It is crazy how much eating bad affects me.
Basically we have big thanksgivings and so we have been eating thanksgiving leftover food for days for basically every meal and my energy during the day is all over the place and I can’t sleep well and I just feel like I’m unwinding back into depression brain.
This is in stark contrast to the weeks prior to thanksgiving where I was focusing very hard on getting all my health routines in as ideally as possible.
Its crazy how fast it flipped too, it was within a week, its not even anything to do with weight or body fat changes because my numbers have not changed at all, its purely the fact that I’m eating the wrong things.
I haven’t lost any gains from the training i was doing for running and I did even get a better than expected time so I wasn’t starting in a worse position, it just really was a matter of eating the wrong things.
What’s confusing is in this case cronometer wasnt so helpful. I can see that before thanksgiving I was meeting like 80% on everything if I did all the right things, I could be better but that’s soooo much better than what I sued to be which was like 30s.
And when I eat the Thanksgiving food I’m actually hitting a lot of it, in the 60s but that means nothing apparently because I actually am functioning worse all around, so despite being somewhat rounded and somewhat filling, its putting me near when I was in the 30s.
I guess this means that the timing of food is probably equally as important as hitting macros/micros.
My sleep was getting up into a score of 80s even if I didnt do a proper wind down routine before and now after I’m in the 60s and still doing a nosedive of both quality and duration.
Its interesting how stuff like this is all still basic stuff but it turns out its still complex and probably explains why people can never agree on ways to do health because its too variable to be able to just say do this and that and also too complex to just tell people the variables, they have to figure out how to improve for themselves.
I find your very measurement- and data-based approach interesting, but as you mention in the end, the factors impacting mental status and sleep quality are really too many to condense in measurable cause-effect schemes.
From what I read/heard and my experience, the most important thing is to get the core points somewhat right: having a routine (=regular time of day) for eating and sleeping is the cornerstone. I’m the idea that what we eat is extremely important, but not in the sense of macro and micro nutrients but in a more instinctive approach: eating colors, vary day by day and listen to your body and avoid sugar and processed foods as much as possible is a practicable way of staying healthy. I would count macros only in training, competing or high load of exercise, where you have to plan energy reserves for a future effort.
Mental state/health is then such a big part of how we feel: sunlight is extremely important and modern society generates so much stress that has deep and longstanding impact on our minds and bodies. Look at your post: a nice family get together has a falloff that makes you feel bad :) maybe you can just relish this “cheat week” (I hate the term “cheat” but it gets the idea maybe) and build back to your well balanced routine gradually. A lifespan is built by consistency during the years, not by avoiding slips at all costs.
Im aware of the flaws here but I know how the variables correlate in this case I’ve done lots of trialing in the past, I basically have a very slight leaky heart valve as a remnant of a surgery to correct a larger heart problem when i was born and this means its extra important to eat right for me because there is wasted effort in blood sloshing around basically, its not enough to cause me to be unfit or have major problems physically or mentally but its enough to make my body more sensitive.