Beyonce

For those just tuning in to my back-breaking vegan quest and wondering why I’ve decided to do this, it’s in response to the revelatory announcement by Beyoncé that eating a vegan diet for 22 days is the secret to her otherworldly beauty. I’m calling bullshit and testing it out to see what really happens. Read the first part here, the second part here and the third part here.

AV (After Veganism)

What a nuts 22 days that was; a lot of terrifying lows, some dizzying highs, a few creamy middles. I’m waking up on this fine Friday morning feeling relief like never before and going to absolute town on whatever non-vegan food I can get my paws on; starting with a coffee made on regular old milk straight from the cow.

My barista calls me over as she’s making my order and just wants to confirm that it ISN’T to be made on soy, given that that’s all I’ve ordered for the past three weeks. I return her a look that is equal parts withering and ‘if you even fucking THINK about it…’

I put that coffee to my lips and take a sip…

It’s so very good! Gone are the evil spirits and cardboard flavour of soy milk and it’s such a joy.

I don’t give a solitary shit about the awful gastric cramping that follows as a result of forgoing all forms of dairy for three weeks and then suddenly shoving it straight back into my system, it was totally worth it.

I’m spontaneously jetting to Sydney for the weekend, having never been before, and I plan on ingesting approximately three times my body weight in meat. The twinges of guilt and Earthlings flashbacks I get upon inhaling such animal-murdering delights as lamb curry, crispy skinned salmon and prawns, teriyaki spatchcock (I have no idea what that even is but it was delicious), not to mention a hamburger and fried chicken from my new favourite bar in the universe (Mary’s in Newtown), are not nearly outweighing the amazing flavours going mental in my mouth. I feel bad about it and I can almost hear Joaquin Phoenix sadly narrating my abject failure to adhere to an animal-friendly diet, but I just can’t stop myself. Apologies to all vegans…

My dreams the whole time I was living as a vegan were haunted by the thought of BBQ ribs, potentially my favourite food on this planet. To that end, I’m ordering an entire rack of them while I’m here.

When I set out originally to do this diet, it was with disdain for Beyoncè coursing through my carnivorous veins. I had little to no respect for vegans or their lifestyle choices and simply wanted to point out how ridiculous she and her 22 day diet of leafy nightmares was.

What I instead came away with was a newfound level of respect and admiration for those who choose to adopt a vegan lifestyle. Because that’s what it is. It isn’t some quick-fix fad diet you can subscribe to temporarily like Beyoncè would have you believe, it’s a way of living your life. One that is admirable in every way but that I simply don’t have the intestinal fortitude to adopt full time, as much fun as I had while it lasted.

I may not have proven Bey wrong, because I actually did lose weight and felt kind of healthy after the initial shock of living as a vegan and I guess that’s kind of the point of a diet, but I hope I may have highlighted the sheer hypocrisy it takes on her part to call herself in any way a vegan.

Real vegans don’t half-ass it and do it part time, they don’t use products like emu oil to keep their aging skin from drying out or dress in enough leather to clothe a small nation. These people adopt a vegan lifestyle because of their love and compassion for the living creatures who share this planet with us. For Beyoncè to try and cash in on that dedication is nigh on disgraceful.

I may not have proven her wrong, but I did learn what a completely greedy twit she is. I’d encourage everyone to give 22 days of vegan living a try. Not Beyoncè’s money-grubbing meal plan version of it, but just an honest vegan diet, the kind you can find from a whole lot of online sources. You may find it too difficult, as I did, but you also might find it’s your cup of (soy milk) tea.

For those just tuning in to my back-breaking vegan quest and wondering why I’ve decided to do this, it’s in response to the revelatory announcement by Beyoncé that eating a vegan diet for 22 days is the secret to her otherworldly beauty. I’m calling bullshit and testing it out to see what really happens. Read the first part here and the second part here.

Day Thirteen:

Having disgraced myself with such a miserable attempt at a pizza the night before, I’m making up for it tonight by getting pizza and doing it goddamn right this time. To that end, a Vegetable Supreme pizza from Crust is in order, and I’m shoving extra sauce and a whole mess of avocado on it.

The guy is still making my pizza when I get there to pick it up and he just cannot even deal right now. Why no cheese? Do you want the extra sauce on top or something? You know it would taste better with cheese, right?

After calmly and rationally explaining to pizza dude why I can’t have cheese (‘that’s crazy, man’), he then offers me free garlic bread for waiting so long. Having to turn it down got me feeling some type of way.

I get home and open that bad boy up and am immediately blown away. Spot the difference here:

That first pizza is from last night, the second is tonight’s. One looks like it was sent down from heaven by Pizza Jesus himself. The other looks like it was made by spiders after Lucifer fished the ingredients out of Hitler’s lower colon and then coughed all over it.

Pizza number two more than makes up for the nightmare that was pizza number one. Veganism wins this battle.

Day Fifteen:

I entered the wonderful world of veggie burgers last week and I’m keen to broaden my horizons there. I’ve been alerted to the fact that Grill’d do a Garden Goodness burger that becomes magically vegan with the removal of aioli so I traipse up to my nearest one to see what it’s all a-bloody-bout. On my own like a complete creep too, I swear the people serving me think I’m having a meal immediately prior to murdering somebody.

I mean, it’s nice and all, but there’s definitely a faint, fish food-y kind of taste about the vegetable patty here. The avocado is also not really like fresh avocado. The chips are hittin’ but damn, I wanted some character about my veggie burger. Feeling disappointed and on my way home, I decide to say fuck everything and go back to old faithful Oporto for one of their veggie burgers, replete with fresh avocado AND chilli.

I don’t care how comatose I am afterwards, I feel like I need a cigarette. I’ll never cheat on you again, Oporto. Please take me back Oporto.

Day Sixteen:

I’ve really surprised myself with some of the stuff I’ve been eating lately. Lentil salads, pumpkin and basil gnocchi, enough fresh fruit to kill a gorilla. I also don’t know where this sudden motivation to go to the gym every day has come from either, nor the energy to physically do it. I feel slightly dirty that I’m here again for the third consecutive Friday. Who does this apart from the bruss-iest of brusses?

I’m just thinking to myself ‘it’s crazy how I’m just not really craving meat at all’ when out of nowhere that shit hits like a truck mid-workout.

The terrible, unforgivable things I would do for something meat. Anything meat. I’m so delirious with cravings that if you put it to me right now that punching a baby panda in the face would result in me being able to have meat, I would consider it.

Fuck that, I would consider it for about four seconds before socking that cuddly ball of fluff right in the chops. And then being derogatory towards its mother after I walked off.

I’ve had cravings on this diet but never this intense and I have no idea what set it off. The feeling soon subsides but now I need a beer, fuck everything.

Day Seventeen:

Saturday afternoon and it’s my younger brother’s 21st birthday. It’s at Southbank by the river and there is a table of food. All of the food. Shit I’ve almost completely forgotten the taste of. I check everything on that fucking table damn near under a microscope and there is absolutely nothing I can have. Not one thing.

Emma, your Howl-ing editor, is there and wastes no time in calling me out for inflicting this upon myself, but the thought of sticking it to her precious Bey is more than enough to keep me going.

Oh, and also beer. Beer fixes literally everything. I’m stinging for the delicious, coriander-infused tang of an Oporto veggie burger though, so I dice early and go straight to the Valley to shove one into my face. This shit is better than crack, I can’t even begin to tell you, and it gives me the energy I need to get wildly drunk and slither around a dance floor to Future Islands. No shits given.

Day Twenty:

It’s family dinner at a Thai restaurant for aforementioned brother’s aforementioned 21st. That means more extended family, all requiring an explanation as to why I’m refusing anything remotely delicious. I have a script of my reason in my head that I’ve delivered on so many occasions already:

‘So Beyoncè says that following a vegan diet for 22 days is one of her secrets so I’m doing that and documenting it because fuck Beyoncè’.

Their polite nods say that they get it but their eyes tell a different story. A story of judgement. The waitress comes out to take orders and, with very little hope that she’ll say yes, I meekly turn into ‘that guy’ and inquire as to the vegan status of both the curry puffs and the spring rolls. Both are made with vegetable filling and just on puff pastry, surely they’re fine. She replies that they definitely are vegan!

But then, just when I’m about to go all Riders of Rohan on the Pelennor Fields against the orcs of inconvenient veganism, Thai restaurant waitress is there to ride in on her Oliphant and fuck my day royally.

“Oh wait, is fish sauce vegan though? Because they’re made with fish sauce”

Fuck me raw.

