CRON Diary

New Years Resolutions

2012-01-11T20:54:00.001-05:00

When I retired - almost 3 years ago, I wanted a vacation from responsibility. I did not really get that until the end of last year because I had made the commitment to care for my mother. But for those 3 years, I really did not make any other commitments. In many ways, this is my first real post-retirement New Years.

When I moved to Austin, 4 years ago, I had an unbroken history of CR - 7 1/2 years. I had recorded what I ate every single day. My average calories were around 1200 kcal per day for that period, sometimes a bit lower, sometimes a bit higher. My weight had been 118 plus or minus 3 pounds. I had gained a few pounds, post-menopause, even though I had not changed my eating habits at all. January 2008, I weighed 121 lbs.

My post-move environment was quite different. Before the move, I had a reliable set of healthy restaurants in Virginia and menu choices that worked for me. Dinner was with my husband - who ate whatever he wanted at lunch during the work week. This turned out to include desserts. He did not mind having no desserts at home. He could get them at work. For five days of the week, I spent the day at the office, away from snacking opportunities. My non-CR mother moved in with us, used to eating bread, desserts, snacks, butter, etc., etc. She was 80 and although her health was not good, she was hardly willing to change her eating habits at that age. She really was not motivated to prolong her life. So, now I spent most of the day mere feet from a kitchen stocked with croissants and apple pie. My husband got used to having desserts around - making muffins, cookies, pie. For a long time, I resisted entirely. I never ate them a lot. But non-CR people do not realize how difficult they are making CR by leaving an apple pie or a plate of cookies out on the counter for days. My husband has always been very supportive of CR, but my mother was not. She liked to tempt me. She thought I was being nutty. She felt sorry for me. She meant well.

Although I have generally followed CR much of the time, there have been lapsed periods, especially holidays and vacations. I now weigh 129. I've lost the habit of daily recording. I had been at a mild level of supplementation before the move. Now, I went through months without supplementing. Not recording, I did not see what I needed.

I had a little visit with my youngest son around the holidays. He is really an inspiration. His eating habits have not changed since he left home. They are great. He eats paleo with an emphasis on vegetables and lean meats. He never eats bread. He rarely eats rice. He never eats dessert, other than dark chocolate. He snacks on nuts. It was so easy to do CR during the visit with him. We fell right back into our healthy eating out patterns.

It really made me long for doing serious CR. Since I returned, I have been recording and planning every day. My intake has been right on target. So, resolution #1 is back to my old CR routine. Get my weight back to 120 or lower. Do appropriate supplementation. I still think supplementation is a key component of CR. In my experience, supplementing enough to modestly exceed the RDAs is necessary to avoid cravings. I am really prone to cravings otherwise. I have to avoid carbs as well - or I will be hungry and have low blood sugar issues. So, there are some forbidden foods for me for a while.

Resolutions #2-#4 are far more likely to be kept if I keep #1. Succeeding at CR is very empowering. For one thing, you feel better. You focus better. Being about to do CR makes you feel like you can do anything.

So #2 is becoming a proficient Java web programmer - enough to make a multiplayer browser game. I doubt I can complete a game this year. I just want to get a great start on the project. My goal there is to master a new tool set. Sort of like learning a new spoken language.

#3 is to experiment with knowledge capture using a cog sci book. I think I will do it on Thinking Fast and Slow by Kanneman. I am not sure what I will discover with this activity. The purpose of this is to do something creative and inventive. This is something I have wanted to do for a while. I just have never been able to focus on it.

#4 is to finish painting the back decks and replant the back gardens. This is intended to be a constructive activity in physical space.

Along with this, I will keep up the good things I am already doing: spending time with my family, reading, helping out with neighborhood activities, hiking, cooking, posting on G+.

No Rain

2011-09-30T21:39:00.000-04:00

The fact that it hasn't rained at my house since June - and very little in the last 12 months - while there have been 90+ days over 100 degrees makes me grouchy. I hate to see all the plants in the preserve areas around my house dying, which they are. It's hard to feel optimistic - especially when all the political and economic news is negative too.

Nonetheless, I am doing better on exercise. I am still walking the 2 miles every day. When my iPod shuffle finished recharging, I will do my 90 minute yoga routine for the 3rd time this week. The TotalGym is in my bedroom and I am using it daily for arm strength.

I have had 2 periods of non-CR in the last 2 months - when I did not record what I ate and had days I ate at higher calorie levels. First was my 2 week vacation in Colorado and the second was the week-long visit by my son that culminated in a weekend memorial for my mother. Both times, my weight popped up 3 pounds temporarily. A week back on CR, and my weight goes back down. This is just the extra glycogen in my liver - not actual fat. It's easy to put on this weight and easy to take it off. This might be messing up the CR effect. I will try not to do this again. In my better CR days, "bad" days like this would just be a few times a year and my weight hardly ever varied more than a pound.

But now I am back to measuring and planning. We are rarely eating out, so I can plan meals easily. All I have to worry about is making sure my husband knows not to sabotage my plan, not very difficult since he is supportive of my CR.

After the Party

2011-09-23T20:41:00.000-04:00

Last weekend was the memorial for my mother - at my house. Twenty family members gathered for a couple of days, looking through photos, enjoying each other's company, eating together, remembering Grammy/Mom. It was just how I was imagining - and I think just how Mom would have liked it. My daughter ordered hundreds of pink carnations and roses online - and we have a dozen full vases all over the house.

My son was visiting from San Francisco for the week. He left on Tuesday. We had just returned from our two week trip to Colorado a few days before he arrived.

So, things have been more hectic than usual for me. All very enjoyable though. Really the entire summer has been very busy with family events - my Mom's final days in June, lots of time with my grandson and granddaughter in July and August.

I am still waiting for things to settle down and get boring. I think we have worked our way through any bad food left over from the party. I should be able to record easily and focus on veggies. I am still doing the 2 mile trail every morning and I have started doing upper body weight training. I want to add yoga. I do yoga poses spontaneously during the day, but it's not the same as 60-90 minutes of yoga routine. I could really tell that the balance poses I have been doing have helped me when we went hiking in Colorado. I can go across logs now without trepidation.

You would think being retired and having lots of time, I would be able to be very disciplined on eating and exercise. But the opposite has been true. Being off a schedule - means being off a schedule. You hate to put yourself back on one. The luxury of no schedule really means a lot to me. So, I have to really want to do something to actually do it. The hike is something I enjoy - so I can do it every day. The upper body training and the mini-yoga sessions are short and make me feel better - so those are easy too. But taking 60-90 minutes out for yoga means I have to dedicate the time - sort of a tedious thing, even if I feel better for it.

What I've Been Up To

2011-09-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

I just got back from 15 days in cool and beautiful Colorado. We hiked every day - on average 3 or 4 miles. I was not careful about CR, but didn't go overboard either. Now I am back to recording and eating very healthy.

Today was grandparent's day at my grandson's school. You eat lunch with them. Really very sad fish sandwich and vegetables. We came home and made a raw spinach salad. I love my grandson dearly, so I would never miss it - or make a big deal about the food. I should have just brought a lunch! Other grandparents showed up with takeout. I don't think the cafeteria food was actually worse than McDonalds!

April's Experiment

2011-08-14T17:52:00.000-04:00

April was sponsoring a breakfast experiment on her blog. She has 3 different breakfast menus, with varying levels of carbs vs protein. She wants you to try each of them and record when you get hungry for lunch (or mid-morning snack). I can't really participate, because she is using dairy and egg whites as the main food - both things I don't eat - at least not in any significant quantities.

I have my own version though. So, I know what the answer would be for me. The breakfast I ate today was a great one for avoiding hunger. I get these great low carb flat breads - Joseph's flax and oat bran lavash, similar to this pita version, at Walmart. I cut the sheets in half - so they are 50 calories. They are very low in carbs - similar to Trader Joes Low Carb tortillas. My breakfast was a half sheet of lavash, rolled up around 1/2 oz of goat gouda and 1 oz of grilled chicken. Not much carbs involved there. I ate this at 8:30 after I got back from my 2 mile hike.

I was not even very hungry at 1 pm when I ate 1/6 of the spinach and feta quiche I made for lunch. I was perfectly happy to eat the modest piece and quit. Again, another low carb meal and I will not be very hungry the rest of the day.

The worst of all breakfasts for me is cereal and milk or bagels. Much as I love my husband's muffins, they make me hungry. He tries to remember to add whey power to them. And they have walnuts. But they are basically pretty carb oriented.

Odd Spam Posts

2011-08-14T17:38:00.000-04:00

Thanks Judith for alerting me to the unusual posts showing up on my blog. I set a parameter to allow me to post to my blog with email, and apparently google and some spammer took advantage of this!!

The Social Side of Eating

2011-08-12T00:34:00.000-04:00

Trying to do strict CR now that I am retired and it's just me and my husband at home most of the time has really clarified to me how food and people are linked. When I was working, I made breakfast for myself, bought a salad in the cafeteria, and then we often ate out at the same restaurants for dinner - ones that I had a CR menu strategy for. So, I could eat and socialize - since I was eating with people who ordered their own food.

At home, you would think I have more control. But, I am eating with family. And I am often eating food that family members cooked. My husband likes to make me food. He often makes me food without asking or thinking about whether it will mess up CR. Today he made me a half a banana with a little chocolate sauce. Now this was only 100 calories. But 100 calories is enough to mess up CR at the end of the day. I ate it, because it would have just seemed unfriendly and annoying for me to reject it. He wants to be nice to me. We spend a lot of time together now - which is great. We like to cook together too.

This just emphasizes to me how social cooking and eating is. In a family, food is love. I used to think that food was either pleasure or health - and CR was just making the choice to emphasize health rather than pleasure. But, there is this third dimension - the love.

So how to keep the love - without the calories? I haven't quite figured that out yet. I will have to ask my loved one.

Nice to see a study that validates my CR ...

2011-08-10T18:08:00.001-04:00

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Nice to see a study that validates my CR experience. I ate Zone all throughout my weight loss period and did not lose muscle mass. Of course, this was perimenopause. It's tough to hang on to the muscle at this stage in life. I've gone from 92 lbs LBM to 87 over 11 years. Obviously, more strength training might help. But, I don't have the hormones that guys do to help put muscle on.

Protein preserves muscle and physical function in dieting postmenopausal women | ScienceBlog.com

Protein preserves muscle and physical function in dieting postmenopausal women. August 10, 2011. Dieting postmenopausal women who want to avoid losing muscle as they lose fat should pay attention to a...

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Indian Restaurant

2011-08-09T17:32:00.000-04:00

I was being very good today, eating my healthy breakfast and lunch. Then we went through my Groupons and noticed that the Indian Palace one will expire pretty soon. So, it will be Indian for tonight - northern Indian, which is pretty creamy and buttery.

They will have a buffet - which is $10 a person. I am sure it will be wonderful and have tons of veggie curries. Their main dishes are around $12. The buffet would be more fun. If I was a non-CR person, that is what I would do without even thinking about it. But, buffets encourage you to eat more to get the value, and their are no leftovers. If I order a main dish, I can eat half and take the rest home. I can get saag with spinach or tandoori. So, decision, decisions. If I do the buffet, then I will eat very light tomorrow and stay away from the bread. As of now, I have eaten 640 calories. The entree with a take home container sounds best. I think I will study up on the dishes and their calorie count.

What to do with that eggplant?

2011-08-07T12:47:00.000-04:00

There is a nice eggplant in the veggie drawer and some Turkey Italian Sausage in the meat drawer. I proposed that we make a "lasagna" dinner using them both. We don't have ricotta cheese, so I will use feta. I will pre-cook slices of eggplant in a non-stick pan - maybe brushed with a bit of olive oil. And precook the sausage with some red bell pepper and onion. Then layer these with feta cheese, parmesan and pasta sauce. This sounds very filling. I suspect a small serving will seem like plenty.

CR is Not So Hard, and So Worth It

2011-08-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

A friend who read my blog for the first time recently was chatting with me, and noting that I had blogged about my difficulties with CR. That made me think about how much my blog this week and last has been focused on the negative - the family interactions, drifting off a bit, etc.

So, I am feeling the need to counterbalance all that negativity with some positive thoughts. Depending on how you choose to practice CR - and there are as many ways to do it as there are people - it can be easy or hard. Your environment can certainly impact you too. As long as the people around you are reasonably supportive, or at least not out to sabotage you, you can do CR.

You have to make the effort to really learn about nutrition. Read some books. Use a tool to track it. But once you have done that for 6 months or a year, it becomes habit and not so hard. It's best not to "tickle the dragon" and eat the caloric and low nutrition foods that you know you overeat. Watch caffeine and alcohol consumption, because they both make it easier to overeat. Design some breakfast and lunch standard meals that you can make or buy easily - and use those on days you are busy or tired. Stick to lean protein and vegetables as the base of your diet, supplemented with some good fats, and modest amounts of whole grains and fruits. It's all the usual healthy eating advice that we have all heard over and over. You just have to convince yourself it is a lifestyle, not a temporary diet.

The incentive is that you will feel great. If you are a woman, you will look fabulous. If you are a man, well, you will look thin. But April and I will think you look fabulous too.

Two Day in a Row

2011-08-05T23:40:00.000-04:00

I really ate too much. Not way too much - like 1400 calories. Very sloppy of me. I must make amends and eat light this weekend. I ate good quality food for the most part. Really, beer and wine are the issue. I normally would have a drink maybe 3 or 4 days a week before I started back on careful CR. I had not been drinking anything for 2 weeks. The stock market mini-crash on Thursday just seemed like a beer was needed. And then I went to a neighbor's house and had another. Of course, alcohol is not very conducive to dietary restraint either. I think I will go back on the wagon :)

I have really made the transition away from caffeine completely. Although I do yawn a bit more and I am ready for sleep by 11 pm. I was making iced tea all the time, eventually only decaf. But now, water is fine. I just drink water most of the day.

Weight Watcher Allies

2011-08-03T20:34:00.000-04:00

It turned out that both my sister-in-laws were doing the Weight Watcher thing very very seriously - together even. This was immensely helpful for me. No cake as a result. Nice chicken dishes and veggies and fruit. The only desserts were a peach tart my husband made and angel food cake with fresh strawberries. I did indulge a bit in these. Today we all ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant and I overate just a bit there - not much though. But dinner was nice flounder and spinach salad, so last 2 days was not too bad. It will be easy to get back on track.

I was glad to see my sisters-in-law so conscientious and thoughtful about their eating. They were doing such a great job. I actually had that discussion with my one of them about how their family tends to focus on eating home-cooked meals - with family favorites that are not necessarily the most healthy food.

I am really totally out of the cola habit now. In fact, caffeine in general. I found myself perfectly happy drinking water.

Mexican Restaurant

2011-07-31T20:48:00.000-04:00

We went out to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants for lunch today. I think they had changed the menu - or maybe we usually ate during the week and they have a lunch special menu then. But, it seemed like everything on the menu was big food. And no a la carte. So, maybe the taco salad? Or the tortilla soup? Instead I ordered the mahi mahi tacos. This turned out to be a decent choice. I ate half the tortillas and left the rest. The little bowl of black beans was only 3 or 4 oz. Lots of grilled mahi mahi, tons of lettuce and pico de gallo, and no cheese. Dinner was my standard spinach chef salad which is 200 calories. Breakfast was a turkey hotdog, half of a low carb lavash with flaxseed, and 2 small clementines. So not a bad day for a day I went to an Austin Mexican restaurant.

