Strange eating habits

I mentioned on Thursday that I was back on the antibiotics again.

I jokingly call them "diet pills" because they demaand a no eating window around taking them. The recommendation is :

No food 2 hours before
No food 1 hour after (it's an either or but I take it as a both)
Take 4 a day

If you take that literally, it's one every six hours and 3 hours of no munchies around each one. No snacking for 12 hours a day ! Someone like me might fade away with a diet like that.

It's good actually. It's a discipline that forces you to arrange your munching around the recommended 3 meals a day, with the fourth gap being sleepy time. So the ideal pattern for pill taking time is :

6am - pill - this actually happens when I wake up, which is usually about 7.30 am.
I usually get in to work around 9.00 to 9.15 depending on traffic which gives loads of time to hunt and devour a teacake before 10am, which is the next cut off time.
12noon - pill. Add an hour for a lunch at about 1pm.
3.15ish - sneaky afternoon munchie + hot chocolate at work. It gives me an excuse to walk away from the desk for a few minutes, which lets me restore a bit of focus. I can work straight for many hours but I find it best if I have a break for more calories at a certain time.
6pm - pill. Hopefully taking the pill at this time will let me avoid diving into the chippie or chinese on the way home from work. Although one plan was to raid Sainsburys on Tuesday (I'm travelling again, coming back early so I'll have the car) and pill time will mean forgoing visiting the Frankie and Bennys next to work.
12midnight - pill before bedtime. The 2 hours before mean no snacktime before bedtime.

It's a good discipline to have, even if you're not taking pills. Grazing is really bad for the waistline.

Hopefully it'll get my weight trend back on the right track, it's been going up for a little while and I need to arrest that and turn it round. But in the meantime :

Yep. It's tempting. And I do love my pizzas.

So much for the habits, how about the effect ?

I'm seeing nicely dramatic improvements. Most of my skin is back to silky smooth although the damaged bits are still evident. They are, however, repairing nicely. The progress is delightful. In a few days, my knees may be clear enough to allow me to wear the knee pads which are a vital pre-requisite to me doing physical exercise. I'm going to walk before I do the running thing though.

Yeah - the antibiotics (not had to use much of the gunk outside of the first day) have had a greatly appreciated effect. I'm not celebrating just yet though. I've had similar improvements before which fade away again after the course of drugs finishes. It's as if some of the pernicious infection finds a place to hide until it's safe to come out again.

I'm somewhat cautious there, by ensuring I only wear stuff that I've washed since starting on the course of drugs. And I have my washing machine set to 60 degrees, which should hopefully deal with a few of those nasties. That should isolate one vector for the nasties to hide in. Hopefully the bugs will stay away this time.

It'll take some time for the bad bits to repair. Typically it takes 3 days for cuts on me to heal. But it'll take maybe a month for wounds to disappear completely.

I have my fingers crossed, it's good progress so far, long may it continue.

I'm a little sad though - it's been a relaxing weekend but I've missed a couple of opportunities again. It was the local reenactor's market, this would have been an interesting day out. A friend went and I was genuinely curious about coming along. But - still tired and lacking the energy levels for the wander. That's the same with the other thing this weekend, Chinese New Year celebrations. I was genuinely curious about that too. I opted for restorative sleep time instead. I'm needing to ration the energy somewhat at the moment.

That goes a bit for the gaming too - I'm concentrating on games that don't need much interaction at the moment. I have a few games that have my attention at the moment :

Elite Dangerous - not playing this at the moment. It needs active piloting and some degree of concentration. I'm usually too tired in the week for this and have avoided it this weekend. But ... at some point I want to upgrade that Cobra to a spec that'll let me head off and explore the galaxy. And you can do that in this game, explore the known galaxy.

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol - it's a WW1 fighter pilot game. It's very simple and reasonably complex at the same time. It's very reminiscent of a card game I played with the gaming group a good few years ago. Interesting, well presented and gives a little challenge too.

Sunless Sea - a new one where you're the captain of a steamship in a cyberpunk world. The tagline is "Lose your mind, eat your crew". It models hunger, fuel and terror. Interesting game again, interesting enough for me to pick it up after watching the Totalbiscuit and Kim videos on it. I enjoyed my first look at this one today.

This War Of Mine - difficult subject, your game characters are people attempting to survive in a war torn city, under siege from snipers during the day. You have to collect sufficient material, food and supplies to allow them to survive. It's difficult, somewhat depressing too. I suspect I'll only do a couple of playthroughs of this one.

And then there's Moo2 as well. I've been winning a few of these games, although I've not taken one to the grindy conclusion for a while. There comes a tipping point where you become unstoppable, if you're not attacked up to that point.

Yep. Good times, although I'm not really feeling that.

It's welcome seeing and feeling the improvements in my outsides but it's the nature of depression that your mental state tends to hide any improvements that happen.

I'm not in a depressive cycle as such, although it has been a few days since I got a message from Cupid's Gift. Those have been a real lift.

Before I go - a suggestion for the Elite devs, they really need to implement those as an addition to the game !