Preaching to the choir. I lost 70 lbs a few years ago, but those ten that come and go really screw me up.

Speaking as someone who has tortured their body with weeks at a time of Ranger school and eating less than 1,000 calories a day, wearing half their own body weight and sleeping less than 2 hours a night, I'm going to give you my un-professional opinion and give “advice” to tell you that if you're aiming to lose weight and keep it sustainable, you're perfectly fine to eat 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day. I'm writing it as “advice/directions” just because talking to myself that way worked for me.

Your body is burning around 800-1,200 a day by just existing doing basic functions, even with a sedentary lifestyle. Focus on building up your activity level and eating more un-processed fruits and veggies for their filling effect, while maintaining 1,800-2,000 calories a day. You'll lose weight at a slower pace, but you'll be able to keep it off with less effort, stress and fewer relapses into junk food and sitting around. If you try to go all-out and cut calories to less than 1,800 while upping your activity level drastically, you'll make it maybe a week tops before you end up binging on pizza and setting yourself back to square one because your body still understands the world in caveman mode and assumes that you just couldn't find food and now need to rebuild fat stores to survive another famine. Weight loss is all about understanding that your body hates the idea of starvation, which is what it is, and trying to break it into the process and gently and slowly as is possible. 3-5 pounds per month is considered the sustainable rate for a reason.

Thanks. I've been through this before. I have a kinda specific diet (which is kinda tricky because I'm crashing with my parents, and they have different health issues with different dietary needs.) I just really need to fit in my uniform. I have a decent app that helps me track nutrition. And now I have a time limit. Once I have my annual allowance from work, I'll order at least one set at a size larger. (Although I take some small pride in wearing the same uniform for 5, going on 6, years.)

(I HATE even mentioning that I'm counting calories because every person on the planet has some diet opinion they insist on telling me. Don't need advice. Thank you. I've got this. – Having lost 70 lbs, I find I have to resist the urge to offer my experience to others as well.)

ANYWAY, I just formally accepted a seasonal position to start in May. I got the job offer a few days ago and have since been stressing like crazy trying to arrange housing. Just another annual annoyance. :P (Pain in the butt trying to come up with the money to move my camper and pay for all the initial fees for a place to park it – when I haven't worked in 5+ months.) I have the weirdest “rut” of sorts. This year, I get to work in the mountains, and I'm kinda excited about it because I am not a beach person.

Still hoping to find a permanent job and applying for every one I have any hope in being selected for. But glad for the seasonal gigs. It's something. (Plus, I managed to change my student loan debt to salary-based repayment – which means I can defer payment without accruing interest for as long as my income sucks.)

Checking 320 custom shaped USB flash drives for viruses is insane.
I'm almost finished.

It's a terrible time to be an RVer in Virginia (but a great time to own a campground). There are multiple pipeline construction projects in the area and every campground and mobile home park is filled to capacity.

I am giving up and changing strategy to look for pet-friendly short term rentals. (I hate renting. I hate every aspect of renting. That's why I got the camper. -_- )

I hate pipelines. Guy after guy after guy come in to mark the ground for the same things again and again, so there are sprayed stripes and little flags all over all the lawns and parking lots.

Then everybody comes in to look at the ground. Carloads of engineers who who can't find an address on a map who are supposed to figure out all these projects. So very comforting to know that all these smart guys can barely read a map to find an address are plotting complicated pipelines. I love it when they come in with their complicated technical map of the whole line – and it's upside down.

And the dumb moron security guard turns it right side up and just says “First step of map-reading and land navigation sir is to properly orient the map to the terrain.”

And like they're the engineer and you're the dummy. They were officers. The most dangerous thing in the field? A lieutenant with a map.

But you know it is one of the few times in the industry you see actual living and breathing women. They're usually the smart ones you only have to explain things to once. We need more women in industry.

The funny think is that when you have a few of a subgroup (women in this case) that have to work harder to fit in because of the prevailing culture (majority white males etc), they WILL be the smart ones because they're overachievers to start with and they're trying harder…
BUT, as they become normalised in an industry those traits vanish and they become the same as the previous group. -because they don't need to be overachievers to get in anymore and they don't have to try harder to stay in.

So, more women = they become the same as the men.

Revert to the mean. XD

-Though you will always have the one or two standouts, regardless of gender.

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I'm going into a cosplay comp tomorrow!!!! In my hussar gear,
Made a wooden sabre and a snazzy new corssbelt so the antique ine will stay safe at home.

So few women in technical fields it's going to take a long time before they become as half-assed as the men are.

Same thing in business and government. So few, that when you across an effective one, she's truly a stand-out. Like Melanie Willougbhy. (feel free to google her. She's freaking incredible. She got all the good genes, by the time I was born there was nothing left but a few threads of artistic talent)

So true. If you have to work twice as hard for a position, you'll automatically be top of the class.

I put down a deposit on an apartment today. Going to have to sign a year's lease, so I'm going on faith that I can find work after my NPS job ends in fall. Having both a cat and dog limited my choices (and increased the costs), but I found a pretty neat place. No central AC, so I'll be living old school but it's worth the trade-off for the other features. It's an old art deco style building, maybe 1930s.

Amazing looking place!

Yeah. It really stands out. The leasing agent took me to four apartments in different buildings. The others were more modern, but this one felt more like home.

Guess who's thumbnailing comics again?
THIS GUY
er…girl
yup
me

Yay for thumbnailing again!

usedbooks wrote:
Yeah. It really stands out. The leasing agent took me to four apartments in different buildings. The others were more modern, but this one felt more like home.

That looks great! Glad you found something with that elusive feel to it. Gut feelings are everything when it comes to the space you call home.

Great old building! Central air is overrated unless your wife gets hot flashes. Then nothing is ever cold enough.

