Nut to the Nut

A wide selection of 'nuts.

The dietitian said I needed to reduce my daily calorie consumption from 2200-2350 to 2000-2200. Looking at what I eat, I was a little bit disturbed to find that most of what I ate was relatively nutrition-dense -- vegetables both raw and cooked, minimal grain and bread, barely any dairy, mostly lean chicken and fish, no sweets to speak of. The only glaring thing that was obvious to remove was my life-time habit of indulging in Fritos, and more recently Cheetos. It was a 300 calorie hit of processed yumminess that allowed me to feel indulged and undenied on a daily basis while actively losing weight. I excused it because it fit into my calorie budget. But now it didn't.

The Cheetos and Fritos had to go, if only because of the calories, but I also knew in my heart of hearts it's crap. It's the hyper-processed industrial product that I know to be part of the root of so many ills, and more importantly it's one of the few foods my kids always see me eat, and now indulge in with me. 

My first officially self-generated meme photo. -sniff- -sniff-, I knew I'd be a real blogger one day....

It's part of the grand American Puritan tradition to deny yo' self any sort of pleasure that could be linked to the deadly sins, like sex (LUST!), money (GREED!) and of course eating (GLUTTONY!) While by cutting out this one treat, it's probably not going to send me into a cycle of self-flagellation resulting with me being the middle-aged male king of Ana, I have to be wary of leaning on my self-control and will-power too much. It's THAT way of approaching things that prevented me from taking real action on getting control over my diet for so many years. 

It made me doubly concerned that for several days, my calorie count would come in more than a few hundred below my 2000 lower limit. After a couple of days of that, my will-power breaks -- not a good habit to get into. I briefly started reincorporating some 'tos to keep within in my new lower budget, but that didn't feel right. One night I was riding home on my bike, scarfing a bag of Cheetos to give me enough go-power to get home for a proper dinner. Sure, I was still in budget, but getting my bike gloves all cheesy and riding with one hand was just....stupid. The next week I did the same thing, but based on reading this piece in the blog section of the Times, replaced the rather unwieldy bag of 300 calories worth of cheetos with a single mouthful of 300 calories worth of roasted, salted almonds. CLICK

Consistent evidence for the health benefits of nuts has been accumulating since the early 1990s. Frequent nut consumption has been linked to a reduced risk of major chronic diseases, including heart and blood vessel disorders and Type 2 diabetes.

Just chronic disease? That's all well and good, but I got to slot these babies into a limited-calorie budget! I had already been harnessing the naturally calorie dense package of the nut into my nut-filled home made granola power-bars for my bike riding, and eating almonds twice a week, once as a condiment for yogurt, once as the filling in nut butter form in a sandwich. Could this ALSO be a solution to the Frito-sized hole in my diet? 

Snack-sized hole, hole-sized snacks, google image does not care one wit.

I guess I wasn't the only one experiencing the "CLICK", because the paper did a proper follow up in the Health section, siting more research and theories, specifically nuts as a way to lose weight. Yeah, nuts are full o' the EVIL fat, but...

But perhaps the most startling news is that nuts may help in maintaining a healthy weight. Research has found that people can snack on modest amounts of them without gaining pounds, and that nuts can even help in slimming down.
This dieting power is particularly hard to fathom when you consider that nuts pack 160 to 200 calories in each tiny ounce, not even a handful. And most of those calories come from fat. Ounce for ounce, cashews and pecans and walnuts are loaded with more calories than many of the processed foods being blamed for the surge in obesity. In the conventional wisdom, a dieter’s best friends are watery foods like celery and carrot sticks......

Nuts have several big things going for them, Dr. Mattes said. For starters, even a small amount can make you feel full. Scientists call this feeling satiety; it is a busy field in food research and marketing these days, given the way that snacking has become a sort of fourth meal, adding an estimated 580 calories to the average person’s daily consumption.
Why do nuts appease the appetite so well? Dr. Mattes pointed to several studies.
“They’re high in protein, and protein is satiating,” he said. “They’re high in fiber, and fiber is satiating. They’re rich in unsaturated fats, and there is some literature that suggests that has satiety value. They’re crunchy, and that would suggest just the mechanical aspect of chewing generates a satiety signal.”

I'm all cool with the less-processed-the-better and the thinking behind integrating more raw foods into our diets, but with a few notable exceptions, "dry roasting" a nut will be much more flavorful than a raw nut. It's easy to understand why -- it is dry roasted (roasted without any added oil) because those little buggers are already full o' oil -- they're self lubricated, and essentially deep fry in themselves when you bake them! And I don't care where you stand on the healthiness of deep fried food: as an American, it is your job to proclaim any deep-fried food as delicious!

And it gets better!

Nuts are also resistant to digestion, thanks to the tough walls of their cells. As much as one-fifth of the fat in nuts never gets absorbed by the body, Dr. Mattes estimated in a 2008 paper published by The Journal of Nutrition. He noted some weaker evidence that nuts may cause people to burn a little more energy as they simply sit around.
Even the fat that the body absorbs from nuts tends to be virtuous. It’s mostly unsaturated fat, with lesser amounts of the saturated type whose excessive consumption has been associated with heart disease.

To be fair, a problem with nuts is that they're so much like deep fried processed junk, they're easy to over eat and gorge on, negating their healthy aspects. Regardless, I think life gonna get slightly nuttier, now that I have this new tool to steer myself away from life-long Frito consumption.

