Oh, dear, it's been awhile!

Yikes, it's been awhile.

So meanwhile, vacation ended and I had to go back to work and already a week and a weekend has passed since being back!

I feel a bit unraveling at the seams -- overwhelmed by tons of things right now.

So also during the break, I visited Thailand. Not literally, alas, but through cooking. I found a really excellent pad Thai recipe on the jar of a pad thai sauce jar, and I just added a bit to it. I will go into more detail later perhaps. I am too lazy to hunt down the jar of pad thai sauce and write down the recipe at the moment. Let's just say it was divine and just as good as restaurant pad thai! I have also visited the Philippines via a recipe from my good friend Katie (she has lived there before). That also came out very yummy, but I forgot to take a picture of it. No, really, I WILL make a post that involves travel food again with pictures and recipes and everything, but this evening is not that day.

Healthamateur asked about fasting in a comment. To tell you the truth, I haven't done fasting much since coming back from vacation. It's hard because there's a big social element to our lunch hour at school. Everyone gets together and if anyone does anything weird (like not eating) there is instant attention on you and questions. So I haven't done it, as I get weary of talking about whatever I'm doing on any given day. I would rather not be the center of attention. I will probably go back to experimenting with fasting more in the summer or possibly on occasional Saturdays. Anyway, the question was about hypoglycemia. As far as I know, I have a tendency toward hypoglycemia. As a result, I have trouble if I eat anything high carb for breakfast (like bread or fruit or cereal). Here's what I think. I think that if you are having normal hunger pangs while fasting and just feeling mildly light-headed and uncomfortable, that that's normal. If you have such bad dizziness and shakiness that you can't function? Then probably fasting isn't for you. Also someone else mentioned (can't remember who right now) migraines, and since Healthamateur tends toward migraines, it might be a risk not worth taking because migraines suck.

Writing. Yeah. How's that going for everyone? For me, it's going ok. Not great, not horrible. The writing itself is great. It's me actually sitting down and doing it that's the problem. Once again, I will need to back off from the internet for a bit to allow more time.

Oh. And as for running? I signed up for the half marathon. Am I insane????

Happy to be home

The last week has been awfully busy for me, so I just haven't been in these here blog parts. I was at a conference for a few days and am SO happy to be home with my kitty and in my own private house with no crowds of people all around me constantly.

I am on the eve of my spring break right now, which makes me blissfully happy, but we all know that will pass WAY too quickly.

So I've taken to doing a few 36-hour fasts a week. I have heard that this is good for you, as far as getting rid of crap in your system and helping with digestion and even doing stuff with mental clarity. That latter thing? I need it desperately. Well, the first 36-hour fast I did was last Monday. I knew I had a wildly busy day that day, so it was a good day to start. I go through it with minimal pain. I mean, there were difficult times when I was thinking longingly of food during my usual meal times or when I smelled food. I did get very hungry a few times. I did go through a spacey time when I felt overly tired and out of it. But these things passed quickly.

Mostly any negatives I feel about it have to do with feeling uncomfortable about dealing with other people who don't get it, who think it's unhealthy or pointless to fast. Of course these are often very conventional people who think I'm a bit weird anyway, haha, so who cares, right? I've tried to choose fasting days based on times when I know I am unlikely or do not have any social plans that involve food so that it will not affect my social life at all.

The pros:
1. there are random times of absolute euphoria that you get while fasting
2. nice empty feeling in stomach, no bloating
3. feeling of accomplishment, like I have discipline
4. frees up more time (think of all the time you spend preparing, cooking, eating, cleaning for meals)
5. lots of research out there about calorie restriction and better health (like less asthma) in mice/rats
6. weight loss (I would really like to get back down to my ideal weight - it's tough to be short AND over 40 AND on hormone medication! You have to watch it like a hawk and I refuse to use my age as an excuse to let myself go)

The cons:
1. hunger on fasting days can be pretty intense sometimes and distracting
2. Stomach growling during inappropriate times
3. A few slump periods in energy
4. awkward for potential spontaneous social situations
5. I don't like dealing with naysayers
6. People think I'm weird enough, here I am doing yet another outside-the-box thing

Day off!

