Marla's CRON-o-meter Chronicle

[Marla]

March 13

Today I ate 3.82 pounds of food, with a calorie density of 308 calories per pound.

Lunch was....you guessed it.



Dinner was an Indian-Style Twice Baked Potato with tomato chutney, plus spinach and cauliflower. I had made a whole potato for each of us, but that was much more than we could eat so it looks like we'll have the leftover potato halves tomorrow. I was too full and it was too late at night for fruit (we didn't finish eating until about 9pm).



All nutritional targets were met. I did add ground flaxseed to my salad.

[Marla]

March 14

Today started out with an unusual event: breakfast. I am one of those people who do better if I don't eat it. By "do better," I mean that I have an easier time adhering to the program 100% and experience fewer cravings. For some reason when I eat in the morning, it's like a switch gets flipped in my brain, ramping up my hunger drive for the rest of the day and making me want to eat everything in sight (and everything out of sight for that matter). An hour or so after breakfast I generally feel quite hungry again and want "second breakfast," whereas if I don't eat, my hunger stays at a steady, manageable level until close to lunchtime, when I am definitely ready for a large meal. I also exercise in the morning and don't like my stomach to be too full for that reason. So in general, I prefer to eat two meals a day. I know I am not alone in this, and Jeff Novick has written that two meals a day is fine (as is three or more meals - it doesn't matter as long as it is working).

Well today, mysteriously, I woke up feeling ravenous. My practice is that if I feel like I really need breakfast, I eat it. So, I had a small bowl of oats with banana and blueberries. Predictably, an hour later, I was starving. I looked in the fridge and saw plenty of things I could eat - cooked rice, leftovers from the last couple of days, cooked sweet potatoes....and...uh-oh...MUFFINS!! I sometimes make healthy, oil-free, whole grain muffins for my husband and adult son to take to work, but I stay away from them because they are calorie dense and because one muffin always makes me want to eat MORE muffins. But I was unable to resist them today, and ate two. Now I have muffin regret. I suppose it could have been worse; I could have easily eaten six of them.

Here is a blurry photo of my oatmeal, and a picture of those evil pineapple-carrot muffins (from the recipe in Happy Herbore Light & Lean).





Moving on.... For lunch I had a nice kale salad and a batch of oil-free roast potatoes, pictured separately because I like to eat the salad while the potatoes are cooking:



I managed to avoid eating any more muffins, despite thinking about them a lot. For dinner I had a filling (but low in calorie density) bowl of potato soup and a plate of steamed asparagus and red cabbage:



I'm done eating for the night. I think I'll have a mug of herbal tea with lemon while I curl up on the sofa for a while. As you can see, my intake came up low in omega-3's and vitamin E today, but when I look at my weekly average it's fine. Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully I won't be obsessed with muffins!

Oh - I ate 4.08 pounds of food, with a calorie density of 327 calories per pound.

Steamed Asparagus - 100 calories per pound
Steamed red cabbage - 131 calories per pound
Potato Soup - 152 calories per pound
Oatmeal with fruit - 376 calories per pound
Muffins - 693 calories per pound
Oil-free roast potatoes - 786 calories per pound

Interesting to observe how the potato soup involves adding water to potatoes, resulting in low calorie density, while the roast potatoes shrink and lose water during cooking to become crispy, resulting in less volume and higher calorie density.

[Marla]

March 15

Hey, March is half over and I'm halfway done with this thread!

I had no issues with muffins today. My hunger levels were normal, which meant that I woke up feeling light and empty, but not uncomfortable or weak. I didn't need breakfast and had no problem waiting to eat until lunchtime. I do like to feel hungry just before a meal; it makes the experience of eating more pleasurable.

I ate 4.26 pounds of food with a calorie density of 277 calories per pound.

Lunch looked like this:



Dinner was one of our favorite meals - a bowl layered with rice, greens, sweet potato, beans, and pineapple salsa. The first layer was rice:



Then came the collard greens (I used chopped frozen ones), the sweet potatoes, and the seasoned pinto beans (I make them in the slow cooker and always have some in the freezer).



