Stay on a diet

20191023 Daily report

Once you have decided to think thin, what would that mean?  What would it look like?  

For one thing, it means you put controlling your body’s weight first, before all other food considerations.  An example: I spent time with family recently.  A polite and gracious family person, who puts his family first (like I was raised to do) would eat dinner with everyone else, and maybe try to be guesstimate how much food they were eating.  Did I do that?  No.  I made a pain of myself insisting on weighing and measuring food, and annoyed everybody counting out calories publicly.  Also, I didn’t adjust my mealtimes.  If dinner was 8PM, I still ate at 5.30PM.  If everybody was sitting and talking about something serious and it got to lunchtime, I got up and left to have lunch.   Thinking thin is a value.  That’s how you value being thin – putting it first in your life.  But there are compensations. 

My breakfast this morning - BLT wraps

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps: 4 slices of oven-fried thick cut Kirkland bacon (280); one whole wheat wrap (110) cut in two pieces; lettuce (0); and tomato (30); horseradish sauce (10)

  • 430 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Famous $5 Gyro Wednesday!!!!!! (600); 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – roasted pork loin (350); 1.5 whole wheat wraps (160); homemade cucumber dill salad (50)

  • 565 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 4x Kirkland tea cookies (170)

  • 250 calories

Total for the day: 1845 calories (limit 1800)

What to put first in your life

In your food life, you can choose the path of weight control and put in first in your life.  Done properly, it is a lot of work, but is very rewarding.  When done improperly, taking the quick and easy way, it doesn’t work as well and it is not as rewarding.  Since it is not rewarding, why are you doing it?  Eventually, gradually, you will go back to your old life, old values, old rewards and incentives.  The weight you have lost will come back on again.

Having put weight control first in your life, and committed to doing it properly, you should keep a food journal and weigh yourself every week.  With that established, other things are less of a priority, but there is still a lot of room for your personal preferences and subordinate priorities.  Recall my parable of the woman who ate raw veggies and hummus all day so she could enjoy a big dish of ice cream every night.

“Do what you want, and pay for it.”  -Terry Pratchett, and many other people over the years.

Learn about yourself.  Maybe three meals per day, properly spaced out, will help you control your weight.  Maybe six meals will.  Do you need bacon, ice cream, a 3PM tea break?  Learn about yourself.  Pay attention when you are hungry, when you are breaking your diet.  Part of you is trying hard to tell the conscious ego part what is needed.  When do you need protein?  When will pretzels satisfy you?  

All this is different if you have serious health considerations, like diabetes or other metabolic issues you are concerned about.  In those cases, your health should be the number one priority, and everything you eat should be checked with the question, “how will this impact my health?”  Weight is part of that, but be realistic: health first when needed.  

Use your self knowledge to build a lifestyle that you enjoy and which uplifts you.  It will be difficult and it will take months.  Every time I break my diet, I go through and assign blame.  I assign 100% of the blame to my ego, stubbornness, pride, and my tendency to ignore evidence and go with my lazy assumptions.  Yes, it’s my favorite trio: greed, laziness, and stupidity.  I could write whole essays about that.  But I will leave it for another time.  My point is, it’s not my body’s fault that I have a bad diet day.  Every time so far, the blame has gone to me being stubborn (ignoring hunger signs), lazy (not preparing or thinking ahead, not preparing foods I want to eat), and proud (blinding myself to evidence and coasting on a whim or some mental theory, which might itself be wrong).  

All my willpower is spent updating my store of self knowledge, and striving to make my life better.  There is none left for dieting, so I don’t diet.  Instead, I try to live a better and more fulfilling lifestyle; one which takes work to maintain, but results in weight loss.  It is really easy to lose track, slack off, get careless, fall in love with your own ideas instead of paying attention to reality.  So don’t do those things.  Find a way to make your lifestyle self correcting or at least easy to get back to.  Pay attention to when it doesn’t work and figure out what you are doing wrong.  You are probably trying to force yourself to obey instead of persuading yourself to collaborate and achieve your goals, using all your parts together in harmony.

Achieve that and the weight will come off!  And stay off.  

-The Doctor

20191022 Daily report

Once you have decided that weight control means more to you than anything else about food, there are many paths to weight control.  All of them require you to change your goal of eating.  The change means that now you will not eat without considering what effect the food will have on your weight.  That’s what weight control means.  Control comes with a price, and you have to decide if you are willing to pay.  

When I was gaining weight, I did try many times to lose weight, and I was willing to pay a price.  But I thought the price had to be unhappiness, misery, and deprivation.  I couldn’t look forward to a life of that.  Eventually, I figured out that the price could be eating delicious sandwiches.  Ha, my price was constant vigilance.  That means keeping a food journal and counting calories.  But you can fit all kinds of tasty sandwiches into a calorie count.

