Here's what the heck I'm up to

[darkemeralds]

In a long and thoughtful comment on my recent post about the new disciplines I'm undertaking, tehomet raised some important points about my decision to lose what I consider to be excess fat. (I won't try to summarize her ideas here--her comment is well worth reading.)

I was discussing some of the Fat Acceptance and feminism ideas that tehomet mentions with kis yesterday, and she said a couple of things that I hadn't been aware of:

One, that my writing style on this blog has a Voice of Authority quality to it that might make it seem as if I Speak For All when I'm really only speaking for myself.

And two, that I never actually described the food-related discipline that I've decided to undertake, so that it's easy for people to misinterpret what I'm up to as "dieting" in some commonly-understood and rightfully-maligned sense.

So, to address kis' first point, I really am only speaking for myself. I'm excited enough about what I've undertaken to want to write about it. I do my best thinking in writing anyway, and I'm still thinking: everything on this subject is provisional, experimental, and still open. I'm way too old to believe that I've found the Answer--especially the answer that applies to anyone else--but I move forward by means of enthusiasm, by embracing new ideas, running with them, talking about them, living them; and that's what I'm doing here. That's all I'm doing here.

And to address her second point, here's what the heck I'm up to:

1. Carefully and accurately counting the caloric content of what I eat
2. Deducting the calories I burn with exercise
3. Keeping the total as near to 2000 per day as I can, averaged over a week

Why 2000? Because if I weighed 175 lbs I would need 2000 calories a day to maintain that weight.

(How do I know that? A sedentary 55 year old woman's body metabolizes between 11 and 12 or so calories per day per pound of body weight. 175 x 11.5 = 2012.5)

Why 175 pounds? That's a harder question. It's a working hypothesis, and subject to change, but I needed a number and 175 seemed about right. It will probably result in 25-28% body fat, which is a healthy range according to both my experience and the data I can find. Plus, I liked my appearance and felt good the last time I weighed 175 lbs.

(And yes, this is about my appearance. And my comfort. And my feet. But there is a large body of medical evidence supporting the unhappy notion that excessive fatness is a health risk, one which increases with age. I understand that not everyone agrees with this body of evidence, but I have chosen to give it credence.)

So how will I get there? In a way, I'm already there.

Here's what I mean. Arithmetic ahoy.

If I weighed 255 to start with, which I'm pretty sure I did, I was eating about 2925 calories a day to maintain that mass. So cutting down to 2000 calories a day creates a 925 calorie a day deficit.

A pound of fat contains 3500 calories, so in (3500/925) days (3.8), presumably, I've lost a pound of fat--about 1.85 lbs in a week. I know, I know: there are variables. But stick with me.

That means that at the beginning of the second week, I weigh 253, and now my slightly smaller body needs slightly fewer calories a day. I'm still eating 2000, but the deficit is smaller, and I'll lose a little less this week than last.

If I keep eating 2000 calories a day, the weight-loss curve that started off steep soon flattens out, slowing week by week until it just...stops. It flatlines at around 175 lbs. In about December, 2015. Yes, five years from now.



And in all that time, I won't have really made any food behavior changes. I made the one change on October 17, 2010, and that was it. No "weight loss diet" versus "maintenance diet". No "prancing around with a trophy for a few days" (as kis vividly put it) when I Win The Game and then stop playing.

In theory, I've effectively already made all the changes I need to make, and I'm on "lifelong maintenance" from the get-go.

So far, I'm doing pretty well. (Note--the calorie counts are before exercise.)



...but that is a VERY SMALL DATASET and I know it. I could revert tomorrow.

The big trick, of course, lies in not reverting tomorrow, but in managing to do the same thing every day, every week, pretty much for all the days.

I have never tried this before. I've tried every "diet" except the one where I commit to the kitchen scale, the bathroom scale, the measuring cups and the teaspoons for the rest of my life.

I might fail spectacularly. I might fail modestly. I might just say "fuck it" tomorrow and get back to those yummy nearly-3000 calories a day I was enjoying.

But I might succeed in forging this new (neural) pathway, and I've decided that I want to try, and to marshal all the resources available to me to bolster my chances of success.

One of those resources is writing about the journey here. I'll keep it behind cuts for easy skipping, but I certainly welcome comment and discussion.

Comments

[karen_jk]

I think your plan sounds very sensible and reasonable. Do you have a doctor you feel comfortable conferring with if you start feeling unwell?

