When Ideologies Mean Nothing

A few years back, I was supposed to read a book for a history course I took in college, "How We Survived Communism, and Even Laughed." I didn't, not all of it at least. I've always read a little slow, and in college, it was a reoccurring theme for me to be behind. I kept the book, however. I kept nearly all of my college textbooks. Anyways, this Summer, I thought to myself how I'd like to read it and then get rid of it. I'm always trying to de-clutter my life.

We like to live by ideals and morals. What is right, what we believe is right, etc. One of the smaller points that the author writes upon is this. Her book describes people who believe in the ideals of communism, but as time passed, they realize that ideals mean nothing when your basic needs are not being met. People who supported the new regimes grew disenchanted after forty-plus years of broken promises. It's true. For example, we like to think that we are good people and that we wouldn't commit crimes, but if our situation and livelihood depends on it, we will ditch our beliefs...

It's been at least a year and a half that I've been experimenting with food ideologies. There are two main off-beat theories that I've been leaning towards, stuck at the fork-in-the-road where they diverge from each other. I can say I've had some measure of health improvement. I've lost those twenty pounds. I've also noticed my body responses better to working out now than it did when I was a very athletic high schooler. Still, there's a point in which a person becomes disillusioned, disenchanted, discouraged - a point in which the ideologies mean nothing because there is so little to show for it. Last night was one of those times for me.

After brushing my teeth last night, I did a little inspection. Occasionally, I do this. Upon review of my teeth, I discovered two new black spots on the very back molars. They don't hurt, but they also won't go away. I tried. The health of my teeth had been a speck pinpoint of pride, and so it was upsetting to discover two signs that something is not right! People might want to blame it on the genes. I don't buy that. It's not the hygiene either; I brush regularly. This makes me question the food ideologies that I have put to practice in the last year or two. My teeth as a reflection of my overall health tell me something is flawed.

My best guess is that with the removal of typical salad dressings, the white vinegar replacement may be deteriorating my teeth. After all, it has something like a ph of 2.4 which isn't much different than pouring soda on my salad for dressing! So for the last year and a half, I've been regularly putting something very acidic on my food and chewing it up with my teeth. I probably could have thought that one out a little better.

So Much for Months of Fun

In my last post, I wrote about how the months ahead were going to be exciting because I had travel plans to Peru and Washington D.C. Peru was 2 weeks of fun, but my anticipation for traveling to Washington D.C. was off-base.

I imagined a different life, a different me. Somebody who would be on top of things and very productive. Instead, I'm just carrying over the same bad habits and the same negative emotions. I almost posted on my depressive feelings before I left, but I held back. The draft is still there, but I have no intentions of posting it anymore....probably because this post will also be of a dark overtone.

An hour ago, I was almost in tears over absolutely nothing. It is the nothingness that is driving me crazy. I go for years without anything to say for myself, but that's not how I remember myself. I still think I'm the person that I was in middle school and high school who did everything. Social encounters made me nervous then, but not like now. Now I hate to even answer my phone for almost anyone. I constantly feel like I should be proving myself, but that I've got nothing to give. And I know I should be happy for everyone of my friends and family members who find some measure of success in their lives, but I see their accomplishments as pools which only reflect my failures. The light that shows all my own flaws. I see myself on the outside of a growing party of successful people, that I can relate to less and less as the days pass. And it perpetuates my anxiety of talking to people. Each day I avoid somebody, this hole I've dug myself grows a little deeper. Maybe a few years ago, I would have been able to hop out. Today, I barely see the sun the hole seems so deep, but there are brief reminders to give me hope. Facebook has also become something of an oddity for me. It's filled with people I used to know, but hardly know anymore. People I barely can hold onto my memories of, and facebook is constantly reminding me of all these friendships I have let fade like dream wisps. I apparently cannot accomplish much without these people actively in my life, how can I imagine becoming more successful with a better social life (and less time for work)?

It's just one big cycle of negatives, but then I'll start to sound like a big whiner. I have so low income I really can't do much of the fun things my once friends would like to do. It's impressive what I can do with what little I make, but it can't impress anybody when they can't see me because I can't afford to be social. And who wants to brag about making pennies for money anyways.

I just cannot believe how far from everything and everyone I've become. Before college, I thought I had the world behind me to do something great with my life. Now it's just the same old nothingness every single day. Lots of goals, little progress. So much for months of fun.

The Months Between and Ahead...

I know, I know. It seems I've totally abandoned my blog. It's been almost two months since my last post, and they were becoming scanty before that.

This Summer, I will return, and write some good quality posts. I promise. In the last two months, I've been focusing more on my scan project. Some very important guests are coming to my apartment tomorrow, and I've been spending my time on cleaning and projects that will better prepare my apartment for their arrival. I should be preparing for them now, too. But I was feeling a little guilty of neglect. So I'm taking a short time-out to give an update.

First off, these guests will be living with me for at least the next two weeks. Not sure what kind of free time I will have. Second, in less than a month, I'll be traveling to South America for two weeks. When I return, I'll have a few days before hauling out to Washington D.C. for the Summer. June 8th is the estimated date of arrival. I imagine the first couple of days I'll be busy with settling in, but...after that...I will be back. I may make an effort to post about my travel experiences abroad, with some or no connection to food.

