Chat/Diary -- 03 May 2013

Diary -- 03 May 2013

I was away from home last week, so haven't been cooking for a while, which is why there haven't been any new posts recently. The 5:2 diet regime as generally understood seems to be that you fast two days and can eat what you like the other five. I wasn't really happy with the thought of that – it seems to me that the benefits of an improved diet require an awareness of what you eat every day. From the outset, I decided to restrict calories on non-fast days to about 1800, which is enough to lose weight slowly and not undo the weight-loss benefits from fasting.

Weight-loss

About six weeks into the diet I've lost about a stone in weight, but it is now coming off much more slowly than it was at the beginning. I am aiming to lose another stone before switching to a weight maintenance diet.

More Pudding Recipes Coming Soon

I've been surprised that the most-viewed page so far is my low-cal chocolate pot, which has twice as many hits as the second most-viewed page, which is the rye crackers. I'm going to be thinking about more low calorie desserts because it's pretty clear that's what people like to read about.

Carbohydrates and Processed Food

One of the consequences of dieting is that I have become much more aware about what I eat – I am now especially careful with sugar, carbohydrates and saturated fats. I've re-read Dr John Briffa's book 'Escape Diet Trap', and he is convinced that over-consumption of sugar and processed carbohydrates is at the root of many diet associated illnesses, such as diabetes. His thesis in a nutshell is that we should eat foods that we have evolved to eat/digest; which in simple terms is a mixed diet composed of non-processed food, that avoid starchy carbohydrates and sugar. I don't agree with everything he says, but his approach seems to be heavily based on common sense – and that really appeals to me.   

Canned Chickpeas vs Home-Cooked

Using pulses is a good way of getting protein and making a large portion on fast days. I have been wondering how home cooked pulses compare with tinned ones nutritionally, and not surprisingly home cooked ones contain fewer calories, more protein and less salt (apparently much of the high salt content in canned chickpeas is reduced by thoroughly rinsing but I haven't been able to find data on this). I'm not surprised that the commercial/canned chickpeas weigh more, because the convention is that each tin contains 240g drained weight of chickpeas. Heavier chickpeas have a higher water content, which is a common way for food producers to give us consumers less food for more money. (It's also the reason many processed meats and fish have a high salt content, because the higher the salt the more water the product will hold).

Here is the comparison for one cup home-cooked chickpeas vs canned :-                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

	Home-Cooked	Canned
Weight	164.0g	240.0g
Calories	269.0	286.0
Total Fat	4.0g	7.0g
Sodium	11.0mg	718.0mg
Total Carbs	45.0g	39.0g
--Fibre	12.0g	10.0g
--Sugars	8.0g	10.0g
Protein	15.0g	11.9g
Vitamin A	1%	0%
Vitamin C	4%	0%
Calcium	8%	6%
Iron	26%	15%

Sources are amalgamated from:
http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=newtip&dbid=10 and
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calorie-chart-nutrition-facts.
Since I'm going to all this trouble to improve my diet and lose weight it would be daft to eat less nutritious food – especially on fast days – so I'm going to cook my own pulses from now on.

Fats and Cholesterol

One of my main objectives in following this diet is to improve my cholesterol level and my heart disease risk. I've noticed from my food diary that about 35% of my diet is fat, which is a big surprise to me because I don't seem to add much fat and eat hardly any cheese. It seems that there is nothing intrinsically bad about fats, we need them as part of a balanced diet; but the advice is now clear-cut: saturated and trans fats are not part of a healthy diet.  Whilst reseraching this I found a good source for nutritional advice – The Harvard School of Public Health – this is their page on fats and cholesterol:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-and-cholesterol/

There's quite a lot to read through, here's a summary of their recommendations:

1. Use liquid oils for cooking and baking. I always cook with olive oil but have been baking with butter, so I'm going to try switching to vegetable oil and I'll give olive oil a go in some savoury recipes.
2. Avoid trans fats completely. Check the labels on shop bought cakes, pastries and biscuits, and avoid deep fried food when eating out unless you know the type of oil used for frying.
3. Switch from butter to soft tub margarine. This argument seems to have gone on for years. The advice is that hard margarine (in a block) is less healthy than butter because it contains trans fats, soft tub margarines are healthier than butter. I've changed to spreads with plant sterols which claim to lower cholesterol, but I'm going to check out these claims in the near future.
4. Eat at least one good source of omega-3 fats each day. They recommend fatty fish (tuna and salmon), but for veggies hemp seed oil seems like a good source. See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp_oil  I'll be adding 3 teaspoons (15ml) to my food each day; and also eating a few walnuts and almonds. The American Heart Association recommends an omega-3 intake of 1000mg (ie 1 gram) per day.
5. Cut back on red meat, cheese, milk and ice cream. It's easy to substitute cheese for meat as the main source of protein, but with my cholesterol profile I've stopped buying cheese except for a little parmesan to top things like stuffed pancakes, and only use milk for coffee.

In summary – use good oils for cooking and baking (eg olive oil and liquid vegetable oil), stop eating butter and switch to a soft spread, make sure you have a daily intake of omega-3 and 6, cut back on red meat, cheese, milk and ice cream.  

Vitamins and Iron

One raw carrot per day = 100% RDA vitamin A

I really recommend the calorie counting website/app  www.myfitnesspal.com. It is an easy way to keep a track of what I am eating and of planning recipes and meals. I have found this diet to be a really good learning experience -- I have become much more interested in nutrition and what I eat. The core of myfitnesspal is keeping a food diary.

One of the best things that I've learned from keeping a food diary is that I have been short in Vitamin A and Iron.  I googled 'foods rich in Vit A' and now eat at least one raw carrot a day. Being a non meat eater, the iron isn't so easy to fix, because the sources of significant quantities of iron are all meat based -- liver is good if you're interested. (Food trivia  -- apparently before iron was available as a food supplement the only known cure for pernicious anaemia was large daily servings of raw liver -- yuk!).  I've opted for a multivitamin with Iron.  Before keeping the food diary, I was completely unaware that my diet was low in vitamins and iron. Already

I'm feeling brighter and more energetic. Is it the weight loss or did I have an iron deficiency? It really doesn't matter because I'm happy to be feeling better.