#i was constantly hungry. constantly eating. binging multiple times a week.

[magnus-and-the-dragon]

I’m 5 lbs away from being under 200 lbs for the first time in my adult life, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

[bodyswapmischief]

Holiday Special: The Twelve Months of Transformation

[Part 7 of 12]

July

As Nick went well into July, He couldn't recognize the man he used to be anymore. It was more than the half way point of the year. He lost his friend because it was weird for an old man to be hanging out with a bunch of 30's, going to clubs, hiking, etc. His body couldn't even keep up anymore, like he was able to just a few months ago.

His friend now consisted of his boss, and the other older guys at the business club, and the baker from down the street. He already started looking older and fatter than his boss, at this point. His boss stopped treating him like a young man a long time ago. Instead his boss viewed him, as a slightly older man than himself. He started to look up to Nick as a role model.

As, head of sales and distribution , Nick started to find joy in his work. He was good at it. Making sure these were delivered on time gave him a sense of accomplishment. Something he could finally control. His new office was filled with people that never knew hunky 35 year old Nick. Instead all his staff knew him as a portly mid 50s to early 60s man. They treated him with respect, by always calling him Mr. Winters. And, he was a good boss. He tried to make the work environment fun. Alway, leaving gifts for people's birthdays and having weekly staff bonding games and parties.

Nick gave up on trying to stay fit. He tried to stay on a diet, but it wasn't working out. The first couple of days he felt sick. He had no energy, was grumpy, and his stomach constantly screamed for food. As, he began to eat more he became more energetic and jolly.

It felt good finally allowing himself to binge on food. He spent years trying to stay fit. But. It didn't matter, anymore. Because no matter what he did, now, he was going to end up fat. It was like all the weight was lifted off his shoulders and land on his belly.

----------------------------------------------

In the last week of July, Nick took the 6 hour drive to visit his mom for her birthday. The fear and anger about his situation slowly began melting a way. Because, there was nothing he could do at this point.

It was becoming a tighter fit, in his car, even with the car seat pushed all the way back. Even his 3 day travel bag was strained carrying his bigger clothes and snacks. Nick body constantly felt hungry and if he went to long with out eating he would feel tired and cranky. Another bag of snacks sat on the front seat. It was filled with cookies, chips, beef jerky, candy. He had multiple liters of Coca Cola on the floor of the passenger seat.

He finally made it to his mother's house and knocked door. His mom was thrown off guard as she saw this big older man, at the door.

"Hi Mom!" He says going to give his mom a hug. His belly squeezed against her.

It took a moment to realize what was happening, but his mother replied, "Nick is that you?"

Nick was a bit surprised his mom wasn't freaking out, but he just laughed. His belly jiggling in the process. "Yeah, I wasn't lying I'm an old fat man, now." Nick patted his belly.

Over the weekend, the two spent time together. They went to the store and out to eat. Nick found every excuse to buy his mom something. He enjoyed making her happy and spending time with family. He even decided to not ask her about his father, because what was the point. There was nothing that could be done anyways.

On the other side, Nick's mom worried for her son. She knew the truth. Sadness filled her eyes, everytime she stared at him. The night before he left he heard her crying in her room.

Nick's heart broke and walked in carring a cup of Hot Cocoa to cheer her up. "Mom what is it? Are you sad because of my transformation... because you don't have to be. I'm okay with it, honestly." Nick tried comforting her.

She wiped the tears from her eyes, "Damn your just like your father... Nick, I have to tell you something about your father." Nick's heart raced, he wasn't expecting this conversation but, he just nodded.

"Your father is... Santa Clause. And, based on your transformation it means he's dead."

Nick dropped the Hot Cocoa, the mug shattering on the floor. His mind raced, as his mom informed him of all the missing details.

After another day at his mom's home, Nick drove home his head still spinning trying to grasp the weight of what she said and what this all meant.

[ikehorganics]

HOW TO REDUCE BINGE

EATING OVEREATING,

AND BORED EATING:

disclaimer: i am aware that binge eating is an eating disorder, but not a lot of people have access to professionals to help them, and this guide could help a number of people struggling with binge eating, it could be successful to some binge eaters but not all. i hope this assists you, and this all comes from a place of good faith not malicious intent. i am also aware that binge eating does NOT equate to bored eating or overeating.

skip the preface if you want to skip straight to the tips!

PREFACE:

I have been in quarantine for nearly nine months, and I have struggled with multiple aspects of my everyday life that have had to be changed and adapted to the new rules of society. Since the beginning, I have always preached about staying in doors, social distancing, not going out to into open places without a mask etc because this is a direct reflection of the respect you have for yourself and the people around you. In this strong belief, I found myself struggling to juggle being a first year university student, my fitness, mental health, food and constantly being bored within my house.

Food was the hardest aspect, and with being surrounded by food 24/7, weight gain was inevitable. At first, I had not realised how I ate on a regular basis, I woke up at 6am, and would be at uni between 8am and 5pm from monday to thursday, where i would usually only eat one meal and a snack between that, whether it be left overs from dinner for lunch and an apple or piece of fruit for when i feel a bit peckish, and 2litres of water. My day consisted of four lectures ranging from 1 hour to two hours and walking around a lot because I hated sitting for a long time, and occasionally doing summaries or watching netflix between lectures. And when i got home, I had dinner and would go to bed. That was my routine and it was never truly surrounded by food constantly available at my every beck and call.

During quarantine, I was filled with procrastination and demotivation to attend lectures online or read my books. And all that extra time was filled with having an efficient workout routine and eating, but then that eating turned to eating quite frequently whether i was watching television, and mainly eating for the sakes of eating and in gross portion sizes because it was now available. Let's talk about how I broke out of that cycle of over eating and bored eating:

1. PLAN YOUR DAY PRODUCTIVELY.

I needed some direction in my life, I forced myself to plan every hour of my day so I can do something productive for myself. I planned the times from when I would wake up at 8am, to the time it took to fix my bed, brush my teeth, workout, stretch, eat my meals, nap, spend time outside, spend time on social media and more. Not only did my eating habits straighten out, but I got more done with my day.

2. SET EATING TIMES.

Setting eating times was the best thing I had ever done. Breakfast was always at 12 midday, lunch at 2 pm and dinner at 6pm, but these were my eating times, especially since i was intermittent fasting. These times helped me plan my day accordingly, between eating times I would usually fill my day with studying, and doing summaries, catching up with work I had missed. This helps especially if you have a restrictive diet or fast a lot! Restricting calories and fasting for extended periods of time only adds to the urge of falling into a binge cycle because your body feels the needs to refeed!

3. LISTEN TO YOUR CRAVINGS.

Listening to your body is so important. If you want to eat pizza for lunch, don't eat a salad, eat the pizza because it will be mor satiating than that salad or pasta that you might not want as much. Because that pizza might just pop into your mind late at night and you will have a little late night feast, this applies especially if you are counting calories. Having cravings are normal, and unless you are on a no bs diet that is extreme, you shouldn't deny yourself of something that you really want for something that won't leave your soul satiated.

4. DRINK WATER DURING MEALS.

I won't say much on this, but having water before, during and after your meal is so important. It aids in better digestion and adds to the feeling of being satiated when you are done eating, plus it's an easy way to get your water in. Replace that coca cola or soft drink with water, especially if you know you don't get enough glasses of water into your day.

5. LEMON WATER.

A cup of warm water and a wedge of lemon juice squeezed into it is super refreshing, sip on it throughout the morning before breakfast, to aid in digestion. Lemon water is a thing that is constantly brought up, and shut down for being "ineffective" but it works for me, and I believe that it is a phenomena of the mind. If you believe lemon water can help, it will definitely help you because you have manifested its impact on your health. Lemon water and warm water is one of those things that 'curb' hunger, and if you are one of those people who sometime wake up hungry but can't bring yourself to eat so early because it could make you nauseous, then water lemon water in a glass is the drink for you.

6. EAT WHOLESOME AND NOURISHING FOODS.

Calories are a touchy subject, and they add up very quickly very surprisingly. A bowl of oatmeal will have a lot of volume, leave you satiated and keep you full longer than toast and nutella. No one is saying do not eat the nutella, but adapt it into a meal that will leave you full and satisfied for example, if you want something sweet, heave oatmeal with a tablespoon of peanut butter or nutella inside of your oatmeal! Eat foods that will nourish you and give you enough energy to go about your day.

7. PORTION CONTROL AND PHYSICAL FULLNESS.

Portion sizes are all up to you as an individual and how satiated a portion size leaves you. Eat portion sizes that leave you satiated, but remember that being satiated does not equal to being so physically full that you feel uncomfortable as a result of eating too much. Being satiated is very difficult because sometimes you eat food that tastes amazing, and even though you are physically full, you feel like you could eat more and that becomes problematic because you've eaten past your bodies physical limit. Eating what you are craving ( number 3 ) comes into play with this aspect, as you have to be able to know when enough is enough. If you feel as if your portion sizes are huge and want to reduce them, then reduce it gradually whether it means you want to go from eating 4 slices of pizza to 2 slices of pizza, then begin with eating 3 and a half slices or eating one less scoop of pasta than you usually eat. If you have no idea how to stop eating past your physical limit, eat until you feel like you're just about to be physically full, do this for a week, and see how you will become satiated with the portions you are eating, gradually lessen the portion sizes overtime until you are happy with the amounts you are eating! This won't happen immediately, it is a gradual process.

8. DON'T EAT TOO FAST. CHEW YOUR FOOD.

A lot of the time, we do not realise how fast we eat and how we don't thoroughly chew our food. The food isn't running away, take your time to enjoy your meal and chew it instead of swallowing after a few times of grinding your teeth. Take in the flavour of your food and really enjoy it in the moment.

9. IT IS OKAY TO FALL INTO OLD HABITS, BUT BREAK IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

Nothing in life happens in a linear manner, everything is gradual and has its ups, its downs, its regressions and just general moments we are not proud of. If you find yourself in a binge cycle or overeating cycle for a day or a week, it does not meal all progress is lost. It means you are human, you are not engineered to be perfect constantly. Have a mantra for yourself that you repeat to comfort yourself: “it is okay, tomorrow will be better.” or “it was just one day, i can go back to normally eating tomorrow.” or “I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, it happens to everyone.”

10. INCORPORATE HEALTHY FOOD GROUPS INTO YOUR MEALS.

Make your meals satisfying and as colourful as possible! Don’t just eat pasta or pizza, eat it with something healthy like a side salad or a side of fruits or a side of healthy carbs like roasted potatoes! Never just eat one thing especially if it doesn’t have any greens or vegetables!! It doesn’t have to even be a salad or anything fancy! It can be cut up tomatoes, or cucumbers or apples!

11. HEALTHIER ALTERNATIVES MEAN YOU CAN EAT MORE FOR LESS.

Your oven, grill or airfryer is your bestfriend. Fried food is delicious, but you feel insecure at times after eating something that was cooked in heaping amounts of oil. Remember an airfryer is just a small oven, and can do wonders too. If you want a burger and you have time, home made burgers are always amazing and tastier than their fast food counterparts! Make your burger at home so you can control what goes into it, or make your fries in the oven so you can have a much more healthy alternative for less calories, and have more of it! I’m not saying make your burger buns something like lettuce buns, but making your burger at home can significantly reduce the calories in comparison to ONE mcdonalds burger, and you can have two for less calories than once burger if you make it at home.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Hopefully these tips can assist you day to day, and you take them into consideration and even test it out! These tips worked for me, and I know they won’t work for everyone but some of them might be helpful to you!

[baphomet-media]

Getting Psyched - A The World Ends With You Retro Review

Genre: Adventure Subgenre: JRPG Developer: Square Enix, Jupiter Publisher: Square Enix Platform(s): DS Release Date: July 27th, 2007 Hours Played: 42 hours this playthrough

You’ve almost certainly heard of this game, especially if you’re into JRPGs. When a game advertises itself as being “from the team that made Kingdom Hearts,” I was sold instantly as a kid. One look at the game’s box art confirms that Tetsuya Nomura had a hand at this game with his distinctive bold art style. But the game itself was something that nobody at the time had predicted. The game has an urban fantasy story unlike much that had been told at the time. Furthermore, the game was made to push the DS to its limits and create a battle system that could only work on the DS’s two screens. Does this cult classic live up to the hype, or is it just a janky mess? Let’s find out.

Story

TWEWY opens by introducing our protagonist, an antisocial teen named Neku Sakuraba. Neku unexpectedly awakens in the iconic scramble crossing of Shibuya, Tokyo. To his surprise, the crowds seem to walk right through him, and a strange pin appears in his hand that allows him to read the thoughts of passersby. Neku quickly learns that he has been thrust into the Reapers’ Game, a seven-day death game where the Players are the recently deceased that must partner up to fight the Noise, hostile part-animal-part-tribal-graffiti creatures that seek to erase the Players. What’s more, each day Players must complete missions given to them by the Reapers within strict time limits while avoiding the reapers themselves. If they can make it to the end of the week, they might just be able to return to life.

Along the way, Neku will meet a chaotic cast of characters including Shiki, the headstrong seamstress who is eventually able to get Neku out of his angsty shell, Beat and Rhyme, a pair of street-smart siblings with heavy 2000’s skater vibes, Joshua, an abrasive, sarcastic, literal Christ figure who’s somehow a good guy? Or maybe he’s a bad guy? Or… maybe he’s a good guy again? On top of that, the Reapers themselves vary wildly from the contrasting duo of the laid-back Kariya and the high-strung Uzuki to the lone radical Minamimoto. The game does a good job of having a full roster of characters without overloading the player. Furthermore, while most characters seem wacky at first, they all have motivations and layers behind them that become clearer as you progress through the story.

