April's CR Diary

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August 31, 2005

Very Short Entry

No time to write today.

Ate:

Denny's eggbeater vegetable omlette: 330 calories

Ruby Tuesday's salad bar, just veggies and olives and vinegar
+ 1 cup of my own lowfat cottage cheese, 160 calories

Off to another meeting.

Posted by april at 5:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 30, 2005

The Danger On the Rocks Is Surely Past

One of my favorite things about Steely Dan songs is that they basically make no sense, so you can imagine that they are about pretty much anything. Such is definitely the case with the song "Home At Last," which I listened to on continuous repeat while sitting in traffic for an hour and a half this morning due to an accident on I-476 involving livestock. [You wonder how I have time to blog while I'm in the midst of a very long work day stretch: I write the entries in my head while I drive then just spit them out in about fifteen minutes at the computer. Neat trick, eh?]

The song, I think, contains a reference to the Odyssey:

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast

I considered that line this morning (in between wondering what in the world the police were going to do about livestock on the highway) and was reminded of the recent thread on the CR Society email list inspired by a CR sister who has decided to go a little softer-core on her CR now that she is in a new relationship.

You probably think this is going to be another bragging rant about how happy I am to have a lover who not only supports my CR but pushes me further and makes CR easier for me (he packs little megamuffins when I go on a plane... isn't that sweet???). Another line from "Home At Last" springs to mind:

You think you've heard this one before.

Well, yes, you have, and this won't be *entirely* about the joys of double-CR couplehood.

While I may be safely partnered with the CR'd man of my dreams now, I am definitely no stranger to the warm, dark undertow of love/lust and how it can intensify all the other passions, not the least of which is the passion for good food. The thoughts of Odysseus as his ship sails safely past the siren inhabited waters were probably similiar to the feelings I experienced upon reading the CR sister's message to the list. The description of the intimate connection between food and love, and between food and sex, brought back a flood of memories of times in my life when eating with wild abandon has flowed naturally from falling wildly in love. Pure sexual attraction seems to be even more conducive to this phenomenon for me: I tend to be completely unable to eat while chasing an object of much desire (I don't think MR saw me eat a bite during the entire CRS conference) and then I am completely overcome by a need to eat high calorie, preferably high fat foods immediately upon obtaining the object of my affections. The calories balance out in the beginning, especially if it takes such a long while to catch the boy that I have a few weeks of under-calorie days, but when the routine of the relationship involves heavy food and drink, this can eventually become a recipe for disaster.

Now I want to make it very clear that I am talking just about my own experience... it sounds to me like the CR sister is finding a new balance in her relationship with food that will be very empowering and happy for her, so I am not trying to imply that negative consequences will result. I'm just reflecting back on my journeys through the siren infested waters of sex and food.

There's something about powerful, chemical sexual attraction that makes me feel invincible: like I can organize large hospitals, mobilize scientists to find the cure for aging, and brew my own coffee at home instead of stopping by Starbucks. The raging passion has given me the courage to do things I'd never dreamed I would do. I have risked expulsion from Yale for sitting in the president's office, risked arrest at many a protest, organized hospitals, changed my diet and lifestyle dramatically, and eaten wheat bran, all out of some curious mixture of conviction and love.

The vast majority of the time, my instinct for chasing boys has led me in the right direction. Erica Jong writes in Fear of Fifty about how we straight women seem to fall for men because we want some characteristic in them that we fear we lack. The "Good girl falls for bad boy" scenario and such. This is definitely true for me. I want to be fanatically self-disciplined, hardcore CR'd, a genius, an incredible writer, and slightly orange in color. Even though I haven't always understood it at the time, when I look back over my 31 years, I can clearly see all the times when a seemingly harmless crush led me to make one of the most important decisions of my life. Yikes, I chose my college based on the romantic idea of following Lee Franklin, my long term high school crush, to Yale! I became a union organizer in large part at the urging of my good friend Francis whom I ambiently chased for seven years before finally getting together and discovering that we're much better friends than lovers. And don't even get me started on my two years working as a computing assistant...

When it comes to food, however, this has not always been the case. I am pathologically attracted to skinny men, but most of the skinny men in my past didn't get that way through CR, they got that way by eating everything they could and not gaining weight. For a girl who tends toward fertility goddess proportions when eating ad lib, this usually resulted in weight gain, declining self-image, and general ickiness. The lust-induced feeling of invincibility often made me think that this one high fat, high calorie dinner won't matter... and neither will the one tomorrow... and neither will the shared bottle of wine or the bagel and cream cheese breakfast or the coffee with cream and sugar until, you guessed it, I've gained the Relationship Ten. Somehow, the men never gain, all the fat in the relationship has been carried by me.

There's also that need to give pleasure to each other, and the delight in seeing one's lover enjoy sensual pleasure. It never occurred to me before I began cooking for MR what an intensified pleasure it could be to feed a lover a meal that both delights the tastebuds and nourishes the body. There's something so bizarrely whole about the process of cooking CR food to share with my orange angel... as part of a ritual that gives the beloved pleasure down to the cellular level, it makes ad lib cooking and eating look like a relic of a quaint but dead religion.

On the way to the altar of hardcore CR love and its life-extending power, the first step is the delight in the sensual pleasure of food. The second step is the knowledge of the power of food to nourish life or speed death. Their synthesis is the ecstatic communion of CR-friendly pasta-less lasagna. Most people get stuck on the first step: they never get beyond using food as a vehicle for sensual pleasure at best, for self-destruction at worst. But some get stuck on the second step: they learn to use the life-giving power of food but they lose the visceral delight in eating.

From the safety of my well-established CR practice, I can look back at the siren-infested waters of old relationships and feel not nostalgia but compassion for the person who used to be drawn so easily into the cycle of overeating, bad body image, and bad health. I do still dip my toe in the water from time to time: I still go out with my friends and enjoy an excellent restaurant meal, or have a bite of a cookie that a friend baked. This isn't "cheating," it's a conscious part of my CR practice that enables me to enjoy the good things about eating with those who are not of the CR brethren without harming myself. I just balance out the calories in my other meals. Doing CR doesn't mean giving up the foods I loved before, it just means making an occasional treat, not a steady diet, of them. Now that my body and soul are nourished by healthy CR food, I no longer feel the pull of the Dunkin Donuts bagel. When I go out, it's for well-prepared, excellent food that is sometimes higher calorie than what I would normally eat. When I come home, I know that a fridge stocked with life-giving veggies and eggwhites (not to mention a freezer-full of megamuffins!) awaits me.

For me, the danger on the rocks is surely past. Having experienced the fusion of love, sex, passion, food, health, and life, I could never go back.

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last?

Home at last...

Posted by april at 8:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 29, 2005

How's the Llama?

That's what I thought the waitress at Denny's said to me as she refilled my coffee this morning. I wondered for a moment if this was some variation on the yak joke, and who had let the Denny's waitress in on the yak joke. It took a good five seconds before I figured out that she was asking about my "omlette."

NOTE: Lama spelled with only one "L" refers to llamas and alpacas. I got that off a llama website.

When I lived in Burlington, VT, there was an article in the paper about llamas who live on a beautiful mountain called Jay Peak. The article headline read, "Ruminants with a View."

I am still laughing about that, even as I drink my yak butter salt tea.

Anyhow, I was involved in this complex interaction with the Denny's waitress because I am entering a period of Shift Changes, which means that every day at four different shift changes, I wait at a local eating establishment for nurses to come off work at the hospital and meet with me about organizing the union. We strive to be convenient, which means convenient for them, not for me. Therefore, I am at the Denny's at 7:30 am, the Ruby Tuesday's at 2 pm and 3:30 pm, and the Denny's again at 7:30 pm. Luckily, the food is excellent at both places and quite CR friendly between the Denny's Fit Fare menu (of which my vegetable eggwhite llama was a feature this morning) and the RT's world-famous salad bar.

