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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 March 22, 2005 12:41 PM
Comments
Bravo April...
I love your new digs!
Posted by: Kevin Perrott at March 22, 2005 1:23 PM
Love it on the MPrize site. Can you make the links clickable? It should just be a matter of spacing. Let me see. My blog is
http://infoethicist.blogspot.com
VSM
Posted by: VSM at March 23, 2005 7:43 AM
Hello! I'm thinking about start de CR, and I'm studing it. If you could help me with something, my e-mail adress is here! Kisses, Ma.
Posted by: Ma at June 11, 2007 1:30 PM
Hey, just wanted to say I just read your first blog post and it made me laugh! In any event, I am going to try to start CR and hope the rests of your posts will keep me motivated. I'm also pledged to the 300 for the Methuselah Foundation so I hope that helps folks out.
keep up the good work!
Posted by: Tor at November 18, 2008 10:25 PM
April
I have been reading your comments and other information on CR. I am 5 feet 8 inches and weigh 272 lbs. I would certainly stand out at a CR convention.
Posted by: DAVE at December 11, 2008 2:09 PM
I am curious about CR. I am 48 years old and relatively disciplined about diet and exercise (5 ft, 3 inches tall & 108 pounds). I note that your weight is 105 and that you lost 35 pounds on CR. How tall are you?
Posted by: Ingrid at January 29, 2009 2:27 PM
Hmmmm. I'd somehow missed this blog despite knowing about the mprize since the beginning (I've been wanting to join the 300, but as a startup founder I've always thought it was a bit iffy to promise to donate $1000/yr to anything until we were (a) VC funded or (b) profitable).
Anyway, I thought I should mention that I had to dig way back into the archives in order to find out why on earth "April's CR Diary" was located at http://www.mprize.org/blogs - a URL where I would be *expecting* to see an aggregation page for the blogs of lots of people involved with the mprize in some fashion...
Now, for the people who (like myself) are curious enough and blog savvy enough to find blog post #1 in the archives to figure it out, that's all fine and dandy, but for the somewhat less blog-savvy potential donators to the mprize, I think you really, really, need a prominent "about" link somewhere near the top of the sidebar or in the header, that either links to this post, or another page explaining why this blog is here and what it's for. Also worth noting is that not everyone instantly knows what "CR" means! So another link "About Calorie Restriction" would be worth having as well!
Anyway, hi there, I'm Seth Wagoner, an internet startup CEO from New Zealand. Hope to catch you at an Mprize event some time in the future!
Posted by: Seth Wagoner at August 31, 2009 6:51 PM