Long term dieting

20191012 Saturday weigh in

Everything I eat is written in my food journal.  Not just a description, but a calorie count.  That is part of my commitment to a weight control lifestyle.  If you don’t know how many calories you are eating, you are not in control.  That also means that your food should be planned in advance.  You should have a good idea of how many calories you have available, say, for lunch.  It also means that you have to write down what you ate really soon, ideally right after you eat it.  You might forget!

Not my best week

When I weighed myself early today, as I suspected – my weight was up from last week.  This is my own fault, see the posts from this week for details.  It just takes time for the extra calories to get worked through my body so weight loss can begin again.  I accept this.  Next week is a new week. 

I am also traveling this weekend.  Travel always throws off my eating schedule, my calorie counts, and my fluid weights.  It’s only temporary and I will work through it as usual.

Stick with it!  This system has worked for me in many ways and in the short and long term.  

-The Doctor

20191011 Daily report

Every day, my priority is to live out the weight control mechanism: (1) regulate your food intake, and (2) weigh yourself regularly.  Regulating food intake means eating calorie-controlled portions of food, but that is only part of the meaning.  It also means keeping a food journal, which means planning meals ahead of time.  One way I am able to keep eating measured portions of food is to make sure the food is very appealing, and to make sure I get it when I would most appreciate it.  In other words: I keep myself happy with rewards, or, you could say I bribe myself to control eating.  Take your pick.  But it seems to work.

Eight pieces like this made 550 calories. You like?

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 8oz baked nacho topping (beef, beans, cheese, salsa, 390);

  • 390 calories

Lunch – 13oz homemade beef stew (530)

  • 530 calories 

Dinner – Aldi frozen pizza half with sausage (550)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); Kirkland euro chocolate cookies (270)

  • 430 calories

Total for the day: 1900 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Recovery week

This week didn’t go well every day.  I had a couple of bad diet days Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was a situation started by carelessness and then compounded by my own stubbornness. 

Remember that I keep myself on track with the weight control lifestyle by paying attention to my body’s needs and making sure I am happy with the food, and keep up my interest by building an appetite (but not getting too hungry).  And I made a mistake: I went to bed late Monday, got up late Tuesday, didn’t take care of myself, rushed out the door, and had breakfast too, too late.  Then I was feeling hungry and deprived all day.  I didn’t take care of myself.  I could have moved up lunch and dinner that day to be earlier, that would have helped.  But no, I forced myself to have lunch and dinner at the regular time.  An important part of me felt deprived, resentful, and unloved.  So at 10PM that part took over and I ate an extra 700 calories.  

Instead of learning my lesson, I then made things worse.  I tried to wind back the clock.  I skipped breakfast, which was ok since I wasn’t hungry, but then I prioritized making the calorie numbers right instead of paying attention to my needs.  I didn’t eat when I was hungry or take care of myself.  Then I got busy and didn’t have lunch until after 2PM.  Nothing was going well by that point.  And sure enough, I found myself eating another 700 calories that night too.  I had really let myself down. 

This is a negotiated deal, and I have made a promise to myself.  I am supposed to take care of myself and make sure I don’t get too hungry and unhappy.  That is my priority.  In return, my body and the subconscious parts of my brain are content with eating less food.  If I break the deal, if I pursue other priorities, if I don’t accept that I made a mistake…. then the deal is off.  

Today, and Thursday, I accepted the mistakes from Tuesday and Wednesday.  I made sure to eat the full number of calories due each day.  I didn’t force my body to make up for the past.  That means that this Saturday’s weighing won’t show much (or any) progress compared to last week.  But that is ok.  I have to let that go.  Next week I have a chance to make it a good week.  It really is all about living well.  

Live well, and lose weight as a bonus.

-The Doctor

20191010 Daily report

Dear Reader, imagine you could weigh whatever you wanted.  It would take some time to come true, at the rate of 2 pounds per week.  During that time, you could only eat those foods which excited and pleased you.  You wouldn’t be allowed to eat any diet foods or things that were just Good For You.  The food would be available to you just at the moment you were starting to notice hunger, but well before you started suffering.  You would live a life full of satisfaction and enjoyment.  But you would have to keep a food journal.  Would that be a worthy trade?  

