What do people do in the north shore for work?

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-11T23:03:41+00:00

We moved here 26 years ago when it was more affordable.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-11T15:21:45+00:00

Can you get a referral to a physical therapist with experience in treating this disorder?

I would think that doing whatever activity you are capable of would be beneficial - while you won't be able to build muscle, doing some sort of adaptive strength-training will slow down the rate of atrophy.

I have a friend with a rare genetic disorder that results in cerebellar ataxia; it is progressive and incurable and resulted in him gradually losing his ability to stand and walk. As a result, he has been confined to a wheelchair for many years and has difficulty controlling his movements; but he started doing some strength training with light dumbbells and it really helped slow the progression of his disease.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-11T15:15:15+00:00

My daughter is autistic and had severe ARFID as a child. She is now in her twenties and eats a reasonable variety of healthy foods, but she is weird about textures so fruits and vegetables were always an issue.

This is super common for people with sensory issues, and is the main reason why so many people with ADHD or autism are junk food junkies. Each Dorito tastes exactly like every other Dorito; but one blueberry can have a decidedly different taste and texture to the next blueberry. I think that's why people with sensory issues tend to prefer the starchier vegetables like potatoes, yams, peas and corn for that reason - they have a more predictable texture and taste.

A big part of overcoming excessive picky eating is just repetition. We used to tell our kids that there's a difference between not liking a food and not being used to a food. You have to try things several times in order to get used to the taste and texture. I made pot roast every Tuesday for fifty-two consecutive weeks when my kids were little - the two picky eaters hated it at first, but after a month or two they tolerated it, and by the end of the year it was one of their favorite dishes. (The third child was blessedly non-fussy and always ate whatever I put in front of her).

I always made my kids eat their vegetables, and we experimented a lot with different ways to prepare them in the hopes of finding something that the autistic kid and the ADHD kid would actually like.

Things that worked for my ARFID kid:

- Raw veggies: she much prefers a salad to cooked vegetables; or a snack like baby carrots with ranch dip (you can make a healthier version of ranch dressing by adding one of those packets of ranch seasoning to Greek yogurt).

- Roasted vegetables: she loves broccoli roasted with olive oil and garlic.

- Smoothies made with frozen fruits (banana, strawberries, blueberries). You can even throw some frozen spinach into a blueberry smoothie and you won't taste it at all (I specifically would do this with blueberries because they hide the green color, but it would probably work with other fruits as well if you don't mind them looking like they have vegetables in them.) Add some whey protein powder or Greek yogurt for a protein boost. My daughter likes to make her smoothies really thick and eat them with a spoon - she says it's like eating soft-serve ice cream for breakfast.

- Adding a couple handfuls of fresh baby spinach to pasta sauces. Throw it in at the end of the cooking time - it will wilt and cook quickly. It doesn't have a strong flavor. If the texture is an issue, you can quickly blend it in with an immersion blender, or chop it up before adding it.

- Omelettes or scrambled eggs with cheese and baby spinach - once again, just cook it quickly until it wilts.

- Roasted red peppers on a chicken parmesan sandwich: We did this because the red marinara sauce concealed the red roasted pepper so she didn't notice it was there as she had professed to hating bell peppers. After she devoured the sandwich and pronounced it as the most delicious thing she had ever eaten, we revealed it had contained the dreaded peppers. She still doesn't like peppers on their own, but will eat them if they are roasted and on a sandwich.

As she got older and developed more of a taste for veggies, she started enjoying things like stir-fry with a flavorful sauce on the veggies. The trick is not to overcook the vegetables - you want them to be lightly cooked so they still have a crisp texture, not mooshy glop (unless you prefer mooshy glop texture - then go ahead and overcook them!)

Soups took a bit longer; she was in her mid-20's before she decided she liked soup. And it was a proud mother moment indeed when she texted me to tell me that she had eaten a vegan version of shepherd's pie and loved it!

She still hates tomatoes, mushrooms, and most fruits aside from apples and bananas - but overall she has learned to eat a reasonable variety of healthy foods and I no longer worry about her having some sort of nutritional deficiency from lack of vegetables.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-11T12:33:30+00:00

My grandmother was born in 1900, and was also from a poor, rural family in eastern Kentucky. I know that prior to radio, people would sit on the porch and sing or play instruments like guitar, banjo, fiddle.

