#death to the bullshit diet industry

[therealieblog]

Ever wonder why so many diets promote losing weight quickly, by cutting out large food groups or drastically cutting back on portion sizes or calorie counts?

They do that because if people are forced to restrict over a long period of time, while showing very slow amounts of weight loss, they’ll give up. The human body can only restrict for so long before hunger hormones and anti-starvation systems kick in and force you to eat more. 

This is why so many diets push drastic measures like eliminating all carbs, or working out so hard you can’t move the next day. The diet industry knows that weight loss doesn’t work long term. It knows it has to grab people and show them results quickly, otherwise biology will kick in and make it impossible for them to keep restricting. 

When people see drastic and quick results with weight loss, they’ll keep working at it for a few months, or at least until they hit their goal weight. 

Once that’s accomplished, once the person hits their goal weight, which is relatively common in the world of dieting and weight loss (as most diets do work short term), then the diet has done it’s job. Or rather, the diet + a very concerted effort on behalf of the dieter have done their jobs.  

Then, the diet companies can turn their focus to a new crop of potential buyers and stop worrying about the people who “succeeded” at losing the weight. When those people eventually start regaining, (which 95% of them do within 2 - 5 years), it’s not the diet’s fault. It’s YOURS. You are the one who failed to maintain your goal weight, which makes you a failure. 

Never mind that no weight loss diet will reliably work long term, no matter who’s on it. Never mind that true diet “success stories” have a 5% success rate consistently across all human populations. You’re still the failure. Your body refusing to let you try and (as it perceives) starve you to death, is your fault. Your only option is to stop being a lazy loser and work harder. 

It’s all bullshit.

Anyone who tries to rush you into an expensive purchase, a large life decision, a medical procedure or a relationship, is full of shit, and diets are no exception. If you want better ways of working on your health, check out Intuitive Eating (the real kind), joyful movement workouts or options for how to move more in ways you enjoy, and read Lindo Bacon’s Health At Every Size. 

Don’t listen to diets. They are lying to you.

[patriciavetinari]

It's been simmering in my head for a while now but since I thought of it for the first time, I cannot stop seeing it: the way diet industry is culturally ingrained is very political (obviously) but also very similar to xenophobia, but it's like xenophobia towards your own body.

I mean... One of the characteristics of fascism is othering yout enemy and making that enemy into an umpossible paradox, right? Foreigners are simultaneously stupid, lazy, here for our resources and at the same time they are so hardworking they are taking all of our jobs and so cunning they are controlling the media and brainwashing the kids etc. You've heard some version of this depending on which fascist is more active in your area.

So now think of the diet industry message about your body: it's too dumb to know the diffetence if you give it carrot sticks instead of chips but it's sadistically cunning in flaring up cravings for donuts the moment you try to 'be good'. I've heard people literally talk about their body as a separate entity with a separate free will and a mind of it's own, example: 'I am so determined to lose weight, I really want to live off steamed chicken and spinach, but my body will just sabotage me and make me eat bread and candy on day two of the diet...'

That is verbatim what I hear people say about their own body. Talk about it like some evil genius, like a competition, the other side of the chess board playing against you. An organism separate from your mind and brain, just unfortunately tied to yours.

And the message of diet industry is to subjugate this entity. Play chess against it until you checkmate it into slavery. And when your body is your slave, you will overwork it and underfeed it so it looks how you want it to look so you can show it off to other slaveowners and feel superior. And then diet industry has the audacity to wrap it all in self care and body positivity language. Making your slave work harder when it would rather rest is a triumph of will, feeding your slave things it doesn't want and witholding foods it actually requests 'for their own good' is being a good slaveowner. I don't know, the messages of 'celebrate your body and what it can do' have never sit quite right with me even though they mean well. Do we celebrate our minds or hearts or souls or emotions or brains? All other aspects that make up our existence and our Being? If course preoccupation with body is also the result of diet industry, but even celebrating our body separate from our Self I find is deepening this alienation, and we really should think about celebrating our whole self and recognize our body as part of Self, as the Same entity. I don't have enough philosophy knowledge to find right terms but I feel like we should address our fucked up view on both our self as individual organism and being, because I think that could help us with alienation we experience with others as collective and humans as species.

This is some moralistic bullshit and diet industry has fucked with peoples' heads to the point that they view their own body Not As Part of Self, this is what alienation truly is, and I think this is deeper and more serious on certain level than alienation from your labour or your community. If you don't think of your body as part of your Self, I feel like you'd be much less invested in your actual well-being. If you view your body and the labor it theoretically can peoduce as commodity you can decide to waste it away so that your Soul or your Mind or whatever you consider your Self is happy. You only get one slave per life but goddamit you will work it to death so that you as Slaveowner will be happy. That is also why I feel capitalism and fascism thrives with diet industry, it ingrains this idea that you should strive for control over other slaves, less fortunate than you. All of it works in tandem, as diet industry is built on the same ideals of control, hierarchy, subjugation as other forma of oppression, so of course those systems complement each other.

I don't know. I went deeper than I planned when I started to write this. But I think it's fucked up people see their body as a separate entity, whatever status they give that entity - slave, enemy, friend. It's You. It's all You. It's not separate friend or enemy, it's just you. It doesn't have its own mind or scheme or plan to ruin you, OR to help you particularly, it's an organism that functions in tandem with other parts of you, however you define them. It can be fucked up by life's experiences, diseases and disorders, it can be healed, fully or in parts, it can be trained, but it's still you, not a separate being.

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

okay as a vegan who tries to be openminded let me take these one at a time

honey: OP you're 100% correct about the destructive impact of the agave industry. i have no intention of supporting that shitshow. youre also right about the honey industry not being cruel if good beekeepers are in charge (sidenote: honeybee/beekeeper partnerships are so cute!!! did you know that bees kept in good conditions will start to set aside a specific part of the hive to deposit honey where bees never go otherwise so that beekeepers can retrieve it with minimal disturbance??? they have a lil dropoff site it's so cute!!!) the problem is i don't trust major honey producers to be good beekeepers. i could buy from locally-kept honey farms that i was able to visit and verify the good conditions of, but as alyana pointed out the European honeybee is an invasive species in North America and does deep damage to the ecosystem as it edges out local pollinators. so until i can move to a place where the European honeybee is native, I've stopped eating honey or its alternatives. it's a flavor i miss but not one worth the ecological damage it causes.

wool: IT IS CORRECT that the modern domestic sheep grows an excess coat and if not regularly shorn will suffer symptoms of heat stroke and dehydration leading to death. HOWEVER most wool used for textiles comes from factory farms which are also unspeakably cruel to the sheep in their care. i simply can't support wool that i have not seen with my own eyes is sourced in a way that loves and respects the sheep involved, which means i can't buy wool fabrics from any large or even medium-scale distributor. if i knew a local shepherd and saw how they kept their flock, i would be happy to buy from them, but that's not feasible for me since i do not live in an area that's big for livestock agriculture. so i buy cotton fabrics. i know they're also destructive to the environment with current farming techniques, but i decided they're the least impactful of the options since factory-farmed wool is both cruel and destructive, whereas synthetic fabrics are both destructive AND fast fashion bullshit I'll need to replace in eight months.

eggs: almost entirely with you on this one!!! only thing I'll add is that modern domestic fowl have been bred to lay eggs at an unhealthy rate, which can lead some of them to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies (especially of calcium.) it's nothing that proper attentive care can't resolve but make sure whoever is providing you with eggs is giving their birds a nice well-rounded diet and that the birds seem healthy and in good spirits.

tl;dr I'm not against animal agriculture when it views the animals in question as equal partners and is respectful of the environment. unfortunately, it's so difficult to find animal agriculture that fulfills both those criteria. it's hard (dare i say impossible) to live without harming parts of the world around me, especially under capitalism, but i find that veganism is frequently the less impactful option. i also recognize that veganism does not exempt me from needing to be aware of the effect my consumption has on the world, and try to stay away from any consumption that is deeply, actively harmful.

Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.

[pvlshd]

🍍 🍊 🍒 🍐

🍍  :    how comfortable is my muse in their body ? how do they feel about their height,  weight,  strength,  and body type ? how important is being attractive to them ?

louis has never thought about his physique too much, but he has thought about death. he wonders sometimes about his own relationship with his own mortality. how will he die ? will he be murdered by some crazed fan that thinks they know him through his films or ruined a story they cherished on the page via the screen ? will it be a heart attack by way of his lifestyle: booze, recreational drugs to take the edge off, stress, high blood pressure, too much red meat and cheese. or maybe he'll die like legends, found dead one day shot in the head by a lover wronged. how will he be remembered ? as he is now, looking more or less the same but with more grey in his hair and a lot more lines on his face ? or will the image that might haunt the paramedics that come to take his body away be grotesque. a distended belly, puffed features, knobbly knees, stick-figure legs ?

he is not an energizer bunny by any means and doesn't expect to be, but he doesn't like not having the energy or the will to make his vision come out the right way, it is a dealbreaker for him. if his life is somehow sapping the juice out of his bones, he'll look at his diet, maybe try meditation, go box it out with the punching bag in his personal gym. he doesn't need to feel as strong as a marvel superhero, but strong enough for his weight class will do.

these things inform how he eats, but not always ! he does not have a sweet tooth, he grew out of that in his teens, he likes his carbs and his cheeses and his """robust""" sandwiches, vegetables are rabbit food, unless you know how to cook them into something much heartier. he eats indulgently sometimes and neglects meals at others simply because he is too preoccupied, too obsessed to remember to. he curbs his habits when it occurs to him that maybe the result of high cholesterol or high whatever, wouldn't suit the things he wants to do. it lasts for as long as he's conscious, he'll make better choices, eat conservatively, stop at four martinis, try to get on the treadmill more often. regardless, louis is often pale and gaunt. if he gets some colour, he's been florence, or milan holed up in a friend's house. he likes what he likes, but he is not a foodie per se. the food is there to sustain you, and if you have the means to have it taste good, sure, have it taste fucking good, but that's all it's for.

while being physically attractive to others isn't consciously anywhere on his list, he does have an innate need to be able to recognise himself in the mirror. he has to have the same face, remain at the same size, can't feel too much heavier than he's used to or too much lighter. he dresses for function. he wears nicer things only when there is a need to. otherwise, he'd rather be comfortable, and if other people assess the people they meet according to this, he does not care.