On top of spaghetti, with a side of Meat Balls

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2oz ham (100); Swiss cheese (90); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (negligible calories)

  • 350 calories

Lunch – 13 ounces homemade beef stew

  • 530 calories 

Dinner – 6 ounces cooked spaghetti (300); 5 Costo meatballs (230)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Kirkland euro cookies (210)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1730 calories (limit 1800)

Reboot #33

In France, when something has happened too many times, they say “for the thirty-third time!”  Here in the US we say “for the millionth time!”.  I haven’t had to reboot my weight loss system a million times.  It has happened more than once, though.  I might have a bad diet day, or several days, or I get sick, or have to do a lot of travel, or there is some other disruption to my routine that causes problems.  That just happened this week!  But my new lifestyle is like what I have described above.  Who wouldn’t want to live that way?  It’s very rich and fulfilling.  And you lose weight, almost as a bonus….though not when things don’t go well.  When that happens, though, you just have to let it go.  You don’t get to live that over again. Tomorrow is a new day, and if this week was ruined or wasted and you don’t lose any weight, well, next week might go better.   Never, ever punish yourself for a bad day.  This system has worked so far.

If you think about it, gaining weight isn’t usually even.  It usually happens in bursts, and you might have periods in your life when your weight is quite stable.  Why should weight loss be any different?  I am not a perfect man, so sometimes I will take two steps forward, and sometimes I will stand still.  I am pleased, though, that I have not taken any steps backwards during the last ten months.  

Fatigue!  That is something I think about from time to time.  I have been *on a diet* for ten months.  Don’t I get tired of it?  To which I say, re-read the first paragraph of today’s post.  Who would get tired of that?  I can have all my favorite foods in an infinite variety, served just when I would appreciate them the most.  In exchange, I give up some spontaneity and I have to write everything down and pay a lot of attention.  And I lose weight, too.  This is a trade I am very willing to make, having lived it.  No, I don’t get tired of this.  But I do make mistakes.  See yesterday’s post.  

It occurs to me that I have lost about 9 pounds a month for the last nine months (October only one week in).  I think the right attitude here is gratitude that I have found a system that works well and I have been able to transform myself this way.  In the mirror, I am just another guy 40 pounds overweight.  But I used to be 120 pounds over weight.  Someday in the next few months I will be 30….20…..10 pounds over, and that will be very interesting.  There is some impatience when you have lost 80 pounds and you are still not thin.  But in this system, the goal has not been weight loss, but lifestyle improvement and increased quality of life, more refined tastes, and body consciousness.  So I can ignore the feelings of impatience and fatigue, and just enjoy the gratitude.  Don’t be too hard on yourself – you have lost 80 pounds.  There’s more to come.  

Keep yourself positive.  

-The Doctor

20191009 Daily report

Greetings, dear Reader!  This blog is about my new lifestyle and my new ability to lose weight, and my overall goal to be in control my weight.  In January of 2019, I was ready for some new thinking.  Previously, I believed that I could become a thin person through willpower.  I could force myself to eat less.  I also believed that thin people just had more willpower than I did.  Obviously that was true, because they were thin.  Duh.  

Keep in mind that the definition of success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.  Winston Churchill said that.  Don’t give up.  There are non-willpower things you can change.  But my success so far comes from the realization that thin people are thin because they work hard at it all the time.  The thinner they are, the harder they work at it.  It’s not willpower; at least, not in the way you think.  It’s a different way of seeing the world and a different set of values and goals, compared to those of us gaining weight.  

I have a gyros every Wednesday. I still lose weight. So can you.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Gyros sandwich (600); 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Baked nacho topping (beef, cheese, beans, 390); 1oz tortilla chips (160); 2T sour cream (60);

  • 610 calories

Snacking – ham (100); pretzels (100); cookies (400); ice cream (130)

  • 730 calories

Total for the day: 2020 calories (limit 1800)

When things don't go well

The above calorie count is only part of the story.  Yesterday didn’t go well, either.  All day, I was feeling hungry and deprived.  I ignored those feelings.  And, after 10PM yesterday, I broke down and had some unplanned food, and then some more.  The overage came to about 700 calories.  That’s not good, if your goal is to control how many calories you are eating.  And I was no longer in control.  

Then, I made things worse.  When I woke up today, I decided to keep ignoring the problem.  I skipped breakfast, thinking the late night calories would get cancelled out.  Wrong!  I have experience with that not working out.  I even call it “punishing” myself.  I did it anyway.  Then, due to circumstances, I didn’t have lunch today until 2PM.  I let myself get way too hungry.  Guess what I did today after 9PM today?  Yes, I had more unplanned calories.  That’s two days out of control.  

