Another Round of Educating People About the Basic Concepts of CR
One of the problems with writing this blog is that my audience is so diverse, and sometimes I assume that people know things they don't. I'm really excited that I have readers from all over the world who have all different interests, and I definitely welcome questions. One of the most fun things about the blog has been my off blog correspondence with faithful readers... it really makes me happy when I get email from you guys!
So I apologize for the times when I neglect to fill you in on some of the things that the CR brothers and sisters are familliar with. I got a question last night about whether or not I'm going to lose more weight, and so it seems to be a good time to review some basic concepts.
When we say that CR is not about weight loss, what we mean is that weight loss is a side effect, not the goal. Many of the CR folks would tell you that they actually liked the way they looked better pre-CR. I've been happy with how I looked for quite some time now. But CR is not about getting to a weight where you look good. My goal has always been to get my calories as low as I can, without sacrificing optimal nutrition, while maintaining some quality of life things like being able to go out to eat. I've been very pleased during this process that I've been able to take my calories lower and lower and still be happy with how I look. I'm just a lucky mouse, I suppose. I don't have a weight goal: that wouldn't make any sense because weight is not an accurate measure of CR. As Michael has said about a zillion times, there are plenty of people who are skinny but not CR'd. Does anyone remember my college boyfriend Andrew, the tap dancer who weighed 118 at 5' 10"? He used to eat all sorts of junk, in astounding quantity. For any of you who've lived in New Haven, this would be meaningful: Andrew used to go to the Yankee Doodle diner and eat those giant breakfasts with bacon, eggs, pancakes, and those blueberry muffins that they cut in half, slathered with butter, and cooked on the grill before serving. Yikes!!! I gained weight just being near him, as he seemed to move in a cloud of junk food. At the time, I thought he was the lucky one and I was cursed. Of course, he was constantly moving... he never stopped tapping on things. I wonder if he's still tapping on things, now that he's married and no doubt has children who are constantly tapping on things. His wife is a tap dancer too, I'm sure she can handle it. I'm a big fan of quiet and being still, so it drove me a bit insane. Anyway, the point being, how thin you get at any given calorie level is not standard at all, so it doesn't make any sense to measure much of anything by weight. It is important to lose weight slowly, and I've definitely been doing that. So I suspect that I will lose more weight, but as long as I'm keeping up ON and feeling great (and I feel so much better when I stay below 1100 that it's worth sacrifices in other areas, not that there really are any for me) I'll just keep going. I'm slowly leveling off, so I doubt that I'll lose much more weight, but right now my BMI is something like 19.5, which is on the very high end for CR folk, and my ON is great, so I'm not worried about "going too far." All the really good clothes come in small sizes.
So I apologize for the times when I neglect to fill you in on some of the things that the CR brothers and sisters are familliar with. I got a question last night about whether or not I'm going to lose more weight, and so it seems to be a good time to review some basic concepts.
When we say that CR is not about weight loss, what we mean is that weight loss is a side effect, not the goal. Many of the CR folks would tell you that they actually liked the way they looked better pre-CR. I've been happy with how I looked for quite some time now. But CR is not about getting to a weight where you look good. My goal has always been to get my calories as low as I can, without sacrificing optimal nutrition, while maintaining some quality of life things like being able to go out to eat. I've been very pleased during this process that I've been able to take my calories lower and lower and still be happy with how I look. I'm just a lucky mouse, I suppose. I don't have a weight goal: that wouldn't make any sense because weight is not an accurate measure of CR. As Michael has said about a zillion times, there are plenty of people who are skinny but not CR'd. Does anyone remember my college boyfriend Andrew, the tap dancer who weighed 118 at 5' 10"? He used to eat all sorts of junk, in astounding quantity. For any of you who've lived in New Haven, this would be meaningful: Andrew used to go to the Yankee Doodle diner and eat those giant breakfasts with bacon, eggs, pancakes, and those blueberry muffins that they cut in half, slathered with butter, and cooked on the grill before serving. Yikes!!! I gained weight just being near him, as he seemed to move in a cloud of junk food. At the time, I thought he was the lucky one and I was cursed. Of course, he was constantly moving... he never stopped tapping on things. I wonder if he's still tapping on things, now that he's married and no doubt has children who are constantly tapping on things. His wife is a tap dancer too, I'm sure she can handle it. I'm a big fan of quiet and being still, so it drove me a bit insane. Anyway, the point being, how thin you get at any given calorie level is not standard at all, so it doesn't make any sense to measure much of anything by weight. It is important to lose weight slowly, and I've definitely been doing that. So I suspect that I will lose more weight, but as long as I'm keeping up ON and feeling great (and I feel so much better when I stay below 1100 that it's worth sacrifices in other areas, not that there really are any for me) I'll just keep going. I'm slowly leveling off, so I doubt that I'll lose much more weight, but right now my BMI is something like 19.5, which is on the very high end for CR folk, and my ON is great, so I'm not worried about "going too far." All the really good clothes come in small sizes.
posted by April @ 3:19 AM
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