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The belated twice-yearly post on weight maintenance.

Usually I write this post in May (around the anniversary of the "click" in my head that changed things) and November (around the anniversary of reaching my goal weight, around six months later).   I'm writing the November post late this year, in January, not because I want to cash in on all the New Year's resolution stuff, but just because I've been a delinquent blogger.

Let's grab something as it flies by and slap it up on the page to make things look current.  Here's a year-old article that has been going around on FB the last few days, it being January:  Diet and exercise alone are no cure for obesity, experts say.  Here is an extended excerpt from the  newspaper's summary of the information:

Take note, glib-talking doctors and legislators, rail-thin commentators, and fat-haters of all stripes: For most of the nation's 79 million adults and 13 million kids who are obese, the "eat less, move more" treatment, as currently practiced, is a prescription for failure, these experts say.

In a commentary published  [ed: in the May 2015 issue] in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, four weight-loss specialists set out to correct what they view as the widespread misimpression that people who have become and stayed obese for more than a couple of years can, by diet and exercise alone, return to a normal, healthy weight and stay that way.

"Once obesity is established, however, body weight seems to become biologically 'stamped in' and defended," wrote Mt. Sinai Hospital weight management expert Christopher N. Ochner and colleagues from the medical faculties of the University of Colorado, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania.  

The human body, evolved to endure through periods of food scarcity, has adapted a host of methods to ensure that lost weight will be restored, the authors say. It will respond to weight loss by powering down its use of calories as fuel, pumping out hormones to increase hunger, boosting fat storage capacity, and tricking the brain to demand overconsumption.

"Few individuals ever truly recover from obesity," the authors wrote. Those that do, they add, "still have 'obesity in remission,' and are biologically very different from individuals of the same age, sex and body weight who never had obesity." They are constantly at war with their bodies' efforts to return to their highest sustained weight.

...Why would an influential foursome see the value in recapitulating these ideas in a respected medical journal?

"It's not just that most people still stigmatize obesity--as they say, it's the last acceptable form of stigma," said Ochner. "What really bothers me working around and with clinicians, is that some of them--a disturbing percentage--still believe it's all about personal choice: that if the patient just tries hard enough, and if we can just figure out how to get them a little more motivated, then we'd be successful. And that's just not right."

Lifestyle changes are undoubtedly a necessary condition for enduring weight loss, Ochner said. But they're far from sufficient, and when physicians believe they are--when they say "you already know what to do, I told you what to do," he said--"that's certainly cruel, and it's harmful: It prevents them getting the care they need."

Physicians, he said, should be doing more than exhort patients to eat less and move more. They should[:]

• "intervene more quickly to encourage weight loss in overweight patients before they become obese."
•  "discuss with obese patients ... medications, surgery and device-based treatments...to supplement diet and exercise..."
• "make weight-loss maintenance--an aspect of obesity treatment that is neglected--a part of their treatment plan."

 + + + 

I'm one of the odd people that did manage to correct long-term obesity through diet and exercise.  It required a level of focus that bordered on the obsessive; I paid a price in mental health.  I'm not saying it was the wrong choice to make; the sacrifice was temporary, and it worked.  

 I think I'm mentally more balanced now, but it's also been harder to maintain the habits that seem to correspond with keeping my weight off.  It could just be because I'm under a lot of demands in this season of my life; but sometimes I wonder if I will always have to choose between staying thin and staying relatively sane.

+ + +

Maintenance?

It really is very difficult.  I understand intimately what they mean by "obesity in remission."  I was obese for about 25 years, and I've only been not-obese for 7.5 years, and I feel -- deeply -- that the lifestyle which maintains it is something I put on, not something that's really sunk in fully.  

For a while, between my last two pregnancies, I thought it really had sunk in.  Post-weight-loss, I'd maintained for several months, gotten pregnant, had an amazingly healthy pregnancy and an easy delivery, and then I picked up my old, good habits where I left off.  I returned to my desired weight range and maintained that for three years or so before my fifth pregnancy.  

But after my youngest child was born I was much more sluggish.  He is two now, and I have never quite gotten back to where I was.  I'm about ten pounds and one clothing size over my desired weight.  I'd be okay with it, I think, if it weren't for the frustration and fear that's all wrapped around the knowledge that I've simply not been able to hold myself tightly enough to a plan.

Again, I have a lot of demands on me right now, and I well remember the level of obsession that it required for me to lose the weight the first time.  Maybe there simply isn't enough of my attention to go around, and maybe I could do it if I could only clear my schedule and clear my head.  But it's all hypothetical.  I can't seem to stick to anything very long.  And that "can't" is very scary to me.  

I wonder all the time:  Am I out of remission?

+ + +

Let's take a look at these words again:

The human body, evolved to endure through periods of food scarcity, has adapted a host of methods to ensure that lost weight will be restored, the authors say. It will respond to weight loss by powering down its use of calories as fuel, pumping out hormones to increase hunger, boosting fat storage capacity, and tricking the brain to demand overconsumption.

 

I don't know if the three other response mechanisms are active, but the last one?  Tricking the brain to demand overconsumption?

It is so very, very real.

My brain is a traitor.  It has completely gone over to the side of the body in this one.  How to explain it?  My brain doesn't try to get me to break my resolutions, to foil my plans, anymore.  It's learned that this does not work.  

I don't do the emotional-eating thing.  I don't get tempted to break my resolutions.  If I am conscious of a plan I have made (say "Don't eat dessert tonight") you can wave a chocolate cake in front of me all evening and I will not take that first fatal bite.   My brain has given up trying to tempt me away from my plans.

Instead my brain has learned a better way:  it causes me to forget I had a plan in the first place.  "Ha ha!" the brain says.  "If I refuse to do my job of remembering important things, there's nothing that the rest of you can do about it!" And when dinnertime comes it's all like "Plan?  What plan?  Pass the potatoes."

I realize that this sounds absolutely insane.

I can't think of a better way to describe it.

I make plans.  I literally forget them, or at least forget that they matter, when I sit down at the table.  And then immediately after we are all done eating, I seem to remember them again.  Shit.  And then the remorse.

This is not a good mental situation.  I really have to do something about it, because it is the kind of mental situation that eating disorders are made of:  a cycle of self-recrimination that begins immediately after a meal.  It's bad.

+ + +

There are definitely things I could do about this.   I think that the best course is probably to pick one good habit, one tried and proven one from my old life, and concentrate on that until it's second nature again.   But panic overtakes me.  "Just one habit" is too scary; I fear I'll let all the others go.   For example:  If I concentrate only on not snacking between meals (a worthy goal, part of the way I want to live my life), I fear, I'll destroy all the practice I've made at having reasonably-sized meals.  And so on.  I keep starting off with single habits, but eventually I try to do all the habits at once, get overwhelmed, and start forgetting them again.  

