Loosing weight

I have never bought the idea of stepping on the scale just once a week. Because the daily swings would be there anyway, especially when you aren't loosing weight very fast. Our memory span is so short. At least mine is, that I have to weigh myself every day to keep my motivation going. Seriously, I can't see anything wrong with seeing the results immediately if I eat too much one night. Then the weight is bound to show that next morning. Maybe I would be careful the day before a weighing day, but isn't it better to be careful every day? This is a lifestyle, a marathon, not a sprint or a short diet. Life isn't about running a short distance to a goal. We are going to be here for a long time. And if stepping on the scale every morning is a part of what I need to stay thin, I will do that for the rest of my life. 

I was asked yesterday if it didn't take a lot of self control to count calories as I do. Yes, it does. But so does getting out of bed every morning and go to work. I have to keep a calendar at work, I have to write down everything I do. And If I don't do it immediately I forget things and the quality of my work isn't the same. The same thing counts for eating. Because I have to eat. I can't just stop that as I would do if I was trying to get out of some bad habit like smoking or drinking. Then I could think it was sufficient just to stop doing what I don't want to do and that's it. Although I am afraid things aren't that simple if you are an alcoholic and want to get out of the addiction. You would still crave the substance every day and have to change a life style to stay free. But as I see it, the main difference between loosing weight and stopping drinking is that when you want to loose weight you can't just stop eating. 

Because you have to eat every day. There are no simple solutions. People sometimes ask me what I did to loose weight. Especially when they find out that it isn't just the running because I was also running when I was fat. There are so many things I do. I keep log, I count calories, I step on the scale every day, I eat a lot of vegetables. I try to avoid empty calories. I avoid yeast by not eating to much bread and I rarely drink beer. 

This last thing is something I do because I heard that in Iceland, this country where my ancestors didn't eat bread or drink beer for a thousand years, it is possible that our digestive system isn't geared to digest all that yeast. I can't recite the theories behind this conclusion, but I decided  years ago to give it a try. Not to eat bread or drink beer. And I could feel difference. Before that I had symptoms from my colon that were pretty annoying. It hurt sometimes and I was bloated. Those symptoms disappeared almost entirely when I changed my diet.