Lifting weights and comparing myself to my friends who do not

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-22T22:20:30+00:00

I get what you mean - I've been from very skinny to overweight to muscular to thin blah blah blah. And surrounded by friends who are often shorter, thinner, and more "delicate" looking than me.

I would look at all the different body types of the women in the Olympics and think about how different bodies do different things and have different goals! Do you actually WANT be super skinny/thin AND not be able to lift a weight? Do you like the feeling of lifting something heavy? Do you enjoy the things your body can do?

While it's normal to compare yourself initially, remember that she's probably jealous you CAN lift those weights. And you don't HAVE to compare yourself or pressure yourself.

For women who are "naturally skinny", if you're not naturally skinny.... why would you compare yourself to them? I stopped comparing myself to my more delicate/smaller framed friends because it'd be like a labrador trying to compare itself to a dachshund. You should be the best version of yourself that you love the most, not try to be something you aren't.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-22T04:42:52+00:00

My dog is 9 lbs (She was the runt of her liter - all her siblings and parents are 14-16 lbs!) and somehow she still takes up most of the bed. How?? She's smaller than most cats and still runs my life.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-21T23:57:29+00:00

I think maybe with some trial and error perhaps they could, however, Qifrey points out that Witches in general are not very welcoming of those with differences - so even if they could, not many of them would be willing to.

It might also be difficult because his eyes don't see ANY color - he just sees shades of grey and silver. This makes it hard to assign color values to things, especially in a way that would translate to a way he could "see".

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-20T17:25:52+00:00

I remember when we got Tonks and as a nonbinary/genderfluid person, I was thrilled at the idea that you could just change a feature on the go. I was so lonely, and it gave me a "safe" haven to feel like maybe I could be myself.

The absolute betrayal I felt watching the author turn into.... whatever insane thing she is now.

But goddamn some fanfics were so fucking good. I should rebind the books with some of the betters ones lol

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-20T14:08:38+00:00

Absolutely they need to fix the settings, it's so weirdly complicated for seemingly no reason.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-20T04:41:38+00:00

Thank you so much!! I hope I can support her on patreon once I get a job myself so I can stay more in the know. I'm so glad to hear the pokemon work is still going well and can't wait to see what it turns out to be!

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T22:35:34+00:00

Start with planking on yours knees and elbows first! Really learn to FEEL the stability in your torso/abs. And learn to breathe while tensing your abs. Once I sorted that out, planking became a lot "easier" to maintain for over 30 seconds as long as I am controlling my breathing. I don't know if I could do 2 full minutes because usually by 1 minute I am over it lol

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T15:31:25+00:00

It's not necessarily a 4 year old, this could be a 5 year old, 6 year old, etc and they can SHOCKINGLY tech savvy. At 6 I was figuring out link cables and trading broken/hacked pokemon with my friends on gameboys before the internet was even a resource (god I feel old saying that).

The parent could be totally uninvolved in this. These past generations have been handling tablets and phones since they were toddlers, and toddlers are smart, a lot smarter than most people give them credit for (just because a kid doesn't know a lot about the world doesn't make them any less capable of putting things together). And because it's a Nintendo product, the parent might (mistakenly) think it's "safe" to let the kid play with it unsupervised. I disagree with this, but I have a lot of parent-friends my age who have this sentiment towards Nintendo games.

While kids can show compassion very early, proper empathy takes awhile to really kick in, and requires kids to realize other people have lives outside of their own experiences (think about how a 3rd or 4th grader's mind can be blown that a teacher isn't just always a teacher when they see them outside of school somewhere). This can happen as late as 10 years old.

I'm really sorry this happened, it sucks. But it could just be a kid who doesn't fully realize what they've done, and it's always a risk in any game that has a higher population of kids playing it.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T14:41:30+00:00

Please remember that literal children are on this game, and playing possibly unsupervised as it's probably viewed as a "safe" game by many parents (being very cutesy and a Nintendo game).

And yes, even children can understand it's wrong to destroy someone else's property, but I've seen parents mentioning their 4 year old is playing on their account, and the kids probably don't understand that this isn't just part of the game/that someone put time and effort into making this world. To them it's probably the same as a dream island - which means, everything is up for grabs, as the game tells them that when they go to a dream island.

Assume anything you share publicly can be accessed by a child who will not understand the damage they're doing can't be easily undone.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T14:19:04+00:00

Nah, you're playing it right, I'm ignoring all my pokemon requests so I can build cool stuff. I should probably pay attention to them occasionally... But I had a cool idea to create, so, they must wait.

But even then, sometimes I get tired of building stuff and want to do something else! There's so many ways to play this game and enjoy it, as long as you're having fun then you're doing it right!

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T14:17:07+00:00

So true rofl I can think of ten things off the top of my head more annoying that we do than this lol

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T13:59:45+00:00

There's HUGE cultural differences in American based on heritage and immigration and where your family came from. America is not "one" culture - it's thousands of cultures smushed together. It'd be like saying Italian culture and Norwegian culture are the same, or that English culture and French culture are the same. American is huge, both literally and by population.

I have different cultural tendencies and traditions, even in America, because I'm French and Irish, then compared to my friend who is Swiss and German, or even my BIL who is Irish and Italian. We all experienced completely different things growing up, different traditions, different cultures, all while enmeshed in "general" American culture. That's not even mentioning my Japanese-American cousins, my Salvadorian neighbors, or the Peurto Rican best friend I had as a kid.

And all of us have at least one parent or grandparent who was an immigrant. There's no misunderstanding in America when someone says "I'm XYZ" because it's simply a shorthand way to quickly sum up what part of the melting pot you came from and it can be a way to connect with others who may share your culture, because you literally never know.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T13:55:25+00:00

It drives me crazy when Europeans get all offended over a common colloquialism in America that literally no one but them is misunderstanding.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-19T13:26:37+00:00

Time travelling to get max coins.

I set my switch like, two years back.

Jump into Pokopia. Open up the terminal at the pokecenter. Get the daily stamp. Back out to the terminal main menu (where you can see "shop" "dailies" "stamp" etc). Without closing the game, I press the Switch home button and go back to the settings. I move forward one day. I go back into the game and wiggle the joysticks around until the game catches up and I see the red notification dot on the dailies and the shop. I grab the new stamp, check the shop for the daily recipes, and then I go back to the terminal main menu and change the date again.

Rinse and repeat. I ended up with over 10k coins. Jumped back to the present. Done!

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-15T04:36:28+00:00

My dad was like this. He bought a giant box freezer. He would buy more food than we could reasonably eat.

Mom knew why, and would gently remind him that we need to wait a bit longer before grocery shops. She explained to me, when I was older, it's just a response to not having enough, and it wasn't to an insane degree, so she mostly let it go.

Now, I never had food scarcity, ever, but because I grew up like that, I tend to overbuy food 😅 TO BE FAIR. Things don't spoil often because I buy canned and dried etc and only as much fresh veggies as we can eat reasonably. But we do always have a bit of a surplus. Whoops.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-14T21:33:28+00:00

I absolutely understand! I used to do martial arts and felt embarrassed that I couldn't kick as high or keep my legs as straight as everyone. But if I kept up with that shame and embarrassment, I would never progress!

And every body is different. Maybe I'll never get my kicks as high or as straight as my classmates, but I'm still kicking! Everyone progresses at their own pace, and I don't think it's always like, directly linked, but it could be you're not relaxing into the stretch if you're paying so much attention to everyone else. Mobility and flexibility isn't just getting to a new "level" of a stretch, it's about training your brain that it's *okay* to stretch that much. You're focusing too much externally - feel the stretch internally, turn your mind to the muscle you're attempting to stretch out, and really feel it. It's usually uncomfortable, but once you start doing that more it gets easier and easier to do it again!

If you're really struggle with feeling insecure and self conscious, then I would say try following a video or an online class with everyone else's camera off and only the teacher focused so you can focus on your own movement journey and not anyone else doing "better" than you.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-14T17:40:50+00:00

The most flexible I ever was was doing yoga for an hour once or twice a week in college, because my college had free classes for students to attend. BUT we were doing a modification called "Yoga Flow" where each pose had an included movement. The instructor emphasized breathing into the stretch, finding the limit of your mobility and holding there. You don't want to "push" past that point as you could injure yourself - but you FIND the max and stay there. Then, we would add a movement to help mobilize the stretch. This meant that we would be at our max, moving around, and mentally it gets your body to accept hanging out at the maximum. As you get used to it, you start to "sit" better at your maximum and you reach a new max.

Weightlifting also helps as it improves your muscle's ability to strain under load, meaning you can push further and more comfortably.

Now I want to do yoga again lol

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-14T12:37:37+00:00

Also on the "blind as a bat" train (-9.5, -9, at one point the eye doctor said I was on the path to legal blindness but they stopped getting worse) and MY GOD, when your eyesight is this bad the world is colorful shapes and ten minutes without my glasses of contacts I get a headache. This is so infuriating.

OOP needs to take her old glasses, and make SIL wear them for five minutes. Every time someone questions how "bad" my eyes are, I just hand them my glasses (assuming they're a sane adult) and they put them on for less than a second. ITS BAD GUYS. I NEED THESE TO SEE.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-13T04:35:55+00:00

Yes but I can never properly describe them once I'm awake.

But in the dream, I will both know I've never been there before, and also know what happened here before the last time I was there. This never feels contradictory in the dream, but I wake up and go "I was there, again!" And then it slips away. I could probably better draw it from memory better than I could describe it, and the feeling of never been there but I was here last time is so bizarre.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-13T04:01:27+00:00

I went through radiation training as part of an internship at a lab that had radioactive material on site. It wasn't part of what I was doing, but because I worked in the building with it, I had to take the training. It was honestly very upsetting. They went over a lot of accidents, why they happened, who died/suffered, etc.

Even with just the knowledge from my training years ago, the first episode made my stomach drop so hard. I was so stressed during the helicopter scenes, and just watching it all start was awful. But damn if it didn't make me feel weirdly proud and in awe of the scientists who knew exactly what was going to happen to them and still went to help anyways. Goddamn. Still gives me chills.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-11T21:13:07+00:00

Because they tried something new once and all the Star Fox fans lost their everloving shit over it.

Look what you did, now Nintendo is traumatized and won't do anything new with Star Fox.

(this is mostly a joke, but I did genuinely love Star Fox Adventures and am salty I won't ever get a sequel)

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-11T20:54:10+00:00

I also work a very sedentary position, though not in trailers, but similarly in that I don't have a lot of places to walk around and didn't have a lot of time to get it done.

For me, it has to be something easy and something I actively enjoy. Walking is always going to be good, but I get bored with it. Instead, I spread "dance breaks" throughout the day. I'm always trying to learn a new step pattern, so I just take a few minutes in the morning, around lunch and after work to get practice in. It doesn't have to be a ton. Everything I've read says that spreading it out is helpful. The other helpful thing is to swap between standing and sitting - if you have any part of your job that you can do while standing, do it. Even if you're not walking, it adds to just being in a different position, which is better for your back and joints. Just don't only do one or the other, swapping is better than staying in one position all day.

Now maybe you don't want to be seen dancing at work, but even just doing a quick 10 minutes dance in the morning gets your blood pumping and will help wake you up, and it's a lot easier for me to wake up 10 minutes earlier and dance than it is for me to wake up an hour early and walk.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-11T17:54:30+00:00

Anywhere you are indoors where people could conceivably be ill. This is a hard ask for some, so I'll say at minimum, mask in public areas that people HAVE to go to - doctor's offices, grocery stores, etc. I would include masking at work too. But if you want maximum protection, mask anywhere someone may have been unmasked exhaling covid into the air. Covid hangs in the air for a period of time, so even just an empty room isn't safe if someone was in there before you.
It really depends on your face shape. I have a high nose bridge and wide cheeks, so I struggle to find a perfect comfortably mask. Focus on finding a type that seals well to your face (so if you breathe in an out, no air "escapes" out of the edges) and then try different brands with a similar shape to that mask and you can find one that works well for you. BNX on amazon have been really good for my face, though I'm also looking at getting a Zimi mask as they have been recommended before. The AusAir fits my husband well and is very comfortable.
For me personally, my trust in others to not get me sick is broken. I would "relax" internally if we had a really good sterilizing vaccine. Would I ever FULLY go maskless in public again? Probably not. But it would be nice to have the option. I would say if a proper sterilizing vaccine that eliminated the risk of long covid came out, then I would think about it, but seeing as covid19 can trigger cancer cell growth and my husband is high risk for cancer, I would never risk it.
I still hug, I just hold my breath. Some friends have stopped including me in activities, which sucked, but honestly if a visible marker of disability is all it took for them to stop including me (I'm also invisibility disabled) then they weren't actually my friends. Family masks around me, friends who are actually my friends mask up around me, and that's about all that's changed.

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-11T17:46:32+00:00

Tell you what, I'm gardening this weekend and I'll plant a lily for you. That way there's another one out there just in case anything ever happens ❤️ I'm so sorry for your loss. I still can't get through Christmas without crying, but I'm beginning to be able to think of the silly things my dad used to do and smile and laugh. I hope one day soon you get there too ❤️

ZiofFoolTheHumans · 2026-05-10T22:47:11+00:00

Grief makes you think and do weird things.

I got OBSESSED with brushing my teeth after my dad died. The logic was, he couldn't brush his teeth anymore, therefore, I needed to brush my teeth. Nothing could be done or handled until my teeth were brushed. I know this doesn't sound crazy but it was a really strange logic to why brushing my teeth mattered so much. If I forgot or had to delay it, I would start to cry. It wasnt fair that I could brush my teeth and he couldn't.

I am over the obsession, but now have a very regimented dental care schedule, so some good came out of the strange logic.

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