Stay on a diet

20191112 Daily report

Day by day, the job is the same: regulate your food intake and weigh yourself regularly.  Those two elements are required for a weight control lifestyle.  If you know what and how much you are eating, you can control intake.  If you weigh your body regularly, you have data showing how your body changes over time in response to changes in your intake.  

We are not simply machines that we can program to do what we are told.  I can’t even get myself to do what I want!  So you have to look deeper into yourself to find a way to keep up regulating your food intake and weighing yourself all the time.  I have been doing it since January 1, 2019 and I have 315 entries in my daily food journal since that time.  I have never been able to do that before, in my life.  So what changed?

I decided to aim high.  I don’t have the willpower to make myself do things I don’t want for more than a few weeks.  But I can do things I want to do – that hardly takes any willpower.  So I had to make weight control into a lifestyle that was worth living.  But how to find that kind of meaning? 

One of my more inspired creations

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – 6x Costco meatballs (280); whole wheat flatbread (110); hummus (100), red cabbage kraut and horseradish (10)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 8oz homemade sausage chili (340); toasted bread (130)

  • 470 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2oz ham and 2 pieces swiss cheese (200); 11 chocolate almonds (160); baklava (100);

  • 540 calories

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

McNuggets featurette!

Continuing from above, part of the problem I found in myself was my goals were shallow and limiting.  They fueled weight gain.  In short, my goal was to feel full and that is what made me feel comfortable and secure.  To find more meaning in my life, I decided that my goal should be replaced.  The goal now has several facets, but on one level my goal when eating is weight control.  My goal is also maximum enjoyment.  That means I build up anticipation for foods I strongly want to eat, and eat measured amounts when I am physically hungry for them (but not too hungry).  My goal when eating is also to not ruin the next meal.  Every meal has to be rewarding.  So I can’t eat too much at any one meal.  I find if I’m not slightly hungry for the next meal, food is not as satisfying.  

Honestly, food tastes best when you have an appetite for it – when you are truly and physically slightly hungry.  If you let yourself get too hungry, which is a different story, you won’t enjoy food either.  You also won’t be in control of yourself after that.  Part of your subconscious takes over, and it wants to eat and eat.  

Another facet of my eating goals is to reward myself constantly.  Every meal has to be planned, anticipated, savored, and worthwhile.  Else why go to all the trouble?  I find my body is willing to trade unlimited calories (and the resulting weight gain) for food experience.  That is, just the foods I want, delivered right at the moment when I would appreciate them most.  That is very satisfying.  

From the Instapundit I found another weight loss story that was very interesting.  This lady found a lifestyle that worked for her, though I think the reporter got it a bit wrong.  The first line is the problem.  This is the reporter’s summary:

Dieting doesn’t mean giving up your favorite food (but it does mean having a lot less of it).

Isn’t that backwards?  Leaving aside my problems with the concept of dieting, weight control is all about identifying your favorite foods and using them to reward yourself.  It’s definitely not giving up your favorite foods.  Who would want to live for a long time while giving up your favorite foods, or even regarding them as a problem?  But that is the reporter’s mindset.  The subject of the article has it figured out!

”I could eat a 20-piece chicken McNugget box and large fries by myself,” she explained to the news outlet. It was basically gluttony, just eating and eating…Food was my coping mechanism, so whenever I got upset about something I would just eat.”

This is what many have called emotional eating.  When I talk about being physically hungry, it is very different from eating for the goal of comfort and fullness.  Anyway, this lady has figured out a lot about herself.  The article doesn’t go into these details, but it is clear that she counts calories now.  She lost 100 pounds and plans to lose even a bit more.  The news hook is that she still eats at McDonalds, which is so amazing to the reporter.  Or at least, the reporter thinks that’s what people will find amusing.  It’s terrible to think that for most people, controlling your weight is all about deprivation and suffering.  Is the subject of the article suffering while she is losing weight?

 “I still find pleasure in my food, it’s my main thing.”

I have a good feeling about her long term success.  All the best to her!

-The Doctor

20191111 Daily report

In its essentials, a weight control lifestyle is about living in such a way that every food decision you make is interpreted through a single viewpoint: how will eating this affect my weight?  It does take dedication to do this.  That is the price of weight control – vigilance, attention, and time are required to make the weight control lifestyle attractive and interesting enough to be worth living.  

