April's CR Diary

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May 31, 2005

Can't You Have Just One Bite?

That's what I overheard one of the nurses saying to VLC this afternoon as VLC politely refused to eat one of the fifty thousand or so donuts that were served at today's all day contract ratification meetings.

You got that right, bloggiefriends, for those of you who have even the foggiest what I am referring to. We settled the contract. And a great one it is! Still the best paid nurses in the state, and now with one of the best retirement packages. And yes, the nurses at this particular hospital can now get health insurance for themselves and their spouse if they retire at sixty. The ratification vote was overwhelming, almost all of the 741 nurses showing up to vote. One of the nurses said to me, "I've been in nursing for thirty years, and I have never felt so empowered as I do today." Wow, that warms the organizer's heart.

But this is not a blog about organizing nurses, this is a blog about CR. Which is good, cause for two very long days I've been drowning in an ocean of evil gak, clinging to my cottage cheese snack packs and the sound of MR's voice on my cell phone as though they were a life boat. Yikes, these people eat crap!!!

I knew it would be rough on Monday when the nurses showed up with their contributions to our impromptu Memorial Day picnic, eaten during a caucus break in the hotel conference room. All kinds of pasta salads, covered with mayo and oil... cold cuts and cheese, rolls. All homemade, so I didn't want to offend by not taking any. My strategy: I took the lettuce that someone had brought as sandwich garnish and made a big bed of lettuce on my plate. Then I topped it with tiny dollops of the homemade salads, not even a tablespoon of each. That way, when one of the nurses saw my lunch and commented, "I see you're eating sensibly," I could truthfully say, "I tried your salad and it was delicious!" Of course their food tastes good... it just isn't good for me!

I was ecstatic that one of the nurses, the tall fit one from the ER, had brought a giant fruit tray. Ignoring the silly whipped cream dip in the middle, I went straight for the melons, apple, grapes and pineapple. Yum yum yum! See, I eat fruit! I ate a big plate of that, and dug the almonds out of the trail mix to munch on while others were downing potato chips and such. I also had one of my cottage cheese packs (80 cals) for lunch with my salad, to be sure I was getting some calcium and protein.

For dinner we ordered out pizza, but I got just the house salad, which was pretty generous and included carrots, celery, and all variety of bell pepper. They ignored my instruction to give me JUST VINEGAR on the side and instead gave me oil and vinegar. I HATE THAT!!! I really dislike the taste of bad quality olive oil, and I don't want to eat it if it's been sitting on the stove all day and all night. I actually heard myself say to a co-worker, "It's like totally oxidized, dude!" So I put mustard on my salad instead and drizzled some roasted red peppers (packed in water, not oil) and a few homemade dill pickles on top.

We finally got a tentative agreement, and the bargaining committee all went out to a local bar of moderate dive-ish-ness, where I joined in the festivities by ordering my new favorite drink: the Skinny Bitch. That's vodka and diet Coke with a lime. Delicious! Don't worry, I wasn't driving... the insurance company hasn't gotten me a rental yet so I've been catching rides with a co-worker who lives relatively near by.

It was very late and we live far from the negotiations hotel, so the staff folks all got rooms and parted ways for the night. Of course the first thing I did when I got to my room was call MR... I felt like I deserved the wonderful treat of hearing his voice on the phone after my long and harrowing day of negotiations. Talked for a little while, and went to sleep dreaming of my Orange One and megamuffins.

The hotel had a free breakfast buffet, and I had a small scoop of eggs and two snack packs of cottage cheese. More calories than I would usually have at breakfast, but I didn't want to go crazy on saturated fat and they had cottage cheese snack packs at the hotel breakfast, so I was very excited about that. Put two in my cooler bag for later, and ate one mid-morning. Also made myself a little snack from red and green peppers and fat free salsa that I bought at the corner Wawa convenience store. For those of you who aren't from around here, Wawa is a big Northeast US convenience store that is getting into fresh foods and has some pretty good offerings in terms of fruits and veggies. Not cheap, but if you're on the road and desperate they're great.

Between the 1 pm meeting and the 4 pm meeting we had a going away luncheon for a co-worker who is leaving us now that she's graduated from law school, and we went to one of those excellent local Italian places. I negotiated with the waitress and got an amazingly delicious dish. They offered a seafood pasta dish with steamed clams, scallops and shrimp in a marinara sauce over pasta, so I asked if I could have all the seafood but instead of putting it over pasta, if they could just throw it over a big plate of raw broccoli. My co-workers expressed doubt when I claimed that the heat of the seafood would steam the broccoli, yielding freshly steamed but not overcooked broccoli without exposing me to overly heated oils (it's like totally oxidized, dude!). When the dish came everyone was jealous... it just looked so good. And it was! Not sure how many calories, of course as it was "out" food, but tons of zinc and protein. It came with a house salad of just lettuce, tomato and green pepper with red onion, to which I added only red wine vinegar.

Between the 4 pm and the 7:30 pm meetings VLC and I decided to remove ourselves from the meeting room for a few moments of quiet girl time, and wandered over to a place called the Gumbo Shoppe, specializing in cajun food. I ordered a tiny cup of crawfish soup, which was amazing, and we sat there long enough to catch our collective breath before the final meeting.

Over all, the day was a victory, both in terms of the union and CR. It's not easy to eat right on those days when you're going from 6 am till 9 pm non-stop, and it's hard in social situations to strike the right balance between fitting in (which is to some extent essential for my work) and sticking to what you know is good for you. As always, I probably could have done better, but I think I did pretty well.

Posted by april at 10:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 29, 2005

Give Me Forever

Or: the blog entry in which our heroine admits that she owns a John Tesh CD.

I bought my John Tesh CD with the line from which today's headline is taken back in 1997, when I was working on an organizing campaign at Mercer Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. I was a 23 year old organizer, about to turn 24, and I had just lost the first campaign I ever ran by myself by 6 votes. It was brutal, the worst anti-union campaign anyone around had seen in years and years, and I was pretty badly beaten up. I remember working out on the treadmill, reading Suzanne Gordon's writings on nursing, and trying to bring myself back to life. It wasn't until we got the call from Mercer and I met Dale that I started to be myself again.

Dale had been a registered nurse for about 25 years. She was a nice girl from Levittown, PA, one of those nurses you would trust your life with. I still imagine that if anything ever happened to me or someone I love, I would want Dale to take care of me or my loved one.

She came to her first union meeting with that attitude that a lot of long term, excellent nurses start with: What's the union going to do for me? Who are you, and what do you get out of this? What's the catch?

I was so young then, but already pretty battle hardened, and tougher than any 23 year old you're likely to meet. I knew how to move the conversation. "It's not about what the union is going to do for you: the union is nothing but the nurses in the union. It's about what you and your co-workers are going to do for yourselves, by claiming the rights you have but can only exercise as a collective group." Cutting through class prejudices and ideas about what it means to be a "union person"... so many things I've learned in the intervening years. Dale was a tough cookie, and it took awhile to earn her trust.

But like all good nurses, once she was on board, she was 100%. Hours and hours we spent talking to other nurses, going to meetings, figuring out how to move those who were too scared to even show up to a meeting on their own time. We spent an almost unbearable amount of time at a Friendly's in Morristown, PA, and an IHOP in Trenton, NJ, meeting with nurses. One thing that comes with my dearly beloved great work is a lot of hours logged in bad restaurants.

I remember driving home from a late night meeting one night and hearing this song on the radio, thinking that the words of the song described how I felt about my nurses.

Won't you give me forever
To show all of the love
I have here for you...

It is such a great gift from the god or goddess or chaos or random chance or whomever to be present at the moment when another human being realizes for the first time that she has power over her own work life, and when all the anger and despair and frustration and hopelessness that she's felt for maybe fifty years finally turns into powerful, collective action. It is a blessing to be the catalyst for this action. "I can give you the tools, and I can push you to do what you know you should do anyway," I say to my nurses now. "But in the end, it is your decision."

MR gave me the tools, and pushed me to do what I knew I should do anyway. But in the end, it was my decision.

And I promise that I'll never let you down.

The decision to live our lives as though they are own is hard.

For years and years I put my work above everything else, and to be honest with you, my dear bloggiefriends, I don't regret it for a minute. I lived entirely to help nurses push past the ingrained fear and sense of futility and take control of their worklives, and through that, of their entire lives. I would not trade the beautiful moments of victory and even the moments of defeat for anything.

But now at thirty, now that I've finally fallen in love with someone who is worth taking a few days off from work for, someone who can support my work and who I am as a whole person, I am glad that I can have my great work and still have love. It's a tough call for organizers... may marriages have broken up due to the stress of the job, and lots of girl organizers give up the organizing once they meet a guy and decide to marry, have kids, etc.

Luckily, MR has no more interest than I do in such silliness. Long before we met, we had both accepted that the yellow brick road of marriage, children, and consumer debt, and all the trappings of middle class life would not be for us. How nice that we figured that out separately, and don't have to spend time negotiating it! Leaves more time to fight over the thermostat... I swear, the man is doing slow motion cryonics! He's going to be frozen long before he's dead!!!

Okay, gratuitous dig at MR freezing himself to death aside, when I think about what I have learned from practicing CR and allowing myself to be totally transformed and empowered by the writings of a brilliant if slightly orange man from Canada, I can't help but think about the process that my nurses go through when they first realize that they have power. Even now, nearly ten years in, I am still brought to tears by the beauty of my every day experience of living with these women (and a few guys!) as they stand up for their patients and their profession. They have so much to lose... not only economically, though that certainly is a concern when your job is putting food on the table and health insurance cards in your husband and children's wallets. But when they step out on that limb and risk not just economic loss but the loss of class status, the sense of being the perfect little middle class girl... I can't describe to those of you who have not been there how hard this is.

So no matter what, I'll be there for my nurses. They have saved me so many times, in so many ways they will never understand. They gave me my reason for living, and through them I came to believe in the power of good to triumph over evil. It's not easy, it's not clean, it's certainly not glamourous... most of my job is making hundreds of phone calls and meeting with nurses in smoke filled diners! But it works.

Billy Joel pipes in from "All About Soul:"

It's all about soul
The power of love and the power of healing.

It's going to take so long to see my dream of a world where the workers share equally in the profits they make come to fruition. Just the other day, my colleague and close friend said to me:

"I don't expect to see radical change in my lifetime anymore. I just hope that what I do every day makes it possible for that change to happen someday, even if I'm not here to see it."

My first reaction is to call Aubrey and say, "Make those scientists do the rodent studies and find the cure for aging!" To call MR and say, "Write faster, my angel! I'll do the cooking, you just write!" To raise more money for the Mprize, so that we can break the logjam of hopelessness and pessimism and actually put the SENS ideas into practice. This is life and death to me: give my friend a chance to see the world he has spent his entire life fighting for! I can't convert him to CR, it's way too late. I thank God every day that I have MR to journey with me into the unknown future, someone beautiful whom I love to hold my hand as we stand defiantly against the advancing armies of biological aging. I can not stand the thought that some of my non-CR'd friends may not make it. Fight harder! Thank you, new Three Hundred members, for bringing us closer! Thank you Matt for joining the Three Hundred and starting CR yourself... you're doing everything you can, and MR and I consider you a brother! Thanks to all of you scientists out there actually handle mice (John S!) in search of the cure. I believe in you... and if you come to Philly, I'll make you a really nice dinner!

