I believe I genuinely am getting better. I went outside today and did five times as much work as I've done on any other day this summer, and didn't feel absolutely horrible afterwards, for the first time since late last summer--tired, but the right kind of tired, not like I'm totally spent and about to collapse (which is how I felt the whole time I was hiking, too).

I see now that this really started last year, in the final months of my fast. That's when I began not having the strength to get through a day's work--before that, I'd been outside working all day most days of a week, from the time I started my projects. And I actually think the beginnings of it goes back further. I've been reading on it, and one of the key symptoms is inability to lose weight or even weight gain while doing serious diet and exercise. That's what started the whole thing; when I realized after getting my bodyfat checked, that I'd been working really hard at the gym and seriously dieting for over a year without making any progress whatsoever--that's when I started doing the extended fasting, to break through that. But I think now that that was my body already telling me that it was in the beginning stages of overtraining or adrenal fatigue or whatever.