🍒  :    how much does my muse value companionship ? do they constantly keep people around them,  or do they prefer to be alone often ? do they have or desire to have many friends ? do they see every meeting as an opportunity to make a new friend ?

a lot of people know louis and louis knows a lot of people. the crew of every set he's worked on, his mentors, his peers. he has a lot of acquaintances and good loyal ones too ! they can almost, be counted as friends. but his inner-life and personal life aren't shared with them so they can't be counted as those true good friends everyone aspires to have. he is okay with that. the companionship he values are the people he calls for input. the ones from brooklyn that will rag on him, that will tell him what's bullshit and what can get by, the people he's known for decades. he likes being around them. he likes having cigars with industry heavyweights that he can actually stand, those guys hold the experiences and stories that he would imbibe through osmosis if he could, it's a source of inspiration. when he is working however, he prefers to be alone. if they are on location and the cast and crew has a day off, if he throws a party, it is something that's heavily planned, and that he is mentally prepared for. mood management is important for louis, the people around him never forget it.

🍐  :    how intelligent is my muse overall ? are they smarter than the average person,  or less than ? are they primarily self-taught,  or did they acquire most of their knowledge in school ? are they more street smart or book smart ?

louis is well-read. he counts on his street-smarts from when he was growing up more than his traditional schooling. schools are templated, rigid. encouraging ! sure, but true problem solving happens in the real world, where the stakes are high and there's no safety net. a lot of things are either self taught or observed from the tedious hours spent with various members of the crew from film sets and applied to his own knowledge, his own poetic views, techniques, technical details to supplement and enhance art, rather than things that create obstacles or restrictions. workarounds are a challenge for innovation, not an inconvenience.

[jeanjauthor]

The ‘dreaded swimsuit season’ is coming up, and that means people are going to be obsessing about food and exercise and losing calories.  First of all, I’m not a medical professional nor a nutritionist nor a physical therapist etc, so definitely consult with the appropriate personnel...but I cannot stress strongly enough, you must consult with non-fatphobic medical personnel.

Fatphobia kills people of all bodyweights, and this blog does not support fatphobia, especially medical fatphobia.

Now, with that said...if you want to be healthy, there are plenty of non-fatphobic things you can do about it.  And the biggest things you need to know about how to go about it are: understanding your metabolism, understanding how muscles can affect your metabolism, and understanding how diet (foods, not fatphobia industry) can affect your metabolism.

Given all the fat-shaming bullshit thrown about in the so-called “Health Industry,” it sounds counterintuitive, but you actually need to eat more in order to lose weight.  You need to teach your body that it’s not in starvation mode anymore, that it has plenty of calories and nutrients...and just start moving more.  Not necessarily exercising more, but moving more.

2,000-2,500 calories a day is the range for a “normal” body-weight-and-size person.  However, the more exercise you do, the more muscles you have, or simply the bigger a person you are (the more cells you have), the more calories you need.  Unless you’re seriously short & skinny, a 1,500 calorie meal is a starvation meal, and that will put your body into “OMFG SAVE ALL THE CALORIES AS FAT!!” mode.

Literally, a toddler’s caloric needs are 1,100, and they range from 20-35 pounds.  You’re several times that much.  This doesn’t mean that if you weigh 175 pounds that  you need to eat at least 5 times as many calories, however!  In truth, you only need about double that, because a toddler’s metabolism is geared toward growing, whereas an adult’s metabolism is geared toward maintaining.

The best way to understand this is to realize your metabolism can be divided into 4 categories.

Your Resting Metabolic Rate is simply the amount of calories needed to keep you breathing, your blood pumping, your organs functioning.  That’s 60%-75% of your caloric intake. You have your Thermic Effect of Food, which is another 10%, literally the energy it takes to chew and swallow and digest food & drinks, and then to excrete the leftover bathroom waste. The remaining two types of calorie burning are Non-Exercise Activity Thermogensis, and Activity Thermogenesis.  Of those lattermost two, your body actually burns more of the Non-Exercise calories than the Active Exercise calories...and it is designed to burn more when simply moving.

Literally, just moving a bit more than you usually do in a typical day will burn calories effectively.  Move around the house on every commercial break, stand up and sit down more often, change your position more frequently, raise and lower your arms, gently swing or kick your legs...just move more.  When they say 30 minutes of (gentle) exercise a day, this is exactly what they are talking about.  You don’t need weights, you don’t need machinery, you don’t need a gym membership.  Just move.  It’ll be a gradual process, but so long as you’re eating foods with plenty of fiber as well as other food types, you’ll feel full and won’t feel starved.

Now, if you want to burn calories even faster through vigorous exercise, you can do that, too...but again you need to use your metabolism.  Make sure you’re not starving, because your body will go into a panic attack thinking you’re not only starving but are being chased by bears and will need plenty of fat to survive while you’re unable to gather food, etc because zomg you’re being chased by bears!!1!  (Truly, the metabolism is a primitive/primal minded thing based upon hundreds of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer lifestyles, and does not comprehend modern life at all.)

And then, what do you do to burn more calories?  You build muscles.  Muscles burn a lot of calories.  Not just through using said muscles in excercise, but muscles will burn through calories even while simply resting.  The more muscles you have, the more calories your body will burn.

How do you build muscles?  Well, there are two types of muscles, which while it sounds cannibalistic, we’ll call white meat and dark meat, because it’s the easiest mnemonic to remember.  White meat (think breast meat on a chicken) is designed for strong but brief actions...and men have more white meat muscles than females, though obviously they have both kinds.  That brief sprint towards a prey animal, the thrust of a spear into its body, aaaand done.

Dark meat muscles are meant for lower-strength repetitive actions.  Walking around reaching up or stooping down or digging while gathering plants, with no need to rush and plenty of opportunities to rest.  Chasing after young children.  Weaving baskets, scraping and tanning hides into furs and leathers, cooking...these are tasks that require little to moderate amounts of strength, but most important, repeated movements.  Women tend to have more dark meat muscles than men, though obviously they have both kinds.

(The reasons why wild ducks, partridges, grouse, etc, all have dark meat breast muscles is because they use those muscles to fly long distances. Chickens evolved from jungle-floor hunt-and-peck birds that mostly flew only short distances to get away from predators by flying up to the nearest tree branches, so they literally just needed a burst of strong energy over a short period of time, hence white meat muscles.)

Which type is better?  Both, ideally, because they are useful in a variety of different ways.  Which is better for burning calories?  Ideally both, but it doesn’t really matter.  All you need to do is build muscles.

As for how to do that...you know how you feel when you exercise until you are sore?  That’s what you need to do.  This is where weights and machines and treadmills do come in handy, but still aren’t necessary, since you can lift and lower objects around your home, and get exercise bands or surgical tubing for resistance training, and go for longer walks, etc.

The object is to (gently!) push your body to the point where your muscles are sore.  You can do this by lifting weights for a few repetitions near your limit (use a spotter & practice safe lifting skills!!), which is a white meat muscle activity, or you can use lesser weights or resistance machinery (surgical tubing counts), but just do it more, which is dark meat muscle activity.

You can also do the “step down” method of weight training or resistance training, by starting near your limit, going until your muscles burn, then resting a few minutes while gently shaking out, massaging, or relaxing the muscles in question to help move the lactic acid out of your muscle tissues, along with hydrating. Then you “step down” the amount of weight (say by 20%-30%) and doing another set of reps (repetition movements) until again it’s a struggle, then another few minutes of rest, hydration, etc, before stepping down again, doing some reps...and then again when it’s at the lightest you can for as long as you can, then rest that muscle group.

Regardless of which way you weight/resistance train, take a full 48 hours off.  Or as close to 48 as you manage--weight train 3 times a week, and then take up to 72 hours (three days) off so your body can fully recover.  You can still exercise, but do not use weights or resistance machinery/rubber bands, etc.

Let your muscles use that 48 hours to heal, and eat more protein sources to help your body build more muscle strength, along with a variety of nutrients to get the right kinds of micronutrients.  Again, I must emphasize: Do not starve your body.  It will go into fat-storage mode and will only barely repair your muscles, nevermind build them bigger.

The goal is to build more muscle tissue.  if you are hungrier than usual, eat more.  Your body will tell you what it needs if you listen, and there are plenty of charts out there with “if you are craving X,Y, or Z, then try eating healthier foods A,B,C, D, E, or F!” and they’re actually not inaccurate...but it is okay to have the “less healthy” foods in moderation, same as in everything you eat.

But seriously, up your protein intake, which is what your body needs to build bigger muscles.  The average (again, your needs may be more) person needs about 4 ounces (115 grams) of protein per meal, so you can shoot for more than that.  And get your proteins from a variety of sources.  Humans can manufacture a good number of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), but we cannot synthesize 9 of them, the “9 essential amino acids.”