Part of the system of weight control is total honesty in the food journal.  You write down everything you eat, and how much, and when, and what was happening.  You learn about yourself when things are going well and when things go wrong.  For the last two days, things have not gone well.  Thanks to my food journal and past experience, knowledge about myself, I have figured out what went wrong.  Luckily, my weight control system is very attractive.  It is self-reinforcing and you want to get back to it.  So I will also talk about getting back where I want to be.

Part of this system is the knowledge that I can’t force myself to obey.  I can tell myself to eat less, but nothing happens (not for long).  So I engage my will in figuring out how to persuade myself to eat regulated and measured amounts of food.  That way, I can control my food intake.  Result: weight loss.  The trade-off is that it takes a lot of time and effort and attention to keep myself happy eating measured amounts of food. 

Anyway, there are two ways to go now.  I can keep ignoring the problem and make things worse.  Or, I can fix it and move on.  This is not the first time I have had this choice.  So far this year, I have always chosen to fix it, and to find some gratitude for the lessons I learn about myself.  

Looking back at my food journal, do you know what started the problem?  It was Tuesday morning.  I had my breakfast a little too late – I didn’t make taking care of my appetite a priority.  Then, instead of moving lunch up to an earlier time, I ended up lunching late.  Again, I didn’t prioritize weight control.  To get my own cooperation, I found I have to take care of myself, or there will be consequences from the rest of me.  So by dinnertime part of me was feeling deprived and unloved.  Then, I waited to have dinner until 5.30, instead of moving it earlier, even though I was hungry and deprived and getting resentful and angry.  My ego can be so stubborn.  Like I said above, I even made things worse by trying to force myself to go without breakfast today.  

This attitude is destructive to my weight loss program.   The only way to get back to productive weight control is to accept a loss when it happens.  Wednesday was a loss.  Tuesday was a loss.  How to prevent Thursday from adding to the pile?  Why, accept the loss.  Thursday is a new day and I can get the new day right.  It doesn’t have to make up for the mistakes of previous days.  Tomorrow is a new day to approach, like Mr. Churchill says, with enthusiasm.  Hope.  I can take care of myself better tomorrow.  I find the rest of me is very forgiving.  I am grateful for that.

Be grateful to learn about yourself.  You can use that.  

-The Doctor

20191008 Daily report

Hello, dear Reader!  You are reading the ravings of a changed man.  Not one year ago, I weighed 325 pounds, with no end in sight.  Then, I discovered a rather successful way to lose weight.  And all I had to do was change my thinking!  Well, not all.  I did some other things, too (and I write about them in this blog).  But it all started with changing my mind about food, eating, and my life.  

Homemade beef stew for dinner. That's typical of my diet food.

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 1/2 pizza from Aldi (550); 

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – 13oz homemade beef stew (530); 

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Kirkland euro cookies (250)

  • 330 calories

Total for the day: 1810 calories (limit 1800)

The trade

I have lost over 80 pounds so far.  It has been the best year of my life, and that has very little to do with being thinner!  You see, I am still 40 pounds overweight.  All I have to do to remind myself I am still rather overweight is look in the mirror, or try on pants.  Anyway, who else can say that losing 80 pounds has been fun and enjoyable? 

One of my insights was that normal diets are built around willpower and forcing yourself to eat less.  I can’t do that, not for long.  My new diet is a lifestyle change that I can keep up forever, because it is great.  I don’t usually feel deprived (though there can be moments).  But in exchange for eating measured amounts of food, I can eat whatever I crave.  And I prepare most of my meals myself, often from scratch.  Chocolate cookies?  Beef stew?  BLT?  Pizza?  Gyros?  Red beans and rice?  Curry???  Yes, those are all diet foods for me.  

The key to making this transformation is learn from your food experiences.  What you learn about yourself can be revolutionary.  I found, for example, that eating a measured amount of food, which I was craving, and had built up anticipation for, could be much more satisfying than eating a lot of food, when I wasn’t really hungry for it.  I realized that I had allowed “being full” to become my food goal.  Even if I wasn’t hungry, I wanted to be full, which took a lot of food.  All the time.  You can see where that led.

