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#but it's also reasonably healthy and takes basically zero prep

weaselle · 4 years

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cooking for people who have no idea what they are doing (or are just, like, real depressed)

Okay, I’m a professional cook, but also, I get depressed. This is the cooking I do when I’m depressed, because I need the simplest path to a whole meal.

This is not for vegetarians, because, while I wholeheartedly support people choosing vegetarianism, and also enjoy cooking for vegetarians, for me, the simplest path to a meal includes meat. Perhaps when I am less depressed I will work on options.

A lot of recipes focus on achieving food that is in some way special, using special techniques, or using a precise list of carefully measured high-end ingredients... and that’s not this, this is all the parts of cooking that are not those things.

First, shopping

Meats Starches Veggies Sauces Breakfast/Snack

For a whole week you’re going to want

3 kinds of meat, with five portions each. So, for example, five chicken breasts, 10 sausage links, and 2-3 pounds of ground beef. Other possibilities include pork chops, salmon, some kind of steak, whatever.

You’re going to want up to 3 starches. Honestly I usually stick to just rice, but you can go with rice, potatoes, and pasta. If you want to use quinoa or polenta or something, thats on you.

And, you’re going to want about 3 types of vegetables, again, about 5 portions each -- and try to stay green. So personally, I usually get 5 medium zucchini, 2 medium heads of broccoli, and then either yellow squash or mushrooms. A bag of salad greens is also a good option, and I have an easy way to make a good salad, which I will do as a separate post.

Next pick something easy that works as either breakfast or a snack. For me this is a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bunch of bananas. Sometimes it’s nice to have an additional option here, like cereal or yogurt.

Last, you’ll want 2-5 sauces in bottles. I would definitely recommend a low sodium soy sauce be one of them, and maybe a BBQ sauce for the other. I usually also include worcestershire and sriracha but go with whatever you want, teriyaki sauce, A1, whatever you know you’ll eat. Hell, you can use Italian style salad dressing as a cookable sauce if you really want.

Oh, and If you don’t already have some at the house, you’ll need pan lube: butter and/or some kind of cooking oil.

Okay! we’re done shopping! Affordability isn’t the main focus here, but is undeniably important -- I live in a very expensive area, this shopping trip is going to feed me well for a week and costs me about $100 bucks. When I was living in Alabama, it probably would have cost me more like $70. You won’t need to get stuff like the sauce and rice and peanut butter every week, so you’re definitely looking at a monthly grocery bill of something like $300 depending on where you live, and that’s not too bad.

Prep

hell no, I’m depressed, the only prep I’m doing is putting two packages of meat in the freezer and the rest of this stuff in the fridge. You CAN box or bag each portion of meat separately so you can really alternate what you eat -- me, I’m gonna eat chicken for two or three days, then beef for two or three days, etc.

and listen, don’t fuck around with microwave settings or running water on things to defrost them. If you package the meat all up separately, just move a portion from the freezer to the fridge each time you cook dinner. Or, if you do like me, move the whole package when you go to cook your last portion of the previous stuff, and just deal with the fact that it will probably still be a tiny bit frozen when you go to cook next.

Tip: When you cook dinner, you’re going to make enough for lunch. That just leaves you one small meal - I often smear peanut butter on a peice of bread and wrap it around a banana like a taco - fast, easy, practically no dishes, relatively healthy

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Cooking (this is going to take about 25 minutes)

You’re going to need

ONE frying pan, medium size w/ lid ONE boil pot, medium size w/ lid knife, a spatula and a cutting board.

If you want to be fancy, you can include a big spoon. Looks like this

No matter what the specific ingredients you’ve chosen, the basic format is going to be:

Start your starch heat pan, put meat in the pan flip meat and add veggies, cover with lid remove meat and add sauce finish starch put everything on a plate while it is still too hot to eat and you are standing in the kitchen anyway, wash the like, 4 dishes you’ve gotten dirty. eat.

Okay, before you even get everything else out, start your starch. For rice this means rinse the rice and put it in the cold water and set it on high heat, for pasta this means put your salted water on the stove on high heat. For potatoes, you can use my perfect mashed potatoes recipe (I’ll do that as a separate post) or, honestly, you can wait until you’re halfway done with the rest of everything and microwave the sucker for like 8 minutes. I would never do that in a restaurant, but trying to feed my lethargic depressed ass? Absolutely.

easy rice: Fill your smallest coffee cup with rice, put it in the pot. Rinse. Fill the same cup twice with water, add to rice. Bring to a boil, give a good stir, turn heat all the way down, put a lid on it for something like 15 more minutes.

Okay, now lube your pan. Butter, olive oil, whatever. You’re probably looking at an amount more than a teaspoon and less than a table spoon of whichever you use. Personally I try to use as little olive oil as possible, so I pour a large coin sized amount (a quarter in the U.S.) into the pan, ear off a piece of the paper towel I’m going to use as my napkin for the evening, fold it up tight, and sort of paint the oil around so a little goes a longer way.

Pan lubed? Great, turn your burner on. highest heat will work but is not ideal, medium heat will work better but is still not ideal. Halfway between the two is perfect for chicken, a little hotter for beef, a little lower for fish.

Now remove two portions of your chosen protein (that way you’ll have tomorrow’s lunch too). By the time you get the packaging open and stuff, your pan is probably hot. If it’s not, let it get hot. You don’t want the oil to start smoking (warning, butter will burn faster than oil) but if you shake a single drop of water off your finger into the pan, you want it to sizzle.

If your pan is hot, put your meat in. The more you do this, the more you’ll perfect the timing, but you’re going to cook it for ~about~ 7 minutes before you flip it, maybe a couple minutes longer if it’s chicken or pork, maybe a couple minutes less if it’s beef.

Now that your meat is in, prepare your veggie. Rinse it off, cut off any part of it you don’t want to eat, and then cut what’s left into pieces the size of a large bite. Don’t worry, it’s going to get a little smaller when you cook it. Take your time, you’ll probably finish in less time than the meat needs.

Time to flip your meat? Great. Do that, and then dump your chopped up veggie in the pan. It does not matter at all if the pieces are not touching the bottom of the pan -probably most of them will not be, a bunch will be on top of the meat, that’s fine.

Put a lid on it. Now add your pasta to the water, or put your potato in the microwave, or check your rice. If following my perfect mashed potato recipe, mash now.

Rice tip, checking: eat a grain, you want zero crunch. If it’s not done and there’s no liquid, add a splash of water and stir. It it’s done or close to done, but it is still very wet, give it a big stir and leave on the stove with the lid off for a couple minutes.

Your meat still has like, at least 4 minutes, so rinse off your cutting board and chef knife, get out a plate, table knife and fork.

Meat done? Great. Take the meat out of the pan, leaving the veggies in. Add sauce to the pan. I like to also use a little wine, because it’s usually already in the house, if you have some and want to, pour a large swallow of wine in the pan with the sauce. I’ll often mix a couple sauces, like worcestershire and soy (makes something similar to teriyaki) or hot sauce and BBQ

Stir the sauce around with the veggies. This, called deglazing, is an important step for two reasons, 1: it will get up a lot of the flavorful stuff that has stuck to the pan and make your sauce better, and 2: it will make washing the pan much easier. Okay, put the lid back on for one to two minutes, maybe stir a couple times. Basically you want the sauce to stain the veggies.

Your starch should be done, turn off the burner, put a portion on your plate, and stick the rest in a ziplock or tupperware or something. Go ahead and throw the second portion of meat right in there with it.

Turn off the stove and scoop the veggies onto the plate, and pour the sauce from the pan over everything.

Now, while it’s too hot to eat, and you’re standing in the kitchen anyway, wash the pot, pan, and spatula. It should be very easy because of the way you used the sauce and because nothing has had a chance to harden. This usually takes me about 2 full minutes.

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OKAY! it’s been 20-25 minutes, you’ve got dinner and tomorrow’s lunch (just add another cut up veggie, pour a different sauce on, and put it in the microwave for two or three minutes) AND there’s no danger of dishes piling up on you :) You can even add “washing last night’s plate and fork for use tonight” to where you rinse the cutting board to really keep it full circle.

It’s not gormet. It IS accessibly healthy, affordable, and easy.

If you are extra depressed, forget the starch and use more veggies; this cuts what little work there is by up to half

Using this format, you can have three good meals per day and only spend 30 total minutes a day in the kitchen — including clean up! (dishes piling up tends to exacerbate my depression and makes cooking your next meal harder)

And it’s easy to give yourself a wide variety, from soy glazed chicken, zucchini and rice one night; to steak, mushrooms and pasta the next; followed by BBQ pork chops, brocoli and potatoes... I suck at math but there’s probably a hundred options

Just to recap, because I know I was very detailed and this might seem overwhelming, once you read through the above to answer any questions you might have, simply

-Start your starch -lube & heat pan, put meat in the pan, about 7 minutes -flip meat, add veggies, lid, about 7 minutes -wash knife and cutting board -remove meat and add sauce to veggies, re-lid, 1-2 minutes -finish starch, refrigerate extra meat and starch -put everything left on a plate -wash pot and pan -eat.

#cooking #food #depression meals

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 4 years

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Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

#cptsd #healcptsd #actually CPTSD #just cptsd things #traumabrain #Complex Trauma #trauma recovery #complextrauma #complexptsd

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beardyallen · 5 years

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Plagiarism

So let's start at the very beginning. Before moving to Beijing for the semester, I was warned that the culture around education in China differs in some pretty major ways when it comes to plagiarism and academic dishonesty. In the States, public school students are warned not to plagiarize starting (at least) in middle school. Cheating and plagiarism are not acceptable, and this idea is forced down every student's throat.

However, American students still cheat, copy and plagiarize. When you're put under enough stress, the incentive to abide by certain social agreements is devalued and the risk of punishment for violating these contracts becomes more acceptable to the student. This is something that, I believe, all of us can understand. However, I think we can all agree that it does not justify or absolve the student.

The major difference that I was warned about in China was that plagiarism is not nearly as condemnable. This likely has something to do with the pervading philosophy that puts the community first. Collaboration is assumed, and individuality is not as stressed. Students have indicated to me recently that their other instructors in China have not indicated to them that plagiarism is as severe a violation as their American instructors (namely: me).

In spite of the fact that I was warned that this is a bigger issue in China, I am not one to assume that the students in my classroom are indicative of the general population, or even that any of them are dishonest. Sure, the odds are pretty good that at least one out of the 30-something students will plagiarize, but I feel that I would be doing all of them a disservice by ASSUMING that this will happen.

So, when grading their assignments, I have not had the book's solution manual, written by the authors and published online for free, open next to me. At least until this week.

However, I have caught two students copying homework solutions from each other near the beginning of the semester. That situation was handled, and the students exhibited regret for their actions. I maintained their punishment (a zero on the assignment for both of them) in spite of their apology and the fact that they took responsibility for their unethical behavior.

But this past week, because I didn't want to memorize values in a z-table (a statistics/probability thing), I kept the solutions open next to me to compare the numbers that the students were coming up with. And some interesting trends popped up.

On Tuesday, I noticed a mistake one one student's assignment that I could chalk up to having solved the problem on other paper, then copying down their assignment neatly and missing a few symbols. This happens. No big deal. But...when another student who I know works with the first makes the same unintentional omission, you get suspicious. After comparing their solutions, it became apparent that they were academically dishonest.

This was frustrating. And it was exacerbated by the fact that I noticed a third student (who generally has not been known to work with these two) who had similar phrasing on other problems. The work on many problems was organized in much the same way. This is when I started comparing them to the solution manual, and my temper started to rise. [cue: Mark Ruffalo's Dr. Banner saying, "That's my secret, Cap: I'm always angry."]

After a bit of close reading, it became evident that all three of these students were using the solution manual as a blueprint for their problem solving process. This is not inherently bad. But if a student is to use a resource like this to complete their homework, they still need to convey that they understand the material on their own, meaning contributing their own phrasing or additional ideas and information in the arguments. The solution manuals are (frequently) intentionally left a bit under-developed precisely for this reason.

At this point, each assignment was roughly half-graded, and I had to stop. I was upset. Angry. Hurt. And definitely not in a healthy mental space to grade my students' work fairly. But those three assignments were set aside with a big, fat 0 at the top.

Cut to the next day.

I'm still upset, but I can set these emotions aside. I was still more suspicious than I would like to be of my students, the ones who have done nothing to provoke suspicion.

Until they did something to provoke suspicion. Over the course of the next hour, I identified three more students who plagiarized the solution manual, and my cool was gone. I set their assignments aside, finished grading the submissions from the other students, and then had 4 hours before class to decide how to proceed.

I didn't know what I was going to do until class started, but here's a little glimpse into what crossed my mind:

(1) Write "Who wants to confess to plagiarism?" on the chalkboard and wait to see how they react before passing back their assignments.

(2) Hand back the assignments, as the six who committed plagiarism to leave, and hold a review session for the final in their absence.

(3) Cry. Just sit and sob.

(4) Pass it back, not say anything to the class about it because it's the end of the semester and I'm just done.

(5) Just cancel class. Fuck it.

There were other ideas, but I don't remember them. I tried taking a walk. Reading comics to clear my mind. Taking a shower. Nothing helped.

And then it was time to head over for class.

I was shaking and really not looking forward to confronting them. Part of it was out of fear. Not that I was afraid of them, because they aren't scary. I was afraid of myself in that moment. I didn't know what I was going to say, and I wasn't sure that I could keep my emotions in check while I discuss the issue with them. Or made the decision. Usually I have enough time to parse through my emotions, maybe chat with a few people about what I should do (I'm looking at you, LN and MJ). I'm not usually Ron-Weasley-when-Malfoy-uses-racial-slurs when I walk in front of a class.

But before I get into how I handled it, I want to express why this struck me so deeply.

I was warned in advance that students here would be more likely to plagiarize. In some instances, this was communicated in a fashion that sounded vaguely racist, though I don't think that was the intent. Yet, I chose to trust my students. I assumed that they would have enough respect for me to, if they were going to use the solutions, they would at least make it difficult for me to catch them.

None of these students ever sought my help in or outside of class. No e-mails, no questions in class. Nothing. They never reached out to me, but instead chose to trust a document they found online. In spite of the fact that I have a well-known reputation for high standards, and these solutions (though correct) do not reach my standards. So they're somehow simultaneously taking the easy way out AND ALSO not even turning in good work. Like, they were getting full marks on their solutions, even though the solutions were basically written by the authors of our textbook. And this has likely been going on all semester long, so they know that it's not good enough.

And yes, this behavior hurt me personally. I feel disrespected. But also: they do this because they care about their grade. At least that's what they say. Maybe they fess up to laziness. Fine. But there's always an aspect of it that hinges on their grade being important. But what about the exams? They aren't cheating on the exams, but their prep-work isn't preparing them for the exams. So they give mediocre-to-pathetic performances on the days that really matter. So they care enough about their grade to cheat when it doesn't make a huge difference on their final grade, but not enough to perform well on the days that actually matter. Ridiculous. So it hurts me, but it hurts them more.

And then, the icing on the cake: they're disrespecting their peers. Because there are several students who are struggling with the material, and have been struggling all semester. In spite of that, they attend my office hours and ask questions. Frequently in broken English with a lot of exasperation because we aren't communicating well (which is, honestly, not their fault at all; they've met me more than halfway, I'm the foreigner who's teaching in China and can only say like 5 words in Chinese). These students have expressed frustration. And commitment. And a desire to perform well. But they haven't crossed that line. So yes, the plagiarism hurts me. The plagiarism hurts the students who plagiarize. But the thing to drove me the most crazy is that it devalues the work of the honest students. It is for them that I was the most upset.

