Daily tracking

20200323 Daily report

Weight control in the time of Corona!  Does weight control really matter at this time, Doctor?  Why yes, I believe it does.  Many of us are stuck inside with only trips to the grocery stores and pharmacies allowed.  Sitting at home, it is very tempting to eat.  Eating can be emotionally satisfying, bringing comfort when you feel full, helping you wake up, it’s something to do with your hands, and keeps boredom and loneliness away.  There are many reasons to eat, and very few reasons to stop or limit it.  So, during this time of general lockdowns and quarantines during Coronvirus, it is important to keep yourself fixed on your highest goals for living including controlling your body’s weight.  

Roasted pork loin with apples, and a wheat beer.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 9oz baked beans (400); 2 ounces Ukrainian Christmas bread (200);

  • 600 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); wraps (55); with fried onions (25)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 3oz roasted pork loin with apples and white wine sauce (150); macaroni (150); and green peas (40);

  • 340 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate almonds (160); pretzel (100);

  • 340 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800)

Sunday Dinner on Monday

This is usually a Sunday roast, but I was tied up Sunday and couldn’t make this.  I was also planning something grander, including buttered egg noodles and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts, but it being Monday and working on the computer all day, I couldn’t pull that off.  As it was I ate dinner at 7PM and had to have a snack around 5PM.  This is one of my favorite pork loin recipes because the meat is butterflied and seasoned all the way through with butter, roasted garlic, sugar, and salt.  It is cooked in a sauce of onions, apples, thyme, herbs, and white wine (why yes, it is a French recipe!).  Almost as good as the roast, is the outcome that I have several days worth of sandwiches and wraps available from the leftovers.  The rest of the family don’t like a lot of leftovers, but it works for me.  

I will make my sour cream and dill cucumber salad recipe and use that to garnish future pork sandwiches.  Yum!  Meals like this are worth the wait, worth getting hungry for, and are very, very satisfying even if you have only a controlled portion.  Notice I am not counting the beer in my daily total.  I don’t drink very often, that’s my excuse.  But if you keep yourself fixed on the goal of satisfying physical hunger, and do the work, you can find portioned food very satisfying and you will not feel deprived.  Feeling deprived is the death of so many good impulses.  Don’t let that happen to you.

Aim high!  Control your weight and your body, and see what that does for your life.  Don’t worry about being thin, that will take care of itself.  

-The Doctor

20200322 Daily report

Welcome to more coronavirus diet news!  What makes it a coronavirus diet?  Absolutely nothing!  Except, that I am really talking about the quarantine and the fact that gyms have been shut down for a lot of people (including The Doctor – moi).  That means a lot of us are sitting at home with not much left of our regular routine left, including going to the gym (for those of us who do that).  Personally, I prefer to swim, and the pools are closed at least through next week and maybe longer.  Sitting at home, with all the temptations of food and none of the routine and exercise that helps keep all that in check.  

A new routine is required, if you want to keep it together.  I am planning to start each day with an early walk (30 minutes), count calories carefully, and take an afternoon or evening walk as well.  Stairs will be climbed.  Children will be chased.  And why would anyone do all this?  For two reasons: 1. I have decided that controlling my weight is more important to me than almost everything else.  2. I have succeeded, over the last year, in finding ways to make all the calorie counting and meal planning worth doing.  

Corned beef and cabbage wraps - with carrots and potato. Savory and satisfying!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 8oz baked beans (360); 2oz Ukrainian bread (200);

  • 560 calories

Lunch – 1/4 pound corned beef (140); bread (130); TI dressing (130); Swiss cheese (150);

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – ham (100); bread (130); cheese (50); ice cream sandwich (140);

  • 420 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (200); french toast pieces (70);

  • 350 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800)

Clickety Clack

Last week I said I needed a new keyboard.  It has arrived!  I bought an Ultra Classic from Unicomp, which uses the same principles (and mechanism) as the old IBM keyboards from 20-30 years ago.  It was expensive – $120 all told.  But so far it is very much worth it.  The keyboards are made in Kentucky and the action is much better than the cheap keyboard I was using recently.  Since I type so much, I thought this might be worth the money.  So far, I am happy with it.  It does sound a bit louder than most recent keyboards.  Maybe it will make me sound productive.

