Eating the Same Basic Thing Every Day Makes Things Easier

Note: I am not saying that this is the only way to do CRON.

That being said...

Last night I found myself making what is in retrospect a rather absurd claim: that I was going to put my relatively smooth CR practice on autopilot so that I could devote the energy/time that I had been pouring into designing my diet into learning more about a real cure for aging (for the purposes of eventually knowing enough to be able to convince people to fund said cure, not just for my own entertainment.)

I woke up this morning thinking that might be the dumbest thing I've ever said in my entire life.

But then as the day went on, and I went about my normal routine of eating what I usually eat these days, I realized, that's not as nutty as I at first thought.

I've spent tremendous time and energy over the last nine months figuring out what I should be eating to get maximal nutrition in the fewest possible calories, within the limits of how much time and money I feel like I can spend. And when I just do what I normally do, I do pretty well!

Here's today so far:

eggwhites for breakfast (plain, with a touch of pepper) 140 calories, 29 g protein
half a large container of fat free cottage cheese, 140 calories, 21 g protein
salad with lettuce, tomato, balsamic vinegar, beets, olives, pineapple, strawberries: 229

509 so far for the day, and that's with going out to lunch with a co-worker.

I'm kinda excited about this: all the effort I've put into designing a diet that works for me might just pay off.

A lot of CRON folks like to eat different things all the time, and I certainly eased into CR by doing that, but I do find that it is much easier to stick to the same basic group of foods, varying the veggies and fruits, but keeping things like protein, fat and calcium sources fairly constant. I know I love egggwhites, I know I love cottage cheese and nonfat plain yogurt, I know I love almonds. (I can't find hazelnuts in my store... what's up with that?)

If you throw into the DWIDP what I was planning to have for dinner, which was a bag of frozen broccoli and cauliflower cooked in my 2 cups of chicken broth with 116 calories of brewers yeast, plus 200 calories of almonds and a glass of red wine, you get 1090. Not bad at all! And that's just what I was going to do anyway... before I threw it into the DWIDP. P:F:C = 34:26:40. Never Zone perfect, but a far cry from the high carb darkness. 90% of calcium, 80% iron, 48% zinc, and well over 100% on the rest! I am less worried about the usual suspects, calcium, iron and zinc, because the tier one stuff MR suggested for me would fix that, and while I'll never give up on getting them through food, I'm not going to stress too much about it if I'm both getting *close* to the RDA's in my diet and supplementing with the stuff.

So maybe I wasn't completely smashed with optimism when I said that I can maintain a decent CR lifestyle while thinking about other things too...

In a funny and probably completely irrational shift in perspective, I am suddenly finding my own personal low tech easy happy version of CR to be less stressful than it seemed a week ago.

Another happy warm fuzzy CR moment: I've been up since 3 am, it's almost 3 pm, and I have tons of energy! CR makes you need less sleep!