Long term dieting

20200801 Saturday way in

Today is Saturday and that means it’s weighing time.  When I was gaining weight and not paying attention to controlling my body, I practically never got on the scale.  Partly, I didn’t want to know.  Now, I have promoted weight control to the top of my list of values that I live by.  So I weigh myself weekly.  There are people who weigh themselves every day and I have tried it.  But seeing the number change once a week is much more dramatic.  It’s hard to get excited about losing 0.2-0.3 pounds, and my lifestyle has some excitement built-in.  So I don’t even get on a scale, usually, until Saturday morning and so I never know if I have lost weight until then.  

That's close to the line!

I am at a different location this week so the scale is different.  I am pretty sure 230.0 pounds is accurate because I got on this scale last week too, just to check.  And it had run out of battery.  But once that was fixed, my weight was pretty close to what I get at home.  So I trust this number pretty well.  

Since starting to control my weight in January, 2019 I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Double milestones on the horizon

I don’t like to brag about what I will do in the future because it may never happen.  But I always plan ahead for success.  I always reward myself for achieving milestones, because I want to persuade all the parts of my being that living this way is better.  Let me explain: I have forcing myself to eat less food and that doesn’t work for very long.  It takes continual application of force.  And if I did manage to lose weight that way, I would pretty quickly gain it back again.  I would be the same person, after all, and you can’t force yourself forever.  

However you can discipline yourself.  You, the conscious willing part, can take on doing all the work, and create a new person who will be living the life you want.  The new life has to be attractive and it can’t use force.  But you can make sure that you are eating for the right reasons; that you can make the trade of quantity of food for quality; you can plan ahead and cook ahead so that the foods you want to eat are always there when you need them and in the right portions; and you can learn to see hunger as a positive force that enhances your joy in life.  This is a hopeful lifestyle.

The milestones I use are decades.  When I move from the 230s to the 220s, that is a milestone and I will prepare a favorite meal or food as a reward.  Food as a reward??!?!  All the diet experts say don’t do that!  And I say that I have done it and lost 95 pounds.  Questions?

The other milestone is 100 pounds lost.  My original goal when I started was to lose 125 pounds and see how that looked.  So 100 pounds is not the end.  When I weigh 200 pounds (!) I will see if there is more that should be lost.  But I will be pretty happy about weighing only 200 pounds for a while.  That will be a big, big milestone.

But the weight control will continue.  It’s no good losing weight to put it back on again.  But I won’t stop being the Doctor – weight maintenance is a lifetime job.

-The Doctor

20200731 Daily report Goodbye July

…and goodbye to another food week.  My food week ends Friday night and a new one dawns with Saturday morning.  It just worked out that way.  I weigh myself every Saturday morning and that makes it a good place to either end or start the week.  Weighing yourself is essential.  I have been too embarrassed to get on the scale after a bad day before.  But sometimes I wonder why.  It’s important to know how much weight you could gain after a bad day.  The more you know about your body, the better for you.  The weight control lifestyle is a knowledge-based one.

Homemade pizza this time

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – baked beans (100) 2x Hawaiian rolls (80); salami (140) Muenster cheese (70);

  • 470 calories

Lunch – 9oz chili (315); 1oz chips (150);

  • 465 calories 

Dinner – pizza (600); ding dong (160);

  • 760 calories

Snacking – chips and guacamole (150); 

  • 150 calories

Total for the day: 1845 calories (limit 1700)

The dark side

I am fond of saying that every day is a new day.  That means if I have a bad day and overeat, I can’t then eat less tomorrow to balance it out.  I treat today like a new day and stick to the calorie limit for that day.  Unfortunately that has a dark side.  On days when I significantly undereat, I can’t carry that forward to the new day and eat more.  It doesn’t seem to work, in any case.  This week I have been trying to restrict my calorie intake and that’s been going well since I am keeping my mind on work all day.  But there have been a few really lean days in there.  My calorie average for this week is just about 1600 calories per day.   That is a new low for me.  

