New Years, Holidays — even the beginning of the month or week. These are the days that people choose to begin resolutions, to work out, to eat better, to resolve to stop cheating on their diets.

I used to think the idea was kind of foolish. If you want to change something, why wait til the beginning of the year? Why eat bad or not work out for a few more days so that you can wait til the start of a week, or a holiday, or birthday? I’ve changed my mind.

The day serves as a marker. More than that; an anchor. It’s a clear, definite thing. Saying “I haven’t eaten any flour since that Wednesday at 2:37pm” isn’t very inspiring, or easy to remember either. But everyone knows what a new year’s resolution is, saying “wheat-free since 2009″, and even counting the days, then weeks, then months, then years is easier when you choose a notable day to start the diet.

I was celebrating my birthday this weekend, and I had a slice of pizza. I decided, one more, end the year with a bang. And some indigestion, and some questioning of why I’d want to eat crappy pizza anyway. But I can also say: this year, since I turned XX, I haven’t eaten any flour or drank any soda. Right now that’s not much, just a few days, but the start of a new year of my life carries some weight. It carries more weight than “that Wednesday last April.”

Some people have an easy time making these changes. I don’t know why I don’t, but I know I’ve had problems. I’ve cheated now and then, gone back to old bad habits, and flirted around with dodgy interpretations of the rules. Will it work this time? It has so far, and it will continue by god!

I also bought a coke. It’s sitting on my dresser. I talked with a friend yesterday about giving up the habit, and I was thinking I’d just swear not to buy another one. He suggested that I buy one, and put it at the front of a fridge, as a reminder. I like the reminder idea. I find it much easier to keep to a promise when I’m constantly reminded of it.

Cheating is a mental dodge. You know you’re not supposed to, you know it’s a bad idea, you’ve seen all the dozens of reasons to stop. But if you just push it out of your mind a little, just blank out a little bit, evade the reality, forget the truth, and pretend…. yeah, that’s cheating. My can of coke is a crutch.

Really I’d prefer not to use crutches. I’d like to walk around free, confident in my strength, in my ability to not use them. But more than that, I want to not eat flour or drink soda. Fuck ego. Forget about fortitude, resolve, and discipline. I don’t want to eat that shit.

Writing things down also helps, as does telling friends and strangers. When you take a commitment you made to yourself and tell other people about it, it’s harder to break it. They’ll know. Whatever tricks it takes, I want to be healthy.

Challenge is good. It’s how you improve. But unnecessary challenge is just naked risk. Should I challenge myself by trying something risky, or should I stay in an easy, comfortable environment and try to do more there?

I’ve been riding small parks lately, getting used to the jumps, doing boxes, and trying out the pipe. I’m comfortable with the jumps and boxes now, and I’m thinking: where next? How do I progress? My two choices are to continue in the easy bits for a few more days, or to try something steeper, longer, and scarier.

Fear is obviously a great motivator. I don’t like falling hard. Most of my falls are soft enough that I don’t even feel sore, but a hard injury (like a bruised tailbone) is annoying enough that it makes me not want to try anything risky for a few weeks. That’s what’s kept me out of the more difficult parks. Plus I could be doing more even in the beginner parks, like spins — I haven’t even done a 180 yet.

I did challenge myself a bit more today. Not much; just some boxes I had avoided before, mostly because I had to come at them with speed after already having hit a few jumps. There’s a semi-pipe in the park I rode in this morning and I tried that a bit.

Bleh. Really, the question is: should I push myself to do more in the comfy place, or go try someplace new and see what happens? I guess it really doesn’t matter where I go as long as I’m pushing myself, and learning something.

I’m off to go hit the park, then. Maybe 11 (Disco Park) then 12 (for some blue runs), or 7 (for a more difficult park). I’ll decide between here and the bus stop!

I’ve been here on the mountain for four weeks now, and I’ve been on the hill for twenty of those. Twenty-one, maybe, but I’m going to round that number out. Over the last ten days, I’ve hit a little more terrain, worked on turns, rode some powder, and spent some time in the parks.