These 9 essential amino acids are: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.   Foods that contain all nine essential acids are called complete proteins. These include eggs, fish, beef, pork, poultry, and whole sources of soy (tofu, edamame, tempeh, and miso).

While plant proteins have lower essential amino acid contents when compared to animal proteins, they will also have different ratios of the various amio acids compared to most animal-based proteins.  This is something that vegetarians and vegans need to keep in mind.

Some plant-based foods can be combined together to complement and/or supplement.  “Rice & beans” is one such combination.  Basically, you combine a grain (in this case rice) with a pulse (legumes, like beans, or peas, etc).  Here in America, in Mexican restaurants, a serving of refried beans and Spanish rice (seasoned with tomatoes & spices) is often automatically included as a side for most dishes.  This provides a great deal of carbohydrates, but it also provides a more or less “complete protein” set of those essential amino acids.

Corn, beans, and squash plants do the same thing, providing a complete protein when combined together, as well as plenty of carbs.  These three plant types are the “Three Sisters” of indigenous North Americans.  They are best when planted together, the corn providing a trellis for the beans to grow upon, the squashes spreading out across the field to smother competing weeds, and together they feed people reasonably well.

However, they are still more carb-heavy than protein-heavy, which means vegetarians need to rely upon other sources such as nuts, plus eggs, dairy, and/or fish (if pisco-lacto-ovarian vegetarians).  Vegans in particular need to be extra careful.  Yes, peanuts have a lot of proteins compared to their carbs, same with almonds, etc, so definitely add nuts to your diets!  But just be aware that you’re going to need to be a lot more conscious of your protein types & sources--and make sure to get a variety of sources--if you’re trying to build muscles while on a vegetarian or especially on a vegan diet.  A purely plant-based diet will not have nearly as balanced a set of amino acids as what animal-inclusive diets can contain.

If you’re lacto-ovarian, this is made easier because milk, cheese, and eggs are wonderful foods with a lot of nutritional value.  If you eat fish as well, even better, full proteins in fish as well as in egg whites, etc...but that brings me to another caveat, because you should probably eat the egg yolks as well as the egg whites.

Do not skip out on fats.  Unless you have a genuine doctor-ordered medical reason, do not cut all fats out of your diet.  Your brain needs fats in order to function.  And just as with amino acids in various protein sources, there are different types of fats as well that our bodies need in different amounts for different reasons.  This isn’t to say you should chow down on the equivalent of a full stick of butter (1/2 cup, 65 grams) with each meal (unless you’re camping outdoors in winter in the far north or a mountain, because then you need fat in your diet for your body to literally burn to help keep you warm).

It’s just that you don’t want to go completely fat free...because if you do, your metabolism will go into panic mode in its primitive/primal-minded way, “ZOMG IT’S LATE WINTER/EARLY SPRING AND NOTHING HAS ANY FATS IN IT WE’RE ALL GONNA STAAAAAARRRVEEE!!” Your metabolism will start turning carbs and even proteins into fats in an effort to ensure your brain (along with other vital organs) will have enough fats to keep functioning.  So go ahead and put some butter on your toast.  Even better, put some nutbutter on your toast, since sunflower butter, peanut butter, almond butter, all those things have proteins and fats as well as carbs.

Also, your body actually does need cholesterol to function, but only in smaller amounts than you’d think.  HOWEVER, if it doesn’t get enough of the right types of cholesterol through diet, your body will make its own cholesterol, and will make more than you need, out of carbohydrates.  (Yeah, this one was a shocker to me when I learned about it, and the answer blew my mind.  Seriously, our body will make up to 10x as much cholesterol as we need if we don’t eat it, so it’s best if we do eat it.)

So how much does an average person need to consume of these critical cholesterols that it absolutely needs?  ...About 1-2 egg yolks a day (or comparable alternative sources; vegans, do some research on alternatives, or just accept that your body may try to overproduce certain cholesterols if it’s feeling nutrition-starved).  Seriously.  Just that much is enough. (Again, your needs may vary based on your body size, metabolic rate, and/or environment.)

So.  Put it all together, and you have:  1. Eat a variety of foods in sufficient quantities and qualities (fats and proteins included) to ensure your body stays healthy; 2. exercise just enough to push your muscles into feeling sore; 3. Rest 48 hours while eating a bit more protein to help your body repair and build bigger muscles; 4. Lather-rinse-repeat... and you’ll eventually get bigger muscles that burn more calories simply by existing, as well as whenever you use them to move just a bit more than you normally would.

Dark meat muscles burn more calories when at rest because they’re designed that way, because they’re small effort but frequent use with multiple short rests, lots of blood flowing through them, and thus are more metabolically “charged” than white meat muscles.  However, white meat muscles tend to be the largest muscles, and thus while not designed to burn calories as efficiently while at rest compared to dark meat muscles...they actually end up burning about the same through sheer volume.

Work on improving your muscles, move a bit more every day, eat more conscientously but not through the heavily warped fearmongering lens of the Diet Industry’s blather and/or tactics, and you will be healthy enough to go to the beach and enjoy it.  Not because you’ll have lost weight, but because you will be healthier.  (Fun fact: muscles are denser and heavier than fat, so you could literally lose inches while gaining pounds from your body burning the fat with its now increased muscle mass.)

And yes, you can weigh 260 pounds and still be healthier than someone who weighs 160.

In other words, if you have a body, and you go to the beach with it, you now have a beach body.

You’ll just be less likely to get out of breath while swimming or building sand castles or playing volleyball or whatever if you’ve upped your exercise levels between now and then.

Also:  CONTINUE TO WEAR A MASK IN PUBLIC.

Get one that matches your swimwear, or makes you feel silly & fun.  Even if everyone started wearing their masks (not going to happen, but one can dream), it will to take us all of 2021 to quell the pandemic...and because people won’t be wearing their masks, keep wearing that mask.  Yes, even if you have had all your shots.  Because people aren’t wearing masks, the virus is able to spread, and when it spreads, there’s always a chance it will mutate, and cause new strains of infections...which it already has.  So wear your damn mask.

[stealth-liberal]

I think we need to talk about celebrities with obvious eating disorders. Famous people who are so skinny that there is no POSSIBLE way they can be eating in any way that resembles a healthy diet and be as tiny as they are.

We seem to have gotten complacent. We have decided we just can't talk about it. We are either too afraid of their fans or we are too afraid of being accused of being judgmental. It is time to tell the truth, there is no such thing as health at any size. If you exist on either extreme on the scale, you're killing yourself. Slowly, but surely you are killing yourself.

And while I have MAJOR beef with the body positivity movement for trying to have it both ways (obvious anorexia/bulimia is deadly but morbid obesity is somehow healthy) that's not what this is about. This is about looking at women AND men starving themselves to fucking nothing while we sit on the sidelines and cheer.

We. Are. Complicit.

We wax poetic about "body proportions". We consume videos where these people talk about how much they don't don't eat. We can see the misery behind their eyes. And what do we do? We praise their discipline.

We talk about the diet industry but REFUSE to listen to professionals who spend their lives treating people with eating disorders who tell us till they're blue in the face that ED is almost always about control. About feeling so out of control that the only way to have control is about what you put into or force out of your body.

I am 5'10" and when my son died, many years ago, I was out of my mind with grief. The military controlled my every move, controlled how I could grieve, so I stopped eating. I ate only once a day and then took laxatives to shit out the rest. I got down to 99 pounds. If my friends hadn't intervened I'd be dead by now. I was killing myself by inches. To this day, sometimes when shit gets bad I want to stop eating, I think laxatives might help that feeling of not being in control. But I don't do it, I am one of the lucky ones, one of the 35% of anorexics who recover.

The other 65%, they don't recover. They battle it for the rest of their lives. Anorexia is the mental disorder with the highest body count. There are Karen Carpenters everywhere, but we do nothing because we're too busy cheering them on to their graves. We cheer them on to their deaths, starving, alone, sad and so goddamn hungry it eventually kills them.

We look at women so skinny they are clearly flirting with death while we watch and we just shrug our shoulders. Women like Ruby Rose, Blackpink's Rose, Thandie Newton. We mock them, we accept it. "What can you do?" we say. "That's life in the public eye for women." we justify.

And the men? Well forget that. If a pretty man who is famous is clearly starving themselves we REFUSE to see it. Hysterical fangirls who should know better rise to the defense... of what? A slow goddamn suicide? Too afraid to call it what it is? Dylan Hollis, Kim Seokjin, Jung Hoseok just to name 3 famous men who are CLEARLY being eaten alive by anorexia and no says a word. We just coo and say how pretty they are, how cute. "Look at their amazing proportions!" we cry.

When these women and men eventually either go into the hospital for treatment or they die, we say "How could we have known!"

Bullshit. We knew. We saw. We sat by and cheered and did nothing. We. Were. And. Are. Complicit.

As for me? Fuck it. I'm not being quiet anymore. I'm alive today because the people I loved decided to stop being quiet when they realized I wouldn't stop on my own. So I'm not staying silent anymore. Not for the people I know and not for the people I don't.

These human beings are killing themselves before my eyes and I won't stay silent anymore.

[vaspider]

No, it's not a recipe for early death, please stop mindlessly rabbiting back what the multi-billion-dollar weightloss industry pumps into the world.

I beg you to listen to like one episode of Maintenance Phase or read a book or two. This modern obsession with thinness is not just wrong, it's racist as hell.

