I have mentioned before that Dr. Richard David Feinman can be a bit fiery, and that's what I like about him. He can not be accused of lacking passion. But at times he can be accused of lacking subtlety or tact. Or something. He occasionally goes a bit overboard. But being very wise and knowing this, he many years ago instituted a check on his correspondence to prevent him from sending emails that might be just a bit over the top.

It's called the Fine Tuning Committee, and it's named after Dr. Eugene J Fine, his best friend and long term colleague. The committee used to be just Dr. Fine, but over time other people, including me, joined its ranks.

The funniest thing to watch is when RDF writes a post or letter, such as a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and then EJF edits it and tones it down. They have the most entertaining good cop/bad cop routine I've ever seen, except that they're not playing, it's real! RDF really is that fiery, EJF really is a nice person, and a great editor. The first line of my play, Discordia (the one about The Iliad, which at least Ela and my father have read in Greek!) was "You have to start from the assumption that everyone has the best of all possible intentions." EJF is the kind of person who makes you believe, at least for a few minutes, that this is actually a reasonable stance about life.

I respect that, even admire it. But I'm so much more like RDF. I get a lot of my passion from anger (surprise! I'm a union organizer!) and I'm always railing about something. However I've learned that you can't just go ranting all the time and expect to get anywhere (I actually knew that early... Southern women are taught practically from birth how to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, though why one wants so many flies occasionally eludes me) so I sorta have my own internal Fine Tuning Committee. Remember all those polite and professional responses to the attacks on us in the media? I'm not really that nice. I just know that taking the high road is tactically usually the right way to go. So I may be thinking some pretty harsh stuff, but I edit it back and sound like I'm smiling.

I think we all have an internal Fine Tuning Committee. You know that voice in your head that says, "DO NOT HIT SEND!" right before you're about to send a potentially disasterously over the top email? Or the voice that says, "Perhaps you won't be so angry about this after you've had a nice yoga class and a glass of wine." That's the Fine Tuning Committee. Some of us even manage to externalize this phenomenon.

Well, I'm having one of those days when my inner Gene Fine has left the building. I'm pretty nice, really I am, I like to start from the assumption that everyone has the best of all possible intentions, but I've been running out of nerves lately and this commenter got on my last one.

Why must you weigh out very low-calorie foods like celery? Will you truly go over the day's calorie limit if you eat too much? As a fairly small woman, I find it pretty simple to eat well under 1200-1400 calories per day without weighing provided I eat exclusively whole foods.

Behaviors like needing to weigh every gram of food prompt even advocates of other "extreme" diets to ask whether CR prompts disordered eating behavior in some.

First, welcome. Please do not be discouraged from reading or commenting in future because I am about to rip your comments apart. You're not nearly as annoying as a great many commenters I've had in the past, you just happened to comment on a day when my last nerve was shot. Sorry.

[Wait, I think Gene snuck into my head again for a minute. That was so nice. I mean, the above comment was so nice. Gene sneaking into my head for a minute was just weird... I suddenly knew a whole lot about nuclear medicine and it was awesome, but then it was gone in a flash and I was the same bitter angry union organizer I usually am.]

FIRST: if you don't weigh and measure, how do you know you're eating 1200 to 1400 calories? The data on under-reporting is overwhelming. Did you once weigh and measure your food, eat 1200 to 1400 and remain weight stable, and now you don't weigh and measure and you remain weight stable?

How tall are you and how much do you weigh? Cause at 5'2" and no exercise at all several years ago, I ate between 1200 to 1400 and gradually dripped down to 99 pounds, at which point I stopped because I missed a mildly important detail at work due to excessive hunger and the persistent thought of a cup of cottage cheese. Right now, at slightly over 1400, I am losing weight consistently. Point being, I doubt that you're really eating 1200 to 1400. I suspect you only think you are. But maybe you're 4'10" feet tall, 90 pounds, and 60. That would be awesome, and I bet you look great if you are. There was once upon a time a CR blogger who about fit that profile, Minicronie. She was adoreable and actually weighed and measured her food. Her calorie numbers were like that and she was actually right. She was also so tiny as to make me look like a giraffe.

MR weighs every drop of food he eats because he's so close to his personal edge that if he doesn't, he will easily accidentally eat more than the calorie level he's carefully chosen. The body defends whatever weight it's settled on, and it's very easy to gradually go up in calories if you only monitor your weight.