It is not all price.  Nobody would want to live that way.  That’s where ordinary diets fail.  To lose 120 pounds, like I am trying to do, a willpower-based diet of forcing yourself to eat less would never work.  If by a miracle of character you pulled it off, how would you live afterwards?  You might gain it all back the moment you stopped paying attention.  In a way, the old you, who was gaining weight, takes back over.  That’s why you need a new life and why it has to be a new you that is living it.  This is for life, or the long term, anyway.  

Hopping John is usually for the new year, but a new you will do.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1C steel cut oats prepared in milk  (250); scant 1tsp brown sugar (20);

  • 270 calories

Lunch – Costco pepperoni pizza (710);

  • 710 calories 

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

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels, hummus and cheese (250)

  • 330 calories

Total for the day: 1820 calories (limit 1800)

An attractive lifestyle is a draw

If you are on an attractive lifestyle, you will constantly trying to get it to work, and to stay on it.  It doesn’t directly take willpower to do that, because it is what you want.  Part of the attraction for me is that each meal is maximally rewarding, in my ideal life.  I make the food myself (mostly).  I have a good idea of what foods I would find rewarding.  Another part of the reward is the anticipation.  There is an emotional buildup when you plan for a meal, buy and cook the food, and prepare yourself to eat – that is, work up an appetite.  It’s very fulfilling and rewarding to eat a food you really want, prepared to perfection, and just when you are getting hungry for it.  This sequence allows you to control you intake, too, because you have to be careful not to eat too much.  That reduces the enjoyment of the meal, and prevents you from getting properly hungry to enjoy the next meal.  

Other people have different ways of controlling their food intake.  They might eat the same thing all the time, or prepare all their food on the weekends, portion it then and eat it later.  But the way I am describing is very fulfilling.  Some people don’t need that.  There are some thin people who don’t have a strong interest in food and don’t care what they eat, so long as they stay thin.  But what I value right now is maximum enjoyment.  I can get enthusiastic about that.  

And isn’t that the true secret of finding a fulfilling lifestyle?  Some people are fulfilled by keeping fit, or at least thin.  Others are fulfilled by enjoying food.  I have found that you can have both fulfillment/food enjoyment and weight control, but that weight control has to be first in your mind and in your life.  It’s not possible to do it the other way around. 

Where do you find your enthusiasm?  If you are significantly overweight (50+ pounds) and gaining weight, you are probably not as enthused by getting thin as you might hope.  It’s time to ask yourself: what do you get out of eating?  I was getting pleasure and comfort from eating, which turned out to be shallow and non worthwhile goals once I thought about them in those terms.  But I get very enthusiastic and excited about preparing food and eating foods I find enjoyable.  My goal of eating changed.  The goal before was being full and enjoying eating (quantity).  Now I pursue maximum (quality) enjoyment and fulfillment, which is better and more responsible.  It allows me to control my weight, too.  

What is your goal of eating?  A thin person’s goal is to stay thin.  I appreciate that goal, but I don’t find it very meaningful by itself.  

-The Doctor

20191110 Daily report

Thank goodness for the ability to live life on two levels.  One level is day by day.  The other level is long term: week by week, month by month, year by year.  I have been living a weight control lifestyle for nearly 11 months, and I have been totally committed and dedicated to he goal.  It shows, but there has been a price (which I have been willing to pay).  The price is that everything else comes second.  

Now I am trying to find a new balance, and it is demanding.  Work, family, career, hobbies, and other things have all been neglected correspondingly and need energy and attention.  Luckily, I have 11 months of knowledge and data to help me do this.  What have I learned?  First, I am willing to eat less food if every meal is a reward.

My idea of a good time: bratwurst

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – steel cut oats (100)

  • 100 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (55); onions and mustard

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 10oz Hopping John (240); 5oz cooked rice (160)

  • 400 calories

Snacking – Baklava and cookies (300); tea with half and half (80); more cookies and candy (500); chocolate almonds (160); cheese and pretzels (300);

  • 1340 calories

Total for the day: 2440 calories (limit 1800)

Time of change

For some reason I don’t yet understand, the last two days I have been more out-of-control than usual.  My mealtimes have been all over the place, I have not paid attention to the cycle of anticipation and reward, and my calorie counts and eating habits over the last two days have been way off.  Thank goodness that tomorrow is a new day.  I don’t try to eat fewer calories tomorrow to make up for eating more today.  That has never worked.  But tomorrow can be a new day where I get it right.  And next week can likewise be a good week. 