I also started doing some daily exercise.  Yesterday and today I took long walks and earlier in the week I took some short ones.  I plan to continue the long walks for now.  Maybe that will help me with my problem!  I have been having a slowdown in my rate of weight loss from last year, when I was losing up to 2 pounds per week.  But with the pool closed this summer my exercise has slowed down just like my weight loss.  Maybe there is more of a connection that I liked to admit.  Anyway, I have a good feeling about tomorrow’s weighing.  It’s been a good week, with the calorie reduction and the walking.

The first principle of weight control is to make sure it’s a lifestyle you want to be in.  Promote weight control up your list of values until it is right at the top and push everything else down.  What would you give up for being thinner?  I had to give up my old self and his set of values.  They didn’t suit me any more.  I had to create a new set of values both to become thinner, and also so that my old body wouldn’t come back later.  I’m not going through all this again.

-The Doctor

20200730 Daily report – rain time

Now comes the rain!  Things have been dramatically hot for weeks and now it breaks.  Hopefully the hottest part of summer is over.  It’s done wonders for my appetite though.  I am currently working through the idea that I should only eat when I am physically hungry.  Part of weight control is to reconnect that link to physical hunger.  Many people who are gaining weight have learned to link the good feeling that comes from eating to emotional needs.  That is no good.  Find an appropriate outlet for your emotional needs.  Find the right outlet for your physical needs too.  

Well, I did have 10 ounces of chili for dinner.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 plums (30); mac and cheese (200);

  • 260 calories

Lunch – bratwurst (260); half Ole wrap (30); baked beans (130);

  • 420 calories 

Dinner – 10oz chili (350); 3oz guacamole (135); 1.2oz chips (170)

  • 655 calories

Snacking – none yet (0);

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1335 calories (limit 1700)

Walkies

I walked three miles today, more or less, quite hilly too.  It was a humid day, quite overcast, but I enjoyed it.  It was nice to see what people have been doing with their houses.  There’s so much remodeling going on right now!  

I have been trying to walk more now that I don’t have access to a pool.  Yes, I haven’t had access to the pool since March and haven’t done much about it.  But it’s not too late.  I feel like there is something to the idea that even a little exercise is better than none, so I will walk a little every day.  Maybe it will take me out of my weight loss rut – one pound per week!  That’s not good enough considering the effort I put into controlling my body’s weight.  This also means that after I reach a weight I like, I should keep walking or swimming, if I can.  This Corona virus stuff is getting annoying.  

The first six months of 2020 have been quite a pause in my weight loss, and in blogging.  I’m not sure what suddenly changed for me about a month ago, but I started maintaining my calorie count better and lost some more weight – slowly.  But now I feel enthusiastic about being The Doctor again.  I can’t even blame the pause all on Corona since I stopped losing weight in December and just….paused.    Corona became a thing in March.  

So much of controlling your weight, and staying in charge of your life, happens inside your head.  Don’t neglect it.

-The Doctor

20200729 Daily report with walking

The walking continues!  I worked all day and then had a walk after dinner.  My calorie count continues low, and when I got on the scale this morning (not my usual time, I was just checking something) my weight was a new low.  My guess is that some exercise is better than none.  And this was pretty light exercise.  But it is getting cooler outside and summer food keeps getting better!

Tomato caprese with basil

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bagel (330); 3oz ham (130)

  • 430 calories

Lunch – small chicken piece (30); bratwurst (260); 1/2 Ole wrap (30);

  • 320 calories 

Dinner – tomato caprese with mozzarella cheese (140); tomato (60); 5oz rice (160); stir-fry vegetables (100); 3.1oz ham (140);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – Nothing yet, likely ice cream and chocolate syrup for 240.

  • 00 calories

Total for the day: 1380 calories, probably 240 more or 1620 total. (limit 1700)

100% of it is 99% mental.

