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#(all things that have the proper nutrition for their diets)
pickapea · 7 months
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my job is reactivating and rehabilitating patients in post surgery care and one of the first things i tell them once they've tried to drink some juice and stand on their legs without throwing up is "every bite is a good bite" and i think that's a good sentiment for everyone
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celestialtarot11 · 3 months
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Solar Return Observations ☀️✨
Hi friends! Today we’re discussing solar return notes + what I’ve observed from them. I’ve been observing for three years, but I’m not able to fit all of the details in one post. I can always make another 🦋 enjoy and feel free to like, comment and reblog.
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Chiron in the 7th house 💌- Healing through partnership and connections. I’ve had this placement last year and went through a breakup which taught me a lot about self worth (Aries ruled 7th house SR) and I learned to stand up for myself. I learned to be my own best friend and start over after a loss. Everything in terms of my relationship and how I viewed it changed completely. It was a pretty long journey, being that Chiron is the wounded healer, I’d say about a year the cycles were going on. Anyone who has this placement in their SR chart, you can expect for healing to occur in your relationships. Not necessarily a breakup always, but definitely wounding will come up that year.
Neptune in the 6th house 🌷- Routines can be heavily centered around spirituality. Meditation, yoga, occult practices become a theme in the daily life. Incorporating this can help the native grow and develop a consistent routine, and eventually connect with a higher source of love (deity, religion, universe, etc) because Neptune is the higher octave of Venus. With Neptune here there’s an emphasis on romanticizing daily routine and self care. Certain day to day events can feel whimsical, ethereal, and fated even! The native may question that year their beliefs and want to start something new, or reignite spiritual passions ✨
Moon in the 4th house 🌙🌟- Romanticizing the past, viewing things from a nostalgic lenses, daydreaming about a family. The native may deal with family illusions around this time, manipulation, or themes surrounding the family this year. The native might find it difficult to balance their life as family is an important theme for the year, whether it’s their own, or biological. The mother could be significant this year, and the mother may try to build a close bond with the native. The past is viewed from a bittersweet lenses, as there’s an element of moving on but honoring the past for what it was.
Capricorn 4th house 🦋✨- Structure, evolution, and discipline is needed regarding the home. Things may be slow, sluggish, or even depressing in the house. Saturn slows things down and when Capricorn is in the 4th, it can point to restrictions, boundaries, and limits. The native will learn to have boundaries with the family that year, and the value of alone time. The necessity of independence, and rebuilding structure in terms of roots. New job, new ways of managing finances, moving homes even. The native may feel uncomfortable that year within their home, they could feel detached even more than usual, and may long for an actual home of their own. Their own independence apart from family. Family could be stricter that year, and family events may be limited.
Saturn in the 6th house 🤍🌹- Structure, routine, discipline through health. The native may develop a stable gym routine and eating habits that year, and their health will improve with dedication and practice! They may choose a better diet, and learn about proper nutrition that year, and take care of their digestive system especially. Even energetically, the native will find themselves not wanting to consume shows or channels that are stressful. The native is meant to build a stable routine with their health.
11th house stellium 🌷🥂- Emphasis on networking, friends and meeting new people. Lots of people will want to meet the native, and will try to talk to the native. It’s easier to meet people this year, and to form new connections. Even strangers will randomly strike up a conversation with the native. Potential for meeting a marriage partner or best friend is strong! Potential for growing famous online is also strong, you may start an online business or be online a lot more this year.
11th house sun ☀️✨- Finding others is how you come back to yourself. What kind of community will you center yourself around? This year the native will try to figure out what kinds of friends they want, and where they belong. Through others the native comes to themselves, and people will teach a lot to the native. Not necessarily handing out wisdom, but there will be situations in which the native has to choose their own community and their beliefs compared to what everyone else wants.
11th house Venus 🦋🤍- Having friends and community becomes important, and the native realizes the importance of it all this year. Lots of people may want to date and get to know the native, as the 11th house is public. The native will be seen a lot more by others, around the place and people may actually make comments about that (I’ve had that happen with this placement many times!) The native will find that somehow the people around them come the right time when they need help too. Almost as if they’re blessed 💘 The native learns a lot about detachment from others expectations, and opinion. It’s about finding what works for them not for others this year. Potential for dating online is strong! And meeting someone through a dating app or social media.
Mars in the 12th house 💗🌹- The natives abilities and effort may struggle to be seen and recognized. There’s a sense that the natives effort is hidden, and the native feels unseen. It’s important this year the native keeps their plans and goals hidden as there could be others who want to criticize negatively. Especially with virgo 12th house! People may expect perfection from the native this year, or the native will struggle with perfectionist tendencies, and eventually will be the self undoing (12th house) Perfectionism is the natives enemy this year, and the native will have to find ways to understand themselves and work on their tendencies. There’s a chance to end up injured or hurt this year, so be cautious. The zodiac sign in that house will tell you where. For example if you have Virgo 12th house, your stomach in some way could struggle this year or be injured.
North Node in the 8th house ☕️💌- Leaving behind the material realm for the spiritual. Native is involved heavily with healing, releasing, and esoteric practices. The native eventually finds balance towards the end of the year with the material realm, but will likely find 6-8 months of deep inner work. Boundaries regarding spirituality get muddled as the native explores their psyche, uncovering new experiences! Healing and transformation through the past, to be in the present. Certain relationships can fall apart as it’s not aligned with the natives growth. Jobs may change as the native adjusts to their needs.
Libra Ascendant 🥂💗- Focus is on beauty and seeing the world through a connective lenses. Connection everywhere, with nature, people, communities, spirituality, etc. the native will fill more in touch with their fair and balanced side. This year the native will focus on balance, and not doing too less or too much. The act of balancing means things will be out of balance, so this year the native will go through upheaval as well. They will learn about discipline and structure throughout these changes, and work on mending things that were out of place. Going back and rebuilding. Or starting new if needed. The natives peace is important, and the native could find a partner this year! Depending on the other SR placements. The native is looking for ways to be connected to whats around them and within them.
Pluto in the 7th house 🌟🌷- Transformative relationships and unhealthy dynamics can come up this year in the native. Power dynamics and upheaval of roots in connections. The natives relationships with others is changing tremendously, and likely they could attract someone healing as well, and the two can heal. But with pluto here it can get intense and chaotic, if the two aren’t consistent working on themselves. People from outside could try to get into the natives relationship, adding gossip. It’s important to stay private this year with relationships.
Venus in the 12th house ✨☀️- Some I knew actually met a soulmate that year, the potential for a deep bonding connection came up. It was long distance given the 12th house ruling distant lands. If Venus is in a water sign for that year, the connection is a psychic one and very intuitive. Her house had cancer over it, and she developed a close bond with someone. They did things for the first time she’d never done before like traveling to another place! Everything was kept private, as Venus fell in the 12th house. Although this happened, they both mirrored wounds and did inner work to sustain the connection, and had a connection that was incredibly intimate. So Venus in the 12th can bring up a romantic interest, a connection that will be profound in terms of inner healing. It can also mean the native will choose to heal and do inner work, and not have the desire to date that year. It can mean codependency is the natives undoing that year in their relationships.
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Sun in the 1st house ☀️🥂- Focus is on the self, growing and improving the body. The native could go to the gym and explore new routines, or be athletic that year. Participating in a sport they enjoy. Their appearance will go through a massive change too, someone I knew impulsively cut their hair after drinking lmao. It was super long, and then they went short! The father could be in the natives life a lot more, whether thats through spending time and bonding, or being intrusive and invasive. The native will realize a lot in terms of their strength, depending on which zodiac sign falls in the sun. For example, if its Leo, the native will realize a lot of their determination; strength, resilience and their self esteem will improve.
Venus in the descendant or 7th house 🤍☕️- Dating someone! Or meeting someone who is a potential partner. Venus was in my 7th house for my SR when I got into long term relationships. Conj. NN will be an impactful relationship, NN is also associated with destruction in a way because it rebuilds, and what doesn’t work must leave, so that relationship I had was incredibly chaotic 😅 But for those who have Venus in the 7th house, you will potentially meet a long term partner that year. Check the zodiac sign and that’ll tell you how! Someone with Gemini Venus 7th house met someone online.
Venus in the 1st 🌟🌹- Appearance changes! A glow up will definitely happen that year, and ideals of your relationship will change a lot. What you expect, want, desire will go through changes. You may prefer healing therapy of some kind for the body, like massages, or yoga. Something to restore the body physically. You could absolutely be in the gym too!
Saturn in the 1st 🌙🦋- Having to be more structural and disciplined within yourself. Setting new routines and maturing personal boundaries. You may struggle with dissatisfaction and apathy this year, because you’re moving towards what fulfills you. Check the zodiac sign to see what will be maturing most within yourself that year. For example if its in Pisces, you’ll be maturing the part of you that has wishes, dreams, but has been passive in taking an approach to make them happen.
Venus in the 5th house🌙🥂- More fun and romance this year! The chance to get to know someone and friendship. However your approach to dating will differ depending on what zodiac sign falls in the 5th house. For example, if it’s in Capricorn, you’ll take on a reserved and detached approach to relationships. You’ll show up practical.
Capricorn Venus 🦋🤍- Material matters are important and you’ll likely pick up extra hours this year. Your approach to relationships are practical, refined and you have a long term focus. You don’t want anyone or anything unnecessary, as you know it’ll hinder you this year. There’s a need to mature when it comes to relationships and understanding how they work, because Capricorn is ruled by Saturn. There will be lessons on emotional intimacy this year!
Leo Venus 🥂🌟- This year there will be a focus on attracting the one potentially, and going big. Not playing small in relationships and attracting abundance. Loyalty is important, and the native wants a commitment within their friendships or romantic interests. The native steps into their worth and their value. By valuing themselves, they learn to realize their value in other peoples life. Lessons regarding self worth and value will come up, and the native will find themselves having to speak up for what they deserve in relationships!
Thats all I have ya’ll! I hope y’all enjoyed and please support this blog 💗🤗 it’s very much appreciated! If ya’ll would like I’d love to do more of this!
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queenofcoquette · 8 months
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eating clean(er)!
prefaces:
i know talking about food can be a sensitive subject, so i want to give some prefaces before we begin:
this is not about weight loss, this is about health. people can be thin but still have a diet that is not beneficial for their health. even tho i’m not overweight, im still striving to eat healtheir for the sake of my health and the health benefits of whole foods. 
 i know it can also be difficult to eat healthy (healthier foods are typically more expensive in the US) and a lot of people don’t have the time to put time into thinking about what they’re going to eat. you don’t need to eat completely farm fresh food, these are simply tips for bettering your current diet.
eating better:
read about nutrition. you can buy or check out books on it or read online, but read about the importance of eating good and what we need in our diets.
find fun recipes. the first step is finding recipes you can make at home. generally, eating at home is cheaper and also a lot healthier. and finding recipes that are fun and new makes eating healthy a lot better :)
make a list of fruits and vegtables you like and dont like- this will help you know what to buy and what to eat more of. this is a great starting point
add more fruits and vegtables to your meals. find new ways to incorporate them into your meals- snack of them- whatever. just strive to eat a fruit and vegtable with every meal.
add more whole foods into your diet. obviously this includes fruits and vegtables, but also things such as poultry, eggs, nuts and beans. fish is also really good for you. find ways to incorporate the nutrients you need.
start with healthier snacks. to put it simply, just swapping out highly unhealthy snacks (such as chips, sweets, etc.) with healthier alternatives (such as fruits) can make a big impact. not only will these healthier options satisfy your hunger better, but you’ll also be provided with the proper energy your body needs.
balance it out! dessert is fun to- so are sweets and milkshakes and ice cream and all of that. eating healthy doesn’t mean getting rid of those foods, it means eating healthy most of the time but letting yourself enjoy a variety of foods.
how to start:
do your own research. the internet is full of misinformation and fear mongering, so before you even begin take time to research things like the effects of canned foods and other ultra-processed ones. you don’t have to be an expert in nutrition, but building a better knowledge of healthy eating and WHY it’s important is crucial to start.
find healthier alternatives. for example, i love fruit snacks and gummies, so not only do i eat less of those, but i tend to go for the healthier versions. changes like this will make healthy eating a lot easier!
start small. maybe just add a fruit or vegtable to two of your meals a day and then all of them. progress always comes from little steps, so find something that works for YOU.
if you’re having trouble balancing out food, or if food is just a general issue for you, then please get help and contact a hotline or service that deals with eating disorders.
conclusion
self-love means nourishing our bodies in order for them to be their healthiest versions. our bodies keep us alive and do so much for us- so in return we need to nourish them with what they need to keep us feeling good. treating our bodies to the nutrients they crave helps us feel more energized, improves our overall health and mood. it gives us a healthy feeling and a glow. hope u enjoyed this post :))))- amy <3
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glacierclear · 6 months
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Can I... can I ask for some househusband Leon hcs?
alright. okay. we're gonna work with a few assumptions for these headcanons.
this all comes from the hypothetical of leon being fully retired from his line of work. he still has the same backstory, skillset, traumas, everything, it's just...now he's your loyal house husband!
cooking? this all depends on where he's at in life. mid-30s and onward? he's a chef. i don't believe he'd be terribly gourmet about it. you aren't coming home to a roasted duck served with a reduced wine glaze and a perfectly made risotto...but god. he can make some damn fine spaghetti. he'd likely shoot for simple dishes, with perhaps an added flair or two. homemade burgers. lots of steak dinners. he'd prefer anything that can be prepared with minimal mess. recipes that are made with one pot or one pan...a big hit for him. he is not a pretentious eater, and that would reflect in his cooking.
now, if we're talking early to late-20s leon? erm. well. let's just say he's learning. his transition from zombie apocalypse policeman to military meat shield didn't do much for his cooking skills. and a diet of MREs and scrounged up viper parts did even less. if post-re4 leon is your house husband you're gonna be eating a lot of questionable meals. he's not completely oblivious. he won't try and feed you absolute slop, but his abilities don't much exceed kraft mac and scrambled eggs. still! he's a domestic man now. plenty of free time to try out all sorts of new things in the kitchen! be on standby with a fire extinguisher when he decides 3am is a great time to make fried chicken from scratch!
leon's independent food preferences likely revolve around utility. protein. nutrition. careful rations. compact energy a growing boy needs to kill bioweapons. he doesn't strike me as having a particularly strong sweet tooth, but he also won't say no to a bit of dessert! but he's adaptable, of course. one must be in his line of work. your tastes and favored dishes will influence his palate a lot. he'll naturally associate flavors with you and will, over time, come to adopt a lot of your dietary choices.
cleaning? leon will do his best. you can count on him to not accidentally mix mustard gas in your bathroom, but his knack for cleanliness would be...odd. i choose to believe leon has a strict standard for bodily hygiene. his extended exposure to all manner of glop and viscera means he strives to smell nice and stay on top of dirt the best he can when he is able to...on his body. a house is different. he's never had to see it as a home, merely an empty room where he sleeps and eats. so maintaining it as a tidy space might not come naturally, and it's not as if he had a proper upbringing to teach him proper housekeeping techniques (cough, cough, he's an orphan).
man's a fast learner though. expect a lot of trial and error. him accidentally using glass cleaner on the stove. or not understanding the exact purpose of fabric softener. why do we need make our bed if we're just gonna sleep in it and mess it up again? he likely has a lot of bad habits from living on his own, but gentle guidance and persistent advice will go a long way.
of course, leon needs his private time. space for him to isolate and be alone...but, you're at work all day. the loneliness is easily accessible, and now that he has all the time and freedom to be with you...it's grating. his favorite sound is the noise your key makes when it unlocks the front door. he's careful, not incredibly overbearing, but you don't make it more than a few steps into your home before his head is poking around the corner. "how was your day? you look tired. here, let me take your coat off-" leon is a listener. he doesn't talk about himself much, if at all, so he'd prefer to just hear you ramble on about whatever you need to or want to. neck rubs. gentle squeezes on your arm. light kisses on your brow. he doesn't smother. he doesn't drown you in the touch he's so starved of. but you can tell, he misses you a lot.
the real issues will probably stem from the quiet. the absolute lack of danger. take a person out of their traumatic environment and things start crumbling real fast before they can start to heal. he's hyper-aware. paranoid. has all this pent up energy and an instinct to fight. and he has to redirect it all somewhere, right? it'd come out in bizarre ways. diy projects. you come home from work and he built you a fucking chair. you don't even need a chair, but now you have one. lots of yard work. he renovated your patio and set up a birdhouse (also handmade). you didn't really want him to rearrange your living room but he did it anyways.
and it's hard for him to relax. for him to feel truly safe. he'd insist on installing locks on all the doors. bulletproof windows. guns hidden and stashed in corners of the house, just in case. any tech that could impede on his privacy (ie, amazon echos, doorbell cameras, etc) are out of the question. he'd run you through drills and hypothetical scenarios. make sure you know what to do in any situation. he's vigilant, and honestly, you've never felt safer, but it wears him down and you aren't sure if it's truly good for him.
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ms-demeanor · 4 months
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hi! i’ve been following you for a bit and seen you post abt taking nutrition courses, and i was wondering if you could talk about how you found/vetted your program? i have a community-oriented foodservice job and i’m interested in learning more about nutrition, but i know there’s a lot of dubious stuff/outright pseudoscience in the field so i’m wary of just signing up for the nearest/cheapest class.
So if you're looking at doing nutrition in a serious academic in the US way you need to take courses in an ACEND accredited program; there is an industry compliance standard that is required for RDs/RDNs so I started from there and worked backwards. I looked at state schools in my area that had programs on that list, then looked at community colleges in my area. California has pretty strict rules about accredited community colleges and state colleges in terms of what is transferable and transfer-ability is one of the better markers of a program that is not hot garbage. The school that I'm currently at has a program that complies with the Cal State requirements for an AS-T (Associates of Science Transfer) degree for Nutrition. There's another nearby school that has a more comprehensive program that offers both an AS-T and further lower-division nutrition classes.
If you're not thinking about becoming an RD/RDN (which at this point requires an MS in nutrition, a 10-month internship, and board certification) but want to learn more, I'd still say that working backwards works and you will likely be well served by seeing which schools in your area have an accredited program, which community colleges - if any - they accept transfers from, and signing up for basic classes.
If you're interested in doing an online class, it looks like there's a free class (the audit option is free) on basic nutrition offered through EdX from UC Riverside - this course outline looks very similar to basic nutrition classes I've taken.
The thing is that in some ways nutrition is pretty simple; there are essential nutrients, we need to make sure to get enough of them, a lot of people don't get enough of them, and most people's nutrition can be improved by eating a varied diet that includes many fruits and vegetables with sugar and some kinds of fats in moderation (but everyone needs protein, carbohydrates, and fats as part of their diet).
In other ways nutrition is tremendously complicated, highly specific to individuals, and people look at it as a silver bullet to solve all problems. And the really frustrating thing is that if you've got certain kinds of issues (celiac disease being one example that I'm intimately familiar with) then proper nutrition IS actually a silver bullet. But it's not a silver bullet for, say, heart disease or diabetes (both of which *interact* with the foods a person consumes, but are likely not purely caused by food consumption and may not be significantly mediated by nutritional care alone).
And that makes it a field ripe for charlatans!
But if you're doing community-oriented food service specifically i think that you're probably going to do well looking into programs for nutrition for public health and looking at accredited local schools. If you can't do that, check on what's available from schools that are ACEND accredited but have online classes through stuff like EdX - the UC Riverside program falls into that category, and there were classes from Arizona State University - which has a really widely known, accredited, and popular nutrition program - in that same category.
But. Yeah. I'm sorry. The field is kind of a nightmare and huge chunks of it are very misleading and even if you're looking at well vetted stuff there's going to be some garbage and it's going to depend a lot on the age of the program and how long people have been teaching in that program. It's a mess! It's a fascinating mess but it's a mess nonetheless!
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What made you want to recover. I have anorexia and I don't want to recover I just want to get worse and worse until I'm sick enough. I'm in forced recovery but faking it as I just want to starve is there any reason to recover?
Hello anon, this is a difficult question to answer because for me, personally, it wasn't any one thing that made me want to recover. The truth is that when I started, I didn't understand the long-term effects of what I was doing to myself. I sort of knew about them, but the importance of being thin had been stressed to me all of my life and so I was in a self-destructive place where I was willing to make that choice again and again and risk throwing away my health for thinness. That's pretty fucked up, true, but again, I didn't understand the full extent of the damage I might be doing to myself.
I think it's also worth mentioning that I had an undiagnosed chronic illness and some trauma that I was quietly sitting on because I doubted my own perspective and my ability to access real help for these things. Because of this, I didn't have a frame of reference for mental and physical wellness, because I hadn't felt mentally or physically well for a very long time. Even now, looking back at symptoms I was experiencing, it is hard to know if I was experiencing these things due to my eating disorder or something else. I think it was all cumulative damage, to be honest. The eating disorder didn't help.
But looking back, I think I actually had an eating disorder long before I "decided" to start restricting food. I remember going through a growth spurt during puberty around age twelve and being hungry all the time, but we frequently had the kind of foods people call "junk food" in the house because that's what my parents bought. So that's what I ate a lot of, constantly, and my mother was constantly remarking on it in a negative way and trying to stop me. I have a very complicated relationship with my mother, and she raised me with a complicated relationship to food and body image. I remember doing fucked-up things like sneaking food into the bathroom with me so I could eat snacks in the shower unobserved, or hiding snacks under my bed, and just absolutely gorging on food at other times while knowing I was eating way past the point of being full and not knowing why I wanted to. So I officially decided to start restricting when I was fifteen, but the truth is that I had a fucked up relationship with food way earlier than that.
When I was nearing my seventeenth birthday, I experienced a breakdown in health due to chronic illness. I was suffering terribly. At the time I had this hippie friend who believed everything could be cured with the right diet and supplements. As I mentioned before, I was raised in a household where we didn't fully understand proper nutrition, and I had been raised eating a lot of low-nutrition meals. Because I had a stronger relationship with this friend than with my family, I bought into the mindset that if I got the right nutrients, I would be cured. And, in my mind, I had to get as many of those nutrients as possible as quickly as possible, so I immediately turned back to bingeing. But I was bingeing on a lot of high-nutrient hippie foods, so I didn't see a problem with this. I didn't understand that my relationship to the food wasn't fixed. I wasn't enjoying it, I was gorging on it, and between meals I was desperately anticipating the time I could gorge again. And because it was hippie food, I thought that this would cure me.
The thing was, after over a year of severe restriction, my GI system was wildly unprepared to handle the level of food-stuffing I was about to put it through - even though it was super-healthy hippie food. So I actually got sicker, experiencing the symptoms that come along with suddenly eating real portions after restriction. This led to me alternating between not understanding why the food wasn't working to cure me, to not understanding why I felt so addicted to eating. And this kick-started a violent binge-restrict cycle where I'd force myself to go hungry until certain times a day, at which point I'd unleash myself upon food and be unable to stop. Then I'd restrict again the next day to make up for it, get increasingly desperate for food, and you see the pattern. The binge-restrict cycle is so real.
So I was super trapped in that life and I wanted out. I knew I wanted to get out long before I actually started getting out. Because every time I binged, my immediate response was to hate myself and restrict. That was all I knew. By the time I even started to make a bit of progress on breaking that pattern, I had achieved enough real healing to understand that my restriction days had been a part of what led me down this hellish path and I didn't want to go back to that. To tell you the truth, in order to truly stay away from it - because I'll be real, I do get tempted to go back to restriction from time to time - I have to remind myself that while restricting feels like it would save me, it would only be a stepping stone back into that horrible pattern that kept me so sick and felt impossible to break. And I have to choose wanting better for myself.
Now, your story may not look like mine. So I'm not sure your motivation will end up looking like mine. But what do you need for yourself in order to want better for yourself?
You say you want to do this until you are sick enough. Can I just ask you to take a moment to ask yourself, what do you think is "sick enough?" Would you really stop when you got there, or would you just keep moving the goalpost until your body gave out? Because if you're stuck thinking "I have to do this till I'm sick enough" then believe me - you are sick enough. Your struggle counts. You don't have to wait until the damage is irreversible.
Because the thing is, when you start experiencing long-term sickness as a result - GI disorders, internal organ failure, etc - your suffering will be out of your control. Eating disorders feel like you're taking control, but you're not. And as someone who suffered with chronic illness for years, let me tell you, you don't want "sick enough." I can't tell you for sure what you do want, but allow me to take a guess. Maybe you want the validation that comes from being sick enough. Maybe you want to showcase how awful it got because you want people to care, to be concerned, to validate you. You want indisputable proof that you are well and truly fucked up, that you truly were hurt by whatever it is that hurt you.
The fact is, even some people who are sick enough to be on death's door, from some chronic illness or another, never get that validation or support. Our system is fucked up like that. But understanding that also means you don't have to wait for someone else to validate how hard you struggled and how much you've suffered. You're already sick enough. You don't have to wait for it to get worse in order to deserve better. So what do you need? What do you need in order to affirm to yourself that what you've been through is real? What do you need in order to feel you deserve to get better for real? What do you need in order to keep seeking out that desire to heal even when you're triggered as hell and struggling and forget all the breakthroughs you had once made and all you want to do is say "fuck it then, I'll self-destruct" because that's addicting in its own way?
I hope you're able to seek those answers in your treatment, anon. I hope you're able to affirm to yourself that you deserve to be more well than this, and to love yourself enough to fight for it?
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ckret2 · 5 months
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Mabel and Bill were sitting on the couch when Soos passed from the gift shop through the living room. As Soos passed, Bill was saying, "No, I just don't see relationships as eternal. Romance is a short term commitment. Like a fashion trend, or, or—"
"Like gum?"
Bill snapped his fingers. "Yes! Exactly like gum!"
As he headed upstairs, Soos heard Mabel say, "So when a romance starts to lose its flavor, you just—" and Bill cut in, "You spit it on the sidewalk, grind it under your heel, and float away without looking back, never thinking about it again..."
A few minutes later, after changing out of his Mr. Mystery suit into a more comfortable question mark t-shirt, Soos headed back downstairs. Bill was still talking: "... and all you get out of it is sickly sweet spit, you're just—swallowing all this sweet spit until it makes your mouth sour and it's dripping out around your eye, and it makes you hungrier than if you'd never eaten at all, and all your friends say 'oh Bill, you're always griping about your gum, why don't you settle down to eat a proper meal,' and you say 'how about you mind your own business, Kryptos, I don't lecture you about your diet,' and then your other friends accuse you of choosing inedible snacks so you don't have to commit to swallowing them, because they don't get that you're a flawless energy being, you don't need 'nutrition' or 'sustenance,' this is just a hobby to you—and then you just, you get sick of the taste of gum altogether, you never want to chew gum again as long as you live, it's always so needy and your jaw hurts, and it's your fault if you can't focus on chewing the stupid thing all day every day, like maybe you have a life of your own, did anyone consider that? So you burn down a gum factory so you don't have to look at their stupid ads! And then an eon later you find yourself craving a stick of gum, so you find a different brand and cram a new one in."
Mabel, who'd been listening to Bill's monologue in wide-eyed stunned silence, finally smiled in relief as he landed on a familiar sentiment. She pumped her fist in the air. "Yeah! Cram a new one in!"
"You get me, kid."
I think there might be something wrong with Bill.
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minmos · 23 days
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sorry im not drowning the post because i disagree with it, i just dont want to derail and traumadump on a stranger's post, but this is my dad finding out that forcefeeding me new foods while hes drunk isnt going to cure my sensory problems around food and actually will make me want to try new things less Sorry
but also bc i have thoughts on this ^ 1. does anyone have any advice on how to ger your nutritional needs met with autism related food problems. yes i know that the most effective way to get proper nutrition is to have a balanced diet & nothing else i can do is going to replace that. But does anyone have any like, at least harm reduction style advice while i work on that
in return i offer: ive found that learning to cook has expanded my world so much & is such a treat for my food weirdness. i feel like it's given me a level of control that makes me feel so much more secure when i eat, like i can control exactly how it tastes & the textures, and i know what's in it. And in turn, that extra security lets me try new foods on my own terms in a way that doesnt feel as scary as people forcefeeding me or pressuring me to try things when i dont want to
Also if you can eat soup, ive found that making chicken soup has been an incredible way for me to try new vegetables. you can't really taste any of them (i know i know, but with a large pot i really do not taste it at all because everything tastes like the savory broth), but i think that there's enough slight vegetable taste that i'm very slowly building my resistance to it. and the texture of all the vegetables iz the same (very soft & unnoticeable) because of how long it cooks, so you dont have to deal with texture issues, and if you cut it up small then you don't notice it at all
Speak now my autism warriors
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suguru-getos · 2 years
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genshin boys when you aren’t eating properly
warnings: implied eating disorder, tooth rotting fluff.
characters included: xiao, zhongli, itto, childe, ayato, thoma
xiao: the yaksha is too stunned tbh, why are you not eating? cant you see youre miserable without food? what is happening with you? finally, he brings his favorite almond tofu for you and sits beside you, “i dont know why you aren’t taking care of yourself, little human” he mutters with furrowed brows and feeds you with his own hands. as someone who likes to eat alone, it is a big step from him to actually sit beside you and eat every meal together. <3
zhongli: oh the archon rex lapis’ favorite little human. the most adored being on earth isn’t eating properly? that simply won’t do, that can’t do- “little one, i can’t help but notice you are getting weaker. the bags under your eyes aren’t from lack of sleep. i am sure since i sleep beside you.” when you tell him that you just don’t want to eat these days. he is concerned. hand resting in his chin as his index finger taps his lips. “that won’t do, sweet thing. that really won’t-“ he clears throat and leaves. the next day you’ll have little bites of everything. every single taste liyue has to offer on your table. all in small amounts. you don’t like liyue? inazuma’s specialities are ordered for you, monstadt too. he knows it’s hard for you to gulp down food. but he’s patient.
itto: “whadyaa meaaannn numero two?” he pouts, concerned when you said you feel nauseous at the sight of food. “i mean i get itt~ im allergic to beans and they make me lose it; but what’s up with mr. belly here trynna act all sassy,” his black, long nailed fingers draw designs on your tummy as he cooes. “tell ya somethin’ i wont let you harm your body like that baby, thats a promise.” the whole arataki gang will make sure you have your meals, they would even bring different things, sweeter things for dessert and just over all be really appreciative and clap their hands and do their little dancies when you eat properly xx
childe: mighty rich harbinger sama’s s/o not eating? whomst the fucketh dareth made her like that? rage 😡 oops- it’s you? o-o childe has a loss of words, “i don’t understand girlie, you don’t like to eat knowing it would harm you?” he brings you onto his lap, making sure you are craddled to him like a baby. he isn’t wearing his normal clothes and the intimacy of it makes you whimper. “i don’t know ajax, things have just been off and maybe it’s” he interrupted you with a kiss. “maybe a change of scenary will do you good baby,” he is taking you to snezhnaya to spend time with his family ensuring you feel mentally okay and try all the snezhnaya cuisines xoxo 💋
ayato: he usually doesn’t have the time to notice your little things and he deeply regrets it. the workload he has is immense. one day when you are walking with him in the kamisato estate, you slowly pass out. he’s immediate to pick you up and call the doctor, ensuring you are in his lap the whole time. ayato loses a part of his sanity when he sees his loved ones being harmed. the doctor informs him about your body not receiving proper nutrition. ayato doesn’t want to take the stern approach but he does. when you wake up he talks to you with extreme authority. “y/n, i will be staying here in the estate for ten days. until then, you will accompany me with every meal, and if not, you will come to me and inform me of every snack you take, every drop of water you drink. am i clear?” when you do this, he softly smiles and kisses your forehead, “proud of you, my darling,”
thoma: housekeeper thoma sama is the most caring househusband in the whole game i dont make the rules. he takes care of waka the bully so taking care of you is just natural to him. “sweetheart i’ve noticed, you’ve been taking fewer bites of food than usual, you- uh? on a diet or something? if you are, im sure i can make something that would suit-“ he notices you sheepishly denying the whole thing. thoma is also your best friend so you are quick to inform him about what’s happening to you mentally and physically. please he will ensure you like everything and will personally make every dish for you 🥺💋 whenever you’re making progress he’ll bring you close and kiss your forehead and be a grinning, happy mess.
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femchef · 2 years
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The Medical Industry in the US needs a dispensary for prescribed diets.
I’m talking about prepackaged and preprepared or easy-to-prepare meals, snacks and fluids as a part of outpatient care.
You can’t just give a patient a list of dietary restrictions and a 30 minute appointment with some vague guidance and then send them on their way. I’ve been watching a family member the last three weeks be miserable on a liquid diet for pre-surgery and the biggest struggle isn’t the diet itself, it’s that the list the doctor and dietitian gave her is only some suggested guidelines and half of the recommended things she can have on the list aren’t available anywhere. Also, when I say the guidelines are vague - her doctor during the pre surgical meeting yesterday chastised her for buying low-sodium broth, when the reason she bought low-sodium is because in her last meeting with the dietitian, low-sodium was verbalized as a positive. Also the low-sodium broth met all the other requirements on the list?
1) dietitians and nutritionists should be responsible for putting together a comprehensive meal plan with specifics and instructions - it should be a perfectly reasonable expectation that a person who’s job is to understand how our bodies are affected by what we eat, and what effects the things we eat have on our bodies, be able to provide comprehensive recipes that are tailored to patients diets. Cause guess what - people expect chefs to be able to do it on the fly in professional kitchens. You think working with and around dietary constraints hasn’t become one of the hottest selling skills the last 8 years?
You can’t tell me that it’s reasonable to expect an overworked line cook to do that and not a dietitian or a nutritionist.
2) There are too many patients who, once they are sent home, go off whatever necessary food restrictions they’re meant to be on because they don’t have the proper support or knowledge or experience to maintain their nutritional health. If we want health care to be wholistic, we need to make medically required diets and food restrictions more accessible for outpatient care.
Like - imagine being able to pop over to the pharmacy (or have a delivery!! We can do that, think about all the meal kit deliveries traveling around right now) or some kitchen dispensary near a hospital complex, turning in a script and getting one or two weeks worth of portioned meals, everything is measured out with easy use instructions and dates/times, because you just had surgery and can’t do certain strenuous activities, but popping a frozen meal to heat up in the microwave or the oven isn’t too strenuous - or maybe you’re on your chemo cycle, and those are so fucking miserable already but at least you don’t have to worry about figuring out what to put in a calorie-dense smoothie because it’s already thrown together in a sealed cup (nice fat straw included) you can dump in a blender tomorrow and right back into the disposable cup to drink - or maybe you’re on a liquid diet for five weeks and then on limited soft foods for four weeks after that, but at least you don’t have to worry about hunting down the only things you can have in four different grocery stores.
And maybe doctors will have less recurring patients when, if sending them home, they know that the patient will have more of a chance staying on their medical diet during recovery because they have more accessible options, rather than a vague list of instructions.
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loki-zen · 16 days
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What's the news on saturated fat? My impression was that earlier narratives overly vilified it but that it remains kinda sus.
Well okay, my considered position is "we don't have enough evidence to support a blanket recommendation to everyone that they should alter their diets to reduce saturated fats."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/#:~:text=The%20idea%20that%20saturated%20fats,never%20establish%20a%20causal%20link.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210122/New-model-explains-controversies-over-saturated-fats-and-heart-disease-risk.aspx
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37777760/
As the authors of these papers often point out, official guidance and the practice of many health professionals is still to advise reducing saturated fat. This is probably a good amount inertia and bloody-mindedness. It is not uncommon for experienced doctors to weight their own idiosyncratic and biased-in-the-recollection clinical experience over the preponderance of evidence. Doctors and especially public health bodies like to display "caution" in their recommendations, which is not a terrible instinct necessarily, but I feel it is overapplied in this case.
Nutrition is horribly complicated, and the business of dietary recommendations involves things that people are really on just starting to figure out how to properly take account of in healthcare research, such as patient behaviour in the context of burdensome indefinite medical lifestyle intervention advice.
As it's horribly complicated just to figure out what advice to give one person who we have bloodwork for, it is next to impossible to figure out advice that it's a good idea to give literally everyone. With other kinds of medical interventions, such as drugs and anything with a financial or capacity cost to healthcare providers, 'caution' would mean that even if you had good evidence of benefit in a specific population, you would need evidence of clear benefit in everyone else before you could recommend it to everyone else. (Did you know your cholesterol can be too low? If you haven't got someone's bloodwork how can you know if their cholesterol is too high or too low?) And if a drug had excellent evidence but the papers were all fairly recent, caution might mean being reluctant to suggest it yet. However, in nutrition, "the advice we've been giving since the 1950s" is being treated as a privileged hypothesis in the same way that "not recommending a given drug" is the privileged hypothesis of any public health body or practice guideline until lots of evidence has been accumulated over many years.
I think this is because our models for thinking about medical interventions have double standards about lifestyle interventions. Doctors love them; drugs are scary. Only in recent years (perhaps in no small part due to the increase in published research by AHPs) have we even begun to consider the obvious truth that "not being able to eat the things you like" and "having to read a lot of nutrition labels" and "feeling guilt about what you want to eat" are negative quality-of-life-impacting side effects in the same way as headache or nausea might be negative quality-of-life-affecting side effects of a drug treatment.
Considering all the proper factors, the evidence does not support the recommendation of this intervention for the general public.
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borderlinereminders · 2 years
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One of the emotion focused DBT skills I am going to talk about is PLEASE.
This acronym is meant to help you remember to take care of your needs so that you are less vulnerable to things that can cause emotional crisis.
PL: treat PhysicaL illness. If you are not feeling well physically, research has shown this can affect you emotionally and mentally as well. Maybe taking care of your physical illness means setting reminders to take your medications, and schedule doctors appointments or anything else you need like that.
E: balance your Eating. Getting proper nutrition can be really critical to your mental health. This skill doesn't mean to go on a diet or anything super strict like that, but to make sure that you are getting proper nutrition. Even just making little changes can make a huge difference. Lacking certain vitamins can make a lot of mental health issues worse. Maybe for you this even means you start by getting a multivitamin!
A: avoid mind Altering substances. If mind altering substances, like alcohol, non prescribed drugs and even things like caffeine are making it harder to use your coping skills, then consider cutting back on them or not using them if possible.
S: get enough Sleep. We all know this is easier said than done! But an unhealthy sleep cycle can throw off so much. A lack of sleep can heighten emotions. Some tips include avoiding screentime for a half hour before bed, try to go to bed at the same time, try and make your bedroom a comforting place and ideal conditions for sleep whatever that means to you.
E: get regular Exercise. This is different for everyone! This doesn't mean you need to start weight lifting (though if you want to, by all means!) or running marathons. For some people, even adding a 30 minute walk to their day can make a huge difference. Maybe it's dancing around to music. There is a lot of research backing up the benefits of exercise on emotions, physical health and other things. Of course if you have certain physical limitations, then please check with your doctor before trying anything.
Yes, we all hate it when people say "have you tried exercise?" or "have you tried changing what you eat?" as a solution to our mental illnesses. It feels invalidating and dismissive. And no, doing these things isn't going to cure you but it can improve your symptoms and help you to use your coping mechanisms better.
Don't underestimate the benefits of taking care of your body. Even if doing these things can't cure you, not doing these things can certainly makes things harder for you. And you deserve things to be as easy as possible.
Read about other DBT skills here.
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musingsfromthemitten · 3 months
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The countdown is on!
Tomorrow is the big day so I thought I’d share a few tips. (Rules here)
Overall: be sure to track your progress towards your goals! I downloaded the Habit app which allows 5 goals a day for free and syncs with my watch to help keep me accountable.
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Nutrition: I’ve never been a fan of diets because I don’t find them sustainable. For me, I focus on eating six times a day (typically 5 smaller meals/snacks and 1 main meal), more veggies, the right amount of protein, and try to avoid refined sugar as much as possible. (I’m big into the Green Chef meal options!) I know others that have been successful at counting calories or just focusing on proper portions. You do you! Every body is different and we need to nourish them differently.
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Exercise: Don’t forget to let your muscles rest between workouts. Alternate days focusing on different muscle groups. Find whatever exercises you love! Dancing, boxing, weightlifting, cardio, yoga, HIIT, Tabata, walking…anything that gets your heart rate up!
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Water: I was always told to find a fun water bottle to help drink water. Straws help me drink more. And if you can drink it without ice, it makes it easier to drink more at once. Try an app like Plant Nanny or Waterllama to help log your water and remind you to drink more!
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Books: Focus on wherever you want to develop! Maybe it’s a religious or spiritual book, maybe it’s a self help book, maybe it’s a book related to your job. Whatever it is, it’s your chance to focus on exercising your mind and your own personal growth.
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Photo: it’s important to see your progress. When making changes it’s hard to see the differences without something to compare it to. And no one likes photos of themselves- remember we’re all quicker to focus in on things we don’t like that other people never would
And most importantly, this challenge is HARD! It’s meant to help you grow and develop healthy habits for the mind and body. Be gracious with yourself. Don’t be hard on yourself if you mess up, but never give up!
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There is also 75 day soft which is a little more lenient for those that want to join but find the hard too daunting. But why not push yourself and see what you can really do? 💜
@welp-heregoessomething @distractingbeth @inshelliesworld @sarahdonald87 @kaybronz @fenixstar @honeyhoneylovelylove @rainydayandmondays @karma-is-my-girl-friend @misssoutherncharm
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ridiasfangirlings · 3 months
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I see a lot of patient x therapist in sarumi but it's illegal, so I propose a much more interesting plot: Urologist!Yata x Patient!Fushimi.
Could Yata even handle being a urologist XD Maybe he initially started studying when someone suggested it as a way to deal with his girl issues, like hey maybe you’ll be less nervous around girls if you think of them only in clinical terms (this backfires though, Yata can now handle seeing a girl with her pants off but he only thinks about health things, and meanwhile women in low cut shirts still make him blush and stutter). Fushimi is also the type who definitely avoids doctors and normally would never see a specialist, he probably had to be forced into it. Like Fushimi works for a private detective force and due to his bad diet he has frequent health issues. At some point he’s dealing with significant issues going to the bathroom and having pain, all of which he’s blithely trying to ignore, until his boss Munakata makes him an appointment and gives him no choice but to either go to the doctor or be fired (and while Fushimi would love to be like good I quit he does need this job, because he’s not going groveling back to his parents for money and his bad personality makes it hard to be hired by anyone besides someone who is in their own way equally twisted).
Fushimi ends up in the urologist office all hunched and grumpy on the examination table, waiting for the doctor to show up. When Yata walks in Fushimi’s all ‘I thought I was seeing a doctor, not a shrimp who’s still in high school.’ Yata’s immediately like shut up I’m a med student in college asshole, and I’m totally capable of handling your problems. Fushimi finds it pretty funny that his doctor is being so foul mouthed, like does your school know you talk to patients like this. Yata stutters and quickly tries to move on, like can we just discuss your medical history. Fushimi’s much more relaxed now, he doesn’t particularly want to discuss any of his medical issues (mainly because he never goes to a doctor so he doesn’t actually know what most of those are) but he can at least have some fun with this. Poor Yata is having trouble keeping up, he’s doing his best but this guy keeps being such an asshole it’s hard to maintain a professional demeanor. He does manage to get some info from Fushimi about the problem and assumes it’s a urinary tract infection, he prescribes some medicine and is happy to get that jerk out of his office.
Except the medicine doesn’t work and Fushimi reluctantly shows back up at Yata’s office mocking him for being such a shitty student that he couldn’t fix the problem. Yata grumbles like well if you weren’t being such a jerk maybe I could have examined you properly. Fushimi’s like you’re shirking your duty Misaki, Yata covers his name badge with a hand all that’s doctor Yata you bastard. Yata threatens Fushimi with a rectal exam and Fushimi’s like oh are you that interested in me. For the first time in a long while Yata gets all red, he thought he’d gotten over being embarrassed about doing this kind of thing but Fushimi just keeps throwing him off balance. He does need to do some examinations that require Fushimi to take his pants off though and it’s suddenly so awkward, like normally Yata always sees this as just medicine but now for the first time he feels like he’s really looking at another guy’s dick and he’s flustered.
It eventually turns out that Fushimi has like kidney stones, Yata can remove them but of course this requires more of Fushimi lying down with no pants on. Yata manages to fumble his way through the whole thing and afterward he’s trying to be professional again, discussing diet and such, and that’s when he finds out that Fushimi eats like a four year old. Yata starts lecturing him on proper nutrition and Fushimi clicks his tongue all ‘don’t want to,’ without even thinking Yata slips out a ‘if I have to I’ll go over to your place and make you healthy meals myself.’ Fushimi responds with ‘fine, come over then,’ intending to say it in mocking tones but it just comes out as a blunt acceptance of Yata’s inadvertent invitation. The two of them stare at each other, both thinking they should take that back but of course neither one is willing to swallow their pride and go back on those words, so Yata’s like ‘o-okay…where do you live?’. After Fushimi leaves Yata’s immediately freaking out like did I just ask that total jerk out on a date, and meanwhile Fushimi is outside the office all irritated at himself and thinking about how stupid he is, why would he want that shrimp to come over and make him dinner. He tells himself well maybe I can just tease him and it will be entertaining, not willing to in any way think further on why for once he’s actually showing interest in another person.
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isleofdarkness · 3 months
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Please please p l e a s e tell us about literally any of those people more in depth I am so so interested and like specifically evie I’m p l e a s e
So, Evie
(Warning for child sexual abuse (meant to "train her for marriage,") childhood sexual assault, attempted childhood sexual assault, child abuse, isolation, starvation, mother giving her daughter an eating disorder by body-shaming her and encouraging said eating disorder, victim blaming, slut shaming, slut shaming a victim, queerphobia, racism, ableism)
Evie lost weight after she was born. Grimhilde was critical of her appearance from the very beginning. She didn't want a "fat" baby and starved her newborn daughter to force her to slim down. Most children lose their baby fat at around two or three and some have it until they're school age. Evie was forced to lose hers at only a few weeks old. Even when her daughter had been starved into what Grimhilde felt was a proper body (emaciated,) she never fed Evie enough. She didn't want her daughter to get "fat" again.
This undernutrition- which has been a constant for Evie's entire life- has left Evie with so many problems. Evie is small considering how tall her parents are, standing at 5'3 (Grimhilde is 5'10 and Chernabog is 6'4) and she's clearly underdeveloped. The poor girl looks like she's thirteen without her makeup. Her bones are weak. She gets sick easily. She nearly died several times as a child from hypoglycemia. She has to carry sugar tablets because doctors can't yet tell if her pancreas will recover. She's on so many nutritional supplements. If she wasn't getting those, doctors are sure she wouldn't have made it even another two years. Deprivation of the nutrients and vitamins her body needed was doing damage to her organs, decreasing their ability to function.
To discourage her daughter from "cheating her diet" (trying to eat enough for her body to function,) Grimhilde taught her calorie counting from a very young age. She would give Evie clothes she knew would be too small and acted as though the clothes didn't fit because her daughter needed to lose weight. When Evie dropped weight she couldn't afford to lose, Grimhilde praised her. That was the only time Evie ever got praise, and she was desperate for it. She would refuse to eat anything for days just to see her mother's smile of approval.
And the homeschooling Evie grew up with... well, let's just say she had a very unusual education. While her mother taught her history and royalty stuff, that was the closest she came to teaching Evie a normal curriculum. Evie was taught to read, but just barely. The second she could read, Grimhilde moved on rather than continued to nurture the skill. She taught Evie basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, but only the basics- not even teaching her daughter how to do multiple operations in the same equation, not even trying to teach multiplying and dividing with numbers larger than twelve. Most of Evie's education would be household chores, homekeeping, beauty, the "right way" to act and look to attract and keep a prince, and how to raise children. Oh, and one more thing.
Grimhilde made sure her daughter knew how to sexually attract and please men.
When Evie turned six, her mother started her on potions that would keep her from getting pregnant, then (I have been trying to find a way to word this gently for hours but I can't, so I'm just gonna say it) let a few of her guards rape her daughter while Grimhilde lectured her about everything she was doing "wrong." Despite the circumstances, Evie was forced to play along and do what her mother told her to do just to get it over with.
Her bedroom, which had once been her beloved refuge, had become a place she couldn't stand due to all of the horrific memories made in that room. She soon found solace in the castle's overgrown gardens, where she could hide away from her mother, the guards, and the entire world.
That garden was where she first met Malcolm.
She was in the garden one morning when she was seven when, without any warning, a boy with blue hair baseball-slid through a tiny gap in the bushes. Before she could even think of screaming- who would help her, anyway?- Malcolm quickly covered her mouth and pulled her behind an overgrown rose bush.
"I swear I'm not gonna do anything, but-"
"Where are you?"
Evie felt the boy go completely stiff, breath coming far too quickly but with practiced silence- who even developed the skill to hyperventilate silently? It was clear he was afraid of the old-sounding woman who seemed to be looking for him. Evie briefly considered trying to call out to her in case the boy was dangerous, but she didn't. Somehow, she knew he wasn't. He was terrified, shaking and tense, the same kind of terror Evie felt when her mother was angry.
The next five minutes were some of the longest of Evie's life as the two hid behind the bush, waiting for the woman to give up or search somewhere else, praying she wouldn't think he had gone into the garden. Malcolm finally let her go when the woman's voice had gotten decently far away, but he didn't relax until she was well out of earshot. He took several deep, shaking breaths once the danger had passed, rocking slightly and reaching up to his buzzed hair, moving his hand as if trying to run his fingers through long hair he didn't have and cursing when he realized.
"I'm sorry," He whispered once he'd mostly calmed himself down. "For... kinda kidnapping you. If Mother Mim had found me, she woulda killed you as collateral. I didn't know anyone was in the garden, I swear."
"You're hiding from your mother?" This is the first person outside of her palace that she's ever met, and he's a boy her age with dark blue hair who's hiding from his mother. He was so much like her that it was hard to be mad at him. And how could she be afraid of someone just like her, especially when she'd just watched him openly have a panic attack in front of a stranger.
"Yeah. Do you have a knife?"
Pardon? That was definitely not how she expected the conversation to progress. "No? Why do you need a knife?"
When his blue eyes finally meet hers, he suddenly looks so much older. In her moments of vulnerability, when she dared look in her cracked mirror, she knew her eyes could look like that. "If Mother Mim finds me again, I'm not going back. I want a knife so I can cut my throat."
Well.
"I know where I can get you a knife." She'd never felt that way with her mother, had never been so desperate to hide from her that she'd rather cut her throat than let her mother find her, but she'd definitely felt that way about her mother's guards. Still, she never would have acted on it. Whatever this boy had gone through had to have been worse than anything she could ever imagine. How could she complain when this boy was so desperate to escape that he would rather kill himself than be caught? (Malcolm doesn't like that she thought that. He'd had a shit life, sure, but at least Madam Mim didn't let the people torturing him use sexual violence. They're traumatized in different ways, but neither of them had it better or worse than the other. He doesn't want her to compare her trauma to what others have gone through, and he definitely doesn't want her thinking her trauma isn't bad because someone else has different trauma.)
She led him to the groundkeeper house, a small house on the property where someone had once lived and stored tools to care for the gardens. The person who had lived there was long gone, but their belongings remained and the house was still stable. A bed with dusty blankets, a kitchen with ancient cookware, and a garage full of tools that, while rusted, she knew from experience were still sharp. The small house even had running water. To her knowledge, she was the only one who knew of it. She was certainly the only one who ever had any reason to struggle through the overgrown plants to get to it.
To the first person her age she had ever met, she offered a house. She'd never seen anyone get so happy.
She didn't need to sneak him food, just told him where the edible plants were and helped him identify the ones that were poisonous. He taught himself how to use the old canning and preserves equipment, creating jams and the like for when winter came. There was sugar cane and maple trees in the garden, which helped. He even found a few different plants that he knew could be used to make flour (there was a book of plants and their uses in Grimhilde's library. Evie had snuck it to him.) He was absolutely thriving in the groundskeeper's house.
Evie would go out to visit him every chance she got. As he began to feel safer, his true personality showed. He was so happy, kind, and gentle, so unlike everyone else in Evie's life. He was a joy for her to be around. When she was with him, she could completely relax. For a few months, everything was starting to feel almost good.
And then everything came crashing down.
Even in her isolated garden, Evie was still on the Isle. When someone heard about a beautiful little girl who walked the isolated grounds of that palace completely alone, with no one around to protect her when she was too far away for anyone to hear her scream, he got interested. When he found out that the rumors were true, it didn't take him long to attack her.
Evie managed to drag herself to Malcolm afterwards, in too much pain to even crawl. Malcolm wrapped her injuries and helped her out of her shock, then let her sob for nearly an hour about what had happened. He wanted her to stay in the house, night having fallen, or at least walk her back to the palace, but she had to leave and he had to stay. If Grimhilde found that Evie had left her room, Evie would be punished. If she found out that Evie had left her room to spend time with a boy, she would be apoplectic. Evie had to get back to her room alone. She used salves her mother had taught her about to get rid of her bruises and speed to healing of where her skin had broken (while keeping the wounds from scarring,) and she pretended nothing had happened. She knew that he mother would be furious to learn about what the man in the garden had done to her.
Furious at Evie, of course. Not at the man for assaulting a little girl who wasn't even in her teenage years.
Evie was terrified to walk to see Malcolm but, as she did so nearly every day for nearly two weeks without issue, she slowly started to feel safer. She assumed her attack had just been a one-off thing.
She was wrong.
After she was attacked a second time, Malcolm secretly started following her through the garden, hiding in the overgrowth. The third time that man appeared, Malcolm was ready. He tried, he really did, but he wasn't an excellent fighter. The man was far bigger than a seven-year-old boy and far stronger. Evie had tried to help Malcolm fight him off, but she didn't know how to fight. The man beat Malcolm until he could barely move, then assaulted Evie again. He made sure to threaten to assault Malcolm too if the boy ever got involved again. Malcolm didn't care, but Evie did. She begged him to never interfere again.
He did, of course, but the man wasn't able to make good on his threat. He didn't even get the chance to assault Evie. Because Agony Olympian had gotten involved.
The man was a known rapist and Agony had seen him going somewhere with a suspicious look in his eyes. It had set off alarm bells, so she had followed him. She got to the garden just in time to see him put Malcolm on the ground with a bone-breaking punch to his jaw and grab Evie by her wrists.
"Hey, dickhead." Never before had she been so happy she was half ghost. There was no entrance like her phasing through the bushes. "Let her go. I'm only gonna say it once."
He, of course, didn't listen to another seven-year-old. He tried to attack her, too, and quickly found out two things;
One, her left arm was metal and packed one hell of a punch.
Two, he really should have known better than to piss off a little girl nicknamed Agony. The least he could have done was not backhand her and knock her sunglasses off of her face.
I think we all know how that ended.
Agony covered her eyes with her arm (she didn't want to just close them because that's less effective and she didn't want to hurt Evie or Malcolm) and tried to find her sunglasses, but she had no idea where they were and obviously couldn't see them. Evie saw them nearly a yard away (he slapped her that hard) and, even though she wasn't 100% sure why Agony needed them back on at sunset, she grabbed them and pressed them into Agony's hand.
Evie was, thankfully, not badly hurt, but Malcolm's jaw was cracked and he had a few busted ribs. They got him to the groundskeeper house and got him as fixed up as they could. Agony wanted to get him to Facilier's, but hearing that his mother was Madam Fucking Mim quickly changed her mind. She taught Evie how to diagnose, set, and tape broken ribs, then showed Evie how to feel the difference between a crack/fracture (Malcolm's jaw) and an actual break (his ribs.) Evie very quickly realized that Agony wasn't going to do "whatever that was" and hurt her or Malcolm. In fact, she wasn't going to hurt her or Malcolm at all.
Agony was the first girl her own age she had ever met. The first girl she'd ever been friends with- the second friend she'd ever had. Evie was absolutely thrilled.
Unfortunately, it didn't even take a full day for that one to come crashing down.
Evie woke the next morning to her mother calling her. When she went into the throne room, her heart stopped at the sight of the man who had been assaulting her. Her mother looked perfectly calm. Too calm. That look always meant danger.
"I've heard some very interesting things about you, my daughter. We need to talk."
Her slap sent Evie to the floor.
Evie dared not get up as Grimhilde screamed at her. She screamed about the company Evie was keeping, using every racist term towards Black people that she knew, calling Agony a cripple and Malcolm a retard (along with several other derogatory terms for people with Down Syndrome that I won't repeat,) insulting them based on their backgrounds (Agony's "whore mother" and calling Malcolm a slave because of his mother-) if there was a way Grimhilde could insult the two, she used it. She blamed Evie for her assault, shaming her for "being a cheap whore instead of a princess" and acting as though Evie had consensually had sex and hadn't been a child raped by an adult. She forced Evie to apologize to her, then forced her to apologize to the man who'd assaulted her for the "trouble she'd caused" and having people "hurt an innocent man."
That was the longest week of her life. Grimhilde forced her to stay in the guards' barracks for five days as punishment for being assaulted. She could barely move for three days after.
(Agony and Malcolm had very much realized that Evie hadn't come out of the palace in a while, but Malcolm wouldn't have been able to spring her even without broken ribs and Agony was busy because a Sanctum had been called and the person who was in her house was in such horrible shape that the Last Resort Kit came out to try to ease its suffering so that it could die not in extreme agony. Because it was Ace, it did the medically impossible and survived. But that's a story for another time.)
I am going to pause this post here because it is so long and I am so tired, but there is, of course, way more to the story.
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flock-talk · 9 months
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That last anon answer has me wondering, what in your opinion is the best pellet out there?
At the present moment I don’t believe there is a best pellet. With current research we don’t even know what exact foods wild parrots we keep as pets eat. what vitamins and minerals are actually needed in what quantities for optimal health. Most of the data used to formulate diets for captive parrots is based off studies done on chickens. Pellets don’t run feeding trials and the singular one that claims they do won’t publish any data for consumers to make educated decisions.
We don’t have any of the data necessary to be able to say that there is one that checks the boxes better than another. Currently when selecting pellets the knowledge you’re using is as primal as “is this toxic” and “will this cause harm to the body over time” which is where we are able to make statements on fillers, dyes, and sugars.
I feed three different pellets currently for various reasons
TOPs - the ingredients are wholesome foods, no real fillers or additives, no synthetic vitamins (there’s no studies on whether or not a parrot can actually absorb and utilize synthetic vitamins currently, hypothetically they should and there’s nothing wrong with synthetic vitamins, we just do not have proper peer reviewed knowledge on how they interact in a parrot body) however there’s loads of concern over whether TOPs on its own supplies enough nutrients to be a full diet on its own.
Harrisons - it is formulated by a veterinarian (say about that what you will *cough* science diet debacles *cough*), does primarily use fillers but does also have slightly more hearty things like oats and barley, packed with vitamins that may be lacking in other formulations. Have flavour varieties, tougher texture, and much more varied sizes that can benefit more picky eaters. Frequently recommended by other vets, same company also creates liquid formulas for sick and ill birds. Overall does seem like they know what they’re doing.
Caitec - I primarily started feeding this because Newt is allergic to soy and this has very low soy and doesn’t yield a reaction from him. Has some filler but primarily uses oats, quinoa, millet, sunflower. Then you move in to the added vitamins and minerals. Unique crunchy texture, very palatable to my birds, very large size variety which is great for enrichment.
My choice to feed multiples is because of a safety fallback in case of recalls, I won’t be left feeding seeds trying to quickly do a pellet conversion if I have two other backups they can eat. But also to cover nutritional bases. We do not know what they need and I don’t wish to rely on one specific company to be doing everything just right to be providing optimal health for my birds, serving several will hopefully make it so if one pellet is lacking something one of the others will have it. And lastly is enrichment- various flavours, colours, textures and pellet size make meals more interesting and really liven up mealtimes.
There simply isn’t a perfect pellet because nobody knows what that would even look like.
When looking for a food to feed your bird the ultimately best thing to do is ask yourself “is this product made for the birds or to draw human interest”. Flashy colours, silly shapes, and potent sugars will primarily be used to attract your eye- not your birds. The sugars will make it palatable which converts the bird quickly and make the human happy. But the dyes and sugars are not ideal for long term health.
And secondly “how do birds do on this food” in the dog industry you would just get the paperwork from a feeding trial but for birds this means reading forums or sampling it for yourself. you can tell pretty quickly whether a food is doing your specific bird any good. Dull plumage, inconsistent droppings, weird food intake fluctuations, lack of energy, feather destructive behaviour, would all be potential signs that a food isn’t working for your bird (also potential signs of illness so y’know, correlation is not causation)
I did a deep dive last year where I contacted major pellet brands and tried to get any basic info out of them, you may want to read in to that if you want continued reading!
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