reemergence, via words

it is an interesting experience, coming back to life.

it's intense, and it's difficult. the last couple years have been quite a rough journey for me, but it is one that is thankfully coming to an end. seeing the end in sight, but not quite being there, is exhausting.

slowly, I feel parts of myself reawakening. links in my brain that have been switched off for who knows how long. I can sometimes almost feel the little sparks, and I imagine them as tiny fireworks pinging into existence. facets of myself that have been lost are evolving and strengthening. NEXT LEVEL ROBOT MODE, INITIATED.

my insurance company quite rudely decided not to cover my medicine last month, so I was thrown cold turkey from the serotonin train. it was fairly hellish, but short. nausea and brain zaps. they aren't kidding when they talk about how crazy withdrawing from cymbalta is - I do not recommend.

the bright side is, holyshitI'malive.

those pills were necessary for me to survive, but now off, I realize I wasn't feeling much at all. I existed, barely.

but now, I'm ready to thrive.

reemergence via photos

The immortal words of Carl Sagan.

the pale blue dot

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar,” every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless visits by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel, the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.     

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.  

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.     

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan. Pale Blue Dot.

100 billion planets, and carbohydrates.

According to a study done by astronomers at CalTech, there are at least one billion planets in our galaxy alone (read more here).  This information will probably be considered basic space knowledge in a few decades, but I think it's amazing that we've gone from not knowing about the rest of the planets in our galaxy, to then thinking there are only that many planets, to knowing there are BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of planets, a decent percentage of which may be Earth-like and potentially habitable.

This is truly the great age of space exploration and discovery. I can't wait to see what we're going to discover next. Although the debate is still up for whether or not there is life out there, just think about it. Billions and billions of planets that are like ours, billions of moons surrounding those planets. Although the Fermi Paradox states the problem of the huge contradiction between the possibility of large amounts of life and the lack of communication from them, I don't believe it myself. Human beings, and higher intelligence on planet Earth, have only been around since about 200,000 years ago in the form of Homo sapiens, and only within the last 10,000 years have we formed the culture that we have today. Now consider the vast amounts of time that the Universe is thought to exist... 13.75 billion years. Life is said to have started on Earth 3.2 bya. There are huge disparities here, advanced intelligence life could have risen and fallen 3x before we even evolved into the Homo species. I think it is foolish and egotistical to think of ourselves as the only form of higher intelligence in the Universe, knowing the huge amounts of time and chances for life that are involved.

Regardless, I can't wait to see what we find next.

Day 3 of fat-fast! It went fantastic. I've noticed that when I do the macadamia nut + heavy cream + cream cheese fast, I will shoot into ketosis within the next day. It's really unbelievable. I used to suffer through 3 days of exhaustion while my body switched gears from glucose burning to fat burning but never again will I put myself through that.

From here on out, I will slowly start throwing more carbs into my diet. Tonight for dinner I had a cup of broccoli soup splashed with heavy cream, and some summer sausage sandwiched with cream cheese. Low carb is nothing if not sinfully delicious. Salads, cauliflower, broccoli, dairy, nuts and berries are where I will get the majority of my carbohydrates from, and I try to keep under 30g per day. It can be difficult, but it is much easier when ketosis kicks in and you are sated by what you eat instead of always feeling hungry (like on low/cal, low/fat diets), and you have excess energy.

This is the lifestyle that the human species has been living for the majority of the time that we've been in existence, and although agriculture has made it easier for us to feed vast populations, it is not the healthiest way for us to live. Our bodies are made to exist best on fat and protein, and the inclusion of cooked protein is actually what caused our brains to start growing. We essentially became human because of eating protein and fat... not grains, and especially not corn. I sincerely believe the majority of the obesity problem today is caused by this over-reliance on carbohydrate calories.

But to even suggest that is considered blasphemy. Well, maybe I'm blaspheming then, but the keto or low-carb/high-fat diet has worked wonders for me. Check out my before & middle ;) :

187 - 150lbs!

Happy new year!

It's 2013! Turns out, it feels a bit different from 2012. This is the first year I've spent NYE in relative sobriety, and with a baby nonetheless. The cutest baby in the world, my best friend's kid. He's 6 months old, a round and giggly ball of adorable. He makes my ovaries hurt with baby rabies. We just spent the night shooting the shit and drinking wine and eating chilli. It was basically perfect.

This year marks one of hard work and frugality. We have to save a bunch of money, I have to do a lot of school, and we will be team-leading it up at work. It also makes the year that I'm going to lose the last 30 lbs! I briefly mentioned this in the last post, but I am going in to a bit more detail now. If nothing else, this is going to keep me accountable. I hope.

Went to the store today. The next 3 days, I'm going to do a fat fast. This is basically consisting of 1000 calories based 90% on fat for a short period of time in order to jump your system into ketosis. It works magic, but it does make me feel kinda sick. It's a surefire thing though, and then you slowly work your carbs back up to the 20-30 range. I'm also going to start lifting again next week.

Fat fast meal plan

Breakfast:
1/4 cup heavy cream w/ protein shake (360 calories)

Lunch:
1/4 cup macadamia nuts (240 calories)

Dinner:
2 ounce cream cheese (200 calories)
2 tablespoons heavy cream (100 calories)
vanilla extract

80% fat, 14% protein, 7% carb, 3 days, ketosis.

It's magic.

I'll be back after 3 days to report on the next part.