Just checking in....

I don't have any particularly stirring musings to post today, but just wanted to check in, for the discipline if nothing else.

We've had a blast of absolutely gorgeous weather here in Chicago since Friday with temps in the upper 70s and clear sunny skies. I spent a good deal of yesterday manufacturing vitamin D in my skin!

I had my first official training run for the marathon yesterday--just 3 easy miles--but it felt good to re-establish the weekend rituals that marathon training imposes on me: healthy dinner Friday night, early to bed, early to rise Saturday morning, a good run, then a delightfully low-key, yet productive day that begins with an earned sense of self-satisfaction.

Since Tuesday I've had a great CRON week. My averages for the week are good, but not perfect: 93 calories/day over target, and short on protein and Vitamin K, but all other averages are well within acceptable (to me) parameters. This includes a bit of a splurge last night: I attended at a party where I a) drank NO alcohol; and b) nibbled very modestly on the delicious snacks, then dutifully recorded them all in CRON-O-Meter this a.m. The results weren't as bad as I'd expected.

Friday was so beautiful that I walked all the way to work--five miles. Then I did the 3-mile run on Saturday. Everything felt great! But then last night I got soooo hungry. I ate well, but it was a wakeup call: I know from experience that there is no way I will be able to function at my current target calorie level on Saturdays, particularly when my training runs start creeping up above the 5-6 mile mark. Endurance exercisers might recognize what I mean when I say there are times when you experience a deep-down-full-body-hunger that will not be denied. It's a kind of hunger most Americans rarely if ever experience, and it turns food into a kind of orgasmic magical elixir.

The fact is that burning calories at the rate one does in training necessitates the consumption of more fuel, and significant post-run refueling as well. It's just a simple fact I'll need to accept even as it conflicts with the very basic foundation of CRON. But it's a nice excuse to eat more--whoopee! And it's only for 6 months, while CRON is (theoretically) forever. We'll see!

That is all for now. I'll try to post something a bit more interesting in the coming week.

An e-mail to a friend

I received an announcement today that a friend has decided to do the Paris-Brest-Paris Randonnée this August.

For the uninitiated, this is a 745 mile bike ride in 90 hours with NO support. It's an exercise in self-sufficiency and personal commitment.

I found myself so cheered by his news that I composed a reply that, after I sent it, I realized would be perfect for my blog. It follows at the end of this post.

In addition to getting back to CRON (which I've finally been doing lately), I'm beginning training this weekend for the October marathon here in Chicago. Lengthening my life through calorie-restriction, then shortening it again through ridiculous endurance-running. I've definitely got myself a confused little masochistic streak.

And gentle readers (if any remain, given my hiatus), go ahead and note my falling off the CRON wagon, but then recall what you read right here a couple of months ago:

Quit attempts should be thought of like practice sessions in learning a new skill—at some point one hopes to “get it right,” but one should not put undue hope on any single given quit attempt, and take solace in knowing the probability of success increases with each try.

Indeed. I'm living for that probability right this very second.

---

Okay, so on to my message to my inspirational cycling friend:

T.C.!

I'm extremely delighted by this pleasant news. Allow me to make it all about me for a moment.

In 1999, as I was hatching my plans to move from DC to Chicago (and my plans were only that: to move here; I had no plans beyond my arrival), I decided to run the Marine Corps Marathon.

I was 29 years old, I'd never been a runner (or an athlete of ANY kind), and I was then--as I am again--about 40 lbs overweight. I also have some mild foot problems that require special running shoes, but thankfully that was an easily solved challenge.

They call my running cohort "Clydesdale." I wasn't terribly amused by that, but then again, Clydesdales are very sturdy, handsome horses, and they haul beer around, so what's not to like?

The point is that as I was contemplating major life changes, and I needed a powerful shot of confidence, proof that I could muster a bit of some weird thing called "discipline," and actually finish a long-term, hard project before I packed up the truck and headed west. I conjured up the idea that in running the marathon at the end of my time in DC, I wasn't running away from my old life, but running towards my new one.

I trained for six months, and then I ran (and sometimes hobbled) that race, crossing the finish line barely before they closed the event. Then I came to Chicago and staggered around on unsteady legs for several weeks. I was wrecked physically, but high as a kite emotionally.

It was easily in my top three majorly awesome life-changing experiences (even above my first CCM) [Author's Note: CCM is "Chicago Critical Mass"]. That sounds corny, but I'm a sentimental guy, and I was as self-satisfied as I could be. I also didn't feel too badly about raising nearly $2000 for AIDS (it was a fund-raising program), though that wasn't honestly why I did it. I did it for me.

Here I am at 36, fat again, getting ready to finish school and start my interim-career (yep, working for you-know-who), and finally making some serious and steady progress on the novel I've been belaboring for years (that's my REAL career). I'm at another crossroads, another moment when my whole life is gonna change around again. Everything's good--no everything's GREAT, but...I need a serious kick-start to push me out of the gate. Not to mix metaphors.

So, coincidentally I've decided to train for and run another marathon, and my training begins soon. Of course, what you are doing requires a much greater level of commitment and self-sufficiency than doing a marathon, but I bet the results will be similar in some ways.

While I don't really know what your reasons are (or mine for that matter), I bet there's at least a bit of some of the following: Maybe we are having pre-midlife-crises? Maybe we want our youthful bodies back, and all the fun and health and even MORE fun that promises. Maybe we're hoping to impress others (at least a little). Maybe we're bored, or curious. Maybe we're in pain (physical, psychological, spiritual), and more pain seems like it might be curative, like some bizarre metaphysical homeopathy. Personally, I sometimes wonder if I'm looking for ways to dig the knife in a little deeper and give it a twist--after all, it can't feel worse than what I've been doing to myself over the last six years, with all my addictions and self-destructive impulses. It's like a bleeding, a cleansing ritual. Maybe you just wanna see France by bike, and I wanna see the backsides of 44,999 other runners.

Whatever the reasons, I promise you will enjoy what happens to your body along the way (provided you're careful to avoid injuries--and injuries are NOT inevitable but preventable, so do take care).

But the big surprise to me was realizing that these things train our minds as much as, no--more than--our bodies. Endurance sports require, to my mind, a great deal of mental discipline that is much more difficult than meeting the physical demands we place on ourselves. Our bodies are just the vehicles, and they are very adaptive and malleable ones, at that. Our minds are where resistance is located. That's where the real workout is. Enjoy this trip--it's mind-blowing. You'll be a whole new T.C. when this is over. (Not that there's anything wrong with the old one.)

I'm really excited for you, and I'll read your blog faithfully. (Actually, I read anything you write. I dig your "voice.") So make sure you actually post to it.

And thanks for the shot of inspiration on this depressingly gray, damp, April (the cruellest month) day. My conviction was wavering today, but now I'm fired up again!

yours,

--Chris

Just checking in.

This started out as a quick "hey there--I'm still alive!" post, but as I got into it, well...

First, I assure anyone reading that I haven't truly disappeared. These long breaks between posts are simply the result of my being so busy with work and school that I haven't had much time for the blog--or for CR, for that matter. My CR practice is all but suspended at the moment, but I remain committed to it, and as soon as things settle down, I look forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Next week is my spring break, and I will spend it helping my beleaguered mother care for her ailing parents, so she can take a break herself. Grandma and Grandpa are old (96 and 79, respectively), and Grandma has been fighting off a rare infection in her lungs called nocardia, a bacteria that typically infects only immunocompromised patients or those with damaged lungs. Grandma was a smoker for many years, and her lungs are full of scar tissue (amazingly, no cancer). She's also immunocompromised by virtue of being old and frail. Over the last year she has been in and out of the hospital a dozen times in as many months. Last year she spent two months in a long-term care facility, trying to recover enough strength that she could go home and do simple things like cook for herself and bathe.

Grandpa isn't much help: though mentally sharp, his body is failing him too. He's been diagnosed with an "age-related" condition called spinal stenosis for the last 10 years or so. It's a narrowing of the spinal canal that squeezes on the spinal cord and nerves. For him, it results in numb legs after a short time standing, so he can't do much walking before he starts losing sensation in his legs. Back when surgery was still a viable option, he was afraid of the risks. Now he's too old and frail for the surgery. Coupled with that, he had an old and deteriorated hip replacement touched up surgically a couple years ago, and things never returned to normal afterward. He gets around with a walker, and can bathe and feed himself, but is in no condition to be a care-giver to his equally frail wife.

Grandpa is 96--that's pretty old by almost anyone's definition. But his quality of life sucks. He can't get around, has nothing to do, and we all believe he is probably depressed (he is rarely willing to cop to physical pain--admitting emotional pain is not part of his stoic constitution).

Grandma would almost certainly be in much better shape had she not smoked cigarettes all those years. But she battled alcoholism, and dealing with that--which she has done quite successfully (sober for something like 30 years)--made the smoking seem less a problem--something to put off until sobriety was a part of her life again.