Steak and Cheese, diner style.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2oz Carando brown sugar ham (90); Swiss cheese (50); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (call it 20 calories)

  • 320 calories

Lunch – Steak and Cheese sandwich (500);

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 6oz cooked spaghetti (300); 5 Costco meatballs (230)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); 4 Kirkland tea cookies (170); pretzels (150); chicken strips (50)

  • 530 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Other ways to the goal

The goal is weight control (overall).

How you get to the goal can vary.  I recommend maximizing the pleasure of eating, if you can find the time and energy and attention to do so.  Look at the Food Prep King – I have talked about him before, and his strategy of extreme weekend meal prep.  He hardly has to prepare any food during the week because he cooks on the weekend and portions everything out; he has developed recipes that work for him and can fit into that kind of schedule.  

I love to find and read stories on the Internet about people who have successfully lost large amounts of weight and kept it off over time.  They have achieved control, and it takes constant attention.  I have found a way to make the effort worthwhile, and that allows me to raise my lifestyle to almost a luxury experience.

This story is interesting.  Sara (for ’tis her name) lost 100 pounds over a year.  When asked how she did it, her standard answer is “I’m still doing it.”  That is just perfect.  The Doctor agrees that the price of (1) getting thin and (2) staying that way is constant vigilance.  Sara also is quoted, “The best diet plan for weight loss for you is one you can stick with long-term and improves your health.”  Exactly right again.  If the diet is deprivation and misery, and you have to live that way forever, then you just won’t do it.  It sounds like her goal of eating is not just being thin, but feeling healthy as well.  That can be a winning system, though it’s not mine.  Some people eat only with their health in mind, they are often thin, too.  

I tell you often that becoming thin is a side effect of my wonderful lifestyle.  I am not joking around about that.  It removes so much effort and willpower from losing weight.  I spend my willpower making sure my lifestyle is wonderful, so win-win.

Cosmopolitan magazine has regular articles about weight loss that often have nuggets of good advice.  Here are some of my favorites from women who have lost 100 pounds:

Find a healthy meal you like, and eat it all the time. “In college, I researched the food available in the dining hall to find the healthiest options, settling on a turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread with mustard. I ate that for most lunches and dinners—and I was so focused on achieving my goals that it didn’t even feel repetitive.”

That is another strategy that works for a lot of people.  This woman’s goal of eating has been transformed.  She is so focused on the goal (being thin) that what she is eating is now less important.  She picks a simple meal that she likes and so removes some of the temptation from life.  She is also making it easier to regulate her food intake, as she will know exactly how many calories are in her sandwich and won’t have to figure that out each time.  By contrast, I do a lot of looking up how many calories are in things.  I also spend more time than she does shopping, preparing meals, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen.

Prepare for heavy meals. “When I know I’m going out for dinner, where I’ll probably want to eat extra calories, I eat lighter meals throughout the day, like a smoothie for breakfast and a salad for lunch.”

That is calorie counting, in one woman’s life.  She is paying attention, and her goal is to eat the right amount of calories to stay thin.  She is also increasing her satisfaction by anticipating the restaurant meal.  By preparing and waiting and getting a bit hungry for it, she will enjoy it more.  It will be very satisfying.

Eat more often. “I switched from three meals a day to six small meals a day.”

This is amazing self knowledge.  This lady, who lost a lot of weight, learned about her body and did what she needed to do to create a lifestyle where she could be happy and be thin.  It takes less willpower if everything you do towards your goal makes you happy. 

On a regular diet, only the goal itself (getting thin) makes you happy.  The rest is unhappiness.  Learn about yourself and build an attractive life you can be proud of.

Stash snacks everywhere. “I carry protein bars in my purse and car. This way, I fend off hunger so I don’t overeat later.”

Brilliant!  Especially when you are still figuring yourself out, don’t try to tough out getting hungry.  If your body is hungry, listen and give it something to eat while you are still in control.  Once your need to be fed takes over, it is really hard to stop eating until you are full or run out of food.  This quote is about not punishing yourself.  Hunger at the right time is a good pursuit, but the goal should be a system or lifestyle that will make you happy and thin.  You should never, ever diet in a way that is punishing.  

You can lose all kinds of weight using rewards.

-The Doctor

20191021 Daily report

Have you tried dieting and it hasn’t gone well?  Who hasn’t?

Who has heard the expression “think thin”? 

I used to think that meant some kind of Zen visualization: picture yourself thin and hold the image in your mind.  Then you will be successful!  That didn’t work.  But now I understand it differently.  Think Thin can mean Think Successfully – think like a person who is already thin, and is staying that way.  Being in control of your weight is almost a mental exercise rather than a physical one, in this view.  You come to understand that being thin takes work and doesn’t just happen.  There are no naturally thin people, then.  

