Keep it simple stupid (was: Rochester NY)

[Guest guest]

: IMO, you hit the nail on the head. In our files, we do outline simple ways of doing CRON - especially in the newbie files.

I make/eat simple meals that are easy to prepare (salads, fish, veggies etc.) and I don't bother with the megameals or extensive preparation. This has kept me on the straight and narrow for the 6 years I've been CRONing. I think it's obvious that if it requires a lot of work, most people will slack off and take the easy way out.

Thanks for your wonderful post below. Simple is better.

Everyone please note that the subject of this thread has been changed to a more suitable one and please do so when applicable

on 2/25/2006 11:25 AM, gdmedia1 at garybiz2@... wrote:

If I may interject here, in my experience, people who start out CRON

thinking that it necessarily involves laboriously making up special

meals are unlikely to continue with it.

The key, as I see it -- as as I have found over the past few years -- is

to do, primarily, one very simple thing -- change the foods you eat from

calorie-concentrated processed foods over to mostly calorie-dispersed

fruits and vegetables. In addition, eat some lean poultry, oily fish,

whole grains & nuts -- although those you have to limit a lot more

because, while they are good for you, they are also high-cal.

That's the main thing. Because these different foods are not

calorie-concentrated, you may find that you actually eat MORE food than

your non-CRON friends.

You make this change on a permanent basis. You don't just cut down on

the " bad " food, you stop eating it completely, forever. Period. That's

the only way to break the habit of eating it. But you will find that in

a few weeks or months, you are craving fresh blueberries instead of

sugary deserts. You may still crave to eat -- appetite may be

genetically passed on, not just a habit -- but you will be craving the

low-cal fruits and vegetables.

After you have changed the foods you eat, you can then cut back more on

the amount you eat, as necessary. Many CRON people, including myself,

skip lunch, but I eat quite a bit -- sometimes even stuffing myself --

at breakfast and dinner. But the foods I stuff myself with are low-cal

fruits and vegetables.

In practical terms, this means that, for breakfast, you don't have eggs

and toast, you have 6 different fruits, maybe cut up the night before

and waiting for you, cold and inviting, in the frig. For dinner, you

may have a big salad with some lean chicken or fish on top. You are not

depriving yourself or having to eat anything weird or hard to prepare.

It's food from Whole Foods or Safeway, it' s just not processed,

refined, high-glycemic, calorie-concentrated food.

I am not suggesting that there is never a struggle, never a need to

impose self-discipline. I struggle all the time. Even if I have no

temptation to eat ice cream or pot roast -- and I don't -- I still need

to resist the temptation to over-stuff. Life is struggle, there is no

getting around it. But if you just change your foods to other normal

foods -- the fruits, vegetables and limited quantities of lean meat,

whole grains, nuts etc. -- rather than to weird, hard-to-prepare " meals "

-- you will do better, be more likely to stick to CRON.

gary

austin