So I walk into the classroom. I don't write an agenda on the board. I don't write anything. I set the assignments down at the front of the room on top of my Surface. I grab a chair that's tucked away behind the podium/tech-center and place it dead-center at the front of the room and sit down. I can't even look them in the eyes. And I'm shaking. My body is buzzing. If I were in an anime, their would be a yellow electric buzzing aura around me. Maybe red. I'm not sure.

And I start with a question: "Who is aware that there were solutions to all of the homework problems available online throughout the entire semester?"

Nobody moves. I'd say you cut the tension with a knife, but I think a better description is that the tension could stop a bullet. Or a train. Eventually, one of the students raises their hand. Side glances. Another hand. Then another. Some of them were the plagiarizers, some where not. Interesting.

I talk about how I feel. I summarize briefly what happened the day before, where I found three instances of plagiarism, all connected to the posted solutions and was so upset that I had to stop grading for the day. I have their undivided attention for the first time all semester long. (This makes me more angry, but I set that aside and don't think about it until this very moment. Now I have to calm myself down again. *deep breaths*)

I talk about how I felt today, when I went back to grading. And found three more instances. Half of the class committed plagiarism. This is unacceptable. I've been talking for 5 minutes, and I've mostly been looking down. Away from them. But I see fear on every single face in that room. Deer, meet headlights.

I talk about how I felt at the moment, in that room. That I'm shaking. That I wanted to come in today and give them a comprehensive recap on the entire semester, to reiterate some connections that maybe weren't perfectly presented before. But that I can barely stay calm enough to keep standing. And they can see it.

A student raises her hand. She didn't plagiarize. She's come to office hours all semester long seeking help. "Yes?" I say. "Professor, what is your definition of plagiarism?" she asks, in a voice that shakes nearly as much as mine. In that moment, the irony is almost too much. She has been a good student all semester long. She has worked with another student, collaborated on their homework all semester long, and I've given them warnings that their work sometimes looks a bit too similar (always written, and never with repercussions). Because of this, while I was grading the homeworks this week and plagiarism had already been found, I compared their work. Sure, a lot of it was similar. But it's clear to me that they didn't plagiarize each other because there is always enough written down to convince me that they both contributed to the work.

And this is, more or less, the distinction for me. Plagiarism in a math class is a tricky thing. There are only so many ways to write x = y. There are only so many ways to present individuality when showing your work. And this is one of the reasons I find it so important that all of their work include written justification. Because the justification is where their individuality will come through.

So what is my definition of plagiarism? "My definition is the same as that of the University. You can find a link to the University policy on plagiarism in the Academic Dishonesty portion of the syllabus. But, more practically, it's writing something down that you saw or heard somewhere else without contributing anything original." Because I know that some students didn't "copy word-for-word." Some may have even tried to avoid plagiarism by paraphrasing (this is the most common approach), which IS STILL PLAGIARISM.

I go on a bit after this about how I was warned that plagiarism is a bigger issue here, but that I view plagiarism as a person-by-person issue. That I couldn't walk into that classroom day after day, assuming or presuming that they would be dishonest. But that I apparently haven't been doing my job correctly because this was the first time I had compared their solutions to those found online.

"So, your assignments are here. You can come collect them. But I need to leave. I will see on Monday for the Final Exam." Class began at 7:00pm, and class ended at 7:11pm.

I was laying in my bed, finally calming down, by 7:15pm.

Over the course of the evening, I checked my e-mail a few times and noticed apology e-mails from students:

Student A

I am so sorry that I copied the solution for this homework. I know that I should not do that. I will work hard for my final exam and try my best to have a good grade.

I just went to your office and you were not in here. Can I go to your office at your office hour tomorrow? I am so sorry for that.

Friend of Student A, who wasn’t even in class

I want to express my apologies to you because of the plagiarism. I never thought this action is so serious before, I just too anxious to finish the work, but now I know that it is a really bad behavior, I promise that I will not make mistake like this in the future. Please accept my apology, I'm so sorry.

Student C - pretty sure I busted him for letting someone else copy his solutions earlier this semester...

I admit that I copied the solution online to do the last homework assignment and I apologize for that. It is close to the end of the semester, which is my last semester in university and I guess I have lost some incentive to work hard as I used to do before. I didn't treat the homework assignment seriously and copied some of the solutions directly, which is totally wrong. I can see your effort this semester, that you really want to teach us something and make the math knowledge more interesting. To be honest, I really appreciate your teaching style. Anyway, plagiarism is not right and I really want to say sorry about that. I promise I will work hard for the final.

Student D, and the most entertaining apology but also kind of the worst

I sincerely apologize for my fault---I copied answer from online.

I am a senior student. I am soon to graduate from this university, so I am a little bit slack at the end of this semester. When I was doing some questions of the homework, I had some ideas but I couldn’t totally solve these problems. I thought they were a little bit difficult. I wanted to figure them out, so I turned to online answers for help. I am not a bad student essentially, I truly want to learn knowledge. When I finish copying, I immediately understand how the mathematical theories are applied. So I used “answer” as a tool to help me study knowledge. I admitted that behavior was wrong, but I hope you could understand I truly wanted to learn knowledge, though my behavior was not appropriate.

I copied homework answer but the exam score was definitely true. They reflected my real learning state. I have already got math minor but I still choose this course, since I love math and this course is a prerequisite for my graduate program---business analytics, which will start this September.

You are a nice professor and I indeed learned a lot. Therefore, based on all these above, I sincerely entreat you could only punish me on this assignment and don’t fail me on this course. I apologize for my behavior again and I promise I will study hard for the final exam.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but for the most part, it didn't mean much. But reading those e-mails, having seen the looks on their faces...I think I reached them. I'm not sure that the message they received was the one I was trying to send, but I highly doubt they will forget that experience any time soon. This thought was what brought the first smile to my face all day.

And then...today.

As you could tell from some of the messages, students were going to come to my office hours to apology or talk to me or plead for mercy or whatever. I've dealt with reactions after the fact before, and, with no exception, the apologies end with a request that I change my mind. "But sir, I've learned my lesson. Now I know. I won't do it again. Can I have another chance?"

So not a second after my ass hit my office chair, a student walked into my office. Didn't knock on the door in spite of him having seen me close the door. Just walked in, walked right up to me, and handed me some papers, saying, "I've rewritten the assignment without looking at the solutions."

Huh. Well that's new. Sure, he was somewhat quiet and ashamed and vaguely remorseful, but he had so much of that air of entitlement that you see in American students. He knew that, if he said he was sorry, pleaded his case that his lack of awareness surrounding the seriousness of his dishonesty was not his fault, that now he knows better, it won't happen again, and he knows the material, then I should give him some credit for the work. Because he did it again. I bet he's even proud of himself for thinking of rewriting the assignment all on his own.

And honestly, I'm a bit thrown. I didn't expect this. Granted, it's for sure something that I would have thought of had I committed plagiarism in college. If I committed plagiarism in college, got caught, and wanted to save some aspect of my grade, I would FOR SURE have done much of the same thing. I mean, I would have done it better, though. I wouldn't have asked for a different grade...maybe said something along the lines of: "I know that I don't necessarily deserve a second chance, but I was hoping that you could at least take a look at what I have and give me feedback. I want to make sure that I understand the solutions completely." Maybe, just MAYBE, they would give me some partial credit. But it would have to be the instructor's idea.

But he doesn't do this. Nah, he just begs. Lip quivering the entire time. I'm sitting in my chair, amazed at how easy it is to stare directly at his eyes when he's too ashamed or embarrassed or whatever to look at me. And he's standing 2 feet away, searching in his mind for the right words to convince me that he's right and that he deserves partial credit.

And I tell him, "No." He asks and begs again. "No." And again. "My mind is made up. You are getting a zero on this assignment. That's the end of the story. This won't impact the way that I grade your final exam, but I will not budge on this." And he keeps begging.

This goes on and on until I start to feel that familiar feeling of this-kid-cares-enough-and-feels-so-strongly-that-he's-right-that-he-might-get-violent. This is a very American thing. It's not uncommon for white, American boys/young-men to be so sure of themselves that they resort to violent action in response to what they perceive as unfair treatment. If I were in the States, I would be legitimately concerned that he would shoot up my office. Or the classroom during Finals. People have done it for far less. And I've had students far more brazen with me. A former vet, even; he scared this shit out of me. Not sure how I managed to stand my ground and kick him out of class...but I clearly recall walking to the front of the room he exited, looking out at the students and saying, "Fuck, that was terrifying. I'm shaking. Gonna need a minute."

Students, for one reason or another, are put under such ridiculous stress. And they react. But I'm not sure what the extreme reactions here would be. To be clear: I don't expect him to do anything drastic. I expect that he will be upset for awhile, take the exam next week, and that will be the end of it. But what would he have done if my punishment for plagiarism was more extreme? And believe me, it could have been. A zero on the assignment, when my policy says that the lowest grade gets dropped? Pssh. That's basically nothing! *sigh*

Anyway.

At this point, it's clear that he's not backing down. So I ask him to leave.

Him [quietly]: "No."

Me [internally]: Bitch, what did you just say to me?!

Me [aloud]: "I have told you repeatedly that my mind is made up. I heard what you had to say, but I've made up my mind. I will see you on Monday for the Final Exam. If Monday does not work, please e-mail me with your availability for Tuesday so that we can find a time for you to take the exam. That will be all. Please leave me office now."

Him [quietly]: "No. I think--"

Me [internally]: Aight, now I feel unsafe. And I'm still angry. And I don't know what he's going to do, and I don't want this to escalate. How the fuck do I handle this?! What the fuck is even going on?! SERIOUSLY?! He's just not-leaving?!

Him [quietly]: "--that I deserve--"

Me [internally]: What the hell do I do? There are 4 or 5 other students out there, hoping to talk to me about the same damn thing! What if they're like this? What if they're worse? Now that this kid has already pissed me off, how I do recollect my cool-calm-approachable-demeanor and engage with them appropriately?

Me [aloud]: "I need you to leave. Now. If you don't, I can go downstairs at get a security guard."

Me [internally]: Got 'im! Now way does he just ignore that one! Security and safety is a huge deal in China, he's going to cave. For sure. *phew* Go me, just de-escalated the situation like a motha-fuckin' boss! I'm so proud of me.

Him [quietly]: "No." (Or something else that's similar.)

Me [internally]: *alarms are blaring* *that part of the brain responsible for fight-or-flight is going haywire* FUCK! *there goes my hearing* *now my vision is getting a little red at the edges* Shit, am I gonna have to fight this kid?! Is that boss-battle music?! Damn, I don't even have a character sheet...what's my dexterity?! I know my strength isn't super high (though neither is his), but come on!!!

Me [aloud]: "Alright. This is getting out of hand. I'm leaving. I suggest you do as well."

I collect my belongings (the ones that I'm most concerned he might destroy in my absence), and walk to the door, open it, see 5 students waiting to give me a "formal apology," and I then turn and look at the kid. He's not budging.

Alright. Time for a fucking staring contest, then. But now we have an audience.

My mental/emotional state:

"You need to leave. Now." And I didn't even raise my voice.

And although the students aren't necessarily on my side in this, they're standing behind me, staring at him.

*cue Pokemon battle music*

Michael used Intimidate.

It was super effective!

[Student] ran away!

*sigh of relief that was heard the world over*

But now there's the rest of them.

"Hello Professor. We're here to give you a formal apology."

URGH!

"Okay. We'll do that here, then," I say, standing in the hall, two feet away from another open office door, with the instructor staring at me, a bemused grin splashed all across her face.

They give me a similar apology to those written above, so I'll skip to the end. They say they're sorry, I listen. It's awkward. I respond, "Okay. You should know that this does not change my decision on how I graded your homework. That will stand. However, the plagiarism will not impact how I grade your final exams. I will see you on Monday."

They leave, end of drama (for now), and then two more students show up.

The two I've mentioned before, who work together on their work constantly but haven't been academically dishonest. They have questions about the final exam. Content-based questions. And we have a nice exchange. It's pleasant. I don't know if I'll be a teacher/instructor after I receive my PhD. At least formally. If you know me, you know that I can't help myself but share information. It's just a part of who I am.

But if I did, I would be putting up with all of this bullshit just for the hope that some of the students are like these two girls. They may not care about the material the way that I do. They may not find it particularly useful for them at any point after the Final Exam. But they still put in the work. They still ask questions to make sure that they understand what's expected of them. And they're honest. Maybe not for the right reasons, but they're still honest.

And those students make it worth it. Almost. Sometimes. Maybe.

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islanani-blog · 6 years

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Allow myself to introduce my....self...

Ok so, it’s a new year, time for a new look…it’s time to break the mold of the old and be cool with what’s new. Like that Tupac song goes…”it’s time for a change, let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live, and let’s change the way we treat each other. You see the old ways wasn’t working so it’s on us to do what gotta do, to survive…”

The New Year tells me that it’s time for a change...it’s time to reintroduce myself. It’s time for IslaNani sucka’s! That sounds good, don’t it? IslaNani….it’s….it’s….well it’s the soul in my food, my travels, and how I feel when I see my family and friends. IslaNani is a state of mind, a sojourn of the spirit, very Metamucil…just close them eyes, take a deep breath and when you reopen them eyes, see the world for what it was intended to be…beautiful, loving, and filled with those we care about the most. So…what does all this mean? Shee-yit, it means I’m back fool! But I’m changing up the game while staying true to what got me here and that is sharing my passion for life, food, and still making dumb assed uncle jokes along the way. So, you ready? I’m ready! Let’s get down!!

Ok then, I recently got back from a 19 day trip to Hawai’i and I have to say it was transformative. Not Transformative like Bumblebee or Optimus Prime Rib…but like it provided me the chance to be with my family as we found new things to love about a place we have gone for the last 10 plus years. It was really cool to see new things and go on new adventures in a place that had become so familiar and laden with the same haunts each jaunt. Think of it like looking at yourself in the mirror all the time, same old you. You say to yourself “I’m good looking but it’s the same reflection every time.” Then one day you realize, “Hey, I have really nice ear lobes…those are some nicely shaped lobes. I never realized how good looking those things are. I’m gonna go out and show my badass lobes to the globe.” I also came away with a new found appreciation for my family relationships in general. We even made some new friends that we will be in touch with for years to come. That’s what got me thinking about a shake-up in my blog postings. I’m still sorting this out, but I feel like mixing up food and travel will be a nice blend. Basically when I travel, I find something good that I ate and I come home and cook it. So why not bring the two together? Food and travel go hand in hand like Charlie Brown and Snoopy, ball games and hot dogs, a white Speedon’t and that one European dude at the beach playing badminton by himself for some reason…just matches made in heaven. I mean damn, they have a full channel dedicated to it. Not the European Dude Speedo Badminton Beach Championships (or the EDSBBC for short), but you know…travel. One day I’ll have to audition for one of those Travel Channel shows. We call it, “Can’t Take Him Anywhere Nice” starring Uncle Manny. But sadly, that dream will have to wait. Until then, I’m gonna show off some sweet Hawai’i pics and take on a couple different ways to prep up musubi as well as some egg rolls. So slap on those board shorts and that chef hat and let’s get to work motha sucka’s!

