Beef vs. Buffalo vs. Turkey

It's been a slow process weaning my husband and mother off beef. There are plenty of reasons not to eat beef. It's consistently linked with early mortality and heart disease. Unless you buy "natural", grass-fed beef, the cow has been fed antibiotics, hormones and an unnatural amount of corn. Beef has a very high carbon footprint and the cows make methane gas, a greenhouse gas. Eating beef is a habit, though, that many people cannot imagine breaking.

When I tested allergic to beef, I switched us to buffalo. Buffalo is by law grass-fed and natural. The beef producers had this law passed to make sure buffalo was not marbled with fat and more competitive with beef. We quickly got to where we preferred the flavor and texture of the buffalo. We typically bought ground buffalo, which is generally available, and used it for spaghetti, tacos, meatloaf, chili, and burgers.

Then, I started buying ground turkey to replace the ground buffalo. Slowly, but surely, we've started to prefer turkey to buffalo. The main objection to turkey is that turkey raising practices are cruel. But, turkey has a small fraction of the environmental impact of beef and no significant early mortality issues. The latest buffalo recipe to switch to turkey is hamburgers. We made turkey burgers this week and everyone was surprised they were more tasty, juicy and tender.

So, at this point, I almost have my husband and mother ready to switch to near 100% poultry and fish as protein sources. I am sure they will still order beef at restaurants. But, once you quit eating it regularly, the habit is broken.

I skipped a day on food reporting, I think. It was an 892 calorie day and probably worth discussing. We used to make CR pizzas from tortillas. Since we moved here, I have been buying HEB extra thin cheese pizzas. They cost $3 or $4, depending on the whim of the grocery store management for the week, so they are really cheap. They are especially low in fat and calories compared to other brands. We use these as a base for putting on our own toppings. We saute a large amount of onions, peppers, and mushrooms to put on at the last (we like them cooked a bit). We add extra tomato paste, a little goat gouda, turkey pepperoni, and more spices and garlic. I dash a bit of extra olive oil on the top. The result is a fairly healthy pizza - one third of the pizza (my share) is 400 calories and fairly nutritious because of the low fat meat, tomato paste and loads of veggies. If you serve it with a nice green salad, it is reasonably CR for a dinner meal. That is what I had on Wednesday for dinner. I had made some homemade hummus and my snack in the afternoon was a carrot dipped in hummus. My husband messed up my plan, just a little, by making guacamole from a small avocado, which I shared with him, using a few tortilla chips. He made a wine cooler for dinner for me, too - 4 oz of Cabernet, some blueberry tea and a splash of diet lemon/lime drink. So, that why I went over 800 calories - 200 calories worth of husband treats. Good I saved a few calories to spare just for this possibility. Lunch included a small bowl of leftover homemade chicken noodle soup and a 2.8 oz packet of tuna.

Yesterday's food

Here is what I ate yesterday:

4.5 oz of baked pork tenderloin, carefully trimmed of fat
2 tbsp of A-1 sauce
1 cup of butternut squash that was steamed, then microwaved for a minute or two with a tsp of maple syrup and lots of cinnamon
1 cup of steamed green beans
1/2 an ounce of dry roasted almonds
4 cups of coffee
a 44g carrot dipped in 66g of homemade hummus
1 50g roasted chicken leg - with no skin
1 small plum

CRON-o-Meter says 711 calories. Even though it seemed as if I was eating "bad" meats - dark meat chicken and pork - there was no other source of saturated fat in what I ate. So, only 4.2 g of saturated fat yesterday and 130 mg of cholesterol. I am not worrying very much about vitamins and minerals at the moment. It's just too difficult to get 100% of them every day at 800 calories and eat a varied diet. I am taking daily folate, daily C and weekly E supplements. As usual, I get all the other B vitamins and plenty of A.

The Chicken is Free

It is amazing to me how much of the food in the grocery stored is prepared food. If you cut the store back to the basic ingredients, it would be 1/4 of the size - or less. We buy very little prepared food ourselves. We have the time to make things and the interest in cooking. You get to control the amount of salt added, the oils and other ingredients. Plus, you get to make things to taste just the way you like it to taste. And then, there is the cost issue.

