Long term dieting

20191129 Daily report

How do you stay on a diet?  I don’t.  

Call it what you want, I associate dieting with temporary changes.  It can be effective if you are someone who just has a few pounds to lose (less than 10) and generally have a system that works at keeping your weight under control.

When your eating and weight are out of control – say you are 120 pounds overweight – you don’t have a situation that can be controlled with temporary changes or dieting.  You need a new lifestyle, a system you can live out, a new set of values to live by.  

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop eating things you like, either.  But it does mean that you limit yourself as to quantity.  That means measurement.

1/12 of a 4000 calorie pie

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1C mango Kefir (200)

  • 200 calories

Lunch – 1/12 slice pumpkin pie (340); whipped cream (25); 4oz turkey (120); 1T cranberries (25); 1T gravy (25);

  • 535 calories 

Dinner – 1/3 Aldi pizza (340); with extra cheese (105); and pepperoni (40); broccoli casserole (230); 

  • 715 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolates (240); beef jerky (90);

  • 410 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

After Thanksgiving

When I went to the pool today, it was full.  Everybody wanted to work off their holiday meals!  At home, I have plenty of holiday left.  Look at all the pie!  When I was living my old life, which involved a lot of weight gain, I would have thought nothing about eating a huge hot turkey sandwich and a big (unmeasured) piece of pie the day after Thanksgiving.  Maybe two pieces.  

A hot turkey sandwich, if you don’t know, is all the Thanksgiving leftovers warmed and placed on a piece of bread.  Then you pour reheated gravy all over the top (and cranberry sauce perhaps) and eat it up.  It’s almost as good as Thanksgiving in the first place.  I had an abridged version today, with just 4oz turkey and a small measured amount of gravy and cranberries.  Tomorrow I will create an experimental sandwich –  the hot turkey wrap!  I had a great success adapting Reuben sandwiches to the wrap format and I don’t see why this would be different.  My mother would sometimes reheat the turkey in gravy on the stovetop, I need to try it.  I can hardly wait for tomorrow so I can enjoy it properly! 

Today I managed to get back under control calorie wise.  I don’t feel hungry or deprived at all, since I had pumpkin pie, pizza, and leftover turkey and broccoli casserole with cheese sauce.  It’s the end of a week, a week full of out-of-control eating, so I expect the scale to be very judgmental tomorrow.  I mean, accurate, tomorrow.  But I am full of hope for the week to come.  No matter how bad my number is tomorrow, the next week will be lower.  

Have a good weekend!

-The Doctor

20191126 Daily report

Paying attention is a transforming act.  When you pay attention – to what you weight, and what you are eating, and how much, and how you feel about it, and why you are eating, and when – you gain a store of self knowledge that is nearly as good as dieting. 

Today, I know how much I weigh.  I couldn’t have said that a year ago; I avoided the scale.  One you start paying attention, you can ask yourself: do I like what I’m doing?  Do I like all these things about myself?  And if not, maybe I should do something about them.  

So pay attentnion.

The chicken was good, the biscuits not so much

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wrap (200)

  • 200 calories

Lunch – meatloaf (500); 3/4 whole wheat wrap (80)

  • 580 calories 

Dinner – chicken pot pie (530); Cheerios (200); milk (100); cookies (200)

  • 1030 calories

Snacking – yogurt (150); chocolate nuts (160); kefir (200); bread and hummus (230); corn chips (140); bread and jelly (400)

  • 1280 calories

Total for the day: 3090 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Pay attention anyway

The temptation to not write any of my food consumption down today was strong.   But I did it anyway.  And it was helpful.  I was hungry early in the day – I had lunch before 11AM.  I had dinner at 4PM, and I was quite hungry.  I had more dinner at 6PM and then lots of snacking and bits and pieces of food through 9PM.  The evening food was heavy on simple carbohydrates.  