Back when I was young and single (as opposed to young and not married) I used to love the way that shift changes gave order and meaning to my days. There's something about doing something four times a day that is compelling and comforting. Now that there's a strange man in my house, I'll miss my Orange One a lot during shift change weeks, since I will basically leave the house at 6:30 am and return around 9 pm at the earliest. But it will give him an opportunity to write uninterrupted for hours on end, and to spend more quality time figuring out why the cats howl so much.

We had a great weekend away... MR arranged all the food in advance so that we had wonderful CR meals. The couple who got married were angelic about letting MR negotiate with the caterer, and the owners of the bed and breakfast let us use their kitchen. It's amazing to travel without fear. Made me think about what fun it would be to have a CR B&B! Well, it would be fun for about three days. I probably shouldn't quit my day job.

Posted by april at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 27, 2005

Lifeline

You bloggiefriends think you know me pretty well by now, and in fact you do. But there are things you don't know about me. Some of them you don't want to know... I am world-renowned as the Queen of Too Much Information... but some are relatively harmless and family-friendly.

For example, I bet you didn't know that I am an art person. That is ART PERSON. No, I don't draw or paint or sculpt... my finest artistic effort was a little stick figure named Will that my mother and I drew when I was small and invoked whenever we needed some cosmic help getting something done... but I love art. I practically minored in art history in college. One semester, I designed my entire course schedule around the concept of looking at pretty pictures. Three art history classes and a course on fractals. Very, very pretty. I chalk up this love of art to the artists in my family: my grandfather was a professional painter and photographer, my cousin in a very successful movie set designer and art director. I also credit my parents, who used to drag me to the North Carolina museum of art time after time after time. I complained, but secretly I loved it, especially the Egyptian art. I had a major obsession with all things Egyptian when I was a child and at one point read about fifteen Cleopatra biographies and was fairly convinced that I was in fact her reincarnation. Yes, I know she was not Egyptian, but Greek. She used to fantasize that Alexander the Great would be reborn and would come to sweep her off her feet, and look, she caught Julius Caesar, to which I say, "You go, girl!"

Anyway, I love art and I love art museums and I was downright obsessed with the Yale Art Gallery when I was in college. I knew every work, every room, and studied the fantastic installations in that little museum until I could show you every brilliant angle and give you some kind of interpretation of what it meant.

If I ever ask you to go to an art museum, I am trying to seduce you. [It suddenly dawns on MR that I have asked him to go to the art museum. This must mean that I am trying to seduce him. I know that might seem obvious to all by this point, but I've learned in the last few days that the men in the R. family can be a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to matters re: girls.]

One of my favorite art history classes in college was a seminar taught by Jules Prout, a *(^^ing brilliant art historian, on the works of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Wow, it was a rockin art history seminar. Hours and hours of staring at Homer and Eakins works in the art museum. I was on an almost constant art buzz.

In the last few days, for reasons apparently unrelated to CR, a favorite painting by Homer jumped back into my head. You can go look at it here. It's called The Lifeline.

Apparently back in the day they used to rescue people from sinking ships by firing a thing called a breeches buoy out of a cannon onto the deck of the sinking vessel and then running this little pulley back and forth to the shore with people in it. Pretty scary way to travel... it had a piece of floating cork that would for the most part keep the person inside from drowning, but there could be a considerable amount of time spent under the water during the trip.

I was drawn to the image of this painting again recently because I found myself using drowning as a metaphor in attempting to describe an experience that felt to me like being pulled out of the water. The first time I saw The Lifeline when I was in college, I was struck by the sexual imagery (I was constantly being struck by sexual imagery when I was 20, and if you were honest you would admit that you were too) but didn't look far beyond... looking at it now I am entranced by the sight of the powerful lines that anchor the ship to the shore as the unconscious woman is reeled in by her faceless rescuer. I have the odd, sometimes entertaining, sometimes irksome habit of seeing other people's thoughts and feelings almost as though they were literal, physical objects... for instance, I can have my back turned and be playing with the food processor when MR has a briefly distressing thought, and I will feel his thought like I've been hit with a small laser beam and turn around to say, "What's wrong?" This ability makes me empathic like Deanna Troy, and a bit annoying to anyone who is trying to hide something, but it also makes me unusually appreciative of anyone who is able to extend a psychic lifeline to me in a time of need.

My recent experience of being "pulled out of the water" was a short, sharp shock [HW: Pink Floyd quote is intentional.] But looking at the painting caused me to reflect once more upon the gentle, life-saving reeling in effect that MR's writings had on me as CR pulled me out of the water of ill-health and anxiety. I felt him pulling me up through the electrons, across the distance [nearly 3000 miles! Yikes! Glad the long distance part is over!] and through the seemingly impersonal format of email that wasn't even to me! His writings to the CR Society list gave me a lifeline to ride to the safety of my now CR'd lifestyle.

In writing the blog, I hope to throw to you a little lifeline. Whether or not you jump in and risk the stormy seas of hunger, conflict with family and friends, and just plain lifestyle change, is up to you. This journey isn't easy, and the waters can be downright rough. But like the rescuer whose face is obscured by the red scarf in the painting, I won't let you go. I'll keep showing up, day after day, writing you the silliest details of my life and the best recipes I can come up with. To paraphrase Don Henley: I will stand here in this fire with you.

I wonder if there is a limit to how many times I can legally quote pop music before I have to start paying the artists royalties. Let me push the envelope here, with a mixed metaphor of sorts:

And will you stand here in this fire with me?
And are you ready for another life?
I bit that bullet, I took that vow
And everything is different now.

Love angel music baby
Hurry up and come and save me.

Love angel music baby
Bloodsugar, sex, magick.
Eggwhites, brewers yeast, flax oil, kale.
In my mouth, in my kitchen, in my measuring cups and not particularly good measuring spoons, be the essence of the radically extended life.

The Goddess is coming. Drink to her, burn perfumes to her, and consider adding some protein to your breakfast. Cereal is for losers.

Posted by april at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

VLC's Last Day

It's sad news, everyone. The Very Little Co-worker is leaving us.

She's got an internship in DC with an energy policy think tank. That's what she studied in college, and it's more up her alley than organizing. I think she'll love it.

But I'll miss her! Who will distract the hotel staff while I steal celery from other parties' vegetable trays? Who will join with me in extolling the virtues of Essential Mix? Who will fight with me for limited space in the fridge for our giant lunch salads? Who will really appreciate Quorn with flax oil and Carolina barbeque sauce? Who will order the Skinny B*&*( when we're out for drinks in Center City (that's a vodka and diet Coke with a lime.)? I will be lonely. I will be sad. But I will visit her in DC.

I'm going to be out of town and offline from tomorrow until Monday, so try not to miss me too much. When I get back, I'm going into a long stretch of 16 hour work days, but I'll find a way to write to you. If nothing else, I can entertain you with stories of the Denny's Fit Fare menu, since I'll be at a Denny's meeting with nurses for hours on end every day.

Posted by april at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2005

Somewhere A Curse Had Been Lifted

That's a line from an Edie Brickell song called "Olivia." I've always loved the song, and this weekend that line rang rather true. In the past, other lines have jumped out at me, but I'll leave it to the hardcore Edie Brickell fan to figure that out.

I have blogged often, most recently in the issue Campaign for Real Beauty, about my aversion to the backlash against women who really are thin and/or beautiful. I've written very passionately on the subject, and I've often wondered if you've wondered what the hell happened to me to make me such a freak about it. Well, I feel like it's time to tell you.

To make a long story short, and with the names changed to protect the guilty:

In 2002, I left my then-home in New Jersey to go to Vermont to take on the biggest career challenge of my career to date, a career challenge that if I was successful would make me somewhat famous in my profession. There was no guarantee of success, and I left everyone close to me, taking only a small calico cat, to venture off into the wilds and slay the big dragon.

To take on this challenge, I had to supervise a staff of ten, seven of whom were women. I was excited about this because I had met them before, and they welcomed me onboard as something of a savior. They had hated the person whom I replaced, a man, and they treated me at first like a conquering heroine, the architypical strong female leader.