Since my last post, I haven't lost any more weight. I had some travels in which I ate kind of crazy, and consequently gained a little weight. I've dropped back down now without trying very hard. By not trying very hard, I mean that I've been having a few more cheats than I should. Still, I'm following most of the basic concepts. My lowest was 119 lbs, and I'm 122 lbs now -- down from 125 lbs maybe two weeks ago. My new year's resolution last year was to get down to 125 lbs, so I'm still really doing awesome not letting myself slip too far.

Anyways, for awhile, I've been meaning to post my menstrual cycle chart for the last two years. I think it offers an interesting perspective to what is happening in my body. It isn't perfect. It reflects an imperfect me. I cave in and eat poptarts here and there. I sometimes buy three items from the vending machine instead of a real meal. I know those things are bad. Sometimes, self-control just fails me.

 Seeing the image above might not mean much to you without some extra info. Slightly past the halfway point of the chart, there is a huge jump from a 28 day cycle to a 36 day cycle. Right before that jump, there are a few months that have a low dip. That low dip (29 days, 27 days, and 28 days) correspond to the days that I was training for my marathon last year. I also noticed a few years ago, when I exercised extremely heavily, I would get a little bit of spotting. So, I guess my body responds to hard exercise by shortening my cycle lengths. After that big spike, there are four months in which my period cycles were longer consistently longer than normal. That was the Summer months last year. I was experimenting with diet then, but I still had restricted my animal fat intake to just as low as I could. I was still hungry often.

Then, there is a patch of four more months that are relatively stable at about 30 days. You can see, in this chart of more than two years, how unprecedented that is. Right?!? That lines up pretty well to my switch to a much higher fat dietary intake largely based on saturated fats, and avoiding PUFA's like they were the plague. More careful grain elimination as well, despite having started restricting grains since the beginning of the year 2012. I have no idea what I did to get the second spike in cycle lengths just 3 and 4 months ago, but it appears to balancing back a little. I would mark the graph, to show all these points, except that I simply need to focus on other things right now. I hope I was able to describe this well enough that anybody that stumbles upon this blog may understand how diet and exercise really can change one's cycle. Not to mention pain levels. I used to need to take pain killers for my period. Now I haven't taken them in so long, I don't remember the last time. I would still take them if I needed to be fully functional and couldn't afford to take it easy on that first day.

I recently read a really interesting blog post questioning how essential the "essential fatty acids" are. It made a comment about variation in saturated fat and unsaturated fat content of fish from different water temperatures which I really want to look into more. I suggest you read this link...

http://pranarupa.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/pufa-because-this-wouldnt-be-a-ray-peat-themed-blog-without-at-least-one-post-on-pufa/

Anyways, if I seem distant in the next month or so, you know why. I'm going to have a life! Yay, I'm so excited. Months of nothing to months of fun. 

The Gift of Acne

My insides decided to gift me with two new acne blemishes this morning. Thank you! One on my face, one on my back. Both hard and cyst-like in nature. Ever since the end of my college years, this awful kind of acne has plagued my face (mainly near my jawline). Yesterday I didn't eat much for my body to react to. So I have three guesses about the nature of this awesome reward.

1- Eating nearly 500 calories from Pitted Dates (approx. 1/2 the container, or nearly 20 dates)
2- Three slices of organic bacon
3- Three walnuts (who knows, I might just be super-reactive to nuts)

Note, I did eat other fruits and a salad with olive oil and vinegar. I'm just a little less suspicious of them since I didn't eat a crazy amount of the other fruits, and I highly doubt salad is going to give me acne. Olive oil, perhaps...

Using your body as a test subject really sucks when you're susceptible to acne. 

Random: Not Food-Related Post

I do tend to shift (originally, "shit," but I caught my Freudian Slip) my focus from time to time. Lately, I've been scanning, and as of yesterday, watching a way too much Battlestar Galactica.

My scanning project is simply something that needs to get done. I need to put my baggage in a container that fits in the palm of my hand. As the project progresses, though, I have to face all that baggage. The life I used to live. The one that had a plan and the energy of youth. Instead of living, I'm documenting living. Why? Because I'm afraid of forgetting all the good that has happened in my life.

My recent scan mini-project has been to process all my previous awards. This goes back far. It reminds me of everything I used to do. The sports, the good grades, the clubs, etc. Somehow, I remember all the bad with it. All the failures, too. The work unfinished, the disappointments. That was when I could count the disappointments on my fingers. Now everywhere I navigate my mind, there are minefields of time-ticking bombs implanted special-order by yours truly nearly everyday of my six years in college. They represent every promise I made to myself, and every let-down. Success was not my area of expertise in the second half of the last decade.

I see an award from high school, a scholarship - never sent them a thank you card. There's more than one that fits into that category. I am thankful, especially now, to have received all the money and recognition I did. A science award, why? I did terrible in honors bio, and ended up dropped out of ap chem. My middle school art awards only remind me of my after-school art club painting that was never completed. Cross country awards. I did that for all four years, and on my last year, I was the disobedient brat who refused to run an extra block or something. At least the coach was mature about it. But these were the good days...