I’m not sure what kind of illness I have.  It’s low grade.  I have intestinal issues, but not severe.  I feel cold at night, and need a lot of sleep.  And I’ve had it for almost three weeks!  It’s getting tiresome.  So I have started on yogurt.  All the commercials are full of the idea that you can help your intestines and improve the kinds of bacteria and critters that live there, by eating yogurts with live cultures in them.  I’ll try it.  But I had 3000 calories today, that is way out of control.  

And here it is 10.45PM.  I have to go to bed, or I feel like I will never get better.  Good night!

-The Doctor

20191125 Daily report

The daily task is to keep a food journal.  It’s one part of the mechanism I use for weight control.  #1 regulate food intake and #2 weigh yourself regularly.  Keeping a food journal isn’t the only meaning of regulating your food intake, but it is the most consequential.  Once you know how much you are eating, you will find out how much food you need to eat to gain weight….lose weight….keep the same weight.  That kind of knowledge allows long term weight control.  And weight control is the goal, rather than dieting.  Weight control is yours forever, while dieting is temporary.  

Steak umm, but a good one

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Spanish tortilla (333); 1.5 teaspoons mayonnaise (40); whole wheat wrap (110);

  • 485 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese hoagie (500); 

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 15oz split pea soup with ham (465); toast (130); cream cheese (70);

  • 670 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); yogurt (150); chocolate nuts (130); cookie (110);

  • 470 calories

Total for the day: 2120 calories (limit 1800)

long lasting

My intestinal complaint is really hanging on into the third week.  I need to get to bed so I don’t have a lot to say tonight.  Just two things:

  1. A lady at work complimented my weight loss and wanted to tell me about her husband, who she said has recently lost 80 pounds after a health scare.  Very interestingly, his approach upends all my observations.  He gave up eating everything he likes for dinner (on Saturdays he allows himself to indulge a little) and during the week eats lean protein (fish or plain chicken), brown rice and vegetables.  For lunch he only eats fruit.  She is sure that he does not count calories OR measure what he is eating.  This is super dedication and willpower.  I have met other people whose eating goals have been transformed by health related concerns and I admire the dedication.  Such people are looking at food and eating a different way than they used to.  This lady told me that her husband’s rule is now that he considers the impact every bite will have on his health.  This is different from my “vanity” project where I am just trying to lead a more fulfilling life and live out higher goals.  But congrats to him.  (He really lost 80 pounds and didn’t count any calories????)
  2. I was reading about Mister Rogers (Fred McFeely Rogers of Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood fame) and discovered that he controlled his weight very successfully in his adult years.  As a child he was overweight, but for most of his adult life he weighed 143 pounds.  Late in life he also quit eating meat altogether, and he never smoked or drank alcohol anyway.  I wonder what were his eating habits and how he managed to keep his weight so stable for so many years.  Maybe he counted calories, but maybe not.  He was a man who developed extremely regular and productive habits, so he probably had a system.  We may never know what it was, but I will look into it.

Good night!

-The Doctor

20191124 Daily report

Getting your mind right is the first necessary step.  When you are a person who is gaining weight, and unhappy about it, the first problem is that you don’t have the mindset needed to control your weight.  When I was gaining weight, I was only interested in shallow eating goals and those dominated my eating behavior.  Trying to lose weight meant going against my goals and feeling unfulfilled and deprived all the time.  Every instant felt like punishment.  My ingenuity was devoted to finding ways around the dieting. 

If I was a person with tons of willpower, I could force myself to lose some weight, probably.  But I’m not.  And maybe neither are you.  So you have to change your mind, like I did.  What kind of mind do you need to control your weight?  