It wasn't long before things began to go bad. It started with questions about how I dressed, how I looked. As you have probably figured out, I am the kind of girl who wears make-up and dresses in a feminine style. I am rarely seen in pants, I have long hair, and as I write to you now, my nails are painted a nice shade of red. In Vermont, women tend to dress in more hippie style, with little or no makeup, and high heels are rare. In the ultra-left culture of Burlington, VT, it seemed to call one's feminism into question to appear at work in a dress with red nails.

So my female staff began to criticize me. Publically. Staff meetings rapidly became a referendum on how April looked, dressed, and acted. How did these people get away with what is clearly unprofessional behavior? Well, that's a long story, which I'll save for my blog about screwed up organizational politics. Suffice it to say that I had no power to fire them, and indeed had to get along with them well enough to make them work so that we could prevail in an effort where 1200 people's work lives depended on us.

It wasn't just about my looks. It quickly became about my sexual behavior too. I had begun a relationship with a fellow worker in the organization. Both of us were single, and we were not in a supervisory relationship. But the women on my staff decided that this was immoral. I was called a whore to my face, in a staff meeting. I was accused of sleeping my way to the top (to which I have always wished I had the wit to respond, "*This* is the top???") I was accused of having an affair with a married friend (luckily, the next day, his wife sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers for my birthday. Scratch that accusation!)

Every day when I went into work, I was subjected to insults, questions, and criticism. Almost worse was the whispering behind my back: the way the conversation would stop the second I walked in the room. The way no one but my one loyal friend (a man) would eat lunch with me.

Needless to say, I was stressed. There I was, a stranger in a strange land, attempting to do a very important job, and being attacked every day for my looks, my clothing, my relationships, and my sexuality.

Work wise, I held up beautifully. I led the campaign to stunning victory. The staff never doubted that I was a great organizer... in fact, they used to call me a genius. They just said that I was an evil genius! That I used my bewitching powers to enslave men. That I was a part of the patriarchy. Never mind that I had spent seven years helping a workforce of primarily WOMEN achieve economic independence and empowerment.

But emotionally, I was a mess. One by one, I had watched the women I thought were my friends betray me. My body started to fall apart. I couldn't eat, and had trouble keeping food down. My loyal friend John would sit with me every day while I tried to eat, attempting to tempt me with yummy treats. He was there when I couldn't stop throwing up. One day he almost picked me up and took me to the hospital because we thought I was throwing up blood... until we remembered that I had eaten a few grape tomatoes! I wanted to eat... I wasn't anorexic or bullemic! But I was so terrified and hurt that my body wouldn't accept nourishment. I shrunk. On May 29th, I weighed about 123. On July 26, I weighed 110.

And it was not a healthy 110. I didn't know to get protein or healthy fats. When I did eat, it was mostly spaghetti with marinara, or anything I could get down. I looked like a ghost. My skin was ashy and white, and my clothes hung off me in an unappealing fashion. I looked nothing like I do now, at a healthy, well-nourished, well-loved 103.

I was diagnosed with cervical dysplasia.

Eventually, I went home. I was offered many jobs after the triumph in the campaign, and I took the one where I could go home to Philly and work with a team of people I already knew and respected, especially a colleague who I knew would never, ever let staff walk on me again. I entered an environment of tremendous support, and have loved going to work every day.

But the emotional effects of the trauma didn't subside so quickly. When I read the description of post-traumatic stress disorder, I am fairly sure I had it. I was easily startled. I had terrible insomnia. I had hideous anxiety and was constantly convinced that something awful was about to happen. I was terrified everytime I had even the slightest conflict with friends or family that they would leave me forever.

I started to gain weight. In part, I was refeeding from the starvation. But I wasn't refeeding with eggwhites and flax oil... I was refeeding with nachos and margaritas. There was a part of me that wanted to get fat so that women would stop hating me and calling me a slut. Surely, if I was fat enough, no one could call me names like that, right? It was unconscious, to be sure, but in retrospect I can see that it was very real.

The crisis came two years later, and you've read much about my road to Damascus conversion to CR. Somehow, I decided that my body deserved to be loved and respected with healthy food in the right amounts. I pulled myself out of the downward spiral, and the results were downright amazing.

But still, some of the effects of the trauma remained. I have been easily startled, and MR can tell you that I seemed to jump several feet in the air at even a loud noise. I remained terrified of losing my close friends and family, so much so that at times I would need constant reassurance. The people around me were supportive and got used to it, and I was incredibly functional (as you know), but I was never quite right. It seemed like I just couldn't shake it, whatever "it" was, free.

Then this Saturday I had a rather bizarre experience. It is part of my private religious life, not for discussion on the blog, but suffice it to say that in the aftermath, I seem to have lost the signs of the Vermont trauma.

I am no longer ambiently afraid. I don't jump at loud noises. I don't feel the need to question my loved ones at every moment about whether or not they plan to abandon me.

And here's the other weird thing: I feel like some barrier has been removed to my CR practice. I've been consistently eating about 1000, and I plan to eat more than that here and there to avoid overly quick weight loss, but I'm no longer craving foods that aren't in my CR plan.

Will the effects last? Who knows? I definitely feel good now. Even if the only thing I've gained is the courage to share my Vermont story with you, my dear bloggiefriends, it will have been worthwhile.

So will I stop railing about the joys of loving my body? Never! I've come too far from being ashamed of my body and my sexuality to ever go back. I encourage all women to take control of their bodies, their health, and their sexuality. Maybe that will mean taking up CR and dating men who weigh less than 125 pounds, maybe it will just mean adding an hour of exercise and a vegetable to the daily routine. These things are very individual. There aren't that many healthy adult men who fit my specifications, so it's probably just as well if others' taste run to the heavier.

But for reasons known and unknown, I feel strangely free.

Somewhere, somehow, a curse has been lifted.

The Goddess lives.

Posted by april at 9:40 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

August 20, 2005

Lasagna -- Variations on a Theme

MR loves my lasagna, so I keep making various different versions of it using Trader Joe's marinara. Basically, if you put marinara sauce, cottage cheese, vegetables, and flax oil into a bowl, MR will love it. Lately I've even stopped putting in mozzarella... he seems to prefer it with flax oil for fat instead, and it's certainly healthier that way.

I am wondering... how would the lasagna taste with goat cheese?

Posted by april at 8:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

Too Much Zinc

Today I came downstairs after my shower at about 6:00 am because I had to leave for work at 6:30... normally I would hang out with MR while he creates our salads, but when I have to leave before breakfast I shower first, socialize later. He asked me what zinc supplement I was taking, and I produced my bottle, proud that I had purchased zinc, or a supplement of any kind, by myself.

He nearly had a heart attack.

I have been taking 60 mg tablets. This is way, way too much. I am supposed to take 15 mgs.

How was I to know?

Apparently, I should have compared the tablets he gave me with the new bottle. This didn't occur to me. Hey, I am no longer zinc deficient!

I am in big trouble now. No zinc for awhile.

As for muffin recipes... the only one I know is the megamuffins, and they're a production to make, but they last for like two months per batch once they're done. Melinda... come over and make them with us! They're fun! (I am now flashing back to the time I covered my kitchen with endive-flecked green ectoplasm looking goo... very Ghostbusters.)

Tonight I threw together a quick meal for MR of artichokes, eggwhites, roasted red peppers, Trader Joe's marniara and mozarrela. You know the Calorie count. I ate cottage cheese, red peppers and Trader Joe's marinara because I was out all day at meetings, so I didn't have my usual cottage cheese at lunch. Gotta get my calcium!

More philosophy soon... after I've had some sleep. Work is crazy now. The good news is: Denny's, where I meet most of my nurses these days, has a GREAT calorie controlled menu! More on that soon...

Posted by april at 9:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

Yippie! It's a Brownie!

Last night I stayed overnight in Wilkes-Barre along with VLC because we had to do some late evening sneaking into hospitals to drop off flyers, so I was away from my Orange salad-making man this morning. Anticipating that I would be without lunch today, he packed an extra brownie for me yesterday that I left in the fridge at work. It's just over 300 Calories and it's just like the megamuffin except that it's chocolate! I was so happy to see it when it was lunch time.

