April's CR Diary

I don't know what it is that first made me come across your Blog, but it is probably my favorite one. I love the way you write the in-and-outs of CR right into your daily life. I am sorry about your grandfather and I don't know what else I could possibly add to that. I love that Billy Joel song I have it on a Greatest Hits album somewhere. And yes, people do make crazy excuses as to why they don't stick to their diet. God knows I do. Take care.

I have been so hungry lately and only want to eat and eat. It's hard sometimes when food seems to be a best friend. I'm getting back to yoga and know that will be a good remedy. Thanks for your words of wisdom. Love you, M

The next couple of lines of that Rod Stewart song are also pretty meaningful: "Because life is so brief and time is a thief when you're undecided. And like a fistful of sand, it can slip right through your hands." Having attended four funerals this year, we have had far too many reminders of how precious life is. I want to be healthy for a very long time, then die a "good death" like your grandfather (minus his last several months, but that's an issue for another day). This definitely requires daily "decisions". Damn it, though! I thought calories eaten in the dark didn't count ........

Marti: Sometimes I think we're all related to bears! There have been 4 young bears caught in Calgary this past week. They've been roaming various suburban neighborhoods, looking for berries to stuff themselves on, in preparation for winter. Once winter comes, they will simply find a nice cave close to the mountains and sleep! Since we aren't bears, maybe we can substitute baby carrots, raw broccoli and hazelnuts and make sure our winter coats have been to the drycleaners! Seriously, I suggest you give The Zone a try: http://www.drsears.com/gettingstartedinthezone.page

I first read your blog last February and was happy to find it today. I am sorry to hear about your loss of your grandfather. I am now practicing CR and am taking it one meal at a time... then completing each day at a time. Having this choice has helped me through my guilt( when I freely ate and then felt bad after and its consequences). I am looking and feeling much better after taking good care of what I choose to eat healthfully. CR came back to me this month after a few months absence when I was on it for a short time. I am re-reading the CR book "The Longevity Diet" (BM Delaney & Lisa Walford) again. I am on the east coast and my girlfriend flew from west coast, San Diego, for the long weekend and to help her daughter. I have read your previous day diary on eating out. I will be eating out tonight and truly and honestly am "petrified" because "yes" the defenses lower and the good time rolls then after or even during, in my mind I will think guilt. Hopefully that won't happen, though the article you linked to yesterday's diary for how food is prepared at some restaurants and "be aware" was helpful. I plan to have a small calorie snack prior to meeting for dinner, so I am not hungry. It was a good sign that I found your blog today, just to let you know "thank you" because it can be a challenge but I would like to live longer healthfully. "Life is good"-Brenda C

Your post made me sad. It's difficult for me to articulate why. I'm sympathetic to CR goals and practitioners, but when I read something like "I've got one shot at life, and it's not too late for me," it literally saddens me.

You may see hope and excitement in that statement; I see pressure, fear, and even desperation ("I've got one shot").

The statement implicitly sets up a binary opposition. "I've got one shot at life." It's as if you feel that there's a single, narrow path, and outside this path is death--or at the very least, the death of your goal to live as long and healthy a life as you can.

But remember that Zen Buddhists say that those who seek after Zen can never achieve it. You have to balance the benefits of your diet against the obvious stress you incur by worrying about that second glass of wine or that bite from your friend's plate. Your belief that you are closing the window on your "shot at life" by those stray bites or extra drinks puts a *lot* of weight on those actions. MR's fear that if you eat too much Progresso soup, you will die before him, also puts tremendous emotional loading on the both of you. It clearly makes you anxious to at least some degree--and that has physiological effects on people.

Furthermore, I ask you to see, truly, and with a kind intention, that it is unreasonable. Step back and think about it: this man is afraid that *if you eat too much Progresso soup or too many Subway sandwiches*, you will *die before him*.

Again, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, that is madness. No one can know that. Retarding biological aging to some degree and *probably* extending your lifespan to some degree does **not** equal "ohmigod, she had an extra glass of wine/another bite off her friend's plate/another can of Progresso soup; it could make her fall short and she could die and I could be alone!!" That is anxiety talking, April, not reason or science.

