[Elastigirl]

3 hours ago, Harriet said:

I'm enjoying the effects of getting dressed, and playing around a bit more with the clothes I have. I look cute today! And yesterday! I'm feeling more comfortable about adding flourishes like a silk scarf tied in a bow around my hair. If i leave it until special occasions, I will feel too uncomfortable to wear anything new, cos I'll feel like a total dork and like everyone is judging me. So practicing it every day is great. The plan of we

I like this! 

[Mistr]

4 hours ago, Harriet said:

I'm enjoying the effects of getting dressed, and playing around a bit more with the clothes I have. I look cute today! And yesterday! I'm feeling more comfortable about adding flourishes like a silk scarf tied in a bow around my hair. If i leave it until special occasions, I will feel too uncomfortable to wear anything new, cos I'll feel like a total dork and like everyone is judging me. So practicing it every day is great. The plan of wearing my favourite dark colours instead of black and grey is working well, it really makes me look nicer than my don't-look-at-me neutrals (some people can pull off black, but I just look like I didn't even try...). And my plan of layering slightly fancier knits is definitely working. Just as comfy as a hoodie, but I look 35 and pulled together instead of 15 and severely depressed.

 

Awesome that you are having fun with clothes and feeling good about how you look.

 

One of the results of the pandemic for me was taking a deeper look at my clothing choices. There were lots of days that I didn't have to "look professional" because no one was going to see me. I was brought up with the idea of "school clothes" that looked better and had to be kept clean and "play clothes" that were more comfortable and I could get dirty. I can see echos of that in how I think of my "work clothes" even now. I am actively pushing back against the idea of saving things for later. I reached "later" ten years ago, when I turned 50. Now I want to take every opportunity I can to wear the clothes I like. So today I am wearing a cashmere turtleneck and a silk undershirt, even though I am working from home. I am also wearing comfy leggings and yoga pants because comfy and my family room is cold.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Mistr said:

 

Awesome that you are having fun with clothes and feeling good about how you look.

 

One of the results of the pandemic for me was taking a deeper look at my clothing choices. There were lots of days that I didn't have to "look professional" because no one was going to see me. I was brought up with the idea of "school clothes" that looked better and had to be kept clean and "play clothes" that were more comfortable and I could get dirty. I can see echos of that in how I think of my "work clothes" even now. I am actively pushing back against the idea of saving things for later. I reached "later" ten years ago, when I turned 50. Now I want to take every opportunity I can to wear the clothes I like. So today I am wearing a cashmere turtleneck and a silk undershirt, even though I am working from home. I am also wearing comfy leggings and yoga pants because comfy and my family room is cold.

I deleted the duplicate posts for you.

[Sovalis]

I love that you've started a notebook for your carnivore adventures. It's true that you write things here, but that gives you privacy for specifics and it will be easier to reference than combing through all of our posts. Kudos for that. 

 

Bums are weird to me, full stop. I don't think I've ever gotten good at drawing them, even when I was doing figure regularly. Good job working on it, I really admire your determination. 👍👍

 

And yay for cute, comfy clothes! The daily win on the Journey app today is to wear an outfit you feel good in, so I'm wearing a pair of leggings with gold foil on them. Your outfit sounds lovely with the knits. I need more knits in my life. 

[Scaly Freak]

6 hours ago, Mistr said:

 

One of the results of the pandemic for me was taking a deeper look at my clothing choices. There were lots of days that I didn't have to "look professional" because no one was going to see me. I was brought up with the idea of "school clothes" that looked better and had to be kept clean and "play clothes" that were more comfortable and I could get dirty. I can see echos of that in how I think of my "work clothes" even now. I am actively pushing back against the idea of saving things for later. I reached "later" ten years ago, when I turned 50. Now I want to take every opportunity I can to wear the clothes I like. 

 

I can so very much relate to this. A critical part of cos-playing as a grown-up has always been to wear strict business outfits to work, and then I as soon as got home I'd get out of the costume and into "my" clothes, that I was comfortable in and felt like myself in.  So my outfit transition is going in the opposite direction from yours..

