I did two things today suggested by the Longevity Diet.  I requested lab tests from my doctor so I can have a before and after picture of my cholesterol, triglycerides, thyroid and cortisol levels.  I will re-test in 6 months and 12 months to see if my health “biomarkers” have improved.  And, I made kale for dinner again.  Kale is a nutrient packed vegetable that I am learning to make more interesting with add-ins like carmelized onions, shallots and balsamic vinegar.   I got the idea from a cookbook called Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop that I absolutely love for all of the creative ways to prepare vegetables.  As for calories, I probably under-ate.  I don’t think I went over 1,000 calories and I walked for 30 minutes after dinner with my hubby and pooch.  I think I’m starting to feel like I’ve added at least one day to my life already.  I do plan to be careful though and not allow my calories to drop too low.  It’s just nice to see that when I eat the right foods it’s not difficult at all limiting my calories.

I have completed day seven of the Longevity Diet.  I was unable to blog the last couple of days because of technical difficulties I encountered while visiting my father in California.  I went there to celebrate my father’s 80th - and likely last - birthday.  After we sang happy birthday, he said, “well, it looks like I made it but I was hoping to have more”.  He is losing his battle against prostate cancer and he knows it. 

I agree with the notion expressed in the Longevity Diet that it takes us so long to learn how to live we need to live longer so we can put to good use all that we’ve learned.  I know that 80 years does not seem long enough for my father’s life.  His mind is as sharp as a tac, he is so full of life and he has finally become comfortable being expressive with his love.  He is not ready to die; his eyes well up with tears when we talk about death.  We both know it won’t be long now and our hearts ache together. 

I can say the same for my mother as well.  At age 75 I enjoy her more than ever.  She is a lot more easy going than she was as a young mother and her sense of humor is as delightful as ever.  I appreciate what she said to me recently when I told her about some of my concerns for my own children.  She said, “Linda, stop worrying about your children.  I have been worrying for 50 years and it hasn’t done a bit of good!”  Now that put things into perspective.

For the most part I was able to keep my calorie count down through portion control during my visit.  I wasn’t about to refuse the cookies, or the enchiladas or the cake and ice cream.  These were foods that required a lot of effort on my step-mother’s part so I allowed myself to partake without going over board.

I revisited the Longevity Diet book tonight to make sure I am getting it right and it appears that I am.  This is not a book of extremes but rather it promotes substituting highly nutritious foods for the usual junky ones and to gradually decrease your calories over time.  This is easy enough.  What isn’t easy is tracking all of the nutrients as the book suggests.  Tonight I attempted to download a free demo of software that is supposed to be a companion to the book and make it easier to keep track of everything you eat.  The problem was that the download didn’t work.  Consequently I was unwilling to pay $35 for the full version for fear of losing my money.  I think I will stick with my plan of building my own menus with highly nutritious foods that are known to have either high ORAC values or other important nutrients such as certain vitamins and minerals. 

So how long is long enough?  I’m not sure but I do know that 80 is too young.  Your thoughts?

Overall, today was another success with a minor setback.  Most of the food I ate today was high ORAC (high potency antioxidant).  Breakfast consisted of soy yogurt and a slice of Very Berry Cornbread (cornmeal, brown rice flour, xylitol, blueberries, canola oil); Lunch was Tropical Bean and Rice Salad; mid-day snack was…well, chocolate - about 200 calories worth; snack before dinner was an apple; and dinner was half a grilled boneless skinless chicken breast with a side dish of kale, onions, shallots and mushrooms braised with white wine and olive oil.  Overall my calories came in under 1300 for the day.  To add to that, I walked for 40 minutes this morning and 30 minutes after dinner.  The key lesson learned for today is how many empty calories are in wine.  I would much rather have some liberty to eat a bit more food (other than chocolate) than use up the calories on wine.

My first triumph today came when I resisted the temptation to eat chocolate out of my coworker’s candy dish.  It’s my own private battle that I am waging and no one around me even knows it.  All day long out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpses of the bite-size candy bars all huddled together like baby kittens.  I know that they are there.  When I turn to walk down the hallway I come face-to-face with those shiny little wrappers that twinkle in the reflection of the overhead lighting.   There are lots of things all around me that could grab my attention but I have this strange tunnel vision when I am within a certain distance of that candy dish.  I almost thought about asking it’s owner to move it to a different spot but then I realized that would be unfair to all of the other candy patrons in the office.  So I strengthen my resolve and try to ignore it’s puny existence.

I left work a half-hour early today because I started to cry at the thought of bidding farewell tonight to my son and daughter-in-law.  In my position it can be a career limiting move to be seen crying in your office for no apparent reason.  I came home and ate popcorn and drank wine; my favorite combination of comfort food.  After deriving some benefit from that indulgence, I diligently recorded my calories and found that I was still under budget on my calories for the day.   And, that’s where pizza comes in.