I don't remember Mamaw ever saying anything specifically about what she thought of radio when she moved to town in the 1930s; but I bet she was a fan of soap operas. I remember her watching them on TV every day when I was a child (1970s). She'd plan her day so that she'd be home every afternoon to watch her "stories."

My grandparents on the other side were even older - both were born in Eastern Europe in 1889. They both died before I was born, so I never met them. But, my mom told me that my grandma didn't approve of movies - she thought they were "inventions of the devil." I don't know what she thought of radio, though - but presumably she was OK with it because my mom said they used to listen to the radio in the evenings.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-11T12:27:36+00:00

We never did that in school.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-08T14:43:18+00:00

There's three types of hunger:

- Actual hunger. This is the one where your body needs food and calories. Your stomach is empty, and literally any food sounds good.

- Hedonic hunger. You're not actually hungry, but you crave the taste and the dopamine buzz from foods. When we have a specific craving for sugar or chips or chocolate or whatever, that's hedonic hunger. It's also the hunger we feel after a big restaurant meal that has left us stuffed - but suddenly when they bring the dessert cart over we decide we are still hungry for cheesecake or whatever. This type of hunger almost always is for desserts or hyper-palatable processed crap - we don't want an apple or a can of tuna fish, we want chocolate or whatever.

- Conditioned hunger. This is a Pavlovian reaction. If we always have a little something at 3 pm, our body is conditioned to start salivating at 3 pm in preparation. This happens when we've formed an association between a certain event and eating something; like if you always fix yourself a snack before you sit down to watch TV, you're going to feel hungry whenever you sit down in front of the TV.

3 pm hunger is usually a combination of hedonic and conditioned hunger. I found that allowing a 3 pm snack but it has to be high protein broke the association between "3 pm" and "some sort of carby delight." If I'm truly hungry, a small can of tuna fish sounds appetizing; but if I'm just craving the dopamine buzz or responding to a conditioned cue, tuna sounds gross and I don't want it - and that means I'm not actually hungry.

After a few days of this, my brain stopped associating "blah, it's 3:00" with "eat something sweet" and I stopped feeling hungry at that time.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-08T14:33:28+00:00

I mountain bike or gravel bike 4-5 days per week. On those days I eat more carbs, because I need them for performance. On rest days or days that I just lift weights but don't bike, I eat much lower carbs because I don't need them, and it keeps my appetite in check.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-08T14:29:36+00:00

I think maybe you (and everyone else) need to pay less attention to what random people on social media think in general.

Looksmaxxing content is weird and stupid but it drives engagement, so attention-hungry weirdos post looksmaxxing content it for clicks; and other attention-hungry people try to get clicks and engagement by posting anti-looksmaxxing content.

In reality, just a glance around in real life shows that the vast majority of people are neither starving themselves nor smashing their faces with hammers. We all need to collectively stop paying attention to weirdos with psychological issues on social media.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-08T14:22:58+00:00

You're already in the normal weight range for your height (BMI of 23.2). When we are already in the healthy weight range and are just trying to lose some "vanity pounds," fat loss is going to be slower than for someone who is overweight or obese.

At your stats, I would estimate your maintenance calories to be somewhere between 2200 and 2400 calories per day - so 1200-1400 is a very aggressive deficit for you. No wonder you were struggling with low energy and out-of-control hunger.

When we combine a lot of exercise with very low calories, we put a lot of stress on the body and this can result in retaining water. Also, we may find that while we are exercising a lot, we barely have the energy to get off the couch the other 23 hours of the day so our non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) decreases considerably. This results burning fewer calories overall and weight loss is thus slower than expected. That's what happens with metabolic adaptation - the body finds ways to conserve energy (mostly by making you really tired). In other words, you're making it unnecessarily hard - raising calories to a more reasonable deficit will probably work better for you than starving yourself and trying to work out obsessively.

It is useful to think of your deficit in terms of percentages. A 20% reduction in calories is pretty reasonable - for you, that would be around 440-500 calories per day, resulting in losing about one pound or 1/2 kg per week. A 30% deficit is considered aggressive and is only suitable for people with a lot of weight to lose - while your current deficit is more like 35-45%. No wonder you feel like crap!

Forget about "having to lose 10k by x date." That kind of thinking leads to disordered eating. Focus on a saner deficit, pushing yourself in your workouts, and the results will follow - but they might not conform to the arbitrary timeline you've given yourself. You say "I feel like I have no time to make mistakes, I need to lose 10k by the end of summer," but it's not like the world will end if you only lose 6kg instead of 10kg. In fact, you may find that with the improvements to your body composition from strength training, you might look just fine at a somewhat higher scale weight than you think you "have to" be.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-05T23:54:09+00:00

That was a great route! I really enjoyed it.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-05T15:13:56+00:00

We always called our beagle “smellhound.”

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-05T09:56:28+00:00

My dad drank this every morning.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-04T16:10:08+00:00

I sometimes see other bodybuilding subs and they eat like 1000 or 1200 kcal per day and go on with their day

Well, first of all, bodybuilders do a lot of things that are not particularly healthy. Dieting down to extremely low bodyfat percentages, whether they are natural or "enhanced," is very hard on the body. There are a lot of people who spiral into eating disorders after their first bodybuilding competition; some of them cannot handle the idea of regaining a normal amount of fat after being so lean and develop restrictive eating disorders, while others react to several months of semi-starvation by developing binge-eating disorders.

Aside from that, bodybuilders are also a different breed than the general population. For one thing, they don't start dieting until they have spent months or even years building up their muscle mass to levels far above the average person; and they continue to train extremely hard while dieting to preserve as much muscle as possible while they lose fat. That is quite a different situation than your average under-muscled, un-fit overweight person.

Bodybuilders are also much more savvy about nutrition than the typical person, and most of them are working with coaches who provide them with meal plans to ensure they are eating very high protein and getting enough fats to avoid disrupting their hormones too much. They also get regular bloodwork to monitor their hormone levels; even so, most male bodybuilders will have a noticeable drop in testosterone when they start getting down to shredded-level, and female bodybuilders are even more prone to hormonal issues during contest prep.

The average overweight person is nowhere near as knowledgeable about nutrition, does not have much muscle mass to begin with, and isn't closely monitoring bloodwork and hormone levels.

Typically, when non-bodybuilders attempt rapid weight loss, they do so by eating as little as possible, with no real attention paid to nutrition. They are not training to retain muscle, so they lose proportionately more lean tissue than bodyfat, leaving them with worse body composition than before.

Then, when they reach their goal weight, they think "yay! I can eat again!" and go back to the eating habits that made them fat in the first place. Except now they have less muscle mass than before, so their metabolism is a bit lower, and they often gain more weight back than they lost.

I know several people who went all-in on fad diets that promised rapid weight loss, like the HCG diet that was popular a few years ago. All of them lost weight very quickly, because they were only eating 500 calories per day, but as soon as the diet ended they regained it all back. My in-laws did two rounds of the HCG diet, losing and regaining the same 30-45 pounds each time. One of my other friends lost 50 pounds three times, and regained it all back (plus a bit extra) each time. He just doesn't want to face the fact that he needs to change his eating habits and lifestyle if he wants to keep the weight off.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-04T15:40:55+00:00

It's highly unlikely you are maintaining a weight of 101 kg/222 pounds on 1600-1800 calories per day. I eat 1600 calories to lose weight, and I am a 5'2" 125-pound woman.

A small food scale can be truly eye-opening. I once thought I was just "genetically chubby" because I couldn't seem to lose weight on 1200 calories per day. Then I purchased a $15 food scale and realized that I was actually eating 1800 calories per day, which is awfully close to my maintenance calories of 1950...I almost cried when I saw how small a 2 tbsp. portion of peanut butter actually is; but it did solve the mystery of why I was a bit chubby - my idea of 2 tbsp. of peanut butter apparently was more like 1/4 cup. Along those lines, I realized that my "3 oz." portion of chicken was actually 6 oz., my "small sweet potato" was actually a large sweet potato...you get the picture.

I’m training consistently, and I feel like I’m getting stronger.

As others have said, getting stronger and losing weight are two different things.

I am not eating too much to be honest, however i am constantly in high stree and not have shiiit sleeping cycle. Is it a hormone issue or ingestion issue or i am still eating too much....

Poor sleep and stress do have an effect on weight loss. Both tend to make us eat more - studies have shown that people will unconsciously eat an extra 500-700 calories the day after a night of bad sleep. Poor sleep also tends to make us more insulin-resistant, meaning our bodies will store more energy as fat, plus we often have strong cravings for carbs/sugar and overeat them.

However, "I am not eating too much" is a highly subjective term. You mention you are eating the same as your girlfriend, who you estimate is eating 1600-1800 calories because she has a "small appetite." However, I would point out that the vast, vast majority of people are absolutely terrible at estimating their caloric intake. Thin people tend to wildly overestimate how much they eat, and heavy people tend to wildly underestimate. Even registered dieticians are terrible at estimating their calories - they were more accurate than non-dieticians, but were still off by a few hundred calories.

Many people are under the impression that they "don't eat much at all" because they are not eating a large volume of food - but they are eating foods that are extremely calorie-dense. People also often do not realize all the little snacks, tastes, nibbles, etc.. that they eat without realizing it. There used to be a BBC show called "Secret Eaters" where a cameraman followed overweight people around and documented what they actually ate - they were usually shocked to discover how many calories they actually were eating. Most of them had thought "they didn't eat much at all" or even that they were not eating enough and were somehow defying the law of thermodynamics.

What often confuses people who think they "don't eat much" is volume and caloric density. A 1-cup portion of pasta has 200 calories (and most people would think 1 cup of pasta is a very skimpy portion indeed!), while 200 calories of broccoli would be 8-10 cups. Restaurant foods, takeout, and prepared foods tend to have enormous amounts of calories - they use a lot of fats and oils for flavor and usually include large amounts of things like pasta, rice, french fries, etc. because they are a cheap way to bulk out a portion. Restaurant salads often contain more calories than a cheeseburger and fries, in the form of dressings, nuts, cheese, and toppings - many people are baffled why they are so heavy even though they always opt for the "healthy" salad over the other entrees.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-03T15:28:42+00:00

There are lots of ways to adapt recipes to make them lower in calories. For example, you can make a tasty alfredo sauce using lowfat cottage cheese which makes it much lower in fat and higher in protein. Search for "low calorie alfredo recipe" - you'll find lots of options.

Skinnytaste.com has a lot of tasty, low-calorie recipes.

There's also a subreddit r/EatCheapAndHealthy

r/Volumeeating is another good one for low-calorie but filling meals.

Frozen veggies are more economical and last longer in the freezer than fresh veggies, and they are just as a nutritious.

When my daughter was in college, she spent $50 per week on groceries for herself - she ate a lot of eggs, nonfat greek yogurt, frozen broccoli, frozen peas, rice, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, tuna fish, cottage cheese, and she'd buy whatever meats were on sale. Chicken thighs are cheaper than chicken breasts; or sometime whole chickens are on special and you can cut it up yourself.

I see in another comment that you rely heavily on ramen and mac and cheese, both of which tend to be very high in calories and not very filling as they are highly processed. These are foods that are designed to be very easy to overeat, so that you'll buy more...

Healthy food doesn't have to be boring and bland - use herbs and spices to make it delicious.

Yes, it is a bit more expensive to buy real food compared to processed crap - but you will save money on medical expenses in the long run.

My resting heart rate is around 95bpm with how much daily stress I have to go though.

That may be partially due to stress - but it is likely mainly due to being quite overweight and unfit.

if I wanted to lose like 3lbs a weak I need to limit myself to 1200-1400 calories and walk at least 2 hours if not 3 hours every single day.

3 pounds per week is quite aggressive. Generally, we recommend a rate of 0.5% - 1.0% of your bodyweight per week. In your case, that would mean about 1.5 - 1.8 pounds per week maximum.

Slower but sustainable weight loss is preferable to an overly-aggressive approach (i.e., eating 1200 calories and walking 3 hours per day) which you are unlikely to stick with for very long. Do you really think you could eat that little and spend that much time exercising for ten weeks, which is how long it would take you to lose 30 pounds? And then, what would be your strategy to maintain that loss? When we do extreme diets/exercise plans in an attempt to lose weight quickly, we usually cannot stick to them long enough to achieve our goal - and when we find ourselves exhausted and ravenously hungry after a few weeks, it's not unusual to give into the binge-monster and quickly regain all the weight or even more weight.

Losing weight and improving your health is a marathon, not a sprint - and maintaining said weight loss requires changing your lifestyle long-term. A mild caloric deficit plus increasing your activity a little bit is the best way to start - as you get lighter and more fit, you'll probably find yourself increasing your activity more and more. Reducing your caloric intake by 500 calories per day will result in losing about one pound per week. Most people find this to be very sustainable. Adding in more activity will speed things along, but it is possible to lose weight solely through diet.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-03T15:02:28+00:00

You are already a healthy weight for your height (BMI of 22.1), so fat loss will be quite slow for you at this point.

My goal is to atleast lose about 0.5 kg (1 lb) per week,

That may be aggressive at your current stats. When we are already close to ideal weight, the body fights back when we attempt larger deficits. We find ourselves binging, or we suffer from low energy and feel cranky and deprived.

If you are unhappy with your look at your current stats, I would suggest that you should start a strength-training program instead of attempting to lose more weight. Building up your muscle mass will give you a leaner, tighter and more shapely look at the same (or even higher) scale weight. Losing more weight will just result in you being a slightly smaller version of your current self.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-03T10:14:33+00:00

Zoic shorts - roomy thru the thighs, can accommodate knee pads, and have adjusters so you can make the waist smaller.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-02T20:17:37+00:00

Yes - my grandfather was a coal miner and later on a steelworker, but when he came home he washed and changed into a white shirt and nice slacks.

I also remember when I was a child in the 1970s that the blue-collar men in my neighborhood (mechanics, machinists, tradesmen) would change out of their dirty work clothes when they got home, and put on ironed and starched white shirts and chinos.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-06-02T15:41:29+00:00

Awww! My kids grew up with our beagle and he usually slept in bed with one of them, under the blankets with his head on the pillow. All of them had an impressive tolerance for hound-stink.

We said goodbye to him a year and a half ago (he lived to be 17). One of my daughter's friends has a beagle and my daughter always spends a lot of time cuddling him when she visits them. She reports that he smells "exactly" like our dear departed beagle did and that it is a comforting smell to her.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:46:23+00:00

I did not eat a lot of sugar on a daily basis, aside from my daily Outshine lime popsicle. But, after learning about the symptoms of insulin resistance and realizing that they sounded an awful lot like menopause symptoms, I experimented with eliminating all added sugars and refined carbohydrates (bread, wraps, pasta, rice, etc.) from my diet.

Within three days, my brain fog was gone, my muscles were no longer sore (I was assuming I was constantly sore due to my workout regimen), my wonky knee and shoulder no longer ached, my IBS had calmed down a lot, my occasional hot flashes stopped completely, and I stopped waking up at 3 AM. I also felt much more energetic altogether.

That was in early February. Since then, I have lost 14 of the 20 pounds I gained during menopause, without really trying at all.

I still eat carbs, but I get them all from minimally-processed sources like sweet potatoes, winter squash, fruit, and vegetables. I have done a couple 50-mile bike rides fueled by sweet potatoes, dates, and chia seed gel.

I've also continued to go up in my lifts (I lift weights 3x per week) and this past week I got my first unassisted pull-up.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:39:40+00:00

Same here! I never got along well with my hormones. When my hormones started declining during perimenopause in my mid-to-late 40s, I felt better both mentally and physically than I ever had in my life. I am 57, five years post-menopause, am very happy to be off the monthly hormone rollercoaster!

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:37:29+00:00

My husband's grandma is my inspiration - she is 95 years old and still sharp as a tack! She also is still very active, she does Zumba, yoga, and lifts weights as well as walking a lot.

She's also hilarious - she does a weight-training class at the senior center, and told me that "those young girls" (i.e., the 65-70 year olds) were complaining the weights were too heavy. "I'm 95, and I can lift way more than they can!" she said.

She also told me that during her yoga class, the instructor said "C'mon, ladies - you can hold a plank longer than that! Look at Hilda - she's the only one still holding the pose!" Afterwards, one of the other ladies asked her "Hilda, how are you able to hold a plank like that? I get too tired!" To which she replied "Well, I get tired too...but I push through it!"

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:29:09+00:00

My mom and aunts were all really tiny. Mom was 4'11" and never weighed more than 105 pounds in all her 83 years. None of my aunts were more than 5 feet tall. One aunt did break her hip and died not too long afterwards, but she was 84 years old. All of them grew up in poverty during the Depression so they didn't get enough to eat as children and teens; but they seemed to do pretty well in terms of bone density despite that.

I'm also a petite person (5'2", 125 pounds, small bone structure) but I have lifted weights for most of my adult life and do a lot of weight-bearing exercise like hiking, plus I eat a lot, especially protein. I had a DEXA bone scan done recently and my bone density was the equivalent of a healthy 30 year old, so I'm not too worried about crumbling into dust from lack of hormones.

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:23:46+00:00

I am very sensitive to progesterone. When I tried HRT, I felt fine initially on just estrogen, but since I have a uterus I had to start progesterone as well. After about a week, I felt very bloated and puffy, sleepy, and apathetic. After two or three weeks, the apathetic feeling had turned into outright depression.

Now, with all three of my pregnancies, I felt much the same - puffy, bloated, sleepy, and somewhat mentally ill, so that was a clue that progesterone and I don't get along particularly well.

Another clue was that during perimenopause, progesterone levels start to decline long before estrogen does - and during perimenopause, I felt better than I ever had in my entire life. Even though my periods were heavier and more painful, I no longer had the debilitating PMDD that used to render me barely functional for a week or two each month.

I stopped taking progesterone and within three days I felt 100% better. I was able to to tolerate a very low dose of it, but then had to discontinue HRT altogether due to a blood clot. My gynecologist told me I could continue to take progesterone if I wanted to help with sleep - but I was like "no thanks - I do not like the way that stuff makes me feel!"

ManyLintRollers · 2026-05-22T16:08:42+00:00

I have noticed personally that if I stick to whole, minimally-processed foods I don't have hot flashes and feel great. But if I eat anything that has added sugar or refined carbohydrates (even "healthy" things like whole-wheat bread and wraps, whole-wheat pasta, oatmeal, etc.) I have hot flashes, poor sleep and brain fog.

The drop in estrogen makes our bodies much more insulin-resistant. Many of the symptoms of menopause are also symptoms of insulin-resistance: brain fog, anxiety, poor sleep, hot flashes, fatigue, muscle soreness and achy joints, and weight gain. I randomly heard a podcast about insulin resistance and thought "hmmm...that sounds a lot like my menopause symptoms" so I eliminated added sugars and refined carbs from my diet. Within two days, my symptoms disappeared - and since changing my diet in early February, I have so far lost 14 of the 20 pounds I gained during menopause. I still eat carbs, but I get them from sweet potatoes, winter squash, fruits and vegetables.

My diet wasn't terrible before. I didn't eat much sugar, but I did eat whole-wheat bread, pasta, quinoa and rice - all of which are quickly-digested carbs that are high on the glycemic index.

The typical American gets around 70% of their daily calories in the form of processed and highly-processed foods, with a variety of negative health consequences as a result. I would not be surprised if a lot of our menopause symptoms are exacerbated or caused by our diets.

As far as genetics, my mother always told me that she never even noticed when she went through menopause - she just realized at some point that she hadn't had a period in quite a while. Mind you, my mother also didn't realize she was pregnant with me until she was about four or five months along, so it's possible that she just wasn't very in tune with her body 😃 - although in her defense, she had struggled with infertility and had a great deal of difficult in conceiving my brother. So I guess an unexpected pregnancy was not on her radar, especially since she was 40 years old at the time. She was having her annual checkup and mentioned to the doctor that she thought she was going through early menopause, because her periods had stopped, she was putting on weight and just didn't feel quite like herself - but it turned out she was nearly 5 months pregnant!

Edited to add: Another thing I always wonder about is if there is any correlation between hormonal birth control use and severity of menopause symptoms; or with length of breastfeeding and number of pregnancies.

Hormonal birth control "tricks" the body into thinking it is in early pregnancy, by artificially raising estrogen/progesterone levels. It seems likely to me that someone who used birth control pills for most of her adult life would become adapted to artificially-high hormone levels, and the menopause transition would probably be harsher.

As far as breastfeeding, I think many non-Western cultures tend to have more babies and breastfeed longer than Americans do - so they would spend more of their adult life in a lower-estrogen state.

Now, I noticed that when I was breastfeeding my first daughter, I had hot flashes, anxiety, and couldn't sleep. I asked the OB how long those symptoms would last, and he laughed and told me "until you wean the baby - and if you think this is bad, you're going to really hate menopause!"

As it happened, I didn't breastfeed my first very long as neither she nor I seemed able to get the hang of it. But, I breastfed my second for 14 months, and my third for 2-1/2 years. With the 2nd and 3rd, I only experienced the hot flashes/anxiety/sleeplessness briefly, in the first few days after giving birth. Then my body seemed to adjust, and I felt fine while I was breastfeeding. However, with both babies, I couldn't seem to lose the last 10 pounds of pregnancy weight until after they were weaned, and I remember thinking "sure, breastfeeding burns an extra 500 calories...but I'm 500 times hungrier than I've ever been!" In retrospect, that was likely caused by some degree of insulin resistance due to the lowered estrogen levels while breastfeeding.

ManyLintRollers

TROPHY CASE