When you are viewing you life as an exercise in controlling your body’s weight, and shape, it can become a kind of obsession.  I think that is correct and likely the only way you can do it.  In my life so far, dieting by exerting willpower has never been successful.  By willpower I mean that you make yourself change how much you are eating and consequently feel resentful and deprived.  You keep that at bay with force of will.  That is all that is keeping you from going back to your old habits.  Based on my experience so far, I only have a limited amount of that kind of will, and then I fail and feel bad about myself.  So I don’t set myself up for that kind of failure any more. 

I can make each day a success by reframing the exercise: did I successfully prepare for each meal by getting physically hungry just at the right time?  Did I satisfy myself my making sure the controlled portion of food I was eating, was a high quality item that I would really appreciate?  Put another way, I work hard to make sure that eating less food is a positive.  I don’t feel deprived and don’t have to exert that kind of willpower, because I am looking forward to a deeper kind of fulfillment.  Emotional reasons for eating are not seen as satisfying and being truly stuffed full feels strange and distasteful to me now.  

Make sure you are able to achieve success every day and every meal, and you will look forward to that.  If you don’t, you might seek fulfillment in being full.  

-The Doctor

20200320 Daily report

My exercise routine has had to change while all America is doing this semi voluntary quarantine for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.  The gyms and swimming pools are closed in order to slow the rate of infection, and swimming is my favorite exercise.  But even little things like walking downstairs to the schoolbus are no longer part of my day since schools are closed too!   And I am doing 100% telework, so no going to the office.  I am having a very physically inactive week.  I am starting to get very creaky.  Walking sis all I have right now, though I am thinking about getting a bike.  Bikes are nice.  So: today I walked to the store, I walked up six flights of steps, and I chased some children on their bikes.  I took any excuse to walk down to my car.  It’s not 40 minutes of swimming, but it is better than nothing.  But it’s true, as a commenter has pointed out, that a sedentary lifestyle burns fewer calories than an active one.  This lack of exercise will definitely make weight loss more difficult.  

Reuben wraps - I like the pinwheel effect

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Steel cut oats (320)

  • 320 calories

Lunch – Reuben grill wrap: 1/4 pound corned beef (140); wheat wrap (110); 2Tbsp Thousand Island dressing (130); Swiss cheese (150); sauerkraut (inconsequential calories);

  • 530 calories 

Dinner – Aldi frozen pizza (525); 

  • 525 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); ham (150); chocolate (250);

  • 480 calories

Total for the day: 1850 calories (limit 1800)

The coronavirus diet

This is going to be a challenging time for many people.  The danger of runaway infection and after that, overloading the hospitals and medical people with too many cases at he same time, has everybody in agreement: the spread of the virus must be slowed.  This is sometimes called ‘flattening the curve’ and even has a Twitter tag #FlattenTheCurve.  So many people are being told to stay at home for the good of the public health.  I wouldn’t be the first to note that the usual forms of exercise will be unavailable.  But it is dieting and really, weight control, that will be an issue for many.  Activity is down for most people, since people aren’t doing anything more strenuous than walking around the house or from a car to the store and back.  Carrying groceries is the new exercise!

But it is weight control that will have to be encouraged during this time.  With so many people cutting their physical activity and having nothing to do but sit at home with the temptations of eating all around, all the time, we can predict a few consequences.  #1.  Baby boom.  I’m not the first to say that either, but I am sure that there will be one.  #2.  Routines are disrupted and that means interrupted sleep.  Interrupted sleep in my experience makes it harder to focus on controlling your weight.  It also means people will eat more because eating seems to make people more awake.  #3.  Less physical activity and the opportunity for regular meals and disrupted sleep cycles will mean overeating and lots of weight gain.   

So I will keep writing and extolling the virtues of weight control.  Part of controlling your weight is establishing and sticking to an eating and sleeping routine that will support your ability to control your weight.  If your top desire in life is to be in control of your weight, then you must and will create a new routine and eating schedule that works during this disrupted time.

Weight control starts with a simple realization: the goal is not to be thin.  The goal is control, to be able to choose any weight you want and make it happen.  Once you place yourself in control of your weight, then you can see that being heavy or thin is in your control.  That does mean that being heavy is a choice or trade-off you have made for some other, more important good in your life.  You can work on making weight control an essential and all-but-central part of your life.  It will be what gets you out of bed in the morning.  

Choose your weight carefully.  The thinner you want to be, the more work it is.

