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lionlena · 10 months

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Dancing With Your Ghost (JavierPeñaxreader) Epilogue

A/N:

Ok, so that's the end of this story. I started writing it almost 7 months ago, not really knowing where it would lead me and having the idea until chapter 6… Along the way, I abandoned this story for Joel… But sooner or later, my heart always missed Javi 🥺 I would like to thank you all for your comments and likes. Everyone who read this series enjoyed it. I hope you'll be happy with the ending🥰

Epilogue

Since Javier found out you were pregnant, theoretically nothing has changed. He still loved you madly, he still cared for you, you still spent magical Sundays, and he still worked hard on building the house.

On the other hand, everything has changed. Javier worked even harder and at the same time spent every free moment with you. Even if it meant driving half an hour into town just to spend twenty minutes of your lunch break with you, he did it. And of course, he couldn't keep his hands off you. And he fulfilled all your desires without blinking an eye, including sexual ones. You suddenly discovered that pregnant women can be very horny, but that was no problem for Javier. If he had to, he would fall on his knees in front of you every evening and listen to your moans with pleasure.

You also noticed that the bigger your belly was, the prouder Javier was. When you were walking through the city streets or sitting in a restaurant, he would always put his hand on your belly and look around with a cocky smile as if to say, 'Look this is my work. Thanks to me, her belly is swelling.'

It made you laugh, but at the same time, you didn't want to take away his joy. After all, he deserved it for what a wonderful man he was to you, for supporting you every step of the way and going with you to all your doctor's appointments. Thanks to this, you felt confident and your fears about your child's health decreased significantly. Everything was going perfectly.

When you were seven months pregnant, the construction of your house was officially completed. With a wide smile, Javier led you into your beautiful living room. And even though you had been there many times before, somehow knowing that everything was over filled you with delight and you looked at everything as if you were seeing it for the first time.

"Everything is amazing." You said with emotion in your voice.

Javier kissed you passionately while tenderly stroking your belly.

"It's all for you, my little ghost, and for our baby."

Then suddenly Javier knelt down on one knee in front of you and pulled out a small box from his pocket that contained an engagement ring. You were speechless at that moment.

"Y/N, you are the most wonderful person I have ever met in my life. You taught me that love is more than a physical connection, it is a connection of souls. You gave me peace and warmth that warms my heart. Please be my wife. Be Mrs. Peña. Let's have a little wedding next week."

You looked at him in shock and quickly said, "No."

Javier looked at you surprised, maybe even sad. "No?" he repeated quietly.

Seeing the fear in his eyes, you knew you had to fix the situation quickly. "No... I mean yes, but no."

This didn't help at all. Javier was still kneeling in front of you, now on both knees and tilted his head to the side, looking at you with those puppy dog eyes. "Yes, but no?" He asked confused.

You took a deep breath and gently stroked his hair. "I want to marry you." You said calmly, and the sadness instantly disappeared from his face. "But not next week."

Javier smiled coquettishly. "What are you doing next week?"

You huffed and pointed to your belly. "I'm carrying your baby, in a week, in two... basically for the next two months."

He laughed softly and kissed your belly sweetly. "And? I still don't see the problem. One little extra guest isn't a problem."

You groaned in annoyance. "Javi, I don't want to get married with a huge belly... I don't want to be ugly and fat in my wedding photos."

Javier immediately tightened his grip around your waist, gently squeezing your ass and still kissing your belly.

"Mi amor, hermosa, cariño, how can you say such terrible things about my future wife? You are beautiful, the most wonderful, and I can't wait to see that beautiful belly in a white dress... Oh, believe me... This makes me get hard..."

You gasped in surprise as his hands squeezed your ass tighter.

"Javier..."

"I'm telling the truth." He kissed your stomach and looked down at you. "But I will understand and respect any decision you make. We can even have a big wedding next year if you want."

And suddenly, as usual, all your fears disappeared.

"Actually…" You started quietly. "You're right. I want a small, modest wedding and I want our baby to be born with your surname."

Javier smiled widely and gently placed the ring on your finger. Then he stood up and looked at you with eyes shining with joy.

“Y/N, I dreamed of this moment.”

He cupped your face in his hands and kissed you, but it was a different kiss. It wasn't a passionate, hot kiss... Or hungry or longing... It was something completely different. It was a kiss filled with love and gratitude. Your heart was beating like crazy and suddenly you felt your baby move. You placed Javier's hand on your pregnant belly and he chuckled.

"Someone here is as excited as Daddy." You purred against his lips and he kissed you lovingly once again.

A week later, you and Javier were married in the meadow behind your house. You were wearing a plain white dress that fit your pregnant belly really nicely. You wore a wreath of white flowers on your head. It was surprising, but you felt like a princess. Everything seemed wonderful and so peaceful. You said 'yes' surrounded by your loved ones and friends, and then you all had fun together until late.

That night, Javier took you to your bedroom and made love to you in such a gentle and caring way as he had never done before. And he wasn't just doing it because of your pregnancy. He really wanted to prove to you that he will be the best husband in the world.

Two months later, after almost ten hours of labor, your son, José Peña, was born. You were tired after giving birth, but happy as you held your healthy baby in your arms. And for the first time, you saw former DEA agent Javier Peña cry like a little baby. When he took your newborn son for the first time and looked at this little miracle created with his help, so tiny that he could hold José with one hand, he just cried. And he wasn't even ashamed of it. He hugged his son to his chest and kissed his little head, whispering sweet words. It was a sight that melted your heart and you were sure that Javi would be the best dad in the world.

...

You woke up one night and Javier wasn't next to you. You felt anxious for a moment but quickly calmed down. You started listening to see if José was crying, but you didn't hear anything. Still, you decided to get up and look into his crib. However, your son and husband were nowhere to be found. Your heart started beating a little faster. Common sense told you that nothing had happened. Maybe José couldn't sleep, and Javier took him for a short car ride. It was something that quickly calmed your three-month-old baby. But Javi never did it alone. You quickly went out of the house to the terrace to check if there was a car outside and that's when you saw them.

Javier sat on a rocking bench with his son safely placed in his strong arms. For a moment, you wanted to be angry at him and tell him that he shouldn't scare you like that, but... It was such a sweet and adorable sight that it melted your heart.

However, you noticed that something was bothering Javier. He didn't take his eyes off his son's sleeping face. You carefully sat down on the bench next to him and touched his arm.

"Mi amor? What happened? José couldn't sleep?"

Javi still didn't take his eyes off the baby. He gently touched his son's chubby cheek with his finger.

"He was crying, but as soon as I changed his diaper he fell asleep, but I... I couldn't put him down in the cradle..."

You smiled and nodded. You knew this feeling very well. You yourself have held your baby in your arms many times after he fell asleep. However, Javier's next words surprised you.

"I felt a sudden fear. I was afraid to put him down... I was afraid that as soon as I let him out of my arms, something bad would happen to him."

You sighed and gently stroked his cheek.

"Javi, what's going on?"

Javier finally looked away from his son and looked at you. He smiled sadly.

"I don't know, cariño... The cocky, arrogant, and malicious DEA agent suddenly became soft and scared."

You giggled quietly. "You're still cocky and devilishly handsome."

Your comment made Javier laugh softly. You always knew how to cheer him up. He carefully placed your son on his chest, holding him with only one arm. So that he can wrap his free hand around you and pull you to his side. He kissed your forehead and whispered:

"I wonder if I've made the world a safer place for our son. Catching Escobar, and taking down the Cali Cartel, does it all matter? The world is still dangerous. Maybe retiring was a mistake. There are so many things that could hurt him. So many bad things, bad people. Now he's still tiny... For now, I can really wrap my arms around him and protect him, but then what...

