I'm adding a thread to talk about my diet because I have noticed that when the diet is not going well I tend to get discouraged about other things too.

I'm hoping the diet eventually works and the thread becomes history, as they say.

Foods do not make people fat. If I repeatedly eat more
calories than I consume, I will store the rest as fat. If I repeatedly eat fewer calories than I consume, I will lose weight. It's a quantitative problem, not a qualitative one.

Dieting is a complex problem because when I overeat I also bring in minerals and other things that I need. If I cut my calories and change what I eat I now have a new problem, namely to bring in the minerals etc.

The scale doesn't measure weight. It measures how much water is in my body. There is no way to extract the water and weigh myself. The only meaningful way to define my weight is to look at the moving average because the water goes up and down from day to day. This makes it essential to weigh myself each day, else there is no moving average.

There are about 3,500 calories in one pound of fat.

When you lose weight you have to be diligent about drinking water. If you drink too much water you can feel lousy because your salt goes down.

I have a lot of work to do. When I'm done with my office job my home job begins. Making supper, cleaning, entertaining my wife, driving kids around, homework etc. I can do all these things while lugging around a lot of extra weight, and overeating makes me feel like I'm worthwhile. Therefore the aforementioned lifestyle cannot motivate me to lose weight: I should not diet, and I should be overweight.

It is only if I become a lot more active that I should lose weight. (And in the process I will also feel more worthwhile.) And I cannot wait to be much more active until the end of the diet, I have to be active first and feel the necessity of losing weight.

Being very active also distracts me so I don't think about eating, the house is cleaner, the kids are happier, my wife is internally grateful that she doesn't have to do all the things I'm taking care of. So being very active is an absolute good.

Dieting makes me tired. When I feel tired I usually feel like I want to eat, but then afterwards I still feel tired. The feeling does not reflect the underlying problem, it's misleading.

Therefore if I'm hungry because I'm tired during the day I should acknowledge the reality and take a short nap. And when I'm tired at bedtime I should remind myself that if I just go to sleep I will no longer be hungry when I get up in the morning. I have found this to be true time and time again.

When I'm feeling totally exhausted and ready to chuck the diet with the excuse that I need more energy I should remind myself that a good night's sleep can actually restore my strength to a large extent, even though it seems unbelievable.

When I cut calories my body will start to conserve energy before it bothers to tap long-term stores of energy. That means that I will feel cold, my immune system can run slower (not sure there,) for a while. Until the body sees the writing on the wall and starts burning fat.

This is also one reason why I can put on weight. It's like a ratchet. If I try to eat a little less the body will not burn fat, and on days that I eat more than I need the calories will end up as fat: it goes up, but doesn't come down.

Planning meals is a very effective dieting tool. If I make up my mind what I will eat in the next day (or longer) I will not get desires to eat this or that food when the time for the next meal comes around.

I have noticed about myself that if I eat a very small volume of high calorie food I don't get hungry. Then I can eat with my head instead of my stomach (that sounds weird.)

Regarding getting enough salt, I have some indication that drinking broth helps. It has a lot of salt.

Today I was really tired and didn't look forward to learning gemara. I got started anyway because I thought maybe I'll feel different after I start. Sure enough it went well, the Torah proved amazing once again (I like it when the gemara leaves me in the dust) I feel spaced out so here and there I cheated and read the translation instead of figuring it out ...

I think this shows that being spaced out from being low on calories doesn't mean I cannot concentrate enough to learn. Good data point.

I think I need to use a fixed time to learn in the morning. It's not just that the time must be fixed, but learning must be priority one at that time. So if there is laundry to be done, cleaning etc. those must wait. Work in priority order, and learning at that time of day must be top priority. That's part of the job.

When I know that I'm getting up early to learn I can convince myself to go to bed early and not to snack at night, and it's not a burden because by going to sleep I know I am thus skipping over the sleeping hours, not feeling hungry, and teleporting myself to the time when everybody is sleeping and I can't be convinced to do something for someone else and learn instead. And when I get up in the morning I'm not tired so I'm not hungry.

And when I keep the diet I don't need a lot of sleep all at once.