sideeye

Stress and depression absolutely impact your weight loss - the past month has been hellish on a number of fronts for me, and I’m now realizing how much my eating habits slid. Capacity hasn’t changed a bit, but frequency and junk content went WAY up. I can only imagine it was chasing an endorphin high I used to get while eating. I didn’t gain but I did stall, and that’s not good six months out. Early this week I realized what was happening, went back on my depression meds (I’m reverse-seasonal, I NEVER take them in autumn), and refocused on what I’m eating and when. Lost 3 lbs this week, so it’s possible to get back on track. Damn, though. Even when you intellectually know ahead of time that backsliding is possible, when you get walloped by a stress event (or ALL THE STRESS EVENTS, like this month) your old habits sneak right back in.

I was literally just coming to the main board to ask about migraine INCREASE post-op. It might be dehydration and I’m trying to be more mindful of that, and it might be stress, it might be screentime, might even be much-delayed LASIK reaction. But I am getting headaches a lot more frequently than I recall pre-op.

I’m one of the ones who cut off a foot of hair and love it, but the most important thing I’d suggest? CHANGE your hairstyle. Doesn’t have to be a drastic cut, but do something significantly different overall. Otherwise you’re hyper-aware of the minute changes in your hair. Make a big change and the tiny stuff becomes unnoticeable.

Protein shakes and eggs helped me get back on track after a week’s vacation full of ice cream and booze. Shake at noon (I did the same morning fast thing, except for a cup of coffee) and then a two-egg omelette every night for the first week I was back. Right now my cheat is 8oz of good cocoa or milky chai at night. Really takes the edge off any late-night cravings. Oh, and Bonne Maman jam in my yogurt.

I did my annual “go into the front closet and try on all of the winter coats” sort just now. Usually it’s a depressing exercise that means trying on 10 coats, none of them buttoning or hanging exactly right, pulling out the two that are somewhat manageable, and then vowing to buy something better-fitting at a sale. I then have to keep all of them on hand, to account for weight gain or the day I wear a bulky sweater. This year every single one of them fit. Four immediately went into the donate pile for being too big, three others went into the resale pile for just not being as flattering as I’d like, and three look FANTASTIC. Better yet I’ll likely be able to wear them all season, since as I lose weight I’ll wear more sweaters/layers, so if they fit over a tank now we’re good. I am astounded by how straightforward and affirming that was. Again: this is how average weight people go through life? They just do things like sort through winter clothes without feeling depressed for days after?

I think we’ve exhausted the side-topic enough to let this thread get back to prayer requests - but I do also believe the Lounge is the right place for it.

If you're going crazy, so am I - it's not constant, but I certainly seem to be a lot more sensitive to sewage smells post-op than I was before. Some other smells too: I had some rugrats over and for a week afterwards, I'd suddenly get a whiff of berry tube yogurt. My sister later told me one of the kids had spilled a little on a couch and she'd cleaned it up, which I'm sure she did, since I'm the only one in the entire family who keeps smelling it. I'm also pretty sure one of my perfumes has turned, though no one else thinks it has. So maybe it's just a sharper sense of smell?