But!  There are naturally thin people who can eat whatever they want!  

Ah, that can be you, too.  This is me:

9PM teatime! How is this a diet?

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese submarine sandwich with American cheese (500)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – Roasted pork loin (300), whole wheat wrap (110); cucumber salad (50);

  • 460 calories

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

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1650 calories (limit 1800)

So what makes cookies weight loss food?

If there are no naturally thin people, then the system collapses.  On the one hand, that means there is nothing wrong with you, the non-thin person.  I have met a lot of thin people, and they are not on any kind of higher moral plane.  You can be a mess and stay thin.  

On the other hand, if there are no naturally thin people, doesn’t that make you a failure who can’t stay thin?  Maybe you are just in a place in your life where being thin is hard?  The Doctor rejects this view and so should you.  What is missing is the mental transformation.  Understand what thin people value and see the world the way they do.  If you want to be thin, that is how you think thin – not by forcing yourself to eat less food.  That can’t be borne and you will quit and feel like a failure.  Saying you can become thin by eating less food only works for prisoners or rats in a lab whose diet and behavior are under external control.  Eating less food has to be part of a successful and rewarding system of living, or else why do it?  

(Actually, there is a famous Dilbert cartoon where the character Dogbert advertises how to get thin by eating less food.  The author, Scott Adams, is on record agreeing that the systems approach is a great way to weight loss.  But that is his system.)

What would this system of rewards look like?  Here’s one: I cook most of my meals.  Today is a bad example of that.  I had pre-packaged breakfast, restaurant lunch, and store-bought cookies for tea.  But it was very rewarding.  Each meal was worth the wait, worth getting hungry for.  I always tell people that a little hunger, at the right time, makes the reward more enjoyable and worthwhile.  Soon you will be looking forward to getting hungry just so you can have the pleasure of sating it with a favorite food (in a measured amount).  Anyway, by cooking my own food, I make sure it is at its best when I eat it; I anticipate it and dramatize that with plannning, buying ingredients, cooking, and portioning.  That turns out to be very rewarding.  You wouldn’t go to all that trouble otherwise.  

What do thin people value?  I have thought about that a lot.  On one level, it is really simple.  Thin people value being thin.  Is that a duh?  Duh, you say!  But consider this: overweight people don’t value being overweight.  That isn’t their goal.  Thin people value being thin and that is their goal.  When they eat anything, they are asking: how will this impact my weight?  Now, when you are thin, you get to value other things too; I recall one very thin woman who liked ice cream more than anything.  She basically survived on raw vegetables and hummus all day so she could have ice cream for dinner.  Would that work for me?  No!  But she paid a heavy price for her ice cream, since her goal was to stay thin.  

Frankly, when I was gaining weight, if I wanted ice cream, I just ate it.  It didn’t matter to me what else I had eaten that day, or what I weighed, or how I would feel in the morning.  My goal was to enjoy some ice cream.  More ice cream, more enjoyment.  Now it is different.  I would anticipate the ice cream all day, and just when I started to feel hungry, I would eat a measured amount.  The pleasure of the first few bites of the anticipated and best-loved food, when you are just getting hungry, is worthwhile and satisfying, and makes eating a lot of ice cream seem kind of shallow and unfulfilling.  

Do you see it is your system of values and how you live them out that separates a thin person from an overweight one?  

-The Doctor

20191020 Daily report

When you are living a weight control lifestyle, it is most important to keep a food journal.  That journal must be completely honest.  You, dear Reader, get a slightly skewed picture of my journal, since if I have a bad day and eat late at night after posting, you wouldn’t hear about it!  And that has happened (not often).  Part of the food journal is counting calories.  Many people are unhappy about that.  It’s too much work!  It’s to hard to keep track, et cetera.  And that is all true.  But most people who have successfully lost weight count their calories.  Just check the weight loss forums at Reddit.  It then all becomes a question of your world view – by which I mean, your view of food and eating.  That is what must change, and that is the hardest thing to change.  But if you do change your thinking, you can eat anything you like while controlling your weight!  

My recipe book calls it Enchaud Perigordine! In English, roast pork.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bratwurst (260); 1/4 whole wheat wrap (30); onions and horseradish (10); pizza slices (150)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – breaded chicken pieces (200), whole wheat sandwich wrap (110); with tomato and lettuce and horseradish (40)

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – roasted pork loin (250); 2.5oz cooked egg noodles (125); mixed vegetables (50);

  • 425 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2x orange Jaffa cakes (50); 1/4C ice cream (80)

  • 260 calories

Total for the day: 1685 calories (limit 1800)

Mystery upon mystery

Several times this last few days, I have found myself well short of my daily calorie limit.  For those of you who have read a lot of these daily reports, you know that’s not a common occurrence.  Usually, the problem goes the other way.  The number of calories I allow myself is meant to be satisfying and completely fulfilling, but small enough to lose weight.  This weight control system is not about feeling deprived, in fact, the opposite.  If a person was trying to control their weight, I would advise them to choose foods which are rewarding and worth waiting for. They should also be worth getting slightly hungry for.  Under those conditions, eating feels very satisfying, because there is nothing like the first few bites of your favorite food when you are just hungry enough.  “Hunger is the best pickle,” as Poor Richard said, and as I often remember.  