You smiled at him understandingly. Javier always had a tendency to get lost in thought. Often unnecessary.

"Javi, darling. The world is dangerous, and we are not able to protect our baby from everything. This is the pain and fear of all parents. In a few months, our son will start walking and he will surely trip over a stone more than once. You want to remove all the stones from the area?"

Javi looked at you with determination. "If necessary."

You rolled your eyes.

"You know it's impossible, but you know what is possible? Our comfort. We will wipe his tears, bandage his hurt knee, and assure him that we are with him. And this is how we will keep him safe. At every stage of his life we will love him and accept him and thanks to this, he will know that he can always come to us and ask us for help.

Javier looked at you with eyes full of boundless love.

"You are very smart, hermosa."

You giggled quietly. "I learned a thing or two about life by being a ghost."

Javier laughed softly. Then he kissed you on the forehead and then your son. He looked at you with those puppy eyes of his.

"Can we sit here for a while? I don't want to put him in the crib just yet."

You nodded and snuggled into his warm, strong body. You looked at your son's calm face and realized that he felt exactly the same as you. That Javier Peña would do literally anything, even burn down the entire world, to keep you safe, happy, and loved. You closed your eyes and whispered, "We can stay here until morning."

You felt Javier hug you tighter and rest his chin on your head. You no longer needed words. Everything was perfect, right in that moment, when he held in his arms the two people he loved and needed most in the world.

...

Six years later, you still felt the same peace and security when you were in your husband's arms. You've had harder times, but you've always been in this together. You didn't hide anything from each other, you didn't fight each other. You loved each other.

Your son was healthy and growing quickly. From a baby, he became a small, charming boy who loved life. He was cute and feisty like his Daddy, but he was also calm like you... And he wasn't the only one.

Four years after your wedding, your little girl, Maya Peña, was born. And if you thought José was like his dad, then... Your little girl looked like a little copy of her daddy. Her eyes were identical.

And currently, she was looking at you with those sweet brown puppy eyes that were tearful and very tired. She put her thumb in her mouth and hiccuped. Her cheeks were red and the hairs on her forehead were wet.

"Oh my little one, you really need a nap."

"Papi…" She whined indistinctly and you already knew you had no choice.

You've been trying to put her down for a nap for the past forty minutes, but she's only gotten more grumpy and cranky. There was no other option. You must have to used a secret weapon. You took her in your arms and left the house, heading towards the horse paddock.

Your son was just sitting on a little white pony and looked very happy. His grandfather Chucho held the reins and Javi secured his son, but you knew that your little boy could handle it even on his own. So you walked up to the fence and waved your hand. Javi immediately said something to his son. You could only guess that he was asking him to hold on tight and be careful.

When he got closer to you and your daughter, he immediately noticed what the problem was and without asking, he reached out his hands, taking Maya away from you. His two-year-old daughter immediately snuggled into his chest and let out a few grumpy purrs. Javi chuckled and kissed her head.

"Someone here is tired but doesn't want to go to sleep?" He asked, knowing the answer perfectly well. "It's okay. Daddy can handle it."

He smiled at you and kissed your forehead, whispering. "I love you."

You smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Even after all these years, he still took every opportunity to make sure you knew how much he loved you.

"I'll go to José." You said and kissed your daughter on the head before Javier took her towards the house.

When your son saw you, he smiled broadly. Chucho gave you a friendly smile too.

"Is everything okay with the little princess?" he asked with concern.

You immediately felt your heart melt. Your children not only had a wonderful, loving, and caring father, but also a wonderful grandfather who always spoiled them and cared for them.

You nodded and moved closer to your son, placing your hand on his back.

"Yes, the heat today is just bothering her. But I'm sure Javier's magic will work on her and she'll be asleep soon."

Your son giggled (in the same way as his daddy) and asked, "Papi can do magic?"

You smiled widely and touched his sweet cheek.

"Yes, it always puts you and your little sister to sleep in minutes."

Your son eagerly nodded and added: "And he can turn ghosts into people!"

You laughed. This was your son's favorite story. Of course, Javier told your story in the form of a fairy tale, omitting the tragic moments and changing a few things. And of course, only you and Javi knew that it wasn't just a made-up story at all.

Half an hour later, your son finished riding the pony and, together with his grandfather, took the pony to the meadow so that the animal could enjoy the fresh grass and rest.

You came back home, quietly entered the living room and your heart beat faster.

Javier lay on the couch and slept with his baby girl, who was dozing comfortably on his broad chest. You saw them both calm and finally resting. You looked at them, enchanted, for a moment. Then you went to the kitchen and started preparing lemonade. You were sure that soon your son and his grandfather would come home, and then your daughter and Javi would wake up. And you all need a sip of refreshing, cool lemonade. Soon your quiet home will once again be filled with the joyful screams of children and the laughter of their father. And as always, Javier will grab your hips whenever he gets the chance, kiss your neck and whisper some dirty words in your ear, because some things never change.

And your love for the man who danced with your ghost will never change.

...

MASTERLIST

Part I

Part XII

Taglist: @aestheticangel612 , @kittenlittle24 , @hxpburn76 , @creedslove , @ranahx , @yyiikes , @fuglyputa24 , @picketniffler

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #javier peña #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena x reader #javier pena and you #javier is so sweet #soft!javier #narcos fanfiction #fanfiction #dancing with your ghost #hurt/comfort #pregnant!reader #daddy!javier #javier pena is papi #happy ending

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new-health-products-in · 5 months

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African Lean Belly Dietary supplement - weight loss

Shedding Pounds and Feeling Great: My African Lean Belly Experience

For years, I struggled with stubborn belly fat. I tried countless diets and exercise routines, but the results were always temporary. Then, I came across African Lean Belly.

Skeptical But Hopeful

Initially, I was sceptical about another weight loss supplement. However, the positive reviews and the focus on natural ingredients piqued my interest. After researching the product, I decided to give it a go.

A Simple Addition to My Routine

African Lean Belly was very easy to incorporate into my daily routine. I simply took two capsules every morning with breakfast. The capsules were flavourless and easy to swallow.

Feeling the Effects

Within a few weeks, I started noticing a difference. My clothes felt looser, and I had more energy throughout the day. Most importantly, the stubborn belly fat I'd been battling for so long began to diminish

Sustainable Weight Loss

African Lean Belly wasn't a magic bullet, but it certainly helped. Combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise, I've been able to achieve sustainable weight loss and keep it off.

More Than Just Weight Loss

Beyond the weight loss, I've also noticed an improvement in my overall health. I feel more confident and have a newfound zest for life.

Would I Recommend It?

Absolutely! If you're looking for a safe and effective way to lose weight and improve your health, I highly recommend African Lean Belly. It's been a game-changer for me, and I believe it can be for you too

Disclaimer:It's important to note that everyone's body is different, and what works for me may not work for everyone. It's always best to consult with your doctor before starting any new supplement.

