April's CR Diary

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January 31, 2007

Designated Driver Take the Keys to My Truck

That's a line from "This is How We Do It," by Montel Williams, one of my favorite songs of all time. It is one of the few mentions in pop music (that I know of) of those fabulous people, designated drivers.

I mention this because ever since I started CR, I have had a horror of being in any situation where I might be called upon to drive after having even one drink. I am so short and was a lightweight to begin with, but on CR, my tolerance, never high, went out the window. Bu-bye. Even before I lost all the weight, the second I brought my calories down, my tolerance went way, way down. Leading to some unfortunate events (none of them involving driving, however) when I didn't quite realize that I couldn't drink like I used to.

Needless to say, I plan for this so that if I am going to be drinking at all, I either take public transit or line up a designated driver who isn't drinking. MR is good for this since he a) never was much of a drinker even pre-CR b) only drinks 3 ounces (aka a thimblefull) of pinot noir at dinner anyhow c) lives with me, so is going to the same place at the end of the night, and has some incentive for taking me home. I am also a huge fan of Philly public transit for both convenience and environmental reasons, so when I go out in Center City, I always take the train. If for some reason I'm driving, I just don't drink.

I was thinking of this today because last night I had this horrible nightmare that I went over to my best friend's house for dinner and even though I said I wanted a seltzer water, he made me a gin and tonic. I drank it, and then realized I really couldn't drive home after dinner. Then he kicked me out of his house cause we had some kind of stupid fight and I went wandering around his neighborhood trying to figure out how to get home, since I wouldn't drive my car.

So this is a big shout out to all you designated drivers out there. You literally save lives. Can I buy you a Diet Coke?

That reminds me that I need to get on the diet soda post. It's half written. Sorry for the delay! My job actually expects me to do it on a regular basis, so I've been short on writing time!

Posted by april at 8:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 30, 2007

Cream of Green Soup

Sunday night, I made a new version of an old favorite: "cream" of leek soup.

Only this time I didn't stop with leeks. I put in broccoli stalks (chopped finely), asparagi, as well as leeks. Simmered them all in no salt veggie broth, then added broccoli tops after the harder veggies had gotten a bit less soft. Some eggwhite chunks for protein. After removing from heat, I stirred in a cup of nonfat plain organic yogurt and served topped with a teaspoon of olive oil and one of flax oil. Very yummy, very green.

I love making "cream" soups with yogurt because a) I used to love cream soups pre-CR and b) I actually find that the yogurt makes them more flavorful than cream because it has a taste of its own. It's especially good in Indian inspired dishes.

Lately I've been thinking of making a CR version of New England Clam Chowder, based on this yogurt instead of cream premise. Suggestions?

Posted by april at 4:15 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 29, 2007

And The Winners Are...

A few weeks ago, I posted an essay contest. The question was, "Why are people so hateful about CR?"

Thanks to all for your thoughtful responses. I enjoyed reading them all. But I had to choose, so here are the winners. Remember, these are reader submissions. I agree with some things written, and disagree with other things.

Second runner up: Robin.

When you are afraid, it actually takes courage to recognize your fear and give it its proper name. For some reason, it's more socially acceptable to express anger or even hatred than it is to admit your fears. In the end, there are only two responses to fear: fight or flight.

Those of us who have started down the CR path are admitting that we fear death and disease, and we want to do everything in our power to avoid those things as long as possible. We are the fighters. Those who attack us are also afraid of death and disease. But instead of confronting those fears, they reach for anger and hatred - emotions that are apparently easier for them to feel than fear.

This does not apply to everyone who disagrees with CR. There are many scientific and moral issues surrounding CR that deserve proper consideration and debate. If this is done honestly and with respect, I think everyone wins. But the folks who resort to personal attacks and pronounce death wishes on those who practice CR leave no room for discussion. These people only pretend to be fighting. What they're actually doing is running away from their own terrors.

First runner up: Nerissa.

Here is my entire essay:

People don't like seeing other people happy when they
are not happy.

And the winner is: A. Meeks, with:

No Sympathy for the Skinny

We are told to embrace ourselves and love ourselves. It's not such a
hard message when you like what you see in the mirror. The week I
turned 25, I did not like what I saw in the mirror. I started writing
down what I was eating every day and making better choices. I was at a
healthy weight, according to the numbers, but I wanted to see what I
could do to truly feel comfortable with my own body.

I realized, after telling one girl friend what I was up to, in what I
thought was a sympathetic "we're in this together" moment, that I had
made a mistake in advertising it to anyone. Although she was trying to
start a diet herself, she was aghast that I was trying to lose weight.
I realized if I told anyone else I would be met with that American
shriek of "you don't need to lose WEIGHT!" and immediate gossip about
an eating disorder. Even my father, who has been slowly and steadily
losing weight because of the same concerns as me, and has gone from 6'
and more than 200 pounds down to 175 over about the last year, joked,
"You aimin' for the double-digits?"

Oh, the cheap, sensationalist flourish of "eating disorders." As a
former teenage American girl, I only saw the eating disorder world
through my acquaintances and friends, not in my own life. The most
predominate eating disorder I saw was compulsive eating. I knew only
one true anoretic and one real combination anoretic/bulimic. And there
were some who claimed years after the fact, after having gained
massive weight, that when they were at normal weights it was only
because they had an eating disorder. Thereby making their obesity
healthy, because it meant they had escaped their so-called eating
disorder.

America has turned into a country where the merest flutter of hunger
is a discomfort on the level of heroin withdrawl. The 65 percent of
Americans who are overweight/obese can call themselves healthy
because they have "escaped" an eating disorder, something that affects
about one percent of adolescent girls. Yet as overweight people who
have come to grips about their relationships with food will tell you
(the authors of Body Clutter, for example), those 65 percent of
Americans are quite unhappy.

Ours is a country where depression is treated with macaroni and
cheese, chocolate, french fries, and 3-liter bottles of Coca Cola. Get
rid of that treatment and you have pain. Obesity is a way for people
to drug and shield themselves from jealousy, from attention, even from
- as in the case when I lived with two obese girls in college and was
expected to be the one to run upstairs and fetch things - expectation.

Much in the same way someone with a broken soul will approach the
pulpit to be saved at a Baptist service, being large is a way to tell
the world that you are in pain, a martyr. It is a way to get a husband
you don't really love not to want to reach out to you in bed. It is a
way to excuse lack of speed. Now, as this state of bodily affairs is
the majority, it is a way to disappear into the crowd.

American corporations, from the drive-through fast food establishments
to the burgeoning industry of plus-size clothiers, have discovered
that there's mad cash to be made off it. One has to have put forth the
effort to clean out their psyche, before one can attempt the simple
exercise of caloric investment banking. I don't have any debt, nor do
I want it. And I don't want to have any excess storage meant for
previous generations of humans' genetics.

It's January now, when the females in offices across America come in
during their lunch breaks, hands full of crinkly Wendy's and
Whataburger and McDonald's and Sonic bags, vats of
high-fructose corn syrup in their hands, and lament to each other
about should they try and sign up for Curves this year?

I remember what it was like to weigh 25 more pounds than I weigh now
and to be unhappy, heaviness causing the sadness as much as the other
caused the other, and it seems impossibly sad to watch people your own
age go down a totally avoidable path if they just would get straight
in their own heads.

Why do I think people are so virulently against CR? In a country where
the average American woman is a size 14, even adjusted for vanity
sizing, it's an easy target. While CR could easily put on a pious
front, it is, these days, the fat that reserve that for themselves.

Watch a taped performance from 25 years ago, one with frequent shots
of audience members enjoying the actors. Watch one today. The face of
America is changing. It has a double chin and the upper body of a
long-former linebacker. And if you're not with the expanding beltline,
you're against it.

Posted by: A. Meeks at January 8, 2007 4:06 PM

Posted by april at 4:44 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

When You Gotta Hava Wawa

"Hello, muffin-less one," said MR to me on the phone last Thursday morning. I had just arrived at my 7:30 am meeting (early, as always) and realized that the megamuffin I thought I had packed for breakfast was not in my bag. Since I have to leave at 6:30 to battle traffic and get to these early meetings, I take my ultra-convenient mega breakfast with me. But this time, though we had packed my salad, almonds and thermos of green tea, the muffin was missing.

We struggled to figure out what I should eat for breakfast. I pointed out that an Egg McMuffin is 300 calories, but MR was not amused. Under previous circumstances, I could have just waited till I got to the office around 9 or 9:30 to eat, but with enough 1200's days in a row, I was close enough to the hunger edge to not want to wait that long for my first meal of the day.

My first thought was to order a McDonald's salad, as there are some quite reasonable ones with grilled chicken, and eat it without the dressing, substituting my almonds for fat. I could always get lunch almonds later. But the McDonald's didn't have the salads at that early hour, so that wasn't going to work.

Then MR suggested that if there was a Wawa nearby (it's an east coast convenience store, for those of you who are confused) I could check and see if they had nutrition information on their new turkey sausage and eggwhite egg McMuffin knock off. I could remove the bread and eat the turkey sausage and eggwhite.

So after my meeting was over I went to the Wawa store conveniently located two doors down. Sure enough, they had the sandwich. Meanwhile, MR was searching online from home, trying to find nutrition information.

I was just about to purchase the sandwich when he called to inform me that it had 410 calories and a whole lot of saturated fat... apparently, it was topped with cheddar cheese, full fat. Way to ruin a great idea! And since the sandwiches were pre-made, it would be difficult to separate out the offending elements.