We've decided to add a half a megamuffin to my daily CR practice. I used to eat a cup of yougurt with some hazelnuts in the afternoon at work, but I had stopped since I'm eating dinner at home with MR many nights and wanted to save the calories for later. However, I'm getting so hungry in the afternoons that I am tempted to eat the nuts on my co-worker's desk! Danger! So we decided to add a half a megamuffin (or brownie) to my day so that I get lots of nutrient-packed sweetness in the afternoon and come home hungry but not starving. I wouldn't want to be so hungry that I walked in the door and immediately took a bite out of my Orange One. Though he is low-fat, high-protein and nutrient-dense, he is not for snacking on.

Posted by april at 12:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 15, 2005

Baker Soup

No, it's not a soup made with tons of pastry flour!

It's an old favorite of generations of Yale kids, served at the only union resturant in New Haven, Mory's. The legend goes that a guy whose last name was Baker used to stumble in for Sunday lunch with a major hangover and ask them to make him something to stop the pain. Baker Soup was the potion created. The original is cream-filled, and piping hot spicy with the taste of tomato, curry, and who knows what else. I decided to create my own CR-friendly version that I served for dinner last night along with a side of eggwhites for protein and some added hazelnuts for fat, plus some veggies with flax oil and lemon juice, brewers yeast on top of mine.

Here's the recipe:

120 calories (half a large can) of canned tomatoes, Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted is best
1 cup non-fat plain yogurt (110 calories)
curry powder
paprika
squeeze of fresh lemon juice
two teaspoons olive oil (you could use just one if you didn't want that much fat)
1 cup vegetable broth or chicken broth

Make the broth on the stove and add the tomatoes. Stir in curry powder and paprika. Remove from heat and add in yogurt, lemon and oil. Add more curry and paprika if necessary.

Enjoy!

Posted by april at 8:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 14, 2005

Magic Chef

That's what the lettering on the microwave that came with the house that MR and I are renting says. I think the microwave is about as old as I am, but it works, though slowly.

Sunday afternoon is a good time to reflect on everyday miracles, and so this hot sunny afternoon finds me reflecting on the daily miracle that is cooking. As someone I rather wish I had known once said, "Forasumch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance..."

In this day of fast food and body angst, I think it is too easy to forget the miracle by which the sunshine joins with the water and the earth to form the tiny parcels of lifeforce that we sometimes so unconsciously scarf down. People who cook or farm or garden are more conscious of this process, I think, than those who for whatever reason are deprived of these great pleasure. Living with MR makes me constantly more reverent in the presence of the great mystery... how on earth do we get our food to taste so good? Eggwhites meet vegetables, pour in garlic and pinot noir and a heaping spoonful of love and as though by magic, you have a delicious meal. What's the secret ingredient? Is it really the love? If it is, then can you not truly have good food without love? Or is it the tomatoes?

Even in my short lifetime, attitudes towards cooking have gone through many transformations. In the middle seventies when I was born, women weren't having as many babies... it made it hard for my mom to be the only one of her feminist crowd who was pregnant, but it caused a great dip in the population, making it easier for me to get into Yale. Many of the women of her generation and younger rejected cooking as another form of slavery, and I can see why: if I were chained to the stove day after day cooking for an ungrateful husband and children, with no say in the matter myself, I'd be ready to give it all up and send the husband and kids out to the nearest drive-thru too!

I know lots of women who have had partners who made them feel that their cooking was inferior. Just another way in which people can use the symbols of femininity to hurt or to harm. A man says you're gorgeous and adores you're cooking, and I swear, you feel like the latest manifestation of the Goddess. A man says your stomach is too big and turns his nose up at your cooking, and it's basically like being told that you're not a real woman. No wonder food, in which we confront both cooking and the effects on our bodies, is such an emotional issue for most of us female humans!

My cat sees it differently. MR says, "Feeding Kieffer is futile. It distracts him for a moment, then he's back to howling." It's true: we wake up in the morning, and MR gets his supplements and feeds Kieffer before bringing me my supplements in bed. Kieffer, as soon as he has consumed a can of Fancy Feast, returns to the top of the stairs to howl until his Mommy comes downstairs. MR says that Kieffer is thinking, "Now my belly is full and I want my mommy!" Who can blame him, really? We have basic needs: food, water and companionship. Some of us seek these out through elaborate networks of family, friends and colleagues and fancy DWIDP'd recipes. Others of us eat a can of Fancy Feast and return to howling for our mommies. Who am I to judge?

I've blogged before about how in the past, I've experienced a disconnect between the love I felt for a person and the food I was creating for or sharing with him or her. Making "treats" that really weren't healthy, or sharing special meals out that did more harm to our bodies than good always made me slightly uncomfortable. Like somehow my actions were speeding both me and my friends towards an early death. As it turns out, I was more right than I knew. Nowadays, when I cook, it does nothing but fortify the body and mind.

I understand that there are those who don't like to cook. MR is actually one of them, believe it or not, and it works out beautifully because that means he lets me practice my favorite hobby on him! I can accept that for some people, cooking is just not part of the accomplishment of their true will, in much the same way that backpacking simply will not make me happy, not now, not ever. But for those of us who do, I think that we get a special little window onto one of life's greatest every day miracles. We have the privilidge of actively giving life to ourselves and to others, without the pain and hassle of childbirth. We have the power, through our choices about what delicious treats we create for others, to powerfully influence their health and lifespan.

Makes you wonder... who died and made us gods?

Posted by april at 2:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2005

Neutral Greens

I went to Whole Foods today to do our weekly shop for the fancy veggies that MR and I eat for breakfast salad. On the list he made me was "neutral greens."

Now I ask you, my dear bloggiefriends, what the *(&*#(&# does that mean? I had no idea.

I turned to my mother, who accompanied me to Whole Foods. I said, "Neutral? Like Switzerland?"

"Maybe you should get him some Swiss chard," replied the all-knowing Mother of the Blog.

I called him from my cell phone on his cell phone (yes, MR, unlike Aubrey de Grey, has a cell phone.) He said he wanted a green that didn't have a strong taste. In the end, guess what we settled on?

You guessed it: Swiss chard.

The moral of the story is: the nutritional is political.

Meanwhile, I am further convinced that Sarah and I are twins, because unbenknownst to her, you, or the rest of the world, the dinner I have been planning for tongiht, and indeed had DWIDP'ed this morning, is a pumpkin curry with apples, yellow squash, and fat free ricotta. Yes, I thought of it myself. Yes, it's exactly like what Sarah suggested. No, you'll never believe it because it's too much of a coincidence. But it's true! Great CR girls think alike!

Here's tonight's dinner:

Curried pumpkin squash:

Dice 200 g yellow squash and 100 g red delicious apples. Coat with juice of fresh lemon to preserve.

Create 1/2 cup vegetarian vegetable broth and add to apple and squash. Add the juice of half a lemon, half salt to taste. Add 1 clove of garlic, minced. Simmer till veggies and apples are soft.

Stir into 425 g pureed pumpkin, canned (not pumpkin pie filling!!!) Add 146 Calories of eggwhites, microwaved and diced into bite sized pieces. Allow to simmer so the eggwhites pick up the pumpkin flavor. Add curry powder and half-salt to taste.

Measure 1/2 cup (120 calories) fat-free ricotta (great source of calcium!) Blend curry powder into ricotta, and a dash of half salt.
Place at bottom of pyrex glass bowl or other heat resistant large soup bowl.

Remove pumpkin mixture from heat. Stir 1 teaspoon flax oil, two teaspoons olive oil into pumpkin mixture. Pour into bowl over ricotta. If desired, throw a dash of cinnamon on top.

Serve with three ounces of pinot noir.

626. Zoned. DWIDP just screwed up my file so I can't print it out. I am thinking about asking for Nutribase for Christmas.

Posted by april at 6:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

It's Not Having What You Want, It's Wanting What You've Got

That's a line from a Sheryl Crow song that I don't particularly like. Though I'm glad she's wearing sunscreen, and I am occasionally in favor of Zen-like acceptance, these days I've been enjoying having what I always wanted. A great job, an amazing live-in partner, excellent family and friends, a cat with opposable thumbs... what else is there?

