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The True Rejection Challenge
An exercise:
Name something that you do not do but should/wish you did/are told you ought, or that you do less than is normally recommended. (For instance, "exercise" or "eat vegetables".)
Make an exhaustive list of your sufficient conditions for avoiding this thing. (If you suspect that your list may be non-exhaustive, mention that in your comment.)
Precommit that: If someone comes up with a way to do the thing which doesn't have any of your listed problems, you will at least try it. It counts if you come up with this response yourself upon making your list.
(Based on: Is That Your True Rejection?)
Edit to add: Kindly stick to the spirit of the exercise; if you have no advice in line with the exercise, this is not the place to offer it. Do not drift into confrontational or abusive demands that people adjust their restrictions to suit your cached suggestion, and do not offer unsolicited other-optimizing.
To alleviate crowding, Armok_GoB has created a second thread for this challenge.
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Comments (532)
Nada, I am already told enough, more than I can handle.
I wish more people would just tell me to relax and have some fun (people with arguments in favor of doing so).
Existential risk mitigation. I don't do it because of uncertainty and psychological distress caused by the fear of having no more time to do what I would like to do based on naive introspection. And I am too selfish to give away large amounts of money that I fear I might need for my self at some point
Be more focused on improving my education. I am too distracted by all the shiny and interesting things out there, by problems I can't solve and real life needs.
There are many irrational examples here. I am told not to care so much about my health and actually have some fun by drinking lots of alcohol. I don't drink alcohol because of health concerns but also because I simply don't like it.
Would you be happy if someone told you to do something fun in a way which, in your eyes, is likely to reduce existential risk?
Yes. That would probably mean that I could either learn something by reducing existential risks or that it wouldn't eat up all too much resources.
Try starting a German meetup group.
You can learn things with them, and do other fun things.
If you get people into the group who haven't been exposed to ideas, but would be interested in existential risk mitigation then you have a non-zero impact. If you work with them to try to make money and donate some of that, then you will donate without eating up too much resources.
(That being said, I do think that your sending letters to AI researchers is providing probably-helpful information)
You should relax and have some fun. It could perhaps be justified by increased productivity and motivation on other tasks, but the real reason is so that you can enjoy yourself. Recursive functions need base cases, maximizing the value of action needs to be balanced by acting. You have needs, and one (subgroup) is the need to relax and have some fun.
If you would like more specifics, please let me know.
I have the same problem with knowing I should work on existential risk mitigation, but I don't. (Not directly, at least. Ideally I would do FAI related research.)
My fear is that I won't be good at it and/or I won't like it. It'll end up as a waste of my time and money, and I won't contribute very much, or may be even worse, I'll waste other people's time and resources.
Is this not working preventing you from doing anything to reduce existential risk mitigation (donation etc.)?
No, I still donate and I am doing my best to raise the sanity waterline. But I think AdeleneDawner brought up a good point: there might not be enough x-risk workers to justify not doing it if I can.
My impression - and admittedly this is just an impression - is that there are few enough x-risk workers that someone doesn't have to be especially good at doing x-risk work to be able to do more good on the margin as an x-risk worker compared to doing other things. This seems to be especially true for people who are good at motivating themselves (so that they don't need a lot of managerial support) and who are willing to do things that aren't particularly glamorous (but it's probably true even when neither of those is the case, so don't use that as an excuse).
"I might not like it" sounds like a fully general argument to me, and there are cheap tests you can do on the other issues. I suggest sending a resume to SIAI or someplace similar; if they think you wouldn't be useful there, you're at least no worse off than you are now.
Thanks, that's the point I've also been considering, but I don't know how true it is. I am going to (and already started to) talk to people at SIAI and see if they could use my help for anything.
After talking to jsalvatier offline for a bit about the issue of wanting to do AI research, but being afraid to fail, I've came to realization that I haven't fully analyzed why I am afraid of it. I'll need to take more time to break it down, but my first guess is simply lost time. But it's very likely that if I try to do the research, I'll realize really fast if I am at all capable of doing it, so the time wasted would be a year or two, which is not too bad IMO.
You said you are interested in existential-risk reduction. I don't know if you mean specifically AI research by it, but if you do, we should try to solve this problem together. I am sure there are other people in similar situation (and there will be even more in the future), so it makes sense to create some kind of standard way of answer the question "am I cut out for this".
I think this should be discussion level.
Disagree! Less Wrong needs more meme-y posts like this. Longness is not an inherent virtue.
I agree with you, Kevin.
I'll try this at the Seattle Meetup.
I have two reasons not to use your system:
One: If you're committed to doing the action if you yourself can find a way to avoid the problems, then as you come to such solutions your instinct to flinch away will declare the list 'not done yet' and add more problems, and perhaps problems more unsolvable in style, until the list is an adequate defense against doing the thing.
One way to possibly mitigate this is to try not to think of any solutions until the list is done, and perhaps some scope restrictions on the allowable conditions. Despite this, there is another problem:
Two: The sun is too big.
How big is too big?
They say not to eat anything bigger than your head.
Well, they're missing out on some swell watermelons, then.
I'm afraid I don't get your joke. Does this have anything to do with the system itself, or is it just an example of an insurmountable obstacle?
It seems like both to me. The system is vulnerable to arbitrary problems that meet only a personal standard; the problems themselves are not subject to scrutiny.
This is my new favourite objection :)
I do not exercise.
(Caveat: I will refrain from taking any advice that would lead to me starting to significantly exercise until I have a diagnosis and a treatment plan of my apparent heart condition, which doesn't indicate it would be unsafe or otherwise a medically bad idea. I'd be really surprised if my doctor told me not to exercise, but in case she does I want to wait and make sure that my body is really lying to me when it says "don't do that, bad things will happen".)
Reasons (and existing known routes around each):
Sweat is horrible, and I overheat too easily. (Swimming gets around these; outdoor exercise in cold weather, interestingly, does not.)
Sunshine is horrible (and other environmental issues). (Anything indoors or at night gets around the sunshine thing. Other environmental issues are mostly limited to smelly gyms and excessively humid indoor pool facilities. Anything outdoors and at night and in nice weather gets around this.)
Many forms of it are financially costly (equipment, facility use). (Going for walks does not have this problem.)
It is boring. (When I tried jujitsu, it did not have this particular problem. Merely being able to listen to music does not solve this, although it could combine with another partial solution. If this problem is solved by simultaneously watching a movie, it has to be in a context where I can turn on subtitles, because I will not be able to reliably hear dialogue over any non-perfectly-silent form of exercise.)
Known route around all of these problems: happening to have free access to an outdoor pool which is open at night and a person who will go with me and chat while we both backstroke laps. This would be great but I don't happen to have access to a free outdoor pool that is open in the dark.
Why do you think you should, or wish you did?
Health professionals keep telling me to.
Make friends with someone who has a backyard pool and invite yourself to swim laps with them. I don't actually know where you live and what the climate is like there, but even if it's colder, you can at least swim for part of the year. Ask everyone you know if they know anyone who has a backyard pool, and invite yourself.
Ideal long-term solution: build your own backyard pool. Probably not financially feasible right now, though.
I live in North Carolina at the moment and the weather would be fine for swimming. I don't think I know anyone with a pool or have a good way to filter potential new friends for pool ownership (and I live in an apartment complex, so I can't just stroll around the block looking for a pool-having house to turn up at with a plate of cookies). Suggestions?
ETA: I fail. I didn't even think of asking the local meetup group if anybody in it has a pool before I posted this. (That said, since I don't drive and I don't think any of them live really close, it'd be more of an imposition than just allowing me to let myself into their backyard, but it's worth a try.)
Taking evening walks while listening to audiobooks seems to deal with all of those issues, assuming you aren't like one of my friends who can't stand audiobooks. Audiobooks aren't free, but if you take 3 30 minute walks a week it will take you months to get through a single book.
Audiobooks can be free if you get CDs from a library. (Then if you want, burn them onto your computer.) Also they may be available online as torrents.
Another source of free audiobooks is LibriVox which is building (i.e. recording) a catalog of free & public domain audiobooks. It is all volunteer work so I'm sure there is varying quality, but the few I have listened to have been quite good. However, the catalog is limited to works out of copyright (or under an appropriately permissive license), so newer material is rare, but many of the "classics" are there.
My existing iPod does not have any battery life (expense of equipment). Walking is not immune to the sweat problem. I also might not be able to reliably hear the contents of an audiobook over the sound of my own footsteps, nearby traffic, etc., but this part would be worth empirical testing.
I probably have an mp3 player around somewhere that you can use. (Check in the electronics bin, if you like.) If you don't mind being functionally deaf to anything else, using earplugs and turning the player's volume all the way up will likely solve the problem of hearing it over things. There is still the sweat issue, though.
Noted, thanks.
Even when it's dark out? I would expect this would be OK at least at some times of year.
Other things you could do to fight the boredom problem would be to try to get a friend to walk with you, or have a phone conversation.
From the original comment:
Sorry if it sounded like I hadn't read the post carefully. I know it annoys me a lot when I have to repeat myself because people don't seem to be listening. But I did in fact notice that and had a possibly incorrect but not actually crazy reason for asking that specific question.
My model looked something like this:
expected_amount_of_sweat = f(ambient_temperature,exercise_intensity,time)
where f() is continuous and monotonically positive in ambient_temperature, exercise_intensity, and time. In other words, a small increase in any of the three inputs yields a small increase in the output.
This implies that for a sufficiently small increase in exercise_intensity, there would be some finite decrease in ambient_temperature that would offset it. I interpreted "does not [get around the sweat problem]" as meaning that for a fixed value of exercise_intensity, as ambient_temperature decreases, expected_amount_of_sweat approaches a lower asymptotic bound. It's possible for that to happen (e.g. if you're doing intense enough exercise you will sweat even in a walk-in freezer), but for there still to be an offsetting effect (e.g. carrying something heavy or running will make me sweat sooner on a hot summer day than on a cold winter day).
It seems as though either my model is wrong, or my model is right but the transition from resting to walking is not a sufficiently small increase in exercise_intensity. Is one of those the case, or am I missing something else?
Your model is close to correct, but "ambient temperature" is local to parts of the body, and in some locations cannot normally drop below my actual core body temperature. I'd have to wear ice packs in some mighty weird and highly uncomfortable places to make reality function like a naive version of your model.
OK, though I'm quite surprised if you're saying that the general outside temperature has no effect whatsoever.
I'm slightly less surprised if you're saying it has some effect, but that due to localization of heat and the insulation of even light clothing, walking is intense enough to overcome even a chilly autumn or winter night sweatwise.
General outside temperature has an effect on parts of me that are exposed to air. This doesn't typically include, say, armpits, my scalp under my hair, or certain less G-rated locations - not because of clothes (or rather not entirely because of clothes; they certainly have an effect), but because of other body parts being in the way.
Ah. I was thinking in terms of core body temperature being affected by the external temperature, which seems like it has to happen at least in extreme cases as a simple matter of physics (e.g. if it's so hot or so cold that it overcomes the body's ability to self-regulate temperature), but it might not happen in the majority of less extreme cases for some people. I should just take your word for it that you're one of those people, or close enough for practical purposes.
