You’re welcome.

I like to read a fun or interesting book before bed too, in order to wind down. It’s good to have a bedtime routine that is calming. Some yoga, low light, deep breathing, etc. Sleep hygiene.

Boring books work great for when I’m up because of anxiety or nightmares and want to fall back asleep.

Basically, the thought is that you want to keep the bed for sleeping (and sex). If you’re in there awake for a while it’s telling your brain that the bed is an awake space and breaks the association bed=sleep. So if I’m gonna be awake for 15 minutes or more anyway I get out, get in my chair, flip through the boring book until I’m calmer.

I love finding ephemera in books. My favourite are bus tickets and receipts. Imagine the ordinary life of whoever bought a 60c loaf of bread and used the receipt as a bookmark.

I remember somewhere that nomadic people (hunter-gatherers) would let their kids play with machetes. They would keep a close watch but not stop them. Kids would grow up with many scars but also would learn how to handle machetes safely.

Understandable, I also do things the difficult way in my hobbies.

Every macronutrient has to have its day in the sun, I guess. Maybe all the seed-oil-saturated-fat-tallow-is-good nonsense is preparing the ground for a new diet where 70% of your calories come from fats?

There’s a lot of obsession over protein, but most people don’t need a lot. 50g per day is a common recommendation, and it’s very easy to get that much without focusing on “protein source” foods. If you’re an athlete and especially putting on muscle then you need lots more. I have seen vegan bodybuilders out there but I suspect a lot of them build most of their muscle on a meat-heavy diet and then went vegan later.

I suspect a lot of the high-protein discourse and anti-soy nonsense comes from animal agriculture lobby groups (and the seed oil bullshit). High protein milk?? Just a way to charge 2x for milk which is already high in protein. Greek yogurt? Look at the ingredients, it’s yogurt with added whey protein - just buy Balkan yogurt for half the price and add your own protein powder. Your mixed nuts are high in protein? Yeah no shit, and potatoes are gluten-free and water has no trans fats.

You can also get pre-mixed stuff if all that is a hassle.

I got a wooden cutting board and a tube each of oil and some stuff that seals it, those have lasted for 8 years now maybe.

And hopefully HUR can whack him if he gets too successful.

A foreign power propping up a militant to destabilize their enemy can work, or have massive unintended consequences. Refer to Lenin being sent to Tsarist Russia on a sealed train.

Just like at the hospital!

Sent from Proton Mail? Def autistic.

New years’ resolutions don’t really work for 2 reasons:

• You’re in survival mode so a year-long project is impossible to keep up, you’re living from one day to the next or paycheque-to-paycheque.

Or,

• You’re doing well enough to think of long time horizons. Likely then you have many medium- to long-term goals on the go, and you don’t have to start them in the new year.

I find myself luckily in the latter case. I’ll take the new year as a chance to evaluate where I am with my goals and adjust priorities, if needed.

Fitness is my slow hobby. Nobody is gonna get swole in 30 days. Not even in 3 years. The results pile up though. It’s like gardening but for my body. I started with an arid wasteland and it’s slowly blooming.

Goal: put on muscle mass.

Do exercises within all of these categories:

• Vertical press
• Horizontal press
• Vertical pull
• Horizontal pull
• Squat
• Hip hinge

Any program I do must have those. Beyond that, isolation exercises as needed. I’m adding shoulders and arms as I want big ass arms.

This year I mostly did 3x a week full body. Now I’m gonna change to Upper, Shoulders/Arms, Lower. More ShArms to bro out, less leg frequency as they’re growing faster than everything else.

Estimate your total daily energy expenditure:

https://tdeecalculator.net/

Eat in a caloric deficit. You will need to weigh your food and track calories, at least for a while.

Weigh yourself and see if the weight is going in the right direction and not losing too fast either. Adjust calories as needed.

It’s way harder than just these steps but this is the foundation. Personally I found the food weighing and calorie counting massively stressful but I got a good sense of how much to eat from doing it from a few weeks. Now I check the scale and log weight and make sure it’s going the way I want it.

Also talk to a therapist. I needed one to get over certain mental barriers and to re-evaluate my relationship to food and my body image.

That’s not too slow at all! Pretty common for weight loss to slow down the further along you are. Think of it this way: to lose 1% of your bodyweight at 300 lbs you lose 3 lbs, to lose 1% of your bodyweight at 200 lbs you lose 2 lbs.

Plus you have to keep decreasing your calorie intake as you get smaller and your body needs less to maintain its weight.

Have used the apps on and off for a while. When things didn’t go well on them and swiping and chatting only to be ghosted was taking a toll on me, I deleted them and focused on other things in my life for a few months, then returned.

When I still set myself as looking for men on the apps, I’d get a 10:1 ratio of likes from men to women/NB. Men who swiped on me would often be obviously incompatible if they read my profile or have minimum effort profiles. So I turned off looking for men on the apps.

Where I live is pretty accepting of LGBTQ+ people and there’s a good sized queer scene IRL so I can easily find events to meet queer people. However I have severe RBF, generally act unapproachable in-person, look a little scary, am clueless to hints, and don’t drink or party, so for meeting women I use the apps and IRL events specifically for single people.

Not a lot of success so far, but I’ve learned a LOT about what I don’t like in a person. I’ve learned to listen to my instincts. When things felt off and I carried on with the dates I met on the apps, things went badly. As a result, I’m much more in touch with what I want too. I was in a long-term relationship for years before where I compromised too much and settled with someone who I never should have. Dating many people has allowed my own preferences and desires to resurface and has given me a lot of confidence and self-esteem back.

Early teens:

D’Angelo’s video for Untitled (How Does It Feel)? made me realize I like dudes too. Round the same time I remember blushing heavily watching the male gym teacher do pushups.

Knew I liked women earlier when some kid snuck a stack of porno mags and a bunch of kids flipped thru em ogling the titties etc.

Nice try Interpol

Nice try FBI