How to lose weight

20200725 Saturday weighing or is it waiting

Ah, Saturday.  The day when you find out if your effort during the week has been applied properly.  You can work quite hard after all and find out later it was all spent in the wrong place.  That’s hard but you can correct it over time.  As Homer Simpson complained (as Henry VIII), “I eat and eat and still don’t lose weight!”  I have been having a problem that my weight loss has slowed to the speed of a sleepy snail.  On a cold day.  Is that a matter of readjusting my effort?

The lowest number yet

Progress is progress, however slow.  I have some thoughts about that.  But the iportant thing is that since starting my weight control lifestyle in January 2019, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Crawling towards a minor victory

I will be pretty happy when I lose 100 pounds, but at current rate that will take months.  I am leaning towards blaming the lack of exercise and activity in my life right now.  The Corona Virus is playing hell with my lifestyle and I haven’t been seriously exercising (swimming) since March.  That and staying home most of the time must be having an effect.  I am eating carefully and just the same as I always did when I was losing 2 pounds per week.  I am guessing that exercise was fueling part of my weight loss all this time.  

I don’t know that for sure and won’t know until I have evidence – that is, once I can start swimming again.  In theory the pools near me are open now with lots of restrictions and I can get appointments to swim laps.  I don’t know how that will work in practice.  Until I can get that working I will have to crawl towards success (good pun there, swimming has a crawl stroke too).  

I could try cutting calories some more with a target of 1700 calories per day.  That might make up for the lack of exercise.  Or I will have to be more systematic about walking or find other exercise, I suppose.  It’s always something, but you can redirect after you find out what is going wrong.

Put your effort in the right place.  IF you aren’t successful, your effort is in the wrong place.  Don’t waste it.

-The Doctor

20200718 weekly weighin’ slow n’ steady

It’s the Saturday weigh-in ,weighing, and a-weighin’.  To weigh in also means to say an opinion.  Plus the weighing part.  Let me weigh in!  Like I do every Saturday.  Saturday is the reset day.  I weigh myself in the morning, before breakfast, every week.  People who stay thin by choice, check their weight all the time.  In a prosperous society, staying thin takes work, and don’t forget it.  Most of all, pay attention.  

But your mind has to be in the right place so you can motivate yourself.  You can’t force yourself thin.  That comes slow and steady, once your mind is right.

Only victories in my battle-gallery

It’s not a lot of weight lost since last week, but it is still the lowest number ever.  Hooray!  Since I started working on controlling my weight, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Slowing pains

When I woke up this morning and got on the scale, I wasn’t optimistic.  It has been a hard week and weight loss has been slow.  But amazingly, the reading was 233.0.  But when I went to get my camera, I couldn’t get that number back, even not holding the camera.  That’s unusual, my scale usually replicates well.  I’ve had this happen before, though.  One Saturday a few months ago, I weighed myself, took a shower, dried off and got on the scale again. I was up a whole pound!  So there is some drift.  Would I weigh the same at the doctor’s office?  Well, I am confident that the trend is down.

This brings me to pants.  With all the teleworking, I have been wearing pants less often and since my weight has paused around 240 for the first 6 months of the year, I have kept wearing pants in the 44-46 waist size.  Yesterday, I tried on some 42 size pants as a clue to myself – have I really been losing weight?  My body doesn’t look and feel that different to me at 233 (point 4?) than it did at 243.  But the pants: I put them on and they closed without compression.  They were snug, not loose, but they did fit.  So change is occurring.  

It’s hard to keep perspective.  Having lost 91.6 pounds doesn’t make me thin.  I still want to lose more weight – my original idea of a healthy weight for my body was 200 pounds.  Now I am wondering if 185 is a better goal.  But first things first.  200 pounds is the target, and I will be happy to get there.  

