Quod Me Nutruit, Me Destruit.
So I promised to tell you all about the health woo, and how I got that way.
Around the time of my last relapse I decided to use the artificial jolt of energy the steroids had given me to jump-start myself into a bit more physical activity. Simultaneously, I wasn’t nursing as much and felt more comfortable with weight loss, so I decided to see if I could get some of the pregnancy weight off without too much agony. Here I am at my post-pregnancy, thirtysomething “normal” weight (I’m the one in the green and black):
I actually don’t see too much wrong with that, to be honest–but I wanted to lose a little.
Historically, I eat an incredibly healthy diet. I wasn’t about to go into some weird unsustainable food-system alternate universe, having had that experience with macrobiotic and paleo eating in the past (both were good, but living and dying according to a food system is just not my thing… I’ve got to be a bit more wash-and-wear than that). I tinkered a bit with what I ate–not much–and ended up just cutting portion sizes while being a bit more careful about nutrition. Basically, I eliminated what few junk foods I eat, supplemented myself up to optimal levels (especially of B vitamins), and then just took what I would normally eat (a pretty optimal fruit-and-veg, lean-protein, whole-grain diet with a ban on processed crap) and… cut it by a third. And waited to see if I’d feel starving or weak or headachy or or or…
Well.
First of all, I got thin. Fast. This had a lot to do with the fact that at the same time, I got my Razorblade and was wheeling all over creation building up my arms. This, by the way, was the ideal workout–I could push myself as hard as I wanted, provided it wasn’t too hot out, because when I got tired I was already comfortably sitting down. So I started spending the better part of the day out and about, which also helped my mood. My baby became a toddler then, I couldn’t afford a housekeeper anymore–a host of factors got me more physically active. So that helped. But keeping up the “diet”–which really wasn’t a diet at all–had a lot do with it.
Essentially, over the course of 2008, I’ve gone from 165 lbs (the photo above) to a low of 110, currently holding at 113. A BMI of exactly 20. Here’s what that looks like:
So, yeah, OK, I’ll admit it. Fun. Size 2 jeans and all that. But that really isn’t the point, this is:
Since I started eating this way, I’ve had no real relapses and my symptoms have abated. I also have tons of energy, and am just, in general, so much healthier. And yet I knew–knew–that this was all wrong, based on everything I’d been told. I knew for a fact, being an OCD nutrition-person, that I wasn’t getting the calories I “needed,” and that by rights I should be having all sorts of problems. Which I wasn’t having. In fact, the longer I kept to this, the better I was feeling.
Googling around, all “wtf?”, I came up on calorie restriction. This is the sort of thing that would have seemed mad woo to me if I hadn’t basically been doing it for months and getting every positive effect that these people go on about. So I’ve been digging into it a bit further, using a bit more of its structures, and, um…
I’m converted.
Seriously. It’s working for me health-wise like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t pretend I don’t like how I look, although that does piss some people off. I love the energy, the clear skin, all of it. Plus, my husband and I get to play all sorts of fun starvation games with each other (don’t ask) and I’m actually bringing him around to eating remotely healthily–a biggie, because my father-in-law now has prostate cancer, and I plan to keep this man of mine around forever.
So, yeah. If anyone wants to, you know, bug me about CRON and ask how to do it or whatever, I’m available for that, and am now swearing by it. I’m eating about 1300 calories a day, which will probably go down to 1100 or so when I’m not nursing. It takes some doing to make sure that’s nutritionally complete, but I’ve expanded my diet and gotten into new foods in order to make sure I get all the nutrients and well… that’s a plus, too.
Is CRON woo? I don’t know. But right now I’m really feeling it.
I have every intention of living forever. I have a 100-year-old great aunt. I will get there.
November 3, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I’m all about it – but still in the planning stages while Gloria is getting so many calories from me. I saw NOVA about it a while back (it’s here) and really, the idea of life extension through calorie restriction appeals to me on several levels. I want to be alive to be a help to Bede for as long as possible. I was a calorie restricted vegetarian for several years in my 20s and I know I can totally do it again.
That’s great that it has had so many benefits for you already, too.
xox, your faithful blog-stalker
November 7, 2008 at 6:09 am
You don’t find two studies done 50 years apart a LITTLE thin research wise for the long term health effects of, I dunno, bone density in humans, healing times? Not to mention the lovely litany of side effects the one human study found. I have been aware of CRON for about 20 years and my feeling is why not sign up for Cryogenics because you will need it. Actually there have been hundreds to millioins of CRON studies, it is why it was so easy for the Germans in WWI to shoot the officers; since they were a foot taller than the rest of the UK population becuase they had access to….food. Indeed, from the women’s camps from Singapore, to any conflict in the last 120 years, internment camps have had similar caloric intake to what you are getting now, and yes, many of them lived a long time (and many of them were psychologically unable to change thier eating habits after internment). I am a third generation anorexic and my grandmother starved my mother, and my grandfather, and my mother starved me (and I was whipped for eating from the fridge). It is called Anorexia. And yeah, I ran marathons, and I was only eating 1,000 calories a day; I worked 16 hours and I was eating 350 calories a day. My grandmother lived until her 90’s; my grandfather in hospital pleaded not to be sent back, “She starves me” and an investigation of abuse occured (She should of said CRON instead of “I like him as thin as when he was 20″ – he was 86)
Of course, if you DO get anemia (or rickets, or scurvy or any of the other joys of people who don’t obsessively watch the food – but then obsession is sort of part of it, isn’t it?), statistic show you won’t be able to survive any cancer if found, you won’t wake up from an operation. Just read Ideopathic Anemia – longer than Cron but just as interesting.
It is of course your life, and the life of your child; I was starved as a child, and was anorexic for 13 years as an adult, off and on, so I find it difficult to cheer a mother into a type of behavoir which will make a impression of some type on your offspring.
And since no one else is likely to say it, if your Menses stops, please go to a GP right away. Because you have fallen below the body fat threshold.
I admit that some of my comments are a reaction of an anorexic – because it isn’t a joke.
By the way, both of my grandparents practiced a form of CRON, with vitimin suppliments (sometimes they seemed larger than the meal they were eating). They both lived until past their 80’s (so they died young in our family as all his other siblings are still alive, and her side lived until 105-112 generally); both in particularly horrid ways. And they maintained thier diet until the very end.
Have fun, just curious, are you less now than you were at 16; and does a woman post puberty, with bone growth and body development supposed to be that weight. I ask that because I am below what I was at 16 and I am getting a feeding tube.
November 7, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Ouch. No, I’m well above what I weighed at 16, and I won’t go to a BMI lower than 20 (CRON supporters say 18, which I think is a little uncool). I have a lengthy history with being termed “anorexic” which may have caused me to sound flip when I didn’t mean to be–serious sensory issues that I had with food were misdiagnosed as “anorexia” for years, causing me NOT to get any help with them but rather to be termed non-compliant. I have had periods cease, teeth get loose, and so on.
So, at 14 (and at my current height and very definitely post-pubescent) I weighed around 90 lbs. At 16, moved out of the house and able to manage my own eating in ways that DIDN’T put me off of food for weeks (don’t ask, it’s a long story) I rose to 106 and stayed there for years. Eating ice cream, and such. I’m a very delicate-boned five-foot-two-er. To put things in perspective, then, I weight about 115 now (it varies… has been as low as 111, is usually closer to 120 before my period, etc.)
I wouldn’t worry about the little ones on this one–my daughter has the world’s original mind of her own when it comes to food and, to my utter delight, eats like a troop of marines. She has recently gone semi-vegetarian, which does worry me a bit (iron intake, puberty, etc.) but seems to have a good head on her shoulders. And the little guy is one of those kids who’ll eat anything that doesn’t eat him first–is constantly amazing my in-laws (who are more used to kids his age being on Beech-Nut and little else) with his consumption of “strange” vegetables, things like calamari, and spicy foods. He’s also nursing pretty regularly, still. They’re both tall kids, slim but not skinny. A little lanky. I seem to grow them that way.
We’ve ALWAYS had a non-junk-food house, which is not to say it was forbidden, just that we’d go OUT for ice cream or pizza or whatever rather than have it lying around. The kids go for fruit, vegetables, nuts, and cheese as snacks because that’s what there is in the fridge. Nothing’s changed substantially about my eating less, except that I’m liable to have one helping of dinner rather than several and skip the “and a croissant” portion of my fruit and cheese breakfast. In my case, it’s kind of hard for someone with my usual diet to eat much over 1300 calories a day anyway–CRON for me was a lot more of realizing “Oh! Hey! I’ve been doing this!” and deciding to avoid baking (and eating) cookies EVERY day.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m chasing the dragon a bit, the dragon being my health, energy, and well-being. I think it’s possible for people on CRON to be a bit run-down at times, which for all I know may be keeping my immune system from flaring up. The “ON” part of “CRON” is pretty significant here. Bluntly put: If I’m doing this to feel like a million dollars, if I feel like shit, I’ll obviously cut it out.
Anorexics, I think, care more about how they look than how they feel, and the often feel like crap. They’re often hungry. Neither of these are actually true of me. And, as a said, I’m trying to avoid relapse–which is going reasonably well, although a recent cold caused me to flare a bit, which has now caused some optic neuritis… so excuse typos!
November 19, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I want to know more about the calorie restriction thang. I am trying to do a modified Swank MS diet but the sugar is still kicking (and expanding) my ass. Tell me more!
Lazy J