Finally, I topped it all off with a large helping of fresh pineapple salsa that I made. Our local supermarket has pineapples for $1.98 this week. I had a bowl of steamed green beans and yellow squash on the side.



And for dessert, a bowl of mixed strawberries and pineapple.



Here's the nutrition data from CRON-o-meter. A pretty good day!

[Marla]

March 16

Today I ate 4.18 pounds of food with a calorie density of 292 calories per pound.

It was Sunday, so I had my once-a-week homemade decaf soy latte in the morning.

Lunch was my usual. I have tried using less Walnut Caesar dressing for the last couple of days; so far, so good.



Dinner was Vietnamese Summer Rolls. I used a very small amount of baked tofu in the rolls, and I had a low-sodium dipping sauce made from plain rice vinegar, ground chile paste (sambal oelek), lime juice, and a little sugar. The side dish was napa cabbage and mushrooms, steam-fried with garlic and a squirt of Sriracha.



If you're curious about what exactly was in each summer roll, here is the breakdown:



I had fruit for dessert as usual.



Tonight's dinner was delicious but not quite as filling as I am used to. I could have eaten more. Part of that was because the vegetable side dish turned out to be smaller than I wanted (thanks to the napa cabbage cooking down so much), and part was probably because the starch in the summer rolls consisted of refined rice flour (noodles and wrapper). My fiber and nutrient intake for the day was fine; I just like to feel a bit more full after dinner. Luckily my bowl of fruit was a generous portion, and it satisfied me.

[Marla]

March 17

I always post last thing at night before going to bed, and I am more of a lark than an owl, so I am always in a hurry to get it over with

This morning I felt like having a banana when I got back from my morning run/walk, so I did.

Lunch was my usual: a huge salad and a plate of delicious Japanese sweet potatoes. Actually, I don't know if these qualify as Japanese sweet potatoes. They came from my local Indian market. They are a lot smaller than the potatoes I usually get at the Asian supermarket, but they have similar red skin and white flesh. At first I wasn't crazy about the tiny size, but now I have decided that I like them just as much -- I just have to eat more potatoes per meal.



Dinner was Colcannon with steamed chard and asparagus. Very satisfying. I had a glass of wine with dinner. What does surprise me is that with just one glass of wine (a little over 5 ounces), alcohol made up 9.3% of my calories for the day. That doesn't sound very good!



After dinner I had an apple and a tangerine.



I ate 3.99 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 302 calories per pound.

My CRON report looks pretty good, other than being low in omega-3's again. Maybe it would be easier to just take a little flaxseed every day instead of trying to remember to take some a few times per week.

[Marla]

March 18

I ate 4.52 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 266 calories per pound.

Lunch will look familiar:



Dinner was leftover colcannon from yesterday, plus steamed cauliflower and spinach. If anyone was wondering how I browned the colcannon, I baked it at 475 degrees F on a parchment-lined baking pan for about 20 minutes. Then I removed it from the oven, placed another piece of parchment and another baking pan on top (making a colcannon "sandwich" between the two pans), and flipped the whole thing over. I removed the first pan (now on top) along with the topmost piece of parchment paper, then continued to bake for another 15 minutes until both sides were browned. In the past I used to brown it in a nonstick pan on the stovetop, but I prefer this way.



Dessert was pineapple and mango.



Today's nutrient intake was fine, with the addition of a little ground flaxseed (2 teaspoons) to my salad at lunchtime. It's late now, so I'll wish everyone a good night!

[Marla]

News flash! We interrupt this incessant stream of facts, figures, data, and visual evidence to bring you a random thought or two.

Now that this thread is a couple of weeks old, I feel I should take a moment to reiterate the reasons why I’m doing this project.

I’m not doing it because I think that tracking food and nutrients and calories is the way to approach this program. I would never suggest that anyone, especially those new to this way of eating, count or track anything. Eating the recommended foods is all that should be necessary, and for many people, the rest takes care of itself.

In my case, I’ve been following the program for a long time and have done all the recommended fine-tuning, and yet I have been unable to achieve the low BMI I would like, and I have had trouble maintaining a stable weight over time. My “maintaining” consists of allowing myself to gain weight up to a certain upper limit, then losing again, then slowly regaining, over and over. That is weight control of a sort, but not what I would like to keep doing forever.