My first day out since the day 10 review, I realized I was having trouble making turns. I went to June with a friend, and right turns were just spooking me. I wasn’t making the transition from left to right turn smoothly. My board is set up goofy, but it’s fairly neutral. I frequently ride switch. Actually, I’d ride switch to give my feet, ankles, and legs a break — ie to work both legs equally. Plus, get used to riding switch. So I was having trouble transitioning heel to toe when switch, and toe to heel when regular: ie right turns. Which was weird, because it wasn’t a heel-to-toe thing, or toe-to-heel; it was right turns. Anyway, despite the fact that I had been going down blue-black slopes, I decided to return to gentler slopes and start making a bunch of right turns. It took me a couple days to figure it out.

That’s one of the fun things about snowboarding to me. It’s all balance. Lean forward, lean back, lean right or left, tilt the board, pull up on the nose, whatever. Riding well requires a good sense of your own body and it’s a feeling I really enjoy.

I want to get into park and pipe riding, so after a couple days of just making simple turns, I rode into one of the newbie parks. My first day, I just went over the rollers (a mound of snow with a fixed cross-section left to right and a rounded profile when going over it). It took be a couple days to get used to hitting the rollers straight on, and with speed.

Then we got some powder, and I spent a day riding through the trees and the ungroomed bits on the side of the trail. It was a ton of fun! I hunted for untracked paths through the trees. I rode a bit of powder before, and this wasn’t too deep (about 6 inches), so I wound up working on making turns in the powder, especially on steeper slopes. I know I’ll need more practice in steep powder, but it was great to head through the trees, dart across a trail, then back into the trees again!

Then it was back into the park. At this point, I was more comfortable going left-foot first (which would normally be called a regular stance, cept for my board being mounted goofy means that this is actually switch). So on the non-park bits, I’d ride right-foot first to get better at those turns, then back to left-foot-first for the jumps and whatnot. Terminology is confusing; I wish there was an accepted term for riding left-foot first, for riding mounted-forward-foot first, etc. Really there’s just “goofy” (board is mounted backwards) and “switch” (riding reverse to how the board is mounted), and everything else requires a lot more words…. I figure most people rarely ride switch. It’s a big deal in tricks, and evidently not something most people do much, but … meh. Anyway.

I hit the rollers for a couple days, then started hitting jumps, then got more comfortable hitting jumps at speed and getting air. I’m still not jumping much over the jump; ie pumping my legs to get a boost. There’s a couple small parks; one (Disco) has smaller jumps on a shallower slope, so easier to learn jumps. The other small park (Wonderland) is a bit steeper, and the jumps themselves are shaped a bit more aggressively. I’d usually ride one for a couple hours, head across the mountain to the other, then hit that one for a bit.

Although I’d ridden a box or two before, today was really the first day I did boxes. Still haven’t hit a rail.

View from the top

I also went back to the steeps today. It’ll take me a couple more days to really get used to it. And I also took the gondola up to the top of the mountain. It was incredibly beautiful. They have a great center in the station at the top of the mountain which points out nearby peaks and has a bit of history (both human and geologic) of the region. I peered down the slopes and… couldn’t see it. It’s not a cliff, but it’s effin steep. I got back into the gondola and rode that down.

Next weekend, I’m taking a park-and-pipe camp. Should be interesting. Before that, I’ll be working on both steeps and the park, going for rails, longer boxes, and bigger jumps. They do split the camp up according to skill level. I have a feeling it’ll be me and a bunch of 13-year-olds, but what the hell! hehe

See ya on Monday.

Burton Cattleman's Rail Jam

There’s a rail jam here in town on Saturday. I’m not competing, but one of my roommates is. Until you get to the big pro competitions, they’re really structured for entrants, not spectators. I think the rail jams are a bit different; footage and photos I’ve seen of other rail jams look like parties with some snowboarding going on nearby. There was a Gatorade Free Flow Tour event here a couple weeks ago, which is an amateur event for the 21-and-under crowd. Spectators? Feh! Spectators can go f themselves!

