Courtney Love, Food Journals and My “Efficient” Metabolism [Watching other people eat]

I… have no caption for this picture. Courtney Love defies description.

“Hershey leaves me my usual tray of foods.” An entire story in one sentence, written by Ms. Courtney Love as her ode (or eulogy, I’m still not sure) to food when the Grubstreet page of New York magazine asked her what she normally ate. They should have known that putting “normal” and “Courtney Love” together doesn’t end well. Of course I found the whole thing utterly fascinating: That they would ask her. That she would answer them. And that she would answer them truthfully because I swear you couldn’t make this up if you tried.

I’ll break it down for you. See, Hershey is her “house manager” and he wakes her up every morning with “a hot washcloth for my face, a leg rub, and a plate of toast soldiers.” So many questions already! What are toast soldiers? (Seriously I must know – my kids would love them whatever the heck they are.) Why a leg rub and not a foot rub? And most importantly, what is a house manager and where can I get one?

Moving on. The latter part of the sentence is where the story really gets good. It turns out that Courtney is very specific when she talks about “my usual tray of foods.” Every day she eats the same thing:

- Sugar in some form (but never chocolate!) from 4-5 a.m., a habit she says is a residual coping mechanism from giving up dope in the 90′s. “When I lived at the Mercer Hotel, they literally called an admin meeting on how to make the perfect warm sugar cookie for me in the middle of the night. Last night I got into some Jeni’s Ice cream in Ugandan Vanilla Bean.”

- A chicken pot pie and potato salad from Dean & Deluca. She adds, “If I can’t afford D.D., I just don’t eat.” (A place which I love solely based on the fact that Felicity worked there while she was in college and I was obsessed with watching Felicity when I was in college, which makes me sound like a crazy stalker if you are too young to remember the hair-lopping amazingness that was the television show Felicity.).

- A fresh cake. “One thing from living next to Paris Hilton in L.A. … she always had a fresh cake in her house. So I make sure someone gets a full, fresh new one every day, like marzipan. My house manager tries to put it in the fridge, but I don’t like refrigeration.”

See what I mean? Every “answer” only leads to more questions! Like, who lives in a hotel besides Eloise? And who takes life tips from Paris Hilton? And who hates refrigeration?! Courtney Love, that’s who.

As I was reading through her interview (and you really should go read the whole thing if only to see how she turns meeting Michael Stipe and “some people from U2″ into an ode to food porn) my first reaction was “She eats what?!” And then I realized that my reaction had morphed from disgust to respect. Say what you will about the Hole lead singer but girl eats what she wants. I’m not saying it’s a healthy diet – she doesn’t even recommend it – but I do give her props for knowing what she wants. She’s a woman who unapologetically eats cake! Every day!  And that is a rare breed.

Thinking about Courtney Love’s strange diet made me think about my own. (Because everything is about me, right?) First, here is proof that I do not have the weirdest diet on the planet, Gym Buddy Krista! And second because I just got the results of my metabolic testing* back. The short of it is that when The End comes, it will be the cockroaches and I left on the planet (and maybe Courtney Love too) because apparently I don’t need food to live.

While Thom Rieck, my metabolic specialist at Lifetime Fitness, said that my RMR (resting metabolic rate or the number of calories I need for basic daily survival) is not the lowest number he’s ever seen, it was pretty low. Even worse, it’s down 150 calories from the last time I was tested. For a moment it sent me into a depressed funk contemplating all the food I don’t get to eat compared to other people and how unfair it is that one Dairy Queen Blizzard is more than my entire daily calorie usage. But! As I sat pondering my numbers I realized that thanks to Intuitive Eating, I don’t have to be afraid of hunger because I’m never hungry (in the extreme deprivation sense – I absolutely do feel hunger pangs between meals). I eat as much as I need to feel full and I, like Courtney Love, eat pretty much what I want. (Although my diet contains vegetables not encased in pastry and way less sugar – I’d feel like crap during the day if I ate her diet.) How cool is that?! Every day I get to eat all kinds of yummy foods and I’m never starving. So who cares if my calorie burn is less than most peoples’? I’m happy. And I’m really efficient! Like I said, me and the ‘roaches. Who knew I could learn so much from Courtney Love?

Are you fascinated by celebrity food journals? Normally I skip right over those articles because a) I think they lie and b) they depress me but I’m glad I read this one! Anyone else have a really “efficient” metabolism? And what’s up with hating refrigeration? Is this like A Thing now?

*This portion of my metabolic testing was the easiest assessment I’ve done so far! All I had to do was show up in a fasted state (only 9 hours so it just meant skipping breakfast), sit in a dark room and relax as best I could with a mask over my face. Of course I managed to make it harder than it needed to be because my body refused to relax. Took me a half hour before they could even start the assessment. Sigh.