Dragonwolf

Here's a fun one for you. Black bear fat is primarily oleic acid, the same one olive oil is prized for. Apparently black bears are olives with claws. But seriously, if Grandma really did swear by it as a skincare product, that's probably why. That said, tallow is also a fantastic skincare product, as well, because its fatty acid ratios are close to our own and the body can use it directly. Lard works in a pinch, but for moisturizing purposes isn't quite as good as it doesn't absorb quite as well.

Blood-shot eyes peer out from under the oversized hood of the warm-weather traveling cloak that had been keeping the too-bright late-spring sunlight from making her headache worse. Mentally and emotionally exhausted, the Ranger flops down in a booth as the barkeep brings a glass of Irish Cream, a bottle of hard cider, and a package of peanut butter M&Ms to her table. Dragonwolf wearily nods her thanks to the barkeep. She takes a sip of the Irish Cream as her mind drifts toward the thought of setting up her hammock and not leaving it for the next month. I'm not doing a challenge this time around (and probably for a while), but I figured I'd check in here to see what's going on. Therapy has been brutal and isn't slated to get much better anytime soon. That's challenge enough for me for some time.

Wait....what?

I got to go camping this past weekend! \o/ Tried out a shiny new cooler-weather sleeping bag. Worked about as well as to be expected in a hammock (sleeping bag = compression of insulation = less insulation on the bottom; apparently, the better way to go is with what's called an "underquilt," which goes under the hammock, itself and therefore doesn't get compressed). Energy has been pretty good and seems to be steadily increasing (::fingers crossed::). I've been making great use of my standing desk of late as a result. The nice weather has also helped, since I can open the windows and have fresh air coming in, and I can start taking the dogs for walks during the day. Yoga seems to be working best first thing in the morning. Roll out of bed, do a couple of poses (which has the added bonus of helping further stretch and loosen everything up).

OMG, my body is pissing me off right now. One day, I'm itching to do things, the next I have zero energy. And my sleep has been hit or miss for no apparent reason. :angry: This whole less than an hour of deep sleep per night (tracked by my Fitbit) is getting old. I want good sleep, dammit! On the upside, I got my new desk! \o/ It's a Jarvis adjustable desk and it's nice. So sturdy and easy to adjust and easy to stand at for some time. <3 Language learning is still going well, but I can't say the same for the exercise (thanks in part to the above sleep issues, which result in me feeling like shit unless I let myself sleep until later). What's particularly frustrating are the days when I feel like I have so much energy, but then I have other things that need done, and then I then can't get to sleep and then I feel like shit the next day. :facepalm:

Indeed they can. Nothing like working muscles you didn't even know existed. :lol:

Mainly just push-ups and (attempting) pull-ups on them and toying around with dips. I don't have a lot of space and even less vertical space, so I couldn't do the more...dramatic...stuff even if I was capable of doing so, but they're a hell of a workout on their own. Go for it! It's been working fantastically for the husband, so there's certainly something to it. I'm working on Dutch right now.

Oh look, another week has gone by already. I went off my dietary plan over the weekend. Popcorn at the theater with friends on Friday and the most divine mashed potatoes (high quality potatoes + cream + bone broth + butter = :yum: ) at dinner on Sunday. That's okay, it happens, though I have been feeling it the past couple of days. It certainly reinforces the notion that such things aren't really for me anymore. I finally got my money in from my invoices for work, so I promptly ordered my new standing desk. \o/ I went with a Jarvis from Fully. Bamboo top with contour and a monitor shelf. I can't wait for it to get here. We officially left the Kindred. We'll do an oath releasing ceremony....at some point. We need to make those arrangements with the leadership. It actually feels kind of good to not be tied to them anymore, really. There are a few members we plan on keeping a relationship with, but now it's on our terms, which is nice. For the others, well, the ball's in their court, now. I've been hollowing out eggs to decorate for springtime and Sigurblot. Hubby laughed when he saw how I get the egg out of the shell for that purpose. I've got 5 or 6 eggs so far for it. The plan is to build an altar and have a few on it for spring, and save a few for decorating on Sigurblot day (April 20th). With any luck, I'll be able to do a sort of "party, take two" and have a couple people over and we can all decorate eggs together (and hopefully, we'll have enough eggs to do so, but that's why I'm starting now ).