When I played “pro” chess, it was the same way. There wasn’t really room for families and friends, and of course no effort made to draw the public in. But chess isn’t much of a spectator sport. But is that because they don’t try? I played in some video-game competitions and they were the same way, even though there was a much larger group of spectators — usually friends and clan-mates of the competitors.

Online coverage of tournaments is mostly the same. Some info for competition entrants, tables of results, but no flavor, no reporting, no hype, no info for spectators or people that just want to follow the sport.

Magazines like to push personalities. This was one of the keys to the success of poker on television: drama. They turned the players into characters (or characatures), then pit them against each other and exaggerated past conflicts, as if there was something personal going on behind the scenes. It worked for the Travel Channel; they were able to make money from it.

Money would be the obvious reason why it’s difficult to be a sport enthusiast. No-one’s figured out how to make money from it. No-one wants to offer me coverage of upcoming snowboarding competitions, competitor profiles, behind-the-scenes looks at training and tournaments, and info for spectators that want to go watch a competition live. As with poker coverage, I think that it’s a Field of Dreams thing: if you build it, they will come.

The “obvious” answer would be to go offer that stuff myself. Sadly, I don’t have the time. Could I outsource it, 4HWW style? Hmm.

I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism ten years ago, after my sister was diagnosed and I went in to get my TSH checked. I’ve been on synthetic T4 (levothyroxine, aka Synthroid) for most of that time, except for a small period that I was off meds altogether. Chances are, your doctor will only tell you about one option, but I think treatment can be grouped into four choices:

1. synthetic T4
2. natural thyroid extract (Armour Thyroid)
3. low-dose naltrexone
4. nothing

Doctors will ask for a TSH test if you think you have hypothyroidism, or if for some other reason they suspect that you might be hypothyroid. TSH stands for “thyroid stimulating hormone”; it’s put out by the pituitary gland in response to the production of TRH by the hypothalamus. Patients with hypothyroidism and low free T3 and T4 levels will have high TSH levels, but I haven’t found any research directly linking T3 or T4 to TRH production. It seems to make sense, but there’s no knowledge there; just theory. For the most part the theory works. But not always.

And that’s really why I’m writing this post. Some people with hypothyroidism report that some symptoms improve when they start taking synthetic T4 (basically bypassing production from the thyroid), but that other symptoms persist. These people report much improved symptoms when they switch to a natural thyroid hormone replacement (ie Armour Thyroid), which contains not a synthetic T4 but a natural T4, as well as T3, and a bit of T2 and T1. T4 is the storage form of the thyroid hormone; T3 is the active form used by cells. (The number indicates the number of atoms of iodine in the molecule.)

Some people have trouble with T4-to-T3 conversion; some have adrenal fatigue; there’s a whole range of problems. Most doctors give you a TSH test, look at the number, then prescribe Synthroid and tell you any remaining symptoms are just because you’re a lazy fuck and should stop whining. Yeah, I haven’t been happy with my doctors, and many other hypothyroid patients haven’t either. Anyway, the most common cause of hypothyroidism is what’s called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis; it’s an autoimmune disease, in which your own immune system attacks your thyroid, preventing the production of thyroid hormone. Research on molecular mimicry by Dr Loren Cordain suggests that this process is started when foreign proteins cross from the digestive system into the bloodstream; prevention is to not have a leaky gut, perhaps caused by grains, one reason why us paleo people avoid eating them. And one damn good reason why you should never feed grain to your kids.

The third treatment option is what’s called low dose naltrexone. I won’t write much on it here other than to say that the theory behind it’s effectiveness is to tell the immune system to calm the f down, which then allows the thyroid to do its own thing.

