Stay on a diet

20190703 Daily report

Part of my weight control program is to document what I eat every day.  I don’t always keep within my target calorie count of 1800/day, but I know how many calories I ate.   Since I also know how many calories I need every day (about 2800), I know if I am eating Goldilocks style – too much, not enough, or just right.  To reward myself  for eating so little food, I make sure the food I eat is worth it. 

Big Greek Cafe's Famous $5 Gryo Wednesdays!!!!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Wasn’t hungry – didn’t eat any. 

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Famous Gyro (600)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Chuy’s Tex Mex King Carne Burrito half (600); chips and salsa (100)

  • 700 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); candy (180)

  • 340 calories

Total for the day: 1640 calories (limit 1800)

Getting the band back together

I have been ill and not restricting my caloric intake.  I have had an appetite for simple carbohydrates and I have been indulging it.  Today, I was feeling a bit better.  My appetite for carbohydrates was more muted, and my usual cravings (for meat) were returning.  Meat was starting to sound good again.  

My new lifestyle is very attractive and I like it a lot.  I am very motivated to get back there, even though I have spent several days off my diet.  Are you wondering, can I really get back on my weight control program so easily?  On a regular diet, having a bad meal (overeating) or a few bad days is terribly demoralizing.  Sometimes people quit their diets over it.  You might be disgusted with yourself.  But using my new system, a bad day or a few bad days can be shrugged off.  The lifestyle is that attractive!  

First, I spend a lot of time thinking about what foods would be rewarding to me.  I have never paid so much attention to my own needs and desires before.  That is rewarding.  Second, it also makes my tastes more refined, as I have more detail about what I really want and pursue that through cooking and buying special foods.  That’s from my food log.  Third, I am focused on maximum enjoyment of the food.  I am only eating 60% of what I need.  My mind and body are willing to do that, if the food is worth the effort.  It has to be exactly what I want, and it has to be eaten right when I am most hungry for it.

Food just tastes better when you are hungry.  You can add on to that, and say that your favorite food tastes best when you are hungry.  That makes it even more exciting.  

My goal for eating is to be hungry just in time to eat my favorite meal.  With that kind of anticipation, I am able to stop eating when I have eaten just enough to satisfy myself.   Yes, I am thinking about being hungry for the next meal.  If I kept eating, had a second portion, the food wouldn’t taste as good.  Try it!  You will find the second serving is not as exciting and only serves one purpose: making you feel full.  Feeling full is to be avoided.  (You won’t be hungry for the next meal!  It won’t taste as good!)  Feeling hungry (just in time) is the goal.  

I have now guaranteed I will be hungry just in time for the next meal, since it was so rewarding and satisfying to be hungry for this meal.  The system reinforces itself.  

Yesterday, still feeling ill, I ate 3500 calories or more.  Nobody loses weight doing that.  Today, I had less than half of that, using my system of hunger and rewards.  Tomorrow, I have been careful to plan out all my meals so that I can anticipate them properly and use them as rewards.  I think I am back on my weight control lifestyle.  That’s where I want to be!  Where do you want to be?  

-The Doctor  

20190702 Daily report

Every day, my job is to keep a record of my food intake.  Well, that is part of the job.  I also regulate my food intake to keep the total calories in bounds.  When I am ill, however, it’s all I can do to keep the food intake record.  I don’t have the same tastes when I am ill, and my determination to lose weight is rather sapped.  

Apart from being ill, my stomach feels very strange right now, because I have eaten a lot of food today. I am stuffed and feel more full than I have in a long time – it’s been over six months, since I started controlling my food intake.

My food intake and calorie count

Miscellaneous carbohydrate rich foods, including bread, noodles, ice cream, hummus, peanut butter and jelly.

  • 3550 calories

Total for the day: 3550 calories (limit 1800)

Being full

How I feel right now (stuffed, full) is how I must have felt all the time before I started my system of weight control, before I changed my mind about food and eating, and lived that out.  In those days, I ate whatever I felt like all day, and I had a desire to eat until I felt full, every meal. 

