40+ Female Just Getting Started

[Tiffanisoptera]

I am a 41 year old female just getting started on CR and would like to know if anyone has any suggestions for a beginner my age? I have two children, I'm a busy stay at home working mom and am taking my new lifestyle very seriously. I just saw my PCP this morning and she happily ordered a complete benchmark panel for me, including Dexa Scan, IGF1, etc. Looking for wisdom/encouragement. ;-)

[mccoy]

Hi Tiffani, welcome in the forum!

I believe people will give some specific advise after seeing the benchmark panel results.

[Gordo]

My advice would be to figure out an optimal BMI target based on published research, and reduce calories to get you to that target (I wouldn't go below 20 but everyone has an opinion).  Great health depends on much more than BMI though.  All of these things are controversial and at best will probably only gain you a few extra years of life.  My research based conclusion is that a plant based diet full of "superfoods" and regular doses of cruciferous and allium family veges and mushrooms along with pungent spices (like turmeric and ginger root) as well as generous portions of beans, nuts, and seeds (including daily flax and chia) and a variety of whole grains is the best way to achieve extraordinary good health, cancer protection, and a healthy heart and brain (low LDL).  I am a fan of nutritionfacts.org even though Dr. Greger has sort of an annoying personality and sometimes over the top plant bias - his videos provide a lot of great information and summaries of nutrition research studies.  He has a free app called the Daily Dozen which might help you, but I haven't actually used it myself.  Tracking calories for a few months is probably a good idea for most people, there are free apps for that too, like MyFitnessPal and Cronometer.

[drewab]

In my experience, being busy makes it easier to follow this lifestyle, especially in the beginning. Before you know it, you will find yourself with more energy than what you know what to do with (perhaps it won't feel this way at the start though). What you do with that energy is up to you.  Pursue academia, exercise a good amount, chase your kids around without fatigue, or whatever floats your boat.  

 

You are very fortunate to have a PCP who is willing to order tests like IGF1. Some physicians are not so cooperative with this sort of thing. What is your motivation for starting CR? What health goals do you have?

[Gordo]

You are very fortunate to have a PCP who is willing to order tests like IGF1. Some physicians are not so cooperative with this sort of thing. 

True, I asked my doc about getting an omega index test -- he had no idea what I was talking about and thought it would be included with the standard lipid profile test.  Last physical was fun though, he was practically giddy about my biomarkers of health, he said he never sees numbers like mine.  Even my vision apparently improved which surprised me (I have been eating a lot of beta carotene including homegrown goji berries). 

[Sthira]

^ Wow, congratulations, Gordo! I feel like all these comments above are excellent. I'd only add that perhaps adding Cronometer.com to your to your laptop, and then use it for awhile to track how well you're doing in meeting your basic nutritional needs vis-a-vis RDA. That is, weigh and record what you eat.

 

Also listen to sweet reggae because it's been PROVEN in e-coli, yeast, rodents, and human cells in a Petri dish to delay diseases of aging -- for example woahhh: https://youtu.be/8ucOCYuEK7c

 

Meanwhile, support SENS because honestly I doubt anyone thinks CR is gonna get us more than a few years of extra lifespan (if that)

[Burak]

Hello Tiffanisoptera,

 

I'm also new to the topic (though not to CR). However I do not practice CR directly, rather I try to eat as much as healthy foods to satisfy RDAs, recommendations and be not underweight. It is really hard for me to eat +95% WFPB diet with adequate exercise and not lose weight even if I'm already thin. Everyone is different, so you need to find your way by experimenting. I think the most important factor is that you should also enjoy your life. If your diet is 95% or 98% healthy, doing extra healthy stuff will only shifts this to couple of points higher but with exponentially additional hindrance and hardship to life. 

 

My final advice: Do most of the health basics and you will be better than 98% of the population and try to improve after you settle there and decide later if you want to push further depths of CR. And remember long term 95%-98% healthy lifestyle is better than 99.9% with no compliance.

 

Good luck on your journey,

Burak

[Thomas G]

Hi Tiffanisopter,

 

I'm also pretty new to this stuff. I've been practicing CR since last Feb and still have a lot to learn but feel like I have learned so much in the last year. I got a lot of good advice when I first joined the forum which might be helpful to you too: https://www.crsociety.org/topic/11705-total-n00b-here/

 

Here are two things that have helped me that might help you too. First, I thought I would never be able to weigh and measure everything I eat and enter it into Cronometer. I thought it would add too much friction and make eating healthier all but impossible if I made it a requirement. But I thought it would be a good idea to diligently record everything I ate for one week just to see what it said. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed weighing and measuring and tracking what I ate. I really enjoyed it. It just goes to show that we do a poor job of understanding ourselves. But I also learned that I am terrible at guessing how many calories are in something. I would eat a big salad and think I had really eaten a lot, only to find out it was something tiny like 60 calories. Meanwhile even small amounts of food could really rack up the calories depending on what it was. I had to learn to change the way I think about the amount a food makes me feel full and how many calories are in it.

 

Another thing that I've found really helpful, although this might just be beneficial to me and my personality, is to try to be very very strict for a certain span of time (like a week or a month or even just one day) and then be more relaxed the next week or month, etc. I find that I'm still eating very healthy food even when I'm relaxed about it and that it makes it easier to be diligent for specific periods of time if I know that I'll get a break from being so hyper diligent pretty soon. I also have noticed that the periods when I am relaxing are getting closer and closer to how I am when I am diligent, but without having to try. It's just becoming second nature. So that's my strategy.