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September 30, 2008
Mushroom Mini-Cheesesteaks and Asparagus Stuffed Eggplant
We had a friend over for dinner tonight. He's a huge mushroom fan, so I stuffed white mushrooms with Quorn grounds, tomatoes, Worschtershire sauce and Louisiana hot sauce topped with nonfat mozzarella for appetizers, then the main dish was eggplant, halved and hollowed out, then stuffed with a mixture of mushrooms, asparagus, cauliflower, ricotta, and eggplant guts. Topped with mozzarella and flax oil.
My work is heating up again, and I'm having a wonderful time. I have a few other interests in life, but nothing compares to my love of organizing. Everyone has noticed... since we got back from California I've been lit up like a Christmas tree, excited about all of our projects.
Speaking of Christmas, it's almost time to decorate for Halloween! MR and I strike a compromise that I wait till October 1 to put up the decorations, but when I was single I used to put up Halloween decorations on Labor Day weekend. It's my favorite holiday... aside from a few on the Tibetan Buddhist calendar that hold my attention...
Okay, folks, it's time for bed. I have a 7:15 am yoga class, and I like to do my full meditation practice before I walk out the door, so that means up an hour before dawn.
Posted by april at 7:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Last Night On Earth
[This is the second, as it turns out, in a series about behaviors and attitudes that will really screw up your CR, or even just your attempts at healthy weight loss. The first was "Not Just One Bite."]
Y'all have all been there. Not sure why I keep using "y'all" to demonstrate my Southernness, but there it is.
It's the night before you're going to start your big "diet." You think about all you're going to give up. It's like a giant food batchelorette party. You eat everything in sight... things you don't even want, in fact... just cause you can, and cause you know that tomorrow, you can't.
So right now you're thinking that you'll start your diet tomorrow. So you're eating whatever you want. And you're going to start five pounds heavier than before you decided to undertake this diet. Cause you were living like it's the last night on earth.
Trust me, I've been there. I was even doing a bit of this on my California trip. "I'll eat well when I get home." Yeah, whatever. That's no excuse for abusing your body with the Barack Obama Cheese Plate while people who look 20 years younger than they are eat nothing and confuse you by having more experience than their looks say that they have.
You make a ton of excuses about how this is your last night of "freedom," that is the last night to obey the biological compulsion to eat to excess. Freedom is not eating whatever food is put in front of you: it is exercising your own will to decide what is best for your body, mind and spirit.
I am not always all that good at this. For awhile I will be, then it gets hard when I am confronted with a cheeseplate when I am hungry and stressed. Giant tower of cheese! How can I resist?
There's nothing wrong with eating the cheese, but there is something wrong with living in a way that is not in accordance with your principles, whether it's doing a kind of work that you fundamentally disagree with or eating food you know does not nourish you.
I fall off all the time... don't get me wrong, I am not some 90 pound paragon of CR perfection. I am 110 and lucky to be so after being in California after a nurses' conference for five days. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's what kind of thinking messes up our efforts, be they at CR or just at healthy weight loss.
The night before you start a "diet" is the last time to imagine that it is the last night on earth. All that food will still be there if you want it: the fries, the cheese plate, the pad thai. It will be there if you want to take a break and eat whatever. For now, do yourself a favor and start one step ahead. Don't think of it as a diet... think of it as a life, from which you will no doubt diverge but which will be more affirming and fun than anything you could get from an extra slice of cheese.
Trust me: I've done both. The second really is better than the first. Discipline has its rewards. Being thin is the least of them.
Suzanne Vega has some advice for us on this point, from "Nine Objects of Desire," by far her best album.
From My Favorite Plum:
My favorite plum
Lies in wait for me
And I'll be right here
Longing endlessly
You'll say that I'm foolish to trust
But it will be mine and I know that it must
Cause I've seen the rest yes
And that is the one for me
Yes I've seen the best, yes
And that is the one for me.
Posted by april at 1:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
September 28, 2008
Are They Trying To Fatten Us Up?
Hey y'all... sorry for the long absence. I just (and I mean walked in the door five mins ago) got home from a work conference in San Francisco. The conference was extremely productive, San Francisco was beautiful, and I got to meet some organizers who totally rocked my world.
