50 at 50?

 It's been a long time.

I have another blog now with a very different purpose and audience.  Some of you are subscribers to both - thank you!  

It has been a rough few years - chronic illness, tough economic times, medication reactions and perimenopause, which is definitely a thing!  In the last year and a couple of months I've gained 35 pounds, and it doesn't seem to be as easy to take it off as it used to be.  Nowhere near as easy.

My doctor says to lose weight but says nothing helpful.  He is a low fat vegan and those of you who have been with me for any length of time know how I feel about that.  

For a long time I couldn't afford a gym anymore, so I lost my weight lifting routine.  I couldn't afford yoga, so I stopped going to classes though I kept up a daily home practice.  But now I have a new job and not only joined a gym, I signed up for these interesting four person at a time personal training classes that cost a quarter of what regular personal training does, but you still get individual attention.  The gym is lovely, clean and close to my new office.  I love it.  I am happy there.  

I don't feel like myself at a higher weight.  I feel like I am living in an alien body.  I hate not having the cardio fitness and strength and flexibility that I had had for so long.  Yet it does not help to beat myself up about it.  Just work the problem, and be happy at the steps, not just the result. 

I turn fifty on August 2.  I had so wanted to have my happy body again by 50.  That won't happen.  On the scale at the gym yesterday I weighed 165.  That's from someone whose high weight before had been 136, except for a short period of time in 2016 when I briefly got up to 160.  I've never been one of those people who stays thin naturally.  I have to work at it, and now that I am older, I have to work at it more.

I've also lost a lot of muscle mass.  Two years ago I was hospitalized and put on a ventilator for eight days due to a medical error.  Yes, I made a complaint to the Department of Health (it went nowhere), yes, I looked into suing but since I didn't die, they said I didn't have a case.  Spending eight days immobilized has permanent consequences for muscle mass, and I worked hard to build it back.  I was getting there when tremendous tragedy in my life struck, and I got far off from my healthy practices.  Recurring bouts of chronic illness didn't help either.

Now I have some stability and am getting back in shape.  Oddly enough, I actually manage to look pretty good.  I hate my belly, but I still wear clothes well and a lot of the fat went to the boobs.  A few things to be thankful for. 

While building muscle and cardiovascular health are my real goals, there is something catchy about losing fifty pounds over the course of my fiftieth year.  The calculations the trainer did at the gym, after taking measurements of body fat and skeletal muscle and various tests of strength and mobility say that it's all quite doable, if I just do the work.  And y'all know I am capable of doing the work.

I thought I'd go back to regularly using a food diary.  Checking in with you bloggie friends is always helpful, and why not start now. 

So here's what I've eaten so far today: 

2 "Don't Be Piggy" Wegman's vegetarian sausage patties, 80 calories each, 9 g protein each.  My goal is 30 g protein at each of three meals a day, but it may take a little while to get back there.  

Here is a start. 

Meatballs: Or How Other People Can Be the Death of CR

My first day on my plan went perfectly, or purrfectly, as we cat people would say.  I got up the next day, did my yoga and all was well.  I went about my plans and then my mom got some unexpected good news.  She texted me while I was at the grocery store to buy ground beef.  She wanted to make our favorite meatballs because we were celebrating.

So I did.  It was a big deal.  I had just now started back on my CR diet after being completely un-serious about it for a very long time, and Mom wanted to do something special.  So I bought the meat.  I proceeded to eat almost nothing all day to save calories for the meatballs.  I ate quite a few, but I figured it was a good infusion of B vitamins and iron, two things I tend to lack, and it was just one day.  Then back to the plan.

Then the next day while I was out, my mom texted me that she made me more meatballs.

I've lived with my mother for two years.  I came here to help her when she was having trouble recovering from a hip surgery and ended up getting a job I loved teaching in the public schools, so I stayed.  I was supposed to move back to Philly in January and did for a bit but then the pandemic hit, so I came back here.