Without spoiling anything, nothing is as it seems in the Reaper’s game, and multiple parties are vying for control for different reasons, meaning the whole thing feels like one big political intrigue story on top of an urban JRPG. Even on my most recent replay after having played the game countless times over the years, I was hungry to put the pieces together. While the main storyline mostly follows Neku’s perspective and doesn’t explain a lot of the behind-the-scenes interactions and motivations of the secondary characters, the game fortunately has a Secret Reports feature, which are written by a certain character who seems to know way more than they let on. These Secret Reports are near essential to understanding the game’s true story, and reveal whole layers to the plot and world that the main story doesn’t even touch on.

Needless to say, I loved the story of TWEWY. Everything feels perfectly crafted, leaving no loose ends, while still leaving the player wanting more. If anything I wanted to see more of Neku and his friends after the game’s conclusion just hanging out in real life.

Gameplay

TWEWY is a JRPG, but in the loosest sense possible. In the overworld, the player controls Neku, guiding him around the various streets of Shibuya on the touch screen or with the face buttons. Unlike in traditional RPGs, outside of story events the player must deliberately initiate combat with the Noise. By scanning their environment they can read the surface thoughts of passersby, but also reveal noise symbols in the environment. By tapping on these symbols, the player can queue up battles with the noise, and can even chain multiple battles together for back-to-back fights that multiply your drop rate.

In battle, Neku and his partner are sent to separate Zones, with Neku on the touch screen and his partner on the top screen. Neku fights the noise by activating the abilities of pins he has equipped, called Psychs. Each psych has its own activation method, from swiping on an enemy to tapping empty space, to scratching on the screen, to shouting into the microphone, and more. It’s up to the player to equip Neku with the best pins, though pins level up as they are used, becoming more powerful and sometimes evolving into even stronger pins.

On the top screen, Neku’s partner fights the noise by using the DS’s face buttons to move through a combo map and select certain finishers. By selecting the right finishers, you can charge your Sync gauge to perform a powerful special attack. Both characters share an HP gauge, damage to each character subtracting from each side. If you’re following along, that means the game expects you to control both Neku and his partner at the same time. This can be tricky for new players, but you quickly get used to it. Additionally, you can have your partner auto-fight with a customizable delay, meaning you technically don’t have to control your partner at all. However, if you really want to deal major damage and wipe the floor with the Noise on higher difficulties, you’ll want to master battling with both characters at once. When I first played the game in 2007, I found the parner battling to be too difficult to keep up with, but now that I’m older and more experienced, I find the combat to be incredibly deep and rewarding. Additionally, the game rewards back-and-forth control of Neku and his partner with the Light Puck mechanic. Essentially, when one character performs a combo finisher, the light puck is passed to the other character, and passed back when that character does a finisher. In this way, you can build up a damage multiplier based on how quickly you rally the light puck. This creates a natural back-and-forth flow of using Neku until his psychs discharge, then getting a few hits in with his partner, and so on.

My only complaint about battles is that in later fights on higher difficulty the Noise will attack so frequently on the partner’s zone that it’s difficult to get attacks off with them at all. Your partner has a limited block/dodge, but it only does so much and there’s often tons of Noise attacking at once. It’s not insurmountable, but it can be frustrating at times.

Outside of battle, the player must constantly keep up with a few things, food, swag, and difficulty. Both Neku and his partner can eat food and wear clothing purchased from many shops around Shibuya. Food offers an up-front bonus as well as a permanent stat increase once the food is digested by completing battles. However, you can only digest so many times per real-time day, meaning you have to prioritize high-calorie foods before smaller snacks. I found the digestion limit to be a bit too limiting. It can be removed in the post-game, but it still makes food hard to deal with for someone that is effectively bingeing the game.

Swag are articles of clothing that offer flat stat increases, but also have abilities that are unlocked by showing it to the right store clerk. Each clerk can unlock the abilities of specific clothing, and you can unlock more by buying enough stuff from them to fill up their Friendship Gauge. I thought it was fun to slowly make friends with each store clerk, and I felt bad that I couldn’t hang out with them or reciprocate some of their obvious advances, though I’m sure it’s assumed that Neku cherishes his friendships with them after the game’s conclusion. However, you can’t just equip any old piece of clothing to any character. Neku can’t just pull off a dress and cargo shorts right off the bat. Each piece of clothing has a Bravery rating, with characters whose bravery is below that rating being unable to wear the clothing. Fortunately, bravery increases as you level up, and can also be increased by eating food. By the end of the game, you’ll be able to have Neku and company wearing whatever clothing you want.

Lastly there’s Difficulty. The game has four main difficulty levels, being Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultimate. You begin the game in Normal, but once you unlock a difficulty, you can change it on the fly from the pause menu. On easier difficulty enemies have less HP and deal less damage, but you get fewer XP and worse pins. The reverse is true on higher difficulties, with some of the best pins in the game being available exclusively as drops on Ultimate difficulty. To aid you in this, you can also change your level at any time. Unlike in a standard RPG where your level is immutable to the player aside from leveling up, in TWEWY you can freely choose your level from one to the highest level you have achieved. For each level below your max that you set your level, you get a multiplier for drops. This can be combined with the battle chaining multiplier to get ultra rare drops, some of which have less than 1% and even less than 0.1% drop chances normally. This gives the player an incentive to level up aside from just stat bonuses, and rewards players who go out of their way to engage in battles. As above, battles are largely optional, but it heavily behooves the player to battle as much as they can, not only because you get drops and experience, but increasing your level gives you more wiggle room for harder fights such as bosses.

There are tons more smaller features, but these are the main ones. I thoroughly enjoyed the vast depths of the game’s mechanics and found the difficulty settings to be really engaging and a novel approach to RPG player advancement while still affording accessibility. I was enthralled for multiple hours as I struggled to get the best gear, feed my team the best food, and equip the best pins to get as strong as possible. Until the very end of the postgame, it never felt like mindless grinding, as you can just breeze through the story on Easy if you really want to, but where would be the fun in that?

Presentation

TWEWY is probably best known for its vibrant and bold incredibly urban street-art-themed style, which shows in not only the art, but the UI, music, and writing. The character art is that hard-outlined and overdressed Nomura art style that fans of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts have come to love, and the backgrounds are all vibrant and stylized to fit. The pixel art of the character sprites and Noise are all incredibly expressive, with Neku’s idle animation as he jams out to tunes on his headphones being one of my favorites.

The game’s music is unabashedly lyrical, covering a vast array of genres including JPop, Punk, and Hip-Hop, with many different styles of each. I loved almost every song in the game, though I found one of the overworld themes to be a bit grating at times. Other than that, the music is pretty great, and what’s even better is you can buy CDs of each of the game’s songs in the game to have your own personal sound test right from the menu, even going as far as to allow you to set the background music on the menu itself.

The game even has voice acting, though it’s limited mostly to battle quips and wordless expressions for cutscenes. I actually really enjoyed the voice acting and thought they nailed each character. I was honestly surprised at the audio quality the developers were able to pack into this game. The music was a very slight bit tinny through the DS’s audio chip as is to be expected, but barring that the vocals and voice overs were super clear and the instrumentation of the songs were well mixed.

Overall, the game’s presentation is about as good as it gets on the DS, giving even home console games a huge run for their money.

Conclusion

Honestly it’s hard to say anything bad at all about TWEWY. The game was a bit hard to approach at the time, but it’s aged magnificently. These days, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it’s the best (at least non-Pokémon) game on the DS. Honestly though some might be turned off by the game’s quirks, I think TWEWY is a masterpiece that everyone with a DS should pick up and play. I can’t wait to see how the newly-released sequel stands up, but honestly the original is a tough act to follow.

Score: 10 / 10

[wastedbones]

Introduction 🌙

In autumn of 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to start a new diet. I was 150 pounds and 5’8. In my eyes I was overweight and ugly. I wanted to lose a bunch of weight but in a healthy way, and I did. Over the course of 3 months, I ate 1000 calories a day, worked out 2-3 times a week and only ate vegetarian food. I lost around 10 pounds in a little over 3 months, I know it’s not a lot but at the time it was a big achievement.

I’d like to assume my disordered eating patterns began once I reached my goal weight. I remember towards the end of my weight loss, there were multiple, multiple days where I would eat 500-600 calories and I was so proud of it. Eating around there didn't make me hungry. I didn't feel weak or lightheaded. A little cold sometimes, but that happens with weightloss.

I’m pretty sure I became addicted towards losing weight at around the time quarantine started. I got addicted to the high when I fasted for long periods of time. After reaching my goal weight, I ate around 200 calories or less every day. If I wasn't doing online school, or working out, or on sites that fostered my fucked up way of thinking, I was sleeping. Constantly, constantly sleeping. I bruised at the slightest touch, but I didn't care. The number on the scale kept dropping. It kept me measured, it kept me in control.

I was 115 pounds at my lowest.

I was, in a way, happy and miserable at the same time. But that’s when the binging started. I ate and ate and ate thousands and thousands of calories compulsively everyday. My behavior grew even more erratic. I'd throw food away to keep myself from binging and then dig it up and eat it only to throw it back up. I was no longer in control. I went from restricting myself completely to binging and purging everyday in the space of a couple months. I am utterly ashamed that I allowed myself to gain loads of weight from stupid repulsive binges.

I want to stop eating. My careless phase is over and done for good now. I am getting back on track.

I feel ana coming back to me and I just know I’m going to be skinny this time. It’s a new start and I’m going to be successful. I will be posting updates and diary entries everyday about my weight loss journey from now on. It’s more for me but if anyone is at all interested please do message me or give a follow, much appreciated :)

[onewfantaesy]

Monsters in the Dark (Part 3)

(tw: ed)

It’s once he’s on his own that things get really bad. Not just going solo, but all the others are doing their military service at the same time. He’s completely alone. It allows Taemin to be swallowed up entirely by his own thoughts, allows him to fast for days on end without anyone really being able to notice. Sure, managers get concerned, stylists mention the bags under his eyes, backup dancers have to put a hand on his arm to steady him when he stumbles, but they don’t really say anything. Not like the others would. Taemin takes advantage of it, even if he hates it with every ounce of his being.

He misses them, and it hurts so much, so he drowns the hurt with hunger pains instead.

But after the first few months of what feels like complete solitude, he can’t keep up with the fasting. It’s been so long - so long - since he started all of this, and he’s lost track of time, and he can’t remember when anything started or how or why. But the fasting, he just can’t do it.

He starts binging worse than he ever has before. Weeks on end of stuffing his face with anything he gets his hands on, anything to fill the void in his chest. He gains so much weight so quickly that he’s terrified to step on the scale, but he has to, he has to weigh himself every single morning compulsively.

More binging leads to more purging. It becomes a daily occurrence, sometimes multiple times a day, and his throat burns so bad but he can’t stop.

Then SuperM becomes a thing. He’s suddenly thrust into this group with members he isn’t used to, with members who aren’t used to him, who haven’t grown accustomed to his fucked up eating patterns. With SHINee, his eating had become so fucked up so gradually that no one really noticed; it was like growing taller, you don’t notice when a child grows up when you live with them. But these new members? They send him funny looks when he picks at a salad, when he drinks five cups of black coffee in less than two hours, when he pulls out an emergency cookie from his dance bag and shoves it in his mouth to stop himself from passing out mid-rehearsal.

And Taemin wasn’t used to them, either. He’s grown accustomed to SHINee’s particular brand of bickering, it no longer gave him the stomach-churning reactions it used to. But these six new members? Especially the younger ones? God, they bickered about anything and everything. It wasn’t always serious, it was sometimes very lighthearted, but the way their voices rose so quickly, the way they talked over each other and made things clatter all over the room, it made Taemin’s anxiety spike higher than usual, sending him bolting to bathroom to gag over a public toilet.

He hates nothing more than falling in a public bathroom, bent over a toilet that who knows how many gross fucks took a shit in with their asses sweaty from dance practice sitting on the rim. It made the nausea so much worse. Made his puking so much more violent.

“Are you okay?” Baekhyun asks, and he’s taken over the role of leader rather well, if Taemin is being honest.

“Fine,” he chokes back.

“Do you want a water?” Baekhyun asks. “You should lay down on the couch when you’re finished. Take a rest.”

“Thank you,” Taemin says inbetween spitting out whatever’s left in his mouth. “Sorry.”

Baekhyun holds him upright as they walk back to the practice room, and he lowers Taemin very gently onto the couch in the corner. Jongin sits with him then, running a hand through Taemin’s hair to try and soothe the headache Taemin lied about having. The younger ones are quiet then, speaking softly to each other after shyly asking Taemin if he was alright.

“Just tired,” he says, his eyes closed.

“You should stay at my place tonight,” Jongin says softly.

“That’s alright.”

“Please,” Jongin says, his voice close to pleading. “Just humor me. I worry about you.”

Taemin stays at Jongin’s that night, the two of them curled on the bed with Taemin’s back pressed against Jongin’s chest. It’s comforting. Taemin is glad he went, glad he let Jongin hold him even if he was afraid of him feeling the way Taemin’s hipbones didn’t poke out the same anymore.

But he doesn’t have to live with this new group. Doesn’t have to around them constantly. It’s a freedom Taemin wishes he had cherished more when he realizes just what sharing a dorm in Los Angeles means.

He needs his own room. He desperately needs to get a single room, to not share with anyone, to have his own bathroom, otherwise they’ll find out, they’ll know, they’ll all know. It makes his heart race and he almost falls over and his hands are shaking when he picks a number to pick a room.

He thanks God and all his lucky stars that he managed to snag the room he wanted. Thanks his seniority and the fact that they essentially gave in and let him have it. Falls on the bed while clutching his chest because his heart hurts, it hurts so bad, he’d been so freaked out about having to share a room or a bathroom and having to work so much harder to hide the purging.

He wants the pain in his chest to stop, so he pinches his legs hard, punches them, squeezes them until bruises start spreading across his skin. He punches his thigh so hard it makes him gasp and fall over and hide his face in a pillow. Fuck. Fuck, that had actually hurt more than he meant to hurt it. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The others don’t seem to notice the way he drags his right leg when he does finally leave his room. Well, Jongin notices, and he whispers in Taemin’s ear to ask what happened, and Taemin just snorts.

