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mensbodybuildingtips · 6 years

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14 Things I Learned from One Year of Lifting and Keto

Celebrity fatalities, election insanity, and gorilla celeb fatalities. 2016 was an all-you-can-eat food poisoning fever desire. 2016 was likewise the first year in my life that I functioned out and consumed right the entire year. Right here's exactly what I have actually found out about myself from a strong year of getting down to business. Maybe you can swipe a method or 2 from my victories as well as failures.

1) I Intended to Stop So I Had to Trick Myself Out of It

I have actually learned that I do not respond well to logic. I require pure, base, psychological allure. If I don't want to function out, I have to identify a way to deceive myself right into the gym. This might be entering as well as Out healthy protein style, animal style after my work out or just letting myself view West Globe on the treadmill. I had to lay a catch for myself. It's very easy to outmaneuver on your own when you're an idiot.

2) Clinical depression May Be Metabolic for Me

I have actually always fought with depression. Up until this year. This is likewise the very first year I lifted weights like I was auditioning to play 'Tubby He-Man'. You do the math.

3) I Learned to Cook

I was a quite great cook prior to yet eating healthy and balanced forced me to become a better cook. When you're limiting your diet, it could be a great deal easier to earn your personal food. My favored, reasonably healthy food on keto used to be chicken wings. My partner as well as I would pay out the nose for wings at an area that simply blared run ball as well as stick ball (those are names of sporting activities? The only sport I lettered in was Speech as well as Discussion). I might never find out ways to make great, wing-place-style-wings. After two months of Keto, I 'd figured out where to acquire cooking oils, obtained myself a fryer and also was making some damn excellent poultry wings. They taste like victory ... as well as SAVINGS!

4) I Cheat On Squat Day

I discuss this in another write-up however unfaithful on my diet plan on a squat day made points a great deal simpler for me. When you can locate a cheat for disloyalty ... it feels good.

5) I Load My Own Salami (Laugh it Up)

When I reach a celebration, I'll inhale a whole package of salami as well as never ever break eye contact with whoever makes the blunder of talking with me. I have no embarassment. Specifically when it comes to events with food. People are low-cost as well as monotonous. So are fine-tuned carbohydrates. I can not inform you exactly how many times I've been welcomed to a breakfast gathering with various other parents as well as it's just donuts as well as bagels. Be the guy that brings a sack of his own ham, splits portions off it, talks with his mouth complete and also DGAF.

6) It's Harder Than I Thought

I stalled. I had plateaus. I reduced weight a lot slower than I thought I should. I had to force myself to obtain to the gym some days. Bear in mind, likewise ...

7) It's Easier Than I Thought

My food cravings went away as well as I found out to enjoy the gym. I additionally admired how swiftly my 'novice gainz' escalated. That encouraged me to maintain going.

8) I Shed My Preference for Scrap Food

I assumed I liked fast food. The longer I have actually eaten healthy as well as worked out the more bogged down I really feel by bad consuming. A similar point happened to me with alcohol. The memory of my hangovers obtained stronger the older I got as well as currently when I assume about drinking I begin to feel the hangover before I also start. The same thing is happening with poor food. I begin to really feel unwell as well as exhausted when I take a look at it. It resembles the finale of West Globe instructed us: there can be no modification without memory. It additionally educated us not to 'f around' with robots ... yet that's another subject for my 2020 list.

9) It Turned into one Of The majority of Crucial Parts of My Life

I really did not realize exactly how required exercising and consuming right would end up being to me. I need it like I as soon as needed bong slits as well as all night morning meal diners. It's become a component of exactly how I function at my best.

10) You Could Never Have Sufficient Butter

My better half always asks if we require a couple of butters when we're at the store. We constantly need 4. Constantly. All year. We've never not required 4 packs of Kerrygold, Salted, Lawn Fed Butter a week. 4 is the variety of butters we make use of in a week. We've tested this for 52 weeks in a row and also we always, 100% of the moment, require 4. We obtain two.