Split pea and ham soup in the autumn - perfect

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with bacon (300) and a whole wheat wrap (110) and lettuce and tomato and horseradish (20); plus extra bacon (70);

  • 500 calories

Lunch – 15oz split pea soup (465); Italian bread toast (150);

  • 615 calories 

Dinner – chicken pot pie (500);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1795 calories (limit 1800)

Continuing the balancing act

Once you have your mind right, then you are living a life where controlling your body’s weight is high up on your list of life goals – also known as your moral hierarchy.  (You don’t gain this control to become more moral, it just means that you don’t eat anything without considering how it will affect your calorie count for the day.  On that front, you are taking on responsibility for your body, which is perfectly moral.)  Almost every successful long term and large amount or weight loss that I have read about involves counting calories one way or another.   I keep a food journal on a Google spreadsheet.  That way I can access it anywhere, and I have committed to writing down what I eat almost as soon as I eat it.  So I control how much I eat.  

The act of writing down everything you eat means you are serious about monitoring your intake and controlling your weight.  But how do you get the motivation to do that?  Like I said, it’s all about getting your mind right.  If one of the top goals of your existence is to control your weight, the problem simplifies.  I changed the reasons I was eating so that feeling full was no longer the goal.  My goal now is to be fulfilled, rather than filled.  Maximum fulfillment comes from enjoying what you are eating, and anticipating the next meal with excitement.  Taking care of yourself would be another way of putting it.  You are now trying to meet your own needs for fulfillment through quality, not quantity.  Therefore your ingenuity is engaged in finding ways to make your lifestyle work.  It’s quite fulfilling.  

The last two weeks I have not been able to control my food intake well.  I’ve had low grade intestinal trouble.  It’s also gotten cold, and my food journal over the last year has several instances of me overeating when I feel cold.  I’m not sure what to make of that, but it has been observed.  I’ve also been quite tired (probably the illness) and have had unusual demands on my time.  This all means it’s been hard to keep my balance (the balance between emotional fulfillment and eating less).  And I miss it.  I have really gotten to like the focus on weight control and how I am living that out in my life.  So I am planning out this week (which includes Thanksgiving) to make sure it is easy to get my balance back. 

It will be easy to know when that happens.  When my digestive system is cleared out and I am living close to the edge, meal times and tastes are very vivid and immediate.  My body feels different.  The cost is that when you are living close to your calorie edge like that, you have to pay a lot of attention.  It’s easy to neglect yourself and then lose control.  Think of it this way: you’re asking a lot from part of yourself.  In return, you must make a promise that you will make it worth your while.  You must keep the promise or else your will, mind, and body won’t cooperate.  

It’s interesting, this idea of living close to the calorie edge.  I will think about that some more.

Happy Thanksgiving week!

-The Doctor

20191121 Daily report

A weight control lifestyle is a long term approach to the problem of weight gain.  It is useful to think of it in layers.  Every meal is counted in a food journal.  There is a calorie goal every day.  Every week is a weighing, where the effects of the previous week are checked.  That means, realistically, that every day is a new day and every week is a new week.  A chance to start again, to make things better.  Today didn’t go well?  Tomorrow can be a perfect day.  This week was spoilt?  Never mind, you can work on having a good week now. 

This is all is part of what makes weight control a success in the long term.  You can persue perfection every day and every week.  

Spanish tortilla is eggs and potatoes and olive oil...so simple

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2T peanut butter (190); 2T strawberry jelly (100); toast (150);

  • 440 calories

Lunch – catered office lunch of chicken kebabs, salads, falafel and pita, with cupcakes (400);

  • 400 calories 

Dinner – 1/6 of a Spanih tortilla (333); 1T mayonnaise (100)

  • 433 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); granola bar (100); chips and salsa (150); baguette and cheese (200); chocolate almonds (160);

  • 690 calories

Total for the day: 1963 calories (limit 1800)

Another busy day

No deep thoughts today.  I have to run and take care of some things.  I am still recovering from my intestinal complaint, but I noticed I feel less cold during the day.  Things are looking up!  On the other hand, I just ate about 400 calories at 9PM, which is not the way to control your weight.  