#African Lean Belly #Dietary supplement #Weight loss #African lean belly supplement #Highly recommended #Decrease fat level #Belly fat #Lower belly fat #Fat belly #artists on tumblr #Slim belly #Belly slim #Big belly large belly #Natural #Natural product #Natural way

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genderqueerdykes · 1 year

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do you know any resources for top surgery in the uk?

also graphic details about the effects of testosterone on AFABs and if dht blockers are a thing in the uk?

hello there! thank you for taking the time to ask!

i actually do not know of resources for DHT blockers and top surgery in the UK, if any of my followers can help out and get resources for top surgeons/what the procedures for getting surgery are like in the UK that would be awesome!!

in terms of graphic details that testosterone has on AFAB bodies, i would say these are the things you need to be aware of, and keep in mind:

changed fat and muscle distribution: less fat stored in the breasts and buttocks, more stored in the belly, for example, and possible development of more masculine muscular structures such as an "adonis belt," and more prominent pectoral muscles

potential modification of facial structures such as brow ridge, cheek bones and jaw

changes in body odor, increased sweating, overall greasiness when getting sweaty

potential increase/worsening in acne

increased growth, thickening, and darkening of facial and body hair, including to chest, back, butt, arm and leg hair

thickening of vocal cords resulting in a deeper voice

potential growth/development of an adam's apple

clitoris growth, where the clitoris grows fuller and longer, looking much like a penis, even with the hood becoming much like foreskin

potential vaginal dryness or atrophy, can be easily treated

potential increase in libido, though some report a decrease after adjusting to T

potential balding, hair loss, or hairline recession (this is the most common in _TM people), can be easily treated

increased blood pressure and production of red blood cells- may increase clotting, but can be alleviated by donating blood when and where possible or taking blood thinners and/or blood pressure medications

if there's anything else i can think to add i will! good luck, hopefully we can get some surgery resources for you! stay safe in the mean time!

#asks #answers #testosterone #hrt #t #testosterone hrt #top surgery #uk resources #resources

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anony-man · 5 months

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Chubformers drabble #1!

Character: Sunstreaker

Word count: 500

Vanity was a shortcoming, according to some. For Sunstreaker, however, it was what kept him afloat. Rising the ranks of the Autobot army and keeping his name respected while also adopting the title of an important part of the team was his goal, and while he’d began to struggle in some areas of this regard, Sunstreaker still did his very best to keep the name he’d earned himself pure… even if it came down to locking himself up in his berthroom to avoid being seen in such a frenzied state.

Success meant keeping himself in peak condition, Sunstreaker knew, which oftentimes meant avoiding indulgence whenever possible. Sure, every so often he’d catch himself lingering at the bar for far too long, or maybe idly sipping on some cocktails in the comfort of his quarters when he knew he should be doing something more productive. These weren’t frequent happenings, though. He was still in control, and that wasn’t going to change.

At least, he hoped it wouldn’t change.

As Sunstreaker stood in front of his full length mirror and pinched at the pudge spilling out from between his plating, his mind began to race. When had that started forming? A bot like him wasn’t usually prone to such a poor silhouette, and yet… here he was. Sunstreaker’s musings were briefly interrupted by the rattling of the door as someone—likely Sideswipe, who always hated being locked out of their shared room—pounded on the metal.

“Give me a minute!” Sunstreaker snapped, his panic making him irritable. He was busy, for Primus’ sake.

“Sunny, open the fragging door!” Sideswipe snapped back, having thankfully stopped knocking long enough for Sunstreaker to go back to studying his reflection. “It’s late, and I’m tiirrrred.”

“That’s not my problem,” Sunstreaker muttered to himself.

He went back to pinching and prodding, his fingers slipping between the seams of his armor to pull at the flabby mesh tucked beneath. The more he played with his belly, the sooner he realized that he was practically fat beneath all the plating. He couldn’t quite determine a cause of the sudden weight gain outside of decreased holds on rations and a sudden drop in Decepticon activity, but still… surely he couldn’t have gained this much weight in such short time, right?

Despite his inherent frustration at the new body shape, Sunstreaker couldn’t help but admire his figure in the mirror. Sure, he wasn’t nearly as sleek and foreboding with rolls of belly fat poking through, but kneading at the soft slab felt rather nice. He could almost imagine himself sitting down for a nice meal after hours, anticipation high as he attempted to gorge on as much fuel as he could handle before someone caught him.

The mere thought was enough to get his systems warm and array twitching, and Sunstreaker quickly clapped a servo over his mouth to keep any stray sounds of contentment from escaping.

It wasn’t exactly ideal, but… well, who could blame him for exploring his options?

#chubformers #sunstreaker #anon man writes

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catboybiologist · 11 months

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Transition journal #2: October 2023

Two months, lets gooooo!!!!!! To start off, I've updated my metrics spreadsheet:

My first levels check is on there, alongside the usual stuff.

I have a couple of thoughts and notes, just like I did last month, but this is probably going to be a bit shorter and less excited than last month. Nothing disappointing about this month, just less so than the wave of emotions that came with starting.

The biggest change in the past month has def been that I started my spiro based on my levels. I was actually genuinely surprised that my levels were that low on E and high on T. T is solidly above target levels, and my endo described my E as “barely acceptable” and said we should get it higher. I’m all for it, of course. But that also means starting spiro.

Right before starting spiro, I was noting that that initial burst of changes was slowing down. Notably, it seemed like breast growth was slowing, but tbf, it really seemed like I had a frenzy of it to kick off the changes. Spiro does feel like it restarted that, but I can’t tell how much that’s a direct effect of it and how much it's just that these changes are going in bursts anyways.

That being said, it's been an interesting month of changes. Notably, my overbust hasn’t increased at all- but, I’ve lost a lot of weight overall. My waist and underbust both decreased, while my overbust and hips remained exactly the same. So proportionately, they’ve grown. I’m actually shocked that my underbust decreased, even if it was just half an inch. Best I can figure is that I have fat pockets that extend down from my armpits, and I think I burned fat from those. While bone changes are possible even in adults on HRT, they wouldn’t happen this fast to my ribcage. I don’t think I’m go

Of course, I’m wildly happy about the way my waist has been developing. Not only is it quantitatively thinning, the way the fat looks even in side profile is gradually looking more like “female” pudge as opposed to “man” pudge. Does that make sense? There’s certainly a difference between the way hormonally male and female people carry their belly fat, and I think I’m starting to see just a little of that femaleness shine through. I’m ecstatic. I do want to lose a tiny bit more weight, or at least maintain my current weight while other regions of my body grows, and hopefully this trend will continue. Gotta have the best waist for someone’s arm to slip around.

As usual, it does seem like my wide shoulders and barrel chest are a little at odds with my waist-to-hip ratio. I have a full on fridge upper body, a nicely slimming waist, and relatively wide hips. That seems to be holding pretty true, but we’ll see how it turns out long term.

I made a post about this the other day, but I do think I’m registering facial changes on some subconscious level. I can’t really put my finger on it, but something is different in the mirror. I’m comparing before and after unmasked pictures, and I do think there’s some slight facial changes coming on. But still, I’m a little worried about the pace of it, and worried about if I’ll ever pass in that department. But hey. If I don’t, I don’t, and I just present how I want, when I want.

It’s not noticeable enough to really tell yet, but I think my facial hair growth has slowed a little bit. I’m shaving weekly at this point, and it does seem a little bit thinner every time. But I don’t think I have enough data to tell, really, so we’ll see where that goes. It’ll never get to the point where I won’t need laser. I’m mostly just worried that my facial hair will be my last bastion of boymoding, so I’m being a dumbass and procrastinating a lot on that.

Overall, however, I do want to get tf off of spiro once my levels are stable and can potentially be suppressed by estrogen alone. There’s a little I’ll write about below, but mostly… the motherfucking diuretic effect. Oh my fucking god. My caffeine and water consumption means I pee a lot anyways, but fucking hell. I feel like a goddamn fountain, what the fuck. Hopefully I’ll be able to get off it sooner rather than later, especially if I can get injections.

