Every diet plan ever tells you to measure your food, keep a food diary, and watch the numbers carefully. I've done that in the past; usually I use DietPower, which I think is an excellent program. However, after a couple of days of careful tracking, I start to be obsessive. I start fiddling with nutrition graphs, watching the weight graph incessantly, and generally I become neurotic about it. It occupies all my thinking.
This time, I haven't been keeping a record of anything. After years of various stages of low-carb eating, I know roughly what the carb content of the things I eat are. I know if I eat an ounce of cheese and have two cups of milk for breakfast, and then have chicken salad on romaine for lunch, and finish my day with lunch meat, cheese, and mayonnaise (today's food), the only appreciable carb amount was in the milk. If I have a kiwi or some baby carrots with dinner, I know there's a little more there. The exact number isn't really important to me.
Conversely, last week when my father wanted to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant and I had pan-fried dumplings and cheese wontons, I knew I was over my target. So there's no point to knowing the exact amount; it didn't really matter. What was important was that my next meal was the appropriate composition, and the next, and the next.
After my intial weighing, I also shoved my scale into the back corner under my kitchen table where I just won't see it often. No matter how I try to tell myself that daily numbers aren't important, only long-term trends, etc., that stupid number still upsets me whenever I make a weight-loss attempt. If it's higher by a pound, it's depressing. If it's lower, it's not low enough. For whatever reason, I'm not able to frequently weigh myself without edging closer to those disordered eating tendencies I've run in to before. So I'm just not going to do it. Oh, at some point my curiosity will get the best of me and I'll jump on the damned thing. But until that point, I'm not going to track it. I know where I started; hopefully I won't know exactly where I am weight-wise for a long time. I am going to take pictures, but not post them -- without comparison photos it seems like pointless voyeurism!
So this time I haven't been doing any tracking of anything. I may later, if I find myself often making choices that don't fit with the plan or if I find I'm not getting results. But so far, this approach is working. My size smaller jeans aren't comfortable enough yet to wear, but at least I don't have to lie down to button them anymore. The weird feeling of fullness is also a little less, but that may be due to simple water loss. We'll see.
2 comments:
Are we embracing the size, or trying to get smaller. I understand both, just want to know...
It's both. I passed a point where I feel physically comfortable, and I'm trying to get back to where I feel good again. That was only 25 pounds ago, at which point I was obviously still very fat. I don't rule out continuing beyond that; it depends on how I feel when I get there.
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