Stay on a diet

20190613 Daily report

Every day, I monitor my food intake and regulate it.  Also, I weigh myself every week.  Together, those two operations put me in control of my body’s weight.  Part of monitoring my food intake is writing down everything I eat.  Regulation is a bit trickier.  I don’t have the willpower to force myself to eat less.   But I am willing to be bribed into eating less food.  The bribery takes many forms, including making sure that the food I eat is strongly appealing to me.  

My diet food - corn, roast pork, and baguette with butter

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Jimmy Dean sausage egg croissantwich (410)

  • 410 calories

Lunch – 4 ounces cooked noodles (200); half Italian sub sandwich (300); cookies (100)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – roast pork loin with apples (200); baguette (250); corn on the cob (150)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate (110)

  • 190 calories

Total for the day: 1800 calories (limit 1800)

Clothes

I was recently reminded that as I lose weight, my clothes won’t fit any more.   Any pants I buy will only fit briefly (a couple of months) at my current weight loss pace.  I hadn’t thought about other clothes, but eventually all my Oxford shirts (button down collar types) will be too loose to wear, especially around the neck, but the body too.  That will all have to be turned over.  And what makes it worse is that I don’t know what my real final weight will be yet.  205?  200? 195?  The BMI scale suggests 144-195 pounds, but that is a big range.  What will my final size be?  What will I wear?  

In a way I don’t like to deal with this issue until I have to, it feels like “jinxing” my progress, counting chickens before they are hatched, etc.  But I have gone ahead and bought a series of pants, waist sizes 46, 44, and 42.  They are all too small for me, but the size 50 pants I am using now are too big, and the size 48 pants I own fit perfectly now.  By the end of this month, I wouldn’t be surprised to see size 46 fitting.  At that point, my shirts will probably start looking too big, too.  My winter coat?  Too big.  I own one suit.  It will fit briefly during the summer (coat is 52 long, size 46 pants)  and then be too big.  

So the charity shops will do well out of me for the rest of this year. Then I will have to construct a new wardrobe.  It’s an opportunity, but I hope I can settle on a permanent weight relatively quickly.  Making that transition will also be difficult.  I won’t be losing weight (on purpose), I will be trying to maintain a weight.  But for now, I will just try to be happy about the way my food lifestyle is working out.  Really, when the lifestyle is working well, I am very happy to be in calorie deficit.  It feels like a worthwhile cause, and brings the different parts of my mind and body together.

-The Doctor

20190612 Daily report

My daily commitment has the two parts made famous by repetition: (1) weigh yourself weekly and (2) regulate your food intake.  The difference between this weight loss scheme and most others is in how you spend your willpower.  You can fight yourself to eat less, but I have found it more productive to use my willpower to focus on my eating goal – getting hungry so as to enjoy the next meal.  

$5 Wednesday Gyro!!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wrap (200); leftover rice (160)

  • 360 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Pretzels and hummus (200); hummus bread (150); chocolate almonds (200)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Jaffa cakes (100); Hershey chocolate bar (220); ice cream (310)

  • 710 calories

Total for the day: 2220 calories (limit 1800)

What to do when diet failure occurrs

Failure is a strong word, but I am using it to mean that I exceeded my calorie allowance by a fair amount (420 calories).  On a regular diet, you might be mad at yourself or feel disgusted with yourself.  There might even be an urge to punish yourself by skipping a meal the next day, or trying to make up for the difference.  Don’t do that.  Take the chance to learn about yourself and find out something about yourself, that you can use later.  The point is to improve your life and you can’t do that without finding out what makes you happy and fulfilled.  Where did that failure occur today?  

My focus is on hunger.  I spend my willpower making sure I will be hungry in time for meals.  Today, I did the job a little too well.  I didn’t make the most of breakfast, and had leftover rice for some of the meal.  That was probably a mistake.  Next, I waited to have lunch until 12.30 because I didn’t feel ravenously hungry at 11.30, my usual time.  By the time I realized I was really hungry, it was too late and I was over hungry.  I ate my sandwich way too fast and therefore didn’t enjoy most of it.  

Now part of me took over that comes out when I get too hungry.  It wants to feel full and doesn’t care about my wish to be hungry and in control.  So I overate of carbohydrate-rich foods, and then my timing and calories for dinner were off.  I didn’t want to punish myself by withholding dinner, because that would make the panic worse.  I want to have the different parts of myself working together, and I can’t do that if I am punishing parts of myself.  Those parts need to be understood and loved, not punished or hated.  I caused the problem with some bad judgment.  I can’t then get mad at myself for reacting like I know I want to.  I have experienced this problem before.  