The next few days will be draining... we are in negotiations tomorrow, and we may settle the contract, but we may not. I'm packing a cooler bag full of calcium and protein and hazelnuts, and I'm packing a bag with anything I might need if I have to stay over at the contract negotiations hotel, cause we often at the very end negotiations we don't get out till 3 am, and then we have to be doing meetings at 7 the following morning. Luckily, lack of sleep has never bothered me much. Sure, I like to sleep if I can but I'm more than willing to sacrifice sleep to the cause.

I am very lucky to have a job that is more of a calling than a career, and more of a passion than a grind. Doesn't mean that it's not stressful and boring and irksome at times (Groundhog Day, anyone?) but it's always had a way of making me certain that I'm alive.

To (very loosely) paraphrase MR: I plan to take on aging, disease and dying -- and the political economy of this country -- and the unfortunate habit that so many Northerners have of wearing white shoes before Memorial Day -- as a literal life and death struggle, entailing self-discipline, commitment and sacrifice.

BTW, it's Memorial Day now. You can wear white shoes.

Posted by april at 8:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Is It Really Normal for a Woman Over Thirty to Be This Thin?

It never fails. I read a beauty magazine, I get blog inspiration.

I was flipping through Glamour yesterday when I came across an article claiming that older women (like over thirty! like me!) are now acquiring eating disorders in an attempt to look like the women in "Desperate Housewives." I imagine there are (and have always been) women over thirty with eating disorders, and those women should get help and I hope they get better.

But do we really have to address this problem by claiming that it's not healthy for women over thirty to be thin??? Okay, granted, they said normal, not healthy, but reading the article confirmed what they meant.

Why oh why would we counsel women to "accept" gaining weight every year after thirty as a natural process, when it is a deadly process? Sure, it may be harder to stay thin after thirty, especially for people who have kids. But people gain weight because they eat too many calories and don't exercise enough, not because they keep having birthdays. Personally, I found it quite easy to get fat before thirty... if I had not started CR at 29, who knows what I might weigh now? I was gaining weight at about three pounds a month with no sign of stopping. I hadn't had children, I was just eating too much, and bad foods!

I wish the magazines that women turn to for advice would confront the problem instead of shoving pictures of thin fashion models in our faces then telling us that we should accept gradual weight gain. What a depressing message! How about a feature with all the CR'd grown up girls (to be a grown up girl, in my mind, you have to be over fifty, and be prepared to show ID) talking about how real women stay thin and healthy at any age.

Another feature in Glamour asked "Full skirts for real bodies?" implication being that some bodies are not real. I wondered, do I have to look forward to a CR'd future in which I am not real, not normal, because I'm not fat?

At least now, when MR and I are together, we look more like a nice couple who just graduated from college than like supermodels. I've always thought that he looks more young than skinny, like one of those teenagers who eats a pizza every night before bed. I'm still not particularly thin looking... anyone who has actually seen me can comment that I'm not skinny looking at all! And yet, I find the Banana Republic size 0 slightly too big. MR's mom was noticing how sizes have crept in recent years... what is now a size 0 used to be more like a size 10. People are growing, and so are sizes. Thin short women can't find clothes. Should I gain weight? Should I grow taller? Should I shop in more expensive stores (oh no!)?

It's even worse for men. One of my male friends who is not particularly thin but is in shape and works out all the time has trouble finding pants that are both long enough and small enough in the waist. CR'd men seem to just give up on finding clothes that actually fit, relying instead on belts to keep their pants from falling down. It always cracks me up how when a woman says a pair of pants are too big, a man will often say, "Why not just wear a belt?" As if!!!

I can understand that there's not that much demand out there for clothes that fit men who are six feet tall and 123 pounds, but really, a six foot tall man who weighs 180 but is in great shape should be able to find clothes! Is it a requirement that everyone get fat? This same friend was hanging out with some of our nurses the other day, and they started to tell him he was too thin! One of them said, "You have to have a milkshake!" When we all went out to dinner, they wanted him to eat dessert. These are nurses! If you genuinely think someone should gain weight, shouldn't you suggest that they eat healthy yet high calorie foods, like a little more olive oil and some hazelnuts? Grrrrr...

Contract negotiations go on and on, and the room is filled with gak. Friday was a rough day... I hadn't planned to spend the afternoon/evening in negotiations, so I hadn't packed enough food, thinking I would get out for lunch. VLC and I met nurses at noon in the hospital cafeteria, where I marvelled at the horrific choices that hospital visitors and staff are offered for lunch. Chicken fingers (do chickens have fingers?), pepper steak, macaroni and cheese. A truly wilted salad bar. Ugh. I did try a Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper, which was exciting. I guess they skipped the steps of having Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper and Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper and just went for the whole thing.

We had to do some scouting out for office space, so by the time we got to negotiations it was about 2 pm. I was still thinking I would get out and go get a real lunch, but I eventually decided to stay at negotiations, so I walked up to the little hotel restaurant to order a salad to go. I had to have some protein, and the choices were horribly limited, so I had a grilled chicken caesar salad with no dressing, no croutons, and no cheese. The man who took my order argued with me that it wouldn't be a caesar salad anymore, and I said, "That's right, I just want lettuce with chicken on top." That settled that.

Someone had brought trail mix with almonds, so I munched on those, and towards the end nibbled at the last of a club sandwich that someone had ordered and not eaten... feeling terrible but also really hungry.

Yesterday was another interesting experience... I took a break from work last night to go out with some new friends, and we all went out to a bar that had absolutely nothing I would eat. I decided to pull an MR and not eat at all, as I had dinner plans later, which fell through at the last minute when an out of town friend didn't end up making it into town.

Going into work this afternoon and may end up making dinner for my mom, not sure yet. Tomorrow we're back in negotiations (no holidays for the union people!) and I will be packing my cooler bag full of cottage cheese and yogurts and hazelnuts. There's a pizza place near the negotiations hotel that had an excellent house salad with a ton of veggies, so if I can convince the others to get lunch from there, I'll be in good shape. Who knows how long we'll be there... could be all night... so I'll just have to stuff my cooler bag as full as I can. It's times like these that I wish for megamuffins, and of course it's times like these when I am least likely to have time to bake them! Not to mention that the memory of green endive flecked goo dripping from my kitchen walls the last time I made them does not inspire me to attempt the process alone.

Posted by april at 7:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 27, 2005

Wow! My First (and Hopefully Only) Car Accident!

I know you're freaking out, so let's start with this: EVERYONE IS OKAY!!!

I actually think I just had the best car accident experience ever.

I was on my way out of work when a car turned from a side street directly in front of me, like right into my car. I pulled over and jumped out (putting on my hazard lights) and walked up to her car. She jumped out and we said simultaneously, "Are you okay?"

We were both totally okay... I have a bruise on my shin from where my leg hit the car when I slammed on the brakes, but that's all. Then she gave me a big hug and said, "We're all okay, that's all that matters!"

Yes, my first moment after my big car accident involved the person who hit my car giving me a big hug. I told you this was a bizarrely positive car accident experience.

We proceeded to exchange insurance info, and it looks like her insurance will pay, as she was turning from a side street. A man appeared to ask us if we had anyone in particular we used for autobody work, and as I've never been in a car accident before, of course I do not. As it turns out, I had my first car accident ever right in front of an autobody shop. So he was very helpful, as he is hoping to get my business, and he explained how we need to call the insurance companies and get a claim number and such. We exchanged tons of information, and the autobody guy said he'd never seen such nice people get into a car accident. Usually, it appears, people yell and scream at each other.

I wasn't hurt, but was a touch shaken up, so I went on home and stopped by my mom's house... mom's are so good when one is a touch shaken up.

Ate dinner at her house, aka the Carb Castle: 3 slices of seven grain bread (I know MR is horrified at the notion of me eating bread no matter how many grains are involved... it doesn't happen often!) with roasted red pepper hummus, three small (one Weight Watcher point each -- my mom is a hardcore WW) frozen (well, thawed and baked and then fished out of the fridge) crab cakes with Trader Joes' seafood cocktail sauce, and two glasses of wine. More than I had planned to have for dinner and not my greatest CR friendly meal, but when I stopped to think of what most people would have eaten for dinner after having a car accident, I didn't feel too bad. The rest of the day had been light: usual breakfast, kale salad with yogurt for lunch.

You're probably expecting to read some long rant about how getting in a car accident, however minor, really made me think about my mortality and either a) give more money to the Mprize b) decide to give up CR and "live for today" or something stupid like that.

Sorry. The first thing I thought was, "Glad my car insurance is up to date." The second thing I thought was "Glad I'm not in the slightest bit hurt cause MR and my mom would be really upset." I drive so much that I've always considered it a little odd that I'd never had an accident. Sure, I'm an extraordinarily careful and non-agressive driver, but still, one can't control things like people driving right into your car. I have often thought that with as much as I drive, I am statistically dead already. So I try to minimize my risk in other areas of life... for instance, I don't ski. Now all you skiers out there will say that skiing is not dangerous, but I know lots of people who've gotten pretty twisted up in ski accidents, and I also don't understand why people pay money to be cold and wet on a mountain. Haven't humans evolved things like shelter and electric heat to avoid just such situations?

Anyway, I'm fine, so don't worry. To quote the woman who hit my car,
"We're all okay, that's all that matters."

Posted by april at 3:50 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 26, 2005

Guest Entry: MR Answers Your Questions

All:

OK, this is MR (and not April pretending to be MR) attempting to clear
up some confusion I've caused second-hand.

Howard: one of my many concerns about people not having personal CR
physicians (aside from the most important, which is that it prob means
they aren't getting regular lab tests, which is criminally irresponsible blind navigating on a controversial, experimental diet and also prevents one from supporting CR Science via the CR Society Cohort Study is that your lab tests will by default look a great deal
different from what a doc expects to see in a person of what passes for a healthy lifestyle, which may lead to a misdiagnosis.

This is enough of a pain in the ass when you're just in for a routine
checkup, but suppose that something really bad landed you in the
hospital & you were unable to explain your situation to a doc (or didn't understand the science and expected findings, or your own "normal" labs, well enough to have such a convo). S/he orders a diagnostic lab test and sees that (eg) your white blood cells are so low that you MUST have an immunosuppressive disorder, or (OTOH) your normally-ultralow WBC count is elevated relative to your norm because you have a nasty systemic infection, but to the doc it looks like you are free of infection because your relative increase looks just "normal" to hir.

Similarly, you might look like you have liver damage because of elevated liver enzymes (not uncommon on CR esp in the initial weight loss period), or like you have some kind of wasting disease because (a) your lipids are freakishly low and (b) you look like you just stepped out of Dachau or Calista Flockhart's living room -- or even, you just have a "normal," healthy body weight distribution, but your doc is used to the sea of overweight that is America, 2005, making you look "too thin."