There’s still the issue of headspace.  The author Terry Pratchett talked about getting your head right before making things happen.  Where is my head?  All this emphasis on a weight goal isn’t where I want to be.  I want to be creating a life I enjoy and will be motivated to work to keep.  I’m going to have to think about that some more.  

But still, this is my lowest weight ever (going down, anyway, I weighed this much once going the other direction).  Hooray for the weight control lifestyle and the food journal!  

-The Doctor

20200711 Saturday report, white feather edition

I was too scared to get on the scale this morning.  That’s because I had an extra 1000 calories before bed!  And the latter half of the week was also calorie loaded.  So I have no idea what I weigh this week.  But it wasn’t going to be a triumphal number.  It’s just a lost week.  Next week can be better.

No picture today, since I didn’t get on the scale.  I only post pictures of victories, anyway, so even if I had gotten on, I wouldn’t have taken a picture.  

It's just a number

For the week, my daily calorie average was 2248, usually 1800-1900. In fact, the last two weeks my average daily calorie count was just below 1800 and my weight didn’t budge.  I blamed illness, and it might have been.  Can I blame my recent food bingeing on recovery?  It’s tempting.

But if I have recovered then I can get back to weight control.  I’ve made a start.  Let me explain.  My last five days of calorie counts were:

  • 3155 (Monday)
  • 1870
  • 1955
  • 2275
  • 2855 (Friday)

…and today, Saturday, I had 1850.  Right on the target.  I do not feel like eating any thing else and I am not feeling deprived, resentful, or have anything like appetite for any more food.  As a matter of fact, I feel tight across the middle, and heavy.  It’s hard to put into words.  But I don’t have the bouncy, energetic feeling I get when I am much closer to an empty stomach.  It will take a few days for me to get that back.  That’s the consequences.  And there is no guarantee that next week’s weight will be an improvement over 235.2.  But the week after that probably will be.  This is a long game with my body as a lagging indicator of my mental state or mindset.  

I was talking to a friend who has stayed thin through her adulthood and she complained that she has gained 10 pounds since everything here shut down for Corona virus craziness.  That is, since late March.  She explained her weight gain by saying that her routine, her lifestyle was disrupted.  Normally during her workday (she has an in-person service job) she skipped lunch or just had a bite on the go.  Now, she finds she had more time and is eating lunch.  

This story is very interesting.  I always listen to what thin people tell me.  She knew her weight had increased and by how much.  So she has been checking!  I went for years without checking my weight.  As part of my observation of thin people, I learned that people who stay thin usually monitor their weight.  She also introduced me to a new concept: thin people maintaining their weight by skipping meals.  I kind of knew that, I know another woman who only eats carrots for lunch (sometimes a hummus serving also) so she can eat ice cream at night and still stay thin.  This also has social benefits because everyone who knows them sees that they hardly eat a thing.  Remember Gone with the Wind, where the main character says in so many words that one should eat like a bird when anyone can see you?  Then go to the kitchen later and eat the rest, haha.

I can add this meal skipping to my other two strategies: calorie counting and total food management.  I count calories and keep a food journal, which takes some effort and fuss but is accurate.  I know other people who just eat the same thing all the time (food management) or some variation, like the man I met who cooks once a week and then eats a 1/7 serving daily for the rest of the week.  Now there is meal skipping, too.  I wonder how else thin people manage their bodyweights?

Keep your eyes open!

-The Doctor

20200704 Saturday weighing report

Saturday and Fourth of July weekend!  A good combination.  I weigh myself every Saturday.  It’s important to do that, even if you know you didn’t have a good diet week.  I have skipped sometimes, if I am not feeling well for example. I have found that my weight is unreliable when I am not well.  As it happens, I have been recovering from illness this week and I have no idea what my actual weight is.  Let me explain.

In 2019, when I got sick my weight was all over the place.  The first time it happened I worked hard to keep the calorie count under control, though it was an effort.  Maybe I really wanted the comfort that comes from eating and feeling full, when I was sick and suffering.  But it didn’t do any good, apparently.  After I was better, my weight was exactly the same as before I got sick.  The next time I got sick, I let myself eat whatever and however much.  The same thing happened – after I got better, my weight was the same as when I started.  What is the truth of it?  I am not sure.  