I forget the source of that quote, but I think I know what it means.  I’ve been concentrating on my work projects so hard that eating and fulfillment through food has taken a back seat.  I haven’t cooked anything in days!  My recent meals have all been with family.  It’s been nice to get together, we have all been isolated because of the Corona Virus rules.  But anyway, since my brain has been busy I haven’t had the time to worry about what I am eating, or even if I am hungry.  Be careful there – you have to take care of yourself or you will lose control fast.  

But there is a valuable lesson here: your reason for eating should be as closely connected to your physical needs as possible.  If your reasons for eating include feeling good, or at least better, then you should be very suspicious.  That way lies weight gain.  You will never run out of emotional problems that can be indulged with food.  Solving your problem is harder and challenging but very rewarding.  I will be very, very happy when I start achieving more weight milestones and achievements.  I am looking forward to Saturday’s weighing with enthusiasm  for the first time in a while.  

Here’s to success!  Don’t fall into a rut.  

-The Doctor.

20200728 Daily report – dining outside

OK, I have ruined my experiment!  This week I was going to try eating fewer calories to see if it made up for the lack of exercise.  Well, I had a walk yesterday and two today, so combined with me eating fewer calories it’s muddied the waters a lot.  However my weight goes this weekend, there will be a lot of guessing involved.  Well, the direction won’t be much of a surprise.  My calorie count is far down for some reason, and I am going to walk every day.  

And the weather has changed.  Now it is pleasant to sit outside and have dinner.

It is worth getting hungry because you enjoy dinner so much aftewards.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 4.5oz ham (200) 1.5 hot dog buns (120)

  • 380 calories

Lunch – bratwurst (280); 1/4 wrap (35)

  • 315 calories 

Dinner – chicken (100); mac and cheese (330); baked beans (80); tomato (25);

  • 535 calories

Snacking – 110g ice cream (220); chocolate syrup (20)

  • 240 calories

Total for the day: 1470 calories (limit 1700)

Eating less food

Scott Adams had a joke about losing weight by eating less food.  While that does describe most of the ugly reality, you can’t force yourself to eat less food unless you have incredible willpower and can sustain that over a long time.  Even then, it’s using force which is can make you feel quite unhappy.  Yesterday and today I had a total of less than 1500 calories per day which is very light for me and I haven’t felt at all deprived.  I wasn’t even trying, because my mind was all focused on work (crunch time there).  

Anyway, I wasn’t forcing myself to eat less food.  I was letting my brain be busy with other things and trusting my stomach to let me know when it was time to eat.  That’s tricky; I have found regular mealtimes are best in the long run.  If you let yourself get too hungry there might be a price to pay later – I have found myself feeling unhappy and resentful in that situation and then watch out: I have had that part of myself take over and eat too much.  You don’t want that.

But even then, it’s just one bad day or one bad week.  You can still have a lot of days and weeks when things go right.  That’s what I mean when I say every day is a new day.  Don’t bring yesterday’s baggage with you into today.  Let it go.

I don’t have incredible willpower.  But I have developed ways around that.  I don’t eat less food!  No, no.  I just try to enjoy life more.  I just enjoy food more when I am hungry for it.  That’s just logical, right?  I can’t get hungry for my next meal if I am still full from the last one.  And after the first portion, food doesn’t taste as nice.  Try it!  Amazingly you can control your weight that way.

-The Doctor

20200727 Daily report sans picture

Yes, it’s a day without pictures.  My camera didn’t break, I just had other things on my mind.  Interestingly, there have been some good comments from reader CPhil about exercise and diet.  I like to read about that because it introduces me to things I don’t know about the relationship between weight loss and exercise.  

