Fourth Day: What To Do When Leftovers Arrive

On the last run, I discussed what to do when social outings require a temporary deviation from the diet plan. I recently faced a special one - a going-away dinner - and I followed the procedure I set out beforehand for "cheating:" casting it as a temporary respite from a diet, one that will supply good memories to tide me over when the going gets especially lean. In its place, nostalgia works - which explains why "forceum" plans often don't.

This time 'round, though, I faced a greater challenge: I got some leftovers which I had to get rid of in some way.

I say "leftovers," as opposed to gifts of food, because that's what they were: a kind of hand-me-down package of food. Since I have qualms about getting rid of a whole load of food outright, I decided to eat it as speedily as possible. This decision, plus the dinner beforehand, put me up several pounds.

I can say to the weight-obsessed that such respites are little more than setbacks. A sense of overall perspective is needed: since a serious diet is going to take a month minimum, and possibly a couple or a few months, prolongation of it by a week or less isn't going to do that much harm. Perspective leads to robustness; lack of perspective may mean an underlying lack of staying power. "Efficiency-centred" often entails a certain brittleness.

Perspective also drains self-absorption. Someone who doesn't share my sense of mission in this regard may decide that I'm simply hungry, or that I'm starving myself disproportionately to my need to lose weight. Looking starved, no matter what weight you are, does tend to invite charity from people who really care for you.

This point being noted, though, I have come up with a procedure to limit a deviancy from becoming a new rule. In a word, it's sequestration. That's why I tend to polish off any extras I receive as soon as I can - to get them out of the way. I admit that this approach does tread towards Bulimia Land, but it seems the best way to make the diet the norm, and heavy eating the exception. That way, my sense of the norm, and my habits, are inclined towards weight loss.

As far as receiving extra food is concerned, this procedure is the one I'm following:

a) Work any received low-calorie items into the diet, if they do in fact fit.
b) Those that don't, eat as soon as practicable unless you have no qualms about throwing them out.
c) Don't mix your diet food with the "extras" - keep them apart.
d) Some items don't make up much of a meal by themselves, or in combination with the others you're received. For these, it is tempting to go to the grocery store for extra ingredients to make "real meals" from what you've got. This is the slippery slope that's likely to make you an ex-dieter. Why? Because ingredients almost never balance out. So one trip turns into two, which turns into three, which turns into a regular habit. (Consider also that it shows that you really needed the food that you received, which makes for a happy giver who'll be encouraged to give you more of the same.) If you have to eat like a wolf for a time, so be it. Doing so will make it less jarring to go back to the diet plan.
e) For the eat-a-rama, it may be best to down the high-calorie items first and the lower-calorie items later. This practice leads you back to low-cal food, and makes the climb back up to the diet plan less abrupt.

Another point: the more you go off the diet only to get back on, and stay on, the more practice you have cutting down your food, and the more acclimatized you become to cutting back. There's little wrong with yo-yoing as long as the overall net change is downwards.


Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 247 pounds - a five pound, if temporary, setback.

Third Day: More About "No Exercise"

The supposed benefit-point of exercising while on a diet is that it burns more calories, thus enabling weight to be shed faster. Like all plausible ideas, though, there is a hidden catch. I've been experiencing what it is recently.

The more fitness-centred you are, the more "in the body" you are. This is a plus for a physical person, but not so much of one for a dieter. When you eat, you get up and you grab the food. When you're physically oriented, you tend to snap into action when you've made a decision or choice. To the extent that exercise makes you more physical, the more inclined you are to get up and physically follow through on your desires...

...including the desire to snag an extra snack. "Go-go-go" to the fridge, to put it one way.

Those people who think that exercise is a necessary component to a diet should ask themselves why there are so many ex-athletes around with protruding bellies, for the male variety.


Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 242 pounds.

Second Day: Restlessness

Last night, I bumped into a side effect when trying to get to sleep. I've set up a diet plan that doesn't require exercise, but during this second run-through I'm finding myself getting restless. I would like to believe that I'm abnormal with respect to this need for activity.

More normal is, of course, tiredness. Try as I might, I can't find any way around that part of it.


Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 243 pounds again.

