#All food is nutritional

[scentedluminarysoul]

I also hate the

"Not all people are fat because of what they eat! A lot are because of medication/health condition!"

And

IT DOESN'T MATERRRRRR

At ALL. You don't get to decide whether or not a fat deserves basic respect and human dignity based on arbitrary rules you made up!

You don't get to sort fat people in "good fat" ("not their fault", hates themselves) and "bad fat" (doesn't care about being fat or what/how much they eat)

You are not entitled to someone's medical history and medication plan just to decide whether or not you treat them as human

Treat ALL OF US as human beings deserving of respect and dignity

BECAUSE WE ARE

It drives me fucking insane how even when people say “hey don’t be fatphobic and don’t hide behind ‘health concerns’ to do so. Fat isn’t inherently unhealthy” people line up out the goddamn door to go “yeah!! There’s a difference between being fat and being obese!” Fuck off !!!! First of all I’ve been considered “morbidly obese” (god what a dehumanizing term) for nearly my whole life despite living a healthy lifestyle, but even if I hadn’t, even if I were completely immobilized and disabled due to my fatness, even if it were “my fault” according to those arguments — I’d still be deserving of respect

[bonefall]

Warrior Bites: Dietary Needs

[ID: A fish carcass, bird carcass, and mouse carcass on a stone slab.]

Are you wondering how much prey a Clan needs a day? What they should eat to stay healthy? Why food processing is useful at all? All the answers to these questions and more, contained within a general guide to dietary needs for your Warrior Cats!

As an obligate carnivore, a cat's entire diet revolves around processing meat. More specifically, the ideal diet should be 55% protein, 45% fats, about 1% to 3% carbs, with the remainder being various micro-nutrients. You can expect the average 10-pound warrior to need 350 calories per day, about 3.5 mice on average.

I've also included a section talking about obesity, which dives into how canon's depiction of it is both harmful fatphobia and wouldn't make sense from a cat perspective. It also discusses obesity in realistic cats; and how you're free to choose the realism on that aspect.

Below the cut;

Caloric Intake

Nutrition

Food Processing

On Obesity

Caloric Intake

The general rule for how much a cat needs to eat is that an active, non-neutered tom will need about 35 calories per pound of their own body weight, per day, just to remain the weight they are.

That means that the average warrior, assuming they are 10 pounds, will need 350 calories a day.

Kittens, pregnant and nursing cats, and large warriors will need to eat more than average. Neutered cats, elders, and clerics/medcats will eat less. There are calculators online for determining how much an individual will need, but you can estimate how much an entire Clan will need just by taking 350 and multiplying it by population!

Assuming the average population is about 30 cats, that's 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a day! To put that in perspective, that many calories would feed 7 large humans. If you felt like fighting a group of angry cats to steal their day's worth of mice, I mean.

Generally speaking, land prey will have a caloric value around 5 calories per gram. Aquatic prey is significantly lower, around 4 calories per gram. Birds will be just below 6 calories per gram. To find out how many cats a piece of prey will feed, or how many pieces a cat will need that day, take the category and multiply by the prey's weight in grams.

So for example, the average house mouse is 20 grams and it is land prey, meaning its caloric value is around 100 calories! A warrior will need 3 and a half mice a day to stay healthy, and a Clan will need 105 mice daily to support 30 cats.

105 mice may seem like a lot, but remember that a wild rabbit is 1,800 grams on average which means 9,000 calories. 2 big pieces of prey will feed the whole Clan, with leftovers.

Those estimates include every part of the animal. Cats eat organs, small bones, and even skin. Skeletal muscle, or "fillets" in reference to fish, is so low in calories that it's typically somewhere between 1 kcal to 1.5 kcal per gram. That's what you're buying in the supermarket; but wild animals don't usually cut their food into choice strips.

(unless you're writing a clan that does food processing of course!)

QUICK FACTS

Average warrior will need 35 calories per pound of weight

10 pound warrior needs 350 calories a day

350 x 30 cats = 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a single day

Birds provide the most calories per gram, land prey the middlemost, and aquatic prey the least.

Calculate calories in prey by taking the weight, converting to grams, and multiply by 4, 5, or 6 depending on broad category.

If you're having trouble feeding a Clan on small animals, look at bigger prey like rabbits and trout.

Muscle fillets are inferior to organ meats and have a much lower caloric value.

Nutrition

Not all food is the same. The more important thing to consider about any particular meal is NOT its calorie count, but its nutritional value. This is especially important to cats because protein is not stored as fat. If the body has no immediate use for it, it's flushed out.

