Happy Thursday!

 The production of the cows on which I depend is down, so being somewhat in want of cream, I had the idea to buy half & half from the store, not shake it, get cream off the top, and then just kind of use it up as the cream content dwindled.

It had been my experience, at least as far as I thought, that for some reason, the cream in half & half was less processed, adulterated and funny-tasting than store-bought and Dairy Commissioned Ultra- Pasteurized 'cream.'

I got some education as my plan unraveled.

First, I realized that half & half is homogenized. So I gave up.

But later on, as my non-processed supply dwindled, I asked my wife to pick up a half & half. I figured homogenized was better than nothing, at least, this once.

She grabbed a carton for me from the local Giant Eagle. I got around to tasting some, and after so doing, I noticed a little cloud printed on the carton, "Made with Real Milk."

Uh-oh.

The brain cogs began to turn. If made with real milk, what about the cream? I was flabbergasted in reading the ingredients. It said half & half on the carton but it contained no cream whatsoever.

Just corn syrup solids, titanium something or other, maybe some carrageenan, and other stuff I never consume. No more tastes.

I last saw cream, in a store, that was similar to what I drink, in 1992. It was pasteurized, not ultra-, and it was pure. It was good. Now we've come this far. I would be hurting without direct production cows.

For example, today, I wanted nothing more than to eat some cold pumpkin pie. Not the sweet kind most folks know but the unsweetened kind my Sharon sometimes makes for me.

I was pressed for time, so instead of buckling down and baking a pie, I took 3 fresh whole wheat rolls I made (ingredients: organic hard red winter wheat berries, olive oil, yeast, water) and piled pumpkin (ingredients: pumpkin) from a can and roasted sunflower seeds (ingredients: sunflower seeds) on before each bite. I also had some raw collard greens on the side, and to really top it off super, I was sipping cream, which, really, made it super.

3/4 of the can was gone when the 3 rolls were gone.

I could live without cream but it would be like a kid who loves ice cream going without any kind of thing that was at all like ice cream. And boy - I enjoyed that pumpkin thing today far more than I ever did any pumpkin pie, with all its spice and eggs and everything!

Bonus paragraph: A European once said, "Leave it to the Americans to come up with something like process cheese." Did you ever stop to realize that what Americans call 'milk' is actually process milk, and what they call 'raw milk' is milk?

Extra Bonus paragraph: A young man once exclaimed with great emotion that an acquaintance of his had lost his eyesight from drinking raw milk. I since thought about it and realized it was not raw milk but dirty milk that had been the problem. That problem, as solved by the young man and his camp, is pasteurize the dirty milk, and kill all the harmful bacteria and all the enzymes and everything, in the dirty milk. You see that just keeping everything good alive and clean in the first place is fundamentally a better idea.

Cacao

 I eat a lot of cacao and cocoa compared to people but of course, never with a sweetener, made for the purpose of sweetening, by people.

Lately, I have been eating lots of Maxx bars and Rx bars and thinking about how I would ask them to change them, if they were to ask me for feedback.

The Maxx have little chocolate cuboid morsels that are SO GOOD! I would love to know the ingredients. It has to be cocoa and either egg white or coconut oil or both. So easy to figure out, I suppose, but I'm not so sure I can make them as good as they do.

Anyway, I was  thinking hold the egg whites, put in at least 50% more roasted almonds, and less or no dates. That is regarding the Chocolate, Sea Salt  Maxx. Regarding the Peanut Butter Maxx, I would try less dates and increase the peanut chunk size and portion.

The dates are fine and good but they remain to be chewed long after the choco is gone.

Well, I went and got what I need, and my first idea to try is cacao, chopped dried apricots, roasted almonds (really good ones, not mediocre ones) and coconut oil.

Gonna have a ball, I think!

I have had it with my lifetime of buying mediocre pecans, philberts, brazils, even cashews. And I never suspected I was buying mediocre almonds until after eating them from the store for quite some time, I got some from the food co-op, and they were amazingly superior. I made up my mind: I know where  I can get good nuts, and I refuse to ever buy lesser again, as long as my sources remain.

I really love cocoa milk. Any strength. Cocoa and cold milk. If I could push a button and not have diabetes any more, I would push it in a second but would I go back to having sugar in my cocoa? No. It won't happen. I like it best this way: cocoa and cold milk. Preferably fresh milk, not processed.

