April's CR Diary: February 2010 Archives

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February 27, 2010

Every Second Counts on A Clock That's Ticking

I just love the new song by Kris Allen, "Live Like We're Dying."

I heard it a few weeks ago on my way to early morning meetings at Temple. It was one of those mornings when I was just barely dragging myself to where I needed to be... definitely not thinking of these seconds as the precious little treasures they are.

I will freely admit that I was having one of those sub-optimal days today.

Yesterday I moped around most of the day: went to work and got some stuff done. Edward took me to the RT (that's April-speak for the Ruby Tuesdays, which has both an excellent salad bar and a calorie-controlled menu, making it CR-safe) and allowed me to whine non-stop about the cancellation of the N&M Society meeting due to weather. A girl can always count on her best friend.

Went to bed early...all that being dejected took a lot out of me. Then I got up late... just stayed in bed till 7 (which is very late for me, almost record late) having weird dreams and wishing I was in NYC. Wondering about the results of the RECHARGE trial.

Did some grocery shopping. Spilled my coffee all over the floor of the store.

Put back salt free, no additives, free range organic turkey breast because it was too expensive, though MR later explained how it probably wasn't, per ounce, too expensive.

Went home, got changed quick for yoga.

Walked to the studio up the block. Almost. Snow was coming down again and I slipped on a giant patch of pure ice that was rendered invisible by snow. Ouch. My first fall on ice in years.

Hurt my wrist, scraped up my hands. Was momentarily glad that I am not yet quite at CR fighting weight cause the extra padding on my rear probably prevented further injury. Yay for the yoga butt, even if not as skinny as I'd like it to be!

Was way too sore and shaken up to go to class. Turned around and came home to MR who dropped everything to cuddle me. He does that a lot.

Got in bed and read for awhile. Finished Stephanie Meyer's "The Host," which is an awesome book, better, I think, than the Twilight saga.

Vacuumed the living room, did some cleaning. Made MR's dinner and had lunch with him.

Got in bed and took a nap. Had to push re-start on the day.

Just wasn't feeling much like being happy. I know it's ridiculous, in the face of real tragedies in the world, but I had been looking forward to the N&M meeting the way a kid looks forward to her birthday party.

Then I woke up from my nap and started to put myself together. Finished cleaning the living room, unpacking the bag I had packed for New York.

While I was unpacking, Kris Allen's song came on my iPod.

I know that the reason why I am so obsessed with finding out what the results of the RECHARGE trial are is that I've for quite some time had this horrifying intuition that eventually I'll have some kind of cancer. I would dismiss this as just morbid paranoid, except that I have, for many years, had an uncanny ability to predict people's health situations, and even deaths. The most alarming case was when I accidentally let it slip that I knew that someone else had stomach cancer and five years to live. A few weeks later I got independent confirmation that the cancer part was true. This was something he never would have told me (right up there with the time of day -- we were not close) but I had just seen it over the psychic lines. Ah, the joys of being a psychic empath. Yeah, like Deanna Troy, minus the cat suit. Short of it is: if I say you've got at least twenty five years to live, you need to plan accordingly and go clothes shopping.

Anyhow, I've long had this horrifying vision of having some kind of cancer. Probably breast cancer. My grandmother had it but it was right before she died of the complications of smoking. Please skip all the "Oh April you're just being nuts" comments. I know it's unlikely, and I'm doing everything I can (almost) to minimize my risk factors. I'm transitioning back into serious CR (1400 or so a day, quite well, for almost two weeks now) and I exercise, etc. I do yoga. I meditate. I don't snort asbestos. I don't live in north Jersey. So I do the best I can, and I don't sit around pondering this vision. It's just there in the back of my head.

In fact, months ago I had a vision of a cancer drug that would be devastating in its side effects, but that would actually to out to be the precursor to The Pill, the age reversing drug that is the holy grail that MR and A DNJ dG have been looking for all this time. Some kind of drug that nearly wipes out your body but regenerates a new one in its place. Sounds like science fiction and I have been reading a great deal of Stephenie Meyer, but the vision pounded into my head the way that true psychic visions hit me, and have never yet failed to come true. In fact, the vision was not of taking the drug myself. It was of being with MR some time many decades from now while he was taking it. And as I looked around the edges of the vision, I saw that the reason I wasn't also taking it was that I already had. To cure cancer, many years before. I had survived and in fact been regenerated. He hadn't become ill at all (all that good CR and April's home cooking) and therefore wasn't taking the drug till he was in his seventies or eighties or even later. Hard to see... he looks so young, even in visions of the future. I rather hope his hair goes a nice white shade of gray when it does go, but at this point it shows no signs of changing from pale carrot, and he's almost forty, leading me to wonder if it might turn a shade of light pink eventually. Could I spend the rest of eternity with a man with pink hair?

Pink hair and cancer visions aside, none of us has any time to waste. And we've all wasted time. I thought about how I've carried some grudges for a couple of years now and allowed anger to take away from some of my closest relationships, and what a waste of time that is. If I knew that the people close to me were dying (and aren't we all?) would I spend our precious hours nursing old hurts? Or would I just say, "Who cares, I love you!" We've all hurt each other in a million little ways, unless we just met. Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we've all done really stupid things, but that most of the time nobody set out to hurt someone else.

Every second counts on a clock that's ticking
Gotta live like we're dying!

Gotta tell 'em that we love them while we've got the chance to say
Gotta live like we're dying!

-- Kris Allen

There is so often something so undramatic, so anti-climactic about my life that the revelations come slow. There is rarely the screaming, smashing of glassware, punching holes in walls. No divorce, no tearful goodbyes, only tearful attempts to make it all work. "Whose idea was this?" I asked my mother a couple of years ago, surveying the entertaining chess game that my life had become. "Nobody *tries* to set it up like this," she said. I paraphrase.

I find it easier to forgive others than to forgive myself. I hate myself for falling off my hardcore CR, I hate every one of the extra ten pounds (depending on how you count it, I have lost some) and yet I love the compassion for others that they have given me. The more nuanced view of the world, the understanding that living in this food environment is hard. Temptation is everywhere, and the biological need for food is sometimes overriding. What are you willing to give up for longer, healthier life? It used to be easy for me but it's not easy any more.

Coming face to face with the temptation, and often failing miserably, taught me not to brag so much about my self-discipline. It happens to the best of us. I am no robot, though my partner may be.

I had a rather stark reminder a few days ago that we all do exactly what we think we can get away with. The problem with applying that strategy to health is that the only person we're cheating is ourselves. Trust me, none of you has done as good a job as I at externalizing the food police in our head. But even I understand that when I do things that compromise my health and longevity, the person who really loses is me. That doesn't stop me from yelling at MR (quietly, I am Southern, not from Brooklyn) and making him miserable as I whine about how hard it is to live with the pressure to be super CR girl. But deep down I know that it is I who set out on this journey and carefully constructed my life to support it, in spite of almost overwhelming obstacles. On this day in 2004, at that fateful party, I made the decision to save my own life. That I wasn't content to age and die like my co-workers and friends. That I didn't want to be in decline at the age of 29, huffing and puffing as I walked the stairs to my third floor office.

I lost forty pounds, gained fifteen back. Losing the fifteen. Wow, I was really skinny when Ray Kurzweil said, "You don't look skinny enough to be on CR!" Thanks, Ray. Good thing you like Alanis, else we'd have gotten into a fight over that one.

These days I am very good. Very healthy. Yoga, lifting, cardio. Low cal diet. Carb restriction, which really helps me with the REAL CR. Carbs make me hungry... who knew? Oh, I did, and so did everyone else, but I didn't get it through my head till I met the distinguished Dr. Feinman. The number of times the phrase, "Thank God for Dr. Feinman," is uttered in my house is at least five per week, and it's not me saying it.

