Long term dieting

20201012 Daily report: walking, walking

My body’s weight is walking down, slowly, slowly.  And I am walking every day, 7-8 miles, if you can believe my pedometer.  The two are probably connected.

When I was living my past life, I didn’t pay any attention to my body’s weight at all.  I couldn’t have told you how much I weighed or how much I was eating.  I had no system and no plan.  I ate when I felt like it, and I didn’t pay any attention to the consequences.  The result: uncontrolled weight gain.

Don’t let yourself believe that there are people who are naturally thin.  Thin people who have stayed thin throughout their lives have to work at it.  They might not think of it as work, but it is.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of willpower, but it does take work.  

There are tortellini under there!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – toast (120); ham 200);

  • 320 calories

Lunch – Reuben sandwich, with bread (200); Swiss cheese (70); 2oz corned beef (70); Thousand island dressing (50); sauerkraut (25);

  • 415 calories 

Dinner – tortellini (200); Braciole (300); gravy (50);

  • 550 calories

Snacking – chocolate (150);

  • 150 calories

Total for the day: 1435 calories (limit 1700, Fitbit predicts I burned 3625 calories today while walking 7.2 miles.)

You can do it

It is very important to celebrate your achievements and to set up your tasks so that you achieve results regularly, or at least have the chance to.  Part of that is measuring.  I measure how many calories I eat per day.  I measure how many calories I eat per week.  I know that it takes 3500 calories of deficit to lose one pound of weight.  So if I lose 2 pounds, I was down 7000 calories on the week.

You know, I have never tried to correlate my weekly calorie count with my weekly weight loss?   I need to fix that!  I have nearly 2 years of data.

But anyway, if I lose 1 pound, that means I was down 3500 calories on the week, an average of 500 calories per day.  You can do that and never feel deprived, if you are careful and listen to your body.  Yes, if I lose 2 pounds it does mean I was down 1000 calories per day!

(Does that mean that when I want to stay at a weight, I need to eat 1000 MORE calories per day than I am now?  I bet it’s not that simple.)

I like to reward every 10 pounds lost.  That’s about one reward every month or so.  What is my reward?  Food!  What else?  Don’t be worried, I don’t destroy my diet.  I make something special or have a special meal out, and I work it into my calorie plan.  It usually doesn’t cost me even one day of weight control to celebrate my achievement.  I have also toyed with celebrating other milestones, like losing 50 pounds, 100 pounds, 111 pounds, or 125 pounds.  I went into this weight control attempt with the target of 125 pounds lost, isn’t that worth celebrating?  I may not even stay there, I am guessing I will want to try being thinner as well.  Celebrations are important, it’s like a promise you are making to yourself and then keeping it.  It’s part of a system of responsibility and reward.

They go together!  And it works.

-The Doctor

20201011 Daily report: Keeping on

It is all getting very real, now.  This summer I went from 240 pounds to 214 pounds.  It’s entirely possible I will weigh 200 pounds (or less) by the end of the year 2020.  Not bad for a fellow who started out at or near 325 pounds in January 2019.  My pants size has gone down as well.  I am regularly wearing and buying waist size 40s now.  When I weighed between 240 and 245 pounds, I was wearing size 46 and 44 waist pants.  I started all this in size 52 and 54 pants.  

So basically I have done a lot of work, achieved great things, and now none of my clothes fit.  On top of that, looking in the mirror I am still overweight!  The weight is most persistent around my middle (back, sides, and front), the tops of my arms and the tops of my legs.  Everywhere else, like my neck and face, have thinned out nicely.  What will happen as I concentrate on losing another 10 or 15 pounds?  Where will the extra weight persist the longest?

But the path forward is clear.  I intend to keep going.

