- This week is what I've been calling my "Launch Week," though I've been eating about 90% according to my plan since the middle of last week.
- I can't find my WHOOP and don't know how long/how well I slept last night. But I locked away my iPhone and iPad in my kSafe before bed, setting the timer for 6 hours. I also used my sleep mask. I woke up maybe once during the night to pee. I'll see if I can do a better job of "manual" sleep tracking.
- Breakfast: Scrambled eggs. I've already made my first exception, as the recipe includes mayo, though I didn't use butter.
- Lunch: Grilled chicken from FreshDirect, Painterland Sisters Organic Skyr Yogurt, Vanilla Bean, Spindrift Lime
- Fitness: Rucking for 41 minutes with 30 lbs. of plates with my Rucker 4.0. (GoRuck is now on the Rucker 5.0.) For me, rucking is a good way to get some fitness in, even if I'm just doing errands.
- Dinner: Wonder, Yasas, Build-Your-Own-Bowl (White Rice, Chicken Souvlaki x 2, Eggplant, Tzatziki, Toum, Roasted Broccoli, Feta Cheese, Diced Avocado, Lemon Vinaigrette) , Spindrift Lemon, Spindrift Grapefruit. (no photo)
- Good start to my Launch Week.
-
My biggest takeaway from the Introduction is that I need to prepare in advance for challenges/rough patches.
Beck asked the dieters who she works with what they now know about dieting that they wished they'd known years ago.
Some of the words of wisdom from Beck's clients which particularly resonated with me:
- "When I'm tempted to eat something I shouldn't, I need to pull out my list that contains all the reasons I want to lose weight"
- "Just because I'm hungry doesn't necessarily mean I should eat"
- "Cravings always go away, and there are things I can do to make them go away faster. I don't have to give in to them."
- "I have to prepare in advance for sabotaging thinking"
- "I need to give myself credit every time I do what I'm supposed to do."
On to Chapter 1...
On Saturday I had a long day working on my home renovation project. I had to make a lot of decisions, I'm not close to being done, and I'm getting worried about the rising costs.
Soon after my interior designer left, I ordered Truffle Mac & Cheese, a Quesadilla with Sour Cream, Mozzarella Sticks, a Brookie, a San Pellegrino Aranciata, and a Canada Dry Ginger Ale from Wonder.
Today I crossed a task off my to-do list that I'd been procrastinating on for weeks. It was easier than I expected it would be.
I then ordered Potato Salad, a Quesadilla with Sour Cream, Mozzarella Sticks, a Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookie, a San Pellegrino Aranciata, and a Canada Dry Ginger Ale from Wonder.
I need help with emotional eating/eating to relieve mental strain.
I'm revisiting "The Beck Diet Solution" by Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., a book originally recommended to me by Coach Chris from My Body Tutor.
It applies Cognitive Therapy to weight loss.
I read a few chapters last year but never finished the book.
This seems like a good time to revisit the book and apply it one chapter at a time.
Soon after my interior designer left, I ordered Truffle Mac & Cheese, a Quesadilla with Sour Cream, Mozzarella Sticks, a Brookie, a San Pellegrino Aranciata, and a Canada Dry Ginger Ale from Wonder.
Today I crossed a task off my to-do list that I'd been procrastinating on for weeks. It was easier than I expected it would be.
I then ordered Potato Salad, a Quesadilla with Sour Cream, Mozzarella Sticks, a Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookie, a San Pellegrino Aranciata, and a Canada Dry Ginger Ale from Wonder.
I need help with emotional eating/eating to relieve mental strain.
I'm revisiting "The Beck Diet Solution" by Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., a book originally recommended to me by Coach Chris from My Body Tutor.
It applies Cognitive Therapy to weight loss.
I read a few chapters last year but never finished the book.
This seems like a good time to revisit the book and apply it one chapter at a time.
Thoughts on the Foreword
The small sample of "sabotaging thoughts" in the Foreword makes me think that Beck knows what she's talking about:
- It's okay to eat this because...