That being said, I personally often don't weigh very low calorie foods like celery. I often consume an entire pint of grape tomatoes while grocery shopping and talking on the phone (yeah, that's what that noise is, it's me eating grape tomatoes) and I don't know their exact calorie count, it's just that I've weighed pints of grape tomatoes enough times to be fairly sure of their count. I often munch on unweighed celery while making dinner. I am not close to my personal edge right now so it seems kinda silly to weigh everything, especially when I still very occasionally eat out.

But here's the part that I really want to rip apart:

Behaviors like needing to weigh every gram of food prompt even advocates of other "extreme" diets to ask whether CR prompts disordered eating behavior in some.

Really? Does that prompt some people to ask about eating disorders?

Guess what:

I DON'T GIVE A FLYING Apo-E KNOCKOUT MOUSE'S DERRIERE!

In a nation where two thirds of the population are overweight or obese, where diabetes and heart disease are epidemic, and where there is just a lot of annoying crap on the internet, I am sick of answering stupid questions about CR and eating disorders. Yes, we are different from "normal" people. We are on a science experiment, and we take responsibility for our own health in a way that makes us downright freakish compared to the Cheeto eating population (wow I don't even know how to spell that snack food it's been so long since I ate it.) We don't have "orthoexia" or whatever idiotic made up disorder is in fashion this week. Anorexics don't run to their doctors for blood tests to make sure they're in optimal health on a yearly basis. Anorexics don't do their nutrition on software to make sure they're getting optimal nutrition.

I will be the first to admit that we, and my partner in particular, are a bit odd. MR has the kind of personality that craves a rigid structure. He's like that in general, and guess what: he's the happiest person I know. He loves routine, schedules, plans, and cute little packed pill boxes. He's just that way. At any given moment, I know what he's doing. I like that. I have more than enough spontaneity in the rest of my life... I enjoy the calm secure quiet of a partner who is the dictionary definition of predictable.

Life-extension is MR's life's work. He writes about it, researches it, and has made CR his big experiment. He tweaks his diet, messes with his calorie levels, and looks so much like a teenager at the age of 39 that I occasionally wonder if I am going to be arrested for having sex with a minor. His mommy however assures me that he really was born a solid four years before me, so I think I'm okay, but you guys would bail me out if I got into trouble, right?

CR has done incredible things for my partner, and I see the effects every day. He doesn't just look amazingly youthful, he is in unbelievable health. He weighs about the same thing I do, but can pick me up and carry me around anytime I don't feel like walking. He never, ever gets sick, even when he is forced to sleep next to and even cuddle a very sick girl who -- due to not being in proper CR state -- has a terrible cold, and he never gets more than a tickle in his throat. Even that is unusual. His moods are even, he's happy almost all the time except when I'm being a crazy psycho b*t&h and yelling at him for something stupid. Or if the amazon.com order gets screwed up.

It also does amazing things for me. I never got sick at less than 108 pounds. CR cured my anxiety disorder. When I'm in low calorie balance, even at a higher weight as I'm losing, I have this clarity of mind that is incredible. Granted, I do occasionally have flashes when I think I know a lot about nuclear medicine, but they pass quickly and are probably unrelated to CR. Though they may be related to CR, The Other, which is of course Carbohydrate Restriction. There are so many confounders, it's hard to tell.

As Paige says, CR brings out the scientist in us. We are running a human experiment, and MR just wants to run his under the most laboratory perfect conditions. He's serious about catching that bus to real life-extension, the kind that only biotech, not lifestyle, can make possible. I've seen him run for the bus before, and let me tell you, he's serious about it. He's willing to make sacrifices to that end, much like an Olympic athlete makes sacrifices to train to be the best in the world.

Does that bother you? Do you think that's weird?

Again, I don't care. I'm not doing this to impress you. I'm not doing this to impress anyone, actually. I'm doing a lot of other things to impress people, but not CR. This is for me. And, no, it's not even for MR. He's cute and all, but there's no boy cute enough to justify doing this kind of unusual, call it extreme if you want, lifestyle just to keep him.

