Stay on a diet

20190414 Daily report

Every day, I keep track of my food intake and calorie count using a spreadsheet.  I plan to do it for the rest of my life.  That’s because people who stay thin and in control of their weight do two things.  (1) They monitor their weight and (2) control their food intake.  I’m not somebody who can do that by eyeball.  The tools of the trade are nutrition information on the package, calorie counting and the kitchen scale.  Sometimes I use a cup measure.  

As determined as I am to do this, and though I have used the technique to lose more than 40 pounds, I simplify a bit.  I had a sandwich wrap today, and I don’t carefully count the condiments, like pickles, sauerkraut, lettuce, tomatoes, mustard, or horseradish sauce (not usually together on the same sandwich).  I do a quick estimate.  Usually I round up to the nearest 50 or 100 calories, so if my sandwich is 460, with pickles and horseradish sauce, I say 500 calories total instead of counting pickle slices.  There are limits.

For dinner, I made beef stroganoff – based on an America’s Test Kitchen recipe.  The total calories I calculated at 3000, including the noodles.  I measured  1/5 of the total for my dinner.  

Filet steak in sauce made of cream and white wine.  Look how I suffer! Actually, I love my new lifestyle.

My daily food intake and calorie count are:

Breakfast – Leftover fritatta in a wrap (300), 2x pizza slices (200)

  • 500 calories

Lunch – meatball and hummus wraps (500)

  • 500 calories

Dinner – Homemade beef Stroganoff (400) with egg noodles (200).

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120)

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1720 calories (limit 1800)

Today was a good diet day, though it didn’t feel like it.  I am getting used to these portion sizes.  I kept feeling like I was eating a lot.  I also was a bit late for lunch and didn’t have a snack with me.  That was a fail.  I got really hungry and a bit grumpy.  Luckily, lunch was really good.  

I am recognizing that my Saturday weigh-in is very emotional.  I get anxious about it, and hung up on the results a bit.  I notice my behavior changes towards the end of the week as I worry about Saturday morning.  So far, the results have been good.  But there is that seed of doubt.  Next week, will I have lost weight?  People talk about plateauing, is that a real thing for someone as regimented as I am about counting calories?    I did have two weeks in January where I weighed the same.  I tell myself: stay the course.  This has worked so far and I am really enjoying the feeling that my mind and body are lined up in agreement on how to do this and make it work.  I will deal with problems if they happen.  

-The Doctor

20190413 Saturday weigh-in

Hello, everybody.  I have committed to a weekly weigh-in as part of my new lifestyle. 

That’s what thin people do.  They all  (1) monitor their weight and (2) monitor their food intake.  Be careful!  It’s so easy to fall back into your old life and old life, when you ignored your weight gain and didn’t monitor your food intake.  Keep going!  I plan to do this for as long as I plan to be thin.  That is, for the rest of my life.  Being in control of my weight is a value I have adopted right at the top of who I am – the new me.  

So how is the new me doing, monitoring my weight?  Last week I was 285.4 pounds.

A lower number than before

I need to be very consistent with my weighing.  I usually weigh-in once per week, on Saturday, before breakfast.  Today, I forgot.  I ate breakfast first!  So I waited to weigh until just before lunch.  I have no way of knowing how that changes things, so I don’t want to repeat that mistake next week.  But this means I have probably lost:

Pounds!!!
0

This week I had the recurrence of another old problem.  The weight measured by my scale fluctuated as I got off and on again.  My rule is, the first time I get on the scale is my weight.  So I stopped worrying about it.  My family also did their weigh-in today.  It’s as habit I plan to inculcate into our routine.  Every Saturday morning!  Later, we can take a family walk.  We will all learn together how to control each person’s weight.  

The weekly weigh-in is a time to take stock of my progress.  How am I doing?  It was a good week.  However, it still feels very slow.  I have lost weight, but I am still more than 70 pounds overweight.  That means I am still in large clothes and the differences I see in the mirror are still subtle.  Still, there is progress.  My rate of weight loss is still high.  I am on-track to lose all my extra weight by the end of the year.  It’s been a long time since I was normal weight.  What will that be like?  Will I make it?  What will my final weight be? 

It will also be a strange transition.  I will go from being in serious deficit (1800 calories per day), and raising my intake to about 2500 calories per day.  What will that do to my food intake plan?  It’s carefully balanced for losing weight.  Will I be able to let go and negotiate a new plan with myself?  

For now, I’d better stick to losing weight.  I’ve got some idea of what to do and how to do it.  The rest I will have to construct later.