“Hit it on the corner of the bed,” he mumbles, trying to look embarrassed.

Jongin laughs and hugs Taemin close to him on the couch.

“Does anyone want pizza?” Mark asks, having already downloaded Postmates and looked at all the available options.

Everyone else loudly agrees, asks for specific toppings, asks for chicken wings and breadsticks, and the idea of that much bread at one time almost gives Taemin a panic attack.

“No thanks,” Taemin eventually says, and everyone looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “I’m not really hungry.”

“You hardly ate anything on the plane,” Jongin says softly, and everyone else has gone back to talking with each other. “Are you not feeling well?”

“Traveling just makes me queasy,” Taemin laughs it off. “My tummy’s upset, that’s all.”

And he leans heavily against Jongin and closes his eyes and nuzzles his face in Jongin’s neck. Jongin pouts and hugs him and joins in on the conversation while Taemin stays quietly nestled against him.

Taemin ends up eating a piece of cheese pizza and a cinnamon breadstick and it feels like a huge lump in his stomach, he hates it.

He feels his breathing quicken and then he feels the way the saliva pools in his mouth and he has to rush to his bathroom so he doesn’t end up puking on the floor.

“Taemin?”

He hates that Jongin is coming over to him, sitting on the bathroom floor with him, rubbing his back and whispering soothing words to him. He hates that puking always makes his eyes burn with tears, hates that when he pulls his head away from the toilet that Jongin wipes the tears away with his thumbs.

“You worried the kiddies,” Jongin teases, helping Taemin up and flushing the toilet for him, then guiding him to the sink to brush his teeth. “You should take a shower and go to bed. Do you want me to stay with you?”

Don’t let him stay, the voice says.

“Please,” Taemin croaks. “Please stay.”

Traitor, the voice calls him.

Jongin stays with him, makes sure he doesn’t fall over in the shower and crack his head open, and gets him into bed.

“I’m just gonna go change,” Jongin says softly. “I’ll be right back, if you still want me to stay.”

“Don’t leave,” Taemin begs, gripping Jongin’s hand. “Please stay.”

“What’s wrong?” Jongin asks, his voice barely above a whisper as he sits back down on the bed.

“Traveling,” Taemin lies again. “Just makes me sick. And - and-”

He wants to tell Jongin. He wants to tell someone, anyone, that he can’t eat anything without puking, that he hates the way he looks, that he hates food but he loves food but he hates eating but he loves eating and it’s so confusing and he can’t handle it anymore.

“I’m lonely,” he says instead.

“I’m sorry,” Jongin whispers, laying down and hugging Taemin. “I’ll stay here. Can I shower in here?”

“Yeah,” Taemin whispers. “Can wear my other pajamas.”

They’re all too big for him anyway. They’ll no doubt fit Jongin.

He makes Jongin stay with him a few more minutes before he lets him go shower. Then Jongin stays with him until he falls asleep, falls into dreams about bread getting stuck in his throat as he pukes it back up and choking him until he dies. When he wakes up, Jongin isn’t in the bed anymore, but he can hear him whispering just outside the door.

He’s telling Baekhyun that Taemin got sick, that he was lonely and wanted Jongin to stay in his room that night. Baekhyun says they can talk about it in the morning, when Taemin is awake and hopefully feeling better.

Taemin doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to deal with it. He doesn’t want help. He wants to just ignore it all, to pretend that nothing is wrong.

“Traveling,” he continues with the lie the next morning, “just makes me a little queasy sometimes. Especially when it’s international.”

They all seem to believe him. Taemin is thankful, and he pours himself a third cup of black coffee and ignores the way the younger members look concerned and whisper about too much caffeine.

[the-hs-etaverse]

Headcanon that after Rose and Kanaya decide to move out of their flat and get a house, Vriska and Terezi (who have both returned and are dating by this point) move in with them. They just ask to stay temporarily at first, promising that they’ll find their own flat eventually, but as time goes on, Vriska reels in favours and invents reasons to stay for longer. Rose and Kanaya don’t mind, however; they appreciate the company. And eventually it becomes obvious to all four of them that the current living situation is effectively permanent.

When you have functional (barely) lesbian wives, disaster bisexual girlfriends, and three cats all living in the same house, you get sitcom-level scenarios.

Take note that aside from Rosemary and Vrisrezi, all relationships are platonic.

This got really long so I’m putting it under a Read More tag.

First, about the cats. Technically, they belong to Rose and Kanaya, since they’re the ones who feed them. But one of them, a ginger tom, has practically glued himself to Vriska. Vriska wears a lot of black. I think you can see where this is going.

The cats pose a problem for Terezi for two reasons. First of all, she’s prone to tripping over them or sitting on them by accident. Second, on multiple occasions, she has licked something and gotten a mouthful of cat hair for her efforts. Needless to say, none of the cats like her.

After The Saliva Incident of February 16th, Terezi is no longer allowed to lick anything not within her and Vriska’s room. Nobody is allowed to talk about The Saliva Incident of February 16th for fear of going under the business end of Kanaya’s lipstick.

Rose is fairly neat but is prone to mess when sleep-deprived, which she often is. Kanaya is a neat freak. Vriska and Terezi are slobs on par with stereotypical university students. There is an ongoing feud.

They’re all kept busy in some manner. Kanaya’s the only one with a real job: taking care of the mother grub. Rose and Terezi are both in university, studying psychology and law respectively. Vriska bounces between part-time jobs a lot, trying to figure out what she’s going to do with herself for the rest of eternity.

Kanaya has remarked that Vriska and Terezi are vacillating through all four quadrants simultaneously. Karkat is trying to confirm her claim but is hung up on the auspistice part.

Vriska has expressed interest in acting. She’s torn about whether it would be a good or bad idea due to her god status.

Jade is slowly but surely teaching Kanaya how to teleport. She practices a lot. The cats are afraid of her now. Terezi refused to speak to her for a week following one incident that shall not be discussed.

Rose and Kanaya, even though they’re married, are not clingy. Kanaya in particular is reticent to express affection through physical means. Vriska and Terezi, however, are very clingy. More need not be said on this matter.

In contrast, Rose and Kanaya often call each other pet names. They most frequently use “honey” and “dear”, but sometimes they branch out. Vriska and Terezi only call each other pet names if they’re actively trying to make other people uncomfortable. It happens more often than you’d think.

The four young ladies hold game/movie nights every Thursday. Occasionally, Dave and Karkat join them. Sometimes, they do livestreams. Those often deteriorate into madness.

They watched “The Sting” one evening. Vriska now has ideas. She is officially barred from watching “Ocean’s 8″.

Rose once convinced everybody to join her in binge-watching all the Lord of the Rings movies in one day. It went over surprisingly well. She’s now trying (unsuccessfully) to get Vriska and Terezi to read the books. (Kanaya has read them but doesn’t like them quite as much as Rose does.)

Kanaya and Terezi used to duel on the front porch on occasion. After Terezi nearly lost a finger, they stopped.

Vriska is the reason why Terezi failed her bar exam.

None of them can cook. Like, not even Kanaya can make anything more complex than a sandwich. They get takeout about twice a week.

Vriska has been known to subsist on nothing but graham crackers and those pull-apart cheese stick things for upwards of 36 hours. It’s not that she forgets to eat, it’s that she snacks on them nigh-constantly and doesn’t feel hungry enough to consume an actual meal.

Rose is the one who forgets to eat. Some days, she only has lunch and drinks coffee the rest of the time. Kanaya posts sticky note reminders for her all the time. They don’t help much.

Terezi, on the other hand, has a ridiculously fast metabolism. They always order two medium pizzas instead of one because Terezi will finish one all on her own.

Kanaya’s diet is mostly normal. She has acquired a liking for rare meat.

Vriska can sleep through a fire alarm (and has done so before), which is a good thing because Terezi snores. However, Terezi’s a fairly light sleeper, so sometimes she wakes herself up.

Kanaya sleeps like a mummy. She lies on her back and just. Doesn’t move. Rose doesn’t seem to find this odd.

Terezi stole a copy of Roxy’s old Complacency of the Learned fanfiction and brought it home for her and Rose to read. Rose claimed that she was simultaneously expecting both better and worse out of it.

At one point, Aradia burst through the window and asked to stay over for the night. They let her stay. She left in the morning without any explanation.

Kanaya has a deal with the local hospital with regards to her blood-drinking requirements. (They let her purchase donated blood from them for a fee.) Sometimes, if she runs out and forgets to go shopping, she’ll ask one of her friends to donate.

Terezi is proficient in the slide whistle, to the detriment of everybody else.

Vriska knows that Kanaya should never be trusted to name things in any timeline. She stopped her from naming one of the cats Nepeta.

The names of the cats are:

Glenn: The ginger tom who loves Vriska. Is found sleeping in very strange places.

Shepard: Grey tabby tom, slightly ornery but mostly lazy. Kanaya’s cat, by process of elimination.

Artemis: Brown tabby she-cat, slightly lazy but mostly ornery. Only likes Rose. Was almost named Nepeta.

They all have wildly different tastes in music. Terezi prefers so-called “single-colour songs”, which can be anything from smooth jazz to EDM to heavy metal. (Her playlist is like an acid trip.) Rose likes classical music and dubstep and dubstep remixes of classical music. Vriska likes rock, both classic and alternative. Kanaya prefers show tunes and the like. However, they are all united by a strong distaste for country music.

Rose is learning Alternian so that she can understand what Kanaya, Vriska, and Terezi say behind her back. She already knows what her birthday present is going to be. It’s either a set of golf clubs or a necklace. She’s still pretty shaky on vocabulary.

Kanaya claims she is the sole reason why Rose and Vriska haven’t killed each other yet. (Vriska actually HAS killed Rose, but it was ruled a stupid death. Thank God.)

Terezi hung a stuffed Dirk in effigy in the dining room once. Rose took it down almost immediately, but she took a picture of it first.

Rose is practically nocturnal at this point, given her university studies and the nocturnal habits of her housemates. One time, she stayed up for 53 hours straight. Lots of hallucinations and espresso were involved.

Other than all the clashing caused by the differing personalities, the four young ladies get along surprisingly well. Sometimes, they claim that their time spent on the meteor was training.

[hecallsmehischild]

On Losing Weight

Recently I was asked a question that prompted me to pull together all the information I could remember about how my husband, Sergey, and I have been eating over the last few years. We both struggle very much with food and have been trying to do better by our bodies for a long time, but are wary of all the diets and fads. This post has details about what we’ve tried to date and what has worked for us. Most of it is written by me. At the end, Sergey wrote a few paragraphs also. Very long post under the cut.

Disclaimers and a few generalities

One thing about eating and weight loss is that accountability really helps. However, I’ve found personally that even if everyone in your family means well, accountability partners should not be within the family. The main reason I've found is that there's too much baggage with any family member (with the potential exception of your marriage partner) for accountability to ever go well and function as it should. Resentment, triggers, irritation, even accidental shaming crops up because of old baggage and derails everything. You need accountability with someone who you don’t carry a lot of baggage with, because there’s often a huge emotional component to eating.

It takes a LONG time to lose large amounts of weight. You can lose five to ten pounds relatively quickly, but often your body will stabilize on the new number and then you may find it very hard to get lower for months, so continuing to try new things is helpful.

You will yo-yo between 3 and 5 pounds all the time. That is standard. So think in five pound increments in any direction, because your bodyweight is constantly in flux over a few pounds. For this reason, weighing once a week is a lot more accurate than weighing every day and will cause a lot less despair and frustration.

We are not vegetarians at all. We cannot offer any thoughts on a vegetarian diet.

Whatever you do, food-wise, has to be part of your ordinary life. Short term diets set you up to fail. Changing your lifestyle is what will produce long-lasting changes.

Also, some of the things my husband and I try, in some ways, appears to walk the line of eating disorder. I’m watching it very closely with that in mind, and I still don’t think it falls into the trap. Sergey and I do not have enough activity to burn off all the food with take in, so we’re trying things to decrease our food intake AND increase our activity, so that we reach a reasonable balance. But people who have (or are tempted by) eating disorders need to take care, and I would recommend not reading this post or else proceeding with utmost caution.

Obviously not all of the things we do are feasible for everyone, but maybe even hearing some of our ideas might spark a different way of thinking about food and being active for you.

One Meal a Day

Three meals a day makes a lot of sense if you’re doing hard labor all the time. It doesn’t make as much sense if you have a desk job or take care of a house as your main occupation. So the first thing we did a few years back is cut down to one meal a day. It could be anything at all, but it had to be just one meal. That alone dropped us both about 10 pounds down. We’d have one meal around lunch, and later in the evening we would share a large bowl of some sort of fruit (like tangerines or cherries). The aim was to eat things that were both good and filling. Variation keeps you from getting bored and abandoning the lifestyle.

Meals were often grilled salmon or home-warmed burgers (lean, when we could) or a soup from Trader Joe’s. Some of our meals now:

Two burgers with lean beef patties, pickles, and some mayo on bakery fresh onion rolls

Lox (with is VERY low cal, if expensive) on onion rolls with tomato and onion, a little oil and pepper and salt

Sharing a whole roast chicken from the store, plus a roll each

Large can of tuna mixed with a little mayo on two onion rolls

Shredded chicken and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Pot roast and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Meatballs. Just meatballs.

A spicy beans/rice/sausage/mushroom dish we brainstormed that we make in a pressure cooker

Home-made chicken mushroom fettuccine alfredo. Not super healthy, but hot and homemade. (this is a “maintenance” meal, see what I mean by that later)

A bag of chicken fried rice from Trader Joe’s

Soup from the grocery store (not the canned kind, but the fresher ones sold by the store)

Two larger sized tamales

One frozen pizza (inspect the full calorie count, you’re shooting for something between 600 and 1000 calories total, which does exist but it takes some looking and experimenting with types) whose flavor can always be spiced up with extra mushrooms or garlic powder. Not the Tostino’s or Party pizzas. I promise there are healthier, tastier, and more varied pizzas to be had in this calorie range.

