April's CR Diary

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February 28, 2006

Finally, A Reporter Is Coming For Dinner!

Great news all! A reporter from a great local magazine is coming to our house on Thursday to sample CR cuisine and interview us about the CR'd life. What should we make?

Sorry I've been such an absentee blogger as of late. Life is insane, and I had a very rough week. I'll be back soon, but now I'm off to Scranton again. Rest assured that MR is taking good care of me, packing my salad and my green tea and providing me with all the love I need to keep my faith alive (that's a Billy Joel quote for those of you who follow the pop music theme -- extra points to the bloggiefriend who can identify it!)

In the end, it's all about soul. Maybe not soul food, but soul.

Posted by april at 12:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 27, 2006

If The Above Options Do Not Meet Your Needs

For some reason, I am always hearing profound wisdom in the tapes they play at the hospital while I'm on hold. Advice on how to keep your kids safe at Halloween, sticking to New Year's Resolutions, and now: what to do if the above options do not meet your needs.

Press 1.

That's deep. I must meditate upon it.

Posted by april at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Search for Panto Acid

It's a B vitamin of some kind, and it's often low in my quotidian diet. It's found in mushrooms, so I am adding 20 grams of shiitakes to my eggwhite breakfast. Along with my slice of nonfat cheddar cheese, this makes a delicious mushroom and cheese omlette -- with no saturated fat!

Off to meditate, eat breakfast, go to the gym, go to work, and then tonight out for dinner at one of my favorite Philly restaurants, a BYO called Lolita, that has an incredible serviche. Shrimp and scallops here I come...

Posted by april at 5:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 24, 2006

Putting Years On My DWIDP Files

I've known for a long time that I wanted to spend the rest of my dramatically extended life with MR, but never did it seem so life-altering a decision as the moment when I realized that I was putting the years on my saved DWIDP files.

You see, every night (when I can get home from work in time, which is less and less frequently but that's a topic that need not detain us here) I create a perfectly Zoned (that's 30% protein, 40% carb, 30% fat) 629 calorie dinner for my love. I used Dr. Walford's Interactive Diet Planner to do it, and I save the file with the date, as in: MR Dinner 2-24-06.

I used to just save the dates, not the year. Now, I save the year. Because I know I will be making him dinner on this same day many, many years from now.

Now if that's not commitment (a word that Aubrey de Grey taught me how to spell!), then I don't know what is!

Posted by april at 6:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

That Was Not A Good Way To Meet Your Doctor

So said MR as we laughed about the scene when, immediately after I had my blood drawn for a new round of bloodtests for the CR Society study, my doctor popped by the room. I was lying down -- I'm a fainter, so I had to remain flat for quite some time after the blood was removed -- and MR was measuring out 50 cc's of cranberry juice into a giant syringe because we had misplaced the baby measuring cup. We asked the nurse if she had a measuring cup, but she didn't, so she gave us this huge plastic syringe. MR had run across the street to get me some cran so we could raise my glucose after the test was over -- I had been fasting since the night before. He held my hand as I got the blood taken (and was a bit concerned when I looked like I was going to faint, even though I was lying down!) and then he went to measure my juice. At just that moment, as he was standing with a huge syringe filled with bright red liquid, my doctor pokes her head in and says, "And what are we doing here?" It was pretty funny.

MR had to drive me to work, but not until we went to Starbucks to get my coffee. I sat eating a Sherm's brownie and drinking a Venti coffee on MR's lap at the Starbucks until I felt ready to face the world again. He was angelic, as always, and now understands just how dedicated I am to science if I go though this every six months for the study.

I hope the other study participants don't expect this kind of care from MR. He'd be awful busy, driving them to and from bloodtests, and he might not let all of them sit on his lap.

Posted by april at 11:08 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Coffee

Like my commenter, I love Starbucks too! Same exact reason: when I walk in, everybody knows my name, my drink (coffee, no room for anything), my mom (decaf, room for milk and two Sweet and Lows), my best friend (tall double shot nonfat latte) and my boyfriend (doesn't go to Starbucks, but they hear about him anyway.) I just love the manager of my local Starbucks, Alex, and I chat with all the employees. They give me free stuff on a regular basis, and I feel guilty for cheating on them by going to another Starbucks! I don't eat the food, I just drink the plain old coffee. We even brew Starbucks Fair Trade blend at home, now that MR has me making my morning coffee here.

It's 4 am and I just got up. I'm meeting a nurse at 5:45 am to give her flyers to take into work (she starts at 6) so I have to leave in about an hour. Off we go...

Posted by april at 4:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 23, 2006

A Favorite Childhood Memory, All Grown Up

That's the caption on the new cupcakes at Starbucks. I shudder to think of the calorie count. Can we please stop equating childhood with gak?

Posted by april at 10:42 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 22, 2006

The Rest Is Still Unwritten

There's this really cheesy pop song on the radio these days that goes:

No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten.

Because so many of my friends are writers, I wonder if that song reminds them of the terrifying feeling of facing a deadline with the article/book/piece still unwritten. Hmmm.

Anyhow, I've had a very rough few days, and I haven't been able to write. I hope my bloggiefriends can forgive me for the long absence. I am writing in my head again now and as soon as I have time I will sit down and spit out (I mean type out) a new entry.

Thanks to all of you who checked in, I really appreciate your concern. And thanks especially to Istanbulwitch for cheering me on and kicking my butt to start writing again. As the waitress in the bar in Nashville three years ago said when I mentioned that I used to write but didn't anymore, "You will again."

Now run along and make yourself a tatta. Unless you hate them, in which case you should eat an olive instead.

Posted by april at 8:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 17, 2006

Did I Say Something About Taking Care of Myself?

Well, that's rapidly going to hell. Work is insane, one of my staff members just resigned, and I have tons of work to do for the weekend. And taking the Monday holiday off -- not a chance! Haven't been to the gym since before the blizzard and didn't get to go yesterday because everything went nuts.

At least I'm eating right. With MR back to making my salad and tea, my lunches are taken care of. (Before you start thinking I'm an evil slave-driver, exploiting my boyfriend for his veggie chopping skills, I remind you that I cook almost all our dinners and do the vast majority of the housework. And I am about to take over megamuffin production because I am about to switch my afternoon snack from yogurt and almonds to a half a mega. More on that when I have time.) Then it's the easy quotidian at dinner. Nothing much to write about foodwise for today -- I wanted to make a butternut squashatatta for MR last night but the butternut squash had started growing something unpleasant so we chucked it and I made a brusselsproutotatta instead. He liked it, so that was fine. He loved the fresh blackberries in flax oil I made him for dessert. Flax oil really brings out the flavor of fruit, I find. There, that's my food-related insight for the day. Flax oil brings out the flavor of fruit. That's all I have time for today.

Posted by april at 7:56 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 16, 2006

Hidden Calories

Yesterday was so busy at work that I didn't even have time to wash my lunch dishes. Lucky for me, MR took them off my hands this morning as I drove away just before 6 am to head back to work... meeting a physical therapist to get him flyers on his way into work. MR had already packed me one day ahead of salad, so he put together my lunch bag as he was making his breakfast. I went to bag up some olives for lunch time fat, and MR asked me if they were packed in water or in olive oil.

Hmmm. Puzzling. They come out of the bins at the Whole Foods store. But they do look like they're floating in olive oil.

I began to feel like my world was falling apart. It dawned on me that I had been consuming large numbers of calories in olive oil along with my carefully measured olives. That might explain why I wasn't experience as much weight loss as one would expect from my reduced calorie intake. I decided to go with almonds for fat until I can figure out how to properly measure the olives and account for the calories. I have tons of motivation to figure this out, however, as olives from Zeynep are on their way even as we speak. I will definitely be consuming those as soon as I open the box! I am very much looking forward to real authentic olives... I hope they are enjoying their travels!

Meanwhile, I was in such a hurry to get out the door that I forgot to pack breakfast. I had been planning to eat a megamuffin. Now I don't know what to do. By the time I figure it out, it will probably be lunch time, so it looks like I will accidentally skip breakfast today. Oh dear. At least I have a wonderful MR-packed lunchtime salad with yogurt and salsa, and I should be home tonight to make dinner between working at the office and working at home. I do plan to take a break to enjoy a meal with my Orange One, so I'll blog about that tomorrow. It's so nice to have my regular audience for my cooking back at his place at the table.

It probalbly won't hurt me to skip breakfast, since last night's dinner turned out to be much higher calorie than I had anticipate. I skipped my afternoon yogurt and nuts snack since dinner was at 5:30 (we took our evening forum presenter out to dinner before the event), so I saved a few calories, anticipating a salad fest at the place where I frequently eat the salad bar for lunch.

Crisis: No salad bar at dinner.

I sat staring at the menu. Not many good choices. I hate salmon, I hate lobster, and the thought of a grilled chicken Caesar salad was too dull for words. I saw that they had a shrimp and chicken scampi served over rice, which I thought was a dish in a white wine sauce. Cleverly, I thought, I ordered it without the rice. Chicken and shrimp in white wine -- that should be fine, right?

Wrong. When it came, it was definitely a white wine creamy cheesy sauce. Now, dear readers, is that how scampi is supposed to be? I thought I'd had it before and found it to be quite brothy, not creamy at all. Anyhow, I ate the chickens and shrimpies, and also shared a Middle Eastern dip platter with our two guests: tapenade, hummus, baba ganoush and some kind of sundried tomato puree. All quite delicious but the pita squares weren't cheap calorie-wise.

After January's experiment, I was really longing for the fun and change of scene of going out to eat, but after all the eating out I've done lately, I long for boring quotidian days. Work has required a bunch of eating out lately -- yikes, every day this week! but hopefully that will be done for awhile so that I can get back to CR perfection. I really do feel so much better when I'm eating right, and now that I am used to keeping my calories low and my nutrition high, I really feel it when I eat out and consume something that doesn't quite fit in. High calorie food seems to make me irritable, and too much wine makes me anxious. What a terrible combination. It's enough to drive a girl straight to the organic produce section.

Re: Kale. I've noticed that kale gets more discussion than any other food I mention, with Lewis Labs as a close second. I love kale raw. Love it love it love it. You can also cook it. I seriously doubt that it damages your thyroid, and would like to see some evidence to back up that claim. If it takes a president eating a food publically to make it popular and acceptable, then I think we should launch a campaign to get each of the 2008 presidential candidates to eat kale on national television. Can somebody come up with a slogan? A lot of things rhyme with "kale," but I don't think we want to mention "jail," "bail," "snail," or "whale." Perhaps "hearty and hale?"

Posted by april at 8:04 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 15, 2006

Valentine's Dinner

Scallops cooked in pinot noir with grape tomatoes and fresh basil
Brussels sprouts with lemon and flax oil
Apple-cinnamon pizza

I just simmer the scallops in red wine for about half an hour, adding the tomatoes near the beginning (so they pop) and the basil near the end. MR loved his Valentine's Dinner. I wasn't hungry because our lawyer took us out to lunch to celebrate the last day of hearings, and I ate enough at lunch for the rest of the day. We shared a dip appetizer with green olive dip, artichoke dip and a roasted peper dip of some kind, then I had the quiche of the day, which was asparagus and red pepper. Small salad on the side. We went to an amazing Center City restaurant, the kind that gets really good reviews and is packed at dinner but manageable at lunch. I love eating in really good restaurants, and if I eat a big lunch I usually skip dinner because I'm just not hungry, and then by the next day I'm hungry again and I go back to eating normally. Though there have been times when I've gone 24 hours before eating again after a Lunch with Lawyer. I feel like a big snake when I do that -- I eat one large meal, and it stays with me for awhile.

Unfortunately the unfamiliar food (no doubt the slice of chocolate bundt cake the three of us split for dessert) came back to haunt me at night, and I felt just a bit ill before bed. But MR brought me a tiny cup of Coke to settle my stomach and I went right to sleep and felt fine when I woke up.

Today I'm having breakfast salad for lunch again -- yea!!!! And MR is taking out the trash and recycling! Tonight I have a big event with a dinner beforehand, but the restaurant where we're taking the event speaker for dinner has a salad bar, so I should be fine.

I may eat scallops for breakfast.

Check out the new blog on the block: http://lestlessbemore.blogspot.com/ It's really cool, with beautiful pictures. Welcome to the club!

Posted by april at 5:47 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

February 13, 2006

Stuffed Peppers

MR is finally home. I survived a very long day of labor board hearings and picked him up from the airport. No delays! As it turns out, they don't plow our street, so I had to take the train to the hearings and then take a cab home with MR and his luggage.

For dinner, I made a variation on Zeynep's stuffed peppers. I took red peppers, hacked their heads off, filled them with artichoke hearts blended with nonfat cottage cheese plus garlic, oregano and basil. Then I put the tops back on and baked them at 350 for about 25 minutes. Served with a side of Quorn tenders covered with steamed cauliflower and marinara sauce. MR had blackberries with hazelnut oil for dessert. Yum!

I think in future I will return to cooking my stuffed peppers in wine... the artichoke/cottage mix was great, but it was a bit dry from cooking. That's what I get for not cooking with wine! My favorite old stuffed pepper recipe was just peppers stuffed wtih tomato, feta or goat cheese, and fresh basil, cooked in a mixture of white wine and tarragon vinegar. Heavenly! I wanted to do something similar but the basil in the market looked terrible. Maybe next time...

Another day of hearings tomorrow, then Valentine's dinner tomorrow night!

Posted by april at 11:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 12, 2006

Learn From My Mistakes

My CR sister Amy recently wrote a comment on my CR sister Zeynep's blog referring to the self-discipline of Mary and April. Well, I usually have quite a bit of self-discipline, but I extend this story of a total lack thereof to all of you out there who like me, are human! Guess what, ladies and gentleman? What we are trying to do is hard. And sometimes we don't do it perfectly. I am so far from perfect that it makes me giggle or cry, depending on the day. I want you to both learn from things I do that derail me from my goals, and also to forgive yourself when you fall a bit short of your expectations.

