#(i am so salty for forgetting to include my shop link in all other posts :c)
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kotikaleo · 3 months ago
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That's what family means!!!
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HELLL YEAHHHHHHH!!! LET'S GO JOEL!!!!
I am back with last stained glass drawing for now. I am so so hyped to see them irl, sadly they won't be too big, only 6 inches, but I am still hyped as hell to have them in my hands!!!
As always I encourage you to tell me what you thinks, what detail you picked up from drawings, reblog, comment you know the regular and...
If you like what I do please check my shop!!
I am smart, and I have not forgot that I have to advertise myself constantly yeah yeah
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heartofhryule · 7 years ago
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Breath of the Wild: Captured Memories - Chapter 7
Preface and Disclaimer; First and foremost; SPOILER WARNINGS. If you have not played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or completed the Captured Memories Quest and want to stay unspoilered for it, DO NOT READ. Keep Reading link provided for that reason. 
So I am writing these as I play through BotW for the first time - which means they probably won’t be ‘one-a-day’ consistent - I have finally gotten all of the memories, but not yet gone for the final fight at Hyrule Castle. #Soon. I will post them as I can though! Promise! I also plan to include links to the cutscene for you to watch at the bottom, if so desired - at least for the ones I can find. Any other warnings that become necessary, I will add for content as I go. For now, enjoy! [All Chapters here for your reading enjoyment.]
Y’all… Dammit Salty Bird. I got irritated all over again rewatching the scenes to get the dialog for Revali’s scenes. He’s SUCH a well written character... and I hate him. Well, hate is strong. But I really, really dislike him a lot. Even when he “gets better” he’s still a !@#%%^&^er. But, I like this chapter, and I hope you will too. Chapter 7 - Revali’s Flap
The Rito Village, and land surrounding, was genuinely breathtaking. The wood and canvas huts that served as both homes and shops were built around the landscape’s large peaks of sandstone. This design allowed wind to blow through the village unhindered without disrupting structural integrity. At this altitude and in the region, Link was chilled. Pretty much constantly. But, he’d bought some new armor from the nice Rito vendor in trade for some amber and a few sapphires he’d found. Now he was nice and toasty warm.
Sitting by the cooking pot inside a part of the village’s inn, Link stared into the fire as his dinner marinated. He’d been here before. He could feel it, and this was not a place soon forgotten. It might have been if it was the first place he’d come, but even then the striking beauty of the land, difference in architecture, and the colorful individuality of its inhabitants were like nothing else in all of Hyrule.
Maybe that was the opinion of an ignorant Hylian child that he had once been. He had grown up in and around the Zora Domain in the Lanayru Province. This knowledge was coming back to him slowly, and explained why he’d gone there first. It also meant the Zora had never seemed odd to him, though consequently neither had they seemed particularly awe inspiring in a long, long while. The Rito however, were a different story.
Ladelling out his dinner from the pot, simmered fruit for the moment as he was cold, tired and in need of foraging for some supplies, Link leaned back against the solid wood support beam of the hut. Simmered fruit made him think of his mother - now that he remembered her face. She made the best, and had taught him long ago. It always made him feel better.
He needed that right now. There was a long way to go for him to find all the locations in Zelda’s album, and take back control of two more Divine Beasts from Ganon. He was tired, and had only arrived less than an hour before, deciding that he was going to eat something before speaking with the Tribe Chief. In the sky overhead, Vah Medoh let out a shrill and bone chilling cry. The enormous ancient technology flew overhead in the shape of a bird, stone and metal kept aloft by gigantic propellers and magic. Glancing up, and giving a good, long look at the Calamitous energies pulsing through the construct, Link ate his simmered fruit quickly.
No rest for the weary, as it were.
After eating, he asked directions to speak with the Rito Chief and had the oddest interaction. It was as though the Chief could tell he was the fallen hero, but couldn’t accept it. Link had stopped bothering to try and explain it to people months ago at this point. He was told of Teba, and that perhaps the warrior could help him, if nothing else the Chief was worried.
But it was the following conversation with Teba’s wife that ignited something in Link. She showed him Revali’s Landing, a flight platform just outside her home named for the Champion of the Rito from a century ago. Looking at it, Link was taken by a memory.
***
Standing out on the center of the flight platform, Link craned his neck and shielded his eyes to look up at the impressive Vah Medoh high above him. It truly was an impressive piece of ancient technology, and he’d listened intently to Zelda lament at great length that she would never be able to set foot on such a marvel. The sky was the clearest blue surrounding the Divine Beast, and wind cool despite the sun’s warmth. But then, it was always cool in the Hebra region.
Just as Link had the thought he should probably go find the Rito Champion, as that was whom he had climbed the peaks to see on behalf of Zelda, the wind picked up. At first it was small, but it rapidly build to a steady cyclonic breeze that seemed to come from beneath the platform.
In the blink of an eye and the flash of dark grey feathers, the Rito Champion appeared from below. Shooting up into the air high above, Revali spread his charcoal and white feathered wings, gliding down to a light and graceful landing before Link.
“Impressive, I know,” the Rito archer said in his normal, smug tenor. “Very few can achieve mastery of the sky. Yet I have made an art of creating an updraft that allows me to soar. It’s considered to be quite the masterpiece of aerial techniques, even among the Rito.” Revali turned to pose dramatically, one wing lifted where he was backlit by the sun in the beautiful day.
Link managed to not roll his eyes at Revali’s grandiloquence, giving him a tight-lipped smile. Revali didn’t like him - Link knew this. The Rito felt within his superior self image that he should have been the Princess’s appointed knight as he was clearly the most capable and worthy of the Champions. Clearly.
Though the Rito had never said those words exactly, it was the undertone of every word, sneer, snort and action the Champion took while in Link’s presence to date. Somehow the Hylian knight had a feeling this interaction would be no different.
Link found Revali cutting him a sharp look, speaking again before the knight could give a syllable of proper greeting. “With the proper utilization of my superior skills, I see no reason why we couldn’t easily dispense with Ganon,” be boasted with a bow. Hopping down from the railing on which he’d perched, Revali tucked his wings behind his back as if about to give a dissertation (which Link had no doubt he was going to do just that). Strolling forward, Revali’s expression was one of barely contained detestation. “Now then, my ability to explored the firmament is certainly of note… But let’s not- and pardon me for being so blunt-” he said as his tone changed from fairly condescending to outright patronizing, “Let’s not forget the fact that I am the most skilled archer of all the Rito.”
“Oh here we go,” Link muttered to himself into the wind.
“Yet despite these truths, it seems I have been tapped to merely assist  you. All because you happen to have that little darkness sealing sword on your back. I mean, it’s just… asinine.” The only thing that prevented Link from drawing his sword then and there and teaching this megalomaniac of a Rito a lesson, was self control. As Revali’s red-feather rimmed, green eyes cut snidely to him, Link crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. The absurdity of this entire monologue was as laughable as it was insulting. Clearly, Revali liked hear the sound of his own voice.
