#under 100 calories

[sweetcherryslim]

4-Ingredient Blueberry Mousse - 82kcal/2g protein

Servings: 2 - 82kcal/2g protein per serving

170 g frozen blueberries

1 tablespoon caster sugar/granulated sugar

1 large egg white (approx. 40g)

50 ml whipped cream optional

Add frozen blueberries to a food processor and blend a rough puree. Add sugar and pulse to combine. 

Add the egg white and blitz again until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. It will take about 2-3 minutes and the mixture will at least double in volume. You may want to stop the processor once in a while and scrape the sides down if the puree is sticking to the sides. 

Spoon the mousse into glasses. You can layer it with some whipped cream if you wish. Serve immediately before the blueberries start to melt release too much water.

[neemeesiis]

9.4.23

"more tea pls"

da ich ja den april nur tee trinke, und ich nur 5 sorten habe, habe ich mir nochmals 7 weitere bestellt..na ja eigentlich 9, da man gratistees dazu bekommt bei jeder bestellung 🫖 die 14 sorten sollten nun auch reichen 😁🙈 es ist zwar erst der 9. tag, aber habe -2kg weniger 😄✌️ passt

[satanicking420]

low cal meals/snacks <3

cheese egg roll about 46cals each:]

ingredients- 1 egg white 18 cals , half a dairylea cheese slice 28 cal and any seasoning u would like to add i preferer salt , paprika , thyme and pepper on mine ,

how to make , put eggwhite on plate and salt (salt is optional ) mix egg till slightly fluffy on top then put in microwave for about 15 seconds check if the egg is cooked do that till it is cooked just before its fully cooked use something to get egg off plate so it dosent stick tho , then when u have done that add ur chesse rip it up and place around the the egg white evenly add sesoning then put back in microwave for another 5-10 seconds then roll it up so the chess in on the inside add salt if u want and seasoning on top then enjoy

[aiura-stan]

ngl ive been having A Time of it, though, as of late, and it’s not even just the new job. My body has decided to malfunction in several different confusing ways and I have to force my brain to stay awake sometimes

[sk1nnysuccubus]

also realized i haven't been sharing my cal intake these past few days, oops

wednesday: went out with my aunt, had a chicken sandwich. then later for dinner i had some shrimp alfredo. net: 972

thursday: had some alfredo for breakfast, walked for an hour and lost about 300 cals. then had some mashed potatoes and 2 chicken strips, which wasn't the best day ever. it made me go to about 1,200 calories that day.. (was my own fault, didn't count the calories properly). but because of my exercise, my net was: 881

friday: basically had microwaved sesame ginger cod all day- think i ate the whole box actually... oops. got close to 1,000 overall, but my net from exercise was: 692

and then today was: 3 pieces of salmon and a 10 cal monster. may or may not have something else very small, bc i feel like i've been eating way too much lately. about to do my exercises, but net as of posting this is: 390

[flatstarcarcosa]

Mentioned this on my main but sorry I haven't been active much in any forms. The health horrors are never ending and I'm struggling to keep up w doctors appointments when every appointment is more testing and questions and no answers, on top of working.

:(

[pieces-of-silverwing]

im hungry. but i cant eat. i miss cookies.

[frownyalfred]

Listennnnn, I need some Batfleck headcanons, please. Thank you 🫡

This man is too overhated :/ I still think he was an amazing Bruce (and Batman), and I wish we had seen more of him. Dare I say, Jeremy Irons' Alfred is one of my favorite interpretations ever. Loved him in BvS. Specially scenes with him and Bruce.

Started going grey at 32

He and Alfred jog around the Manor property together for exercise

He’s a functional alcoholic but only in between his cases / big missions. Otherwise he’s 100% sober for peak physical performance.

The kind of Batman who beat up criminals for even looking at Robin, much less making a joke about hurting him.

Darker, grittier and more pessimistic even before he lost Robin. He didn’t trust anyone beyond Alfred, and it took years for him to warm up to Robin (Dick or Jason, depends on if you go off Snyder lol)

Every single inch of property and every cent he owns goes to Alfred immediately upon his death. This is an expectation, not a worse case scenario.

Most of his failsafes are a complex series of satellite uploads and then explosives. Soooooo many explosives under that lake.

Sustains on an insane amount of calories per day (see my protein post)

So big/massive that the Bane matchup in this universe was much more balanced (he didn’t get his back broken but absolutely got beaten up)

On that note: breaking his bones doesn’t stop him, it just makes him more angry (this is a man who pulled a knife out of his own rotator cuff to stab someone with)

GCPD doesn’t just fear him because they’re corrupt, they fear his brand (he has a bad habit of branding cops who betray innocents right in the face)

Once spent ten or so days pit fighting in the Narrows for intel and actually won minor fame as a brawler

Alfred has slapped him awake on more than one occasion so that Bruce can help move himself (he weighs too much for Alfred to even try moving)

Alfred never left him or the lake house because he made a promise to Martha that he would always watch over Bruce

Jim Gordon respects and fears him in equal amounts. He watched what happened after Robin’s death and just shook his head.

The acid burn on his shoulder is from the Joker taunting him for being too pretty after unmasking him and threatening to burn his face off.

[willowisdead345]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧my safe foods✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Big post of my safe foods!! With calories, so basically a big post of low cal and low fat foods that are basically all I eat... and I feel full, satisfied and have lost over 17 kg so eating them is working I guess??

under cut because this is looooong

Dairy products

Almond milk (instead of cream in cooking): 2 dl of "no sugar" almond milk is 26 kcal and tastes creamy in food, without the fat and kcals from that

fat free greek yogurt: the one I buy has 13 grams of protain and 65 kcal for 100 g, and my regular portion (1/3 package) is only 109 kcal

fat free quark: 10 grams of protein and 59 kcal for 100 g

skyr: (type of like yogurt I assume), naturally fat free and there are lots of flavored options. The one I eat (my favourite) is 16 g of protein and 94 kcal for the whole thing

sugar and fat free drinkable yogurt (with beneficial bacteria), really good for a snack or sweet craving but not very filling, mainly for just the taste (my safe one has strawberry flavour), it's 27 kcal for 100 g (which happens to also be the size of the bottle)

fat free cottage cheese: 63 kcal for 100 g (although it's also lactose free which lowers the calories), great for protein and can be blended into stuff if you can't deal with the texture (source: I can't)

proteins

Elk/moose meat: (edit part 2 because I have discovered that this is safe for me) 112 kcal for 100 g, a lot of protein and little fat. Also pretty ethical. I get mine from my grandparents, my grandfather enjoys hunting.

Tuna: canned tuna in water!! Forgot to add this and remembered only now, but I also consider tuna a "safe" protein to have, I use it in salads or sauces.

quorn: quorn is a mushroom and egg white based protein, without much of a taste and a texture like that of chicken. Huge recommendation for this if it's sold in your country. 89 kcal for 100 g and very low in fat!

egg white: 1 large egg white is 18 kcal, and contains no fat but does contain protein! seasoned with salt and pepper and fried without oil is my favourite way to have it. Note that the yolk does contain fat and has a lot more calories, so removing it is what I do

turkey slices: idk why but this is the only meat i'm not scared of, and it's a specific brand of turkey deli meat. 1% fat (probably why I'm not scared of it) and a 15 g slice is 13 kcal and it's meat, so a lot of protein. Goes well with lentil flatbread sandwiches!

lentils: have protein and work very well in soups and lentil flatbread/pancakes!! 100 g of dried red lentils has 118 kcal

dairy products: already covered but a lot of them have protein

"sides"

shirataki noodles: whole bag is 20 kcal, and contains 4 reasonable portions!! If you can deal with the texture, I definitely recommend!

Cauliflower: amazing vegetable, works as a base for soups, nuggets, a side for any meal, replacement for rice, literally anything... 25 kcal for 100 g, very, very good for volume eating!

green beans: really good in place of potato with meals, 31 kcal for 100 g and goes well boiled or air fried (or just stuck in the oven)

cucumber: with or without seasoning, goes really well as an easy side dish! One entire cucumber is 28 kcal!! try being hungry after eating an entire cucumber...

salad: great as a meal with a source of protein or as a side, calories vary for ingredients (ingredient I love include tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, lettuce, arugula and salt and pepper for seasoning)

homemade meals:

lentil flatbread/pancakes: made with 3 ingredients (egg white, lentils and water), have 50 kcal for 3 pieces (which is a reasonable portion). work both as a replacement for bread when had with savory toppings and pancakes when had with sweet toppings, basically very versatile! Made with a frying pan and no oil, they don't need oil

SOUPS!! Lentil soup (delicious) or my favourite, vegetable-cottage cheese-blended soup!! ingredients determine the calories, but usually they vary between 80-120 kcal per portion and I love soup as a nice (and filling!) dinner :)

sauces: (with shirataki noodles, cauliflower or green beans to skip the calories from potato or pasta), my favourites are tomato based, but cream based made with almond milk is also something I enjoy. calculate the calories for whatever you make

salads: with a protein a salad can be a filling meal! lettuce, cucumber, bell pepper and tomato are all pretty low calorie, meaning the portions of them can be massive and still under 100 kcal combined!! my favourite protein for salads is tuna (canned IN WATER), and of course seasoned with salt and black pepper (my favourite seasonings tbh)

vegetables

CAULIFLOWER!! best vegetable in my opinion. Makes a perfect replacement for potato as mash, rice, makes a good base for soups, is delicious oven fried with grill seasoning... just love cauliflower so much and get through about a head a week lol. 25 kcal for 100 g

broccoli: pretty nice in soups and as a side, 34 kcal for 100 g but pretty nice and low kcal for the volume

CARROTS!! 35 kcal for 100 grams, so a 200 gram bag is 70 kcal and will fill you up. I love carrots and have 200 g for lunch almost every day, and get through a LOT of carrots during other meals too! I love the taste and texture, and they are so low kcal for the volume. Huge recommendation, carrots are amazing, and zero fat!

leafy greens: my faves are arugula, spinach and lettuce. arugula and lettuce are the best in salads, and spinach is nice cooked. Depending on which one you have the kcal differ abvs

mushrooms: (i know, I know it's not a vegetable but still), 22 kcal for 100 grams! if you are like me and picky with textures, blended mushrooms taste pretty nice and it goes well in soups!

CUCUMBER: 28 kcal for an entire cucumber! i feel stuffed after half a cucumber, which is just 14 kcal... cucumber and grill seasoning is the best snack, I beg for you to try it. I get through like 4 cucumbers in a week lmao, love them and they are the best snack and volume food imho

bell pepper: goes well in salads or as a snack raw, 24 kcal for an entire bell pepper! and the texture is so satisfying if you're craving something crunchy

green beans: 31 kcal for 100 g, and it was already mentioned before as a good side, but it also works as "fries" when oven roasted and with grill seasoning

fruits and berries

tangerines: 40 kcal for a small tangerine! really easy as a snack and tastes really nice

kiwi: 42 kcal for one medium kiwi! and eaten with a spoon, you don't even need to peel it (just like scrape the kiwi out), kiwis are also sooo good when they are ripe

tomato: one medium tomato is 22 kcal, and is so good in salads. Also grilled, just grill the tomato until it's soft and it's so good

banana: one medium banana is 105 kcal, and the only way i have bananas is cooked. Just put it in a frying pan and heat on medium heat until it's cooked (no oil needed), it becomes so much sweeter and it's delicious.

strawberry: 32 kcal for 100 g, strawberries are great and taste so good. I love frozen strawberries especially, they are cheaper here and they last longer

raspberry: 53 kcal for 100 g, raspberries are better in taste than strawberries in my opinion, even though they are higher in calories. Go great with yogurt though!

cloudberries: they grow in swamps over here, i get mine from my grandparents lol. if offered, definitely do try them, they are good! 51 kcal for 100 g, and they are really good

desserts:

sugarfree "raspberry soup" (mehukeitto), basically just raspberry juice with a thickening agent, so can be eaten with a spoon. 8 kcal for 100 g, and I like having it as a dessert sometimes

sugarfree vanilla syrup: basically 0 kcal, goes great with yogurt or berries or lentil pancakes...

sugarfree cola: almost 0 kcal, and the best thing ever if you're craving something sweet!

rooibos: basically tea, except it's a different plant, and naturally caffeine free. It's also sweeter, and won't make you stay up at night so great before bed

coffee: not sweet unless you add sugarfree sweetener, but black coffee is pretty low in kcal (2 per cup), i love black coffee and have it each morning

artificial sweetener: nice in tea and a life saver if you need to bake something! The one I use is stevia based, but anything works

sugarfree juice: 1 kcal per 100 ml, and just another amazing thing to have in case of sweet cravings

others?

oatmeal, 40 g of dry oats is 145 kcal. best tip for oatmeal is to season it with salt, it is soo much better with a bit of salt! pretty high kcal though

rye bran, 16 kcal for a tablespoon and like 39 % fiber! goes well in yog if you are trying to make sure you get enough fiber

(baby) corn puffs: a portion is 30 grams and is a bit over 100 kcal! amazing texture, literally cheese puffs without cheese.

sugarfree gum: very low in kcal, and a great help to stop mindlessly eating and start mindlessly chewing instead, basically treat like snacks when watching a movie or the like

sugarfree cough drops: nice, especially if you are like me and are paranoid your breath smells. the ones I have are like 2 kcal for one, and sucking on them they last pretty long

sugarfree energy drinks: my favourite (and the one I always buy) is 15 kcal, but for example white monster tastes like lemonade and is 11 kcal for a can. caffeine also helps curb appetite!

grill seasoning: if you've read this far, you'll know that this is the best thing in combination with cucumber or cauliflower! Has stuff like paprika powder, salt and other spices that are soo good. of course also good for meat if that's what you want to eat. low kcal food does NOT need to be bland! i personally don't count seasoning with my calories (COUNT OIL THOUGH!!)

the end, thanks:) if you have others you want to add, comment or reblog or something, I want to know about all the cool foods out there!!

[thebibliosphere]

tw: content under a cut for talking about calorie counting (in a positive way), restrictive medical diets, and MCAS 'remission.'

So it's been 5 months since I last saw the GI doctor who took me seriously regarding my mast cell dysfunction, and not only have I gained a LOT of foods back into my diet under his care without experiencing idiopathic anaphylaxis, but I've also managed to eat 2000 calories almost every day for the last 5 months.

Prior to his care, since 2020, I had been mostly surviving on a liquid diet with the odd bit of solid carbs and protein when I could handle it.

Which was better than the 2 things I could digest safely prior to 2019, which were oatmeal and filtered tap water toward the end when I was dying. But even after I recovered from that, any time I went over 700 calories a day in solid food, I'd be writhing in pain.

I still have days when the pain hits, and all I can manage is liquids, but those days are so much less, and thanks to being able to eat more foods, I can at least liquidate more nutrients to make sure I'm getting what I need.

Things will never be 100% healed. That's not the nature of this kind of immune disease. But they're better. I'm better. I'm still so scared to say any of this is in remission because MCAS is wildly unpredictable. But I'm so much better than I was.

And I'm going to go happy-cry and eat a gluten-free cupcake about it.

[neemeesiis]

23.3.23

"it's tea time 🫖"

hab lange nichts mehr lesen lassen, aber habe trotzdem weiter meine sachen durchgezogen..eine freundin schenkte mir zum bday 6 probiertuetchen mit losem tee von TEEWICHT..mega 🤤 hab mir dann fuer eine enorme summe einige tees bestellt..ab 1.4. heißt es dann "teeparty 🍵"..einen monat wird dann nur getrunken und nichts gegessen..aber bei diesen tees will man auch nichts essen 🤭

[xyfanficarchive]

Laios x Fat Reader HCs (reader of nonspecified gender with boobs and pussy)

18+ 😈

First of all. It's been said but. Fat is totally his type. real and factual and canon 100% i stake my life on it

i mean, he's not that superficial. Laios will fall for someone's personality and not their body. but trust, if he's walking down the street and someone attractive catches his attention so much so that all he can do is think "waow.... theyre really hot......" and stare (and he will stare, unsubtly and without shame, like, he'll turn his head as he passes you by and then trip over his own feet or walk into a lamppost or smth) then that person guaranteed has a lil more fat on their body

if youre uncomfotable with your body..... get comfortable. he's a handsy lover. he wants to touch you and feel you. and he's not shy about loving the way you squish under his hands and in his arms

its not even necessarily an erotic thing much of the time, when he feels you up and pokes and prods you (gently) all over; it's a simple pleasure to his brain to feel the warmth and weight of your breast in his open hand, to press your tummy and pinch the fat on your hips between his thumb and fingers, just to watch the supple flesh deform under his touch and bounce back into place. he'll trace up and down your stretch marks because he likes the way the skin texture feels different there, and touch the pads of his fingers to the dimples of cellulite on your butt and thighs just to feel how your skin embraces his fingertips. he can be pretty mindless about it, his hands drifting across your body as you lie together (yes, he uses you as a stim toy)

of course if you hate this kinda treatment that much, he’ll stop. he won’t torment you. but if, say, you ask him to only touch you in ways and places that dont remind you of your fatness too much, he’ll have an intuition that its because of feelings of insecurity whether you say so or not. and it makes him so so sad because all he wants is to show you how wonderful your body is to him, how delightful it is to touch you in all your softness, how the very presence of you squished up next to him is such a comfort that its all he can do to grab at you and pull you closer and closer to him in crushing embrace- there is no part of you that is so disgusting that Laios wouldnt want to explore.

on the topic of insecurity. if youre feeling bad about the way you look, whether its just a bad image day, or if you find out that you gained some weight and have to get new clothes made from the tailor, he will reassure you. but it will not be a tactful and gentle kind of reassurance, he’s not going “noooo baby but youre still so beautiful tho 🥺.” boy is so so delighted to inform you of all the reasons why its GOOD that youre fat. he has like a whole presentation prepared and he’s talking a mile a minute about how he loves that youre not afraid to eat a full days worth of nutritious meals, and how its good to put on weight to crawl the dungeon, about the energy you expend doing all that walking and fighting and the calories it takes to get revived if you die, talking about how you can go longer in the cold before succumbing to hypothermia and longer without food before youre incapacitated by hunger, how having a thick layer of fat means your vital organs are better protected from slashing and stabbing and blunt force damage alike, getting more passionate as he goes on. and by the time your eyes are glassy and ears are fuzzy from all the knowledge he imparted upon you he grabs you by the shoulders, fingers digging into your deltoids, glowering down at you with a look of such intensity that you shrink away, he finishes his rant with a deathly seriousness: “and….. it makes you really sexy, too..!”

and he does think youre so so fucking sexy; congratulations because it genuinely doesnt happen often! ususally he's too busy thinking about monsters and dungeon ecology and how to make his next incursion below more successful.... if you're reading to this point still somehow thinking that by "fat" i mean "exclusively chubby" then don't worry... i mean, yes he will drool over your cute little tummy pooch and your thick thighs, and he daydreams about sucking your full, round boobs - but he also starts sweating the first time he sees the way your breasts sag under your shift, he wants to taste your skin, he wants to leave bite marks on your back rolls, and side rolls, and he wants to dive in the folds of your belly, and when he sees your luscious pubic mound he gets dizzy and lightheaded because all the blood is going to his cock-

he'd happily die suffocating between your thighs

don't feel anxious about the way you smell around him - you don't, at least no more than anyone else after a long day of walking, but if you did, Laios is a known freak and he's totally into that. you'll never forget the first time you found this out; you were enjoying a simple embrace with him before washing up at the end of the day, your arms thrown around his neck as he leaned down and pressed his forehead into your shoulder, inhaling deep a few relaxed breaths before something changed, his body tense underneath you. you almost pulled away to ask what's wrong but - he grabbed you at the elbow and outright manhandled your arm to stop you from pulling away or pinning your arm to your side, and it's then that you realized to your utter mortefaction that he'd stuck his nose in the crook of your arm and was sniffing your armpit. you almost made a fuss asking him what the hell is he doing?!?! except for the fact that chilchuck was over in the corner organizing his pack and marcille was facing the wall combing out her hair in the mirror and neither of them have seemed to notice anything and you would never, never, never live it down from either of them if you were to draw their attention. but ultimately you couldn't help the way your heart softened to your big weirdo man when he finally pulled his face out of your pit, flushed red to his ears, his irises a thin golden ring around his wide dilated pupils, as he breathed out "I dunno why, but it smells so good..."

when he eats you out, he's literally huffing your pussy scent. he takes his time smelling you as he kisses his way down your thighs. and when he's buried in your folds, sometimes it's almost concerning and you think there's something wrong. is he starved for air, can he breathe down there??? (i did say he'd be happy to die there....) no. thats just how into it he is. one time you ask him what it smells like to him, thinking maybe his perception is significantly different, perhaps because of his hormonal profile or something, and he pauses to think for a moment before elaborating: "it smells like, musky and animalic... a little sweet, and kind of funky, like a little sour and salty almost like sweat, it's so great!" maybe not what you expected, but he only sounded more and more giddy about it as he went on.

he can tell roughly where you are in your cycle based on your smell. this comes far enough into your relationship that nothing can surprise you anymore.

he just loves watching you as he fucks you. the way the shockwave of each thrust ripples throughout your whole body, your tits jiggling back and forth with each gasp of pleasure, and the way it sounds so obscene with your wetness spread out over your plush thighs clicking when his hips make contact and when he pulls away. theres no time or space in your head to be self conscious when you're making those sweet uh uh uh uh sounds every time his cock bottoms out inside you. he loves to pull back and watch it happen, the way his shaft glistens with your slick between your pillowy lips, savouring the stroke of delicious pleasure shooting through his nerves as he glides back in, watching as his pubic bone meets your cushiony mons and the way you shake under it all, your body so completely open to him, he could hardly imagine a more erotic sight or a more beautiful person to share this part of him with

thats all i got for now hope u enjoyed <333

[bubblespink43]

Things to do this week

💋

(I will come back to cross these)

🎀 3

(The amount of stars 🌟 will signify the achievements that I've done throughout the days)

Restrict as much as possible from your calorie comfort intake 🌟

Go on a 92h fast for the first time 🌟

At least fast 20h 🌟to 30h🌟

Let the binge urges come and go 🌟🌟🌟

Stick to the plan 🌟🌟🌟

Make your weight number move down than your general weight 🤷 ( I haven't checked)

Sleep with the stomach empty 🌟🌟

Fast 48h and 72h 🌟

Do NOT binge 🌟🌟🌟

Don't over eat 🌟

After waking up and before even thinking of eating, read your thinspo 💌 to keep you going 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Stay clean✨ and don't eat trash food 🌟🌟

Don't go over 100 🌟🌟🌟

Ignore your bf until you get your priorities straight 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Have one only on the third day of fasting and under no condition you should have it any other day ✌️🤞(11th of January) 🌟

Loose weight before the photoshoot 🤷 (I haven't checked)

Don't get on the scale just until your estimated date! 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Under no condition should you maintain the same weight this week 🌟🌟

Stick to the fast 🌟🌟🌟

Have your pink tea at the second day of fasting under no condition you should have it at any other day is prohibited (10 of January) 🌟

Before Monday hits, get your priorities checked🌟

Don't give in to temptation🌟🌟🌟🌟

While having your calories just drink liquid/ exception? Fruits, cucumber and hummus ( that's all!) 🌟🌟🌟

If you are hungry keep drinking water 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Have your white monster just on the 11th of January 🌟

On the 9th before going to sleep have your 7cal drink 🌟

Be strict with yourself 🌟🌟🌟🌟

under no condition should the weight move up to the same number again(I haven't checked)

No eating today 🌟🌟🌟🌟

On the 11th of January the fourth day of your fast, you can have your less cals latte 🌟

A week without eating normal (day 1) 🌟(day2) 🌟(day3) 🌟(day 4) 🌟

On the 12 of January, add extra hours to your fast🌟

Fulfill the promise✨ that you've made to yourself 🌟🌟🌟

Fast insomnia??? Keep yourself awake until you feel tired no food involved🌟

Have your less cal almond milk in the morning at the 12th January ( if you are in the mood) 🌟🌟🌟

Before going to your dad's drink the 7 cal drink 🌟

Reward? : (✨new hair✨)

Expiry date: 12 January

Back up account on twt

(@luciapink34)

[madi-writes-things]

Making The Bed (Johnie Guilbert X Reader)

Summary:

Pushing away all the people that know me the best…

Word Count: 1,415

TW: Passing Out, ED, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Self Deprecation, Self Destructive Thoughts and Actions, Avoiding Foods, Parties, Drinking, Johnnie Being a Supportive and Good Boyfriend, platonic!Jake Webber

A/N: this has been in my drafts for like three months. Sorry if it seems rushed or anything, I fell asleep halfway through writing it and finished when I woke up. 🫶

“”“”“”“”“”

Y/N’s POV

I stand in the bathroom, obsessively typing the calories from the meal I just ate into the calorie counter that I promised I wouldn’t redownload. I didn’t mean for it to get like this again, but here I am. It just started as a few missed snacks, which turned into meals, and it all snowballed into daily weigh-ins and days with no food. I stop by the mirror for a moment, and I regret it immediately… the second I see myself, I feel my stomach churn.

The worst part of this is the lying to the people close to me… I don’t push them away on purpose, it just makes it easier. On days where I don’t see Johnnie much, I’m able to go the whole day without eating. I know that he’ll find out eventually, but I can’t let it be now.

In an ironic way I find it funny how people on the internet find out what you struggle with, and do their best to make it worse. The only reason that I started skipping snacks, was because people started commenting on my weight gain. It’s not the people who praise me for looking healthier, the issue is the people who spew my worst fears in the comments.

I know in the back of my head, that I will lose everything I’ve worked for if I don’t stay skinny. Johnnie won’t want me, Jake won’t chose me over him, Tara won’t want someone like me as a friend, my fans will get tired of me once I’m not interesting to look at, my family wo-

I hear Johnnie lightly knock on the bathroom door, pulling me from my doom spiral. “you okay in there babe?”

Shit.

I quickly wipe my face off, leaving no trace of the tears that were spilled. “Yeah! Be out in just a second.” Sometimes I wonder if he knows, and he’s happy that I’m losing weight. No. He’s not like that.

“”“”“”“”“”

I think Jake knows…

He stared me down after making me lunch. I think he was trying to see if I actually ate it. He made pasta, and I cried in the bathroom for thirty minutes after leaving the table. I saw him staring at me anytime we were in the same room after that.

Now I’m climbing into his car with Johnnie and Tara, headed to an influencer party. I’m wearing a cute Tank + Cropped Hoodie with skeleton hand’s bedazzled on the tits, and a pair of high waisted jeans. I knew that going out was a bad idea, but I have to stay under Jake’s radar… if he says anything to Johnnie, I’m done for.

I offer to be designated driver when we pull up, there’s no way I’m drinking tonight. One shot of vodka is nearly 100 calories, and vodka is the lowest calorie alcohol I’ve found. Everyone agrees pretty easily.

“”“”“”“”“”

The party has been going on for hours, and all of my friends were pretty tipsy at this point. I decided to go sit with Tara a little bit ago, and now we’re talking about her latest hookup. “He was literally so pretty… and his dick was huge!” She nearly falls over laughing at my reaction. I tell her I’m going to grab a water from the cooler, and find the guys so we can head out.

The second I stand up, everything goes blurry for a second. Shit. I don’t think I’ve had anything to eat since Jake made me, and that was like three days ago. I reach out and steady myself on Tara’s shoulder, as she asks if I’m okay. I mutter a quick yes, as I start walking away. It’s takes a second for my eyes to focus again, but most people just seem to assume I’m drunk.

Once I find the guys, we head out. My head is pounding, and all I want is to get home and go straight to bed. Once we finally get to our room, Johnnie holds me tight in his arms as we drift to sleep.

“”“”“”“”“”

The party was two days ago, and while I know I shouldn’t, I took advantage of everyone’s hangovers. I still haven’t eaten or drank anything other than water. Every morning I wake up lighter than the day before, and I’m not risking gaining any weight at this point.

Today is different, Jake and Johnnie are wide awake. The guys have been filming all morning, and they asked me if I wanted to join them in a video… I obviously agreed. I’ve missed my boyfriend, and I doubt he’d notice anything while we’re out at target.

“”“”“”“”“”

We stopped at three different targets before finding one that would let us film, totaling about an hour and a half of driving around. We’ve been walking around this target for a while, but the lights are too bright and I can’t seem to make my brain work hard enough to figure out how long.

I’m standing in the board game isle when it happens. I see Johnnie’s face fall when he sees me. “Babe, are you okay? You look really pa…” I don’t even hear the full sentence before everything turns to static.

“”“”“”“”“”

Johnnie’s POV

It all happens so fast. One second we’re laughing at something stupid, the next second Y/N has gone completely silent. “Babe, are you okay? You look really pale.” Then it happens. I watch as her eyes roll back into her skull.

Shit.

I barely move fast enough to stop her from hitting her head on the ground. “Jake! Go get some juice and a granola bar.” He practically drops the camera before breaking into a sprint across the store.

nononono… how long have I missed this? It all starts clicking into place… the long bathroom breaks after meals, the pulling away, the way she offered to not drink. Jake returns within 30 seconds, and Y/N starts to stir in my arms.

“”“”“”“”“”

Y/N’s POV

Everything feels like static… I think my eyes are open, but I still can’t see anything. I reach up, and my hand graces something, it takes me a second to register that it’s my loving boyfriend. I mutter a quick apology, and I hear him talking to someone but it’s so muffled. I don’t know how long I lay there before I start to regain feeling in my body. I can’t tell if I’m shaking, but I feel like I’m having a seizure or something.

once I’m able to sit up on my own Johnnie hands me a juice box and a granola bar. I can see Jake sitting across the aisle, also sipping a juice box. They wait until I’m done with my snack before talking. “Baby, I need you to be honest… when is the last time you ate?”

Shitshitshitshit. “I had lunch with Jake.” I try to sound confident, but my voice is shaky. I see Johnnie look across the aisle at Jake, questioning whether I was telling the truth.

“Y/N… that was almost a week ago.” He looks at me with a nearly indecipherable expression, but I know it well. Pity. “Is that really the last time you ate?”

Seeing how worried my they are breaks me. I only allow myself to break down because we are in a fairly secluded area of the store. Johnnie pulls me into his arms, kissing the top of my head. We stay like that for a while before heading home.

“”“”“”“”“”

Three Months Later

That day was a massive wake up call. Johnnie let me take a nap when we got home, while I slept they assembled friends and family. When I woke up they held an intervention. They gave me the choice to Go to an inpatient treatment, or try to get better at home… I chose getting better at home, scared that nobody would wait for me.

That night we worked out a plan. Johnnie made me a meal plan full of foods that I felt safe eating, we threw out the bathroom scale, and we deleted the calorie counter. It wasn’t an overnight change, but I had amazing support from the people around me.

Johnnie is truly the man of my dreams. He never stops telling me how much he loves me, and reassuring me that he would never leave me. He is the reason I wake up in the morning, and I know that he will always be there.

“”“”“”“”“”

@unbruisable @bernardsbendystraws @sturniolo-fann @jnkvivi @stasiesturn

@h3arts4harry @slutforsturniolos

[ediet-the-right-way]

Keeping my day to 6 meals under 100 calories each keeps me from 🍽️🤢🤮

[posttexasstressdisorder]

A mole infiltrated the highest ranks of American militias. Here's what he found.

ProPublica

January 4, 2025 8:26PM ET

John Williams kept a backpack filled with everything he’d need to go on the run: three pairs of socks; a few hundred dollars cash; makeshift disguises and lock-picking gear; medical supplies, vitamins and high-calorie energy gels; and thumb drives that each held more than 100 gigabytes of encrypted documents, which he would quickly distribute if he were about to be arrested or killed.

On April 1, 2023, Williams retrieved the bag from his closet and rushed to his car. He had no time to clean the dishes that had accumulated in his apartment. He did not know if armed men were out looking for him. He did not know if he would ever feel safe to return. He parked his car for the night in the foothills overlooking Salt Lake City and curled up his 6-foot-4-inch frame in the back seat of the 20-year-old Honda. This was his new home.

He turned on a recording app to add an entry to his diary. His voice had the high-pitched rasp of a lifelong smoker: “Where to fucking start,” he sighed, taking a deep breath. After more than two years undercover, he’d been growing rash and impulsive. He had feared someone was in danger and tried to warn him, but it backfired. Williams was sure at least one person knew he was a double agent now, he said into his phone. “It’s only a matter of time before it gets back to the rest.”

In the daylight, Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.

It was addressed to me.

The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.

Now he was a fugitive. He drove south toward a desert four hours from the city, where he could disappear.

1. Prelude

I’d first heard from Williams five months earlier, when he sent me an intriguing but mysterious anonymous email. “I have been attempting to contact national media and civil rights groups for over a year and been ignored,” it read. “I’m tired of yelling into the void.” He sent it to an array of reporters. I was the only one to respond. I’ve burned a lot of time sating my curiosity about emails like that. I expected my interest to die after a quick call. Instead, I came to occupy a dizzying position as the only person to know the secret Williams had been harboring for almost two years.

We spoke a handful of times over encrypted calls before he fled. He’d been galvanized by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, Williams told me, when militias like the Oath Keepers conspired to violently overturn the 2020 presidential election. He believed democracy was under siege from groups the FBI has said pose a major domestic terrorism threat. So he infiltrated the militia movement on spec, as a freelance vigilante. He did not tell the police or the FBI. A loner, he did not tell his family or friends.

Williams seemed consumed with how to ensure this wasn’t all a self-destructive, highly dangerous waste of time. He distrusted law enforcement and didn’t want to be an informant, he said. He told me he hoped to damage the movement by someday going public with what he’d learned.

The Capitol riot had been nagging at me too. I’d reported extensively on Jan. 6. I’d sat with families who blamed militias for snatching their loved ones away from them, pulling them into a life of secret meetings and violent plots — or into a jail cell. By the time Williams contacted me, though, the most infamous groups appeared to have largely gone dark. Were militias more enduring, more potent, than it seemed?

Some of what he told me seemed significant. Still, before the package arrived, it could feel like I was corresponding with a shadow. I knew Williams treated deception as an art form. “When you spin a lie,” he once told me, “you have to have things they can verify so they won’t think to ask questions.” While his stories generally seemed precise and sober — always reassuring for a journalist — I needed to proceed with extreme skepticism.

So I pored over his files, tens of thousands of them. They included dozens of hours of conversations he secretly recorded and years of private militia chat logs and videos. I was able to authenticate those through other sources, in and out of the movement. I also talked to dozens of people, from Williams’ friends to other members of his militias. I dug into his tumultuous past and discovered records online he hadn’t pointed me to that supported his account.

The files give a unique window, at once expansive and intimate, into one of the most consequential and volatile social movements of our time. Williams penetrated a new generation of paramilitary leaders, which included doctors, career cops and government attorneys. Sometimes they were frightening, sometimes bumbling, always heavily armed. It was a world where a man would propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a debate about logistics.

Federal prosecutors have convicted more than 1,000 people for their role in Jan. 6. Key militia captains were sent to prison for a decade or more. But that did not quash the allure that militias hold for a broad swath of Americans.

Now President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters when he returns to the White House. Experts warn that such a move could trigger a renaissance for militant extremists, sending them an unprecedented message of protection and support — and making it all the more urgent to understand them.

(Unless otherwise noted, none of the militia members mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment.)

Williams is part of a larger cold war, radical vs. radical, that’s stayed mostly in the shadows. A left-wing activist told me he personally knows about 30 people who’ve gone undercover in militias or white supremacist groups. They did not coordinate with law enforcement, instead taking the surveillance of one of the most intractable features of American politics into their own hands.

Skeptical of authorities, militias have sought to reshape the country through armed action. Williams sought to do it through betrayals and lies, which sat with him uneasily. “I couldn’t have been as successful at this if I wasn’t one of them in some respects,” he once told me. “I couldn’t have done it so long unless they recognized something in me.”

2. The Struggle

If there is one moment that set Williams on his path into the militia underground, it came roughly a decade before Jan. 6, when he was sent to a medium-security prison. He was in his early 30s, drawn to danger and filled with an inner turbulence.

Williams grew up in what he described to me, to friends and in court records as a dysfunctional and unhappy home. He was a gay child in rural America. His father viewed homosexuality as a mortal sin, he said. Williams spent much of his childhood outdoors, bird-watching, camping and trying to spend as little time as possible at home. (John Williams is now his legal name, one he recently acquired.)

Once he was old enough to move out, Williams continued to go off the grid for weeks at a time. Living in a cave interested him; the jobs he’d found at grocery stores and sandwich shops did not. He told me his young adulthood was “a blank space in my life,” a stretch of “petty crime” and falling-outs with old friends. He pled guilty to a series of misdemeanors: trespassing, criminal mischief, assault.

What landed Williams in prison was how he responded to one of those arrests. He sent disturbing, anonymous emails to investigators on the case, threatening their families. Police traced the messages back to him and put him away for three years.

Williams found time to read widely in prison — natural history books, Bertrand Russell, Cormac McCarthy. And it served as a finishing school for a skill that would be crucial in his undercover years. Surviving prison meant learning to maneuver around gang leaders and corrections officers. He learned how to steer conversations to his own benefit without the other person noticing.

When he got out, he had a clear ambition: to become a wilderness survival instructor. He used Facebook to advertise guided hikes in Utah’s Uinta Mountains. An old photo captures Williams looking like a lanky camp counselor as he shows students an edible plant. He sports a thick ponytail and cargo pants, painted toenails poking out from his hiking sandals.

Many people in Utah had turned to wilderness survival after a personal crisis, forming a community of misfits who thrived in environments harsh and remote. Even among them, Williams earned a reputation for putting himself in extreme situations. “Not many people are willing to struggle on their own. He takes that struggle to a high degree,” one friend told me admiringly. Williams took up krav maga and muay thai because he enjoyed fistfights. He once spent 40 days alone in the desert with only a knife, living off chipmunks and currants (by choice, to celebrate a birthday).

Williams struggled to get his survival business going. He’d hand out business cards at hobbyist gatherings with promises of adventure, but in practice, he was mostly leading seminars in city parks for beer money. He would only take calls in emergencies, another friend recalled, because he wanted to save money on minutes.

Then around New Year’s in 2019, according to Williams, he received an email from a leader in American Patriots Three Percent, or AP3. He wanted to hire Williams for a training session. He could pay $1,000.

Finally, Williams thought. I’m starting to get some traction.

3. The Decision

They had agreed there’d be no semiautomatic rifles, Williams told me, so everyone brought a sidearm. Some dozen militiamen had driven into the mountains near Peter Sinks, Utah, one of the coldest places in the contiguous U.S. Initially they wanted training in evasion and escape, Williams said, but he thought they needed to work up to that. So for three days, he taught them the basics of wilderness survival, but with a twist: how to stay alive while “trying to stay hidden.” He showed them how to build a shelter that would both keep them dry and escape detection. How to make a fire, then how to clean it up so no one could tell it was ever there.

As the days wore on, stray comments started to irk him. Once, a man said he’d been “kiked” into overpaying for his Ruger handgun. At the end of the training, AP3 leaders handed out matching patches. The ritual reminded Williams of a biker gang.

He’d already been to some shorter AP3 events to meet the men and tailor the lesson to his first meaningful client, Williams told me. But spending days in the woods with them felt different. He said he found the experience unpleasant and decided not to work with the group again.

This portion of Williams’ story — exactly how and why he first became a militia member — is the hardest to verify. By his own account, he kept his thoughts and plans entirely to himself. At the time, he was too embarrassed to even tell his friends what happened that weekend, he said. In the survival community, training militias was considered taboo.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Williams was hiding a less gallant backstory. Maybe he’d joined AP3 out of genuine enthusiasm and then soured on it. Maybe now he was trying to fool me. Indeed, when I called the AP3 leader who set up the training, he disputed Williams’ timeline. He remembered Williams staying sporadically but consistently involved after the session in the mountains, as a friend of the group who attended two or three events a year. To further muddy the picture, Williams had warned me the man would say something like that — Williams had worked hard to create the impression that he never left, he said, that he’d just gone inactive for a while, busy with work. (Remarkably, the AP3er defended Williams’ loyalty each time I asserted he’d secretly tried to undermine the group. “He was very well-respected,” he said. “I never questioned his honesty or his intentions.”)

Even Williams’ friends told me he was something of a mystery to them. But I found evidence that supports his story where so many loners bare their innermost thoughts: the internet. In 2019 and early 2020, Williams wrote thousands of since-deleted entries in online forums. These posts delivered a snapshot of his worldview in this period: idiosyncratic, erudite and angry with little room for moderation. “There are occasionally militia types that want these skills to further violent fringe agendas and I will absolutely not enable them,” he wrote in one 2020 entry about wilderness survival. In another, he called AP3 and its allies “far right lunatics.” The posts didn’t prove the details of his account, but here was the Williams I knew, writing under pseudonyms long before we’d met.

One day, he’d voice his disdain for Trump voters, neoliberalism or “the capitalist infrastructure.” Another, he’d rail against gun control measures as immoral. When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in 2020, Williams wrote that he was gathering medical supplies for local protestors. He sounded at times like a revolutionary crossed with a left-wing liberal arts student. “The sole job of a cop is to bully citizens on behalf of the state,” he wrote. “Violent overthrow of the state is our only viable option.”

Then came Jan. 6. As he was watching on TV, he later told me, Williams thought he recognized the patch on a rioter’s tactical vest. It looked like the one that AP3 leaders had handed out at the end of his training.

Did I teach that guy? he wondered. Why was I so cordial to them all? If they knew I was gay, I bet they’d want me dead, and I actually helped them. Because I was too selfish to think of anything but my career.

Shame quickly turned to anger, he told me, and to a desire for revenge. Pundits were saying that democracy itself was in mortal peril. Williams took that notion literally. He assumed countless Americans would respond with aggressive action, he said, and he wanted to be among them.

4. A New World

Williams stood alone in his apartment, watching himself in the mirror.

“I’m tall.”

“I’m Dave.”

“I’m tall.”

“I’m Dave.”

He tried to focus on his mannerisms, on the intonation of his voice. Whether he was saying the truth or a falsehood, he wanted to appear exactly the same.

Months had passed since the Capitol riot. By all appearances, Williams was now an enthusiastic member of AP3. Because he already had an in, joining the group was easy, he said. Becoming a self-fashioned spy took some trial and error, however. In the early days, he had posed as a homeless person to surveil militia training facilities, but he decided that was a waste of time.

The casual deceit that had served him in prison was proving useful. Deviousness was a skill, and he stayed up late working to hone it. He kept a journal with every lie he told so he wouldn’t lose track. His syllabus centered on acting exercises and the history of espionage and cults. People like sex cult leader Keith Raniere impressed him most — he studied biographies to learn how they manipulated people, how they used cruelty to wear their followers down into acquiescence.

Williams regularly berated the militia’s rank and file. He doled out condescending advice about the group’s security weaknesses, warning their technical incompetence would make them easy targets for left-wing hackers and government snoops. Orion Rollins, the militia’s top leader in Utah, soon messaged Williams to thank him for the guidance. “Don’t worry about being a dick,” he wrote. “It’s time to learn and become as untraceable as possible.” (The AP3 messages Williams sent me were so voluminous that I spent an entire month reading them before I noticed this exchange.)

Williams was entering the militia at a pivotal time. AP3 once had chapters in nearly every state, with a roster likely in the tens of thousands; as authorities cracked down on the movement after Jan. 6, membership was plummeting. Some who stayed on had white nationalist ties. Others were just lonely conservatives who had found purpose in the paramilitary cause. For now, the group’s leaders were focused on saving the militia, not taking up arms to fight their enemies. (Thanks to Williams’ trove and records from several other sources, I was eventually able to write an investigation into AP3’s resurgence.)

On March 4, 2021, Williams complained to Rollins that everyone was still ignoring his advice. Williams volunteered to take over as the state’s “intel officer,” responsible for protecting the group from outside scrutiny.

“My hands are tied,” Williams wrote. “If I’m not able to” take charge, the whole militia “might unravel.” Rollins gave him the promotion.

“Thanks Orion. You’ve shown good initiative here.” Privately, he saw a special advantage to his appointment. If anyone suspected there was a mole in Utah, Williams would be the natural choice to lead the mole hunt.

Now he had a leadership role. What he did not yet have was a plan. But how could he decide on goals, he figured, until he knew more about AP3? He would work to gather information and rise through the ranks by being the best militia member he could be.

He took note of the job titles of leaders he met, like an Air Force reserve master sergeant (I confirmed this through military records) who recruited other airmen into the movement. Williams attended paramilitary trainings, where the group practiced ambushes with improvised explosives and semiautomatic guns. He offered his comrades free lessons in hand-to-hand combat and bonded with them in the backcountry hunting jackrabbits. When the militia joined right-wing rallies for causes like gun rights, they went in tactical gear. Williams attended as their “gray man,” he said — assigned to blend in with the crowd and call in armed reinforcements if tensions erupted.

Since his work was seasonal, Williams could spend as much as 40 hours a week on militia activities. One of his duties as intel officer was to monitor the group’s enemies on the left, which could induce vertigo. A militia leader once dispatched him to a Democratic Socialists of America meeting at a local library, he said, where he saw a Proud Boy he recognized from a joint militia training. Was this a closet right-winger keeping tabs on the socialists? Or a closet leftist who might dox him or inform the police?

He first contacted me in October 2022. He couldn’t see how the movement was changing beyond his corner of Utah. AP3 was reinvigorated by then, I later found, with as many as 50 recruits applying each day. In private chats I reviewed, leaders were debating if they should commit acts of terrorism. At the Texas border, members were rounding up immigrants in armed patrols. But Williams didn’t know all that yet. On our first call, he launched into a litany of minutiae: names, logistical details, allegations of minor players committing petty crimes. He could tell I wasn’t sure what it all amounted to.

Williams feared that if anything he’d helped AP3, not damaged it. Then, in early November, Rollins told him to contact a retired detective named Bobby Kinch.

5. The Detective and the Sheriff

Williams turned on a recording device and dialed. Kinch picked up after one ring: “What’s going on?” he bellowed. “How you doing, man?”

“I don’t know if you remember me,” Kinch continued, but they’d met years before.

“Oh, oh, back in the day,” Williams said, stuttering for a second. He knew Kinch was expecting the call but was confused by the warm reception. Maybe Kinch was at the training in 2019?

“Well I’m the sitting, current national director of the Oath Keepers now.”

The militia’s eye-patched founder, Stewart Rhodes, was in jail amid his trial for conspiring to overthrow the government on Jan. 6. Kinch said he was serving on the group’s national board when his predecessor was arrested. Rhodes had called from jail to say, “Do not worry about me. This is God’s way.”

“He goes, ‘But I want you to save the organization.’”

Kinch explained that Rollins, who’d recently defected to the Oath Keepers, had been singing Williams’ praises. (Bound by shared ideology, militias are more porous than outsiders would think. Members often cycle between groups like square dance partners.) “I imagine your plate is full with all the crazy stuff going on in the world, but I’d love to sit down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Williams said. “AP3 and Oath Keepers should definitely be working together.” He proposed forming a joint reconnaissance team so their two militias could collaborate on intelligence operations. Kinch lit up. “I’m a career cop,” he said. “I did a lot of covert stuff, surveillance.”

By the time they hung up 45 minutes later, Kinch had invited Williams to come stay at his home. Williams felt impressed with himself. The head of the most infamous militia in America was treating him like an old friend.

To me, Williams sounded like a different person on the call, with the same voice but a brand new personality. It was the first recording that I listened to and the first time I became certain the most important part of his story was true. To authenticate the record, I independently confirmed nonpublic details Kinch discussed on the tape, a process I repeated again and again with the other files. Soon I had proof of what would otherwise seem outlandish: Williams’ access was just as deep as he claimed.

I could see why people would be eager to follow Kinch. Even when he sermonized on the “global elitist cabal,” he spoke with the affable passion of a beloved high school teacher. I’d long been fascinated by the prevalence of cops on militia rosters, so I started examining his backstory.

Kinch grew up in upstate New York, the son of a World War II veteran who had him at about 50. When Kinch was young, he confided in a later recording, he was a “wheelman,” slang for getaway driver. “I ran from the cops so many fucking times,” he said. But “at the end of the day, you know, I got away. I never got caught.”

He moved to Las Vegas and, at the age of 25, became an officer in the metro police. Kinch came to serve in elite detective units over 23 years in the force, hunting fugitives and helping take down gangs like the Playboy Bloods. Eventually he was assigned to what he called the “Black squad,” according to court records, tasked with investigating violent crimes where the suspect was African American. (A Las Vegas police spokesperson told me they stopped “dividing squads by a suspect’s race” a year before Kinch retired.)

Then around Christmas in 2013, Kinch’s career began to self-destruct. In a series of Facebook posts, he said that he would welcome a “race war.” “Bring it!” he wrote. “I’m about as fed up as a man (American, Christian, White, Heterosexual) can get!” An ensuing investigation prompted the department to tell the Secret Service that Kinch “could be a threat to the president,” according to the Las Vegas Sun. (The Secret Service interviewed him and determined he was not a threat to President Barack Obama, the outlet reported. Kinch told the paper he was not racist and that he was being targeted by colleagues with “an ax to grind.”) In 2016, he turned in his badge, a year after the saga broke in the local press.

Kinch moved to southern Utah and found a job hawking hunting gear at a Sportsman’s Warehouse. But he “had this urge,” he later said on a right-wing podcast. “Like I wasn’t done yet.” So he joined the Oath Keepers. “When people tell me that violence doesn’t solve anything, I look back over my police career,” he once advised his followers. “And I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, because violence did solve quite a bit.’”

Kinch added Williams to an encrypted Signal channel where the Utah Oath Keepers coordinated their intel work. Two weeks later on Nov. 30, 2022, Williams received a cryptic message from David Coates, one of Kinch’s top deputies.

Coates was an elder statesman of sorts in the Oath Keepers, a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran with a Hulk Hogan mustache. There’d been a break-in at the Utah attorney general’s office, he reported to the group, and for some unspoken reason, the Oath Keepers seemed to think this was of direct relevance to them. Coates promised to find out more about the burglary: “The Sheriff should have some answers” to “my inquiries today or tomorrow.”

That last line would come to obsess Williams. He sent a long, made-up note about his own experiences collaborating with law enforcement officials. “I’m curious, how responsive is the Sheriff to your inquiries? Or do you have a source you work with?”

“The Sheriff has become a personal friend who hosted my FBI interview,” Coates responded. “He opens a lot of doors.” Coates had been in D.C. on Jan. 6, he’d told Williams. It’d make sense if that had piqued the FBI’s interest.

To Williams, it hinted at a more menacing scenario — at secret ties between those who threaten the rule of the law and those duty-bound to enforce it. He desperately wanted more details, more context, the sheriff’s name. But he didn’t want to push for too much too fast.

6. The Hunting of Man

A forest engulfed Kinch’s house on all sides. He lived in a half-million-dollar cabin in summer home country, up 8,000 feet in the mountains outside Zion National Park. Williams stood in the kitchen on a mid-December Saturday morning.

Williams had recently made a secret purchase of a small black device off Amazon. It looked like a USB drive. The on-off switch and microphone holes revealed what it really was: a bug. As the two men chatted over cups of cannoli-flavored coffee, Williams didn’t notice when Kinch’s dog snatched the bug from his bag.

The night before, Williams had slept in the guest room. The house was cluttered with semiautomatic rifles. He had risked photographing three plaques on the walls inscribed with the same Ernest Hemingway line. “There is no hunting like the hunting of man,” they read. “Those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else.”

They spotted the dog at the same time. The bug was attached to a charging device. The animal was running around with it like it was a tennis ball. As Kinch went to retrieve it, Williams felt panic grip his chest. Could anyone talk their way out of this? He’d learned enough about Kinch to be terrified of his rage. Looking around, Williams eyed his host’s handgun on the kitchen counter.

If he even starts to examine it, I’ll grab the gun, he thought. Then I’ll shoot him and flee into the woods.

Kinch took the bug from the dog’s mouth. Then he handed it right to Williams and started to apologize.

Don’t worry about it, Williams said. He’s a puppy!

On their way out the door, Kinch grabbed the pistol and placed it in the console of his truck. It was an hour’s drive to the nearest city, where the Oath Keepers were holding a leadership meeting. Williams rode shotgun, his bug hooked onto the zipper of his backpack. On the tape, I could hear the wind racing through the car window. The radio played Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69.”

Kinch seemed in the hold of a dark nostalgia — as if he was wrestling with the monotony of civilian life, with the new strictures he faced since turning in his badge. Twenty minutes in, he recited the Hemingway line like it was a mantra. “I have a harder time killing animals than a human being,” Kinch continued. Then he grew quiet as he recounted the night he decided to retire.

He’d woken up in an oleander bush with no memory of how he’d gotten there. His hands were covered in blood. He was holding a gun. “I had to literally take my magazine out and count my bullets, make sure I didn’t fucking kill somebody,” he said. “I black out when I get angry. And I don’t remember what the fuck I did.”

Kinch went on: “I love the adrenaline of police work,” and then he paused. “I miss it. It was a hoot.”

By the time they reached Cedar City, Utah, Kinch was back to charismatic form. He dished out compliments to the dozen or so Oath Keepers assembled for the meeting — “You look like you lost weight” — and told everyone to put their phones in their cars. “It’s just good practice. Because at some point we may have to go down a route,” one of his deputies explained, trailing off.

Kinch introduced Williams to the group. “He’s not the feds. And if he is, he’s doing a damn good job.”

Williams laughed, a little too loud.

7. Doctor, Lawyer, Sergeant, Spy

Early in the meeting, Kinch laid out his vision for the Oath Keepers’ role in American life. “We have a two-edged sword,” he said. The “dull edge” was more traditional grassroots work, exemplified by efforts to combat alleged election fraud. He hoped to build their political apparatus so that in five or 10 years, conservative candidates would be seeking the Oath Keepers’ endorsement.

Then there was the sharp edge: paramilitary training. “You hone all these skills because when the dull edge fails, you’ve got to be able to turn that around and be sharp.” The room smelled like donuts, one of the men had remarked.

The week before, Kinch’s predecessor had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. This was their first meeting since the verdict, and I opened the recordings later with the same anticipation I feel sitting down for the Super Bowl. What would come next for the militia after this historic trial: ruin, recovery or revolt?

The stature of men leading the group’s post-Jan. 6 resurrection startled me. I was expecting the ex-cops, like the one from Fresno, California, who said he stayed on with the militia because “this defines me.” Militias tend to prize law enforcement ties; during an armed operation, it could be useful to have police see you as a friend.

But there was also an Ohio OB-GYN on the national board of directors — he used to work for the Cleveland Clinic, I discovered, and now led a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. The doctor was joined at board meetings by a city prosecutor in Utah, an ex-city council member and, Williams was later told, a sergeant with an Illinois sheriff’s department. (The doctor did not respond to requests for comment. He has since left his post with the UnitedHealth subsidiary, a spokesperson for the company said.)

Over six hours, the men set goals and delegated responsibilities with surprisingly little worry about the federal crackdown on militias. They discussed the scourges they were there to combat (stolen elections, drag shows, President Joe Biden) only in asides. Instead, they focused on “marketing” — “So what buzzwords can we insert in our mission statement?” one asked — and on resources that’d help local chapters rapidly expand. “I’d like to see this organization be like the McDonald’s of patriot organizations,” another added. To Williams, it felt more like a Verizon sales meeting than an insurrectionist cell.

Kinch had only recently taken over and as I listened, I wondered how many followers he really had outside of that room. They hadn’t had a recruitment drive in the past year, which they resolved to change. They had $1,700 in the bank. But it didn’t seem entirely bravado. Kinch and his comrades mentioned conversations with chapters around the county.

Then as they turned from their weakened national presence to their recent successes in Utah, Williams snapped to attention.

“We had surveillance operations,” Kinch said, without elaboration.

“We’re making progress locally on the law enforcement,” Coates added. He said that at least three of them can get “the sheriff” on the phone any time of day. Like the last time, Coates didn’t give a name, but he said something even more intriguing: “The sheriff is my tie-in to the state attorney general because he’s friends.” Williams told me he fought the urge to lob a question. (The attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

Closing out the day, Kinch summarized their plan moving forward: Keep a low profile. Focus on the unglamorous work. Rebuild their national footprint. And patiently prepare for 2024. “We still got what, two more years, till another quote unquote election?” He thanked Williams for coming and asked if they could start planning training exercises.

“Absolutely, yeah, I’m excited about that.” Williams was resolved to find his way onto the national board.

8. The Stakeout

On Dec. 17, 2022, a week after the meeting, Williams called a tech-savvy 19-year-old Oath Keeper named Rowan. He’d told Rowan he was going to teach him to infiltrate leftist groups, but Williams’ real goal was far more underhanded. While the older Oath Keepers had demurred at his most sensitive questions recently, the teenager seemed eager to impress a grizzled survival instructor. By assigning missions to Rowan, he hoped to probe the militias’ secrets without casting suspicion on himself.

“You don’t quite have the life experience to do this,” Williams opened on the recording. But with a couple years’ training, “I think we can work towards that goal.” He assigned his student a scholarly monograph, “Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in a Capitalist Society,” to begin his long education in how leftists think. “Perfect,” Rowan responded. He paused to write the title down.

Then came his pupil’s first exercise: build a dossier on Williams’ boss in AP3. Williams explained it was safest to practice on people they knew.

In Rowan, Williams had found a particularly vulnerable target. He was on probation at the time. According to court records, earlier that year, Rowan had walked up to a stranger’s truck as she was leaving her driveway. She rolled down her window. He punched her several times in the face. When police arrived, Rowan began screaming that he was going to kill them and threatened to “blow up the police department.” He was convicted of misdemeanor assault.

Williams felt guilty about using the young man but also excited. (“He is completely in my palm,” he recorded in his diary.) Within a few weeks, he had Rowan digging into Kinch’s background. “I’m going to gradually have him do more and more things,” he said in the diary, “with the hopes that I can eventually get him to hack” into militia leaders’ accounts.

The relationship quickly unearthed something that disturbed him. The week of their call, Williams woke up to a series of angry messages in the Oath Keepers’ encrypted Signal channel. The ire was directed toward a Salt Lake Tribune reporter who, according to Coates, was “a real piece of shit.” His sins included critical coverage of “anyone trying to expose voter fraud” and writing about a local political figure who’d appeared on a leaked Oath Keepers roster.

Williams messaged Rowan. “I noticed in the chat that there is some kind of red list of journalists etc? Could you get that to me?” he asked. “It would be very helpful to my safety when observing political rallies or infiltrating leftists.”

“Ah yes, i have doxes on many journalists in utah,” Rowan responded, using slang for sharing someone’s personal data with malicious intent.

He sent over a dossier on the Tribune reporter, which opened with a brief manifesto: “This dox goes out to those that have been terrorized, doxed, harassed, slandered, and family names mutilated by these people.” It provided the reporter’s address and phone number, along with two pictures of his house.

Then Rowan shared similar documents about a local film critic — he’d posted a “snarky” retweet of the Tribune writer — and about a student reporter at Southern Utah University. The college student had covered a rally the Oath Keepers recently attended, Rowan explained, and the militia believed he was coordinating with the Tribune. “We found the car he drove through a few other members that did a stakeout.”

“That’s awesome,” Williams said. Internally, he was reeling: a stakeout? In the dossier, he found a backgrounder on the student’s parents along with their address. Had armed men followed this kid around? Did they surveil his family home?

His notes show him wrestling with a decision he hadn’t let himself reckon with before: Was it time to stop being a fly on the wall and start taking action? Did he need to warn someone? The journalists? The police? Breaking character would open the door to disaster. The incident with Kinch’s dog had been a chilling reminder of the risks.

Williams had been in the militia too long. He was losing his sense of objectivity. The messages were alarming, but were they an imminent threat? He couldn’t tell. Williams had made plans to leave Utah if his cover was blown. He didn’t want to jeopardize two years of effort over a false alarm. But what if he did nothing and this kid got hurt?

9. The Plan

By 2023, Williams’ responsibilities were expanding as rapidly as his anxiety. His schedule was packed with events for AP3, the Oath Keepers and a third militia he’d recently gotten inside. He vowed to infiltrate the Proud Boys and got Coates to vouch for him with the local chapter. He prepared plans to penetrate a notorious white supremacist group too.

His adversaries were gaining momentum as well. Williams soon made the four-hour drive to Kinch’s house for another leadership meeting and was told on tape about a national Oath Keepers recruiting bump; they’d also found contact information for 40,000 former members, which they hoped to use to bring a flood of militiamen back into the fold.

Despite the risk to his own safety and progress, Williams decided to send the journalists anonymous warnings from burner accounts. He attached sensitive screenshots so that they’d take him seriously. And then … nothing. The reporters never responded; he wondered if the messages went to spam. His secret was still secure.

But the point of his mission was finally coming into focus. He was done simply playing the part of model militia member. His plan had two parts: After gathering as much compromising information as he could, he would someday release it all online, he told me. He carefully documented anything that looked legally questionable, hoping law enforcement would find something useful for a criminal case. At the very least, going public could make militiamen more suspicious of each other.

In the meantime, he would undermine the movement from the inside. He began trying to blunt the danger that he saw lurking in every volatile situation the militiamen put themselves in.

On Jan. 27, 2023, body camera footage from the police killing of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man, became public. “The footage is gruesome and distressing,” The New York Times reported. “Cities across the U.S. are bracing for protests.” The militias had often responded to Black Lives Matter rallies with street brawls and armed patrols.

Williams had visions of Kyle Rittenhouse-esque shootings in the streets. He put his newly formulated strategy into action, sending messages to militiamen around the country with made-up rumors he hoped would persuade them to stay home.

In Utah, he wrote to Kinch and the leaders of his other two militias. He would be undercover at the protests in Salt Lake City, he wrote. If any militiamen went, even “a brief look of recognition could blow my cover and put my life in danger.” All three ordered their troops to avoid the event. (“This is a bit of a bummer,” one AP3 member responded. “I’ve got some aggression built up I need to let out.”)

After the protests, Williams turned on his voice diary and let out a long sigh. For weeks, he’d been nauseous and had trouble eating. He’d developed insomnia that would keep him up until dawn. He’d gone to the rally to watch for militia activity. When he got home, he’d vomited blood.

Even grocery shopping took hours now. He circled the aisles to check if he was being tailed. Once while driving, he thought he caught someone following him. He’d reached out to a therapist to help “relieve some of this pressure,” he said, but was afraid to speak candidly with him. “I can check his office for bugs and get his electronics out of the office. And then once we’re free, I can tell him what’s going on.”

He quickly launched into a litany of items on his to-do list. A training exercise to attend. A recording device he needed to find a way to install. “I’m just fucking sick of being around these toxic motherfuckers.”

“It’s getting to be too much for me.”

10. The Deep State

On March 20, Williams called Scot Seddon, the founder of AP3. If he was on the verge of a breakdown, it didn’t impact his performance. I could tell when Williams was trying to advance his agenda as I listened later, but he was subtle about it. Obsequious. Methodical. By day’s end, he’d achieved perhaps his most remarkable feat yet. He’d helped persuade Seddon and his lieutenants to fire the head of AP3’s Utah chapter and to install Williams in his place.

Now he had access to sensitive records only senior militia leaders could see. He had final say over the group’s actions in an entire state. He knew the coup would make him vastly more effective. Yet that night in his voice diary, Williams sounded like a man in despair.

The success only added to his paranoia. Becoming a major figure in the Utah militia scene raised a possibility he couldn’t countenance: He might be arrested and sent to jail for some action of his comrades.

With a sense of urgency now, he focused even more intently on militia ties to government authorities. “I have been still collecting evidence on the paramilitaries’ use of law enforcement,” he said in the diary entry. “It’s way deeper than I thought.”

He solved the mystery of the Oath Keepers’ “sheriff”: It was the sheriff for Iron County, Utah, a tourist hub near two national parks. He assigned Rowan to dig deeper into the official’s ties with the movement and come back with emails or text messages. (In a recent interview, the sheriff told me that he declined an offer to join the Oath Keepers but that he’s known “quite a few” members and thinks “they’re generally good people.” Coates has periodically contacted him about issues like firearms rules that Coates believes are unconstitutional, the sheriff said. “If I agree, I contact the attorney general’s office.”)

Claiming to work on “a communication strategy for reaching out to law enforcement,” Williams then goaded AP3 members into bragging about their police connections. They told him about their ties with high-ranking officers in Missouri and in Louisiana, in Texas and in Tennessee.

The revelations terrified him. “When this gets out, I think I’m probably going to flee overseas,” he said in his diary. “They have too many connections.” What if a cop ally helped militants track him down? “I don’t think I can safely stay within the United States.”

Four days later, he tuned into a Zoom seminar put on by a fellow AP3 leader. It was a rambling and sparsely attended meeting. But 45 minutes in, a woman brought up an issue in her Virginia hometown, population 23,000.

The town’s vice mayor, a proud election denier, was under fire for a homophobic remark. She believed a local reporter covering the controversy was leading a secret far-left plot. What’s more, the reporter happened to be her neighbor. To intimidate her, she said, he’d been leaving dead animals on her lawn.

“I think I have to settle a score with this guy,” she concluded. “They’re getting down to deep state local level and it’s got to be stopped.” After the call, Williams went to turn off his recording device. “Well, that was fucking insane,” he said aloud.

He soon reached out to the woman to offer his advice. Maybe he could talk her down, Williams thought, or at least determine what she meant by settling a score. But she wasn’t interested in speaking with him. So again he faced a choice: do nothing or risk his cover being blown. He finally came to the same conclusion he had the last time he’d feared journalists were in jeopardy. On March 31, he sent an anonymous warning.

“Because she is a member of a right wing militia group and is heavily armed, I wanted to let you know,” Williams wrote to the reporter. “I believe her to be severely mentally ill and I believe her to be dangerous. For my own safety, I cannot reveal more.”

He saw the article the next morning. The journalist had published 500 words about the disturbing email he’d gotten, complete with a screenshot of Williams’ entire note. Only a few people had joined that meandering call. Surely only Williams pestered the woman about it afterwards. There could be little doubt that he was the mole.

He pulled the go bag from his closet and fled. A few days later, while on the run, Williams recorded the final entries in his diary. Amid the upheaval, he sounded surprised to feel a sense of relief: “I see the light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in two and a half years.”

Coda: Project 2025

It was seven days before the 2024 presidential election. Williams had insisted I not bring my phone, on the off chance my movements were being tracked. We were finally meeting for the first time, in a city that he asked me not to disclose. He entered the cramped hotel room wearing a camo hat, hiking shoes and a “Spy vs. Spy” comic strip T-shirt. “Did you pick the shirt to match the occasion?” I asked. He laughed. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

We talked for days, with Williams splayed across a Best Western office chair beside the queen bed. He evoked an aging computer programmer with 100 pounds of muscle attached, and he seemed calmer than on the phone, endearingly offbeat. The vision he laid out — of his own future and of the country’s — was severe.

After he dropped everything and went underground, Williams spent a few weeks in the desert. He threw his phone in a river, flushed documents down the toilet and switched apartments when he returned to civilization. At first, he spent every night by the door ready for an attack; if anyone found him and ambushed him, it’d happen after dark, he figured. No one ever came, and he began to question if he’d needed to flee at all. The insomnia of his undercover years finally abated. He began to sketch out the rest of his life.

Initially, he hoped to connect with lawmakers in Washington, helping them craft legislation to combat the militia movement. By last summer, those ambitions had waned. Over time, he began to wrestle with his gift for deceiving people who trusted him. “I don’t necessarily like what it says about me that I have a talent for this,” he said.

To me, it seemed that the ordeal might be starting to change him. He’d become less precise in consistently adhering to the facts in recent weeks, I thought, more grandiose in his account of his own saga. But then for long stretches, he’d speak with the same introspection and attention to detail that he showed on our first calls. His obsession with keeping the Tyre Nichols protestors safe was myopic, he told me, a case of forgetting the big picture to quash the few dangers he could control.

Williams believes extremists will try to murder him after this story is published. And if they fail, he thinks he’ll “live to see the United States cease to exist.” He identifies with the violent abolitionist John Brown, who tried to start a slave revolt two years before the American Civil War and was executed. Williams thinks he himself may not be seen as such a radical soon, he told me. “I wonder if I’m maybe a little too early.”

I’d thought Williams was considering a return to a quiet life. Our two intense years together had been a strain sometimes even for me. But in the hotel room, he explained his plans for future operations against militias: “Until they kill me, this is what I’m doing.” He hopes to inspire others to follow in his footsteps and even start his own vigilante collective, running his own “agents” inside the far right.

In August, I published my investigation into AP3. (I used his records but did not otherwise rely on Williams as an anonymous source.) It was a way of starting to lay out what I’d learned since his first email: what’s driving the growth of militias, how they keep such a wide range of people united, the dangerous exploits that they’ve managed to keep out of public view.

Two months later, Williams published an anonymous essay. He revealed that he’d infiltrated the group as an “independent activist” and had sent me files. He wanted to test how the militia would respond to news of a mole.

The result was something he long had hoped for: a wave of paranoia inside AP3. “It’s a fucking risky thing we get involved in,” Seddon, the group’s founder, said in a private message. “Fucking trust nobody. There’s fucking turncoats everywhere.” (Seddon declined to comment for this story. He then sent a short follow-up email: “MAGA.”)

Sowing that distrust is why Williams is going on the record, albeit without his original name. He still plans to release thousands of files after this article is published — evidence tying sheriffs and police officers to the movement, his proudest coup, plus other records he hopes could become ammo for lawsuits. But Williams wants to let his former comrades know “a faggot is doing this to them.” He thinks his story could be his most effective weapon.

Every time militia members make a phone call, attend a meeting or go to a gun range together, he wants them “to be thinking, in the back of their heads, ‘This guy will betray me.’”