Long term dieting

20200921 Daily Report: Holiday from Reason edition

An astute reader (and I do have one) will note a few days’ break in the Doctor’s blogging.  Things were disrupted with travel, extra tasks, and a Holiday from Reason.  Yes, I had some wild excess in eating for a few days while I was traveling and out of town.  And I didn’t go walking for several days, either.  This has not been the best week for weight control.

But that is ok.  Now I am back from Crazytown (population: you) and I can get back to my preferred lifestyle: weight control.

If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be able to do it.  The Doctor is not made of willpower.  

From a few days ago. The scallions make it extra good.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch –bread (80); pulled pork (150); bratwurst (260); 1/4 flatbread (25); peanut blossom cookie (120)

  • 635 calories 

Dinner – 16oz beef stew with lots of potatoes (550); 2x peanut blossom cookies (117);

  • 785 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1580 calories (limit 1700)

A few days waisted, two weeks wasted?

On one of the missing days (when I didn’t blog), I estimate I ate 4000 calories.  That was the worst of it.  Don’t ask how or why.  It was a holiday from reason.  Now that Mr. Reason has come knocking, there is plenty of cleanup and fixing to do.  A couple of days of excess eating have thrown my body for a loop and it will take days to feel normal again.  I feel non-hungry most of the time, and oddly full or bloated in the intestinal/stomach area.  I tried having tea today, twice, thinking that would help.  It didn’t.  I think it will just take time.  

That means for a few days of bad eating, I will have to pay a price lasting a couple of weeks.  It will take a week to feel normal again and another week before I could expect to weigh as little as before (117 pounds).  I accept the price.  I have no choice!  But I accept it with good will.  Was the holiday worth the price?  Oh no, it wasn’t.  It was emotional eating of the worst kind, totally unsatisfying in any food/hunger kind of way.  There’s part of me that takes the easy way out with emotional hunger.  Taking the easy way out!  That’s how I gained a lot of weight over the last 20 years.

Nobody said weight control was easy.  It takes work and discipline and sacrifice.  It doesn’t take much willpower.  Tonight is as good example.  I was offered a store-bought cookie and after one bite put it down.  It was terrible and why would I waste calories on it?  I had just made some peanut blossom cookies and had those instead.  Fantastic!   And it took little willpower to put down a cookie I didn’t like and replace it with one I do like.  There was some work involved – I had to make the cookies!  I would have enjoyed them even more if my body was feeling normal.  I will let you know how that goes.  

-The Doctor

20200914 Daily report: underweather

It’s hard to concentrate on weight control when you are not feeling well.  It happens, though.  What do you do?

I have learned I can’t force myself to do this for long.  I have to want to do it, and that means waiting out the illness.  I don’t worry too much about my calorie count, or when I should eat or getting hungry.  I haven’t been well since Friday and am still not all better.  I am recovering, though.  But today will be an abridged posting.

When nachos aren't exciting, nothing is.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Getting better just takes time.  But during this time I have found I am not hungry in the mornings at all.  I am finding I want to eat in the evenings, and I have less appetite for meat and cheese and protein.  I have a big appetite for bread, pretzels, and crackers.  And chocolate.  I am not sure why that is, but it makes it hard to be on my usual routine.  The foods I usually like aren’t interesting when I’m sick, and I have little interest in calorie counting.  I’ve had this situation before, in 2019.  So far, whenever I get better, my appetite goes back to normal.  

Until then, just bear it.  Tomorrow is another day.

-The Doctor

20200912 Saturday weigh-in

When you decide to take control of your body’s weight, you have a mental change to make – even more than the physical one.  I call it “thinking like a thin person” and it is a little different than the usual diet advice.  Normally you are told to ACT like a thin person.  For example I often see the advice that you should take half of your lunch and put it away for dinner or another meal.  That could be a sensible thing to do, but WHY are you doing that?  I never see a thin person doing that, either.  Usually they throw away what they don’t eat (say at a restaurant).  Thin people also don’t usually order diet soda.  Watch them and learn how to think about food and eating.  WHAT to do will then come natural.

Actually it varied a bit today

When I got on the scale this morning I was 217.4 and after I went for a walk and did a little yard work it was 216.4  So I will split the difference and say 217 even.  Since starting my weight control lifestyle in January 2019 I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

TrY EaTIng LeSS fOOD!!!!

