Stay on a diet

20190723 Daily report

One way to describe my effort to lose weight is that I am paying attention.  During the years that I was gaining weight, I never paid any attention at all to how much I was eating, only if I was full.  If the point of eating is to be full, then paying attention to what you are eating and how much you are eating don’t matter. 

Once you have made the mental transformation into someone who is capable of losing weight and controlling their body’s weight, you learn the importance of paying attention to what and how much you eat.

Summer grilling

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – skipped (not hungry)

  • 0 calories

Lunch – 2 x bratwurst (280); half wrap (50)

  • 610 calories 

Dinner – noodles (300); blueberries (40)

  • 340 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken and hummus wraps (150); chips (160); granola bar (200) pretzels and hummus (200)

  • 790 calories

Total for the day: 1740 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

You can't make up for the past, learn and go on

Very few people can become thin (lose 120 pounds) through exercise.  However, many people have lost 100+ pounds by dieting, while not increasing exercise.  So, how much you eat is the important thing to control.  But paying attention to what you are eating enables you to control how much you eat.  Paying attention is expensive and difficult and takes a lot of effort.  Take any chance to make it easier.

In the course of a perfect week, I would be in deficit nearly 10,000 calories and might lose a little over two pounds.  The rule goes, if you are 3500 calories in deficit during a week, you will lose a pound of body weight.  But yesterday, I ate 2000 calories more than I had planned.  I have had experience trying to make up for extra calories by eating less during the rest of the week, and it has never worked.  Part of me rebels and feels like I am starving.  I would break my diet in no time and might be tempted to quit.  

Focus on learning what you can,  If you overeat one day, think about how you felt and how you ate.  For me, it can be as simple as delaying too long before lunch or dinner.  Then part of me will go into a little panic and want to eat more, and it’s hard to resist that urge.  I have learned to monitor my hunger and keep myself satisfied during each day.  (Satisfaction used to come from when I was stuffed full of food.  I had to learn new ways of being satisfied.)  

Reward yourself for all the other days during the week you did it right, and learn what you can from the days you made mistakes.  Really, you are learning about yourself, if you will listen.  Reward yourself for doing it right, for listening, for figuring out how to make it work.  I ate normally today (though I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, I still ate nearly 1800 calories today).  I accept that no matter what, I will not lose 2 pounds this week.  My calorie deficit will be 2000 calories less that it could be, or more than half a pound!  But I will still lose weight, just not as much.  It is the price of learning about yourself.  

Luckily my new lifestyle is very attractive and appealing.  I get a lot of satisfaction out of keeping my needs satisfied!  It is hard to find and keep balanced all the time, but it is possible to make it all work in the long term.  This is a long term weight control effort.  Don’t worry too much about the short term.  The goal is long term, the goal is lifetime.

-The Doctor

20190722 Daily report

The point off keeping a food journal is the consistency of the effort.  You can measure how well you are keeping to your plan, over a really long term.  If you have a good week, or a bad week, that all fits in and you can track it.  It gives you total awareness of how you are acting and how the consequences show up.

Caption

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2/3 cup yogurt (125); 2 tablespoons strawberry preserves (70); 34g waffle (100) Johnsonville bratwurst (260); flatbread piece (45)

  • 610 calories

Lunch – 8oz chili (400); 1oz chips (140); pretzels and cheese (300); Klondike bar (250)

  • 1090 calories 

Dinner – pizza (200); noodles and jambalaya (600); Snickers ice cream bar (180); Twix ice cream bar (160); 3/4 Cup ice cream (250); 1 cup cereal and milk (400)

  • 100 calories

Snacking – cookie (100); chocolate (200)

  • 300 calories

Total for the day: 3800 calories (limit 1800)

A regular occurence

Today I may have had a few more calories than was good for me.  The usual excuses apply – it was a tough day, I didn’t get a lot of sleep, a stressful 4 hour drive in the rain, and bad meal planning and management.  The point is, it happens.  The question is always, what do you do now?

You should not be mad at yourself or punish yourself.  Look at me.  I have lost 65 pounds and should be rewarded for my success, not punished for a bad day.  I have proven that I will recover, and pretty quickly.  Trying to make up the calories tomorrow would be foolish and counterproductive.  Bad days and bad weeks happen with some frequency.  I will easily reorient myself, learn and move on.  The weight loss will continue.  I have said before that I don’t have the kind of willpower that can make myself act perfectly.  But I can learn, in time.  Keep yourself focused on what you can become and what good you can do.  Nobody will do it for you, but you can get a lot of it done yourself if you figure yourself out.  