“Unless,” the Rito Champion added after a moment, “You think you can prove me wrong?” He took one large step closer to Link. The bird man who was a good head taller than the Hylian leaned in, beak to nose and invading Link’s personal space aggressively. “Maybe, we should just settle this one on one.”
Link opened his mouth to say that he had no problem with Revali… not until this conversation at least, but the archer turned away and continued his drama. “But where?” he asked the wind, one wing crossed his chest as the other pretended to stroke his beak in thought. “Oh, I know! How’bout up there?!”
With a grand sweep of one wing, Revali motioned to the sky, where Vah Medoh was soaring past, making its rounds. “Oh! You must  pardon me,” Revali chuckled, his tone even more supercilious than before, “I forgot you have no way of making it up to that Divine Beast on your own.” The last words were spoken with actual open aggression as the Champion spread his wings sharply, and took to the skies, leaving Link behind on the platform.
As Revali grew smaller towards Vah Medoh, and the vision began to fade, the Rito’s parting jab echoed the skies. “Good luck sealing the Darkness!”
***
As he came back to himself, Link was being stared at oddly by Teba’s concerned wife. Apparently she’d asked if he was alright, while he’d been lost to the past. “Oh, I’m sorry, yes - thank you ma’am.”
Giving him an uncertain look, she touched a delicate wing to her beak. “If you’re sure… you seemed… angry? Irritated at least. Are you well?”
Cracking his neck at the legitimate frustration Revali’s personality had left him with, he nodded. “It was… just not a pleasant memory, ma’am. Sorry to space out like that- but I promise, I will find your husband, and bring him back alive.
“Oh thank you!” she said sincerely. “Please… be safe.”
---
The knight held his shoulder and looked around the topside of Vah Medoh. The Windblight Ganon creature that had held control of Vah Medoh for so long was gone, fallen to the Master Sword. Well the Master Sword, and a not insignificant amount of bomb arrows.
Staring at the Main Control panel ten yards from where he stood, injured and exhausted, Link smirked to himself. He should just sit down, right here, and bake some apples to eat so he could regain a bit of his strength. It had been a hard fight! It had taken a lot out of him! And Revali could sit around and complain all he wanted, since there wasn’t anything the spirit of the Rito Champion could do about it.
He deserved as much for the prickly and haughty manner in which he’d been speaking while Link tried to subvert Ganon’s corruption. Though the change in tone as the hylian’s repeated successes went on had not gone unnoticed by the knight.
No, No Link wouldn’t keep him waiting… that would have been cruel. With a sigh, Link closed the distance between himself and the Main Controls, setting the Shiekah slate on the tablet as he had so many times elsewhere. The bulb, large as a room and intricate with ancient energy, changed from orange to blue, and pulsed once… twice… three times as Vah Medoh was not returned to control of the Champions.
“Well I’ll be plucked,” Revali’s echoic, ethereal voice said from behind him, “You defeated him, eh?” Link cut his eyes over his shoulder and turned around, braced for a potentially long and self absorbed speech. There Revali stood, incorporeal as both Daruk and Mipha had been, green spirit fire dancing around him where he had just landed. Spreading his wings wide, Revali seemed reserved… for Revali. “Who would have thought?”
Looking at each other a long moment, Link felt… differently than he had before. Mipha and Daruk had been his friends, people he cared a great deal for. Revali and he had not been friend, and even actively disliked one another a century ago. And yet, there was still a sadness in Link’s heart, seeing the Rito Champion’s spirit.
Noting that the archer dropped his gaze and looked away before he spoke, the Rito’s next words were surprising to the hylian. “Well done.”
But Revali continued, and the moment was over. “I suppose I should thank you now that my spirit is free. This returns Medoh to its rightful owner.” With a grand gesture to the sky of one wing, Revali straightened, clearly meaning himself. “Hmph,” he added with a callous expression. “Don’t preen yourself just for doing our job.”
Link pressed his lips together and raised one eyebrow. “Oh yes. We could never have that from any Champion,” he mumbled sardonically. If Revali heard, he didn’t show it.
“I do suppose you’ve proven your value as a warrior. A warrior worthy of my unique ability. The sacred skill that I have dubbed Revali’s Gale!” Despite the posing and flapping of wings, Link forgave the Champion’s drama in the face of the nicest thing  Revali had ever said about or to him.
With yet another set of dramatic movements, Revali’s spirit summoned and sent an orb of green spirit energy hurtling at Link, and as it entered him body, a familiar, strong whirlwind kicked up, lifting Link from his feet and tossing him into the air quite unexpectedly. With a flip and twist, Link landed without injury on one knee, and looked back up to the Rito… in gratitude.
“It’s now time to move on and start making preparations for Medoh’s strike on Ganon. But,” Rivalli gave a small smirk, “Only if you think you’ll still need my help while fighting inside Hyrule Castle.” It wasn’t an apology, but even a small admission that he’d been wrong so long ago was enough to inspire forgiveness entirely in Link’s heart. Revali quickly ruined the moment again by added, “Feel free to thank me now.”
Rolling his eyes, Link noticed the now familiar gold light that meant his time on the Divine Beast was over, and was shocked to hear Revali say, “Or.. .nevermind. Just go. Your job is far from finished you know.” The Rito Champion was glancing at him sidelong. Finally turning away and lifting his beak to the sun, Link was fading away already when he heard the final words of his old self appointed rival.
“The Princess has been waiting an awful long time.” Revali’s Flap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMVZikgnNE Freeing Vah Medoh - https://youtu.be/uxP8BqemAvc?t=1413
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jerrytackettca · 6 years ago
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The Science of Emotional Eating and Food Addiction
Emotional eating and food addiction are very real problems, and the former can easily lead to the latter. While emotional eating is a universal phenomenon and won’t do any significant harm in the short term, if you find yourself reaching for comfort foods on a regular basis, it can lead to significant problems, both physical and psychological.
Physically, emotional eating can lead to obesity and related health problems, and psychologically, it may delay or prevent you from addressing your true emotions and sources of stress. As clinical psychologist Susan Albers told Huffington Post, “ … [E]ating to avoid facing feelings is like putting a ‘Band-Aid on a broken arm.’”1
The Chemicals Involved in Emotional Eating
Your emotions and food intake both result in a cascade of biochemical reactions, and these chemicals can have a potent effect. As explained in Dr. Pamela Peeke’s book, “The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction,” the neurotransmitter dopamine is a critical player in all forms of addiction, including food addiction.
The stress hormone cortisol and the neurotransmitter serotonin also play important roles. As reported by the Huffington Post:2
“Cortisol is our main stress hormone, triggering our fight-or-flight instinct. It also regulates how our bodies use carbohydrates, fats and proteins. So if we’re stressed or anxious and cortisol kicks in, that can make us want to carbo-load.
‘When we’re stressed, our bodies are flooded in cortisol,’ said … Albers. ‘That makes us crave sugary, fatty, salty foods.’ Then there’s dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with learning about rewards. It kicks into gear at the promise that something positive is about to happen, like eating a food you love.
The comfort foods we turn to because they taste so good give us a surge of dopamine, Albers said, and we look for that high again and again … And let’s not forget serotonin, aka “the happy chemical” … serotonin itself isn’t in food — but tryptophan, an amino acid necessary to produce serotonin, is.
Famously associated with turkey, tryptophan is also found in cheese … Carbs can also boost serotonin levels, which can improve your mood, and chocolate, too, is linked to a serotonin spike.”
Comfort Foods Lower Cortisol Levels in Highly Stressed Individuals
According to the experts on eating disorders interviewed by Huffington Post, emotional eating is primarily triggered by stress and boredom. Essentially, the act of eating “gives us something to do. It fills our time, gives us a way to procrastinate,” Albers says.
Research3 published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2011 confirms the stress-reducing influence of comfort foods, showing that calorie-dense foods trigger the accumulation of mesenteric fat — a main contributor to abdominal obesity — which inhibits hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis activity.
The HPA axis is your primary stress response system that links your central nervous system and endocrine system together.4 According to the researchers, “long-term adaptation to chronic stress in the face of dense calories result in greater visceral fat accumulation (via ingestion of calorie-dense food), which in turn modulates HPA axis response, resulting in lower cortisol levels.”
Put another way, eating a lot of comfort food lowers your stress response. Unfortunately, it also leads to unhealthy fat accumulation. If you’re like most, you don’t reach for apples or carrots when in a funk. Comfort foods by and large tend to be unhealthy, with cake, cookies, ice cream and chips being among the more common.
Food Versus Feelings
Over time, eating becomes associated with emotional relief; it’s a way to temporarily distance yourself from emotional discomfort and dampen your experience of stress. Karen R. Koenig, a licensed clinical social worker and expert on eating psychology told Huffington Post:5
“There’s conscious and unconscious emotional discomfort. Sometimes we know [what we’re feeling], sometimes we don’t — we just feel uneasy or not happy, and we don’t deal with that. Instead, we just eat.
Then we get what we know we’ll have: shame, remorse, regret. We trade in the first discomfort, which is maybe unfamiliar and something we’re more frightened of, for the familiar feelings that come after emotional eating.”
Comfort Foods Are Associated With Positive Memories
An interesting study published in 20156 found that people reach for comfort foods when they feel isolated in some way, because the food in question reminds them of a strong emotional relationship they once had. Highlights from this study include the findings that:
Comfort food is associated with relationships (it has “social utility”)
Feeling isolated predicted how much people enjoy comfort food
Threatened belonging led those with secure attachment7 to enjoy comfort food more
Here, a group of undergraduate students at the State University of New York at Buffalo were asked to recall a time when a close relationship was under threat, or a moment when they felt alienated and alone. Another group was not given this instruction.
Afterward, the group that was instructed to think back on an emotionally stressful time were found to be more likely to eat comfort foods, and they rated the tastiness of those foods higher than the group that were not eating to dampen their emotions. Huffington Post notes:8
“Think about all the happy and comforting memories you have involving food. Maybe your family used to celebrate occasions with a trip to the ice cream shop, or maybe your mom or dad used to soften the blow of a bad day with macaroni and cheese. When you’re feeling rejected or anxious today, eating one of those foods is an instant connection to that soothing time.”
How to Separate Your Emotions From Your Eating
If emotional eating strikes now and then, it probably will not cause you any harm. The real danger lies in chronic emotional eating, which can undermine your health and emotional well-being. So, what can you do? According to the experts interviewed by Huffington Post, it’s important to separate your emotions from your food intake. Huffington Post writes:
“To start with, we have to remember food’s true purpose — to nourish us. In fact, Koenig suggests that the term ‘comfort food’ itself could be part of the problem. ‘A misleading misnomer if there ever was one, comfort is not something we want to keep associating with food,’ Koenig said.
‘We want to file food in our brains under nourishment and occasional pleasure. We want to seek comfort through friends, doing kind things for ourselves and engaging in healthy activities that reduce internal distress. As soon as you start looking for food, stop,’ Allen advised.
‘Think, ‘Am I hungry? Do I need food in my stomach, or is one of my triggers going off? What do I need right now?’’ Both Albers and Koenig said that we should ask ourselves if we’re actually hungry for food or if we need some other action to treat what we’re feeling.”
Journaling is one option. Allen suggests writing down what you eat, why and when, to help you identify emotional eating patterns. Another suggestion offered by Koenig is to think in terms of a yes/no flow chart. Ask yourself questions such as “Am I hungry? What do I want to eat right now? What am I feeling?”
If you find that your search for food is triggered by a negative emotion, find a more constructive way to address it. The concept of mindful eating can also be helpful. When you eat, really focus on the act of eating. As noted in the featured article:9
“What good is even the most delicious treat if you’re so emotionally distracted that you’re just eating and eating to the point where you can’t even taste it anymore, and you’ve ignored the signs of fullness to the point of discomfort?
When we eat, the goal is to sit down and really experience that meal and its flavors, and be aware of when we’re full … We can enjoy our cookies every now and then, but we should try to eat them for the pleasure of eating a cookie and not as a form of self-therapy.”
Food Addiction — Another Debilitating Problem
Unchecked emotional eating can easily transition into food addiction. Not only is the emotional component driving the behavior, but comfort foods such as cookies and ice cream are also loaded with addictive substances — sugar being one of the main ones. But even in the absence of emotional eating, food addiction can be a problem.
The correlation between food addiction and recreational drug addiction is actually quite striking, and probably stronger than most people suspect. Researchers have found a high degree of overlap exists between brain regions involved in processing rewards, be it sweets or addictive drugs.10
Not only can sugar and sweets substitute for drugs like cocaine, in terms of how your brain reacts to them, they can be even more rewarding.11 The dramatic effects of sugar on your brain may explain why you may have difficultly controlling your consumption of sugary foods when continuously exposed to them.
Neuroendocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, has for years warned of the addictive dangers of sugar, and its impact on your health and weight.12
Added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names,13 and this abundance of sugar in the diet is what fuels food cravings and addiction, which in turn can take a significant toll on your health, and in a relatively short amount of time.
One of Lustig’s studies14 demonstrated that reducing added sugars from an average of 27 percent of daily calories down to about 10 percent improved biomarkers associated with health in as little as 10 days, even when overall calorie count and percentage of carbohydrates remained the same.
The Science of Food Addiction
Research by addiction psychiatrist Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), has shed much-needed light on how food addiction develops.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, which offer high quality views of the brain, Volkow was able to show that when dopamine links to its receptor, called D2, immediate changes take place in your brain cells, causing you to experience a “hit” of pleasure and reward.
While just about any food can trigger pleasure, only the “hyperpalatables,” foods high in refined sugar, salt and fat, tend to lead to addiction when consumed regularly. The reason for this has to do with your body’s innate survival instinct.
As explained by Peeke, the primary directive of your mind and body is survival, and it will go through some interesting adaptations when survival is threatened. When you indulge in too much of hyperstimulators, be it cocaine, sugar, alcohol or sex, your brain’s reward center notes that you’re overstimulated, which the brain perceives as not good for your survival, and so it compensates by decreasing your sense of pleasure and reward.
