I have been meaning to write back to this thread. I’m having great success
with the bite counting!
I’ve been counting bites for about 8 weeks, and I’m down 15 pounds.
(205->190) I think I’m a good data point, actually, since I’m controlling
for other variables too - my activity level and diet have not changed
significantly.
Indeed, I still eat as unhealthily as ever - bacon, eggs, sausages,
pancakes with maple syrup, cookies, pizza and whiskey. (Seriously, I’m
bad.) But it doesn’t matter if I eat less of it, as it turns out.
My weight has been stable at ~205 for the last year, following the same
eating habits and activity level, and then in 8 weeks of bite counting I’m
down 15 pounds, which is actually close to too fast.
It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, and we’re awash in baked goods and
home cooking, but I’m finding it easy, with Beeminder’s eye upon me, to eat
only slightly more than my targeted 80/day. I’ve got hundreds of margin, so
I’m happy spending an extra 30 or 40 bites on cookies this weekend, and
working them back down by aiming for 70-75 over the next week or two.
I’ve found that having a bunch of buffer helps a lot; several times I’ve
gone over by 20 bites on one day when we were hosting something or had
dinner plans I forgot about or whatever, but I’ve found it easy to rebuild
the margin over the next week or so. YMMV on that one.
One final point: I raised the question of how to handle calorific
beverages. I settled eventually on 20 calories/bite as the exchange rate.
So a coffee with a teaspoon of sugar (~18 calories) is 1 bite, and a double
of whiskey with ice (~140) is 7. I’m still not convinced this is ideal, but
it’s working. I don’t drink whiskey often enough to make a lot of impact
anyway, and I don’t count my usual black coffee since it’s ~2 calories per
cup.
Braden
On Sat Oct 11 2014 at 13:25:57 Yonah Sienna carmi.sienna@gmail.com wrote:
How did everyone do? I’m back on bites after the High Holidays, and I’ve
felt my appetite return to normal (before beeminding bites, I had no idea
that how much more I was eating than I needed to!). I’ve even decreased my
daily target from 100 down to 70, because that’s what tends to happen when
I’m really conscious of my eating. I’m wondering if anyone else who tried
had success/spectacular failure, and why.Yonah.
On Monday, 18 August 2014 13:29:25 UTC-4, Adam Mesha wrote:
Speaking of intriguing ideas for beeminding food, an idea I’ve had (but
haven’t tried) is to always define before I start eating how much I’ll eat
at that meal (you enter in an undesired datapoint if you forget to define
it beforehand or if you eat more than you intended to). Many times I find
that the great tasting food makes me forget that I’ve had enough and don’t
really need to eat more (and it’s much more salient right after you’ve
actually tasted the food).On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 6:31 PM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow <
mel...@beeminder.com> wrote:
I had a similar thought… that this would force me to only eat when I
have the time/peace and quiet to be able to count the bites, ie when my
butt is in a chair.On Monday, August 18, 2014, Laurie Reeves laurie...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Mel,
I’m going to sound like your mother lecturing you here (Ha! I am your
mother) but maybe you should beemind something like never eating unless
your butt is in a chair. Our fast-paced life styles that force us to eat
on the run are surely a detriment to weight control.Even I am intrigued by the idea of bite counting. I think it might
encourage slower chewing and eating too. I don’t even own a smart phone
yet but I can start by just keeping track to see how many bites I typically
eat in a day right now.On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 1:38 AM, Melanie Reeves Wicklow <
melanie@beeminder.com> wrote:so my first attempt wasn’t great today. I started the day off
counting and then forgot a couple times while eating an apple and a bar
while rushing out the door and driving. Totally not a typical day for us
though (my daughter and I did flying trapeze for the first time!), so not a
great day to start this. I fear this won’t be easy for me to keep up with
since I take care of my 3 kids and eating is often happening on the go or
while dealing with so many other things going on at once, but I’m going to
keep trying, it’ll likely get easier as I remember to do it more. Just the
fact that it forces you to be more mindful of your eating, kind of like
calorie counting, yet simpler, is worth trying. I like the idea of cutting
into bites and then being able to eat in peace without having to
count/remember or tap.
