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 )

My thoughts and feelings have been all over the place lately; I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to describe what's been going on in my head. Most of the time I was too confused by my body's sudden unpredictability in regards to sleep to pay attention to what was happening, anyway. I now know that part of the mess was likely my own fault due to taking my pills only sporadically, leading to either headaches or extreme tiredness depending on whether I took them that day or not, but that can't have been the only problem.

I wish I could sort out which perceived symptom was caused by what. It's probably impossible because everything overlaps and there is rarely just one answer, but I'm so fucking sick of being unable to tell how I should react to feeling sluggish and low on energy, for example. Is it physical fatigue? Do I need to take it easy for a day? Or is it a mental thing? Should I bite the bullet and force myself to do more than I feel like? How am I supposed to know??

What I've recently discovered is that even my actual muscle strength can vary greatly from day to day. Sure, I always knew that exercise was harder after I had slept badly and easier during a high energy phase, but I didn't know that these fluctuations could also happen randomly. Then I had an extremely good day and yet my arms were super weak. :| Also, one time I had no energy whatsoever and only wanted to exercise a tiny bit to relax my shoulders, but to my own surprise I did way more than I had planned, just because it was so easy. It's like, do I get any control over my own freaking life?!

But what troubles me the most is that there are things that I almost always lack the motivation for, and I don't know what this means. I'm talking about enjoyable things here, so it's not a matter of laziness, exactly. However it's too specific to be anything as general as depression, and I can't quite see how my OCD would have such an effect. It's more like my brain's been incorrectly programmed to view these things as harder to do or less fun than they actually are - how do I get around that?!

Okay, this post is made of questions. Have I mentioned that I'm confused?

(Dude. That's way too many tags for one post. What am I doing.)

Somebody please explain to me why I am awake? I slept somewhat normally for what, three days? You'd think I'd be allowed a little more time to recover, but no. Evidently we can't have that.

By now I have moved on from making smarter shopping lists to trying my hand at meal planning, which is kind of difficult to do if you had meant to start the next day, but then you stay awake so long that you need to eat again. WTF am I supposed to eat at this time of night? More sandwiches? I'm not going to cook at four in the morning, but my last meal was sandwiches already! Argh. I suppose I could always ... sacrifice some of that chocolate pudding for the greater good. Uhm. Yes.

Seriously though, meal planning. I appear to suck at it, but mostly because I can't concentrate. I suspect it would be just my thing, otherwise. Well, I like making lists.

There is really no point to this entry at all, is there? :P