+ + +

And make no mistake:  while I might be able to develop and reinforce habits that maintain my weight where it is, I really have to be conscious at every meal if I am going to run a calorie deficit and live off my stores even for a few weeks.  I am under five feet tall.  Maintaining my weight as it is  requires, roughly, only 1850 calories per day.   Losing it at a noticeable pace means going down to something like 1400-1500.  This is not that much food, people!  Unless you are the sort of person who forgets to eat under stress, it takes attention to maintain that for more than a couple of days, and it is shockingly easy to make up several days' deficit in only one meal.  

Example.  If I am trying to stay at 1500 cal/day, chances are good I'll really manage closer to 1650.  Let's say I do that for 4 days in a row.  Great! I'm running an 800-calorie deficit.  Then on day 5 I go to a restaurant for lunch and in a fit of forgetfulness I order a cheeseburger and a fountain Coke with a vinaigrette side salad (no fries, please).   That's all it takes!  The deficit is gone, and I'm back to square one.  Without ever really departing from reasonable, moderate eating!  We're talking a single, culturally normal-sized meal (too big for my body size, but it isn't an amount of food anyone would call "overeating") after 13 carefully-restricted meals in a row.  If I kept up that pattern (13 restricted meals, one culturally normal meal) over and over, I would never change.  The only thing that would be different is that I would feel very frustrated.  Would you be able to keep that up without going slowly insane or developing an eating disorder?

It requires attention.  I have found that it requires counting.

+ + +

Still, I can point to areas of relatively easy improvement.  Someday I will have the attention available to make a final push through those two-year-old postpartum pounds, and I could concentrate on developing the habits that support the drive, make it a little easier.  Cutting back on alcohol, making easy-to-remember resolutions like eliminating snacking and seconds, making rules like "half sandwiches only," splitting things with Mark at restaurants (and NOT using that as an excuse to go ahead and have dessert).  

I could do these things.  The question is, will I?

A series of older pictures can be found here.

Put up or shut up (III): lunch edition.

I know this isn't the most fascinating of post series to read, but at least it isn't going to upset anyone. I guess.

So, a few days ago I mentioned that I'm about to make a six-week push to get back on maintenance habits, and started out by making a list of meals -- first dinners, then breakfasts. I really never do the whole-month-at-a-time meal planning, so this is kind of a first for me. Especially in the middle of all the preplanning I have to do for school, which starts right after the six weeks is up.

But... moving right along, in my six weeks of summer lunches I can expect

• 17 ordinary weekdays at home with the kids
• 10 lunches out with the kids on our way to or from somewhere
• 8 times I can expect to come home hungry at lunchtime and will need something quick
• 6 times I might host other families for lunch
• 5 times I will come home from the grocery store and need to have lunch ready soon.

I categorized the lunches at home with kids according to the kind of thing I typically have ready for the kids to eat. I'm afraid they are going to have to go without macaroni and cheese for a few weeks, though, except maybe on date night.

 

• When the kids have sandwiches, I'll have the same: 3 oz ham/0.5 oz cheese or 2 oz turkey/2 oz roast beef on whole wheat with mustard, lettuce, and tomato. Fruit on the side.
• When the kids have quesadillas, I'll have a roasted veggie wrap with 1 oz goat cheese and fresh fruit. (The roasted veggies are the kind of thing that you do ahead of time and freeze in portions. Eggplant, bell peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, onions. I have made this before, it is really easy to do about 6 portions at once.)
• When the kids have tuna salad, I will too, made with white beans and parsley and sun-dried tomatoes, packed in a whole wheat pita with fruit and baby carrots.
• When the kids have hot dogs on homemade wheat buns with corn, I will cook a frozen white fish fillet and have that on a bun with lettuce and pickles.
• When the kids have frozen pizza and fruit, so will I, but I'll choose a thin-crust vegetable pizza like Amy's roasted vegetable or Amy's pesto or DiGiorno thin and crispy.
• When the kids have spaghetti, so will I, with red bell peppers and a lean smoked sausage to flavor the sauce.
• A random emergency lunch is an entire bag of frozen vegetables with whatever protein is handy and a slice of bread.

Hosting another family calls for kid-friendly meals that scale up to a crowd. My ideas are:

 

• Mini bagels with turkey and cheese, lettuce and tomato, fresh snap peas and apples.
• Spaghetti and red sauce -- it stays warm in the crockpot -- with sliced smoked sausage and red bell peppers. Plenty of breadsticks and cheap grated Parmesan for the kids, but not for me.
• Poached chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli, and pineapple chunks with assorted sauces. For me, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

 

Expecting to arrive home hungry calls for some planned ready-to-eat meals. My ideas are:

 

• Half a cup of hummus, half a pita, and some red bell peppers, carrot, and celery.
• Veggie burger patty on a bun with lettuce and tomato and a scoop of avocado or guacamole.
• One of the Amy's vegetarian Indian food entrées with some Greek yogurt and cucumber.
• Half a package of a Birds-Eye Steamfresh Protein Blend.
• As a last resort, any ~400-calorie frozen entrée will do, or a combination like a frozen sandwich and a can of vegetable soup.

Coming home hungry right after grocery shopping is a bit less grim, since I can bring something nice from the store. The kids often opt for bagels and cream cheese or a rotisserie chicken. For me, how about

• A premium bag salad topped with a pouch of tuna or salmon, or maybe some of that rotisserie chicken, plus bread.
• A bowl of fresh berries and a hot container of some hearty take-out soup.

 

Lunches out with the kids -- there always seem to be a lot of these in the summer as we go back and forth to day camps and the like -- are a pretty important part of rebooting my habits, I have found, because they offer excellent opportunities to practice portion control.

 

• The Chinese buffet -- a pretty good deal since they charge less for younger kids, and one of my kids' favorite places -- can be dealt with by measuring 1 8-ounce bowl of hot-and-sour soup and 1 equally-sized bowl of all other choices put together, as long as enough of the latter is vegetables.
• There are several workable choices at a Bruegger's Bagels: an egg/cheese or spinach-cheddar omelette bagel, any eight-ounce soup plus the "bagel bites" that come with it, any café salad, a "skinny" veggie bagel sandwich.
• Noodles and Company has some new bowls where they have swapped out the noodles for a pile of spinach. Highly recommended. Similarly, salads at Chipotle with no rice work well.
• At least one kids' meal choice at most fast food restaurants is within limits, e.g., hamburger Happy Meal with apple slices, fries, and a water bottle. Other places make it pretty easy to put together something under 400 calories -- Subway is a decent example, thanks to good menu labeling and a custom-order culture.
• It is even possible to navigate newfangled burger places such as Smashburger if I am willing to split the burger with someone, or have a small one with lettuce wrap instead of bun.

Here's hoping this is a start for a well-planned six weeks.

