April's CR Diary

Well, I didn't think you looked fat, but I agree you didn't look skinny, which is a good thing, especially after he made the comment about Michael's physique. I thought the article was really well written, but I wish he hadn't portrayed you guys as cult-like. That's the problem with being enthusiastic about something in a world of jaded people, I suppose. I thought the photos were great, though. I like the orange kitchen!

Maybe at some point journalists will stop using the word "starving" so often when they talk about the subject of CR. Seems to me this guy needed help tweaking his diet and maybe he wouldn't have been hungry during his "experiment".

Oh well, as I said, you guys looked great and the food looked great - the best revenge is outliving the masses, I suppose :-).

Bye for now,
Amy

You didn't look chunky! And you sure looked better than the poor model on the cover (though I'm guessing they did a bit of a photoshop job on an otherwise lovely, slender girl).

But I couldn't help cracking up on both of your expressions in that photo. MR looks like he's about to collapse into giggles.

Hi April.

As others have commented: you looked good and the food looked delicious. As is often the case, folks who tend to eat high fat, junk carbs, etcetera fail to appreciate simple healthy foods which haven't been infected with nasty hydrogenated fats and gunks of buter... Also, it seemed that the writer himself enjoyed the food, just not his non CR'd friend (or did I miss something? I tend to move through negative stuff too quickly).

Alex

Well I like your food very much, and so do the many hundreds of others who visit your blog and try your recipes. I suspect the author did too, but he had to have an "angle" on why he quit, and the taste of the food was a good excuse, rather than the reality of him just not having the willpower to do CR, or the courage to be different.
The power to conform (and the lure of gak) was just too strong.
Such a shame. Other than that, it was quite a fun article. Would have been nice if it mentioned more scientific evidence though.

I found your blog as a result of reading the New York Magazine article. After reading that article and some of your posts, I went to the Calorie Restriction Society website. I saw a list of the potential down-sides of CR (increased sensitivity to cold, less stamina for vigorous activity, fewer "reserves," slower wound healing).

I wondered how a regimen with these potential drawbacks could possibly have aided the survival of mice and monkeys.

And then it hit me.

Did these animals live in a lab? In other words--was their food and shelter already taken care of? It seems to me that CR could only be an advantage to animals under lab conditions, i.e. animals which did not have to compete with other animals for resources or mates or face any uncertainty as to their (small) food supply.

In the wild, a CR animal wouldn't be a CR animal at all--he'd be a failing animal, and good luck to him if he had to outrun a predator or fight off a rival or recover from wounds afterwards, or endure an extra long time without food.

Humans don't have to race across the tundra after our prey, but we do compete (sometimes in subtle ways--will an employer prefer a buff man or one who appears too thin?), and we do face a certain degree of uncertainty. CR-ers might be gaining *long* term advantages (although it will be a long time before we find out), but it looks like they may be sacrificing some potentially important *short* term advantages. And those are meaningful to survival too.

Everything's a trade-off. If having some 'extra' muscle and fat (i.e. a normal BMI) disqualifies you from living to 150, well--as our current crop of centenarians proves, you might still make it to 100, and in the meantime, it's entirely possible that the padding which disqualifies you from 150 was--without your knowledge--responsible for saving your life one day at 68 when you got caught in a huge New York crowd at New Year's and spent the whole night freezing in the crowd, waiting for the street to clear so you could get home.

So: as a CR person, do you feel like you may be over-emphasizing long-term survival advantages at the expense of equally-important short-term survival advantages?

Hi April,

I enjoyed the article and even printed out a copy for my s/o to review. I'm working on converting him to CR s-l-o-w-l-y. So far, so good. What I REALLY found wild was how much you and I look alike (albeit, I'm much older--41). My daughter saw the photo and said "WOW she looks like you!" My hair is shorter now, but I'll try to find a pic to share later. It's uncanny.

Anyway, great article and I've found your blog to be a source of humor and inspiration. Keep up the good work!!
~Sheila

Well, April, until I got to the last page, I thought the article was very good. However, when he described your dinner as bland and made the comment about CR meals being lousy, he lost almost all credibility with me. Having just spent over a week eating your delicious, wonderfully nutritious CR meals, I can with a clear conscience state that the writer must be a total jack-ass who cannot recognize good food when it's put in front of him. No, your meals are not loaded with saturated fat, sugar and useless white bread like the gak from McDonald's, but bland? Lousy? NOT! They're wonderful! And what's all this rubbish about being hungry all the time? I certainly didn't hear either you or MR complaining of being hungry and believe me, a mother knows when her child is hungry, even if he doesn't verbalize it. If the writer was truly constantly hungry on 1800 calories a day, he obviously wasn't eating the right foods. MoMR

A big thank you to all my commenters! You really cheered me up, as I was rather sad after that slam on my cooking. You guys are the best!

love a

After trying virtually every recipe that you've ever posted, I can't see how anyone, gak-addicted or not, could find CR food bland and tasteless. I'm the only one in my family who does CR, but I prepare CR-friendly dinners every night for my hubby and kids. They've never complained about them and usually request a repeat!

April,

I thought the article had some good stuff in it, but I totally disagree on his opinion on food: anyone who likes the taste of mcdonald gak food doesn't know what good taste is like.. I have to wonder though at how much of that was literary license to spin the article a certain way and not his actual opinion.. but if that's the case, then it certainly says something not-so-salutary about his character.

I think it's great that you are advocating CR like you are and you and MR do such good work. Hopefully, there will be a lot more people becoming interested (and starting) CR than are turned off it from reading the article. And at least, the article did point out the positives about CR and didn't make it a total slam. Someone who is looking for the facts will see that in the article and be inspired to look further into it (and read this blog).

Hello Hello,

I have inadvertantly caught many different media sources talking about this new "live forever diet". I couldnt help but grab "The New Yorker" or whatever it was called off the shelves and read the article in its entirety. Thank goodness some people just don't put things back where they belong, or I would never have read it (I found it where snowboarder magazine should have been). I'm just curious, everything sounds great except for, it seems that there isn't much room for physical activity (it was a vague article mind you). I don't want to post anything really negative but I would really like to read a discussion on this or even be a part of one. The article posed a very interesting view but one I am really striving to get a mental grasp on because it spoke of loosing muscle and bone. I remain interested but for now it seems a totally mechanical and foreign idea. This rigorous control in your life day in and out seems contradictive to fun.