Yay, so today is President's Day and I have an extra day off, which is exactly what I need! In fact, after I write this post, I'm going to banish myself from the internet for the day and write all day! Yes, I can do this. I got seriously into it for a few hours yesterday and the only reason I stopped was because I was going to bring some dinner over to my dad! Otherwise, I might have gone into "forget to eat" mode (which, believe me, does not happen that often).

As for my whining in the last post, as usual, Write Group represents with awesome advice and support. It's so true. I tend to expect perfection whenever I'm trying to change my life. I get frustrated when my inner toddler takes over and kicks everything and whines and wants to eat cupcakes all day. And if you got to try any of Pink Audrey's oreo cupcakes, then you would understand why I would want to eat cupcakes all day.

One of my non-sugary/non-floury concoctions I'm working on perfecting is sugar-free, flour-free pancakes. I got this recipe somewhere and adjusted the ingredients to my taste, but here it is:

1/4 cup almond flour (expensive stuff, but if you're only using 1/4 cup on weekends, it will last a long time!)
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 eggs
pinch of baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Pour onto griddle or whatever you use to make pancakes greased with butter or olive oil or coconut oil.

Top with fruit or eat savory!

If you're the kind of person who MUST have sweet pancakes, then I imagine you could add sugar or honey to it or even mashed bananas to keep it naturally sweet (I might try that today as an experiment). And add syrup if sugar isn't a problem for you! :)

I actually really love my new way of eating and honestly? The only stress about it is feeling very limited when dealing with social situations or going out to restaurants where there are so many hidden ingredients in things. (Who knew that KFC put MSG all over their green beans, for example??? Why? Why? Green beans are awesome by themselves. Not that I ever eat at KFC, but since I brought some over for my dad yesterday, I was looking at the nutritional information)

Also, I find that a square of very dark-dark chocolate (like over 70% dark) really helps with sweet cravings!

Now, as for my writing, I want to end this beautiful day off knowing that I am on a super sonic roll. So wish me luck!

Whiny McWhiny pants

As always, I'm a very sad work in progress.

I say I'm going to do one thing and I get all determinedy and I'm actually very good at sounding full of conviction so that other people actually believe I'm going to succeed and follow through. Then I go and do the exact opposite. I break. I fizzle out. I rebel. Then I feel bad for awhile, but I quickly forgive myself and promise to do better. This has been a pattern for as long as I can remember and it must stop.

Let's just say that both my eating plan and my writing plan failed utterly this past weekend. I am SO scattered right now. I keep making excuses for myself and promising to do better the next day. Meanwhile I have success on no fronts. I'm even being a bit anti-social with my friends in order to banish myself from distractions so I can accomplish these things that I am not doing -- how insane is that?? Also, the main problem is that no matter what I claim I am determined to do, I keep changing my mind. Inconsistency has always been a huge weakness, but this is getting ridiculous and far worse than it used to be. First I'm going to eat in a particular way, then two days later I get bored so I switch to eating a different way. My body gets confused. I lose a few pounds, I gain a few pounds, I get in great running shape, I stop running and get out of shape. Or I'm going to write on this project, but no, this other project is better, more exciting. But no, I should go back to whatever I was doing before. And by the way, I should start over, from the beginning because it's been so long. Ugh, if there was only some way to force my brain to do whatever it takes to get to where I want to go.

I want the satisfaction of bringing a project to completion. Admitting it is the first step, yes?

The mystery of lack of focus...

When I act as lazy as I have been lately, I honestly can't figure out if I'm just lazy or there's some other craziness going on in my head or if I'm just stressed and unable to focus. I have the ammunition, I have the desire, I have the motivation. So why is it that I wake up at Ridiculous O'Clock to write (yes, I'm actually able to pop right out of bed) and I still don't write? Or maybe I write for like 10 minutes, when I've had a good hour and a half set aside to do so.