Anyway, this is a chance to put my focus back on hunger.  I want to be hungry tomorrow morning, and I will just have to make sure that I eat on time and have food ready that I really want to eat.  Tomorrow is a new day and I can get my balance back.  I am grateful that my body has predictable responses and I can learn from them.  Eventually.  Be patient with yourself.  

-The Doctor

20190611 Daily report

These daily posts are for the purpose of documenting my food intake.  I also talk about other problems I encounter on my project, to gain control of my body’s weight.  Today was a reward day.  Recently I got below 270 pounds, and I promised myself that if I did, I would reward myself with a special meal.  There are people who think it is strange or at least counterproductive to reward myself with food, while dieting.  But since a key part of my diet is to transform the way I think about food and eating, it actually helps me to have rewards.  The reward is something I really like and don’t usually have.  Sometimes I make it, and sometimes I go out.  

Massive Steak Burrito!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x pizza slices (100); apple fruit bar (110)

  • 310 calories

Lunch – Chuy’s steak burrito (1010); rice and beans (160)

  • 1170 calories 

Dinner – leftover burrito

  • (see above)

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (120)

  • 200 calories

Total for the day: 1680 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Rewards keep you going

Food rewards are a great idea, if you are willing to change yourself and how you think about eating.  For most people, dieting is temporary and they go back to their old habits after a while, sometimes after a successful weight loss.  However, it is easy to gain the weight back since you are living the same way you did before.

My goal for eating is to really enjoy my food.  To do that, I have to be hungry, ravenously hungry.  Food you are really looking forward to eating tastes the best when you are hungry for it.  So you can’t overeat when you are thinking this way.  If you eat too much, you won’t be hungry for your next meal.  Also, I have found that after the first helping of even my favorite foods, I am no longer enjoying it as much.  Then I have a choice: keep eating until I am completely full, or stop eating to preserve my hunger for the next meal.  

My body is willing to eat less food if it is food I really want to eat – if I have something to look forward to.  Part of looking head is food rewards!  When I am looking ahead to a weight milestone, I plan a reward for when I reach it.  Most recently, I was going to reward myself with an enormous Texas steak burrito from Chuy’s restaurant.  (They are a national chain based in Austin.)  It’s not clear from the picture, but that burrito was almost 11 inches long and full of steak.  That was more steak than I have eaten in a long time, and it was really, really good, because I made sure I was really, really hungry.  I am willing to go back there again for another reward in the future. 

In keeping with my desire to not get too full, I ate half the burrito for lunch.  Then I ate the other half for dinner.  That’s right, I got to reward myself AGAIN with the same food.  And it was good again, though not as good as it was at lunch time.  

Rewards pull me forward.  They also make me happy, it is fulfilling a promise to myself.  I get to be happy, eat steak burritos, and lose weight.  This is great!  It could be great for you, too.

-The Doctor

20190610 Daily report

The purpose of my daily posts is to keep my food journal and remind myself why that is important.  Since January 2019, I have been becoming a new person with a new life, and new values to live by.  This new person values being in control of his body’s weight, and has a plan for doing that.  The mechanics of the plan are: (1) monitor your weight and (2) regulate the intake of food.  These mechanisms failed me in the past due to two main problems: they took a lot of willpower and I didn’t really value being thinner.  A lot of other things were more important than being thin, in my old life.  Thanks to the mental changes I have made, I have lost nearly 60 pounds since January.  Willpower was not really involved!  I found a way around that.

Trying it with numbers today

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Apple fruit bar (110); Bella Vita crackers (230); Beef jerky (90); peanut butter crackers (130)

  • 560 calories

Lunch – catered lunch: chicken adobo, rice, corn salad, guacamole (450)

  • 450 calories 

Dinner – breaded chicken (200); rice (100); green beans (25)

  • 325 calories

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

  • 190 calories

Total for the day: 1525 calories (limit 1800)

Eating by numbers

In the Futurama TV series, there’s a pair of virtual reality glasses you can wear that lets you see the world through someone else’s eyes.  If you look at today’s food picture, you will see I have labeled each component with the number of calories it contains.  See the world through a calorie counter’s eyes!  It’s just a joke, though, eyeballing your food portions doesn’t work.  You end up cheating even if you don’t want to.  So the calories were all measured using package information, a scale, or volume measure.  