 

I have been going through my closet and getting rid of all work attire items that were not comfortable enough to wear just as well outside of work, and am now in the process of gradually replacing them bit by bit, with clothing that makes me feel good and is comfortable to wear, while still being "adult" enough for corporate America's penchant for basing its assessment of a woman's level of competence and professionalism on her outfit. It's slow going, but oh so worth it.  

[Harriet]

21 hours ago, Salinger said:

Yeahhhhh so glad you are looking cute  

 

Hoping your day is lovely ❤️ xx

 

Thank you, possum ❤️

 

21 hours ago, Everstorm said:

It's amazing the difference clothes make in how you feel about yourself, isn't it?

 

It's definitely a significant factor! And Mr Harriet has been wanting me to stop dressing like a grotty teenager for years. He comes from a fashionable family that dresses up every day.

 

19 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

What's crazy is we need fat or our brains don't work right. I think someone on here already mentioned rabbit starvation. The sugar industry did a lot of evil when they pushed the "Fat is bad" agenda to sell more sugar.

 

That was me lol. I ate 1.5lb of lean steak in one day and was still embarrassingly and expensively ravenous. And yes, fat makes the brain, in a dramatic way in my case. And it makes me wonder.... can I really call my MDD/anxiety an illness if it goes away when I crush loads of cream and tallow? Sounds to me like more a deficiency. Or slow poisoning. Makes me wonder how many other people with moderately severe mental illness could be helped with nutrition. The authorities really messed up with a lot of the nutrition science, that's for sure. But hey, processed food companies are happy, and that's what matters.

 

17 hours ago, Mistr said:

Awesome that you are having fun with clothes and feeling good about how you look.

 

One of the results of the pandemic for me was taking a deeper look at my clothing choices. There were lots of days that I didn't have to "look professional" because no one was going to see me. I was brought up with the idea of "school clothes" that looked better and had to be kept clean and "play clothes" that were more comfortable and I could get dirty. I can see echos of that in how I think of my "work clothes" even now. I am actively pushing back against the idea of saving things for later. I reached "later" ten years ago, when I turned 50. Now I want to take every opportunity I can to wear the clothes I like. So today I am wearing a cashmere turtleneck and a silk undershirt, even though I am working from home. I am also wearing comfy leggings and yoga pants because comfy and my family room is cold.

 

Exactly, I have this 'save for special occasion' mindset. But then the special occasion happens and I panic because my special clothes are unfamiliar and I'm extremely sensitive about it for some reason.

 

I like that you're wearing lovely silk and cashmere at home, that sounds nice.

 

16 hours ago, Sovalis said:

I love that you've started a notebook for your carnivore adventures. It's true that you write things here, but that gives you privacy for specifics and it will be easier to reference than combing through all of our posts. Kudos for that. 

 

That's right, I don't want to have to fish through my meandering threads to find out whether I had a headache on day 33 or something

 

16 hours ago, Sovalis said:

Bums are weird to me, full stop. I don't think I've ever gotten good at drawing them, even when I was doing figure regularly. Good job working on it, I really admire your determination. 👍👍

 

Thanks! I hope it will pay off with actual improvements. I'm sure the secret to bums is that they're boxes. Everything is a box. That's the secret to everything.

 

16 hours ago, Sovalis said:

And yay for cute, comfy clothes! The daily win on the Journey app today is to wear an outfit you feel good in, so I'm wearing a pair of leggings with gold foil on them. Your outfit sounds lovely with the knits. I need more knits in my life. 

 

Oooooh I don't yet have the audacity to wear gold clothing but I sure put it on my wishlists often (and then don't buy it obviously, I just look at it). And yes, knits are awesome.

 

10 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

I have been going through my closet and getting rid of all work attire items that were not comfortable enough to wear just as well outside of work, and am now in the process of gradually replacing them bit by bit, with clothing that makes me feel good and is comfortable to wear, while still being "adult" enough for corporate America's penchant for basing its assessment of a woman's level of competence and professionalism on her outfit. It's slow going, but oh so worth it.  

