March 31, 2005
And What Would You Suggest?
[Disclaimer: I have no idea what Jay Olshansky ate yesterday.]
My friend Lisa, who was the best organizer I ever worked with, had a great way of handling criticism. When someone would tell her that they didn't like what she was doing, she would say, "And what would you suggest?" This was effective, because nine times out of ten, the person would have no alternate plan to recommend, and it would be clear that he or she was blowing off steam more than constructively criticizing. On the occasion when someone did have something to suggest, they would then put it forward and all rational options could be discussed.
I remembered Lisa's criticism trick yesterday when I watched a debate between Aubrey de Grey and Jay Olshansky at BIOMEDEX, a conference of biotech and related companies in Montreal. The debate was, as always, on the foreseeability of radical anti-aging biomedicine. Aubrey started off with a presentation of his SENS approach (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens if you've been hiding under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about), and also pointed out numerous occasions on which Dr. Olshansky has agreed that some kind of extension of lifespan through bio-medicine is likely at some point in the near future. Aubrey laid out the seven deadly things that kill you, along with the reasons to believe we can fix them, in enough detail that the audience was clearly getting it. I wondered how Olshansky was going to respond, as he's a demographer, not a biologist, and therefore I thought unlikely to take Aubrey on about the specifics of the SENS approach.
I was right that Dr. Olshansky avoided the specifics. There were many points to his talk, and I won't attempt to summarize them all. I thought that his presentation was very well done, and to be honest, I said a loud "Amen, brother" to many of his points. You're surprised by that, aren't you? Well, let me tell you why I was really warming up to Olshansky by the end of his talk, but why this story ends with me getting into bed with MR last night (after 38 hours without sleep) and announcing, "I got into a fight with Jay Olshansky!"
As I said, Olshansky didn't take de Grey on when it comes to biology. Instead he tried to convince the audience that radically extended lifespans should not be our goal. Rather, he suggested that we should focus on three things: a) Improving public health b) postponing the period of time when people are in age-related decline c) improving people's functioning right now.
Well, well, well. You're singing one of my favorite songs there, brother. As anyone who has known me for a long time, or anyone who has read the unpublished blog entry "The Two Are Inextricably Intertwined Over the Medium Term" knows, up until the very instant that I was converted into an Mprize volunteer, I was passionate about food and health as a public health issue. While I recognized the difficult of converting others to CR, I believed (and continue to believe) that encouraging people to do even a moderate version of CR would be a worthwhile endeavor. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why I started this blog that you've come to know and (I hope) love. So as Dr. Olshansky is showing graph after horrifying graph of the rise in obsity, especially in children, and urging that we should do something about it, I'm about to jump up and start clapping, all the while thinking, "Hey, I'm supposed to be rooting for the other guy, the one with the beard!"
Now here's where I disagree with Dr. Olshansky: While I think that we should be putting energy and public health into ending obesity, I don't think that we should do that to the exclusion of focusing medical research dollars on a real cure for aging. And I don't think that taking about the foreseeability of radical anti-aging medicine is going to discourage people from taking on the obesity crisis. The number of Mprize volunteers who are also CR practitioners makes the opposite argument: people who take seriously the possibility of radical anti-aging medicine are just as likely to take better care of themselves than worse. In any case, I doubt that there is anyone out there finishing off his second pint of Ben and Jerry's and thinking, "It'll all be okay because Aubrey de Grey says we can cure aging. Pass the mashed potatoes!"
I am also in general very discouraged about the idea that most people will *voluntarily* do much of anything to improve their own health. One of the reasons why I find working with the Mprize very personally satisfying is that my efforts will help people, whether they have the self-discipline to help themselves or not. I know that most people won't do CR. Most people won't even adopt the pathetically weak recommendations of public health "authorities" -- even the authorities themselves aren't models of what they preach! I mean, hello! People who live and work with the evidence that the standard American diet is deadly keep eating crap, so I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that anything short of coercion is going to get the masses to eat less. But if we are successful in our efforts at the Mprize, we can help bring about rejuvenation therapies that won't be so darned difficult for people.
But here's Dr. Olshansky talking about how we should put our energy into public health, increasing the time in which people are youthful and healthy, and improving people's functioning right now. All three things that my mission to convert more people to CR is supposed to accomplish.
