cyphercrypt

I'm still dying of menstrual cramps, and I'm not taking any more ibuprofen because it gives me stomachaches for hours.

This new eating schedule gets easier and easier each day. "Fasting" is not really an accurate term for it because I'm not going very long between meals; the time between meals is merely long compared to what I'm adapted to. I had some electrolytes today and the pre-first-meal headache disappeared. Eating at 2, 8, and the equivalent of a snack at around 2:30 am is a rather normal meal schedule.

I'm supposed to see the dietician tomorrow and I'm seriously considering cancelling. I don't think I need a dietician, and, if what I'm doing works, I won't even need the endocrinologist. I expect my body to adapt to the point that I stop having symptoms of low blood sugar in between meals. I'm pretty much already there except for the headaches, and, if they turn out to be merely dehydration headaches, then the problem will be solved.

My body looked great when I woke up this morning; I can already see signs of weightloss. I'm no eating very much and I'm not struggling with hunger, so I'll be hitting my weight goal (much sooner than anticipated) as well as a health goal. It would be amazing if the "fasting" fixed my insomnia as well, but I daren't hope for that much.

I think maybe there are some warped forms of "feminism" going around. It's not easy to pinpoint because I just read snippets of it here and there. Once, for example, there was a womon saying that she wanted to lose weight but didn't do it because she's a feminist. But there are no feminist principles against weight-loss. There are principles against mindlessly valuing certain looks simply because they are presented as desirable, and there are principles against self-abuse to achieve certain looks, but there's nothing about simple weight-loss.

Another example is this article about a guy who is attracted to overweight womyn: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40838979

As I became a man and started to educate myself on issues such as feminism and how the media marginalizes women by portraying a very narrow and very specific standard of beauty (thin, tall, lean), I realised how many men have bought into that lie.

This is relevant to my topic because he's identifying these ideas about body type with feminism. Media certainly influences how womyn are viewed, but saying that it "marginalizes" womyn simply by not showing the non-thin, non-tall, non-lean ones is going too far. I might say that the actresses and certain other kinds of workers who cannot get jobs in media because of that bias are marginalized, because their livelihood is affected, and employment is a serious issue because everyone needs money to survive. But marginalization is too serious a term for people simply not seeing bodies similar to their own on TV or in fashion magazines. Another thing about these warped feminisms is that some tend to give media way too much power. "Media representation" is overly relied upon as a form of activism. But media is largely simply entertainment, and people shouldn't take it so seriously that it canaffect change. Moreso than more female video game characters, people need to turn off screens and interact with real life if they're clueless and/or narrow-minded about the diversity of human beings. In the warped feminisms, there's something like an implicit capitulation to the hegemony of the entertainment industry's power.

I think there is a mis-perception that the fat-positive movement is some kind of feminist movement. Well, there is feminism and then there is pseudo-feminism. Pseudo-feminism I can briefly describe as "girl power" shit: mostly slogans and shallow ideas that are primarily meant to make womyn feel better, very little real political analysis, and, most importantly, very little focus on the most serious womyn's issues (misogynistic violence). There's like a trend for anything that is meant to be positive or uplifting for womyn and girls (regardless of whether it involves anything concretely positive) to be labeled "feminist." Feminism is a collection of sociopolitical ideologies and practices in service of those ideologies. Mere self-esteem boosts are not really feminism.

I've complained on this blog before about womyn making everything about their damned feelings, and the fat positive movement seems like a good example. It's primarily about womyn feeling bad about the stigmatization of fatness. There may be a few legitimate points about things like healthcare and the particularly vicious insults directed towards overweight and obese people, but I don't believe that any sort of serious marginalization is the main focus. The main focus is that society doesn't like fatness, even when society is polite and gentle about that dislike. This is obviously not any kind of serious womyn's issue, and that's why fat positivity isn't any kind of feminism. Excessive focus on the female body is absolutely a legitimate issue in feminism, but the promotion of obesity is not. Adding focus on fat bodies is not. The fact that womyn are seen as little more than walking breasts and vagina is a serious issue. The fact that there are few overweight women in tv and film is not.

