The CRON Diet: The Fountain of Youth

 

Alright, last week I promised to write a bit about the diet that I truly believe will greatly extend your life as well as help you live better. Would you believe that you can get those huge benefits from just what you put in your mouth? It’s true. There is a diet that really improves your health and extends your life.

The diet I’m talking about is known as the CRON diet (Calorie Restriction, Optimum Nutrition). The idea is that you will keep your calorie intake down enough to keep lean while still giving your body all the supportive energizing nutrition to stay healthy.

Studies of this particular diet showed significant increases in longevity and health in laboratory mice. I certainly noticed it in myself when I changed my eating habits to follow a CRON diet. I’ve had more energy, lost weight, seen much better ease of movement, and I feel so much better. I really believe that this diet will extend my life by quite a few years. Who wouldn’t want all that?

This diet is not as difficult as it may sound at first. You don’t have to go hungry. You just need to make better food choices and watch your portions. Here are the basic guidelines.

1. Focus on eating low calorie, high nutrition foods, such as fruits and veggies.
2. Eat just a couple small servings of protein in the form of fish, lean meats, nuts, beans, soy, and egg white.
3. Greatly reduce eating processed foods and sugary drinks.
4. Cut back on high calorie, minimally nutritious fats except omega 3 fatty acids found in fish and flaxseed.
5. Cut back on starches although it is okay to eat small portions of whole grains.
6. Eat 4 or 5 small balanced meals throughout the day rather than 2 or 3 big meals.

Follow these guidelines and learn to eat well before you try to lose weight. Once you start eating more nutritious, lower calorie foods, you can start cutting back on total calories to reach your optimum weight. Lose weight slowly, at a rate of 1%-2% of your present weight per month. This gives your body time to adjust which is easier on you and makes it more likely that the weight will stay off.

Now, that’s not a very scary or difficult diet to follow, is it? There are no special foods or special preparations. There’s just your determination to be good to yourself. Go ahead and discuss this with your doctor and find out what a good target weight is for you and then go for it!

You might want to look over the calorie restriction website, www.crsociety.com to find a good book or two on this subject. I think if this gives you much better health and extends your life by quite a bit it’s certainly worth the effort!

Next week, I want to talk more about health and how critical it is to keep moving, especially as you get older. Keep running or jogging as long as you can and, if you really can’t run, at least walk. Walking can extend your life and raise your health to very high levels. Believe it or not, I walked approximately 3600 miles in the great year of 2019 and, wow, did it ever feel good. Now in 2020 I’ve set more walking goals along with those low-calorie goals. It’s going to be a good year!

The Magic of Small Steps

Everything you do is comprised of many small steps, tasks and moments. As mentioned last week, if you can break down your goals into these very small steps and just aim to accomplish each small thing, one at a time, you are more likely to be successful and will avoid feeling overwhelmed. Let’s take a goal that is on a lot of people’s minds this time of year—not gaining weight through the holidays. Whether you want to avoid gaining those holiday pounds or want to actually lose weight, here’s the thing you should try because it really does work!

Let’s say you’ve decided to set a goal to get back to your high school weight and stay there the rest of your life (and I do believe it’s always a better to set a permanent goal rather than just saying you’re going to lose X number of pounds which can be perceived as temporary). Once you have your big weight loss goal set, push it out of your mind and begin working on what it will take just TODAY or just THIS HOUR or just THIS MINUTE to keep moving towards that goal. And when you have gotten through that day or hour or minute (not doubt successfully!) do the same for the next small increment you know you can meet.

Taking on only small goals is about setting small time frames as well as small, easy to accomplish tasks. For instance, one trick that studies suggest is very effective when it comes to setting super small, short goals while at the same time building self-discipline is to not completely deny yourself the thing you want but rather, delay it. Say you have decided that you are not going to snack between meals but now it’s an hour before dinner and you are craving a treat that’s calling your name and the craving is driving you nuts. What you do is say to yourself “Ok. I’m going to give in and allow myself to have that treat BUT I’m going to wait 15 more minutes.” If you are like most people who have tried this you’ll start watching the clock and counting down the minutes, but when the 15 minutes have passed you’ll no doubt feel quite good about yourself and your self-discipline. That in itself is a treat and a reward. You have proved to yourself that you can in fact postpone a little pleasure so why not try another 15 minute delay in gratification? And after that 15 minutes do another and another till it’s time to eat dinner and you may or may not even desire that treat after a good well balanced meal.

You can do this same delay technique when you want to take a break from your work out or stop working for the day or crave a cigarette. Just give yourself small time goals to get past and see yourself get through the trying time with relative ease.

Using super small goals and steps can and will work especially if you practice breaking your goals down to manageable small items or blocks of time and do this every day. Try this on multiple types of goals that you set for yourself and you’ll see just how much you can accomplish one small step at a time.