Don't Step There

Though tracking physiological changes was never the aim of this project, I have noticed a few things slowly becoming a little different. One is weight loss. I was really unsure of how this diet was going to treat my weight. I was pretty nervous that eating the food of the 1700s without, well, you know, twice weekly participating in a 'barn raising' would cause me to stack on pounds like the cast of 'The View', but it hasn't. I'm actually losing a little bit. Which for a while kinda baffled me, especially considering that I haven't been getting as much exercise as usual due the it being winter and the only exercise I like is Mt. Biking. So why is the Ass of Mass getting less so?

I think it has to do with food being a lot more work and planning than before. Eating is deliberate now. Food is no longer a target of opportunity. If I hadn't thought about preparing something to eat beforehand, there's no food to eat. I just sit there and watch other's eat while my stomach eats itself. It's even true of snacks. Aside from raw peanuts, there aren't really any snacks in my diet anymore. I used to grab the occasional bag of skittles from the snack bar at work. Or, I'd peruse about the pantry in search of some delectable treat hidden away in a can or box. I would sometimes get lucky enough to find half a box of hitherto out of sight Wheat Thins that the girls had missed, and gobble them up. Lunch is probably where this has the greatest impact. Even while trying to pay attention to what I ate, I had a terrible penchant for acquiescing to Big Frank's invitations to take on a three-item gut bomb from Manchu Wok. Oh, that stuff is good, too. I don't even bother to eat it with the mini chop sticks they give you; partly because even with a fork I have a hard time keeping up with Frank and his sticks, as he quaffs it down like wood chipper. It's like watching one of those liposuction operations on the Discovery Channel.

Another aspect which is a bit more abstract, and admittedly unproven, involves the inner workings of my gastrointestinal tubulations. See, a few years ago I had my gall bladder removed—not because I just didn't want it, but because it was malfunctioning. Ever since then things, digestive things, have never been the same. Without a gall bladder to store and then release on command, the precious bile that your body uses to break down fat, I just have a nice, steady trickle. It's like a mountain stream from my liver to my intestines; first forming in little droplets like due around my hepatocyte cells and then, well, as the song goes, the stream becomes a river, the river becomes an ocean, and it floods the bile delta of my duodenom with precious, lipid crunching bile. The constant presence of bile without a constant presence of something for it to do provides one specific and noticeable effect: You never know when you're going to have to poop, but when you suddenly do, there will be no fighting it, and let's just say that anyone unlucky enough to witness the event would never question the validity of the Big Bang ever again. Things are somewhat different now; not like they were before, but different. At least six out of ten times when I poop now, it's well, what you know as poop—something you could step on and say, 'Damn that dog!'. I don't know why. Perhaps it's all the fiber, or the real fat, or the lack of xanthum gum (though it would seem that xanthum gum would help the situation more than hurt it). Who knows, but I'll take it.