Braciole and Sunday gravy with tagliatelle noodles

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 8oz Steel cut oats (215); syrup (30); pizza (50);

  • 295 calories

Lunch – wheat wrap half (60); with steak (100); green beans and potatoes (40); 2x Ole wraps (50); with pork (100); sauerkraut (100); horseradish (50);

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – Braciole (200); 4oz noodles (200); salad (50); gravy (40);

  • 490 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 1 serving cookies (170)

  • 250 calories

Total for the day: 1585 calories (limit 1700)

Nothing is easy but some things are worth it

I recently acquired a Fitbit Charge 4 watch.  It has provided a lot of interesting data on my movements, heart rate, exercise patterns, and sleep.  Among other findings, my sleep quality is not very good.  I am amazed; I always thought my sleep was good quality because I am almost always able to go to sleep quickly and easily.  But getting up is always difficult.  Now I have a possible reason.  I am apparently spending a minimal time in deep sleep or REM sleep, and most of my time in light sleep.  I have talked before about the connection between getting enough sleep and overeating, and I am thinking about this issue of low quality sleep, a lot.

One point is that while I spend a lot of time in bed, part of it is spent reading and playing games before trying to sleep.  It has been suggested that I should use bed only for sleep and do my reading and game playing while sitting in a chair.  It’s worth trying.  I have always believed that you need good sleep to do a good job while awake.  Even if you aren’t getting a lot of sleep, I want it to be high quality.  So I will be paying more attention to this.  That part of my lifestyle is out of sync and not helping me towards my goals. 

If you are doing a hard thing, make it as easy as you can in all other ways.  

My goal of body control is worthwhile and will help me in other parts of my life.  I talked yesterday about responsibility.  If I take responsibility for my body’s weight, and find ways to make that work, then I can apply those lessons to any enterprise: find what works and keep at it until the goal is reached.  What will I do next?  After a while I will not have more weight to lose and will have to adjust to maintenance.  Sleep is also a worthwhile project.  How can I get the best sleep?  I’ll look into it!

Goodnight,

-The Doctor

20201010 Saturday weigh-in and in-sight

1661 is a magic number this week.  It’s a palindrome, it’s the average number of calories I had per day this week, and the “16” has an echo of what I weighed last week, 216 pounds. 

There’s another interesting number, which is today’s date, 20201010.  Two times 1010 is 2020!  This is a data blog and a numbers blog, in its way.  I have decided I want to be in control of my body and my body’s weight. That is best done with numbers: calories, clothing sizes, weights and measures (of food portions and the body).  There was a time when I tried magic diets and that didn’t work well for the most part.  

What has worked well?  Let’s see how well I did this week:

Are my toes thinner?

Since I began my weight control project in January 2019, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

When can I stop dieting?

That is the wrong question. A bad question.  That is a question asked by someone who is living a “diet” lifestyle they don’t like.  I am having a great time, eating whatever I like.  I am enjoying eating more than I ever did when I was out of control and gaining weight uncontrollably.  That’s the real reason this is working so well.  And all I had to do was change my mind.

Magic diet is my term for diets that substitute magic for thinking.  I tried a diet that claimed that you had to eat foods in a certain order, to lose weight.  Another type of diet I tried that said certain foods should be avoided.  This includes the keto, or low carb, or low fat, and similar exclusion diets.  Another popular one was to substitute a low calorie milkshake for 1 or meals per day.  The only one that worked (a little) for me was the low carbohydrate diet.  The claim is that if you follow these diets you will lose weight.  But they all have the same problem.  You can do these things and they may work for a while, but you are still the same person with the same thinking who became overweight in the first place.  That is what you have to change.

You become overweight not because you are eating sugar or fats or carbs or grapefruit or drinking juice, coffee, or soda.  You become overweight because of your mindset, your way of looking at the world, experiencing the world.  Your values and thoughts are resulting in overweight.  That is what must change.  Your food choices and your body’s weight will catch up to your thinking, if you improve it.

The single biggest difference between people who are gaining weight and those who maintain a thin weight throughout their adult life is in values and how you live them out.  I don’t even value being thin very highly.  I decided that I needed to value being in control of my weight, more than almost anything else.  Then, I could pick the weight I wanted.  That attitude feeds into other parts of you life too; if you are responsible for your weight, why not your house, your yard, your community, your day job?  Thin people have decided that being in control of their weight matters to them more than anything else.  