Egg Rollin’ with the Homies

Egg roll wrappers (thawed)

2 chicken breasts

1 bell pepper diced

1/2 onion diced

2 tbsp. of minced garlic

Taco seasoning to taste

This isn’t exactly a new one, but it’s something that the wife had on our last trip and she wanted me to make it for her. So to start, in a medium sized bowl, rub the chicken breasts with taco seasonings then put a little oil in a pan over medium-high heat and cook the chicken breast until done, about 10 minutes. Once done, remove from heat and place on a cutting board to cool. While those breastesses cool down, put the pan back on medium-high heat and add in the onion, garlic and bell pepper and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Go back to the chicken and dice it up into small pieces, return the pan to the heat and mix in the chicken with the veggies and cook until it is all blended in. When done, set aside and allow to cool for about half an hour. While you wait, go like drink a beer or something. Once you have waited for half an hour, or about 4 beers (because 4 beers in half an hour is about right isn’t it?) take out the egg roll wrapper and place a couple spoonful’s of the mixture on the bottom corner. Wrap up the egg rolls and set on a cookie sheet, plate, or whatever flat surface you want to use. From here you can pan fry them in oil, or if you are one of those do-goody “I don’t fry stuff because I’m healthy, but I’ll bake the sh*t out of it” types then that’s cool too. Just put a little oil on a cookie sheet, brush a little oil on each egg roll and bake it at like 425 degrees or whatever temp you like. Me? I’m the “Fry-day is My-day” type so I puts ‘em in oil and eats ‘em up. If I wanted to be healthy I’d eat a salad and run a mile. So anyway, once these are done, you can set out some salsa for dipping or do it my way with a couple spoonfuls of sour cream mixed with Chipotle Tabasco for your dipping sauce. This recipe feels very Guy Fieri, but who gives a spit, they taste good cuz!

Don’t Worry, Musubi Happy

Steamed white rice (sushi rice preferred but jasmine is ok for musubi)

Nori sheets

Portuguese sausage

Salmon

Teriyaki sauce

Furikake

What you want to do first is steam the rice. While that steams, cut the sausage in long strips, then pan fry them on medium-high heat. They will be done when they are a little brown and slightly crispy. When done place on paper towels to cool but keep the oil from the sausage in the pan. Now put the salmon in that same pan and on the same heat, drizzle on some teriyaki sauce and cook on one side for about 8 minutes. Flip the salmon over, then, cook the other side for about 8 minutes, drizzling on more teriyaki sauce. When done, remove from pan and set on a plate. Next get the nori sheet and place on a sushi mat. Cover the nori with rice, salmon, and Portuguese sausage. Leave about an inch of space on the end of the nori so you can close and seal it. Sprinkle on a little Furikake and then roll it up in the mat. Taking a sharp knife, run it under some warm water and slice into equal-sized rounds. With every other cut, run the knife under warm water since this will help the knife cut through the nori and not tear away at it.

So there it goes…my first post of the New Year. Hope it was fun and informative because if not, too bad, it only goes downhill from here my dudes and dudettes! If you decide to try these recipes at home, just take your time with it and have fun. If you have kids, encourage them to help. Give them the hot oil and frying pans as well as the sharp knives, then, leave them unattended while you go fetch another drink. Nooo! I’m kidding! Let them turn the oven on too…all right y’all, until next time, be cool.

As promised, I have a sweet ass video of Hawai'i! Turns out my inlaw's neighbor works for a great ocean excursion company called Trident Adventures and they took us out for a cruise early after Christmas. You can find them at www.tridentadventures.com and they are worth checking out. They had plenty of snacks and drinks for the kiddos plus they are just very nice people. The crew is great and run by military Vets so you get to be out on the water with our nation's finest. I guess the crew of Hawai'i 5-O was out on the boat as well as the dude from Aquaman so they have a pretty swank clientele list. Even Z list stars like me (I was in a Hollywood movie about Prefontaine for like point zero 2 seconds). Even though I didn't sign any autographs that day, the kids had a blast and saw half of the supporting cast from Finding Nemo. I'm talking full on Honu, Whales, small fishies...but hey, we were just around the corner from Disney's Aulani so it made sense...

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lespetitesmortsde · 7 years

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Bechloe where Beca's a baker who saw Chloe move in through her window and is awkward but also wants to get in on that from the Neighbours AU list "I just moved into the building and I found banana bread on my doorstep. I probably shouldn’t eat it cause I have no idea where it came from buT IT’S DELICIOUS"

Beca tried very hard not to be creepy, but that’s kind of difficult when her past-time for the last hour and a half has been to stare out the window and watch a gorgeous redheaded woman carry box after box into the house beside her own.

More than once, Beca debated the merits of going out and offering to help her, but that required more game than she had ever or would ever possess. It wasn’t a bad day for moving, either. The sky was overcast, but still bright without being too hot. So Beca didn’t feel bad for whom she could only assume was her new neighbour.

It was Beca’s day off and she had originally planned to use the day catching up on her boring adult stuff, like paying bills and updating her budget (which she preferred to call ‘the financial situation’ in a veiled reference to one of her favourite musicals). Yet, here she was, staring out her kitchen window like a weirdo, trying to check out an unsuspecting lady.

Sometime shortly past noon, Beca gave up on trying to be a functioning adult. She put away her tablet and calculator on the small table by the pantry and decided that if she was going to stare all day, she could at least do something useful at the same time. From beside the calculator she picked up her kitchen notebook and walked to her spice rack, flipping to one of her favourite banana bread recipes.

At this point, cracking open her book to make banana bread isn’t so much necessary as it is habit. These days, she knows her recipes by ratio and plays with the fun stuff: flavouring, aromatics, density, leaveners, and the like. Not that Beca doesn’t like the classics, but nutmeg and cinnamon in particular for banana bread is a little ‘meh’ in her opinion.

A few weeks ago, she tried cumin and coriander with a bit of orange zest, which worked well, especially when paired with an unsalted, fresh coriander herb butter. She introduced it at her bakery after her at-home success, and so far, it was still selling well. She even got her friend Benji, owner of the cafe beside the bakery, to flavour a chai latte that would pair well with it.

They often played off each other like that, running the joke that one day they’ll tear out the wall separating their businesses. He was a good guy, if a little weird at times, and he makes a shot of espresso that gets Beca to sigh in pleasure.

Especially when she’s baked a batch of biscotti for the occasion.

But back to her current spice rack dilemma. She didn’t want to do anything too ‘out there’ because she has zero clue about the redhead’s tastes. Maybe she doesn’t even like banana bread. It doesn’t matter, she’s going to get some. It’s the least Beca can do after drooling at her all day. Beca’s baking is fucking delicious, so the new neighbour can always use it to make friends if nothing else. She seems like the kind of person who makes friends easily. And no, it’s not just her pretty face. Well, Beca’s assuming her face is pretty. She’s only seen it from a distance, but she has faith.

So Beca opted for a pretty vanilla banana bread, if you don’t mind the pun. She chuckled as the joke went through her mind and grabbed a jar of vanilla beans and a different jar full of cardamom pods.

Now, most banana bread recipes don’t have a liquid component aside from beaten eggs. However, Beca uses a quarter cup of cream for richness and, in this case, to host the flavours from the cardamom and vanilla pods. After getting a small step stool from the corner of the kitchen, she grabbed a small cast iron pan that hung from her ceiling. She set a burner to medium and tossed a few cardamom pods into the pan, lightly toasting the spice.

God help her, she is such a nerd for baking.

She measured out her cream into a glass measuring cup and split a vanilla bean to scrape out the seeds. She took another peek out the window. The woman was lugging yet another box into the house. Beca wondered how the decently-sized but also kinda small moving van had this much crap in it.

Shrugging off the thought, she added a touch of water to the pan in order to cool it a bit, and pulled it off the heat. She added the cream to the pods before adding the vanilla seeds and after a quick internal debate, the vanilla pod as well. The pan wasn’t too hot, so she used her bare hand to swirl the pan and thus the liquid around, and smiled as it started to change colour, taking on the colours and flavours of the spices.

She set it off to the side to finish steeping , prepped her dry ingredients, and mashed a few bananas from the freezer. Periodically, she glanced out the window to keep loose tabs on where the redhead was. Last Beca noticed, the woman had shut the back door of the van and gone inside.

A little disappointed, Beca preheated the oven. Then she buttered and floured a loaf pan, and took out a stick of butter from the fridge to soften for later. She figured she might as well use the last of the rosewater she’d made a few days ago for a shortbread experiment to create a rosewater whipped butter to go with the banana bread. It would complement the cardamom and vanilla softly, since it’s a delicate flavour.

Beca tried to stay aware of not overcomplicating her flavour profiles. Sometimes, less is more. She’d once made a twelve-spice bundt cake and while it was not awful, it wasn’t particularly good either.

She combined all of her ingredients and then poured the mixture into her prepared pan. One long look at it later, and she spritzed the top with rosewater. She justified it by telling herself it’ll tie the flavours of the butter to the banana bread better, and even keeps the profile if the butter is skipped.

It was a reasonable decision and not at all impulsive.

Beca slid the pan into the oven, picked up her notebook, and went to go lean against the counter in front of the window. She propped the book against the glass so she could pretend she wasn’t trying to scope out the neighbour if she needed an alibi. It’s a stance she’s been caught in before, more than once.

When you’ve been baking for more than fifteen years (Beca started when she was eight), you don’t have to set an alarm anymore unless you’re very busy. Despite being distracted, Beca was technically not busy, so she figured she’d be safe relying on her internal clock.

Luckily for her, the universe did not want her to burn anything today.

She caught the rare glimpse of the redhead through the other house’s windows. Sometimes the woman popped up in the only upstairs window Beca could see, sometimes in what appeared to be the kitchen, and most often in what looked like a living room.

45 minutes later, the bread passed Beca’s test for doneness and was put aside to cool. She turned away from her viewing pleasures to pull out her stand mixer. She changed the attachment from the ever-trusty dough hook to the whisk and dropped the stick of butter into the bowl. Eight minutes of whipping, starting at medium and going all the way to spastic, brought lovely, white, fluffy, and aerated butter into existence. She added a healthy measure of rosewater, but there wasn’t much left, so she tossed the rest in too. Another minute on high and she was scraping out the butter onto some wax paper.

It took a few minutes to wrestle the butter into a cylinder and then to squeeze the extra air bubbles out, and then Beca just stared at the tube. Something was missing. She grumbled a little as she went to her decoration drawer and pulled out five weirdly angled pieces of plastic. Beca loosened the wrapping on the butter tube, pressed the pieces of plastic into it, slipped a couple of elastic bands around the tube, and then wrapped the whole thing in cling wrap.

Stars. That’s what the presentation needed. Butter that looked like stars.

xxxxx

It had been a long day of moving stuff into her new place and Chloe was exhausted. She’d spent the better part of eight hours straight lugging heavy boxes in from the rental van. She flopped heavily onto the couch, thankful that her best friend Aubrey had been around to help her yesterday so she could get all the furniture moved in without too much struggle. She could’ve used Aub’s help today, too, but it was miraculous that Aubrey had gotten even one day off to help her. The law didn’t rest.

Chloe sighed, feeling her limbs get heavier as she laid there. Her mattress was still on the floor of her bedroom and she hadn’t gotten a chance to build her bed yet. At this point, it was looking like she might not even make it upstairs before she passed out. The couch looked like a better and better option the longer she didn’t move.

Her stomach rumbled and Chloe groaned because she doesn’t have anything to eat, aside from some instant ramen. Even that basic assembly seems too daunting.

When Chloe was trying to figure out where her phone was—she couldn’t tell anymore if there actually was something in her pocket, or remember if she put it down somewhere—someone knocked on her door.

She cocked her head to the side, trying to recall if she was expecting anybody. Not that she knew of. And unless she can’t remember a very lucid dream where she ordered pizza (which would be amazing), no one has any reason to be on her doorstep. But, even though she was absolutely beat, she got up with considerable effort, and went and opened the door.

No one was there. Chloe couldn’t believe it. Not even one whole day in her new place and the neighbourhood kids were already pranking her. Then, she looked down.

“Oh,” Chloe said softly, bending down to pick up a Ziploc container. There was a note stuck on top. Chloe looked around to see if she could spot the person responsible, but she couldn’t see any sort of movement.

She took the tupperware inside, closing and locking the door behind her. In the kitchen, she set it on the counter and pulled off the note left on top.

Welcome to the neighbourhood!Hope you got moved in alright. Please enjoy some banana bread. It’s not vegan, gluten-free, or calorie-wise, but it should be delicious. There’s also a butter that goes with it, if that’s something you’re into.Of course, you don’t have to eat it either. It’s pretty sketchy to eat random banana bread from your doorstep. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never know.

Smiling, Chloe took the lid off of the container. It looked like banana bread. It smelled like fancy banana bread. She poked it. It felt like regular banana bread too. Not that she’d know what poisoned banana bread looked or felt like. Tucked in a smaller container at the side was the butter. Chloe opened that one too and laughed when she saw the butter in star shapes. Yup, that spelled out fancy banana bread. It must have been a pain to cut all those stars out of a block of butter.

Her stomach rumbled again. “Well,” Chloe murmured, “if this is how I die, so be it.” Without bothering to try and find a knife in one of the still numerous remaining boxes, Chloe tore off a chunk. She eyed the butter, debating quickly, before smushing her bread into one of the stars.

She put the whole piece into her mouth.

Holy shit, was it delicious. It was rich and dense, but smooth and creamy with the help of the butter. There was also something extra, some spice she didn’t know. She could make out the vanilla, but something in there had more depth that blended well with the banana and the vanilla.

She ate three-quarters of the loaf, eating a couple of pieces without the fancy butter, just to say she tried it both ways. Honestly, it’s probably one of the best dinners she’s ever had. She just wished she knew whom she should thank for the truly delectable gift.

Also, she should probably give the container back. At some point, anyway.

Is it possible to fall in love via baked good? Chloe thought about it as she put what little was left of the bread away and trudged upstairs to clean up and sleep. Yeah, it probably was possible. Chloe was a goner.

xxxxx

After returning the van in the morning, and unpacking more of her belongings, Chloe took a bowl of ramen outside to eat on her porch. She was impressed she found a bowl, pot, spoon, and chopsticks, too. About halfway through her noodle lunch, a man left the house directly across from hers, and walked right toward her.

“Hello!” He called out as he approached. Chloe moved the bowl from her lap and got up, brushing her right hand against her pants.

“Hi there!” She replied brightly, stepping down to meet him on the walkway.

“Welcome to the neighbourhood! I’m Jesse,” he introduced himself with a little wave.

“Hi Jesse, I’m Chloe,” she shook his hand once he’d stuck it out there.

“Nice to meet you. Do you need any help?”

Chloe shook her head. “Thank you, but no. It’s just putting things away now and I want to be able to find things again.”

“No sweat,” he smiled easily. “Am I the first one to say hi?”

She shifted on her feet. “Kind of?”

He looked at her, waiting for the explanation.

“Well, yesterday someone knocked on my door, but when I opened the door, nobody was there. They left some of the most delicious banana bread I’ve ever had, though, but I have no idea who it is,” Chloe sighed.

Jesse laughed. “That’ll be Beca,” he told her. “She owns a bakery further into town.” He turned to point at the house next door. “She lives there, and you’re right, her baking is amazing.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped, as she looked over at the house. “Really? What’s it called?”

“Grain of Salt; it’s right beside a cafe that my best friend owns.”

“That’s so cool,” Chloe gushed, glancing back to Beca’s house.

Jesse smirked a little. “Do you want me to introduce you?”

Her hair whipped as she turned to look at him. “That’d be great!”

He nodded. “Okay, let’s go.” He started walking away.

“Wait! I need to change, I can’t go over like this!” Chloe cried, gesturing frantically at her sweatpants and tank top.

“Relax,” he said calmly. “She’s probably not dressed much better by now.”

Chloe’s brow furrowed.

“She opens the bakery every morning, so by the time two p.m. rolls around, she’s already back home and lounging.”

“Still,” Chloe said, drawing it out.

“Nope,” Jesse walked back to take her hand. “Come on, it’ll be fine.”

“Wait, wait, let me at least grab her tupperware container,” Chloe said, pulling away and marching into the house. She emerged a minute later with a clean container. “Okay, now we can go.”

Jesse led the way, even though Chloe now knew where to go. He’s also the one who knocked before calling out loudly, “Beca, open the door!”

From somewhere upstairs, slightly muffled, someone (presumably Beca) yelled back, “Go away, Swanson, I’m not watching a movie with you! Not now, not ever!”

Jesse rolled his eyes and leaned towards Chloe. “She’s being dramatic. I made her watch Titanic the other day. She hated it,” he whispered conspiratorially.

“Come on, Becaw! I have someone for you to meet!” Jesse smiled smugly.

The door flung open. “You know I hate that nickname!” She growled, before realizing exactly who it was with Jesse.

“Hi!” Chloe greeted, and on impulse went right up to Beca and hugged her.

Beca looked at Jesse, lost, but he only shrugged in return. “Um, hi?” Awkwardly, she patted Chloe on the back.

“I’m Chloe,” she said as she pulled away.

“Beca.”

“Nice to meet you!” Chloe smiled, then offered the container to Beca. “And thanks, it was amazing.”

Beca wrenched her gaze from Chloe’s eyes down to the Ziploc and back. “You finished it already?”

Chloe blushed. “I hadn’t eaten dinner when I discovered a poor defenseless banana loaf on my porch, and then it was so good I just could help myself. I finished it off for breakfast this morning.” She shrugged, “I have no regrets.”

Beca tilted her head to the side. “And did it work well with the butter?”

Chloe nodded emphatically. “Oh my God, it was so good!” But Chloe paused. “Wait, you didn’t try it?”

Shaking her head, Beca replied, “No, I didn’t want to ruin the presentation. I had faith it would be good, though, so I’m glad it was.”

“Aww, I wouldn’t have minded! Also, what spice was in there?”

“Cardamom.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that one before. It was nice though. I don’t know how to describe it, but it added to the experience.”

Beca smiled. “That’s great. That’s the goal.”

The two women just kind of gazed at each other for a few moments.

“Should I leave you two alone?” Jesse asked, already taking a couple of steps back.

Beca rolled her eyes. “What brought you here anyway?”

Jesse gestured at Chloe. “She wanted to know who baked the banana bread. Had to be you. That’s all.”

She looked at him warily. “That’s it?”

Chloe jumped in before Jesse could say anything more. “Yup! I needed to know who made this. Tell me all your secrets!”

Beca noticeably blanched. “All?”

Chloe grinned, stepping forward so Beca would step back and let her in the house. “Yes! You’re like a magical baker, I need all the baking secrets.” Chloe wandered in, slipped off her shoes, and went looking for the kitchen.

Beca stared after her, half in amusement and half in disbelief. She closed the door and followed her, hoping she wouldn’t destroy the organization of the pantry before she got there.

Jesse watched the door close in front of him. “I’m good here,” he muttered under his breath. “No, I don’t want to come inside thank you. Geez,” he shook his head at his friend’s behaviour. “Maybe she’ll get laid and be less grouchy, though.”

He turned and walked away, chuckling at the exasperation he could hear in Beca’s voice as she asked Chloe to put something down before their conversation dissolved into two distinct giggles.

#ask #anon #bechloe #fic request #lespetitesmortsde #fanfic #beca mitchell #chloe beale #baker beca au #ficlet

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trentteti · 6 years

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Predictions for the March 2019 LSAT

It’s only six days before the March LSAT, so it’s time for us at Blueprint to dust off our crystal ball, unpack our tarot cards, and focus our powers of divination. That’s right. It’s time to make some predictions for what’s going to be on the March LSAT.

Now, we don’t have any insider information about what’s going to be on the LSAT. We don’t even have especially keen powers of divination — our crystal ball is completely ineffectual (we bought it on sale at CVS) and we can’t read our tarot cards (we just think they look cool). I, for one, am wrong about all sorts of things. For years I thought Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton were the same person. I’m aware of the harm of perpetuating this belief and the social stigma it caries, but I’m sort of willing to entertain the idea that at least part of the moon landing was faked. One of my core, guiding principles is that no name (first and last) should have more than four syllables.

So I’m wrong a lot, and maybe not the most trustworthy person in general. But I do follow the LSAT very, very closely (perhaps more than any sane or healthy person should), and have a pretty solid grasp on where the test is trending. And that, I think, is ultimately more helpful to someone about to take this test. If I made a bunch of a specific predictions, I’d be wrong about most of them (as would anyone trying to predict exactly what’s going to be on the test) and that would be of little use to you. If instead gave you a more general sense of what’s likely to appear on the test, you’d at least have some general guidelines that would help you prioritize certain concepts in your studies during the waning days before the big test.

For March test, then, I’m only going to make one specific prediction, and then I’ll try my best to give you a general sense of the types of questions and concepts that will probably appear on the exam, based on how this test has been trending for the last few years.

So, first up, the specific prediction: They’re going to re-use an old, nondisclosed test for this one. Probably a test that they used for those test takers who observe the Sabbath and cannot take the exam on a Saturday.

Why do I think this? Well, there will be way more LSATs in 2019 than there have been in any previous year. The exam used to be given four times a year. In 2019, it will be given seven times. So LSAC is responsible for making three extra LSATs in 2019, a (check my math) 75% increase in its output.

And if you think taking the LSAT is hard, think about how much harder (and expensive) it would be to write the LSAT. Not only do you have to come up with all the insane topics that show up on these questions, you have to rigorously test the questions to make sure they produce predictable, standard responses from test takers. It is, to put it mildly, a whole thing.

So LSAC probably can’t afford to make three more LSATs every year. Instead, they’ll use an old nondisclosed exam that never got released to test takers or test prep companies. There’s some precedent for this, too. In 2018, LSAC reused the nondisclosed February 2014 LSAT for the then-brand-new July LSAT.

LSAC could theoretically use an old February test again. But I sort of doubt they’ll do that. By using an old February exam last July, LSAC drew quite a bit of ire from test takers who, rightly or wrongly, felt that this gave people who took the February 2014 exam an unfair advantage. (I, for reasons discussed in this old post, thought those test takers were overreacting). LSAC probably doesn’t want to incur the wrath of angry pre-law types again, so I don’t think they’ll use an exam that was seen by as many people as a previous February test.

So I’m thinking they’re going to use a test that’s only been used for an international LSAT administration or a Sabbath-observer administration. An old Sabbath-observers test feels right to me, since the March exam will be given on a Saturday, and Sabbath observers — by both religious custom and LSAC fiat — cannot take the test on a Saturday. So there will be no one — law-school-bound recent Sabbath-observing religious converts aside — who takes the test on March 30th who had seen the test previously.

This is a prediction I make sort of reluctantly. It’s not one I mentioned to any of the classes I taught. I didn’t want anyone to have the idea that the last week before the test should be spent scouring the internet for information on Sabbath observer exams given between the years 2014 and 2017. Since those exams weren’t disclosed, these searches wouldn’t yield anything helpful. And trying to figure out whether an exam was previously used as you took it could be, at worst, a distraction that most test takers can ill afford.

But, I figure if you clicked on a blog called “Predictions for the March 2019 LSAT,” you’re already on that search. So I’m willing to make that prediction for you. I’m nothing if not a people pleaser.

Other than that though, I think can be of more help giving you a general sense of what to do study in these final, fleeting moments before Saturday. In Logical Reasoning, Strengthen questions have been the most common question type. And an increasingly high proportion of Strengthen questions have been of the Principle variety. So study up on those. Other than those, expect somewhere between six and eight Flaw questions, four and six Necessary questions, three and five Weaken questions, and a handful of Soft Must Be True questions. Get lots of practice with each of those questions. We’ve seen fewer and fewer questions that ask you to identify the formal aspects of an argument — like Main Point, Describe, and Role questions — and almost no Must Be False questions, so those questions aren’t worth prioritizing in your studies.

Also, in Logical Reasoning, the two most important concepts have been, and will certainly continue to be, conditional statements and the common fallacies. Recent exams have had a lot of questions involving conditional statements — the average is about ten questions per exam. However, very few of these exams involve making long, ornate transitive deductions. Most just require you to know whether a condition is sufficient or necessary. So study up on the language of sufficiency and necessity. Of course, knowledge of the common fallacies helps you on a ton of questions. But there are a few common fallacies — particularly causation fallacies, comparison fallacies, equivocations, and exclusivity fallacies — that you appear more frequently that you should spend some extra time studying. Recent exams have been positively replete with causation fallacies, in particular, so make sure you study how to identify causal relationships.

Over on Reading Comprehension, I would expect to get a passage about science, a passage about the arts, a passage about the law, and a passage about history or the social sciences. Passages recently have been structured around a few different organizing principles recently — like trying to prove a cause and effect relationship exists, or attempting to answer a question. I wouldn’t be surprised to see most or all of the passages organized around one of those. The relationship between the comparative passages on recent exams have generally been a little oblique (such as, one passage discusses a general problem, and the other discusses a specific instance of that problem), so make sure to practice identifying the big picture relationship between the two passages on the comparative passages you do this week.

Finally, on Logic Games, you will almost certainly get one basic ordering game, one tiered ordering game, one grouping game (probably what we call an “unstable grouping game”) and either a second grouping game, or a game that combines ordering and grouping. The odds of getting a truly bizarre game is fairly low. But it’s possible that they’re going to draw an old exam from the years in which they briefly got super into weird games, so the odds are, unfortunately, not zero. But nearly all or all of these games will be a lot easier if you construct some scenarios before the first question, so make sure to review all the rules and deductions that are commonly useful for making scenarios.

If you place emphasis on these concepts during this last week, then I will make one final prediction: you’re going to do great.

Predictions for the March 2019 LSAT was originally published on LSAT Blog

#LSAT #March LSAT #predictions #trent teti #lsat

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butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway · 7 years

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I'm making spaghetti and GIANT ASS MEATBALLS for dinner so in honor of that, my birthday, and the exactly zero fucks I have left to give, here's my personal recipe for spaghetti and meatballs for any and all folks who want to do it. Please bear in mind that, while I find this recipe to be low-spoons for me personally, there are definitely steps in it that will not be for everyone. Plan accordingly. Ingredients: (this list has been severely edited because I am shit at writing down my recipes and I literally just wrote the steps and then came back here and added in the ingredients list because fuck if I know what I'm goddamn doing) ~2.5 pounds of ground beef - this recipe may sort of assume you, like me, live within reasonable transit of a wholesale butcher's where ground beef costs $14 for a five pound bag. The good news is that there will be enough leftovers from this to keep you in dinners for a week, so blowing your entire meat budget probably won't lead to protein deprivation later on. ~1 pound of SWEET ITALIAN SAUSAGE, GROUND - I cannot stress enough how important it is that you not just get plain ground sausage, although my dead great grandma and I would be fucking thrilled if you picked a spicy tomato sausage instead of the sweet. ~a handful of Italian herb mix - how much is a handful? Exactly as much as it takes to make a middle aged Sicilian woman ask "are you sure that's enough oregano?" Probably. Try like 3 table spoons at first and then next time adjust to your specific tastes. If you want hard mode, instead of buying the container of dried flakes labeled "Italian" or "provincial", then buy fresh rosemary, thyme, sweet oregano, basil, lavender, and get ready to grate a goddamn lemon peel over some minced garlic. ~4 to 6 eggs. Do you like your meatballs soft and just a little squishy? 6. Do you prefer them to be solid enough that they don't feel like the slimed underbelly of a frog with phlegm when you're shaping them? Maybe stick with 4. ~bread crumbs. I like the Italian seasoned ones. Because that middle aged Sicilian lady was right and you ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY did not put enough herb mix in there. ~any combination of the following four types of cheese in frankly unreasonable amounts: mozzarella, asiago, Parmesan, and Romano. Hard mode is to mix these grated monstrosities into the meatballs themselves. Easy mode says drop into your bowl after it's all been heated and prepped and fucking stir. ~2 pounds of noodles. You're feeding people for a week, shut up and make it 4 pounds. I like those cheap ass 2 lb boxes of elbow macaroni from Aldi's, but sometimes I splurge and buy the fancy spinach flour pasta or the fucking wheel noodles because I'm a goddamn child. Hard mode says to mix flour, water, eggs, and herb mix into dough, let rest for 24 hours in plastic wrap, and then roll, slice, and drop in the pot to cook for maybe 7 minutes but probably 5. ~a jar full of pasta noodle marinade. This means that you mix together garlic salt, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and those little red pepper flakes they give you at pizza restaurants along with some fracked black pepper. Fill your pot with water, dump this in, and let it come to a rolling boil before you ever introduce noodle to wet, or my great grandmother's ghost will personally haunt you for exactly two days to tell you that your cooking tastes like sadness. There's a reason my mother never cooked pasta in my house and it's mostly because great grandma Josephine is a fucking irritation. If you want her to haunt you except to say nice things, you can use fresh garlic, kosher salt, sliced lemons and bell peppers dropped directly in the water, and a splash of red wine vinegar because Josephine was a bit of a lush. ~pasta sauce, at least 16 oz of it. The reason I know so much about Josephine is because I refuse to take the mother fucking time out of my day to personally crush the dozen tomatoes and two bulbs of garlic, dice a sweet onion, chop the flowering herbs, and layer in the white wine vinegar and chicken broth that she insists is the appropriate way to make sauce. Store bought costs like $8 for a week's worth on a fancy day and doesn't make my kitchen look like the scene of a grisly murder. I'm pretty sure she only haunts me for this out of spite and loneliness though, so you shouldn't need to worry and can just use storebought as well. The recipe itself is as follows: get a giant mixing bowl, crack in your eggs, whip with the herb mix, then dump in all the meat (and cheese if you took hard mode - Josephine is so proud of you) and the bread crumbs (which should be at a ratio of about 2:1 of meat:bread crumb) and just fold and squish. If you're like sane people and hate the feel of raw meat under your finger nails, I recommend dumping all this stuff into a giant plastic bag instead of a mixing bowl, sealing it tight, and just squishing it around a lot until the texture feels consistent. If you're like sane people except you have children who are constantly under foot and in your way, this is a great part of the recipe to let them do as long as either a) they're not four, or b) you don't mind losing some of the meat mix into the floor. Once your meat is mixed, scoop and shape chunks of it into lil balls. Or if you're like me and want to scare people, into something roughly the shape and size of 1.5 baseballs. I like this version because it means 1 meatball per meal per person is usually slightly pushing it, and since the recipe can make 20 of them....... well, portions are really easy to judge and it feeds a lot of people. Put these balls into one of two containers. Either an extremely large baking pan or a crock pot. Whichever cooking container you use, pour in enough sauce to basically cover the meatballs as if you were going to boil them in sauce. Because you are. If it's a crock pot, put on your lid, set on low, and let them slow cook all goddamn day while you're at work. If it's the baking dish, cover with tinfoil securely, preheat an oven to 400 degrees, and bake for about an hour and a half. Maybe two and a half if you made the baseball sized ones. Once you're mostly down cooking them (15-20 minutes left) you put a pot of water on to boil with your noodle marinade in it. When it reaches a rolling boil, drop in your pasta and cook to your preference. Strain the noodles and - this is absolutely fucking critical - rinse them with cold water (removes starch and prevents your leftovers from becoming a slimy block-o-noodles in their container) and put them into a giant bowl before tossing lightly with like a quarter cup of your noodle marinade. Hard mode involves putting some asparagus in a frying pan with steak seasoning, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar, and a little butter until they're soft and a little seared to serve with the pasta. Once you're done, you put some noodles, a giant (or a few smaller) meatball(s) with some sauce, and a healthy amount of shredded cheese onto a plate, microwave it for about a minute to soften the cheese, and mix thoroughly. Then enjoy. This looks like a lot of steps. And it is. But it also typically only takes me 10-15 minutes of prep time and since the cooking is all done without needing attention (besides maybe stirring the noodles two times while they cook or flipping the asparagus during hard mode) I tend to find this to be one of the lower spoon feed-an-Army-and-pretend-you-slaved-for-hours-to-do-it recipes in my book. Hopefully it'll work for a lot of you all too. See you next time on the "I am the literal worst at measuring out ingredients and honestly you should just assume you haven't put in enough garlic" cooking show.

