G9 late-sleep diet tactics

I have adjusted this blogpost for a few months and it is not effective. I need to review other blogposts!

Note if home food is irresistible, then i need to eat a LOT of veg/fruits/milkshake to 90% to resist the temptation. Is this realistic?

• — some items for the “seasonal promotion”:
• delay all meals. Fight the bao3shan1 battle. Don’t give up. As illustrated in proactive^passive acceptance , Don’t accept the “fate” that I will always be powerless against the leftover food. Postpone it as far as possible  and you may succeed in fending it off once a while.
• — now the tactics
• [n] box up all the home cooked food. The tcost is acceptable. This has proven to reduce the temptation and increase my chance of successful defense.
• [n] bring the most enticing foods (meat, eggs, cakes, ice cream…) to office. The office environment is a far more controlled environment. Home is frequently an uncontrollable environment.
• [n] reward my abstinence with ice cream and milkshake?
• [n] keep lettuce pre-washed in fridge, as a (crazy) substitute for rice ! Newly discovered trick
• [n] be ready to discard some foods
• leave the home cooked food to the stressful hours, not before. Worried about sleep with a stomach filled? LG
• [n] overeat lots of raw veg, before fruits and milkshake, before the big meal, but to be effective, I must eat till I’m fed up with those foods, AND be pray that the home cooked food is not too enticing ! Basically, I’m at the mercy of …
• [n] overeat lots of filling stuff (like chia, smoothie, fruits…) to fend off the temptation of home cooked food.
• maintain starch restriction with or without weight improvement. Strengthen it whenever feasible.
• put away some of the left-over food in the fridge as early as possible. Pick the most tempting foods.[1]
  • Use big boxes if needed. Ask wife for smaller boxes, or buy them from provision shops
• Sleep earlier. That’s the most obvious solution.
  • I think 10 times I sleep late, at least once and often 9 times I would end up eating more in the extra hours.
  • early sleep may induce morning hunger — more manageable than midnight hunger
• [n=innovative]

— [1] If there’s no tempting food left, then just put everything in the fridge and reward yourself with ice-cream or something else!

This is such a easy win, but I tend to give it away and pay a high price in BMI !

—

Apparently, cooked veg, fish, meat may be bad stuff in BMI improvement, but I think they are better than starch and fat. Let us keep the current level and monitor.

 

popular diets: often low starch due to western origin

Fashionable diets of the last decades are usually created in cultures with slightly lower starch reliance. These cultures tend to have slightly higher emphasis on animal protein, milk, raw veg, thick soup.

In contrast, Chinese food culture features starch as the “main food” (主食), so most of us Chinese are brought up eating starch in every meal. Without starch, it’s hardly a meal. Majority of western meals also feature starch, but less prevalent.

So this is one reason those popular western-originate diets are unpopular among most Chinese people.

However, this reason does NOT imply it’s harder for a Chinese dieter to adopt such a diet. Many Chinese people enjoy non-Chinese cuisine including Indian, Thai.

 

##[18] foods I should eat more in office

1. raw carrot? “As much as possible” because not tasty
2. chia seeds? “As much as possible” because not tasty
3. fat-free milk? “As much as possible” because not tasty
4. fat-free yogurt
5. –fruits that I rarely eat nowadays
6. apple
7. banana
8. grapes

Even with these foods filling up my stomach I still feel a strong craving for “proper food” i.e. starch! What (less healthy) foods could reduce that craving:

• milk shake
• fancy juice
• chocolates
• peanuts

## what calorie-dense foods are binge-risky #nut

Note water content is arguably the biggest unsung hero/ having the potential to save the day.
Many otherwise binge-risky calorie-dense foods are saved by the high water content — fruits, smoothie, chendol, red-bean congee, even ice cream (with chia seed),,, The more water content, the safer, since the stomach gets filled up by the water content which serves as a binge-preventing circuit-breaker.

• nuts — prime eg. I can binge i.e. eat a lot quickly. Some people are naturally protected from this binge risk.
• creamy cakes, fried foods, chicken skin, potato salad — are the worst fatty foods. High binge risk.
• starch — I can eat a lot in one meal, including the fibrous starch like starchy roots.
• lean meat — (not KFC)
• cooked meat — I can binge iFF with rice

— a few foods with moderate binge-risks

• 🙂 chocolate? I usually don’t binge, not at the same level as cakes or potato salad.
• 🙂 avocado?? not sure. Not as tasty as cheese cakes and more natural and more fibrous.
• 🙂 fancy nuts and avocado? binge-risk is limited by cost ! Rather expensive, and seldom offered in quantity.
• — low risk
• 🙂 fish — (non-fried) I can eat quite a lot but fish is almost always low-fat, low-starch so I get filled up without too much calorie load.
• 🙂 porridge
• 🙂 whole fruits — most of us can’t eat too much fruits (with the sugar), largely thanks to the water content
  • Watermelon — i can eat a lot but not calorie dense 🙂

–fat without starch or sugar without starch are significantly less binge-risky than with-starch

• eg: cheese alone
• eg: fried peanuts and many fried nuts are not tasty
• eg: chocolates — actually i won’t eat a lot
• eg: red bean paste alone (not in a pancake) I won’t binge.
• gr8 eg: candies
• gr8 eg: raisin, dried fruits
• gr8 eg: visible sugar on biscuits and cakes
• gr8 eg: among Indian deserts, those very sweet are the least attractive

starch-alone feels more filling than fat-alone

Strangely, starch feels more filling than fat!

