Daily tracking

20200909 Daily report – keep plugging

I am an expert at starting a diet.  I have been on a lot of them!  I am also an expert on quitting a diet.  That’s happened almost as many times.  I didn’t learn much from my earlier diets, though.  I kept running into the same problems over and over, and I had no answer.  I’m sure you know the problems too.

Now I have found a way around those problems.   I’m not the only one, and if you have read this blog before I will sometimes look at other people’s successful diet strategies.  They have a lot in common, but not everything is the same.  

Pulled pork with mac and cheese and oven-roasted sprouts!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – coconut cream pie (400);  2 slices Canadian bacon (20);

  • 440 calories

Lunch – lasagna (400); 

  • 400 calories 

Dinner – 5oz pulled pork (250); bread (70); mac and cheese (100); Brussels sprouts (20)

  • 440 calories

Snacking – nada (0);

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1280 calories (limit 1700)

Why so low?

I don’t know why some days I want to eat more and some days less.  It isn’t related to exercise, or the size of breakfast, because those were very different each time.  But I am paying attention to (1) physical hunger and (2) the effect that has on how much I enjoy the food.  That means I don’t eat if I’m not hungry.  If my favorite apple pie (Mother’s homemade!) is calling me, that’s ok.  It will be there tomorrow and I will be hungry enough to really enjoy it.  It’s no good eating when you’re not hungry.  But sometimes it is hard to be honest with yourself about hunger.  

When I was dieting in the past, I had the same problems come up again and again.  Dieting was hard and I failed a lot.  Where do you begin?  Do you try to eat “less”, whatever that means?  I found that if I tried to eat less, it was hard to sustain the effort.  Eating until I was full was the goal and I learned to associate being full with being satisfied and happy.  What was “less”?  Giving up my eating goal required a big sacrifice.  What did I have to replace it?  Nothing.  Giving up your source of comfort and happiness for nothing is a hard sell.  You are just making yourself miserable on purpose and working against all your mental goals (of being full and that making you happy).  

The same with keeping a food journal and counting calories.  Why would you do such a thing?  It’s against your eating goals: being full and associating that with comfort and happiness.  Keeping track of calories would be at best a waste of time.  At worst, you might start eating less and become unhappy!  It’s a terrible trap, associating fullness with happiness.  It can get to a point where anything less than being full is making yourself unhappy, or withholding happiness from yourself.  You can’t do that for long!  So that mindset is very destructive.  

Everyone is going to be different.  I wonder what portion of people who are gaining weight have fallen into my mental trap?  At least I have learned how to get out.  But do my lessons apply to anyone else?

-The Doctor

20200908 Daily report: wait for it!

An important part of living a weight control lifestyle is delayed gratification. You absolutely can have a cookie, or pie, or cake, or your favorite meal on this lifestyle.  In fact it is recommended.  

Best tomato sauce ever!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/8 apple pie with single crust (450)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – Grilled pork burger (450); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (45); pickles and horseradish sauce (20);

  • 515 calories 

Dinner – 6oz fettuccine (300); 1 Italian sausage link (230); homemade San Marizano tomato sauce (30);

  • 560 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80);

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1610 calories (limit 1700)

Walking is enough

To finish the thought from before the break: it’s no good skipping meals or starving yourself during the day.  You will feel deprived and unhappy since there is no immediate reward for doing that.  I felt that way on several failed diets.  Instead, now I carefully use hunger to improve my eating experience.  (1) Wait until you are physically hungry before you eat.  Don’t wait until it’s too late, or you will eat so fast you will hardly notice you have done it.  That can lead to overeating as you go back for seconds.  (2) Eat a controlled portion of your favorite food.  The fact that it’s your favorite will make the waiting and the controlled portion worthwhile.  A small amount of hunger enhances your enjoyment of your favorite food.  It’s a much better experience than eating a lot.