Tomorrow we head to Houston for my mother-in-law's birthday. I may bring along some food, but it sounds like there is likely to be things I can eat.

A contest to redesign food labels. The winner...

2011-07-29T23:24:00.001-04:00

A contest to redesign food labels. The winner is an interesting and different approach.

Rethink The Food Label

We've asked the public to submit ideas for redesigning the nutrition facts label that appears on food packaging. See what they came up with.

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Scientific evidence for popular dietary supplements\

2011-07-28T11:30:00.002-04:00

What a great chart. At this point, I am taking Bone-Up, Vitamin C, a fish oil cap, folate a couple of times a week, Vitamin D, grapeseed extract, biotin, and pycnogenol. Not a huge pile of pills. The Bone-Up and folate I take because the foods I select just don't get me close enough to the RDA. Biotin - that's a long story - but I seem to need extra of it or I get "prickly". Grapeseed extract and pycnogenol seem to reduce inflammation for me and make my joints and muscles better. The D is just preventative. I like taking the C. It seems to make me feel better.

Scientific evidence for popular dietary supplements

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Food and Family Gatherings

2011-07-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

I don't know about your family, but for my husband's family, gatherings are about food. To a large extent, it is about the women cooking the food, and the men (and the women too, of course) eating it. It is a big production. The food tends to be family favorites, too, so there is a lot of nostalgia and tradition. My family can get together and just sit around and talk a lot -with eating often an afterthought - take out even, or something pre-prepared. No one in my family minds at all if the host takes everyone's order and runs to Subway - or orders pizza.

As a result, for my family, I can sneak in CR eating and they might not even notice. No one is watching to see that I don't eat some female relatives special salad or cookies or roast. But, with my husband's family, I feel some pressure to join in and appreciate the food, for politeness sake. You can imagine how comfortable that is for me (not). People have put in a lot of effort and, generally, the food is good. So rejecting it just seems weird. I can say "Nope, I don't eat desserts". But now I seem like a food diva, who is just too good for their food. I am making a commentary on their food being unhealthy (which it often is). They feel judged.

So, coming up is one of those awkward occasions - my mother-in-law's birthday. Lots of food will be cooked. A brisket is planned and I don't eat beef, so a protein source will need to be brought in special for me (the prima donna). Six people will be eating together. Three are just plain thin and never gain weight. Then there is me, my sister-in-law who is a careful eater and struggles to stay at her ideal weight, and the sister-in-law who has lost the battle entirely and has just had a very bad report from her cardiologist. So half of the people really should be eating healthy and low calorie - and half can get away with eating as much as they want. It's the mother-in-law and the men - against the 3 women who gain a pound just from looking at a cake.

I have not done very well dealing with occasions like this in the past. I was usually visiting on vacation from my hectic job, coming in on a plane, and just went along with the elaborate plans that other people made. But this time, I am going to make an attempt to see that there are at least 3 or 4 dishes that are really healthy - so I can have plenty to eat. I might still be "rude" if I am mostly eating my own food, but maybe no one will notice, if I am just casual about it?

So, I am thinking about the 3 dishes. Maybe a spinach salad with strawberries and feta and light raspberry vinaigrette. Some fruit-based thing for dessert - berries and mango? And a veggie thing. I have a nice recipe for a roasted broccoli and cauliflower salad I would like to try. It's not for a week, so I still have time to plan it out. And I told my husband, we can just buy me a rotisserie chicken, so people don't have to cook me something special. I can just eat that while everyone else has the beef.

Unless you are thinking about the healthiness...

2011-07-27T18:04:00.002-04:00

Unless you are thinking about the healthiness of food, you will just pick food based on its taste. This means that to stay calorie-restricted, you have have to constantly impose a regimen on yourself of thinking about the healthiness of every food choice. This is why it is so hard.

Scientists show link between attention and self-control | ScienceBlog.com

Scientists show link between attention and self-control. July 27, 2011. You're trying to decide what to eat for dinner. Should it be the chicken and broccoli? The super-sized fast-food burger? Ski...

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Calorie Levels

2011-07-26T00:03:00.000-04:00

I ran the CRON-o-Meter report for the last 13 days - the time period I have been very carefully recording. The calories on average were only 1026. And my weight is the same. I am probably eating 200-300 calories less than I have on average over the last 3 years. When I was recording carefully before, I targeted 1150 calories - and gained 3 pounds over 2 years at the point I went into menopause.

I know this seems like a ridiculously low level of calories to a lot of people. But, my lean body mass is only 80 pounds now. I never would lose weight on diets before I did CR unless I ate less than 1000 calories a day.

It really shouldn't matter how many calories I eat, as long as I get good nutrition. But, there is a problem. This is such a low level that social eating and eating out is hard to manage. The food people serve me is almost always too much. There always seem to be those polite eating events - "try this", etc. and I just don't have a lot of calories I can spare. So, I just have to hang tough and say no. I am finding this makes me just want to eat at home, where I can eat what I need.

Another thing I am struggling with is eating out as entertainment. Do you realize how much of what people do to entertain themselves involves eating? If not eating, then shopping. I am trying to focus on music venues for this reason :) Or hiking - though it is too hot for that at them moment. We went to go see the bats the other night -that was great! But, even then, we went out for dinner with the family beforehand - and there was ice cream at the bat viewing area. Food is everywhere.

How am I doing?

2011-07-25T13:42:00.000-04:00

I am doing very well on my new improved CR regimen. Really, my level of personal health discipline is way up. I walk at least 2 miles every single day, despite the 100+ degree heat. This requires me to get up and out the door before 8 am, which has never been my best time to exercise. But, I am doing it and enjoying it. I walk the trail in my neighborhood that goes along the side of the canyon/low mountain, though the juniper/oak forest. It is mostly shady and has lots of interesting things to see: fossils, views, wildlife (2 deer today, a bunny yesterday). It is a great trail, with just a little bit of up and down. There are more challenging trails around, with lots more elevation change, but they would mean we have to walk in the sun. So I am saving those until fall.

I measure at least 50% of what I eat. I am staying in my calorie goals 6 days out of 7 and barely going over on that 7th day. Most days it is pretty easy now. My body is adjusted. I am not losing weight - at least not detectably. It's only a couple of weeks though that I have been tracking it. If I am losing, it is very slow.

I haven't had a Cherry Coke Zero for quite a while either. I am down to 2 servings of green tea a day for caffeine. No headaches and not really tired.

And I feel very good. I have that mental energy and focus you get from CR. I am not sure I had that most of the time in the last couple of years. It's the best thing about CR.

Surviving McDonalds

2011-07-25T13:31:00.000-04:00

Back with the grandson today and I couldn't talk him out of lunch at McDonalds. I pulled up their nutrition info and decided it wouldn't kill me to eat one of the salads with grilled chicken there. Now, of course, the trick in the aftermath of this diet misadventure is putting it into CRON-o-Meter. I always use the recipe feature and try to match to protein and carb counts. The ingredients are somewhat simplistically listed on the McDonalds site, but were not too helpful, since the black beans and corn were just called "southwest salad mix". So, I did my best to match it up. Further complicating things is that I did my usual customization - picking out all the annoying taco flavored Doritos and adding half the package of the Newmans Own salad dressing. This is a great exchange since the chips are gak and the salad dressing has decent oil and will increase absorption of the vitamins in the vegetables. It basically results in a 295 calorie salad that won't set you back on meeting adequate nutrition goals.

Kung Pao Chicken

2011-07-24T23:05:00.003-04:00

I will admit that though I make stir fry off and on all the time, it is never THAT good. It's healthy though. I always wish I could make better Chinese food. I tried a new recipe for Kung Pao today that turned out better than usual. I tweaked it a bit to make it healthier and match my tastes. What I like the best about it was that it didn't really require a good wok -which I do not have. I have a terrible cook top actually. It is an ancient electric one that only fits pans that are 11 1/2 inches or less in diameter. You can barely cook with 2 pans on a side at a time at all - one has to be small. I was surprised that the nutrition was so decent on this recipe because it came out pretty close to restaurant level of yummy. The original was at allrecipes.com. I decreased the peanuts and added the peppers and onions. I thought it needed more sugar and less chile paste, though I might have put in twice the amount of chile as was in the recipe. It was pretty hot, but then Kung Pao is supposed to be. I think some fresh ginger should go in there too - but I didn't have any on hand, and the recipe did not call for it.

Kung Pao Chicken

Ingredients

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks
2 tablespoons white wine
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
2 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
1 ½ tablespoon hot chile paste
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
3 teaspoons brown sugar
4 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, including liquid
2 ounces chopped peanuts
1 teaspoon olive oil
½ medium onion cut into bite size pieces
red or green bell pepper, cut into bite size pieces

Directions

To Make Marinade: Combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture and mix together. Place chicken pieces in a glass dish or bowl and add marinade. Toss to coat. Cover dish and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
To Make Sauce: In a small bowl combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon cornstarch/water mixture, chili paste, vinegar and sugar. Mix together and add green onion, garlic, water chestnuts, green onion and peanuts. In a medium skillet, heat sauce slowly until aromatic.
Saute onion and pepper in the olive oil in a large skillet until soft. Add to sauce.
Remove chicken from marinade and saute until meat is white and juices run clear. When sauce is aromatic, add sauteed chicken to it and let simmer together until sauce thickens.

(4 servings, 275 calories per serving, 23g protein, 14g carb, 14g fat, 55% RDA Niacin, 33% RDA Vit. C)

Food Police

2011-07-23T18:56:00.001-04:00

Derya Unutmaz posted this article on overlooked "good" foods on G+ today and got immediate push back with negative comments. *Sigh* This just reminds me that there will always be someone who thinks your favorite healthy food is poison. I have never been fastidious in my eating habits like many CR people. I just assume that every wonder food will be found out to be flawed in some way by some study somewhere. And that there will be some study that proves any "evil" food is just fine. So, I would rather just go for nutritional quality and variety than be whipsawed.

But, one step beyond that, I try to concentrate on traditional whole foods. There are foods that have stood the test of time - olive oil, fish, lean meats, vegetables, fruits. Not so much grains, they are newer to our diet. And none of that Archer Daniels Midland designer manufactured stuff.

And one more thing. Any food that you cannot control your intake on - I don't care what it is - don't eat that. That is why I have no issue eating sweet potatoes, even if they are starchy. I like them and eat them often. But I eat them plain and microwaved, and I never seem to want more than half a medium potato, ever. Four ounces of sweet potato as part of a balanced Zone-ish meal is a good thing. I am sure 10 ounces of sweet potato fries would be much easier to consume - and not a good idea.

Eating the Same Thing

2011-07-22T15:36:00.000-04:00

I am thinking I need to come up with a default set of meals for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. So most days I will not have to think too hard about CR and can just focus on dinner.

Today I made a nice spinach chef salad. This type of salad worked for me when I was doing CR for the first 3 or 4 years. I ate it every day at work for lunch and never got tired of it. Making that any day that other plans did not intrude would help simplify things. It's just 2 oz of raw spinach, and ounce of feta, an ounce of ham, 1/2 an ounce of turkey pepperoni, 1/2 ounce of carrots and peppers, and lite Caesar dressing. All weighed on the scale as I make it. I could increase the veggies too - if I used a bigger bowl. This is 200 calories and 39% of vitamins and 31% of minerals. It is low carb and leaves room for a snack of fruit early in the afternoon. I also like to eat half an ounce of nuts in the afternoon too. So any daily menu needs room for that.

For breakfast, the easiest thing to include is a berry-whey shake. I make this very simply. 100 grams of frozen berries, water, and a scoop of why protein. Zzzz, zzzz in the blender and it is done. Tastes great. It's 147 calories and only 16% each of vitamins and minerals. Still okay for CR. But it does not really get me "ahead" like the salad. What I would really love to eat would be my pumpkin custard, but no way would I bother to make that all the time. Wait, maybe I would. Have to think about that one.

I went looking through the blog for a pumpkin custard recipe and found a complicated one with fresh pumpkin. Really, it is just pumpkin pie filling, minus sugar, plus splenda, minus evaporated milk, plus whey protein. Cooked in custard cups instead of a pie shell. I would run off and make some right now, but I hate to heat up the over for just that (it's 100 degrees here every day, forever, apparently).

I can't agree more with the author of this...

2011-07-21T14:01:00.001-04:00

I can't agree more with the author of this article. The money for research is largely public funding. The value of the research will never be maximized until it is made freely available. The value provided by the journal publishers is trivial now. As someone who would love to be able to freely access academic journals, I have a vested interest in this. But the case cannot be made for the other side.

33 GB of Scientific Papers - and a Manifesto - Uploaded to Pirate Bay

An archive containing over 18,000 scientific papers, downloaded from the academic journal database JSTOR, has been uploaded to The Pirate Bay where they're now available as a torrent. The papers were ...

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Missing sleep made these people eat quite...

2011-07-20T19:28:00.003-04:00

Missing sleep made these people eat quite a bit more. 4 hours of sleep instead of 7-9 and they ate 300 calories more a day - enough to gain almost 3 pounds a month. This gives new meaning to "beauty sleep".

Short sleep duration increases energy intakes but does not change energy expenditure in normal-weight individuals

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Oh, interesting! A study that shows that ...

2011-07-20T19:14:00.001-04:00

Oh, interesting! A study that shows that eating the same thing every day makes you eat less. Even macaroni and cheese. A very useful strategy, then. Boring is better if you want to reduce your intake.

Long-term habituation to food in obese and nonobese women

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From Mike Collela on the CR list. I would...

2011-07-20T14:17:00.001-04:00

From Mike Collela on the CR list. I would have to see how "high" the high fat was and how significant the drop in dopamine was myself. There is no clue in this summary. And then there is the issue that human and rat diets are not that similar.

A high-fat diet alters crucial aspects of brain dopamine signaling

Prolonged exposure to a high fat diet is correlated with changes in the brain chemical dopamine within the striatum, a critical component of the brain's reward system according to new research.

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I am going to start following the CR Society...

2011-07-20T13:15:00.001-04:00

I am going to start following the CR Society email list and repost any studies discussed here. If you are on G+, you can discuss this in the comments. Let me know if you want to be taken out of my circle for this (basically off the distribution list). Anyone not on G+ will only get this first message in their email. This should come with an invite to G+ I think. If not just reply and I will invite you directly.

The study was posted by Al Pater. Bottom line:

"During 11 years of follow-up, 597 men and 418 women had died from IHD. Systolic blood pressure in men and pulse pressure in women were the most informative predictors of blood pressure, and waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI was the most informative expression of obesity in both men and women. Among serum lipids, the most informative predictor was the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol."

Informativeness of indices of blood pressure, obesity and serum lipids in relation to ischaemic heart disease mortality: the HUNT-II study

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. Informativeness of indices of blood pressure, obesity and serum lipids in relation to ischaemic heart disease mortality: the HUNT-II study. Bjørn Mørkedal1 Contact Information ...

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Here was my 'Living in the Future" moment...

2011-07-19T23:43:00.001-04:00

Here was my 'Living in the Future" moment from the past week. I paired up Fitbit and Withings and I'm digging all of the charts and graphs for tracking health and fitness on the Fitbit site (and mobile site).

