T-Shirts, guts, and vegetables

Oh on another note I got my GSOC 2010 T-Shirt delivered today. From the paperwork it looks like it was sent on the 23rd, so 2.5 days isn't bad for 13 000km. I was also surprised to see the confirmation of delivery email from fedex.com arrive about 5 minutes after I answered the door.

And fortunately it fits ok - never can tell with size numbers locally let alone internationally (it's an L). Although my Ximian tshirts have stretched a bit, they were a reasonable guide (yes I still wear them - although most are getting a bit tatty these days). Just gotta lose a bit of gut so I can wear it without extra embarrassment.

Guts

Combination of over-eating, over-drinking and over-sitting has let my weight creep up a bit too much. I finally weighed myself the other night and got enough of a shock that I decided to do something about it. No more making fresh pasta or bread and eating the whole lot in one sitting, hang back a bit on the booze and cheese, and I'd already started to cut back on the keyboard hours.

Actually the sleep apnoea had been getting pretty bad of late and apart from alcohol (and being overweight) aggravating it big meals don't seem to be a good idea either. I have a bit of a feeling that yeast and/or flour and/or carbs also seem a problem but it's a bit hard to gauge that for sure. I'm don't know if it is in any way related but last week with the very hot weather and northerly winds (from the desert) my hayfever was so bad I could barely breathe at night, I was waking up gasping for air well before daybreak (which is about 5am at the moment). And even before that i'd be so tired in the afternoon I often needed a nap.

So for a couple of days i just had 2 coffees (plenty of milk but no sugar) in the morning, then 1 snag for lunch, some nuts for a snack if I felt too hungry, and finally a big salad with another sausage for an early dinner along with eating it a bit more slowly; and keeping to that general idea since. A few pangs of hunger for a while but not enough to be a problem, and I seemed to be getting them anyway - having a huge dinner and then waking up feeling `starving' just didn't seem right. If you just ignore the feeling it just tends to go away for quite a while, and the salad and a bit of meat is enough to fill satiated at night.

Did about 20km of cycling today just visiting a couple of shops - apart from the waste of time in the city I got some homebrew sugars and some stormwater fittings. My legs felt a bit tired, and my head was feeling a bit light and foggy (almost pleasant actually) but a small snack fixed that when I got home. But not a whole big packet of chips which is something i'd gotten into a bad habit of downing after a decent ride. Not that 20km even rates on that scale.

It's still too early to tell how this will play out - tonight is my traditional piss-up night which i'm giving a miss - but so far I'm generally waking up pretty early and ending up more tired at night (good - no problem getting to sleep) but able to make it through the day without a nanna nap.

With X-Mas coming up i'll probably be a glutton like everyone else, but i'll see if a couple of weeks of this makes any difference. Although the weight is quite an issue, I really want to see if it affects my sleep and general feeling of weariness upon rising and throughout the day.

Vegetables

All this talking of diet gives me a chance to mention a post I that I came across a few days ago which I found interesting. To summarise, a `militant' vegan has started to eat meat again because without it she was getting very very sick. I saw it on a link from here via The Animal Spirits Page side-bar (direct link).

Apart from the little `schadenfreude' all of us `right thinking' people experience when we hear of such silly ideas getting the boot up the arse they deserve, it is good to see she had the guts to admit she was very wrong and sort both herself and some of the facts out and try to ensure others don't get stuck in the same spot. It was interesting the way she specifically pointed out that eating meat `felt natural' and her body handled it with no problem - often a claim by the vegetables that their system isn't unable to process meat. What, did they grow 4 stomachs and start mooing all of a sudden? Udders to that.

I think this is one for the vitamin pill poppers too. This is what a vitamin deficiency looks like. You get very sick. You can die. This is why they're called vita(l) min(eral)s. So, unless you are very sick all you're really doing by taking a daily dose of vitamins is pissing your money down the toilet by turning your wee into liquid gold and making some pill pushers very wealthy. e.g. if you don't have scurvy - you don't have a vitamin C deficiency. Any `pep' you get is from the placebo effect, or perhaps just having a glass of water.

The fact she's getting violent threats just shows there's some pretty unstable people out there, perhaps the sort of crazy control freaks that try to hook into the unnatural self-flagellation of things like veganism rather than dealing with their `issues'. And maybe they're suffering from poor diet and a vitamin deficiency ;-)