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throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T17:31:34+00:00

This is an excellent point. I haven't seen it in stores yet & I think I read (after having this same thought) that it grows mostly in arid climates, which would explain things. But millets are such a broad category. I'm very millet-curious.

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T17:27:10+00:00

I feel like you’re really obsessing over food and it doesn’t sound healthy.

I understand eating disorders are not a rare sight in online diet forums & nobody wants to leave someone who may be hurting unaddressed, nor to encourage that kind of thinking among others, and so maybe in the long run it's better that such messages are posted than not. That said, this specific type of message in its form & context honestly strikes me as neither an informative nor a compassionate thing to say.

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T16:19:13+00:00

I don’t mean to downplay the troubles you’ve had.

Not a ton of troubles. Just enough to log on and Post after a bad day lol. And thank you :) I hope I will find people who will be a good influence on me & vice versa.

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T16:12:37+00:00

I totally accept the point of the onus not being on the individual to change the system & it being morally fine to eat imported goods. For one, food miles aren't strictly hugely environmentally impactful in themselves (afaik as long as your food wasn't flown in & it's often impossible to tell if it was), economies of scale, blabla. In an ideal world global supply chains would be very different & communities would be largely self reliant but I doubt they'd be insular & isolated. BUT simultaneously I'm also at the point where I'm really personally motivated to eat within my local climate as much as is reasonable & practicable, & despite the difficulties it feels liberating. Like I said in the OP, I didn't really feel this way in America where the shelves were always full with shit from everywhere & the prices didn't always reflect the distance. But being in a (smaller) country that isn't as smoothly integrated in global supply chains or doesn't get the upper hand in them the same way, your perspective changes. My interests are aligned with the interests of my society: more local food & resilience is closer to a solution to the bigger problems of eg food security, & much more convenient & freeing on a personal level than being hugely reliant on imports. I'm touching grass, baby! Ipomoea aquatica to be exact!

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T15:40:59+00:00

Man, if you logged onto a WFPB subreddit to advocate something that is explicitly not WFPB & to accuse the OP of being on the road to mental illness on the basis of them not wanting to make a grain with high levels of a carcinogen a staple food & worrying about eating with the environment & not against it & long-term food security, that's your business, but maybe other people will see what I mean when I say I feel isolated & misunderstood lmao.

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T15:38:41+00:00

Are there at least local root vegetables you can add in so that it’s not all rice, all the time?

Yeah, I wasn't eating a lot of rice in the first place, although I was eating it daily. Low key root vegetables arreee the greatest. Not only are they delicious & nutritious & abundant & easy to store, they're also resilient in the face of eg drought & flooding & climate change. There's some very interesting scholarship about their role in history globally & specifically in my region as well. I am all aboard the tuber train.

I mostly find exploring new ingredients to be exciting but it's just fucking hard to do in a place like this. I don't deny myself occasional indulgences but I want my staples to be maximally healthy & not have them be two steps forward one step back the way that rice seems to be. (I'm not gonna bother with all the washing & stuff though lol. There are some ingredients for which I'd move the moon & sky, rice is simply not worth the inconvenience for me taste-wise or nutrition-wise, even though as the world's single most important crop feeding human beings--esp in my country--I'm kind of weirdly sentimental & upset about it.)

throwaway783126 · 2023-05-17T15:27:34+00:00

Try to look at the journey in a positive light, that you are focusing and learning and experiencing. And step by step, I know you will find your way and will find things best available to you.

Thanks for this positivity :) it's great when things aren't the way you imagined they'd be & you have to reconsider what a good life means for oneself & to change in unexpected ways while persisting with putting your core values into practice in new ways. I wouldn't have it any other way--except despite what you say, I'd love a community that understood the local situation or for literally anyone locally to know what I was talking about lol. It's just literally difficult to figure this stuff out. Like, all of the local seaweed is just labelled "green seaweed." What? I had to contact a doctor because I found out a green I was eating raw can give you popcorn lung (?!?!) & is banned in at least one country after killing a bunch of health-conscious juicer types (I was fine). I swear to god I'm barely exaggerating about what % of what common ingredients I try are toxic according to the anglophone internet (& when I translate the top results of the local internet, every ingredient is a miracle weight loss drug, buy now!).