It does this by downregulating your D2 receptors, basically eliminating some of them. But this survival strategy creates another problem, because now you don’t feel anywhere near the pleasure and reward you once had when you began your addiction, no matter whether it’s food or drugs.
As a result, you develop tolerance, which means that you want more and more of your fix but never achieve the same “high” you once had. All the while, the addictive cravings grow stronger. Volkow’s work also revealed that the changes taking place in the brains of drug addicts are identical to those occurring in people addicted to food.
Regardless of the source of the addiction, you see very little dopamine bonding with its D2 receptors in the brain, as their numbers have been drastically decreased due to continued exposure to the addictive substance/process. Importantly, Volkow also found that addiction affects your frontal cortex, often referred to as “the CEO of the brain.”
Your frontal cortex is in charge of impulse control, irritability, impatience, strategic planning and more — all the things that figuratively go out the window during withdrawal and addiction. This is why addicts feel so out of control, and why addiction is so difficult to break.
Early Trauma Primes Your Brain for Future Addiction
Experiencing abuse (e.g., physical, emotional, sexual), neglect or other trauma during the formative years of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood can also significantly affect your frontal cortex, thereby making you more susceptible to addiction.
Peeke cites research by Susan Mason, assistant professor at Harvard University, which showed that women who had the highest levels of abuse during childhood had a 90 percent increased incidence of food addiction. In her book, Peeke also talks about the role of epigenetics, noting there’s a “sweet spot” between the ages of 8 and 13 when your genome is particularly vulnerable to epigenetic influence.
If you’re wondering whether you may have an issue with food and addiction, there is now a published and credentialed assessment you can take called the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Peeke provides a short and long version of this test in “The Hunger Fix.” She also has a quick and easy online food addiction test on her website.15
How to Break Your Sugar Addiction
Fortunately, there are solutions to unhealthy junk food cravings. Two of the most effective strategies I know of are intermittent fasting and a cyclical ketogenic diet focused on real, whole foods. These strategies will effectively help reset your body's metabolism and boost your body’s production of healing ketones, and your cravings for sugar will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether, once your body starts burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel.
Ideally, for best results, you’ll want to do intermittent fasting and a cyclical ketogenic diet in combination. You can find more information about nutritional ketosis and how to implement a cyclical ketogenic diet in my previous articles “Burn Fat for Fuel,” and “A Beginner’s Guide to the Ketogenic Diet.” For more information about intermittent fasting, see “Top 22 Intermittent Fasting Benefits.”
Another helpful technique, which addresses the emotional component of food cravings, is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). If you maintain negative thoughts and feelings about yourself while trying to take physical steps to improve your body, you're unlikely to succeed.
Fine-tuning your brain to "positive" mode is absolutely imperative to achieve optimal physical health. While traditional psychological approaches may sometimes work, EFT has shown to be a far better, not to mention inexpensive, solution.
If you feel that your emotions or your own self-image may be your own worst enemy when it comes to altering your relationship with food, I highly recommend you read my free EFT manual and consider trying EFT on your own. A version of EFT specifically geared toward combating sugar cravings is called Turbo Tapping.
For further instructions, please see the article, "Turbo Tapping: How to Get Rid of Your Soda Addiction." In the video above, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman also demonstrates how to use EFT to fight food cravings of all kinds.
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/03/07/emotional-eating-food-addiction.aspx
source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/the-science-of-emotional-eating-and-food-addiction
0 notes
paullassiterca · 6 years ago
Text
The Science of Emotional Eating and Food Addiction
Emotional eating and food addiction are very real problems, and the former can easily lead to the latter. While emotional eating is a universal phenomenon and won’t do any significant harm in the short term, if you find yourself reaching for comfort foods on a regular basis, it can lead to significant problems, both physical and psychological.
Physically, emotional eating can lead to obesity and related health problems, and psychologically, it may delay or prevent you from addressing your true emotions and sources of stress. As clinical psychologist Susan Albers told Huffington Post, “ … [E]ating to avoid facing feelings is like putting a ‘Band-Aid on a broken arm.’”1
The Chemicals Involved in Emotional Eating
Your emotions and food intake both result in a cascade of biochemical reactions, and these chemicals can have a potent effect. As explained in Dr. Pamela Peeke’s book, “The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction,” the neurotransmitter dopamine is a critical player in all forms of addiction, including food addiction.
The stress hormone cortisol and the neurotransmitter serotonin also play important roles. As reported by the Huffington Post:2
“Cortisol is our main stress hormone, triggering our fight-or-flight instinct. It also regulates how our bodies use carbohydrates, fats and proteins. So if we’re stressed or anxious and cortisol kicks in, that can make us want to carbo-load.
‘When we’re stressed, our bodies are flooded in cortisol,’ said … Albers. ‘That makes us crave sugary, fatty, salty foods.’ Then there’s dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with learning about rewards. It kicks into gear at the promise that something positive is about to happen, like eating a food you love.
The comfort foods we turn to because they taste so good give us a surge of dopamine, Albers said, and we look for that high again and again … And let’s not forget serotonin, aka “the happy chemical” … serotonin itself isn’t in food — but tryptophan, an amino acid necessary to produce serotonin, is.
Famously associated with turkey, tryptophan is also found in cheese … Carbs can also boost serotonin levels, which can improve your mood, and chocolate, too, is linked to a serotonin spike.”
Comfort Foods Lower Cortisol Levels in Highly Stressed Individuals
According to the experts on eating disorders interviewed by Huffington Post, emotional eating is primarily triggered by stress and boredom. Essentially, the act of eating “gives us something to do. It fills our time, gives us a way to procrastinate,” Albers says.
Research3 published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2011 confirms the stress-reducing influence of comfort foods, showing that calorie-dense foods trigger the accumulation of mesenteric fat — a main contributor to abdominal obesity — which inhibits hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis activity.
The HPA axis is your primary stress response system that links your central nervous system and endocrine system together.4 According to the researchers, “long-term adaptation to chronic stress in the face of dense calories result in greater visceral fat accumulation (via ingestion of calorie-dense food), which in turn modulates HPA axis response, resulting in lower cortisol levels.”
Put another way, eating a lot of comfort food lowers your stress response. Unfortunately, it also leads to unhealthy fat accumulation. If you’re like most, you don’t reach for apples or carrots when in a funk. Comfort foods by and large tend to be unhealthy, with cake, cookies, ice cream and chips being among the more common.
Food Versus Feelings
Over time, eating becomes associated with emotional relief; it’s a way to temporarily distance yourself from emotional discomfort and dampen your experience of stress. Karen R. Koenig, a licensed clinical social worker and expert on eating psychology told Huffington Post:5
“There’s conscious and unconscious emotional discomfort. Sometimes we know [what we’re feeling], sometimes we don’t — we just feel uneasy or not happy, and we don’t deal with that. Instead, we just eat.