I am grateful that so far, they've been able to live at home with relative independence despite their failing conditions. But that's thanks to my mother looking after them constantly. My mom's been a superhero through all this--I guess that's what we do for our parents.

This whole experience has been instructive for me--particularly in light of all I've learned about health and nutrition since I started reading about CR last November. The pair of them are simultaneously a great example of lots that's wrong with how we live--and lots that's right. They are old, and they have survived a lot--so it doesn't seem unreasonable for me to conclude that, in terms of genetics, I probably have a decent shot at a long and healthy life--if I take their situation as a lesson, and make wiser choices now.

I have to live at least 60 more years to catch up with Grandpa (and likely longer--he's not dead yet!). I plan to do that, and I'd like to do it well, with strength, self-sufficiency, and the knowledge that at 96, I will still be capable of seeking out and experiencing the pleasures of life.

So I am acknowledging two things to myself right now: 1) I will get on the ball with this CR lifestyle by year's end, and 2) I will not add to my stress and at times overwhelmingly hectic life by beating myself up for not doing it right now.

I started flirting with CR in November, after Thanksgiving. If it takes me a full twelve months to achieve, at last, a single full month of committed CR practice, so be it. Grand life changes are difficult, take time, and the most important lessons are learned slowly.

I do have some good news that I believe will make getting my lifestyle under control a little easier: I have a job lined up for May, when I pseudo-finish school. I say that because I was meant to graduate in May, but it turns out I'll be short a few credit hours and will have to squeeze in a class or two part-time over the next year while I experience gainful full-time employment for the first time in more than five years.

I'll give more specific information about my burgeoning career in a future post, but for now I'll say simply that I'll be working for a non-profit advocacy organization whose mission I've been committed to for many years. And it's not just an administrative job like all my others. I will be a program manager, and in time, the expert in my field--not just in Chicago, but in all of the United States. That's not meant to sound grandiose--it's just that Chicago is a leading city for my field.

I consider earning this job to be the fulfillment of a commitment I made to myself after getting laid off in 2002. I returned to school with a plan to change my life and do something good. I set my sights on this organization, and five years later I have the job. Sometimes I fail to take credit for my successes, for the systematic way I took all the necessary steps to arrive here. I had a loosely defined plan (which is about as close as I get to "ambition"), I allowed myself to be influenced and motivated by good people along the way, and now I have what I set out to get five years ago.

Best of all, my new career has nothing whatsoever to do with my degree. When I returned to school at the age of 32, I vowed to study something I found interesting and fulfilling to me personally (Latin American and Latino Studies), without regard for career. I believed things would work out if I was true to myself and my values, and it turns out I was right. I have received a wonderful gift, to be able to live like this, and I want to prolong it as long as I can.

And I'm mindful that I'm just starting a real career at the age of 36, and while I may only be a post-pubescent teenager in CR years, I'm still beginning perhaps a decade late compared to my peers who are graduating and beginning the careers in their early twenties. So, obviously I must live longer (and even longer!) so that I can enjoy a similar--or even longer (longer longer)--career! CR is my ticket to do it--I believe that--so now I have yet another reason to get back to CR!

Finally, I'm also continuing work on a novel I started last year, and what creative energy that remains after my writing for school has been funneled into that instead of the blog. It's a passion of mine that needs to be nurtured at all costs, and one of those costs is the frequency of my blogging. Sorry--but any of you who are artists of one sort or another understand what happens when a creative endeavor begins to gather critical mass and take off.

So, that's where I'm at right now. Thanks to those of you who left comments wondering what had become of me. I'm right here, and I'm still reading the blogs and the e-mail list. I swear I'll be back in full-force when this semester is over!

Existential Crisis!

I have some great news: I am not suicidal!

I'd always suspected that I was not suicidal, but how could I have ever known for sure? I mean, it's really easy to sit there and say, "I want to be alive! Living is great!" But where do you find your proof? How do you know your desire to be alive springs from a passionate lust for life, or some sense of purpose, and isn't just instinctive and reflexive, the product of the basic survival impulse?

However bad things get, however defeated I ever might feel in an individual moment, it seems that I generally return to an optimistic attitude. I know that I can probably have a good life and make a difference, and all that stuff. But sometimes I wonder, "what's the point of it all," and "why bother?"

I realize that I am not breaking any new ground here, and people far more well-read and well-spoken and intelligent and possessed of more philosophical curiosity than I have waxed eloquently about these questions for, like, a really long time. If I have nothing new to say about these things, then, what am I going on about here? Well, a week or two ago, this question popped into my head, unbidden:

"Why would I want to live even LONGER...when this is all meaningless, and I could die today and I wouldn't even care because I'd be dead, so I wouldn't know any better, right?" What would I want with all that extra time? Why not just "live it up" now and who cares when I croak, if it's at 50 or 80 or 120?

It occurred to me that this was a really, really important question to discover an answer to if I seriously want to do CRON (or any other healthful thing) for the purpose of longevity. It seems to me that if you are asking for more time, you should have some sort of idea what you plan to do with it. I realized I wasn't sure.

This sophomoric existential crisis was looming large a week or so ago when, in an intensely strange moment while I was preparing my (decidedly non-CRON) dinner, I vividly imagined having a massive heart attack and dropping right there in my kitchen. Making the moment more surreal was the fact that opera music was streaming from the living room (something from Prairie Home Companion). I felt like I was in some kind of artsy movie. The diva was wailing, and I imagined myself on my knees, clutching my chest, begging, "No! Not now! Wait...it's too soon! I have so much to do!" before slipping into the darkness.

I stood there, paralyzed, waiting to see if it was really happening. You know the funny way time seems to stretch out and everything goes slow-mo when something horrible and traumatic is happening, when seconds seem like minutes, and minutes seem like hours? I found myself stricken with the idea that I was in the midst of a sudden, surprising death, and time was stretching out forever, so I could experience every moment of it. Not that I was experiencing any bodily sensations or anything--this was all in my head.

When I'd recovered my senses (just in time to drain the gaky pasta I was cooking), I couldn't help but chuckle with relief, that kind of insane chuckle that really isn't because something was funny, but rather, served as a pressure-release valve we sometimes need after averting disaster. I mean, obviously I was relieved that I wasn't really having a heart attack. But more than that, I felt an intense relief to suddenly know for sure that I actually wanted rather seriously to be alive, as opposed to descending into the aforementioned sophomoric existential crisis.

I know that all sounds so silly, but I realized that I've never really been endangered in a way that made me seriously fear for my life. My mortality has never posed much threat. It's been more theoretical than actual.

I suppose that sureal moment (revelation? ephiphany?) was at least in part the result of all my new knowledge about health and nutrition, and the tension inherent between all that knowledge and my continued bad behavior.

I'm sure I was fantasizing what I actually do fear will be the likely consequence of my continuing the path I've been on. That path has been strewn with fitful, sporadic CRON practice, peppered with frightening bouts of ad lib abandon. I was in the midst of preparing macaroni and cheese, a meal so off my CRON list it shouldn't even be recognized as food so much as poison!

I realized something else: I've been thinking of my bad feelings about food as "guilt" and "shame," but those are imprecise characterizations of something that I think is much more primal. I think, at least for me, my bad food feelings spring from fear. I was suddenly imagining what was going to happen to me thanks to the very food I was preparing that moment.

Guilt came next, in the moment I realized I wasn't having a heart attack and everything was fine. As I shoveled greasy forkfulls of macaroni and cheese into my mouth, I felt like, "Ha! I've gotten away with it again!" But getting away with something always makes me feel guilty. This is why I cannot bear to play practical jokes on my friends--if I get away with it, if I fool them, I feel guilty!

So, what does all this mean? I guess the answer is, "I don't really know." It's a relief to be made aware in no uncertain terms that I don't want to die, that in fact I'd prefer most strenuously to remain alive. I never did think I was suicidal, but isn't it nice to know for sure? But I also know that if I want to stick with CRON, I need a plan. I need a goal. I need a rationale for prolonging the time that I plan to spend here, a justification for the greater amount of resources I will then have to consume in order to do that, for the greater footprint I will leave on the environment.

The answer, it seems to me, is that I must do something good. I need to prolong my life, and most especially, the period of my life during which I am most robust, because there are some good things I am meant to do, and they take more time than I'll have if I continue the way I have been. What are these good things I have to do? I have no idea. But I'd prefer to have the luxury of time in which to figure out the answer to that question. And so, I must do CRON.

Existential crisis averted, for now....

Bad Mantra, or "This is the blog where I say 'fuck' a lot."

As often happens, I was inspired this morning to write after reading a blog entry of a fellow CRON practitioner, Emily (http://cron-emily.blogspot.com/), who was expressing frustration over her recent lapse into making some food choices that she felt regretful about.