-The Doctor

How to start a diet 120 pounds overweight, Part 2

In the first post of this series, I talked about the general thinking and philosophy you need for successful lifestyle change:

  • Make the decision (to sacrifice your old self)
  • Accept the realization (thin people monitor and control their weight)
  • Create a plan (monitor your weight, and control your food intake.)
  • Learn about yourself (negotiate to find what you really want, keep yourself satisfied)

Those points were about committing yourself to a change of heart, a change of values, and ultimately a change of lifestyle.  I want to talk some more about the sacrifice you are making and the new self you are creating.    

An old phoenix sacrifices itself and is reborn as a new bird

1. Don’t go on a diet

How do people do on a diet?  Sing along with me, you know the tune.  (1) lose some weight by forcing yourself to make some drastic and unpleasant change, then (2) fall back into your old habits (your old life), suddenly or gradually, then (3) gain back that weight and maybe some more, and (4) repeat.  For your own sake, please don’t go on a diet.   Instead, change who you are.  Let me explain. 

I’ve checked out the weight loss forums and food diary pages, and read some weight loss books.  The advice can be good.  But it needs a framework.  Why are you doing this?  What does it mean for how you live your life?  What are you sacrificing (forever)?  Who will you be, when you have reimagined yourself?  People are full of enthusiasm to give dieting a try.  Motivation is not the issue!  But they run into a few problems that make the whole thing self-defeating.  The first problem is the dieting idea itself.   

Diets set you up for failure because they are built around the idea that you do not need to permanently change your lifestyle or take control of yourself.  They give you excuses that salve your self-image instead of inspiring in you the desire and ability to change forever.  Once you accept the truth that thin people absolutely do monitor and control their weight throughout their lives, you are mentally halfway to getting there yourself.  Think about it: if thin people must monitor and control their weight during their whole lives to stay thin, then so must everyone else, including you and me.  (If you want to be thinner, anyway.)  If you diet, then go back to your old life, your old weight will come right back.

On diets, you are following a temporary plan.  Whether you are on the grapefruit diet, or low carb, South Beach, keto, Atkins, or paleo, or whatever, that diet has a built-in, self-defeating excuse and a dodge of your responsibility to yourself and others.  (The people in your life who depend on you, need you to be at your best.)  If what’s making you heavy is too many carbs, or processed foods, or the lack of grapefruit, well, it’s not your fault, is it?  It’s those darned carbs, or the corporations, or some other demon.  Remember: if thin people must monitor and control their weight during their whole lives to stay thin, then so must you and I. 

Do you really want be someone who is on the diet cycle for the rest of your life?  Don’t diet.  Make a change to your thinking and create a new you who can lose weight and keep it off forever. 

2. Instead, change your mind. Your body will follow.

Your old self was a person who couldn’t lose weight, and who is gaining weight.  You need to be a new person, who can lose weight and keep it off.  That means you must sacrifice the old you.  It has to go.  Does that sound hard?  Well, it is.  Very hard.  You’ve built the old you over many years.  It’s comfortable and secure.  To leave the old you is like being a hermit crab leaving the old shell.  It’s scary and makes you feel unprotected.  Luckily, you have some help in making this difficult change.  You know that successful people sacrifice.  You will read here some ideas on to build a new and better lifestyle for yourself.  Sacrifice your old thinking, goals, aims, and lifestyle that make you overweight.  Find new ones that result in a new you.  I will explain. 

Maybe, like me, your old goal in eating was to feel completely full.  Maybe you find that very comforting – being completely full.  And maybe you have hurt yourself, failing on diet after diet until you can’t trust yourself any more.  You might start to dislike yourself, or get depressed about your failures.  Maybe you have punished yourself for straying off a diet.  Maybe you eat quickly, to get to that full feeling faster.  Maybe you eat while watching TV or using your phone or reading.  The old life is not that wonderful when I describe it, is it?  You must let go of all that.  It will be hard.  Even letting go of hurt is hard.  But it is necessary and there are compensations.   I know an adult who ruined his own life just to upset his parents.  That’s someone who can’t give up their hurt and needs revenge.  Let it go.  

You need to create a new self. You need a plan to become a new person with a new set of values.  THAT is the lifestyle change.  You will become a new person who values being thin and is willing to put in a lot of time and effort to make it happen.  It is a transformation!  You turn yourself from a person who is overweight into one who can succeed at losing weight.  You’re not doing it for anyone else or despite anyone else.  You let the old parts of you burn away and your life is renewed. 

Remember me? I am rebirth and renewal.

You are building a new identity.  What does the new you value above all else?  What is your new aim regarding your eating?  What does a person in control of their weight value?  What is your new goal when you consider eating food?  It all flows from the top.  Change what you value in your life.  If you value having your weight under control, then you need a new aim or purpose in living your life.  Your goals in eating must be different, too.

