The Diary of A Simple Man

GRAPEFRUIT DIET. About two and a half weeks ago, K. and I went on a diet. It's not actually a grapefruit diet, but rather a gut balance diet. The goal is to "reset our gut microbiomes" to have more good flora and less bad flora, hopefully to improve my digestive difficulties that have been getting worse for years.

Is it just pseudoscience? I hope not! It was recommended to me by someone who said it worked for them. And the author is a professor at John Hopkins. On the other hand we certainly saw during COVID that there are medical professionals at prestigious institutes with woefully wrong beliefs. Anywho, we're trying it.

It's based on the book _The Gut Balance Revolution_ and the book is horribly written. Continually repeats itself. Continually goes back to the same metaphors. Inconsistent between different sections on (and this is really critical) what food is allowed and what isn't. A good editor could have helped much of that, but that doesn't seem to have happened. So we persevere through a really bad bit of writing.

The diet itself is largely Keto and low-FODMAP in its first month. I have a suspicion that part of that is purposefully manipulative, to cause weight loss in the first month and so encourage people to continue, but I dunno. Theoretically it's supposed to be killing bad gut flora in the first month.

Also: entirely miserable. We're eating way more meat than I like, way less grain. Also, it's super restrictive, making shopping and making meals tough. Having to hand-prepare every meal is also a huge deal. I'm using to cooking some vegetables and putting together some semi-prepared foods to make up a meal. But this instead takes notable effort every meal. (At least on my days that I'm working for clients I can dash out a nut butter and (cucumber or blackberry or avocado) sandwich on nut bread, but nuts are on our "eat few" list for month one so I can't do that constantly.

And the Keto side effects suck. I've had a bad taste in my mouth for at least two weeks now. K. has discovered that we're both irritable. My muscles aren't bouncing back like they should. And I was super achey for several days.

Anyway, the jury is out on the digestion issues. I've actually lost 15 pounds which is a great side effect, but a good chunk of that has to be the fake water-weight-loss that you see with Keto.

Another week and a half and then we open up to phase two where we're supposed to be building up good flora (and have somewhat more foods to chose from). And then in April we can start eating normally again, though maybe with some lessons learned from cooking from scratch (or mostly scratch, there has been Costco rotisserie chicken).

We've picked up some spices for that and had a variety of stuff: garlic chicken and green beans, ginger chicken, salt & pepper chicken (I'm sick of the texture of cubed roast chicken), shrimp and some vegetable, shrimp salad, smoked salmon salad, too many other salads, chicken soup, shredded chicken with sautéd peppers and onions (probably the best thing we've had), and tonight some fish or another with the sautéd peppers and onions. And for lunches: nut butter sandwiches, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, tuna on almond-flour crackers, and more salads. For snacks? blueberries, cantaloupe, cashews, raspberries.

Hoping phase 2 won't be quite as annoying, because this has been really annoying.

BROKEN STUFF. We have a frustrating amount of major stuff broken right now.

Windows: Ah, not literally broken. But we've put films on most of our south-facing windows to protect us against the UV and to a lesser extent the glare (only my office has a film to really cut back on light, so that I can see to work). The one in our living room (which has our view) and the one in my office have been opaquing over the last year. I actually wasn't sure what was going on for a while, but I finally got an extendable window cleaner so I could clean the outside of the one in our living room (which is up on the second story) and determined that with the outside and inside both clean, it was still notably opaque. So we called the people who installed them, and they came out on Wednesday and affirmed that the film was "failing". Personally, I wondered if the installation had failed and they'd let moisture get under it, but their belief seems to be it's film maker 3M's fault. So they took pictures and are apparently passing the buck to 3M, and we'll see where that goes.

Battery: Our PowerWall is still out, as it has been since October. I poked our solar installers in January to see what was happening with our warranty replacement, and miraculously the same day the person I asked got back into the office, Tesla (Elon Musk is a white nationalist Neo-Nazi, I know) sent it out. That was about five weeks ago, so I'm hoping to see something soon, and drop our electricity bill to back where it should be (the $0 to $50 range instead of the $100 range with solar only during the day). I also have picked up from vague statements that our solar installation people have made that they're going around with Tesla about what Tesla will actually cover regarding re-installation (which requires more than just putting a new battery in because our failed Powerwall 2 is being replaced with a Powerwall 3, because that's all Tesla makes). More buck passing there. Hopefully Tesla gets stuck with all the cost, but I wouldn't bet on it given that the company is run by a lying scumbag rat.

Internet: We've had storms swishing around the island for a few weeks, delivering a little rain and a lot of wind. On Tuesday night, when we tried to watch the series finale of Andor, we discovered our internet was no longer up to streaming to our TV. No biggie, disruptions happen, but on Wednesday night when we again tried to watch the finale of Andor it was the same story, so I called our internet provider and they had someone out the next morning (which was extremely impressive, given that I've waited a week in the past for them to mail a modem form another island). He discovered that a conduit out on our pole had filled with water and rotted out the wire, hence our problems. But he also decided that the coax to our modem was flaky and because he couldn't get to it because it's mostly under the bookshelves we built in to our family room, he moved the modem to K's office before I had much say in the matter. So now our internet is working again, but our whole wifi configuration is messed up because we're trying to spread it out from one corner. I've actually got a mesh configuration, but having the main hub to one side wasn't working at all for my office on the far side of the house (I think the walls of books in between don't help) until I relocated our single upstairs hub downstairs to bridge the distance, and now my office is still worse than it was before ... and the upstairs is too. Sigh. So my current plan is get one more mesh router for upstairs and K. has kindly agreed to call an electrician to try and get as many of our routers wired as possible, so that we don't have to depend on the wifi to get all the way across the house.

Bike Rack: And this one isn't broken, but it nonetheless needs some work. I'm still waiting on being able to haul my bike around with Maria Kia, since it's not safe to bike to any of the more expansive biking areas available on island. That requires a 2" trailer hitch to use my trusty sturdy, easy-to-use bike rack and Kia just had 1.25" hitches, so I found a 2" hitch made for Maria, ordered it, and it arrived on Monday. Kia won't install it because it's third party, but Destination Auto (who I used to see for the much too frequent work on Julie the Benz) will, so I have an appointment with them next Friday, which hopefully means I can haul out my bike next weekend, by which point these storms have finally broken (after a few gray weeks). Funny thing, last time I walked out of Destination Auto, I thought I'd never see them again, because they'd said Julie had a mortal wound, but then Kia said that's who worked on their cars when they couldn't themselves. So, once more into the breach, dealing with their gravel lot and hoping there's enough space and then wandering around all day waiting for them (and this time I'll need to pack a lunch instead of having anything tasty).

CATS: Both the kits have been slowly starting to explore Elmer's old haunts (I assume, as his scent fades). Mango was in Elmer's donut for the first time ever a few Sundays ago (and has since become a return visitor). Megara was also up in the boys' cat tree for the first time recently (a tree that it took months for Mango to return to after Elmer's departure), and has since been hanging out in the donut too!