#it wasn’t even that bad i was still eating like 1600 calories a day

[snarltoothed]

shoutout to my high school psych teacher for mentioning that the romanian orphan crisis was very much caused by abortion and birth control bans. like i’m pretty sure she could’ve gotten fired for that, even though it’s true… discussing abortion or fascilitating conversation about abortion in any context as a teacher in public schools in america is a big no-no

[valkyrieofvalhalla]

Weight Loss - Day One (Kinda)

Soooooo

I almost never make oc posts on tumblr BUT since I can’t really do this on another platform HERE WE GO

I am an obese woman. I’m 23 years old, 5′4 and I currently weigh 268.8 lbs. I am determined to lose weight, so I’m going to track my “journey” (blergh) on tumblr (even tho the communities here can be a little... adverse to weight loss).

So, I calculated my TDEE; I eat about 2300 calories a day just to maintain this weight. I’ve decided to eat ~1700 cal/day to lose weight, as well as exercise. Today I’ve eaten 930 calories (but don’t worry ya’ll I’m not done I still have dinner to eat haha).

I’m gonna use tumblr to post about it because honestly I want to talk to people about it but I also don’t want to use fb or instagram due to the fact that people know me on those sites and may also find constant posts annoying (whereas on here you can just blacklist these posts if you don’t like em). Which, btw, the tags that I use on this post are what I’m going to use on every subsequent post, so feel free to blacklist that shit if you don’t wanna see this (honestly can’t blame ya).

LONG POST AHEAD

So I wanna share my background with you lovely people.

I have not always been obese.As a child I was underweight, then as a teenager (for a number of reasons) I became 30 lbs overweight. For most of my teenage years I was like that until I was 17. Then a lot of things happened which caused me to balloon up to the weight that I’m at now.

My deadbeat dad lost his job and refused to search for another one. I was under a ton of stress from suddenly having to become the breadwinner for my family while also going to high school. I was also stressed out from trauma I experienced much earlier in life that I was still learning how to deal with. Both of my parent’s health also started declining (my dad havin strokes n shit). The second semester of my senior year things kind of imploded for me.

I had a friend who was severely morbidly obese - she was about 450 lbs. I started going to her house every single day after school to hang out, and as a result I picked up her eating habits. I also smoked a lot of weed to self medicate, which made me constantly hungry, and I drank a lot too. In the span of four months, I went from weighing 160 lbs to 290 lbs. That’s how much I was eating. 

Honestly, I recognize now that I was self medicating with food (and drugs and liquor). BAD.

But at the time I didn’t really care. As I gained weight, I made excuses for myself. 

“I’m still pretty.” 

“I can still jog and swim.”

“I’m still active.”

“My weight isn’t a reflection of who I am.”

And so on and so forth.

When I hit 250 lbs, I knew something was wrong, but I pushed the bad thoughts to the back of my mind and continued to make excuses for myself. I also stopped tracking my weight altogether.

Then, for about two years I did not step on a scale. Not once.

I willfully remained ignorant because I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth that I knew, which was that I was at an extremely unhealthy weight and that I didn’t feel good about myself anymore, in any regard. 

I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why, but for some reason I got the urge to step on a scale and see how much I weighed for the first time in years. I was 19 and fat and curious about myself, about the actual number.

Well, when I saw the actual number I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT.

I mean that.

FREAKED. OUT.

Like straight up panicking. 

I weighed 293 lbs.

And suddenly I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. It very obviously wasn’t healthy, and I was very scared for myself. I was 7 lbs away from being 300 and I was really afraid I was going to die.

So then I started dieting. Things were still stressful for me, still difficult, but I calorie counted (restricted to about 1500-1600/day). By the time I turned twenty (in a little under a year, actually) I went from 293 to 244. I was (and am) very proud of myself. I can’t tell you the kind of discipline it took to do that. It takes a lot of willpower.

Well, I lost it.

You see, my friend died and I struggled to cope with her death. I didn’t care to count calories anymore. I started self medicating with food again. And unfortunately, in a few months time I gained twenty pounds.

For these last two years I just lived with it, even though I didn’t like it and I felt extremely poorly about myself. I just couldn’t find the willpower to start all over again, even long after I’d learned move on from my friend’s death. I kept telling myself that I would start again soon, that I would go back to losing weight “when the time is right”.

See, the thing about that kind of thinking is that it’s incredibly self-destructive. There will never be a “right” or “perfect” time. The truth is you can’t wait for the planets to be perfectly aligned and for everything to be in place before you can/should start something (not just weight loss, but other stuff too).

I didn’t acknowledge this truth, however, until I left my old job for the one I’m at now. At my old job, I was in a position where I had to be really active for a good 12-16 hours a day. Constant walking and standing for most of the day. Due to that, I was able to keep from gaining more than those 20 lbs.

BUT now I’ve gone on to a MUCH, MUCH MORE sedentary position, where I am quite literally sitting for nearly nine hours a day. And then to go home and sit and play video games for another four hours?