And it's probably a bad idea to induce hypothermia in order to go for a run without sweating, so I withdraw my suggestion.
I share many of the problems with exercise that you have, especially the overheating and the boredom.
My solution to the sweating problem is to pick out clothes that are 'okay to sweat in', go for a run, then wash the clothes and have a shower immediately. I experience being sweaty as being very unpleasant, but with the attitude of "in these clothes, that doesn't matter", I can get around that.
I find that podcasts are much better than audiobooks for exercise -- they give variety and a breadth of topics in the event that I'm not in the mood for a particular audiobook. I subscribe to some news podcasts, anime/movie review, comedy, philosophy, sociology, hacking and short-story podcasts, and if I grow tired of one, I always have something else to distract me.
Really bare-bones mp3 players can be bought here for 15 units of local currency, so with rechargable batteries, that isn't a good reason. Most phones can play mp3s, and come with free headsets.
It's a textural issue, not an attitudinal one.
The object is to get around my reasons, not dismiss them as bad reasons. Also, I don't have a phone.
I understand that that's the object, but I hope you aren't excluding the possibility that some of your reasons--or anyone's reasons--might actually be bad reasons. That's a concern I have with this whole post: it could be a net rationality loss if you let your attitude shift from "I will do X if objections W, Y and Z are overcome," to "I will do X if and only if etc."
It is certainly possible that some reasons are bad. When people have presented options as partial solutions, I am in some cases willing to meet those partial solutions halfway. But "It only costs $X and it's a functionality that comes with $OBJECT so that can't be too much even though I know nothing about your finances or why you want free options" is not a responsive answer to my complaint that things cost money. X ≠ 0 and I don't have $OBJECT already.
You know that wasn't me, right?
Didn't say it was.
I play DDR at home (all you need is a DDR pad and a computer). It solves all the problems except the sweat. But since it's at home, I would think you wouldn't mind that as much (plus you can have a towel nearby). I find this the most convenient exercise ever, since I can do it at home, any time, and for free.
I once owned a DDR pad, but either it or the adapter I used to hook it up to my computer had a delay that made it unplayable. So I don't have one anymore, and this therefore fails the expense criterion.
You presume incorrectly.
Unless you are playing on high difficulty, you can comfortably play on a cheap pad ($16 + $4 adapter).
As for sweat, it seems like there might be two things going on there. One is you overheat, which you can control with a fan or something. Two is the actual sweat, which is annoying, but by no means bad in of itself. If you sincerely dislike it, you can self-modify to find it acceptable (might be worth doing anyway). There are plenty of resource on LW for how to do that.
Nope. (I overheat strangely. It's like my interior and my surface area aren't connected. Aiming a strong fan at me will prevent exterior but not interior overheating. If I just stay under the fan after I stop exercising, I will get too cold on the outside while still being too hot on the inside.)
Not helpful.
I may look into the inexpensive pad and adapter, though.
I can't be sure, but drinking cold water throughout might help.
You know, it might. I don't like water but that's not among my listed problems, so if I come up with a solution for which overheating (as opposed to sweating, which this wouldn't affect) is the only problem, I will attempt this patch. Thanks!
If you don't like water, but like lemonade (or some other drink that can be served chilled and isn't too expensive), filling a water bottle with it can be nice. If it's too sweet, it'll make you thirsty, but watering it down fixes that. I tend to add just enough syrup/juice/whatever to water to make water palatable. (i dont like water either).
i know a person who has a medical condition that gets worse with exercise. they have to avoid it as much as possible because they can feel poorly for weeks afterwards (even moderate amounts of exercise, like walking too much). The condition in question is not a heart condition, but it is possible that there are other conditions that react poorly to exercise for different reasons than the one my friend has. So you should definitely consult with your doctor AND listen to your body. If you feel really crummy after exercise, you should be doing smaller amounts of exercise to build up your strength. If you feel really crummy after a tiny amount of exercise, you probably shouldn't be exercising. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.
solution to sweat: deodorant
solution to sunshine: a wide brimmed hat and sunscreen, if the problem is sunburn, or a sensitivity to light, or heat.
other solutions to sunshine, if you are a night owl: rollerblading at night -- is safer than walking since you can zip by other people. is also less hot and sweaty. bicycling at night. these sorts of things are best done in well lit areas
another solution to sunshine: if you are in a building with an elevator, take the stairs at least part way up. if you have a washing machine, hang your clothes up on a clothesline to dry (i have a clothesliine over my bathtub. they're easy to make. i don't have a dryer, and hanging up heavy, wet clothes can be tiring, especially lifting them up over your head. you can also flush toilets with a heavy bucket of water (you dont have to empty the entire bucket, just a little bit will do. this saves quite a bit on the water bill as well -- my water bill has gone down since the flush on my toilet broke. bake bread now and then. kneading bread is also quite a workout. if you take public transportation, get off a stop early when you aren't in a hurry. little things like these add up and they're often more interesting than sitting on an exercise bike -- getting off early lets you explore on foot a part of town you might not have known as well. and these tips are all good for number 4 as well -- they're cheap. most of them (including the elevator one, since i'm living on the fifth floor and my building doesnt have one) are things i do not really by choice but because i'm that poor.
solution to boring: audio books! i prefer reading a book to listening to one, but listening to one is more interesting than listening to nothing. also, if you like television and are doing something that can be done in front of a television (yoga, stretching, lifting cans of beans and pretending they're dumbbells...) then television is another option.
I do like lemonade, but I can only water it down a little before it starts tasting like water.
Deodorant does not work well enough and is not properly applied to all relevant locations.
I have textural issues with sunscreen, and don't like the directed warmth and brightness of the sun even through it. (I walk outside on a sunny day and it's like I can feel myself crisping up. Or steaming if it's humid.) Hats worsen the sweat problem on the scalp.
Skating is unkind to my ankles; skates cost money. Bikes cost money and I don't trust myself to bike safely in traffic. Helmets worsen the sweat problem on the scalp.
I take stairs when they're handy most of the time.
I don't like the texture my clothes have when they are hung dry. (I know this because sometimes I get a broken dryer and then strew my clothes around my room to dry rather than spending more quarters.)
I do mean to learn to bake bread, but can't regularly count on being able to knead it; I routinely have small wounds on my fingers. (Don't say gloves. No form of glove I am aware of both lacks texture issues for me and would be okay to knead bread with.)
Audio books have been mentioned. Cans of beans: interesting. May try that and see if it generates noticeable amounts of sweat. Yoga is physically painful to me in ways I am fairly sure are not supposed to happen.
Fair enough.
I have textural issues too although mine seem to have different triggers than yours. But it influences what foods I can eat (nothing squidgy, which might be a made up word, but it means mushrooms and anything else that feels like i'm eating a condom), what clothes I can wear (i can only wear nylon tights if i wear thick white socks underneath), even what kind of books I can read (smooth textures are the worst for me, my hands break out in sweat and i get a fight or flight response). i've used cotton gloves before to soak up some of the sweat from my textural problems, but any other type of glove would exacerbate it. i have to be really careful with what kind of socks i buy as well. -- no i'm not suggesting you knead dough in cotton gloves.
yeah, i had a feeling the deodorant thing wasn't going to be too helpful -- it's nice for armpits, but you can't slather it on your face or hands or feets or other places. and deodorant does nothing for the heat rash you get under the bra after sweating.
it's true, bicycling and rollerblading cost money if you dont already have the equipment (i already have rollerblades, so its cheaper for me to use them than to take a bus -- my rollerblades have saved me a lot more money than their initial cost, but that is only the case if you know you are going to be able to use them for transportation).
I think it's probably best to just avoid the sun as much as possible.
another thing that is potentially exercise, if you like kids, looking after one for a while. true, you can just stand there and watch, but joining in tends to be a bit of a workout.
yoga should not be painful. you may be stretching too far. for example with lotus position (where you twist your legs up like a pretzel), you shouldnt do that until your body is ready to do that. instead, just put your feet together, and try to get the knees as close to the ground as you can without it hurting -- if this means your thighs are at a 45° angle compared to your torso and floor, that's okay. you do it so that it's a tiny bit of a stretch, but not painful, and over time, you're able to go farther. but if it's not for you, it's not for you. i will probably never be able to touch my toes. i can touch my knees. and i can touch a little farther, and then if i go any farther, it hurts, so i dont. I think stretching and yoga can probably be done safely by most people (definitely not all, though) if they granularise it enough -- work on touching the knees before touching the top of the shin, then the middle top, then the middle, etc. but every body works differently and you know yours best -- i only elaborate about the yoga because a lot of people seem to try to turn into a pretzel on day 1 and it doesnt work. my body is pretty weird actually. For example, walking (at all) is usually a bit painful for me, but rollerblading is not. something about the stride, or the way my foot is held tightly by the skate, but not too tightly.)
our local ice skating rink sometimes has deals where they let everyone in for free (but you still have to pay to rent skates). Maybe your local public pool (you did mention swimming) has similar specials from time to time.
having cats is also a source of exercise for me: carrying a heavy bag of kitty litter up 5 flights of stairs. then carrying dirty kitty litter down again. phew. and carrying them to the vet when one of them gets sick is exercise. My one cat has been sick , constantly, though something different each time, since October (UTI --> antibiotics --> diarrhea from the antibiotics --> ringworm --> nearly went bald --> eye infection. So for a while I was having to carry her (in my arms, with a leash attached in case she made a break for it) about a km every week or so. Thankfully, she's much better now.
Me too... and I'm Australian (where sunscreen is a necessity). I'm currently loving being in the UK and not needing it.
I also don't wear makeup or use moisturiser for much the same reason (and suffer the social penalty for doing so in a business setting).
I did eventually find one sunscreen that I could actually use - one put out by the Australian Cancer council (their "everyday sunscreen"). Understandably, however, it's not available anywhere else but Aus... though you might be able to find it (and try it) online if you're not in Aus yourself.
It is the only sunscreen in the world (and I've tried very many) that you can't actually feel after you put it on... and I'm the sort of person that can feel the moisturisers that are guaranteed to be unfeelable...
Thinking about the overheating... you might try getting some plastic-coated 5-lb hand weights, using them for arm exercises while watching a movie, and storing them in the refridgerator when not in use. Blood vessels are relatively close to the surface in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, and I remember an experiment in forced thermoregulation which took advantage of that. Of course, it also involved a special suction-glove to increase blood flow, which is probably out of your price range.
The weights themselves are almost certainly out of my price range. I just don't care enough about getting this done to work around my monetary neuroses. It turned out that my roommate has some 3lb weights (not covered with anything that would respond interestingly to refrigeration) and I was messing with those; my hands were not excessively warm during this process, so cooling something I hold in my hands would be of minimal help.
The thermoregulation experiment suggested that cooling the hands is a relatively efficient way to cool the whole body. I don't think many people feel like their hands get too hot while they exercise, but there are apparently gains in endurance when exercisers keep something cold on their hands. These gains are most likely due to the body taking longer to overheat.
You could find out whether this works for you by timing how long something takes to produce noticeable overheating or sweat, then timing the same thing on a later day in very similar conditions, holding ice packs or something like that in your hands.