-MelanieOn Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Yonah Sienna carmi.sienna@gmail.com
wrote:Thanks everyone! I’ve been sitting on this post for a few months, so
I’m glad I finally got around to sharing it.Re: Melanie - let me know how it goes!
Re: Daniel/Braden - I forgot to tap once or twice, but it was never
too bad. Especially because I started being able to remember how many bites
common foods were. I started cutting my food up into bite sized pieces,
entered the number, and then just ate.The reason I didn’t start stuffing candy bars in my face is because
counting bites was also forcing me to be mindful of the fact that I was
keeping track of my eating. And if I was really hungry, I knew that sugary
foods would make it worse later, so I grabbed a protein bar or something
else high protein. The system worked well because strategies to “beat the
system” often encouraged healthy eating!Later, once counting bites was second-nature, I started closing
loopholes. Things that were had more liquid or raw veggetables than any
other ingredient counted for 5 bites per cup (rounded down), and things
that had sugar or fat as the first or second ingredient counted for 2 bites
per bite. If my mouth was over-full, it counted as 2 bites. So that helped
me to remember to budget if I planned to drink, and to eat much smaller
portions of greasy/sugary food, and err on the small side when it came to
bites. I also added fine print saying the day didn’t roll over until I’d
gone to sleep (before, I would eat a meal’s worth of food right after
midnight, and then struggle to keep within the budget the next day).I’m not sure how many Calories it was, but I don’t eat only cake one
day and only lettuce the next. I just counted how many bites I took for two
days, it averaged to just under 100, and so I set the slope there. After my
weight loss started to plateau, I set it down to 80, then 75, then 69. I
amagine every person has a different ‘ideal’ bite count, and it was pretty
easy for me to feel my limit. When I tried going below 69, I started
feeling hungry and less in control, so I knew that was the magic number.
But it was interesting to me to learn that, left to my own devices, I
over-eat by almost 50%! I would strongly recommend fine-printing not to
change your road until you’ve gone a few days with the target bite count,
because I know I was sometimes impatient and wanted to reduce it before my
body was really ready for it, and testing the new bite count for a few days
before dialling was a good way to check if I was ready yet.On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Braden Shepherdson <
braden.shepherdson@gmail.com> wrote:Brilliant flip to track inputs!
I “finished” a (very gently sloping) weight loss goal recently,
without any real success and with plenty of stress about fluctuations in
that very noisy channel.I work for Google, so unlimited quantities of free and very tasty
food are always very close to hand. And then I get home, and my wife is a
chef and loves to cook delicious dinners and bake cookies and cheesecakes
and … There’s a lot to be said for being surrounded by delicious food -
it’s a big part of my joy of life, but also a big part of why I’m well
above my healthy weight. Cutting unhealthy things just isn’t going to
happen with me; but managing quantity I should be able to manage.I love the idea of Beeminding bites of food! I’m a little concerned
about Daniel’s loophole; I have a big mouth (in both senses of the phrase)
and there’s quite a difference between taking a bite of your salad, and
stuffing an entire piece of bacon or a quarter of a burger into your mouth
at once. But I suppose one can just adjust the slope until it avvounts for
one’s face-cramming tendencies.The other question that comes up is “bites” of beverages. Beer, wine,
whiskey and (non-black) coffee are all nontrivial sources of calories. Do
you abstain from them anyway, and so never faced the question? Count each
mouthful or whole beverage as x bites? Let them be part of the background,
and adjust your slope to lose weight anyway?My consumption of those drinks is constant enough I could probably
get away with the latter approach, but it seems like counting them somehow
would be ideal. I guess it’s easy enough to compute your average
calories/bite, and just count eg. 3 “bites” for a coffee with one sugar, or
whatever it works out to.I’m mainly missing context for how many bites is the right amount.
You said 100 a day worked for you - how many calories did that average for
you, and was it 100 bites of cheese, bacon and cookies (my eating habits,
to a first approximation…) or 100 bites of generally healthy food?I’m definitely going to try this, I’m just trying to get a handle on
it so I can get closer to the right slope and avoid doing a binary search.
I think I’ll just start the goal now with a flat or very easy-to-hit road,
and start collecting data. I can always adjust the slope and then
retroratchet the slack.Thanks again for the clever idea!