I had three wonderful meals today (controlled portions) and finished at 1610 calories for the day.  I was completely satisfied and don’t want to eat any more.  How many people can say that?  Eating 1610 calories per day means I will lose a reasonable amount of weight this week.  That’s partly because I am taking light exercise almost every day.  You don’t need a lot, but some exercise seems to enhance things.

My current system is to eat about 1600 calories per day.  The last few weeks, doing that, I have lost an average of nearly 2 pounds a week.  That includes walking 3 miles most days and 1600 calories of food intake per day.  I also write down everything I eat and plan out meals that are worthwhile.  The balance is hunger and fulfillment.  If you eat a controlled portion you will be slightly hungry for each next (portioned) meal, which will be extra fulfilling.  Then the cycle continues as you are hungry next time.  It’s all because you don’t eat too much at any one meal.  It’s amazing how fulfilling hunger takes only a small portion of food.  

So far I am keeping my mind in the right place.  I want to live this way and enjoy it, so it hardly takes any willpower. Would you like your favorite food for dinner?  Why yes, I would.  See?

-The Doctor

20200907 Daily report burger

Tracking your food intake is a job that takes some dedication and it has big rewards.  It is worth doing even if you don’t intend to change a thing about how you are eating.  You will learn all about yourself and your habits.  Some people get around this by eating the same thing every day.  They don’t have to keep a journal because it would be a very short book.  But even those people will break their routines, for example at the holidays.  There is a reason why it is common to gain weight during the holidays!  Hint: you break the routine and start eating new things and more of them.  

I don’t use an app or anything.  Those don’t work for me.  I prefer my own spreadsheet.

Grilled pork burger with red onion, pickles and horseradish sauce!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x pancakes (75); sugar-free syrup (10); butter (20)

  • 180 calories

Lunch – Costco meatballs (280) 3 tablespoons hummus (100); Aldi wheat wrap (90); pickles (20);

  • 490 calories 

Dinner – grilled pork burger (450); half wheat wrap (45); oven fried potatoes (105);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – none (00)

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1270 calories (limit 1700)

If your stomach doesn't call vigorously, with a shout!

Don’t just keep eating because you have calories left in the daily budget.  That’s an important lesson that takes a lot of confidence.  Saturday I had over 2000 calories and felt uncomfortably full.  (I am rarely if ever full while living this lifestyle.  I aim more for a feeling of fulfillment.  So being physically full is a strange sensation now.)  Sunday I had 1450 calories and today 1270.  Was I making up for Saturday’s overeating?  Or just not hungry?

I’d be lying if I said Saturday wasn’t in my mind at all.  But I have learned my lesson over a year and a half of mostly successful dieting.  It goes: Don’t Punish Yourself Today for Yesterday’s Mistake.  I usually say: today is a new day.  I deliberately had a small breakfast today thinking I would like dessert at the end of the day – cake or pie.  But after dinner, which was extraordinarily delicious, I was so fulfilled that I didn’t feel any need for more food or dessert.  I had the calories to spend but didn’t spend them.

Another saying: don’t eat if you are not hungry for it.  If your stomach isn’t calling with a shout! for more food, don’t feed it.  You won’t enjoy it nearly as much.  And I aim to enjoy food as much as possible, in the best possible way.  I try to enjoy fulfilling my physical need for food at just the right moment with exactly the food I want most.  It’s a balancing game that keeps things exciting and interesting and a constant challenge that I enjoy.  Don’t let yourself confuse eating for hunger with eating for emotional reasons.  That ends with overeating and an unhealthy food relationship.  Aim high and be simple.  Food is for physical hunger.  

Choose good values and live them out!  You will succeed.  

-The Doctor

20200906 Daily report: don’t make this mistake

Every day is a new day.  That’s one of the principles I live by now – speaking of weight control.  If I overeat today, I shouldn’t under-eat tomorrow.  Likewise if I under-eat today, I shouldn’t overeat tomorrow.

OK, yesterday I overdid it a bit.  There was cake.  And pie.  And they were very, very good chocolate cake and coconut cream pie.  