So I was expecting to walk up to Jay Olshansky after the debate and start a happy chat about how much better everything would be if lots and lots of people would do at least moderate CR. I pointed out that CR will get us most of the benefits he outlines in his three goals, and that Luigi Fontana is studying CR'd humans and finding excellent health results.
Olshansky said that he doesn't advocate human CR because it's not been proven that it works. Well, hmmm... when I pointed out that so far in the humans who are practicing it, it seems to be contributing to both immediate feelings of well-being, fewer illnesses, etc., as well as to be lowering risk factors for killers like heart disease and diabetes, he said that it also has risks, like it might mess with fertility. I pointed out (sorry if this is too much sharing) that I practice CR pretty intensely, and I'm not in amenorrhea (I was for a short time, but once my body adjusted to my current calorie level things started functioning normally) so I'm fairly confident I could get pregnant if for some completely unfathomable reason I wanted to inflict the terror of children on myself. Besides, for people who have already had their children or don't want any children, this is simply not an issue. Dr. Olshansky then said, "But what you're on is an experimental diet."
"So is whatever you ate today," I answered.
And here's where I get to the point of what was frustrating about this encounter. If what Jay Olshansky ate yesterday was even remotely similar to the standard American diet, then it's actually not experimental: his own evidence proves that it's killing people! Left and right, killing people! People are dying young, feeling terrible, and looking like crap. Caution should be applied to that diet: public health authorities should be warning people to avoid anything that looks remotely like SAD as though it were the plague! Instead, they're urging that people eat unhealthful gak "in moderation," exercise "moderately" (when everyone knows that even very athletic people die of heart attacks if their diets stink) and "reduce stress." Huh? My "experimental" diet is the only thing that makes any sense: you know that eating too many calories kills you, and that in every animal in which it's ever been tested, CR extends the period of youthful functioning. Why are we handwringing about whether or not CR might mess with fertility when a) lots of CR'd women have successfully had children b) everyone else in the room is overweight and looks like crap! Well, I take that back, we were in Montreal, where people speak French, and therefore look better and are thinner. They also dress much better and have better hair. I love French women and long to be one, though I fear that many of them smoke and of course I would never do that. Can't very well be a life-extensionist and go setting your lungs on fire all the time, now can you? But I digress.
Olshansky opposes Aubrey's contention that we should do whatever we can to find the cure for aging so that we can dramatically extend the time when we are youthful and healthy. Rather, he says, we should put our energy and funding into ending the obesity epidemic, which threatens to not just stop life expectancy from growing, but to actually *shorten* average life expectancy. But when asked about humans doing CR, which we have every reason to believe accomplishes all three of the goals he outlined as being more worthy than the goal of dramatically extending human lifespan, he says he doesn't advocate CR because it's an "experimental diet." An "experimental" diet that's working for people, right now, including the size 0 girl in front of him who has been awake for almost 36 hours and is still energetic, healthy, and looking smashing if I do say so myself? An "experimental" diet that combines all that is known about the dangers of excess calories with all that is known about the importance of getting the right nutrients? An "experimental diet" that makes people look and feel much, much younger than they are (has he seen a picture of MR? MR looks 22!) How can public health authorities, who live with the evidence, fail to advocate for CR? What, precisely, would he suggest?
Posted by april at 9:26 AM | Comments (6)
March 30, 2005
Live from BIOMEDEX
Greetings from Montreal! I'm at BIOMEDEX, a trade show of Canadian biotech companies. In just a few hours Aubrey de Grey will be debating Jay Olshansky. How exciting! I haven't located Aubrey yet, but I crashed the press room and set up an interview for him with a guy who writes on life sciences for the Montreal daily newspapers. The CBC is also going to do an interview with Aubrey, so it should be a great day for press. We do well in Canada. Wonder why that is. I've always suspected that Canadians are just better. More evidence pours in every day.
I've been wandering around looking for people to talk to about corporate sponsorships -- several weeks ago I sent letters out to the companies exhibiting here asking them to support us, and so now is a good time to put a face with the name. There's a rep here from a company who let our corporate philanthropy grant application through the first hurdle last week -- I'll make friends.