Naturally, I’ve blamed my body. I must have those “curvy genes” that Doug Lisle talks about in his presentation “How to Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind.” Or to borrow a phrase from ETeSelle, I’m an “easy keeper.” I only have to look at food and I put on the pounds. That must be why I can gain weight even while eating 100% on plan, and why I have to work so hard and be so strict in order to lose it.

But is that really the reason? I need to know. Because if it is true, then I need to just accept this fact about myself and do what needs to be done. But if it isn’t, then I need to find out what the real issue is and fix it.

Jeff Novick has written that many of his clients are deceiving themselves about how closely they are actually following the program:

A patient came to me who had some concerns and questions and said they were on Dr Essy's program and even told me they were his patient and following his program 100%. After speaking with them for a while, it was quite evident that they were doing about 60-75% of it at best. (Sometimes I have seen people who have told me this and if they were at 25%, they were lucky).

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=26337&p=271971

He also says:

People always underestimate how many calories they eat. Many studies have shown that even peoples best attempts to estimate how many calories they eat is not just off but way off, and always underestimates their caloric intake, even when attempted by trained health professionals, by 30% or more. I've seen them underestimated up to 50% or more. One has to weigh each and every bite of the food & beverages they consume to really begin to come close. Estimates based on volume never work.

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=39129&p=401655t#p401655

Could it be, then, that for all these years I have either
(a) not been following the program as well as I thought I was, or
(b) been eating too many calories of “allowed” foods, or
(c) both of the above?

My idea to track everything I eat for 100 days arose from a desire to find out the answer to the question “why am I having trouble controlling my weight?” By tracking my energy intake and expenditure, using the best tools and methods I have available to me, I should at least be able to find out whether my metabolism is operating within approximately normal parameters for a woman of my age and size. And by monitoring what I actually eat (not what I think I eat), I should be able to find out what happens when I truly adhere to the program as closely as I can for a reasonably long period of time (occasional lattes and glasses of wine notwithstanding!).

Basically, it is all a big “experiment of one.” The final data that I need will be my weight at the end of the project: how much did I lose? For now, I can tell you this: a couple of days ago, I decided to get the scale down out of the attic and weigh myself. I thought I should update my Fitbit pedometer with my current weight, so that it could more accurately estimate my TDEE (since, as body weight decreases, energy expenditure decreases). I won’t report how much I’ve lost until the last day of March, but I will say that the results so far are interesting. I wanted to know the truth. . . but can I handle the truth? Stay tuned to find out.

[Marcella]

It's interesting that you just posted this update and review of your reasons for doing this experiment. I was actually meaning to ask you about how you are feeling energy-wise, sleep, etc. and also if you've noticed that your clothes are fitting differently since you started this experiment. I imagine that you're still keeping up the same level of activity?

I don't get the impression that you are feeling deprived, although I do get a sense that you are really enjoying your meals and have not had an issue with satiety even though you are consuming lower calories than you burn in order to induce weight loss.

An added bonus is that when you're done logging the food at the end of this month, with all that you've learned through the logging and nutritional analysis process, you can continue eating to satisfaction and also feel confident that you don't need to worry about the nutrition, as your experiment has been showing that you are easily able to meet all your nutrient targets even while you are limiting your caloric consumption through the principles of calorie density.

It's been fun to follow you along on this journey thus far!

All the best,

Marcella

[Marla]

Hi Marcella,

Thank you for your interest and your questions. My energy levels have been normal; I'm not bursting with energy, but I'm not wanting to nap during the day either. I have enough energy to feel good on my 6 mile run/walk each morning. I'm sleeping well. My digestion is good.

My clothes are fitting differently for sure. I am not far from my personal lowest weight, so all of my "skinnier" clothes fit. If I do actually get down to a BMI of 20, none of my clothes will fit at all....but that's a problem for another day.