Instead, I find that a little hunger, at the right time, makes my food experience very satisfying.  The trade-off is that I do spend a lot of time and attention thinking about food, hunger, and eating.  I have made a decision that it is a price I am willing to pay, in exchange for the improved quality of life, fulfillment, and satisfaction.  Plus, I believe that my weight is under control now.   I do weigh 82 pounds less than before, though I still have 38 to go.  That’s good progress.  

I met a lady who told me she was trying to lose weight by eating salads instead of meals.  It wasn’t going well, since she had to force herself to do it.  Half jokingly I told her to make a BLT out of her salad and enjoy it!  Amazingly, every time I have seen her since then, she has brought up her BLT and how much she enjoys it.  Her weight loss is going better, too.  

What can you learn about yourself?  What are you trying to tell yourself?

-The Doctor

20191007 Daily report

One thing that may not be coming across in these daily posts is my quality of life. People I talk to find it hard to let go of the idea that losing weight means willpower.  A lady today asked how I kept from backsliding, and complimented me for keeping going.  There’s a definitely a disconnect, because I am living well right now.  I don’t feel deprived, because I have changed my values and my eating goals.  And besides, the food is wonderful.  Today, I am going to represent all my meals in pictures.  This is from a typical day.  

For breakfast, I made BLT wraps with lovely Costco bacon. 400 calories!

Oven fried bacon is the best.

And for lunch, I had 500 calories.  I made meatball, hummus, red kraut, and pickle wraps, with horseradish.  It’s like eating a Middle Eastern pita with beef.  Only better.  

Is the common link Costco? These are Kirkland meatballs.

Dinner doesn’t get an accurate picture.  I didn’t think to take one until just now.  I had a bowl of baked Mexican nacho topping, a family recipe involving ground beef, beans, and cheese, layered and baked.  Then it is served with chips, salsa, and sour cream.  The different textures and tastes are wonderful!  Here’s a picture of a similar thing I did with chili last week.

Actually, the nachos don't have any ingredients from Costco.

My plan was to have cookies and tea around 3-4PM, but that didn’t work out today.  Instead, I had tea and cookies for dessert.  These cookies are from Costco!  Five of them are about 210 calories.

They are not large cookies, but pleasantly chocolatey.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 4x Bacon pieces (70); 1 whole wheat wrap (110); lettuce and tomato and some horseradish.

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 6x Kirkland meatballs (47); 2T hummus (80); red sauerkraut and pickles with horseradish

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 8oz nachos (390); 1oz tortilla chips (160) 2T sour cream (60);

  • 610 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); jerky (50); Kirkland chocolate cookies (210)

  • 340 calories

Total for the day: 1850 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

See how I suffer

I’m just joking.  I am not suffering, but enjoying this life.  The food is so good that I can look forward to it.  It is worthwhile to get a little hungry just before eating it.  If the food was always so-so, or salad, or some diet food, why would I look forward to it?  Nobody looks forward to salad every day (as the meal). 

This actually has caused me problems, when the food didn’t turn out well at a restaurant, for example.  It’s a huge let-down and you feel cheated.  You’ve sacrificed for nothing.  So to make this work, I use my willpower, not to eat less, but to make sure what I am eating is worth the trouble.  And it’s a lot of trouble, both getting hungry and preparing all the food!  Every meal has to be great, or else the system collapses.  

The satisfaction and fulfillment that come from preparing and eating this kind of food, while building up your own anticipation and maximizing your enjoyment, while having a measured portion, just brings your whole being together.  It’s a great feeling, having all your parts come together to make a success of some part of your life.  This is an amazing feeling and I would give up a lot to keep doing this.  I might even give up 120 pounds, or more.  

Isn’t that a nice way to think about it?

-The Doctor

20191006 Daily report

The purpose of the daily report is well expressed in the tags to this post: Daily report, Long term dieting, Paying attention, and Stay on a diet.  I am no longer the man I was prior to 2019.  Now, I see the world in a new way and I live according to a new set of values.  One of those new values is to care a lot about how much I weigh.

Terry Pratchett said (paraphrasing) that the essence of magic was to describe the world in a way it couldn’t ignore.  Well, I have transformed myself using the power of magic.  In these posts, I am describing a new way of living – the way I am living now.  I have lost more than 80 pounds by just adopting a new and appealing lifestyle.  I plan to lose at least 40 more pounds.  That seems possible, considering I am two-thirds of the way along.  