But I am trying hard to get away from the idea that food should be eaten for comfort reasons.  It is better to enjoy the food because you need it physically.  Anyway, what was my weight today? 

The lowest number yet!

This means since starting my diet I have lost more than 90 pounds!  That’s a good milestone.  How many pounds have I lost?

Pounds!!
0

What is my weight?? And what reward?

My food intake has been under very good control this last few weeks.  But my weight record has been 241-239-235-235-234, an inconsistent loss.  I blame being sick.  I have this feeling that I should have lost more weight since my intake has been so controlled, but who knows how your body’s energetics change when you are sick.  Anyway, I will find out next week what my “real” weight is.  I have been looking in the mirror hoping that I have lost more than that, but it’s hard to judge small changes in weight.  

This is kind of a milestone, reaching a loss of 90 pounds.  Typically I reward myself for reaching each decade of weight, so I would normally be looking to reward myself at <230 pounds.  There’s also the fact that I have been hanging out above 240 for six months or so.  So it’s notable that I have reached a kind of milestone (under 235#s).  I won’t make a big deal out of this milestone, though.  I will reward myself for getting under 230 pounds, and also when I have lost 100 pounds (under 225).  That’s a lot to lose. 

But this is good.  This is a new low.  A new low every week means I will get to my destination someday.  Remember: you change your mind and become a different person.  Your body is a lagging indicator and has to catch up more slowly.  I also have to remember that it took a long time to gain all this weight.  It’s hard to not be impatient if you look at the scale and your progress.  But you can be happy about how quickly and completely you changed your mind.  The new me is in there.  

Change yourself and change the world.  Change at least the way the world sees you.

-The Doctor

20200627 Saturday weighing – just barely edition

Well, I had a surprise!  First, for the non surprise part, I had a good week for weight control, with no day over my calorie limit and several days under it.  My average daily calorie intake for the week – 1793.  Second, I did have a big drop in weight during the last two weeks, from 239.6 to 235.4.  This leads me to a puzzle, because when I got on the scale today, I was at a new low – just barely:

Technically, less than last week...

Still, we commemorate victories on this blog, even little ones that I can’t explain.  Since starting my weight control approach in 2019, I have lost: 

Pounds!!
0

Chicken and egg

Why did I lost four pounds in one week, recorded last week, and only 0.2 pounds this week, recorded today?  If anything, my calorie intake was less this week than last week!  I have had this happen before, and it usually straightens itself out in a week or two, at the most.  My guess is that the 4-pound loss was a fluke, and this week’s weight is real.  But we will find out next week.  

This is strange, though, because my weight does fluctuate.  And you hear stories about people, like Mr. Rogers, who weighed himself daily and apparently weighed the same amount every day.  I wonder if truly thin people don’t fluctuate much (he weighed something like 143 pounds).  Maybe it just means “most of the time”.   I plan to find out, but I recognize it will take some time.  No, I am not trying to achieve 143 pounds!  More like 180-190.  Even that will take time.  

Looking at the diet news stories, I see that one woman attributed her loss of 80 pounds to low calorie foods and 0 calorie soda.  We’ve talked about zero calorie drinks before, so I’m glad to see that it doesn’t keep people from losing weight!  The important part of her story, though, is what she said: “food became my refuge.”  Apparently she had a rough year or two and she started gaining weight around that time.  I have been looking for quotes involving this insight.  If you are completely honest, and examine your reasons for eating, you may find, like me, that your reasons are not always physical, but emotional.  You can get to a place where you eat until you feel completely full, for every meal, and do that as a kind of emotional fulfillment.  Then you might lose the connection to physical hunger entirely.  Once that happens, you are eating because it’s mealtime and because you are not completely full.  