-The Doctor

20200319 Daily report

Another day is another chance to control my body’s weight!  Believe it or not, you can get to a place where that is something you look forward to.  It fulfills a need in you.  And that all comes from setting weight control as a great moral good in your mind.  You create a vision of the future where you have you body’s weight under control.  You can be thinner, or heavier, as you choose.  It does mean though that you take responsibility for what happens to your body and yourself.  You decide to make the changes needed to bring this moral reality into being. 

Before I became interested in weight control, controlling how much I ate was a huge bother and I would give up easily.  That’s because my vision of the future (at that time) was centered around being full, and that became more and more of a source of satisfaction.  Now, I think of being full as a cheap thrill, hardly worth it.  My mind has changed and the way I see food and eating has changed.  My goal now is weight control.  

When the leftovers are as good as the original!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 3oz soda bread (275); 6oz baked beans (270)

  • 545 calories

Lunch – Corned beef (100); and cabbage (10); wraps (100); with potato (10); carrot (10); and TI dressing (100);

  • 330 calories 

Dinner – bread and hummus (210); 8oz baked beans (360); bread roll (220);

  • 790 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Trader Joe’s chocolate (125);

  • 205 calories

Total for the day: 1870 calories (limit 1800)

Day to day

I don’t quite understand it, since I have not been exercising due to the quarantine for coronavirus, but I woke up ravenous and ate breakfast earlier than usual.  I could have eaten more, but I wanted to be careful not to spoil lunch.  When this kind of thing happens, I have to make sure I eat enough so that I don’t feel deprived; that’s when trouble begins and overeating looks attractive.  So I was careful to eat just enough.

Lunchtime – yes, I was ravenous again, and was staring at the clock from 10.30 onwards.  Leftover corned beef and potato, carrot, and shredded cabbage wraps hit the spot (especially if you warm them up).  It’s hard to believe that Thousand Island dressing has 130 calories in 2 tablespoons, by the way.  Very expensive in calories, but it does bring the sandwich together.  

Dinner – yes, starving by 4.30 again.  I have no idea what’s gotten into me, though I have made a change recently.  I’ve been having tea with half and half daily as a treat, and I noticed that the half and half was not lasting as long as it used to.  Maybe the container had a hole in the bottom.  But really, I’ve clearly been having quite a bit more than I was supposed to, since I hate to drag out the measuring spoon every time I have tea.  But I have discovered that 2 tablespoons of half and half weigh about 30 grams, so now I just pour it into my cup while on the kitchen scale.  Yes, all calories must be measured when you are trying to achieve weight control.  

Today I went to Aldi because I needed exercise.  So I walked and took a backpack.  Once I got there, it was an interesting scene.  This store has been hit hard by panic buying and has had to do major restocking every night, and the hours have been restricted to limit hoarding (a recipe for more panic and hoarding if you ask me).  The store had not completely recovered but it had a little bit of everything: some dried meat, some bread, lots of produce, some fresh meat, some milk, and some canned goods, and a little pasta.  Very little rice, very few fruit cups, no flour or granulated sugar (plenty of powdered sugar), no yeast available.  There was plenty of lunch meat, frozen goods, chocolate and sweets, and tons of snack chips of all kinds, plenty of crackers and lots of cheese.  They had a lot of eggs too.  There were about half the customers compared to normal.  

Next: a report on Trader Joe’s!  I hardly shop there, but they have also been hit hard by the panic.

-The Doctor

20200318 Daily report

When your focus is on weight control, you can make it work for you whatever the circumstances.  Right now, I am working from home, the pools are closed, and most of my social outlets are cut off.  But my lens for looking at my world is still: what can I do to control my body’s weight?  And from home, for me, there’s a lot I can do.  For one thing, I can make my patented (not really) Reuben wrap sandwich, with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing toasted and wrapped up in a flatbread.  It works and it is very, very good.  I even make it on the kitchen scale so I can weigh out the corned beef.  My toaster oven makes it easy to melt all the cheese.  