First Day: It's Easier The Second Time 'Round

Once again, I've felt the "empties" that come with the start of a diet. Having been through it once before, though, I had some idea of what was coming...which has made it easier. Also, the carrots, celery and cabbage pre-diet I've been through made coping with the fat-metabolism hunger easier.

There's something to be said for the people who try to diet, find that it's too hard for them at that point, and go back to their old ways for a time. The experience gained makes the second go-'round a little easier because the obstacles are clearer. When it comes down to it, unless a diet is medically necessary, there's no immediate need to shed the fat on the first go-round.

In fact, given that surgical and quasi-surgical help is now offered, there seems less reason to overdramatize. We do, afer all, live long lives.


Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 243 pounds (in part due to fluid loss.)

Back At It

It's now 2008; after some re-fattening up, I'm back on the diet track. Unfortunately, I didn't gain the amount of pounds that I wanted to play with this time 'round, so I'm going to limit my fooling around with the Plateau Buster to this one test: for the first four weeks of this phase of the diet, I'm not going to use it - plateau or not. For the next four weeks, I'm going to whenever I bump into a plateau. Instead of a sliding scale, I'm sticking to a straight 1,000 calories/day until my goal is reached. This eight-week straddle will determine whether or not the Plateau Buster speeds the weight-loss process up.

As far as the last five+ weeks are concerned, I spent them using what could be called the "inside straight" of dieting: eating as much as I want of three foods, all of which are low-calorie bulk foods: celery, cabbage and carrots. The plan is simple: eat as much as you can, whenever you want, of those foods. "Cheating," or deviation from this plan, is all-but mandatory for nutrition needs. The rationale behind it is to lose weight without enduring hunger pangs, as the stomach is kept full with low-calorie bulk food. Supposedly, this bulk-up makes for an easier diet.

Unforutunately for me (as well as for anyone else who has tried it, I suspect,) there are two types of "hungries." The first comes from an empty stomach, and is one which every dieter is familiar with. This type of hunger is avoided by the "CCC" diet. The trouble is, there's a second kind of hunger that does not go away with this kind of diet - the "hungries" that come with consuming a below-maintenance number of calories. This kind of hunger is essential to any diet, as it signals the body to metabolize some of its fat. I found that the disjoint between the lack of the first hunger and the presence of the second, instead of making me easier with the diet, instead made me feel querulous.

It is possible to lose weight with this diet, but only slowly. I "cheated" frequently while on it, including spells of outright backsliding. One of the lethal risks results from the much greater sugar hunger it engenders. Normally, I found, drinking a sugar-filled liquid made me queasy after a few swallows. Not while on this diet, though: shortly into it, I gulped down more than a cup of maple syrup (which I had to get rid of anyway or else mold would have gotten to it) without any quease that would indicate that enough sugar has gone down the gullet. In other words, my sugar hunger had increased dramatically. This side consequence meant that I had to abjure sugary foods as completely as I could. A sugar-laden diet would have taken away the safety-belt feature of this kind of diet: making cheating impracticable because of an already-filled stomach.

I did lose a few pounds while on it, although slowly: seven pounds over the course of four weeks. This kind of diet can work for someone who likes to lose weight slowly and doesn't mind putting up with the querulousness caused by the above-noted disjoint. It may suit a true endomorph well, and/or someone who's uncomfortable with rigid food restriction. At the price of feeling both full and hungry at the same time, of course.

It also may work as a prelude to a diet because of the resultant stomach fooling. One day, about two and a half weeks ago, I had to shovel a lot of snow. Because I had to get out there, I forgot to eat anything. By the time I remembered, it was dinner-time. Despite me going hungry all day, which I didn't notice for most of it, I only had room in my stomach for a regular-sized meal. Had I decided to start a more rigourous diet at that time, I might have found it easier to do so because my stomach was fooled into shrinking already.

Nevertheless, I have to confess that this approach, as a full diet in itself, isn't the one for me: I suppose I need a more structured approach. So, I'm back to the more rigid, fatburner method of eating five snack-sized meals a day, all of which total up to 1,000 calories. To start off, my weight as of about 6 PM today, unclothed, is noted just below. As is usual for this blog, I will be measuring myself in that state of undress for all of the measurements in order to whisk away the effect that different clothes have.


Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 246 pounds.