Am I being unreasonable?

PAV8888

There are two sides to many coins.

Before logging my food (by weight, before eating) I was ready to give up losing weight because I was eating in a way I could not see myself continuing to eat long term.

I was making choices I thought were good.

But, in retrospect, while some were good choices, a lot that I thought were good at the time were, number-wise, a lot of effort and suffering for little profit.

And I had been overdoing my deficits which was leading to burnout and spectacular reversals at times.

One of the first decisions I made after reviewing the logging of my food on MFP was trading three tablespoons of olive oil for another can of salmon in my salmon salad... even though olive oil was so healthy that I had been using every opportunity to add some to anything and everything 😹😹😹

My McDonald's fruit and fiber muffin (with peanut butter and jam packets) stayed in the books for a bit longer but was eventually replaced by two egg McMuffins no butter add 3x slivered and 3x red onion per sandwich. Only a few more calories but a more substantial and longer lasting meal for me. This came out of reviewing logging and comparing caloric cost to satiety and satisfaction.

TBH, "tactical eating" was an early part of the experiments: toss out one of the two egg McMuffins above and stuff two regular meat patties into the remaining one. Saves 100 Cal and to me, at the time, was an equally long lasting/filling meal.

Or put three beef patties on a side salad no dressing. Not gourmet, right? But add a vanilla cone as the meal's highlight to kiss and make up, and that's another sub 600 Cal McD meal (yes i used to do a lot more McD's than I do now). And no, logging says that the fried fish or chicken patty is not any healthier than the beef patty. And losing the weight was much more important (in the beginning and for overall health) that the type of foods that helped me do so.

So fully costed logging helped me to re evaluate what was worth it to me and what was not.

Let's face it.

In the beginning it was a trade off of more filling for less calories. Calories are all that matters for weight control success, so this helped to establish the base of the pyramid for me.

Then, for me, things evolved into finding options that were both filling for right now that I'm eating, but also more filling for more hours. i.e a min max problem trying to get maximum hours of "I'm happy enough with what I've eaten" for the minimum number of calories

Then it evolved into total satisfaction: hey, maybe I'm willing to forego some satiation because this tastes better then that, or because it offers some level of satisfaction the other doesn't.

And way way later it became a game of hitting nutritionally sound goals.

Not 5 but 10 portions of vegetables and fruits, at least so much protein, always say least so much fiber, minimize saturated fats, minimize sodium (should get back to doing that). I've never gone the less sugar route; but I don't see anything wrong with wanting to reduce non intrinsic added sugars.

Again, all that came from reviewing my logs. And adjusting over time

During initial weight loss I would log before eating to make sure I was on track. I was operatin on tighter margins than you might be because I started at sub 300 and didn't get to MFP till I was already in the 240 range.

All this careful logging took time, especially in the beginning. Which made it hard to do if I had let myself get too hungry. Which led to me consuming an easy to quickly weigh and prepare apple or two during cooking and logging. Which helped me cut down on hunger and total eating. And helped me eat smaller portions more regularly instead of eating larger portions to avoid getting hungry before the next meal. (Again this changed in the future as I will often now eat a bit more to reduce continuous nibbling; but I wouldn't have been successful at doing this now had I not previously reduced "customary" / "expected" portions by going the smaller portion route initially)

So logging and a few early "rules" about treats (have to eat pre weighed individually packaged-by me-treats; have to get up to get one from kitchen; sit down to eat it undistracted, not while watching tv or reading; have to get up to get second one, sit back down to eat, get up and go for x amount of walking before third, etc) helped me keep to my calories early on, see that results were possible, and got me interested in figuring out how to make things easiest on me by maximizing what I would get to consume while still meeting reasonably defined goals.

Further changes and optimizations built on each other till my day today satisfies me just as much (that's a lie: it actually satisfies me much more) as it did when I was obese; but it looks quite
a bit different--the vast majority of the time.

But yes i had to review logs and I also accepted early on that I was on a journey of self discovery where I WOULD be making changes.

So I wasn't trying to minimize changes.

I was 48 and could already see severe limits as to the options I would have available to me based on my physical abilities during the last third of my life

So I was trying to just make smarter and better choices that I could see myself keeping to long-term, and which would, hopefully, help me run into less limits during that last third.

So far, six years later... it is still working

PS: spray of Pam..... scale works fine for that.

Direct addition to pan/pot, for sure if sensitive enough. Else 0.5g to 1g oil.

Also subtraction from can weight. Propellant has some weight but the 0.25g of propellant per few grams of oil is minimal vs the actual drops of oil.

I can easily use 100Cal of Pam over a few sprays during cooking if I don't pay enough attention!

skurve04

glp2323 wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback. It has helped ease my concerns.

My current weight is around 560 lbs. My peak was about 640 lbs. I'm also 6'7" so I'm a tall big guy (38yrs old).

The coronavirus really was a wake-up call that I needed to get healthy if I wanted to be here long term for my family. I am disappointed in myself and feel incredible guilt it took me this long to "wake up"

I know I can't correct all my problems overnight but the urgency feels real. I just wish I had gotten serious about this sooner.

Thank you again for all the responses. Means more than you know!

Hey bud,

We are all on our own journey. Nice job putting yourself out there!

I've started so many times and have given up when the scale stops moving. It's extremely difficult to keep eating healthier and working out when the scale isn't moving.

Currently, my scale isn't moving. Albeit only for the lasy 2 weeks. This is about the point where I usually give up! I'm absolutely determined to keep doing the right things and push past this.

Your body is changing. I don't know the science...but it's changing and it'll take time.

Keep going man. You don't need to double your efforts, keep to your original plan. It'll pay off.

I have 80 more lbs. You have a long way to go too. We got this!

You're the man!

AlexandraFindsHerself1971

I do the family's cooking, so I put the recipes into the "Recipe" tab. I've done this with a lot of things because I don't salt a lot while cooking, and many recipes I get online I modify, and that changes the calorie load (Sweet and sour sauce made with sucralose instead of sugar, for example).

And since I do a five week menu plan for dinners and we eat the same things for lunch every week, by eight months in everything's pretty much in the food log already.

I weigh and measure. I have a food scale, and when I made enchiladas today I measured out a third of a cup of shredded cheese and two ounces of diced cooked chicken. I didn't measure on my partners' enchiladas, but they aren't dieting, so an extra ounce of cheese is neither here nor there. Tonight I measured my rice using a four ounce portioning scoop, and then weighed the swiss steak portion to get four ounces. (And that was almost too much. I was FULL when I got done.)

I bought several smaller dishes; my small pinch bowls if filled to the thick rim around them are a quarter cup. So if I have trail mix I have it in that. The small blue plastic bowls are one cup if fully filled. The little footed glass dishes are just the right size for a single scoop of ice cream or a pudding cup. I eat off lunch and bread and butter plates, rarely a full-size dinner plate.

I figure that I can't judge portions accurately and I will be measuring and weighing my food for the rest of my life, and if that's what it takes to be able to play with my grandchildren and be active into my old age, it's a small price to pay.