April's CR Diary: A Memo Regarding Swedish Fish

January 17, 2007

A Memo Regarding Swedish Fish

One of the keys to successful long term CR, or even weight loss, is to make your own personal food environment less obesogenic. In other words, don't fill your house/office/car/space with food you don't want to eat but find hard to resist.

Another CR blogger, Emily I think, had a Swedish fish problem as of late. I too have been a victim of the evil gummy red fish. A few months ago, back in November, I had an encounter of the obesogenic kind with Swedish fish at a work meeting. I hadn't gotten lunch due to a closed Subway on my route, it was late and my dinner was going to be even later, and then I encountered a bowl of Swedish fish.

I love Swedish fish. Now, if I were to plan for it and include it in my calorie and nutrient counts for the day, I could have Swedish fish. There are no forbidden foods on CR! But really, do I need Swedish fish? I do not. It's so easy to shovel the little critters one after the other into the mouth. Since I have bad reactions to high carb meals, I of all people need to avoid the school of Swedish fish.

To that end, I wrote this memo to Luke, whom I am going to visit/supervise in Scranton tomorrow:

RE: Swedish Fish

Can you please hide all the Swedish fish and gummi bears and any other candy in the office prior to my arrival?

I'm sufficiently low on calories these days that I really don't need to deal with temptation.

Your efforts in this matter are much appreciated.

Thank you,
a

The fact of the matter is, as you get deeper into your CR practice, you develop more self-discipline and strategies to handle encounters of the obesogenic kind. You may not be invincible (I'm not, though my freaky space alien boyfriend is) but you get pretty good at deciding, as an act of conscious application of will, what you want to eat, and then eating it, and only it. The flip side is that as you get lighter and lighter and lower and lower on calories, you're closer to being hungry. Most of us are not hungry on a regular basis, except right before meals. But when we're confronted with objects like Swedish fish, we have more real hunger than we had when we were carrying forty pound fuel tanks of fat and could survive a famine while carrying twins and still come out looking decent in an Ann Taylor size six petite suit. So on a biological level, we're even more tempted. It takes more work to turn off that automatic part of the brain that says to eat.

Ergo the Swedish fish must go. Call me a food Nazi if you want, but the freedoms of others will not be irrevocably impinged upon because I asked Luke to remove the Swedish fish from our Scranton office before my vist. Where in the Bill of Rights does it say that every American has the right to a bowl of candy in every room? Those who want Swedish fish can buy them. They don't need to live in my office.

I really don't know how people who have to live with junk food eaters do it. If I get hungry and want a fast, easy, yummy snack, I grab a pint of grape tomatoes and eat it standing in front of the fridge. That's not many calories, I weigh it in advance and calculate it in, and it's extremely healthy stuff. There are no Little Debbies, Doritos or Triscuits in our household. So there is no reason to even think we would eat that stuff. Ridding your immediate environment of unhealthy food is one of the first steps to getting junk food out of your diet, but if you can't do that because you live with unhealthy eaters, you're going to have a harder time than we do. My hat is off to any of you who can deal with a junk food filled house. I'd rather just not have the stuff around. Isn't life difficult enough without fighting our biological programming that says "You're dipping way below your set point! EAT THE SWEDISH FISH! Put on weight so you can carry twins through a famine!"

Anyhow, here's today's crunch. Pretty low key day. Quotidian breakfast, quotidian lunch, then I couldn't figure out how to work the new version of CRON-O-Meter so I wasn't sure what I was low on before dinner. One of my favorite tricks (which I learned from Mary) is to crunch my day right before dinner so I know what to fill in. On days when I eat my megamuffin and my regular salad with yogurt for lunch, I don't have too many gaps. But today, I couldn't crunch due to CRON-o-Meter problems (which were actually my problems, not Aaron's... I have trouble adjusting to new software, which is why I used DWIDP religiously until a few months ago when MR all but insisted I switch. Of course I love CRON-O-Meter so much more, but I am a terrible creature of software habit and I had to be ripped screaming from my DWIDP) so I ate another one of my salads (I had an extra in the fridge) with a cup of yogurt and two tablespoons of salsa, along with my second teaspoon of flax oil, another 17 g almonds, and my usual glass of red wine (Ravenswood again, there was a great sale.) After dinner I got the CRON-O-Meter new version to work, so here's the crunch:

Nutrition Summary for January 17, 2007
General (76%)
Energy 1236.1 kcal 63%
Protein 88.6 g 177%
Fat 34.5 g 53%
Carbs 127.6 g 43%
Fiber 33.0 g 132%
Water 1877.6 g 125%
Vitamins (92%)
Vitamin A 37051.6 IU 1235%
Folate 694.1 mcg 174%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.0 mg 168%
B2 (Riboflavin) 4.1 mg 312%
B3 (Niacin) 18.0 mg 112%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 6.4 mg 128%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.4 mg 142%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 3.2 mcg 132%
Vitamin C 295.7 mg 329%
Vitamin D 6.2 IU 2%
Vitamin E 14.7 mg 98%
Vitamin K 1267.7 mcg 1056%
Minerals (100%)
Calcium 1675.3 mg 120%
Copper 2.3 mg 258%
Iron 14.0 mg 175%
Magnesium 489.5 mg 117%
Manganese 5.1 mg 223%
Phosphorus 1890.6 mg 270%
Potassium 5498.5 mg 117%
Selenium 111.7 mcg 203%
Sodium 1972.2 mg 152%
Zinc 15.0 mg 136%
Lipids (15%)
Saturated 3.8 g 19%
Cholesterol 30.8 g 10%

I'm packing megamuffins for my trip to Scranton tomorrow, but I'll be home for dinner, so it won't be a rough day. As long as Luke hides the Swedish fish.

Posted by april at January 17, 2007 8:38 PM

Comments

Must I point out the irony here of a union organizer taking a stance against workplace freedom?

Posted by: Coco Seven Mile at January 17, 2007 6:54 PM

Sorry to hear the COM did not work for you. It's very cool. I crunch my numbers too before dinner.. but then I have to head back out again and never really get to the dinner part. :( 35 pieces of goldfish later (I have junk food in my pantry, yes, it's sad but true) I'll have to just let the night go..gold fish and all. At least it's not chocolate, ice cream, potato chips or Swedish Fish (Tho my daughter did get some for Christmas and they do tend to jump out at you at the oddest moments). Again, I thank you for your very nice post and discussion and it all certainly is food for thought.

Posted by: Deborah at January 17, 2007 7:05 PM

O.K., so I live in a foreign country, but what the HELL are Swedish fish? I'm assuming you don't mean pickled herring..... JD ;-)

Posted by: Judith at January 17, 2007 7:53 PM

Oh WHO'S NEXT, APRIL? BJORN? AGNETHA?

Yeah, hide the Swedish fish?! Like where, for instance? In a GHETTO? Should they wear little stars labeling them as of an impure caloric race? Next thing you know, you're smashing in the windows of a sweet shop on your own personal Candynaccht.

You know what they say - they came first for the candy dots. And I didn't speak up because I didn't really dig on the candy dots. Then they came for the Jujubees. And I didn't speak up because I don't care for Jujubees. Then they came for the Twizzlers, and I didn't speak up because I'm not into chocolate. Then they came for the Cadbury bunnies, and I didn't speak up because I prefer Peeps. Then they came for the Peeps, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Just. Think. About. THAT.

Posted by: A. Meeks at January 17, 2007 8:38 PM

I'm American and I've never heard of Swedish fish either. Is it code for something else :-)?

Posted by: Amy Wright at January 18, 2007 6:38 AM

If you're using the CRON-o-Meter now, does that mean you're no longer tracking biotin & chromium? I've been wondering if I should buy software so I can track those, since they're not in the database. But perhaps it doesn't really matter. . .

I'm definitely with you on the get-the-junk-out theory of CRON - it just makes it infinitely easier to eat the right things. At the moment, I'm living with flatmates who eat junk, but we keep our food separate. This means I'm tempted by their food, but not allowed to eat it. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I move back home in a couple weeks. My parents are generally okay with not having cookies and candy around, but my dad loves ice cream, and there's always cereal. . . cereal is, for some unknown reason, the one food I cannot eat just a little of and must avoid at all costs.

Posted by: Emily at January 18, 2007 6:56 AM

Swedish fish are little red gummi candies, gummi fish if you will. Not pickled herring. :)

Biotin and chromium, straight from the mouth of MR: there isn't sufficient information in any of the nutrition databases on the amounts of these, so if you tried to track them you'd always think you were under the RDA.

Hope that helps!

Posted by: April at January 18, 2007 7:01 AM

Food Nazi! Just kidding. I totally understand what you are saying. I am gluten-free, but my SO and his two teens are not. There was very little food in the house one night, and they ordered a pizza (one of my most-missed trigger foods), and I was in tears about starving in the House of Sugar Snacks. While the gluten-free is not as severe as CR, I can appreciate how long it takes to "re-wire" and not have those triggers set you off.

Posted by: Gina at January 18, 2007 9:09 AM

April's CR Diary

January 17, 2007

A Memo Regarding Swedish Fish

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