#And yeah yeah diet culture is bullshit but also

[grumpyfaceurn]

Why does everything in life that I'm dissatisfied with require long term sustained effort? Why can't a brief flicker of hyperfocus be enough?

[musicloveop3s]

I love simply atsumu, religiously.

Honestly what's better than atsumu just absolutely gushing over his partner and refusing to not talk about them during interviews.

Like this one time he's doing an interview with someone and he just keeps saying shit like-

"Yeah the training regime is absolutely BRUTAL but ya know my baby like a strong build soooo"

"The diet is horrible cuz my baby makes a lot of (your culture) food and it's delicious but I can't eat it! Cuz well it has too much this and that and I think it's bullshit!! I mean before the new diet I was able to eat it and still maintain-"

"Oh I love my fans! My honey says they feed my ego too much but like! How could they not? I love my fans and if they send me stuff I have a room dedicated to-"

"Sometimes my baby and I will read some of the stuff people write about me on Twitter and it's always funny, so many are thirst so let me say now if I could I'd let y'all take a big bite out of m-"

"Yer an idiot! Oh my god!! That's what my brother, owner of onigiri Miya, screamed at the TV or at least that's what my darling says and it sounds exactly like em'!! That bastard"

Like he's still bragging about himself and he doesn't even realize he's doing it, not even after watching it on screen, he realizes it when he goes on to YouTube and see compilations or counters of how often he mentions you. He does not give a shit in fact he starts mentioning the counter in interviews.

"My lovely said they'll order in my favorite! Which is (idk) and, oh wait! How many is that! I did it again ahah!"

- "did what?"

"Mentioned my lover! People have been poking fun of how often I talk about em' but I just can't help it!! Hahaha"

-"you do say a lot, at this point I think I'm also dating them! Haha it's amazing to see how much you love them!"

He has not a single drop of shame or embarrassment!

[lavender-jedi]

Yo the stereotype about southern food being unhealthy is kinda bullshit when you think about it

Like yeah mac n cheese and fried chicken aren't the healthiest, but literally every culture (even the ones known for healthy diets) have less nutritious dishes one could point to

Literally so much of southern cuisine revolves around veggies, like greens, beans, sweet potatoes, succotash, maux choux, gumbo, jambalaya

Also we prepare meat in more ways than just frying, like low country boil, blackened catfish, barbecue, gumbo/jambalaya/etoufee, etc.

People like to casually blame the high rates of obesity and heart disease in the south on southern cuisine, but that's a really convenient way to ignore the prevalence of food deserts and lack of access to quality healthcare down here for poor folks

[basiliskonline]

LETS MAKE SOME FUCKING DELICIOUS HEALTH FOOD

Some of you fuckers that follow me over on other websites may have heard that I have lost over 50 fucking pounds in going on 6 months now and i'm honestly shocked by how easy its fuckin' been now that I'm ignoring bullshit media and diet culture!

Also I just wanna say to all my fat kings and queens out there, yall fucking hot as shit and this was a decision I made for me, but I fully support you motherfuckers to love yourself at any and all sizes and I fucking love you too.

Now, what the fuck is this shit up here? A fucking Spinach tortilla? Fruit? Sugar free jello pudding? What the goddamn FUCK Basilisk!

Okay, calm down there buddy. hear me out. The spinach tortilla is the weird one, right? Well it has a light enough flavor to be overshadowed by the rest of the flavors, all this goddamn tortilla is here to deliver 18 fucking grams of FIBER directly into the glorious fucking body, ya dig?

No joke though! This is one of my favorite go to recipes, its quick as fuck and absolutely delicious jammed full of good shit at only 238 Calories!

Lets talk fucking Macros!

5.3 grams of fat (I usually get my fats elsewhere, if you want more fucking fat in this bitch than dice up some fatty delicious fuckin coconut in it or some shit)

44.3 g of carbs (including 19.3g of goddamn fiber!)

22.1 g of protein

Now lets talk some goddamn micros

494.7 mg of potassium

100mcg of Vitamin A

51.9mg of Vitamin C

284.5mg of Calcium

2.5mg of Iron

All kinds of other vitamins and minerals that they annoyingly don't let you track easily!

Now what the fuck is in this thing? Recipes? How do you FUCKING make it? Here we go, and just a warning ALL of this shit is measured with love, i weigh it all to track my shit but i do it in the moment and every time i make it, its a lil different!

