Saw the dietician last week, which was a positive experience all round. She reaffirmed that I knew what I was doing with this elimination diet, and encouragement me to keep pushing the boundaries to discover the thresholds of my tolerances so that I could eat as wide a variety of food as possible. Which is great, and last week I dutifully set about including a small dose of amines daily, to see what would happen.
Only then on Sunday we had a kid’s birthday party to attend, and I forgot to pack my own food, and rather than starve I choose to ate the homemade pizza, because PIZZA, right? And there was a green leaf salad with a vinegrette dressing, and ohmygosh, FLAVOUR.
When you can’t eat amines, you definitely miss out on a whole world of savoury/umami FLAVOUR, and I, the renowned sweet-tooth, and turning into a major savoury-craver. World = ending.
So anyway, predictably, because I’d had small daily doses followed by a modestly giant dose (we’re talking the equivalent of maybe two and a half adult slices of mushroom and capsicum pizza, the half slice also with pineapple, made with actual tomato paste (i.e. intensely-concentrated tomatoes) with maybe 2c of salad leaves with dressing?), I tipped over the edge and had insomnia most of Sunday night and spent Monday wandering around in a bit of a fog – but I realised something. I’d also been feeling groggy and off all of the previous week – and notably, despite the fact that I’d powered through 10,000 words* in just four days at the end of October, boding well for NaNoWriMo for a change**, in November, last week, I fought for about 2000 words in the last 7 days. And I mean fought.
* Look, I’m reworking an old story, so I have the old scene open next to me as I type, so it’s not really hard, thinky writing.
** November is marking/reports/finals/BLEARGH month in Australia at schools, so I don’t usually even attempt it.
Now, I have been sick the last week+ too, with a persistent chesty cough that kept me awake all Wednesday night, for example, so I’m not exactly in peak health. BUT.
BUT.
But. *sigh*.
Sicknesses aside, it looks like even though I can *tolerate* a small daily dose of amines (a tablespoon of grated parmesan, a couple of stalks of broccolini, some tomato sauce (ketchup) on hot chips, etc), ‘tolerate’ does not equal ‘function optimally’. And even though I’ve trained myself to write tired, writing tired and writing groggy are different – i.e. I can write tired if I have to, but I can’t, apparently, write groggy.
Which means I’m pretty much left facing the choice between food or words, knowing that if I go with ‘food’, it’ll likely knock out the words as an option for the following handful of days as well.
On the one hand, this is a sad situation to be in. On the other, it will make sticking to the diet and not cheating a whole lot easier, because you guys? I want my words.
Turns out words are a pretty powerful motivator.
So yeah. I expect I’ll be out for at least the next couple of days recovering from last week (and from being sick – nearly there, getting there, by the end of the week I should be okay again), and then we’re going out for pizza on the weekend, so that might knock me out a bit again, so we’ll see. We’ll see. Hopefully I can get back to the words again soon, because I really want another book done by the end of the year (even if it isn’t Sanctuary 3, oops O:) ).