Since cats should not eat more than 3% carbs, ALL of their fat stores will need to come from fat.

The ideal piece of meat would be at least 55% protein and 45% fat. Every individual species will have a different ratio, and more importantly, individual cuts will have a different ratio.

Skeletal muscle has a higher ratio of protein to fat. Organ meat, also sometimes called "offal," will have a more balanced ratio. That said, nearly all meat skews towards protein. PURE fat is very hard to find on the sorts of animals Clan cats hunt, and must be carefully divided, collected, or processed to make sure all warriors are getting proper nutrition.

I'll be going more in-depth with dietary fat at some other time, as this guide is meant to just be an overview! Just know that some Clans will need to eat MORE food to stay healthy because of this.

Cats need more than the "macronutrients" to stay healthy. They can't JUST rely on the juiciest cuts of meat to keep their health intact, they also need several vitamins and minerals to support their body functions, and avoid getting a deficiency.

Here's some of the important micronutrients, where to get them, and what happens they don't get enough;

Vitamin A: Livers, mealworms, eggs This is one of the most important micronutrients in a cat's body, used for practically everything. Without this, their coats will grow dull, and their joints stiff, and they'll start to go night-blind. In a severe state, they'll start to lose the ability to heal skin lacerations and die. Pregnant cats and kittens need more of this than usual, but it IS also possible to get vitamin A poisoning from getting too concentrated of a dose.

Calcium: Bones, eggs With a calcium deficiency, the warrior will feel stiff and sore, and experience painful muscle spasms. Most cats will simply crunch the bones of small prey and never have to worry about this, but if your cats cook or scavenge, they have to be told to NEVER eat the bones of a roasted bird. Because bird bones are hollow and cooking makes them brittle, they can splinter and cause fatal internal bleeding.

Thiamine: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs Called a Fish Seizure because raw carp and raw bream contains thiaminase, which will destroy thiamine in the body. Lack of thiamine will cause neurological issues, such as the aforementioned seizures, general confusion, memory loss, and muscle weakness. This can be counterracted by eating trout, which is so high in thiamine that there's a theory that carp evolved it specifically to eat salmonids better.

Potassium: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs As cats get older, they begin needing a lot more potassium for their bodies. It's a very common micronutrient found in most meat, but elders should get the first bite of special snacks "out of respect" which helps keep their potassium level up. Without it, they become very weak.

i feel like that evil struthiomimus from land before time with how many times i typed eggs

QUICK FACTS

The ideal ratio of a cut of meat is 55% protein 45% fat

Organ meat > Muscle meat

Micronutrients are important

But micronutrients can also cause poisoning if, somehow, they're too concentrated (very hard to come across concentrated micronutrients without the science of chemistry tho. Like if a cat swallowed a vitamin gummy.)

Food Processing

"Food Processing" is when you do something to your food before you eat it. Just a little bit of care is going to go a LONG WAY when it comes to health of the warrior.

Cats that eat raw meat the way canon warriors do are almost guaranteed to get worms. Roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms are all passed through the infected tissue of rodent prey, and in fish, roundworms, tapeworms, and flukes can pass through raw meat.

All parasites do something a little different, but most digestive worms aren't fatal unless the cat is sick or a kitten. However, nearly ALL of them screw around with digestion, making the cat need to eat more just to stay healthy, or causing stomach irritation. Some of them can even pass in milk, infecting a suckler's nursing kits.

The easiest way to reduce this kind of infection is simply to slice the prey open from mouth-to-butt, Tigerstar-style, and hook and lift out the GI tract before eating. There's nothing in that worth eating raw anyway. It can just be discarded, or cleaned out and used to case tiny sausages! But it's only a reduction; there's still a risk of catching worms from raw meat.

There's also always the possibility of getting salmonella poisoning.

Many believe that cats are immune to this, but that's not true! Carnivores just have a shorter GI tract than omnivores and herbivores, so salmonella spends less time in their gut and ergo has less chance of causing an infection. It still happens, ESPECIALLY when cats hunt songbirds.

Nothing can be done about salmonella in raw meat, besides eating it as quickly as possible. It's innate to the bodies of birds and reptiles, and usually found on raw eggs too.

Some animals are small enough to be dried and carried around as rations, such as minnows or grasshoppers. Others could be sliced up into strips, and marinated in spices like valerian or catmint for an extra boost of energy. It could also be worthwhile to cut the pelt off a particularly soft animal, like a mole, to dry and keep as bedding material.

