9.26.2009

The low fat, low sodium diet has been in effect for about a week now, since last Friday. I let Stacie worry about the fat content in the foods I'm eating...it's enough for me to count sodium. I get 1,000 miligrams per day, and people, let me tell you, that is not much.

I've had to practically give up beef and pork (which is a real drag, because I do love pepperoni and bacon so much). I haven't eaten chicken in years, having somewhere along the line developed a distaste for it. Now it's about all I CAN eat. It was very difficult, but in a couple of days I was fine with it. Don't tell anyone, but I actually liked it in a stir-fry the wife whipped up. I suppose it's the kind of situation where you're going to eat whatever it is you have to eat to keep your belly full and stay alive. You might as well cultivate a taste for it. If your only choice was dog meat I'm sure it would take a long, long time, but eventually you'd find something tasty about it. Given a choice between chicken and dog, well, I guess I prefer the dirty bird.

One thing I am glad of...I seem to enjoy fruits a lot more now. Satisfies the sweet tooth. Especially oranges. I can have about as much fresh squeezed orange juice as I want, too. Pricey stuff and will surely put a dent in the pocketbook, but when you take into consideration all the money I spent on junk food, soda pop and such, it will likely even out or maybe even save some money. Granny Smith apples are tasting better and better every day, as are Gala apples. I use a salt substitute called Nu-Salt and pour that stuff on like it was sugar on a grapefruit (speaking of which, I'm not sure I can have grapefruit). It doesn't taste much like salt, but it does something to the tongue that kind of sensitizes it so that the flavor of the apple is, IMO, enhanced.

We're off today to Shawnee for a few things...maybe we'll stop at FireLake or Wal-Mart and check out their produce. Stacie was at Wal-Mart in another town yesterday looking for fruit, but she said that none of what they had looked very good.

Emotional situation still looking pretty good. I've kind of dropped out of the "moment of clarity" phase...I can feel a little depression coming on, but it's not quite as awful without all the meanness, hatefulness, anger, and all that stuff that fueled it before all this happened. In a way I'm actually glad that it has returned to this small degree, because it means that I'm not escalating to a manic phase. Which means that my medication for that is working.

Even so, I seem to be enjoying music at just about the same level...I don't think I mentioned it, but my depression had convinced me that I didn't like music anymore, that I was burned out on it. I would try and try to remember what it was that I loved about it. One day I would be positive it was the musician's talent, the next it would be how intricate the composition was and so forth and so on. I had forgotten that the main point of music is to EXPERIENCE it, not to dissect it. So maybe that's a good barometer of how serious the depression could get...

No comments: