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.