All of the above examples of food processing are possible without fire, but if your cats DO have fire, they will have a DRASTIC increase to the quality of their health.

Such as;

Cooking will almost completely eliminate those foodborne parasites. Their eggs don't survive extreme heat.

No more salmonella poisoning! GONE! Cooking is the only way to eliminate this!

It can increase caloric absorption from anywhere between 20% to 50%. Our example warrior who needed 3.5 mice a day could suddenly need one less mouse; and even a meager 20% drop in how much the entire Clan needs saves 2,400 calories a day. 24 whole mice!

I HAVE TO STRESS HOW BIG THAT IS. You save anywhere from 2/10 to 5/10 successful kills.

Thiaminase is destroyed by cooking, making bream and carp healthier and reducing "fish seizures."

It allows for fats to be processed and stored as tallow, lard, and oil, so it can be added to other dishes to make them both healthier and tastier.

Most food preservation requires fire in some way; by heating, jellying, boiling, etc. The only other two ways to reliably store food is by having access to a ton of salt, which is hard for most non-coastal clans to acquire, or vinegar, which is so acidic it's a notorious cat-repellent.

While cooking can also destroy some micronutrients, its benefits FAR outweigh any potential "strengths" of raw food. Destroying micronutrients is also not always a bad thing; as TOO MANY micronutrients can cause poisoning. Fire-using Clans will be more likely to "seek" micronutrients than non-fire Clans as a result, though they probably won't recognize the science behind a hankering!

QUICK FACTS

Worms. Basically unavoidable if your cat's eating like a canon warrior.

Some parasites can spread through milk.

Slicing and lifting out the GI tract can significantly reduce the chance of catching worms.

Salmonella can only be eliminated with cooking

Cooking will drastically increase the quality of a Clan's health, if your cats are advanced enough to figure out fire.

Warriors need to hunt a LOT less prey, and can store that prey, if they have fire.

Fire-using Clans will intentionally try to put more types of food in their diets and get 'cravings.'

On Obesity

Warrior Cats is not a realistic series. The boundary that any particular writer draws between humans and warrior cats is completely arbitrary. The series itself follows no sense of realistic genetics, regularly shows the cats using herbs that would poison them, and gives the characters human-centric morals like monogamy and paternal involvement.

So when it comes to being fatness in your project, please keep that in mind. You do not need too follow realistic cat weight distribution, if that's not what your project about. That said, let me tell you about humans vs cats in this department!

Humans have a massive diversity of weight distribution, with varied genetic predispositions to gaining and losing weight. The shame, bullying, and medical discrimination that comes with fatphobia is a LOT more harmful than being fat itself, and the causes of the "obesity crisis" are ridiculously more complicated than "ppl r snorking 2 much food".

Realistic cats aren't the same way.

When REAL cats are fat, that's VERY bad. It's a sign they are being fed the wrong things by humans, or live somewhere that they are able to eat what they shouldn't. They just don't have that same diversity in fat distribution that humans do. Because of how adipose tissue secretes certain hormones, feline obesity is like a chronic inflammatory disease which can cause arthritis, bladder stones, hepatic lipidosis, and more.

But with that in mind, fatness should be perceived very differently even in the most realistic settings. In comparison to humans;

It is harder for a wild cat to put on weight. Most of what they're eating is raw protein, actively trying to fill the 45% of daily fat intake they need to stay healthy. Protein isn't stored as fat, it's immediately discarded by the body if there is no use for it. A cat would need to be taking an INSANE amount of prey to start becoming dangerously overweight. Housecats are often fed human food, which has carbohydrates. Low-quality cat food will also use carbs as filler. High carb food is VERY bad for them, since they're only supposed to have 3% carbs at most. This is one of the reasons why it's easy for pet cats to become overweight.

Realistic cats don't look start looking overweight until they are significantly obese. Most of their fat is stored around their ribs and internally, unlike humans with our thick hips and round bellies, and they are covered in a naturally sagging pelt of fur. It's not as obvious with them. Visually, weight will be noticed best from a bird's eye perspective, unlike humans where it's apparent at every angle.

Putting on the fat that CAN be acquired is ridiculously important 3.5 raw, whole mice a day, per cat, are needed to fill their basic dietary requirements. There are going to be days or months especially during winter where they might be below that number, and that stored fat is going to be lifesaving. Bulking up is actually a big deal!

