Marla's CRON-o-meter Chronicle

[Marla]

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.

[WeeSpeck]

Hi Marla,

Count me in as someone who will be following your chronicle with interest. I love numbers and measurements and tracking progress, so your approach appeals to me very much.

I align with you in my height (also 5'4") and my belief that my metabolism is slower than the average avid McDougaller. Even though you are in the "healthy" BMI, I get why you want to fine-tune and figure out what it will take to bring it down to the lower BMI range. I think there is value in studying the science of our actions when it comes to health choices. So, I will watch with interest as your project unfolds.

For me, I know there are certain areas where I am in denial and the perpetual brat comes out to pout because I cannot eat like the rest of the world. I am tracking that side of my behavior as well. Until I can accept that what the rest of the world eats is out of balance with good health and I can never go there again, I will continue to struggle.

I think of you as a success story. 70 pounds is an amazing accomplishment and to keep it off with such firm resolve is proof of your balanced approach and discipline.

I am looking forward to your continued progress. I will watch and learn.

[Marla]

Until I can accept that what the rest of the world eats is out of balance with good health and I can never go there again, I will continue to struggle.

Hi Nancy, it is great to see you here. I feel the same way -- that I still need to work on accepting the "unfairness" of not being able to eat the foods that I used to enjoy and that everyone else is able to eat. But a lot of this is fueled by my own false perceptions. First of all, let's think about the population of people who eat calorie-rich, processed, sugary and fatty foods. Subtract the ones who appear to be overweight or unhealthy. How many are left that look reasonably fit and healthy? Let's say 30%. Of those, how many are over the age of 25? Not too many. Most of the trim women I see are in their teens and early 20s. So now we are left with the 15% of the people who can seemingly eat CRAP and "get away with it." But when we look at the actual eating habits of these folks, we may find that their diet, taken as a whole, contains fewer than average calories. We see them eating pizza for lunch, or a restaurant meal for dinner, but that might be all they had to eat that day. I watched a few episodes (on YouTube) of the British reality series "Supersize vs. Superskinny," in which they examined the eating habits of morbidly obese people vs. underweight people. I was surprised to see that the underweight people often had appalling diets made up of nothing but chocolate bars, potato chips, cookies, and pastries. But their caloric intake was very low because they only ate small amounts. When they ate regular meals, they often ate the same unhealthy food as the overweight people, but they picked at it and actually finished very little. My point is that I think we often see slim people eating junk, but we don't see what they eat (or don't eat) the rest of the time. And of course, the most important point to remember is that anyone who eats that way is damaging their health, whether it is visible or not. As Jeff often says, the best measure of health is the "plate test."

As for other McDougallers who seem to be able to lose weight more easily, or eat a wider variety of foods without gaining, I think a lot of that may be just a perception also. At the end of this project, I hope that I will be closer to understanding the truth of what works for me and why. I love a good mystery, but where my health is concerned I prefer facts and evidence.

[Marla]

I can’t believe it’s March already! I will post my first day’s CRON-o-meter stats and screenshots later, after I’ve finished eating for the day. But first, I think it would be helpful to say a little bit about how I use the CRON-o-meter app to log my food.

Nutrient Targets
CRON-o-meter comes with default nutrient targets than can be modified. I have modified some of mine to bring them into line with what nutritional authorities agree is an acceptable intake, particularly for someone following a whole foods plant-based diet. Many of these tweaks are discussed in this thread: http://drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6796 . I have modified my targets for Calcium, Selenium, Sodium, Vitamin E, Iron, and Zinc, as well as Omega 3 & 6, Saturated fat, and Cholesterol. I don’t track B12 since I get it from a supplement. I have my target calorie range set at 1200-1500, and my target macronutrient ratio set at 80:10:10 (carbohydrate:protein:fat), but those are just for reference and adhering to them is not my goal.

Recipes
CRON-o-meter has the ability to create “recipes,” and I use this feature a lot. It allows me to enter all the ingredients that go into a specific recipe, so that when I log my food I can enter the weight of the portion that I eat, and get nutrition information for that portion size. In general, I prefer to log my food in its prepared form, i.e. as eaten. But this is not possible with recipes, since the ingredients must be weighed raw, prior to cooking. I am careful to make adjustments for water loss that occurs during cooking, which can throw the nutrition information way off if it is not accounted for. This can be accomplished in CRON-o-meter by entering a negative value for “water” such that the weight of all the ingredients, minus the adjustment, equals the final weight of the cooked dish. Here is an example of a recipe I make about once week, “Oil-Free Roast Potatoes.” The weight of the uncooked potatoes is 400g, but the weight of the finished dish is only 210g (which includes some flour and spices).