I had to take three flights overnight last night to get here. Flew out of Calgary at 8:30 pm to Edmonton, then hung out in the Edmonton airport until 12:30 am, when my flight left for Toronto. Got to Toronto at 6:00 am Eastern time and flew out to Montreal at 7:30, arriving here around 9. It was a very long night, but I wanted to work the flights so that I could avoid the expense of staying overnight. Tonight I fly back to Calgary at 7:30 pm, on a direct flight, thank heaven. I'll get back to MR's house at about 11 pm.
Being in Montreal is reminding me that there is French somewhere in my brain, but that I need a little more time to warm up to it. I used to speak French very well, but it's been years and years since I used it conversationally. The first session of the conference is all in French, and the only word I understood was "out of the box." Apparently they just say that in English. It got a good laugh, but I have no idea why. I'm glad the Aubrey and Jay debate will be in English.
I had a megamuffin that MR packed for me for breakfast, and I'm still holding onto a Sherm's binging brownie for later. Last night I didn't finish all my dinner before leaving MR's -- sometimes I just can't eat all the mountains of veggies, even though they're delicious -- MR is a high-volume, low-calorie cook. So I got hungry at about 11 pm in the airport and ate a shrimp salad at the only open airport restaurant, where I had a nice chat with a waitress from Edmonton. I have all my supplements packed into the cute little container that MR loaned me. I even packed my supplements myself - aren't you proud of me?!!! I'm learning.
Okay, off to take another tour and see if I can locate the bearded man who says we can cure aging. He said he'd be wearing dark green.
Posted by april at 11:20 AM | Comments (3)
March 28, 2005
Easter Dinner
Last night we went over to the home of the Parents of MR for Easter dinner. Mother of MR had decided to cook CR food for us, and we had an absolutely delicious Indian shrimp dish that combined flavors in a way that was totally new and exciting to me. First, we sauteed garlic and a whole whack of spices: curry, cumin, coriander, cilantro, tabasco sauce, and should have had tumeric but we couldn't find it, in some olive oil. Then we stirred in red onion. Next we added chopped apples: granny smith and braburn (sp?). Then we added plain yogurt and let it sit for about five minutes with the heat on low. Then we added shrimp and cooked that for about ten minutes. It was heavenly! The yougurt calmed down the spices, and the apples contributed a fascinating sweet/tart taste that interacted brilliantly with the shrimp and curry flavors. I foresee a lot of cooking with apples, plain yogurt, and spicy spices in my future! MR's mom also made my cauliflower soup, which turned out much better this time than when I made it for MR and ended up putting in tomato sauce and turning the whole thing a sickly shade of pink. We were amazed that the entire batch of soup, at least 5 cups, was only 150 calories, total! It tastes buttery and creamy, and yet has neither fat nor oil. For those of you who weren't around when I first published the recipe, it's just a head of cauliflower thrown into the food processor with four cups of chicken broth and approx two cloves of garlic. Blend until smooth, then cook on the stove in a large pot, adding half-salt and pepper to taste. If you wanted to you could add a bit of lemon juice but we didn't. You could also stir in other veggies, like broccoli or asparagus. Delicious! It doesn't get much more low calorie than that.
For dessert, MR's mom made a creation that is an example of extreme creativity making CR not just possible but fun. She whipped eggwhites into a meringue (did I spell that right?) using Splenda as the sugar substitute. Then she baked them for I think an hour and a half, until they turned into these amazing cookielike objects that tasted like a decadent dessert but were actually almost pure protein! Talk about a CR friendly dessert! It was hard to believe there were eggwhites! I may invest in an electric mixer so I can make them at home. Apparently it takes quite some time to beat the eggwhites into stiff peaks, but the results are unbelievable!
As we were leaving, MR's mom observed that this was the first time in about ten years that MR had eaten with them and eaten the same food as the rest of the family. He's been doing CR for about seven years, and before that was a vegetarian so has eaten different foods for a long time. We all ate the same thing last night because Mother of MR went to a great deal of trouble to make a meal that fit within our nutritional and calorie requirements -- a gesture that we both really appreciated. It reminded me of how important food really is, and how the experience of sharing a meal is so deeply imbedded in the idea of what it means to be a part of a community. It's no surprise that CR can result in social struggles. It's wonderful when we can share a meal that is both delicious and healthy -- there's no trade off between doing what we need to for our health and being part of the family or community.