If you visit the weight loss forums at Reddit and similar sites, you will see that CICO reigns supreme.  That’s Calories In Calories Out.  The technique is the undisputed king of losing weight.  However, many people will admit they gain some or all the weight back, once they stop dieting.  That is, they diet, reach their goal, and then stop dieting.  Not only that, but the person doesn’t keep monitoring their food intake and weight.  That’s no way to live.  It makes losing weight and dieting a futile exercise of your willpower. 

I continue to be impressed that there are people out there with that kind of willpower.  The Doctor doesn’t have it.  I got around that problem by redefining how I see the world.  I don’t eat to be full any more.  I have switched my eating goal to quality over quantity of food.  Quality is narrowly defined by me as “things I really like to eat”, and does not include things that other people say are healthy for me.  Is it healthier to be thin, or to be eating health foods?  My answer is, being thin is more desirable. 

I am confident about this system, having consistently lost weight with no feeling of overall deprivation.  I don’t feel like I am starving myself and I am not using willpower to eat Diet Foods that I don’t like.  This has been an intense and enjoyable experience so far.  

Tomorrow I am going to talk about clothes, especially pants.  These are things to think about when you are losing weight at the rate of 10 pounds per month.

-The Doctor

20190609 Daily report

My transformation into a person who was capable of losing weight, and more deeply capable of controlling his body’s weight, included the adoption of two patterns of behavior that I intend to follow as long as I am alive.  (1) Regulate your food intake.  (2) Weigh yourself every week.  To include these commandments or directives in my life, I had to become a new person who valued weight control.  It had to become part of my vision of the good that I am pursuing in my life.  I sacrificed my old self and in the process am becoming a new one.  The old person couldn’t lose weight.  He tried and tried.  This new person that I am becoming sure can lose weight.  In a way, I decided to accept certain limitations of my body which I think apply to almost everyone.  

Meatball, hummus, red cabbage and pickle wraps, 250 calories each

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x BLT wraps (200); half piece extra bacon (35)

  • 435 calories

Lunch – 2 x meatball and hummus wraps (250)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 3 x pizza slices (100); chips (160); 2 x Jaffa cakes (50); 11 Kirkland chocolate almonds (160)

  • 720 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); pancake pieces (50)

  • 170 calories

Total for the day: 1825 calories (limit 1800)

Changes to the body followed changes to the mind

I have written extensively about the mental changes needed to become a thin person, and stay that way.  Regrettably, I have come to accept that everybody must practice some form of food control and weight control throughout their lives, or they will become more and more overweight.  Everyone you see who is thin, makes an effort to be that way and stay that way.  Speaking to such people, I have noticed they are obsessed with their weight.  Speak to someone who is overweight, and you will find they pay much less attention to their weight and do not have the same priorities in their lives.  

A simple experiment.  Find a friend who has stayed thin and ask them some questions.  You will find out that they know exactly how much they weigh from a recent weighing.  They will know how many calories they can eat, or have some other system of measuring their food intake.  Watch them around food and you will see they are very careful, and may use social cues to see how much to eat.

My conclusion is that if you don’t pay attention to your weight and your food intake, you will get more and more overweight throughout your life.  Many people impressively are able to lower their weight through dieting.  The Doctor salutes these people, who have more willpower than he does.  The problem is that people reach their immediate weight goal, then stop dieting and go back to their old habits.  Overweight becomes a problem again in a few months or years.  It is better, then, to invent a new life for yourself and sacrifice the old one.  In the new life, you will accept that your body has this limitation: it will gain weight unless you regulate your intake and monitor your weight all the time.  

It is probably unwise to see that limit as a burden.  Wrap it into your new life.  Having to carefully choose what to eat and who to be, given that limit, opens up possibilities and allows you to set a positive path in your life.  What is the good you are aiming for?  How would being in control of your weight help you achieve it?  That is what I am thinking about too.  

-The Doctor

20190608 Saturday weigh-in

The Doctor is following a system of weight control, rather than dieting.  Every Saturday I weigh myself.  This is so important, I am also teaching my children to do it.  Weigh yourself every week, even if you aren’t dieting.  Keep a record, and you will have 52 weights per year written down.  It will be really clear if you are gaining, losing, or staying the same weight.  If you don’t do this, you will almost certainly gain weight.  That’s sad but true. 