To state the obvious, it is very difficult to live with someone who doesn't do CR when you want to do CR.  I never tried before.  First I was alone, then I was with MR.  I had pressure from friends when I was eating out, but during the early and most successful days of my CR, my daily calories were so low that I could eat out and not worry about it without losing track.  I often kept my calories to 1000 a day, but would go out for a meal with friends and probably pack in 2500 at once.  Seem impossible?  Read the calorie counts on menus and you'll see it's actually quite easy.  And I drank wine back then - those calories add up.

I am moving back to my own place in Philadelphia in literally two weeks.  In between I'm spending a week at my father and step-mother's house, where the dinners will be fabulous creations by my father (who calls himself my step-mother's personal chef) but during the day there are no structured meals so I can eat lightly.  Then I will be back in my own place, carefully controlled environment where everything is set up to suit me.

People see food as love, celebrations revolve around food, etc.  We know this.  I find it difficult to get around.  I don't want to make anyone sad by refusing their loving gift.  At the same time, I really need to get back on CR.  My blood pressure has been running higher than I like it to these days - partly due to stress (okay, almost entirely perhaps, as last time I had it taken was at the urgent care center when I was waiting to be seen for an acutely painful case of poison vines!) and I'm not messing around with stroke risk, not with my family's history. 

It's hard to communicate your food needs to people, especially when they've seen you go back and forth on the topic before.  I've been trying to get my diet straight for a long time since I've lived here, but too often ended up impaled upon a pile of toast that waits so appealingly in the toaster at night.  Late night eating often gets me, especially sugary things.  That's why I find it so much easier to just set a clear diet plan and stick to it.  Less decision energy... more about that later.

Anyhow, today I am right on plan.  Feeling better about myself and life in general.  It's a turbulent time... for everyone, to be sure, and my family was going through a lot without the pandemic.  But, as Lord Petyr Baelish says in Game of Thrones (which is now my religion):

"Chaos isn't a pit.  Chaos is a ladder."

What If?

It's a sad time around here.

Sunny is gone, my mom will soon have to move from this place, and the world is in a state of pandemic (I'm sure you noticed.)

I was laid off from my teaching job in one of the toughest public school districts in Pennsylvania on March 13, and I've been sad ever since.  I had been planning to go back and get my teaching certificate so I could teach in poor urban schools.  I loved those kids.  But I have a Masters in Public Health, it's a pandemic, the future of public education is entirely up in the air, and, as I tell interviewers, I feel it is a moral imperative for everyone with a public health background to rush to the frontlines.  For us in epidemiology, that doesn't mean direct patient care, but tracking down this disease.  I'll keep you posted.

I haven't paid enough attention to my eating, which only makes the sadness slip into a kind of depression.  I'll be moving back to my new place in Philly (where I've lived almost my entire life and where MR and I lived together for almost a decade), but for now I'm still at my mother's about an hour away. 

I used to call my mom's house the "Carb Castle."  I think I still will.  She loves bread, toast, baked oatmeal (it's a PA Dutch thing) and all sorts of carby treats that are very hard for me to resist when they're around.  I don't keep them in my own place, but I can't very well tell her what to keep in hers, so here they are, and here I am. 

I seem to go in phases between barely eating at all and then overeating.  Emotional, all of it.  Eating late at night is the worst.  It feels like carbs will be a sedative, calm my mind and help me sleep, but eating carbs late at night makes me wake up in a blood sugar crash and eat in the middle of the night.  Disaster for my sleep and obviously for my CR.

I look forward to a better day.  It's good to be here for my mom, it's beautiful, my cat has been happy looking out at a pond and listening to geese, but I am a city girl.  As I fix up my new apartment back in home sweet West Philly, I imagine getting back into the swing of "real" life, with my friends and a city that I know and love, where things actually happen.  Yet who knows, given the pandemic, what "things" will "happen" and what "happen" will mean.

CR is a natural antidepressant and I could use one.  I am also ever more aware of mortality.  And wanting to keep looking ten years younger than I am.