One of the central challenges of CR is fitting it into family and social life. This is an area where we all come to our own compromises. It's so much easier when the people you're around are supportive and willing to play along, even if they don't practice CR when you're not around.
Being with MR really brings home to me the importance of food in a relationship -- whether we're cooking together, chattering in CR babble over the dinner table, or celebrating my CR birthday, it's clear that food is an important and positive part of our relationship. So many couples and families use food to nurture each other in ways that are ultimately unhealthy -- making high calorie "comfort food," pushing children to clean their plates, indulging in family trips to the corner ice cream shop... so much so that food in families has almost become synonymous with eating gak. Just think about what the term "kid food" brings to mind: chicken nuggets, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, french fries. I read somewhere once that a parent who would throw himself in front of a moving bus to protect his child thinks nothing of going through the McDonald's drive-thru for happy meals, even though teaching those bad food habits almost guarantees a heart attack later in life. When MR expresses concern over something I'm eating (like when I was eating salt instead of half-salt), I know he's not trying to be a pest or control me in any way -- it's the equivalent of grabbing my hand to prevent me from walking into an oncoming car that I didn't see but he did.
I'm in trouble if he finds out that I still talk on my cell phone while I drive.
Posted by april at 8:05 AM | Comments (2)
March 27, 2005
Happy Easter, If Applicable
One of my Mprize brothers points out that the Mouse has no ideology, and certainly the Mouse has no religion. So Happy Easter to you from April, who celebrates Easter, but happy not Easter to you if you do not. Chloe definitely has no religion, nor is she an athiest. She's too busy thinking of important things like macronutrient ratios to be bothered with questions of higher beings. So the mouse has no religion, and nothing I am about to write should be taken as an endorsement by the Mouse of any particular religion or religion at all. However, religious images often make good metaphors, much like fables, and Christian imagery is deeply embedded in my cognitive structure. Bear with me: I don't have much food to write about because it's before lunch and you already know what I had for breakfast. Happy Sunday, if you believe in the existence of Sunday.
It has not escaped me that my CR birthday fell out this year on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. This strikes me as significant because CR is something that people often begin during an especially dark time in their lives: a health crisis, a realization that their lifestyle is going to kill them, even a change in personal relationships like a divorce that allows them to consider structuring their social eating in a different pattern. Starting CR is a giant leap of faith: faith that a) CR will work b) you personally will be able to do CR. I find that as a non-scientist, it's not too hard for me to believe that CR will work because it makes a certain amount of "common sense" and I can't be troubled to really understand all the arguments against (though I did read your weather article seven times, Aubrey, and my cat ate large chunks of it.) But the leap of faith that I personally would be able to do CR was a giant one.
I didn't exactly begin CR during a health crisis, but at a time when it was clear to me that my lifestyle was unhealthy, and wasn't making me happy. I didn't feel good, I was unable to sleep, I didn't like my body, and I was starting to see the first signs of aging. I had always had in my head that I would not allow myself to age like the people I saw around me, and I had a vague notion from reading a Ray Kurzweil book (_The Ten Percent Solution for a Healthy Life_) that I would someday embrace CR. March 26, 2004 seemed like as good a time as any. I found the CR Society list, which I had begun reading on March 8, extremely motivating. But when I took the plunge, I had been unsuccessful on other "diets," and I had lots of reason to doubt that I could adopt a long term low calorie lifestyle.
I had been relatively thin all of my adult life: sometimes 120, sometimes 115, up to 130 twice and down to 110 twice, but never too fat or all that skinny. But in 2004 when I gained up to 137, I knew things had to change. I mean, I couldn't exactly allow myself to age and die like my neighbors when the co-worker with whom I spent the most time was a gorgeous 23 year old, now could I??? I feel sorry for people who are naturally skinny and therefore lack the attractiveness motivation to deal with their eating habits. If I had always been a thin girl, I might have missed the kick I needed to say "Enough!"
Changing my focus from weight loss to slowing aging changed my attitude toward my body and toward food. No longer was I looking for gimics: lose weight quick schemes or weird one food diets. I was embarking on a very long term project that would slow down my rate of biological aging. I couldn't lose weight too fast -- that screws up the CR effect! And I couldn't eat low cal crap because optimal nutrition is essential. So I started to address both my calories and the nutritional content of my diet, and the results were dramatic. My giant leap of faith quickly turned into a mountain of evidence that I not only *could* do CR, but that I *loved* doing CR!