3. Avoid the willpower trap

A couple of months after I started dieting, my mother sympathetically asked me if I was feeling deprived over the things I was cutting out.  It was hilarious, there was no way to answer her.  We were operating on different planes.  She was thinking in terms of what I was cutting out of my food choices to lose weight.  She was expecting me to be living on willpower and broccoli, constantly hungry and craving.  And I had done that before and failed at it before.  But this time, I was eating better (quality) and enjoying my food more than I ever had since I was in college and decently thin! 

I could only answer her by showing her how I was reframing everything.  Mom, I’m just not thinking about it that way.  I’m not giving up any foods, deprivation is not part of my experience.  Willpower is not being used in the way you think it is.  For breakfast, I had 3 slices of bacon and 3 eggs with cheese.  For lunch, I had a Reuben wrap sandwich.  For dinner, I had a carnitas burrito.  I ate 1730 calories that day and I was hungry for every meal and I enjoyed every bite.  Oh, and I was losing weight too.  The willpower was all used for paying attention to what I was doing.  Deciding which foods would be worth waiting for.  Figuring out how much of them would be enough to enjoy, but not so much that I wouldn’t be hungry for my next meal.  Paying attention while I was eating, so that I would eat carefully and remember to enjoy satisfying my hunger with that first bite and every bite.  I was making a sacrifice, and then ensuring that the sacrifice would be worth it.  What was I sacrificing?  My old self.  My old goal.  My old comfort (which came from eating until I was completely full). 

Don’t use willpower to force yourself to do things you don’t want and can’t live with.  You can’t force yourself to do them forever, and then you will go back to your old life.  Plus, when your willpower fails, you will feel terrible about yourself.  You need to feel your body and mind are working together.  Fulfillment comes from that partnership.  

4. The new you

Imagine you were helping someone else on a diet and they are letting you down, time after time.  How can you trust someone like that?  How can you work with them to accomplish the goal?  Think of your body as another person you must work with.  You need your body and mind to be working together in your new life.  You must love yourself, work with yourself, and reward yourself for a job well done.  You also must figure out (in consultation with yourself, strange as that may sound) a lifestyle that will make you successful at losing weight, and one that you could enjoy being on for many years.  That’s right – if your new lifestyle is enjoyable, losing weight will be enjoyable too.  Losing weight will almost seem beside the point. 

The new you will have to be discovered.  I can tell you about the new me.  Unlike my grandfather, who very effectively controlled his food intake by eating a monotonous diet, I am very interested in the different foods I can eat and I want to keep eating them.  A lifestyle of eating only broccoli wouldn’t work for me, though I like broccoli (with enough butter and cheese).  The new me still values eating as a sensual experience.

What changed?  I moved “in control of my food intake” and “I want to be thin” near the top of my moral hierarchy.  They are up there now, higher than my desire to be frugal, higher than my desire to save money, higher than my desire to buy a house or a new car.  I haven’t saved any money by eating less food, because what I am eating isn’t as cheap, but is more satisfying.  You know, my new values are higher in my mind than “I want to eat together with my family”?  If they don’t make it home in time for dinner, I eat without them.  That sounds terrible, but I am in a serious calorie deficit.  By dinner time, I can get seriously grumpy if kept hungry for too long.  They wouldn’t like me when I’m grumpy.  It’s better if I eat.  When they come home, I can serve them, sit with them, and talk to them about their day.  Do you see how that works?  Being in control of my food intake and being thin are now more important to me than they were before.  I sacrificed that old me, and I sacrificed my old values and I will sacrifice eating with my family, if that gets in my way.  (There are limits – we’re not the Donner party.) 

My aim now is to be in control of my food intake and to be thin.  There are many physical and social benefits to being thin and I won’t go into them here; they are well known and I accept most of them.  But my new aim is a great moral good that I have brought into my life; I will be responsible for my body and how it looks and I will be proud of it.  I am focused on my aim and I will cut off anything that gets in the way (unless it conflicts with a higher value; there are some things even rats won’t do!).  Other things, like spending time with my family, are still important.  But I fit them in if I can.  If it’s work on my food journal, or play with the kids, I complete my journal.  It’s that important to me now.  I don’t compromise in my new aim.  I intend to be like this for the rest of my life, too.  It may sound a bit selfish, but my family will benefit from me being a stronger, fitter, and more disciplined person who is living responsibly. 

My goal now, when eating, is to be hungry.   Using the power of my mind, I have turned hunger from a bad thing into a good thing.  Let me explain.  Before I changed, I wanted to feel absolutely full after every meal.  That was my old goal.  Consequence: overweight.  My new goal is to have every meal be as enjoyable as possible, while still under control.  That goal means that I must be hungry when mealtime comes.  Food tastes best when you are hungry.  The food has to be worth getting hungry for and has to be truly satisfying my cravings.  It has to be just enough to satisfy me and keep me happy until the next meal.  I have found this arrangement works for me, if the food is worth it.  This brings me to rewards.

Reward yourself for doing a good job.  Your body will love you for it.  Make promises to yourself and keep them.  Build your trust in yourself and your abilities.  Each 10 pounds I lose gets rewarded.  I reward myself with special foods.  Do you see how the new me has a system that reinforces itself?  The special food is the ultimate in “worth waiting for”.  I will prepare by getting hungry; I will take my time and enjoy it; I will eat just enough so I will be hungry for the next meal.  I admit that if the reward is an Indian buffet lunch, the next meal might be breakfast.  But I will be hungry for it. 

What if I have a bad day or fall back into my old thinking?  What if I get too hungry, overeat, ruin my plan?  Well, I don’t punish myself, ever.  I try to learn why I did that.  What was different about today?  Did I get cold, did I have some emotional stressor, was I tired?  Was I not planning my meals out?  I learned that I need to have the foods I am craving in the house and ready.  When I get hungry, it gets very urgent, and I really resent eating things I don’t really want.  My old habit was to cook lots of extra food and eat the leftovers as lunch.  Quantity was the goal.  Now I want quality, and if all there is to eat is leftovers I don’t really want, I get resentful.  Maybe rebellious.  I am not satisfied, after the sacrifice I made!  So I rebel. 

So don’t punish yourself.  Try to learn.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Losing weight is a matter of average calorie intake, week by week and month by month.  Leave your anger and disappointment at yourself behind.  It’s better to learn to listen and prevent future binging.  I pay a lot of attention to what foods I keep around, now.  Resentment is destructive. 

Create a new life, one that you can be proud of, and enjoy.  Who wouldn’t want that? 

-The Doctor

20190412 Report

I am happy this week is over.  It was a successful week for losing weight, judging by my food intake, but I need more sleep than this.  

Today was a swimming day.  Using an online calculator, I found that for my height, weight, and exercise regimen, I am burning about 600 calories per workout.  I don’t do this as part of a weight loss program, though.  I just like to swim.  The relaxing hot tub and shower afterwards are part of the reason I go.  And I also use it as a bit of a reward – I allow myself an extra 500 calories if I want to eat them.  And I am usually pretty hungry after exercising.  It’s a great setup, I get to feel like I am doing a splurge and it is part of the plan and feels good.   Today I took out some of my extra calories in chocolate.  

Look Ma, no plate!

Are you thinking, “Oh, no!  Won’t those carbohydrates keep you fat?”  Just remember that I am not on a diet.  I am not restricted in what foods I can eat or when I can eat them.  There is a bit of restraint involved in how much I can eat at one time or in one day. 

There is a daily goal – I try to stay under 1800 calories.  On an exercise day I can go up to 1800 + 500 or 2300 total.   So on a normal day, the choice may be chocolate bar OR breakfast.  But on my exercise splurge day, it’s chocolate bar AND breakfast, and more too.  That chocolate bar is 220 calories.  I broke it into 12 pieces and I took the time to enjoy it.  Reward!

My daily food intake and calorie count are:

Breakfast – 2 x BLT wraps (200) 

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 2 x Costco pepperoni pizza slices (355)

  • 710 calories

Dinner – 3 x Aldi pizza slices (100), chicken and hummus wrap (200).

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), beef jerky (90), Hershey bar (220)

  • 390 calories

Total for the day: 2100 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming)

I  have promised myself not to be too rigid about the daily goal.  If I get hungry, I will eat a snack.  Beef jerky usually does the trick if I have hunger pangs.  If I need something sweet, the pre-wrapped Nestle Li’l Drums ice cream cones are only 110 calories (or 120, depending on the flavor). 

I don’t want to fall into a willpower battle with myself.  I want to eat just enough so I can be hungry in time for the next meal, which has to be something worth being hungry for.  That’s why I eat chocolate, bread, and other carbs sometimes.  I am really looking forward to breakfast.  You’ll see, tomorrow, why it was worth waiting for.  

20190411 Report

I am very sleep deprived today.  The kids took forever to fall asleep and the Toddler of Things was forever getting out of bed.  However, it was a good day for weight loss.  Notice that I am reporting my food journal every day.  It is part of my commitment to a new lifestyle.  I am not dieting just until I reach the goal of 205 pounds.  I am on a weight control lifestyle, for the rest of my life.  I have accepted being thin as an important value, and I have found a way to make it meaningful and celebrate it as something worthwhile.  I accept that everyone struggles with their weight (in a society where food is super abundant) and I am no different.  Nobody healthy is naturally thin.  They all have to work at it.  If they can do it, I can!