- It won't matter if I eat this
- Since I cheated a little, I might as well eat whatever I want for the rest of the day
- I can't waste food
- My friend will think I'm rude if I don't eat her cake
- I can't stand being hungry
On the other hand, I resist thinking of myself as a "dieter" who is on a "diet."
I'm also worried that I'll have to constantly use willpower to replace unhelpful thoughts with helpful thoughts.
On to the Introduction...
OVERALL STRATEGY
"What?" means "What do I eat?" and "What don't I eat?"
"What?" means "What are my constraints?"
There need to be some guardrails.
Eating anything and everything isn't working!
I want to make this as easy on myself as possible.
I want to be able to know right away, that's "allowed" and that's "not allowed."
I don't want to always have to negotiate, "Can I have this? Is this on the diet?"
Ideally, not too many rules and exceptions, I don't want to make it too complicated.
ALLOWED
What diet am I going to follow?
The "protein and vegetables diet!" LOL
- Protein
- Chicken
- Beef
- Turkey
- Pork
- Eggs
- Beans
- Tofu
- Beyond Burger/Beyond Breakfast Sausage and related products (Impossible, veggie burgers)
- Protein powder
- Nuts
- Fish (very little, because of mercury concerns)
- Vegetables
- Rice
- Potential issues with lettuce/salads in the U.S. right now
- Base for lunch/dinner bowls
- Satisfying
- White or brown
- Dairy
- Spicy feta and tzatziki yogurt sauce at Mediterranean-inspired fast casual lunch places
- Cheese at a party, but not crackers
- Tahini adds dairy-like creaminess to Mediterranean bowls
- Fruit
- Drinks
- Water
- Tea
- Spindrift (Lime is my favorite)
- LMNT (electrolyte packets, Pink Lemonade is my current favorite)
- Bai (Brasilia Blueberry is my favorite)
- Seltzer water
- Mas+ if I can find it
NOT ALLOWED
- Noodles
- Pasta (spaghetti, fettuccine alfredo)
- Ramen
- Bread
- Bagels
- Sandwiches
- Pita bread/pita chips
- Naan
- Rolls
- Tortillas, wraps
- Quesadillas w/ sour cream
- Pizza
- Mac and cheese
- Mozzarella sticks, and other foods with fried breading
- Potatoes (Sweet potatoes and yams are OK)
- French fries
- Waffle fries
- Potato wedges
- Mashed potatoes
- Crispy potatoes
- Tater tots
- Home fries
- Hummus
- This is one of my biggest "domino" foods (h/t 4-Hour Body)
- Especially tubs of hummus with crackers or chips
- Falafel, chickpeas
- Nut butters (easy for me to overdo it)
- Corn
- Tortilla chips, Tostitos, Fritos, Cheetos
- Corn salsa
- Sugar
- Brownies
- Cookies
- Brookies (brownie + cookie)
- Crookies (croissant + cookie)
- Cheesecake
- Gatorade
- Lemonade
- Ginger ale
- Soda
- Other sugary drinks
- Restaurant meals may have hidden sugar, I'm not expecting myself to be 100% perfect
- Processed foods (anything in a bag, box, jar, can, or tube, h/t Dr. Alejandro Junger)
- Exceptions for pantry staples like cooking oil or salt
- Condiments
- Olive oil
- Mayo
- Ketchup
- Coffee (my personal preference)
- Alcohol (my personal preference)
MONTHLY SPECIAL OCCASIONS
I'm not going to say "I'm never having pizza again."
"Never again" is hard, and probably counter-productive for me.
For me, daily, weekly, or biweekly "cheat days" are too frequent.
I'll have "monthly special occasions" instead.
- Not a regular delivery option (Wonder, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, etc.)
