New Life Plan, One Month and Counting
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008So for almost a month now on this new lifestyle change and I’ve been eating a lot of okinawan sweet potato, tofu, brown rice, seaweed, miso, and a lot of steamed vegetables from our neighborhood farmer’s market. I’ve pretty much cut out everything fried, dairy, and cow-based. There have been stretches of days now that I don’t even eat meat, and when I do, its fish, or a very small amount of steamed pork. Meat has now become more of a condiment than a main dish for me, something that I never thought I’d ever do, being that I’ve always been a big meat eater. I’ve also always been a little irritated at the smugness of people who like to broadcast that they are are “vegetarian” or “vegan” as if its for some social cause. I say you do it for personal or health reasons, more power to you, but just don’t do it to show off like a pompous ass.
Almost within a week I started noticing some pretty dramatic changes in my overall well-being. I feel even more rested even with my 4-5 hours average sleep. I feel more alert and not as groggy overall at night in my classes. I even find that I’ve been able to concentrate better too – makes me wonder if I could’ve improved by grades more if I had started on this journey earlier in 2005? 2002? 1997? Another thing I noticed was that the the numbness in my jaw from my dental work this past summer has gone away almost instantly since the change in my diet.
After about a month I’ve dropped about 6 pounds, almost just from changing my diet alone, without much additional hours spent in the gym. The scary thing is that even with my current weight, I’m still about 15 or so pounds lighter than I was when I first moved out here to DC back in 2004. Once I moved I hit the gym pretty hard and over a year I lost about 35 pounds, thinking that I would benefit from getting back into fighting shape for the rigors of law school. And I was right more or less, seeing that I’ve gained roughly half of it back after 3 years of school. Right now my goal is to keep up with the current rate of exercise and diet, and get myself in as good a shape as possible to take up some jiu-jitsu, or some other martial arts again. I have an old shoulder injury that I re-aggravated, but otherwise my strength is still there. I do have to remind myself sometimes that I’m training for life now, not a season of matches. Kind of a reminder that I’m getting older.
A ironic twist in all of this is that when I first come out to DC I purchashed this large bamboo steamer thinking that I would be making wonton, gyoza and dumplings, but never really gotten around to it so it was in the corner collecting dust. For a few years now we’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get rid of it by trying to unload it onto friends, but as it turned out, ever since coming back from Hawaii this August, it ended up becoming the most used kitchen utensil we have right now.
Another sign that I’m getting older – Hana noted the other day that a lot of our friends are getting married, or getting engaged lately. It seems like we have showers and wedding trips to plan ahead for at least the next year or so. Of my old group of friends back home, only a handful of us have gotten hitched so far, and at least one of them was probably one of the last we all would’ve thought have been one of the first. I hear through the grapevine that at least one of my ex-girlfriends is not only hitched, but already a happy and proud mom now. I’m glad I don’t have that kind of pressure from my folks yet. One step at a time.