Firmly in place by the time the diet industry began to flourish in the 1920s, the development of fat stigma was related not only to cultural anxieties that emerged during the modern period related to consumer excess, but, even more profoundly, to prevailing ideas about race, civilization and evolution. For 19th and early 20th century thinkers, fatness was a key marker of inferiority, of an uncivilized, barbaric, and primitive body. This idea—that fatness is a sign of a primitive person—endures today, fueling both our $60 billion “war on fat” and our cultural distress over the “obesity epidemic.”

Whatever you do, stop putting this fatphobic and factually wrong bullshit on shit you reblog from me. Medical fatphobia almost lost me the use of everything below my L1 vertebra because a doctor was so BLINDED by my BIG FAT ASS that he didn't even bother to do any tests past looking at me and saying YEAH YOU FAT. I lived in fucking agony for years because my doctor didn't listen. He just put me on 1300 calories a day (which is about what you feed a fucking toddler, not a 35yo adult) and ignored me when I said I wasn't getting better. I just needed to work harder to lose the weight. Never mind that I was furious with everyone all the time because I was literally starving, and couldn't exercise because I couldn't fucking walk from the pain.

When I needed help to walk to the bathroom at work, my wife finally got pissed off enough to demand that I go back to my family doctor, who looked at me for a very literal thirty seconds before sending me to get an MRI of my spine. That very simple test which - again - the other doctor didn't bother ordering for two years as I slowly lost my ability to do fuck all and missed doing cool shit with my daughter from ages 10-12? Yeah, it revealed a 2.5cm tumor growing on my spinal cord sheath, compressing my spinal cord.

I was really lucky - it was benign. I didn't die like my friend Ginny, who had a tumor in the same spot and lost the tumor lottery. I'm lucky. Genuinely. I know of far too many fat people who fucking died because their doctors didn't do the same tests on them that they do on skinny people.

And it's all fucking lies! It's all fucking lies. All that suffering and fatphobia is because of racism and money.

And here you are, vomiting up the same fucking garbage.

Don't respond. You're wrong, and I'm not arguing with you. Sit down, shut up, and learn before you keep perpetuating the same harmful bullshit that caused me years of agony.

An 8,000-year-old marble figurine of a voluptuous woman was unearthed in 2016 in the Neolithic urban settlement of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The figurine is 17 centimeters long, 11 centimeters wide and weighs one kilo.

[roo-bastmoon]

Hi Roo, hope your day is great!

Am so happy to see Jimin in the last Run BTS. He looks so happy and carefree, and I realized that it is enough for me. Of course as my bias I want him to be praised more, appreciated more, supported more, shown love more. But looking at him these days (at least for the ones we are shown), he seems to be content.

And as long as he is happy, I will be happy for him too.

He said he gained weight, which I also can see. But I like it! Means he eats well. And he is glowing! Always love our beautiful happy glowing carefree Jimin-ah ❤️

Hi there, Happy Anon,

I agree, Jimin looked very content, relaxed, and healthy in this RUN episode. Earlier in the year I was really worried for him, what with illness, bullshit scandal, and work stress. But the first RUN episode was filmed only a month ago and he was giggly, playful, and open.

With regard to the weight thing... Jimin said on his Vlog (which I am guessing was filmed in the spring) that he gained about 7lbs since he had his wisdom teeth removed and he was shocked to see his face. I think he is one of those people who gains weight in his cheeks first. His body is still on the lower side of the BMI scale even now. I have never once understood the antis who call Jimin "pigman" because he has never, ever been overweight.

Now I'll level with you here on a personal note: I'm in recovery from a binge-eating disorder... and I was borderline bulimic back when I was a teenager and involved in really intense professional ballet training, some 30 odd years ago. The world of professional dancing--just like the world of K-pop, it seems--is just absolutely appalling when it comes to the rules around a performer's weight, and it warps your understanding of what's proper and safe.

Can I say for sure Jimin has an eating disorder? Nope. I notice he trends towards either feast or famine, and he brings up his body weight in a negative light a LOT. But I can't diagnose him as obsessed or disordered. I just think he could use some better self-talk, especially given the standards of his industry.

I don't ever, EVER, want to see Jimin go through this again:

I'm sorry but someone who does such intense choreo and is on the go as much as he is has no business being gaunt. I won't budge on my stance here. I don't give a crap about cultural norms, Jimin deserves to eat three nutritious meals a day, lift weights in addition to doing cardio, and look his natural age. If that "hurts" his idol career, then the industry doesn't deserve him.

Jimin deserves to have fully functioning organs, a natural sleep cycle undisturbed by hunger pangs, and to experience genuine esteem when he looks in the mirror; in fact, everyone deserves it. No one should faint from hunger; no one should receive online death threats from having bread cheeks; no one should use dental pain as a diet strategy. That's fucked up.

Park Jimin is amazing because he's such a chameleon. He can pull off any look. He can be a siren, a student, a sex god, a boy next door, a CEO, a daddy dom, a nerd, a puppy kitty, a demon, a court jester, a mafioso, a mermaid, a boyfriend, a fairy, a prince, a fashionista, a b-boy, a sweetheart, a brat... and he's always mesmerizing while doing it.

Never once has his weight gotten in the way. I hope by now he knows that.

Now, I have to stop procrastinating and hop back on work deadlines. Thank you for the happy distraction.

Yours,

Roo

[tg-headcanons]

You ever think about that whole argument (from the narrator/Ishida) that humans are just like ghouls because they eat animals to survive? So, so flawed. A LOT of people are vegetarian or vegan these days. It would have been better to make the argument that any animal's survival is dependent on the death of others, whether those 'others' are slaughtered or not. Circle of life and all that.

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS

This is one of the ways in which tokyo ghoul gets close to a nuanced philosophy, but instead falls short into a tired old cliche. It’s just inches away from getting the point, but is held back by a major issue with Ishida’s writing style: Full focus on individual responsibility

We see it with how he portrays Kaneki alone with very little focus on countless other people who contributed as the catalyst for Change. We see it with how he portrays a handful of CCG members and Ghouls as “the bad ones who are making it worse for everyone else” rather than predictable products of their world’s system. And we see it with how he frames the world in a philosophical sense. There’s far too much focus on single people and simple goals. What will Kaneki do to save the world? What will Touka do to protect kaneki? What will Hinami do to decide if she’s a good person or not? It fails to take into account the sheer immensity of outside forces. It shouldn’t be “will X character choose to do Y?” it should be “how does Z effect X character’s ability or reason to do Y?”

Think about how Hinami had to kill Kureo because otherwise she and Touka would die horrifically. Was that even a choice? Could anyone blame her for fighting for her life when it was the only way to live? Or how Nishiki ate a piece of Kimi. Was he ever in a position to turn her offer of herself down? Was there any other way for him to survive then? Or how countless ghouls hunt down innocent people to eat. How else are they supposed to get food for themselves and their families? What other way can they survive starvation when every other Avenue is purposely blocked?

But I’m every single case, the situation these characters are in are set aside in favor of framing it as decisions they made with no other factors than their own desires

Now let’s compare that to how humans interact with meat. We’ve evolved for it, we sweat, see, and even support complex brains because we eat meat. Whether we like it or not we are predators, and that has been the case since the first hominids took down prey with sticks and rocks. We’ve been doing this for ages and it’s ingrained in our biology, cultures, and day to day life. Of course throughout history people have chosen not to. Whether it be for religious reasons, not liking it, or just being uncomfortable with the thought of eating animals some people have always been vegetarian, but in recent years there’s been way more. Sometimes it’s about diets, but other times people claim that to eat meat is unethical. “How could you eat a poor animal? How can you support factory farms? That’s disgusting I’m gonna email you a link to a poorly researched paper focused solely on Eurocentric ideas of consumption and terrible comparisons to actual human suffering that will guilt you into veganism”

The thing is, eating meat isn’t inherently evil. Not to sound like a cannibal or anything but I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with eating both humans and animals given that it’s done respectfully. The problem comes when we focus on what farming is like now, that animals are mistreated, that farm workers are mistreated, that it can harm the environment, but does that make people who eat meat evil? Are they supporting this when they get dinner?

No, of course not, and to understand why we need to look at the reasons. First and foremost, it’s just good for a lot of people. Many people can’t survive on vegan/vegetarian diets, many people struggle with food and animal products are what they can eat, and often animal products are the easiest and most affordable food out there. Even in urban areas it’s hard to find food without animal products that are affordable in the long term for everyone, and that’s in the best case scenario. Look at places like Alaska, food most take for granted costs so much that no one can reasonably live only off that, and people there have lived off of animals they’ve caught for millennia before diet crazes existed. And yes, there are so many ways in which the methods of farming are unethical and harmful and those should absolutely be called out, but the responsibility lies with those profiting from it. How much evil is someone tight on cash trying to make it last until their next paycheck doing by taking their family to McDonald’s rather than getting food so much less filling for the same amount of money or more?

