My CRON regimen - comments welcomed

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I’ve now been officially practicing CRON for almost a month now, and I

wanted to share my regimen with you for comments and suggestions.

First, some background:

I’m female, 28, 5’6”, currently 142 lb. I’ve had a debate going with myself

about what my set-point weight is. When I was twenty, I weighed about

155-160 lbs. Since then I have lost weight through a combination of a

greatly improved quality diet and exercise. However, I have been stable at

this weight for about five years, so I suppose I should consider it my

set-point. In the past I have tried to lose weight through dieting but have

always been unsuccessful. I’m not even a yo-yo dieter because I don’t get

to the point where I lose weight in the first place. My attempts at

“calorie restriction” in a dieting context have always failed within a day

or so. Apparently, where vanity was not an adequate motivator, longevity

is. I’ve been fairly successful over the past month.

I eat approximately 2200 calories a day ad lib. My current goal is to bring

that daily average down to about 2000. This will be about a 9% restriction.

This should induce a weight loss of about .4 lbs a week or 1.6 lbs a

month. That seems to be a good rate – I’m wary of losing weight much faster

than that. I am recording my food in the free online nutrition journal

FitDay.com. I would like to purchase DWIDP, but as I am a poor grad student

currently, I can’t justify the expense. For the same reason, I also haven’t

had any of the recommended blood tests.

My approach to CR has been to significantly restrict the number of calories

I eat on two days a week, then eat normally the rest of the week. So, for

the past month I’ve been consuming 1500 calories on Monday and Tuesday, but

an average of 2200 calories a day the rest of the week. This averages out

to 2000 cal/day.

My normal ad lib diet is of fairly good quality. I usually consume 100+% of

the RDA of most nutrients, with the notable exceptions of zinc (I get about

70% of RDA) and Vitamin D (I get about 30% of RDA – but I do get significant

sun exposure since I live in Arizona). My calcium and magnesium intake are

borderline (just about 100%). I also consume a multivitamin to make for any

deficiencies. Zinc is the one I’m most concerned about. As a vegetarian

(no meat or fish, but do eat dairy and eggs) I find it difficult to get

adequate zinc.

Restricting calories has been a fun and interesting experiment for me. I’ve

learned a lot about myself and my relationship to food. One interesting

aspect has been that the most difficult part has been the transition to

different calorie levels. So, Monday morning is difficult, when I’m moving

from a 2200 calorie level to 1500 calorie level, but then Wednesday morning

is also difficult when I raise my calorie consumption back to 2200 calories.

It can be easy to make myself sick by eating a rich meal first thing on

Wednesday. I have to escalate calorie intake slowly. That’s been an

interesting experience for me since I’ve always had a hearty appetite and

normally can easily out-eat my husband. But then again, my husband has

basically been practicing CR naturally – I’m still trying to get him to work

on the ON part, though.

Over the past four weeks I’ve found that each week it has been easier to

restrict calories. This past week it was hardly difficult at all. Related

to a recent discussion here, I’ve found white potatoes have been very

helpful in increasing my satiety. A baked potato (220 calories) topped with

green onion (5 calories) as a dinner is absurdly filling and can easily

carry me through til breakfast. And I love potatoes, so it satiates my

taste buds as well.

I run approximately 15-20 miles a week and lift weights 2-3 times a week. I

have noticed that it’s a little harder to get going on days when I’m eating

low calorie, but once I get going I seem to do fine.

One of the challenges I’m facing is that school is about to end for the

summer. Eating low calorie is easier for me while I’m at school because I’m

always busy. In addition, if I want food, I have to go buy it – it takes

more effort than just walking in the kitchen. The bad part about trying to

eat at school is that they just don’t have a wide variety of healthful foods

available. That should be improved over the summer, when I can buy my own

food and prepare it. If I can learn how to transfer the ability to restrict

calories that I’ve been practicing at school to home I should be good.

My calories (ave 2015/day) over the past month have broken down as follows:

28% fat, 60% carbs, 12% protein. I am getting about 61g fat (18 sat, 14

poly, 20 mono), 312g carbs, 24g fiber, 61g protein a day.

My weekly averages over the past six weeks are as follows:

cals fat carbs prot fiber

3/18-3/24 2213 83 322 60 26

3/25-3/31 2027 80 279 61 23

4/01-4/07 2313 85 317 64 23

4/08-4/14 1920 56 313 55 26

4/15-4/21 2007 56 308 66 25

4/22-4/29 1934 58 304 59 24

Here’s a sample menu from an ad-lib day and a low calorie day:

Ad Lib:

Smoothie (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, OJ, banana)

Small handful of pistachio nuts

Cup of grapes

Small chunk of gouda (perhaps ½ ounce)

½ dark chocolate bar

Cheeseless veggie pizza (Amy’s Kitchen brand, frozen)

Lentils and potato over quinoa

Small handful of almonds

Nonfat blueberry yogurt

Total: about 2200 calories

Low Calorie day:

Single serving shredded wheat (maybe 2/3 a cup) - 125 cals

1 c. fatfree milk – 86 cals

Banana – 109 cals

Coffee – 5 cals

Smoothie (blueberry, strawberry, pineapple, with fatfree yogurt) – 307 cals

Chocolate Pecan Pie flavor Luna Bar – 180 cals

Vegetarian sushi (avocado, cucumber, carrot rolled in rice and seaweed) 9 pc

– 273 cals

Soy sauce, pickled ginger, wasabi – 11 calories

Nonfat yogurt – 100 cal

Baked potato – 200 cals

Green onion - 10 cals

TOTAL: 1445

Any comments, suggestions, or questions are welcome.

- Robin

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