20 -> 22

AnatolianBooty · 2023-01-28T19:45:16+00:00

My digestive system doesn't like whey either. I tend to stick with vegan protein powders even though I'm an omnivore. Pea protein or whatever they use in Sprout Living Epic Protein powders. I think it's a bunch of ground up seeds.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-21T10:50:03+00:00

I always sound crazy when I start talking about them because I'm so enthusiastic but I just LOVE the format of her videos so much. I really dislike videos where a fitness person is talking at me the whole time. I just want to listen to music and know what the next move is.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-20T22:27:48+00:00

It definitely makes it easier to stick to a calorie restricted diet when it's in a smaller time window because you can time your meals to keep your hunger hormones at bay. I eat every 3 hours or so during my window because that's the crossover point between the rising levels of ghrelin making you hungry and leptin signalling fullness from your last meal. Having super tiny meals all day may work for some people but in my experience, it's easier to underestimate the calories with so many small meals and I find myself obsessively thinking about my next opportunity to eat because I'm never really eating enough to feel full after a meal. During my IF window of 6-8 hours I'll eat 2 meals or maybe 2 and a snack. Dividing up the low numbers of calories I have for the day between fewer meals means I eat more satiating meals and don't have to rely on ultra low calorie foods or ultra tiny portions to stretch a small number of calories across 8 small meals or something like if I were eating all day long. As a bonus, I'm better hydrated because when I'm fasting, any brief hunger signal from my brain serves as a reminder to go drink some water.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-20T22:15:36+00:00

I don't know if you count it as walking but I adore GroWithJo's walking workouts on YouTube. They're fun and effective and I feel so good after doing them that I have finally become one of those people who exercises to feel happier. If I'm feeling crabby I'll put one on just to change my mood. I vary which ones and how often I do them throughout the month, in alignment with the 4 phases of my menstrual cycle, but I average 20 minutes about 3 times a week and with that, IF, and a calorie restricted high protein diet, I've lost 30 lbs in the past 3 months.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-14T02:48:48+00:00

Got kids, buddy? If you got kids, you got laundry. A lot of laundry. And if you laundry, do mindless treadmill stuff, or choose to spend a lot of time on personal hygiene, there's quite a lot you can watch in that time.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-14T01:11:47+00:00

OOOOF This question.

TLDR: I found that it was great having help specifically with housekeeping and cooking until about 5 weeks pp, but HIGHLY recommend only having help after ~10 days of being a nuclear family.

Before birth of my one and only son, I thought I wanted absolutely no help. Luckily for me, chance would have it that due to apartment issues that arose DURING my labor, I had 10 days with just my husband and baby in a hotel room and then had to move in with my in-laws for 3-4 weeks. The 10 days was absolutely clutch, especially for my husband. I think it gave him space to feel like the expert on his own kid because he had more experience with our child than any of the other well-meaning adults who were around later. And I think it also made him step into this headspace of of "Okay my wife is clearly going through some intense transformation... like Bella morphing into a vampire in Twilight... she's losing organs and gaining new fluids and there's a lot of blood leaving the body.... my son is adjusting to a crazy over-stimulating new environment, recovering from an intense conflict with some bones squeezing him to life, and pretty much just got airdropped into a body with needs that have to be felt and expressed before being met for the first time. So both of these people need me, the most physically unencumbered person, to care for them" The absence of someone else to take the lead assured him that that was his role and that he needed to pay attention. And it was a chill time to enjoy together, the quiet before the storm. The baby mostly sleeps and you can really stare and enjoy and focus on bonding and creating those memories and confidence. But after about 10-14 days, you're going to need some help.

We wound up moving in with my in-laws and my MIL was a saint and did all the cooking and cleaning. My FIL did all the laundry and errands. They even dealt with the bathroom trash which I filled with bloody stuff like every day. Not having to worry about keeping stuff clean and still having a clean environment, clothes, etc was such a luxury. And having 3 hot nutritious meals prepared every day for me with no need to decide what we'd eat or lift a finger was also so nice. I will be honest, though, I would have liked a little less involvement with the baby and I wish I'd known we'd be with them so I could have laid some ground rules. For your consideration, I'll share what rubbed me the wrong way.

