Chocolate + Fat = Brain Food

Yesterday I was driving down the road with a huge headache and realized I had been fantasising about brownies and fatty meat and milkshakes for a couple hours. I never do that. Like, sometimes I have an impulse for Thai food, but if I don’t follow up on it I forget about it in a couple minutes. So this was really wierd and I instantly connected my headache, confusion, and irritability of the last few days with the cravings. What the hell?

Lately I have been eating jerky, fruit, and vegetables. It’s not too different from the way I’ve been eating for the last year – no grains, no proessed sugars. The difference is that I actually read the Paleo Diet book (and loved it), and decided to try lower fat and cutting out dark chocolate. The Paleo Diet guy says that about thirty percent of your calories should be fat, but since fat is more calorie dense than other things, it’s not like thirty percent of what you eat by volume. So he recommends low fat meats, a little nuts, and healthy oils. I’m not about to calculate calories or anything. I just stopped eating chocolate and ate mostly jerky and lower fat meats.

Duh! Not enough fat! I hadn’t been eating ANY nuts or oils, and jerky is practically fat-free. You know what happens if you don’t eat fat? You get confused. And you get a headache. I know that.

I would like to say that, having realised this, I stopped and ate some nuts, maybe chugged some olive oil. But I didn’t. I went through a Burger King drive-through and got a milkshake. By the time I finished drinking it my headache was almost gone. Then I ate some nuts.

This morning I woke up with a little headache feeling very bitchy. Then Possum, who knows me so well, gave me some dark chocolate. My good mood and good health were instantly restored! Then Possum took me to a dollar store where good expensive chocolate was on sale for fifty cents. We cleaned them out of dark chocolate. I have enough for months. I mean, I got close to a hundred dollars worth of chocolate for like ten bucks, and I will never cold turkey off chocolate ever again.

(I’m trying to upload the picture I took of all the chocolate, but the new WordPress isn’t working for me on the picture front.)

0 comments

  1. Maybe this is what’s wrong with me ! I’ve been eating so little fat and reducing food in general a bit to do auditioning that I have been tired, confused, and bitchy for the last couple of weeks. Maybe I tried to do too much too soon.

  2. That’s funny about the chocolate! I crave it whenever I feel bad. Possum and I were shopping at a scratch and dent store run by the Amish and they had dark chocolate on sale for 50 cents each. I bought them all. Not sure if I shared with Possum 😆

  3. LOL. tara, you are so smart. i eat chocolate alllll the time and swear it is my plant friend for life.

  4. *OMG*, no chocolate??? 🙄 You absolutely *must* have chocolate every day… heck, it’s a *vegetable*! 😆 Can’t live without it!!!

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