Everyone knows that CR doesn't reverse aging, but it does make you healthier, and that combined with being thinner has made me look much younger. I get carded much of the time now (I'm careful to get my glasses of pinot noir out at nice Philadelphia wine bars often in order to test this -- purely scientific experiment, of course.)
I'm glad I made that leap of faith. There are a lot of readers out there who have made the leap of faith with me, and to very good results. I just now learned where to read the comments so I'm just now saying thank you to all my commenters -- it sounds like everyone is doing very well. If I can do CR, you can too. The power is all in the deciding.
Posted by april at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2005
Happy Birthday to Me!
It's my CR birthday!
Can you believe that exactly one year ago, at 5:10 pm, I started CR?
I'm in the perfect place to celebrate, at MR's house. He's making green tea for us and I'm blogging.
He asked me last night why it was that I started CR at 5:10 pm. I recalled that I had been thinking about starting CR for quite some time, but didn't take the plunge until one Monday night I was at the office and some nurses were coming over for a phone bank. We always ordered pizzas for the phone banks, and in my pre-CR days, I would eat several pieces. But on this particular night, I decided, this is it. I'm not eating the pizza. I ate salad with vinegar and a hard boiled egg instead, and as I watched the nurses devour the delicous pizza, I said to myself, "We are Dr. Walford's mice. We find a longer life quite nice."
Very "We are Siamese if you please," isn't it?
Well, Disney-esque or not, it worked. I had many many set backs and changed my diet dramatically over time, but on March 26 I officially started down the path to saving my own life.
At that point I already had a bit of a list-girl crush on the genius boy who wrote so many interesting posts to the CR Society list. We had exchanged a few emails on the topic of the CR Society human study, and I was particularly impressed that he referred to himself as a cynical curmudgeon. Apparently, I like that sort of thing.
It's hard to believe that just a year ago I weighed 32 pounds more than I do now. The difference in how I feel is amazing too, but losing that much weight feels more dramatic than ceasing to get colds and sleeping better. At the NYC CR Society meeting last week, I met a woman who said she wanted to lose 30 pounds, and she seemed encouraged by the fact that I had done so. When she asked me why I had been able to lose weight on CR, I said something to the effect of, "When you're actually eating fewer calories, you're going to lose weight." I think that's why so many people who have been dieters in the past lose weight and keep it off with CR. Instead of bizarre high carb, low carb, good carb, no fat, eating only certain foods, etc., CR causes people to focus on how much they're actually consuming. Of course, the point is not weight loss, but for most women, weight loss is a nice side effect.
I've found doing CR to be a very empowering experience. Realizing that I have power over my own aging process made me open to the idea that other, better avenues for slowing or even reversing aging might be possible.
You're probably wondering what I've been eating. Yesterday was a wild and wacky travel day (it takes a long, long time to get from Philadelphia to Calgary.) I didn't eat breakfast because I had to leave the house at 4 am to catch a plane out at 6:30. I grabbed a grab and go Caesar salad in the airport with fat free dressing. I wasn't very hungry because I had eaten quite a bit on Thursday night when I went out with friends for dinner. By the time I got to MR's though, I was hungry, so I was very happy that he had 100 calories of megamuffin waiting for me. Ah, the ecstacy of that first megamuffin bite. Nothing like it, especially after it's been awhile. I really should just make them at home, but a) they take longer than my cooking attention span usually allows for b) I kinda like them to be a special treat I get at MR's house.
For dinner we had vegetable stir fry with eggwhites, homemade pickles, and blood oranges on the side. To commemorate the early stages of my quest for protein, MR made us hard boiled eggs! Now Mary, is that not the cutest thing you have ever heard in your life? CR geeks in love.
I'm also very excited because one of the Mprize brothers with whom I've been corresponding just joined the Three Hundred! A warm welcome to Sasy Kumar, who is our first Three Hundred member from India!
It's a great day to be alive, a great day to be CR'd, a great day to be a supporter of the Mouse (do you love Chloe or what?) Happy birthday to me!
