Day 815 Record Keeping
Day 787 Fixed Meditation (did not do)
Day 661 Writing (did not do)
Day 201 Rowing (did not do )
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Eating
Day 39 Pantry Check (72)
Day 37 Recording (80)
—–
Good sleep, good but tired wakeup.

Total and Utter Depletion
It’s been an exhausting day.

After about a week of depletion, I woke up today with absolutely no energy whatsoever. I did, however, automatically do a pantry check, which was good, and food recording. But writing, rowing, meditation…just didn’t happen. I slept a lot today.

From a willpower/endurance perspective, I can understand this depletion. I’ve been pushing rowing what with my HIIT program, I’ve been pushing writing by doing a project I consider incredibly difficult, and my meditation has been intense lately and I’ve been trying to extend the time. I’ve also added two eating habits.

From a pure carbohydrate/caloric perspective, my pantry check and food recording have both had me more attentive to food. According to MyNetDiary, the food recording program I’ve been using, I’ve been under my calorie goal since Monday May 9th. That’s under the amount I’ve inputted in order to make my goal weight by November (not a serious goal, just something the program had me input), which is itself a lower caloric threshold. And quite a few days I’ve been under a thousand calories.

Today Lydia suggested I take the day off. I nodded but secretly kept trying to get up the energy to just start to end the week on a high note. After flopping around a bit I realized there was no way I was going to get anything done, but I still have this odd fight in my head.

I still think that this game is about fighting the good fight, character flaws, and motivation rather than fuel in a tank. You don’t ask a car to magically summon up forward motion. If there’s no gas in the tank, you find some way to get gas in there rather than giving the car a stern lecture.

If I can sense a lack of energy, I shouldn’t be berating myself or summoning up anything. I have a list of things I can try. Eating more, since some experiments suggest that glucose can replete willpower. Watching funny videos to improve my mood or perhaps some types of meditation. Altering my schedule and the type of work I’m doing - perhaps by not pushing multiple skills at the same time. Or taking a three day weekend and letting stores replenish.

Emotional self flagellation is not the way out. God knows I’ve tried that enough in the past without any benefits. Since I’m not the type of person that just uses anything as an excuse to take time off, there must be a reason, and strategically combatting that reason is the way out.

So today I ate a lot, and finally had a high calorie and high carb day. I’m very curious how this affects me tomorrow, or if I’ll have to take other measures to insure a smoother allocation of energy throughout the week.