Then we get what we know we’ll have: shame, remorse, regret. We trade in the first discomfort, which is maybe unfamiliar and something we’re more frightened of, for the familiar feelings that come after emotional eating.”
Comfort Foods Are Associated With Positive Memories
An interesting study published in 20156 found that people reach for comfort foods when they feel isolated in some way, because the food in question reminds them of a strong emotional relationship they once had. Highlights from this study include the findings that:
Comfort food is associated with relationships (it has “social utility”)
Feeling isolated predicted how much people enjoy comfort food
Threatened belonging led those with secure attachment7to enjoy comfort food more
Here, a group of undergraduate students at the State University of New York at Buffalo were asked to recall a time when a close relationship was under threat, or a moment when they felt alienated and alone. Another group was not given this instruction.
Afterward, the group that was instructed to think back on an emotionally stressful time were found to be more likely to eat comfort foods, and they rated the tastiness of those foods higher than the group that were not eating to dampen their emotions. Huffington Post notes:8
“Think about all the happy and comforting memories you have involving food. Maybe your family used to celebrate occasions with a trip to the ice cream shop, or maybe your mom or dad used to soften the blow of a bad day with macaroni and cheese. When you’re feeling rejected or anxious today, eating one of those foods is an instant connection to that soothing time.”
How to Separate Your Emotions From Your Eating
If emotional eating strikes now and then, it probably will not cause you any harm. The real danger lies in chronic emotional eating, which can undermine your health and emotional well-being. So, what can you do? According to the experts interviewed by Huffington Post, it’s important to separate your emotions from your food intake. Huffington Post writes:
“To start with, we have to remember food’s true purpose — to nourish us. In fact, Koenig suggests that the term ‘comfort food’ itself could be part of the problem. ‘A misleading misnomer if there ever was one, comfort is not something we want to keep associating with food,’ Koenig said.
‘We want to file food in our brains under nourishment and occasional pleasure. We want to seek comfort through friends, doing kind things for ourselves and engaging in healthy activities that reduce internal distress. As soon as you start looking for food, stop,’ Allen advised.
‘Think, ‘Am I hungry? Do I need food in my stomach, or is one of my triggers going off? What do I need right now?’’ Both Albers and Koenig said that we should ask ourselves if we’re actually hungry for food or if we need some other action to treat what we’re feeling.”
Journaling is one option. Allen suggests writing down what you eat, why and when, to help you identify emotional eating patterns. Another suggestion offered by Koenig is to think in terms of a yes/no flow chart. Ask yourself questions such as “Am I hungry? What do I want to eat right now? What am I feeling?”
If you find that your search for food is triggered by a negative emotion, find a more constructive way to address it. The concept of mindful eating can also be helpful. When you eat, really focus on the act of eating. As noted in the featured article:9
“What good is even the most delicious treat if you’re so emotionally distracted that you’re just eating and eating to the point where you can’t even taste it anymore, and you’ve ignored the signs of fullness to the point of discomfort?
When we eat, the goal is to sit down and really experience that meal and its flavors, and be aware of when we’re full … We can enjoy our cookies every now and then, but we should try to eat them for the pleasure of eating a cookie and not as a form of self-therapy.”
Food Addiction — Another Debilitating Problem
Unchecked emotional eating can easily transition into food addiction. Not only is the emotional component driving the behavior, but comfort foods such as cookies and ice cream are also loaded with addictive substances — sugar being one of the main ones. But even in the absence of emotional eating, food addiction can be a problem.
The correlation between food addiction and recreational drug addiction is actually quite striking, and probably stronger than most people suspect. Researchers have found a high degree of overlap exists between brain regions involved in processing rewards, be it sweets or addictive drugs.10
Not only can sugar and sweets substitute for drugs like cocaine, in terms of how your brain reacts to them, they can be even more rewarding.11 The dramatic effects of sugar on your brain may explain why you may have difficultly controlling your consumption of sugary foods when continuously exposed to them.
Neuroendocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, has for years warned of the addictive dangers of sugar, and its impact on your health and weight.12
Added sugars hide in 74 percent of processed foods under more than 60 different names,13 and this abundance of sugar in the diet is what fuels food cravings and addiction, which in turn can take a significant toll on your health, and in a relatively short amount of time.
One of Lustig’s studies14 demonstrated that reducing added sugars from an average of 27 percent of daily calories down to about 10 percent improved biomarkers associated with health in as little as 10 days, even when overall calorie count and percentage of carbohydrates remained the same.
The Science of Food Addiction
Research by addiction psychiatrist Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), has shed much-needed light on how food addiction develops.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, which offer high quality views of the brain, Volkow was able to show that when dopamine links to its receptor, called D2, immediate changes take place in your brain cells, causing you to experience a “hit” of pleasure and reward.
While just about any food can trigger pleasure, only the “hyperpalatables,” foods high in refined sugar, salt and fat, tend to lead to addiction when consumed regularly. The reason for this has to do with your body’s innate survival instinct.
As explained by Peeke, the primary directive of your mind and body is survival, and it will go through some interesting adaptations when survival is threatened. When you indulge in too much of hyperstimulators, be it cocaine, sugar, alcohol or sex, your brain’s reward center notes that you’re overstimulated, which the brain perceives as not good for your survival, and so it compensates by decreasing your sense of pleasure and reward.
It does this by downregulating your D2 receptors, basically eliminating some of them. But this survival strategy creates another problem, because now you don’t feel anywhere near the pleasure and reward you once had when you began your addiction, no matter whether it’s food or drugs.
As a result, you develop tolerance, which means that you want more and more of your fix but never achieve the same “high” you once had. All the while, the addictive cravings grow stronger. Volkow’s work also revealed that the changes taking place in the brains of drug addicts are identical to those occurring in people addicted to food.
Regardless of the source of the addiction, you see very little dopamine bonding with its D2 receptors in the brain, as their numbers have been drastically decreased due to continued exposure to the addictive substance/process. Importantly, Volkow also found that addiction affects your frontal cortex, often referred to as “the CEO of the brain.”
Your frontal cortex is in charge of impulse control, irritability, impatience, strategic planning and more — all the things that figuratively go out the window during withdrawal and addiction. This is why addicts feel so out of control, and why addiction is so difficult to break.
Early Trauma Primes Your Brain for Future Addiction
Experiencing abuse (e.g., physical, emotional, sexual), neglect or other trauma during the formative years of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood can also significantly affect your frontal cortex, thereby making you more susceptible to addiction.
Peeke cites research by Susan Mason, assistant professor at Harvard University, which showed that women who had the highest levels of abuse during childhood had a 90 percent increased incidence of food addiction. In her book, Peeke also talks about the role of epigenetics, noting there’s a “sweet spot” between the ages of 8 and 13 when your genome is particularly vulnerable to epigenetic influence.
