That way madness lies

Despite yesterday’s tough workout I feel… just fine today? This is good! DOMS sucks! Since I felt okay, I decided to do a slightly more strenuous recovery workout and spend 35 minutes running sloooowly on the treadmill. On the one hand, it felt nice to run; it’s been a while. On the other, my cardio conditioning is… not what it was.But 2.8 miles of slow-ass running is okay, I’ll take it.

WARNING: Stupid weight loss stuff/dieting behavior follows. Trying to keep it 100 here… rather than pretending I’m some super Body Acceptance practitioner who never falls off the wagon. Feel free to wander off…

So I’ve fallen back into what is starting to feel like disordered eating. It started with the powerlifting comp coming up. First, I was tracking my protein to make sure I was eating enough ("protes life"). I was at the bottom of a weight class and I figured I should try to get to the top of the next one down, it was a small difference (~3lb). Protes life wasn’t changing my weight (it never has).

So then I started changing my macro ratios… it went from C/P/F 40/30/30 to 35/35/30 and then I started reading… and fell into low-carb hell. The past week has been 10/35/55, basically keto or low carb/high fat (LCHF) with a protein bump. (Tracking all the way, of course.)

Whatever, right, I’m still eating; it doesn’t feel that weird until I have to be out in the ‘real world’ trying to figure out what I’m going to eat for a restaurant lunch. I’m skipping a lot of "filler foods" like rice and bread and putting a puddle of olive oil on everything. (I also haven’t had fruit for a week, I have a fridge drawer full of slowly-decomposing clementines and apples, sigh.)

The real problem has been my mood. It might be stress, it might be PMS, it might be the fact that LCHF is altering my serotonin levels something fierce– it’s likely a combo attack. (Things I did not know 2 weeks ago: carbs get used to manufacture serotonin, people who tend toward depression beware. This is also why assholes say "carbs are addictive, they make people happy"– yes, they literally do, but since when is being happy a bad thing?) Either way, I’ve found myself raging/crying/apathetic an unusual amount since starting this experiment. My poor partner has been worried; I’m eating weird stuff and crying all the time.

On the other hand, in my bodyparts I feel pretty good. Not hungry, not low-energy, not sore, my joints are in unusually good shape even after tough workouts, there might be something to this inflammation thing.

I have lost a few pounds– water or not, I should get my weigh-in done to close that loop. After that, I’m going to have to decide what to do. Tracking is miserable, low-carb is miserable in my brainparts. I like the non-sore. As soon as a grain of rice or a beer passes my lips I’m going to regain anything I lost. But I’m pretty sure that this is not something I can or should do long-term. And I refuse to spend money on "keto strips" to obsess over if I’m doing it right or not!

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