My total for yesterday was over 2000 calories; this on the same day I reached a new low weight of 219 pounds.  Today was a new day, right?  So I should have eaten the normal amount.  But I didn’t.

Dinner - sausage and manicotti

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – sausage (270); pizza (300)

  • 570 calories 

Dinner – sausage (230); manicotti (250); salad and broccoli (30);

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate cake (200)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1440 calories (limit 1700)

Actually I wasn't hungry.

I didn’t eat breakfast and didn’t want it.  I was uncomfortably full yesterday after eating a big dinner with dessert and going over my calorie budget!  But I have been here before.  The last thing you want to do is to withhold food from yourself and get into a punishment mindset.  But I really wasn’t hungry.  I had tea and didn’t get hungry until 11AM.

For lunch I ate normally and I was quite hungry by lunchtime.  Dinner I left until late, usually a bad idea.  It was past 7PM and I was so hungry I wolfed it all down.  I don’t like that.  Normally I try to time things so I am hungry enough to enjoy things but not too hungry.  Once I get too hungry it’s hard to slow down and enjoy things.  That’s my main incentive to eat fewer calories, reaching that exact hunger point.  If I let myself get too hungry, it’s like I am breaking a promise to myself.  The promise is: I will eat less food, but I will make sure that the food I do eat is worth waiting for and served just when I will enjoy it most.    See the problem?  I waited too long and broke my promise.

Anyway, it didn’t work out too badly this time.  I have earned a lot of credit with myself for being faithful about that promise.  I even had dessert, and was able to enjoy homemade chocolate cake and more tea.  That’s because I had already eaten dinner and could slow down and enjoy.  It made up part of the promise I broke earlier; at least dessert was served just when I wanted it.  

One other thing – I was wearing size 40 pants last night, which are just slightly tight on me yet.  After I ate all that dinner, it was physically uncomfortable to be in those pants!  Great feedback, and I knew immediately I had eaten too much.  This is definitely one way thin people know if they have overeaten.  The physical sensation of being too full for your pants is quite uncomfortable.

Don’t get too hungry, just hungry enough is best.

-The Doctor

20200904 Daily report long weekend

It didn’t come too soon.  The Doctor sometimes needs a long weekend.  It’s time to stop and think about what’s important and get your mind right.  

Every day, I keep a food journal, maintain portion control, and make sure I am hungry every time I eat.  Yes, it takes discipline to do it every day, but I have made it easier by setting up my life and my mindset so that I want and need to do it.  It doesn’t take willpower and force for me to lose weight.  I tried that for many years and it didn’t work, over and over.  I thought for a while that low carb/keto would be the answer, but it seems even on those magic diets you still have to wach how much you eat or it doesn’t work.

That’s the difficult part, really.  How do you lose weight?  You eat less.  But you must never, ever tell yourself that.  

Breakfast, 3 eggs and cheese omlette. Part of a weight loss lifestyle.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 3x eggs (80); 1.25 ounce Pepper Jack cheese (140); tomatoes (20);

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 9oz Nacho topping (420); 1oz chips (140); sour cream (60);

  • 660 calories 

Dinner – pizza (600); salad (50);

  • 650 calories

Snacking – cheese (50);

  • 50 calories

Total for the day: 1760 calories (limit 1700)

Persuade and lead yourself

Force yourself to eat less?  What a terrible idea.  You would have to do that every meal and every day.  You would hate it and when you stopped using force you would go right back to what you prefer.  You have to persuade yourself to prefer a different goal when you eat.  

One of my goals is to be physically hungry before I eat anything.  Sure, there is something to regulatory and eating when it is the usual time.  But if I am not hungry at that time I will usually wait until later.  The first few bites when you are properly hungry are the best part.  You don’t even want to eat too much because it ruins the experience.  I mean, the experience of eating when hungry only lasts for a few mouthfuls. After that the experience is diminishing returns.  Plus if you eat too much now you won’t be hungry at next mealtime.  