Tonight, I need some rest.  Tomorrow, after all, is a new day.  

-The Doctor

20191109 Saturday weigh-in

Every week, on Saturday, I weigh myself.  This act is so important to weight control that I get my whole family to participate.  If you don’t know how much you weigh, and in what direction you are going, it will be hard to lose weight over a long term period, or control your weight for an even longer period (the rest of your life).  It is also important to learn how your eating affects your weight in subtler ways.  For example: how many calories per day, and per week, can you have and lose weight?  Stay the same?  Gain?  That kind of self knowledge comes from weighing.  What else can cause weight gain?  Illness?  A large meal the night before you weigh yourself?  

On another level, counting calories and keeping a food journal only goes so far.  The proof is your body’s weight.

No picture day; clothes shopping

Sadly, the Doctor did not lose weight this week.  In fact, my weight went up to 239.4, which is very unlikely.  I hope I’m not getting sick.  I did have a very large Indian buffet lunch Thursday, and I have been hitting the candy and cookies hard due to the cold weather (or that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway).  

But looking through my food journal I can see half a dozen periods in the last year where I didn’t lose, or else gained weight.  It’s almost always illness related, though not always.  Since the weight control lifestyle is attractive and I find it fulfilling, it’s easy to keep going even in the face of a week of gaining weight.  Every other time it’s happened, I have always started losing again 1-2 weeks later.  It’s not too disheartaning either, as the long term trend is good.

Weighing yourself is important, but it is only one way to look at your body’s condition.  No matter how much weight you have lost, going clothes shopping is another great way to measure your body and see where you really are.  The sizes don’t lie (much), there are mirrors everywhere, and you have to be really realistic about what fits you and how.  The clothes and mirrors don’t care that you have lost 80 pounds.  They only can hang on your body now.  

In dress shirts, I was able to fit  nicely into a 17″ neck, but the sleeve length was crucial.  I was up to 18 or 18 1/2 neck size when I weighed over 300 pounds.  In winter coats, 2XL was a better fit than anything else, but slightly large on me now.  I could fit into XL, but it was slightly tight.   My old winter coat was 3XL.  And in suit and sport coats, I was between 46L and 48L (closer to 46).  I know that my waist is taking size 44 pants comfortably.  Size 46 pants are rather big on me now. 

The reality, though, is that I am roughly 40 pounds heavier than I should be (looking at the weight charts online).  The size and fit of the clothes on my body reflect that.  I will know that I have reached a good weight, I think, when I am in size 38 pants and they are comfortable.  I’m not sure how coat size and shirt size will change.  I am between sizes right now.  

I will try to make sure next week is a good week.  The better I live, the better I like controlling my weight.

-The Doctor

20191108 Daily report

Thank goodness that the weight control lifestyle is a long game.  If I was focused on short term ups and downs I’m not sure I could lose weight successsfully.  I have had weeks where I controlled eating well but didn’t lose much weight, and a few times I have had bad days but still lost weight overall.  Of course, I have learned a lot about myself in the last 10 1/2 months, which explains some of the ups and downs.

It’s a long game because if you have a bad day, or a bad week, you can try again next time.  Eventually, enough goes right so that you lose weight.  Keeping off the weight you have lost is actually easier in some respects.  Losing weight is a careful balance and it is somewhat difficult and stressful to be in calorie deficit.  It’s also a long game because it’s self reinforcing.  The weight control lifestly is very rewarding and living it is attractive.  

Last, I have learned that most of the time, having a bad diet day or week is entirely my fault.  That kind of self knowledge comes slowly and learning to apply it even slower.  It’s a long game too.  But the reward is a better life, plus you control your weight better, too.  Part of a better life is learning what foods are your favorites that you can look forward to.

