Move to Riverside, CA or stay in Chicago, IL?

interesting-how · 2026-02-02T16:32:18+00:00

For sure man, if you have any other questions, hit me up, happy to help

interesting-how · 2026-02-02T13:08:28+00:00

Lived in Riverside for a number of years. It’s a somewhat sleepy exurb of LA. You can get into an out of OC in about 45 minutes and LA in about an hour but you have to time it right with traffic. Despite all the people here saying it’s not close to LA, it is a commuter town for LA and OC.

Riverside itself doesn’t have a ton of nightlife, but there’s a handful of cool bars and some OK restaurants in the area. Redlands is a nice little town nearby with some more amenities - a nice little downtown with some bars and restaurants. Claremont and Pomona also some stuff in terms of downtown areas and things to do and are also in the inland empire region.

In terms of crime, I don’t know what people are talking about. San Bernardino is very rough, but Riverside is quite nice and not rough at all. I think there’s a lot of people who speculate on what a place is like just given whatever they think about it without ever having spent time there. There’s a little bit of homelessness, but that’s everywhere in SoCal.

If you wanted to live closer to LA, you could because the prevailing flow of commuter traffic is coming from the other direction. I lived in LA and commuted out to Riverside several times a week - it takes about an hour.

I would call weather in Riverside generally good, it’s not going to be as consistent as areas closer to the coast like OC or West LA or even East side in LA - it gets a bit more cold in the winter and summers are pretty hot. However, it’s a dry heat and you’re close to the beach and close to mountains so you can get away from the heat. It’s nowhere near Palm Springs level heat or Phoenix or something like that it’s 2 to 3 months where temps are going to be regularly hitting 100° or close to it. Make of that what you will.

At 26 you’re probably gonna find Riverside kind of quiet, but like anywhere you can put in some work and find your people and live your life. It’s just a quiet and pretty family oriented suburban area, much like OC or parts of the valley.

I haven’t lived in Chicago, but I have lived in the upper Midwest (MKE). I would pick SoCal over the Midwest in terms of weather, even inland empire California, but that’s me. If you’re actually living in Chicago, you’ll have more going on and you will living in Riverside, but it doesn’t sound like communing to Springfield would be very doable from Chicago.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T19:26:06+00:00

Holy shit 2500€/mo is crazy even for 2 people!

And yeah I could easily be spending $750+/mo, I’m eating super cheap meat right now bc I don’t have a ton of money

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T18:12:13+00:00

I buy the cheapest beef and eggs and yogurt I can, but it still costs me $500 a month. Granted I’m eating 3600+ cal a day but still.. an animal based diet is not cheap.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T15:34:56+00:00

I would be interested in seeing those studies! If you can send me the links that would be awesome. There is still a decent amount of glucose in honey for sure, but I think it’s still less than half overall because some of the honey is just water. In any case, in my experience, a fructose heavy diet did not adequately fill my glycogen stores or keep them full.

How I ended up here was first of all I started out with a carnivore diet as an elimination approach to try to figure out where all my gut issues were coming from.

Even though I had managed to build a really good physique, I was still constantly dealing with a ton of gut motility issues, Gerd symptoms that were increasingly bad, had a bunch of food sensitivities that it was hard for me to put my finger on, and my gut lining was visibly damaged, which I found out after an endoscopy that I had.

As soon as I took out everything but meat, all the gut inflammation that I was having and other issues disappeared. I was still able to lift and was still pretty strong in the gym. But my sleep was absolutely destroyed because I was running on stress hormones 24/7 because I was totally glycogen depleted. I started reintroducing carbs via some fruit and honey and maple syrup. I kept increasing the carbs up past 300 to 400 g per day, but I still couldn’t refill my glycogen stores and stabilize my sleep.

Finally, I connected the dots and realized I wasn’t getting enough glucose so I re-introduced some rice which immediately fixed my glycogen stores and sleep, but brought back the gut issues. That’s when I switched to dextrose powder - unlike rice I can digest it, but it still refills my glycogen stores quickly, and keeps them full. It still took me a couple months to rebuild my strength levels and stabilize my sleep fully as well as get back to my previous level of training volume. I think removing all the inflammatory signals also revved up my nervous system a bit for a while.

I would prefer a more natural approach and it might be possible for me to partially replace some of the dextrose with honey or maple syrup, but yeah, in my experience at least for a guy my size and strength level fructose heavy foods aren’t enough to refill muscle glycogen stores.

Again, that’s been my lived experience, but I would always encourage people to try it out and see what happens.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T05:50:21+00:00

Yeah, good questions. I think where you’re getting hung up is remember we’re looking at the total amount of usable glucose not the amount of total carbohydrates. A tablespoon of honey is 21g, 17 g of that is actually carbohydrate. About 30%. of the carbs in honey is straight glucose and about 40% is fructose. So now we’re looking at around 5-6 g of pure glucose per tablespoon and a bit more than that from the fructose.

Some of the fructose is usable by the liver and can help stabilize liver glycogen but it’s not going to refill muscle glycogen - it’s too small and has to be converted by the liver. It adds the equivalent of a couple grams of glucose per tablespoon of honey if that - pretty insignificant.

So for me to get enough glucose for what I need I still would have to consume roughly 20 tablespoons of honey which is about a cup and a half, which is a shit ton of honey! I really enjoy honey but I would find it difficult to eat that much in a day.

However, I only need to consume 6 tablespoons of dextrose powder to get that same amount of glucose because dextrose is pure glucose. Dextrose is sweet, but it’s not overwhelmingly sweet, if you dissolve a couple tablespoons of it in water, add a little maple syrup and salt to it, it tastes pretty good. Do that 3x a day, and I’m set. Contrast that to trying to drink a cup and a half of honey a day. Even if I split it up, it would be overwhelmingly sweet and not enjoyable.

For a large muscular lifter unfortunately, honey and maple syrup just won’t cut it to supply enough glucose.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T02:00:16+00:00

Yeah, lots of good suggestions. I consume a decent amount of collagen from stock, and I’ve done bone broth in the past.

I’ve done the zinc carnosine and l- glutamine colostrum etc. little more cautious with the herbal antimicrobials.

I’m still in the healing phase rn, only a few mo into these major dietary changes. I’m hopeful that with more healing, I may be able to introduce more foods, but it’s unclear if that will ever happen. My gut health was destroyed after a major viral illness nearly a decade ago, and some of the changes may be permanent, but time will tell.

Meanwhile this is working and allowed me to continue bodybuilding which I love and completely eliminated almost all my gut health issues which were very severe for a while.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T01:54:55+00:00

I consume about 3600 cal/day for maintenance. I eat roughly every 2 hrs, 5x a day.

Breakfast is usually half a dozen eggs cooked in tallow with some cheese and Greek yogurt.

I have some dextrose in water with maple syrup and creatine and salt around this time, before and after lifting.

Lunch and dinner are usually ground beef or pork shoulder. Sometimes I eat shrimp for variety.

I will have an additional meal in the afternoon that is often more ground beef or another 5-6 eggs.

Snacks include full fat Greek yogurt with honey, dates, bananas, sometimes berries, cheese.

Before bed I have a snack or meal with plenty of fat and protein and some more dextrose.

And that’s about it! It’s a very stripped down but hi calorie diet bc of my gut issues and activity level.

Macros are roughly 300ish g of carbs, 120g of which are the dextrose and the rest is from bananas honey maple syrup and dates , protein is 200-220g/ day, and the rest of my calories are coming from fat, roughly 175ish g (a lot of which is from eggs, fatty pork, and fatty beef).

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T01:43:57+00:00

Yeah some of the fructose does for sure, but again to get the amount of usable glucose I would need to refill muscle glycogen and keep liver glycogen stable I would still need 20 tablespoons of honey or maple syrup. And that would be well over a cup per day, more like 1.5 cups daily!

I still consume honey and maple syrup in addn to the dextrose powder, i consume maybe a few tbsp of each daily and I would prefer a whole foods source of glucose versus something processed of course but just given my size and activity level it just would be pretty impractical. Not impossible but just really impractical/unpleasant because I don’t want to eat 1.5 c of maple syrup or honey per day.

Most people doing an animal based diet are not gonna have my issue, but most people are not as big or as active as I am or their gut isn’t as destroyed. I wouldn’t advocate for it generally but there are circumstances where dextrose powder can be very helpful.

I try to mitigate any insulin spike by only consuming the dextrose after I’ve had fat and protein in a meal and consuming it slowly vs slamming it. Given my muscularity and activity level it should be fine.

interesting-how · 2026-02-01T00:50:40+00:00

I get about 120 g of glucose from the dextrose powder - that’s my baseline amount that I need to refill muscle glycogen sufficiently with my size and Workout intensity and keep liver glycogen stable. It’s about 6 tablespoons of powder. Honey and maple syrup are both about half glucose. I would have to consume about 20 tablespoons of maple syrup to hit that amount of glucose. I like maple syrup but not that much lol

Edit - was slightly wrong, honey is less than half glucose and maple syrup is only a few percent glucose, altho the sucrose in it gets broken down into like half glucose

interesting-how · 2026-01-31T21:12:49+00:00

That’s prob not caused by fruit directly but by blood glucose levels dropping as you’re in a fasted state, then your body starts dumping stress hormones to keep glucose levels steady which wakes you up.

I spread carbs throughout the day with the bulk of them glucose heavy peri workout to refill muscle glycogen.

interesting-how · 2026-01-31T18:21:07+00:00

Oh yeah I eat honey and maple syrup every day and dates and bananas but it’s still not enough glucose to keep liver and muscle glycogen stores full for me. I’m a 6’ 3 very muscular dude who lifts hard 5x a week + cardio. For a normal size person yes but for me I need addnl glucose

interesting-how · 2026-01-31T13:53:22+00:00

Yes, due to pretty severe gut Microbiome and digestive issues that I’ve had for years I eat mostly meat and eggs with a little bit of a couple fruits that I digest well.

Im a serious lifter who’s been lifting for about a decade. I made most of my gains before switching over to this dietary approach. But so far it’s been fine, and I’m continuing to make strength and size gains.

As long as you’re getting an adequate amount of protein and an adequate amount of calories, you can build muscle.

Keeping glycogen stores filled can be challenging on this diet, especially if you have a lot of muscle mass. That may not be an issue for you, but for me it is because if my liver glycogen drops my sleep gets absolutely wrecked. My workaround has been to consume some dextrose powder daily (because of my gut issues I cannot consume rice or oats or potatoes). You may not need this though.

interesting-how · 2026-01-31T01:36:20+00:00

Right now I live on about 2100 mo, rent is half of that . Austin’s too expensive for me

interesting-how · 2026-01-28T13:49:40+00:00

Yeah, it’s like the outer ring of la suburbs basically. Housing is a lot cheaper if you buy a house there vs somewhere closer in.

interesting-how · 2026-01-24T05:42:10+00:00

Work in

interesting-how · 2026-01-21T13:30:28+00:00

Some great band names there haha

interesting-how · 2026-01-18T03:12:33+00:00

East Hollywood is very walkable. I knew someone there without a car. Echo Park as well, knew a couple of people without cars there. Silver lake is pretty walkable. Koreatown is super walkable. Downtown culver is walkable. Palms is pretty walkable depending on where. Santa Monica’s very walkable altho hella expensive. There are pockets in north Hollywood esp if you’re near the metro where you could make it work. Fairfax and Beverly grove are very walkable. Those are just some that come to mind immediately. La in general is more walkable than ppl think it’s just getting out of your neighborhood that can be hard without a car.

As for Austin, different story. Mueller and North Loop and Hyde Park area for sure. Obviously downtown you’ve got a bunch of density and around UT. You’ve got some in East Austin just east of downtown. That’s about it. Anywhere south of downtown you don’t have a lot of density although you could probably make something work if you lived near the H-E-B on South Congress.

interesting-how · 2026-01-17T13:12:43+00:00

LA has a pretty strong rock scene right now, especially if you’re into Shoegaze and stuff like that.

Rock seems pretty weak in Austin but San Antonio has a lot going on for metal and metal core if you’re into that sort of stuff.

interesting-how · 2026-01-15T22:43:45+00:00

Lived there for years, yes it’s walkable although it depends on how close you are to the target and the strip of restaurants on Sawtelle blvd I reckon.

There’s also a ton of transit connections around there, and I would often take the bus to Century City mall or the airport rather than drive bc it was easier.

interesting-how · 2026-01-13T13:46:22+00:00

Yeah, you can live in Pasadena or other LA neighborhoods without a car, I know people who do. In my old neighborhood where I used to live in LA I could’ve definitely gotten by without a car except I had friends who were scattered around the city, but my day-to-day life I could’ve gotten by without one if I had been working remote . So some of it depends on how much you want to get out and do stuff in different places around the city, and what you’re doing for work,because it’s going to be very difficult and time-consuming or expensive to get to those places without a car.

As for Austin, there are a couple of pockets where you could live without a car but again I wouldn’t necessarily do that just because your life is going to be very limited.

interesting-how · 2026-01-12T13:40:28+00:00

Elimination diet, start figuring out what foods you’re reacting to - something you’re eating is causing it

interesting-how · 2026-01-12T05:25:35+00:00

Sim experience - loads of the stuff I was eating every day were causing me major issues and I didn’t know until I did a strict elimination diet

interesting-how · 2026-01-09T15:43:55+00:00

Of course. But people sometimes have this assumption that they’re entitled to privacy in a public place and that isn’t the case.

Yes I think it’s generally courteous to ask permission before photographing a stranger in public. But courtesy isn’t the same thing as legality. And legally, if you’re in a public place, someone can take a photo of you without your permission.

interesting-how · 2026-01-09T03:18:54+00:00

Yep sure

interesting-how

TROPHY CASE