First, I recognize this frustration, but just for a little reality check, let's consider the foods in which she indulged during her moments of weakness:

• cereal
• chocolate
• almonds
• tortilla with peanut butter and jam

These are hardly the food equivalents of a shot of heroin, so let's not completely freak out here. You wanna know what my recent binges included?

• pizza (delivery)
• donuts
• Chinese food (delivery)
• wine (lots of it)
• more pizza
• monte cristo sandwich (ham, turkey, cheese, on FRENCH TOAST!) and fries--FRIES!!!
• even more pizza
• did I mention pizza?

Aw, fuck it.

That's what the old me would have said. I have a long history of attempting some life-change, "failing," and saying "Aw, fuck it" and simply abandoning the cause entirely. I'd done it so many times that "Aw, fuck it" had become something of a mantra for me. Not the kind of mantra that helps organize and quiet the mind. No, this is a bad mantra. A self-defeating mantra. A self-indulgent mantra that serves the purpose of giving me all the excuse I need to head to Dunkin' Donuts for an old fashioned buttermilk donut, chocolate frosted cake donut, and glazed chocolate cake donut. I sure like me some cake donuts.

Not to sound all pop-psychology-self-helpish, but we shouldn't underestimate the power of our self-talk. Saying "aw fuck it" is just another tool for making sense of the choices we are confronted with. It's a poor tool for the job, but it is a tool nonetheless. I know, Emily didn't say "aw, fuck it," but she did say "I felt positive and great and totally in the CRON-groove, and now... I just don't know." That's close enough. It may say "I just don't know," but it whispers "aw fuck it." It's just a few slides down that slippery slope from "I just don't know" to "aw, fuck it."

We need to become more skilled at opening up our tool boxes, surveying what's in there, and then--with the job in mind--choosing the best one to get it done. When we stray from our plan, we can say "aw fuck it," and go completely off the rails--that's what I used to do all the time. Or we can say, "oh well, it's not like I can't try again. And again. And again. However many times it takes until it sticks." The tool of negative self-talk makes us feel badly, and still it doesn't get the job done. Like beating on our thumb with a hammer, when we're supposed to be using wrench to tighten down a bolt.

The other issue here, besides the unhelpful ways we talk to ourselves about what we are doing, is our notion of what constitutes success. I argue that an attempt itself is a success, and every attempt, regardless of its outcome, should be applauded. We should be all self-congratulatory AND self-satisfied whenever we make an attempt to do whatever the good thing is that we want to do. Not fully succeeding in any attempt just means we get the chance to try again. Each new try offers the possibility of success, even if that's just an incremental success.

Consider this gem from an article on smoking cessation from PubMed Central:

"The most important aspect to smoking cessation is maintaining the motivation to make multiple attempts. Thus, quit attempts should be thought of like practice sessions in learning a new skill—at some point one hopes to “get it right,” but one should not put undue hope on any single given quit attempt, and take solace in knowing the probability of success increases with each try. (read the article)

Hey--you need to read that sentence again:

"Quit attempts should be thought of like practice sessions in learning a new skill—at some point one hopes to “get it right,” but one should not put undue hope on any single given quit attempt, and take solace in knowing the probability of success increases with each try."

You know, that sentence is so smart, we all need to read it one more time:

"Quit attempts should be thought of like practice sessions in learning a new skill—at some point one hopes to “get it right,” but one should not put undue hope on any single given quit attempt, and take solace in knowing the probability of success increases with each try."

I'm not an addiction specialist or anything, but I've certainly wrestled with addictions throughout my adult life (a topic I'm bound to blog about eventually) and I find it all too easy to analogize the Standard American Diet with cigarette smoking. It's addictive, destructive, deadly. And I have my own theory about why repeated attempts to quit lead to success.

I think we learn a lot from our unsuccessful attempts to quit things (like the Standard American Diet). We learn about the pangs of withdrawal--what they feel like, what eases them, how long they take to pass; we learn about that ephemeral "pink cloud," that wonderful, carefree high we feel in the first days or weeks of abstinence that inevitably dissipates, leaving us to face the long journey ahead with clear eyes not blinded by the comforting fog of euphoria; we learn about the physical and mental pain of relapse. Knowing all that makes the next attempt easier. Knowing the course ahead makes it easier to bear the pains, and not be unsustainably seduced by the joys.

Future attempts are easier too because we already have a chest full of useful tools to put into service: we already know how to distinguish between good food and gak, we already know how to use the software (don't tell me you aren't using software yet--that's like going to the job site without a tape measure), we already know what our own patterns are, our triggers, we've learned tips and tricks, we have our blogs and our online friends--these are all tools we have immediately available to us as soon as we're ready for our next attempt. These are all tools we didn't have in the beginning, so we are already that much closer to success.

I invite those of us new to CRON to look at it this way: quitting lifelong addictions is hard, it requires many attempts, and since we are all in this for the long haul, whatever is happening today, or whatever happened yesterday, is just a tiny piece of a great big picture. All our many (perhaps frustrated) attempts to "get it right" are a necessary part of our future success, so what we are doing now is good, and helpful, and productive. We'll get there in our own time, some faster than others, if we keep on working at it. And I can assure you, we will most certainly not get there if we say "Aw, fuck it," and quit trying.

If, like me, you are starting CRON all over again today (or tomorrow, or the next day), then remember, the probability of success increases with each try. So keep trying. And don't even let me hear any of you say "Aw, fuck it." I promise not to say it too.

Ack. ACK! Gak-Attack!

First: how cool is it that my blog has now been commented by April, MR, and MR's Mom? The CR Power Dynasty has recognized my blog as something other than the unfortunate case of verbal diarrhea that it sometimes feels like to me. (And please, no cheery assurances that it's not all so much verbal diarrhea--my self-deprecation is part of my winning personality.) Now, of course, the pressure is on to continue, and I think I actually need some of that "peer pressure" to stay the course, so thanks y'all!

Now on to the Gak Attack

I ate about 2800 calories yesterday, thanks to poor planning coupled with the convenient presence of a Sbarro at the cafeteria at school. The 960-calorie slice of saturated fat basically obliterated my nutrition for the day. I'd been doing field work for my job all afternoon, which meant biking around town in temps in the 20s, getting really cold, and really tired, and really vulnerable. I already knew this was a risk from last time, but somehow hadn't learned my lesson yet, I guess.

Worse, this has been a regular occurrence lately as I struggle to keep up with competing responsibilities and find meal planning to be hard to fit in.

Get this: I spent Sunday planning and executing a working recipe for what I'm calling "MegaSoup," a recipe I engineered in CRON-O-Meter to provide 10% or better of all nutrients per 100-calorie serving (although I eat more like 200-calories worth in a serving). I got pretty close to that goal (it's much easier to engineer a soup than a baked good like the MegaMuffins), and it tastes delicious. The whole recipe provides 11 servings. Along with my MegaMuffins, it should have provided easy, convenient grab-n-go options to take to school with me for the week.

Did my plan work? No. Why? I don't have any food-storage containers suitable for soup (keep it from leaking in my bag, microwave safe, etc.) I forgot to buy some when I was shopping for ingredients, so the soup sits in a big pot in my fridge, waiting to spoil instead of getting eaten. Such SILLINESS!

It seems that when times are tough, the most recently instituted habits are the first to get tossed out the window in favor of the familiar.

I've been stuffing my gob with gak at an alarming frequency and it MUST stop post-haste. I feel terrible. Where's my energy? Where's my feeling of well-being? Where's my self-satisfaction at a job well-done? Arghhh! [As an aside, the Urban Dictionary defines "gak" variously as slang for certain extremely addictive stimulant drugs. Appropriating the term for horrible food, therefore, seems more than appropriate.]

With no good news to report on the nutrition front, I figured this was a good time to point out--to myself as much as to anyone else--one of the seemingly obvious yet wildly ignored hazards of the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Although I did consume impressive quantities of protein and most minerals yesterday, I finished a nearly-3000 calorie day (!!) with just 12% of my vitamin C, 32% vitamin E, and 26% vitamin K. Sound unbelievable? It should, but sadly it doesn't. If that huge quantity of food still deprives me of such important nutrients--and I was actually paying attention to eating good food for the first half of the day--it's really quite startling to imagine how most Americans are getting by.

But there's a bit of good news, a positive way to look at this: the only reason I know about my deficits and overages from yesterday are because despite my feeling gross about what I ate, I dutifully plugged it all into CRON-O-Meter (as you should all be doing), so I could appropriately assess the damage and remind myself why I'm doing all this.

Working with nutrient targets is sort of like working with a financial budget. I'm more likely to watch my spending when I know how much I have and how much things cost, and plan ahead, usually with the help of a spreadsheet or at least notes scribbled on paper. Ignoring all the facts and figures does not lead to financial health (or plain old survival, for that matter). It leads to over spending, late payments, bad credit, poverty, homelessness and death! (Or at least unwanted and unnecessary psychological distress.)