11) I Became Frugal

Eating keto can be costly. I chose up tricks occasionally to slow the cash hemorrhage. Beef cubed for stew is typically more affordable compared to full on steaks yet skilled right is much like little steak nibbles. A great deal of supermarket market bacon ends which is mostly all fat, smells much like bacon and also is more affordable. Keto win-win. You'll discover your own methods, too.

12) I Was Unfortunate I Really did not Begin Sooner

Like whatever cool I have actually ever done, I'm really depressing I didn't start seriously raising as well as doing keto earlier. I can't get bogged down with remorse yet I am kicking myself. Specifically because I like it.

13) My Wife Loves It

It's indisputable that being appealing is extra eye-catching than being unsightly. You understand exactly what? I assume that covers it.

14) I Got Much better at Every little thing I Do

Everything I do, from composing to stand up to image has improved this year. I can not aid yet think that remaining in the most effective form of my life (although I'm still tubby) has a lot to do with my increased efficiency. It makes sense when you think of it. I do stand with my body, I write with my mind, I draw with my hands, all of this stuff has actually been positively influenced by training and also keto. Why would not I have improved at it all? It's not like my brain was crouching in some diminish Craigslist one bed room, fifty percent bath garden apartment temporarily. It lived there. When I moved my mind to a better community it began functioning harder. It may have allow me down on that allegory, though.

That's just what I picked up from a year of adhering to training, eating right and also remaining on top of my physical fitness. I wish it influences you to remain on your path to physical fitness or if you haven't begun currently, I wish it offers you some valuable methods as well as excuses to start now. Here's to 2016. We miss you, Harambe. Always.

Andrew DeWitt is a comic, author, illustrator and daddy living in Los Angeles. Andrew won the TruTV Development honor at the New york city Television Celebration for his comedy docuseries, Mike and also Andrew Attempt to Lose Some Weight. He's created for E-How, Broscience Life, Geekster Ink, Skies Does Gaming, holds the Andrew DeWitt Show podcast, a previous voice actor for Activity Number Therapy and also has actually shown up several times on The Jimmy Kimmel Show as an illustration actor.

#bodybuilding #bodybuilding workout #fitness #gym #weight #work out #workout

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clonerightsagenda · 7 years

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A Jade post? In 2017?

I could write this post in my sleep because I’ve written 40 just like it, but I keep seeing posts about lack of Jade meta, so I guess I was a little ahead of my time and must now answer the call. If you’ve been following me for a while, you might as well keep scrolling. You’ve seen this all before in increasing tones of despair.

For everyone else, this aims to be a general overview of Jade Harley’s character, back when she was allowed to have one, looking at her issues and development. I’ll condense it a fair bit because none of us want to be here all evening, but feel free to ask me to expand on anything. I used to do this all the time.

Childhood

So let’s start at the very beginning. Jade’s home situation is revealed in pieces. Much like Dave’s, it’s played as less serious early on, with the ramifications and its impact on her personality not fully explored until later. (Jade never gets a big speech on the topic, so I fear it still went over some heads.) Over time, however, we learn that Jade has grown up alone save for a powerful dog, after her grandfather died... and she stuffed his corpse. (yuck.) She has had to fend for herself from a young age, plagued by occasional bouts of Vriska-induced narcolepsy to boot.

This has made her tough and self-sufficient. She’s one of the more capable and efficient Betas, shown when she takes charge near the tail end of their session. However, she takes it a bit far. When you’re a kid alone, no one is going to take care of you. You don’t have the luxury of hoping someone else will handle a problem, or getting bogged down in sadness or doubt. Jade takes this to the extreme of never allowing herself to express negative emotions. That’s not productive. That won’t get anything done. She’s happy happy happy all the time!!! (At least to her friends. More on that later.)

