Day 19 - Starch Solution

Today’s stats:

Another relatively restless night with lots of staring at the ceiling and trying to get comfortable. I’ve never really had that before, at least not consistently several nights in a row and I’m wondering if it’s my diet that’s causing it. Previously I effectively medicated myself with caffeine (not that it ever really seemed to do much) and was able to stay up late on demand and then, once whatever project I was working on was complete, go to bed and crash out. Those were the days…

Now though it seems when I get to bed I still have plenty of energy. I might be a bit tired, but really I could be doing much more. I’m not sure if this is just because I ate late (although I ate early yesterday so I’m really not sure) or just that now that I’ve cleaned up my diet and my body is catching up, I can do more with less.

One of the key tenets of what Dr. McDougall teaches is that it’s expensive for the body to convert glucose into fat (de novo lipogenesis) and so it generally burns off any excess (assuming a low fat high carb whole plant based diet of course) by ramping up the metabolism. This shows up as increased body temperature or just more fidgeting.

It’s possible then that I simply have plenty of energy to burn and that’s why I’m not tired. I’m not sure how likely that is though because I can’t see how I’d be taking in enough calories for that to be the case - I’m only eating potatoes, rice and a selection of veggies with the occasional piece of fruit. Presumably this isn’t enough to keep me wide awake.

Tonight though I’ll do an experiment. If I can’t sleep, I’ll simply get up and go for a walk. We are lucky to live next to an amazing park which is not only beautiful and ideal for walking and running, but is also completely safe regardless of the time of day. Maybe I just need to burn off some excess calories to help me settle down for a good nights sleep.

Breakfast today was just beans on toast without the toast. I’ve never eaten a tin of beans before, but it’s hot, tasty and pretty quick and easy (despite the decrepit microwave). I couldn’t find any good bread locally available that didn’t contain oil which is super annoying. One that I did find was super whole meal and it was like eating a plank of wood sigh. Still, beans by themselves don’t seem to pose much of a problem which is nice.

Lunch as always was my lunch box of, you guessed it, rice, potatoes, and a selection of veg (and the carrots are back today as well! wooo).