Friday, as you know, I ate a nutritionally brilliant, 828 calorie day -- well below my average, but I was making up for a touch of restaurant food and a margarita on Thursday night with VLC. I left the house for my late night meeting feeling quite full between food and the coffee I brewed since I would be working past my usual bedtime.

I got to the nurse's house after a fifty minute drive to find that she had both ordered and made a ton of food. She was expecting a large crowd of her co-workers coming off of a twelve and a half hour day shift. Unorganized (as in non-union, not disorganized!) nurses often are so understaffed that they don't even have time to stop for a lunch break in 12 hours, so you can count on them to be hungry after work. I didn't plan on eating anything, but as the hour wore on and the crowds my hostess had expected failed to materialize, she lamented the waste of so much food and urged me and my co-worker to eat.

I decided one small bite wouldn't hurt.

Wow, was I wrong.

Here is the thing: my friend the clinical neuropsychologist (that's a complicated job title!) once told me that when you take a bite of a high calorie food, something happens to your biochemistry that makes it almost impossible to resist eating more. Like you go temporarily insane. This effect is magnified in those of us who are truly in calorie deficit. Therefore, it is setting yourself up for failure to try to "eat just one bite."

I'd have to concur from experience. One bite of stromboli (that's like pizza with crust on the outside) turned into two slices, two chocolate chip cookies, and several dips of the Mexican bean dip the nurse's son had made. I also ate some grapes and pineapples off the fruit tray provided as a nod to healthy eating, but all in all the evening was a gak-filled disasterous nightmare. Oh, and I forgot the handfull of M&M's.

Yes, my dear bloggiefriends, sometimes I fall apart and eat gak. And then I feel physically terrible! I thought I was going to throw up driving home, though I managed not to. My body is not used to this kind of thing anymore, and when I consider how in my 137 pound days I used to eat like this frequently at nurse meetings, it's no wonder I weighed a lot more!

I didn't take it too hard psychologically -- I know this kind of thing happens only very rarely for me, and I now know how very important it is to avoid that "one bite" syndrome. A good lesson learned, one that perhaps you can learn from my experience without having to try it yourself!

I'm sure you can add a whole bunch of calories onto my average for the week after that disaster, yet my weight was only up by two pounds the next day, which isn't bad considering how much salt water weight I must have been retaining post-gak fest.

And before you naysayers out there take one gak-fest as evidence that CR is impossible, let me remind you that even with this gak-fest my total calorie average is no more than 1300/day for the week, which is way the hell less than almost all American women and low enough to have kept me at under 105 pounds for a year and a half now. I've dropped my calories very low in the last few weeks as a result of my consistency experiment, and I'm going to use the information I've gained to stay low. The occasional problem doesn't derail CR, as long as you get right back on the train. Or get the train right back on the track. Or get the subway right back into the tunnel. Or eat an Atkins wrap at Subway instead of going down the wrong road in the first place.

I never met a metaphor that couldn't stand to be mixed well.

So there: I do no have iron incorruptible self-disclipline when it comes to food. Do not despair when you eat something that doesn't correspond to your goals -- it happens to the best of us. None of us are perfect.

Well, MR is. But I assure you, he's quite odd.

Posted by april at 2:25 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Snow Brunch

We are without a doubt snowed in. There is more than a foot of snow out there and it's still coming down fast. The small table on our deck looks like a giant marshmellow landed on it.

I just made a snow brunch for myself and my mom, who is spending the snowstorm at my house. I made eggwhite omlettes with fresh brussels sprouts and a piece of nonfat cheddar melted on top. Olives on the side and flax oil on top. Yum!

Here's the crunch:

Calories 319.00__cal 16%
Protein 35.65__gm 65% RDA
Total Fat 11.60__gm 18%
Sat. Fat 5.21__gm 26%
Mono. Fat 5.09__gm 18%
Poly. Fat 0.74__gm 11%
Carbohydrate 19.15__gm 6%
Fiber 6.30__gm 21%
Cholesterol 22.17__mg 7%
Vit. A 1229.00__IU 25% RDA
Vit. B6 0.24__mg 15% RDA
Vit. B12 0.50__mcg 25% RDA
Vit. C 86.50__mg 144% RDA
Vit. E 5.13__mg 64% RDA
Thiamine 0.16__mg 14% RDA
Folacin 68.60__mcg 38% RDA
Riboflavin 1.22__mg 94% RDA
Niacin 1.00__mg 7% RDA
Panto. Acid 0.62__mg 12% SA
Calcium 516.00__mg 43% RDA
Copper 0.31__mg 16% SA
Iron 4.80__mg 32% RDA
Magnesium 54.50__mg 19% RDA
Manganese 0.37__mg 12% SA
Phosphorus 104.50__mg 9% RDA
Potassium 755.50__mg 38% RDA
Selenium 46.50__mcg 85% RDA
Sodium 1333.00__mg 56% SA
Zinc 0.66__mg 6% RDA
Tyrosine 1.24__gm 130% RDA
Lysine 1.98__gm 275% RDA
Phenylalanine 1.67__gm 174% RDA
Leucine 2.43__gm 253% RDA
Valine 1.87__gm 223% RDA
Methionine 0.95__gm 317% RDA
Cystine 0.71__gm 237% RDA
Tryptophan 0.40__gm 220% RDA
Threonine 1.35__gm 280% RDA
Isoleucine 1.65__gm 230% RDA

Big breakfast, but it was actually brunch as we ate at quarter till noon. We never bothered to make breakfast this morning, which MR wouldn't approve of one bit! We weren't moving very quickly this morning, since we had to stare at the snow a lot.

We might just walk down to the Cresheim Cottage Cafe later tonight for dinner if they're open. The snow is so high that everything might be closed!

Posted by april at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Winds Still Falling In Center City

That's what the weather man on our local NPR station just said. I don't think that's what he meant. I am fairly sure that it is snow that is still falling, not wind.

MR has packed his computer, so I can now freely blog about the creations I am making for him. I love Stirred's clever idea about luring Philo from the shower with seafood. However, MR only eats seafood once a month, and I've already planned a seafood night in the near future.

Here's what I'm making him for the first two days of lunches when he returns. It's his favorite curried pumpkin soup with cubed eggwhites thrown in for protein.

Here's the recipe. Makes 2 500 calorie, perfectly Zoned servings, which he will eat for lunch with a portion of a megamuffin.

1 large can pumpkin

460 g eggwhites, cooked and cubed

1 cup or 75 calories nonfat plain yogurt. Mine is 75 cals per cup, but most have more calories, so adjust the calories if you're making it at home with a different brand of yogurt. You need to use a whole cup.

2 teaspoons oil, to be added just before serving

32 g hazelnuts

146 g apples, cubed

squeeze fresh lemon juice

1 cube no salt vegan vegetable organic veggie broth -- 50 calories total

curry powder to taste

Prepare the broth and add the pumpkin, stirring till blended. Allow to cool, add the yogurt. It's easiest to divide the recipe into halves now and then stir in the remaining ingredients in half portions into each serving, reserving the hazelnuts and the oil. When ready to serve, heat and add nuts and oil after removing from heat.

Here's the crunch:

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1000.00__cal 50%
Protein 74.74__gm 136% RDA
Total Fat 33.03__gm 51%
Sat. Fat 11.64__gm 58%
Mono. Fat 16.56__gm 57%
Poly. Fat 2.58__gm 39%
Carbohydrate 111.66__gm 37%
Fiber 34.60__gm 115%
Cholesterol 46.15__mg 15%
Vit. A 181800.13__IU 3636% RDA
Vit. B6 0.80__mg 50% RDA
Vit. B12 1.63__mcg 82% RDA
Vit. C 41.60__mg 69% RDA
Vit. E 22.00__mg 275% RDA
Thiamine 0.51__mg 46% RDA
Folacin 160.83__mcg 89% RDA
Riboflavin 2.91__mg 224% RDA
Niacin 5.09__mg 34% RDA
Panto. Acid 5.13__mg 103% SA
Calcium 837.63__mg 70% RDA
Copper 1.45__mg 73% SA
Iron 13.32__mg 89% RDA
Magnesium 364.57__mg 130% RDA
Manganese 2.03__mg 68% SA
Phosphorus 664.45__mg 55% RDA
Potassium 3015.95__mg 151% RDA
Selenium 127.57__mcg 232% RDA
Sodium 4133.04__mg 172% SA
Zinc 3.29__mg 27% RDA
Tyrosine 3.73__gm 388% RDA
Lysine 6.06__gm 842% RDA
Phenylalanine 4.78__gm 497% RDA
Leucine 7.51__gm 782% RDA
Valine 5.55__gm 661% RDA
Methionine 2.52__gm 839% RDA
Cystine 1.67__gm 556% RDA
Tryptophan 1.14__gm 632% RDA
Threonine 3.83__gm 797% RDA
Isoleucine 4.81__gm 667% RDA

P:C:F = 30:40:30

Posted by april at 7:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 11, 2006

Cat Sleeping In Shower, Lunches for MR

Greetings all... a long philosophical entry to follow, but I am now taking just the shortest of breaks from my weekend housecleaning to ask you a few questions.

First, MR is coming home on Monday (Praise be to Grapefruit!) and I decided to whip up a few 500 calories, Zoned lunches for him to eat on his first few days back so that he doesn't have to immediately throw a bunch of beans into the crock pot when he could be unpacking or writing. He eats a little over 100 cals of megamuffin with his lunch, so 500 cals is all we need. Suggestions? Note: it's hard to put enough protein into his lunches unless I use tons of eggwhites. No meat or soy allowed. Eggwhites, nonfat dairy = fine.

Other question: Philomena seems to have decided to sleep all day in the shower. I need to clean the shower. What do I do? Moving the cat is not an option... as you know, I can't stand to see a cat inconvenienced in any way.

Posted by april at 12:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 10, 2006

Back to Basics

Yesterday was a little too exciting with all that eating out, so today was a very basic day. Here goes:

Pre-breakfast:
same as always

Breakfast:
same as always plus one slice fat free cheddar (which I actually really like)

Lunch:
88 g kale
60 g mustard greens
1 carton organic lowfat peachy peach yogurt, 130 cals (my ride to work got here early so I had to grab a carton instead of putting together my plain and salsa -- had to catch a ride in with Edward cause my brakes were getting replaced -- life extentionists do not drive around on bad brakes, especially not when one is picking up the man of one's dreams at the airport in just a few days!)
106 g olives

Dinner:
half a cup of eggwhites
1 teaspoon flax oil
1 tablespoon brewers yeast
85 g brussels sprouts
all stirred together into a little scramble -- yum!
150 g olives

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 828.01__cal 41%
Protein 68.95__gm 125% RDA
Total Fat 29.45__gm 45%
Sat. Fat 11.99__gm 60%
Mono. Fat 13.79__gm 48%
Poly. Fat 2.11__gm 32%
Carbohydrate 78.90__gm 26%
Fiber 17.83__gm 59%
Cholesterol 50.24__mg 17%
Vit. A 12802.05__IU 256% RDA
Vit. B6 0.73__mg 46% RDA
Vit. B12 1.37__mcg 68% RDA
Vit. C 243.79__mg 406% RDA
Vit. E 13.50__mg 169% RDA
Thiamine 0.80__mg 73% RDA
Folacin 219.69__mcg 122% RDA
Riboflavin 2.21__mg 170% RDA
Niacin 7.09__mg 47% RDA
Panto. Acid 1.79__mg 36% SA
Calcium 1040.72__mg 87% RDA
Copper 1.68__mg 84% SA
Iron 13.68__mg 91% RDA
Magnesium 176.98__mg 63% RDA
Manganese 1.82__mg 61% SA
Phosphorus 365.04__mg 30% RDA
Potassium 2254.68__mg 113% RDA
Selenium 109.41__mcg 199% RDA
Sodium 3115.51__mg 130% SA
Zinc 3.20__mg 27% RDA
Tyrosine 2.33__gm 242% RDA
Lysine 3.78__gm 525% RDA
Phenylalanine 3.07__gm 319% RDA
Leucine 4.58__gm 477% RDA
Valine 3.55__gm 423% RDA
Methionine 1.67__gm 557% RDA
Cystine 1.21__gm 402% RDA
Tryptophan 0.72__gm 401% RDA
Threonine 2.46__gm 512% RDA
Isoleucine 3.07__gm 427% RDA

P:C:F = 33:35:32

I just brewed some coffee to keep me up for my meeting at 8 pm. I get up so early that I really like to be settling down for bed between 9 and 10. But when I have a meeting, I have a meeting, so up I am. I'll probably get home at around 10:30 or 11, since these meetings tend to go two hours and it's at least a half hour home. At least my car is freshly inspected and has new brakes!

Onward, olive eaters.

Posted by april at 6:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Eating Out

Yesterday turned out to be a big eating out day. First, I had my weekly lunch out meeting with my boss, Edward. We went to a place with a great salad bar that includes lowfat cottage cheese, so I had tons of veggies and cottage cheese, plus my favorite dessert that totally grosses Edward out: a plate of fruit (pineapples, melons, berries)topped with grape tomatoes, black olives, and a small sprinkling of freshly grated parmesean cheese. He says it's just wrong to mix sweet and salty tastes that way. I say he can't stop me.

Later on, I met my old co-worker VLC in the city for a drink after work. We met up at a vaguely Mexican/Cuban fusion type place in her neighborhood, and we both had the happy hour special margarita. I hadn't had a margarita in ages, and this one was quite delicious. So I didn't use my measuring cup this time... I'm being a little bit less religious about measuring now that my experiment is over, though still measuring everything almost every day. I also ate a cup of Cuban black bean soup, very beany and not creamy, to put something in my stomach before drinking the margarita. I'm sure yesterday was a higher than 1050 day, since there's no telling what's in restaurant food (though I can be fairly sure that the veggies on the salad bar really were what they claim to be!) Therefore, I'm going slightly under calories today. I had my quotidian breakfast + cheese, then my quotidian lunch, and tonight I'm just going to throw together a brewers yeast soup as I walk out the door to an 8 pm meeting. At least I'll have time to make a quick stop at the house, feed the cats and give Philomena her medication, before I leave for my meeting. I probably wont' get home till 10 or 11, then first thing in the morning I'm running to Whole Foods for the big shop. Tomorrow afternoon we're supposed to have up to a foot of snow! So I have to stock up before the storm. Hopefully the WF won't be TOO crowded at 8 am on a Saturday! And even though my trip to Whole Foods really will feel like a trip to Whole Paycheck, I will be so glad to be buying organic produce for two!