If you don't want to induce extra overheating or sweat for the sake of the experiment, you could try holding something cold while doing something you have to do anyway (e.g. sometimes I have to go outside on a hot day). That way the worst likely outcome is not much worse than before unless you really hate holding cold things.
The weights only need to be made of something with reasonably high thermal mass, and the coating only needs to have thermal conductivity in a range that will allow the transfer of heat from your hands to the weights quickly enough to be useful but not quickly enough to be painful.
My theory here is that your core is well-insulated under most of your skin, but that the soles of your feet and palms of your hands are effectively gaps in this insulation. Under this theory, I would not expect your hands to feel hot when you're exercising, since they contain no major heat source and have ready access to a major heat sink (the outside world). Cooling your hands just makes them a better heat sink for the rest of the body, reducing the need to sweat.
I suppose I'll pop the weights in the fridge and see what happens; couldn't hurt.
I also overheat, then get too cold after exercise.
For the overheating, I find that if I drink more water, I feel a bit better. I also run cold water over my wrists to cool down quickly after a workout.
Cooling down quickly causes me to overshoot, so I need to have a clean, dry shirt to put on, and a sweater or sweatshirt, handy to cope with the chills.
I don't like the sweating either, but I try not interpret it in a negative way. "No one cares if look like I'm sweating." "Sweating is a good way of removing toxins in the body. " That sort of thing.
It seems to me as if some bodyweight strength training exercises might not trigger any of these problems. I would suggest very small sets of comparatively high-load exercises, e.g. work your way up to one-legged squats, one-armed pushups, and chinups if you have a suitable thing to hang from or are willing to get a chinup bar (I sometimes do chinups on the metro). If you are interested I can give you some details on how to work your way up to these exercises, since many people are not initially strong enough to do them (I sure wasn't!).
Sweat: Short sets don't give you much of an opportunity to overheat or sweat. Also, with bodyweight exercises, you can do them at home and take a cool shower/bath immediately afterwards. (By the way, do you hate sweating, or do you hate being sweaty? I am assuming the latter for now.) You could even do the pushups in a cool bath to get some of the advantages of swimming.
Environmental Issues: You can do this at home and indoors.
Cost: Only the time investment, plus (optionally) the cost of a chinup bar.
Boring: This type of exercise does not take very long, so you won't have much time to be bored. Not very long means 5-10 minutes total, a few times a week. You don't even have to do it all in one session, you can take a minute at a time through the day.
As a bonus, strength training can make other sorts of physical activity less unpleasant, since you will be operating at much less than capacity.
I am near-certain I do not currently have the strength necessary to do anything you have listed. The working up to it must also meet the criteria, but do tell.
Both. If the sets are as short as you describe and can be broken up into arbitrarily small pieces, I would expect to be able to work around this, though.
I have tried to be reasonably concise here so as not to drown you in intimidating details and caveats, please let me know if anything is unclear and I can expand on it or try to say it another way. I included common names for some of the more unusual exercises, to aid you in Googling, but am happy to try to explain anything that is not obvious to you.
I hope this helps, but please let me know either way, as it will help me give better and more relevant advice in the future. Especially anything that doesn't work for you.
Basically the idea is to do exercises that are less intense versions, and to do negative reps. Try doing the hardest exercise you can do. If at some point in the day you can't do it anymore then move one notch down. Once you can do 5 sets of 5 repetitions each in a day, try the next level up (no reason you shouldn't be ambitious and try it earlier if you feel like it).
Less intense versions of the 1-armed pushups
Regular pushups
Regular pushups with 1 leg off the ground
Ab pushups, sometimes called Supermans (like a pushup, but instead of having your hands under your shoulders or chest, put them above your head, keeping your arms mostly straight). Then most of the work of is done by your abs rather than your arms. I found it much easier to work my way up to 1-armed pushups this way, and core strength is important for its own sake too.
Fingertip pushups (push with your fingertips rather than your palms)
If you work your way up to 1-arm pushups and want to challenge yourself a little more, you can always try 1-arm, 1-leg pushups.
You can increase the load on any given pushup by wearing a backpack with heavy stuff in it.
You can also vary the load of a pushup by doing it on an incline. (Hand(s) below feet is harder, hand(s) above feet is easier. Leaning with your hands against a wall is much easier.)
Another way to make it easier is to use your knees instead of your feet.
Another way to add challenge is to elevate your hands (e.g. pushup between two boxes or crates, or even just two books), with your hands on the boxes/crates/books. This would give you a larger range of motion and give your stabilizing muscles more work.
Less intense versions of the one-legged squat (sometimes called the pistol) include:
2-legged squat
Partial 1-legged squat, where you start with your leg only partially bent - walking up stairs is very close to this, as is stepping up onto something like a box or platform. If you can progressively raise the height of the thing you're stepping onto, eventually you will be going through the whole range of motion.
You can also wear a backpack while doing a partial (or full) squat to increase the load.
Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups
The bean-can curls that pthalo suggested would be a good intermediate exercise for pull-ups. Since the point is to do only a few repetitions to maximize the ratio of muscle use to chance of sweating/overheating, you will want to use the heaviest weight you can lift five times. Once bean cans become too easy (maybe they already are), you can try heavy books, and eventually just putting heavy stuff into a bag and holding it by the handle.
Negative Reps
Negative reps are just doing the motion in reverse. So for the pushups, start with your arm extended, and lower your body slowly to the floor. For the squats, start standing on one leg, squat down slowly. For chin-ups, start in the "up" position (a standing stool would help for this) and slowly lower yourself. If you can't do some of the intermediate exercises you can do negative reps of those as well.
Some notes on technique
For pushups, try not to arch your back backwards. You get the most out of each repetition if you put your hands next to your chest rather than your shoulders (with the obvious exception of the Supermans).
For pistols, try not to let the bending knee get far in front of your foot. To balance, extend your free leg forward or to the side, and tilt your torso a little forward. Do whatever you want with your hands. Keep your back straight.
For pull-ups, if you are using a proper bar, try varying between palms facing away from you (rock climbing style) and palms facing toward you. I find that when I am not able to do any more of one, I can often still do some of the other.
For curls, make sure your wrist doesn't bend backwards, or you can get wrist pain like I did.
Note on Sweating
I can do sets of 5 at work, feel I've got some decent exercise in, and don't sweat enough to notice. I dislike sweating and being sweaty too, but not as much as it sounds like you seem to do, so I can't tell you whether it will be under your threshold. As I mentioned earlier, you could always try doing slow pushups in the bath if ordinary ones make you sweat noticeably. Or doing fewer reps in a set.
Other Stuff
If you do 5 sets of 5 repetitions per day (vary between the arm and leg stuff), you should be able to make a lot of progress. You can get away with doing quite a bit less, though my gut feeling is that you will only be making material progress if you do at least 3 sets of 3 repetitions each, a few days per week. Spacing them out is totally okay, you will still get stronger, it just won't help your endurance as much (but it will still help a little!). In fact I would recommend spacing them out a lot at first, in order to minimize the probability of sweating. You don't want to start out with bad associations!
By the way, if you are never able to work your way up to the 1-arm pushup and 1-legged squat, the intermediate exercises will still be materially better than nothing. And I specified bodyweight exercises because you mentioned you dislike gym-smell and weights are expensive, but if you find a gym that you can stand and has free weights, or have a friend with heavy weights they will let you borrow, that will accomplish most of the same things.
I wasn't aware there were so many difficulty-altering parameters to mess with. That alone might stave off boredom for a few sets. Thanks!
I was worried that adding that much detail would be intimidating or confusing; I'm glad it was encouraging instead.
You recommend doing multiple sets per exercise on multiple days a week. This seems to contradict what Tim Ferriss and others have said, but maybe that doesn't transfer to bodyweight exercises.
Right now, I've been doing exercise similar to what you describe (following Convict Conditioning), but only about 3 sets per exercise per week (as the book recommends for beginners). I feel I stagnated somewhat and don't really transition to full push-up and pull-ups (legs and abs are doing fine). Do you think it would be beneficial to move to, say 3-5 sets on 3 days a week for those exercises? Or do I just have to wait it out, given that I'm fairly skinny and never had any serious strength?
I'm also trying to be more consistent about my protein intake. Constantly forget to eat enough. I aim at ~150g at 85kg/185cm, but often just get 50-100 because I accidentally skip meals.
The linked Tim Ferriss article mentions one-set-to-failure, and if you're really truly maxing out you probably only need to do it a few times a week. But it's harder to max out with bodyweight than with weights. I was also trying to suggest sets that would accommodate Alicorn's desire not to sweat, which requirement would likely be violated by a true high intensity workout.
For workouts that don't leave you feeling totally spent, which is generally the case with bodyweight exercises, you should take into account the total load in a day as well, and the brain-training effect of greasing the groove, for which there is substantial anecdotal evidence. It's a non-trivial skill to be able to be able to use your true maximum strength, we're designed to hold back in normal situations.
There is also a difference between training for muscle volume and training for strength. Obviously the two are strongly correlated, but they are not entirely the same thing. My understanding is that you want fewer, more intense reps at a time if you're training for strength.
EDIT: Though to be honest, I only do 1-2 sets of high intensity kettlebells and 1 set of the 1-arm pushups in a week. But I've decided that it's worth my time to maintain, but not to materially improve, my level of fitness at this point.
I also sweat a lot and the best way I've found of dealing with the discomfort is a merino wool baselayer. And not just for sports: I will probably never buy another pair of cotton boxers or socks.
Cotton gets wet, then cold and clingy, which can exacerbate blisters (socks). All sorts of high-tech synthetics start to stink real fast (I don't have much experience with silver-treated fabrics though). Wool wicks very well, will not stink even after a week of wear, it retains 50% heat insulation and does not cling against the body even if it is saturated with sweat + merino wool is too fine to be itchy and it stretches back for longer than most fabrics so cuffs etc can stay tight for years. They used to have wool jerseys at the Tour de France up to the 1980's since it beat synthetics for cooling up to that point. Couple of downsides though: merino wool (Ibex, Icebreaker etc) is expensive (but hard wearing), needs delicate detergents and does not like aggressive machine drying.
Bottom line: hundreds of millions of years of evolution for keeping warm-blooded animals performing from desert to arctic conditions has not been wasted.
Wool is itchy. And my dislike of sweat has little if anything to do with what I'm wearing when it happens.
I would also be interested in learning to work up to effective bodyweight exercises.
Going for walks at night would seem to solve everything except for possibly "boring." You could try to get a friend to walk with you, or call a friend on the phone, or listen to an audiobook.
Now, before you can build yourself a workout you have to have a reason for doing it. There are many combinations, but they boil down to:
1) Rehab of injuries. if this is the case you need to consult a therapist and work out exactly your regime, but I doubt it. 2) Body re-composition--commonly called "losing weight", but is more accurately called "reshaping this mess". 3) Getting stronger 4) Building Endurance (you could argue that this is a subset of 3, but in practice it's different enough)
There are some others, but they are usually either a subset (body building is really an extreme of 2 and some of 3 for example).
Once you have your goals clearly defined some of your other objections can be worked around, except possibly for the sweat thing. The one thing "we" can do is keep the workouts of high intensity (meaning short and hard (get your mind out of the gutter)) so that you don't have time to get bored, and you minimize the length of time you sweat.
