April's CR Diary

Hi April
As usual, that is so intelligently written. Thanks for the inspiration. How true. I no longer get strange looks for how I eat from co-workers. I even hear them talking about improvements they are making in their diets. And our office manager now buys healthy low calorie drinks and juices, along with carrots and apples to keep on hand for the employees. Happy Holidays.
Arturo

You took the words RIGHT out of my mouth. I wrote something exactly like this but I have not posted it yet. But it basically said the same thing... Nobody ever asks the Guy who eats a Cheeseburger every day "So pal what are you doing to contribute any good in the world." Other than the fact that he's going to die at 45 of a heart attack.

The reactions that people have to CRONners is so weird to me. I'm new to all this, relatively speaking... so it just amazes me some of the reactions... I would have never imagined. So you want to limit your calories and eat healthy foods OBVIOUSLY you must be selfish and want to contribute nothing to the world. Weird.

My own CR has influenced some family and friends... for example, I buy LOTS of fruit and veg, and there is ALWAYS some available for anyone to take and eat. This encourages people in my house to eat healthy foods. If I never did CR my mother, sister or father would have not bothered to eat these type of foods. Also others that visit everyweek (family) are now interested in what I do and ask me about what I put into making my meals and even tell me about the change in food they're making... My neice and nephew always come over for 2 days a week and on these two days they have MANY foods like blueberries, strawberries, carrots, yogurts, broccoli and other good food. It's not exactly perfect, but a good change that has been influenced DIRECTLY because of my CR. And I would bet that this is 'common' among CRers and their family and friends.
That post made on Salon, and the replies were not very thoughtful, in fact, for most of them it seemed no thought was put behind them at all.

Hi April,

I really admire your civility even when others are not civil towards you. I've read the New Yorker article and the post on Salon and wanted to share some thoughts with you. The writer of the Salon post seems to feel somehow threatened by the self-control or CRONers and irritated that whatever else she might think about CRONers they definitely are gaining health benefits from their practice of CRON.

I wonder what your goals are when you agree to be a part of a CRON article featured in a magazine? Are you trying to encourage others that might be interested to try CRON? If that is your goal you might want to hightlight the aspects of it that won't turn people away from it. Find the middle ground. I think everyone appreciates excellent food. Why not have a chef prepare the meal or consult with a chef about how to prepare meals in a CRON way that are highly appetizing? I think CR would really benefit from the expertise of chefs helping us CRONers develop some really wonderful recipes. I, for example, much prefer to eat at restaurants that hire chefs as opposed to those that just hire cooks. These aren't even very upscale restaurants but the difference in food taste and preparation is striking between these two groups of restuarants. Secondly, it might be a good idea not to focus so much on weighing food. I know you think this is very important but admit it, does it really matter if you eat 30 or 40 grams of arugula? Since you've been weighing food for awhile I bet you could come pretty close to getting the weight right. Most people don't want to adopt an eating plan that would require such constant monitoring and again if you've weighed food enough before a person could get pretty good at guessing weights. And maybe MR could be persuaded not to lick his plate clean during a visit with the media. Will the 10 calorie difference in intake really matter that much? Just some thoughts. Keep up the really wonderful blog.

--Jen

In response to Jen:

I think you raise interesting questions, i.e. why does April do these interviews and what does she hope will come out of them? However, I disagree with your suggestions.

I believe it would be wrong of April and MR to invite a journalist to dinner to see what the CRON lifestyle is like and then hire a chef to cook some exotic dinner and start acting differently than they normally do. It would just be completely dishonest. If they normally prepare their own meals, weigh their food and lick their plates, that's what they should do when a reporter is present. Otherwise, they're lying to the world. And suppose the reporter found out that they normally do things differently? (In fact, April has already written in her blog that they weigh their food and lick their plates). He would conclude, I'm sure, that April and MR were embarrassed or ashamed of the way they normally live, and I would venture to guess that that's the last thing they would want anyone to think about them.

I do think the magazine article could have benefited from more interviews with many different people practicing CR to varying degrees. But ultimately, the writer and editor decide which people to interview and which to omit. I'm sure it sells more papers to interview those they consider "extreme" rather than those following milder versions of CR.

Getting back to the question you asked, I would be very interested in hearing April's explanation for why she gives interviews. Is she trying to promote CRON? Does she hope people will begin to think more about life-extending research? What is the goal?

By the way, I suspect some people have responded negatively to the article (on Salon and elsewhere) because they believe April and MR are actually trying to promote the CRON lifestyle for the general public. I don't believe this is really the goal - April has said many times she isn't trying to convert people to CR - but I think it's not entirely unreasonable for people to draw this conclusion based on the article alone.

This sort of illogic applies to almost any line of eating that makes another person feel bad (which is their own gig) about the food choices they make. I'm not CR, but I do notice myself eating less food and more healthy food, which is opposite to the bulk of my family. Would they tolerate comments from me telling them that "all of that gravy and stuffing won't help your fat ass and cholesterol count"? NO! Why is it that people feel the need to attack? It's one thing to ask a question with the desire for knowledge, but it is entirely another matter at play here with these sorts of questions about selfishness. Fools!

Interesting that you only seem to allow comments from those who agree with you. There is nothing wrong with moderate and responsible self-control, but there is something wrong when the control becomes an obsession, especially from a former anorexic. Yes, you tell us that the CR goal is not to disappear, and you claim you're measuring everything correctly to the tenth of an ounce (how's that for obsession?). However, it's still the same sort of self-control that indicates there's something pathological going on. It's not a matter of "we don't ask those who eat cheeseburgers what good they're doing in the world", it's that you and your cohorts flirt with the media and glorify a possibly-dangerous fad that can result in people accidentally starving themselves to death, yet are unable to come up with a real justification for it, apart from "I've decided (from basically conjecture, with no scientific evidence on humans) that this might possibly make me live a few extra years so I can fuck my boyfriend more". Uh, sure. Feel free to do what you want by centering your life around weighing arugula and fucking, but don't forget, there are plenty of ways you can die that diet has nothing to do with.

