In which I’m just trying to look busy here, guys! *type typity type*

School
Since last term culminated in an exhausting two-week freak-out because I hadn’t gotten my courses finished in time for finals, this term I’ve made myself a schedule.

I’m already behind my clever schedule, and it’s only week 4. Um.

I like my Linux class, my CCNA class makes me miserable, and my other class is fine but the labs and chapter tests are seriously tedious. Waah.

Nicotine
That last quit failed. I just wasn’t prepared to suffer for the necessary length of time.

Quitting smoking is mild yet endless suffering; a feeling that you should be doing something else that doesn’t go away for weeks. It’s relentless. I didn’t have my shit together so I failed to withstand the whisper of the dopamine.

The fact that every drag is doing irreparable damage to my lung tissue is pissing me off, however. There will be another quit, I just need to get my mental and emotional shit together before I face it. Grr.

Clothes
For no particular reason, I broke down and bought clothes from KrishnaCulture.com yesterday. I can’t wait for them to arrive! Two shirts and an adorable gopi dress. Yay!

My jeans are too big. A punjabi I’ve had for years and which has always been tight now fits. I’m probably going to have to buy a couple of new sundresses this summer, so I don’t look like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.

Metabolism
Which is to say that I’m still losing inches, but I’m not dieting in the traditional sense. I eat whatever I want – as long as it doesn’t contain white flour, white sugar, HFCS, white rice, or potatoes – and I pay no attention to fat or calories. The slabs of fat on my belly and back are slowly melting away. (I’ve lost three-and-a-half inches off my rib cage, two inches off my upper arms, and three inches off my hips since January.) I can see my ribs and sternum for the first time in nearly a decade. I feel energetic, which, if you know me, is not really a word anyone would ever use to describe my physical activity.

I continue to study human metabolism and diet. I am more convinced than ever that the problem with our modern diet is not the fat, sodium, or calories: it’s those few components that are metabolized directly into blood sugar and which throw the body into insulin hell, namely the refined carbohydrates I mentioned above. The longer I avoid those foods and observe my own body’s response to their absence, the more convinced I am that those particular food items are behind our current epidemics of obesity and diabetes. There’s really no reason to eat those calories anyway as they have zero nutritional value, and anyone curious should just avoid them for a month and see what the results are.

Anecdotally: on Easter Sunday, at the family brunch out at The Oasis, I had potatoes with my eggs and salad and fish. I was hungry again an hour and a half later – which, considering it was a buffet and I had had plenty of calories, is completely absurd – and I felt hungry the entire rest of the day, no matter how much I ate. The experience was in direct contrast to my usual experience these days, in which I tend to eat every four or five hours and basically never feel a desire to snack.

I eat chocolate. I drink wine. I eat brie. I cook with butter and extra virgin olive oil. I use mayonnaise. I drink whole milk. Not counting calories and not avoiding fat is heaven, I tell you, after three months of a traditional semi-starvation diet.

And don’t freak about my fat intake. Dietary fat does not cause arterial build-up, “bad cholesterol” (aka LDL) does. The presence of LDL is more a function of the intake of refined carbohydrates than it is of dietary fat.

In other words, a calorie is not a calorie. It doesn’t matter how many calories you eat, what matters is which kinds of calories you eat. A calorie of sugar does things to your body that a calorie of fat or protein simply does not do.

Amma
The most exciting news of all, though, is that tour dates have been announced and Mother will be in Seattle at the end of May. I’m so excited I could explode, because this year I have the money to register for the retreat and go to both of the public programs and I have a friend to go with! Om namah Amma! Jai Ma!

Kindle
I upgraded to the K3 for no good reason beyond gadget envy. It’s pretty sweet, really, but functionally it’s not much different than the K2i I’m sending to my mom. I’m excited to see if she digs it, or if she just sends it back.

If you have a Kindle and haven’t already done so, definitely check out Lendle.