(TMI warning) I’ve been offline for most of August and September with really bad IBS problems. I couldn’t figure out what I was eating that was triggering my flareups, and at the time, I also didn’t realize that stress might be also causing some of the IBS problems as opposed to food. I went on a complete elimination diet to try to get the IBS to calm down. About a week later, I started getting terrible sinus headaches, most likely from the smoke from the California wildfires that was blowing into the bay area. I was limited in what I could take to treat the headaches since most medicine made my stomach queasy, thanks to my IBS issues. It took me about 2 weeks before I realized that my headaches were probably worse because, as part of the elimination diet, I had stopped taking my allergy supplements (allergy medicine, as well as butterbur, quercetin and bromelain). I started the supplements up again but it took about a week before my headaches went away. While I’m glad my heada...

I know I blogged about this on my Writing Diary Blog , but I don’t think I blogged about this here. I read a few writing and productivity books, and I’ve been trying to form better daily habits. The problem is that my self-discipline is very bad. As in, embarrassingly bad. One of my goals has been to form a better writing habit. Since I’m a full-time writer, I already write every day, but I think there are things I can do to tweak my schedule so that I can be able to focus better when I write. I tend to get distracted by the thought of things I need to do that day which I haven’t done yet. I don’t know why my brain is like this, but I haven’t been able to break this tendency. So for example, while I’m writing, I’ll suddenly think about the fact that today’s the day when I need to change the bathroom towels, or mop the kitchen floor, or change the bedsheets. It’ll distract me for a few moments before I tell myself I’ll do it later and I need to focus on writing now. Then a few ...

I should have known it would happen, that I’d had too many “good” days, but yesterday I completely binged on sugar and carbs. I mean, SERIOUSLY binged. SparkPeople.com gave me a daily calorie range of 1200 to 1550 calories a day, and I had been doing pretty good for almost 4 weeks in keeping my calorie intake to around 1300 calories a day, mostly through eating more slowly and changing my food choices and portions through looking at my nutrition tracker on SparkPeople.com. I only had one day where I went over the maximum (I ate 1800 calories that day) and only three days where I went up to my maximum of 1550 calories. The rest of the time for the past 27 days, I’ve been at 1300 calories a day, so I guess only four days of straying is a really good thing. But then yesterday I was simply DYING for sugar and carbs. I’d never felt a craving like it in the entire 4 weeks I’ve been tracking my food. I had been really good at staying within the carb range that SparkPeople gave me, even ...

We’re really fortunate in that we subscribe to an organic co-op, Live Earth Farm , where we pick up a basket of organic veggies every week. We don’t get to pick which veggies we receive, but there’s always a good variety and we’ve learned to eat veggies I wouldn’t normally buy at the grocery store. It allows for a lot of really good variety in our diet, because typically I’d buy the same veggies every week. Where we really spend money is on meats. I don’t know if this is only true in California, but meat is incredibly expensive. Chicken and pork are both cheaper than beef, but my problem is that I have noticed several things; 1) If I eat only chicken, beans, and soy products, I start to feel run down. I’m not sure why, especially since the chicken I eat has no growth hormones. I need to eat beef at least once every two or three days or else I get that run down feeling. 2) My stomach reacts badly to pork. I can eat maybe an once or two, but any more than that and my stomach beco...

Okay, specifically, doing my taxes. I would rather get my period 4 days early. Oh, wait. That happened yesterday.