Last week, one of my professors mentioned something about America that I’d like to elaborate on. As wealthy and prosperous as we are, the United States is one of the worst countries in the world at adhering to the “three pillars” of health — nutrition, exercise, and sleep. I believe it was Mike Huckabee (Disclaimer: I don’t support him for the presidency) who recently said that we have not a health care crisis, but a health crisis. For an interesting read specifically about obesity, look at this 2003 testimony by Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

You can say all you want about what the government should do to improve the situation, where our money should be spent, yadda, yadda, yadda — but we all know that when it comes to the government, nothing happens quickly (unless it’s related to anti-terrorism). That’s why, here at Don’tASQ, we believe in the power of the people to fix — or much better, to prevent — their own bloody health problems.
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Today marks the third day of living this dreaded vegan/exercising/early-rising life. I’ll give a brief synopsis of how things have been going and what’s to come.

Diet
The vegan diet, thus far, hasn’t been terribly difficult to follow. Other than the occasional chicken sandwich craving, I haven’t had many regrets. Of course, it’s only been three days — ask me again in three weeks. However, for full disclosure, I should note a few possible exceptions…
*Green tea: I bought a bottle of green tea which “contains a small amount of honey.” Not included in the ingredients, just in fine print on the bottom of the label.
*Boost protein drink: Contains “milk protein concentrate.” I started buying these last semester, but I don’t think they’re vegan-friendly. I have about six more to drink, and will not be buying any after that.
*Blueberry waffles: Contains whey powder, which apparently consists of milk. I’ll be more careful next time. (Give me a break!)
*Syrup: I bought a bottle of Valu-Time syrup containing “artificial flavors.” I don’t know that it’s not vegan, but quite frankly, that scares me.

I’m not an anal retentive purist, so I won’t be deterred by things like a “small amount of honey.” I’m doing this diet primarily for health reasons; saving an animal or two is a bonus.

Fitness/Early-rising
Yesterday, I woke up before my alarm; I didn’t sleep much at all the previous night. This morning, however, I happily shut off my alarm and promptly returned to sleep for an extra three hours. As a result, I missed out on my morning run. Yesterday’s workout went quite well.

Effects
Yesterday morning, I had a surge of creative energy in the morning (after my workout) that lasted a good couple of hours. I don’t know how to describe it other than that I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but brainstorm ideas, whiteboard style — and so I did! I also experienced a brief stuffy nose this morning, which may have been a detox symptom due to the diet.

Expect another update on this next week.

This morning, I woke up about 30 minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off, with seemingly no logical cause. Ah well.

Some of you may remember (or perhaps you’d like to forget) when I briefly wrote about polyphasic sleep. What I’ve not mentioned since then is that I’ve developed a strange “ability” to periodically switch between polyphasic and monophasic sleep patterns. As you can imagine, this comes in fairly handy during finals week or other high-stress periods of time. The problem? I can’t control when I switch back.

I’ve grown tired of my unreliable sleep patterns (or lack thereof), so I’ve decided to go “back to basics” and retain a standard, early-rising, 100% monophasic schedule for an indefinite period of time. In plain English: I will wake up at 5:30 every morning, stay up, and take no naps during the daytime. I call this Back to Basics because, quite frankly, I’m embarrassed that this step is even necessary. It’s not even worth designating this as a project, but I’ll be writing about it purely for accountability reasons. These posts will be categorized as Blurbs, which means they won’t show up on the news feed, so you won’t see them unless you want to.

Okay, Sun, the race is on!

Edit (1/26/08): I’m documenting this on the new Fitness page instead of in the Blurblog.