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July 5, 2005
How Ray Kurzweil Saved My Life
There's an old song that is traditionally sung at the Yale private club called Mory's during an ancient ritual called a "toasting session" while a person spins a cup of champagne and cool-aid on his or her head in an effort to drain the last drop. It goes:
I was lying in the gutter
I was covered up with beer
Pretzels in my hair
And I thought the end was near
Then along came [fill in name of person finishing cup]
And saved me from my curse
Glory glory hallelujah
Sing another verse!
Yeah, that wasn't how it happened at all.
No, I was riding on a train on my way from New Haven to Boston, running away from a romantic entanglement gone awry (do you get the sense that all of my stories start that way?) and reading a book called The Ten Percent Solution for a Healthy Life by Ray Kurzweil. The book was all about keeping fat to below 10% of the diet, and I read it with excitement because I was in the beginning stages of my conversion to the lowfat gospel.
Buried near the end was a chapter on CR. I had never heard of CR, but it made perfect sense to me as soon as I read about the concept. Fewer calories = more life. This, I thought, I will have to revisit when I start to think about aging.
Well, sure enough, time marched on and I spent my twenties in various phases of lowfat vegetarian and veganism. My weight went up and down, I learned to cook some fancy bean dishes, and I went five years without eating eggs or cheese. Then I freaked out and had about a year of eating all the eggs and cheese I could find. Maybe it was the protein deficiency talking, or maybe I just discovered that I loved McDonald's egg and cheese biscuits and had to make up for lost time. For whatever reason, I gained weight, felt miserable, and had to buy a suit in a size 8 Petite.
You all know the stories of my conversion to CR... looking in the mirror and realizing that at the rate I was going, I was going to turn into one of those statistics about how most Americans are overweight. Contemplating how very long it would take to see the results of my life's work, and figuring out that I had to add more time to my lifespan in order to get anything worthwhile done. The words of Ray Kurzweil from ten years earlier popped back into my saturated-fat soaked brain, and I thought, "Calorie restriction! There is hope!"
Into the google toolbar went those magic words, and in short order I was converted. Calories dropped, weight fell off, health improved, and the world seemed like a different place.
My CR journey has been empowering on so many different levels. The power to improve our own health is intoxicating. Every time I drop my calories or improve my nutrition, I feel like I am saving my own life. Breaking free of the prison of body hatred that haunts almost all women has freed up so much time and energy that I have time to volunteer for the Mprize as well as do my much-more-than-full-time job and cook delicious dinners for friends, family, and cats. If it weren't for Ray Kurzweil, I might be at the McDonald's drive thru picking up a biscuit in utter despair. Instead, I worship the eggwhite at my own homemade altar every morning, after annointing it with flax oil and Carolina barbeque sauce. Life is good, and I have every reason to believe that it will be long.
I recently enjoyed reading Ray's new book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. In it, Ray ties together the themes of CR, the SENS approach to reversing biological aging, and nanotechnology. He even discusses his own CR program.
I am honored to join Ray as a supporter of the Mprize. And even more exciting, Ray has offered to donate his time to a celebrity lunch auction to benefit the Mprize! Read all about it here! I encourage you to bid, donate and win the lunch!
Guess who's doing the cooking...
Posted by april at July 5, 2005 9:49 AM
Comments
April, are you doing the cooking? That would be too funny, because I plan on winning this auction. I was the first bidder ($10), just for the fun of it, but I'm sure the winning bid will be in the low four figures.
Posted by: Scott Miller at July 5, 2005 1:00 PM
Um, that's "Pretzels in my MUSTACHE, I thought the end was near." While I appreciate the effort to degender it, "hair" doesn't scan, you need a second syllable.
Posted by: James at July 6, 2005 6:50 AM
Hey, all you babies! Bet you didn't know that the Yalie song April quoted is a parody of "The Whiffenpoof Song" written back around the turn of the century. I'm just a fountain of useless trivia .... JD ;-)
Posted by: Judith at July 6, 2005 11:22 AM
I just randomly surfed in. Id never heard of the Mprize before but have always been interested in post human developement so Ive instantly sent it to everyone I know. Im sure the cute mouse logo will get lots of visitors attention. Im glad to see the lunch auction went well.
Great blog
Posted by: Ben at November 3, 2005 6:51 PM