Food budgeting is the same. If we're not tracking our nutrient info in CRON-O-Meter (or something similar), we really have NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE EATING. It's just that simple. So the take home message of this entry is: record everything you eat, no matter how embarrassing or disgraceful it all seems. JUST DO IT. For people like me, seeing the damage in black and white is a very powerful motivator to make voluntary changes to diet.

The software also facilitates a powerful sense of accomplishment: I can't lose 40 pounds and live forever TODAY, but I most certainly can eat food that provides 100% or better of all the important nutrients I need in a relatively small number of calories.

Nutrition software: JUST DO IT!

Greetings, and a Couple Recipes

I haven't blogged for ages. Why? I'm taking a heavy course load this semester so I can graduate in May, and also working part-time. I simply don't have time for much, unfortunately.

I've been eating dreadfully too, as a result of lack of time and failure to spend what time I can manage to plan meals. I need to develop a routine whereby on the weekend I plan out the meals of the week ahead and shop accordingly. Then I need to cook much of the food over the weekend, and portion it out in handy containers for lunches at school and maybe even dinners, since I so often drag myself in at the end of the day with no energy to cook or even open the fridge to see what's in there (which usually isn't much).

So, that's today's project, to spend some time and brain power on this today and tomorrow. Otherwise I'm going to wind up making my my life harder, as my body suffers the ill-effects of a gak-laden diet which certainly won't provide me the energy I need.

For you dessert fans, I wanted to share the following treat, a meal that eats like a dessert.

Toasted MegaMuffin with Blueberry Sauce

1. Take about a 1/2 cup of blueberries (frozen is great) and put into a saucepan with some sucralose (to taste), a squirt of fresh lemon juice, and some grated lemon zest. Cinnamon, vanilla, and almond extracts are all good additions. For a touch of the exotic, try a dash or two of rose water--rose and blueberry is a gorgeous and flavor combination: you can tell there's something unusual in there, but it's subtle and elusive.
2. Simmer until the berries break down and you reduce the liquid enough to thicken it somewhat. (You may have to add a few drops of water to get the simmering process started).
3. Split a MegaMuffin and chuck it into the toaster (or in your regular oven) while you are simmering the blueberries.
4. Remove MegaMuffin from the toaster (or oven), put in a bowl, and pour the blueberry syrup over it. (If you need some fat for the day, a drizzle of flax oil before the berry sauce is sublime.)
5. Eat while your eyes roll back in your head and you wonder why you ever wanted cake with frosting.
6. Imagine endless variations with other fruits and flavors.

Kale Chips

I've struggled to eat my kale. I chomp and chomp and after awhile I just can't face another bite. So I'm delighted to report that it is possible to turn leafy, chewy kale into a delightful crispy snack food that isn't out of place as an accompaniment to watching a movie: Kale Chips.

1. Chop or tear a large quantity of kale leaves into small pieces (they will shrink so much in the oven that a mountain of kale is reduced to a mere mole hill)
2. Drizzle with the smallest quantity of olive oil that coats the leaves enough to allow a bit of salt (or other flavoring--I'm going to try brewers yeast) to stick. You should be able to get by with a teaspoon if you take some time to really toss the kale until it's all lightly coated. Cooking spray might be an alternative.
3. Spread out in a thin layer on a cookie sheet (parchment helps); you'll likely have to do several batches.
4. Bake in low oven until dry and crispy (I started out with too-high a temp and some of the leaves browned which is less desirable; try between 250-300 degrees).
5. Pour into a bowl and snack away, or bag 'em for later.

These are incredibly light and crispy, and though some of that cruciferous bitterness gets a bit concentrated, I still found them to be highly palatable. I offered them to friends and everyone was amazed that these light crispy little delights were actually kale. And because their volume is so reduced by the elimination of all the water, you can easily consume 1/2 pound of raw kale in a handful or two of easy to chew and swallow crispy Kale Chips.

"Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time."

That quotation from François Voltaire seems a good way to start out today's belated Gratuitous Musing.

But first, a note about my recent silence: I started back to school the week before last, and am taking a lot of classes, plus working part-time. As time evaporates, I'm finding it difficult to spend as much time on the blog during the week. The blog is an important tool for my CR practice, and I really relish working on it, but have to keep my priorities clear so I can graduate in May. So, please pardon any longish delays between posts. I really appreciate that folks are reading and drawing some usefulness from my prattle, and I'll keep posting, just a bit less frequently. Now on to today's Gratuitous Musing.

If you haven't read "On Setting a Good Example," over at Apri's blog (1/24/07), do so at once, then come back and read this entry, which was inspired by it.

April writes:

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

The unfortunately conjoined-twin subjects of CR'ers behaving in non-CR-like ways, and the emotional and psychological gymnastics we perform in order to cope with our slip-ups, have been a recurrent theme in the CR newbie blogosphere since I entered the discussion a few weeks back. I've commented on it before myself in my "Shut the Hell Up on Pain of Bitch Slap" post.

I am one of the few males I know who wrestles openly with my self-demands for perfection, and the inevitable failures for which I then scold and criticize myself. I say "openly" because many--perhaps most--men experience self-doubt, lack of confidence, fear of failure, dissatisfaction with achievement, fear of being judged weak, and on and on, but almost as many seem to be conditioned to avoid expressing it. I don't know how those tough dudes work it out, but I get through it by boring a few very select, dear, close friends (plus the whole CR newbie blogosphere) to death with my mutterings. They then set me straight (er...so to speak).

Speaking of straight, I dunno, maybe the fact that I'm gay has something to do with all this. I was certainly exposed to some specific sorts of unfair pressures growing up. I lacked the physical desire to do the sorts of things that the other boys were doing, things that would have established me as a more "normal" member of the tribe. I was a deviant in the purely sociological sense: I was different. It's no surprise I developed my closest, longest-lasting relationships with females, people who make up just over half the population of the United States and still somehow are still treated as if they are "other" or "different" from normal (which is of course white, male, and heterosexual). Perhaps I absorbed more than just companionship from my close platonic friendships with girls who were carrying around--or struggling against--society's ludicrous and oppressive gender baggage.

Now as a young(ish) gay male adult, it's easy for me to see some similarities in the pressures I face to those of many women in our society, including the pressure to look a certain way. Tyra Banks was recently mocked for being 30lbs heavier now than at the height of her modelling career. Noel Gallagher of Oasis described Jack White (from the White Stripes) as "Zorro on donuts." Okay. So these wildly successful, career-oriented, accomplished folks gained a little weigh. That somehow means they should be publicly ridiculed? Society demands perfection and so breathlessly and gladly sneers at anything less.

I commit the unspeakable sin of being too fat for a gay man. Try being a youngish urban gay male AND too fat, and then try to get noticed by gymbot physical-perfection-obsessed urban gay male society. My basic identity has long included being constantly aware that I'm not perfect. My fear of being too fat inevitably becomes an element of my CR goals and practice. How could it not? Enter my obsession with perfection, as expressed by that Embittered Nasty Little Troll: "Oh no! You ate a chicken burrito with sour cream and cheese at Chipotle Mexican Grill for an astonishing 1200 (delicious) calories! You failed! If you can't do it perfectly, you can't do it at all. Might as well say 'fuck it' and hop right off the wagon." You guys see why I don't like to listen to this guy, right? He's such a dick.

I had a friend in my hometown of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who like me wanted nothing more than to leave town and live somewhere else, somewhere cool like Chicago. In 1993, at the age of 22, I packed whatever I could fit in a big suitcase and headed east to Washington, DC, where I lived for six years before moving here to Chicago. I did my messy and exciting and and tragi-comic growing up in DC (The drugs! The booze! The sex! The really bad food!), then came to Chicago to enjoy my maturity. Soon after moving to Chicago, I visited my friend in Ft. Wayne who still wanted to move to Chicago himself, so badly. But he was going to wait until he could "do it right." I wasn't sure what "right" meant, but whatever it was, it kept him in Ft. Wayne, where he remains today. Granted, much more is at stake with relocating than eating a burrito, but still my friend had a sense of perfection that, if he couldn't achieve it, immobilized him--quite literally. He didn't even try.

Meanwhile, people who appear to actually be perfect in some way get stuck in a different kind of trap: if perfection is the achieved norm, then losing that perfection becomes a constant concern and source for fear. The risks in fear-driven behavior are many, and include the propensity to be very annoying and humorless.

And let's not forget there are some unpleasant forms of perfection. There are people who seem to have perfected being assholes. Some politicians have demonstrated that they are perfect idiots. Some manage to commit the "perfect crimes," and the perfect aspect in grammar has caused more than a few headaches for students of languages.