Now that it's toasted, add sauerkraut, dressing, and roll!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x bacon slices (70) on a toasted bagel (300)

  • 440 calories

Lunch – 1/4 pound corned beef (140); wheat wrap (110); 2Tbsp Thousand Island dressing (130); Swiss cheese (150); 

  • 530 calories 

Dinner – 8oz chili (340); 3oz soda bread (280);

  • 620 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); chocolate almonds (150)

  • 270 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800)

Diet without exercise

You can lose weight without any extra exercise, just by controlling your food intake.  However, you do’t have to feel good about the lack of exercise.  But how and why would you control your food intake?   First, you have to commit to measuring it.  You can only do that if you have decided to make weight control one of the top values of your moral existence.  I’ve found (after failing on lots of other ideas) that I am willing to do this, so long as I don’t feel deprived, punished, and miserable while I am controlling my weight.  That does take a fair amount of work because you have to anticipate the needs and desires of your own body, and learn about yourself and what you want, and be willing to put in the work (or spend a lot of money getting other people to work for you) so that will happen. 

Just sitting around all day, your body will burn a regular amount of calories.  Today, I hardly left the house (does walking to my car count?) so my calorie burn was at the minimum.  Tomorrow I hope to do some walking.  When I swim, I have calculated my normal routine burns about 600 calories.  Think about the numbers, though.  I swim twice a week and burn 1200 calories.  In that same week, I will eat about 13,400 calories (ideally, if I want to lose weight).  So exercise is a small fraction of my total calorie throughput and a lack of exercise should only marginally affect my calorie calculations.  But there are other benefits – exercising makes you stronger, for example, and you might look better.  On the whole, I like swimming twice a week.  

Find a way to make weight control into something you like and appreciate, and work to keep yourself liking it.  Then you will always do it, and failing that, can always come back to it.

-The Doctor

20200317 Daily report

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day at the Doctor of Things!  That means it’s time for New England Boiled Dinner and Irish soda bread.  I like the meal a lot, and it means I have Reuben sandwiches out of the leftovers for some time.  Since corned beef hardly ever goes on sale apart from this time, I usually buy two and freeze one for later.   Actually I bought three, but two of them are quite small (2-3 pounds) and one large (5 pounds).  

Annoyingly, the cabbage is hit or miss.  Sometimes it’s uniformly tender and sometimes, like this year, it turns out a mixture of tender and tough leaves.  But the carrots and potatoes turned out nicely.  And I had a success with the soda bread – used golden raisins this time.  

Apparently this is not a traditional meal for Irish people – just Americans.  But it seems like many of us do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this way.  “Why” is a mystery and may stay that way forever.  For me, it’ a handy holiday with a food I like.  

Caption

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 4oz Ukrainian bread and butter (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 12oz jambalaya (420); 2 pretzels (100); Cheddar cheese (100);

  • 720 calories 

Dinner – Corned beef (100); potatoes (50); cabbage (25); carrots (30); soda bread (300); beef broth (100);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); ice cream sandwich (190);

  • 270 calories

Total for the day: 1990 calories (limit 1800)

Excuses, excuses!

I normally manage my food intake to be around 1800 calories per day.   It can be a fun job and I work hard to make sure it is fun and worthwhile.  Today I made an error – I thought the jambalaya was only a few calories when it was really over 400!  Then I had an ice cream sandwich and that put me over the top today.  It was all perception – I believed that I had deprived myself at lunch by only having a low calorie portion of jambalaya, so I felt deprived afterwards and rewarded myself with an ice cream.  Oh, well.  Normally I would fret over this a little, but I see this week I have had a few days that were below the 1800 calories I strive for.  In the game of calorie averages, today should be ok.  

I was looking at the data on Amazon regarding best sellers during all this Coronavirus business.  Amazingly, while everyone was horking the toilet paper (or Bogarting it, if you prefer), the sales of baby diapers, diaper wipes, and sanitary products for women have not been affected.  What kind of targeted freak out are people having?  Look at the Amazon top sellers in food: Rice Krispies treats, powdered mashed potatoes, cereal, noodles, and bags of chips.  And evaporated milk.  Fresh milk has been another odd target of all the horking.  You see people walking out of the store with two and three gallons!   What they will do with it I do not know.  There has also been a huge demand for “survival garden” seeds – presumably people are looking to grow their own since they are stuck at home anyway.  

I went to Costco today – part sightseeing, and partly to get some soap and shampoo as we were nearly out.  There were not a lot of customers, and almost everything was fully stocked, including meat.  It is obvious that the first wave of panic buying is over and people are sitting at home with piles of powdered mashed potatoes, pasta, cookies, cereal, and toilet paper.  

I hope my food is a bit more interesting. Quality homemade food is an important part of my weight control system, and I intend to keep that going.   I just wish the pools were open.