Yeah. Well, that’s how I gained those 8.8 pounds.

And now I’m done. I’m just done.

I don’t want to go back to 290. I’m scared of it. And I’m scared of wasting more of my youth. At this point, I have spent five years as an obese woman, and I’m doing myself a disservice by living like this.

I very recently turned 23, and when I did so many of my coworkers told me “Oh man, to be in my twenties again.” or “Oh, the things I’d do to be 23 one more time”.

It made me realize that I’m not really living the kind of life I want to live. Men aren’t attracted to me. I don’t like what I see in the mirror. My knees hurt and they shouldn’t. I can’t go to amusement parks anymore. I get winded going up some stairs.

I will die young, slowly, and painfully if I continue living like this.

“We must each suffer one of two things: suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

Well, I’m not going to miss out on my entire twenties, or the rest of my life. I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to be healthy and strong and I’m going to live the kind of life I want to live, and be happy with myself.

And that starts today. 

Today, I’ve eaten at a deficit. Yesterday, I exercised. Tomorrow, and for the rest of my life, I’m going to do both (until I hit my goal, then it’s eat at a caloric maintenance of course).

According to LoseIt! I have 487 days to go until I reach my goal weight of 130 lbs. I should be there by Jan 2020.

I will be there. Because I know I’m strong enough to accomplish it.

486 days to go.

[jooliargh]

How I made a habit stick and lost 3kg

Content warning: weight loss; calorie counting.

If you find this article interesting and decide to use a similar method to lose weight, please get proper advice from a doctor or dietitian. I can talk about habit forming, but I'm not qualified to say what is safe or healthy for you to eat.

This isn’t really a weight loss blog, because what could be more boring or unnecessary than a weight loss blog from someone only a few kilos overweight? It’s a blog about how I built some better habits, and found a system for sticking to them that worked for me. But in the first couple of months of lockdown I was moving about less than usual and probably eating a bit more, and the effect of those things was gaining weight (specifically, my jeans were getting tight). So the habits I needed to build were to move about more and eat less.

(For what it’s worth, I find it helpful to think about weight gain and loss as effects of different eating habits rather than problems or goals in themselves since I read Gillian Riley’s excellent book about food addiction Eating Less.)

The Problem

In my job, sometimes when we start a piece of work we use a set of questions something like this:

What problem are we solving, for whom?

How do we know it’s a problem?

How will we know if we’ve solved it?

My answers were:

I’m eating too much and moving about too little, which is bad for my health, which is a problem for me. Also, I want my clothes to still fit.

My jeans are getting tight (even my ‘comfy’ jeans which I wear on days when the others are too tight)

When I’ve adopted better habits that lead to me comfortably being able to fit into my favourite jeans

At this point I needed some science, which meant thinking about calories and weight for a while. I reckoned my jeans used to fit pretty well when I was about 3kg lighter so to achieve that, the energy I used (from moving about) needed to exceed the energy I consumed (from food) by about 22,500 calories in total. Whether it took me a few weeks or a year to create that difference didn’t matter.

The Science Bit

Caveat: I got a D at GCSE Science.

When I talk about calorie deficit, I’m not talking about someone else’s idea of what I should or shouldn’t be eating or how much I should be moving. I’m talking about physics: what goes in needs to be less than what comes out.

Side note: Did you know that when we lose weight, it leaves our body via our lungs? Yes, there’s wee and poo and sweat and stuff, but fundamentally when we ‘burn’ energy we turn oxygen into carbon dioxide. The air we breathe out is very slightly heavier than the air we breathe in, and that’s where the weight goes. I only found that out a few years ago and it’s still one of my favourite facts.

So for me, a 47-year-old woman, 5′3″ tall, weighing 69kg and working at a desk all day, on average*, I’d be burning about 1600 calories a day. (That number is different for everyone. And it makes me wonder where the 2000 calorie target for women on food packaging comes from, because I’m fairly average size for a woman.)

If I go for a 2 mile leisurely stroll, I’ll burn about 150 calories. (Click the link to work out your numbers because they’re probably different to mine.) So if that same day I get 1400 calories from food and drink, I’ll create about a 350 calorie deficit.

The System

I made up a card with 75 empty circles on it. Each circle represented a 300 calorie deficit. (75 x 300 = 22,500, my target from earlier.) When I’d filled in all the circles, I should be 3kg lighter.

To add some accountability, I decided to use different colours for different days of the week. That way I’d want to fill in circles most days, and it might help me spot patterns. You can see from the key at the top of the card, Monday is red, Tuesday is orange, and so on. So if on Monday I ate 1600 calories and used 1900, I could colour in one red circle. If on Tuesday I ate 1200 calories and used 1800, I’d colour in two orange circles. As you can see here, I started with a 600 calorie deficit on a Thursday. (I actually started this experiment on a Wednesday, but ended up eating about the same amount of energy as I used, so didn’t get to colour in any circles that day.)