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – sausage (250); potatoes (80);

  • 330 calories

Lunch – Italian sweet sausage link (250); 1/4 wrap (35); pretzels (120);

  • 405 calories 

Dinner – 7oz ham (300); baked beans (130); tomato (25); Brussels sprouts, roasted (25);

  • 480 calories

Snacking – 97g ice cream (200);

  • 200 calories

Total for the day: 1415 calories (limit 1750)

Diet and exercise

It’s an old and familiar pairing.  Looking at my own body, there has been a real fall-off in weight loss since I gave up swimming.  Based on reader advice, lowering my calorie intake may not help much.  Plus, my body misses a bit of exercise.  I liked swimming because it works so many systems at once: arms, legs, back, neck, and breathing discipline too.  But some walking won’t hurt anything and it is starting to get cooler outside, finally.  Morning walking, then.  I can probably do that every day.  I’ve been looking for a bike, too.  

Taking care of your body is a long term business.  Once you are doing it, you realize you should be doing it and should have been doing it before!  

Stay with it!

-The Doctor

20200726 Daily report: still hot

It’s still hot, but it was a nice and cool morning.  Yes, cool!  Summer mornings where I live can be unpleasantly warm and humid during the summer.  Luckily my weight loss since last year at this time has come with some heat resistance.  I’ve talked about that before.  But it’s true.  I don’t sweat unless working hard.  Just sitting in the shade when it’s 92 out is bearable.  

Another thing that comes with hot weather is cookouts.  And eating outside can be nice.  

OK, the beans were cooked inside.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – sausage (200); wrap (140); peppers and onions (60)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 wrap (70)

  • 590 calories 

Dinner – 2x hot dogs (110); 2x buns (120); baked beans (160); potato pieces (40);

  • 660 calories

Snacking – fire-toasted marshmallows (75)

  • 75 calories

Total for the day: 1725 calories (limit 1750)

Yes, it's a new limit

I’m trying something new this week.  Since my weight loss has slowed down and there has been a reduction in my physical exercise regimen, I will trying lowering my daily calorie limit to 1750 for a week to make up for it.  That will be 700 calories less than usual.  My exercise regimen was actually about -1200 calories per week, but we will see what effect this has.  I would like to have a bit more exercise, but thanks to Corona virus closures I can’t go to the pool and it’s pretty hot outside for much else.  The mornings may get cooler and I can do more walking, I guess.  Online the calculator says someone like me would have to walk for 1 hour to burn 380 calories.  I do miss swimming and hope it comes back.  

There now, I have something to look forward to on Saturday.  Will I continue losing just one pound or will it be a bit more?  Always start the week off with a pull – something pulling you ahead, something to look forward to.  It’s part of setting up your life so that you are rewarded and enjoy it.  That makes it worthwhile.

-The Doctor

 

20200725 Saturday weighing or is it waiting

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

The lowest number yet

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

Pounds!!
0

Crawling towards a minor victory

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

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

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

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

-The Doctor

20200724 Daily report and wrap-up

No more week!  My food journal is full and tomorrow I turn to a fresh page.  Every day is a new day, but every week is a new week also.  The formula is well known: if you are in deficit 3500 calories for the week, you will lose a pound of weight. How many people really know what their zero point really is?  Do you know how many calories a week your body needs?  There is a range and it changes all the time.  I used to be able to predict it well: 1850 calories per day, for a week, and I would lose about 2 pounds – maybe a little less.  1850 x 7 = 13,000 calories a week, which means I was in deficit 7000 calories, maybe a little less.  

But it’s not so simple, is it?  Do we really believe that if I ate 13,000 + 7000 calories per week or 2860 per day, I would not gain any weight?  I am not sure I believe that.  The other possibility is that my calorie counting is too strict, which I am also not sure I believe.  Actually it’s also possible that when I overeat I am not counting accurately – but rather under counting.  That one sounds most likely.  

Sausage, noodles, cheese, and tomato bake

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 10 ounces ziti, sausage, cheese, and tomato bake (390)

  • 390 calories

Lunch – 10z Beef and broccoli (315); 1.5oz rice (50)

  • 365 calories 

Dinner – chicken wrap (90); 7 ounces ziti, sausage, cheese, and tomato bake (280);

  • 370 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); banana (50); pretzels (300); 100g ice cream (250);

  • 680 calories

Total for the day: 1805 calories (limit 1850)

Not any more?