Well one thing is that it turns out I've become a little obsessed with this tweaking what goes in my mouth thing right now and so I am reading a lot of articles about it, forums, etc. That's time-consuming and I don't seem to get bored of it. So far I've been almost two weeks with no flour or processed sugar (aside from fruit) or grains. I've eaten eggs! I feel physically great and I now go for hours without feeling even a twinge of hunger. (I did set myself back a little last Friday when I met some friends for dinner and had some food that wasn't good for me and wow, it's taken almost all week to get back to where I was before that dinner as far as weight and good feelings). My exercise routine has tanked, however, because suddenly we have much colder temperatures *grump* (WHAT?? COLD IN FEBRUARY?? THE OUTRAGE!!!) and I don't really like going to the gym and it's too cold to be outside right now.

But I'm also frustrated about the writing thing. I used to be able to take any idea in my mind and create magic with it. Lately, I can't seem to find passion in most new things I start. I start them, write about 8000 words, and then I feel disgusted with them and want to just delete. Yet I can still picture the premise in my mind like it's a great idea. It's just the characters. They won't cooperate into becoming interesting people that I want to write about, much less that others would want to read about. I still love love love my original universe, you know, the novel from hell that has been in my life forever. So, people might ask, why not just focus on your original project, Eccentric Auntie? Because, my friends, there's so much emotional baggage wrapped up in it. It has a past. Ugh. Which is probably WHY I love it so much. And yes, I do work on it. But it makes me sad because as much as I love it and nurture it, it will likely never hit that "sweet spot" and be appreciated for the genius that it is. Okay, I'm kidding there, but you know what I mean. It's like if you have a kid and you love that kid with every breath you have, you think he's a genius, but you know that when you send him out in the world, the world is not going to love him or think he's a genius like you do. Unless he ends up discovering a cure for cancer or becomes a good looking actor or athlete that just happens to hit some national "sweet spot." That's what I'm talking about.

I also suspect I'm too scattered, considering that nobody is sponsoring me to just write full time. I actually have a full time, emotionally draining job. I have four, count 'em, FOUR awesome novel ideas right now that I take notes on. That is WAY too unfocused for what little time I have. I have my original-original novel, I have three or four other strong ideas, and to tell you the truth, I can never decide what to work on, what really needs the most of my attention, what SHOULD have the most of my attention.

On what we put in our mouths

So I tried this experiment this week in which I cut out all flour, starches, and sugar from my diet (exception being lower sugar fruit like berries).

I allowed myself protein, vegetables, and dairy, some berries, and nuts.

For a few days I felt yucky. I couldn't tell if that was a "low carb flu" that people who cut out a lot of carbs get or whether it was my job (which was very stressful this week). I felt headachy, lethargic, and tired.

I had this weird upper stomach bloating that I was able to pinpoint exactly to extra dairy intake. I cut out the dairy for about two days and voila, it was gone. (I had SOME dairy, just not the big amounts I was having before).

However, come Friday morning, I woke up and felt wonderful. I had lost 4 pounds and felt full of energy and ready to take on what I knew would be a long and frantic day of meetings, more meetings, data, and hardly any actual teaching. By the end of the day, my stomach hurt in a throbbing way, but that was stress from a particular meeting that ended up being upsetting emotionally (long story, but there's a child that I work with who ended up witnessing something really bad in his home and I got to hear about it in detail). The stomach hurting ended when I left school.

Anyway, I promptly ruined all progress by eating a mini bag of m&ms (I NEEDED CHOCOLATE, K???) and then I went out to eat with some friends and had french fries and wine.

How do I feel this morning? My stomach rebelled. There was much tmi. I'm feeling off.

So game on again today. No sugar, no flour, no starches. Just basic, basic food. How can that be wrong? I've been reading up on the Paleo way of eating a lot. I'm not a trend follower, except when the trend follows along how I'm feeling. My main obstacle is myself. My main obstacle is inconsistency and laziness. That's what I have to remember.

I have thought about maybe adding chicken back into my diet. I've been a fish-only vegetarian for a few years now. The idea of red meat and pork still make me gag, but chicken is, well, chicken. And if I buy locally where I won't feel I'm contributing to cruel chicken farms, then I feel I can do that ethically (in the summer when my chicken-eating husband was here, I bought chicken from the farmer's market from a local farm).