Posted by april at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Measuring Cup

Yesterday afternoon as I was meeting with a group of nurses and one OR tech, my purse fell off the ledge on which it had been resting and spilled all over the floor. The nurses were entertained by their opportunity to inspect the contents of my purse. They were especially interested in the tiny Good Grips measuring cup. I didn't even bother trying to explain. Good thing they didn't get ahold of the baby scale...

Posted by april at 5:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 9, 2006

Still Sexy At Eighty

The BBC on my NPR station just had a short piece on an artist whom they described as "still sexy at eighty." Of course, they say that as though it's both shocking and slightly silly. That really bugs me.

One of my pet peeves has always been people who put an age-limit on sexiness. There's this giant pervasive myth that everyone stops having sex at the age of fifty, but I guess I've always known enough grown-ups well enough to know that's not the case. My favorite fiction author Susan Howatch deals brilliantly with this topic. Her characters are getting themselves into sex messes well up into their eighties.
That more accurately reflects real life than the media representations of people in their twenties having all the sex while their parents jealously and disapprovingly look on.

At some point in my teens, as I lamented the utter patheticness of the boys available for dating, my mother said to me, "Men don't even start to ripen until thirty-five." When I first got out of college, one of the most exciting things about going out into the world was that after one is a college graduate, it suddenly becomes socially acceptable to date actual adults. I swore off men my age until they got old enough to be worth talking to. My love life improved.

Now finally as I am in my thirties, some of the men my age have become worth looking at. MR just hit the minimum age of ripeness, and I look forward to watching him hit all the truly great ages for men: 41, 47, 55, 65, and why stop there? Between CR and the inevitable advances in biotech, he's going to be sexy and gorgeous for a very, very long time. It has always struck me as a tragedy that the body starts to fail as soon as the mind gets enough experience to give the body anything much to talk about. I mean, have you ever met a man in his twenties? With very few exceptions (such as my CR Little Brother Matt who is obviously wise beyond his years!) men in their twenties are only good for carrying heavy boxes around. I was already working, and working really hard, in my twenties. I didn't have to find myself. I was too busy organizing nurses and figuring out how to pay the bills on my then-meager union organizer's salary to spend time or money going out drinking and clubbing. No wonder I only dated men in their late thirties and forties! (except for one exception, which all who were there would describe as a disaster, mostly because he was too immature!)

Women in their twenties are smarter than men at the same age (as a rule), but women get the worst of society's discrimination as we age. My mother often talks about how as a woman over sixty, she is invisible. She actually considers it a neat trick, to be able to be ignored, and I trust she isn't using it to become an art thief or some such thing. It's clearly absurd that such a large and wise part of the population receive media messages that they don't exist. We've theorized that it's because grown-up women, who have raised their children, built their careers and learned how to pay their own bills are not considered as attractive as sweet young things who are willing to do anything for a man.

Most of the nurses I work with are at this magic age, somewhere in their mid to late forties, where much of the fear that has held them back their entire lives starts to disappear. Their children are grown or nearly so (most of these women had babies early) and they are so experienced as nurses that they can mop the floor with the snotty residents who populate teaching hospitals. They know who they are, and they're proud of their achievements. They are, sometimes, finally ready to stand up for themselves. And when their patients are threatened by unsafe staffing, they turn into these beautiful tigresses who are ready to rip hospital administrators to pieces with their well-manicured claws. I hang out with a lot of nurses who have been nurses longer than I have been alive. After a day of meeting with the ones who just plain get it, I feel like I've had a long and intense shoulder massage. Women standing up for what they deserve and what is right: it's better than a day at the spa.

The media messages that people over sixty aren't sexy, combined with the pressure to eat gak that makes one feel about as sexy as a dead fish, is enough to convince a lot of young people that there is no sex once you become a grown-up. I remember a friend lamenting that she was in her late twenties, so she was almost all washed up and had better get married while there was still time. "29!" I would say, "We're just getting started!" I never bought those myths about sexiness ending at any particular age. And with CR and biotech, the possibilities are endless. People who have lived long enough to have know better will be able to get themselves into sex messes well into their nineties, to the horror of their grandchildren. Movie stars we had crushes on when we were children will still be sexually available once we're grown up enough to do something about it! Lingerie models will start to look like adult women -- some will even have grey hair!

I wish grown-ups (by which I mean people over sixty) would talk more about sex. It's so cute to watch people into their sixties and seventies cuddle up with their partners just like those of us who are young and in love do. If one is healthy in body and brain, why not sit on one's partner's lap? By the age of eighty, one should be making out in the produce aisle of the local Whole Foods store early in the morning while all those young folks are too hung over from their nights out to be up. And why do their kids totally freak out? Aren't grown-ups allowed to have sex? I guess since my parents have been divorced as long as I can remember, I never had this weird thing about parents having sex. When my father was dating my step-mother twenty-two years ago, they would go to elaborate lengths to sleep in different beds while I was visiting. They meant well, being appropriate in front of the children, but I thought the whole thing was rather silly. I loved my soon to be step-mother, and thought she was beautiful and cool (she still is!) Grown-up couples are supposed to sleep together, thought I, just like children are supposed to sleep with large numbers of stuffed animals. Even then I didn't put much stock in whether or not people were married. Even now I sleep with large numbers of stuffed animals while MR is away.

I'm not saying that everyone over sixty has the moral obligation to make out in public. Some folks find that they're not so interested in dating or being partnered. That's fine with me... not everyone has to be as sex-obsessed as I am. But for all of you out there who are having sex with someone or multiple people well into your sixties and seventies, can you help me with this project to dispel the myth that there is no sex for grown-ups? At least once a week, go somewhere where other people will see you. Then kiss a lot, sit on your partner's lap, hold hands everywhere you go, make out at a restaurant or in the grocery store. Just see what people do. If young people look agahst (no doubt playing out their own stupid Freudian problems with their parents) just smile condescendingly at them and let them wonder if they'll be nearly as happy when they're your age.

Posted by april at 7:04 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

February 8, 2006

Nothing Diet About It

So said the ad on TV for Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. I don't have a TV but it was on at the gym, and as much as I hate to look at it, it's eye-catching.

Today was another good food day, though for some reason it's coming out a bit lower fat than I had thought it would, with P:C:F = 37:36:27. I guess when I added in coffee (I drink it black but it has niacin so I add it) and wheat bran that upped my carbs and lowered my fat. Who would have thought of black coffee, nothing in it, as carby?

The day was so quotidian as to bore you to death, but here goes anyway:

Before breakfast:
Same supplement chaser as always

Breakfast:
the usual, but with one fat free cheddar single and no mushrooms cause I'm out

Between breakfast and lunch:
coffee, green tea, decaf black tea

Lunch:
kale and mustard green salad, olives, yogurt with salsa verde. just like yesterday. and the day before. and...

Afternoon snack:
Organic strawberry yogurt with sixty calories almonds

Dinner:
Trader Joe's nonfat cottage cheese with flax oil and Carolina Treet, the world's most amazing sauce! Brewers yeast soup with just cauliflower, 200 g. 76 more g olives. Those olives are an expensive hobby!

Crunch:

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1050.88__cal 53%
Protein 96.67__gm 176% RDA
Total Fat 32.30__gm 50%
Sat. Fat 12.64__gm 63%
Mono. Fat 13.66__gm 47%
Poly. Fat 3.30__gm 49%
Carbohydrate 99.07__gm 33%
Fiber 20.04__gm 67%
Cholesterol 64.35__mg 21%
Vit. A 9251.88__IU 185% RDA
Vit. B6 1.19__mg 74% RDA
Vit. B12 3.11__mcg 156% RDA
Vit. C 240.07__mg 400% RDA
Vit. E 10.79__mg 135% RDA
Thiamine 0.91__mg 82% RDA
Folacin 307.65__mcg 171% RDA
Riboflavin 2.24__mg 172% RDA
Niacin 8.26__mg 55% RDA
Panto. Acid 3.78__mg 76% SA
Calcium 1595.34__mg 133% RDA
Copper 1.65__mg 83% SA
Iron 12.65__mg 84% RDA
Magnesium 234.35__mg 84% RDA
Manganese 1.98__mg 66% SA
Phosphorus 781.80__mg 65% RDA
Potassium 2999.01__mg 150% RDA
Selenium 110.75__mcg 201% RDA
Sodium 4455.58__mg 186% SA
Zinc 5.50__mg 46% RDA
Tyrosine 3.53__gm 367% RDA
Lysine 5.79__gm 804% RDA
Phenylalanine 4.25__gm 443% RDA
Leucine 7.15__gm 745% RDA
Valine 5.04__gm 601% RDA
Methionine 2.27__gm 757% RDA
Cystine 1.21__gm 404% RDA
Tryptophan 0.92__gm 514% RDA
Threonine 3.42__gm 712% RDA
Isoleucine 4.36__gm 606% RDA

Not bad at all. I should probably cut back on that fat free cheddar single with breakfast on days when I eat cottage cheese, cause I'm well over the RDA of calcium and I have a ton of protein, so I could use the calories for things with panto acid, magnesium, or just plain fat. Did somebody say olives???

Another busy day, but I did fit in a trip to the gym after work. After leaving the office that is... I've been working ever since I got home and am about to write up an agenda for an organizing meeting. One of my readers asked how I manage to blog so much even though I am busy, and the secret is that I really like to hear myself talk, but with MR out of the country and no one much to talk to at home, hearing myself type is second-best. I also write all the entries in my head while I'm doing other things like driving or showering or working out, so when I get to the computer I just spit them out. I also often take a moment to blog if I take a short lunch break at work. I shove kale into my face while I write, which means that I get a face covered in yogurt and salsa verde, but it's good for the skin I'm told.

Tomorrow I have my weekly lunch meeting with Edward, my boss, unless he has to cancel due to swampedness. Then I'm off to Center City for a meeting with some nurses. I may try to hit the gym before work since it's unclear what time my late afternoon meeting will end. In any case, I will endeavor to get as many nutrients in as few calories as possible!

Posted by april at 7:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Exercise Does Not Slow The Aging Process

Another interesting comment from a reader we haven't heard from before, reproduced here:

i find it interesting that u r now using more calories per day (u profess now exercise), and consuming same number or less of calories without any ill effects. u have yet to blog as to how many calories u r burning in ur exercise, and whether the amount of exercise may be affected by energy levels due to calory consumption. migh also be interesting at some point to compare life extending benefits of exercise vs. cr or appropriate combo. seems little point to cr when couch potato habits lead to death by body deterioration.

This is symptomatic of a common misunderstanding about the effects of CR. Unlike simple obesity avoidance, real calorie restriction actually slows the aging process in mammals. It doesn't just lower your risk of heart attack -- though it does that too -- it slows every aspect of aging throughout the body. Exercise can't do this, neither can popping massive amounts of supplements. While exercise and other "healthy living" interventions might push you toward the better end of the average lifespan, CR can actually extend maximum lifespan -- at least in all the mammals in which it's been tested. It takes awhile to see if humans die, so we're living an experiment right now, but all the studies to date show that CR folks seem to be aging more slowly in every way that we can measure.

Therefore, while it makes sense to do some exercise for bone and cardio health, it doesn't make sense to do any more than the minimum necessary. According to the treadmill, I burn about 100 calories per day, five days a week, treadmilling -- though I don't know how accurate those things are. And as to how many calories I burn by lifting weights, two - three exercises a day, three sets each (I got overly enthusiastic and did squats, inner thighs and outer thighs last night, and I am feeling it today!) -- can one of you exercise people out there estimate that?

As to feeling no ill effects from exercising more but consuming fewer calories, I think a lot of what I'm experiencing is confounded by the fact that I have mostly eliminated wine from my diet and also upped my fat content (all unsaturated -- love those olives! worship those almonds!) at the same time. The fat makes me less hungry and helps me hold onto my weight, while the elimination of wine allows me to consume fewer total calories while getting almost as many nutrients (though I may add a small amount back in for resveratrol eventually -- say 3 oz per day.)

As to there being no point to CR if one were a couch potato, this is actually not true. The CR'd couch potato will live longer than the non-CR'd couch potato (assuming no intervening incidents, such as the couch catching on fire). The person who does CR and engages in moderate, very targeted exercise to address the specific factors (like bone health) that could lead to increased risk of death in old age will live longer than the athelete who consumes twice the number of calories. If your priority is living longer, younger, then fewer calories is your best bet. If, however, you enjoy competitive sports, like the way you look when you're big and buff, or own a fitness studio, you may have other priorities. Even a bit of CR can be helpful then... my friend the marathon runner is finding his CR regimen to be helpful in making him lighter so that he runs faster, and he isn't cutting his calories to the point where it's detrimental to his energy level.

In designing my exercise program with the help of my ever so helpful trainer Lisa, I focused on getting the maximum impact with the minimum calories expended. That's why we combine bone building impact work along with light weight training. For example, when I do squats, I hold a weighted ball and jump from an aerobic step to the floor into a squat, and then jump back. Impact on the bones, weight bearing exercise for the legs, and it makes me look like a strawberry blonde frog! When I do push-ups, I jump into them from a sorta standing V-like position with my hands on the floor, then I jump back out of each one. Makes me look like a strawberry blonde grasshopper, minus the annoying chirping noises. Instead of running (high impact but also very high calorie burn) and then weight lifting (with no impact), I'm walking fast (4 mphh with incline of 4) on the treadmill for cardio, then doing weights and high impact work at the same time. Have I mentioned that I love my trainer? She really paid attention to me and my needs, instead of trying to push me into a one-size-fits-all. My priorities are so different from the average gym-going female: I don't want to lose weight, tone up, or meet dudes. I just want to have healthy bones and get some stress reduction benefits. There are few things I find so relaxing as a fast uphill walk on the treadmill. Zoning out, in the non-macronutrient sense of the word.