There’s so much complication added by factoring in society and capitalism and colonization’s effect on the local environment and what kind of life our meat animals live, but in the end, predation is natural. Animals eat animals, and humans who have benefited so much from our rise on the food change as early hominids are the only ones who take issue with it. Some people believe it really is evil and unnatural to eat animals, and they are free to believe that for themselves, but it speaks volumes about their own privilege when they turn that judgement on the people just trying to eat enough to survive. It isn’t a massive personal stake, it’s trying to survive in a world that has so many roadblocks to something as simple as a full meal

So compare that to ghouls. They steal bodies and hunt and kill because they have to. The rich may be able to outsource the carnage and keep the blood off their hands so they seem ethical, but they contribute to the deaths of humans the same way people touting that the animal farming industry is killing the world will buy animal product substitutes that harm people and the ecosystem just as much. After all, is the agave syrup that some company tore up a shitload of land in a more exploitable country to farm any less harmful because you can pretend that no people or animals were hurt? They can feel bloodless, but that doesn’t make what they do more ethical. It just lets them feel like it

As for the poor ghouls? They have to hunt. They get to play the part of ravenous monster because they don’t have the time or money to have someone else get bodies for them. Even anteiku ghouls have a little privilege by finding bodies that are already dead. Not every ghoul has a car to pick up corpses, or bodies that can walk that distance, or the knowledge to find good spots. Most hunt since the people that have died naturally are locked away because humans think of themselves as too evolved to take part in the circle of life, and would rather ghouls keep killing than let their loved ones be eaten like most animals are

In the end you’re completely right. Any animal’s survival is dependent on the deaths of others. All we as people can control is how kindly that is done. Humans with the means to can choose not to eat meat, but humans who don’t and ghouls can’t, and that does not make them evil. If humans in the TG world were willing to give the dead to the ghouls, it’s entirely possible that they wouldn’t need to hunt anymore. Meat will always be necessary, but the way they get it can be better, and that change relies solely on the system preventing them from having ethically sourced food. The fault does not lie with the individuals who need to eat

Ishida fell just short of the point in favor of the boring and nihilistic “oOoOh HuMaNs ArE tHe REAL mOnStErS” thing because it’s edgy and easy, but not correct. There’s nothing evil about having a biological need to eat meat, there’s nothing evil even for humans who don’t need to to eat meat, it’s just the circle of life. Nature is gruesome sometimes, but claiming that people are inherently evil is just edgelord bullshit. We can make the ways we get meat better if the people profiting off of it are held accountable, and ghouls can too if the people profiting off of their slaughter are held accountable.

Humans and ghouls are alike. Neither are bad for feeding themselves, and both can benefit a whole lot by not fighting over who is worse and instead demanding that the people in charge of their world make it better

[naamahdarling]

TW: eating disorder stuff, angry rant.

I mean, the starvation diet used on prisoners in Guantanamo as a form of torture is at the high-ish end of medical recommendations for weight loss: 1500 cal/day. The dudes in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment were on 1570 cal/day and one went batshit and cut off two of his own fingers with an axe. He didn't remember why. They were all extremely unstable by the end.

I don't think the weight loss industry has any right to tell us that calorie restriction is an okay or safe thing to do, either physically or ESPECIALLY psychologically.

I don't think anyone should get to profit off people's bodies by provoking them into disordered behavior when we KNOW that starvation -- which weight loss dieting is -- has incredibly deleterious effects on the human body and mind.

I had really nasty orthorexia, and a "good day" was walking five miles on 1000-1500 calories/day, followed by 1-2 hours of cardio or an hour of free weights. The doctors and nutritionist thought that was just fine. "It's getting in your 10,000 steps, and there IS no upper limit on cardio, do as much as you want! As for the calories, if that's what it takes to conquer your stubborn metabolism, well, do what you have to do. You're losing weight, that's fantastic."

I was the ideal weight-loser. I lost about 70 pounds. I still never got down to an ideal BMI. They wanted me to lose more. I just wanted to be "healthy" because I DID believe all the bullshit about fat being deadly.

I was 140 lbs. and 5 feet tall and a size 10. That was overweight. I told myself I would kill myself if I ever got above 150 again. Does that sound like a person in good mental health, or does it sound like some sort of horror story? That was the level of damage I HAD to do to myself psychologically to maintain the horrendous punishment I was putting myself through. Death threats.

God knows what it did to me physically. I gained it all back plus a whole lot more. And I still struggle with hating myself and thinking I am disgusting over 20 years later.

Never again. NOBODY has the right to demand that of me or of you, or say it is safe.

There is NO SCIENCE that will EVER convince me that doing that was in my best interests, or that it increased my health. Weight loss scams and gaslighting medical professionals who push disordered behavior on patients can go straight to hell.

It is WILD to me that people continue to think they can "gotcha" me into saying the science on weight loss doesn't say what it says. Like, it's not what the authors say; it's what the data reflect. And the data don't give one single hot shit about your reason for wanting weight loss. You can have a terrible reason or a great reason and it doesn't matter. The reason behind your desire for an outcome doesn't change whether the data support the likelihood of it happening or not. There isn't a secret Option C here. The options are A) try to make peace with your weight or B) fight it forever. And if you fight it, the data are pretty clear that you're worse off than if you make peace and take the best care of yourself that you can. You can hate vegetables, you can want it to be easier to find clothes that fit, you can be disabled and find physical exertion challenging, but it doesn't matter. There is no secret option where, because you hate vegetables, your body works differently than every other body that's been studied.

There IS a database of people who have managed to sustain long-term large-scale weight loss. They're so rare we study them extensively. In general, they eat severely restricted diets and exercise for at least an hour a day. I have no desire to recommend eating disorders to my patients. If staying thin is occupying time and brain-space you could be putting into other things that are more meaningful to you, do those other things.

[awed-frog]

What I don't understand is how angry people get when they are told that obesity and being overweight are both risk factors for poor covid outcomes. I was already working on losing weight but that lit a fire under me. I shared some of my weight loss journey to help. The pushback was insane. It's not a moral judgement, I'm overweight too! Boomers can't help their age, but weight is changeable. Diseases don't care about hurt feelings. Anything we can do to better our chances should be priority one.

Hey, first of all congrats on making good decisions! It’s not easy but you’re right - if you’re overweight or obese, now is a great time to take care of your health and reduce your risk to catch this thing, so KUDOS!

(Really: I know we’re all panicked af, and I’m not shaming anyone who’s gaining weight because of a stressful home situation or emotional eating or anything, but developing healthier coping mechanisms is absolutely crucial, and we all need to do our best there.)

As for the why, I think there’s several reasons.

First, nobody knows anything about nutrition. Even doctors barely study the subject in med school, and for most of them it doesn’t go beyond ‘What foods to avoid if you have turtle vomiting disease’ and the like. The idea that nutrition may be the best form of preventive medicine is still beyond reach for most healthcare professionals. As for regular people, we’re not better off. Most of us discussed nutrition maybe twice in formal education - I remember a two-hour lesson on what calories are, and about six cooking lessons which only featured party-appropriate foods and a few cakes.

Second, the issue is complicated by the fact food is not just how we keep our bodies alive. For mostly everyone, food is about culture, tradition, habits, personality, comfort, being shown affection and showing affection to others. Food is not neutral, and that’s one reason why recovery is so difficult for people with eating disorders, and why people who need to change their diet because of specific health concerns find it so challenging to let go of certain foods. 

Finally, and possibly most importantly, the food industry profits off low-quality stuff and it will fight to the death to protect its turnover. Politically, they lobby against any kind of regulation, from safe working conditions in their factories to clearer labels for consumers, but they also target people directly. On top of increasingly sophisticated marketing and lab-perfected recipes, the industry actively funds biased research and makes sure disinformation is spread. Back in January, during my no-sugar month, I read a French book detailing how this works in France - it’s beyond scary. As with smoking and climate change, the goal is not winning the argument but confusing people. ‘One day you hear [food] is bad, the day after they say it prevents heart disease’ - one of those two facts is complete bullshit, but the damage is done. People are fed up and automatically revert to the path of least resistance, which is littered with soft drinks and junk food.   

(I don’t want to add fat activists to this list because I’ve never seen any studies on how influential they are and how many people they brainwash, but while their ideology may not be a huge contributing factor to the mess we’re in, they certainly don’t help.) 

The result of all this is that people mostly grow up steeped into what some call ‘fat logic’ and never manage to claw their way out of it. We live in an obesogenic environment; we accept the idea people put on weight during college, with pregnancy, as they age; that weight gain is mostly inevitable and irreversible; that how much you weigh is out of your control, down to genes and luck. And for most of us, disastrous attempts at fad diets only reinforces the belief nothing can be done and you should just find a way to accept yourself and be happy. 

If you buy into these arguments, then yes, you’re going to be angry and resentful af. It makes complete sense. You’re surrounded by enticing high kcal food and encouraged to snack all day long. Meanwhile, you’ve got fat activists on one side, actively spreading the idea that telling people to lose weight is basically conversion therapy, as weight is as unchangeable as your skin colour or your sexuality, and governments on the other, focusing on the ‘personal responsibility’ message, which further reinforces the idea weight gain is a moral failure. It’s a complete catastrophe.

On the whole, I’m not surprised people react so negatively. I want to hope this virus can be a watershed moment and bring about systemic change, but for now it doesn’t look likely. Still, I’m dreaming of a better future of sustainable food production and the industry heads being dragged to the Hague. No law against optimism, is there?

[cyclogenesis]

☕️- the "fast fashion" industry

This is an interesting subject! I mean, you know, I don't love fast fashion. I've been selling vintage (my vintage shop is called Sara Louise Vintage! go look!) for seven years now and collecting it for even longer. And fast fashion - oof, the quality just does not compare. (Putting the rest behind the cut as I have a lot of thoughts on this from working in the fashion industry haha.)

Flipping through racks at thrift shops you can literally feel the difference from garment to garment. Even made in America juniors fashion from the 1990s still feels sturdier and is better constructed than Fashion Nova/Missguided/Forever 21 etc. which can feel (barely) one step above Halloween costume construction. And thrift shop racks are stocked with the latter because it's made to be disposable like that, to take advantage of momentary trends at the expense of the vast number of people, often women, in the supply chain being paid poverty wages to work long hours in horrifying conditions (thinking of Rana Plaza still makes me feel sick) to keep churning out tons of this stuff every day. It's awful for the human beings who make these items, the ones who live with the pollution generated by the production of them, and for all of us who come to expect incredibly cheap prices on clothes, thus devaluing that labor even further and feeding into the cycle.

But it can also be hard as fuck to remove yourself from that. I worked for five years at a fashion brand that rode the wave of "sustainable" fashion while in actuality that was fucking bullshit - I remember days where the factory in India had to completely shut down because the air quality was so bad due in large part to pollution from that factory and others in the same district. My coworker visited that same factory and saw the workers dyeing fabric by hand in buckets in a crowded room where it was about 100 degrees and humid. Meanwhile, this brand was marketing itself as ethical slow fashion, while releasing multiple drops per season and wildly overproducing stock, and the quality was often not that fucking great, especially for the hundreds of dollars they were charging for each piece. And that's like, a fraction of the terribleness, and they were certainly not alone in pulling shady shit like that! (Remember when ethical fashion giant Everlane decided to union-bust? Uhhh yikes lmao!)

Which is to say: this shit is complicated. I recognize that cheap clothes are the only option for some people, and that it's especially hard to shop ethically (whatever the fuuuuck that means) if you're over like a size 12. Working in fashion and seeing behind the curtain, especially at a brand where the owners were pretty much openly lying about ethics and sustainability for clout, was disillusioning as fuck for me. I shop secondhand almost exclusively now for clothing, and the new things I buy (underpants, size 10 shoes which I fucking wish I could find more of when vintage shopping, 34E bras which are hard enough to find as it is oh my god) tend to get worn to death. Thrift shops have plenty of shit if you're willing to look, and buying vintage is pretty much always supporting a small business rather than yet another megacorp. Neither contribute to the creation of yet more clothes that the world does not need, made by people who live lives that you would not enjoy yourself. I know that's not possible for everybody - but like eating a largely plant-based diet, it's something I do to feel okay about the world I live in, and what I take from it.

Thank you for asking me to discuss this very intense subject upon which I could continue expounding for hours. 🤪

[cartoonsrulemylife]

OCD-based hyper-responsibility . my mental illness.

I'm getting vulnerable

Hyper responsibility involves feeling responsible for others all of the time. It is an involuntary urge to avoid disasters – all day long. This urge consumes your mind every minute of every day.

Ex You see a nail on the floor,

so you pick it up before someone accidentally steps on it. You pick it up not just for yourself, but also for anyone else who could step on it. You feel like it is your responsibility to look out for everyone – to ensure that everyone is safe. If someone was injured because of that nail, the guilt would eat you alive because you left it there.

Because you were the first person to see the nail – protecting others has become YOUR responsibility. So, if you don’t pick up the nail and someone steps on it – it is YOUR fault. YOU saw the danger and did nothing.

So, ultimately, hyper-responsibility involves feeling overwhelmingly responsible for someone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions, safety, and happiness. Hyper-responsibility feels like it is your responsibility to solve all the ills of the world, and if something happens on your watch, it is your fault, even if you played no role in it. Hyper-responsibility is often termed a “savior complex” because of the need or urge to “save” others from impending danger.

You truly believe that if you do not act immediately, you will be blamed when someone gets hurt. What if the nail becomes so deeply lodged in the person’s foot that he or she needs surgery to remove it? Or, what if the person doesn’t feel the nail in his or her foot, causing an infection and leading to gangrene?

This is called hyper-responsibility and it is common in people with OCD.

Those scenarios most likely will not happen, however, the mere thought of it terrifies you, triggering extreme anxiety. You quickly pick up the nail and place it on the kitchen counter.

Crisis averted.

Of course, the world will not shatter if you don’t pick up the nail, because most likely if you don’t pick it up the next person will. But, in the mind of someone with OCD, a tragedy will occur if you don’t do something (like pick up the nail).

OCD-based hyper-responsibility involves feeling responsible for others all of the time. It is an involuntary urge to avoid disasters – all day long. This urge consumes your mind every minute of every day.

OCD fears permeate your mind until you remove the stimulus (the nail). To you, the danger feels real, even if it’s not entirely realistic or plausible. You become obsessed with the fear then the anxiety rushes in and the only way to calm your nerves is to engage in compulsions (ritualistic behaviors).

Although hyper-responsibility is more prevalent in people with OCD, we all experience forms of it from time-to-time. For instance, most of us would pick up a nail, if we saw it to prevent injuries. This is instinctual. Most people would also feel some degree of guilt and shame if they did not do something to prevent someone from getting hurt. But, this is especially true if you struggle with OCD.

People with OCD perform ritualistic behaviors to try to ease their stress and anxiety and avoid feeling guilty for their feelings. Unfortunately, this reprieve only lasts a short time. Once, these individuals are exposed to one of their OCD triggers, the cycle of obsessions and compulsions repeat. And, yes, the feeling of hyper-responsibility can return with a vengeance.

The fear of danger, harm, or death infiltrates your mind (obsessions), so you spend most of your day extinguishing “small fires” (averting disasters). It’s time-consuming and exhausting, yet, you feel it is YOUR responsibility alone to prevent these tragedies. Taking responsibility for yourself and others becomes the sole focus of your life. It is an insistent urge to protect everyone from devastation, however, what actually happens is you end up devastating your own life.

hyper-responsibility involves feeling overwhelmingly responsible for someone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions, safety, and happiness. Hyper-responsibility feels like it is your responsibility to solve all the ills of the world, and if something happens on your watch, it is your fault, even if you played no role in it. Hyper-responsibility is often termed a “savior complex” because of the need or urge to “save” others from impending danger.

What is the Relationship Between OCD and Hyper-Responsibility?

Doubt and fear are the main hallmarks of OCD. But, this isn’t your normal everyday fear and doubt – when you have OCD, it’s more intense and persistent. For people with OCD, hyper-responsibly involves incapacitating and paralyzing fear and doubt. And, the only way to stop these intrusive thoughts (obsessions) is to “remedy” or “fix” the situation (compulsions). It is an urge to solve any problem that crosses your mind – or path. It’s assuming responsibility for others – on steroids.

It feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, because you’ve become a real-life superhero – preventing disasters and saving lives. This hyper-responsibility impacts every area of your life, because when a problem pops up, you feel the need to resolve it. If you don’t act or you try and fail, guilt and shame sit in – even if it was an impossible feat. Should you feel guilty and ashamed? No, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling that way.

Hyper-responsibility threatens to take over your entire life, controlling your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Understand that people with OCD are fearful and doubtful of almost everything

Is it possible to end this never-ending hyper-responsibility cycle? Yes.

You can stop feeling like you’re responsible for the world, but it will not be simple or easy. It involves confronting your fears and guilt and fighting your urge to “fix” the person or situation. Understand that this urge to “fix” every possible problem is a compulsion. So, if you can change the way you perceive (see) a situation, the urge to perform actions to “remedy” the ills of the world will lessen and hopefully, go away altogether. But, it will take work and help from a qualified mental health specialist (i.e. counselor, therapist, or psychologist).

Imagine what you can do once the obsessions and compulsions are gone. You’ll have more time to engage in the things that actually bring you joy. You’ll also have the ability to really help others by volunteering at domestic violence, animal, or homelessness shelter, helping a friend work through personal, social, or work issues, spending time with the elderly, donating your time to a charity, etc. There is so much good you can do once you get your OCD under control.

You can’t make the world a better place until you realize that you are not solely responsible for everyone’s safety and happiness.

https://impulsetherapy.com/hyper-responsibility-ocd-what-does-it-all-mean/

This is my life/ mind everyday and I hate it. I lose hours to it i changed a diet once for it that went badly. I just want the bad feelings to go away

My thing.. As a kid i tapped Jesus pic three times bec if i didn't my parents would die

I would have bad thoughts or curse out ny folks in my head felt guilty and wrote em to my parents.

As s young adult i wanted to tell store people i ate grapes as a kid without paying for em or chocolate mints from a cracker barrel or a cop about checking out a abandoned house. Any small crime the itch to tell was loud

It got worse

My thing for a while was china has concentration camps and child labor don't buy from china don't buy from stores that sell stuff from china or feel bad when you do because that means you support child labor. Don't buy from companies that profit from child labor . This was impossible its like every store and every company at some point. I stopped using crayola for like a year they're toys are from china

Farming industry has abuse issues my brain just buy meat from stores you trust only eat meat from stores you trust. ended after a gallbladder attack

Now its about the pedo guy from ren x stimpy i have to know everything he worked on and his workers to never watch anything from em .

or how do i know if any cartoon is clean and made by good people maybe everyone sucks you don't know you need to know.

My brain is all about wanting to know or wanting to tell others the negative bullshit i know or I'm human garbage if i don't it's an itch but telling people never ever helps in the end

. some days its manageable others is not and when my ocd fixation leaves it opens a new one every time.

It just it sucks I'm so stressed

[crazy-pages]

Ex-fucking-scuse me? Does this claim that the predatory industry isn't the weight-loss pills industry (selling a ruinously expensive drug in limited supply, needed badly for diabetic treatments, which only temporarily loses you weight while you're on it, and causes weight loss by just tricking your body into not noticing it's literally starving)?

Two industries can be fucking predatory at the same time!!!

This is happening because we are trapped in a set of old stories about what obesity is and the morally acceptable ways to overcome it. But the fact that so many of us are turning to the new weight-loss drugs can be an opportunity to find a way out of that trap of shame and stigma — and to a more truthful story.

Or maybe the problem is that we need to reckon with two facts: Obesity isn't something which can be 'overcome' (there are no peer reviewed scientific studies supporting the existence of any way to reliably make people lose weight on a 5+ year timeline, no not even Ozempic), and it's not something which needs to be overcome! The concept of morally acceptable ways to lose weight (through hard work and toil) isn't bad because it excludes other ways to fulfill the moral imperative to lose weight, it's bad because it's predicated on a moral imperative to lose weight!