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Put up or shut up (II): Meal planning, breakfast edition.

A few days ago I explained my upcoming 6-week habit reboot, intended to put the last annoying pregnancy weight behind me for good. I started general meal planning by making a list of dinners that would work with the kind of schedule I will be keeping over those summer weeks. I didn't assign dinners to dates yet, though -- I will do specific meal planning week by week when I make my grocery lists.

Today I attacked the same problem, only for breakfast. Normally I do not plan breakfasts ahead of time. I usually just have whatever I feel like having, typically some combination of eggs or yogurt, toast, and fruit or V-8. I probably don't have to do this, because I rarely have an excessive breakfast, but I thought I would make a list anyway and then I would at least have portions all figured out.

I figured that I have four kinds of mornings coming up:

• Five breakfasts out by myself, early on a Saturday morning.


• Seven weekend breakfasts at home with the family. This calls for muffins, pancakes, or similar.


• Thirteen weekday breakfasts soon after shopping, when we still have fresh fruit around.


• Twenty weekday breakfasts after I can expect all the fresh fruit to be gone.

Breakfasts out by myself need a strategy, not a plan, and I already have such a strategy. At the Ordinary Breakfast Place I always have buttered pumpernickel toast, one egg, and a big glass of tomato juice. At the Fancy Breakfast Place I usually order the delicious breakfast quesadilla, on a house-made sprouted tortilla with black beans, spinach, and guacamole, and take half of it home for later.

I raided my cookbooks for some good weekend-morning breakfasts, around 400 calories, and came up with this list:

• Lemon-blueberry muffin (150 cal), scrambled egg + eggwhite + onions + mushrooms, 2/3 c whole milk


• Coffee cake muffin (220 cal), 1/2 c plain yogurt, 1 c berries


• Chocolate-chip scone (160 cal), 1 c strawberries, 1/2 c yogurt or cottage cheese, 1 Tbsp sliced almonds


• 1 waffle with blueberries and 1 Tbsp maple syrup, 2/3 c whole milk


• 2 cornmeal pancakes (1/4 c batter each) with 1 c blueberries and 6 oz blueberry yogurt

Why the 2/3 cup of whole milk everywhere? Well, published meal plans always call for 1 cup of skim milk. Bleah. I like whole milk, so I only pour 2/3 of a cup.

I think the best plan for weekday breakfasts is to eat the same breakfast a few days in a row; change it to something else when I run out of fresh fruit; then, change it again when I buy more fresh fruit a few days later.

 

My "there is fresh fruit in the house" weekday breakfasts might include

 

• Toasted whole wheat English muffin, 2 tsp whipped butter, 2/3 cup plain yogurt with a teaspoon of honey, and 1 cup sliced strawberries


• 1 egg scrambled with bell pepper, tomato, 1.5 oz turkey kielbasa, red onion, garlic; 1 slice wheat toast, 1 cup blueberries


• 2 eggs scrambled with cream and spinach or broccoli and bell pepper, half an English muffin, butter


• Ham, egg, and cheese (or bacon, egg, no cheese) sandwich on an English muffin with tomato and a cup of fruit salad


• 3/4 cup plain whole Greek yogurt, 3/4 cup chopped fruit or berries, 1/4 cup granola or other crunchy cereal, drizzle of honey

 

After the fresh berries run out, I could have one of these:

• 2-egg frittata with green pepper, onion, cheese, and salsa; 1 slice toast; half a grapefruit or some canned mandarin oranges


• Toasted English muffin with 4 tsp peanut butter, half a banana, and 2/3 c whole milk


• Toasted English muffin half, spread with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese; hard boiled egg; fruited yogurt cup; tomato juice or V-8


• 3 ounces of bagel (e.g., mini or half), 2 Tbsp hummus, cucumber and tomato, 1/2 c canned fruit


• 2 soft-boiled eggs, (six minutes for me), 1 slice of toast with plenty of butter, glass of V-8 or tomato juice


• 2 scrambled eggs with cream and butter, half an English muffin with a bit of honey, glass of V-8

You might notice the total absence of bowls of cereal in this breakfast plan. This is because once I start eating bowls of cereal, I usually fall into an iterative loop of "Oops, I ate all the cereal but there is still milk in the bowl; add cereal" followed by "Oops, there is no more milk in the bowl but I still have cereal; add milk." I do better with oatmeal, but I don't really want that in the summer.

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Put up or shut up: early meal planning.

The baby turned 18 months old yesterday.  His babbling is peppered with "Mine!" and "'Elp-bee! 'Elp-bee!" and "DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG."  He answers Yes and No, tells us when he needs a new diaper, uses forks and spoons and regular cups like an expert.  He is coming right along.

It is time for me to stop making off-hand remarks to Mark and other people about how frustrated I am that I have not yet gotten back to my pre-pregnancy weight.  I think it is happening kind of on its own, but very slowly.   The number of pounds left to lose is not terribly large -- about eight pounds -- and honestly, it isn't a bad place to be; I think I look fairly normal.  But I'm longing to get back into my old clothes, which are tantalizingly, only one size away.  I've held off buying a new wardrobe in the larger size that I've been wearing for most of a year.  

But these yoga pants are not going to last forever.  Eventually I either have to get back to the old size, or buy clothes that fit me now.

+ + +

It isn't so much the need to go on a crash diet as it is the need to refocus on my lifetime maintenance habits, with strict enough attention to calories that I can't fool myself.  I never really have emerged from the "eating for two" mindset, and if I want to eat for one in the future, I need to remind myself exactly what it looks like and feels like.

I know what this takes:  single-minded attention that prioritizes the Calorie Project above all else.  (See this category if you don't believe me.)  Mark knows what it takes too:  a lot of support from him.  For example, I'm going to cut out alcohol with dinner for six weeks, and he will help by not opening bottles of wine or offering me a beer with dinner.

So together we looked at the calendar and picked out a roughly six-week period this summer:  July 21 through September 3.   There's not a whole lot going on for us in there, and it seems like a good time to try.  

I have been thinking of it as the "put up or shut up" block.  It isn't good for me to be constantly fretting about still carrying around extra weight, but not making the commitment to do something about it.  At the same time, I'm not ready just to say "oh well, I guess this is my size now" until I've achieved some closure by taking a real stab at it.  

So, I keep saying:  "I'll work on it for six weeks, and then I'll stop complaining about the extra weight."

And Mark keeps reminding me:  "You know, if you really do work on it, you might actually lose the weight."

And I reply:  "Well, then, I hope I do stop complaining about it."

+ + +

I must prepare for this.

 I have so much less disposable time than I did the last time I focused.  I need a strategy that does not rely on me laboriously counting each day's worth of calories the night before.  Hence, I am going to try for meal-at-a-time counting, which I can do pretty well on the fly, and shooting for 400 calories at each meal.