This won't work if your goal is to do the Leadville 100 (http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/309879-run-series), but if you just want nicer hips and a little thinner belly, it isn't that hard.
One suggestion--and this WILL involve sweat--is to find a 25 or (better) 35 pound kettle bell and do kettle bell swings 3 mornings a week when you first get up. Do as many as you can in 5 minutes, then take a walk around the block to cool down. Shower and go to work. This will work your legs, lower back, shoulders and abs. It won't turn you into super$GENDER but if you currently do nothing, it'll help. As you do these try to do longer and longer sets with fewer breaks. At first you'll probably do 10-20 at a time, but it's 15 minutes a week. If that's too boring for you, then you've lost anyway.
Edited to add: Here's a three minute workout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOYpU9gg1yc&
He's barely started sweating, but it'll come in a few minutes. Oh, and he's already (clearly) in shape--either that's a 50 pound bell, or he's really short :)
Not helpful.
You don't have to believe me, I guess, if you think I'm lying about what things are and are not horrible for me, but if you're going to disbelieve me, maybe don't give me advice?
I recently have been trying to exercise more as well, I bought a door hang pullup bar for 20$ and so far in terms of exercising its quite relaxing. You can do assisted chair pullups if your tired, you can do just a few and be done fast, you can do extended sets if you feel like it. All infront of the tv/computer movie of your choice.
I should go to more parties and events, and introduce myself to more people, so that I can 'network' and build a base of contacts who might be useful in the future. People who tell me this: my boyfriend.
Reasons I don't: a) I don't actually have all that much fun at parties, compared to the amount of fun I have, for example, singing in church. b) Parties with people in my age group almost always involve alcohol, and it's extremely boring to be the only sober person at a party, and alcohol is expensive. c) I am a morning person, emphatically not a night person. I can occasionally stay up late reading or writing, activities that I can get caught up in, but in social settings I start yawning and getting sleepy and boring around 11 pm. The last thing I want to be doing at 11 pm is getting ready to go to a club. d) I'm not a good dancer and I feel self-conscious in clubs. e) I have a busy enough schedule already.
a) What are you doing at parties, then? You seem to do something wrong. b) Go to a party where not everyone drinks, often quite a few persons will drive home so they won't drink. Alternatively, drive other people home. c) You can shift your sleep schedule by going to sleep 15 minutes (or more) later each day. It's a quite simple mechanism, and it works. d) Simple: attend a dancing course! It's a simple yet valuable skill, worth the money and the time. Alternatively, you could watch tutorials on youtube. e) You don't. You don't want to tell me that you're busy with such other things every single evening. If that really is the case, take one of those activities and either let it fall or do it somewhen (I'll just use this word, I don't care whether it's proper English) else.
Now, because that was your true rejection, it's party time for you. Let your friend take you to a party, and have a good time.
Shifting sleep schedules around by going to sleep later each day does not work for people who are strongly aligned to certain sleep schedules.
Or for people who work 6 am shifts multiple times per week, and start work at 9 am the rest of the time. I could conceivably stay up til 2 am partying if I stayed up til 2 am every night and didn't have to get up until 10 every morning, but the real problem is that I can't get up at 5 am on a Friday morning and be able to stay up late on a Friday night. I could conceivably change this by working fewer opening shifts and more evening shifts, but I like getting up early and then having my evenings at home.
I do have fun at some parties, for example pool staff parties with people I've known for years, where all the gossip is relevant to me and I get all the in-jokes. I simply am not extroverted enough to enjoy going to parties where nearly everyone is a stranger, and I have to keep up with my boyfriend's manic introducing-himself-to-people pace. So the real solution is to track down more parties where I'll know the people well, but that reduces the number of people I'll meet, which according to my boyfriend is the point of going to parties.
Your dancing comment is very relevant. I should. I'm currently going swing-dancing once a week, and I should really take a couple of hip-hop classes or something. It would help a lot and I might actually enjoy clubbing then. I do like most of the music they play in clubs.
And no, I'm not busy with things every single evening, but there are an awful lot of days each week when I leave the house first thing in the morning and don't get home until 9 pm, after having been on my feet or in the pool all day and then biking halfway across the city. Yeah, technically my Saturday nights are free, but I'm exhausted, and when I'm exhausted I get antisocial.
So then I was successful at defying d)? That's a start, although I realize that I know your life far worse than you do, which is rather obvious. Your day might be to full, but I can't reliably judge this from afar.
b+c: drink caffeine, not alcohol?
Have considered that. I probably would have more fun. And be more social. Although I enjoy the sensation of being drunk, I tend to be antisocial.
I think you are thinking about the wrong kinds of parties. In fact, you are solving the wrong problem. If your goal is to network and meet people, there are much much better ways of doing that than going out to parties. Go to local clubs/meet-ups (chess, book, poker, sewing, toast masters, etc...). Meet more people through other people you already know, and through workplace if you have a job. You said you like going to church, do activities with those people. You'll meet new people there. See what fun things they do. Go to those things too.
I probably am solving the wrong problem...in fact, I'm solving someone else's problem. I'm solving the problem that my boyfriend likes going to parties and meeting people, and thinks that networking is an indispensable part of university life, and feels his social status increase if he can bring his girlfriend along, suitably dolled up, and show her off. Except that I consistently mess with his plans by not wanting to dress up and by not enjoying parties all that much. I'm pretty happy with the current rate at which I'm meeting people through work (I work at a pool and know pretty much every member who comes in during mornings), school, church, activities like taekwondo, and LessWrong meetups. Granted, most of them aren't my age, but compared to older people, people my age tend to be less interesting anyway.
It seems like giving your boyfriend what he wants and spending time in a way that is enjoyable to you are things that could be optimized separately.
For example you could show up briefly, armed with an excuse to leave early, at some time you determine in advance. That way he gets to show you off and you don't have to stick around at a party that bores you.
I really do not think it's especially likely that this is a good solution to your problem, and I only mention it because it is one that people tend to reliably refrain-from-thinking-of...
But it does sound like breaking up with your boyfriend and finding one with social preferences more similar to yours would solve most of the named problems.
I am not signed up for cryonics.
1) I think I can save more lives by being an organ donor. 2) I can't afford it, even with life insurance. 3) If there is a Singularity, I expect it will happen before I die anyway.
I can't actually sign up until I'm 18 even if all these are refuted, but I will precommit to signing up when I'm old enough.
1) Calculate how many lives you can save with your organs. Pre-commit to donate enough money to save as many lives, on top of what you would normally want to donate.
2) Since you are under 18, I can see your problem. Your chances of dying where cryonics would be an option (read: not in an accident) are so tiny, it's probably OK to wait. But you can always take out a loan (maybe?) or borrow from someone.
3) Do you want to take that chance? I also believe that the Singularity will happen within my lifetime, but I am totally willing to pay ~$80 a month to increase the chance of my brain existing when it happens (even if it's only 1%).
1) Statistics on this are almost impossible to find, with lots of websites declaring that you can save 100 lives without any substantiation. If there are any studies of average lives saved per donor, I haven't been able to find them. Saving 100 people another way would be prohibitively expensive, but I'm not convinced those numbers are right. 2) This is my biggest hang-up. It's hard to get a loan without a steady job, and most people I know won't loan me money for something they think is crazy. At least for the next 30 years, my chances of dying where cryonics would be an option are pretty small. When does it stop being OK to wait? 3) Now that you point it out, this is more a excuse-to-stop-thinking than an answer. It's easier not to worry about whether I could sign up for cryonics when I can downsize the expected impact by a factor of 100, but you're right - even a 1% chance would still be worth it.
1) Look at GiveWell. This is precisely the kind of analysis they do.
2) It's stops being OK to wait when you are not OK with dying right now. Since you are young, you can get life insurance for dirt cheap, $1-$10 a month. (Still probably have to wait until you are 18, unless your parents are supportive.) That would be Term Life insurance, which means it'll be for something like 30 years. Then you'll have to renew it at a much higher cost, since you'll be older. So it won't be the most cost efficient (or may be it will be) way to spend money, but it will serve its purpose. There is no harm in finding out exactly how much it will cost for you. I would recommend talking to Rudi Hoffman, cryonics life insurance is his specialty.
1) I find GiveWell's analysis very convincing on the question of which charity to donate to; they estimate it costs between $500 and $1000 to save a life with Village Reach. What I can't seem to find is how many lives I would save by becoming an organ donor - if GiveWell has reported on this, I can't find it (and it seems outside their scope).
2) I'm taking a look at this. It appears to be nearly impossible to buy life insurance when under 18, but I'll keep looking.
With a little research online you'll probably be able to figure out the average number of lives saved per organ donor and the probability that you will become one before you age to the point when your organs aren't wanted.
But not necessarily the marginal number of lives saved, which is the important thing.
My quick Googling prior to making posting the grandparent seemed to show that the demand for donor organs goes unfilled -- people die on the waiting list.
I'm afraid 1. just doesn't work, at all - if you can save more lives by being an organ donor, and you think this is the right thing to do, this is an entirely separate question from how many lives you can save by giving money to VillageReach, and I don't see how the answer to one can have a bearing on the other.
If you save thousands of lives by giving away money during your lifetime, then on the day you die, the relevant question is still: can I save more lives at the margin by being cryogenically preserved or by donating my organs? Unless you think of saving lives as some sort of competition, rather than as intrinsically a good thing to do, the answer to this question is completely unaffected by how much money you gave away when you were alive.
Edit I now realise the suggestion is to give away extra money when you die, but this just has exactly the same problem. You don't get extra money by freezing your body.
NB - I'm not saying I really believe the objection is valid, I'm just saying that your proposed solution really doesn't work.
Another thing to think about here: if you save lives by donating your organs, the organs will probably go to elderly people who are not signed up for cryonics, and will probably die in the next few decades regardless. So you will have saved a few decades of infirmity. On the other hand, if you are revived from cryopreservation, you will probably be revived to immortal, healthy life. So, if the Singularity/some other form of immortality does not happen until more than a few decades after your death, you can save more years, with greater average quality of life, by cryopreserving yourself.
ETA: Also, if the people your organs go to are signed up for cryonics, then getting your organs still wouldn't make that much difference to the total number of years they live.
So... sign up for the "head only" cryonics. All your organs get donated to others, and you still get cryonics, because nobody gets a donor brain.
You could still even donate your corneas...
Edit and have just read further down the comments to see why this is not optimal...
Doesn't sound like a good fix to me. Isn't the donated money necessarily taking away from some other (presumably also life-saving or otherwise valued) endeavor? Instead I'd point out that it's possible to have it both ways: freeze the brain and donate the rest. Not much demand for brain-donors, compared to kidneys or corneas.
Currently, it's not possible to do both.
Factor that into your analysis of cryonics: if enough people sign up, organ donation can be integrated into the vitrification protocol.
If number one is part of your true rejection, look to see if there are head-only cryonics available in your area.
I'd thought that signing up for both organ donation and even head-only cryonics leads to battles over one's body- the necessary preparations are quite different. I'd be happy to find I'm mistaken, though.
My research via CI and Alcor suggests you are correct. I don't have sources offhand, but should be easy to find on their websites.
