Mid May Check In

Hello Blog world! 

It's been about 8 weeks since my last post.  So much for accountability, eh? HAHAH.

My brain has been doing much better lately.  Yesterday I felt quite dizzy in the evening, but I attribute this to the massive amount of tree pollen that just dropped and to which I am allergic.  I was outside most of the day.  I have had hardly any allergy symptoms this year, I think it caught up to me yesterday!

Really, although I have some "DOH!" issues, lately it's been more vision that cotton brain.  I feel like I have some spirit self or other mischievous gremlin popping in and moving things on me.  I spent 5 minutes the other day looking in the pantry for a huge open bag of raw cashews that I knew I had just put in their days before.  I gave up and grabbed my newer, un-open bag.   I opened the new bag, took what I needed, went to put the bag back, and there, literally right in the center of the middle shelf, was my old bag!  D O H!  This is totally different than cotton brain, and I will happily take this weird vision thing instead.  I am pretty sure it is the norm for my son and husband as they can never find anything in the fridge or pantry!

I am doing much better with food planning.  I would say I am about 98% vegetarian and about 92% vegan in the last month.  I feel great physically and I am super happy about the improvements in my son's diet as well.  He "kid approved" the chocolate pudding I made this morning.  He has no idea that the base is sweet potatoes, and it has 1/4 cup steamed/blended cauliflower, plus flax seeds and mushroom powder and dates, plus some almond milk.  It has about 1/2 cup of monkfruit/erythritol too but I feel OK about it- there is about 3 cups of pudding made so it's not a ton per serving and the rest of the ingredients are plants in their natural (or very close to it) form.   It tastes like normal chocolate pudding and is SO good!

I am sort of combining the diets espoused by Drs Greger, Furhman, and McDougall.  It takes a bit of planning but overall I am really enjoying this high carb, low fat, plant based way of eating. I am down about 11 pounds since my last post in March.

Years later

 Hello, great and vast Blog World! I am back. It's not New Years or anything where I am starting up a new resolution (and anyway, I am still struggling on my 2020 NY resolutions of meal planning!)

I have not had an alcoholic drink since Dec 2 2014 and I am still blissful about it.  Still very much in love with sober living, may it be ever so!  My life is far superior to what it could have been had I not made that one simple yet impactful change. 

No, instead, something else is bringing me back: the desire to document changes with age.  I will be fifty this year.  Although I could die today or tomorrow, I am going to act as if I will live to 100 and consider this Half 2 of life.  If I want to actually get to 100, I have some changes to implement.

And, being honest, I want to document the (hopefully? age-related?) change that I have been experiencing, which really galls me and sends me down the Contingencies pathway.   I think of it as "cotton brain".  

Cotton brain comes and goes. I first started noticing it in 2018, where I had a very stressful job.  My heart rate was consistently up about 20 beats per minutes into the 80s (it's usually in the high 50s/low 60s), and I just couldn't think very well.  I see the term "brain fog" and it's probably describing the same thing- my head just feels like there is a ton of interference, like my head is full of cotton and my thoughts have to travel around it. 

Today is a "clear" day.  I feel mostly pretty good head-wise.  I want to track the days as far as the cotton brain goes and see if I can pick up some trends, things that seem to work vs things that don't seem to work.   I want to track stress level, diet, sleep, and anything else that might be going on.

So, starting today, Sunday March 28th

Brain Clarity:  feels about a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale where 10 is crystal clear, sharp and 1 is can't function.

Stress: Low (calm and rainy Sunday, house is already clean, no items on the agenda)

Sleep: Medium (6 hrs, 30 mins)

Exercise: TBD, yesterday got 10k steps and also went on a 5 mile bike ride with my son.  This amount of exercise is unusual but it was good!

Diet: Yesterday,  was so-so.  Went on that bike ride but then had a small soft cone with son afterwards.  Meat-free but not dairy-free. 

I am cooking today to prep for the week.  I am roasting veggies (eggplant, red and yellow peppers, garlic),  have soaked some Great Northern Beans, will prep up some soup and also make a huge salad and split it up into containers for me, my husband, and my son.  

My overall goal has been to be about 90% vegetarian and 80% vegan- e.g. limited amounts of animal product.  

Misc:  I am on day 2 past my first COVID vaccine (Moderna).  I had a few side effects:  I had a short-lived metal taste in my mouth that was gone by yesterday morning (so fewer than 24 hrs), plus soreness in my left arm where I got the shot. That is done this AM, so not quite 48 hrs post the shot.) Also, I had weird muscle? neuro? pain in my other arm,  in my wrist area, which I thought might have been not related to the shot at all but possibly carpal tunnel or a similar computer-related injury. I live on my laptops (business and personal) and thought perhaps working on computers for 21 years has been catching up to me.  But the pain is gone this AM, so we'll see if it returns prior to Shot #2.   I will give it a week and then will  hop into VAERS to report the symptoms (https://vaers.hhs.gov/ if you're interested and have any vaccine side effects to report.)