Chicken breast or chicken thigh meat is sold frozen. Cook that and make that into sandwiches for very lean, filling meals. Use of various spices encouraged.

A tray of baked “catfish nuggets” which are chunks of catfish cooked in the oven

A tray of baked white meat chicken nuggets

Cocktail shrimp (thawed from frozen) with cocktail sauce

I have just broken into the frontier of omelettes, also low-cal and filling in conjunction with onion rolls.

Sergey would often go to a salad bar and load up on the salad, then also load up on the chicken noodle soup which is very filling and very low cal.

Sergey eats his meal closer to noon or one. I try to eat my meal around 3 or 4 if I can hold out, because then I’m not groaning about how hungry I am in the evening or being kept up by hunger pangs. For me, that’s the mid-point of the day and the one that helps me deal with hunger best.

Snacks and Sweets

Snacks are always tricky, and large bags of anything salty are automatic failures in this house; we are incapable of portioning them. So we stopped getting them unless we acknowledged the truth to ourselves, which is that one bag is one serving size no matter what the back says (i.e. we embraced that we’re being bad and got it anyway).

For a while Sergey and I had an occasional bowl of non-buttered popcorn with powdered salt. This worked for a bit because it was pretty filling, but Sergey found himself making multiple bowls so we had to stop because that defeated the purpose.

Some stores sell very small snacks individually portioned, like a tiny foil pack of variously flavored olives, or banana bites coated in cacao, etc. Those are great. Rice cakes can be good, though I get tired of them after a while. I like the cinnamon apple and chocolate ones best. Speaking of cinnamon apple, individual oatmeal cups are good too. I aim for around 140 cal for a snack.

Sometimes I will snack on a lean burger patty or chicken thigh-meat piece, each of which is about 70 cal.

By himself, Sergey often would (and still does) fill a large bowl full of small quartered tomatoes mixed with pepper, oil, and onion. He can put away two of these tomato salads a day as “snacks.” He says they’re very filling, good for you, and low-cal. He’s leaning more on bowls of baby carrots and sugar snap peas these days. Sometimes he will make a large bowl of Golden Apple slices to chow down on.

I keep NO ice cream in the house. I may get a larger quantity for a birthday celebratory binge, or use individual containers as a reward system, but I never “stock up” on ice cream. Birthday? Maybe 4 of the personal containers of various flavors, and that’s it for my birthday treat. Reward system? Once I get to a certain weight, I allow myself to have one small personal container of ice cream (or my other favorite, a jar of honey pecans) a week. The incentive to get to a certain weight balances out the slow-down on the weight loss the treat causes, because this can’t be all about deprivation or I couldn’t sustain it. Being able to sustain a way of eating into a lifestyle is a huge deal.

I keep dried cranberries in the cabinet. Sometimes if I’m hungry and need to hold out, I’ll grab one handful of those to eat. I keep larger quantities of oatmeal too, but I’m not sure if that’s working against me or not, because I dump high quantities of honey in to bring it up to my sweet tooth standards so it might end up being a bad thing for me. I haven’t sat down to figure that out yet.

I make a mean chunky cinnamon applesauce that is a delicious and pretty healthy snack, too, when I have the energy to make it.

I would like to make sweets all the ding dong day, but it works against us, so I have to reserve my sweets making for when there’s a large group to share them with. Otherwise we would eat all of that ourselves.

Tools that help

Making your own food at home becomes a lot more enjoyable and feasible for low-energy people like us when there are tools that cut back on the effort it takes. To that end

A good 6 qt pressure cooker does everything a crockpot does, but it has more options and is faster.

A good food processor can do almost anything, from applesauce to milling oats to slicing veggies to finely dicing the onions you don’t want to deal with, to making ice cream out of frozen bananas and cocoa powder. We have an older one and it still does wonders, even though some of the latches don’t work right.

A good indoor grill machine.

Electric mixer/beater. The effort of making cookies goes down by a third to a half the personal energy cost when you use this, plus the process goes faster and the texture is so much better.

A dishwasher. A good dishwasher means you aren’t spending a ton of energy cleaning up all the dishes you soiled just making food. Did you know there are portable dishwashers that hook up to your sink if you don’t have one in the home? I just learned this...

This one heavily depends on how much you’d use it, but it can be very inexpensive to get an electric citrus juicer. I can go through about 40 lemons for a party-sized quantity of lemonade and it wracks out my wrist to do that manually, so I got a good one for about $20.

This website is one Sergey uses to see what products are legitimately good, because Amazon is starting to have major issues with fake reviews PLUS Chinese knock-offs getting passed off as the good product. This site user-tests a ton of different brands of the same product and tells you which one they found to be best and why, then gives a few runners up in other categories like price or different type. I used this to find a good set of salt/pepper grinders, a good knife sharpener, and an individual serving coffee maker. I also found my electric mixer and citrus juicer on here.

Also, pickling things is fun and very cheap and easy.

A few radical things

This is our lifestyle, not a diet. We go crazy with our eating when we’re on a trip, but normal, everyday eating is the one-meal-a-day plan for us. Going to a friend’s place for a meal is a balancing act that we often fail (because it’s often all-you-can-eat), but we’re already brainstorming ways to compensate.

Here’s for something radical sounding, to be handled with care. While Sergey aims for around 1300 calories a day, approximately, I aim for under or close to 800. I’ve found that if I eat the same things as him, I maintain my current weight but do not lose any. It’s when I, the smaller and less active person, undershoot him, that I start gaining ground. When I reach the weight I’m aiming for, I will allow myself more leeway to get to his calorie intake level, because that’s “maintenance” level for me.

Here’s the current thing we are testing, so the results are not in yet. We’re doing this because neither of us has been able to budge our weight for a while. It’s a combination of factors so track with me. We like a place called Star Cinema Grill which is a movie theater that serves you a meal and/or drinks while you watch the movie. But even for one meal this is a very high calorie day if we go there. We swore off going for a long time, until their marketing department sent out a wave of “Two free tickets!” in the mail. Sergey figured that he would go, and then he would not eat for 48 hours to make up for it. I was a little concerned by the idea, but after thinking it over for a while (with the concern about eating disorders in mind) it didn’t actually seem that unreasonable. So I joined him in this. So now we’ve worked out that we can go to Star Cinema Grill on occasion as long as it’s followed by a 48 hour fast.

We had previously tried 48 hour fasts (which consist of, for example, eating lunch around noon on Sunday and stopping food until lunch on Tuesday, so that you sleep through much of the 48 hour period) but we first did the fast on ONLY water. By the second day we were both so lethargic and unfocused that we could hardly function. This time we allowed ourselves to have several rounds of tea or mocha throughout the day. That time, we experienced very negligible energy drops and made it through the period of no-eating with a lot less suffering.

NOW. I was reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the expanded and revised edition, and at the end they included several articles they had written as bonus material. Please read this article to understand where I’m going next.

Excited, I rushed over to Sergey to make him read this bit. This is already sort of what we had been doing. Though this guy had distilled it down to sugar water, tea with a cube of sugar isn’t much different. My mocha had about three times the sugar, but was still on the very low end of calories for a day. So this idea (that sugar-water helps trick your body past hunger) was being confirmed for us by someone else. So we’ve decided to test out doing this 48-hour fast once a week, which may also allow for re-inclusion of things we tend to forgo more often (like weekly ice cream? Or a fresh batch of cookies?). Stay tuned...

Going out

We built a list of places and categories of how good or bad they are for us to go to. We divided them into Healthy and Healthy Cheat. Bad ones don’t make it on the list so we’re not tempted when we’re thinking of where to go out.

Healthy Restaurants are places where, if you’re reasonable with your choices, you can eat pretty much any one meal on their menu. (Lemon Shark is our Poke place in the area. Poke is unreasonably good and healthy and filling for you, and most will have vegetarian or cooked options on the menu if you don’t like raw fish. Jinya is a ramen place, though you have to be a little more selective about because some dishes are two meals’ worth, and Sweet Tomatoes is a salad bar also known as Souplantation in some regions)

Healthy Cheat Restaurants are places where we know we’ll probably eat more than we should, but the food is still relatively healthy. Tokyo Grill and Dimassi’s are both buffet places with relatively healthy options near us. Fukuda Sushi is our sushi go-to for now (though we’re looking to replace it as the fish quality went down).

Avoid most all-you-can-eat places like the plague, unless it’s a salad bar. Even then, if you gravitate toward the breads and creamy soups like I do, just say no.

Places we love that are also pretty bad for us on any kind of regular basis: Rudy’s BBQ, Star Cinema Grill, Wine Tasting Room (large meat and cheese platters), anywhere Italian.

Being Active

We took up Krav Maga, which had us doing off and on rigorous exercise for an hour twice a week. That went on for about a year. After I broke my toe, we switched to a home exercise regimen.

Instead of home exercise equipment, we opted for DDR pads, and have been doing hour-long DDR sessions most mornings. After an hour long workout (25 songs on easy-to-medium levels) we each do 20 crunches and then Sergey does extra burpees or push-ups. As the crunches get easier for me, I will be adding five at a time. I’m up to 30 now. Crunches were initially added to help me maintain the muscles that hold up a weak place in my spine, however now it’s also a good end-workout routine. I cannot get through all this without frequent water breaks because I drip sweat, and Sergey turns into a waterfall.

Sergey has added about 3-5 extra mini-workouts (a set of pushups or burpees) sprinkled throughout the day.

Some days we go to a park in the morning and walk for 30-50 minutes instead of DDR. It’s less strenuous, but a nice change of pace and scenery.

Some days we go kayaking in a nearby waterway, which REALLY works the arm muscles that day, but it’s a fantastic workout. We keep saying we need to go more often, but often forget.

Failing

It’s going to happen. It’s going to feel miserable. Sometimes I have found myself up at three AM, unable to sleep, making myself another whole frozen pizza or eating all the spaghetti leftovers. Sometimes I can talk myself into something slightly better, like a bowl of oatmeal, but not often. Sometimes I’ll just mix white and brown sugar, butter, and raw oatmeal and eat this lump-of-barely-cookie-dough as is. Sometimes I come home from the grocery store with an entire round loaf of bakery bread and eat it, much to Sergey’s fascination and surprise. One time I scooped one out and filled it with clam chowder and ate my own homemade bread bowl. It was great. It was also way over my limit.

Sometimes “failing” is known and expected, like around the holidays or birthdays. It’s okay to celebrate. Food is a very social and emotional experience as well as a sustenance deal. Keep picking yourself back up and trying again.

Sergey, who is SUPER good at distilling core concepts, adds his own TLDR:

On Losing Weight

Dusty and I have both struggled with overeating. For me, there have been sad times when plowing through a huge meal may have been the happiest 20 minutes of my day, and it’s no surprise that I would resist any attempts to eliminate that. However, I’ve found that losing weight and getting healthier leads to better moods and reduces the frequency and severity of impulses to binge.

Whatever you do must be incorporated into your lifestyle—if you are “going on a diet,” then you are setting yourself up to fail. If certain behaviors become part of your ordinary day, and you maintain that for months at a time, it’s much more likely that you’ll be able to keep going.

The most important change I’ve made is limiting myself to 1 meal a day. After a short adjustment period, I feel only a little bit hungrier than I did with 2 meals a day while consuming half the calories. That meal should be a reasonably-sized meal (typically 800-1200 calories for men, 600-900 for women), not an extra-large one. If I get hungry again, I only allow myself some very low-calorie snacks like carrots, sugar snap peas, or tomatoes.

The second thing I did was institute a daily exercise program. Dusty and I start each morning with an hour of DDR when we can, and I stop what I’m doing every 3-5 hours to do a set of 20 burpees. As I gain strength, I plan to increase this number. We also go for walks or go kayaking when the weather and our moods allow. What’s most important is that you do something to get your heart racing and get sweaty, and that you do it every day.

The last thing I did was institute occasional 48-hour fasts. For example, I would have lunch on Monday and not eat again until lunch on Wednesday. If I have tea with light sugar during a fast, I only feel moderately hungrier than I would otherwise. It’s much more tolerable than I thought it would be. There is considerable research suggesting that intermittent fasting is good for you, and it can be a reasonable way to offset the binge you couldn’t resist having. It’s definitely a healthier approach than purging, which hurts both your body and your soul.

[ronyxfic]

Educating the Victim - Act VI, Chapter XVIII

Pairing: Yellow Pearl/Yellow Diamond

Rating: Mature

Warnings/Tags: Alcohol, binge drinking, vomiting

CHAPTER 18: Drunk

 She looked up into the hotel room. Her shoulders fell. Rose.

Marigold hadn’t had to deal with drunk people in... a while. It had usually been her that had been drunk.

She sighed and pulled on her jacket, making her way to the bar to find Rose.

 A few glasses surrounded her. Rose sat hunched over a barstool, attracting a few concerned gazes.

"The one with the... cherry. Yeah. Thanks." One more and she'd head to sleep. One more.

   Marigold sat next to her, keeping a few inches between them. "Rose," she said in a low voice. "I think that's enough."

 "Last one..." Rose murmured. "You aren't my mom."

 “No, but I am your boss. Us being here on a personal mission doesn’t change that.” Marigold shot her a stern glance.

 Rose gave an amused chuckle. "What are you going to do? Fire me? We found out that's a long and tedious process, didn't we?"

 Marigold frowned. “I can give you a warning for technically drinking on the...” She exhaled. “Oh, who am I to talk?”

 "Just let me have this. I'll be better tomorrow. I don't want to be here."

 “You’ll be in hospital tomorrow if you keep going at this rate,” Marigold said. “Trust me, I’ve been keeping up.” She then sighed and turned to Rose, her voice becoming noticeably gentler. “What’s bothering you so much?”