Now, the need to feel full is very much associated in my mind with being sick.  I just need to be full, for whatever feeling of comfort it gives me.  I always found being full very comforting.  I think most people do.  But now I am living in a strange duality, where I want to be full, but at the same time, I don’t want that anymore.  

What this is, is another opportunity to learn about myself.  Before I started my weight control system in January 2019, this is how I lived.  (Except – then, I did not pay any attention to how much I ate and did not count calories or keep a food journal.)  It’s easy to see how I overate and gained weight.  Without even trying, today I ate enough to gain weight.  According to the online calculators, I need to eat about 3000 calories a day to maintain my weight.  I had 550 calories more than that today.  A week of eating like this, and I would gain a pound per week.  

Part of the difference now, is that I am paying a lot of attention to what I am eating and how much I am eating.  Before, I didn’t pay any attention at all.  Paying attention has really made me raise my standards.  My tastes are more refined now and I know myself better.  

I can hardly wait to feel better.  I had to take naps today, I was that tired out.  And I don’t like this feeling of being full anymore.  Well, tomorrow is a new day to feel better and get back to my preferred life!  

-The Doctor

20190701 Daily report

While I have been ill, I have kept on recording how much I eat.  But restricting calories is too much during that time.  Plus the foods that motivate me when I am well (bacon) aren’t very appealing when I am sick.  What foods do I want then?  Simple sugars and carbohydrates!  I grilled a few days ago and still haven’t eaten the food!  

Pork tenderloin, pounded flat! It grills fast.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories 

Dinner – spaghetti noodles 4 oz. cooked (200); four Costco meatballs (200); 1/2 cup grapes (40)

  • 440 calories 

Total for the day: 600 calories (limit 1800)

No punishment; exercise and weight loss

Yesterday I figure I ate nearly 3000 calories, mostly carbohydrates including ice cream, chocolate, candy, crackers, and bread.  I did eat some meat, but it wasn’t very appealing to my appetite.  I am trying to eat 1800 calories per day.  Is the solution, then, to not eat until I have made up for those calories?

No, you can’t do that!  Each day should be treated as a new day.  Overeating yesterday shouldn’t be made up at the expense of today.  Part of you will see that as a punishment and rebel.  You would have to use force to keep yourself from eating, and then resentment would start to build up.  Try dieting when every meal is a source of resentment!  The best way for losing weight is to cooperate with your own plan.  The plan has to present an attractive lifestyle you want to follow.  It regulates itself, if you have set it up properly.

My weight control system is focused on each day’s food.  If I fail for a day, well, I can’t make up for it.  It is lost.  It so happened today that I was not hungry until dinner time.  Maybe it’s being ill, maybe it’s the huge amount of food I ate yesterday, but I checked by opening the fridge and looking around – no, nothing appealed to me.  I drank tea just hoping that it would wake my stomach up.  I have no idea if that worked, but I did get hungry around 6PM. 

For most meals I try to eat about 500 calories.  When I was hungry at dinner time, I tried having my normal meal.  But I am still not back to normal.  Meatballs didn’t really appeal – I just wanted the noodles!  And I could have kept eating them, too.  But I am hoping that when I get up tomorrow, my normal appetite will have returned.  

I read an article today about weight loss and exercise.   This author had the idea that one would look best through strength training.  Her system is to diet until you like your weight and size, then incorporate a lot of strength training (weight lifting) to make your body look better.  To do this, you would have to increase your food intake a lot while burning a lot of calories at the gym.   She does stress that the point is not to bulk up, but to gain muscle definition.  

This system wouldn’t work for me.  As she correctly points out, you should only do this if you really like working out at the gym.  You won’t keep doing it over the medium or long term if you have to force yourself.  The maintenance cost is high.  Muscles take a lot of effort to build, and if you don’t use them, they go away.  For my lifestyle, it would be effort wasted.  

Some strength training is probably a good idea, though.  I am hoping that my swimming contributes to that.  I like it; I do it twice a week and miss it if I don’t go.  It all adds up to a lifestyle I like.  That’s the goal.