Jason Hiner - Blog - 'Living in the future' moment: Fitbit + Withings

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Food Management

2011-07-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

He wanted to make scrambled eggs this morning, so I had him make me one. There were leftover muffins, so can't let them go to waste. Before I set out, I asked about dinner plans, so I could decide what to eat for lunch. We had ground turkey, so we decided to do one of our favorite CR adaptions of gakky food - turkey burgers with oven fries. I either eat the burger without the bun, or use those new sandwich thin things - 100 calories and whole grains. This is not the most nutritious of all meals, but decent. I make the fries from raw potatoes and just toss them in a teaspoon of olive oil and bake them. It's a 500 calorie meal. Breakfast was 200 calories. I wanted to eat 100 calories of the black grapes for dessert too. I made the mistake of trying out a Jello Temptations chocolate thing at my daughter's before I checked it out on the Web and found out the little thing was 60 calories - wasted as far as I am concerned. So, planning for 1200 calories, I only had 300 left for lunch. I decided to spend it on leftover chicken breast, some carrots, and some pecans.

This is my typical approach to CR, for whatever it is worth. I want to get back to my earlier steady CR weight of 118 - which is 8 pounds less - so I am not about to be casual about it. I need to be sticking to the calorie goal and recording pretty accurately. So, I plan out the rest of my day at some point and stop there. While this seems obsessive, it really means I quit thinking about food as soon as I have the day planned. When I am not on CR, I think about food a lot regardless. I think of things to snack on. So, this does not make me think about food more - it actually makes me think about food less. I just think about it differently. It is an engineering process, a food management process. Instead of thinking about things I would like to eat and how I should probably not eat them, I think about how to budget my calories for the day. This is why CR works for me so well. It is like I am working around a cognitive defect in my appetite. I turn food into a little math puzzle instead of a comfort thing.

I am hanging out (can't say babysitting, ...

2011-07-19T21:44:00.001-04:00

I am hanging out (can't say babysitting, because he is 10) with my grandson - still over at his house today and tomorrow. I mentioned the semi-mega muffin yesterday. Today, I found out my husband forgot the whey powder, so they were less mega than usual. He gets the general concept of CR megamuffin, which is a muffin that provides complete nutrition relative to its calories, but he has zero ability to construct such a thing. He does understand the idea of making a muffin that is extra healthy. So his muffins have no added sugar, extra bran, walnuts, only olive oil and half the normal amount as it is, and added whey protein. I should get him to add grated carrots and they would be better on vitamins and maybe even tastier.

He wanted to make scrambled eggs this morning, so I had him make me one. There were leftover muffins, so can't let them go to waste. Before I set out, I asked about dinner plans, so I could decide what to eat for lunch. We had ground turkey, so we decided to do one of our favorite CR adaptions of gakky food - turkey burgers with oven fries. I either eat the burger without the bun, or use those new sandwich thin things - 100 calories and whole grains. This is not the most nutritious of all meals, but decent. I make the fries from raw potatoes and just toss them in a teaspoon of olive oil and bake them. It's a 500 calorie meal. Breakfast was 200 calories. I wanted to eat 100 calories of the black grapes for dessert too. I made the mistake of trying out a Jello Temptations chocolate thing at my daughter's before I checked it out on the Web and found out the little thing was 60 calories - wasted as far as I am concerned. So, planning for 1200 calories, I only had 300 left for lunch. I decided to spend it on leftover chicken breast, some carrots, and some pecans.

This is my typical approach to CR, for whatever it is worth. I want to get back to my earlier steady CR weight of 118 - which is 8 pounds less - so I am not about to be casual about it. I need to be sticking to the calorie goal and recording pretty accurately. So, I plan out the rest of my day at some point and stop there. While this seems obsessive, it really means I quit thinking about food as soon as I have the day planned. When I am not on CR, I think about food a lot regardless. I think of things to snack on. So, this does not make me think about food more - it actually makes me think about food less. I just think about it differently. It is an engineering process, a food management process. Instead of thinking about things I would like to eat and how I should probably not eat them, I think about how to budget my calories for the day. This is why CR works for me so well. It is like I am working around a cognitive defect in my appetite. I turn food into a little math puzzle instead of a comfort thing.

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Why I am so enchanted with Google Plus

2011-07-19T12:10:00.000-04:00

I've been on G+ since July 6th - so a mere 13 days. I would like to share with you why it means a lot to me and why I would like to move my blog there.

I have long seen the Web as a social place, but I am not a fan of Facebook. I have an account there with 122 friends - a very eclectic mix of family, school friends, work friends, CR friends and game friends. So it is a nice way to keep up with people. But I don't post a lot there and at least half of what shows up on my wall is pretty silly. It's not a serious place. It is just for fun. I don't tweet on Twitter or follow tweets - it seems insanely manic to me. I use chat fairly often to talk to my son and game friends and find chat to be a really nice way to keep up with people. I have really enjoyed playing strategy games with other people online. It can be an intense social experience. My game friends are all people I have met playing, not RL (real life) friends and it's been interesting to make good friends with people from all backgrounds and places. Of course, I have blogged and met some great people that way. I've posted on some other blogs as well. And then there was the CR list, which was email, not browser, but Web as well. On the CR list, I met some amazing and interesting people I would never have met any other way. So, I feel like I have gotten a lot of value from the Web as a social place, over the last 10 or so years. When you have the whole world available to you, there are so many great people who share your interests. If only you can find them easily and have great tools to help you interact with them.

That is why you need to get on Google Plus. Because, as nice as FB and twitter and groups and chat are - they left a void that G+ fills. If you get on G+ and make some effort to find people, you will be amazed at the quality of the interaction. The way the tool works encourages the best interaction. Once we are on G+, there are more things we can do as a community. We can have "hangouts" and do video chats with up to 9 people. You can see when someone comments after your comment - so your comments are more valued. So everyone comments. It's just different - and better. It's an amazing rich environment for interacting with people. I've met so many people there in 2 weeks. Two weeks of G+ is worth so much more to me that 3 years of Facebook.

So, let me invite you to G+ - so you can get in. It is not open to everyone yet, so I have to have an email address (make it your permanent "real" one too). Here is a user guide being written collaboratively by 100 people (amazing in itself!). And when you are in, then just add 2 people to the circle "Following". You will see it. Add me - Mary Lignoul Robinson - and Derya Unutmaz. You will get a dozen interesting posts a day from us and connections to other interesting people. If you see us copy a post that you find interesting from someone else, then drop that person in your "following" circle. Post me a message and I will add you to my CR circle there. Many days, I will have G+ up off and on all day, so we could chat or you could send me a message and I will answer. You have great control over who sees what there. A huge improvement over Facebook. The circles are like email distribution lists and you can set them up any way you like and have total control over who can see any post. You can send a personal message to one or more people, or post something that anyone who follows you can see. You can send to circles, which are last email distribution lists. It sounds complicated I know, but it really is natural when you use it. I will be there to answer questions.

A Very Good Dinner

2011-07-18T22:28:00.000-04:00

For now, I have really clicked into that focused CR mode. It's what made me love doing CR and keep doing it for 11 years - as of yesterday! Hope I stay there. I had 2 of my husband's semi-mega-muffins for breakfast and the Chipotle salad for lunch. I knew tilapia was on the menu for dinner and bought some baby spinach and a sweet potato at the store to go with it. I am sorry I did not take a picture of dinner because it was pretty.

Dinner menu:

Baby spinach with carrots and dried cranberries splashed with some light raspberry vinagrette

Half a medium sweet potato - plain, microwaved

3 oz tilapia, lightly sauteed in a non-stick pan with a splash of olive oil

half a fabulous Fredericksburg, Texas peach - picked Friday - this was pretty small, but very flavorful

a small bunch of black grapes

Looking at my menu, it was pretty sweet! I didn't really mean to make everything but the fish a sweet item.

I just drank iced tea today - no Cherry Coke Zero. I made it from 3 tea bags of Trader Joes green tea. It seemed to be plenty of caffeine. I could cut back already. Maybe only 2 bags tomorrow and the rest decaf.

Chipotle Restaurant

2011-07-18T12:09:00.000-04:00

I don't eat out very often, but this week I will be hanging out with my 10 year old grandson. He's been away from home for a week, so I am assuming he wants to stay home for at least a day or two and chill - and not come to my house. So I am hanging out there during the day - 20 minutes away from home. So, either I bring food, eat what is at my daughter's, or get food out. My kitchen is empty. I need to grocery shop pretty desperately. There are no leftovers. So bringing is not an option today. My daughter does not do CR and has pretty different food tastes from me regardless, so I never assume there is food there that works for me. She lives close to a shopping center with lots of restaurants and take out places - as well as HEB groceries.

My husband and I like to eat Chipotles - and that is one of the close by eateries. He and I get a chicken or pork bowl and share. I decided I better enter the dishes I like there into CRON-o-Meter. So now I know what to get for myself. The Chicken Salad without the caloric dressing is pretty decent. I would add black beans,cheese and tomatillo salsa. The way I would eat it, it is 427 calories. The best thing about it is that it is showing 50% of vitamins and 43% of minerals! That is one dish I can eat out and be perfectly CR.

I can't/don't eat beef, so chicken or pork are my choices. Clearly they are using pork loin/tenderloin based on their nutritional values. The preparation says the pork is braised. From a nutritional point of view, the pork is also a decent choice. The sat fat content is only half a gram higher than the chicken, it is braised instead of grilled, and I eat lots of chicken, so I get lots of niacin and less thiamine, which the pork is great for. The pork is higher fat and lower protein though - so I would tend to get it only on a day where I am eating low fat and high protein otherwise.

Breaking the CCZ (Cherry Coke Zero) Habit

2011-07-17T20:44:00.001-04:00

This is going very well! CCZ appeals less each day. Tomorrow I think I will substitute iced tea (though I need to be careful I don't bump up the caffeine inadvertently by doing this). Looking at a caffeine chart, I think regular green tea is the best match for CCZ.

I drink 3 cups of weakish decaf coffee when I wake up. This week I have been switching to 2 glasses of filtered tap water, then 1 glass of CCZ starting late morning and through early evening. I make it through maybe 3 cycles of this and then don't drink the rest of the night.

If I switch to iced tea, I could start substituting decaf green or black tea for the regular green tea over time. This should make getting off caffeine pretty easy. This has the fabulous side benefit of all the great minerals and anti-oxidants in the tea.

This will also get me off Splenda pretty close to 100% - well, at least for the summer. For whatever reason, I like iced tea without sweetener. But I have a hard time drinking hot tea without it. In cold weather, I would drink my tea hot. Maybe I can adjust.

Prepared Foods

2011-07-17T20:34:00.000-04:00

I would guess that only 10% of the food I eat is pre-packaged prepared foods. I suspect I am underestimating this though. It would be an interesting exercise to track this for a week or two.

Today, I had leftover broccoli cheese soup for breakfast. So fresh stuff with ingredients I controlled, though you could argue that someone else roasted the chicken for the broth and the feta cheese came from the store. I had a piece of leftover pizza for lunch - a pretty healthy version of pizza that is a mix of prepared and fresh ingredients. For dinner, we made a package of frozen General Tso's Chicken, which I complained was too sweet, but my husband said was just right. It had nice amounts of broccoli and a bit of red bell pepper, but no other veggies, and the chicken was breaded. So, really not the healthiest.

For foods like this, I find CRON-o-Meter to be very friendly. I always add the food using a recipe. I sit down with the label and start entering the ingredients in the order listed. I guess at quantities and adjust up and down to get the serving to match the overall weight and nutritional profile. I find this is usually pretty easy. It also makes you intimately aware of the components of the food and any issues with it.

An hour after dinner, my husband said that, on second thought, the food was too sweet. He could just tell based on how his teeth felt! Of course, he ate a big serving of rice with it as well - and I ate no rice. So it was a big carb meal for him. He ate 2/3 of the sauce and I ate 1/3. We split the broccoli and chicken pretty evenly. So, this product goes back on our rarely eaten list. Stir-fry we make ourselves is never as yummy, but so much healthier.

After +Khannea Suntzu

2011-07-17T18:09:00.001-04:00

After +Khannea Suntzu

A "New" Approach to Health

vimeo.com - A new documentary on health. Why is food important? Watch this and learn!

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I am testing posting to the CR Diary blog...

2011-07-16T20:13:00.001-04:00

I am testing posting to the CR Diary blog using G+. If you join G+, let me know and I will add you to the circle.

Here's a study that finds that CR reduces birth defects due to genetic mutations in mice

Study suggests new strategy to prevent infertility, birth defects | Bioscience Technology Online

Caloric restriction prevents egg-cell defects in aging mice, drugs under development may have same protective effects

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Broccoli Cheese Soup

2011-07-16T13:31:00.001-04:00

I see blogger has put my old posts somewhere that I can't link directly to them. Lunch today was my Broccoli Cheese Soup. I happened to have a roast chicken carcass for stock. This is really pretty similar to the spanakopita, when I think about it. A different vegetable and different format. I really cannot eat enough vegetables with dill and feta cheese though.

CR Broccoli Cheese Soup
1 box stock (32 oz) - low salt if you need it - veggie or chicken
one head of broccoli
one small yellow onion
garlic to taste
2 oz feta cheese
lots of dill
lots of parsley
half-salt to taste
pepper to taste

Cut the broccoli and onion into chunks - so they fit in a soup pan.
Cover with the chicken stock and bring to a boil.
Cook the broccoli until soft.
Pour the broccoli, onions and stock into a blender.
Add the feta and the seasonings.
Blend until smooth.
Return to the soup pan and warm for an additional minute or two.

This is a creamy, French style soup. Sort of a light version of broccoli cheese soup, though the flavor is very rich. If you are out of stock, water actually works fine. It makes only a small difference to the overall flavor.

Spanakopita

2011-07-16T12:46:00.000-04:00

I made this yesterday - it was dinner and breakfast this morning. I was sure I had an old recipe for it somewhere in the blog. But I think I have improved it a bit.

10 oz package of frozen chopped spinach or equivalent amount of fresh spinach, MUST BE GOOD TENDER SPINACH! HEB store brand, for instance, is terrible.
3 oz feta cheese
tablespoon lemon juice
dill to taste - tbsp of dried for me, I love dill
pepper
half salt to taste
1 raw egg
crushed garlic to taste

I often add a half ounce of romano or parmesan as well - still great without this
6-8 sheets of phyllo dough (these are something like 8 x 12 inches)

tbsp of olive oil

muffin pan

Thaw the phyllo dough and bring it to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 350.
I actually like the frozen spinach better for this, because its already finely chopped. Cook the spinach - either in a covered saucepan with a little bit of water or the microwave. Put it in a strainer and press out all the water. Chop it if it is not already chopped.
Mix all the ingredients other than phyllo and oil in a bowl. The cheese can be in small chunks.
My innovation with this now is to make it as tarts! I cut the phyllo sheets into halves or quarters - depending on their size. Oil the bottom of the muffin pans (makes 10 usually). Take a phyllo sheet - basically 8" x 6" and fold in in half so it is 6" x 4". Now make a triangle. Press the triangle into a muffin cup so that the long side curls around the edge. It will cover maybe 75% of it. Now do another cut sheet the same way, and use to to curl around the other side of the cup. Press it down to make a shell. Rub some olive oil on the bottom to keep it from getting soggy from the filling. Fill with the spinach and feta mixture. Repeat until sheets are gone Bake all your little spinach tarts until the edges are light brown - about 20-25 minutes.