What orthonormal said -- I was told that the circulatory system was used to get the crypopreservant into the brain and this rendered the other organs unusable.
1: If cryonics is appealing because it potentially saving your life, then not signing up once you have the money is effectively suicide / voluntary euthanasia. The fact that other people could be saved by your organs is true whether or not you are signed up for cryonics -- so if your life is worth less to you than 4 or 8 strangers' lives, you should commit suicide and donate your organs.
If you don't want to commit suicide to donate organs, you shouldn't want to avoid cryonics to donate organs.
2: This is not a reason not to do it, it's a reason you literally currently can't. So make more money (there are lots of other better sources of how to do this; if you want to delve down this road, reply or PM and I'll provide more resources).
3: How confident are you that it will happen before you die? Given the number of years of additional life you are buying a chance at by signing up for cryonics, the extra chance at preserving your identity and 'coming back' via cryonics may still be worth the extra cash. But that depends on the probabilities you assign to the various relevant factors (chance of singularity during lifetime & chance of cryonics resulting in extended life, mainly).
1) I value my life more than the lives of 4-8 strangers, as demonstrated by the fact I haven't committed suicide to donate my organs. Based on the reading I have done so far, I can't realistically assign cryonics a greater than 10% chance of actually working, so the question is whether I value my life (discounted by a factor of 10) more than the lives of 4-8 strangers, which I don't. If Omega told me cryonics was guaranteed to work, I would sign up.
2) Making money without a high school degree, special skills, or Eliezer-level intelligence is more difficult than I think most highly-trained people realize. I'll PM you, though.
3) I would assign a very high probability to a Singularity within my lifetime; I would also say I am 85% confident that if the Singularity does not happen in my lifetime, it will not happen. If the 21st century closes without any of the advances we anticipate, that would dramatically increase my estimate that they are impossible.But I've conceded to Alexai that even discounting for all this, it is probably still worth it; if I can resolve the other issues I will sign up.
The cost of a life insurance policy that covers cryonics is, I think, much less expensive than most people realize. I did the math myself recently and I think it came out to, conservatively, $500/year, which I could easily afford on a retail / call center paycheck. It is definitely worth your time to at least look in to the exact cost for you personally. You're young so you're probably looking at significantly less than me.
Disclaimer: I'm not signed up either; I'm currently trying to sort out why. Discovering it was that cheap has removed a very major obstacle that I wasn't aware of, however.
Doing this exercise has really forced me to clarify my thinking on this - you should try it. I did a little research and it looks like it would be less than $15 a month for me, which removes that objection - except for the fact I can't buy life insurance until I'm 18.
There were about 6 thousand people last year in Canada who needed an organ transplant [1] and around 247 thousand deaths [2]. Of those deaths, about 1/3rd were prevented by existing donors. We'd be preventing less than 2% of all deaths in Canada if everyone got the donations they needed.
Donation is only viable in cases of brain death (~49% odds) [1], and I couldn't find any statistics on how often a donor body is actually usable (but I'd assume vastly less than 100% of those cases, since you have to die of brain death in a hospital and still have cardiac activity) All in all, there's a deficit of donors, so it's probably still helpful (unless you're a man who has had sex with another man, in which case you might not even be legally eligible; it's banned in Canada).
I think you're probably saving less than 1 life on average by being a donor. You'd probably do better to convince some friends and co-workers to sign up with, since organ donation is "low hanging fruit" (free, socially acceptable), and sign yourself up for cryonics (you can claim you've gone with the more complex "donate body to medical science" if you need a social excuse for why you're not an organ donor yourself)
If you're not doing cryonics, there's no excuse for not being an organ donor, of course, so don't use this as an excuse to wiggle out of doing one or the other! :)
[1] http://www.transplant.ca/pubinfo_orgtiss.htm [2] http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/demo07a-eng.htm
Do you mean a man who has sex with men, or do they allow bisexual men? (The incidence of e.g. HIV might be different in these populations.)
(Full disclosure: I am so fucking tired of bisexual erasure I will use thread derailment and other acts of terrorism^W mildannoyanceism.)
Men who have had sex with another man. Thanks for calling me on it; I was mimicking the standard language I see there. Unfortunately the trans/queer-erasure remains, because the legal system tries desperately to pretend everyone fits in the nice binary boxes.
Oddly enough, here in France I see more and more mentions of transpeople, and fewer and fewer mentions of bisexual people, both in the mainstream and in LGBT media.
I've noticed the same, actually. However, the question of "can a trans-person legally donate blood/organs" is... well, not answered at all, to my knowledge, because they don't fit the expected binary box of "are you a male who has had sex with another male?"
U.S. websites tend toward overblown claims (100 lives saved per donor...) that have made it nearly impossible for me to figure this out. It appears there are 15,000 donors per year here, and around 28,000 lives saved, implying it's more than 1 life per donor (but not 5 or 10, as I had assumed).
I am currently signed up to be a donor, and I'm not really trying to wiggle out so much as figure out which option is better.
nods I tried looking at U.S. websites and found a pretty consistent "up to 8 lives saved" and anywhere from 40-100 that benefit from tissue donation. The big missing factor in my research was how often an organ donor actually ends up donating. Everything I read hinted at less than 50%, but I never found a firm figure.
Google needs a "-Propaganda" or "+Science" tag :)
I should stop smoking.
1) I am addicted to nicotine.
2) Nicotine patches are expensive, cigarettes are very cheap.
3) cigarettes supress my appetite and they are cheaper than food. I can smoke 25 cigarettes for the cost of a loaf of bread. it takes me more than a day to smoke that many. if i want to buy things to put on the loaf of bread, we're up to about 3-4 days worth of cigarettes.
4) if i quit smoking i would have more money for food, but not so much more as to make a huge difference.
5) smoking is my only vice and my only luxury.
6) I currently have a 0% chance of becoming pregnant (long distance relationship + we're both girls anyway), so I do not have to worry about harming a fetus. -- i do plan to quit someday before i have children, but that is a few years away yet.
7) i'm in my mid 20s, so the health risks aren't looming large yet. i can quit later.
8) i need something to do with my hands and my mouth. i dont like gum or lollies all that much.
I think you should put separate things into separate comments so the threading makes more sense.
okay. that's a good idea. I put two into separate comments and then edited this one so it only contained the last one.
Switch to chewing tobacco. It's less harmful*. Also, it's much more disgusting, so you will have more motivation to quit.
[*] IIRC from when I read about it years ago. Do your own research.
Um - I'm afraid I have to tell you that "later health effects" are not caused by smoking later in life. They are caused by smoking early in life... and then getting older (whether or not you quit).
You can improve your chance of recovering from the damage you are doing by quitting right now.
As a frequent health-campaign in Aus tells us "every cigarette is causing you damage"
chew on the end of your pen. of get a ring and twirl it around your finger. or take up knitting or some other hand-crafty activity to quell your fidget-cravings (which I get too).
I don't eat enough vegetables or protein.
1) Vegetables and meat are expensive and are generally not in my budget.
2) I don't like the way I feel after eating meat. I find my thoughts are slower and my stomach feels slightly queasy.
3) Beans take forever to cook. Even if I soak them overnight. Canned beans are expensive.
4) When I buy food, I tend to try to eat as little of it as possible to make it last longer. When I do this with vegetables, they go off and have to be thrown away. But it's so hard to make myself eat now when I could eat later. I know that I'll be hungry a few hours after I eat, so longer I go, the longer it'll be till I get hungry again.
5) Some fruits and vegetables give me bad heart burn. Others don't taste very good.
6) I'm probably not saving all that much money on food by not eating. It's just a weird behaviour I can't break myself of.
7) I'm cooking for one and it's very hard to cook the tiny portions I require. Or rather, it's a lot of work and I only get one meal out of it. If I do get two or three meals out of it, I'm get tired of eating it and can't eat it for a while.
8) I have a small fridge, but no freezer. Frozen vegetables aren't an option for me unless I use them all at once (and then the portion is too big and half of it goes bad).
9) I have problems washing dishes (and of course cannot afford a dish washer), and sometimes i have to wash a plate on 4 or more consecutive days before it's clean. (this isn't /just/ OCD. there really is visible grime on it still after so many washes. i just dont have the arm strength due to the chronic pain.) washing dishes can tire me out to such an extent that i am then unable to cook. cooking and eating tires me out to such an extent that i cant wash the dishes. the best plan i can figure out is to alternate days: eat bread one day and wash dishes. cook the next day and dirty dishes. but the current state of affairs is that all dishes are dirty and have to be washed before each use.
10) most ingredients for cooking don't keep for more than a day or two, even in the fridge. milk, bread, veggies, leftovers, they all go bad. i think it's something about the humidity.
Vegetables I like: tomato (heartburn), onion (heartburn), garlic (no problem)
Vegetables I like, but don't really know what to do with: carrots, lettuce (can't buy small enough quantities anyway), corn, potatoes
Vegetables I don't like all that much or at all: peas, string beans, asparagus, brussel sprouts, capsicum, cabbage, eggplant, zucchini
there may exist vegetables that i forgot to mention. i may or may not like them or be able to afford them or know how to prepare them.
Get protein from non-meat sources. Consider, in particular, eggs. Monitor the sales at your grocer of choice; if they have a free loyalty program fill out their form and take their junk mail to get in on that.
See above
Buy canned beans in large amounts when they are on sale. Or, consider trying to make a deal with a friend or neighbor where you split batches of beans and only have to do cooking some of the time.
This should admit of self-modification. If you know your food will go off if not eaten, there is no waste or "not lasting longer" associated with eating it before that time. But perhaps you need to work around it instead...
Heartburn can be medicated. If you can't afford to get that checked out or afford the meds, eat around it...
I really do recommend eating, but would need to know more about the etiology of the habit before I offered advice on breaking it.
Consider sharing meals with friends/neighbors. Or, get a freezer. Freezers are really useful.
If you can't get a freezer, buy your veggies canned. Many veggies come that way. Cans are smallish.
Consider disposable dishes, or covering your dishes with something like plastic wrap and being careful with your utensils. (Possibly expensive.) Also, note that not every use of dishes requires washing between uses, especially if you are the only user: you can use a water glass for days as long as you don't leave a lot of water standing in it; you can brush crumbs of relatively dry foods off a plate and use it again; etc. When you do have to wash dishes, soak them overnight with water and dish soap first, or at least rinse them out, to reduce the amount by which things cake on and to help give the grease a head start on dissolving.
Freezers are useful. Like, a lot.
Veggies you did not mention include: miscellaneous greens such as turnip or collard, kale, spinach, green or wax beans, bamboo, peppers, artichokes, beets, water chestnuts. (All of those things exist canned.) Also, celery, celeriac, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, miscellaneous sprouts, assorted squashes, fennel, leeks, scallions, avocados, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, edamame, radishes, jicama, seaweed of various sorts. I don't know if these ones are available canned. (Seaweed has the advantage of being available dried. You can reconstitute whatever amount you desire.)
As for what to do with them: Your favorites, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, corn, and potatoes (plus most of what I just mentioned) can all be put in soups, stews, pot pies, sautés and stirfries, kabobs, and curries, or just eaten by themselves cooked or not with the spices/seasonings of your choice. Google is your friend; search for [vegetable] recipe and see what pops up. If you require more specialized help, pick some likely-looking veggies and I will locate or fabricate simple preparation instructions for you!