Salt?

 When I was young I salted most things. I couldn't stand oatmeal without salt. I salted the crap out of soup that my mom made. I salted my baked potato and butter. I salted my eggs. I salted most things one would normally salt.

Not so much the last 20 years or more. Now only one thing do I salt or add salt to, when cooking or eating: I salt a beef steak when I fry it. Everything else, like the popcorn my wife prepares, which she has to salt, I just really do not notice a difference any more. So I don't use it. Why eat  it if you don't notice the difference? So I don't. 

I don't notice a difference between salted and not salted butter. So I ask h e r to buy unsalted. But she always goes back to getting it salted.

I get my Iodide in the oligo-fructose multivitamin I take  each morning.

My brother for years had a thing against salt, which made him cough. He ended up with a thyroid problem for lack of iodide.

I have no medical or physical reason at all for avoiding salt. Just don't need it or want it except on my steak, which I have about once every 10 years. So far. Watch me start having it every week.

Millet Anew

 It has been a long time, if ever, since I prepared and ate millet the way I do rice - steamed till the water is gone, and the berries just ready to burst, no more, with no other grain or ingredient.  Ten years ago, I was mixing it with other grains and preparing it in a rice cooker, and calling that "grollet."

I have been eating steamed millet for a week or two now, plain, and I like it more than I ever did before.  Much more.  More than rice, depending on my mood and menu.

Breakfast Today

 One 1/2-lb carrot

1/2 C popcorn with lots of butter

1 lb  ricotta

1 Jonathan apple (we scored some good ones this year)

2 Bartlett pears

Glass of apple cider

Glass of milk

4 oz baked chicken 

New Lows

 June 2020, which marked my 4th anniversary since eating sugar for  the last time, I began for the first time recording my blood sugar test results.  I had  always thought  I was one of the few who were in good control but now I was realizing I could do better and should, and that in reality, I didn't even really know how well I was doing.  So I started testing frequently and recording it.  I would test right after each meal and again after things settled, and so forth, striving to keep even my spikes under 150 mg/dL.

I seemed to be doing very well in June, July not quite as good, and then August was a little disappointing.  But I kept at it, and achieved what I felt were mixed results in Sep-Oct.  I had wanted to have my A1C tested at the end of August but the pandemic indirectly discouraged me from going in.  I went in the third week of October, and the result was 6.3, 0.3 higher than my goal had been in June.  I had never been that low before.

Then winter, always the challenge and the killer, came.  Would this winter be different?  Would I be able for the first time to keep the control I enjoyed all summer?  It started out as a Yes on Thanksgiving day.  After the festive feast, I was 117 or something.  I felt I came off victor.  Trouble was, I had not learned yet about how the food in you can keep on giving, and the sugar can climb after you thought it was stable.  

So a little later, not having eaten anything, I spiked the first of many winter spikes through January.  This winter was no doubt better than most but I was still searching for my way to a perfect summer-like winter.

Third week of January, I went in for my A1C.  I expected it to be worse than 6.3 but I didn't care how much worse it would be, because it would have little relevance to how I was going to be, once I found the answers and could do as well all year as I had done in June.

Then on February 1, 2021, I had the worst spike of all.  Since June or before, I had not broken 300 mg/dL.  Now I was reading 383.

So I pulled out all the stops.  All the tricks from my bag.  Lined up all the guns.  I had achieved the ability to never again eat sugar, now I was ready to permanently institute my evening fast.  From then on, I would finish my eating for the day between 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm, even if it meant skipping supper or only having a light snack.  From then on, my sugar would be settled by bedtime, and I would not have to worry anymore about checking my sugar and meteing out a bed-time shot of fast-acting insulin to get me trajected (hopefully) through the night.  There would be many benefits.

My sugar would be lower and more stable during the night.  This could be huge for my A1C.  Imagine, night after night, suppose I was sleeping along for 7 hours at 102 mg/dL instead of 117 mg/dL, what effect that could have on my A1C.

So I started doing it along with all the other tricks I know.  It was easy.  I felt content evenings.  I was waking up with sugars like 105 mg/dL.  It was great.  Now I really really didn't care what my last A1C result would turn out to be.

The doctor's office just called.  5.8.

5.0, here we come.

