Nutritionally useless foods update

- Small bag of bulgur wheat: threw this out.
- Small bag of dried black eyed beans (cow peas): cooked these with tomato, adobo chili and tabasco sauce to bring to a housewarming party.
- Half a bag of quinoa: Used it all up for dinners and lunches.
- Small bag of green lentils: cooked these with indian spices and low-fat yogurt and ate for several lunches.
- Bag of brown rice: all gone.
- Small bag of azuki beans: Not used yet, maybe this weekend.

Hummus (too much tahini)

Am I right in thinking that chickpeas are an ok food for CRON, high in both iron and zinc? Hummus definitely helps me fill up on raw veggies. My local supermarket sells a hummus that’s 135 kcal/100g. Not as low as the big supermarket’s low-fat hummus 133kcal/100g but that’s usually mixed with low-fat cream cheese or something to thin it out and doesn’t taste as good. I also don’t want to buy from the chain supermarkets if I don’t have to. Both contain several E numbers which I haven’t learned off by heart yet, so I'm wary.

Therefore I’m making my own with my blender! I bought a can of chickpeas (77kcal/100g – so low, can that be right!?), tahini, a lemon, cumin and some garlic. I used about 1/3 cup tahini which was way, way too much. It’s so high calorie! I also used 3 cloves of garlic, again overkill. The recipe came to 200kcal/100g. Hmmm. I’ll have to refine the recipe. I’m determined to get it lower than 135kcal/100g.

Faltering

Ho ho ho… Well this certainly has been a week of not sticking to what I said I’d do when it comes to my CRON diet. I’ve not been trying hard enough and slipped back into eating higher calories. Lots of meals out with friends and colleagues, which are really lovely and enjoyable but soo bad for my physical well being. Way too many delicious sweet things aging me prematurely. I’ve been drinking just water and tea and eating only veggies at home though! Like that makes up for it…

I keep thinking to myself that I should know how to do good CRON by now. I mean, I have been trying this for months and I’ve got all the advice I need at my fingertips with other CRON blogs and the CR society archives. But I’ve gained 10lbs since March when I was calorie restricting without particularly doing ON.

When I’m disciplined I’m really, really good and CRON is easy and fun but when I let it all go I get depressed and let it all go even further and eat whatever I want. I think I see CRON as a game. When I’m sticking to the rules (low calories, 100% RDAs), it’s awesome but if I break the rules, even once, I’m no longer playing the game and I quit… until I start playing the game again. I hate the fact that I’m still so black and white in my thinking.

I weigh and measure breakfast and lunch religiously but it all goes wrong at dinner.

And I hate the fact that I’m still addicted to sugar and refined carbs!

But… I love that doing CRON, even for this short time, has made me try so many new foods. I used to be quite a fussy eater but now there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t eat. Except mayonnaise. And marshmallows (eww). But no big nutritional losses there! I used to hate curry, olives, cucumber, courgettes, squash and whey protein powder but I’ve since learned to love them all. I’ve learned so much about the calorie content and nutritional makeup of food and gotten better at estimating calories, though I’m still by no means an expert. I read labels. I remember calories per 100g. In fact, I’ve become more knowledgeable about the whole messy and exploitative process of food production and very rarely shop in the big retail supermarkets anymore. I now get nearly all my veg from the local farmer’s market, cutting out the middleman altogether.

My cooking skills have improved and I no longer keep things like cereal, bread and pasta in the house. I used to eat bowls and bowls of pasta last year (slathered in cheese) but now it’s a once-in-a-while treat. I haven’t eaten a microwave meal in many months. I eat very low-fat yogurt with pumpkin and sunflower seeds and I love it.

I understand what triggers food my food cravings and phantom hunger signals: not drinking enough fluids and boredom. I have very little to do in my current job and spend more time than I should thinking about food (I’m blogging at work right now!). The good news is I’m leaving in three weeks for a much more stressful (but better paying) job where my mind should be busy for the vast majority of the day. When I’m busy I sometimes forget to eat but I think if I continue to bring my lunch every day I should be fine.

I continue to notice that brushing my teeth and removing my contact lenses when I get home in the evening creates a Pavlovian sense of ending the day. It prevents me from eating anything more and I start to feel ready to sleep no matter how early it is.

On Monday I cycled to work and home again for the first time, a round trip of 8 miles. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for ages. Cycling through central London is exhilarating and dangerous. I’m not a confident cyclist at the best of times so the journey there and back requires half an hour of pure concentration. I’m making sure to follow the highway code and stop at every red light. I can’t believe the blasé attitude of some of my fellow cyclists. Don’t they realise they could be crushed to death at any moment? And if I didn’t hate the bendy buses before I sure do now: they are agents of death! I didn’t cycle in today or yesterday because of the rain but I’m going to purchase a charming yellow raincoat this evening so there’ll be no excuses tomorrow.