Another key commitment is to pay a lot of attention to my eating.  It follows from my moral transformation.  Since being thin is high on my list of values now, and for the rest of my life, I commit to putting in the time, care, and attention to making it work.  I have put a lot of time into understanding myself: what I crave, when I am hungry, my little preferences and habits.  What foods work for me.  What I am willing to sacrifice to be successful. 

Some sacrifice!  That’s about one serving of bread, by the way (2 oz).  Talking of sacrifice, here is my daily intake and calorie count.

Breakfast – BLT wrap (200) and fried chicken piece (300)

  • 500 calories

Lunch – homemade chicken enchilada with sour cream (200), chicken wraps with hummus (300)

  • 500 calories

Dinner – Homemade sausage chili (300), brussels sprouts (30), bread and wine (170).

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), beef jerky (90), Nestle Lil Drums ice cream cone (120)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)

It was a pretty good weight loss day.  I was hungry for all my meals, and was only hungry for a snack around 3-4PM.  I ate the same things my family did for dinner.  My aim is to be a person able to lose weight and keep it off.  My goal is to be hungry for every meal, but not between meals.   I have a purpose and a way to get there.  The struggle to pay attention is all the willpower I need.

-The Doctor

20190410 Report

Last night, I stayed up way, way too late.  It was my own fault, I was busy until late doing some personal financial management.  I may do a series of posts on that too, sometime.  I am a Doctor of Things, after all. 

Today I woke up very, very hungry.  That often happens after an exercise day, and I was a few hundred calories short of my budget yesterday, too.  But it’s Wednesday, and that means Gyro sandwich for lunch day!  I look forward to that all week.  Remember, my diet strategy is to want to be hungry because the upcoming meal is going to be so good.  The Big Greek Cafe near me has a $5 Gyro deal.  Behold my diet food:

The Gryo in its natural habitat

You are seeing 600 calories of hot, yummy gyro with sauce, cheese cube and pepperoncini.  Notice on my diet, I am not restricted in what foods I can eat. 

That is great because I can eat the same things the family does, just a regulated portion of them.  I was reading about keto today, and people were definitely missing their favorite foods.  Too much willpower required for me!  I would definitely be concerned that about eating that way for the rest of my life.  I am trying to make a lifestyle I can joyfully adopt, which improves my appearance.  Wouldn’t you be happy about this lunch? 

Notice that I didn’t get any fries or dessert.  But my stomach is really happy to be on this diet.  I love how with a mental transformation, I have sidestepped the willpower problem: with food like this, what willpower do I need?

My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – Bratwurst wraps (2 x 300)

  • 600 calories

Lunch – $5 gyro from the Big Greek Cafe (600)

  • 600 calories

Dinner – Spaghetti (200), meatballs (230)

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

80 calories

Total for the day: 1710 calories (limit 1800)

Now that I have my Costco flatbreads back in stock (110 calories each), my bratwurst sandwiches are down to 300 calories each (1/4 flatbread at 28 calories, 1 sausage at 260 calories, horseradish sauce for the rest).  I don’t count the fried onions.  Onions are basically crunchy water. 

I had the same spaghetti and Costco meatballs for dinner as my family – and just about the same amount as the kids.  Please, remind me sometime to do a post about my system for portioning! 

After such a rich set of meals, I am really thankful that I have discovered a way to keep myself so happy while depriving myself of at least 800 calories per day (I should be burning 2500 per day for an average male, per the USDA).  Well, the calorie burn total is a little more complicated than that, but I’ll go into that another time.  The point is, I don’t feel deprived and I hope I keep listening to myself.  

-The Doctor

20190409 Report

Last night, I had a full night’s sleep and was not inundated by any children in the small hours!  I find that bad sleep is a risk factor for overeating.  It’s harder to pay attention, and also eating food seems to take away some sleepiness, so it’s doubly tempting.  I always track my sleep quality along with my food and calorie intake.  And it was a good day – I went swimming.  

Exercise is tricky for many dieters.  Many people have lost a lot of weight and kept it off by dieting alone.  Very few the other way around.  But I like swimming and always have.  Going is not a struggle, I like being in the water and I enjoy the exercise.  I burned off 600 calories (I will explain that calculation later) and I added 500 calories to my food budget for the day.  It’s win-win; I get to swim, which I like, and I am down another 100 calories on the day.  And I don’t feel like swimming is punishment because I’m not hungry afterwards – I let myself have most of the calories back that day.  

I have noticed now that I have lost 40 pounds that swimming is easier.  My times are a little faster and I don’t get sore legs and hands like I did while at my most overweight (325 pounds).  What will it be like when I have lost 60, 80, or 100 pounds?  It’s hard to imagine, since I have been heavy for so long (8-10 years over 300 pounds).  