Also really? An anecdote about a rat study on nutrition? One of the things for which rats are absolutely not analogous to humans for?

Reducing or reversing obesity hugely boosts health, on average: We know from years of studying bariatric surgery that it slashes the risks of cancer, heart disease and diabetes-related death.

Let's define "risks", shall we?!?! Because the "risks" of obesity with respect to heart-disease is an increase in your odds of getting a heart-attack, but when you take into account obese people having higher survival odds from heart attacks, well...

The term "obesity paradox" refers to the observation that, although obesity is a major risk factor in the development of cardiovascular and peripheral vascular disease, when acute cardiovascular decompensation occurs, for example, in myocardial infarction or congestive heart failure, obese patients may have a survival benefit. In addition, it has been suggested that obese patients tend to fare better after certain surgical procedures, such as coronary artery bypass surgery. Moreover, it appears that obese men with chronic hypertensive heart disease live longer than men of normal weight. Mounting evidence shows that obesity alone may confer a survival benefit independent of age, medical care, or therapy.

HUH! It's almost like blithely asserting that obesity makes you more likely to die of a heart attack is kind of bullshit.

This article is an embarrassment and a shame and I'm so frustrated every time another one of these nonsense unscientific op-eds comes out hyping the latest diet industry grift as "totally not like the rest of the predatory industry".

You’re not a sinner for gaining weight. You’re a typical product of a dysfunctional environment that makes it very hard to feel full. If you are angry about these drugs, remember the competition isn’t between you and your neighbor who’s on weight-loss drugs. It’s between you and a food industry constantly designing new ways to undermine your satiety. If anyone is the cheat here, it’s that industry. We should be united in a struggle against it and its products, not against desperate people trying to find a way out of this trap.

— Ozempic Is Repairing a Hole in Our Diets Created by Processed Foods [nytimes.com]

[happymetalgirl]

The 15 Worst Metal Albums of 2020

This list might have been shorter if not for my running into a few awful albums at the end of the year that I had been avoiding wisely up until that point. My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and what’s done is done. I’m paying the price for it by going back over the worst albums I heard all year. Let’s get this over with.

15. Ghøstkid - Ghøstkid

This was the debut solo album from the former singer of Eskimo Callboy, who had a pretty decent backing of hype heading into this release under the Ghøstkid moniker, but with the namesake frontman putting in no more than the standard performance on a bunch of poorly assembled tracks in an unappealing and dated poppy metalcore style, ultimately the eponymous album wound up disappointing me pretty substantially.

14. Powerman 5000 - The Noble Rot

Powerman 5000 are just such a low-rate band that even one of their more okay albums makes it here. While not as astoundingly, mind-numbingly basic as their worst material, The Noble Rot is still some of the most unevolved, underwritten, and forgettable electro rock and industrial metal I’ve heard from a big name artist. This is some eighth grade level songwriting here, and that’s a fuckin’ feat for a band that’s been around longer than any eighth grader has.

13. Corey Taylor - CMFT

There was a lot of hype around Corey Taylor finally coming out with a solo project, and it was pretty damn disappointing to hear a bunch of uninteresting classic rock too tacky for Stone Sour. CMFT focuses on the fun side that has made its creator such an enigmatic figurehead in the metal press, but its one-note approach does little more than highlight Corey Taylor’s songwriting deficiencies. I really could have seen this album turning out better too, with just some more time and care put into it, if a fun time of an album is what Taylor was going for. Unfortunately Taylor tried to make a party album and a grand ceremonial tribute to his greatness at the same time, and ego-petting and partying don’t really go hand in hand.

12. Evildead - United States of Anarchy

It has some good bones underneath it, but Evildead’s long overdue (if anyone was asking for it) third album wears out its welcome so quickly with some of the most adolescent thrash I’ve heard in a while. The band gets some good rhythms going and the vocals aren’t terrible either, fitting the older thrash style pretty well. But the band’s predictable formula tires out very quickly, and the political commentary of the lyrics is too cheesy and cringeworthy to ignore. It seems every year we get a handful of these kinds of albums that try to get into the simmering thrash revival with some ultra retro approach, and a good portion of those albums are from long-defunct bands who figure their primitive old-school approach might be a selling point despite their sounds often being even more juvenile against the backdrop of today’s metal landscape. So it’s not a huge surprise or anything to hear an album as ham-fisted and corny as United States of Anarchy; this year it just happened to be Evildead.

11. Five Finger Death Punch - F8

They may not always place highest in this list, but they always manage to make it here, and this was actually an improvement on the last album, not that that’s saying all that much. In fact, I’d say this is the only time in the band’s history that they actually shifted their trajectory upwards. But while the band’s ugly continual creative decay has been a hard thing to watch and made them the five finger punching bag of the metal world, there seems to be a large enough swath of mouthbreathing chuds who love their incoherent derivative shit and flock to their shows enough to put them in lucrative headlining slots and on top of the metal world. Goddamn that sure sounds a lot like someone else we all know doesn’t it. I’ve criticized them plenty in the past, and while indeed an improvement, F8 only mildly remedies the numerous problems with Five Finger Death Punch. Still septic to the system are the predictably formulaic and tiresome songwriting, the stale production, the corny butt rock choruses, the shitty bootlicking worldview that bleeds into Ivan Moody’s douchey and faux-deep lyrics, the contrived ballads and country-dabbling. Even with an improvement in the flow of the track listing and a few more bangers that somewhat hearken back to their first album, F8 is still an over-thought and overly calculated batch of Sirius XM fodder that’s trying to please everyone in some superficial way. I’ll grant that it seems as though the band realized they had been giving the more metal-immersed side of their fanbase that has been with them the longest smaller and smaller crumbs with each new album. I’m not gonna hold my breath for this being anything more than placating for the time being; I’m sure the next album will find the band back on whatever bullshit they feel (or their execs feel) they need to be on to pull enough streams from inattentive radio metal bros. I always end with the disclaimer that I still steadfastly stand by the band’s first two albums, and even American Capitalist to a degree, and that I totally acknowledge the immense potential for greatness this band could seemingly at any time decide to fulfill. Ivan Moody is a talented vocalist with a lot of star power and they really could have been the second coming of Pantera or singlehandedly ignited a new wave of American groove metal and metalcore or carried it on their own. But instead the band have followed the money on the path of least resistance to fast-track their way to the top of festival tickets, which I’m sure affords them quite enough luxury and comfort in life, more than most bands these days get, but it doesn’t exempt them from criticism, and unfortunately I think their legacy will show that they were a lowest common denominator kind of band at the end of the day when they could have been, again, like a second Pantera or something.

10. Anvil - Legal at Last

Another year, another album of Anvil unable to evolve past their prototypic thrash of their forty-year-old origins. Though as tacky as ever, Anvil actually also managed to make a mild improvement on their last album on the musical front at least. The songs are a little more energetic and easier to get through, if not for the lyricism though. Anvil lyrics are never anything beyond a fourth-grader’s poetry assignment for their English class, but some of the Facebook boomer lyrics here are fucking cringy dude. A quick look at the track listing will let you know exactly where you’re gonna find the juiciest cringe, but honestly, even as far as cringe goes it’s nothing comedically special and cringe culture in general is played out anyway. So do yourself a favor and just ignore Anvil the way they deserve to be ignored.

9. Halestorm - Reimagined

It feels a little harsh to place an EP here, especially for a band whose album back in 2018 was one of the best things I have heard to come out of hard rock in a long time. But these stripped back covers and revisions of songs from the band’s catalog just suck all the oomph out of them, perhaps making the case by contrast for the importance of the role the rest of the band behind the indeed charismatic powerhouse frontwoman Lzzy Hale play in making their sound what it is. It’s unlikely this points to any kind of new direction for them, so I’m not particularly worried about them running into this problem again. Plus, I don’t think Halestorm and Lzzy Hale are like fundamentally incompatible with more ballad-y rock music, this forced balladization of older songs just did not work, and it makes perfect sense as to why.

8. Gama Bomb - Sea Savage

The fact that this album is only number 8 on this list is just depressing for its reminder of just how much shittier it got this year. The fact that there are seven albums from this yet worse than Sea Savage, goddamn. With one exception, this was maybe the stupidest album I heard all year, at least in the thrash department it was. God this thing is a sugar high mess. I feel like a toddler on an entire bag of Halloween candy or an elementary schooler on a 2-liter of Mountain Dew sat at a computer to program a thrash album would’ve probably come up with something like this. The erratic operatic highs and dumbass lyrics, it all just embodies everything that ever made thrash look bad. It’s like that drunk guy at a party who’s hyper as shit and doing a bunch of crazy stunts for attention because he thinks it’ll make the people there like him more, but really he’s just embarrassing himself. Yeah, definitely the worst thrash metal album I heard all year, and one I wish I could unhear.

7. Amaranthe - Manifest

One of the albums I was avoiding but reviewed late out of my own weird sense of obligation that I wasn’t surprised to find only validated my reasons for avoiding it in the first place. The weird combo of dancy pop music and power metal isn’t as crazy of an idea as it might seem at first thought. In fact, that’s basically in part what Babymetal are doing, and actually getting better and better at. But Amaranthe get the worst of both worlds with Manifest, unsavory pop melodies and utterly generic symphonic metal to make for something I’m not at all surprised I was so repulsed by.