Google Plus update

2011-07-15T21:34:00.000-04:00

I am totally in love with Google Plus and spending a fair amount of time there. It is mostly people who are Web techies and tech journalists at the moment. Lots of tweeters there too (Twitter people). I won't move my blog there until I can filter my public posts by topic. Otherwise you will have to put up with all my musings on various topics. Maybe you want to hear them all, and maybe you don't!

It's a pretty exciting environment - a new frontier - and growing very rapidly. You have to have an invite to try it out - so let me know if you need one.

Grocery Stores

2011-07-15T15:38:00.000-04:00

When I lived near DC, Trader Joes was my main store, Whole Foods was secondary and the Giant was 3rd. Giant was mostly for things like toilet paper. I hardly ever actually shopped there. Since I moved to Austin, I shop mostly at HEB and Sprouts. This is a big change for me and really probably detracts from my CR compliance a bit. HEB here has by far the best prices and selection. They have a lot of healthy food, the stores are big. You would think since Austin is the home of Whole Foods, they would have great WF stores. Sadly, this is not true. There are only 3 stores for 1 million people and they are very crowded. The stores are hard to get around in. The prices seem higher to me than they were in DC. So, my replacement for WF is Sprouts. This is not really equivalent at all. Sprouts has very inexpensive produce, but I find the quality is not as good as HEB most of the time. Of course, HEB is full of bad food. They have insane buy this and get 10 items free specials too, which encourage purchases of bad food. I am pretty good at ignoring these and just walking past the bad food aisles. My husband is worse. If he goes shopping, he buys bad things. Oh, by the way, he's eaten half the chocolate cream pie already!

The fabulous news is that TJs is coming to Austin this fall. I can hardly wait. Wherever it goes, I will drive there. I can't wait. We are not really far from most locations in Austin - a 20 minute drive or less usually.

Updates

2011-07-15T15:27:00.001-04:00

Wow, comments! Really good ones, too.

Ellie shared her own issues with cutting out caffeine. Really, my little strategy is going pretty well. I am down to 1 liter a day and not really feeling it. Drinking the 2 glasses of water for every glass of Coke should do the trick. I can shift to 3 glasses in a week and then 4. Somewhat amazingly, 1 liter of Coke means I drank 2 liters of water! That on top of the 3 cups of decaf is a lot of fluid. Not sure why, but I am usually thirsty and drink a lot between waking up and dinner time. After dinner, I just am not thirsty. I have been this way all my life, so it's not new and certainly unrelated to diabetes.

Kyniska gave me some good suggestions for breakfast - chicken sausages and non-cow yogurt. I have bought goat yogurt occasionally. It's okay, but doesn't seem worth it. I eat about 4 ounces of cheese a week, usually goat or sheep cheese. Supposedly a lot of people who have trouble with cow's milk, still have trouble with goat and sheeps millk. I can't tell at this level of intake. I do buy the chicken sausages sometimes and I will eat a turkey hot dog for breakfast too. Walmart actually has some good uncured ones. She also posted a great comment on my salt-related post. I totally agree with it and should have made that point. I also assume the salt issue is really genetic and makes a big difference for some people. The potassiun balance issue is why we use Lite Salt. I think my balance is still not optimal, but this helps, since it is half potassium salt. I am used to the taste and can't even detect it.

Sabotage

2011-07-14T19:43:00.000-04:00

Gotta work on the husband. He made a little spinach salad (not on my plan) for me for dinner and then put regular Caesar dressing on it - without checking with me. Right now, he is making a chocolate cream pie - all for himself I guess. I ate the salad. I had room for a tablespoon of dressing - that was basically decent fats. But, the chocolate pie! All his. Guess it will be staring at me in the refrigerator for several days.

I had 10 cherries and a roasted chicken leg for breakfast. Lunch was leftovers from last night. Dinner was pan-sauteed flounder, in olive oil, dusted with flour, a couple of ounces of plain sweet potato and a small raw spinach salad. I had a snack of guacamole with a few chips. The guacamole is our usual recipe:

CR guacamole - enough for 2 small appetizers

1 small avocado
1/8 of a lemon's juice
1 clove of garlic, mashed and chopped - or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon salsa or 1/2 small tomato chopped (the salsa I use is NOT sweet at all)

Mash this all together! The salt and garlic make the difference - be generous. I use Lite Salt.

Planning Ahead

2011-07-14T16:29:00.000-04:00

People who do rigorous CR tend to take one of two approaches: eat the same engineered things every day or record and adjust on an ad hoc basis. At times, I have eaten the same breakfasts and lunches over and over. There is a big advantage to this, because you can engineer a breakfast and lunch to leave you with a reasonable calorie goal for dinner and get you close to the RDA already so that dinner does not have to be spectacular CR. I went through a couple of years I ate exactly the same 1 pound spinach salad every day at work. I used to have 2 breakfast menus that I just alternated.

Eating the same well-designed things over and over is not very practical for me just now. For one thing, I would never eat the same thing for dinner night after night. It would be really boring and ruin all the fun I have cooking with my husband. We are cooking for two, so we usually cook enough to have leftovers. Leftovers are consumed at breakfast and lunch over the next day or two. Very efficient, saves time, and eliminates waste. We hardly ever throw away leftovers.

I struggle with breakfast choices regardless. I am allergic to egg whites and my face will break out with hives if I eat an egg 2 days in a row. Grains just don't fit in my diet in any serious quantities - bad nutritional density at my calorie level - so cereal and bread items are out. I am allergic to cow's milk, so forget yogurt. I tend to eat a lean meat item and a piece of fruit as a result. And sometimes leftovers. Lunch also tends to be leftovers and sometimes a meal I cook with my husband.

So, each day is different. This has contributed towards my bad recording habits. The kitchen is around the corner and my husband is around tempting me, so snacking occurs. It is hard to remember every little thing. But, I need to be diligent about recording if I am to be serious about CR and I am eating different things all the time.

I am realizing that this is a bit more of a challenge for me in this environment. So, for the next week or 2, I am not worrying too much about yoga, and just maintaining my walking habit, reducing/eliminating the Cokes, and getting back into the faithful recording habit. Once that is routine for me, I will move on to some other good behaviors.

So, part of my approach is to do some planning ahead on meals. I usually decide what breakfast and lunch will be (though not always, since my husband sometimes wants to cook a real meal). I try to record food as soon as possible after I eat it - or even before. By mid-afternoon, I see where I stand and plan and adjust dinner accordingly. This is actually a fair amount of work. It makes me think about food a lot, but in a careful and disciplined way. Food is like an engineering problem, rather than something yummy. While this takes up some time and attention, this process is a familiar one to me. It is something I did all the time for the first several years of CR. Maybe I will switch to standardized meals, when this just gets to be too much trouble. Or, maybe I will just get used to it again and not mind the effort at all.

Fish Oil and Anxiety

2011-07-13T23:25:00.000-04:00

I've said in the past that when I started myself, my husband and my son on fish oil ten years ago, the household really got mellow. We are all pretty anxious people so it was very noticeable. This study showed that fish oil can reduce anxiety, though the amounts the students took sound fairly large. Wow, 4 or 5 times what is in a serving of salmon (say 1.5g of omega-3) - that would be 20g of fish oil, if I am calculating that right. That is probably a pharmaceutical dose!

Food Plans

2011-07-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was somewhat of a CR disaster, being my birthday and the primary celebration was dinner out at a great restaurant with an awesome bakery. I did order a dinner salad with goat cheese and chicken breast to soften the blow. But I ate some of the awesome whole grain bread with olive oil and some of the desserts that we ordered. I am not even going to try to record it. I ate light earlier in the day and the day before just to counteract this.

Today needs to be a light day for this reason and I am shooting for 1000 calories.

I was not hungry for breakfast at all - just my usual 3 cups of black organic Fair Trade decaf Sumatra. Lunch was a roasted chicken leg , 10 cherries and a plum. Dinner will be a very simple-to-make favorite dish of ours:

CR Italian Sausage and Peppers
Mild Sweet Italian Ground Turkey Sausage
1 Bell Pepper
1/2 Large Yellow Onion
Tablespoon of olive oil
Jar of your favorite Pasta Sauce (we like HEB store brands)
Penne Pasta - your discretion on how much and what type. I use maybe 1/2 of what a restaurant would.
Romano or Parmesan cheese to taste

Start water to boil for the pasta. Cut the pepper and onion into chunks and start it sauteeing in the olive oil in a large saute or frying pan. Remove the skin from the sausages and cut them into chunks. I like mine about an inch in diameter. Add them to the saute and cook until the veggies are soft and the sausage is somewhat firmed up into meatballs. I do not brown. The water should be boiling - so add the penne. Add the pasta sauce to the pan with the veggies and sausage and keep the heat high until the sauce bubbles. Stir occasionally. When the pasta is done, drain and toss into the pan, stir and cook for another couple of minutes. This is 6 servings for us. I will have it for dinner and then for lunch 2 days after.

I still have 250 calories to play with. I have 2 excellent mangos - so maybe 1/2 a mango for dessert - and that watermelon slice still in the fridge for a snack. A very fruity day - maybe too much sugar - but we have such great fruit at the moment.

Cut Salt or Not?

2011-07-13T13:46:00.000-04:00

Scientific American put out an article claiming that there is no good evidence that lowering salt reduces your chances of death from cardiac disease.

Isn't it maddening when you find out that dietary advice is not based on solid evidence? This sort of stuff really damages the credibility of science with the public.

My theory on this all along has been that there is a strong genetic component involved. My mom, who had mild heart failure, just would not follow a low salt diet, and loved eating canned soups that were super high in sodium. She took her blood pressure daily and it seemed to be quite unaffected by her diet. Her BP was within 10% of 140/80 at all times. But, my mother-in-law's blood pressure goes up and down quite dramatically and seems to be affected by sodium intake.

My plan on this is to continue using the Lite Salt - which is half sodium and half potassium salt - but to season to taste and not worry too much about quantity. We buy no salt or low salt versions of food whenever we can get them. I think getting the extra potassium this way is a great idea.

Addictive Food Behavior

2011-07-12T12:38:00.000-04:00

It seems surprising to me that addictive food behavior has not been well studied before? This study seems to be looking at the most basic aspects of this and confirming that addictive treatments would be helpful for food issues. Did we not know this?!

I am certainly more than capable of addictive behaviors relative to food. I self-soothe. I can pretty easily fixate on certain foods and become obsessed with them. This has always been an issue for me with CR and weight control. I know not everyone has this problem. My husband just doesn't do this and doesn't really understand its power.

Although I have continued to practice a loose but consistent CR and maintain a weight that is easily 30 pounds less than my ad lib, I have let addictive patterns sneak in. One of my goals near term is to break these. In the past, I have displayed these behaviors towards foods as diverse and odd as almond-stuffed olives and meringue cookies. My current issues are chips and salsa and diet colas (especially Cherry Coke Zero). I tend to habituate on foods and really expect to eat or drink certain things at certain times of the day. Both foods have some serious side effects actually and need to be eliminated.

Corn and hot peppers are on my food allergy list, so I am eating the chips and salsa because I am allergic to them - and crave them for that reason. Food allergies do that. The salsa I like is high sodium as well, so I want the salt, too (The chips are no salt). I need to replace this snack - which I tend to eat mid-afternoon, with something else that is veggie-oriented and maybe a bit salty (with half-salt preferably). Maybe a little spinach salad with some toppings and salty dressing. Really, the salsa alone is fine from a CR nutritional point of view - a good CR food. It's just that I know the peppers might be causing me inflammation and I would like to try to do without them.

Cherry Coke Zero - that should be easy enough, but I have tried to cut it out a dozen times in the last 2 years. It's just a matter of willpower. Why is CCZ bad for me? Caffeine is really pretty good for people as far as studies seem to indicate. But, for whatever reason, caffeine is something I just overdo. When I started drinking coffee in my 20s, I quickly worked up to 10 cups a day. I had a benign arrythmia when I was tested at the WUSTL last month. I asked about caffeine as the cause and the answer was no, but I am suspicious. I can easily consume a 2 liter bottle of CCZ a day. I consume a lot of liquids a day - more than most people - and this really needs to be water or decaf tea or coffee, not CCZ. Caffeine interferes with my dietary restraint in a noticeable way. I am just restless and start into food "gathering" mode once I begin drinking CCZ each day. And then there is the issue of consuming large quantities of artificially sweetened substances - which may be messing with my brain a bit and keeping my sweet tooth activated. So, CCZ needs to go.

I've gone without soft drinks from 2001-2006, so I know I can do it. Weaning yourself off caffeine is never fun. There are the headaches and the sleepiness. The sleepiness I will just put up with, but the headaches might be best dealt with as a gradual decrease. For now, I am trying having 2 glasses of water for every glass of CCZ. If this doesn't work, I will just cut it out 100% and drink a cup of caffeinated coffee at 11 am and 2 pm - them cut one of those out - then both. Or maybe switch to black tea from the coffee and then to decaf tea.

In the past, these are the things I found that helped with dealing with obsessive addictive food behaviors:

1) Make sure you get the RDA of everything and supplement to cover any gaps - deficiencies make you crave-y.
2) Take an IgG test for food allergies and avoid your allergy foods.
3) Avoid caffeine and alcohol - both interfere with dietary restraint.
4) No sugar! Be careful with sweet fruits. If you are still craving sugary stuff, maybe only berries should be on your menu. Definitely don't eat the sweet stuff with less nutritional value like apples, pears, and bananas that have been evolved by humans so much they are basically desserts.

Back to Blogging - but on to G+

2011-07-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

I plan to start doing CR blogging again. It will be my 11th CRONiversary in a week and the discipline that blogging imposes appeals to me now. It did not seem appealing at all until lately because I was far more interested in really relishing the freedom that retirement brings - the lack of schedule and commitments is really relaxing.

For those who do not know, my mom was living with me for 3 years. She had a stroke in December and had been in the hospital or nursing home since the stroke. She passed away peacefully 2 weeks ago. It was something both she and I were ready for. I had a long time to adjust and deal with the grief. Working on the memorial service for her helped me to remember better times with her and reminded me of what a good life she had. So, I am in a good frame of mind.

It was hard to do good CR with my mom living with me for a couple of reasons. First of all, asking someone with a short future horizon to forgo pleasures is not worth it. So, we had food around that she liked that was not necessarily healthy and certainly not CR. She was always asking me if I wanted some of it. That was just part of her personality and impossible to get her to stop without hurting her feelings. I almost always said no anyway. But, I don't have the discipline and self-restraint to turn down food that is flaunted at me 100% of the time. I will give in occasionally.

Now, my husband can be as bad or worse when his mom is visiting. They make cookies (which I can pass up) and pies (much harder for me). The last visit of my dear mother-in-law, who I treasure, she really listened to me about how I don't eat dessert. So, she is not going to be upset if I don't eat it. She won't push it.

So, I think I can control the food in my house again. Makes CR so much easier for me.

Self-discipline is always a spiral - either upwards or downwards. Getting some aspect under control tends to increase your feeling of being able to get anything else under control. Letting something get out of control tends to make you feel unable to control anything. So, losing control of the food in my house really threw me off. Succeeding with one good habit is always a good start to more. Lately I have been enjoying walking - even though it is over 100 degrees every day. I find that I can take a 2 mile walk down the close trail every morning by 8 and it will not be too hot or sunny. Keeping this habit now makes it seem easier to get back into recording food and eating stricter CR. Maybe I can get into a yoga habit too. I can never seem to do yoga for more than a couple of weeks consistently.