 "What isn't bothering me? I might come face to face with my abuser." Rose was handed a martini. "Do you... wanna get some food? I should at least go to sleep with something in me. I'm hungry now."

 “Azure did say we could order anything. The restaurant should still be open, if you want to relocate. Though I’m sure we could get them to bring the food here as well. Are you feeling okay?”

 "No. I'm not okay." Rose took out the cherry and began to play with it. "I'm okay with fries if they have that... or whatever the expensive ritz equivalent is."

   "We could... get back to the room and get room service," Marigold said. "Do you think you can walk?"

 "Not this second..."

 Marigold looked around, visibly uncomfortable with the amount of stares they were getting. “We should really get back to our rooms. It’s getting late.”

 "Fine..." Rose replied, with an edge in her tone. "Can you do the ordering?"

 “Sure. I’ll call down from the room. Let’s go.” Marigold held out her arm to Rose, who would definitely need support.

 Rose clasped it. Her hand was warm, she couldn't meet Marigold's eye. They began to hobble back to the room.

"This is embarrassing."

 “Yes, absolutely.” Marigold stared ahead. “Let’s just get back to the room.”

 Rose let herself be led into the hotel elevator. "Do you really think she's just gonna be okay with seeing us... seeing me?"

 “I doubt it. But we have to try.” Marigold looked at Rose. “It would probably help if you weren’t hungover. But, again, who am I to judge.”

 "Oh God. What if it's tomorrow? What if I see her tomorrow?" Rose gave a wail.

 “Then you will have to... deal with that,” Marigold said. “You’re not jumping off the mission, are you?”

 "I can't now, can I?" Rose huffed. "I'm in fucking Italy!"

 “So what are you going to do, just be too hungover to function? That’s certainly one way to delay the inevitable.”

 "No... I'm gonna have to go with you, anyway. I need to finish this. For everyone."

 The elevator pinged. Marigold had memorised the directions to their room. “Come on.”

 Rose swayed as she followed. "All the rooms look the same..."

 “I know where we’re going,” Marigold said, reaching out to stabilise Rose again. They made it to their room and Marigold shepherded Rose inside before closing the door.

Inside, Marigold sat Rose down on one of the double beds. “Water,” she said, putting some fancy bottled water into her hands. “I’ll order food.”

 Rose popped the top off and took a sip. Her cheeks were flushed, her hand trembling a bit.

   Marigold took up the phone, figured out how to call room service, and ordered fries and a few fancy-sounding Italian dishes (the food was bound to be good, and Azure was paying). She then looked at Rose and came over to her.

“Food is ordered,” she said. “It will be here soon.”

 "Nice. Thank you." Rose laid back on the mattress. "I don't understand how you can be so calm."

 “About you being drunk off your face, or about Roxy?” Marigold said. She sat down on the chair and folded her hands.

 "Roxy... but the drunk thing, too."

 “Well, that one is easy. I spent most of the last few years drunk. Trust me, I know the feeling. As for Roxy...” Marigold frowned. “She was my friend. I... I’m wary of her, but there must be a reason for why she’s doing this. I don’t... hate her.”

 "Ohhh, so it's easy for you." Rose gave a laugh. "I suppose it must've been if she didn't have it out for you."

 “Well, she was always quite racist.” Marigold grimaced at the memory. “You know, in the ‘I’m not racist but’ way. I could never understand how Azure could be such good friends with her.” She caught herself. “Sorry. Dating.”

 "Oh, Jesus Christ, yeah. I mean, it didn't really ever stop if you were white, either. She just found something else to tear into."

 Marigold sighed. “Claire was the only one who could ever control her.”

 "Somehow, I find that hard to believe."

 “What do you mean?”

 Rose shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. I just can't imagine anyone with the will." She turned around. "I thought all that time that maybe if I just obeyed her and went along with it all, she'd at least... value what we had. But no. No, she just had to cheat on me after knowing how much remaining monogamous hurt me!"

 “You didn’t... know she was dating Azure.” Marigold frowned. “Oh.”

 "No! No, I didn't! She forbade me from seeing anyone. It was her condition for dating me, because she knew I was poly when I started." Rose's voice began to break a bit. "And it hurt so much. I had to distance myself from so many people."

 “Why did you do it, then?” Marigold asked.

 "Because I loved her. She was fun. She was exciting. She was... so funny and talented and was so good at making me laugh."

 Marigold gave a soft smile. “She was that.”

There was a knock on the door. “Oh, that’ll be the food.”

 Rose watched her get it, looking downcast. "Okay."

 Marigold returned with a little cart full of food. “Here you go,” she said, “just take whatever you want. There’s fries here, but you can also have some of the fancy food.”

 "Fries are fine for now." Rose looked over it. "It all looks great, I just want to see how it settles first."

 Marigold gave her a glance. “Are you going to be sick? Here.” She took the bin from the corner of the room and placed it in front of her. “Just in case.”

 "Thanks. I know I probably should abstain, but I didn't even have breakfast. I haven't skipped meals since... her."

 “You drank all of that... on an empty stomach?” Marigold felt sick.

 "I just kept getting more drunk... and drinking more just seemed like a good idea."

 “It probably wasn’t. Don’t eat too fast, and have water with it.”

 Rose tried her best to keep eye rolling discreet. "Gotcha."

 “Don’t give me that look. I’m looking after you.”

  It's not as if you know what I'm dealing with.

Rose took a swig of the water bottle. "Just... You and Azure nn-need to stop telling me she's a good person. "

 “She shot someone,” Marigold said. “If she ever was a good person, she isn’t anymore. It’s not the same as being able to be reasoned with.”

 "Exactly! Exactly the reason she deserves a life in prison and not... whatever gentle shit is coming... but... I need this court case."

 “Closure?” Marigold asked. “I understand. I... just want to know why she’s trying to take away Claire’s vineyard.”

 "Because she's a twisted bitch! There's your answer!"

 “You’re not being fully objective, Rose.”

 "Come on! I know her. It's been nearly six years and she hasn't left my head!"

 “I knew her for far longer than that,” Marigold said. “And I knew Claire. Roxy wouldn’t do this without a reason, I’m sure of it.”

 Rose sat, hugging her knees. "What was she to you?"

 “Roxy was my friend,” Marigold said, “and she was very close to Claire. Had been even closer before I came to Bridge club.” She paused. “Damn,” she said, the realisation coming to her thirty-five years too late, “they were dating. They must have been.”

 "Oh! Is that a clue into the whole wineyard thing?" Rose slurred, more alert.

 “Possibly,” Marigold said. “Did she ever mention Claire to you?”

 "Never, no. She constantly compared me to an unnamed ex, though."

 “What did she say?”

 "Just offhand things... about the things she did and the ways she behaved."

 “Hmm.” Marigold took some of the food, thinking.

 Rose picked up a chip. "Why would you hang out with someone who's that racist?"

 “It was the eighties. Everyone was racist. And she was Claire’s friend.” Marigold shrugged.

 "Ah, I see." Rose ate another. "These are good..."

 Marigold dug into her food. It was excellent. “You doing okay?”

 "A bit queasy, to be honest. Not my proudest evening."

 Marigold nudged the bin towards her. “Honestly, I’ve done worse. If there’s anything you want to vent about, feel free.”

 Another chip. "How much worse?"

 “You really want to know?”

 "Why not? It'll probably make me feel better."

 “Well, it’s not like you’ll remember it.” Marigold sighed. “I convinced myself I wasn’t gay for five years while being drunk out of my mind every single night and... sleeping with my very female secretary multiple times a week.”

 "Oh, Jesus, yeah... Aurora. God, she's younger than me!"

 A soft smile as Marigold thought of Aurora. “I can’t believe she... still loves me after all that. But she does.”

 "God. You really are into her. I miss being able to trust relationships that much.”

 “Roxy?” Of course.

 "Indeed." Rose just looked... broken.

 “Why did you stay?” Marigold asked. “Actually... that’s probably a stupid question.”

 "That's okay. You don't tend to understand if you've never been through it." Rose put her chip down. "I became incredibly codependent. She began to control every inch of my life. I felt like if I said the wrong thing or broke up, she'd kill herself."

 Marigold’s heart went cold. “I did that,” she said, “to Aurora. I didn’t tell her I’d kill myself, but I required her to do what I wanted, all the time. Never even gave a thought to her desires and needs.”

 Rose froze, and then swallowed. "But do you at least understand it was wrong?"

 Marigold inclined her head. “Yes,” she said, “and I won’t ever ask anything of her again unless I know she wants to give it to me. And... and she does. Miraculously, she’s stayed.”

 "Huh. That entire family is like that, I swear."

 “You’ve had experience with Pearl, I presume.” Marigold looked at her nails. “I’m not going to pry. I know you’re close. I trust both of you to keep in line with regards to that.”

 "Oh, trust me. We're just about friendly again." She decided to keep tight lipped on Pearl moving in. "What are you hoping to get out of all this... except for the vineyard. That can't be that important?"

 “Oh, it is, though,” Marigold said. “Claire... is buried there. It was hers. She always wanted it to stay in the family. She was passionate about her wine, and didn’t want some corporation to come in.”

 "Is she actually aligned with any named corporation?" Rose tilted her head.

 “I never found out. So probably not. They were incredibly cagey when I called them about it – whoever ‘they’ are.”

 "Yikes." Rose frowned. "That's unfortunate."

 “Yeah. I don’t understand why she would do this.” Marigold looked at Rose. “How are you feeling?”

 "Not... so great."

 “Need anything?”

 Rose stood up, wobbling. "Where's... The bathroom?"

 "It's over there," Marigold said. "Can you make it? The bin is here if you can't."

 Rose shot off to the bathroom, stumbling over furniture, slamming the bathroom door shut before heaving.

 Marigold watched, and then got up to get another bottle of water for Rose. She fluffed the pillows, trying not to be reminded of Claire.

Claire had chemotherapy. Rose is just drunk. There’s a difference.

But the instinct to take care of Rose was there.

She decided to leave Rose to it for now.

 Rose took her time and emerged after about ten minutes, pale. She looked at the bin and grabbed it. "Just in case..." she murmured.

 Marigold handed her the water. “Small sips,” she said. “We should probably think about going to sleep, if you can.”

 "That was the plan." Rose sighed, slinking under the covers. "I take it that this is my bed now."

 “Sure,” Marigold said. “Are you okay, do you need anything?”

 "Company would be nice."

 “I can provide that,” Marigold said, giving a small smile. “How are you feeling now?”

 "Still awful." Rose sighed. "I hate to say it, but you... were right."

 Marigold could name probably about five instances of her being right in the past few hours. “About what?” she asked.

 "I don't know. Probably everything, but I'm not ready to admit that yet. So... the drinking."

 Marigold sighed. “I’ve been in your shoes far too many times not to recognise when someone is overdoing it. I’m just glad I stopped you when I did.”

 Rose responded by picking up the bin and vomiting straight into it.

 Marigold sat next to her. She couldn’t help herself from reaching out and holding Rose’s hair back, lightly rubbing her back in the process.

 Rose took a minute to finish, trembling by the time she was done. She gave a cough and groaned in pain. "Hurts."

 Marigold loosened her hold on Rose’s hair, still rubbing her back. “I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend taking painkillers until the morning, though. Most of them don’t mix well with alcohol.”

 "Okay." Rose wiped at her mouth with her sleeve. "I think I'm done. Where's that water?"

 “Here,” Marigold said, handing it to her. “Don’t ruin your clothes. We’re in a fancy hotel. I’ll get you a towel.”

 Rose finished the bottle, slowly and wiped at her face again. "I'll... take it out of the room..."

 “No, don’t worry about it. You just lie down, I’ll take care of it.” Marigold went away and came back with a damp, warm towel. “Here you go, clean yourself up. There’s probably some juice in the fridge if you want to get rid of the taste. Are you done, do you think?”

 "Yeah, I don't feel as sick anymore." Rose gave a weak smile. "Thanks. I think I would've made it out of the door and fallen over."

 Marigold nodded and took the bin away into the bathroom, where she cleaned up and rinsed it. On the way back to Rose’s bed she stopped by the fridge. “How are you feeling now?”

 "Ready to try sleeping." Rose was back under the blanket. "Drained."

 “Here.” Marigold handed her two bottles: one water, one orange juice. “Try to have some if you can. Let me know if you’re feeling worse again, but sleep if you can.”

 "Will do." Rose took a sip of each and lay down. "Principal D- Marigold... I'm sorry about all this."

 “Well, next time try dealing with your feelings in a slightly more healthy way.” Marigold gave her a small but genuine smile. “I’m happy to talk about things more. In the morning. According to Azure, we have quite a drive ahead of us.”

 "Yeah. Maybe... it might be helpful for me to hear more of your side of the story," Rose admitted.

 “Quite possibly. Go to sleep, now.” Marigold resisted the urge to tuck her in.

 Rose turned around, "Okay. You... rest well."

 Marigold nodded and disappeared towards the bathroom to get changed and brush her teeth. When she came out, she turned off the lights and plugged her phone in to charge, but not before sending a message to Aurora.

Had to look after Rose. It was... rough. I can’t help but be reminded of the many days I spent drunk. I cannot ever thank you enough for putting up with me and looking after me back then, and I’m still so sorry for the way I acted. I love you. Sorry again about earlier, I will definitely keep you in the loop from now on. Good night. x

[babealert]

Day 2, Whole 30

Alright! First time loggin on to Tumblr in about three years..?

Last time I see was to start a Travel Blog, but obviously that flopped (the blog, the trip itself was amazing)

My intention is to use this space as a way of holding myself accountable, and as a time capsule for earnestly trying to enact change in my personal life.

30! Coming at me in about 9 months from now. I’ve never been one to feel to sentimental about loss of youth, or aging. I really feel ready to take on a new decade, and can say with almost all certainty that I’m ready for this next phase. What I really want to do is set some personal goals for how I want that to look.