One of my close friends just found out she has colitis, which means that she needs to minimize the amount of meat and oils she eats and maximize the amount of fruits and veggies. Just knowing about this has made me eat less packaged food and fewer cookies and stuff today. I eat quite healthily, but I'm going to try to make veggies, grains fruits a bigger part of what I eat and packaged food a much smaller part.

Maybe I'll put it on my Joe's Goals. I am inspired by the way you are taking such a logical approach to your goals, and I'm trying it out myself.

[darkemeralds]

Getting myself signed up with a doctor is a step I still need to take. If the last almost two months are any indication, I don't think simply reducing the amount I eat of the things I've been eating will do anything but make me feel better and better. But as part of my overall plan of discipline, I do need to establish myself with a doc.

I think Joe's Goals would be a good tool for dietary improvement a little at a time. Like, give yourself a point for each serving of vegetables, or dock a couple of points for a day without them--that sort of thing.

One way I'm using the tool in relation to eating is giving myself a point for each day I stay at or under 2000 calories, but taking off three points if I end the day below 1500. I call that second one "Too Hungry!" I have a tendency to play "diet games" and I wanted to be sure not to reward myself for doing so, and to make the penalty pretty steep.

That's what I like about the tool: it seems almost infinitely configurable to my own approach to goals.

[alex_beecroft]

It was health issues which made me finally decide that I needed to lose weight too. I didn't want to get diabetes, and I already had swollen ankles and foot problems, and felt cumbersome and tired all the time. For me, though, I'd tried counting calories 10 years back, and after two years of dealing with ravenous hunger every single day I decided that was not for me. So I'm doing the Slimming World diet, the principles of which aren't exactly clear to me, but in practice seems to involve eating as little fat as possible, lots of vegetables and carbohydrates and no sugar. The result is that I have to cook food from whole ingredients, which is a lot healthier, and I lose weight while never needing to go hungry. It's working for me :)

[scribblemoose]

I've nearly replied to a couple of your weight loss posts but needed some time to properly formulate my thoughts, because this is something I've struggled with for decades, and while I'm pretty clear what my issues are, it's always wise not to assume that's true of everyone.

I would say this, though - goals and goal tracking is an excellent way to improve anything, including the self, BUT - only if you treat yourself kindly.

There's a fine line between healthy discipline and self-punishment, and I have wondered if you're really asking too much of yourself all at once? I know that's something I do a lot, so I'd ask you just to do a quick check that you're not doing that?

The more exercise + less calories = weight loss equation sounds so simple, and yet it's so not, especially if you're aiming for steady weight loss. For one thing, it's a lot easier to burn calories when you're heavier - as a fitness instructor pointed out to me once, it's like you're doing everything with weights permanently affixed to your body. Also, different kinds of exercise have different effects on your metabolism: some burn fat, others burn sugar and some even burn lean tissue, so it's important to get the right kind of exercise at the right time, and always to mix exercise into your program; if you only control food without increasing exercise you'll just fuck your metabolism even more.

But the most important advice I've ever been given (by that same fitness instructor) was that it's pointless trying to control food intake and exercise by will power alone. It doesn't last, or if it does it has a terrible toll because it requires a strong streak of compulsive behaviour which isn't healthy. (The only exception to that rule, she suggested, was for people who are naturally fit but have got out of condition due to some externally imposed factor, like injury.) The first thing to do is to work out why you aren't fit already. The first question, if you eat more than your body needs, is 'Why do you want to eat when you're not hungry?'

Because that's where the problem really lies. The human body is designed to regulate itself to its own healthy weight. It's the mind that causes the trouble. And while you can change things with grit and determination, you can change things more permanently and healthily by changing the behaviours that got you into trouble in the first place.

Paul McKenna has exploited these theories to good effect with his weight loss programme - it's horribly hyped-up and commercial and ugh, but it's based on very sound principles - it includes things like tapping to help ward off cravings etc., but it comes from that principle that if you are kind to yourself, only eat what your body really wants (not what your mind wants), and get yourself out and being active, the rest takes care of itself.

I've lost about 15 lbs that way - it's hard at the moment because I can't exercise, and food is difficult with Ste's illness, but I haven't put back on what I'd lost. Previously I lost about 28lbs with calorie/fat control and exercise through a slimming class, but it all piled on again, and more, when I finally cracked and couldn't take the discipline any more.

