A Day Even Mary Would Be Proud Of

After all of yesterday's ranting about how I had to get serious, I clearly had to have a serious day. That's the thing about blogging... you really focus when you know the whole world is going to read about what you ate!

It was Mary who first pointed out to me how lacking I was in protein, as well as calcium and some other problems in my nutrition (looking back at my early entries is kinda spooky!), and set me about a quest that ended up with my cat eating page 23 of the Albatross and me eating a lot more protein. So I thought that today's entry, which represents a triumph of sorts (though still far from CRON perfection!) should be named after her.

I haven't had time to crunch the nutritional analysis on my software yet because my computer lived at the office over the weekend, and I have to enter Grape Nuts as their own food since they're for some reason inexplicable to me not in Walford's software already. But... from my read on the labels of everything I ate it looks to me like I did very well.

Here's what I ate yesterday:

eggwhite scramble 140 cals 29 g protein

vegetable stew of every kind of vegetable I could find: asparagus, okra, yellow tomatoes, red pepper, garlic sauteed in olive oil, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and Farmers' Market fra diavlo sauce, with a couple squirts of green chile sauce on top. Delicious! I tupperwared up some for today, tomorrow and Wednesday to have at work, 200 cals each in a serving. So 200 cals there.

50 cals olives (you know the drill. pet me on the head.)

200 cals grape nuts, 7 g protein (and 90% o the iron RDA, btw)

cup of skim milk (80 cals, 8 g protein)

90 cals cottage cheese (you talked me into it! The original rationale was that I should trade cottage cheese for skim milk, which has more calcium. But I came close to nailing my calcium goal even with the cottage cheese, and you can't beat the cc for filling up and convenience) 11 g protein

iced latte with skim (80 cals of skim milk, 30% of the RDA of calcium and 8 g protein)

raw red pepper (20 cals, I think)

Walford sized (4 oz) pour of red wine 85 cals

If I added right, that's 945 calories, at least 63 grams of protein (not counting anything that might have been hanging out in the veggies), and a little fat thrown in there. Still high carb, still probably too low in fat, but progress! I am not quite ready to trade in my evening four ounce glass of red wine for a spoonful of olive oil. However, I've been thinking I should eat nuts. It seems like all the cool kids do. Thoughts?

Lefty book club almost turned into a brawl, with passionate activists debating the finer points of political philosophy. Luckily, there were no snacks, so I didn't have to explain why I wasn't eating. And I offered to host the next gathering at my house, with dinner beforehand. I can try my favorite trick of feeding people healthy food that they don't know is healthy. And you can almost always take a CR friendly meal and throw it over rice or pasta for the non-CR.

I also did my four mile walk twice, for a total of eight miles, enjoying the beautiful weather and also needing a break from the relentless boxing up of my earthly possessions. I get the keys on Wednesday, and the moving truck comes on Friday!

Today will be another crazy back to the wars day... meetings with nurses, running hither and thither. I have packed:

200 cals of the vegetable stew

eggwhite scramble (already ate it) 140

200 cals of grape nuts

a cup of yougurt. I didn't buy cottage cheese yesterday since I didn't read the comments and decide that Kenton was right until it was too late to go to the store. So I picked up a carton of sugar free yougurt on my way into work at the coffee shop. It looks okay: 20% of the RDA for calcium, and 100 calories, with 8 g of protein. Not too bad.

olives

I figure I will eat a big salad for dinner tonight. The veggie stew is kinda like hot salad... so many veggies, so little time! I will also drink some skim milk, possibly in the form of another iced latte with skim. It's a nice afternoon pick up and an easy way to drink milk. And coffee has niacin... and even Dean drinks green tea, so caffeine can't be all that bad for us. Not that I'm ready to put myself through the emotional roller coaster of an archive search on that subject!