You gotta have baseline tests and a doc that knows what's normal FOR YOU and why if you expect to have competent medical care.

Laura: CONVENTIONAL pickles are indeed pretty toxic due to the high
sodium (a 50 g serving, which is not much pickle, has > 600 mg), and are lacking in nutrients from having been cooked to death and left to sit for extended periods, but can be made into a perfectly respectable CR food at home. I half-fill a 1 L pickle jar with straight pickckling vinegar, into which I dissolve just 1/8 tsp of table salt (I will now perhaps try 1/4 tsp Half Salt), plus 2 tsp pickling spice, 1 tsp dried dill weed, 1/4 tsp turmeric, & 1 tsp Bernard Jensens Special Broth Or Seasoning (yes, that's really what it's called -- and it's dispensible, really, for this recipe). I then put in 1 thinly-sliced cucumber & add in enough straight pickckling vinegar to top up the container and let sit for at least 48h in the frige.

Also: glad you like the Mulligatawny Mess! *I* like my food, but I'm
often surprised when other folks do. FWIW, I've changed a lot on the
stew with kaffir lime. I now put 1/3 C of wheat bran in with the black
beans, which gives them a long time at warm ttemperature and water to
break down the phytate. I replace the eggplant with 700 g "hairy squash" (a Chinese vegetable), which is lower in energy density (more bulk) and has a much higher zinc and lower copper than eggplant, which pattern is better for my diet (which otherwise tends toward the reverse). I replaced the beet greens & stems with 1 can of sliced beets, which I further slice, and for "Remaining Ingredients" (which go into EACH SERVING as it's prepared, not the batch, in case that isn't clear) I now use 135 g zucchini, 100 g sin qua, 1 okra (great slimy texture -- I know that sounds unappetizing, but it's a smooth, fatty mouthfeel that's quite satisfying) and enough eggwhite so that it, plus the okra, make 28 Calories (I recently dropped my Calories a bit, so I need to bring up my protein grams here & there to keep the total constant from some foods of which I eat less).

This makes VERY vinegary pickles, which are to my and (happily, in yet
another sign that the universe is attempting to fool me into thinking
that it has a design) the Magnificent April's taste. You can use weaker vinegar or cut it with water, too, but you'd have to use more salt and/or let it sit for a lot longer (NB that the salt and vinegar kill bacteria, which is what prevents the cucumbers from just rotting from sitting in water for long periods).

Misc comments:

-Thanks to all for supporting April thru' this plateau-breaking energy
deficit period. I'm the sort of anal freak that just deals with hunger
etc. and slogs thru', but April's been having a real challenge and while she's clearly overall making progress, the emotioinal & practical support thru' her struggles is appreciated by us both.

-Did everyone see Dani's comments on how to deal with docs (and family, friends, & coworkers, I might add) who insist that you MUST be damaging yourself??

"Explain "the challenge". If anyone can prove to you, via any medical
test, you are unhealthy, you will stand before them and eat 10 Snicker's
bars."

LOL!

Posted by april at 5:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 24, 2005

Don't Feed the Mice

Now this is funny. I broke down and made an appointment with a family doctor so that my Orange One could stop worrying about me, and in talking about what info I'll need to give my doctor (who has never seen me before) on CR, I asked MR if he could write me a letter from the CR Society Human Study explaining what CR might do to my various bloodtests and such, and why I'm perfectly healthy and not anorexic. He's going to write me a note!!! It got me to thinking about my early CR days, and how I used to wish for just such a note. Then I remembered that months ago I wrote a blog entry on this very topic! But I never published it... so here it is now! What a fun little historical artifact... funny to think that I had so much fat to burn in those days that I could eat 800 cals a day and feel just euphoric. Don't try this if you're already thin... if I try that now, I get hungry and weird.

Saturday, July 16, 2004
Don't Feed the Mice!

Finally back to my little blog! Hello out there, whoever you are!

Yesterday, after my late spinich salad following my not having time to eat catastrophe, I had a meeting then went out for dinner with a co-worker. I definitely went over 800 for yesterday's total because I ate a piece of bread with olive oil, followed by an appetizer portion of spaghetti with tomato sauce, along with two restaurant pours of red wine. A lot less than I would have eaten in my pre-CR days, and my averages have been staying solidly around 800, so I'm not too worried about one day of going quite high on the calories.

That brings me to the thoughts I've been having over the last few days. My regularly scheduled insomnia attack (2:30 am, like clockwork) has lately been devoted to thoughts of CR. On Wednesday night, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I have to get more serious about both my CR and my ON. I'm still to some extent allowing my social life to dicate what I eat. Case in point: Wednesday evening, I went out with a co-worker for a drink after work. She's not doing CR, but she's a very healthy eater and extremely supportive of me. So we went to the place where we usually have margaritas, and instead of a margarita of unknown calorie content and much sugar, I had a glass of wine (I know some of you are thinking that I should give up wine too, but I'm not there yet and there seems to be no consensus about the benefits/costs of small amounts of wine.) Alex, the bartender there who we're friendly with, usually hooks us up with a bunch of free happy hour appetizers, unless we specifically tell him not to. (Remember that post early on in my blog explaining how I gained weight when I took this job and stopped being vegan, eating a lot of nachos and margaritas? Most of those were consumed at Alex's restaurant.) This time we forgot to ask him to hold the appetizers, and I felt weird about not even taking a bite when the nachos he brought us were sitting right in front of me. We told him not to bring anymore (he almost came over with some cheese things, but we saved ourselves.) So he asked if we were dieting, and we said no, we just had dinner plans later (a lie for both of us.) I had about four nacho chips, not exactly a crisis, but an example of food that didn't do my body any good that I didn't even want, I just ate it for social reasons. When I started to de-construct this in the middle of the night (I am so productive during my insomnia hour) I thought about how when most people see an already thin, obviously fashion conscious young woman in her early twenties (I am actually going to be 30 in August, but I have always looked younger than my age and got carded twice last month) eating sparingly or turning down the yummy appetizers, they think "anorexia." They say things like, "Oh, honey, you're so thin, you don't need to be dieting. Just try one." I know they mean well, but it's so annoying! Now I recognize that my problems with what people think of what I eat are very minor in comparison to those who have to deal with hunger on a daily basis (I am not excessively hungry, even at 800) and I'm lucky to be a woman in a time when the fashion ideal for women is a very low BMI. However, I have to get past this need to fit in with what I eat if I am going to hit ON at 800. It's not that I can't keep to 800 calories... for the most part, that's not that hard (I know this sounds odd to any guys reading this who have to eat a lot more just to survive, but I am a very, very little mouse.) Of course there are some days like last night when I go over, but that's getting cut to about once a week, without me really trying or experiencing hunger. If anything, I feel great all the time except for those occasions when I go over my target, then I feel a little less energetic, a little more like my old pre-CR self. Still, I have to focus to get the right nutrients. On that score, you'll be pleased to see this:

Thank you for your order!
Your order 31381 has been successfully processed.
Your authorization code is 222210 and transaction ID is 635631411.

If you would like to enquire about your order or need further information, please write us at sales@walford.com.
Return to the Walford.com home page.

Now we're onto some serious CR inside baseball. For those of you who are not into CR (first, I am impressed that you're reading this at all since non-stop chat about what I ate must be boring for you!), this is the processing of me ordering Dr. Walford's Interactive Diet Planner. This is long, long overdue. I still don't have my own laptop but I'm just going to load it onto someone else's for a little while if I have to. I can't take digital pics like Mary Robinson, but I hope to figure out a way to post my nutritional analysis. If you're not a CR person, please go to Dr. Walford's website and read up about it... it's an excellent website, full of easy to read information.

But back to my issues about being perceived as an anorexic. When people ask me if I'm dieting or express offense that I won't eat whatever they're offering, it makes me very uncomfortable! It's not that I'm unaccustomed to odd discussions in social situations... after all, I'm a union organizer (which is a radical, weird thing to do in this country, the kind of thing that makes people ask if you're a Communist.) But there's something much more unpleasant about having to deal with people who think you're anorexic. From women, it's a combination of jealousy and pity. From men, it's that "She's weird, probably won't eat hot dogs with me at the ballpark" kind of vibe. Luckily, my good friends and colleagues are very supportive and have been educated about CR (more than they would like!) so they understand. And anyone who has been around knows that it wasn't long ago that I weighed twenty pounds more. I still look quite normal, not even all that thin, with a BMI of 21 and falling. But in a world where most people are obese and pigging out is a social ritual, CRON makes you different.

I wonder if I could get a note from the CR human study people that I could put on business card sized pieces of paper and hand out to anyone who seems offended by my food choices. Something like:

"We are certain that whatever you are offering is delicious. However, April is one of our mice. So please do not feed her. She is not anorexic or in any way unhealthy. In fact, she is much healthier than you are."

Okay, so I'm joking about the note. But I'm seriously considering printing up a little card, complete with the CR Society's web address and Dr. Walford's, that explains in brief what we're doing. Then I could turn down food that I don't need without feeling rude, and maybe do some educating in the process!

To live in a world where you frequently found yourself saying at social occasions, "You're such a cauliflower pusher!" as people passed the vegetable tray.

You know, I feel better just writing about this. Which, I suppose is the point of this blog.

More thoughts on the point of the blog later.

Okay flash forward to the present. Here's my nutritional info:

Food List : 5-24-05.fls
DATE : 05/24/05
Num. Foods : 16
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup
Food #2 : oil 2 teaspoons flax, 1 olive
Food #3 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru May average 150 g
Food #4 : Broccoli, frozen, spears, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt leftover soup
Food #5 : Brewer's Yeast 2 tbsps
Food #6 : Brussels sprouts, raw 100 g
Food #7 : Mushrooms, raw 50 g
Food #8 : Soup, chicken broth cubes, dehydrated, dry 1 cup veggie broth
Food #9 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 6 oz
Food #10 : Coffee, brewed, prepared with distilled water a lot
Food #11 : Kale, raw 100 g
Food #12 : Salsa, med. chunky 2 tablespoons
Food #13 : Dannon Light and Fit Yogurt 1 cup
Food #14 : Lemon juice, raw juice of half lemon
Food #15 : Nuts, filberts or hazelnuts, dried, unblanched 20 g
Food #16 : Yogurt, fruit, low fat, 9 grams protein per 8 ounce 130 cals (1 container)

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1052.90__cal 53%
Protein 72.23__gm 131% RDA
Total Fat 29.37__gm 45%
Sat. Fat 6.27__gm 31%
Mono. Fat 14.04__gm 49%
Poly. Fat 6.70__gm 101%
Carbohydrate 129.43__gm 43%
Fiber 13.71__gm 46%
Cholesterol 80.03__mg 27%
Vit. A 12639.57__IU 253% RDA
Vit. B6 3.57__mg 223% RDA
Vit. B12 1.50__mcg 75% RDA
Vit. C 283.61__mg 473% RDA
Vit. E 9.23__mg 115% RDA
Thiamine 1.56__mg 141% RDA
Folacin 217.71__mcg 121% RDA
Riboflavin 3.42__mg 263% RDA
Niacin 14.71__mg 98% RDA
Panto. Acid 15.82__mg 316% SA
Calcium 1229.88__mg 102% RDA
Copper 2.32__mg 116% SA
Iron 8.25__mg 55% RDA
Magnesium 275.12__mg 98% RDA
Manganese 3.66__mg 122% SA
Phosphorus 2404.76__mg 200% RDA
Potassium 3548.67__mg 177% RDA
Selenium 127.85__mcg 232% RDA
Sodium 2276.61__mg 95% SA
Zinc 5.14__mg 43% RDA
Tyrosine 5.37__gm 559% RDA
Lysine 10.26__gm 1424% RDA
Phenylalanine 6.21__gm 647% RDA
Leucine 10.64__gm 1109% RDA
Valine 7.95__gm 946% RDA
Methionine 2.45__gm 816% RDA
Cystine 1.41__gm 470% RDA
Tryptophan 1.74__gm 968% RDA
Threonine 6.30__gm 1312% RDA
Isoleucine 6.97__gm 968% RDA

The cholesterol is making more sense now... I wonder what happened?