But I found, eventually, that the Good was the enemy of the Better. Healthy eating will not extend your life, it will just reduce your risk of dying early. That's good but not good enough for me, and definitely not good enough for MR. We have had conflict, at times. But we are not having conflict over this anymore because I am committed, as I was when I was a young single CR girl, to eating kale and extending my life, perhaps to catch that elusive bus to more radical life-extension.

MR can't stand the idea of watching someone he loves age and die. Recently my iTunes somehow developed a mind of its own and downloaded a bunch of music to flesh out albums (do people under 30 know that word anymore?) from which I had purchased one song. It downloaded a bunch of Rita Coolidge, and don't get me wrong, I adore Rita, but I never meant to download "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love."

I'd rather leave while I'm in love
While I still believe
The meaning of the word
I'll keep my dreams and just pretend
That you and I are never gonna end
Too many times I've seen the rose die on the vine
Somebody's heart gets broken
Usually it's mine
I'll never take the chance on being hurt again
I'd rather leave while I'm in love.

-- Rita Coolidge

My thought when I heard this song, for the first time in probably twenty years, was that it reminds me of MR's outlook on love. The thought of me aging and dying before him tortures him, in a way that is touching and sweet and the way he reacts to being in love. We all react rather bizarrely to being in love: think of all those people who get married!

He can't stand the thought of me aging and dying. I don't like it much myself, but I have a more nuanced view. I've been around the block a few more times and been in love before. I can definitely identify with Rita's statement: "Somebody's heart gets broken -- usually it's mine."

I've just accepted that my heart will get broken from time to time. Sometimes that's the price of love, but I'm more than willing to pay it. If you shrink from love because you might eventually lose, then what have you got?

Every second counts on a clock that's ticking.

This is the one argument that the pro-aging trance people have that I think holds water: the knowledge of death makes us more aware of every moment we have to live. Unfortunately, most people (like me most of today!) act like time means nothing, is even something to be gotten through, endured.

The trick is not to speed your own mortality so that you appreciate life more: it's to live every day with the awareness that every second counts.

My gift (or is it the booby prize? So very Cassandra...) for seeing other people's deaths brings me face to face with this reality from time to time. It's a good thing MR does not have this gift. He would have even fewer friends than he already has.

But being me, the messy realist, the girl with her arms elbow-deep in the bloody thing that is human existence, will be right there at the sad times as well as the happy times. Unlike Rita, I'd rather stay while I'm in love. I'll choose reality over fantasy any time. Insulating myself from human connection has never worked for more than a few hours. Love is dangerous and messy and stuff gets all screwed up and people age and die, but as I say to my junior staff, "Deal with it."

I feel like having disagreed with Rita, I owe her the last word of this post. So I'll choose one from the song I actually intentionally downloaded, a song from a James Bond movie, "All Time HIgh."

We're an all time high
We'll change all that's gone before
Doing so much more than falling in love
On an all time high
We'll take on the world and win
So hold on tight
Let the flight begin.

-- Rita Coolidge, "All Time High"

Posted by april at 2:44 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

February 26, 2010

No Meeting. Bad Snow. Bad bad bad snow.

The snowstorm has managed to cancel the Nutrition and Metabolism Society meeting.

I am so sad. Like deeply darkly existentially sad. Really sad.

I was so excited about this. Had been counting the days.

Must somehow cheer up self. Am looking at the bright side:

-- more time to do laundry and clean house

-- easier to stick to calorie goals when at home

-- more time to do yoga

-- more time to pet Kieffer

-- there will be other meetings.

It's not working. I'm just sad.

Posted by april at 11:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 25, 2010

Pepperomile

I've just decided that that will be my name for my favorite herbal tea blend. I like my tea super strong, just like I like my coffee and so I frequently will make a large cup of tea with two teabags, and mix two different kinds. My favorite mix is peppermint and chamomile, which I've decided to call Pepperomile. Chamomint would be cute too, but is almost too catchy.

I'm drinking herbal tea in my office and watching the world turn into a recently shaken snow globe outside my window. I'm finding that the chamomile calms me down a bit... I am not anxious but rather extremely excited about the upcoming Nutrition and Metabolism Society meeting! It starts Sat at 10 am! RDF will be presenting, as well as Gene Fine (aka Eugene J Fine MD) who is doing research on the effects of ketogenic diets in cancer patients. Then Dr. Bernstein, about whom I have heard much, will be presenting. We'll also be talking about ways to get the information about low carb out to those in need. Low carbers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your grains!

Snow or no snow, I will go. I take trains all the way there, and trains are notoriously reliable. "The trains always run!" is my current mantra.

Okay, Pepperomile tea is consumed, and break's over. Back to work. Workers of the world unite...

Posted by april at 11:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 23, 2010

It Doesn't Take A Village To Eat A Pickle

More from the land of bizarre and irrational serving sizes:

I recently bought a large, very large, jar of my favorite pickles, Mt. Olive giant dills. They are made in my home state of North Carolina. I think.

Anyhow, curious to see what the calories were, I looked at the label. 5 calories! What a steal!

But wait... check the serving size: 5 calories per ounce, which is approximately 1/4 of a pickle.

Has anyone ever eaten a fourth of a pickle and considered it a serving?

Do you sit down to dinner with your perfect American family of four and share a pickle?

Do you go out for a business luncheon and suggest to your three colleagues that you order the dill pickle appetizer to share, then expect a plate to be brought to you bearing four even sized slices of pickle?

Do you think it takes a village to eat a pickle?

Serving sizes are madness. Madness I tell you.

Posted by april at 2:04 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 21, 2010

Chilled Dilled Carrot Soup

The Marie Claire photo people brought over some carrots cause apparently they think they are photogenic, so we ended up with a bunch of carrots and I wasn't sure what to do with them. So today I made a chilled, dilled carrot soup, and MR loved it.

1 (large) serving:

200 g carrots
15 - 30 g dill, depending on your preference
1/2 tsp to 1 tsp minced garlic
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt
1/4 cup nonfat ricotta
1 tsp olive oil

Blend all but the olive oil in the blender. Season with a touch of half or no salt, and some pepper to taste. Chill completely, then serve cold, topping with olive oil or flax oil.

Posted by april at 5:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 19, 2010

"You're A Junkie, Man! Save Some For the Rest of Us!"

I parked the car on the third floor of the office parking garage, not because, as I always say, I prefer to park far away and walk so as to get more exercise, but because I do not like to park near other cars. There, now you know the truth. It's not about fitness at all, it's entirely about fear of accidentally hitting someone else's car while trying to park.

I got out my bag of food and my giant binder of contact sheets I use when I'm recording my contacts with nurses. Shoved into the binder were a lot of scientific papers by various ones of the low carb boys (and a few girls in there) that I've taken to carrying around with me.

Somehow in the process of closing the car door the binder slid out of my hand and bounced on the parking garage floor, leading all the papers to jump out and scatter.

"Carbohydrate restriction in patients with advanced cancer: a protocol to assess safety and feasibility with an accompanying hypothesis," one of my favorites (authors: Eugene J. Fine, MD, MS, C. J. Segal-Isaacson, EdD, Richard Feinman, PhD, Joseph Sparano, MD) went flying across the parking lot at alarming speed.

"Good morning, Dr. Fine," I thought as I chased the paper, now blowing away from me in a strong wind, flying fast toward the roof. "Good morning, Dr. Feinman. Good morning other people I don't know."

I caught the paper and it's brothers, several others I've taken to carrying about in order to avoid the possibility of being stuck somewhere waiting for something with *no scientific papers.* The Fine and Feinman paper really made me chase it though... it made it halfway to the roof of the garage before I finally captured it by stepping on it (sorry, guys!) The entire scene must have looked quite silly: professionally dressed young woman in skirt, high heeled boots, and long, grown-up looking camel hair coat chasing scientific papers, calling after them as if they were school boys. "Got you!" I exclaimed as I captured the paper, tucking it safely back into my binder. You can run, but you can't hide.

The stack of papers that I carry around is rather large, and some of them are really well worn by now. Volek and Feinman is crinkly from being carried around so many places, and the ITT paper has nail polish stains on the back of several pages. The are, as my mother used to say about my stuffed animals, well-loved.

I love the fact that since I outed myself as a scientific paper junkie on blog, so many of my dear readers have confessed to a similar obsession. Reminds me of a old story a friend of mine used to tell about a friend of hers, let's call him Jon.

Jon was in his early twenties in the mid nineties, and was a union organizer. He also looked like a young Bon Jovi, and as you might imagine, did well with the ladies. Well, one day he was invited (in fact commanded to attend) an intervention, organized by the ex-girlfriends and female friends of a close friend of his who was suffering from a touch of a drug problem.

The friends all sat in a circle around the interven-ee (is that the word? I've never been to such an event) and the women cried, the ex-girlfriends telling him how much they loved him and hated to see him throwing his life away.

Eventually it came to Jon's turn, and he said, "You're a junkie, man! Save some for the rest of us!"

Thanks to the magic of Pub Med, my scientific paper junkieness need not impair yours in any way. Read what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law: start downloading today!

Posted by april at 7:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 17, 2010

What I Would Tell Someone Who Was Thinking of Suicide

A friend of mine, who is wise beyond his years, told me this story the other day. I have no idea if it was in the context of actually counseling someone who was contemplating suicide, or just random musings, but it really rang true to me.

"What I would tell someone who was contemplating suicide," he said, and I wondered where he was going with this, "Is that you just never know when something wonderful that you never could have expected is going to come out of nowhere..."

Yes...

"So you may as well stick around and wait."

Now I'm not sure how well this counsel would work for someone in the midst of a suicidal depression, but I think it's pretty awesome advice for life.

Those people who say they don't want to live any longer than however many years they think is "normal" often say, "But wouldn't you get bored?"

To which I say, "Only if you are really boring, in which case you are probably bored right now."

Do you really think that the entire human experience is so small that it can be had in 70 - 90 years? Only if you are so busy limiting your life such that you are learning nothing new, feeling nothing new, and having no fun.

The problem with being young is that you're often too busy figuring out who you are, dealing with the basic problems of economic survival, and just basically being crazy (find me a woman in her twenties and we have proof of this concept) to really enjoy the experiences life throws your way.

"When I was young, I was the craziest person I know," said another friend, the only person who gets to call me a kid without having a fairly large book thrown at his head, "Now I'm the sanest person I know."

I can't imagine getting bored just because I celebrate more birthdays. Even in the time since I turned 35, I've met so many fascinating people and had so many deliciously new experiences, things I could never have dreamed of in my twenties (okay, things I actually sat around dreaming about in my twenties but never had the guts to make happen) that I feel more motivated than ever to do what it takes to keep on going. And believe me: I know better than almost anyone how hard it is. You've read about my CR struggles, trying to balance a "real" job and social life, a relationship with the paragon of CR perfection, and a hardcore yoga practice... not to mention a genuine fondness for good French reds.

I have certainly gone through bad times, and at times fought that depression that whispers in your ear, "It's never going to get any better."

But I've always found that if I just hang on and keep going, and even take minor steps towards the world, instead of away from it, something wonderful comes out of nowhere and into my life.

[And do a bunch of headstands. I don't know why, but headstands seem to be very good for bringing incredible characters into my life. Try it and see... but please learn to do yoga before you attempt it.]

I'm planning to make the concept that something wonderful that you never could have foreseen will hit you in the face (metaphorically, I assure you) soon if you just hang on and wait for it the organizing principle of my life. When I look back, I find it was always true, I just never saw it in quite such stark relief before.

The things that seem like barriers to experiencing life are so often constructions of our imagination, or projections of what others want. "If you want to live forever, chances are you want to really LIVE!!!" said a friend of a friend not long ago, and it resonated with me.

Wanting to live longer is about wanting to really LIVE, no matter what that means to you. I know what it means to me. I can easily pinpoint the moments when I have felt most alive, and the quest for more of these moments is enough reason to stick around and see what happens.

"We'll see," people are fond of saying, and that's one of those things that is always true. We will see, but only if we're here to see it.

Posted by april at 3:23 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

February 11, 2010

But for now I find, it's only in my dreams...

"This song reminds you of Francis, doesn't it?"

So asked my boyfriend Paul in the fall of 1996. We were driving in DC, around DC really because he was constantly getting lost, and Eric Clapton's "Change the World" came on the radio.

We all remember the story of Francis\, right? The once upon a time love of my life. I've noticed that it seems to take two serious love affairs to dislodge the one two before from my mind. Francis got kicked out by MR, and we've been close friends ever since. I think he will be getting married soon... I'd always thought he would settle down before I did but I was wrong. But yes, that song was a Francis song. I wandered out into the organizing world determined to organize thousands of workers so Francis would realize that I was the girl of his dreams, and sure enough, I did it, leading to an amusing interval in the spring of 2003 (and the saying, "I never did have much luck flying to LA for sex") but we really are better off as friends. Francis is one of those people I can tell anything and everything to.

I've always had an activist bent towards the universe. Got it from my mom, I'm fairly sure. I graduated from Yale determined to become the best organizer of my generation, and pretty much did it by age 28. Organizers don't have much of a shelf life... we're a lot like ballerinas that way... and I had to organize a bunch of workers fast to impress Francis.

But back in 1996 when this was all just a fantasy, I was riding around DC in a rental car with my then-boyfriend Paul, who turned out to be a disaster, I was all about changing the world. And have always been, as much as I try to put some cynical padding around the crazy room of my delusions of grandeur.

My friend Fred Hahn (whom I've never met but I've decided he's my friend and people rarely turn down my friend requests ;) wrote this excellent article for the Huffington Post re: childhood obesity. Reading articles from like minded folks about public health and nutrition is like injecting heroin straight into my veins. One of the most fun things about being involved with the Nutrition and Metabolism Society\ is that it seems that everyone there has an activist outlook on the world. Even though frequently toned down by his best friend and chair of the Fine Tuning Committee, Dr. Eugene J Fine, MD, RDF has a fiery activist outlook on everything, to the point that he gets really, really mad about the dishonesty of the scientists who are now slouching towards low carb after years of advocating high carb, low fat diets, even for diabetes patients. And Dr. Fine is pretty fiery himself, just better at tuning it down a bit for the outside world. Watching them work together is almost too much fun. Whereas for years I had felt that I was dying in some sort of intellectual wasteland, loving my work but depriving my brain cells of oxygen, I am now thinking so fast that I can't keep up with myself.

The fact of the matter is that my delusions of grandeur aside, there are people who are dying of the complications of diabetes, and people who are suffering from all the negative effects of obesity, and try as I might to silence the part of me that wants to do something about it (shouldn't I be working? or cleaning the house?) I can't help it... the pull is so overwhelming that I find it takes up a lot of my waking thoughts.

But for now I find,
It's only in my dreams...

I'd never want to do anything health-related for a living. Seriously. I love the fact that my economic security has nothing to do with my published opinions on diet, and I can put a roof over the heads of my partner and my cat no matter what I say about carbs. Both RDF and EJF have "real" jobs that they can go to and therefore maintain their complete freedom to publish whatever revolutionary papers they want to, and they do.

I'll never do any revolutionary science: I'm just an organizer, and an arguably burnt out one at that. Yet I still have that desire to change the world... to at least make life a little better for a few people who are looking for a way to live longer and healthier.