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personalfinancenews · 7 years

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Get Your Finances On Track With These Three Tips http://bit.ly/2ENERC7

New Post has been published http://bit.ly/2ENERC7

Get Your Finances On Track With These Three Tips

Thirty four percent of American adults have zero savings. Surprising? Actually it is not considering that half of American families have no savings for retirement at all. Americans continue to rely on debt in their everyday lives. The result is that majority of them go through their lives being unable to repay that debt; with 73 percent of Americans dying with an average debt of $61,554. The year started off with the total credit card debt hitting $1.02 trillion and credit strategists have called for Americans to focus on reducing their credit card debt.

With APR rates at an average 19 percent, savings have taken a hit. If you are one of the many Americans looking to increase your savings, there are many small adjustments you can easily incorporate into your everyday habits. Here are three simple ways to bulk up your savings.

Embrace Homemade

The DIY trend continues to gain popularity amongst consumers and it certainly has its reasons. Adopting a homemade attitude to several parts of your daily lives can save you small amounts in each category. It may seem minimal in isolation but at the end of the month, you can surprised at the total shaved off.

Batch cooking and meal prep is often a popular choice for Americans looking to live a health conscious lifestyle. However another effect of embracing home cooked meals: it can save upto $2,000 a year. Those small daily purchases add up to a sizeable amount. So while that $1.50 daily cup of coffee weekdays may not seem a lot; over the course of a week you are looking at a savings of $7.50.

Homemade meals do not have to be boring or bland either. With many online resources such as recipes, you can easily make delicious healthy lunches and sweet tooth treats.

DIY does not apply to just your meals but can also extend to other areas including homemade gifts and getting crafty with your home and car repairs yourself. Basic maintenance tasks such as oil changing and testing of your tyre pressures can easily be done yourself, saving you a pretty penny annually. By learning the basics of car maintenance, you not only save money but you are also better prepared in event of a breakdown.

Consider The Cash Envelope System

If you are struggling to get out of debt, one of the first things to do is look at your spending and where your money is going. The cash envelope system can help you get your finances in shape and allows you to achieve those savings goals while actually seeing how your cash is spent daily or weekly.

Every month, money is allocated into your various envelopes such as mortgage and groceries. The principle behind it is that you stick to using your allocated cash and when it has finished, you would have to wait until the next replenishment date. The envelope system is a great addition after creating a budget and allows you to identify how to best spend your money. Bonus point; your access to credit cards are limited which avoids your debt increasing further.

Think About It

Fifty four percent of Americans spend over $100 on impulse buys. Afterwards, 52 percent of women and 46 percent of men regretted their purchases. Instant gratification is a common mistake amongst shoppers especially those with credit cards in hand. By taking a few days (up to 30 days) to mull over the purchase, you can find often that you will change your mind about wanting the item. The end result is money saved on another impulse buy.

So get started on increasing your retirement savings and knocking down those credit card debts. With these three simple tricks, it is easier than ever.

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lindafrancois · 4 years

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Active Recovery Ultimate Guide: What Should I Do on Rest Days?

“Steve, what am I supposed to do on days when I’m not training?”

It’s a great question and one we receive quite frequently here at Nerd Fitness.

With our coaching clients, not only do we create workout schedules for them, we also help them utilize “off days” with active recovery.

Have your Nerd Fitness Coach create a complete workout routine, including active recovery! Learn more here:

Today, we’ll share with you the exact same lessons (click to jump to that section):

Is it good to work out every day? (Why you need rest days)

What should I do on gym rest days? (Active Recovery)

Rest Day Workout 1: Mobility

Rest Day Workout 2: Fun Activities

Rest Day Workout 3: Intervals, Sprints, and Walking

Rest Day Workout 4: Yoga

Rest Day Workout 5: Foam Roller

Making the most of your days off (3 Rest Day Best Practices)

Is It Good to Work out Every Day? (Why You Need Rest Days)

We advise our coaching clients to train 3 days per week with full-body strength training routines.

This would include lots of compound movements like squats, push-ups, overhead presses, and deadlifts.

These exercises work multiple muscle groups at once, resulting in an efficient, functional, strategy for strength building and weight loss.

Here’s the important science for today’s lesson: your muscles are actually broken down during your workout.

When challenged enough, they tear during the exercise and only start to grow back during the 24-48 hours after training.[1]

That’s why it doesn’t benefit us to train the same muscles every day; we don’t want to destroy them without giving them a chance to grow back stronger.

If you follow our advice and do full-body strength training workouts 2-3 times a week, the question “How many days a week should I rest?” can be answered with “around 4 or 5 days without heavy lifting.”

So, does this give you free rein to binge-watch your favorite show on “days off from the gym?”

While I’m not going to tell you to delete your Netflix account (the horror), I do want to talk about making the most of your time away from the gym.

What Should I Do on Gym Rest Days? (Active Recovery)

The biggest problem most people have with off days is that they become cheat days!

Because they’re not training, they’re not thinking about being fit and it’s much easier to slack off, eat poorly, and lose momentum.

This is bad news bears.

Remember, exercise is only 10-20% of the weight loss equation: how we eat and rest is the other 80-90%!

Personally, I know I am far less likely to eat poorly when I’m doing some active recovery than when I’m not doing anything deliberately.

So plan your off days!

They’re not “off days,” they’re “recovery days,” and they serve a vital role in building an antifragile kickass body capable of fighting crime (or roughhousing with your kids in the backyard).

Whether it’s scheduling one of the Rest Day Workouts below at the same time you normally train every day, or deliberately adding a morning mobility/stretching routine to your day, doing SOMETHING every day is a great way to remind ourselves “I am changing my life and I exercise daily.”

Which leads us to the idea of “active recovery.”

Active recovery is any gentle movement designed to help your muscles heal after training.

It’s a subject we discuss in our guide on DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).

When you exercise, you increase blood flow to your muscles. By moving your body, you’re actually speeding up your recovery.[2]

The trick is to be active enough to increase blood flow, but gentle enough that you allow the muscles to heal.

Our Rest Day Workouts below will walk that fine line.

On days when I’m not training, I try to block off a similar amount of time to work on myself in some way to maintain momentum, and I encourage you to do the same if you lose momentum when taking a day off.

It could be flexibility training, mobility training, meal prep, and more. I’ll cover these below! Whatever it is, do SOMETHING every day, even if it’s for just five minutes, to remind yourself that you are making progress towards your new life.

Need help building a weekly workout schedule, including rest days? I have two options for you.

The first is to get your hands dirty and check out our guide “How To Build Your Own Workout Routine.” It’ll walk you through everything you need to design a day-to-day exercise plan.

Alternatively, we can do all of the heavy lifting for you (well, not ALL the heavy lifting) – we’ll create a specific routine so all you have to do is log into your NF Coaching App each morning and do the workout your coach prescribed!

Never wonder what to do next. Learn how our coaching app can tell you exactly what to do every day!

Rest Day Workout 1: Mobility

We’ve all felt that soreness the day after (or two days after) strength training or from an intense run – our muscles have been broken down and are incredibly tight from all of the heavy lifting.

For that reason, one of the best things you can do on an off day is to work on your flexibility and mobility. After all, what good is strength if we can’t move our body properly to utilize it! Dynamic stretching and mobility work helps prepare our body for the rigors of strength training and keeps us injury free!

Regardless of whether or not you have a training day scheduled, start each morning with a mobility warm-up: a series of dynamic movements that gets your body activated and wakes up your muscles, joints, and tendons. If you live in an apartment or are just getting started, feel free to leave out the jumping jacks:

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This gives us a chance every morning to check in with our bodies and reminds us mentally “I am leveling up physically, might as well eat right today too.”

Here’s another favorite mobility routine from my friend (and coach) Anthony Mychal. It says it’s a warm-up for tricking, but it’s quite helpful for those of us mere mortals:

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If you spend all day at a desk, doing some basic mobility movements throughout the day can keep your hips loose and keep you thinking positively. Here’s an article on how to dominate posture at your desk job.

Rest Day Workout 2: Fun Activities

We are genetically designed to move, not sit on our asses for 60+ hours a week. Not only that, but we are genetically designed to have fun doing so too!

Which means we can spend time on our off days working on our happiness AND staying active at the same time.

This fun activity can mean something different for everybody:

Go for a bike ride with your kids

Go for a run around your neighborhood

Play kickball in a city league (I play on Thursdays!)

Play softball

Swim

Go for a walk with your significant other

Go rock climbing

Learn martial arts like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Capoeira or Kung Fu

Take a dance class

Try Live Action Role-Playing (LARP!)

Play on a playground

Roll down a hill and run back up it

Check out our guide “40 Fun Exercises! Exercise Without Realizing It” for even more ideas!

I honestly don’t care WHAT you do, as long as it’s something you truly enjoy doing – it should put a smile on your face and gets your heart pumping.

Exercise does not need to be exhausting or miserable. If you haven’t found an activity you enjoy yet, you haven’t tried enough new things.

The point is to get outside, remember it’s a damn good day to be alive, and that we are built to move.

Helping clients discover exercise they love is one of the key components of our Online Coaching Program. Whether it’s learning parkour, hiking in a nearby forest, or heading to the gym to grab a barbell, we help clients discover their passion so working out becomes enjoyable.

Our coaching program makes getting healthy fun. Seriously! Learn how we can help you on your journey.

Rest Day Workout 3: Intervals, Sprints, and Walking

“But Steve, I have this big party coming up and I really am trying to lose as much weight as possible.”

Okay okay, I hear you – if that’s the case, then 90% of the battle is going to be with your diet. You should focus your energy on healthy eating in order to lose weight. But there are SOME things you can do on your off days that can help you burn more calories:

1) Interval Training – In interval training, you’ll be varying your running pace. This means you may switch between jogging and walking, or walking and sprinting (there are few different methods of interval training). This training style can help speed up your metabolism for the hours after you finish.

2) Sprinting – If you like the idea of burning extra calories and building explosive power and speed, check out our article on becoming the Flash. Find a hill, sprint up it, walk down, and repeat the process for 10-20 minutes. No need to overthink it!

3) Long walks – Walking is a low-impact activity that burns extra calories and doesn’t overly tax your body. What a “long walk” will be is different for everybody based on their level of fitness, but walking is one of the best things you can do for yourself!

If you want to take a more active recovery day, the most important thing is to listen to your body. Destroying ourselves for 6+ days a week can really wear us down, causing long term problems if we’re not careful.[3]

Rest Day Workout 4: Yoga

You might not realize it, but yoga is the perfect complement to strength training:

Strength training makes us stronger, but it can tighten up our muscles and make us sore.

Yoga, on the other hand, lengthens our muscles and tendons,[4] aids in their recovery,[5] and helps our body develop better mobility and flexibility.[6]

It’s the perfect way to create a strong AND mobile body, ready for anything and everything we throw at it.

It’s kind of like turning your body into a swiss-army knife: prepared to be strong, flexible enough to avoid injury, and truly antifragile.

Now, if you’ve never been to a yoga class before, it can certainly be intimidating, especially if you’re a ones-and-zeros programmer wary of the practice’s more spiritual aspects.

That was my concern years ago before I got started with it; I had to muster up 20 seconds of courage to attend my first yoga class, and I’m so glad I did.

Here’s how to get started with Yoga!

Nearly any commercial gym you join will have yoga classes.

Most yoga studios have classes throughout the day.

Follow a plethora of videos online if you want to get started at home.

In fact, here’s a beginner routine you can follow from Nerd Fitness right now:

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If you like how we do things around here and that video piqued your interest, consider checking out our full-length course, Nerd Fitness Yoga:

6 full 30-min workout routines you can follow along to:

Download or stream the routines anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Mini-mobility sessions to help you deal with a sore back, tight shoulders, poor posture, etc.

We’re super proud of Nerd Fitness Yoga, and I’d love for you to check it out! It comes with a 60-day money back guarantee!

Need help with any of the poses? Check out 21 Yoga Poses for Beginners for guidance on all positions.

Rest Day Workout 5: Foam Roller

You’ll often hear using a foam roller as “self-myofascial release.”

You may be asking, “myofawhatnow?”

Don’t stress, because “fascia” is just the connective tissue covering muscle.

Just know that “self-myofascial release” means giving yourself a tissue massage.

The important thing for today’s lesson: a rolling massage has been shown to help alleviate muscle soreness.[7] Which means it’s a perfect inclusion for active recovery.

Here’s some simple rolling exercises you can try today, courtesy of NF Coach Matt:

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Yes, that is in fact a T-Rex. Yes, it was 100% Matt’s idea.

If you want even more information, including recommendations on which type of roller to purchase, check out our guide “How to Use a Foam Roller.”

Making the Most of Your Days Off (3 Rest Day Best Practices)

No matter what you end up doing on your rest day, here are some best practices to keep in mind.

Rest Day Best Practice #1: Meal Prep

As we know, a healthy body is made in the kitchen, not in the gym.

It’s important to stay diligent with healthy nutrition even on days when you’re not hitting the gym.

One of the best ways to do that is to use one of your non-training days to prepare your meals for the week! NF Coach Staci Ardison does all of her meal prep for the week on Sundays, and looks at it like an activity that is furthering her fitness journey.

Interested?

Staci walks you through everything you need to start cooking for the week in our Guide to Meal Planning and Prep. Plus, here’s my exact recipe for batch cooking chicken:

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Rest Day Best Practice #2: Engage Your Brain

I like to use one of my off days to break a mental sweat too!

On Tuesdays, I take fiddle lessons, which is a mental workout so taxing that I can’t wait to get back to deadlifts!

Learn a language, build a table out of wood, or go play chess with a friend.

Anything that forces your mind beyond its comfort zone engages your brain. A great way to spend your time away from the gym.

Rest Day Best Practice #3: Have Fun!

Whether it’s playing a video game, getting caught up on a movie or TV show, or reading a book, it’s important for us to do the nerdy or fun things that make us who we are.

As the Rules of the Rebellion state: fitness can become part of what we do, but not at the expense of who we are!

I’m currently playing through The Last of Us: Part II, and it makes me happy our current apocalypse isn’t as bad as that one.

If you live for playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends, make room for it on your calendar.

Just like it’s important to schedule health and fitness, it’s important to schedule fun.

This guide has provided you with all the tools you need to begin an active recovery practice and to make the most of your rest days.

If you’re looking to go a bit further, I have three options for you…

1) If you want step-by-step guidance creating a workout schedule, getting stronger, and even eating better, check out our killer 1-on-1 coaching program:

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn more here!

2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Have questions you need answered? Join Nerd Fitness Prime!

Nerd Fitness Prime is our premium membership program that contains at-home exercise routines, live-streamed workouts with NF Coaches, a supportive online community, group challenges, and much more!

Learn more about Nerd Fitness Prime!

#3) Join The Rebellion! We have a free email newsletter that we send out twice per week, full of tips and tricks to help you get healthy, get strong, and have fun doing so.

I’ll also send you tons of free guides that you can use to start leveling up your life too:

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

Alright, your turn: How do you stay on target even on days when you’re not “training?”

I’d love to hear from you – do you take the day off completely? Do you challenge yourself in a different way? Do you try to do something every day to keep the momentum up, or do you actually take days off?

Leave it in the comments!

-Steve

PS: Another good rest day activity? Take a nap!

Your body does quite a lot of its healing during sleep. Get some proper shut-eye.