Pick your new goal carefully.  I found with my goal of being hungry that I actually prefer it to my old goal.  When I was gaining weight and not paying attention, my eating goal was to feel full, and I taught myself that eating and feeling full was comforting and satisfying.  Now that my goal has changed, I find being physically full a bit distasteful.  In a way, I welcome the end of my measured portion and the feeling that I could eat more.

Why eat more?  I have had enough!  Enough calories and enough so that Iwill be hungry for the next meal.  Satisfying that hunger is now why I eat.  The behavior reinforces itself because I don’t want to eat too much and I want to be hungry.  Now it’s no longer about force.  I WANT to do it.  Now it’s a matter of discipline.  My goal is so rewarding that I will do all this portioning and measuring and journaling every day, because attaining the goal is worthwhile.  Losing weight is a side effect.  It’s a side effect I like.

I have persuaded myself to do this.  Go thou and do likewise.

-The Doctor

20200903 Daily report: Nacho 2!

What a difference a new day makes.  Remember: every day is a new day. A new day is a fresh start.  You can do everything right, one new day at a time.  Some days won’t be good or won’t go the way you wanted and planned and even fought for.  But most of them will.  

I had the same dinner today that I had yesterday.  But because my head was in the right place, it was a satisfying experience today and I didn’t want any more afterwards.

OK, nacho topping looks better in a bowl.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – sandwich with bagel (330); 2x Canadian bacon (40); Muenster cheese (70)

  • 440 calories

Lunch – wrap with 6x meatballs (47); 2T hummus (70); 1.5x Ole wraps (50); 

  • 425 calories 

Dinner – 10oz Nachos (450); 1oz chips (150); sour cream (70);

  • 670 calories

Snacking – Nectarine (30); 

  • 30 calories

Total for the day: 1560 calories (limit 1700)

If

If you are properly hungry (physically hungry) when you sit down for dinner, you will enjoy the experience of the first few bites the most.  If you are TOO hungry then you might wolf those first few bites down and not really enjoy them.  Take time with those first few bites.  The rest of your meal will never be quite as good.  That’s why going back for seconds is a bad idea – you will never recapture those first few bites until you have time to become hungry again.

If you sit down to eat and you are not particularly hungry – physically craving the food and feeling like your stomach is empty – then eating is a bad idea.  You should question why you are doing it at all.  It’s important that your call to a meal should be physical.  Otherwise you risk starting to eat for the wrong reasons.  You may go out of control, and over the long term it will show up in your body’s weight.  

If you monitor your body’s weight regularly you will be alerted to any changes before they go out of control.  In control means you know your weight and you know your clothing size.  You can go to the store and try on Size X and be pretty confident it will fit.  AND, you can get on a scale and be confident you know the answer within a pound or two.  OK, an overweight person can know their size in clothes.  But can you really?  I was surprised almost every time I went to the stores for new clothes.  I had no idea what my weight was and didn’t monitor it for years.  The clothes you own can stretch out and fool you.  

If you pay attention to how much you are eating – yes, counting calories and measuring portion sizes – you have more control than if you didn’t.  Do you know how many calories you need to eat in a day or week to maintain your weight the same as last week?  Leave aside trying to lose weight.  Do you know your body well enough to keep your weight the same, for a year?  How much do you have to eat to gain weight?  

Know your body and know why you eat!  You can learn your body and choose what reasons for eating you like best.

-The Doctor

20200902 Daily report: now focus!

Today I had a challenge.  It was a rough day and it’s been a hard week so far with lots of ups and downs.  Yesterday I started feeling the disconnect.  I wanted to eat even though I wasn’t physically hungry.  I’ve paid enough attention to myself over the last year and a half to notice the difference.  I was also tired today.  

Even though I had enough food (by the calorie count) the food didn’t satisfy me.  I wanted more!  But I know by now: if food doesn’t satisfy you, MORE food won’t satisfy you either.  That way madness lies.