So do not try to push the limits.  This is a long term weight control strategy that is working well, and you should have no interest in feeling deprived and unhappy.  Cutting calories is often a strategy of someone who has overeaten and feels bad about it.  They decide to eat fewer calories the next meal or the next day.  But that feels like a punishment, and nobody can punish themself into losing weight.  Even if they succeeded by sheer will, that’s a loser of a long term strategy.  Once you have put all this work into losing weight, you never, ever want it to come back.  That’s why you kiss your old lifestyle goodbye and invent a new self, and new life, and a new way of thinking and looking at the world.  That is much better and more successful in the long run.  And isn’t the rest of your life the long run?

The pictured Sunday pork roast is a favorite.  The roast is butterflied, seasoned, rolled and tied, then seared briefly and baked at low temperature with apples, onions, garlic, wine, and some French herbs.  This is a fine example of how I reward myself.  I find the food visually interesting and it tastes wonderful, it’s worth anticipating for a whole day, especially a cold and rainy October Sunday.  (To be clear, it takes about 2 hours to cook.)  This kind of food also seems to last a long time in my body, because I won’t be hungry until tomorrow.  So invest in that kind of self knowledge.  Find out what foods are interesting and exciting for you, and satisfy you for a long time.  I cook mine, most of the time, to make sure it is the most dramatic and pleasurable food possible.

One tradeoff of this weight control system is that it takes time, energy, and some work.  You have to enjoy it, make it a favorite hobby.  Other people have other strategies, like eating commercial frozen dinners and other pre packaged food, and that might work for them.  But there’s no denying that my approach is very, very rewarding.  That system of reward is how I keep myself eating a measured amount of calories.  The fulfillment takes place on different and deeper levels than just being full of food.  I am so happy to be doing this, even though it takes time.  That happiness is really the product of my lifestyle, and weight loss (And weight control) are side benefits.  

Isn’t that a great way to think about this?

-The Doctor

20191019 Saturday weigh-in

Every Saturday I weigh myself.  That is new.  In the past, I would rarely weigh myself, really only when I was trying to start a diet.  Years ago, on Instapundit, I read a list of habits, or common characteristics, of people who were thin and stayed thin.  Very few people did all of those behaviors on the list, and I only remember a few of them, but one of them was “they weigh themselves regularly, daily or weekly.”  That was never part of my life, until now.  And it makes sense – who wants to get on the scale and see just how overweight you are, every day or week?  Especially if you are not trying to lose or maintain a weight?  Now I just do it.  True, I am trying to lose weight, but I plan to keep on weighing myself, even after I reach a body weight I like.  For the rest of my life, anyway.  I have picked Saturday.  Here’s me on the scale:

The lowest number yet

I am constantly surprised by my body.  However, the scale tells no lies and that is why I weigh myself every week.  Since I started my diet, I have lost: 

Pounds!!
0

The Doctor is In

Well, this is a surprise!  Why did my weight go down?  It’s against a lot of previous experience.  I had several good dieting days this week but Sunday was terrible, with travel and lots of extra eating.  And I have been very congested, so I assumed I was getting sick.  Generally, all that has meant my weight loss stops and has to be written off for the week.  But this is my lowest weight ever!   

It sounds funny to say my lowest weight ever.  I did weigh 240 at one point in the past, but my weight was on the way up.  This is the lowest weight I have achieved while trying to control my weight, though.  

My original plan was to lose 120 pounds, to go from my highest weight, 325, to 205.  The choice of ending number was a little difficult.  I don’t remember what I weighed when I was thin.  That was probably 20 years ago.   I read, though, that the US Army will take new recruits only in a certain weight range for their height.  I thought the Army would have to know something about physical standards, so I picked a figure at the top of their acceptable range for my height and age.  So 205 it was.  I am as shocked as anyone that I am making progress.  I am officially more than two thirds of the way there.  What is the reason for all this success so far?  And what is the potential for reaching the target?  

The weight control lifestyle I am living is partly based on a system of incentives and rewards.  Every meal is a potential reward (it can be something I really want to eat), and every time I lose 10 pounds, I also give myself a reward.  The 10-pound loss rewards are more extravagant than the everyday rewards.  In the past I have made myself a cake, made special desserts, and gone to restaurants.  Often I have picked my reward far in advance, but right now I don’t have anything in mind, and I am only one pound away from  losing another 10.  What will I choose?  I think of these rewards as a promise to myself and I need to keep it.  And that leads us to another reason for success – I have inverted the usual system for losing weight.