The second part to controlling your body’s weight is to regulate your food intake, which also means monitoring it.  If you do that accurately and well, your weight will be moving in the direction you expect, every week.  

Darker picture than usual, but a good number.

This means since beginning my weight control system I have lost…..

Pounds!!
0

The weight loss calculations were correct!!!!

That is fantastic, considering the weekly calorie total was 13,755.  Let me explain. 

I usually try to limit myself to 1800 calories per day.  On swim days, that’s a little higher and my average for the week is usually 1850 calories per day.  Per week, that means I am eating about 13,000 calories. 

Someone like me should be eating 22,400 calories per week to maintain current weight.  That’s plugging my information into the calculator at healthline.com (most of the calculators you will find on the Internet agree with this number).  So, the 22,400 I should be eating to maintain my weight, minus the 13,000 I am eating per week is 9,400 calories.  What does that mean?  

The weight loss number, expressed in calories, is 3500.  The fact is that if you are in deficit 3500 calories in a week, you will lose one pound of weight.  I am usually in deficit 9,400 calories per week, which means I should be losing between 2-3 pounds per week.  Amazingly, that has been fairly accurate over the last 6 months.  22 weeks have gone by and I have lost 58 pounds, or 2.6 per week.  That’s an average, some weeks have been more or less, due to illness or other reasons.  

So, this week I had about 800 calories more than usual.  Instead of a deficit of 9400 calories, I was in deficit 8600.  That’s still more than two pounds (7000 calories), so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.  

The above calculations all come from my daily food log.  I have a fairly simple one that describes what I ate, how I felt, and how many calories, my health, and whether I exercised.  That bank of data, or self knowledge, is pretty useful.  As it grows, I will learn more and more about myself.  That can all be harnessed in service of the new goal I am living out: create a life full of satisfaction and fulfillment, be able to enjoy lovely food, and control my weight.  So far that has all come true.  Having lost 58 pounds, I am gaining confidence that this system works.

The above is all true, but the most true part is that to lose weight you really have to let go, change yourself dramatically, and live out the changes in a way that makes your life better.  Say no to dieting, because dieting is too often a way of making strictly temporary changes.  You are still the same person after dieting.  THe Doctor is a new person with new values and priorities, and a new life goal and new eating goals.  This was a big transformation.  It doesn’t make me a better person, but it does make me one who is in control of his weight and who has found meaning and fulfillment in that part of life.  How could you life improve?

-The Doctor

20190607 Daily report

Paying attention is the most important change you can make, if you want to be in control of your body’s weight.  Sometimes that is easy and sometimes not.  Today the Doctor went to a party where there was party food for dinner, but there was no way to count calories!  So I had to guess.  I did my best by remembering to write everything down in my food journal.  However, my camera phone is currently a brick.  Until I find a substitute, pictures will be a bit limited.  

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/8 Blueberry pie (400); slice of Spanish tortilla (165)

  • 565 calories

Lunch – 2 x Italian sausage links (250)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – Spicy Asian noodle salad (200); boneless chicken wings (100); cheeseburger slider (200); pizza (100); Nepalese potato salad (50)

  • 650 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160)

  • 160 calories

Total for the day: 1875 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Becoming and staying thin has to be your highest value.

Continuing from yesterday, today I still was not able to pay full attention to getting hungry.  This was due to putting my swim above my diet in terms of priority, but I still didn’t think about my beef jerky snacks.  More on that below.  

Breakfast was as soon as I got up.  I didn’t wait until hunger was pressing and that went well.  I know that eating something so sugary as pie wouldn’t last the morning, hence the slice of Spanish tortilla.    I wasn’t able to eat lunch until 12.30, even though I usually eat around 11.30. The usual result of delaying a meal is that I lose control around 4PM.  Luckily, the party was at 3 and the potluck was pretty lucky.  I was able to find things I really liked and were filling.  I contributed the spicy noodle salad, or else I would have taken less of it.  I knew it would be good. 

After such a nice dinner so early in the day, I was satisfied for the rest of the night.  Unlike yesterday, when part of me really wanted to eat and made that known all evening, today I have stayed satisfied and have had no interest in eating anything else.  No willpower required.  (That’s really something.  When I was gaining weight, eating the equivalent of a second dinner in the evening was my biggest self-identified issue.)  But back to the point: this is all critical self-knowledge.  The important point is that I need to put my diet above other considerations, like swimming.  I like to swim, but it is not essential to my weight loss plan.  Next time, I must put my eating in first priority.  When I am so much in calorie deficit for the day (about 1000 calories per day), I don’t have the margin to put other things first.  It’s a lesson I will have to learn over and over in different ways.  