Spanish tortilla is a family favorite, everyone eats it.  It’s 10 eggs, 1/2C olive oil, 1 onion, 1# of potatoes, 1/4tsp pepper and 1.5tsp salt.  The onions, potatoes, and oil, with half the salt are cooked on the stovetop (covered) until fully softened, then the whisked eggs, pepper and remaining salt are folded in, briefly set and then put into a 425 degree oven for 9-10 minutes.  The whole thing is 2000 calories (thanks, olive oil!).  It works for every meal, though I don’t usually make it in the summer (too hot).  

Enjoy! 

-The Doctor

20191120 Daily report

The realization I made was that being thin doesn’t just happen.  There is no mindset, no moral compass, and no secret that will get you there.  It takes direction and it takes paying attention and it takes work.  Every day, it must be made to work.  And why would you think of doing all that?  Aren’t people just thin or fat, by nature?  Don’t I gain weight because my parents were overweight?  Some people just have that fast metabolism, right?  They can eat whatever they want.  People like us just get fat.  The weight just jumps straight onto my belly!  It must be true.  The alternative is hard to contemplate.

People want to be thin.  They go to great lengths to try, so they are motivated.  But people need a framework and a proper direction or dieting doesn’t work.  The most productive thing you can do is change your mind.  Figure out what you get out of eating.  What is the goal?  Is that goal working for you?  

Gyro Wednesday!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – skipped (00)

  • 0 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe $5 Famous Gyro Wednesday!!!(600); 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 1/4 Aldi frozen pizza (225); baguette piece (200); 4oz ham (200); pumpkin coconut curry soup (100);

  • 725 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate almonds (300)

  • 380 calories

Total for the day: 1705 calories (limit 1800)

Quicky

I had a busy night.  So I won’t post anything long today, but I will say I’m not sure why I felt like skipping breakfast, I just wasn’t hungry until 11.30.  Since I am slowly recovering from my intestinal complaint I won’t argue.

Enjoy your night!

-The Doctor

20191119 Daily report

Staying with your weight control lifestyle in the long term is not always possible.  I read often about people who adopt extreme-sounding lifestyles.  People are clearly very motivated to try and control their weight, based on what they are willing to try.  One man said that he had good results on a low carb lifestyle and was planning to stay on it long term.  I tried that, living on 30 grams of carbs per day.  That’s the equivalent of an English muffin.  And a low carb diet isn’t magic.  You can eat enough low carb foods to maintain overweight or even gain weight.  I lost 30 pounds on a low carb diet.  But it didn’t work for me in the long term.  Why?

It wasn’t very satisfying, for one thing.  That means you get tired of it.  It starts to take more effort to stay on.  After a while, it’s not worth the effort.  But for losing up to 30 pounds short term, and not having to change anything else about yourself, a low carb diet is hard to beat.  How many people are willing to do it forever?  

My own invention. I think.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with 3 slices bacon (210); 3/4 whole wheat wrap (80); lettuce, tomato and horseradish (25);

  • 315 calories

Lunch – 6 Kirkland meatballs (250); 2T hummus (80); whole wheat wrap (110); red cabbage, pickles, and horseradish (20);

  • 460 calories 

Dinner – 2 chicken enchiladas (450); sour cream (60);

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); pretzels (260); ham (100); chocolate almonds (100);

  • 580 calories

Total for the day: 1865 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Discovery and Recovery

I am slowly recovering from a low grade stomach flu.  That’s my explanation for the last two weeks!  I lost my appetite for my usual foods, and started eating a lot of simple carbohydrates – out of control.  I also felt cold (it has been cold outside, but inside??) and needed more sleep than usual.  It took me a while to figure out that I must be sick, since there weren’t many obvious symptoms.  My first clue is that my weight went up two weeks ago – very unusual.  An issue of fluid retention shows up in my food journal almost every time I get sick.  (I also had some stomach issues but nothing that seemed serious at the time.)  

I’ve said this before, but how many people’s “plateaus” in their weight loss might be due to intestinal issues?  Looking through my records I have been sick 6 times since January, and several times it lasted 2 weeks or more.  During those times I didn’t lose weight, but quickly started losing again once the illness was over.  

