Thursday 28 February 2008

Cautiously Optimistic

Over the last few days, P's father seems to have been making gradual, positive progress towards a recovery. It appears that he had a stroke after his heart surgery. However, today he was able to open his mouth of his own volition to have his teeth cleaned, and he is sitting in a chair rather than lying in bed. As yet he can neither see nor speak, but we are hopeful that the system will continue to reboot and he will be back with us, fully compos mentis, very soon. Thank you for your good wishes.

INO, I found Robin's latest post today fascinating, setting as it does a hypothetical non-CRON day against a CRON one. It reminds me, not that I really need to reminding, that getting one's RDA's on a CRON diet without using software is really impossible. It's ironic that when I was using CRON-O-METER regularly, P would chastise for me disordered eating, but when I do not, and sit down with him and eat my way through a plateful of romaine quietly, he doesn't comment at all. Yet I know that that plateful of romaine really doesn't do it for me! Often I am in danger of eating unhealthily-healthily.

Today I have eaten (in order, as far as I can remember) fat-free yoghurt, LLBY, pumpkin seeds, goji berries, flax seeds (4am insomnia); a mug of hot soya milk some of which was poured on 10g of puffed spelt, almonds, and a brazil nut (2nd breakfast, like a hobbit); more yoghurt, LLBY and cinnamon (after gym); salad of romaine, cavalo nero and mustard greens with eggwhites (back to shelling my own); cooked beetroot, the kind that comes vacuum packed (because it needed eating up); some more gojis, a few more almonds, a couple of walnut halves and some more pumpkin seeds; and a baby cauliflower and a baby romanesco cauliflower with two chopped tomatoes and a little feta. I don't know the calorie count or the nutritional profile of any of that lot, because I can't get CRON-O-METER downloaded onto my new PC (something to do with the settings of IE, which I just cannot change; it keeps wanting an Active-X script running and it won't have it - any tips welcome). But as far as calories go, knowing there is no bread in there, I'd estimate it to be just under or just over 1000 cals and the nutrition to be around 80-85% vitamins and minerals. I imagine I'd be low on iron and E, and certainly on D because I've stopped taking my supplement after the latest scare. I might have some broccoli later to bump things up, but I'm about to head out to a friend's place for a movie so if she did insist on feeding me, I have room for it.

Where am I going with this? Well, I guess I would just like the reassurance that C-O-M gave me that my healthy diet was healthy, and not just pseudo-healthy, lacking in nutrients. It's not bothering me too much; I'll get C-O-M installed somehow, sometime... The other thing was that I try very hard to get P to eat healthy food when I am with him, but not my food. Quite often I make a large salad, cook greens, and we share those, but I will do meat for him - steak, or lamb, or something that looks as though it could look nice if I wasn't a rampant veggie. I'm a little distressed to find that what I thought was healthy - good steak, for instance - isn't! Still, the nutritional profile of all of the meals on R's posts could be bumped up by 200g of steamed spinach whacked on each plate, I would have thought. A small difference, but a crucial one... At least P is usually more than willing to eat his greens even if he does draw a line at a plate of kale. :-)

More off-the-cuff ramblings from me... Golden Compass now (a disappointing adaptation of a fabulous book if there ever was one).

3 comments:

Unknown said...

tip : don't use IE. This is a good general rule, independent of COM.
Download Firefox, and use that as your browser.

Oh, and best wishes for P's father ..

artifex (enjoying California sunshine - the ducks in the stream next to my office are enjoying the aftermath of last weekend, which was very wet)

Robin said...

Sara,

Fear not - there are probably healthier cuts of beef than the one I chose to analyze in COM. I just clicked on the first thing I happened to see.

You're also right that I sort of stacked the deck in CRON's favor given that I didn't include anything green and/or leafy in the "traditional" diet. The thing is a lot of people really *do* eat like that - no veggies or fruits at all - so I didn't feel it was entirely unfair. A nice side of kale would have added a lot of nutrition; however, it couldn't take away all the saturated fat and salt...

I hope P's father continues to improve. I'll be thinking of you and your fam.

Artifex, it figures the weather cleared up right after we left. Sigh.

Arturo said...

hi sara
sorry about your father in law. sometimes the body can recover by learning in other parts where the stroke did not affect the brain.
cheers,
arturo