So not only is how canon treats overweight characters full of malice, it's full of lazy malice. It makes no sense from a realistic standpoint for wild cats to develop an association between fatness and greed or laziness. It's important, hard work for them to acquire it!

Though the Clans are notoriously xenophobic and kittypets are more likely to be overweight, it still doesn't make sense from a realistic cat perspective to be fatphobic in the same way as canon. It's more likely they'd see fat housecats as having "unearned" weight given to them by humans, like they're cheating, or they might be disdainful of how much junk food they eat, or pitiable because it's a sign of a bad twoleg... or just "sour grapes" variety jealousy ☕.

Bottom line is that there's a LOT you can do here which is better than canon's vicious bullying. The writers just lifted British cultural disdain for fat people and put it into the books. They simply did not think it through.

So please do what they didn't, and just put a little extra thought into how your project is going to view fatness! Consider if fatphobia is even a theme you need in your text.

As stated, you do not even have to write weight in your cats as being realistic in this way! I encourage you to pick and choose what's most fun and fitting for your own work. I personally give my characters a more human weight distribution, simply because I want to spite canon and be more body-positive. I am a fat people and you can take Bumble's big chunky bod from my cold, dead hands.

You can choose to make your work however you'd like, and now with this guide, you can have an easy reference for what your cats should eat! Thank you, StarClan, for this prey <3

[tangledinink]

new gemini update was so good as always but I can't stop thinking:

big mama: there's nothing wrong with my sons

splinter: you fucked up two perfectly good kids is what you did. look at blue. he's got an eating disorder

wwhhhattttt? nooo, don't be silly. leo doesn't have an eating disorder.

leo and donnie have eating disorders--

[tmae3114]

My Mum, When She Is Buying Ingredients For Her Own Cooking: Everything must be as fresh as possible. All the prep will be done in the kitchen, it improves the quality of the meal. Get the WHOLE neep, we can make several things out of that. I need to compare these boxes of chicken to figure out which has the least water and therefore most meat - don't get the pre-cut chicken, it's never cut right and usually has more water. We will get the whole herbs and I will chop them myself.

My Mum, When She Is Talking To Her Daughter With Known Dysfunctional Executives And A History Of Forgetting To Eat: Buy the meat pre-diced. Here are good jars and packets of sauces. Buy the pre-prepped vegetables. Always have tinned things to hand for emergencies. Frozen stuff is still good for you! Order takeaway, it exists for a reason!

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Hahaha I can't eat at all today and I keep feeling like I'm going to throw up, why is my body this

[thatraccoonthing]

I’m making posters and whatnot for the person I live with who has an at home job and forgets to eat a lot how is it

[hasdrubal-gisco]

eating nutritious gray gruel all week to wean my body off color texture and flavor, in preparation for the weekend. the weekend: cold veal brisket with truffle mayo and vegetables pickled in raspberry vinegar; gazpacho with cod croquettes; boeuf tartare; tarte aux pommes normande

[brotherlysuggestion]

Hey, for any of my little sibs trying to learn to eat salads/vegetables but running into a lot of unhappiness/failure/sensory issues, I recently started learning to eat veggies after a lifetime of struggling due to autism and sensory issues, and I have some tips that I’ve collected along the way!

Forget all about the “healthiest varieties” or “most nutritional salads” elitism.

A lot of that talk is based on bogus science or half-truths to begin with, but even for anything that’s true, you’re trying to eat in a way that is sustainable for you. You don’t need to be like anybody else. If you like iceberg lettuce, screw the people who say “well that doesn’t have any nutritional value”. It’s fiber and roughage if nothing else! You like a lot of dressing or add ins and people tell you that isn’t a real salad/isn’t a healthy salad? It’s more vegetables than no vegetables! It gets the greens in your body! Do your thing, you don’t deserve guilt (external or internal) for figuring out your own path.

This is about habit forming and breaking bad associations to form better ones.

Think of this as practice! I eat salads nearly daily when available because I genuinely look forward to them now, but I used to want to retch at just the thought of salad. When I used to think of salads, I always thought of being a kid and trying not to gag while forcing sensory hell so that adults wouldn’t get mad at me. It was punishing for me, and it took a lot of gentle work to change that association! So if you hate salads, really try to identify why. Are they bland and tasteless to you? Conversely, are the bitter flavors too strong? Is it a textural thing? Do you have some highly negative experiences with them in the past?

Don’t force yourself to keep trying something you know you hate.