Here's the day:

Breakfast:
1 cup eggwhites scrambled
1 teaspoon flax oil

Lunch:
100 g kale with two tablespoons salsa, 1 teaspoon olive oil, balsamic vinegar, 150 g grape tomatoes
1 cup plain yogurt with the juice of one lemon and a little garlic powder mixed in
10 g hazelnuts

Snack:
1 cup fruit yogurt
10 g hazelnuts

Dinner:
leftover soup (broccoli, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, flax oil, brewers yeast)
6 oz glass of wine

I forgot to add in my wheat bran, grape juice creatine chaser, or calcium chewy, so add about 40 calories to the total.

Solid under 1100. Good nutrition.

Now if I can just get my new doctor to order me some bloodtests for free...

Posted by april at 8:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Dealing With Feeling Like A Failure

Now that I've outed myself as a Good Kid, I feel like it's safe to talk about how horrible I feel whenever I don't live up to my fairly high standards. I think that CR tends to attract very serious people who have a touch of perfectionist in us, and the struggle to stick with our plan, whether it's Calories, exercise, or whatever, is a particularly charged emotional issue. People are always posting to the list asking for advice about how to stay on track, get back on track, or make the track a little more pleasant. So clearly, I'm not the only one who struggles.

Yesterday I was having a great day. Got up at twenty till five, did all my usual morning activities, went to the gym, went to work. Had very productive day, including calling 100 nurses. I am not exaggerating... I called precisely 100 nurses Will probably call a few more than that today.

Went out to lunch with my friend whose graduation dinner I missed on Friday night. I took her out to a nice place in my little town called the Fayette Street Grill where they have excellent salads. I ate a house salad that included about an ounce of blue cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, dried cherries, spring mix greens, and a raspberry merlot vinegarette that I had on the side. I ordered grilled shrimp on top and dipped the shrimp in the vinegarette before eating, but put plain vinegar on the rest of the salad. It was quite delicious and seemed like a good meal out... low calorie, high protein shrimp, lots of veggies, just a little cheese.

Lunch was low calcium though, so for my late afternoon snack I ate a cup of my cottage cheese with 10 grams of hazelnuts. Then on my way home from work I stopped at the produce store and got some beautiful veggies... a giant head of flowering green kale, two pints of grape tomatoes, several bunches of broccoli, portabello mushroom caps, and brussels sprouts. Also picked up some Wild Berry Zinger herbal tea, as I have been drinking a lot of berry teas lately. Went home and made a fantastic vegetable soup with broccoli, brussels sprouts and portabello mushrooms in veggie broth, to which I added my requisite two tablespoons of brewers yeast and a teaspoon of flax oil. Had a glass and a half of wine.

I was feeling great... here's how the day was looking nutritionally:

Food List : 5-23-05.FLS
DATE : 05/23/05
Num. Foods : 16
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup
Food #2 : Oil 2 teaspoons flax, one olive oil dressing
Food #3 : Cheese, blue about an ounce
Food #4 : Cherries, sour, red, canned, light syrup pack, solids and liquids
these were dried and sprinkled on top but this is the closest thing DWIDP has
Food #5 : Lettuce, butterhead (includes boston and bibb types), raw
Food #6 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru May average on salad + 50 g grape
Food #7 : Crustaceans, shrimp, mixed species, raw guessed at amount on salad
Food #8 : Cucumber, with peel, raw on salad
Food #9 : lowfat cottage cheese 1 cup
Food #10 : Broccoli, frozen, spears, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt fresh, close enough
Food #11 : Brewer's Yeast 2 tablespoons
Food #12 : Brussels sprouts, raw 100 g
Food #13 : Mushrooms, raw 50 g
Food #14 : Soup, chicken broth cubes, dehydrated, dry actually veggie broth -- Dwidp
Food #15 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 1.5 glass
Food #16 : Coffee, brewed, prepared with distilled water a lot

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1009.88__cal 50%
Protein 98.55__gm 179% RDA
Total Fat 23.18__gm 36%
Sat. Fat 9.11__gm 46%
Mono. Fat 5.89__gm 20%
Poly. Fat 5.93__gm 89%
Carbohydrate 80.75__gm 27%
Fiber 10.25__gm 34%
Cholesterol 243.75__mg 81%
Vit. A 4167.17__IU 83% RDA
Vit. B6 3.33__mg 208% RDA
Vit. B12 3.28__mcg 164% RDA
Vit. C 134.62__mg 224% RDA
Vit. E 4.72__mg 59% RDA
Thiamine 1.32__mg 120% RDA
Folacin 229.88__mcg 128% RDA
Riboflavin 3.26__mg 251% RDA
Niacin 15.84__mg 106% RDA
Panto. Acid 15.34__mg 307% SA
Calcium 1006.65__mg 84% RDA
Copper 1.84__mg 92% SA
Iron 9.07__mg 60% RDA
Magnesium 213.99__mg 76% RDA
Manganese 2.90__mg 97% SA
Phosphorus 2569.39__mg 214% RDA
Potassium 2905.90__mg 145% RDA
Selenium 179.44__mcg 326% RDA
Sodium 2955.66__mg 123% SA
Zinc 5.08__mg 42% RDA
Tyrosine 7.63__gm 795% RDA
Lysine 15.04__gm 2089% RDA
Phenylalanine 8.63__gm 899% RDA
Leucine 15.45__gm 1610% RDA
Valine 10.68__gm 1272% RDA
Methionine 4.08__gm 1359% RDA
Cystine 1.95__gm 649% RDA
Tryptophan 2.46__gm 1369% RDA
Threonine 8.69__gm 1811% RDA
Isoleucine 9.79__gm 1359% RDA

Keep in mind: the cholesterol is probably showing up as higher than it actually is due to a bug in DWIDP that we can't figure out. The calcium is over the RDA cause the RDA changed... or something... MR told me I was getting plenty of calcium but I can't remember why. I have this habit of remembering what he tells me to do but not why, just to save space in my brain for things I actually have to figure out for myself, like how to organize all the registered nurses in Philadelphia.

So it was a wicked awesome day, nutritionally, if I may channel a skate rat named Kurt I went to seventh grade with. He was always referring to things as "wicked awesome."

Then, in my infinite stupidity (and feeling a little hungry) I decided to eat one of my low carb snack bar things that I had purchased to have as purse food during the last week of negotiations. Purse food, for you men out there, is food that's small enough to put in a cute little purse but filling enough to keep you from eating gak or taking a bite out of a colleague.

That was stupid.

Wow, they were really yummy. Tasted exactly like a Butterfinger candy bar, which is the only chocolate candy that I really really love. It was quite the sensory experience. And only added 120 calories. So I was up around 1129. That's really not bad, if you consider that I'm cutting down on those wild and crazy go out days, so averaging in the 1100-1200 range seems smart. Now it wasn't the best use of Calories -- MR would have had a little hazelnut oil instead -- but it wasn't exactly going to kill me, at least not much.

But then, in the heat of the Butterfinger remembrance moment, I ate another.

Bringing my total Calories to 1250. And really, the things are just fortified candy, much like my calcium chewy but with lots more Calories.

I felt terrible. Well, I felt really good while I was eating it... wow, I used to love Butterfinger candybars! But when I finished eating it and added up my total Calories for the day, I felt so bad!!!

And then the "I am a failure" tape starts to play in my head.

Now I recognize how absurd this is. I work a very demanding job, volunteer for the Mprize, write a blog about CR, entertain my mother and my cats, manage to be a pretty darned good friend to a whole host of people all over the country and the world, drive a fuel efficient car, cook excellent CR food, am basically a good person. I even did laundry! I used environmentally friendly products to clean my shower!

But I ate two low carb peanut butter crunch bars and immediately decided that I am the lowest of the low, a major failure, bereft of moral value.

Now to the brothers, this may seem a bit odd. I think that the brothers are less familliar with the "I am a failure" tape than the sisters, cause boys are just trained differently. But I'm sure the sisters are saying, "Yeah, I know what you mean."

It's so easy, when you're a Good Kid almost all the time, to get really freaked out when you're even a shade off of perfect. Food shouldn't be a moral issue... it's not "bad" to eat gak, it's unwise, if you want to live a long and healthy life. It has bad short term effects and bad long term effects.

I know, intellectually, that eating 1250 yesterday is still putting me in the range of nice, happy, moderate CR and is probably a much better day than many of most of the wild and crazy going out days I've had since I started CR.

But when I'm having such a good day, and then it seems like the Spirit of Gak invades my house and jumps into my mouth, it's rather disheartening.

The moral of the story: don't beat yourself up. I figure that by blogging about it and telling you bloggiefriends about how I screw up and how I feel when I do, it will help you to forgive yourself next time and get right back on track, skipping all that useless energy wasted on guilt.

Also, don't leave temptation lying around. I brought the rest of the low carb Butterfinger bars into work today to give to my officemates, who will find them to be an improvement over their normal fare. Why take chances? Life, however radically extended, is too short.

Posted by april at 8:01 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 23, 2005

I'm In Trouble Now...

Or: Why I Do Not Have A Family Doctor.

I considered it alarming when my mother stopped answering my personal emails, instead only writing comments on my blog. Now I'm answering my very own MR's email in my blog. Don't worry, you're not in for "too much information." It's all about health.

Thanks to all for your wonderful comments on the doctor's visit issue. Dani -- I am totally going to give the doctor The Challenge! You're all just wonderful... with bloggiefriends like this, how can I be afraid???

MR sent me some fabulous articles about CR, including one by our very own Luigi Fontana, for me to print out and take to my doctor. I was feeling better already, almost as though MR was going with me, to argue with my doctor while I sat quietly in the waiting room reading fashion magazines. Over the course of discussing the doctors' visit, MR asked me if I have a family doctor, to whom I go for an annual physical.