So, in honor of my CRONiversary, here is what I hope to become very consistent about:

1) Walk 2 miles or more each day, regardless of hideous weather
2) 180 minutes of yoga a week
3) 1200 calories a day, plus or minus 200 calories
4) Record food every day
5) Eliminate caffeine again to see if it helps me on appetite control
6) Cut out all the foods that were on my IgG allergy list - no chips and salsa :(
7) Be very consistent on taking supplements (my current much reduced set)

Another thing I am doing lately to be kind to my aging self is to moisturize. I have been using this really effective moisturizer on the sun damage on my arms and legs for several years now. I put a sun blocking moisturizer on my face daily too. But now I am using Burts Bees Foot Repair on my feet and hands to help my nails, which are dry - with very good results.

Oh, and last thing - the G+ - I am really excited to be using Google Plus and plan to drop Facebook as soon as I can. I think I can use G+ for blogging just as easily as Blogger. So I will be trying that out when G+ is opened up. Meanwhile, if you want to try out G+, I will send you an invite. Just comment with your email address. I really like it a lot and plan to make it my main web interface. If you want to follow me when I move to G+, you will need to be on G+. You want to be on G+ anyway. Trust me on this.

Testing at WUSTL

2011-04-29T21:38:00.000-04:00

So I am excited. Finally all the body fat I have is an asset. The gene array testing at WUSTL needs some subjects with body fat. Luigi called me up to see if I would be willing to be tested. And, of course I said yes. I had to think a moment about whether I am seriously a CR candidate. The only reason I hesitate is that I no longer do the food diary every day. But my weight has been stable or declining for the last 8 months at around 128 to 126 - which is still very restricted from my original weight of around 155. I have some days I am not very restricted - maybe a couple of days a month. But most days I am good. And my weight when I moved to Texas 3 1/2 years ago was 123, so really not much change for 3 years - even without the diary. I guess eating well is a habit now.

The testing won't be until mid-June, so to be sure they get CR data, I am doing the diary until then and making sure I stay restricted. This has me very motivated to eat well so I seem to be going overboard. I am just not hungry at all. I had been eating chips and salsa for a snack most days and drinking a light beer off and on. Suddenly these things don't appeal at all! At this rate I will lose a pound or 2.

Update

2011-03-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

It's been three months since my mom's stroke now and we are at a more stable point. She is now in long term care and her condition does not change much. Her long term memory is pretty good. Her thinking is slowed. She is disoriented in time and space a lot. She recognizes everyone and can talk. But talking is a big effort for her. She does not like to answer questions. When I visit, I just tell her little news of the family. This is not taxing for her and she seems to enjoy it. She has adjusted to the nursing home and seems to be reasonably happy there. Her left side is paralyzed, which she is unaware of somehow. So she needs total care and is only somewhat able to feed herself.

Update

2011-02-24T19:23:00.000-05:00

An email from April made me think about how I left people hanging with my last post. Sorry about that. It's been four weeks, so things are different in many ways. My mom is in a nursing home now, still paralyzed on one side, but adjusting. She is talking and socializing with the other patients and seems to be improving slowly. I have gotten used to turning over the responsibility for my mother to other people. I visit her several times a week and coordinate her care.

CR took a backseat of course, during all this. But, CR habits are always there for me to rely on.

Road Maps for the End

2011-01-27T17:02:00.000-05:00

My family is not religious. Most of us are not even believers - my mother included. My two older children and I are probably the most firmly in the non-believer camp. We are the ones having to deal most with my mother's situation on a day to day basis. This presents some interesting problems in dealing with end of life.

I have been thinking about how religious beliefs affect the way people meet death. In theory, if you believed in heaven, it would seem to me that it would make acceptance of death easier. Death would not be the end. It would be the beginning of an even better time for you. You would be reunited with loved ones and still be able to "see" your living family. You would be united with God - which should be your greatest source of joy. If I was truly a believer, I would be facing death with serenity.

But this is not what I see. Instead, religious people seem to cling very hard to life. They pray for miracles. They hope against hope. Instead of making reasonable decisions for treatment, they are most likely to opt for the maximum interventions. This is somehow supposed to be "putting things in God's hands" - even if it seems the opposite to me. Even if things are fairly hopeless, they continue on, because God's will might be that you keep living. They have a script to follow. It includes prayer. It seems to maximize trust in doctors, who seem to stand in God's place here on earth a bit.

I have encountered many religious people in the hospital and nursing home environment. Clearly, they get a lot of comfort from their faith and are honestly convinced that my mother and her family would also be comforted as well. They are sorry for us that we don't get that. I am sure they are right. But, you can't make someone believe something just with good intentions and wishes.

So, for my family, death seems to be like a new invention. We do not have a road map or script. We have to figure it all out for ourselves. This seems like a lot of hard work to me. I think there are probably some nice road maps we have not really looked hard enough for. Surely, in history, there have been people who have dealt well with death. The article I read the other day, and linked to, talked about how people in the past had a concept of what a "good death" was. This seems pretty easy to figure out. We are not very close to this for my mom. So, maybe a good road map would get us much closer to this. Here are some elements of a good death:

Freedom from pain and discomfort
Being surrounded by your favorite things and doing your favorite activities
Forgiving people
Settling debts
Giving away your possessions thoughtfully
Getting to have that last meaningful conversation with each of your loved ones so you leave them with a good feeling - saying good-bye
Coming to terms with your own mortality and letting go of fear

So, one thing you should notice. This list has NOTHING to do with the way that people normally die in America. Instead, they are in the ICU hooked up to all kinds of tubes and wires. Their loved ones are not really told they are about to die and they often don't get a good chance to say good-bye. They are hoping against hope for a recovery - due to miracle treatments or God's intervention.

We Could Do Better - Yes, We Could

2011-01-24T17:23:00.000-05:00

I feel like doing a bit of venting. I read this article - a very good one, I think. It raises all the issues. I am dealing with a version of this with my mom. She had a severe stroke - which paralyzed her left side. It left her able to talk and with her memory as it was - slightly unreliable, especially for recent events. For the first 2 weeks, she could not open her eyes or swallow. She declined a feeding tube and after a week, she was sent to hospice for palliative care - to die. They would give her comfort medicine - but no food or water. In 2-3 weeks she would die. Her stay in hospice for the first week was wonderful and inspiring. Surrounded by family in a beautiful environment, she rallied a bit. Her swallow improved and she opened her eyes. After a week, a doctor asked her if she still wanted to die - and she said no. I think in her mind, she would be going to rehab and somehow regain all her prior capabilities and be going home with me.

So, now, fast-forward ten more days. She has been in rehab now for a while. Her swallowing and speech are better. She talks pretty well now. She is still on thickened pureed food and liquids, though. Her meals are yogurt, applesauce, mashed potatoes, pureed beef stew, scrambled eggs. She hates them already. She is doing 2 1/2 hours of difficult PT a day. She is very very tired from it. It hurts her neck and back to sit up in a wheelchair. She shares a room in a noisy environment. The family has gone back to a near-normal schedule and she gets 1 or 2 visitors a day for an hour or 2. She will never move her left side again and her right side is pretty weak. People have to feed her "mush", move her from chair to bed. She is in diapers. She wants "to go home". The rest of the family has talked about it and talked about it. That is not really an option. She is not happy now. I don't think there is any way she would be happy realistically - no matter what. Only turning the clock back would really solve things for her.

I feel like she is my responsibility. Her pains are my pains on some level. If I am enjoying a meal, I feel bad. She is not getting to eat like she would like to. If I am sitting in the sun on my deck - I think of her being there. It is like a cloud over my head. Every day I wake up, it is not a good day, by definition. My husband tries to help me out. My daughter and siblings are very supportive. But, if I don't watch it, I slide downward.

So, I am also a bit angry. The neurologists at the hospital supported the idea of hospice for her. They knew her recovery would be very limited. The sort of person who says they don't want extraordinary care - which she clearly told them the last time she was there for a stroke 2 years ago - that sort of person would usually choose hospice at this point. They tried to make things easy for me and told me that we were making the best choice. The hospice doctor meant well. But, he really did not tell my mother what her real choices were. I don't think he really knew the whole picture. He just asked her if she wanted to fight to live. Like fighting would return her to her previous state. So, she said yes. Like perhaps a miracle might occur. Which I suppose it could have. But, it hasn't So, now we are on a different path from hospice - a much slower death is all it seems to me. A slow, miserable death.

The hospice process was very, very difficult too. Watching my mom joke with the nurses, I could not imagine just letting her die. So, when she changed her mind, I was glad. But scared and sad too. Because I worried that this is what we would be going through.

When someone you love is just a mess - they are damaged and won't get better, it hurts to be around them if they are unhappy. This makes it hard for everyone to spend time with her. It gets you down. So her visitors have tailed off a bit. My son still visits just the same, but I can see each visit is very hard for him. I still visit the same, too - because I feel I must. He and I try to make things better in little ways. I bought her a iPod shuffle to listen to classical. I talk to the nurses about pain meds for her discomfort. He put her back in bed when they left her too long in the wheelchair and brings her the soft drink she asked for.

We could do better. This is not how things should be. The hospice was closer to the right answer. We need to be brave and talk about things honestly. People need more support to do the right thing. Sick people need to be told the truth - and if they can't understand it, the decision needs to be made ahead of time by them and followed.

Restaurant CR

2011-01-24T15:57:00.001-05:00

My daughter is starting a new diet that is basically low-carb and low-fat CR for the first week. She was asking me for some suggestions on what she can eat out for lunch - hopefully not expensive options. And the other constraint - central/North Austin, Texas. That is actually one of the harder parts, since this is the home of barbecue and Mexican food. Here are some ideas I have - I will have to meet her for lunch one day!

One of the salads at E-Z's that comes with chicken- dressing on the side and hold the croutons. I would put a little of the dressing on the salad myself.

Chicken Taco Salad at Jorge's - no shell and no sour cream - or the Star Salad - which is perfect

Mama Fu's - any salad with dressing on the side, or Mongolian or Red Thai Curry stir fry without the rice.

Even better Asian food at Zen - here you can see the calorie count.

I am sure there is something that would work at Central Market. The problem would be in saying no to all the other stuff. I noticed that there was a distinct salad theme developing in my choices. Really, that is usually my default when I eat out - a salad that contains meat - with dressing on the side if I am being conscientious.

Changes

2011-01-06T20:40:00.000-05:00

This has been a month of major changes for me. My mother suffered a major stroke on December 20. She was unable to swallow and asked not to have a permanent feeding tube inserted. This meant she would die soon and we moved her to a wonderful hospice facility - Christopher House. At Christopher House, she was surrounded by family in a peaceful and pleasant environment. I think this helped her rediscover her will to live. She started to talk more - making jokes with the nurses. She opened her eyes. And then she decided to live. We moved he back to the hospital and although he is really weakened after 2 weeks without much food, she passed the swallow test today and she is eating soft foods again. She will be off to rehab and skilled nursing this weekend. We will see how much she actually regains, but she has found some joy in life, despite her limited circumstances.

This really has been a roller coaster for me emotionally. The stroke was always a likely event for her and her health has been fragile. But, it is still a shock when it happens. The stress of the decisions is enormous. The difficulty in watching your beloved parent dwindle in hospice care cannot be overstated. My hopes and fears for her future are there with me every day. As her primary caregiver for the last three years, it is mostly my responsibility.

So, that is the bad news.

The good news is that my youngest son's game studio shut down and he found a new cool job in San Francisco. The new job wanted him there - moved from Las Vegas - right away. He and my husband went into action and rented an apartment remotely and planned the move. His Dad flew to Vegas and drove the truck while he drove the car. A big snowstorm got them stuck in Barstow on Monday, but the weather cleared and he was all moved in and off to work today. San Fran is pretty much nirvana for game programmers. And, it is nice and cool there in August so that parents could come for a happy visit. And even warm enough in January that they could escape the juniper pollen of Austin.

It's been hard to eat. I had no appetite a lot of the last 3 weeks. Now that things have all settled down quite a bit, I am feeling more normal. Thank goodness the stress did not make me eat compulsively. My mother will be in a nursing home environment for the foreseeable future. While this is sad for me, not having her here, I do not miss the croissants. My refrigerator is much emptier.

I have been reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes - often while hanging out at the hospital. It is maddening that this debate over dietary percentages of carbs, fats and protein is so unscientific. There are just too many financial interests involved - the food and agriculture companies. All I can say - based on my own personal experience - is that high carbs - especially sugar and grains - makes you fat and hungry. So, I am certain Taubes is correct on this. I do not believe that fat does not matter though. He does a poor job of explaining why extra fat in your diet wouldn't just be stored in those fat cells too. The cells don't know that lipids were you made in your liver - or that they were ones you ate in your food. When they show up in a fat cell, I am sure they can be stored. I am still sticking with a Zone-like, low calorie diet, with food of high nutritional value and an emphasis on olive oil as a source of fats.

Who Can You Trust?

2010-12-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

One of the themes in our current political environment is trust/distrust of science - especially climate science and medicine. We have witnessed a high-pressure public health campaign - at least in the U.S. - to get us all to eat low fat as a panacea for heart disease. Really, the U.S. population has been one big population study over the last 30 years. Like most paradigms that fail, proponents blame the failure on lack of diligence on our part and other confounding factors. We quit exercising as much (not)? We didn't reduce fat enough? As our fat percentages and saturated fat consumption have dropped, the results are not impressive. People are fat, fat, fat, and diabetes is an epidemic. Heart disease deaths may be less - but then treatment has become more and more aggressive, too.

I am reading Gary Taubes book on Good Calories, Bad Calories. Whatever you think about his pro-fat stance, the book makes thoughtful reading about how science can get boggled up with public policy. I think the strongest message here is that when you mix medical research with public health, conservatism is wise. Instead, the low-fat diet proponents went the opposite direction and erred on the side of thinking that pushing the low fat message very, very aggressively was a good thing to do, because surely it couldn't hurt, even if they were wrong. In the meanwhile, before real results were in, research funding and publishing got hijacked quite a bit to support their message.

I am certainly not willing to buy the "calories don't matter, only carbs do" hypothesis yet. But, the low-fat message was equally silly: "calories don't matter, only fat does". By making fat the overwhelming villain, they have deemphasized the risks of refined carbs or extra calories. Now, it appears that fat is not even the villain it was made out to be at all.

So who can I trust? Walter Willett maybe? He seems to be doing good science. I read this article as being far more supportive of Taube than supportive of his critics. If even half of Taube's accusations of laundering anti-fat study results are fair, shame on the scientists who supported the scam. Even if the scam was well-intentioned.

Personally, I find it very hard to "like" fat. I feel wholly brainwashed! Even as I try to absorb the idea that maybe butter is not so bad and real mayonnaise might be fine, my emotional reaction is fear and loathing. How to add back fat? Cut carbs even more? I've been eating 150g of carbs a day in recent years - along with 60g of protein and 40-ish grams of fat, only 10-12g saturated. The saturated fat comes from cheese mainly, and lean meats. There are some junky carbs involved - rice, tortillas, whole grain crackers or bread. Sugary stuff is very rare for me, still. But, I am eating more almonds now. Maybe using oil in my dressing. Not worrying about eating that ounce of cheese. I shifted my targets in CRON-0-Meter to have less carbs and more fat. I am not going to worry about sat fat for now.