If I ate 300 calories more than I used on any given day, I’d have to add an empty circle to the bottom of the card. (If you zoom in you might be able to see some very feint circles I printed out for this purpose.)

I've tried numerous ways to be better in control of my eating or exercise over the years and I’ve learnt a few things about what works for me and what doesn’t. This felt like it had a good chance of succeeding because:

I like having data, and I like data to be visible. Graphs, charts, etc. are all good.

I like to see progress. The bathroom scales are a bad measure day-to-day for me because on a traditional diet, what I gain or lose in hormonal and other random fluctuations can be more than I’d target to lose in a week. Colouring in circles should be a good measure because, even though my goal is better habits and not weight loss per se, as long as I don’t cheat, regardless of what the scales say on any specific day, every 300 calories of energy I use that I don’t replace with food will result in me being one step closer to my jeans fitting.

Things which rely on all-or-nothing thinking don’t motivate me very much. e.g. the Seinfeld Method where you have to avoid ‘breaking the chain’. I need to be able to have off-days and to be able to get back on track the next day. If I feel like I’ve failed at the whole task because of one slip-up, I’ll inevitably slip up and won’t continue.

I like stationery and have a lot of Sharpies.

If I had to draw in extra circles because I’d eaten more than I’d used in a given day, it would be a rough, hand-drawn circle and would stick out like a sore thumb from the neat printed circles. I like neatness, so I probably wouldn’t want to do that. (Please don’t look too closely at my colouring in.)

Measuring

Most fitness trackers will try give you some sort of estimate of how many calories you’re burning each day. I have a Garmin Vivosmart 4 which measures heart rate, so it should be fairly accurate. But most Fitbits and similar devices will do it, and if you don’t have one of those, MyFitnessPal and various other apps will give you an estimate which should be close enough to get you started. I’ve also included links to my own estimates from Wolfram Alpha in The Science Bit above, which are very close to what I get from my tracker.

Without a tracker, background activity level (walking around, physical effort involved in housework or childcare or whatever) you’d have to estimate based on whether you’ve had a ‘sedentary’ day, light activity, etc. Being anything other than as honest as you can gains you nothing. As for specific activities (going for a walk), there are tons of places online you can get estimates for walking, running, swimming etc. Any estimate which doesn’t take account of your approximate weight is close to useless, so bear that in mind. There’s no real need to weigh yourself frequently or accurately, but you do need a rough idea of what you weigh to know how many calories you’d burn by, say, walking two miles.

As for energy coming in, I kept a food diary using MyFitnessPal. The free plan does everything I needed for this exercise. Pre-packaged food comes with a calorie count, but especially in lockdown, where I was making more stuff from cupboard ingredients, I was using the meal and recipe functions and having to weigh things. It’s a hassle, but only a minor one.

What Happened? Did It Work?

Yes! Here I am, eight weeks later, sitting comfortably in jeans that haven’t fit me for a few years. I realise 3kg in eight weeks is hardly headline-grabbing stuff, but the point is it worked for me, where all the headline-grabbing weight loss plans just don’t.

Confession: for all I try not to think in terms of weight loss, I do weigh myself most days and I do collect data. Above is the chart from my Wifi bathroom scales, because of course I have Wifi bathroom scales.)

But more importantly, I’ve changed my habits:

I’m being more mindful in my food choices. Do I want a snack after lunch, or do I want to colour in another circle? If I’m genuinely hungry I haven’t been depriving myself, but a couple of times I’ve planned to eat something and then... just decided I wasn’t bothered.

In the first weeks of lockdown I’d developed a bit of a biscuit habit. But within the first few days of this experiment, I’d find myself in the kitchen, thinking about taking a chocolate chip cookie, and deciding not to because I didn’t want to sacrifice a circle for the day.

I’ve been walking absolutely loads. A long walk on a Sunday means I can have croissants and jam and an oat mocha for breakfast and still eat a decent sized dinner. And now a walk has become part of my weekend routine, I miss it if it doesn’t happen.

I’ve been getting up at 7am to walk 4km before I start work each day. I listen to podcasts when I walk so if I skip days then I feel like I’m missing out on my podcast time.

Chocolate raisins are my weakness. There have been a couple of times I’ve gone for a 40 minute walk just so I could ‘earn’ some chocolate raisins. This probably isn’t entirely healthy in terms of my eating addiction, but still healthier than just eating the raisins and not going for the walk.

I think what I’m saying is it’s taught me to make better choices. This is also a big theme in Eating Less - that putting all our focus on weight is unhelpful because anything I do today takes a long time to pay back in terms of a noticeable improvement in my weight. But hour by hour I can make better choices about what food I eat and how much I move about. This system lets me see the effects of those choices the same day. The circles don’t lie - if I create a 300 calorie deficit 75 times I will be about 3kg lighter, however long that takes. I’m holding myself much more accountable for those choices than I would be if I didn’t see the outcome for a few weeks.