Controlling your weight amounts to eating less food, yes.  But that is the least important part and the least helpful way to look at the issue.  But hey – did I say eating less food was the Least Important Part?  Doctor, are you MAD??

Mad like a fox who has lost 108 pounds.  (That was a mighty big fox.)  The most important thing to change is your mind.  Change your mind.  There’s a saying: some people would rather die than think.  Don’t be those people.  Thinking as you have and living as you have has resulted in weight gain and overweight.  You can’t do those things any more.  The decision has to be made: I am going to control my body and its weight.  That means I have to give up or sacrifice something.  I will give up my old values, life, and habits that resulted in overweight.  I need new values and a new way of thinking about food and eating.

Why is eating less food not a helpful way to look at controlling your weight?  Isn’t that the reality?

We don’t live in reality and our brains aren’t about reality.  You are an actor on the stage and the stage is the world and the play is your life.  “Eat less food” is commonly used to mean “have some willpower,” like that is the difference between thin and overweight people.  Do you think that is true?  It isn’t.  I don’t have any more willpower after 108 pounds lost than I did when I weighed 108 pounds more.  

If you try to force yourself to eat less, you might succeed for a while.  Maybe you have more willpower than you think you do.  But the old you is still in there and has the same values, priorities, and habits.  When you stop dieting (usually when you run out of willpower) then the old you will step right back in and you will gain all the weight again.  Who wants that?

Change your mind instead.  Then the new you can be a person who is in control of their weight and thinks like a thin person.

-The Doctor

20200911 Daily report back loader

My job on a Friday, in addition to my usual work of writing a food journal and measuring my portions with care, is to get ready for Saturday.  That’s when I weigh myself.  Today, it didn’t go so well – not entirely my fault.  It was unusual.

Most protein-ey dinner ever

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – none (00)

  • 0 calories

Lunch – chocolate (200); ice cream (200); ice cream bar (150);

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – Italian sausage (270); 5oz pulled pork (250); bread (70);

  • 590 calories

Snacking – pretzels (110); cheese (50); chicken (200); cookie (110); tea with half and half (80);

  • 550 calories

Total for the day: 1690 calories (limit 1700)

Out of balance today

If you look at my journal entry, I didn’t have any breakfast.  I didn’t feel well and my stomach felt in knots, I don’t know why.  I also had a very unusual lunch – chocolate and ice cream.  I don’t usually find that satisfying for lunch.  Then I started to feel better after 2PM and by 6PM I was ravenous and only wanted meat.  I had meat for dinner.  I had meat and cheese for snack.  Then I finished it all off with a cookie and tea.  In effect, I ate the day’s worth of calories all in the second half of the day.  Not only that, I don’t feel well.  Combine those facts and despite my good week of dieting I doubt the scale will have good news for me tomorrow.  I could be wrong.  It’s a prediction.

My calorie average for the week was under 1600 per day.  That’s usually good territory for losing 1-2 pounds.  But the weighing tomorrow may be a disappointment.

It’s happened before that I get on the scale and have lost an amazing amount of weight.  Just recently I went from 230 to 225 pounds in one week.  The week after I hardly lost a thing, even though I dieted well.  There is variation in the short term, but in the long term I have been losing almost 2 pounds per week, which is excellent results.  I have done really well the last two months going from 234 to 219 pounds.  My original aim was to lose 120 pounds and get down to 205.  That is getting closer.

As a matter of fact it’s making me quite impatient.  By now I thought I would look thin!  I don’t, at least not naked.  I’m still fairly wobbly around my stomach, legs and arms.  Less than before.  I can now fit into some size 40 pants, breathing optional.  Will there really be that big a change in the next few pounds?  I decided some time ago that I will probably experiment with a final weight around 185 to 190 pounds.  Maybe that will make a difference.  

That is all to come. For now, I just want to get better.

-The Doctor

20200910 Daily report

It’s time…..for a daily report!  My job every day is to manage my food intake so that I am always satisfied after a meal and always slightly hungry just before a meal.  I keep track of that by writing it all down in a food journal.  I am able to do all this because I have changed my values.  Now I see hunger as a friend. When I get hungry just before mealtime, it means I am doing things right.

Curry time

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/8 apple pie with crumb topping (450)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (45); peppers and onions (20);

  • 585 calories 

Dinner – 13.5 ounces vegetable curry (350); 5oz cooked rice (160);

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1625 calories (limit 1700)

Fulfilling rather than full feeling

When you are managing your weight you have to have your mind right.  Once that is done, you learn to manage your food intake.  You start to welcome hunger because it means you are doing things right.  You put things in the correct order: get hungry, then eat.  You make sure that your meal is worth all the fuss.  Then you let yourself get hungry. 

