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I've been living the CRONlicious life for over a week now. It's going really great :) I would like to emphasize fabulous!!! It's a whole new way of looking, feeling and thinking about food. I always like to change and switch the way I do things especially around food and anything that I do with my mind and body. Food that we eat is just one kind of food but I consider other factors in life are like food in that it can provide a different form of nourishment and just as important just not the kind you chew or put in your mouth. I will expand on this more later on...

I would like to share my experiences, findings and thoughts as well as results from my newly adopted CRON, Raw, whole foods, Paleo regime. As I said I like to mix things a bit and this is what I've come up with lately. Using the CRONometer helped me realize my past mistakes and challenges all within a matter of a week and a few days. Of course with insights from reading plenty of CRON-ers or ies (still not sure what the terminology is???) I'm starting to get the why's, how's and what's of my previous dietary choices.

Almost all the blogs that are health, diet and fitness related that I went and read gave me tremendous insights and more knowledge as to what can potentially work for me long term. I also discovered a few new interpretation on what constitutes health and what some consider balance.

There was one phrase I read somewhere that someone advocating balance just means they lack self-control. These days balance equates having a day or moments where one eats indiscrimanately and not think about calories, bad fats and weight gain. It can also mean not worrying or thinking about the consequences of our choices. Is it healthy to step on the scale of balance??? I can only speak for myself of course because it's all a matter of control. There it goes control. Can balance and control co-exist in the world of food and calorie choices? What can our primal insticts drive us to do or become? When is it necessary to listen to those primal drives and when is it a good idea to soothe or appease it or order it to shut up and vanish at least for the time being?

Just some of the questions that popped in my head as I write my first post. I'm sure I'll come up with more as I go through more blogs.

I'm a newbie with blog posting will refine as I go along.

Well, with regard to food intake, a switch from Paleo High Raw lifestyle and integrating CRON was not much of a stretch. Once I started plugging in food into the COM, I was actually surprised that it came out pretty low. When I ate out, I usually plug the estimates on the high side to make room for those hidden calories they put in restaurant food. I started on St. Patty's Day. I love green and indeed can eat about a pound of the stuff a day so fittingly enough I started CRON on Green day :)

The highest calorie intake since I started COM ten days ago, was 1500 and to a low of 700+. What I do though is really not try and achieve the same amount of calories each day because I also practice IF (Intermittent Fasting). I find that when I exercise esp. in the morning, I prefer to be in a fasted state for at least 12 hours or more at times depending on mood and energy levels. What's really interesting is seeing what vits and mins I lack on a consistent basis based on most foods I eat. I experiment by varying different kinds of vegetables, fruits, nuts etc. The only thing I eat cooked are flesh foods. This has taken some time to get used to ever since adopting Paleo. I was raw vegan for a few years. The first few attempts at eating flesh food, I felt really ill. I'm still coming up quite low on the protein department but remedying this by adding more raw cheese. This is of course goes against the grain of the Paleo ideology but I don't have any reactions to dairy so I use it as a condiment to balance out my nutrients. I also don't eat any form of grains and legumes. On occassion, I eat quinoa usually sprouted but quinoa is really a seed and no gluten as well high in protein.

I have cut back on fruits because when I was raw vegan I basically ate mostly fruits and veges some nuts and sprouted seeds. I switched because of several things, my hair started to thin despite loads of greens, hemp products and additional supplements to make sure that I had adequate B12, and iron levels. I also noticed a change in cycle so this alarmed me. I went to get some blood work done and my iron levels were so low that it was even lower than the bare minimum required. I supplemented with a plant based supplement but seems my body was not absorbing. I decided health comes first, so experimented with adding back some flesh foods. It's gotten better and switched a few things as well how I exercise. I'm still working out the macronutrients balance. I feel fine with an average of 65 g of protein but I try and up it if I'm doing any intense physical activity.

I'll try and play around with this and see what I come up with. I look forward to reading and hearing about other CRON blogs and sites.

GG