I hope that's helpful. Whatever you decide is the best route for you, make sure you're being kind to yourself, okay? *hugs*

[darkemeralds]

All very important points. I've been a very long time working up to this stage--for instance, I completed trauma therapy five or six years ago (that ended binge and unconscious eating for me); made the gradual switch to all home-prepared natural foods three years ago, and I took up daily exercise more than a year ago. Really, the only thing left to ask of myself was to start eating less.

As I said in my post, I'm not aiming for steady weight loss. That's the biggest lie of the diet industry: "Lose two pounds a week!" I did the math, and it showed clearly that to do something like that, I'd have to cut my intake steadily with every pound I lose, to where I'd be eating something like 25 calories a day towards the end in order to be still losing two pounds a week. That's what the line graph in my post shows: that on a fixed caloric intake, the rate of weight loss tails off gradually. At no time in my graph do I lose even as much as two pounds a week. I project at least two years before I'm even within range of my desired weight.

I think this is a really important point, and a non-starter for the diet industry, because nobody wants to buy into a program that promises significant weight loss but only over three or four years.

I'm so glad you mentioned tapping, because it's been crucial to this whole process. It is an excellent tool for dealing with cravings. It's what I used to overcome my fear of hunger pangs, and I use it every day to settle those "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" that I've always responded to in the past with a nice comforting bit of food. I didn't say anything about it here because it's pretty far out, but I've been using it for years, and recently learned a technique called Turbo-tapping (sorry about the ad on that link--all other links I can find to the technique have been buried in members-only sites) that is AMAZING and highly recommended.

My only quibble with what you say here is about natural body weight regulation. I pursued that holy grail for years--it's what made me go to all natural cooking and eating (so it wasn't a waste of effort), but when I was pretty much free from additives and industrial preservatives, hormones, sweeteners and MSG and hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrup, and then from wheat and gluten, and I was still steadily gaining weight on a natural and intuitive diet (complete with daily exercise)--I had to reconsider. I was healthier, sure, but I was getting fatter and fatter.

I have tentatively concluded that in fact what's natural to us is to eat ALL THE FOOD, to pack on as much fat as we can whenever we get the chance, because throughout all but the last 50 years or so of human evolution, winter and drought and bad hunting always came. Now they don't, so our getting really fat is a perfectly natural evolutionary response to the constant abundant availability of food. The moment I glimpsed that idea, conscious choice, self-discipline and technology suddenly loomed for me as the right path.

As to exercise, I ride my bike for an hour every day as transportation. That's it. I've been down the gym-and-workout road and it was too much discipline for me. Bike-riding is a year-round joy, at least six days a week. Perhaps, if and when I get a little lighter, I'll get back to some serious walking, which I used to enjoy before time and excess weight took their toll on my feet.

I'm really not being hard on myself. I'm eating 2000 calories a day--hardly starvation--and having a wonderful time with the counting and tracking, which are very much in my nature. I hope I haven't conveyed some idea that I'm on a long, grinding slog, because I don't remember when I've had this much fun.

[darkemeralds]

Congratulations! I hope your health conditions are improving.

[Edit: Sorry! Note to self: do not try to answer long thoughtful comments from your phone. At 5:30 in the morning. Without your glasses on.]

Constant hunger was my biggest fear and obstacle,, once everything else was out of the way--emotional overeating, and the appetite-stimulating effects of a lot of sugary and salty (and MSG-laden) packaged foods. I did some body work on my fear of hunger before setting out, because I knew that cutting my accustomed calories by a third was going to hurt a little.

It hasn't been a problem, partly, I think, because 2000 calories a day isn't starvation by a long shot, but it's also true that home-prepared, natural food without additives had been an important foundation for this whole effort and I'd established it a couple of years in advance.

I do notice that eating more vegetables and drinking enough water is more filling, and as I count calories, I've learned that some foods I thought healthy and satisfying (like peanut butter, OMG) are way too high in calories for the satisfaction they offer.

In fact, I've really begun to learn how far off my internal satiety gauge has been. A little fat goes a long way towards a feeling of satisfaction, but more than a little just made me want more, apparently.

It sounds like we've both hit on a couple of the same key things: that going hungry is a non-starter, and that good whole food is important if we want to feel satisfied and improve health.

Good luck to us both!

