Month: September 2017

One week down of a new trial and I’m feeling pretty good. It’s been a long day, hence why I’m not publishing this post til nearly 10 PM, but I am really looking forward to hopping in the shower to get a blast of that ice cold water. I’m still working on measuring the benefits of taking showers but I have at least one thing in mind now. Regardless, even after just a week, I am feeling pretty good about it.

Usually, the place that most of us get some good thinking done is in the shower. While I might not be coming up with the next idea for r/showerthoughts, I’m focusing on the task at hand, to get clean and move on with my day (in my case usually my night). I figure I probably cut the time it takes to get in and out of the shower and on to the next task at hand in half, at least. I would say an average shower before would take me about 6 mins. I don’t have a stopwatch on it or anything, but by listening to music while I shower, an old habit of mine, I’d typically be out in about a song and a half to two songs. I haven’t started clocking my showers now, but I do want to start. I do fear that knowing I’m being timed will lead to me rushing more than I have been, though it’s not like I can start this as a blind study.

I would’ve liked to see the possible impact that cold showers had on utility bills but the new apartment I moved into only charges for electric. The night of the move led to possibly one of the best showers of my life. After hauling all the crap I have up to the fourth floor, by elevator luckily, dropping off the moving truck and then parking my car a half mile down the street to avoid the parking meters nearby, it was just shy of 5 AM on Saturday. ON a side note shout out to my brother Brandon for driving with me all the way up from TX and helping me throughout the whole move. I didn’t want to get my freshly washed sheets covered in my nasty sweat, so I hopped in the shower. Even though it was ice cold and so early in the morning, it felt amazing. Most days thus far have felt nice. The initial drop of water is a bit jarring, but once settled, it feels good. Whenever I start to get uncomfortable, a line from the song Laugh Til I Cry by The Front Bottoms pops in my head…”And I will take cold showers from now on cause once you’ve fucked with fire all that’s left to do is burn baby burn baby burn.” That line gets me thru it every time.

I am definitely enjoying this more than I thought. The showers themselves and the trial in of itself. It’s much simpler than ones I’ve done in the past. It takes next to no willpower to get myself to do it. Similarly to biking every day, it felt like just a part of the day, not something I had to actively think about what I was doing about it that day. On that note, I’m grabbing my watch and gonna cool off before heading to bed. Let me know in the comments what you’ve been trying out lately!

As the weeks have gone on keeping on a vegetarian diet has definitely gotten easier. I have a definite fall back meal on days I’m feeling too lazy to be creative and just need to cook for sustenance which back in the day might be a frozen pizza or something similarly simple. Lentils and rice are a fast and easy meal to put together with little cleanup needed afterward. I still have some frozen vegetables that I tossed in to add some additional nutrients and flavor.

Last week, I think I was a bit too far on the opposite side of the spectrum from my first post, that I feel my words were a bit exaggerated. I was particularly over zealous in my statement that I would not need to go shopping for the next couple weeks. There was no way in hell that was actually going to become a reality. That lasted all of about three days. The trip was only for a refill of some bananas and some canned tomatoes, but shopping none the less. I’ll probably make another less than ten dollar stop before the week is done. We shall see. In general, I’ve been either busy with other things or distracted and haven’t really made anything that complex for a few days. I’ve just been sort of rehashing what’s in the fridge and pantry to make a meal that will keep me alive.

On the subject of shopping, I wish I had set myself up with better measurements for the diet. Weight loss, money spent, other examples. It would be nice to be able to give some concrete results based on real data rather than arbitrary feelings or estimates. I did end up buying a new scale on Amazon. There was a sale on a smart scale by Eufy, nonaffiliate link for anyone interested in the model. I suppose some people would say starting this late would be better than never, there’s that joyous optimism creeping its way back. I went with the scale because it was reasonably priced and offered some interesting options. A major selling point that got me was that the app is supposed to have body fat percent measurement, not sure how accurate it would be, but I was hoping to at least use it to track a gain/loss trend. So far I’ve been unable to create an account for the companion app and each time I’ve tried to sign up, the service is oh so conveniently unavailable. All in all, I’ve seen mixed reviews for it online, mostly due to the app involved, and I can see why.

Going forward, I hope to A) quickly recognize moments of blind optimism. Looking at the bright side of things is good so long as you don’t get blinded by some very obvious flaws in the mindset. B) set my self up for better measurement and tracking of particular benefits or losses of trials. Each post has been a building on the last here and I hope to keep finding out ways I can try to make this blog better. On a similar note, sign up for my newsletter, aka that annoying pop-up box you close every time you visit the site, though I wonder if it’s blocked by an ad blocker. Regardless, I plan on sending a short email to subscribers to the newsletter some bonus thoughts and recent reads, videos, etc. that caught my attention. And as always, let me know what you think I should try next!

Wow! What a difference a week can make. It could partially be due to just having a better grasp of my meals or just feeling better overall, but I’ve found this past week way easier than the previous.

A major factor might simply be hitting new recipes this week. This being those recommended on the Plant Based on a Budget site. The meals from last week were good, but pretty straight forward. A pasta salad one day, soup the next. The food tasted good, but it also left me with so much in leftovers that I was eating the same stuff two or three days in a row.

Another thing that I believe has helped me a lot is simply eating more. Last week, I think a major factor in A) the amount of aforementioned left overs and B) the fatigue I was feeling some days was the quantity I was eating. I’ve never been a calorie counter or anything so maybe I was getting more or less, but based on how I felt last week, I needed to bump up the amount of food I was eating throughout the day. I now have guilt free snacks like the smoothie I’m drinking as I type this (banana, strawberries, broccoli, kale, almond milk, and some protein powder).

Now, I’m planning on veering off of the plan provided by the people at Plant Based on a Budget, and will more so look to their site for recipes and guidelines. I believe I have enough groceries for the rest of my trial run, all in all totaling about $65 for the month. Though I do see myself running to the store to grab some more fresh fruit. I’m really looking forward to the next couple weeks, and not simply to struggle thru it all to finish at the end as I was last week.

On a different note, my cousin jokingly asked if he could do a guest post here about not having a phone for four weeks after he was pushed into our pool and lost his. Guest posts from friends or family have been something I’ve considered for some time. Let me know what you think, would you like to hear from somebody other than me from time to time?