Prepare to assemble the BLT!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wrap (220); chicken sandwich wrap (180)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – chicken fajitas (500); baklava (200);

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – meatball, hummus, red cabbage slaw, and pickle wraps (500)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate almonds (160)

  • 240 calories

Total for the day: 1840 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

The season has found his overcoat of wind, cold, and rain

This week it was really cold for the first time.  I know what that means!  Because I keep careful records and a food journal, I know that when it is cold outside I feel a need for food.  Maybe I’m actually hungry, maybe it’s comforting, maybe there is some primal move towards making sure you have enough food when the weather really starts to get cold for the winter.   I’m not going to question it.  I just know that it is coming.

Today, I had breakfast and lunch both in the morning, and I was very, very hungry for lunch – before 11AM.  I was also hungry for dinner, but that doesn’t mean much – it was dinner time, and I exercised today.  

I have said before how surprising it is that I don’t feel a lot of change in my body, considering I have lost a fair amount of weight.  My exercise of choice is swimming, and it’s not like losing 87 pounds has increased my lap times.  The difference is more subtle.  I also haven’t noticed that it is much easier to walk, stand up, or go up stairs.  I have noticed that I am a bit smaller when it comes to squeezing through small spaces.  I can fit into smaller clothes, and am within range of buying clothes for average-weight people.  As for that, I am finding my size 46 pants too big, and size 44 just right.  I bought a new swimsuit, and it was 2X, down from 3X size.  

So what I have I noticed in terms of physical change?  It used to be that swimming was harder on me.  When I was done, my wrists would be sore, or my legs would get injured more easily when I pushed away from the wall of the pool.  Now, I don’t get that.  I can do my swimming and not feel any aches.  Also, I feel more bouncy when I walk.  But I think your body adjusts quickly to change.  Maybe the effects will get more drastic and noticeable when I am merely 20 pounds overweight, instead of 40.  And won’t that be a strange feeling?

Recently, other people have started noticing that I have lost weight.  About 20 people have mentioned it to me directly in the last few weeks.  And every one of them has also asked what I did differently, and almost all of them have a theory!  One neighbor just asked me today if I had increased my exercising schedule to lose weight.  I love people’s theories of weight loss, it tells you all about how they approach the problem themselves.  They are looking for common ground with you.

At a lunch for my work group this week, people asked and then the group expressed a lot of support.  They are nice people, and most of them are average weight to thin.  When they asked what I was doing differently, I started off talking about my lack of willpower.  That method of explaining weight control does seem to flow well.  Based on that, they seemed to follow how I constructed an attractive lifestyle based on rewarding myself for eating controlled amounts.  If you are doing that, willpower is not such an expense as on a regular diet.  Of course, that lunch was at the Indian buffet and I didn’t show a lot of restraint after I talked about eating less!  I have decided, though, that the Indian buffet lunch was my reward for getting under 240 pounds.  I like rewards.   The next one is 230 pounds.  After that is quite a special one – 225 pounds.  When I weight less than 225 pounds, I will have lost 100 pounds.

First things first.

-The Doctor

20191107 Daily report

Every day, the weight control lifestyle requires that I keep a food journal.  Doing it with willpower won’t work, I don’t have that kind of willpower.  But I can make staying on a weight control lifestyle attractive and fulfilling and interesting and worthwhile.  Then I am looking for reasons to make it work.  Setbacks are not calamities but speed bumps.  I don’t get resentful or unhappy – instead, I am the most engaged I have ever been.  My life has new evels of meaning from the way all the parts of myself come together around the goal of living a better life.  

One way to make the lifestyle attractive is to make sure every meal is rewarding.  Once a milestone is achieved, I also reward myself with a special meal – all within the calorie budget.

Indian buffet is a special meal for me! Hard to count calories, though.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps (430)

  • 430 calories

Lunch – Minerva Indian buffet (1200);

  • 1200 calories 

Dinner – crackers (200); chocolate (150)

  • 350 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 2060 calories (limit 1800)

Balance is getting tricky

A person can only pay attention to so many things.  Juggling other obligations, family, work, household, etc., can take your attention away.  I have kept weight control at the front of my mind for 11 months and I have to learn to find some balance.  

