Destressing is too stressful!

Hey guys! Just want you to all know that I'm not dead as of yet... I know I haven't been updating AT ALL in the last however-long, but I thought I should get up to speed with my life at the moment.

Just quickly as a bit of an intro, I'm finally down to my last spoonfuls of protein powder. Yay! Once that rice protein and rice milk (nearly finished that, not long to go) is gone, I can clean up my act and start going fully, FULLY grainless. That's not to say that the powder didn't teach me anything. I realised that protein powders don't make me gain weight (or lose weight) or get stronger or anything, and I learnt what powders act and may taste like. I've also learned to love smoothies, and how to add extra calories and nutrients into something without being able to taste it or drink a whole heap more. But most of all, smoothies have given me my post workout snack(y-thing). Before I had smoothies, I worked out, and that was it. So I bid farewell to my starchy smoothies and make way for new ones with paleo proteins, like raw yolks and raw grated liver (and bacon on occasion :) ). But one of the smoothies I really wanted to be weird and try out was a broccoli smoothie. It sounded ultra rich in protein and low in sugar, and I hadn't found any idea of it anywhere so I tried it this morning. The verdict? It sucked. It tasted incredibly bland, and no matter how much lemon juice I squeezed into it, it still didn't pick up any flavour, and my throat was sore and scratchy afterwards, even though I boiled the broccoli before. Another lesson: don't eat a whole cupful of broccoli at one time (if you get scratchy throats like me).

On a completely different note now. Last night, I tried to catch up on sleep and get my rhythms and sleepiness back in order. I've been super tired lately and no matter how hard I've tried, I haven't been able to get to bed aaaand fall asleep at a reasonable time. I think I've always had a problem where I just think and think and think for like an hour before my brain eventually realises I'm meant to be restoring myself. So last night I made a list of stuff to do to wind myself down. That included:
- have a shower after all homework, instead of after dinner (gives me more time away from work)
- do some yoga that'll make me sleepy, on my bed
- have a mug of hot tea
- meditate
- continue my normal bedtime routine
- heat up heat packs for my knees (they've been hurting since I've been wearing foot coffins for school - I wonder why)
- go to bed with my door shut.
I was all on time with the showering business, but because I wanted my tea directly after yoga, and I didn't want to wait for any boiling or steeping or whatever, I had to prep my tea before and after my shower (I hadn't opened the packet and it was loose leaf and it just took forever. So I was late, leaving me stressful and made me decide to leave out the meditation. I had to boil the kettle twice because I got out a tablespoon of tea instead of a teaspoon, for one mug... So I had to brew up extra tea and I worried about it all through my yoga, which made me more stressed out. The fact that the yoga wasn't helping me feel better physically also wasn't doing my mind any favours. A bit cranky at my quick yoga that did nothing for me, I sorted my tea and drank that sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark. It had mint, licorice root, fennel and calendula leaves, and it was ah-mazing. That was the best part of the whole night. I discovered a new love for this tea, and sweet mint teas in general (the flowers made it beautifully, sugary sweet). When that was sadly over, I got up, raced around to fix up the rest of my tea and heat up my heat packs, and when I got back I realised I had to do the stuff I do every night, with the blaring lights on. So I crossed off the day on the calendar, wrote down what I'm grateful for, put lip balm and cuticle cream on, plugged in my charger, and made my way to bed. The whole night's procedures had taken me an hour to do, and I was still not sleepy. In fact, I was probably holding more stress and additional anger/crankiness than I was before. I went to bed and, I must admit, I did go to sleep quicker and I had a dream (a sure sign - for me at least - that I've had a deep sleep), but I still woke up with a yawn. I guess, overall, every little thing did its part, but instead of being peaceful and letting it all work to 100% of its capacity, I only let it work 60%. My knees feel better, but only slightly. Yoga before bed stretched me out, but didn't calm me down. The shower got me away from blue screen lights, but didn't make me sleepier.

The idea I got from this is that you don't need a thousand things to get you to sleep. Less is more. During now and the end of the hsc, I'll inevitably lose sleep, and wasting my time trying to fall asleep better is not going to work. I'll just have to pick what method of sleepiness I want to pick up that night.

Tonight, it's meditation and another mug of that cooling, calming, homely tea.

Paleo Sausages, and The Recess Problem

Argh! School starts tomorrow and I'm up so late (for my standards anyway). I'm starting year 11 so there will be a humongous workload continuously being put on me for the next, say... 28 months? I think it's easy to say that the whole blog-daily thing won't be happening as well as I'd want it to. But before I go, I just thought I'd pop in for my daily blog post.

Today I discovered a sausage shop that sells sausages that are grain free (mostly), use intestines instead of plastic and have good ingredients. I bought a packet of their sausages for tonight and they were insanely good. I really want to try their pork, fennel and chilli ones, and the honey lamb with mint and rosemary. I got the plain beef ones, because my brother wouldn't eat one with funny flavours in it, and like I said, they were superb. If you wanna check them out, have a look at them here.

Wow it's late. I'll wrap it up quick smart.
With school coming up, we're going to have breaks for recess and lunch, which sounds all good and familiar and normal, but during the holidays I've gone from a snacky grazer to a predatory cavewoman who could easily thrive on two meals a day. I only found this page today but it really epitomises my outlook on not just what to eat and what not to eat as a primal person, but also how to live. Anyway, so with this random 'recess' thing where the general convention is to put something in your mouth, I've decided to make this time a bit more rewarding without food. So I'll have a drink instead. A good one that is, and not just water. Tomorrow I'm having fresh ginger and lemongrass tea in a cute glass bottle, and I'm thinking that my little nourishing drinks will consist of ice teas and juices in the summer, and broths and hot teas in the winter. I can't wait for that!

I might come on. I might not. I'll just see how everything goes, and if all goes well and the homework gets done and the assessments are checked a hundred times and the exams are all studied for, I'll give you guys a post.

:)

Life - tea, potatoes and nut butter

So much for my big blogging spree I thought I was going to have last week. I'd planned yummy cheesecakes and roasted spatchcocks and... they just never happened. No one (read: neither mum nor I) has been that hungry so nothing has really been cooked. Ok, so I lied about the cheesecakes. I made a second batch of cupcake cheesecakes with crushed up, pink-icing-and-100s-and-1000s-covered-sugar-soaked cookies for the base so I thought it might not be a good idea to post that recipe up. But I had a few other things to mention about stuff I found yesterday.

I really don't know how I found it - I must've been looking up herbal teas - and I found this website called Steepster. Basically, it's a social networking site for people who love to drink tea, and you rate the tea you drink and talk to other tea drinkers across the globe. Sounds ridiculous? Honestly, I think it is a bit. But I love the simple idea of it. I think the fact that I am signed up to it will make me want to drink more tea (herbal tea, that is) and hopefully get a better understanding of it. And find some tea-drinking friends too! Another good site kinda like that that I found is Punchfork, which is a Foodgawker-style site but you can put a preference in for paleo stuff. That's right, there's a foodie blog place you can choose to get you completely paleo meals! Aaand they have an app, so I'll certainly be using that a lot.