A good diet can be one of the hardest things to resolve. Having a digestive issue that makes it hard for me to effectively digest some nutrients and sensitive to others, I find that a simple meal can fill me with brain fog, make me as alert as a guard dog, or lead to me being incredibly dizzy. Today, I have felt all 3 of those things. I have had brain fog for the past week or so, and I have been rather confused by it. It has been happening more and more recently. I find this odd, as I have been following a ketogenic diet for a bit over a year now, and when I had first started this diet, my alertness was beyond anything I had ever felt before. Additionally, my energy levels were so steady, I had trouble sleeping as I felt I had endless amounts of energy. So what has changed in the past 6 or so months where this elated feeling has left me?

1) I have realized that I wasn't gaining proper nutrition back then. I felt alert and energetic, but my digestive condition was worsening, so I had started trying to diversify my food intake.
2) I stopped going outside as much due to the covid lockdown, including time in the gym (which already was dropping after I broke the only punching bag at my gym and I lost my preferred method of exercise/stress relief there).
3) I had increased stress as my MBA graduation approached with no job in sight, my mother had begun chemotherapy due to a breast cancer diagnosis, and my relationship was going through a rough patch.

Now, 2 of those things I listed do not have to do with food intake, so why am I including them on a piece about diet? Well, the fact is, our bodies have a daily "diet" for all of these things. In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it is important that we get a proper balance of nutrition, exercise, both physical and mental, as well as maintain proper management of stress, our mental health.

My nutrition had been lacking, but, in my efforts to rebalance my diet, I had overcompensated and fallen outside of the terms of the ketogenic diet, essentially pushing myself into dietary limbo where my body was neither firmly in ketogenesis or out of it. To put it simply, this leads to brain fog, a consistent feeling of lacking energy, and just overall feeling pretty cruddy. I began relying on supplements to overcome my lacking nutrition which also can help, but it does not fill the gap of a properly balanced diet, which became increasingly difficult to maintain as I ran low on personal funds during the lockdown and began needing to rely on selective staples for my macronutritional (carbs, proteins, fats) profile. Basically, I was eating the same, cheaper options consistently for months and it really wasn't good for me from a nutritional standpoint.

Beyond this, I, to this day, do not have a proper gym setup to exercise at. I've been making use of a small bench seat to use for weightlifting on, but it is difficult to get the full range of motion on it (this shortens your muscles, not good), and part of my back hangs off, leading to some back problems, which also leads to less restful sleeping time. Ah, how the butterfly effect cascades. Simultaneously, I have always had coming and going pain in my leg since high school (I fell into a curb skating and walking it off was apparently not the correct response) and it had gotten to the point where my doctor has finally prescribed me to undergo physical therapy. Another check mark on my list of medical malfeasance. Anyhow, I was essentially told I had to lay off the long walks and sprints that I kept doing after the lockdown started, leading to an exercise low, which has a side effect of diminishing the blood flow through my digestive system which I need to keep up in order to properly absorb nutrients. Funny how the treatment for one medical issue can impede another.

Regarding stress, I had watched a video not so long ago, perhaps a month or 2 ago, that analyzed how people have a certain limit for the amount of self-control they have in decision making, and it made me think of stress in an interesting way. I have long thought that stress, to an extent, is essential to human life. Without stress, we seem to forge our own stress, as it gives our lives purpose. However, the ability to handle stress is also like a muscle. For me, I am particularly good at handling certain types of stress, and not so much with others. Physical labor has always been relatively fun for me, so the stress I get from that is not something that bothers me. I even have decent levels of stress management after overcoming situations of bullying in school. On the other hand, I have always had such a leg up in terms of education over my peers that I never truly had to work hard for my entire upbringing when it comes to intellectual stressors, so my capacity to deal with mental stress is surprisingly low. At least by my own standard. I like being more stoic, but find I can become emotional rather easily when placed under emotional pressure. Combine that with the brain fog I have been having, as of late, and my stress levels have gone a bit off of my usual charts. I have always had strong psychosomatic responses to stress, so this is something that I need to learn better to manage, for sure, as I seem to have become "stress obese".

So, does this mean anything for the channel? Not really, I just wanted to share my recent thoughts on this today. I've been working on readjusting my diet lately, exercising more, eating a better variety of keto approved meals and cutting down on the sugary foods (bye bye pineapple, you will be missed). I was actually feeling really good today after a well prepped keto meal cleared me of my morning fog, but I wanted to take some vitamin C before bed because I've felt a bit sick lately and I immediately got a raging headache after drinking it. I thought it would help, but apparently that was a mistake. That said, the green tea has done wonders for me. Anyhow, that's all for now

-James