Diary of a CheeseFiend page

[CheeseFiend]

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread83639.html

Hope that link works? It's to my first few questions and discoveries, with the aid of my Helper In Chief, Cryptocode, to whom I had something very important to say about liver yesterday, but now cannot remember...

So, a journal should start somewhere, but since I've experienced it all once already, it's a bit dull for me now - abridged version then:

- discovered paleo site whilst idly browsing for something else
- long been sick of bloaty stomach, bloaty mind, bloaty willpower, bloaty disinterest in general - and that was on mainly potato and rice, not really eating much bread or pasta at all
- read through all the success stories in one night AND - and this is the important bit - AND what struck me most was not the weight loss (I'm a bit meh as far as weight goes), but the sense of life and vigour that just barged out of those stories
- never having been one to sneer at someone else's evangelicism, I thought rather wistfully that I would love to have some of that oomph.

So about three weeks ago (sorry, not good at counting time, carbs, weights etc etc) I went thoroughly paleo, but including cream, butter and cheese. And about two weeks and three days ago I started feeling rather wonderful, and have been feeling better and better every day since, until it's unusual now to see me without a smile on my face. Except yesterday. Yesterday I spent being violently sick. Nothing to do with paleo though, just been a greedy cow on the foraged goods. Hugely better today.

Apart from a mild few days of carb light-cold-just-a-few-sniffles-really/NOT 'flu, I have not stopped feeling energetic, cheerful, more present physically than in years - as though I've taken full body earplugs off and can hear, see and touch more vividly than before. I leap home from work to scour the house and garden for more things to do, whereas I used to crawl in and collapse in front of the fire with a bottle of wine and not move until bedtime. I can even do a full day's weekend gardening work - digging, planting, pruning, ivy-wrangling, mowing - then get home and bounce outside to cut my own lawn at eight in the evening. Just bonkers, truly bonkers. No blood sugar slumps, no crashes, just energy, energy, energy. And when I do get hungry and stuff my face, there's no sleepy patch afterwards - just even more energy. It has to be magic, has to be.

Downsides: I thought for a moment this meant a free pass to eating as much as I wanted. An unfortunate trip to the cheese counter proved that theory to be wrong last week. I have to limit my cheese. I am allergic/intolerant/whatever to eating cheese by the kilo. Dammit.

That's it on the downsides.

My body shape has definitely changed. I don't own scales so I can't be sure, but I think I was about 9 stone (about 125lbs?) - UK size 10 anyway. A classic skinny/fat (just discovered that term), where fully clothed I looked slim, unclothed, I looked a bit more... bulgy. I don't think I've lost much weight, but I think the outdoor work I do has given me more muscle on my new eating habits, and certainly a lot, a LOT, less fat - I'm now in my UK size 8 jeans (a US size 4, I think?) and they're fairly loose fitting - fully clothed I don't look too different, but unclothed I look... well... sleek! No other word for it. Sleek and slightly don't-mess-with-me looking. Excellent.

So there you go. It IS magic. I have been trying to calorie count and macronutrient track - I have not done so well as I should, being too low on carbs and too high on fat and calories. I think I will probably end up going for a wild stab at the correct amounts and then trying to even it out over the week, rather than get the correct proportions of everything, every day. Some days I'm just ravenous for green stuff and wrinkle my nose at the smell of meat. Some days I just want steak steak steak and can't see the point of a vegetable. Although I do not yet trust my body not to lie to me about what it thinks it wants (poor confused beast that it is), I think that whilst this continues to work I probably shouldn't beat myself around the head with figures all the time (see crap-at-counting comment above). If I begin to flag, lose energy, gain weight, or otherwise feel less marvellous that I currently do, I will have to abandon this theory...

[Cryptocode]

HIIIIIIII! I found you. Congratulations to us both.

I think I've learned more from you than you from me. Your comment about the micronutrients made me realize I'd never looked at mine in the tracker, which I haven't used for 3 - 4 months. So I entered the last 3 days and found I'm dying, or starving to death, or something. No, I'm not hungry. Anyway I spent much of the day trying to add in my multi-vitamin as a food. I think I really screwed up the tracker. I'll have to delete that and try again. It's now telling me I ate 176,572 calories today. Really?

We have a strange new group in the forum. "What happens if I eat "this food"? Me - you will die a slow and painful death immediately. So I asked a question today and so far no one has answered. Now I'm feeling very unloved. LOL. Somedays it's really hard to keep me happy.

Wish I had your energy though, it sounds great.

[CheeseFiend]

Hellooooo!

Yes, big pat. Well done us.

176,572 calories, eh? You'll get fat at that rate. Good idea about adding the vitamins though.

I haven't tracked for a few days. It seemed a bit pointless since a) Saturday's food and I parted company anyway, b) I didn't eat anything Sunday, and c) Monday was mainly fruit juice, apples, water and half a sweet potato.

Not much energy tonight - I think the crash famine, potato & fruit (sugar & sugar) remedy, and a really late night have done for me. Knackered this evening.

I just went looking for your question. I'd love to answer it for you, but I have no idea what you're on about.

Journal note for the day: don't be sick and not eat. You won't feel well.