Also worth consideration: Layering a single-ply paper plate over a non-disposable plate. This helps stretch your paper plate supply (most paper plates are something like 3 or 4 ply, for strength; break them apart into 3 or 4 individual ones), allows you to use paper plates for things that are too heavy or wet to usually use them for, and should at least cut down on the amount of effort that it takes to wash the non-disposable plate afterward. (I almost always manage to get sauce or something on the edge of the non-disposable plate when I do this, but cleaning that is a matter of a 5-10 second rinse rather than a full scrub.)
Also consider protein powder. On a per gram of protein basis, whey protein powder is only slightly more expensive than eggs, but much easier to prepare. (Assuming $25 for 5 pounds of whey protein powder, and $1 for a dozen large eggs, I get $0.0156 per gram of protein for whey, and $0.0132 per gram of protein for eggs.)
i am lukewarm on eggs. I like them enough to eat a few of them, and you can stir certain vegetables into them and add cheese if you have some and salt and pepper and they can taste nice, maybe every few days but then I have to get creative to use the last few eggs in the carton before they go off. if i make a concerted effort, I can eat a carton of 10 eggs in 3 batches spread over 9 days, and they do last longer than that. maybe I could make every day divisible by 3 egg day. Today's the 179th day of the year (well, now that it's 2am, it is), so if I went out tomorrow (which will still be the 179th, but it's tomorrow because i'll have slept between now and then) to pick some eggs up, I could start tomorrow. If not, I could start on the 182nd.
there's a store that's only 1km walk and a bus ride away where I can buy many things very cheaply and the quality is better than anything else in the town. Cans of soup for €1 a piece instead of €4 (hmm, i wonder what their canned beans are priced like. If it were €1 it might be worth it, though when you can get an entire kilogram of dried beans for less, it feels like a waste to spend €1 on one meal). sometimes when I go there I buy sausages. These are more expensive, about €3, but cheaper than I can find elsewhere and the quantity will last me about a week, since I use them sparingly to make them last longer. I shop there when I can, but most days I don't have the energy to spend a couple hours taking busses and walking with a heavy load (the savings in buying their products vastly outweigh the cost of the bus tickets), so I also shop at places that are nearer to me, where the selection is poorer and the prices are higher. at these stores, i'm careful what I buy and tend to buy things where the price difference is smaller
The cheapest source of vegetables isn't these foreign stores. It's the market across the street where the farmers from neighbouring villages come in the morning with carrots that look like they've just been pulled out of the ground. You have to get up early if you want to buy anything, and the prices change every day -- and if you don't know the seasons as well as everyone else seems to, they will stop going down and start going up just when you were thinking you'd buy at the next price drop. I don't know the seasons well, but I could probably find something with googling -- except I get a feeling that questions like "when is strawberry season here?" is considered common knowledge. Once, I was playing "guess the fruit" with a six year old, and he was giving me hints for the fruit he'd thought of. The first clue he thought of was not "it is yellow" or "monkeys eat it" but "it's ripe in winter". (Bananas, grown in the southern hemisphere, are ripe in our winter. it made sense once I thought about it, but I'd never thought about it.) but maybe I can find a website aimed at slow six year olds who don't yet know which two weeks are strawberry season, and whether sour cherry season comes before or after black cherry season.
about number 4. i do need to find a way to do some self modification for that. it's kind of ridiculous. the goal of frugality is living within my means and someday, trying to get to the point where i have 1 months expenses saved up in my bank account so that i have a small cushion if my money's late or i don't get paid or an emergency comes up. buying food, eating nothing, letting it go bad, and throwing it away isn't frugal. Actually, it reminds me of something the Cullens would do (I'm a big fan of Luminosity and Radiance. Never read Twilight, but mom sent me to the DVD since she <s>knows nothing about my tastes</s> heard it was popular, so I downloaded subtitles for it in one of my target languages (Macedonian) so i could watch the gift and call it language practice.)
heartburn can be medicated. i've looked up some medications that i can get without a prescription at the local pharmacy. (All medications here have to be bought from a pharmacist, even aspirin, but some don't need a prescription) I am painfully shy, and having to ask for something by name is a trial for me, but I have been meaning to get down and buy some antacids. it's probably stress related heart burn anyway. I can afford to spend a few euros on antacids. I am poor, but I actually live more frugally than strictly necessary, because I want to improve my situation and frugality can help with that (though neglecting my health is not frugal in the long run or even in the short run, I know. I need to cut that out.)
6) i've done a lot of thinking recently because knowing why is the first step. After my parents divorced, when I was about ten, I was terrified we'd have to go back to living with my father if we failed to make it on our own financially and knew that we were poor, so I tried to do all that I could to prevent that from happening. I knew I was too young to get a job, too young to legally babysit, and I knew I wouldnt have earned much anyway. So, I stopped wanting things. I stopped whining about the toys I saw on tv, I stopped eating breakfast, knowing that my overworked mother would see the opened and partially empty box of cereal and not replace it until it was nearly empty because she would see that I had something to make myself when I got up before going to school. I stopped eating lunch, because the agreement was that I would ask for more money to buy school lunch when I needed it, and I knew she wouldnt remember how recently she'd given me the money. So I kept the money and spent it as infrequently as I could, knowing that the longer i stretched it, the longer my mother would have to go without giving me more. I probably did save her some amount of money this way, but i didnt really have all the facts, and the teacher's reports that i'd stopped responding to my name and mostly stared off into space all the time led to doctors appointments which definitely costed more than school lunch. Dinner was eaten together when she came home from work. Sometimes I cooked, sometimes she did, and I ate dinner every night. I don't remember much about that year, but I spent most of it dizzy and spaced out. after a while, my body got used to it and i didnt have much appetite anymore. It was logical in its own way, but i didnt have all the facts, and i was very young. and then as a young adult, i was again scared that if i couldnt make it on my own financially i'd have to go back to living with my mother, so i went back to skimping on food. it's like an eating disorder, but i don't obsess about calories and couldn't care less what I weigh.
freezers are indeed useful. someday, i shall have one.
i already use a piece of paper on a tray to catch crumbs if i'm just eating bread or something. pasta i eat out of the pan (i am cooking for one, after all, why dirty a plate?) my cup is rinsed well the first time i'm going to use it that day. who knows how many flies visited it over night (no fly screens either, and it's summer), but after that i dont wash it between uses. i've used disposable plates and forks in the past, and though i feel guilty about environmental concerns, if i can't eat any other way, then i can't. i'd really like to find some paper plates instead of plastic, because the only plastic ones i can find melt in the microwave, which renders them useless to me. when i cook in the oven, i use aluminium foil instead of a pan, if i can get away with it.
dishes: i do rinse them, and then i come back to them a week later and they are slimy. (solution: come back the very next day. i try, and i can succeed for days at a time sometimes, but then something comes up and i'm back to having a sink full of petri dishes.
vegetables you mentioned that I know what they are called here and remember seeing in a store, even if rarely, and think i like or have questions about whether i would like it or not:
spinach - <3 but hard to find out of season
kale - it's called "kale cabbage" here, which has scared me off it, since i dont like cabbage. does it taste like cabbage? my real problem with cabbage is that it is huge and i cant eat an entire cabbage before it goes bad, and i dont like it pickled. i can tolerate the taste here and there, but ill never be enthusiastic about eating a lot of it at once.
peppers = capsicum. - will eat them, and wil sometimes like them, but am not crazy about them. they do go nice in pasta sometimes.
we don't have celery here, but we do have celeriac. it is large and hard to use all of it in time, but i do like it. the problem is you only need a tiny bit to get the right flavour.
turnips - are called "white carrots" here and are good in soups, but it is impossible to cook soup for one person and i dont know any other ways of preparing them. can they be eaten raw?
squash - like, but they are usually large, and i dont know whether they can be eaten raw or how to turn them into the tasty mashed stuff (i dont have a masher), or if they can be prepared non-mashed.
leek - is a readily available, mostly green, gigantic, cylindrical onion. i like onions, but do not know if i could consume an entire leek. i imagine that slices of it would be good on just about anything though.
broccoli - is only sold in 500g batches, is hard to find, and somewhat expensive. i love it, but have trouble using up so much of it.
cauliflower -is cheap, white coloured broccoli that is sold by the head. impossible to use an entire head without it going bad if you are only one person.
Do most vegetables go well with each other? (in a stir fry, on top of pasta, etc.)
I like reading recipes online, but sometimes get frustrated when they list ingredients that are unavailable to me (happens more often than not.) but i'll look around some more.
If milk goes bad after a day or two no matter when you open it, you might have a malfunctioning refrigerator.
If milk is OK until a day or two after you open it, you might have a dangerously elevated level of airborne microorganisms.
I've noticed that cheaper food doesn't keep as long after it's bought-- this is a casual observation, not careful research. It seems plausible that cheaper food hasn't been given as good care and/or isn't as fresh to start with.
It's plausible that the refrigerator is malfunctioning. It's also plausible that its temperature is set too high, so that should be checked. Look for a dial inside the refrigerator.
A pressure cooker might be helpful with getting beans to cook faster. I don't know whether one can be found cheap enough and whether an unusually small one would be needed because of portion size/arm strength issues.
You can sometimes buy these second-hand from thrift stores. Alternatively you can often buy a "slow cooker" from the same places - and they are also good for cooking beans (you set the up in the morning and leave them to run during the day while you're at work/whatever and dinner is done when you get home).
10)
eggs: can be kept uncooled for a while, very long shelf life hard-boiled, easy to prepare in small portions.
milk: do you get UHT milk? It has an uncooled shelf life of months and tends to be cheaper than fresher variants.
meat: consider smoked or dried meats (bacon, salami).
pasta: reasonably easy to prepare in smaller portions
Out of interest, where do you live that cigarettes are so much cheaper than food? One pack of cigerattes here (Germany) will buy me 2 days worth of (cheap) food.
Based on #2 and #5, if I were you I would experiment to see if you have hypochlorhydria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypochlorhydria). Symptoms are (ironically) basically the same as GERD. (Note: I'm not a doctor!)
Specifically regarding protein: You are probably underestimating how much protein is in many foods. Here is a brief list of foods which, if you got all of your calories from them, would give you enough protein: * Any sort of bean, including fast cooking beans such as lentils, lima beans, and peas. * Most nuts * Many dark green vegetables (e.g spinach, kale, broccoli, green cabbage) * Bread. Yes, really - there's lots of gluten in there. * Pasta. Again, lots of gluten. * Potatoes, so long as you eat the skins. Get red ones, they're easier to clean and the skins are more tender. * Quinoa (a grain).
Brown rice is close, but not quite there. So you should not worry about eating meat, it's unnecessary.
One specific dish you should consider is dal. Cooked lentils with spices. Popular in India. Lots of other things you can throw in, too, including onion, tomato, garlic. carrots, and corn. In small quantities the tomato and onion should be less likely to cause heartburn. To keep the cost of the spices down, buy from the bulk section - it can be as little as 1/10 the price of bottled spices, and you can get only however much you need. Dried lentils and spices keep for quite a long time, and it only takes 45min to prepare, in one pot (or two if you make a tarka).
When you store vegetables in the fridge, do you keep them in plastic bags? I find that helps for many green veggies in particular. I just use the bags I get them in from the store or my farmshare.
Consider shopping more like a European - buy fresh ingredients every day or every other day instead of doing one big shopping trip once a week. This will minimize your food spoilage problems.
I agree with everyone else that you should check that your fridge is functioning properly. Measure the temperature. It should be between 33 and 38 degrees F. Above 38 and I'd expect fairly high rates of spoilage.
If your beans are taking forever to cook, are you adding salt? Adding salt will keep beans hard -- wait to add it until the beans are fully cooked.
Also, I second the suggestion to either make your fridge colder, or replace it.
Things I really need to do but can't seem to make myself do them:
there are clothes rotting in my washing machine. I had a migraine and couldn't hang them up, and the migraine lasted about a week, and now there's fungus growing on them. I've read online that this can be fixed by washing them 3-4 times and then hanging them in the sun to dry. Adding vinegar to the washing machine can help. The washing machine is right next to the bathtub, and I can't bathe properly because the smell is overpowering and makes me dizzy and light headed.
1) I'm still sore and constantly on the verge of a migraine. There's no guarantee that if I start a load I'll be able to hang it up.
2) Medicines sometimes help the migraines but not very much. I mostly have to ride them out. It may be a week yet till I can be sure that I can hang it up to dry.
3) There are noise restrictions in my building, so I can't make lots of noise after 8pm. This means that I'd need to get up early in order to wash the clothes. I got up early for a few days, but it made the headache worse, and it rained anyway, so not much sunlight.
4) I think the real reason is that when I do eventually take them out of the washing machine (having been washed X more times), I will have to touch them with my hands.
5) I can't really afford to replace them. Some of the items in the washing machine I could get over losing (I do have other shirts), but others are items I don't own enough of as it is.
6) i am very allergic to bleach and have trouble breathing if i walk through an area where it was used within the last half hour. so i cannot use it on my clothes. but vinegar should do the trick.
7) if i leave it much longer, the fungus will eat holes in my clothes. and leave stains. but some of the articles of clothing may not be too stained any may be wearable around the house, once they are fungus free.
Similarly, the floor in the apartment is filthy. Absolutely filthy. Covered in all sorts of stuff. It's a really hard carpet to clean (you have to brush it to coax the dirt out before you can vacuum it, or the vacuum doesn't do anything). But vacuum cleaners are loud and the noise would drive my pain levels up even higher. i can't vacuum, because i would have to devote an entire day to it (literally. have done so in the past and it still wasn't fully clean, just cleaner), and i dont have the stamina for a day of it. this is really the same problem as the laundry except that it's less bad and less urgent.
More information about your situation might be useful here. My first suggestion is to see if you can find someone local to help you with it (friends, family), but that seems like an obvious enough solution that I expect that if it were that simple you'd have done it already. So, what resources do you have available?
Seconded. This looks like a job for another human. Where are you staying at, pthalo?
Yea. With migraines like that it is unreasonable to expect that you should be able to do anything like this on your own. Please get help before you get sick from the unsanitary conditions.
For the unnumbered reason of potentially getting another migraine by having to do the laundry, and just in general to get past this rut/problem: Ask a friend or family member for assistance with the task. Alternately, offer someone money to do your laundry (an amount less than the cost of replacing the clothes).
For 4 specifically, maybe try wearing gloves (dishwashing gloves or latex gloves) to avoid touching the mold/fungus directly.
Could a face mask and nose plugs help with exposure to the fungus?
On 2: What kind of drugs are we talking about that don't help? If you haven't tried triptans, that could be a thing.
Do not fuck around with possibly-toxic fungus. The fact that the fumes have immediate negative effects strongly suggests that it's toxic. Do not ignore sudden health problems that coincide with the appearance of mold in your environment, especially not ones as severe as a perpetual migraine. Those clothes are probably not salvageable, but they should be the least of your worries. You need outside help cleaning your apartment, and you need it yesterday. You also need a physical.
You could use hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine bleach. It's not as effective as a disinfectant but it's odorless, cheap, and probably a lot more effective than vinegar. If you get 3% concentration (the most common) you'll probably need to pour a whole bottle over the clothes, then wait an hour or two.
Depending on what's underneath the carpet, you could consider just removing it.
As others have mentioned get help. If you have no friends who can do it look on Craigslist for someone who cleans houses. Explain the situation to them and have them bring their steam cleaner.
While the clothes are washing have them steam clean your carpets at least twice.
Then when you get done paying this off, go get a good vacuum cleaner, and if you are the sort of person who's always tracking in dirt (I am) get a cheap carpet shampooer.
Also--have to comment--the migraine thing really should be your focus. My wife gets these and absolutely refuses to do the food/activity diary thing, is horrible about exercise and the rest. Fortunately for her she only has them for a day or two about once a month.
Watch some episodes of "hoarders". Just a few should provide enough motivation to implement the suggestions of others...
Re: vacuuming when you are physically unable.
I strongly recommend an iRobot vacuum cleaner (roomba). It will vacuum for you.
By the sound of it, your carpet is badly ingrained with dirt, so the vacuum will not get it all out in one day - but if you set it to vacuum every day (which few humans would normally do voluntarily, but the roomba doesn't mind) it is highly likely that over time it will improve until "clean" it a normal state for it.
I eat less fruit and vegetables than I should. This seems to mostly or entirely be because I don't reliably alieve that they're food.
This manifests in a few different ways: When shopping, most fruit or veggies or fruit- or veggie-containing things don't register as things that I might consider buying. When choosing something to eat at home, those things don't register as things that I might want to eat. For most fruit and a few veggies, once they're actually in front of me in a ready-to-eat form (which does not include whole fruit), I'll eat them, but getting to that point is unreliable. For most veggies and a few kinds of fruit - including several that I actually like - even when they're in front of me in an edible form I'll automatically eat around them unless I make a conscious effort to do otherwise, which is irritating to do. I would literally find it easier to eat a sheet of paper than a head of broccoli, even though I actually like the taste of broccoli in many contexts.
Adding fruit or veggies to things in such a way that they can't be picked around is a partial solution at best - it doesn't solve the problems of remembering to buy the supplies and actually use them, and if the result smells or tastes like something that registers strongly enough as not-food, I'll have the same kind of hard time eating it. Further complications: I prefer not to put a lot of effort into my meals, and I have trouble swallowing rice, which means that things in the 'frozen rice with broccoli bits and cheese' genre are not good for me to rely on. (Tasty, though.)
I'm not actually sure that this is my true rejection. Even if it is, I'm prickly enough about taking advice that I might reject some on general principles, though I seem to have gotten better about that in the last few years.
Since you say you're prickly about advice, I will try just giving you the reasons for my suggestions and omit the actual suggestions when possible. Please let me know if that way of phrasing is actually helpful, or just annoyingly indirect.
On buying more vegetables
I've heard that people buy more food if they shop while hungry. People also are more likely to interpret more things as edible if they are hungry.
I find I buy more vegetables when I am somewhere that sells primarily vegetables, like a farmer's market. At the farmer's market, there is also the illusion of scarcity since it's a once-a-week stuff (even though I could buy similar things in the grocery store later), so I stock up a lot.
Some friends of mine subscribe to CSA or other vegetable-delivery programs, which takes pretty much all of the effort out of it.
On eating the vegetables you've bought
It is possible to make a meal or part of a meal that is nearly 100% vegetables.
After experimenting with a few methods of preparing them, I found that roasting works for me as a way of preparing solo vegetables; most vegetables taste good to me when coated with olive oil and some light seasoning (and sometimes some grated Romano or Parmagiano cheese), and roasted. It gives them a satisfying, almost meaty/buttery taste. It is also pretty easy and doesn't require a lot of time once I got the timing right and stopped needing to keep peeking into the oven to determine doneness. If you want some more specific roasting suggestions I am happy to provide them. But you may find other preparations are more appealing.
Even if you prefer to mix veggies with non-veggies, I suspect you wouldn't be able to eat around veggies in a smooth or fine-textured soup very easily (e.g. cream of broccoli, carrot soup, gazpacho). And you'd have to decompose a sandwich to avoid eating a cross-section of the ingredients.
Related question: Vegetables are more easily visually identifiable in some foods than others. For example, in something like pasta with broccoli, you can see the broccoli pieces and they are obviously separate from the pasta. On the other hand, in something like a curry or stew, it's not always easy to see which lumps are meat, which lumps are something like potato or cheese, and which lumps are veggies, since they're all covered in sauce. Do you find you eat around the veggies to a different extent in foods that differ along this dimension, or is it a pretty uniform phenomenon?
Actually helpful. :)
There is a farmer's market here, but it's hard for me to get to - I don't drive, and it's on the other side of town. I will definitely see about getting a ride over there sometime soon, though - I'd actually forgotten that it's that time of the year again. (Om nom nom blueberries. ^.^)
Last I checked (over a year ago), there wasn't one of those close enough to deliver to me. Also my impression is that they don't allow their customers to customize their orders very much. I should probably check again, though, anyway.
I'll consult Google about this later.
This would be hit or miss - there's a very high chance that any soup like that would smell like not-food. (Cream of broccoli soup is one of the contexts in which broccoli smells like not-food, if I remember correctly.)
The problem with this is that most traditional sandwich veggies have a short enough shelf life that it'd be silly for me to buy them - they'd go bad before I remembered to use them. Experimenting with non-traditional sandwich veggies might be useful, though.
It can, though soup isn't a good test case - if I know that there are veggies in soup, I'll make a point of identifying any chunks of things before I eat them, and if I don't know that there are veggies in the soup, I'll notice in pretty short order in most cases. What does work is things like casseroles where there aren't obvious chunks at all - and especially if it's not obvious in the construction phase of the casserole that something non-food-ish is being added. Casserole is one of the few contexts where I'll eat mushrooms, for example - they're usually clearly not food, but one of my favorite casseroles involves canned cream of mushroom soup, which is fine so long as I don't think about it too hard, even if I end up finding a mushroom chunk or two, because nothing that looks like mushrooms goes into it.
Insofar as remembering is important, this might be relevant: I'm experimenting with actually writing up menus for myself in advance. So far it seems to be helping me remember to use up all my vegetables.
There are also veggie-intensive sandwiches. I don't think it would take very many hummus and cucumber sandwiches to use up a small cucumber, for example. A whole red pepper can probably be used up by 2 sandwiches, especially when roasted. Same with avocado (minus the roasting). And wraps can materially increase the veggie-to-bread ratio; you could probably use a whole avocado in a single wrap.
You may be out of CSA range, but if you're willing to forgo freshness Amazon.com now lets you subscribe to consumable items like this and receive them on a regular basis, for a 15% discount.
What have you actually tried to train your brain to reclassify them?
Example training task: There is a deck containing images of various food items, vegetables/fruits, whatever you currently classify vegetables like (non edible plants maybe?), and completely random objects. Sort it into edible and non-edible piles as fast as possible, without thinking and while maybe listening to an interesting podcast or radio or somehting to distract you.
No idea if that'd work, but if you think up 20 exercises like that at least one of them should work.
