Blah and Food.
My old jswells.com site went down a little while ago due to some corrupted, mutant database issues so I figured I’d start it up again on Blogger. Not as fancy but less to worry about, I suppose. I’m not sure what I’ll post as I was pretty much neglecting the old blog but at the very least it may help me keep track of what I’m cooking and drinking.
Speaking of cooking and drinking, I’ve been working on changing up my diet quite a bit this past year. It first started over a year ago when I learned I could no longer eat dairy. I’ve heard some people’s horror stories about what happens to them when they eat dairy and I’m kinda relieved that all I got was a few hours of debilitating agony a couple of times before I narrowed down the problem to milk products. Luckily there are plenty of substitutes for most foods that contain dairy and Almond Milk cooks as well, if not better in most dishes that regular milk did anyway. The only thing I deeply miss is Pizza.
It also became clear to me over the course of time that I consume way too much fucking sugar. I haven’t gained any weight in a few years but I certainly wasn’t losing any and I often felt like shit after eating too much crap. Sugar isn’t really a hard thing for me to cut back on but I’m sure it would be near impossible to cut it out completely. At this point I do seem to be losing much of my sweet tooth since cutting back. Not sure if that’s from age or lowered tolerance.
Lastly, and where I’m at right now, is cutting out as much gluten as possible. My initial and most important reason is not directly physical but psychological. A while back The Pretty One had cut out gluten from her diet as she has a significant sensitivity. One of the studies about gluten heavy diets was that, among other issues, it affected moods and could cause depression-like symptoms. For me this year has been a bad one and I started to feel my enmity and frustration levels climb even with very little environmental stimulus. All I could focus on was the bad and truth be told everything in my life is gold aside from the dayjob. Little things would send me into irrational anger which would then spiral down to a helpless lethargy while projects I started and things that needed doing all went undone. I’ve always figured I had some form of inherited depression but always worked my way through it without much difficulty. It was never bad enough to seek medication outside of a tasty, distilled spirit or counselling outside of a good LP with the lights out and no one around.
One thing I noticed very soon after changing my diet was that a few issues were no longer issues. No longer did I feel any effects of GERD late at night and my overall sense of well being seemed better. Now, I have no idea if the sense of well being is anything more than just the fact that I’m eating a greater variety of food or even a placebo because I feel like I should feel better, but there is no denying that many issues I had with my own stomach acid trying to burn out my throat as I tried to sleep are gone. Also, as an unanticipated but perfectly understandable side effect, I need to wear a belt and The Pretty One says I’m a wee bit less fat. I don’t have a scale so I have no idea if this is true.
I don’t notice any of the mental/emotional issues until I completely cheat on the diet. Then, I’m a miserable, even more irritable fuck who wants even less to do with anyone or anything than I normally do. Much like I do today. If one more motherfucker sets off another fucking door alarm at work I’m going to open up one of the fucking nitrogen tanks onto them and bash their frozen flesh to chicklets.