I always wanted to be a nutty boy.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2751

Oof. Happy New Year indeed. Holiday eating. Reset, let's get back on track next week. Between time off from work, snow storms interrupting routine, a trip north to visit my brother and the chaos ripping through my non-blog life the past few weeks, I guess this could have been worse if I wasn't mindful enough to write it all down here.

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MONDAY COUNT: 1990

SLEPT: 10:30pm-6am, 7.5 hr
Half day at work, errands to run. Despite the schedule being thrown into turmoil, kept the food in check. Good work out in the morning. Surprised to find myself slightly sore when putting myself to bed.

AM SNACK: 6:15 am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:15am, steel cut oatmeal, 410

LUNCH: 1pm, falafel, tomato soup, health salad, pickles, 760 cal

PM SNACK: 3:15 pm, momma salad, babaganoush, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 4 pm, poppa salad with bottled organic ranch dressing, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:30pm, shirataki stir fry with shrimp, shitaki mushrooms and oyster sauce, 360 cal 

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TUESDAY COUNT: 3030

SLEPT: 10pm-4am, 6 hr
Decent work out this morning.

AM SNACK: 4:15 am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9am, fage whole yogurt with agave, vanilla and almonds, 310 cal

AM SNACK: 9:30am, popcorn, diet coke, 500 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, almond butter & grape jelly on whole wheat, pickles, momma salad, 610 cal

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, poppa salad with bottled organic ranch dressing, 150 cal

DINNER: 5:30pm, slice of streetza, +/- 300 cal

PARTY EATS: 6:30pm, spagetti & meatballs, cookies, cheese n' crackers, 1 beer, +/- 1000 cal

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BIKE CREDIT: 825 cal
WEDNESDAY COUNT: 3385

SLEPT: 8pm-2am, 6 hr
Early up to ride in the cold, through Times Square. Nice head-clearing way to start the year. Not the best, food-wise, but not self-harming, either.

AM SNACK: 2:15am, M&Ms, cashews, iced green tea, 100 mg caffeine, +/- 200 cal

BIKE SNACK: 6am, granola bar, 350 cal

BREAKFAST: 9am, BLT on bagel, home fries, diet coke, +/- 800 cal

AM SNACK: 10:30am, large fistful of roasted, salted cashews, +/-500 cal

AM SNACK: 11:15am, bite of Edie's granola bar

LUNCH: 12:30pm, Stouffer's french bread pizzas, 860 cal

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, cashews and chocolate chips, +/- 500 cal

PARTY EATS: 3pm, queso & chips, gumbo over rice with mac n' cheese n' greens, cake & ice cream, 1 beer, +/- 1000 cal
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THURSDAY COUNT: 1905
SLEPT: 7:30pm - 6am, 10.5 hours
Intended to wake at 4 to lift, but woke up deeply tired, still sore from Tuesday's lift and beat up from yesterday's cold ride. Woke up feeling strong, so this was definitely the right thing to do.

AM SNACK: 6:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, steel cut oatmeal, 410

LUNCH: 1pm, berbere chicken, steamed string beans, Indian spinach n' cheese, pickles, 600 cal

PM SNACK: 3:15 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, poppa salad with bottled organic ranch dressing, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:30pm, Subway 6" veggie burger sub, diet coke, 435
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FRIDAY COUNT: 3445
SLEPT: 12am - 5:30am, 5.5 hours
Would have gone to sleep a little earlier and woken up at 4 for weights, but snow storm had the baby sitter sleep in the same space that I'd be lifting

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 8:45am, fage whole yogurt with agave, vanilla and almonds, 310 cal

AM SNACK: 11am, bowls of special k, bowl of raisin bran, with whole milk, +/- 650 cal
Quiet day in the office, hungry. Free food, too hungry. Ugg. Reminds me of childhood. They also had honey-nut cheerios and frosted flakes, which are just nasty. These were my ur-foods, so comforting...

PM SNACK: 2:30 pm, momma salad, hummus, pickles 170 cal

PM SNACK: 3:15pm, BBQ pistachoes from graze box, 105 cal

PM SNACK; 3:45pm, cup of sugared cereal, +/- 300 cal

DINNER: 4:45pm, chicken burrito, chips & salsa, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookie, +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 5:30pm, 3 slices of cold pizza, +/- 750 cal
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WEEKEND REPORT

SATURDAY COUNT: 3600
SLEPT: 8:30pm-5:30am, 9 hours

AM SNACK: 5:45am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 7am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal
Had an extra juice pack due to the holidays.

BREAKFAST 2: 8am, WF breakfast bar small box, +/- 400 cal

AM SNACK: 11am, roasted salted cashews, 160 cal

PM SNACK: 12:30pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, mahi mahi, roasted brussels, whole wheat cous cous, kimchi, 830 cal

PM SNACK: 2pm, small bowl of cheesy poofs, +/- 150 cal

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, large bowl of chocolate chips and almonds, +/- 800 cal

DINNER: 6pm, sweet & sour chicken, pork fried rice, egg roll, diet coke, +/- 1000 cal

SUNDAY
SLEPT: 8:30pm - 2:45am, 6.25 hours

AM SNACK: 3am, iced green tea, small amount of chocolate chips, cashews and cheetos

AM SNACK: 6:30am, donut

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, sausage mcmuffin, hash browns, diet coke

LUNCH: 12:15pm, 1.5 bagels with cream cheese & hummus, water

DINNER: 4:15pm, quarter pounder, fries, diet coke

EVENING SNACK: 6:45pm, vanilla ice cream cone

EVENING SNACK: 8:30pm, slice of streetza

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, cheese doodles