On the good side, I have finally gotten my reward for bringing my weight below 240 pounds!  Indian food, and Indian buffet food, are some of my favorites.  My Indian friends say it’s all kind of tarted up with food coloring in those buffets, but I don’t mind.  It tastes good AND looks good.  I feel rewarded.

On the bad side, given my calorie record this week, I won’t have much to celebrate come Saturday.  That’s all right – next week is a chance to do better.  It’s all part of finding balance.  I have been paying more attention to work, and it’s difficult to also prioritize weight control.  But it’s not impossible. It will just take some planning and better preparation on the weekends.

Tonight I have to rush off to do other things.  Remember to think about balance in your life.  

-The Doctor

20191106 Daily report

The job seems simple – lose weight by eating less food!

Amazingly, that doesn’t work with actual people.  Part of the problem is the word “less”.  Do you know how much you are eating?  How many calories did you have today, yesterday, last week, last month?  How many calories does you body need to gain weight?  Lose weight?  Stay the same?

If you can’t answer those questions, then you can’t eat “less” food.  You can only guess, and measure by how deprived you feel.  Keep a food journal instead, and write in it everything you eat, with a calorie count.  After a while you will know exactly how much you are eating and when you eat it.

Then you can talk about less.

Big Greek Cafe Famous $5 Gyro Wednesday!!!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2T peanut butter (190); 2T jelly (100); toasted bread (150);

  • 440 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Gyros sandwich (600); 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 10oz sausage chili (420); chicken (150); noodles (100);

  • 670 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (50); baklava (200); Fun Size Snickers (80); granola bar (100)

  • 510 calories

Total for the day: 2220 calories (limit 1800)

Now I've done it!

I didn’t do a good job today of focusing on weight control and putting those needs first.  Instead, I was so distracted with my day job that I first delayed breakfast (and was too hungry in consequence) and then lunch.  Now that I think about it, I was pretty late to have dinner, too.  After that kind of treatment, it’s no wonder that my body took over.  After dinner, I found I was still emotionally hungry and craving more food.  I call it food insecurity – after letting myself get too hungry three times in one day, it’s no surprise that I am getting a reaction.  

The temptation is to blame primal drives, or complain that dieting is hard, or Big Sugar or whatever.  But the truth is I did this to myself and I have no-one to blame but myself.  Based on all my past experience and my keeping a food journal, I know what I did to cause this and I have to take the consequences.

When I fail myself like this and then get emotionally hungry (not physically hungry) I don’t try to use force to suppress the urge.  That would make things even worse.  Look at it from the point of view of my body or subconscious.  It suffered all day because I didn’t feed it on time, then when it justifiably complained, I used punishment (denying the urge and trying to not eat).  Would that help?  I don’t think so.  So I had various foods and now I feel too full.  I accept the consequences of how I behaved and I will have to do better tomorrow.  Tomorrow is a new day.  

There has to be a balance in your life.  Frankly, weight control has to be pretty high up in your list of values for it to work consistently.  It takes a high precedence but it’s not difficult.  Just make sure you eat on time and don’t stress your body out.  Maybe I will start setting an alarm – Time to Eat!

Pay attention and you can control your weight.  Don’t ask too much of yourself and don’t punish your body for failure.  It will work out.  Put the blame where it should be.  

-The Doctor

20191105 Daily report

Staying on a diet is really hard.  I never could do it for long.  It was too hard to work against my needs and desires all the time.  That kind of thing takes a lot of willpower.  I have never had that.

So I don’t do that any more.  Instead, I figure out how to get things I really want that can be part of a weight control lifestyle.  An example is swimming.  I picked an exercise I really like.  I like swimming so much, that I happily go twice a week and look forward to it every time.  I like swimming so much that I can use it as a reward.  It’s something to look forward to, and enjoying your lifestyle is a way to keep it going without needing all your willpower.  

A new treat!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x muffins (90); toast (130); and 2x Muenster cheese (70);

  • 440 calories

Lunch – Aldi pizza half (570); 

  • 570 calories 

Dinner – Fajitas: flour tortilla shell (140); marinated chicken breast (100); peppers and onions in cream sauce (80); muffin (90);

  • 410 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 8x Baklava cookies (260)

  • 380 calories

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

DIET and EXERCISE

The two most dreaded parts of losing weight must be diet and exercise.  Who wants to do those?  If you don’t want to do it, it takes limitless willpower to make yourself – you have to force yourself to do what you’d rather not and eat what you don’t like.