The fourth option isn’t really an option. That is, I don’t suggest it. I did feel great when I went off of my meds for a couple months, but I also changed my diet and started some serious exercise, too. If the molecular mimicry theory is correct, then once you’ve got Hashimoto’s, you’ve got memory B cells that know what the antigen looks like. What happens in molecular mimicry is that a protein gets from your gut into your bloodstream; the immune system recognizes the protein as foreign and produces antibodies. Hashimoto’s is when that foreign protein is a molecular mimic of thyroid gland cells. (People with different genetics or different proteins will get other autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.) To the immune system, the foreign protein and the thyroid look like the same protein; the immune system then attacks the thyroid. Reducing the presentation of foreign proteins to the immune system might help reduce symptoms, but it seems that there is no cure for Hashimoto’s; you’ve basically vaccinated yourself against your thyroid gland, and there’s no way to remove those memory B cells.

Eating iodine-rich foods or supplements might help; some recent talk in the blogosphere suggests that 8-50 milligram range iodine supplement is needed; Lugol’s and Iodoral were two suggestions in the comments over at Richard’s site.

My current T4 refills are up in another month. I plan on switching to Armour. Meanwhile, I take iodine, but crappy microgram amounts; I’ll try and find Lugol’s and do that for a month.

I stopped by the pharmacy today to pick up my levothyroxine (synthetic T4) prescription, and it wasn’t ready — so I sat and read the lit they had in the waiting area. One pamphlet was called “Weight Management” so I figured I’d see what kind of foolish things they’d say.

1. “Eat filling foods that are low in calories.” Because calories are calories, the body is a closed system, and our digestive system is identical to a bomb furnace, right? They suggest grains and legumes, because lectins are a health food, of course.

I’ve tried to completely avoid grains and legumes. The only legumes I’ve had since November is a bit of hummus, before I sat and thought about the fact that it’s ground garbanzo beans. Maybe some soybean oil in fast-food condiments, such as mayo and salad dressings. Unfortunately I’ve had a few pieces of bread: one sandwich, some breaded chicken nuggets (curse you Mickey Ds), and a brat in a bun. I need to stop doing that.

2. “When you eat meat, cut out fat and cut down portion sizes.” Hah! My last meal in Austin was a pound of steak. It was quite yummy. I try and get as much fat as I can, and I think I’m just not getting enough. I need to start adding more butter to the food I eat.

3. “Avoid fried foods.” Makes good sense, since most food is fried in vegetable oil, possibly including soy, peanut, and trans fats. As for losing weight, I don’t think this matters at all. Again, they’re trying to say “reduce calories,” and it’s easy to get a lot of calories from fried food.

4. “Use low-fat or nonfat dairy foods.” Cuz, you know, fat soluble vitamins are over-rated. This is part of the “fat makes you fat” mantra, which Taubes addressed directly in a “What if it’s all been a big fat lie” article in the NY Times Magazine and GCBC. Finding full-fat dairy is difficult. Raw milk cheeses are usually full-fat, but yogurt? Forget it. Out of the hundreds (no joke) of brands and flavors of yogurt at the local grocery store, there were maybe five that were full-fat; the rest reduced or nonfat. Yogurt is a good food if it’s made from raw milk. What’s the point of pasteurizing milk, then adding bacteria back in? Wtf? Of course, it’s what you have to do if your milk is ass. Frickin’ ass milk.

5. “Avoid fast food.” Tom Naughton addresses this well in his documentary. Fast food isn’t great on the paleo scale, but if you avoid full-sugar cola and strip the buns of the meat, it can be a part of a weight-loss diet. There’s low-carb options at tons of fast food places, especially if you’re willing to toss buns away. Stay away from their salad dressings, unless they’ve got a good oil and/or vinegar dressing.

6. “Avoid high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks.” I came to Paleo via the Weston A Price Foundation, which is high on nutrition, so I’m very much a high-nutrient guy. (They also tend to be pro-whole wheat, which is where they diverge from the rest of paleo crowd; see Kurt’s post on the subject.) There’s not much that’s high-calorie and low-nutrient, unless you eat potato chips, candy, fruit, or grain-based snack bars. They recommend nonfat yogurt (see above), hummus (see above!), baby carrots (nature’s candy bar), and pistachios (one out of four ain’t bad for a mainstream publication). I recommend not eating when you’re not hungry. And if you are hungry, eat a big, fatty piece of meat. With butter.