Since the 383 spike a week ago, I have not really spiked at all.  I got up to 165 a couple of times is all - and that was right after meals.  My wake-up sugars were 110, 131, 105, 101, 122, 146, 130.  Which could be better, and hopefully will be, but as an entire week's record, at this stage, coming off many weeks of crazy spikes, ain't bad at all.  As a statistic, I count bad days.  Defined as days I broke through 180 mg/dL at least once.  Ain't had a bad day since last Monday, when I spiked at not only 383 mg/dL, but 240 mg/dL just hours before.

Just so you know, I normally would be using Lantus as well as humalog but it was keeping me from strenuous abilities during the day.  I needed a way to maintain at night that would not prevent me from charging up a big hill on my bicycle, lifting heavy logs, or participating in wrestling during the day.  So that's why, above, I speak of getting through the night some other way.  You should also know that over the past 6 months, I have put on more weight and muscle than I had done since when I was 19 years old, which was my former record.  So you need not suspect that I am just starving myself, or anything like that.  I am 6 ft tall and weigh 160 lb, whereas, through my 20s, 30s, 40s, I was 140 lb.  In my 50s, I was closer to 160 lb, at least the late 50s, when I started working out and wrestling again.

An unrelated note, that I may not have mentioned, so I will just tack it on here - a lot of know-it-all people who think they can advise me on everything diabetes because they read an article or two, or because their grampa had diabetes, have insisted to me that I have type II diabetes.  Well, my doctor confirmed I am type I.  He also confirmed something I have come to realize - it isn't always a clear and definite case of type I or II.

Teeccino

I might as well tell you about a beverage I have really been enjoying.  My base is fresh whole cow's milk, so if you only have junk from the store, and you try this, your results may vary.

I mix pure cocoa powder into just  a little bit of milk till I have a smooth paste, then add the rest of the milk and finish mixing but also add like I dunno maybe a 1/4 ts of Teeccino brand Hazelnut Medium Roast granules and let them start working.

This is all done cold.

Then you drink it.  It's really good.

You don't worry about the grounds of Teeccino.  You just chew em and enjoy em because unlike coffee grounds or any other kind of whatever, they are tender and delicious.

The unadulterated milk and the Teeccino combine to sweeten the cocoa to the perfect degree.

I do a similar thing with herbal teas in general, usually with tea bags, where I just let them work cold, and I often do it with milk but other times water.  Peppermint tea in cold milk may be my favorite of those.

18L20

For breakfast today, I cooked down some baby kale (about 2 C) with a little butter and onion in a small fry pan we use to scramble eggs, added a little cayenne, scrambled in 2 eggs, and served mixed with plain sesame seeds roasted in the same pan.

My son had thinned his garden kale and saved what he pulled.  I had separated the above-ground portions from the roots and dirt clods and grit.

The kale didn't actually 'cook down' but remained gnuarley and snarly (kept its height and springiness), and when I scrambled in the eggs, they disappeared!  They appeared largely to be gone but I found that the mess required longer cooking than I normally would observe, because raw egg kept forming in the pan.

Anyway, that was after the customary raw carrot, and with a nice drink of water.  Quite different and quite good.

I am now pretty much lock stock and barrel about not eating carbs other than the carrot and seeds before Noon.  Sugar just jumps otherwise.  But in the pm, I usually get away with eating all the fruit and grain and what not I want.

By the way, I have never had A1C results < 6.5 or so; I am shooting now to break the 6.0 floor barrier.  Have actively and carefully controlled my sugar this past month more than ever before, and had a pretty easy time of it.  I have been getting about 3-5 undesirable level spikes per week, with a maximum of 229.  Undesirable level is defined as > 150.  I test pronto, any time I am not absolutely certain it's good, and record the number in a spreadsheet.  So the spreadsheet does not show test results according to a consistent schedule but rather shows the general times during the day and the results of all 'peaks.'  My average peak for June was 122; for July, it is running 135 right now.  But this says nothing about the fact that I am testing pronto like never before and correcting quickly the climbing levels that do occur, and it says nothing about what my average level is, only the average peak (sometimes when I am not certain, and I test, it can be quite low, and that is why the average "peak" is so low).

Nokia 3310

My personal observations regarding the Nokia 3310

I have been using this phone for about a year.  It has served me very well.  I am selling it only because, largely due to the pandemic of COVID-19, I never use it for much, and decided to go back to the good ol days when there were no cell phones, and I never had to have one, let alone carry one around or pay for one.