A solid attempt was made to raise me Catholic, and I even went to Jesuit uni, so I've got a pretty good grounding in Biblical theory - but honestly, I was digging up contradictions in the Children's Bible at the age of six, my mind's just not made for faith-based religion. I didn't get much exposure the the evangelical side of things, which is a very different flavor and part of why I watched this thread. I think this is getting back to the "atheism = void" misunderstanding. It might be better to think of atheism as a belief that there's no intelligent and purposeful direction coming from on high; we can still believe in systems and energy and karma. Those aren't directed by an intelligence, they're more like natural flows. Like gravity or solar wind, just natural patterns that exist and can be amplified through our actions. There's a lot of natural mystery in life, it's fascinating, we just don't attribute it to an intelligent organizing force. Same as above - one involves an intelligence independently laying down the law and holding you to it, and the other is more of a... I don't know, communist thing? Like, the community determines justice and that's meted out when what you put out in the universe comes back at you. The split there would be that a lot of atheists don't get why religious systems would promise eternal reward to a zealot who technically upheld the religious "rules" but also made a lot of non-religious people miserable through his zealotry. Goes back to proselytizing, I suppose. This is one of the sorer points between me and my mom. She's very comforted by the thought of an afterlife with all of her family around her and subtracting me from that image hurts her. And that in turn hurts me, because I don't want my mom to be sad, but I also don't get the whole system. I get the idea of hell for bad people. I do not understand the idea that good people will be split into religious and nonreligious categories and only the religious will get into heaven, even knowing that it will cause the believers pain, it's not logical. I don't understand worshipping a god who applies both a merit-based and personal loyalty test, it's like a politician getting voted into office and then only approving healthcare for those who voted for him. Feels overly Old Testament to me. Hopefully I haven't come across as aggravated overall, but any group that fosters negative in-group thinking and then starts exporting it is worth confronting, because that crap snowballs. When anti-atheist rhetoric shows up on a weight loss board, pushback will at least make people think twice before mixing it in with their messaging in future. Think of it as a sort of instant karma - the venture into brimstone proselytizing was made, and the reaction made it clear that any further efforts to do so would be met with resistance. At which point hopefully it became less worth it to casually drop bible-thumping references targeting other groups. Turns a low-stakes bid into a slightly riskier gamble. I'm not trying to get into anyone's head and convince them of the atheist argument; just trying to get casual anti-atheist messaging out of the public square/messageboard. Respectful dialogue's the way to go, thanks for the good back-and-forth.

Pre-WLS me brought back an entire WHSmith bag of Cadbury's - and the only reason it wasn't 100% Crunchie-based is because of dental work. I never got hooked on Hob Nobs but definitely on chocolate-covered digestives. It's a good thing I'm unclear of the legality of imported clotted cream.

I didn't join the thread to change minds - I'm certainly not trying to convert anyone to atheism, or to shake their faith in a higher being, or to prevent others from changing their mind (I assume you mean being convinced by Christian proselytizing). And I'm not trying to change your belief; I'm fully aware that very religious people believe that if you don't adopt their religion, then: brimstone. But there's a difference between believing something and broadcasting it, and that's where I stepped in. I'm not trying to change any minds, but I AM going to remind people that what they're saying is A) not the way everyone thinks, despite this small group being in accord, and B ) is unfriendly to people outside your group. It's about the broadcast, not the belief. I'm with Penn when he views proselytizing as being motivated by caring, in its purest form. But once someone tells you that your words are both unhelpful and unwelcome, then that really should be that, and pursuit beyond that point is no longer motivated by caring, it's motivated by a willingness to ignore someone else's stated wish to cut it out. And that works both ways. Despite the "Prayers" label on the thread, this is not church, and it is still a public message board. While I would not walk into your church and start picking apart Abrahamic principles, if I was sitting in a coffee shop and heard your Bible group at the next table talking about how atheists will be proven wrong on Judgement Day, then yeah, I probably would chip in. It's a slippery slope between saying things in private settings and feeling able to say them in the public sphere, and without pushback, in-groups may think their rhetoric is more acceptable to the general public than it actually is. This is literally what's happening on social media networks right now, and on certain cable news channels - people become unmoored from what society is actually willing to tolerate out in the open.

Praying isn't a thing I do, so I was sort of interested in following the dynamic - my mind is definitely made up as to its usefulness to me personally, but it's still intriguing to see how it works for others. I didn't pipe up until things took a hard turn from positivity into dark mutterings about how atheists would find out "too late". Overall I don't find it beneficial to let stuff like that slide - group dynamics mean that if a bunch of like-minded people get together, the echo chamber of them hearing their own views mirrored back to them can reinforce their beliefs. When that's about sending people good thoughts during their surgery, cool. But when you hear one person start to introduce rhetoric that denigrates another group... Well, it's worth stepping in and reminding the in-group that we can still hear you, and that it's a crappy thing to say. Don't want that sort of thing to build momentum. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Most religions organize around a robust set of fixed beliefs, while atheists kind of gravitate to a single agreed principle that there's no intelligent organizer of the universe but don't organize outside of that. And I think you're right that "please pray for me" and "think good thoughts" are pretty much the same sentiment - in fact, I believe most of us are generally feeling extremely similar emotions all the time, just attributing them to different sources. If something wonderful happens, a religious person might say "it's a miracle" or "I'm blessed', while I would probably be marveling at my luck that I just happened to be around in this particular place at this time to witness this thing. The religious person thinks it's intelligent and deliberate, and I think it's extremely good luck in the midst of organic entropy. Same sensation of joy and wonder, though. As for the afterlife, that one's harder. I mean, life is wonderful, and I don't want to treat it like a test run. I'm pretty thrilled the assembly of atoms that makes me up came together at this point in time, and I want to appreciate that luck and grab onto it. When I die, I'm good with those atoms breaking apart again and becoming components in the next turn of the universe. I think atheism gets a rough ride; because a lot of people's first exposure to atheism is a family member snapping and going full militant atheist on the "family religion", it's easy to tar it as a void or a rejection, but there's really a ton of wonder and beauty in it. Just not attached to a supernatural intelligence. Religious people and atheists can be friends, absolutely. My family is aunt-in-the-nunnery-Catholic, and I get along with them fine. It took a while, but they now understand that no, I CAN'T attend Christmas Mass just because "it's a family event", and I only wrapped their Christmas gifts in Winter Solstice wrapping paper for a few years in a row. As long as I don't mock their beliefs or tell them they're imagining things, and as long as they don't inform me that it's their sorrowful duty to tell me I'm going to hell, we're good. It's pretty simple, just be kind to each other. No "truth" you feel compelled to speak in support of your religion (or nonreligion!) is worth it if it's essentially telling someone else they're wrong and doomed.

Scotch eggs, they'll get you every time. That and the pudding. And the lager. And all that stuff they fry just for fun. I'm headed to the UK in a month, and unfortunately it's a place with a lot of memory-associated foods, so not only will I be tempted by Dairy Milks and pasties because they're delicious, but I'll have impulses to go to very particular sandwich shops or get very particular coffees because I'm time-traveling. I'm only there a few days, I'm just going to roll with it. My current cheat is a warm mug of chai before bed (the milky kind, not the tea).

Yes, but not the fluffy kind - I used to whip the whites, add the yolks back in and use that for the omelette base, but these days I just do rolled egg omelettes. Can't handle the air anymore. Eggs fill me right up, even just one.

By month, I went: 22, 10, 10, 5, 7, 5. So definitely slowing, but I'm partly putting that down to a really weird few months with a lot of unpredictability. Next month will be a lot more stable with regards to schedule and food, kind of curious what that'll mean weight loss wise.

Orgain chocolate is my go-to, specifically because I don't find it sweet.

I just had a photo taken for an office pass, and it looks like a still from a security camera where they're asking if you saw this woman because she may have poisoned one of her coworkers. Mostly I think I don't look like photos because I'm used to seeing my face in the mirror, and this is the reverse.

Dunkin' Donuts. Firstly because they make delicious donuts that I can no longer eat, secondly because they have drive-throughs, and thirdly because a medium iced mocha with cream is somehow 230 calories. What the everliving HELL. Also because they've got a really annoying ad running on Pandora right now.

Ironically, that's also what I was doing, just for a different group of people than the ones you have in mind. You are not being persecuted for your beliefs, you’re simply being challenged for saying something cruel and you don’t like being called on it. I only stepped in when you started throwing shade at atheists, because while I don't have any problem with like-minded people getting together and creating a community, it does no one any favors to let negativity and division be openly spoken and go unchallenged. Praying for people is a kind gesture I can understand; stating atheists will face a day of reckoning for not thinking the same way you do, I cannot. Sure. But non-Christians will likely continue reading even if we don't comment, and we're way less likely to wade in if positivity and prayers are the theme, rather than the more brimstoney sides of religion. Don't know why damnation would show up on a weight loss conversation anyhow, unless we're talking about the temptation of Oreos and the Wendy's drive-thru.

I would have if they'd made eye contact! They were so studiously NOT looking at me that they missed my expression, which would have made it pretty obvious that I absolutely understood what they were saying. I didn't say anything at the time because Korean has mostly optional pronouns, so technically they could've been talking about someone else (they were not) and I do not want to get into a Korean argument with a nail salon ahjumma. Today's NSV was going into the office in the middle of the day, and tons of people were in for a sales meeting, so I got the pleasure of: being stopped on my way into the lobby because the longtime guard didn't recognize me; getting stopped at the front desk because the longtime receptionist also didn't recognize me; and being repeatedly blanked by coworkers who took a full three seconds to register who I was. One of them entered a meeting room I'd booked, apologized extremely politely, then came running back in when he realized it was me all along. It's INSANE.

I would genuinely hope that any God is not concerning themselves with judging the rezoning of message board threads. Also, do you not get that saying something like that to an avowed atheist comes across as just weird and unfriendly? Or is this just the internet evangelist version of a southern "bless your heart"?

Both times I've had surgery, I came out of anesthesia thinking I was mid-presentation. So if you've got a high-pressure job, know that your subconscious might supply content all on its own. I think in recovery most of what happened was me very seriously and repeatedly informing the nurses that in spite of the patch behind my ear, I still felt very nauseous. Then I was relocated to my actual room, threw up a ton of blood in one go (this is actually pretty normal and I felt a lot better after), and after that all I needed was liquid tylenol. If I said or did anything bonkers, no one enlightened me.

The dry cleaner saw me walking the dog Friday morning and in complete delight shouted "HEY, YOU THINNER! LOSE WEIGHT, LOOK SKINNY, YOUNG!" down half a city block. A good show for the 20 people at the bus stop.

I razor-cut 12 inches of my hair off, into a mid-length bob. It looks awesome and any thinning around my temples is mostly masked. And as a bizarre side benefit, people seem to know SOMETHING is different about me but wouldn't likely mention weight loss, so they're all being insanely complimentary about the haircut.

A thread got moved to a more appropriate area: no destruction of content and very little effort expended. It just wasn't relevant to target a VSG-specific WLS board with a fully faith-based, exclusive (and by that I mean faith, not type of surgery) thread.

I agree we’re in a zone of diminishing returns at this point - my first response here was because of a “well those atheists will get their comeuppance, when it’s too late” comment. Had nothing to do with weight loss, struck me as inappropriately exclusive and proselytizing. So I piped up. I do not bite people for saying they’ll pray for me despite my sincere atheism, and I understand the psychological lift involved for believers. But I do get leery of self-selecting groups who then start targeting people outside of their group for no good reason, and I will speak up then. Smugness is not a good look. Much like a lot of other previously-privileged positions, Christianity is starting to feel the same restrictions as every other religious group. I get that people don’t like it, but it’s not a double standard, it’s the LOSS of the double standard that’s stinging. If you’ve been in a privileged position, losing that privilege can look like unfairness, while for those of us who never were in that privileged class it just looks like we’re all finally closer to a level field. If you’re used to saying whatever you want about your faith with the full nodding support of your in-group (or at least the silence of people outside your group) and suddenly you start getting pushback, no matter how gentle, that can feel like an attack. To many of us that respectful tension is the norm when talking about religion and always has been.