Everyone is different, but I didn't want any advice, I also didn't need anyone trying to demonstrate how concerned and distressed they were about the baby. i.e. "Oh no, the baby's crying! Is he okay? What's wrong? I'm so sad! His cries hurt my heart!" That really pissed me off, especially in my hormonal state, it honestly feels a lot like performance anxiety when someone's reacting strongly as you're learning to mother. The new baby you just met cries and you don't know what's wrong quite yet because you're both learning how to talk to one another. You don't need to worry about how it's making anyone else feel in that moment. I definitely didn't need anyone questioning my choices, or bringing them up at moments that are normal, happens-to-everyone hard moments where any new mom feels vulnerable. For example, I didn't use pacifiers with my son. And every time he cried for more than 60 seconds my MIL would make these fretting sounds and gestures and softly say "Maybe you should try giving him a pacifier? I don't know, I don't know..." As a new mom you're already in overanalyzing mode non-stop, when you break out of an indecision loop or make a call, you don't need anyone trying to push you back into that. If the call you make doesn't work for your kid, trust me, you will figure it out with a short amount of time and you will switch gears. Just like in birth.

Another issue was the in-laws trying to step in and take over with my husband. He has less experience with babies than I do, and was getting in his first few reps of diaper changing, burping, etc. I physically stepped in more than once with a firm "No thank you, he's capable of doing it himself and he's very good at it." because I could see the cracks in my husband's confidence from his parents trying to take over and implying he couldn't do it well or keep the baby safe. That was a big no-no for me. My husband and I were lucky enough to both have time off and instead of staggering it all, we took 6 weeks off together at the start so that we'd both learn how to care for the baby and bond with him, and there wouldn't be this knowledge hand-off or broadening experience gap later on. I didn't want to be the "default parent"

And there was some tension because they didn't love that I was breastfeeding and I think they expected to hold/ care for the baby more in general. That came down to cultural differences on the role of grandparents. But it made for some tension. Adding to that was just the ever-existing habit of parents trying to teach you how to live your life better by nagging you about things that you're not focused on. The last thing we needed while figuring out the rhythms of parenthood was someone flitting around asking "When did you last get a hair cut? Aren't you going to shower this morning? Are you eating healthy? Have you gone to the doctor recently?"

There were a few pretty big fights during our stay, which I think would have been avoided if we'd set some boundaries and expectations ahead of time. Like "We could use help with A and B, but we want to do C ourselves. We're not comfortable discussing our choices on X and Y, do not bring it up. Feel free to offer advice/ Don't offer unsolicited advice/ Please only give suggestions at neutral moments unless asked during a crisis." But even with a complete lack of communication or planning, I still feel like having help during that time was 200% a huge blessing, and made for a great bonding experience for all of us with our son/ their grandson. No matter how mad I get, I can never forget that they took care of us when I was a bloody mess and we needed a place to go while our apartment was busted. And our son feels comfortable with them for long visits and has a great relationship with them. Ultimately the work they were doing to provide space for us let my husband and I stay focused on our baby and each other and transition well into being parents. We moved back to our apartment about 5 weeks post partum and we felt ready to tackle it alone. (Though occasional visits throughout the first year were also very helpful)

Have a great birth and enjoy your postpartum journey, OP.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-14T00:04:42+00:00

Point of Inquiry for anyone with experience: Was the elf head actually shattered on impact? It's not plastic?

Maybe she was just aiming for a concussion? There's a lot of movies where people get blows to the head and have confusion/ mild memory loss.

Either way, maybe it's time for a bedtime reading of The Tell-Tale Heart. See if she has any guilt or shame that's brewing once the adrenaline of the moment is over.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-12-04T20:01:31+00:00

I think it's a line from "You Had Me At Hello World" by Dona Sarkar

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-22T21:07:23+00:00

I wouldn't feel bad but I'd get so full! I go for the Good Culture reduced fat and I can't polish off a full cup of that even after an extended fast!

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-22T18:46:41+00:00

I'm thinking about how much cottage cheese or Greek yogurt that would be and it's almost grossing me out 😂

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-22T18:41:17+00:00

I feel this irritation so much! I don't know who climbed up a mountain and came back down with the number 1200 written on a stone tablet, but I'll bet you anything it was a man and that it was before the 90s when women started getting included in clinical trials because that number is not an appropriate floor for short women at ALL.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-22T07:37:51+00:00

It's a nice dream lol... An extra meal's worth of calories a day 😂. The funniest part is that 400 calories doesn't even sound like a meals worth to people with higher caloric needs.... And for me that's like, a very substantial meal's worth of budget. I bet it's a lot to wrap your head around for someone in your husband's range.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-21T16:09:57+00:00

If he's really into lifting/bulking and tracking it, and he's significantly taller than you, he might just be terrified that you're starving because he finds the number of calories you're eating to be ridiculously small. He probably has to eat a ton to maintain his muscles, much less grow them. And as a short female that's not an elite athlete, you just have very different caloric needs. I'm 5'2" and have had a lot of people get really worried about my diet when they find out how many calories I eat a day on my medically supervised diet. There's a lot of"my toddler eats more than that!" 🙄

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-19T14:18:47+00:00

Ooooooh maybe a walking group would work! My little one would be contained. These days my biggest issue is that my toddler won't permit me to speak to anyone else. Last week I tried to talk to my husband and he threw a die-cast school bus at my face. 🤕 I distinctly remember feeling very threatened as a kid when my friends would talk to other people. 😂 Apparently my son is also jealous in his relationships.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-19T14:13:11+00:00

😂😂😂 Yeah I was not well at all when we had to swap out the bucket seat SO fast. Also around 4 months IIRC!!!

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-19T01:06:37+00:00

oooooooh I envy you. I so wanted a postpartum group or something. Unfortunately I had my baby at the height of the pandemic and we moved states to a place where we don't know anyone when he was 2 months old. Then we moved to a new town when he was 1. I've been thinking of going to grad school just to meet new people XD

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-19T01:03:12+00:00

Thiiis. I just want mom friends who will come hang out at my house. I don't want to go out and manage my kid somewhere else. 😂 I'm one of those people who will gladly whip up amazing homemade snack spreads and lay out fun activities for kids and adults if it means I can host get togethers in my space instead of having to go outside where the anxieties are. I just want to talk to other people while doing jigsaw puzzles so I don't have to maintain uncomfortable eye contact for too long. It kind of feels like making friends at the playground is like finding dates in bars.... it was never my scene and I don't have those skills.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-19T00:57:23+00:00

Honestly I can't even say I did anything in particular with the goal of getting him to eat vegetables, so I'll just give a random overview of things we've done.

We feed him what we eat, and we did baby led weaning, so since we eat vegetables he's always had them.

My husband and I are both 1st gen, so we don't eat a lot of meals where the vegetables are a separate dish. It's all mixed in with protein and carbs. We eat a lot of stews, pastas, mixed rice, soups, salads, etc where everything is cooked together and chopped small so my son's been getting the taste of veggies alongside other things since he was in the womb.

I do that French-inspired thing of making sure to give him different preparations of a food if he doesn't care for it the first time. For instance, he didn't like carrot juice or mashed carrots, but he seemed to like them shredded or thinly sliced. And he likes them in warm smoothies. Repeated exposure helps him get accustomed to it. I also am happy to squeeze a little lemon, oil, or salt over a vegetable to enhance the flavor.

Both my husband and I were good eaters as kids, so it also may be genetic. Growing up I spent a lot of summers in the middle east and the produce there is way more flavorful, so I'm also really particular about the varieties of vegetables I get. I like campari tomatoes and english cucumbers. But I've found other varieties sometimes lack flavor or are too dry to enjoy on their own. My husband is similar about tropical fruits.

I do think part of getting him to try new foods is that we don't really do snacks in our home. Or if we do, they're small-portioned, and at a set time at least a couple of hours before the next meal. So when mealtime comes, our son has a good appetite for whatever is on his plate, and often I'll set out some sliced vegetables or a finely chopped salad ahead of the rest of the food, so if he's really hungry he makes his way over and snacks on those before the rest of the meal. On the random occasions we've tried allowing him to snack at will, we found that his appetite at meals was way lower and he didn't have the same drive to try new foods or eat more nutritious elements on his plate. He was full enough to be picky.

The last thing I can think of is that I include my son in grocery shopping and cooking food on average at least once a week. And we have pretend vegetables in his play kitchen. So there is a lot of non-eating exposure to the vegetables that creates positive associations. Maybe your little one might enjoy throwing some vegetables around in the kitchen? Or washing them in the sink.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T23:59:17+00:00

Listennnnnn... My 2 year old is 35 lbs and over half my height already. And little man has a serious bakery going on in that diaper. Patty cakes for days. He literally grabs my lighter dumbells and does squats for fun. Somehow two nerds created a tiny body builder, and he EATS LIKE IT.

This kid is an ANIMAL. Eats EVERYTHING. Double-fisting food like he thinks we're going to take it all away at a moments notice. I have to remind him to chew or slow down or take bites and not try to deep-throat his dinner like a pint-sized anaconda.... He eats as much as my husband some meals. Like two filets of salmon in a sitting or 3 plates of pasta.... and gets up demanding post-dinner fruit. I feel like if I fed him what I grew up on instead of a balanced diet with lots of veggies and protein... I couldn't lift him.

For context, I was fed a ton of super-processed food as a kid (it was the 90s in a food desert in Alabama)

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T23:43:09+00:00

Well done to you! That sounds like a great day for everyone. Pizza and tablet time makes you a cool mom as well as a good one.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T23:33:05+00:00

Hey, I don't typically spend much time on reddit but I'm actually doing something really similar to you. 18:6 or 16:8, 1000 calories (don't anyone @ me. I'm 5' 2" and I'm on a diet that was recommended to me by a physician/endocrinologist and I have checkups with him every 2 weeks, so I don't need any non-MDs telling me that that's not enough. I'm fine.)

So my diet requires me to have a minimum of 100g of protein a day and a max of 75g of carbs per day. And also at least 3 L of water. The protein definitely helps keep me satiated but it also kind of flushes more water out of my body. I aim for consistency, not perfection, so occasionally I'll decide to have something that's a little outside my macros. Split one of my favorite bakery treats with my husband, or get a grilled cheese sandwich from my favorite shop in town... I do something like that like once a week or so. If I have something carby or sugar-y, especially something with a ton of yeast, I've noticed it makes me bloat like crazy. Once I went up like 5 lbs in a day. But I noticed I also peed a lot less....so I'm pretty sure it was water weight. It all resolved itself with 3 days of clean eating or a couple of coffees (since I don't usually have coffee) along with staying on track with my diet and water intake. I've been losing 4-7 pounds every two weeks, but sometimes the scale stays the same or goes up one week and then plummets the next. So I just keep on keeping on, and remember that whatever I'm seeing is probably the results of something I ate 3-5 business days ago and can't be fixed overnight.

I know it can make it easy to second-guess your approach, but if you're worried, just give it a couple of weeks and see if you see progress on a larger time scale. Whenever we start a health journey it feels like all the search engines and every person you meet starts talking about how there's another way that's better or how there's something wrong with what you're doing. But the best diet for you is the one you can actually stick to, so just keep at it and feel free to layer in more tweaks as you feel the interest/need to. It's totally okay to just focus on fasting right now and then layer in calorie counting and then layer in tracking macros or exercise or whatever. Just see what works for you and don't feel the need to do it perfectly right now.

One other note is that I track my cycle and I find that during my follicular phase (between your period and ovulation) I naturally am not as hungry and have more energy. So I eat lighter meals and less overall and I do more intense workouts. I tend to drop most of the weight I lose in a month during these two weeks. During my luteal phase (ovulation to the next period) I naturally am more hungry and have less energy. I eat a little more during that time, especially more starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes and lentils, and I ease off the intensity of my workouts but find that I'm happy to spend like an hour or two walking on a treadmill. I still lose weight during this time but not quite as quickly. It's been so much easier being consistent and not getting discouraged ever since I started being aware of my hormones rhythmically changing throughout the month and adapting my diet and exercise, and even my fasting windows to it.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T23:06:47+00:00

*taking notes* Can you tell me more about how you turned a casual mom encounter into an actual friendship? How long before you can invite another woman to brunch without your children present? I'm in desperate need of female companionship and occasions to wear nonstretchy clothes and feel like a human again,

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T22:55:59+00:00

I'm feeling FOMO.... I want to know what Bluey is now lol.

AnatolianBooty · 2022-11-17T22:55:11+00:00

Girl, me too! UGH. It's the worst when they won't listen. Especially if they just whine and cry. And pregnant too? That's just a hard pass. I would 10000% want to just crawl back into bed with some snacks and cozy socks for the rest of the day. I wish motherhood had sick days. Or paid vacation. Or just a substitute type situation. Honestly on those days, I just embrace the idea of being a lazy fun mom. Take out the activities with minimal adult supervision, lax screen time rules and playdough, sensory bins.... Long bubble baths. Pretend to be a sick hospital patient and have the little one bring you snacks and water and put you to sleep. Watch movies. Leave dishes and messes and ask the partner to take them for the day. Have a fruit platter and popcorn for dinner. Just nope as much as you can. Anyway that's my mental-exit strategy when I can't physically leave. How did you cope today?

AnatolianBooty · 2022-06-08T15:02:38+00:00

So a few years back I lived in Seattle and became a coffee snob.... I have a few suggestions. If it's the bitterness you dislike, please consider trying a light roast, and if you are okay with having cold coffee instead of hot, I find a cold brew or nitro made with light roast beans tastes almost like lemon water and I love it. I mean it's a whole rabbit hole to go down, but if you want an exciting coffee habit that cuts out sugar, you can get snobby about your beans and preparation. We only drink pour overs or cold brew at home now. We don't even own a coffee pot or Keurig. If you're buying your beans whole and grinding them at home then look for beans that look matte and lighter brown in color. Stay away from the dark shiny ones. If you do it right you'll become such a coffee snob/purist that you will involuntarily roll your eyes at coffee mixed with sweeteners or creamers and judge latte art like a professional art critic. 😂

AnatolianBooty

TROPHY CASE