Not bad, but needs more browning

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham (100); Swiss cheese (120); toasted bread (160); horseradish and mustard and pickle sandwich; 8 oven roasted Brussels sprouts (60)

  • 440 calories

Lunch – 8oz nacho topping (390); 1oz nacho chips (160); 2 Tbsp sour cream (60)

  • 610 calories 

Dinner – 11.25 ounces beef stew (475); ccc (00)

  • 475 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 5x Kirkland tea cookies (210)

  • 330 calories

Total for the day: 1855 calories (limit 1800)

Don't crowd the pan

The total recipe of beef stew, cooked, weighed 7 pounds and contained 4750 calories.  So I had a tenth of it for dinner (7 pounds is 112 ounces, so the portion was 11.25 ounces, nearly three-quarters of a pound), which makes 475 calories.  It didn’t look like a lot in the bowl, but really it was very filling.  Three quarters of a pound is a fair amount of beef stew!

The only problem was browning the beef.  I tried doing it outside, since that kind of thing is hard on the kitchen surfaces.  It was going well with my electric skillet, until the last batch.  I crowded the pan and so the meat didn’t brown well in that batch.  Darn!  The stew was really good but I had this feeling that it could have been better, with more browning of the meat.   Anyway, an extra glass of wine (in me) solved that problem.  

I literally had a comment from a reader regarding willpower.  To clarify: it’s true, I am not using willpower to eat less food.  I have tried and tried that, and all it does is frustrate me, make me resentful, and then feel disappointed when I fail and give up.  Instead, I changed my mind.  Now, I use my willpower to pay attention to my needs and try to meet them.  I spent a good part of the weekend shopping and cooking to prepare for the week.  I have homemade beef stew and a baked Mexican nacho casserole, for dinners.  For lunches, I have ham, chicken, hummus, meatballs, and low calorie bread wraps ready to go.  There is bacon ready to reheat.  Actually, that sounds like the perfect breakfast.  

I negotiated with myself, built trust, and established a system of rewards.  In exchange for the food being satisfying and delivered with care and attention to when I am most hungry, I have found my body and subconscious parts are willing to eat controlled amounts of food.  If I slack off, look out!  I may have a bad diet day.  So willpower is involved, but not in the way people think.  For me, living this way, there is no need to use willpower or force, to eat less food.  I am as happy as I have ever been, living this way.  I feel like all my parts are working together and achieving remarkable results.

Fine, I caused the problem (overweight) myself, by not paying attention, by having short term and shallow goals, by being stubborn and set in my ways.  But addressing it so dramatically and successfully so far, is remarkable anyway.  It does take discipline.  But I don’t have to force myself to eat things I don’t want, and I don’t have to force myself away from the table hungry and resentful.  That used to be me.

What parts of your thinking are due for a redo?

-The Doctor

20191005 Saturday weigh-in

There are two essential parts to the mechanism for controlling your weight.  (This is after you have given up on your old life and your old ways of thinking about food.  If you haven’t changed your mind, then this approach won’t help you either.)  1. Regulate your food intake and 2. Weigh yourself regularly.  I thought about calling it the Well Regulated Diet, but the name lacks drama.  And it’s only the mechanism.  What’s truly important is your mental transformation.

Having transformed, you need a mechanism to control your weight, though.  Ultimately it’s all about the scale.  Weigh yourself periodically and regularly.  Some people weigh themselves every day.  I prefer once a week, at this time.  It may change.  I think the thinner you want to be, the more effort (attention) it takes.  

Not thin yet, but this is a reward based system!

I started in January 2019 at 325 pounds.  Alas, I didn’t take a picture at that time.  I just have a spreadsheet entry.But this is an improvement from last week of nearly three pounds!  My original goal was 205 pounds, and now I am less than 40 pounds away from that.  And that means since starting in January I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Reward, reward, reward. Put the duty on your conscious will.

The conscious ego “I” is very good at issuing orders.  If you have ever been on a diet (and you know you have), you know that you can tell yourself to eat less, lose weight, eat different foods, stop drinking, exercise more, stop smoking, and (my favorite) stop procrastinating, if you get around to it.  None of that works.  Your body and your subconscious parts might try to play along for a while, but you can’t even order yourself around successfully, not for more than a few days or weeks.  You will build up resentment against even yourself.  Soon you will be looking for excuses, reasons, rationalizations, to explain breaking your diet, just this one time.  Game over.  Then you will be disappointed in yourself.  Welcome to competing resentments in one body, where each part of your being is angry and resentful against the other parts!  Good luck getting anything done.  