Much to my dismay, my husband suggested we try something new and go to the Pizza Research Institute.  It’s a pizza place that just re-opened in the bohemian neighborhood of the Blair district.   They do not serve any meat; it’s totally vegetarian.  Everyone but me was excited about it so I had no choice but to go along with the idea.

And then there they were, big delicious looking pizzas loaded with exotic toppings like eggplant, carmelized onions and goat cheese.  I stared at those suckers knowing there was no way I could scarf down even a single slice and stay within my calorie budget.  So I thought about my health, my excess belly fat, and the difficulty I have squeezing into my clothes these days.  At that point, I unregrettably ordered a spinach salad - a great big one, the biggest one they’ve got.  It must have had a pound or more of spinach, some good looking mushrooms and grape tomatoes and best of all, the dressing came on the side, so I only used half.  I had another glass of wine with dinner; probably not the best decision but given what I was up against - saying farewell to loved ones (a formidable reason to overeat) over gourmet pizza (a justifiably irresistable pleasure) - the fact that I said no to pizza -  just like Nancy Reagan taught us all to just say no to drugs - I think today was a pretty impressive dietary success.

Today was my first day on the Longevity Diet.  I restricted my calories and ate only highly nutritious foods today with the exception of having two glasses of wine tonight at dinner with my dear friend Patricia.  We went to McMennamin’s and sat out on the deck that overlooks the bike paths that run along the Willamette River.  The view is always breath-taking yet at the same time rather common place having lived here for so long.  Strangely, it reminded me of when my husband and I stopped over in Las Vegas a couple of years ago on our way to a bike tour of Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.  We chuckled inside when we saw people eating in restaurants with tables situated near synthetic reproductions of river banks and streams.  We realized  two very important things on that trip; how fortunate we are to live in the beautiful Northwest where dining next to a river is an everyday experience and secondly, that we really don’t like Las Vegas.

I almost made my daily goal of 1450 calories but fell short by having 100 more calories than I was supposed to.  According to the book, I can make it up so I will have to have just 1350 tomorrow.  The goal is to average your calories over a week to deal with the reality of situations that life thrusts upon us.  Like the bittersweet dinner we will be having with my son and daughter-in-law tomorrow night.  It will be our farewell dinner to them; they will be leaving for New York in just one week.  We have to say our good-bye’s early because we will be visiting my father in California for a few days immediately before their sorry departure.  My father is turning 80 and that’s a birthday I am just not willing to miss.  I don’t know how long we will have him with us given that serpent of a disease he has.  It is hard to believe that it was about this time last year that we had gone on a 15-mile bike ride with him along the very same bike path that I sat next to at dinner tonight.  I thought about him in flashes but never talked about him; I wonder why that is…maybe it’s just too painful right now.

This weekend I read The Longevity Diet by Brian Delaney and Lisa Walford.  This will be the first diet in my twelve months of twelve different diets.  I am looking for similarities, differences and universal truths across a broad spectrum of diets.

Here’s 6 things I took away from the Longevity Diet:

1.  They are correct, it is a thinking person’s diet.  You have to think about what they write, you have to think about how to apply it and, in the final analysis, you have to think about what you eat.  A true mind-body experience.

2.  It is based on calorie restriction, not food restriction.  This is an important distinction because you are not merely limiting the amount of food you eat.  You are limiting your calories to those that are most nutrient packed.  In other words, a diet consisting of 1500 calories of Snickers bars (like my former co-worker Roxanne was so happy with, waving her candy bar on the way to the break room, swaying her hips until she almost toppled out of her high heals) is not the same as 1500 calories of high ORAC (total antioxidant potency) and low-energy density foods (filling AND low calorie). 

3.  How many calories you should have is never discussed; perhaps that’s because it’s different for everyone.  This is where Google or, Bing or, Yahoo or, Ask Jeeves comes in.  I found a website that gave me a formula for determining my Base Metabolic Rate (BMR) - how many calories I would burn if I stayed in bed all day - and then I took it from there.  I have decided that I will start this week at 1450 calories per day, decreasing by 50 calories per week for 4 weeks until I arrive at 1300 calories per day.

4.  What you should eat is only provided in terms of food lists with nutritional values.  Sorry, but I need more help than that.  So I turned to a book called the Seven Pillars of Health by Jay Solomon.  It’s over 10 years old but it talks about antioxidants, fiber, low-cholesterol cooking, protein myths, power eating, etc. And, it has recipes.  Here’s what I will be eating this week

For breakfast I will rotate between: steelcut oats w/ raisins and soy milk; an egg scramble with spinach, tomatoes and feta cheese, and; soy yogurt w/ Verry Berry Cornbread.

For lunch I will rotate between:  bean and rice dishes; slices of meat w/ soy cheese; tuna salad.

