Cronometer lets me stay in control

ianmac

For years I've known about the ketogenic diet, but my weight gradually crept up. I read Dr Mercola's book, and it seemed good, but it was mostly about what I THOUGHT that I was already doing.

I'm 77 years old and my body fat percentage had crept up to 22%. A man should be between 10% and 20% and a woman between 20% and 30% so I was out of my own territory.
So I followed Mercola's advice and started to use Cronometer.

Was I in for a surprise. I was eating a lot more than I thought.

Starting at the end of August I weighed 73Kg (161lb) and was down to 70.9Kg by the third of July. I had to cut down my protein by about half and discovered to my horror that many of my favourite vegetables have high calories even though they have low carbohydrates.

Using the foods section of Cronometer, I was able to create an XL table showing the proteins, carbs, fats, and calories in my favourite foods and sort them into order by calories.

After that, it was a simple matter to choose which foods to cut out during my weight loss and put back again when I wanted to level out.

In nine weeks I had reached my target of 12% body fat with a weight of 60Kg, so now my problem is to level out correctly. You see, I keep eating about 300 calories more than Cronometer says that I should eat to level out, and my body fat keeps creeping down.

One problem is that nobody has done analyses on many of the foods that I like to eat. So I have to list unripe fava bean pods as green beans. I managed to create a food for milk thistle and nasturtium flowers. But what about things like Aptenia cordifolia that I've got growing all over my garden as ground-cover? What about beetroot leaves, radish leaves, broccoli leaves, turnip leaves, chayote leaves, etc - and that's even before I start eating garden snails.

I'll just have to lump everything together as greens, but that misses the point about their micronutrients. Fava bean leaves are supposed to be the richest source of potassium, but I haven't seen any figures anywhere, so I can't use them in Cronometer.

Hilary

Hi @ianmac; Wow! It sounds like your jouney on a Ketogenic Diet has been really successful; Congratulations! Glad to hear Cronometer has helped you out.

I'm also impressed by the sounds of your Garden; So jealous! You are in luck though! Cronometer actually has quite a bit of High quality data with close to complete micronutrients for a number of the plants you mention - and snails too! Here is a list of specific search terms for you to add to your food diary. In the Search Bar you can search for either the specific food number, or the name. If you are eating some of the greens cooked there are also entries for those as well!

Food #1265; Beans, Fava, In Pod, Raw
Food #465095; Beet Greens, Raw
Food #455462; Turnip Greens, Raw
Food #7175; Broccoli, leaves, raw
Food #463239; Snails

If you are having trouble searching for foods in the database, check out https://cronometer.com/help/diary/#foods.

Once again Congrats on reaching your goals!
-Hilary

LCHF

@ianmac - I don't know where you live, but if you speak British English, then when you can't find a food try googling to see if there is an alternative American English name. It took me aaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to work out that heavy whipping cream is the American equivalent of the British double cream!

I also find putting in a minimal number of search words is better than being too specific. I tend to put one (or possibly two) word(s) in for the actual food and then "raw", "cooked" or "canned" as appropriate and then scroll through the list to find what I'm looking for. It's rare that I don't find a match with these two approaches. For example, to find your fava beans I'd first type in "Beans Fava Raw" and then search through the list to see what options it has, and if that fails then try again with "Beans raw". Or I'd type in "salmon canned" and then select from the options available. Always type your search in the order: (Food group) (specific food type) (further details) (raw/cooked/canned) - this is the order used to name the foods and using the same method to search for them seems to give the best results.

ianmac

Thanks LCHF and Hilary for your helpful and useful suggestions. I'll definitely use them. It's my own fault for not sticking to conventional foods. I've just put down 5Kg of fermented broad beans and leaves with a couple of hundred grams of parsley. Instead of water I used one and a half litres of watermelon (which is nearly all water). I'm not even going to try to get a good analysis. I'll just treat it as sauerkraut.
I'm having some difficulty levelling off. I wanted to level off at 12% body fat, but I'm down to ten now. I seem to need about 350 more KCalories than Cronometer says.
I live in Australia, but my parents are Scottish, so I speak UK English.

ianmac

No two people are the same. Start with the figures suggested, then trim them a little at a time till you get the results that you want. You may be burning more energy than the typical person.
Remember too that measurement of body fat is never absolutely accurate. I like to use a calculated method from tape measurements, and the caliper method. They rarely agree exactly.