###

Photo sources: sleepyhead, A good Sunday to you, resting cat, Rain doesn’t stop a photographer, soccer player, Run, foam roller, back to vacation,

Footnotes ( returns to text)

A meta analysis found that 1 to 2 rest days between workout sessions was optimal for muscle repair, although they included a caveat that the intensity of the exercise would impact this: “A meta-analysis to determine the dose response for strength development.”(PubMed)

Check out this study on active recovery and DOMS: “An Evidence-Based Approach for Choosing Post-exercise Recovery Techniques to Reduce Markers of Muscle Damage, Soreness, Fatigue, and Inflammation” (PubMed)

Check out this sudy on the importance of resting for 48 hours after intense cardio: “The effects of exercise-induced muscle damage on cycling time-trial performance” (PudMed)

Check out this study on yoga and flexibility in the eldery: Flexibility of the elderly after one-year practice of yoga and calisthenics. (PubMed)

This study showed yoga helping to reduce DOMS: “The effects of yoga training and a single bout of yoga on delayed onset muscle soreness in the lower extremity.” (PubMed)

This study showed college athletes obtaining better balance and flexibility in only 10 weeks of yoga: “Impact of 10-weeks of yoga practice on flexibility and balance of college athletes”(PubMed)

The study on foam rolling and muscle soreness: “Pain pressure threshold of a muscle tender spot increases following local and non-local rolling massage: PubMed”

Active Recovery Ultimate Guide: What Should I Do on Rest Days? published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

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gethealthy18-blog · 5 years

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How I Meal Prep Intuitively

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/uncategorized/how-i-meal-prep-intuitively/

How I Meal Prep Intuitively

If you asked me 7 years ago what I thought of meal prep I would have told you it was essential. And at the point in my life, it was. I was rigid and inflexible with food. Food was something meant to be controlled, not enjoyed. Food was both a source of my anxiety and also my means of dealing with anxiety. My Sunday meal prep sessions were long, exhausting and in my mind, the key to health and wellness.

And then for lack of a better word: I woke the f*ck up. Many of you have followed my journey from disordered eating to intuitive eating, the process of which has been long and winding and always evolving. A few years ago I wouldn’t have been caught dead writing a blog post about meal prep. After years of restriction and control the pendulum swung in the opposite direction and I was vehemently against meal prep. I felt like all the services and blog posts out there writing and sharing tips and lists for meal prepping were perpetuating disordered eating and not allowing individuals to customize their food choices to their personal needs and the whims of life. And on some level I still feel this way. Unless you have a serious health concern and are working one-on-one with a nutrition professional, you really should not be following anyone else’s food or nutrition plan. Can you take inspiration for meal ideas? Absolutely. But just because Sally Sue insists on steaming her veggies on Sunday and pre-cooking her chicken doesn’t mean you have to. Which brings me to an important conversation topic…intuitive eating.

What is Intuitive Eating?

I’m going to briefly summarize this but basically the term “Intuitive Eating” was introduced by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole in their groundbreaking book by the same title in 1995. Though the concept is simple, it was very new for the time, discussing the principles of getting back to a healthy body image and living with food freedom. As diet culture continued to grow it emphasized the idea that only WE can decide how we eat, why we eat and letting go of food rules our culture has thrust upon us.

In the past few years I’ve watched this term get reworked in a way that it was never intended. The whole point of Intuitive Eating is that it’s not a diet. It understands that our food choices change based on the flow of our lives. While I certainly identify as an “intuitive eater”, I would never tell people I follow an intuitive eating diet. For me, intuitive eating means enjoying food and making choices that feel good for me. Absolutely nothing is off limits (except buckwheat and peas cause I hate them!) but I also don’t eat a plate of cookies for dinner or popcorn for breakfast. Could I? Totally. And in some ways I think this permission has empowered me with choice rather than a reaction to rules, but I don’t because I just wouldn’t feel great if I did.

So how does this all connect to meal prep? Up until this past year I didn’t think meal prep could work in conjunction with intuitive eating. I associated meal prep with rules and that strips away all of the joy of food for me. But recently my mind has changed. I found myself kind of scatterbrained and overwhelmed when it came to meal time. I also found myself eating out a lot because I put in ZERO planning when it came to food. I realized that I needed a bit more structure around my meals and that some forethought was not the worst thing in the world.

For the past year I’ve experimented with flexible meal planning and prepping and have found that I’ve been able to make intuitive meal prep work for me. I’m not slaving away in the kitchen trying to prep all my food for the week, and I’m also not running around my kitchen trying to figure out a meal when I’m already starving. So I thought I’d share some of my best intuitive meal prep tips with you.

My Best Tips for Intuitive Meal Prep

1. Know your Why

I truly believe in the power of intention. If your goal is to meal prep because you want full control of your food and want to make sure everything is 100% healthy, this is a very rigid approach to food. While I’m all for making healthy choices, it needs to come from a place of feeling good, not from a place of fear or self-hatred (which I see a lot). I want to share a few approaches to meal prep that I believe can lead to a sustainable habit:

Money – if you’re on a budget or saving, meal prep can save you a lot of money rather than eating out all the time

Easing stress – we all have busy lives with a lot of stress. If meal times are causing you extra anxiety, a little planning can’t hurt

Fun – One of the best parts of meal planning and prepping is finding inspiration and playing around with different cooking styles. Doing a little prep work can actually make meal time fun and dare I say, enjoyable!

Meal prep is not something that should happen if you don’t trust yourself at meal times. I used to be terrified that if I didn’t have healthy food on hand I would fall into a bit of indulgent eating. The funny thing is, I only did because I had so many rules around food. I eat cookies and pizza and pasta and foods that bring me joy because I can, not because I can’t and my lack of rules around food means that more often than not I actually enjoy salads and soups and healthier brownies. I trust myself around food. If you don’t, please take some time away from meal prepping to reestablish healthier boundaries.

2. Find Inspiration

One of the biggest pieces of meal planning is finding inspiration for what to cook. My best tip: make this fun but not overcomplicated. Keep a list of recipes you love from blogs, cookbooks and friends. I keep a running list on my computer so when I start planning my grocery shop I can decide what meals I want to make. From there I’ll go through ingredients to see what I need to buy and what I already have.

If you’re lacking inspiration check out Pinterest or ask friends for some of their favorite recipes. Or dare I say, check out the THM archives!

3. Plan a flexible schedule

I always look at my schedule for the week ahead and see where I have plans and likely won’t be able to cook for meal time. These are my priorities. After saying no to so many social engagements because of my fear and rigidity around food, I will never say no to something because I want to stay home and cook. That being said, I’m usually at home at least 5 nights a week, not to mention breakfasts and lunches.

I generally estimate I’ll need at least 4-5 dinner recipes, 6 breakfasts and 5 lunches. Most lunches are leftovers from dinner the night before (if C doesn’t eat all of them!) and breakfast is really a cravings thing for me but I try to have ingredients for 1 sweet (i.e. a smoothie) and 1 savory breakfast option (i.e. avocado toast). Most dinners I turn to my inspiration list. I also aim for 1-2 snack recipes if we don’t have packaged stuff on hand.

So to recap, I’ll plan:

5 dinner recipes (usually doubled for lunch leftovers)

2 breakfast recipes

1-2 snacks

This will change week to week depending on my schedule. If I have more social engagements, am travelling etc…it may look different. Flexibility is KEY.

5. Prep food that won’t go bad

One of the biggest realizations I had after my come to jesus meal prepping moment (lol) was that I’d often say no to plans because I already had food prepped that I didn’t want to go bad. I believe there are a multitude of reasons to say no to plans (I have big-time JOMO so this has never been an issue for me) but saying no because you already have sweet potatoes roasted is not a good excuse. The thing I’ve learned about intuitive meal prep is that the planning piece is more important than the prepping piece. I no longer spend my Sundays trying to precook all my food. Here’s what it looks like instead:

Start with a list of meals you know you’ll be home for (yes this can change but estimate)

Get inspiration for these meals

Make your grocery list (I order what I can from Imperfect Foods and fill out the rest with a grocery shop)

Precook or make things that will LAST – usually this means most of my snacks which won’t go bad after a couple of days

I don’t pre chop my veggies or precook proteins. Doing this infers I don’t have trust in my body that I will make choices intuitively based on how I’m feeling and/or prevents me from being flexible with my schedule if plans change.

*I understand that people have kids and families or unpredictable work schedules. My recommendation for this would be to make meals that you can freeze. That way your food won’t go bad and meal times don’t have to be stressful.

6. Assess how it’s working

Don’t take your meal prep as a given or write it off as impossible. Our lives and priorities are ever changing. I’ve been a rigid meal prepper and a vehement anti meal prep evangelist. Finding intuitive meal prep has been a journey for me and one that will change throughout my lifetime. If you’ve been meal prepping for years and find yourself burnt-out, uninspired and/or inflexible, maybe it’s time for a break. If you love flexibility and fun with food but find meal time overwhelming and stressful, play around with a little bit of planning.

And as always, come back to your why. Intention is everything when it comes to our choices to make sure you’re still connecting with yours.

As always, open to hearing your suggestions or anything I missed. Feel free to drop your best intuitive meal prep tips below.

Like this post? Here are some other healthy living posts you might enjoy:

WANT MORE HEALTHY LIVING TIPS? Join the THM Community!

Join 10,000+ members of the THM Community to get access to exclusive info about healthy living, products I’m loving and tips and tricks on making a healthy lifestyle easier and sustainable.

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ouraidengray4 · 6 years

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How to Spend Zero Extra Dollars This Month

Have you ever thought, I have oh so much cash. If only I knew what to do with it? If you have, please stop reading this article and make a check out to Amber Petty. DM for more detailed personal info.

More likely, at the end of the month, you've probably thought, Holy God! Where did all my money go! In this era of gig economies, side hustles, and working round the clock for just over minimum wage, a lot of us are dying to find ways to save a couple dollars. Luckily, there are lots of ways to save cash, and with a little preparation, you could go a whole month without spending a dime on additional expenses.

Now, I'm not talking about actually spending $0 for a whole month. There's rent, gas, groceries, and medical bills that can't be avoided. Would I love to tell my landlord that I can't pay rent because I'm participating in a "no-spend" month? Yes. Would I promptly be removed from my home and told to go screw myself if I did that? Also yes. But you can reduce all extraneous expenses to zero with some planning, discipline, and advice from budgeting experts.

EDITOR'S PICK

Be Prepared

If you don't have a plan for your no-spend month, you'll start with good intentions but end your day buying Chipotle and drinking a Frappuccino. But if you make a plan, it will be much easier to avoid temptation.

First, make a list of things you normally spend money on. Again, basics like groceries don't count, but eating out, going for drinks, or buying the new lipstick you just saw somebody wear on Instagram does. So write out all extra things you spent money on last week, and you'll probably find a spending pattern. Now you'll know what to avoid and how to get around your typical spending traps.

Also, pick a month where you probably won't have to spend much. For example, December is a bad choice. With all the parties, travel, and presents that are expected, anyone's lucky to get out of the last month of the year spending $1,000 extra dollars (though if you do a $0 December, good for you, you are a gem). Instead, pick a month that's pretty light on birthdays, holidays, and weddings. It might be impossible to avoid all three in one month, so just do your best.

Stock Up

Food is usually one of the biggest expenses every month. But if you stock up on easy, non-perishable items on your next trip to the grocery store, you can save a ton. Dustyn Ferguson, personal finance whiz and creator of Dime Will Tell, says you'll save a lot by "moving a cost tier down in grocery stores." Basically, if you shop at exclusively at Whole Foods, you don't need to abandon all that for the Dollar Store. Instead, move down a tier. Go from Whole Foods to Trader Joe's. You'll still find things with the quality you're used to, but you'll save a little cash.

Stock up on cheap, good-for-you ingredients.

Think items like rice, beans, pastas, canned tomatoes, broth, and frozen vegetables. All that stuff is as cheap as it gets and could possibly take you through the month. Of course, you'll buy some fresh fruits and vegetables during your no-spend weeks, but if you stock up on fairly healthy non-perishables, you can eat well and spend much less.

This might sound like the old college days of ramen and mac and cheese, but you can eat a wide variety of rice and legumes for dirt cheap—and yay for chili!—and not feel like your diet is made of sodium and preservatives.

Also, make sure you buy easy stuff you can take for lunch.

Cans of tuna, bread, soups, stuff like that. Sure, maybe you'll make some roasted pork with saffron-infused quinoa to take with you to work. But more likely, you'll be running out the door with about two seconds of food-prep time. In that case, it's much better to have some Campbell's soup you can throw in a bag to bring with you, instead of getting to work and realizing you'll have to shell out $10 for the crappy lunch salad at the place next door.

Be realistic with yourself.

Do you know you'll miss going out for a drink with your friends? Stock up on a few bottles of Charles Shaw's finest. Have an inkling that you'll want to order pizza? Get a reasonably priced frozen pizza for when the craving hits. The more you know yourself and your spending habits, the more easily you'll be able to go a month without shelling out extra money or feeling deprived.

Use a cash-back app.

To save even more on your grocery stock-up adventure, "use a cash back app like Ibotta to get money back on things you'd purchase anyway," Ferguson says. "If you do it right, an app like this could easily give you back 10, 20, or even 30 dollars every single grocery trip." Ibotta is a free app that offers coupons and deals to a wide variety of stores. Just scan your receipt, and Ibotta gives you money back. Once you've made $20 or more, you can get cash deposited directly into your Paypal or Venmo account. If you use this app just for essentials, it's kind of like getting free money. Now, don't expect to offset all your costs with this, but it's not bad for some bonus savings.

Last stock-up tip: coffee.

Yes, buying Starbucks every day gets expensive. We all know it. And normally, I'd say treating yourself to a fancy coffee now and again is totally fine. But for a no-spend month, it's off-limits. Instead, get yourself a coffee you like. Are you a flavored coffee person? Buy flavored syrup. You can often find these at the dollar store, or if that freaks you out, they're pretty reasonably priced at the regular grocery.

Here's my personal favorite coffee tip: Make your own cold brew. It's easy as hell and cheap as all get out. Buy this $10 cold brew maker from Target (not a sponsor, just a legitimate thing I bought and use every day). All you have to do is put some coffee grounds in it, fill it with water, and put it in the fridge overnight. That's it! Yes, you have to remember to do it the night before, but I think it's way easier than getting up extra early to make a fresh pot of coffee in the morning.

Plus, the cold brew tastes super rich and smooth. My husband usually drinks his coffee like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and now he uses half as much sweetener because the cold brewing process gets rid of so much bitterness. Sure, my cold brew enthusiasm is a slight tangent, but it saves a lot of money when you DIY everyday.

Get Free Stuff

After you've stocked up, we get to the magical no-spend itself! Hooray! Luckily, you don't have to sit around your house in silence to avoid spending cash. There's a lot of free stuff out there, so you can maintain your wardrobe, be entertained, and maybe even take a vacation—all while your credit card stays at $0.

Swap Around

"One of my favorite ways to find free clothes is to host a clothing swap," says Ashli Dawn, owner and founder of Moolah Mogul. "I recommend posting in a local Facebook group and getting a bunch of people together." Make sure you have a couple items to give away and ask your friends to bring a few items of their own. Then, set all the stuff out and let everyone choose a new, free item to add to their wardrobe.

This is especially good because it's a free way to get together with friends, and you can get a few items out of the deal. Since it's a clothes swap, don't worry about having food and alcohol for your guests. Most people will expect to just look at clothes, talk, and enjoy getting something for free. But if you really want to be sneaky, ask your friends to bring a simple snack. By the end of the party, you'll have free clothes and chips, you devil (cue an evil laugh). Honestly, this is a great way for people to recycle stuff they don't want and to scratch any shopping itch you might have.

