In the past, what has worked for me to lose weight is this: I restrict my calories to 1800 per day. That's it. This is based on an ideal weight of 180 X 10. My source for this formula is a nutrition book I used in nursing school over 20 years ago, so I can't attest to its scientific accuracy. It has worked in the past, although I have been tracking my weight for some time and the thinnest I have gotten in the past four years is 195 pounds. I have hit a few plateaus, but for the most part my lack of further progress is almost always because I get off-track with this plan for one reason or another, usually because of a "special event" that is used as an excuse for self-indulgence, somehow gets extended for days or even weeks and then I am right back where I started. If I hit a true plateau I may have to reassess this formula, but that's a problem I would love to have.
Oh, and I am a vegetarian (those factoids just keep on coming!). I have also discovered that, like many people, I do not absorb nutrients (including protein) well from soy products. So, I keep close track of my protein intake as well. I am not a vegan and love dairy products and, to a lesser extent, eggs, so getting adequate protein is really not that difficult. My goal is 80 grams of protein a day. I eat yogurt twice a day (plain, low fat) for the probiotics as well as the protein.
Of course, that's not quite all I do to keep myself healthy. I love walking and this is my primary exercise. I walk about 70 minutes four days a week and 60 minutes once a week. These may seem like odd durations for my walks, but I work four days a week and walk 35 minutes both to and from the shuttle that takes me to work, and on the weekend I have several hour-long walk routes mapped out near my house. My job is also a physically active one; I work as a staff nurse in an HIV clinic (another little fact about me).
A healthy body is very important to me, but what matters most in all this is what happens when I don't have food to fall back on to comfort me when I am stressed or reward me when I feel good or keep me company when I do most anything: I have to come face to face with myself as a human being without anything standing in the way. I am also an alcoholic in recovery, so this compulsion to put something between me and reality is very familiar. But why should I care about facing life and myself so starkly? Ah, therein lies my deepest motive for what I am taking on and why I am writing this blog. If I have eaten 1800 calories today, or don't want to use them all up right now, I have to stop and just be here now.
The Buddha said, "I have come to teach suffering and the end of suffering." He did not say that he came to teach a bunch of stuff and that suffering and the end of suffering were one on a long list. He said that this was all he came to teach. And his most basic teaching about suffering, the foundation for everything else he taught was this: we create our own suffering by rejecting what we find unpleasant, clinging to what we find pleasant, and ignoring what we find beneath our notice. His one and only recommendation was to live entirely in this moment, with whatever joy or pain or sorrow or sadness or pleasant sensation or inconvenience or beauty or ugliness that entails. When I find myself craving something to eat (just as I used to crave alcohol or cigarettes) when I have no bodily need to eat more, I have a choice. I can eat something, or I can ask what the source of that craving is. It is not true "hunger" (though that word may require some parsing later on), so what is it? What function does food serve when it is not feeding my body? Would I rather be comforted or free?
Mind you, the answer to these questions is not what is important. The asking of them over and over again is. And not only about food, of course. I must ask them whenever I seek to leave my here and now behind because it is too frightening or frustrating or boring. I have used sex, drugs, alcohol, buying things (especially books), cigarettes, computers, music, reading, and many other dodges to avoid facing myself. Of course, except for cigarettes (and, in my case, alcohol) there is nothing inherently bad in any of these things. But I know when I am using them healthily and when as an avoidance technique. And sometimes this is OK; one of my tendencies is to perfectionism, so I have an impulse to force myself to face up to what and who I am with brutality rather than compassion. Escape has its uses, and I have an obligation to be as kind to myself as I would be to others.
One big advantage to having quit both alcohol and smoking (I am nearly 12 years sober and haven't smoked in over 14 years) is that I am familiar with the feeling of desperation that comes with giving up something that seemed to define the parameters of my life and make me feel that everything was all right. So, when I want to reach for the Lindt white chocolate truffles or go get a pint of Full Tilt ice cream or have another few slices of bread instead of just being, I know what that feeling is, and I know it won't kill me to simply let it arise and pass away.
Oh, and I am a vegetarian (those factoids just keep on coming!). I have also discovered that, like many people, I do not absorb nutrients (including protein) well from soy products. So, I keep close track of my protein intake as well. I am not a vegan and love dairy products and, to a lesser extent, eggs, so getting adequate protein is really not that difficult. My goal is 80 grams of protein a day. I eat yogurt twice a day (plain, low fat) for the probiotics as well as the protein.
Of course, that's not quite all I do to keep myself healthy. I love walking and this is my primary exercise. I walk about 70 minutes four days a week and 60 minutes once a week. These may seem like odd durations for my walks, but I work four days a week and walk 35 minutes both to and from the shuttle that takes me to work, and on the weekend I have several hour-long walk routes mapped out near my house. My job is also a physically active one; I work as a staff nurse in an HIV clinic (another little fact about me).
A healthy body is very important to me, but what matters most in all this is what happens when I don't have food to fall back on to comfort me when I am stressed or reward me when I feel good or keep me company when I do most anything: I have to come face to face with myself as a human being without anything standing in the way. I am also an alcoholic in recovery, so this compulsion to put something between me and reality is very familiar. But why should I care about facing life and myself so starkly? Ah, therein lies my deepest motive for what I am taking on and why I am writing this blog. If I have eaten 1800 calories today, or don't want to use them all up right now, I have to stop and just be here now.
The Buddha said, "I have come to teach suffering and the end of suffering." He did not say that he came to teach a bunch of stuff and that suffering and the end of suffering were one on a long list. He said that this was all he came to teach. And his most basic teaching about suffering, the foundation for everything else he taught was this: we create our own suffering by rejecting what we find unpleasant, clinging to what we find pleasant, and ignoring what we find beneath our notice. His one and only recommendation was to live entirely in this moment, with whatever joy or pain or sorrow or sadness or pleasant sensation or inconvenience or beauty or ugliness that entails. When I find myself craving something to eat (just as I used to crave alcohol or cigarettes) when I have no bodily need to eat more, I have a choice. I can eat something, or I can ask what the source of that craving is. It is not true "hunger" (though that word may require some parsing later on), so what is it? What function does food serve when it is not feeding my body? Would I rather be comforted or free?
Mind you, the answer to these questions is not what is important. The asking of them over and over again is. And not only about food, of course. I must ask them whenever I seek to leave my here and now behind because it is too frightening or frustrating or boring. I have used sex, drugs, alcohol, buying things (especially books), cigarettes, computers, music, reading, and many other dodges to avoid facing myself. Of course, except for cigarettes (and, in my case, alcohol) there is nothing inherently bad in any of these things. But I know when I am using them healthily and when as an avoidance technique. And sometimes this is OK; one of my tendencies is to perfectionism, so I have an impulse to force myself to face up to what and who I am with brutality rather than compassion. Escape has its uses, and I have an obligation to be as kind to myself as I would be to others.
One big advantage to having quit both alcohol and smoking (I am nearly 12 years sober and haven't smoked in over 14 years) is that I am familiar with the feeling of desperation that comes with giving up something that seemed to define the parameters of my life and make me feel that everything was all right. So, when I want to reach for the Lindt white chocolate truffles or go get a pint of Full Tilt ice cream or have another few slices of bread instead of just being, I know what that feeling is, and I know it won't kill me to simply let it arise and pass away.
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