-The Doctor

20190630 Daily report

My weight loss program involves a hedonism strategy: I eat just enough of foods I really want to eat, and avoid other foods.  My brain and body are willing to give up being full of food, in trade for eating just enough of my favorite foods, foods that I am anticipating and excited about.  There are flaws in this approach, though it works about 97.44% of the time.

My food intake and calorie count

Miscellaneous foods, heavy on carbohydrates

  • 2500 calories

Total for the day: 2500 calories (ill today; no real limits)

The illness flaw

My diet depends on me anticipating and looking forward to eating my next meal.  I want to be hungry, and never be full.  Food always tastes best when you are hungry, always.  So to get the maximum enjoyment from the food, I get hungry at mealtime and then eat a food that I like a lot.  I get excited about it, and prepare it with care and attention.  Then I eat the food, which only has 60% of the calories I need to maintain my weight.

There are calculators you can find on the internet that help you work out this number.  Based on the experience you have dieting, you can refine the number and get the true figure.  That’s one reason it’s really important to maintain a food journal, where you record everything you eat, the calories, and how you felt about it.  

Anyway, since I am sick, my weight is all over the place (fluid retention?) and my appetite has devolved.  My taste right now is for really simple and easy carbohydrate rich foods.  That is, bread, cookies, ice cream, crackers, noodles….meat just doesn’t have a lot of appeal for me right now.   So my usual approach of preparing delicious meaty food and using that to reward myself for eating less food overall – doesn’t work.  I can’t anticipate and enjoy those foods when I am sick, they have little appeal.  If they are not appealing, I can’t reward myself with them.  Could I reward myself with carbs during this time?  Maybe.  

My concentration and willpower are also at a low ebb when I am sick, so I am having trouble with portion control.  That is all out the window.  Luckily, it is temporary.  I probably won’t lose any weight during this illness.  

In the past six months of weight loss, when I have been sick, this has happened.  I am used to it now and always find it easy to get back to my weight control program once my old tastes return.  IT is self reinforcing, and very successful at losing weight.  I hate the delay though.  I get so impatient watching the scale crawl down over weeks and weeks.  But it has been steady, at least.  I didn’t gain all the extra weight that quickly, either.  So my goal now is to get better.  Then make my life better.  People are starting to remark to me that they are noticing I am losing weight.  It only took 60 pounds!  I wonder what the next 60 will be like.  Stay well!  

-The Doctor.

20190629 Saturday weigh-in

Part of my commitment to myself, an expression of my new values, is to weigh myself regularly from now on.   I have been doing that since January 2019, and I have been teaching the rest of the family, especially kids, to weigh themselves regularly.  That’s just how important it is, in terms of my new values.  What are the new values?  To be in control of my body’s weight.  To be as thin as I choose.  Those values are now superior in my moral hierarchy, to most other things.  It’s the price I am going to pay to keep control. 

Interruptions in the plan

Normally I post my weekly weighing in this spot.  I did weigh myself, but the number was almost the same as last week – down half a pound, that’s all.  I think I am getting sick and my body is retaining some fluid.  Remember I am wearing size 46 pants now, so I am losing weight.  My calorie numbers are on track.  I have been exercising, even.  This has happened before.  When I get sick, my weight fluctuates and becomes unreliable for a week or so.  I used to worry about interruptions in my weight loss a lot, but I am pretty confident in my system now.  Things will get back to normal as soon as I feel better.  I’ll keep writing.

-The Doctor

20190628 Daily report

My daily task remains: write down everything I eat in a food journal, and stay below the self-imposed limit of 1800 calories per day.  Doing it can be a bit tricky.  It takes dedication to keep writing everything down.  You can’t compromise, either.  Controlling your weight either has to become one of the most important parts of your life, or just don’t bother trying.  It’s possible to come up with some other system, but this one is mine, and it is working so far.  

