I made a silly emoji that you are welcome to use here :3 Imgur Link

Not exactly a new year thing but I had been heavily drinking at the end of last year. Probs 2-4 beers each day with 6-10 a couple of times a week. Stopped on Christmas Eve which now is probably the longest I’ve gone without taking the drug in 6 months or so.

I’m aiming to last till at last Feb, hopefully by then I’ll have enough distance I can do some clear eyed assessment of how I want to treat the drug in an ongoing sense. I enjoy it, but on my mother’s side there’s defs a predisposition to addiction and it’s a significantly harmful drug physiologically.

So far my opiate system is still bouncing back, a bit of anhedonia in the evenings when I’d usually drink. Sleeping better though, and fewer IBS flairs.

Distracting myself with wok cooking. I haven’t had a gas burner in years (using induction now, as I learned there are cheap induction hobs for woks). Having to relearn lot of basic technique but it’s a fun and vigourous way to cook.

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I am off from work this week and got Covid lol - Womp Womp.

I don’t usually make resolutions but I guess I’ll tell the story of my end of year and the changes I have made so far. About 10 years ago I was falling apart. I went to the doctor for something unrelated and they diagnosed me as pre-diabetic and suggested I started to take metformin. First I learned about keto diet and this made no sense to me so I kept looking and found Forks Over Knives and the Whole Food Plant Based Diet. Around that time I had moved in with my partner who was a vegetarian and was became one as well so I decided to make the plunge to fully vegan style diet. Following the plant based doctors I lost a lot of weight (270 to ~160 lbs) and reversed the pre-diabetes diagnosis. Once the meat goggles were full off I went all the way hard core animal rights vegan.

This year though I crossed into my mid 40s and towards the end of the summer I started to have headaches, I wasn’t sleeping well and I generally was having a hard time paying attention. In October I decided to do something about it. I’ve been a pretty heavy cannabis smoker for most of my life and I switched to dry herb vapes about 10 years ago. This was the first thing I stopped doing. Anecdotally I really don’t think cannabis is addictive because if I were drinking as much as I was smoking I would have gone into the DTs and had to go to the hospital, I was grumpy for a few days then didn’t smoke since, after daily smoking for 25+ years.

I don’t really like or trust doctors either so I didn’t believe that going to one would really help me with vague symptoms. So I downloaded medical textbooks from Annas archive and started to perform a physical on myself. I purchased some medical equipment on ali express all under 15 dollars, a blood pressure monitor, a blood oxygen sensor, and a thermometer. I started working through the family medicine examination process on myself.

I learned I had first stage hyper tension/high blood pressure between 121/81 - 135/90. I started to revisit my diet and made some tweaks to it. White rice crept in, I was eating processed food more often, I wasn’t really being very careful about added sugar any more. I also haven’t really been exercising since I moved from a big city to a more suburban place. I ordered my own blood work (I can do that where I live, I don’t need to go to a doctor to do this, I called a lab) and I got my blood work back. It actually came back pretty good except my triglycerides were high (200 and good is < 150) although my cholesterol was good. My A1C was good which is a metric of diabetes, I am still non diabetic. I am more anemic than I have been in the past, but I knew that and it is non-reversible in my case because of a blood disease called beta thalassemia.

So I got to work on correcting the blood work and the hyper tension, I got an exercise bike which I use almost every day and started going for hour long walks most days. I bought 5, 8 and 10 lb weights and started doing a routine I found on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNsKEG3hIzI). I switched out white rice for brown rice and started eating salads every day along with steamed greens with lemon juice (turnip greens, collard greens, kale, spinach) because where I live I can get bundles of them for a dollar within walking distance. I am following this rough plan although I add tofu and tempeh to my dinners too https://www.doctorklaper.com/hsep.

Anyway it has been working well, I have been sleeping much better, I stopped snoring. I got my blood work done again and all my numbers have gone to normal dropping 50 points of triglycerides in a few weeks which according to the internet is rare to do without taking medicines and have been in a much better mood. My blood pressure has gone down to an average of 110/60 over the past few weeks now without any more days of over 120 or over 80. So for the new year I intend on keeping on this path for a while and feeling better for my late 40s and 50s. I am really thankful I found veganism and healthy plant based eating when I did in my life and didn’t end up like my grandma who had amputations from diabetes and died in her 60s. I want to have a healthspan that goes way longer than that.

Happy New Year everyone!

I like the idea of using the end of the year to reflect and set goals but I really didn’t have the capacity to do that this year. I think my main goal for 2025 is to figure out what self care looks like lol

This year is the year I get swole and dunk on everyone unhealthy. Not really a resolution as I started the process long ago and refined it with time in part thanks to Hamid’s advice of going noil, and also reconstructing my way of eating thanks to congee.

Already lost 14kgs in 4 months (and a lot more before that) - doing sports every day for one month and a half. I am now 69kgs for 1m77 - overweightness being distant now, and definitely being into the healthy range, is a great feeling. Especially when most of my self worth stems from my physical appearance (specifically weight) and how disciplined I am related to eating and exercising.

Now if only I could also be pain free, now that’d be swell.

From a comment a few days ago about new years improvements and whatnot:

• move over to WFPB veganism and move away from junk food veganism.
• focus on finishing unmasking as an autistic person
• figure out how I want to present as enby agender
• finish my anarchist theory reading block and jump back into Lenin and Marx
• Get my freelance web development thing off the ground and actually get paying clients.
• Get my PSL branch off the ground

I don’t really do new years resolutions since i am pretty motivated to regularly update my goals and keep them. But one of my current goals is to work on my portfolio since I’m not 100% optimistic in my job security long term.

I have some specifics for that written down but one of action items is that I’ve started a handful of projects and I’m needing to focus on one long enough to finish it before moving on to the next. Like one of them is an idea for a side hustle so I’ve got the domain registered but need to start developing it. Stuff like that. So I’m at the point where i have my action items written down but need to prioritize them and get to work.

Anyway, nothing terribly exciting. Happy new year all!