I started off my 20′s in college not being able to give my teacher a 5 year plan because I truly had no idea where my life would take me. As I can recall, I believe I told him I wanted to be a Baker...while I was finishing up my Four year BFA *head in hands* Not to say I don’t feel that same lack of direction sometimes, but now I like to think I have some hindsight on my side to allow me to greater understand that limitless possibility isn’t something that happens to you. 

So where to go from here? Well I guess I’m starting it off right with the Whole30 “Diet” I hate that word now because it just sounds like a failure waiting to happen. Which it has! Multiple times I’ve started a cleanse, or diet, or action plan and I’ve gotten a week in and given up.  That being said I’m hoping that with a little support and self love on my side I’ll be able to make it out on the other side feeling better, inside and out.  So what does it mean to me? Let’s list some goals!

Whole30 Personal Goals: 

Creating healthier eating habits (duh) but really! So often my cravings are driven by laziness, but especially, and most dangerously by feelings! I’m an emotional eater. I’m also Italian which probably has a lot to do with it cause about 85% of my childhood memories are fueled by food. I find comfort when stressed by eating something bready and warm and saucy. I’ve never been a fruit person, I don’t think gas station chips are a good road snack. When I’m hungry I want Wawa cheesy pretzel bites, and hummus, and more than anything Ramen noodles. (My original goal this year was to mark down every time I ate ramen, but then I realized how sad that was). So I’m trying to learn to love fruit, and cold snacks, and smaller portioned meals. And paying closer attention to when I’m actually hungry, or if I’m just filling an emotional void by shoving a sandwich in it.

Concur laziness! No more will there be “Nothing to eat!” at the house. Because I’ve made grocery shopping for whole, fast delicious foods a priority. I won’t allow my lack of preparation control me, and I will be more mindful about having small snacks around to sustain me while I get together a whole meal.

Create better sleeping habits, and feel overall more rested and energized for each day. I’m pretty much tired all day everyday, which definitely ties into drinking, but I also know is because I constantly allow myself to believe “I’m not tired!” when I get home from work and don’t feel like going to bed.

Stop drinking like a fucking 20 year old with nothing to do but feel hungover and shitty all the time. This is probably my most embarrassing, and most personal goal for this. I’ve been drinking weekly for about 16 years now. Not just a glass of wine with dinner drinking, but full on hangovers weekly, and wasting whole days feeling shitty because I decided to over imbibe the night before. Theres not much more I can say to it other than I need to grow up and stop living my life like a teenager binging because its fun. Gross, I’m so tired.

Spend some time with myself in a loving way. Not just going out for lunch, or the museum, or to have a beer and read, but really paying attention to my thoughts, and feelings, and allowing myself to hear and understand what I need. I know this sounds vague, and a little crystal worshipping. But I’ve found that in the past I’m clearest and happiest when I’m allowing my mind to wander, and in those times I find my mind telling me things like “Be patient, theres no rush to get things right” or “Your legs feel so strong and lean today! Walking feels good, and the cold isn’t so bad when we’re listening to nice music” Specific I know, but inner dialogue is important to listen to because eventually it will tell you important things like what you really want to do with your life.

Break free of stressful mind numbing habits like social media, binge watching tv, and even having my phone in the bedroom at all! I want to get back to the creative seed that was planted in me as a preteen when I was exploring what I loved, and defining my personal interests. And finally getting back to a creative practice, and enjoying making art for myself again.

So there you have it! I can’t say it’s a perfect plan, and I know for sure I am not perfect. But I will raise my can of off brand seltzer water and toast to embracing all of life’s imperfections, and trying my goddamn hardest to feel happier.

[iodos84]

George.

Content Warnings: suicidal ideation, mental health struggles, binge drinking, co-dependent friendships.

George and I were friends for over a decade when he died. We had a bond that only two queer kids from relatively conservative small towns would have: cavernous to the point of co-dependency. We would roleplay as pirates and daydream about owning homes next door to each other where we could bug each other constantly and if we had families, they would all be friends with each other. He was the devil on my shoulder, my confidant, the other half of the mirror that I didn't know was possible. He was by my side during some of the most tumultous and arguably dangerous years of my life. We always tried to protect the other and knew when we were needed for something, or when something wasn't right.

Which is how I knew he was dying the moment I hugged him at the MARTA train station. He had been slowly withdrawing from life and from our friendship over the year prior. I told him that winter that he could go fuck himself, I was buying a plane ticket to come see him. It was to the point I had frequent anxiety over what he was hiding from me. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know HOW bad. I just had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to get out to Georgia and see for myself what he was hiding. To say that he was hostile to my upcoming visit in the weeks and days leading up to the trip is an understatement.

So when I discovered that he was dying, I felt this level of anger that I haven't felt in a long time. I honestly felt betrayed. The visit itself was painful and we both knew it was goodbye. He put off seeing me the entire week I was there until the day before I flew back to California. We only hung out for a few hours before his wife and I convinced him to go home, he was in such bad shape. He was just mean the entire time, and I got whiplash from his constant comments that he was hungry, but refused to eat even when we were practically begging him to. I honestly dissociated the entire visit. I know I was distant and he could tell that I was angry, so there was a lot of silence and me avoiding what was coming.

I cried the entire train ride back to Midtown Atlanta, and then the walk to my hotel. It was ugly crying, too. Quite a few people stopped me on my way back and kept asking if I was okay, asking if I needed someone to come get me. I contacted him that night and essentially ended our friendship. I told him that I knew he was dying and that he needed help, but I was drowning trying to help him and he needed to get his shit together. We talked a few times after that. One of the last things that he said to me was that it was too late for him, but that I would always get back up no matter how dire the circumstances were. I still don't know how how I feel about that.

Less than three months later, he was dead due to multiple organ failure. He had been struggling with more than one demon. And I fell apart from guilt and a broken heart that I had lost someone I largely considered my twin. My own drinking increased, and I began looking for answers to questions that I didn't know if I wanted the answers to in the middle of the woods at night, deserted beaches, etc. One night in particular stands out; I had polished off most of a bottle of rum within an hour and started hallucinating that he was sitting on my kitchen counter, shaking his head at me. I was sobbing into the sink and throwing up while our ex-roommate held my hair and told me that I wasn't going to die. That I was fine. That I was more than what was going on. Another night, my other best friend was in town and we had a handful of absinthe cocktails at a local bar and I'm still unsure how the hell we got home in one piece.

I had some friends do their best to distract me and keep me stable. My roommate was always at the shoreline with a life preserve. I honestly don't know what I would have done without her there. Other friends made sure I was doing what needed to be done to keep the basics covered and got out of the house for things that didn't involve binge drinking.

The days bled together and other parts of my life began to fall apart, too. I was seriously unhappy with my life, job, and I had a few other friendships that were frankly toxic. The job issue eventually worked itself out, and those friends exited my life. I had built my life around someone instead of investing that time, love, and concern on myself. But it was a learned habit from childhood. Trying to be other peoples' cheerleader stunted my identity because at the time, it was easier than healing my own trauma and living a life free of others' expectations. Arguably it still is like that, but on a much smaller level than what it used to be.

Interestingly enough, someone who I had been friends with for two years reached out through the darkness with kindness and seeking answers of his own about what the hell was going on. He has always been a light in my life, and this time something deeper developed in our conversations. He is now my partner and we have been together for ten years this fall. Some people don't understand how two total opposites can have a loving and fulfilling relationship, but our foundation has always been friendship and he was the truest version of a friend in one of the darkest periods of my life. He respected me and showed me kindness when other people were telling him I wasn't worth it and openly mocked what was going on in my life. He helped pull me out of my version of hell.

Today marks ten years since he has been gone. I don't want to focus on just the bad or the good; I ultimately want to heal and remember all of it without getting emotionally destroyed. Obviously I still wish shit would have turned out different, but through the lenses of time and age I also know that he was a deeply unhappy person and there is nothing any of us could have done. I have finally recognized that his wellness was not my responsibility. Thanks to therapy and being in healthy friendships, I recognize the red flags and try to keep healthy boundaries with people. I am still trying to figure out who I am. I want for him to have had some moments of peace before he left, and wherever he is now. I want his other loved ones to have peace, too.

If you can see this G, I miss you.

[ryiafaye]

I hate binging and purging, and yet I bought binge food last night (unpictured are two pints of icecream, chocolate milk, and lemonade). I’ve only bought binge food a few times in the last year (since I started recovering). Prior to that I was buying massive amounts of food multiple times a week. Using my money like that makes me feel awful, so does eating so much my stomach is distended and it hurts to move, and of course the disgust while/after purging. But I still did it. It scares me. I know this is what happens when I restrict too much. I start thinking about food constantly while also being terrified of eating. I haven’t actually been restricting a lot (as much as I used to), but I didn’t eat much yesterday and was super hungry after work. Why do I do this to myself? Why can’t I just eat like a normal person? I hate it but I also feel like I need it. I need my eating disorder to cope with my emotions, especially when I’m stressed. As much as I dislike b/ping I have to admit it makes me feel better for a little while. I feel powerful (what normal person can eat that much then get rid of it?). And it numbs my emotions. So yeah I bought binge food, ate it, then purged. I didn’t finish it all (my stomach can’t handle as much as it used to). I won’t be able to eat the left overs because they’re fear foods so inevitably I’ll b/p again in the near future. I feel so disappointed in myself but also a little happy. I got to taste forbidden food and hopefully will weigh less next time I weigh myself (yay for dehydration). Ugh, I’m so tired of my fucked up brain and my eating disorder.

[webmarket01]

People Are Sharing Small Changes They Made That Helped Them Lose Weight (47 Tips)

New Post has been published on https://weightlosshtiw.com/people-are-sharing-small-changes-they-made-that-helped-them-lose-weight-47-tips/

People Are Sharing Small Changes They Made That Helped Them Lose Weight (47 Tips)

45 million Americans go on a diet every year. Moreover, Americans spend $33 billion each year on weight-loss products. The numbers are staggering, having in mind that two thirds of society are now classified as overweight and obese. So where did it go wrong?

Well, humans tend to overthink and end up trying too much. From counting calories to judging ourselves for a piece of cheesecake, some lose the simple joys of life, while others get fed up with their diet just not working.

But what if weight loss, like any other journey in the world, starts from some simple little steps? What if one or two basic changes in our lifestyle are all it takes to find the balance we crave? To find out, we looked at the little weight loss tips shared by people who genuinely claim they really worked. And no, you don’t need to give up on pizza any time soon.

#1

Make your couch a no-eating zone. I found that when I sat in my overused, sunken-in spot in the couch with food, it turned into a mindless binge-fest. Sitting at a table or kitchen bar with a plate and silverware made me more mindful and present when I ate, which in turn helped me to listen to my satiety cues and stop eating when I was full. Lost over 100 pounds in a little over a year.

#2

Just doing something in the gym everyday is better than nothing.

This advice helped me so much. It really reinforces that this is a lifestyle change by forcing you to just go be active everyday. It also helps just in the sense its objectively true doing 10-15 minutes on the treadmill is better than nothing if you really arent motivated at all. The biggest way it helps though is on the days you are unmotivated, once you start you will often just do your full workout.

Image credits: totalloserx

#3

Don’t try to ignore your cravings — just find healthier ways to satisfy them. I will never be the girl who says no to pizza or bread. Embracing it and not hating myself for it was the first step. Then I was able to find ways to satisfy those needs in a better way. For example, Cauliflower pizza crust pretty much satisfies my need for pizza. (I know, it doesn’t sound believable but it’s true!)

Image credits: Deb Nystrom

In the past few years, there has been a surge in what’s called the mindful eating trend, which is all about staying present in the moment and enjoying it. This approach gained popularity because it doesn’t focus on restriction, but instead aims at changing our relationship with food.

Mindful eating is opposed to mindless eating, which is all too common these days. The latter refers to eating past fullness, eating out of boredom, emotional eating, eating and multitasking, and eating to gain comfort and soothe yourself. Conversely, mindful eating refers to eating when your body tells you to, enjoying eating, thinking about where food comes from, listening to your body, and stopping when you feel like it.

#4

Give up delivery and start preparing your own meals instead.

#5

Stop weighing yourself as a means of measuring your progress. For a while I was focused on making my weight number constantly decrease. When I stopped looking at that and just focused on being healthy — eating right, fruits and veggies for snacks, exercising — that was when I started losing weight and feeling better!

#6

Swap “boredom eating” with other mindless (or productive) tasks. [I stopped] snacking when I was bored, became more aware of what I was doing, and I soon realized I wasn’t actually hungry. I was just restless and wanted something to do while I relaxed. So I replaced snacking with painting my nails. It’s also become kind of a fun thing I do for myself. When I’m at the store and trying to make healthy decisions, I will reward myself with a new color. Essie has become my preferred reward, as opposed to a ‘cheat meal’!

You can practice being more mindful in the way you eat simply by slowing down and concentrating on your plate. Let yourself be immersed in flavors, textures, tastes, and smells. Think of how the bite melts into your mouth and what kind of nutritional value you get from it.

Also, you need to learn to trust your body. Our bodies are smart mechanisms that can signal both hunger and fullness, except we sometimes prefer not to listen to them. In reality, when the mind tells you to grab another piece of cake, you may ask your body if it really wants one. You may be surprised by the answer.

#7

Skip escalators and elevators. I took the stairs EVERYWHERE! I worked on the sixth floor when I started this endeavor. I had to start getting to work earlier than normal just to make sure I’d make it up in time without being disgustingly sweaty. I lost 40 pounds in the first eight months and now I’m running half marathons multiple times per year!

#8

Water is your friend

Image credits: stop_being_ugly

#9

Cut down on sugar. “Trying to eat healthier foods” is good to do, but it’s also vague. For example, I’ve seen people go on strict low-carb diets and drink insane amounts of Gatorade. There are tons of things you wouldn’t expect to have a lot of sugar in them, too- it’s not always the obvious stuff like cookies.