 

I love the idea of curating a wardrobe full of only those things you like. I haven't been able to do that in the past because I didn't know what I liked. But I think I can start gradually replacing. Should be a great process

[Harriet]

Saturday 14.01

 

I was pretty lax with the art. The video stopped working and I was waiting for a new catsitter to come over. Meeting new people is always a little stressful for me (but is no longer a traumatic even that ruins the day, and the day before, but merely a mild stress). Anyway, the temptation to scroll was just a bit too great today so I quit after a fairly minimal effort. The scrolling wasn't satisfying, by the way. But when does that stop me? Some kind of temporal valuation paradox.

I did DBs, got dressed, did minimal art (fallback levels), and went for a walk. Menu for today is ribs, tallow, cream, black tea, licorice root tea. No symptoms, and I was able to eat a little more tallow today.
 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

3 hours ago, Harriet said:

can I really call my MDD/anxiety an illness if it goes away when I crush loads of cream and tallow?

Can a type II diabetic call diabetes an illness if they control their symptoms with nutritional choices and exercise? 

[Elastigirl]

5 hours ago, Harriet said:

Anyway, the temptation to scroll was just a bit too great today so I quit after a fairly minimal effort. The scrolling wasn't satisfying, by the way. But when does that stop me? Some kind of temporal valuation paradox.

Good job on quitting it with minimal effort. Yep, this is so true. it is rarely satisfying, but my brain keeps telling me it will  be this time.😉

[Harriet]

27 minutes ago, Elastigirl said:

Good job on quitting it with minimal effort. Yep, this is so true. it is rarely satisfying, but my brain keeps telling me it will  be this time.😉

 

Haha no, it was a bad job. I quit the art after minimal effort.

 

1 hour ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Can a type II diabetic call diabetes an illness if they control their symptoms with nutritional choices and exercise? 

 

You mean it's not an exceedingly slow attempted mass assassination by poisoning? Wurllll okay, but if MDD is a disease I'm renaming it MBD; malign butter deficiency.

[Scaly Freak]

6 hours ago, Harriet said:

can I really call my MDD/anxiety an illness if it goes away when I crush loads of cream and tallow?

 

2 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Can a type II diabetic call diabetes an illness if they control their symptoms with nutritional choices and exercise? 

 

Tank beat me to it. Though I was going to go with high blood pressure instead of diabetes.  

 

6 hours ago, Harriet said:

I love the idea of curating a wardrobe full of only those things you like. I haven't been able to do that in the past because I didn't know what I liked. But I think I can start gradually replacing. Should be a great process

 

I highly recommend it. It does make clothes shopping more time consuming, especially because the styles I like and want are rarely available in the shops around here, but at the same time also more fun and more rewarding. I know exactly what I'm looking for, I may not be able to articulate it but I know it when I see it, and I refuse to purchase anything else. 

 

One surprising side-effect, that I in hindsight should have expected, is that those highly frustrating "I have a whole closet full and nothing to wear" mornings I used to have, have entirely stopped happening.  

[Elastigirl]

2 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Good job on quitting it with minimal effort

LOL. Yeah, I read it again, and saw what you meant. Sometimes,  when I am working on something and I want to stop and look at Instagram, I think it's because my brain needs a break. Just getting up and talking a walk around the hall, or staring out the window, gives me the break I needed. Not that I often when that battle, but the occasions that I do, that's something that works!

[Harriet]

22 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

I highly recommend it. It does make clothes shopping more time consuming, especially because the styles I like and want are rarely available in the shops around here, but at the same time also more fun and more rewarding. I know exactly what I'm looking for, I may not be able to articulate it but I know it when I see it, and I refuse to purchase anything else. 

 

I've given up trying to shop in person. It's an energy expenditure I cannot afford. Shopping online makes things easier because I can filter by material, colour, etc. Anyway, it's great that you've developed your preferences and sense for things that will fit your style. I'm still working on that, but I am a lot better at it than I was in my 20s.

 

22 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

One surprising side-effect, that I in hindsight should have expected, is that those highly frustrating "I have a whole closet full and nothing to wear" mornings I used to have, have entirely stopped happening.  

Brilliant!

 

21 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

LOL. Yeah, I read it again, and saw what you meant. Sometimes,  when I am working on something and I want to stop and look at Instagram, I think it's because my brain needs a break. Just getting up and talking a walk around the hall, or staring out the window, gives me the break I needed. Not that I often when that battle, but the occasions that I do, that's something that works!

 

Oooh, staring out the window sounds perfect. I also get up and listen/jiggle to music while making tea.

[Harriet]

Sunday 15 01

 

Did DBs and reading, got dressed, did art, went for walk. Carnivore continues.

I didn't sleep well and the length of reading I could get through before getting distracted dropped from about 5 pages to half a page. This could be a very good fatigue indicator! Yeah so I'm a bit sleepy, but also feeling like I want more activity in my afternoons, because scrolling is boring. Hmmm. What do I even want to do? I'm in the in between space where I don't have enough energy to initiate new activities, but I'm not satisfied with resting and doing nothing.

[Harriet]

Monday 16 01

Did DBs, reading, got dressed, did art. I walked to the doctor to get a new referral since I waited so long for a cardiologist that the old one is invalid. Walking for 2x22 minutes was fine; what sucked was standing for a few minutes while waiting for her to type in the details. I'm noticing it more, now that I know what to look for. It's the POTS. It seems to be responsible for a lot of my fatigue, unpleasant symptoms and unfitness. Hoping the cardio will have some good advice.

 

Carnivore continues. I ate ribs, tallow, butter, raw salmon, fish eggs, heavy cream and a cheese sandwich*. (Plus illegal plants: black tea and electrolytes with stevia). No symptoms except waking up slightly earlier and splendid mood: calm and happy. CFS not cured yet lol. I went to bed super early last night, and just went back to sleep when I woke up at 2am. So I got 9-10 hours total. This was reflected in better reading concentration this morning.

 

*One cheese sandwiched between slices of a different cheese, obviously.

I'm trying to learn about the electron transport chain because I'm exploring the hypothesis that the various fatty acids we eat have different effects on cell and mitochondrial functioning. I'm wondering if I could do a little beginners course on biochemistry... something to keep me busy in the afternoons that would hopefully allow me to understand all those papers on CFS... In the meantime I am ready to join the cult and pronounce butter a divine health food.

[Salinger]

💜 

 

Lots of love Harriet xx

[Everstorm]

28 minutes ago, Harriet said:

No symptoms except waking up slightly earlier and splendid mood: calm and happy

Glad to hear it!

 

28 minutes ago, Harriet said:

In the meantime I am ready to join the cult and pronounce butter a divine health food.

Amen.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

36 minutes ago, Harriet said:

S... In the meantime I am ready to join the cult and pronounce butter a divine health food

 

Butter is amazing.

[Harriet]

28 minutes ago, Everstorm said:

Amen.

 

19 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Butter is amazing.

 

Ahhhhh, you, too, are disciples of the butyric brotherhood. Bring out the room temperature and melted butters and let the ritual buttering* and libations begin!

*Buttering of what? I leave it to you to determine.

 

I selected these as the next best thing to the peanut butter gifs.

[sarakingdom]

On 1/13/2023 at 7:51 AM, Harriet said:

some rendered tallow from the ribs with salty umami scrapings from the bottom of the pot. Even after I tried to trim them, they still rendered a lot of fat. I'm squeamish about new things and was raised low fat, so I'm telling myself it's mashed potatoes. Just eating small amounts because it probably wants some getting used to.

 

You are braver than me. I struggle with that high a fat content, even though I think it'd be a good macro choice. (I want to experiment with therapeutic keto for ADHD, but I just don't know how to get that much fat in my diet.)

 

On 1/13/2023 at 7:51 AM, Harriet said:

I'm enjoying the effects of getting dressed, and playing around a bit more with the clothes I have. I look cute today! And yesterday! I'm feeling more comfortable about adding flourishes like a silk scarf tied in a bow around my hair.

 

And I struggle with this, too. (Some days, I'm only arguably wearing clothes, because leggings are not pants, and that means my bottom half is technically unclothed. So flourishes might take me some time. And I didn't have this problem working in an office. Sure, it was always scarves and only rarely layers, but I could use a few more scarves and layers. At home, it just feels like all it's accomplishing is increasing the clothing maintenance requirements.)

[Harriet]

5 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

You are braver than me. I struggle with that high a fat content, even though I think it'd be a good macro choice. (I want to experiment with therapeutic keto for ADHD, but I just don't know how to get that much fat in my diet.)

 

In what way do you struggle? Just palatability, or planning, or something else? I'm hitting between 70 and 88% fat, and my ketones today were over 2, which is higher than I was on keto.

 

5 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

And I struggle with this, too. (Some days, I'm only arguably wearing clothes, because leggings are not pants, and that means my bottom half is technically unclothed. So flourishes might take me some time. And I didn't have this problem working in an office. Sure, it was always scarves and only rarely layers, but I could use a few more scarves and layers. At home, it just feels like all it's accomplishing is increasing the clothing maintenance requirements.)

Ja, I don't like high maintenance clothing. So what I've done is just made classier swaps within categories: relaxed but still properly fitting oxblood cashmere sweater instead of hugely oversized faded black hoodie with holes. Same category: comfy warm top! And I don't wash my sweaters often because I don't sweat much, and wool is in any case very good at staying cleanish. Mostly it's me getting into the habit of picking my nicest stuff first, instead of 'saving' it for later. I feel like this approach shouldn't add toooo much daily effort. A little, for sure, compared to staying in my trackpants. But not a lot.

[XBlackWidowX]

7 hours ago, Harriet said:

I'm trying to learn about the electron transport chain because I'm exploring the hypothesis that the various fatty acids we eat have different effects on cell and mitochondrial functioning. I'm wondering if I could do a little beginners course on biochemistry... something to keep me busy in the afternoons that would hopefully allow me to understand all those papers on CFS... In the meantime I am ready to join the cult and pronounce butter a divine health food.

A course in biochemistry sounds so interesting! 

 

Oh, is butter actually healthy? I love butter so much, it'd be great news for me

[KB Girl]

17 hours ago, Harriet said:

I'm wondering if I could do a little beginners course on biochemistry...

That sounds very interesting! good use of time  

[Harriet]

10 hours ago, XBlackWidowX said:

Oh, is butter actually healthy? I love butter so much, it'd be great news for me

 

Wurrrrl, maybe. Nutrition seems to be split into two camps. One camp would tell you saturated fat will kill you, and you should avoid fatty animal foods while loading up on whole grains, legumes, and mono- and polyunsaturated fats. The other camp says added sugars, refined carbs, and industrial seed oils are to blame for all our woes, and fatty animal foods high in saturated fats are not only safe but healthful. I am very persuaded by the latter camp, and am crushing a lot of saturated fat (tallow, butter, cream) and feeling great. I'm not your doctor, though, or even a scientist. All I can do is share my understanding of what I'm reading, and my personal anecdotes. My brain seems to love saturated fat, though. I'm calm and overflowing with little bits of random happiness.

[XBlackWidowX]

43 minutes ago, Harriet said:

I'm not your doctor, though, or even a scientist.

It's ok! It was just like an interesting fact for me, I tend to eat instinctively and it suits me well. 

 

44 minutes ago, Harriet said:

My brain seems to love saturated fat, though. I'm calm and overflowing with little bits of random happiness.

Totally!! Hmm a piece of bread with butter or even better, a croissant *_* I think it is my favourite treat.