So, I think it's more than totally cool that someone who is a visible and charismatic proponent of CR publicly acknowledges her imperfection and the struggles that make CR challenging for her, even after years of practice. Especially for us newbies, this candor about struggle is also absolutely necessary in order to build an authentic, solidly supportive community that we hope will grow into larger grass-roots movement.

Adjusting to this lifestyle is HARD, even on the very easy, low-hunger days, and I don't trust anyone who tells me "it was nothing." It's such a radical departure from what we are used to. Food is so emblematic, so tied to tradition and ritual, that we sometimes feel we are cutting ourselves loose from our moorings, set adrift in a strange and by turns inviting and intimidating sea. There's no way that sort of heavy transformation isn't gonna hurt. We are going to stumble around in the dark, stubbing our toes on the furniture, and then when we finally find the light switch and flip it on, we'll see that the room is a mess, and it's going to take awhile to clean it up. And we have to find a place for all the clutter before we can even think about vacuuming the floor, or dusting, or repainting.

It's so great to be able to stumble around and yet keep going, and that's easier when we can be reminded that the experienced CR folks still stumble too. The trap of perfectionism is not going to turn out to be a useful tool for making this transformation. Put on some old ripped jeans and a stained t-shirt and prepare to get messy. Prepare to come up with a brilliant plan today for your "perfect" quotidian diet, and then find yourself at Chipotle Mexican Grill tomorrow. Prepare to make four trips to Chiptole Mexican Grill this month, but only three next month. And only two the month after that. And then sometime two years from now, to look back and say, "I haven't been to Chipotle Mexican Grill for six months...maybe I should....naw, I don't really want it that much anymore."

Prepare to think about this lifestyle in terms of months and years, not days and weeks, and readjust your notion of what perfection is. Perfection is not "all or nothing," and this isn't a "zero-sum game." Perfection is a process, not a goal. Perfection is deciding what you want to do, then taking frequent and steady--albeit small--steps towards that goal, steps that include stumbles, stubbed toes, maybe even an all-out face plant or two. Just remeber that even stumbling, you are moving forward. Even taking two steps forward and one step back still makes progress.

I'm not just musing gratuitously here. I'm engaging in a therapeutic reframing of my own successes and failures, because lately, since going back to school, I feel like I've been doing CR more in theory than in practice. Not yet fully comfortable with my new tools, in moments of weakness I've been choosing some old, comforting ones. For every three good days, I have one bad.

I haven't been successful at keeping my calories as low as my target, and my weight loss--one of the easiest but also most psychologically loaded metrics--has leveled off at just five pounds since January 1st. Maybe I'll hit that magic eight pounds by January 31, but I doubt it. So I probably won't meet my first monthly target.

But not so fast: I lost five pounds and stayed that way! My jeans fit noticeably looser! That means despite my stumbles, I really did ratchet down my calorie consumption enough to lose weight, and that is undeniable progress, just a bit slower than I anticipated. But who cares about two or three pounds when I want to do this for the rest of my (long) life? For the month of February, I'll set a more modest goal: instead of having three good days followed by one bad, maybe I'll try for four good days in a row, followed by one not-so-bad?

So down with perfection, and up with progress! I just want to be happy with moving steadily forward with the rest of you on our long, slow journey!

Supplementation, Redux

Did I really get a comment on my blog from Michael Rae? Isn't that like a bike racer having Lance Armstrong comment on his blog?

It seems all I need to do is propose a reckless supplementation program to get individualized attention!

His response was so thorough that I felt compelled to repost his initial recommendations for anyone who is reading my blog and maybe didn't read the comments. Also, I'm finding it difficult to do much original posting now that the semester is in full swing AND I'm working. I'm also not eating as well--I'm having "growing pains" as I figure out how to do CR on the run. I do believe establishing that "quotidian diet" will help with that. And the MegaMuffin!

The good news, I suppose, is that my weight loss stopped, and that's good while I figure out what I'm doing. No sense melting away at too fast a pace for good health and longevity.

MR says:

Congrats on doing this carefully, supplementing nutrients that you need based on detailed nutrition analysis rather than just shotgunning everything. Do have a look at the following for some principles for supplementation:

• CRON-WEB's Definitive Guide to Supplementation
• Lates Science in Vitamin & Mineral Research

... and the products based on this research (whose writeups give much of the above info in more compressed form):

• AOR Essential Mix
• AOR Multi Basics 3
• AOR Orthocore

See my important disclosure here:

http://lists.calorierestriction.org/pipermail/crcomm_lists.calorierestriction

[link currently broken :( ]

Wow--thanks MR!

Supplementation

Sorry I've been quiet the past couple of days. Just busy and/or tired. Today's entry will be dull, I'm afraid. No Gratuitous Musings today (though I have a a few in the works, so stay tuned).

I've decided, after a few weeks of CR, that it's time to add supplements to my routine--but just a few. I never knew much about vitamins and minerals because I never really paid much attention to what I was getting from my food. Food labels would have you believe the only things you need to pay attention to are Vitamins A and C, and the minerals Calcium and Iron. Sodium is the only mineral labels report by actual number of milligrams, while the rest just give percentages that may or may not reflect my needs.

Like most people, I always assumed that I was getting everything I needed if only because of the sheer volume of food I was eating (wrong), much of it artificially enriched.

What nutrients have I been lacking?

Like every other aspect of my eating routine, CRON-O-Meter has radically affected my understanding of my micronutrient needs and intake, and revealed some potential problems:

• Vitamin D: Unless you delight in eating sardines on a daily basis or consume large quantities of fortified dairy products, it's extremely difficult to get adequate vitamin D, and recent list chatter suggests this vitamin is more important (and required in greater quantities) than we have thought in the past.
• Zinc: I never knew before that men require so much more zinc. It's roughly analogous to a woman's need for iron, and like women, related to our reproductive equipment. But I'm not happy to eat oysters every day (or any day, really...I have not yet acquired the "taste" for these snotty little globs of grayness).
• B's: I regularly find myself short on various B vitamins, but never the same ones, so determining one that I'm typically short on was impossible.
• Biotin: While it's extremely unlikely that I am biotin deficient (especially since I've given up on my recent "discovery" of using raw (pasteurized) egg whites in my breakfast smoothies, when I read the list of symptoms, I had to acknowledge that it got my attention: hair and skin problems similar to ones I regularly experience. (I still wonder of pasteurization makes it safe for biotin: cooking egg whites denatures their protein in a way that prevents its binding to biotin, but since the pastuerized egg whites won't "whip up," I wonder if the process also makes them safe for biotin. I don't know how I'll figure out the answer to that one.)

How did I decide which nutrients to supplement?

I reviewed CRON-O-Meter nutrition reports that averaged my intake over the period that I've been doing CR, and looked at which vitamins and minerals were lowest, especially below 80%. This included the following:

• Various B's (occasionally)
• Vitamin D (regularly)
• Vitamin E (occasionally)
• Potassium (regularly)
• Zinc (regularly)

Some others that I suspected I was low in were actually quite high on average. The only ones that remained low were zinc, Vitamin D, and potassium.

I decided that it was most important to supplement Vitamin D and Zinc; probably safe to supplement B's with a B complex (just to be sure); and to tweak my quotidian diet to fix the vitamin E and potassium deficiencies, which was pretty easy to do with a little attention and a daily MegaMuffin.

Here, then, are the supplements I am now taking:

• Vitamin D, 400 IU, from fish liver oil
• Chelated Zinc, 50 mg
• B-Complex
• Biotin, 1000 mcg

I'm interested in any tips and/or advice, and especially if I'm making any big and/or dangerous mistakes here. I'm especially concerned about zinc--is this the best form? What about balancing it with copper--that's something I don't understand very well yet.

It's a learning process, and I want to treat supplements as something very specific and deliberate, rather than the "one a day multi" approach most people take.

Pooping in the blogoshpere

I hope you all are doing well, and thanks for all the support yesterday with my Skull and Crossbones dilemma. I am so much looking forward to going to the brunch now that I've resolved (with your help) my ambivalent feelings about what's "okay" for me to do, and confronted and (I think) disarmed my guilt reflex in advance. It takes time to make peace with food and all the emotional baggage attached to it. But I've never had it as easy as I do now. I hope it's not too sappy to say--especially for a man (but then I am a very sensitive type of man, after all)--but it feels like an emotional and physical healing is taking place, and you are all part of this effective treatment, so thanks for being there!

By the way, I find it interesting to note that it seems most of the blogs, and most of the comments on my blog, are created by women. Where are the men? There is something culturally interesting going on here, that both women and men are doing CR, but the support network seems heavily weighted towards women...this seems a good topic for a future blog. Your thoughts, ladies?