Question: how do you do that?  Don’t you want to avoid feeling hungry on a diet????

What you don’t want is to feel hungry all the time.  Avoid feeling deprived, unhappy, put-upon.  Getting hungry is an important signal that you will enjoy the food!  But you have to learn to time the feeling of hunger.  Learn to get a little hungry, not a lot.  It should just last a few minutes, but it heightens your enjoyment of the meal.  If it’s something you have been looking forward to, you will enjoy it more when you are hungry.  That’s just your perception but it will work for you.

If you overeat, then you won’t be hungry next time and you won’t enjoy your next meal nearly as much as you could.  What’s the point of setting up your favorite meal, and all the cooking and preparation, if you’re not hungry and won’t fully enjoy it?  Use hunger as a signal and as an appetizer.  Are you hungry?  That means your last meal has worn off and you are ready for more.  Are you hungry? You will enjoy your next meal!

Don’t get too hungry and don’t get too full. Go for the more fulfilling experience: satisfying physical hunger at the right moment with the right food for you.

-The Doctor

20200909 Daily report – keep plugging

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

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

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

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 440 calories

Lunch – lasagna (400); 

  • 400 calories 

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

  • 440 calories

Snacking – nada (0);

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1280 calories (limit 1700)

Why so low?

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

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

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

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

-The Doctor

20200908 Daily report: wait for it!

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

Best tomato sauce ever!

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 450 calories

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

  • 515 calories 

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

  • 560 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80);

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1610 calories (limit 1700)

Walking is enough

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

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

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

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

-The Doctor

20200907 Daily report burger

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

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

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

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 180 calories

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

  • 490 calories 

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

  • 600 calories

Snacking – none (00)

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1270 calories (limit 1700)

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

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

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

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

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

-The Doctor

20200906 Daily report: don’t make this mistake

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

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

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

Dinner - sausage and manicotti

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – sausage (270); pizza (300)

  • 570 calories 

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

  • 510 calories

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

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1440 calories (limit 1700)

Actually I wasn't hungry.

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

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

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

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

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

-The Doctor

20200905 Saturday weigh-in

Dear reader, while living out my new values I have lost more than 100 pounds.  This took surprisingly little willpower, once I had my head straight.  It’s a lifestyle I like.  That means I can do it forever, or at least until I find something even better.  My previous attempts to control my weight (readers will know that I dislike the term “diet”) hardly ever went anywhere because I couldn’t keep forcing myself to go against my values at that time.

A surprising clue came when I tried a low carbohydrate diet.  I did lose some weight, and many people have had the same thing happen.  But it stopped due to math.  I will explain.  For now, the math I want to talk about is subtraction:  

Down we go!

Since I started my weight control lifestyle in January 2019 I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

125 pounds was my original aim

My weight control lifestyle was built around the idea that I can choose the values I want to live by.  My success is proof that once you pick values you like and start living them out in your life, your weight will come under control – slowly, because bodies don’t gain or lose 125 pounds overnight.

My original starting weight was 325 pounds.  Losing 125 seemed like an ambitious goal.  However in my new value system, it is merely an aiming point.  It can be changed.  My goal is to live well and control my weight while enjoying the eating experience.  I don’t eat any diet foods, load up on vegetables for bulk, or avoid carbohydrates.  I eat what I like, but I am careful about how much.  

My values new include weight control, and quality eating.  I don’t mean that I buy organic or expensive foods, because I don’t do that.  The quality comes from finding foods I really like and are worth waiting for.  This is because I wait to eat until I am hungry.  That lets me maximize the enjoyment I get from eating (measured portions of) my favorite foods.  In a nutshell, that’s how I lost 106 pounds and still going.

That reminds me about the low carb diet or keto diets. They aren’t magic but they gave me a clue.  If you want to lose 10-20 pounds and you have generally been good about controlling your weight during your lifetime, switch to low carb and you will lose that much.  I think it’s because your calories are restricted a bit (no bread, chips, cereals).  To lose a lot of weight, you need a lifestyle change too.  There is just no magic answer, so pick a lifestyle you like a lot.  That means, pick your values.  You will fight to live them out and the weight will come off almost as a side effect.

What values would you choose?  Which do you have now?  Which are not helping you?

-The Doctor

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