So I'll keep going to the gym and enjoying my workouts, but I don't seek to increase the number of calories burned or build a ton of muscle or train for a marathon. All of things would take away from my primary goal of keeping calories as low as I can, without compromising nutrition or quality of life.

And avoiding having a giant weight dropped on my foot. Some of those dudes at the gym are seriously not careful enough. I fear them.

Posted by april at 12:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Eat 80% Full

That's the Okinawans' oft-quoted piece of wisdom, and the text of one of MR's t-shirts. I considered it both yesterday and this morning as I ate my delicious, nutritious food to the point where I was satisfied but not stuffed.

I note that when I stop eating at the end of the meal I've planned, I don't feel as full as I used to by the end of a meal. I notice that about twenty minutes later I feel full... right about the time when before, I would start to feel uncomfortably stuffed. It really is true that it takes twenty minutes for the brain to register that enough food has been consumed. In addition to the "29 grams of protein before you leave the house" advice, I'd add that you should always wait twenty minutes before deciding you're still hungry.

Here's another thing I notice: if I wait to eat my afternoon snack until I'm really hungry, instead of eating it just at a convenient break in the day or when I start to think that some yogurt might taste good, I feel much less hungry before dinner time. That makes tons of sense, of course, as I end up eating a good two hours later than I would have otherwise. We're so programmed to eat based on the clock, social cues, or just boredom. It's not easy to learn to listen to the body's signals, but I suspect that people who lose weight successfully can credit listening for real hunger with keeping the weight off.

For those of us who do CR, it's a tricky proposition. We need to listen to the body to make sure that we monitor our health, know when we're losing weight too fast, and check for any signs of nutritional deficiencies. I know I'm not eating enough fat when my skin gets dry, or that I'm not drinking enough water when I notice my performance at the gym sagging. But when it comes down to it, CR is an "unnatural" lifestyle. It goes against biological programming to resist the urge to feed the body, and the body will say it's hungry even when it's had all the calories it truly needs to function. For us women, our bodies want to put on enough fat to sustain a pregnancy through a famine, even if we have no intention of ever becoming pregnant, much less during a famine. Even for men, it's "natural" to eat more: that's why we call it Calorie Restriction. It's not just a weight loss program -- it's about pushing the body to achieve and maintain the absolute best level of health it possibly can, and that means giving it fewer calories than it thinks it needs.

I've been having quite a few chats with my body lately about what we want to do with all this. I definitely don't want to be hungry to the point where it distracts from my work or other things I find important in life. But I don't find a bit of hunger subjectively painful, and the feeling of eating to 80% full vs. eating to 100% full, which feels like 20% *overfull* twenty minutes later, is definitely preferable. I don't like feeling overstuffed -- never have, never will. When I eat a perfect combination of nutrients, both macro and micro, I am satisfied on a cellular level that makes me *not* hungry on many fewer calories.

Caloric consistency from day to day has definitely opened up a whole new world of possibilities for my CR. It makes me understand that MR's fanatical consistency is not just one more sexy manifestation of his self-discipline (I am driven mad with lust at the sight of self-discipline -- did I find the right man or what?), it's essential for his level of CR. While I may never be quite so consistent as MR, at least not every single day, I have benefitted tremendously from the exercise of keeping consistent, so much so that I have cut my calories by 250 per day and I'm feeling better than ever!

How far will I push it? We shall see. The more I learn, through both research and self-experimentation, the more power I have to make my own choices. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the journey. I think it would have been boring to have just woken up one day with the perfect CR plan. Could have saved myself a lot of trouble and pain, but the thrill of discovery would be missed.

Onward kale-fed soldiers... marching to a dramatically extended life...

Posted by april at 7:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 7, 2006

The Secret of Life Is A Full Cup of Eggwhites

Faith Hill does a great version of the song "The Secret of Life." It ends with, "The secret of life is there ain't no secret -- and you don't get your money back!" I beg to differ. The secret of life is a full cup of eggwhites for breakfast.

Was it really this easy all along? I asked myself as I glanced in the mirror at the gym? I love my food, I'm not hungry, and I have the body I always wanted, and every expectation of keeping it for a long, long time. Why didn't someone tell me about this ten years ago? Where was my angel then? Huh? What the hell was he doing before he started spreading the gospel of adequate protein, unsaturated fat, and the eggwhite divine?

My hunger wigginess was gone. I ate lunch about 12:15, and was definitely ready for my delicious organic kale and mustard green salad, etc., but wasn't flipping out. I enjoyed my afternoon snack, but wasn't dying for it. I loved my dinner, and now feel totally satisfied.

Here's today:

Pre-breakfast supplements:
25 cals unsweetened cranberry in Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

Breakfast:
1 cup eggwhites
23 cals mushrooms
1 fat free cheddar cheese (30 cals)
1 teaspoon flax oil

Morning:
coffee, green tea, decaffienated black tea

Lunch:
69 g organic dino kale
38 g organic mustard greens
1 cup (75 cals) nonfat plain organic yogurt with 20 cals salsa verde mixed in
100 g olives!

Afternoon snack:
130 cals lowfat organic yogurt, maple vanilla
100 cals almonds

Dinner:
100 g broccoli
100 g cauliflower
40 cals eggwhites
1 tablespoon Lewis Labs brewers yeast
All in a yummy no salt organic veggie broth!

100 g raw blackberries w/1 teaspoon flax oil (that's good, try it)

Another 100 g olives!

1 tablespoon wheat bran, soaked and drained, for fiber (I eat that every day but forget to write it down as it has negligible cals)

Here's the crunch:

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 1048.38__cal 52%
Protein 80.48__gm 146% RDA
Total Fat 36.41__gm 56%
Sat. Fat 12.78__gm 64%
Mono. Fat 16.99__gm 59%
Poly. Fat 4.44__gm 67%
Carbohydrate 110.18__gm 37%
Fiber 25.92__gm 86%
Cholesterol 53.26__mg 18%
Vit. A 10680.61__IU 214% RDA
Vit. B6 1.03__mg 65% RDA
Vit. B12 1.91__mcg 95% RDA
Vit. C 307.52__mg 513% RDA
Vit. E 13.74__mg 172% RDA
Thiamine 0.96__mg 87% RDA
Folacin 323.04__mcg 179% RDA
Riboflavin 2.86__mg 220% RDA
Niacin 12.16__mg 81% RDA
Panto. Acid 5.57__mg 111% SA
Calcium 1572.50__mg 131% RDA
Copper 2.29__mg 114% SA
Iron 13.54__mg 90% RDA
Magnesium 279.74__mg 100% RDA
Manganese 3.37__mg 112% SA
Phosphorus 764.54__mg 64% RDA
Potassium 3344.36__mg 167% RDA
Selenium 120.76__mcg 220% RDA
Sodium 4738.80__mg 197% SA
Zinc 5.98__mg 50% RDA
Tyrosine 2.43__gm 253% RDA
Lysine 4.30__gm 597% RDA
Phenylalanine 3.33__gm 347% RDA
Leucine 5.12__gm 533% RDA
Valine 3.97__gm 472% RDA
Methionine 1.75__gm 583% RDA
Cystine 1.19__gm 396% RDA
Tryptophan 0.78__gm 431% RDA
Threonine 2.67__gm 555% RDA
Isoleucine 3.30__gm 459% RDA

P:C:F = 31:38:31

Wow. What a delicious, nutritious day. Feeling good at 1050, and thinking that will do for now. Had a great workout, a busy day at work, and now I'm going to take my chamomile tea upstairs to make work calls with the cat.

Posted by april at 6:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Why Mangoes?

My mother wants your opinion on why she craves mangoes.

Posted by april at 4:20 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Madness Begins

Or: "Pennsylvania Hospital Administrators Conspire To Make Sure April Will Not Be Home During MR's First Week Back in Country."

It's amazing. I wait for years for the nurses in PA to be ready to organize the union... running contract campaigns, starting campaigns but having to shut them down when nurses get bought off by big raises, etc. Then finally, it seems like the whole thing is about to blow. As PDiddy so memorably said, "This is the moment they all been waiting for, playboy." Finally, we're getting tons of calls, nurses all over are getting pensions slashed, wages frozen, and staffing cut. So now they want to organize (no one ever thinks to protect themselves in advance from this sort of thing... that would be too much trouble for the American worker.) I've had plenty of spells of twelve to sixteen hour days, early mornings, late nights and weekend work... in fact, my entire first two years at this union were just like that. Every day, working till 9 at night, leaving the house at 5:45 am most mornings for an entire summer of a contract campaign, months of shift change meetings when I leave for the Denny's by 6:30 am and argue with the staff over the exact ingredients of the eggwhite omlette, walking the picket line in sub-0 cold in the Poconos in February... it's all par for the course as an organizer, and even though I'm the Director of Organizing now and have a staff of people whom I supervise, I still to an incredible amount of the work myself. I love my work, and I love it when it's busy... it's good when there's activity, it means the day when a more just world is a reality is closer than I think. But it does mean long long hours.

Just in time for: my Orange One's return home!

It's not as bad as it sounds... I will be home to cook a nice dinner on Valentine's Day, and I can pick him up from the airport on the evening he arrives home and feed him a fantastic dinner immediately thereafter. Then I'm out Wednesday until about 10 pm, out Thursday over night (meeting 2.5 hours away that doesn't end until 9 pm, and I always try to stay over when I have meetings that go late since I've taken my chances way too many times with driving when exhausted. I used to work for a union that was too cheap to pay for us to stay somewhere over night, so for months on end I'd drive two hours home at night, four nights a week, after a twelve to sixteen hour day. danger!)

Luckily, MR is super-supportive of my work, and is so used to keeping his own company and making his own tatta that he'll be fine when I'm away. And the charming cats will be so happy to have him home, they'll no doubt follow him from room to room excitedly meowing... something I know he is looking forward to.

All of this travel and crazy scheduling and work obligation requires a certain degree of flexibility from the CR girl. For example, on Wednesdsay night, I'm taking a professor who is presenting at one of our events out to dinner at the restaurant in the hotel where we are having a big meeting. Luckily, this restaurant has an excellent salad bar, with lowfat cottage cheese, so I'll do okay there.

Thursday night we have a meeting several hours away at a location that is near a Ruby Tuesday's! They have both a calorie-counted menu and a fabulous salad bar, so I should be set for dinner. And the place where my staff and I are staying overnight has a free breakfast with an omlette bar where they have real eggwhites, not Eggbeaters, and will make you an omlette with same! VLC and I used to love those eggwhite omlettes, just the thing to fortify you for the long drive back to the office early in the morning. It will probably be cold enough that I can even pack a small jar of flax oil and leave it in the car to pick up in the morning and add to my eggwhites... just like home!

Let's not forget the beauty and convenience of Subway, the ultimate CR road food. It was looking like I'd have to grab Subway tonight, as it suddenly became clear at midday that I would need to leaflet another hospital tonight from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, but I figured out a way to juggle my schedule so that I can stop home to feed the kitties, give Philo her antibiotics, and eat a quick brewers yeast soup on my way to the leaflet. I even figured out how to fit in a trip to the gym! Taking care of myself in spite of big work demands on my time... imagine that. Shocking, I know.

I have considered as of late that I could make my brewers yeast soup on the road by bringing a cube of no salt organic veggie broth along with a baggie of measured Lewis Labs. Then all I'd have to do would be heat some water in a mircowave and bam: more nutrients that you can shake a DWIDP at in minutes! I have also made use of the all-powerful megamuffin and brownie to satisfy my nutritional needs on the run.

Being busy is no reason not to do CR. In fact, it's even more reason to do CR. If you don't have enough time now, how can you afford to lose one day to aging, disability and death?

Posted by april at 12:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 6, 2006

Re-Reading the RANT... and Some Thoughts On Hunger

Sometimes you need a good shot of fire and brimstone. Sometimes you need to get the wind knocked out of you before you're ready to emerge from your cocoon. Sometimes you need to mix metaphors.

This is one of those times.

I am actually hungry.

This doesn't happen all that much for me. I've managed to maintain a calorie level and nutrient balance such that I feel pretty satisfied all the time. Sure, I'm hungry just before my meals, but it doesn't last long and doesn't feel particularly uncomfortable. It's quite lovely to be hungry just before a meal, something that ad lib eaters sometimes forget about. The joy of physically (not just psychologically) needing food, and satisfying that deep need. Yum yum yum!

But this is different. I've learned that consistency makes it easier for me to go lower, so I'm pushing the envelope. I'm exercising and measuring everything. I did go out last Thursday, so I know I was in calorie-overage. But after several days of 950, I'm feeling it.

And tonight I met my best friend for a drink on the way home from work. So there are some resveratrol socializing calories that don't exactly fill a girl up.

I learned, back in my last episode of hunger in the fall, how to note that the hunger is there, say hello to it, and then move forward. On with my day. Just like how you note that an annoying person you work with is still there: you may not be able to fire him, but you can scurry past his desk without getting entrapped in conversation.

I also find that hunger blunts some of my less pleasant emotions rather nicely. For example, if all around me are having a crisis and acting insane, I can observe them and say to myself, "I'd love to join you in your emotional mayhem, but I'm too busy contemplating my next meal." I'm sure to some folks this sounds like a horrible way to live, but I find it much more pleasant to worry about the beauty of nonfat cottage cheese and when it will next intersect with my mouth than to take part in other people's hysteria. I have always had an excess of emotion, so a little emotional deadening was a welcome change. I haven't experienced all that much deadening... my libido has definitely *increased* since CR, but the major confounding factor is meeting and moving in with the love of my life, which is bound to increase libido. I've also had a very stressful year, so it's possible that I have had tons of emotional deadening but I can't tell cause I'd just be insane if it weren't for CR!

