To Live and Diet in NP

I hit 40 a couple months ago, and on that very day, an article appeared in the Science Times about the Calorie Restriction diet. This involves a balanced regimen of fewer-than-expected calories, and in a wide variety of lesser animals, it's been shown to extend the lifespan by a considerable margin, perhaps even 50%. Because it's so new, the jury is still out for humans, but it could mean that a man of say, 40, who was expected to live to 90 would instead last to 115. The diet has also been shown to increase immunity, thereby reducing chances of getting Alzheimer's, cancer, and so on.

Knowing myself lo these many years, I had come to realize that I thrive with obsession. When I learned to unicycle, I spent three hours a day for three days until I had taught myself to ride. When I started to play Scrabble at the tournament level, I studied word lists for months; in fact, I started going thru the Scrabble dictionary this past summer and have made it thru the Cs. So after failed attempts to take off some of the weight I'd put on this past decade, I decided to do something obsessive about it: calorie counting.

I weighed 165 when I left college, much of it made up by the muscles in my legs from unicycling and other sports. My weight hovered in the 160s until Shirra got pregnant. I put on 10 pounds of sympathy weight (eating with her late at night when she got the munchies, for example), but while she lost her pregnancy pounds by the time Fiona was six months old, I never lost my extra poundage. Then when Emmett and Maeve came along, the same thing happened, and before too long, I'd hit a high of about 197 (tho generally I was in the low 190s). I still felt pretty fit, usually cycling about an hour a day, but I had developed a spare tire that would not fit on my unicycle.

After reading an insufficient amount about the CR diet, I decided to jump on it in conjunction with my birthday. I figured that this date would be easier to remember than most others, and I really didn't want to wait any longer. I decided, against some good advice from fellow-CR dieters, to go down to 1600 calories per day (they usually suggest working your way down to that low a level). My decision was based on a personal need to see some results. Eventually I had a physical, as suggested by the book I was reading, and my 'bio-markers' were all pretty good, so I decided to keep at it.

The results came pretty fast. From 197 late this summer, I'd gotten down to about 192 by Halloween. Here on Christmas, I'm down to about 174, a loss of about 2 pounds a week. At my starting weight, two pounds doesn't make much difference, but when it drops off at that rate every week, the change is noticeable fairly fast. At this point, my gut is gone; abdominal muscles are peeking thru for the first time in a decade, and I feel great. So if all goes well, I can look forward to another 75 happy years. More to follow (or maybe I should say: Less to follow).