People who consider CR often say they couldn't give up their favorite foods. Well, neither could I. Sure, I eat less of things like french fries, but I definitely eat the food I enjoy and enjoy the food I eat.

Take, for instance, the dinner I made for MR and myself Thursday night: Quorn gumbo. Okra, Quorn grounds, Trader Joe's marinara sauce, bell peppers, yellow squash, flax oil, and some eggwhites to Zone up the protein. Amazing stuff. You can do it without the Quorn too, using only eggwhites, if you live in the Land Without Quorn.

Or the dinner I'm planning to make for MR for fancy Saturday night dinner. Wait: I can't tell you, it's a surprise for him!

Last night I created a strange soup of vegetable juice, red peppers, avocado, and a veggie blend of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. Quite good really, as I blended the avocado and the roasted red peppers into the juice to create a slightly creamy broth. Added flax oil. Served cool, like gazpachzo.

MR was commenting the other day that it's amazing how much variety there is in the taste of my foods, especially considering how frequently I use certain ingredients. I am constantly serving tomatoes, eggwhites, bell peppers, broccoli, and cottage cheese. He loves the food, but I think it's time I branched out! So, bloggiefriends, here's your chance: give me some thoughts on new ingredients that you love, and ways to cook them. I await your comments.

Posted by april at 1:10 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 12, 2005

Melissa and the Eggwhite Omlet

No, it's not the title of a children's book. It's how I spent my morning for two months of my life around May of last year, and the scene I nostalgically revisited this morning.

Part of my job is meeting with nurses at all hours of the day and night in locations that are convenient for them. This has led me to spend hours waiting for nurses in a McDonalds in Camden, New Jersey, where all of the other patrons were on their way to the local clinic for their methadone maintanence injections. This has resulted in many an evening spent feeding at the salad bar at the Trolley Car Diner in Chestnut Hill, PA, where nurses from the local hospital could pop by after work. And for two months last year, I sat in a Denny's in suburban Philadelphia every morning from 7:30 to 9 am, waiting to meet with nurses as they came off of work.

The campaign didn't go forward at the time: we met with over 100 nurses out of about 350, and as is traditional, management gave a big raise, held a lot of mandatory anti-union meetings, and made a lot of promises to keep the nurses from organizing. As is also traditional, management failed to keep their promises. It's over a year later and the nurses are frustrated again, so they've called us back and now I'm back at the Denny's, home of the Fit Fare calorie-controlled menu, and my favorite waitress in the world, Melissa.

Melissa waited on me every morning, seven days a week, for two months. She sees my car pull up in the parking lot, and she puts my coffee on the table. No cream, no sugar. She knows that I want the eggwhite omlet with mushrooms, onions, tomato and green pepper. Needless to say, I leave excellent tips.

Posted by april at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

It's Your Day For Free Ice Cream

No, actually, it's not.

But that's what a man standing outside an ice cream truck said to me as I tried to make my way to the Starbucks for an afternoon iced coffee. "No thank you," said I. It is truly not hard for me to resist a free ice cream, as I was never that into ice cream anyhow. I'm glad it wasn't my day for a free everything bagel toasted with cream cheese. That might have necessitated a cell phone call to MR for a pep talk. "Remind me again about spending an indefinite youth together..."

I meditated again on how unfortunate it is that we look to foods that don't nourish our bodies as "treats." One of my CR sisters, Shannon, once said, "Some people say I deserve a treat. I say, 'I deserve a long and healthy life.'" Wow, that's cool.

I am by no means immune. I still consider going out to restaurants with friends and eating more than I would usually eat a treat. It's hard to break the programming. I do better than I used to, by far, but the impulse is still there.

Imagine a CR friendly world where you'd pass a fresh vegetable truck. "It's your day for free broccoli!" Yippie!!! I often amuse myself by imagining how different the world would be. For instance, you're in a bar, and a guy slides into the seat next to you and says, "Can I buy you some resveratrol?" If you agree, he asks how many grams you would care for. The bar tender carefully measures your serving.

You go out to dinner. The menu is divided not into appetizers, salads, entrees and desserts, but into protein dishes, fat dishes, carbohydrates, and mixed dishes. Detailed nutrition info is on everything. You and your dinner companion pull out your pocket nutrient trackers, observe what you've already had today, and put together your delicious, nutritious meal.

You go clothes shopping and everything fits. Even if you are a CR'd male.

Green tea, sweetened with sucralose, is served in restaurants and available in vending machines.

Everywhere you go it warmer. There is no shame in carrying a blanket around with you all winter. Some people even carry pocket space heaters.

Seats always have extra padding.

Fast food restaurants serve salads that actually contain vegetables! Salad dressings contain real, extra virgin olive oil, refridgerated instead of left standing next to the grill all day!

The idea of being unhappy with your body or "feeling fat" is unheard of. People feel at peace with their bodies as they fill themselves with nutritious foods in small, measured portions. There is no weight loss industry. In fact, weight loss, as a concept, doesn't really exist because no one ever gets fat.

People don't talk about what they will do when they retire. They talk about their second, thrid, fourth, and fifth interesting careers. Those who choose to have children live to see their great-grand children grow up. Those who choose not to (and there are many of those, as there is less social pressure to reproduce) live to serve several generations of CR'd cats.

"Kid food" is no longer chicken fingers and hot dogs: it's high protein, high calcium, tons of veggies and fruits for growing bones and muscles and brains.

DWIDP is re-written as an interactive, DOOM-style video game.

And nearly everyone is ever so slightly orange.

Posted by april at 5:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Party Report

I wonder if the birthday/housewarming/fundraising party was the first social occasion ever in which calorie counts for all items served were written on little pieces of paper in front of the dishes. No doubt it's all been done before, but it sure was fun.

MR made a batch of brownies and a batch of megamuffins that he cut into fourths for nice cupcake sized pieces. I made:

gazpachzo -- 26 cals per half cup

kale stems and other cut veggies with artichoke hazelnut dip and salsas

black bean burritos on Trader Joe's low carb whole wheat tortillas, 50 calories each. Homemade guacamole on the side, first batch my recipe, second batch my friend Myrna Perez' homestyle recipe. Yum, and good fats!

cottage cheese

Seems like there was more but I can't think what. The buffet table was stacked, between the giant vat of gazpachzo, all the vegetable trays, and the two baskets of baby muffins and brownies. My mom also got tons of fruit, including whole pineapples and mangoes, that were enjoyed by all.

Everyone loved meeting Aubrey de Grey, who held court from a pink arm chair in the corner. MR drifted in and out of the kitchen in his apron. Lots of beer and wine were consumed, and we also served iced green tea.

Notable CR attendeed were Mary and her husband. They brought me some much needed red wine glasses and cute little wine charms. You can see some pictures of the party on Mary's blog. Also coming in from a great distance were Saul, who flew in from Rochester, NY, and Bob, who drove nine hours each way from North Carolina! Now that's dedication!

It was a fun mixture of science people, CR folks, life-extensionists, and my local friends. Kieffer the cat was a major attraction, as he sat sleeping and showing off his thumbs throughout most of the day.

By far, the favorite food (besides the megamuffins and brownies, which everyone was surprised they loved!) was the artichoke hazelnut dip. It's the world's easiest dip to make, so I'll write the recipe and you can try it today!

Take 2 cans of canned artichoke hearts, packed in water. In a food processor, blend them with a couple handfulls of hazelnuts (measure to get your right calorie amount... this is not a low cal recipe, but rather a way to get your good fats in a delicious package!). Add olive oil, 1 tablespoon, and the juice of one lemon, freshly squeezed. If needed, throw in a dash of half salt. Serve cold or at room temperature. Enjoy!

Things are finally getting back to "normal" after our hectic weekend. I was so exhausted after the party preparation that I fell asleep as soon as the last guest departed and didn't wake up till midnight! Meanwhile, MR did almost all the dishes! Our house is finally almost back in it's pre-party condition, and we've recycled all those beer and wine bottles. Who says that CR folks don't know how to have a good time?