Protein is the new contender. I should consider protein as a viable hunger fighter.

green peas: #1 starch # 80 cal

• 🙂 high protein — “Green peas are one of the best plant-based sources of protein” [1]
• 🙂 high fiber
• 🙂 … surprisingly filling in my experience
• 🙂 relatively low calorie among starchy foods — ## low-cal foods
• 🙂 🙂 often premixed with low-cal frozen veg, enhancing fiber and calorie
• 🙂 cheap; easy to buy, store (frozen), microwave and serve with no seasoning required 🙂
• 🙂 starchy and satisfying on its own, better than rice/bread/biscuits. I can eat this regularly and in quantity.
• 14g carb out of 100g [2]
• 😦 over-eating may give you too much starch
• 🙂 compared to banana — slight less calorie, 5 times higher protein, more fiber, less sugar
• see the nutritional comparison with other starchy foods in ## lighter starch

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/green-peas-are-healthy

[2] https://www.nutrition-and-you.com/green-peas.html has USDA data

Walgreen guy on starch reduction #protein

In 2019, a young Bayonne Walgreen pharmacist told me that for the regular healthy adult, there’s a limit to how much one can safely cut starch intake. He said if you cut below that limit, your body will not get enough energy, leading to hunger.

My practical target is 0 to 500 calories of starch. I don’t aim at zero, but if you can “stay at zero” then it’s probably safe. In my experience, it is really tough [1] but actually possible to reduce starch to zero on a long-term basis.

[1] It’s tough because I avoid fat and need alternatives to replace my traditional main source of energy. Protein is promoted as the best source of energy but I doubt it.

 

Everyone2cut sugar/salt/fat…What about starch

For me, starch reduction is more important than reducing fat, sugar, salt, because I have already reduced the trio for decades.

resistant starch=subtype@fiber: half the calorie density

Research in RS is relatively new. It appears the higher the resistant starches content in a food, the fewer usable calories it will have. Since RS is incompletely digested, 100 grams of resistant starch is estimated worth 200 calories, while 100 grams of other starch gives us 400 calories. All based on nascent research.

https://www.prebiotin.com/prebiotin-academy/what-are-prebiotics/dietary-fiber/ classifies RS as a subtype of fiber.

https://fiberfacts.org/fibers-count-calories-carbohydrates/  and https://www.verywellfit.com/why-are-there-calories-in-soluble-fiber-2242320 and https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ask-the-macro-manager-does-fiber-count-in-calories.html basically equate RS to fiber.

For reference, “insoluble fiber” is supposed to be calorie-free since it is never broken down never digested. Resistant starch appears to have the same effect as fiber i.e. Adding resistant starch to meals increases feelings of fullness and makes people eat fewer calories

Many calorie counters argue that fiber (+RS) should be subtracted from total carbs when calculating and labeling calories. https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ask-the-macro-manager-does-fiber-count-in-calories.html says “If there is any caloric difference due to fiber, it’s small enough”. I agree that calorie calculation is inherently imprecise in many ways.

Here are a few foods rich in resistant starch but mostly starchy. Among them, my top choice is green banana followed by green peas.

• 1) cooked then cooled potatoes, then eaten cold
• 3) cooked then cooled white rice.
  • Brown rice offers same amount of resistant starch but offers more fiber.
• 2) green banana — its resistant starch slowly becomes regular starch when it ripens.

calorie ] boiled rice^bread #h2o

Bread is more convenient; rice is more tasty but addictive

• boiled white rice = 130 cal/100g, some site say 120 cal
• wheat bread = 270 cal/100g

My son’s dietitian said one big slice of bread is one serving, as a bowl of boiled rice. I was incredulous but now I think the two-fold difference above is presumably due to water content as boiled rice has a lot of water. Bread is so MUCH dryer and always[1] requires a liquid as companion.

That’s perhaps why western culture always has a soup or drink to go with bread. Chinese rice culture doesn’t encourage any drink, and soup is optional.

I think boiled rice is slightly healthier than drained cooked rice sold in U.S. and Indian restaurants.

[1] Personal experience — Out of 10 times I eat bread, I have required drinks 10 times, without exception.