Facebook and Craigslist

Nowadays, few good things come from Facebook and Craigslist. But when it comes to free stuff, they can be a goldmine. "I've personally used Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to get a free queen-size bed frame, cat food, and a jacket," Ferguson says. "You'd be surprised by the things people are willing to give away just because they have no use for it and want it gone." Look for Facebook Marketplace groups and join to see what's being given away. You usually have to reply pretty quick to score something good, but it's a nice resource at the wonderful price of $0.

The Freecycle Network

If you need something specific during your no-spend month, check out The Freecycle Network. People post things that they're giving away, but you can also request items. The site strictly forbids any selling or bartering. It's all free, all the time.

I checked out the Glendale/Burbank section to see what they offer. Turns out, I could get moving boxes, vinyl records, and doll clothes all for nothing! But there are also big-ticket items like a full bedroom set of furniture, so I highly recommend giving this site a try whether you're doing a no-spend month or not.

Community Gardens

"Community gardens are usually free to participate in, and often members are allowed to take a portion of what they grow," Dawn says. You get to be outside, commune with nature, and sometimes take home some produce! Not bad for a free afternoon. The American Community Gardening Association can help you find the garden nearest you.

Libraries

Libraries are a haven of free stuff! Obviously, you can get books. But when you're not in the mood to leave your home to get reading material, the library still has you covered. Most public libraries use Overdrive, an app that lets you access tons of free e-books and audio books. You can even send them right to your Kindle so you don't have to squint over your phone to read Anna Karenina.

But there's so much more than books. Most libraries give you access to Kanopy, a streaming collection of classic cinema, documentaries, and my favorite movie of the last 10 years, What We Do in the Shadows. Honestly, if you just watch that fake documentary about vampires sharing a flat in New Zealand (starring Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords), you'll have a very happy no-spend month.

Maybe you'd like to use this $0 month to learn a new skill and improve your resume? Well, lucky for you, your library card gets you access to Lynda, a site that streams all kinds of courses from internet marketing to crochet 101.

After you've listened to an audiobook, read a lengthy ebook, streamed a doc, and learned a new skill, you might want to leave the house. Make sure to check out the events within your local library system. There are always activities for kids, but many also offer concerts, talk backs, book clubs, and other fun stuff for adults.

I'm a little spoiled because I live in a very large library system (also the library near me is an old Spanish style mansion, so I know this isn't normal). But the public library offers a MakerSpace with sewing machines, computers, jewelry-making tools, and three 3D printers! Plus, they have audio equipment and a VR station. It's all free to use with a library card (you have to sign up to reserve a spot, but still), and they offer free workshops to help you use all those interesting tools. Again, I know not all libraries have this much stuff. But every library hosts interesting events, and they're usually great options for free, enlightening entertainment.

Special Events

If you're near a city, there's something free to do. Check out the TimeOut nearest you and look through their "Free" tab. Usually, it's everything from improv to art gallery openings. Pro tip: As a person who's done years of improv, that free improv show will be a real gamble. Just a warning. Speaking of art galleries, they often hold free openings that involve wine and a snack or two. So, you can look at pretty stuff, get some free booze, and feel cheap and classy at the same time.

Secret Shopping

If you'd like to try to turn your free month into side hustle month, Jen Hayes of Smarty Pants Finance suggests becoming a mystery shopper. "It is a 100-percent legitimate source of income and free things," she says. As a mystery shopper, you're told to go into a certain establishment, make a purchase, then write a report about the experience. Companies use these shoppers to find out how their stores are running. It's like Undercover Boss but with less crying.

"Just this month, I have mystery shopped at restaurants, smoothie shops, a shipping center to mail a package, a beauty counter to get $30 lipgloss, a kitchen supply store, sports clothing store, toy store, valet parking at a mall, and a high-end hotel!" Hayes says. "My grocery budget is next to nothing when I line up restaurant mystery shops each day." I've been a mystery shopper for bars and restaurants. Don't expect much cash to come your way, and it's a little bit of a hassle, but you do eat for free and get a little extra for your troubles.

You can find mystery shopping opportunities online, but be careful. There are a lot of scams out there. But the FTC has a helpful guide for sussing out a scam, and if you follow its recommendations, you should be fine.

Free Vacation (Sort Of)

If your no-spend month has you feeling cooped up, why not get out of town? If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, you can volunteer to work at farms around the world. Every day you're there, you work a half day and get free room and board. You can commit to as little as one day or stay for months—it's up to you.

Now, you will be working on a farm, which many might not consider a true "vacation." Also, there's a $40 annual fee to access the system. But the site does let you check out full farm listings before you purchase, so you can see if there's anything you're interested in before putting in your credit card. If you like the idea of getting away from it all, doing a little work, and spending less than a night at a hostel would cost, this could be a lovely way to take a trip.

All it takes is a little planning, cleverness, and a library card, and you can have a pretty fun no-spend month. Even if you can't quite break your Starbucks habit for a month at a time, these tips should save you some money all year round.

Amber Petty is an L.A.-based writer and a regular contributor to Greatist. Follow along as she shares her weight-loss journey in her new bi-monthly column, Slim Chance. You can also take singing lessons with Amber at Sing a Different Tune, check out her awesome podcast about The Masked Singer, and follow her on Instagram @ambernpetty.

from Greatist RSS http://bit.ly/2TS0JDM How to Spend Zero Extra Dollars This Month Greatist RSS from HEALTH BUZZ http://bit.ly/2ROzSLl

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mlmcompanies · 6 years

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Another MLM that promises to shed body weight, right?

Spouting catch-phrases like “natural ingredients,” they all start sounding alike.

TruVision is yet another wellness network marketing company that sells nutritional supplements and weight control.

These guys might be a dime a dozen, but weight loss products will never go out of style. Think about it, how many people do you know who wouldn’t like to lose a few pounds?

TruVision not only has a noteworthy weight-loss product, they’ve also developed a reputation for having a little more integrity than most in the MLM game.

Are they right for you? We’ll let you decide.

FAQ

1. What does TruVision sell? TruVision sells products designed to help you operate at peak performance. That includes health supplements, weight loss, essential oils, and skincare products.

2. What are TruVision’s most popular products? TruFix is one of TruVision’s flagship products, a beverage designed to support and maintain a healthy blood chemistry. TruControl is an energy drink that “electrifies” your metabolism and supports weight loss. Also popular are their weight-loss products, including TruKeto and Non-Glycemic Chocolate.

3. How much does it cost to join TruVision? To join, you’ll need to pay an annual membership fee of $35. You’ll probably need to set up a SmartShip order that will be shipped to you automatically every month. But if you maintain at least 100 PV, you can waive auto-ship.

4. Is TruVision a scam? No, TruVision is a legit business. The real question is whether you can make any money at it.

5. What is TruVision’s BBB rating? A+

6. How long has TruVision been in business? Since 2014

7. What is TruVision’s revenue? $60 million

8. How many TruVision distributors are there? We didn’t see any numbers published online.

9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2017, the FDA slapped TruVision with multiple violations of the Current Good Manufacturing Practice and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They were marketing their products as drugs, and some of their products had wrong serving sizes listed and don’t include the number of servings per container. Also, the nutrition labels didn’t meet FDA requirements. [1] In 2015, the FDA called them down for having DMBA and synephrine, a dangerous combination, especially when caffeine is added to the mix, as it was in TruVision’s product. [2]

10. Comparable companies: LifeVantage, Yoli

So should you get involved?

Product-wise they might be legit, but there are better options out there when it comes to sustainable income opportunities…

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here are 11 things you have to know before joining TruVision.

#11. The appreciation plan

Their bonuses and rank perks, “our way of saying thank you,” are pretty extensive.

Even as an Associate, their first rank, you get 1 level of commissions, 4 levels of fast start bonuses, and a 10% matching bonus. As you move up to the director levels, you get more commission and perks like a FitBit, a smart water bottle, meal prep lessons, and even a signed guitar and a trip to Zion National Park.

At the high-end director levels, you get bigger trips, branded luggage, and shares of their TVH bonus pool.

#10. TruNecessity, TruEssentials, TruHealth, and TruControl

TruVision sells health and wellness products that range from supplements to weight management programs to energy boosters. Most of their products contain ingredients like green tea extract, ginseng, caffeine, bitter orange, dendrobium, and other vitamins and minerals.

Mostly natural ingredients, but there have actually been some complaints from customers that the product has had a negative effect on their mood, making them feel agitated or jittery. Definitely not what you want from a health and wellness product.

#9. Significant amounts of caffeine

It makes sense that some would experience mood issues due to the amount of caffeine in their products.

While it’s not an extreme amount, and probably wouldn’t impact people who aren’t easily affected by caffeine, the products do contain about the same amount of caffeine as over-the-counter medications like Excedrin. There are definitely people who experience negative side effects from these medications. [3]

#8. Heart and hydration proprietary blend

The proprietary blend found in most of their products is their heart/hydration blend.

Basically, they really push the idea that proper hydration is essential to weight loss, and not a lot of weight loss products focus on that. It’s smart, because there is a proven link between weight loss and proper hydration. [4]

But isn’t hydration just drinking enough water? And isn’t that FREE?

Sort of. Their product claims to hydrate and promote heart health more than your tap water. Here are the claimed benefits:

supports heart health

hydrates at a cellular level

cleanses toxins

loaded with electrolytes

So, definitely better than tap. But $85 a month better? That’s the question.

#7. Products contain sucralose

Despite mostly healthy and natural ingredients, their products do contain sucralose, which is often avoided by members of the health community.

They do fess up and explain why, starting with two principles –

“Principle 1: Almost any ingredient whether vitamin, mineral, plant extract, etc. has a duality. If the ingredient is used in the right proportion it can be of benefit to the consumer. If it is overused, it can be potentially dangerous to the consumer. For example, Iron can become dangerous at 200-250mg/kg body weight, salt toxicity level is 3.5g in the blood plasma (Brody).

Principle 2: Just because information is posted on the internet in the form of an official-looking site, vaguely referencing research studies, biased research, and “mommy blogs” (we don’t really like that term as it can be viewed as demeaning towards mothers when a better term would be “alarmist blogs”); does not mean it is true.” [5]

Both true, TruVision. But what’s the connection to sucralose?

Well, they claim that sucralose is one of these ingredients that alarmists hate for no reason and can be OK in moderation.

#6. Sucralose is healthier than most sweeteners

The small amounts of sucralose in their product amount to almost zero calories. The FDA themselves have stated that sucralose is fine in doses of 5mg/day or less, and TruVision products contain .01-.05 mg. [6]

Most supplements and shakes use some kind of sweetener; otherwise, they’d taste awful.

Sucralose is natural, unlike far worse sweeteners like corn syrup. It doesn’t cause blood sugar spikes or crashes like regular sugar. [7]

Calm down health nuts. Would you rather consume .01 mg of sucralose, or a product that tastes like horse feed? That’s what I thought.

#5. FDA advisory sent to them in 2015 and 2017

The FDA sent TruVision a warning regarding their TruWeight & Energy products for containing DMBA.

Not a good sign.

DMBA is marketed as an exercise enhancer, but according to FDA findings “there is inadequate information to provide reasonable assurance that such ingredient [DMBA] does not present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”

It’s been linked to cardiovascular concerns – definitely worrying.

“Failure to immediately cease distribution of your TruWeight & Energy product and any other products you market that contain DMBA … could result in enforcement action by FDA without further notice,” the FDA wrote to TruVision. [8]

As if that’s not enough, the FDA investigated them again in 2017 for improper labeling of ingredients, serving sizes, and doses. This doesn’t apply to just one product, but to multiple products. [9]

#4. No evidence for weight loss properties

While ginseng and caffeine and green tea all have their health benefits, there’s no research or evidence to support the claim that TruVision’s products actually increase weight loss.

The closest they come to proof are studies that show caffeine, in general, can aid with weight loss, but you can save a lot of money by just drinking a cup of coffee instead.

#3. No car bonus…and they’ll tell you that with pride

Truvision is super into announcing the fact that they don’t have a car bonus (no offense, Mary Kay, Kyani, or Qivana). They even have an entire page on their website dedicated to it. [10]

Nope, no fancy pink car decked out in company logos for you. But that may be a good thing. The “free” cars sound great unless you read the fine print. They really aren’t all that free.

As they state on their website: “The catch — and it’s a big one — is that the company is not just giving you a car. It’s your name and your credit on the lease.” [11]

And it’s usually true. The MLM foots the bill for your luxury lease, sure, but since it’s under your name, if you lose your rank by failing to maintain your product volume (and therefore your car eligibility), you’re stuck with the $500-750 lease bill.

As you can imagine, this happens a lot. The cars are usually repossessed, and the distributor’s credit is wrecked.

TruVision doesn’t want their distributors taking on unnecessary debt. It’s a refreshing sense of responsibility that’s often absent in MLM.

#2. High retention rate

Churn and burn is practically the slogan for network marketing when it comes to their employees and distributors.

While they’ll keep on a handful of loyal devotees, the majority of their distributors don’t stick around for long (because they’re not making money). This is less true of TruVision, who has one of the higher retention rates in the industry.

#1. Simple compensation plan with up to 7% commission

You get 7% commission on your first level of recruits, which is not bad.

They also offer downline commission to level 8, 10% matching bonuses, fast start bonuses, and a 3% bonus pool for highest ranks.

There’s a $35 annual fee and you have to maintain at least 100 PV to waive auto-ship. Annoying, but typical.

—

If you are set on the nutritional MLM route, these guys aren’t a bad choice. But if it’s just a little side income that you are looking to stash in your pockets, you can get it quicker with other opportunities.

Look, I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

#MLM companies #network marketing companies

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brandyfields66-blog · 6 years

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5 Next-Level Push-Up Variations for Anyone Up for a Challenge

Push-ups are a classic, zero-equipment exercise with a whole lot of perks like serious chest, shoulder, triceps, and core gains–not to mention a visibly toned upper-body. Strengthening those muscles can help decrease symptoms like back pain, poor posture, and even not-so-perky breasts. But doing the same mighty, multi-tasking exercise over and over again can get a little boring.

Luckily, push-up variations abound. “Once you've mastered the basic push-up, incorporating different push-up variations will help engage and strengthen different parts of your body,” says certified strength and conditioning specialist Laura Miranda, also a doctor of physical therapy and the creator of PURSUIT. Some will work your biceps or triceps more, while others will work your core and quads. “Adding variation means you're strengthening your entire body in new ways” she says.

Below, Miranda demos five push-up variations that go way beyond the classic (and that means they'll help sculpt your arms even faster). Whether you're sick of standard push-ups or are just looking for new, creative ways to work your chest, triceps, shoulders, back, and core, try these moves below.

And don't be intimidated if they look challenging at first: If you're not quite ready for these next-level moves, Miranda offers easier variations that'll get you rocking the real thing in no time.

RELATED: 5 CrossFit Moves That Are Actually Easier to Master Than You Think

Narrow Grip Ball Push-Up

How to do it: Grip a medicine ball in front of your body in push-up position with your hands directly under your shoulders. Keeping your body in one long line and your elbows by your sides, squeeze your core and lower your body until your chest touches the medicine ball. Then, exhale as you push back to start. That's one rep. Aim for five to 10 reps.

To make it easier: Place the ball on an incline–like on top of a bench–so that your grip is the same, but the angle of your body is different. "Doing push-ups on an incline reduces strain on your body while keeping the integrity of the movement and prepping your body for the more advanced move,” Miranda says. You can also grab a larger medicine ball. "The bigger the ball and the wider your feet, the easier this movement will be," she says.

Why it works: "This push-up variation is similar to the Chaturanga push-up that you do in yoga because you're keeping your elbows and triceps as close to your body as possible,” Miranda says. This placement puts a greater emphasis on the triceps muscles. Plus, using a medicine ball, which is less stable than a flat surface, requires you to engage your core and improves overall stability and balance.