  • My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – Jimmy Dean breakfast croissantwich (sausage and egg) (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – BLT sandwich (330), bratwurst sandwich (340)

  • 670 calories

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), beef jerky (180)

  • 260 calories

Total for the day: 2040 calories (limit 1800 + 500 from swimming = 2300).

Yes, I made it to Costco today.  I have my flatbreads and those are very low calorie.  I am happy about using them tomorrow.  Looking forward to what I am going to eat tomorrow, is what gives me the ability to say “no” to more today.  It’s amazing to get so much fulfillment and satisfaction out of eating less!  

-The Doctor

20190408 Report

I had another night of interrupted sleep last night – invaded by two children at different times.  However, my total food intake was great and I had prepared wonderful meals to keep me going all day.  Here’s my food intake from today:

Breakfast – Bratwurst wrap (340)

  • 340 calories

Lunch – 2 homemade chicken enchiladas (500)

  • 500 calories

Dinner – Sausage chili,  (350) egg noodles (220), and peas (30)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), Nestle Li’l Buddies vanilla (110)

190 calories

Total for the day: 1630 calories (limit 1800)

I started off with a Johnsonville bratwurst sandwich.  Each brat is 260 calories.  Usually I have it on a small square of flatbread for 40 calories extra, but today I only had sandwich bread.  It’s so easy to have brats prepared ahead of time.  I just cook a pack of five in my cast iron skillet in the oven (with a whole diced onion) at 400 degrees, then just keep them in the fridge until needed.  

My lunch enchiladas were left over from last night.  Enchiladas are great because you just count up all the calories you put in the dish and divide by the number of enchiladas.  Portioning made simple!  Notice I do round the numbers a bit, but I always round up.  

Homemade sausage chili is also really meaty and satisfying.  My goal as always was to be hungry (but not too hungry) and be really looking forward to the meal.  It was worth the wait and I got noodles and peas too.  With chili you have to use a liquid measure (if you made 8 cups of chili, a one-cup serving has one-eighth of the total calories) but noodles are easy.  I just weigh them.  2 ounces of noodles dry equals 4 ounces cooked.  

How do I keep from eating more at night?

Eating at night is my kryptonite.  If I am going to lose control, it’s between dinner and bedtime.  BUT I have learned, by observing and negotiating with myself, a way forward.  If I am really looking forward to breakfast, I am willing to sacrifice snacking to get my reward in the morning.  A Jimmy Dean sausage and egg croissant sandwich sounds really, really good…..maybe with hot sauce (no calories extra!)

Notice I didn’t eat near my limit of 1800 calories tonight.  I don’t feel hungry and I don’t need to eat to the limit today.  

I have found a great balance.  I’m not hungry now, but I will be in time for breakfast.  I am willing to put up with eating a small portion of chili tonight because feeling hungry in the morning is a wonderful way to start the day.  When I have binged at night, I always notice how bad I felt in the morning.  Now I get to feel good, both because I am anticipating a great breakfast and because I am listening to myself and working with myself to achieve a lifetime goal.  I am on a journey to lose 120 pounds and everything is coming together for me.  

-The Doctor

20190407 Report

Not a good sleep last night – lots of kids waking up and invading the parental bed.  Late bedtime, too (my fault).  I overshot my calorie goal, as I usually do when really tired.  I’ve read the theory that food can substitute for sleep, and it is more tempting then. 

My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – pizza slices (300 cal), chocolate almonds (160), 1 slice bacon (70)

  • 530 calories

Lunch – BLT wraps (300), fried chicken piece (300)

  • 600 calories

Dinner – Homemade chicken enchiladas (550)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), ad hoc wraps (200)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1960 calories (limit 1800)

How to start a diet 120 pounds overweight

I don’t like to dwell on it, but I have failed on a lot of diets.  Now, I am focused on the future.  But here is just a bit of background:

I weighed 325 pounds in January, 2019.  I have been overweight for the last 20 years.  I have weighed more than 300 pounds for the last 10 years.  Many diets have not worked for me.  But there is hope – I have lost 40 pounds so far by developing a new way of thinking.  What I have discovered is that if you change your mind, your body will follow.  I am already thinking like someone who can control their weight.  You can, too.  

Battered but trusty, The Doctor's home scale.

1. Dieting starts with a decision

It’s not the decision you are probably thinking.  Are you thinking it will be “I decide to lose the weight”?  It isn’t that simple, or everyone would be thin.  If you have the mindset that you can will yourself thin, you’re wrong.   I wouldn’t like to meet the person who could will 120 pounds away.  The decision is also not “I choose to be responsible for my weight.”  Definitely not!  Now you’re in a moral contest with your diet ideal, and you will lose, and start to really be disgusted with yourself.  Dieting through self-loathing!  Good luck with that. 