I think you know the answer. The answer is no.

He was NOT HAPPY.

Basically, he said that I have got to find a doctor who understands what CR is about, else if I get hit by a bus and end up in the hospital, something terrible will happen to me cause of my white blood cells. He is worried. He is distressed. Y'all know I can't stand to stress MR out... I am willing to take supplements, exercise, and stop talking on my cell phone while I drive, if it will help my Orange One sleep better at night.

And it is kinda weird, isn't it, that someone who is so obsessed with her health that she does her RDA's on software everyday and even does the nutritional info for a fictional woman named Cindy doesn't have a family doctor? What???

There's a history. MoMR, get our your kleenex. This one is sad.

Those of you who have been with me for a long time remember in the Women's Magazines entry that when I was 11 and weighed 108 at the same height I am now (just under 5'2"), my pediatrician said I was too heavy and that I should lose weight.

I stopped eating lunch. I lost weight. I weighed 92 pounds.

That was the first bad doctors' office experience. And you know what it taught me, bloggiefriends? That doctors make you sick. I didn't become anorexic... I fixed myself and granted, I've had some wacky times with food before I discovered the life-saving CR religion of low calories and excellent nutrition, but I figured out that my doctor was wrong and that my own instincts were right.

The story goes on. When I was fifteen, I went on birth control pills because I was having menstrual cramps so bad that I would take doses of naproxin sodium that would give an ox an ulcer. But even the low dose estrogen version of the Pill was so strong for my sensitive little body that I would throw up the morning of the first day of the cycle, just like I had morning sickness. I was at boarding school during the year, and I'd go to the school health center and ask if I could sit out just my first class of the morning (8:10 am) until I could stop throwing up.

The school nurse said no. Birth control pills, she said, don't make you throw up.

Now let me put this in perspective. I was what they call a "good kid." No, I take that back. I was perfect. I made excellent grades, was nice to my elders, had SAT scores so good that my father spent five years quoting them to random strangers (I was mortified, believe me) and I never, ever, got into trouble. So to have this medical professional telling me, while I was barfing my guts out, that I was just making it up to get out of class was pretty upsetting.

Did I mention that she was my boyfriend's mom? Ugh, I forgot that part until just now. I dated Jeremy Chamberlin, creative writing major, Michigan native, and son of the ecology teacher and the school nurse.

Wow, have I graduated to much better Mothers of Significant Others. Let's take a moment to thank MoMR for being so darned nice to me. She'd made me feel so welcome in the family, I'm starting to think I'm Canadian.

So my boyfriend's mom the school nurse was saying that I was making it up as I threw up once a month, and I just went to class anyway. Ran to the bathroom to be sick, staggered around unable to eat. Ick. Not good!

Let's fast forward to a few years later. Discussions with doctors about getting birth control. You'd think that women doctors would be really liberated and helpful, but that was not my experience. To judge from the women doctors I went to, it was nothing short of harlotry for a woman to have more than one serious boyfriend before the age of 30.

I finally gave up and started going to male gyns. I had this one particularly good one who referred to me as "The Princess," was about ninety years old, and found my stories hilariously funny. I noticed that I never saw anyone under 65 in the waiting room. No wonder he liked me so much.

He retired, and I went to Vermont, hippie capital of the universe, for a year to run a giant organizing campaign. The doctors there weren't too bad... and the nurses were awesome! I still have a soft spot in my heart for one particular anesthesiologist who managed to get an IV started on me when no one else could. That was a good doctor experience.

But overall, my experience has been that doctors don't know much, and that they often make me feel worse than I did before I showed up. So I've avoided forging personal relationships with physicians of any kind. And I stay so healthy that it usually doesn't matter.

But now MR is worried that I'm going to be hit by a bus... he's always thinking about public transportation... and so I have to find a family doctor who understands CR.

A lot of people have asked me if MR puts pressure on me to change what I eat or be tougher in my CR. I think some folks wonder if someone who is so serious about his own health could be a bit of a pain about mine.

The fact is, he watches me very closely. He noticed today that the cholesterol numbers that show up on my DWIDP seem oddly high for what I'm eating, and that I should figure out if it's another bug in DWIDP, since I'm obviously not eating that much cholesterol. I haven't figured out the bug yet (though I did spend some time checking on my normal workday foods to see if any were entered wrong) but I'll keep looking. He reads my RDAs like they're baseball stats, and he was so worried about my bones that I actually started exercising.

Some people might consider this intrusive or pushy, yet it is the most wonderful expression of love I can imagine. To have someone out there who actually knows things that can contribute to my health and well-being, and who cares enough about me to follow my daily life as though his own life depended on it, is worth more than any gift I can think of. Other women may feel loved when their man gives them fancy jewelry. I know that I am loved when MR worries that I eat too much salt.

Now this doesn't mean that I want MR to cut down on the showering me with fabulous food when I'm in Canada. I expect an avalanche of low-carb Zoned pizzas, low carb pancakes, stews with stems, and breakfast salad for lunch. I will settle for no less. Oh, and I want a whole lot of homemade pickles. I am a vinegar freak, you know.

I am living proof that love is a stronger motivation than fear.

I left a message on the answering machine of the family doctor that my insurance company assigned me to. And I printed out a bunch of articles about CR.

Still, I think I'll look both ways before crossing the street. I don't want to get hit by a bus.

Posted by april at 6:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Preparing for Exhaustion

One of the advantages to doing a particular kind of work for a long time is that you know how things go well enough to plan pretty well. Or at least, to plan for the unplanned.

For example, in the last ten days of a contract campaign, I know to plan to be exhausted. From now until June 1, I know that I'll be either a) talking to nurses on the phone b) assisting with negotiations c) talking to nurses at the hospital d) meeting with nurses e) dealing with some kind of logistical problem with a meeting space. I didn't become the Mistress of Logistics for nothing, you know.

Negotiations frequently go very late or all night at this point in the game, and just because I don't sleep one night doesn't mean that I take the next day off... nope, it's those times when it's most important to be in constant contact with the membership.

So I spent a lot of time this weekend preparing for the stretch. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on all my CR staples. I cleaned out and organized my fridge so that all my easy breezy CR food would be easily accessible and look happy when I go to reach for it. I did a giant load of laundry, even though, like most organizers who have spent much time on the road, I have enough underwear to last for approximately two months. That's what happens when you're often so busy that it seems more efficient to buy more underwear than to find a laundromat.

I also caught up on my correspondence and returned all phone calls. Hung out with people I won't have time to see until the contract is won. Thanked any and all deities that I have the world's most supportive significant other, considered making a burnt offering in thanks just to be on the safe side... but then realized that burning food probably creates some kind of toxic chemical with a fancy name, and that wouldn't please MR or the gods, goddesses, or random chance that sent him to me at all.

You're probably getting worried by now that I won't have time to blog. It's possible that I might miss a day here and there if I absolutely can't get out of negotiations. But one thing that tends to happen during this stretch of time is that I spend a lot of hours driving back and forth between the office, the negotiations, and the hospital, and as we all know by now, I do my "writing" while I'm driving. So as long as I have ten minutes to sit down and spit out the text that is pre-written in my head, I should have time to keep you at least vaguely updated.

I'm planning to keep my diet pretty simple during this time. I won't really have time to cook, and I won't have much time to play with DWIDP, so I may as well stick to the tried and true. It's hard not to fall into the pattern of eating all the junk food that swirls around the negotiations room, and not overeating when we go out for meals. To ward off cravings and possible disaster, I picked up some Atkins bars (160 cals) and some low carb chocolate peanut butter protein bars (120 cals.) I normally wouldn't eat these things, but every once in awhile when the other option is eating nothing or eating bagels and potato chips, I think it will be okay.

Keeping up my new exercise routine may be a challenge. I've been either going to the gym or walking or both every day, but I doubt that I'll have time for my nice long walks. Hopefully I can keep up the morning treadmill half hour and at least a little weight training, push-ups in the office between calls if nothing else. That should be entertaining to watch.

I woke up this morning craving a grilled cheese sandwich. Chalked it up to the overly strong Cosmopolitian I drank last night when out with a friend. Perhaps I should go back to the red wine only policy... has resveratrol, never makes me crave grilled cheese.

I am not, however, going to have a grilled cheese. We've come this far by faith... and by faith we shall avoid the evil gak.

Posted by april at 8:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 22, 2005

Annual Cancer Scare... Or: How I Will Explain To My Doctor Why I Am Twenty Pounds Lighter

It's that time again. Time to go back to the doctor and be scared to death again that I will have cervical cancer.

Like almost any woman you ask, I've had a couple of irregular pap smears. Every time, I've freaked out and gotten scared and undergone a painful and invasive test (I'll spare the details, out of concern for our more squemish brothers) and waited on pins and needles for two weeks to find out whether or not I have cancer. I never did, and my doctor always said we'd just keep watching it.

Now I'm on I-3-C, a supplement that MR made to combat the thing that causes cervical cancer. You can read about it here. So I'm hoping that this year I will discover that my annual cancer scare is no longer so scary.

Here's the other thing that's frightening about going to the doctor this year: I've lost twenty pounds since my last visit.

My last visit was on June 7 of last year, and I weighed 123 when I stepped on the scale. That was already a few months into CR and I had dropped from 137, but I hadn't been to the doctor during the year when my weight really sky-rocketed, so my previous recorded weight had been 126. That's dead center of normal for my height, and the nurse even said something to me about being jealous that I was so thin. I think she was being nice.

This time, unless I take steps to prevent it, I'll weigh 103. That's clear underweight for my height. Now if I want to add water weight and show up to 108 on the scale I know how... eat a lot of salty carbs and exercise a lot the day before my appointment and then eat a big meal right beforehand. I can show at least five pounds in water weight that way, probably more if I really pull out all the stops. But who wants to eat a giant meal before her gyn appt? Ugh, not I.

So I may just forget about it and take the flak from the doctor about my weight loss. Cause you know the doctor is going to be a total idiot about it. "Are you anorexic?" Even though I am obviously the healthiest person in the world.

I don't feel like arguing with the doctor. And yet I feel like I must defend the integrity of our lifestyle. Maybe I'll print out some good articles to shove in his face.

Once again, I must point you to an excellent blog entry by Liz on at http://www.seespotcron.blogspot.com about her recent visit to the doctor. She's so great... I wish she would move here and kick my butt so I'd lift more weights. She's awesome. She got the same stupid reaction at the doctor's office: we don't know what to do with a woman who is so healthy that she's actually slowed down her own aging process!

Ya know, it's a little weird to go chatting about these women's issues on a public blog that's read by a bunch of the brothers. But I think it's important that we girls talk about this stuff... if we don't, how the hell are we going to know if we're normal or if we should freak out? And the men out there might find it easier to be more supportive of their wives/girlfriends/sisters/moms/friends if they weren't totally in the dark about things like the hell a girl goes through when she has an irregular pap smear and thinks she must be dying of cervical cancer.

