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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 March 26, 2005 09:22 AM
Comments
Bonne Fete! (MR can translate that for you.) Test his memory: ask him who dubbed him "cynical curmudgeon".... Enjoy your healthy pampering. Happy Easter, April! CR geeks in love rule! JD ;-))
Posted by: Judith at March 26, 2005 11:34 AM
Yeah for romantic hard-boiled eggs! Nothing like sharing one's love of minimal, but highly nutritious food with our loved ones. My husband made a super-nutritious flounder meal with me today. Nourishing for the soul.
July 17 will be my 5 year CR birthday! I think about this all the time. How every year is better and how grateful I am to have found this way to live.
Posted by: Mary at March 26, 2005 07:12 PM