And I need serious meal planning, ideally of all six weeks at once.  I started by sitting down with a calendar and methodically working out the following information:  there will be

• 11 evenings that we have to eat quickly and then go to the gym
• 6 Sunday cheese-and-cracker suppers
• 5 date nights
• 5 ordinary Saturday evenings
• 4 ordinary Friday evenings (similar to Saturdays, but meatless)
• 4 consecutive evenings with Mark out of town
• 4 weeknights after busy days
• 3 dinners I take to H's house
• 3 dinners provided by H

Then I considered family favorite meals and consulted a couple of 400-calorie-meal-plans to come up with ideas.  I rejected all meals that I usually compulsively eat more of (e.g., homemade garlic-bread-crumb-topped macaroni and cheese).  

 Repeats are okay, and some things can't be planned, so I came up with something less than the corresponding number of dinners for each type.   

Gym nights:

• Chile cheese egg bake, salad, and a cooked green vegetable
• Sweet and sour cabbage salad, kielbasa, and mashed potato
• Skillet gyros (it's just ground beef and oregano), pita bread, and Greek salad
• Turkey BLTs (that is, deli turkey plus real bacon -- no turkey bacon), broccoli, and apples
• Slow cooker tortilla soup, limited chips, and fruit salad
• Southwest corn and bean chowder with ham, limited cornbread

Ordinary Saturday evenings:

• Yogurt-marinated chicken on the grill, sliced cucumber salad, pita bread, cooked greens
• Grilled steak, corn on the cob, tomato salad, melon
• Moroccan-spiced grilled chicken, couscous, salad of sliced radishes and oranges
• Hamburger patties, on buns for everyone else, cooked green vegetable, carrot salad

Ordinary Friday evenings:

• Minestrone soup, fruit salad, and a limited supply of parmesan pita toasts.  
• Cheese tortellini with red/yellow/green peppers.
• Tilapia fish tacos with pineapple chunks, cabbage slaw, and guacamole.

Mark out of town:

• Grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade tomato soup for kids.  Soup, cheese, crackers for me.
• Roasted chicken legs, fruit salad, bread and butter, and cooked green vegetable.

Busy-day weeknights:

• Baked teriyaki chicken breasts, white rice, kale, oranges.
• Rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, sweet potatoes, broccoli.
• Deli turkey sandwiches with asiago cheese, apples, almonds, and chips.

Meals taken to H's:

• Crockpot hili over whole wheat spaghetti with shredded cheddar, french-cut frozen green beans
• Crockpot salsa chicken in brown rice bowl with cheddar, cilantro, beans, corn, lettuce.

Date nights and cheese-and-cracker suppers don't need a plan as much as a strategy:

• For the date nights, it has always worked well to split everything with Mark in about a 2-to-1 ratio.  
• For cheese-and-cracker suppers, I'll make sure I have my own little three-ounce portion of some nice blue cheese, a couple tablespoons of fig preserves, and some Triscuits, and not touch any of the other stuff.  I know my blue cheese is safe from everyone else at the table, so that should work.  Or I'll have my own three ounces of lox and a couple tablespoons of cream cheese.   A pot of decaf coffee already brewed will help, too, for the end.

I'll plan each week in more detail when I sit down to make the grocery list, but at least I have already done the work of identifying meals.  For breakfast and lunch I will probably employ the same-thing-every-day-for-a-week strategy.  I guess I'll check in on that later.  For now, it's business as usual.

   

 

Fourteen-hour fasting.

Every May and November I try to write about the long-term maintenance of the significant weight loss I achieved in 2008.

(Care about numbers? I am 4'11" tall. From lifelong obesity, having had an all-time nonpregnant high of 160 lbs, I went in 6 months from 148 lbs to 108 lbs. After my subsequent pregnancy, I ended up at 113 and felt better there then I had at 108, so stayed. Since then I have had an additional pregnancy.)

Longtime readers will remember that while that was going on, I blogged about almost nothing else, to the point that, for example, wildly popular paleo websites linked to me and called me a "weight loss blogger." I probably overdid it, but I can't be too sorry because the hyper-focus probably helped.

May is disappearing fast, so here I am with my update.

+ + +

My youngest is now nearly seventeen months old, still happily breastfeeding, and generally keeping us on our toes. I am feeling really good overall. I haven't run a 5K in a while, and have been swimming more often than running, mostly because swimming feels better and is easier to convince myself to do; but I am getting to the gym at a fairly reliable pace of twice per week.

However: I am really, really frustrated by the non-budging of my postpartum bathroom scale.

Is it just the difference of being four years older in this last pregnancy than I was in the pregnancy before that? Or is it from being four years farther removed from the felt experience of constant, successful self-denial in my 2008 weight loss, so that I forgot how to work hard? Or is it from having 25% more children vying for my limited attention than the last time around? Whatever: After my last pregnancy, the weight came off with very little effort, and fairly quickly. This time -- it appears to be happening, but verrrrrrrry sloooooowly.

Seventeen months postpartum, I am still 7-10 pounds above my prepregnancy weight, which (on my 4'11" frame) means I am still one full clothing size larger, which means that I have a bunch of clothes that I would really like to wear that I can't. The conflict: I am still, unnecessarily it would seem, living in the yoga pants that I bought at the beginning of pregnancy to bridge the gap until maternity clothes. Should I accept life in my current size, buy more clothes that fit me, and get rid of the ones that don't? Or should I keep on working at it, in the hope that little by little, enough flesh will slip away to allow me to wear my "real clothes" again?

I don't look bad. I don't feel bad. But I don't want to buy a whole new wardrobe either. It feels like giving up.

+ + +

One factor is certainly attention. The self-denial that I have found necessary to drop pounds -- mostly, from sticking to small portions -- is not difficult to endure; I am quite used to it by now. But the body has tricks to play. As odd as it may sound, I seem simply to forget my intentions, forget to account for food I have already eaten, forget that I meant not to snack or to have seconds, forget to arrange plates full of vegetables and to limit rice and tortillas and bread. To combat this, I should make a meal plan for each day, but it is hard to find the time; family life is so distracting right now. The only time I have ever had rapid success is when I prioritized eating self-control over all other family priorities, and I am unwilling to do that now.

The best I've been able to do at this attention level, it seems, is to work on it when I remember, and hope that my efforts pay off over time.

+ + +

I am trying a new experiment on myself right now, though, to shake things up a bit: what is called Intermittent Fasting, of the "14/10" variety. That is, I'm spending at least 14 hours of every day (including my sleeping hours, of course) not eating at all.