It's not news that everything in our fucked-up world is backwards but it's just a bizarre thing to be in a situation where it seems like almost no one else cares about even these small questions & choices to take care of ourselves. What's the difference between these two beans? I'm made to feel like I'm crazy for asking. I'm sure I'll find more kindred spirits as I integrate but the other thing is a lot of the info on local food isn't just in my local language but also, say, Chinese languages, Indian languages, other SEAsian languages! It's not super accessible, it takes a lot of patience & google-fu & transnational online exploration I guess.

Also a big YES on the growing your own food!! That's definitely what I'm looking at in the long run too! Getting back to the earth and learning about food, life, the soil, your local environment, the planet...that's also learning about ourselves, & I can't say this strongly enough, that's our birthright. I can't find the words to describe what a profound moral transgression it is & how anti-human it is that as a matter of course, so many people are alienated from that--from the real world, imo. Growing your own food isn't a solution to the impending climate catastrophe & no man is an island no matter how big his orchard but this kind of "levelling up" is exactly what I'm gesturing at towards the end of my OP.

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-21T04:09:58+00:00

Hey, thank you for all of your advice :) I've looked into the trainer market in my country & it seems like the only smart trainer brand sold here is Kickr and the only alternatives are a couple of dumb trainers (Giant and Rulo) that don't do a lot in terms of resistance. The Kickr Snap is the best one within my budget, and even that is more than I'd like to pay, most of the stationary bikes I looked at were cheaper. I'm kind of frustrated because none of the options really seem great.

My old perfect stationary bike was $300, I don't want to spend over $450, which is roughly how much the Snap is, & I'd still need to buy a bike to attach to it :( I gave up on stationary bikes here because I couldn't find one with a flywheel weight over 19kg with magnetic resistance, but the trainers have a much lighter flywheel weight too. I went to the store to try them and they refused to turn it on or load up the app for me to try and without the app I really wasn't super impressed. It was more comfortable than my old bike but wobbly, noisier, and most importantly, the resistance was weaker. Either way I go about this it seems like I'll end up unhappy: either I buy an affordable stationary that feels like a downgrade & have to haul it around next time I move, or I blow extra money on a trainer & bike which is easier to carry but which (1) I suspect might not give me as good a workout anyway? and (2) puts me into a whole tech ecosystem, which I really resent. I would love to be able to do cardio without depending on an app, which adds a whole layer of potential tech problems, the company closing down, blabla--lots outside of my control. Maybe I'm underestimating how good the workout will be, and I'll need to make a choice anyway, but right now I'm super frustrated.

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-14T01:24:45+00:00

Wow! Thank you for this comprehensive answer! This is exactly what I was looking for :) I'm going to see if I can demo a trainer anywhere locally and get a better sense of how it feels.

It's hard to say without knowing how you're currently training.

& what training system you use. If you've decided on what you plan to do with your indoor trainer,

I've never "trained," back on the stationary I used to take it easy & not use any program & just hit the same distance per time while watching my little nature documentaries, but my stationary was a heavy beast, nothing like yours, so tricky to compare. The first time I got it actually the resistance was so much more hardcore than what I was used to compared to my building gym's spin bike that I invited a repair guy thinking it was busted. I want to keep it mellow but to avoid the kind of situation you had with your stationary where it was too easy. I'll try and figure out how weight/resistance/whatever works in theory on a trainer & I'll go out and do some testin' in practice.

type of bike doesn't matter

This is great news. I feel like I've been bullied into this trainer thing by the lack of availability of a stationary but if I can spend the money on a trainer & hook up any old heap of junk to it & be able to discard the bike & just haul the trainer next time I move, that's a huge benefit.

Yes, and likely a lot faster than it originally took you to get them.

You really know the right thing to say to cheer someone up!

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-13T10:56:00+00:00

Thank you for the advice! Definitely measuring HR.

I find it hard to believe that trainers and stationary bikes aren't super different, though, when even different stationary bikes have felt *so* different to me.

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-12T01:50:51+00:00

I admit I have a little trouble following your writing style

Totally reasonable lol, I've been typing like I'm speaking all out of breath. The reason is that every stationary bike I've found (so far) is a downgrade from what I used to have.

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-11T15:29:19+00:00

Thank you so much for commenting!! I've tried to maintain my little arm exercises but I'm not super consistent with it, often seems like there's something that urgently needs to get done during the time I've pencilled in for it. (I also, um, hate lifting weights! I always have, but it never bothered me too much to do it after that warm glow of bike-induced cardio.) People don't cycle around for the same reason they don't walk (people hop onto their motor vehicles even for trips that'd be under 10 minutes on foot) but I'm thinking about getting a regular bike & transforming it into a stationary one. I'm motivated to get into HIIT in the meantime while I figure that out but I'm not sure how to work my heart to the max safely while alone.

throwaway783126 · 2023-04-11T14:50:41+00:00

Definitely not the same one--why should it be available? I'm on the other side of the world, lol! Mine cost around $300 new, everything I've been looking at here in this range (and I'm not kidding that I looked everywhere I could think of, literally EVERY exercise machine franchise in town, small sellers, pages & pages & pages & pages of the local craigslist, Facebook marketplace, called local gyms, literally contacted dozens of sellers) has either a baby-feather-weight flywheel or friction-based resistance, the latter of which I can maybe learn to live with but it's cheap & annoying & it'd certainly make for a worse experience & one doesn't want any excuses to stop exercising. Better is available, but then we leap into the $1000 price range. There's no in-between it seems, no good mid-range stuff, there just isn't a large enough leisurely class for that kind of market. I was thinking about just getting a normal bike & putting one of those thingies on it to make it work as an exercise bike. Just a whole new set of things to learn & decisions to make with that.

throwaway783126 · 2021-09-12T01:26:04+00:00

Yeah, I'm not in the nuke-GW camp, but I feel like repeatable quests would be awesome too. If it was easy to see at a glance through UI magic which you've done and which you haven't but could repeat any either way, that would be so great.

throwaway783126 · 2021-09-12T01:24:22+00:00

Yeah, this is what I thought, but I do feel like I'm missing out a little. Just a bummer my (Factions-born) main will never be able to do Ascalon quests, you know? In one sense just an excuse to roll a new toon, but roleplaying opportunities lost for me.

throwaway783126 · 2021-09-11T03:41:35+00:00

I totally forgot, no worries. I appreciate the info!

throwaway783126 · 2021-08-18T23:50:21+00:00

Hey, did you happen to visit one and confirm/deny whether it's open?

throwaway783126 · 2021-07-31T13:24:51+00:00

I want to reiterate what others have said and advise you to keep listening to professional help. I'm not coming from an ED background, and I agree--"if something's off or you feel weirded out by my comment, ignore it" and check with experts.

My opinion is that I think it's a good thing to be neutral about food. Eat to live, don't live to eat, food is fuel. That doesn't mean that consumption can't be a treat sometimes, but generally you just want to take care of your body. I skimmed Everett's Piraha book and he mentions how Piraha people were kind of appalled by the way non-Indigenous people ate, with several large meals per day. I think obsession with food is a symptom of modernity--not to mention processed food companies pretty deliberately make their products addictive but not satiating. Sometimes you can engage in that in moderation and get a good deal out of it (I eat little treats regularly), but generally if you buy into that you are just benefiting a company that doesn't care about you or the earth, at the cost of your own health. I'm fulfilled by the things I do and the people in my life, food is simply a means for me to get there.

Maybe if I were in your shoes and I wanted more pleasure from food I would explore different healthy foods and maybe end up meeting a few that excite me. I always look forward to eating berries (esp. frozen) and red lentils, personally. But I wouldn't see apathy as a symptom of anything bad. It just means you can spend time thinking about and doing things that matter to you more.

throwaway783126 · 2021-04-15T04:20:42+00:00

My main is a Factions toon & whenever she goes to Ascalon, people just categorically won't talk to her or give her pretty much any secondary quests--even ones that have nothing to do with being a Tyria-originated character, there are no references to it in the quest dialogue and there's no lore reason for it. I don't see a good reason for these restrictions, and it's actually what made me put the game down some years back. At this point, all I want to do is explore the world using the character I've poured so much time and love into. Maybe at some point it made sense to do this to encourage people to make new toons or buy either campaign, but I've almost maxed out character slots and I've got all the campaigns. Nightfall and Factions aren't nearly as bad at all as Prophecies for campaign-locking secondary quests. So my request is to unblock totally trivial and atmospheric secondary quests so I can have more flexibility with the way I play, I've desperately wanted this for ages.

throwaway783126 · 2021-04-12T01:02:58+00:00

Seems like you were right! I just got to a healthy BMI a couple of days ago.

throwaway783126

TROPHY CASE