[alex_beecroft]

It does make sense that we should have found something that works from two different directions :) One of the things that struck me reading about food rationing in WW2 was someone saying "we never went hungry, because bread and potatoes were not rationed" but things like butter and sugar were. I think a lot of the blame for the so called 'obesity epidemic' these days can be put on the shoulders of the makers and retailers of convenience foods. It's so hard to go out and find anything at all that doesn't contain lots of fat and sugar. People are probably eating about the same amounts as they always have, but the foodstuffs themselves are that much more fattening than they used to be and need to be.

And yes, I can see that 2000 calories wouldn't be a problem in the long term. My problem with calorie counting came because I wanted to lose 2lb a week, and I was therefore on 1300 calories a day, which was a whole main meal less.

[darkemeralds]

I suspect that we really are "wired" by evolution to eat all we can find, with a strong natural preference for rich and sweet things, precisely because those things DO make us store fat. And now that our economies in the west can offer us 3750 calories per person per day (I think the number is a little lower in the UK than in the US), and much of that is, as you say, rich and sweet as well as artificial, it's not at all surprising that we (the average "we") eat it.

The X-pounds-per-week diet strategy is liable for a lot of problems, in my book. By definition, it means slow starvation (or, more likely, failure), but nobody wants to do the math. I didn't, when I was young and desperate to lose 30 pounds in time for the senior prom. I get why slow weight loss doesn't sell. But damn. Even the moderate, health-conscious "authorities" say that a 2-lb-per-week loss is "sensible" when in fact it's impossible after the first few weeks without creating malnutrition and starvation.

[alex_beecroft]

I think so too, but of course it's safe to have a strong natural preference for rich and sweet things when rich and sweet things are difficult to come by (as they are if you're hunting and gathering.) If the government really wanted to tackle the problem they could do it much more easily by regulating the kinds of food available than by suggesting that everyone should crack their sugar addiction by sheer willpower. Particularly not while they are surrounded at every turn by shops offering them chocolate bars and pastries and very little chance to choose a healthier alternative.

(Sorry, I think I'm bitter that my local Starbucks has stopped stocking fruit salad, which means that it's now a choice of about 20 different types of fattening pastry or nothing at all when I go in there. It's a situation I find myself in often when I'm travelling.)

[darkemeralds]

You raise a really important point, one that I hadn't quite gotten around to writing about yet, but which has been in my mind. Road-food is AWFUL. Between it and the problems with US airport security, I've told my boss that I will not travel for work unless there's no conceivable alternative. I need to acknowledge within myself that that is a significant lifestyle change.

I'm in two minds about government regulation of the food supplies, but I have absolutely no problem with regulating what's served in schools and institutions, and prohibiting the Corn Syrup and Salt Corporation from advertising or vending on school property.

Sadly, though, in the US, the government heavily subsidizes the production of the corn that undergirds the whole junkfood nation, so the prospect of it turning around and regulating that industry seems pretty remote.

The change in people's individual behavior towards superabundant food will take at least a couple of generations, I think.

[erda]

I find this all fascinating. I've tabbed a bunch of stuff from your conversation with tehomet to read later today. I can't really decide where I stand in all this, somewhere in the middle I guess. I've never had any trouble with my weight despite eating loads of junk food, but recently, since I've slowed down due to health problems, I have put on a few extra pounds. My husband, however, has had a life long struggle with his weight, and dieting. I've noticed he tends to be much less active than I am, but I think a lot of my lack of weight problems is due to having an extremely anxious personality. Anxiety burns calories as well as reducing appetite, and may I point out that high levels of anxiety are not conducive to good health.

Anyway I love quantifying things, so I will be following your journey with great interest. Also I wanted to thank you for the link to Joe's goals. I'm enjoying that immensely, though as you pointed out, I will probably tire of it after a bit.

[darkemeralds]

I don't have any doubt that different body/personality types have different metabolisms, and that "high-strung" people burn off a lot in nervous energy. Me, I'm what they used to call "phlegmatic" in the old days of the four humours: cool and slow and damp. My natural body type is (again, to go back to the ancients) "Jovian," big and expansive and somewhat fleshy.

The one thing I've finally accepted is that energy in minus energy burned equals energy stored. How fast or efficient the burn is differs from person to person--mine is relatively slow and yours is probably relatively fast (and hence the "no trouble with weight despite eating loads of junk food")--but the basic laws of physics don't change.