You'll be wanting some nutrition info right about now. Please don't die of boredom. Note that I ate some whole grain bread! That should entertain you. It was 6 g of protein per slice and lots of fiber. See, even I eat bread every once in awhile. It was good too, though I don't think I'd ever go back to eating it every day.

Food List : 5-22-05.FLS
DATE : 05/22/05
Num. Foods : 14
Food #1 : Bread, mixed-grain, toasted (includes whole-grain, 7-grain) 2 slices
Food #2 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup
Food #3 : Oil 1 teaspoon flax
Food #4 : Coffee, brewed, prepared with distilled water lots
Food #5 : Hot dog relish (pickle relish, on bread)
2 tablespoons
Food #6 : Yogurt, plain, skim milk, 13 grams protein per 8 ounce 1 cup
Food #7 : Oil 2 teaspoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon flax
Food #8 : Lewis Labs 2 tablespoons
Food #9 : 1 Cosmo -- met a friend for a drink -- approx 1 shot vodka
Food #10 : Broccoli, frozen, spears, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #11 : Cauliflower, frozen, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #12 : Carrots, frozen, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt 25 cals
Food #13 : Nuts, filberts or hazelnuts, dried, unblanched 10 g
Food #14 : Salsa, med. chunky 2 tablespoons

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1057.40__cal 53%
Protein 76.78__gm 140% RDA
Total Fat 29.21__gm 45%
Sat. Fat 5.55__gm 28%
Mono. Fat 15.36__gm 53%
Poly. Fat 6.17__gm 93%
Carbohydrate 95.20__gm 32%
Fiber 20.15__gm 67%
Cholesterol 126.81__mg 42%
Vit. A 14157.47__IU 283% RDA
Vit. B6 0.74__mg 46% RDA
Vit. B12 1.23__mcg 61% RDA
Vit. C 97.10__mg 162% RDA
Vit. E 6.21__mg 78% RDA
Thiamine 1.63__mg 148% RDA
Folacin 228.27__mcg 127% RDA
Riboflavin 3.12__mg 240% RDA
Niacin 14.79__mg 99% RDA
Panto. Acid 2.49__mg 50% SA
Calcium 721.58__mg 60% RDA
Copper 0.52__mg 26% SA
Iron 7.67__mg 51% RDA
Magnesium 214.80__mg 77% RDA
Manganese 2.84__mg 95% SA
Phosphorus 496.16__mg 41% RDA
Potassium 2397.49__mg 120% RDA
Selenium 145.39__mcg 264% RDA
Sodium 1628.82__mg 68% SA
Zinc 4.22__mg 35% RDA
Tyrosine 3.48__gm 363% RDA
Lysine 7.10__gm 986% RDA
Phenylalanine 4.81__gm 501% RDA
Leucine 8.39__gm 874% RDA
Valine 5.77__gm 687% RDA
Methionine 2.78__gm 927% RDA
Cystine 1.71__gm 570% RDA
Tryptophan 1.28__gm 710% RDA
Threonine 4.33__gm 903% RDA
Isoleucine 5.08__gm 705% RDA

P:C:F = 29:46:25

Posted by april at 9:26 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 21, 2005

The Protein Challenge

I said that I'd figure out how much protein an AL woman might be eating on any given day, in order to refute the charge that my diet is unusually high in protein. So I created a non-vegetarian ad lib woman and DWIDPed one of her days. Let's call her Cindy, shall we?

For breakfast, Cindy eats:
2 slices of bacon
1 hard boiled egg
1 glass of 1% milk
1 glass of orange juice
cup of coffee with half and half

For lunch Cindy eats:
a turkey sandwich on white bread
a container of fruit yogurt

For dinner Cindy eats:
grilled chicken
baked potato with butter and sour cream
salad with spinach, romaine, tomatoes and green pepper, olive oil dressing
a half cup of vanilla ice cream for dessert
glass of wine

That's not a freakishly high protein low carb diet. If anything, I'd say I'm being nice to Cindy by having her eat that well. I mean, how many people eat only a half cup serving of ice cream? And I didn't put any mayo on her sandwich, nor did I force her to eat blue cheese dressing on her evening salad that she thinks makes her so healthy, sitting there next to a white baked potato dripping with not overly large servings of butter and sour cream. Her portions of meat are not particularly large. She had a hard boiled egg and two slices of bacon for breakfast, not a three egg omlet with sausage or an Egg McMuffin. Cindy didn't have beef jerky or pork rinds for an afternoon snack, nor did she nibble on the bagels with cream cheese that were served at her morning meeting. Cindy could do a lot worse... most people do.

Here is Cindy's nutrition info:

Food List : AL Protein Game.FLS
DATE : 05/21/05
Num. Foods : 20
Food #1 : Pork, cured, canadian-style bacon, grilled 2 slices
Food #2 : Milk, lowfat, fluid, 1% milkfat, with added vitamin A 80 cals, about 1 cup
Food #3 : Turkey, all classes, meat and skin, cooked, roasted 100 g
Food #4 : Yogurt, fruit, low fat, 9 grams protein per 8 ounce 130 cals -- 6 oz
Food #5 : Bread, white, commercially prepared, toasted 2 slices
Food #6 : Coffee, brewed, prepared with distilled water 1 cup
Food #7 : Cream, fluid, half and half 30 g in the coffee, 39 cals
Food #8 : Chicken, broilers or fryers, back, meat and skin, cooked, roasted 150 g
Food #9 : Spinach, raw 50 g
Food #10 : Lettuce, cos or romaine, raw 30 g
Food #11 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru50 g
Food #13 : Olive oil 1 tablespoon
Food #14 : Potatoes, baked, flesh and skin, without salt 1 baked potato
Food #15 : Frozen desserts, ice cream, vanilla 1/2 cup, 66 g
Food #16 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 6 oz
Food #17 : Egg, whole, cooked, hard-boiled 1 hard boiled egg
Food #18 : Orange juice, California, chilled, includes from concentrate 1 cup
Food #19 : Cream, sour, cultured 1 spoonful on the potato
Food #20 : Butter, with salt 1 pat on the potato

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1882.94__cal 94%
Protein 108.69__gm 198% RDA
Total Fat 89.47__gm 138%
Sat. Fat 32.66__gm 163%
Mono. Fat 34.48__gm 119%
Poly. Fat 13.93__gm 209%
Carbohydrate 132.93__gm 44%
Fiber 11.29__gm 38%
Cholesterol 618.06__mg 206%
Vit. A 4862.42__IU 97% RDA
Vit. B6 2.28__mg 143% RDA
Vit. B12 3.28__mcg 164% RDA
Vit. C 129.52__mg 216% RDA
Vit. E 4.97__mg 62% RDA
Thiamine 1.24__mg 113% RDA
Folacin 231.63__mcg 129% RDA
Riboflavin 1.81__mg 139% RDA
Niacin 24.26__mg 162% RDA
Panto. Acid 6.46__mg 129% SA
Calcium 730.91__mg 61% RDA
Copper 1.21__mg 60% SA
Iron 10.74__mg 72% RDA
Magnesium 246.28__mg 88% RDA
Manganese 2.22__mg 74% SA
Phosphorus 1293.29__mg 108% RDA
Potassium 3167.67__mg 158% RDA
Selenium 43.13__mcg 78% RDA
Sodium 1292.30__mg 54% SA
Zinc 10.94__mg 91% RDA
Tyrosine 5.31__gm 553% RDA
Lysine 12.19__gm 1694% RDA
Phenylalanine 6.07__gm 632% RDA
Leucine 11.64__gm 1213% RDA
Valine 7.73__gm 921% RDA
Methionine 3.92__gm 1305% RDA
Cystine 1.86__gm 619% RDA
Tryptophan 1.68__gm 931% RDA
Threonine 6.37__gm 1327% RDA
Isoleucine 7.17__gm 996% RDA

P:C:F = 23:34:43

Cindy's diet is low protein as a percentage of Calories, but that's cause there's so much gaky carb and saturated fat calorie laden food in her day. Her total protein grams are 108.7.

My freakishly high calcium day on which I ate my normal weekday diet but added in more yogurt to up my calcium and ward off the osteoperosis nightmares comes in at 78.75 g protein.

On days when I eat meat in addition to eggwhites and yogurt/cottage cheese, I sometimes go higher. But I almost never go above 100, and on days when I eat meat I usually am not having my brewers yeast, which takes 16 g of protein out of the total.

Here is my total for today. I went out to eat with my mom at the Ruby Tuesday's salad bar, where I guessed at portions on things like fruit and tomatoes. It was really fabulous. I had a glass of cabernet with dinner, and then decided to walk to town to my favorite little bar/restaurant to have a glass of pinot noir later in the evening. I really enjoy taking myself out alone, and bringing some reading material. It's like a Saturday night date with myself.

Anyway, tonight I made the forty-five minute walk, and just as I arrived at my destination, the Gypsy Saloon, it started to rain! I had to call my mom and get her to rescue me in the car... thank heaven for moms! It may seem that I spend a lot of time with my mom, and indeed I do, but we are more like sisters or best friends than like mother than daughter. She is one of the most entertaining people I ever hang around, and it's nice to know that there is one person on earth who still has to love me even though I spent nine months fanatically quoting a man I had never met. That's what moms are for!

So today was relatively low protein: take that! And keep in mind that the calcium is a little higher (about 10% of the RDA higher) cause I'm scared to modify the food in DWIDP to fit my brand of yogurt.

Food List : 5-21-05.FLS
DATE : 05/21/05
Num. Foods : 12
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh a cup
Food #2 : Flax oil teaspoon
Food #3 : Cottage Cheese Lowfat Light and Lively 80 cals
Food #4 : Lettuce, cos or romaine, raw a lot
Food #5 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru May average 100 g ish
Food #6 : Pepper, banana, raw a lot
Food #7 : Peppers, sweet, green, raw 100 g ish
Food #8 : Fruit salad, (peach and pear and apricot and pineapple and cherry), canned, light syrup, solids and liquids 1.0 servings
Food #9 : Olives, ripe, canned (jumbo-super colossal) 12
Food #10 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 2 glasses of wine
Food #11 : Yogurt, fruit, low fat, 9 grams protein per 8 ounce 1 container
Food #12 : Grains, Tabouleh a big scoop that I probably over counted

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1097.24__cal 55%
Protein 50.15__gm 91% RDA
Total Fat 30.12__gm 46%
Sat. Fat 9.64__gm 48%
Mono. Fat 15.83__gm 55%
Poly. Fat 3.02__gm 45%
Carbohydrate 109.90__gm 37%
Fiber 13.17__gm 44%
Cholesterol 59.03__mg 20%
Vit. A 10454.83__IU 209% RDA
Vit. B6 0.95__mg 59% RDA
Vit. B12 1.28__mcg 64% RDA
Vit. C 235.86__mg 393% RDA
Vit. E 8.38__mg 105% RDA
Thiamine 0.46__mg 42% RDA
Folacin 155.99__mcg 87% RDA
Riboflavin 1.75__mg 135% RDA
Niacin 4.76__mg 32% RDA
Panto. Acid 1.88__mg 38% SA
Calcium 760.48__mg 63% RDA
Copper 0.97__mg 49% SA
Iron 9.55__mg 64% RDA
Magnesium 155.13__mg 55% RDA
Manganese 3.13__mg 104% SA
Phosphorus 602.37__mg 50% RDA
Potassium 1995.31__mg 100% RDA
Selenium 59.88__mcg 109% RDA
Sodium 2042.22__mg 85% SA
Zinc 2.80__mg 23% RDA
Tyrosine 4.56__gm 475% RDA
Lysine 10.06__gm 1397% RDA
Phenylalanine 5.67__gm 591% RDA
Leucine 10.33__gm 1076% RDA
Valine 6.86__gm 816% RDA
Methionine 3.45__gm 1149% RDA
Cystine 1.83__gm 611% RDA
Tryptophan 1.50__gm 831% RDA
Threonine 5.55__gm 1155% RDA
Isoleucine 6.09__gm 846% RDA

So there. I win.