Last week I didn’t even try to do more than keep a vague track of my calorie count.  My eating behavior was too erratic and the result to unsatisfying for me to keep it up.  The lethargy of feeling ill probably didn’t help.  Since Monday, I have been able to recover my lifestyle somewhat.  My appetite still isn’t back to normal but I’m not eating 3000+ calories a day, either.  I was doing that late last week, though it’s only an estimate.  It might have been higher!

I’m very lucky that I have been able to spend the whole last year devoted to my weight control lifestyle and working out a system for doing it.  The major weight loss portion is still going on and will be for months, yet.  My initial goal was 215 pounds, and my last pre-sick weight was 237 pounds.  That’s only 22 away from that goal (losing 120 pounds).  We’ll see what happens when I get there.  I might decide to lose more.  Anyway, I don’t have any bad feelings about this pause in my weight loss.  I am grateful that it has worked so well, so far.  I have a way to keep going, and a history to build on.

-The Doctor

20191118 Daily report

One of the underpinnings of the weight control system as I practice it, is that it’s attractive in multiple ways.  I want to live that way, for all the rewards it gives me.  Controlling my body’s weight is merely one of the attractions.  I have talked before about the amount of fulfillment and satisfaction I get from working hard to meet my own needs and desires.  And I am meeting them in a way that is very practical and also very high quality.  This lifestyle is the best I have ever lived.  It makes my old choices seem cheap; as they were focused on quantity and immediate fulfillment.  

Now I think about quality.  How could I raise everything about my practical life – like eating – to a higher quality?  One answer is to change the goal of eating and focus on the quality of the experience.  

Steak and Cheese sandwich from the cafe

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and cheese croissantwich (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese sandwich (500); 

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 10 ounces Hopping John (270); 5oz cooked rice (160)

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (100); Perdue chicken strips (90); Hershey’s bar (220);

  • 490 calories

Total for the day: 1820 calories (limit 1800)

I'm back, baby

I haven’t posted for a few days, because I haven’t been in control and haven’t had a lot of energy to spare.  Some kind of intestinal bug got me.  That has some strong effects on my lifestyle. 

One of the most important discoveries I have made in the course of losing ~85 pounds, is that if your lifestyle is attractive, you will pursue it hard.  You won’t need willpower to stay on a diet or maintain your system, at least not in the negative sense of forcing yourself to diet.  However, if that lifestyle suddenly loses its attraction, it removes all the motivation.  When I got sick, my usual foods lost their attraction and I found myself grazing in uncontrolled ways, at every kind of simple carbohydrate-based food I own.  

I’m willing to call that an aberration.  I had a strong desire to eat lots of calories, and lots of simple carb calories at that.  There’s no way to pursue a lifestyle based on those goals, not if you want to control your weight, anyway.  And it was not particularly enjoyable.  My body has gotten used to the cycle of (positive) hunger and satisfaction, and feeding my higher needs and goals with controlled quantities of high quality meals.  Instead, I was eating out of some kind of instinctual need (or some kind of chemical imbalance, frightening thought).  

But the feeling did not last.  Sunday and today, I didn’t want to eat a lot of food anymore.  However, my normal appetite hasn’t really returned.  I think I am getting better, but I am not all the way there, yet.  Once I am back to normal, I will start working my system again.  I’ve had this happen several times this last year due to illness.  Each time, I agonize a bit over whether I will be able to re-establish my successful weight control lifestyle.  And every time, I have happily put it back together again.  It does take discipline, but not force.  

Find a way to make what you want attractive.  That works.

-The Doctor

20191114 Daily report

The weight control lifestyle is all about finding a way to control your weight, that is worth living as a lifestyle.  If it’s not worth living, then you are forcing yourself to lose weight.  That doesn’t work in the long term. Can you force yourself to do anything for your whole life?  You won’t have any willpower left for anything else!