Tomorrow: weighing day.  I am confident I will weigh less than last time, but less confident it will be an impressive amount of loss.  I ate 700 calories more this week than my optimum.  That’s why weight control has to be first in your mind.  I have promised myself that eating fewer calories will be rewarded!  I can’t break that promise by not eating on time.  That’s unfair and will erode my diet, because important parts of me just won’t cooperate.  My promise to myself is that important, and I will work on keeping it better. 

-The Doctor

20190606 Daily report

A few weeks ago, my problem was facing the scale.  There are two parts to my system of weight control: (1) regulate your food intake and (2) weigh yourself periodically.  I was a bit psyched out over facing the scale, even though I was pretty sure my food regulation was going well.  Now, I find my worry has reversed.  I don’t mind the scale.  Instead, I am having some problems keeping my hunger where I want it.  Ideally, I eat three times a day: 8AM, 11.30AM, and 5:30PM.  I started the day today with something unusual for me – a test of the most famous breakfast sandwich there is.  

This is a well made sandwich with good components

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Sausage Egg McMuffin (480)

  • 480 calories

Lunch – 6 x slices of Aldi frozen pizza (100)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 2 x bratwurst raps (300)

  • 600 calories

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

  • 190 calories

Total for the day: 1870 calories (limit 1800)

Hunger management

It always surprises people when I tell them that McDonald’s uses a whole real egg per McMuffin.  It’s true.  I used to assemble these things one summer in high school.  The eggs were real, and almost everything in the store was good quality material.  It’s a good sandwich.  Compared to the frozen breakfast sandwich from Jimmy Dean, this McMuffin has a larger sausage and more egg, a more tangy cheese, and butter.  The muffin is the weak point.  Compared to the Jimmy Dean croissant, it’s unremarkable.  But at 480 calories, I think swapping in a croissant would make this sandwich remarkably calorie heavy.

For lunch, I was late today.  I didn’t eat until 1.15PM or so, and I was very hungry.  I wolfed most of the pizza slices down.  (I carry beef jerky with me now, but I am having a hard time recognizing that I need to use it.)  Getting too hungry is counter productive, and I was sure my body would be in a food panic.  Sure enough, starting at 4PM all I could think about was dinner.  I don’t know if I was really hungry or just having a reaction to eating lunch so late.  So I ate dinner early.  Now I am having to use some willpower to keep myself focused on tomorrow. 

I want to be hungry for breakfast, there will be blueberry pie!  And, I am not actually hungry now.  But part of me is upset about getting too hungry at lunchtime.  That part wants food security and wants to feel full.  That part thinks we are hungry.  Imagine a little voice saying “We are not full!  Quickly, eat until you are so full you can’t eat any more!  Then you will be satisfied.”  Normally that voice keeps quiet.  But today I had bad hunger management.  That’s rather careless of me.  Part of the tradeoff I have made to be in control of my weight, is to pay a lot of attention to what and when I eat.  There are consequences if I don’t.  

My normal feelings at this point in the evening are satisfaction and happiness that I have eaten well and am ready to do it again tomorrow.  I know I am going to lose weight on top of that.  Now that feeling is spoiled and I am unsatisfied.  Tomorrow, I am going to pay careful attention and make myself feel loved and attended to.  Then the little voice will get drowned out in the sea of satisfaction I usually get to feel.  Behold the price of success!  It is absolutely worth the effort, when done well. 

-The Doctor

20190605 Daily report

It’s important to understand how people stay thin.  You aren’t different from other people.  If you do what the thin people do, you will stay thin, too.  My experience is that people who stay thin are very interested, or somewhat obsessed about it.  That’s not a bad thing.  While I was gaining weight, I was definitely not obsessed with staying thin.  I wasn’t thinking about it at all very much.  Now I could fairly describe myself as very interested or even a bit obsessed about it.  And I am losing weight.  If I stopped being interested, stopped paying attention, I would go back to gaining weight.  That’s true for everybody else, too.  The naturally thin person, who can carelessly eat without gaining weight, is a myth.  