Braden
P.S. Love the subject line, too. I wonder if it set off some spam
filters, though. I came close to insta-archiving this, but for the Akratics
Anonymous label, and then I would have missed out on this idea!On Sun Aug 17 2014 at 12:53:45 AM Melanie Reeves Wicklow <
melanie@beeminder.com> wrote:Lol, Danny
nice loophole.
I also think this is genius! I have the exact same problem when it
comes to eating… not too bad of foods, but too much quantity all the time.
I tracked calories for a good amount of time on the loseit app, but slipped
into allowing myself to go over my calorie budget more and more and
struggled to maintain let alone lose more. Also, after several weeks, I
just wanted a break and figured I could hang on to the good eating habits,
what with having a better sense of appropriate quantity. I did ok, still
maintaining, not losing, for a while. Then drifted up over the summer a
bit. Then a vacation happened. With buffets. I drifted up a bit more. I too
keep trying to think of a simpler way to keep the quantity of food down. I
think I’ll try this! I’m also excited to go back to more consistent
workouts with kids going back to school in a few days. Hopefully it’ll be a
winning combo.Thanks for sharing!
MelanieOn Saturday, August 16, 2014, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com
wrote:Wow, that’s genius. A tap counter is built in to the Beeminder
Android
app so beeminding bites of food would work especially well on
Android.
(The desktop widgets built in to the Android app also make that
slicker since you don’t have to navigate to the right goal.)Two kind of related things I beemind:
- Pushups by touching my nose to the phone.
- Servings of sugar using a bracelet like this:
http://knittingabacus.com/Yonah, here’s a blog post about beeminding actions strictly and
outcomes laxly: How I Use Beeminder | Beeminder BlogThanks so much for sharing this! Beeminding bites. I love it. Was it
hard to establish the habit? I worry I’d keep forgetting to tap as I
ate. I also worry I’d abuse the loophole of cramming whole candy
bars
in my mouth at once.On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Yonah Sienna <
carmi.sienna@gmail.com> wrote:Hey fellow Akratics!
I want to share with you my beeminder success story. I joined
beeminder,
like many people, because I wanted to lose a bit of weight. I eat
generally
healthily and know which types of food to eat/avoid, but quantity
is such a
slippery slope for me and I often end up eating more than I need
to
(especially late at night). The problem with all my previous
attempts was
that I hate ‘diets’. At best, they’re short-term solutions (many
people
regain the weight after a couple of years), and at worst, they
are just
exchanging one set of unhealthy eating habits to another. Since I
didn’t
have foods I could simply cut out of my diet, I usually made up
my own rules
about how much to eat, or when, and I even tried counting
calories. Nothing
really worked.I figured the only problem was a lack of motivation, so when I
learnt about
Beeminder, I joined, started a weight goal, entered my current
and goal
weights, and then waited for the magic to happen. It seemed like
the threat
of losing money would be enough to keep my food-akrasia at bay.Of course, the only thing that happened was that I derailed.
Twice. I kept
saying to myself that I’d change my eating habits before it was
too late,
but it never happened. At one point, someone from beeminder
mentioned that a
lot of people have more success beeminding things they have
direct,
day-to-day control over, like eating or exercise. That was when I
started
tracking bites.I used got a tapcounter app for my iPhone, and created a do-less
goal,
tracking bites of food. So I eat as much as I want, tapping my
phone for
every fork/mouthful, and stop when I’ve hit 100 bites. It has
been really
amazing and it surprised me how easy and effective it’s been. I
think it’s
because even though each individual bite isn’t very meaningful
(each bite of
food has a different number of Calories), the average number of
bites of
food I eat a day paints a picture of my eating habits. Sometimes
that means
large meals and no snacks, sometimes I snack a lot and only have
one or two
meals. Because of my yellow brick road, I know I how often I’m
able to
splurge and stay on track, and I can see how constantly eating
large meals
or too many snacks makes me go over and risk derailing. Knowing I
only have
a certain number of bites in a day helps me eat better too! When
I see I’m
starting to run out, I go for high-protein and high-fibre foods
because I
don’t want to be hungry when I’ve run out of bites. I love it
because I feel
totally able to keep track of my eating, without all the annoying
number-crunching of Calories or fat/carbs/protein.Has anyone else tried unconventional methods of weight-loss
beeminding? I’m
interested in how other strategies have worked.– Yonah
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