Based on my past dieting and how I thought about foods and eating and dieting at that time, I always tried to force myself to eat less, with one exception.  That was the low carb diet I tried, where I let myself eat as much as I wanted as long as it didn’t have carbohydrates!  That diet really gave me an insight on how to lose weight while still eating rewarding food.  But in general, I usually used force, and punishment, to try and lose weight.  I am convinced that’s why most diets fail.  You can’t force yourself consistently, long-term, and have a weight loss lifestyle you will enjoy.

As for the future, I think this weight loss will continue under the weight control system.  There will be surprises, and chances to learn, and disappointments.  I hope I choose wisely.  But as your body gets thinner and closer to actually thin, I am sure it behaves differently.  I will be keeping an eye on that and reporting it here.  Here’s to more success!

-The Doctor

20191018 Daily report

It is in a fatalistic mood that the Doctor posts tonight.  It has been a hard week, one way and another.  There was travel, there was overeating, there was despair…and that was only Sunday!  But my weight loss lifestyle is still operational, though the outcome is delayed.  One of my top values is weight control.  It is how I am living my life now.  It’s part of the way I get around the willpower trap.

Diet, noun.  A plan, generally hopeless, for losing weight, which tests your willpower but does little for your waistline.  -Herbert B. Prochnow, whoever that is.

Weight control is not about willpower.  It is about satisfying yourself physically, mentally, psychologically.  I investigated how I was satisfying myself in my weight-gaining days.  Largely, I was finding cheap satisfaction in the feeling of having a full stomach.  Yes, I convinced myself that eating until completely full was comforting and worthwhile way to life satisfaction.  Boy, was that wrong.  

The answer was of course Bacon.

A field of Kirkland bacon. Thick-cut.

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 350 calories

Lunch – BLT wraps: 4 slices Kirkland bacon (70); 1 whole wheat wrap (110); 1 tomato (30); lettuce and horseradish sauce (negligible); 1 extra piece of bacon by hand (70)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – half an Aldi frozen cheese pizza (500); with 1oz pepperoni (140);

  • 640 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1610 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Less than it appears

If you look, you will see my calorie count was very low today – 1610 is calories rather lower than the limit of 1850 I have been trying to achieve.  Maybe that’s because of my willpower?  I am the Doctor of Things, filled with the almighty willpower!  No, that’s not true.  Willpower can’t be used to satisfy hunger.  Part of weight control is finding a lifestyle that you find satisfying and rewarding to be living.  You don’t need to use willpower if you are being satisfied and rewarded for your behavior.  And not just you behavior.  Behavior flows from your thinking and your view of the world.  You can’t successfully force yourself thin by changing behavior.  That’s diet-thinking:

“A diet is just code for a time when you eat food you dislike and still feel hungry.” -unattributed

Truer words were never spoken.  That quote is a distillation of the force required to succeed on a diet.  I have never made a diet work.  On the typical diet, you are trying to temporarily force yourself to change behavior to lose weight.  You will eat food you don’t like and feel deprived and hungry all the time.  But what you are really hoping is that you can do this without changing anything about your inner self.  That is why people who manage to lose some weight often complain that they gain it back.  Their old self and their old lifestyle are there, waiting.  Eventually, they will take back over if you are unhappy with your diet life. 

Atkins (of the famous eponymous diet) was correct when he said weight loss didn’t have to be about deprivation.  On the physical level, of course it is – you are eating less food than your body needs to sustain its weight.  But he was talking about your psychology.  One of the biggest barriers to losing weight is the feeling of deprivation.  Imagine, if you have to, that eating and being full make you happy.  Eating less is like withholding happiness from yourself.  It’s painful to even think about, and doing it is worse!  To inflict that kind of pain on yourself, you need lots of willpower, and who has that?   Not me. 

So you need to change your mind instead.  Find eating satisfaction in a new goal.  Personally, in a way, I chose hunger.  I want to be properly hungry when I eat food.  The food has to be something I am really looking forward to eating.  The source of satisfaction and fulfillment in my new life comes from maximum enjoyment.  There is no substitute for eating food you are really craving, just at the moment you are physically hungry and need to eat.  That is much more satisfying than what I used to do. 

I used to get satisfaction by eating until I was full.  When I was doing that, I had a different definition of hungry than I do now.  Hungry just meant that I wasn’t full.  

Now everything is different.  I see a different world now.  You could, too.

-The Doctor

20191017 Daily report

My hobby is now weight control.  I take an active interest, and think about it in my daily life, and read about it.  It wasn’t always like this.  I had to recreate myself if I wanted to control my body’s weight, since my old self was so hopeless at it.  It was starting to get depressing.  You start to lose confidence in yourself, when you have dieted and failed enough times. 