-The Doctor

20200316 Daily report

Well, I started this work week off with a bang!  Like many of you, the Doctor is (mostly) home for a few weeks trying to slow the spread of coronavirus.  So my food preparation can be highest quality.  Today I made Bacon for breakfast, Boston baked beans (homemade) on toast for lunch, and then a Reuben grill wrap for dinner.  I did not feel deprived at all today.

How deprived would you feel with a BLT breakfast?

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps: 4 slices bacon (280); whole wheat wrap (110); tomato and lettuce; horseradish sauce;

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 8 ounces Boston baked beans (360); bread roll (200)

  • 560 calories 

Dinner – Reuben grill wrap with 4 ounces corned beef (140); 3x slices Swiss cheese (50); sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing (130); wheat wrap (110);

  • 530 calories

Snacking – sourdough pretzels (200); chicken and grapes (100);

  • 300 calories

Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)

Sorry, the pool is closed

One sad effect of the restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus is that all the pools and gyms are closed where I live.  How will I stay in peak physical condition without any swimming???  I will miss that because I like swimming and I do it willingly twice a week.  And this means I don’t have my excuse for eating extra calories on swim days.  There’s no hope for it, I will have to come up with another exercise.  

On the good side, I can unleash my creative energies cooking at home.  Tomorrow I have a full St. Patrick’s feast planned: New England boiled dinner and soda bread.  There will be pictures.  Apparently it’s an American thing to do any of that for St. Patrick’s day, though.  For a laugh, if you have time, take a look at some of the videos on Youtube called “Irish People Try” things.  Here’s one that’s relevant.  The Irish people in the video spend most of the video laughing at the idea that people might eat food on St. Patrick’s day – mostly they drink Guinness instead.  

For me, it’s the one time of year when corned beef is less than $3/pound, so I buy several.  The one I have from Costco is a masterpiece, though it was more like $5/pound.  It’s a truly beautiful brisket and I am looking forward to tomorrow.  When you are controlling your food intake, having something to look forward to at every meal is very effective and satisfying.  I recommend it.

-The Doctor

20200315 Daily report

Chili day!  Chili for dinner is a family favorite. My recipe involves ground pork sausage meat and kidney beans, with a chunky tomato sauce flavored with onion, garlic, chili powder, and cumin.  I have seen recipes with wine, and different spices, or all beef, or even mixed pork and beef.  But this one is very, very good.  I’ve eaten it plain, or with tortilla chips and sour cream, or in a burrito with other toppings (like rice, guacamole, refried beans, lettuce, cheese).  It never lasts very long since the whole family likes it.  This kind of dish is ideal for weight control.  It’s so good that it’s worth eating a measured amount; so good that you want to approach your first bite with an empty and hungry stomach.  

Did I mention some people serve chili on hot dogs or over noodles?  I’ve tried both.  This chili is wasted on hot dogs, the flavor is too strong for them.  On noodles, I feel like it dilutes the flavor too much.  You have some noodles with a lot of chili and most of the noodles just with a whisper of chili.  See, I know what will work, and what will satisfy me, in detail.  That’s actually important knowledge when controlling your weight.

This chili is 42.5 calories per ounce. Worth it!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 4 ounces Ukrainian bread and butter (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – lasagna half (300); bread roll (200);

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 4oz chili (170); bread (80); ice cream sandwich (190); chocolate almonds (160); salad (25);

  • 625 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 4oz Boston baked beans (180)

  • 260 calories

Total for the day: 1785 calories (limit 1800)

Deprivation and diet (do not mix)

I have said many times that leaving yourself feeling deprived is a sure way to mess up on a diet (or when attempting weight control, a far more permanent change).  Almost every Friday this year, and for many in the past, I am careful to not overeat Friday so that when I get on the scale Saturday, I will record the best possible weight loss.  Guess what happens?  Sure enough, I overeat most Saturdays.  It’s because I am leaving myself Friday in a state of feeling deprived, like I am forcing myself to not eat, and then Saturday I have a reaction to that.  That’s not even true, but I am putting myself there by not taking care of my need to not feel deprived.  There are two parts to not feeling deprived when restricting calories.

The first is to make sure you do get enough to eat and that it is food you like and appreciate.  Make sure you get it at the right time.  I often get a bit careless about dinnertime and can delay it by an hour or more.  Then I am in deprived territory.  The second part to not feeling deprived is to have something to look forward to tomorrow.  Not the weighing; my body (or my subconscious) doesn’t work that way.  It feels deprived for food and no amount of numbers on a scale makes up for that!!!!  So I am going to try and make sure I have a great breakfast planned for Saturdays, or maybe a great lunch to look forward to.  That means: getting to bed on time (less chance to binge eat late at night if you are already asleep) and getting up early enough to make breakfast.  