The food, on the other hand, was a disaster. On the second day I said to someone who was standing in line at the fruit and cheese plate with me, "Do you think they're going to eat us at the end? Cause it seems like they're trying to fatten us up!"
I felt like veal. Sitting in an auditorium and meetings all day, constant feeding. Let me outline it for you.
Thursday night: reception with bar (three drink tickets a piece... I bought a drink for an organizer whose name I never got) with vaguely Asian appetizers: sushi, spring rolls, and lots of pastry like stuff. Desserts. Fried things.
Friday morning: huge, huge breakfast. Everything you could imagine: eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles, pancakes, potatoes, coffee, donuts, danishes, muffins.
As soon as breakfast was cleared and session started, they brought out a "break" comprised of three kinds of pastries plus sodas, coffee and tea. Tzao teas, of which I stole quite a few... but still, who needs a cinnamon roll two hours after a huge breakfast? I had a protein shake.
Lunch: we were going on a march across the Golden Gate Bridge for a rally for single payer healthcare, and they had packed us bag lunches. Chicken salad (mayo!) on crossaint with 300 calorie package of chips, brownie, apple, and huge chocolate bar! That lunch was 2000 calories at least.
Then: we gather for the debates. You know, if you're wanting to send good energy to Barack Obama, the best place to be is with 1000 radical nurses. They had a huge fruit and cheese plate plus an open bar. This was all before dinner.
Dinner was some horrible yuck fish (y'all know how I hate salmon, smells like my cat's breath after she eats dinner) in creamy sauce, but I cut out to hang with a friend from San Fran whom I hadn't seen in ages.
Next day: huge breakfast, breaks with Danishes... lunch was a Caesar salad covered with goopy dressing followed by a chicken covered with creamy sauce. I ate one bite.
The nurses went off on a dinner cruise that night on the bay but my staff and I stayed behind, digesting our day's meetings and making plans for a future that looks exceedingly bright.
Next day: huge breakfast, breaks, and finally lunch, which was being set out as we left to get our flight: a healthy lunch! Salads, cold cuts, fruit. So I miss the one healthy meal.
I didn't eat too much, but I'm sure I was over calories, so this week will be sparse. And though I did yoga and Pilates in my hotel room, I am missing my classes. Looking forward to some hard workouts in the next few days.
Still... exhausted. And lots to do this week!
Posted by april at 8:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 18, 2008
Not Just One Bite
There's really something to the "You can't eat just one," slogan for some kind of potato chip.
Have you ever noticed that once you have one bite of a tempting little treat, it's nearly impossible to not have more? There's something neurological to this... my friend Robert K, a neuropsychologist, told me so. It really does set off a reaction in the brain that makes you eat more.
I noticed this yesterday. I stopped by the corner bar with some friends for a glass of wine after work, and I was very on-track for the day with my calories, and planning a healthy dinner.
Then they ordered the hummus. You remember it from awhile back, the hummus of death.
Just one celery stick with hummus, thought I. Just one.
Had one. It was so yummy.
Then it was as though hummus jumped into my mouth. On carrots, on celery.
Then a piece of bruschetta.
So I wasn't hungry for dinner, was no doubt over calories, and was quite annoyed at myself.
Hummus isn't junk food, especially not on carrots and celery, but it wasn't nutritionally just what I needed to round out my day, and it wasn't what I intended to eat. If I had stuck to the "Not One Bite" rule, I would have had a healthy dinner of veggies with brewers yeast and flax oil, and stayed within my calorie goal (which is currently 1400, btw, six days a week with one dinner or lunch out per week where I don't count or worry about it much.)
So here is my advice for the day, and most of you have heard it before: Don't eat one bite. If you're confronted with a tempting little treat and you don't want to indulge, don't even start. None of us have super-human will power, so don't even tempt yourself.
Posted by april at 3:53 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 8, 2008
No, Stuff Squash This Way!
Thanks so much to all for your sweet comments... you make my day!