If you’re wondering whether you may have an issue with food and addiction, there is now a published and credentialed assessment you can take called the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Peeke provides a short and long version of this test in “The Hunger Fix.” She also has a quick and easy online food addiction test on her website.15
How to Break Your Sugar Addiction
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Fortunately, there are solutions to unhealthy junk food cravings. Two of the most effective strategies I know of are intermittent fasting and a cyclical ketogenic diet focused on real, whole foods. These strategies will effectively help reset your body’s metabolism and boost your body’s production of healing ketones, and your cravings for sugar will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether, once your body starts burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel.
Ideally, for best results, you’ll want to do intermittent fasting and a cyclical ketogenic diet in combination. You can find more information about nutritional ketosis and how to implement a cyclical ketogenic diet in my previous articles “Burn Fat for Fuel,” and “A Beginner’s Guide to the Ketogenic Diet.” For more information about intermittent fasting, see “Top 22 Intermittent Fasting Benefits.”
Another helpful technique, which addresses the emotional component of food cravings, is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). If you maintain negative thoughts and feelings about yourself while trying to take physical steps to improve your body, you’re unlikely to succeed.
Fine-tuning your brain to “positive” mode is absolutely imperative to achieve optimal physical health. While traditional psychological approaches may sometimes work, EFT has shown to be a far better, not to mention inexpensive, solution.
If you feel that your emotions or your own self-image may be your own worst enemy when it comes to altering your relationship with food, I highly recommend you read my free EFT manual and consider trying EFT on your own. A version of EFT specifically geared toward combating sugar cravings is called Turbo Tapping.
For further instructions, please see the article, “Turbo Tapping: How to Get Rid of Your Soda Addiction.” In the video above, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman also demonstrates how to use EFT to fight food cravings of all kinds.
from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/03/07/emotional-eating-food-addiction.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/183283738366
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tebbyclinic11 · 7 years ago
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Trader Joe’s Newest Products in 2018, Reviewed
New Post has been published on http://kitchengadgetsreviews.com/trader-joes-newest-products-in-2018-reviewed/
Trader Joe’s Newest Products in 2018, Reviewed
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Trader Joe’s has it all figured out. The new products, they just keep coming. We’re on a hare-brained mission to try every new product at TJ’s in 2018. Trying. A noble pursuit, a “good use of time,” “what is this, an ad?”, call it what you will. New this week—Valentines gummies, coconut clusters of fun, pretty good chicken sausage, and more.
Organic Oven Roasted Turkey Breast, $4.99These floppy shingles of roasted turkey are a lunch meat staple, though I’ve never tried to bind two pieces of paper with them. Instead, I roll them with sliced Swiss cheese and dip them in mustard like the grown adult person with an expired license I am. A subtle, roasted flavor elevates the turkey from its natural state of taste (soggy meat Kleenex) to a whisper of Thanksgiving leftovers. Good product. Reliable sandwich material. Real meat. Gluten-free. Protein. Precisely circular. Not salami.
Gummy Xs & Os, $2.99In time for Valentine’s Day, we have a big bag of gummies. The ”natural flavors” flavor reminds me of rosé–supposedly grapefruit, strawberry, and mixed berry—but they all blend together to me in the way you’re pretty sure gummy bears are different flavors for different colors but are they, really?? All I know is that the Xs taste better than Os. The big downside–sorry, gummy enthusiasts—is that the texture is too soft. Like that moment you’re making out with your Valentine and finally come to terms with the fact that he’s a body pillow named Ted. Gummies need a little bit of chew, some struggle, a reminder that it’s not gonna be easy all the time. A nice metaphor for love if you ask me.
Electric Buzz Coffee Cups, $5.49I drink coffee the old-fashioned way—by pouring off-boiling water into a filter directly in my mouth—so I enlisted a guest reviewer for these TJ branded K-cups that are supposedly EXTRA CAFFEINATED! “It’s no special cup of mud,” texted my friend Keith, a man who puts plastic cups in a machine expecting roasted bean juice to come out. BA’s Alex Delany described these coffee pods like he does beer, ridiculously: “It tastes like someone walked across your tongue with brand new dad sneakers on. Rubber soles.” Did he really need to offend all of dadkind like that? Probably yes.
Organic Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage, $5.99Like many chicken sausages, it tastes like chicken sausage. Throw in some garlic powder and basil particles and poof, Italian. Out of the package, they have a slimy smooth, bouncy hot dog texture because the casing has been removed. I don’t get how this works, but I‘ll try anything once. A sweet, kind cashier with a striking resemblance to my Uncle Manny (RIP) said he loves to make sausage and peppers with them, so that’s what I did. I mean, we’re practically family. The sausages are smaller side, more the size of Ball Park Franks, and crisp up in the pan as intended. Two people in my household ate the entire package of five links, dipping each bite in mustard and trying to find something more meaningful to say about something as mundane as chicken sausage. Notes of peppercorn tingle the tastebuds. Solidly Not Bad.
Coconut Sesame Seed Clusters, $1.99These are little shards that aren’t quite granola and yet aren’t anything else. Purgatory snacks! They’re crunchy pieces of toasted coconut covered in sesame seeds, sealed together with coconut sugar and tapioca syrup. Okay so they’re candy. Serving suggestions include: casually eating out of a hollowed coconut shell, on ice cream, but more likely, by the handful until you read the nutrition facts and realize the bag is empty but hey, at least they’re gluten-free? If this isn’t impulse purchase material, I don’t know what is.
Previously
The Week of January 22
Churro Bites, $2.49The only thing these churro bites share in common with hot-off-the-oil churros is a coating of cinnamon sugar. Other than that, these crunchy nuggets are their own category of cookie-chip. They have a near-velvet outer texture, the combination of shiny hardened butter and sandy sugar, like when you dropped a doughnut hole at the beach but ate it anyway, because seagulls. (Because you’re a monster). Sort of like giant Corn Pops, rolled cinnamon sugar. I won’t even begin to describe what they visually resemble (😺 💩). The cashier at TJ’s looked at the nutritional details and then slowly raised her eyes to mine. Me: “These are not good for you.” Her: “Then why are you buying two?”
Gluten Free Oat Cranberry Flaxseed Cookies, $2.99As a general life principle, you should never trust a cookie with more than three names. These gluten-free-oat-cranberry-flaxseed-cookies seem to think that they can trick us into believing they’re some kind of health food but we know, ohhhh we KNOW. These are cookies. With plenty of butter and sugar. Because of that, I have some great news: They taste like cookies! Like a very good grocery store oatmeal raisin cookie, with a surprisingly soft and chewy texture (I see you, molasses and rice flour.) They crumble a little, but then again who doesn’t in this current political climate? Still not sure what a flaxseed is, but I’m already starting to see definition in my abs.
Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce, $1.99This so-called simmer sauce is the pale minty green of my grandmother’s bathroom walls, with much more flavor (and a lot less lead!). Even though a simple green curry is easy to make, at this price, it costs the same as just the can of coconut milk, and there’s Kaffir lime peel in here. It’s fragrant with lemongrass and ginger, and super creamy, a little sweet—overall, delicious. You cook some protein or veg, add the sauce, serve over noodles/rice. What does this sauce have in common with a certain presidential marriage? There’s absolutely no heat. BYO-chile if you need to spice it up.