Meanwhile, back at the place where I'm not eating, I needed some motivation. Needed to touch the flame, if you will. So I did an archive search (how my heart speeds up when I type in his email address into the "author" line in the search engine!) and came up with my beloved RANT again. Memories of quoting his funniest lines to him while we sat staring into each other's eyes over dinner at the CR Conference. Memories of carrying around the RANT when I went bar hopping with friends in Philly, as defense against the random guy who would hit on me. "What ya reading?" "A paper about how you really have to dramatically reduce what you eat in order to live longer by this really hot guy who weighs 115 pounds!" Dude-repellant if I ever saw it!

Hunger is not so bad, though too much of it is often distracting, and has to be factored in with other quality of life factors in deciding on a total CR program. I find hunger infinitely more bearable than say, cold. I hate being too cold or too hot, which is awkward since I am almost always too cold, except for when I am too hot. I just don't like weather -- never have, not growing up in the South, not going to high school in Northern Michigan. I despise weather of any sort. I dislike climate. There is just about one temperature I like, and it is rarely availble. I've learned to live with it, but I definitely prefer a little hungry feeling to being cold. Especially to having a cold nose. I hate that. I wish someone would knit me a nosewarmer.

I feel compelled from time to time to check in on the website of a computer geek I was totally obsessed with in college who shares the same initials as a large government agency. I am no longer obsessed with him, so I only check his website about every six months, but every once in awhile I find it gratifying to learn that he's doing well, designing software, writing books, speaking at conferences, and in general being the genius boy that I expect all of my ex-lovers to be. We had a brief fling my sophomore year in college, and I got over it in about 2003. I kid you not. I went on with my life, had lots of lovers, tons of career success, even fell in love a couple of times, but never got over the dude with the initials of the government agency that the former governor of Pennsylvania was head of for awhile until some point in 2003. It is just a coincidence that I moved to his home town and that my union represents the nurses at the university where his parents teach. Point being, years of obsession with a guy who wears an MC Escher tie with a bright purple sport jacket is much, much more painful than hunger. I am so glad I got over that years before I met my angel... and if we ever run into the dude, I will ask him to donate to the Mprize. After I demand an apology for dumping me in 1994. I mean, after I politely inquire about his wife and children.

Missing my Orange is a great deal worse than hunger, because the longing for my Orange One is something that is in fact quite healthy and I know that if he were here, I would enjoy him much more than I would enjoy, say, a grapefruit. Even a Star Ruby grapefruit. And he has no calories. So the absence of him has no upside, whereas the absence of excess calories (with adequate nutrition, blah blah blah for those of you who are just joining us this is about Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition) has a life-extending upside.

Annoying people are INFINITELY worse than hunger. I would rather be quite ravenous than have to deal with some of the annoying people who populate this earth. Call me a misanthrope, but as I get older, my tolerance for annoying humans is actually decreasing. I think that I have less need to connect to others now that I am very satisfied with my own company and the company of those close to me, so I am more discriminating in my taste.

I would rather be hungry than angry, or hungry than tired. I would rather be hungry than clean out the basement. I would rather be hungry than anxious, and I would definitely rather be hungry than sad.

I would rather be hungry than dead.

So what's the big deal about hunger? People act like it's the end of the world. It comes and it goes, and most CR people don't experience that much of it after the initial weight loss phase is past. I am in another weight loss phase, a result of pushing my calories lower now that consistency has given me the tools to do so. I'm kicking it up to 1050 again for awhile because I think 950 was a bit *too much* hunger, more than I'm willing to deal with at the moment. But that doesn't mean I'll run away from the moments of hunger that will come even at 1050... I'm sitting here now thinking that I'm actually quite hungry, but I'm going to bed instead of eating because I'm done for the day, calorie-wise. The temptation in the past would have been to realize that I was hungry, panic, and eat the highest cal, highest carb gak I could get my hands on. Now, I realize that I am hungry, process the information as *information,* not as a disaster alarm, and make decisions accordingly, juggling my life-extension goals, my quality of life issues, and three organic kiwis for a dollar. (Actually, I don't know how to juggle, but I like the image of someone juggling three organic kiwis.) I can realize that I'm hungry, make a decision to eat something, and make that something very healthy. Or make a decision to postpone eating until later. Or make a decision to postpone eating until I learn to juggle. No, that would be bad. I am very uncoordinated and would starve to death.

Occasional hunger is a small price to pay for the chance of making it to the time when real anti-aging biotech is available. It's a small price to pay for spending years upon years in the arms of my Orange genius boy. It's a small price to pay for looking good in a bikini long after that dude who dumped me in college is old and fat.

I mean that in a nice way. Really, I wish him all the best.

Posted by april at 7:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

950 May Be Too Low

After four days of 950, I had burnt off most of the excess from Thursday night, and I was wiggy, absolutely wiggy, with hunger all day. I ate my new breakfast of a half cup eggwhites, 1 slice fat free cheddar and 23 calories Asian mushrooms, along with a teaspoon flax oil. Then I went to work, and all was well until at about 10 am I was ready to chow down on my co-workers (some of whom could stand to lose a little fat, so I probably could have gotten a decent meal, but eating your co-workers is frowned upon in a professional setting.) At 10:45, I consumed my all organic salad of 70 g kale, 30 g mustard greens, 74 g olives and 1 cup nonfat organic plain yogurt with salsa verde. That was yummy, and I felt quite satisfied. I ate while working at my desk, as I had plans to hit the gym over lunch.

Hit the gym a little post noon, had a great workout -- it is so pleasantly un-crowded at that hour! No giant dudes threatening to drop dumbells on my tiny foot! Went back to the office feeling refreshed, enjoyed afternoon snack of 130 g organic lowfat blueberry yogurt with 14 g almonds. Ate the fat first.

An hour or so passes. I am so hungry. Like really hungry, not that "I'm bored so I'm hungry" or "I smell food so I'm hungry" type of hungry. More like the, "My body is eating itself and might eat someone else!" type of hungry. The re-reading the RANT to remind myself of why I'm doing this type of hunger. Hmmm.

Ate 10 more g almonds. That usually solves all problems. Was drinking lots of water all day, along with my usual coffee and green tea.

My best friend Jeff wrote me email suggesting that we meet for a glass of wine after work at a bar about two minutes from my house. I agreed. I had to stop off at the store to grab eggwhites and cat food (things you can't go home without -- MR, can you believe I've eaten all those eggwhites that were in the fridge???) so I left work and headed to the store on the corner.

Then I started to think. I can have ONE (and only one -- still keeping the anxiety at bay by keeping alcohol consumption at a minimum) glass of wine, but I would not want to do so on an empty stomach. And I was hungry, really hungry.

I had planned a quotidian dinner + eggwhites to up my protein for when I got home, but I quickly re-thought and decided it best to put some food into my stomach *before* having a glass of wine. Better for the liver, and better at avoiding those post-drinking a glass of wine on an empty stomach urges to eat everything in sight. So I attacked the Clemmen's grocery store salad bar, one of the seven wonders of the world.

I had a big pile of romaine with celery, red onion, cherry tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet bell peppers, vinegar marinated hot peppers, and pickles, doused with plain red wine vinegar. (Yes, I love vinegar.) I figured it would be good to eat some protein and fat with the meal, especially to soak up my small glass of wine, and the imitation crab meat that I adore was missing! Not wanting to take my chances with any of the apparently mayo-covered chicken or tuna salads, I grabbed two small hot pink pickled eggs (it's a {Pennsylvania thing -- they look totally bizarre but taste amazing!). I ate my dinner in the car in the parking lot of the grocery store -- that's how hungry I was by this time.

The bartender at the local bar said their pours were six ounces, but I made him check it with my Good Grips measuring cup to be sure. Whenever I bust out with my measuring cup for wine, I always announce that I am participating in a medical study, so I have to know exactly what I'm consuming. It's true, in so far as it goes -- I am participating in the CR Society medical study. So there! I'm not a neurotic freak of a girl, I'm a lab rat! We are Dr. Walford's mice... we find a longer life quite nice...

I doubt that I went much over calories if at all, since the vegetables were very low calorie and the total of the eggs, even if they were as large as the ones in the USDA database, would be 140 calories, but the fact that I was completely wiggy with hunger all day makes me think that 950 may not be what I'm ready for right now. Considering that my average was in the neighborhood of 1300 pre-January, that's a steep drop, and as Miss Tenacity has pointed out, I have added exercise which is going to do *something* to my metabolism. I'm thinking I will return to 1050 for a few days and see how I feel. 1050 is still well below my previous average, and if I'm not cutting the consistent days with going out days that are well over calories, I should be in a gradual calorie decline.

It was a very nutritious day, though I'm sure a DWIDP would show my lack of brewers yeast in some nutrient columns. I had more than the RDA of calcium between my fat free cheddar single, my cup of nonfat plain yogurt at lunch, and my carton of fruit yogurt at afternoon snack, not to mention my kale. Kale has tons of vitamin A, and blueberries have something or other that's good. Too much saturated fat in the pickled eggs, but it's not like I eat pickled eggs every day. Panto acid in those mushrooms.

I think that tomorrow I may eat a big breakfast, with my old cup full of eggwhites plus the fat free cheddar plus the mushrooms. It's a great way to space out my calcium consumption, add just a few carbs to breakfast, and keep the protein high so that I feel satisfied all day. I'm always telling those who are new to CR or just trying to lose weight: Never leave the house in the morning without 29 grams of protein in you. Maybe I should take my own advice!

I felt rather silly eating my salad in the car, until I thought about how I would have handled the situation pre-CR, or even in the earlier stages of CR. It would have been tempting to declare the day a disaster and then eat a whole whack of high-carb gak, and keep eating after the biological hunger had been satisfied. A big plate of low calorie vegetables topped with plain red wine vinegar and two small boiled eggs is not exactly a crisis, especially not when it follows days of very low calorie, nutrient perfect eating. Onward we go!

Now I'm home and exhausted... had a horrible insomnia attack last night from 12:30 - 2:30, in spite of melatonin. I often have insomnia after having more than one glass of wine, but I hadn't had a drop of alcohol of any kind since Thursday, so it really doesn't seem fair! Oh well, Philomena enjoyed the extra petting.

Speaking of Philo, she's doing well. She's eating, cuddling and meowing. Her doctor says her white blood cell count was very high on account of the infection, but that her kidneys are doing well, which is great as she has chronic kidney disease. She's yowing at me to come upstairs and pet now, so I'll take my work calls and my chamomile tea up to her room to cuddle the calico.

Posted by april at 6:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bill, I Believe This Is Killing Me

Or: How To Get Your Friends To Support Your CR Practice.

That line from Billy Joel's "The Pianoman" has jumped out at me ever since the day I gathered my two closest friends and explained to them that I was actually going to try CR. It was a scary moment: most of the social time I spent with my two closest friends included eating and drinking, and I knew that the changes I made with my beginning CR practice would effect them as well. Not splitting a high fat appetizer, not ordering margaritas, not grabbing a bagel with cream cheese for all of us on the way into work... problems! I knew I couldn't hide or gloss over my new CR practice, so I had to face the possible conflicts head on.

The biggest difficulty in approaching the topic of CR with friends aned family is that changing your lifestyle, when your previous lifestyle mirrored that of your friends and family, is an implicit attack on their way of life. If eating gak isn't good for me, it's almost by definition not good for you. So if I change, doesn't that mean that I think you should change? And how dare I tell you to change???

Think about it: isn't that what's at the heart of most of your conflicts with friends and family over CR? If you're doing something different with your diet, you're sending the message that what they're doing isn't okay. And to be honest, most of us think the standard American diet ISN'T OKAY! No wonder friends and family often react with anger, indignation and attempts at sabatoge.

Here's how I got out of that dilemma with my closest friends. I made it very clear that while the way we had been eating was killing ME, I provided lots of outs for them to *not* change their lives, while remaining in close relationship with me. Of course I would prefer that they change their lives as well, but I knew that the best I could do for them was to save myself and set the best possible example. Engaging in open warfare over their choices would only have led to conflict, making it more difficult for me to stick to my new CR program.

Take, for example, my best friend Jeff. Jeff is super-athletic, has never been out of shape, can eat a bunch of gak without gaining weight, and can drink me and everyone else I know under the table and still feel fine for the rest of the day. I, on the other hand, blow up like a small blimp in a business suit if I eat like that. I get tipsy from one drink (though back then I could hold my alcohol much better -- all that extra weight soaking it up, I guess.) Jeff is married already, and has been as long as I have known him. I was single at the time I started CR, and had finally faced the fact that I didn't really want to date when I was overweight.

So my approach to making it clear that my lifestyle changes were not a judgement on Jeff was three-fold. 1. I pointed out that while he could eat all he wanted and still like the way he looked and felt, I obviously could not, and I was getting pretty darned miserable about my weight and the other physical signs of aging I was seeing. 2. I simply could not consume as much alcohol as he could without destroyiing my liver in short order. 3. At the rate I was going, I was never going to have the energy to get out and date, which meant an eternity of listening to me complain about it.

I made it very clear that this change was just about *me.* It wasn't a rejection of him, or of all the fun things we did together. In fact, I pointed out that I planned to continue going out to eat, and in the beginning I didn't change my out eating habits much at all -- I just focused on keeping my quotidian diet so low calorie that I could eat more when I went out and still stay on track. I switched out mixed drinks for red wine, and cut out bread. But other than that, I continued to eat "normally" when out at restaurants... and back in the days when I was eating 800 on weekdays, you can believe my weight dropped even with weekly excursions into the land of ad lib eating.

Jeff was pretty darned supportive. We started to meet for drinks at places where we both liked the red wine, instead of the Mexican margarita house where the nachos are free at happy hour. We began to go out for meals to places with a good salad bar. He thought it was pretty nuts that I developed a crush on a man I had never met before and had only read and seen pictures of, but I explained that I was in a transformation process, and unwilling to distract myself from the task at hand with dudes, and he figured that as long as I was happy, that was fine. I was no longer complaining about being single, as I had a long term plan to attract a genius boy, so I was much more pleasant to be around.