[Well, what if he had a really sexy New York accent? On top of everything else that makes him perfect? Like, he still brought me my morning supplements and a tablespoon of inositol dissolved in Diet Mountain Dew in bed every morning, he still packed my little baggies of nuts and seeds, he still explained medical studies I don't understand to me over the dinner table just because I bat my eyelashes and say please, but he has a devastatingly gorgeous New York accent? Would that be worth doing CR, even if I didn't want to do it for myself? I have to seriously consider the possibility that it would. After I peel myself off the living room floor, onto which I have fainted while even considering the possibility. New York accents really, really wreck me. We all have a type. Sometimes you just have to own it and move forward.]

Yeah, we're weird, but we don't have an eating disorder, and we don't need to make the random commenter comfortable with our lifestyle. Do you find it triggering? Ohhhhhh poor dear. Go read something else if information about health triggers whatever problems you may have. Don't project your own issues onto me. It's like those idiots who oppose calorie labeling on menus: are you really so scared of information? I find the prices on menus very upsetting, but guess what: I deal with it and pay the bill. We all pay the bill in health when we eat as though it doesn't affect our health.

[Wow, I am on a rant. And I am having a wonderful time. I think I may have hit my head when I fainted while thinking about the New York accent thing... ouch... I'm sure I'll recover from any damage by the time I have to either a) cook lunch b) go back to working on my *very serious project* about which I assure you I am very serious. Cue putting back on the librarian glasses.]

The thing about MR is that he practices what he preaches. He doesn't just look at the science and say, "Wow, that's interesting, calorie restriction makes every animal in which it's ever been tested live longer, that's awesome, I think I'll have a cheeseburger!" No, he does something about it. And he does it with passion. It's what attracted me to him in the first place. He puts his broccoli where his mouth is... or something like that.

It's probably also what caught my attention the first time I met RDF. When I asked all the scientists if they believe that CR would work and if then they did CR or thought they should, they all had entertaining answers. I applaud their honesty, but none of them were acting on the data that they themselves produced. RDF was the last to answer, and he said that he had been on a low carb diet for eight years. After fifteen years of fat phobia, the only thing that ever got through to me was the biochemist from Brooklyn who actually walks the walk instead of just talking the talk. "Thank God for Dr. Feinman," says MR for the fiftieth time. He tried to tell me, over and over again. Eat more fat. Cut out carbs. He is very gracious about the fact that he's been telling me this for six years and it's not till I meet the biochemist that I really get it.

Of course, people still say stupid handwaving things when you tell them you're doing a low carb diet. Check out our new commenter's other comment:

A high protein, low carbohydrate diet has been shown to cause brain shrinkage in rats. The brain uses glucose as its primary fuel, so it seems prudent to give it enough through adequate (though not excessive!) dietary intake of complex carbohydrate.

Dude, have you been reading my food records at all? I'm eating at least 50 and more like 100 g carbohydrate a day, all healthy veggies. I don't think my brain is shrinking. People have been doing ketogenic diets of under 20 g carb/day safely since the seventies and probably way before... I don't have the energy to get into evolutionary arguments now, but anyhow, this is just ridiculous. "I heard that rats' brains shrink on Atkins." "My Aunt Lucy lost her mind when she went on a ketogenic diet."

WTFEver.

I think the other thing that made me immediately pay attention to RDF when I met him at CR was the flash of his eyes when he talked about how the low carb message, the raw data itself, had been repressed by the nutrition establishment. We CR folk have been so attacked in the media and misrepresented that I find anyone who has been through the same a kindred spirit.

People who actually walk the walk instead of ignoring the data, who actually feel passionate about their work and about changing the world: that's who I want to hang out with. People who are willing to take risks and take a bit of negative press and have their grant applications rejected cause they fall outside the mainstream.

I have no idea how EJF got funding for the cleverly named RECHARGE trial, but it kinda rocks my world. What if ketogenic diets really can help some people with cancer? This matters! While the nutrition establishment is wringing its collective hands about saturated fat, there are people out there doing research that might actually change people's lives. This makes me feel a bit less cynical and bored than usual.

I will declare victory when I get funding to do RDF's low carb diabetes trial. He doubts I can do it. I invite him to imagine what happened to the last guy who doubted me.

If they can find him.

This from the advocacy group Research!America, via LifeStar World Health Initiative and interim SENS Foundation Chair Barbara Logan:

Speak Out for NIH Funding Now: Contact Your Representative by March 17

Funding for the National Institutes of Health in FY 2011 is in the hands of Congress now and it’s time to take action. Please write to your representative immediately to ensure NIH does not lose ground.