Step ONE: Ya start off with your Nonfat/Lowfat greek yogurt (or full fat if you want more of that delicious delicious fat im not your goddamn mom). Just slap as much as you want in a bowl. Like 125-175g is good usually for me!

Step TWO: Measure out like idk 3-7 grams of chia seeds (CHIA SEEDS ARE FUCKING AMAZING GET THEM!) and toss that shit in the bowl.

Step THREE: Toss in some sugar free pudding powder, I use chocolate cause it what i can get regularly, but fuck do whatever you want! Vanilla? Banana? Pistachio? Fuck yeah! (Holy shit now im wondering about using Jell-o gelatin to get some like berry flavors... Idk how that'd work but im thinkin bout it now?!!) anyway you want probably 5-12grams of that shit (depends on how much yogurt you used! it will stiffen up your yogurt a TON, so idk if it gets TOO stiff, just add a lil more Yogurt, ya dig?)

Step FOUR (Optional): Throw in a lil protein powder, I used chocolate for my chocolate but fuckin get wild in there and experiment if you want! You only want like 3-6 grams of this in there! This just adds some extra protein and shit so this is still good af if you don't have any or don't wanna add it! (Also you can just do like ALL flavored Protein powder and none of the sugar free pudding mix if you want LOTS of that tasty tasty fuckin protein, we all just making shit up here as we go along)

Step FIVE (Optional): Use your no calorie sweetener of choice, just a lil bit (one packet or whatever) I use fucking Splenda because I WORSHIP AT HE ALTAR OF MY CHEMICAL GODS. But you can use like... monkfruit? or whatever the kids are using these days.

Step SIX: Mix that shit up with a spoon real quick. Fair warning that I totally and COMPLETELY do not give because of experience. You are mixing a lot of powders in there and start off as GINGER AS FUCK or you are gonna get some choclate fucking powder POOFED on your goddamn shirt or in your wookiee like chest hair or all over your tits, or all over your hairy fucking tits maybe idk, but if thats you I see you and goddamn love you. WARNED.

Step SEVEN: Warm up a skillet and start heating your Low Calorie High Fiber Tortilla (in my case, a Carb Balance Spinach Tortilla by Mission), low heat, you want it warm and supple so you can Taco that bitch and shove all the goodies in your face!

Step EIGHT: While you are warming up the skillet start throwing fruit together, I usually do about 120-140 grams of fruit, make it 3-4 different kinds if you can, get a nice spread of nutrients and vitamins and shit. Lately ive been doing strawberries, tangerines, grapes (both green and red). Banana, Cherry and/or Apple are both great too! USE WHAT YOU GOT!

STEP NINE: ITS TIME TO FUCKING GOOOO! That Tortilla is HOT, the fruit is fucking ready and delicious, that chocolaty yogurt full of NUTRITION-FUCKING-DENSE chia seeds is tantalizing. Slap that yogurt mixture on the goddamn tortilla! Slap the fruit on top (FUCKING lick all the tasty chocolate-yogurt mixture off that spoon, don't let that shit go to WASTE)

THEN YOU FUCKING ROLL THAT SHIT UP like a Taco! (Unless you are lucky enough to find larger tortillas that fit your needs, I can only find these pathetic lil "soft taco" sized like 8 inchers! and shove it in your hungry goddamn hole and just fucking love this FUCKING FILLING and delicious sweet treat at under 250 Cals.

VARIANTS!

Sometimes I mix some zero sugar whipped topping in with the yogurt, or just top it with it.

When you Want a LOT OF FUCKING YOGURT AND FRUIT, I have grilled the tortilla to a more crisp and crunchy demeanor and made that shit a goddamn chocolate and fruit tostada (topped with whipped topping of course!)

ANYWAY FUCKING ENJOY!

[owenthetokencishet]

I PROPOSE A NEW FAD DIET. I simply call it... Monke eat™️.

Here's the thing

Diet culture, fad diets, "x is as bad for you as driving 80 km/h off the white cliffs of Dover" that stuff? Yeah just about all of that's bullshit.

The beauty standards you've been fed? Skinny, pale, clear skin, perfect proportions? Yeah also bullshit. Also probably not real, magazines and the like tend to doctor those sorts of photos and cartoons are... cartoons. (That's another post for another time and a decades-old discussion)

This all is where Monke eat™️ comes in. The name itself serves as a reminder, a memento monkey if you will.

