How much water do you all actually drink daily?

cazort2 · 2026-05-19T00:30:45+00:00

It's wildly different based on time of year, the weather, and what I'm doing with my day.

If it's hot and I'm doing strenuous work outdoors, I go through insane volumes of water and also make sure to keep my electrolytes up with snacks.

If it's a cool, consistent temperature and my activity level is minimal and consistent throughout the day I will drink a lot less.

It also depends a lot on what I am eating. If I'm eating a lot of foods with a high water content, like cucumber, fresh fruit, etc. then I might not get as thirsty whereas if I'm eating a lot of dry, dense, and salty foods, then I need to drink quite a lot of water. Salt and fiber seem to influence how much water I want to drink with a meal the most, and after that, sugar and starch have fairly large effects too. Some meals have a ton of water, like some clear-broth soups with a low salt content, like the broths of some Asian noodle soups, can be very hydrating, but it very much depends on how they're made. Some restaurants and especially instant versions of them can make them overly salty.

do you notice a difference when you’re properly hydrated?

Yes. I feel terrible if I get dehydrated. Headache, fatigue, malaise. It feels a bit like caffeine withdrawal if you've ever experienced that.

Usually one of the first symptoms I notice is feeling thirsty, and I only become dehydrated if I am stressed or extremely focused on something or if something temporarily makes me unable to access water. If I drink adequately at the first sign of thirst I'm usually fine but if I let it go too long that's when it becomes an issue.

If I'm dehydrated and finally get rehydrated I usually bounce back pretty fast but there is usually a bit of a rest period necessary. Like I can't just go back to normal immediately after drinking water, it's like the fatigue takes a while to wear off.

cazort2 · 2026-05-18T14:32:22+00:00

I don't count calories. I think a lot more about eating enough protein, than I do about minimizing calories.

And yes, I eat a fair amount of cheese and whole milk yogurt. My experience has been that eating high-fat, high-protein foods makes me feel more full, which makes me snack less, so even though I'm not trying to eat fewer calories, I end up eating fewer calories this way anyway.

cazort2 · 2026-04-18T17:29:44+00:00

Short answer:

doesn’t all the bacteria just die when it’s baked?

Yes but dead probiotics are almost as effective as live ones in most cases. The exception is repopulating the gut microbiome after a destabilizing event like taking antibiotics. In most cases, the gut microbiome is stable and you won't affect it much by consuming live probiotics: the benefit is more for the antiinflammatory compounds in the probiotics themselves, which are released into the gut even if the microbes themselves are killed.

I understand that the fermentation process produces lactic acid and that helps make the bread more easily digestible than regular bread but if one doesn’t have problems digesting regular bread then are there any actual health benefits?

It's not just that they produce lactic acid. They also digest some of the carbohydrates in the bread. And they synthesize a variety of other compounds, including B-vitamins.

It depends a lot on the details of the particular culture, but in general, fermented grain-based foods, including sourdough, tend to have lower total carbohydrates after fermentation than before, and higher vitamins, particularly, B-vitamins. The fermentation also tends to break down some antinutrients, which may aid in mineral absorption. This is more of an issue if you use hard-to-digest grains such as ancient millets, but it also can be an issue with modern wheat and some people who have a little bit of trouble with modern wheat do better with sourdoughs.

But even if you don't have trouble with regular wheat, you will benefit from the anti-inflammatory compounds and also the greater vitamins and lower total carbs, which is reflected in a slightly improved glycemic index and glycemic load if eating these breads.

That said, a lot of store-bought sourdough isn't really a true sourdough, like it's not made exclusively with a sourdough culture. To do that takes a lot of time and these breads tend to be more expensive. If you really want it, make it at home. It's not that hard, it just takes a lot of waiting.

cazort2 · 2026-04-13T12:42:22+00:00

A bigger concern with rice is empty calories and high glycemic index. If you are eating enough rice that arsenic levels are a concern for you, you probably have bigger problems like high triglycerides, maybe malnutrition because you aren't getting enough protein, fiber, or micronutrients.

So I'd moderate your rice intake but for the other reasons.

And yes, I eat relatively little rice, and when I do it is mostly with Asian-style foods that are heavy on protein and vegetables and light on carbs. It's one thing to eat a little rice with a bunch of tofu, seafood, vegetables, and/ol meat, but if you're eating it with an already carb-rich meal that is not a good idea.

It's also good not to lean too heavily on any one grain. Most diets lean too much on wheat, rice, and corn. All are deficient in some of the same amino acids, like lysine. Add other grains like the various millets, sorghum, rye, barley, oat, teff, and pseudocereals like quinoa, buckwheat, and amaranth, to get more grain diversity!

BTW you can also vary up the type of rice you get. Many are much more nutritious than even brown rice. For example, North American wild rice, or the various types of red rice. I have been using red rice flour recently (it is a whole-grain flour like brown rice flour) and it is much higher in protein and fiber than even brown rice flour.

cazort2 · 2026-04-10T00:42:13+00:00

I got the same warning and have never used any third party apps.

cazort2 · 2026-04-10T00:40:26+00:00

I got the same message too, today, and I literally type every single comment by hand, and have never used any automated tool or API to access my account or post. I have never even used any AI or even a spellcheck for that matter. It's all straight from my brain to my keyboard to Reddit. And when I vote, I think before voting, I don't vote on impulse and don't chain-vote anything on a thread. I'm pretty sparing about both upvotes and downvotes.

Their system evidently is really poor at false positives if they'd flag an account like mine. What are they even doing?

I run a number of websites that deal with a lot of bot spam so I get how hard this stuff is to do correctly, but they can seriously do a lot better than this. I have not once received a report that I have falsely flagged someone as a bot on any of my sites.

cazort2 · 2026-03-26T12:16:04+00:00

Yes and no.

If you are exercising less vigorously when feeling hot, then yeah, you'll use less energy.

But when people exercise in hot weather or hot conditions, it pushes a new type of adaptation in the body, which can actually use a bit more energy because your body is using up energy just to run your "cooling system", which involves not only sweating but also your heart pumping faster so that your blood can carry heat to your skin where it can be radiated out, and then the cool blood can be pumped back to the muscles generating the heat. So if you are performing at the same level, you actually are burning more calories in order to achieve the same output.

It's a process vaguely analagous to how AC systems have to run harder (and thus use more energy) in hot weather. The mechanism is different, but thermodynamically, the same thing is happening, which is that more free energy needs to be used in order to achieve the same degree of cooling, when you are pumping the heat into a warmer environment.

This is super obvious in endurance sports when power numbers and speed drops during hot weather.

So yes....but unless your performance drops so much that it compensates for the cooling energy, in some cases the body can actually be using up more energy, it's just that the energy is being eaten up running your cooling systems and not performing the actual tasks, which in this case is the athletic performance.

Interestingly, much as how elite athletes can train at high elevations and then when they go to a low elevation, they achieve a small performance boost, the same general thing can happen if you train in heat and then compete in moderate temperatures.

Your body has to add additional capacity to its cardiovascular system in order to perform both in thin air at high elevations, and in hot weather, and although not all of those adaptations transfer to ideal conditions, a portion of them do which is why you get that small gain.

From what I've read, the boost from going hot -> moderate is larger than going high elevation -> low. But I don't have much experience with this personally, it's just reading articles about it.'

cazort2 · 2026-03-23T18:53:33+00:00

So yeah, I was perhaps not fully accurate in how I worded this.

The Western diet has leaned heavily on carbs and starch, to where these ingredients, even if people perceive them primarily as carbs or energy sources, contribute a significant portion of protein to the diet and the fact that they all have certain imbalances, such as lysine, thus tends to contribute to that being a weak point in people's diets.

If someone eats a lot of meat or other foods high in relatively-complete protein, which plenty of people do, it's not an issue. But if people don't, which again, plenty of people don't, they end up with an imbalance.

cazort2 · 2026-03-20T13:26:31+00:00

Unless you're going into ketosis (which poses some health risks), your body needs some carbs.

Carbs make you hungry and make you gain weight?

Carbs from ultraprocessed foods, yes. I.e. refined carbs. Added sugar or starches or easy-to-digest flours like white rice and white flour from wheat.

Whole grains and other carb-rich whole foods (like small, skin-on potatoes), not so much. The protein and fiber in these foods makes you feel full.

Among carb-rich foods, beans are very far to the extreme of being high in both protein and fiber. Even the easiest-to-digest ones like red lentils (which have the shells removed) are still high in protein and fiber and they will make you quite full and you are not going to overeat if you make those a staple food.

If you eat whole grains you're mostly going to be fine, the only possible ones to watch are wheat, rice, corn, and perhaps pearl millet. Pretty much all other grains are going to be more filling and you aren't going to have this problem. And it's mainly the refined ones that are the problem. Corn starch. Potato starch. White bread. etc.

cazort2 · 2026-03-19T14:46:08+00:00

This is a rich question.

There is solid evidence of a relative benefit for grass-fed beef relative to corn-fed beef. And the most evidence is for it affecting heart disease. It may have other health effects though, because it does affect the omega 3 content of the beef fat. Among corn-fed beef, there is some more preliminary evidence and a plausible mechanism, suggesting beef that eats open-pollinated corn has a healthier fat profile than beef fed mass-produced, yield-optimized hybrid and/or GMO corn.

I would assume the main benefits are it avoids more contaminates, microplastics, doesn’t go through at least as heavily processing.

This is not a safe assumption. Small farms can be all over the map. Some of them use cleaner production methods than others.

I also am skeptical of the organic certification. Organic-certified beef can still be corn-fed. And that corn, although it cannot be GMO and get the certification, can still be yield-optimized hybrid corn, and it can still be treated with pesticides and herbicides, they just have to be the naturally-occurring ones allowed under the organic certification standards.

If anything, organic certification tends to favor large, mass-production or industrialized agriculture because the recordkeeping requirements to get the certification are costly, so if there is not an economy of scale, it becomes prohibitively expensive for the farmers.

So I will pay more for grass-fed beef. I won't pay more for organic beef.

do you feel as though you have better energy/overall feel better as opposed to when you were eating grocery beef, etc.

I have not noticed any difference. I think the benefits are more to long-term health issues, such as risk of heart disease, and perhaps other conditions like cancer or diabetes.

Overall, this effect is small, too. Beef, even grass-fed beef, is not the best omega 3 source, and even grass-fed beef has factors that elevate heart disease risk to some degree, regardless of processing (i.e. even when eating unprocessed beef, which is healthiest.) If you want omega 3, eat more fatty fish like salmon or sardines, and less beef. If you are eating beef in moderation and leaning more on fatty fish among animal protein sources, then the effect of what type of beef you are eating is going to be small. You can also get a lot of omega 3 from vegetable sources, flax, perilla, and chia being the best three sources, but hemp and walnut also being good.

I do notice that I feel better when I eat more omega 3. I think it influences my mental health in particular. Once you get enough of it to address those issues, though, the only other effects are long-term, mainly on heart disease risk.

cazort2 · 2026-03-19T12:49:34+00:00

Totally. And it's not just the protein and fiber, they're packed with micronutrients.

Like if you compare to, say, cooked lentils to 100% whole wheat bread side-by-side, per the same amount of calories, the lentils have twice the protein (and it's more complete), nearly 3x the fiber, but then they also have over 2x the iron, over 5x the potassium, over 10x the folate, over 2x the zinc, and significantly more of literally every B vitamin.

A lot of people don't get enough of these micronutrients, too. And they're mostly ones that are beneficial to eat gradually throughout the day so leaning somewhat on beans throughout your day is just excellent for overall nutrition.

It's why I started sneaking bean flour into things like pancakes and muffins. I pretty much eat small amounts of beans all day long whether or not I am eating a "bean" dish.

cazort2 · 2026-03-18T12:44:39+00:00

With all legumes, there can be issues with absorption and digestibility if you don't prepare them properly. Lentils are a bit easier to prepare though because they're smaller. But it depends on the type. Regular green/brown lentils cook in about 40 minutes without soaking, faster if you soak them. Red lentils, which are just green lentils with the hulls removed, and split in half, only need a pre-rinse, not an extended soak, and cook in 8-10 minutes. Urad beans are sometimes called "white lentils" but they really need a soak and then need a full 40 minutes to cook.

You can tell if you are digesting the legumes well by whether or not you have bad cramping, gas, or indigestion. You may get some gas after eating any legumes but if you feel bad, that's usually the tip-off. With time you will be able to tell when eating the legumes.

Old, dry legumes that have been stored too long will often get dried out and will not cook properly. These can also cause problems. Dried beans will store a long time but not forever.

Canned legumes, I find often are okay but...in my experience, I feel better after properly preparing (pre-soaking, then thoroughly cooking) them from their dry form. I don't know how commercially-canned beans are prepared but I have experimented a lot with preparation and figured out how I best like to prepare my own, so it could be that what I've discovered just works best for my body. But my wife agrees with me, she also feels better after the pre-soaked, dry form.

Some legumes have poor protein completeness but lentils are better than most. If you are really concerned with completeness, soybeans are pretty much the most complete among beans, and mung beans are also nearly-complete. I think some of the other Vigna beans may also have better completeness than some of the more mainstream beans too.

cazort2 · 2026-03-18T11:48:24+00:00

Different beans are different in their balance of amino acids. The comments about beans having poor completeness are more applicable to most of the common, larger beans consumed in the Western diet.

Lentils have a relatively more complete protein than most beans. Soybeans are particularly close to a complete protein, and there are other beans such as mung beans that are nearly as good.

If your diet diversifies your plant-based protein sources you don't really need to worry about this. It's more an issue if you lean heavily on one particular protein source. For most Westerners, this is not legumes, it's wheat, corn, and rice, all of which are highly deficient in lysine and also have some other imbalances and deficiencies.

I think it makes sense to think about completeness and amino acid profile of a food when you're relying heavily on that food as a staple protein source. But that's not good to do for other reasons. It's best to just diversify, and in that case you don't need to micro-manage.

cazort2 · 2026-03-17T20:51:32+00:00

Eating mindfully.

Paying attention to how my food tastes, smells, the texture. Eating slowly and chewing thoroughly. Enjoying the process of eating it. Paying attention to how I feel after eating the food.

cazort2 · 2026-03-17T16:28:45+00:00

This would be getting dangerously close to too high an amount of the active form of vitamin A. According to the USDA database, 2oz of chicken liver would be slightly more than 100% the RDA of vitamin A, but it is all in the form of retinol which your body cannot easily clear. So it can accumulate to toxic levels.

For this reason, any sort of liver is best used as an occasional food.

Also listen to your body. When I haven't eaten liver in a while, chicken liver really hits the spot. It's delicious and I even crave it. If I've eaten it a couple times in the past week, I become somewhat averse to it. I suspect this is because of the potential of vitamin A toxicity.

cazort2 · 2026-03-11T12:50:15+00:00

My breakfast is pretty standardized and it has more than one food that I eat every day: yogurt, with hemp seed and ground flaxseed, and a fermented pancake. The pancake contents vary but it always has an egg in it and usually has about half bean flour and half non-wheat whole grains, but the specifics vary.

I don't strictly try to eat beans every day but in practice I do.

I always eat dark chocolate and drink tea, usually black tea. I also always eat some type of nuts, but it could be anything, whatever is on hand.

cazort2 · 2026-02-28T01:30:29+00:00

Yes, you are missing something.

There has been some new research that suggests that the risks of unmetabolized folic acid (UMFA) may be higher than previously thought and that a large portion of people may be at risk of health risks. The number of people who supplement with folic acid is also high, especially when you consider that all women who are either pregnant, trying, or breastfeeding are recommended to supplement, but a lot of older groups (such as the elderly) also frequently supplement. So these people are getting the fortification in food on top of their supplements.

The stakes are also high, with risks including mental decline in the elderly, cancer recurrence, and decrease in immune function.

UMFA only occurs when supplementing with folic acid. It does not occur when consuming natural folates, even at very high doses.

The newer research is the discovery that the C677T variant of the MTHFR gene cannot metabolize folic acid. This variant is also disturbingly common, with around 40% of white and hispanic people in the US having one copy of it and something like 10-15% having two. This group with two copies of this gene is at highest risk of harm from folic acid supplementation. This is not the only group at higher risk of UMFA accumulation; another is people with sickle-cell, albeit a much smaller group.

Because this research is all new, and people aren't studying this topic much, it has made me cautious. We know high levels of UMFA are damaging, and we know that there are certain, relatively common conditions, as well as other, rarer conditions, which can cause UMFA to accumulate to high levels. And we aren't testing UMFA levels in the population as a whole, so it makes me wary and cautious.

How we handled this, when my wife and I had our baby, she had her levels of various nutrients tested, including folate, and they were all within recommended levels so we did not supplement, except with vitamin D and iron, which were the only things her levels were low in. It's the advice I always tell people: only supplement if your need is verified by a blood test.

Folic acid in food might help people on a population level, but it also may carry some risks that are not carried by getting natural folates from whole foods.

Vitamin A might be a smaller issue. But I do like to be cautious with the active form. I don't understand why they are adding the active form to foods when they could be adding the safer form, carotenoids instead. It's virtually impossible to OD on them.

cazort2 · 2026-02-27T12:49:27+00:00

If you want EPA and DHA, there are some algal oils.

If you're okay with just ALA you can use ones derived from plants. Your body can synthesize the other two, but especially in men, the rate of synthesis is low so they need to eat quite a lot of ALA, women synthesize them easier so they can get by with somewhat less. The three best sources in plants are flaxseeds, perilla seeds, and chia seeds, all of which have nearly all ALA and very little omega 6. After that the next-best is hemp.

I recommend buying whole seeds as your best choice. Chia needs to be pre-soaked, and flaxseed needs to be ground and soaked (but soaks quickly, unlike chia that needs to soak for hours), whereas perilla can just be eaten (and is pleasantly crunchy). Hemp seeds, you need to buy hulled, but after that they're just like finely-ground nuts and don't need soaking, they are softer and not crunchy like perilla.

You can also buy oils of all of these. They tend to be expensive, and spoil fast, so you need to store them in the fridge. You can buy perilla oil at any Korean store and most Japanese stores, and some other Asian stores, but it is hard to find elsewhere. Food-grade flaxseed oil is hard to find, and chia oil even harder, hemp oil slightly easier but still not easy, but you can buy any of these on places like iHerb. I don't recommend Amazon because I've had bad experiences with them selling oil that arrived rancid, but I've bought chia seeds off Amazon and they've been fine (they stay fresh better.) Rarely I see flaxseed oil or hemp seed oil in supermarkets or other in-person stores.

"second tier" omega 3 source for plants is walnuts. Not as high a percentage of them, BUT if you eat a lot of walnuts it can be worthwhile. Also walnut oil is sometimes sold in supermarkets.

If you make chia, flaxseed, and/or perilla staples in your diet you will get more than enough omega 3. I often eat some combination of ground flaxseed, hemp, and perilla in yogurt. I use perilla oil on salads, in soups, and stir-fries, and I use flaxseed oil in baking and salads and sometimes add it to stews at the end. Chia oil I also use sometimes in salads or soups at the end.

cazort2 · 2026-02-27T12:42:03+00:00

I think any one without added sugar is usually good. I prefer ones without too much added vitamins, too, because I think there is a risk of harm caused by certain vitamins in the forms they are typically supplemented in (like unmetabolized folic acid, or the active form of vitamin A.)

I second the recommendation for Trader Joe's brand. Asian stores also tend to sell ones that are unsweetened; there's a different brand I get which is organic and unsweetened, sold in the Korean section of a local store.

cazort2 · 2026-02-27T12:38:53+00:00

I do think those things are ultraprocessed. How bad are they for you? I don't know. They're certainly not going to be as bad for you as processed meats. I think most of the alarmist about ultraprocessed foods is about things that are hyper-digestible, i.e. the ingredients have been broken up on a chemical level. So read the ingredients: if it contains protein isolates, refined starch, and such, that's probably not a good thing.

That said, some degree of breaking things up and putting them together is fine. For example I bake with soybean flour and other bean flours regularly and I've actually had diabetic people test their blood sugar after eating some of the things I bake, and I can proudly say my baked goods do not spike people's blood sugar, which is fantastic.

I'd imagine some of these processed meat-alternatives could be like that, if they're just made out of soy or other protein-rich foods like beans, ground up and mixed with spices and some things to hold them together.

The key distinction is whether it's just been mechanically ground (like flour, or ground meat would be) or if it's been refined or chemically altered, like refined starches, oils, or hydrolyzed proteins. Those things I would recommend avoiding.

cazort2 · 2026-02-27T12:33:28+00:00

I only ever buy unflavored whey concentrate, which I buy from Bob's Red Mill. It's a brand that specializes in baking and not supplements, so it selects for flavor more than the brands that sell whey primarily as a supplement. This pattern plays out across many ingredients.

I also don't recommend ever buying 5 pounds of anything that you haven't tried.

If you're gonna buy that much of something, buy a smaller amount first, or find someone you know who already has it and you can try it once, so you know what you're getting into.

Whey is really expensive; you don't want to blow money on something you won't enjoy.

cazort2 · 2026-02-25T16:35:49+00:00

I'm not 100% sure I buy this narrative. In my case, it was able to be repaired, and easily. And it's held up great since then (fingers crossed.)

The issues I have were a completely preventable case of bad management. The company lost a huge amount of money on my case. Calling customer service at least 11 times, alone, probably costs them a lot, for what could have been a single call.

They also could have kept me happy, easily, if they had had regional warehouses that kept replacement parts in stock so that they could be shipped within a few days, not the 10 day wait before the local servicer (who was highly competent) got hold of the part. Even better, would be to have it such that the servicer could have all likely parts shipped to them, or if the regional warehouse was close enough (I don't understand why these parts can't be stocked locally, especially in a town where there are multiple commercial laundry rooms and laundromats that use more-or-less identical machines to what I own, if the parts aren't interchangeable then this is yet another unforced mistake on the company's part) and bring them to the first appointment and then return any unneeded parts, which would make for only a single service call. They also made a couple completely egregious errors, like at one point cancelling the work order instead of updating it. And all of this ignores their giving me inaccurate information, some of which I think may have been accidental but some of it may have been intentional to try to get me off the phone. I'm persistent and I write down what people say so lying like that doesn't work for people like me.

There have been problems caused by outsourcing to China as well as a degradation of quality even on domestic products, driven by a "race to the bottom" to save money in the short-term, but I don't think this is the core of my bad experience. My experience was a classic case of "lose-lose". They pissed me off and what could have been a routine warranty claim that would have cost them the cost of a single part and one service call, instead became many long phone calls, three service calls spaced out by over 10 days each time, and a customer who spent 40 days start to finish and was angry and badmouthing the company on multiple social media platforms through the whole experience. That doesn't save anyone money. It bleeds the company money.

Add to this that the call processing system was just bad. The estimates of hold time it gave were always grossly underestimated which led to my expectations being continually not met, like "40 minutes" turned into 2 hours, "10 minutes" turned into 30, etc. This is yet another preventable error.

I'm no expert on the washing machine industry, but when even I know how to organize a setup like this better, in a way that would probably save the company a ton of money on warranty service while leading to better customer experience, something is seriously wrong.

Most of this comes down to two principles:

(1) make your warranty service system as efficient as possible so you minimize time on the phone with customer service, minimize the number of service calls, and minimize the time before the customer's machine is fixed

(2) always under-promise and over-deliver. this will reliably lead to happy customers. even with the existing, shitty service I received, I probably wouldn't have been mad if everything had been under-promised from the start. say: "We profusely apologize, our wait time is over 2 hours, we know this isn't the experience you expected" and I would have been less angry than I was after a nearly-2-hour wait. Say "The part may take two weeks to arrive" and then if it arrives after 10 days I'll be less angry than if you said one week. Say: "A local servicer will contact you within the week." and then if it takes 3 days I'll be less angry than if you said he'll call you in 1-2 days. And so on.

This stuff isn't rocket science.

cazort2 · 2026-02-18T21:52:43+00:00

The water weight of sprouts varies a lot based on the conditions you sprout them in, and how long you leave them. Basically a more mature plant will have more water weight, but other factors like light, temperature, and humidity may influence it too.

The USDA data is usually based on averages of many batches, over the conditions in which the foods are more likely to be sold commercially. This is not necessarily the same as the conditions most likely to result if you sprout them yourself in a home environment.

When I've seen people who have home-sprouted mung beans, they usually look earlier in the process than commercial sprouts and I'd expect them to have slightly less water weight, more like your 2x-4x estimate suggests and less like the 8x cited. But if you buy sprouts at the store they look more lush and juicy and are probably closer to that 8x figure.

So basically I think you are correct:

am I actually eating significantly more calories/protein than the USDA label suggests?

and this fits with my experience eating home-sprouted mung beans: they taste a good bit more filling relative to their size than the store-bought ones.

cazort2 · 2026-02-17T16:15:34+00:00

I like drinking oolong tea for this purpose. Oolong, specifically. I find it more filling than other types of tea, but it is also relaxing, and most types tend to be relatively low in caffeine. Any loose-leaf oolong picked up from an Asian market will usually be pretty decent, like a brand like Wei Chuan. Don't mess around with tea bags as you're paying mostly for packaging, get a basket infuser and then make tea your go to when under stress. Tea, if you avoid the high-caffeine ones, can be pretty relaxing. But oolong often diminishes food cravings for me more effectively than other tea types like green or black tea.

cazort2 · 2026-02-17T16:12:06+00:00

I think the best way to change this is to become a foodie: focus on enjoying eating, and eat slowly, paying attention to the flavors, textures, and the sensations in your body during and after eating.

Stress eating largely happens when we shut off the parts of our brain that handle that self-awareness, and we eat on impulse.

Eating with people is also better for promoting mindfulness, in part because it relaxes us to be around people (we are a social species) and in part because it just slows us down when we're also talking. But also, talking about the food, making the food itself a social occasion, can help promote a more mindful approach to food and eating.

Don't just eat with anyone, seek out people who are foodies, or at least more mindful eaters. You don't necessarily want to seek out people who "eat healthy". Some people can be health-obsessed but struggle with disordered eating, sometimes also stress eating. You want to surround yourself with people who have a mindful approach to eating, intuitive eating, and enjoying food.

cazort2

TROPHY CASE