- Not an "everyday indulgence," like a pizza from the neighborhood pizzeria
- Ordinary
- Too easy
- Not special enough
- Ideally with family or friends
- Requires planning
- Opportunity to add to my life experiences while living in NYC
- Ideally something I haven't tried before, but I can return to an old favorite
- Hopefully a monthly cadence will help lower the volume of the voices in my head that want me to indulge
Examples of monthly special occasions:
- Birthday party
- Anniversary dinner
- Wedding
- Michelin-star restaurants
- 50th birthday dinner at NYC Wine and Food Festival with Food Network star chef Maneet Chauhan
- A restaurant on a "Best of NYC" list
CASE STUDY: CHIPOTLE
- Bowl
- White rice
- Chicken, steak, barbacoa, or a limited-time option like Honey Chicken or Carne Asada
- Pinto beans or black beans
- Medium salsa
- Fajita vegetables
- Cheese
- Guacamole
- No chips
- No soda or juice
You learned them in grade school.
I call them the Fundamental Questions of food/diet/nutrition.
- Who?
- What? (I'm going to combine What? and Which?)
- Where?
- When?
- Why?
- How?
For me, "What?" is the most important Fundamental Question, but I'd like to briefly address the other ones in this overview.
Who?
I don't mean "Who do you eat?" -- though that would be funny! (The Cannibalism Diet -- it's high protein!)
I mean "Who do you eat with?"
I'm currently single, so the vast majority of my meals will be solo meals.
"Who?" might matter if I was in a relationship, and my partner and I had very different diets.
"Who?" also relates to social situations, which I'll cover when I get to "Why?"
Where?
I remember from the Ocean's Eleven director's commentary that Brad Pitt's character was always eating on the move.
I don't have a huge problem with eating all my meals while standing up or walking.
"Where?" could also refer to eating lunches somewhere other than your work desk, or eating dinners at the dinner table vs. your couch.
When?
To me, this mostly refers to the concept of intermittent fasting.
I've used a "12 hour window" before (for example, if I stopped eating at 8 PM, I couldn't start eating again until 8 AM the next day.)
This could also mean consistent meal times during the day.
I'm probably not going to worry so much about "When?," as I expect that "What?" will be much more challenging for me.
Why?
We eat for so much reasons besides nutrients and calories.
- Emotional eating
- Stress (eating as medication, h/t Institute for Integrative Nutrition)
- Boredom (eating as entertainment, h/t IIN)
- Mental strain (h/t MyBodyTutor)
- Happiness, celebration
- Social situations - parties, dates, business dinners, going out with friends
- Travel/vacations
- Special occasions - birthdays, holidays, anniversaries
These require their own strategies, which I'll cover in future posts.
How?
There are approaches to nutrition that focus on how you eat:
- Chewing every bite 50+ times
- Putting your fork down between bites
- Mindfulness, Fullness Scale, asking yourself "Am I actually hungry?" (h/t MyBodyTutor)
There's also "How much?", which is a world that many of us are familiar with:
- Calories
- Macros - protein, carbs, fat
- Tracking everything you eat
- Taking photos of what you eat
It kinda sucks to have to do this! LOL!
What next?
I think for now, I'm going to focus on "What?" and "Why?" to get to 155 lbs.
I will probably have to do a lot more of the tracking in "How much?" to get to 15% body fat.
We'll see...
In my last post on cheating, I asked the following question:
"What will keep me from turning to my old favorite comfort foods in future moments of stress, boredom, or happiness?"
Pizza, mac and cheese, brownies, etc. will always taste good to me.
They're always going to set off the pleasure centers in my brain.
It's possible that my tastes will change over time, that these foods will have a weaker hold on me the less I indulge in them.
What I need is a viable alternative.
One approach I'm getting back to is something I call The 75% Strategy.
I'm not trying to convince myself that pizza doesn't taste good.
I'm giving myself an alternative to pizza that's 75% as good as pizza.
At one of my favorite lunch spots in New York (RIP Fotia Mediterranean), this was my go-to lunch formula (calories and protein are rough estimates from the Lose It! app):
You can do this with any similar healthy fast casual lunch place.
You may need to tweak different dials to get to 75%.
For example, I found that adding olive oil didn't really add much in terms of taste/satisfaction, but it added more calories than I wanted.
As you conduct your own food experiments, you might need to turn down the cheesiness, or turn up the crunchiness.
See if you can create your own 75% Strategy meals as alternatives to your old favorite comfort foods.
"What will keep me from turning to my old favorite comfort foods in future moments of stress, boredom, or happiness?"
Pizza, mac and cheese, brownies, etc. will always taste good to me.
They're always going to set off the pleasure centers in my brain.
It's possible that my tastes will change over time, that these foods will have a weaker hold on me the less I indulge in them.
What I need is a viable alternative.
One approach I'm getting back to is something I call The 75% Strategy.
I'm not trying to convince myself that pizza doesn't taste good.
I'm giving myself an alternative to pizza that's 75% as good as pizza.
At one of my favorite lunch spots in New York (RIP Fotia Mediterranean), this was my go-to lunch formula (calories and protein are rough estimates from the Lose It! app):
- Spinach (7 cal, 0.9g protein)
- Chicken Shawarma (330 cal, 33g protein)
- Spicy Feta (80 cal, 4g protein)
- Tahini Caesar dressing (90 cal, 2g protein)
- Bai Brasilia Blueberry (10 cal, 0g protein)
- Total: 517 cals, 40g protein
You can do this with any similar healthy fast casual lunch place.
You may need to tweak different dials to get to 75%.
For example, I found that adding olive oil didn't really add much in terms of taste/satisfaction, but it added more calories than I wanted.
As you conduct your own food experiments, you might need to turn down the cheesiness, or turn up the crunchiness.
See if you can create your own 75% Strategy meals as alternatives to your old favorite comfort foods.
Last Thursday I ate khao soi ramen and pork gyoza at my favorite local ramen spot, which led to Ritter Sport milk chocolate with crispy flakes, which led to potato salad, mac and greens, a brookie (brownie + cookie) and a San Pellegrino Aranciata.
I said "I do" to myself on Monday.
By Thursday I was tearing the clothes off a smoking hot stranger in the janitor's closet of my honeymoon island resort.
--
It had been a mildly stressful day.
A Wayfair tech came to assemble my nightstands.
He opened the boxes and saw that the nightstands were already assembled. 🤦🏾♂️
He asked if there was a place he could put the boxes and trash, but he would have to bring them downstairs to the trash area of my apartment building.
I didn't want to ask him to do that, so I told him I would take care of it.
But that meant I had all this trash in the middle of the entryway of my apartment.
I'd have to borrow a dolly from my super to bring the trash downstairs.
The mild stress caused me to go into a tailspin.
Maybe a big part of myself didn't *want* to pull out of the tailspin.
--
Lessons
1) My old favorite comfort foods still exert a powerful influence on me.
They taste good!
I tend to smash the "instant gratification" button, rather than the "delayed gratification" button.
What will keep me from turning to my old favorite comfort foods in future moments of stress, boredom, or happiness?
2) I wasn't clear enough about how I wanted to eat.
Millions (billions?) of people around the world eat noodles, but I needed to be more explicit with myself about whether or noodles are "allowed."
3) I need more help!
My awesome My Body Tutor coach Chris strongly encouraged me to read and implement "The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person."
It's a cognitive therapy approach to weight loss.
I'm not sure why I kept resisting this book, but I need to revisit it.
I'm going to need a different level of structure/commitment/support to help me, especially since I'm no longer taking a GLP-1.
--
Over the next few posts, I'll dive deeper into these lessons.
I can't divorce myself.
I need to renew my vows during the honeymoon!
I said "I do" to myself on Monday.
By Thursday I was tearing the clothes off a smoking hot stranger in the janitor's closet of my honeymoon island resort.
--
It had been a mildly stressful day.
A Wayfair tech came to assemble my nightstands.
He opened the boxes and saw that the nightstands were already assembled. 🤦🏾♂️
He asked if there was a place he could put the boxes and trash, but he would have to bring them downstairs to the trash area of my apartment building.
I didn't want to ask him to do that, so I told him I would take care of it.
But that meant I had all this trash in the middle of the entryway of my apartment.
I'd have to borrow a dolly from my super to bring the trash downstairs.
The mild stress caused me to go into a tailspin.
Maybe a big part of myself didn't *want* to pull out of the tailspin.
--
Lessons
1) My old favorite comfort foods still exert a powerful influence on me.
They taste good!
I tend to smash the "instant gratification" button, rather than the "delayed gratification" button.
What will keep me from turning to my old favorite comfort foods in future moments of stress, boredom, or happiness?
2) I wasn't clear enough about how I wanted to eat.
Millions (billions?) of people around the world eat noodles, but I needed to be more explicit with myself about whether or noodles are "allowed."
3) I need more help!
My awesome My Body Tutor coach Chris strongly encouraged me to read and implement "The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person."
It's a cognitive therapy approach to weight loss.
I'm not sure why I kept resisting this book, but I need to revisit it.
I'm going to need a different level of structure/commitment/support to help me, especially since I'm no longer taking a GLP-1.
--
Over the next few posts, I'll dive deeper into these lessons.
I can't divorce myself.
I need to renew my vows during the honeymoon!
Breakfast (7:14 AM)
- Momentous Whey Protein Isolate, Vanilla Flavor (2 scoops, 50g) - 40g protein, 4g carbs, 0g total fat, 0g dietary fiber, 180 calories
Lunch (3:29 PM)
- Wonder/Yasas build-your-own bowl (Beef Souvlaki, Za-atar Roasted Carrots, Hummus, Spicy Pepper & Feta Spread, Toum, Marinated Beets, Roasted Broccoli, Pickled Red Onions, Feta Cheese Crumbles, Roasted Garlic Red Wine Vinaigrette)
Snack (4:45 PM)
- Perfect Bar, Peanut Butter (2 bars) - 34g protein, 54g carbs, 38g total fat, 6g dietary fiber, 680 calories
Dinner 1 (5:20 PM)
- Farmer's Fridge Chicken Sausage Breakfast Burrito + Hot Sauce - 16g protein, 43g carbs, 20g total fat, 5g dietary fiber, 410 calories
Dinner 2 (6:51 PM)
- Farmer's Fridge Baja Chicken Wrap - 18g protein, 57g carbs, 19g total fat, 7g dietary fiber, 470 calories
Thoughts on today's choices
- Had a call at noon and ended up having lunch later than I wanted
- I may have to treat Perfect Bars as if they're chocolate
- Farmer's Fridge is OK, but probably best to focus on their salads rather than their wraps
- I thought it would be a good idea to have several Farmer's Fridge options available, but I think it just leads me to overeat
Breakfast (7:29 AM)
- Momentous whey protein shake
Lunch (11:34 AM)
- Wonder/Yasas build-your-own bowl (Chicken Souvlaki, Za-atar Roasted Carrots, Hummus, Spicy Pepper & Feta Spread, Harissa Dip, Pickled Slaw, Roasted Broccoli, Feta Cheese Crumbles, Roasted Garlic Red Wine Vinaigrette)
- Spindrift Grapefruit
- Spindrift Lemon
Dinner (10:07 PM)
- Beyond Breakfast Sausage (6 patties) - 33g protein, 18g carbs, 36g total fat, 3g dietary fiber, 540 calories
Hopefully one way I can be helpful is by sharing daily reports about my food/nutrition, exercise/training, sleep, etc.
These will be a work in progress as I get back into my own rhythm.
--
Breakfast (10:36 AM)
- Momentous whey protein shake
Lunch (1:33 PM)
- Seabear Smokehouse Smoked Salmon Chowder (This was from a care package from friends in the Pacific Northwest)
Dinner (6:54 PM)
- Wonder/Yasas build-your-own bowl (Chicken Souvlaki, Za-atar Roasted Carrots, Hummus, Spicy Pepper & Feta Spread, Tzatziki, Roasted Broccoli, Pickled Red Onions, Feta Cheese Crumbles, Roasted Garlic Red Wine Vinaigrette)
- Spindrift Grapefruit
- Spindrift Lemon