You are (I assume, judging by the fact that you are capable of fully understanding language) a human. Humans are primates. Pretty big ones too, second only to the gorilla in size.

An animal that big takes a lot of energy to run. Almost 8.4 million joules to be precise. It's a bloody miracle it takes that little considering the lumps of jello in our heads that make the average supercomputer look like a dollar-store calculator.

The only way humans have to get that kind of energy is by eating. Good news! As a human, eating could not be easier! Because guess what? You're an omnivore baybee! You evolved to forage and eat as you went, and then we needed extra energy to start thinking so we started eating meat!

I mean obviously yeah you still gotta eat lots of vegetables n shit but even that's not as hard as it sounds. Vegetables don't stop being vegetables the second you do stuff to them. Tomatoes don't turn to nutritionally empty goop the second they're chopped and thrown into salsa, sticky toffee pudding is still mostly made of dates. A salad with dressing and crotoutons and shit is still a salad.

You are a large, omnivorous, domesticated hive primate with a brain capable of designing fusion reactors and you should eat as much as you think you need to without worry. Embrace monke™️

[eroticcannibal]

Re doctor wait times; (and cw for diet culture/eating disorders)

we have a system in my neck of the woods where you can have a phone call with a doctor to get basic medical care like sick notes for work or refills of standing prescriptions. There's a chronic physician shortage so I don't have a PCP, I just bounce between walk in clinics, and since all I've needed for a long time is refills on meds I've been stable on for anywhere from 3 to 10 years.

At one point, a doctor flat out yelled at me over the phone about how I have to come in to the office at some point for a physical exam, I couldn't use telehealth for the rest of my life, and that the physician shortage is "just something we have to live with now". I tried to explain that literally all any doctor has done for me irl is to ask if I'm stable, ask if I have any sudden changes in mood, and send me on my way. She said that she'd never heard of a doctor in her life doing a check up without touching their patient which... I call bullshit.

So I made an appointment because otherwise I wouldn't get my meds, ended up waiting in her office for over an hour, and while, yeah, she did a check of the basic heartrate, blood pressure, breathing (all of which were ideal which.. Was a happy surprise), she also ignored every comment I made about the chronic pain I've been in for seven years, told me off for using a cane "without a prescription" (????), and spent ten minutes (of a 15 minute appointment) detailing a weight loss pill I should try, after being told that I'm in very shaky recovery for two eating disorders.

At this point, they aren't even trying. They don't even pretend to care. Almost ever doctor I've met has some kind of complex about having power over people and they absolutely need to be held to a higher standard.

Jesus FUCK that is some exceptional fuckery. Im amazed how she managed to fit so much awful into 15 fucking minutes

[ghostonly]

Bring back delighting in delicious food

I’m sick of this bullshit diet and appearance culture. I have spent the past many years completely shifting my mindset about food and it has literally made everything better. I don’t care that I’m fat. It literally doesn’t matter to me. You know what does matter? Enjoying my life.

The world is overflowing with delicious foods - flavors that can take you on a journey, create a permanent memory, and even change your life if you let them. At the very least, they can turn a bad day into a good one. It is absolutely criminal that society has been allowed to turn this into a bad thing - into something to be wary of.

“Food is good but being hot is better.”

Yeah, well, you can be fat and hot.

Also, here’s something worth considering:

Presumably, if you’re constantly turning down delicious foods because you don’t want to gain weight, it’s because you believe that being a certain weight will make you more happy than eating freely would, right? So, here’s my question: Are you actually happier? Like, right now. Do you regularly and honestly delight in your appearance to a degree that makes it worth it that you are regularly depriving yourself of the things you want?

“Well, no, but I will once I reach my goal weight.”

Oh really. And when exactly will you reach that? How long will it take? How many delicious experiences will you turn down before you reach it? And, when you do reach it, what then? Do you just continue eating the required low to maintain that for the rest of your life? Will it really make you happy to be that weight or will you set a new, lower goal? Even if you don’t set a lower goal, how will you know when you’ve really reached the one you set? Is it purely the number? Will you feel a sudden happiness when the number is right? Will it change your life? Or, do you think maybe it’s more likely that it will be like turning 18, where you expect something big and great and euphoric only to realize you’re the same person on the inside, which is what the real disappointment is?

Constantly dieting is setting yourself up for constant disappointment. Each time you lose a little weight, it makes you feel good... and each time you gain weight, even an ounce, you feel like trash. Your self worth tanks. This up and down roller coaster of self worth based on pointless numbers isn’t going to serve you well - not now, not ever.

I understand the desire to lose weight and to have control over your appearance. I get it. I know it feels good to be able to say, “I’m in control because I can say no to things I want.” But you know what else feels good? You know another kind of control you can have? The control to tell society and its expectations to eat your ass because you deserve to have a massive burger and fries once in a while. Because it’s your body and you make the rules about what goes into it, and that means you can put good food into it as often as you feel like.

That doesn’t mean you have to eat in a way that makes you feel like shit about yourself. I understand that eating extremely poorly doesn’t feel good. Sometimes I buy a bag of chocolate and eat it a bit too fast and it makes me feel kind of icky because it fucks with my blood sugar and gives me a sugar crash. There’s a balance to it. You have to listen to your body. When your body wants to eat a bowl of ice cream, just get yourself a bowl of ice cream. However, when you start to feel the urge to stop eating the ice cream, just put it back in the freezer. You don’t have to finish it if you got too much.

Listen to your body. Listen to your desires. Enjoy your life. Food is fucking delightful and you deserve to delight in it like everyone else. Do you really want to feel the constant sense of sadness and disappointment in yourself that comes with dieting for the rest of your life? Because I don’t.

A massive percentage of what determines our body shape and size is purely genetic. If you want to be thin while your entire family history says you should be otherwise, you’re going to be fighting your genetics forever. Being fat isn’t a sign of weakness or poor health or poor self control. That idea is sold to you by the same people charging 6 dollars for a tiny pack of “fancy diet snacks.”

(Don’t come onto this post and talk pro diet, pro ED, or pro exercise either. There’s a time and place for the first and last and it’s not here. This post is anti dieting, full stop.)

[team-council-two]

Question for alpha ! (ignore my name it's fine just don't read it no reason to)

It's not really about tf2 or anything,, but it's still a question !

So, I've been meaning to learn French, as I'd find it way easier to write fics with my favorite characters in them, and also super good bragging material /j

i just want to know where to start? DeepL translate has been a lifesaver, yes, but it is still a small bit weird, sometimes not. using the right words, like turning "surprised" into "scared and then "scared" into "frightened."

i think i may find it way easier to just. learn the language.

Advice?

what do you m

Yeah imma pretend i didnt see that

Anyways. How to learn French, huh ? okay so this will be long

DISCLAIMER

I *am* French so I never had to "learn" French to speak it or read it. So i in fact will be relaying advice based on how I managed to learn English.

You really have three options here. The decade long, bullshit, no money free way which gives you shitty grammar, the painful serious method where you bit the bullet and open grammar books n shit, or the somewhat sensical, fastest and most efficient and foolproof ableit possibly costly way.

the bullshit method is what i did. I was vaguely taught basic English shit like some verbs (do, can, be, have, etc) and a couple words here and pronouns and blah blah by school, then i went on the internet at the ripe age of 13 or some shit. I read in English a lot, tried to talk and slowly built myself a vocabulary half through plugging what words i didn't understand in a translation engine (NOT the full sentences, only that. It forces you to place the word back in a sentence and think about said word in its language), half through trying to vaguely deduce stuff by myself through context clues, and while I write in a somewhat understandable way I do not know how to pronounce any of what I write (i lacked actual spoken english having medias in my diet, due to being a subs-reading weeb and neither into american movies nor youtubers). Took a good decade to get where i am right now and the way i handle my sentences is. Errr. Uniquely fucked up. i am not aware of it at alls, so i cannot explain but. Yeah. Still. It can get you here, but that's a lot of time and not for the best result.

What you CAN pick up from this method and port over to the serious one is reading in French and watching French movies. Avoid internet users tho these bitches spell ça va "sava" yikes lol anyways. This is mostly because a language won't stick without some kind of interaction with it. This is a widely known fact so i'm probably pulling a sky's blue, bears shit in the woods here. Still, shit matters. Binge the fucking taxi movies and sit down in front of some goddamn Astérix. anyways the serious method is just this but you actually read up on how the language is constructed, with its technical shit. im not sure how to do this unfortunately so i cant provide much more

