Here Comes The Sun and I Say

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 180.5#, 15.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 179.5#, 13.5% BF

 

Some of that might be suppression (Tuesday night towpath ride, 24 miles in 1:39 -- not even a personal best for this season, but still pretty good -- then a mellow Jacobsburg ride last night with Anne) and dinner has been pretty light the last few days: basically sliced fresh tomatoes, and some cheese maybe, and a blueberry/yogurt dessert both nights. But I'll take it.

 

(It's rainy today though, so we're possibly looking at a rest day, at least on the bike. Tonight is dinner at Black & Blue, but their food is pretty high quality, and nowhere near as fattening as your typical bar food.)

 

Skin: My skin has been in pretty good shape lately: most of the rashes and dry patches are long gone, and though some places are still occasionally itchy it's no longer a constant issue. I no longer need to moisturize constantly, and even the need for cortisone has become pretty rare.

 

What's the secret? I basically changed three things: one was I started taking cold showers, rather than the scalding-hot ones that feel great but do a lot of damage, the next was that rather than scratching, I've been washing itchy areas with an alcohol-soaked cotton swab, and finally, and probably most importantly, I started taking vitamin D supplements. The first two I started doing directly in response to the eczema (the alcohol mainly something I made up, thinking I might have had allergens on my skin), but the vitamin D thing was just something I started doing: I'd been told a while ago that I have a vitamin D deficiency, and so I was adding a few drops, along with an Emergen-C packet, into my post-ride recovery drink mix, and all of a sudden I feel like a million bucks.

 

I looked it up on the less-than-infallible Internet, and there were a lot of alternative-medicine posts, recommending vitamin D supplements as a treatment for eczema. I'm not sure I believe all of the mumbo-jumbo I found, but the supplements seem to be working for me -- or, at least one of those three changes I made is working. I'm going to keep doing all three for now...

 

I may try to talk Anne into a short run tonight, then we're going to Black & Blue for dinner. It's the Homebrew Club monthly meeting tonight too, so we may bring a sample of something, and also a few records since it's also the weekly Bring Your Own Vinyl Night. Probably an early night for us though, since we're meeting some friends (Judy, maybe some others) who are just not the night owls we are.