For a brief period about two years ago, job stresses ratcheted my internal furnace up. I was high on adrenaline for months. I barely ate, I slept four or six hours a night, weight started falling off, and it was incredible. My personality changed. I loved it. And I knew it would kill me if I kept doing it.

Fortunately, it was a limited term job demand, and came to an end, but it gave me a taste of what it must be like to be a high-burner, and it certainly wasn't conducive to my good health.

On Joe's Goals and other tracking tools: usually I find that when the allure runs out and I wander off, I've still gained some lasting change from the experience. I expect it will be the same here.

[erda]

the basic laws of physics don't change.

I totally agree. If you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight. I also agree that we are programmed biologically to tend to eat more than we need.

I was just trying to say that some people, outside of actual exercise time, tend to move around a lot more than others, in my case due to high levels of anxiety, and so will burn more calories than naturally calm types like my husband.


On Joe's Goals and other tracking tools: usually I find that when the allure runs out and I wander off, I've still gained some lasting change from the experience. I expect it will be the same here.

Yes, I think so, too.

[executrix]

I know it sounds silly, but Jonathan Bloom's excellent book "American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food" quotes a study that people ate 22% less if they had 10" rather than 12" dinner plates.

[darkemeralds]

It doesn't sound silly at all. I've gravitated towards itty-bitty plates at home, and I think the whole bento-box and tiffin phenomenon has a similar effect. It's delightful to have a little plate full of food.

(Strangely, the very few restaurants where I still indulge in a meal out--the good ones with the natural local produce and meat and stuff--use those gigantic plates that are like slices off a white porcelain five-foot sphere, and serve those pretty little nouvelle-looking composed salads or duck confit or whatever in the middle of them, with sauce graffiti around them, and that, too, is delightful.)

And as to Bloom's book (which does sound really interesting), one of the biggest wastes of the 3750 calories per person per day that this country produces is that we actually eat them.

[executrix]

The wake-up call for me was that if I just don't BUY so much stuff, I won't have to discard the unwanted amounts either by mouth or by trashcan. He also reminded me of the Vegetable Soup Meme--i.e., combining the bits of things into a pot of soup yields not only good food, but one that contributes to weight loss because by the time you heat up and eat the soup, you won't be as hungry for your main course. MFK Fisher recommended that you keep the stock from steaming vegetables "in an old gin bottle in the refrigerator" and then pour it into the soup pot.

Although cooking fresh food does take more time and effort than getting take-out, sometimes I think that "food contacts" rather than "eating" can satisfy cravings.

I do not habitually have empty gin bottles around, but I bought a couple of bottles of a posh and not very good French soda just because it comes in triffic glass bottles with cage stoppers--I use them for the rest of the three-liter olive oil bottle that isn't in the green glass bottle on the kitchen cart, but one is getting empty and could be recruited for vegetable juice patrol.

And, in conclusion, salad forks!

[darkemeralds]

Heh. MFK would have a gin bottle.

It's funny: I've noticed the food contacts thing since beginning to eat less. I get home from work with a very healthy appetite, having not eaten anything for well over six hours by that time, and having been just-adequately nourished by my lunch. I'm ready to eat the world. Then I start cooking, and by the time I sit down to eat, I'm ready to be quite moderate and, you know, just eat France.

I hadn't thought about it consciously, but I've noticed it on a number of occasions now. Very interesting!

[darkemeralds]

PS: I LOVE those cage-cap bottles! I bought some empty ones at Kitchen Kaboodle (local shop, wonderful place) and use them for whey from my yogurt. And kombucha when I bother making it. Gelatin-free vegetable stock would work too.

[executrix]

Meat stock that gels would probably work too--the olive oil solidifies in the fridge (which is why I only put it in there if I have a lake of it!) but can be poured in a goop state when removed from the fridge; you could let the consomme warm up a little and then pour it.

[darkemeralds]

True, though that's what God gave us big peanut butter jars for. I'm so glad I collected a bunch of them before I essentially kind of gave up peanut butter (at least in big jars).

Is that Jayne with a Santa hat and a giant Vera sized Christmas cracker? LOL! I love it!

[executrix]

When I become Princess of the World, EVERYTHING will have to come in sturdy re-usable containers, so everyone will have access to them whether or not peanut butter fits into their dietary.

The icon name is "Veradress": Vera has been dressed up to go Someplace Nice.

