comfort can be stressful

Ok, sooooo disappointed. Until I wasn’t anymore.

I have been faithful to my keto/paleo/low carb-ish food for a long while now, like three whole days, so I decided last night I was due for some comfort food.

I chose tuna noodle casserole since the tuna cancels out the carbs in the noodles. I scanned my kitchen cupboard memory and found Campbell’s cream of something soup, noodles and tuna. In my fridge memory, celery. In my vegetable pile on the kitchen table memory, onion.

Note that I have a photographic memory (in my mind) and there is no need to actually check the cupboard reality.

And the reality was that I did have everything I needed. Except noodles. And tuna.

It is so off-pissing when you are so hungry for something specific and you are finally ready to brave the mine field of your kitchen to make it and bam, cupboard door slams in your face.

Unfuckwithable, I had deli turkey in the fridge and rice. So I made tuna noodle casserole into turkey rice casserole. Same thing. Too much on the carb scale, illegal canned soup. It was pretty good.

Weird Science #3 — Natural High

I got a little sidetracked looking  for ways to get the effects of exercise without actually doing it.   My brain has been stuck on the concept of endorphins and how they are commonly theorized to produce feelings of euphoria, well-being, and/or happiness from exercise, among other things.

I think physiology or God got it backwards.  I think endorphins should be naturally occurring,  without external causation, at all times.  Because then I would have the feelings of euphoria, well-being, etc.  that I need to keep exercising through the overpowering urge to nap out of the sheer boredom of it.

Aside:  When I imagine what endorphins look like, I see a school of  dolphins laughing and  jumping and splashing around in my blood.  Because “endorphin” looks like “endolphin.”

Then I find out through my extensive research (one reference in Wikipedia, my favorite source of fast, sometimes accurate information about all things) that there is another naturally occurring feel-good thingamajig that may even be better than endorphins — endocannabinoids.  Big word for the naturally-occurring chemical that interacts with the brain deeliebob that causes the marijuana high.

Confession … I do know from experience what the marijuana high is, at least the marijuana high in the olden days, when a lid (ounce baggie) cost about $10, c. 1973 or so.    I don’t know what the quality was then,  but that, rolling papers, a bus ticket to the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk, a pair of well broken in guaraches, puka shells around my neck, turquoise and silver dangling from my ear lobes,  a couple dozen chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal gunk cookies, and my best friends along was the finest living my 16-year old self could wish for.

Endocannabinoids are involved in the “reward system of the body, controlling the rewards for both exercise and consuming of dessert.”  This makes sense to me.  The body rewards itself by feeling good, and doesn’t care whether the good feeling comes from a good work-out or a Twinkie.

So, connecting the endorphin-endocannabinoid dots, it seems to me that I all I need to do is eat some cake or pie while visualizing myself on my horse or a treadmill.   Since I’m “high” from the cake/pie, my body thinks it really is exercising and in response burns calories and builds lean muscle and loses fat.   This then causes my body to jump-start some endorphins.  Which also make me high.

Summary:  Eat cake  –>  get high —> lose fat –> get high again.   Far out.

Another aside:  Yes,  it does occur to me that I could spend less time dabbling in science and more time on my horse.