Everyone else gets curry puffs and loudly enjoys them while I get the lettuce and the shaved beetroot that garnishes the side of the plate. And I fucking hate beetroot something silly.

Dinner isn’t all that bad though, vegetable and tofu panang that I am assured is vegan in every sense of the word. I’ve never eaten tofu before in my life and thought that it was full of ghouls and had the consistency of an eraser, but it’s surprisingly delicious and actually kind of has a flavour that isn’t ‘butts’.

Then the absolutely not vegan in any way mudcake comes for dessert and I’m back to wanting to run people down in my car again. Two more days of this happy horseshit.

Day Twenty-One:

Having enjoyed my Thai curry so thoroughly last night, I decide to get curry again tonight but this time go Indian. The dude on the phone says that the dhall tarka is completely vegan so I order that, but then he catches me off-guard and asks me at what level of spice I would like that. I panic and say hot, then hang up the phone and realise what I’ve done.

Why the fuck did I say hot? Why? This isn’t a regular person’s idea of hot, this is an Indian person’s concept of it. A concept so cosmically gastrointestinal tract-stabbingly spicy that my head will probably explode just trying to get through a single bowl of it.

That picture of Lisa Simpson is quite literally me as I work my way through this curry. I’ve had maybe four bites and my stomach is churning and my nose an absolute faucet. There are war crimes going on inside of me that are only going to get worse before they get better…

Day Twenty-Two

It’s here. It’s finally here! The last day of being a vegan for the rest of my life!

Goodbye tofu! Goodbye lentils! Fuck outta here, soy!

I happily inform my barista that this is the last soy coffee she’ll be making for me, ever. She just nods and laughs nervously, obviously mistaking my unbridled joy for severe psychosis.

I’m treating my insides to the leftovers of that Indian curry from last night with some salad. I then spend my evening at the movies watching the new Terminator, an absolutely dreadful exercise. My two old housemates I’m watching it with split a serve of cinema chicken nuggets right next to me, I swear just to fuck with me because I still have a couple of hours to go.

They even coat the chips with chicken salt, because they’re pure and unadulterated fucks. I’m going to finish my vegan journey with a veggie burger from Oporto, because they truly were a godsend, my last bastion of hope, saving me from the sharp talons of many a hangover on this quest. They were my Chewbacca, my Sam Gamgee, my Wilson.

I catch a cab after the movie completely out of my way into Fortitude Valley because it has the only Oporto open in Brisbane right now, and I get two of those delicious motherfuckers and eat them until I feel like spontaneously combusting. Life is nifty.

I’ll post my reflections on all of this after the weekend. Right now I just need to go and bask in the glory of having started something as difficult for me as this was and actually seeing it through to the end. This is big for me. Tomorrow will be meat-filled…

Oh, and one last “fuck you”, Beyoncè.

For those just tuning in to my back-breaking vegan quest and wondering why I’ve decided to do this, it’s in response to the revelatory announcement by Beyoncé that eating a vegan diet for 22 days is the secret to her otherworldly beauty. I’m calling bullshit and testing it out to see what really happens. Read the first part here.

Day Seven:

Well, the response to part one was interesting. Comments ranged from helpful advice and encouragement, to spiteful photos of delicious-looking vegan food I don’t possibly have the culinary ability to cook, to flat out suggesting I’m shit for finding my first crack at veganism hard.

I know a lot of vegans probably find their lifestyle a breeze, but maybe they’re also a minority because the majority of people like myself simply find what they do to be insanely difficult? It’s hard to just abruptly go without all these things I’ve been eating my whole life. Take that as a testament to your strength of character that I am having a rough time with this transition, the majority of non-vegan people I’ve spoken to have doubted whether they could do this as well.

Also, I’m not actively trying to be shit and only eating white trash pleb vegan food, I swear. Like most things in my life I simply stumbled into this decision hungover and ill-prepared. I did approximately zero shopping before deciding to do this and I’ve never even tried a diet with any kind of rules before, let alone just cut out the meat I love cold turkey. Cut me some flippin’ slack.

In all seriousness, the feedback is so greatly appreciated, keep it coming.

Life hasn’t been entirely Oreos and beer. I’ve had a metric dick-ton of fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts. I’ve actually had some pretty sweet vegan meals too. Today for lunch I enjoyed a lentil and rice dish that tasted exactly like a curry and even had crispy fried onions sprinkled throughout. Its quality could definitely be improved with the help of meat and lentils give off this odd perfume-y aftertaste that takes some getting used to, but hey, at least I ate something that was vegan on purpose!

