Back on the V-wagon after a minor faceoff on the game.

Four months ago I blogged about my struggle with vegetarianism and, not long after that, I reasoned that I would become vegetarian.

It seemed an ethical, moral and karmic nobrainer once the cartesian calculations were done.

And I lasted.. month after month after month (ie three months) until today when I became a faceeater once more.

It wasn't a drunken kebab implosion. Or a Christmas Turkey break. It was the result of a reasoning process that went a little something like this:

I am going to the woods with a bunch of men to do manly things.
It's my responsibility to provide lunch.
I will get some hunted game as this has not suffered much, if at all, and would have a good and wild life, far from industrial meat.
Moreover, I will casserole it, thus dissolving any remnant negative karmic payload.

So here I am, a vegetarian for about 6 hours, and thats Ok with me.

As a man who has spent years more than most with my face in a handheld screen, I have to agree. Now feel a low, but real, a shandy strength shame, even checking a message as I walk through the day. I feel something close to smug, scented with contempt, when I eye the many, hands up, heads bent, faces glued, eyes skewed. It's a time sink, and a waste, it's rude and it's crass, it's enslaving and ensuring and sucking out... the ripe of life and spitting it, with tapping fingers into the pointless aether or... This technology I was at the start of, the featureless set of features I have dreamt of and been close to the heart of, is a shackle for a shekel for a "like", for a score that makes me want to shout across the street or the restaurant or the forecourt, "Tech down!" "Phone away!" "Disconnect!" This is not great. This is not good. This is not any network to liberate, and yet, I am proud, I just got 512 on 2048;)

Abstaining from Abstain The Grain for one experimental week.

So... I was wheat free for a longish time until last week when, as an experiment, I thought I would try going back on the wheat to see if there was any effect. Now of course, I must be aware of confirmation bias, potential cognitive dissonance and anti placebo type effects but on the whole I hope I can be at least impartial enough to get some grasp on wheat and gluten's effects on me.

Firstly, let me say I enjoyed it. There is something incomparable to nice bread. I also ate a lot of it and a little of it on different days, to se if i could notice any effect. 

Secondly, there were negative effects, in order of my perceived impact, 1 being highest:

1. My appetite went up dramatically. This occurred in a general sense and in the sense of wanting to eat more wheat. 
2. I had Sloth. Especially after eating a lot of wheat. It was very discernible, and unmistakably negitavising.
3. I had what they call brain fog. This might be a low level but persistent version of Sloth, or it might be a distinct effect. I would describe it as having a head a bit like a hangover but without any headache.
4. My mood was down. This is a hard one to discern but it does seem that way, especially on the Friday night when I ate it first. 
5. I put on five pounds, which is the heaviest I have been for many months.

I am now going back to Abstain The Grain. I was pretty open to the possibility, if I found no neg effects, of eating it, but a week later I'm pretty convinced that wheat is not good for me. This is a judgement independent of the mounting scientific confirmation of the claim, and based just on my experience over the last week.