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.
I took me a bit of consideration for me to decide on interacting with this post. I have to admit the more I read it the more confused I get and the risk of passing as blunt or uncaring increases.
What I gather is that your are not feeling well with yourself after going through Thanksgiving and the following week, having energy fluctuations and trouble sleeping. You also add a lot of metrics, of which I don’t understand a single bit of what you are forwarding.
What I am picking up, clearly, from your post is a lot of stress and anxiety. It is like reading a report from someone that is being tallied on a score sheet for efficiency and results. It is not positive. I do not know if you have an underlying health condition you are trying to get under control or just trying to set a new set of life habits but that much stress on it is conterproductive.
You state you were in a good place before going into Thanksgiving and it was the amount of food and dealing with the leftovers that is throwing you off. Why? You mention your family does large meals, understandable, but how much, what and when are you eating? And are you allowing yourself time between meals, to properly digest, or are you eating by impulse or because you feel pressed to not let anything go to waste?
Exageration is part of festivities. Just accept it. But that exageration does not have to throw yourself off. Eat when you need, try as best as possible to keep regular meal hours, try to stay active, moderately, to burn off some of those excess calories. And pay attention to yourself.
But please don’t make the occasional excess more than what it is. Excessive concern is as detrimental as excessive indulgence.
And after all this figurative hot air has escaped my mouth, I hope I haven’t been crude.
Thanks for responding but you aren’t really reading it right, I’m perfectly capable of getting onto the routine, I’m not slipping, I just turned it off as a test.
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.
Im not eating excess in fact I actually can’t eat enough because I’m slightly underweight and haven’t been able to gain weight for a looong time because my. Metabolism has learned to work very hard.
That metabolism increase is a side effect of your heart valve not working properly or is it something else?
And I’m glad I was reading wrong your message.
Yeah its a side effect, like it costs more to do the same flow rate basically so this means more work must be done and so there is more metabolic processes happening or for longer or however that works out.
Its basically not enough of a problem to be very noticeable but I have noticed differences between how I am vs how others with the same variables are and noticed there is a very slight discrepancy that aligns with long term hypoxic changes which hypoxia specifically was an issue before I had heart surgery when I was 10 months old and the present differences I notice could be explained by that time period and my slight leak so it seems very likely that I have these subtle sensitivities and differences because of the leak.
It could have been much worse though, usually people with tetralogy of fallot have already needed another corrective surgery by my age (25) and my cardiologist thinks I probably won’t ever need another surgery for the rest of my life.
Cronometer measures just part of the picture.
Carbohydrates, which holiday food tend to be heavy in, drive blood glucose which drives insulin which has a outsized impact on mental health (mood, clarity, executive function).
If you want to be data driven pick up a CGM and watch your glucose and see how that maps to your mood and motivation. I’ve found a very flat glucose graph means I’m feeling motivated and energetic.
Yeah I’ve wanted to try those but havent.
At this point I’ve done enough experimenting that I don’t need it though because I have a handle on blood sugar now.
I had a issue in the past thst I didnt know was a issue for a long time because I just thought it was normal to be forcibly sleepy no matter what a couple hours after lunch.
What turned out to be was that I was hugely undereating probably because I was in depressed nihilistic moods and my metabolism of a tall skinny dude churning through every little ounce of food, I eventually figured out which foods to eat and when to keep it up once I realized this was the problem.
I remember one time getting a detention in school for this and at the time I was fine with the detention because I just didn’t understand the dynamic here but after figuring this out it makes me lose faith in schools because this could be preventable if there was more slattention to individual needs and it would have boosted the schools rate of better grades because I could have been a more functional student by a lot.
But anyways I don’t have an issue with eating right now, this is just the original post was an intentional result of dropping my habits and seeing what changes, turns out it is quite a huge difference.
That’s crazy.