We frequently get those roasted chickens from the store - maybe 3 times a month. I suppose we could roast our own, but that is one of the prepared foods we actually buy. But, we almost always make stock out of the carcass. One of those $7 chickens makes 2-3 containers worth of stock. At $2.50 a container, that makes the chicken free! The stock is usually better tasting to me, too. We made stock yesterday and today it is homemade chicken noodle soup for lunch. When I make the stock, I usually discard the skin, but keep the gelatin that is invariably in the bottom of the container. Just throwing the carcass in a pot of boiling water is all the trouble it takes. Drain the result using a strainer. You can pick off the little pieces of meat to add back in to the stock if you have the patience.

We have not been able to get good hummus here in Austin. There are a lot more Middle Easterners in DC, so the standards are very high there. We had grown used to authentic hummus rather than the wimpy American version. The wimpy version is all that I seem to find here. So, I make my own hummus now. It's a lot cheaper to make hummus from dried or canned chickpeas, too. I just run the cooked peas through the food processor and add lots of tahini, half-salt, tons of garlic, parsley, a dash of olive oil, and some cumin. I find that the extra tahini and garlic is the secret to getting the authentic flavor. I like to use hummus instead of mayonnaise. I make tuna salad with hummus, for instance.

CR vacation is over now

My little experiment to see what life was like without weighing myself and doing my food diary every day is done. I think I ate pretty well. I think I stayed somewhat CR. But, I did gain another pound over 3 months. I found that I felt "sloppy" about my eating and there was an underlying feeling of anxiety about whether I was gaining weight all the time.

I have been doing CR for 9 years now. The first year, I lost 38 pounds, going from 156 to 118. For the next five years, I basically weighed the same thing, plus or minus a pound - 118. Then, 3 years ago, I hit menopause and I lost that groove. Calorie requirements go down, maybe 50 calories a day, due to menopause. But, I think CR was more difficult, as well. Perhaps the hormone changes threw me off mentally and made it harder to focus? My weight has slowly crept up over 3 years to 128, despite my trying pretty hard lose the additional pounds - or even just keep things stable.

I think the little vacation from CR worked as I hoped it would. I feel ready to resume a more disciplined CR again now. I can see that my ad lib future would be that I would just creep back up to 156. It might take five or ten more years to get there, but that is where I would be. At 128, I look good, actually. My weight is quite average for my height and I still fit most of my clothes. But, I miss being slim. My clothes are not loose. With the loss of muscle mass that also comes with menopause, I feel pudgy, lol. I like the 118 pound me a lot more.

So, I am back to careful CR now. The food scale is on the counter - and being used all the time. I will be using CRON-o-Meter every day and recording food as I go as much as possible. I will weigh myself every morning.

Several behavioral changes are involved as well. No more snacking. No more Milagro tortilla chips (which are miraculous, by the way, a local Austin brand that is exceptionally thin and crispy and has no salt). We have not been eating out much any way. But now, when I do, I will order appetizers or a la carte items as my meal - or share with my husband. I have been eating a lot of fruit in the last year or two. I will try to replace at least half of the fruit with salad items.

Yesterday, I just happened to run across a Sun Harvest grocery store. I am really sorry I did not discover it earlier. It could be a partial replacement for Trader Joes for me. The produce was just excellent and priced very well. The Whole Foods stores here are totally crazy. They are huge, terribly expensive and crowded. It's very different from the Whole Foods I shopped at in Virginia somehow. Sun Harvest seems to have many of the same products as Whole Foods for much less. So, I am going to shop there instead of the regular grocery store. I think that will put me is the perfect mindset for planning meals. Not that I didn't fill my cart with fresh, whole foods at the HEB anyway. It's just that the store is full of gak and you have to deal with it as you shop. You have to see all the grocery carts full of gak. The coupon specials on gak. Gak, gak, everywhere. Even the Whole Foods here is more gakky that Sun Harvest. There is so much prepared foods and it has a gourmet food atmosphere, rather than health food.