Intermittent fasting (IF) is popular in a few circles right now -- paleo and bodybuilding, for instance. I guess the idea is that dividing your day into a (longer) period of fasting and a (shorter) period of eating is somehow better for your blood sugar, even if you eat the same stuff in your eating window as you would have if you had spread it out over the whole day. As a practical matter, it presents a clear-cut rule that should reduce one's exposure to snacking opportunities, simply because there is a biggish block of the day where you have pre-decided that you won't eat. Besides the daily block of fasting that I am trying out, another flavor of IF is to periodically, perhaps twice a week, go 24 hours without eating (generally skipping dinner-lunch-breakfast so that every calendar day does have some food), and a third is to follow a more-frequent modified fast (very-low-calorie days intermixed with high-calorie days).

I started by attempting 16-hour fasts, but very quickly switched to 14-hour ones -- which some say is more appropriate for women, anyway. A typical fasting period would begin sometime after dinner -- so, perhaps I would have my last bite around 8:30 p.m. -- and last until a late breakfast, around 10:30. But sometimes, because I chose to have a snack around 10 p.m., I would not eat until lunchtime.

As a lifelong believer in light but early breakfasts, I expected to have trouble getting used to the long delay before the break-fast. Indeed, I find I am pretty hungry when that first mealtime rolls around. But it isn't as bad as I feared. I typically drink coffee all morning anyway, and that hasn't changed, so my routine isn't all that different. It is the kind of thing that would happen to me sometimes when, interrupted by children or intent on the preparation for the day, I would forget to eat until later. That never caused me any great distress, other than a little light-headedness, and I find that doing it on purpose is no worse and often easier because of having planned for it.

I find that each day naturally seems to fall into one of two patterns, depending on whether I can set my own meal schedule or whether I am around other people who are eating normally.

If I set my own schedule, I eat a late breakfast at, say, 10:30 a.m.; a somewhat late lunch at about 2 p.m.; and dinner at the normal time or a bit later. Because the meals are closer together, it is not terribly hard to keep to a fairly light lunch and dinner (though I am still getting used to not inhaling a huge breakfast after the long fast).

If I am around other people, it works better to break the fast with a small snack as soon as the 14 hours are up. Then it's a normal lunch and a normal dinner at the normal times.

+ + +

Trying this out was a bit of a philosophical departure for me. Most of the time I try to focus on dietary disciplines that seem as if I'd like to adopt them as lifelong, or at least long-term, habits. And before I tried this, I definitely thought it would be something for the short-term. I just like breakfast too much to take it seriously! I justified the uncharacteristic "crash diet" approach by thinking that I just needed to shake things up for a few weeks, maybe break through the plateau that's dogging me.

But now that I have tried it for several weeks, I find it ... appealing, actually. I think I will keep going for a while and see what happens if I tweak it a bit here and there.

Some reasons why I like it:

• Bright-line clarity. I don't risk overthinking it. It is very simple: Notice what time I last eat before going to bed, and don't eat again for 14 hours.
• No food restrictions. Except, of course, that it's easier to fast if you've eaten something that is not empty junk.
• Flexibility: On average, of course, the eating window is 10 hours long. But in any given day, I can go ahead and have more food later into the evening; the tradeoff is a later breakfast. (How bad can it be? I doubt I will ever eat past 11 p.m., so the worst it can be is 1.) Sometimes that seems like a good tradeoff and sometimes it doesn't. I get to decide. Similarly, I get to decide when to have meals during the day. If for some reason I want to have an early breakfast -- say 8 a.m. -- all I have to do is stop eating at 6 p.m. after an early dinner the night before.
• Less time to wait between daytime meals. This means -- I hope -- that I could be satisfied with a smaller portion size. When I decide to try that.
• I am practicing a useful skill. Fasting for 14 hours is occasionally necessary. I am slowly learning that it will not kill me or make me crazy or unbearably irritable, but that I can do it without difficulty if I plan well (and carry that fast-breaking snack if I have to leave the house in the morning).

I think I will keep this up for six weeks or so, and then maybe -- if I can sustain the effort required to pay attention -- start watching the total calorie count as well. I am not ready to give up on those non-yoga pants yet.

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Here we go again.

The baby is eight weeks old, and that is how long I promised I would wait before buckling down to trying to lose the weight I put on to support my pregnancy.

Some people advise waiting six months. That does make sense -- often the work of mothering a baby takes the extra weight off without conscious effort, so why not enjoy that while it lasts? And self-starvation is not good for milk supply, itself doubleplusungood for newborns. I am not planning on self-starvation. I am planning on being intentional instead of mindless, and on attention to portion sizes, and room for ice cream after dinner and a beer with Mark after the kids go to bed, and on a great deal of roasted Brussels sprouts. Also on adapting as I go along.

One thing I have already figured out and adapted: the daily rhythm that felt best and most sustainable before I got pregnant (light breakfast, medium lunch, afternoon snack, hearty dinner) now makes my blood sugar go haywire. Distributing my calories more evenly throughout the day keeps me from falling over. I need medium breakfasts and medium lunches and medium dinners now.

And so -- I resisted it for a while -- I have had to hang up my good old mantra "one egg is enough eggs for breakfast." Two-egg veggie and cheese omelet, please. (Technically I hung that up while I was pregnant and eating a lot of steak and eggs specials. But I really thought I would be dusting it off again after the birth. Not quite yet, I guess.)

+ + +

I put on about 40 pounds while pregnant, and about 25 remain. Here at the outset, I feel fairly confident I can deal with the problem; already I am practicing waiting till mealtime, and hitting that happy spot where I feel confortably satisfied after a meal, but still reliably feel good and hungry a little while before the next one.

Getting hungry several times a day seems to be the key. Not "eat when you're hungry," as if hunger is a serious problem that must be immediately corrected; nor "hungry all the time," which probably isn't good for me or the baby; but periodically hungry for a little while before each meal.

I find that going to bed just a little bit hungry is effective, too, but it is possible to overshoot; if I am lying awake at 2 a.m. listening to my stomach growl, I probably need some peanut butter toast, and that is okay.

+ + +

So, what are the habits I am concentrating on right now?

• Watching portion size and sticking to one helping
• Vegetables or at least fruit at each meal
• A scoop of ice cream for dessert after dinner (instead of second and third helpings)
• A beer or a cocktail right before bed (instead of an endless Bedtime Snack Binge)
• Weighing in every five days or so "officially," but also weighing in the evening to strengthen my resolve against the Bedtime Snack Binge
• Preferring fruit, cheese, and nuts over bread- or cracker-based afternoon snacks
• Asking Mark to select snacks for the children that don't leave behind a quarter of a package of leftovers

I am generally aiming for 450-calorie meals, plus a smaller afternoon snack and the aforementioned ice cream and cocktails, but I am not really counting the calories up just yet. That is something to save for if I hit a plateau later on.

