See You Across the Rainbow Bridge, Sweet Sunny

Our sweet golden retriever passed into immortality day before yesterday at 2:44 pm.  She was almost 16, and had lived her entire life on the Christmas tree farm where my mother has been living for about six years.  She was the dog of Jean, our landlady and my mom's dear friend, who passed away suddenly of cancer on March 12.  It was four months from diagnosis to death.  We had not gotten over the shock.  Jean entrusted the care of Sunny dog and Georgia kitten to my mother.  Sunny had actually been more of my mom's dog for quite awhile, living at our little barn house (Jean lived in the bigger house just a few yards away) and sleeping next to my mom every night. 

She loved to go hiking on the beautiful farm with me.  We would hike hills and hills of Christmas trees - 44 acres.  Even the week before she died, she was running like a puppy.  We knew she was sick though - kidney failure was near, as often happens in old animals.  She was very happy until the day before she died, and the vet agreed it was time to stop her suffering.  We were able to be with her at the end, in a beautiful garden just outside the vet's office.  Socially distancing and wearing masks, of course.  

The loss of someone you love always makes you reflect on mortality.  I've lived here with my mother since July 18 of 2018, when she was in bad shape from a hip replacement and a double knee replacement.  Sunny was my dog too, and my best hiking partner ever.  

When I was younger, I loved getting thinner and wearing size 0 or less.  A child of the seventies who grew up in the Kate Moss 80's, I loved the skinny look.  I never quite got it - too blessed in the, shall we say, chest to get that - but it was great to be tiny.  Today I still like being thin, but I've watched my diet all these years, exercised, and except for a brief period when I got very heavy for me (158 at my highest at 5'2") and got high blood pressure, I've been happy with how I look.

As I've said, now it's about health.  I don't want to have a stroke.  I don't want a knee or hip replacement because I've been carrying around too much weight.  I don't want to look older than I am.  I like looking younger than I am.  But mostly, I don't want to have a stroke like my entire family on my mother's side.  

Sunny, I believe, has gone to be with God and her mother Jean and the long line of farm dogs who lived here before she was even born.  She had a beautiful life of running on her farm, never on a leash (she didn't get the concept of leash, really), being loved, and my mom fed her a lot of chicken, turkey and beef.  She was a particular fan of poultry skin. 

Here is my CR plan for today, in Cronometer, which MR and I remember from when it was brand new, a blessed upgrade from the now unimaginably clunky DWIDIP (Dr. Walford's Interactive Diet Planner.)  I do my calories in advance so I can monitor if I stick to my goals.  

I decided to include my weight, after much deliberation, because I want to see how much I lose at my current calorie goal, with quite a bit of exercise.  My weight goal, I think, is 108, exactly according to MR's formula on the CR website: take 15% off the weight you were in your early twenties without overeating or undereating.  I was also exercising a lot during my early twenties - cardio and weight lifting.  Now I do cardio and yoga and Pilates, some lifting but not much.  I love swimming and hiking, as well as the ever-present treadmill and elliptical.  

My weight looks high, but I continue to wear about a size six.  I have big bones, big shoulders and big... yeah.  Everyone said I looked too thin doing CR, but you have to stop caring what everyone says.  Which is a lot easier at 45 than at 30!  

It's Never Over, Only Set Aside

"Since I've laughed and cried and thought it over,
Now I realize 
It's never over, only set aside."

-- Stanley Clarke and George Duke, "Sweet Baby" 

"No one is ever really gone."
-- Luke Skywalker

       Eighteen years since I started CR.  So many stories.  So many changes, so many narrow escapes.  So much to be thankful for. 
      When I look back at my chripy, 30 year old self reflected in the early blog, I remember an enthusiasm that I have repeated over and over again in my life.  My friend Jenn once said, "You're so formulaic," and it's true.  There is a plot line.  Like a James Bond movie, it repeats over and over again.  I develop a passionate interest in something, usually after a crisis.  Hmmmm... always after a crisis.  I meet a guy who is somehow an expert in how to solve the problem I am trying to escape.  At lightening speed, I become a leader in the movement to solve the very problem I am trying to solve for myself.  There is a Bond girl to go with every episode, or a Bond boy, in my case.  
           In the first era of this blog, the Bond boy was obvious, my partner of 9 years and forever friend, MR.  Reading over my old entries I feel like I need to take insulin to bring down the sugar overdose of my fan-girl fawning over the man.  It was worth every minute.  He taught me epidemiology.  He gave me confidence in myself as a scientist, and he respected (after awhile) my powerful intuition as a way to move people.  His mother, who is my now and forever Mother in Grace, proved to him that my moderate, chatty, flexible and friendly version of CR could make health accessible to those who weren't as... serious... (I search for a word that is not "OCD") as he was.  She is now older and in great health.  I am so grateful.  My Canadian family is still my family.
          So much has happened.  I got my Masters in Public Health at Thomas Jefferson University.  I flew away from nutrition to research substance use disorders and launched a freelance writing career that quickly shot me to the top of some circles of a field called Harm Reduction.  I oddly enough met a fellow CR practitioner who happened to have founded the first and largest alternative to Twelve Step programs for people who suffer from addictions to anything.  He faced the strongest, most real craving there is: the need for food.  When you confront true hunger, you know what craving is.   It inspired him to treat addictions of all sort.  
         I've fought my own cravings: for love, for ambition, for food, for escape from the diabolical program Excel (it's an issue - I can explain how brain damage passed from mothers to children through generations has made me unable to use any sort of statistical software, but it would take an entire scientific article and none of you are interested - except about half of you, so I'll write it up later.)  More dangerous cravings, like alcohol, in reaction to severe post traumatic stress disorder.  But as I've said many times in my last five years as a freelance writer on trauma, substance use and psychopharmacology: "For every bad thing that happens to me, I get at least one article out of it!" 
         Writing this blog from the beginning gave me many gifts.  First, it gave me a way to let out my own voice, to write for an audience, every day.  I've written since before I was old enough to actually write - stories in my head - and carried around a little notebook with me from the time I was 7 on.  I'm a natural writer, and chronicling the events and thoughts I have is essential for my mental health.  I also found out that I have things to say that resonate with people, help people, often make them angry (did I mention the death threats?  Yeah, for eating kale.  People be crazy.)  
          The blog gave me the accountability I needed to really pursue CR.  There are so many ways to mean to but not actually do it.  You tell yourself, "I'll start tomorrow," and say the same thing tomorrow.  You make a plan but don't stick to eat.  The late night munchies or post-stress sugar cravings kick in and you say "F" it.  For me, having an audience to whom I felt accountable helped me stay on track.
          It also gave me a now infamous way of spinning an elaborate web to win the affection of the man who was my partner for almost a decade, and who is still my best friends.  He misses my cooking.  We talk all the time.  He does not miss my cats, who in spite of my protestations to the contrary before he moved in, were not "Good Kitties."  My current cat, Loviefluffy (a black panther from West Philadelphia - seriously, she's a West Philly street cat rescue who looks exactly like a mini panther, and she's political too), is an actual good kitty, but MR lives on the opposite coast now so has not met her.
          I didn't quite quit CR... it felt like it quit me.  I held myself to such a standard (wanting to weigh 105 pounds, 97 at best) that I couldn't see the amazing success of my moderate CR with extensive exercise, especially hardcore yoga.  I was dealing with such severe anxiety that I obsessed in the wrong ways.  It stopped being fun.  
           And... I will write more about this later... but the CR media we did in 2006 and following was a disaster for me personally.  The personal, vicious attacks in national magazines such as Salon.com, the vitriolic comments and threats on the blog, even personal messages, sent me into a spiral of fear and depression.  All the while I was trying to live my life, with a very stressful job organizing health care workers to have power on the job.  A job more people would respect now.  
          I didn't think of myself as a public figure then, and had no idea that I'd wake up the day before Thanksgiving to find a scathing, downright mean article in Salon.com written by a writer who had never even contacted me for comment.  I met her later - Rebecca Traister - and she turned out to be a lovely person.  She's written impressive books since then, and is a great feminist.  I understand now, having made my living as a freelance writer, the pressure to get something out on deadline, especially right before a holiday!  But the experience with media taught me two things: 1) My skin is thicker than ever before, which was great preparation for writing full time on harm reduction.  2) Don't hurt the innocent.  There are enough actual villains around to go after.   I didn't put myself out as a political candidate or someone with an agenda to push - I responded to media inquiries about our strange little scientific way of life.  I had a blog, and yes especially back in those early days, that made you more of a public figure.  But the experience I had with the media gave me a great deal of insight into journalistic ethics, integrity, and lack thereof.  More on that later, but I want to get in there that the best experience we ever had was with Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, who ate a lovely dinner at our home.  His producer was the  most professional media person with whom I've ever worked, and his team got through it all with grace - when my cat peed on the cameraman's bag.  
           So why am I back now?  
           Because S*i^ is getting real.  I am not 30.  I am 45.  I have a Masters in Public Health and I have taught epidemiology.  I have a twenty five year long career history of fighting for justice, especially for the poor and marginalized.  I also have a terrifying family history of stroke, and have had high blood pressure at time several years ago when I gained enough weight to be considered mildly obese.
           I lost the weight, lost the high blood pressure, but have never lost the drive to change this world.  I can't do that if I'm dead.  For some, staying thin, active and healthy may be nice.  For me, it is life and death.  CR is the only that that is almost completely protective against cardiovascular disease.  I do not want to join my entire family on my mother's side in having a stroke. 
           Then there's the anxiety.  I've struggled my entire life with a terrible anxiety disorder - one that is functional when you're working in crisis situations (like union organizing campaigns or teaching in urban public schools) - but that can be crippling in the real world.  More than anything else, CR has always been the most powerful anti-anxiety drug I could find, especially when coupled with a low carb approach to my diet design.
            So here I am, again.  I look much younger than I am, have lived a great many lives in a short time, and still want to live more.
            As Brian Delaney used to say, "Onward!"