Working with yourself

20190423 Daily report

Part of my plan to turn myself into a person who can successfully control his weight is a daily log of my food intake.  It’s the price I am paying to lose weight and keep it off.  However, I am getting a lot for my investment.  For one thing, I am accumulating a lot of self knowledge.  I am paying a lot of attention to how my body works, how my mind works, and how they are not always working together.  And there’s more – I can eat whatever foods I like, so long as I limit and keep track of the calories.  I’ve used that, as you have seen, to make sure I am happy to be losing weight.  Sometimes what my body is craving is conventional (like strawberry shortcake roll), and sometimes more particular to myself.  Idiosyncratic, that’s the word. 

Behold, the post-Easter ham, roasted Brussels sprout, and horseradish sandwich wrap. 150 calories.

My daily food intake and calorie count are:

Breakfast – Paska bread and butter (450)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – 4 x pyrohi (75) with sour cream, butter, and caramelized onions (150); half a carnitas burrito (120)

  • 570 calories

Dinner – Jambalaya and rice (350).

  • 350 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2 x ham, roasted sprout and horseradish wraps (150); candy (200); chocolate (150)

  • 730 calories

Total for the day: 2100 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Today was a swimming day.  My body is still not back to normal following my intestinal bug of the last week and a half, but I am getting better little by little.  My appetite is back all the way.  Notice that my calorie counts Sunday and Monday were low and I had little appetite for more.   It was a strange illness where I felt unpleasantly full and hungry at the same time.  I don’t recommend it.

It still feels like my mind and body are not totally working together.  This might be due to illness.  But today I made an effort to eat meals on time, listen to my body, and eat when I was hungry.  I was a bit less successful than I hoped.  For example, I wanted to wait and have a slice of strawberry shortcake roll for dessert, but I ate candy I had lying around instead, around 3PM.  You see, I cheated myself out of what I wanted!  It’s a great example of my head and my body not working together.  And it’s a chance to learn.  Why was I so interested in candy that I didn’t really want? 

When I opened the candy box, I thought I just wanted a few pieces, but I ate the whole thing – 200 calories.  The right thing to do would have been to have strawberry shortcake roll at 3PM instead of candy.  Instead, my mind (or conscious will) insisted I should wait and eat the cake for dessert (after dinner).  And then I rebelled against myself.  My mind wasn’t listening to my body and what I really needed.  Instead, I was trying to force myself to do something I didn’t want – to wait.  OK, I can see I need to listen more and get the parts of myself working together.  That’s when this weight control system works the best.  I am grateful that I have decided to learn from this and not punish myself for a failure. 

-The Doctor

Weighing yourself

Hello everybody.  One of my commitments to myself is a weekly weighing.  I recommend it. 

When I started this diet, I was actually too chicken to get on the scale (I weighed 325 pounds a few weeks before I started).  It took a week before my courage returned.   Now I do it every Saturday, before breakfast.  My weight last week was 288.8 pounds on the trusty Homedics scale.  So, how did I do this week?

Wonderful!  I made fantastic progress.  The weight loss professionals would have a fit, but I won’t.  This means I have lost a total of….

Pounds!!!
0

That’s a big milestone.  I will reward myself for all my faithful staying on the diet!  Now, this part may confuse you.  I am going to reward myself with food.  Am I going to break my diet?  No, I am not.  Let me explain.

My last reward was for the milestone of weighing less than 290 pounds.  The reward was going out to lunch, with friends, at my favorite Indian buffet restaurant.  That day, I had a really small breakfast, an enormous lunch, and no dinner.  I lost almost three pounds that week.  The key here is that my reward reinforces my diet.  One of my insights about myself is that I could transform my relationship with food.  Instead of eating until I was totally full (my old goal), my new goal was to be hungry for my next meal.  The meal had to be completely worth waiting for, worth being hungry for, and worth paying attention to.  But it couldn’t be so large that it prevented me from anticipating my next meal, being hungry for it, and enjoying it in turn.  

My weight loss plan is built around the idea that I must really be looking forward to my food.  A little hunger at the right time is a good thing.  (The trade-off, as I will explain later, is that I cannot be late for meals.)  So, having a reward meal or dessert  that I am really looking forward to actually reinforces my system.  I have to be hungry for the special meal, anticipate and enjoy it, but not go so wild that I can’t be hungry for the next planned meal. 

I hope you are beginning to see how this works.

It’s great progress, but I can’t help feeling a little depressed.  I am still 80 pounds overweight.  Losing weight is really slow, if you let yourself think about it that way.  Usually, I don’t indulge in that kind of self-pity.  After all, 80 pounds overweight is a lot less than 120 pounds overweight!  Plus, I have never successfully lost weight on purpose before.  Really, I have a lot to feel happy and thankful about.  I have never felt so positive about myself.  It is really meaningful to see different layers of my being lining up behind this effort and gives me a lot of positive feedback and a boost to my morale as I keep plugging away. 

But there is a tiny seed of doubt every time I get on the scale.  Will this keep working?  So far, it has.

-The Doctor

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The End