The picture to the right is beautiful psyllium, which in its herbal state, is really quite lovely and delicate in appearance--I think I would welcome it in my herb garden (if I had one)--especially when you consider the rather indelicate function it often serves. Yes, I'm going to talk about poop, here in public. But before you jump to the conclusion that my blog has descended into the e-toilet, let's talk about MegaMuffins, because as you'll see, in the same way MegaMuffins inevitably lead to good poop, MegaMuffin discussions can lead to good poop discussions.

I am flush with the fervor of the recently converted. I'm ready to go tell it on the mountain, to knock on doors, to rouse people from their slumber to let them know about the miracle of the Mighty MegaMuffin.

It's really quite impossible to overstate the allure of the MegaMuffin. It is the ultimate convenience food--so easy, and so satisfying that every time I eat one, I feel like I'm "cheating" (if there is such a thing). MegaMuffins have single-handedly saved my CR program during this hectic first week back to school, just as I was counting on them too. Isn't it great when you open your toolbox and find just the tool you needed for the job, waiting for you? MegaMuffins are like a super-fancy nutrition bar, only I made it myself and I know exactly what's in it and none of the ingredients frighten me (well, okay maybe one or two are sort of creepy). I trust the mighty MegaMuffin. Mighty MegaMuffin--I [heart] you!

I made my inaugural batch last weekend, and I wasn't able to obtain a couple of the ingredients, so it's hard to know if what I produced is like the MegaMuffins others make. But I guess that doesn't really matter--I like them, and on more than a couple occasions they've been the sole barrier between a good CR day and an ad lib disaster.

I see room for improvement though. I think I want to pump up the flavor with more spices. I'm the type who, when making a pumpkin pie, automatically doubles the spices called for in the recipe because I like it spicy and most people are spiceaphobic. And where's the vanilla? Vanilla is a must! I can't believe I didn't think to add some in the first place. And though there is already an entire orange (peel and all) in the recipe, I can't help feeling the flavor could be brightened considerably with the addition of a judicious amount of grated lemon zest! Fresh ginger instead of powdered, and a bit of clove, and I think I'll have a recipe tailored just for me.

And then there are the endless variations: why not some almond extract in one batch, and coconut extract in another? How about some rose water (or maybe even some rose hips--lots of vitamin C in those!) and cardamom, for a little Indian flair? It seems the basic ingredients of the muffin are so mild that almost any flavor profile could work. I'll be turning out another batch this weekend, so I'll post details about any delightful new ideas I come up with.

And now for a little graphic exploration of something very private, so tune out NOW if you are squeamish about discussing our elimination habits. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. But I feel compelled to share this in case anyone else has experienced the same problem as me:

During the first couple weeks of my CR practice, I was finding that I needed to have a bowel movement (sometimes quite urgently) after almost every meal, up to three times a day, and the results were not pleasant: loose and watery. I was consuming vastly greater amounts of dietary fiber than in my prior ad lib diet, but I think perhaps I was missing certain types of fiber for bulking up my stools, with the inevitable watery result, since it seemed there was nothing to bind it all together.

Enter MegaMuffin. I've been eating at least one of them daily, and sometimes two, and I have to tell you, thanks to all the bran and fruit fibers and the psyllium husks, that watery problem is gone without a trace. I've begun having large, firm (but not hard) stools that I'm able to eliminate without any effort and little mess. I'm convinced I was missing important types of bulking fiber, perhaps of the soluble sort. I haven't had bowel movements this healthy and comfortable and clean and effortless in years. So, that's yet another great thing about MegaMuffins: nice poop.

We'll be talking about poop more in the future, I feel confident. I mean, how long can we go on discussing what goes in without at least some mention of what comes out? But for our first poop discussion, was that really so bad?

The Skull and Crossbones Secret Society!

A year ago, me and two of my very dear friends/neighbors (we all happen to live in separate apartments in the same house) put on a series of monthly brunches for all of our wide circle of friends--most of them fellow bicyclists--to keep the community tight during the otherwise rather slow winter cycling scene in Chicago. We called it the "Skull and Crossbones Secret Society" (not to be confused with the "skull and bones" or whoever they are at some important university somewhere).

We had a top secret initiation that everyone was subjected to:

"We have cleverly poisoned all the food with a secret toxin that only kills the people who are not fit to be members of the Skull and Crossbones Secret Society. If you eat the food--and survuve--you are automatically a member for life."

The irony in this is that we didn't actually poison the food (surprise), but by serving them the food we offered, we were, in essence, poisoning them with "secret" toxins, and they did survive--for now, anyway. Mountains of waffles, donuts, pancakes, bacon, sausage, gumbo, goose (yes I even roasted geese one time), the list goes on and on. Fruit? Maybe a listless cantaloupe or off-season pineapple. Vegetables? Only if they are completely enrobed in eggs and cheese and cream, in the form of a quiche or fritatta or strata.

But offering that fatty, horrible-yet-so-delicious comfort food to our best of friends on cold winter mornings was such a wonderful opportunity to sustain relationships and comfort one another with cammaraderie and companionship during a time of year that can often seem so isolating. I've missed the brunches lately, and there are people I haven't seen since the summer who would have been here if we'd been doing them still.

So, tonight I discovered in my inbox an invitation from two of the former attendees, a married couple who just had a baby in October (my birth month too). It seems they decided to end their long hibernation with the newborn this Sunday by appropriating the Skull and Crossbones Secret Society and making it their own.

I'm virtually compelled to go, and I really really want to anyway. Certainly the food table will overflow with nothing good for me to eat. I do have choices, but I also have a tendency to be an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and moderation is NOT my strong suit. (This is why I tend to avoid drinking alcohol--even for the health benefits--because I usually find it difficult to stop at one 4oz glass of wine, and it's just better if I don't start at all.) So here's how I see my choices:

1. Go to the brunch, eat ad lib, and enjoy myself and the feast of badness as a "special occasion;" plan to try to make up for the claories later.
2. Go to the brunch, eat nothing (unless there's some fruit to nibble on)--and hope no on notices
3. Make a dish to contribute that meets my needs, and eat only that--and hope no one notices
4. Don't go to the brunch. People WILL notice this for sure.

I know ultimately I'll end up doing whatever feels right in the moment, but if I at least walk in armed for whatever battle I choose, I'll stand a better chance at not being thoroughly defeated when it's over.

I also think my two ad lib days last week should demonstrate that all is not lost when one has a "bad day," particularly given my otherwise pretty low calorie levels (for a man of my size) for the past two and half weeks. The scale this morning tells me I've lost nine pounds since I started CR on January 1--well over my target, and probably too fast, based on the counsel I've recieved so far from CR experts.

So, I guess I'm looking for someone to tell me, "You know what Chris? By Sunday, you will have been doing a great job of CR for three whole weeks, and if you wanna cut loose just one time, enjoy it, and just try to make up for it later." That's what I really want. I want permission. I want someone else to tell me what to do, but I want their advice to be what I want to hear! At least I'm honest about my denial...

Thanks to all, and...feeling kinda yucky today

I'd like to take just a moment here to say a big THANK YOU to those of you who have been reading and commenting on my blog. I'd been wanting to start a blog for years, but never figured out what I could possibly write about that anyone else would want to read. I'm so pleased that through CR, I've discovered something I can work on and also help others with, one way or another. I may not always respond to your comments, but please know that I certainly do appreciate them!

I haven't mentioned it here on the blog, but I've been fighting off a cold the past few days. It's the kind where I'm coughing (productively), have lots of mucous, but am otherwise fairly functional. No fever or anything.

But today, the first day of classes for the semester, I started out feeling great, like I was over the worst of it, and deteriorated from then on. Now I feel pretty gross, a true feeling of malaise.

As for my food today, well I started out with my usual breakfast smoothie, but after that, I've had NO appetite all day. I forced down a Megamuffin before my third class because I know that it's hard to learn when one isn't adequately fueled.

But since then, eating sounds totally gross. I'm hoping this poor appetite is an artifact of being sick, and not of practicing CR, because the sick will go away, but if I'm feeling un-hungry because of CR and it persists, that could get sorta problematic.

In other news, I'm back to school today for my 10th and hopefully final semester (as an undergrad) at the University of Illinois at Chicago

My classes? Here they are:

1. Race and Labor in Latin America (standard reading/lecture/writing class)
2. Gender in Latin America (taught through film study!)
3. Advanced Fiction Writing
4. Latin American Music
5. Introductory Logic

If it seems like there is a theme, there is: I am a Latin American Studies major. This is my last semester before I graduate, and I'm cramming in the last few requirements. But I absolutely love these classes so far.

Quick Tip: another use for Egg Whites

I'm always looking for low-calorie protein sources, and egg whites give a great protein bang for their caloric buck. But I am really unenthusiastic about scrambled egg whites. I'm also typically not hungry in the morning and find it difficult to eat...but if I don't, I become ravenous by lunch time and I don't like the helpless feeling I get when I'm out in public and suddenly intensely hungry. This feeling leads me to pizza!