The last several weeks, though my weight has been going in the right direction, it has been slower than I expected.  1 pound per week.  Now, compared to the time I was losing 2 pounds per week, there are some changes.  I am not as active with the Corona virus business shutting everything down.  I haven’t been to exercise or even out and about as much as usual.  My swimming burned about 1200 calories per week, and also people say it raises your metabolism so you are burning more calories at rest.  Is that true?  Well, it’s true that I haven’t been swimming since March.  Or I could be losing less weight due to old age.  As they say, he who is not handsome at 30, rich at 40, or wise at 50 will never be handsome, rich, or wise.  In a way, I am trying to be handsome well after 30, when I should be going for wisdom instead.  

Well, there is no rule against being handsome AND wise.  One of my insights was that I should create the kind of life I want to live, and that does involve weight control.  Is that wise?  Well, it’s what I want.  If it is coming more slowly than before, it is still coming.  If the restrictions are lifted and I can swim again regularly, it will be a good chance to see if my weight loss jumps back to 2 pounds per week.  

Have a good end to your week.  Tomorrow is a new one.  You can make it a good one.

-The Doctor

20200723 Daily report: three squares

As in the three square meals I had today.  I have a concept of “food security” which has been working for me.  I find that if I wait to eat until I am hungry, it makes it more stressful to have to decide what I am going to eat, or to discover I don’t have anything handy that I do want.  Having lunch meat or other shortcut foods around doesn’t seem to work all the time.  Maybe they get boring!  So I make sure I have appealing foods, cooked, portioned, and ready to heat and eat.  It’s like the Doctor’s MREs.  Today I had two such meals and one fresh-cooked dinner, one of my all time favorites: Beef and Broccol stir fry.

Best homemade

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 10oz slow cooker sausage, ziti, and cheese bake (390);

  • 390 calories

Lunch – 1/2 pounds of pork burger (540); Lavash wrap (60);

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 5oz cooked rice (160); beef and broccoli stir-fry (315); 

  • 375 calories

Snacking – 110g ice cream (300); pretzels (50);

  • 350 calories

Total for the day: 1815 calories (limit 1850)

Future imperfect

When I was little, homemade beef and broccoli stir-fry was part of my favorite dinner and I asked for it every year on my birthday.  Of course back then I didn’t think about portions, but I did learn that dinner is best when you are hungry.  I remember my parents introducing the concept of measuring food on a diet they tried sometime back then.  I don’t remember what it was called, but I do recall they had a few weeks with no meat and then one day was “X ounces of meat day” and they could weigh out a certain amount.  I didn’t think about these things when I was developing my own weight control system, but they are in my mind somewhere.  

I tried reading about mindset as it relates to weight control and dieting.  Try a search on mindset and weight loss yourself and see how many results you find.  It’s a lot.  But having read about 10 pages there is a lot of bad advice out there.  Almost all of them talk about avoiding your scale as a technique.  How will you know where you are and in what direction you are going without that?  Others repeat the bad advice that you shouldn’t use food as a reward.  Of course you should definitely use food as a reward!  I’ve lost 90 pounds rewarding myself every meal of every day!  

It’s much more sensible to not use food for emotional reasons and be clear about why you are eating.  Use food as a physical reward and a sensual reward, not as medication to help your feelings.  Every person is a bottomless pit of emotional need (ok maybe that is overstating a bit) and you will eat yourself out of control in no time that way.  And the phrasing!  Don’t use food as a reward means what, use it for punishment?  That’s where my mind goes.  I guess there are people who see food only as fuel and neither reward nor punishment, but I am not sure that’s an ideal many people would seek after.  

Much better to create a world you would like to live in and then live there.  If that world involves meeting your physical need for food with carefully portioned meals that are your favorites….how many people would say no?  There is some work involved since you have to actually prepare and plan ahead a bit to make that happen.  But it is totally worth it.  

-The Doctor

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