Leftover sweets - 960 Calories

Today was a much healthier day than yesterday, although really, how can I not do better than unmitigated gluttony? A total of 1842 calories, 731 of them from almond cookies and 230 from chocolates. So, leaving the sweets aside, my menu was pretty lean, as I was still fairly full from Christmas:

December 26th

Calories: 881

Vitamins: 85%

Minerals: 94%

Breakfast:

Coffee with half and half

Yogurt with blueberries

Dinner:

Kale with sunflower seeds, sesame seed oil, and salt

Marinated mushrooms

Ratatouille

Merry Christmas - 3500 calories.

Wow, I managed to eat almost 3500 calories for Christmas. My family is very much into sweets and treats, and I had a hard time to find green vegetables and the protein that I prefer (which is mostly dairy and eggs - a holdover from my vegetarianism). I did not keep track of what I ate, very well, and did not have easy access to many of the recipes that we ate. Where I really blew the calorie budget was on cookies and chocolate (490 and 1070 calories respectively). Once I had my first treat, I somehow felt that I had failed for the day and that gave me permission to eat whatever I wanted. I need to think about strategies that limit that behavior. I DO love chocolate, and especially good chocolate, but surely I can do better than this at the next family holiday.

400 Calorie meals

I saw a book the other day, as I was doing a little shopping for Yule. It was called "EatingWell 500 Calorie Dinners Cookbook" and I though that, while it did not quite meet my needs, it was well done. I find that if I am eating on 1200-1500 calories a day, then my typical meals run closer to 200 calories for breakfast and 400 for lunch and dinner, leaving some room for 2 snacks of around 100 calories each.

Some of the things that appealed to me about the book is that it had meals made out of food. There is little or no "fat free", "sugar free" or pseudo food products. Secondly, the meals did not focus on dessert. There are a number of "500 calorie meals" that involve a diet shake and a diet cookie. The meals looked appetizing - they had some color, some veggies, and more than one thing on the plate. For instance it might be chicken with sweetpotatoes and green beans with a little side salad.

However, I think that with a little thought, I can do better than that. Instead of posting a photo of my CRON data, I will start posting my day in menu form, with the daily calories, vitamins and minerals at the top. If I manage to get around to it, I will start taking pictures of some of my meals, although I understand that food photography is quite a bit harder than it might look.

December 21

Calories 1145

Vitamins 100%

Minerals 100%

Breakfast 118 Calories

Yogurt with strawberries

Coffee w/ half and half

Snack 67 Calories

20 Red Grapes

Lunch 441 Calories

Eggs Florentine w/ tomatoes on homemade bread

Dinner 321 Calories

Braised Asparagus and mushrooms with crab

Spinach Salad with mustard/ume dressing

Dessert 195 Calories

Hot Cocoa w/ Ghirardelli's Chocolate

Another dinner party, and Christmas is Coming

Well, not really a CRON day today. Had some guests over and had a great dinner. I underestimated the calories in the galette, which I later discovered is butter held together with a little bit of flour. If I had know, I think I would have just had a single piece. I also had 2 glass of wine and quite a few slices of bread. However, as I have mentioned before, it is not really the calories of any one given day, but the weekly average, and I find that today, I have not been very hungry at all (although my sweet tooth got the better of me and I had two delicious homemade cookies). The holidays are a little challenging, in that they are full of rich comfort food, and traditions. Foods that I love, and we only have this time of year. I want to make sure that I have everything, because it will be a full year before it comes around again.

This is my first Christmas on CRON, and I think that it will take me a little while to reset my mind when it comes to holiday treats. I think that the thing to do is to budget one's "holiday calories" and keep track as you go along. Just assume that anything that is a holiday treat is about 250 calories, and add it up as you go through the day. A 6 oz glass of eggnog? 258 calories. A gingerbread cookie? 242 calories. A slice of apple pie? 411 calories. A 5 oz glass of wine? 100 calories. It will probably average out to about 250 per treat. Watch out for that pie though.

My plan is to eat light for the next few days - try to keep it under 1000 calories, and then shoot for under 2200 calories on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and then eat light again until the calories per day average to around the 1500. I may take a supplement this week to keep my nutrient level up. I will be at my parents, and have a lot less control over what I can prepare without making a fuss and getting in the way.