Mild nsfw ahead. As usual, this is raw information, and if you’re weird about it, you will be blocked.

If I didn’t say this before, the information in the spreadsheet is only part of what I’m logging monthly- I have a more extensive record that includes things that feel just an ooch intrusive. This also includes a SHITTON of progress pictures in neutral poses and expressions that I’ve standardized to be the same across the months. I mention this bc I can def see some progress in these pictures. Mostly, I think this has to do with my lower body and waist shape. My ass has def gotten a bit bigger, but the reason my hip measurement hasn’t changed is because that measurement is still dominated by my thighs, and the place where growth is happening is still slightly offset from the largest hip measurement, which, as far as I know, is where it's supposed to be taken.

My breasts have also gotten a lot more distinctly breast-like in their qualitative visual appearance. I think this is a combination of the bust to band size/waist ratio getting better, as well as the breasts filling in more. My nipples are less protruding than last month, and the breast is forming a bit more of a mound as opposed to just essentially the bud forming. Eg, there’s actual structure there now. I can actual hop up and down and yes, they do jiggle. Still, the nipples are leading the charge. I’m a little worried about “cone tits”, or breasts where the nipple develops and pushes out without giving much of a rounded shape to the surrounding tissue. I think its a bit too early to tell, however. I’m hoping to get some nice, serious development in before I start progesterone, and the way things are going… yeah, I think I’ll be good there. Obviously I don’t want them to stop anytime soon, but if my boobs continue at this rate, I don’t think I’ll have anything to worry about chest wise.

The sensitivity “cycle” I’ve been going through does seem to have continued, although the timing of it is erratic. I do very clearly go through bursts of higher erotic sensitivity, followed by uncomfortable sensitivity, followed by a lack of sensitivity. The timing, again, is erratic. We’ll see what it stabilizes to long term- this could be a very unstable transfemme period (side note, I know that’s a controversial topic in the trans community. There’s very little data on the subject, but I do believe it is likely that its happening. The estrogen pathway can easily be cyclical when started. But I digress, I’ll relate my personal experience to that as time goes on and keep my eye out for any papers.).

Since starting spiro, I’ve also noticed some differences in sexual function. I’m not gonna get into the raw details there, I’ve recorded them in a personal version of this. But do note if you’re considering spiro that it's a thing that will probably happen.

#transition journal #trans #transgender #trans femme #trans timeline #transition #transitioning #trans documentation #trans woman #transfemme #mtf trans #trans fem #trans journal

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gothgfadeline · 1 year

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Do you have Lymphedema in your legs or is it just all fat?

I developed a lot of swelling after my knee injury. It is edema but I don’t have lymphedema to my knowledge and a lot of the swelling has decreased because I am more active now, but it’s not totally resolved. It’s predominantly in my thighs/knee area/calves and I had major snorlax feet for a while. I also had edema in my lower belly and hips, so my body has changed a lot in the last two years. The edema is slowly getting better though 🙂

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puppyexpressions · 10 months

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When to Stop Feeding Your Dog Puppy Food

Proper nutrition is an important part of caring for puppies and adult dogs. Most owners know that puppies need food specifically made to promote growth and development. However, many owners struggle to determine when the time is right to switch to adult dog food. This is because there is no rule that applies to all dogs. Different dogs grow at different rates. You and your vet can estimate the best time to make the change to your puppy's diet

Feeding Puppy Food

Puppies need more calories than adult dogs to support their growth, development, and high energy levels. Young puppies need about twice the number of calories as adult dogs of the same size. As your puppy approaches adulthood, his growth begins to slow and his caloric needs decrease. If you continue to feed puppy food once your dog stops growing, it will result in weight gain. Excess weight can quickly turn into obesity, which can lead to a host of health problems.

When to Switch to Adult Food

In general, dogs are considered puppies until about one year of age. However, different breeds age at different rates. For example, many large and giant breed dogs are considered puppies until two or more years of age and will therefore need to remain on puppy food beyond age one. Conversely, some small dog breeds reach adult size before the age of one. Your veterinarian is the best source of information when it comes to your dog's diet, so ask for advice before making the switch to adult food.

When deciding on the right time to feed adult dog food, the goal is to switch to adult food around the time the puppy stops growing but before he starts gaining excess weight. Keep track of your puppy's weight and height and look for the numbers to increase at a slower rate. Most dogs will begin to reach a plateau around one year of age, but you might notice the growth slow down as early as eight or nine months of age.

Assessing Your Dog's Weight

Be aware that weight gain does not necessarily indicate growth. If your dog is gaining weight but not getting taller or more muscular, he may be getting overweight. You can address your dog's body condition at home in a few steps:

Run your hands along your dog's ribcage. You should be able to feel the ribs covered by a thin layer of fat. If you cannot easily feel the ribs, your dog may be overweight.

Look at your dog from the side. You should be able to see the upward tuck of the belly. An overweight dog will have very little or no tuck.

View your dog from above. There should be some narrowing at the waist just past the ribcage. A straight or bulging line from the ribcage to the hips indicates an overweight dog.

Very prominent ribs and a very small waist may mean your dog is underweight. Visit your vet for an exam to be sure.

If your dog is less than a year old and seems to be gaining weight, you may need to simply reduce the portion size or frequency of meals before you switch to adult food. Vets recommend feeding young puppies three times per day. However, most puppies can go down to meals a day when they are approaching adulthood.

How to Make the Diet Change

Any diet change should be done gradually to avoid gastrointestinal upset. This process can take a week or two depending on how you do it.

It may take some time and research to choose the right food for your now-adult dog. You may wish to stick with the same brand of food but switch to an adult formula. Of course, your vet can help you find an appropriate diet.

Once you have chosen the adult dog food, determine the portion size of adult food you will eventually need to feed based on your dog's current weight. Then, add a small percentage of adult food to the puppy food, increasing it a little at each meal. For simplicity, you may want to work out a schedule so you are not trying to remember how much of each to feed. Many veterinary professionals recommend the "3 by 3" approach when switching diets:

Days 1-3: Feed 1/3 portion of adult food and 2/3 portion of puppy food

Days 4-6: Feed 1/2 portion of adult food and 1/2 portion of puppy food

Days 7-9: Feed 2/3 portion of adult food and 1/3 portion of puppy food

Day 10 and on: Feed full portion of adult food

During the switch, watch your dog's appetite and bowel movements. Slow the transition if your dog experiences diarrhea or vomiting. If GI upset continues, you may need to choose a different adult diet and re-start the transition. Contact your vet if your dog has vomiting or diarrhea for more than a day.

Watch your dog's weight over the coming months to make sure you don't need to adjust portion times. Also, be sure to keep up with annual or biannual veterinary wellness check-ups as recommended by your vet.

#dog food #puppy health #puppy food #adult dog food #puppy diet #dog diet

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massivematsus · 2 months

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Karamatsu’s Discovery - One Shot

[Weight gain/fat kink, mentions of health problems, mild gas from both ends, vague allusion to past not really incest and current mobility issues]

Karamatsu had been playing with his hard yet smooth gut when the thought came to him.

Why was his belly firm whilst his brothers remained squishy and jiggly? Karamatsu’s belly shook too, but only up and down and all in one motion. Osomatsu and Choromatsu wobbled like jello, Jyushimatsu’s fat rippled across his immense body in waves when smacked or grabbed and the bottom heavy brothers’ rear ends shook with each and every step.