Here's a handy resource with 400-calorie meal plans in it. I ignore the word "low-fat" wherever it appears, so my meals are typically more than 400 calories, but they won't be crazy off the charts. It's 400 Calorie Fix by Liz Vacciarello and Mindy Hermann. It contains a refresher on estimating portion sizes, numerous recipes, a two-week meal plan, and suggested side dishes. This is particularly useful for a household that, like mine right now, is relying on shortcuts like packaged meals and takeout, because it rather nonjudgmentally makes suggestions for how to eat 400 calories' worth of movie theater junk or vending machine snacks or fast food burgers, right alongside 400-calorie homemade meals like Couscous and Vegetable Salad (with a side of tuna and mayo) or Speedy Fish Tacos or Lentils with Zesty Tomatoes (with a side of pita bread).

Not that I am saying one ought to substitute vending machine snacks (e.g., Wheat Thins and a Snapple) for a meal, but at least this particular book is light on the Good Food/Evil Food dichotomy, which I appreciate right now. And it's good for practicing the habit of learning to have reasonable portions of things, and for accepting tradeoffs like, "if I want extra meat, I will get more calories unless I take less rice." Which I am rusty on after the ravages* of pregnancy.

*ravages (n. pl.): state of having to eat cheeseburgers or steak-and-eggs whenever one wants, because iron.

+ + +

The psyche rebelled at first, but I am already remembering what it's like to have self-control, and that peculiar satisfaction of being able to notice that I am kind of hungry, while also knowing that Disaster will not befall me if I wait till lunchtime. It is satisfying because I know I did not always have that ability, and I learned it, and I still have it now when I wish to call on it.

I get hungry. I think to myself what I know from experience: "This is my body telling me it's about to switch over to burning the stored calories. In a little while the sensation will go away, and then after a while it will be time to eat again." And this message works, I find, as long as the things that I eat are generally real food with a decent amount of protein, fat, and fiber.

So, for example, today for breakfast I had

• Fresh-baked berry muffin
• A half cup of plain yogurt with a sliced banana and a bit of toasted coconut
• Coffee coffee coffee

And for lunch I had

• Homemade Niçoise salad with half a can of oil-packed tuna, a boiled egg, a potato, green beans, olives, tomato, and lemon-mustard dressing
• Another one of those muffins

And for dinner I plan to have

• Fajitas with chicken (3 oz) and peppers and onions and a bit of guacamole on 1 whole wheat tortilla and lettuce
• Some good pilsner

Hopefully we'll start to see some results before long, but for the time being I am going to try to simply enjoy having some control and predictability to my sensations of hunger and satiety again, and relax and feed myself (as well as the baby!) well and intentionally.

And try not to think about how in October I need to get a new drivers license.

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Semiannual maintenance post, May 2013.

Five years ago this week, I woke up one day and decided to try being hungry for a change.  Those of you who've been through my archives know that this decision eventually led to my dropping 40 pounds and 6 pants sizes, and returning myself from BMI-obese to BMI normal.

I guess it's sticking for now.  I guess it's real.

I try to remain detached from the number if I can.  For instance, I always keep in mind that if I have another pregnancy, or when I go through menopause, I could wind up at another weight.  Mostly I think I've learned to manage that detachment, but from time to time I forget.

+ + +

Last month I forgot for a while.  

From time to time I think back to the months while the number on the scale was dropping.  During those months -- May to November of 2008 -- I was, frankly, obsessed and controlling and fearful (that whatever magic was working would stop working).   I was developing good habits, but at the same time I felt very driven by the numbers.  And yet I look back at that time with amazement at my power and self-control.  

Sometimes I start worrying, "What if I gain weight and I need to lose it again?  Will I ever be able to do what I did then?  Maybe I'll never recapture it, if I ever need it."

And I say to myself, "I know how I can make myself feel better.  I'll prove I can still do it.  I'll lose 1 pound, starting right now.  Even though I don't objectively need to lose any pounds, I'll just lose 1.  If I still have what it takes, it won't take long, just a couple of weeks, a month at most once I get back in the groove again.  I'll crack down really hard on myself and I'll lose 1 pound, and I'll prove to myself that I could still lose weight again any time I want to."

And then I can't "crack down on myself" as hard as I think I should, and the little line I still plot on a chart most days goes down a little and up a little and down a little just like it always does, and I fret some more.  Maybe I'll never get that groove back, even if I need it.  If I can't make it happen whenever I want to, whether I need it or not, will I be able to make it happen someday if I do need it?

And then I imagine a future where everyone makes fun of me because I blogged about overcoming gluttony but then I got fat again.  Seriously?  This is what I worry about?  Becoming a data point on the nobody can lose weight and keep it off side?  Or is it being proven wrong?  Am I a thin-person impostor?  Are the size 2's only a disguise?

This is not a healthy mental space to be in.

+ + +

So, last month I confessed to Mark that I was trying to lose ONE POUND and I couldn't manage to do it.  

(I mean, obviously my weight fluctuates day to day, but I wasn't seeing a permanent shift downward that would stick.)

And he reminded me:  

You are getting it backwards again.  

If you are worried about putting the weight back on, look at your behavior, not at the numbers.

Look at your habits.  Are you developing habits you don't want to develop?  Are you losing good habits you wanted to keep?

Because if you are slipping back into old patterns that you associate with the time when you were heavy and when you ate constantly, then that is a problem.  And it's a problem you can do something about.

But if all your habits are good, then you don't need to try to force the numbers to do ANYTHING.

+ + +

He's right.  He's absolutely right.  And I know this.  I don't know why I keep forgetting it.

But I do forget it from time to time.

I cannot directly control the number on the scale.  

I can directly control the choices that I make.

And I want to make choices every day that are compatible with living out the rest of my life in a healthy relationship to food and physical activity.

That's what I want.  To make choices now that are good for the rest of my life.

I can't really go wrong doing that, no matter what the numbers do.

+ + +

Fretting about the numbers often accompanies feelings of loss of control over those good habits.  And I usually find that, if I can remember to examine the habits instead of the numbers, I find that I have some places I should re-commit to.

The "diet mentality" has always been a mistake for me.  The idea that I can or should deprive myself strictly for some temporary period and then return to "normal" eating once I've acheived some number.   This has only been destructive.

(The only exception:  On occasion, I've found it helpful to cut out sugar and cut back on carbs for a few days, just to break a spiraling descent into a carb-craving cycle.   I don't think of it as dieting.  I call it detox even though I know that's a stupid word for it.)

Instead, I need to look at each behavior I engage in, and ask:  

Do I feel confident that repeating this behavior, regularly, for the rest of my life, would be good for me?  

If I made it to the end of a long life and looked back, what habits would I be telling everyone were my secret?