I made a very nice stuffed squash dish yesterday. Here's the recipe:
Slice squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the innards, chop and mix with:
1/2 cup lowfat or nonfat cottage cheese
garlic powder
lots of curry powder
Top with nonfat mozzarella. Microwave for 1 minute or until the cheese has melted.
You could also toast them in a toaster over if you wanted.
I seem to be obsessed with stuffing veggies. Tonight I'm having a friend over for dinner and making stuffed mushrooms, three kinds. Mushroom mini-cheeseburgers (with Quorn grounds), mushroom mini-pizzas, and mushrooms stuffed with shallots, asparagus and ricotta.
I stuffed yet another eggplant for MR on Saturday, this time with cottage cheese, Walden Farms marinara, and of course FF Mozza.
Stuffed veggies are so nice in the summer because most of them are just microwavable, so we don't have to heat up the kitchen with the stove or the oven.
Off to Pilates...
Posted by april at 6:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 4, 2008
Oooops, I Did It Again!
Yes, that's a Britney Spears quote.
I am so excited! One of my nurses discovered my blog, and has already lost 8 pounds following some of the advice! I really love it when this happens. I never give advice unless I am asked... I firmly believe that what others eat is none of my business... but if people are genuinely interested, I love to help. So now nurses from both of the twins are losing weight and getting healthy. What a happy ending! Meanwhile, both of the twins are growing into wonderfully functional locals, and I am a very proud mommy!
At the same time, another of my close friends has asked for diet advice. We've been working on a plan, goals, etc. It's so much fun for me, and re-energizes my own practice.
In other news, I'm doing a lot of working out. The yoga studio was closed for the holiday weekend so I did cardio. The interesting thing about cardio: it raises a lot of energy, but yoga teaches how to direct and focus the energy. I need both. Without yoga, I am energetic but unfocused, frenzied. Without cardio, I can get slothful. Funny how the body influences the mind.
Work is going to go insane again soon, but in the meantime I am having fun, chilling out, enjoying life. Spending time with non-work friends, re-invigorating my meditation practice, spending more time in prayer and contemplation.
I can't sleep, but that's another story. I am the queen of the insomniacs. It's all well and good when I'm on a campaign and can return calls from night shift nurses at work at 3 am... right now, it's just a pain.
Okay, I'm going to try to go back to work. More soon!
Posted by april at 3:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 3, 2008
Stuff Eggplant This Way
Slice in half, longways.
Microwave for 3 minutes.
Scoop out the insides, chop up, mix with 2 tbsps nonfat ricotta, the heads of about 100 grams asparagus, garlic, oregano, and basil.
Replace eggplant guts mixture in the eggplant. Top with 1 oz nonfat mozzarella per eggplant half. Microwave till it melts. Serve piping hot, topped with a teaspoon of olive oil and a dash of oregano.
Posted by april at 12:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 2, 2008
Another Way to Support the Fight to Repair the Damage of Aging
Please vote now to get American Express to contribute scholarship money for research projects aimed and removing the cellular and molecular damage of aging!
http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/BVVE2C
Background: An undergrad student named Kelsey Moody was trying to find a way to get working directly on the SENS platform of age-reversing biotechnologies (see the outline here:
http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=sens_index
... and for more detail, the popular science book I cowrote with Aubrey de Grey:
http://tinyurl.com/22anhb )
Inquiring around, he was alerted to the existence of established programs ("Independent Studies" and "Advanced Honors" Programs) through which the American university system allows undergrads to get together with faculty and design and execute their own research projects, for which the university provides basic resources (lab space, access to equipment, limited expenses for anything they need that isn't available), usually a small scholarship, and (upon successful completion) academic credit.