You asked about satiety. I only feel a little hungry in the mornings, because I am not currently eating breakfast. My routine at the moment has me being active and busy throughout the morning hours, which seems to reduce my hunger signals. If I had to sit down at a desk and concentrate during those hours, I think I would need to eat in order to feel settled. In the future I plan to add breakfast back into my eating plan, but at the moment I am doing well without it. From lunchtime until bedtime I am very satisfied by my two large meals with lots of veggies and starch. I love the food. If I didn't love it, I would change it.

Once I complete this project I hope to maintain more awareness of what, and how much, I am eating. I suspect that my weight tends to creep up because I engage in mindless eating or "recreational" eating. I love sweets and snacks, and will eat them even if I am not physically hungry. I will also eat more starch than I need just because it tastes good. Those are going to be the habits and behaviors I will need to work on if I want to maintain my weight without so much fluctuation.

Yes, it's been very reassuring to see that I can get enough nutrients even on a limited calorie diet. Looking ahead, when I am at my target weight, I may need to eat about 1,800 calories per day (more or less, depending on my activity level) instead of the 1,200 or so I am consuming now. At that caloric level it will be practically impossible not to be well nourished if I eat a variety of whole plant foods.

[Marla]

Activity Report

Fitbit did not email me my weekly activity report on Tuesday. I contacted customer service and they are looking into it....meanwhile, I was able to pull up a report by going into my Fitbit log and specifying the date range for last week (Monday through Sunday).

I'm still being consistent with my exercise, covering about 6 miles in the morning (running as much of it as I feel like) and walking up to the store or around the block in the early evening, which gives me another mile.

[Marla]

March 19

As you can see, my CRON-o-meter report lists coffee with soymilk and sugar in the morning. Normally on a weekday I would drink Roastaroma hot tea with a bit of stevia. With the Roastaroma I don't feel the need for soymilk or sugar, so it is a better option all around. I like it, but I don't love it the way I love coffee. I guess as long as I have coffee in the house, there is a risk of consuming it.

Lunch was a kale salad, a few chopped raw vegetables, and baked sweet potatoes. The little dots on the kale salad are sesame seeds.



Dinner was tacos. The filling is lentil-based, and the yellow stripe is "cheaze" made from white beans and nutritional yeast. With the tacos I had a bowl of steam-fried veggies. I could have eaten a third taco, but I didn't need it to satisfy my hunger, so I settled for two tacos. They were delicious.



After dinner I enjoyed a bowl of sliced banana and tangerines.



And here's the nutrition report:

[Marla]

March 20

I ate 4.26 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 286 calories per pound.

Lunch was salad and sweet potatoes (with ground flaxseed and a Brazil nut). I always add the flaxseed after taking the photo because it looks gross. But I don't mind the nutty taste at all.



Dinner was an Ethiopian/North African feast. I made a hot and spicy stew called Yetakelt W'at; Ye'abesha Gomen (stewed collards); Tunisian beet salad; and couscous. The couscous was actually a whole wheat variety, but CRON-o-meter only has a listing for regular couscous. It is probably not that different.



I was pretty full after dinner, but found room for a little pineapple.



I was very satisfied with my food today. I think there is enough of the Ethiopian stew left for tomorrow's dinner, too. The only complaint I have is that dinner takes forever to make when you have to weigh every ingredient, weigh the dish after cooking and adjust for water loss, weigh your portions, enter all of the recipes into CRON-o-meter, and take pictures too. I have enjoyed doing this project, but I won't miss all the weighing and logging when it's over.

[Marla]

March 21

I ate 4.49 pounds of food today, with a calorie density of 288 calories per pound.

I had a two-course lunch -- first a big salad, then crunchy potatoes. The salad weighed about one and a third pounds, and the potatoes weighed over a pound before cooking (but less after cooking of course). I think I used four medium russets.





For dinner, there was some leftover Yetakelt W'et, and I made millet to go with it. Does anyone like millet? I had only tried it once before and wasn't crazy about it, but I thought I'd give it another go. I have decided that it is not my favorite grain; I much prefer brown rice, quinoa, oat groats, barley, and bulgur. My vegetables tonight were cauliflower and cabbage. I had a bowl of mango and pineapple for dessert.