Posted by april at 7:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 8, 2005

Campaign for Real Rants

Well now we know the truth. While she appears to be a mild-mannered, sweet Canadian Mum -- she even owns a children's clothing store! -- the Mother of MR is in fact capable of fire breathing ranting just like her unusual offspring! I knew he got it from somewhere!

I think that's a good thing, because I enjoy impassioned debate. Most of my best friends are people who have strong beliefs and express them. In the blog, I deal with issues that are very emotional, for me and for everyone else. It's bound to touch a few nerves, and I'd argue that that's a good thing.

However, I do think I may have been misread. When I read MoMR's Rant (now she has her own Rant! Isn't that cute! Mother and son have matching rants!) I find I don't disagree with a word she said. In fact, I strongly agree with all, except perhaps for what I would call a misunderstanding of my original post.

At no point did I say that simply looking like a model is a guarantee of health. I said that for many women (and I am apparently not one of them) doing serious CR will result in looking like a model. Many models are indeed unhealthy (as are many doctors, for that matter) and I do not advocate smoking, taking dangerous drugs, or dating Hugh Grant, as some models have been known to do. My problem with the Dove ad campaign is it's title, implying that thin is not real. For some people, thin is very real. In fact, several of my CR brothers and sisters have recently and quite independent of each other shared with me growing concerns as they get pressure from their friends and family to gain weight. So characterizing people as somehow not real because they are thin is not fair.

I also think it does a disservice to the very people who do suffer in the battle with weight. MoMR's discussion of the misinformation about health and nutrition with which people have been bombarded is right on target, and very well said. If you look back at my blog entries, especially on the old blog, you'll find long discourses on the misinformation that I lived by before I discovered CR. I am not a naturally skinny person by any stretch of the imagination, and until I started CR, I battled my weight my entire life. I tried all sorts of diets, from Atkins to Ornish to Weight Watchers. I found them either hard to stick to, crazy, or both. Weight Watchers I think can be great when done by the book, which means getting your servings of calcium, lowfat protein, fruits and veggies everyday, the way my mom did it. Certainly there are people out there who lose weight by eating only 21 points a day of junk, but Weight Watchers as taught in the classes (I know because I attended WW for several months pre-CR) does not support that kind of unhealthy lifestyle, any more than CR folk advocate eating nothing but 1200 calories of rolled oat disks (there is someone on the list who does this and gets a good yelling at from MR everytime he posts... "Eat some ***&*%*ing vegetables!")

Point being, I don't blame people for being the victims of misinformation... the entire reason why I write the blog is to provide people with tools to make a healthy lifestyle easier! I certainly wouldn't be able to do CR the way MR does: between not having the patience to chop vegetables for hours and having a job that requires me to eat socially, travel a lot, and eat on the run, his style would just not be possible. Even my fairly easy breezy brand of CR is hard for me at times of stress or lots of travel or really good restaurant eating. And you see the struggles I have when I try to take my calorie intake even lower. So I'm in no way blaming people who struggle with weight, the misinformation ocean that we swim in when it comes to diet and nutrition, or a desperate craving for a fungus-based meat substitute. I've been there, and recently.

However, I don't think that the solution to the problem lies in trying to change society's ideals of beauty to conform to the growing unhealthiness of the population. It's average to have cholesterol of 200 -- but it's not healthy. It's average to have about $4000 in credit card debt, but it's not a good idea. It's average to be overweight, but instead of trying to make people feel better by describing it as "real" and therefore somehow preferable to the "unreal" ideal of being thin, let's actually help people feel better by giving people the tools they need to achieve healthier weights, through healthy means (no cocaine or dating rockstars allowed!)

MoMR is quite correct that the tools have not been available, and are to a large extent still not available to many people. One of my motivations in writing the blog has always been to provide ways of doing CR or just cutting your calorie intake back and improving your health that are possible for most anyone. An MR-like lifestyle is neither possible nor desirable for most folks, but throwing together a green salad with a side of cottage cheese and taking it to work for lunch is pretty do-able. Substituting greens or zucchini for pasta in lasagna is a whole lot easier than making megamuffins (and I *really* mean that, after watching MR slave over a hot stove in a hot kitchen for the better part of a day to make a delicious batch for the party!). Making normal, yummy, easy, cheap food is my specialty. I don't have the patience to do otherwise, and until MR moved here, all my money was going to plane tickets to Canada, so I really couldn't afford all that guava.

It has always seemed to me that the food industry and the weight loss industry work together to create people who have unhealthy eating habits that will result in obesity unless you are one of those genetically skinny people (and even those people tend to gain weight eventually as they age). Look at how kids are becoming addicted to sugar and saturated fats right in the school cafeteria! Then they can pay a lot of money for diet scams that are pretty much guaranteed not to work. They can also pay a lot for gym memberships that they then won't want to use because it's too upsetting to stare at oneself in all those mirrors when one is overweight. When I was at my high pre-CR weight, I did not go to the gym because I just didn't want to look at myself in workout clothes all the time. And because I hated the radio station they had on, but that's a different rant.

The answer is not greater acceptance of the inevitable results of an unhealthy lifestyle. The answer is to demand, all of us, that the food industry, public health authorities, and school cafeterias stop feeding us gak, whether it's in the form of a cheeseburger or in the form of a food pyramid (or is it now a rhombus?) that is guaranteed to make anyone but the naturally skinny and the very athletic fat. How many servings a day of grains? Why??? No way!

Unfortunately, the idea that if you eat fewer calories, you'll lose weight and maybe even live longer, certainly avoid many heatlh problems, isn't likely to sell as many books as say, the Atkins diet. McDonald's doesn't offer the extra value meal with a super-sized order of broccoli because it won't sell.

My concern about the Dove press release that says:

"Models weigh an average of 23 percent less than the average woman. Twenty years ago, models weighed an average of 8 percent less."

is that it's misrepresenting the problem. Models may have gotten thinner, but the real problem is that the population at large has gotten a whole lot heavier. The press release makes it sound like the models have gotten thinner and thinner while everyone else has remained the same real weight. The average woman weighs a lot more today than the average woman did twenty years ago, and it's in large part due to just the kind of misinformation that MoMR cited. It's also due to a food industry that has figured out how to make its products cheaper and more addictive by adding tons of sugar and salt to everything. I believe in addressing that problem, not in pretending that the problem is all in our heads, or is a result of models being too skinny. While many models no doubt arrive at their thinness by very unhealthy means, the natural result of an extremely healthy lifestyle for many people will be what would now be considered extreme thinness. For men, the social pressure is already there to be big, bulky and muscular. For women, the pressure goes the opposite. I feel a lot of guilt about the fact that my CR brothers have to put up with being called freakishly skinny, while the CR sisters for the most part enjoy society's approval (up to a point, then we all get picked on for being too skinny, but I'm certainly not there yet.) It's a lot easier to practice CR when you aren't pedaling upstream against the current of society's ideals of beauty, and in that respect I think it can be easier for women. I'm in favor of keeping it that way. While thin doesn't always equal healthy, most people will lose considerable weight living a lifestyle that we now know to be life-enhancing and hopefully even life-extending. So let's encourage people to do that, and give them the tools to do that. That's what I try to do in some small way in the blog, and what I do when I refuse to serve gak to people who come to my house. I'd love to work on campaigns to pressure restaurants to offer more healthy choices, and to publish their calorie counts and nutrition info on the menu. Imagine! If every restaurant had the calorie count posted on their creamy artichoke spinach dip! The world would be a different place.

Besides, let's remember that these ads are for a firming cream! If you read the article in Slate that I originally cited, you'll note that the author makes this point. "Real" curves are great, but get rid of that cellulite! Is everyone okay with that???

Meanwhile, onto the last comment, by someone who didn't leave his or her name.

I’m finding it still seems to have crossed the line from critical to condescending, and I can’t think of a better way to turn people off to your actual message.