I have a competition coming up in three week’s time and need to drop my weight by about 8lbs to do well. So definite motivation there. This really needs to be the last day of eating at-lib! I also want to start running regularly to improve my cardiovascular fitness.

TTBMLR

TTBMLR is my new acronym: Trying To Be More Like Robin. One of the things I like about Robin’s blog is that she keeps a separate blog detailing her food and data from COM. It’s been really helpful to me to see an example of a real CRON diet for someone who’s about the same height as me. So, I’m going to start doing the same, as much as I can. I have to realise there will be times when I can’t measure everything (like restaurant food) but when I can I’ll post my COM data. Obviously I want to do that as much as possible to get some good stats on my nutrition deficiencies. This will help me be a bit more accountable to myself because other CRONies will be able to see what I’m eating. There’s nothing like knowing someone’s watching you to keep you from eating that free brownie.

I’ve also purchased a very cute portable scale so I can measure food when I’m out. Discretely, of course! It should be arriving any day now. Very exciting. One thing I did notice that quite a lot of portable scales are designed to look like mobile phones. How wonderful, I thought, the designers have catered for the furtive needs of the CR community! This was until my flatmate reminded me that these scales may be used for less virtuous consumption… I opted for a non-cellular looking scale. Photo to follow when it arrives.

Cleaning out nutritionally useless foods

In my cupboard I currently have:

- A small bag of green lentils
- A small bag of dried black eyed beans (cow peas)
- Bag of brown rice
- Half a bag of quinoa
- Small bag of azuki beans
- Small bag of bulgur wheat

My question is: given that I'm aiming for between 1200-1400 calories per day, which of these foods would you consider nutritionally useful and which useless? Which would you keep and which would you give away to hungry flatmates?

Squash baked in marinara sauce

Squash baked in marinara sauce
Originally uploaded by cronuk

Slightly burned. Ugh... I was doing so well today too! Messing around with photos was what did it, I completely lost track of time. It tasted great though and the smell drew my flatmate out of his room. Which left me with a dilemma: you often hear of CRON people being tempted by the food from the plates of others (I am as guilty as anyone in that respect) but what does one do when a non-cron wants to partake of carefully weighed and measured deliciousness? I was planning on eating the whole thing. Do you encourage nutritious eating or refuse, prioritising your own optimal nutrition?

I chose to encourage and spread the word of CRON. The zen was short lived however, when an hour later I was starving.

I decided to make the tofu chocolate pudding since I had enough calories left over.

I hated it!

What a waste of chocolate! I'm off tofu for life. YUCK! Bleurgh! Horrid. Never again.

I consoled myself with some low-fat custard and (unfortunately) some nutter butters my flatmate offered in compensation for the squash. Not a fair trade, I feel. I was at about 900 calories after dinner but these few yucky sugary trans-fatty snacks pushed me up to 1500. Great.

Moral: sometimes it's best not to share.

Grilled oatmeal herring with rainbow chard

Grilled oatmeal herring with rainbow chard
Originally uploaded by cronuk

Today was a bit of a one-huge-meal day as befits a Sunday in this country. My dinner was not the usual grease-laden roast though, it was a mini farewell to the bad old days. I used up the last 15g of the oatmeal which has tempted me too many times from the virtuous path of CRON. The oatmeal was laid to rest scottish-style on two lovely herring with a little smear of a low-fat spread and lemon juice mixture to keep it in place and seasoned with fresh thyme, dried parsley, salt and pepper. Grilled on a medium heat. Only one herring is pictured; I ate two.

Yesterday I made my second trip to the organic farmer's market, before noon this time, which yielded much better results than last week. Even though tasty cakes, breads, cheeses and pies attacked from all sides, I managed to abstain and instead obtain 20p's worth of some lovely rainbow chard (pictured) which is sweet, delicious and extremely pretty. Also purchased a summer squash, knobbly cucumber, cos lettuce, rhubarb tomatoes, eggs and some lamb's liver which has since been made into a pate. The rhubarb, likewise has been prepared, stewed with splenda and cinnamon and eaten with low-fat custard (see flickr). The leftover rhubarb will likely be part of breakfast tomorrow.

I feel like I've eaten a feast though I'm only at 909 calories for the day. I think I'll stay low since I ate out at a Turkish restaurant yesterday (cue bread and hummus) and had a vegan, sugarfree brownie at the cinema as well as reminding myself earlier in the day, via a friend's plate, why I loathe fried chicken.