My friend VLC was another good example of a friend who was supportive of my transition to CR. She's a healthy eating, working out type herself, and is very interested in nutrition, so she was more than willing to eat healthier when we were together. Together we raided hotel vegetable trays, argued with waiters about leaving off the cream sauce, and split scallop dishes at restaurants. She listened to me rattle on for hours about MR, quoting every brilliant little thing he had to say on-list, and she even encouraged me with helpful thought experiments like, "Imagine MR in nothing but this Hello Kitty bath towel." With motivation like that, it was easy to resist the errant piece of bread.

My mom was a source of unending support and encouragement. Having recently lost 70 pounds on Weight Watchers (that's three and a half Kieffers, and ten Philomenas!) she knew how much better it felt to be healthy. She listened with enthusiasm as I made every new discovery, and enjoyed many a CR-friendly meal at my house.

My father and step-mother were also supportive, which was really fun because we had fought over food issues for years when I was a lowfat vegan and they were doing Atkins. As I started to eat more lean protein, more unsaturated fat, and fewer carbs, we found ourselves eating just alike for the first time in years! I knew it was a revolution when my step-mother and I ordered the same chicken Caesar salad at one of our favorite restaurants.

I had other, less happy friend interactions. One of my long time good friends and co-workers was not happy with my CR lifestyle. She told our other co-workers (I found out later) that I was anorexic, and she used to look at what I was eating for lunch and say, "That's ALL you're having?" Meanwhile, she'd be eating a large vegetarian hoagie on white bread with stuffed grape leaves on the side, and she wasn't happy with her weight. She finally told me that she didn't want me to talk about CR with her. Our friendship never quite recovered, though there were many other factors leading to us becoming less close.

The saddest of my friends lost to CR stories was my closest friend from high school, who had fought a gruesome battle with anorexia, including six years in and out of the hospital. She couldn't believe that CR could be anything other than an eating disorder, and she said that since I had had eating issues in the past (like almost all white women my age, but anyway) I shouldn't try it. She finally decided that it wasn't healthy for her to see me. I'm still really sad about it, and I hope someday she changes her mind. I never had an eating disorder like hers -- thank the Goddess! -- and while I had some crazy dieting days back in high school (like everyone, but anyway!) I seemed to have miraculously recovered from all such things upon reading Susan Faludi's Backlash my freshman year in college. When many years later I started to fall victim to the Standard American Diet and see signs of declining health, just being non-anorexic wasn't enough. Learning self-control and self-discipline around my eating issues and focusing on health and longevity instead of weight was an incredibly healthy process for me. I hope that someday my friend is able to resume our once-close relationship.

What amazes me about my friends who accused me of being anorexic is that they never expressed the slightest concern about my health, mental or physical, when I was rapidly gaining weight, eating gak, getting sick all the time, suffering from terrible insomnia, and indulging in one more margarita than my liver really needed. That, I suppose, was just considered normal. A woman starts to gain weight approaching thirty... well, that's just what everyone does. But a woman begins to lose weight and pay close attention to her nutrition -- she must have an eating disorder!

As my CR evolved, I found that I became closer to the people in my life who were supportive and grew away from those who were not. I just wasn't interested in people who attempted to sabatoge my new eating habits. I also wasn't interested in people who tried to sabatoge my self-confidence. I was developing a new attitude towards life, one in which I valued my own health and happiness just as much as I valued my work or my friends. As Harriet Learner says, when you change, people in your life will demand, through their words and actions, "Change back!" The people who wanted me to change back gradually faded out. The ones who supported me have become even closer friends.

CR is for most of us a very empowering process. The very act of taking control of something as basic as your diet gives you confidence in every other realm of life. I am still in the middle of this process, and expect to be a work in progress for the rest of my dramatically extended life. There have been speedbumps along the way: Buddhists bearing tequila, carb-outs at dinners with old friends, forgetting to soak my wheat bran because I've gotten so used to having a man to do it for me (I really sound like a slave-driver, don't I? He soaks the wheat bran, makes my lunch, makes my tea, takes out the trash... I just keep him barefoot, though not pregnant, in the kitchen! In my own defense, I do the majority of the housecleaning and cook almost all our dinners!) But there have been no roadblocks that I couldn't, with some work and some support from my true friends, navigate my way around.

Having body confidence and an abiding sense of health has given me the courage to do lots of things I never would have considered before. The connection isn't always obvious: how has CR made it possible for me to take up meditation, fall in love and join my life with someone Orange, and wash the cat food cans as soon as I open them? Body confidence is a lot of it, but there's something more. It's confidence in my ability to do what I say I'm going to do: to make a vow and keep it.

No, I'm not going to quote Don Henley again. But you know I'm thinking it.

Now about that low-carb tortilla and half-salt...

Posted by april at 6:57 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 5, 2006

Symphony in 946 Calories

Back when I was just stalking MR, I used to imagine that some day he would read my perfect, simple, delicious and nutritious tiny quotidian diet and realize that nowhere else on earth could there exist such an ideal mate for him. Well, that's basically what happened, but I never stop being excited about my new ways of fitting incredibly delicious meals, chock full of RDA's of everything, into very small calorie packages.

Behold the beauty of today.

Breakfast:

Something new! (Please do not die of shock, or anything else.)
1/2 cup of eggwhites with 23 calories Trader Joe's Asian Mushrooms and 1 fat free cheddar single, plus 1 teaspoon flax oil. Mushroom and cheese omlette -- super yum, better distribution of calcium, closer to Zoned (okay, not really, but closer) and more panto acid than you can shake a stick at!

Lunch:

Rather quotidian, to come down from the high of a different breakfast.
70 g kale, 30 g mustard greens, 1 cup nonfat plain yogurt with 4 tbsps salsa verde. 134 g olives. (I love olives!)

Dinner:

Cooking dinner for Mom again... she's coming over to keep me company and help with the kitty-nursing. It isn't easy getting pills into a six and a half pound cat, let me assure you.

A new and fabulous salad, created with the inspiration of a sale at Whole Foods this am on organic blackberries:

Blackberry Beet Salad with Ginger Balsamic Vinegarette

100 g blackberries, fresh, raw
120 g sliced beets
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar with ginger powder (or you could use fresh ginger)
1 teaspoon flax oil

For the main course, we're having an old favorite: cruciferous veggie eggwhite drop soup with brewers yeast. 100 g broccoli, 100 g cauliflower, no salt organic veggie broth, 1 tbsp Lewis Labs, and the juice of a half a fresh lemon (amounts per person) and 40 cals eggwhites, stirred in so it's like eggdrop soup. Sides of fats: 9.4 g almonds, 70 g olives.

In addition to my meals, I had two oz cranberry juice (totally unsweetened, the too-sour-to-drink kind) with morning supplements and diet Dr. Pepper, and two ounces just now with more DDP, served in a wine glass. It's just like drinking wine, except without any of the negative side effects!

Here, my friends, is the crunch for today. Behold and be amazed.

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 946.18__cal 47%
Protein 69.94__gm 127% RDA
Total Fat 31.63__gm 49%
Sat. Fat 8.63__gm 43%
Mono. Fat 15.62__gm 54%
Poly. Fat 5.17__gm 78%
Carbohydrate 106.16__gm 35%
Fiber 29.10__gm 97%
Cholesterol 48.29__mg 16%
Vit. A 10414.40__IU 208% RDA
Vit. B6 1.07__mg 67% RDA
Vit. B12 1.16__mcg 58% RDA
Vit. C 327.52__mg 546% RDA
Vit. E 12.23__mg 153% RDA
Thiamine 1.34__mg 122% RDA
Folacin 326.05__mcg 181% RDA
Riboflavin 2.10__mg 162% RDA
Niacin 14.91__mg 99% RDA
Panto. Acid 5.14__mg 103% SA
Calcium 1380.19__mg 115% RDA
Copper 2.63__mg 132% SA
Iron 16.16__mg 108% RDA
Magnesium 231.29__mg 83% RDA
Manganese 3.26__mg 109% SA
Phosphorus 560.00__mg 47% RDA
Potassium 3214.66__mg 161% RDA
Selenium 125.97__mcg 229% RDA
Sodium 4732.99__mg 197% SA
Zinc 5.44__mg 45% RDA
Tyrosine 1.78__gm 185% RDA
Lysine 3.20__gm 444% RDA
Phenylalanine 2.43__gm 254% RDA
Leucine 3.76__gm 392% RDA
Valine 2.93__gm 349% RDA
Methionine 1.24__gm 414% RDA
Cystine 0.84__gm 280% RDA
Tryptophan 0.64__gm 355% RDA
Threonine 2.02__gm 420% RDA
Isoleucine 2.47__gm 344% RDA

P:C:F = 30:40:30.

Right on the Zone. Check out those nutrients. Look at those recipes.

I really get into this sort of thing. Major geek out. But look: it's so elegant! So tiny and perfect! It's like a Barbie house of nutrition! It's like a snowflake, in its microscopic uniqueness and perfection. It's like, so yummy!

Now I'm off to actually put together the dinner that I have so lovingly constructed on my software. Happy blackberries to all, and to all a good night!

Posted by april at 4:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 4, 2006

You Eat, You Take Supplements

That's what MR tells me when I report that I've forgotten to take my mealtime pills. He can't quite figure out how I can possibly not have this firmly implanted in my head. I manage to juggle so many other, more complex details of our lives... why can't I remember to take my supplements on time?

Well, he would be proud, because I've gotten one thing about supplements clearly implanted in my head. If you're carrying a pill and a glass of water, you take the pill.

Unless the pill belongs to your cat.

And you're walking up the stair carrying a pill because you have to administer your cat's antibiotics, and a glass of water because your cat prefers to drink her water out of a large tumbler than out of a dish.

The good news is, I caught myself just before consuming one kitty-sized antibiotic. Good thing, as I am not suffering from an infection due to a giant tabby bite, so I do not need kitty antibiotics. I delivered the antibiotic, and with my mom's help, got it into my cat's mouth. We also got her pain medication in and another 100 cc's of subcutaneous fluids. The cat is all drugged up, and slept peacefully on the side of my face for quite awhile as my mother and I chatted. It's nice to have company who can just lie in the bed with the cat and talk. Nothing too fancy here.

Dinner was lovely, and my mom brought over giant olives as a hostess gift, so I switched out the almonds I had planned to eat for olives. Yum!

Now I'm purring with Kieffer for a little while before bed. Can't let the giant one get jealous. He keeps asking why everyone is cooing so much over the other kitty, and I keep saying, "Cause you bit her!"

Isn't one of the Ten Commandments "Don't bite your neighbor's butt?"

If it's not, it should be. That will definitely be a commandment in my religion.

Posted by april at 9:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Quorn Crucifer Soft Tacos

Since I'm keeping watch by the cat's bedside, I'm not going out tonight. I had plans to go to a potluck, at which I would have once again swum (is that a word?) upstream against the currents of gak, but instead I am having my mother (my cat's grandmother, of course) over for a low-key, CR'd dinner. I'm making cruciferous soft tacos with Quorn tenders. For two people, I sauteed 15 g shallots in 3/4 cup chipoltle salsa, then added 160 g cauliflower and 80 g broccoli. I'm planning to split that in half, and put them into 1 low carb tortilla with 1 fat free cheddar single for me, and more tortillas for mom if it is her will to consume more than 1 low carb tortilla, and 85 g Quorn tenders each. I will have almonds on the side, and I will top both of our tortillas with one teaspoon flax oil. Mom may have fruit for dessert... I'm not really feeling it so I probably won't.

Today was a very low key food day. I was feeling the need for familiar favorite comfort foods like cottage cheese and kale, and copious amounts of Carolina Treet. For breakfast, I had my typical eggwhites with Treet instead of salsa, and flax oil. For lunch, 50 g kale with cottage cheese and Treet and a side of almonds and a side of plain old veggie broth with a tablespoon of brewers yeast... it's a cheap and easy way to get up my nutrition, and I love warm soup. Dinner is above. Several cups of chamomile tea, some niacin-filled coffee, and the ubiquitous Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.

Here's today's crunch:

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 953.00__cal 48%
Protein 101.33__gm 184% RDA
Total Fat 29.49__gm 45%
Sat. Fat 7.40__gm 37%
Mono. Fat 9.07__gm 31%
Poly. Fat 5.88__gm 88%
Carbohydrate 80.77__gm 27%
Fiber 25.89__gm 86%
Cholesterol 54.77__mg 18%
Vit. A 6897.11__IU 138% RDA
Vit. B6 1.28__mg 80% RDA
Vit. B12 1.95__mcg 97% RDA
Vit. C 362.17__mg 604% RDA
Vit. E 7.27__mg 91% RDA
Thiamine 0.87__mg 79% RDA
Folacin 347.01__mcg 193% RDA
Riboflavin 1.95__mg 150% RDA
Niacin 9.33__mg 62% RDA
Panto. Acid 3.73__mg 75% SA
Calcium 911.58__mg 76% RDA
Copper 1.22__mg 61% SA
Iron 6.20__mg 41% RDA
Magnesium 239.88__mg 86% RDA
Manganese 1.80__mg 60% SA
Phosphorus 599.73__mg 50% RDA
Potassium 3073.42__mg 154% RDA
Selenium 113.11__mcg 206% RDA
Sodium 2149.71__mg 90% SA
Zinc 4.16__mg 35% RDA
Tyrosine 3.27__gm 340% RDA
Lysine 5.34__gm 742% RDA
Phenylalanine 4.05__gm 422% RDA
Leucine 6.74__gm 702% RDA
Valine 4.66__gm 555% RDA
Methionine 2.12__gm 706% RDA
Cystine 1.22__gm 406% RDA
Tryptophan 0.95__gm 526% RDA
Threonine 3.32__gm 692% RDA
Isoleucine 4.20__gm 583% RDA

P:C:F = 43:30:27

BTW, ignore the sodium. It's messed up by the fact that DWIDP doesn't have an entry for no-salt veggie broth, so I keep using regular chicken broth by calories in the entry as a substitute. I am really not consuming all that salt -- please do not have a heart attack! (for that, or any other reason!)

