Recovery

The long and winding road to post-cold health is littered with trashy novels.

I admit it: since I couldn't eat my cold away, I filled my head with the literary equivalent of junk food. Thank goodness for the Kindle, it lets me read my low-brow novels in secret.

The experience has me thinking about how easy it is to fill our minds with "empty calories" (as easily as we fill our mouths). I have the mental equivalent of a post-binge food hangover -- lethargy, low-energy, a feeling of slight depression and just overall not comfortable in my own skin.

Weird, no? I really do believe it's from ingesting crappy books that don't really feed my mind, connect to my life, or relate in anyway to my conscious self. It was all about escape, fiction, fantasy -- getting away from who I am and my current unhappy condition.

A little bit of that is fine, I think. But apparently I'm a binge reader as well as a binge eater. I worked my way through six overwrought historical novels all written by the same woman -- the first one was mildly diverting, then they all become the same, just with different names for characters and slightly different settings.

Ultimately, I was left with the same feeling I have after eating too much crappy, sweet cake: why didn't I stop at just one?

The only positive is that I got them on my Kindle, so they were cheap, and each one took about 2 hours to read, so I didn't waste too much time on it, just kept me busy while I was down and out and not capable of anything requiring actual concentration.

Anyway, this is all to say that I am feeling better. If I'm back to usual long and rambling posts, my strength must be returning, right?

Still not able to work out beyond some walking, but that will change soon. I feel the energy trickling back. Yay!

Read an interesting article about a vegan long-distance runner in the NY Times yesterday. Wow -- this guy and I have similar diets, in that I try very hard to eat what he's eating (tempeh, beans, salads, quinoa, yams, etc). I supplement with fish a lot more now b/c I think I've developed a bit of a reaction to tempeh. If I eat it too often (every day) I get bad stomach cramps.

But I'm thinking if this guy can run for 8 hours off this diet, I surely can be vegan and get through my day! Then again, he's not trying to lose weight, and there may be something in there for me to ponder.

OK, off to work, more later.