I will talk about achieving that control another time, but for now I will say you have to develop the correct reasons for eating and ways to measure your control.  

Have a good week!

-The Doctor

20201009 Daily report: mind your matters

The goal is to be in control of my body’s weight.  So, every day, I write down exactly what I eat and how much.  Writing it all down is important, but I refuse to do it using an app or smart watch.  I use a spreadsheet I created myself.  It suits me. 

How do I manage to keep writing it all down?  I didn’t write much down for the first 40-odd years of my life, after all.  What changed?

I changed my mind.  I realized that the mindset I was using to experience the world resulted in uncontrolled weight gain.  I was eating for the wrong reasons.  I associated being full with comfort and happiness.  If I tried to diet, I was essentially withholding comfort and happiness from myself!  Who would want that?  I had to change my mind.  Comfort and happiness could come from positive achievements, accomplishment, a difficult job well done. 

Now, I treat food as a reward for achieving, not as a source of happiness.

My reward: pizza! The crust needs some work.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Cauliflower and potato curry (75); 4x Jaffa cakes (50); Canadian bacon (40);

  • 315 calories

Lunch – Pork tenderloin (130); sauerkraut (80); and whole wheat wrap (90)

  • 300 calories 

Dinner – pizza (800); 

  • 800 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); M&Ms (70);

  • 150 calories

Total for the day: 1565 calories (limit 1700)

It has been working

Controlling my body’s weight has been going reasonably well.  It’s not 100% consistent, because I make mistakes, backslide, and fall back into my old habits from time to time.  I can’t say I haven’t gained any weight during the last two years.  But changing your mind is highly recommended.

If you don’t change your mind, but manage to lose some weight, you are in danger of gaining it back.  Underneath, you are still the same person who became out of control and gained weigh you didn’t want.  You can force yourself to behave – to follow a temporary diet.  But you can only force yourself for so long.  Your old self, your old thinking will re-emerge.  I believe that is why so many people experience cycles of weight gain and loss.  

Change your mind.  Change your thinking.  Change yourself – if you change what is important to you, change what you value, then when you live out your beliefs your behavior will change as well.  If your new values are rewarding and useful then you will thrive. 

Losing all your extra weight isn’t difficult in terms of willpower.  I have lost a lot of weight – and kept it off pretty well, just by changing my mind.  I changed what was important to me.  Suddenly, I could understand why thin people acted the way they did.  Their behavior was not a mystery any more, because now I understood their thinking.  I understood their motivations.  I changed myself into a person who weighs 216 pounds, last I checked.  I changed myself into a person who can wear size 40 pants – down from size 52.

Don’t do as I say, or as I do.  Change your thinking, then you will find a way to do it yourself. Then you can build the life you want to lead.

-The Doctor

20201008 Daily report: steak time

I skipped posting yesterday.  Altogether it was not a great day in many ways.

However in terms of food, it was great.  I had 1420 calories, which is well within the range I need to lose weight, assuming I have enough days like that.  I was so busy yesterday that I didn’t have time to have more than a bite for lunch.  I made up for it later, though.  

Today was a better day.  Food-wise, it wasn’t quite as low calorie as yesterday.  However, part of the lifestyle (that has been so successful in terms of losing weight) is to only eat foods you really like.  This was one of those days.  Each meal was better than the last.

That's 8 ounces of tenderloin of beef!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 8oz rice (250); leftover chicken stir-fry with snow peas (100);

  • 350 calories

Lunch – 4oz noodles (200); 6.5oz Carbonnade of beef (350)

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – 8.5oz tenderloin steak (500); Indian cauliflower with potatoes (gobi aloo) (200);

  • 700 calories

Snacking – no today (00)

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1600 calories (limit 1700)

Each better than the last

If you want to live a lifestyle where you are in control of your body, you must find a system that works.  That means finding food that you are willing to wait for.  It must be worth the wait.  I’ve had a lot of success, losing over 100 pounds, by sticking to mealtimes and eating measured portions of foods that I really like.  That comes with a How and a Why.

