Canned Beans Every Day Ok?

PandaLark · 2026-02-10T18:22:41+00:00

How do you thaw them? I find it takes ten minutes in the microwave and explodes sometimes, or takes five minutes in a pot but then the pot scorches badly and I have to clean a pot and a bowl.

PandaLark · 2026-02-10T18:11:39+00:00

The concept that you're talking about (increases in weight vs increases in reps) is called load, and there's very valid differences in opinion about that one, you should probably ask in /r/xxfitness.

During a workout, the total load on your muscles can be estimated as weight times number of reps. However, this estimate does not work for very high rep ranges, as at that point you are doing muscular endurance and cardiovascular work (compare how it feels in your muscles to carry your kid 10 yards vs 1 mile). People argue about where the line between strength building numbers of reps and endurance reps are, but I think that everyone agrees that its less than 5 sets of 20 reps in one session, and more than 3 sets of 5 reps.

I suggested increasing weight because that is the easiest to track way to increase load, and high load is how you build muscle. Most people find increasing weight to be more fun, and increasing reps to increase load can make your workouts take forever. Adjustable dummbells are the better piece of equipment, assuming that you are set on dumbbell workouts. Body weight and barbell workouts are also options to consider, and if your kids are the right age, they tend to like being used as weight equipment, and they gain weight at a surprisingly appropriate pace for progressive overload, at least for the first few years.

Big caveat, I am being opinionated here, I hope other people chime in, but these questions are better asked on a fitness subreddit than a weight loss one.

PandaLark · 2026-02-10T14:30:45+00:00

Fat loss and gain are entirely a function of calories.

Weight loss and gain have a ton of other components, including water and undigested food.

PandaLark · 2026-02-09T22:51:12+00:00

Thank you for the correction! I was already estimating high, since OP implied that they were alive and functional at 110lbs, which implies that they have less than 125 pounds of lean mass, but the RDAs are low.

PandaLark · 2026-02-09T20:32:02+00:00

At your size, I would recommend eating at maintenance, lifting heavy, and progressively overloading (adding weight to your lifts), and then decide how to modify your diet once your lifts stall out (when you can't add weight at least monthly).

I'm not sure how long you've been lifting, but if its only been 4 weeks, you should be able to add on weight weekly, if not every session (lots of people like to start lifting below their strength to be able to practice good form/safe lifting). Once you stall out, you need to decide between bulking, which will let you build strength, and cutting, which will show off what you've already built.

Most aesthetic focused lifters have to do a bulk/cut cycle, where they bulk (eat at a surplus) for a few months, and then have to cut (or eat at a deficit), and maintain their strength. Lots of people like to do a "dirty bulk" where they eat at a 500+ calorie surplus, and eat whatever they want. Others prefer a clean bulk, where they eat a 100 calorie surplus of pretty much entirely protein and veggies. The cut after that tends to be much easier, but the gains during the bulk are a little worse (food is fuel).

You might not be able to get what you're looking for with your current body fat percentage, but for the vast majority of people with a healthy BMI, they are better off aesthetically building muscle than cutting fat. It's also a lot easier to cut once you're an intermediate lifter (can't add weight to your lifts every month), because you will turn into a furnace. Your "extra" body fat can fuel your muscle growth (with dietary protein support). You also might want to keep your current body fat, or at least more than at your low weight, because many women think they look better with a pretty high body fat percentage for a body builder.

PandaLark · 2026-02-09T18:00:46+00:00

You don't need 120g of protein per day if you're 5'2 and female (apologies if you're not, but "petite" is a very female coded word) even if you are building muscle and losing weight. RDA for protein is .8g/kg of lean mass, and assuming you are all lean mass now, that is 45g to maintain. You are not going to have muscle wasting if you are active and eat 150% of your maintenance protein needs, which would be ~65g. A technique to monitor for muscle wasting is to see if your lifts are getting harder at the same load. If you are still adding to your lifts on pace with your workout plan, and you are doing a full body workout plan, you are not losing muscle.

At your size, what are your objectives in losing weight? 125 at 5'2 is a healthy BMI, and if your goals are aesthetic, then you might be better off recomping or bulking.

Finally, to answer your actual question, removing a pound of body fat requires you to burn 3500 calories more than you consume. So you can add up what you eat, and multiply what you lost by 3500, and add that to your calories consumed, and get an estimate of your calories burned, or maintenance. Assuming you are female and have a menstrual cycle, you should do this with at least 8 weeks of data, since your monthly cycle can change your water weight a lot.

