Dan on February 25th, 2006
This week my sleep patterns have been a bit unusual. I would frequently take extra naps at night, getting a total of 4.5-6 hours of sleep in a day. Getting through the night has been quite hard. I’ve been getting in the bad habit of “snoozing” - waking up after a nap and then taking another one right away. There were also a few days when I woke up from a nap and decided to lay there for a minute - and woke up 1.5-5 hours later.
This wasn’t a problem since I this week was school vacation. I didn’t have to worry about being late to class. Next week will be the true test. I’ve been slowly giving up these extra “snooze” naps and getting out of bed right away. Last night I decided to go back asleep after my 1AM nap and didn’t set an alarm. Luckily I woke up at 3AM, my normal breakfast time. My body does seem to be getting used to waking up after shorter periods of time. There were a few days where I slept more than 1.5h on my core nap, but woke up multiple times during it.
On a side note, the low amount of sleep hasn’t seemed to affect workout recovery. I’ve been working out 3 days a week. The workouts themselves give me a lot more energy and keep me awake. I’m very happy that I started working out again. So happy in fact that yesterday when I showed up to work out and the gym was closed I was quite disappointed.
Dan on February 20th, 2006
I’ve always liked spicy food. Chili, General Tso’s Chicken, curry chicken, buffalo wings, etc. It’s gotten to the point where I call Frank’s Red Hot “weaksauce” and don’t consider something hot unless it has at least Cayanne, or even better Habaneros in it. For those of you who don’t know, habaneros are the hottest pepper in the world. Very little is required to make something hot. For example, earlier today I was crushing habaneros that I dryed a few days ago. When finished I licked the small amount of dust left on the spoon and my mouth was burning for about 5 minutes.
Only recently have I taken interest in the chile, the mechanisms of how it makes food spicy, and the side effects. Through our favorite friend the search engine I’ve found plenty of interesting data. I won’t restate all of the basics, but here are a few to get you started.
Capsaicin is the chemical in chile peppers that causes the spicy or burning sensation. The body has receptors that are sensative to this chemical. The interesting side effect of this is that the body produces endorphins to help stop the pain. Endorphins cause a natural high. This explains why many people like capsaicin-infused foods.
For the past two weeks I’ve been using much more capsaicin products in my food, including store bought habanero sauce, homemade habanero sauce, and chili powders. I’ve found that the rush of endorphins temporarily helps to make me more alert and less tired. It’s an interesting way of reducing sleepiness related to polyphasic sleep. Plus it makes food taste better 
It’s gotten to the point that I won’t eat certain foods in resturaunts anymore because they aren’t hot enough. I was at Uno’s Saturday night and skipped on the chili because it’s mild and they didn’t have anything to spice it up. I think I’m going to start carrying habanero powder with me when I eat out. That should solve the problem.
Dan on February 13th, 2006
Ever have one of those weekends when you know you have stuff to do but just aren’t motivated to do it? That’s how this weekend has been. I’ve acomplished a few things, like listing an item on Ebay, writing up ideas for my new website, and cooking some new foods. Other than that I blew through the weekend without acomplishment. No laundry washed, no cleaning of the apt, and no polyphasic sleep. Sleep plays a big part of it since life is shorter on monophasic sleep. Days fly by much quicker when you are missing 5 hours.
I also ate pretty poorly this weekend consuming candy, cake, and snack foods. My appetite has been through the roof this week. I’m constantly hungry and crave snack foods. I’m not quite sure what is causing this but I don’t like it. I’ve gone for 3 months now on my nutrition plan without incident and I don’t want to change it now. It could be a combination of sleep changes and eating pattern changes. I’ve been moving my meals around to different times everyday due to sleep patterns. I’m hoping that once I re-adjust back to polyphasic sleep my appetite will slowly return to normal. Between monophasic sleep, working, school, and general apathy life has been quite different this month.
Dan on February 11th, 2006
This is a simple variation of the oatmeal omelet recipe I posted exactly a month ago.
Today I decided to see how they would turn out if I substituted 1/4 cup whole wheat flour for 1/4 cup of oatmeal. I figured they would turn out pancake or crepe like and they did. Prepare the same as the omelets. The only difference is the skillet must be hotter, to the point of boiling a drop of water on contact.
Using half of the batter, cover skillet edge to edge. When once side is finished carefully flip. Roll half the apples inside, being careful to keep out any liquid. When both are finished drizzle the leftover liquid from cooking the apples over the top of the crepes. Very tasty and very filling, yet healthy and low on calories!
Dan on February 10th, 2006
I finally have time to update the site. I’m now working out at school 3 days a week. I haven’t devised my entire workout plan yet but the general idea is 10-20 min of cardio with 10-20 min of targeted weight training. I’d like to make that 5 days a week but that’s just not possible with class 8-5 on the other 2 days. I have to leave at 7:30 right now to get to class on time. I’d have to make that 6:30 if I wanted to have enough time to workout and shower. I’m not even sure if the fitness room is open then, plus I’m giving a ride to a friend and I don’t think he’d like having to wake up an hour earlier.
My sleep patterns have been a mess this week. I started with polyphasic and that was going okay until I overslept on Wednesday and ended up going back to monophasic. I’m going back to polyphasic this weekend with the same 5 period schedule I posted before. The problem is that adjusting while I’m in class is hard. So long as I’m doing something interesting I have no problem staying awake. Once it gets boring though, like Accounting is at the moment, I start nodding off and having microsleeps. I really hope I can adjust enough this weekend to maintain it through the week. I really need the extra time in order to accomplish work on my investing research and my new website.
Speaking of the site, I’m not working at all this weekend so I’m going to spend some time working on it. I still have to run the idea past an attorney but I think I can make it work. More details to follow.