Representatives Edward Markey (D-7th, MA), Janice Schakowsky (D-9th, IL), Rush Holt (D-12th, NJ), Susan Davis (D-53rd, CA), Joe Courtney (D-2nd, CT) and Jackie Speier (D-12th, CA) are inviting their colleagues to join them on a letter in support of increased funding for NIH in FY 2011. The letter states that the advocacy community is recommending a $35 billion increase for NIH and that the congressional members are “seeking an increase for NIH of at least 7 percent, with some of us believing that the appropriate funding increase would be as much as 12 percent.” ($35 billion) The deadline to sign the letter is March 17.

Each congressional office can also submit a Program Level Request to the Labor Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee recommending $35 billion for NIH in FY 2011. This is the one opportunity for all members of Congress to make their own funding recommendations to the leadership.

It is critical for representatives to both sign the letter and submit the Program Level Request. Urge your representative to do so immediately. Take action now!

I'm going to Qdoba today to meet with some nurses. I have no idea what to eat there but have to eat something to justify taking up a table, so I'm looking up my options online. Their online nutrition calculator is awesome!!!

In looking at their Mexican Gumbo, I glanced at the nutrition info and saw that next to Cholesterol it said OMG.

Hmmmm, I thought. The cholesterol is so high that it prompted someone to put the standard abbreviation for "Oh my God!" (with apologies for taking the Lord's name in vain.)

I almost emailed the CR Society list asking if anyone could figure out what's up with that. Or RDF. He usually knows the answer to questions, and seems to enjoy teaching. How convenient as he is a professor.

I'm so glad I didn't.

Put a space between the O and the MG. You probably already figured that out.

In my defense, isn't mg usually listed in lowercase letters? And isn't there usually a space between the number and the unit?

Perhaps I have been on the internet too long.

[Warning two: If in spite of Warning One, which like World War I is what we're not calling it because there is a Warning Two, you read this and feel that your life has been diminished by what I am about to say, don't say I didn't warn you!]

Yesterday I spent nearly two hours waiting for a nurse who never showed up for the meeting we had scheduled. This is actually fairly common, and I didn't much mind other than the fact that I was really sick (I have a cold, which never happened when I was on hardcore CR, but though I'm doing well and losing weight I'm not back to my CR fighting stage... I've observed that I can not, ever, get sick under 108 pounds. Not far to go now!) and would have been better off lying in bed at home drinking spiced tea.

But, I had my blackberry (whose name is David, named after the CNA organizer who made me get the thing last year) and I also had a new toy: TGI Friday's calorie-labeled menu! It's now city law that chains in Philly, just like NYC, have to put their calorie counts on their menus, and I was supposed to meet this nurse at the TGI Friday's, so I sat there for quite a long time reading their menu.

Wow! No wonder there's an obesity epidemic! Nearly every entree is over 1000 calories! Even the salads, which people think are "healthy" choices, are out of control. There was this one Southwest type salad for 1800! Of course it's covered in tortilla strips, cheese, and an avocado ranch dressing that goes for about 500 per serving.

That's what really gets the salads. The cheese and the dressing. The one decent salad on the menu, devoid of carby additives like tortilla chips (who needs chips on a salad?) was the Cobb salad, which is usually what I order when I'm out. Except that I usually order it with no bacon and no blue cheese, both because my partner doesn't want me to eat saturated fat and because that dramatically cuts down on total calories, and when you're a little girl, you don't have a ton of room to play with excess calories. But anyhow, the Cobb salad, assuming you have it with all the regular ingredients (veggies, grilled chicken, bacon, blue cheese, avocado, olives) was 580 calories. Not bad at all, especially for a normal person or even a male on CR.

But then add the dressing. Imagine you add blue cheese dressing to this lovely salad. 480 calories! Not sure the serving size but I'm guessing it's round a quarter cup or less, since that's the size of the little dressing on the side cups they give you. So your 580 calorie meal just became over 1000! The other dressings are about the same.

Even the "lowfat" dressing was 130 calories, and I'm sure it's all sugar. Gross.

That's why I get my salad with vinegar. I love vinegar, and it's nearly calorie free. I'd rather not spend my calories on salad dressing, but that's just me.