Not Just For Calorie Counting

I’m telling you about my calorie deficit journey because that’s the change I needed to make and that’s why I built the system. But you could easily use the same system for any consistent change you want to create. These are the things that I think would apply to building any new habit:

It gave me near-instant feedback on the results of my choices.

It provided visible evidence of progress toward a goal, where progress might not otherwise be discernible immediately.

It doesn’t fix a timescale. It didn’t matter to me how many weeks I took to fill in the circles. Of course I wanted to get there sooner rather than later, but if I had a bad day or a bad week, there was no reason for it to derail me.

I wasn’t showing the card to anyone else, so I was accountable only to myself. There was no point in cheating or lying to myself because it wouldn’t gain me anything.

I found colouring in the circles surprisingly motivating. I’ve always been sceptical of ‘star chart’ type trackers because of the public element. But even though nobody else saw it, I was still disappointed on the days I couldn’t colour in a circle.

Other uses I can think of, off the top of my head:

Being more active: one circle for every two miles walked - if you change nothing else in your life this will make a difference

Decluttering: one circle for every shelf, cupboard or drawer cleared out

Study schedule: one circle for every half hour of study

Guitar practice: one circle for 20 minutes practice

You get the idea. If you try this, let me know how it works out for you.

[lalarennt]

Maintenance Day

I am currently enjoying my Keto/LCHF food and meals. I am only 9 days in, but I have lost 6lb. While Keto is meant to be short term for me, I will be working on staying Low Carb for the rest of my life. Yesterday I could not get the idea of french fries out of my head. I felt like I had to have them. I was fixated. I thought it over, and I decided to eat some fries. Instead of a Cheat Day, I decided to go with a Maintenance Day. Rather than eating whatever I wanted, I ate as if I had reached my goal already. Weight loss- 1200-1350 cal, under 25 net carbs Maintenance- ~1800 cal, under 100 net carbs I planned and made good choices, I think. I had my French fries. I bought frozen fries with the lowest calorie count and fewest net carbs, then cooked them in my air fryer. I skipped the breaded chicken patty sandwiches my family was eating and had a brat. I even had a drink (vodka, seltzer, and SF syrup) and a few pieces of candy. All that said, I ate 1600 cal and 63 net carbs (85 total carbs). It wasn't even that bad! I could still lose weight eating like this daily. Thinking of it as Maintenance was more like practice for when I don't have to diet anymore instead of a binge. I probably kicked myself out of ketosis and it will take a bit to get back on track, but I don't feel guilty. Not one bit.

[gpm-maam]

A Secret to Achieving Permanent Weight Loss
 (Other Than Divorce)

Reprint of the MAAM article by Dave Pivin in July of 2012

No, it’s not some miracle pill or buying your food from some over-hyped diet plan or even hiring a personal “coach.” I’m just going to skip right to the answer, simply put:

     DON’T EAT SO MUCH!

Sure, easy for me to say. But here is what I have learned over the past 10 years since I weighed over 300 pounds and how I permanently lost over 100 pounds. How you do it makes all the difference. It’s neither quick nor a diet. It’s about un-learning the bad eating habits that got you to that undesirable weight and how you educate yourself in good habits that result in permanent loss.

First step in the process of adding years to your life is to discuss your current condition with your doctor and formulate a plan. Set a goal to achieve your ideal weight over an appropriate time scale. You will find that you will have to make some changes. Like I said, it’s bad habits that got you to where you are at. It may or may not involve changes to your current exercise routine, but the highest priority, the one with the most leverage, in my opinion, is to consume fewer calories.

Here’s what my doctor suggested to me: “Try restricting your calories to less than 1800 per day to start out.” He didn’t tell me to exercise beyond what I did at work or my infrequent hiking/walking. He gave me a “cheat sheet” of good nutritional meal plans with typical calorie counts. Seemed reasonable, but I then realized that it not only is it important to keep your diet balanced to stay healthy, you need to understand the nutritional value of what you eat along with the costly calorie “penalty” of continuing to eat the same quantity of the items you like.

The learning process for food value is a key to success in the long term and there are many aids in that area, ranging from printed calorie/nutrition guides to on-line programs that help you track everything you eat. And yes, it’s true, “there is an app for that.”

Read the labels on packaged food and visit the nutrition pages on restaurant web sites. If you simply record the calories of everything you currently eat for two weeks without trying to reduce your intake or change your choices you may be surprised. Weigh yourself at the start and end and see what average calorie count per day has resulted in what weight change. From there, calculate what your new average should be to lose 1.5 to 2 pounds per week by using the estimate that 3,000 to 3,300 less calories per week will mean losing about 1 pound. (YMMV and it works both ways.)

So, back to my case. I first used a program on my Palm PDA that had a database of common foods and I entered everything I ate into that. This allowed me to manage to my budget. I found it was easy to do that and so much so that I was able to easily stay under 1600 calories. In this way I lost my first 80 pounds at the average rate of 1.5 pounds per week. The doctor was pleased, my blood pressure went down, my tri-glicerides got more into balance, although he said I could exercise more. However, this is not the end of the story…

Even though I dropped the weight, I wasn’t close enough to being at a healthy weight. I had slacked off a bit in my calorie tracking and still didn’t exercise. However, I had learned a whole new set of “good” foods and what to avoid at all cost. I had drifted back up by 20 pounds over the course of a few years and then a wake-up call. A coronary artery blockage sent me to the emergency room. In spite of passing a treadmill stress test the week before and always having consistently low cholesterol I had to have five stents put into two blocked coronary arteries.

I needed to continue my weight loss and complement this with some exercise once I was released to do so by the cardiologist. At this point, I retired from working and had a lot of free time so I started riding bike a few days a week around the neighborhood. First 2 miles, then 4, then 6, then 8 and finally 10 miles each time I went out. I also began doing it more often until I was out every day, making friends with the other “regulars” running or riding in the neighborhood.

So over the past 10 years I learned what I can eat habitually yet still stay under 1600 calories average. I can still have pizza, chocolates, burgers and the like, but I just have to stay in budget. Speaking of budget, I now spend less on food! Holidays provide challenges, but keep the average around your budget and you will do fine. Today I use an app on my iPhone that tracks everything and even has a bar code scanner for packaged food UPC codes to lookup the information automatically.

In summary, I have learned that diets can’t possibly work, since they are always temporary. Only a permanent change in habits can achieve permanent weight loss and a longer, healthier life.

Photo at the top shows “before” on an Alaska Cruise in 1998 where I was approaching 300 pounds and below is “after” where I have lost over 100 pounds and completed a bike ride of 25 miles with daughter-in-law Lisa.

[To further attest to the permanence of the change up until today, 17 years later, I weigh 207 pounds, still 100 pounds less.]

[supernaturalsaxophonist]

March 10th- the Absolute Minimum

That could be a story title, couldn't it? Though, it would be a really boring story. It would just be about me doing the bare minimum to get by. See, through my therapy, i'm breaking everything down to get to the roots of all my problems so i can grow back up. So, right now, the really fucked up tree is all but torn down, which is really good, but i've yet to build it back up. Right now, the bare minimum of my responsibilities are keeping clean and hygienic, eating, and doing my schoolwork. The rest of my spare time is usually spent with my boyfriend. And i haven't ~completely~ given up on diet and exercise and #geminiproject2017 with @adazedlife but i've very much fallen to the wayside. I've had such a hard time sticking to anything i need to do weekly or daily, even if it's something I decided to do for my own benefit. I'm trying to figure out why this keeps happening. In a couple of my classes, we've gone over the 6 steps of change. And failure to go through them properly is why most people end up giving up or having to start over once more. Maybe i've jumped up to Action when i was really only in Contemplation or Planning. I find myself falling back to those steps a lot. But how can i move past them? I get easily discouraged. I haven't seen any change in my physical appearance, even when i was keeping up with it. I still have on all 10 of the pounds i randomly put on in 2 weeks. Even if i haven't been exercising perfectly, I haven't been drinking more than like once a week and i haven't been eating more than like 1600-1700 calories a day. (i mean yeah, if i'm being sedentary i could probably do better, but i need to not be sedentary). My sleep schedule is still all out of whack. I'm always tired, and i actually sleep when i try to nap and i always have weird dreams and for some reason always wake up feeling ashamed that I slept. I guess because i'm trying to get my sleep schedule in order because bad sleep is probably a big reason for my weight gain. But I can't stop the naps. And normally, i tell myself i'll accomplish something that day, and then i don't do that thing and end up feeling like shit. If i don't submit something to the Odyssey this week they're taking me off. Understandable, i haven't submitted anything in over a month. I don't know what to write about :( So, basically, i've been letting my passions and goals fall to the wayside becuase i've only been doing the bare minimum to stay afloat. I need help staying motivated. Deep down, i know i've made improvements. I was trying to do everything but failing miserably at it. i wasn't even doing the bare minimum- i was half-assing everything. Help me out friends. I don't seem to have the energy to do anything.

[nomadchick]

Have you heard the latest episode on being poor in Tudor England - the 1601 Poor Law would be the standard in social welfare for over 250 years...

REHP Episode 125: Being Poor in Tudor England

Episode 125 of the Renaissance English History Podcast was on poverty in Tudor England, the way the poor were cared for, and the giant shift that occurred with the Reformation.   Book Recommendation Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England (ad break) Remember, if you like this show, there are two main ways you can support it. First (and free!) you can leave a review on iTunes. It really helps new people discover the show. Second, you can support the show financially by becoming a patron on Patreon for as little as $1 episode. Also, you can buy lovingly curated Tudor gifts at TudorFair.com!   -----Rough Transcript-----   Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 125, a look at what it was like to be poor in Tudor England, and how the conversation began to shift around how to care for the poor, leading up to the 1601 Poor Law that became the standard for 250 years.  Like so many aspects of life in the 16th century, the treatment of the poor changed radically between 1485 and 1601, which was when the landmark Elizabethan Poor Law was passed. The 1601 law was the standard for several centuries, and as such it then became the basis for the attitudes towards caring for the poor in America as well.  I think most people, no matter where you are on the spectrum politically, would agree that society has some kind of duty to caring for the poor - at the very least, for the poor who are sick, disabled, or elderly, and are basically unable to work. In Elizabethan times, these people were called the Impotent Poor, and a distinction was made between the Impotent Poor and the Idle Poor, which were people who were poor because they were considered lazy.    We probably even make that distinction ourselves - we might agree that if someone has a disability, they should be cared for with benefits, but we might argue that unemployment benefits for an able-bodied person should be limited. This distinction is rooted in the Elizabethan period. Before the mid 16th century, the poor were the poor were the poor were the poor - there weren’t really these differences between the deserving or the lazy poor that we come up with now. They were all just poor.   Now, in our modern day times we might argue between us about the role of the private versus public enterprises in caring for the poor - ie, how much should the national government take on, versus local governments, and even non governmental organizations like churches and charities. These are lasting debates that were started during the Reformation. But, most of us agree that we have some kind of duty to the poor. And THAT comes directly from the 1601 Poor Law that took on responsibility for the most vulnerable people in society.    So in this episode we’re going to go back and look at some of the history of treatment of the poor pre Reformation, the great shift that took place, and then the leadup to that 1601 legislation.   By Elizabeth’s time nearly ⅓ of the population of England lived in poverty, and these numbers exploded during the 16th century. During the time of Henry VII, there wasn’t really a huge problem with poor people. A big part of that was because the population itself wasn’t as big.    In 1485 the population of England was still recovering from the Black Death, which, despite having wreaked its destruction over a century earlier, had wiped out the population so much that it would take several hundred years to come back. Before the Black Death, in 1347, England had a population of about 6 million people. In 1485 the population of England was only about 2 million. That would double to 4 million by 1600. And like I said, about a third of them were living in poverty. So we’ve got about 1.3 million people living in poverty, which is very close to the entire population in England a century before. Additionally, the population was becoming increasingly urban - more on that impact in a few minutes.   Finally, another change we have is an early mini industrial revolution, both with the iron industry, and the wool industry. The population is becoming more urban, and the old feudal laws where a Lord, or wealthy landowner would take care of the peasants and serfs, no longer applied. On top of this, we saw the rise in land enclosures where previously public land was fenced off for the wealthy to graze their sheep, leaving the poor without public lands to use to grow food, or graze their own animals. While this led to a number of rebellions - like Kett’s Rebellion during the reign of Edward VI - it also meant that it contributed to this growing industrialization.   So what did it actually mean to be poor in Tudor and Elizabethan England? Well, the main thing is that you were constantly preoccupied with food. And not in a, “I need to log this on my loseit app later on,” sort of way, but in a, “how are we going to eat this year,” way. If you were a poor laborer in Tudor England, you would work for a yeoman farmer from sunup to sundown, six days a week. In the summer, that meant you were in the fields by 5, going until about 10 at night. For that labor, you were paid about a groat. What would a groat buy you? A chicken, bread, cheese, a little bit of butter, and that was about it.    Let that sink in for a minute. A chicken cost the equivalent of a full day’s labor. To me, that is one of the most striking changes in our post industrialist capitalist economy. Food is always available to us. It might not be the healthiest foods, as the food deserts in some inner cities can attest. But it’s still food. You don’t work a 15 hour shift, and then make the equivalent of a chicken.    Getting enough to eat was a constant struggle for the poor in Tudor England. If there was a bad harvest,  you would have to figure out what you were going to do to get through the winter, as well as the early spring, when you would need to have a lot of calories and energy to plant the seeds, and yet nothing had been harvested yet, and it was still too early for fruits and gardens.    And so, if you were a laborer, and you had a wife, that wife might plant a garden, and then salt or store the vegetables to use through the winter. You might have chickens for eggs. It’s likely that if you were a poor laborer you wouldn’t be able to afford a cow, but if you were on the higher end of the scale you might, which would mean you could have cheese, eggs, and butter. Of course that cow would also need to be fed through the winter, so if the harvests were bad you might have to make some tough choices about whether your cow would be part of your family after January.    If you were poor, remember that your daily salary would only buy a chicken, so if you wanted something luxurious like, I don’t know, clothing, you were either going to have to have a little less food that day, or you would have to make your own. And so your wife would probably spin the flax and make wool for your clothing.    You likely didn’t have much in the way of possessions. Your home had a dirt floor. There was a fire in the middle of the one room, and in order to keep you from suffocating you would have a hole in the roof. Still, the room would be incredibly smoky. It would also be dark. You didn’t have window glass, so you wouldn’t want to have a lot of extra windows, which were just holes in the home, and covered up with shutters. So you’d maybe have one window, and even in the summer, it wouldn’t be very light. You would sleep on straw if you were lucky, and you probably owned just a few simple things like a cooking pot and spoon, a few baskets or pots to store food, and maybe some tools to do your work.    So, being poor in Tudor and Elizabethan England meant a constant struggle to survive each year, find enough food to keep you healthy, and making everything else you would need.   Let’s go back to 1485 where we have this attitude that there is plenty of work, and if you aren’t working it’s your own fault. There aren’t a lot of extra people, the population is still recovering from the Black Death, and it’s no one’s fault but your own if you haven’t got anything. With the earliest poor law legislation we see a desire to punish poor people, to deter idleness.    In 1494 Henry VII passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act which said that idle people should be placed in the stocks, and then they should be returned to the land where they last lived, or where they were born.    The government was, and continued to be afraid of these vagabonds who didn’t seem to have any home base, nothing to tie them to the success of their town or birthplace, and no jobs. A bunch of people without jobs, without a sense of civic pride, and who didn’t work was a potential mob, and the goal was to control this potential mob rather than offer any meaningful poor relief.    There was also the fear that these idle people would become criminals, funding their lives through stealing and petty crimes.    That was followed a few decades later with the Vagabonds Act of 1531 which stated that only licensed beggars could legally beg. So people had to apply to the local justice of the peace who would license the Impotent Poor to beg. Which meant that only the sick, disabled, or elderly were allowed to legally beg. If you were lazy, or had some kind of issue that kept you from working, or you just couldn’t find a job, things got even harder for you in 1536. This is the year that Henry passes the Act for Punishment of Sturdy Vagabonds and Beggars. If you were caught without work outside of your parish, you would be whipped through the street. If you had a second offense, you would lose an ear. A third strike and you’re out - literally. You could be executed for the third offense. But most people were very reluctant to enforce this act, which, you know, makes sense. Because it’s a pretty terrible piece of legislation.    In 1547 Henry’s young son Edward got some help from his uncle, the Protectorate, Edward Seymour, who helped draft the 1547 Vagabond’s Act. This said that each parish was responsible for taking up weekly collections for the poor, but also said that vagabonds who were caught could be enslaved for two  years During that time they were to be fed bread and water, forced to work, and could be bought and sold just like any other slave. If no one wanted to buy the slave, then he could be sent back to his town of birth, and forced to work for the community there. If the vagabond had children, those children could be given apprenticeships until age 24 for boys, age 20 for girls.    These poor laws were incredibly unpopular, as one might expect, and in 1550 it was repealed, and the 1531 law was back.   A series of poor acts was passed, one in 1552 required a register of the poor to be created, and empowered parishes to raise local taxes to help them. But again, this was just for the deserving impotent poor. The Beggars, or people who were not considered deserving, could still be whipped through the town. In 1555 Mary passed her own poor act, which required beggars to wear an identifying badge. Like buskers in Covent Garden or something.    So these laws really seemed to be about punishing those who were seen as undeserving, and creating a system to license the ones who were deserving, but mostly just so that they could beg. There wasn’t any kind of structure in place to provide any kind of lasting relief for poor people in terms of training, jobs, or education.   Now, this brings us to a discussion of why this system didn’t exist  yet. Because before the Reformation, all poor relief was entirely left up to the monks and nuns who would provide alms, education, and medical care to those who needed help. The monasteries already had a system in place to provide a rudimentary education to poor orphans, to help care for aging people who had no children to take care of them, or to help provide basic skills training.   Monasteries would also help care for the poor by giving out alms, and encouraging charity from their wealthy church members and patrons. But with that gone, help for the poor became totally secular.   After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the responsibility for caring for the poor shifted on to the state. This is clearly something that the monarchs hadn’t planned for, and one of the reasons why we see this flurry of activity related to caring for the poor, or punishing those who didn’t work.    And even without the Dissolution, this would likely have become more of a problem over time because the population was moving increasingly towards cities. This made it harder for monasteries to care for them since it was easier to disappear in a city with thousands of people than in a small parish.    So we have this huge shift, and it’s the foundation of the debate that still rages today in how to care for the poor. Does the government take care of the poor? Or do charities and churches? Well, obviously if you’re going to destroy the church foundations, then the government would need to take over. But no one was really thinking about that in the late 1530’s as Cromwell was busy Dissolving the monasteries.     It took until the 1570’s for people to begin to have some serious conversations about how to care for the growing number of the poor.  The Vagabonds Act of 1572 was a law passed that provided that justices of the peace were to register the names of the

[donoteatdonut-blog]

Some reflection

I was planning on getting drunk tomorrow evening alone at my flat to “celebrate” my 20th birthday. Then I got a call from work asking if I could work the night shift tomorrow and I said yes, since I kinda need the money. I took it as a sign that alcohol was a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it.

It got me thinking about the whole weight loss thing. I have history with eating disorders which makes this kind of rapid weight loss I’m currently doing even more dangerous. I’m a trained nurse and I know that 800-1200 calories a day is less than anyone should be eating, and that someone my size would lose weight even eating 1600-1700 calories a day. I also know that my goal weight of 56 kilos is likely to be too little for me, I have a large frame and having some muscle tone would also be nice. A better goal for me would probably be 62-68 kilos. I used to be at that weight range and I really wasn’t fat back then even though it felt like I was.

Despite going vegan in 2016 I’ve gained about 20 kilos in the last two years. I’ve had some thyroid issues but of course bad eating habits have also contributed. I used to try to make myself feel better with huge platefuls of noodles and tofu, pints of vegan ice cream and the stuff I baked. I never weighed myself, but I did notice the weight gain and it really made me feel bad about myself. About a month ago I ended up weighing myself at my parent’s house and was shocked to see how much I’d gain. I’ve now lost five kilos in less than a month and there’s still way to go.

Is there a way for me to lose this weight without losing my mind? I’ve gotten quite obsessive about calories lately, I’m frightened by the thought of eating more. Seeing the number on the scale go down is the best feeling. I’m depressed, lonely and just in a very bad place in my life right now. I feel like my life has no purpose other than losing weight. I don’t know what to do. 

[persephones-closet]

Online Coaching Problems

I picked the wrong coach for me.  I had the choice between a $1600 local coach who would’ve met in person to go over posing and bikini fitting, been more readily available, and would’ve given me macros.

But I skimped.  I went with a $1100 online coach who is too popular to keep up with all her girls.  She gives cookie cutter workout and diet plans, she doesn’t respond for several days to weeks, and she charges extra (which I wasn’t aware) for posing advice over skype.  She didn’t care to sell me anything (which is fine I guess) but I would have probably bought one of her bikinis or supplements if she cared enough. She simply doesn’t care about all her clients equally.

Perhaps I don’t have the right build?  I was embarrassed and tossing between following up and bothering her or just letting it go and doing my own thing with this prep.  I was actually embarrassed that she forgot about me because  I thought I was worth believing in and could actually bring a winning physique to a competition.  I was embarrassed, disappointed, and deflated.  My hopes were gone after a week went by and no change to the plan.  The workouts were repetitive (boringly so) and wayyy toooo long.

I couldn’t keep up with the rep counts. I wasn’t seeing much change or feeling sore anymore.  It was just time consuming and the diet was absolutely bullshit!  No added sodium?  No flavor?  Are you serious?  For 4 months???  That is absolute bullshit.  According to SCIENCE it’s all about calories in vs. calories out.  Your body can flush sodium out pretty easily.  Also she had me on a semi high carb diet.  And eating 6 meals a day is bullshit too.

I don’t feel that I needed 4 entire months to get ready for a bikini competition.  I think it wasn’t a total waste of time though, because I gained some solid muscle.  But if I had done a 12 week bodybuilding.com generic FREE build I actually think I would’ve bulked even more.  Yes, I’m actually saying that I paid $1100 for the most useful advice: my quads overpower my symmetry.

So... I had a bad experience.  Will I compete? Ever? I’m not sure.  Probably not in May.  I’m still cutting for summer though.  I’m going to get as lean and muscular as possible because that’s what I want to look like.  Once I cut, I want to maintain until around August and start to bulk like crazy.  I want to gain 15-20 lbs slowly and consistently working out. I want huge shoulders, big back muscles, huge hamstrings, huge quads, and huge calves.  Those are the 5 things I want to focus on.

My plan for the next 3.5 weeks = CUT.

1. eat till full and STOP. fast most of the morning. bulk of calories lunch - early dinner.

2. running. i want to do HIIT sprints 5-6 days a week and LISS walking/biking when I have the time to get it in. Burn OFF the calories. Michael Phelps principle. every day is devoted to burning fat.  going to start taking fat burner twice a day.

3. eating clean but not flavorless. because FUCK SALTLESS. FUCK NO SAUCES.  OMG. but fuck greasy food too. ew. im just going to eat what feels good to eat. salads, rice, spicy food, whole wheat pastas, taco bowls. guac. I’m not restricting anything but mainly dairy, high sugar stuff (1 x per week maybe), and oils (ewwwww so done).  I want my curries. I want my guac. I want more flavor.  Saltless for 4 months was RETARDED!

4. full body every day. No days off. at least for the next 3.5 weeks.  on upper body days, I’m doing a booty exercise, abs, calves, and sprints. on lower body days i’m doing an arm exercise, abs, calves and sprints.  No body part will be neglected anymore. Hoping to grow my: biceps, shoulders, calves, lower butt/upper hamstring tie-ins.

5. no alcohol for 3.5 weeks (metabolic maintenance). more sleep (recovery). more stretching (recovery & mobility).