She projects this onto her grandfather as well. Loneliness takes a toll. When Jade “encounters” her grandfather, she imagines him chastising her and has an argument with him, eventually concluding “he was much easier to deal with when he was alive”. Jade has placed a lot of her weighty expectations for herself on her grandfather, and she pretends he’s talking back to deal with her isolation. Additionally, she doesn’t know about Tavros’s interference, so as she grows older, she assumes Grandpa Harley killed himself, abandoning her to her fate. When she does learn about what happened, she blames herself. More on that later.

Her constant cheer is particularly concerning when we consider one last detail that people also seem to forget a lot. Jade grows up knowing she’s going to die. She’s seen her own stuffed dream self, and while it may not be time stamped, she’d be able to gauge by her own height roughly how much time she has left. By the time the story starts, she knows she’s almost out. And when Tavros mentions that his dream self died in their conversation pre-Descend, she’s surprised. She didn’t know they could die. This means she didn’t think ‘oh, my dream self will die but it’ll be ok’. She thought she was going to die, full stop. But she kept up the cheerleader routine anyway.

Friendships

That segues into Jade’s personal relationships. As I mentioned earlier, Jade refuses to express negative emotions. This is similar to John, but I’d argue John is less aware of what he’s doing. Jade knows all that dark stuff is there; she just keeps pushing it down. Instead, she acts as team cheerleader, encouraging all her other friends as they start playing the game. She tells John he can save the world, encourages Rose, and flatters Dave. Rose is the only one who pushes back a little - her comment about Jade being tough for surviving on her island suggests she might have grasped a little about her situation, and she probes a little - but Jade doesn’t give much away. John vacillates between being surprisingly perceptive and super not, and Dave tends to be absorbed in his own problems. Jade successfully keeps most of her life a secret. No one knows her grandfather is dead or that she’s alone. No one knows she’s going to die.

The person she’s most direct with, ironically, is Karkat. He hears her angry or upset, mostly because he’s not her friend. She doesn’t care what he thinks. It also seems likely, though, that she lost patience with him a long time ago. After all, from her perspective he’s been trolling them for a while, and her dismay the first time he contacts her suggests that he got on her last nerve a while back. (She gets her revenge later, showing that she doesn’t forgive him as fully as she claims during their session.) Still, it’s kind of tragic that she’s most honest with people she dislikes. As they grow less adversarial, she begins to cover more and more up.

Karkat happens to be the character who catches her at one of her most vulnerable moments, which is...

Jadesprite

Alas, we hardly knew ye. Faced with the seemingly unbeatable boss that’s Bec Noir, Jade decides to prototype her dead dreamself in order to have a human intelligence armed with the power of a First Guardian. This... does not go as planned. Jadesprite is yanked out of the afterlife and put back into the game that traumatized and killed her. She’s hysterical and doesn’t seem to understand that John’s not dead, and she’s not thrilled about facing Jack again and probably dying in the process. This makes Jade furious. How dare this version of her not put the group’s safety over her own personal life and happiness? How dare she not be happy to be used as a tool? How dare she show fear, weakness, pain, anything but a constant eagerness to please? Jade flies into a rage because Jadesprite reveals every bit of weakness she has hidden within herself and has come to despise. This part of her was never supposed to see the light of day.

Of course, it doesn’t for long. Jadesprite shows up again for a handful of panels, which are mostly devoted to Davesprite exposition-dumping. It’s interesting to note that, while she’s more emotionally honest with him, the panel after he shows up, she’s back to the generic sprite-mode smile. She still can’t quite kick that urge to cover it all up.

Then, Jade God Tiers and absorbs Jadesprite as part of herself. She wastes no time in crushing her and everything she represents deep into a corner of her psyche. And she crushes hard. Jade mentions later that her memories of Jadesprite’s time in the bubbles is hazy, which is understandable. Bubbles are weird. But later, when Dave talks about his sword quest and Jade seems confused, he asks in exasperation, “didnt davesprite tell you anything?” And he did. He told Jadesprite information that should have made Dave’s explanation later clear. But Jade, it seems, has forgotten. Could be an authorial oversight, could be the passing of time... or could be a signifier of how hard she pushed away everything “tainted” by that ‘lesser’ version of herself.

Yellow Yard

Hope everyone’s been enjoying themselves, because we’ve now left behind the chunk of the story where Jade gets to do much at all. She’s John’s emotional sounding board for the next three years and then spends the majority of the combo session possessed, dead, or asleep. Yes, I’m still bitter.

The fact that both of Jade’s appearances in the intermissions are focused on being a response to John’s complaining is fitting, though (besides revealing the author’s priorities), considering her role on the battleship is to do everyone’s emotional labor. I could write a massive post on battleship dynamics since I’ve had years to parse the roughly 5 sentences allotted to them, but I’ll keep it short for this post. John’s showing the strain by the first intermission (there’s a lot of subtext in the way he talks about that video game) but in general he’s missing his old life, chafing at having nothing to do, resentful of his role of “following orders” in the previous session, upset at himself for being childish, and of course sitting on top of a simmering pile of repressed emotions he refuses to fully acknowledge. Davesprite is Sir Not Appearing In This Comic the whole time, but it’s clear he’s in a downward spiral due to his lack of a clear purpose, feelings of inadequacy, paranoia over his lesser/doomed status, and general self-hatred. Jade is the apparent ‘stable’ one. She tries to be supportive of John even as he gets increasingly nasty to her in his frustration, and she’s presumably doing her best to prop Davesprite up. Unfortunately, no one’s going to support her, because she can’t ask for help. She can’t show weakness. She has to be useful. Anything else means she’s a bad friend and a failure. So she just keeps going until she gets crushed under the weight.

It gets to her, though. By John’s 15th, she’s short with him and looks visibly annoyed in a few panels, which is unusual for her. And by the time they arrive, she heads off to deal with business without telling Davesprite where she’s going or even bothering to wake John up, which suggests she’s pretty sick of them. Still, she hasn’t given them a piece of her mind. Yet. Instead, she heads off without a word, right into the Empress’s trap.

Grimbark Mode

The Empress has been plotting for the arrival of the gods, and she gets to work. In moments, her two girls are under her control. Not only are they forced to do her bidding, but their worst impulses, desires, and repressed grievances are pulled to the surface. For Jade, this is primarily anger. Notice that she mostly lashes out at people who have wronged her. She kicks John, fabricates a reason to get Karkat stabbed (it’s strategically inadvisable to have Jane fork him, but Jade wanted to), and tries to goad Dave into a fight. Finally, all that fury is coming out.

While talking to Roxy, Jade also reveals how much her hypercompetence issues affect her self-esteem. ‘once i was even more of a dork than you’, she tells her ‘but now i’m one of the most powerful beings in the universe’. The implication is that Jade considers her greatest asset her powers. Without them, without her ability to be useful, she’s nothing. Also in this conversation she says she’s the suckiest Jade there is, showing both her unhappiness with her current state and her deep seated self-worth issues (get in line, girl). These hypercompetency issues also fuel her fight with Jake. She arrogantly proclaims herself smarter and more powerful than him (Jade can be headstrong at times or disregard other people’s views; I’ve talked about that in other posts) but gets curbstomped because she refuses to back down from the fight or go straight for Aranea. She has been challenged, so she has to prove she’s the best... and she fails.

Speaking of things I am still bitter about, I will never not be bitter about how grimbark mode (and crockertier mode) were handled. I was upset about my favorite character being mind controlled, yeah, but I defended it as a chance for character growth. When I saw grimbark mode, I thought, ok. This sucks, but this means Jade can’t hide anymore. It’s all out in the open. She had a guy killed, for crying out loud. Once she’s snapped out of it, she’s going to have to be honest about it. This is a turning point where she can finally tell people how she feels.

That... did not happen. Instead, Game Over did, and then the retcon, and my last hopes of Jade Harley getting decent character resolution fizzled and died. I don’t like talking about the retcon very much, so let’s make this last bit quick.

Post-Retcon

I’ll go through this fast, because it’s unpleasant. In our latest chapter of ‘Jade Harley gets fucked by the narrative because Andrew Hussie made her too op and also doesn’t care’, the retcon shifts things around so that John and Davesprite blow up soon into the trip, leaving Jade to travel the Yellow Yard alone. Accompanied by carapaces and Nanna, of course, but it’s never really acknowledged that she can interact with them, despite her growing up on Prospit. Why those two couldn’t have blown up immediately before arrival I’m not sure, considering how late retcon Roxy died, but fuck Jade, amiright? (Bitterness intensifies). Anyway, the part of this I find most egregious is that this doesn’t have as much of an impact on Jade’s character as it really should have.

Let’s review. Jade derives a lot of her self-worth from being competent and helping people. She has had issues with loneliness in the past. She’s got some self-worth problems that she covers up with the knowledge that she has a lot of cool powers. So we blow up her two friends while she in all her God Tier and First Guardian powers is powerless to save them, and then she’s stuck alone stewing in her failure for three years, knowing she will have to face Dave and Rose and tell them what happened.

Does it seem likely that Jade would pop out the other side of the fourth wall perky and enthusiastic? Hardly. With no witnesses left, I imagine she would have dropped the facade. Having failed her friends, if she didn’t believe the timeline was doomed, she’d probably double down on making sure it never happened again, devoting her time to leveling up and training to a greater degree than she did in the GO timeline. She’d emotionally distance herself from her friends in advance. After all, once she finds out what happened to Grandpa, she describes it as “basically my fault”, even though Grandpa let her play with guns and Tavros redirected the bullet. Part of her hypercompetency is a quickness to take responsibility even when she should not. She would blame herself for John and Davesprite’s deaths and assume Dave and Rose would as well. I imagine her trust in Skaia and a happy ending would also be shaken. The clouds never showed her this.

So Jade ought to be a mess. In canon, though, she really isn’t. Oh, she mentions to Calliope that she felt depressed. This is progress for Jade, admittedly, but in general she’s relatively the same as she always was. When she sees John, it apparently fixes that all up (setting aside his notorious issues with alt selves.) She does seem reluctant to process that Davesprite is essentially dead, repeatedly referring to D avepeta as Dave, but otherwise, she seems to slot into the new reality without a ripple. We do see a hint of the loneliness-based projection with her naming the consorts and making up stories about them, but that's mostly glossed over. And since Vriska knocks her out before she has a chance to do anything while grimbark (even deliver some nasty taunts), no one gets any indication of her suppressed anger, so no one’s prompted to ask her about it. In terms of repression, she’s cleared to continue. And, as far as we’re shown, she does. At least John gets to visibly show that he’s got issues in the credits. Jade’s a smiling background character.

As the final insult on top of injury, Jade’s big contribution in Collide is getting punched. I’m not entirely clear as to why she’s trying to prevent PM from fighting Jack - she knows Jack is a threat and has worked against him in the past. But no, here she gets in the way until PM knocks her down. Another blow for a character who has built her self-worth upon contributing to the team.

I have my (grim) thoughts on what Jade realistically would have turned into after all this. And honestly, you could write a ‘how the ending shafted character x’s development’ for most of the cast, but Jade is a special example because her shafting started after Cascade and never stopped. And it makes me sad, because she was my favorite, and the opportunities were RIGHT THERE to give her development and bring some of this to the surface, but the story never made the effort.

I could go into way more depth about any of this, especially her personal relationships, but this is already long and it’s late, so I will leave you with this single, simple truth:

Jade deserved better.

#homestuck #jade harley #whoah i'm putting a thing in the hs tag #no slashes or anything #this is unusual #anyway i can elaborate a lot on any of this if you want me to send me an ask #although i'm going to be super busy tomorrow #character analysis

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