Judy2

oh, i see. how is it now? do you think you could willingly replicate the experience?

i've made the switch again from feeling stressed to feeling utterly, utterly bored and empty. and kind of disappointed because will this stupid cycle ever end? last time this happened, i put up a list on my wall to see what activities i can do when i feel this way. nothing, none of it, seems even slightly appealing now. i would like to resolve this, but i do not know how. weekends really aren't good for me, as much as i want to get there during the week. i am so much better off when i have at least one appointment or two to fill my schedule each day.

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@cetus sounds cool:)

hi there:) i dimly remember asking about this before, but can't remember the conclusion we came to. so i was vegan for six years and started eating eggs and dairy again two years ago. i eat dairy-based products mostly for protein, but usually gravitate toward the low-fat products. and i mean really low fat, sometimes the 0.1% (still single-ingredient and no added sugar). i eat other healthy fats from nuts and high-quality oils, but i've been wondering if swapping the dairy for higher fat varieties would be a good call? it's something i started wondering about because i consume a lot of artificial sweeteners, which are also low calorie but not necessarily healthy and i'm so used to the indigestion, but tbh my body doesn't exactly like them. they're still hard to cut out, though, but it's something i would like to work on. i'm sure i'd also be able to enjoy plain low fat yoghurt, but anyway, this still got me wondering about the fat percentage of choice. lower fat products are lower in calories, obviously, but i'm not sure if the swap to higher fat dairy would have a huge impact on my total caloric consumption in a day....i'd probably find ways to balance this out, although protein might be slightly lower overall, then? maybe not concerningly low, but a little bit? or maybe there are other concerns to be had with 3.5% yoghurt that i'm not even aware of? for example saturated vs unsaturated fats?

thank you for all your suggestions!

but it's a delusion that many people share, so that makes it a bit more real. didn't fully understand the rest because there's too much Freud in there.

i do experience a lot of bloating, though. any guesses why this could be, aside from the sucralose lol? Germany:)

that is crazy. aren't you super bloated? do you live in Germany? Alnatura's the best:)

yes, i actually made a commitment to cut out protein bars a couple days ago:) i already eat a lot of fibre and fruit, maybe even too much.

my neighbour's stomping woke me up last night, and it's just super triggering overall. makes me feel so trapped. people say i should relax more, but i don't know how i possibly could. i can't wear headphones 24/7. i could move to a new place, but that's not so easy to find, and it's not guaranteed that it will be any better there. i try to be reasonable and stop playing victim, but it's usually not working out. and then the despair just grows all the more.

@PsychedelicEagle yes i've gained a lot of muscle mass since last year but i've also gained body fat. if i just went on a cut, i'd look alright, but idk how to go on a cut without harming my mental health and i wouldn't know how to eat sustainably after that, either. i am not sure if counting calories works for me. i know exactly how to do it but things could tip over very quickly and feel more harmful than helpful and make me very anxious around food.

@Osaid thank you for sharing your perspective:)

yes, i can literally feel my brain fighting to just accept that i can still be pleasant and soft at a higher weight. i would like to be those things, of course. i don't know if this is what you mean but yes, when the body lacks resources it responds to external stimuli differently and also processes emotions slightly differently. that can look like hyperarousal or it can also look like depression. i've also been much more prone to experiencing dissociation at low weights.... and having a very cloudy, foggy, borderline delirious inner monologue. you assume i haven't but i have gained weight since last year and also exercised a lot and built some muscle, but i'm really uncomfortable in my body. you wouldn't think that, but even just having more weight on my body does change the way i carry myself a lot. and i just know i'm prettier when i weigh a little less...in fact i get sad every time i see myself in the mirror and think my complexion is pretty, but it all goes to waste because my size is so wrong...i just don't know how to go about that in a healthy way. going on a cut or diet might not be the best for my psyche, but i don't know what habits/dietary guidelines to pick up to be healthy and lean long-term (without experiencing too much querulousness, as you say). you underestimate how tough it can be psychologically to have a history of restriction and then figure out moderation, of all things. ....i do try to be hopeful about it, though, and trust that one day i'll figure it out. please be aware that this is a vulnerable topic for me and something i usually battle very silently on my own:) please don't say anything mean.

what did the practice consist in?

yes i can see that. it could even be a type of neurological "disorder" if it happens a lot. really fascinating:)

@PenguinPablo i looked into it briefly and basically from a neurological pov, an OBE is a sensory mismatch when your brain receives (or produces?) conflicting information on how the body is positioned in space. (and of course it can get much deeper than that, but that's the basics.) i get this a lot when i take afternoon naps and my sleep is very light. that's when i'd be prone to getting close to waking up but my body is still asleep, and sometimes i confuse bodily sensations or feel as though there is the sleeping body and my other body with which i can be in slightly different positions. this has also gone as far as feeling as though i got up and walked through my apartment, only to realise that i had done so in a dream-like state and my real body was still in bed.

@Oppositionless do OBEs occur for you shortly after falling asleep or shortly before waking up? is there a relation to how light your sleep is, how well you remember dreams, or a tendency to experience sleep paralysis?

i haven't fully experienced either but have had glimpses of both. in my understanding, the two are quite distinct. you don't "need" one to experience the other. during an OBE you still experience yourself as a separate entity travelling through non-physical dimensions. but there can also be experiences of unity/God realisations occurring during these journeys. God realisation is the dissolution of the sense of a separate self (basically you flip inside out and become everything). leaving the physical body is not necessary; rather, God realisation is a metaphysical recontextualisation of what it means to be/have a body in the first place. the body can still be here as part of your consciousness, no problem with that. your visual field doesn't have to change for God realisation to occur, either - of course it can, but that's not the core of it.

my father is also overweight. but he also has very questionable views on nutrition. my brother is ripped, though. dentists have literally told me that i should consider having surgery for my jaw because it's so narrow. so i'm not making that up:) i know you don't believe me but i have direct experience of being at different BMI ranges and how people treat me differently in relation to it. sure, BMI ~11-14 maybe isn't perceived as that attractive (though there was one thirty-something-year-old dude messaging me recently on the basis of Instagram pictures from many years ago when i was an anorexic minor and said he wanted to meet me? don't know what's up with that but it's creepy; and several people have said i looked so cute when i was emaciated - yourself included). but the real problem is i've had direct experience of being maybe BMI 22ish vs BMI 17 or 18, and at 17/18 i wasn't healthy at all, but unfortunately, that's the kind of skinny that people can still think of as healthy, and that's also when i got more attention than i ever did at healthier BMIs (where i also felt more stable with my behaviour independent of the BMI charts). that's incredibly painful to deal with.

my mum and grandma are both overweight and i worry a little bit that it's in my genes (ugh). but my mum was very skinny when she was younger, it's just that menopause hit her bad. so i wonder what habits i can pick up now to epigenetically prevent this kind of fate....exercising a lot is the only solution i've come up with so far. my idea is i'll get so used to it that i'll still want to exercise a lot when i'm 50, and then menopause won't be so tough on me. if anyone can think of something else, those tips are very welcome, though.

sessions with my therapist are just so weird. i can't tell if it's because he does a good job, better than therapists i've had before, or if it's simply weird and not necessarily good. at the beginning of every session, he asks what my wishes or goals are. we pick a topic, and then he ask three or four times as we talk what it's like for me to talk about a certain topic, and urges me to give a name to the emotion. usually there is no emotion other than amusement and smiles, and i try really hard to give a proper answer but all that ever comes to mind is "it's fine". then we just circle around different topics and he asks a lot about how certain things connect to my past, and basically it's always the same questions on repeat...and it all just feels so fake to talk things through? like so unnecessary, and it doesn't do much other than make me feel super awkward giving interviews about myself that don't do anything. i hate talking about myself in that kind of setting, it feels so wrong. i feel so stupid trying to play along with that game and just speak about random associations forming in my head, and most of the time i don't feel anything anyway. we've never once come up with a solution, either. it's simply such an odd game when he pretends to care and i answer mechanically, but he doesn't actually care and only says all those things because he thinks they'll shift something inside me, which they usually don't.

i could also sit at home all day and be miserable. Italy would have been an option, too, but my Italian got a bit rusty and i'd like to take a class to get back into it before i book a trip there. in the UK, i can speak English, i know my way around London, but i've never travelled further up north, even though the Lake District and Scotland are on my personal bucket list. there's nature and beautiful architecture all over the country and, depending on where you go, the ocean. this is also the reward trip i had promised myself to go on for finishing my undergraduate degree, since that was quite hard for me mentally.....and i need to get out for a while and explore. i think that will be good for my mind. besides, i live close to an airport now, so i'm primed to want to pollute the environment every time i look up at the sky.

(:

really looking forward to it now!