Now in earlier, more moderate CR, I probably would have purchased the sandwich and eaten it anyway. Afterall, 410 is only 135 calories more than my normal breakfast, and a piece of cheese is not going to kill me. But what I'm finding as I take my calories lower and lower is that consistency is really important. I didn't want to go that far over my normal calories, and I certainly didn't want to blow a lot of calories on high saturated fat cheese or nutrient-less processed bagel material. So I put the sandwich back and proceeded to look through the cases at Wawa, searching for a better option. They have some excellent choices there like nonfat yogurt and cottage cheese, as well as apples, carrots, and celery. But early in the morning I need a strong shot of protein, or at least a Zoned megamuffin. Nonfat yogurt, while a great snack for me in the afternoons, would have left me low-protein for morning, and no doubt set me up for freakish hunger before lunch.

MR and I agonized over the choices over my cell phone. We took a moment to contemplate the utter geekiness of this exchange, and to be glad that we have CR'd partners. Ah, nutrition geek love. So cute, in a goofy sorta way.

I was just about to give up and order a slab of roast turkey from the deli when I noticed a lovely red haired employee named Liesel assembing breakfast sandwiches in the back.

"I am wondering," I asked her, in my nicest voice, "If you happen to have any of the eggwhites patties from the turkey sausage eggwhite sandwich floating around free back there."

Indeed she did.

"Could I buy some from you?"

She looked confused but agreed to sell me two eggwhite patties, and popped them in the microwave.

The cashier only charged me fifty cents! I called MR to tell him the good news. He rejoiced in eggwhite glory with me. Then he pointed out that I had baby scale in the car, so I could actually weigh the patties to figure out how much they were caloriewise.

Now this was getting geekier all the time. And sure, I frequently still eat unmeasured food when I'm out, so had I been unable to measure I would have just eaten the eggwhites and not worried about it. But since I could... and since I might want to grab eggwhite patties at Wawa again... and since inquiring readers might want to know... I got in the car with the eggwhite patties, got out my scale, used the lid to a travel mug as a weighing platform, and weighed them both. 46 g for one, 49 for the second. So I called MR to get the calorie count on that.

Apparently, eggwhites are 25 calories per 50 g, right around a calorie per two grams. So my two eggwhite patties were a total of less than 50 calories!

I ate them, marched right back into the Wawa, and ordered three more.

This is a good example of how estimating just doesn't work. I have eaten a cup of eggwhites, scrambled, almost every morning for breakfast for two and a half years. You'd think that I would have some sense of how much volume that is. But no, I looked at two patties and thought, "That's about right." Had I not weighed them, I would have been 75 calories under my estimation, and quite short on protein (I had consumed my almonds for fat by this time.) It is very hard to look at a food, even a food you are familiar with, and guess how big it is and how many calories it has.

Now, you don't have to carry around a baby scale and weigh out eggwhite patties in the parking lot to do CR. But having these tools available sure does make it easier. And having a megamuffin safely stashed in one's purse makes it much, much easier.

These days, as I take my calories lower, I find that consistency is key. The Friday and Saturday meals out really threw me off, but yesterday I got back to my normal calorie levels (on the lower side to make up for any excesses) and my nutrient packed foods. The averaging works just fine for moderate CR, but I've yet to meet anyone on hardcore CR who can do it without a relatively consistent eating pattern. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I doubt that I'm one of them.

The good news is, any of you east coasters can pop into a Wawa and order a 5 eggwhite patty breakfast, content that you're getting right around 125 calories and a whole whack of protein. Maybe that should be my blog motto, "We weigh the eggwhites so you don't have to!"

Posted by april at 8:59 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

January 28, 2007

St. Peter's Fish

That should answer the question of the day.

Artifex and MR picked the same thing off the menu: mussels and the green salad. That was my plan, until the party began to order and I realized that everyone was ordering just an entree, not an appetizer or salad followed by an entree. So I quickly re-adjusted my plan and got the tilapia, which I had had before, so that I could get both protein and veggies in the meal instead of having to choose. I also endorsed the tilapia so heartily to the other diners that several of them ordered it as well. It came over steamed veggies: snow pea pods, carrots, and maybe zucchini. I love tilapia! It's a fish we can feel good about. Not sure what St. Peter has to do with it, but there you go.

My friend who was exhibiting his art introduced me to the others by mentioning my CR involvement. This always makes me a bit nervous, especially if the activity is a meal, since I worry that people are going to feel self-conscious eating around me. My dinner companions asked several questions about CR and diet in general, and I found myself launching into a mini-lecture. It's like someone presses "Play" on my head and I spit out the answers I've now practiced so many times in media interviews. I hope I answered their questions without boring them to death! No one at my table ordered dessert, and both the host and I ordered a glass of vintage port in a cute little tiny port glass (I have a thing for tiny glasses) that was absolutely delicious. I really enjoyed meeting our host's friends, and the exhibit was fantastic.

After this short spell of eating out two days in a row, I feel desperate to return to the lower calorie end of my quotidian diet. This week should be fairly safe, until next Saturday when we are going to a dinner party at a friend's house. I will probably go down to 1200 even for the week to a) make up for any excesses left over from the last two days b) be prepared for lamb stew next Saturday night.

In other news, I owe people several posts:

1. Michelle requests a sample, RDA perfect 1000 - 1300 calorie menu. I can do that fairly easily since it's what I eat most days, I just have to adjust my Cron-O-Meter version for a few things to make sure it's accurate and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

2. Cat asks about diet sodas. Working on that entry, not done.

3. Another reader asks about methionine restriction, and I have to write about that.

4. I need to re-post my flax oil vs. fish oil post.

Can anyone think of any more posts that I owe?

Someone asked about pictures of the food... when I get my new site (really, we're working on it!) I'll be able to post pics. My web designer has been a bit swamped with his other clients as of late, sorry for the delay!

Meanwhile, I've been wondering... how did you happen to find the blog? I know I have a lot of readers from that NY Mag article. If you feel like it, do comment and tell me how you found me.

Off to make lunch.

Posted by april at 10:37 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

January 27, 2007

CR Challenge

As we are all too aware, I have been working on lowering my calorie average. This has had all sorts of consequences, including better mental focus, increased calm, that strange episode with the M & M's, etc. I have both increased my regular weekday calories while decreasing the frequency with which I go out for high calorie meals with friends. Yesterday, I had a high calorie meal (though very nutritious) meal so I didn't eat dinner afterwards (couldn't have gotten one more bite of food into my mouth). Normally, I would make today a very low calorie, nutrient packed day to get my average back down, then go back to normal calorie levels on Sunday.

But there's a problem: I have plans to attend a friend's art opening tonight with a dinner afterwards.

Now I can definitely choose a low calorie salad at this dinner. We're eating at a great restaurant that has healthy choices. But as we all find when we try to take our calories lower, it is harder to deal with restaurant food because you just don't know what's in it. So I could end up higher on calories than I think, or I could end up lower. Either way, it's much harder than just eating my CRON-o-Metered food at home. Blergh.

I'm looking forward to the event, I'm just a bit concerned about the food. So I'm throwing it to you, dear readers. Pick my dinner at the White Dog Cafe. Ideally, I'd like to consume 300 calories, so it's going to be a challenge. I suspect I will be eating an appetizer salad as my dinner, and that's just fine. I am also quite comfortable negotiating with the waiter for dressing on the side, no cheese, no croutons, whatever. So feel free to request this or that left off. The St. Peter's fish (aka tilapia) is also a possibility... I've had that before with the creamy thing left off.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Posted by april at 5:49 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

January 26, 2007

Success Disaster

I learned a new term last night from a friend in the computer/internet/networking industry. "Success disaster." It's when you market a new product and suddenly there's so much demand you can't possibly keep up with it. I found this concept riveting because it's so often the case that success brings a whole new set of challenges that those who succeed weren't prepared for. When we're busy failing, we know how to deal with the familiar challenges of failure. But success puts up a whole new set of obstacles, ones we might not have anticipated.

Let me talk to you for a sec about possible problems resulting from success with CR, or even with healthy weight loss.

When I set out on the path to improve my health and lose weight the right way, I sat my closest friends down and explained that I had to make some changes. I told them why I wanted to make these changes, gave them articles explaining the science behind it, and asked for their support. They've been pretty darn good about giving me that support, even though some of them preferred me heavier.

But as a good friend of mine, a master practitioner of various forms of western magick and meditation likes to say, "When you do self-transformational work, you risk everything in your life."

This is quite true. When you embark upon a path of self-transformation, you risk everything to which you have become accustomed. Your routines, your relationships, even your relationship with yourself. CR is such a path of self-transformation, even if you're only interested in CR at a moderate level.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to become friends with many fellow CR practitioners. The stories of our first year are so are errily similar: the euphoria, the body changes, the social struggles, and the changes in our overall perspective on the world that reverberate througout our lives. Once we learn that we can take control of our health and our bodies, we begin to see the power we have over other parts of our lives. That's overall very positive, but it can cause some unexpected consequences.

For instance, several CR practitioners I've spoken with have reported that they became more assertive in their relationships. Less willing to settle. A bit more independent and self-reliant. This can either be a welcome relief to significant other and family members, or it can be perceived as a threat. I know more than a few CR'd females who have left their husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends/lovers when their new self-image no longer seemed to fit into their partner's vision of the relationship. Or left their jobs. Or resumed relationships with their families. Or cut off ties with friends or family members who were destructive influences on their lives.