+ + +

Here are some of them, I think:

• Eat just enough at meals so that I have a real appetite when I sit down at the next one.  Pay attention to how much that takes, and learn.
• Have sweets and desserts at any meal time that I wish, but keep them small.  
• Go to bed a little bit hungry.  Have a drink in the evening instead of a snack. 
• Keep alcohol portions modest at dinner--or at least put off the drinking until the food's cleared away.
• Sugarless gum after meals -- good for teeth, and good for reminding me not to nibble as I clean up.
• Prefer dressed vegetables to carbs.  Use carbs judiciously to extract the maximum textural experience from each portion.
• I only typically need one snack, in midafternoon:  make it small, balanced, pleasant, and on a plate.
• Share my food with people who ask.
• Half sandwiches.    Most sandwiches are too damn big, at least for me. 
• Graciously accept some of whatever I'm offered, but I don't have to eat all of it.
• Refuse to think of an occasional, deliberate choice to enjoy food for pure pleasure as a "failure." 

These are not difficult to live by and don't represent deprivation, but they do take a little bit of attention.  And when my attention slips, I make choices that aren't as good.  It's as simple as that.  I need to pay a little attention to make good choices regularly, but the choices I want to make are choices I can feel happy about for the rest of my life.

The semiannual gluttony retrospective, part IV: sticking to it through the ups and downs. ALSO comparison to nicotine.

Intro to this series. Part I. Part II. Part III.

Sometimes I forget, but most mornings I still weigh myself. I keep a homemade Excel chart on the bathroom counter (next to the other chart); I pencil in a little dot. Each graph lasts a calendar month. At the end of each month I file away each graph in a three-ring binder.

It is hard for me to let go of data.

Despite that, I try to maintain a certain distance from the numbers. The numbers aren't my target; behaviors that keep me mentally and physically healthy, and non-gluttonous, are my target. The numbers only serve as a signal that my habits and behaviors are working -- and only in one particular way. I know this intellectually, but I have to work at it to believe it.

+ + +

So let's say that I have observed my weight creeping up. (Hypothetically, ahem.) That's the wake-up call to deal with habits that I already know have been slipping. Gluttony creeping back in:

• second servings just because I can,
• eating the children's leavings,
• joining in on bedtime snacks just because everyone else is,
• feeling full and still going because there's still some pleasure to be had on the plate.

I start paying attention to all these, keeping a pack of gum in my pocket and leaving the serving dishes in the kitchen and so forth, and invariably the weight dips back down the first couple of days while I am focused.

What happens next is kind of funny.

If I stay focused, and the weight keeps going down, a little voice in my head urges me to make an Akron U-turn. "Look how great I am doing! I guess I don't really have to change my habits after all! My numbers are lovely! I can go back to big portions and extra chocolate at bedtime!"

(As I wrote on the Akron U-Turn post, this is certifiably insane. X causes Y, therefore Y is inevitable.)

If I don't stay quite as focused, and the weight pops back up -- maybe not as far up as it had been, but not dropping quite so fast -- a little voice in my head urges me to give up since "it isn't working anyway." This is also certifiably insane, and is in fact the exact opposite argument being made by the Akron U-Turn voice.

Picture on my shoulders -- not the angel and the demon, but a skinny demon and a fat demon. They take turns. The skinny demon's line is "You're doing great! You can afford to be a little gluttonous!" The fat demon's line is "Give it up! You might as well be a glutton for all the good this is doing you!"

I am telling you, there is part of my brain that will try anything, including the complete suspension of logic, in order to get more cake.

+ + +

I guess there are two counter-thoughts I could be having here.

When the number on the scale makes me happy, I can think: "What I am doing is working well. Keep it up."

When the number on the scale makes me worried, I can think: "I know what I need to do. I have done it before."

So I am working on that.

One thing that is definitely getting better is the long-term view. I keep coming back to that. Because this is a rest-of-my-life thing, it is okay if the trends are really, really slow and slight. I don't really care about getting quickly back to my target. I only care about not getting farther away and making course corrections that nudge me back to where I am going.

+ + +

As an almost but not entirely unrelated matter: there was a thread on the front page of reddit today about smoking cessation. The question went like this:

Ex-smokers of reddit, what was your motivation and/or technique for giving up?

First, I think this person was right to post the question to /r/askreddit (which is a general-interest subreddit) and specifically asking "ex-smokers," rather than posting to /r/stopsmoking and getting answers from a lot of people who are still struggling with their addiction.

And I thought to myself -- where would people struggling with nicotine addiction be if mostly they just turned for advice to people who haven't (yet) successfully quit, or to people who never had an addiction in the first place? It seems pretty obvious that while they are not the only source of useful advice for would-be quitters (the medical profession probably has at least some), those who've been addicted and managed to quit would be a good population to turn to. Learn from the proven.

The same thing could be said for the battle against gluttony and sloth (and by extension, excess adiposity). It is really surprising how much of the popular narrative is devoted to pointing out that few people succeed permanently, without rounding up a bunch of successful losers and trying to learn from them.

That being said, I noticed as I was lurking on the reddit "how did you quit?" question that there was a great deal of variety in the answers. One swore by antidepressants, another warned against them. Many said that cold-turkey was the only way, others thought that cold-turkey approaches were doomed to fail and advised keeping a pack of cigarettes around to ease the really bad cravings. E-cigarettes and patches were common tools, but some didn't find them helpful at all. For some, a "wake-up call" was all they needed (becoming a father, coughing up a wad of black stuff, counting up the yearly cost) and for others, mental effort alone wasn't enough.

I have never been addicted to nicotine (never smoked a cigarette in my life, in fact), so I can't directly compare the two experiences of kicking nicotine and kicking gluttony. However, I was struck by the similarities evident in the list. Highly personalized approach; the necessity of learning to deal with physical suffering; the way it gets slowly better with time, even though relapse is always a sobering possibility; the knowledge that even though it is hard, some people do succeed, every year.

The semiannual gluttony retrospective, part III: Keeping motivated in the face of okayness.

MrsDarwin kindly obliged me with a question on my introductory post:

I really appreciate your maintenance/reminder posts, since I'm kind of at the same stage you are (though with less exercise). I'm at a basically acceptable weight which I maintain without much trouble -- I could stand to lose five pounds and tone up, but on the other hand, my clothes fit in a mostly flattering fashion. But I need the constant reminder not to be complacent. You should write about "keeping motivated in the face of okayness." 

This is really the crux of maintenance, and it can even be the crux of initial weight loss, too.  Remember the Akron U-Turn?  I think it's common to use "hey, I'm doing pretty well!" as an excuse to undermine ourselves by going back to undesirable behaviors.

Some good habits have persisted in the face of my okayness, and some have drifted away.   What's the difference?  I think a lot of it has to do with having created "bright lines" around some behaviors:  some rule I've stated to myself, even gone public with here on the blog or in my family. Something that It's not okay to eat a whole pizza.  A normal breakfast can contain one egg, but not two.  The right dessert size for me is about as big as two Oreos.  I don't go through a drive-through to get a snack.    I go to the gym at least twice a week.   

