I quite smoking 8 or 9 years ago and within the year my body started to crumble, slowly but steadily if you look at the past decade as a whole, although there were stretches where I trained vigorously and built myself up again - only to crash and continue to wither.

I had always attributed this physical decline of mine to my quitting smoking. I started messing about with tobacco when I was 9 and smoked full-time by 15 or so, and I figured that my body was so used to tobacco that being deprived of it suddenly caused everything to go to hell.

Now I think that my gluten and dairy intolerances started acting up around this time and that they are jointly responsible for this decline, and that the actual cause of my decline is malnourishment (being gluten intolerant causes your body not being able to process the nutrition from the food you eat).

I have lately been experimenting on myself with this regard, knowingly and unknowingly, and the results confirm my current thinking: I believe I am seriously malnourished.

The interesting thing is that no amount of eating will give me the nutrients I get from green juice. If I don't drink green juice for 3-4 days, I do not last a full 60 minute session in the gym. If I juice heavily for 3-4 days, I will last two and possibly three sessions, back to back.

My brain has felt as if it was packed in syrup for the past few days, in fact since my crash last Saturday, and I have been trying to figure out what causes it. Yesterday I realized that I am probably iron deficient. Certainly there is iron in the green juice, and in all the green vegetables I eat but I think I need more. And I remembered beef.

I don't eat much beef anymore, for some reason. I used to eat steak every day or every other day when I was younger - I used it pretty much like people use engergy drinks nowadays - but for the last few years I've hardly touched it. And Greece is a pork country so since I've been here it's been pork.

But yesterday I went to the butcher down on Kanada street and bought a kilo of prime beef that he ground for me, and when I came home I quickly rolled four hamburger paddies and quick-fried them and and ate them with sautéed root vegetables, spinach and rice.

My brain cleared up within the half hour.

Later in the day I juiced 4 kilos of carrots, a bagful of spinach and several heads of leaf lettuce and drank about a liter of this stuff for the remainder of the day. In the Body Pump class in the gym that evening I was in fine form, but I only took one class because I had added weights at all stations, and I was tired - and hungry. I ate fruit and nuts and figs for dinner and a few rice cakes with spinach and walnut paste.

This morning I had green juice, carrot juice and apple juice when I woke up, my breakfast was root vegetables and beef and green juice and some dates. I got up at 5:30 or so and I ate at 6:30 or so and my head has been sharp all morning - until maybe half an hour ago, and I've been wondering what the f*** was wrong with me now...until I realized that I am hungry. I need food. I need beef and green juice and root vegetables and fruit.

I am malnourished, most likely severly malnourished after almost a decade of not being able to process properly the food I eat. But I am getting a handle on this now and I WILL build myself up again and be like I am supposed to be, physically fit as a fiddle and with a brain that is not swathed in liquified cotton. It just takes time...