If you want to be serious you get a goddamn real person to teach you, to explain you, hey here's how you build a sentence, forcing you to talk in French and to remember words and their meaning and shit, and also sitting here for your questions, to point out to you cultural stuff, slangs and so on. Self taught can be a trap. Courses like Duolingo really are good solely for reminding you to practice and teaching you to identify some verbs/words so you can somewhat start reading and vaguely get your head wrapped around the pronunciation (tho it can be faulty i heard), but its teachings grammar wise are lackluster at best, and this fucking method seems to be consistent because these things just emulate the "if you read a lot of a language with the translation you learn it" stuff i mentioned earlier except even more isolating, and you wind up with people like my gothfriend that have a year long streak on French and that still feel like they cannot wrap their head around the language at all. So yeah. This is a supplement at best. I'm trusting Ray to follow up on this post to rant about this because they are a language teacher and they'll likely have more on the topic. I personally tried to learn italian, german and polish on this. Result ? I was using french as a crutch for italian, english for german, and couldn't get through a single exercise for polish. Total learned despite 100 day streak and doing the courses both in french and english : 0

As for translation engines, I personally use WordReference. It is hand curated, accounts for a lot of slangs, includes context clues, is wonderful navigation wise for tapping back and forth between words to see what they say, it has a forum for more specific questions... It never failed me tbh.

[sereniv]

gunna angry rant here

i fucking hate so much when people who are on a plant based diet tell people that veganism is about health and eating fruits and no sugar and all that bullshit

like fuck off truly fuck off. go eat your banana and shut up

because then you have people thinking veganism is some strict diet shit

AUGHH

Possible and Practical (and nescessary) is so important to me because it acknowledges that not everyone is the same

like the dieters that you see are usually so jusgemental and racist because they think everyone should eat 100% plant based

they and non vegans are the ones i see shitting on native whaling

and it makes me sick

i remember when i first went vegan i technically wasnt bc i did judge people like slaughterhouse workers, i was influenced by the person who got me to be vegan, and they were highly anti-human. so i was like yeah die slaughterhouse workers

or judging someone who has to work at mcdonalds bc they are handling animal products (though i always felt iffy about that stance but i went along with it for a very short time)

and then? i fucking grew up

and i was reminded about the biggest most important part of the veganism definition whivh is Possible and Practical

and it still took me time to get to where i am now, i WAS an asshole

But the moment you ignore that is the moment you get into colonialist mindset. into a racist mindset. classist mindset

i hate hate this so much it makes me so mad

because when it comes down to it you are allowed to feel conflicting emotions

you are allowed to think a cultural food is gross (to yourself) or sad/upset about it, but also be happy for the people enjoying themselves happy that they can provide that they get to eat

i mean i watch non vegan cooking where they gut an animal (like fish), and i think its gross and i feel bad. I try to not hang on the word gross either, but i also enjoy just seeing things cooked

like idk how to fully convey the mixture of recognizing sentience in an animal, and then also supporting those that hunt for their own personal cultural connection

like yeah we can compare and say "what if instead of an animal ppl were killing ppl" but right now that talk in those situations doesnt matter. because yeah cultures as a whole change and so can religion, but when you target a culture or religion as a whole then that is not very good at all lol

i got off track. basically, fuck plant based dieters.

[halleymacleod666]

Hello guys, it's been a while.

I just want to do a rant on beauty standards cause I'm so fucking annoyed.

(Soon I'll be back on tumblr more often and I'll update you on how I've been doing with my weight and all)

Anyway yeah I'm so tired of everyone expecting perfection from me (including myself here)

What society has come to is just sad and honestly kinda outrageous. I'm willing to argue that the 90's and early 2000's beauty ideals were less toxic than today. I'm talking about the super super skinny Era (heroin chic too). Like yes girls were starving themselves back then to be thin, but that's pretty much all they were expected to do to be "ideal". Nowadays if you wanna be what is considered "perfect" you need butt lifts and/or implants, boob jobs, lip fillers, nose jobs, face lifts, liposuction, cheek fillers, brow lifts and on top of that you need to follow a strict "healthy" diet and workout 2 hours a day. OH BUT EVEN THAT IS NOT ENOUGH, BECAUSE CELEBRITIES AND INFLUENCERS WHO SPENT ALL THAT MONEY ON PLASTIC SURGERY AND PERSONAL TRAINERS STILL AREN'T SATISFIED AND THEN GO ON AN EDIT ALL THEIR GOD DAMN PHOTOS TO THE POINT THEY LOOK NOTHING LIKE THEY DO IN REAL LIFE.