Posted by april at 9:22 AM | Comments (2)
March 24, 2005
Chloe, The World's Oldest Living Mouse
It's not easy being 500 in mouse years.
Well, actually, it is. I have a good life. It's hard to complain when everyone you come into contact with is dedicated to your health and well-being.
Also, it is very satisfying to outlive the family cat.
My name is Chloe. You've probably heard of me because I am the winner of the Methuselah Foundation's Longevity Prize. Yes, that means I'm the world's oldest mouse. And I look pretty good, if I do say so myself.
People often ask me if I think that wearing a pink bow in my fur is a little young-ish for a mouse of my advanced years. Note that the people who ask this are usually women who are a bit jealous of my fantastic good looks. I say, if you've got it, flaunt it! We'll see how you look at 500!!!
My mom is a writer, fundraiser and organizer. My dad used to make supplements for a living, but now he spends most of his time writing articles and books with this nice guy named Aubrey de Grey who lets me climb up his beard when he comes over. Very warm fellow, doesn't do CR. I'm a hardcore CR practitioner, and have been as long as I can remember. My mom and dad are too, so they're not quite as warm to cuddle with as the non-CR'd masses, but they're still pretty nice. Of course they're not really my parents -- I'm a mouse, hello! But they're both terrified of human children, so they decided that raising a prize-winning mouse would be a good outlet for any bizarre parental instincts they might have.
Like I said, I'm a hardcore CR'd mouse. How do you think I got to be 500? My littermates are all long dead. They went to MIT to work in a cognitive science lab where they drink chocolate milk all day. Ick!
I eat one lettuce leaf a day, lightly tossed in a salad dressing that my dad made. It's the perfect mouse nutritional formula, with everything I need and nothing I don't need. It's also quite delicous, as the base is fine French olive oil. It has just a touch of cardamom for seasoning. I eat it every day, and have for the last 499 mouse years.
Since I'm so old, people are always coming to me for advice. I give advice on nutrition, longevity, and love. I like to cuddle because I'm always chilly, so if you drop by to visit me and cuddle, I'll answer your questions. Or if you send your questions to my mom, she'll cuddle me and write you back my answers.
First piece of advice: ladies, cut it out with the high carb diets. High carb diets make you attracted to the wrong kind of guy. Let me tell you a story:
Once when I was a rather young mouse, my dad was messing with my salad dressing and upped the carbs over 40%. I was living with this mouse back then: he was such a rat! Laid around all the time drinking chocolate milk, wouldn't help me clean up the cage, you know the type. As soon as my dad dropped my carbs down to below 40%, I said, "Get this loser out of my cage!" Mom took him away immediately. It's nice to be in charge.
Mom has often asked me if I'd rather have a CR'd mate. I know she's very happy with Dad, who's about as CR'd as they get, but fact is, I've never liked skinny guys. Besides, there's something liberating about knowing your boyfriend is going to die long before you do. So, you get tired of this or that bad habit. Don't worry -- mice don't live very long. He'll die and you'll get another! It's like dating back in the 80's! All casual, no commitment. So you share a cage for awhile, no big deal.
On the topic of nutrition, I've found that a 30:30:40 Protein:Fat:Carb ration works well for me. My dad's an old Zonie, and he makes my salad dressing up every morning while he makes his breakfast salad. Then we eat together while mom drinks her coffee and eats eggwhites. Then a few hours later, we feed whatever guy I'm shacking up with at the time. Those non-CR'd mice have so little energy! If you didn't wake them, they'd sleep till noon!
I've met a lot of interesting people in my time. Aubrey de Grey is probably my favorite, aside from mom and dad, because his beard is so warm. I also really like this girl named Emma who knitted me a tiny pink sweater. Every once in awhile, some of mom and dad's friends come to play with me. There's this guy from way north in Canada who pets me and has a very strong Canadian accent. Then there's the one my mom calls the Brother from Denmark. Sometimes at night when not a creature is stirring, except for the mouse, I chat with him over skype, cause he's always awake. It takes me awhile to type, as I have to run all over the keyboard, but he's very patient.