Showing astounding initiative, Kelsey switched majors from psychology to biochem, and got himself set up on a project related to breaking down neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), an intracellular aggregate that is one of the hallmark lesions of Alzheimer's disease and several other neurodegenerative diseases, and appears to be the main pathological factor in neuron death in those diseases:
http://www.answers.com/topic/neurofibrillary-tangles
de Grey AD, Alvarez PJ, Brady RO, Cuervo AM, Jerome WG, McCarty PL, Nixon RA, Rittmann BE, Sparrow JR. Medical bioremediation: prospects for the application of microbial catabolic diversity to aging and several major age-related diseases. Ageing Res Rev. 2005 Aug;4(3):315-38. Review. PMID: 16040282 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
http://www.mfoundation.org/files/sens/medbioremPP.pdf
de Grey AD. Appropriating microbial catabolism: a proposal to treat and prevent neurodegeneration. Neurobiol Aging. 2006 Apr;27(4):589-95. Epub 2005 Oct 3. Review. PMID: 16207503 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] http://www.mfoundation.org/files/sens/NBA-PP.pdf
Their removal could be expected to arrest neural death and play a major role in an ultimate cure for Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases, along with the 'normal' degeneration of the aging brain.
This was already an impressive self-started action on Kelsey's part, but then he initiated a project -- first on his own, and then with the Methuselah Foundation -- to facilitate getting students across teh country signed up for these programs to do undergraduate work on SENS: the Methuselah Foundation Undergraduate Research Initiative:
http://www.mfuri.org/
This remarkable initiative absolutely thrilled me and other folks at the Foundation, which is now intending to start supplementing the available bare-bones funding for such projects with scholarships for the best ones.
And now, we've become aware that American Express has a program called the "Members Project," through which they donate money in support of a range of philanthropic projects, which are nominated by cardholders and whose ultimate award is decided by vote:
http://www.membersproject.com/
And voting is open to ANYONE -- not just cardholders!
Kelsey and others got MFURI set up just less than 2 weeks ago, and during the first week the project garnered just over 1000 votes through word of mouth. Because we had to clear a minimum of 2,000 votes by the first of September to pass on to the second round, some people within the Foundation began offering comments of the “it’s too bad we didn’t get started earlier” variety. But then the Foundation launched an intensive campaign, contacting our donor and volunteer base to ask people to vote, to ask their friends and colleagues to vote, and to promote the effort on their blogs. Suddenly, the votes started pouring in ahead, and in the last 3 days of first-round competition, the MFURI projec we surged forward, clearing 2000 votes this very morning! Every vote, and certainly every call for others to participate, really did count.
But the campaign isn’t over. To mobilize AmEx's dollars, we need to pass through several rounds of voting followed by a panel of judges appointed by AmEx. We need to keep the momentum going, to draw in more supporters as they browse the Members Project site, to impress the judges, and to establish a base of supporters amongst advocates of scientific research and of younger, healthier, more youthful lifespans.
Right now, the deck is stacked against these students. The public still hasn’t allowed themselves to imagine that *real* anti-aging medicine is even possible; and their own academic futures as the scientists who would work to cure aging is murky. Biomedical gerontology is WOEFULLY underfunded, few schools even *have* specialized biogerontology departments, and too much of the focus remains on descriptive studies looking at all of the nasty things that go wrong in aging bodies instead of projects actually aimed at DOING something about it.
If the MFURI project wins, hundreds of thousands of dollars would be freed up to support undergraduate scientists-in-formation in pursuing their mission of developing interventions against the biological aging process. This is a real opportunity to get good research done, and launch the careers of young people as scientists who will tackle the cellular and molecular damage of aging, contributing to the cure of age-related disease and ultimately of aging itself.
I *am* concerned that we've probably reached nearly all of 'the usual suspects' and that we may suddenly, frustratingly plateau at any time, so your votes – and those of anyone you can drag along – are precious. Voting is easy:
1. Go to:
http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/BVVE2C
2. Log in either as an Amex Card Member or as a Guest Member on the top right side (ANYone can vote as a Guest)
3. Complete the Registration Form, which will give you your login ID
4. Click the Nominate button at: http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/BVVE2C
You can then also post a supportive comment, to encourage others to cast their vote in favor of this exciting project in the advancement of real anti-aging medicine as the browse the many laudable causes.
Please sign up and vote now, and support a long and healthy life for all of us!
--
SENS: The biotechnologies of rejuvenation. See the outline < http://tinyurl.com/63zzns>; learn the detailed science! < http://tinyurl.com/22anhb>
Posted by april at 9:11 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack