I will try to stay away from the normative aspects and stick to the science.
I don't know what your goals are, but everyone underestimates what it takes to actually lose weight. If you wish to lose 1 pound of fat per week (which is already almost unnoticably slow), you need a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day. This 500 calories per day can come from extra exercise, but bear in mind that most people would have to run 4 miles to burn 500 calories. Or it can come from reduction in diet. Since an average woman burns ~2000 calories per day, you would need to reduce that intake to ~1500 or a roughly 25% reduction in daily intake. And none of this takes into account that there are all kinds of minor ways your body tries to retain weight, so it would probably take more drastic measures
Tl;dr. Summary: Losing just a pound a week requires running an extra 4 miles every day or eating 25% less every day or some combination thereof.
That seems crazy to me (depending what your goals are and how much you prioritize them).
I'm perfectly comfortable, at this point, with the feeling that I want to try to get into the gym semi-regularly, but that I'm not willing to change my schedule or displace other things to go more often.
I could imagine deciding that I wanted to make a specific time-limited commitment to doing more (which it sounds like is what you're considering), but it's a question of trade-offs.
As I said in another thread, I get cranky and dumb when I don't eat enough, and I try to avoid that.
F, tell me about all the times you've been pregnant.
3: Once I ate too much and couldn't fit into some of my pants. That's basically the same thing, right?
Except that pregnant people ate a baby.
Well, there was this one time in Haiti...
The only thing I'm saying is that it's extremely difficult to lose weight, regardless of who you are. This is what makes these discussions difficult. I intended literally zero value judgement in my post. None. I was trying to point out how losing weight is extremely hard. I naively thought it might be sympathetic to point out how hard it is.
6: That's how Michael Douglas got cancer.
Or is Ace a very well-disguised dingo?
9: I think you're forgetting that pregnancy is technically not a kind of cancer.
7: Fair enough. Sorry for being touchy.
I'm not sure how you want a hyper-quantitative conversation not concentrated on gendered baggage to go if the response to 1 is 3. (Which isn't to say that 3 isn't a perfectly valid response, but rather that it seems out of place in the thread you wanted to have.)
Sorry, should have previewed.
I . . . refer you to all my other comments ever made on these subjects. But yes, that, sounds horrible, a very low calorie count and the 60-75 minutes 6x/week (presumably of our good old awesome buddy "low impact cardio") is likely to be unsustainable, not work, and even be counter-productive (largely, but not exclusively, because 60-70 minutes 6x/week of low impact cardio is likely to make you very, very hungry without producing countervailing benefits in weight loss). If you really stuck to it, you would of course lose weight (how could you not?), but it sounds like a recipe for failure.
It really is hard to lose weight, which is why it's so maddening that nutrition industry just keeps giving out advice like this trainer, which takes something that's hard but do-able and makes it impossible. And that weight loss advice is constrained by calorie is a calorie theory, which produces advice like F's 1, which would drive any reasonable person to despair.
"Follow your dreams. You can reach your goals. I'm living proof. Beefcake. Beefcake."
The meta-overthinking is something I am very, very familiar with. I agree with you completely about the oppressiveness of how our culture treats overweight people, and the oppressiveness of how our culture overvalues visual attractiveness, and how evil the culture of eating disorders and so on is. And I'm really, really conscious about not feeding into that with my kids.
(Just had a big body-image discussion with Sally, sparked by my mother's having bought her a dress in a thrift shop that was clingy in an entirely age-inappropriate way. Sally looked at herself and thought the dress looked terrible on her, which was good because I agreed she shouldn't be wearing anything that looked like that out of the house. But then the conversation turned to Tumblr blogs she's reading which talk about how girls should have "thigh gap" and hollows behind their clavicles. I pointed out that the internet is great for allowing weirdos to find each other and form self-sustaining communities, and just because there was a network of blogs saying things didn't mean that they were rational, and that "thigh gap" was incompatible with the amount of leg muscle necessary to break a tackle. Hopefully this conversation had the intended effect.)
On the other hand, as I've mentioned here many times before, I'm heavier than I was before I had kids, and I'm vain enough to wish I wasn't and want to get back to what I weighed in the 90s. And a large part of what keeps me from actually doing anything effective about losing that weight is being inhibited about dieting in any way that anyone else could possibly notice, for fear that it would feed into all the crazy oppressive stuff, and particularly for fear that it'd affect my kids negatively. Which means that I'll be puttering along in my current dress size indefinitely.
I'm not willing to do a paleo diet, but I don't actually mind having a fairly low calorie diet. That part is sustainable.
For exercise, right now I've got loads of time, as long as Ace is sitting in the Baby Bjorn. So that pretty well limits my options to long bouts of low impact cardio.
(Also, this trainer isn't charging me money.)
There's the impact of gender, there's the impact of age, but there's also the way we have very effectively designed a world in which we avoid any (unnecessary) physical activity. When I moved from living in a major urban centre (student-ish lifestyle, no car) to living in a suburb (professional lifestyle, busy, lots of driving to meetings) I gained weight. I mean, no shit, but it was subtle, and it's hard to lose.
Stress is linked to weight too, isn't it?
I heard about this thigh gap thing in an article recently, but couldn't work out what they were actually taking about, so I assumed it was one of these dubious trend pieces with little basis in reality. What the hell is a thigh gap, who thought it up, and when did it become a thing?
It's a shame you're in a Texas summer. 60-75 minutes of low-impact cardio sounds like a nice long walk outdoors, but mindnumbing on a machine. There isn't a forested park or something nearish where you could hike around in the shade instead of going to a gymn [sic.]?
I'll disagree with Halford and insist that the laws of physics are obeyed, even in crossfit boxes, and that a calorie is, in fact, a calorie.
The most charitable way I'll agree with Halford that low-impact cardio is deadly boring, so it's no surprise that most people fail to sustain it. Also, finding a way to make yourself not hungry, which some form of Atkins/paleo diet may actually work for, is also important.
Also, not to derail, but this blog post responding to the "fat students have no self-control and so need not apply to grad school" tweet (which I assume this crowd may have followed) is interesting: http://www.cgbrooke.net/2013/06/04/fat-shaming/
Basically, is all willpower the same kind of willpower?
I'm currently working with a trainer and trying to lose a fair amount of weight. I've certainly turned some fat into muscle for no net loss of weight, which I call a win but which is still a bit frustrating. I have had some success with a low carb diet pulling weight off pretty fast (like ~3 lb/wk) but I can't seem to sustain that for very long as I just get sick of it after a couple-three weeks.
18 -- If it works and you like it, great. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
And my general reaction to the issue of talking about weight among women, which of course maybe I don't have a right to talk about at all, is that (a) sunlight is the best disinfectant and the more information the better, as long as it's real and realistic information and (b) we need desperately to distinguish fitness from slimness.
It is really really really hard to lose weight and the basic set-up of food distribution and consumption in the US has set almost everyone up to fail. People don't get magically slim bodies just by doing 15 minutes every three days on the Stairmaster and eating organic vegetables, and your friend who says that either hit the genetic lottery or is lying. Slimness is not something that everyone or even most people can achieve. Reasonable fitness is, though, and reasonable fitness will produce active, healthy bodies that are not razor-thin. I feel like there's just so much nonsense out there, particularly among women, pushing for the idea that a super thin, long-distance runner's body is (a) broadly obtainable and (b) desirable, when neither one is particularly true. I also feel that advice like that given by the trainer in the OP totally feeds into that paradigm.
19.1 is so true. During 'con, I was very jealous of city life and all the natural getting out and walking that comes with it. Even just taking a subway to get to work involves so much more activity than me commuting to Heebie U.
20: Visible space between the tops of your thighs when you're standing up. Some people are built that way, of course, but it's not particularly common even for the ordinarily skinny. The phrase "thigh gap" is pretty new, but I've heard the thought expressed forever.
I've just promised my doctor that I would try Overeater's Anonymous for a couple of months. I'm very, very skeptical of applying the 12-step model of addiction ideology to eating disorders. And I hear what a lot of Fat Acceptance people are saying. At the same time, my health has gotten dramatically worse over the last few years, and nothing besides losing a great deal of weight seems like it will help. We'll see, I guess.
Having said all that, the personal trainer's advice does sound unlikely to work/be sustainable.
Basically, is all willpower the same kind of willpower?
Nope. I read Willpower recently, which was too close to pop science garbage for me to bring up on Unfogged. But there are definitely studies that show that since willpower depletes brain glucose, etc, the willpower to diet is subject to all sorts of pitfalls that can be overcome in other contexts.
and that "thigh gap" was incompatible with the amount of leg muscle necessary to break a tackle
That's awesome.
To the OP, I do think there are some conversations in our society that are good to have but that you cannot have in an open forum -- and often not among friends -- without long disclaimers differentiating the point that you're actually making from something pernicious that you're not saying. This is one of them. There are a number of others that have to do with gender, and then more that have to do with race, and then there are a whole bunch that have to do with politics in the Middle East. Embrace the disclaimer, I say.
I pointed out that the internet is great for allowing weirdos to find each other and form self-sustaining communities
I'm assuming that Sally mentioned unfogged at this point in the conversation.
23: I was a great grad student, but I have very very little will-power in the sense relevant to dieting. For example, I can't do physical therapy regularly or take medicine daily for longer than a month or so.
I've certainly turned some fat into muscle for no net loss of weight, which I call a win but which is still a bit frustrating.
I've managed the same thing, because it is very obviously impossible for me to cut the necessary calories without stopping drinking and fuck that.
I pointed out that the internet is great for allowing weirdos to find each other and form self-sustaining communities
Now I'm going crazy trying to remember what I read which talked about the challenge posed for moderators of social media by, "pro-ana" (anorexia) groups of teens supporting each other.
Hmmm, it may have been Clay Shirky's book, which is vaguely disappointing. I was hoping for something more feminist.
I'll disagree with Halford and insist that the laws of physics are obeyed, even in crossfit boxes, and that a calorie is, in fact, a calorie.
Biology trumps physics in this regard. A calorie is a calorie if you're setting them on fire in a bomb calorimeter, but there's no 'laws of physics' requirement that a calorie of one chemical makeup provide the same amount of energy to the human body as a calorie of another chemical makeup (a piece of hardwood, say, is going to look pretty high calorie in a calorimeter. You'll lose weight trying to live off a diet of oak, though). It can't provide more than the total amount of energy it contains, but it can provide less.
This is not intended as an endorsement of any particular ideas about what foods have what weight-related effects; I'm just annoyed by the appeal to the laws of physics.
As to grad school and willpower, I think that for some people, myself included, postgraduate education and some parts of professional life involve a type of periodic, obsessive work that is entirely compatible with a low-willpower approach to eating, drinking, and so forth. "Binge research," if you like.
I do agree with 25, on the whole.
For the record, I didn't lose a single pound doing Crossfit for a month, but I totally enjoyed it and felt great, built muscle, and plan on doing it in the future.
35
A calorie is still a calorie. There are, however, two factors that can alter this. One would be a change in the efficiency with which the body uses consumed calories. Another would be the way in which psychology/behavior changes in response to changes in diet or exercise. My guess is that the latter is way more important than the former, though both are possible.
35 and 36 are both so right.
I agree totally with 35, while also basically disbelieving any particular theories about which calories are better or worse for who (we just don't know that much at this point).
Writing is something I need will power to do, math I'm stuck on is something I need will power to stop thinking about.
My main objections to the paleo diet are:
- expensive
- trying to cook for small picky eaters who love carbs
- it's really not clear what the longterm effects are. The science in the fasting material seemed to conflict (to my untrained eye) with longterm paleo.
(That plus actually preferring a low-cal, some carbs meal plan.)
I've recently wondered at the need for a regimen to be "sustainable". I thought I saw some poorly-sourced, unreliable wisdom on the internet saying that some of the people who lose large amounts of weight do so by sudden drop, plateau, sudden drop, plateau. The sudden drops could be something faddish, but slow and steady isn't the only way to go, so long as there isn't rebound weight gain.
One would be a change in the efficiency with which the body uses consumed calories.
Fecal transplants will fix that.
Writing is something I need will power to do, math I'm stuck on is something I need will power to stop thinking about.
Things like this validate my decision to not pursue research as a primary focus. I do not need willpower to stop thinking about math!
so long as there isn't rebound weight gain.
This phrase is doing a lot of work, no?
How sustainable/reasonable "60-75 min of exercise 6x/week" turns out to be seems to me to depend heavily on what counts as "exercise." I mean, I live in a city and walk to work every day, 20 min each way, but it doesn't feel to me like that counts as exercise. Exercise, in my mind, is when my heart rate is up and I'm sweating. I may be wrong, but I have the impression that you're in a similar place on that question.
As a source of possibly-relevant numbers, I happened to be looking at training programs for road races the other day and the one for an "intermediate" runner prepping for a half marathon starts at 20 miles a week and peaks at 39. This is supposed to get you ready to run your 13.1 miles in under 2 hours, so you've got to be going under 9 min/mile. Even say that's your racing pace and your average training run is a little slower, call it 10 min/mile; that's 390 minutes a week, at the height of your training program. Spread over 6 days that's 65 minutes a day.
Your trainer thinks you need to be at that level, consistently, while eating under 1600 calories a day, to lose weight? Setting aside the (arguably more interesting) cultural questions relating to weight, health, and fitness, and also the question of sustainability, that seems to me to be extremely aggressive, and likely to lead to injury if you try to adopt it too quickly.
On the other hand, if exercise just means walking, well, walking for an hour a day is probably doable.
to cut the necessary calories without stopping drinking and fuck that.
Word. I've managed to compensate by resigning myself to eating little to no flour and sugar in my day to day regime. I also have to be pretty religious about bringing my lunch to work and avoiding all the places giving the cop pricing. Oh sweet discounted al pastor quesadilla, your call is strong.
47: I tried to follow the intermediate runner program for my half marathon, but couldn't even get close to it. I've never been able to run more than four days a week, regardless of time. Stupid tendons.
42: I just lost a very fast 10-12 pounds with the flu a few months ago, and was kind of pleased by the prospect of keeping it off. This did not happen.
The only helpful thing I can say here, is to think about whether your goals can really only be achieved by losing weight. Some fitness goals can also be achieved by replacing fat with muscle.
49: It's not about injury for me, but I max out at about four days a week as well; I seem to have a minimum of three days a week when either something interferes with getting out the door to go running, or I just really don't want to. (And this is with a perky eleven-year-old waking me up at six to go. If Newt weren't into it I'd have a hard time making it past three days a week.)
Also, I've had some good success paying attention to which foods produce a high level of long-term satiety, out of all proportion to their caloric content. For me, that's hard boiled eggs, plain yogurt, and raw unseasoned walnuts. On the other hand, basically whenever I eat bread I gain weight.
Are you sure that isn't your taste buds going on strike instead of long-term satiety?
we need desperately to distinguish fitness from slimness
Yes we do.
54: Do those hypotheses make different predictions?
51: Well, right, the question is whether your goals are health-related, sports-related, or looks-related. Mine are vaguely health-related (that is, I never want to be frail) and largely looks-related, with a strong smattering of non-sports-physical-prowess-ego: I like being unexpectedly strong.
But if you want to look slim, there's a real limit to what putting on muscle will do for you. More muscular, you'll look better, but you won't look much thinner without actually losing weight.
49: Yeah, I have no present intention of running that far. My current enterprise is just seeing if I can get myself to the baseline level that this particular website says you need to safely begin that program. They say you should be comfortable with a weekly routine of running 3-4-4-0-3-5-0 miles for a while before you get started. So far, I've achieved the 3-4-4, looking forward to tomorrow's 0.
39 -- fine, but people are interested in what works. The professional dieticians who've had the official diet advice for years be simply "count calories and eat a low fat diet" -- is precisely the advice that does not seem to work. It's that advice that people are rebelling against, and for very good reason, it's lousy diet advice.
56: They might, if you could find food that produced long-term satiety and had a flavor.
57: Despair is important here. To make a rational decision, one needs to accept which outcomes are never, ever going to happen, and choose among the remaining alternatives. Some people (possibly including myself, I don't know yet) are never going to make the sacrifices necessary for their bodies to become slim. So they're really choosing between fat and muscle.
Others have different constraints.
I also seem to have about a 4x/week maximum of serious exercise, and for the past few months have been at 3x. It's driven a little by soreness, but mostly because it just seems to difficult life-wise to get to 5x or 6x. I really need to just change habits, but that's hard.
Not to the OP, but I don't think Crossfit or really any exercise is very good at producing substantial weight loss. Weight loss IMO is basically all about diet, or so much so that it's silly to focus on other stuff.
59: Is that actually what professional dieticians recommend? Most of them I've encountered have been wanting me to avoid certain types of fat. I've never heard anybody recommend counting calories. The only common piece of advice I've ever heard is that I should eat vegetables.
60: I do put some fresh fruit in my yogurt, and fancy pink or black salt on the eggs, and I have always loved plain raw walnuts.
65: But kittens are babies, and we know what happens to people who eat babies...
The nice thing about having a truly terrible diet is that improvements are all low-hanging fruit. I could improve mine immensely by cutting out cookies and ice cream.
How sustainable/reasonable "60-75 min of exercise 6x/week" turns out to be seems to me to depend heavily on what counts as "exercise."
I asked, and he's pretty liberal on this. Walking briskly with baby in Bjorn, for example, as long as it gets my heartrate into the 90-100 range. That's far lower than any heartrate a self-respecting Geebie would have when actually exercising.
To elaborate on the exercise: I will find out what he expects for strength-training tomorrow, of which I'll be doing 45 min/3x a week, provided it's baby-in-bjorn-compatible.
One fitness tip I just had occasion to use, is that when something really frustrating happens during the workday, calm down with a walk or a brief workout before you resort to junk food or a martini. Although I think I need both exercise and a stiff drink right now. However, doing the workout first means that I start training myself to take a bad mood as a cue to exercise.
I suspect that 62.2 is right. I don't really have weight-loss goals at the moment as much as don't-gain-weight goals, and my hope is that adding some regular exercise back into my life will allow me to keep on eating cookies and ice cream without changing shape. It worked fine with my teens-and-early-20s metabolism--not sure I can count on it in my mid-30s, but I aim to find out. For science.
67: Maybe instead of cutting them out you should start by not putting any more in.
You could also try switching to almond-flour-and-sucralose cookies or something.
I have been noodling about looking for a proper estimate of how average daily activity (for who?) has changed over the century or so. Did not find. Anyone? Lots of interesting skeletal results about the rise of agriculture/pastoralism/empire/industry, though.
My impression from 18th and 19th c drama and novels is that everyone except the richest people in Paris and London walked a *lot more* than almost anyone does now: an hour each way to visit a friend, not unlikely, and anyone not upper-class is likely to be carrying something heavy most of the time (five pounds mud on each wooden shoe, in some seasons).
Someone above says walking doesn't raise the heart rate or bring a sweat: never? even on the way home, you can't walk fast enough for that?
Without having read the thread: Heebie, give yourself a break. You just gave birth, what, a month ago? I assume your metabolism is not all speedo, and I don't see why should try to jump-start it in that direction just yet.
My metabolism has noticeably plummeted with each pregnancy. I've hit the exact same high-water mark with each one, but taking it off has gotten harder and harder. And even though it's only been 6 weeks, my trajectory this time is clearly even worse. Which is why I've generally had a flailing reaction.
My impression from 18th and 19th c drama and novels is that everyone except the richest people in Paris and London walked a *lot more* than almost anyone does now:
And I'd narrow that to a small subset of the richest people; you'd have to be not only rich but also averse to what were then ordinary levels of physical activity not to walk more than the modern average. (Also novel-based.)
68 -- oh. That does sound much more sustainable. I thought it was 60x6 on the exercise bike or something.
74 before seeing 73, but it speaks reasonably well to it.
Someone above says walking doesn't raise the heart rate or bring a sweat: never? even on the way home, you can't walk fast enough for that?
I think that was me. Sure, it's possible to walk fast enough to sweat, especially when it gets to be 90 degrees out. But I'm talking about really elevated heartrate, breathing hard, like you get from running or other similar levels of exertion. I imagine race-walkers get that way, but to try to do that in work clothes, with a briefcase, would be weird.
72.last: When I walk home, I'll sweat through a shirt if it is over 70. It's a little over three miles and I'm traveling at about 15 min/mile. The hills are what get the heart going.
not sure I can count on it in my mid-30s
I'm turning 37 in a few days and I sure haven't been able to count on it. Ice cream is a no go. If it's in the house, I'll eat it every day.
I don't carry a briefcase because that would be weird.
Also: the trainer asked me how often I was willing to exercise and I answered "Over the summer, I can do 6 days a week. During the school year, 3x a week." (Because I basically enjoy it.)
So he might have tailored things differently, if I'd given a different answer. I think if I am still working with him, the plan will be different during the school year.
Shit, I can get pretty sweaty just driving home from work.
I have been noodling about looking for a proper estimate of how average daily activity (for who?) has changed over the century or so.
I have no idea how that would be estimated but the obesity rates in Amish communities makes me think it's gone down a lot.
I don't carry a briefcase because that would be weird.
It'd be a good place to stash booze.
"Some people (possibly including myself, I don't know yet) are never going to make the sacrifices necessary for their bodies to become slim. So they're really choosing between fat and muscle."
Putting on muscle is not necessarily easy. There are all kinds of people trying to put on muscle and are unable to. they call themselves hard gainers. Standard advice includes drinking a gallon of milk a day.
I lost weight pretty easily on a low-carb diet but I am slipping back up a bit. I still eat pretty low carb, but I am not as strict as I was before. I kind of fear that the next step will be intermittent fasting or calorie counting.
80: I'm turning 37 in a few days and I sure haven't been able to count on it.
Yeah, I expect that's where my results are going to come out too, sadly. Then I'll have to decide which makes me more unhappy: resisting my sweet tooth or watching my gut grow. I don't look forward to that choice, hence my attempt to forestall it with the less-painful option of waking up early to run every morning. We'll see.
Consistent with my comments above, I'm sure that activity levels have gone down a lot, but I doubt strongly that this is the cause of the rise in overweight people or obesity in America. That, I think, is driven primarily by eating way too much cheap food, particularly high volumes of sugars grains and processed foods. In fact, isn't that just what that mathematician who has looked at this stuff who we discussed a while back discovered?
Buck would be a hard gainer -- he's always bitching about how he's been busy at work and unable to exercise and has lost a treasured ten or fifteen pounds he'd been trying to hang on to.
74: Find out if flailing counts as exercise and you might be set.
(This is probably one of those things you shouldn't ask, but thigh gap is not normal? I figured life was all downhill from the time I lost it and I'd never thought of it as a too-thin thing.)
(Anyone worried about my abdominal muscles should be reassured that a week's rest and restarting from lower numbers of pushups seems to have resolved the soreness. I'll see if it reoccurs as I ramp up the numbers again.)
"One fitness tip I just had occasion to use, is that when something really frustrating happens during the workday, calm down with a walk or a brief workout before you resort to junk food or a martini."
A 30 minute timer is another trick that can work. Tell yourself that that you will just wait 30 minutes and often times the craving will just go away.
My impression from 18th and 19th c drama and novels is that everyone except the richest people in Paris and London walked a *lot more* than almost anyone does now
I think of there being a distinctively British tradition of walking. Both hill walking and also stories like this.
Whenever Thomas visited Frost in 1914, they would walk out together on the fields of Gloucestershire; wherever they walked, they moved in an instinctive sympathy. Frost called these their "talks-walking": and in them, their conversations ranged over marriage and friendship, wildlife, poetry and the war. Sometimes there was no talk and a silence gathered about them; but often at a gate or stile it started up again or was prompted by the meeting of a stranger in the lanes - a word or two and they were off again. They went without a map, setting their course by the sun or by the distant arc of May Hill crowning the view to the south; at dusk, the towering elms and Lombardy poplars or the light of a part-glimpsed cottage saw them home.
59 is fascinating, but I'm still processing what it means. Thanks.
90: If you were built that way, and you weren't overly skinny, it was normal for you. But it's not a reliable marker that anyone should be using -- there are lots of thin women out there whose thighs touch each other.
but I doubt strongly that this is the cause of the rise in overweight people or obesity in America. That, I think, is driven primarily by eating way too much cheap food, particularly high volumes of sugars grains and processed foods.
Also, per my recent fascination with the BIODOME, loss of gut diversity seems to play an important role, so tied to the rise of antibiotics as well.
an hour each way to visit a friend, not unlikely
An not just to visit friends. IIRC, Mr Pooter walked about 5km each way to work and back (Upper Holloway to the City), six days a week come rain or shine.
Speed walking is good exercise, good for health. I lost 30 lbs. that way: 4 days a week, about 4 miles each time, which took about an hour.
I think of there being a distinctively British tradition of walking.
Yes, even in the present, with the "rambler's right to roam" and the popularity of walking/hiking holidays and whatnot. I love the rambler's right to roam. It makes time spent in the country so much more pleasant.
Going farther back up the thread, I agree that low carb does feel lots harder to pull off with little kid(s) in the house. Of course, trying to combine that with being vegetarian is doubly difficult, so... blah.
93: Those pictures really made me want to go take some of those walks. I've only ever been on a short walk through the Lake District.
"rambler's right to roam"
Subject of a good Ewan MacColl song.
I give my kid carbs, but since I'm not interested in eating them I do a lousy job of preparation. She already seems to think that soggy egg noodles with butter aren't great but that bison ribeye is awesome. It is hard for me when she wants pizza, my nemesis.
My job is super active. I am up and down four flights of stairs frequently, I sit rarely (sometimes only for 20 minutes at lunch), and do a lot of lifting. I also walk to and from work, which isn't far but is another 30 minutes of exercise. Naively, I thought I would lose weight (not that I wanted to lose a lot (agh, I'm becoming fraught and overthinking my self-presentation here), but, simply help with weight I added when I didn't have a job and was a bit stressed). Instead, I eat more (because I am fucking hungry at lunch) and am clearly gaining fat. (I don't know my weight, but I'm definitely pudgier.) At the same time, I can tell my cardiovascular health is better and I can pick heavy things up easily. But, still - abdominal weight gain which makes me worry about health stuff (I need to stop reading articles about cancer and stuff).
Semi-OT - Speaking of putting on weight, WTF!? He cannot be serious.
What really confuses me about thigh gap is that it seems like it depends largely on how wide your stance is.
But, still - abdominal weight gain which makes me worry about health stuff (I need to stop reading articles about cancer and stuff).
THIS. (Damn, I meant to mention this in the OP.) My weight gain is all abdominal, and I do fret about the health consequences of that.
They say, what, that a .7 waist-to-hip ratio is healthiest? I do not want to know what mine is. But I really feel like I need to get that down, and not just for vanity's sake.
What really confuses me about thigh gap is that it seems like it depends largely on how wide your stance is.
Yes. I have a thigh gap and will probably always have one. Apple-shaped, etc. Does not mean squat.
Is there a good source for non fat-shaming health information? I know that "overweight" is as healthy or healthier than "normal weight", so the usual categories and numbers are useless. How do you know what's actually a health threat given that doctor's are just as prone to fat shaming as anyone else?
Nice quote, NickS. My one mild hiking vacation in Wales was absolutely glorious (rain! fog! sheep! straight through someone's paddock! ancient stone-pits! Hay-on-Wye!). Would love to do the Pennine trail.
A detail on historical activity; my last silly social dance happened to attract about equal numbers of swing kids and Victorian social dancers. The swing kids were startled by how energetic the old waltzes and polkas are -- and we didn't happen to have any of the *really* tough ones, which involve kicks and leaping and are fifteen minutes long. And people used to walk miles to dance in someone's front kitchen, and then walk home, and then get up to lay the fires. Of course, that's when it was attractive to be plump (a woman's arm was supposed to be circular in every cross-section) because poor people couldn't be.
Said the polkers to the swing kids, _this is much easier on the knees_, as you are so once was I, see you in a couple years. (Victorian groups also much kinder to plump people, as the clothes are better suited.)
You know how people are always telling you to find the kind of exercise you enjoy and do it? The only, only thing that vaguely counts as exercise that I actually enjoy is walking (which is no soccer, power lifting, or long-distance running, as exercise goes). But I do in fact love walking. It's a pity I don't live in either a (snow free) bucolic countryside with ample right to roam or a fascinating big city. I still walk quite a bit, but I'd be a lot happier the other way. Oh well.
80: Do we have the same birthday, but off by a year? That would be weird.
I posted this as pause/play the other day, but pretty on topic for this one. Small batch artisanal high-fructose corn syrup.
80: Do we have the same birthday, but off by a year?
Mine's Friday.
111:
a woman's arm was supposed to be circular in every cross-section
Women were supposed to have spherical arms?!
Honestly, I think if what you're actually worried about is health, you're best focusing on activity level/cardiovascular fitness/strength, and thinking about weight only insofar as it's interfering with your activity level. If your weight is keeping you from exercising because of injury or because it's just exhausting hauling yourself around, that's a health threat. Other than that, it's all about activity.
(For sensible vanity purposes, and maybe for health, I think tracking on the basis of a weight you personally were at a time when you were in good physical shape makes sense. I think about getting back to my 1990s weight, because that was my college rowing weight: athletically thin on my build. That same number might be over or underweight on someone with a different frame, though.)
A year and a day. Huh. Must be some cosmological significance to that.
Honestly, I think if what you're actually worried about is health, you're best focusing on activity level/cardiovascular fitness/strength, and thinking about weight only insofar as it's interfering with your activity level.
I would agree, but I don't know how to square this with the waist-to-hip ratio research that says that having a ratio over .85 puts you at all these risks.
Also, don't get me wrong - my vanity is motivating most of this. But the abdominal fat thing does worry me a little bit.
93: Those pictures really made me want to go take some of those walks.
Me too, but it makes me sad that I am not as good a walker as I used to be. In HS I walked everywhere and enjoyed the days when I would walk until I was completely tired.
These days after 2 or 3 hours my feet start to get sore. Not badly, but enough that it takes most of the fun out of it (though I did a bunch of walking in DC and there was only one day when my feet were bothering me).
I think that's not actually true. Fat is the threat for diabetes, not lack of fitness.
I think tracking on the basis of a weight you personally were at a time when you were in good physical shape makes sense.
Gee, thanks. 40 years and 40 pounds ago.
122: Are you sure about that? That's not what I thought - I thought fitness was protective against diabetes.
This thread is making me want to start working out and eat cronuts. Hopefully it'll be a wash as far as my health goes.
low carb does feel lots harder to pull off with little kid(s) in the house.
Reducing the amount of carbs you're eating might be helpful even if you never get to the point where your overall diet could be considered low-carb. I had success eating low-carb only for the meals I was away from my kids after I had trouble losing weight after the birth of my second. I started with lunch and later added breakfast and snacks. Dinner was always too tough to do low-carb so I ate a lot at my other meals so I could keep my dinner small.
I love walking and I love my kids by I guess I'm with Halford on this: walking for six hours a week with a child strapped to me sounds dreadful and not worth the payoff. Could you find 10-20 minutes in your day to do something intense? Even 45 minutes, 3 times a week of strength training seems too long.
The guy in the next office has a dozen donuts. He's been eating through the box all day. He offered me one, but they don't look fresh.
As far as I can tell, the cronut thing exists only in newspaper style sections.
Even before I knew cronuts existed, I didn't want to waste calories on grocery store donuts.
Nothing stopping you from deep frying some frozen croissants.
The sudden attention to stuff like "thigh gaps" makes me think there is an intrinsic part of the human brain that yearns to obsess about stupid shit. Some people have an innate drive to find some synecdoche for attractiveness, rather than just thinking someone is attractive as a whole person.
Reading from the bottom up, I assume that a cronut is a battered, deep-fried old woman.
128: For my sake, I hope you're right.
I did a sort of low-carb thing for a while (meat, salads, and yogurt or other dairy) and I did get leaner, but I think a lot of that was because I got tired of it and didn't eat a lot.
124: No, I'm not sure, which is part of why I wanted to know if there was a good source for this. But I thought that fat cells produced compounds which decrease insulin sensitivity.
120: This is off the top of my head, I'd need to google to back it up, and so on. But I think that while the WTH ratio thing is true in that apple-shaped people are worse off than pear-shaped people at any weight, that activity level is still a much better predictor of general health than anything about your measurements.
122: Again, I'd need to google. But fat is pretty strongly correlated with lack of activity, and I had thought that if you could pick one of thin but inactive or fat and active, that you were likely healthier with the latter.
131: Lots of really tight pants and tights as pants mean you can obsess about this shit more easily than ever.
131 -- those sound like the words of a man without a thigh gap.
walking for six hours a week with a child strapped to me sounds dreadful and not worth the payoff. Could you find 10-20 minutes in your day to do something intense? Even 45 minutes, 3 times a week of strength training seems too long.
If I find it dreadful, I'll certainly try something else.
Men don't have thigh caps because of balls.
I'm a pretty good example of skinny but unhealthy. Poor cardio, not a great diet, but when I'm depressed eating becomes a chore. I unintentionally fast.
I think a secondary character in The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B., probably the one who is expelled from school for writing "I am the vast masturbator" on all the blackboards whilst the other lads were out at games, expresses a particular fondness for the phenomenon now known as "thigh gap," but not by that name.
16: "This is sweet: camera crews are setting up and I'm lookin' totally ripped."
But I thought that fat cells produced compounds which decrease insulin sensitivity.
Among other things. There can be a tendency to treat the fat like inert weight when really it's like you're carrying around a fifty pound endocrine organ.
The sudden attention to stuff like "thigh gaps" makes me think there is an intrinsic part of the human brain that yearns to obsess about stupid shit.
My ears are burning!
waist-to-hip ratio research
I thought it was more about adding weight in the abdomen itself, rather than just the ratio? Because my ratio is probably still fine, as I'm adding weight to the hips as well, but I'm worried about the belly fat being tied to all the no-good health issues associated with it. I also think LB is right in 135.1.
144: I think it really is about the ratio. If you're adding weight evenly all over, then while some of it might be on your waistline, it's probably subcutaneous fat located on the waistline rather than the fat within the abdominal cavity which has the worrisome metabolic effects. A defined pot-belly is what you worry about much more than well-distributed fat. (Again, I'd have to google to back this up.)
Ah, a quick google shows me that what I mean to say is visceral fat, and you're right, LB.
I had a scoop of ice cream after lunch today, sitting in the sun down by the river. Local band playing. It was glorious.
I unintentionally fast.
I keep on reading this as a bit of dialog from Sesame Street.
"Grover, why did you get to the playground a half hour before anyone else was going to be there?"
"I unintentionally fast."
Fact: Grover is the hardest Sesame Street voice for me to imitate.
Yeah, that husky but musical burbling is very tricky. I can't do it recognizably at all.
Reading about diet and exercise is fairly depressing [in a mild way]. I know how much weight I want to lose, I know the kinds of fitness gains I need to get pleasure from doing the sorts of things I want to do, and get better at doing them. But it's nearly impossible for will-power, plus long-commute, plus small-baby, plus only-have-half-a-fucking-thyroid.
Someone needs to provide me with a miracle extra 20% will power and a shower at work so I can exercise at lunch.*
* I do exercise at lunch. I go for a walk quite often, but if I walk at the sort of pace I'd need to do to get my heart up, I get sweaty. I also walk 40 minutes a day just during the commute. Ditto. I could do it faster, but, sweaty.
The OP really does get at something essential about discussing weight and health issues. I really don't like what I wrote in 144, and I think anytime it is discussed, either in person or in a forum like this I end up feeling like I've said something terrible or over-qualified things or given everyone the idea that I'm terribly focused on weight. Bah!
Haven't read the comments but I think no fewer than 1800 is recommended for a woman who is nursing a baby.
I hope to be cleared for exercise next week but man, is it going to be a long way back. Pregnancy and labor took all of my core strength and turned it into noodles. I'm terrified to try anything high impact or lift anything heavy because I think all my stabilizing muscles went out with the placenta or something, and that was how I used to keep in shape. (Maybe I'm super-sensitive to hormones? But I was completely unprepared for feeling so weak.)
On the other hand, I will get a chance to see how badass I can get solely with bodyweight exercises and swimming.
What do you mean 'high impact' that you're scared of? Like, I think of running as 'high impact', but I wouldn't worry about running with your core strength messed up.
Also, conversations I am sick of:
"Are you in your old clothes yet?" [Honestly, who decided this was a good measure of anything?]
"Are you back at your old weight yet?" [No fucking clue, because I don't own a scale, never have, and figured pregnancy was a dumb time to start.]
a shower at work so I can exercise at lunch.*
This is a huge advantage of my job along with my having teenaged children. A four day workweek plus having a small gym and locker room with showers at the precinct means I can usually get at least three of my strength training days in at work.
"Are you in your old clothes yet?" [Honestly, who decided this was a good measure of anything?]
Four years out and still no! I've got at least three non-maternity wardrobes. If nothing else, I really would like to know my longterm size so I can stop investing in the wrong sizes.
More to 153; I should butt out in favor of Heebie, who's done this all much more recently, but while I was telling you to cut yourself slack in terms of feeling weak right now, I wouldn't worry too much about how hard it will be to get your fitness level back. You're not exactly out of shape, it's more like being injured, and a lot of that weakness is going to heal without your having to work for it too hard. I mean, you're also out of shape from not having been able to exercise hard for the last couple of months, but I doubt you're as much work away from being strong again as it feels like.
Last year, I used to walk to work because I didn't care if I smelled bad. Now I have to supervise people, so I probably need to smell better to project authority.
158: Due to the weirdness of my bodytype, while I don't look like I did before having kids, and I don't weigh what I did before having kids, I've still got clothes that fit from back then.
Come to think, given that Sally's a teenager, I should probably go shopping.
I should butt out in favor of Heebie, who's done this all much more recently,
No, there are huge huge differences between first and later pregnancies. What Cala's recovering from is much rougher, and I don't have any special expertise on first pregnancies.
160: Depends. Do you want them hanging out in your office chatting?
I feel too jiggly for running.
Also peeing your pants is no fun. But gets better!
155: Your lack of core strength prevented you from pummeling these folks, I presume. Too bad.
But you were playing soccer pretty fast after Hawaii, right?
Yes, but it was an utter disaster. Not that I should have waited exactly, but I was incredibly weak and miserable with how it went.
I'm nagging you to say something cheerful, or at least to support my point, but how long do you think it was before you were playing soccer normally again -- maybe not at your peak, but not an utter disaster? Six months? A year? Not a crazy amount of time anyway.
164: Not an issue I think I'm having, fortunately. (Though I admit I haven't really tried to stress anything. I also need a better sportsbra.) I just feel like everything is going to fall out and then my hips will break and then my knees will go and then my back will go out.
And LB's right that it feels like rehab, which is how I'm mentally trying to think of it. Just like when I hurt my shoulder! It will get better!
165: Distance. My dad seems to think this is a topic for conversation -- it doesn't bother me, exactly, but I wonder who decided that six weeks postpartum meant "back to normal" vs. "beginning phrase of healing, mostly complete, and also, let's talk contraception"
how long do you think it was before you were playing soccer normally again
Hawaii was born April 19th, and by the end of that summer I felt pretty good on the field. My first game back was mid-June.
My wife was told some significantly longer period than 6 weeks before resuming serious exercise. It's 10 weeks now, and while she's fine doing every day things, I don't think she'd feel able to do serious core exercise or harder yoga. Admittedly, that was after a c-section, but still. Six weeks seems ridiculous to be 'normal'.
"beginning phrase of healing, mostly complete, and also, let's talk contraception"
One of the things that I found charming in the article Minivet linked to yesterday about Finnish government providing a box of baby essentials to mothers was that the box includes condoms.
The joys of an online journal! My first game back was May 30th, 2009. It was awful.
For exercise, I should join an old-man soccer league. Do you think they'd take somebody who doesn't really know the rules other than "no hands"?
A quick googling suggests they prefer to call it "Over 40" soccer.
173: So, right about where Cala is now. And then three months after that you were pretty normal feeling. That's about my memory of it -- first month or so I was a bit of an invalid, next couple of months I still felt all messed up, although I could do non-strenuous things fine, but after that I was just kind of back to normal without having done anything particular to get there.
175: Sally's rugby club has the under 19 teams, the adult men's and women's teams, and then an over-35 men's team referred to as the "Gents", which cracks me up.
re: 178
A guy who used to come to our frenchykickboxing club used to play rugby fairly seriously [6ft5, 240lbs or so, not fat], and was then playing for a 35+ rugby team. He gave it up for martial arts as he couldn't stand the violence any more. Lots of guys approaching middle-age still wanting to 'mix it'.
Oh, yeah, they're very entertaining to watch. A pack of fat old bald guys with grey beards (and by old I mean my age) being absolutely vicious on the field. It somehow looks more violent than the pretty young men, probably because the violence looks less athletic and more like a fight broke out in a bar.
Heebie, have you considered asking Dr. Dodogods for a spell? I understand his remedies are quite efficacious.
(Apparently there is some risk of run-on sentences though, so caveat emptor.)
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Perhaps, well-meaning maternity staff, it is possible to give us too much advice, delivered altogether too often.
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I've recently lost a lot of weight due to generally distressing and serious health problems, which has drastically changed my attitude about both my body and other people's comments about how I look.
Now I'm commenting from an airport smoking lounge while drinking beer, because I care about my health so much.
Did they give you the cheat codes yet? Up, left, up, right, right, left, down = sleep.
I read an article Memorial Day weekend that talked about fat and muscle each being thought of as more or less endocrine now such that your fat cells produce hormones to try to keep you fat and muscle or exercise secretes something else that helps you lose/keep off the fat. If I can actually find the link, or might be useful.
OT: I really liked the 2000 New Yorker essay "Calliope Times," quoted in this not-otherwise-as-good little retrospective of New Yorker writers' summer jobs, but it reminded me that, growing up in western New England around people who had been children or adults in and around Hartford during the '40s, I never heard anyone mention the 1944 Hartford circus tent fire, which seems odd in retrospect for such a terrible disaster.
I just can't stop saying the phrase "Dr. Dodogods." Dr. Dodogods! And, topically, I just ate part of a donut to be polite.
I am only halfway through the thread but it is way timely for me. A year or so ago I easily lost 14 lbs and then easily put them back on and now I'm chasing them away again and I'm finding the changing of habits hard right now. And yes, I am doing this for the shallow reasons. When it's my health I'm after, I'll exercise.
At lunch I ate a salad and a banana. I usually eat about four million calories more than that. I have not felt A++ wonderful the rest of the day.
I thought I had value to add but it turns out I'm just whining on-topic.
I'm definitely in the thin-but-not-healthy category. I've never managed to exercise enough for it to become pleasant and self-reinforcing; it always feels like a chore, and whenever I stop, I lose whatever strength or endurance I've gained, pretty much immediately.
This is pretty much the story with my trying to become a morning person as well.
(On the other hand, my father is strong as an ox, and he doesn't seem to have to do anything to maintain it. He does a lot of yard work during the summer, but I think he's strong year round.)
This thread is killing me; part of the reason I quit my job was that I've put on 10 lbs. over the past year and I want to keep on top of it so my various health concerns don't get worse. (Well, and also so I don't suck so much wind playing soccer.) But I've managed to put my back out twice in the past three weeks and I haven't been able to do any of the things I'd planned on. And I've been depressed and eating like crap, so my blood sugar's all out of whack too.
189: This is why God invented the Cobb salad. That's basically my go-to "lose weight but keep eating delicious food" meal.
I've always hated exercise. I do it because it helps more with depression that most other things, because getting measurably better at something gives some facsimile of self-mastery and achievement in a life otherwise bereft of either, and because I want to look good naked, but I never think "oh boy, I can't wait to start this 40-mile bike ride!"
... and in fact I just skipped today's, because I've come down with a cold and I'm exhausted and everything's vaguely wrong. Booo.
Oh hey Josh how's that fixie treating you?
(Entirely on-topic, I think I'm about to go buy an overpriced pint of ice-cream and eat it. So there.)
Err, the fixie comment was meant to be a sincere expression of curiosity; after reading 191.1 more carefully, I see I shouldn't have quite taken that tone.
Sidebar comment: Seeing four comments in a row with the same name on the post "Hyper-overthinking-it" is funny.
191.2: Hmm, that should work for me too, but for some reason whenever I eat bacon in a salad I feel ill afterwards.
My go-to salad is the Niçoise.
Weirdly, bacon on its own is fine, and salads without bacon are fine, and I like the taste of bacon in a salad just fine.
OT bleg: who are the most famous/respected actual, non-figment-of-the-right-wing-imagination socialist muslims? unsurprisingly, google is difficult here.
That's weird. A bunch of comments disappeared.
And now Netflix is down! What is going on.
Timothy Olyphant's character from Die Hard 4 is enacting his plan but with actually important targets.
I love Niçoise salad but I'm too lazy to make it for myself and as far as I can tell very few places near where I've lived in the past few years have served (or if pre-made is ok, sold) it that were within the range of effort I'm willing to put in to find it. (Also, I'm cheap.)
I'll disagree with Halford and insist that the laws of physics are obeyed, even in crossfit boxes, and that a calorie is, in fact, a calorie.
This is the stupidest thing I frequently hear otherwise smart people say. Do you honestly think that the concepts of faster vs. slower metabolisms are just totally bogus? Or that eating the same number of calories and getting the same amount of exercise when you're 50 will have no different effect on your weight than it did when you were 25? Because once you acknowledge, no, of course, people's metabolisms slow down over time, and vary considerably from person to person, is there any part of "a calorie is a calorie" that is salvagable at all? Isn't that completely incompatible with the simpleminded "thermodynamic law" that weight management is a simple calibration of calories-in vs. calories-out?
199: who are the most famous/respected actual, non-figment-of-the-right-wing-imagination socialist muslims?
If you're seriously asking, there are lots and lots, although some of them were only dubiously socialist (especially in Africa).
Ali Shariati, the founding ideologue of the Iranian revolution (though he would have loathed the way it ended up), was an Islamic socialist, though a quirky one IIRC. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was certainly one, and I'm sure many Indian Muslims were as well, though I'm not exactly sure how Indian Muslims have historically broken down between Congress and the various parties of the Left. I think Sukarno made some vague gestures towards socialism. Qadhafi is.....hard to classify, but Nasser and the Assad family sort of claimed to be socialist, make whatever you wish of that claim. (Some Muslims would say Assad isn't a Muslim either). Yemen was run by communists for awhile, as was Guinnea Bissau, which I think was plurality Muslim. And then in Africa, uh, Thomas Sankara was a Christian socialist but many of his followers were Muslims, Zanzibar was briefly run by socialists before they merged with socialist (non-Muslim) Tanzania. There were plenty of African Muslim politicians who claimed to be socialist, but historically most African governments have tended to be so weak that I think it would be pretty dubious to call them socialist (with a few honorable exceptions, like the aforementioned Sankara, Nyerere, etc.).
I'm sure there are plenty more, and that's really only the ones who ran countries. And I would assume there are some European Muslim politicians who are socialist as well, maybe in France (though I wouldn't really consider the French Socialist party particularly socialist, there many people to the left of the PS).
Well, as someone who was once in the "normal" range, is -way- outside it, hasn't been near it for a decade, and wishes he were, I can fully sympathize with this post. It's -ridiculously- hard to lose weight.
That said, there's at least two things that have worked for me in the past:
(1) day-on, day-off fasting. Heebie,I think you mentioned that since you have a baby, that's not possible. Maybe just wait until you -can- do it ....
(2) N.E.A.T. Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. My version of that is that, when I work from home, I do all conference calls on a (used, cheap) bike mounted on a (used, cheap) mag-trainer. With a music-stand as a laptop stand. I try to hack on it too, but that's a little less successful. But for con-calls .... yeah, that works.
Something else that comes to mind:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
I have a friend who lost a ton of weight on this. Basically, you weigh -everything-. It results in two things:
(a) can't eat out, can't eat meat, fats
(b) and hence, eating becomes cheaper
As someone pointed out, to merely lose 1lb per week requires 500 calories/day deficit. The point of this approach is that you can lose more gradually, if you are -completely- consistent. And he provides a methodology (time-series averaging) for being completely consistent.
My friend did point out that he was hungry -all- the time. But since he knew exactly what he was consuming, and what was happening to his weight, he was able to exert the willpower to not consume.
To someone's point that not all calories are utilized by all people in the same way, this diet doesn't end up prescribing a certain number of calories daily. Basically, you continue reducing what you eat, until your weight starts to drop (again, using time-series averaging so it isn't precipitous) and then stay on that slope.
He was on the slope for over a year, getting rid of it all. And he's stayed on it ever since (we're talking 6+ years).
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Wow, this is surprisingly cool (the vocals from "Under Pressure" without any of the instrumental tracks). Better than I would have expected.
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203: Pret à Manger does a nice but inauthentic version.
Ok. Here's the article I was referring to.
210: Mitochondria, another key part of our microbiome!
I am glad when other people say they find exercise unpleasant. Otherwise I feel like it's a character weakness. Exercise doesn't make me feel exhilarated or healthy. It makes me feel tired. Even during the few periods when I've done it consistently for a while.
I really love that not only do we now know that mitochondria used to be free living bacteria, we actually know what family of bacteria they're in. And this even though the absorption event took place over a billion years ago. Science never ceases to amaze me.
212:I used to find it unpleasant, before I did strength training, with two effects:
1) strength training was itself an exercise that wasn't miserable for me
2) being stronger made everything else easier
195: Don't sweat it. One of the things that's been bumming me out is that I'd really like to ride my new bike (not a fixie! just a single-speed! unless I flip the hub!), but my back's been fucked up enough that I haven't been able to. But it's been fun on the occasions I've been able to ride!
I am glad when other people say they find exercise unpleasant. Otherwise I feel like it's a character weakness.
Why can't both be true?
OT: I know I haven't been around much lately, but I need some advice. I have lived one year in Rural Town, and my landlord is a colleague in another department, and his wife is a powerful administrator. I like both of them personally a great deal, but luckily, our relationship is triangulated by a property manager who handles the day-to-day business of life in their old house.
The problem is that this person is a fucking idiot. The rent is decent, but she lets herself into my house with no warning, hires incompetent people who don't do the work and she pays them anyway before sending them again and again. Or they tell her something needs doing (like snow removal), and hire themselves to do it without consulting me at all, and then leaving me a bill, despite the fact that I have arms and kind of like shoveling. Another guy she kept hiring, over and over, last summer, accomplished nothing other than sending her photographs of himself naked in my house. "Can you believe these guys? I'm gonna have to pay him AGAIN to come back next week and really paint that bathroom door!"
I just got a letter saying she wants to increase my rent by 13.3%. For scale, my salary is going up by 1.7% this year. She says I'm a great tenant and that she is hoping to keep me. It's such a small town, half the other properties are also managed by her. And, for comparison, a friend of mine is moving out of a beautiful 2-bedroom apartment she manages, and she's raising the rent on that one by 50% next year, to honestly big-city-type prices.
Rural State does not have a law specifying the maximum percentage rental increase, but we do have an anti-retaliation law, in that landlords are not allowed to significantly increase rent within 12 months of the tenant requesting that some normal upkeep (not renovation) be done. I'm suspecting that her huge price jump has something to do with our recent disaster-grade flooding, plus the massive amount she's spent this year re-hiring the same incompetent jackasses to do the same non-work over and over. E.g.: She hired one team of guys to install storm windows. They put them in backwards, so they can't be opened, aren't flush with the wall, and one of them blew off in a wind storm. According to my colleague-landlord, she reported to him that she was hiring the same team of guys to come back, but they would need $800 per window to TURN THEM AROUND. I rest my case.
I don't *want* to move. It would be expensive, and would create bad blood between me and dear friends. But I do want to threaten to move to teach this idiot a lesson in jerking people around just because you're an incompetent shithead. That's not a good motive. But I'm definitely getting fucked here, right? Right?
I have nothing good to say for myself at the moment.
TBH, there's no reason why I can't pay the higher rent. I've finished paying off my car, which is like getting a raise. But technically, I would like making a little more money next year so that I can save some in case I'm unemployed soon, as my position is short-term. I would like to make clear to this person that she is not being friendly or nice or welcoming or complimentary, as she seems to think. It's shitty to raise rent that much when no improvements have been made to the property.
I think I'm going to have dinner with Powerful Administrator Wife next week and discuss this. It seems the right thing to do. I think they're aware of the rent increase, of course, but that they've been way too passive in the face of the manager's demand for more income, without realizing that it really hurts a somewhat-vulnerable person who has done them a ton of huge fucking favors.
107: Wait, what is this waist-to-hip ratio thing? 70%, really? If your hip measurement is 33", then your waist measurement has to be 23.1" at most? I can't visualize whether this is even plausible or not, but it seems amazing that your waist would have to be at least ten inches smaller than your hips. If you have a 50" hip measurement, the waist # should be 35"...?
You could bid for a job as property manager. 218.2 makes me nervous; Cossack, czars.
220: Me too. I'm not used to making demands as anything other than a supplicant. But just last weekend I did a bit of work for them that I thought I was getting paid for that it turns out they meant they would have paid a professional for, but how nice to have a friend do it instead. The powerful person here keeps also holding out crumbs regarding longer-term positions here, and I'm somewhat concerned that they're fucking with me. Alas. My plan is to get another job at some point in the next two years and be done with this drama. As it is, everyone is impossible to read.
Hm, that's a tough one, AWB. (But it's nice to see you around!) The mix of friend and landlord-tenant relationship ties between you and the owners seems to be complicating things even beyond the property manager's actions.
They definitely do seem to be fucking you over, though. "They" meaning both the manager and the owners, even though the latter in particular probably aren't thinking of it that way.
They do not sound, to me, like friends.
Interpreting labor that they would have paid a professional for as a "favor" by a "friend" who just happens to be paying them lots of money on a regular basis to live in a house they own is egregious bullshit and, indeed, not very friendly at all.
Oh and another thing I hate about trying to make positive eating/exercise changes is that every time I do it, I get sick. Not very sick, but like lose a night of sleep and sometimes a day of work. I used to think this was a weirdly quarterly thing but lately it seems to happen around the time I, say, cut out flour/sugar. It's enough to make a person talk about toxins. TAAAAAHKSIIIIIIINS.
The silver lining this evening is that I was watching Arrested Development before I went to bed and in my half-sleep I'm having somewhat diverting AD dreams.
I typed some advice to AWB that didn't make any sense so I eated it.
219: Okay, everyone, publish your income times your hip-to-waist ratio!
225: Yes... you have a friend working a scratch job, you throw them some work, half the point is they get *paid*. The other half that they won't let it go unfinished.
Tiny toxins
Flee my bod
Fluids tell them:
Clown, get schrod
Burnashave
*scrod
*Burmashave
4:23. Ain't we got fun?
The swing kids were startled by how energetic the old waltzes and polkas are -- and we didn't happen to have any of the *really* tough ones, which involve kicks and leaping and are fifteen minutes long.
My father has something he calls the Edinburgh Triathlon, which consists of cycling out to the Pentland Hills (relatively small hills to the south of the city), walking all day, cycling back, and then going Scottish country dancing in the evening. This epitomises the "find a kind of exercise you like and do it a lot" advice. Since it also adds up to about 6,000 calories burned per day, it's no wonder he's the shape he is.
Just to continue the fitness-shaming, I feel I should share that I did 100 pressups in a row for the first time ever this morning. Go, me.
To 110: Actuarial tables? There is a huge version of this posted where I work, and it fills me with unspeakable rage.
re: 231
A friend of my mum's is approaching 70 [this year, I think]. In her late 40s she realised she was really quite overweight, and unhealthy, and yoga and other things she did weren't cutting it for her. So she started hill-walking with a little organised group. Her husband was ill,* and it was a way to get out of the house. Anyway, now nearly 20+ years later and still walking regularly, she is still a little overweight lady, but she has the cardio-vascular fitness of a fell-runner.
She went to China to walk bits of the Great Wall a few years back, and was hee-hawing at all the young people flaking out on the steeper sections, while she just kept powering on. She might only walk 4 miles an hour, but she'll keep doing 'em up steep slopes and down, relentlessly, hour after hour.
* he died of being Scottish, i.e. overweight, too much alcohol, too much fatty good, no exercise.
Re: "thigh gap," is that why bowed legs are so traditionally attractive? Must be.
Also, the waist-to-hip ratio is mysterious to me. I just don't understand the proposed mechanism as to why having an apple shape is worse. I mean, fine, there's some correlation that seems well-established, but why would that be? Proxy for some real issue?
Finally, that's quite a program, Heebie. 12X the exercise on 2/3 the calories? Did you threaten to fire him if you didn't drop weight immediately?
The mechanism is that fat deposited in your abdominal cavity has different metabolic effects than fat elsewhere, and is more harmful (googling 'visceral fat' will get you people talking about it). The ratios aren't magic, it's just that a disproportionately large waistline is likely to indicate a lot of visceral fat.
(As with everything else, I think sweating particular numbers aimed at a population average is silly. I think this largely because I never had a waist: the way I'm built, the skinniest day of my adult life my waist to hip ratio was I am sure well over .8. That wasn't visceral fat, that's being so short waisted that there's very little room for an indentation between my ribcage and my hipbones. But generally, as between two people the same weight and body fat percentage, the one with skinny limbs and a potbelly is at greater health risk than the one who's soft all over.)
re: 235.1
There does seem to be some supposed causal link. Although I can't quite tell if the various proposed links are flaky [health websites being notoriously accurate sources of information, not] or not, but the correlation with visceral rather than subcutaneous fat is solid.
It's of personal interest, as my own stomach is way fatter than it ought to be. I'd like to know whether I should worry, especially given that all the other indicators: blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, resting heart rate, etc are good. Or is it just that having a fat stomach tends to be correlated with poor measurements on all of those.
Are bowed legs supposed to be attractive? I understood they were supposed to be a sign of deficiency diseases in childhood.
That comment may have been sarcasm.
Thanks, both. From a quick scan, it seems like the docs assume that the waist-hip ratio approximates the levels of visceral fat (not sure I agree without a primary literature search on that one). The visceral fat thing I do understand. Mostly it's that visceral fat is more likely to adversely affect organs like liver because of its proximity and low viscosity. So, perhaps cholesterol and inflammation are the actual problem. I just don't in general like rules like the ratio when it elides the important effect.
Also, go Ajay. I will feel puny now.
219 makes a good point, although I believe 33" is pretty tiny for hips.
Finally, that's quite a program, Heebie. 12X the exercise on 2/3 the calories? Did you threaten to fire him if you didn't drop weight immediately?
Well, he's not charging me any money. I'll threaten to gain weight if it doesn't work, though.
AWB, that is indeed a mess. My inclination is to tell you to work with the property manager and not the owner - maybe price out comparable apartments and think of it as a negotiation?
I was trying to come up with something helpful to say there as well, but coming up dry. Not that it's wrong to go to the owner, but it somehow seems unlikely to have any good effect. If practicality weren't an issue, I'd want to find an apartment not managed by the useless person, rent that, and only after the decision was made talk to the owners about how their manager is driving tenants out. But clearly the first step of that is a bitch.
233: I need something that will bring me up to 6'1".
She might only walk 4 miles an hour....
4 miles an hour is a very respectable pace, even on flat ground. A friend and I were very pleased with ourselves when our GPS indicated that we had kept up a 3 mph pace during a couple of days of hiking in Yosemite, but when things get steeper even 2 mph is nothing to sneeze at, especially over a day.
This is true. 4 mph is the sort of pace you'd expect if you were fairly fit and walking fast, unloaded, on flat level ground.
Naismith's Rule says to expect 3 mph as an average for level off-road walking, and you add on an extra hour for every 2000 feet of climbing. So if she's walking 4 mph on the Great Wall, even unloaded, she's pretty damn fit.
Re: 249
I may be exaggerating slightly, but she's a solid fast hiker. When I used to walk for cardio I used to do, I think, 6mph+ but that was really hard to keep up for long. That a lower impact alternative to running though, so flat out and targetting heart rate.
Walking 6mph sounds implausible to me -- I hit a point on a treadmill where I can't go any faster without breaking into a run somewhere around 4.5. Obviously, just because I can't do it doesn't mean you can't, but are you sure you've got that correct?
252: Maybe people with really long legs can do it, but the fastest I can walk is a twelve minute mile. 6mph is jogging for me.
Yeah. I could probably get up to 5mph/12min mile for a bit -- 4.5 is more like where I really want to start running rather than where I have to, but much more than that seems impossible.
Of course, 8 minutes is my fastest mile. Even in a short distance, I doubt I get to 8 mph.
And this page describes racewalking speeds as 5 to 9 mph. Never mind, I will stop being skeptical about other people based on my own limitations now.
And will continue to feel puny.
It would be embarrassing to be in a flat-out run and passed by somebody walking, but not as embarassing as the ass-wiggle needed to racewalk.
AWB, you're a great writer when you're mad.
IMO, telling the owner that the property manager is paying multiple times for the same work and then charging tenants for her incompetence or sloth is worthwhile. but unlikely to change much or help. It sounds to me like the core problem for both owner and manager is a reluctance to seek out and deal with new business contacts. Good luck, sounds like a messy case where transactions are inextricably fused with personality.
re: 252
My usual route when I was doing it was, according to my pedometer, roughly 9km. I did that in under an hour. Which is about 5.5 mph. When I used to do shorter routes [more hills, though], I went faster. So I'm pretty sure it was close to 6mph. That was race/speed-walking. Not in the sense of using the arse-wiggling technique, but flat out with my pulse up as high as it would be if I was running. I used to target 70% of MHR, or more.
Running is more efficient and easier once you are at those speeds. I was walking because I have shit knees and get shin splints from running.
That said, it's 18 months since I was doing this at all, and longer since I was doing it a few times a week. I'd get nowhere near that fast for a sustained time period now.
217: I really hope that the property manager is getting kickbacks, because if she's just wasting all that money out of the goodness of her heart, then I think my brain will melt because that just makes no sense.
My takeaway from this thread is that Ttam does a nice arse-wiggling speedwalk and Halford doesn't have a thigh gap.
The cynical reading is that "running a business" is a fun role to play, allows for self-importance and the appearance of decisionmaking. Apartment rental as an instance of the pointless boutique or cafe without the need to dust or rotate stock.
re: 261
I expect I looked more like a tramp/hobo on the run. Awkward shuffling gait, sweaty, surprisingly fast.
Let me just google "tramp ass wiggle" to see if 261 and 263 are actually contradictory.
262 is precisely my impression of this property manager. Since the beginning, she brags about how handy she is when she buys cute sconces for the bathroom or whatever, but she is deaf to requests like, "Please have someone come and sanitize the basement, which was used as a neglected dog pen by the previous tenant." La la la! Don't you love these window shears?!
My favorite interaction with her was when I asked how the garbage works here. There's a pretty complicated system involving special bags that are taxed to price trash by volume, etc. "I've looked at the website, and it's not too clear. What do I do?" "Oh, I have a fiancé who takes out the trash, so I wouldn't know." Um, can your fiancé come take out my trash then? Apparently this has been her answer to tenants for YEARS.
I don't know that this is going to do you much good, but could you talk to the owners from a perspective of "You guys are my friends, and I think your manager is incompetent in a way that has the effect of ripping you off"? Do some off-the-cuff calculations adding up things like the pointless $800 on the windows, because that's all money that comes straight out of your profits. And then throw in "Honestly, with the rent hike I'd be moving if it weren't so much of a hassle to do it for only one year, but as long as my entire raise is going to go to a rent hike, I'd rather it go to you guys, who I like, rather than being frittered away by the manager who harasses me." If you're not actually prepared to move, which is your only leverage, I think that's about as much guilt-tripping as you can do.
I think maybe guilt-tripping about the dog shit might also work.
Oh, yeah, throw in the fact that she actively makes tenants' lives difficult, with all the pointless workmen but no help on real problems.
221 suggests that these people are not in fact your friends, though it may still be in your interest to let them think that you still think they are.
247.last seems right, you must seek your batna.
Revenge is a perfectly legitimate human motive, but you probably want to make sure you do it in a way that doesn't ruin you.
Yeah, I was trying to phrase something like 266. You have the owners' best interests at heart, you hate to see them taken advantage of, etc. etc. Unless the "manager" is also a friend, in which case I suspect you're pretty much fucked.
"You know if years go by and he won't set a date, chances are that you're not a fiancee, you're a beard. That's my expert opinion anyway."
(Expertise gained from literature! of which you are a doctor.)
"I cried because I was a beard until I met a man who was a Van Dyke."
221 suggests that these people are not in fact your friends, though it may still be in your interest to let them think that you still think they are.
I'm not sure whether it's more or less cynical of me to think that just because someone is intentionally or thoughtlessly screwing you over, that doesn't mean that there's no sense in which they're your friend. You can enjoy a relationship with someone even if you're conscious of keeping one hand on your wallet (or whatever the issue is) at all times.
As a reluctant manager for my mom's duplex, all I want is to have no interactions with my tenants. If you could promise them that you would handle everything and not bother them, they might be willing to skip the raise, cut out the manager and leave you in place for a year. But then you forego the privileges of a renter, where someone fixes things for you.
274. Being completely delusional about well-intentioned interactions with other people is a popular style of life. I have found that it is extremely rare to find people open to hearing their own behavior described.
As a reluctant manager for my mom's duplex, all I want is to have no interactions with my tenants.
I admit that on first reading I interpreted this as "I never want to talk to my mom".
Oh, I could see that. No no! My mother doesn't live in the duplex; she is not one of her own tenants.
But, my dad might move into the duplex, becoming his first wife's tenant. In which case, I really don't want to be a manager-intermediary. (Everyone is friendly. They can talk directly.)
266 sounds about right.
The thing about the payment was that it was for a very little bit of singing, for a special college event. I don't actually expect to be paid to be a musician, because it's something I do for fun outside my work. The only quirk to it is that there was another soloist, who got paid, and a string quartet, who got paid, and an organist, who got paid, and then me. And none of those people had practiced the music at all (it was kind of hard) and the performance was terrible. They make their living as musicians, so they need the money more than I do. Actually, I got a call yesterday asking if I would sing another thing for them this weekend but I'll be out of town. Presumably, if I became part of their stable of reliable musicians, they would compensate me somehow.
That's neither here nor there, but I think there is a little bit of just honest-to-God cluelessness about money somewhere in here. And all of these people are the sort of lifetime-bourgeoises who have not, like I have, lived on the knife's edge for years and years to the point that I am still a little hyper-aware of who's getting money for what. Hustlers gotta hustle and all that. And as a musician friend reminded me when I discussed this with him, taking a paid position from a professional singer without getting paid makes me a scab.
Fell asleep, thread moved on, but to conclude:
The ratios aren't magic, it's just that a disproportionately large waistline is likely to indicate a lot of visceral fat.
But the ratios don't just seem like too-vague "guidelines"; they seem seriously distorted. I'm not even certain that 1:1 is all that disproportionate on a lot of people. There must be some kind of screen for body type. If you have a narrow pelvis, it seems like this would be an impossible standard. Like you, LB, it's never going to happen for me: I'm pretty sure I'd have to break my ribs to get my waist # to be 70% of my hip #, which seems like it would make regular exercise difficult.
Lots of metrics are silly, sure, like BMI-- but they might still be a good approximation for maybe 50% of the population. This one struck me as being a good approximation for way less than half the population. Apparently ideal runway models do have a 70% waist-to-hip ratio, though, so of course that's perfect.
I actually thought the healthy ratio for women was supposed to be .8, which I don't come near either. But you're right that it's very body-type dependent, and should be treated with the same suspicion as BMI or any other one-size-fits-all measurement.
Lots of metrics are silly, sure, like BMI-- but they might still be a good approximation for maybe 50% of the population.
I don't know for what percentage of the population of individuals BMI is a good approximation for. It's supposed to work (and does) for populations, not for people that make up populations. Individuals are just annoying because they lack variance.
Yes, it's .8 for "low risk" (for women).
So, you're like an unpaid intern musician?
Update: So the strength-training was far less intense than crossfit, but hard enough that, say, my muscles would burn near the end of the first set, and the last set would be really tough. Or that I'd get out of breath if we were doing a major muscle group.
Here's the weird-ish part?
I have a friend who works at the local state U, in the Kinesiology/Activity Center parts. So she's the one I originally called and asked if she could recommend a personal trainer, or send me to someone who might know someone.
She got back to me with this guy, and said "D. has a lot of experience with pregnant and post-partum women, but he's not taking clients. But he'll chat with you and see if he can connect you with someone."
So I emailed D., and he said "When are you free to meet?" which surprised me slightly, but great.
When we met on Tuesday, he said, "I could meet with you weekly to check in, but if you want someone who can meet more often, I would refer you to someone else." I said that I thought weekly would be good. (I felt like it was rude to my friend not to give D. a shot, when he was being so generous, even though I knew his regimen conflicted with Wise Online Advice.)
At the end of it on Tuesday, he said "Ok, let's meet Thursday and I'll walk you through the first strength-training session." I was surprised, but great.
Today he said, "Ok, let's meet Saturday so I can go over another routine with you."
He made it sound like he would be there as we adjusted routines, as they got easier, and he took some fancy equipment back home with him, so it'd be hard to do the routine at home without him.
In other words, he's constantly escalating how closely we'll be working together, and I don't know what to make of this. (I did say today that I'd feel better compensating him for his time, and he said $20.)
That got long. Sorry.
Wikipedia gives the .7 as ideal WTH ratio, and says:
The National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) states that women with waist-hip ratios of more than 0.8, and men with more than 1.0, are at increased health risk because of their fat distribution.
But who knows. I agree with everyone above about individuals within a population, etc.
Obviously I have no idea how any of this works.
Relatedly, I should really finally stop commenting here. This lovely community is a real mismatch for my (grating, awkward) personality and (limited, irrelevant) skills. If I were someone else reading, I would actively skip my own comments. I hate them all, and this one is necessarily the worst.
Do we really want to have a grating-and-awkward Olympics here? No, we do not. Stay, stay. Or don't, in order to be productive; but not because of comment perfectionism.
Beaten to the punch by x. Let's not set minimum requirements.
What I meant by 288.1 is that I'm sure lots of people think their comments to be the most grating and awkward, and we can't all be right, and there's no sense in fighting for the title. In case that wasn't obvious.
[awkward turtle motion]
Thanks but no no no. AWB's question/problem was infinitely more interesting than this. Please don't let me derail that better discussion! I'll leave my email address here instead.
If I were someone else reading, I would actively skip my own comments.
Not the case!
What kind of bullshit is this. Your comments are awesome, what do you think the rest of us are doing, none of these assholes (including me) are that interesting. Comment like a brave, soaring eagle.
A brave, soaring, appreciated eagle.
Maybe 286 is nothing. He also lives in Small Town, and so maybe his kneejerk reaction is not to take clients up in Austin right now, but it's very convenient for him to swing by and meet in person here.
It's very convenient to ME to have a baby-compatible strength routine. Win-win.
Also, Lurid, seriously, this is a grating and awkward community. You chafe like the best of us.
A brave, soaring, appreciated eagle.
That should be the text on a motivational poster.
OMFG who painted that eagle LOL
Eagles have grating, awkward cries! It all works!
I will be triply earnest by saying that if you feel that commenting here does you harm, lurid keyaki, then of course there are better places to be, but I've found your posts perfectly 290 cromulent.
About the visceral fat: the abdominal fat in meat animals is often strongly distinct from subcutaneous or intramuscular fat (and the best to cook with and the kind we're supposed to avoid most scrupulously). I assume it's full of Short Life but a Happy One demons.
I've only heard the 0.7 waist-hip ratio as ideal for appealing to men. For health and sanity purposes, re. 280.3, I know people who track their ratio rather than their absolute measurements, and figure they're fine if it doesn't rise. One's (robot) tailor could alert one, I suppose. (Would ma'am like a couch to match?)
The comic _Finder_ has several pages of a joke on baby-carrying parkour as an athletic and martial practice. I can't find any images to link to, though.
Late to the thread, skipped many of the comments. Invest in free weights. Weight lifting actually is more helpful for weight loss than low impact cardio, and free weights take up no space and you can squeeze a rep in here or there at any time. They also can help stave off osteoporosis.
On thigh gap. I grew up with two grandmothers who would would make Karl Lagerfield look like a fat acceptance advocate, and this was definitely 'a thing' I knew about as a kid. When I was little my one grandmother used to take me to the beach and comment on all the women walking by in bathing suits, pointing out the physical flaws on each woman which should preclude them from stepping outside in anything less than a muumuu. Lack of a thigh gap was one of them.
287: I like your comments, and have often found humor in them, and rarely grating awkwardness.
Let me be the first to assure lurid that you're no more gratingly awkward than the rest of us. Stopping commenting might be an improvement in your life, but wouldn't in any way benefit the rest of us.
When I was little my one grandmother used to take me to the beach and comment on all the women walking by in bathing suits, pointing out the physical flaws on each woman which should preclude them from stepping outside in anything less than a muumuu.
Jesus christ.
301 and 304 (& Halford, you'll like this): when I was 10 or 11 at the beach with family, my father pointed out a chubby girl about my age playing in the surf with the comment, "Too many carbs."
Christ wore more of a robe than a muumuu.
oh, I forgot.
A thigh gap really depends on the width of your hips and the way your thigh muscles develop, and how you accumulate fat. At a certain point, it's not about overall slimness so much as physiology (at least, at the pre-starvation level. At a certain point, everyone has a thigh gap). Women with wider hips are more likely to have a thigh gap than women with narrower hips, as are women who are 'apple' or 'banana' shapes over 'pear' or 'hourglass shapes.' In China, almost all women have thigh gaps, even if they're not super slim or have super slim legs. Women here tend to first put on weight around the middle and in the upper arms and face before putting on weight around the hips and thighs.
I'd never heard of the whole "thigh gap" thing until this year. I think someone over at Slate said that they had lined up their daughter and her friends (all tall, skinny, gangly 12yo girls) and none of them had a thigh gap. The takeaway over there was that the idea is a bit of a fake, something that can be kind of created by affecting a certain posture. Certainly I never had one in my
I think someone over at Slate said that they had lined up their daughter and her friends (all tall, skinny, gangly 12yo girls) and none of them had a thigh gap.
And then somebody called the cops.
Oh, ha. My "less than" sign is apparently deprecated.
Erm, that sentenced finished "in my less than 100lbs days. But then I am only 5'2.5", so maybe that still isn't thin enough."
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that our Narnian corespondent mentioned it at some point.
I just don't understand where your feet are supposed to be when determining if you have a "thigh gap." Looking at myself, the range of normal ways of standing goes from not even close to a "thigh gap" to having one. Maybe this is a male/female thing and girls are trained to stand in a very specific way, but it just makes no sense to me.
girls are trained to stand in a very specific way
I had a professor who stood just like Daphne from Scooby Doo.
Along with wide hips, apple-shape and skinny-ish legs, I'm also bow-legged! Perfect storm of thigh gap, here I am.
I seriously hope that I have successfully sold Sally on the fact that thigh gap and similar are just people being nuts, insofar as they're being put forth as a standard appropriate for everyone. I remember taking rules like that as uncontroversially true (everyone knows that you should be able to stretch a string across your abdomen from one hipbone to the other without it making contact with your skin between those two points, right?), and it took me a fair amount of time to get past that.
I feel kind of weird to be the 'thigh gap' expert, but I think that it means that ideally, standing up straight, feet together, one has a gap between the thighs. Bending forward at the waist can create a thigh gap, as can shifting the weight to one hip, or sitting at the very edge of a chair, or holding one's legs up in the air. If you look at common model poses, most of them involve the model slightly leaning forward or shifting her weight to create or emphasize a thigh gap.
312: Feet and knees together. If your legs aren't together, you're cheating.
Bending forward at the waist can create a thigh gap, as can shifting the weight to one hip, or sitting at the very edge of a chair, or holding one's legs up in the air.
Or spreading one's legs.
Feet and knees together. If your legs aren't together, you're cheating.
Oh, then I'm cheating. My knees are never together, cos bowlegged.
320: I was in North Carolina once in high school, and heard an absent third party described as "So bowlegged she couldn't catch a pig in a corner." I've always treasured that.
Isn't thigh gap just an ana/mia mishegas?
Hector, thanks for 205. It is a serious request, although I'm specifically seeking contemporary commenters/activists/politicos.
Aren't powerful, muscular thighs a desirable feature in pretty much all human sexuality?
I remember taking rules like that as uncontroversially true (everyone knows that you should be able to stretch a string across your abdomen from one hipbone to the other without it making contact with your skin between those two points, right?), and it took me a fair amount of time to get past that.
My grandmother used to make me do this when I was a teenager. Somehow I managed to survive childhood without an eating disorder or even a very negative body image, so maybe reverse psychology works? Like, if you adhere to rigid, insane, and patently unachievable body ideals, your kids will recognize it's a crock of shit sooner rather than later and just give up. If, at 15 and 100 lbs, my grandmother had told me I should weigh 95 lbs, I may have tried to lose weight. When she told me I should weigh 75 lbs, I felt a little bad but mostly just kind of shrugged it off.
My grandmother urged me and everyone else in the whole world to eat.
Some while ago -- before I had ever heard of `pro-ana' -- I came across a claim that the perfect woman's legs made three diamond-shaped gaps: ankle to calf, calf to thigh, upper thigh. Of course we keep our ankles and knees together! Only a fast young woman would cross her legs!
323: But could she stand flat-footed and piss in the radiator of a Chevy pick-up?
Let's all send in pictures of our thighs.
Seconding 307. 'Thigh gap' depends in part on the shape of your thighs. It's about as ridiculous as a measure of female fitness as it would be were I to insist that no woman without a six-pack were truly in shape.
were I to insist that no woman without a six-pack were truly in shape.
Army PT instructor: "Don't waste your time trying to get a six pack. If you have a six pack, you're too thin and when you get on the hills in winter you will go down. You need to be at a healthy weight."
God bless you army PT instructor.
Hopefully, this is far enough down an old thread to ask a presidential question.
I was having sex last night, and having an unusually strong and protracted orgasm. Nothing unprecedented, but better than usual. And then the sensation started transitioning from pleasure to cramping, and I had to roll off and curl into the fetal position because I had a full-scale charley horse in whatever you call the muscle that's contracting during an orgasm. And it just kept on cramping off and on until I fell asleep, and I'm still getting twinges this morning.
First, has this ever happened to anyone else? I've never heard of an orgasm turning painful. Second, any advice on making my husband quit being smug about it? It was quite an unpleasant experience, and the preening over how he made me come so hard my that I broke myself is irritating.
I don't really need an answer to the second question, unless he's still preening this evening.
Second, any advice on making my husband quit being smug about it?
Unpossible.
Damn and I thought charley horses in one's leg sucked.
Isn't cramping influenced by sodium levels? I don't know if it is too much or too little and can't Google from my phone. Try eating a pile of salt and see if it happens again.
I thought cramping was potassium. Maybe potassium and sodium?
More dietary potassium helps with ordinary muscle cramps for me. Bananas are an easy source.
Second, any advice on making my husband quit being smug about it?
Might be preferable to him being terribly worried about it and unwilling to try whatever it was again for fear of breaking you again.
He wasn't doing anything unconventional. I hadn't thought of his being put off sex completely by it, though, and that would be a bad thing.
Maybe it was just, like, Cristina's inner goddess being released, only she was held up by immigration authorities for trying to bring foreign flora with her.
No one's weighed in on the first question: I'll say I've never heard of that happening to anyone but Sra. Presidenta de Kirchner. Anyone else have an anecdote?
Something similar happened when I was pregnant: not as bad (nor, alas, as good), but the orgasm did cause miserable cramping. More than once. Never when I wasn't pregnant, though, so who knows what the common factor is.
To get him to stop being smug I would go for some version of "if you don't stop being smug, I will/won't tell you who I was actually thinking about." ("Will" or "won't" depends a great deal on your partner.)
340: nope. i was wrong. potassium it is! bananas to the rescue!
Something similar, though much less severe, has happened to my wife more than once. In her case it's usually been menstruation related.
That is relatively severe cramping was brought on by orgasm, but around when she was menstruating (or more accurately, during a week off of birth control).
My grandmother used to make me do this
My wife's grandmother, on the other hand, spent a winter in Florida photographing butts - all shapes and sizes. She was completely nuts, as the people who discovered a little old lady creeping up on their ass armed with camera may or may not have realized.
She made an excellent montage the next summer. I wish my wife had inherited it, but it probably got pitched.
That's just a wonderful image. I'm picturing her dressed like the old woman in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon sneaking around the beach.
I've gotten a painful cramp in the arch of my foot mid-orgasm before (which will seriously kill the mood let me tell you), but that's probably not quite the same thing. Also, I don't seem to have the hang of this going presidential thing yet.
355: Same here, though I thought it was more positional than orgasmitronical.
355/6. I think that's just an occupational hazard.
I've gotten a painful cramp in the arch of my foot mid-orgasm before (which will seriously kill the mood let me tell you), but that's probably not quite the same thing.
It might be, if the reflexology people are right.
356: same here (right calf; more than once) but I'm pretty sure it was positional (sort of sideways).
OK, so two different scales differ by 10kg on the question of my weight. Oy. This after derauqsd failed to recognise me in public the other day because I lost weight.
Hey LB: I had a thought about Sally and The Thigh Gap. Instead of sticking to health/rugby rhetoric, I'd throw in some feminist conscious-raising and try to tap into some of the teenage desire to be oppressed. Point out how this is about policing women's bodies, etc. Get her a little angry and self-righteous about the bullshit that teenage girls are subject to.
Because I'm thinking that I played quite a bit of nonchalance up to my parents, as well, but actually took things quite seriously. She's being bombarded with a wild amount of body propaganda, and some anger might be a bit protective.
360. Was one of the scales arithmetical and the other one logarithmic? Because otherwise that makes no damn sense.
361: That's interesting. I'm sure I've given her plenty of talks on how all the body-image pressure is bullshit, but I don't know to what extent I've framed it as specifically the patriarchy oppressing women.
(It is unsettling realizing how effectively I've propagandized the kids without actively intending to. Every so often they'll come out with some perfectly reproduced version of my political opinions as if it were an original thought, and I'll be stunned that I could get that level of fidelity without actively drilling them in the one true way to think about everything. In consciously political conversations, I spend a lot of time on devils advocacy and pointing out that people who don't agree with us about everything are nevertheless occasionally right.)
That's true - you may have been making that point quite effectively just be coming from that belief system yourself. It's amazing how easily kids can pick up on the actual system of beliefs of the parents, whether or not they say so explicitly.
363.last: I'll be interested to see how this develops as my kid (and any future ones) age. Right now, at 32 months, he frequently appears not to be listening, but then much later repeats a phrase that one of us has said, exactly. Most recently my wife asked me to hand her a tissue, and the next day the kiddo said "[my first name], could you grab a tissue" and then started laughing hysterically.
It's small step past pure mimicry, since he definitely understood what he'd said and wasn't just reproducing the sounds, but like I say it'll be fun to watch as the ideas that he absorbs and repeats get more complicated.
They get really good at not listening by age 6.
You mean by age 60 months.
You mean by age 72 months.
Prez Kirchner,
I've had this happen around menstruation, and now that I have a copper IUD and am prone to cramps, it happens very frequently, but usually not at that level. Do you have an IUD or do you get terrible menstrual cramps?
Is this the place to express my sadness/annoyance that my wife's experiment with an IUD was a total failure? I mean, bad news: back to condoms for the foreseeable future, but good news: sex is back to being an option at all after six months.
The bleeding that occurs after insertion and is supposed to go away in a week or so just never stopped, and in fact got notably worse the one time we did have sex while it was in place.
Oh, interesting--I could have written 371. But didn't. (And, uh, not six months.)
(Although I couldn't have written 373. (Or, rather, I could have, but not truthfully.) Our problems were different.)
My friend told me that our (shared) OB-gyn has stopped implementing both Mirena and Paraguard and is blaming Obamacare. The whole thing sounds insane. I hate finding out evidence that she's got shitty politics because she's really the only OB in town who's receptive to natural childbirth ideas.
Also she's only respectful of mothers who she perceives to be crunchy - she treats me vastly better than friends of mine who visit her. Recently she gave me some folk-ish medical advice, and said something like "I can only tell you this because I know you'll get it. I woudn't tell this to mothers who wouldn't get it." She repeated this like three times.
So basically she's insulting and conservative in paradoxical ways. Plus she's one of the few docs in town that accepts Medicaid patients, so how the hell does she square that with being anti-ACA?
Sorry, ranting, I should stop.
I probably meant to say implanting, not implementing.
O hai, is this the presidential orgasm thread? This is hardly scandalous but it's so fun going presidential.
Does anyone else have particularly intense orgasms when you have a cold/flu? It's like a little consolation prize. Then sometimes I pass on the consolation prize because I'm addled and get convinced of some "preserve your qi" bullshit. Also particularly good O when extremely stressed out.
Second, any advice on making my husband quit being smug about it?
Next time you're having sex, punch him really hard in the face right when he's about to, you know, have his moment, and then collapse in maniacal laughter.
(The other thing about being sick is it makes me cranky and giving obviously bad advice gives me a lift.)
We had/have similar issues- we tried one between kids 3 & 4 and it was... expelled. I forget which that was- the copper non-hormone one (Paraguard?) Using the plastic hormone one now (Mirena?), initially a lot of bleeding for 2-3 months, now sporadic and pretty irregular bleeding not on any pattern.
Next time you're having sex, punch him really hard in the face right when he's about to, you know, have his moment, and then collapse in maniacal laughter.
Some guys might actually enjoy that.
I've run into a bunch of selfish crunchy conservatives. What I think of as the west-coast variant (starting in Boulder, if not Brooklyn) bases itself on, and I quote, Poor people chose to suffer based on their actions in a prior life -- they need to.
Or, of course, they should be content in the station to which G-d has called them. In either case, an imbricated shell of beliefs.
---
The Mirena was a total bloodless, PMS-preventing sexfest for me and my sweetie. I am very sorry to hear that not everyone gets this. I've never had an orgasm charley-horse, though -- blacked out once or twice, but that's easy with low blood pressure.
376/377: inserting. Implanting is bad.
I don't get stopping that service, since (TMI) mine was covered completely under normal health insurance before the ACA. Maybe the reimbursement for newer plans is lower, but stopping altogether is pretty nuts. At least she know you're special and should get the very best care, unlike the unworthy other patients.
President Jefferson & urple, my sympathies (although maybe more towards your wives).
The muddled (secondhand) reasoning went something like "Under Obamacare, we'll only be reimbursed for part of the procedure by [my friend's] insurance, and so we'll have to bill [my friend] for the difference. So instead we just won't offer them."
This is difference from every single insurance interaction how exactly?
Magnesium, potassium, and water are what I take for foot cramps. I hate foot cramps.
Oh lord. Foot cramps are horrid.
And boy howdy, is 384 true. I can't believe the effortless cognitive dissonance on this issue. I've decided to charitably start believing that since doctors now spend 19 years and four and a half zillion dollars getting educated, their policy and critical thinking muscles for the world outside the practice are atrophied.
Also, while I'm serial posting, stats people? I got misled into clicking on a Slate link and now I'm wondering if it's as much of a misinterpretation as I think. Aren't these fancy charts kind a normal distribution, and therefore the story is so what?
http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html
389: They do look pretty close to a normal distribution (with some major outliers), but I don't see how that makes Manjoo's interpretations wrong. (His writing style is of course as annoying as it always is, which is very.) But then I'm not really much of a stats person.
I guess what seems wrong is his implicit assumption that it was going to be different. I mean, I would expect to see that for the web stuff I write. What did he think, most people read fully?
Now, do you know what you get on a typical Slate page if you never scroll?
A better life.
Ah, okay, that is kind of a weird assumption. His analysis seems fine to me, though, albeit not particularly novel or insightful.
There's plenty of good stuff on Slate, haters. Emily Bazelon is great.
Towards the end he acknowledges that he doesn't read most things he reads every day to the end. Then he declares this to be the age of skimming. Probably because no one ever closed a book or turned through the pages of a magazine or folded a newspaper or something.
(I read the whole thing in almost one shot - the one break was to post my previous comment - but I spent maybe 5 seconds on Slate's page since I use a reading add-on that reformats pages to cut all the non-article content crap. An unfortunate side effect is it often takes out pictures and graphics too.)
I skimmed the first paragraph and then scrolled down to look for pictures. It seems like a good choice.
If you're writing an article bemoaning how people don't read through till the end, don't make it bloated and poorly written. Ugh.
I mean, I'm First Citizen of the Republic of I Hate That I Skim So Much, but that article was not exactly a totally novel sex act.
Also, on the theme of awkwardness as a superpower, this story slam winner: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QWAWFhgb1Aw
People I know with Mirena either love it or had non-stop bleeding for 6 months and lost their sex drive. I know slightly more people in the second than the first camp, so I would be wary of trying it out. It might come down to how well you do with hormonal BC in general. I feel like if you react badly to BC pills, doctors are always pushing other various different forms like the Nuvaring or Mirena IUD and claiming there won't be the same side effects because the dosage is lower, but from my and others' experiences that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm a big fan of Paraguard, despite the random cramping and cramping after orgasms, because the side effects are still better than hormonal BC.
I hated standard BCP - spotting, aching, gloom. Go figure.
362: It makes no sense to me. A Bayesian reasoner would hold that scale 1 is right, as I have three data points a week for the last year from it and only one from the other. Further, it recorded a steady fall, and I can't imagine how it could malfunction in such a way as to produce that. Anyway, I'm now the man with two watches who therefore doesn't know the time.
401: Put a big pot on there, tare. Add a couple of quarts of water. If it doesn't weigh in correctly, you have an unexpected windfall. Massfall?