It fucking bothers me that everyone looks so fucking perfect on social media and comperatively me and every other normal looking person that didn't spend 200000$ for plastic to be pumped into them looks like shit. And it's toxic af that all those influencers claim they are completely natural just to "pump" their ego up. Like okay get plastic surgery but at least fucking admit it, it's obvious, don't bullshit me that you "worked out" for 2 months and magically lost 5 inches off your waist and gained 10 inches on your butt.

My fucking boyfriend also like buys into that "I'm all natural" crap, and sends me like workout videos and progress girls made through working out. It fucking upsets me. They are not fucking real. Like don't fucking send me a video of a girl doing 30 squats and then magically a year later her butt is 10 times bigger while her legs and waist got 3 times smaller. Like how dumb are you. He won't let me get plastic surgery (like I wanted a nose job bc I hate my nose and I've been bullied for it) but he says he doesn't want me to get anything and that natural is better and that he'll leave me if I get plastic surgery and then fucking shows me a picture of a girl that's faker than Kim kardashian! Like bro make up your mind.

Anyway yeah it fucking hurts to be compared to those girls. I'm honestly so fucking glad that the heroin chic starvation is coming back. I don't think body types should be trends, I think the whole culture around beauty standards is disgusting but I hate my body so much now and I hate myself for not looking like the girls on instagram so at least with the super skinny coming back it's something that's more achievable and at least I will feel better about myself when I reach that standard.

[katierosefun]

hot take but really should be an ice-cold take, but okay whatever, i feel like going off: fat-shaming is actually bad, no matter who you’re criticizing. if you’re going to criticize someone for being racist, sexist, homophobic, all the bad things, then criticize them purely because of that. do not go after their body shape/body type and add “fat” in there as an insult. 

when you do say “ah, this person is a fat, sexist, racist, homophobic asshole”, you’re lumping in “fat” as a bad trait. given that people who are fat (and i use this word purely as a description, not as an insult, because the term ‘fat’ has been so demonized by media), are already severely discriminated against by doctors and work spaces and just like...the media in general, using the term “fat” to describe someone who’s just an asshole feeds into the already-forced narrative that all fat people are greedy and lazy is so incredibly damaging. 

like. someone’s body shape or someone’s health is not something that should not be in the criteria for someone who’s a jerk. if someone’s a jerk, you can find other ways to explain why instead of going after their body shape.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Like if we're going to focus on men un-learning toxic masculinity (great), I do want it to be largely understood as "this is bad for you and will kill you, and you deserve to be free and choose your own destiny and not be constrained by societal expectations" and not simply as "gendered socialization for women harms women and gendered socialization for men also harms women and exclusively benefits men" cause yeah that is some bullshit right there. (Male privilege is a thing, and also there are ways in which gendered socialization harms men.) Take that thing where you get a million comic strips and tv shows and whatnot where a woman is forcing vegetables onto a man who just wants to eat pizza and drink beer, and think about how that expectation that real men don't worry about nutrition harms men, and on the flipside look at the expectation to be muscular and the pressure on men to work out and be athletic and the way some men go to this other extreme and get really obsessed about food and not getting fat, and that also harms men, and it's not just an exact copy of the way diet culture harms women, it affects men in different ways and has to be fought in different ways. Depression is underdiagnosed in men. Men are more likely to successfully commit suicide. Men are less likely to seek help for domestic violence, and less likely to receive it. Men who are sexually assaulted have a harder time finding resources. Men are more likely to work absurdly long hours. Men are more likely to have no close friends. There are ways in which men, specifically are harmed by gender stuff.

[nonbinarynightmarefuel]

People always tell you to change your eating habits when you're sick, they say it'll make you better. They tell you to eat less or eat differently. They say to try removing carbs, sugar, meat, dairy, gluten. They say to eat more vegetables and fruits and nuts and meat. It's always this call to radically change your diet.

And of course, I was always like, go to hell. Because I knew eating less gluten wasn't going to fix me. Because anyone who thinks it would (since I don't have celiac or a wheat allergy) is ignorant.

But if diet and wellness culture weren't so pervasive, I wouldn't have missed the much-needed advice that was veiled by all this fatphobic, food-demonizing bullshit.

I was sick(er) because of what I was eating.

Well, technically, because of what I wasn't eating.

Let me give you some background. I was 23 with EDS and Dysautonomia. At this point I didn't have a dx for EDS yet. I was subpar all the time, and I was frequently very ill. My treatment protocol was only kind of working and I was super fatigued. My heart would race and my resting HR was very high.