As you might imagine, the party at which I was awarded the Longevity Prize was a big event in my life. My mom bought me a brand new pink bow for my hair, and Emma made me a really fancy sequined sweater. My mom and dad won a giant bottle of champagne, which they'll never drink because they only drink red wine for resveratrol. This really nice guy gave me a tiny bite of his lemon pound cake, which I'd never had before. I don't think my mom saw... she would have been mad, as I'm really only supposed to eat lettuce with special dressing. But I figure, at 500, a little bite won't kill me!
If you have questions for me about life, love, longevity or macronutrient rations, write me here and my mom will bring you back my answers.
Stay young, and never let them tell you not to wear pink.
Posted by april at 5:51 PM | Comments (8)
Healthy Easter Basket
One thing you notice when you start CR is that you no longer feel comfortable giving people gifts of sugar-filled, high calorie gak. You actually feel like you're killing them. Since no one wants to be a murderer, I've developed ways of handing holidays that usually call for junk food. For instance, for Easter, I made my mother a healthy Easter basket. Here's what was in it:
dried papaya
two fresh organic fruit juices: mango lemonade and passionfruit berry
lip gloss
four tealights
two votive candles
a pair of Easter earrings
I also got her a nice bunch of tulips, that are hiding in my bathroom until she can come to get them because my cat eats flowers. My cat eats everything, so the fact that he eats flowers is not remarkable.
It definitely takes creativity to deal with holidays in ways that don't involve unhealthy food. It must be hard for people who really liked chocolate. I never loved chocolate, though I ate it occasionally and still share a dessert now and then. I guess it's lucky for me that there was never an entire holiday devoted to the consumption of bagels with cream cheese! Saint Bagel's Day?
Posted by april at 8:57 AM | Comments (1)
We're Just Ordinary People
I wonder who I have caught in my web so far... innocent people checking out the Mprize website suddenly begin consuming lots of vegetables!
This diary is mostly about what I eat, and about how you can fit CR into a very busy life. So far this week has been really boring because I've been eating very carefully, eating only at home, and eating the same thing every day. Over the last seven months or so I've evolved a basic daily diet that works well for me: it's right at my calorie target, it's easy to make, hits almost 100% of my RDAs, and I like the food. So I can go for days eating the same thing and be prefectly happy. But yesterday went terribly wrong.
I unexpectedly had to do an errand that ended up taking much longer than it should have. I had my eggwhites and flax oil breakfast at six, but then I ran out of the house before lunch. After sitting in traffic and running hither and thither (for some reason when it rains, people just can't drive and go very slowly on the expressway to watch the rain fall) I was absolutely starving. One thing I notice about CR: I used to go a long time without food and not mind so much. I guess when I was carrying around 32 more pounds, I had more of a margin. Now, when I miss a meal, I get really, really hungry.
So as I was driving home I passed a Taco Bell. And I recalled a converstaion with one of my CR brothers about the Taco Bell Fresco Style menu, in which there was a chicken fajita for about 180 calories. That seemed like a good lunch to grab on the run, so I stopped, waited in a very long line, and then proceeded to order a chicken fajita, Fresco style.
The employee looked at me like I was completely insane. After a detailed discussion, it became apparent that he had never heard of any kind of Fresco style anything at all. So I gave up and ordered a regular chicken burrito, figuring I could look up the calories when I got home. I was tempted to get my favorite old bean burrito, but I thought I needed a bigger shot of protein. It was quite delicious, and I was absolutely stuffed after eating it.
I couldn't find the exact thing I had ordered (a "spicy chicken burrito") on the nutrition info online, but every kind of chicken burrito I could find was 680 calories! No wonder I was so stuffed! Foiled again! I won't be going back to that Taco Bell.
By dinner I was rather desperate for vegetables, and I met my mother at a Ruby Tuesday's near our house, a restaurant where they have a giant salad bar. I had a very big plate of vegetables and a smaller plate of fruit salad. Ruby Tuesday's has a "Smart Eating" menu on which they give the calorie, carb, protein and fat counts of their healthier items. My mother ordered a tilapia dish off that menu along with her salad, and took some of it home.