I'm home most of the time nowdays, and when I leave, I will be really gone.  So just call my home phone.

The battery is great.  Much longer life per charge than typical.  Never runs out if you charge it about every day, always has plenty to spare.

The settings on this pup, though limited, are not too mysterious to master.  But then, mysterious and ridiculously complex control settings is mostly a smart phone thing, I think.

I like the small size but it bugs me that it isn't as small as they used to make them before touch screens were in vogue.

It has Snake if you know what that is.  I don't.

It is supposed to have multimedia text and internet browsing capability but none of that has ever worked at all.  Not that I wanted it to.

It is 3g.  3g works very well these days as long as you are somewhere besides my house.  But I usually get a good enough signal if I go upstairs.  With this phone, I started out with ATT as my carrier.  I was blown away by the bad customer service and more so by the way I was treated as a major corporation as a customer, one with infinitely deep pockets.  And the signal coverage wasn't ideal.  So I tried Mint Mobile.  Phone worked great if I went caddy corner from my house to a parking lot, didn't have any signal whatsoever if I was on my own property.  It worked great as long as I was anywhere but home.  Then I tried Consumer Cellular because they operate on dual carriers, ATT and some other.  I presumed this meant whatever was optimal would automatically carry the signal for me but as it turned out, no.   It meant I had to go to Target and deal with associates whose common sense had been washed from their brains and replaced by store algorithm, till I finally got my phone switched from the default "other" carrier to ATT.  After that, life has been fine.

This has no touch screen, as you probably know.  It is a dumb phone, and there are some pretty stupid things about it.

Some things are acutely stupid.  Not enough that I would not rate it 4 stars out of 5, but if I were a company like Nokia, I would be embarrassed to market a product that had not 5 stars for professionalism and attention to detail.  It's still a pretty good phone though.

The remainder of this review is negative only.  Please keep in mind, I like this phone.  It meets my expectations.  You might like it even more.  But now I will list the acutely stupid things and some minor negatives as well; I will let the reader decide which are which:

Very slippery.  If your hands are dry, you will drop it.  Fortunately, this phone is very destruction-resistant.  But the battery will pop out; you will have 3 pieces to gather up and reassemble.

The flashlight, which I never ever use, turns on while the phone is in my pocket.  Does it fairly regularly, drains the battery quite a lot by the time I notice, but has never left me high and dry.  I don't know whether it is a pure electronic anomaly, or by designed key shortcut.  But I sure was not able to find a shortcut for turning it off.  Not in the manual, not on the web.  I intended to take it to my drill press and carefully drill out the LED but never got round to it.  And I cannot say what ill ramifications might have been had I done it.

It has a square ring for up, down, left, right menu buttons.  Quite tricky and difficult to use.  Also hard to intentionally hit the center button.

Has a hang up button.  Hit twice to end call.  Really would give me that extra little narcotic satisfaction if I could end the call with a single push.

Comes with radio and headphones.  This would be a real plus for me, being the one network data feature that works, and I do like a small radio and phones to listen to, but since it isn't really a radio, just an internet thing, I get charged tremendous $$ to listen for a very short time.

If your screen goes off as timed, or if you happen to accidentally turn it off, and you try to go back in to continue what you were doing, too bad, you are locked out.  You must press unlock and then press * to get in.  This includes going in to turn off your flashlight.  So however the light gets turned on accidentally, I must assume it does it without having to get in by unlocking it.  But to turn it off, you must unlock it.  And then use the tricky buttons to get way down the menu to the flashlight, etc.

Similarly, the phone does not require your pocket knife or car keys to unlock the phone before entering an infinitely long and random phone number, while the phone is in your pocket, that you must delete one character at a time before you can use your phone - but only after you unlock the phone to get in yourself.

One must ask, if the things are not prevented, that phone locking was designed to prevent, and if I must unlock the phone to undo them, what is the point of locking the phone?  Is it to piss me off?

What kind of manufacturer, what kind of engineer, would produce a product that would not at least present the option to turn off locking?

I read that the phone has a number of keyboard shortcuts.  No one knows this number.  I was not able to find any that were of use to me.  To find any, you do not consult your manual.  Please consult Ask.com, flybynite.com, or any other random place to find out stuff.

No redial.  I wouldn't know if that's a thing with cell phones.

