Yeah I want both governments to fall and both countries’ people to thrive and forge a better future

Hey, say what you will, but the DOW is higher than it was when Obama took office /s

It’s just math in the same way basketball is just a bunch of physics 101 problems. Yes, but the hard part is taking it from paper to doing it with biology. Your brain is struggling to get you to have an excess when there’s more than enough because animals whose brains didn’t do that were less likely to survive lean times. Add in complications like hypothyroidism and other endocrine and metabolic issues, some people are going to really struggle in ways others might not. For some the cravings will be far more intense than they can bear, and that’s why going in steps and waiting until that step is comfortable and sustainable before the next step is so useful.

Food can serve in many roles, some of which are healthy, such as a bonding exercise, cultural expression, and nutrition, others are unhealthy like stimulation and emotional comfort. One of the important things about my method is that the maintenance and early loss steps are going to challenge your negative relationships with food and find more healthy forms of stimulation and emotional comfort if those are reasons you overeat. A small weight is a great replacement for stimulation as is a glass of water or a walk. And learning to handle emotional distress without destructive coping mechanisms such as overeating is vital, here too I’ve found exercise to be a magnificent replacement. (Yeah basically any time anything happens or I feel anything I take a walk or bike ride)

Oh also I totally forgot to mention the self esteem elements. I’m not going to say nobody can hate themselves skinny, I’ve seen it, but the people who do it are rarely the sorts one should emulate. Much easier is to love yourself and your body enough to do this for yourself. “I deserve to have a body that I am physically and emotionally comfortable with” is just so much better of a mantra for when you’re hungry or struggling to exercise than something about hating how fat you are. You want to learn to look in the mirror with love and kindness and as time goes on with pride. Firstly because it’s not like fat people are less deserving of love and kindness. But also because you’re doing this for you, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to do something difficult for someone you love than out of spite. And that spite will fade as you lose weight anyways, and it may coincide with sagging skin.

But also, hugely important is that hating yourself is a fast track to disordered eating and overshooting weight loss as well as developing weight focused body dysmorphia (ie inability to see your healthy weight as healthy). I have a loved one who wound up hospitalized for anorexia, so it’s something I feel is important to acknowledge and avert the risks of. It’s better to be overweight and living an active and happy lifestyle than to be anorexic. General rule is a little over is better than a little under, but a lot over can be worse than a little under.

Clown ass country where we need coupons for medicine

If that was the case we’d have one of the most efficient medical systems in the world instead of one of the least

I’ll add that one huge thing is establishing a realistic plan that accepts weakness and failures without derailing. When I was actively losing weight I did the following cico based plan.

I started with a week of just counting calories, all diet changes were because I was aware of how much I was eating. While doing that I found out what my maintenance calories were and what the maintenance calories of my goal weight were.

I then did a week at my maintainance calories, though the goal is to keep doing it until it’s comfortable. While doing that I figured out general meal plans (ie how much I wanted to budget for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks). This stage is important because a) you’re probably used to overeating so this is you stopping gaining weight, b) you’re learning where you’re most comfortable cutting calories in your day, and c) relearning your relationship with hunger. For that last part, I was teaching myself to associate a mild hunger with losing weight and to stop seeing it as such a problem.

Then once I was comfortable at maintenance I began with a 500 calorie deficit. That’s a generally safe number that’s largely achievable and results in a pound a week loss. When I was comfortable there I moved up to 1000 a week, which is about the limit of what is safe/wise for the average person to sustain over an extended period without medical supervision. Either as the ultimate deficit is fine.

From there, don’t check the scale more than once a week, and if you hit a plateau for a few weeks reevaluate your maintenance calories and double check you aren’t missing some in your counts. I also recommend smaller portion sizes over a longer time. Keep food out of sight when it’s not eating time. Try a glass of water and a walk instead of a snack. You may need a multivitamin or to plan around your micronutrients. Fiber helps with satistion, refined sugar hurts with it, though you’ll figure out what foods leave you full and what foods just aren’t worth the calorie/fullness ratio pretty quickly. Some days you will fail, that’s ok, keep them spread out and don’t try to make up for them. You can have cheat days, but those calories do still count so keep them few and far between. Also home cooked is usually a better value for calories than premade.

Once you hit your goal keep counting while eating at maintenance for a while to ensure you’re sticking with stable maintenance habits. This isn’t supposed to be a yo yo (though if you’re active dirty bulk/cut cycles), instead it’s about building a healthy relationship with food portioning.

Exercise doesn’t make you lose weight outside maybe a hundred or two calories a day, but it does lead to a healthier lifestyle and creates reinforcement of the health and ability gains from weight loss. It also can raise your resting calorie burn (don’t calculate for changes from it until you’re done). The important thing is just like with diet, finding a way to sustain it. This means finding something involving cardio that you enjoy that you can do regularly like a sport, running, or biking. If you’re interested in strength building, bodyweight exercises are great. Slowly build up with exercise, until you’re at an activity level that you want.

Anyways yeah, I figure it’s worth putting all this out there since a lot of people out there love to act like it’s either all about willpower or all about finding tricks to not need any willpower, when really it’s all about building better habits and accepting that it took time to gain it, it’ll take time to lose it, but you lose it bit by bit with actual changes. I was never huge, but I lost 30 pounds in about half a year when I was OPs age and developed a healthy lifestyle for years out of it despite a family riddled with obesity, heart disease, and anorexia. This doesn’t take from the shittiness of what OP is going through and if her doctor feels the medical benefits outweigh the risks the insurance company needs to shut up and pay.

It’s also wrong for St Linus. He was a college student trying a project for fun when he started. Part of what makes Linux great is that it isn’t something made from the ground up to change the world or to be its founder’s career. It was an interesting project that was so useful it wound up being adopted and evolving into what it is

Good. It’s sad it’s needed but I’m glad it’s being done

Oh absolutely, and I (also neurodivergent, but adhd and cptsd) totally get that, I just think it’s valuable to be clear what the intermediate and advanced skill levels look like. Because I should be clear here: beginner skill level flirting as you described earlier can do the job when someone is already interested, but much like with many skills, if you’re at the beginner level, sometimes you’re going to see someone doing it at a higher level than you and think that they’ve got this magic skill that makes the results happen. In reality getting better at flirting is 90%+ getting better at regular social skills.

And yeah most people can learn that interplay in some capacity. I’ve known people who can only do it with their fellow neurodivergent people, or their fellow neurotypicals, or both. But you learn it by hanging out in social situations and trying to have a good time chatting with people. You start to learn how to vibe off people and how to tell you’ll be able to. It makes stuff like parties actually fun too. But you also are gonna fuck up, and you ask yourself what you did wrong (“why did it stop being fun to talk to me” is a great question) and you start to get better at not fucking up with practice. Even extroverted neurotypicals go through this, though it’s typically younger, faster, and easier for them. And yeah from there higher skill level flirting is just flourishes and added bits.

It’s hard for those of us who actually want to help because the truth is, it’s long, difficult, and doesn’t make you feel cool. There’s no secret manual, no special magic tricks, no guarantees even. It isn’t a strategy game or an rpg, it’s a roguelite where metaadvancement needs to complement what you rolled (the parts of your appearance and personality you like) and your natural playstyle because you’re trying to get people to like the version of yourself you’re working to become. What’s the ideal build? Becoming the best version of yourself, learning how you best naturally socially interact, and building around it. You find hairstyles that show off your personality and your face, similar for clothes, interests, and topics of conversation. But you also gotta learn to play the game well.

I think negging is a prime example of the distortion that a lot of these pua/redpill/etc influencer types do. Playful teasing is a medium risk medium reward move. You might come off as fun, irreverent, and playful (in which case you need to be prepared for a riparte), but you might hit a sore spot and if you’re not able to do it well you will fuck it up. But these types took that and twisted it into a version meant to make the recipient feel insecure and vulnerable while trying to feel like the innocuous version. Each subsequent iteration of that crowd took ot further until you get the modern guys saying that being an overtly abusive asshole and raging misogynist is how you get girls. And to a man who is increasingly bitter towards women over not dating him it feels right.

There’s also a lot to be said for these guys feeling insecure at the power they perceive people they’re attracted to having over them and lashing out against it (and it’s not just men who do that). But yeah as you say it’s gone disastrously for society.

It’s remarkable that they curated it and the files still show that a large portion of the modern far right was somewhere between acquaintances with and funded by and taking orders from a convicted child sex trafficker.

I was under the impression that he declared war on brown people with no fucking plan whatsoever because he’s racist, under the false impression that being at war means he can stay in office no matter what (despite his entire life being filled with counterexamples), and him trying to distract from his close ties with and probable crimes as a child rapist.

I actually don’t know how it could be worse

Yeah shit like that is why the ultra rich have committed to destroying international organizations like the UN

Ah yes just casually taking the bulk of the fucking Nile…

Idk I find intentionality valuable in flirting, it’s just that my intent is to flirt and if it goes from there well then that’s fun. A sly smile with the compliment, then paying attention to see the tone of her response… it’s a game and it’s in some ways unique compared to telling a stranger I like their outfit (which I also do non flirtatiously).

“What can I say to make them like me” is the far more juvenile framing. It’s one I’ve seen especially beginners fall into. Instead framing flirtation as a (metaphorical) playful whisper of interest. It should be like a scent you wear: light, discretionarily used, inviting, and yourself. You’re not casting a spell to make them like you, you’re simply inviting them to come and see what could happen if they’re interested.

But all that is more the intermediate level. The only real secret is that people like spending time with people with whom they enjoy the time they spend with.

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Wait, we may have cracked the key to solving the rich pedophile problem…

If it wasn’t happening irl I’d think it’s a parody of our country

I think starting flirting not expecting anything but practice is also valuable. I mostly flirt catch and release these days, and I think it’s best to understand that the goal is to learn to have fun with it. Even when married you should be flirtatious with your spouse, so learn to love it.

Yeah, though in my experience the bike girl with a bike guy boyfriend is the one problematically into bikes in their relationship. Like, he’s had to put his foot down about no more new bikes.

Like as a woman into bikes, I really wish there were more of us and I know a lot of women who casually are interested, but I think especially with how hard-core into bikes a lot of people in the scene are scares people off. That and a lot of women who don’t have mechanical skills are uncomfortable trying for fear of breaking something or facing judgement.

In the city I used to live in a lot of the bike women I met got into it after burning out of some form of anarchist activism, and they tended to be some of the more balanced people in the bike scene that I knew.

So yeah, more casual group bike rides that encourage newer people and work to make women feel comfortable would be awesome for the hobby. And getting a second hobby would be awesome for a lot of people in the hobby.

It looks like it’s a joint operation with Ecuador. I’m curious if they actually are asking for the help or going along with it so we don’t overthrow them