I'll never do much of anything, most likely, but I still do have fun sitting here writing my blog and helping out a few people who want to change their lives, and occasionally trying to change mine.

If I could change the world
I would be the sunlight in your universe
You would think my love was really something good
Baby if I could change the world...

-- Eric Clapton

Posted by april at 9:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 10, 2010

But Not Just Yet...

One of my favorite songs of all time is Sting's "Saint Augustine in Hell." I heard it for the first time back in 1993 when the album first came out. I was a freshman at Yale, and I had just gotten home from the Yale Political Union's Washington, DC trip, a spring break tradition, where the Yale Political Union hacks met with congresspeople, pundits, journalists, and all sorts of people we thought were important, ostensibly to learn more about politics but actually to network for future jobs and give ourselves an excuse to make out with our respective boyfriends/girlfriends in a hotel in DC, which is infinitely more fun than doing so in a college dorm room.

On that trip I met my second college boyfriend, whom we'll call MCSC cause those are his initials. It was quite a scandal, really. I was the chair of the Liberal Party, then the farthest Left party of the YPU, and he was the head of the Libertarian wing of the Party of the Right. I sat next to him in the van on the way down to DC, a trip on which I distinctly remember a) getting lost b) listening to "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and realizing that that's definitely my song most autobiographical of any song I've ever heard c) falling head over heels in lust with MCSC, and the feeling was definitely reciprocated.

Chemical reaction, desire at first sight
Mystical attraction turned out all my lights.

-- Sting, "Saint Augustine in Hell"

It was just exactly like that. Of course there were problems: I had a boyfriend (the past president of the Yale Political Union, of course, whom I'd decided to seduce the minute I met him at pre-frosh days, that Yale weekend when high school seniors visit Yale and decide if it's where we want to go to college. Julian was the Chair of the Liberal Party of the YPU then and chaired the "Pre-frosh Debate," topic I can't remember to save my life. Ultra-geeky, super brilliant, fond of mixing patterns and prints, Julian started the debate by introducing himself. "Hi, my name is Julian, I'm a junior in JE [editor's note: it is Yale tradition to introduce yourself by your year and your residential college. I'm JE '96] and I'm the Chair of the Liberal Party," he said, and I mentally finished his sentence: "And you are MINE!" By the second week of my freshman year he was, indeed, my boyfriend (I moved quickly back in those days... one really doesn't have time to waste when one is 18, but then again, does one ever?) and the president of the Yale Political Union during one of its most successful semesters in anyone's memory.

But by spring break Julian was growing ever so slightly bored with me, as men have a habit of doing when they have a female available to them morning noon and night, and back in those days I hadn't leaned the hard lesson that one must occasionally attempt to be a bit more difficult. So when I sat down in the van on the way to DC next to the dashing, charming, brilliant, witty and extremely interested in me MCSC, there was no doubt that sparks would fly.

A huge scandal ensued: I was running for Chair of the Liberal Party, and an opposition had formed that thought I was too associated with the party's old guard, personified by my boyfriend Julian. As often happens when women seek positions of power, I was attacked on the basis of my sexuality: rumors floated that I was having an affair with MCSC (which, for the record, I wasn't: we didn't move beyond the realm of friendship until the next year after Julian and I had broken up, though there were reports that MCSC was seen in my dorm room drinking Diet Dr. Pepper late at night, and the fact that someone was spying on me through the windows in such detail that they could report the brand of soda consumed was scary.) I got called every name in the book that is usually leveled at a woman who is seeking power if she is at all attractive, but I won in the end anyhow and had a great semester as Liberal Party Chair. Julian stood by me, and we remain good friends to this day, when he is married to an astoundingly beautiful woman and they just had their first child last year.

But back at the time of the scandal, when I first bought Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales," I definitely resonated with the song "Saint Augustine in Hell." On top of the obvious, I was mildly obsessed with Saint Augustine. My mother taught me early on that Augustine is to blame for most of the problems one finds one has being a woman, and I had read "Confessions" at just the right age to think that just because Augustine got himself into a sex mess with a girl didn't give him license to ruin it for the rest of us for thousands of years. Way to put f*&ked up Greek dualism into Christianity, where it didn't belong, but ANYWAY... and don't even get me started on the letters of Abelard and Heloise.

One of Saint Augustine's better known quotes was his prayer to God to "Make me chaste, but not just yet."

Does that sound familiar to any of you dieters or CR folk out there?

It's a close cousin of "Last Night on Earth." I will start to be more strict, but not quite yet. Like, any minute now. After this event, that party, this dinner out, this caving in to the can of 98% fat free ravioli in the cupboard that I bought in a fit of enthusiasm over my low carb self discipline... WTF???

I consider my upcoming week. I have a photo shoot for Marie Claire on Tuesday night so I will be laying off the salt at the weekend. But on Saturday I'm going to a wine and chocolate tasting some friends are giving, and I can't eat chocolate (sugar gives me anxiety attacks) but I will be drinking the wine, and then I'm meeting a friend for dinner, and I've already made it clear that I want to go to my favorite salad place in Philly (hand cut turkey, radishes, arugula, goat cheese, tomatoes) and yet if I'm not super careful with my calories early in the day, the wine calories from the tasting will put me over my goal. And I haven't been able to get to the gym or yoga (other than home practice) because we are snowed in. Of all times, this week I must be careful about my calories, but it's so tempting to say, "I'll be really, really strict on my calories... after *insert name of event.*"

This is the enemy of CR or even of healthy dieting. This is where I those who say that the diet mentality is unhelpful are really onto something. If you think of a diet as a punishment that you will enter into after one more indulgence, you're just going to either a) keep putting off the start date or b) be really miserable once you do in fact start.

The thing I find so wonderful about low carb is that metabolic advantage aside (and I believe it's real, I actually read those papers about ten times each) eating lower carb really is a great way to control appetite. I'm so much hungrier if I have lots of carbs, especially early in the day. For me, the same holds true whether it's a bagel or oatmeal: YMMV. Just avoiding unnecessary carbs for a couple of weeks led to a four pound weight loss that I have maintained, but I am still not being careful enough in my daily calories to be at CR fighting weight. I'd really like to be there by my CR birthday, March 26.

Don't get me wrong: I love the way Iook now. I'm very nearly in the best shape of my life, with all the yoga and Pilates and healthy food. But as we all know, that's not CR. I want to get back to the razor's edge... soon...

It was so easy the first time, and now it seems harder. Definitely feeding hungry yoga muscle takes up a lot of calories that I could easily do without before, and I lost weight so fast that it's obvious that I was just living on my tank of fat as I kept to those super-low calorie levels. But striking a balance continues to be difficult, unless I do everything right.

Here's what works (for me):

a) Low carb. Under 100 g a day, with very few carbs early in the day. That makes me much less hungry.
b) High protein, especially at lunch.
c) High unsaturated fat.
d) Fried eggs and Brussels sprouts. Could live on. Wait, am not allowed to eat whole eggs or anything fried! I meant: steamed Brussels sprouts with nonfat plain organic yogurt and flax oil. Yes, that's exactly what I meant. I apologize for any confusion.

CR is hard. Anyone who tells you it's not is either a) in the early stages of euphoria b) not really doing it. Fighting your biological programming (and I think this is especially hard when you're a woman of childbearing age -- I agree with you on that, Robert!) takes constant vigilance.

It's hard but not impossible. The tool kit, for me, includes all the elements above plus careful weighing and measuring. And planning in advance.