I personally can’t stand a lot of “ultra healthy” salads that have a lot of different textures/flavors mixed in, and years of trying to suffer through salads like that never made me like them more. Back to the first point again, forget about what you’re “supposed” to be eating and eat what you find the least repulsive tbh.

The greens you choose can make a massive difference, so try a lot of different things!

This is especially important if texture or flavor is an issue for you. Personally I find iceberg lettuce the “easiest” because it has a very mild taste. I started out my adventures in learning to eat salad eating EXCLUSIVELY iceberg lettuce. Butter lettuce or romaine (especially romaine hearts) are others that are popular for being pretty palatable, and I’ve come to love them! And you don’t even HAVE to have lettuce! You can have cabbage, beets, carrots, whatever! Pick a vegetable you like and search for salad recipes using it!

Find a dressing you really like and drench that bad boy if you need to!

Some people really like ranch, or poppyseed dressing, or vinaigrettes, or even sweet dressings with honey and fruit! You can use mustard or honey in dressings! Look up different types of salad dressings and try them all out if you want. Personally, I really like zingy dressings like Italian vinaigrettes or blue cheese, but everyone’s different. You can make a lot of dressings at home, too, and if you have the stuff already it can be a cheap way to find what you like. I know dressing freaks some people out, but referencing my very first point again; some salad is way better than no salad. You may even eventually find yourself able to use less and less once you’re more accustomed to eating salad! So use as much as you need, whether it’s just for now or forever.

Toppings! Salads are allowed to be goodies with obstacles!

Use a protein like chicken or fish (I like tuna a lot) or crumbled bacon, use croutons, hummus, little cubes of cheese or shredded cheese, sliced hard boiled eggs, whatever! If there’s vegetables that you know you like, put those in! I love some sliced cucumber or shredded carrots in my salads. Some people do nuts like almonds or cashews in their salads, some people use chickpeas and corn from a can, and if you’re feeling super adventurous you can try some fruit to sweeten things up! If you like variety then mix warm foods and cold foods, creamy textures and crunchy textures! Make it totally your own. Personally, I’ll sometimes eat around my croutons so that once I’ve eaten all of my greens I have a big, crunchy reward. There’s no rules for how you have to eat something!

Conversely, be as simple as you need to be.

If you need to get used to salads by eating just iceberg lettuce and ranch for a while, you don’t need to be embarrassed! You don’t have to throw the kitchen sink at your salad, even if that’s what helps some others! This is about what works for you.

Don’t be afraid to have salad ingredients… not as a salad!

You can make a green smoothie by blending ingredients if texture is your big issue! Or make a fruit smoothie with some spinach or lettuce thrown in to help you ease into it. Or try dicing up some lettuce, cabbage, and a preferred vegetable or two (avocado, bell pepper, tomato, or cucumber would all work!). Drizzle that with a generous amount of dressing or sauce, and you can use it as a chip dip! Tortilla chips work especially well for this. Or maybe make a vegetable wrap in an actual tortilla? Or throw some chopped up vegetables in your next soup. Even if it’s as simple as putting some lettuce, carrots, or tomatoes into a sandwich, that’s awesome too!

Even outside of salads, experiment with texture for vegetables!

You can roast most vegetables on a sheet pan in the oven (or in an air fryer) for a crispy and crunchy experience! Or you can boil or steam them on a stovetop (or in the microwave) to different levels of softness; you can get most vegetables pretty mushy with enough time, if crunchy textures are hard for you! Looking up vegetarian versions of your favorite meat-including dishes can sometimes also offer great ideas for getting different textures out of vegetables! Try everything that you think you might like: grilling, griddling, roasting, steaming, boiling, sautéing, braising, stir frying, and blanching (which also helps reduce bitterness!) are all different methods to look into, and different methods have different results with different vegetables!

Big takeaway…

Be patient and kind with yourself. Working through food aversions is hard. The goal is gently pushing/testing your boundaries and expanding your comfort zone, NOT forcing yourself. Forcing yourself into extreme discomfort, distress, or pain typically only makes aversions worse! So it’s in your best interest to be patient and go as slowly as you need to. Be proud of yourself for trying, and don’t let anyone (including yourself) make you feel shame for doing what you can.