Image credits: foreverfremdshamen

#10

Ditch the soda, seriously. I decided to give up soda for Lent since I had one almost every day at lunch. After the first two weeks I lost 10 pounds! When it was over I honestly didn’t even crave it all at anymore. That was years ago and now the taste of soda is always too much sweetness in a drink for me.

#11

There are no bad vs good foods.

Try to eat a balanced diet of fruits and vegetables, but if you want a donut and it fits into your daily caloric intake, eat the fucking donut. Don’t demonize food. Learn about nutrition, drink plenty of water, and exercise.

Image credits: trolldoll26

#12

Ditch friends who sabotage you or try to keep you from progressing on your goal. If you’re 180 pounds of fat and they say you’re getting too skinny they’re not trying to help you.

Image credits: _ImperialScout_

#13

Buy smaller plates.

I don’t hear this one too often, but it’s basically an aide to the common “Eat smaller portions” advice. Willing yourself to eat smaller portions can be difficult, but a smaller plate can look full with less food on it, and that can have a very real psychological effect. You still get that “I cleaned my whole plate” satisfaction, but you’ve eaten less to get it.

Image credits: Gluttony4

#14

Patience. Losing weight (especially a significant amount of weight) takes a considerable amount of time.

I lost 60 pounds, but it took upwards of 16 months of constant work. It was a shade under a pound a week.

Image credits: Neb810

#15

Stop forcing yourself to go to the gym if you hate it, and find an exercise you actually enjoy. I gave up trying to enjoy the gym and found things I actually like doing! What a difference! I’ve lost 30 pounds simply by finding exercise I enjoy, such as hiking, biking, yoga, swimming, snowshoeing, and kayaking, among other things. Now I crave exercise and can’t wait for my next workout session, because nothing feels like a workout anymore!

#16

Start taking your coffee black. Started drinking black coffee instead of having it with cream and sugar or the flavored creamers.

#17

Full disclosure, am still fat (currently 301 pounds), but I have lost 50 pounds since my highest weight and am working on the remainder. Here is what is working for me: 1.) Track everything. Get an app, or a journal. Write down everything that goes in your mouth. You don’t need to track calories at first if you’re not used to it. Just write down what you eat. Be honest, don’t cheat. 2.) Learn your triggers. What makes you eat? Is it normal hunger? Did you have a bad day at work? Did you fight with your SO? Are you “treating” yourself because you accomplished something? 3.) Redirect yourself. Don’t be idle. If you sit in front of the TV and snack, start cross-stitching, knitting, paint-by-number, F**KING SOMETHING that gets you occupied while sitting and watching the latest mind-numbing crime drama. 4.) Make a plan. Meal plan for a week, or be ambitious and do a whole month. Plan what you’re going to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Make a grocery list. ALWAYS GO GROCERY SHOPPING WITH A LIST. Never have to ask yourself “oh what’s for dinner? what do we have anyway? am i going to have to buy x ingredient? f**k it, I’ll just order a pizza”. Include eating out in your meal plan. 5.) Move a little. You don’t have to run a marathon. Just move more. Walk further. Do yoga in the morning. Just something to remind your body that it has a purpose. All I do is yoga in the morning and walk to and from the bus stop. 6.) Start small. Don’t make a goal to lose 100 pounds. Make a goal to lose 5 pounds. That’s a bag of potatoes. Those are huge and heavy! 5 pounds is a huge accomplishment. I never set a goal for myself except to lose 5 pounds at a time. Lose 5 pounds, drop one pants size, walk around the block without stopping, jog for 90 seconds. These are tiny goals that when added to incrementally make a HUGE DIFFERENCE. 7.) Ignore everyone else. Don’t buy some junk your Aunt Marcy promises will cleanse your colon. Don’t let your coworkers tell you “oh you look so good you don’t need to lose weight”. Don’t let your family say “but grandma made this chocolate cake just for you”. THIS STEP DOES NOT APPLY TO MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS SUCH AS A DOCTOR OR CERTIFIED NUTRITIONIST. The world wants to sabotage you. Listen to people that you pay money to to take care of you. 8.) Forgive yourself. This is the most important step. Love yourself as you are now. You are beautiful. You are loved. You are important. You are a human being. You will move forward but you will have bad days. You will struggle and you will hate yourself for making a bad choice. You will fall down sometimes. But life is a series of failures and lessons. Life is a long journey and weight loss is a lifestyle change, a transformation, and those don’t happen quickly. It will take longer than you think it will. And that’s OKAY. You are doing your best and you will reap the rewards SOMEDAY. Don’t be in a hurry. Enjoy the journey.

Image credits: bigdamncat

#18

unless you’re Chris Traeger you’re gonna f**k up. it took me two years of trying to get the momentum I needed to lose 110 pounds. I’ve got 50 to go and I’ve lost that momentum and it’s taken me a few months to get back in the swing of it. [Messing] up is a part of progress and progress isn’t linear.

Image credits: MichyMc

#19

The 70% rule

Eat 70% of the meal. Take a break and talk for a while drink some water and enjoy the moment for a bit. You’ll find that the majority of the time the food will settle in your stomach and you won’t be hungry anymore.

Edit: many are saying it’s a waste of food but I never said that. Get a to-go box and take it home.

Image credits: Pizanch

#20

Remove the sugar. Once you do that, it’s stupid easy. It’s not a secret, but it’s rare for people to really do it. We all scramble around trying to find a trick to avoid doing just that. Lost 60lb and kept them off. For the past year and a half I’ve been eating less than 10 grams of added sugar per day, no exceptions. After the first 2 weeks, it gets pretty easy. After about 2 months, the idea of eating sugary [crap] feels pretty repulsive. After a year, it’s a no-brainer.

Image credits: fixittillitbreaks

#21

It’s a lifestyle change. It’s not something you can do for a while and then be done with it. You need to continue to eat mindfully and exercise in order to maintain your weight once you’ve lost the excess.

Image credits: LeftWren

#22

Don’t drink calories

Image credits: LordTachanka_LmgMaL

#23

My mum says “Motivation helps to lose the weight but discipline is what keeps it off.”

Image credits: Rithims

#24

Walking. It’s so underrated. Anyone can do it, can be done anywhere and it’s free.

What I’ve been doing is leaving early for my bus to work and walking 30 mins along the route before catching my bus. On the way home I’ll get off early and walk 30 mins home again. Adds an hour of walking a day with very little disruption to my daily routine. That plus eating better and I’ve lost a stone in about 5/6 weeks

Image credits: JiMMyCCuDDa

#25

Meal Prepping. You would be surprised how much control you give yourself over your calories when you plan ahead. It also saves a lot of time and money.

Image credits: totspur1982

#26

Don’t look in the mirror. This was sophomore year of college and my roommate didn’t have a full-length mirror to hang in our room, and neither did I. Without it, I discovered that I could mark my progress based on how I felt rather than how I looked. This was great because it prevented me from being discouraged when I didn’t see results right away. Looking back on it now, not having the opportunity to constantly glance at my reflection actually played a pretty key role in my success. I ended up losing around 40 pounds total.

#27

Treat yourself really well. Be easy and gentle with your thoughts, then the decision to eat healthful foods will be easier to sustain.

#28

Make sure you’re actually drinking enough water. I realized I was terrible at it and it’s so stupid. I bought some 32-ounce bottles and put labels on them, so I have to drink 8 ounces by certain time points, fill up the bottle and do it again to get 64 ounces in a day. I feel a lot better and have an easier time exercising now that I’m not chronically dehydrated.

#29

Quit fad diets for good. I had lost weight before on really restrictive diets like the Dukan diet and then just gained it all back as soon as I was allowed my regular foods again. By deciding to quit the fad diets and eating smaller portions and mostly unprocessed foods, I found it was a whole lot easier to lose weight, I felt much healthier and the weight stayed off!

#30

Replace “I wish” with “I will.” I used to always say, ‘I wish I looked like that.’ Or I would look at people on Instagram who had lost 100 pounds and I would think, I wish I could do that. And then finally it just hit me. Stop wishing for it and just do it. Replacing ‘I wish’ with ‘I will’ has helped me make actual goals that I am on the way to achieving. I have been working out six days a week and watching what I eat for over a month now and I have lost over 20 pounds. I am so excited to see where I WILL be in a year!

#31

Chew flavored gum to keep your mouth busy and overcome eating addiction. It’s so much easier to quit chewing gum I find.

Image credits: unknown

#32

Do simple exercises like push-ups and sit-ups every night. Start out with low numbers and by the end you’ll be able to do 100+ push-ups a day. It’s just involves making it a part of your routine.

#33

Realizing that you CAN actually control your body weight. You are in the driver seat. Eat 2000 calories but burn 2500 calories a day? You WILL lose weight.

There is no secret to losing weight. End of the day it’s Cals in vs Cals out. The control and results are addicting.

Source: Lost 50 pounds in the past year.

#34

Stop buying your go-to unhealthy snacks so you’re not even tempted. The only snack food I keep in the house now is cottage cheese, Triscuit crackers, fruit, hummus, English muffins, and veggies.

#35

I think a lot of people go into dieting with a mentality of “I’m going to diet constantly until I hit my goal weight” and either end up stopping along the way or putting the weight back on within a year or two of reaching their goal. What I have found that helped me was stopping my diet every 3-4 weeks and having a period just trying to maintain that particular weight before I start up again on my diet. It has helped me keep things under control and it’s nice to have a little break from a diet every once in awhile.

Image credits: ElPapiGrande

#36

Be prepared for the psychological barriers you will face if you are dieting. People will pressure you to eat badly all the time without really realizing it – when you go over to your parents’ for Thanksgiving, when your co-workers go out for drinks and wings after work, when your partner wants to go out to eat and celebrate something, when you go over to a friends’ house for a dinner party.

People think they are being nice to you when they say that one piece of cake or big meal won’t kill you and you should just go for it. In other circumstances, they just won’t realize that are making you feel like a diva or a wet blanket when you don’t eat what they clearly want you to. You have to be prepared for these curveballs or they can undo everything.

Most diets are designed for you to be able to construct your meals basically from scratch at home, or consume something prepackaged. But for many people their lifestyle and social life just can’t accommodate that enough. You need to learn to have backup plans that don’t make you feel like an ass or a killjoy. Plans can involve eating before, deciding what you eat when you get there, and how to talk to other people about it so everyone is comfortable. It takes some effort, but you get the hang of it pretty fast if you work on it.

Image credits: zazzlekdazzle

#37

(Not fat, just had a brief “chubby” phase in my teens, but I cured it fast.)

My tip: don’t snack. it’s easier than you think.

Eat your breakfast, lunch, dinner. In between those, stay the hell out of the kitchen and eliminate snacking as an option at all. Stay busy with life and fun. Don’t wander around your house bored and depressed until you find yourself making peanut butter toast with cookies or chips. Just GTFO of the kitchen and into a life of some sort.

The bulk of the magic is in the diet, not exercise. It’s a hell of a lot easier/quicker to refrain from eating 500 extra calories than it is to eat it then try to burn off 500 extra calories.

So when you’re done a meal, brush your teeth and get on with your day.

#38

My trainer wanted me to run, but I just could not for the absolute life of me get into the habit of running. So I would do this walking / running interval. I still hated it

So I decided to just cycle instead. Yes it burns fewer calories than running but you know what, I actually do cardio when I’m cycling. With running I wouldn’t really do it, I’d be like “meh I can skip it today.”

#39

Cut down on beer.

Drink only water

Burn more calories than I consume

Eat smaller meals

Go hiking as much as possible in preferably challenging terrain.

Pull up bar.

I’ve went from 198-163 since the end of May and I look pretty damn fine now.

Also, mind numbing depression helps with the hunger…

#40

Don’t stop at home before going to the gym after work or class. I cut out the middle step of going home before working out and started going to the gym straight from work. If I set foot in my apartment, all intentions of going to the gym fall by the wayside because my bed and Netflix always sound like better alternatives. Going to the gym straight from work helped me get into a routine, and in just over a year, I’ve lost 45-plus pound

#41

Ditch alcohol

#42

Cut back on foods with added sugar. I got rid of added/extra sugar during Lent one year. This meant no desserts, no soda, no syrup, etc. Fresh fruit was OK and I used yogurt with the least amount of sugar to satisfy my sweet tooth. In 40 days, with minimal exercise outside of gym class in high school, I lost 20 pounds.

#43

Feeling hungry for a bit won’t kill you. Drink water and deal with it.

Image credits: Kitehammer

#44

Soda has to go, period. Sure you could balance it into you calorie counting but why bother when you could fill it with stuff that makes you feel better

#45

If you want to lose weight, start by honestly counting your calories. You dont need to cut back what you eat, just keep track. Keep doing this for 2-3 weeks. By doing this, you are showing yourself just how much you are consuming.

From there, establish a small goal for yourself, e.g. 2100 calories per day. Keep track and measure your calories honestly. It’s okay if you dont meet your goal every day, but aim for most days.

Once you are comfortable at that level, lower it a bit further down, to say 1800. Keep this up and repeat until you reach 1600, 1400, or 1200 calories per day.

Take time to work your way down. Dont deprive yourself of a once in a while treat. The end goal is not to hit a point and then go back to eating how you did when you started, it’s about changing how you eat permanently. Sustainability for how you eat is what it’s all about.

Personally, my goal is 1300/day and after doing this for 2 years, it has become normal. A bad cheat day for me is 1600-1900 calories, which is in line with what my body needs (BMR).

The hardest part of this process is being honest with what you are eating and sticking with your goals.

#46

Treat working out as a social activity. One of my friends got a Groupon deal for a gym, and about five of us signed up. I joined purely to hang out with the boys after work instead of going home and browsing the web. We started going every evening, and within a few weeks I started noticing significant differences (as all beginners can relate).