[darkemeralds]

PPS: And yes, I have noticed a real and significant reduction in my food bills since I began this effort. I don't buy nearly as much, and I eat pretty much everything I buy. It was an interesting side effect that, for unknown reasons, too me quite by surprise.

[emungere]

Good luck! I find your math really fascinating. You are roughly 1000x more organized than I was when I tried this. *g* Also, though I suspect you do not need one more thing to make your life even busier, I cannot help but recommend tai chi. It's made such an enormous difference in my life, and I wasn't doing it while I was losing weight, but I wish I had. I think it would've made the change of lifestyle easier.

[emungere]

PS: lego bento boxes! just in case you feel the need for one:
http://en.bentoandco.com/products/block-bento-new-colors

I work at home, so I have no excuse for buying one, alas.

[darkemeralds]

OMG A HUGE PINK LEGO. WITH FOOD INSIDE. That is awesome!

I'm finding that my natural tallying-and-tracking proclivities are serving me really well in this weight losing enterprise. It seems so obvious, but I never quite got there before: quantifying things makes them clear. In this case, it's moving me out of denial about what I eat, and into undeniable fact. It may not be 100% razor-sharp perfect data (for instance, I'm still a bit hazy on how many calories I'm burning during my bike commute), but it's a damn sight more accurate than the fairy dust I was sprinkling around before.

I've never tried tai chi. Can you say more about how helped you? And do you mind my asking about your weight success story? I don't think I remember hearing it before.

[emungere]

Man, I am not even sure what to say about tai chi. It's changed my awareness of my body, if that makes any sense, and after years and years of dance and martial arts it's not like I wasn't aware of it to begin with. It's corrected the way I walk so that I find I have far less knee and back pain; it helps, in some bizarre way I can't explain, the tendinitis in my wrists. I can balance on one foot with my eyes closed! Harder than one might think. Idk, this all seems really vague, but in conclusion: it makes my body work better.

Weight loss: I lost about 70lbs ummm...almost ten years ago? Eight? Something like that. Part of it was kung fu, which is what I was taking then, before tai chi. Part of it was cutting out dairy, corn, and most soy due to food sensitivities. The rest? I am honestly not sure. I'm just happy I haven't had a problem keeping it off. Sorry, I know that wasn't terribly clear, and you're welcome to ask questions if you want. :)

[darkemeralds]

Your description of tai chi reminds me of what I got from several years of Alexander Technique (which is often thought of as for musicians only, but it's really for anyone). Not as meditative, perhaps, but I know exactly what you mean about right use of the body, and body awareness.

On your weight loss (I'm just collatin' data here :D). Seventy pounds is a LOT of weight! I'm curious about how old you were when you a) became fat and b) lost the weight--that is, how long you were 70 lbs overweight. I'm curious because some of the successful weight-losers I've known have an advantage I can't claim: having been fat for only a short period in their lives, owing usually to illness, injury, or a freak bout of depression.

Anyway, thank you for the info and the inspiration. You're kind of One White Crow to me.

[emungere]

I guess in high school, and then more in college, lasting until...maybe two or three years after college? So maybe 8-10 years. Something like that. Not all my life though. I was a pretty skinny kid. I wouldn't say it was due to illness or injury; mainly it was due to eating a whole lot of crap, lol. Also, I think stress really does make one (or maybe it's just me?) hungrier.

It was seldom a case of eating when I was full, more of just being really damn hungry, more than other people. Which is why I tend to think losing weight wasn't just about losing weight for me, but about a change of life as well. Hope this is helpful in some way. :)

[darkemeralds]

Yes it is, thank you. I don't exactly have a ton of survey data or anything, but I feel very encouraged by the fact that you lost a lot of weight that you had been carrying for quite a few years. Just intuitively, it strikes me as a more difficult achievement, and it inspires me to keep going.

Thanks.

[emungere]

Also! Here is a book I found helpful, even though I followed basically none of his advice:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophers-Diet-Weight-Change-Nonpareil/dp/1567920845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291995614&sr=1-1

And you might find this guy interesting. He's chronicled his whole weight loss saga and is so far keeping it off, despite his job as a food critic, which is pretty impressive:

http://www.seriouseats.com/tags/Ed%20Levine%27s%20Serious%20Diet

[darkemeralds]

Dear god, that poor food writer! Even at Week 149, he's white-knuckling his way through every day. I admire his persistence, but I can't imagine trying to count every calorie in a world where calories are laughed at and everyone wants me to eat fancy food they prepared!