Except for swimming.  I like to do that.  I like riding my bike, but I haven’t done that in a few years.  I am not a “ride 50 miles” kind of bike rider, anyway.  15 miles is plenty for me.  So I guess I could exercise.  (See what I’m getting at?  Don’t start by running marathons or going to aerobics classes, or even swimming, if you dislike them.  Pick one you have always liked.)

DIETING is the same.  It’s a terrible word that people hate.  Why do people hate to diet?  Because you have to force deprivation on yourself. You feel deprived.  Why?  Because you are withholding what you want from yourself.  Something it would be easy to give yourself.  Do that for a while and you will be searching for reasons to break the diet and give up.  So don’t do that.

Aim higher.  What are your reasons for eating?  How does it make you feel?  Feeling full was always my goal before.  It’s not a high goal, though.  When I thought about it, I didn’t feel proud of that goal.  And I could see how fulfilling that goal was resulting in overeating and weight gain.  Eating until full at every meal?  That couldn’t be right.  The amount of comfort and satisfaction you get from that diminishes if it’s your only aim.

What is a higher aim?  I talked about fulfilling your goal, and that is part of the answer.  Change your goals.  Change your mind.  Choose goals that you can be proud of.  Make them goals that are harder to reach than being full.  Then meeting those higher and more challenging goals will be more difficult, but much more satisfying and meaningful to you.  

LAST, I bought baklava today to try.  It’s ok, but baked desserts bought in the store are never, ever as good as you can make yourself.  I may have to make my own baklava in the future, though I never have before.  On the other hand, I do like the tea cookies from Costco.  But after I eat them all (and it’s Costco and that will take some doing) I will be cured for a long while.  I will make my own desserts and enjoy them.  

If fulfillment is your aim, what would fulfill you completely? 

-The Doctor

20191104 Daily report

When I started thinking about losing weight in late 2018, I knew one thing very quickly.  Whatever I was going to do, it had to be long term.  Not only did I have a lot of weight to lose, which would take a long time.  But also, having lost any significant amount of weight, I didn’t want to gain it back afterwards.  That’s why I threw out the word “diet” immediately.  In long-term thinking, dieting is a temporary condition where you eat things you don’t want, and never enough to feel satisfied.  You are going against your own desires and your own goals for eating and happiness, as far as those go together.  

Weight control was the way I came up with.  Mrs. Doctor of Things says Weight Management would be less intimidating for people than weight control.  But I think that it is too bland, and also feels like you are giving up.  You manage things you can’t change, after all.  Control sounds more like you should be in charge, which I think you have to be.

So many kinds of chocolate!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Spanish tortilla (333); 1/2 flatbread wrap (55); mayo (30)

  • 415 calories

Lunch – 7 ounces rice (220); 8oz chicken curry (240);

  • 460 calories 

Dinner – 2x pancakes (65); sandwich bread (130); 2oz ham (90) 1.5 slices swiss cheese (75); pickles mustard and horseradish (20); 

  • 450 calories

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

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1615 calories (limit 1800)

Thinking for the long term

That is how I came up with weight control as a system.  It is accurate and puts the responsibility right on you, where it belongs.  Dieting, though, is a problem for the long term.  Are you going to live on your diet forever?  

Every successful diet is about restricting the amount of food you eat.  Low carbohydrate diets, for example.  In that system, you are actually giving up a lot of calories and you will lose weight that way.  Think about it – no chips, no fries, no rice, pasta, pizza, bagels, toast, cereal, cake, cookies, or sugar.  No pancakes.  Eat all the peanut butter you want, but you have to eat it with a spoon (or a celery stick).  Eat all the hamburger you want, but no bun.  All the cheese you like, without crackers.  And so on. 

There are two ways you are cutting calories in the low carb system.  The first is, you are giving up a lot of foods, which have calories.  The second way is balance, or the lack of it.  You get tired of eating peanut butter by the spoonful.  There are only so many chicken breasts you can eat without potatoes.  You can never have a sandwich, unless you try diet bread, which is not as nice.  Plain meatballs without pasta or bread are tiring.  