A more successful approach is to treat yourself respectfully, as someone you should negotiate with, to benefit all.  That means give and take.  That means figuring yourself out.  It means paying attention to what your body wants.  That means satisfying many different parts or layers of yourself, with their competing desires, priorities, and interests, and harmonizing those wants and needs with your conscious desire to be in control of your body’s weight.

You can profitably invert the system I described above.  Your conscious will can do the work, for a change, instead of just issuing futile orders.  Use your will to serve yourself with care and attention.  You will love it.  For that kind of love, your mind and body will do anything for you.  Use your willpower to reward yourself for a job well done.  Don’t use your willpower to force yourself to go against your nature.  Each meal can be a reward, and you can use your willpower to make sure your body and soul get exactly what they want to eat, just when it will be most fulfilling.  In return, they will be willing to eat less food.  

The rewards exist any many levels.  Each meal is a reward.  I only eat things I love.  When I reach a weigh milestone, I get a reward.  Every 10 pounds I have lost, so far, has resulted in a new reward.  You’d think I would run out of rewards, but apparently I have a limitless appetite for reward.  And I use my willpower to figure all that out, plan meals ahead, shop, and prepare food ahead of time.  I cater to myself and reward myself using willpower.  I will always have enough will for that. 

I’ve enjoyed this lifestyle (so fulfilling and satisfying) more than I have enjoyed any part of my post-childhood.  And I only started living it in January, 2019.  On top of that, I have lost 82 pounds.  It’s almost been a side benefit of enjoying life more.

If you can’t say that, maybe you should allow yourself to think about what that would be like.

-The Doctor

20191004 Daily report

Writing a food journal means paying a lot of attention.  There’s more to it than just sitting down at the end of the day, or the end of the week(!) and trying to remember what you ate.  A food journal is kept right at the time you eat.  I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Today, I had a tea break at 3.30 PM.  With cookies.  That means I wrote in my food journal four times today.  It takes a lot of time and attention to control your body’s weight.  Don’t think you can do it just when you have spare time.  You get spare time when your food journal is done!

Also, you should be paying attention to a lot more than just what you ate.  If you are in control, then you are paying attention to what you are going to eat next, too.  Next meal, next day, next week….it shuld be food that makes you happy to think about it and want to eat it.  Then it is worth getting a little hungry for.

Admit it, you like the look of my homemade sausage chili.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2oz ham (100); Swiss cheese (90); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (negligible calories)

  • 350 calories

Lunch – 8oz homemade sausage chili (330); 1oz tortilla chips (160); 2T sour cream (60)

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – 1/2 slice Costco pizza (355); 10 ounces homemade Lentil soup (190); toasted bread and butter (150);

  • 695 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 5 Kirkland Euro chocolate cookies (210)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1885 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

I never know

I only weigh myself once a week (usually), on Saturday mornings.  I never know until I read the scale, whether I have lost weight that week.  It is always, even after months of weight loss, a happy surprise when I have lost.  It has gotten so reliable that keeping the same weight (or even gaining a pound, which happened one or two times) is strange and requires explanation.  I have learned, though data in my food journal, that slowdowns, halts, and reversals in weight loss (which can last weeks!) are almost always illness or travel related.  When I get better, weight loss resumes.

Part of the reason I don’t know before I get on the scale, is that I don’t understand and have no experience with my body at this weight.  The last time I weighted 246 (apart from last week), was 15 or 20 years ago.  When I go swimming and look in the mirror, it’s not like I can see that I have lost a pound or two since last time.  The weight around my middle doesn’t seems to change very drastically week to week.  I do know that the size 46 pants I have been wearing since early July are pretty loose now, but they might have stretched a bit.  My size 44 new pants are a bit snug, honestly.  (Yes, I know when I started wearing size 46 pants because that’s in my food journal.  It has a lot of uses.  Keep a food journal!)

Amazingly, because of my food journal, I know that in early July I weighed 264 pounds.  That’s a loss of almost 20 pounds and I am in the same pants!  Honestly, they are a bit loose.  But there is such a thing as stretching the waist out.  I just can’t be sure using any other way but the scale.  

