Oh look, it's Dietrich

Around February 2004, I started working out in what I can safely say is the most consistent way I ever have; that is, since then, I don't think I've ever gone more than two weeks without hitting the gym at least once. I've been pretty durned steady-as-she-goes the past few weeks, lifting twice a week, doing cardio three or four times, and usually a yoga class. I feel like I've reached a plateau, though, and for some reason, I also have been gaining weight (this may be due to a change in birth control scripts: Seasonale, while it is in every other way my friend, may have caused a bit of weight gain).

sensesurfer asked me recently if I ever thought about just getting all buffed out. Of course I do, but I told him that I'd decided I'm not capable of it. He kindly informed me that that was nonsense, and I needed to be working to failure - each body part only once a week. (And maybe take Creatine, too, but I'm suspicious of powdery muscle supplements. Anyone have any experience with this stuff?)

Hm.

So I decided to give it a shot. Tuesday I worked my chest and shoulders until they could be worked no more, and did some abs. Yesterday, I hit my legs the way I haven't since my earliest days of weightlifting (actually did calf raises, hip adductors and abductors, and three different kinds of leg presses - I don't do the quad lifts or leg curls, they feel weird on the backs of my knees), and today I wailed on my back and biceps.

Result? Well for one - DAMN I'm sore! I'm like Sorey McSoreypants here. I realize how long it's been since I did high weight, low reps, and I've never done it where I don't let myself do more than eight reps per set - that is, where I lift enough weight that doing more than eight is physically impossible.

I injured my left shoulder over two years ago, and sometime last year realized I had slightly injured the right one in overcompensating for the left. But they haven't been bothering me at all lately, and I've been doing low weight, high reps on chest presses, shoulder presses and pull-ups for months. So I'm going for it, with warm-up stretches for the shoulders, and very-low-weight rotator-cuff exercises once a week before my other shoulder stuff. The stuff that hurts right now seems definitely to be sore muscle (good pain), not pulled muscle or messed-up tendons (bad pain!), but I suppose as I rest over the weekend I'll get to know for sure.

Besides this, I also seem to be becoming some kind of protein monkey. After working out yesterday, I had two pieces of turkey and a piece of cheese, followed by a banana with a bunch of almond butter. In about an hour I was hungry again - for meat. I had been planning on cooking eggplant; that plan was totally fucked. I wanted sushi. After billions of sushi I desired ice cream - not the delicious sorbet that novalis made which is living in our freezer, but ice CREAM with fucking MILK and fucking FAT and PROTEIN. And sugar, yes, but that was fairly incidental at this point.

Meanwhile, last night I finally seem to have caught up on sleep/rest from the events of the weekend, and woke without difficulty around 7:30.

This morning I had an omelet with lots of cheese in it, and while I ate the potatoes that came with it, they weren't all that interesting. My zucchini muffin, which was tasty, I didn't even finish. Those of you who know my breakfast habits will know how weird this is. Me, not finish a sweet breakfast carbohydratey thing? The people near me were having waffles, and they just looked, I don't know...ick.

And then there was my food shopping trip. First I picked out some nice veggies and not too much fruit. I thought about cutting the veggies into bits and putting them in the fridge for quick snacking. (?!) Then I skipped the cracker aisle, not even stopping to buy rice cakes, which were my staff of life during the elimination diet. Instead I got two pounds of halibut steak (on sale!), a pound of beef sirloin tips, a 32-oz thing of yogurt, a pound of cottage cheese, a small wheel of provolone, a block of dill havarti, two packs of smoked turkey breast, a pack of turkey bologna, a pack of sliced swiss cheese, and a dozen eggs.

What. The fuck. Is wrong with me.

I hope it stays wrong. I feel great.

Hm. My body wants MORE protein, MORE! What will happen? Will I purchase an overpriced salad with meat and cheese all over it? Will I search the local groceries in vain for unsweetened yogurt? Will I have to eat one of my fellow Diesel denizens?

Stay tuned, for the further adventures of PROTEIN MONKEY!!!

Since the results of my elimination diet were inconclusive aside from the obvious big bad of yeast (and even that doesn't seem consistent; commercial bread yeast obviously bad, unfiltered beer obviously bad, wine not so much bad), I decided to continue my body experiments with some longer trials.

The other main things I reacted to were wheat, dairy, and corn, each having a mild reaction. So I thought I'd eliminate two out of three for four days or a week at a time.

Last week I ate wheat, but no dairy or corn. At first it didn't seem so bad. But I woke up tired and nauseated (class-cancelling level of sick) after eating commercial pasta - made with "enriched" flour. Ha. I'm told those vitamins are often derived from yeast. Oops.