And, perhaps I will log what I eat here again. My lowest CR weight was in the months after I started this blog and reported what I was eating. I was trying very hard to set a good example. Since I am trying to kick into serious CR mode and reduce my appetite - and lose a few pounds - I cannot eat my normal 1150-1200 calories a day at this point. I've tried that over and over for the last three years and it does not lead to good CR. I know from my past, that I need to eat less for some period of time to get back on track. So, I will be trying to eat very low calorie for at least 2-3 weeks - 800 calories a day.

Here is what I ate yesterday:
25 red grapes (yes, I counted them out)
3 cups of very delicious fair trade Sumatra decaf coffee
1 packet of light tuna (2.8 oz) packed in water and mixed with 50 g of homemade hummus
194 g of cantaloupe ( a really yummy one!)
7 pistachios (counted those too)
4 oz grilled ground turkey (93% lean)
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp dill pickle relish
1 thin slice of red onion
1 ear of yellow corn
fruit salad equivalent to 1/3 large apple, 1/3 plum and 10 raisins

CRON-o-Meter says 725 calories. Very low in fat actually - maybe a bit too low. I ate some almonds today for lunch to get my fat intake back up.

Today's dinner will be baked pork tenderloin, steamed green beans and winter squash. I am so excited about the winter squash. The normal grocery store only stocks Frieda's winter squash and 1 squash costs $4. They are usually not very fresh. The Sun Harvest had beautiful winter squash for half the price. Texans apparently don't eat winter squash. I guess I remember that. Not enough winter here, lol. On September 21 in D.C., the trees start to turn colors. On Sept 21 in Austin, the high of the day is no longer over 100, lol. That is fall in Austin - it rains more and is less hot. Winter here is sunny with frequent highs in the 70s - very nice - but not long enough and cold enough for good winter squash.

Training for post-menopausal women

This study has lots of interesting findings that apply directly to me. First of all, it is a reminder to all you young CR people that things do change as you age. CR might be keeping you younger, but hormones will decrease regardless, and they have their effect.

Here are some of the realities the study points out:

"a woman's metabolism changes as her hormone levels change after menopause, affecting glucose clearance from the blood"

"after the age of 30, people lose the capacity to consume and use oxygen at about 1 percent per year"

"postmenopausal women, who are different because of decreased estrogen, decreased lean body mass and decreased aerobic capacity,"

Another interesting fact presented was that women burn fat when they exercise much better than men and here is the real surprise to me:

"women, in general, are better than men at maintaining stable blood glucose levels - the glucose comes from stored carbohydrates - and maintaining their weight, even while undergoing vigorous training, he said. In fact, men continue to burn carbohydrates for several hours after exercise, while women's metabolism immediately returns to normal."

So, all those people who are telling women that if they do aerobic exercise, the effect will last for hours afterwards and help them lose more weight don't know what they are talking about. That is just for me.

This study is pretty encouraging for me. I am pretty inspired to exercise more from it. I have really noticed the decrease in lean body mass and increase in fat mass since menopause, and felt sort of hopeless about it, since I know my hormone levels are not going to cooperate with reversing this trend. But, the VO2max improvement alone is probably worth the trouble, even if I don't lose some of the fat and gain back much muscle.

We've been working on a huge landscaping project. My husband has done 90% of the hard labor on it - which has been really hard. Lots of shoveling, pick axe work and digging. He is a slim person regardless, but he was also getting a bit flabby before the project. I am really impressed with how much his physique has improved. He looks 10 years younger. All the flab is gone and he's put on a fair amount of muscle. It's a rather extreme way to get some exercise, but it saved lots of money, he did a much better job on it than anyone we could hire, and he really enjoys it actually. We are almost ready to plant the area. When the plants are in, I will post pictures.

Confession, lol

I have not been blogging as of late, as I am sure you have noticed. There are two reasons for this. The main one is that I have gone into an increasingly casual CR mode. I am taking a little breather from paying a lot of attention to CR. I am still eating CR 99% of the time. I just have stopped the daily weighing and recording of food. I plan to go back to better metrics soon enough. It just means I am not thinking about CR much and the blog does not come to my mind. I am on CR autopilot. It's been 9 years since I started, so it is pretty easy to do CR without thinking about it very much. I know many of the long-time practitioners get to this place - where CR is automatic and it's not a big deal. Perhaps this is where most people go with CR after a while.

