Aging is a weird thing. For some reason the self perceived age never seems to change much. Maybe that’s because perception of one’s own mistakes are felt so amplified. And experienced (read old) people don’t make mistakes, right? I feel so horribly stupid at times that it scares me. Sorry, I won’t share any embarrassing examples here. Maybe some other time. I can’t believe I’m 37 now although I still think (and am convinced) I’m twenty years younger (on a side note: why do I always have to fill out my date of birth, current age and current date on every form I fill out? To form designer: Can you say redundancy?). I still remember when I was 17 how old I thought 40 year old people appeared to be. No I’m almost that age myself. This is very confusing. Now people expect me to be a responsible parent. Instead I catch myself enjoying playing with Rohan’s toys. Did anyone say midlife crisis? No way. I hope I’ll grow up soon. From MrsM I hear I’m not alone with that hope…

It sounds weird, but I believe I had a life changing event earlier this year, and I’m not talking about our baby we had recently.

Sometimes during our last vacation (Hawaii) I decided to allow a little bit more consumerism into my life. After flipping through the pages of “Wired” magazine I decided to give the publication a shot for a year. This magazine just makes you want to buy gadgets… The subscription process usually takes a while and I had already forgotten about it when the first issue arrived in my mailbox. I was a bit underwhelmed to say the least and didn’t think much of that issue (March 08). The next month’s issue arrived just shortly after and I tried to find the April’s fools article. Sure enough there it was: a portrait of Ray Kurzweil, a pattern recognition scientist and futurist, who has published various outrageous books, that describe ideas that are way off from what we would consider mainstream. So here it was, the dude has published another book in 2005 about the nearing singularity (machines take over the world). The article went on to describe how he is also running a quantitative analysis hedge fund which had made him rich. Sure, that’s probably, why he’s still working, too, I thought. Not stopping with his scientific accomplishments and various patents, he became a venture capitalist and also invented a life prolonging new diet: The 10% solution. Sure, thanks, I’ve read enough. Tomorrow I’m going to cancel my subscription.

But over night I was thinking about all his claimed fame and accomplishments and I remember having been fascinated by his first book a couple of years ago. So I decided to google some of the data in the portrait and one by one all yielded credible results. The hedge fund exists and is well, the books are all published and can be ordered at Amazon and his speech quotes were all available. Strange.

So I went ahead and looked up his ideas on the dieting, since I thought that was the least credible claim to fame. He isn’t a physician after all and has a background in engineering. But his scientific background enabled him to process humongous amounts of readily available medical data from studies and draw conclusions. Interestingly he addressed many of the questions that had been nagging me in my head over the last couple of years: Are there any populations on earth that follow a healthy diet that reduces the risk of heart disease? What foods are the least favorable in our diet? Is our body built to process the provided western diet, or was it originally built for an entirely different set of foods? After having read a bit online, I decided to order a copy of his book. It arrived two days later in the mail. I began reading. And then I got really sucked in. It was all so logical and he used the engineering language and reasoning to convince me that he’s onto something by the time I reached page 30.

In a nutshell he claims that all of our civilization diseases (High Cholesterol, heart attack, atherosclerosis, diabetes II) disappear, when you’re following a diet that doesn’t provide more than 10% of all provided calories from fat. A typical American is closer to 40%! Calorie intake should also be controlled somewhat, but in essence the fat is the culprit. In addition he obviously suggests an exercise schedule to get our routine more in line with what our bodies were built for.

The diet change is non gradual and in order to achieve the 10%, a complete change of eating patterns is required. Interestingly, this is not too difficult for me as it turns out. Throughout my life I already underwent two major changes in eating habits: the first time when I moved to the US and had to adapt to the American food, and then when Meera and I got married and I got exposed to the Indian cuisine. Both changes were significant, yet enjoyable in the long run. Changing to the 10% rule is more a mix and match between all food styles known to me using only the low fat ingredients. With the rich vegetarian Indian cuisine, this exercise becomes almost too easy!

So here I am changing my eating habits all over again, and you find me in weird places like Whole Foods or Central Market studying the labels of new food groups that I’ve never tried before. In the beginning it’s a lot of learning and trying, but over time I’m sure shopping and choosing will become second nature. I’m having a lot of fun going through this change right now. Since I’ve started the diet my body weight has dropped from 185lb to 155, dipping down to 152 when I was sick. At 6″1 that makes for a body mass index of somewhere around 20.4, which makes me quite happy. Thanks Ray – this world needs some extraordinary people like you!