6. Trapt - Shadow Work

Yep, I listened to it. God, no wonder this band is flailing in irrelevance with aggressive MAGA nonsense being their only audible desperate plea for attention. The album, thank fuck, isn’t steeped in the same bitch boy tantrum that the band’s singer has engaged in all year to the point of getting his band’s Facebook page banned for hate speech, and the music isn’t like offensively poorly made or anything like that either. There’s clearly a conscious meeting of the baseline requirements for the type of music they make, but holy fuck it’s so damn flavorless and predictable. It’d be one thing if this was the trendy thing to be doing, but this diet hard rock for people who think Three Days Grace is too wild has been out of fashion for over a decade. And Trapt are just recycling the same dumb formula that overstayed it’s welcome in the early 2000’s. Yeah, I’m not surprised at all, but god, it’s the kind of thing that has to be apparent to the band themselves too unless they’re lacking of any and all self-awareness. Trapt have thrown themselves to the forefront of the online metal world’s discourse by being an annoying, toxic, and childish presence all year; the silver lining being the unity among metalheads in roasting their laughable posturing about their Pandora numbers and the juicy memes about their one hit “Headstrong” that rile the snowflake singer up without fail. And this shit album is just another reason to laugh at them and more fuel to roast their crybaby Trumper frontman with. Go back into your hole, Trapt. 3/10

5. Unleash the Archers - Abyss

I talked about it in my review, but there really is only one simple thing that sinks this album so low. And that is just how incredibly low-effort and lifeless it is with a genre that’s supposed to be so life-affirming. Power metal isn’t the most highly revered genre in metal, but that’s just for its cheesiness. I love it; when it’s at its best, it’s some of the most inspiring metal music out there and I genuinely wish there was a bigger demand across the board for it. But Unleash the Archers just sound so flat and unenthusiastic in this album, and, sorry, in power metal, unabashed enthusiasm is just nonnegotiable. The guitar parts are phoned in and lacking in imagination, and the vocals especially are so narrow-range, it’s all so antithetical to the ethos of power metal and it doesn’t make a strong case for itself. I’ll leave it there; this album is lazy and lifeless so I feel no need to waste any of my time and work on it.

4. Burzum - Thûlean Mysteries

Ol’ Varg must’ve needed a new wizard hat or camouflage pants or whatever goofy shit he’s been doing since retiring the Burzum name to focus on his racism and LARPing because I thought Burzum was supposed to be finished. I thought you were done with Burzum, Varg. Apparently not too done to not dump an hour and a half of embarrassingly half-baked ambient dungeon synth song fragments that sound, so many of them, quite obviously unfinished. Varg Vikernes has been a washed-up shell of the musical god the various weirdos who idolize him make him out to be for a long time now, and it has shown in the gradually degrading work he had put out after his release from prison. Yet after clearly not caring about creating music in any meaningful way for a long time, Varg drops this heap of shit in his fans’ laps. I suppose they deserve it, but I’m sure some of them are delusional enough to lap it up with a smile on their face while still believing their white nationalist idol to be a musical genius. Again, it’s entirely dull ambient music, not metal at all, but it deserves to be shit upon for its astounding laziness and purposelessness.

3. Asking Alexandria - Like a House on Fire

Doubling down on exactly the unflattering crossover of pop music with their significantly sanitized butt rock in their apparent quest for arena glory that started with their self-titled album back in 2017, Asking Alexandria’s bid for the big spotlight that Imagine Dragons occupies didn’t get any stronger this year with Like a House on Fire. After three or four years of aiming for this style, the band still aren’t even all that competent with the basics of fucking pop rock, which is pretty downright laughable. Honestly, for an album so high up here on my shit list, my feelings on it are more or less just that of unsurprised disappointment; as soon as I got a feel for what the band were doing with the album, I knew it was going to be a mess of predictable results. And lo and behold. This was just such a wholly inexcusably floppy paper towel of an album, and one more Asking Alexandria release I know I won’t be returning to ever again.

2. Hollywood Undead - New Empire, Vol. 2

Coming on at the last minute to get on the scoreboard, reliably, is Hollywood Undead. When I reviewed both volumes of this project earlier, I referred to them as “corporate Linkin Park”, and I stand by that 100%. This album especially showcases nothing but what an incoherent, vapid, clout-chasing act they are, with such a corny, focus-grouped sound that sounds like it was made in a lab by a bunch of out-of-touch boomers. God, they could’ve been safe too if they had left it with the more tolerable first volume back in January, but this follow-up sequel from just this month was exactly why I had avoided listening to the first installment in the first place. And I should’ve never played this second one either. The album opener, “Medicate”, is probably the worst song I sat through in my own volition this year, and the rest of the album doesn’t get much better. It’s nothing new for Hollywood Undead after I gave their 2017 album my award for least favorite album of that year: more unfitting interplay between machismo posturing Eminem-cosplay and the sappiest, wimpiest radio rock and pop choruses; more cringy tough-guy struggle bars; more forgettable-at-best instrumentals. Congrats again, Hollywood Undead, you made one of the worst albums of the year once again.

But even worse than Hollywood Undead is an album that I feel like is already so legendarily bad, that there is no other album that could’ve been sat here. It had to be this one.

1. Six Feet Under - Nightmares of the Decomposed

Shitty metal bands everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief any year Six Feet Under decide to put out new music because any album they release is just about bound to end up as everyone’s #1 worst album of the year, and boy is that guarantee becoming more and more airtight with each successive release. It’s truly astounding too how Six Feet Under manages to outdo themselves every time. I don’t even want to think about what could possibly come after Nightmares of the Decomposed; we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But for now, holy fermented shit, this thing is not just bad, it’s like the holy grail of terrible TERRIBLE albums and I don’t want to know what kind of apocalyptically despicable album Chris Barnes and company could possibly conjure to outdo this one. And make no mistake, it’s still Chris Barnes dragging this band down. I gave this album a 1/10 instead of a 0/10 because there was at least a sliver of salvageable instrumentation on it, as thin of a sliver as it was, a few halfway decent musical ideas of you squinted hard enough. The instrumentalists are checked out and clearly just participating for the paycheck, but I can’t even imagine what kind of professional instrumental performance could possibly overshadow the embarrassment that Chris Barnes put to tape in the studio here. Maybe that says it, because it honestly sounds utterly unprofessional. It’s baffling how this got through management and sound engineering to be released to the public because I don’t think I’ve ever even heard any amateur high school band’s vocalist sound this bad. Vocal ingenuity is generally something to be applauded in the metal world, and pioneers like Randy Blythe, Dani Filth, and Travis Ryan deserve all the praise they get for their innovation with dirty metal vocals, yet what Chris Barnes has “invented” here on Nightmares of the Decomposed to compensate for his continually-deteriorating vocals is just sad. The man simply cannot perform highs anymore, clearly, and the alternative is this fucking comical, cartoonish squealing that sounds more like a bratty toddler gargling their own snot than it does anything fitting for a death metal record, even a death metal record at stupid and cheesy as Nightmares of the Decomposed. Chris Barnes should be thankful that metal is not a sport and that there’s not nearly as much of an abundance of performance statistics to point to and analyze to see what kind of records are broken in a legendarily awful performance. I feel like if there were any kind of performance stats to pull up, this album would have to break some kinds of records. Like this is worse than that 7-1 Germany-Brazil World Cup game, this would be like if the Brazilian team all got unholy levels of blazed and repeatedly scored on themselves because they kept going the wrong way and kicking the ball into their own net, and then pissing their fucking shorts. Even in 7-1 defeat, Brazil had more dignity than Chris Barnes here. Six Feet Under and their label have to know they are a laughing stock and that people will listen to them at this point for the sheer entertainment value of how mind-blowingly awful they sound. It’s not an illegitimate marketing tactic, and it’s the only explanation I can come up with for how this passed inspection. If that’s their mission, to be a spectacle and instill cringe in death metal fans in a regular ritual of comically stupid performances across every successive album, they’re sure doing it, and I guess this baffling headache-trophy is their well-earned prize. Congratulations Six Feet Under, you did it again! Worst metal album of the year.

[seghs24]

God I’m so fucking tired of morons posting shit about “Destroy the meat industry!!! We literally don’t need meat anymore!!! Stop eating meat!!! Killing animals is awful and inhumane!!!” Like okay yeah no-one on Earth ever eating meat again is neat and all except:

Some people will literally fucking die if they don’t eat meat. Do you know that some people have things called medical issues? They might not be able to digest plants/nuts/etc properly or are allergic to them and literally need the protein in meat to survive?

No more meat equals numerous domesticated species becoming extinct. Want a new puppy? Sorry, but no meat means no obligate carnivores as pets (don’t even start with the bullshit uwu vegan diet for doggy shit, you’re literally killing your pets)

No more hunting means many people in rural areas (a lot of them natives) will starve. It’s real fucking hard to grow veggies in places where it’s nighttime the majority of the year, not to mention a lot of peoples culture revolves around sustainable hunting.

No more hunting also means the rapid spread of diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease, overpopulation leading to mass-starvation, etc. But yeah, a quick death from a bullet is MUCH more horrible than slowly dying of disease or starvation! uwu

I guess wildlife rehabilitators that bring in carnivores just have to let animals, including endangered species, die since they can’t feed them anything.

Not to mention zoos (not that you clowns support them or the work they do for conservation) and sanctuaries will have to let their animals starve to death since they can’t be feeding lions and tigers apples and lettuce.

No more killing animals means no more euthanasia. Did your dog get hit by a car and now has a shattered pelvis and their organs are hanging out and ripped open? Sorry buddy, you gotta die on your own, I can’t euthanize you cause that’s bad and awful.