I have had to get rid of some dress shirts.  My neck is smaller now, even if my waist has only shrunk a bit.  So that’s goodbye to anything with a size 18 neck.  The problem is that a dress shirt with a size 17 neck has a smaller body too….so my neck is shrinking quicker than my waist.  That’s awkward.  It sounds like I need to lose more and hope it comes off at the waist!  Classically, men gain weight first around their middle and then it spreads to other areas.  Logically, that means I will lose the weight around my waist….last.  But by that logic, at some point it will take less than 20 pounds to lose a pants size.  There won’t be anywhere else to lose from.  

Paying proper attention is a lot of work.  Pay attention to important things and it will help you a lot.  

-The Doctor

20191003 Daily report

I am in a weight control lifestyle for the long haul.  The rest of my life, anyway.  I can do that because I’ve made the lifestyle attractive.  I want to live this way because I enjoy it more than how I used to be.  Not just because I am thinner, but because my quality of life, my enjoyment, and sense of fulfillment, are all increased.  Notice, it is not being thinner that makes me enjoy things more.  The lifestyle is the attraction.  Will I be counting calories and keeping a food journal for the rest of my life?  Maybe.  It takes effort and it takes a lot of attention to keep yourself balanced that way.

Several old men I know, who were thin and stayed thin throughout their lives, had a different approach.  They didn’t keep food journals.  They just ate the same thing every week and knew exactly how much of that they could have in a week.  They didn’t get a lot of variety, but they stayed thin.  It didn’t hold up when their routines were disrupted, like during the holidays.  Then your normal food gets disrupted and there are lots of fun new things to eat.  A calorie counter has the advantage there.

Right now, I like the freedom to eat whatever I want.  I just count the calories.  

210 calories of cookies. Tea with half-and-half, 40 calories per cup

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 6 ounces cookied rice (200); 8oz New Orleans red beans and andouille sausage (250);

  • 250 calories

Lunch – Costco half slice pizza (375); 12 ounces homemade  lentil soup (230); 

  • 605 calories 

Dinner – 12 ounces sausage chili (500)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 5 Kirkland tea cookies (210)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1845 calories (limit 1800)

Think it through

Remember, the lifestyle is the goal, and not a target weight.  Let’s think that through.  If I was obsessed with hitting a certain weight number, that could be a problem.  For most of us who are overweight and gaining weight, the hardest thing to change is your mind.  Dieting without changing your mind means you are doing it wrong.  Your old life is just waiting to re-emerge and then your old weight will come back as soon as you let it.  You need to be a new person who sees the world in a new way.  Your old self is sacrificed to the new one.  That is very liberating.  But consider what you need to change.

When I was gaining weight, I didn’t pay any attention to the amount of food I was eating.  Food tasted good, and more food tasted good even longer.  Being full was very satisfying, or so it seemed.  I just let the good food roll on in until I was full.  But you don’t stay full for long.  And if satisfaction comes from things tasting good and your stomach being full, well, the result would be weight gain, if you are in a position to indulge that.  

Dieting was 100% against everything I enjoyed, when I thought that way.  Eating less food meant less enjoyment, and not getting full meant never being satisfied.  I was resentful and unsatisfied, even as I tried to force myself to eat less.  Giving up the sources of pleasure and satisfaction in your life is no way to get your body to cooperate.  So I was making the wrong sacrifice.  And I was asking the sacrifice from the wrong part of myself.  

I sacrificed my old values and my old way of thinking.  I gave up being full as a source of fulfillment (ha) and I gave up eating more food as a source of pleasure.  I replaced them with dramatizing my food, an old technique.  Basically, you appreciate your food more, and it tastes better, when you let yourself get a little hungry.  So you make sure you build up the meal and make it more dramatic.  Plan out the food you really want to eat, let yourself get hungry for it, anticipate it, prepare the food well, and then enjoy a measured portion of it.  That sequence is actually hugely satisfying.  More food actually ruins the drama, because you’re not hungry any more.  There’s no anticipation.  

You can see how the rest goes.  The anticipation becomes something you look forward to.  You come to value it more than you value having a full stomach.  At that point, you would rather be hungry than full, just so you can have the pleasure of satisfying your hunger.  And now you are thinking like someone new.  That new person is capable of controlling their body’s weight, because they are increasing their enjoyment of life while eating controlled amounts.  They are no longer fighting themselves and hating it, resenting it.

Could you change your mind?

-The Doctor

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