I started upping my beneficials and decreasing my avoids and neutrals and have been 98% compliant since Monday. Still more sugar than I'd like, but I've learned that if I decrease it slowly then I don't get crabby or have headaches for the first several days. Even with just decreasing the sugar and changing the amount of veggies and bennies I'm eating, I've had (lighter) headaches and have been a little crabby in the evenings. But I've also started getting up earlier (6am instead of 8 or 9 or later) and haven't quite gotten down the pattern of also getting to bed earlier. So I'm sleep-deprived AND changing my diet!

I've been getting up to go to an aerobics class at 7am. I went last Friday, again Monday, and again today. Once my body gets used to the activity and I'm not so SORE that I can barely move the next day, then I'll start going every morning. So far I feel like death on a cracker until about halfway through the class, and then I start feeling really good for the rest of it.

I roasted a leg of lamb last night so that I have meat readily available in the house and can eat something straightaway if I need something NOW! I just stuck garlic gloves in it all over (about 15 of them) and put some salt on it and cooked it at 400 degrees for about an hour and 20 minutes. Yum. Gordon had split pea soup for dinner, and I had lamb. We went to the movies last night and didn't have a 'real dinner' - by the time I got home I was too tired and cranky to really cook, but it was easy enough to stuff the lamb into the pot and shove it in the oven. I'd had a big spinach salad for lunch, so I wasn't too concerned with getting more veggies in me yesterday.

Just got back from a four day trip to Oregon. My best friend and I drove up there on Sunday, and drove back yesterday. I'm exhausted. Four days of crappy food, not enough sleep, and no real exercise (except for a nearly 3 mile walk with my sister-in-law who lives up there). I got back last night and practically passed out. Woke up after 9 hours of sleep feeling as though I hadn't slept at all.

During our trip, I had a reaction to something I ate every day. My ears would start burning and were very itchy for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. So it's time to do some serious detoxing and see if I can calm down my immune system. This isn't fun, and I haven't felt like myself for much of the summer, so it's time to get strict about things again and figure out what's going on with my body. I'm going to give myself through the weekend to get rid of what's in the house (or to tell Gordon to put it somewhere NOT in the kitchen) and to stock up on some healthy basics. Come Monday, it will be meat and veggies (and some fruit) for me.

I'm so sore! I've been working out on a more regular schedule again (finally!) and am slowly tightening up my diet again. I've been gaining weight this summer - I think because I wasn't feeling so hot, so I wasn't working out. My diet hasn't been terrible, but I've been eating more neutrals than beneficials, so I'm getting back to the basics.

The acupuncture seems to be helping, as does the working out and higher compliance level of the BTD. I've also been having trouble sleeping and staying on a regular schedule, and I think I am getting more sensitive to caffeine as I get older. So no more caffeine. The last time I had some I was up until 6am. Not good. So no more caffeine at ALL. In a couple of weeks I may to an experiment and see if I can have some first thing in the morning and still be able to sleep, but even if the experiment is successful I will NOT make it a regular habit.

Gordon and I went to the movies last night and saw "The Aristocrats". It's a documentary about the dirtiest joke in the world, and how comedians all have put their own spin on it. I hated the joke (it really is vile), but I was able to appreciate all the different comedians and their perspectives on it. After the movie we walked down the street to PF Chang's and had dinner. They have a wok-seared lamb dish that is YUMMY. It normally is served over shredded lettuce, but I always ask for it over spinach or broccoli - they are beneficials and they reheat better than lettuce. Last night I had it over spinach. We walked over to Barnes and Noble and perused the aisles for a while, and watched various entertainers on the mall, and came home. Nice evening out with my hubby.

I've been seeing a Doctor of Oriental Medicine for the last few weeks - after we returned from our honeymoon, I got sick, and haven't been 100% since then. I've been on a parasite cleanse, which helped, but my gut has still not been quite right. It feels tense all the time and I haven't had a normal bowel movement in about two months. I tried everything else that I and my chiropractor could think of to normalize things, but nothing was working.

So one day I walked to a café nearby to see what it was like and saw a sign in a window for a colon cleanse, and it occurred to me that it might help clear out whatever's going on in there.

So I've been there three times now, and things seem to be improving a bit. He massages my tummy, and has told me that my chi is low and that I need to stretch and not eat cold foods, raw foods, dairy or pork, not too much fat, and not very much sugar. Since I already don't eat dairy or pork, that's easy enough. The sugar thing I'm still working on, but even at my worst I eat less than the average American. I'd still like to cut back on it. Not eating raw food is okay, since I tend to steam veggies anyway, and he said a little salad is fine every day. And no sushi, which I'd been avoiding lately anyway because of the parasite issues....

The 'cold' food thing is the most difficult, for a couple of reasons. First, it's summer. In Los Angeles. Sometimes the only thing I want is a cold ginger beer or china cola. Or a little bit of soy dream 'ice cream'. And it complicates lunch a bit since I am supposed to have something hot..... Also, he not only means cold food as in temperature, but cold food as in 'cold' food, and I have no idea what foods are considered 'cold' foods, other than pork, which isn't an issue. I've decided that I'm not going to worry about the 'cold' foods at all, since the BTD works so well.

He's also been doing acupuncture on me, which I've always been interested in. Last week he put two tiny (maybe a millimeter long, if that) needles into points in my ear - one for the large intestine, and one for well-being. The well-being one lasted about 4 hours before I was in so much pain that I pulled it off, but the large intestine one didn't bother me at all, and he said it could be in there a week without any problem. He pulled it out today, and put needles in the other ear for large intestine and stomach. Neither of them is giving me any problems at all, so I expect he'll pull them out next week. He also treats acupuncture points while I'm in the office without needles - he uses some electrical gizmo that zaps the acupuncture points. It's pretty cool.

Not much else to report - I've been jobhunting and cleaning out the closet in the spare room. We ordered a four-drawer filing cabinet that will be delivered tomorrow, and will help us get organized. I've thrown out about 6 grocery bags full of trash in the last few days. It feels good to clean stuff out!

I'm reading "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry right now, and it is a remarkable book about the influenza pandemic of 1918. It describes the background of numerous factors that went into the pandemic's occurrence, including the history of medicine in the US, military history, the events of the "Great War" that affected the movement of troops (and therefore the movement of the virus), virology, etc. It's a fascinating account of a virus that affected nearly every family in the US (and worldwide). Roughly half the population became ill, and 10-20% of those who fell ill died. According to the book, approximately 675,000 Americans died from the 1918 flu pandemic, and that was with a third of the population we have today. In current population terms, with ~287 million Americans, that would be equivalent to losing 1,750,000 people to the flu.

Some people fell ill and died remarkably quickly - one man asked for directions in a perfectly normal tone of voice, and then fell over dead. One man got on a streetcar for a three mile trip and while on it, the conductor, driver, and 6 passengers died, and they'd been perfectly normal until moments before they died. He walked the rest of the way home.

I highly recommend "The Great Influenza" - it's a fascinating and frightening read.