You have to strike the right balance when it comes to these:

• they have to be something that you really want to adopt permanently, with few exceptions.  
• They have to be something where it doesn't matter if you're doing "okay" -- for the rest of your life you want to live with these bright-line boundaries, no matter what your dress size.   
• And you have to know when to define your bright line around a "never" (in my case, "never eat a whole pizza") and when to define it around a "normal" that can be excepted on special occasions (like the two-egg thing; if I'm starving, I'll order a big fat omelette at a restaurant, but I think of it as a splurge, a deviation).

The hard part is creating the bright line in the first place.  I may think I want to stop doing a certain behavior, but often I find that I don't really want to.  I've tried to establish "I never nibble off the kids' plates after lunch" and it hasn't worked very well.  On the other hand I might well be able to establish "I make the kids scrape their own plates into the trash after lunch," now that I think about it.   So maybe part of it is carefully choosing which behavior to enclose in those bright lines.

Right now the "okayness" I struggle with is in the physical activity.  I'm in pretty good shape compared to the average woman my age; training at a higher level is not feasible right now because of my other responsibilities, so I have no reason to set a stringent goal; even Mark can't run faster or longer than I can because he's recovering from an injury, so I haven't got the motivation to keep up with him.   I still go to the gym twice a week, and try for three times, but I haven't been pushing myself very hard lately; I've told myself "I only have to run for twenty minutes and then I can quit," and pretty often when I get to the end of the twenty minutes I do quit.  For a while there I was running at a peak speed of 7.2 mph at intervals, and these days I go "meh" and set the treadmill at 6.0 and try not to think about it till I'm done.  Well, I didn't draw the bright line around a certain number of minutes or a certain speed; I drew it around showing up twice a week.  And I faithfully show up twice a week, but I don't work very hard right now.  

Why the backsliding?  I think I feel a little bit overwhelmed with things right now -- look how badly my blogging has fallen off -- and so it's harder to say "no" to the voice that says, "You're sick of this treadmill and you could just get off and go take an extra-long, extra hot shower."   My solution to this has been to run less and swim more, since I hate to run and love to swim.  It works.  At minimum, I want to keep running enough that I don't hurt myself when I do run, and one run every week or two seems to do that.  

Anyway, I still have to take a good hard look at my habits and clean them up now and again, because where I didn't draw a bright line they occasionally veer into "old bad habit" territory.  One way I'm doing that right now is by keeping a food diary and counting up the calories -- it's not a permanent habit, it's a diagnostic tool to find the places where I can improve.  Mostly it reminds me of things I already learned:  I don't need a snack between breakfast and lunch.  An afternoon snack with a little protein in it is generally a good idea, but it doesn't have to be big.  Second servings at dinner is something I have to be careful about.  All these things I know, but it's really easy -- when things have been going well -- to trick myself into thinking I'm in pretty good shape -- I can afford to splurge often enough that the "splurge" creeps back into becoming an everyday thing. 

Anyway, I think the best defense against the "okayness" problem are bright lines -- boundaries which are meant to stand no matter how "okay" you feel.  They can be somewhat porous and can have exceptions -- but the point is that they define a lifelong norm.  I find that wherever I've managed to establish them, they have remained.

Semiannual gluttony retrospective, part II. The numbers.

So I haven't been doing that "weight control chart" for a long time now. I still weigh myself most mornings, and every few days I write it down because I want to keep a long-term record (and if nothing else, there's a height and weight check-in on the NFP charts, so I will at least have one data point per month). I stopped doing that thing where I would start following more rules when I had so many data points (weight readings) that were in such-and-such a range, etc. It was worth a try, but it was really too involved to keep up with.

I have been thinking more and more about the most useful attitude to have toward the numbers: the weight on the scale, the dress size, and even the calorie count (or WW points or carb grams---whatever countable food metric you might be considering).

Coming into the start of my fifth year of weight control, I am even more strongly convinced of a particular way of thinking about these numbers. I have pointed out before that "the numbers" are not under your direct control. Behavior and habit development are under your direct control; the numbers aren't. If weight/size control for health is your desire. the numbers are useful -- not as goals or targets, because you cannot really aim at them -- but as diagnostics to evaluate existing habits and behaviors.

The sequence goes like this:

• Check the numbers
• Decide to develop a particular habit that seems it might be helpful
• Set goal to "hit" the habit by repeatedly practicing the behavior until habit is established
• Once habit is established, check the numbers again
• If the numbers are good (or at least not worse) and the habit is pleasant or tolerable, keep the habit; if the numbers are worse or the habit is intolerable, choose a different habit.

The important thing here is that if you're going to freak out and feel like a failure, don't do it because the numbers are bad. Focus all concern about failure, all motivation to succeed, on the behavior. Not on the numbers. The behavior is what you can control. The numbers are an indirect effect.

 

One of the things I am even more sure about is that even the number of calories you consume counts as a metric, not a behavior. I know it seems wrong, because theoretically you ought to be able to directly control the number of calories you put in your mouth. But it is so foreign to human relationships with food to calculate calories before eating them, and it is such an intrusion into normal eating behavior to do it, and it is so difficult to keep up long-term (not to mention being pretty inaccurate) that I really think it needs to be considered a metric, something that is indirectly affected by the choices you make throughout the day.

 

Even if you take the step of counting calories before you eat them, using a calorie counter to make a plan and then trying to stick to it all day, you still need to employ direct behavior strategies, and whether you consume the number of calories you planned or not is an indirect result of all the choices you made that day. One of them was the choice to count up the calories and put together the meal plan, of course. But there were many others: did you measure your food every time? did you take steps to avoid temptations? what did you do when you had to make an unexpected substitution? At the end of the day when you count up all the calories, the number you actually ate is a measure of whether your decisions were useful or not.

 

In other words: don't berate yourself for eating 1,972 calories instead of 1,300 calories. Measure it, write it down, work on the habits, and then some day in the future try measuring again and see if, with a similar effort, you manage to get closer to the 1,300.

 

I find that periodically spending a week or so pre-planning my portions in order to hit a certain calorie range is a good way to remind myself of the portion sizes I actually need, so I do this from time to time. (I am doing it this week; the semi-annual gluttony retrospective is here for a reason, after all). But I try really hard to think of the behavior goal as "I will sit down every evening for a week and pre-plan my portions and foods to the best of my ability to predict them, and at each meal I will measure portions and make corrections to the plan to reflect reality." I don't think of it as "I will eat no more than 1700 calories each day." Because ultimately, unless I moved into a locked laboratory, I can't just make that happen. I don't eat calories; I eat food, things like strawberries and cheddar cheese and turkey sandwiches and Twix and margaritas. The calories are an abstraction, and they are not worth getting upset about. I just use them, from time to time, to tell me if my habits are helpful or harmful.