So in conclusion, our body is amazing. It's amazing how what we put in our mouth affects our moods, our aches and pains, and energy levels.

Next? How to get my writing focused, how to get my writing focused...

Has it really been a week?

So my writing this past week has been pretty good. Not spectacular. Not any 6000 words a day (pffff!).

But I do have a total of 7,000 words on a new project. Even so, I have slipped into some previously bad habits of fooling around the internet, reading interesting forums, getting hooked into fascinating you tube videos, etc. Time to Get Serious again.

And another note on writing. I struggle a lot internally between wanting to write something that will hit a "sweet spot" and catch on fire, that is, a subject matter that is suddenly "hot," like vampires were just as Twilight came onto the scene or what happened with the author that we went to see last weekend, where she was told that suddenly time travel books were "in." So naturally I want to hit one of the sweet spots. Dystopian novels are really in, and I really do dig those. I feel like I have no new ideas for one of those that hasn't already been done a million times. Sadly, though, as part of that whole "Be Andrea" resolution happiness projecty thing that I've been trying to act on, my interests tend to gravitate toward things that are not overall popular. I tend to go for the darker side of fate and human nature, things that people don't really want to escape read to explore. I tend to be interested in morbid things that most people would shudder about and say, "Why do you want to read about/write about such things?" I'm not afraid of the dark, I know what goes bump in the night, and sometimes I just want to explore it with my own flashlight. But my "nice girl" side just can't. My "nice girl" side wants to write something fluffier that appeals on a mass level. So somehow I need to find a balance between the two.

In other news, have to drop sugar and flour from my diet for awhile. Long story, but hypoglycemia is knocking at the door again. So while it is very disappointing to have to give up some awesome things that I love (like J.'s amazing homemade breads and pizzas!) and cupcakes. CUPCAKES, noooo, not fair, I know from previous experiences that after a few days, I will start to feel super good and energetic once again. Also this isn't forever. By summer I should be able to have those things occasionally again!

Happy 2012!

As I scuttle around the house on the very last day of my vacation (which did not go wrong and in fact was very good on a lot of different levels), cooking for the week, doing laundry, etc., it occurs to me that I am at peace beginning this January and it's all because of an awesome blog that I discovered during the last few days:

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

As often happens in these cases, I was desperate to find something to inspire me out of this funk I've been in for months on end, something to help me change my attitude, get off my butt and start living and creating again, and get organized. I don't even know how I found the site. I think it was an accident, but I have been devouring the archives for the last five days or so and I'm only in 2007 somewhere!

The blog started when the blogger, a writer (yay, writers! WE ARE COOL YES WE ARE), decided to do research and self-experimentation in pursuit of happiness. She approaches it from different angles, from current scientific knowledge to wisdom from the ages to popular culture. There is a lot of concrete advice, a lot of inspiration in just the way I tend to like it. Not overly sappy/sentimental while being concrete enough to try myself or mold it into something I could try myself. She has twelve personal commandments, the top of which is "Being Gretchen" (basically about loving and owning who she is and being authentic in that way). This is more complicated than you may think and I will talk about that another day.

So here, starting January 1, 2012, I embark on my personal Happiness Project. I know that a huge part of what makes me happy is when I think I am living up to my expectations and accomplishing personal goals (such as writing/running/etc.) and not brooding. I don't call these New Year's resolutions per se, because I hope it's not something that drizzles out in a few days, weeks, or even months. I hope it's something to hang onto when my natural tendency to be lazy and unmotivated kicks in.

And also? Not to be so stereotypical New Year's Day, but these extra holiday pounds (5 of them!!!) have to go. Farewell to the plethora of cookies, rich dips and chips, comfort food, wine, chocolate. Hello, vegetables and fruit and water and running. I've never really been on a diet that's lasted for more than two days (I get really bored by diets), so this will be interesting to see if I can last.

Anyway, I know I promised Pink Audrey a post about writing -- that will come some time this week.

Happy New Year, good friends and family! Good luck to us!