Baked nacho topping with chips and sour creammmmmmmmmmmmm

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – chili and bread (250)

  • 250 calories

Lunch – bread (60); cheese (100); chocolate (170); Snickers ice cream bar (180);

  • 510 calories 

Dinner – 9oz nachos (390); 1oz chips (140); sour cream (60); olives (10);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); banana and grapes (60)

  • 140 calories

Total for the day: 1500 calories (limit 1700)

Nachos!

In case you are wondering, it’s a baked nacho topping made with beans, meat, cheese, salsa, green chilies, and spices.  After it’s all baked and melded together, you can eat it with tortilla chips, salsa, sour cream and black olives, my favorite toppings for nachos.  

It’s a favorite and should be hugely satisfying.  But it almost wasn’t because my head was in the wrong place.  Part of me was processing my emotional state and tiredness and coming up with the answer that I needed respite, comfort, satisfaction.  That part wanted me to eat, and eat, until I was full.  It’s a pattern that has not worked for me – during the time when I thought that way, I gained weight uncontrollably and wasn’t considering my responsibility for my body’s weight.  So I know it’s a danger and it was weird to watch it start again.  I always say that the danger, after you put for the effort to lose weight, is going back to your old mind and old life afterwards.  

The old you let you gain all the weight!  It can’t be allowed to come back.  The new person you have invented for yourself lost a lot of weight and puts you back in charge.  The choice should be easy.

Anyway, I made it through today.  Tonight I’ll go to bed early.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Be careful of your thinking.

-The Doctor

20200901 Daily report (with more push)

Pay attention.  Pay attention if you want to be in control of your body’s weight.  Fine, on one level you pay attention to how much you are eating.  But that is not the point.  Pay attention to yourself, find out about yourself and you will learn how to get the right behavior out of yourself.  You must get your mind right.

Do you want to control your weight?  Pay attention to why you are eating.  If your weight is out of control, you will know from the following simple test.  How much do you weigh?  If your answer includes the word “about” or “um” and you don’t really know, then you are not paying attention. 

Can you say what you had for dinner last Tuesday?  What about lunch last Monday?  

Why are you eating?  What does it do for you?  How does it make you feel?

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bagel (330); cheese (70); salami (100);

  • 500 calories

Lunch – ham (200); bread (140); pretzels (100); cheese (100);

  • 540 calories 

Dinner – chili (200); gobi aloo (125); gazpacho (30); Reese’s PBC (100);

  • 455 calories

Snacking – cookies (120); 

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1615 calories (limit 1700)

When I was out of control

I remember those days.  I ate whenever I wanted, however much, without thinking about consequences at all.  Of course, I did get up to 325 pounds that way.  Not all at once.  It seemed to go in stages with long plateaus.  I was only 230 pounds when I started graduate school, but near 300 pounds 10 years later.  My primary interest in eating was to feel full, which I learned to associate with comfort.  Soon I was in a trap – eating and feeling full became my quickest and easiest ways to find satisfaction and comfort.  

I don’t look for the easy way in my life so much any more.  It’s much more of a challenge, much more rewarding, to readjust my thinking and aim for higher goals.  Satisfaction comes from other things in my life that I work hard for and accomplish.  Eating food is not an accomplishment and I have gotten away from that thinking.

Now I pay attention to my physical needs and I have learned to use hunger as a good sign.  Hunger means I haven’t been overeating and it means I will really enjoy what I eat next.  The anticipation is dramatic and the food is much more satisfying then when I would eat it all.  I pay attention to why I am eating.  If I want to eat, I ask why.  If it’s not mealtime I have to have a good reason, otherwise: is this hungry eating or emotional eating?  

I don’t like to give in to emotional reasons for eating food any more.  But it takes some paying attention.  It’s much more important than paying attention to how much you eat.  If you have your mind right and are eating only for physical reasons of hunger, you will stop eating and be satisfied more easily with less food.  You won’t feel deprived and it will be easy to stop eating when you have had enough.

Paying attention is very close to getting your mind right.  You have to pay attention to the right things.