Needing to do something with his hands while he thought of how to figure this out, Karamatsu continued his belly play. Unable to reach all the way around the dome of his middle anymore (that had stopped being feasible a little over a month ago), he could no longer finger his ever deepening belly button, not like how Ichimatsu would during their feeding sessions.

Was this something he could ask Mommy about? No… she had been acting out of it lately and wouldn’t be any help. Daddy? Ugh, for some reason the thought of talking to his father about anything related to his developing kink icked him out. Choromatsu was smart, right? Maybe he’d know! No… knowing him and his own fat fetish, he’d just turn red, pop a boner and run away. Chibita worked in the food industry! He must have seen plenty of fat men at his stand! Maybe he would know about Karamatsu’s hard fat? No… the nosy bastard would just prod him for info on why he and his brothers had grown so fat so fast.

As he tried again uselessly to reach his belly button, suddenly it hit him! He could ask Todomatsu if he could borrow his laptop (something he’d saved up for with his increased allowance and small paychecks) to do some research!

With a grunt, Karamatsu began to heave himself off the floor. It took a few tries and using the wall to push off of but eventually he was on his feet (not that he could see them anymore) sweating and panting. God, that was getting harder wasn’t it?

Karamatsu smirked at the thought of telling his girlfriend that it took him four tries this time to stand from the floor, instead of the usual three. His ever decreasing mobility got the two of them going like no tomorrow.

Having barely caught his breath, Karamatsu waddled up the stairs to the brother’s shared bedroom. It was one of Totty’s days off and the rest of the brothers were out and about for various reasons. It was the perfect time to ask his youngest brother for a favor!

Sweating and overheated just from ambling up the stairs, Karamatsu opened the door and entered.

Todomatsu was sat on his huge ass cheeks, legs forcibly spread apart by his obscene thighs scrolling mindlessly through what looked to be some kind of social media app.

“Good evening, Brother! I have a request of moderate proportions to ask of you!”

Todomatsu didn’t even bother to look up from his phone. “No.”

Karamatsu’s glasses fell askew. “B-But, you didn’t even get to hear what I was going to ask…”

Todomatsu looked up now, considered his older brother for a few seconds and sighed. “Fine, ask me. Maybe if it’s funny enough I’ll say yes.” He didn’t bother putting his phone down, prepared to start scrolling again at a moments notice.

Karamatsu adjusted his sunglasses and huffed in satisfaction. “You see brother of mine, I am in need of doing research today and you’re the only one with a computer. I would humbly ask you if I co-“

“No.”

“B-But!”

“I said no, Nii-san!” Todomatsu sighed returning to his scrolling. “I don’t want to risk my laptop being damaged by anyone let alone my idiot brothers, full offense Bee Tee Dubs.”

(Secretly, Totty didn’t want anyone on his laptop because the risk of them finding out about his streaming career was too high.)

Deflated in his disappointment, Karamatsu left Todomatsu to his perpetual scrolling and waddled back down the stairs, an easier feat than going up for sure.

Where else could he acquire the use of a computer? He wondered.

Embarrassingly, it took Karamatsu several minutes of thought before he realized that the local library had a couple old computers he could use.

Totty is right, he thought deprecatingly. I am an idiot brother after all.

Grabbing his keys and wallet, Karamatsu slowly left the house, carefully making sure his shirt didn’t ride too far up his middle section.

The library didn’t have much in the way of modern amenities, being unsurprisingly underfunded. But due to a moderate donation from Mr. Flag a while back, they were able to afford to update some of their most out of date features and purchase and maintain two old desktop computers. Last he heard from Choromatsu, they thankfully had internet capabilities (his brother would use them to type up and print his resumes).

Thankfully for Karamatsu’s decreasing mobility and stamina the library was close by. Panting heavily he plopped his chubby ass down on a memorial bench located out front of the building to catch his breath.

“Damn, I’m out of shape.”

It took a few minutes to make himself more presentable, needing a handkerchief to wipe away his sweat, but Karamatsu was ready to tackle the general public.

Being a Monday, the library was open and bustling. Despite its lack of funding, the establishment was a popular place.

Using his gut to push open the door for him (he could no longer reach past it to use his hands), Karamatsu burped behind his fist politely and entered the building.

To the right was several shelves of books and an audio/video section. To the left was the check out and late fee payment registers. A few librarians were seen helping put away carts of books and talking to patrons.

Locating an employee who didn’t seem too busy, Karamatsu approached them.

“Excuse me,” he glanced at their name tag and spotted a she/her badge. “Miss, I am here to utilize your computer system, in particular the internet. Where might I find them?”

The librarian did a double take at the sight of the obese man talking to her. How the fuck did someone get that fat?!

Shaking her head she tried to remain professional, but for some reason her eyesight refused to stop staring at the shorter man’s rotund middle.

“Uhhh…” She stammered briefly. “In the back to the left. They’re hard to see from here cause check out is in front of them. But walk far enough and you’ll find it.”

Turning 180 degrees, she power walked away from him, leaving behind a confused yet appreciative Karamatsu.

Making his way to the back of the library, he couldn’t help but notice, well, people noticing him. He’d be the first to admit that his body… wasn’t what it used to be. He was no longer attractive in the traditional sense. So it made sense that his unique form might cause a stir. But this was kind of ridiculous!

Men and women alike were open mouth staring at his beach ball sized gut as it swayed with each of Karamatsu’s heavy steps. The floor boards creaked and his nasally breathing sounded especially loud in the quiet atmosphere of the library. Strangers whispered to each other, kids pointed and he even heard a phone camera go off behind him.

If asked prior to this experience how he would feel being singled out like this in public, treated like a zoo animal on display, he would have said he would feel embarrassed and upset.

In the moment however, he couldn’t help but thank Akatsuka-sensei that his weighty belly hung down in front of his crotch cause holy shit this was super hot!

Being judged in public was exhilarating! The disgusted stares riled him up like no tomorrow! No wonder Choromatsu read degradation porn mags all the time. Karamatsu now understood the appeal.

Taking his time getting to the computers, he breathed heavier on purpose and even scratched at his underbelly, causing his sweatshirt to ride up significantly. The whispers intensified and his arousal spiked.

Shit, okay, get yourself under control. You’re in public, Karamatsu. You can jack off later.

Face flushed from both pleasure and movement, Karamatsu made it to the computer section.

Uh-oh, seems like there was yet another problem.

The chairs were tiny.

Even for a normal sized person these would be small! Karamatsu knew he was belly heavy but he also knew that his rear end had grown quite padded over time as well. There was no way his ass wouldn’t spill over the edges of the seat.

But would that really be so bad?

It could be something to tell his girlfriend about… how her morbidly obese boyfriend struggled to fit onto regular furniture? That he’d grown too big to function properly?

The thought turned him on again and he quickly began the process of sitting down.

Gripping the table with one hand, he reached behind him to grab the back of the chair with his other, hoping to lower his bulk down gently. Who knew how old these chairs were. The last thing Karamatsu needed was to break one in public, no matter how hot that would be…

Arm fat quivering, Karamatsu lowered himself about half way before gravity kicked into full gear and he lost control of his decent. Plopping his wide ass onto the small seat caused his cheeks to sag significantly over each side. The chair groaned loudly, covering up the small squeak of a fart that slipped out from the impact.

Sighing in relief from being off of his feet, and releasing a bit of gas, Karamatsu booted up the computer and got to work.

