Control what you can

Weight control vs. diet control

No one has direct control over their body weight, percentage of body fat, or waist circumference. Indirect control, maybe, but not direct control.

For example, you can’t tell your body “lose five pounds” and expect it to obey. You can’t wake up and decide your waist-size for the day will be 36 inches. Sure, you could decide to pull out size-36 pants, and try to squeeze into them, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to.

You have direct control over what you put onto your body  — green shirt, blue shirt, no shirt. You have direct control over what you put into your body — steak, green salad, and a square of dark chocolate (which is close to my dinner last night). But you don’t have direct control over your body’s metabolism, composition, and weight.

Weight control isn’t something you do. It’s something your body does.

Sure, you can influence your body’s metabolism, composition, and weight. That’s what I mean by “indirect control.” One way you exert such influence is through your diet. It’s the main way, I think.

Under normal circumstances, you can directly control what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat. By doing so, you offer a suggestion to your body to lose, gain, or stay the same.

I’m doing a pretty good job of exerting control over my diet, as I approach the end of the second week of my Keto Diet Reboot. Yesterday, for instance, I hit my macro-nutrient targets almost exactly: 160 grams fat, 90 grams protein, and 23 grams net carbs. In the past, when I’ve kept my dietary intake at those levels, I’ve lost weight. In fact, I lost poundage.

Well, as of this morning, I’m down around three pounds since I started my stricter diet and record-keeping on September 25. I say “around” three pounds because it’s actually 2.8 pounds, and I want to be honest about things. I’ve lost a few pounds, but not poundage. Not yet.

My body has taken my weight-loss suggestion under advisement.

It could be that the way I’m eating now is too similar to the way I was eating before the Reboot. I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t recording what I ate before, but generally I tried to eat low-carb, high-fat — and I’ve had a lot of practice in the past six years. Yes, I had a few higher carb days this summer, but I had many more that were lower carb — in the range of 40-50 net carbs.

The fact is, I weigh about the same now as I did in May. My body seems to be comfortable at its current weight, having maintained that weight for a long time now. It’s in a groove.

I’ll make some changes at the end of the third week, as I’ve always planned. This is, to a great extent, an “N = 1” experiment.

I can’t control my weight. But I can control my eating.

I need to control what I can, and not worry too much about what I can’t.