That may be. I clearly upset a lot of people, and whenever I do that, I'm always momentarily tempted to apologize to everyone profusely and retreat into talking only about food and recipes and how to turn a standard American dish into a piece of CR genius. But part of writing this blog for me is about being real, and that means saying what I think even when it makes people angry. That's scary at times since everyone I know reads the blog, including a lot of people I really like and respect. I hate offending people: as Jessica Simpson once said, "The real me is a Southern girl," and I can't stand the thought that people won't like me or will be mad at me because of something I wrote in the blog.

However, I think it's a risk I have to take. If I don't occasionally risk making you bloggiefriends mad, I run the risk of bleeding the life out of the blog, and destroying the thing that makes you read it in the first place. I'm not selling anything: you read the blog for free, and if you don't like it anymore you'll go away. I don't get paid a bounty for converting people to CR, so if I turn people off, so be it. It seems unlikely to me that someone who was on the verge of adopting CR would decide to eat a hot dog just cause I said something with which he or she disagreed. My recipes taste just as good, whether you agree with my philosophy or not. Lots of my fellow bloggers have expressed opinions with which I disagree, but I still consider them CR sisters and brothers cause when it comes down to it, the rest of the world thinks we're all freaks!

I'm glad I inspire strong feelings in my readers, and I'm even happier when they express themselves in comments, or better yet, by starting their own blogs! Rants are good... let's have more of them!

Meanwhile, has anybody tried the new Dove green soap? Now that's an ad campaign that works. I have been totally obsessed with buying green Dove ever since I first saw the "Gentle, meet fresh" billboard. The only problem is: it's made with green tea extract, and I'm afraid that if I smelled too much like the beverage he has every day at 11 am, MR might get confused and try to drink me.

Posted by april at 7:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 4, 2005

Campaign for Real Beauty

You knew it was coming. That it was only a matter of time before I was forced to comment on the new Dove ads featuring "real" women with "real" bodies, including "real" curves.

I just read an interesting article from Slate Magazine on the topic. The author describes the campaign to feature non-models in ads for a beauty product, and has some interesting reflection. In the article, Seth Stevenson quotes from Dove's press release re: the ads:

"Models weigh an average of 23 percent less than the average woman. Twenty years ago, models weighed an average of 8 percent less."

The implication here is that the problem is that models are getting skinnier. I beg to differ. Has anyone noticed the abundant evidence that women (and other people too) are getting fatter?

Now I'm not one to insist that all women must look like Kate Moss. I, for one, do not look at all like a skinny supermodel, and probably won't no matter how hard the core of my CR gets.

But please. "Real" women have bodies that carry a whole lot of extra fat? Does that make me a fake woman? Am I a poser? I could have sworn that my birth certificate says female, and that my driver's license confirms that I am over eighteen. Last time I checked, being an adult female was the definition of being a woman, whether you have excess fat or not.

One commenter on the Slate site points out that the women on the ads range in size from 4 - 12, and that the average American woman is a size 14, so the "real" women aren't so real after all. Implication being: get even fatter women! Yikes! What is up with this?

How about if instead of whining about how media images of beautiful thin women make us hate ourselves, let's stop engaging in behavior that makes us fat, unhealthy, and in time, dead? What is so "real" about not being able to control our eating? No one takes out ads in the Wall Street Journal featuring pictures of people buried in consumer debt proudly holding up a new credit card. Even though most people carry more credit card debt than they should, we don't call that "real" as though it were somehow superior to those freaks who are debt-free.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not calling the brave women who are photographed in Dove ads wearing next to nothing fat. I think several of them have gorgeous bodies, and I applaud any woman who will get out there and show off what she has. If there were more of that spirit in the world, there would be a lot more decent lingerie, a lot more happy marriages, and a lot fewer sensible shoes. I have always adored girls (of all ages) who are comfortable in their bodies and enjoy showing them off. So for the record: you go girls!

But say one of these beautiful women decides to take up CR to further her chances of living to see a time when anti-cellulite creams really work. She loses a lot of weight and becomes very thin, like, uh, a model. Will she then cease to be "real?" Will she no longer be "healthy," because it's not "healthy" to be in control of what you eat? Will we no longer be able to make a politically correct statement by placing her on a billboard?

How about this: if you feel guilty for buying products advertised by people who embody society's ideal of beauty, yet you do not wish to encourage the deadly overconsumption of Calories that leads to more politically acceptable body types, I have a solution. Let's start an ad campaign called the Campaign for Real Health. On giant billboards, we can feature pictures of gorgeous skinny CR'd guys in all sorts of poses: chopping vegetables, mixing whey protein shakes, brewing green tea, running down a city street with several pounds of guava in a backpack. We can even list their real ages on the billboards so that all can see how much younger they look. Then we can simultaneously defy society's dictates while glorifying a lifestyle that is truly healthy and that leads to many more years of youth and beauty than any firming cream on the market.

Now that, my friends, would be a campaign for real beauty.

Posted by april at 1:18 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Aubrey de Grey Doesn't Think CR Will Work

One of my blog readers asked that question in email last night.

"I think he's wrong," said MR as he separated salad greens from their stems. It's 6:20 am and he's making our salads. MR wrote a rebuttal to Aubrey's article about weather and CR that was accepted by Gerontology, but he had to withdraw it due to page charges. Now he's resubmitted it to another journal and is waiting for approval. So I can't spoil the punch line by telling you too much (wait for the movie: it will be a lot like Star Wars Episode III) but yes, we know that CR isn't high on Aubrey's list, and we still think it's a good idea.

One thing Aubrey, MR and I do agree on is that CR in itself isn't nearly enough to solve the problem of aging. No one, not even CR's most fierce proponenets, suggests that CR will reverse aging, or even put it off indefinitely. To do that, we need a completely different kind of biomedicine. That's why both MR and I are members of the Three Hundred. We do CR because we want to live long enough to see the results of Aubrey's work, and the work of the many scientists who are pursuing anti-aging interventions that might actually succeed.

We also think that judging from the inherent defects of CR, pursuing CR mimetics is a waste of time. If the thing itself won't get you more than a couple of decades under even the most hopeful of predictions, why pursue drugs that mimic it? The only reason to pursue CR mimetics would be if we truly didn't think that more effective interventions were within the realm of possiblity. Then we'd have no better options. MR says there are more technical reasons but that it would take me a long time to explain it, and he is almost finished with making breakfast.

We'd like to point out that Aubrey de Grey, for all his disapproval of CR, really likes my cooking. He will be making a special one-day-only appearance in Philadelphia at my birthday party on Sunday, August 7. Get your tickets now!

Posted by april at 6:17 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 3, 2005

Now We've Come So Far, So Fast

Driving home from work tonight I heard Don Henley's "End of the Innocence." I didn't like that song much when it was popular, but grew to love it when a good friend put it on a mix tape for me a few years ago. As I drove down the road to Chestnut Hill (which, as we all know, is paved with good intentions) I contemplated how very far I've come in my own CR practice since even last July.

The distance can't be measured in pounds, the way the first part of my CR journey was easily observed. Rather, it's been a nutritional shift and a shift in how I think about food. Being with MR has definitely encouraged to be more serious about my Zone ratios, and more serious about my cooking in general.

I'd love to say more about it, but I just got home and am exhausted. So content yourself with a pop music quote and go to bed.

Posted by april at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Indulge Your Good Intentions

That was the caption under the apricot oat granola bar at Starbucks. I just returned from my third trip there today. The first was on my way to my mom's house at 6:30 this morning, where I was going to help her remove all objects from her car so that she could help me and MR get his stuff out of the cargo bay at the airport. My second was with MR on our way to the airport. My third was after my second lunch of the week (I realize that it is Wednesday) at Ruby Tuesday's, where I met a co-worker on my way from the airport to the office.

I'm sure that a quick check of the nutrition information on the Starbucks apricot oat granola bar would confirm that one's good intentions would be better indulged elsewhere. For instance, in my very own kitchen. Now that we have both power and an internet connection, I can sit in my kitchen DWIDPing while online! Last night, however, was MR's night to cook for my birthday dinner. It was quite pleasant to arrive home after a long day and discover the Orange One chopping veggies for CR'd Zoned pizzas in the kitchen. Gotta love that kitchen island.

