I want a perfect body
Since my birthday I've reopened the losing-weight quest. Since January I've been serious about it. I'm hitting the gym three times a week almost every week, I'm mostly following an informal set of diet rules, and I'm neurotically keeping track of everything I eat.
The tracking is interesting, if you find the organization of information interesting. In past Atkins-style attempts at dieting I found it much easier to stick to a rule if it was hard and fast. "No bread" is a fairly easy rule to follow. "Eat less bread than usual" is a really hard rule to follow. Why? You don't know what "usual" means, not really in your gut, and in moments of weakness you will always tell yourself everything is fine, eat something unhealthy, then tell yourself it's okay not to think about this moment ever again, and then later your self-analysis gets confused. How did you end up so unhealthy? You've been trying the whole time.
The subconscious betrays you by maliciously misinterpreting any fuzzy rules. But at the same time living your life according to an absolutely strict diet can get annoying. E.g. a big group going to an Italian restaurant. So there needs to be a fix.
My solution so far (which is really mine in no way - like most of my good ideas all the idea-parts are stolen, no epiphanies were involved in any way) is to maintain strict rules, but keep them from directly restricting what I do all the time. The point of the strict rule is to maintain a subconscious bother when I eat unhealthy food without letting myself slip.
Specifically, I'm just keeping track of everything I eat. Really standard, and hard to convince yourself you shouldn't do it too, if you are remotely concerned about diet. It takes 2 seconds per meal to jot down what you ate, and you don't have to do anything more. Track your weight too. If you're frustrated later because you don't understand what's happening, you have a sea of data. Most likely there's a couple outlier days where you just ate insanely unhealthy food.
The upside is the tracking makes it a lot easier to roughly adhere to a plan without strictly adhering to it. There's no way you can possibly come to a conclusion like "I'll aim for eating a hot dog no more than twice a month" and actually implement that otherwise.
Many faint analogies are possible. If you don't know what to do, collect a lot of data. Probably you will get some instincts going even before you start analysis.
Now on to the perfect soul.
The tracking is interesting, if you find the organization of information interesting. In past Atkins-style attempts at dieting I found it much easier to stick to a rule if it was hard and fast. "No bread" is a fairly easy rule to follow. "Eat less bread than usual" is a really hard rule to follow. Why? You don't know what "usual" means, not really in your gut, and in moments of weakness you will always tell yourself everything is fine, eat something unhealthy, then tell yourself it's okay not to think about this moment ever again, and then later your self-analysis gets confused. How did you end up so unhealthy? You've been trying the whole time.
The subconscious betrays you by maliciously misinterpreting any fuzzy rules. But at the same time living your life according to an absolutely strict diet can get annoying. E.g. a big group going to an Italian restaurant. So there needs to be a fix.
My solution so far (which is really mine in no way - like most of my good ideas all the idea-parts are stolen, no epiphanies were involved in any way) is to maintain strict rules, but keep them from directly restricting what I do all the time. The point of the strict rule is to maintain a subconscious bother when I eat unhealthy food without letting myself slip.
Specifically, I'm just keeping track of everything I eat. Really standard, and hard to convince yourself you shouldn't do it too, if you are remotely concerned about diet. It takes 2 seconds per meal to jot down what you ate, and you don't have to do anything more. Track your weight too. If you're frustrated later because you don't understand what's happening, you have a sea of data. Most likely there's a couple outlier days where you just ate insanely unhealthy food.
The upside is the tracking makes it a lot easier to roughly adhere to a plan without strictly adhering to it. There's no way you can possibly come to a conclusion like "I'll aim for eating a hot dog no more than twice a month" and actually implement that otherwise.
Many faint analogies are possible. If you don't know what to do, collect a lot of data. Probably you will get some instincts going even before you start analysis.
Now on to the perfect soul.
posted by Kevin at
12:10 AM
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