This used to bug me but I don't care anymore.  Vibrators.  Phones vary in what you can do to keep them from vibrating and using up juice, but in my experience, you can never simply turn it off completely.  I once successfully removed the shaft with the eccentric weight from one of my phones, but that is not often recommended.

It will show you a count of unread emails and junk like that.  Too bad it's inaccurate and only resets when you empty your inbox or threads or whatever completely.

If there can be such a thing as extremely or very mediocre, the camera on this pup is it.  I have had a lot of different cell phones over the years, some cheaper than others, and they all had pretty great cameras.  Not the case here.

All I want for Christmas is a quality cell phone that doesn't lock, has no touch screen, has a good battery, has an on/off button, a screen that glares brightly with no adjustment that you can see in any light, is the smallest and lightest phone ever made, makes calls, texts, has a clock and all the usual clock features, and has and does absolutely nothing else.  And no secret shortcuts or tricks.  And no vibrator.

Breakfast

Here's what went into my breakfast bowl today:

baked butternut squash
simmered wheat
simmered couscous
old fashioned rolled oats, raw
milk
cinnamon (lots)
baking cocoa
cranberries

Did I Mention Oil?

I pretty much stay completely away from any oil anymore, that has not been expeller-pressed.  It's nice because I no longer have to remember all the fancy stuff I learn and forget about hydrogenated this, and polyunsaturated that.  Together with my never consuming sugar ever again, this pretty well keeps me in the safety zone, I think.

Red Meat

For the past 20 years (don't blink - it goes quick), standard USDA beef consumption has always caused the tendons in my knees and elbows to hurt and ache.  Inflammation, I think they call it.
Natural grass-fed, free-range beef, and venison have had absolutely none of this effect on me.
Now that I am 57 (it's been going on since just this year), my right hip has been really sore like my knees and elbows get when I eat USDA Red.  It's pretty bad.  My wife has a USDA roast in the crockpot right now.  I think I shall forego tasting it, and cook me some chicken for tonight.  And I hope that, unlike my mother, who became an invalid when she was 60 because her hip joints disappeared, I will be able to continue my hard labor to which I am accustomed, running up and down all these Pittsburgh hills and stairs in my house.  In addition to my dietary measures, I use Melaleuca Inc.'s Replenex and Replenex Extra Strength.
I clearly recall that my mother was especially in the greatest pain whenever she ate red meat, and she became affected right about the time they started dicking with the beef, which was mid-1970s from what I am told.  Her hips gave out in 1977.  I could be wrong about the timing, I don't know.  But I believe that in 1972, beef was still beef.

BBQ

It goes against the basics of this blog but here is the bbq sauce I sometimes enjoy on any sort of pig meat, if I am missing being able to have a hot dog:

1 diced onion
1 diced garlic clove
1 Tb paprika
1 Tb Original Tabasco Sauce (McIlhenny Co.)
8 oz tomato sauce
dash or three black pepper
1/2 C dark honey (I use wildflower honey from 1980)

It goes against the basics of this blog but here is a recipe I enjoy:

black beans
canned corn
chopped cilantro OR parsley, either one, not both
fresh avacado
gourmet vinigar - just a dash
some fresh purple onion

It's a recipe, but really not too fancy.  For me, anyway.  You can also add some carrot, cooked or not.  Or anything else you want.  My wife has made something like it only a little more fancy, for years but the above recipe is what I enjoyed last night.  Try lime juice instead of vinegar, if you like.

GMO Soy

Years ago, soy products in the USA generally went from non-gmo to gmo.  That is, whereas up to that point, soy in all products at Harry's Grocery and at Walmart had been natural, subsequent products generally all contained genetically modified soy.  As I began to consume the latter, I found myself breaking out in hives.  Having definitely isolated the cause to be the gmo soy, I eliminated it from my diet and continued to enjoy natural soy wherever I could get it, hive-free.  If I happened to eat the gmo again, the hives came back.
If you are not clearly familiar with hives and what they are like, I hope you will read about it and become so, without having to experience it yourself.  They do not heal or stop itching in a short time.
By and by, I stopped doing soy regularly.
Last week, a hive appeared on the back of my hand.  It itched constantly but I didn't pay it much mind.  This week, hard-up for protein (didn't even have any beans), I searched out and consumed the last can of tuna (in oil - I always buy "in water") my son had left behind when his visit here ended.  A few hours later, 12 additional hives appeared on my arms and legs.
Then I thought about it.
I had tried a little of his tuna on our camping trip last week, just prior to the first hive appearing.
The tuna was canned in gmo soybean oil.
Well, There you go.
Update:  Now I estimate I have a total of at least 4,000 hives.  Mostly on elbows, wrists, knees and ankles.  These additional are smaller than the really large ones that first appeared.  The breakout seems to have peaked and is about wound down now.
Update:  Now they are on the palms of my hands and the insides of my forearms and fingers, and on the outsides of  my fingers.  I never had any kind of a thing on my palms before!  But it still seems to be winding down, although hives, as I might have said, do not stop itching ot go away in anybody's definition of a short time.