I am considering cutting my morning eggwhites down a bit and replacing some of the calories. I come up so high every day on protein, and breakfast is a meal I could make smaller without noticing it. What should I put in my breakfast? Nothing too high carb. How about an oyster, for zinc? Just kidding. Mushrooms for panto acid? Suggestions welcome, as long as they're not too high carb.

Interesting question from Miss Tenacity, reproduced here:

RE: the plan for the next week - yowza!

I was just going to comment and ask if you were going to "re-bound" during February to see how that affected your metabolism (especially since you are lifting weights). Is that still part of the plan, or no?My own metabolism definitely is enhanced by zig-zagging calories, but of course "enhanced metabolism" isn't necessarily something that CRONies are interested in, unless they are also devout foodies and just would like to eat (at least a little) more. Hmm.

I am definitely not planning to speed up my metabolism on purpose: while the idea that slowed metabolism is responsible for the CR effect has been pretty much discounted, it certainly seems that decreasing total calories is, for whatever reason, responsible. So I wouldn't want the number of calories it takes for me to survive to increase. Lowered weight is also not responsible for the CR effect, so even if I could keep the same low weight with more calories, I wouldn't -- I'd continue to cut calories anyway. If the experience of other CR'ers holds true, eventually my metabolism would bounce back up, and then, if I were carefully tracking my calories as I have been and keeping them consistent, I'd lose weight for no apparent reason. Happens to all of us, at least those of us who have carefully tracked our calories throughout the process. It's really helpful to live with a very carefully controlled experiment because he knows what really happens when you change just one small factor. However, unlike an actual rat, he has no wish to chase frozen peas in a bathtub. Nor is he in danger of being eaten by a cat. Best of all possible worlds, really. A lab rat who can talk!

That being said, I don't think my metabolism has changed much in this month. I am now fairly sure that my 1300 estimate was so close to what my pre-January calorie average per week really was that I didn't experience much change in calorie input to output ratio - I just felt subjectively more comfortable with the more consistent distribution. It hasn't been all that long since I dropped my calories further, and confounding the equation is the decrease in wine and increase in unsaturated fat.

Meanwhile, I do think that exercise is making some kind of difference because I feel different. I have discernable muscle (just a tiny bit!) and I can tell that my cardio endurance is improving on the treadmill. The amount of exercise I do, however, is so small and so well-spread out over the course of the week, that I don't think I'm burning that many more calories with it. Doing only two weight lifting exercises, with very, very light weights, per day, isn't much. It's plenty to tone up my tiny little muscles and put some stress on my itsy bitsy bones. But not enough to freak out my metabolism and send me running for a protein shake.

I did notice the first week or so of adding exercise that I was very hungry after working out and craved sugar. But that seemed to fade away after I started eating 10 g almonds just before a workout. The water weight gain seems to have dropped off or evened out or whatever too.

I think it will take longer to figure out the long term effects of exercise on my CR. As I build muscle, I will need more calories to exist. So I'm being very careful not to build any more than necessary. It's a good example of the differences in priorities between CR folks and athletes. One of my other friends who is a marathon runner has been dabbling in CR. He's losing weight fast, and keeping his carbs rather high because he finds it helps him have energy to train. As long as he has plenty of energy and endurance, he's happy with weight loss since it makes him a lighter runner. People who are interested in body building, like my trainer at the gym, wouldn't want to cut their calories to the point where they lost muscle mass, since muscle is a high priority. Since I've never been interested in sports, losing muscle is no sacrifice at all.

Keep in mind, when you consider my 950 experiment, that I ate at least 700 extra calories on Thursday. So if you just plain average, I am really eating 1050 a day for the next week, same as the previous week. The averaging this really does seem to work, judging from the consistency in my weight when I went from 1200 for six days and one meal out to 1300 for all seven days. My weight only started to dip below 102 when I started to cut below 1200 on a daily basis.

Of course, the figures are somewhat confounded by wine consumption, since I started cutting out wine before I dropped my calories, so I may have actually gained a little weight during that period! I wasn't weighing myself every day (though I should have been) and the fluctuations in water weight due to exercise, salt intake and hormonal changes make it hard to be exactly sure from one day to the next what weight is what. However, substituting food for wine at isocaloric levels, it is my experience, will lead to weight gain. Very good for those who want to hold their weight, gain, or cut calories by cutting out wine without losing weight.

It's more fun to be a lab rat when the conditions are perfectly consistent, but I don't think I'm willing to sacrifice *ever* going out to eat in the name of science. I probably will cut back quite a bit though, now that I'm committed to consistency. I know, I know, Little and Tall MR's. You told me so.

Posted by april at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Be Your Own Lab Rat

Well, while I'm sitting next to a sick cat all weekend, I may as well write up the results of my January calorie consistency experiment.

I started out at 1300, which was about where I estimated my average to be back when I was doing 1200 for about six days followed by one big meal out with friends. I think that estimate was pretty darned close because while I did lose a tiny bit of weight in those days (I had gained about three pounds over all the holiday eating in December) I didn't drop weight fast at all. I also noticed that I felt absolutely no subjective hunger or discomfort... so I decided to drop my calories, first down to 1150, then down to 1050.

A couple of things occurred. The consistency definitely helped me feel better, and the combination of that and really, really keeping my nutrition high seemed to keep me from feeling nearly as hungry as I used to back in the six days on, one day off days. I also made a couple of changes to my diet: I upped my fat percentage (which I had done in the early days of Zoned MR-stalking, but had kinda let go as time went on) and I started eating my fat first in a meal, for example chowing down on almonds before eating my yogurt.

My weight was 101 this morning, and that's after eating out on Thursday night (it's February now, you know), so I suspect that it might drip down to 100 in a day or so. That's nice, safe slow weight loss from where I was when I started, which was hovering around 103 - 106 post holiday eating. 102 seems to have become my new set point (what a change from the 120's, to which I gravitated my entire adult life!) so at this point I should be losing only very, very slowly.

A few confounding factors: exercise and decrease in wine consumption.

I joined a gym as soon as I got back from the holidays, and have been doing 20 - 30 minutes on the treadmill 5 days a week, plus two exercises, 3 sets each, of light weight lifting. That caused an initial jump in my weight, due to water retained when muscles become active again. I think I may have put on just a tiny bit of muscle, as I certainly *feel* more solid, at least to myself (with MR out of town, I lack other people who would be appropriate to do such feeling. He'll be back soon, though, and I'll be sure to record his very scientific observations.)

Decreased wine consumption. I've cut out my quotidian glass of wine with cooking/dinner. Two reasons: 1. It flat out saves calories. 2. Skipping it or at least making it less regular seems to have dramatic positive effects on my anxiety. My anxiety has largely gone away, due to both CR as a whole and some bizarre and unexpected spiritual side-effects of my CR practice (results, I assure you, are not typical.) But it attempted to make a comeback in recent weeks, and cutting out wine seems to make it beat a hasty retreat. I really, really notice that if I induldge in too many of any kind of carb, be it bread, wine, or chocolate (holy substances in many religions, I note) a gruesome anxiety spike follows. It's not worth it. Thank Goddess I can still handle salt, even if the bread is a bit problematic.

Kicking out the wine but keeping the food calories the same seems to have resulted in a total calorie decrease with almost no weight loss. This is very good news for a CR person, since we do not want to keep losing weight indefinitely. To be able to cut calories without compromising nutrition or encountering hunger is quite an exciting thing. MR is convinced of the health benefits of a tiny amount (3 oz per day) of wine, and I may re-make it quotidian once he returns... I doubt that such a tiny amount would spike my anxiety, especially not if consumed with a meal after fat. But for now, I'm putting those 64 calories into other things.

The difference in how I feel when I keep consistent is remarkable. I used to feel super hungry by the end of 3 days at 1200. Now, I don't feel subjectively hungry even at 1050, assuming that I keep my nutrition way, way up. I've also been eating dinner earlier when MR isn't here, which has no doubt decreased my perception of hunger, since my hungriest hours before were 3 pm - 7 pm (MR and I eat dinner at 7.) Eating dinner closer to 5:30 by definition cuts an hour and a half off the hungrier part of the day. I may add back in a late afternoon snack when MR gets home and take the calories out of my dinner, since I enjoy sitting down at the table with him and eating our evening meal together.

Many of the most interesting effects I noticed from my experiment were just the social implications of weighing and measuring absolutely everything. Bringing a measuring cup to a bar when I met a friend for a glass of wine, insisting that my boss and I eat our weekly lunch out at a place that has a calorie controlled menu... all very interesting and entertaining. I did have a couple of exceptions: two lunches with our lawyer that I couldn't get out of and that were at very nice places (a pre-approved exception) and one lunch out for a co-worker's last day that was on the last day of my experiment, at which I ate a low-cal and very healthy tuna nicoise salad, and cut back my cals for the rest of the day just to be safe. I also had the day of my staff member's party, the day after my encounter with the Tequila-Bearing Buddhist, when I fasted all day and then ate some small bites at her party... coming in no doubt under calories (as evidenced by how hungry I was the next day) but an indeterminate number thereof. I don't recommend that practice, and only did it that time to knock out a post-Buddhist anxiety spike. I may not consume another ounce of tequila as long as I live.

I realized that I do miss going out to restaurants, and that I enjoy eating unusual foods and socializing over dinners and lunches enough that I don't want to cut them out of my life forever. However, I also discovered that I can go out and socialize without carbing out. I can drink little or none at all, and I can order foods that are probably higher calorie than my quotidian meals, but are still healthy and satisfying without being loaded with things that make me feel un-well. I also saved quite a bit of money, between not going out to eat and not drinking wine. Good thing, as our gas bills, my cat's vet bill, and the cost of getting my windshield replaced will more than make up for any cash I saved by abstaining from wine and restaurants. I'd rather have a heated home, a live cat, and a safe car than wine and restaurant meals, I suppose. I hope it's not a choice I have to make every month!

This experiment has also re-affirmed my faith in my own self-discipline. It wasn't easy to insist on calorie controlled meals, turn down glasses of wine (even when under some peer pressure) or force myself to eat a nutritionally balanced meal even when I was dead exhausted and felt like just grabbing a low carb tortilla and calling it a day. My daily practice of meditation definitely helped, as did the genuine fear that little Buddhist demons would come after me if I didn't do what I said I would. Buddhists bearing tequilla are frightening enough... I certainly don't want Buddhists bearing pitchforks!

I decided to try this experiment in January because a) I didn't have many social eating events planned, unlike the busy holiday months of November and December b) I had a little weight cushion that it wouldn't hurt to get rid of leftover from said holiday eating c) with MR out of town, I somewhat feared slipping back into bad habits of skipping breakfast, eating out too much, and consuming an extra glass of wine when one would quite suffice. I knew that by undertaking a strict plan, I would protect myself from any excesses. I'm glad I did... I feel even healthier now that I did before he left, and I have taken on a slightly orange tint that will nicely compliment his own.

In that spirit, I've decided on a little challenge event for this last week before my Orange returns home. I've had a habit, in the past, of eating out too much and getting lax with my CR just before a visit to MR, under the assumption that spending time with him would clean it up anyway so why not get really toxic before my de-tox? I don't want to do that... I have too much to focus on between work being insane, preparing our home for his re-arrival (which shouldn't take long, but does take some time as he has allergies so I need to clean the floors really well, wash and dust everything) and taking care of my sick little furry one. I also have a little bit of a calorie-cushion leftover from my delicious Thursday night dinner, I'd estimate at least 700 extra calories, so 100 per day of the next week.

Therefore, I'm going to shoot for 950 a day for the next week. I've got about a million permutations of my quotidian diet that include almost all the RDA's in that number of calories, so I can drop that low without compromising nutrition. If you factor in the extra 700 (at least) calories I ate on Thursday, eating 950 a day for seven days will only end me up at an average of 1050 per day, which is where I was before this last week anyhow. I don't seem to lose weight too fast on that, so I think it's safe, but just to be sure, I'll monitor my weight every day and go up if it's dropping precipitiously.

I'm not going to be ultra-religious about this (a girl can only have so many religions and I may be about to max out.) If lunch with lawyer comes up, or if VLC and Jeff and I can schedule a get-together with VLC's fiance, I'll relax the standard a bit. But I won't go carb crazy no matter what -- I've learned my lesson the hard way enough times now to suspect that I may swear off those crazy days forever. Or at least till the Immortality/Imperviousness to Carbs pill is on the market.

Being your own lab rat is one of the most fun aspects of CR, and probably why it attracts so many scientific/engineering types. I am not a scientific type, but I have always loved self-experimentation. It's fun when you do something good, and when you screw up, you have no one to blame but yourself. These days, I am a study subject with a letter to prove it, and blood tests ordered for Feb. 21. And an Orange researcher ready to pick me up off the floor when I faint.

Posted by april at 11:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 3, 2006

Big Healthy Dinner

Thanks to all for your wonderful comments. Philo is eating well, purring and sleeping. Still bleeding some, and I have to go put a hot compress on her wounds soon, but for now she seems okay. I'm taking a moment to write and pet Kieffer so he doesn't get too jealous.

I finally got around to fixing myself some food. I knew I had to get some nutrition into me, or else all the stress and exhaustion would just be too much. Here was dinner:

189 g cauliflower in 25 calories unsalted veggie broth w/1 tbsp Lewis Labs brewers yeast

60 g kale with 1 cup nonfat yogurt and 4 tbsps salsa verde

12 g almonds, 30 g olives

98 g fresh blueberries

30 calories artichoke hearts

Very big dinner! But hitting lots of the nutritional bases.

Here is lunch and dinner combined, but breakfast is missing since I ate leftover restaurant food:

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 631.13__cal 32%
Protein 57.76__gm 105% RDA
Total Fat 16.70__gm 26%
Sat. Fat 6.11__gm 31%
Mono. Fat 6.27__gm 22%
Poly. Fat 2.25__gm 34%
Carbohydrate 68.72__gm 23%
Fiber 14.93__gm 50%
Cholesterol 36.49__mg 12%
Vit. A 5942.48__IU 119% RDA
Vit. B6 0.94__mg 59% RDA
Vit. B12 2.40__mcg 120% RDA
Vit. C 220.67__mg 368% RDA
Vit. E 4.78__mg 60% RDA
Thiamine 0.82__mg 75% RDA
Folacin 191.68__mcg 106% RDA
Riboflavin 0.92__mg 71% RDA
Niacin 8.44__mg 56% RDA
Panto. Acid 2.98__mg 60% SA
Calcium 556.69__mg 46% RDA
Copper 1.21__mg 61% SA
Iron 5.16__mg 34% RDA
Magnesium 142.04__mg 51% RDA
Manganese 1.46__mg 49% SA
Phosphorus 631.78__mg 53% RDA
Potassium 2089.65__mg 104% RDA
Selenium 60.62__mcg 110% RDA
Sodium 1359.69__mg 57% SA
Zinc 4.46__mg 37% RDA
Tyrosine 2.38__gm 248% RDA
Lysine 3.87__gm 537% RDA
Phenylalanine 2.59__gm 270% RDA
Leucine 4.77__gm 497% RDA
Valine 3.18__gm 379% RDA
Methionine 1.34__gm 445% RDA
Cystine 0.52__gm 172% RDA
Tryptophan 0.54__gm 299% RDA
Threonine 2.18__gm 454% RDA
Isoleucine 2.79__gm 387% RDA

Not bad considering it's missing a meal that was packed with veggies. Those stuffed peppers were awesome... I'll have to make something like that when MR returns.

I'd love to put my recipes in a book... perhaps I will some day! Thanks for the vote of confidence. :)

I was planning to go to a potluck tomorrow, but now I'm not due to sick kitty. I just feel like curling up with my cats and hiding right now... an urge to cocoon. Perhaps I am about to turn into a butterfly? I hear they do well on CR...

Posted by april at 6:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

It's Bad. It's Really Bad.

I am now having a terrible day. Philomena is really sick.

Apparently, and I have no idea how this could have happened, Kieffer bit her hind quarters. I think she must have slipped through the bannisters and into Kieffer's downstairs territory, where he no doubt bit her. The vet said the kitty forensic scientist in him was certain that those were the teeth marks of a very big cat.

Now she has an infected flesh wound, and she's on antibiotics and pain medication. The wound looks horrible... the vet said it looked like a gunshot wound. My poor little baby! The vet says she could be as old as 16 or 18 (we don't know... she was already old when she came to me in 1999) so any illness could be her last. I hope she'll make a full recovery, but in the meantime I have cancelled all my weekend plans in order to stay by her side. She's sitting at the foot of the bed now (thank Goddesses my internet wireless seems to be working, at least I can write while I'm being a kitty nurse!) and she just ate a whole bunch of tuna, which has to be a good sign.

Oh, and while I was at the vet's, I got another $100 ticket for the same stupid inspection thing. I just put the piece of glass in my window and decided to live with it for now. I guess I'll have to go to court twice over this.

Today has not turned out to be a good day. I'm going to just sit here until it improves.

In case you're wondering what I've eaten, with all the crises that abound: for breakfast I ate my leftover stuffed pepper from last night. For lunch I ate a cup of cottage cheese (140 - nonfat) with flax oil and Carolina Treet, plus 89 g Star Ruby grapefruit. I'll probably have brewers yeast soup for dinner, since I've cancelled my plans to go out so that I can sit with my sick baby.

Posted by april at 4:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

I'm New In Town and My Cat Is Bleeding

I am having a day.

First, I couldn't sleep from 1 am till 5 am, then I finally got back to sleep at about my normal wake-up time and woke up at 7. Then my landlady called upset because we haven't changed the water bill to my name, which I couldn't do because we can't find the water meter -- and neither could she! Eventually I found the water meter, but I couldn't get to it to read it because it's under a table that's bolted to the floor. Finally I scrunched in to read the first four numbers, but couldn't get the last several. So I decided to crawl under the table from the other side.

And came face to face with a giant spider. Screamed. Retreated.

This is a job for MR. He can face giant spiders with bravery worthy of a medieval knight slaying a dragon for his ladyfair, and due to CR, he is so skinny he can get into tight spaces with no problem.

By this time, I had already called in to take the day off from work, since I was going to have to go down to Center City Philadelphia to actually change the water bill in person (along with two forms of ID, a copy of my lease, and several utility bills. Remember the story about how I had to prove myself worthy to pay the water bill?

Finally, I give up, agree to send lots of money to our landlady and beg for her patience while I wait for the Spider Slayer to return from deepest darkest Canada. She agrees, and I am almost going to go to work when I go upstairs to check on Philomena, and discover that she is bleeding!!!

Oh dear. I love my cat. I freak out when my cat is merely inconvenienced, much less hurt.

However, I am one of those calm, cool and collected in a crisis people. So I begin to call veternarians with the message of our headline. We haven't gotten a new vet since I moved, and I didn't want to go far or wait long.

While I'm doing this, I'm petting the cat, who is purring up a storm and oblivious to the fact that she is bleeding from her tail region. She's just excited that Mommy is home on a weekday. The bleeding is hard to find, but I eventually discover that it is probably coming from a spot on her tail that she had over-groomed. It seems to have stopped for now, and after calling several vets, I got an appointment at the one closest to us for 2:40 pm. That's less than an hour away, so I'm watching the cat with baited breath, making sure that she doesn't start bleeding again. Meanwhile, she's sitting still and purring with a blissful look on her face. I think everything is going to be okay.

Posted by april at 1:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 2, 2006

Cat

Can I just share that I wrote an entire entry, a very good one in fact, on how to enlist your friends to support you when you start CR, and then my cat somehow sat on my keyboard and erased it all????

I'll just answer a few comments and go back to bed. Kale: I love it raw! In salads, with salsa, oil, vinegar, whatever. But some people like it cooked.

How do I keep track of my nutrition without going insane? Software! Dr. Walford's Interactive Diet Planner. Available at http://www.walford.com.

How do I keep the tatta from sticking to the pan? Hmmm... don't know. I bake it in glass dishes. I have MR, with his greater physical strength, scrub the eggwhites out of the pan. Works for me!

My battery is low... both mine and my computers. Time to plug in and recharge for both of us. I went to bed early but woke up in the middle of the night wide awake... that always, always happens when I have more than one glass of wine with dinner. Then I end up writing. But now it's time to sleep some. More soon. Maybe I'll re-construct that great entry on enlisting your buddies in your CR project.... hanging out with my best friend made me think about it. For now, I'm going to sleep to dream of cooking for my Orange One again... visions of Valentine's dinner dancing in my head...

Posted by april at 11:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Real Me Is A Southern Girl

What a day.

Met a worker at 7:30, doctor's appt at 8:30, worked all day without even a real break for lunch, dinner with best friend.

Amazing dinner. Dip trio, roasted stuffed peppers. Ate half and had to take the rest home! Guess that will be lunch tomorrow. My stomach is so small now! We sat by the fire and were the only people in the restaurant, as we were there quite early. My friend had to leave to go to a concert in which his son is singing, but I hung out with the waiter for another hour. The place is in easy walking distance, so I wasn't worried about the two glasses of wine I had to drink. I am such a pathetic lightweight now! I won't drive after I've had even one glass!

I went to a new doctor this morning, and she was great! She sees my mom, and she was very, very interested in CR. She said she'd like to have some better advice for her patients who want to lose weight, so I think I will send her my "Girls' Guide to Starting CR." She ordered me a fresh set of blood tests, which I will take when MR is here to pick me up off the floor when I faint. I am such a baby about getting blood drawn.

I am tired now, and tomorrow will be a not terrible day. For the first time all week, I do not have to be out the door before 8 am! That means: breakfast, long meditation, cat cuddling, kitchen cleaning, and NPR listening. Very nice.

Must go to sleep soon... more thoughts tomorrow!

Posted by april at 8:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 1, 2006

Or You Could Get a Pedicure

I had a long day. Up at 4, out the door at 5:45, meeting with workers and writing leaflets and calling workers and running hither and thither all day. Then to top it all off, while I was parked on the street at one of our hospitals, perfectly legally, I got a ticket, stating that my inspection was expired because it wasn't in the windshield. Well, I had gotten a brand new windshield to replace one that had cracked (life-extensionists don't drive around with broken glass pointed at them) and I had put the piece of glass with the old stickers on the seat next to me, since it would be unwise to drive around with a big piece of glass sitting on my dashboard.

I went back to the office and called my attorney, who is also my best friend. Let's call him Jefferson, Jeff for short. Not because that's his name, but because it's a triple in joke, meaning an in joke on three levels, and I'm having a big in joke day. So Jeff tells me he'll take a look at it tomorrow -- we have plans to go out for our first best friend dinner in ages -- and suggests that I can contest the thing, show up at the hearing looking cute, and get the thing dismissed. The ticket is for $100, so I'm not sitting still for it.

I still had plenty of work calls to make, but I decided to leave the office and take my call sheets home so I could do them while petting furry felines.

But I stopped at my nail salon to get my eyebrows done. And the really good, really careful guy did my eyebrows. He always takes forever, and he's really, really good. Reminds me of someone else I know... but that's a matter that certainly need not detain us here. Anyhow, while I was getting my eyebrows done, it ocurred to me that now might be a great time for a pedicure.

I've blogged before about how life-extensionists should get pedicures. What's the point of living if you have bad feet? I like to keep my toes nicely filed, oiled, cuticles pushed back, and polished. Soft feet are nice when you sleep with someone else -- no one wants to get cut up by callouses. And getting a pedicure is so relaxing. Especially when this guy does it, because he has extraordinarily strong hands, and he gives the best foot massage ever. I recalled a dear reader's note today urging me to take some time off and not work too hard... I remembered my railing on about how I now take care of myself... I pondered the possibility of having to take my shoes off at an event this weekend... I got a pedicure.

Oh it was so good. My toes are now a metallic neutral color, and I am so relaxed I feel drugged out. That guy can give an incredible foot massage. He also gave me a shoulder massage while my toenail polish dried. MR will be happier not knowing how huge a tip I gave him, but he gave me $5 off the total price of the pedicure/eyebrow wax. It was so worth it. When I have my Orange at home to take out the trash, make my dinner when I'm running late, rub my shoulders and otherwise relax me, I might not be in such desperate need of a pedicure. But today, it was so, so called for.

Made me think for a minute of all the unhealthy things we sometimes do to relax. Drinking too much, eating too much, having sex with the wrong people, attempting to pet large wild cats... all ways to unwind that are dangerous at best. Getting a pedicure -- pretty darned healthy.

Going out for dinner with my best friend... also pretty darned healthy. My best friend is a lot like the older brother I never had but always agitated for. Problem is, once you're born, it's generally too late to have an older sibling. My father got married and procurred for me an older step-brother; my mother adopted several boy cats. But it's not the same. My best friend always assures me that any man would have to be dead, insane or gay to not be madly in love with me. Sometimes a girl needs reassurance. He used to be a genius at decoding the behavior of the men in my life, but MR sometimes leaves him stumped because they are such opposites. However, he sees how happy MR makes me and is therefore thrilled that he is here and in my life. He even at one point offered to take MR to Whole Foods once a week if he would only move here so I would stop whining about how much I missed him.

We're going to the Cresheim Cottage Cafe, my favorite near by restaurant, and I'm going to have a very light day in preparation. I'm thinking: half cup of eggwhites with normal serving of flax oil, and 50 g kale with normal serving yogurt. That's a very light day, but we're getting dinner at 5, so I want to be hungry and to have saved tons of calories. Online menu readers, have at!

Posted by april at 7:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

I've Never Felt This Healthy Before

That's a line from Alanis Morisette's "Head Over Feet," the second song I heard this morning as I drove towards one of our hospitals at 5:45 am. The first song I heard on the radio was REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore," an awesome eighties song that has unfortunately been appropriated by Old Navy in one of their ad campaigns. I flipped channels when REO was done, and hit "Head Over Feet" at the line, "You held your breath, and the door for me." That struck me as particularly timely this morning, though the reasons why may be so deeply embedded in April and MR in-joke land that even MR may not get it.

The line quoted in the headline, I've always thought, would make a great blog entry title. I've felt that way many times over my practice of CR, and I'm always astounded when I manage to feel even healthier than I did before! People tend to think of health as the absence of disease, but I find it's much more on a sliding scale. Sure, if you're in the ICU after triple bypass surgery, you're not healthy. But you can be not actively sick and still be quite unhealthy. And the healthier I get, the more I feel like I wasn't all that healthy at earlier stages.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep... I strongly supsect that in a rare Starbucks blunder, I was served a short regular coffee instead of a short decaf on my way home. Oooops! Melatonin didn't work, and though I was dead tired my mind was racing with all sorts of interesting and entertaining thoughts. I didn't get to sleep until after 11, and I had to get up at 4. But I woke up feeling rested and energized, and even as I took all the trash and recycling out, rejoicing in the fact that less than two weeks from now the person whose job that is will return to his duties, I felt strong and happy.

Little sleep, tons of work, situtations that would have been stressful pre-CR. Not such a big deal now. It's quite amazing. We should market this stuff... or better yet, give it away for free!

Nurses often ask me when I first meet with them about the union something along the lines of, "Okay, sell me something." I have to go over the fact that I'm not a salesman, and that while I can teach them how to build and use power, I can't wave a magic wand and solve all their problems. I sometimes refer to organizing as "selling empowerment." CR is the same way... we don't get anything if you convert, other than the satisfaction of another life improved, lengthened, and possibly saved. The power is free -- you just have to decide to take it.

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