Back

2010-12-06T14:37:00.000-05:00

Wow - it's been a while. I was so good during September, October and early November. I did CR really well and lost 7 pounds. I had the month of Bikram yoga, which literally transformed my body. Really, it took 10 years off my face as well while I was doing it.

But then guests came and we had Thanksgiving. I bought the Bikram CD that would let me do the lesson at home and I have done it maybe once a week since my first month membership at the studio expired. I really want to give it a try at home without the heat and see if it has even close to the same effect. I ate ad lib more or less for 2 weeks. Not excessively - but not CR.

So, I think I have snapped out of my haze and snapped back into discipline mode. I really want to do the Bikram experiment badly. So Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday minimally are yoga days. I have been practicing bow posture all the time as well, lol. Because bow posture is cool and I want to be able to do it well. I am sure I will never do it this well, but the closer the better.

Under Construction

2010-10-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

It's been 15 days since I started Bikram yoga and I have not lost a single pound, despite keeping my calorie level just barely above what it was. I should have lost 1-2 pounds. That is what I would have lost if I was not doing Bikram. However, I have dropped 2% body fat. My calculations say that means I have exchanged 2 pounds of fat for 2 pounds of muscle. This is a new experience for me, since this is the most challenging exercise program I have ever done. It will be interesting to see when the muscle building quits. I am sure at some point my body will be as muscular as it needs to be to do Bikram well - at least the "beginner" class, which performs the 26 pose sequence exactly the same every day.

I am feeling stronger. It is most obvious in the balance poses, where I was struggling mostly due to strength issues. My hands are also getting stronger interestingly enough. They look better actually. Having to grip slippery body parts with sweaty hands is hard! My hands are really bony, so putting a little muscle on them is a good thing.

Eating Well on Less Money

2010-10-04T23:34:00.000-04:00

This post on Andrew Sullivan's blog reminded me of a thought I had before. I eat like a well-to-do person - fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, nice cheeses. But, I think it would be possible and interesting to try to come up with a healthy, low cost diet - one that almost anyone could afford. I agree with the post that frozen vegetables would be helpful. But, really, frozen veggies are not always that much cheaper. I would have to study this and see. I suspect there are lots of places that people live where the frozen veggies are much more available and better quality than the fresh. While there are lots of cheap calories out there - and people's diets are filled with them - those cheap calories are very, very expensive nutrition. Getting the RDA of almost any vitamin from them would be quite expensive, especially if you eliminate foods that have cheap added vitamins. So many of those foods are basically People Chow - low quality artificial mixes of factory food ingredients.

Very Good Day

2010-09-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

This is one of my better nutrition days. Although I did eat some tortilla chips (whole grain, lol, no salt) and turkey hotdogs (my weakness), I had baked tilapia and 9 (or more?) servings of fruits and vegetables today. It was my yoga day, so I drank 17 oz of coconut water an hour before class. Coconut water really improves my mineral profile for the day. I might make it an every day thing. Way more water was consumed than the report shows :)

Nutrition Summary for September 30, 2010

General (94%)
Energy	1098.6	kcal	122%
Protein	58.9	g	100%
Carbs	98.6	g	89%
Fiber	27.4	g	130%
Fat	54.6	g	161%
Water	1979.0	g	73%
Vitamins (98%)
Vitamin A	19673.1	IU	843%
Folate	492.1	µg	123%
B1 (Thiamine)	0.9	mg	82%
B2 (Riboflavin)	1.2	mg	112%
B3 (Niacin)	18.2	mg	130%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)	4.8	mg	97%
B6 (Pyridoxine)	1.8	mg	120%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin)	2.6	µg	109%
Vitamin C	237.5	mg	317%
Vitamin D	8.6	IU
Vitamin E	14.6	mg	97%
Vitamin K	1218.8	µg	1354%
Minerals (93%)
Calcium	594.2	mg	50%
Copper	1.5	mg	169%
Iron	9.6	mg	120%
Magnesium	446.5	mg	140%
Manganese	2.9	mg	159%
Phosphorus	870.1	mg	124%
Potassium	4660.8	mg	99%
Selenium	100.9	µg	184%
Sodium	1817.8	mg	140%
Zinc	6.8	mg	85%
Lipids (68%)
Saturated	12.2	g	61%
Omega-3	1.0	g	89%
Omega-6	8.8	g	74%
Cholesterol	142.4	mg	47%

Adapted to the Heat

2010-09-30T16:14:00.000-04:00

My temperature no longer goes up very much during the Bikram class. I barely notice the room temperature any more. In fact, for the last 20 minutes or so, the air blowing from the fans feels cool. So now it is me focusing on the poses themselves, not the heat. I quit drinking during class, because it made my stomach feel uncomfortable. I superhydrate before class. I read on some Bikram blogs that lots of experienced people do no drink during class. It takes quite a while for water consumed during class to make it into your bloodstream and tissues - most of the class time. Better to have an empty stomach and be very hydrated before hand. I am drinking a big can of coconut water an hour before class. This seemed to work great. The coconut water is a nice nutritional addition - lots of mineral in it. I am aiming more for 1000 calories a day now than 900.

Adjustments

2010-09-27T11:10:00.001-04:00

I am struggling a bit to adjust to the new exercise level. I have a bit of a headache today. Is it low blood sugar? Or just pollen? (Update - it was caffeine withdrawals, lol) Bikram is just such a major physical event for me. Ninety minutes of sweating profusely in the heat with a pounding heart rate. Hydrating up for it seems very successful, but then the calorie adjustments needed are still not clear. I have not lost any weight in the 9 days since I have been doing Bikram, despite eating pretty carefully and sticking to a fairly low calorie level. I suspect I am gaining muscle, though the fat percentage on my scale goes up and down too much to tell. Here's the summary on what I have eaten since Bikram started. Remember I supplement minerals and folate every day, take a fish oil cap, take an E once a week, and I do have B5 caps too - though I think those upset my stomach (must experiment with taking those again). I also get considerably more potassium than the numbers show, since I use lite salt for all seasoning. I just don't always record that properly.

===========================================
Nutrition Summary
September 19, 2010 to September 27, 2010
Daily Averages over 9 days
Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.7
===========================================

General (78%)
===========================================
Energy               |   997.0 kcal   111%
Protein              |    63.2 g      107%
Carbs                |    93.5 g       84%
Fiber              |    11.4 g       54%
Fat                  |    41.0 g      121%
Water                |   801.6 g       30%

Vitamins (83%)
===========================================
Vitamin A            | 4316.0 IU     185%
Folate               |   220.5 µg      55%
B1 (Thiamine)        |     0.8 mg      70%
B2 (Riboflavin)      |     1.1 mg     105%
B3 (Niacin)          |    17.2 mg     123%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)|     3.1 mg      61%
B6 (Pyridoxine)      |     1.4 mg      95%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) |     3.2 µg     132%
Vitamin C            |    65.0 mg      87%
Vitamin D            |    41.3 IU
Vitamin E            |     6.1 mg      41%
Vitamin K            |   145.0 µg     161%

Minerals (80%)
===========================================
Calcium              |   463.8 mg      39%
Copper               |     1.3 mg     149%
Iron                 |     7.3 mg      92%
Magnesium            |   217.2 mg      68%
Manganese            |     1.4 mg      80%
Phosphorus           |   855.7 mg     122%
Potassium            | 2181.4 mg      46%
Selenium             |    75.8 µg     138%
Sodium               | 1716.7 mg     132%
Zinc                 |     6.1 mg      76%

Lipids (74%)
===========================================
Saturated            |    14.4 g       72%
Omega-3            |     1.2 g      113%
Omega-6            |     5.8 g       48%
Cholesterol          |   226.8 mg      76%

Being Your Own Experiment

2010-09-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

Today was my 4th Bikram yoga session. It went very, very well. I was not lightheaded at all and had great stamina. I did all the poses (or tried to at least). I only sat out half of camel - my left arm just cramps up doing it. I had this problem last time. When I get more strength in my arms, it will be easy for me. I have strong legs, very flexible hips, wimpy arms, tight hamstrings and calves, a right ankle with a bit of scar tissue, a reasonably flexible back, and mediocre balance. All these things come into play in Bikram - you become acutely aware of them - your good points and your bad. It is nice I have some good points, lol. On the positions that depend mostly on those, I can coast a bit more.

I had gotten on the web to see what people said about being lightheaded, and it appeared the consensus is that it is caused by dehydration. So today, I woke up and had 2 8 oz cups of weak coffee, an 8 oz cup of low sodium V-8, and 2 20 oz. glasses of water. Then 30 minutes before class I drank 15 oz of coconut water - the secret for Bikram. This all worked great.

Data must be gathered, so I took my temperature and blood pressure before and after. My temp was 97.8 F going into class and 100.1 coming out - and that was after more than five minutes of cool down. My blood pressure was 121/78 going in and 99/62 with pulse of 122 more than 5 minutes after the end. I was not surprised at the rise in body temperature. The room feels quite hot when I come in and almost cool by the end. I guess the blood pressure drop is not a surprise either, since it is caused by fluid loss.

I am still thinking I am going to stick with Bikram. I enjoy it well enough and it is a very efficient way to get in shape. I can't do it every day yet. I tried that on Tuesday/Wednesday and the Wednesday session was really not good. Better to do a really strong session every other day I think.

Special restaurant meal

2010-09-22T22:06:00.000-04:00

It is Austin Restaurant Week. Nice restaurants are having fixed price 3 or 4 course meals for special prices. Since I have done 3 days of Bikram, while still eating 1000 calories or less a day, I decided taking mom out to dinner at one of these was a good way to spend my Bikram calories - which I assume is at least 400 per session. I cleverly picked an Italian place with a relatively healthy appetizer and main course - steamed squid with lemon dressing and baked salmon with a pesto topping. The salmon came with a piece of awesome Italian garlic bread. Just one piece though, not some huge basket. So, those two courses were very heavy on protein, but not too carby. If I am going to waste calories on dessert, it has to be chocolate, carrot cake or pumpkin pie. It was a nice moderate sized piece of chocolate ganache cake in this case. The whole day was 1900 calories total, generously estimated (2 tbsp of olive oil was probably more than my dinner entailed). But only 154g of carbs total - so still moderate carbs.

More Bikram

2010-09-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

Second class went better than the first. I halfway did the balancing poses and only sat down through 1/2 of 2 poses. The heat is not issue. It was very helpful to bring a hand towel to dry my hands and legs so I could get a better grip. I am sold on the heat now. You are much looser and your muscles relax. It feels like a dry sauna. It's not stuffy.

I was not hungry after class at noon, ending at 1:30. I have eaten 300 calories at 9:30. I was able to wait until dinner at 6:30. Didn't even think about food. Meanwhile, I haven't lost any weight for a week. So, I am not worrying about it at this point.

I can see wanting to go every day. Every day would seem like I was on a schedule (yuck). I guess I could go every day that it did not interfere with other activities. One of the secrets of Bikram is that you do exactly the same routine every single time. I like this. It makes it really easy to see progress. I would like the routine to become a habit that I could do without thinking too hard.

By the way, I think Bikram would be a good place to meet women, lol. The women are in good condition, not wimps, but low maintenance types. That is who would be attracted to Bikram. Bikram is not extreme in its focus on the yoga spiritual thing. It is more pragmatic. It is about taking care of yourself.

Bikram Yoga

2010-09-19T22:06:00.000-04:00

I was trying out one Hatha yoga studio for the last 2 weeks - fairly pleasant. Then I ran across a web link for a local Bikram yoga studio. They whole idea of doing yoga in 105 degrees sounded pretty crazy. I have enough trouble getting overheated in 72 degrees doing yoga. But then there was a discussion of how much easier it is to relax your muscles in the heat. And nice testimonials about how much progress people made quickly. And, best of all - $39 for unlimited classes for a month!

So, I worked up the courage to try it out today. I can't say I fell in love with the experience, but the heat did not really bother me much. I had my usual trouble doing the balancing poses in a class setting and got tired after doing a lot of standing poses - but that is not unusual for me. These should improve with additional sessions. And, the relaxation aspect was very effective for me. It is one less thing to have to work on in the class. I got a lot of stretch out of the workout compared to normal. So, I am shooting for 3-4 times a week for the month. I will see if I can go at least that much. If I have gotten used to it and improved a lot, then I will keep going. There is a lot of literature that says it takes 7-10 days for your body to adjust to workouts in the heat. A month should be long enough for that to all get worked out.

So, here is the CR question. Of course, there would be one. I am normally only moderately active to sedentary. A 2-3 mile walk would be a typical active day. At this level, my activity calories are very low - maybe 200-300 at most. This is how I survive on 1150-1200 calories a day. But Bikram is supposed to be 600-800 calories. The heat adds to the burn. That is bound to throw off my calorie budget. I really try to stay at the same calories, more or less, every day - to train my brain. So, I am thinking that if I keep this up, going 3 times a week, that is 250 extra calories a day on average. That I better start planning for that once I manage to make this a habit.

Bad labels

2010-09-16T17:04:00.000-04:00

Since I am planning on eating a low-calorie fish dinner, I decided I could afford some sushi for lunch - in addition to my little brunch of leftover mashed sweet potatoes and pork tenderloin. Sushi was on sale! I picked out spicy tuna roll.

I had recipes for various sushi rolls back in my old Access database, but not in CRON-o-Meter. Time to add one. For this exercise, I deconstruct and weigh one of the pieces, component by component. Adding it all up, including tamari, totals 294 calories. LOL - the package says 9 pieces, 50 calories each. That is because they are reporting it by the piece, which are 29 calories, and rounding to the nearest 50. So, if I had taken their word for it, I would have assumed 450 calories, quite high for a sushi roll without any creamy sauce involved.

When you can take apart prepared food like this and reconstruct the parts, this is the ideal way to record. Sushi is pretty easy because the parts are so obvious. I suppose some sushi rolls might have some added sugar, but this particular sushi brand is not sweet at all (my preference).

Eating Really Small

2010-09-15T21:33:00.000-04:00

I am eating 900 calories a day right now. Really, I am. I eat at most one or 2 meals a week away from home. I weigh almost everything. I prepare almost everything from scratch. I record faithfully - throughout the day. At that level, I lose maybe 3 pounds a month. I have lost 4 pounds since August 1 on 900 calories a day.

This seems like a really low number to someone young, muscular, male and/or fairly active. But I am none of those things. Each of them contributes to a reduced need for calories. I might get more active, as the weather cools off a bit. But, 200 more calories a day, and then I would be set to do some hiking every day.

I find it very easy to eat healthy at 900 calories now. Since I am not really eating bread or sugar, I am actually finding it hard to get 900 calories. I have to fill in with nuts - which is nice. 4-6 oz of lean protein and maybe 7 servings of fruits and vegetables, with a sprinkle of cheese or oil in there, and you are really only to 700 calories a lot of the time.

This actually leaves me room for a frill or 2. Today I had 3 oz of cabernet, my favorite Little Penguin. Plus 3 dark chocolate covered almonds. And some salsa and chips. And I am still at 847 calories.