So I find that a nice, light-tasting and refreshing smoothie goes down very easily and keeps me fueled for the first half of the day. One thing I've taken to doing lately is adding egg whites (uncooked) to my smoothie to give it a low-cal protein boost. I use Trader Joe's egg whites, which are pasteurized--and that means they are safe to eat uncooked. Here's the recipe:

1. 1 cup nonfat yogurt
2. 1 cup blueberries
3. 1 cup egg whites
4. 1 tsp flax oil
5. 1 tsp cinnamon
6. optional: one scoop whey protein

You could easily scale down this recipe to fit your caloric and protein requirements.

Banish from your mind the "ewww, gross" factor of raw egg whites. They aren't snotty-textured or gooey or stringy or anything. They are basically a flavorless liquid that completely disappears in the smoothie (actually, they improve the texture and taste in my opinion).

But think twice before you use fresh raw egg whites--there is some risk of microbes.

Guess what mustard greens taste like....

First, a few odds and ends, perhaps enough to make ends meet:

I recently decided to "Zone" up my targets, so I'm shooting for 40% protein, 30% fat, and 30% carbohydrate. This has made getting adequate protein a bit more challenging. Also, I've decided to increase my daily calorie target again, because even despite my two very unCR days last week, my scale informs me that I've lost six pounds--in just two weeks. That's two pounds too fast, and while I at one time thought, "I want to lose as fast as I can," I'm also enjoying the chance to eat some extra food and still lose weight.

[As a cheery aside: it doesn't take much weight loss for you to start feeling it in your clothes, and I'm happy--oh SO happy--to report that my favorite pair of jeans, which were fitting exactly properly two weeks ago, are now somewhat loose--comfortably so. God that feels GOOD.]

Back to my targets: reviewing my CRON data reveals the truth, that I've been eating more than my 1500/day calorie target anyhow, sometimes up to1900 calories. So I'm going to raise my target to 1700, and see where that takes me in the next week. Recall, I began with a 1300/day target, raised it to 1500/day, and now 1700/day.

The downside of raising my target is that I will have to find new ways to consume more protein. This is a bit of a tedious process, but thankfully it's fun and rewarding too.

Now, on to the titular subject matter: Mustard Greens

The only way I've ever eaten mustard greens in the past is stewed to oblivion the way collards and turnip greens and kale are often cooked, with a nice ham hock, plenty of salt, a dash of vinegar, a little sugar, some red pepper, served with hot sauce. I used to make good old fashioned, old-school collards that could take their place in any soul food restaurant without anyone noticing the white boy made them.

That was then, when said collards would naturally be accompanied by sweet potatoes (and I mean SWEET with sugar), corn bread, macaroni and cheese, and perhaps chicken wings, or ham, or a smothered pork chop. Don't forget the cobbler for dessert (even though the sweet potatoes had just as much sugar...).

Obviously I don't do that anymore, but I've always loved greens, and given their powerful nutrient punch for low calories, finding new and exciting ways to eat them seems like a high priority for effective CR practice.

Given the fact that "cooked-to-death" was the only way I'd experienced them previously, imagine my surprise yesterday when I got home with a pile of fresh, curly, beautiful mustard greens, and tried a little piece raw.

Mustard greens taste like mustard.

And I love with a capital L-O-V-E the flavor and ephemeral vapory heat of mustard (and horseradish and especially wasabe, too!)

But here's the funny and almost tragic part (if I'd gone through with it): I was on a shopping trip looking for recipe ingredients for my inaugural batch of Megamuffins, which includes curly endive. Well, Whole Foods was out of endive, but had a mountain of mustard greens that looked sort of similar--same color you know. I thought, "well, maybe mustard greens will work," and I bought a bunch.

Fortunately I discovered endive in stock at another store and bought it too. Why? Because mustard greens taste like mustard, and that just might not be the best accompaniment to strawberries and cherries, the fruit I was using in my batch of Megamuffins.

I'd had NO idea mustard greens were so mustardy. I'd never had them when they still had a flavor of their own. What a revelation!

Which brings me to my next point: the different styles of eating I engage in each day.

I prepared some lightly steamed mustard greens, dressed with a quick "vinaigrette" of balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, brewer's yeast, pepper, garlic, and flax oil. The flavor was deliciously sharp and pungent--at first.

But after three or four bites, with a HUGE bowl still to go, it quickly became overwhelming. Too much pungency, too vinegary, too sharp. Just too flavorful, so flavorful I was practically crying out for a thin and tasteless broth to ease things up.

But I'd already mixed all those nutritious ingredients into the dressing, and I needed to eat ALL of it to get my budgeted nutrients for the day! So, I gritted my teeth, and chomped my way through a rather aggressive meal that, when I'd finished it, well, let's just say I was more than ready to be done with it. I turned to a big soothing mug of green tea to cleanse my poor overwrought palate.

This type of eating, this "ignore what's going on in your mouth and just bite, chew, swallow, bite, chew swallow," I'd charitably call "utilitarian," or "refueling" eating. I was not really enjoying the food (though I certainly wasn't hating it), and I was definitely eager to be finished. But I was also self-satisfied with the knowledge that every bite was packed with nutrition and while maybe my tongue wasn't exactly amused, my guts were all about it. (I can feel them in there now--my guts--descending on those greens like a pack of hungry wolves on a young buck.)

Well, mercifully, I got the "utilitarian" meal out of the way early. All the rest of the food I have planned for today seems indulgent by comparison, what I'd call "luxurious" eating:

• salmon
• sweet potatoes
• kippered herring
• yogurt
• blueberries
• chocolate (72% cacao)
• a brand new Megamuffin (!)
• ....and more!

Isn't it wonderful when you begin to notice your tastes changing such that a baked sweet potato (mashed with a teaspoon of flax oil, cinnamon, vanilla, chopped nuts, and maybe a dash of Splenda if you are really in the mood for SWEET) seems like a rich dessert? When blueberries seem like little nibbles of ambrosia? When just 10 grams of some of the finest chocolate you can get virtually explodes in the mouth with flavor?

Sensible eating, as CR is, turns taste buds into sensory super-athletes. Without the oppressive unctuousness of all that unnecessary fat (not to be confused with necessary fat) and salt and sugar--which overwhelm everything else in the food--taste buds are free to tune themselves to detect essences that hover on the edges, tastes that suggest the presence of important nutrients our bodies crave, subtleties we missed before that give food its fullest expression of flavor.

And good flavor is what keeps us eating, so to me, this process seems key to survival. I'm inducing my body to deploy some dusty and disused tools from my toolchest of evolutionary survival. There's something primal and honest about this, something that makes me feel in touch with the way things work, the way things are supposed to work, a connection to nature that had been lost, paved over with refined carbs and saturated fat and bizarre chemicals, like a garden turned into a parking lot where nothing can grow with any real enthusiasm. My body feels like it's been depaved, the soured earth beneath tilled and restocked with nutrients and moisture and springing to life once again.

CR makes it easy to love food again, instead of always thinking of it as a source of guilt and denial. It's a benefit I wasn't expecting so soon in my experience, but I'm so grateful it's here!

I don't care if I die tomorrow.

I don't care if I live to be 70, 80, 90, 145, or die tomorrow. Not exactly, anyhow. No, I don't want to die--I love life as much as anyone (and maybe more than some). But the notion of practicing CR for the purpose of achieving longevity is a concept that I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

Here's the thing: if I died suddenly, and didn't know it was coming, how could I possibly care? I wouldn't be around to notice it happened.

What I absolutely DO care about, without a doubt, is that I don't want to get sick and linger in some awful in-between state, not quite alive, not yet dead. I'm thinking of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, any illness that would directly or indirectly interfere with my ability to enjoy (not just endure) my life. I want to be vital, strong, healthy and energetic for as long as I can, and then I want to be suddenly, and without warning...dead.

Right now, if I were to suddenly die, and if my consciousness could somehow linger long enough to appreciate my own death, I could be satisfied that I hadn't descended into serious quality-of-life-ruining ill health, pain, fear and sadness, and that I'd been living my life according to my values and principles. But I'm only 36, and despite a few health conditions, I enjoy fairly healthy, happy existence--for now.

But statistics are NOT on my side, here. Give me another 30 years proceeding as I was before starting CR, and I could reasonably expect my death to be merely the logical and tragic end to a lot of suffering.

I don't want to do it that way.

So, as far as I can tell, this CR thing is my ticket to avoiding that tragic fate, to enjoying life as a strong and healthy person for as long as possible--however long that turns out to be. I don't need 140 years to feel successful here. I'd be happy to make it to 70, but have these next 34 years be vibrant and wonderful, instead of sickly and sad.

