Juice Fast

I'm thinking about starting a juicefast tomorrow. It sounds easy when I think about it now, though. Behaviorial economists like to call it "present bias naiveté". It's about how we, the eternal simpletons, naively assume that we will be more self controlled, disciplined individuals with healthier habits, tomorrow. I'm mildly deviating here, but I'd like to quote St. Augustine of Hippo, who famously said, in the oldest known example of present bias - "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Anywho, getting back to the point about the juice fast. After a bit of recon work on the interweb I found the following:

1. What makes you hungry?

• Affected by this tiny portion of the brain called the hypothalamus.
• 6 primary triggers:

- Light of the day to determine body rhythm and physiological create appetite

- Olfactory stimuli

- Natural Steroidal activity

- Neurally transmitted information

- Blood borne chemicals such as insulin, leptin

- Stress

2. What does a juice fast do?

• Breaks the natural rhythm of hunger
• Stops inappropriate appetite simulation
• Cleanses gastrointestinal tract of accumulated residue of years of bad diet
• Cleanses hypothalamus of learned chemical mediators that can increase appetite
• Breaks the cycle of eating habits that can lead to weight gain

3. How to do a juice fast?

Okay. Let's not get into the ridiculous concoctions that you're expected to drink. First, from my point of view - eating healthy is expensive and time consuming. So, I will start of with a simple orange juice diet. I will outline the nutrition information of the Tropicana Orange and Mango because

a) it tastes slightly better than orange juice

b) I have a carton of it on me right now

Per 1000 ml

Energy - 480 kcal

No salt /fat

More than the recommended daily allowance of sugar - which is bad!

Tomorrow's diet

- 1 L of Tropicana - 480

- 1 yoghurt - 75

- Eggs - when craving for salt arises

-

So. I've found this incredible webcomic that I'm totally addicted to. It's a story of a journalist/blogger Hazel and her strangely delightful friends. I started off with it a few days back and its taking up most of my time these days.

So since we're on the subject of webcomics .. my love for webcomics began about a couple of months before my exams at Oxford. My vicious urge to procrastinate coupled with my mind being too exhausted to read blogs and magazines led naturally to.. webcomics. My entree into webcomicdom began with.. oh crap.. cant remember really. What was it? Uhm.. okay, embarassing revelation here.. I used to follow Luann online.. dont know why though. It's become incredibly silly over the past few years.. and the punchlines mostly get a smirk out of me.. seldom a laugh. Anywho.. so what was my first proper webcom.. dont know really. QC, Dinosaur Comics, SMBC - can all battle for the first spot maybe. Oh.. I used to read xkcd as well.. but I hardly ever got the jokes.. they're so obscure most of the times. Blah. And PhD comics! I'm no PhD student.. but they're hilarious.

This reminds me.. I'll be attending a PhD film screening at Oxford sometime in Michaelmas this year. Should be fun.

Back to webcomics.. others that I enjoyed/loved - PerryBibleFellowship, Channel Ate, etc.

That's it for now.. cant be bothered to type more. And gotta head home in a bit anyway. Yes. I'm blogging from work.

Its late evening now and I'm lying on the bed, in a position that's probably going to give me a debilitating back pain some time later in life. But I cant be bothered to get up and sit straight. Economists call this 'time inconsistency'. Also known as procrastination. It affects the best of us, paralyzing plans, turning us into blundering fools. But we never give up on it. Or at least I dont. I'm pretty sure this blog is a tool to procrastinate. I'm not sure what I'm trying to postpone though. It could be the fact that I still am not sure about what exactly I want to do for my MPhil. And that scares the hell out of me. Maybe I'm thinking too much, expecting something grand to materialize.

I need inspiration. INSPIRATION.

Good morning my omniscient readers. It's a fresh windy day today. The weather, in the words of E, is romantic - absolutely perfect for a bollywood love song in the gardens of the Patna zoo. It makes no difference once you reach office though. Its an airtight box of sorts, air conditioned - sometimes chilly. The internet works, most of the times. Its almost like we've been transported to a different world.

I'm about to resume work on my report. Its on all sorts of research opportunities that are available in Bihar, mapped to the various research areas. I'm done with Agriculture and Infrastructure and Urbanization.

Today's agenda -

1. Complete the following sections :

• Governance, Accountability and Political Economy
• Climate change, Natural Resources and Environment
• Human Capital

2. Work on the slides for the presentation and also.. call Prof C to find out whether I can use the slides at all. What a colossal waste all of yesterday's effort shall be - if the laptop isnt available.

Thats about it for now.

Cheers!