As you can see, 200g of water disappears during cooking, leaving the potatoes much smaller, lighter, and more calorie-dense than before cooking. I do this adjustment for every recipe I create; soups and stews often lose 25% of their weight during the cooking process, and I would not get accurate information about the calorie density of my diet if I didn’t take this into account.

Additional comment: the ability to enter negative amounts is also helpful in other ways. CRON-o-meter for some strange reason has no entry for 'Potatoes, Russet, raw, flesh only." So if I want to create a recipe like the above, which uses peeled russets, I have to weigh the potatoes, then peel them, then weigh the peel and subtract it. CRON-o-meter does the work of subtracting the calories and nutrients that are in the peel. Pretty cool.

Liquids
I don’t log my drinks if they are on-plan and calorie-free (such as water, sparkling water, and herbal tea). I do log drinks if they have nutritional or caloric value (such as coffee with soymilk added). Beverages do not contribute to satiety, and their weight is not included when I calculate calorie density.

Herbs and Spices
CRON-o-meter is limited in terms of the spices it includes in its database. If a recipe includes only a small amount of an herb or spice (1 gram or less) I may omit it (from CRON-o-meter - not from my food!). When several teaspoons or tablespoons of spice are used, I do enter that information, since 3 Tablespoons of curry powder (for example) contain 61 calories and 2.65g of fat. Sometimes if there isn’t a listing for an herb or spice , I enter the value for a similar one.

Fitbit
I wear a Fitbit pedometer that tracks my steps and calculates my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) for each 24-hour period. Of course, it does not “know” how much energy I have expended; it is basing its number on my age, sex, weight, and measured activity. Most of my exercise is step-based (primarily walking and running), so this works well for me. According to Fitbit, on a sedentary day (just my normal activities of daily life without purposeful exercise), I burn about 1,500 calories. That’s not a lot! So, I try to do a 5-mile walk (or run-walk) every day, and I often walk to the nearest supermarket (a mile round-trip). I do all of the little tricks like choosing the farthest parking space, and even some silly ones like marching in place while waiting for the kettle to boil for my tea. Doing all of that, I can accumulate 15,000 steps a day and achieve a TDEE of around 2,200 calories. Exercise makes a HUGE difference in terms of how much I can eat and still expect to lose (or maintain) weight.

Are your eyes glazed over yet? Sorry! I hope that the rest of this journal will be more interesting. It will even have pictures! I’ll post today’s food before I go to bed tonight.

[Marla]

March 1, 2014

March is off to a good start. I hit all of my nutritional targets today.

I consumed 4.4 pounds of food, and the calorie density of my food was 279 calories per pound.

I typically eat two meals a day (lunch and dinner). My lunch is usually a very large salad with walnut Caesar dressing, and a baked Japanese sweet potato. A serving of the dressing contains 6.5g of walnuts (for reference, 28g would be an ounce of walnuts, so this is less than 1/4 ounce of nuts). The picture below shows my salad in a huge 2-quart serving bowl, and the dressing in a 2-ounce Tupperware "midget."


Dinner was a lentil and green pea curry with brown rice, plus lots of steamed cauliflower and spinach. I had a bowl of orange sections and fresh pineapple chunks for dessert (not pictured).


And here's how it all stacked up, nutritionally.

[jenfrazzle]

i think this is FASCINATING. i'll definitely be reading your journal for the month - thanks for sharing! i have played around with cron-o-meter in the past, mostly to prove to myself that eating in this manner would actually result in getting enough protein in all its forms. i tracked my food for one week and was pleasantly surprised to find that protein was not an issue - was glad to have that hard data to use to back up my food choices to skeptical friends and family.

i'm inspired by what you've accomplished so far and can't wait to read more about how this month goes!

[baardmk]

I love the photos!

Thanks a lot for sharing your thinking and insights with us.

[Marla]

Jen, I agree, it is nice to have some evidence that the way we eat is healthy. I plan to keep my CRON-o-meter logs in case I ever want to show them to a healthcare provider or even a friend who questions my diet.

Baard, thanks for stopping by. I am glad you like the pictures. I know they aren't great, but I am including them mainly to help illustrate the volume of food I eat and the ratio of starches to vegetables.

March 2

Today was Sunday, so I enjoyed my once-a-week treat of a homemade soy latte. Yes, it contains sugar. Rightly or wrongly, I am comfortable with this amount of sugar (2 teaspoons) because I eat very little added sugar in the rest of my diet.

I went to the Asian supermarket today and bought 10 pounds of Japanese sweet potatoes, plus some Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli) and Persian cucumbers. Then I swung by a Mexican market that makes its own fresh corn tortillas. I picked up 4 dozen tortillas (still warm) for $2.60! I got a pint of their freshly made pico de gallo salsa too. I used the tortillas to make an enchilada casserole, and I made some baked chips from them as well.

Lunch was exactly the same as yesterday (and the same as most days)--a huge salad and a sweet potato.

Dinner was a piece of enchilada casserole, with steamed green beans and zucchini, and a few (6) baked corn tortilla chips with pico de gallo. I had pineapple and mango for dessert.


I hit all my nutritional targets today, yay! I ate 4.11 pounds of food, with a calorie density of 312 calories per pound.

[Marla]

March 3

Looking at my food log from yesterday, I was struck by how many calories were in the tiny portion of oil-free baked tortilla chips that I ate with dinner. Only 20g of chips had 85 calories.....not surprising I suppose, since the corn has been not only ground up, but dried out in the oven, making the calorie density of the chips 1,941 calories per pound! It was fine that I enjoyed some in the context of an otherwise low calorie density meal, but I decided that it would be better not to have any tonight with the leftover casserole.

Speaking of that casserole, it was a bit labor-intensive to make, with homemade enchilada sauce, filling, and a "cheazy" layer. But I divided it into two small casserole dishes, and froze one of them. Each small casserole yields two nights' worth of dinner for two people, so although the recipe took over an hour to make, it made four meals. Not a bad investment of time after all.

I added a small amount of ground flaxseed to my dinner, because I've figured out that adding just a little bit, a few times a week, is enough to satisfy my requirement for omega-3s (when added to the amount I already get from greens). I don't need a tablespoon a day, but more like a teaspoon 3-4 days a week. I got enough selenium today mostly because of the nutritional yeast that was part of my lunch salad. If I eat whole wheat or oats or enough brown rice, or have some nutritional yeast, I tend to get enough selenium, but on days when I just eat potatoes and vegetables I might come up short. I recently bought some Brazil nuts and will try eating a couple of those a week for extra selenium insurance.

Lunch today was salad and a Japanese sweet potato again, but not the same salad. Two or three times a week I have a massaged kale salad that starts out looking like this (an entire bunch of organic kale):

After it was massaged down, and had other ingredients added, it looked like this:


Although it looks a lot smaller than one of my green salads, it is nearly as heavy and takes almost as long to eat.

Dinner was leftover enchilada casserole with steamed red cabbage and yellow crookneck squash - no chips this time. I had tangerines and strawberries for dessert.



So I ate 3.7 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 315 calories per pound. I felt satisfied between lunch and dinner and didn't feel the need to snack, and I felt full after dinner/dessert and didn't get any late-night munchies.

[Marla]

Weekly Fitbit Report

On Tuesdays, I get an email from Fitbit with my weekly step count, distance, and calories burned. It covers the period from Monday through Sunday, or in this case February 24-March 2. I am working hard to keep my step count up by going for a 5 mile walk/run every day, and I've doing that since the beginning of the year.

As you can see, with this level of activity my 24 hour energy expenditure (which includes the hours I spend sleeping or being sedentary) is about 2248 calories per day. Back in December, when I was being lazy, I was only burning about 1500 (and I was being lazy with my diet at the same time, so no wonder I put on some holiday weight).

So, CRON says I'm consuming about 1250 calories on average at the moment, and Fitbit says I'm burning about 2250. With an average calorie deficit of nearly 1000 calories a day, conventional weight loss wisdom would tell me to expect a loss of two pounds a week. Will I see that? I highly doubt it, but it will be fun to find out at the end of the month.

[Marla]

March 4

I ate tons of greens today. My lunch was my normal huge green salad with sweet potato, and dinner was a massive portion of steamed Chinese broccoli (gai-lan) with "Edamame Surprise" (a McDougall recipe) and baked kabocha squash. Due to all the greens, I exceeded my omega-3 requirements with no flax needed. Over half of my fat intake today was from the Edamame Surprise, because soybeans are naturally somewhat high in fat. Sometimes I make this dish with lima beans instead, and it is just as good.

CRON-o-meter doesn't have a listing for kabocha squash, so I entered Hubbard (which is in the same family). Hubbard is the most calorie-dense winter squash in the CRON-o-meter database, but I have a feeling kabocha might be a bit denser. I was unable to find solid nutrition data on the kabocha anywhere; everyone seems to wonder how many calories it really has because it tastes so sweet and starchy compared to other squashes. I am not going to worry about it.

I was really full after dinner, and could have easily skipped my fruit dessert of strawberries and oranges, but I knew (only because of this project) that I was a little low on calories, and I didn't want anyone to yell at me so I had the fruit anyway.

I ate 4.44 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 270 calories per pound.

Dinner:



CRON-o-meter report:

[Marla]

Today was exciting because I got a new kitchen appliance -- an Instant Pot! I needed a new rice cooker, so it seemed like a good idea to get an appliance that would take the place of my old rice cooker, my crockpot, and my stovetop pressure cooker (which I never use because I always seem to overcook everything in it). Hopefully with this one being so programmable, I can set it to cook for the right amount of time and not worry about cooking the food to smithereens. I look forward to trying it out in the next couple of days

For lunch today I decided to roast a pound of broccoli and sprinkle it with nutritional yeast (after roasting, it weighed 3/4 of a pound). I had that with my usual baked sweet potato. I am very attached to my sweet potatoes!