Colorful!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x Italian sausage wraps with sauteed peppers and onions (300)

  • 600 calories

Lunch – BBQ chicken pieces (100); 1/2 Cup potato salad (100); pretzels and cheese (200); Perdue chicken strips (100)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – BBQ chicken pieces (300); ccc (00)

  • 300 calories

Snacking – 2 x Reese’s Peanut Butter cups (80); 5  chocolate almonds (50); tea with half and half (160); blueberries (30)

  • 400 calories

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

How to keep from eating at Danger Time

I was talking with a retired nurse today who is trying to lose 25 pounds.  She swims every day, apparently.  We chatted a little about the struggle to lose weight.  The important question she asked me was, how to keep from eating at night (after dinner)?  This is a subject near to the Doctor’s heart.  This blog is public, and I do want people to read and use my ideas to learn to control their own weight.  So what would you tell this woman?  

On the spot, I told her about the goal of being hungry for meals.  It works for breakfast – if I am really looking forward to breakfast, I am willing to put down my dinner fork.  I bet that would work for other people too.  I also suggested that she should concentrate on preparing and eating what foods she liked best.  Being hungry for food you are really looking forward to – the best combination.  My problems eating at night have practically disappeared.  It only surfaces when I have no plan for breakfast the next day. 

Having thought about this some more, I would ask her to run the following experiment: get what you need to prepare a breakfast that is 100% satisfying to you (within calorie limits).  No diet food!  I use bacon, or steel cut oats, or eggs, or sausages, there are so many great choices.  It should be your favorite!  You should do this two times:

  • First Try: act normally, eat your dinner, deal with your late night cravings as you usually do, then get up in the morning and have your fun breakfast.  Yay!
  • Second Try: when you are having dinner, start thinking and talking about this great breakfast you are looking forward to.  Allow yourself to get excited about it.  Tell yourself that it will taste even better if you are hungry for it.  Take note of any feelings for late night cravings, but concentrate on getting yourself hungry for tomorrow.  When you wake up, prepare and eat your most exciting breakfast, that you have worked and struggled and sacrificed for.  

No contest, right?  The drama, anticipation, and hunger, will make the Second Try food really satisfying and exciting.  You may never go back to your old ways again.   I won’t!

-The Doctor

20190627 Daily report

The Doctor uses rewards to make sure the weight loss program is followed.  Never punish yourself for having a bad diet day.  Overeating happens from time to time.  The mistake is to be mad at yourself.  Don’t get mad.  Eagerly take the opportunity to learn.  What happened that day?  Did you truly plan out your meals well?  Did you eat on time?  Were you eating foods you really enjoy?  I have found that missing any of those things will cause problems.  

Rewards pull you forward.  If you are looking forward to breakfast, you are willing to stop eating dinner, so you can enjoy breakfast properly.  

Breakfast has to be worth getting hungry for

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x pork carnitas on tortilla half with sour cream (200)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Persian kebab wrap from Moby Dick Restaurant (760)

  • 760 calories 

Dinner – hamburger on a half wrap (425)

  • 425 calories

Snacking – sampler of barbecue food: beans, mac and cheese, collard greens, potato salad (300)

  • 300 calories

Total for the day: 1885 calories (limit 1800)

Today's pants

My calorie count was a little over the limit today.  I blame not enjoying lunch very much.  It’s always a risk going out for a meal when I don’t know exactly what I would like at that restaurant.  Anyway, as a result I was a bit out of control at dinner time, ate my burger too quickly, and then helped myself to a little of several dishes from Urban BBQ.   There is some guessing involved in how much I ate.  That is, I guessed.  I should have measured.  That’s why I have to be so careful!  

Lunch was at a restaurant I don’t know well.  One bite of my kebab told me I wasn’t going to enjoy it.  It wasn’t bad, just not great, not rewarding.  Maybe I should have gotten a doggie bag and eaten half the sandwich.  Then, at home, I could have eaten the more enjoyable BBQ food without a worry.  On this weight loss program, I have to be pretty demanding and selfish about food.  

Interestingly, I was able to learn more watching the group eat today.  The thinnest guy ate his meat but left most of the rice on his plate.  Most of the guys who were heavier, cleaned their plates.  (I ate all my kebab, which I didn’t even like.  I am kicking myself now.  It amounted to 760 calories wasted on a sandwich I didn’t enjoy!  My old value of not wasting food, was in force.  My new value is being in control of my weight.  I will try to remember that.)  Generally, the thinner people ate slower and weren’t afraid to leave food on their plates.  The heavier people ate faster and ate everything.  Subtle differences.  