I also had an eating disorder. I was trying to be in recovery, but I honestly didn't know what I was doing wrong or have the tools to do better. I knew I had EDNOS, because I didn't fit strict criteria for other things.

I took a nutrition class in college, in my first semester. I was terrified. When I took health in high school, and even when I learned about it in middle school, diet + wellness culture were so incredibly pervasive. I was expecting to be told, yet again, that I needed to fit my meals into the food pyramid or I'd die, and that I needed to eat less or I'd be sick, and so on. But I needed the course for my major.

This class changed my life.

There was no diet or wellness culture in sight. She told us why we shouldn't take vitamins, why we should eat GMOs, why organic is a scam. She taught us the dietetic principles of eating.

What I learned from that course was that I was eating catastrophically too little for my body. I was eating too few calories and too few carbohydrates for my brain and body to do all that it needs to do.

I learned that micronutrients are (*gasp*) less important than macronutrients. It sounds like a no-brainer when I put it like that, but diet and wellness culture push micronutrients so hard.

I also learned about ARFID.

So, learning these new principles, I started eating. I allowed myself to eat whatever my ARFID lizard brain said was ok, I increased the carbs, calories, and frequency of my eating. I did this because I wanted to have more brain power, energy, and less muscle problems.

My chronic illnesses became 200% more manageable because I started to eat enough carbohydrates.

If I hadn't been backed into a corner by wellness + diet culture, maybe I never would have gotten so sick in the first place.

Yeah, I still have Dysautonomia. But the medication works well and my body can handle so much more than it ever did.

[biterflies]

psa,eating is good and you need it to live and denying yourself that just makes you miserble and sick until you die

i really really wish i could just eat more. i normally eat like,one or maybe two things a day and its terrible. i WANT to eat more,i just cant. i know not eating is bad and will hurt me but i dont know how to stop. i stopped eating BECAUSE it would hurt me,it was my own fucked up self harm method and by the time i got better mentally i just physically couldnt stomach it. and i dont know how to make myself stomach it cause i also know that eating more then you can stomach makes you throw up and that just puts me back at square one but this time with the taste of vomit in my mouth. i hate it i hate it i hate it .i WANT to eat i really do but i CANT and i HATE it. i cant rough house or wrestle with my brothers anymore cause my body is to weak from not eating. im unfocused and spacey which makes day to day tasks near impossible. i almost pass out so often its worrying. i literally shake its so bad. so psa for anyone thinking about not eating for whatever fucking reason,dont do it. “ oh but i have work to do i cant just stop “ yeah been there denied myself that,yes you can food is fuel it will make you better at doing whatever it is you decided to do. “oh but i  need to lose weight” putting aside the fact diet culture is a toxic horrible thing made to make you insecure. newsflash,skipping meals actually makes losing weight HARDER. because you go into starvation mode and your baby retains what little energy it gets because of that so you dont die,making weight lose even harder “i dont deserve it though” YES.THE FUCK. YOU DO. ive had that line of thinking before and let me tell you its bullshit. you ALWAYS deserve to eat. fullstop. end of discusstion . go eat something right now infact. go forth and dont do what i did cause the road of recoverary,while the right path to take if your already this far along the highway of harm is a long and hard and painful one. 

[xazz]

I’ve been staying with my dad for a few months bc him and his gf are old and have had... some medical issues and then a broken shoulder (ugh) and like

I’ve unlearned a lot of really unhealthy diet culture talk. But they’re still caught by it sometimes in ways that make me give them a look.

the gf just came over to my room and was like ‘did you know that an ice cream cone with nuts has less calories than a bagel’

and I said ‘yeah bc it’s bread’

‘yeah they really aren’t that good for you’

‘there’s nothing wrong with bread. Humans have been eating it for thousands of years’

Like so many people look at bread now and are like ‘well that’s the worst thing I could put into my body’ when it’s just bread. A thing we as a species have been making in one form or another for thousands of years. Bread isn’t evil.

And my dad briefly had a ‘I’m not gonna eat processed meat’ phase while I was here. So no bacon.

but he bought ham steak and cold cuts

and I’m just like ‘these things are AS PROCESSED as bacon wtf are you even doing????’ All non raw meat is processed in some way, usually with salt, maybe even nitrates. But nitrates and nitrites just also naturally appear in food, like fucking celery seed. And then he buys cookies and ice cream during almost every grocery store trip bc he and his gf like those things. But they throw up arms about bread, rice, and pasta. What are you doingggggggg????

