That is some advice I can use. However, I just read that studies show, that those who monitor their weight tend to lose it faster and keep it off.
Is there a healthy balance between monitoring and not obsessing?
Yes, there is a healthy balance: it’s called “habit.” Don’t treat a diet like it’s something special, or something that will immediately change your life for ever. Get accustomed to checking your weight. Get accustomed to eating and exercising a certain way. Once tracking calories, pounds, and inches becomes second nature to you, you will cease harmful obsessing. I’m sure the people in the study you read were people that monitor their weight like other people monitor their oil changes.
> That is some advice I can use. However, I just read that studies show, that those who monitor their weight tend to lose it faster and keep it off.
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> Is there a healthy balance between monitoring and not obsessing?
Yes. It is healthy to be curious whether you are, in fact, losing weight. It isn’t healthy to obsess, as you know.
How to find the balance? Try this:
Give away your bathroom scales to the Salvation Army. They are inaccurate and no help to you anyway. You don’t need ‘em and they clutter up your bathroom. Get rid of ‘em.
Make a recurring doctor’s appointment once per fortnight (every two weeks, in other words). Have her weigh you at these sessions, and take your bloods and your blood pressure. Always phone for results of the bloods a few days later, because most doctors don’t bother to follow up if the bloods are normal.
Make sure you tell your doctor what you are doing, so that she can also monitor your progress. Write down the numbers she gives you, and ask her to explain them.
Now, once per fortnight is plenty for you to monitor yourself. It is long enough away that you should see big improvements each time (thus motivating you), and it is near enough so that you are not kept in suspense.
And you now have the only expert — your doctor — involved that you will ever need.
Your first blood tests will probably suck — mine did. Poor liver function, hi cholesterol, renal functions were ok. Blood pressure was hi.
It’s OK for the first test to suck: that is because your diet sucks, and your body isn’t helping you because you aren’t helping it.
Immediately cut booze out of your diet completely, and if you smoke immediately stop. Don’t stress about it: what you are doing is getting your liver to start working like it should, and your lungs to also begin oxygenating your blood properly.
Visualize this:
Every clean breath you take is oxygen that is making your blood richer and healthier. And every time you drink something other than booze is another chance for your liver to regenerate its cells (it is the only internal organ that can rebuild itself) and start burning off fat. And whatever you drink that isn’t booze washes thru your kidneys, keeping them healthy, too.
Next, stop buying prepared foods if you can. Go for the cheaper, better-for-you foods that you must prepare yourself. Or at very most, take out of a tin.
You want to put top-quality fuel into your body: not junk that your liver is going to struggle to get rid of.
Again, ask your doctor if she has any dietary advice. She will probably have some advice for diabetics: this is good sensible stuff that we should all be doing anyway.
You don’t need a severe diet: just eat good food.
Then do moderate exercise. Don’t kill yourself doing it, just a little bit — enough to make your body burn off the food you put in.
Use the blood tests coupled with your weight loss as an indicator of your progress. In many ways, the blood tests are more interesting.
Now, can you cheat? Good question: once you start seeing progress you probably won’t want to, or at least not very often. Every time you do, you stop your progress and your liver and kidneys need to make up lost ground.
So if you do cheat, wait until your liver has had a chance to start working properly for a while and rebuild the damage that’s been done (for it will be damaged), and wait until your kidneys have flushed out for a while.
Then cheat, in the full knowledge of what you are doing, and knowing that your results will take a hit.