It's definitely not a deal-breaker. In the dorms, I wasn't even allowed a window unit. (I kept fans going like a wind tunnel.) Then I rented a big old 3-story house with a few of my friends. It had no heat or AC upstairs, so we made due with personal space heaters and window air conditioners. It was a wonderful house.

I like colder temperatures, especially after working outside all day, but I'm both flexible and resourceful.

In July last year, the temperature was too much for my camper's system. The AC blew the breaker while I was at work, and I came home to a dog in heat distress. -_- So I am glad to be out of the camper, even if it costs more.

Katch wrote:
Guess who's thumbnailing comics again?
THIS GUY
er…girl
yup
me

Welcome back guy :)

NPS is on the ball this year (or Blue Ridge Parkway is). I already have access to the uniform store along with an allowance. I ordered essential components (shirt, trousers, and belt) a size larger than my current wardrobe.

(I tried on my current uniform, and it's just a couple inches too small around the waist. I can close the trousers – but I can't sit down. Lol. I still have two weeks, but no guarantee they'll fit by then.)

So, I should be set one way or the other. I'm exactly the same level of “too big” that I was at the end of the season last November. It'll be nice to have a larger back-up uniform for the “fluffy” days. I fully intend to get back into my older uniform comfortably, though. I'm too cheap not to make use of that investment.

Speaking of changing sizes-
My cat Simon who's 18 this year and who I thought was going to die at the end of last year, is getting really fat in the middle now!
Around Christmas he had lost all his body mass and he was ravenously hungry. I thought he had cancer because that's one the signs.
Anyway, he has always been a stocky, chunky cat, with a wide square face, a big wide chest and thick arms. But then he was all ribs and I could feel his spine, all the muscle and fat went and his body was just a big wide head and chest and big arms but with nothing to fill up the space in there :(

So I brought him inside and kept him in there, feeding him 4 times a day with whatever he wanted to eat.
NOW he's really wide in the belly. I can STILL feel his ribs and spine but he's fat. I'm pretty sure that's because what pads the ribs at the flanks and spine on the back is muscle and not fat.

I'm really not sure what to do… Honestly.
He's old and I'd like him to be as happy as possible and if eating makes him happy then that's good.
Also when you're older you NEED those fat reserves to help you weather periods of illness.
I don't want to feed him into an early grave though… or feed him so full he has trouble moving, which he's starting to.

I don't worry about the weight of super elderly animals. Keep them fed and hydrated. My last really old cat got kinda bloat looking in the belly at 19+. She had never been overweight in her entire life to that point (always indoors, never active). I have a feeling it wasn't fat but was her organs being weird. I have an elderly rat (2 1/2 years, which is really old for a rat) that is the same way.

It might be a thyroid issue. One of my cats has this issue. She is on medication for her thyroid for the rest of her life. She got that hungry period and the meds stopped it. Just don’t miss the dose cause she reverts back to hungry-hungry munch munch time. Ask your vet.

I'll ask :)

Getting old and the health issues that go with it suck. Being a fat bastard really doesn't help matters either. Now I'm forced to radically change my diet or I won't last much longer.

I had to change mine due to a tendency to collect cholesterol. The trick is to find alternatives you really enjoy to the things you need to cut back on, but that will usually end up costing you more. I love nuts and dried fruit but they are sadly not cheap as chips.

My bad cholesterol is a touch high, but my good cholesterol is higher, so I balance out. My doctor wanted to put me on medication a while back so I changed my diet. Need to change it again as I'm eating too many cookies. (Am. English, From the Dutch and German kuche. First appears in print near the end of 18th Century. Many different words between British and American English can be traced to Dutch and German immigrants as well as the Anglophone Noah Webster)

I changed my diet years ago due to kidney stones. Went vegetarian for a while. Now I stick to no more than 8 oz animal protein in a day. I also stopped drinking tap water completely (bottled only now, which seems snobbish, but kidney stones are TERRIBLE). Haven't had a stone since.

Oh, and I had to give up almost all ice cream. Turns out the “gums” that EVERY brand uses to make them creamy is something my body outright refuses to accept as edible. Only brand without it is Hagan Daazs, which I can't afford. (Also, Wendy's Frosties are fine, so I sometimes buy a large one and keep it in the fridge to scoop like store-bought ice cream.)

It sucks how much bodies stop cooperating with us as time goes on.



Oh, and my cat has a heart condition, so that's a thing now. She's only 8, but she's had a murmur for years (and asthma since she was a kitten) and scared me to death last week when she was anesthetized for a dental cleaning. No more anesthesia for her.

Bodies DO stop cooperating as you age :(
I'm lucky that I still look younger than I am, but internally I'm exactly my age! XD

These days I have to watch what I eat. NEVER had to do that when I was younger. I ate everything, as much as I wanted. Now food punishes me.

But then when I was younger I never used to casually buy bags of chips or chocolate bars because I considered it a waste of money or something… I only started that in my early 30s I think.

I swear… I swear… I'm gonna grow old gracefully, but damn those younger years, when the body was on cruise-control, sure were nice!!

Since I tend to get many age related conditions early (diverticulitis at 35, cataracts at 50) I should be past everything by the time I'm 70 which should give me a few years to be healthy before my passing.

But by then we'll probably have panimmunity, transhumanism and socialized free medicine so I can just get the mind uploaded to a cyborg and keep on going.

@used books, argh kidney stones are awful, and I've only ever had the one.

I'm having to go gluten free and cutting out pretty much anything greasy, which will be fine once I've adjusted to the new diet but fir now I'm craving all the things I can't eat.

Genejoke wrote:I'm having to go gluten free

Unless you were born a coeliac I don't think that will do a thing for you.
Cutting out greasy food will help your liver though.

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I have a damn cold -_-