Eating Well to Live Long??

6 weeks ago I celebrated my great-grandmother's 100th birthday. Her name is Edna (known as Nani), and it's a complete understatement to say that she is an inspiration to me. We threw a party for her, complete with a swing band. This is her, dancing. At her one-hundredth birthday. She's the sprite bird on the left.

 Nani dancing. c. Jolie Rodriguez Photography 2010

If you're not amazed, you should be. President Obama was; he sent her a birthday letter. According to the CDC, the average life expectancy at birth for people in the U.S. is 75 years for men, and 80 for women. In 1910, when Nani was born, it was more like 50. Between the ages of 65 and 85, the top three chronic health "issues" that inhibit activity are (in order): arthritic or other musculo-skeletal problems, heart/circulatory issues, and diabetes. According to my aunt and uncle (both doctors), the number one thing linked to all three health issues is extra poundage. After the age of 85, diabetes is superseded by vision and dementia. But let me clue you in on something else: that's because people with diabetes generally don't make it to 85.

I know I'm not the first person (or the last) to harp on the dearth of sufficient nutrition, exercise, preventative care, or dietary regulation in our country. Lots of people have written excellent books and articles on this issue. Other folks have made a killing selling fix-it diets on Oprah. While it's all right in the short term just to lose weight (if you can keep it off, that is), it's hard to know what kind of effects these uneven dietary guides have on consumers in the long run, other than allowing people to consume more empty foods each day. I suspect that my age group will be known as the Splenda generation, once our health stats demonstrate a leading cause of death of gigantic kidney stones developed from a build-up of artificial sweeteners.

Me perched on Tiger Mountain

I don't suffer from any of these conditions...and I don't want to. Here I am, in ardha matsyendrasana (half Lord of the Fishes Pose):

At 27, I'm in reasonably good health. I'm active, exercising nearly every day, and I eat fairly well. At just under 5'7", I weigh approximately 135 lbs, right smack-dab in the middle of what the CDC declares a "healthy" range of weight for my height: between 118 and 159 lbs. This seems like a pretty wide range to me, but I'm no specialist.

So, I'm "healthy," but am I my absolutely healthiest? No. Will I blow out 100 birthday candles? Couldn't tell. Like most Americans, I could stand to lose a few pounds, if only to help out my chronically aching knees and make it easier to do forearm stand on my disproportionately small shoulders. I exercise a lot, so I figured it was time to take a look at my eating habits and see if I could tweak a few things. If you know me, you know that I'm pretty dedicated to eating whole foods, and that I love to eat local when I can afford it on my graduate student budget. You also know that I have a huge sweet tooth and that I could live on cheese. And that once I get started, it's hard for me to stop :)

My yoga teacher informed me that 27 was the beginning of a new life cycle, so I thought this would be a prime time to evaluate, considering I just turned 27 a few weeks ago. I'm not only going to start counting calories, but I'm going to look at the break down of how much I eat of what kinds of foods each day. What you'll be reading here will be a kind of log of that process (albeit not daily), but not just a blog about calories. I think part of being healthy is giving yourself enough pleasure. I don't want to fool myself into eating artificially sweetened products as dessert or limiting myself to 99% fat-free turkey meatballs just to make a certain weight quota. I don't want to give up the good things in life, because it's obvious to me that a certain joie de vivre is just as necessary to making it to 100 as keeping my body in check.

This project is about getting to know my favorite foods (and finding new ones), learning how they really break down in terms of nutrition, and then finding ways to optimize their "health" factor without sacrificing good flavors or solid ingredients. Trial and error is obviously going to be my method...and I am always open to suggestions!

Here's to dancing at my 100th birthday party, and savoring every bite on the way!

Cheers!
Lauren