Now my trajectory is towards weight control.  It is very important to me and I am confident I am succeeding.  That is very non-depressing.  Fulfilling, in fact.  And it builds on itself.  The way I have planned this out, weight control is better than dieting.  Weight control is for your whole life, dieting is temporary.  I am living a weight control lifestyle, which means I do two things: (1) regulate my food intake and (2) weigh myself regularly.  To regulate my food intake, I bribe myself with delicious food, but in measured amounts.  And I keep a food journal.

About-to-be-constructed chicken sandwich, about 400 calories pictured.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x bratwurst (260); half a whole wheat wrap (55), onions and mustard (a few calories surely)

  • 600 calories

Lunch – office lunch – 2x small Mediterranean chicken kebabs (70); roasted broccoli (20); rice (50); cake (200);

  • 410 calories 

Dinner – 2x Tyson’s panko breaded chicken breast pieces (200); half whole wheat wrap (55); some baked nacho topping (300);

  • 755 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80);

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1845 calories (limit 1800)

Mr. Pants

I have made the jump to size 44 pants. I have been wearing size 46 since July.  I say “wearing”, but size 46 pants were pretty snug and and a bit uncomfortable when I first started wearing them.  I was able to wear these size 44 pants all day, though I should point out that they are Haggar pants with an expandable waistband.  Even so, you know when you are straining against the expandable joint, and I hardly was at all.  Being in between sizes is my reality for the next while.  I actually bought three pairs of Haggar work pants at the start of the summer: size 46, 44, and 42.  They were having a sale – three pairs for $100.  The 46s have started to fold excess fabric around the waist when I use a belt, so I am smaller than they were designed for, but I am still slightly too big for 44s.  

It’s taken a lot longer than I calculated when I first bought all these pants.  Based on my rate of weight loss then, about 8-10 pounds per month, I thought I would be going down a pants size per month.  In that world, I would already be in size 42 pants and they would be a pretty relaxed fit.  It turns out that losing weight and waist size are not in a linear relationship, at least for men.  I have been in size 46 from July to October – that’s a span of 20 pounds!  At this rate I won’t break size 40 (into size 38s) until I weigh about 180 pounds! I’m not even planning to get that low in weight.  Maybe 190.  Maybe 200.  It all depends on how my body looks and feels at that weight.

The important part is, I can choose, because I am pursuing weight control.  I’ll be able to pick what I want my weight to be.  I think there will be a lot of work involved finding a way to keep a stable weight and still be happy.  Losing weight is a system I have worked out, to some degree.  It’s all self knowledge and I am happy to learn and grateful that I can do it.  

But I am getting ahead of myself.  My lowest weight so far has been 243 pounds.  There are still months to go before I lose all that.  And my observation is that the thinner you want to be, the harder it is to get there and stay there.  I’ve effectively lost the last two weeks due to bad diet days and travel effects.  I will be very happy when I get below 240 pounds.  What should my reward be?

What would yours be?

-The Doctor

20191016 Daily report

Staying on a diet is hard, if you are doing it using willpower.  Think about it.  A dieter is trying to do something they don’t want to do.  Maybe they are eating something they don’t like; maybe they are eating less than they want; maybe they are skipping meals; maybe they are are doing all of those things!  I failed on many attempts at dieting. The important point is that I was trying to force myself to do things I didn’t want to do.

I like creative lunch sandwiches on toasty bread.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Oven-toasted Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and cheese croissantwich;

  • 400 calories

Lunch – ham (100); salami (110); and cheese (100); sandwich (bread 260); with mustard and horseradish and whatever pickled veggies I had lying around (30);

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 6oz cooked spaghetti (300); 5x Costco meatballs (230); sauce and cheese (30)

  • 560 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2x Jaffa cakes (100); Costco chicken strips (100);

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1540 calories (limit 1800)

Changing my mind: how it plays out

The most success I ever had in those days (before realizing it was my mind that needed to change) was a variation of the low-carbohydrate diet.  I allowed myself to eat as much as i wanted, but restricted carbohydrates (non fiber) to 30 grams per day.  That’s about as many as are in an English muffin.  So I stopped eating things like bread (my favorite), rice, noodles, chips, and fruit juice, which are high in carbohydrates, but was unrestricted on anything else.  I lost about 25 pounds in 12 weeks, and there it mysteriously stopped.  After a couple of months stuck at 290, I gave it up.  

Now things are different.  I decided what needed to change was myself and the values I was living out.  What I valued was incompatible with losing weight.  I needed to value different things and look at life in a new way.  I have changed how I see the world, and my reasons for eating, and my life goals.  Willpower is involved, but since what I am trying to do is attractive, pursuing it comes more naturally. 

I changed several things, but one of the most important things I did was to promote weight control up my list of values, to one of the top spots.  Now, there is not much in my life that is more important than that.  After I made that decision and thought it through, it was clear to me that what I needed was a system that would last my lifetime.  I wasn’t at all interested in losing weight and then gaining it all back again.  So in effect I needed a new weight control lifestyle, and that meant I had to figure out a new way of thinking about food and eating.  The new lifestyle would have to be attractive and self reinforcing, so that it wouldn’t take willpower.  I talk about my lifestyle a lot on these posts.  Do you see why I like it?  My pictures are meant to capture this happy approach.  

And it’s not just food and eating.  Figuring out what you value is also very important for controlling money and spending!  I have been thinking about this and intend to write a few posts about financial control.  Financial control, to give a preview, is similar to weight control in that your values make all the difference.  If spending money makes you feel good and feel happy and important and loved, then how would you make yourself stop?  It would be like withholding happiness, love, and goodness from yourself.  A person with the habit of spending, like a person who is overeating and gaining weight, needs to discover new values to make any lasting change.  

Your values might be revealed this way:  “What kind of life do you want to have?  What would it take to get there?  How do you NOT want to end up?”  Try asking and answering those questions and you can start to articulate answers.  If you don’t like the answers, you can think about changing them.  

Positive values might include taking care of your family, taking responsibility for your life, saving for a rainy day, helping others, being a good parent, or a good partner.  I made a value out of weight control, but it clearly fits under the categories of taking care of my family and taking responsibility for my life.  

Do you see how it fits there?  

-The Doctor

20191015 Daily report

Every day, I dedicate significant time to paying attention.  When I was gaining weight (for about the last 20 years) I didn’t pay attention to how much I was eating, or when I ate, or what I ate.  But it took time for that to go really bad.  Eventually, I reached a bad place: having a full stomach was good, and eating to be full was good, and eating to be full at every meal was the best and highest good.  By that point, I was almost paying negative attention.  I paid attention to the cheap and easy comfort of feeling full.

How did I escape that kind of thinking?  I realized that my goal was to be full.  When I dieted, I was working against myself, feeling empty, unfulfilled (and unfilled), outraged, resentful, and just waiting to quit.  The author Scott Adams said in one of his books that his way out of that trap was to realize this and adopt a different view.  He decided that when he ate, his goal and highest good was to feel healthy.  Mine is to cultivate maximum enjoyment from food and eating.  But we both talk about the willpower problem.  What’s the problem?  Willpower runs out.  On our diet systems, we both eat whatever we want. 

The double brat! I managed this degree of browning in the oven.

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 350 calories

Lunch – 2x Johnsonville bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (55); fried onions and mustard (25);

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Costco chicken strips (100); last of the homemade sausage chili (100); 2 pancakes (100); a little kale and beans (50); pretzels, hummus,and cheese (250); 

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); cookies (190)

  • 310 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

And now, a word from our Sponsor

I don’t actually have a sponsor, but I do have something to say about sausages. Johnsonville’s bratwursts (the original ones) are the best bratwursts that you don’t make yourself.  (Kirkland makes a really good one also, but it’s not the winner.)  However, this is a blog about maximum enjoyment of food leading to thinner people.  So I will tell you that boiling them or even cooking them in a skillet on the stovetop just doesn’t bring out their best qualities.  It’s the grill that does that.  And my grill is closed for the fall. 

It’s been sad losing them from my summer food rotation.  They are so flame broiled and juicy!  Having two of those for lunch is a fulfilling shot of delicious protein.  I don’t feel hungry again for hours, and they are very satisfying.  Two of them on wraps, with caramelized onions, are only 600 calories.  And now I figured out that I can cook them in my oven at 425F in a cast iron skillet on the top oven shelf for 12 minutes per side and get almost perfect results!  I am so happy about that.  Be careful when you put in the onions!  Do that only when the sausages are already as brown as you would like.  The onions exude enough water to prevent any further browning.  

Part of my system is using rewards to keep myself happy about eating measured amounts of food.  One of the rewards is the food – it has to be exactly what I want, cooked exactly the way that I find most satisfying.  If you build up a meal in your mind with anticipation, and you are looking forward to it, and it turns out badly, that is very, very disappointing.  You feel like you have sacrificed for nothing.  Why eat less food if the food is terrible?  You are giving up something (feeling comfortable and full) to get something (delicious and well prepared food served exactly when you would most appreciate it).  You must, must keep up that bargain to stay on the Doctor of Things weight control lifestyle.  That means you do have to put some effort into preparing food, thinking about it, and preparing yourself.  

This is all part of the realization that thin people work hard to stay thin.  To believe that some people are naturally thin is to believe in magic.  Sure, some people have higher metabolisms than others.  I myself burn about 3000 calories per day.  My mother burns 1500.  But it takes work to be thin, for both of us.  Of course, I am  not thin yet.  

But I enjoy controlling my weight, and eating controlled portions of my favorite foods.  I like learning about myself and taking care of myself.  Nobody will do it for you (if you are an adult, anyway).  I even enjoy the anticipation of getting a little hungry just before a meal, since I know that first bite or two will be so satisfying.  It’s much more worthwhile than what I used to do.

-The Doctor

20191014 Daily report

Welcome, gentle Reader!  (I don’t mean gentle in the soft and careful sense, but more like “ladies and gentlemen!”)  As in, genteel.  This is high-class weight loss blogging, after all, and collects a select audience of people who are aiming high and reaching for success in their lives.  What is success?  Ay, there’s the rub!  

Success is weight control and lifestyle improvement.  The Doctor is calling you to a higher kind of living, where you use drama, suspense, determination, delay of gratification, fulfillment, satisfaction, and love, as worthy replacements for the highest values of any overweight person who is currently gaining weight.  The highest values of the weight gaining person are: feeling full, and a life of ease.  A sense that of something is good, then more of it is better.  And, unfortunately, avoidance of consequences.  That was me, and sometimes still is. 

Nachos! Family style, with meat, beans, cheese, salsa, sour cream and chips.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – skipped 

  • 0 calories

Lunch – 8oz baked nacho topping with beef, cheese, and beans (390); 1oz tortilla chips (150); 2T sour cream (60);

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 13oz homemade beef stew with potatoes, peas and carrots (530)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); cookies (200); chocolate almonds (160)

  • 440 calories

Total for the day: 1570 calories (limit 1800)

Calamity!!!1!1!

I didn’t skip breakfast because of my extreme virtue.  I wasn’t hungry.  That’s because yesterday, with all the travel and whatnot, I didn’t have the discipline to keep my weight control going.  I just let go and ate whatever I felt like.  Later, I tried writing it all down, but I am not sure the count is accurate.  This follows a bad diet week which I documented last week.  So do I lay down and quit my diet?  Ha, trick question.  I am not on a diet.  I am living a new lifestyle which is fulfilling and attractive.  I want to get back to it.  This means even if I have a bad day, week, or month, there is an incentive to get back to the weight control life.  

But, there are consequences to deal with.  I had a bad week and didn’t lose any weight, last week.  This week is shaping up the same.  Well, so far I have had a bad Sunday this week.  In any case, if you have a bad day or a bad week, you don’t get to go back and have a do-over.  You have to deal with it.  Next Saturday, I won’t have lost any weight.  That will be two weeks in a row.

Some people would call that a plateau.  But thanks to my food journal and insistence of writing down everything I eat, I know that isn’t the case.  Let me explain.  Every day, my target is 1850 calories.  For one week 1850 x 7 = about 13,000 calories.  My body needs about 3000 calories per day to maintain its current weight (WebMD has a calculator).  3,000 x 7 = 21,000.  Therefore on a perfect week I am in deficit about 8,000 calories.  That’s about two pounds a week I could lose (you have to be in deficit about 3500 calories per week to lose one pound).  Hang on!  If I have one bad day with 700 calories extra, I am still in deficit 8000 – 700 or 7300.  Won’t I still lose weight?

My experience says my body will not lose any weight that week.  For reasons that are unclear to me, my body seems to get thrown off by that kind of event (one bad day).  I won’t lose anything that week.  Everything has to be going well for me to lose weight, and for the whole week.  I don’t know why that is, but I have seen it over and over in the last 10 months.  

Anyway, even though I won’t lose anything this week, I will still get back on my weight control lifestyle for the rest of the week.  It’s just that much better, more fulfilling and satisfying, than me living any other way.  Especially the way I lived before, when I was gaining weight and had no control.  That was getting depressing.

Before, I was writing about the values of the overweight and gaining weight person.  I know because I lived them.  I have investigated and discovered the values of thin people, and I have adapted them to my life.  So I know like I know myself, that overweight people like to overeat because there is enjoyment in living a carefree life.  It’s strange to hear overweight people complaining about people who are “naturally” thin.  There’s no such thing.  Every thin person you see works to stay that way, and the thinner they are, the more effort it costs them.  It’s a fundamental difference in how we see the world.  People who are overweight and gaining, live their lives without counting calories, writing food journals, weighing their food, and obsessing over clothes sizes.  So they think thin people don’t either.  

See the trap?  There is a cost to getting thin and keeping thin.  (Barring health issues.)  And who wants to pay it?  The trick I have discovered is that adopting the viewpoint of a thin person can be integrated into a fulfilling life.  It’s not about starvation and deprivation.  Well, it doesn’t have to be.  I’ve lost significant weight without systemic deprivation or hardship.  So could you!  Read on.  

-The Doctor

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