No, the decision you need to make is, are you willing to let go.  Obviously, you are willing to let go of the extra weight, especially if it is 120 pounds!  No, you have to decide if you can let go of your stubborn pride, some strongly-held values, your mindset, and your comfortable old life.

  • My pride made me overweight, I wouldn’t admit the need to change. 
  • My hierarchy of values made me overweight.  For example, I wasn’t willing to throw away or waste food.  Being thin wasn’t in the same league.       
  • My mindset made me overweight.  I ate to feel full.  So I would eat to feel full at every meal.  Result: constant calorie overload. 
  • My old life made me overweight and kept me overweight.  I usually ate without paying attention, and ate until I felt completely full.  I would read or watch TV while eating.  What did it matter?  I only needed to eat until I was stuffed.  At every meal.  That was my source of eating satisfaction: being full.  All that had to go.

2. Successful dieting starts with a realization

No, the key realization isn’t “I could be thin”!  My realization was a bit deeper than that, and had moral and mental components.  The moral part was figuring out that being thin or overweight isn’t a moral condition.  I will explain that in a moment.  The mental realization came from observation.  I am a scientist by training and profession, so observation is a very important tool.  By observing the behavior of people who were thin and stayed thin, I realized that thin people mostly monitor their weight throughout their lives.  They also control their food intake throughout their lives. 

Morally, I was in a nonproductive mindset before I figured out this diet.  I saw losing weight as a matter of willpower and moral fiber.  Thin people were full of willpower and were filled with strong moral fiber.  Overweight people lacked willpower and would quit before reaching the goal.  According to this moral mindset, I just needed some willpower to transform myself.  I would use my willpower, and somehow my food intake would just balance out due to my superior moral condition.  I would lose weight and keep it off, through strength of moral fiber. 

Terrible, isn’t it?  You can see how that mindset will set you up for failure.  With that thinking, you will be overweight, AND feel bad about yourself.  Willpower just doesn’t work that way, and being thin does not imply superior moral fiber or moral being.  Take the moral scolding out of your thinking.  It just reinforces failures and makes you hate and resent your own being.  Don’t set yourself up for failure.  Set yourself up for success instead.

The setup for success comes from the other half of my realization.  To start a long term lifestyle change that will result in the loss of 120 pounds, you must accept that it’s a lifetime change, to monitoring your weight and regulating your food intake.  Ask a thin friend or family member.  They monitor their weight all the time!  Maybe they judge their weight by the fit of their clothes, or belt, or using a scale, but they do it.  They also monitor their intake of food, no matter what they call it. 

My grandfather never counted a calorie, but lived to 101 years and never weighed more than 135 pounds in his life.  What willpower!  Actually, he just had the same things for almost every meal of his long life.  His dinner was invariably a small hamburger patty, a baked potato, and string beans.  Not of lot of them, either.  Lunch was a ham sandwich: 2 slices of ham, one of cheese.  Breakfast was cold cereal.  He did have dessert every night, but it was never more than a bite or two of brownie or cake.  He exercised every day and monitored his weight every day.  He also didn’t spend a lot of time wondering what he was going to have for lunch or dinner.  He had a system that worked for 101 years.  Ask yourself: where was the willpower in that system?  The only moral decision is that being thin is more important to you than other things. 

3. Successful dieting needs a plan

I am not saying you should plan like my grandfather did.  I personally transformed myself into someone who is looking forward to each meal and is hungry at mealtimes.  After the first 100 years I think I would get a little bored of his regime.  I can only think that for him, being thin and staying thin was more important than almost anything else.  Seen in that light, eating the same amounts of the same things every day is a very simple and reliable way to make sure your food intake is under complete control.  No calorie counting, no carb counting, no cholesterol or LDL worries.  Just eat the green beans, potato, and beef patty.  He could look on, amazed, as his acquaintances and coworkers agonized over their waistlines and talked about steaks, rich desserts, and holiday food. 

For you to lose weight successfully and keep it off, you need a plan.  The plan will let you live out the consequences of your moral and mental transformation. 

Create a plan to do two things:

  • Monitor your weight
  • Control your food intake

3A. Monitor your Weight

I weigh myself every Saturday morning.  I blog about it, as a matter of fact, under the category Saturday Weigh-in.  I am in the middle of an incredible personal quest to lose more weight than most people on Earth weigh.  I am not at all interested in this diet petering out, and once I have achieved this remarkable weight loss, I have even less interest in gaining any of it back again.  So weigh yourself systematically. 

Some people, like my grandfather did, weigh themselves every day.  But once a week is a minimum.  I like the anticipation of a weekly weighing.  I was also worried that if I had a bad day and overate, I would get all discouraged.  This point is so important I have taught it to my kids: weigh yourself every week.  We make a family activity out of it, but it is an important tool for their lives too. 

3B. Control your food intake.

