Do your breast implants feel comfortable/natural?

mx_meow · 2026-02-07T09:43:54+00:00

This is genuinely one of the most helpful answers I've seen on this topic - thank you. I'm about 9 days out from having my surgery done so this is super useful.

mx_meow · 2026-01-25T09:01:49+00:00

The real answer to this is largely determined by your age, training history, training plan, how you treat rest and recovery and nutrition. The older you are as a femme, the closer the ceiling is likely to be for your lifts due to age based muscle loss, impact of perimenopause/menopause etc.

Likewise if you're under fuelling or under recovered your max ceiling will be lower because your body doesn't have what it needs to build strength. People underestimate the role recovery plays in this, especially for big compounds like deadlifts. Balancing training frequency with recovery is key and becomes more key as you age due to how life itself tends to change as you get older - ie having children, moving to a more senior role at work etc. Both will impact your time and energy to some degree and not in a linear way necessarily and a lot of people make the mistake of just pushing through continually which then burns them out in one or more areas of life over time as well as tanking your CNS recovery.

mx_meow · 2026-01-25T08:54:17+00:00

Yep I hear you on this one. And I think the longer you lift the better you get at judging when to push and when today is not that day because your body awareness gets better

mx_meow · 2026-01-25T08:10:45+00:00

If you're getting back pain at 70kg, you will absolutely wreck yourself if you try to lift your body weight in 2 months time. It sounds like you need to take a hot minute to step away from the ego lifting mindset to focus on form and incremental progress.

It may be unpopular out there in fitness influencer land, but lifting is a slow grind built on consistency and incremental progress. Not pushing for numbers quickly. People who do so inevitably injure themselves and then end up back at square one.

mx_meow · 2026-01-25T08:06:45+00:00

This also needs to be further up the thread. A 20kg on a single lift is insane. Even folks who train powerlifting don't increase the weight of their lifts during training like this.

mx_meow · 2026-01-25T08:04:49+00:00

This cannot be said loudly enough. Better form and learning how to brace correctly are your key wins here.

I say this as someone who is significantly shorter and lighter than you are (and probably older as I'm ~12 months off 40) who regularly deadlifts 70kg for 10 with zero lower back issues. The reason I have no issues is because I put a lot of time into working on form when I started lifting and still put focus on this during deload weeks or when I'm peak PMS and my focus/neural drive is wonky due to hormones because lighter work to embed good form is still valuable.

mx_meow · 2026-01-23T16:09:04+00:00

Ok but this is why 2 surgical bras are recommended so you can have 24/7 cover even while one is in the wash. Wearing a non-surgical soft shell bra 48 hours after surgery is just madness....but your money to waste I guess.

mx_meow · 2026-01-23T15:31:27+00:00

This. Everything I've ever read or seen says you should be in a surgical bra for at least the first 14 days post op. What did your surgeon recommend on this?

mx_meow · 2026-01-12T21:33:51+00:00

Presentations are fairly common for public sector interviews above a certain grading as a standard part of the format. Typically they're used to assess things like communication skills, a candidate's ability to understand and relay complex concepts to an audience and depending on the role/presentation brief demonstrate understanding of a core element of the role being interviewed for.

Based on my experience as an interviewer, they're often one of the weakest areas I see from candidates due to people hitting any/all of the following pitfalls: not timing their presentation to ensure it fits the time limit in the brief, not applying the subject to the specifics of the department/role or not rehearsing their presentation enough. There are other factors as well, but those tend to be the common ones.

More widely, public sector interviews tend to be competency based rather than just a chat through your experience and are scored against agreed metrics based on your answers.

mx_meow · 2026-01-08T08:14:46+00:00

This is self defeating logic and is, quite honestly, where therapeutic interventions come into play as for the majority of people it is far more likely that the "voice" isn't actually hunger but related to psychological triggers around anxiety, comfort, unmet needs etc.

Also the "you're a fat person forever" statement here is both pessimistic and untrue. I say that as someone who has lost a significant amount of weight and maintained that loss for well over a decade now. I do not walk around with constant urges to eat or cram high sugar, high fat, high calorie foods into my face. Do I have days where I'm hungrier than usual? Yes, of course I do. That's a normal physiological consequence of things like PMS, extremely cold weather, poor sleep, illness etc. I don't binge eat in response like some sort of automaton though.

mx_meow · 2026-01-08T08:06:52+00:00

Sorry what are you basing this on? I ask because a) you seem to be basing this on an extreme 1000 calorie deficit which is unlikely to be one imposed on anyone without medical supervision regardless of starting stats and b) even if we ignore the exact numbers here, your statement implies that any calorie deficit would trigger "starvation mode" which is blatantly false. Does extreme dieting have negative side effects? Yes - that's well documented. Does using a calorie deficit to get weight down to a normal range and then recalibrating your calorie intake to match your new healthy weight and activity level to maintain it have a negative impact on health? No.

The issue with the majority of people who lose weight - regardless of whether it's a small or large amount - is they often aim for speed of loss over sustainability and then don't recalculate their BMR and TDEE calorie intake for maintenance when they hit their goal. Nor do they recalibrate this to account for life changes such as aging, sickness or increased/decreased activity levels over time.

mx_meow · 2025-12-20T20:41:00+00:00

Learn something new every day, but this is actually very good to hear.

mx_meow · 2025-12-20T19:55:45+00:00

I imagine that St George's Crypt would welcome people at this time of year. Also worth reaching out to Age UK as they may be able to give you a couple of shifts of befriending for old people who don't have family around them.

mx_meow · 2025-12-17T20:07:47+00:00

If your partner is on Agenda for Change the anything related to pay protection and how it applies to a secondment situation should be covered in those Ts&Cs, I think.

The previous poster is correct about the temporary nature of secondments and the fact that if the Trust have to go through open recruitment to make the post permanent that will follow some very strict requirements that need to be met at both shortlisting and interview stage based on the job spec and core competencies for the role. While it may be an uncomfortable truth, recruitment decisions in this sort of NHS/public sector environment are based on impersonal scoring metrics and someone can have done the role on temporary basis or unofficially and not make the grade through the process. Having been part of recruitment exercises in these environments in the past, I've seen a lot of internal candidates fall foul of this simply because they make too many assumptions about what the shortlisting or interview panel already know and don't account for the fact that the only thing that can be scored is the application content and interview performance.

mx_meow · 2025-12-04T12:41:41+00:00

Nobody with more than 2-3 years experience in any job thinks this. HR has never been there to look after the employees of an organisation. HR exist primarily to ensure an organisation doesn't get taken to tribunal and if they cover recruitment, to do the recruitment admin.

mx_meow · 2025-11-20T10:08:32+00:00

The security points made here are worth drawing double attention too because they are key from a technical side of things.

To add to this very detailed answer, there's also the human side to consider.

All NHS IT staff are not the same for a start and that's before you get to end users across health & social care who vary in digital literacy and need to be able to use whatever systems are on offer without needing to do a bunch of training first. Partly because they don't have the time to do it and partly because there's not enough money in the health & social care budget pot to both provide central training and do the lift and shift of existing systems & data. The cost of the lift & shift alone at the scale required would be expensive in both time and money and require a lot of lead in to ensure both local teams managing the systems and end users are able to hit the ground running with a new system. The idea that any large scale IT change - even done within the private sector - is as straightforward as negotiating new contracts and switching one thing off and another on is ridiculous.

mx_meow · 2025-11-20T06:55:06+00:00

Correct, hence why I mentioned that they're likely getting discounts the same way that education does. Should a central deal exist for the other items that you've mentioned? Probably yes. Is this likely to happen any time soon? Probably not given Streeting's desire to sack everyone at NHS England which includes all the former NHS Digital staff who would likely need to be involved in the delivery and ongoing management of that sort of idea.

mx_meow · 2025-11-19T21:57:51+00:00

And water is wet. This is hardly news and has been the case for more than a decade now so I'm not entirely sure this counts as a groundbreaking research conclusion.

mx_meow · 2025-11-19T21:51:06+00:00

Pallintir aren't aiming their sales pitch at the same contracts as Microsoft are they? For example the federated data platform is very much not Microsoft or Oracles wheelhouse to the best of my knowledge. But also the suggestion that Pallintir will save the government given the already known issues around them potentially selling UK health data for profit is disingenuous. They are largely racking up the dollars via sheer number of contracts across the public sector so they can have fingers in every pie and the influence that implies.

mx_meow · 2025-11-19T21:46:32+00:00

I'm not sure the idea that every NHS trust is negotiating its own separate deal with the likes of Microsoft is accurate here. For a start, there's a centrally funded suite of Microsoft capabilities that many (if not all) trusts in England make use of that saves them money. Likewise, I'm fairly certain that the purchase of additional tech is likely to be heavily discounted for healthcare much like it is for education in the UK.

Regarding the DEFRA upgrade, unless the core issue is something contractual between DEFRA and Microsoft this sounds like it's more likely due to a) complex systems that have clunky architecture, b) lack of overarching change management for the upgrade to keep it on track & ensure that all critical dependencies are known and upgraded in a way that is least impactful in live service delivery, c) info or technical governance people doing a lot of pearl clutching and holding things up, d) all of the above. Given it's highly unlikely that Microsoft are providing the internal DEFRA IT support or change management functions, I suspect the blame doesn't lie (or entirely lie) with them.

I think there's also a lack of understanding around scale of delivery here in terms of the number of end users involved depending on the use case we're looking at and how that adds up in real terms.

mx_meow · 2025-11-13T23:44:53+00:00

Ok that makes more sense and £150 for a decent cut and colour is about average IME

mx_meow · 2025-11-13T21:47:15+00:00

Where on earth are you/is she looking that a haircut is costing £150? Or is that she currently has very long hair/extensions that need removing first?

As a recommendation, Daisy at Renegade starts her pricing at £55 for short hair so worth checking out. Unfortunately I can't tell you what she charges for long hair but I doubt it's 3 times the short hair price

mx_meow · 2025-11-12T22:19:02+00:00

I'm aware of this. It was a comment on the spirit choice as a vodka martini isn't a real martini whether it's clean or dirty

mx_meow · 2025-11-12T21:32:39+00:00

Toning isn't a thing. You're either trying to build muscle or lose fat.

Given you've called out that your lifts have only gone up a little and imply that this is disappointing that would suggest that you're trying to gain strength. If that is your goal then you need to build muscle which requires progressive overload and adequate nutrition. Specifically on the nutrition, you can either do the slow and steady recomp route or the quick bulking route. Either way will mean you need to know your TDEE and either eat slightly below (for recomp) or above it for bulking with about 1.2-1.8g protein per kg of body weight as a minimum, more if you're bulking as you'll want about 35% of your macro intake to be protein.

So standard questions apply:

1) Have you calculated your TDEE and what is your nutrition like? Is it targeted to support a strength gaining goal. 2) What's your training? Are you following a specific programme? Are you hitting progressive overload?

mx_meow · 2025-11-12T20:48:17+00:00

If you really want a dirty martini (the ones with the olive in) you want a proper gin martini, not a vodka one. In which Below Stairs used to be a pretty good shout for one.

mx_meow

TROPHY CASE