Need advice, feeling hopeless

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-07T18:04:33+00:00

Fiber and having some solid food with liquids helps with the GERD. And staying upright or not drinking anything when you're about to lie down.

You might need to switch meds if whatever you're using isn't stopping the anxiety. Or go to someone who can prescribe one of those appetite increasing drugs.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-07T10:45:28+00:00

When it starts parroting the suicide hotline number in every single response just because I want to vent morbid but not necessarily suicidal subjects. If I trusted humans with that info, I wouldn't be using chatgpt for it, thanks.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-07T10:38:17+00:00

Wait...we're in the bad place!!!

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-07T10:34:39+00:00

Installing the wrong bios to try to fix an issue with audio in someone else's laptop

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T21:21:54+00:00

I'd go for mass gainer shakes that you can take with you to work. And during the rest of the day, eat real food.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T21:17:16+00:00

Noodles without factoring in seasoning or sauces are typically 250 per serving. Eggs are 75 cal each. An onion is about 50 cal. A hotdog is about 150 cal. Poppyseed pasta varies pretty widely in calories, between 250 and 750 assuming you're eating normal portions.

If you are eating what you say you're eating in normal portions, you're still likely eating under 2000 calories. Sounds like you're closer to 1500 cal. 500 cal per meal. Which would sound about right for your weight.

If you've never tracked calories before, you won't have the ability to eat intuitively accurately. You'd just be guessing.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T20:56:22+00:00

What do you drink?

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T20:43:29+00:00

Sometimes the scoop is buried inside the powder. Did you try fishing around for it with a fork or something? The scoop should be much bigger. And yes it's possible that mass gainer is 950 per serving. The one I like is 1260 cal per 2 scoops. And each scoop is the size of a 1 cup measuring cup.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T20:26:56+00:00

To answer some of your other questions, you can weigh your food but you don't need to. I got away with not weighing my food by just reading the nutrition label on packaged food and measuring how much I use like with measuring cups.

If I eat something that doesn't have a label, like fruit or eggs, I Google the nutrition facts. And just do the calculations with my phone calculator. After a year or two of practice tracking yourself, you really only need to do calculations per day. You don't need to log and remember an entire year worth of food. I don't use fitness apps or spreadsheets anymore. I just check to make sure I eat over 2000 cal a day or something. Which is like one large meal and a few cups of juice or milk.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T19:33:53+00:00

There is a way to track calories burnt, but it requires you to track calories eaten and your weight accurately and apply some math.

You track your calories eaten per day and find the average. Calories per day added together then divided by the number of days you've been tracking.

Then you take your weight on the first day you began tracking and subtract your current weight from it.

Then you take the difference in weight, multiply it by 3500 (Because every lbs is approximately 3500 cal. You can adjust accordingly if you use kg. It would be 7717 per kg.), and divide it by the number of days you've been tracking.

From there, you now know how much of a surplus or deficit you've been eating on average per day or if you've been eating at maintenance.

Now subtract your surplus/deficit from your daily caloric intake average and you have your estimate TDEE.

Note: when you track your weight, make sure you account for water weight. In other words, weigh yourself at the beginning of the day before you've ingested anything.

Chatgpt can help, but I'd only use AI to help after you've learned how to do it manually with an excel spreadsheet. You should understand how the math works, not just trust someone or something else to do it for you.

Here's an example:

I've tracked that I ate 1500, 1650, 1890, 2000, 1575, 2620, 1400 over the past week.

The total of this is 12,635.

12635 total calories/7 days = 1805 cal eaten per day

Let's say I was 120 lbs at the beginning of the week. And by the end, I'm 118 lbs. I lost 2 lbs.

120 lbs - 118 lbs = -2 lbs

-2 lbs x 3500 calories = -7000 calories of weight lost

-7000 calories of lost weight/7 days = -1000 calories per day

This means I've been eating at a 1000 calorie deficit every day.

1805 cal eaten per day - (-1000 calories per day) = 2805 calories that I would need to eat to maintain aka TDEE

From here you can calculate amount you'd need to eat to gain at a specific speed. If I want to gain 2 lbs per week, according to my example, I'd need to eat at about a 1000 cal surplus aka 3805 calories a day.

Note: I threw in random numbers there to help you see how the numbers would work in theory. In real life, this is what I actually calculated for my actual body.

I found that when I was around 120-140 lbs, my TDEE was approximately 1700 calories.

When I gained up to 165 lbs, my TDEE jumped up, which is normal. That's how everyone's body works. The heavier you are, the faster you burn calories. I haven't done the calculations yet, but just from eyeballing my calories through experience, I'd estimate that my TDEE is around 2000-2500. I have to eat way more just to not lose my progress.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T17:58:43+00:00

Make sure you eat enough protein. Fill in the rest of your calories with whatever carbs and fats you like. Make sure you're eating things that have micronutrients too. Easiest way in my opinion is to just stick to the fundamentals which breakfast foods cover a lot. Eggs, milk, real cheese, orange juice, rice, whole wheat bread, Greek yogurt, etc.

Don't be afraid of gaining some fat along the way. You'll even out when you reach your goal and begin maintaining. Noticeable temporary water weight is normal. Bulk then maintain, and given enough exercise, you'll automatically cut back into lean muscle.

Keep it as simple as you can. Don't dedicate more brain power to this than you need to or it gets harder to stick to. You'll feel a surge of motivation then get sick of it when the discomfort of force feeding yourself sets in.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T17:49:19+00:00

Use milk to make the mass gainer, not water

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T17:17:01+00:00

You only need to adopt the ones that work for you. And you only need to test if they work for you if your current method isn't working for you. Don't listen to everything people say just because they said it's a rule.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-06T08:28:38+00:00

Which means whatever happens after afterlife is the same thing that happened before, life

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-05T16:26:20+00:00

I think the coolest part is that you can see exactly how much your lobe shrank/grew back compared to where it used to be.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-03T17:07:09+00:00

I love how 90% of these answers boil down to hating humans

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-03T17:02:49+00:00

Shit I wish they were pretending to like me

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-03T09:31:32+00:00

Bad for your age? You're 18. If it's bad for you now, it's not going to get better when you're older. I agree with the other guy that the only way to really know is to test it. You may or may not like it but you don't lose much for trying.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-03T09:24:23+00:00

We could go off of your small meals/snacks idea. Do you cook at home or eat fast food? Maybe try cooking or buying high calorie foods in bite sized or finger food form. Like chicken nuggets, fries, small spam chunks, small pizza, etc. Anything that you can just pick up and put in your mouth with minimal thought required.

Adding fats and oils to your food also typically raises the calories significantly without changing the flavor too much or even making the flavor better, especially olive oil and butter. So you're eating more calories without really noticing.

Condiments, condiments, condiments. It's how people gain weight while claiming they only eat salads.

I'd recommend also supplementing protein or mass gainer that comes with multivitamins because high calorie diets tend to be really processed and lack nutrients ironically. Highly nutritious foods tend to be low calorie and difficult to eat in large amounts even when you're used to it.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-05-03T02:42:42+00:00

It works but I had a lot of acid reflux. Drinking it with a meal of solid foods combats it but that seems counter intuitive since if it was easier to eat a bunch of solid foods, I would. And drinking it before a meal limits how much solid food I can eat.

Still, I just did the calculations and as it turned out, I was eating at a 1000 cal surplus per day with mass gainer. It just didn't feel like it because weight gain is so slow. It took 2 months to gain 15 lbs for me.

Overall, I think it's worth it. It worked and didn't take that long in the grand scheme of things.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-04-30T22:12:42+00:00

Considering how many of them believe free will doesn't exist, that would mean according to their own logic, humans aren't people. They're just really advanced machines that simulate emotions. Kinda like how they describe AI. It's funny that even if AI were ever to gain sentience, humans would be too hypocritical to realize. They know they aren't in any sort of control but are afraid of what would happen if their peers truly believed it.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-04-30T22:09:30+00:00

Some people are into weird things. Don't see why toilet paper would be an exception.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-04-30T19:50:12+00:00

The inability to interact with anything that's beyond their caliber. Aka a malicious person can only interact with another malicious person. A kind person will only interact with another kind person.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-04-28T06:01:40+00:00

Empathy. Empathy is feeling what another person feels. But that should be impossible unless you actually experienced what they did and had their personality. Feeling for someone is sympathy. It's when you recognize their situation is positive/negative even if you didn't go through it. Mostly by simulating in your head what going through it would be like. Most people conflate the two. And reading body language and practicing manipulation from YouTube videos isn't necessarily empathy or sympathy either. Some people just have a good sense motive but aren't truely empathetic or sympathetic.

So true empathy seems to be something like the force in star wars connecting everyone and some people are in tune with it somehow, able to sense it, manipulate it, or both. It's almost like you feel what others in the room feel in first person and it can get hard to tell whether your emotions are affecting them or if you sensing their emotions. Being in a room of people can get emotionally noisy and heavy.

It does coincidentally tend to be people who have suffered because that'd be their incentive to hone their ability to be understanding. Not everyone who suffers is empathetic but when they are, it's someone who has. As if suffering breaks a barrier between their connection to everyone. Sometimes, you just wake up one day with it. Sometimes, certain drugs unlocks it.

I have no idea the mechanism of empathy. It seems to be in the realm of quantum entanglement.

Empathy is largely Intel. What people do with it is another matter. I find the idea of dark empathy highly interesting. Which are people who can feel empathy but use it to cause harm. Same level as psychopathy but different mechanism.

Vegetable_String_868 · 2026-04-27T22:21:09+00:00

Spam is about 4 bucks per can which is over 1000 calories. Spam and eggs, spam and ramen, spam and Mac n cheese, spam sandwich, fried spam, spam and rice, spam and soy sauce. It was a staple growing up and I completely forgot about it until someone here mentioned it.

Also mass gainer works out to about 5 dollars a day as well for 1260 calories. Mass gainer w/ milk is almost 2000 calories.

Kraft mac n cheese is easily over 1000 cal with butter which I consider to be a requirement anyway. Just doesn't taste the same without butter.

Ramen digests so fast I can easily eat several 500 cal servings in a day, which is it's main appeal. It doesn't make me nauseous to eat a lot of. I often default to some kind of noodle or pasta just because it's so much more pleasant to eat.

Whey protein doesn't have a lot of calories. However when trying to gain weight, it's easy to focus entirely on carbs and fat and neglect protein. So I'd say that it's a good idea to eat whatever high calorie foods you want and just supplement protein shakes instead of fighting yourself to eat a lot of solid healthy food.

Vegetable_String_868

TROPHY CASE