How do I lose 100 pounds?  I developed a set of behaviors that put me in control of my body.  In the past, I was using food for reasons other than fuel – for example, emotional reasons.  Using food as an emotional release is kind of an expedience trap.  It becomes the easy way out, a cheap way to feel better.  Once you are in that trap, you will start using food more and more for those purposes, and gain weight at every meal.  

Why do I do it?  There’s another problem with dieting.  People (such as myself) try to imitate the behavior of thin people: try eating less in various ways.  But none of those behaviors work for us,  because we are just changing behavior, not the person underneath.  The person you are has developed a mindset that allows overeating and weight gain.  Just forcing yourself to behave differently only lasts as long as your willpower.  You need to adopt a new set of values to live by.  You have to basically become a new person who thinks differently than the old one.  

The new person believes strongly in controlling their body’s weight, more than anything else.  That’s the kind of dedication it takes.  It doesn’t make you a good person, or a deep thinker.  But it does mean that your priorities are focused on your body and controlling your body, and your life.  

Hunger becomes your friend because it enhances your eating experience.  Food becomes a reward instead of a therapy.  Think about becoming a new person.

-The Doctor

20201006 Daily report: concentrate

The job is to control my body’s weight.  How do I do that?  Well, it’s one day at a time.  Every day, my job is to have a perfect food day.  

That starts with getting enough sleep.  Being tired is no good, there is a temptation to awaken yourself with food and comfort yourself with more food.  I find my stomach is the last part of me to wake up!

One day at a time is one meal at a time.  The rules are: 1. Only eat when you are hungry.  Have the food prepared that you really want to eat, and allow yourself to anticipate and grow hungry.  Don’t eat outside of your mealtimes.  2. Measure your portion.  That usually means: no seconds, but it truly means you have to control how much you are eating.  It also means if you eat too much, you won’t be hungry next time.  Hunger is your friend.  Allow it to build, then satisfy it.  Think of it as rewarding yourself for accomplishing the goal.  

Chicken and snow peas stir fry

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 6oz red beans (200) 3oz rice (100)

  • 300 calories

Lunch – bread (140); 4oz ham (160)

  • 300 calories 

Dinner – 6oz rice (200); chicken and snow peas stir fry (200)

  • 400 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken pieces (100); crackers (100); Snickers ice cream bar (180);

  • 460 calories

Total for the day: 1460 calories (limit 1700)

Always victorious

Because my goal is weight control and it is lived by the day, I can have victories every day.  Not every day is a total victory, but each day is a new chance.  If your goal is to lose weight it is self-defeating.  (Think about it: if your goal is to lose weight, everything you eat is against the goal.)  Don’t think like that.  Your proper goal is control.  Once you are in control of your body, you can pick the weight you like and you will get there – slowly, but it will happen a pound at a time.  You can get addicted to the victories as they pile up.

I weigh myself every week.  It’s more dramatic that way.  But based on my daily food journal I have a pretty good idea if I will lose weight.  It’s a way of keeping score.

I have a busy day tomorrow and have to get to bed.  Remember the first thing I said on this post: start with the right amount of sleep.  

Goodnight,

-The Doctor

20201005 Daily report: steady now

I had a bad diet day yesterday.  And it’s something I have found to be true every time: if you have a bad diet day, don’t make it worse.  Don’t try to make up for it tomorrow, by skipping meals or eating less.  That will ruin both days.  Try to make tomorrow exactly right (eat exactly the calories you are supposed to).  Enough good days will make up for a bad day in the long run.  Weight control doesn’t come by punishing yourself, but by re-establishing control over the majority of the time, eventually the vast majority.  You want your weight control lifestyle to be attractive and nice as a place to live.  Then you will want to stay there.  The bad days will be fewer.