Being responsible and keeping your weight under control are partners in that way.

-The Doctor

20200313 Daily report

Friday, the last day of the diet week!  I have found my body responds on a daily and a weekly scale to persistent weight control living.  I tried weighing myself every day for a week last year, and every day I weighed about 0.4 pounds less.  By the end of the week I had lost just over 2.5 pounds.  But there are sometimes swings, and I have found it best for myself to weigh in once per week.  It’s a more dramatic change, every even days.  The nice part about that is that while a bad diet day can affect you for a few days, each new week is a chance to have a good diet week.  If you have a good week and balance your food intake and make that worthwhile, you will enjoy it and your body will lose weight.  

This week I am not expecting any miracles.  I had a bad diet day on the first day of the week, and while I have had a good week after that, the bad day will color the result.  No worries.  Next week can be perfect.

Mia lasagna. No meat, in this recipe.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Bratwurst (260); 1/4 wheat wrap (25)

  • 285 calories

Lunch – 1/6 lasagna (640); 

  • 640 calories 

Dinner – Aldi pizza half (570); bread and pulled pork appetizer (200);

  • 770 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken pieces and cheese (200)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1990 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

The pace has slowed

This year, my calorie average per week has generally crept up around 1950 per day, up from 1850 per day last year.  I still should lose weight, but not at the quick pace I managed last year.  Also, the fact that I had a bad day at the beginning of the week, and then had nearly 2000 calories today, will probably minimize any real loss I had this week as far as my weighing tomorrow.  But that’s ok – any inflation of my weight tomorrow means the loss I have during the next perfect week will look larger.

Even if the pace of weight loss slows a bit, I can probably increase that pace over time.  A small success – a pound per week, say, is the basis for a larger success.  This is a long term affair.

I am typing on a different keyboard from usual, a very cheap one (my backup wired keyboard).  You have to really thump each key pretty hard to get reliable keystrokes, and that increases errors.  So it’s a lot of effort AND creates a huge number of spelling errors I have to go back and fix.  I can’t stand it, I am getting a different keyboard.  Amazingly there is a project going along to recreate the old original IBM keyboard from the 1980s with their buckling springs, what I always used to call the “spring-click” keyboards.  It turns out those keyboards were very quality items and were originally designed and built for mainframe computers that cost big bucks.  Anyway it is nearly $400 for one of these recreated ones, no thanks.  A company called UniComp still makes a watered down version of the IBM keyboard and I ordered one of those instead, much less expensive.  I am looking forward to using a spring-click again to write some blog posts.

-The Doctor

20200312 Daily report

This diet week – weight control week, to be precise – was slightly spoiled by beginning with a bad eating day.  Of 3000 calories or more.  One mistake I’ve made in the past (and other people do this too) is try to make up for the bad day by restricting calories for the next few days.  It will all balance out that way, I would tell myself.  No, it doesn’t work.  You feel deprived and hungry on top of the fact that your body takes several days to recover from bingeing.  It took me until today – Thursday – to return to normal after overeating Saturday.  And I didn’t deprive myself at all during that time, so this was pure recovery with no added angst.  I kept eating 1850 calorie per day, give or take.  It was definitely the right move.  I have a long term strategy and a lifestyle of weight control that I am building.  Punishing myself and deprivation are no way to build your new life that you will be happy and proud to live.  

Jambalaya for lunch! Much more enjoyable than lunch meat.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham and cheese sandwich (370)

  • 370 calories

Lunch – 5oz rice (160); 12oz Jambalaya (420)

  • 580 calories 

Dinner – 5oz pulled pork (270); roll (220)

  • 490 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2 Samoa cookies (150); chicken pieces (50);

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1720 calories (limit 1800)

Not sure how that happened

I only had 1670 calories today?  I didn’t notice.  I wonder how I did that!  I wasn’t even particularly hungry for lunch until past 12 noon.  Usually my stomach is calling for lunch by 11.15!  Still, this means I am still well focused on my highest goals for eating and living.  

It’s another early-to-bed night.  I hope my body resets for dalight savings time soon!

-The Doctor

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