This goes to show you the wonders of not eating grains. As soon as you cut out most grains, there is room for all sorts of other things.

How many servings?

2010-09-13T22:37:00.000-04:00

Can't find the link, but I read somewhere this week that Americans are actually eating less fruit now than they did in 2000. And no more vegetables. We are talking 1 serving of each a day - typically orange juice and potatoes. How sad is that?

It is a rare day that I don't eat 6 or 7 servings. Today was typical. Here is my fruit and vegetable tally:

1/4 large cantaloupe
1/3 pound of asparagus (in a tasty soup!)
1/2 avocado with a tablespoon of salsa (2 oz of avocado)
1 1/2 cup green beans
1 plum
1 large nectarine
1/2 ear of fresh corn
3 oz of sweet potato

I am not sure how many USDA "servings" this is. Must be at least 7 or 8. Most of my carbs are coming from fruit these days.

Only Fear Fear Itself

2010-09-12T15:01:00.000-04:00

This little study caused a cascade of thoughts for me. When you are 57, you have seen many changes in society already in your life. One trend that became obvious to me was that during the 80's and beyond, people increasingly expected NOTHING bad to happen to them. Children were locked up and allowed only to play in safe environments. Cars all had airbags and seatbelts. Wars were expected to be fought with drones and missiles. Any injuries were something to sue people for. Children were given only positive reinforcement for fear of damaging their self esteem. Cable news went on and on about every tragedy. America as a culture became afraid of loss.

9-11 is another example of it. We have let ourselves be traumatized by this event. The cost of our response must be 1000's of times more expensive than the damage of that event. We have let the terrorists win. Our society was enormously damaged by it. If we had said instead that we were tough and resilient - a nation that valued freedom, openness, multiculturalism - we would have won. If we had turned the pursuit of the perpetrators into an international crime and diplomatic mission, it would have faded away by now. We would have healed. But instead, we cut our arm off because there was a small wound there. Now our country is deep in debt to China for the costs of our wars. Our grandchildren will have to pay for this. And what do we have to show for this? Hatred and intolerance. Compromised freedoms. It makes me sad.

I bring this up because CR can be part of this fear culture if we are not careful. We cannot let fear of aging and death consume us. At 57, it is realistic for me to think CR will make me live a longer and much healthier life, but that I will indeed die soon enough - in a blink of an eye on the human history scale. Living with someone at the end of their life, this is an inescapable reality for me. My mother tries so hard to "fix" her 91 year old sister and 89 year old brother. But there is no fixing for them. Or, for the most part, for her.

Humans are designed to struggle to survive. We naturally fear death. But let's be brave and bold. Not frightened and limiting. Mistakes will be made. Things will not be optimal. Damage might occur. But, that is life - and growth.

CR Obsessions

2010-09-08T16:40:00.001-04:00

Being calorie restricted tends to make food a very important thing in your life. You may not be that hungry (I am not), but still food and food preparation somehow loom large. Even food storage can be more interesting than usual. I never microwave in plastic - only ceramic or glass. So, I had this idea several months ago that we needed some rectangular glass storage dishes with glass covers for this. We have been using our Fiestaware bowls covered with plates. This works pretty well, but they really do get too hot in the microwave and you can't see what is in them. I happened to see these in the grocery store today and found them exciting and fascinating. Now that I brought a set home, I must return and buy two more. Anyone who cooks from scratch a lot and likes leftovers should have these in my CR opinion.

I also want to eat at least one green salad a day and really find having to wash and dry the lettuce at dinner time to be discouraging for this. I am wanting to cook other things on the stove most of the time. So, the salad idea gets rejected. I really can't see buying the pre-washed greens all the time - they are so expensive - and I have time to spend preparing them really. So, today, I prewashed a couple of day's worth and stored them in a plastic container. Oh, and I also reorganized the vegetable drawer and rearranged food on the shelves. This all gives me an excuse to be in the kitchen without actually eating anything. I get to look at the food and think about it for zero calories. Not sure why this is satisfying, but it is. I guess the promise of future food being verified?

Being a CR Person in the World

2010-09-06T22:52:00.000-04:00

Now that I am back to measuring and weighing and staying within my calorie limit, every single day, I am back to accidentally being the nagging/scolding CR person that I am so familiar with, since I did it for at least eight years. When offered some treat by family or friends, you politely decline. You can make some excuse - "I am full", "Couldn't possibly fit it". But people often object, saying how good it is, just have a little bit. At some point, you will slip up and reveal what is really on your mind: too many calories for me. This takes all the fun out of eating for other people - especially anyone who could stand to lose a pound or two. You are like the grim reaper of food, sprinkling gloom over every treat. People are suddenly self-conscious and may or may not want to eat with you again. You are like a reminder of their failings.

So, this becomes your role at celebrations. The one who throws the wet blanket on everything. This is part of why I stopped doing strict CR for a year or two. I was just tired of this routine. My mother was especially tedious about it. She would question what I was doing over and over every day. She was always pushing food.

Before she moved in with me, it was just my husband and son at home. They are very, very CR-friendly. Never pushed food on me. Were very understanding. And very thin. Great inspiration. They were fine with having only healthy food in the house. The ideal CR housemates. So, it was just when I was at work or with family elsewhere that I had to deal with it. At work, I slowly but surely started eating at my desk. I would get my little CR lunch and take it back and eat alone. Otherwise, everyone acted like I was analyzing and judging their lunches. Even if I wasn't. Even if I never said anything about it. It is tricky to be the only person not eating a piece of cake at the birthday celebration - but you can pull it off if you do it discretely.

My mom has been here long enough now, that now I think I can tell her not to offer me food and it won't make her feel unwelcome. She asked me the other day "Is this a life long choice for you?". It was a very nice question. When I said "Yes, yes, it is", she said something pleasant and accepting. So we have come a ways on this and I have arrived back to a comfortable CR place.

Just Say No to Dead Cheese

2010-09-06T00:07:00.000-04:00

I remember reading somewhere that the French consider American cheese to be "dead". They would never eat the stuff. They only eat "live" cheese. Along the way, I came to really understand this notion.

When I tested mildly allergic (in an Ig-G way) to cow's milk in 2002, I started eating only goat cheese. Not generally the semi-soft chevre, either - too fatty. I went for goat gouda and other hard goat cheeses. And pecorino romano - a sheep's cheese. My theory on this was that I would rather die without some cheese. So, I went for the most flavorful cheeses possible, so I could use a 1/2 ounce instead of an ounce or two and get the same wonderful umami value.

So, for 8 years, I have been eating wonderful, expensive, enormously flavorful goat and sheep cheeses. Crumbly, melty, tangy cheeses. In small quantities.

My grandson is equally addicted to these cheeses and will run to the refrigerator and get out the grater when he comes over and grate himself a snack of 2 or 3 ounces. Good boy. He will be a chef when he grows up, you will see. He is playing Pop Warner football now, but I think it would be more useful to send him to cooking classes.

To my mom, all this goat cheese seems a bit extravagant and exotic. She will occasionally purchase mild or medium cheddar - which costs 1/3 and sometimes 1/4 as much as my precious goat cheese. Occasionally, I will eat this cheese, since I am out of goat cheese.

It is NOT the same food as my "live" cheese. It is dead. It is gooey and gluey. It doesn't break when you bend it. It sticks to the roof of your mouth without melting. It is sadly lacking in umami. Not even worth the calories. The horror of fat-free cheese is even too terrible to contemplate, since it tends to be even worse in all these undesirable qualities.

So, in my CRON practice, a little real live cheese fits right in. Saturated fats are getting a better and better reputation as more research is done, after all. And the little sprinkle of tasty cheese can add that fat balance to a meal to get you to Zone.

The Photo

2010-09-05T01:16:00.000-04:00

I got started on CR because of a photo. More than 10 years ago, we had a family reunion at the beach. I looked rather like a killer whale in that picture - since I weighed 156 pounds at that point. That was when I decided to get serious about eating better and losing the weight. After 25 pounds and several nutrition books, I stumbled across Dr. Walford and CR and realized that was what I was doing. And I wanted to keep on doing it because I felt great.

The last 2 weekends, we had family events with lots of photos. While I am no where near the frumpy middle-aged woman I was 10 years ago, I do not look as good as I did when I weighed 12 pounds less. There is no denying it. People constantly tell me I look better now that I did when I was thinner, but I think they are either being nice or delusional. Maybe I was a bit waif-like before - but I am a small person. I don't need lots of extra fat. While I feel pretty good now, it is a different feeling to be really slim. A very nice feeling.

I was going back to strict CR anyway - I am ready for that. But the pictures help :) I think I might make my screen background be the one where I look the fattest.

I was very good at last weekend's party. I ate one small piece of cake at the birthday and a half piece of key lime pie. Otherwise, I ate lots of carrots and bell peppers and reasonable amounts of the more healthy food. All week I have weighed and counted very carefully. It is fun!

Adapting to Low Calories

2010-08-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

When I was doing casual CR, I was mostly avoiding excessive calories, and occasionally eating less than I wanted to. Since this resulted in me stabilizing my weight around 15% below my ad lib weight, this is probably something like 10% CR. At this level of commitment, if you have good self discipline, a couple of days of eating more calories due to family events or traveling is pretty easy to recover from and get back on track.

Disciplined CR for me has been 20-25% CR. This is significantly more challenging from a hunger standpoint. At that level, it takes a week or two to adapt to the lower calorie level. I am often hungry, light-headed, and maybe not feeling my best for that week. Towards the end of it, I start to feel really great - better than before. As long as I keep your calorie level somewhat close to your goal, I will not be very hungry and I will continue to feel really good - lots of energy and mentally active. But, it is pretty easy to get knocked back from this state. Three or four days of ad lib and I am back to zero again and facing a week or more of bad. I had a couple of weeks of CR goodness before I let family events take over and sidetrack me just a bit - back to casual CR. Monday, I was back on strict CR and by today, I am feeling pretty good. This weekend is another family event and after that, it should be smooth sailing for a while - at least until the holidays. So, I have pretty big incentive to eat well this weekend and just say no. No point in getting knocked off the track again.

Being around the house and sitting where the kitchen is plainly visible all day is still a challenge. I am trying to limit myself to 3 meals and no more than 1 snack. I am writing down everything before or immediately after I eat. The weather is starting to improve here - it has been 100 degrees for 3 weeks. One of my strategies is going to be that I will just do something physical if I start thinking about food - take a walk, do yoga, go out in the garden, use the Total Gym.

Cooked Food vs. Raw

2010-08-25T00:52:00.000-04:00

Back to blogging after being busy with family. This little talk was fascinating:

Harvard Thinks Big 2010 - Richard Wrangham - 'Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human' from HTB2 on Vimeo.

Healthy Butter Spread

2010-08-19T09:42:00.000-04:00

With the new studies coming out saying that saturated fat might not be so bad for you (in reasonable quantities), this seems like an even better idea. I personally rarely use butter or margarine, but my mother and husband do use it. I have been buying low salt "healthy" spread. I decided to go back to my old spread recipe:

Olive Butter
1 stick unsalted butter
1/3 cup olive oil
3 T flax oil
1 tsp salt

Melt the butter in the microwave until just barely melted. I do this is the container I will store it in. Stir in the other ingredients and put it back in the refrigerator. It spreads really nicely, tastes fabulous and it lower in sodium and provides some decent potassium. You can vary the amount of olive oil to make it softer or harder (obviously more olive oil makes it softer).

My Shake Strategy

2010-07-28T13:06:00.000-04:00

For now, whey protein shakes really appeal to me. I have decided to have one every day and use it to balance out my nutrients. If I am going to be low in protein, I will just add more whey powder. If I am low in fat, I will add some flaxseed oil. If I am low in carbs (yes, I am often actually low), I will add some more fruit.

Today's was 1/2 a cantaloupe, 1 1/2 protein scoops and a teaspoon of flax oil. Just a little crushed ice and it was fabulous. No sweetener needed.

I am having these for breakfast, if my husband doesn't make muffins or squash scramble. Those days I will have it for lunch. Yesterday, I had it for dessert after dinner, because I sort of skipped lunch. I put my husband's muffin recipe into CRON-o-Meter and it was quite acceptable for CR. If he just adds some whey powder to it, it will actually be a semi-mega-muffin.

I am sure I will tire of these eventually. Otherwise breakfast is really a mystery for me. No bread stuff obviously. I can't do cow's milk - though whey seems to agree with me just fine. I am allergic to egg whites. I've been skipping breakfast for several years. I don't think that has worked for me at all - weight control wise. So, coming up with a 150-200 calories breakfast is something I need to do. No soy either - allergic to that.

Yoga Instead of a Snack

2010-07-26T18:14:00.001-04:00

Was is a coincidence I finally found my favorite missing yoga DVD an hour after I read this post from April about Iyengar yoga? Her post really made me think I should be doing yoga daily now. Iyengar sounds good too. I like to hold poses and really deepen them. I did vinyasa yoga for a couple of years - my workplace sponsored it. But, I never enjoyed it as much as my favorite Yoga Zone video. Guess I am not a flow person.

So, today around 3:30 pm, I did my hour of yoga. Towards the end, feeling all relaxed and flexible, I realized that this was the time of day I am most likely to want a snack. I am trying to cut these out and stick to three good CR meals a day instead. So, doing yoga instead every afternoon might be a clever way to distract myself.

No Bread

2010-07-25T22:49:00.000-04:00

For the first several years I did CR, I ate no bread. I love bread, though it lost a lot of its appeal to me during that time period. Most bread that people eat - especially white bread - is really very, very boring. It actually tasted quite artificial to me. But, then I started to eat occasional bread, especially rye or multi-grain bread. Then, three or four years ago, I would eat a piece of bread a day maybe. I've kept that level of bread eating up since then, with occasional bread binges when extra good bread was served. There is an Italian restaurant we eat at that has fabulously delicious bread - very rich tasting. I am sure it has lots of milk and butter in it. We only eat there several times a year, but that is always a bread binge for me.

Looking at the nutrition in the CRON-o-Meter reminds me of why I didn't eat bread for that first 5 years. It is really weak nutrition for the calories. There are so many other foods you could be eating instead. If I am going to eat something starchy, 100 calories of sweet potato - or even white potato - is a better choice. Most of the vitamins in bread come from the enrichment of the flour. Or beans. More beans would be better. I need the folate.

The biggest problem I have with bread vs. potatoes or beans is appetite control. A medium sweet potato - 100 calories more or less - is very satisfying. There is no way I want to eat another after eating 4 oz of sweet potato. One large slice of bread though, and I would like to have a couple more. When you are eating less calories than your ad lib desires, there is no point in torturing yourself too much.

My mom - who lives with me - must have bread. I have been buying nice expensive loaves of multi-grain bread, made by the store bakery. They are quite good. The loaf sits out on the counter in the kitchen calling to me, so I occasionally succumb. I talked it over with my husband today and he doesn't really want to eat the bread either. He would rather go back to multigrain wraps like we used to buy. These are more flexible to use than bread, do not contain yeast, and last a very long time in the refrigerator. So, I will ask my mom what bread she really, really would like to have around (bet she says croissants) and get them for her. If it is a loaf of some sort of normal bread, I will freeze part of it for her.

This will be very helpful for CR for me. I won't eat croissants, for instance. They are just way too not-CR. There will not be some acceptably healthy bread sitting out on the counter then, tempting me.