I felt energetic late this morning after breakfast so I went out for a long walk. Going out for a walk in the middle of the day here is a fraught endeavor because of all the people and dogs out and about, but I didn't run into any problems until I was leaving a local park. First there was a group of horseback riders on one of the trails. The trails are barely wide enough for two people to stand side-by-side, so horses shouldn't even be allowed. They leave huge piles of shit and it's inconsiderate to even bring them to a public park. I tried to step aside to avoid being trampled, walked into a prickly bush that hurt my bare arm.

Then I was off the trail and in the main part of the park when yet another group of horseback riders approached. We were walking down a lane in between the kids' play enclosure and the parking lot near the park entrance, a place where there were a lot of people. These entitled fools were coming at me in a fanned out formation instead of walking their horses in single file. I kept walking straight down my side of the lane, and the one in my path turned behind her riding mates, where she should have been in the first damned place. After I'd passed them, one had the nerve to say that "maybe" I should watch out while walking past horses. I turned around and responded that they shouldn't have been monopolizing the whole damned lane. The horses were supposed to be under their control and any accident would have been their fault. I wasn't walking into horses. The nerve.

The white-privileged women here are unbearable. All ages, I've found. I'd had a great walk and then it was kinda ruined at the end. It's always this same demographic group doing shit like this here in this town.

I'm transitioning to two meals per day. I can't take this eating 5 times a day shit anymore. Yesterday I was watching OMAD videos and it made me think about how one meal a day might be possible for someone with hypoglycemia. I don't really want to do OMAD because it seems rather extreme and not ideal for physical fitness, muscular development and retention in particular. But two meals per day should be ok. Just getting away with three would be progress.

So I decided I'd just gradually decrease the number of daily meals. Normally I have 4 with one mini-meal of a tofu slice and salad greens just before bed. Yesterday I kinda had three although the third was split into two, or maybe it would be more accurate to say I had three plus a snack instead of four. Today, I'm shooting for two. I had a larger than usual breakfast and now I'm going to try to avoid eating until just before my nighttime walk.

The first several hours after breakfast were easy because I was walking. Now that I'm home, the hunger pangs have started up and my head has just started hurting. I can deal with hunger pangs but I'm afraid of developing a migraine. Maybe when it gets a bit worse, I'll do my weightlifting+cycling to put off the hunger for a while longer. Then I'll have a few more hours to kill, I'll eat, go for my walk, fill a couple more hours, and have the mini-meal as usual. Two regular meals and a mini-meal is my goal, and maybe whatever is wrong with me will improve enough so that I can eliminate the mini-meal one day, but I'm not going to try to eliminate it for a long time because it never works and the results are always too harsh.

Maybe I won't accomplish much today because I'll be too hungry or sick, but I'm getting off this treadmill.

This didn't get posted last night so now it's like twenty-six hours after I started this post. I couldn't deal with the hunger yesterday and ended up having lunch, so three meals instead of two. It's probably because I had a long walk just after breakfast. Today is much better; I didn't need lunch at all. It's almost nine pm and I just finished my second meal of the day about twenty minutes ago. I'm trying to eat at 2pm and eight or eight thirty pm. I haven't really felt very hungry since yesterday afternoon but I have been dealing with a migraine all day. Now that I've eaten, it's going away. Looking at the computer screen seems to severely worsen the migraine, so I haven't been studying. Bowel function has returned, but with the stomach cramps that I always get if I have a bowel movement after the morning time. I was too scared to get on the bike yesterday because hardcore cardio can easily worsen headaches, but I did it this evening just before second meal and it was ok besides me feeling a little weak.

I'm hoping that my body adapts within the next few days so that I have no headaches.

I'm drowsy and want to sleep but I'm supposed to be going for a walk in half an hour. I've been going to bet at around 3 AM lately so I shouldn't be sleepy this early but I still get only about five hours of sleep per night.