I was frustrated by the Taco Bell event, but dinner was low calorie and I've been so low calorie all week (under 1000 a day) that I'm not too worried about it. It's not essential that you have a consistent low calorie level, though many people find it much easier to eat that way. I tend to eat on the low end of my ideal calorie range for several days, and then go out and eat more. One thing I've figured out in the last month or so is that when I do go out, I'm eating more calories than I thought I was. The Taco Bell example is a good one. I'd like to drop my total calories a bit, so that I average 1100 instead of where I suspect I am now at an average of about 1200. I do a lot of angsting about what kinds of changes that would make in my life. I definitely have better mental focus and a happier mood when I stay at a consistent low calorie level. However, I still enjoy going out for nice dinners with friends once or twice a week, and that's where I get my excess calories.
When people first hear about CR, they often say things like, "I can't imagine being hungry all the time," or "You wouldn't live longer, it would just *seem* longer." Usually people who say these things have never met a real live CR practitioner. Most of us don't experience unusual hunger, though we do find that we appreciate our food more than we used to. Many of us have discovered that getting good nutrition makes cravings go away. Social struggles are harder, and a lot of what you'll hear about in my blog is the tension between wanting to fit in and wanting to do everything I can to stay healthier longer. These days, CR has been winning.
In other news, I'm getting to be close friends with the people at my neighborhood Kinkos as I make up the literature that I will take to BIOMEDEX, a meeting/trade show of biotech companies in Canada at the end of the month. Aubrey will be debating Jay Olshansky there, and I'm hoping to convince some people and companies to support the Mprize.
Posted by april at 5:48 AM | Comments (2)
March 22, 2005
Who Am I? Why Am I Here?
Do not attempt to adjust your web browser.
What you are about to witness is a blog about a 30 year old woman practicing Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. You can find out more about that by checking out the CR Society website at http://www.calorierestriction.org
Why, you ask, is this on the Mprize website?
Could it have anything to do with the fact that Spindler's Rejuvenation Prize-winning mouse, Charlie, was calorie-restricted?
Will this blog include delicious, low-calorie recipes that you can feed to your pet mouse?
Perhaps, but not yet.
We're putting my blog, which has for the last ten months resided at http://www.aprilcr.blogspot.com, onto the Mprize website because it's about what you can do in the here and now to live longer and be healthier, and it's also about what you can do to live longer and healthier in the future.
I started practicing calorie restriction a year ago (March 26, 2004, to be exact) when I saw the first signs of aging and decided I'd better do something, fast! I lost thirty-five pounds, started eating a much healthier diet, learned a lot about nutrition, and gradually became interested in the science of extending health.
Before I came across Aubrey de Grey's website at http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens, I had no idea that radical anti-aging bio-medicine might be foreseeable in my own lifetime. But you can bet as soon as I figured it out, I became even more committed to doing whatever I can to make sure I'm around to see it.
Hence my ever-intensifying practice of Calorie Restriction (CR).
What you'll find in my blog:
-- recipes. My style of CR is quick and easy, adaptable to traveling and social eating, delicious and fun. I love to cook but I don't like to spend too much time doing it, so you'll find dinners you can whip up in twenty minutes.
-- chatter about my life. It's a diary for me. You'll follow my travels, my dinner parties, my discussions with my cat about why she shouldn't chew up the de Grey articles I left lying on the bedside table. It's got a Bridget Jones-esque feel to it and I want you to have fun reading.
-- advice about CR. If you want to do CR, I want to help you. You'll find your own style, but we can learn from each other.
-- lots of info about the work I'm doing, which is fundraising for theh Mprize. The Mprize is something I believe in deeply, and if you follow me around, you're going to hear about it.
What you won't find in the blog:
-- a lot of hardcore science. You want that, go read Rejuvenation Research. I'm an organizer, a fundraiser, a people person. I often know *that* it works, but not *why* it works. And a lot of the time, I don't care.
-- complicated recipes. I'm not a gourmet cook, I'm a girl who likes to eat well and throw dinner parties on short notice.
-- anything about moderation. When I do things, I do them all the way. This is one of my greatest strengths and one of my greatest weaknesses. Ask anyone. My style of CR is quick and easy, but it's hardcore, both in its number of calories and its insistence on optimal nutrition. I have lots of social struggles over it, and I've decided that living longer and healthier is worth fighting it out.
I hope you have as much fun reading the blog as I have writing it. I appreciate your comments, and I reply if you leave me your email address.
Welcome aboard!
Posted by april at 12:41 PM | Comments (3)