Tonight I will be out at a meeting from 5 pm to 8 pm, so MR will be on his own for dinner, and I will probably have some kind of salad at the meeting. Tomorrow is my night to cook again, and I look forward to whatever creation my little brain will dream up between now and then.

Thanks to all for the sweet birthday wishes! I am getting excited for the party, and to see Aubrey de Grey again. I am thinking that due to the heat, I may substitute a giant vat of gazpachzo for lasagna... yum! We will have megamuffins, cottage cheese, lots of veggies and fruits, stems with salsa, artichoke hazelnut dip, and who knows what else... as the spirt moves me I will cook.

Right now I am so tired... between the heat, the move, adjusting to sleeping with both an Orange One and a Calico One in the bed, and running around doing errands, work, etc., I am quite exhausted. Hence the three trips to Starbucks. Maybe all will calm down soon and MR and I will be able to enjoy a quiet low calorie evening at home.

Posted by april at 2:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 2, 2005

Recipes

Every few days, MR has to get rid of stems because he creates so many in the preparation of our breakfast salad. Last night I created a dish that disposed of all available stems. I chopped the kale and simmered it in a cup of vegetable broth (Rapunzel Organic brand), then I added the arugula stems, followed by 1 cup eggwhites dissolved in 1 cup veggie broth, stir stir stir to prevent the eggwhites from totally congealing. Added a few dashes of my funky shaker of mixed spices like lemon, lime and cilantro, and added tons of fresh lemon juice (not from concentrate.) He seemed to like it, and now we are without stems.

Food List : MRstems.FLS
DATE : 08/01/05
Num. Foods : 8
Food #1 : Arugula, raw stems, 395 g
Food #2 : Kale, raw stems, 209 g
Food #3 : Soup, vegetable broth or bouillon, dehydrated, dry 1 cube
Food #4 : Nuts, filberts or hazelnuts, dried, unblanched 11 g
Food #5 : Oil 1 teaspoon olive, 1 teaspoon flax, 1 teaspoon hazelnut
Food #6 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 3 oz
Food #7 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 125 calories/1 cup
Food #8 : Blueberries, raw 136 g

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 624.93__cal 31%
Protein 46.57__gm 85% RDA
Total Fat 20.95__gm 32%
Sat. Fat 3.11__gm 16%
Mono. Fat 11.04__gm 38%
Poly. Fat 4.42__gm 66%
Carbohydrate 60.92__gm 20%
Fiber 14.84__gm 49%
Cholesterol 68.46__mg 23%
Vit. A 28137.49__IU 563% RDA
Vit. B6 1.01__mg 63% RDA
Vit. B12 0.52__mcg 26% RDA
Vit. C 327.85__mg 546% RDA
Vit. E 8.21__mg 103% RDA
Thiamine 0.55__mg 50% RDA
Folacin 471.47__mcg 262% RDA
Riboflavin 1.86__mg 143% RDA
Niacin 4.30__mg 29% RDA
Panto. Acid 2.52__mg 50% SA
Calcium 972.26__mg 81% RDA
Copper 1.19__mg 59% SA
Iron 10.39__mg 69% RDA
Magnesium 335.64__mg 120% RDA
Manganese 4.01__mg 134% SA
Phosphorus 421.38__mg 35% RDA
Potassium 3025.05__mg 151% RDA
Selenium 49.61__mcg 90% RDA
Sodium 1362.60__mg 57% SA
Zinc 3.29__mg 27% RDA
Tyrosine 3.28__gm 341% RDA
Lysine 5.99__gm 831% RDA
Phenylalanine 4.49__gm 468% RDA
Leucine 6.99__gm 728% RDA
Valine 4.81__gm 572% RDA
Methionine 1.91__gm 636% RDA
Cystine 1.46__gm 485% RDA
Tryptophan 1.09__gm 604% RDA
Threonine 3.81__gm 793% RDA
Isoleucine 4.45__gm 618% RDA

P:C:F = 30:40:30

Sunday night I made a very simple scallop dish that turned out fabulous. I simmered 200 g sea scallops in 3 oz red wine (that cooks down to 30 calories) and minced garlic, then I added 100 g diced tomatoes and at the end I added 4 g fresh basil leaves and 1 teaspoon olive oil. Simmered for about half an hour, and served with zucchini and asparagus on the side topped with olive and flax oils and juice of fresh lemon. We ate outside on our deck, which was beautiful.

Food List : Redwinescallop.fls
DATE : 07/31/05
Num. Foods : 11
Food #1 : Mollusks, scallop, mixed species, raw 200 g
Food #2 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 6 oz
Food #3 : Garlic, raw 4 g
Food #4 : Basil, fresh 4 g
Food #5 : Oil 1 teaspoon flax, 2 olive
Food #6 : Squash, zucchini, baby, raw 200 g
Food #8 : Asparagus, raw 100 g
Food #9 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, June thru October average 100 g
Food #10 : Kiwi fruit, (chinese gooseberries), fresh, raw 139 g
Food #11 : Nuts, filberts or hazelnuts, dried, unblanched 10 g

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 628.15__cal 31%
Protein 43.85__gm 80% RDA
Total Fat 23.25__gm 36%
Sat. Fat 3.74__gm 19%
Mono. Fat 12.96__gm 45%
Poly. Fat 4.07__gm 61%
Carbohydrate 46.93__gm 16%
Fiber 11.74__gm 39%
Cholesterol 167.91__mg 56%
Vit. A 2339.56__IU 47% RDA
Vit. B6 1.04__mg 65% RDA
Vit. B12 3.07__mcg 154% RDA
Vit. C 232.15__mg 387% RDA
Vit. E 10.28__mg 129% RDA
Thiamine 0.42__mg 38% RDA
Folacin 285.36__mcg 159% RDA
Riboflavin 0.50__mg 38% RDA
Niacin 6.32__mg 42% RDA
Panto. Acid 1.76__mg 35% SA
Calcium 190.44__mg 16% RDA
Copper 0.95__mg 47% SA
Iron 4.74__mg 32% RDA
Magnesium 288.04__mg 103% RDA
Manganese 2.15__mg 72% SA
Phosphorus 758.63__mg 63% RDA
Potassium 2466.38__mg 123% RDA
Selenium 49.68__mcg 90% RDA
Sodium 352.15__mg 15% SA
Zinc 4.20__mg 35% RDA
Tyrosine 2.48__gm 259% RDA
Lysine 5.95__gm 826% RDA
Phenylalanine 2.97__gm 309% RDA
Leucine 5.70__gm 593% RDA
Valine 3.59__gm 427% RDA
Methionine 1.71__gm 571% RDA
Cystine 0.92__gm 308% RDA
Tryptophan 0.92__gm 509% RDA
Threonine 3.27__gm 681% RDA
Isoleucine 3.38__gm 469% RDA

P:C:F = 23:39:33

I've been serving side dishes of blueberries with hazelnuts and/or hazelnut oil as little dessert while the blueberries are fresh and relatively cheap.

For lunch yesterday I got to enjoy an MR breakfast salad that he packed for me in the morning. Today I'll be going out to lunch since it's my birthday, and tonight, MR is making me my favorite: MR's CR'd Zone Low Carb Tortilla Pizzas!

Posted by april at 6:37 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

August 1, 2005

Drowning In Eggwhites

Hello bloggiefriends... sorry I haven't written, we've been absolutely crazy with logistical nightmares. We finally got power back on, but now we're in a battle with the cable internet people over who should pay for the electrician. It sure is nice to have electricity again... candlelight dinners are nice, at first, but doing dishes by candlelight is less entertaining. Meanwhile, the food has been going over very well. MR is drowning in eggwhites, but he says that I make them so many different ways that he won't get tired of them. "It's like asking an ad lib person if they're tired of wheat because they've had bread, pasta and cake," he said. Good analogy. Tons of recipes but they're on my DWIDP at home and I'm checking in briefly from work. Will try to post more tonight.

Posted by april at 8:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack