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June 30, 2006
Home Inspection
Day before yesterday, M and I had our home inspection for our new house. There were several things that needed to be fixed, and I wasn't surprised because it's a 100 year old house. Our realtor is going to negotiate with the seller to fix it, etc.
The whole process got me to thinking about one of Aubrey de Grey's best metaphors for the engineering approach to the reversal of aging. He suggests that we consider a house: if properly maintained, a house can live indefinitely. Sure, you have to put on a new roof from time to time, and replace the hot water heater every twenty to twenty-five years. You'll need to repaint the place, and the floor joists (new word, spelling thanks to MoMR!) might need bracing. But basically, you can repair the damage and keep living in the house. You can even make improvements: add a bathroom, do some renovations, etc.
There's no reason to believe that we couldn't do the same with the human body. If we could learn how to repair the damage that happens to the body over time, we could essentially reverse the aging process. Buy ourselves new water heaters, re-paint a few rooms, maybe even pave over the weeds in the backyard. Make it a rock garden or something. Very Zen.
CR is a little bit like making it rain less so that the wood in the basement won't rot as fast. It might slow down the aging process, but it certainly won't reverse it. That's why we need something better. That's why I support the Mprize, and why I support the SENS project.
Reversing aging may sound like a tall order, but I can't imagine that it would be any *more* stressful than buying a house!
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Posted by april at 6:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 27, 2006
I Have Good Genes
Whenever the subject of life-extending, age-reversing biomedicine comes up, someone always has to say, "Well, I'm not worried about aging because I have good genes."
To which I ask one question:
"Has anyone in your family ever died?"
If anyone at any point in your family has died or is currently dead, then I suggest that your genes are not so great. They may have lived a long time or danced the polka through their nineties, but they eventually grew old and died. The whole point of the research that Aubrey de Grey is doing and that MR is working with him on is to find therapies that actually reverse the aging process, making death, well, not absolutely unavoidable but a lot less likely to come as soon as it comes now.
CR won't get us there. Max, CR may buy us 10 or 15 years. We hope that CR is a bridge to the day when radical anti-aging biomedicine will be in its early stages. In the meantime, CR makes us feel great, invinicible in the face of germs, and look fab in a bikini. Well, more me with the bikini thing than MR, but the point remains. We can slow our aging with CR but we can neither reverse nor stop it. Let us hope that SENS and related initiatives bring about something better soon.
Let's face it: nobody's genes are that good.
Posted by april at 8:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 25, 2006
Your First Mouse For Your New House
Luke and Christine gave us our first housewarming present yesterday: a very fancy catnip filled blue mouse with pink ears (reminds me of Chole!) for Kieffer. He chased the mouse all around. It's the first, and hopefully only, mouse we will have in our new house.
Yes, you got that right. We just bought a house! It's less than a mile from my office, big enough for MR's office, a nice living and dining area, and all the space we need. And best of all: it has an orange kitchen! A nice burnt orange color, not like construction sign orange. It's a brand new, beautiful kitchen, and it matches MR! What could be better for a CR'd couple than a large orange kitchen? Of course it needs more counter space, but we will be able to add some counters since there's plenty of wall space.
We close July 28, and we'll be moving throughout August, depending on how long a few renovations take. Our first house: wow. What should I make for our first dinner in our new house?
Posted by april at 7:24 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
June 21, 2006
Teaching Children the Right Attitude About Food
MR's Mom was reading Calgary Child magazine and came across this article on raising children in a weight obsessed world. She was moved to write a letter to the editor that I found absolutely right on! Here's her letter:
Dear Ms. Shore and Editors of Calgary's Child:
I feel compelled to respond to your article entitled "I Feel Fat". This is a very serious issue that must be confronted if we are not going to be the first generation of people whose children die before we do.
There is one way to guarantee that your child will not become fat: quit buying and serving "gak", by which I mean all forms of junk food, including chips, candy, pop, sugary cereals and so-called "Kid Food". Those so-called foods are nutritionally bankrupt and filled with chemicals and fat. It's simple: if you don't have the stuff in the house, they can't eat it there.
Cut the quantity of grains you feed your child in half. Make pasta, potato and rice portions very small. Cut down the amount of fat you use for cooking to tiny amounts. Feed your kids lean meat/fish at least twice every day but in small portions -- no bigger than the size of the palm of the child's one hand. Forget such chemical and fat-filled foods as hot dogs, except when camping or at the midway. Double or even triple the amount and variety of vegetables you put on their plates. Put berries in your salads. Give them fruit and low fat yogurts for dessert & snacks. Cut going to fast food restaurants down to once a month. Choose one day a week as "treat
day", and allow them one serving of candy or whatever they want.
It's a food revolution and it's hard. Guaranteed, they'll scream and throw tantrums. They might not even eat for a few days. Don't worry; they won't starve. They might not speak to you, either. You'll survive. Remember this: you're the grown-up. If you want to raise healthy, happy and fit kids, bite the bullet and stick with it. They'll thank you when they're 18 and not having to buy their prom dress from the plus-size shop or tux from the men's big & tall store.
Can you tell they're related?
Posted by april at 4:55 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
No Bagels This Time
Our largest hospital is in contract negotiations again, and I am once again working on the internal organizing for the contract campaign. That means, in addition to mobilizing nurses, getting the food for meetings. I ran the contract campaign in 2003, and it was a very bad moment for my diet and health. Meetings with unlimited pizza and bagels with cream cheese helped me hit 131 pounds that summer.
Well, now I'm under 105 -- 102 on a good day -- and there's no way I'm going to eat a Dunkin Donuts bagel with cream cheese at the morning meetings. I used to be able to eat five over the course of a day... and some pizza on top of that! No wonder I felt horrible. Not enough protein, too many carbs, too much saturated fat, and too many poppy seeds sticking in my teeth. I remember buying size 8 suits, and I still looked pretty good, but I felt just awful.
Well now all the nurses I haven't seen in three years are coming to meetings. "You look fabulous!" they are saying. It makes me very happy. CR is not about weight loss, but when you're fighting the urge to go down the dark bagely path, a few compliments on your post-CR look don't hurt.
Posted by april at 12:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
South Beach Diet Wraps
Oh how I love South Beach Diet Breakfast Wraps. So yummy, so convenient, so high in protein, low in saturated fat, and tasty delicious! Especially with my ubiquitous hot sauce. For those of you out there who are looking for a quick and easy breakfast you can throw in your purse and then throw in the microwave at work, check out these South Beach Diet Wraps. You can also eat them later in the day... sometimes I have them with a plate of extra veggies, brewers yeast and flax oil for an entertaining and easy dinner. April-tested, MR-approved!
Posted by april at 11:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 18, 2006
Welcome to the Garden of Earthly Delights
Most likely my third favorite XTC song, next to "Supergirl" and "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul."
A painting I saw once too, with a lot more scantily clad, or not clad at all, people.
On Friday night, I went out with a bunch of my favorite people: my mom, Luke and Christine, Susan and her husband Zack, and my lawyer friend Jon, to a Center City wine bar called Vintage. I'd been there before with VLC, and I love the place. The atmosphere is comfortable, the wine is amazing, and the food is decadent and excellent.
I started the evening with a flight, meaning 3 different wines, 3 ounces each. Delicious! I had the "off-white flight" -- three slightly sweetish white wines. Yummy! My mother ordered a cheese plate and we shared it. The other friends arrived and we had a second cheese plate and a third -- all seven folks sharing. Susan and Zack shared some walnut fig bruschetta, Luke and Christine got yet another cheese plate but I was stuffed and ate none of that. Jon ordered a bottle of Malbec that several of us shared. It was a wild and crazy, decadent, un-CR-friendly evening.
Though when I think about it, most people would have had dinner aftewards, and would have consumed more than the 550 calories I had eaten in the day before hand. Most people would not have even gotten close to their RDAs, even though they would have eaten much more than I had. My diet is carefully constructed to hit the nutritional bases, so even when I fall short, I still do pretty well.
Unfortunately, I got home just as the post-carb anxiety attack was hitting. I sat on the couch with MR discussing some of my fears.
"You don't think I'm CR'd enough," I said.
"No, I don't. Not consistently, anyway. I worry that you won't make it."
Make it to the first wave of anti-aging biomedicine, that is. Preserve my body in good enough health that I can take advantage of the first treatments that will reverse the aging process.
I've been over calories a lot lately, and though I make up for it with some very low days, it's still a problem since you just can't go so low on normal days to hit a 1300 average when you have days that are really, really high. And nutrition becomes a serious issue: it's hard enough to pack the RDAs into 1300 -- it's impossible to get the right nutrition if you have to cut back to 1000 to make up for a wild and crazy night out when you got a lot of calcium in cheese but nothing else worthwhile.
The obvious thing to do would be to give up my nights out.
After all, I love the food I cook at home, and the food MR cooks for me. We have a wonderful time feeding each other nourishing food at our very own table.
If I never went out, I would never have over-calories days.
Here's my problem: I have way too much fun when I go out. I am not and never have been an ascetic. I love the feeling of freedom and decadence of heading out on a Friday night with my closest friends to a great wine bar and eating fun and cheesy treats. I don't do CR because I have some problem with food, or because I want to prove that I am somehow above the earthly pleasures of food and drink. I do CR to slow my biological aging. Period. And cause it's nice to look hot in a bikini, something I never experienced pre-CR. But mostly, it's about aging.
I have no attachment to the idea of not having attachments. I love this world! I love good wine, excellent food, gorgeous men, and the company of my chosen and preferred. I love to dress up, put make up on, go out, and have a great time. I love it even more now that a skinny orange man who loves me is waiting at home (MR has no desire to go out, and loves the space he gets when I am out and about -- so don't write in telling me that I'm mean for leaving him at home while I go to the wine bar. The last thing he'd want to do on a Friday night would be hitting the wine bar.) It's so hard for me to compromise, as I want to go lower in my calories, with this simple fact of my existence: I am a CR'd party girl.
It's easier at wine bars that serve measured servings of wine. It's easier if I put a muffin in my purse or eat beforehand. It's easier if I tell my friends in advance not to feed me. But it's still hard.
Until this campaign is over, I've decided, I will stay at 1300, measured and perfect. Just like January. Mostly for psychological reasons. Consistency in calories makes me Zenned out, calm and happy -- a huge asset when the decisions you make effect the lives of 550 people.
MR is worried that this will be hard, and he's right. Stress and work make it harder to stay CR'd, but making a firm decision makes it easier. In that moment when I'm deciding whether or not to order a second glass of wine, or whether or not to partake of a co-worker's french fries, the decision to stay at 1300 will save me. I've done it before, and I know it works. Sure, it's a sacrifice, but the pay off is more than worth it.
My CR has nothing to do with a desire to renounce the pleasures of this world. Rather, my CR is about maximizing the amount of time in which I can enjoy all that our world has to offer.
To the life-extension barricades! To the wine bar!
How many ounces were in that pour?
Posted by april at 6:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Everything Strawberry
Since organic strawberries were on sale, I bought a large container. Now I am doing everything strawberry.
Last night, inspired by the odd and amazing rhubarb Quorn stir-fryish, I made a Quorn tenders dish in a strawberry balsamic sauce. I boiled 300 grams of strawberries, diced, in chardonnay and balsamic vinegar, then I added Quorn tenders. MR said it was weird but good.
Today for lunch I am serving a salad of strawberries and cucumbers marinated in balsamic and tarragon vinegars over the lettuce that Christine gave me from her garden, sprinkled with raw pumpkin seeds (a great source of zinc!) A Quorn dog tatta will be the main protein source.
Tonight I think I'll make my famous gazpacho. Don't worry, I won't put strawberries in it.
Posted by april at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2006
CR Trifle
When I was in college, my roommate and I used to throw huge dessert parties where we would serve cookies, pies, cakes, and after dinner drinks to about 40 people in our tiny little apartment. One of my favorite things to make was a trifle, served in a giant, gorgeous glass bowl.
I've been thinking about a way to make a CR version of trifle, and today when I saw organic strawberries on sale at Whole Foods, I decided that today was the day. Here's how I did it.
I took 1/4 cup (45 calories) of nonfat ricotta and put it on top of a layer of thinly sliced megamuffin. Then I added a layer of diced organic strawberries and topped that with a half teaspoon hazelnut oil and a teaspoon of Walden Farms chocolate sauce. I followed with another layer of megamuffins, another 1/4 cup fat free ricotta, a few hazelnuts, more strawberries, and another 1/2 teaspoon of hazelnut oil. Beautiful, and delicious! MR just about freaked out when he ate it. He had never eaten trifle before, and can't imagine that the regular version would be any better.
Posted by april at 2:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Grass Fed Milk
Is probably not. How do they get the milk to eat the grass?
Like free range cheese, frolicking in the pasture, grass fed milk is the figment of some marketing intern's imagination. The fact is, the milk, which we use to make megamuffins, is the milk of grass fed cows. Do they really think we're going to believe that they feed grass to the milk?
How many vegans are in that vegan carrot cake, by the way?
Posted by april at 9:53 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 15, 2006
Gazpacho Tourist
Lately I've been ordering the gazpacho anytime I see it on the menu at a restaurant. It's such a CR friendly summer springy way to get your veggies in a chilled, delicious format. Here are a few observations:
- The more expensive the restaurant, the more smooth, purreed the gazpacho
- More gazpachos are green than red these days.
- No one has ever heard of Bloody Mary Gazpacho, but everyone wants to try it.
On Tuesday night one of my friends tooked me out for a spur of the moment dinner at a great restaurant called Gayle's in Center City Philly. It was awesome! Their gazpacho was green and had basil and fennel in addition to the usual ingredients. It was almost creamy... made me contemplate putting nonfat plain yogurt into mine sometime.
As for some of the comments, here are some brief answers:
-- No TV: my former step-father didn't like TV, so I spent several years of my childhood not watching it, and I just never started again (except for a few summers in high school when I obsessively watched Crossfire on CNN because I had a crush on Michael Kinsley.) I just don't like it. I find the noise annoying, and I don't like ambient noise -- either I am listening to something, or I'm not. I also find that people who watch TV sometimes pay attention to the TV when they should be paying attention to me. As a Leo and an only child, I do not approve of any distractions that might keep others from paying attention to me! To me! To me!
As to the faith question: funny how all the athiests out there assume that I have no personal experience of any force other than those that *they* have experienced. You have no idea what my experience is. Don't assume that just because you haven't had experience of things other than what you can measure with your five senses, that no one else has. That's like someone who is color blind insisting that colors don't exist. I have no doubt that you have perceptions of the world that would seem alien to me... science people often see meaning and detail where none is apparent to me; musicians hear patterns in the world around them that are beautiful to them but go right over my head. Consider the possibility that I have direct experience of things that you may not.
I don't try to convince you of my system of belief... you asked, so I answered. I try to show respect for your beliefs or lack thereof.
Even those of you who don't like gazpacho. Which is almost unfathomable to me, even horrifying, but a reality I have come to terms with. Some people have a problem with cold soup. All I can do is pray for them.
Posted by april at 7:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 11, 2006
Heirloom Tomatoes Rock My World
Yesterday at Whole Foods I bought some pretty yellow and green heirloom tomatoes. They are delicious! It's amazing how different they taste from regular tomatoes. Here are some recipes for using the yummy little ones:
Big Yellow Heirloom Tomato and Squash
3 oz dry white wine
2 cloves garlic minced
100 grams yellow squash (one small crookneck squash) diced
200 g (or one medium) heirloom tomato, yellow, not finely diced
1 teaspoon flax or olive oil
180 calories Quorn, or any other protein source you want (shrimp, scallops, turkey, chicken, tofu, eggwhites)
Allow the garlic to simmer in the white wine on a low boil for about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and squash. If you need to, add some water to continue the simmering. If your protein source needs cooking (like animal products) add the protein source and simmer on medium low for 30 minutes (to make some of the alcohol calories cook off.) Serve hot, drizzle with olive or flax oil just before serving (after removing from heat.)
Heirloom Tomato Ricotta Puffettes
Marinate heirloom tomatoes in balsamic vinegar (I used 200 g tomatoes and 1 tbsp vinegar) for at least and hour. Top with nonfat ricotta (I'm using a half cup) and drizzle another tbsp of balsamic on top, add a teaspoon olive oil. If desired, drop a few capers on top. Yum!
Why I call them puffettes? I have no idea. I thought of calling them "ricotta puffs," but they're not really puffy, so I figured puffettes would capture the puffy ambiguity.
As anyone who knows me well is aware, I am all about puffy ambiguity.
Posted by april at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Average Weight of An Almond Is 1.2 Grams
Little MR writes:
I hate to tell you, but to most people, weighing every little thing you eat and eating an exact number of calories a day would seem weird. My five minute a day diary regimen seems wacky enough to most people.
That's true, to most people, that would seem weird. That's fine with us! We are not doing this to impress anyone. We are doing it to slow our biological aging. We're weird, we're okay with that. MR really does eat 1913 a day, and he weighs everything. He doesn't estimate that a head of lettuce = x calories, he actually weighs it and puts it into software. It doesn't take very long at all, as our other commenter pointed out... no longer than cooking by recipies out of a cookbook. A lot less time than making the gourmet meals that my father and step-mother often cook. I weigh and measure everything except when I go out, when I am very aware that I am eating many more calories than when I eat my own food at home.
I have, however, determined the average weight of the Trader Joe's raw almonds, so I now count them out. But MR just proved yesterday that I was slightly off... 10 g was 6, not 8 almonds. I have a tiny baby scale that I carry around and can use when at work, and I also keep a measuring cup at work to measure my cup of nonfat plain yogurt on my lunch salad.
It's true -- we're unusual. I am used to being unusual. I'm a union organizer -- most people don't know that those still exist! I'm an assertive, aggressive woman -- that's weird! Haven't had a TV since 1986. I like skinny guys -- that's not exactly average. Being unusual is the norm for me, and MR is even weirder than I am.
Posted by april at 6:45 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 9, 2006
What Happens When I Eat 1100 Calories A Day
The last few months have been very stressful, including much eating out for work and socializing. For a little while, I felt like I had lost control of my CR, and while I was still eating well, I was eating a few too many meals out and "treats" at the Carb Castle (aka my mom's apartment, where she can live with a candy store worth of gummy bears and jujubees and not eat it, and I can't keep my hand out of the candy jar!) As always happens when I don't carefully weigh and measure (I do when I'm home, but you can't when you're out, and I was out toooooooo much!) I was going over my carefully constructed 1300 cal a day average and gaining weight, feeling awful, and genuinely worrying that I wasn't going to live to catch that bus to radical anti-aging biomedicine.
Of course MR was worried, but he tries not to be an anal controlling freak, and he's usually successful. (About my eating anyway... he's rather controlling about the recycling, but he's so good to me and so good at so many very important aspects of partnership that I'll wash he cat food cans, remove and recycle all the labels, and place them in the right bin, even though I used to throw them all out before I met MR.) He doesn't want to spend a lot of time in his radically extended lifespan missing me and wishing he could find another girl who fits him in so many bizarre ways. I don't want to deprive him of my company for all eternity, nor do I want to miss anything exciting that might happen in 80 years or so, so I wanted to get more serious.
Well, meeting my classmate who is living, bravely, honestly, courageously and powerfully with HIV was a big kick in the not-so-skinny butt to me. If this dude can live so very well with a life-threatening virus, the least I can do is take care of myself. Out of respect for him, love for MR, and most importantly, love for MYSELF! I decided to get back on the hardcore bandwagon.
So I dropped back down to 1100. Quotidian diet, lots of megamuffins, brewers yeast everywhere, no more than 1 glass of wine per night (except for that night when I got the really bad work news right after dinner and joined Luke and Christine at the local pub for a Cosmo, quoting that dude in Airplane who says, "I picked the wrong week to quit drinking!")
Right after reunion, where the food was good but not measurable and on the highish calories side, I had hit 110. My weight had been hovering around 108 for about two weeks before then. That's way up from my usual 102 - 106 fluctuation (based on time of month and how much salt I'm eating) that had been consistent for about a year and a half. Now, it is unbecoming for a woman of 110 or 108 to complain about her weight unless she is 4' 5". And it bears repeating that CR is not about weight loss -- my skinny friend Christine weighs 95 and eats gak -- she's in less than ideal health and definitely won't be extending her lifespan unless she radically changes her ways. However, gaining weight is a pretty clear indicator that you increased your calories (unless you were a marathon runner and turned abruptly into a couch potato) so I was getting nervous that my calories were skyrocketing with all the restaurant eating. I cut back to 1100 calories a day. That was Sunday.
Sunday -- 110
Monday -- 108
Tuesday -- 108
Wednesday -- forgot to weigh myself
Thursday -- 106
Friday -- 104.6
That weight loss would be way too fast if I weren't already well above my new "set point," and if I didn't know that quite a bit of it is no doubt water loss. Still, it's very fast. I upped my calories yesterday when I ate 1045 before heading out to a work event (political fundraiser cocktail reception) and had two glasses of wine and some celery, red peppers, fruit, and (yikes!) a couple of crackers with portwine cheese.) I may go back up to 1200 consistently until I level off a bit. Back in the early days of CR when Mary warned me that I was losing too fast, I was dropping at this rate for more than a few days, I regret to report. Dropping weight too fast isn't healthy, and there is no question that eating 1100 calories a day makes me drop weight.
I am not particularly active... I don't get to the gym nearly as much as I would like to. I am also very small: under 5'2" and usually 102 - 106. 110 at my highest in two years. If I drop weight that fast at 1100, I find it hard to believe that there are very many women out there who eat less yet weigh more. Hence my skepticism about Mary's reported low calorie levels, and even about Liza May's. Liza claims to eat 800 to 900 a day, but freely admits, even boasts, that she does not use a food scale. She is very, very skinny and very tall, so who knows, she may be right, but there are very few people who can guestimate food portions that well.
If you're new to CR, don't try to eat 900, 1000, or even 1100 a day unless you are 4'5". You'll just starve yourself and lose weight too fast. Figure out where you are now by doing an HONEST inventory of what you've been eating and plugging it into software. Take a look at nutrition info for fast food menus to get an idea of how much any fast food you eat may be costing you. Don't think you can guess restaurant food -- it's always higher than you think. Start by cutting your calories by 200 a day and see how you feel, and pay attention to nutrition! Get 70 g protein or more a day, mostly packed into the early part of the day. Get your calcium. Eat vegetables. Just cutting calories won't extend your life -- if it's done too fast, or without adequate nutrition, it could shorten your life.
Any amount of CRON seems to have health benefits, and I support anyone who is making an effort. We all hit hard times for our CR -- the key is to jump back on your program and find better ways to handle stress. I am not the queen of this, to be sure... I am under tons of stress right now, and I have had to return to weighing and measuring everything to keep my diet and nutrition from going to hell. But my scale is my friend, my partner is supportive (and helps me relax in healthier, calorie-free ways!) and the rest of the world won't be any better off is I'm feeling bad and aging faster. The support of my bloggiefriends is a constant help.
In the end, I think it comes down to self-respect. When you feed your body what it needs, but no more, you're showing that you respect yourself and value your own life. When you don't, you're telling yourself that you're not worth the effort, that other priorities (work, family, friends, etc.) matter more than your own health and life. It's hard, especially for the women among us, to take a stand for ourselves. But our lives depend on it.
[BTW: comments are back! One of our Mprize computer genius volunteers hacked it somehow to get rid of the 20,000 spam comments that had appeared. Thor, you're our hero!]
Posted by april at 9:38 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
June 8, 2006
Is My Cat Pro-Aging?
It's happening again... Kieffer is expressing his displeasure through "inappropriate elimination." In MR's suitcase, on my shoes, next to my umbrella. This is not good! He had a bout of this last September when he got upset that MR went to SENS for seven days, but he's been fine since.
That is, until MR went to Boston for the American Aging Association Conference (AGE.) MR had a great time, but Kieffer did not approve of his kitty step-father's absence. Kieffer cries when MR leaves the house. And he does much worse when MR goes to an anti-aging conference of any kind.
It makes me wonder: is Kieffer pro-aging? He doesn't do this when MR and I go on a trip together. It's not like he was alone -- I was home the whole time except for two nights, when his grandmother whom he loves stayed with him. It's just when MR goes to an anti-aging conference.
And I just remembered: he peed on the Channel 4 cameraman's bag! He's trying to stop us from getting the word about about CR and SENS!
Hmmmm. We need to have a talk with Kieffer about this. We're not talking about putting him on extreme CR (though his vet did put him on a weight loss diet -- he's down to 18.5 from 20, but we've still got a ways to go to reach trim cat weight.) We're just talking about letting MR pursue anti-aging research without fear of opening his suitcase to find cat-pee soaked t-shirts.
Suggestions?
Posted by april at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 6, 2006
Fixins Bar -- CR Style
This morning I was off to Scranton just before 7:30 for a 10 am meeting. Two and a half hour drive, one hour meeting at a wonderful little tea house where I enjoyed a cup of jasmine green tea and a cup of Chinese black tea infused with peppermint leaves (yum!) then back on the road. By the time it hit 1 pm I was hungry for lunch, and I had planned to eat my megamuffin, lovingly packed by MR, on the road. Then I had an idea: the Allentown rest stop has a great condiment bar for the Roy Rodgers that contains pickles, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and salsa! I brought my salad in, bought a diet soda, and proceeded to add peppers, onions, pickles and salsa to my homemade salad with eggwhites! It was delicious... and I got a thrill out of subverting Roy Rodgers' sandwich fixins to distnictly non-Roy Rodgers-esque purposes.
Tonight I went out with my mom to see a concert by the string trio Time for Three at Longwood Gardens. My employee Susan is married to the band manager, so we went to support him, and we loved the music. All the guys are recent Curtis graduates and look like boys I dated in high school at Interlochen. It was tons of fun. I ate before hand... a South Beach Diet Denver Breakfast Wrap (180 calories, nearly Zoned) with hot sauce and a megamuffin. After fielding work calls before, during and after the concert, I am finally home, savoring four ounces of wine (that's just more than half a typical American restaurant pour for those of you who didn't participate in National Measure Your Wine Week back in January) and writing while Kieffer (who peed on my shoes to show his disapproval of me spending a weekend away at my ten year reunion) purrs on my lap.
Posted by april at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 5, 2006
The Quest for the Historical Zeynep
My dear friend Zeynep poses the question to me, after reading the entry Resurrection, of how I can believe in things like Jesus and God that don't exist in the material world, and of whose existence I have never seen proof.
Zeynep is a very faithful athiest, even an evangelical one. My belief system is often confusing to those who see science and religion as opposed.
The best I can do to explain my belief in God, or in a life force that goes beyond human understanding but of which we occasionally see glimpses, is to compare it to my belief in the Historical Zeynep.
You see, I have no proof that Zeynep exists, or is who she claims to be. Someone claiming to be Zeynep writes me email and writes comments on my blog. Sometimes she writes her own blog. She says she lives in Istanbul and is a writer and journalist. She says she has written a novel, and that she is a lesbian. But for all I know, Zeynep is a fifteen year old boy in Detroit who surfs the internet looking for straight porn when not attending high school and pretending to be a Turkish lesbian writer.
I have never met Zeynep in person, though I certainly hope to some day. And I'm not always happy with what she does... she's written some pretty nasty comments on my blog in the past, and been downright rude to some people I really care about.
None of that changes the powerfully positive effects the force that calls itself Zeynep has had on my life. She never lets me get away with being a wimp. She reminds me to be myself, no matter what other people say. Sometimes she's dead wrong, but she's often right on target.
It doesn't really matter to me whether or not Zeynep is really who she says she is. The quest for the historical Zeynep, like the quest for the historical Jesus, is in my mind, a flawed undertaking. If I were to find out that she's not who she says she is, I'd be disappointed because I was really looking forward to our trip to Greece in 2007. But it wouldn't take away all the things I've learned from her. Just the *idea* of Zeynep keeps me on track when I start to fall into pretending to be someone I'm not or working too hard to please others.
When I am afraid, feeling under attack, actually under attack, or experiencing profound change, I often call upon the spirit of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the actual Jesus comes to my aid -- perhaps invoking the symbol of Jesus sets in motion a series of changes in my own consciousness that allow me to be courageous and do what needs to be done. It doesn't really matter does it -- like CR, we don't know why it works. But we do it cause it works, regardless of the how.
Prayer, to me, is not asking God for favors. It's sending my own energy into the great eternal pool in the direction of those I want to help, love, or thank. Sometimes the person I want to help with prayer is me. My prayer is much more akin to a magick spell than to Christian prayer (no bat wings or baby's blood -- I'm too lazy to go out and find a bat or deal with a baby.) It's about energy. We send it back and forth. It isn't interested in geographical boundaries or even the line between the living and the dead.
I don't think of God as a man in the sky with a big white beard, sending out good fortune and ill and keeping a ledger of our good and bad deeds. God is to me just one more name for the force that sparks in all of us and in all of life. I'm sure there's a technical term for that belief, just as there may be a technical term for those who believe that there is a real person named Zeynep -- Zeynepistas, perhaps. I hope and believe that Zeynep exists, but I would still be grateful for what the idea or projection of Zeynep has done for me, even if she turned out to be a figment of my imagination. I take what I learn and the inspiration I am given and I work with it and am grateful for it. I sacrifice organic grapefruits on my little home altar in thanksgiving for the humans, living and dead, demonstrably "real" or not, who positively effect my life. (I eat the grapefruits later.) I don't quibble about the details.
I do, however, hope that Zeynep turns out to be real. If she's not, whoever is pretending to be Zeynep is very convincing. And when I find out for sure, you'll be the first to know.
Posted by april at 9:29 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Precision Isn't A Disorder Either
It's rare that Mary and I disagree on much of anything, but every once in awhile I take issue with something she writes in her excellent blog.
In her blog over the weekend, she wrote:
Do you have to be OCD to do CR?
No. You don't. But you need to have a lot of self-discipline and objective - so perhaps quasi-OCD. For those wondering what OCD is, it's obsessive compulsive disorder. While I thought the CNN piece on CR was pretty good, and tall MR and April were as cute a couple as ever, I still don't like the idea that it portrays CR as something that require weighing every component of your dinner and recording on your laptops in the kitchen as you cook. Pretty alienating.
Realistically, though, CR requires a lot thought and attention to be successful. On the other hand, most people eat gak and are walking around fat and unhealthy because of it, so bad CR would hardly be worse. I hate to discourage people from trying it because it looks too hard to do. I loved the food that April cooked for CNN, it was wonderful. But, they did focus on the recording and the laptops. If those had been out of the picture, it would have been more powerfully focused on the wonderful food.
First... thanks! Glad the Little MR thinks both we and the food are cute!
But alas, second. I really object to the characterization of weighing and measuring food as having anything to do with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a serious psychological condition that ruins a lot of people's lives. The whole problem with OCD is that it causes people to do things that are irrational: refusing to walk on the cracks in the pavement, engaging in elaborate and unnecessary cleaning routines, etc. These behaviors don't help the person accomplish a carefully chosen goal (such as extending life through CR) -- they make the person feel "safe" because the disorder causes extreme anxiety and fear if the routines are violated. Discipline and purpose have nothing whatsoever to do with OCD.
Weighing and measuring food help us determine exactly what we're eating so that we can a) keep our calories consistent b) keep them as low as possible. Most people have no idea how much they're eating until they measure it, in terms of volume, calories, or nutrients. CR does not work if it's not accompanied by ON, or optimal nutrition. Of this we are quite certain. CR also does not work if you think you're eating a whole lot fewer calories than you are actually eating. People on the list report absurdly low calorie levels, then report BMIs that just don't make any sense with those calorie levels, no matter how much you adjust for metabolism differences. Very few people have the sense of spatial relationships necessary to evaluate the difference between 10 grams and 15 grams, and while this is less of a calorie difference when you're talking about celery, it's huge when you're dealing in calorie-dense foods like almonds that people can eat all day if given the chance. MR can achieve a very CR'd level of CR without feeling hungry (except right before meals) because he keeps his calories and macronutrients very consistent. That works much better for him than guessing. It is perfectly consistent with his goals, which are not just taking off a few pounds or eating "healthier," but actually slowing his biological aging process through the only intervention known to do that in mammals.
In terms of making CR look easy and accessible in the media: I think that comes down to a fundamental difference in what we think we're trying to accomplish here. CR is not a weight loss diet, and while cutting a few calories (which would be, technically, calorie restriction of a very modest amount) will probably help most of the 83% of American adults who are overweight or obese be healthier, that's not what we're doing. We're not even doing "moderate" CR to look and feel better and decrease our chances of *pre-mature* death from heart disease, stroke or diabetes. What MR and I are trying to do (and him more successfully than me!) is to actually extend our lifespan. That is not easy, and it will not result from small decreases in calorie intake. It certainly won't work if we're malnourished, so we are very, very careful.
I think it would be misleading to have a national television program talk about actually living longer, extending human lifespans, and then neglect to show the tools that can help you do that. Nutritional software is a must! Little MR first called my attention to the hideous gaps in my diet when I was not yet using software. I fixed those with the help of DWIDP, and without it, I would never be able to maintain a low calorie level without leaving out important nutrients here and there. Consistency is a powerful tool in keeping calories low without hunger, and knowing how much you're eating is essential to keeping calories consistent.
I find the public health aspects of nutrition absolutely riveting. I am frequently gripped with a desire to run off and go to Public Health school and become a full-time advocate for nutritional approaches to solving our nation's health crisis. I love that stuff so much that I have to chain myself to my desk and repeat "I love organizing" over and over again until the urge to run away and join the public health circus passes! But that's not what I'm doing with my CR. CR is way beyond what any "normal" person would even want to do. Mild reductions in calories combined with large improvements in nutrition would greatly benefit most overfed, undernourished North Americans. But that's not CR. That's not going to *extend* life -- it will at best cut back on pre-mature death.
If we are to hope to get any longevity benefits whatsoever (beyond avoiding *pre-mature* death by heart diesease, etc.) we must do more than merely eating healthy and cutting calories a little. When you start cutting calories a lot, getting all the nutrition you need becomes a more difficult task, one that (unless you are able to memorize the entire USDA database, or you just want to eat the same thing every day) requires nutritional software. When you want to cut your calories well below what the body *thinks* it needs, but you don't want to be hungry all the time, it's going to be much easier if you keep calories consistent. It's hard to do that without weighing and measuring food. Our goals are different from the goals of the average person who just wants to lose a little weight and feel healthy. So the tools we use to accomplish our goals are different.
There's a lot of talk within the CRS about how weird it is to weigh and measure food. I find that odd and disturbing... do these people have any idea what they're eating, or if they're getting adequate nutrition? Very few people are good at guessing portion sizes (there is tons of research to document this) and most of the people who have that kind of accurate perception of spatial relationships can also parallel park an eighteen wheeler in San Francisco. It's not easy!
No one says it's OCD when someone baking a cake carefully measures out cups or teaspoons of flour, baking powder, sugar, and butter. You don't just throw "a few" eggs and "some" water into cake batter -- you measure it, otherwise the cake would fall. Gourmet cooks and even those normal people who just follow recipes measure their food. They often use cups and spoons rather than scales (and we use cups and spoons too!), but they're doing the same thing. When the goal is creating a delicious cake that won't fall in the oven, nobody calls it OCD, freakish or weird. Why is it any different when the goal is creating a healthy body that has a chance of outliving its "normal" lifespan?
Posted by april at 6:17 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 4, 2006
Resurrection
I just got home from my ten year college reunion. I learned a lot, had a great time, and have many blog entries stored in my head as I reflect upon the experience. But one of the experiences that stands out most was being on the "Life Changes" panel discussion -- a discussion about ways our lives had changed in the ten years since we left Yale. I spoke about CR to a receptive audience. But the classmate who followed me was far more profound in his reflections.
He had graduated and headed off to pursue a career in acting, but had eventually realized that it wasn't going to work out financially, and in between needing to care for sick family members at home, he had to move back in with his parents at the age of 28. He was depressed, despairing of realizing his dream of acting professionally, and feeling like a failure. Just when he though that things couldn't get worse, they got worse. He found out he was HIV positive.
This beautiful, talented, Yale-educated young man found out that he had this deadly virus. And he had to figure out how to live. He said that his faith in God -- the faith that he had learned growing up as the son of a minister (we PKs have to stick together!) was profoundly tested. He felt healthy, but he felt like a ticking time-bomb -- at any minute he could become very sick and die. Some people live for many years with HIV, while others are dead within a year. There's no predicting who will fall into what category. He said he felt like he had let down his family, his friends.
Coming immediately after my story of finding CR and hoping to extend my life through CR as a bridge to radical life-extending biotechnology, his story was a stark reminder that we can all die anytime. But instead of being ploughed under by the virus and allowing it force him to withdraw from life, he made a brave decision. He told us that he talked to the "little bugs" in his bloodstream and informed them that they weren't going to get him. Maybe it would be Bus #65 turning the corner too fast that would take his life, but he wasn't going to let the bugs do it. "You go ahead and do what you need to do," he told the virus, "But I'm going to live my life."
And on he went. Back to the doctor every six months -- still healthy. He is what is called a "non-progressor" -- something you don't want to be in grade school but that is very good if you have HIV. He's not getting sick. He doesn't know how long that will last, but for now, he's in great health. He takes care of himself, eats well (I offered to do his nutrition on my software to see if any tweaks might help!) and runs six miles several times a week.
He said that when he tells people that he is HIV positive, they say "I'm sorry," but he says, "I'm not." Whereas he used to fear very little, he now fears nothing. "What can any man do to me now?" he asked us. He has embraced the freedom of living every day as though it might be one of your last. Of course, he tells us, he would have preferred to learn this lesson in some other way.
His entire life, he had felt called to help people live more fully through his acting and performance. He is a storyteller, and through his stories he always wanted to call people to live life and live it more abundantly. Now, he says, it is his ministry to use this story that he has been given to jolt people into life more powerfully than ever.
In many ways, he and I are very different. He is black -- I am white. He is male, I am female. He has really gorgeous arm muscles -- I do not. I strongly suspect that he can dance - I can, but should not unless I wish to humiliate myself. But in so many funny ways, we have a lot in common. We both have the mark of freakishness and priviledge that a Yale education confers upon one. We are both Southerners, and Southern children of Southern Christian ministers. Just like him, in times of extreme trial, I have gone back to the faith I grew up in and called on Jesus Christ to help me scatter the demons and stand up tall to fight whatever is attacking me.
People are often surprised that I am a Christian because they think of Christians as stupid, dogmatic, narrow-minded, socially conservative, and prone to wear white shoes before Memorial Day (which I would never, ever do.) My faith is a big fleecy blanket that can embrace many belief systems without becoming too upset about any one's particular problems. I see in Jesus Christ the movement leader who defied the class and cultural prejudices of his time to build a community based on equality and love. I see in Jesus Christ a manifestation of the life force that slithers through history, showing up in people and events and in the daily regeneration of our own bodies as our cells keep turning over even as we attempt to kill them with gak food. In my big electic faith, the life force that burned brightly in the person of Jesus Christ is the same one that gave strength to the great leaders of the labor movement who made it possible for my nurses to organize without getting shot. The same life force that glowed in the writings of a skinny guy from Canada and pulled me out of my pre-CR path of destroying my own body through food and drink. The same life force that after that rather trying experience in Februrary that made it hard for me to write for so long reached across the world in the form of my dear sister Zeynep, who yanked me out of my paralysis and wouldn't stop bugging me until I wrote again because she knew that writing would help make me whole. Call me a Gnostic (it's been done before) but I believe that the divine spark jumps about in every person.
This weekend, my classmate with the incredible courage to share his story of being HIV positive glowed with the light of the life force, and he brought it to all of us who heard him speak. He called us to live life more fully, to put aside the fears that hold us back and keep us locked in a prison of our own making. The virus that may eventually kill him has made him an even more powerful vehicle for transmitting the life force to everyone he meets.
I pray for the cure for the virus. I pray that he will continue to be a non-progressor, and that the little bugs will sit quietly in his bloodstream without disturbing his ministry or his six mile runs. I pray urgently that he will touch more and more people, transmitting the light of freedom from fear that he has gained to as many people as have ears to hear. And I thank God, Goddess, and all of the above that I was blessed to be in his presence this weekend.
"Life is too short to do something that grinds down your soul," said one of my fellow Life Changes panelists who had quit graduate school when she realized that the glittering prize she had always pursued wasn't what would make her happy. I started my presentation on CR by saying "Life is just too short, period." My classmate who shared his story with us agreed that life is too short, and called us to live every minute without fear and in freedom that can only be a product of the decision to be free, no matter what challenges outside circumstances impose. He set an example that I want to follow. Thanks be to God.
Posted by april at 5:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 1, 2006
Lazy CR Pickle
No, it's not what MR calls me when I save the dishwashing after the dinner party till the next morning! It's a new beet recipe from one of my dear readers, Pablo!
Cut and boil the beets. Save the cooking water and let them cool. Put them in a jar and add apple cider vinegar, about 1/4 the volume of beet liquid. You can add salt if you want. This makes a good lazy CR pickle.
I'm looking forward to trying it!
Posted by april at 6:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Watch It Online!
Try this:
http://edition.cnn.com/video/ Look under health "subtract
calories, add years"
Posted by april at 6:03 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack