I've got hurt feelings...

I have been feeling guilty enough about my terrible lapse in blogging, but have been trying to soothe myself with rationale—between weddings, traveling, packing, moving, puppies, and jobs, I’ve barely had time to breathe let alone relax to the point where I can think (and write) about the stuff I actually enjoy. So far, this whole month has basically been one big instance of “going through it, to get to it,” or some such cliché, and it's all going by way too fast.

The clincher however, came today when I was talking to my friend Jeff. The conversation went something as follows.

Jeff: So, whats the deal, your blog consists of one entry per month now?

Me: Whatever, one entry per month might be lame, but my blog is still cooler than your blog.

Jeff, after a long pause: Barely.

Ouch...

Jeff doesn’t have a blog.

Even though I knew he was kidding, I let this marinate in my brain for a few moments and let the truth sink in—although depressing, he was kind of right, one new blog entry a month is barely better than nothing at all. My sense of guilt deepened for second... but then all of a sudden I had an epiphany, and realized that I just needed to look at things from a different perspective.

Yes-- my time has been full of all sorts of varied endeavors; weddings, traveling, apartment shopping, moving, packing, puppies, and jobs, but if I re-examine these experiences in the right way, I am sure to discover that these events are ripe with plentiful future subject matter. For instance, I discovered just today that U-Haul includes a $5 “environmental fee” with every truck rental, which goes to counteract the carbon dioxide emissions their vehicles create. Yay U-Haul!

August is gearing up to be almost as hectic as July, but with the right mind-set, I'm hopeful that the environmental aspects, trials & tribulations, and lessons learned from my many adventures will make their way here, so that the next time the topic comes up with Jeff, I can say something like, "So, have you been able to keep up with my prolific postings?" And then it won't hurt my feelings when he responds after a pause, "Barely."

Skinny For Life

And so the sleek shall inherit the Earth: eat less, and live longer.

In stark opposition to the plethora of Seventeen and YM magazines stories touting only the negative sides to anorexia and bulimia-- new studies seem to support the idea that the less food a person consumes, the longer, and better, they live. Seems like Eating Disorders need to hire a better PR company…

The premise isn't that new, people have been searching for the fabled Fountain of Youth for thousands of years, and stories about staying young forever continue to circulate throughout modern societies due to our culture’s obsession with youth. Everyone's heard the story of Dorian Grey, girls everywhere are obsessed with Edward Cullens, and stories like these will continue to be created and passed long, because people love the fictious idea of staying young and beautiful forever.

Meanwhile, wouldntcha know that the very trick to achieving this may have been right under our nose along? Literally. By keeping your mouth shut-- and staying hungry-- you can stay young possibly forever.

I’ve heard this lore before, and dismissed it. (Probably because it was too impractical to ever be applicable to real life?) However, I was reminded of this "starvation= longer life" theory when I heard that Oprah was doing an upcoming show about this, because, you know, if Oprah is recognizing this, it has to be a big deal. (Or, soon will be.)

It’s an interesting idea, and would make a great “would you rather” question—is an extra 20 years of life worth sacrificing the foods you love, forever?

Consider: Monkeys, Mice and Men! (oh my!)

• Mice that are on restricted diets are living twice as long as their litter mates who are fed regular diets, and can live for 4 years instead of the average 2.

• In a study between two groups of Rhesus monkeys, where one group is fed normally, and one group is fed 30% less, the differences are extreme: the chunky monkey control-group is nearing the end of their life-span (about 27 years) and dealing with high occurrences of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. The skinny monkeys actually look and behave as if they were much younger-- with shinier coats, and fewer instances of health problems.

• Humans that have joined the CRS- Calorie Restriction Society- (a group that has severely restricted their calories for years now, some of which are are also participating in the Washington University monkey study) have lowered their blood pressure, reduced their body fat, and lessened risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and even cancer. And, they’re looking more physically attractive for it too. As stated by one CRS husband regarding his wife, "to be honest, if you saw her without any clothes, you'd see she looks pretty darn good, like a woman like of many, many years younger."

If you’re interested in science stuff, there are a lot of supportive and significant statistics regarding this kind of lifestyle; and if you're interested, please reference the link above to the CRS website. However, I find myself more interested in the psychological “hows” and “whys” of this lifestyle?

How can people force themselves to live like this, indefinitely?

An example of the menu at a celebratory occasion dubbed a “happy hour” for a group of calorie restricters includes a cocktail of low-calorie soup, some walnuts, a jar of pureed green beans (preferably baby food) spread on flour-free bread. Was the celebration over the fact that there was food?! Foods with high-fat content, such as meats, cheese, sweets, basically everything worth eating, are totally cut out. Instead, dense, high-fiber foods are to make up the bulk of your diet, with the emphasis not neccesarily on being thin, but being healthy.

The people in the CRS are not going on these restricted diets to lose weight, everything they do is solely for the purpose of elongating their lives. But, if you are drastically cutting your food intake, day after day, for the rest of your life, how do you stop yourself from being too skinny? Is there a point where you weight is considered too skinny and negates whatever health benefits you’re aiming to achieve? On the official CRS site, it defines your goal "thinness" (which needs to be achieved to maximize long-life benefits,) as whatever your weight was as a teenager. (With one noteworthy caveat-- this only applies as long as you were NOT one of those morbidly obese kids that would be shown on another accredited talk show hosts line-up, gobbling up everything in sight because, as Maury would expertly suss out, food was the only medium your teenaged mother could express her love with.)

But how does being hungry make your body live longer??

There are many compelling arguments to support the longevity issue, but advocates believe that at the very least, following CR will enhance your health right now by minimizing body fat, inhibiting cell mutation, lowering blood glucose levels, decreasing inflammation, activating brain-alertness, promoting deep restful sleep, increasing energy levels and creating a more youthful biological age.

As the recent studies from the National Institute on Aging, Harvard University, and Washington University show-- a calorie restricted diet can include many other benefits too, one of them being extending human life. Lab studies dating all the way back to the thirties show that mice and all sorts of laboratory critters, when placed on a severely restricted diet, lived fifty percent longer than the oldest members of their peer community.

I don’t expect people to forgo the easy fix that Botox can provide in order to achieve the same effect that starving themselves for the rest of their lives might produce, but it is very interesting to think about.

If in the end, the skinniest of us will be what's left over (like the cock-roach equivalent of humans), the end of times will be populated with models, homeless people, and Rachel Zoe clients. I suspect that if this "calorie restriction=longevity" theory is true, current records would indicate that models already have a much higher than usual life-span in comparison to us regular working folk-- and if it weren’t for those pesky drugs and that meddlesome alcohol, those hungry bitches could probably have gotten away with it and lived forever!

Best! Invention! Ever!

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to
survive." Albert Einstein

My grandfather was a patent attorney, and ever since I was a little girl I have strived to come up with awesome inventions to impress him. Fortunately, for all parties involved, my ideas at age 27 are a bit better than my fork/hair-tie hybrid inventions from days of yore...

In all honesty, I really cannot believe that what I’m about to reveal to you does not already exist. It seems akin to a Post-It like invention, in that it seems like such an obvious idea that I can’t believe no one has thought of it already? Despite my mother’s insistence that she saw a whole special about MY idea on the Discovery Channel the other night, I indignantly keep reminding myself that she is innately a major Debbie Downer, and since I can’t find any proof of the existence of this alleged Discovery Channel special, I am optimistically, systematically, and categorically ignoring her. (Just this one time, love you Mom!)

So, sorry for the long preamble, I’ll get to the invention unveiling now:

(Drum-roll, please)

Imagine… it’s the middle of August. One of those days when your steering wheel gets so hot it hurts to the touch, and just stepping outside into the heat sucks out every ounce of energy you may have had. Imagine, that despite this, you decided to go running.

And, you’re not just going for a “fun run” or a slow jog- you’re running fast.

And so are the other twenty people surrounding you.

And, because of this- you’re keeping cool the whole time.

What if, as you’re running on a treadmill, working that elliptical, or pedaling away on a stationary bike, the energy you were creating was being stored away to a battery connected to the exercise equipment? Technically, I don't know how exactly how it would work- but I know that it could. The same way that wind energy can be stored, or car companies store the energy created by the friction of braking tires, the energy created from spinning bike spokes and rotating treadmill belt has to be able to be bottled up. And these days, when it seems every alternate source of energy conceivable is being researched and developed, how have we looked past the most prevalent and renewable energy source right in front of our faces? How have we overlooked harnessing and storing human energy?

(I’m making these upcoming numbers up to explain my point, so please take all of these figures into consideration with a grain of salt- I am by no means a scientist.) For the sake of the discussion, let’s say that the energy a human could create by doing 3 miles at 6mph could power a house for a day, and take off $20 off that month’s electric bill. What if that person did 3 miles every day? What if there were 3 people in the house, and they each did 4 miles per day? If people could create their own energy, there would be so many obvious benefits. We could stop relying on expensive energy providers, start being more proactive about our lives, save money, and become physically healthier. The financial benefits of this, on top of the environmental benefits, on top of the physical benefits, make this such the win-win-win situation for everyone.

Wouldn’t it be great motivation to be at home watching Oprah, pedaling away on your stationary bike, and you know that if you could just push yourself to do one more mile, you’d be taking an extra $10 off your monthly power bill from the energy you were creating and storing?

And good lord- think about the potential of public gyms where people are exercising en masse 24/7!?

The Ballys gym that I go to has about 60 machines, and I’d guesstimate that at least 50% of them are being used at any given point over the course of their 14 hour business day, with the range of exercisers greatly varying. Like the tortoise and the hare, there are the marathoners who can go and pound out 9 miles in an hour, and on the other end of the spectrum there are the walkers and bikers who go slow and steady just to get in their recommended 30 minutes of physical activity. If all of that energy created by the running, and walking and biking (oh my) could be stored, the potential energy that a gym would be able to produce and store is unimaginable. (Imagine the environmental PR Britney could get: http://popsugar.com/1574532)

These gyms could have the AC pumping full power all day every day, and they still would never have to pay an electricity bill. In fact, the more energy they used to keep the place cool- the more the energy they would be able to create and regain by keeping the people as optimally comfortable as possible. Is the correct term “return and gain”?

Also- with the inherent value of energy, would gyms be able to create/store enough energy where they could turn around and sell it to other people? Could gyms become a new major power provider? Would the gym memberships of today become obliterated as gyms realized the benefit of paying people to work out at the gym instead of reaping the benefits for themselves at their own homes?

Seriously, does the idea to store the human energy created from exercise equipment really not already exist?

Whether it currently does or doesn’t - I feel like the technology to harness energy created from humans has to be right around the corner. So, despite the list of things that I am pointedly not (patent attorney, scientist, financier) I will still try and leave you with one sound investment tip: buy stock in battery companies. Lots of it.

[This guy agrees with me too, although his views are definitely a bit darker than mine- I hadn't even really considered the possibility of this technology being used for punishments and community service: http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/BOW3741/gs950802.html )