revel in healthinessfulllllness

Have been feeling particularly fatigued recently and am wondering if the truly remarkable weather for the time of year has been sucking my energy. Today is dull, overcast, and drizzly – so a chance to see if my energy levels pick up with less UV around. Pants isn’t it!

Meanwhile I will try and stay upright and thus avoid injuring myself any further.

And porridge for breks to set me up for the day.

Grrrrr!!!! Just been to the docs and I do now have sun sensitivity. I have some more steroid cream (getting quite a collection now) and will have to wear sun block every day.

And we only just bought a convertible car for this summer, how ironic is that!!!

We are on hols for the next 2 weeks and the plan was to have some nice days out in the car, so it looks like I need to invest in some all over sun block clothes, big floppy hats, lots of factor 60+ (UVA and UVB), sunglasses, and only go out after dark.

What fun!!

article in this week’s Observer this week by William Leith who had chronic fatigue syndrome – it covers a lot of the things I’m interested in, like the importance of sleep and how too much choice and constant email makes us all stressed-out.

I remember when we were on holiday in Burgundy a couple of months ago, I checked my phone occasionally but I didn’t have internet or email access. G’s ex-colleagues who were with us were constantly checking their iphone/BlackBerry and as soon as one of them got their gizmo out, the others followed. I remember walking along the peaceful sunny streets of the village of Meursault, admiring the irises growing by the side of the street, when G demanded that I get his BlackBerry out of my bag so he could check it. It was quite disturbing!

On the other hand I’m in no position to be smug, because as soon as I get home in the evening, I’m straight on to the internet and email, and have a tendency to get rather despondent if nothing interesting has been happening ;)

Interesting that the cocaine use and the frequent jet lag were likely factors in screwing up William Leith’s immune system. At least I don’t have those to worry about! Fruit _{do fermented grapes count? ;)} and veg, satisficing rather than maximising, and being in bed before midnight is the way forward!

Been thinking some more about how to put this goal into action. I’m looking at eating three meals a day at the 500-600 cal mark which are protein-oriented as past experience has shown that this is what works for me. E.g:

• breakfast: scrambled eggs, strawberries. This is what I’ve been having the past few weeks and it works very well and means I don’t get hungry till lunch.

• lunch: mozzarella, peach, handful almonds (I would add lettuce and other salady things but then the temptation to have salad dressing would be too much…) Sometimes to ring the changes I’ll have something like salmon and avocado with lime juice as a dressing.

• dinner: a reasonable portion of lean meat or fish plus a green veg of some sort, and then a little bit of dark chocolate, preferably Michel Cluizel as it’s hideously expensive so one has to appreciate it rather than mindlessly guzzling ;)

I’ve also identified my nemeses as:

1) chocolate or biscuits in the office: there have been a lot of these lately due to people bringing stuff back from holiday or leftovers from meetings, and when I’m hassled and stressed it’s very tempting. Need to remind myself that Sugar is Evil and I don’t need it.

2) nuts: I have no off-button where these are concerned! If I have a moderate and finite portion of almonds (thinking 25g here) at lunch hopefully that will help me not eat them the rest of the time.

3) wine: one of the pleasures in life but easy to go overboard… I’m actually drinking less at the moment than I have sometimes, so need to build on that. I find it easier to resist earlier in the week, so think I’ll generally aim to have three booze-free days, typically Monday to Wednesday.

Will see how it goes!

of writing this and then 43T crashed! Argh! Grrr! etc.

Anyway.

At the weekend I had a couple of interesting discussions on this subject and started thinking about it more. I did get myself sorted out during my last year in Oxford, when I used to live a positively monk-like existence with very little gallivanting by current standards, and only saw G every other weekend when we would eat, drink and be merry.

Back then, in a typical 4 week period, I would have:

• 16 days good
• 6 days not-so-good
• 6 days extremely bad

Now, by contrast, it would look something like this:

• 6 days good
• 10 days not-so-good
• 10 days extremely bad

_{edit: argh! this doesn’t add up to 28! the other two days must be spent in a coma or something ;)}

So it seems clear that what I need to do is tweak these ratios and be better during the week, and I’m already making progress on this but I need to do more. For the next 4 weeks a realistic possibility might be:

• 14 days good
• 8 days not-so-good
• 6 days extremely bad

I think I shall aim for this and see how I get on!

I have a dental check up, plus a visit to the hospital for an eye examination linked to my Lupus. Have rung the hospital to see if I can talk about my meds while I’m there. Last time I went they were reduced (which seemed good at the time) but I am now having more symptoms and am back on the pain killers. I think I need them increasing again (but maybe not as high as before). My lack of get up and go might be part of this too – I hate feeling so washed out.

^{must feel more energetic if we are having a pup}

i went swimming! hadn’t made it back to the pool since it closed last summer. no idea why, just never seemed to get round to it. today i was getting on my nerves, so rushed there for a quick 20 lengths before lunch. feel it really cleared out the pollen, apart from anything else. and i still have 10 swims on my card, which is good. and the opening hours seem even longer now (til 22.30 some evenings!). definitely the place to spend the hay fever season.

Just a check-up – but hopefully will not need any work.

have declared this month dental health month. we bought whizzy new electric toothbrushes at the weekend. the old one, apart from being temperamental, was far slower, so we should certainly have nice shiny teeth. i really have to get into the regular flossing thing too, terrible me.

also, i think it’s about time to think about losing another few kg. would be great if i could get down to the next decade on the scales in time for the 10k in May. that’s a number i haven’t seen since, oooh, 1997 probably, so it would be some achievement.

Got my new lenses, and I can see!!! I could read the very bottomest line on the optician’s chart too.