What do you do now?  Why, tomorrow is a new day.  It is a new day where you can get things to go right.  Based on past experience, I won’t be hungry tomorrow for a meal or two.  My plan is to watch myself carefully and eat when I get hungry.  That is, after all, always my plan.  

-The Doctor

20190721 Daily report

My daily reports are part of a long-term system.  The changes I have made have made me into a new person.  I am no longer the same person who gained 120 extra pounds over the last 20 years.  In the long term, I have decided that being in control of my body’s weight is a top moral priority requiring top level attention.  Almost every decision I make about food now takes my body’s weight into consideration.  

Like, what do I have for lunch?  (OK, I cook all six but then just eat one today.)

Caption

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Canadian bacon (30); 10 ounces chili (480); 1 ounce tortilla chips (140); 1.5 tablespoons sour cream (50)

  • 700 calories

Lunch – grilled bratwurst (260)

  • 260 calories 

Dinner – 10 pounces filet mignon (550); 1 cup oven roasted cauliflower (50)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Nestle Li’l Drum vanilla ice cream cone (110)

  • 190 calories

Total for the day: 1750 calories (limit 1800)

More vacation posting

I am on vacation away from the heat, so I will be brief.

Every person you know who has stayed thin has made it a top priority of their own.  Being in control of your weight (staying thin) never, ever just happens.  Not for anybody.  You have to accept that to lose weight. 

Long term, there are two main phases to implementing weight control.  There is the Losing Weight phase.  Then there is the Staying Thin phase, where you learn how to maintain your body’s weight over the long term.  

In between the two phases is a period of experimentation.  I have no idea what my final chosen weight will be.  205?  190?  200?  180??  What will my clothing size be?  Will there be a period between losing weight and my body finishing changing its shape?  How many calories per day will I need to eat, to keep any of those weights?  The interesting part of this blog has barely started yet.

Strictly speaking, I still haven’t decided how to reward myself for going below 260 pounds.  Originally I was going to bake something, but not in this heat.  Maybe a restaurant meal.  I will think about it.

-The Doctor

20190720 Saturday weigh-in

Time for my weekly weighing!  This was a tense moment for me as I have not lost weight appreciably for several weeks, mostly due to illness. 

On the move again

Hooray, for two weeks in a row I have lost weight and this week it was appreciable at more than three pounds!  Since starting my weight control diet in January 2019 I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

Traveling

I am away from home for the next few days and will be brief.  

My historical pattern (all six months of it) is that during illness, my weight loss slows or halts, sometimes I even go up a pound, probably due to fluid retention.  The first full week after recovery, I usually lose three pounds.  That’s what happened this time!  Last week I weighed in at 262.4 pounds. 

Even though I had made this observation and told myself to expect it, it was still a very emotional experience.  I was starting to worry that I had run into some kind of intractable plateau.  No, I was just ill the last few weeks, and my weight is unreliable when I am ill.  From fairly early in my food journal, I kept a column I color coded for illness (a lovely shade of green) and I was easily able to identify periods of illness and see what happened.  I predicted last week that this would happen (losing three pounds after recovery), and it did.  Next time I will be stronger in my faith. 

Now it is time to think about rewards.  How would you reward yourself after going from 320… 310… 300… 290… 280… 270… to below 260?  Whatever I decide, I plan to be really, really nice to myself for my accomplishment.  It’s amazing how well one responds to rewards and recognition, even from the self.  

-The Doctor

20190719 Daily report

Every day is another day to get my balance right.  Since I am losing weight and therefore counting everything I eat, the way I have found to make that work for me is to balance hunger and reward.  I want to eat enough food to be happy (and it has to be very good food to do that), then let myself feel hunger just before it’s time for my next meal.  Then I reward myself with another very tasty meal, small but enough.  Satisfying hunger with something I really desire, makes up for the effort and stress of getting hungry.  It’s a pleasant hunger, one that knows there will be food soon.