7. “Watch what you drink.” The only area that we agree, except for their recommendation of fat-free milk. At home I drink water; if I’m out, I drink unsweetened iced tea.

So this guide is mostly useless for weight loss. If you want to lose weight and be healthy, here’s my seven tips:

1. Eat fatty foods, such as meat and dairy. Add butter or bacon to every meal.
2. Avoid lean meat. It won’t be filling, your body is unlikely to process that much protein, and you’re skipping all the great fat-soluble vitamins.
3. Fast every so often. 24 hours a few days a week, or maybe 36 hours a couple times a week.
4. Cook with butter, not vegetable oil. If you’re lactose intolerant or want to stay away from casein, ghee or coconut oil are good options.
5. Avoid carbs. Your body burns way less fat when you’ve got an insulin spike. If you do eat carbs, only eat them once a day; you won’t be burning any fat for 3-4 hours after you ingest them.
6. Eat nutrient-dense food (such as pastured meat, eggs, and dairy), and avoid anti-nutrients (such as in grain and beans) and low-nutrient foods (such as potatoes or high-fiber veggies).
7. Avoid soda; drink water when you’re thirsty. Contemplate quitting caffeine, or switch to hot or iced tea.

I lost 8 pounds in December, and 14 in January. February is a short month, but I’m hoping for another 14 pounds.

The past few days I’ve been spending time in the park, going over rollers (mounds of snow with a smooth, circular profile) and jumps (which are shaped with a lip and a knuckle). It’s been my first time getting air on a snowboard and I thought I’d capture some of what I’ve learned.

I see a lot of people in the park that don’t know how to ride; that are barely staying up. Going over the jumps is a bit much for them, I think. At least they’re getting used to the jumps, but I don’t know how useful it is. One of the key bits that I’ve heard and seen about tricks is that you want to control speed, takeoff, and landing. If you can barely ride, you might be getting air but you aren’t likely to be learning to do it in a way that you control, can repeat, or can improve on. I really think it’s important to be able to link turns first.

Part of the reason I say that is because of my experience on the rollers. Before I tackled the jumps themselves, I went over dozens of rollers. They’re like an intro to jumps; there’s a ramp up, and ramp down, and you’ll feel a little less gravity (but not quite weightless) as you ride over the top. Trying to carve over the top of a jump tends to mean making a sharp turn right after the crest of the roller; I’ve heard that riding flat (ie not on edge) over the top (unless you’re spinning) is crucial, and all those rollers helped me not just practice riding flat but to see first-hand what happens when you’re not. Snowboarding is a balance sport, like surfing and skateboarding; the key ‘trick’ to learning to ride is getting a feel for balance. Where to put your weight, how hard to lean, etc. And jumps are the same thing.

Between jumps, I also scrub off a bit of speed and take a line for the next feature; that means good board control. It’s forced me to be ready and able to make quick turns; I can’t sit and traverse and take my time waiting for a turn; when you’ve got to get lined up within yards to make the next jump, and don’t want to be cresting over it at a crazy angle, you’ve got to turn quickly.

Getting air isn’t really difficult. It’s a matter of speed and direction. Learning to make jumps just means getting a feel for how fast to go, and how to get lined up. That’s what I’ve been doing for a few days; getting a feel for the speed, getting used to going over the jump, getting used to air, and getting more familiar and comfortable with speed. Which brings me to the second big thing to learn: speed.

When I started riding this year, I worked on making turns, staying on my feet, not getting tired out or lacing my boots to tight. At the same time, I worked on going faster. I eventually realized that I really wasn’t comfortable making right turns, either normal or switch. So I slowed back down and worked on making turns, over and over. (And on powder days I worked on getting used to powder, which is hella fun!) Now I’m speeding back up again. One of the things about jumps is you need a certain speed at the takeoff, and once you launch you can’t slow down until you land. Speed happens. If you’re not comfortable at speed, then I suggest working on that before you hit too many jumps.