People watching in the Friday's was a ton of fun now that I could follow the calorie counts on what they were eating. Sure enough, the restaurant was chock full of overweight and obese people ordering meals that totaled anywhere from 1500 to 3000 calories. And it would be almost impossible not to do so! The only decent thing on the menu besides the steamed broccoli was a low carb shrimp entree that actually looked really good, for about 400 total, served with broccoli. I would get that if I were eating a meal there. There were also some fairly low calorie steak dishes, in the 500 neighborhood. Most everything on the entire menu, however, was over 1000. Wow.

Even the house salad was silly. I saw that it came in at 280 and asked what in the world was on it. The waitress wasn't quite sure but mentioned at least croutons and cheese. 280 calories for a little salad that people think of as a throw-away part of the meal?

I ordered a side of steamed broccoli (60 cals, nothing on it) and a house salad *with nothing on it but vegetables* vinegar on the side. It was iceberg lettuce with tomatoes and cucumbers. Quite satisfactory. I was just ordering to justify being there, not eating a real meal, so I didn't worry about the fact that I had no protein and no fat... I'd eaten a healthy turkey, yogurt and nuts and seeds lunch at work before heading out.

I love calorie labeling on menus because it means that I can order anything I want and just adjust my other calories accordingly. So what if I did want a basked of fries for 850 calories? At least I'd know where I stood.

I don't have much sympathy for those who say they are upset by the calorie labels. It's just information: you can do with it as you will. I argue that I am upset by the prices, and yet I still have to pay. It wouldn't help if the menu didn't list the prices, it would still be coming out of my budget.

Unless, of course, someone else was paying, which does happen from time to time.

Wouldn't it be neat if people could somehow pay for your calories? Like, "Don't worry about it, I'm under my calorie budget for today, I'll pick up this one! Go ahead, order the 1400 calorie brownie obsession, it's on me!"

I've found a very similar reaction when I run into or talk with someone I haven't seen in awhile.

"What are you up to?"

"Well... (insert basic update on work, MR, the cat, etc.) and I'm collaborating on a book with a biochemistry professor who does work on low carb diets."

The face inevitably reads, "Huh?"

Now everybody knows I'm into nutrition. That's not new information. But the second you throw the word "biochemistry" into it, people glaze over worse than a Krispy Kreme original recipe donut.

RDF wants to teach the world biochemistry in an attempt to make them understand why and how low carb diets work. "For someone whose full time job is to teach biochemistry, Dr. Feinman seems to have a pressing need to teach people biochemistry," said MR, or something like that. RDF is testing the book out on me because a) I know no chemistry beyond what I learned in tenth grade and have had no science class since unless you count that class in fractals I took in college b) that being said, I'm pretty smart and passionately interested in the subject. I figure if he can teach me biochemistry, he can teach anyone.

So there's The Book project. That's hard enough to explain.

I discovered very quickly that there's no point whatsoever in explaining to anyone other than my mother and MR The Mystery Project. The minute I say the name of it my friends look like they want to fake a fire drill in order to get out of the building gracefully. Even the ever-patient Susan thinks that things have gone from weird to weirder.

"I'm working on an (x) with RDF and (y) who does (z) for his "real" job but does all this writing and research in (lcd) and the criteria we're looking for are (a) (b) (c) and..."

Clearly, I have fallen in with the wrong crowd. Run away to join the circus. Followed Obei-wan on some damn fool crusade... wait, it's a Princess Leia Complex that I have, not a Luke Skywalker complex. Right. World-view screwed on straight again. Whew.

The fact of the matter is: I'm having fun. Science makes me happy! Well, this kind anyhow. Let's not get crazy and start trying to teach me physics. Feynman himself would have trouble with that, though if he were around I bet he'd give it a try. He sounds like the kind of guy I would have really gotten along with. Sorry I missed him. Damn aging and death.

I used to joke that MR's idea of a bachelor party, were we to get married (which we won't because we don't believe in marriage... you know the line, we believe that marriage exists, but that it's the kind of thing that happens to *other* people, just like cancer and plagues of locusts) would be a big plate of vegetables and a quiet evening alone at home doing PubMed searches. These days, he sits in his office upstairs while I sit at my little desk downstairs, and we are both doing PubMed searches. I try to limit the frequency with which I bother him with questions, but he seems to enjoy helping.

"Well, it keeps you off the streets and out of the bars," Edward's mother, may she rest in peace, would have said.