It’s the same for other diets.  Paleo – you are giving up a lot of oils as well as processed carbohydrates.  Keto – basically low carb.  Bariatric surgery – you are putting a physical limit on your stomach to make yourself feel full faster, so you (in theory) eat fewer calories.  But bariatric surgery comes with a lot of restrictions you have to live with forever.  And so forth.  

There have been some attempts to get around this problem (Diet vs. lifestyle).  Think of The Mediterranean Diet, for example.  But in general, dieting is for losing weight, not for living.  I don’t think many people would be interested in keto, low carb, or atkins….forever.  Weight control, on the other hand, means you can eat anything you want as long as it fits into the calorie goal.  You have to pay attention and plan ahead.  It has a price in time and energy you will spend.  But it is very nice and you can live this way forever – I have been doing it for 10 months now and I have no desire to stop.  This is just how I will live now.

Tying this to yesterday’s thoughts, a long term diet is possible if it is so attractive and worthwhile that it doesn’t require constant force and isn’t a constant drain on your will power.  There is some discipline involved in recording all the foods and calories in a food journal, but the return on the effort is very worthwhile.  Will is involved, but the aim is high – a better and more satisfying life, that gives me a tremendous sense of meaning.  The meaning and purpose in this lifestyle come from the feeling that all the parts of my being – body, mind and soul – are coming together for this.  I have successfully negotiated with myself and gotten the cooperation of all my competing parts and their different wants and needs.  And I lose weight, too.

Who needs to force themself to do that?

-The Doctor

20191103 Daily report

Someone asked me yesterday (Saturday) how I was losing weight.  We had met before, but I weighed 87 more pounds then.  Really, he asked what I was doing differently.  Like other people who ask me about my weight loss, he had a theory: was I cutting carbohydrates out of my diet?  

I have been thinking about what to tell people when they ask me about weight loss.  I decided to tell him about paying attention.  The biggest change I made in my mind was to make weight control one of the top values I live by.  I don’t eat a thing without considering what effect it will have on the day’s calorie count.  So I told him about that.  When it is at the top of your mind, and you see everything through that interpretation, the act of paying attention by, for example, recording all the calories you eat, results in controlling your food intake.  Even if all you are doing is recording your calorie count, you are in fact controlling it just by knowing what it is.

It doesn’t mean you have to give up any food in particular.  

My precious!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – one-skillet chicken breast (210) and 6 oz. rice and peas (140)

  • 350 calories

Lunch – 5 oz. white rice (160); 12oz chicken curry with cauliflower (340)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – pretzels and hummus (200); chicken fajitas with peppers and onions cooked in cream (150) in a flour tortilla (150)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 5x Kirkland tea cookies (210); 2x Reese’s peanut butter cups (160) graham crackers (100)

  • 550calories

Total for the day: 1900 calories (limit 1800)

A rich vein: willpower

I have been searching for what to tell people when they ask me about how I lost weight.  I have tried telling people about keeping a food journal.  That has not been well received.   I have tried telling people about rewarding myself with foods I like, but I think that can sound flippant.  Talking about paying attention seemed to work well as a narrative, though.  

Yesterday, when I was asked, I started out talking about promoting weight control, as something I value, to the top value I live by, and seeing everything I eat through the question: how will this affect weight control?  When you come to it, all diets are about restricting calories, in various ways and disguises.  Talking about what I value led easily to a calorie count.  At that point, he asked if I was using willpower to do this.  So this approach may not be the best after all.

I am now thinking about willpower.  If I start out answering this question by admitting I don’t have the willpower to force myself to eat less, then I can talk about persuading myself to eat less, by adopting a lifestyle I like, and finding the deeper meaning that I have been telling you about on this blog.  Also, I think it is disarming to say your willpower is inadequate.  Many people feel that way about themselves, too.  Hearing you say (having dramatically lost 87 pounds) that willpower wasn’t a big factor will intrigue people.  

Only then can you bring up the idea of paying attention, values, rewards, and persuasion.  So much of my new lifestyle is finding ways to please myself that aren’t about having a full stomach.  There are a lot of substitutes for that.  Finding the ones you like is self-knowledge you can’t do without.

Should I call it the Persuasion Diet?

-The Doctor

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