Here's today:

Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.7
Nutrition Summary for February 11, 2010
General (43%)
Energy 1009.6 kcal 38%
Protein 97.5 g 48%
Carbs 85.0 g 28%
Fiber 23.5 g 62%
Fat 37.3 g 41%
Vitamins (89%)
Vitamin A 20764.2 IU 692%
Folate 597.9 µg 149%
B1 (Thiamine) 2.0 mg 168%
B2 (Riboflavin) 3.7 mg 287%
B3 (Niacin) 17.0 mg 106%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid) 6.0 mg 120%
B6 (Pyridoxine) 2.4 mg 182%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) 2.1 µg 88%
Vitamin C 264.7 mg 294%
Vitamin D 14.0 IU 7%
Vitamin E 10.5 mg 70%
Vitamin K 270.1 µg 225%
Minerals (98%)
Calcium 1275.1 mg 128%
Copper 1.9 mg 216%
Iron 11.5 mg 144%
Magnesium 398.6 mg 95%
Manganese 2.5 mg 107%
Phosphorus 1751.1 mg 250%
Potassium 4149.9 mg 88%
Selenium 126.8 µg 231%
Sodium 3049.9 mg 203%
Zinc 11.9 mg 108%
Lipids (52%)
Saturated 4.8 g 24%
Omega-3 5.2 g 323%
Omega-6 8.6 g 50%
Cholesterol 98.1 mg 33%

Don't worry, I will eat more than that to get up to 1400. That's just the "must eat" category. Pretty good eh?

It's:

200 g turkey
2 cups Butterworks Farms nonfat organic plain yogurt
150 g bok choi
150 g romaine lettuce
2 tsp flax oil
15 g pumpkin seeds
30 g almonds
300 g cauliflower (mashed)
2 Laughing Cow Light cheeses
2 tbsps Lewis Labs brewers yeast dissolved in nonfat organic low sodium chicken broth
50 g shiitake mushrooms

Meanwhile, we remain covered under snow, and I'm not even sure I can get to the office today so may end up working from home again. In any event, I have my good healthy foods!

Posted by april at 8:42 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 7, 2010

Another Weird Thing About Me That You Didn't Know

Back in 2000 I ran an organizing campaign at Bayonne Hospital in Bayonne, NJ. One of my favorite workers was nuclear med tech who was absolutely brilliant, funny, and among other things sang in the New York Gay Men's Chorus. At night after I'd finished my work calls I'd call him to check in on how his co-workers were doing (in a union campaign things move really, really fast so nightly check-ins with key leaders are normal) but after that we'd stay on the phone talking about everything in the world, sometimes until late at night.

One of the bizarre tangents we got on once was strange things that turn us on. His strangest, and you'd think it would be mine with how much I adore vegetables, was that he found it really sexy if he saw a cute guy carefully checking out the produce at the grocery store. Like tapping the cantaloupe, squeezing the eggplant, etc. That's weird, but you can totally see the appeal.

Mine were pretty weird too, some more predictable than others. For instance, everybody knows that I am rarely in the slightest bit attracted to a man who *doesn't* wear glasses. Over time I've come to associate glasses with brains, and we CR girls like our boys smart. So that one's not too weird.

Second: typing. The one boy who really broke my heart in college, whose name I will not mention for fear of invoking him, was the best typist I'd ever met. I used to lie in his bed and close my eyes and listen to him type... one straight line, no stops. Amazing. Never got over it really. Until I met MR, I always knew that if he who shall not be named were to turn up, I'd probably leave anyone I was dating for him. I knew it was serious with MR when I told him that he was the first man I would not leave for HWSNBN.

Third parallel parking: I am so terrified of parallel parking that I have a mental block on how to spell parallel. I can do it, and I do have to do it sometimes, but I will do almost anything to avoid it, including calling MR from up the block and telling him to come out and park the car if there are no easily accessible spaces on the street. I find it almost unbearably sexy when a man can parallel park really well. My ex was the best ever: I would look at a space and say, "You can not possibly get into that space!" and he'd do it in seconds, without really even having to adjust. I, on the other hand, am the queen of the 64 point turn.

Then this morning a new one occurred to me, and it's really weird, but highly adaptive. I find it exstremely sexy when men shovel snow. I didn't realize it until today, but I just think that's really hot.

Of course we are having a giant snow storm in the Northeast, so attracting a mate who shovels snow is a highly adaptive behavior. Sorta like how MR was attracted to me in large part when he read all my blog postings of my delicious recipes... just waiting for someone to cook for... about a year later he realized the degree to which he fell into a carefully constructed trap, but by that time he was too hooked to mind.

In any event, ladies, I suggest that even if you do not genuinely find the concept of men shoveling snow inherently sexy, you should put out press releases that you do, as you may find that your husband/boyfriend/partner is more likely to clear the sidewalk without complaint.

But to be fair, you might want to make a nice stuffed eggplant afterward!

Posted by april at 8:16 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 6, 2010

It's Like Nothing Else Can Make You Sure You're Alive

Well, don't die of shock, but I'm doing it again.

I got an inquiry from a freelance journalist writing for Marie Claire UK, wanting to do a story on CR. And sure enough, she wants to interview the redheaded CR couple.

I was hesitant to do it. How much hell have I been through with media? A lot.

But I love Marie Claire magazine, the British press has tended to be a bit better to us than the American press, and I really liked this journalist, Jenny Kleeman. And silly me, I still think that when some people read these articles and decide to find out more about CR for themselves that some good happens in the world. Maybe not a lot, but a little.

So I agreed to do it. Did the interview this morning. The photographers are coming out this week to do the photo shoot.

So I am preparing myself for yet another round of "April Smith is anorexic!" followed closely by cries of "April Smith is too fat!" What fun.

Yet, a few people will find information that will help them do some research and improve their lives. We hope.

She asked the usual questions, and I hope I didn't sound stale answering them. There are so many that I've answered so many times that it's hard to keep it fresh. Unlike a first meeting with nurses, which I seem to make new every time I do it even though I've done literally thousands ("I could see it again and again!") I find re-telling the story of how I got into CR, how much weight I lost, what I eat every day, a bit dull after all this time. Still, Jenny was very nice, extremely respectful of us and our privacy, and quite a bit of fun to work with.

As required by law, she asked the whole CR and libido question.

I've answered that one a lot. As half of one of the two most famous CR couples, I get that question a lot.

My first reaction, honestly, is that my sex life is really nobody's business. But the fact is, low libido is an oft reported side effect of CR, and so we do have to address it in one form or another.

I gave the standard answers: first, women do not seem to experience any changes at all. I didn't. I was born boy crazy and a forty pound weight loss didn't change a thing.

So that leaves us the question of what is the effect of extreme CR on men.

The myths are: CR'd men lose all interest in sex, become celibate monks, and wear comfortable but unflattering clothing. This could not be farther from the truth.*

There is, however, a change. MR puts it best: he describes himself pre-CR as obsessed with sex, and evaluating the entire world through that filter. Upon meeting a woman, in any context, he would be focusing with his conscious mind on whatever the supposed purpose of the interaction was (business or whatever) but in the background he would be evaluating her as a sex object: "Do I want to sleep with this woman? Could I sleep with this woman? How difficult would it be to get this woman into bed? Would I likely be arrested or killed for sleeping with this woman?" You get the idea. That's not in the forefront of consciousness, but it's there, the bass in the soundtrack of life, all the time.

I may overstate it, but I think this is the normal state of being for men, and for a lot if not most women too. As civilized as we may be, there is a constant background noise of checking out potential sex objects just under the main melody of whatever it is we may be ostensibly doing.

As a woman, I experience this from both sides. When I first met MR, and several other of the extremely CR'd brothers at the first CR Conference, I noticed that something was missing. They didn't check me out! That subtle, almost imperceptible (if you're not good at looking for it) looking up and down and evaluating as a sex object was not there.

"What the hell is wrong with these people???" I asked myself, and later, I asked them.