I had to fight off some cravings today brought on by the displays of Easter candy EVERYWHERE. I wonder if my candy demon will ever go to sleep for good. I am sure the memory of the pleasure of that candy is better than the reality would be.

The CRON-o-meter report looks good, apart from low vitamin E. However, when I look at vitamin E over the past 7 days, I have averaged 10.7mg per day, which is more than I require given the low intake of PUFA's on this plan.

[Marla]

Talking to other people about how we eat

Recently, an acquaintance who sees me a few times per year noticed that I had lost weight since she last saw me, around Christmas. In an email about something else, she asked me what diet I was following. I always struggle with how much or how little information to give; I don't want to overwhelm people, but I want them to be interested enough to explore more on their own. This is what I wrote. The "in a nutshell" description of the diet came originally from Jeff Novick, with a couple of minor changes.

You asked about our diet. We have been following, and fine-tuning, the same lifestyle for over 10 years. It is a health-promoting and disease-preventing nutrition plan, not a weight loss diet to drop a few pounds, although weight loss is a natural result. I lost 70 pounds originally, and have maintained my weight mostly in the "normal" range for the last decade, while my closest family members are morbidly obese. We do go through periods where we get lazy or busy, exercise less, drink too much wine, eat too many treats, and as a result put on a few pounds. Currently we are both being more mindful of our diet and exercise, and we've both lost our "holiday" weight.

How we arrived at the program we follow was due to my research after I lost my mother to multiple sclerosis and breast cancer (she had both, and died at age 59). I wanted to find out what was the best preventative strategy for avoiding those diseases. It turned out that there was overwhelming evidence, in study after study, linking a whole-food, low-fat, plant-based diet to lower rates of nearly every chronic disease, including cancer, autoimmune disease, heart disease, and diabetes. We learned about Dr. John McDougall's impressive track record of healing people with food (http://www.drmcdougall.com/) and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's work on reversing heart disease through diet (http://www.heartattackproof.com/excerpt.htm ). Another book that opened our eyes to the benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet was The China Study: http://www.thechinastudy.com/the-china-study/about/. Since then, a wonderful documentary called Forks Over Knives has become available, and I consider it to be a must-watch for anyone interested in improving their health: http://www.forksoverknives.com/

In a nutshell, the program we follow is this. Eat whole plant foods, base the majority of your caloric intake on unrefined or minimally processed starches (such as rice, sweet and white potatoes, corn, beans, and whole grains), avoid animal products, eat no added oils or fats, limit high fat plant foods (like nuts, seeds, and avocados), avoid excess sugar and salt, and control weight by adjusting the amount of green and yellow vegetables that you combine with your whole starches. Ensure regular and adequate sunshine (for Vitamin D) and maintain a moderately active lifestyle. That's about it!

The food we eat is delicious, and we eat a lot of it. Tacos, lasagna, veggie burgers and baked fries, chili and cornbread, stir-fries, pizza, burritos, loaded baked potatoes, veggie sushi, and curry dishes are some of our favorites. There is a bit of a learning curve involved, and it does take some time to get used to eating this way, but the rewards are so substantial that it is well worth the effort.

I know that is probably more than you wanted to know, but I do have a lot to say on this topic because I am passionate about it. I believe that most of the illnesses which take our loved ones from us and cause so much suffering, need never exist.

So far I have received an email back, thanking me for the information. The rest is up to them, and I won't bring it up again unless they ask. I don't want to be "that annoying health nut" that everyone avoids!

[Marla]

March 22

Today I ate 3.83 pounds of food, at 332 calories per pound.

Lunch was my usual salad, followed by Japanese sweet potatoes. I couldn't photograph them together because I ate my salad while the sweet potatoes were baking.





Dinner was one of Jeff's burgers, plus crunchy potatoes and steamed chard, asparagus, and okra. We like the curry burgers best. I served them with homemade salt-free ketchup, which I doctored up with garam masala and cayenne for a spicy Indian ketchup.

Jeff's burgers weigh in at 648 calories per pound uncooked, but when baked they are 1,067 calories per pound.



For dessert I had a large bowl of strawberries. Yum!



The CRON-o-meter report was good today, except for Omega-3's which are fine in my weekly average.