A person who stays thin and keeps control over their body’s weight keeps that connection simple.  You eat because you are empty, and eat just enough so you are no longer physically hungry.  To a person who stays thin, that is their whole reason for eating – to stay thin.  

For a person who is gaining weight (out of control), the point of eating is to feel full, for comfort, or for “refuge” as the lady above put it.  With that mindset, stopping eating before you are completely full feels like abuse!  Think about it, you are basically denying yourself comfort and refuge by stopping.  

Once you have your mind straight, eating less doesn’t feel like deprivation.  Then, you can do it.

-The Doctor

 

20200620 Saturday weighing & Triumphant Return

Yes, it is the triumphant return of The Doctor.  I have been away for almost two months and not written anything.  But now I have something to write about.  I have gained more wisdom and experience, but have lost some more weight.  Maybe the two are connected.

The lowest weight I reported on this blog was 237.4 pounds, from November, 2019.  What did I weigh this morning?

The scale does not lie. Not today.

This means since November, 2019 I have lost 2 pounds!  Oh, and since starting my diet in January 2019, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

So why the pause?

Since November, 2019 I haven’t had much to say since my weight loss was not progressing and that was getting a bit embarrassing.  I was running out of excuses and didn’t have any good reason why that might be.  After 10 or 11 months of very, very successful weight loss (from ~325 to ~237 pounds), why would I suddenly stop?  My first thought was that I had hit some kind of physiological barrier.  More recently I thought it might be a psychological one.

No, not fear of success!  A growing up, maturity problem.  I am transforming myself into someone who is responsible for his own direction in life.  I don’t want to talk here about my previous mindset, but I will say that several things in my life started going wrong all at the same time, last year.  That was a clue.  

I have been thinking about my goals in life.  That shapes how you see and experience the world, since everything either becomes a thing you use to advance yourself towards your goals, or something to not waste time on.  Very recently I have started to pick a direction, a thread to follow.  I can’t express what it is yet, it all seems to have happened subconsciously.  Suddenly things have started working for me again.  And here we are.  

So there is a necessary ingredient to weight loss, and it starts at the top: pick where your life should be going and pick how you are going to experience the world.  You are also picking how the world experiences you.  Right now it is experiencing me as a 235 pound man.  Maybe by the end of the year it will experience me as a person of completely different appearance.  What else will change?  

-The Doctor

20200321 Daily report

Every Saturday is weighing day.  Sometimes I don’t want to get on the scale, but I do it anyway.  My goal is to control my body’s weight and knowing how much I weigh is an important part of that.  I plan to weigh myself every Saturday for as long as it matters – for the rest of my life, that is.  That’s part of my commitment to weight control.

When I got on the scale today, I weighed 241 pounds.  That’s good, steady progress for the week, especially considering I didn’t get much exercise.  

Measuring progress

For the last few Saturdays my weight and (daily average calorie count) have been:

  • 244 (1932)
  • 242.6 (1980)
  • 241 (1913)

That is about 1.5 pounds per week, with fluctuations per the calorie count.  My plan is to keep plugging away, since in 10 weeks I will have lost 15 pounds assuming things stay the same.  Once I get below 240 (again), I will start planning how to reward myself for the next milestone of 230.  Since I have already taken a reward for getting below 240, I don’t feel very celebratory about going above 240 and then down again.  Remember though, in my system every meal is meant to be a kind of reward: fulfilling and worth waiting for and worth eating a measured portion.  

And that is the secret to progress under the weight control system.  Planning and working ahead, portion control, self-knowledge and paying attention to how I am feeling, a focus on weight control as a central part of my life, and rewards.  Plus getting weighed every Saturday.  When you say it like that, it sounds complicated.  Better to start at the top: focus on being in control of your body and what you eat.  Have a vision for where you want to go: towards weight conrol – you can pick the weight you want and work for that.  Make weight control your alarm clock: thinking about it is what gets you out of bed in the morning.  It really has to be that important, especially if you are trying to lose a lot of weight – in my case, 120 pounds.  Maybe it is different once you are just trying to maintain the weight you have achieved.  