There’s a couple great areas to learn to get air here at Mammoth. One is a bit steeper than the other, but has a bunch of rollers; the other has jumps that are very easy to work into. Sessioning these two has been great, a bit of variety to try one thing or another. If you don’t have options, you do what you can, but if you do have options, then go for it. I feel like it was easier to get air on the lower slopes, but I learned more about speed and takeoffs from the steeper slopes.

Of course I’m no pro. I’m not even doing any grabs or spins yet. But I feel that the rollers have taught me a lot — not just in words, but in feel. And now I’ve got a feel for air. I plan to hit the same areas tomorrow, maybe I’ll actually be doing 1s.

Confirmation Bias is looking for confirmation of a held belief; interpreting data as support for your beliefs. If you believe that garlic keeps away vampires, then you would interpret the absence of vampire attacks as evidence for your theory. If you believe that God designed humans, then you would interpret irregularities in the theory of evolution as evidence for your belief.

But the absence of vampire attacks itself isn’t evidence of anything. You would need to contrast that absence with the presence of attacks somewhere else.

I would like to believe that I am getting fitter. Of course. I want to get fitter. I think what I am doing is helping me. But is it? I made it all the way down from one of the longer lifts yesterday without stopping. Is that cuz I’m more fit now, or because my muscles have more stamina, or because I had more energy available to my muscles that day, or because my feet and ankles weren’t killing me? Riding in the powder today was exhausting. In powder, one raises the front of the board up by leaning on the back leg. It feels more like surfing. But it’s also hell on that back leg. Today told me I wasn’t as fit as I thought I was. But then again, I’m 230 pounds — am I more fit, or do I just weigh less? I haven’t run since I left Houston.

I would like to believe that Vit D3 is helping me ward of colds. In the hour or two after I take 4000 IU, my nasal congestion goes way. Then it comes back, and I take a couple more. How accurately am I keeping records? Is it just that I notice nasal congestion some times but not others? It’s been a persistant problem since I got here. Until Richard’s recent post on Vit D and colds, I was only taking 4000 IU a day. Now I’m taking 12, or more. Is it helping? Am I getting over new allergies? I’m I just giving credit for any improvement in my sinuses to D?

I will continue what I’m doing, but I’ve got to be cautious in my interpretations. More snow tonight, so I’ll hit the powder again first thing in the morning. I doubt my legs will improve greatly in the night – but I’ll be here for the season.

and it was good.

My first trip down a run in Colorado on December 22nd, I stopped about 14 times — about every 100 yards. My first run down Round Robin here at Mammoth, I stopped three or four times. Today, I made it all the way down Easy Rider/Comeback without stopping.

I feel more fit, at least on the slopes. My legs don’t burn as much, my ankles don’t hurt. As I talked about in the Ten Day Review, there’s a virtuous cycle there: I’m riding faster, making more turns and slipping less. As a result, I get down the mountain faster with less time spent straining my legs. I’ve dropped 14 pounds so far this year, in addition to about 8 in December, so that helps too; less extra mass to throw around the mountain.

I’ve heard a number of people say that snowboarding (and skiing) aren’t great workouts, but they’re fit people. If you’re overweight and/or unfit, walking up stairs can be a great workout, so I think snowboarding really does count. I remember back in December when I stopped, my heart and breathing was fast; I was obviously working hard. I haven’t done any weight training while I’ve been here but I’d like to start.

Today was my first real day in the park. I sessioned Wonderland yesterday, mostly hitting the rollers but also rolling over the small jumps a couple times, not getting air. But today I rode over to Disco Park and hit the rails, boxes, and jumps, getting some real air. There’s an “eighth-pipe” down at the bottom that I consider a gentle introduction to pipe riding. I like Disco; I find it much easier to ease into park stuff there than at Wonderland. Wonderland is much less crowded, however, and it’s easier to get some speed going into the jumps. Forest Trail, Main Park, South Park, and Jibs Galore are all a bit above my pay grade at the moment.