Well, until MR comes back with some more evidence.

I know there's a danger in challenging the King of the Zonies to a contest of this sort, but I can't resist. I understand that I eat *enough* protein for a 258 pound man (let's call him Cindy's husband, Jack) but I bet Jack is eating way more protein than that! Cause most meat eaters eat way way way too too much protein. I think the lowfat vegans were right about that one. MR?

As the 80's band Scandal once so aptly put it:

"Hit me with your best shot."

Posted by april at 9:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

What's Your Favorite Color Food?

Fruitgirl raised an interesting point off-blog this morning... what color food are you attracted to? It was in the context of mentioning the Orange One, whom she abbreviated as OO. Made me think of the first time I read the abbreviation "evoo" and thought Kenton was talking about some kind of Star Wars creature. It was about twenty-four hours before I figured out that he was referring to extra virgin olive oil.

For those of you who don't know, the Orange One (aka Genius Boy, MR, and a few others that are none of your business... the Orange One has many god names) has a slightly orange tint to his skin because he's very pale to begin with and eats a whole lot of natural beta carotene in vegetables. He eats quite a bit of orange, and there's also beta carotene in green veggies like kale.

Fruitgirl says she's attracted to green foods, for the chlorophyll. It got me thinking about how powerful color is in our food choices, at least for those of us who aren't color blind.

I am attracted to red foods, but I wonder if that's just a function of the fact that I'm obsessed with tomatoes. I would eat tomato foods for every meal if I could, and I often do. A pint of grape tomatoes, barbeque sauce on my eggwhites, a can of stewed tomatoes in my evening soup, etc. I also love red peppers, both raw and roasted. When I was a kid, like most kids, I liked the cherry and strawberry candies. I also like red Twizzlers.

My step-brother used to only like white foods. Mashed potatoes, vanilla ice cream, white bread... you get the idea. For his birthday my step-mother would make him a white cake with vanilla icing. I liked devil's food cakes, even though I was not a huge chocolate person. I think I just liked the name. I was such a good kid that I had to express my bad girl tendancies through the name of my birthday cake flavor.

The associate pastor of the church where I grew up would eat nothing green. No green vegetables. Not even lime jello. That can't be healthy... I mean the lack of green vegetables, not the lack of lime jello. One can live without lime jello, though I'll admit I did enjoy the 10 calories of sugar free lime jello MR made for us last time I was visiting.

The now retiring president of my union will eat salads and green vegetables, but she won't eat anything green and creamy. She is viscerally horrified by anything green and creamy. Guacamole, cream of broccoli soup, etc. She can't even watch someone else eat it.
She says there's a story behind this, but that if she told us we would be grossed out forever. When a nurse says that something is too gross to tell you, do not push her further. She's right.

Remember the story of how I was making dinner for MR and turned the cauliflower soup light pink? He didn't mind at all, but I was horrified. Food, it seems, should not be pink. Even those sheet cakes with strawberry icing are kinda scary.

Some people avoid black foods. They don't like licorice, won't eat black olives, etc.

Presentation is so important in the way we perceive our food. I often think that people taste the presentation more than they taste the flavor. When I'm serving a meal, I really enjoy messing around with different dishes and garnishes and pretty things. I love to light candles, get out the pretty dishes and the linen napkins, and serve a beautiful meal.

When I was a vegan and hanging out with a whole lot of anarchists who used to have potlucks, I lived with a man who was an amazing vegan cook. He had this theory that you should never take a stew to a potluck, because people associate vegan stews with tastelessness. He called it "vegan slop" and carefully avoided bringing anything vaguely like that to a potluck. No matter how good it tastes, the second people are confronted with a pot of vegan stew at a potluck, they want to run to the nearest McDonald's.

I really like to serve and eat soups and stews, so I've worked at how to present them such that they don't seem like slop. I often serve a colorful soup in a pretty mug in the middle of a white plate full of colorful vegetables.

One of MR's regular meals has a bunch of colorful side dishes: homemade pickles, eggwhites, blood oranges, hazelnuts. It's fun to work around the plate eating the little goodies up. It's also entertaining when he makes this dinner to see his giant portions and my little baby portions. Watching MR eat vegetables makes me understand how giraffes can eat tons and tons of leaves and stay so thin and gorgeous. There's something naturally graceful about critters that are tall and skinny... giraffes, fashion models, tall men who do hardcore CR. They can also reach things on high shelves, which is useful to those of us who are under 5'2". I mean, the tall men and fashion models can. Giraffes, as far as I know, don't have hands, and therefore might be perplexed by a request that they remove the Vitamix from the top shelf in the kitchen. Of course by that time the question would be, what is a giraffe doing in the kitchen? But I digress.

I'm sure there's an evolutionary reason why we're attracted to phytochemical filled yummy foods that are good for us. It's sad that so many people have been brainwashed into avoiding these foods in favor of processed white gak. In fact, there are whole diets based on the idea that you should eat nothing white. People are such cheaters though... I can imagine dieters using food coloring to turn their pasta blue and claiming that they were following the rules, then complaining that the diet doesn't work.

Today I'm going to have a beautiful colorful dinner because I'm taking my mom to the Ruby Tuesday's salad bar! It's just amazing... the mind boggles at the number and quality of gorgeous veggies, beans and fruits. I'm having a light day today in preparation, and also to wash out the side effects of that high calorie day on Wednesday that seems to still be messing with me. I had my breakfast late (you know what I ate for breakfast, there's no point in telling you for the zillionth time) and we're going for dinner at five, before it gets crowded, so I won't be eating lunch. I was planning to go to an event and potluck at the home of some new friends tonight, but the plan changed so I get a quiet evening that I hadn't planned on. I'm sad that my event got cancelled... was really looking forward to hanging out with my new friends and also to showing off my potluck cooking skills (no vegan slop!) but truth be told, I probably need the rest. It's been a very busy week, and next week will be brutal. We're down to the wire in contract negotiations, and I'll be making approximately 400 phone calls to nurses to keep them updated on what's going on, in addition to helping out in negotiations and doing anything that needs to be done.

Did I tell you guys about my new shoes? VLC decided that I was no longer allowed to wear those square toed Mary Jane type shoes I'd been wearing since the CRS conference... they were too beat up and just not cool enough... so we went to DSW shoe warehouse and I got a pair of nice black pointy toe pumps. They are so cool. I feel very fashionable with pointy toes. And get this... I've lost half a shoe size! I used to be a 6.5 - 7... now I'm a 6 - 6.5! My mom lost a whole shoe size when she lost 70 pounds, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I've lost 35 pounds and a half size. Still, it's an unexpected and entertaining side effect. I wonder if MR lost any shoe sizes when he started CR... I'll have to ask. I'm thinking not because he often wears these shiny black Canadian army boots that I think are really cool, and I know he's had them since pre-CR.

I almost forgot to tell you that I never ended up going to the restaurant last night! I had to pick up my mom from the airport and her plane was very late, so I couldn't go! But thanks for all the suggestions... wasn't that a fun game??? My plan was to eat the mushrooms stuffed with lump crab meat and an insalata gardenia (garden salad, I presume, though my Italian is rusty) with just vinegar. Alas, I didn't get to try out my choices. It was tons of fun to read all your suggestions... thanks to all!

Okay now I'm just chatting, running the clock to put off doing the laundry and trying to come up with a clever last line.

How about this:

Eat fewer Calories.

And don't dye your pasta blue.

Posted by april at 12:59 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 20, 2005

Read the Online Menu

Eating out is a challenge for us CRON folks, and I can readily see why some of my favorite CR people... well, okay, only one, but he's my very favorite one! don't even bother.

There are times in my life when I can't avoid eating out without giving great offense to people who are important to me, and the fact remains that I still enjoy going out and eating good food. Tonight is one of those occasions when I'll be going out with a lot of people, none of whom are CR friendly, and I don't want to call much attention to myself. It's a dinner for my friend's graduation from law school... the same friend who got married back in March. We're going to a fancy Italian place in New Jersey where she lives. The food is great, but not exactly CR friendly. This is what Laura would call a challenge.

Recently I've started reading menus online before I go to restaurants so that I can scour the selections for the most CR friendly (or least CR hostile) options and be prepared with my order before I go. It cuts down on anxiety beforehand and drama at the table. I read the menu for this place, Villa Barone in Collingswood, New Jersey, this morning online. I've picked out what I'm going to order, a full twelve hours in advance of the dinner.

I would like to propose a game. You can read the restaurant's menu here. I want all you bloggiefriends to check out the online menu and see if you can guess what I'm going to have.

Here are some clues:

1) This is not a CR friendly crowd AT ALL so I am going to do minimal negotiating with the waitron. I will basically order off the menu with minimal modifications.

2) I will plan my lunch to be on the low end so that I have more Calories available for dinner.

3) MR thinks I eat meat too often.

The bloggiefriend who guesses closest to what I actually eats will win a magnet! BTW, Laura, you never sent me the address to send your magnet to. I am not kidding about the magnets. I really do give them away.

So write in your guesses on your comments... and may the best CR'd folk win!

Posted by april at 3:27 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 19, 2005

You're A Good Little Girl, Aren't You?

That's what a nurse said to me today at contract negotiations as I ate my little snack pack of lowfat cottage cheese.

I was unsure of how to respond to the question. It reminded me a bit of when I was in college and people would ask me where I went to school. When I said Yale, they would invariably say, "You must be pretty smart."

That's a tough one to answer. I mean, it seems impolite to say, "Yes, as a matter of fact I am pretty smart. Thank you for noticing."

But what am I supposed to say? "No, I'm actually a complete idiot and the admissions committee made a huge mistake."

You can't win.

So when this particular nurse asked me if I am, in fact, a good little girl, I was similarly puzzled.

I could say, "Yes, as a matter of fact I am a very good little girl. In fact, like Little Miss Muffit, I am sitting here here enjoying my curds and whey."

Or I could say, "I'm actually a very bad little girl, I just happen to enjoy eating lowfat cottage cheese."

Or I could engage in a discourse about the moral value of food.