All in all, science is good for domestic tranquility (assuming that I do indeed get off this computer and fulfill my promise to complete the housecleaning.) My brain is alive in a way that it hasn't been in years... not since the early days of CR, really, when I was researching that like mad.

I also feel much more engaged with my CR. It's going great, I'm losing weight but I don't seem to be losing my hard earned yoga muscle. I'm back to looking at CR as one big experiment, with me as n = 1. Female, 35 years old +/- 1, not-so-randomly assigned to a low carb but currently not ketogenic diet, participating in yoga and resistance training. As my dear CR friend Paige said a few days ago, "CR is just fun for the scientist in us. It's why we continue, even when it's difficult."

Like eggwhites, flax oil, and the Amy Grant song to which I am currently listening: "Good for Me."

However, there are some pretty significant differences.

First, I'm eating more fat in general. 2 tsps flax oil (that was there before) + 30 g almonds + 15 g pumpkin seeds, + more lowfat dairy vs. nonfat, + attempting to get in a little other fat per day, even if it's a tsp olive oil, an olive, or a bite or two of avocado.

Second, I'm eating meat now. I didn't do that as much in my early CR days, but I find that adding 100 g of turkey, very lean that I boil in water and red wine vinegar (to minimize AGEs and cause I love vinegar) really helps hold me over till dinner. Hunger before dinner used to be a big issue for me, and it's much improved by the addition of extra pure protein to lunch.

Third, when I was young and single, I didn't have a man to make me large batches of the world's greatest mashed cauliflower. Now I do. Cauli + a little chives + garlic + a little yogurt: perfection. Top with flax oil, and I melt Laughing Cow Light cheese into it. Heavenly.

Here's the basic template of what I've been eating on a regular basis for the last little while. Note the return of the classic eggwhite breakfast, the return of the kale salad with yogurt, and the return of the super crucifer dinner with the little half cup of cottage cheese on the side.

Calorie goal: 1400. So I still have plenty of room for a few additions, like wine, more veggies, even (gasp!) some fruit if I want.

Don't worry about the nutritional "targets" I've never edited them. Just look at the raw numbers.

I also cheated a little in the COM because they don't have an entry for Laughing Cow Light and I haven't had the energy to make one, so I just put it in as Fat Free Singles. So that means that the total fat numbers are higher and the total carb numbers are probably slightly lower.

Egg, white, raw, fresh 1 cup 116.6
Oil, flaxseed 9.05 g 80.0
KRAFT FREE Singles American Nonfat Pasteurized Process Cheese Product 1 slice 31.1
Kale, raw 100 g 50.0
Nuts, almonds 30 g 172.5
Seeds, pumpkin and squash seed kernels, dried 15 g 83.8
Yogurt, nonfat, plain, organic, Butterworks Farm 1 cup (ignore gram weight) 75.0
Cauliflower, raw 300 g 75.0
Turkey, fryer-roasters, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted 100 g 135.0
Mushrooms, shiitake, stir-fried 50 g 19.5
Oil, olive, salad or cooking 1 tsp 39.8
KRAFT FREE Singles American Nonfat Pasteurized Process Cheese Product 47.3 g 70.0
Cheese, cottage, lowfat, 1% milkfat 97.22 g 70.0

===========================================
Nutrition Summary for March 10, 2010
Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.7
===========================================

General (62%)
===========================================
Energy | 1018.4 kcal 52%
Protein | 113.8 g 203%
Carbs | 61.3 g 47%
Fiber | 14.5 g 48%
Fat | 40.5 g 62%

Vitamins (80%)
===========================================
Vitamin A | 16907.3 IU 564%
Folate | 274.2 µg 69%
B1 (Thiamine) | 0.6 mg 46%
B2 (Riboflavin) | 2.6 mg 203%
B3 (Niacin) | 14.3 mg 89%
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)| 5.3 mg 105%
B6 (Pyridoxine) | 1.7 mg 99%
B12 (Cyanocobalamin) | 2.0 µg 85%
Vitamin C | 267.4 mg 297%
Vitamin D | 19.5 IU 5%
Vitamin E | 10.8 mg 72%
Vitamin K | 867.7 µg 723%

Minerals (92%)
===========================================
Calcium | 1162.7 mg 97%
Copper | 1.2 mg 129%
Iron | 7.7 mg 96%
Magnesium | 343.8 mg 82%
Manganese | 2.8 mg 121%
Phosphorus | 1805.1 mg 258%
Potassium | 3114.5 mg 66%
Selenium | 102.3 µg 186%
Sodium | 1976.7 mg 152%
Zinc | 9.0 mg 82%

Lipids (56%)
===========================================
Saturated | 5.7 g 28%
Omega-3 | 5.1 g 319%
Omega-6 | 8.7 g 62%
Cholesterol | 100.5 mg 33%

Note: Ignore the potassium, I get plenty of it because I add a bit of No Salt to my night time mashed cauliflower.