In the beginning, as we embrace these radical changes in our lifestyle and health, it's tempting to reject the habits and even the people we clung to before we embarked upon the path. I know I went through a phase when I just didn't want to hang out with my old friends as much. I resented their unhealthy habits, felt self-conscious about the change I was trying to make, and feared a re-lapse into my previous way of being. Over time though, I realized that some of the people who were with me before I started CR and have supported me all the way are some of the most important people in my life. The kind who would come rescue me if I had a flat tire in a snow storm on the PA Turnpike in the middle of the night in Februrary. The kind who still love me even when I take out frustrations for things that can't possibly be their fault on them. Real, forever friends. We have different eating habits, but we're as close as ever.

Others had to go. People who intentionally tried to sabotage my self-confidence and self-esteem. People who based their feelings of self-worth on putting others (like me) down. People who couldn't be happy for my successes, whether it be in work, health or love. I learned to let go of toxic relationships. That doesn't mean that I don't still have problems... recently a close friend and I had to work through a bout of toxicity that was poisoning our otherwise phenomenal long term friendship. But I became less of a doormat, more of a strong woman willing to fight for herself, as well as for those she cares about.

For those of you who don't have any weight to lose (or not much) don't think that you're immune from problems resulting from your success. If you're doing something differently, you're going to get a different result. You may feel more energetic, more calm, more powerful than you ever did before. You may already be used to people reacting to you as a thin person (somthing it takes awhile for us formerly not so skinny girls to get used to) but something may change inside you, something not so visible, that changes your entire outlook on life.

I could be wrong. There is no reason to believe we can extrapolate from my experience onto yours. Yet so many of these things seem to be universal, that it seems only fair to warn ya.

Remember that you have choices at every step along the way. You can choose how far you go into CR. You choose which relationships are helpful to you as a whole person (body, mind and spirit) and which are destructive. Doing CR is just one more way you exercise power over your own destiny. I found that it opened the door to many other ways, and my life has changed far beyond what I would have imagined possible. Your experience may be different.

Success comes with unforeseen consequences. It is worth taking a moment now to imagine what your life would be like if you achieved the goals you're currently setting your sights on. I wish I had done this. I might have encountered less surprise along the way.

Your success may open up a whole series of doors that you were unprepared to deal with. You may be tempted to run back to the old lifestyle with its familiar pain and comfortable limitations.

Don't even bother, because once you've tasted freedom, you're never going back.

It's hard to keep a foot in both worlds. Today a very close (non-CR') friend of mine invited me out for lunch to a very fancy place in Center City where he had a gift certificate. We ate a much larger lunch that I would normally consume: I had a cup of Manhattan clam chowder, an entree salad of crab meat, avocado, spring mix, and tomatoes with grapefruit and a grapefruit balsamic vinegarette. We split a piece of key lime pie for dessert. I am stuffed and will not be eating at dinner. I still enjoy the opportunity to go out with friends for an excellent meal at a great restaurant, but it does make it a bit more difficult to stay to my CR plan. I won't be hungry for dinner, but I also won't be sure what nutrients I consumed today. It's worth it to maintain my social life, and the food was delicious! But it's always a trade-off.

None of this is all or nothing. As the theme from one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Facts of Life, informs us:

You take the good
You take the bad
You take 'em both
And there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life...

Posted by april at 2:35 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 24, 2007

On Setting a Good Example

I'd have to admit, I've been a bit concerned as of late that some of you have the idea that I'm some sort of ice queen of food perfection. I mean, you sounded so shocked when I ate some hummus! If you want food discipline perfection, you've got to look to MR. Cause I do pretty well, much better than ever before, but I'm by no means invincible. That's one reason why I build a little margin into my daily calories, so that I don't end up messing up my long term CR program. Life happens! It's okay!

For instance, today I had a savory megamuffin for breakfast, lovingly toasted in the toaster oven by MR with a piece of nonfat cheese on top, flax oil and mustard added at table. Then for lunch I had my usual salad plus yogurt, plus flax oil plus almonds (I knew I'd be out tonight for a meeting so I wanted some flax at lunch instead of the usual dinner flax.) Oh, and I got some Emerill's green hot sauce and it's so good! So I put that on top of the salad and yogurt too.

Then I got to the office (I'd been working at home this morning due to a series of unforeseeable events, all of them good, but basically I hadn't had time to walk to the office yet I was so busy!) I was hit with this MASSIVE sugar craving! I wanted fruit! So I ate some of the dried apples and cranberries out of the Christmas present I gave one of my co-workers... she's pregnant and isn't feeling the sweet stuff right now, so she's been giving her dried fruit away. I ate the last of it (not much, about sixty calories) and still had this wacko sugar craving. Didn't seem right since a) it's not the right time for the PMS chocolate craving b) I have been adding fat to my diet and doing well, whereas usually eating too little fat causes sugar cravings. I couldn't figure it out. But I wanted sugar. Really, really bad.

So I ate (and yes I read the nutrition info to figure it out) 40 calories worth of the M & M's that live on our accountant's desk. They were pretty yummy. I eat them once a month for my PMS chocolate craving fulfillment. I didn't eat many this time, and then I was fine. But I was puzzled by the unusual sugar craving, and I started to worry that my readers would be very disappointed that I ate gak!

Then I started to think about it. I wrote to one of my favorite readers and mentioned the situation to her. She gave me a great pep talk (she's good at that) and reminded me that (as I am always saying!) food is not a moral issue! So I thought some more, and realized, it's not healthy for the blog readers to have this image of me as the perfect ice queen of food discipline freak show from hell! (It's okay if they think that about my boyfriend, but he's unusual, and a bit orange.) They should know that just like them, I struggle with these issues and make good decisions most of the time but suboptimal decisions some of the time. They should see how I learn from my experiences and don't get discouraged. In fact, this eating of M and M's can even been seen as a positive experience, since it is such a perfect teaching moment! Maybe I should eat the entire bag!

Just kidding. I didn't eat the entire bag. I love you all, but I'm not willing to go to that extreme!

I went about my day, finished up at the office and went home to change so I could hit the gym before heading out to my night meeting. While at home I happened to email a reader that I was on my way to the gym.

Then it hit me. I was on my way to the gym. I'd had a horrible hiatus from working out... between my mom's illness, the holidays, stress, blah blah blah, I hadn't darkened the door of the gym since before the holidays. Until yesterday when I had a great workout. Realized how very much I miss working out, and how good it is for stress reduction. Not to metion bone health, which we CR girls need to pay a lot of attention to!

Between being in minor calorie deficit (as you know, I'm taking my calories GRADUALLY lower, and so I've been under my average for many days in a row without a going out big meal day to make up for it and boost my average) and adding intense exercise, no wonder I was having a sugar freak out! I just hadn't thought about it. I'm eating less and burning more. I'm going to be hungry. I've got to plan for it, so I don't end up blowing the benefits of exercise by eating more calories.

When I got home from my night meeting I explained this all to MR. I already had the solution figured out: Just Blueberries. They're the dried, unsugared, nothing added blueberries that we use in our megamuffins. I love them, and usually skim a little off the top (calorie counted and weighed) "for expenses" when I'm helping him make his muffins. I had considered bagging up some measured servings of these to add to my lunch or as an afternoon snack, as we had thought it might be nice to put a bit of fruit in my diet. I typically eat fruit only twice or so a week, and blueberries have flavenoids that may protect me from dark circles under my eyes. So the problem is solved: I will satisfy any future afternoon sugar cravings with pre-measured, calculated in blueberries! Delicious!

The moral of the story is: nobody's perfect. This isn't about being good, moral, righteous or invincible. It's about making the most of your life, moment to moment, such that you achieve both your short term and your long term goals. We face a lot of challenges in this obesogenic environment, but the key is to learn from our experience and keep pushing on.

And carry a small bag of dried blueberries. Cause you never know.

Posted by april at 9:44 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

January 23, 2007

Upping Your Calorie Targets

I am so, so happy to see that some of our newbies are upping your calorie targets. As I wrote on many of your blogs, I was concerned that some of you (not all of you!) you were going too low too fast. I was lying in bed concerned that some of you would lose weight too fast, ruining your chances for getting life extension benefits (if we can follow the animal evidence.) Or that you would get hungry and frustrated and give up on CR. Or that you would faint while driving. You're doing such a great job of getting your nutrition into small packages that I was getting scared you just weren't eating enough! I lay in bed, sandwiched between a very warm slightly orange man and a purring calico cat (she likes to sleep on my pillow, so we call her Philo on the Pillow) and wondering how I should bring up the topic. I don't want to discourage you, my brilliant CR sisters and brothers, and I don't want you to feel like I'm a preachy old-timer trying to tell you how to live your life. So I got up and wrote (causing the calico to meow, MR to wonder where I went, and the giant tabby to think it was feeding time.)

Here's some of what I wrote:

It's three in the morning and I am literally up in the middle of the night worrying about the newbie CR bloggers.

You're doing so well on so many things. I love to see those pretty nutrition numbers pop up, and watch as you find out how to pack more nutrients into your day. You're doing great with CRON-O-Meter, and you're focusing on nutrition and health. I am so proud of your healthy attitudes, your funky fun style, your new recipes, the zest for life with which you are pursuing this quest. I just love you guys!!! But here comes the lecture: many of you are eating way too little!!!

I understand how hard it is in the beginning when you're so excited about CR to take it slow. It's possible, especially when you have a little fat to burn, to take your calories too low and still feel energetic, not hungry, and overall great. But if you go too low for two long, you will lose weight too fast. Remember the animal experiments: the ones who lost weight too fast because their calories were cut abruptly didn't get the longevity benefits. In other words: going to fast defeats the purpose!