Protein

So how much protein does a person need? There are a number of different numbers floating around out there. The most common seems to be .7g to 1g per pound of body weight. Other people say that it is per lean pound of body weight. However, I am unable to track down the study that cites this number. What I did find was the "WHO Technical Report Series #935" published by the World Health Organization in 2007. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/WHO_TRS_935_eng.pdf

In Table 47, page 241 they sum up their findings, recommending .83g of protein per kg of lean body weight. For me, that would make my target protein level at 55g of protein per day. Based on that information I have changed my target protein level.

I have also reached my target weight, and plan to upping my calorie intake to average 1500 cal/day or higher to maintain my current weight of 168. I am planning on holding this weight for a month or so and then deciding wether to drop any further or hold here for a while.

I seem to have shaken that pesky cold, and I feel great.

Ugh, a cold.

I have been feeling tired, a little weak, and low energy for the last few days. I have been a little worried that I have been doing something wrong with my diet - losing weight too quickly, or missing some nutrient, or something. I did not know what. But, I was talking to a friend of mine, and he pointed out my runny nose, my complaints of a sore throat, and deduced the blindingly obvious. I have that cold that has been going around. Der.

I realized that I did not see that because I had some unexamined assumption in the deep in my brain that if I was eating really healthy and doing good exercise, then I wouldn't ever get sick anymore. Which, of course, is rediculous. I hope that it increases my resistance, but there is no food that will stop you from getting any sort of illness.

So yesterday, I took it pretty easy. Did a little light work outside and then took a nap. I ate a lot of comfort food, which for me is fruit and starches.

I am low on my B12, E, Potassium, and Zinc. I am going to make some Finnan Haddie Chowder today, which is a smoked haddock chowder. It is mmm-mmm good, and very high in Zinc, B12 and Calcium, so that ought to help balance out my week.

Tuesday is doughnut day

On Tuesdays, I get up early, drive into town and play cards with some of my buddies until 9:00am, when we head off to work. My cousin owns the doughnut shop in town, and so every Tuesday I get a half dozen doughnuts and split them with the guys. Doughnuts were invented here in Maine, about 20 miles down the coast, in Rockland. Captain Gregory, not liking that the traditional fried dough recipe often had an uncooked center, instructed his cook to punch the center out of the dough before frying. It was an immediate success.

Still, even with the almost 600 empty calories (between the doughnuts and the Little Lad's tarts) to start the day off, I came out ok.

Butternut squash stuffed with lentils and chestnuts

Butternut Squash recipe.

Lentils:

6 C water
add 1.5 C Red lentils
bring to a boil, skim foam.

Add in strainer basket or cheese cloth (ie, you need to remove these later):

1/2 onion,
1 C garlic pressed
1 Carrot, coarsely chopped
1 Celery, coarsely chopped
Bay leaf, 2 tsp Dijon.
Salt, pepper.
Boil for 30 min (ish).
Remove seasonings and drain lentils. I reserve the lentil water for soup stock.

---
Butternut squash:
cut squash in half. drizzle oil on pan, place squash face down.
Bake at 350 for about 25-30 min.

---
Chestnuts:
Cut x on round part of 6-8 chestnuts.
place on cast iron pan. Drizzle a small about of water on nuts.
Place pan on lowest part of oven. Bake for 15 min, flip chestnuts and bake another 5-10min.
Cool chestnuts rapidly.

---
Assemble:
Scoop seeds out of squash, Scoop trench in squash and add scooped squash to drained lentils.
Mix extra squash, lentils, chestnuts and Tbl marmite (yeast extract spread). Fill squash.

Cut squash halves into 3rds and serve.

The whole thing takes about 45-50 min.

Snacking

I felt like snacking today for the first time in quite a while. I am not really missing any (known) nutrients - I was just craving starch. I went ahead an apple, and later had some peanutbutter on rice cakes. Certainly not snacks I could have chosen, but I will think about why I was feeling like snacking at all. It may be that I ate an earlier-than-usual breakfast. I typically have "breakfast" at about 10- 10:30, and then I have dinner at about 6:00pm. In between I might have some veggies. Then I might have a late snack of yogurt around 9 or 10pm, if I didn't have it for breakfast.