And obligatory disclaimer:

Please don’t get discouraged if none of these tips work for you! This isn’t an exhaustive list, and I’m not any kind of professional. This is just a mix of tips I’ve seen online, and what worked for myself and my own sensory issues, and I’m still learning more about myself all the time! If you’re struggling, there’s still more out there! You can achieve your goals, I believe in you. 💖

[dandyshucks]

guzm.a and me shaking hands about being poor and eligible for welfare 🤝🤝🤝🤝

[pickapea]

my job is reactivating and rehabilitating patients in post surgery care and one of the first things i tell them once they've tried to drink some juice and stand on their legs without throwing up is "every bite is a good bite" and i think that's a good sentiment for everyone

[anthromimicry]

okay, so i believe it's time to talk about what kind of powers misao possesses. let me start off by saying that she is by no means invincible and/or invulnerable: so, she can be defeated in combat, of course. i just wanted to affirm that with y'all because she does have an enhanced healing factor. but unlike a regenerative healing factor, which heals a lot of things pretty much automatically, it does still take a good amount of time for her to heal. i'd say it's just a bit faster than a human's ability to heal, and so she can not do things like regrow limbs / reattach her head.

BUT to counteract her lack of a more proficient healing ability... misao and all jorōgumo can produce very sharp, silk-like threads and manipulate them to their liking to attack other's + create constructs out of these silk threads that can be used as weapons. and thus, one could argue that she has a certain 'advantage' over humans since this is a long-range attack, which would mean only they would have to get closer to her in combat if they didn't have any long-range weapons themselves. being a spider in actuality, misao can also make webbing that comes from within her. also, because of her true nature as a spider, misao can control diminutive spiders or just regularly sized spiders at will.

another, and her last ability, is that she has venom available at her disposal much like a real spider that targets the central nervous system / is a potent neurotoxin ( in which she would transfer directly into someone through a bite ) buttt the thing is is that she will often not use this method of killing, and/or seriously harming someone because of how long it takes for her body to regenerate the venom. thus, most of the time, misao will only use it if she is in a very dire situation where she has to defend herself or someone she cares about.

and as a result, those who are in combat with her don't really have to worry about her using this ability unless she's genuinely on death's door or something of that nature. so yeah; i hoped this gave you all a little more insight as to what exactly she can do with her powers as a jorōgumo.

[newvegasdyke]

The bizarre assumption that weight loss through diet changes means you’re “ON a diet” specifically a restrictive and unsustainable diet. Just because that’s all you’ve ever tried doesn’t mean it’s what everyone does!!

[disengaged]

toronto ….. :-)

[lixenn]

Every time my supervisor or one of the other PhD students say that they won't have lunch today, a tiny part of my soul withers away.

Do you know what Science requires you to do? Thinking!

What body part does the Thinking? Brain!

What does Brain need to do the Thinking? Glucose!

Where do you get Glucose from so Brain can do the Thinking? Food!

Food = Lunch

No Lunch = No Glucose, therefore no feeding Brain, which means NO THINKING!

IT'S EASY MATH PEOPLE! FUCKING EAT! EVEN IF IT'S JUST AN APPLE! I KNOW EXPERIMENTS ARE IMPORTANT AND YOU'RE ALL SUPER BUSY BUT HONESTLY! PROPER NUTRITION IS IMPORTANT!

...

Rant over.

[stupid-elf]

Okay dandy, what is "it's not about the bread"? I recognized everything else

Ah! It's not about the bread is a phrase fairly common in marriage counseling/relationship advice circles. It comes from a popular anecdote of a husband in counseling saying his wife is always blowing up at him about petty things, like buying the wrong brand of bread. The therapist asks the wife why she's upset about the bread, and she says it's because he is chronically inattentive to her and their collective needs so she ends up carrying the slack. It's not about the bread: It's about what's manifesting through the bread

Humans are not rational creatures, we're rationalizing. It takes a lot of self awareness to be in one's own head and go "oh. I'm not upset about the bread, I'm mad because this is the third time this week and the twentieth time this month I have to come up with a new dinner plan because this idiot fucked up." However, it takes much less awareness to look at one's partner and go "hm. That was an outsized reaction. Something larger than what set this off is probably going on."

Once you've realized there's something going on, partners can begin working towards a solution. You have to pull back the rug to find what's been swept under it.

Emotions all have causes. Sometimes they're bigger than they seem like they should be, and sometimes the cause is buried deep in the unconscious parts of the brain, but there's always a reason. Part of loving someone is trying to understand them, and part of understanding them is sussing out when it's about the bread... And when you should maybe start writing a more detailed grocery list

[trans-axolotl]

having a lot of thoughts about eating disorders + how some of us end up developing chronic illnesses directly because of the physical effects of our eating disorders and how Cruel doctors can be about that and just trying to untangle so much shame and blame from that experience rn