Sure enough, that zinging around of sexual energy just wasn't there right off the bat.

However, once we got to know each other, and once I became a close friend and a real potential girlfriend and someone he knew intellectually and spiritually, all the sex drive stuff seemed to pop right back for MR, and (the detail will not detain us here) all has been quite well since.

Still, having known several very CR'd men, I can attest to the bizarreness of being around men who don't have the normal testosterone driven libido. It's like being around gay men, except with gay men there's an obvious explanation for why they're not checking us out, and we go out to dinner with them and their boyfriends and we check out guys together and all is well.

I do find myself occasionally upon meeting a non-CR'd man thinking, "Thank God, you're normal!" I really enjoy the zing zing zing of sexual energy floating up and down the psychoenergetic lines that flow between people, and consider it one of the most fun aspects of being human. As Todd Rundgren says, "It's nothing else can make you sure you're alive." It doesn't matter if I'm in a situation where I would actually *do* something about it or not: it's just fun to have the energy, the general affirmation of life force that a bit of flirting can be. As Crowley writes,

Mysterious Energy, triform, mysterious Matter, in fourfold and sevenfold division, the interplay of which things weave the dance of the Veil of Life upon the Face of the Spirit, let there be Harmony and Beauty in your mystic loves, that in us may be health and wealth and strength and divine pleasure according to the Law of Liberty; let each pursue his Will as a strong man that rejoiceth in his way, as the course of a Star that blazeth for ever among the joyous company of Heaven.

Yeah, I can vibe with that. Even in a situation where there is no way I would take action of any sort (for instance: a man is happily married, my boyfriend's best friend and/or brother, and/or a convicted serial killer) there's still no better shot of energy than a bit of mild flirting. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, unless you count those sugar free energy drinks which are supposed to kill you if you drink them with vodka.

The super CR'd men I've met have reported that they have extremely satisfying relationships with their wives/girlfriends/boyfriends/partners, but that they obsess about sex a lot less and they like it that way. It seems to free up their consciousness in a way that they find an improvement, while not detracting from healthy sex lives with their partners.

I can see the benefit of that. I've spent a great deal of my life, if not the majority of my life, obsessing about this boy or the other, driven in large part by a craving not so much for physical sex but for a kind of emotional connection that feeds upon sexual energy. Most if not all of my biggest accomplishments have been fueled in large part by this energy. I'm just as glad that, having already been to my razor's edge of CR, I know that never changes for me. At the razor's edge, I can be pretty darned obsessed with a cup of cottage cheese, but I would still never let a cute boy go by unnoticed.

Still, it can be distracting, and I can understand how the super-CR'd men who find this filter removed from their consciousness prefer their post-CR state. I will probably never know how that would be.

MR says that CR'd men are more like normal women: they enjoy sex, but mostly in the context of an emotional and spiritual connection that goes far beyond the physical. I find this to be true enough. I've rarely if ever been sexually attracted to anyone I didn't have a pretty profound intellectual affinity with. (Well, except that guy I picked up from jail in 2000, but that was a long time ago.) As my CR-girlfriends and I are frequently observing, we do love our smart boys.

When you know enough about neuroscience, it's easy to be depressed by the thought that what we think is a mystical connection is just a series of electronic impulses firing in the brain making us act weird. The experience of CR'd men really shows how much hormones influence the world view of us normal people. Do I occasionally envy that calm, rational state? Yeah, from time to time. Would I want the fear of a change in the nature of libido to scare men away from CR? No, as long as they were careful to check me out first.

*Note: MR, upon reading this, pointed out that he does wear comfortable clothing around the house, and that some might consider it unflattering. I disagree: I think the comfy clothes he wears about the house are quite adorable (and I note that he likes me in Hello Kitty pyjamas and sweatshirts) and that most men, even those of perfectly normal libido, wear comfortable clothes when hanging around the house with the wife and cat. This is not a marker of CR, that's just what people do.

Posted by april at 2:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 3, 2010

April and the Breakfast of Doom

"Are you sure you want to do that?" asked MR at 5:30 this morning as I scooped Nancy's Organic cottage cheese (the best on the planet) into a 1 cup measuring cup. I had said, two days before, that eating cottage cheese for breakfast causes me to be very hungry very shortly thereafter, and is probably therefore not a good CR strategy. In general, in fact, I don't eat breakfast at all, as I find that I am not much more hungry immediately preceeding lunch if I don't eat breakfast at all, and so it's a great way to save calories. But this morning I knew I was going to be doing nurse meetings in a room with a dozen Dunkin Donuts bagels: my arch nemesis. So I figured I'd better fortify myself, and I was trying to consume as little methionine as possible (see previous post for why/how this all came about) so the eggwhite and flax oil breakfast of CR glory days was out, and I wanted to eat something.

I ate the cottage cheese with flax oil. It was delicious.

I was still hungry. Even right at that moment.

I went to the meeting. I had volunteered to pick up food for the morning meeting (we are legally required to provide bagels if it's before 11 am, at which point we become legally required to provide pizza) so I went to Dunkin Donuts and ordered them.

In the old days, pre-CR, I would have eaten a sesame bagel with light veggie cream cheese (lowfat don't ya know???) and a Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream and sugar on my way to the meeting, and then probably another at the meeting, but those days are long gone... right?

I got to the meeting. My co-workers were there. The nurses didn't show, but that's not all that unusual. My co-workers ate bagels. We had a productive meeting amongst ourselves.

"Oh come on..." the evil inner voice said in my head..."You can have just a bite. You know you love sesame bagels. Just a little bit. You can go online and figure out the calorie count later and just adjust for it. Just a little bite... yum yum yum... you've been soooooo good lately..."

And I was really hungry in that wiggy, blood sugar out of whack way that you forget about once you're on a low carb diet for awhile. Apparently cottage cheese causes a weird insulin release because the protein in cottage cheese is the highest insulin spiking of all known proteins, and it only has a little bit of carb, so when you have a big spike of insulin as though you'd just had a big bowl of sugar, and then you have cottage cheese, the insulin surge sweeps all the glucose out of your bloodstream all at once and then you go, "AAAAARGH!" Causing a fairly quick explosion of hunger. This is made much worse by being in a many hour fasting state first thing in the morning.

So I was wigging out.

Then I ate a little bit of bagel. Then I ate a little more. Then the just one bite thing went swimmingly out the window, and I ate AN ENTIRE BAGEL.. With reduced fat veggie cream cheese, which really is quite good.

Here is the thing about me and bagels: I can not have just one bite. No, I can not. Bagels are the kind of thing for me that if I am going to have even the smallest sample, I must be prepared to commit to eating the entire thing. It's very important in CR to know if you have these triggers. There are plenty of foods of which I can have just a small sample and be satisfied, or at least stop myself from going forward. But there are a very few things, of which the bagel with cream cheese is the main one, that I can not even nibble at unless I am prepared to go all the way.

Bagel: gone. For the record, it really was just as delicious as I had remembered it, as I had perhaps fantasized about it being in the early moments of the meeting when I hadn't really been paying attention to Edward and was instead staring at the naked and defenseless sesame bagel just a few feet away from me. How can a girl with normal, healthy appetites possibly be expected to resist such temptation? (This is where changing the food environment comes in!) I am no anorexic: i have the compulsion to eat the bagel just like everyone else, but over time I've learned strategies to stop myself. *Most* of the time. And most of the time, I don't put myself in the same room with something I desperately want unless I'm planning to have it.

Then after the meeting, I looked for it's nutrition information online.

Okay, bad news. But not surprising... I vaguely knew it even before the evil voice in my head urged the oft-failed "just one bite" strategy.

It was 8:45 am and between the cottage cheese and flax breakfast and the bagel with cream cheese, I had already eaten 760 calories.

