Asayake

Sorry you went through that. Binge eating afterwards is normal, it's the same thing that happens with people in the biggest loser TV program, they go on big caloric deficit lose a lot of weight and then rebound afterwards. Any big caloric deficit will lower your metabolism which is why your body went cold, and will put your body in starvation mode. Your hormones like cortisol will increase and you will eat a lot as a consequence, your body is trying to put on fat to prepare itset for a potential similar situation in the future. I believe listening to your body and eating as much as it wants is good, your body is healing from the fast by doing this and changing its metabolism and hormones. When your body is reassured you're not going to starve anymore cortisol levels will go down. High cortisol also makes you more prone to psychosis as it stresses the body and puts you in a constant fight or flight head high. But you need to eat the things that help your body. Fruits & vegetables are healthy but I'm going to guess you didn't get enough calories eating only that. Nor did you probably get enough minerals. It's the problem with a long fast like that, when you come back from it you can't eat just anything. Fruit makes sense as it digests quickly and doesn't tax the digestive system much. However this also means that the refeed period is essentially a continuation of the fast, you're not fasting but you're on a big caloric deficit with limited nutritional intake. My advice to you would be to continue eating fruit if you experience no issues eating that but to also eat a lot of healthy cooked foods that are higher in calories like a lot of rice, lentils, potatoes. You can make something like a big batch of lentil daal with a lot of spices and have that last 3 days and serve with different carbs and eat as much as you want from that. You can keep eating a lot but eating a lot of fast food is going to potentially harm your body. You need to eat as much as you want, no restriction but eat real food and minimize oil if you become too heavy so you get more space for carbs. Personally something that helped me stabilize my mind was to increase sugar intake by adding sugar on my fruit and cereal. As well as eating big amounts of rice, potatoes, lentils, pasta (no more pasta anymore though because turns out I'm sensitive to gluten). I believe eating sufficient amounts of sugar with no restriction lets your body know it's safe because blood sugar spikes lower cortisol levels and help you relax. It's why back in the day children in my country were given a spoonful of sugar before bed if they couldn't sleep. The key is to avoid foods with both a lot of sugar and fat such as donuts and pizza as fat decreases the body's ability to handle blood sugar spikes by increasing insulin resistance. The body really wants a sufficient sugar/carb intake to help regulate cortisol levels. A big rice & lentil meal before bed helps you sleep like a child again.

I love Jeb Corliss, such a crazy soul. I haven't watched that documentary, will watch it!

I find it beautiful when people dedicate their lives to something some would consider risky or trivial. Please share your favorite videos of people doing dangerous but beautiful things. I'll start out with a classic I love, imagine the amount of falls and injuries one would have to go through to get to this level, having the will to keep going further even though you know one bad fall could end your career, that's true passion:

The same video could be made with Jordan Peterson in his low moments to show the scary side of the carnivore diet. That video is not a good representation of vegans, I don't see anything wrong with any of them except for the girl, she is clearly very underweight and it looks like she's avoiding calorie containing food and opting for zuccini noodles and eating 100% raw which is not easy to make sustainable.

I've had similar experiences. It's great until it isn't, it really is sneaky as hell.

You already quit for 2 months, it's very common to relapse atleast once before quitting for good, pretty much everyone does it so you did nothing wrong, it's just like having thoughts appear during meditation practice, it's not a mistake just a part of the process. The next step will be to give it another go, don't stop meditating just because a hindrance appeared, so to speak. If you want to get to the next level of well being quitting is foundational. It's a beautiful experience, it's ultimately a rebirth/rediscovery of your sober self, restoring the magic of the sober state and the healing of your body and mind. It's going to be an easy way for you to integrate some shadow aspects of your mind. Things will come up as you've already noticed and you'll be forced to learn how to deal with them properly, how to live with increased emotional instability for a while and learn to be okay with that. Quitting will increase your self acceptance and help you come to peace with yourself, it's a gradual process. Quitting is challenging at times but it's also a beautiful spiritual experience. It's a deep dive lesson in maneuvering your mind. Instead of doing psychedelics or chasing spiritual highs in other domains, quitting smoking could be your psychedelic of choice for 2 years, that's how you could approach it. Quitting smoking is more than meets the eye, it's a personal transformation which will have positive ripple effects in all areas of your life. The longer you're off it entirely the more time and space will be opened up for healthier recreation to take place and it only becomes a matter of time before your new pursuits bear more fruit than smoking ever could. At that point cravings have no impact, you start to see through the trick your mind is playing on you, you see smoking for what it is, it's never really as good as you think it is, that's an illusion. Your mind is tricking you to believe that other coping strategies won't compare to smoking, that it will be more rewarding to smoke than for example sober Vipassana practice or taking a walk in nature, or listening to music and cooking a healthy meal. You need to reprogram your mind in this regard. Your mind is tricking you by thinking about how good it would feel with a smoke etc, all of that's not true, smoking is not at all that pleasurable, you just think that it is and then your sober state feels bad because you're going through withdrawal alot of the time when you're not smoking. After a few months of abstaining the withdrawals will get significantly less severe and returning to smoking will become less and less tempting as it becomes clearer and clearer that it just leads to misery. Fatigue, phlegm, yes even cancer as you're aware of. It's not exactly heaven what's in store for you heading down that path. Smoking is like replaying that same song you heard a thousand times before, you know how the song goes already and at this point you're looking for cheap thrills. It's like a toxic relationship you know you should have ended a long time ago. It's keeping you stuck in a place of delayed growth. That's fine, but know that the growth and rewards you can achieve as a direct as well as indirect result of quitting smoking is more worth it than you probably think. You need to look at quitting smoking more as a way of growing and cultivating love in your life, not as merely avoiding disease down the line, although that's nice too. Sorry for the rant but I feel like you need it. You need to give it another shot or your 2 months were in vein.

Quitting smoking will generally get easier after 3 months of abstaining. I'm curious, did you think much about cigarettes/smoking/have cravings? It would be interesting to get a bit of an insight into what made you go back to smoking. There must be some cognitive dissonance going on in you considering that you likely quit for valid reasons of which you're aware in the first place. Cigars are not healthy, anything where you are in direct contact with smoke is not good for you whether that's cigars cigarettes or weed doesn't matter. Even if you don't deeply inhale cigar smoke you'll still inhale some of it and it's also bad psychologically because similarly to smoking cigarettes it will give you an addiction forming dopamine spike and worsen your mental health by increasing your cortisol levels and increasing risk of disease. People promoting cigars as healthy today are like doctors promoting cigarettes back in the day. It's dumb and there are immoral people out there looking to profit of your suffering.

Judging by the fact that you're still quite young it's not too late for you to study psychology still if you want. I agree with Eugene, if you could get the math figured out that could be nice. You could research how to study maths more effeciantly, watch YouTube videos going through different math problems in Swedish. You could get paid help with studying math if you got some money to spare. If you want to become a psychologist you should really start taking your HP studies seriously. You need to study math everyday and find the charm in it and self exam yourself online every month to track your progress. Perhaps you knew all of this already but I figured it was worth pointing out anyways. There's a possibility that you really want to become a psychologist but that you're not motivated enough about HP because it's a bit of an illusion/it doesn't feel like studying to become a psychologist when you're studying maths. You need to contemplate that a bit to see clearly what you need to do to become a psychologist so that you become motivated to study maths consistently and work on improving your study technique itself. However there's also a possibility that you don't want to become a psychologist and that's why you're not motivated to go through with the math studying thing, which is also fine. Perhaps you're more interested in alternative healing and therapy styles not taught in psychology at university. A psychology degree could still be useful but it's not a must to help others. It's still possible. Just more difficult and you got to make it happen more by yourself. It could even be a bit of an indirect route as you say if what you want to work with isn't directly related to the things you learn in University. You should lookup precisely what they study at the psychology program and consider if those are things you find interesting/valuable. Another thing to consider is that you would meet a lot of people your age who are interesred in psychology if you went to Uni which could be quite valuable and fun. To do a more direct path by yourself you need to become very knowledgeable in the things where you want to become valuable to others. You want to become valuable to others to be able to make a living doing what you do. Wether it's having private counseling calls or studying under some authority independent of the University there are many alternative paths. But they're most likely not going to be less rough than studying for HP. But anything becomes more bearable when it feels more aligned with what you want to do. No one can make this call but yourself, you need to take all things into consideration, think things through and then go with your gut. Good luck!

Drink enough water so that your pee clearly every 2-3 hours, you can start every day out with drinking 3 glasses of water(1 liter in total) before you do anything else. Do light cardio, don't overexert yourself just go on walks and do light yoga to get the blood flowing. Avoid oil & fatty foods, it worsens blood circulation. Eat a lot of fruit, vegetables & grains so you get enough vitamins, phytonutrients and energy. Get enough sleep so your body can recover, if you're feeling tired, eat a couple of fruits and if you're still tired take a nap if possible.

Exposure therapy can act as an extension of your formal mindfulness practice as it will make your anxiety appear, and then you have an opportunity to practice mindfulness in the face of the anxiety, it will make your formal sits easier, staying mindful in a social situation with social anxiety is likely more challenging than sitting in the comfort of your home. But formal sitting practice is super great too. When you practice mindfulness in the face of anxiety either on or off the mat it will integrate the anxiety into your life over time so that at first, even when anxiety appears, it's not as big of a problem anymore. Then as time goes on it becomes a smaller and smaller problem, and with even more time and practice it turns into just an annoyance you have to deal with. Finally, it turns into something which you fully accept as a part of your experience and at that point it could barely even be considered anxiety anymore, it still is in a sense, but it's just that you see it more clearly for what it is, so it doesn't cause you as much suffering. Anxiety is something we struggle to accept, we want to get rid of it, preferably as soon as possible. Similarly to fear it's a feeling we want to turn away from, we don't want to look at it/feel it, If we wanted to feel it we likely wouldn't call it anxiety/fear. It's resistance of what is because we fear what could be. When you're practicing mindfulness, you're teaching your mind to stay present of what is. To be present of what is means to stand your ground, you're there in the eye of the storm, you're not running away, you'll find peace there amongst the disturbances. The anxiety might arise, but you're still there, observing what is, if the anxiety is a part of that, so be it. You will be there for longer than the anxiety will be there, the anxiety is on a temporary visit but will dissolve sooner or later like all other appearances. In a sense, it's your teacher. In the end it might have been one of the best things that happened to you, it could be a gift in disguise. Your mission is not to try and get rid of it as soon as possible, but to get acquainted with it, being mindful of it when it appears. Become aware of which behaviors trigger it and which soothe it, and investigate why that is. Having anxiety is like being placed in a forest with nothing but a knife and a tent, the first time is going to be a mess but the more you get placed in the same situation the better you'll be able to handle it. You'll learn different coping skills, and you'll increase your awareness, it will teach you something about yourself you probably weren't going to learn otherwise, it will make you grow. A lot of what makes fear/anxiety so overwhelming is an illusion, it's not what we think it is. When we're mindful of it, in the present, feeling into our breath and body, we can get to know the feeling directly and discover that it's not as bad as we think it is. Awareness will dissolve the feeling over time, and the thoughts associated with that feeling will no longer serve much of a purpose and will lose their impact. When anxiety arises, and we're aware of it, it's a process of purification. Those feelings were potentially in your subconscious, governing your behaviors all along, it's just now coming to light, being aware of it is a healing of the mind, a letting go.

In regards to the fat & protein thing, fat especially is more taxing on the digestive system, it takes longer to digest. Fruit or rice will digest in 30-60 minutes and higher fat foods will take much longer, about 4 hours to digest. Acid reflux is often a symptom of poor digestion. A lot of people who suffer from acid reflux do so because of low stomach acid levels/indigestion. The food they eat for dinner will take longer to digest than it should so by the time they go to bed they still have stuff filling up their stomach, causing juices to get pushed out of the esophageal sphincter more easily. Beyond this, people with lower stomach acid levels don't have an as acidic enviroment in their stomach as others, either the acid is diluted by food that's not digesting quickly enough or the acid levels are just low to begin with. The acid level being as it should be is important because when acid gets in contact with the esophageal sphincter it triggers it to close shut so that sutff doesn't leak out and cause damage. If this is the case Apple Cider Vinegar will help to remedy this short term. Because it is acidic it will trigger the esophageal sphincter to help it close properly, this way you can lie down without stuff leaking out causing heartburn. There are also those who have high levels of stomach acid and that's the cause of the their reflux, for those people Apple Cider Vinegar would not help I believe, so testing Apple Cider Vinegar as a remedy could be helpful to try to troubleshoot what the cause of your acid reflux potentially is. If you eat something like cinamonn sugar rice porridge or rice & steamed vegetables or rice & chickpeas for dinner it will leave the stomach quicker, leaving your stomach acid less diluted so it can trigger the esophageal sphincter more easily as well as reducing risk of stuff getting pushed out of your stomach becuase of it not being emptied properly. Edit: I wanted to add that you also want to figure out potential trigger foods and avoid them completely. For me pasta is a big trigger where as rice & potatoes works great. I still have pasta every now and then because I love it but there's a price to be paid for that lol.. Another trigger for me is chili pepper. For a while I couldn't eat tomatoes or canned tomatoes but that seems to work fine again now so some triggers seem to disappear as the digestion improves.

I have been dealing with this on and off for years. The first thing I would do is to reduce the fat intake as much as possible. Remove oil and opt for tofu or beans over eggs. If you're eating street food/restaurant food you're gonna have to look for a place that got something without oil or fat such as steamed vegetable. This alone helped me quite a bit, with that being said I still have acid reflux from time to time, it seems to be multifactorial for me. In my case going to bed too late as well as just increased stress by itself are two triggers. Another thing worth trying is avoiding to drinking water when you eat, instead try to drink 3 glasses 15-20 mins before your meals, as to not dillute your stomach acid and slow down your digestion. A quick remedy you could try is 2 tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar mixed in 1/2 glass of water, drink that at night before going to bed and flush out your mouth with water afterwards. After about 20-40 minutes of drinking that my acid reflux disappears for the night. However, relying on this longterm might not be great because it damages your enamel in the long run since it's acidic. And it could be more useful in the long run to get to the root cause of your issues. I hope you found some of this useful and I hope you find some relief from your symptoms.

Lost Highway(1997) Eraserhead(1977) Mulholland Drive(2001)

Interesting, I've been dealing with heart burn on and off for a long time. I'm starting to wonder if there's something related with that for me. Possible I have had some digestion issue for a long time that I've never gotten figured out. I'm going to get blood tests done to see if that makes me any wiser. Definitely feeling better so far without supplements, the only question is how sustainable that is.. given that I'm in a dark country on a vegan diet...

Any animal product high in fat is also high in cholestorol pretty much so the only way to avoid cholestorol on carnivore is to calorie restrict as far as I am aware and that's only possible temporarily and will worsen fatigue. On carnivore you need to eat a lot of fatty foods for it to work. Eating only lean meats like white fish etc is not going to be sustainable.

Cheers

Anyone here living in a rental place have RO? I'm curious now to try this but I live in a rental place so I'm not so sure I would be allowed to make an installation like this, perhaps I could do it under the radar, I saw there are potentially some no install units you can attach to the tap itself but I'm not sure how good those are.

Did you come to any resolve regarding this? I am recently experimenting with taking vs not taking certain vitamins and it does seem like I feel better overall when I'm NOT taking Vitamin D, despite living in a dark country. Super strange, I'm pretty sure it's not placebo, although that's possible as well of course. @Craigxt22

I'm not sure reverse osmosis is the best, I've heard things about it potentially depleting minerals in the body because it's too clean, anyone knows something about that? Carbon filter seems to be a good middle ground but I'm not sure what a good carbon filter would be. In my country there seems to be no good carbon filters available as far as I can find. I believe tap water isn't good, the tap water where I live is insanely high in calcium which is not a good thing, increases risk of kidney stones and other issues so I want to get this part of my health figured out. Edit: I just noticed Leo adds back minerals and stuff into the water after the reverse osmosis, could be worth pointing that out for anyone who didn't read the blog post, I think reverse osmosis without doing that could be dangerous.

Judging by Leo's posts on the forum, I believe him to be an INTJ. He seems to use Ni a lot to me. He also give off a certain "INTJ vibe".

Yeah, pretty much. I obviously don't think it's a good idea to drink just sugar water as it would leave you deficient in nutrients. Just added to fruit or a fruit smoothie will do, it compensates for lack of ripeness/quality of fruit and provides the energy necessary to feel better and become more active physically & mentally. But any kind of sugar works, brown sugar/maple syrup, whatever you think is the best, they're all pretty similar from my point of view, they're forms of readily available energy. The body will convert everything it gets its hands on to glucose as that is what the body's cells use for energy. Organic is probably the best but I think the difference is not that big.

That article didn't seem all that concerning to me. It even states most lectins can be removed by soaking beans & lentils before cooking Lectins are just one piece of a large puzzle which is why I don't think it's a problem. Yes beans & lentils contain lectins but they also contain minerals, fiber, phytonutrients and lack the most harmful nutrients such as saturated fat & cholestorol. Beyond this beans were consumed by some of the healthiest and longest living populations such as the okinawans. I think avoiding lectins is possible to do in a healthy way if you wish, I just think it's not the best thing to focus on, it seems to me like focusing on one minor detail that is not really the main issue. But if you're experiencing some issues you're trying to resolve you might as well try it and see if it works for you. 6-7 bananas, 250 grams of frozen blueberries, 1 decliter of white sugar and you got 1000 calories. Fruit don't cause cancer and fruit contains sugar. Adding sugar to a fruit smoothie just jacks up the ripeness level of the fruit in the smoothie, pretty much. Chug one smoothie like that down in the morning and go for a run and you burn off the 300 calories that was in the added sugar. And adding the sugar will make you feel like you actually want to go for a run because it increases your dopamine and you get a surge of natural energy instantly. The reason sugar is considered to cause heart disease is because it's considered to contribute to obesity & diabetes which is not really true. People who eat fat & oils just can't handle high sugar well because the fat & oils they're eating is causing insuline resistance by increasing blood fat levels & blocking the insulin receptor site. You'll struggle to find fruitarians with diabetes type 2 or obesity, they're all mega thin. A coke contains no fiber, vitamins or phytonutrients. It also contains stimulants in the form of caffeine which increases cortisol levels. It's also very acidic which is bad for the enamel. It's not the worst food out there but it's lacking in nutrients, drinking it every morning for breakfast would not be the best choice. Fatigue from a lack of sugar/carbs keeps us reliant on stimulants or dopamine increasing substances to get going. Physical inactivity is going to be worse for our health than consuming some extra sugar in our food is. The extra sugar will be burned off quickly by our increased activity and the body & immune function will thank us for not jacking up its cortisol levels with caffeine or other drugs to compensate for our lack of energy.

Lectins are not a problem. Also, I don't have any problems eating beans, problems from beans just means you're poorly adapted to fiber or are eating too much fat. Meat is low in carbohydrates which is the natural energy source for humans that cures fatigue. It's high in potentially cancer causing animal protein and heart disease causing fats that increase your blood fat levels. It also is high in cholesterol which is bad for some people. Difference in acne between two different brands of chicken could depend on many things. It could be that one is higher in B12 or fat which both can cause acne. The solution to not having to eat 25 lettuce heads for lunch is to smash down a banana blueberry smoothie with added sugar for breakfast. Boom 1000 calories of high quality energy for body and mind. High in vitamins, fiber, phytonutrients, sugar, water, it's the wombo combo. Tastes amazing. And low in cancer & heart disease contributive properties.

Yup

I've had very weird reactions to Magnesium in the past so interested to see what answers you're gonna get. I had a period where I suspected I had a magnesium deficiency and took a magnesium supplement and I couldn't sleep afterwards. I also had an intense surge of nauseousness. I tried it once more but had the same result and that put me off it for good. Personally this would only be an issue for me if it happened with vitamin D as there's no sunlight where I live. The other vitamins might not be necessary for you to supplement depending on what you eat.