There is a place where the plant-based diet (the one I’ve been on for nearly nine months now) leads you. It’s a place you see more often than you did when you were filling yourself up with meat and cheese and the like. It’s a good place to go more often than I did in my previous life, although I’m not sure it’s the best thing to be spending as much time there as I do now. It’s the bathroom.

Yes, the plant-based diet has a cleansing effect, and the cleansing can sometimes take up long stretches of the day. Sometimes I’ll spend the whole morning in that place, and it’s all good, really it is, but that’s a lot of time. (A lot of reading, too.) It’s possible I’ve slightly overdosed, over the last few days, on fiber-rich fruits and vegetables. For whatever reason, I’ve been spending even more time in that special place than usual.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as healthy as I have since starting this diet, but there’s a commitment there that I didn’t realize, before I started, that I was making. It’s a good thing I work at home, with hours flexible enough to accommodate such a commitment.

Anyway, today, for the first time since I gave up meat, eggs and dairy, I had real digestive problems. There’s a difference between spending all morning in the bathroom and really having a sick stomach, and this was a difference I felt all day today. I think it might be tied into the total ultimate fatigue that hit me so hard yesterday. I’m not worried about my health, though. I know this will pass, and in the meantime I’m getting by with less appetite than usual. That’s not a wholly bad thing, either.