The previous commenter sounds very angry. I wonder why that is.

A few notes:

I publish all comments, except for ones that attack other blog readers (of which there has only been one.) If you look back through the blog, you will see many comments much nastier than yours.

I made my decision to do CR based on a great deal of research into the scientific evidence. I am part of a medical study on the effects in humans, and I hope that others will benefit from this research. I wish that someone had done the research on humans earlier so we'd have more evidence, but they didn't, so now I'm part of the experiment. If you look into Luigi Fontana's work (Washington University St Louis) you will find lots of evidence of how well CR practitioners of all ages are faring now. Lower incidence of all sorts of diseases. Check it out for yourself.

As to weighing food and using nutritional software: it would be irresponsible to attempt to lower calories without attention to nutrition. So I make sure I have adequate nutrition. Why is that a problem? When I watch people who use recipes cook, they use measuring spoons and cups. So do I, but I also use a scale. So do serious bakers. As I've said many times: why is is fine to use precision when making sure a cake doesn't fall, but it's a problem when your goal is to make sure you're getting the nutrition you need?

While I enjoy arugula and my boyfriend (two things that I was not aware until now were a crime... I certainly hope that others out there who want to have a partner can enjoy meaningful relationships that are as fulfilling as ours, on all levels) I center my life around helping workers organize unions, a job that requires more than full time attention, lots of mental focus, emotional strength, and physical endurance for long, long days and months on end without a significant break. My CR practice gives me the energy I need, and has improved my immune system to the point where I rarely get sick. So it actually helps me achieve my goals. Perhaps your goals are different... no problem! No one is trying to get you to do CR. I wish you the best of luck reaching your goals, whatever they may be.

In a world where the majority of Americans are overweight or obese and heading for heart disease and diabetes, more and more children are obese and suffering from diabetes already, and millions are without health insurance, I'd say people doing CR are the last thing one needs to worry about. We're taking care of ourselves to the best of our ability, and are already suffering from fewer diseases than others our age. Maybe we'll save you health care costs in the long run! Perhaps by needing fewer medications or heart bypass surgeries, we'll save resources for those who need them.

You're quite right that I could die some other way, but I don't see that as a reason not to take care of myself now.

a

The phrase "fuck my boyfriend" is a quote from you via the NY Post article.

A few more thoughts for "a fan":

I know that April has addressed the very clear differences between anorexia and CR many, many times so I don't think there's any need to rehash all that. What I find interesting, though, is how people get all hung up on the fact that she and MR weigh their foods. Why is this such a big deal?

Personally, I think our society would be better off if more people weighed their foods, not necessarily all the time, but often enough to get a reality check on exactly how much is being consumed. Given the prevalence of obesity in our society, it's obvious that most people are consuming way too many calories every day. Whatever common sense we used to have regarding portion sizes and healthy choices has obviously gone out the window in the last few decades. But if people are confronted with how much they're eating - the cold hard numbers on a scale - they can no longer hide behind a veil of ignorance. This is the whole rationale behind campaigns to force fast food chains to prominently display in their restaurants all the nutritional information for their products (I refuse to call what they produce "food"). It's easy to eat a Big Mac until you find out exactly how many calories and how much nasty stuff it contains.

If you eat pre-packaged food, it'll come with everything pre-weighed and all the nutritional information spelled out for you. But what are you supposed to do if you aren't eating pre-packaged foods? How are you supposed to get accurate information about how much food you're eating? It's ridiculous to pretend that we have some innate ability to just look at a plate of food and somehow know how much nutrition and how many calories the food contains. Even a trained nutritionist would have trouble doing that. What's so wrong about actually measuring things to figure out exactly what you're getting?

Before I found out about CR, my 5'2 frame carried over 150 pounds around every day. By changing the types of foods I ate, my weight dropped. And when I started paying attention to how much I was eating, the decline was even more dramatic. Today, I weigh a very healthy 115. This was possible, in part, because I started weighing my food to make sure I didn't delude myself into thinking I was eating less than I was actually consuming. Now that I've lost all my excess weight, am I supposed to just abandon this wonderful tool that helped me regain my health?

I have no idea how serious I'll ever be about CR. I may decide to simply maintain the healthy weight that I've reached. But whatever I do, I think I'll always weigh my food to ensure that I'm maximizing nutrition while keeping my calories below a reasonable level. If I don't continue to precisely monitor how much I consume, I have no doubt I'll just slip back into old habits of overeating and end up right back where I started. So would you consider me pathologically obsessed? If weighing my food prevents me from becoming obese and keeling over from a heart attack in my 40's, I honestly can't see how it's pathological.

Thanks, Robin, for your thoughts on my comments. I agree with what you wrote. It probably would be better to just include a range of CR practitioners in the article rather my suggestion that April and MR act differently than they usually do in front of the journalist. I still think that CR could be greatly improved and facilitated if chefs could be consulted for recipe development but this is a separate idea from the article. Having a diversity of CR practitioners included in an article would enable more people to identify with them and consider that CR might be possible for them. I think the people in the New York magazine article represent hard core CR practitioners. Having someone like Mary Robinson featured who is more moderate and has figured out a way to practice CR without as much weighing of food and monitoring of nutrition through the use of nutritional software would make CR seem so much more achievable. Personally I don't constantly weigh my food and monitor my nutrition through the use of nutritional software. I do so sometimes. I would find the level of constant monitoring that is reflected in the article very tiresome and if I thought I had to do that in order to practice CR at all then I would give it up entirely.