Hey, if you’re wanting to make some changes to how you eat, remember- it’s much easier, healthier, and more sustainable to ADD foods that make you feel good than it is to REMOVE foods.
If you feel like you don’t drink enough non-sugary fluids, it makes more sense to try drinking more tea and sparkling water than it does to just avoid soda. You gotta add in the good (and remember, that the only value food has is how it makes YOU feel. Food is morally nuetral and should be enjoyed.)
Try:
Adding a handful of easy produce to lunch and dinner- baby carrots or cherry tomatoes, something 0 prep. And yes, you are allowed to dip it in dressing! (The fats can make it easier for your body to absorb the vitamins in the veggies)
Adding a cheese stick or yogurt to breakfast. The protein is good and can help you wake up faster.
Adding some roasted nuts to your afternoon snack. (ADD, not replace.) That variety and little protein boost will do you good!
Have a glass of tea, sparkling water, or juice each time you have food. Let’s be honest- you aren’t hydrated enough. Go buy yourself some Kool Aide mix if that’ll make you drink more water! Really!
If you struggle with binge eating sugary foods and it makes you feel yuck when the sugar crash comes- eat 1 or 2 pieces of chocolate with lunch and dinner. Every day. Really. Make it not a big deal. Make it not special. Make it something you can expect, instead of crave. Let yourself enjoy it without guilt.
Remember- food is a gift. It should bring you joy, not stress. Trust your body. Enjoy the cookie. Drink something tasty.
I heard an interview, can’t remember the psychologist, but he was explaining this idea and encouraging people to stop and take a deep breath and literally drink in small moments like you’re a dryass plant when something is ever satisfactory, positive, mildly successful, randomly joyful so your brain can code and integrate that experience because our natural lizard brain will quickly tape over it with mostly unnecessary negative survival shit. Sounds dumb and dorky but sometimes I remember this when I’m feeling good about a moment because our cave brains are still catching up with modern life without sabertooths. I like that it’s not just a pollyanna gosh just be more positive thing but more of a legit brain wiring phenomenon can be gradually hacked through small behavioral changes.
Another super important one: Take the time to tell yourself, when something you did or bought or decided works out “That was a good decision and I’m glad I made it! Go me!”
Seriously, it can have a huge impact. suddenly you go from remembering nothing but bad decisions to adding in a series of Excellent Choices You Feel Good About, and it makes things so much better.
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” —Kurt Vonnegut
Love local coffee shops. your “refugees are welcome here” sign goes really well with the one that says “bathrooms are for paying customers only”
You’ve clearly never had to deal with people doing hard drugs in the grocery store bathroom and it shows.
Bro I literally manage a coffee shop with an open restroom policy, and I prioritize enforcing that policy and making sure everyone feels comfortable. I’ve dealt with everything from the easy end of the spectrum (people quietly doing hard drugs) to a lady ripping all her hair out and setting it on fire in the sink. I clean up after this stuff day after day and I still feel VERY strongly about the fact that human beings should be allowed the basic decency of a place to poop. Yes, I very frequently end up having to kick someone out of the bathroom for doing drugs, and when I do I always offer them a cup of water on their way out. Because they’re a person and I give a shit…
It’s safer for people to do drugs in (clean) public restrooms than it is for them to do it on the street.
It’s also ableist to deny someone the use of a bathroom. There are countless gastrointestinal disorders that cause bathroom urgency and potential incontinence. There are other conditions, like pregnancy, that necessitate quick and easy access to restrooms.
also what makes you think a paying customer wouldnt misuse the toilets in some way, and a person using it without buying something would?
contrary to popular beliefs people with money do drugs, and homeless people need the toilet just like the rest of us
Having a sharps container “for medication injection” in our bathrooms has dropped the amount of needles I find in the bushes and planters down to a whole 2 in the past 4 years since we rolled them out. I used to find them so often I got in the habit of wearing cut resistance gloves in 90 degree weather in case I had to pluck napkins out of the landscaping.
I read a lot of the notes and I really can’t say enough how the “you couldn’t pay me to clean up other people’s shit” comments kinda piss me off. It is not that serious, it’s really not. You dump a bunch of Triade III on it, let it sit for 10 minutes, wipe it up.
If it’s watery you throw absorbent on it like you do throw up, we use a kitty-litter type clay based absorbent. You put a trash bag in the dust pan and sweep it all into the bag.
Takes me 15 minutes to clean an absolutely destroyed bathroom stall in a place that sees THOUSANDS of people daily. It’s a shopping and restaurant area that opens up into a nightlife location after 5pm, with some bars opening at 3pm and several restaurants becoming full nightclubs after 9pm. You pay for parking, but anyone can walk in off the sidewalk and not pay a dime and just hang out until 2am.
On a busy night I cover 3 location’s restrooms (2 venues have multiple rr) but on slow days I’m covering around 7. 7 buildings, thousands of drunks, I get a LOT of bio spills.
Our sharps containers are toolbox-looking things that hang on the wall with a flap that allows things to go in but not come out, ever (rip to like 5 phones that I know of), when full it gets closed, locked, and sent to be incinerated. I literally never touch a needle anymore. If I find one on the ground outside we have sharps shuttles which are long plastic tubes that look like giant tampons with a flip top, you put it on the ground, step on it to hold in place, and sweep the sharp into it. Takes like 20 seconds.
The answer to this entire issue is to TREAT SANITATION WORKERS BETTER not make going to the bathroom a fucking ordeal. Pay me I will clean your bathrooms, let homeless people piss with dignity!!!
i am shrunken down and brought to the gnome world and when i attempt to assimilate to their culture I use an acorn cap as a hat and they all laugh cheerfully at my silly mistake of wearing what they use as a bowl like a cap and though this is a transgression that would have humiliated me in my human life I am instead laughing alongside them at my humorous misunderstanding
they ask me what I would like to eat and knowing that gnomes enjoy fruit i ask for my favorite fruit, an apple, and they all laugh raucously and say that i must be very hungry indeed to desire an entire apple rather than just a small chunk, and i go along with their joke and say that while my body may have shrank my stomach has not! and they all guffaw with delight until their faces turn red and see that my request is met and we all sit around a toadstool and share many apple slices together
over my time spent with the gnomes, my antics are still regarded with much delight. though i am past the age in which i am confused by their customs and norms, i occasionally pretend to be clueless about simple and easily understood things, such as shock at how toads are as tall as I am. they all continue to laugh at my feigned surprise, and sometimes join in, asking me if I need any help distinguishing what berries are for eating and which are for painting. i laugh, too. there is a sense of grace that comes with my shortcomings amongst the gnomes. they are entertained by my misunderstandings, yes, because life is to short to not be jolly.
i wake up one morning back at my original size. the small cavern in the roots of a tree that i lived in is destroyed in my sleep. my clothes, tailored from cut-up scraps of fabric, are shredded around me. i am a human again. i am horribly embarrassed.
the gnomes of the community gather around where i sit, all looking at me and exchanging glances with each other, none of them speaking the obvious. i can no longer stay here, now that i am not their size. but i was part of their community. i became one of them, indistinguishable from these people only from my past. how am i supposed to return to the world of the humans now? there is no life left for me there. that is not a life where i may fish for minnows in a babbling brook and feast off a bounty of raspberries. i am distraught. i cry.
my community comforts me. friends, all minuscule to me now, pat me wherever they can reach, nimbly dodging the tears that fall from my face. one of them offers me water. they don’t have any containers that are big enough for me, they apologize, so just this acorn cap filled with morning dew will have to suffice.
i take the acorn cap and look at it in my hands. it is so small now. with a sniff, i put it atop my head.
the gnome chuckles. then laughs. then bends at the waist, bellowing with laughter, supporting himself on my knee. then i am laughing too, face red, tears still falling, and my community of gnomes laughs with me as well, so loud that a flock of birds takes off in the distance, and i am still laughing even as i stand to my feet and lumber away, back to where i once came.
You might think that I’m joking when I say that we need cyborg rights to be codified into law, but I honestly think that, given the pace of development of medical implants and the rights issues raised by having proprietary technologies becoming part of a human body, I think that this is absolutely essential for bodily autonomy, disability rights, and human rights more generally. This has already become an issue, and it will only become a larger issue moving forwards.
No but seriously we need cyborg rights, in case you don’t know how many people count as cyborgs here are some examples;
People with cochlear implants are cyborgs
People with pacemakers are cyborgs
People with insulin pumps are cyborgs
There are even edge cases revolving around how much electricity and integration into the body are necessary to make someone a cyborg.
People with replacement hips or other bones are by some definitions cyborgs
People with implanted medical devices such as artificial valves or stents are by some definitions cyborgs
People with prosthetic limbs are by some definitions cyborgs
People with ostomy bags are by some definitions cyborgs
People in wheel chairs, electric or not, are by some definitions cyborgs
The list could go on but I think I made my point that cyborgs are a lot more than just people with robot arms, they are the disabled deserving of the rights to the technology their lives literally depend on.
This is needed.
Earlier this year, a woman was forcibly deprived of a brain implant that was treating her epilepsy because the company that made the implant went bankrupt. Here’s a link to one of several articles about it:
This story happened back in the 2010s according to the first article but is still relevant. Also if my cochlears were repossessed by the company for some asinine reason I would literally stop being able to do 80% of the things I do and my future would be ruined. Cyborg rights are necessary and should have been codified decades ago
hey tgirl tops it’s been a while since I said this on here. if you take Cialis or Viagra you CAN NOT take poppers while they’re in your system; it can trigger a heart attack
Nitrates or nitrites (the active ingredients in poppers) can interact with PDE5 inhibitors (cyalis/viagra) and cause severely low blood pressure that can kill. PDE5 inhibitors alone can cause blood pressure to drop.
Seconding the blood pressure clarification because I studied this and used to counsel patients as well when I worked in a clinic: The issue is the steep drop in blood pressure. It won’t cause your heart to fail but will be a VERY bad time and COULD kill you. Never mix poppers or similar prep/party drugs that are amyl nitrite or butyl nitrite or especially the nitrate based meds (e.g. taken for angina of the heart/chest pain) with Cialis/Viagra/Levitra/Staxyn/Stendra and note some of these PDE5 inhibitor meds are also prescribed if you have pulmonary hypertension
“My childhood was so awesome. Kids today don’t even know!”
Isn’t a flex.
It’s a lament.
More people should understand that.
Cereal boxes had toys inside.
Yes, it was a crass marketing for a sugar cereal made of chintzy plastic
Today you’re just expected to eat Capn Crunch because that’s what you do as a child, that’s what breakfast looks like. Which is… fine, I guess. Sugar still tastes good. That’s still a pleasure you’re otherwise asked to disavow by the protein shake nutribottles advertised on podcasts.
But it also means the idle minor joy of getting a random toy present, as a reward for nothing, just because you exist, is stripped. That random spark of joy is gone, replaced with nothing.
Where did the public pool go? the neighborhood park? the atrium food court public place to gather?
Same thing. All of them were just replaced with nothing.
Kids today have many good things. But it shouldn’t be a trade off. They should get to have instant messages with friends and go skating at the park. They should get to play amazing modern video games at home and go trick or treating for halloween. They should be able to have stickers and markers and macaroni art as well as youtube and streaming libraries and fortnite dances.
Fun should be allowed at every level.
Also. Kids now are just used to people constantly trying to sell them stuff.
When I was a kid, we had advertising on TV, radio, magazines, and billboards. It was easy to recognize and you could work around it. There were certain types of TV, like PBS or cable, that did not have commercials.
Now, kids are inundated with advertising constantly. YouTube and social media have replaced TV and radio for a lot of families, where in addition to ads every 1-3 minutes, many YT stars have sponsored bits in their videos. Social media constantly tries to sell you things. They have found a way to put advertising into the pumps at gas stations. There are so many things, like access to TV shows and Disney movies, that are locked behind a paywall. They can’t even read a newspaper if they wanted to.
I did a school visit a while back to a group of about 100 fourth graders to tell them about the library’s upcoming Summer Reading Program. They were totally unimpressed by me telling them cheerfully that if they met their reading goals, we would give them books for free. I thought they were just tired because it was close to the end of the day, and then one kid raised his hand to resignedly ask the question they were all thinking:
Kid: How much does this cost? Me: Nothing. It’s a free library program. Kid: Uh huh, like you are going to give us books for free. How much does it really cost? Me, confused: … nothing. You don’t have to give us any money at all. You just have to do the reading and fill out your reading log, and you will have earned the books to take home and keep forever. Kid, in disbelief: Oh come on. If you don’t charge us, how are you gonna make money? Me, taken aback: We don’t make money, we’re a library. Kid, exasperated: What do you mean you don’t make money? Me: We’re a public service, like the fire department or schools. You don’t have to pay to use those either. There is a ripple in the crowd as 100 disbelieving 9 year olds take this in. Other kid: How do you afford to do anything if you don’t make money? Like where do you get the money to do stuff if we don’t have to pay you? Me: Through things like government grants and taxes. Third kid: So let me get this straight. That means that if some people don’t pay their taxes – Teacher: Friend, this is a great conversation for Social Studies and not during library time! Ms. Intrepidheroine, would you like to show us the LEGOs you brought?
And that’s the story of how I realized that children absolutely expect you to try to sell them something if you come in to do a “special talk” even if it’s for a library.