I was having tuna on leaf lettuce and then I sprinkled it heavy with ginger and garlic.  Winner!

Today I had a fish sandwich but I skipped the lettuce and fat spread.  All I put on the bread was pink wild-caught salmon from a can and a ton of black olives from a can.  NUM!

Sandwich Truck with a Lift Kit

I was complaining how well cranberries stick to peanut butter so that when making a butter, peanut butter and cranberry (open face) sandwich, you can't very well move them around and arrange them after they land on there, without pulling up divots and leaving bare patches of bread.  I finished making one and tried to pick it up.  With a laugh, as often happens, it leapt from my hands onto a dirty floor, landing face down, of course.  Awwwww.  But wait - it was like huge glass tractor wheels keeping the whole thing perfectly clean, robustly intact, and up off the floor!  I could have played hockey with it!  All i had to do was pick it up and of course, nothing stuck to the frozen cranberries, and nothing stuck to the floor!

Mmmmmm, so good.

BLT

There are times when a chef happens upon a dish that does not only taste great, it tastes like it was meant to be - the bacon, tomato and lettuce sandwich is a good example of this.

I had such a dish just now.

Grollet, heavy on the millet, lighter on the wheat and barley, amaranth about the same, and instead of actual "wheat," kamut.  Contrary to the usual, include a dash of sesame seed.  As usual, soak and sprout one day before steaming in the rice cooker.  Right when it finishes steaming, put a glob of it into a bowl with milk and raisins.

Cake and Eat It Too - wait - "Cake"?

I enjoy all of the after effects from my eating well more than I ever enjoyed eating, and I enjoy eating well too.

Nothing New

I'm never hungry, eating the way I do.  One of the most telling and important indications of a person's diabetic tendency is hunger.  If you aren't hungry and do not have a tendency to overeat, it's a good sign.  Otherwise, better check your blood sugar.

I am not hungry because I get the insulin I need.  Artificially.  And of secondary yet very significant importance, I eat only high-value food.

Without insulin, 'super food only' would do me no good.  Insulin enables digestion, including that of sugars.  Without it, you have more than excess sugar that can't get digested, but also every other vitamin and nutrient.  Thus hunger.  Starvation is a better word for it. 

Before I understood it, and before I had enough insulin,  I ate till the needle pegged and then ate a lot more and then threw up every night.  The feeling of starvation never left, it was constant throughout every day.  For 8 years.

High blood sugar and the damage it does is only one side effect of "Sugar" Diabetes.  The general problem of the disease is seldom discussed.

Most people are Type II though, and I am pretty much Type I, I think.  My doctors were never interested in determining it for certain.  I don't know if it's exactly the same experience with hunger for Type II folks.  I expect it is though.  Type I is inadequate insulin, Type II is insulin resistance, so I would expect the effect to be similar, except that in the case of Type II, the person can reduce their resistance through exercise and diet.  A Type I person can exercise till the cows come home and eat perfectly and they will still starve and suffer sugar damage as much as if they had stayed home on the couch, to the degree that they are insulin deficient.

So based on just my experience, I am certain I am at least predominantly Type I.  Which makes sense because I never lived the life they say causes Type II.

The rare times that my sugar doesn't want to come down, I suspect are times when I am temporarily more Type II than usual, due to lack of exercise or whatever.  I take shot after shot after shot, and it does no good till I get back to normal.  Happens like once a year or whatever.

People notice that the body works overtime to accommodate less-than-perfect discipline, and not when they have had good discipline for a while.  When they've been disciplined and then suddenly fall off the wagon, they hit the road and the rocks a lot harder than when they have been less-than-perfect for a while, and do the same things.  Catches the system off-guard.  I notice it myself.