Next few days, I ate only whole wheat and stuff I'd made so I knew it wasn't from enriched flour. The nausea went away. But all week I felt rather tired and low-energy - hard to get up in the morning, not terribly motivated, unfocused. I started to notice breathing problems - nothing severe, just an inability to fully catch my breath, and feeling winded sooner than usual, like from climbing stairs. And by Friday, I was sitting in the Diesel having just eaten some sandwiches made from the whole-wheat soda bread I'd made, and I started to feel what I might describe as a very mild anaphylactic reaction: swollen tongue and throat, slight difficulty swallowing.

How about that shit.

So this week, I cut out wheat, and am testing dairy. Only fermented dairy, mind you, as I know milk makes me a bit ill and I don't generally drink it anyway. Results thus far: eh. Yesterday I woke up feeling sort of bleh after eating a lot of cheese the day before, and I didn't get that much done in the way of work. I was able to handle small tasks, household duties, and social stuff, but couldn't buckle down and write or grade papers. Today: slept until nearly 11, and haven't done any work yet - only making stew, planning the next few days' menus, and stuff of that nature. Today I'm eating only goat and sheep dairy (goat yogurt - weird!), but my stomach doesn't seem to know the difference: it's still a trifle unsettled, and the stuff below that is a bit clogged up. (Ick.)

So I'm thinking that the yeast causes much of my nausea, but that the wheat and dairy help. The wheat and dairy, especially over several days in a row, cause sluggishness and low energy. And the wheat causes my exercise-induced asthma, while the dairy contributes to my ADD-like symptoms.

And then, when I'm all groggy and unfocused, I reach for the caffeine. Cycle complete.

Wow. Cool.

Except not, because that means I need to avoid all of it.

To quote lady_tabitha: Pills and water!

But seriously: I love food entirely too much for that. So I'll have to use my judgment. Tomorrow is a holiday: I'm going to go all out and not worry about it. Likely the same for Christmas. In ordinary life, though, I figure I'll not eat any of those things when I can avoid it, eat it when I can't, and eat it on special occasions.

Well, either I'm reactive to everything (which doesn't make sense, and which the nutritionist says might mean it's something else) or so far I have mild sensitivities to citrus, corn, and milk. Eggs were fine.

I wonder if it's possible that these mild reactions (slight nausea, slight tiredness, usually passing before day's end) have anything to do with my body's simply having gotten used to not having these things, and needing to readjust?

This is getting a bit frustrating. I was really hoping I'd have some big reaction to something, the way tafkar did to corn. So far, citrus was my strongest reaction - sharp, sudden stomach pains, stomach discomfort the rest of the day, crankiness by nightfall. But nothing is making me pass-out tired, or very sick, or anything.

Is it possible that all of these things are simply bad for people and should be avoided anyway?? Or is it the sum totality of all of these mild sensitivities that has been making me feel mildly shitty all the time? Will I have to be on this diet (plus eggs, apparently) forever??

Crap.

As of yesterday, I'd been in the elimination phase of the diet for 2 weeks and 2 days. The nutritionist said to start challenging things when my symptoms reached a plateau, and since the initial breakthrough around the end of the first week, I hadn't seen any significant improvement, and started to understand my ups and downs within a new baseline, if that makes sense. In other words, rather than sometimes feeling okay and sometimes feeling awful, I mostly felt great, with the occasional tired spell or whathaveyou, for several days.

So yesterday, I decided to try the first challenge.

( It turns out that... )

So, it's a nice solution to part of the mystery. I started with citrus because I didn't think I was sensitive to it at all! I figured I'd challenge the things I didn't think it was first, so that any residual effects wouldn't leak over into the next challenge. So much for that!

I wish this were the only solution, but I'm sure it won't be - namely because I don't generally consume all that much citrus. Oranges and such are too much of a pain to eat, and I mostly don't drink juice since it's concentrated sugar and a waste of calories. But I've always found my lips get all irritated and I sometimes break out if I drink too much orange juice. No more screwdrivers for me!

I wonder if I now need to avoid foods with citric acid in them. The hummus I've been eating, which contains it, doesn't seem to have any ill effects. Still, might be worthwhile to ask.

Today's teaching was a lot more inspiring. For whatever reason, the kids in the first class were engaged and ready to work. They summarized, they analyzed, they inferred. Look! I almost said to them. You just thought critically! It's a great feeling when you're writing on the board and they just keep throwing up suggestions for what the purpose of Cisneros' essay might be. It's even more thrilling when they start disagreeing with each other, then seeing how they might all be right.

My second class wasn't as great - they're all afternoon-tired at 2:30 and need to be really impressed in order to participate - but I was riding the wave from the first class, and managed to make my way through this one, and by the middle of it, they were saying interesting things too.

Not to mention that I feel scads better today. I'm all energetic and shit. It's weird. I wonder what I'm allergic to!