The key to long term success is going very slowly, and eating enough to both get your RDAs and give your body enough energy. If you're feeling light headed or woozy, you must eat more. If you're feeling crazy hungry, you must eat more. As you gradually adjust to eating differently, you will continue to lose weight and feel better, but you have to trust the process and not push it too far, too fast.

I know you think I am trying to be your Mom, and I'm sorry if I sound a bit preachy. I got the same lecture from Mary almost three years ago, and at the time, I didn't pay enough attention. Until I realized that I was dropping weight so fast I ran the risk of turning into one of those dead rats! Then I started to eat more. And I still lost weight, and I still felt great. Mary was right. I got where I wanted to be, and I keep evolving... but slowly.

Getting adequate fat is also extremely important. It's easy to cut the fat from your diet and save calories because fat doesn't give you much volume and it's something that many of us are a bit phobic of since we were alive in the nonfat nineties. But getting enough fat is essential for just about every system in your body, especially your brain. You don't want to be skinny and stupid, so pour on some measured olive oil with the dinner salad and have 20 grams of almonds to get that nice vitamin E. The difference in how you feel: skin will be softer and not dry in the winter, hair will be shinier (yes, Haesel, shiny coat!) and your moods will be more stable. Not to metion the increased satisfaction from food and lack of hunger. I was sooooooo fat phobic in the early days, I had to learn the hard way that oil is not just something you put in your car. MR thinks my diet is still too low fat, so you see, I am still evolving and improving. I decided to follow my good advice and throw some almonds into my dinner to up my fat percentage in what has historically been my lowest fat meal of the day.

I am so proud of all of you and all your progress... I feel like I could spend all day reading your blogs and commenting. You can do this in the long term, and be healthier than everyone you know for years to come. But it won't work if you crash your calories and your weight down so low that you destroy the benefits you're looking for.

If you don't drink at all, you can go slightly lower on calories and still hit your RDAs and do pretty well. But for those of us who enjoy our glass of wine (and I know I'm not giving it up!), we've got to factor in however many calories that burn off faster than you can say "Frenchy cabernet." That means our totals need to be a little higher than they would be if we cut the wine out. I think it's worth it, but the principle remainds: must eat food!

Now as you know, I am working on gradually taking my calories lower. We'll see. But you can bet I'm monitoring my weight every day and going very, very, very very slowly! I don't want to lose more than a pound a month at this phase. Slow and steady wins the race. Even if you've got weight to lose, take it slow.

I want all of you to be around for a long, long time. Some of you have already upped your calorie targets, and good for you! Some of you still need to increase your fat intake in unsaturated fats (flax oil, olive oil, almonds hazelnuts!) And those of you who aren't bloggers, don't think you're immune! If you're following along at home but not posting, just imagine that I am still watching you and shaking my head if you skip your olive oil in an attempt to save calories. I will come get you and put flax oil on your salad when you least expect it. Then you'll say, "Wait, what happened to my chapped dry skin? I think that crazy April has been sneaking flax oil onto my salad! I knew something tasted buttery flaxy good!"

Don't make me come to your house with a big bag of almonds. I have enough trouble trying to meet my own fat targets without having to share my nuts.

There, that's my speech. I'm going back to bed.
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That's all I wrote. I took it down because I wanted to edit somewhat, to make sure I didn't sound harsh or critical. I take criticism pretty badly, even when it's constructive and meant to be for my benefit. In fact, if there's one thing people criticize about me a lot, it's how badly I take criticism. I think a lot of us are like that, especially women. We've got enough negative voices in our own head, we don't need extra ones from the outside. So I don't want anyone to feel criticized or singled out. And it makes perfect sense in the beginning to go low for a few days before and after a big meal out... that's still my strategy, I just do it less often because I find it wrecks havoc with both my nutrition and my moods. If you're planning to stay on moderate CR (which is great! health benefits, look and feel fab, decreased risk of disease -- what's not to love?) that's a very successful way to manage the competing goals of keeping calories low while still enjoying excellent meals out on the town. I was just getting worried as I saw day after day of very low calories on some of your blogs, and as some of you reported a lot of hunger.

Then I tuned in today to see that many of you are increasing your calorie targets! Yea! Very wise. Take this process slow. You can always cut later if you choose. You're doing great: getting your nutrition, focusing on health, monitoring and improving every day. You're doing so much better than I did when I was a newbie! So keep up the fantastic work, write or call if you have questions, and attend the event Chez L'Orange in March!

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

Grazia Article -- and a few corrections

This just in from our UK friends! Grazia, a British women's mag, did an article on CR and an interview with me. Here's the link. The pictures, I think, are good. They did get one thing wrong though -- I don't eat 1000 calories a day. I eat more like 1250 - 1300. But for quite some time I ate 1000 on weekdays and ate a time or two during the week, which throws a lot of calories onto the average. Just to clarify! Don't want anyone out there to drop their calories too low thinking that I eat that little! Also remember, I am very, very short! I can't use the high up shelf space in our kitchen. I have to stand on my toes to kiss my boyfriend. (I'm just under 5'2")

Anyhow, here's the article. I think it's pretty darn good, though I haven't read it closely yet. At least no one called my boyfriend an Oompha-Loompha this time.

I can't seem to get the link to work, but I'll send it to you in email if you emai me a request. (If you leave your request in comments, I'll just copy your email and delete the comment after sending you the article so that you don't have to publish your email address on blog.

Here's a message I just posted to their feedback page and sent to the editor (who was very nice, btw):

Hi!

Overall the article was great. Just a few short corrections:

1. I don't eat 1000 calories a day. I average 1300, which means that some days I eat as low as 1000, but others I eat more. These days, I keep fairly consistent in the 1250 range. Eating 1000 calories a day would be too little for almost anyone.

2. No one thinks CR will *reverse* the aging process. Based on animal evidence, we believe it will *slow* the aging process. Based on human evidence, we know it greatly reduces risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and many other common diseases of aging.

3. I never said I expect to live 30% longer than most people. We have no way of knowing how long we'll live, and I think 30% from CR alone is wildly optimistic. I want to live as long as I can in healthy brain and body.

4. Michael and I met through the Calorie Restriction Society, http://www.calorierestriction.org. You can find more information there!

It was tons of fun working with the folks at Grazia!

April Smith

Posted by april at 4:25 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 22, 2007

Salsa Bar

One of the strange things that happens on CR is that you start to want to eat what other people think of as garnish.

Example: today I accompanied my to a place called Baja Fresh, a takeout Mexican restaurant that really does have quite decent food. He was picking up a huge order for the rest of our office, and I already had my salad and yogurt and almonds (lovingly packed by MR, yes I know I'm very lucky!) and I went along to raid the salsa bar. They have amazing fresh salsas, in four varieties: pico, verde, roja, baja, and one other I can't remember. Also, they have little pickled hot peppers on the salsa bar. So I was filling up multiple containers with much salsa when I noticed the garnish surrounding all the salsa bowls.

Kale. Green kale. Fresh, beautiful green kale.

If you had dumped all the salsas out of their bowls and onto the green kale, I would have put up my hair in a ponytail and proceeded to dive, face first, into the kale and salsa salad.

"Look at the kale!" I said to Edward.

"Isn't that decorative kale?" he asked, scanning the crowd to see if anyone was looking.

"No, that's the stuff planted outside our office. This is real, edible kale!"

"I'll get the sodas and wait outside."

And then my boss proceeded to pretend he didn't know me while I filled the rest of my salsa containers. I blew his cover by announcing, as I left the restaurant, "I know you're pretending you're not with me because I took most of the salsa on the salsa bar!" I think he was genuinely afraid that I would start nibbling at the garnish. And you know what? He wasn't that far off! The kale looked so fresh, so healthy, so delicious... with just a few scoops of salsa... well, suffice it to say I didn't want to take my chances with the restaurant security cameras so I filled my salsa containers and left the garnish kale alone.

I enjoyed a sampling of roja, baha, verde, pico, and whatever the other one was on my quotidian salad with yogurt. Then I really impressed Luke by drinking some of the hottest salsa straight from the container. He was still suffering from a close encounter with a hot pepper. I said to him, "You hold your peppers about as well as you hold your liquor." We got a good laugh out of that.

Then something else weird happened. I discovered that Edward drinks tea. Our office manager had purchased a variety pack of Tazo teas, and I was about to make a cup of "Awake" for an after lunch treat (I had already consumed my thermos full of fancy Japanese green lovingly packed by MR). Edward said he wanted some tea. I had no idea Edward drank tea. I made him tea. Weird.

So today has been pretty normal, except that I had the megamuffin for breakfast and about a gallon of salsa with lunch. I'd say 50 calories worth, if the standard 15 cals per two tablespoons holds true. That's a lotta salsa!

Now it's back to work for awhile before dinner, and back to work on the phones after dinner. Tomorrow I may be off to Scranton, but I won't know until I make some calls tonight. My megamuffins are ready if I need to go on a trip.

For dinner I made MR a tatta, this one with pumpkin, spaghetti squash, Quorn, and chipoltle Tabasco, chili and garlic for spice. I made it last night and he put it in the oven while I was at work. Broccoli and olive oil on the side, flax on the tatta. Nuts for added fat. I'll probably make myself a good old boring veggie soup, which really hits the spot on these cold days.

I'll save time at the end of my night to catch up on all the newbie blogs... it's incredibly gratifying to see so many new people doing so well. It literally brings tears to my eyes to read about how y'all are changing your lives for the better. I am so honored, humbled, shocked, pleased to have been a part of your process. To quote Michael Jackson, "You rock my world you know you do!"

Here's my crunch du jour:

General (76%)
Energy 1287.9 kcal 64%
Protein 58.1 g 116%
Fat 30.6 g 47%
Carbs 136.0 g 45%
Fiber 33.5 g 134%
Water 1862.8 g 124%
Vitamins (91%)
Vitamin A 16942.9 IU 565%
Folate 548.7 mcg 137%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.0 mg 163%
B2 (Riboflavin) 2.9 mg 226%
B3 (Niacin) 18.9 mg 118%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 6.1 mg 122%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.6 mg 154%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 2.6 mcg 107%
Vitamin C 206.7 mg 230%
Vitamin D 6.2 IU 2%
Vitamin E 13.6 mg 91%
Vitamin K 451.4 mcg 376%
Minerals (100%)
Calcium 1406.1 mg 117%
Copper 2.1 mg 229%
Iron 15.1 mg 189%
Magnesium 513.6 mg 122%
Manganese 5.8 mg 252%
Phosphorus 1825.7 mg 261%
Potassium 5382.6 mg 115%
Selenium 69.2 mcg 126%
Sodium 4663.7 mg 359%
Zinc 13.0 mg 118%
Lipids (14%)
Saturated 3.6 g 18%
Cholesterol 29.8 g 10%

Wine at dinner, a brewers yeast and veggie soup with flax, and a bedtime snack of grape tomatoes and a fat free single, in addition to everything you've read about already.

Meanwhile, I'm not going to Scranton tomorrow, so I'm taking the seven thirty am meeting about an hour from here. That means: megamuffin for the road! MR will toast it in the toaster before I head out. Then to the gym before I head into the office because I have got to stop letting work interfere with my workouts. Bone health is important for us CR girls, and the stress reduction of exercise is very important to me.

Happy blogging to all, and to all a good night!

Posted by april at 9:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Mega Goodness Fresh From Your Toaster!

A reader alerted me to the presence of an even-more-portable version of Pop Tarts. Were Pop Tarts hard to carry in the first place? Well, I have my answer to Pop Tarts. My very own toaster pastry. You guessed it... the megamuffin!

In the never ending quest to pack more nutrition into my calories, I decided to try eating a megamuffin for breakfast. I love it with nonfat cream cheese, and that also increases the calcium. And lately, I've taken to the idea of toasting the thing. So MR dug our toaster oven out of the basement and has begun toasting my megamuffin for me! It's so pretty coming out of the toaster oven, ready to be slathered with nonfat cream cheese and flax oil. Of course we are careful not to let it burn. The cherry berry muffin turned out quite well this morning.

I posted my crunch for yesterday, then I realized that I had forgotten the veggies in my dinner soup. I got so mad I deleted the entry. I was a bit low on vitamin E, potassium, and oddly enough, only at 59 g protein since I had a megamuffin for breakfast (on the road) and none with lunch. Here it is, 27 cals low due to the omitted squash, zucchini, carrots, and cauliflower that I forgot to enter and then gave up. So put 27 cals and some vitamin A on there and call it a day.

General (73%)
Energy 1231.9 kcal 62%
Protein 58.9 g 118%
Fat 30.6 g 47%
Carbs 117.8 g 39%
Fiber 31.4 g 126%
Water 1372.1 g 91%
Vitamins (87%)
Vitamin A 16128.1 IU 538%
Folate 500.7 mcg 125%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.4 mg 200%
B2 (Riboflavin) 3.3 mg 250%
B3 (Niacin) 22.8 mg 142%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 4.9 mg 99%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.5 mg 147%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 1.7 mcg 69%
Vitamin C 163.2 mg 181%
Vitamin D 6.2 IU 2%
Vitamin E 11.5 mg 76%
Vitamin K 427.7 mcg 356%
Minerals (98%)
Calcium 1011.1 mg 84%
Copper 2.2 mg 250%
Iron 14.0 mg 176%
Magnesium 457.3 mg 109%
Manganese 5.9 mg 258%
Phosphorus 1524.0 mg 218%
Potassium 4374.9 mg 93%
Selenium 93.0 mcg 169%
Sodium 3660.8 mg 282%
Zinc 13.1 mg 119%
Lipids (13%)
Saturated 3.4 g 17%
Cholesterol 26.4 g 9%

I think I am still using the male DRI's. Am having a bit of CRON-O-Meter confusion. Anyhow, I'll stock up on calcium and B's tomorrow. All I needed was a glass of milk or a latte today to fix those deficiencies.

Yesterday was almost a work day... meetings in the morning, phone calls in the afternoon. Cleaning the house. At least I got to eat both lunch and dinner at home with MR. Wine calories high due to weekend custom of having a glass of wine with both lunch and dinner. And a very good sale on Ravenswood Shiraz. No offense to non-French wines, but I really am missing my Frenchy cabs. I have to get over to my favorite wine store that sells the French wine from small family producers you never hear about. The store has a large selection of wines excellent wines that are actually cheaper than the mass-produced stuff you get in most wine stores, which is a big plus. I love earthy French wines. The kind that MR says taste like wine, and my step-mother (who will only drink California) says taste like dirt. Someday I'd love to meet Mireille Guiliano, author of Why French Women Don't Get Fat. She's bringing the wine. She advocates drinking champagne with lunch, and describes in great detail how French women drink small amounts of wine with most meals and don't get drunk, old or fat. I love her outlook on food, wine and life in general. I wonder if she would like to come for dinner?

But back to the real world, where I have to buy my own wine. Yesterday I had my megamuffin for breakfast, followed by my normal salad with yogurt for lunch (and almonds) with brewers yeast soup and veggies for dinner (plus flax oil.) Very simple food for me. I made MR a pumpkin tomato chili with (surprise!) pumpkin, tomatoes, and some fun chili powders that I picked up at a gourmet market in North Carolina. Quorn and eggwhites for protein, flax and olive oil plus hazelnuts for fat. I also put an entire yellow squash into the pot for crunchy veggie filler. He loved it. It took him a long time (about a year) to accept that I enjoy cooking fancy dishes for him, but that I usually prefer to eat my regular food. I love to cook as a work of art, but I like to eat food that I already know works for me both nutrionally and taste-wise. I don't like to gamble too much with my calories. I love my food, and I've crunched it to come out well on nutrition. Why switch, if I'm happy? He just has so many more calories to play with. Ladies, imagine what we could do with 1913! About two to three times a week I'll cook the same thing for myself that I make for him, especially on tilapia, tofu, or scallop night.

It's snowing here... I'm glad I can walk to work! We should have better weather for our get together in March. We're official now... Friday, March 23 and Saturday, March 24. And Gina, Gregg and G., you're all quite welcome!

Posted by april at 6:02 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 21, 2007

Another Way the Megamuffin Saves the Day!

I left the house at 6:45 for my 7:30 am meeting with nurses... since it's Sunday, traffic was light. Normally I would leave at 6:30. I packed one of my new strawberry cherry megamuffins to eat for breakfast, since our usual breakfast time is 6:30 and I didn't want to slam a cup of eggwhites and run out the door.

When I got to the McDonalds where I was scheduled to meet with nurses, I saw a man wearing scrubs. I asked him if he was looking for the nurses' meeting. He said no... was there going to be a meeting here? Concluding that he might be a doctor at the hospital where we are trying to organize, I just said that I was meeting a few nurses whom I hadn't met before, so I wouldn't recognize them.

"Can I interest you in breakfast," he asked.

"I brought my own," said I, and proceeded to brandish my megamuffin.

"That looks homemade," said the man in scrubs.

"Yes, my partner engineered them to have 10% of the RDA of everything per 100 calories. So this 209 calorie square has 20.9% of the RDA of everything."

"Wow, that's great. Bye!"

And he left, and I waited for my nurses who showed up a few minutes later.

It reminds me of how, before I met MR in the flesh, I used to carry the RANT around with me when I went bar-hopping with friends. If I was early (which I always am, I was released too soon from the home for the compulsively early) I would order a glass of pinot noir and sit at the bar reading my worn out print out of MR's famous RANT. If a guy came up to me, he would inevitably ask what I was reading. I'd say, "It's a long rant about how if you eat a small number of calories packed with optimal nutrition and get really, really skinny like this 115 pound six foot tall guy who wrote it, you'll age a lot slower and live longer!" That was guaranteed to make sure that no one asked for my phone number. I may look normal, but scratch the surface, and I'm a CR geek.

Shefaly asks an excellent question about protein. You must be very small if you are eating 1100 a day! My main protein sources are organic nonfat dairy and eggwhites, with brewers yeast accounting for 16 grams per day. I eat chicken or fish about once a week, and I eat Quorn about once every week or two. You can get a ton of protein with eggwhites and dairy without eating all the saturated fat that comes with meat. I'd like to see your diet crunched in nutritional software to make sure you're getting the RDA's (or DRI's... thanks for the informative comments, btw, WG!). For folks on CR, there's some evidence (that is not at my fingertips right now but I could get) that a higher protein intake than normal is better for longevity. But that is, of course, a matter of much debate. For practical purposes, I tell people who are trying to cut calories to eat more protein and cut out high carb but empty nutrient foods because it's a good way to control hunger. I have maintained a weight lower by 20 pounds than my normal adult weight with very little effort, and one of my main tools is my protein intake. Intake of unsaturated fats (olive oil, flax oil, almonds, hazelnuts) is second in terms of useful tools for cutting calories while maintaining satisfaction and getting all the essential fatty acids we need to have beautiful soft skin and healthy brains. Have you ever crunched your diet? If you're happy with your current calorie and protein intake, I'd say stick with it if you're getting your RDA's out of an 1100 calorie a day diet. What are your goals? Longevity, obesity avoidance, general health? All of those come into play when deciding where to set macronutrient targets. I have learned that if I eat too little protein, I lack mental focus, am more prone to anxiety, and have more hunger. If I eat too little fat, my skin gets dry, I have sugar cravings, and I feel hungry more often. So to fit in with my goals of slowing aging as much as possible while enjoying my life in the here and now, I eat quite a bit of protein and much more unsaturated fat than I did pre-CR. All of these are very individual decisions. Let me know if I can help with any aspect of crunching your nutrition.

