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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2778 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 17, 2016

This conversation benefits from a fifteen mile bike ride, a ten minute guided meditation and a decent breakfast (a ham & turkey scramble, a grilled cheese sandwich and a tomato, if you must know). It allows me to approach it with the dispassionate perspective it deserves, rather than the vitriolic hellstorm I'm tempted to supply. I'm almost positive you intended to be helpful. I postulate that you applied the tried-and-true /r/fitness "when in doubt, bro it out"/fistbump/flex/regurgitation-of-dogma that qualifies as discourse on most fitness forums. And while I acknowledge and appreciate your attempt to be helpful, I think it's important that you know how toxic,offensive and hurtful your response was.

As ref mentions, I've been calorie counting since the iPhone 3G came out. That'd be eight years. Speaking as a reformed bulimic, allow me to assure you that I'm more aware of calories than anyone you've ever met. More than that, I know the calorie-in,calorie-out game better than anyone; speaking as someone who dropped 100 lbs in three months through the punishing application of aerobic exercise and starvation I can say with confidence that not eating for three days and running eight miles a day is good for three and a half pounds.

You might also be interested to learn that prior to fitness trackers even being widely available on smart phones (they were tricky before GPS), I had a Polar heart rate meter. And while I freely acknowledge that their measurements are imperfect (dear MapMyRun: why, exactly, do you count calories backwards when I'm at a traffic light?), they're also not wildly inaccurate. I weigh 206 lbs. I'm going between 11 and 20 mph (I beat a moped home yesterday - I'm not exactly approaching this in a leisurely fashion). I do it for between an hour and an hour ten each way. For added fun, I do it on a flat bar fitness bike hauling 15 lbs of gear. I invite you to look up the caloric expenditure for that and tell me how much your estimates disagree with mine. Only not mine. UnderArmour's, and before that, Strava's, and before that, Runkeeper's.

Finally, it might interest you to know that I've increased my daily calorie intake by maybe 500 or so on average from before I was biking 30 miles a day. That's above the 1800 that MyFitnessPal thinks I need to lose a pound a week. Which I don't; I know that flies in the face of gymbro dogma but the fact of the matter is, calories in minus calories out does not equal fat loss. Thermodynamics isn't the endocrine system. Sure - if all things are working perfectly you will lose weight when you restrict calories. Take it from me, though - those extra 500 calories are what I need to not feel light-headed on the way home. That's the sort of margin I'm living in. And when I'm not biking, I'm running about three miles a day, six or seven days a week.

Don't fret your acolytic little head, though - I'm actually under care for endocrine disruption, and have been for six years now. I know there are some sects of the One True Faith where glandular issues aren't takfir and one can still experience issues outside of "calories in, calories out" without causing apostasy. Perhaps your faith is one of those, in which case you'll be happy to know that in 2010 my cortisol levels were actually above the measurable scale of an adrenal fatigue saliva test. I dropped 30 lbs once my endocrine system was under artificial pharmaceutical support.

But that support is failing, probably due to increased stress, and I find it frustrating, and I expressed it.

I would have told you all of this had you asked. Had you inquired about any of the above I would have gladly shared. Instead you assumed, and now we're having this awkward conversation. Rather than wondering whether or not I might understand what calories are, based on my discussion of them, you presumed that obviously I'm an idiot. Rather than questioning my health, you questioned my truthfulness, my observational skill and my intelligence. More than that, you just threw a "you're not trying hard enough" face-slap at a self-professed former bulimic. Highest mortality rate of any mental disorder, including chronic depression. Just so you know.

I recognize I'm a rare bird. One in two hundred, one in three hundred depending on who you ask. Women are three times more likely to have an eating disorder. Shit, according to the DSM-IV men can't even have an eating disorder because our periods can't be disrupted (look it up). But the next time you stumble across an internet forum and someone professes an eating disorder and difficulty losing weight, think twice before saying "toughen the fuck up."

Please.

I'll put this simply - if someone tells you that they were having a hard time losing weight, despite counting calories and adding a spinning class five times a week, your instinct should be to wonder what else is going on. It shouldn't be to doubt their word. And depending on how you count, I've added between two and four spinning classes a day to my life with no measurable effect.

The above discussion was for your benefit, and for the benefit of others on the Internet you may come across. Ending it here, and forever, is for mine.





_refugee_  ·  2778 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In the Name of Brodin, Wheymen

P.S. Don't you just love it when a stranger tries to tell you some Truth about your Body, everyone? Anyone? Last week my girlfriend's coworker gave her a speech about how rare Celiac disease is in the population because she let loose her allergy to gluten. And then, the clouds in the sky broke open, and the light of the Sun shoneth upon her, and lo! She ate of the loaves and the fishes, and her hunger was satisfied, and she said "Verily! This is the true coming of the Lord!"

....actually, I believe she told him he could tell her whether she was allergic to gluten after force-feeding her Benadryl to keep the hives down and wiping her ass after her explosive shits for the next 3 days.

And then he apologized.

arguewithatree  ·  2778 days ago  ·  link  ·  

i wanna hang w/ your gf she sounds awesome

_refugee_  ·  2778 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm pretty biased, but yeah.