What POSITIVE CHANGES are you making in your life?

As of this month I will have been going to free community mental health therapy for a year. My therapist is a grad student who is also a paraplegic. She graduates next month and I will probably stop therapy at that point. She's pretty cool, and I have learned some important things in the past year, about myself and what to do going forward. It has been good to talk to someone weekly and get some validation, and also be accountable each week with my therapy homework.

I also started taking low doses of Bupropion about three months ago because winter was kicking my butt. When my partner and I are both on it we tend to calm down a little and spend less time outside of the "window of control."

Yesterday I hosted an online academic symposium with 22 presenters and 150 registered attendees. I was impressed with the quality of the sessions. It was a lot of work and stress and Microsoft Teams threatened to lock people out but it finally came all together.

So I've got about two more physical therapist sessions for my Lateral epicondylitis, more commonly known as "I'm over fifty and everything breaks all the time." I think the therapy helps, but also the leftover wrist brace I've been wearing reduces the muscular pain in my forearm considerably.

My son is going to work remotely in Nicaragua and told my wife when she was having a depressive episode and she freaked out and is convinced he will be kidnapped.

We went on our first cruise to Baja, to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. It was both trashy and fun.

There is quite a difference between Catalina Island and Ensenada, but we enjoyed them both.





Taking the bus to the Long Beach airport. This photo is pointless, except all of the bungalows we saw, frozen in place by their million dollar mortgages, were quite charming.



We probably spent three hours on public transit on the way home and saved about $150. We each just took a carry on, not carrion, for a five day trip. I think I want to go on another cruise, perhaps.



“As each person's sandal hits the pier, a sociolinguistic transformation from cruiser to tourist is effected.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments [//i]

I went to my last therapy session on Monday. She gave me a very nice card with some suggestions and a thank you. It was very sweet, and she thanked me for helping her grow as a therapist. I actually saw her improving over the past year, and am going to miss her. She is practicing locally, but money and insurance, and I think we've hit a good stopping point. I will now revert to my former therapist, this forum. Brace yourselves.

dysjunct wrote: It's been a very fun experience. We might add a trumpet player in a bit.

We added a trumpet player. Now my various screwups are even less noticeable. WIN.

My wife decided we are going vegan, mostly so we don't slather everything we eat with cheese. The weather turned decent and I began riding my 40 lb. recumbent to work. We had a congregation fast for a member who was in a coma and I decided to just not eat until 2pm every day. I hope I can keep this up. I hope lose five lbs. a year so that when I hit 70 I don't run into mobility issues from having a huge cortisol gut throwing me off balance. Maybe I should start doing Tai Chi for balance.



They found cancer cells in my prostate but my PSA scores are still good. If you are over 40 there is a very good chance you have some cancer cells hanging out down there [if you have a prostate].

I have been vegan for 25 years so I am happy to help if you want advice. I regret to inform you that it is not a magic bullet for losing weight, especially in the modern environment of high-calorie vegan convenience foods like soy ice cream and beyond burgers. Not eating breakfast or lunch can help but it will not offset a 6000-calorie dinner.

However my preferred high calorie vegan food is bourbon, which a TBM might not have a problem with.

I was unaware that bourbon was high calorie. :/

Without trying, I lost 6 pounds in the last two months. The only real change that I made was to increase my protein intake. I lift weights at the gym three times a week, and have been doing that for decades. But I have generally shorted myself on protein because meat is more expensive than most other types of food, and non-meat sources of protein tend to lack some of the nine amino acids. So I have always been physically fit but a little too skinny.

Two months ago, I took my older cat off of chemo. He had a third bout of lymphoma earlier this year, and I was afraid to take him off the chemo too soon. Finally, I realized that he was losing too much weight, so I stopped the chemo and started feeding him an extra meal every day of slow-cooked chicken. Since I was cooking a chicken breast for dinner every night and he was only eating a tablespoon of it at the most, I was taking in a lot more protein, and soon had more muscle to show for all my workouts. Muscles, especially when supported with sufficient protein, continue to burn calories even on the days when I'm not working out, and so I started losing weight.