Dinner was leftover Edamame Surprise, leftover kabocha squash, and an assortment of steamed vegetables -- cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. It was a big plate of food and I was very satisfied afterward. I had a bowl of fresh pineapple and strawberries for dessert.



Nutritionally, everything was okay today, although at the end of the day I found that I had eaten less food than I thought. I ate 3.6 pounds of food, with a calorie density of 305 calories per pound. I am not trying to hit any particular target, but rather trying to follow the principles of calorie density while eating to satisfaction. Tracking it all for a limited period of time is my way of "looking under the hood" to see how the principles work when applied. I hope that by the end of the project I'll have a record of what worked and didn't work for me, so that I can eat more intuitively going forward. Plus, the process of recording everything is helping me to think more about what I am eating and why.

Today's CRON-o-meter report:

[Marla]

March 6

Morning Snack: banana and half a Brazil nut (the half Brazil nut was for selenium insurance)
Lunch: enormous green salad and baked Japanese sweet potato (as pictured in my March 1 entry)
Dinner: large baked potato topped with homemade spicy pinto beans, corn, salsa, and golden "cheaze" sauce + spinach + cauliflower



The amount I ate today felt just right, and I was very satisfied with my meals. Yum! I ate 3.78 pounds of food, with a calorie density of 322 calories per pound.

Since I eat the same green salad for lunch frequently, I thought I'd say a bit more about it. Two or three times a week I make up a batch of salad base, which I keep in a large plastic bowl in the fridge. This makes it quick to throw a salad together without so much washing and chopping. The bowl keeps the salad crisp; to help with that, I only include those vegetables that hold up well to being stored after cutting: romaine, cabbage, carrots, radishes, and celery. The other veggies (cooked beets, tomato, cucumber, etc.) I add to my individual salad bowl when I prepare it.

This is what my "Basic Green Salad" looks like in its storage bowl (somehow this picture makes the bowl look smaller than it is):



And here are the ingredients and nutritional information for one of my typical servings. CRON-o-meter has a feature called "explode recipe," which allows you to view all the component parts of a serving size of any recipe you've created.



Here are the ingredients and nutritional information for a 50ml serving of the dressing I usually use, which is based on the Caesar dressing in the Starch Solution book, except that I use walnuts, and I change the proportions of some of the other ingredients. I also blend it in my Vitamix to make it super smooth.



So now you have full disclosure where my salads are concerned!

The only comment I have to make about today's meals is that my dinner was almost too much food. I considered stopping after the first half of my "loaded" baked potato, but it tasted so good that I didn't want to. I certainly didn't need any fruit for dessert.....I just had a mug of Tazo "Calm" herbal tea.

[Chile]

Marla, I love seeing the pictures of your meals. Having the visual image of all those vegetables is already reminding me to eat more myself. One big difference between your meals and mine is that I tend more towards "one pot" meals where the vegetables are mixed in with the starch instead of having the starch and several steamed vegetables separate. I think it's because cooking it all together is faster and easier, and there are less dishes to clean up.

The one drawback, though, is hubby and I disagree on the proper ratio of starch to vegetables. I like about 50:50 where he prefers no more than a third of the dish to be vegetable. My solution to this lately has been to either have a separate steamed vegetable or salad on hand that I can load up on while he takes less, or to make the main vegetable portion separate from the starch so we can each serve ourselves. For example, stir-"fried" veggies over rice works well for us.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to snap a picture of your food before digging in!

[WeeSpeck]

Hi Marla,

I really want to thank you for putting it in perspective that the people who appear to be able to eat anything and stay thin really are not as prevalent as I believe them to be. They are the young and the calorie crunchers and the ill. This is so not rocket science. I need reminders like that when I am feeling pathetic and weepy about how hard it is to get to the weight I want to be. So, I appreciate your level-headed analysis. I cannot argue with your logic!

I am enjoying your chronicle so much! The pictures are a clear visual of how one should apply the principles of calorie density and maximum weight loss. The CRON-o-meter statistics lock it in. Your success is guaranteed.

I am migrating more and more to simpler meals. I spend so much time each week planning my menus and then cooking them, that it becomes wearisome. It is hard to be creative night after night in the kitchen after a long day at work. But, you show that your meals can be visually appealing, satisfying and not take HOURS of effort. Little by little, I see where I can make adjustments to increase my free time, while maximizing my weight loss efforts.

Can I ask the name of the business where you find home-made tortillas in Sacramento? I didn't know there were places in town where these purchases could be made!

I am really enjoying your journal, Marla!