Being thin doesn’t make you a better person, or even a good person.  You can be a shallow person and keep thin.  It’s best to concentrate on a worthy lifestyle that you can be proud of.  Controlling your weight can be a side benefit of that.  Isn’t that a good ideal?

My food intake and calorie count

Total for the day: 2700 calories 

The waiting game

I finally figured out why I was cold, oddly hungry, sleepy, and having intestinal issues.  I’ve picked up some bad germ!  I’ve never been so relieved to be sick before. That means that yesterday, when I said it was strange to feel full, it was really just a strange intestinal feeling, apart from being full.  I should have guessed that I was getting sick on Saturday, when my weight was up 2 pounds.  That’s very unusual.  

According to my food journal, this kind of thing has lasted as much as a week, or more.  There’s not much I can do about it.  I will keep track of what I am eating but not try to control it, until I don’t have to use force.  It’s also in my notes that when this happens, my appetite for simple carbohydrates like bread, chocolate, rice, and noodles, is very high.  Meat and protein are oddly unsatisfying.  

With any luck I can get to bed early and have a good night’s sleep.  That’s another thing – I have had trouble getting out of bed all week.  Why didn’t I notice this sooner???

-The Doctor

20191113 Daily report

At the most practical level, a weight control lifestyle is lived one meal at a time.  However, it is convenient to set a daily calorie limit rather than limit that by the meal.  And the standard for losing a pound of weight from your body is to be in deficit 3500 calories per week.  I am also a proponent of weighing yourself once per week.  So the individual meal, day, and week are all important.  One way to keep all of that straight is with a food journal.  Mine is a spreadsheet, with columns for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack.  I also have a comment column where I keep track of exercise and illness and related matters, and finally a weight column where I enter my weekly body weight every Saturday.  It takes work, but I know exactly how many calories I am eating and I have learned a lot about myself and what my body and subconscious mind need to cooperate!  But there is always more to learn.

You'd think warm chili would do the trick on a cold day.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Perdue chicken strips (100)

  • 100 calories

Lunch – Daycvare annual thanksgiving meal: turkey, ham, mac and cheese, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans. Estimate: 500 calories

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – chili and bread (350); ham (100); cookies (150); chocolate almonds (160); ice cream (210); Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355);

  • 1200 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); ddd (00)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1960 calories (limit 1800)

Primal urge

My theory right now is that the cold weather we are having in early November is pressing some kind of behavior button in my subconscious.  I am just feeling a need to eat at odd times, and I am eating large amounts!  I am not in control of my eating, though I am making a food effort to keep records of everything I do eat.  I hope this freakout ends soon, I don’t know what to make of it.  It is strange to feel full now, after months and months of living close to the deficit.  I used to live like this all the time, and now it feels strange.  

When I started my weight control plan in January, I did notice in the first few months that if I got particularly chilled or cold, I would have a bad diet day.  But I didn’t pay much attention to addressing that problem as it was getting warmer all the time.  So I have no real plan now and have to figure this out in the next week.  I am sure that my next weighing on Saturday won’t be good, just because my food journal says I am not in control.  Normally this kind of thing means I am being stubborn and punishing towards myself, resulting in a bad day or days, and I write the week off and try to do better next time.  But what do I do when faced with an internal insurrection like this?

I could try staying warm – lots of socks and sweaters.

I could try a change in meal scheduling, eating meals earlier or combining meals into a mega lunch or a large breakfast and dinner while skipping lunch.  My behavior during the cold weather is definitely towards eating a large amount in one sitting.  Today, I had lunch at noon, a healthy lunch of 500 calories, and then found myself eating an enormous meal of 1200 calories at 3PM.

Luckily the really cold weather ends tonight and tomorrow and next week it is more seasonal.  That may make the problem easier for now.  I will continue to think about it.

Pay attention to your needs and use self knowledge to figure out the best way to keep your aim high.

-The Doctor

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