You can do it, and you are the only one who can.   You are in control of what you eat and what you weigh, so put yourself in charge.  It can’t be done part time or by forcing yourself, I think we have all tried and failed doing that.  

With all the quarantine going on for coronavirus (also called SARS-CoV-2), it’s going to be hard to maintain your routine and easy to stay at home and eat.  Eating can be comforting, but the danger is linking fullness with well-being and comfort.  That is the gateway to eating for emotional fullness rather than physical.  But if you work hard, you can uncouple those and find better ways to be emotionally fulfilled.

-The Doctor of Things

20200314 Saturday weighing

Today I fulfilled the second half of the weight control method: weighing.  After a week of careful calorie counting, discipline, and concentration on my vision for how I want to live, it is time to find out how it is going.  Is there progress?  That means I am in the zone of effectiveness.  Did my weight stay the same or go up?  That could mean illness, overeating the day before, or even ineffective weight control.

Last week, when I got on the scale the number was 244 pounds.  This morning when I got up, the number facing me was 242.6.  Progress!  That ‘s not bad.  I have been talking myself down all week to manage my expectations, since I had a super bingey day last Saturday.  I also had about 2000 calories the day before my weigh-in, with a post dinner snack Friday evening.  And I still lost a bit.  

Persistent plateau?

For the last couple of months, my weight has gone:

  • 246.0
  • 243.6
  • 239.4
  • 249.6 (big swing!)
  • 244.0
  • 242.6

So I have been hanging around this weight level with a fair amount of bouncing around.  The corresponding daily calorie averages for those weekly weighings were (in parenthesis):

  • 246.0 (2200)
  • 243.6 (1880)
  • 239.4 (2000)
  • ——— (2320)  – didn’t weigh-in that week
  • 249.6 (2400)
  • 244.0 (1930)
  • 242.6 (1980)

It seems like a magical pattern.  The weeks where I managed my food intake well (averaging below 2000 calories per day) my weight decreased, and when I had bad weeks with a lot of calories per day, my weight rose.  If only it were as easy to eat less food as it is to say you intend to eat less food.  

This confirms what I thought all along.  Controlling your weight takes constant effort and hard work, and the thinner you are the more work it must take – more work meaning paying constant attention and keeping up your discipline in food intake, all the time.  

Your system for weight control had better be attractive and self fulfilling, if you want to have any hope of carrying it out forever.

-The Doctor

20200208 Saturday weigh-in

Saturday!  I weigh myself every Saturday.  What will happen?  To me it is always a surprise.  By keeping my calorie count, I have a rough idea of whether I will lose weight.  Sometimes I don’t, even though my calorie count has been properly limited to under 13,300 for the week.  I have learned to associate that situation with getting sick, and the weight issue is temporary.  But usually, if the calorie count is acceptable, I lose up to 3 pounds (usually two) per week.  There are two complications this time: 1. Until recently I have having trouble getting my head focused on proper weight control goals and values.  I lost about 87 pounds last year using that focus, but then gained back nearly 10 pounds in December and January.  This was through not paying attention and letting my focus wander.  2. My calorie total this week was 14,000, mostly because I had one bad diet day at the beginning of the week.

Last week was the first time I had lost weight since November, 2019.  My total weight last week was 243 pounds, down from 246 two weeks ago.  So I still have some work to do to get below my previous low weight of 237 (November).  So what happened this morning on the scale was a surprise.

When I got on the scale this morning, my weight was 238.6.  That’s down 5 pounds!  I took a shower, and when I tried weighing again, my weight was 239.4.  Surprise!  On the good side, both weights were below 240, which I wasn’t expecting.  But what I actually weigh, I am not sure.  I always use the first weight the scale gives me, but it was very strange today.  One doesn’t normally gain a pound by taking a shower.  Usually washing away the dirt would make you weigh less!  

