how do you food

Oh my goodness. It has come to my attention that some of the tiredness I've been suffering from lately may have been due to the beginnings of a simple iron deficiency. Thank you, random Tumblr post that had nothing to do with me whatsoever and that I got very close to not even seeing. D: I don't think I would have figured this out by myself! If it's true, that is. But it makes sense - I had noticed that something about it felt slightly different than usual.

Here's how I believe it happened:

- I realised that I could eat dairy and grains again.
- I ate a lot of dairy and found that I didn't seem to need meat anymore.
- I stopped eating meat altogether.
- Because I didn't need beans and chickpeas for protein anymore (cheaper than meat; what little meat I used to eat was probably in response to beans and chickpeas lacking fat), I kind of forgot about those a bit. Same with tofu, although I never bought that regularly in the first place (not cheaper than meat).

I've been reading up on iron-rich foods, and what did I find out? Dairy not only doesn't contain much iron, it even makes it harder for the body to absorb the stuff. Meat is obviously the best source of iron, and iron from other sources is harder to absorb in general. Vitamin C helps with that, but I probably haven't been consuming enough vitamin C, either. Both beans and tofu contain decent amounts of iron. Need I say more?? The timing fits, too.

Now, I know you're supposed to get deficiencies confirmed by a doctor before you start taking supplements, but I'm not really up to that sort of thing at the moment. I'll just try to keep an eye on the iron in my diet and drink a lot of orange juice during meals. Maybe if I can find a comparatively weak iron supplement somewhere, I'll also take that. I don't think it's easy to get an overdose while being vegetarian.

( 'By the way, about that ...' - in which I go off on a tangent on what's up with the sudden vegetarianism )

AUGH!!

This is probably the first time in my life that I set myself an alarm because of Internet Commitments (!!) and I'm promptly screwing up what I signed up to do. >_< See, the person who usually does the posting in danielpix (a "daily picture" type of community for pictures of Daniel Jackson) is going to be unavailable for a while and has therefore asked us members to fill in. I volunteered for two days, one of which is today, but I didn't realise until just now that I'd only been watching the community instead of being a member! D: So I can't post. And I don't even know if the other moderator aside from the person who's absent is still actively involved in moderating the comm. I sure hope they are and will approve my membership before the day is over. :(

I'm so embarrassed. And this is the first day of their absence, too. Why can't I do anything right?? I never participate in fandom because I don't write or draw and at the moment I can't even make graphics, but I thought posting a simple picture would be something I could manage. Apparently not. *headdesk*