Meanwhile, Carolyn mentions the menu for CR get together 07! MR and I were just discussing it at lunch. I think that for the Friday night dinner, I will make CR pizzas for all. They're Zoned and calorie controlled, so we can serve side dishes in easily measurable amounts and all of you can build meals of appropriate sizes around pizza with sides. Mashed cauliflower, salad, baked apples, various nuts and oils... we can tailor our sides to our calorie and macronutrient needs. All will be labeled. MR even suggested that those who eat megamuffins bring a few for a muffin tasting! We can sample savory, cherry strawberry, traditional and brownie! And any new variations y'all have come up with.

For the luncheon on Sat, we'll do a whole bunch of easily weighed out dishes. I did a similar party two years ago when MR first moved in. It was a ton of work but turned out great, and this time I'll have tons of CR sisters and brothers around to help!

I realized that I've never cooked for a seriously CR'd woman before... I've cooked for women on moderate CR, but never for women who attempt calorie levels like mine and track everything. Sure, most of us still go out from time to time, but we'd prefer to stick to our low calorie diets and eat the most nutritious food possible. It will be so much fun to have all of you here!

To answer Shelia's question, quotidian means "everyday." My quotidian diet is my plain basic boring diet that I love that forms the basis of my CR program. I eat other foods, but I tend to gravitate towards the same breakfast and lunch. That makes it easier to stay on track both caloriewise and nutritionally. I still vary my foods quite a bit, but I've constructed a diet that is easy for me to prepare and delicious that fits all my nutritional needs in a small calorie package, so when I'm not cooking something special or going out, I tend to return to my quotidian.

Speaking of cooking something special, I made MR an awesome lunch! I made eggplant medallions: eggplant sliced thin and covered with stewed tomatoes, garlic, oregano, eggwhites, nonfat ricotta, and fat free mozzarella. Microwaved till the veggies were steamed and the cheese melted. Topped with olive oil, along with a side of asparagus with lemon and oil. He loved it! I have so much fun cooking for him, and while sometimes I eat the food, at other times he doesn't mind if I'd rather just eat my regular lunch salad.

Off to do some work before dinner!

Posted by april at 2:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 20, 2007

It's Magic!

I have taken the liberty of choosing a theme song for our March gathering. Pilot's "It's Magic," is a song that has long been linked in my mind with the amazing changes that CR causes in one's life. I wrote about it years ago here, ages ago on the old blog, and it's just as true now as it was then!

I am so excited that many of my favorite bloggiefriends are planning to attend! The hotel six blocks away from us seems to be the cheapest place (amazing, as it's also the nicest with kitchens in every room!) and MR and I are making plans for the menus. We can't wait!!!

I had a very boring food day, but I loved it. Sunday breakfast (eggwhite veggie omlette, low carb whey protein pancakes) because tomorrow morning I have to work, so we did our Sunday on Saturday this week. Lunch was quotidian salad with yogurt and olive oil and vinegar instead of salsa to save calories. On Sundays we have wine with lunch, so I drank wine with my salad. Dinner was a super simple brewers yeast and veggie soup with no salt veggie broth and another glass of wine. I haven't done the crunch but I'm sure I'm low on vitamin E since I lacked almonds. On days when I don't eat a megamuffin for whatever reason I tend to come out low on B's, E and potassium. I'd better eat a muffin tomorrow! Yesterday was a weird day since we had a big victory party for the Temple workers who organized last summer, so I ate a big lunch of salad plus megamuffin, wanting to be pretty full before the party because I knew there would be very little on the dinner buffet that I would want to eat. At the dinner itself, I had tons of iceberg lettuce (the only salad they had), pickles, peppers, and a very small helping of the vegetarian lasagna that one of the lab workers brought. The wine at the catering hall was pretty scary, so I drank the Skinnybitch, which is vodka with Diet Coke and a lime. Thought of Robin, the nicest Skinnybitch you could hope to meet!

I have a 7:30 am meeting tomorrow and I have to work most of the afternoon, but it looks like I will be able to eat lunch and dinner with MR, which is a great pleasure and luxury. No doubt we will devote a substantial amount of time to discussing our March CR gathering!

Posted by april at 8:07 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

New York CR Society Meeting!

Calling all New Yorkers!

This cross-posted from the List:

The Metro NY local chapter of the CR Society will be holding a meeting
next Saturday, January 27, at 5 p.m. in Manhattan. Please contact
the coordinator at (email me off blog for the address) for details and the address of
the meeting.

We hope to see you there!

To my knowledge, this event is not open to the media.

Posted by april at 7:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 19, 2007

Proposed Agenda for CR Philly Weekend

Friday, March 23

5 pm: Welcome reception at our house

6:30 pm: Dinner at our house

7:30 pm - 9 pm: Hanging out drinking wine and tea at our house, then everyone has to leave so MR and I can go to sleep by 10

Saturday, March 24:

8 am: Trip to Whole Foods and Trader Joes

10:30 am: Unload groceries, begin to cook for luncheon

1 pm: CR luncheon, dishes labeled with calorie and macronutrient info

hanging out all afternoon

5 pm or around then: Catch train into Center City Philly (21 minute trip) for night out on the town at BYO's that serve small dishes of healthy food!

Looking forward to seeing everyone! I should figure out if we can get a good rate at the nearby hotels... there is a Residence Inn quite close, and a Marriott a tiny bit farther. A Hampton Inn in easy driving distance. If people want to double up, I'm sure we could figure out roommates.

I'll stay with MR... I've gotten used to sharing a room with him. :)

Posted by april at 9:51 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Weekend of March 24th It Is!

Will that work for everyone?

Posted by april at 3:15 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

March 26?

Dudes, March 26 is my CR birthday. It goes well with Chris' spring break. What do folks think?
It would actually be the weekend of Saturday, March 24.

I should probably check with MR too... btw, he's not all that orange, so a lot of people are disappointed when they meet him and were expecting a citrus fruit with a head. Now our kitchen, that's orange!

Posted by april at 12:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

CR Get Together?

Good morning all!

First, you've got to go over to Skinnybitch's blog (she's so nice, so it's a most amusing choice of names) and read her entry for today. It's brilliant. She compares the number of calories she ate yesterday to what she could have had at McDonald's for the same number of calories. Then she compares the nutrients and the total grams! It's so great.

Second, MR and I have been thinking of hosting a CR get together at our house in Philly sometime in the spring. We're easy to get to by train, plane and automobile, fairly centrally located, and the conference isn't till November so it would be great to get together before then. We could have the gathering at our house for lunch and an afternoon of hanging out, and anyone who wanted to could go out in Philly for dinner afterwards... I know plenty of places where we can get a quite decent meal. We've been talking about a CR Girls' weekend, but we have a few wonderful guys and I don't want to leave them out. What do you think? Anyone who wanted to stay in town a bit could do so... there's tons to do here. I'd love to go out on Friday night with anyone who wants to come in early, and there's a Residence Inn in walking distance of our house that has kitchen facilities in every room - ideal for those CR folks who need a fridge wherever they go. There are some cheaper places to stay nearby too. And a few of you could help me cook for the lunch... last time we did this, we put calorie and macronutrient ratio labels on all the foods, so that takes some time and effort. With all these CR whizes hanging out in the kitchen, we could get it together easily!

Let's pick dates soon so Shelia can schedule her vacation time! And Robin can book her flight... flights from Boston to Philly are so cheap these days! Maybe Chris can come in from Chicago... though I'm a bit scared that he's going to try to bike the whole way after he posted his daily biking mileage the other day! Who's in?

Posted by april at 5:39 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 18, 2007

Cauliflower Mash

I thought I would entertain all of you with tales of my CR newbie days, complete with links to my old blogspot blog. I'm so impressed with the newbies' efforts at designing their own quotidian diets, and I am amazed at how much better they are than I was when I was new! I had all these funny stories chronicled in old blog entries... but blogspot is being dopey at the moment and I can't connect to anything! I just barely managed to catch up on our newbies' blogs!

Everyone is doing so well, and I am so proud. It's just wonderful to see people using software, focusing on health and nutrition, and losing weight and feeling better in the process! I loved Chris' piece on the beauty of megamuffins today, and Christina's story about the Wellness Test. And Deborah's insight about babies! It's just fantastic to see this supportive, non-judgmental community forming around our blogs!

My day was pretty good. Regular old breakfast, followed by the two and a half hour drive to Scranton. Upon arriving in Scranton, I realized that while MR had packed my lunch salad, megamuffin, green tea and almonds, I had no yogurt. Hmmmm. So I ate the salad with a bit of cocktail sauce that Luke had in the fridge and the almonds. And some disgusting flat diet Coke that I threw out after realizing that it had been in the fridge since an October open house.