Why is my fat belly hard?

Was what he typed into Gooble. A surprising amount of results popped up about the topic. He thought it’d be harder to find information than this! Man, technology was awesome!

Clicking the first link he saw, Karamatsu began to read.

Oh jeez.

Visceral fat. Also known as Abdominal Obesity.

Fat located underneath the layer of muscles in your abdomen. Fat surrounding and squeezing your internal organs.

Too much of it can lead to severe health issues such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Karamatsu swallowed thickly before continuing to read.

How to get rid of-

He stopped reading.

Did he want to get rid of it?

Not really… He liked being this big. He actively wanted to grow bigger. He was aroused by his obesity and having just read about the potential consequences of his unhealthy lifestyle caused him to pop a boner so fast he didn’t even know what to do with himself.

Why the fuck did the knowledge of health risks turn him on so much?!

The thought of one day having to use a cane to get around, or take blood pressure medication or sleep with a c-pap machine… Why was that making him so horny?!

Was it the idea of letting go and not caring about the consequences? Was it the idea of metaphorically spitting in society’s face about what lifestyle choices are considered acceptable or not? Was it the risk of danger getting him off? Or the knowledge that he had grown so fucking fat that even his own body couldn’t handle it anymore?

Shiiiiiit he was hard.

Deleting his search history just in case, Karamatsu turned off the computer and speed waddled to the men’s bathroom to jack off.

Hey, don’t judge him! This wasn’t the first time he or his brothers beat the meat in public spaces…

Regardless, Karamatsu had some thinking to do, and a nearby buffet to visit…

End.

#mm//one shot #osomatsu san weight gain #karamatsu weight gain #weight gain story #weight gain fanfiction

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krinndnz · 1 year

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An Ad-Hoc, Informally-Specified, Bug-Ridden, Single-Subject Study Of Weight Loss Via Potassium Supplementation And Exercise Without Dieting

Here's the short version: I lost 30 pounds in 6 months by chugging a bunch of potassium salt and exercising a lot. My subjective experience is that cranking my potassium intake way up made it possible to do a lot more exercise than I had been doing without also eating a lot more. Exercising more without also eating more led to weight loss (as one would hope!). I did not diet: I ate as I had been doing and as it pleased me to do. Do with the raw data as you please.

Losing weight this way is unusual and worth paying attention to because many things about increases and decreases in weight and obesity are very poorly understood. Many people would like their personal weight and obesity levels to be different, so anything that improves our collective understanding of how to make that happen is valuable. However, losing weight this way is an experiment: it's not necessarily safe to do what I did! Part of why I did it was to find out what would happen, and if you have any kind of existing kidney problems then you definitely should not do what I did. Note to other transfemmes: if you're taking spiro, that counts as a kidney problem.

I also don't want to overstate the significance of this experiment: what I've been up to in the last 6 months amounts to a single data point that happens to also be 1,100 spreadsheet cells. It's a data point that is highly suggestive, sure, but it would be extremely ambitious to say that it proves anything beyond "this worked for me" and perhaps "it's not impossible for this to work". I am writing about it because as far as I know, this particular experiment is something that nobody else has tried, and, again, anything that improves our collective understanding here is valuable.

The long version comes next: how I came to be doing this experiment, what I did in the experiment, what I plan to do next, and finally what I think about it all. The really long version is the ongoing conversation that this post is part of, starting with A Chemical Hunger, which is a book-length literature review about the 1980s–present global increase in obesity prevalence, also the posts about single-subject research where the same authors discuss the limits of what can be learned from experiences like mine, also the Experimental Fat Loss guy and his wide variety of diet-only experiments, also some critics who disagree.

How I came to be doing this

At the tail end of 2022, I noticed both that my BMI had hit 30 and that I had become very unhappy about my weight. There's a specific photo where I didn't realize until I saw the photo that my belly was hanging out over my waistband and it's vividly unpleasant in my memory. Around the same time, I happened to find the potassium-supplementation community trial that the Slime Mold Time Mold folks were running. The value proposition was "this will be easy, cheap, and safe, but also it might not actually work," and that sounded good to me, so I signed up for it and took a modest amount of potassium all through December and January. It kinda-sorta worked: I lost 6 pounds. Not nothing, but "it kinda-sorta worked" is the most one can really say about losing 6 pounds in 60 days.

The low-dose potassium delivered on all of what the SMTM folks promised, though. It was easy, cheap, and safe. So I kept doing it and, since I was already doing the potassium, decided that I should get an exercise habit going. I am a big believer in the idea that it's a tremendous amount easier to go from doing Something to doing More Something than to go from doing Nothing to doing Something. The low-dose potassium got me through the first step: once I was doing Something about my weight, it was relatively easy to do More Something. When the community trial ended in early February, I didn't have to worry about messing up its results by departing from the trial's instructions, so I started taking more potassium and building my own experiment. I also kept in touch with the SMTM authors, who were very encouraging. 🐯💕

By late March I had brought myself up to daily amounts of potassium and exertion that seemed good to me, and I stuck with those. This is the first time in my life I've focused on trying to lose weight, and I was not fully prepared for how demoralizing it is that the weight change from day N to day N+1 sometimes seems perversely unrelated to what you were doing on day N. Fortunately I have experience with spreadsheets, so I put together a tracker for myself that focused on the trailing-week average of my daily weight and exercise measurements as well as long-term graphs. Three months of data were enough to put together a chart whose trendline said very, very clearly, "what you are doing is working — keep it up!" With any kind of long-term project it's very important to create and sustain sources of feedback. All else being equal, the longer it takes before you can get a read on "is this going well or poorly?", the worse it will go.

I decided that my goal would be to get my BMI from 30 (the lower limit of "obese") to under 25 (the upper limit of "normal"). Happily, the math is very easy there: for my height, a BMI of 25 rounds off to 200lbs. I further decided that I was willing to spend all of 2023 working on this. That decision is why I'm writing this post now: halfway through a project is a natural time to pause and take stock.

What I did

By the end of March, my regimen was firmly settled and I kept at it through the end of June without further tinkering. The daily goals I settled on were 10,000mg of potassium and 1,200kcal of exertion. That amount of exercise worked out to be 90 to 100 minutes per day. For contrast, in 2022 my average amount of exercise per day was 15 minutes and my average exertion was 500kcal.

I used my smartwatch's exertion number ("how many calories are you using above the amount you need to burn to be alive at all?") and gradually walked up my daily goal, settling at 1,200kcal/day partially because it was working and partially because one hour of watch face equaling 100kcal was helpful for being able to read "how close to my goal am I?" without thinking hard about it. Most of the exercise was treadmill time, usually a brisk walk or light jog. Over the months I also did some running, some bicycling, and some hiking, but treadmill time was the reliable, unremarkable, do-this-every-day core of my exercise regimen. It took a while to ramp up to that amount of exertion and there were definitely days when I stumbled, for good reasons and bad. However, in general I hit the exertion goal and in particular had it absolutely dialed from early March to mid-April.

It was easier to be totally rigorous about the potassium-intake goal — it helped that that part only took a few minutes per day, instead of 90+ minutes! I used potassium chloride powder (whatever came up first on an Amazon search since all KCl should be alike) mixed with regular Gatorade (i.e. not the sugar-free kind) to make it taste okay (I recommend blue Gatorade, it's the closest to appealing when kaliated — the yellow lemon-lime was meh and the fruit punch red was awful). I added two heaping teaspoons of KCl powder to a 20oz. bottle of Gatorade and drank that. KCl is about 52% potassium and a heaping teaspoon of it is about 6500mg, so I rounded up a smidge and called that 6600-and-a-bit milligrams of potassium per bottle. On Thursdays and Sundays I drank 2 full bottles and on other days 1.5 bottles. I recorded this as 10,000mg of potassium on regular days and 13,500mg on Thursdays and Sundays.