[Cryptocode]

Sorry, "What happens if I eat this food" is a joke (snide) question. Has nothing to do with you. Has to do with stupid questions being asked on the forum.

[CheeseFiend]

As a stupid question asker, I'm going to side with the stupid on this one. You need to ask less pertinent questions; clearly it's all your own fault for leading from the front.

What a long week. Energy still mostly up, but come 8 o'clock (sitting down time) in the evening, I'm pooped. Still off-colour from last weekend's vomitfest which doesn't help, and I haven't tracked a thing since then. I don't care [self-pity face on] - I've just been eating whatever feels good as long as it's within my strictly primal range (I dumped the sugar/potato thing after the first day).

So what guilty secrets shall I share today? The smoking I daren't even approach on a site such as this. Exercise? OK. I hate 'exercise'. I have avoided 'exercising' my entire life. I know this is a character flaw along the lines of pointless teenage rebellion and I should just grow up and accept exercise as being as incontrovertible as death, taxes, clearing up catshit and PMT, but I really don't want to. Do I have to? Is there such a thing as binge-exercise and is it bad? By which I mean, I spend about 10 hours every weekend doing vaguely Grok-like things for my gardening work. Then I do very little for five days. And repeat. Actually, I take that back - I don't have central heating so every evening I have to saw up wood for the fire - that can get quite energetic. I'm a hill-walker by desire (when I get the time!), so that's long, measured, strolls taken account of (although the highest near me is only around 4000 feet). I feel guilty that I don't 'exercise', but to be honest, I've never yet met a proper gardener with a saggy arse - all those lunges, you see... So dither, dither, dither - I'm not running, I'll tell you that now. Not never. Perhaps now the evenings are getting longer/lighter I'll take some more evening strolls [ with a saw stuffed up my jumper just in case a good piece of wood-scrumping presents itself ].

Journal note for the day: The Careful Reintroduction Of Cheese Plan is going extremely well. As someone suggested on the other thread, quality cheese, but less often. Unfortunately I seem to have scarfed my week's allowance of quality cheese by yesterday evening, and I only bought it yesterday afternoon [cries].

[Cryptocode]

Do you mean to say that, on this site, I've found a fellow smoker? Shhhh, don't tell anyone. Now I'm more than ever interested in coming to visit.

Sounds like you get plenty of exercise. What, you don't have central heating? Where do you live again? You chop wood. You're already living the primal life. That sounds like plenty of exercise to me.

EDIT: You're right. My posts to you have been much to brief and thus not understandable. And my 'humor' doesn't do well on-line. I've trimmed my fingernails and will try to be more complete and explanative.

Here's your previous thread: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread83639.html
and here's us: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread34076.html (NamelessWonder)
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread81880.html (AnnieH)
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread81870.html (me)

When you have time, please come visit us.

[CheeseFiend]

Oh bloody hell, that's the third time you've felt the need to excuse yourself to me.

Right - new agreement. You can pick one of the following and we'll stick to it as a working assumption until further notice:

a) I'm a bit thick; I'll probably never quite catch up with what you're saying, so just play nicely and you can feel a bit sorry for me, and I can feel a bit inferior about you;

b) I probably have got it, but am either off on a ditz about something else or am playing it deadpan; or

c) I probably got half of it but wasn't really paying enough attention so you should be pissed off at me for not listening...

You can choose any of the above - I won't be offended. I've spent my whole life assuming people talk down to me because I'm female, blonde, and look quite young. It could very well be true that, actually, they talk that way because I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box...

[CheeseFiend]

Whoops. Having read through some of the journals, I realise most people introduce themselves a little, not just bang on about what they think about what they thought they might have been eating until they realised they weren't...

Erm, 40, female, Yorkshire born, started working life as a lawyer, joined the UK Government as an international negotiator (energy and climate change), traveled the world talking persuasive nonsense about power plant efficiency and radiative forcing (courtesy of the Foreign Office) for ten years, no kids (had a husband but he got cancer), threw it all up at the age of 38 to live in a house built in 1700 in the middle of the hills in the middle of nowhere, with a bathroom in the barn, no heating, and barely scraping a living by gardening and occasional office work when needs must. Two cats, one sunny disposition, and a reluctance to ever again have anyone in my house who thinks that the world is, on balance, a bit shit.

[Cryptocode]

WOW! Now I'm really impressed. And life is hell! That explains why you're there when you're so smart.

Please explain further - "who thinks that the world is, on balance, a bit shit."

Ok, let's agree. Neither of us is unusually thick - ever. We won't apologize.

[CheeseFiend]

Excellent.

Long story, but basically my default setting is that everything and everyone is interesting if you just know enough about it/them. I spent a lot of time recently with someone whose default setting was that everything and everyone was a bit shit - and I didn't realise just how miserable that low-grade, constant background negativity was making me. So while I accept the world has room even for grumpy, bad-tempered miseries - and good luck to them - I won't be sharing my space again with anyone who has a temper on them. Not rocket science, I know, but having been brought up to be a nice, polite, helpful, accommodating little girl, it's quite liberating to become a I Will Not Put Up With This Sort Of Thing woman.