Or I could point out that at thirty, I am hardly a little girl, though I am finally reaching the age when I consider that a compliment, not an insult.

I finally responded, "I didn't eat particularly well yesterday, so I'm trying really hard today."

That seemed satisfactory. I think people like to think that you screw up sometimes. People have this weird visceral negative reaction to the appearance of perfection.

I did, in fact, screw up quite a bit yesterday. It was a very long meeting day on which I left my house at 6 am for work and got home shortly before 10 pm. I ran out in the morning so long before my normal breakfast hour that I skipped my usual eggwhites and flax oil. I had a great lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, which has a new salad bar that I highly recommend. It was amazing: all kinds of veggies, hot peppers, kalamata olives, tabouleh, lots of fruits, beans, even edamame! If MR had been there with his portable scale we could have constructed a perfect CR friendly measured out meal. Of course, the waitstaff might have had us arrested for weighing all our food at the salad bar, but that would have made a kinda cool headline in my local paper: "We Shall Not Be Moved: Skinny Redheads Refuse to Relinquish Food Scale."

Then the afternoon took a turn for the problematic when I thought I would have just one little bite of the sour cream and onion potato chips. A bite turned into a handfull. And a handfull turned into two. I recognize that the world will not come to an end over this, but it still seems like such a stupid waste of calories. One of my co-workers came over to me and said, "I can't believe you're eating potato chips," which made me feel even worse.

The nurse bargaining committee went out to dinner as a group at an Italian restaurant, and VLC and I negotiated with the waiter to get the shrimp scampi over steamed broccoli rather than over pasta. That was delicious. I had my house salad with just plain vinegar, as there was plenty of olive oil in the scampi to fatten out the day. Not that the potato chips left me low on fat, carbs and salt. Ugh.

So yesterday was one of those days when I'm not sure what I ate because it was all restaurant food, and while it might look like a very good day for a normal person (shrimp over brocoli? giant salad?) it's not good enough for someone who is trying to push her calorie averages ever lower without getting so hungry that she eats the neighbors' pets.

So today I am solidly back on track. Eggwhites and flax oil for breakfast, cooler bag packed with cottage cheese and yogurt and hazelnuts for during the day. At lunch mid-negotiations we ordered out from a pizza place, and the nurses urged me to try some of the pizza, but I politely said no. I ordered a house salad that turned out to be fabulous: spring mix greens, arugula, red and yellow bell peppers, carrots, celery, and red onion. I ate it with just vinegar and a cup of cottage cheese along with 10 g hazelnuts for fat. I didn't feel deprived as I watched everyone chow down on pizza... remember how crappy I felt yesterday after eating sour cream and onion gak was enough to convince me that the straight and narrow path is the one for me.

The social implications of unusual food choices are numerous. Liz wrote an absolutely rockin blog entry about it the other day
http://seespotcron.blogspot.com/2005/05/she-looks-like-scrawny-crow.html. People act really weird around thin people. It's just darned freakish to be in control of your health these days.

I've been pleased that for the most part my nurses have been supportive of my life and health changes. They often ask me how I lost so much weight, and I tell them about CR and refer them to the CR Society website.

The issue of weight is so emotionally charged for women. I know that I breathe a big sigh of relief whenever I am in the company of other CR girls... we can genuinely discuss the possiblity that our partners might think we're too skinny without anyone throwing a donut at us. I'm so lucky that my genius boy likes me just the way I am... and I suspect he'll like me just as much even if I get skinnier. He'd be a damned hypocrite not to, as he has about the lowest BMI out there, but taste is, as we all know, a matter of taste.

Food is such a moral issue in our society... and like beauty, it's one you just can't win on. If you're fat, you're lazy and lack self-discipline. If you're thin, you're anorexic and self-centered.

I think there comes a point where we just have to tell everyone else to deal with their issues elsewhere, and leave us to be happy with our kale salads and megamuffins. VLC and I have a certain harmony when we're together where we can attack the vegetable tray with genuine enthusiasm keep each other company while everyone else eats their way to an early death.

We weren't always like this... I am definitely a woman who has to work hard at eating right and staying thin and healthy. Back before CR, on meeting days like yesterday when we would do four or five meetings in a day from early in the morning till late in the evening, my eating would be just out of control. The stress and exhaustion combined with being surrounded by free, bad food was overwhelming. For example, here's a day that really happened back in September of 2004 when I was working on a giant contract campaign at a Philly hospital.

5 am: pick up the bagels and donuts for morning meeting. Eat: 1 toasted bagel with veggie cream cheese, one large coffee with cream and sugar.

8 am: cleaning up after meeting: eat another bagel with cream cheese

1 pm: pizza at the 1 pm meeting. at least two slices, maybe three.

6 pm: dinner between 4 pm and 8 pm meetings: probably at a diner near the hospital: pasta with marinara sauce, garlic bread, salad with fat free dressing.

After meetings (10 pm ish): a couple of beers or glasses of wine with co-workers to unwind post meeting.

Next day: bagel with cream cheese and coffee with cream and sugar for breakfast.

Is it any wonder that I eventually weighed 137?

Yikes!

I was all angstful about yesterday's slips, but when I look back on how I used to be, I feel rather cheered up about my progress.

A couple of reader questions:

Laura:
Eggwhites are better than eggbeaters because eggbeaters have synthetic beta carotene in them for color and that's bad for you. I think that kefir has more probiotic goodies than yogurt, but I'm still not drinking it. It's gross, and its name sounds like my cat.

Chris:
My diet, which proportionally high in protein to total calories, is not particularly high in protein when compared with any normal non-CR'd non-vegetarian. I just talk a lot about protein because it makes me a lot less hungry, more energetic, and mentally focused. Also because one of the first changes I made when I started reading your brother's writing was to up my protein, so eating protein reminds me of him. I'll see what Genius Boy says about your question.

[Later -- I asked Genius Boy, and he says I eat way more protein than that. He really did the calculations to determine that I eat enough protein for a 258 pound man. I don't think I even know a 258 pound man! But anyway, I'm not convinced of this, so I'm going to DWIDP some sample days of AL meat eaters and see what I come up with. I know, it's probably stupid to challenge the Orange One to a contest of any kind where nutrition is concerned, but it's fun for us to disagree from time to time. It cuts down on the danger that we will turn into one giant Orange One, who would still not weigh anywhere close to 258 pounds. :)]

Mary:
I asked MR to promise me he would never ski. No dangerous sports for us. I drive the NJ turnpike so much that I figure I've already used up my nine lives.

Liz:
Your blog absolutely rocks my world.

Fruitgirl:
So glad you're back! I miss you!!!

Dani:
Same to you! You've been with me from the beginning!

Jacob:
Yea Nurses!!! More on that soon.

Dan:
You haven't commented in awhile... am I boring you? ;)

Enough for now.

I'm off to be a good little girl elsewhere.

Or a bad girl who gets a whole lot of calcium.

Posted by april at 6:21 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

If You Choose Not To Decide You Still Have Made a Choice

You know that old saying, a favorite of followers of Chomsky, that goes, "You can't be neutral on a moving train?" I've never really thoguht that made much sense, no doubt because I was born after the sixties. When I woke up this morning with the song in my head that is quoted in our headline for today, I finally got the train thing.

We're all aging, the train is going forward. Unless we *do* something about it, we're going to keep going, and the destination isn't a place where we want to be. We can't just hang out and claim to be indifferent... if we don't drastically change our actions, we know what will happen.

Right now, we don't have a way to stop the train, or to jump off at one stop and go back a few stations. We do, however, have a way to slow it down. You know what that is.

For some people, CR is a spectator sport. It's interesting to watch people who carefully monitor their Calories and nutrition, and it's certainly got to be fun to observe as I screw up over and over again in my quest for hardcore CR. But for some, there's no compelling reason to actually take up CR as a lifestyle. It's too hard, too weird, too much of a hassle, might not work, might work and might lead to living longer which might for some reason be bad, might cause you to become obsessed with exotic salad greens, turn orange, and carefully read your girlfriend's RDA percentages with the rapt attention that most men only give to the sports page.

Friends, the train is moving forward. There are two things you can do about it, and you know what they are. Come on, it's a quiz. What are the two things you can do?

You guessed it.

1. You can donate to the Mprize. That's not that hard.

2. You can use the only tool we have right now to slow your own aging process. Lots of readers are doing it. It's a little odd, but it's actually a whole lot of fun.

If you choose to do nothing, you have by your very inaction damned yourself to dying earlier than you need to.

It's really that simple.

It's none of my business what you do with your life... eat eggwhites or not, see if I care.

But I do care about you because if you're reading this, chances are you're the kind of person I'd really like to hang out with. I'm planning to be around for a very long time, and I want to make sure that the fun people are here too.

The nightmare I had night before last about MR being so sad that I wasn't going to make it escape velocity was a big wake up call for me about my exercise. It's just silly to ignore something I can do to improve my health and keep my bones from getting fragile. So today I was back at the gym at 7, and did thirty minutes on the treadmill followed by leg weights. I've always found that love is a stronger motivation than fear, and the hope of spending many, many years with my genius boy is more than enough reason to drag myself to the gym.

Last night, I had another interesting dream. I was on my way to a birthday party for my grandparents, who are in their nineties and doing great... they go dancing more often than I do! In the dream, I had to navigate through a run-down building that was missing a few walls and windows on my way to the party, and a cousin named Amy was leading me through the maze.

We got to a point on the eighth floor of a building where Amy said that I needed to jump through the window and onto the ledge of a next door building. It wasn't a far jump, and I might have been able to make it, but it was a big drop eight floors down to the street. I didn't want to risk it.

People on the other side in the building made fun of me and said, "Come on, jump, we did it, you'll make it!" "WHat are you, some kind of wimp?" But I continued to refuse, and said that I'd be happy to walk the long way around the building and go up eight flights of stairs again, but that I just wouldn't take the risk with the short cut.

Finally Amy agreed to show me the long route, and as we walked, I explained to her that now that I do CR and volunteer for the Mprize and put so much of my energy into living longer, I'm no longer willing to take stupid chances with my life and health.

Amy said she understood, and that there was another person at the party who had also refused to make the jump and had taken the long way around. She said she'd introduce me to him once we got there.

I walked into the party, and sitting quietly in the back of the room was MR.

Posted by april at 7:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 17, 2005

Another Boring Weekday

My diet is getting so boring on weekdays at work that I have to entertain you with philosophy and dreams. At least I'm keeping my Calories low. I'm definitely getting hungrier as time goes on and I get further away from one of those way over average days. The exercise is no doubt contributing as well, but I really like the way my body feels when I'm working out, so on balance it's definitely for the best.

Food List : 5-17-05.fls
DATE : 05/17/05
Num. Foods : 17
Food #1 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup
Food #2 : Oil 2 teaspoons flax, 1 teaspoon olive
Food #3 : Dannon Light and Fit Yogurt 1 cup
Food #4 : Kale, raw 50 g
Food #5 : Arugula, raw 20 g
Food #6 : Salsa, med. chunky 2 tablespoons
Food #7 : lowfat cottag