It Was Inevitable

I got busy and stopped counting calories. I feel like I put on a bit of weight. I don't think I look fatter, but sometimes I feel like my knees are mad at me when I jog after having gained even 2 or 3 lbs!

The trouble is, I don't think it is healthy or wise to simply cut back drastically again. I think I should ease my way back into CR as though it's my first time: track my calories to get a sense of how much I like to eat on an average day, normalize my gym-going schedule, then gradually cut back my energy intake, 50 calories at a time, over a very, very long period of time. I noticed that I honestly feel better in some ways when I'm eating more, because I eat a carb-laden plant-based diet that would make lots of extra serotonin along with those extra carbs. But CR makes you feel better in other ways, offering enhanced energy and mental clarity, and fasting is its own euphoric high.

We'll see....

My, How Time Goes By

I see why so many CRONies stop blogging. Time, you ephemeral thing, swiftly tumbling sands through a sieve, how I could but catch you and slow the tide!

Ha! Isn't that why we are CRONies, though?

School is occupying my time, and, just as I feared, I am getting to the gym less and eating more. I stopped writing down what I eat, which is such a problem for me. I eat too much fat when I don't keep track, too. Even now, I am procrastinating. I want to drop one of my classes but I don't know if I can at this point.

Time will tell....

I've been eating this big vat of stew my mom made me, which has squash, chickpeas, sweet potato, some greens, onions, and tomato. It's delicious, healthy and improvised, as all my mom's best dishes are. Unfortunately, I don't know how many calories it is, which is always such the problem when I'm eating home-cooked (but blessedly healthy) meals. I do my best with it. The problem is that once I mentally label it as "healthy," it's easy to overindulge, as studies have borne out.

My mealtimes are irregular from day to day because my schedule is, which I hate. How do we juggle all this? I just want to go back to how people lived a nanosecond ago--family farms were how everyone lived. Low stress, high satisfaction, good health, simple schedules with big blocks of time carved into it for each lone activity. And then everyone dies of the flu. I guess not everything was grand.

I need to hit the lotto.

CR's Lingering Effects

Maybe she was just being nice, but I was sitting next to someone I didn't know on my first day of classes, and she marveled at my age when it came up in conversation. She swore that she thought I was 18, straight out of high school! Haha. I had been off CR for awhile though the past year, which I thought made me look older and canceled out what I had gained before, so it's nice that it had lasting effects (if she indeed was being sincere rather than polite). I'm going to be 27 soon, so it bolstered my self-esteem for the day. Not because a youthful appearance should be where we derive our self-esteem, contrary to American corporate marketing's legacy in our culture, but because it validated that the practice worked on some level. I hope it will help my health! While I have such high hopes for my well-being, it is only with self-efficacy that I may realize them.

Changing Schedule

I'm getting nervous about my schedule changing as school begins. It's been the same for-freaking-ever before this, and I hope my food intake won't get all messed up from being busy. I guess I'll have to keep jotting stuff down on a piece of scrap paper throughout the day. But packing a healthy lunch can be a doozy of suck for me, as I would never voluntarily consume any of the garbage that passes for saleable foodstuffs in today's marketplace, calorie restriction or no.

The other concern I have is timing. Keeping basically the same schedule every day for the same types of activities is one of the most under-recognized factors in general health, and will likely become more appreciated in the future as a basic component of well-being (maybe as the "next big thing" in mainstream health buzz for the undereducated, underexercised, chip-eating populace to latch onto and quickly discard as a feasible lifestyle choice). Keeping the circadian rhythm steady by waking and sleeping at the same times every day (and preferably dictated by the natural waxing and waning of sunlight), being physically active at the same times every day, being spiritual at the same times, socializing at the same times, relaxing at the same times, ruminating over how likely it is you'll make it to the anti-aging escape velocity and hit the ground running (that is, be able to afford the damn procedures--better plan for that before you celebrate simply making it to that point alive!) at the same times, and eating at the same times every day, are something that is written right into your body function for it to function optimally.

I recall seeing on an Imminst thread about fasting that one guy would automatically start sweating with heat and a severely runny nose at the usual time he'd indulge in his post-fast binges. The body turns on the thermogenesis when it thinks calories are coming to wreak havoc on your body, and makes you cold when you won't be replenished any time soon. Keeping a schedule allows for optimum use of your calories and even promotes insulin sensitivity! I recall another study that showed people who didn't eat at their meals at the same times every day were a whopping 60% more likely to be diabetic! If your body has to have an insulin party every time you surprise it with calories, it will negatively affect your health and insulin sensitivity. On the other hand, if food is expected, thermogenesis is at the ready, and so is the insulin, and you can handle your calories properly.

I intended to get on a halfway-manageable schedule before school started, but lookey here! Almost 2 A.M. and here I am. I had better get to sleep and get my schedule regulated starting now! Eek!

Why I Do CR: Post-Mortal-Coil-Acceptance

Initially CR's remarkable effects on longevity are what intrigued me and drew me in, but as I've mentioned before, it's the quality of life it offers that solidified it in my lifestyle.

To fear one's own mortality is to be human, but my Weltanschauung seemingly shifted when I was about 25, thereby making me suddenly, unexpectedly, give nary a damn about living forever or dying that hour by some force beyond my control. Far from being a sign of depressive apathy, it was an enveloping understanding I'd gained about my place in nature, as one quantum unit merely floating on the crest of an undulating millenial wave in a galactic tide of an infinite forever-sea. I feel at peace with life and death in a way that I had imagined contented elderly people gain after having lived their lives, so it was a surprise to me that such a change in perspective is had as a normal part of the evolving consciousness that comes with earlier maturity.

Enough with this Star Trek philosophizing BS; why do I do CR then? I do think it extends the lifespan, and, more importantly, the health span, but it also gives me immediately benefits, like paradoxically, giving me more energy; enhanced mental clarity; reduced joint pain; improved mood; and, of course, the juvenile, vain pleasure of my boss telling me he had an argument with his wife over how old I was--19? Nay! 26!

Huzzah!

My Foodie Ways

I noticed over the 5+ years of restricting my calories/fasting that the more specific I am about goals for CR, like meeting a definite number of calories per day, the more I overly focus on CR and, paradoxically, I stop finding it easy to do and fail to reach my usual target. Instead, I have a range of calories that I'm comfortable with with no real specific target. If I eat more than my comfortable range though, I mentally calculate the next day about how much I should eat to get the calories to even out (even out to what though? I usually calculate to a 1400 calorie average). The amazing thing about doing it this way is that it's not a mistake, it's an opportunity, because extra lean days seem to have way more health benefits than eating the same number of calories every day than averaging that amount over two days, with one day being as close to fasting as possible. This upregulates several important genetic pathways that make the brain resistant to excitotoxic stress and other toxic damage. It also gives your body a break from glucose and insulin. The only thing I have a problem with is making sure my glucose doesn't go too low; hypoglycemia can cause excitotoxic neuronal death! I haven't been as vigilant as a I should about this. I believe all CRONies should invest in a blood glucose monitor, and that it should even be a higher priority than a food scale.

I love that I used to consider feast-famine days as a way to correct my mistake, when in fact it ended up an even more desirable behavior in terms of health benefits! Sometimes life surprises you with good news.... So now I don't stress about calorie numbers whatsoever. I eat anywhere from 1300-1550 calories a day, though a bit less than that range the day after I eat more than 1450.

Since my CR is flexible, I don't spend much time thinking about food as a result, and I'm not ever disappointed with how a day "went" in terms of food, because it's always an opportunity to do an extra-low calorie day tomorrow, or even a fast.

Probably the only inflexible thing about my culinary life is that I don't eat animal protein if I can help it, a habit that luckily preceded the research showing that the majority of CR's benefit is in restricting that one macronutrient group. For protein, I eat legumes, nuts, and sometimes seeds. I also try to avoid excess vitamin A, copper, and manganese, while maximizing folate and other B vitamins, though I don't obsess over micronutrient intake. I do my best to eat a variety of foods, with an emphasis on veggies, whole grains, and legumes.

I noticed that the more fruit I eat, the hungrier I get and the more sweet stuff I want (most likely due to the effects fructose has on leptin, which can induce a temporary insulin-resistant state), so I try to save the fruit for later in the day when it can't influence all my food choices at other meals. This also has the benefit of minimizing AGEs, or advanced glycation end products, which fructose can induce.

In Defense of Defending CRON

At first I didn't understand why anyone would bother defending CR. I could care less if someone else practiced it, because I am the one who wants the health benefits. It sounds selfish when I think of it this way, but, yes, I care about numero uno and that's about it, lol. In fact, if I was going to care even .0001% about someone else's assessment of it, the juvenile in me would actually feel happy that it's dumb annoying people with poor reasoning skills who won't be around at some point in my long life, even if I have to wait a really long time to realize the benefits, haha.

I had supposed that the people who took it personally when people criticized CR had unsupportive people in their real lives, so their defensiveness was on autopilot. It wouldn't even dawn on me to engage with someone over the benefits of CR. Again, what do I care if someone else does it? It's not like advising people to stop smoking, which can also benefit me so I don't have to breathe it secondhand.

But now I feel differently.

The more CRON is accepted as a mainstream cultural idea, just as going to the gym, jogging, and vegetarianism have slowly come onto the public's radar and gradually been accepted as desirable health behaviors in the 20th century, all individual CRONies stand to benefit from it. No, I'm not just talking about an end to the haranguing about low weight once and for all! I'm talking about improved health research specific to the CR lifestyle. Even when studies aren't addressing CR specifically, wouldn't it be nice if CR status were often controlled as a variable so we knew how certain medications or other interventions affected CRONie subjects? Because of all the effects of CR, including weight loss, lower glucose, lower insulin, reduced body temperature, and upregulating neurotrophins, orexin, etc., as well as changing gene expression to induce a longevity-promoting state, it stands to reason that CR status should be controlled for in ANY study, just as body weight or physical activity level should be (studies will frequently specify whether an intervention was on obese or non-obese mice, for example. The results are NOT always similar.).

And the more people who practice it, the more likely (hopefully) the sexism in the studies can be addressed, although that problem is so pervasive in all medical research in general that I won't hold my breath on that one. But there would be more public criticism that might move researchers to improve the quality of the studies on that front (more on that later--I'll have to dedicate a post just to that subject eventually).