Is 10,000mg of potassium a lot? It's a lot more than average! The SMTM potassium trial post contextualizes it helpfully:

For a long time, the recommended daily value for adults (technically, the “Adequate Intake”) was 4,700 mg of potassium per day. But most people don’t get anywhere near this amount. In every CDC NHANES dataset from 1999 to 2018, median potassium intake hovers around 2,400 mg/day, and mean intake around 2,600 mg/day. In this report from 2004, the National Academy of Medicine found that “most American women … consume no more than half of the recommended amount of potassium, and men’s intake is only moderately higher.” Per this paper, only 0.3% of American women were getting the recommended amount. Similarly low levels of intake are also observed in Europe, Mexico, China, etc. But in 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine changed the recommended / adequate intake to 2,600 mg/day for women and 3,400 mg/day for men. They say that the change is “due, in part, to the expansion of the DRI model in which consideration of chronic disease risk reduction was separate from consideration of adequacy,” but we can’t help but wonder if they changed it because it was embarrassing to have less than 5% of the population getting the recommended amount. In any case, recommended potassium intake is something like 2,500 to 5,000 mg per day for adults, and many people don’t get enough. Potatoes are exceptionally high in potassium. A single potato contains somewhere between 600 and 1000 mg of potassium, depending on which source you look at. They are the 6th highest in potassium on this list of high-potassium foods from the NIH, and 9th on this old list from the USDA. If you do the math, this means that someone on the potato diet, eating 2,000 kcal of potatoes a day, gets at least 11,000 mg of potassium per day, more than twice the old recommended intake.

This explanation is most of why I decided to stabilize at about 10,000mg per day: because that's about how much potassium people were getting during the SMTM potato diet community trial. Because that community trial involved around 200 people, it was unlikely that there would be any truly heinous health effects from knocking back that much potassium, especially together with the anecdotal evidence that inspired the trial. Aiming for that amount also meant that it would be easier to compare my results to something that worked decently well and to ask questions like "is there something special about whole potatoes, or is it mostly the potassium?" If it's mostly the potassium, you'd expect my results to be closer to the full-potato-diet results than to the low-dose-potassium results — which is what happened.

I measured those results in a very basic way: ordinary bathroom scale, first thing in the morning, every day. Considering how much noise there is in weight measurement, there's just no advantage to measuring it more often. I kept the circumstances of the weigh-in simple and stable, trusting that that was good enough. I also measured exertion in two other forms — step count and exercise minutes — but that was mostly for my personal curiosity because both are basically downstream of exertion as such. Similarly, I tracked my sleep but didn't expect that to matter a whole lot.

While I was affirmatively not dieting, I want to make sure to talk about my food habits because I could be missing something that's easy for others to see as unusual but seems totally ordinary to me. My meals are heavy on pasta, rice, bread, and granola. I work diligently to get enough dietary fiber. I eat some meat but not a lot (eating a pound of meat in a week would be above average for me), and I enjoy coffee but not a tremendous amount of it since usually I make Chemex-style coffee and having a bunch of that in a day would be too time-intensive. My go-to snacks are cashews, pistachios, cherries, and granola bars. Like most people, I should eat more dark leafy greens than I do. I use a generous hand when measuring out olive oil. I believe that if you need either milk taste or milk fat, you shouldn't half-ass it, so when I need milk taste or milk fat, I rely on whole milk and heavy cream. Fats, generally, taste good. I eat more whole food and food I personally cook than I eat packaged and processed food, and I only infrequently eat restaurant food (weekly pizza night, maybe twice a month other than that). I really like sour candies but basically stopped eating them last autumn after some very patient coaxing from my dentist. Once in a while, dark chocolate, usually with the nuts and fruit.

I ate as I had been doing: I ate the food I felt like eating and ate as much of it as I felt like eating. If I felt like eating more or less, I did that. Since I wanted to keep the exercise habit going regardless of whether or not I lost weight, it was very important to me to not make the exercise any more difficult than it had to be. Going hungry would definitely make it more difficult, so I avoided doing that. One way in which I'm very sure my experience generalizes is, it's much easier to persuade people to try "add this supplement to what you're already eating" than to get them to try "replace all of your current food with potatoes," especially when talking about long-term or indefinite-duration changes.

What I plan to do next

I'll be thrilled if I can recapture something like the 7-week March/April streak I had going. Most days in this period (44 out of 49) were PB days (i.e. a day where my trailing-week-average weight was the lowest it had been since the start of the year) and no two consecutive days in this period were non-PB days (i.e. if a day wasn't a PB day, both the day before and the day after were PB days). I was losing almost 2lbs per week and exercising a lot and I felt great. However, my intuition is that that was the honeymoon period of going from mostly-sedentary to exercising regularly, and that I should expect further progress to be more difficult, to be like the less impressive results I got in May and June.

Still, the thing as a whole has definitely been successful enough that I'm going to keep at it until the end of the year, re-evaluating again in December (and maybe when I hit my weight-loss goal, which should happen around halfway between now and then). Since I'm using January 1st as my anchor date for the start of the experiment, it lines up nicely with the calendar if I just keep going all year and see what happens. Besides, I only need 6 months more to generate a year of data, while someone going from a cold start would need a whole year.

Given that I have a setup that is working pretty well, I'm reluctant to tinker with it. I might add one more high-potassium day in addition to Thursdays and Sundays, and I might start tracking some extra data — even though I'm not trying to change them, recording my food habits seems like the most helpful additional thing I could record.

If I develop health problems I'm gonna pull the ripcord (and post about it). There are already too many shitty fake weight loss regimens in the world that fuck up the health of people who try them, we do not need more.

What I think about it

Since I'm the one doing this experiment, I get to be excited about how it's working out for me personally, which is to say, very well indeed. Right now it seems pretty certain that I'll be able to reach my goal of losing ~50lbs in a long-term-sustainable way and just as importantly, getting myself to a much better baseline state of physical fitness. I feel pretty great about that part!

The experiment is not just for me, though: the reason it's an experiment rather than just "I'm trying to lose weight" is that I am keeping track of things carefully such that other people could carry out the same steps I did and get results similar to or different from mine and ideally everyone eventually comes to pretty firm conclusions about whether this — losing weight via potassium and exercise without dieting — works or not. My chugging potassium and Gatorade for six months to a year is the very beginning of that process, and I expect that the difficult parts of the process will be carried out by people with more expertise and resources than me.

I also expect that I have not tumbled to the One Weird Trick for weight loss that everyone else just overlooked. As someone with plenty of programming experience, I have a hearty suspicion towards "well, it worked on MY setup" stories. One obvious alternate explanation for my successful weight loss is "well yeah, you doubled your exertion and kept your food intake the same, of course you lost weight" — but I don't find that explanation satisfying. To start with, if it were that easy, people would do it more often. There are a tremendous number of people who would like to lose weight and a tremendous marketplace of devices, services, and professionals to help them use exercise for that purpose, and yet in a 20-year NCHS study, average exercise rose without obesity falling. It's also very, very easy to find fat people who exercise plenty — you will find them more or less anywhere you find lots of people exercising, as well as in places like sumo stables. A member of my family has taken up powerlifting in the last year, making him both fitter and heavier by quite a bit.

