Monday, June 21, 2010

A Couple Kinds of Self-Regulation

I decided this morning that I had to finish reading articles about self-regulation today so that I can move on to the million other things I need to do for this project, and after a big push (OK, about 11 hours of high productivity), I did. I also typed up my sources into a bibliography tonight - all 53 of them. I feel a little sorry for the future self that is going to have to attempt to synthesize all that information (though I think I'll do fine in the end; I'm pretty good at this). Verdict: self-regulation working well today.

I think tomorrow I will start writing the results section from my first year project. It'll make a nice change from all this reading.

I also made two decisions tonight:

(1) I can't eat fruit by itself in any kind of appreciable quantity without getting my blood sugar way out of whack. All the berries I've been buying need to be turned into muffins or something that won't cause me to sugar crash later - trembling all over, general weakness, heart palpitations, dizziness.

(2) I need to start waking up early and exercising in the morning before I start work because I simply cannot get the temperature cool enough in my apartment in the evening to use my treadmill comfortably. Tonight, for instance, after 2 hours of full-time A/C blasting, the temperature managed to come down less than 2 degrees. I think every time Robert called me last week, and especially tonight, I felt super-grouchy and didn't want to talk to him because I was feeling so uncomfortable. (I was not to the point of a friend on Facebook who got so hot and miserable on her bike ride - doing one of those bike across the state things - that she cried for an hour, but it's not been good.) The fact that I don't sweat easily is a problem in these situations.

Man, hypoglycemia, blood pressure dropping whenever I get up, problems sweating, pupils poorly responsive to changes in light levels (hence my inability to drive at night), etc., etc. - I really do seem to have an autonomic system problems...which, ironically, indicates that while my controlled self-regulation is working well, my automatic, physiological regulation is not so great. Weird. I guess I know what I'm titling this post now.

And to cap this off, I present to you a lolbun my sister just sent me:

Could I get this bun to write my major area paper?

This rabbit's got his self-regulatory act together.

3 comments:

Tam said...

I really love berries with cottage cheese. Maybe the extra protein and fat from that would work (at least if you like it)? Your body does seem to kind of suck at basic regulatory tasks. I don't think you mentioned your dryness issues. It's sort of too bad that you know better than to think this was the trade-off for being such a bad-ass in other ways.

Inadequate AC is the pits - I'm sorry you have to deal with that. Cool showers or dampened clothing/sheets might help if you get desperate.

Congratulations on your supremely productive day. Wow.

Sally said...

I did my treadmill this morning and it worked out extremely well - it was only 71 degrees when I woke up and was down to 68 by the time I started.

Cottage cheese is one of those foods that I kind of like and kind of find disgusting, sometimes on subsequent bites. It's weird.

jen said...

In contrast, the fog has rolled in here this evening and I'm wearing a scarf and light jacket. Another reason Stanford should admit you :)