Cranberries, I don't believe that intermittent fasting will result in lasting weight loss. Taking in less food will slow down your metabolism, and confining all your eating to a limited daily time span could create unhealthy swings in your blood sugar level.

hotseatgames wrote: I was unaware that bourbon was high calorie. :/

97 calories in a shot, for typical 80 proof liquor. It's better (in terms of alcohol per calorie) than beer or wine.

Shellhead wrote: non-meat sources of protein tend to lack some of the nine amino acids.

This is true, but not that big of a deal in practice. A legume plus a grain will get you all nine essential ones, which has been discovered independently by pretty much every traditional cuisine: tofu and rice, hummus and pita, black beans and tortillas, etc. You don't even have to eat them at the same meal or even in the same day.

Cranberries, I don't believe that intermittent fasting will result in lasting weight loss. Taking in less food will slow down your metabolism, and confining all your eating to a limited daily time span could create unhealthy swings in your blood sugar level.

Not a doctor or nutritionist, but I have done intermittent fasting in the past and have paid attention to a lot of the research in the space. You're right that:

* Current research doesn't show that IF has any advantage in long-term weight loss compared to calorie restriction. So I would say it's more of a tool than a magic bullet. For some people, it's easier to eat fewer calories if they skip a meal. For others, it might make it more likely for them to slip up and binge.

* Fewer calories can slow down your metabolism. But, it doesn't always. Metabolism is extremely complicated and interlocks with so many different parts of anatomy and neurology that it's hard to generalize.

I don't agree that the blood sugar swings caused by IF are necessarily harmful, although they might be if someone has insulin resistance or outright diabetes. What is more harmful for most people is having constant elevated blood sugar, which is what most people on a western diet have. Between three meals a day, snacks, and caloric drinks like soda or frappuchinos, they are always digesting something. This is what contributes to insulin resistance, and eventually metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

But like I said, not a doctor, so Cranberries should do the responsible thing and check with a medical professional, or at least pretend he did before taking random internet advice.

Shellhead wrote: Since I was cooking a chicken breast for dinner every night and he was only eating a tablespoon of it at the most, I was taking in a lot more protein, and soon had more muscle to show for all my workouts. Muscles, especially when supported with sufficient protein, continue to burn calories even on the days when I'm not working out, and so I started losing weight.

Cranberries, I don't believe that intermittent fasting will result in lasting weight loss. Taking in less food will slow down your metabolism, and confining all your eating to a limited daily time span could create unhealthy swings in your blood sugar level.

One thing I like about the IF is that when I do eat at 2pm every day, I'm hungry and look forward to the meal. I like having something to look forward to every day. I'm interested in the autophagy that may occur, but apparently you have to fast for 24-48 hours for that to kick in.

My other concern is the amount of protein I'm consuming. Right now my only real protein source is beans. Dysjunct noted that veganism won't automatically lead to weight loss because of the preponderance of processed vegan snacks. My wife is really into imitation vegan foods--fake sour cream, various fake butters and cheeses. I'm hoping we get to the point where we are eating more whole foods and recipes that aren't trying to imitate animal-based food. The. other night we had lentil pasta with Ikea vegetable "meat" balls and Rao's spaghetti sauce. It was fine, and I bought this stuff, but some kind of classic curry lentil dish would have been better.
But we are in phase one of adapting the diet, which means too many carbs.

Interesting: The association of circadian rhythm with an IFD is an important issue. In a recent study, increased risk of cardiovascular disease was reported in a population without or with only a simple breakfast [38]. Skipping breakfast is associated with an increase in the release of stress hormones [39]. In addition, there was a study showing that significantly improved weight loss and improved insulin resistance were observed in a group that consumed more calories in the morning and less in the evening, in conditions with the similar calorie restriction

From the same meta-analysis: In conclusion, IF significantly improves glycemic control and insulin resistance with a reduction in BMI, a decrease in leptin level, and an increase in adiponectin concentration in the general population without chronic metabolic disease.

www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/8/10/1645

But wait there's more:

There were 28 statistically significant associations (27%) that demonstrated the beneficial outcomes for body mass index, body weight, fat mass, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose, fasting insulin, homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance, and blood pressure. IF was found to be associated with reduced fat-free mass. One significant association (1%) supported by high-quality evidence was modified alternate-day fasting for 1 to 2 months, which was associated with moderate reduction in body mass index in healthy adults and adults with overweight, obesity, or nonalcoholic fatty liver disease compared with regular diet.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen...cle-abstract/2787246

I mean, I'm just looking at meta-analyses and cherry picking, to be fair. I'm coming across stuff that says IF sucks for sustained weight loss and have requested full copies from our interlibrary loan.

EDIT: the vegan fitness subreddit has a lot of seemingly good information on vegan protein and getting jacked. Spolier: you have to eat so much food.

SuperFlyPete has been sending me reels in Facebook and I'm sure you can imagine what they are like. Now every reel I get has some kind of illiterate southern version of Sydney Sweeney arguing about whether your man is cheating on you. It has bee six years since I last quit Facebook, and the whole site just feels so aggressively dumb and mean that I killed my account again.

I exported my status updates, then used AI to format them and sort them by date and put them in a two column document that is about 140 pages long. 140 pages of banal observations. Then I had NotebookLM write a summary and answer some basic questions based on the content.

Just now I asked it for board game recommendations:

```bbs
Based on your expressed demographic and values in the sources, you are likely to enjoy a variety of board games. Your posts reveal an intellectual curiosity, a sense of humor, an interest in strategy (evident in the chess analogy), and appreciation for social interaction, including with family.

Here are some types of board games you might find appealing:

• Strategy Games with Thematic Elements: Given your interest in history, social issues, and science fiction (mentioning books on the collapse of civilization and reading *Dune*), you might enjoy strategy games with strong thematic ties. Examples could include:
  • Games that explore historical events or societal structures: Terraforming Mars, Wingspan, or Twilight Struggle.
  • Science fiction-themed games with strategic depth: Scythe, or Gloomhaven.
• Intellectual and Puzzle-Like Games: Your enjoyment of the NYT mini crossword suggests an affinity for puzzles and wordplay. You might enjoy abstract strategy games or games with clever mechanisms. Examples include: Azul, Sagrada, or Codenames.
• Social Deduction or Negotiation Games: Your observations about social dynamics and intrigue (like the "Game of Thrones level struggle over the last jalapeno popper") might make social deduction games or games involving negotiation interesting. Examples could be: Codenames, The Resistance: Avalon, or Settlers of Catan.
• Cooperative Games: Given your family life and the mention of participating in activities together, cooperative games where players work together towards a common goal could be enjoyable. Pandemic is a classic example. Other examples include Forbidden Island or Spirit Island.
• Games Played at the Local Board Game Store: You mentioned a new board game store in Orem with clean, well-lighted play areas and a good inventory. This suggests a desire for local gaming experiences and a willingness to explore new titles available there. The inventory caters to both family and hobbyist gamers, indicating a potential interest in a range of complexity levels.
• Humorous or Lighthearted Games: Your posts often contain humor and witty observations. Games with a lighter tone or satirical elements could also be a good fit. Examples might include: Ticket to Ride, Sushi Go!, or Exploding Kittens.
• Games with Engaging Narratives: Your appreciation for books and storytelling might extend to board games that offer immersive narratives or opportunities for emergent storytelling. Examples include Tales of the Arabian Nights, or Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Ultimately, exploring the offerings at the board game store you mentioned or researching different genres based on the themes and mechanics that align with your expressed interests would be good starting points.
```

Quoting MetaAI since I just got it added to WhatsApp without my consent: "some output can be inappropriate or false"

Fuck you, Cranny. My memes are choice!

A few things to note:
-
1. If you have 100 calories of fiber and protein in the morning and then don't eat until 2, you feel good and lose/maintain weight. It also gives you some freedom to mess up calories later.

2. Building lean muscle mass is the only real way to lose weight and keep it off, IMHO. I run and I walk and I play sports but I just maintain weight. When I was lifting heavier I lost weight, without changing much else. That's just me.

3. My girlfriend wants to move in. My kids adore her but I'm kind of on the fence. I am absurdly neat and obsessive about cleaning my house and she is not, although she isn't a complete slob. I've never really done this before as my exwife and I moved in immediately with nothing and we built a life, where she is established.

Very weird time.

Oh, I indoor rock climb a lot now. Those people that are good at it are so fucking absurdly athletic that I think they may actually be the peak form of humanity.