Reason number 2 is that I started playing an online strategy game last January and it takes up too much of my time. It is a multiplayer game with teams, and my team elected me their leader. It's been fun up until now, but it is starting to get a bit wearisome. Much like blogging, it is an interesting way to meet people from all over - though mostly guys ages 15-40. Many of them actually have RLs (real lives) with spouses and children and jobs, but some do not, I fear. I've enjoyed the competition aspect of it as well. I will not tell you which game unless you really, really want to know. Be prepared to spend hours a day on it if you play. And no, it's not World of Warcraft. I am really adept at chatspeak now, lol, ;) This current round ends in 3 months and I really, really, really will not play it after that - at least for a while.

Meanwhile, things are fine in my world. My mom is doing well. I do see my grandkids pretty often. My granddaughter is exceptionally beautiful and bright, of course, just like her brother (who is handsome, not beautiful). My game programmer son in Oregon is being transferred to Las Vegas. Talk about heaven vs. hell. So he will be closer to us and easier to visit. The weather is abysmal here in Austin - over 100 degrees almost every day and still in a severe drought, so I have not really been able to do lots of hiking or outdoor activities lately. I still work several hours a week, but my workaholic husband works 30-40. I started the game to keep myself entertained while I was waiting for him to quit working so much - which he claims will happen any week now, supposedly, every week for the last year. I am so much better at goofing off than him so far.

CRON-o-Meter and eating out

Michael asks about using diary tools like CRON-o-Meter when you eat out. (And, yes, Michael, your comments show up in my email). Tools like CRON-o-Meter are just estimates. They are based on a USDA database that took samples of food. One tomato is not exactly like another - so the calories are just and estimate. Just because it says that 100 grams of the tomato they sample were 18 calories does not mean that your tomato is not sweeter. It might have 24 calories in it. Don't even imagine that they are accurate to the single digit range.

It is not meaningful, in general, to track calories for a single day. After all, you might eat twice as many the day before and the day after - and not be doing calories restriction at all. If you weight things at home a lot, you will get pretty good at estimating weight based on size. Entering data day after day, the amounts will get more and more accurate on average, since some days you will overestimate and some days you will underestimate.

But, what about eating out? If you eat out at a chain that posts nutrition data, then you can enter data more easily. But, even so, you will need to estimate ingredients for a dish. I often go on the web and search on " recipe" - like "enchilada recipe". This typically gives you a list of recipes for the thing you ate. I am a veteran recipe reader and can figure out which one matches most closely to what I actually ate. I then wil enter the reciple into to tool and can use it after that. Assuming you have entries or recipes for all the food, now you have to estimate the weight. One useful rule of thumb is that 100g is the size of your hand (without fingers). The more you estimate, the better you will get at it and the more your overestimates will cancel out the underestimates.

Fifteen Pounds of Organic "Slicing" Tomatoes

I ordered 15 lbs. of tomatoes from a CSA farm this week. I am not a member, though I would like to be. But, they had an excess of tomatoes and were selling them for $25 for 15 lbs. I picked them up yesterday - and we've eaten 2 lbs already. Any ideas on what to do with them, besides give some of them away? So far, I've made a big bowl of pico de gallo (raw salsa basically), eaten 2 of them sliced with a sprinkle of pepper, and plan to make a middle eastern cucumber/tomato salad (fattoush). They won't make good sauce - they are not sauce tomatoes. I am also planning to eat them as a salad with low fat dressing.

All 15 lbs of them is only 1260 calories - not that you could eat them in a day. Two pounds is certainly more reasonable for a day's intake. That would be 162 calories and 5.7 time the RDA for A, and 4.5 times the RDA for C.

While I am asking questions - does anyone have a favorite brand of olive oil? I bought some at World Market a couple of months ago that tastes funny to me now - like it has oxidized a bit. I just can't use it any more. Yesterday, I bought some imported Italian brand at the grocery store to replace it and it was horribly bitter. I am taking it back. My favorite for some time has been Whole Foods 365 brand. That's what I plan to buy now, unless someone has a better suggestion. I like my olive oil to be nutty and fruity, so it can be flavorful - but certainly not bitter. We cook exclusively with olive oil, so it's pretty important that it be good.