I guess, if I'm really honest with myself, I'm early into this process and I've been reluctant to share this blog with, for example, friends or co-workers, etc. because I'm sensitive to the idea that someone reading this blog who doesn't know anything about this process will be dismissive of CR before fully understanding that it's not only about some magical unknown future longevity, but about the quality of my life RIGHT NOW!

When I first trained for a marathon, our training coach said at the beginning, "Don't think about 26.2 miles, when today you only need to run 5. Can you run 26.2 miles? Of course not--not today. So why spend time stressing about how daunting that distance seems. Focus on what you have to work with right now."

I don't have 140 years to work with right now. I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol and I'm 40 lbs overweight--that's what I have to work with right now. That's the five miles I have to run today. Longevity? That's the 26.2 miles I'm slowly, gradually working my way up to. I'm choosing to be mindful of what's happening to me now.

So if you are reading this blog, and you are critical of CR, or you are interested in persuading me that CR isn't the absolute best way for me to work with my health concerns right now, you better first do the following:

1. Demonstrate to me that you know what CR is, and that you are conversant in its premises and principles. (And be aware that it's taken me almost three months of study to just begin to understand it, and I have a long way to go, so don't imagine you can simply do a quick google search and convince me that you know what you're talking about. Be prepared to work for my respect.)

2. Prove to me that you have a better solution that can survive scientific scrutiny (good luck)

3. Show me how your solution is working out for you personally. (In other words, if you aren't personally a shining beautiful example of good health, I really don't want to hear advice from you.)

There's an expression, "stick with the winners." And it seems self-evident to me that if you want what someone else has, you should probably try to do what they did. So I'm taking my inspiration and advice from people who are doing this now, and achieving the kind of results that I want. Longevity? Who knows. Low blood pressure and cholesterol and weight loss and feeling good and healthy now? I'll take it.

Shut the hell up on pain of bitch slap!

I find the premise that we can control, or at least influence our psychological and emotional responses (what I usually refer to as my "internal life") by managing the substances we put into our bodies to be intuitive, even self-evident. But that was not always the case for me, and I'm regularly reminded that others do not always see this connection as clearly as I now do.

My experience training for marathons and other athletic endeavors taught me the value in keeping a training log in which I recorded not only how much exercise I performed, but other things, like observations about energy levels, mood, the weather, diet--anything that could have an impact on performance was fair game to be journaled. The purpose was in being able to look back over a period of time and draw some connections and conclusions about what worked on the good days and what contributed to the bad days. This approach diminishes the role of randomness, focusing instead on rational, predictable responses to various inputs and stimuli--the predictable results of behaviors, as opposed to simply being a victim of bad luck. So rather than saying after a bad day, "Oh you know, it was just one of those days..." one could just as easily conclude "I ate a bunch of crap the day before, didn't get enough sleep, then ran 30% further than my last run instead of just 10%. No wonder I feel like shit today and my per/mile average sucked and I'm stiff and sore and am missing today's workout because of it."

I'm starting to view keeping track of my CR experience as not unlike keeping a training log. It seems important to be mindful (mindfulness--such a powerful concept) not only of how I'm eating, but how I'm feeling, how my external behaviors influence my internal life, and how my internal life in turn influences my external behaviors (the image of an ouroboros comes to mind). Over time, it seems likely I can learn much about the predictable and mechanical functioning of my mind and body by reviewing this information. And I predict that when my mind and body live in easy balance with one another, I will perceive that experience as what I'll call the CR Happy Meal, a well-balanced emotional feast consisting of a judicious serving of relaxed contentment, generously spiced with optimism (and just a pinch of pessimism for contrasting flavor), served with a side of mixed energies and enthusiasms, with healing and restorative sleep for dessert.

My certainty of these premises has only grown as I've embarked on this new CR lifestyle. Its objective tools, like nutritional software, allow me to compare and perhaps correlate my moods and emotions with the foods I've eaten that day or in the days previous, while the more subjective tools like the blogs of other newbies struggling their way through the initial baby steps, and the blogs and mailing lists with the musings of long-time practitioners invite me to compare my experience with those of other people. I'm aware that what works for me may not work for others, and vice versa, but I'll add that these truths that I have concluded to be intuitive and self-evident were things I learned from other people, then tested in my own life and found to be true, so I'll be happy if anyone reading these words I write can identify with my experience in some way.

With all of that as a rather indulgent prologue, I'll now move on to the real meat of this morning's Gratuitous Musings.

I've had a couple bad--really bad--CR days. I haven't recorded my food in CRON-O-Meter since January 10. Why? Because I sacrificed mindfullness and allowed my emotions to dominate and overmaster my behavior in ways that I couldn't bear to record for posterity. I used to call what I'm feeling this morning "shame." But the real shame I should be feeling is for how I often sit in judgment of myself in a disdainful and destructive way that I would never subject anyone else to.

Imagine:

"Chris, I really fucked up yesterday. I ate 10 pizzas, drank a keg of beer, and finished up with three dozen donuts which I washed down with a gallon of heavy cream!"

"How do you feel today?"

"Terrible. I'm sluggish and tired, depressed, my gut is in open revolt, I gained 25 pounds overnight, my blood pressure skyrocketed, and I'm about to have a heart attack because my arteries have narrowed to a trickle!"

"Wow, you are a total fuck up! You should probably just kill yourself and get it over with. Here, have a pound of butter for a snack."

Ouch! No, No, NO, not in a million years, not ever, never never never would I even THINK such a thing about--let alone say it to--someone who was suffering from the results of a few bad choices.

And I'm not going to put up with that nasty voice whispering in MY ear either. Oh, he tried it. He got all up in my face, that embittered, nasty little troll, and I had to warn him to shut the hell up on pain of bitch slap.

So imagine instead:

"Chris, I really fucked up yesterday. I ate 10 pizzas, drank a keg of beer, and finished up with three dozen donuts which I washed down with a gallon of heavy cream!"

"How do you feel today?"

"Terrible. I'm sluggish and tired, depressed, my gut is in open revolt, I gained 25 pounds overnight, my blood pressure skyrocketed, and I'm about to have a heart attack because my arteries have narrowed to a trickle!"

"What were you doing before this happened?"

"Well, I was eating generous portions of delicious and nutritious vegetables and fruit, succulently fatty fish, nuts, tea, even delicious 72% cacao chocolate!"

"Wow, that sounds terrific. How'd you feel?"

"Oh, man, I felt GREAT!"

"Well, if that was working for you, maybe you should try that again."

"But yesterday...it was all so awful...I..."

"Don't even think about yesterday--or tomorrow, for that matter. How about we just focus on what we actually have to work with, which is now, today. Could you try that, just one day? I'll do it with you, and we can compare notes tomorrow. What do you say?"

Well, whose counsel do you prefer?

I know what some of you are thinking: "So much DRAMA about food. Relax!" Oh, I wish I could! But, that food is tied to psychological drama shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Food is the first thing we do in life after breathing. Love and dependence and ecstasy and survival become inextricably hardwired the first time we latch on to mother's tit, and there's no divorcing them again. There is so much emotional baggage attached to food that we should applaud ourselves for making even the most trivial of good choices.

Embracing CR or any healthy way of eating is an act of self-love and self-respect, and inherent in that choice is an optimistic view that we can and should be better, that we can be healthier and happier and that those are desirable goals because we want to be alive and life is meant to be enjoyed, not just endured.

But love and hate are not opposites, and this isn't a zero-sum game. A day or two, or a week, a month, even years of bad choices don't have to be seen as acts of defeating self hatred. We don't need to keep sabotaging ourselves with feelings of inadequacy and disappointment and self-shaming, because those things in the end do not contribute much to our lives or the lives of others.

I like to remind myself of something I learned when I did some research on Wicca for a class once, something called the Wiccan Rede:

"An it harm none, do as thou wilt."

It's a powerful statement, and not only because it advises us to be mindful of how our choices impact others. The unspoken message inherent in the Wiccan Rede is that we not harm ourselves. Human beings are fairly clever--too clever perhaps--we find a million ways to harm ourselves first, and then find we are unable to help but harm others.

Obsessing about one's health and well being, about CR--about any of these things--can at times seem self-indulgent and self-absorbed. But we also need to recognize that if we want to be of any use to the world at all, if we want to love and respect others, and be loved and respected by others, we first must take care of and love and respect ourselves. And that means enjoying our successes and our good choices and our good days, and learning from our bad ones without descending into self-sabotaging shame and regret.

As Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron said, "We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves."

As I sit here in front of CRON-O-Meter, peering at those two empty days where fear and loathing stood in my way and prevented honesty and acceptance, I can hear his receding voice now, that embittered little troll who visits me on days like yesterday, or the day before. He sounds so desperate and hateful, so unhappy. I'm tempted to give him an extra bitch slap for the road. But maybe like me, all he needs is a hug and blueberry/yogurt/flax oil/egg white smoothie.