mythbusters was so good because it wasn’t a killjoy show. they didn’t just say “see, it doesn’t work” and leave it there
whenever they find that the stunt doesn’t work as portrayed in the movie, they immediately ask “what would it take to make this happen?”
“we know it takes this amount of explosives to work, but what if we doubled it anyway?”
Some myths I’ll always remember:
* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)
* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?
* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?
I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they “failed.” Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
And each time, they reacted with just… pure glee. “Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”
And that, to me, is what science is. Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information.
Trigger warning disordered eating, diet talk, calorie counting, etc.
(caveat, i’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice)
It is generally accepted in the weight loss/dietary medicine/fitness industry that in order to lose a pound of weight you need to burn or cut 3500 calories from your diet. That means if you want to lose a pound a week you need to cut 500 calories a day. If you want to lose two pounds a week you need to cut 1000 calories a day.
The advice on how to do that varies, but it usually comes in the form of “well, just shave a little bit off of a meal here or there, skip that extra cookie” but if you’re trying to cut 1000 calories a day that’s about 330 calories a meal.
What did you have for breakfast today? I had a gluten free bagel with an olive oil butter spread and raspberry jam.
260 calories for the bagel, 45 for the butter, 60 for the jam, 60 for the cream in my coffee. About 425 calories. Cut out 330 and I guess I can have cream in my coffee and about half a tablespoon of butter.
What did you have for lunch? My day has been hectic, I had a couple handfuls of peanuts and some freeze dried banana slices.
At about 200 calories for the peanuts, 70 for the banana slices, and another 60 for more cream in my coffee I guess I’d better just skip lunch.
What are you having for dinner? Things are a little odd for me right now; I might have some leftover frozen soup and maybe a string cheese and maybe a smoothie. It’ll be about a thousand calories, probably, because I’ve eaten light meals for the rest of the day. Maybe i’ll leave out the smoothie.
There you go. I’ve cut my thousand calories. I’ll lose two pounds this week.
Never mind that there isn’t actually a hell of a lot of room for cutting a thousand calories out of my daily diet, never mind that at the end of the day I’m not eating enough to support a healthy ten year old, never mind that I’m tired and irritable and my head hurts.
The websites all say that if I cut a thousand calories a day I’ll lose two pounds in a week.
What they don’t say is that you’re cutting those thousand calories out of the food that gives you energy to talk to friends. What they don’t say is that if you cut a thousand calories and leave yourself with only a thousand, only eight hundred, only three hundred, only a hundred calories a day that those lost pounds aren’t going to flatten your stomach or thin your thighs, they’re going to make you tired. They’re going to make you cold. They’re going to make it hard to concentrate and they’re going to make you feel sick.
If a doctor tells you they want you to lose ten pounds they think they’re saying “I want you to have the benefits of weight loss showed in diet studies” and they frequently don’t realize they’re saying “I want you to cheerfully be Sisyphus.” The aren’t thinking about where those five hundred or thousand calories a day are coming from, they’re not looking at your specific diet, and if you’ve lost a significant amount of weight in the past (even if you’ve gained it back) they may not realize that cutting a thousand calories a day will not make you lose a reliable two pounds a week. They think they’re saying “practice a little willpower and your heart will be healthier” and what they’re ACTUALLY saying, IF THEY MEAN IT, is “weigh everything you put in your mouth. Level off every spoonful. be hungry until you hit your goal weight, then be hungry forever. Get weaker. Spend more time measuring rice and less time eating with friends. Popcorn at the movies is a sin. Nobody deserves birthday cake.”
Food is complicated and our relationships to food are complicated, but if you really, really want to take a look at how weight loss works you should hit up some bodybuilder forums before competition season. Bodybuilders on a cut are a standing joke because of the endless boring plates of chicken and broccoli and broccoli and chicken they eat to get to their show weight. Go look at those people trying desperately to add any spices to their meals that will help them taste good and will make them feel good when they’ve cut fat and carbohydrates out of their diets for six weeks. Watch what bodybuilders eat the day after the show. Watch a bikini model wipe the foundation and spray tan off her face, throw on a pair of sweats, and eat a whole box of donuts because she’s been hungry for weeks and she’s celebrating the end of being hungry.
Now imagine that without cheat days.
That’s what it’s like to try to lose any significant amount of weight.
I remember being in weight watchers as a teenager. I remember the success stories people would tell at the beginnings of the meetings, and I remember that there was one girl in the group who was younger than me. We were supposed to applaud, because she’d figured out how to use the flex points system to ensure that she could have two slices of pizza at her thirteenth birthday party.
And that weight loss success is considered losing 10% of your bodyweight and keeping it off for a year? One year. And that 80% of people who are overweight or obese have a significant amount of trouble managing that (for extremely good reasons)?
Also, more to the point: I weigh 215 pounds and am five and a half feet tall; my BMI is 34.7. I am obese. If I lost 21.5 pounds I would weigh 193.5 pounds and my BMI would be 31.2. I would still be obese.
Even though it means counting calories and eating chicken and broccoli and worrying worrying worrying about going over my points/calories/goals for the day.
Better to set aside that bagel. Let me skip the smoothie.
Never mind that the smoothie was added to my diet in the first place to make up for nutrient deficiencies that are a result of an autoimmune disease. Never mind that my body needs at least 1600 calories a day to maintain my body temperature and literally nothing else.
I wrote this up because someone sent me an ask discussing their myfitnesspal tracker allowing them to track a very low number of calories for a goal of 2lbs a week weight loss.
If your goal is to lose weight in order to get the health benefits of losing weight you need to plan on losing weight as slowly as possible, because losing two pounds a week with absolutely fuck your shit up. Losing a pound a week might fuck your shit up.
Do you know how long it takes to build muscle, to actually add muscle weight, once you’re past the early gains that new lifters see? It might take a year of hard work to add about five pounds of muscle to your body.
That’s actually pretty close to the way we should expect to lose weight, if your goal is to lose weight at all. (which I don’t think it should be)
I’m in the National Weight Control Registry.
From 2012 to 2014 I lost 30 pounds - less than a pound a week - and I kept it off until 2017. The NWCR is where we can pull the biggest pool of data on long-term successful weight loss.
I remember being hungry. I remember being cold.
I started losing weight and tracking calories when I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I had to obsessively read labels anyway, I might as well read and track the calorie labels too. Plus I’d just found out I wouldn’t be able to eat any of the foods that I liked so I might as well take the opportunity to be disciplined by external forces.
My friends.
Thank fuck for Trader Joe’s because it’s super, super easy to keep off weight when there’s no food around that you can eat unless you take the time to cook it yourself, but it’s a lot harder to sink into the depressing mire of counting calories and self denial when you can just make a fucking sandwich without having to bake bread from fucking scratch.
Your body is not going to be happy if you deny it sustenance. You are going to feel sick, you are going to feel cold, it is going to be hard to concentrate, you are going to have cravings.
There is no way that you are going to lose two pounds a week or a pound a week without experiencing some really significant negative outcomes that might have long-reaching consequences with respect to metabolic damage and hunger signals.
You need to eat.
You need to feed yourself.
You do *not* need to be skinny, you do *not* need to lose thirty pounds, you do *not* need to have a thigh gap or a bikini bridge or whatever pro-ana bullshit that 4chan is trolling with this week.
You need to feed yourself.
You need to eat.
If you are interested in managing your weight you probably need to care more about what happens going forward than in reversing what’s already happened. Eat nourishing food that makes you feel good. Exercise. Get a lipid panel done if you can and watch your sugars.
Exercise in a way that is fun for you and makes you feel good. Take care of your joints. Stay hydrated (and it doesn’t have to be with water - literally any nonalcoholic beverage will hydrate you, coffee and soda don’t have enough caffeine to offset the amount of water in them, just drink fluids). Sleep.
There are many, many ways to improve your health.
Cutting a thousand calories a day out of your diet to lose two pounds a week is not one of them.
Today I found out that yarners think crocheting socks is subversive and controversial and I just…on one hand, why the fuck not, I guess yarners are allowed to have their controversies, but on the other, how much time do you have in your FUCKIN DAY??
My main concern is how they would feel but Maggie u know yarn fandom gotta think about something while knitting five miles of stockingnette for a sweater
Look, you can’t just leave it at that, why is it subversive and controversial? *gets popcorn*
I mean, I’m taking this on good faith, and I’m not saying this is my own personal belief. I believe in all crafts.
But…the structure of the stitches and the resulting fabric is pretty different between crochet and knitting. You get different effects between them, which lends themselves to different crafts. And none of the effects of (most) crochet stitches lend themselves naturally to socks. You’re (usually) going to end up with something either stiff and bulky, or full of holes that will Not Feel Good to walk on. Whereas knitted socks will just…BE elastic and comfortable.
Sure you CAN do it. And there are people and patterns that do it well!!
But MOST crochet socks are a bit like calling this a bicycle
I mean… Okay? But people are going to Talk.
But this is BABY controversy, this is nothing. You haven’t even touched on the good shit like RHSS or that time the Olympic Committee dissed us.
Iiiinteresting. So one of those “just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD” things.
Also I know very little about the yarn fandom except for that bit where a woman had to fake her death and had a nervous breakdown over selling homespun/dyed yarn so like, I already have big expectations.
Was that the one that “died” of leukemia or the one that “died” of lupus, or the one that overdosed?
From what I know of the narrative as it was described to me, I want to say the one that overdosed, but I am intrigued and vaguely concerned that there are multiple distinct individuals the above situation could apply to.
hey umm, what the fuck
the fake deaths thing: indie yarn dyer gets popular, gets overwhelmed by orders, can’t refund money because of shitty bookkeeping, decides faking online death is the only way out.
i’m sure some of them are unintentional rather than premeditated scammers but they’re all still thieving assholes who shouldn’t be running businesses and need to give all the money back.
the olympics commitee: ravelry, well-known knitting (fiber arts in general) site, held a contest they called the ‘ravelympics’ to drum up olympic support then get a cease-and-desist letter for copyright infringement, and the letter said that calling it that ‘denigrates the true nature of the Olympic Games’ and was ‘disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes’
except, you know, ravelry had like 2 million users who all, by nature of ravelry being a website, have basic tech literacy. the social media backlash was so bad that the olympics board had to make 2 official apologies because the first wasn’t good enough.
RHSS: Red Heart Super Saver is cheap Walmart-level yarn. some people hate it because it used to be just really fucking awful and they haven’t bothered updating their opinions. some people hate it because they hate non-natural yarns. some people hate it because they’re yarn snobs(which, btw, comes in two flavors: the disdainful assholes and the people who just don’t see the point if you have the money and don’t indulge yourself). a lot of people defend it because it’s cheap and widely locally available and honestly not that bad after a wash and some fabric softener.
crocheted socks: exactly what kaitoukitty said. people who crochet socks tend to either be new crocheters who are not aware crochet is not the best medium for socks or experienced crocheters who are pushing the boundaries of the medium.
babies on fire: i can’t believe we’re talking about yarncraft controversies and no one mentioned babies on fire. that’s my favorite controversy.
so when deciding what material to make baby blankets out of, in addition to considerations like softness, ease of washing, and allergy concerns quite a lot of people like to consider what would happen to the baby if the blanket was set on fire. yes, really.
wool has the problem of hand-wash only blankets for a new mother (superwash wool exists but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph), allergy concerns, and also
real fucking expensive if you want quality not-itchy-on-baby-skin wool. but pro-wool-blanket people insist that because wool actually resists being set on fire pretty well and also can self-extinguish, it’s the only sensible choice.
acrylic on the other hand is cheap and you can throw it in the washing machine, and while bad quality acrylics might be stiff and plastic-y they’re not itchy, but if it gets set on fire it will melt onto the baby’s skin. pro-acrylic people insist that if your blanket is on fire, you probably have bigger problems than what the blanket is made of.
wow I didn’t expect such a detailed response. thank you!
Fiber Arts Just Be Fucking Like That.
what hte FUCK
🤣 hooked me at *gets popcorn*
And this doesn’t even take into account the Needle Wars that will crop up from time to time: Metal vs wood/bamboo, fight.
(it seems universally agreed upon that we all hate plastic knitting needles, and alternative materials aren’t usually involved in the fight.)
Here is how I deal with color work’s skipped stitches! I use this technique for everything, not just polka dots. It can be done on a flat project, but the purling version takes some time to master!
Check out my Ravelry for patterns you can use this with! (also on Etsy)
this post hasn’t left my mind since i’ve first saw it
people jest but this is literally how i worked out i was gaslit for like 15 years of my life
People who “want trauma” are recognizing, on some level, that they were traumatized but in a way that’s not “socially recognized” as trauma. What they really want is for people to see that they’ve been traumatized and be on their side
Hold up
I think it’s also important to talk about mental illness, and how the pain and trauma of being mentally ill as a kid is often diminished because of the lack of outside actors. If you spent your childhood being suicidally depressed because your wee little kiddo brain decided to be a chemical shitshow, it doesn’t matter how much mom and dad loved you, that kinda thing fucks you up. And having people only look at your external surroundings and argue that “nothing bad happened” ignores all the pain you went through internally. So wishing you could have something external you could point to in order to justify that pain and enduring stress – just so people could understand – makes sense.
I went to this Sicilian pizza joint yesterday and it’s literally so underground and such a big hole in the wall that their parking lot is wrecked, their front door is bolted up, and you have to enter through the kitchen and walk to the front end past all the ovens and down a narrow ass hallway and then all the tables and chairs are fold ups and the ceiling is all saggy and it looks awful but fuck me it’s been there for 70+ years and makes the best damn thin crust pizza in the city and no one hardly knows about it because it looks like an abandoned building
3805 S Saginaw St in Flint
If it looks like an abandoned building you’ve got the right place
That’s the place
There’s no way this isn’t a mob front
Mob fronts always have the BEST pizza. Visit your local mob front eatery today
No mob boss wants to eat bad pizza while they meet to discuss crime. Even if it is unprofitable to sell really good pizza there, the mob will put up the funds to get top quality ingredients and a good chef and make up the difference in money laundering.
it’s true, i grew up in nj and you could tell how good the food was by how many insurance frauds the place did. one of my favorite pizza places in my home town staged an arson to collect on insurance money, the owner got caught tho