Pants.  Today I wore size 46 pants.  I haven’t done that for a while.  I have said goodbye to size 52, 50, and now 48.  At 263 pounds, I am fitting into size 46.  2XL shirts are fitting well.  Eventually I will say goodbye to them, too.  What will I be wearing at 250 pounds?  I won’t know, at best, until the end of July. 

Anyway, size 46 is a triumph.  Does that count as a reward?  I did buy new pants.

-The Doctor

20190626 Daily report

Losing 120 pounds is a difficult piece of work.  And doing it by forcing yourself to eat less food, for a year, is even more difficult.  I have never managed it in the past. I did try, and all that happened was I got really disappointed in myself – my failure to keep it up, failure to be strong, failure to have willpower, failure to follow through.  That kind of thing makes you doubt yourself.  I want a life that is great and makes me feel great! 

However, I have gotten a lot of success out of persuading, bribing, and rewarding myself to eat less.  I’ve done it over 6 months now and lost over 60 pounds.  That’s pretty great.  I bribe myself by enjoying food I really like.  OK, it’s not quite that simple.  

Big Greek Cafe! Wednesday $5 Gyro!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x BLT wraps with precooked Kirkland bacon (200)

  • 400 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 2 x Italian sausages (220); wrapped in flatbreads (110); with sauteed peppers and onions (30)

  • 580 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160)

  • 160 calories

Total for the day: 1740 calories (limit 1800)

Accept no substitutes

For breakfast, I tried the precooked bacon again, from Costco.  It’s 90 calories for 2 slices, and I used six slices (three per wrap).  That’s 270 calories, and 110 for the flatbread.  I don’t really count the tomato slices and lettuce, but throw a few extra calories on there for horseradish sauce.  It was really disappointing – leathery texture, hardly any flavor.  It might as well have been a turkey sandwich, only tougher.  No, bacon must be the real kind and cooked fresh to be at its best.  Sadly, the pre cooked bacon will go in the trash.  I don’t want to eat it and I don’t want to waste my few allowed calories on it.  

My whole system of weight control depends on persuading or bribing myself to eat less, using really, really good food as the reward.  Today, breakfast was a disaster.  My body and mind were unhappy and at odds with my will – the part of me that likes to think it’s in charge.  Breakfast could have been so much better.  So I went through the morning feeling resentful and disappointed.  That’s no way to persuade anyone.

I made this loss up to myself with a gryo sandwich.  I don’t know how many people look forward to Wednesdays, but I am one of them.  I look forward to my $5 Wednesday gyro at the Big Greek Cafe all week.  So, luckily, I was able to turn my lemon of a breakfast into lemonade.  Having a terrible breakfast set me up to really appreciate having a delicious and fresh gyro for lunch.  I spent the rest of the day very happy with myself and had a great diet day.  

When you are losing weight, find a way to persaude yourself to do it willingly.  Once you have found that way, you can’t make many compromises.  The price I pay for losing weight consistently, is fussiness about the food and an insistence that it be exactly when I want it, and how I like it.  I can live with that.  I have learned a lot about what I do and don’t like.  That self knowledge is gold.  Learn yourself and persuade yourself!

-The Doctor

20190625 Daily report

Rewards make my world go around.  The diet advice is “Don’t Make Food a Reward.”  Fiddlesticks.  I have transformed how I think about food.  With that change, it is actually helpful and constructive to my weight control strategy to use food as a reward.  I can bribe myself to eat less.  And then reward myself with really exciting food for eating less.  

Those are prime rib burgers....mmmmmmmmm!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Pork carnitas on a half tortilla (200); one piece of cold Pizzeria Uno thin crust pizza (170)

  • 370 calories

Lunch – 6 slices of pizza (100)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Grilled prime rib burger on a half wrap with tomatoes, pickles, and lettuce (405); Grilled Italian sausage link (220)

  • 625 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (125)

  • 205 calories

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

The magic transformation is hunger, not fullness

At the center of my mental transformation is switching the goal of eating.  Most of us eat to be full.  We associate being full with comfort and satisfaction.  That can be unhealthy and you can get into a place where you are eating and getting full, just for the comfort and satisfaction.  That’s not a good place.  