There are different levels of control.  You could decide that being thin is so important to you that you will only eat pre-portioned frozen dinners or pre-packaged weight loss meals every day for the rest of your life.  There’s also what I will call the Grandfather Method. 

Speaking personally, none of that works.  I tried may variations of the idea over the last 20 years of unsuccessful dieting.  I tried having weight loss shakes for meals, and I also tried eating only low carb foods with a limit of 30 grams of carbs per day.  Neither was satisfactory.  I had to find a different way, and I was willing to do some work and put in some time to achieve control. 

My own solution is calorie counting and recording the totals in a spreadsheet.  I’ll go into more detail elsewhere, but I am careful to count calories before I eat, and then record them immediately after I eat.  No matter what else is going on, if my hair is on fire (metaphorically), I will record what I eat before doing other things.  So I recommend a serious commitment to controlling food intake.  I spend an hour a day doing this and I am happy to do it because being thin is high up on my list of values. 

I don’t use any dieting apps or websites for this.  I figure out the calories, eat the portion, then right after the meal, record everything in a Google spreadsheet.  I use the internet-based spreadsheet because I can access it anywhere I have internet, like work, restaurants, and on vacation.  If I waited until the end of the day or the end of the week, I wouldn’t remember what I had or how much or when.  I might leave things out by accident or on purpose.  And I tell the absolute truth in the spreadsheet.  If I overeat, I put all the food in there and the calorie count.  (In the section on self knowledge just below, I will talk about the temptation to punish yourself for overeating or having a bad diet day or week.)    

Through trial and error, I picked a number of calories I am allowed to eat every day.  Exercise is a tricky subject I talk about in another place, but when I exercise, I increase the number of calories in my daily limit.  I also keep track of my average weekly calorie intake and compare that to what I would have to eat to maintain my weight. 

Have a plan to monitor your weight and regulate your food intake.  It has to be a plan you can follow forever.

4. A successful lifetime diet plan relies on self-knowledge.

If you’ve spent any time on a diet, you know that there is part of you that doesn’t enjoy it.  It doesn’t play along with what you say or follow your plans.  When your diet fails, you blame yourself, or that part of yourself for your supposed lack of willpower.  Well, imagine that part of you is important, even crucial, to your dieting success.  If you are mean to yourself and treat yourself badly, and think of yourself as a weak-willed slob, that’s not a plan for success.  It’s more self-loathing. 

You have to really listen to yourself, figure out what you need and want, how to work with that, and then reward yourself for doing well.  Never, never punish yourself for overeating.  Try to learn instead.

By punish, I mean: have you overeaten and then withheld breakfast or lunch the next day to make up for it?  That’s punishing yourself.  Skipping dessert, or withholding some food you really like?  Usually in retaliation for overeating before?  That’s a punishment.  It makes it really hard to get your subconscious desires lined up behind your diet.  By carefully paying attention, I have found I can figure out why I overeat and keep ahead of it.  For example: if I get really, really hungry, I will overeat.  I will also eat in a big hurry and want to feel full.  That’s destructive.  But when it has happened, I don’t punish myself anymore.  At the next meal, I eat normally. 

Try to learn: I mean you can learn about yourself by figuring out when you will overeat.  When it is really cold outside and I feel cold, I will overeat.  When I don’t go to bed on time and don’t get enough sleep, I also overeat.  If I am significantly late for a meal and get too hungry, I will overeat.  And if I have any food insecurity, I will overeat. 

Food insecurity means I have to have food available that I really want to eat and am looking forward to.  When I am hungry and head to the kitchen at meal time, it is really demoralizing to have to only find food I don’t really want.  Remember before when I said my values include not wasting food or throwing it away?  That had to change.  I learned I have to reward myself at every meal for eating less food.  The reward is I get to eat foods I really crave.  I am willing to accept that trade at all levels of my being. 

I also decided to build in some significant rewards.  As I lose each 10 pounds, I pick something I really want to eat as the reward.  I might flip through the recipes at America’s Test Kitchen (I am a subscriber).  My reward for losing 30 pounds was making a cake.  A gingerbread cake.  With ermine frosting.  It was really good, even on the installment plan.  Rewarding myself builds confidence and self-trust: I say I will reward myself, and I do. 

That’s the really nice part about this project.  I have learned to really value working with myself, figuring myself out, and learning to trust myself.  It is very rewarding and satisfying.  Losing weight is almost beside the point, given the beauty of my new self-relationship.  I’m not a weak willed failure, but a person capable of making the changes needed to improve my appearance and lifestyle. 

Compared to all this, my old lifestyle seems really pointless.  Why would I go back to it and gain weight?  I have learned to get much more out of myself.  Aim high!

-The Doctor

 

(To read all the posts in the Start a Diet series, click here.)

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