We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Please do not go around diagnosing people - or even yourself. Still, this is something to watch out for when dating. Interestingly, many men are attracted to women with borderline traits because of the drama. At first, anyway, it can be exciting. Borderline men exist too, but they are easy to avoid.
Endurance is a different category from the general fitness things we usually post about. While all exercises assist endurance, the best way is to do things that take time to train your body to endure.
Who has time to hike 10-12 miles over hill and dale, with a pack, without either a vacation or a dedicated Saturday?
From the Harvard Med. School Letter: Age and muscle loss
As the years pass, muscle mass in the body generally shrinks, and strength and power decline. The process begins earlier than you might think. Sarcopenia—defined as age-related muscle loss—can begin at around age 35 and occurs at a rate of 1-2 percent a year for the typical person. After age 60, it can accelerate to 3 percent a year. The loss may be mild, moderate, or severe—or muscles can remain in the normal range...
... researchers agree, MT is particularly worth promoting among the young, a stance that seems at least somewhat at odds with today’s self-care narrative. Says Chawla, “I would define mental toughness as grit. Tenacity. And a fairly big chunk of that is having some discipline over your own impulses—doing things even when your mind is objecting. This idea is now reviled in mainstream culture in favor of approaches such as, ‘be gentle with yourself.’ [But] if you’re always gentle with yourself you will stagnate and grow weak and fragile.” If our goal is to uphold and not erode mental toughness, it is surely unhelpful to applaud iconic role models for extolling fragility.
Mussels were not commonly considered food in the US until after the war. It's a shame they were overlooked for so long. The Indians ate them, as do crabs and diving ducks.
Mussels have a remarkable capacity for holding on to things. Photo shows mussel farming, on ropes, in deep New Hampshire waters.
Our Atlantic Blue Mussel is the edible variety - not the deeply-striated Horse Mussel. I can eat pounds of them, steamed in white wine and shallots, but Mussel Soup is good too. In my experience, kids love mussels.
Try cookin' up some mussels this weekend, with some good bread fried in olive oil to sponge up the juices.
Not really. Sex toys for ladies have been around forever. The newer ones might be more exciting though. Women, of course, have sexual needs and wants which cannot always be realized for many reasons.
Males can easily take care of themselves but it can just be a chore.
"Diet and exercise." Those are the usual suggestions.
Fact is that, with exceptions for situations with hours of vigorous activity daily (eg military basic training), a daily routine of stressful exertion of every sort is for building or maintaining functionality for most people but not for fat loss. It doesn't work.
Building strength is another matter. As readers know, for general fitness we like a combination of heavy weight training, "Cardio" of the HIIT type plus some endurance cardio, and calisthenics. That covers all of the basics.
How Hard Should I Work Out? To lose weight? That's not a thing. For general fitness, a hard hour 6 days/week is good.
They are, simply, far too rare. They are terrible tragedies, but entirely unpredictable. It is wrong to use these as news and political fodder. It encourages copycats, and, worse, it makes every odd kid a potential suspect.
Psychiatry has nothing to offer with this other than opinions on TV. These adolescent or late-adolescent boys never get to Psychiatrists, and even if they did there would be little to do. None would tell a doctor that their dream is to shoot up a school.
While doing cardio intervals at my gym I was amused to see an ad for weight-gain products (probably quackery) on the TV. Amused, because we are so accustomed to seeing ads for weight-loss quackery.
Weight-gain is important for scrawny or physically-undeveloped people who are looking to gain muscle and physical power. The classic 150-lb weakling male who wants to develop might need to gain 10 lbs with a balanced exercise program including weights and a robust diet. Same goes for a weakling stringbean gal.
Whether part of a fitness goal is weight gain or weight loss, a nutritional diary, I believe, is the essential, basic aid. If you record everything you put in your oatmeal-hole, including portion size, while weighing yourself every month, you will get a good idea of how you're moving towards your goals.
For weight gain goals with a 5-6-day per week exercise program including weights, I'd like to see about a 1 lb gain per month for a while. Unless you want to gain fat, a pound/month is plenty. If you can't do that, you need to up your intake. That can be difficult for some people who have to force themselves to eat more than they really want.
For getting rid of excess fat, a reasonable goal is 2 lbs/month with or without exercise. I can't tell you what percentage of American medical problems are related to being overweight, but it could be half of it, from arthritis to breast cancer. Hard exercise doesn't do much for weight loss but it's a good thing for life anyway.
In either case, a detailed diary can help you navigate towards your goal. People are often surprised by how much, or how little, they consume in a day.
This is not a recommendation for an obsessive lifetime plan, just to try for a few months.
"Metcon" workouts (metabolic conditioning) are not about strength-building or weight loss. They are about building vigor and endurance. A combination of HIIT Cardio and calisthenics, usually.
They are far better, and more fun, done in a group in a gym. Not 20 minutes, more like an hour with a 5-minute warm-up and 5 minutes stretching at the end.
The problem with that book review, and maybe with the book, it that it sounds as if "mental illness" were a unitary phenomenon and as if treatment approaches were somewhat unitary too.
Believe it or not, we have many ways to be of help to people with all sorts of problems. True "cures" are relatively unusual in all areas of medicine.
The news these days are preoccupied with the topic. I have never had a single, clear view on it and still do not. Moral, religious, freedom, politics, etc.
As I have noted in the past, I refused to participate in an abortion in medical school and nobody cared. I was not alone. It was not on any clearly-defined moral or religious grounds really, just more like a disgust for the whole idea. Other people did them as comfortably as doing a tummy-tuck. OK for them. Maybe I was weak. It was an inner conflict. I would never have been willing to do a tranny surgery either, but they were not routine then.
I confess that I came from a good, solid family which stayed together and produced a large litter of good, solid citizens. Protestant, not Roman Catholic.
Regardless of the above, it is all about sex. Sex is a strong drive in us animals. We do not always use our brains despite every form of birth control.
I wanted to transition because my body was my enemy, and my body was the enemy of the world. I hated myself and wanted to punish myself. It was the same feeling that motivates cutting, binge-eating, anorexia, and lashing oneself. My very nature meant I deserved pain. I couldn't remove my whiteness from myself, but maybe I could remove my maleness...
My husband loaded trucks at a lumber yard for three years in his teens. Sports too, of course, but he is sure that that labor made him a sturdier adult. Hard manual labor is what growing boys are made for. This might not apply to women, though.
In adulthood, however, if women want to avoid osteopenia the simplest and most natural approach is to lift heavy. Cardio does nothing for bone maintenance.
Mussels were not commonly considered food in the US until after the war. It's a shame they were overlooked for so long. The Indians ate them, as do crabs and diving ducks.