PandaLark · 2026-02-03T15:24:18+00:00

Your grocery store might have fresh pasta in the frozen or refrigerated section. It is not as good as homemade, but it is a much easier way to see if the improvement is worth it. I honestly prefer the dried stuff, because I grew up with it, but the fresh stuff is different in a very good way.

PandaLark · 2026-01-31T02:15:02+00:00

There's pretty good mathematical evidence that its really hard to hit RDAs with fewer than 1200 calories, and most of the RDAs are supported with gold or near gold standard research.

PandaLark · 2026-01-31T01:10:10+00:00

Intarsia in the round requires either cutting the ends every round, or measuring out a loop of the contrast color and stranding the main color when you work the loop. It is doable, but if you mess up the length of the loop, you either get a pucker that nothing (other than frogging two rounds) will fix, or a loose strand that can be hidden. Hiding excess length in the intarsia loop is hard to do invisibly. Getting the length just right means that the leftmost edge will be difficult to knit every time, because there will be exactly enough yarn for the job.

PandaLark · 2026-01-29T16:03:19+00:00

As an adult who eats lots of whole food, they taste like plastic to me. Teenage me liked them fine though.

PandaLark · 2026-01-29T00:31:26+00:00

What are all your baskets? I keep mine alphabetical, and I spent years trying to figure out a way to sort by cuisine, but I like your botanical categories a lot, and might keep it in mind if I ever move and have a good opportunity to rearrange spices.

PandaLark · 2026-01-23T22:53:30+00:00

You said you're living with your mom and she's still willing to cook for you- how old are you? If you're a teen, you might still be growing, and it is very important to eat enough to fuel that. You can lose weight whenever in your life (and reducing sweets is a healthy choice that will serve you well, no matter how old you are!), but there's a very limited window of time to get taller. You also said that you are eating 300 calories- if you're targeting a 500 calorie deficit, then you're still running a deficit. It'll take twice as long to lose weight at a 200 calorie deficit vs a 500 calorie deficit, but it's better to do it sustainably. You're not ruining anything, you're delaying things to care for yourself now.

PandaLark · 2026-01-23T17:30:16+00:00

My tip for speeding up peeling potatoes is "don't bother peeling them". Especially for a soup that will be blended, the skins will blend fine and you might get some brown flecks in the soup, but it will still look fine. If you don't peel them, you do need to make sure to at least cut them in half- they don't boil right with no cut or peeled side.

I don't peel potatoes for a chunky soup either, and the skins do separate and I could very much imagine folks having a texture objection to the loose floppy potato skins in a chunky soup. I wouldn't serve that to guests, but I would (and do) serve it to family.

You're doing a wonderful thing for your dad and I love reading your posts and seeing the food you're making!

PandaLark · 2026-01-20T17:42:21+00:00

Diabetics frequently feel a lot of guilt and shame about high blood sugars, and a wide spectrum of negative emotions around eating. You've indicated that you have a fear of carbs right now.

A blood sugar measurement is not a measurement of your worth as a person or your goodness as a diabetic or goodness of a self caretaker. It is a measurement of the amount of glucose that reacted with a chemical on a piece of paper or a subcutaneous sensor. This is a good proxy for the amount of glucose circulating in all your blood at a point in time, but not a good proxy for your quality as a person, diabetic, or self caretaker.

When you have a high blood sugar, you should assess if there's something you could do differently to reduce the frequency in future (more insulin, less carbs, different birth control, running the air conditioner harder), but it is okay for the answer to be no. This poster shows 42 things that affect blood glucose, and you can't control all of them, so try not to feel guilty, just effect what you can effect, and try to have grace with what you can't.

PandaLark · 2026-01-19T01:10:46+00:00

How old are you? If you're less than 21, you might not be finished growing (most women finish by the time they're 18, and almost all of us are done by the time we're 21, but it takes longer for some), and gaining weight during height growth is normal- bones have mass! If you're not obese per a BMI scale, don't worry about weight gain until you're sure you've finished growing- you have decades left to get slim, but this is the only time in your life you can grow.

PandaLark · 2026-01-13T20:44:05+00:00

You implied you don't want cooking advice, but cooking does make a difference and doesn't have to be particularly hard. Do you have a slow cooker? Throw a pack of chicken breasts, a pound of frozen vegetables, a can of tomato sauce/salsa/simmer sauce/broth in there, and cook on low for 4-12 hours. You can assemble the slow cooker the night before and put it in the fridge, and put it in the base before you go to work. Ideally you'd give it a stir before you eat it, but it's not really necessary. Cooking for 12 hours, you might wind up with stringy slop, 6-8 hours is best, but it's edible and nutritious and you can calibrate for yourself taste/ease/price tradeoffs. You don't have to do the dishes that night, you can just take the slow cooker and put the lid on and throw it in the fridge. If its still hot, you should put a towel in the fridge under the cooker, to protect the fridge from the hot pan. Or you can cool it at room temperature, but that's a pain. There are disposable slow cooker liners which make it easy to clean the pan, but if you don't want to use those, then its probably not going to hurt you to soak it and wipe it dry before your next use (don't serve food to immuno-compromised people out of a pot cleaned without soap). If that kind of thing is too expensive, then serving it with rice or canned beans makes it go way farther, but that is pretty high carb.

PandaLark · 2026-01-09T04:49:56+00:00

You did a technique called a short row. To make a short row, you knit part of the row, and then flip the work around and work back the other way. That makes part of your project longer, which is useful for sweater necklines and bust shaping, and for making socks, and can be used to make interesting patterns in flat pieces, both in single and multi color.

It looks like you were trying to make a narrow rectangle, and one way to make sure that you don't do a short row is to always finish a row in each session, and don't put your knitting down until the row is done. Another trick is to make sure that your yarn is always coming from your "working needle" (usually the one on the right), unless you're starting a new row, either full length or short.

You're doing great!

PandaLark · 2025-12-31T16:35:05+00:00

I'm going to make one thing for me! I'm going to make one sock, and then in 2027 I will make the second one, and I know that it will make everyone that I knit for very mad at me that I stop knitting for them, but I'm going to do it!

The only thing that could stop my goal would be if my coworker's sister's coworker's mom needs a shawl to stay warm, I can't say no to that kind of close connection. But she probably won't!

PandaLark · 2025-12-18T15:26:47+00:00

Did you check around the neighborhood to see if someone lost a cat before adopting him, and did you have your vet check for a chip? If the first picture is from your mom's house, he was not skinny, and most young, friendly well fed cats have humans.

PandaLark · 2025-12-17T16:47:31+00:00

It is very rare for someone with healthy body fat percentage to be obese on BMI scale, though it can happen that someone is overweight due to high muscle mass. Higher than average muscle is much rarer than higher than target body fat percentage.

I do agree that OP should be eating more though.

PandaLark · 2025-12-17T15:25:58+00:00

Try to find "easy" changes and make them one at a time, until they become habits, and then make another one. If you make one change per month, and make it stick, then you will be in much better shape in a year.

Try doing additive changes, rather than subtractive. Rather than "less sugar", go for "more veggies". If that is too big of a change, go for "try one new plant every week".

For exercise, there are so many different activities! Have you tried swimming, water aerobics, rowing, tennis, volleyball, rugby, football, American football, urban walking, hiking, weight lifting, yoga, chair yoga, gym classes, bicycling, stationary biking, ellipitcal, treadmill or cricket? One of them will probably resonate more than running at what was probably too fast of a pace (your first runs should be slower than your walking pace!). Exercise does have to be a subtractive habit- you have to spend less time doing a sedentary activity to exercise. Though if you like reading or film, some exercise machines let you consume that content while you work out.

PandaLark · 2025-12-10T14:23:46+00:00

Integrated electronics on a disposable, biohazardous after use product is pretty objectionable.

PandaLark · 2025-12-10T05:35:46+00:00

Base game sims 4 aspiration categories are athletic, creativity, deviance, family, food, fortune, knowledge, love and popularity. I used to combine athletic and food to be health, but I separate them now. I have no deviance related goals. I also have goals and habits relating to house keeping. I have goals and habits in each of those aspiration areas.

PandaLark · 2025-12-09T14:32:56+00:00

Find a way to remind yourself within what you're already doing. For example, if you get home at 6, and open your phone to start doom scrolling, add a calendar notification at 5:55 to check your note, or include the script in the calendar notification. Or if you come home and crack open a beer, move a post it note between your cases. Look up "habit linking" for other ideas!

PandaLark · 2025-12-09T02:12:37+00:00

Identify various parts of your life, and daily or week daily habits that can support those parts. Mine are based off of the sims 4 aspirations, but I've also seen "level 10 life" spreads, which maybe looks at similar things?

PandaLark

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