I couldn't focus on my sentence drills this evening (lots of focusing problems lately) so, against my better judgment, I looked up my endocrinologist online. I found only one picture (and a bunch of pictures of other seemingly random people, both male and female). The picture was old and not very clear and not terribly flattering but I can see in the shape of the mouth that spark that reminds me of what he looks like today. He looks better with the moustache.

Yeah I should probably stop but at least I was in a great mood and motivated to walk tonight after that search. Maybe the stars will align and he'll hit on me during my next appointment. Fingers crossed. I need the whole word to cross their fingers for me. I'm going to try to telepathically signal to him that it's ok to be unprofessional and make a pass at me.

I called my friend this evening and told him my goal weight is 117. He said I would be way too skinny and I was like...no, you're way off. I'm not a large person; 117 is a healthy weight for me. Somebody messaged me on this site and mentioned something about me supposedly being underweight; I've been in the 120s since last year and that's what I've been posting. I don't know what people are thinking.

My face didn't peel so experiment over and we're back to square zero.

I got rid of boxes and boxes of old papers and crap, so the living room looks more like a place I actually want to live in. I got laundry done too, but I let myself get dehydrated again somehow and I guess that's what exhausted me, so the later evening has been unproductive. I'm frustrated with the number of things I can accomplish in a day.

Another skincare experiment is underway. If I can keep the apartment humid enough, the skin on my neck should peel. I applied a mild Jessner peel, which contains TCA but isn't pure TCA. When I did pure TCA peels in Sacramento, my skin started peeling after three or four days. Tomorrow will be the fourth day. I've been running the humidifier and boiling water for several hours each day. I don't care whether more mold develops, I mean I do care but I'm willing to deal with it for better skin. If my neck peels, then I'll try the experiment on a small part of my face, which will require me to wait another four days. The waiting is unpleasant but I must proceed with caution to avoid damaging my skin.

Apparently, my sleep has dipped below my minimun; I've been dealing with stomach cramps and insane bloating these past few days. The bloating makes me feel huge. I can't eat stuff that I ate without problems just a few days ago.

I called about the cwt program all week, multiple times per day, and no one ever answered the phone. I sort of lodged a complaint earlier this week but haven't gotten a response to that. I also asked about the local employment department's job services for veterans again and was told again that I must register on their job site, which employers can access. The guy sent me the privacy policy, which I do not have the energy to read. Just skimming it, I'm not sure how much employers can see. I'll try creating an account and adding as little info as possible. It'll probably be another waste of my time.

Over time I've come to see that I have mild signs of a developmental disability. I cannot drink automatically. If I try, the liquid will go down the wrong pipe and I'll end up choking. I've always just drank slowly and deliberately. I never thought to mention this to anyone.

To this day I still find myself putting my clothes on inside out, sometimes even after I've looked carefully at the clothing just before putting it on. I remember being on a field trip to a baseball game in the sixth grade. I was twelve years old, in the stands, and suddenly I looked down and noticed that my shorts were on inside out. That was the first time I noticed my problem. It's weird, like a kind of blindspot. The inside and outside of the clothing don't look different enough for me to easily distinguish, so I usually look for a tag to be sure. Looking at the seams should, or seems like it should, work, and it seems to work sometimes, but sometimes looking at them is like looking at one of those optical illusions: they first look like one kind of seam, then you see the other kind after you've stared at them for a moment.

I want the fat off my thighs and backside dammit. This shit takes forever. This might even drag out for another year because I'll be able to undereat less and less the leaner I get. The brown rice and beans don't really seem to help much with undereating. The steel cut oats maybe help a little. Caffeine and exercise after meals seem to work the best. But I cannot exercise after every meal (or can I?) and I can have caffeine early in the day only. I guess I could do a thirty to sixty-minute walk after every meal, but that would be super inconvenient and I wouldn't have the comfort of walking on the track because it takes twenty minutes just to walk there and back, plus students will be there for most of the day.