Out to eat

The little town that I live in (population 1012), has a fantastic restaurant, which, unbecomingly, is named Ralph's. My wife and I eat there about once a month. The restaurant only has 6 tables, so it is a very intimate setting. All the deserts are homemade, and I can't help but to indulge my sweet tooth. They have some of the best ice cream I have ever had (and this from a person that has driven over 150 miles round trip to get some good ice cream).

Between that, the fried haddock, and the french fries, I went a bit over today in my calories. I will have to make it up in the next few days. Now that my wife Becky is back with the truck, I can go into town and restock on fresh vegetables and get some more mushrooms, which make balancing the menus much easier.

It is interesting to me to see that to hit my protein goal (of 30% of my calories for 1000 calories), I have to eat my cup of yogurt, an egg or two, AND some meat. When I did my baseline about a year ago, I was averaging 32 g of protein, with dairy, eggs and beans. Currently my 7 day average for protein is 62 g. I certainly tend to feel full these days, although I have not noticed that I put on muscle faster or that there seems to be any other real benefit to the added protein.

Evils of sugar

I watched an extraordinarily informative lecture on the evils of sugar (sucrose and fructose) by Dr Lustig, a renowned pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF. Basically Dr. Lustig traces the metabolic pathways of the sugars fructose and sucrose, and shows how it differs from the metabolic pathway of glucose - which we find in grains and tubers. Furthermore, he shows how fructose and glucose contribute to heart disease,diabetes, obesity - the host of diseases related to metabolic syndrome. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

His arguments well presented, insightful and were very persuasive, even though by the end of it I wanted to hit him every time he said " 'k."

So, as glucose does not lead to fat production and the other "diseases of affluence", I celebrated this new knowledge by baking a loaf of 11grain bread and cutting out sugar from my coffee. Still, bread has a lot of calories per nutrient, so it is something to go easy on. I am not sure what I will do with the new understanding of sugars. I don't tend towards absolutes, so I will not be cutting it out completely from my diet. Instead I will probably try to find a reasonable number and try to limit it to that. Right now (having cut it out of my coffee), my major consumption is limited to doughnuts, jam, and a few occasional treats. Unfortunately, the CRONometer does not measure sugars separately.

Anyway, below is the record of my food for the day. I was a little "snacky" today, so I finished up the bread, but added the amount into the bread that I used for the tuna sandwich.

Dinner party with friends

I am starting this blog to record what I eat as I journey towards a CRON diet/lifestyle. I have been interested in CRON (calorie restricted/ optimal nutrition) for about a year and have slowly been working towards a calorie restricted diet. I have downloaded the diet tool CRONometer, and found it very enlightening. A diet that I thought was pretty good was actually missing some key nutrients. As I have been going on this journey I have moved from being vegetarian (with fish about 3x a year) to a diet that I would not call vegetarian anymore. The meat that I eat is mostly fish/seafood, but also now, there is sometimes duck or lamb or other free-range, organic, local meat.

So my journey is heavily influenced by the fact that I have been vegetarian for about 24 years. The other aspect that influences my diet is foraging and thinking about the diet of pre-agriculture man. I think that we evolved to eat the way pre-agricultural man ate, and I think that probably still the healthiest way to eat.

I have found that, compared to my baseline last year, I eat a LOT more protein, a lot more fat, less carbs, and especially less sugar. I have not had any issues with being hungry, and in fact, I often do not finish eating the food that I had planned too, which has lately been leaving me a bit short of my daily nutrition goals, although not short on average. It has been my experience so far that if I am getting all my nutrition from food sources I feel sated.

I started this journey last January. I am 6'-0" male and I weighed 202. In college I weighed about 183, which is what I think of as my set point. I currently weigh 172 (7 day moving average). I am currently averaging about 1200 calories a day. I building my own house, so I spend my day doing carpentry in sub-freezing weather. (Next week I hope to wrap up the jobs outside for the season and be able to work inside where it is warm!) I am currently averaging 99% of all my vitamins and minerals from food sources (over a 7 day average). I tend to be a little short in Vitamin E, and Potassium. If anyone knows of a good food source of these nutrients that I have overlooked, please let me know. My goal for the end of the year was 175 lbs, and I had an eventual goal of 168 lbs.

Below is my record of the day. I through I dinner party tonight, so I am not perfectly on target. I think that you have to have flexibility, or there is no way you can make it a lifestyle. :