-The Doctor

20200831 Daily report: end of August

The end of August!  It’s almost the end of summer.  The first half of this year, practically speaking, I didn’t lose any weight.  It was The Great Pause.  It started before the Corona Virus lockdown.  Then suddenly in June I found I was able to lose weight consistently.  However, even though I was eating the same as before (1800 calories per day) I was losing very slowly – less than a pound per week.  Why did I stop?  How did I start again?  

Then, I found out how to lose more than a pound a week again!

This was good sausage chili.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – beef and broccoli (315); rice (50);

  • 365 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); Ole wrap (50)

  • 570 calories 

Dinner – 12oz sausage and bean chili (420); braised snap peas (60)

  • 480 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1480 calories (limit 1700)

Why stop?

I stopped controlling my food intake in December 2019.  First I was ill, then I was on vacation away from home and my food scale, holiday food, and lots of other excuses.  I didn’t even get on a scale in December!  

But by January 11 2020 I had gained 8 pounds from my November, 2019 low of 237.4 pounds.  At the start of the year I tried to come under control again.  And again, and again.  I couldn’t get it together for more than a couple weeks, it seemed like.  

On the good side, I didn’t gain any more weight after January.  I stayed in the mid 240s for several months. That’s a kind of progress, that I didn’t go back to my old habits and keep gaining and undo all my work.  I wasn’t in total control but at least I wasn’t totally out of control either.  

At the time, I was pretty unhappy even with that silver lining.  I was used to losing 2 pounds a week and feeling pretty good about myself.  Looking back at my calorie counts and eating patterns during that time, it’s clear that I was eating too many calories to lose weight.  (Today, I see that as good information.  How many calories a week does my body need to stay at a consistent weight?  I can use that data to get an idea.)

Suddenly, in June, I started to lose weight consistently.  But that part of the story will be told another time.  Keep track of your calorie count!

-The Doctor

20200830 Daily report and amble

Exercise is a little tricky right now.  With everyone staying at home most of the time it’s amazing how little exercise I get compared to before, when I was running around more, visiting stores, washing cars, swimming, and walkin places.  So I have been trying to walk several times a week, a 3-mile circuit with lots of hills.  Today, I ambled instead, on a 1.2-mile trail.  I don’t know if it counts much for exercise, but it was nice to be outside. 

And it made my hungry for dinner.  

Yes, those are hot dogs with curry. Still good.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – pizza (450); chocolate (150);

  • 600 calories

Lunch – bratwurst (280); 1/4 protein wrap (30)

  • 310 calories 

Dinner – 2x hot dogs (110); Ole wrap (50); Gobi Aloo cauliflower and potato curry (300);

  • 570 calories

Snacking – marshmallows (60); ddd (00)

  • 60 calories

Total for the day: 1540 calories (limit 1700)

When your body is catching up

I have heard may times from people who have lost significant weight that they also get impatient with their bodies.  Many start working out in order to show more progress.  It’s difficult to lose significant weight and still see an overweight body in the mirror.  Then the moving of the goalposts begins.  I mean that your goal changes.

Even if you are thin, controlling your weight won’t result in a body that is fit, toned, or muscular.  Here you were thinking “if only I were thin” and now you start thinking “if only I were thin and worked out.”  I don’t know how much further it goes.  But at some point you have to decide how far to take it.  Will you lift weights?  Work out?  Start running?  Those exercises, especially lifting weights, burn a lot of calories.  But they also take a fair amount of dedication and maintenance.  

The key, as ever, is to get your mind right.  If your life is fixed on weight control, it helps keep the rest in perspective.  You may not work out or have a supremely muscular body, but you are in control of you body’s weight.  I plan to be modestly fit, but I am curious to know what would happen if I was thin and lifted weights for a bit.  Not to become bulky, but to be stronger.  How different would I look?

Anyway, that is a fantasy.  I have a goal and I will keep my mind on the job.  Go thou and do likewise.  

-The Doctor

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