Absolute Calories

Just happily starting the day by reading the tons of CR list posts that came in over night. "Absolute calories" refers to the fact that CR's benefits come from absolute calories, not from weight, percentage of body fat, etc. During my weekend of educating about CR (also known as a trip to Vermont for a friend's wedding), I found the most difficult thing to get across to people was this concept. In our weight obsessed society, people have trouble understanding anything other than weight or body fat percentages. It's like I'm telling them that their equation is backwards: instead of determining what you want to weigh and adjusting your calories and your exercise to fit it, keep dropping your calories as long as you can take it (with ON of course but what I'm hearing is that CR is much more important than ON, as long as you're not actively malnourished, which if most people in the US aren't on the junk they eat, then we CR people definitely won't be) and stop thinking about weight. It's so funny how difficult this is to explain. For example, if I were just looking to live up to society's idea of how a woman should look, I would increase my calories a little to maintain my current weight. However, I am continuing to experiment with lower calorie levels, which incidentally cause weight loss, in order to hopefully achieve the anti-aging benefits of CR. I'm glad I'm starting as a young adult mouse.

Okay, I'll write more after I finish reading the day's posts. I'm a little worried that this blog is turning into too much CR inside baseball, but I'm hoping that will lead the people who are confused to check out the website and maybe lurk on the list. It's amazing what you can learn.

Later in the day... it's becoming clear that work is going to eat me alive this week. However, the good news is that I'll be at the office super later tonight and be able to write more once it gets too late to call normal people on the phone (a lot of my job is talking to people on the phone, which is why I work basically every weekday evening and more weekends than not.)

Made my hotel reservations for the conference. Am getting a free plane ticket... story later in the day.