A month later, I signed up for a gym closer to work and started eating better. Now, four years later, I have lost 100 pounds of fat, and put on over 25 pounds of muscle.”

#47

“You can’t lose weight unless you are hungry.” Accept it and deal with it.

Image credits: reddit

This content was originally published here.

[chicanika]

If there was one picture to explain how I felt in my body, this would be it. I always wanted to hide my rolls and bulges. Whenever I sat down, I would use pillows to hide behind. On top of hating my body, what I was putting in was horrible. I had a tendency to binge eat and if I ever tried to “eat healthy” aka eat one serving of vegetables a day, I would binge on chips or crackers. I got to a point this last semester that eating anything made me feel sick but I did it anyway. I would always say, “one treat isn’t that bad” but when that is said multiple times a day.. it is bad. If someone had told me that I would need to go off all sugar, dairy, eggs, and gluten, I would have laughed in their face. However, I got to a point where I was desperate to do anything. I hated seeing myself in pictures or having to buy new clothes because all my others were too small. I was constantly exhausted, constantly feeling sick, and never content. Two weeks ago I made the decision to start going to a nutritionist. I thought I would be impossible going off dairy, eggs, gluten, processed food and sugar cause lets be real, that was my main diet. But I did it. I ate foods that I used to hate, such as peppers and pea pods, and now today, I like them! I no longer crave chips or sugar but am content with veggies and healthier choices. I have no longing to binge anymore and when I’m hungry, I’m okay with it and don’t feel the need to eat immediately. I am far from where I want to be but I am excited to be headed in a better direction. 

[sleepforteens-blog]

Time For Bed!

Being a teenager is not all just about rebelling and hanging out with friends. Long school days followed by work or after school sports and activities takes a toll on many teens nationwide. Although this would leave you to believe a tired teen is able to come home and fall asleep the second they feel the soft embrace of bed, many teens have trouble falling and staying asleep. This is a problem in multiple ways, with multiple solutions, and is something I experienced first hand. Without being able to fall or stay asleep, teens do not get the proper amount of sleep. This can lead to declining grades, anxiety, low self-esteem, and even depression. Now if you're reading this, are a teenager, and are experiencing trouble sleeping or falling asleep you are not the only one! “Nearly 80 percent of adolescents don’t get the recommended amount of sleep on a regular basis.” (National Sleep foundation 1) This widespread problem amongst teens can be solved or improved by many things but I believe the most important things for a teenager to do to improve sleep are exercising daily, eliminating screen time before bed, and not binge eating before bed.

Being swallowed by the comforting grasp of your bed and blanket is like recieving a reward for most people at the end of each day, and as a teen I can say it is something I alway looked foward to but was constantly not able to enjoy. The first thing teens can do to get to sleep is stay active! "Adolescence is a critical period to obtain adequate sleep, as sleep can affect cognitive and classroom performance, stress, and eating behaviors," said Lindsay Master, data scientist at Penn State University. "Our research suggests that encouraging adolescents to spend more time exercising during the day may help their sleep health later that night." Orfeu Buxton, professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, continued to describe the research as a “relationship between physical activity and sleep almost like a teeter totter". "When you're getting more steps, essentially, your sleep begins earlier, expands in duration, and is more efficient. Whereas if you're spending more time sedentary, it's like sitting on your sleep health: sleep length and quality goes down." Being active is a great way to improve being able to fall asleep, but it is staying active everyday that will ultimately make this tip work. Just as staying active makes your sleep process start faster, being inactive can do the opposite.

Staring at the ceiling unable to fall asleep? Pickup your phone and begin to surf, right? The correct answer to that question is wrong! “For most of human evolution, our sleep patterns have revolved around the pattern of the sun. Then our circadian rhythms were altered with the discovery of fire, and changed forever when we discovered electricity. Now we can keep the lights on and a glowing screen in front of our faces whenever we want. The difficult part, sleep experts are finding out, is rediscovering how to turn it all off. A common complaint for modern parents is how much time their kids want to spend on their devices, whether it be their phones, tablets, or computers.” “A new study suggests that it’s not just the screens but the particular hue of the blue glow they admit.”(Krans 1) This blue hue created by modern day “screened technology” should be cut off approximately 1-2 hours before bedtime. It can be especially helpful to consider this a bedtime for your devices! As the National sleep foundation stated, “Consider setting a digital curfew one to two hours before bedtime (the earlier, the better). Create a sleep-positive bedroom environment by encouraging teens to read before bed rather than texting to wind down. By reading teens can still have the sense of being distracted but without the harmful effect of the blue hue, the fear of missing out or being seperated from a device must be dropped. “There are many benefits to today’s tech-driven world: Access to more information, the ability to connect with others in an emergency, and a chance to make friends with new people in new places. Managing the amount of time adolescents spend plugged into their electronic devices helps give them the benefits without as many drawbacks, especially when it comes to sleep.” (National sleep foundation 1)

There is no denying the satisfaction of your favorite meal or mouth watering treat, but there is a right and wrong time to eat it! Not binge eating before bed can also improve a teens ability to sleep and or fall asleep. Once a teen night binges before falling asleep once, it is likely he or she will do it again and again until it becomes a pattern. This meal, snack, or treat before bed becomes a satisfaction that the body will crave more and more causing it to stay awake. As stated by Paradigm Malibu, author of “Teens: Night Eating Syndrome is a Mental Illness”“Night Eating Syndrome, as it’s called, is a form of an eating disorder. It is within the same category as Anorexia and Bulimia. Although some teens might binge late at night or right before bed, Night Eating Syndrome is not necessarily Bulimia. Also, unlike Bulimia, this disorder does not include the inability to stop eating, like other eating disorders. Instead, this illness is characterized by eating late at night, even if a teen is not hungry.” “Often, a teen will feel that he or she cannot go to sleep unless they’ve eaten.” Late nights without sleep can often result in binge eating which can also decrease chances at improving sleeping and falling asleep within teens.

With that being said teens will also experience consequences in sleep patterns when going to bed on a completely empty stomach. Rileys Children's health clearly expresses to “Make sure your child doesn’t have an empty stomach. This actually is more important than what a child eats,” says Dr. Jackson. “A kid who goes to bed hungry is going to have a tough time getting to sleep. If you’re serving adequate portions at meals and your child constantly says she’s hungry at bedtime, a small snack is reasonable.” Laying down hungry only gives a person something else to worry about before bed, and can lead to eating or excessive eating before bed. With no way to burn these calories, your body can not actively digest the food you have eaten, leaving it to sit overnight.

Some may rebuttal by saying these self motivated approaches the the problem are too little to improve sleep, or that it takes medication from a doctor. Medication has been proven dangerous compared to these natural approaches for more than one reason. “Results of a new study show that doctors often prescribe medications to treat a child’s sleep problems. Many of these medications lack FDA approval for use in children.” according to the sleep education archive. Teens are being prescribed medications by doctors nationwide that have not yet been approved to be used on a teens body type. Another danger to these prescribed medications is the tolerance and addiction a teen can build up. By taking these and creating a tolerance a teen can often find themselves thinking “how am I supposed to sleep without my medicine?” that is when an obvious addiction has set in unconsciously. These things happen unintentionally but can lead to even bigger problems than what a teen started out with such as a teen xanax addiction, which is already an epidemic around the country.

Sleep is a key part in the life of a teen. Whether it be to function at the best of their ability everyday, or to be able to forget the day, sleep is something that everyone deserves to enjoy wholefully and peacefully. As stated again by the National Sleep Foundation “Sleep is vital to your well-being, as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage the stress of being a teen.” There is no one proven way, method, or medication that can miraculously end problems for teens that have trouble falling asleep or sleeping, but with effort, diligence, and proper use of exercise before bed, eliminating screen time before bed, and not binge eating before bed teens can see large improvements in their sleeping patterns

Works Cited

“Is My Teen's Sleep Normal.” Sleep.org, www.sleep.org/articles/teens-sleep-normal/.

“Exercise May Help Teens Sleep Longer, More Efficiently.” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 22 May 2019, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190522081513.htm.

Krans, Brian. Www.healthline.com, 21 May 2019, www.healthline.com/health-news/how-you-can-your-teens-sleep-habits-in-just-one-week.

“How Screen Time May Cause Insomnia in Teens.” National Sleep Foundation, www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/screen-time-and-insomnia-what-it-means-teens.

Paradigm Malibu. “Night Eating Syndrome: An Unknown Mental Illness - Paradigm.” Paradigm Malibu, 24 Jan. 2020, paradigmmalibu.com/teens-night-eating-syndrome-is-a-mental-illness/.

“Food Before Bed: What to Offer Kids and When to Hold Back.” Riley Children's Health, 28 Apr. 2016, www.rileychildrens.org/connections/food-before-bed-what-to-offer-kids-and-when-to-hold-back.

“Medications Often Prescribed for Children and Teens with Sleep Problems.” Sleep Education, sleepeducation.org/news/2007/08/10/medications-often-prescribed-for-children-and-teens-with-sleep-problems.

Monroe, Jamison. “Teens and Xanax: The Most Commonly Abused Prescription Drug.” Newport Academy, Newport Academy, 27 Feb. 2018, www.newportacademy.com/resources/substance-abuse/teens-xanax-the-most-commonly-abused-prescription-drug/.

[cleanmealsca]

Top 5 Reasons To Meal Prep

Meal Prep Your Way To Time Freedom, Health, and Wealth

Time is money, and money is time . . . at least that’s how the popular saying goes. And in today’s fast paced, technologically savvy, and go-go-go society, time is the single most important currency you will ever have. After your health of course. And you can have it all, if you choose to do so

Picture this . . . you have had the most exhausting day at work and you look forward to going to the gym on your way home from work, except, you remember that you have no dinner cooked at home. You realize that your fridge is empty, save for some condiments and some bottles of wine. Feeling overwhelmed, you think, The gym can wait, I can always go to my workout tomorrow. I’ll go grab some groceries now and meal prep for the rest of the week.

Finally at the grocery store as you browse each aisle, you pick up your “must have” items: cereal, fruits, veggies, some protein sources, and snacks. You hear a rather menacing growl and for a moment, you panic, only to realize that it was your stomach growling. I am so freaking hungry, I could eat a buffet right now. You check your cell phone for the time and notice you’ve been grocery shopping for almost two hours; You race frantically to the cashier but are enticed by the aroma of the instant food-to-go counter strategically placed near the checkout lanes. A detour is in order. You end up binge ordering some fried chicken, potato wedges, mac and cheese, and a small salad (to ease the guilt).

You arrive home “hangry,” tired, and of course feeling guilty that you spent money on fast food while you also purchased groceries. You are too drained to meal prep now and resort to scarfing down your food-to-go items. Meanwhile, the fresh groceries get shoved into the fridge, afterall, cutting, dicing, batch prepping can wait for another day, just like the gym, just like your health. Those new year, new you resolutions can wait yet another day. Feeling dejected, you wish you had more time in your day to do all the things you want. For now, barely surviving each day will have to do.

***

Does this sound like you or anyone else you know? You want to feel better, look better, and have more energy moving from day to day rather than resorting to instant, right here, right now solutions. You are so ready to make a change, but just don’t know how or where to start. Well, we are here to help you change the course of your timeline - by giving you back the gift of your time and health through the magic of Clean Meals and our farm-to-table concept meal delivery service.

Still baffled as to how you can gain time freedom and more with meal prep services? Below are 5 reasons to start meal prepping today:

  Save time. Meal prep services can save you hours of time and makes transitioning from the fast food, instant food lifestyle much easier as there is always a healthy meal already prepared and ready for you. Imagine having almost an extra eight to ten hours in your week to do whatever it is you like. Be it going to networking events or spending time with loved ones, partaking in more fitness activities or even going on a R&R getaway. There is nothing like having time freedom.

Save money. Simply put, meal prep services can help you save money because a) you know exactly what you are paying for - there are a variety of packages and options that can be customized to suit your lifestyle. And b) you are less tempted to spend money on takeout or fast food because you finally have your breakfast, lunch, and dinner all prepared and accounted for. Lastly, c) use the money you save each month from your meal prep service as a mini investment into your physical, mental, emotional, and financial wellbeing.

Avoid temptation and stay in charge. Having healthy meals prepped for you, ready to eat at your convenience means that you no longer have to worry about having a pack of Cheetos for dinner or leftover pizza for breakfast ever again. This also means that you will be able to sustain your lifestyle change and stick to eating clean and healthy each day. Meal prep will also show you that food can be nutritious and tasty at the same time. Whoever said kale had to be boring? Or that tofu or chicken had to be bland and rubbery? You can stay in charge of your health and have fun while doing so.

Reduce stress. Remember the version of you in the grocery store story? The person in that story was stressed. They were stressed because they had no meals prepped. No time in their day to live life the way they desired. They were constantly running on empty because they weren’t fuelling their body with the right nutrition or even enough of it. Stress itself is one of the leading causes of multiple illnesses. So save yourself and your family by checking one huge item off the list and find a meal prep service that works for you. Meal prep services can reduce your stress levels by providing you a daily supply of healthy meals all designed to boost your immunity, build your muscle, and help you stay fit, train lean, and live clean.

Helps maintain a sustainable ecosystem. Not only is meal prepping healthy and economically friendly, it is also environmentally friendly. By making a conscious choice to eat clean, eat local and eat sustainably, the benefits are twofold. You get to live a healthier, happier life while helping local farmers and small businesses sustain themselves and together, everyone thrives! Additionally, you reduce food waste because all meals are portioned into the exact portions of macro and micro nutrients needed to help satiate your appetite, nourish your body, and sustain as fuel for you to thrive every single day. What’s not to love?

At Clean Meals, we go for maximum impact and maximum results. What better way than to serve the environment, vote with your dollar, and also benefit your health and lifestyle! Curious about what our meal prep menus include and the options available? Fresh, tasty, nourishing, and most of all, wallet, health, and environmentally friendly. We promise you will want to keep the meals flowing!

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