College became my civil union with disappointment. It's enough to say that I won't open that stinky can of worms.

Somehow, I made it through. Thankfully, the human body can take a lot of abuse. But the scars remain even if nobody else can see them. And so, it's been nearly two years, and yes, I'm still recovering. Please, leave me alone about it. Don't ask me these questions, like what am I doing with my life. Everyday, I try to find answers to questions most people don't ask themselves. And I work on projects that are meaningless to everyone, but myself. I'm not sitting around playing games, enjoying my twenty-somethings like I should be.  It's a wonder I'm not clinically depressed with all the negative thoughts running rampant in this mind.

But second to death, I'm most afraid right now, that all this was a waste. That all the talent and potential I have, or at least had, will never develop into something worthwhile. I think there may be two types of people out there: people who get degrees and jobs, and people who get degrees and never put them to use in their field of study. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that I don't stay in the latter category indefinitely.

Random Ramblings_Disapointment and Partial Failure

It's been a while since I posted last, and I guess I've been slacking in some ways. Not posting lots of new information and whatnot. The last few days, maybe week, I went back to my obsessive scanning project. My desk and bookcase were simply not acceptable. I pushed through and finished it last night. Yay! My life is so thrilling. I'm twenty-six, and I spend my free time scanning and reading about food. Someday, someday in the mid-distant future, I will be leading the life to be envious of (hopefully I'll magically stay young), but for now projects need finished and questions need answers.

Back to the food and dieting experiences.

I'm disappointed. My diet isn't perfect. I'm losing weight still, but something is simply not right. Namely, PMS is not right! Argh! Last month, I broke the short-lived consecutive 30-day cycles. This month, as of yesterday, I'm already having chest tenderness. I believe I must slow down and always give my body the attention it is crying out for. I am on edge about this, because this tells me two things:

1) My diet is still causing inflammation, mostly likely estrogen or food-toxin based, in my chest. I guess the diet being the cause of inflammation may be one step too far. I could be detoxing.

2) My hope at a regular cycle this month is a little limited. Usually chest pain develops shortly after ovulation (with the change in hormones). I can expect to be a little early. From long cycle to short cycle, not my new definition of regular.

A clue that I have towards a solution to the problem is that I have at least once decreased the amount of chest pain I experienced when I was eating vegan (very short time-frame). I think due to not having much competitive from other food groups, I was more closely approaching the right amount of veggies (maybe fruits)....and they were usually raw since I didn't feel like cooking if I didn't have to. Problem with that diet - I was always hungry and having energy crashes despite also eating lots high density nuts.

Or the detoxing. I'm probably just having wishful thinking with that idea. In my previous post, I commented on my shrinking butt. This is not the case for the fatty tissue on my chest. I think if I was detoxing up there, too, then I would probably be noticing some size decrease there as well. A more likely explanation is that inflammation is still occurring, and preventing weight loss in that location. Double-edge sword, do you want to keep something when you know it's toxic?

Another factor could be that with the meat in the diet, I am again cooking it. Read something about how many cooked meats produce something that can encourage breast tumors. I'm still a little nervous about the thought of eating raw meat despite consuming raw milk.

I'm considering flipping my diet every other day. Possibly trying intermittent fasting. I oddly feel most alert when I haven't eaten for a while. But then I think to myself I should eat, and just thinking about food makes me want to eat.

Day 1 - Portion out 3 hard boiled eggs
             Focus on salad, fewer fruits (low protein consumption=potential for sugar glycation) 
             Raw milk if feeling unsatisfied by lots of veggies
Day 2 - Eat how I am now, conservative servings of cooked meat
             Also with cooked veggies, fruits as desired
             Left over salad if there is some from Day 1
Day 3 - Delay eating anything until 1pm (if schedule permits)
             Big Salad, late lunch with 1 egg or glass of milk
             Dinner flexible, as long as big salad eaten for lunch
Day 4 - No program. Eat however desired.
Day 5 - Repeat Day 1
Day 6 - Repeat Day 2
Day 7 - Repeat Day 3

I'll be trying this plan next time I go grocery shopping. Raw milk may still be in limited supply at that time.  :/  At this point, the dieting is not so much about the weight loss, I simply believe that my menstrual cycle shouldn't make me unhappy for half of any given month. I'm four pounds under my 2012 trim down goal, wondering when I'm going to hit the plateau & when all the health factors will tell me I'm on a path to extreme over-ripe old age. What a beautiful day that'll be.

Time for a nice glass of chocolate milk! Milking the PMS with a chocolate fix.   :)

You Don't Get to Choose What You Loose

Shadow on an otherwise bright rainbow of possibilities.

Wouldn't be nice if we could lose 10lbs from an exact location on our bodies without surgery intervention? I've been all giddy about losing weight and fitting into all my really old clothes. That is until I realized the cause of the effect was a disappearing behind! Why my body thinks that it is more advantageous to take fat from my butt rather than my belly is beyond me. I heard it before, little choice in the matter. Goodbye, rear-end.