For dinner I will rotate between:  a meat-based dinner; a fish-based dinner and a vegetarian dinner.

For snacks, well raw veggies and lots of them.

5.  The cost is doable.  I spent $71.00 at Trader Joes and $53.00 at Market of Choice.  So that’s about $124 for groceries for the week to feed me and my husband.  Nearly everything I purchased was organic, all the way down to the spices.  That’s my own bent, the book didn’t say a peep about eating organic.

6.  You have to keep a food diary.  The one in the book is too cumbersome.  You track your foods in one place and then transfer them to another page.  Bah humbug.  My VitalityCheck will do the trick.

Do you think it’s important to eat only organic foods or is it just a fad?  Tomorrow I will tell you how I liked the recipes I tried and whether I got by with just 1450 calories.

Although I’ve read a lot of diet books in my day, I never dreamed it would be so difficult choosing twelve for my list.  I am persnickety when it comes to my health so I won’t do extremes, or diets that push their own shakes or pills, or are too labor intense and time consuming for my lifestyle.  (Granted, living in the Pacific Northwest is like a walk in the park compared to my days in L.A., so I am willing to do some meal prep and cooking but just like everyone else, but I do want convenience.)

I have decided to focus my list on the concerns of my loved ones and create a list accordingly.

Here’s my list.  It’s not necessarily perfect, but here it is.  The diets are listed in alphabetical order based on the key issues I am trying to address. I will work my way through the list one book at a time, one month at a time searching for similarities, difference and universal truths:

1.   Anti-Aging:  The Longevity Diet by Brian M. Delaney, Lisa Walfor

2.  Anti-Cancer:  Anticancer A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber

3.  Arthritis and Inflammation:  The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book by N.D. Jessica K. Black

4.  Bipolar Disorder:  The Bipolar Diet Managing Mood, Food & Weight by Sarah Freeman

5.  Budget Eating:  Your Diet on a Budget:  Better Food Choices that are Easy on Your Waistline and Wallet by D. Johnson

6.  Blood Pressure:  The DASH Eating Plan

7.  Diabetes:  Stop Pre-Diabetes Now by Jack Challem, Ron Hunninghake, M.D.

8.  Food Sensitivity:  The Gluten Free and Casein Free Diet from the GFCF Diet Support Group

9.  Hypothyroidism:  Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels

10.  Vegetarianism:  The Flexitarian Diet

11.  Weightloss:  The South Beach Diet

12.  Everything Else:  The Diet Cure 

Your comments please…do you have one that I should try instead of one that’s on my list?

That’s it!  I am going to try twelve different diets over the next twelve months.  I have been haunted by diet books for most of my adult life, all of them claiming that they hold the REAL secret to lasting weight loss. 

I have a bookshelf situated 50 feet from where I am sitting right now that is filled with diet books, old and new.   The problem is that I always have an excuse for not following them…I don’t want the sugar withdrawal headache; I don’t have time for such tedious menu planning; I’ll end up with a bunch of food in my fridge and pantry that I will never use again; the food itself will cost too much…wah…wah…wah…and yet here I sit, 20 pounds overweight and gaining!

Although I really don’t like my extra 20 pounds, the real reason I am doing this is to create a distraction from so many things happening in my life over which I have absolutely no control.  Things like my father’s losing battle with cancer, my oldest son’s move to New York after a beautiful wedding to a beautiful bride just a few short months ago - it feels like I was just getting to know them as a young married couple, my youngest son’s battle with bi-polar disorder, and the uncertainty about the future of my employer.  Enough already, I need a positive distraction that can help others while helping me.

I must admit, I have a good deal of trepidation…will I lose friends from becoming a food bore, how will I survive holidays and birthdays, how do I cope with my husband’s food loving family and their irresistible cooking?   Will the diet provide menus suitable for entertaining my guests? Will I have to give up red wine at night, or coffee in the morning?  CAN I EVEN DO THIS???

My only criteria is that any diet I choose must be based on foods I can prepare at home.  I tried the same diet that Marie Osmond used to lose 50 pounds, but I did not like the amount of preservatives that must be used in the packaged food.  The food comes vacuum packed (or something like that) and it sits in your cupboard until you eat it - nothing is even frozen! 

To the extent possible, I plan to use locally grown organic food.  And, since I know that I am sensitive to wheat and dairy, I will be choosing wheat- and dairy-free products as substitutes wherever necessary. 

I will be evaluating the diets with my VitalityCheck food diary to make sure I am getting enough variety and balance especially in terms of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and healthy fats.  It will be interesting to see how extreme -  or not - some of these diets are and which ones are difficult or easy, convenient or a painstaking, energizing or draining. I am on a quest to feel good and I want to see which diet gets me there.

Tonight I am going to work on the list of diets and tomorrow I will post it.