I also think I injured about every part of my body today; my knees, left wrist, and left shoulder. I found a stat (from 2000) that says that skiers have about 2.6 injuries per 1000 visits, whereas snowboarders have nearly 7 injuries per 1000 visits. Yeah, that was me today. (I didn’t visit ski patrol tho, so I guess this my injuries are uncounted in that total.) Luckily one doesn’t actually use their upper body when snowboarding!

We’re expecting about three feet of snow between now and the end of Saturday, so I plan to ride for a couple days, getting more powder experience. I might hit the park tomorrow morning, maybe not, but even tho Saturday will be crowded I do want to learn how to ride powder better. Sunday will be bluebird, but prolly groomed. Hmm. Choices!

I’ve been thinking of Fake Food the past few days, since my previous post last week. Strangely, Kurt had a post on a similar theme (Smoking Candy Cigarettes) a couple weeks ago that I missed (as I’ve been on a limited-internet diet til we got service here at the house) and recently read.

His post focuses on the sanction that such cheats give to the offending item; how a cheat now and then might give the impression that you still eat cake, etc. That avoiding cake isn’t a central part of your diet. I was coming at it from the effect it has on you, the cheater: eating fake pasta and sugar-free cookies is still pretty bad, and only one step removed from the real (bad) thing. That accepting that it’s OK to eat bread as long as it is gluten-free might lead to an occasional gluten-loaded bun now and then.

I did cheat last week; I ate a bun. It came with bratwurst, which is a favorite of mine, although I acknowledge that’s not an excuse. I’m not happy about the bun. I’m mentioning it here cuz I’d rather admit my failings then fake it (har). Plus mentioning it, writing it down, is a way of cementing the event in my mind, and remotivating myself to not do that again. I don’t want wheat, I don’t want cancer, I don’t want autoimmune diseases and gut distress.

Anyway, I was shopping today, and I thought of buying some rice noodles so I could make pasta, because … hmm, nostalgia? I used to make a lot of pasta. Pasta sauces are easy to make, and it’s easy to put whatever you want in to them. Pasta dishes are also hefty and filling. But… I don’t eat pasta, and although rice is probably the friendliest of the villainous grains it’s still a villain.

That got me thinking about diet soda. Diet Coke is a lot like gluten-free bread, or rice noodles, or candy cigarettes. Despite the flowery advertising for diet colas, I don’t think there’s anyone that would voluntarily drink them if it wasn’t for a desire for the non-diet versions, whether that desire comes from carb cravings or nostalgia or habit or whatever.

I think they’re fine as crutches; if you’re trying to transition to paleo, I think gluten-free bread, rice noodles, and diet coke are great. Some people do great quitting cold turkey, and if that’s you, then you can really skip this whole conversation. But I’ve had persistent problems with cheating. Carbs are cheating for me, and it’s the easiest thing to cheat on, because I’m eating low-carb to lose weight, not strictly to avoid disease. Wheat, however, is something I want to avoid 100%. I’d like to be wheat-free for a year, two years, a decade…. I’ve been aluminum and flouride free for years. Somehow that was a bit easier, mostly because those purchases (deodorant and toothpaste) are made rarely enough that I just need to be strong like once every six months. Cake.

Food, however, is something I eat daily. There are constant temptations to cheat. Convenience, social pressure, carb cravings that lead to bad food choices, etc. I don’t drink diet soda (choosing tea whenever I’m at a restaurant where I’d otherwise feel pressured to drink soda), and I’ve been 99% bean-free since last April. I still eat factory meat & eggs near daily, but 80% of my cheese is unpasteurized. I just need to … remember. Thinking about it before I down that hot dog bun would help. Gah.

One day at a time? I haven’t had any wheat today. It’s been five days since I last ate wheat.