One of my saint-like co-workers also made me vegan chocolate slice to help numb the pain of morning tea. By God, it’s like Kate Upton and Emily Ratajkowski are having a party in my mouth. Unfortunately somebody still invited soy coffee, who’s also at the party skulking around roofy-ing people’s drinks and generally looking like Steve Buscemi in Billy Madison, but this vegan slice is too awesome for me to truly care.

Day Eight:

Finding myself dreaming of vegan food prepared by people who actually know what they’re doing, I decide to Google vegan restaurants in my native Brisbane. The results are saddeningly bleak. There’s probably one restaurant within convenient distance to home that fulfills the criteria of being an actual restaurant open for dinner and not a café or a food stand as well as being completely vegan-dedicated instead of the catfishily ambiguous ‘vegan friendly’.

The first review merely says the words ‘cult-like’, which are not the words you look for first when choosing a restaurant or even anything at all, and another review elaborates that this restaurant is run by followers of someone called the ‘Supreme Master’. In my head, at best that could mean this:

At worst, vegan Jonestown.

I kid, I kid. I’m sure this restaurant isn’t actually a murderous cult, but I don’t really fancy going there alone just in case…

For dinner instead I’ve got vegan pumpkin soup made on vegetable stock, with pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top and some vegan bread. I feel like I’m actually doing it kind of right! And I’ll have to admit to feeling a whole lot more energised than I did last week.

Day Nine:

Had lunch with one of my vegan friends at work today. Not only is she vegan but she’s also straight edge. She is living both of my nightmares and just not giving one shit, I admire her for her dedication to making her life as difficult as possible. It’s also encouraging to see someone who has lived as a vegan for an extended period of time without turning into a batshit insane person.

I’d like to think there’s hope for me but every time I smell meat I feel like punching somebody and it’s been less than a fortnight.

For instance, I went to see a gig at West End tonight. I made the horrible mistake of not having anything to eat before I leave, then catching a bus there and having to walk about a kilometre to get to the bar.

It’s like strolling through my own version of hell. There are restaurants of all varieties littering the street on either side of me, patrons inside happily stuffing their stupid fucking faces silly with delicious, sustaining meat. The smells, my God, the smells are killing me. Every step feels as arduous as Sam having to haul Frodo’s bitch-ass Hobbit carcass up the side of Mount Doom.

Here’s the top five, in ascending order, of the ever-fluctuating list of my least favourite people and things in the world at this point:

5. People who fuck basic spelling and grammar up, like saying ‘defiantly’ instead of ‘definitely’

4. Spiders

3. Anyone who says ‘yaaaasss’.

2. Spiders a second time.

1. Beyoncé, and it isn’t even close.

Thankfully, I get to the bar and can have beers. Beer fixes all. My intent is to at some point go and get something vegan from somewhere in West End because there are a few places I’m aware of, but I get a little wrapped up in the whole beers thing and forget until it’s too late and they’re all shut. Fuck. Another night then.

Day Eleven:

Surprise surprise, hungover again on a Saturday. Weighed in and I’ve lost a little over 3kg, I really need to do better to stick it to Beyoncé. What Google has taught me, is that apparently if you get a veggie burger from Oporto without cheese or mayo on it, it’s totally vegan.

I don’t give one fuck. I’ll brave a Westfield food court on a Saturday at noon if I get a burger out of it. The girl serving me asks if I want avocado on that. My internal reaction to realising that I’ve been able to have avocado this entire goddamn time can be summed up in this series of Stone Cold Steve Austin gifs:

How the fuck could I forget about avocado? Hell yeah I want some goddamn avocado on that. I want every bit of avocado you’ve got on that. You go back there and you get all the avocados you possess and you slap them on that there burger.

Eating it is every bit as ridiculously good as I thought it would be. I may actually only get veggie burgers from Oporto in the future, even once this diet is over, I honestly think they’re better than chicken.

I have another slightly large night out and I’m stumbling towards the cab rank in Fortitude Valley at 5am when, drunk as a lemur, I remember that one of the people who commented on part one mentioned that 5 Dogs does a vegan hotdog. Sold. Making a quick detour, I buy the shit out of a vegan NYC dog there. The old lady about empties half a bottle each of ketchup and mustard on top and I am so excited, then I bite into it and that terrible bastard, soy, does the Charleston all over my tastebuds.

