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September 27, 2005
Everything I Wish I Didn't Know
All weekend I have had U2's song "Vertigo" in my head. Someone was playing it loudly outside while I cleaned house yesterday morning, and I heard it blasted out a car window yesterday afternoon as I walked around Center City looking for self-igniting charcoal. "It's everything I wish I didn't know" is a line from the song.
On Saturday morning over breakfast MR and I had a conversation about the dawn of radical anti-aging biomedicine, and when it will be. We have a good friend who is about 55 and who does CR, who says that he probably won't make it. He's probably right. Makes us sad... he's a fun guy. MR worries that if I don't get more serious about my CR, I won't be in the kind of health at 80 that will make me eligible to take the rigors of anti-aging therapies. I worry about it too. I love to look good in a sundress and create amazing vegetable dishes, but I'm in this to live longer, healthier. It's so darned hard.
For instance: yesterday was a pretty perfect CR day. Then we went out with our friends, and I ate my delicious megamuffin (275 cals) for dinner. And ate quite a few of my friend's french fries, in spite of my attempts to banish the fries with various magickal techniques. It's so hard to avoid those delicious little critters, and if I weren't going for hardcore CR, I wouldn't have to worry about it. A few french fries here and there are not a disaster, for your obesity avoidance/no early heart attack moderate CR plan. However, for serious, long term, running to catch that radical life-extension bus, it's not going to work out.
Not to mention the empty calories in the wine I drank... ah, those quality of life issues. At least I was never much for desserts!
I recently read the fantastic book by Helen Fielding, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination. In it, she has a piece of dialogue in which Olivia says to her would-be suitor, "You don't have to scare me to death to make me happy!" This was particularly funny a few weeks ago (you had to be there... some of you were!) It's true that I don't require a weekly terror fest... or at least I don't think I do. But the idea of aging faster than my Orange One, and condemning him to an extended life of missing me, is rather horrifying. Makes you think.
I have everything these days... perfect man of my dreams, wonderful family, job that inspires me (and makes me crazy), amazingly freaky friends (you know who you are -- at least you're supposed to!). Okay, so my cat has as of late had some trouble with using inappropriate restroom facilities, and the electric company is convinced that I owe them $0.48. But with all the suffering in the world, I have to count myself as extraordinarily fortunate. I can't be giving one instant of this beautiful life over to disease and death. That would be silly at best, ungrateful at worst.
It's so hard though... I'm looking at my week: two nights of going out. Maybe three. What will I eat? Part of going low on my calories in my quotidian diet is that I get pretty darned hungry... so when I go out, especially if MR's gorgeous blue eyes aren't watching me, it's tempting to overeat. It seems like I can't gain weight, no matter what crazy things I do, so I no longer have that terrible fear of getting fat. [Side note: people keep asking me if it's difficult to maintain my weight loss. Uh, no. It's freakishly easy. Makes me wonder how I managed to weigh between twenty and thirty pounds more for my entire adult life!]
Deciding in advance what I am going to do seems to be very powerful. When I vowed not to eat that pizza, I didn't. I saw it, I smelled it, I saw other people eat it: I abstained. It's so easy when it's so clear cut. I will not ___.
Tougher when it's less clear cut. I will eat something. I will not go too crazy? What's *too* crazy? It helps to have MR there for moral support, but I go out with our other friends without him a lot, and that works really well for our relationship. He can spend the evening with scientific articles, I can spend the evening in Irish bars with the non-CR'd among us, and everyone is happy. But what do I eat???
Back in the day, it was easy: that would be my "going out" night. I'd eat whatever I felt like, usually higher protein, lower carb, no dessert, no pasta, but not a CR poster girl meal. These days, I want to cut calories. Those meals add up quick.
Angst angst angst. "Just do it," says the Nike ad and the voice in my head. I know how to drop my calories. So I get hungry: so what? I've been hungry before and the world didn't end. There is greater satisfaction waiting for me at home, in the form of a strange man in my house. In the form of looking hot when all my contemporaries are fat and wrinkly. In the form of seeing the dream of the Mprize come true. First mice: they're cute and furry. Then people.
I've taken quite a few vows as of late (none of them wedding vows... MR is opposed to marriage, and I am not in need of it) and I have no trouble keeping them. Something about saying, out loud, that you will or will not do something makes it much easier to do or not do it.
But when I make my list of things that would have to change, I get kinda scared.
Things that would have to change:
1) No more eating french fries off other people's plates.
2) No more snacking while preparing dinner.
3) No more drinking wine like it's a weekend dinner party just because I'm cooking dinner. Every day can't be a dinner party!
4) No more truly crazy nights out of stuff-ation. Only moderately crazy allowed. Moderately crazy? What's that?
5) No more carbing out at the Carb Castle, aka my mom's house, where yesterday I ate rice cakes with hotdog relish.
6) No more going crazy on the fruit salad at the RT's.
7) No more angsting and then changing nothing!
Grrrr. I've made so many dramatic, drastic, positive changes in my life in the last year, I almost feel like I'm suffering from some personal transformation fatigue. But I don't really wish that I didn't know how important it is to get my calories down.
At least my red wine scallops dish was amazing. Cook the scallops in 3 oz red wine for at least half an hour with one clove of garlic, minced. Add 5 g fresh basil (that's a lot). This time I did it with grape tomatoes that I put in whole and cooked for the entire time, allowing to melt and pop. Yum! Add 1 teaspoon olive oil after removing from heat, just before serving. I served brussels sprouts on the side, lightly steamed, with flax oil and MR put on some lemon juice (on the brussels sprouts, that is.) I also did another rendition of the apples and hazelnuts/hazelnut oil dish. Very yummy!
I'm having trouble coming up with a catchy last line. I always worry that I'll run out. I think that U2 will get the last line, from "Vertigo."
Hello hello
We're at a place called vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But that you give me something
I can feel
Your love is teaching me how
All of this, all of this can be yours
All of this, all of this can be yours
All of this, all of this can be yours
Just give me what I want and no-one gets hurt
Posted by april at September 27, 2005 2:48 PM
Comments
Try a little hoodia before going out..instant willpower, easier than magick. ;-)
Posted by: Haeresis at September 27, 2005 1:42 PM
Hi April,
You've mentioned before that your boyfriend opposes marriage-why is that? I'd actually be very interested in hearing his thoughts around the issue and why he arrived at his position on the topic.
My boyfriend also is a "no marriage guy", and asserts that he doesn't want any contract with the state around who he chooses to spend the rest of his life with. I dismiss him as being a "commitment phobe", and from what I've read on your blog so far, your MR seems to be a thoughtful and thorough with how he lives his life, so his take on "no marriage" would be helpful for me.
Please reply when you have the time.
Thanks, Lilly
Posted by: Lilly at September 27, 2005 9:05 PM