CR is self-experimentation.  You are your own lab rat.  One positive about the pandemic is that it has put many of us into more laboratory like conditions.  Without actually going somewhere to a job, we are trapped inside and making our own food.  No happy hours, dinners out, work luncheons, etc.  Real food can triumph over Atkins bars if you don't work a job where you have fifteen minutes to eat and no fridge in which to store a salad.  Let's take advantage of the opportunity.

1250 is an ambitious number but it's the BMR I'd have at my goal weight, and I have a tank of about 25 pounds to burn off to get there (132 - 108 give or take.) 

So here's the plan.  Stay on this for the next ten days, until I go to visit my North Carolina family for a week.  There, I will eat my regular breakfast and lunch but eat whatever amazing food my father cooks for dinner.  Still, staying away from ice cream, desserts and overeating. 

What ya think?

This could be improved upon greatly - less dairy, maybe some legumes, etc.  But for now, it's what I know I'll eat, where I am, with what I have going on.  MR used to say, "The best supplement is the supplement you will take," when he grudgingly compromised and said I could have gummy supplements (I have trouble swallowing pills and love all things gummy... a problem that at one point was legendary!)  The best diet is the one you can stay on.  Things will be different when I am at my own place.  For now, I need simple, straightforward and strict.

Oh, and I take Vitamin D and B complex supplements!  MR used to say, "Unless you walk around naked in Southern California all year, it's hard to get the vitamin D you need!"

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!" 

A Note About Dating

No, not that kind of dating!  Though I have plenty of advice on that...

The immediately previous entry was written in early November of 2004, right after the first CR Society Conference I ever attended.  I never published it for reasons that will become clear soon enough.  So while it is dated March 2020, keep in mind that it was actually written long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away...

The saga continues.

The Two Are Inextricably Intertwined Over the Medium Term

When I was younger, about eight years ago, when I had first gotten out of college and was on the road organizing all over the South, I used to read pop nutrition books in my spare time. I got hooked on lowfat vegetarian stuff, and practically memorized Dean Ornish's _Reversing Heart Disease_. I can still quote very large portions of it.

And in those dark days, when I was driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for workers' houses where they would invariably slam the door in my face when I tried to talk to them about the union, I developed a rather elaborate fantasy of what I wanted to do with my life.

It went something like this:

Half the year, I'd travel around the country, speaking to large groups of people suffering with heart disease or obesity, showing them the light about the lowfat vegan diet. I'd write books, appear on talk shows, wear fabulous size zero suits, etc. I'd convince insurance companies to give lower rates to lowfat vegans with cholesterol below 150. I'd convince McDonald's to start offering lowfat veggie burgers. No mayo.

The other half of the year, I'd work in hospitals teaching heart patients and their families how to cook lowfat vegan and save their lives, with minimal stress, possible to cook easy, tasty food, even if you're a mom with two full time jobs, etc. I'd be the kind of woman other women like -- down to earth, focused on taking care of family, helping other women cook food for their men that would both make them happy and not kill them.

Somewhere in all this fantasy world was a very cute vegan cardiologist who liked cats and loved my cooking. I never met the guy, but I was tempted at some points to put an ad in the local university papers that went something like this,

"Thin, beautiful, Ivy League educated social justice professional seeks vegan cardiologist for lowfat dining, conversation, and changing the world."

I never did put the ad in the paper because in typical American woman fashion, I thought I wasn't thin enough. Now I was about 115 at the time, quite thin and cute (I was 22 for goodness sakes!) but still thought I wasn't quite good enough.

At 30 and 104, this seems very silly.

When I look at my DWIDP P:F:C ratios and realize that I am now so far from being a lowfat vegan that I don't even recognize myself, it seems sillier.

[Actually, what would be really funny would be if said vegan cardiologist was actually out there, read this, and tried to win me back to the High Carb Darkness. If you won't turn to the dark side, then perhaps...]

My work got better, I started organizing nurses, which fed my need to reform the broken American health care system while allowing me to help workers stand up for themselves on their jobs. Tons of career success, more than I could have ever hoped for. Lots of lowfat vegan cooking. I even lived with a vegan for two years... we met shortly after the Republican National Convention at a legal defense meeting for the 420 protesters who were arrested. I had brought vegan cookies. He said he liked the cookies, and asked if I was vegan. I said I was. He said, "Me too." I thought, it's the first boy vegan I've ever seen. Two years later, he was still living in my apartment. That was right around the time that MR was writing "Rant: Moderate CR" from which the title of this post was taken... Sept. 2002.

It's all better now... I live alone, I was saved from high carb hell, I love my work and am more dedicated to it than ever. But the vision of changing the world through food has never entirely faded.

So when a large group of us got rather lost on the walk back from dinner in downtown Charleston on Thursday night, and I wound up in conversation with Brian Delaney, it was no big surprise that the topic turned to how to change the world.

He was horrified by the election results. He lives in Sweeden, remember, though he is American. I was also horrified by the results, but as a union organizer, I live with the horror of people acting against their own interests every day... after nine years, it stings a little less.

He wants to write a book about it... he's a writer, basically... but he also has a second CR book in the works. We discussed what would be the right thing to do.

I told him about how my mother, who knows everything, once said to me, after listening to me rattle on about CR for hours on end, "This is how you'll change the world."

By this time we had located and returned to the hotel. We were standing in the hallway finishing our conversation in whispers so as not to wake the other hotel guests.

"The public health system in this country is on the verge of collapse. The nursing shortage is only the tip of the iceberg. We have to stop people from getting sick," I said.

He told me about the calculations he had once made that even 15% CR could so dramatically improve people's health that it would solve the very problem of the baby boomers getting old and sick and destroying the economy with health care costs.

"We can convince people to do this. We can convince governments to buy into this if they think it will save the public health infrastructure." That was me, absolutely ecstatic to find someone who thought my crazy ideas weren't so crazy after all.

"What are you doing with the rest of your life?" he asked me.

"I told you before, I'm up for anything."

We shook hands and parted company, him returning to his room with three roommates, me to my little insomniac palace (I know better than to inflict my insomina on roommates, so I spring for my own room) to listen to Duran Duran for hours before finally being able to sleep.

The next day at dinner I cornered Michael Rae at the salad bar. One great thing about people who weigh all of their food is that they really can't escape if you're trying to talk to them while they're trying to make a salad. I convinced him to sit down at my table and I rapidly outed myself as a serious Michael Rae groupie. I asked him so many questions that at one point, Dean, who was sitting across the table, barked in rather un-Deanlike fashion, "Let him eat!"

After a long conversation in which I try to convince him that "Rant: Moderate CR" is the most beautiful thing ever written (try to envision the scene: MR trying to eat a salad, me dramatically quoting that line about prevention of paraplegia through the non-jumping off of cliffs not being a victory for neurosurgery), Brian appears and apologizes for attempting to pull Michael away from me but points out that they need to have a meeting about the medical study. I reluctantly relinquish my grip on Michael (who is still eating his salad and is now being accosted by other fans who want to ask him questions) and sadly resolve to wait somewhere until the boys are done with their meeting and ready to go out resveratrol hopping. Then it occurs to Brian that I should just sit in on the meeting, and I happily promise not to say anything. (Chanelling the fly on the wall technique of the Black Moth there.)

That's how I ended up in that meeting I told you about, where Brian articulated a way to get the masses involved in moderate CR, make lots of people be healthier, and hopefully fund the research that will find the true cure for aging in the meantime.

But there was Michael, arguing that we can't get distracted by disease prevention. That we should fund the Methuselah Mouse Prize and get the rodent study done. Michael, whose work I've memorized, who changed my life without having any idea he was doing it, all the while happily formulating whey powder and writing beautiful articles in some extremely cold place in Canada.

