Hi friends!
I’m a long-time McDougaller (going on 11 years) and a constant reader of this forum, although I don’t post often. On January 1, I decided to commit to a project of tracking my food intake for 100 days using the online CRON-o-meter web app. I am more than halfway through my project, and I am learning a ton about my nutrient intake and how to optimize my diet. I have also found that focusing on the process of recording my diet every single day has helped me to get real with myself about some of the food choices I was making. It’s been quite an eye-opener.
My 100-day commitment to tracking with CRON-o-meter will end on April 10, so I thought it might be fun and motivating for me to do a journal here for the month of March, where I post my daily CRON-o-meter logs and weekly nutrition reports. I will also post the weekly reports that I get from my Fitbit pedometer, so that I can compare calories in vs. calories out.
Can you tell that I love to measure and record things? Yes, I know that this program doesn’t encourage tracking or counting, but I find it tremendously helpful, especially if I suspect that I’m engaging in some denial about what I’m actually eating. It can be a slippery slope, even after a decade! Anyway, data floats my boat. It just does. I’m geeky like that.
So today, in preparation for the March 1 official start of my journal, I thought I’d explain a little bit about me and why I am doing this crazy project.
I love this lifestyle, and my overall health is great. But I do feel there is room for improvement, especially in the area of weight control. I lost about 70 pounds in my first year on the program, going from the obese BMI range to the normal BMI range, but I have never reached the low-normal range that is associated with the best health outcomes (see the discussion in this thread:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6916). I’m 5’4” and currently 137 pounds, which equates to a BMI of 23.5. While this is considered a normal BMI, I would love to get my BMI down to 21 or so. I need to find out what it will take for me to get there, and then decide whether I am willing to adopt those practices for the rest of my life in order to stay there.
So, my goals for this CRON-o-meter project are:
--To get a better understanding of the nutrition that my dietary choices provide. For example, when I started tracking in January, I was coming up consistently low in omega-3 fatty acids and selenium; it has been interesting learning how to get closer to 100% of my targets.
--To learn how to fine-tune calorie density in order to lower my BMI. Ever since I discovered the concept of calorie density, I have done my best to adhere to the principles explained by Jeff Novick in this thread:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6032 and this article:
http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Articles/Entries/2012/5/20_A_Common_Sense_Approach_To_Sound_Nutrition.html. But I found myself wondering what the actual caloric density of my diet was, on a day-to-day basis and over time. CRON-o-meter does not calculate caloric density, but if I enter all my food intake in grams, I can add up the weight of my food and find out how many calories per pound it has. I can easily eat 4 ½ pounds of food a day. If all of that was Japanese sweet potatoes (my favorite starch), it would add up to over 2700 calories, which is more than I can burn in a day even with intense exercise. Luckily a lot of what I eat is raw and cooked vegetables, so the caloric density of my diet averages about 300-350 calories per pound. In addition, I have been working on eating only to the point where I am satisfied. After I have lost all of the weight that I need to, I may be able to adjust my caloric density upwards and/or eat a little more.
--To increase my awareness of what I am eating and establish good habits that will remain in place after the project ends. I hope that by paying such close attention to my diet for a period of time, I will reach a place where making the right choices becomes intuitive and automatic. I think it is already working!
--To silence, once and for all, the little voice inside my head that tells me there is something wrong with my metabolism, making weight loss harder and slower for me than it is for other people. For as long as I can remember, I have believed that my metabolism must be unusually slow, because losing weight has always seemed difficult for me, even on this program. I think the numbers from CRON-o-meter and Fitbit will ultimately prove that this is just my perception, and in reality I am subject to the same laws of physics as everyone else.
I won’t be weighing myself until the end of March, because I want to focus on the process rather than the number on the scale. Having said that though, I will be interested to see how my actual weight loss at the end of the month compares to the weight loss predicted by the calories in/calories out formula.
So, feel free to follow along as I collect and analyze the data to hack my way to better health. I welcome all kinds of comments and I would love it if people shared their own experiences too.
Disclaimer: I am by no means perfect, if perfect means only consuming the most optimal foods at all times. I enjoy a cup of coffee with sugar and soymilk on Sunday mornings; I have been known to eat pretzels; I occasionally drink wine. The point is to honestly record all my choices and observe how they affect calorie density, nutrient intake, and energy balance. The more aware I become, the better I do, and it is in that spirit that I undertake this month of documenting my diet and exercise.