cassie 🐺

I’m definitely with you in that diet culture does much more harm than good and the weight loss industry overcomplicates it in favor of wacky diets and subscriptions and such.

That being said, just because grifters overcomplicate something, doesn’t mean it’s actually not complicated - especially psychologically, which matters a lot when eating disorders, sensitivities, and difficulties acquiring and preparing quality food, all are in the mix. The psychological aspects are what “weight loss solutions” try to sidestep and I think it really sets people up for failure even if they see some short term loss early on.

Knowing about energy balance could be enough for some, but it’s also definitely reasonable for someone to have further challenges and seek outside help for it. A good nutritionist, trainer, or even therapist can be invaluable for someone struggling to lose weight and keep it off.

imo nobody who is struggling to lose weight needs to be told about energy balance. Everyone knows what a calorie is, and that there’s a daily amount at which they will either lose or gain weight. They probably know they’re above that amount, and need to bring it down to lose weight.

Unfortunately either a lot of good advice or a lot of bad advice can follow that. Nutrition and the psychological factors that influence people’s diets are more complicated and no answer is complete without getting into that too.

the best way to make it stick is to take it slowly. Become more aware of the food choices you make - a food log is helpful here - without necessarily looking to correct them first. Just note the times when you think about food, the times you’re able to eat healthy and smaller portions and the times when it’s harder. Then try and inject some alternatives, make healthier options available for yourself at home, and gradually move your food decisions toward more nutritious food and smaller portions of comfort food.

Even then, thinking in nutrition has moved on from eliminating “bad foods” to eating “good foods” first, and finding a level of moderation with less nutritious food that fits with your goals.

“Stop eating” diets and “fast weight loss” as a primary goal are very good ways to sabotage yourself in the long term. The psychological costs of very restrictive diets are real and lead to losing adherence down the road. Maybe it works for some but the more gradual choice-focused approach worked a lot better for me. Just do what you’re capable of day to day, always trying to push that needle a little further, and you might be surprised at how fast noticeable progress comes!

It’s working out great! I’ve been openly polyamorous for a few years now. Romantically engaging with multiple people has allowed for the longest-running, most secure relationships I’ve ever had, with basically no downsides except the fuCKING work. It complicates the logistics (my shared calendar is a nightmare) as well as the emotions. (recognizing when I am jealous is a nightmare)

But the payoff is so worth it. We make the best use of the time we have together, because we have to. We communicate effectively, because we have to. Through many intersecting relationships with appropriate boundaries we’ve weaved a cohesive family unit, one that achieves a lot of mutual aid needs around housing, food, and mental health support among local queers. I’ve grown a lot as a person through having to communicate my insecurities, sort out my trauma, and think more clearly about the people in my life.

I think some people on the internet have heard of insane polycule drama at some point and declared it categorically unapproachable. But idk, we don’t write off monogamous relationships because a cousin’s friend’s marriage exploded. Polyamorous relationships run the same spectrum of great to dogshit, but with less rules that monogamous relationships demand, we have so much more flexibility to solve problems when they come up.

glad it worked out for y’all! It seems rare for a monogamous relationship to be successfully opened up, rather than it being the expectation from the outset. I can imagine it being a big challenge and test of your compatibility + ability to communicate. Was that your experience?

I crunched like hell in my mid 20s on a live service game that I enjoyed playing, was well loved and consistently played by a few fans, and had a few unique ideas in its niche. I gave up a lot of life for that game to see the light of day, under extremely tight timelines and wavering support from a flakey publisher.

It lasted less than a year in release because of a few mistakes in early access and it inhabited a saturated market that seems near impossible to penetrate now. The console ports that caused the worst months of the crunch never even saw a release.

Me and the rest of the devs would love to just play the game again, but the game’s kinda just rotting somewhere in storage of a publisher that long ago tried to pivot toward NFT/metaverse bullshit, to predictable results. Outside of a few early playtest builds a few people have (and definitely aren’t supposed to) we have basically no way of playing it ourselves, much less letting others play it. We couldn’t even get much approved to show in a portfolio once the studio closed and the assets went to the publisher. It makes me really sad and I’m no longer in game dev / tech at large professionally for that reason. This story is not unique, this is pretty much just how the industry works and devs near-universally feel screwed over by it.

In the age of early access viral hits, optimization is just something no publisher wants to put resources into before they know the game’s a success or not.

True story, a game I worked on at my last job shipped on Xbox One and PS4, the PS4 version was not even built until a month before shipping.

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This was one of the more baffling experiences in coming out - seeing some of the most scientifically minded, media literate people I know suddenly shut off all of those instincts when they encountered “the trans debate.” Like someone with a healthy amount of skepticism around statistics linking me bullshit “average number of sexual partners” figures from a conversion therapy lobbying group. Or someone with an active dislike of sports suddenly deciding that the sanctity of women’s sports is more important than their relationship with their daughter.

The best explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that gender is regimented by complex trauma, often when we are children, and these are the types of cognitive distortions that occur when we’re in fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses. Flashbacks are often thought of as vivid sensory experiences i.e. re-experiencing the traumatic event, but it’s a spectrum of responses. Many are more subtle and feel extremely normal in the moment, while our ability to reason is actually overtaken by our need to feel safe in the face of a perceived threat.

I think this kind of statistics vomit can sometimes be a “flight” response to a perceived threat of someone being trans in proximity to them. Flight responses are characterized as attempting to avoid a threat by throwing oneself into action not to overcome, but escape the threat. Perhaps a wall of text with nuanced-and-reasoned set dressing and lots of links and numbers feels like a wall between them and “the problem.”

I picked up a $10 cane at random last year and it helped me walk enough to realize there was a chronic issue at play. Definitely worth trying if it seems like something that might help, worst case you have a walking stick.

definitely seconding this - I used it the most when I was using Unreal Engine at work and was struggling to use their very incomplete artist/designer-focused documentation. I’d give it a problem I was having, it’d spit out some symbol that seems related, I’d search it in source to find out what it actually does and how to use it. Sometimes I’d get a hilariously convenient hallucinated answer like “oh yeah just call SolveMyProblem()!” but most of the time it’d give me a good place to start looking. it wouldn’t be necessary if UE had proper internal documentation, but I’m sure Epic would just get GPT to write it anyway.

“I love dogs! I’ve always loved dogs!” has to be one of the funniest movie lines I’ve heard. but for my money it was probably the bees choosing their space queen because they “respect royalty”

do actually recommend getting some friends and drinks to see this one, we laughed our asses off at space-twilight and had a good time

more complex yes, but more hands in the family unit and structure between the other two can be a really nice perk too. when conflict happens, you have someone else you love who knows your partner and relationship who can bridge the gap and give perspective.

and for anyone who’s played the base game - make sure to check out the DLC, it’s essentially a sequel! and I found it even more fascinating and affecting. an improvement on all fronts to an already very special game.