I’m sure it could be way, way worse but, as a carnivore who loves the shit out of a good hot dog, I want to banish this soymeat impostor to the land of wind and ghosts (I think it’s soymeat, I’m trying to verify this but can’t, so let’s go with soymeat, it tasted like it).

I’m feeling even more down as I’m forced to finish it while standing in the cab rank waiting to go home, behind a couple of dudes wearing bootcut jeans and pointy leather shoes (the uniform of terrible people) rubbing it in my face eating their chicken nuggets. The busker who resides there always remembers me though (a sad indictment of the amount of time I spend in Fortitude Valley), probably because I give him whatever change I still have in my pockets at the end of the night in exchange for his rendition of either Rip Rip Woodchip by John Williamson or Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas. I slip him a fiver and I’m in line long enough to be serenaded with both, easing my soymeat-induced agony.

That chorus has never been more appropriate.

Day Twelve:

Having finally caved and gotten Netflix, I’m also now craving pizza, because pizza and Netflix go together like spaghetti and meatballs if you believe terrible people on Tumblr. There’s a Dominos a minute away from my house, so, lazy and hungover again, I put together a totally vegan pizza online. It’s basically a margherita without cheese but with added spinach and a few other vegan-friendly toppings.

I get it back to my house, open that box and, wouldn’t you know it, they forgot pretty much everything. No delicious basil, no awesome vegetable toppings, nothing, this pizza is literally just the base, the sauce and tomatoes. How do you fuck it up that bad? I’m too socially awkward a person to ever make a fuss about food that I’ve ordered, so I just shut up and eat it and suddenly I’m craving a soymeat hotdog. I’d rather the slop they’re eating in prison as I watch Orange Is The New Black.

I greatly underestimated the role that mozzarella plays in the grand scheme of a pizza, it makes the whole thing. It’s like the point guard on a basketball team, not always the focal point of the offense, but holding it all together and lobbing the alley up for the toppings to oop.

This pizza is an affront to humanity. If pizza is a basketball team, everyone on this one is Mario Chalmers. I apologise to vegans everywhere, for I have failed you.

To Be Continued…

In case you missed it, Beyoncè came out on Good Morning America recently and proclaimed to the world that she practices a vegan diet and you were all fat but that going on her amazing new diet for 22 days would solve all of your problems or turn you into actual Beyoncè or something to that effect. Give her your money. Give.

I call bullshit.

In fact, I’m calling bullshit so hard that I decided to take her little challenge and go completely vegan for 22 entire days of my life. This is a pretty big deal for me, being such a manly dude whose dining experiences can usually only be made tolerable by the hurting of an animal. I’ve never even seen tofu in real life, let alone put it in my mouth in rejection of all other meats. Could I really do this?

The only bit of research I did in preparation was to verify beyond all shadow of a doubt that beer was vegan. Because I could maybe go 22 days without animal products, but take away my beer as well and you would probably find me hiding in a cave in a loincloth, bereft of most of my hair and plotting the night-time throttling of Baggins-es and such.

Most of what I drink totally is, I discovered, a wave of relief washing over me like an ice-cold pale ale on a Friday afternoon.

And so, my desire to make that overrated emu Beyoncè look foolish burning inside me like a thousand fires, I set off on this quest into the unknown vegan lifestyle. Would I emerge triumphant, or descend slowly into meat-deprived madness…

Some notes before I begin. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for the way vegans live, even if I don’t agree with it. I simply resent Bey for blatantly trying to cash in on their lifestyle like this, presenting it as some kind of part-time thing you can do to get thin when many out there dedicate their whole lives to it. I’m therefore not following her money-grabbing meal plans and instead will simply adopt my own version of the vegan lifestyle.

To that end, everything I have eaten on this journey I Googled prior to consuming to ensure its vegan friendliness; however, there are a lot of varying opinions online as to what is and isn’t truly vegan. If anything on this list actually isn’t, blame both Google and my laziness to research beyond the first few search results that pop up. I have also continued to use what are probably non-vegan hygiene products such as shampoo and hair wax because there’s only so much modifying of my life that I can do at such short notice. I’m sorry.