I am really trying to return to CR that is close to what I was eating at my best CR period - around the time I started this blog. But, I can do better now actually. We have lots of time to cook and no real reason to eat out. It's really pretty wonderful, now that I think about it :)

Make It from Scratch

2010-07-24T23:56:00.000-04:00

I was getting some ice out of the freezer and a package caught my eye. Green Giant Frozen Creamed Spinach says right under that label "with artificial cream flavor". Yikes! Non-dairy creamer is involved! In what way is that "creamed" spinach? Wow. If you don't make it yourself, you are just getting Archer Daniels Midland ingredients - modified corn starch, milk solids, etc. Not that I never eat prepared foods. But I eat very little of them.

For instance, I am usually careful to follow the safe seafood rules when I buy seafood. I get catfish only from America. I avoid tilapia from China. But, we actually ate some Gorton's frozen tilapia last month. I was thinking it was an easy meal and we might get it again. But, it dawned on me the other day that there is no telling where that fish came from. I looked at the package in the grocery store yesterday, and sure enough, no clue about the origin of the tilapia. This is a major problem with eating out, too. Who knows?

The only way to really deal with this is to make as much of your food as possible from scratch. While this might seem pretty burdensome, it really takes no more time to make dinner than it does to get in the car, drive somewhere, order and wait. Frankly, it is pretty rare that restaurant food tastes better too.

A week of CR

2010-07-23T20:49:00.000-04:00

I am pretty happy with this. I am supplementing everything that I am low in, except E and B5 - and have been for some time, since my diet is always looks a lot like this.

Sucralose?

2010-07-23T14:58:00.000-04:00

I have been going back and forth about using sucralose. Some weeks I don't and then I relent and start using it again. There are those rat studies that show rats eating more when they were fed sucralose. It does keep your sweet tooth activated, I think. But, here is a new study that says that it did not affect caloric intake in actual humans. I am inclined to use it in moderation.

I have seen recent diet advice that claimed artificial sweeteners were using up your liver's capacity to process them. Having used the pure sucralose for several years, I am really aware of the tiny miniscule amount of actual sucralose that is involved in sweetening tea, for instance. Hard to imagine much of your liver devoted to processing the micrograms there.

Community Supported Agriculture

2010-07-22T15:19:00.000-04:00

I have a subscription to a CSA here in Austin - Johnson's Backyard Garden. This is what came in my weekly box. I am actually only picking up a box every other week, since it is a bit more than we can easily consume in a week. At least, this was true in the Spring. I love getting the season's vegetables like this. I will make things I never would have thought of. The sweet peppers they are harvesting now are just spectacular. I am adding them to everything I can. It makes our green salads really special. I had a "squash scramble" for breakfast this morning - sort of like a frittata with yellow squash instead of the eggs. Okra was served last night. Need to make it several days in a row to use it all up, lol.

How Do You Get Your D?

2010-07-21T13:29:00.003-04:00

CR folks were on to the whole Vitamin D insufficiency thing very early. Now you see an article about it every other day. This one says we might ought to be getting 2000 to 4000 IUs a day! Wow. I take 1000 IUs as a supplement and I am outside a fair amount in very strong sun without a sunblock. I keep a mild tan 12 months of the year here in Austin - at least on my feet, arms, face and neck. I am probably get something close to 2000 - but 4000!

On the same topic, Canada has upped their recommendation to 800 IUs.

How Do You Get Your D?

2010-07-21T13:29:00.000-04:00

Chatspeak

2010-07-21T12:12:00.000-04:00

I've been playing a multi-player game for the last year or so. There is a whole story there having nothing to do with CR, but let me just say, it has been lots of fun and a learning experience for me. I have spent a lot of time in chat with people from all over the world. I am finding it very hard to write now without inserting chatspeak stuff. It is just so useful! So, I might slip some into the blog. Here is a primer for the uninitiated:

lol - laughing out loud (i am amused)
LOL - i am really amused
ROFL - rolling on the floor laughing - i am really, really amused
ROFLMAO - now my ass is being laughed off it is so so funny
:) - a happy thought
:( - a sad thought
;) - a tongue in cheek comment
=D - a super happy thought
:P - hmm - hard to translate - teasing basically or being snarky
o_O - i am confused or surprised
jk - just kidding

you might notice my lack of caps, too. caps are really not necessary, lol :P i suspect dropping caps will freak out some readers, so i will leave them in.

It's the miscellaneous stuff

2010-07-21T12:02:00.000-04:00

For a year or so, I did not diary my food or weigh myself daily. During this time period, I gained about 5 pounds. It was not ad lib eating, but there is no way I can naturally be CR without the diary. To put this in context, 5 pounds is just an extra 17,500 calories over 365 days. That is 48 calories a day. Or, more realistically - several bags of tortilla chips, an apple pie, a box or two of whole grain crackers, and several loaves of multi-grain bread. Because that is what I ate that I shouldn't have. Maybe some goat gouda, too.

Doing the diary illustrates this easily. If I don't eat grains, then my calorie total for what I eat otherwise is pretty easily under 1000 calories a day. Those are pretty generous meals for me, too. I am having a whey protein raspberry smoothie for breakfast lately - 147 calories. I plan for lunch to be 6 oz of the turkey chili I made last night - 171 calories (lots of veggies in there). The dinner plan is for roasted lean pork tenderloin, a fresh ear of corn and a romaine salad with the peppers and cucumbers I will pick up from my farm delivery today - even with some A-1 sauce and low cal caesar dressing, dinner is only 250 calories. Eating some cherries for a snack and putting a little goat gouda on the lunchtime chili - and I am still at 700 calories for the day. Low on only B-12, folate, E, calcium and magnesium - things I supplement because I am always low on average on these. Enough protein, carbs and fat - I am done for the day, nutritionally.

This would actually have been a very typical menu for me over the last year. I am not eating any differently at all. I have continued to make good CR food for all my meals. Where I have varied is in the miscellaneous stuff. I got into the habit of eating some fabulously light and crispy Milagro tortilla chips with salsa around 3 pm - 200 calories there. And crackers with goat gouda - 250 calories there. Plus miscellaneous dried fruit, dates, etc - 200 calories in 3 dates! Maybe a glass of wine or a light beer - 100 calories. Do several of those each day and the 48 calories is easy to pick up. That is why the diary is so critical to me. My impulse eating will get the better of me otherwise. In the last week or two, knowing I planned to start serious diarying and calorie tracking on the 17th, and would be going back to disciplined eating very soon, I even ate a fudgesicle a day and an occasional snack of Honey Nut Cheerios. Gak.

To put this in perspective, I guess I might consider increasing the amounts I eat at my base meals. If I were to increase those 30%-50%, maybe I would use up all my calories on the planned healthy food and feel more satisfied.

CRON and Self Discipline

2010-07-20T14:56:00.000-04:00

As my family members will all readily tell you, it's not easy to tell me what to do. I don't take orders very well. I understand cats well - we share a lot of traits. On the flipside though, unless it is my job to tell people what to do, I am not that interested in controlling other people. Sort of like - I do my thing and you do yours and we will all get along.

But, then, what about telling myself what to do (hehe)? Sometimes, I don't even like to do that. I do find I need a break from being self-disciplined off and on. One need not always be productive. I never seem to venture far into self-destructive territory, but I can happily live with myself not being "good".

I do think the occasion of my 10 year anniversary of CR is plenty of inspiration, though, for getting back on the disciplined CR track. I have already noticed the subtle shift in mindset that comes with CR. Getting your eating behavior under control seems to bleed into other areas of your personal life pretty quickly. All of a sudden, I am thinking about daily exercise programs. I am finishing up painting my deck - something I put off for a month when the weather turned rainy here. A project or two are starting to appeal more to me. I have a nice little list of things I would like to do with my time.

I know other CR practitioners have experienced the same thing. It's impossible to do CR without being a reasonably self-disciplined person to start with. But CR seems to enhance self-discipline and focus in other areas of your life. Once your frontal lobes kick in and gain control of your appetite, they move on to other things that need work.

CR on a bad stomach

2010-07-18T14:50:00.000-04:00

It's not often that my stomach gives me trouble, but today it is. Can't think of something I ate, so maybe it was passed on by my granddaughter, who shared blueberries with me yesterday. Unlike her brother, who adores blueberries and could eat a pint on his own at 18 months, she decided they were inedible and fed the small bowl to me, one at a time, sometimes after tasting them a bit, just to convince herself that she was not mistaken.

So today, I was just a bit queasy and crampy. To try to settle my stomach, for breakfast I made a very simple protein/raspberry shake from unsweetened whey protein powder, frozen raspberries and cold water. Seemed to help a bit. Yesterday, the granddaughter had grabbed a can of Campbell's minestrone soup off the shelf (my mom buys this), so I made her a small bowl, which she did eat. Lunch was the rest of the can and a 1/2 ounce of hard goat cheese added in. It's been a while since I ate Campbells soup, and I am alway shocked at how salty it is.

I am feeling better now, so maybe our dinner plans will work out fine. Yesterday's meal plan got sidetracked by family events. So today for dinner, we are likely to make sauteed chicken breast with marinara sauce and some eggplant marinara/parmesan.

The Second Decade

2010-07-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

Decade two of CR begins for me today! I started it off with weighing. I haven't weighed myself for 2 months and somehow I thought I would weigh more. But, I didn't. I would guess I am at only maybe 5-10% CR, not ad lib. I will have to think about that and it's implications for my ad lib weight. My ad lib weight has never been obvious, since I basically have no appetite control when I am truly ad lib and just gain weight steadily.

I am fortunate that I found a CR-friendly doctor in Austin - Dr. Leo Toupin. Last week, my mom went to see him and I took her, as usual. I sit in on her visits, since her memory is not always good. He told me he had another patient who wanted to do CR and was looking for software. Here is what I sent him in an email:

This is very easy to use and quite comprehensive: http://spaz.ca/cronometer/ It lets you put in your own recipes. The downside of it is that the pre-loaded foods are only those from the USDA database - so little or no fast food or packaged foods. This is great for someone who cooks a lot and does not eat out. It tracks all nutrients that have been measured by USDA - quite a lot - so it is very good for someone who needs to improve the quality of their diet. I really recommend this for CR. I don't believe you can succeed at CR at all unless you get adequate micronutrients.

An alternative for someone who does eat out a lot is : http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/ This does have most fast food and prepared food in it. For free, it just tracks calories, protein, fat, and carbs. It is fairly inexpensive to sign up for the advanced features. There are cheap apps for smartphones that let you track what you eat on the go.

10 Year CRONiversary coming up

2010-07-15T11:58:00.000-04:00

Saturday, it will be 10 years since I started CRON. I find myself in a mini-echo of the same place I was exactly 10 years ago. My CR has been relaxed this last 2 years. My weight is up a little. I actually caught a cold in June. I have not been weighing myself daily or keeping the food diary. Clothes are a bit tight. I am still more than 20 pounds less than 10 years ago and my diet is many times better. My health is still much better overall and my energy level is twice what it was.

The transition to retirement for me just required this. I needed a break from discipline to recharge. A year or two without regimen is a very refreshing thing. I have done this twice before in my life and it has been followed by a period of focus and productivity. I think I have intended to get back on the strict CR regimen 4 or 5 times along the way - did it for a week or two, and then just lost it. I am not sure I am really ready to get back to it yet - but I will give it a try on the anniversary date. If not then, it will be soon.

The Conveyor Belt Trick

2010-05-12T18:33:00.001-04:00

It would be interesting to know what the rest of the eating control training included, but the one example they gave was pretty good. When you are stressed and want to eat some comfort foods, you put the emotions on an imagined "conveyor belt" and watch them go away. This might be handy for more than overeating - or maybe it would keep you from dealing with problems. Seems like there is both a good and bad side to this one.

I have had a host of my own tricks to help control compulsive eating. Of course, the most important one is to eat a nutritionally rich diet and supplement any deficiencies. I continue to be convinced that a lot of hunger issues are related to poor nutrition. But all sorts of visualization techniques are also helpful. Imagine the gakky food being processed by your body and being turned into fat, for instance. Think about eating a very large quantity of it - so large it would be ridiculous - like 1000 cookies and 10 cakes. And then there are always distraction methods. Leave the kitchen and do something else that takes you away from the food. Go update your food diary. See how many calories the food would add and how impossible it would be to stick to your CR plan with it. In a social situation, I find that telling yourself - and others if you can get away with it - that the desired item is not "in my diet", often is effective in making you feel like you can't eat it. It takes away the stress of the choice. As long as you are mentally debating whether to eat it, you will be vulnerable to slipping up and messing up on CR.

Eating the Best Food for You

2010-05-12T16:34:00.000-04:00

Lots of things CRON followers already know in this article - all fruits and vegetables are not created equal. Someone eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day - where the items were 2 servings of white potatoes, an iceberg lettuce salad, an apple and a banana - is not getting near the micronutrients that someone eating a serving of broccoli, spinach, carrots, bell peppers and blackberries is. I should do the math - but I would bet you get more than 10 times the micronutrients from the second list as you would from the first.

Still doing good CR. Today's brunch was 2 oz of lean pork tenderloin, 2 oz of hummus and 2 large strawberries. The afternoon snack was 10 pistachios, 8 oz of low sodium v-8, CR cocoa, 1 oz of goat cheese. Dinner will be Bertolli shrimp and asparagus penne. Not sure there are even 5 servings of fruits/veggies in there so I will eat a couple of raw carrots too.

Serious CRON, again?

2010-05-10T14:32:00.001-04:00

I just got back from a 3 week trip to visit my son in Las Vegas and do some hiking. I think I am ready to go back to some serious CRON again. Rather than use my own tool or the CRON-o-Meter, I am using Livestrong. I have not paid for the membership on it, just using the free tool - so I don't get micronutrient info - just calories, protein, fat, cholesterol, carbs and sugar. But, really, I don't need the nutritional info at this point. My nutritional intake is something I am so familiar with. It's been consistent for so long. I always get plenty of Vitamin A, C, and all the Bs except folate. I take a folate pill and a vitamin D pill. My intake is low in minerals too, but take 2 Bone-up caps a day. So, no point in tracking micronutrients, really. I have downloaded the Livestrong iphone app, so I can check food at restaurants and record any time. No excuses that way.

So what am I eating today? I am trying to stay under 1000 calories until I am back to my normal CR weight of 118. Here's the list:

Brunch:
40g of lean baked pork tenderloin
6 oz of fresh blackberries

Snack:
8 oz of vegetable juice
Small handful of unsalted almonds and pistachios

Dinner:
1 link of turkey Italian sausage
1 cup of marinara sauce
2 oz each of bell pepper and onion, sauteed with 1/2 tsp olive oil
2 oz of uncooked pasta (cooked of course)

Plenty of decaf coffee and tea with a bit of honey, some of my beloved Gerolsteiner mineral water.

Mother Foods

2010-03-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

My grandson's teacher has taught them to try to eat "mother" foods. This is a simple and clever way to identify whole foods. A mother food is one that you can tell who the mother was. So, an apple comes from it's mother tree. An egg from the chicken. Cheetos? No Cheeto moms. Frito-Lay maybe.

I am trying to eat only "mother foods", too. The only mystery food I ate tonight was low-fat mayonnaise as part of the dressing on bok choy coleslaw.

We Knew This, Didn't We?

2010-03-28T16:48:00.002-04:00

Gak is addictive.