Then Luke was hungry (he had responded to my memo by eating all the Swedish fish... it would have been quite sufficient to have just stashed them in his desk drawer, but whatever!) so we went to a new sushi place. Lacking my yogurt calories, I decided to eat a little sushi, which is one of my favorite foods. I had a Philadelphia roll and a clear broth soup (just chicken broth with a mushroom.) It was fantastic sushi, and I enjoyed every bite! Since lunch was doubtless a bit over my normal lunchtime calories, I had a light dinner: just a serving (85 cals) of MR's world famous mashed cauliflower, a teaspoon of flax oil, and the second half of the megamuffin that I had started to eat at lunch and never finished, and a pint of grape tomatoes. Glass of wine, of course.

Since I had sushi out, I can't be sure how many calories I ate today. I doubt that it was over 1300, but I may go a little low tomorrow just to be sure.

This morning I decided that I would really like some of MR's amazing cauliflower mash. So while he was making tea, somewhat out of nowhere, I said, "That would be wonderful honey!"

"What would be wonderful?" he asked, perplexed, but used to being perplexed (he has lived with me for a year and a half now, after all!)

"If you made me some mashed cauliflower tonight like you were thinking of doing!" pronounced I, as if it were a fait accompli.

"I was thinking of making you a cauliflower mash?" he asked. The boy is a bit slow at times.

"Well, I just figured that you were contemplating what to make for your own dinner tonight since I'll be out of town and unable to make your dinner, and you were probably thinking 'Gee, we have a lot of cauliflower' and remembering 'A few days ago, April said she'd like some cauliflower mash.' So you no doubt concluded that you should surprise me with my favorite mashed cauliflower! Thank you honey! I can't wait!"

Sure enough, tonight when I got home about fifteen minutes before dinner, my mashed cauliflower was ready to eat, topped with delicious buttery flax oil, and cruciferous as ever.

MR steams cauliflower then mashes it with a potato masher along with nonfat plain yogurt and dried parsley flakes. I add a touch of fresh pepper and half salt at the table. We top it with flax oil and it's better than mashed potatoes!

Soon I'm off to bed, visions of megamuffins and cauliflower mash (and the occasional sushi roll!) dancing in my head...

Posted by april at 9:46 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

A Memo Regarding Swedish Fish

One of the keys to successful long term CR, or even weight loss, is to make your own personal food environment less obesogenic. In other words, don't fill your house/office/car/space with food you don't want to eat but find hard to resist.

Another CR blogger, Emily I think, had a Swedish fish problem as of late. I too have been a victim of the evil gummy red fish. A few months ago, back in November, I had an encounter of the obesogenic kind with Swedish fish at a work meeting. I hadn't gotten lunch due to a closed Subway on my route, it was late and my dinner was going to be even later, and then I encountered a bowl of Swedish fish.

I love Swedish fish. Now, if I were to plan for it and include it in my calorie and nutrient counts for the day, I could have Swedish fish. There are no forbidden foods on CR! But really, do I need Swedish fish? I do not. It's so easy to shovel the little critters one after the other into the mouth. Since I have bad reactions to high carb meals, I of all people need to avoid the school of Swedish fish.

To that end, I wrote this memo to Luke, whom I am going to visit/supervise in Scranton tomorrow:

RE: Swedish Fish

Can you please hide all the Swedish fish and gummi bears and any other candy in the office prior to my arrival?

I'm sufficiently low on calories these days that I really don't need to deal with temptation.

Your efforts in this matter are much appreciated.

Thank you,
a

The fact of the matter is, as you get deeper into your CR practice, you develop more self-discipline and strategies to handle encounters of the obesogenic kind. You may not be invincible (I'm not, though my freaky space alien boyfriend is) but you get pretty good at deciding, as an act of conscious application of will, what you want to eat, and then eating it, and only it. The flip side is that as you get lighter and lighter and lower and lower on calories, you're closer to being hungry. Most of us are not hungry on a regular basis, except right before meals. But when we're confronted with objects like Swedish fish, we have more real hunger than we had when we were carrying forty pound fuel tanks of fat and could survive a famine while carrying twins and still come out looking decent in an Ann Taylor size six petite suit. So on a biological level, we're even more tempted. It takes more work to turn off that automatic part of the brain that says to eat.

Ergo the Swedish fish must go. Call me a food Nazi if you want, but the freedoms of others will not be irrevocably impinged upon because I asked Luke to remove the Swedish fish from our Scranton office before my vist. Where in the Bill of Rights does it say that every American has the right to a bowl of candy in every room? Those who want Swedish fish can buy them. They don't need to live in my office.

I really don't know how people who have to live with junk food eaters do it. If I get hungry and want a fast, easy, yummy snack, I grab a pint of grape tomatoes and eat it standing in front of the fridge. That's not many calories, I weigh it in advance and calculate it in, and it's extremely healthy stuff. There are no Little Debbies, Doritos or Triscuits in our household. So there is no reason to even think we would eat that stuff. Ridding your immediate environment of unhealthy food is one of the first steps to getting junk food out of your diet, but if you can't do that because you live with unhealthy eaters, you're going to have a harder time than we do. My hat is off to any of you who can deal with a junk food filled house. I'd rather just not have the stuff around. Isn't life difficult enough without fighting our biological programming that says "You're dipping way below your set point! EAT THE SWEDISH FISH! Put on weight so you can carry twins through a famine!"

Anyhow, here's today's crunch. Pretty low key day. Quotidian breakfast, quotidian lunch, then I couldn't figure out how to work the new version of CRON-O-Meter so I wasn't sure what I was low on before dinner. One of my favorite tricks (which I learned from Mary) is to crunch my day right before dinner so I know what to fill in. On days when I eat my megamuffin and my regular salad with yogurt for lunch, I don't have too many gaps. But today, I couldn't crunch due to CRON-o-Meter problems (which were actually my problems, not Aaron's... I have trouble adjusting to new software, which is why I used DWIDP religiously until a few months ago when MR all but insisted I switch. Of course I love CRON-O-Meter so much more, but I am a terrible creature of software habit and I had to be ripped screaming from my DWIDP) so I ate another one of my salads (I had an extra in the fridge) with a cup of yogurt and two tablespoons of salsa, along with my second teaspoon of flax oil, another 17 g almonds, and my usual glass of red wine (Ravenswood again, there was a great sale.) After dinner I got the CRON-O-Meter new version to work, so here's the crunch:

Nutrition Summary for January 17, 2007
General (76%)
Energy 1236.1 kcal 63%
Protein 88.6 g 177%
Fat 34.5 g 53%
Carbs 127.6 g 43%
Fiber 33.0 g 132%
Water 1877.6 g 125%
Vitamins (92%)
Vitamin A 37051.6 IU 1235%
Folate 694.1 mcg 174%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.0 mg 168%
B2 (Riboflavin) 4.1 mg 312%
B3 (Niacin) 18.0 mg 112%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 6.4 mg 128%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.4 mg 142%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 3.2 mcg 132%
Vitamin C 295.7 mg 329%
Vitamin D 6.2 IU 2%
Vitamin E 14.7 mg 98%
Vitamin K 1267.7 mcg 1056%
Minerals (100%)
Calcium 1675.3 mg 120%
Copper 2.3 mg 258%
Iron 14.0 mg 175%
Magnesium 489.5 mg 117%
Manganese 5.1 mg 223%
Phosphorus 1890.6 mg 270%
Potassium 5498.5 mg 117%
Selenium 111.7 mcg 203%
Sodium 1972.2 mg 152%
Zinc 15.0 mg 136%
Lipids (15%)
Saturated 3.8 g 19%
Cholesterol 30.8 g 10%

I'm packing megamuffins for my trip to Scranton tomorrow, but I'll be home for dinner, so it won't be a rough day. As long as Luke hides the Swedish fish.

Posted by april at 8:38 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

January 16, 2007

RDA Angst

There's been a lot of angst in the CR girl community in the last day or so because we all realized that Aaron set the RDAs to men's. This is good news for most of us, cause it means we're doing better than we thought! But it brings up the topic of just what is the right amount of each nutrient for us, how do we best supplement, and what nutritients do we really need to get from food, vs. what nutrients can we supplement adequately?

Dr. Walford has an excellent treatment of this topic in Beyond 120, so I suggest y'all read it if you haven't yet. But a few quick points:

-- In lab animals, the ones fed their nutrients from real food live longer than the ones fed rat junk food plus supplements.

-- We don't know, for sure, what exactly it is in each food that is good for us, so by getting our RDAs from food we maximize our chances that we're getting whatever we need that might not be specifically isolated in a vitamin. There is no perfect vitamin pill.

-- Most multis have toxic levels of this or that, and varieties of the nutrients that are actually different from what's found in food. Synthetic beta-carotene, for example. Even if you have a great multi, it will still only fill in the holes in your particular diet by chance. You really must analyze your diet before you choose your supplements. MR doesn't take a multi cause his diet is too good. He'd be overdoing it on some nutrients if he took a multi. He supplements with specific nutrients, but doesn't take one single multi.

-- There are some nutrients that have to be kept in balance with each other, else neither will be properly absorbed or utilized. Zinc and copper are an example. If you have too much copper (which is found in fruits and vegetables) relative to your zinc, your zinc won't be properly absorbed and utilized, even if you're getting more than the RDA of both nutrients from your food and/or your supplements. And vice versa. So taking a random pill without analyzing your diet is likely to throw off the balance of your nutrients, or at the very least leave an imbalance uncorrected. You might think you're getting the RDA (the pill says so!) but you're not absorbing and utilizing it. The more you rely on pills without knowing what's in your food, the more likely you are to fail to correct imbalances, or make them worse. You're reasonably safe if you have the RDAs, or even proportional multiples of all the RDAs at once, since good balance is shown in the RDAs. But if you start taking a bunch of pills on top of your food, without knowing exactly what's in them and understanding how they interact with the nutrients in your diet, you're likely to perpetuate any imbalances.