It often feels like the older people in my life have such knee jerk reactions to ‘bad’ food bc they see it on TV and someone on the news tells them this thing is suddenly now bad. Like food’s not bad! Eating too much food is. But food in and of itself isn’t the root of all evil like I feel like old people think it is.

Like I said, I’ve unlearned a lot of unhealthy diet and food bullshit. And am still unlearning but shit man at least I’m not going around mocking bread and then my one meal of the day is ice cream with chocolate sauce =__=

[thunderheadfred]

Good and Bad things about getting healthier

Under a cut since not everybody wants to hear about this stuff.

Since about February, I’ve been gradually making healthier lifestyle changes. 2020 being what it was, my therapist and I mutually agreed it wasn’t a great time to do anything major until Trump was out of office and (some) of my severe anxiety about social collapse was assuaged. I say “some” for reasons that should be obvious, but, whatever. This is about personal and not global health. I’ve got to start somewhere.

side note: it’s also gonna look like I have more bad things than good, but that’s mostly because the “bad” require a lot of explaining, haha.

It’s definitely more good than bad.

The Good:

more energy*

mood regulation**

better sleep

overcoming addiction behaviors

GOALS???? I remember YOU

oh yeah, maybe I do have a future after all

no longer too depressed/tired to leave the house

confidence boost that comes from living in alignment with my core values

buying myself stupid nerdy graphic tee-shirts on sale just so I can wear them while I work out

when I work out my dog hangs out with me and jumps around imitating me and it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve EVER seen

* = I have CFS, so the “more energy” thing comes with a heavy caveat: as long as I don’t overdo it. I’ve introduced exercise SLOWLY. Like, over a few months. First I moved around the house more, then I started walking the dog, then I started doing some extremely low-impact beginner home workouts (WITH PAUSES/MODIFICATIONS). Even then, I had a 3 day crash after my first week of “real” exercise; on one of those days I barely got out of bed. I’m back at it now and feeling better, but. Like. I just have to be constantly aware of my energy balance.

** = I’m also adjusting medications for depression and PMDD, so there’s been some mood swinging that has required a lot of awareness and mindfulness, but overall the trend has been very positive

The Bad

Guilt This is... a big, complex issue I’m not smart enough to tackle here but basically... it’s a mix of my own lifelong baggage AND that unique late-capitalism feeling like our society is falling down and I don’t have any right to “improve” myself in the meantime. There’s a lot of legit social issues to unpack in that line of thinking, and I’m not going to dig into it here because... I just don’t have the mental capacity, (and also it doesn’t actually fix ANY of those issues) but yeah, that mindset severely hampered any personal progress in 2020 and I’ve just had to kind of... put it aside this year. Put on your oxygen mask before helping others and all that.

Body Positivity This is another huge and complicated topic that I have no desire to fully unpack here. But basically: there is a toxic side to “body positivity” that ignores the health risks of obesity AND the emotional problems that can lead to excessive weight gain. I believe everybody deserves respect and compassion at any size, period, and yeah, there’s some equally toxic diet culture bullshit that is ALSO best avoided. But the whole fatphobia mania has made me afraid to even talk about my weight loss publicly. I am not happy at my weight, for reasons far deeper than “conventional attractiveness.” I’m not about to pretend my current body is anything other than a result of disordered eating, alcoholism, and depression. Honoring my body means doing things for it that can be difficult, but are based around recovery and self-respect. Anyway. A rant. This shit is tiring.

Focus I have a hard time focusing on more than one thing at a time. Tackling exercise and cooking at home, doing all the workout scheduling and meal planning, basically the adult shit I forgot how to do in the midst of severe depression... it’s taken a huge chunk of my mental real estate. So I haven’t gotten to make progress on other things I wanted to in 2021, (friendships, art, writing, reading, Japanese) and it’s hard not to beat myself up about it. But. One thing at a time. And health needs to be the most important, so everything else can come back in healthier ways. Sigh.

Deceptive Non-Results To get back to a healthy body, I have about 100lbs to lose. I’m so tall that it doesn’t really look like it, because I distribute fat over a large area. I had NO IDEA what a scary amount of weight I’d gained last year. Plus, now that I’ve lost some weight, there is pretty much no discernible difference. Definitely reinforces the need for intrinsic motivation and healthy non-weight health goals cuz.... yeah. this shit is not happening quickly or dramatically.