But I wanted to learn how to look all cute cleaning my whiskers off the way they do… and jump like six times my own body length.

Also, I wanted the power to survive for two weeks by eating a single shoe.

Rats are so awesome. I was thinking the other day that I missed having a pocket pet, and wondering which species I’d want if I get one again. I decided on rats.

And I don’t care if they’re fat. :3

Honestly? I’d rather have 70 enjoyable years where I didn’t have to obsess over eating and exercise, than 120 years where I was weighing every lettuce leaf that went in my mouth.

I’ve seen news stories on people who did the extreme restriction thing; it seemed very, well, restrictive: they couldn’t go out to eat with friends, they never took part in the traditional sort of holiday meals. I would find that kind of lifestyle very isolating.

I think I’ll go on eating whatever my body seems to be craving, getting some reasonable exercise on a fairly regular basis, and just plain doing my best to enjoy the lifespan I have. If I treat myself reasonalby well, it should be an okay one, considering the fact that on my mother’s side people tend to live a fairly average length, and on my father’s side they nearly all live well into their eighties and nineties.

After all, if I’m hit by a bus tomorrow, I’d hate my last thought to be ‘well crap, I guess I could have had that cupcake after all.’ Or that eggplant. Or that lamb chop. Or that baked potato.

The rats may do as they please.

Wow, Bonnie, way to stereotype a whole group of people. This is exactly what people usually say about fat people: “They may say they’re eating reasonably and exercising, but every fat person I’ve ever seen is lazy/slow-moving/never exercises/insert offensive stereotype here”.

I’m not saying that eating 1200 calories a day isn’t silly, but I don’t think it’s fair to characterize some other group in the exact same way we wish people wouldn’t characterize us.

Perhaps that explains why my hanging out in this here cage lined with cedar shavings hasn’t caused a giant hand to descend from above bearing tasty treat pellets.

And I was really looking forward to the tasty pellets. *pout*

Rats!

But you’d think that the Minnesota Starvation Study would’ve put paid to the idea that calorie restriction is a good thing for humans. Plus the common sense approach that humans use our brains a lot more than mice do, and those brains need food.

Personally? I think that, like the cats in the last thread, most people would naturally eat a balance of fat, carbs, and protein if no one was shouting at them from birth about what foods were bad or good or caused a disease or whatever. (Note: I am not a scientist.)