So today started with more tiredness and heaviness, and ended with The Cranky. I was in that everything-is-annoying-me place again, and I'm not so much out of it now. Actually, the way I'd more describe the state is somewhere between nothing-excites-me and everything-annoys-me. The yummy dinner I'd planned was a nice diversion, but it didn't get me jazzed the way last night's did. My usual dropsy and heart trouble (another old family expression for constant dropping of things meant to stay in hands) annoyed me far more than usual, unhelped by a killer headache I developed sometime around 3:30 p.m.

I finally dragged my ass out to yoga, which helped some, but that particular instructor's style is what I can only describe as...male. He's good, and strong, and quite gentle and helpful, but the poses he concentrates on are mainly warrior series and lots of plank-to-downward dog-to-plank-to-low-plank-to-cobra kinda stuff. By the end, my arms are killing me and my legs are still tight. Where are my deep squats and Goddess postures?! Where my deep hamstring stretches?

Anyway. I'm still cranky. I got upset in yoga if someone was better than me, which never happens.

Sigh. It makes a person desire very little other than sleep.

Soon, precious.

I haven't had any adverse symptoms in the past few days, and perhaps as a result I haven't been as meticulously recording what I eat. Also, it's been similar to the stuff I've been eating, with perhaps a greater emphasis on Thai food. (Are rice noodles and white rice okay, I wonder? I did have brown rice tonight...) What this has also been an opportunity for is lots of amazing sushi. Sooooosheeeee...

I cheated a trifle today and had my rooibos herbal chai with soy milk and...a little raw sugar. The Diesel was out of honey!

I went to a prose reading at chez fanw last night and read an exceedingly wrong passage from a Chuck Palahnuik book I favor. (Just keep thinking: What would Jesus not do?) I also met some cool new people, an adorable new cat, and many new chocolate chip cookies and cheeses I couldn't have. Wah. But a good time was had by all, and then I got to go home and do terrible terrible things. :)

Wow. Looks like I'm sort of writing a real entry. This could get dangerous.

Perhaps I'll return this week with some words...

Yesterday I saw a picture of chocolates on my screen and salivated. I walked out of my house and down toward Powderhouse park and smelled fried chicken. Out on the bike path, the scent of donuts frying.

Ohhhhh.

( Eats. )

Every now and then, when I start to feel particularly toxic, when I start eating dessert every night, for example, or having wine with dinner four or five times a week, or when I'm not only drinking two cups of coffee in the morning, but also enjoying a mocha at the cafe in the afternoon while I write...well...I feel like it's time for a detox.

I've tried many things. I haven't tried simple water-fasting, mainly because I think doing that for a day or more would slow my metabolism down, not to mention that it makes me pass out. I'm no Gandhi; I'm a big girl with a lot of muscle-mass to keep going.

So I've tried juice fasting. I've tried some sort of supposed Seneca Indian Cleaning Diet, where you eat only fruits and their juices one day, only herbal teas the next, only vegetables and their juices the third day, and only broth the fourth. No dice; I caved before the last day, and the herbal tea day was too much.

So I talked to a naturopath I know in Hawai'i, who said that if I'm one of those people who doesn't take well to fasting, I should try simple, easy to digest cooked vegetables, a sprouted, cooked grain that isn't wheat, corn or oats, and a "nutriceutical," some combination of protein and other nutrients in a powder, which I could get from her. (She doesn't like or trust the ones they have in Whole Foods.) This is especially for liver cleansing, which she suggested is good for acne.

Meanwhile, I found some success about a year ago when I gave up on a fruit fast yet again (it sends my blood sugar into the toilet) and decided to go on a vegan diet for four days, with no: caffeine, alcohol, refined sugar, or wheat.

So I'm doing that again, except that yesterday I tried to go without any complex carbs.

Not. Working. So. Well.

This morning I awoke with a killer headache, which I think can be traced to caffeine withdrawal. I was also weak and faint, so I started the day with an apple and some peanut butter. It helped, a little. But yesterday and today I've been severely lacking focus.

My understanding of fasting is that it's meant to be a contemplative time, a time when it's okay for your mind to go wandering, in fact, crucial. It's a journey that lifts you out of the physical realm, out even of the mental realm, to the spiritual.

Mainly because you can't walk or think straight.

So right now I'm eating some brown rice, and I can already feel the carbs doing their work. I've also taking a tip from ceelove and I'm eating lemon juice, olive oil, raw garlic, parsley and cayenne pepper to assist the liver cleanse.

But I still feel pretty depressed and unfocussed.

Does anyone have any experience with detoxing (in whatever manner), and know how long you should feel, well, toxic, before the crap flushes out of your system?

And yes, I'm drinking plenty of water.