When your goal is to be full, you can also fall into a trap of overeating at every meal.  If you do that, you will become overweight.  For such a mental state, you can understand why the advice is “Don’t Use Food as a Reward.”  You already are, in the sense that you are eating for emotional reasons to produce good feelings.  

My goal is to be hungry.  Not all the time!  Nobody wants to live like that.  But I want to be hungry when I take my first bite.  And I want to feel satisfied after the meal and between meals.  (If you pay attention, you will agree that the first serving, if at all adequate, is the most satisfying to a hungry person.  Everything you eat after that is just you trying to be full.)  So, focus on your hunger.  Hunger is your friend.  If you are hungry at mealtimes, you are doing it right.  

At this time, I am pretty significantly in calorie deficit every day.  To convince myself to do that, I put all my willpower into making myself happy about the food I am allowing myself.  If has to be fantastic.  Then my mind and body are willing to make the trade and eat less.  That has made my taste more refined, and I am more aware of what I really want.  So, I have improved my life this way – I am dedicated to making myself happy, I have refined my senses, and adopted a higher eating goal.   It’s worked so far.  

Tonight, I was peckish after 10PM.  That’s unusual, and I had a few pretzels and some cherries.  I was swimming today, maybe that had something to do with my attack of the munchies.  One has to be careful how much to eat in this situation – I want to be hungry for breakfast, after all.

-The Doctor

20190624 Daily report

Every day, I keep my food journal and try to regulate my food intake to 1800 calories.  I am trying to align my intake to about 13,000 calories per week.  At that intake level, I will lose between two and three pounds a week.  The loss varies a bit but the trend  has been very steady on average.  

Today I said goodbye to visiting family.  Now it’s time to get back into my routine.  Luckily, I have some leftovers I am really looking forward to eating!

Italian Sunday Gravy - super meaty

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham (40); salami (90); and cheese (70); bagel (330) sandwich

  • 530 calories

Lunch – chips and hummus (150); bread (100); chicken and cheese half wrap (125); chocolate chip cookie (100); leftover grilled corn on the cob (120)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Italian Sunday gravy (300); 4 ounces noodles (200)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – pretzels and cheese (200)

  • 200 calories

Total for the day: 1830 calories (limit 1800)

Honesty in the food journal

It’s very important to write everything you eat down in your food journal.  If you leave things out, you can’t control your food intake and count your calories.  Write in your journal right away after you eat something. 

A few times, after I have written up my blog post for the night and published it, I will eat something else or drink something with calories.  I update my food journal to reflect the extra food.  But I am never sure if I should go back and edit the blog post.  To make up for this, I try to write my posts as late in the day as possible.  And since my goal of eating is to be hungry for my next meal, evening eating has largely disappeared from my behavior.  That’s surprising to me, because I had it down as a real problem behavior.  

Part of the answer is that I have found I am just not hungry when I wake up (6.30-7.30AM).  I usually eat between 8.30-9.30AM.  Since I want to be hungry before I eat, it pressures me not to eat too much for dinner, or after that, late at night.  I just won’t be hungry all morning, and that throws off my whole day food-wise.  Three meals are working for me.  9AM, 11.30AM, and 5.30PM.  The spacing isn’t even, is it?  But those mealtimes are a result of trial and error. 

Above, I said my aim is 13,000 calories per week.  Since it takes 3500 calories of deficit to lose a pound, and I usually lose 2-3 pounds, I am probably between 7,000-10,000 calories in deficit every week.  That’s a lot!  It means I am eating only 60% of the calories I need to maintain my weight.  Do you see why I need to constantly reward myself, and understand why I need to work so hard to get my food just right?  I can’t do that by willpower alone.  I need cooperation from all parts of myself. 

So far, treating myself really nicely and carefully considering and preparing food I want to eat, and implementing milestone rewards, are doing the job that willpower alone couldn’t.  It’s amazing how changing your mind can change your abilities.  

-The Doctor

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