Manicotti with meat make Canelloni

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – 6oz red beans (200); 3oz rice (100); crackers (120);

  • 420 calories 

Dinner – Canelloni (650); sausage (180);

  • 830 calories

Snacking – candy (200); 

  • 200 calories

Total for the day: 1530 calories (limit 1700)

FitBit walking and sleeping

One reason the weight control lifestyle is a nice place to live is the pattern of consistent fulfilling eating experiences.  It takes planning and work, but you can make each meal something to look forward to, both by preparing your body (letting yourself get hungry just in time for dinner) and preparing the food (preparing a meal you are really looking forward to).   Today, I was living out the aftermath of a bad diet day – eating over 2000 calories on Sunday, and over 1800 on Saturday.  It happens.  Now I have to deal with it.

There is still a link between sleep and weight control.  I happen to know I slept less than 5 hours last night – according to a FitBit watch.  I also have gone walking a couple of times with the new FitBit watch.  It’s fun because it acts like a watch and also does other stuff.  Anyway, part of my responsibility – if I am serious about establishing control over my body – is taking care of myself.  <5 hours of sleep per night is not good sense and won’t give me good results.  I am going to start tracking sleep – and going to bed on time.  I have noticed that if I don’t sleep it is harder to keep my mind on the job, in every sense.  

So, to bed.  Tomorrow is a chance to have a perfect day.

-The Doctor

20201004 Daily report: spoooky

I admit it, I went around the neighborhood looking at Halloween decorations today.  They weren’t scary but some were interesting, and a few were impressive.  The shops are a bit strange, as the Christmas decoration displays are already up (October 4!) and the Halloween stuff is a smaller display crammed next to the spaces filled with trees and reindeer.  There is probably just as much autumn/harvest stuff up at people’s houses as Halloween decorations.  Corn stalks, orange wreaths, stacks of gourds…

New Orleans Red Beans and rice

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bread (110); ham (130); cobbler (100);

  • 340 calories

Lunch – 2 bratwurst (260); 1/2 wrap (45);

  • 565 calories 

Dinner – beef carbonnade (600); noodles (100); salad (30);

  • 730 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (40); chocolate (300); chips (200);

  • 540 calories

Total for the day: 2175 calories (limit 1700)

The pattern continues

It’s a it distressing, but I have continued the pattern of the last several weeks: overeating during the weekends.  This is kind of counterproductive considering all the careful discipline I put into the food week.  It has nothing, or very little, to do with hunger.  I am not sure why I am turning to food, but this will really slow down my progress and gives the lie to weight “control”.  This feels a bit out of control.  

To be fair, I am still keeping track of the calorie count.  This is not a disaster, but it is not helping me either.  I need to think about this and channel my energies into a productive direction.  Imagine, being a person who has an urge to use food whenever something difficult or unpleasant happens to them.  No wonder my weight was out of control!

This is all a process of self-discovery, you know.  Once I learn my behaviors I can change them.  In that case, knowledge is better than ignorance.  I see I have this old, learned, behavior.  Trouble?  Feeling bad?  Eat something and feel better!

Only I don’t feel better. I feel worse, because I am setting myself back on my project to control my body and channel my mind into useful directions.  And I don’t like feeling full anymore.  It feels strange and wrong.  Anyway, what’s done is done and there are consequences to think about.  Tomorrow is a new day, and I will do better.  I wonder if the problem isn’t partly to do with structure.  My workdays are highly ordered and it’s easier to stay inside the lines.  On the weekend, what I am doing is less structured and there is more time to think and get worked up by all the problems.  Hmmmm.  I will keep thinking about that.  I have had many weekends that were weight loss successes.  Why has that changed the last few weeks?  A mystery! 

-The Doctor

20201003 Saturday way in

To my surprise, though I started the week off badly, I managed to have a reasonably good week controlling my weight.  That’s the goal: being in control of my body’s weight.  I could pick a weight number as my goal, but weight control is better.  Then I can pick any weight I want and go in that direction.  Being in control takes a lot of attention, and some hard work and some time.  But it has its rewards.  I am wearing and buying size 40 pants these days.  It was only in 2019 January I was wearing size 52.  OK, the size 40s are not exactly relaxed-fit, but neither are they ridiculous.  I can wear them around.

I know what I weigh, because I weigh myself every week. I can go to the store and be pleasantly surprised with what I am fitting into, instead of a bit shocked and dismayed.  