A lot's happened since the start of the last challenge. I won't go into full detail here, but I'm in a much better mental state now. As I've mentioned and explained elsewhere, I changed my diet and went back to carnivore (yo, Dragon, you're taking the whole "wolf" thing a bit too literally, aren't you?) and it's done wonders for my overall health. I think my holistic doctor thinks it's just a phase (it helps that it's still winter and would be consistent with what some human groups have had to do, historically, this time of year), but is otherwise on board, thankfully. A fair bit of therapy has helped, too, if for no other reason than it being an outlet for all the stressors in my life. Cleaning house of some of the more negative/toxic influences has also done wonders. So, I'm back with the Rangers for my more usual challenges! Body Get back to my gymnastic rings. I actually want to work out again! \o/ This is my big goal/challenge. Ideally, 3-4 days per week. Move more during the day in general. I got too deep into the habit of just sitting while working. Hopefully I can get me a new desk soon, which will help. Also, attempt to find a trainer around here that does barbell medicine/recovery training. I want someone local, so they can watch my form in real-time and make sure it's spot-on. Mind Continue my morning Duolingo sessions. I'm really loving this and the sort of productivity/accomplishment jump-start. Soul I've been trying to get back into yoga/taichi/meditation on a daily basis, but it hasn't been working as well as I'd have hoped. Part of that's been due to later starts than I'd like in the mornings, which pushes my whole day later and I end up not having much, if any time after other obligations (it doesn't help that my current client wants me clocking closer to 40 hours per week, which is actually technically beyond full-time billable workload by many standards). Part of it's due to just not prioritizing it. I'd like to find a way to change that. Even if it's just the little "micromeditations" or whatever you want to call them, prompted by the app that my husband has (which prompts him randomly to do a 1-minute meditation).

Only two in the state and the closest one is over an hour away, but that's better than nothing. Going to ping one and see if I get a response and any help on this front. Maybe they can point me to someone local. :fingers_crossed:

Wow, has it been a week already? Just about. I feel great, too. Already, my back no longer hurts like it did. I've had fewer spasms that had been happening. My hips aren't hurting, either. I feel like I'm handling stress far better, too. The little things aren't overwhelming me like they were even a week or two ago. Hubby and I ended up talking about leaving our Kindred due to the lack of respect that they've shown me (I don't think them having the decency to not blatantly interrupt or ignore me when I'm talking is too much to ask) and the only real thing I had gotten upset about was the holiday planning stuff that I was working on that led up to that conversation (suffice it to say, my jadedness as to people's response to my efforts was showing). Once it became clear that that was what was bothering me about it, he brought up the idea to leave (again, we've been kicking this around for several months at this point). I did notice that taking my liquid supplements in the evening has had a negative effect on my sleep quality. I suspect it might be the Vitamin D, so I took it all in the morning and I'll see how tonight goes. To be honest, I considering just dropping them entirely, but we'll see.

I took yesterday off from work. Aside from kiddo getting sent home from school (which hubby was kind enough to field), it was glorious. I spent pretty much the entire morning in the bathtub, spending most of that time chatting with a friend about runes (I post a weekly rune study thing to the group's Discord server, where I go over a rune and we talk about it). I then spent the rest of the day mulling about some, then playing with my VR stuff. I played through my stuff on Farlands (a little VR exploration game), and then did what I haven't done in quite some time -- I actually played Skyrim VR. I played for a solid two hours or so, which is a feat with that game, because it's very easy to get VR sickness from it, since it wasn't really built for VR (there are a number of ways to mitigate that, which I've done, but traversing a lot of the stairs gets sketchy). Also, like I reported in my Battle Log, I've decided to go back to a carnivore way of eating. The details regarding why are there, but it boils down to the fact that I do far better eating that way. I'm a week into it and already noticing significant improvement in my ability to tolerate stress, my sleep quality, my back and hip pain, and overall desire to do things. My overall concentration is still on the low side, but my ability to keep working for more than 4 hours seems to have improved (I'm currently on 6.5 hours of post-lunch work and not mentally exhausted). Morning Duolingo is still working well. I like having the bit of accomplishment to get the day started, even before getting out of bed. I still need to stop myself from falling into the trap of looking at other things before getting up, though. I'm also still bad about doing the yoga stuff more often. That'll probably be the next step, now that I'm out of that mental funk, though I've been considering getting up early enough to get back into my morning weight lifting routine, probably starting next week (but maybe as early as Thursday, though I don't like starting in the middle of the week like that).

