I have no idea if I ever mentioned it on my blog, I love spreadsheets and charts. Back then I learned this in school of course but that was extremely basic. I went more in-depth alone or with help of IT courses for jobs. I still feel this love, you can use spreadsheets and charts for all kind of things. At home I use OpenOffice because it’s free and in my opinion the same as Microsoft Excel. I do keep track of all kind of things in my life and I had to laugh when a therapist said that would sound like OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). That was one out of hundred reasons why I preferred to deal with my depression and anxiety on my own and why I stopped to visit this person. These guys learn something out of a book and come up with wrong assumptions. It’s not that I feel constrained to write things down, it’s just that I love to visualize data as same as I love to look at graphs that other people created. Numbers can be abstract, but if you visualize them, you might spot interesting patterns. When I do for example create charts about my weight loss progress, it’s not because I am forced to do so, it’s rather that I want to see how the big picture looks like, for example after many months of collecting data.
But now I want to talk about sports and nutrition again, or the resulting weight loss like I started here. I did run a lot over the last weeks, and if I didn’t run I was hiking unless the weather was bad, which happened too recently. But yesterday I noticed that I went a bit over the top, when I was running I almost got a strain because I know the signs very well. I felt the typical pain in my muscles, but I still finished my run somehow yesterday. But now I should take it a bit more easy as I still noticed a little bit of pain today, I think my muscles need a break. Every running session I can run longer than previously, because my lungs are getting used to it, but instead my legs or muscles become the problem. I wouldn’t have expected it, because I hike long distances, but hiking and running is probably still very different stress for the muscles. I think this issue will be solved too when I continue, or at least improved, but I am a running beginner and see progress.
Talking about nutrition again, I did drink a lot of water and only a few cups of ice tea on some days. And as I already mentioned, I started to eat more fruits. I’ve never been a great fan of apples, but now I found some that I really like. These apples are more soft and more sweet than sour. I ate two of them every day, and vegetables are on my menu anyway as I love cucumber and tomatoes. Since I still don’t run marathons, I started to believe that drinking water instead of ice tea has the greatest effect on my weight. But I don’t want to say that my running doesn’t show effects, it’s of course a combination of both. But it’s clear, drinking ice tea all-day, even if I mixed it down with 50% water, is not a great idea. With water and more sport I went down from 83.4 kg to 80.5 kg in 19 days, that’s 2.9 kg difference. Fun fact, meanwhile I still enjoyed pizza’s, bread with cheese, cevapcici and a lot of other fatty things and I don’t plan to change that. Here are the charts…
Diary of Dennis 
I can’t recall you mentioning your love of charts and spreadsheets since we have known each other but it doesn’t surprise me because you have an orderly mind. You like to research things and gather information. I don’t think there is anything OCD about liking to create charts. (Says the person who can’t bear large dishes stacked on top of small ones and shelves books by genre and/or author.)
When she said that, it was funny because it reminded me of repairing computers. When you get experience in it, you spot the issues faster but at times it happens that you come up with an assumption based on previous experiences (oh screen is black, the same issue again…), and to your surprise you notice that something else caused it this time. Computers are complex and that happens, but humans are even more complex and if this single answer that I like to write down data and make charts out of it made her assume this, it was maybe a bit too fast too 🙂 Happened to me, happens to others… but as a therapist I’d probably be a bit more careful with hasty diagnoses 😀
You make a good point, I guess we all have a bit of OCD behaviour, that’s human. It’s probably the same like talking about addictions… what is an addiction, if I drink a beer in a month or a beer every day? No, it’s when the beer takes control of my life. I think people that really suffer from OCD have issues to complete tasks because they are over-perfect, and since they can’t complete tasks because of that, it consumes their time so much that they neglect the other tasks for the day. That doesn’t happen in your or my case. I do for example take always, really always a look if I did put the cooker off when I leave my apartment, even if I know I did put this thing off. I am glad that I didn’t tell her too, she would have felt confirmed. But the truth is, both my grandma and my mother taught me to do this. Further, I saw how a neighbors apartment burned down on that way, not funny. So, it takes a second to look again when I leave the apartment, but warrants that apartment doesn’t burn down, at least not on this way.
I am partly orderly yes, but also a bit of a chaos person in many cases. I put my shoes off in the middle of the floor and someone who doesn’t know it could fall over it (laugh), or sometimes there is a t-shirt on the couch because I am too lazy to go 5 meters to put it to the laundry (And Shyna will find it and sleeps on it, haha) and things like that. But as you I have my areas where I can’t stand it if things are not sorted or places well. I think this is normal. I am very orderly as you said with research and information’s, or even a stranger could find a certain paper from 2015 because my ring binders are sorted that well, and as in your case there is a “system” in my kitchen too 🙂