I wrote my CR girlfriend Paige in a panic, and she reminded me to eat normally for the rest of the day and jump right back on the CRCR wagon. Of course, she was right. (She was also, for the record, feeding my own advice right back to me. :)

Still, I berated myself. I'd been doing so well! Low carb is working for me! I feel great almost all the time! My yoga practice is soaring! I can wear my favorite skirt again! I would just not eat until dinner, I resolved.

Yeah right.

I went to a yoga class and practiced hard for an hour and a half. Excellent class, even though a class that isn't with Jonathan never measures up to what the Mozart of Iyengar can do.

Did yoga. Craved a Diet Coke bigntime, which I always do after yoga, but had no access to one so went back to the office.

All the things I was supposed to do there ended up either canceled or just as well done at home (I work from home a lot, which is great except that it means I never stop working) so I decided to run a few errands then get on home and work.

Went to the wine store... MR was almost out of Pinot Noir.

Went to Lee's Produce to pick up bok choi, shiitake mushrooms, and some other stuff. Was already very hungry... it was nearly 1:30 by this time. I'd had no protein or fat since the cottage and flax this morning at 5:30 am other than the small amount in the light cream cheese.

I ate a pint of grape tomatoes. That's not too bad.

Then I was overwhelmed with the worst sugar craving I've had literally in years. The little produce store (with great prices on fresh veggies) carries a whole host of sugary candies in small plastic tubs, including gummy peaches, pineapples, worms, bears, eggs, snakes, papayas, and little gummy figures of Obama as well as tons of dried fruits, which pre-CR I adored.

There was something so wacky going on with my blood sugar that I just about freaked out. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't look at sugary candies because sugar gives me anxiety attacks. But I was losing it.

I implemented a harm-reduction strategy: I purchased and ate one gummy fruit slice. Red. I love red candies. All my favorite candies are red.

Immediately I started to calm down. But I was still hungry.

"F*&k this low protein, low methionine s*^t." I thought.

I walked in the door of the house and went straight to the fridge. That no antibiotics no hormones lean turkey breast I'd told MR I'd give away after Sunday night's conversation when we decided I'd try to go vegetarian and low protein: I was glad it was still in the fridge. Straight onto the stove it went, in a saucepan with organic free range chicken broth, vinegar, garlic and capers. Bubble bubble, toil and trouble!

Upstairs I went, and burst in on MR's office where he was actually trying to get work done.

As usual, he drops everything for me. "I'm having a horrible day!" I exclaimed.

As it turns out, he had meant to tell me, after our conversation on Sunday night, that he actually didn't think I should decrease protein while I was still in active weight loss phase because those who do that often see too much lose of lean body mass. But he didn't want to micromanage my diet, so he hadn't mentioned it.

And if, in the end, I need high protein and meat to maintain CR calorie levels, then that way trumps methionine restriction or other concerns.

Yum yum yum. I ate my turkey. I started to feel like the sane, rational person I've come to fancy myself to be again.

I will probably go back to skipping breakfast entirely. On days when I have early yoga class, it's essential because you can't eat before practice (if you want proof, eat a big breakfast and then try to do a headstand.) Sure, I'm hungry from 10 - 12, but it seems I'm hungry during that time even if I eat breakfast, so may as well save the 200 - 300 calories.

In any event, my cottage cheese consumption, like most people's alcohol consumption, will be confined to after 5 pm with meals.

Posted by april at 12:28 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Feinman's First Law of Nutrition

[I wrote this last Sunday, but changed a few things in the draft. It will be rather important as background to the next entry so I re-post.]

Well, I've finally figured it out.

MR hid it carefully, cloaked in discussions of beliefs that we share that make marriage unlikely if not impossible. (We don't believe in marriage: we believe that it happens, but to other people. Like diabetes and plagues of locusts.) All this time I thought MR was genuinely ideologically opposed to marriage. We've saved our friends and family thousands of dollars by refusing to get married, and we've finally been together long enough that people stop asking when we're going to get the state's stamp on our relationship. He is on my health insurance. We have a joint credit card, we own a house together. We have no intention of ever breaking up. But we're not getting married. Ever. Not just because the thought of marriage makes me so physically ill that I can't even look at either red wine or Diet Coke.

Nope. Now I've figured out his real reason for not wanting to get married. It's a really sketchy attempt to get around Feinman's First Law Of Nutrition.

Thou shalt not interfere in thy spouse's diet.
- Richard David Feinman

You can see how this would be a very good law for maintaining domestic tranquility.

To be fair, MR has gotten very good about biting his tongue and letting me eat whatever I'm going to eat. He's survived many an episode of me going out with friends and overeating and overdrinking, and he long ago got over the notion that I would weigh and measure every single grape tomato. Most of the time he's just trying to be helpful. For instance, yesterday at lunch when he pointed out that since I frequently do not have dinner on Sunday nights (I eat breakfast only on Sundays, so I often don't have dinner. I'm a two meals a day person.) I should have flax oil with my salad at lunch instead of nuts.

To a normal person, this would be no big deal. But I over-react. I live with the world's icon of CR perfection, and it is at times a bit hard to not measure up. MR has been incredibly patient with me, especially considering that when we first got together I was both much better than I am now, and I also held myself out to be somewhat better than I am (who doesn't, in the early phases of seduction?) But my nerves are rubbed raw. So I overreact and turn into Ms. Mean Nasty B*t&h.

Having decided that we're already going there, I asked him what else he'd change about my diet, if he were given the opportunity to offer an opinion.

Silly me.

He'd have me quit or dramatically curtail meat consumption.

I'm really glad I ate those organic free range uncured turkey dogs before finding this out.

He has lots of good reasons: not methionine restriction, but methionine normalization. Epidemiological evidence that those who are either ovo-lacto vegetarians or eat meat less than once a week have lower risk of heart disease (for which I think my risk is approaching zero but anyway.) Environmental concerns.

So I figure I'll try it.

I created a template of foods to eat every day to make sure I get all my nutrition with minimal meat, moderate (rather than high) protein, and low carb. To this, I will add a) wine b) low carb veggies c) nuts, avocadoes, olives etc. d) little low fat cheeses, like Baby Bel and Laughing Cow Light (little processed cheeses are among my favorite things on earth) to get up to a target of 1400 calories/day.

2 cups nonfat plain organic yogurt
15 g pumpkin seeds
30 g almonds
150 g bok choi
150 g romaine
50 g radishes
300 g cauliflower
2 tsps flax oil
2 tbsps Lewis Labs brewers' yeast, which I will most likely put in organic veggie broth, no salt

Nutrition Summary for January 31, 2010
Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.7
===========================================

Lipids (42%)
===========================================
Saturated | 3.9 g 19%
Omega-3 | 5.1 g 321%
Omega-6 | 8.1 g 47%
Cholesterol | 5.4 mg 2%

Pretty good, eh? Plenty of room to grow in carbs from veggies before hitting 100, some room to grow in protein, but most of the nutritional bases covered.

Food is such a powerful issue in relationships. Back when I was a vegan, I dated a guy for two years who was really not good for me at all, but who was a vegan. We met at a political meeting to which I had brought vegan cookies. "Are these vegan?" he asked. "Yes, are you a vegan?" I asked. Sure enough, he was, and I decided at that moment to seduce him. We lived together for nearly two years of vegan cooking. He was an incredible tofu chef. I made lemon lentil soup that is to die for. He claimed that he was afraid of water, and therefore could not shower by himself. I was so enraptured that I actually bought this, and took a shower with him every other day. He didn't shower at all on the off days... he was a trust fund anarchist and had no job nor need of one... after leaving that relationship (for the guy who later, when I was 28, dumped me for a 22 year old Ruwandan refugee) I made a decision that from thenceforth, I would only date men who shower at least once a day. You know, some things should go without saying, but nothing ever does.

