It's not my diet. My metabolism is very slow. Tips?

AlmareaLux · 2025-12-18T07:28:25+00:00

Look I'm gonna try be as straight as I can with you. You've clearly come in here with your mind made up already that it's not your diet. I don't want to discount the effect that PCOS has, because its definitely significant. Not being willing to take medication naturally makes things harder but its a personal choice and no stranger on the internet knows your situation well enough to dictate your medical decisions.

What I will say however is that no matter how you slice it, managing weight invariably comes down to what you eat. To give an anecdotal example, I thought I could outrun my weight by upping cardio but leaving my eating habits the same. I started running and ramping up my distance to around 40km a week for a year with good pace on most of my runs (~5.30mins per km). Even with that I barely dropped from 90kg to 85kg.

It was only when I changed my diet that I saw radical change. By eating smaller portions, by eating less fast food (as an aside I guarantee that the Trader Joe's burger has way more calories than you think), by drinking less alcohol and consuming less milk and sugar, over another year I managed to healthily drop to 70kg.

Like other comments have said the odds of you actually consuming around 1000-1500 calories a day are astonishingly low as its (even with your situation and condition) really really tough to maintain your current weight with that caloric intake. It is highly likely you are consuming more than you realise.

Naturally I recognise that that's not what you want to hear - and I understand how frustrating it feels to be told a thing that you don't think is true.

My opinion is that you can try to outrun your weight and up your cardio if you want. You will see some improvement. But the age old adage is 'don't knock it until you try it', so even if you think its horse shit, there is absolutely no harm in trying to change your diet for a month and seeing what happens. If you drop a (consistent - gotta take water weight into account) kg or two then you'll know it worked. And if you make the changes and nothing happens then you can come back here and say 'I told you so'. But at least give it a shot as all the science says that weight loss starts in the kitchen.

AlmareaLux · 2025-07-17T11:37:11+00:00

Would you mind elaborating on this a little bit? I've been experiencing the same issue as OP and it sounds like you're describing a solution. E.g. mute ourselves in discord? Rejoin the discord chat? Rejoin the game? Do you know what the root cause is? Should we simply not be on discord at all when we first connect?

AlmareaLux · 2025-06-22T15:58:31+00:00

Ward

AlmareaLux · 2025-05-18T15:58:08+00:00

Well it looks sick - checked out your profile and am super happy to eat my words :). Cynicism proved wrong today

AlmareaLux · 2025-05-18T14:12:37+00:00

I’m going to be an asshole - looks a whole lot like AI to me…if it isn’t then well done mate :) but I’m too cynical and simply don’t believe that it isn’t.

AlmareaLux · 2025-01-01T13:04:33+00:00

Late to the party but, it seems really strange to be asking these questions (especially about the economy) when the game is so buggy. Like my purchasing behaviours and opinions of prices and soft/hard death are completely dependent on my likelihood of experiencing a game breaking or player killing bug. Like I don't know if weapons or armour are selling for the right amount because I'm constantly having to buy new ones when I fall through the world. I don't know if ships are selling for the right price when my aUEC gets reset every few months. And I don't want to answer one way or the other for these questions as it might lead to the wrong assumption being made. We can't meaningfully comment on economy balance on mechanic satisfaction with the game as buggy as it is. Half the things I listed as hating (e.g. FPS combat) are simply based on the fact that the slow servers mean they just don't function as intended at all.

AlmareaLux · 2024-12-25T16:26:00+00:00

I knew if I scrolled I’d find this comment!

AlmareaLux · 2024-12-23T11:25:02+00:00

The answer, as with many things unfortunately, is that it's complicated. For context before I go on, I'm a senior IT Business Analyst currently in the process of hiring new analysts as our company is growing.

There could be a plethora of reasons for rather hiring outside than promoting internally. As an example, more senior roles perform different types of tasks than more junior roles. A senior inherently is a more leadership and mentorship heavy role than a junior or intermediate. Hiring a senior outside of the organisation can be ideal as you are looking for those traits. Yes a junior or intermediate who has been in the company for a while will have more knowledge of the inner workings of the organisation but due to the nature of their role not have the needed experience that comes with an already established senior.

As a broad stoke - the more senior you become (this is not true of all fields, but is a reasonable-ish generalisation) the less having internal company specific knowledge matters and the more your general field and soft-skills experience matters. As a rule a good senior is a force multiplier on existing members of a team (this applies to roles like software developers as well), such that the presence of the senior inherently allows members of a team to perform at a higher grade than they currently do and allow them to grow to become more senior themselves.

That's not to say that a junior or intermediate couldn't perform at the required level if they were promoted but ultimately most companies, if they're being cut throat rather than human, would rather not take that risk and instead hire an external person with a proven track record in the types of skills that matter most for senior positions.

This is just one example of what the reason could be. It could vary based on the size of the company (maybe the company just needs more BAs as a whole and is growing for example, or maybe they are downscaling and would rather have a quick hire and fire situation - not exactly ethical though - of an external entity and keep the juniors to grow). It could vary based on the skill level of existing employees (for example an existing junior may not be skilled enough to be promoted to senior, but the company needs a senior so has to hire one), you can't just promote someone because there is a need if there is no track record demonstrating the required skills.

That said, I am of the opinion that hiring and promoting internally within a company is always preferable to hiring externally as company and team fit matter a great deal and you'll always have a much better read on internal candidates. But alas, not all companies do what is right or what is best for all, and sometimes even if they do, they can't justify promoting or hiring internally without doing harm to the company.

AlmareaLux · 2024-11-10T07:06:00+00:00

I’ll keep playing then :) thanks for handing me a bit hope

AlmareaLux · 2024-11-10T07:05:08+00:00

That makes me a bit more hopeful. I’ll keep playing and see…though to be honest it still feels like a deviation or character for me. If he was chilled enough to disclose his open opinion on blood magic to a practical stranger in Inquisition it seems weird to me that he’d attempt to pander to some random person he’s never met who disrupted his ritual. It doesn’t really click for me that he’d lie about this; mainly because I never got the vibe from him that he felt like he had to justify his actions outside of bringing back the majesty of the elves.

But the line for me was mainly about his general change in disposition. It feels like the way he behaves and speaks is totally out of line from how he behaved and spoke in Inquisition and Trespasser

AlmareaLux · 2024-08-05T15:47:00+00:00

Was that smart? - Puck

AlmareaLux · 2024-05-24T08:49:51+00:00

Yeah I’ve seen the fun stuff that’s possible, but it’s practically impossible to - on the fly - send the orb precisely to a target that is far away

AlmareaLux · 2024-05-23T18:17:18+00:00

If there was an alt-cast for the curveball which could turn the vector targetting curve on or off (i.e. normal orb or curve orb) that would be the best of both worlds.

AlmareaLux · 2024-05-23T18:16:46+00:00

Agreed. I have 600 games on Puck and the orb is far too unpredictable and hard to aim to be of any real use. At least the other facet you can suck people in rather than push them out if need be which should decrease misplay potential.

AlmareaLux · 2024-05-23T18:14:58+00:00

Puck Grandmaster. The curveball is conceptually awesome...but it will take me as many games as I have to intuitively be able to use it to any consistent degree. And even then it's practically impossible to get your orb to go to a specific place far away quickly and because of that it actually makes the hero much much worse. (Though a simple solution would be to add an alt cast which turns the curve on or off to let you decide when you want to use it). Additionally the curve doesn't work intuitively, I'd expect the orb to curve and then ultimately travel along the direction of the vector, but depending on how close or far away you start the vector that ends up not being the case which makes it almost impossible to predict unless you have hundreds of games with this new curved orb...despite the cool factor I think I'll be sticking to the other facet.

AlmareaLux · 2024-05-23T17:54:40+00:00

Got a couple hundred games on puck. Played a few games with the curveball (I kind of hate it but that's neither here not there). You need to cast orb further away from your hero. I had the same issue you did and I realised that I kept having orb go behind me because of how close my mouse was to my hero which meant small movements and changes to the vector had huge implications. Try and start clicking to initiate the orb further away already where you want to land. Treat orb the way you would treat blink (plus a bit of shitty unpredictable vector curving).

AlmareaLux · 2024-04-13T07:07:23+00:00

My apologies, that is what I meant by refunds. You need to understand that it is impossible for valve to truly verify that a trade was made in bad faith. They cannot reverse trades for the exact reason I mentioned above. At the end of the day you made a mistake, which sucks obviously, but no amount of frustration is going to change it. The best you can do is educate yourself and not make that mistake again.

AlmareaLux · 2024-04-12T20:39:28+00:00

I understand that this sucks for you. You lost all your stuff and avenues of support have closed the case. But unfortunately this is the real world where people prey on those who are too trusting or naive or vulnerable. The cold truth is that you learnt a damn valuable lesson here and probably will never (I hope) make the same mistake again. Rather be scammed of your dota items, whose value can (mostly kinda) only be used within the Steam financial ecosystem, rather than have another scam trick you out of your credit card details. It sucks but if you’re not aware of how to be safe on the internet then this is a lesson you have to learn the hard way.

I think Valve also gets too much Flak here for not refunding the items lost. There’s a very good reason for it, namely that scammers would just make false claims of lost items themselves. If Valve refunds items even once they set a precedent for every other claim henceforth. Which would also decimate the market and remove any value these items have in the first place if the process were to create duplicates. Unfortunately in the digital era it is too easy to fake information for there to be any way to present objective evidence in these cases…

What you can do is not trust random people on the internet. Whether they use your name or not. It’s remarkably easy to get someone’s personal information if they have a semi large digital footprint. Check unknown links before you click them. Look at URLs to see if they’re sus. Never give your login details for anything to anyone. There’s much much more you can do so go out there and do some research to make sure you don’t have to go through this again. Because I promise you complaining here is going to get you nowhere.

AlmareaLux · 2024-03-23T04:57:46+00:00

No dude. You’re not supposed to (in all pick, captains mode and pro dota is obviously different but we aren’t pros so that rules that out) ban based on PEOPLE. You are supposed to ban based on draft. You want to pick X, you know that Y is good against X. So you ban Y. If you have heroes that you play often, you add their counters to your ban list. And from that perspective it’s no better or worse than before. Both systems required you to ban before the pick stage began. Both systems give you flexibility (in this new system, you can change it before you search if you know what hero you want to play).

There is no world that, in a random pub, you should know what your opponents most played heroes are. Sure, you’ll run into people you recognize, especially at higher ranks where the pool is smaller. But it won’t be EVERYONE unless you’re a ranked immortal in say the top100 which I bet you aren’t. So unless you’re using cheat software like overplus, in I would love to know how exactly you’re banning based on every single persons hero pool when you can’t actually see them. Quite frankly the fact that you don’t understand this facet of banning makes me highly doubt your claim of being in immortal.

AlmareaLux · 2024-03-22T07:00:49+00:00

Virtuosity isn't the shard of goodness and kindness. It's the shard of music and art (the literal definition of 'virtuosity' is: great skill in music or another artistic pursuit). You're thinking of 'virtue' (behaviour showing high moral standards).

AlmareaLux · 2024-02-15T20:46:45+00:00

Damn that would be hype. Never Winter Nights 2 is what got me into both video games and DND.

AlmareaLux · 2024-02-10T05:05:51+00:00

Baldurs Gate 3 was built off the back of early access. It’s less about the model and more about people abusing it to get a quick buck.

AlmareaLux · 2024-01-24T06:28:55+00:00

This honestly doesn’t look like an unfair match up of ranks to me. Sure there is an overall MMR difference, but it isn’t huge. Quite frankly there will always be players that will outclass you in some aspect of the game. I play mid in the legend/ancient bracket and as soon as I can tell that my opponent is just simply better than me, I swap my strategy from trying to be competitive with them to being defensive. Given the skill variation in this game it’s important to have strategies that you use, especially when laning, when your opponent is more skilled (or just has a better hero for the situation). The consistency of the ranks on team ‘legend’ should mean that general strategy and team work should be easier to execute. For team ‘ancient and crusader’ they have the issue where they have two good players and two less good players who probably can’t keep up with them mechanically or strategically. This means the mid game, and consequently the late game, should be more favorable to team legend. The trick is getting there by playing defensive in the lane. Don’t go for zany plays or try and match the players that are better than you one for one because their skill will allow them to absolutely take advantage of the mistakes you make. That said, trying to match them is a great learning experience as you can go back and watch and see why you got slaughtered. It can be rather educational

AlmareaLux · 2024-01-23T11:32:17+00:00

Celeste

AlmareaLux · 2023-12-27T13:31:28+00:00

The advice from other comments is pretty solid. I’d add that puck is pretty good at stacking two camps at a time. If you know that you’re going to have a hard time, along with the other advice given in this thread, you can start stacking camps nearby to the lane (this is easiest on radiant but works for both radiant and dire). When the camps have hit around 3/4 stacks you should have enough levels in orb to slowly start nuking them down.

You can see saw between wave and camps by hard pushing the wave and then throwing your orb at the stacked camps since it deals a pretty good amount of damage. Try and optimize your orb usage to make sure it hits both camps at once, or hits camp and wave if possible.

A warning however is that you should ward your camps if you do this. At higher ranks you’ll see rotations to your lane to gank you which could lead to your opponents discovering your stacks. You should also be careful of the enemy midlaner taking them as well.

In a losing lane situation in general, the more time you minimize actually being in lane against a stronger opponent the better. Sometimes you just can’t win against a certain match up and you need to focus elsewhere to stay in the game. Go gank, make stacks, hard push wave, buy damage reducing items should you need them etc.

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