A favorite breakfast. Note the horseradish sauce.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 x BLT wraps (200); extra bacon slice (70)

  • 470 calories

Lunch – “Ninja” Taiwanese style fried chicken (200); Duck Donut (250)

  • 450 calories 

Dinner – 2 x bratwurst wraps (300); Partial slice of Spanish tortilla (100); Bread (100)

  • 800 calories

Snacking – pretzels (80)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1800 calories (limit 1800)

Quickie

I am very interested in eating food as a sensual, pleasurable experience.  That’s why my BLT wraps are so good.  But how does a lover of food stay thin?  Julia Child had an answer.  She was quoted as saying “a little of everything, but no seconds.”  She had a system for regulating her food intake!  There’s also a New England food saying, “if you get up from the table with an appetite, you shall never sit down without one.”  Now I take that with a grain or spoon of salt, since New Englanders of that period were famously against using food as a sensual experience.  But there’s no doubt that it places the focus on being hungry, where it should be.  Julia Child’s advice suggests that you have to enjoy what you have because you don’t get any more.  It’s the same – don’t get full. 

Almost everyone wants to be full when they eat.  But they are usually wrong.  Don’t get full, that’s how you gain weight.  There’s also a sensual reason for not getting full.  If you are ravenously hungry when you sit down, your food will taste better.  You will really be concentrating on it.  And if you make the sacrifice – if you give up a future where you are comfortably full – you must reward yourself.  You can reward yourself with a measured amount of really tasty food that you are looking forward to.  In essence, you will eat your best food at the peak of your ability to enjoy it.  And you are controlling your weight as you do it.  

Isn’t that a wonderful way to live?  It’s working for me.  It could work for you.

-The Doctor

20190604 Daily report

Being in control of your body’s weight is different from being on a diet and losing weight.  Many people have lost weight, using different methods such as keto.  Reading the forums there seems to be little doubt that keto diets, faithfully followed, result in weight loss.  But how do you maintain your new body?  You only know (1) your old life, which makes you gain weight, and (2) the diet, where you can lose weight, using a lot of will power. 

The internet is full of stories of people gaining, losing, and then gaining all their weight back.  That’s a tragedy, considering all the will power they put into losing that weight in the first place.  And it’s very demoralizing.  You have worked and sacrificed to lose that weight.  You lost it.  And then it all comes back.  The weight control idea is more of a plan for what happens after you have lost weight.  There is a lot of paying attention involved, but it addresses the problem of What Now.

Blueberry pie for breakfast. It counts as diet food for me.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Blueberry pie, one-eighth slice (400); baked chicken piece (100)

  • 500 calories

Lunch – 2 x bratwurst on flatbread (300)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 2 x Spanish tortilla slices on flatbreads with mayonnaise and Tobasco (265)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); raw blueberries (50); 2T hummus (70)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1910 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Swimming day today

I went swimming today.  I like swimming and always have.  Even when I was very overweight, I would make time for doing it.  My point is, I do it because I like it.  Many people have lost weight without going to the gym, or swimming, or increasing their exercise level at all.  There’s no doubt that people who go to the gym regularly are more physically fit.  You could make the case they are carrying their weight differently than a non-exerciser.  And being stronger is better for carrying out your work.  But it doesn’t seem essential for weight loss.  

Exercise can make you hungry, though.  By 4PM, I was already getting hungry.  Tea with half and half held things off, and I ate dinner at 5:30.  However I was hungry again by 8:00 and had some hummus and some blueberries.  That worked. The impatient part of me (a large part of me is impatient) tries to fight against having any more calories.  That voice says, maybe, if I don’t eat extra calories, I will lose weight faster.  I used to listen to that voice a lot.  But now I listen to being hungry.  Withholding food when I am hungry is like a punishment, and who needs that?  Losing weight is hard enough.  Maybe my weight loss won’t be as fast this week.  But losing weight isn’t the point. 

Losing weight is not hte point??!?!  What are you saying, Doctor?

I am building a new lifestyle that I like and a way I want to live, that I will be living for a long time.  This lifestyle includes weight control.  If losing weight is a little faster one week and a little slower another week, well, I am still in control.  Paying attention still happens, the food journal is still written.  I know when I am eating more and eating less.  But while reaching 205 pounds is a goal, it is not the main goal.  Building my new life and having it be fulfilling, satisfying, and wonderful, is the main goal.  Dieting doesn’t get me to where I want to go.  Weight control is the way forward.  

-The Doctor  

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