Well, what's a blogger girl to do? I'm an organizer, I'm not a scientist. I don't understand the science... I know that eating the right things and eating less and less makes me feel good. I believe what Brian is saying: that moving large portions of the population to "moderate" CR would not only save them from horrible disease, it would save the public health system.

What de Grey is saying (that aging can be cured) makes sense to me too, and as an organizer, I live every day with the idea that the way most people see the world is just dead wrong.

First and foremost in my mind was the thought that I have to live forever so that I can spend as much time as possible in the presence of Brian Delaney and Michael Rae. At the risk of being overly dramatic (as though that ship had not already sailed), I was beginning to feel a lot of kinship with those folks who just left their fishing boats on the shore and ran off to follow Jesus.

Second, I am trying to figure out what to do. For three weeks I had been carrying a blog entry about the MM Prize in my head. (I write a lot of things in my head in advance, and I sometimes set goals that I have to achieve before I allow myself to write them. It's a clever little motivational game.) But there is Brian, disagreeing with the very premise of the MM Prize.

In the end, I did what any sensible girl would do in the situation: I got a glass of wine. I tried to convince Michael to go out with us but he said he needed to sleep (by this time I had been looking up at him for two hours while we stood next to each other and I was starting to think that he must be taller than the six feet that is quoted in the press) but Brian and CR Hacker Boy were up for resveratrol hopping, so we went to downtown Charleston, split a bottle of Pinot Noir, and talked about high school, ex-girlfriends, politics, and the weather. I disappeared to the ladies room and called my mother on my cell phone, attempting to communicate the wonder of this entire experience in a short enough time that the men might just assume that I was putting a lot of attention into re-applying my makeup.

I spent the next two days seeking resolution to the questions that were exploding in my head. The scientists talked a lot about preventing disease and how CR'd folks are healthier. But according to Luigi Fontana's presentation, so are raw food vegans who aren't CR'd... sorta like my old diet. What he didn't talk about (and I understand that we have no reliable biomarkers for it, only dead rats) was whether or not the raw food vegan non-CR'd were going to age and die like their neighbors, just without an early heart attack.

What does this mean to me? I'm not going back to being a non-CR'd vegan. (Luigi didn't seem amused when I said that if there's no difference between CR and being a non-CR'd vegan, I'd run screaming out of the room to go find some rice and beans.) I am going to keep dropping my calories until I no longer like it. See previous ten or so entries for more detail than you ever could have wanted on that.

The question I kept asking myself is: do I believe that we should try to convert people to CR, make it more accessible, encourage people to practice "moderate" CR, much like my 22 year old vision of changing the world?

Or will that just add fuel to those who say "You can't really cure aging, but look, you can feel better longer without sacrificing too much."

I asked both Brian and Michael at separate times what they thought was the advantage to spreading the word about CR. I mean, we always talk as though getting more people involved, making it more "accessible" is a good in and of itself, but I wanted to know why.

Brian said simply, "Because it's bad for people to die." Michael didn't get a chance to give me much of an answer because I just passed him a note during a meeting.

The premise of the blog (other than as an exercise in self-indulgence on my part) is that an example of someone easing into CR, with all the silly mistakes and exciting discoveries, will make it easier for others to do CR. So it would seem that I believe that we should recruit others. I am an organizer... my orientation on the world is to convince people to do things that I have found to be good.
But what if I should be recruiting others to fund the development of the immortality pill?

What about the unnecessary suffering of those who age and get sick in the meantime?

I know, I know, I should just organize nurses and stop whining about my existential crisis over whether or not I should publish the blog entry entitled "Chloe, the World's Longest Living Mouse."


But one of the principles by which I have always lived my life is that what an individual does matters. If I believe in something, I act accordingly, to the best of my ability, even when it's hard. Or even when my contributions are so small that it would seem that they couldn't possibly matter.
Chloe is still riding around in my head, complete with a pink bow in her little mouse fur. She'd really like to tell you all about it, but she can't, cause her translator (that's me) is having this silly existential crisis.
Don't worry, I won't let the cat eat her.