[Note, totally not CR related: I have observed that anytime I tell this story to a man, his reaction is something to the effect of, "Afraid of water? Why didn't I think of that???" So for all you gentlemen readers out there, try it on your wife or girlfriend today. If you are gay, I doubt your partner will fall for this trick, but feel free to try it anyhow. Afraid of water. Can't shower alone. Horrible panic attacks can be averted simply by having some company in the shower. If this works for you, it is evidence that either a) your girlfriend is really stupid b) she just wanted to take a shower with you anyway.]

The thrill of being with someone who shares your food beliefs, when you're one of us nutrition nutcases who thinks about this stuff all the time, is pretty amazing. I imagine it must be like when those people who play with model trains get together, or a Star Trek convention. Sharing a common passion is powerful and exciting, and it is certainly what drew me to MR in the first place. Our first few days in Calgary of CR-geeking out together were incredibly fun, and over the years we've had a lot of partner in crime moments as we weighed out our his and hers celery and played with DWIDP and later CRON-o-Meter. My creep off of CR and into mere healthy eating has been more frustrating for me than for him, but surely it has been frustrating and upsetting. Now that I'm back, things are better. He is so proud of me as I measure out my pumpkin seeds and read my scientific papers.

Still, I will never be quite like MR, and he accepts that. I will always go out, both for work and with friends. My idea of heaven is the Control Freak Salad at Marathon Grill, my favorite Philly salad place, and I don't know the exact calories on the salad I have there but I know it's low carb, high nutrition, and really really yummy. MR would never eat that because he only eats things that are weighed and measured, yet we've managed to make peace.

I doubt that, in spite of his very excellent best efforts, MR will ever be able to follow Feinman's First Law of Nutrition. He's too invested in my health and longevity to just leave well enough alone. So sometimes it's just easier for me to do what he wants rather than fight sad face. Argument from authority, no. Argument from the man you wake up next to.

And of course I want to live long and be healthy. I started to see signs of aging last week, though I think I was just tired, and I had that panic that drove me to hardcore CR in the first place. I need time. I hate the idea of aging, the idea that people who have finally learned how to behave like grown-ups don't stick around all that much longer. I want to look 50 when I'm 70. CR is the only intervention known to...

So very little meat, low carb, low protein, low sat fat, high MUFA and PUFA (awwww, the names of my eventual pet rats!) and I still get to drink wine. I can handle that. Hardcore we go again. 1400 with no going out, or at least very rare going out. At my activity level that will land me where I want to be in just the right amount of time.

The things I'm not eating are becoming a large list. Oh well. I've recently threatened to exist only on mashed cauliflower, flax oil and Laughing Cow Light. I don't need a lot of variety. Having found two things I really like, I don't really want much of anything else.

I've always felt sorry for the CR sisters who have partners who aren't supportive of their CR. I still do. It must be awful to be told you're too skinny (something that rarely happened to me even at 99) and have pressure to eat gak. I am grateful that I have a partner who is so supportive of my CR that sometimes he goes overboard. He forgives me for all the times I wasn't what I promised to be... I forgive him for the occasional micro-management.

Can I have an egg now?

Posted by april at 4:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 2, 2010

Lemongrass Soup

Here's a new one: Lemongrass Soup

I just made it up, loosely based on an old lemon Thai coconut soup I used to make.

1 cup or so of veggie broth with Rapunzel no salt added vegan veggie broth
23 g lemon grass, fresh, diced
garlic
129 g portabello mushrooms, diced
300 g asparagus diced

I boiled the broth with the lemongrass in it, then added the mushrooms. Now they're simmering on the stove for two hours. I won't be home for dinner, but I popped home between work meetings to make MR's dinner. I've set out the asparagus for him to add just before heating to serve, so they don't get overcooked.

We'll see how it turns out. He's eating that along with his standard template of 5 g hazelnuts and 40 g avocado, which will go on the side salad of romaine, Quorn tenders, nonfat mozza, and 200 g zucchini that I've made him. The zucchini are marinated in Walden Farms Caesar dressing. He also gets a teaspoon of flax oil and one of olive oil plus his standard 3 oz serving of pinot noir.

I'm exhausted but the meetings are going well, and I did make it to the gym for a good 30 mins on the treadmill. I go up to 12 incline at 4.2 mph. It works up just enough of a sweat. Doing cardio daily also seems to help me sleep and make me less irritable.

Tomorrow I have to go to yoga. No... matter... what.

Posted by april at 3:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Today

===========================================
Nutrition Summary for February 2, 2010
Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.7
===========================================

Lipids (46%)
===========================================
Saturated | 5.6 g 28%
Omega-3 | 5.2 g 322%
Omega-6 | 8.1 g 48%
Cholesterol | 21.6 mg 7%

1 cup Nancy's Organic Cottage Cheese
1 tsp flax oil
15 g pumpkin seeds, unsalted, raw
30 g almonds
1 cup Butterworks' Farms nonfat plain organic yogurt
300 g cauliflower
150 g bok choi
150 g romaine
50 g radishes
50 g cucumber
90 - 110 calories worth of various favorite little processed cheeses: Laughing Cow Light, Mini Baby Bel, Weight Watchers string cheese, etc.
2 glasses red wine (5 oz)
2 tbsps Lewis Labs brewers' yeast
1 cup organic chicken broth (in which Lewis Labs is dissolved)

A little higher in protein than MR would ideally like, but I'm going to be locked in a room with bagels all morning, and I didn't eat dinner last night, so that high protein breakfast was important (cottage cheese today... not as bad on methionine as eggwhites.)

Room to grow by 200 calories... calorie goal currently at 1400. If I add calories they will probably be in the form of nuts. Nuts are so easy quick and convenient, and very low carb and relatively low protein. Who would have ever thought that I would be attempting to cut back on the two macronutrients that in my past life were the focus of my diet? Re-inventing... she's changing her name from Kitty to Karen...

Busy day today... meetings, gym, office, meetings, etc. MR packed my nut and seed bag, and the rest of my food is already at the office. Our new office is lovely. I actually like going there.

I am almost done with the Twilight series of vampire novels. Good thing, as I have actual important reading to do that has been on hold since I couldn't put down the vampire books.

Had a dream the other night that I was at a conference and every pop nutrition book writer I'd ever read was there. I gave Dean Ornish a big hug. Couldn't help it.

What do you think is the best thing to eat immediately after working out? If it's a high calorie burn workout, I find I like yogurt and almonds. If it's a lower calorie burn workout (like Iyengar, big muscle build but fewer calories burnt just in the practice) I like high protein + high fat. If it's Bikram, nothing goes well with falling in the floor in dehydrated and near death exhaustion, so you may as well eat whatever.

Don't get me wrong, I love Birkram. I'm just saying.

I should have gone to the gym instead of blogging. Oh well, later, between meetings, I will go.

Kieffer, contrary to whatever MR says on the subject, is a very good cat. Especially when he is * not* trying to stand on my computer.

Why do people not like to count calories? I really like to count. It's like a game. I like to count everything though. Carbs, fat, protein, average SAT score of men I've dated.

They apparently didn't take SATs in Canada. I asked. Just now.

You know you're a CR geek if you actually read the nutrition information.

Posted by april at 4:09 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 1, 2010

Low Carb Cucumber Radish Salad

Radishes
Cucumbers
(diced, obviously)
red wine vinegar
parsley, chopped
garlic
dash Worchestershire sauce

Marinate overnight in fridge, serve cold.

Sorry for the lack of blog... had very busy week followed by lots of sleeping over the weekend and lots of work too. More soon!

Posted by april at 4:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack