2024-10-04
I told myself at the start of the month that I would use this month as an opportunity to eat less and lose some weight (seeing as I have surpassed 11 stone again) but as it happens, I haven't really tried and have not lost any weight at all, of course.
See, I know I can do it, as in January this year I lost seven pounds from just eating less, and not making even any changes to the amount of exercise I did or anything else in life. I just ate less. And that is all I really need to do this time around: I am of course going to the gym, so there is a certain additional need when I do that, but aside from that I really can just cut back. Instead, I've been eating a lot, and especially of bread. I have had four slices of (ultra-processed) bread today with oil and dried onion, and for dinner have eaten three pancakes with chocolate on each, as well as half a watermelon. As I was eating the melon I was really struggling; in fact, in terms of even the pancakes I had to stop early, chucking one to the birds and giving the other to my brother. I am now writing this with a horrible feeling of oversaturation in my stomach.
The problem is, I naturally have the proclivity to eat. Some people don't, and I really really do envy them, but I don't have that luck, and so I just eat and eat and can eat to the point where I feel unwell. Then, as soon as the fullness subsides (generally about fifteen or twenty minutes) I can eat again. I haven't done that for a while: I used to when my diet was more heavily ultra-processed, but now I find that once I've gorged I can go without for a few hours at least. But still, I have a tendency to eat not the point of relieving hunger, but instead to the point where I instill a horrible pain in my stomach. I do so partly under the pretense of not wasting food; but also, I make a lot of food in the first place, and then tell myself I can't waste it so I have to eat it all. For breakfast at work I often make bowls of porridge that are too big to eat immediately, and so I have to eat it slowly over the course of an hour or so. At home, my dinners can be enough to feed two, or even three.
My weight is still decently in check, but it is gradually creeping back up. As I said, I told myself that this month would be the one where I reduce my food intake: so far, that clearly hasn't happened. So, I'm going to set myself some guidelines.
Firstly, I know (refined) carbohydrates are terrible for my health, so I will refrain from them as much as possible and instead stick to just protein and fat for the main sources. This will mean, primarily, cutting out bread: I know I shouldn't be eating the bread in the first place as it is so processed, but I have kind of slipped up and returned to a bad habit. As such, no bread, I dare say at all. If I want to make pizzas, I can use my sourdough starter: I don't really do that much anymore and am actually just considering giving up on the starter altogether, or maybe freezing it. I mainly eat brown rice, quinoa etc. so that's not quite so bad, but really it's just that my diet of late is not doing me any favours.
I will try to increase my fat and protein uptake. I suppose in a way, the best method is to allow anything as long as it does not fall into the bad category. For instance, bread is a huge source of my calories at the moment, and so I need to avoid that. Then, I can stick by the heuristic of: eat what you have, and eat until just-less-than-satiety, and I'll be fine.
I'll do that from tomorrow, then. Of course, it can't always happen quite so cleanly, for instance when I go to Italy there will be a lot of refined carbs, but that is ok. For my own cooking, I'll stick with what I've got. I actually probably won't need to go shopping at all now until the holiday next week, and can finish off all what I've got.
Talking of Italy, I'm feeling so unprepared...
I suppose there is a kind of "progress in the gaps" to be made here. As in, this kind of thing (eating) is not really treated as a task that I must perform, as in the gym, or any of my @@[thousands][/thousands]. Instead, this is something that can be performed without really any track being kept of it: I can just notice that I've lost weight at some point in the future, if I slightly change my habits for my everyday.
Of course I could actually track this, but it's nice to have something where I am not tracking it, and I don't want to beat myself up too much... in a way, a lot of life is just tending to various things, and noticing that there is an imbalance in one place, and so having to correct it, and then noticing that in the process of fixing the last imbalance another has popped up elsewhere, and fixing that, and then noticing that in the process of ...
I suppose as I get older, I'll learn to care less about certain things, and not need to strive for them to be in a good form, and will whittle down the things I have to care about, and just focus on them. For now, though, I'm still young.
With that said, have a good one.