Tahini, Pepita & Apricot Slaw Kit, $3.99Inside one plastic bag you get four more little plastic bags! It’s like a Russian nesting salad of environmental doom. Or something. The slaw is a combination of veggies from the aisle-land of misfit produce. Spiky broccoli stems. Faded carrots the color of construction cones abandoned by the highway. The curly split ends from a kale haircut. Cabbage. Unfortunately the dressing, a sweet honey tahini (try this one!), which is pretty good, can’t mask the musty taste of the veg. The pepita and apricot sprinkles are a nice idea, but like hoping the 14 throw pillows on your couch hide all of the cat hair, they can only do so much.
Previously
The Week of January 8
Photo by Chelsie Craig
Frosted Sugar Cookies, $2.99Trader Joe’s imitation of Lofthouse’s iconic packaged cookies is the best thing they’ve brought to the new year. The freakishly smooth, delightfully underbaked sugar cookie is topped with frosting and randomly distributed purple-pink sprinkles. Whoever was in charge of sprinkles appears to have sneezed them out, some gather along the edges, holding on for dear frosting life.
But they really did it. It’s mythic, and it dissolves into dust the second it touches your saliva. The minute you bite into it, you forget it was ever there. And it’s everything you’ve missed since the last time you had one, stoned at 10 p.m. in Kroger with your middle school friends who’ve all had babies on Facebook by now. It’s a cookie that will send you back in time, in memory, in a sugar-induced nostalgia nap.
Photo by Chelsie Craig
Cocoa Almond Cashew Beverage, $2.29Who doesn’t love a beverage? AKA the FDA-approved term for milks that aren’t milk. Remember milk? Pause to pour out some beverage in the memory of milk. Those days are over.
This incredibly silky not-milk is chocolaty and sweet, with a vaguely nutty aftertaste, like a burp after too many bar peanuts. The creamy texture, thanks to the beautiful food science that is locust bean gum and other emulsifiers, ends on a near slimy note, reminiscent of the inside of the cardboard chocolate milk carton. It would be nice in a banana smoothie, heated as faux cocoa, mixed into iced coffee, or given as a bribe to children who have never known the cult of cow.
Photo by Chelsie Craig
Italian Marinara Sauce with Barolo Wine, $3.49Have you ever spooned straight marinara sauce into your mouth? It’s acidic and sweet, smooth save for the little toenails of tomato skin here and there. The saltiness left my chapped lips burning and tingling, like I’d exfoliated them with French fries. The addition of Barolo seems to say, “I know wines other than red,” while the black-and-gold Deco packaging suggests a Gatsby-themed party at the Olive Garden. It tasted like pretty good pizza sauce. Sign me up.
Organic Fruit and Seed Granola, $3.69These little clusters of organic seeds, held together by plasticky tasting tapioca syrup, are nuggets of health. I think. No pesky oats here, just seed bombs that I imagine are only slightly larger than what well-fed pigeons expel. The sharp and crunchy texture is appealing to parents who bring healthy snacks to the movies. They’re also the perfect snack for mindful eaters, as you will mindfully spend every bite doing tongue yoga to get chia seeds out of your molar fillings from the 90s. There are surprise bites of sweetened dried cranberries that will make you exclaim, “SUGAR, for MEEEE?” Somehow you will eat the whole bag.
Stay tuned for more, next week.
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heartofhryule · 7 years ago
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Breath of the Wild: Captured Memories - Chapter 6
First and foremost; SPOILER WARNINGS. If you have not played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or completed the Captured Memories Quest and want to stay unspoilered for it, DO NOT READ. Keep Reading link provided for that reason. So I am writing these as I play through BotW for the first time - which means they probably won’t be ‘one-a-day’ consistent - I have finally gotten all of the memories, but not yet gone for the final fight at Hyrule Castle. #Soon. I will post them as I can though! Promise! I also plan to include links to the cutscene for you to watch at the bottom, if so desired - at least for the ones I can find. Any other warnings that become necessary, I will add for content as I go. For now, enjoy!
Hot hot hot! lol
I really like Daruk in all the cinematics. Optimistic, forthright, stalwart, devoted to his land and kingdom, and ever in support of the Hero - he's a solid dude, no pun intended. While EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THIS GAME is hard to write, this one was less hard just because Daruk is such a cool character. I predict Urbosa will be similar. I. Love. Her. #UrbosaIsBestChampion #SaltyBirdRivaliTakeNotes
One thing I try to do with the cinematics from the games, is not add too much if any dialog for Link - since of course in game he doesn't speak. If I continue with a scene after the cinematic ends in the game, that's one thing. When we get to the Silent Princess memory with the frog, trust me, there will be more. But there are times where at least when writing, its a little awkward that Link says literally nothing - so, while I don't want to add TOO much, so that you basically can watch the cinematic (links provided at the ends of chapters) and then read this for "a little bit more", I did add a line or two in a few chapters now, and I foresee this trend continuing. Nothing extreme, but I felt it needed acknowledgement.
Speaking of Rivali the Salty Bird... his chapter will be next. I swear to Hylia, I wanted to strangle that stupid parakeet. He's a badass... but so, so obnoxious. So, here we go! I'll try and have Salty Bird up as soon as I can, and thank you for staying tuned!
Chapter 6 - Daruk’s Mettle Hot. Hot hot hot. Volcanos were hot. Sure, his Flameproof armor bought in town, and his elixirs helped. But it was still hooooot. Things were looking more familiar nowadays. He didn’t remember faces or names, but things were feeling… familiar. Like he knew he’d been to Goron City before in more than just his memory of Zelda saying they would be heading there. He’d had a feeling he knew where the shop was, and had been right. 
He felt as though it had already been a lifetime since he’d awakened in the Shrine of Resurrection feeling lost, drifting outside of time, detached, frustrated and alone.
But then, he’d never truly been alone.
Zelda’s voice had awakened him. Zelda’s voice spoke to him, to warn him of the Blood Moon each time it rose, or when he needed to know something very important. Her voice called his name in his dreams, and he had begun dreaming of her - from before. Snippets here and there. A white dress, a spring, her tears. Things that when he woke slipped through his fingers if her tried to grasp too hard, but it was enough to fuel him forward. Landmarks were familiar now - perhaps not why, but sometimes, it came to him.
Like looking at the carving of Daruk in the side of Death Mountain, he’d known it, and the memory had come rushing back.
***
They had been standing atop Vah Rudania, traversing the side of Death Mountain in the great, hot wind of the mostly quiet volcano.
“Yeah! I think I’m finally getting the hang of controlling this Divine Beast!” Daruk exclaimed proudly. It wasn’t a boast of vanity, but rather an honest statement of pride and hope from a Goron of integrity. Link knew that, he could feel it. He remembered Daruk, and that he liked him a great deal.
“I’ll tell you what… it sure is a blast piloting a toy like this around!” Link smirked incredulously at his friend and shook his head. A lumbering, enormous piece of ancient technology that they barely understood… and Daruk called it a toy. That was the Goron Champion in a nutshell.
“Let those other champions know,” the rock eater continued, “They’ll have to eat their gravel if they want to keep up with Daruk!” The Goron looked around them, drawing Link’s eye and smile to the scenery. “Speaking of which, can you believe this view?” Just look at all those delectable rocks sprinkled on those mountains… Mighty tasty.”
Link chuckled and cut his eyes to Daruk, knowing the Goron sometimes forgot other races didn’t eat rocks. He would have to take the Champion’s word for it. “It really is a great view, my friend.”
Sharing a few moments of companionable silence, Daruk was the next to speak. “I may not know a whole lot about the Calamity Ganon thing… but mark my words: I will protect this land of ours to the death.” Fist clenched with the vigor of his oath, Daruk grinned and raised his other hand saying, “Right, little guy?”
It happened too fast for Link to dodge or mitigate, and when Daruk slapped him on the back in friendship, it knocked the wind right out of the Hylian Knight. Link gasped and leaned forward, eyes bulging a little as he reached up to what would no doubt be a great bruise on his back by evening.
“Hey, by the way…. Congrats on becoming the princess’s appointed knight. That’s a really big deal! Protecting the King's daughter,” Daruk chuckled, “No pressure.” Still trying to catch his breath and recover from the Goron’s platonic affection, Link winced and nodded but looked to the sky.
“Seriously, though. The Princess is a strong personality - so strong she can’t quite see the range for the peaks,” the Goron Champion added with a scratch of his head. “Remember that, and you’ll be fine.”
No sooner had Daruk finished than a great rumbling started around them. “Huh?” Daruk said and turned his eyes to the mountain. Link thought at first in might have been Vah Rudania beneath them. But when the ancient, mechanical salamander had stopped and seemed to be as it ever was, he too looked to Death Mountain.
Daruk was frowning now. “What the-?”
As they watched, boulders came flying from over the peak of which they stood in the shadow. One, flew directly at them, like a meteor plummeting to the earth. With a great cry, Daruk spread his large arms, balled his hands into fists, and smashed his knuckles together. Just as the boulder would have struck him and also Link, a great angular barrier of red-orange light - like the fires of Death Mountain itself - appeared around them, deflecting the wayward and deadly debris.
“Alright, so what was I saying?” For a moment, Daruk seemed nervously dismissive until he saw the serious and concerned look on Link’s face. That had not been normal, and if Link understood that, Daruk had to know as well.
Turning back to the mountain, Daruk’s voice was a touch softer as he said, “That was a little strange…” They both observed their surroundings and the volcano about for a collection of heartbeats. When it seemed no other boulders were to become airborne, Daruk looked down to Link. “As far as I know, Death Mountain has been quiet for decades. But if the mountain is shivering enough to send down boulders that size, then--”
The Goron paused, and Link turned to raise an eyebrow at him. Daruk just kept his eyes on the volcano. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”
With a look of incredulity, Link crossed his arms. “Then what, Daruk? Do we need to leave the mountain, is there fiery death coming for us all and I need to get the princess out of here yesterday… what?”
Daruk was silent as the stones for a long, breathless moment as his blue eyes beheld his beloved mountain. “I don’t know, little buddy, I don’t know. And that, is what worries me.” The sense of foreboding Link felt at those words should have told him then, things were going to go wrong…
***
As the memory faded, Link scrubbed both hands over his face. Daruk; strong, honest, proud, brave Daruk. His friend. They couldn’t have known, not really. It was not as though a few wayward boulders screamed, “Run from the hills! Ganon is coming!”
But a part of him still felt like he should have known.
There was nothing for it now. Like Mipha, Daruk’s spirit was trapped inside the corrupted Vah Rudania. Yes, Link needed the Divine Beasts to aid in his assault on Hyrule Castle and Ganon. More to his immediate point, he wanted to free Daruk. It was the least he could do for his old friend. But, he was going to need help. All he had to do was find this Yunobo and get up the mountain.
Somehow, he had a feeling that was going to be much harder than it sounded.
---
Once again, Link found himself standing over the main control panel of a Divine Beast, knowing that once activated, he would not be coming back. The Fireblight Ganon had been trying, and he was hot, tired and covered in ash. But one thought had bounced around his mind the entire time he fought - he was fighting for a friend he had failed 100 years ago. The knight hoped that, like Mipha, perhaps he would get to see Daruk one last time.
As the Main Control came alight under his Shiekah Slate, the plant like structure of the ancient controls turned blue, Link heard a cheer from a familiar deep voice. “Great work, little guy!”
Turning, Link smiled to see Daruk, mostly intangible, but no less a present force than he had ever been in life. Arms out in victory and gratitude, he took a step forward. Link squared up to greet him, swallowing against the rise of emotion in his chest. “I owe you big for this. Because of you, my spirit is finally free. Can’t thank you enough!”
The Goron Champion scratched his head in the gesture Link had come to remember meant Daruk was nervous, confused, or apologetic. “I feel like I should apologize. I was doing all I could to protect Hyrule when that thing got the best of me. Sorry that me resting with the rubble caused such a mess.”
The knight nodded, and took a breath to assure his old friend that it wasn’t his fault, but Daruk continued. “The good news is, is that Rudania is now back under our control! That means that our century old Ganon beat-down plan can finally go into effect!” As the embers flickered in their ever ascending dance around them, Link had to drop his eyes at Daruk’s optimism. He felt responsible somehow, if not for the cause then at the very least for the resolution. He owed that to Daruk, and Mipha… and Zelda.
“I’m gonna take this thing down the mountain. I’ll have a better shot from there. And then, once you’ve made your way into Hyrule Castle,” Daruk clenched his fists in front of him, “We’re gonna light that thing up!” Slamming one fist in to the palm of the opposite hand, Link nodded, not trusting his voice.
“I wanna give you something. It’s a special power of mine called Daruk’s Protection. It’s no good to me now that I’m a spirit… but it might be useful for you.” Slapping his hands together, even in spirit Link felt the tremor in Vah Rudania from the great Goron’s strength. “Here it comes!”
Pooling energy grew between the Champion’s hands as he drew them apart, and when the red orb entered link this time, it was warm, and fire licked throughout his aura. He instantly knew how to summon the power. Planting his feet and punching his fists together in front of him, the angular-sphere encompassed him as he had seen it around Daruk over a century ago.
Looking up to Daruk with deep gratitude and sadness, knowing their time was drawing to a close, Link worked his hands as the tingle of magic faded. Daruk just smiled. “From this moment forward, the power of protection, from the depths of my soul, now lives in you.”
Link wanted to, felt he should say something, but the glow of golden energy around him heralded that Daruk was sending him to safety. Looking back to his friend, Daruk nodded. “Good luck, little guy. And… give my regards to the princess!” With one last flash of light, Link was gone.
Daruk’s Mettle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzrJlTjHjag  Freeing Vah Rudania - https://youtu.be/IFvkz_oA-m8?t=335 
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