RELATED: This 50 Push-Up Challenge Will Transform Your Body in 30 Days

The Cricket

How to do it: Start in a high plank position with your hands flat on the floor about shoulder-width apart, wrists stacked under shoulders. Keeping your body in one long line, bend your arms and lower yourself to the floor. Then, using as much power as you can, exhale and push back up, lifting your body up and off the ground and to the right. Aim to travel anywhere from two to six inches, and land so that your feet and hands return to the floor at the same time. That's one rep. Try two reps per side, before switching sides. Rest as long as necessary between repeating for three sets.

This plyometric variation of the standard push-up requires not only strength, but explosive strength in the up-and-down and side-to-side planes of motion. It's best reserved for people who can do at least five to 10 standard push-ups and who can comfortably walk 15 feet in a lateral-moving plank.

To make it easier: Practice your lateral-moving plank. To do that, start in a high plank position with your hands flat on the floor about shoulder-width apart, wrists under shoulders. Then, keeping your body in one long line, practice walking four feet in one direction and four feet in the other.

Build up to a clapping push-up next. The clapping push-up requires the same explosive motion, without requiring you to move laterally. For this variation, after lowering your body to the floor, use as much power as you can in your arms to push up and lift your body high enough off the ground that you can clap or touch your hands together under your chest. This will help build explosive strength and power.

Why it works: “There's power. And then there's explosive power. It's the explosive power that takes your strength to the next level," Miranda says. "The Cricket works on your explosive strength and power because it forces you to lift up while simultaneously moving your body laterally." That lateral movement is also a boon for your shoulder health. “When you only do the traditional push-up, you're only training your shoulder in one plane of motion, which limits how your shoulder joint functions and strengthens. Moving laterally is another way to strengthen the health of that joint,” she says.

RELATED: 12 Reasons You Have Shoulder Pain–and What to Do About It

Inverted "Box" Jump Push-Up

How to do it: Start in a high plank position with your hands flat on the floor about shoulder-width apart, wrists under shoulders, with your feet about five inches apart on a bench or other elevated surface. Shift your bodyweight into your upper body and core and lower your body as close to the ground as you can. Push back up to start. Then, squeeze your core and jump both feet down from the bench so that your knees and hips land in 90-degree angles. Keeping your back neutral, exhale and explosively drive your feet back up onto the bench to starting position. That's one rep.

Aim for three sets of five to eight reps. “But if you can only do one or two reps, do [what] you can do, then put your feet on the ground instead of the bench and do a few more reps. This will help build the prerequisite strength,” Miranda says.

To make it easier: Do just a decline push-up or just an inverted box jump. The decline push-up is the same movement except without the jump. This will get your body used to the angle and the increased intensity. The inverted box jump will help strengthen your core and get your body used to the increased time under tension. Keep in mind the higher the elevation of your feet, the harder this variation will be.

Why it works: “This is a full-body movement with a high amount of time under tension,” Miranda says. Time under tension is a measurement of how long a muscle is taxed during a movement, and it helps increase muscular endurance and strength. “All push-ups activate your core, but this particular movement kicks it into high gear because it requires that your upper body, lower body, and core all work together,” she says.

RELATED: Tone Your Arms With Anna Kaiser's Bath Towel Workout

Running Push-Up

How to do it: This movement combines a standard push-up with a mountain climber. Start in a high plank position with your hands flat on the floor about shoulder-width apart, wrists stacked under shoulders. Your feet should be four to six inches apart. Keeping your body in one long line, bend your arms and lower yourself to the floor. Then, push back up to starting position. Next, while maintaining a neutral back, drive your left knee to your right elbow, then drive your right knee to your left elbow. That's one rep.

This is an endurance-based movement, so Miranda recommends repeating for 30 seconds at a time. “This is a movement that is limited by the number of push-ups you can do. Thirty seconds is a lot of push-ups, even for the most advanced athlete, so when you can't do a standard push-up anymore, go to an elevated surface like a bench, box, or even a wall and finish the remainder of the 30-second interval,” she says.

To make it easier: Do just a standard push-up or just a mountain climber. When you can do mountain climbers for 30 seconds and three to five reps of a standard push-up, you have the prerequisite strength for this variation.

Why it works: A standard push-up works your shoulders, chest, triceps, biceps, back, core, quads, and glutes; adding the knee drive increases the cardiovascular strain of this movement and incorporates your hip flexors and obliques.

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Animal Kick-Through Push-Up

How to do it: Begin in a high plank position with your hands flat on the floor about shoulder-width apart, wrists stacked under shoulders. Keeping your body in one long line, bend your arms and lower yourself to the floor. As you push back up to starting position, lift and bend your left knee and slide that leg under your body, kicking it to the right. As you do this, lift your right arm and rotate your body to the right. Hold for two seconds by squeezing your core.

Rotate back to starting position and return your left foot and right arm to the ground. That's one rep. Repeat on the opposite side. Aim for three sets of four reps per side.

To make it easier: Hold a straight arm side plank for 30 to 60 seconds to help strengthen your shoulders and obliques.

Why it works: “This movement adds a rotation, which means in addition to working shoulders, chest, triceps, biceps, back, core, quads, and glutes like the standard push-up, you're activating and strengthening your obliques, hip flexors, and shoulder girdles,” Miranda says.

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reynoldslevi10-blog · 6 years

Text

5 Next-Level Push-Up Variations for Anyone Up for a Challenge

And don't be intimidated if they look challenging at first: If you're not quite ready for these next-level moves, Miranda offers easier variations that'll get you rocking the real thing in no time.

RELATED: 5 CrossFit Moves That Are Actually Easier to Master Than You Think

Narrow Grip Ball Push-Up

RELATED: This 50 Push-Up Challenge Will Transform Your Body in 30 Days

The Cricket

RELATED: 12 Reasons You Have Shoulder Pain–and What to Do About It

Inverted "Box" Jump Push-Up

RELATED: Tone Your Arms With Anna Kaiser's Bath Towel Workout

Running Push-Up

To get our top stories delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

Animal Kick-Through Push-Up

Rotate back to starting position and return your left foot and right arm to the ground. That's one rep. Repeat on the opposite side. Aim for three sets of four reps per side.

To make it easier: Hold a straight arm side plank for 30 to 60 seconds to help strengthen your shoulders and obliques.

0 notes

yahoo-roto-arcade-blog · 6 years

Text

Juggernaut Index, No. 24: As Trubisky goes, so go the Bears

If Mitchell Trubisky can make a leap in his second season, the Chicago Bears offense can get fun in a hurry. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Chicago Bears have won nine league championships and 749 regular season games since the franchise was founded in 1920. Twenty-seven former Bears are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and 69 have been selected as first-team All-Pros. The names of the greatest players in team history — Payton, Sayers, Butkus, Nagurski — are synonymous with excellence at their respective positions.

And yet somehow, as this franchise enters its 99th season, the Bears’ all-time leading passer is Jay Christopher Cutler.

[Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free!]

In fact, Cutler holds pretty much every significant career Chicago Bears record at the game’s most important position, including passing yardage, completions, passer rating, completion percentage and touchdowns. Remarkably, no quarterback in the history of this franchise has managed to throw for 4000 yards in a single season. Erik Kramer’s 3838 yards back in 1995 remains the team’s top mark. Jacksonville, Carolina and Tampa Bay have all had multiple 4000-yard passers while Chicago is still waiting for its first.

The Bears finished last in the NFL in passing last year and 30th in total offense, so things can only get better under the team’s new head coach. Matt Nagy arrives in Chicago after spending the previous decade climbing the coaching hierarchy under Andy Reid, first in Philadelphia and then in Kansas City. Nagy served as offensive coordinator of the league’s sixth highest-scoring offense last season, plus he oversaw the mid-career breakout performance of Alex Smith. There’s plenty to like in his coaching record. Nagy quickly hired former University of Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich as his OC, which adds another layer of fun.

When the Nagy/Helfrich offense is fully operational for Chicago, things should get legitimately interesting. It’s not crazy to think this team’s second-year quarterback has the potential to deliver the most productive passing season in team history, finally dislodging Kramer from the record book. Cutler’s career marks should not survive Mitchell Trubisky’s second contract.

Trubisky is guaranteed to make a substantial leap in 2018

It feels relatively safe to predict a Trubisky surge, because the team asked so little of him last season. We would say that John Fox and his staff kept training wheels on the offense, but that’s an insult to all the brave kids out there riding big-boy bikes with extra wheels for safety. At least those kids are moving forward. Chicago’s offense was basically inert in 2017. Trubisky ranked dead-last in the NFL among qualified starters in both deep attempts per game (2.5) and air yards (98.2) according to Player Profiler. This offense took no shots and gained nothing.

Whatever else happens this year, Trubisky and friends will definitely play a more entertaining game:

#Bears QB Mitchell Trubisky with us on @SiriusXMNFL now: “We’re going to spread the field and definitely use all our weapons.” Will see things from Matt Nagy’s #Chiefs days, have “twists and tricks” from Mark Helfrich/Oregon, mix in some tempo … more complex than he’s used to.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) July 2, 2018

Nagy was a big believer in Trubisky’s talent during the pre-draft process two years ago, and, by all accounts, the pair has clicked this offseason. Concepts and formations should feel similar to the QB’s college offense, and the system should generally take advantage of his live arm and dual-threat ability. Nagy has indicated the playbook will be 70-80 percent similar to what KC ran last year, with a few added flourishes. It was clear enough last season, despite the timidity of Chicago’s offense, that Trubisky has the necessary physical traits to thrive as a pro. His receiving corps is suddenly loaded with versatile athletes, too. Trubisky is essentially free in fantasy drafts (ADP 164.1, QB24). He’s worth targeting in super-flex and best-ball formats.

Let’s try to remember, however, that year-to-year continuity is critical to success in the NFL, and Chicago has none of it. That’s a small concern. This team has a first-year head coach working with a second-year QB, installing a new scheme. Every key member of the receiving corps is new. Bears fans and fantasy owners will need to be patient with this group. We should expect hiccups in the opening weeks.

OK, let’s meet the new receivers

Chicago revamped its receiving depth chart in a massive (and necessary) way during the offseason, both via free agency and the draft. The team gave a total of $61 million guaranteed to three veteran pass-catchers, then invested a second-round pick in a young receiver. We can safely ignore roster holdovers like Kevin White and Josh Bellamy in fantasy drafts. The new guys are clearly going to dominate the targets in this offense.

Allen Robinson inked a three-year deal with Chicago back in March, and he’ll be 12 months removed from his ACL injury when the season opens. Robinson was able to put in work during OTAs and appears on schedule for training camp. There’s been zero negative news on him, only negative spin from a few fantasy voices. At Robinson’s best, he’s a true No. 1 wideout with terrific red-zone skills, a player with ideal size (6-foot-3) and leaping ability. He was enormously productive at the collegiate level and he produced an 80-1400-14 line in his second pro season. Robinson’s efficiency plummeted in his third year (73-883-6 on 151 targets), but disentangling his performance from the horrors of Blake Bortles is no simple thing.

Robinson is a serious talent with an excellent history, and it’s reasonable to expect 75 receptions and 1100 yards in a healthy season. His draft price (ADP 47.1, WR19) reflects our collective optimism about this team’s offense, tempered by the expected ACL recovery worries. If camp reports on Robinson are positive, there’s a decent chance his ADP will climb 3-4 spots.

Trey Burton is the sleeper TE you need, fantasy owner. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Trey Burton landed with the Bears on a four-year, $32 million contract, and it kinda feels like we can pencil his name into the Pro Bowl roster right now. Assuming Trubisky achieves a reasonable degree of competence this season, Burton should feast. He’ll play a version of the tight end/wide receiver hybrid role that helped turn Travis Kelce into a star for the Chiefs. To be clear, Burton doesn’t have Kelce’s size or his exact athletic profile, but he has good hands and 4.6-speed. He’s a rough assignment for any linebacker or DB. Few defenses will have the personnel needed to check all of Chicago’s receiving threats. Burton should see 90-100 targets, a significant total for a tight end. He has a clear path to a top-six positional finish in any fantasy format.

Rookie Anthony Miller delivered back-to-back 95-catch, 1400-yard seasons at Memphis, so he had nothin’ left to prove as a collegiate player. He has an inside/outside skill set and he’s effective at every level of the field. He was a state champ in the 110-meter hurdles as a prep, too. His profile is plenty appealing and he shouldn’t lack opportunities in his first pro season. Miller is a fine late flier in redraft and a top-five-ish receiver in dynasty.

The Bears also signed the blazing fast Taylor Gabriel to a four-year deal, which allows this team to have at least one undersized burner on the field at all times. He and running back Tarik Cohen are both live-wire quick and difficult to contain. Gabriel isn’t likely to produce consistent weekly numbers; he hasn’t caught more than 37 passes in any of his four seasons. But he’ll deliver a handful of big plays, which puts him on the best-ball radar.

Tarik Cohen is a blur

Friends, let’s take a moment to appreciate Cohen’s ridiculousness.

“We’ll have some fun with him,” Nagy recently said.

Here’s hoping it’s true because Cohen’s playmaking ability is rare, even by NFL standards. He’s only 5-foot-6 (if that), but he bulked up this offseason, perhaps in anticipation of a larger role. Cohen handled 140 touches last season, including 53 receptions; it’s not unreasonable to forecast 170 and 65 in the year ahead. He’s compared himself to Tyreek Hill on more than one occasion, and, well … as comps go, it’s not the worst we’ve ever heard. Hill is faster than almost anyone on earth, of course, and clearly a more accomplished receiver. But both players are exceptional all-purpose threats, capable of scoring on any touch. Draft Cohen aggressively in any variety of PPR league.

Jordan Howard remains the featured runner, but…

Almost every time Nagy has mentioned that Howard is still the team’s primary rushing threat, he adds a caveat. Howard has been a notoriously poor receiver, so he’s not yet an every-down, all-situation player. His inability to catch leaves him particularly vulnerable to unfavorable game scripts. When Nagy suggests the Bears will use multiple backs, we need to take him at his word. Cohen’s expected increase in usage will almost certainly take a bite out of Howard’s workload.

However, we shouldn’t forget that Howard is a 225-pound dude who’s rushed for 2435 yards (4.6 YPC) and 15 touchdowns over two NFL seasons. He can play. Howard isn’t the perfect modern running back, but he generally makes great decisions with the ball in his hands. Stylistically, he’s nothing like Cohen, so these backs complement each other well. If Chicago’s offense can simply climb to the middle of the pack in 2018, Howard can again deliver second round value (ADP 18.2). Just please be prepared for a few 11-44-0 duds.

Ultimately, this season of Bears football is about the development of Trubisky and his indoctrination into Nagy’s system and team culture. Trubisky doesn’t need to make a Goff or Wentz-level leap (although that would be [profane] awesome), but he needs to finish the year in total command of his offense. He’s the key to everyone’s fantasy value in Chicago.

2017 Offensive Stats & Ranks

Points per game – 16.5 (29th in NFL) Pass YPG – 175.7 (32) Rush YPG – 111.8 (16) Yards per play – 4.9 (23) Plays per game – 58.4 (31)

Previous Juggernaut Index entries: 32) Buffalo, 31) Miami, 30) NY Jets, 29) Baltimore, 28) Oakland, 27) Cleveland, 26) Indianapolis, 25) Washington, 24) Chicago

Follow the Yahoo fantasy football crew on Twitter: Andy Behrens, Dalton Del Don, Brad Evans, Liz Loza, Scott Pianowski and Tank Williams

#Tarik Cohen #Mitchell Trubisky #_uuid:0d65ceea-5fa5-3642-94a1-428e37c55cc1 #Juggernaut Index #_author:Andy Behrens #Matt Nagy #Fantasy Football #_category:yct:001000854 #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #Chicago Bears #_revsp:54edcaf7-cdbb-43d7-a41b-bffdcc37fb56

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