Day 1:

I am 100% ready for this. I wake up and have a fresh mandarin for breakfast, and I never even bother with breakfast usually unless it comes in Fruit Loop form or involves bacon in some way. I have at least one coffee a day to get me through my day job though and there’s my first real hurdle, because I love the shit out of a big delicious awakening cappuccino, made with real, no-fooling milk, of a morning.

My options are: go without coffee and risk the office turning into a blood-soaked murder-suicide very quickly; black coffee, which I feel like I’d have to have a cigarette with and also be a deep in contemplation 53-year-old divorced guy whose bookie is after him and whose children don’t have time for him anymore, or… soy milk.

I’ve never let soy milk hit my lips before. It’s by far the wussiest of all the milks. Also, there’s something about a milk made entirely out of beans that simply scares the shit out of me. But some of the girls in the office have soy coffees and they haven’t turned into screeching wraiths yet so I’m going with that.

Drinking it is an unspeakably awful ordeal. It’s a mixture of cardboard and evil spirits. It’s like if somebody made a coffee without ever having tasted it before, only had it described to them by a Steven Seagal cover of a Coldplay song.

Day 2:

I am so relentlessly hungover. I went and saw The Durries at their EP launch last night. It got so bad I found myself throwing back Jägerbombs at 2:30 in the morning like a goddamn college girl. I roll over and, my head is absolutely throbbing. It’s 1 in the afternoon, the perfect time to go and cure this hangover with some of the Colonel’s secret herbs and sp-

It’s like a bad dream. Did I really decide to do this? What can I even have to eat that’s going to fix this? This was a complete spur-of-the-moment decision I arrived at yesterday, so it’s not like I went out and bought a whole bunch of vegan food in preparation, I thought I’d be fine just winging it.

I check the packet ingredients of everything in the pantry and everything, everything, either flat out does or simply may contain traces of milk or egg products, which apparently is not good enough for those precious vegans. Goddamnit.

Goddamnit.

Somehow, by some divine miracle, Oreos are known to be ‘accidentally’ vegan and my life is saved. They do not cure hangovers though. At all.

Day 3:

It’s my great aunt’s 90^th birthday party tonight and there’s roughly 70 relations of mine both distant and immediate packed into her backyard. There are plates of sausage rolls and party pies and cured meats and all kinds of meat-themed deliciousness just flying around everywhere, and I have to refuse every single one. Not only that, but I have to tell these people I barely know the insane reason why I have to refuse the delicious, animal-murdering food they have prepared. The judgement is palpable.

Literally the only thing I can eat while everyone else is eating lasagne and washing it down with my tears is lettuce and rice. Look at this dinner.

Lettuce and rice, together at last. This truly is the darkest timeline. It’s a good thing beer is vegan and I can drown all of my sorrows in it.

Day 4:

In an effort to stave off hunger and feel better about not eating any animals, I decide to spend a hungover Sunday in the darkness of my room, watching the documentary Earthlings. I’m sure it’ll be a delightful romp and-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwd0jcbiKV0

Oh no.

Good God, no.

Don’t watch that. Ever. Not unless you want your soul ripped in twain. Fuck.

Day 6:

Things that are also accidentally vegan: Ritz crackers, hummus, baked beans, Frosty Fruits. I have had liberal amounts of all of those in the last several days.

I have vainly read more ingredient lists in the last six days than books in the last six months. I will spend five minutes carefully poring over these lists, my hopes rising to a near screaming crescendo, only to suffer the worst kind of disappointment as they come crashing down like the Hindenburg at the very end when I see the fine print ‘has been processed on machinery which also processes milk and peanuts’.

I cannot fathom how anyone lives life this inconveniently. If they wipe the machinery down before they process the potato chips, doesn’t that count? Why must you make life so difficult for yourself, vegans? I feel like that hippie kid on that episode of The Simpsons who can’t eat anything that casts a fucking shadow.

I went to the gym yesterday and damn near died trying to do my normal exercise routine. I am in a great deal of extra pain today and I blame this diet. I also have felt so physically weak, like, to the point where even the simplest of tasks like opening a semi-heavy door or going up more than one flight of stairs become some kind of Herculean effort. I was trying to type at my job today and struggling mightily due to an involuntary case of the shakes. I found out it’s probably because I am currently severely lacking in essential things we get from meat such as iron, so looks like it’s more baked beans for me.

To be continued…