Repeating this for reinforcement. I actually stumbled on gluten being the cause of my own eczema trigger when I went (back to) Paleo for other reasons and suddenly found that a patch that just would. not. heal. (even with steroid cream) started healing with no other intervention. I would say be sure to see a dermatologist. General practitioners don't have the deep training and are likely to just give a cookie-cutter band-aid solution (as my GP at the time put it - "welcome to the club, here's a steroid cream. Good luck!") instead of looking for the underlying cause.

Fuck it, I'm going back to carnivore Long story short, several years ago, my MyFitnessPal low carb group did a "Meativore May" challenge after some interest in going carnivore (it was very rare then), with which I had great success, but a few months later, it got turned upside down and did so in such a way that I struggled heavily to get back to it. (Apparently, carnivore + Metformin = a horrible aversion to the ground bison that was my staple food up until that point and intense cravings for sugary foods. WTF?) I spent the intervening years trying to get back to it and struggling for some unknown reason, so I decided to try to work with a holistic doctor to see if I could get a mixed diet that worked for me. It did...at first. I lost 10lbs and was feeling good. I was sleeping better and wasn't as anxious as I had been when I sought her out. ...and then the wheels fell off. I gained that weight back, I've got more sugar cravings, my back has started hurting again, my hips have stiffened up again (oh, and now my knee's bothering me), I'm finding acne and headaches starting to come back, and my sleep quality has started degrading again (things that had gone away as carnivore). Worst of all, I'm finding myself unable to handle stress and be able to function. Granted, I have a lot of stress going on right now, but I'm mentally exhausted 3-4 hours into my work day. That's not good... I feel like I'm spending an exorbitant amount of money on supplements for essentially nothing. Granted, some of them have helped tremendously and I'll probably keep going with them at least for a while, but I intend to pare down the ones that haven't been helping as much. But I never forgot how I felt on carnivore and despite all the supplements and following her dietary guidelines (which are essentially Paleo), I never got quite to that point. Even at my best, I was struggling to get the motivation to get back to working out and actually do things, and more recently, I've found myself wanting to sit and having to pretty much force myself to do even something like a little bit of yoga/Tai Chi/stretching to loosen up my hips and back. So fuck it, I'm done. I've found myself being almost driven back to carnivore at this point. I'm tired of dealing with the flora minefield (especially since I don't have my native-plant garden yet) -- those have oxalates (if my run-in with Virginia Creeper is any indication, me and oxalates don't mix), those are nightshades (possible autoimmune trigger for me?), those are above the bitterness threshold (yay, supertaster...), those are sugary, those I can do but they're starchy so I have to be careful on quantity... At this point, my general rule regarding plant food is going to be if I can't grow/harvest it myself, I'm not eating it anymore. Maybe in three or four years, when I get a harvest of serviceberries, I'll put some serviceberry sauce on my steak or something, but until then this mixed diet thing clearly isn't working for me. But I need it to be manageable for me. The "eat meat, drink water" method doesn't really work for me. I much prefer the principia carnivora method - meat, dairy, eggs, etc. are all fine if well-tolerated. If it's animal-sourced, it's fair game. I do have one caveat - no/minimal fluid dairy not from A2/A2 animals (including cream) and favor A2/A2 dairy in all cases (that's less feasible than just the fluid dairy, but it's an ongoing project). I've got a quart of plain, unsweetened hemp milk open that I plan on finishing (which I use as the base for the bone broth protein shakes I've had more recently), but once that's gone, it's gone.

lol, no, not no deadlifts. No trainers who focus on rehabilitation using barbell training, particularly when dealing with degenerative disc disease (which is a completely different beast from rehab after acute injuries). I'd been looking off and on for many years now, after I found one in Australia that did it. At first, there was no one at all that I could find here in the US. Since it's not uncommon for me to find something and have it click for me ("this makes sense! Why is no one doing this?!") before it really becomes a "thing," I've been waiting and keeping an eye out. A few years later, I started finding them stateside....but on the west coast (go figure, though that doesn't help me here in the Midwest). I've thus far yet to find a therapist in my general region, let alone anything reasonably nearby. Ideally, I'd train with them in person at least for a while, given how I've been struggling and basically losing the battle to the point that I haven't been able to deadlifts in forever and even bodyweight squats are sketchy, let alone weighted in any manner.