You've had a rough, rough summer. You've described an insane workload, dizzying victories, and a rapid-fire series of devastating personal losses both to yourself and your friends. When you say "I've got one shot at life, and it's not too late for me," I don't hear CR. I hear an effort to get past the grief, stress, and powerlessness of the present into an imagined future of vitality and peace. Unfortunately, this effort has the extreme dark side of making you feel like you'll *miss* that future, and die, if you keep nibbling off your friend's plates. That just brings more darkness into the present.

Beyond basic health and calorie control, I do not believe that food should be your focus right now, and especially not grim fantasies of missing out on an imagined long-term future with MR because you ate something less than perfect today. Your efforts to keep those fantasies from coming true by working harder at your CR, amount to bargaining. The problem with bargaining is that, unless you're in an open-air market, it doesn't work.

Please stop fantasizing about other fantasies. Attend to your health in the *present*, which includes letting go as well as holding on. And please know that no one, with the sole exception of Luke Skywalker and the Death Star, has only one shot. At anything. :)

April,

Thanks for this post. I'm having a challenging eating day. I attended and helped bring refreshments for an event at work that involved food. I did pretty well for me in that I only ate some of the fruit I brought plus a quarter of a bagel with only a tiny smear (teaspoon) of cream cheese. Then, I went out to eat with a group to wish a colleague well whose last day was today. The restaurant really doesn’t offer any low calorie food except for a small tossed salad. That’s what I got. I ordered it with no dressing and I brought my own low cal dressing. I ate two really small pieces of plain bread with that. So my eating wasn’t fabulous, but so much better than what it could have been. I was hungry after lunch and ate my healthy food (yogurt and a low-cal homemade spinach pie) that I brought to work just in case. I feel so much better than I would have felt if I’d eaten a greasy quesadilla or a fatty basil goat cheese ciabatina sandwich and I can’t feel the grease on the back of my throat either. Anyway, thanks for your post.

--Jen

Wise words, Yvonne, and eloquently put. And yes, I think April should chill out too. She worries too much about everything, because she's a loving caring human being. She's also feeling really tired and upset, and slightly out of control.

But the truth is (as I know all too well, but don't practice as I ought to), based on hard science, that your longevity does rely on every single damn thing you put in your mouth.
What April eats this week, or this month, may well add or detract from her final "due date". Maybe it might affect it only by a few seconds, or minutes, but affect it, it does. does this matter in the grand scheme of things? Well if it matters to April, then this is her choice, her decision. We have no right to tell her to forget about it or go easy on her food choices, merely in the name of empathising with her.

In my experience, adhering to CR actually helps with stress and grief, because it stabilizes your mood and helps you feel more rational, and able to cope with what crap life chucks at you. Constant regulated food intake of the right type, really does affect the brain chemistry and it WILL help. Just my opinion - many will disagree.

I greatly admire April for her ability to cope "on the road" with CR. I cannot do this. When away from home, I am tempted by hunger, and inability to obtain "real untreated food", and I slip. The end result is that I feel physically and mentally yukky and slightly out of control, not because I am obsessed with what I eat, but because I put the wrong kind of fuel in my sleek Mercedes tank, and now it hiccups a bit instead of running smoothly.

Whether or not we choose to treat our daily fuel as an emotional crutch or a psychological coping mechanism is a constant ongoing battle. April handles her willpower and life's challenges a heck of a lot better than I do, and for that she has my sincerest admiration.

Lindsay, I have to say that if it really is true that "every single damn thing you put in your mouth...may well add [to] or detract from [your] final due date," I for one not only can't but actively refuse to live that way. It is a recipe for madness. It is the Twilight Zone. Or a grim comedy sketch, as people go around totaling up the time they are losing and gaining with each bite they take or don't take. Even if it's true, I can't see how it would be helpful in any way.

Besides, if we're so delicate that "every single damn thing you put in your mouth" has that power, then what *else* is affecting our "due date"? Are we going to start worrying about every particle we breathe? Every medication we take? Every time we stress and feel the adrenaline surge? Is food really going to be able to overcome the combined weight of all those other influences? On a macro level--a lifetime spent eating homemade dinner salads versus a lifetime spent at KFC--yes. But when it gets to the "every bite you take" level, no, I'm not prepared to believe that.

Lindsay, also, thank you for your kind words. I am sorry I didn't say so earlier.

Yvonne (and others):

Thou hast no right but to do thy Will.

> Lindsay, I have to say that if it really is true that "every single
> damn thing you put in your mouth...may well add [to] or detract from
> [your] final due date," I for one not only can't but actively refuse
> to live that way.

But Yvonne, no one is asking you to. Our choices don't dictate yours -- but your preferences about how you want to lead your life don't dictate the laws of physics.

> On a macro level--a
> lifetime spent eating homemade dinner salads versus a lifetime spent
> at KFC--yes. But when it gets to the "every bite you take" level, no,
> I'm not prepared to believe that.

Well, then you aren't acquainted with the science on the matter. From the massive body of available science accumulated from seventy years of research into the biology of aging in mammals, the metabolism of every single
Calorie that one consumes contributes to the "series of cumulative,
universal, progressive, intrinsic, deleterious functional and structural
changes that culminate in death" that are biological aging. The only thing that has yet been found retard this process is to
restrict Calories, as graphs like these make clear:

http://deanpomerleau.tripod.com/CR/CR_lifespan_graphs.jpg

http://calorierestriction.org/files/images/cr-youth.gif

> Step back and think about it: this man is afraid that *if you eat too
> much Progresso soup or too many Subway sandwiches*, you will *die
> before him*.

Yes, I am. That simple, inverse function of Calories metabolized vs healthy lifespan is true even if it comes in the form of 300 Calories of Progresso Healthy Classics Lentil Soup or 330 Calories of 6" Subway Oven Roasted Chicken Breast Sub instead of glycotoxin- and trans-fat-laden KFC -- particularly when your Calorie budget is only about 1500 Calories a day; particularly if repeated, even a few times a week, over a lifetime; and particularly if the rest of the week has been nutritionally suboptimal (rather than being fit into your Calorie budget after having a week of otherwise-perfect eating).

I should add that the stakes are amplified in my mind by my judgement that some decades from now, biotechnology will be available to actually reverse biological aging in humans, so that keeping oneself biologically young for just a few more years might make the difference between catching a rising tide toward an indefinite healthy lifespan, and going instead down the "way of all flesh" until now: a gradual descent, with every passing year, into physical impairment, worsening illness, creeping dementia, and ultimately, death.

Again, no one is asking you to live this way: you pays your money and you takes your bet. Personally, I love my life, and having April in it, and I choose to govern myself in a way that will keep me out of the nursing home and the grave for as long as possible to enjoy it. And yes: I worry, existentially, when I think that the grace that has descended from I know not what heaven in the form of April Smith may be eroded away from me, one scarfed French fry at a time.

Love is the law, love under will.

-Michael

Michael, thank you for the lovely reply. I never meant to imply that anyone *was* asking me to look at my food as a ticking clock. I was just in shock because hadn't realized that some CR practitioners literally feel that every bite they eat subtracts measurable time from their lifespan! I had thought it was more of an overall thing.

I wholeheartedly agree with CR, but I respectfully question the emotional wisdom of giving *that* much importance to your food, even if it appears to be scientifically validated. With respect, you are not the only person who fears that "the grace that has descended from I know not what heaven" will be taken from them. All human beings must live with that fear.

Their fear is real, but if they put too much energy and focus into defending against it ("I won't let Susan go on that cruise ship, it could sink or be attacked"), we call it a maladjustment. What *you* fear is also real, but if it's to the point where you look at a french fry and you see April withering away just! two! short! months! before the magic bullet shows up in the drugstore!!, then I really don't know what to say. I see and accept your point about "the simple inverse function between calories metabolized vs healthy lifespan," *but* it's a big leap between that and "french fry=dying just before the solution arrives." One is a fact. The other is a narrative. It's an anxious projection.

Also: mental health counts too. Mental health *is* physical health, and depression/anxiety contributes to morbidity. Worrying about dying, in short, can be fatal. Fear of the french fry can be just as harmful as the french fry itself. So here we are, wildly adding and subtracting hours--from an original total that no one knows anyhow, and which might not even meaningfully exist. Where does it leave us?

In my opinion--sure, let's all watch our health, but...not that closely. For the sake, ironically, of our health :)

Yvonne you are one wise lady :-)

Wow, Yvonne. You've really made me think today. : ) As the poster above has noted, you are smart indeed.