The Psychology of Weight Loss

I am now within 2 pounds of the weight I was in my early-30s and I am confident of reaching the goal. It has taken me several years to get here. When I first started, the way I approached weight loss was quiet different that it is now. This blog post documents the transitions in my thinking over the past few years.

The goals I started with were:  

• Take at least 7,000 steps per day. I had a simple pedometer to count my steps. It had some oddities (sometimes didn’t count when I was walking) so I replaced it with a Fitbit. I quickly discovered that the bounces on my Swopper chair counted as a step and, very briefly, decided that maybe I should take the Fitbit off so that they would not be counted. Then I decided that it was OK if they were counted…that the relative activity between days and the spread of activity throughout the day were a good measure. I still have a form of this goal although it is 12,000 or more steps and the calories burned measure is more important at this point.
• Eat only when and while you are hungry. This will always be a challenge - particularly when I am not at home and sometimes there too. I enjoy good food tremendously and it is intertwined with family gatherings and celebrations. The psychological challenge is to not think like a Stone Age hunter gatherer that needed to gorge any time food became available because there would be lean times just ahead. The probability of not having food readily available any time I am hungry is practically 0 - but it is hard to remember that when something delicious is in front of me. I’ve learned to savor a taste - but not overindulge.
• Reduce weight to what it was when I was 45. I thought it was a realistic goal - about 20 pounds. I’d held steady at that weight for about 5 years so I knew it should be a comfortable weight for me. I started weighing myself first thing every morning and devising little rewards for when I was at a ‘new low.’

Those three goals did work for the first 20 pounds and the weight came off easily enough that I established a new goal: 

• Reduce weight to what it was with I was 35. It was another 10 pounds to come off.

And the pounds didn’t come off. I maintained my weight easily but could not seem to take off any more pounds. A year or so went by and I was prompted by a nutrition course to update my goals: 

• Burn 2000 calories per day. The Fitbit estimates the number of calories burned so I used that as my key indicator.
• Stay below the calorie level recommended to lose 1 pound per week. The cronometer.com tool calculates the calorie level allowed based on my height and weight. I logged my food into the tool to determine how many calories I was consuming. The tool also helped me internalize the portion size for a ‘serving.’
• Get at least 90% of my nutritional needs from food. The cronometer.com tool helped with this goal too. It totals up the nutrients from the food log. Initially, I was in the 80 percent range but learned very quickly how to improve my diet. I stopped taking supplements for vitamins and minerals that I readily get from the foods I eat.

Those goals got me to where I am now and are still working very well. But I’ve added a new goal now that I am nearing the weight goal: 

• Achieve body proportions close to what they were when I was 35. I found a table of measurements I had made of myself at 35 - stored away in an old journal - and decided to see how close I was getting to that size again. There are some differences - enough that I’ve started exercises to hone some muscles (particularly tummy and upper arms). Otherwise - the measurements are very similar.

I’m close enough to my goal that I am already thinking about what is next. Sustaining a new weight will probably take some effort but probably won’t be as hard as getting there in the first place. Maybe my next goal - with the added calories allowed in sustain mode - will be to: 

• Get 100% of my nutritional needs from food.

Minutiae of Diet

My dietary goals are pretty simple: get as much nutrition from food as possible (i.e. don’t rely on supplements to make up for a very poor diet) and lose weight. I’ve had some success over the years but had stalled about a year ago.

About a month ago, I decided that, for me, sound bites don’t help enough when it comes to diet. I needed data other than weight and activity measurements (I already had from a scale and a Fitbit) that would directly guide my food choices.

The cronometer tool was the one I chose. I set up my profile to lose a pound per week and then started logging in my food each day.

I did not choose a special diet. My day to day goal is to stay below the Calorie maximum for the day and meet more than 93% of the nutritional targets….and to do it as much as possible without heavily fortified or processed foods. I found foods that I normally eat had already been defined in the tool (or something that was close enough to what I was eating to use as a substitute in the log). The result has been quite a learning experience….on a very detailed level. Here are some of the minutiae I’ve learned about my diet: 

• Starting the day with chia seeds in almond milk as I have been for quite some time is a reasonably good way to start the day….and the 20 grams of dark chocolate with it is an acceptable treat….but going to 40 grams of dark chocolate is not a good idea.
• Portion size is hugely important! I’ve started looking at labels and measuring. I focus on those things that are high calorie and low nutrient…those are the ones I watch the most carefully for portion size and sometimes question whether I want to eat them at all. Often the nutrient rich foods are not that high in calories so the serving size is relatively large.
• A non-fat plain yogurt smoothie with fruit (blueberries or banana or orange) is tasty, very filling, high in nutrition in relation to calories and, along with the things I normally eat, gets me to the calcium requirement every day. It doesn’t take a huge change to make a big nutritional difference.
• I easily meet the protein requirements with only one meat serving per day and it does not have to be a large one (since I get protein from other sources than meat too).
• Black tea made with tap water has nutrients!
• I like the orange veggies like carrots and sweet potatoes but I need to eat them consistently to get enough vitamin A
• I will probably always need to take Vitamin D. I am not in the sun enough and the fortification in the foods I eat is not enough to consistently get the minimum dose. No wonder my doctor has found my Vitamin D level a little low!
• I almost never get 100% of the potassium target. That is something to work on. Eating one banana or orange is not nearly enough.
• I always exceed the B12 requirement because the almond milk is fortified but I don’t quite get all of them to 100% every day.
• I am general below 0.5 gram of trans-fat - which is pretty good. The tool has helped me be more conscious of foods I eat occasionally that contain trans-fat.
• I am thinking about how long I will need to log my food at the detail I am not. At 4 weeks, I am still in the process of establishing the habit of healthy food choices. Staying below the 1280 Calories per day (totaled up in cronometer) and burning over 2000 calories (estimated by the Fitbit) has indeed resulted in weight loss of a little over a pound a week and I am feeling good - lots of energy. It does seem to be true for me that nutrients from food, rather than supplements, are used more effectively by the body. 

I recommend checking into doing at least a few days logging food into a tool like chronometer for anyone wanting to make tweaks to their diet!