It used to be that if I ate potato chips, etc I could literally feel myself gaining fat. It wasn't just in my head. It wasn't my imagination. I could simply literally feel it occurring.

In the same way, I could feel protein going to my muscles.

This was back when I was more seriously into lifting weights and eating healthy. This was also when I was into protein stuffing such as is the sad norm for most guys seriously into strength training. I remember when I became vegan that I noticed that soy really didn't work for me. It didn't go to my muscles. Lentils, beans, rice protein, etc did. (Nuts did but (I literally felt) were overwhelmed by the fat action.) But soy didn't. Additional soy led to a strange fatigue and overheating. Some kind of issue my body has with soy which doesn't seem to quite constitue a soy allergy... I guess.

Being able to literally feel junk food turning into fat on my body really reduced the enjoyment I could get out of eating junk food. I don't have that problem now. I've lost such sensitivities. Both concerning junk food and protein. Nowadays anyway I eat maybe 40 grams of protein at most in a day where before I ate 250 on average. And I do eat quite a bit more junk and I do weigh more and have a somewhat lower strength to bodyweight ratio, with a bit more bodyfat and I don't bother as much with weighting lifting.

As I don't feel the junk food turning into fat, I can enjoy eating it a lot more. I do need to ease up though. But still, I really did not enjoy being that sensitive to what my body was doing and I hope to never be that way again.

...I don't know if in general I have some kind of ability to sense myself more than is normal. Maybe.

I keep trying to look into my unconscious (eradicate it) and maybe I'm actually more capable than the norm of sensing what goes on 'there', or maybe I'm just abnormally introspective, at my most emotional moments still somewhat detached and watching myself...

This ability to look into the unconscious, much like literally sensing junk food turning into fat, has some extreme negatives. So much of creativity, for example, originates in the unconscious. Looking in 'there' and seeing the truth of it can so ruin it.

Colin Wilson's The Outsider which I'm currently reading, (and I have my doubts about a lot of what he's going on about) talks about as we move away from mere survival and into more abstract, etc thinking (stuff which is less directly related to survival) we can get a sense of 'unreality', we can become nihilistic. To some extent this is what has been going on with me. Except while I'm ultimately a lot less well read then Colin Wilson was at 24, I think I can talk more concretely about such things then him... The problem is actually wanting to bother doing so, (nihilism, such as he talks about.)

...I can feel my blood as it moves through my body. Certainly not all the time. But if I'm relaxed I can lay in bed and feel my pulse in most parts of my body. My feet, my hands, my head, definitely in my chest. Such isn't so unusual I suppose. It's just a question of degree. I'm pretty sure I feel it more than normal. Although as I've gained weight I think my senses have dulled. Thank God! Because this hypersensitivity has been mostly a negative thing. If nothing else feeling your blood pulse throughout your body makes sleeping difficult.

I don't know to what extent such things are an issue for other people. I know that when I have insomnia my pulse drives me nuts. It is I guess the CNS just too turned on... I guess. This weeks run... (it was a good run. Again I improved. Although this time I didn't actually run any faster (for the first time) but I went the same pace as last week while reducing my intensity back down to not breathing hard at all. And I went 22 minutes farther than last week (2:14). Shall now build up to 3 hour runs.)

But this run left me overheated. I can actually tell whether or not I'm going to have sleep troubles based on how hot my butt feels. If it's nice and cool (the usual) I sleep fine. It was hot. So I took two sleeping pills at 7pm and finally fell asleep at 10:30. So I laid there for quite a while feeling my heart. Absolutely impossible to sleep through it's pounding.

When I was about 8 they told me I had a serious heart defect and would have to have open heart surgery by 14 at the latest. That also I should avoid any physical activity. Hopefully the failing of the aortic valve would be gradual enough that they could do surgery first and hopefully surgery could wait till I was mostly physically mature. But there was a chance it could just totally fail at any moment and I'd just drop dead.

My eccentric stepfather decided we'd ignore their advice. And I was a very active kid. Extremely, abnormally active. Since very young exercising myself till exhaustion just because that was the sort of thing I liked to do.

And I did have chest pain. Sharp pains right over top of my heart. For more than 20 years I had sharp pains here and there while thinking I could drop dead at any moment. (As I write this I'm having a very slightly bit of 'pain' there for the first time in a long time. I think from the four 300 pounders I had to hoist around at the hospital Sunday. Or I hope that's what it is. I hope it's not from the running finally getting to me.)

And the doctors weren't completely wrong. Once while doing partial deadlifts with almost 700 pounds I felt something give in my chest. And then I was extremely fatigued for days afterwards. I finally went to the hospital and my troponin levels were elevated indicating I'd suffered a heart attack. I was admitted and spent a few days with nitro paste, etc on my chest. Then they just discharged me without explaining anything. Shortly after had a stress test where the doctor raved that I had the healthiest heart she had ever seen, no signs of any damage, the most hyperdynamic beating ability she had ever scene. Was I an olympic athlete or something?

But the sharp pains didn't quite seem right to be heart troubles. They corresponded to inhaling. At times they'd get so bad I'd have to just take tiny breaths for 30 minutes or so.

Finally a doctor pointed out that they couldn't have anything to do with my leaky heart valve, while she was showing that indeed I still do have moderate valve leakage. This went along with what I suspected as certain activities which caused a lot of stuff rubbing around in my chest cavity seemed to caused the chest pain to increase. The pains I'd had for 20 years were related to something rubbing/catching when I breathed, not my heart.

But for 20 years I've been worried I could drop dead at any moment. What effect has that had on me? How has that shaped me? I suspect it's played no role whatsoever. But I really don't know.

....In seeming to feel my body better than the norm, in examining my own sub/unconscious, I can't prove anything to anyone else. They can say I'm lying or a bit nuts. They can dismiss whatever I have to say. And, as far as the unconscious I really don't like what I think I've discovered. It is extremely nihilistic. (Next need to get HG Wells book that was dismissed as... nutty, etc.... Where it appears he was talking the same things. That movement at all is illogical, etc.)

...the hypersensitivity led me to conclude when I was 18 that without this physical body, without my mind's awareness of it, I would immediately become something entirely different then what I currently am. That so much of who I am is just a direct result of this mortal shell. And supposing I could exist beyond it, I wouldn't be me anymore at all. That what makes me me is this body. Without it I'm nothing but a speck of awareness. Exactly the same as any other speck of awareness. That speck of awareness without free will, my body serving as the computer program that exactly decided my actions, etc.

But I don't think of such things anymore.