Unexpected weight gain and loss

When I diet well but don’t lose weight for the week, I know I am getting sick.  When I diet well (excepting one day) but lose 4-5 pounds, what does that mean?  I can only speculate as that kind of thing doesn’t usually happen.  Anyway, I seem to weigh less than 240 again.  I had that accomplishment once before (November 2019). 

My next goal: 230 pounds.  That is interesting because it’s on the way to 225 pounds.  At that point I will have lost 100 pounds from when I started.  My original goal was to lose 120 pounds.  That would take me down to 205 pounds.  How will I celebrate the loss of 95 pounds, 100, 110, and 120?  It will be pretty exciting.  Based on last year’s results, it will take about 4-5 months to reach that goal.  Maybe….July?

It’s exciting to think about.  Goals pull you forward, and I feel pretty inspired to have a good diet week.  Once I get below 237.4, I will start posting pictures of my scale again every Saturday.  

Have a perfect week!

-The Doctor

20200201 Saturday weigh-in

Today is weighing day, and I do that every Saturday.  That is the plan.  Some people weigh daily.  (Mr. Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood weighed himself every day.  So did my one grandfather.)  I find once per week is generally enough.  It shows that the work I did during the rest of the week – counting calories and portioning – was true and accurate, or at least reasonably true and accurate.  This week, I did weigh myself every day in the morning, just because it has been a while since I have seen my weight go down.

Good news!  My weight this morning was 243.6 pounds.

Since I weighed myself several times this week, my only real question going on to the scale this morning was: exactly how much would I have lost?  I knew I had lost more than two pounds from last week’s 246 pounds.  That’s unusual that I know I have lost weight and have a good idea how much – most of the time I get on the scale 7 days from the last time and I never know for sure what’s going to happen.  

Also, I normally make more of a bigger deal out of it if my weight is lower than my previous total, but I know that right now, my weight is higher than my lowest ever.  My lowest ever weight was 237.4 pounds.  So I am happy because it looks like my weight is under control again, but not quite happy all the way, since I will spend February getting back to my lowest ever.  Still, this is very positive news: I am capable of continuing my weight control system.   

Responsibility and relief

In January, while I was agonizing about how to restart the weight control system (I stopped doing it in early December), it was tempting to blame my inability on outside issues: it was winter outside!  Genetically, I was predisposed to gaining weight to last through the winter!  The days were shorter!  Eating more was a natural reaction to the stresses of winter cold and darkness! 

Ultimately, those were not satisfying explanations.  Being on a weight control system, losing weight, and maintaining weight, are difficult.  It is doable but you have to accept it is a values question, rather than an impersonal one.  If you do all the things that dieting people do, you still won’t lose weight over the long term, because you have to force yourself to maintain those behaviors.  Your old values are waiting for you and you will fall back into them the second you stop applying force.  You must adopt new values and one of the top values in your life has to be: I will be in control of my weight.  

I’ve talked before about what living out that value means in many different contexts.  But part of my success has been to recognize that I can’t force or order my body to do the dieting for me.  (Eat less!  Go on a budget!  Stop smoking/drinking etc!  It never works.)  That’s another form of pushing off the responsibility to someone “else”. If my conscious mind wants this and values it, then my conscious mind has to put in the work: all the planning, shopping, cooking, portioning, and balancing I do, is done using the time and energy of my life, and limited amount of consciousness, which takes a lot of effort and discipline.  So I try hard to make it worth my while.  That’s a good trade.  

(I think this is why so many diets work for so many people, at least in the short or middle term.  All the mechanisms work because our bodies work the same way.  The difference is what’s in your mind.)

It’s the same for anything in your life.  If you want it, you have to act it out in your life as if it’s the only thing that matters.  

-The Doctor

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