I bet you're going to say: that's not many vegetables! Well, while 100 g kale and 300 g cauliflower are actually quite a lot, I definitely don't eat the huge quantities of veggies that most male CR practitioners eat. I don't have that much room in my stomach, and I find high protein, high fat foods more satisfying. Not that my Vit A K and C are quite sufficient... it's not like I need to eat a patch of broccoli per day.

I'm going back to Old School, with modifications, in part because it makes me feel best, and in large part because I don't want to spend much time thinking about food. I'm working on several very exciting projects and my work is heating up... leaves very little time left over for tweaking my diet. I've always been happier to keep my diet simple, leaving complexity for the rest of my life.

Total calories: 155. That's a huge gigantic bowl of the stuff.

I decided to make kim chee after my co-worker Luke, better known for bringing in organic bagels with free range organic low fat cream cheese, brought kim chee to work. It's both delicious and insanely low calorie. Never lacking confidence in my ability to re-create recipes in CRCR friendly fashion, I decided to take on the project.

I loosely used this recipe, but of course, I mean loosely. I never follow the recipe. I am incapable of it.

Here is what I did:

1,196 g bok choi, sliced to bite sized pieces
28 g scallions sliced small
1/3 cup cider vinegar
2 tbsps Srirachi Hot Chili Paste
a few shakes ground ginger
1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
a few drops of Neotame liquid sweetener (I'm sure one pack Splenda would do it too)
a few shakes of No Salt

I think I put in too much Neotame, but other than that, it's pretty good, and will get better as it marinates.

If it were just for me, I'd probably put in more chili sauce and make it hotter, but when asked to taste it to see if it was too spicy for him, MR said, "If you are even asking the question, it's probably hot enough."

I don't have time to write much now even though I know I owe you and I do feel guilty about it... does that help? Does that make it okay? I have an entry in my head based on RDF's musings on the new Atkins book, and I will get to it soon but this weekend is really, really busy because this afternoon I'm playing Satan in an experimental theatre piece based on the Book of Job! How cool is that? My good friend and partner in crime MG wrote it. My mother, who insisted on bringing angel food cake to a play I wrote about a hard boiled egg is bringing devil's food cake. I will not be eating it. I will be eating Babybel light cheeses. The full fat ones really are better but just marginally and they have ten more calories and as MR pointed out, more saturated fat. Can somebody please save me from this saturated fat debate??? Maybe I'll get RDF to introduce me to his good friend Jeff Volek, who is doing research on eggs, according to his website. Sounds like if anyone could come up with the data to convince MR to let me have my hardboiled eggs, it would be him.

So in addition to the play, I'm working on a new project about which I am so excited that I am downright giddy. I am working with *real scientists* on a *real paper*! I'm not doing anything particularly complex but it is something they need to move forward. I'm going to remain mysterious about what it is because a) even though I hate suspense, I do like to torture others b) there hasn't been enough mystery on the blog lately. So you can wonder what I might be doing that is taking up a lot of my mental energy but that I won't tell you about. All I can say is that you PubMed junkies would be soooooo, soooooo jealous of me right now. I am so exited that I am actually somewhat jealous of me, which is a weird state to be in.

Here's a little story to keep you entertained while I play Satan and do PubMed searches. RDF and I were talking about the book he's working on, and I have some clear ideas about the direction in which I think he should take it. He has some clear ideas too, as do others, and they're different from mine. So I offered to write up a proposal and email it to him. Then, I said, we could start negotiations. The following dialogue ensued:

AS: You know you're negotiating with a union organizer who is also a psychic empath?

RDF: You know you're negotiating with a kid from Brooklyn who has tenure?

Kids From Brooklyn With Tenure. A Facebook group of which I would become a fan, to be sure.

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"

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.

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...

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.

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.

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!