There are still plenty of reasons why you might want to supplement. Insurance against occasional or chronic deficiencies (such as taking Vegetarian Booster if you eat a mostly vegetarian diet,) specific medical conditions for which certain supplements might be indicated (like my I-3-C for cervical dysplasia, which, btw, is GONE as of my last check up!!!) and more experimental supplements that may have a beneficial effect but definitely aren't necessary for a healthy diet. I've written a lot about what supplements I take, and I need to update some of the info because we've recently revamped my supplement program. Informed supplementation can improve your CR program, and uninformed supplementation can cause problems, so analyze your diet before you start taking pills.

I'll ask MR more about the RDAs tomorrow morning... I just got home from a late meeting and he's already in bed. I need to head that way too!

Meanwhile, I continue to be so impressed with the newbies! Great blogs guys and girls!

Posted by april at 11:12 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Order Your Megamuffins (and such) here!

http://foodpart.com/index_files/CRONservices.htmhttp://foodpart.com/index_files/CRONservices.htm

Andrea rocks our collective megamuffin eating world. She's a great cook, and a really cool person to hang out with. I was lucky enough to spend time with her at the last CRS conference. So go buy her stuff!

Posted by april at 12:42 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Baby Pictures of Muffins

One of my favorite readers sent me a picture of herself with her freshly made megamuffin, first batch. I was so overwhelmed by the adoreableness of both the muffin and the reader that I decided to ask for more pictures of muffin eaters with their muffins and make a little collage out of them. Maybe I can put them up on my eventual site (with the sender's permission, of course.) At least I can hang them up in my house as a tribute to the warm and friendly company of megamuffin eaters that has sprung up as of late.

Maybe we can even send one to Sherm, the inventor of the original megamuffin!

So send me your megamuffin picture. Send them them along even if you buy Miss Tenacity's -- you don't have to bake them yourself to be a megamuffin eater. It will make my day!

Posted by april at 9:23 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

Megamuffin Substitutions

A reader writes that she tried to make the megamuffins, but she had trouble finding some of the ingredients, so here are her substitutions:

I made a few substitutions. Let me know if these are okay:

-I couldn't find rice bran, so I used Rice Krispies.
-I like those yogurt covered almonds best, so I used those.
-I used powdered sugar instead of baking powder
-I used that instead of the whey protein (ewwie!) too.
-I don't know what an almond meal is (like what do they EAT?) so I
went out to Wendy's and had an extra value meal instead.
-I couldn't get the spice out of the pumpkin pie I bought at the
cakery, so I just put the pie in whole.
-I know CR's all about getting nutrients from food and not
supplements, so I used a can of smoked oysters instead of a zinc capsule.
-Skim milk, regular eggnog, what's the difference?
-I didn't know why to add more pumpkin since I already included the
pie, so I just added another pumpkin pie just in case.
-I couldn't find "Just" cranberries so I used some fruit cups I had
sitting around (the ones with the yummy syrup)
-24 egg whites seemed like a lot so I just used marshmallows, cause
they're white too.
-I couldn't find K metawhatever it was, so I just used, well, more
Rice Krispies.

While waiting for them to cook I went across the street to this hotel
I hang out at to grab a few complimentary cookies to stave off my
hunger but the bastards had replaced them with FRUIT! I MEAN GAG ME
WITH A TWIZZLER!
**************

Yes, the reader was making a joke. But I was pretty scared when I read the part about the rice crispies!

I'm glad all are having fun with the muffins. Our cherry strawberry muffins turned out great! We just had a tasting over lunch with my mother (I'm technically off today, though I will end up working half the day anyhow.) We love them! You substitute frozen organic strawberries for guava on an isocaloric basis, and then you use four boxes of organic "Just Strawberries" and one box of "Just Cherries" instead of the blueberries and cranberries. Plus 19 g dried cranberries. That's all! Very good. I omitted all the pumpkin pie spice (I hate nutmeg) and used a tablespoon of vanilla extract instead.

Happy megamuffin to all!

Posted by april at 12:10 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 14, 2007

Hunger and Cravings Throughout the Day

Cait asks what to do about cravings during the day and hunger. She's eating a lot of healthy foods: yogurt, veggies, flax oil, cottage cheese. But she's having trouble sticking with healthy eating when she gets too hungry.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Eat more of your Calories early in the day. I usually eat a pretty big lunch, around 400 or more calories. Most work days I eat a big salad of 100 g romaine, 35 g kale, 50 g napa cabbage, 18 g green pepper, 45 g grape tomatoes (they have higher calories than regular tomatoes), 1 cup of nonfat plain yogurt, 2 - 4 tablespoons of salsa, 11 - 19 grams of almonds, and a 209 calorie April-sized megamuffin. I also eat a fairly big breakfast of 1 cup scrambled eggwhites plus 40 g shiitake mushrooms plus 1 fat free cheddar single + 1 teaspoon flax oil + 1 tbsp brewers yeast. So by the time I get to dinner, I've already eaten 700 or more calories. If you're just working on losing weight and eating healthy, I'd say try eating 1000 calories between breakfast and lunch and see how you feel. I enjoy having a lighter dinner (I have a glass of wine with dinner so it's actually more calories but it's food-light) cause I don't like to be stuffed at night.

2. Replace some carbs with more fat and protein. Especially protein-loading in the am. That's why I eat a cup of eggwhites scrambled for breakfast every day. A no-carb breakfast seems to surpress hunger all day.

3. Eat fat with every meal (unsaturated) and eat it first. For example, I eat my almonds before starting my salad. It lowers the blood sugar to avoid that freaky blood sugar spike with a meal.

4. Don't try to push your calories too low. It's just plain counterproductive because you set yourself up for a binge. If you're cutting out empty calories like sugar and bread, increasing your nutrient density, and going for those RDAs, you're going to lose weight.

5. RDA magic really works. Nutritional software is easier to use than most might think, and getting those RDAs really makes hunger cravings go away.

Hope that helps!

Posted by april at 2:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Megamuffin FAQ

I've been getting a lot of questions about megamuffins lately, so I figured I'd post some of the answers in case you're wondering too!

1. Do I use the whole orange, including the peel?

Yes.

2. Where do I find guava?

Asian grocery stores often have it. Use the whole fruit, including peel.

3. I can't find guava. What do I do?

If you can't find guava, you can substitute frozen organic strawberries (strawberries have serious pesticide problems so please use organic) isocaloricly, but that will leave you short on vitamin C unless you also use strawberries as some of the dried fruit. MR and I made a batch of strawberry cherry muffins this morning, so I'll post the numbers on that for you later on.

4. I can't find K Metabisulfite.

Try a home wine making store. If you can't find it, you can make a batch without it.

5. I can only find NAC powder in capsules. Can I use those?

Yes you can, but it will be a pain.

6. Do you mean Belgian endive?

No, curly endive. It's green and is also called chicory. Use all of it, including the stem part at the bottom. Just chop it up.

And whatever you do, don't put all the milk into the food processor. Just put in enough to blend. Otherwise you'll end up with green slime all over your kitchen walls.

Posted by april at 8:47 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Where's The Frying Pan?

Asked MR as we got ready to scramble my eggwhite omlette with zucchini, shiitake mushrooms, scallions and green pepper this morning. I have a little nonstick pan in which I usually cook my eggs, and it usually lives near the stove, but it wasn't there.

"Outside on the back stoop," I answered him.

"Why it is outside?"

"It's with the flowers. You said to put the flowers outside."

Yesterday as we were getting ready to leave to go to a party, I had expressed concern that the roses that we had drying on the pan on the stove (we have a gas stove so it gives off quite a bit of heat even when it's off, very good for drying flowers) would become a target of Kieffer's interest while we were out. In addition to being a huge fan of seafood, Kieffer also likes to eat roses. So MR had suggested that we set them outside to protect them from the cat in our absence.

"I said to put the flowers outside, not the frying pan," he quite rationally pointed out.

"Yes, but the flowers were on the frying pan."

"I'm glad they weren't on the couch."

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

January 13, 2007

The Price of Peace Is $0.16

My cat really loves seafood. So much so that he has to be physically restrained while we peel shrimp. He also loves tilapia, as we discovered when we tried to cook it for CNN.

A few nights ago we had another media appearance, this time for local news, so I just re-ran the tilapia meal. This time, however, I was prepared. I asked my seafood guy at the store for three raw shrimp. Just three. Raw.

Three raw shrimp: $0.16.

Not having to fight off a fish-loving tabby while on TV: Priceless.

Yesterday was a more quotidian food day for me. Usual breakfast, usual lunch, usual muffin, made myself a brussels sprout soup with brewers yeast and yogurt and flax oil for dinner, along with some almonds. Two glasses of Ravenswood Vinters Blend. I made MR a lasagna (zucchini between the layers instead of pasta) for dinner, but I often make myself something different since our calorie and nutrition needs are so different. Here's my crunch for yesterday:

General (74%)
Energy 1300.9 kcal 65%
Protein 87.3 g 175%
Fat 36.2 g 56%
Carbs 109.3 g 36%
Fiber 30.9 g 124%
Water 1282.3 g 85%
Vitamins (91%)
Vitamin A 14770.3 IU 492%
Folate 571.1 mcg 143%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.5 mg 205%
B2 (Riboflavin) 4.5 mg 349%
B3 (Niacin) 22.2 mg 139%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 6.3 mg 126%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.2 mg 131%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 2.6 mcg 109%
Vitamin C 204.5 mg 227%
Vitamin D 9.3 IU 2% <