Sausage section circle

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 10 ounces of jambalaya (350), 5 ounces of rice (160)

  • 510 calories

Lunch – one Boar’s Head bratwurst (300); one Johnsonville bratwurst (260)

  • 560 calories 

Dinner – Mama Lucia’s restaurant Meat Mayhem with roasted chicken, sausage, meatball and roasted vegetables (650); garlic bread (100)

  • 750 calories

Total for the day: 1820 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Push and Pull

Every day, I let myself get hungry just in time to eat a rewarding meal.  Hunger is the push.  It tells me whether I am eating too much or not enough.  It pushes me to think about my next meal – what will it be?  Will it be worth the wait?  Shouldn’t I get it ready?

Reward is the pull.  It pulls me into the future.  I have small and large rewards.  Small rewards are every day, every meal if possible.  I really enjoyed breakfast and lunch, but dinner was an exceptional experience.  It’s in the upper 90s of temperature and I wasn’t going to cook, so I went to a restaurant.  I swam today, so I was extra motivated and hungry.  The food was wonderful, and enormous.  I ate about half, plus all the vegetables. 

The calorie count is probably a good estimate.  I know from my food journal that sausages are about 250 calories each, chicken breast about 250, and meatballs about 230 per five small ones.  I had one large meatball, half a sausage, and an entire chicken breast.  I feel so full and satisfied that I am a little worried about my calorie estimate!  But the scale doesn’t lie and tomorrow I will find out.  

I have an early day tomorrow, so it’s bedtime.  How are you rewarding yourself for a job well done?

-The Doctor

20190718 Daily report

Welcome to the Doctor’s daily food log and battleground of ideas!  Keeping a food log is very important, if you want to be in control of your body’s weight.  And if your mind is in the wrong place, it is very hard to keep writing down your meals in a journal.  

The wrong place?  If you enter upon a diet with the idea that it’s a temporary change you are making to lose some weight, you will be fighting yourself the whole time.  You will have to use a lot of willpower and that is hard to do over any length of time.  

What is the right place?  Read on.  The whole blog, of course, but every day I touch on it a little.  

Don't forget the Tobasco

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Kirkland granola bar (100); 3 eggs (240); 1 oz cheese (70); toast (120)

  • 530 calories

Lunch – grilled bratwurst (300, 260)

  • 560 calories 

Dinner – 6 ounces cooked spaghetti (300); 5 Kirkland meatballs (230)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – pretzels and hummus (150)

  • 150 calories

Total for the day: 1770 calories (limit 1800)

Another reason to have a food journal

Now that I am recovered from being sick, I find that part of me is pushing hard to lower my daily calorie count. That makes things a bit miserable.  Looking back through my food journal, I noticed that over the months I have had a lot of excursions from perfection while following this weight control system.  Over many successful months, I allowed myself extra calories on the days when I exercised, for example, and yet I still lost weight.  So, there is no need to rush, no need to push calorie restriction to the point of unpleasantness, when you are losing 2-3 pounds per week.  Really, that’s enough.  I can just do what has worked in the past.  Losing weight is hard enough without making it harder.  

In the summer heat, I haven’t used my oven for a couple of weeks, so no bacon.  I did try a few brands of pre cooked bacon, but they were all failures except for Boar’s Head precooked bacon, and that was marginal.  So today, I made eggs on the stovetop.  I have also moved a lot of cooking outdoors to the grill.  My slow cooker is another tool good for summer cooking.  I made pulled pork in it (very good) and I am looking at recipes to make barbecued beef brisket and barbecued beef chuck, and even pulled chicken.  It’s worked well for me to have a stock of premade savory food (like chili or pulled pork or Jambalaya) that I can use in different ways and look forward to eating.  

Remember – get your mind right.  You are embracing a lifestyle that is new, attractive, and self-reinforcing.  You want to keep it up, because you are living well.  Your old life seems dull and shallow by comparison.  That gets around the unfortunate truth that we would rather not change ourselves.  If we don’t change, we will get what’s coming to us.  If we do change, WE move towards the goal we choose.  

-The Doctor

20190717 Daily report

Welcome to another daily post!  The point of these is to keep focused on my eating goal, best expressed by Poor Richard in the 1700s – “Hunger is the best pickle.”  There is so much meaning in that aphorism. When I started my new weight control system, this is what came to my mind.  Hunger is the goal.

The Doctor is not saying you should be hungry all the time.  Nobody wants to live like that.  The point is that you create a lifestyle that is very attractive.  You want to be there, so you don’t have to use willpower to stay.  But it is very useful to embrace hunger as a goal, at the appropriate time.  Be hungry for your meals nad let your meals be worth the wait.

Big Greek Cafe! $5 Gyro Wednesday!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/3 C Bush’s baked beans (100); grilled bratwurst wrap (300)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Famous $5 Gyro Sandwich (600)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 12 ounces homemade sausage chili (480); Snickers ice cream bar (180)

  • 660 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Perdue chicken strips (50)

  • 130 calories

Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)

Something about Wednesdays

Who else do you know, who is restricting calories (on a diet), who looks forward to Wednesdays?  Thanks to my food journal, I know that since January I have had 15 Wednesday gyros.  And I have lost over 60 pounds during that time.  Should we call it the Gyros diet?  Ha, no.  The point of this diet is that if done properly, you get to look forward to practically every meal you eat.  In fact, its success relies on that being true.

One of the reasons my diets always failed in the past was the amount of force that was required to keep them going.  I had to force myself to eat less (because my goal was to feel full), and I forced myself to eat things I didn’t want.  That burns a lot of willpower.  You are bound to break eventually.  Then you might get into an unhealthy and unproductive set of feelings about your miserable and failed self. 

Diets are made even harder by the fact that there is little to look forward to.  I don’t know how people do it (some do, many fail like me).  Under my current lifestyle change, I have a lot to look forward to, and lose very little.  My willpower is applied to making sure I will enjoy what I’m eating.  That does mean a lot of time spent planning, shopping, cooking, arranging, and keeping a food journal.  

What do I look forward to now?  I am officially out of pre-prepared food.  The vegetable curry is gone, sausage chili is gone.  The refrigerator is almost bare.  I still have Jambalaya, for a short time.  It’s time to start planning.  I don’t want to disappoint myself.  Isn’t it nice, that my main worry is how to keep being good to myself?  It makes weight loss worthwhile, to feel this way.

-The Doctor

20190716 Daily report

Keeping a food journal is something I have committed to, every day, from now on.  That’s because I am not pursuing weight loss.  My goal is weight control.  To control my weight, I have to know what I weigh and I have to know how to change my weight and how to keep it the same.  That means (1) weigh yourself and (2) keep a journal of what you eat, so you can regulate how many calories you have eaten, every day.  Some days are easier than others.  Today was easy.  

Grilling and glazing pork tenderloins

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 0.75 pounds Chinese glazed pork tenderloin (360); pretzels and cheese (250)

  • 610 calories

Lunch – bratwurst wrap (300); leftover jambalaya in a wrap (300) [hey, does that count as a jambalaya po’ boy?] 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza slice (710)

  • 710 calories

Total for the day: 1920 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Fancy meals are the best

Note the absence of any diet foods in my menu today.  A lot of my food regime is just having small amounts of foods I really want to eat.  When it works, I don’t overeat, and the system works against it.  If I focus on getting hungry for the food, and anticipate eating it with eagerness, then it is just wonderful.  The first portion tastes so good, that eating more is actually disappointing.  Second, if I overeat I won’t get properly hungry for my next meal, so it just won’t be worthwhile.  

Who could believe losing weight while eating – in the same day – glazed, grilled pork tenderloin, grilled sausage, pizza, and jambalaya?  That’s just one day.  Imagine a whole week of looking forward to every meal.  When it works, the system is a wonder to experience.  And I have gotten it to work for weeks and months at a time.  It builds on its own success.  I don’t even want to live like I did before.  That gives me confidence that my weight control plan will last.  

Losing weight, even sixty pounds, seems to have amazingly subtle effects on my physical movements.  You’d think it would be quite drastic, but it’s not very:

  1. Walking up the steps doesn’t seem easier (slightly less out of breath)
  2. Swimming doesn’t seem much easier (a few seconds faster per lap, maybe fewer aches and pains or injuries)
  3. Standing up does seem a bit easier (more bouncy)
  4. Lifting heavy things doesn’t seem easier.
  5. The guy in the mirror is still 60 pounds overweight.

On the other hand, going clothes shopping is a bit easier now.  I just bought four shirts at Costco in 2x size, and brought them home knowing they would fit.  They did.  That’s a size available in every store, for shirts.  For pants, my waist is still 46ish, which is a bit larger than most stores carry (Costco tops out around 40 waist, so does TJ max).  Maybe the physical side of things will improve more noticeably when I am losing this next 60 pounds.  There’s one way to find out.  

