Life Experiment 01.04 - the day 2010.01.17 01

Happy Birthday to me! Well it begins.

I would like to say I'm getting prepared in these final hours, but I got home from the bridal show I worked today @ 6 pm, exhausted, and thought, "Hey... why not start now." So I did.

Here are the results for the very first period.

Sleep – 30 minutes, and not well
Fatigue – Surprisingly better than when I arrived home... that's not saying much though
Weight – Well here it is world... I can't take it back... 261 lbs.
Exercise - 20 mins on the stationary bike
3.87 miles
138 cals
24.2 carbs
Food - some leftover chicken and rice, medium portion... no idea how many calories
Mood - cranky and zombieish, although improved after my nap
Productivity - unknown, but i suspect it would be low
Focus - seems ok, I'm writing this blog
Memory - unchanged which means poor in my book. I had to ask Jamie why I went off on a tangent in our conversation. He knew. Instantly... blast him.


So... it was a long night last night. Didn't go to bed until after 4a and didn't at least even have the benefit of going to bed tired but satisfied with my efforts. None of the printing equipment here worked worth a damn, so I was up an extra 3 or so hours for naught.

Loft is still not spotless as I'd like it to be, so if I feel motivated I'm gonna work on it tonight.

So (probably reiterating from a previous post), here's the deal I made with myself for the acclimation period. I'm not gonna beat myself up over what I get done from a productivity standpoint. I'll track it, but my main focus is staying awake for my awake periods and achieving acclimation as soon as possible.

I'm already feeling SOME benefits of what I'm doing. It was probably a boneheaded move to wanna start this right after a big show, and driving home I was regretting it, but because I've publicly declared and am documenting my progress, instead of making a BAD decision to delay, here we are... 1 nap and successful exercise routine into it. Mind you, I'm not calling ANYTHING a success, but it's one good, non procrastinating decision I've made in place of what would have historically been... not.

Observations so far...

I totally expected that the first nap (or number of naps) go well... I'm SURE I didn't get any REM sleep, despite arguing with my body trying to tell it what's happening. It CLEARLY thinks I'm lying and I expect it to put up a fight. We'll see what tomorrows blog at this time reads... and I'm REALLY looking forward to Tuesday... as I expect to be one irritable mess. I'm glad I started the workout, and I'll do it again at midnight. One episode of the Office (sans commercials) is kinda perfect to start with... a solid 20 mins.

Food. That's gonna be interesting. Steve Pavlina was vegan, and he attributed much of his acclimation success to two things, both of which I lack. He felt his veganism took less of a toll on his body than if he were eating meat. I'm not vegan. I just ate some chicken. Secondly, he had already perfected his ability to get out of bed easily and quickly based on an alarm. He even has wrote a blog on how to do it, which he encourages anyone trying this to do first. I'm not doing that first.

I'm underequipped for food and need to remedy that ASAP. I have no fresh fruit here. I need to make a grocery list so I'm not caught unprepared.


Really... there are two possible ways for me to fail at this, neither of which I intend to have happen.

one) I could not acclimate to get REM sleep when I take my naps. This is kinda outta my hands. I'll adjust anything I have power over to help this, but ultimately it's my bodys decision. I feel confident that it will.

two) I quit. Here's the thing... I'm not quitting unless number one (above) is invoked.

I guess that's why I enter this with such optimism. I don't know ANYONE who would want these extra waking hours more than I do. It really surprised me, but as I query friends, they are all extremely supportive (as they always are), but none of them really see much of a benefit to themselves. Now I see how much of an oddball maybe I am. huh... who knew.