Additionally, there's studies like Keating 2017 concluding that short-term exercise intervention doesn't do enough to matter, or like the Wu 2009 work concluding that exerise-and-dieting isn't meaningfully better than just dieting over periods of 6+ months, and then there's the STRRIDE study, Slentz 2004, concluding that jogging 20 miles a week can get people to lose about 7 pounds over 8 months. The STRRIDE study caught my eye because it's pretty similar to what I did: they took obese mostly-sedentary folks, had them exercise more, and forbade them from eating less. However, once you do the math the results are much less similar: the average STRRIDE participant did around half the exercise I've done for at most a fifth of the weight loss (i.e. around 1lb/month vs. around 5lbs/month and around 3mi/day vs. 7mi/day). If someone else told me "Krinn, your naïve just-hit-the-treadmill exercise regimen is 2.5x as effective as an exercise regimen supervised & measured by professionals," I would want them to provide some compelling evidence for that.

If you tell someone you want to lose weight and would like their advice, it is overwhelmingly likely that the advice will involve exercising more. Everyone has heard this advice. And yet, as Michael Hobbes observes in a searing piece for Highline, "many 'failed' obesity interventions are successful eat-healthier-and-exercise-more interventions" that simply didn't result in weight loss. Even if we as a society choose to believe "more exercise always leads to weight loss, most people just fuck up at it," that immediately confronts us with the important question, why do they fuck up at it? and its equally urgent sibling, what can we learn from those who succeed at it to give a hand up to those who have not yet succeeded?

I find the SMTM authors' metaphor for this helpful:

[exercising more and eating less] is not an explanation any more than "the bullet" is a good explanation for "who killed the mayor?" Something about the potato diet lowered people's lipostat set point, which reduced their appetite, which yes made them eat fewer calories, which was part of what led them to lose weight. Yes, "fewer kcal/day" is somewhere in the causal chain. No, it is not an explanation.

Since I've been doing this for six months, I feel pretty certain that the potassium is doing something positive for me and I'm entirely willing to put in another six months to find out what happens for me. Finding out whether that generalizes is beyond my power: all I can do is explain what worked for me, one middle-aged Seattle housewife, and hope that it's useful to people who are in a position to do serious work about it.

One kind of serious work that's available is the very cool analytic techniques that other people in this conversation have used while looking at their data. If you are the kind of person to get elbows-deep in R or Matlab, feel free to grab my day-by-day measurements for that (I release this data under Creative Commons' CC0 if that's relevant to you). I'm not going to do that, though, partially because it's been a long time since I last used R but mostly because of the thing I said earlier about my whole experiment basically being one data point. If you have a data series, then yeah, get in there with some numeric interrogation, but if you only have one data point, that data point is what it is and statistical analysis can't really add to it. All I can claim here is that this is a new data point: people going about their everyday lives do not spontaneously increase their potassium intake severalfold and the background work from the SMTM potato diet and potassium community trials tell me that no-one's run a study looking directly at what happens if you do increase your potassium intake that much.

Do you want to increase your potassium intake that much? If you do, I have to re-emphasize the potassium community trial's safety warning: if you have existing kidney problems, do not try this. Also I'm gonna deploy the boldface again to make sure I get this across to other trans women: on this topic, taking spiro counts as a kidney problem! I am not a doctor and I'm extremely not your doctor, you should talk to your actual doctor if you have any kind of potential kidney issues and even if you're in good health and want to try chugging a bunch of potassium, you should titrate up gradually the way the SMTM writeup suggests (which is also the way I did).

In addition to a general spirit of responsibility, those warnings are important because otherwise just telling you that this is easy would sound like a recommendation. Did I mention that the experiment was easy? Easy easy. Piss easy. Lemon squeezy, etc. Of course building an exercise habit wasn't easy, but the potassium part didn't make it easier or harder, and the potassium part itself was pretty trivial. Mix this powder into Gatorade a couple times per day, drink it, done.

That said, if you do want to try this, godspeed and please write down how it goes for you. I recommend building positive reinforcement into whatever you use to track it; my personal spreadsheet for this is adorned with color-coding and happy emoji. I also recommend at least thinking about the following questions, whether you're going to do this, evaluate the results of this, or both.

How safe is it, in general rather than for me particularly, to chug this much potassium? This is the big one: "just mix potassium salt into Gatorade and drink it a few times a day" is so incredibly easy that even if the effect size is small, it could benefit a huge number of people, but of course it doesn't benefit them if it's not actually safe to do that.

Does this replicate? If it's not safe it matters a lot less whether it replicates, so the safety question comes first, but if it is safe, then one would immediately want to find out whether it works for 1% of people, 10% of people, or 50% of people.

How much do other mineral nutrients, particularly sodium and magnesium, matter for this? Maybe they need to be combined in some specific way, as this Twitter thread suggests.

Do sex hormone levels matter? I'm a trans woman and I've been having problems with access to HRT in this timeframe. Given how many things in one's body testosterone and estrogen affect, and given that previous obesity research has shown differences based on hormone profiles, that's definitely something to keep an eye on. Also because spironolactone in particular messes with renal function and potassium metabolism, I expect that it affects this. Digression: spironolactone is total bullshit as an anti-androgen of first resort. It sucks and I hate it and I should have switched to other anti-androgens even sooner than I did. If you're using spironolactone as an anti-androgen because it was the first thing your doctor tried for that, you really should try something else and see if that works.

I steadfastly avoided dieting. I like my existing diet just fine, and that's why I preferred the "what if I just chug a bunch of potassium" plan. All else being equal, I'd rather try things that let me eat what I like than things that require throwing my relationship with food into upheaval. But of course you wonder, what would happen if you did combine dieting and exercise and potassium? The ExFatLoss guy has been busy trying a lot of diet-only interventions and he's got a lot of interesting results. I am not the person to try it, but it's one of the obvious things to try, so I hope someone does try it.

How does this interact with the munchies? If you decide to try what I tried and you, like me, enjoy living somewhere where marijuana is legal, I think you should look at whether the potassium changes how you experience marijuana-induced hunger/overeating. One of the things I found very striking about the matter is that it was possible for me to chug enough potassium that the marijuana-induced hunger was drastically reduced. I expected the opposite since the potassium was causing me to eat less (relative to exertion) at other times. However, I have very strong habits about marijuana (exactly twice a week, edibles only, same amount every time) and I'm not willing to change them for this, so who knows how this aspect will work out for others. Definitely something to keep an eye on, though. Even if I wasn't losing weight, the potassium reduces marijuana-induced overeating enough that I'd probably keep going with it just for that effect.

Conclusion

I spent 6 months trying to lose weight with lots of potassium and exercise but without dieting. So far I have succeeded. Unless something disastrous comes up, I'm going to keep trying it for at least another 6 months and going to keep recording what I'm doing. I'm particularly curious to see where I'll plateau, since I assume at some point I'll start getting really hungry and/or tired instead of accidentally starving. I hope that my experience and the data I've recorded from it, are useful to people who are looking into questions about obesity and weight. Please feel free to use my data and my writeup (this post) for that. If you want to try doing as I've done, good luck and stay safe: this has worked for me but it is still experimental, it might be unsafe and/or fail to work for you.

#potassium #obesity #n=1 #slimemoldtimemold #citizen science #achemicalhunger #more or less accidentally doing science and that's kind of a weird feeling ngl but I hope it helps someone <3 #krinnposting

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