And no backsliding.  Having established control over my weight, I don’t want to be gaining it all back again.  I control my weight by becoming a new person who values weight control, and make sure my old lifestyle is unrewarding.

Caption

This is a new low weight for me, and I am getting closer and closer to having a normal-sized body.  Since I started controlling my weight in January 2019, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Closer and closer

My original goal was to reach a target of 205 pounds.  This was arbitrary, and I never expected to reach it.  I have started dieting before and never made it anywhere.  But this time was different.  I left behind my old thinking and my old way of life, and started living according to a new set of values.  But I am making great progress this time!  Soon I will have lost 111 pounds from my starting weight of 325.  That’s only nine pounds away from the target: 205.

I don’t believe I will stop for long at 205 pounds.  I want to see what 185-190 looks like.  But still, reaching that target of 205 pounds will be a big accomplishment.  It’s one that people who stay thin, perform all the time, but it is new to me.  I have learned that people who stay thin have to work at it, and the thinner they are, the harder they must work.  I appreciate that.  I have learned a lot from thin people.  

Of course there is more to do.  I would also like to exercise more, but my preferred exercise is swimming and that is difficult right now, all the Coronavirus lockdowns have made a lot of the pools hard to use.  But some light exercise like walking will make a difference, as I get closer and closer to my targets.

What will I do when I want to stay at a weight?  When I want to stop losing or gaining?  That will take some figuring out and it will be odd to eat more calories than I have been for the last two years.  Weight control demanded I eat less and then it will demand I eat more.  But I have learned it takes constant attention.  You can’t park at a weight and stay there without any effort.  (Well, actually you can, but it takes some pretty strong routinizing – I mean, eating the exact same meals and portions every day.)

Breakfast time.  I am hungry and I will enjoy it.  Have a good week,

-The Doctor

20201002 Daily report: more daily report

In the beginning, was a man who weighed 325 pounds.  This weight he had gained a bit at a time over many years.  He had never been able to successfully lose weight.  But on a low carb diet, he did lose 20 pounds.  This was the first time ever he had lost weight.  Did the low carb food cause him to lose weight?  The weight loss stopped after about 20 pounds, though he didn’t change anything.  Was the low carb food responsible for the stoppage?

It was probably not.  Later, he learned that the kind of food he ate had little bearing on his weight loss (there are some people who find otherwise).  But there was an important clue in there.  The low carb diet was easy to follow because he liked the food, and it was easy to stay on the diet.  It was easy to avoid noodles, rice, cereal, pizza, chips, and bread, when you can have as much meat and cheese and nuts (and vegetables) as you like.  

I can have pizza so long as I portion

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – toast (220); ham (160); salami (80);

  • 460 calories

Lunch – Corned beef wraps (300); stuffed cabbage half (70); horseradish sauce (20);

  • 390 calories 

Dinner – pizza (900); 

  • 850 calories

Total for the day: 1700 calories (limit 1700)

That and responsibility makes weight control

This was one of the Doctor’s key insights: you will find it easy to stay on a diet that you really like.  You will fight to stay on it.  

But that was a bit of a false lead.  I was completely unregulated in terms of calories.  At that time, I ate as much low carb food as I wanted and didn’t measure or pay attention to how much or how many calories I was having. And since at the time my mindset was that: food = comfort, I would have just kept increasing the dose over time and would probably have started gaining weight again.  I had to break that mental link and make a new one: food = enjoyable fuel.  Comfort would have to come from fulfilling responsibilities and achieving my goals.  

That’s leaping a bit ahead of the story.  For now, I had had the important insight, that the diet had to be in alignment with your values and how you want to live your life.  It had to be your lifestyle and not a temporary diet.  Forcing yourself to lose weight is just too difficult.  You will be on a permanent diet and never make real progress.  

The next step on the Doctor’s journey was to figure out how to create the new link.  Food was to be enjoyed, as a reward and as well-earned experience.  It was not to be the source of comfort.  It could and should be a reward for work.  The harder the work, the greater the reward should be. 

-The Doctor 

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