What else will change, as my body catches up to my mind?  What would change for you?

-The Doctor

20190715 Daily report

Today is the first day of the rest of my weight control life!  OK, that doesn’t work as poetry but it is meant to express how high the values of weight control rank in my new life.  They are now, and they will be from now on, the last things I think about at night and my alarm clock in the morning.  

That’s all a metaphorical way of saying I am going to keep writing a food journal.  That means planning ahead, cooking ahead, and learning about myself.  That last part surprises people, but it is the key to making it all work.  

Jambalaya spicy!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1 cup steel cut oats with sugar free syrup (200); 1 cup lowfat Kefir (140)

  • 340 calories

Lunch – vegetable curry with rice (200); bratwurst wrap (300)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 10 ounces jambalaya with rice (510)

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Snickers ice cream bar (180); pretzels and hummus (200)

  • 460 calories

Total for the day:  1810 calories (limit 1800)

Unfinished business

Yesterday I finished my post early and went to the pool.  I came back very late and ate late, so I didn’t have jambalaya yesterday like I planned and posted.  I had leftover chili instead.  But since I waited so long, it wasn’t enough and my body got rebellious – I ended up eating about 500 calories of chocolate and cookies and pretzels and cheese at night.  So my calorie total for yesterday was higher than planned (2400).  It’s all in my food journal.  

Today I was careful to eat when I was supposed to, at least early in the day.  Since I was up and working at 6AM, lunchtime came early (11 AM).  I had dinner just before 6PM, but that might have been slightly too late.  I felt the need for some pretzels after that, even after dessert!  You would think I would learn, having had this lesson over and over again.  Don’t get too hungry or your body will rebel!

The jambalaya, though, lends itself to calorie counting really well.  

  • 1020 calories for sausage,
  • 210 for crushed tomatoes,
  • 100 for olive oil,
  • 75 for peppers and onions, and
  • 640 for rice  

Cooked, the jambalaya was just under 1400 calories and weighed 41 ounces; I had 1/4 (10 ounces) with 1/4 of the rice (5 oz on the scale), which was another 160 calories and the total I ate was 510 counting rice and jambalaya.  That’s almost a pound of food for 510 calories.  Weighing food is a good way to divide it into countable portions, and you can even store the leftovers in single containers that way.  

Tomorrow is a new day and maybe I can get it right this time.  It will be fun trying!

-The Doctor

20190714 Daily report

Filling in my food journal isn’t an act of willpower.  Like I said yesterday, it all starts with the realization that being thin has a price: constant maintenance.  If you don’t want to pay, then don’t sign up.  Having realized the price, the question is: what do you do about it?  

You make yourself into a person who cares about being thin.  Not just a little.  You have to care more about it than almost anything in the world; you have to create a new moral hierarchy for yourself with “being thin” in the top three.  

Now you are on a relentless quest to find a way to control your weight.  It’s not willpower, it’s a moral imperative that fills your life.  That’s what gets you out of bed in the morning, it’s what fills out your food journal and makes you weigh yourself every week.  It doesn’t take will power.  

Chili nachos!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – grilled pork tenderloin wrap (300); 1/2 Cup baked beans (150)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – 6oz chili (240); 1oz chips (130); and 1T sour cream (30); 1 Cup lowfat Kefir (140)

  • 540 calories 

Dinner – Jambalaya and rice (510); small piece of chocolate cheesecake (125)

  • 635 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1705 calories (limit 1800)

Much better, thanks

I feel a lot better today – back to normal in all ways.  I am happy to be going back to my preferred and superior lifestyle.  Let the weight loss recommence.  

I went grilling yesterday and made two pork tenderloins.  The recipe was similar to Chinese char siu style red glazed pork ribs.  However, I think I may have cooked it a little too enthusiastically, it’s delicious but a bit dry.  Pork tenderloins are fabulous for grilling.  There is very little trimming to do, and you can pound them flat or butterfly them open to make them flat and suitable for the grill.  They are very well priced in the summer and cook quickly (careful not to let them cook too long).  Another great feature is a quarter pound of pork tenderloin has about 120 calories, totaling 480 calories in a pound of meat.  

It’s going to be a very hot week where I live.  That means the grill will get some use, and meals that involve heat in general will not be favorites.  Maybe the Doctor will be having an all ice cream diet for a while!  I wonder what that would do to weight loss.  

-The Doctor

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