Alternate direction: focus in on what's in your mind when you avoid a vegetable. You may be able to discover what's driving the alief that vegetables aren't food.
It seems to be exactly the same mechanism that's involved in not eating banana peels and bugs, as far as I can tell. It's not that the mechanism itself is broken, it's that it's using a non-optimal data set that doesn't seem inclined to update easily.
(Hmm... maybe the mechanism for updating the dataset is broken, or generating bad metadata - if it has vegetables tagged as 'technically food, but not good to eat unless there's a famine', that could have the observed results...)
Duplicate.
Triplicate.
EDIT: decided i had revealed a lot more abaut myself in this thread and since it's no longer active I'm redacting a lot of stuff.
I should have more IRL social contact, especially in some larger group.
1) (this is the main one) There is none to have any social contact WITH. If not for the very low prior I might think there simply isn't a single interesting person within a 100 mile radius from here. I don't think I could say I live in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly feels like it. Maybe it's unreasonable to expect the same quality as online in a much smaller search space, but being around people you can't respect as somehting more than dull tools just isn't socially satisfying, when I know I could be online and chat with actual PERSONS. An LW meetup or convention for somehting I'm a fan of is somehting I'd jump at, but nothing even close to that never happen around here and probably never will.
2) I have psychological issues that I do not wish to discus in detail, but the end result is #REDACTED#
3) For various reasons setting of a few hours to go somewhere is inconvenient, and #REDACTED#
Have a look around to see if there's a social/support group for the particular psychological issue that you are dealing with. Then meet with them.
they will understand the issues you are facing and may even have new ways to help you deal with them... but most of all they will at least understand what you are going through.
Can't guarantee that they won't be tools, of course, but I've often found I have to get different needs fulfilled by different groups of people. For the "being interesting" need look into groups that have similar interests to you. Meetup.com is a good place to look for groups nearby to you - they have groups for just about anything you can imagine and you can find the closest one to you that way... and if there isn't one... consider starting one up. If you register a group with meetup - other people near to you that are interested in the same thing will be notified - especially if you tag it appropriately (people watch, say, "meetups in my area that are to do with futurism" or whatever...)
No, just... no. #REDACTED#
I'll check out the meetup site. I've always assumed that if there was a meetup for any of the things I'm involved in I'd find out about it through ordinary forums and blogs and such for it, but &&ing a lot of different more minor interests or organizing one on a site like that might work.
Edit: nope, checked every group in my entire COUNTRY, which was not all that many, and not a single one of them sound even remotely interesting. Maybe I really do live more in the middle of nowhere than I thought. I wont even bother registering and trying to start a group.
You can always move :( but as handoflixue said knowing your approximate location would be useful.
Nope, I can't actually. Again the mental helth stuff and related red tape.
where do you live?
...and have you made it to (or started) any of the LessWrong meetups?
Southern Sweden. And yea I've checked the possibility of starting an LW meetup, there's nobody to come.
I've noticed that some varieties of interesting people (programmers, writers, painters, composers) like to get away from their regular routine to work on projects. They sometimes get invited to retreat centers, which are in remote areas, where they work on their projects, and get housing and regular meals.
Do you have the resources to invite interesting house guests for brief project visits?
Nope.
Even if I did, inviting a stranger to live with me sounds questionable. And also I don't see what kind of project could possibly happen here.
Invite people you know from online. Bayesian updating should give you a decent baseline for whether it's plausible that this person is just scamming you. It's a bit of a trust leap, but I've done it plenty and no one has taken advantage of me. It also helps to remind myself that traveling all that way just to rob me is a pretty big financial waste, and rapists probably aren't going to spend weeks getting to know me online (nor are either group likely to be people I find fun to talk to online to begin with!)
Programming can happen anyplace I can plug in my laptop, and a change of scenery often helps, as does having someone interesting around to fill the rest of my day. Writing can happen even without electricity. Drawing, world building, sketching out plans for other projects and soliciting feedback, bouncing ideas off of you. Most any craft skill (sewing, wood carving, knitting), and those also presumably are a lot more fun to do around someone else.
You could also just go on random wandering adventures if you live in a nice neighborhood or near some interesting wilderness. Requires a car or a proclivity for walking, of course. I get the impression you don't have a car, but your visitors might.
Yea, that'd work obviously, but it limits the pool to people I know personally online. The probability of that AND them being close enough AND them wanting to do a visit/project like that is low enough that it seems unlikely to ever happen.
And what about any of those things can't they do at home? Perhaps you're operating under the assumption that I am interesting or useful in any way?
Humans are social animals. They like being around other humans. Ook ook. That's really all that's necessary, aside from being socially compatible. Unless you have some condition that makes you significantly worse at face-to-face interactions, people who like you online will probably like you face-to-face.
This is highly counterintuitive to me, but it's worth a shot and asking shouldn't hurt. Thanks. Still have no idea how to find anyone who lives close enough and might be interested thou.
Extraverts are weird like that. It's generally counter-intuitive to introverts, but observably true in many (possibly most, depending on how you account for selection bias) cases anyway.
It would help to know approximately where, geographically, you are. I hear people in west coast US say that all the time, because it's just plain difficult to figure out how to find interesting people if you're not a natural extrovert. I don't really know any other portion of the world, but I'd assume that it's very rarely true that there really aren't any interesting people around.
Speaking from my own personal experience, with my own personal issues, which are totally not your issues: There are really cool people out there who are safe to be yourself around. If you can find them, then (a) you have someone you don't need to worry about being strange around and (b) they can then help you navigate larger groups.
If you live in the right city, you can probably find groups of 10-20 people that don't mind you. I've found a few gatherings of 100+ where I can get away with being myself, but those are usually annual music festivals, geeky conventions, etc..
Depending on the issues, it may also be more likely than you think that you can learn to function socially despite it. I've developed high-functioning abilities despite three different psychological issues that can impair me. Part of it is just recognizing my good days and having people close enough to make impulsive plans with. Part of it has been finding weekly gatherings where I can flake out as needed and no one minds, because the group is large. Part of it is a lot of practice. And, unfortunately, part of it is just being privileged to have been dealt a higher-functioning hand in the first place, which not everyone gets. But if you can handle online social, I'd guess there's good odds you can learn to handle face-to-face :)
Sweden. Anyone who live anywhere in the US have it EASY. I'm not sure what my extroversion stat is, I think it might be context sensitive.
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I don't live in any city. And I don't live even remotely near the right city.
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Donating to chairty*: My mum says I'll need the money myself later, and I heuristicaly don't trust myself to make financial decisions due to mental health issues. On one hand, I don't trust her to know the value of efficient charity thou, and I don't really have any good grasp of what I'd need money for, on the other hand I don't really have any good grasp of what I'd need money for and she seems to and come with all these things about survival and education and debts and stuff when I ask.
*Given that I donate to charity I'll donate all of it to SIAI, but that's not obviusly relevant here.
My advice is give money to charity up to your tax deduction level as a starting point, then use the rest of your money according to your personal utility function ;)
Someone from LW saying that dosn't add any new information.
I am mildly malnourished. I am far too thin for my height/age and I do not eat in sufficient volume or sufficiently healthily.
Cost is the major prohibiting factor. I live at home, but I pay for most of what I consume. (Breakfast/lunch.) I am working full time, saving for college.
Food preparation in advance is an option, but I tell myself I don't have the time to do so. Plus buying pre-prepared food is easier and I lack the motivation to make food if I can just buy it.
If I try to prohibit myself from spending (leaving my money/debit card in my car or at home) then I'll more than likely just not eat.
When it comes to preparing food at home, if there is something unhealthy, but gives the illusion of being filling, I will more than likely take that instead of taking the time to make something.
Also, slightly tangential, but still related: I can't eat food that has not-food parts. Examples: apples, I will cut up beforehand and eat only after slicing and discarding the nonedible parts. On meat that has a small amount of fat, I have to completely trim and remove it before starting to eat. I cannot even touch ribs, even though I know I'd like the taste, nor chicken with bones.
I'm assuming that by 'pre-prepared' you mean something like TV dinners or pizza from a restaurant. If that's the case, you can look for things that are close to pre-prepared without being as expensive as that. My go-to meal solution in that vein is microwavable rice or pasta (example), possibly with things added to it. A packet of cheddar-broccoli rice or pasta with a can of tuna mixed in makes a nice casserole-type thing, for example, or a packet of pasta alfredo with a can of chicken mixed in. You can also mix in veggies (canned or frozen are probably most convenient) in addition to the small amount that most of those packets have. This takes less than 5 minutes to put together, cooks in 10-15, and even with added things shouldn't come to more than $3 or so per instance - $1 or less per instance if you look for sales on the packets and don't add anything. If you don't mind bland food or taking the time to add spices by hand, you can do something similar even less expensively by buying large boxes of instant mashed potatoes or instant rice, or instant oatmeal for breakfast.
Can you eat grapes, or do the stems give you trouble? Consider keeping canned fruit around (peaches, pears, mandarin oranges, pineapple, &c) or dried fruit (raisins, dates, craisins, papaya, whatever) as a way to get fruit that does not include non-food parts. Similar options exist with vegetables. Frozen also works - frozen cherries are already pitted for you just like canned ones.
Keep simple stuff around: for instance, buy hummus, spreadable cheese, guacamole, cold cuts, etc., and keep a sliced loaf of bread in the freezer. At will, break off an arbitrary number of slices, toast bread, put stuff on it, nom.
Hardboil eggs - you can do an entire layer of eggs (how many that is depends on pot size) in half an hour, during most of which time you don't have to be doing anything, and they keep really well. (Put eggs in a single layer in pot. Cover with cold water, plus an inch above the top of the eggs. Bring to a rolling boil, then remove from heat, cover, time 15 minutes, and then drain them and put them in cold water with some ice to bring the temperature down. Store in fridge. To eat, peel (thereby removing all nonedible parts) and take a bite; good with salt, better with salt and also other spices.)
Grapes are fine if I pick them off the stems and discard first. Canned fruit is actually a good idea. Those single-serving Dole fruit cups also come to mind as something I can toss in a bag with a spoon, no preparation necessary.
And actually, the hardboiled eggs all-at-once thing seems like a good idea. I think it'd be easier to prepare in advance if it's a one-time investment of an hour total prep/cook time every week rather than 15 minutes the night before every day. Even building a half dozen sandwhiches Sunday evening seems like less of an investment than making one an evening. Any other ideas for batch food-making?
Soup is easy to make in batches; legume-based soups freeze well and others freeze at least tolerably. Measure out servings into (well-sealed) tupperwares and freeze them; chuck one into your backpack come morning. Pasta salad, potato salad, egg salad, or tuna salad can also be made in large amounts - they won't freeze as nicely, so you'd want to put them next to your frozen soup or one of those things that you put in lunchboxes to keep stuff cold.
I give this exact advice often enough that I should just put it on a website.
Bean soup/stew
Buy a bag of dried beans, put them in a pot with as much water as the instructions on the bag suggest, bring to a boil, then simmer until the beans are soft. You will probably want to add some salt at some point.
Ways to add some variety to this dish, all of them optional:
Use different kinds of beans
Before putting in the beans and water, sautee some stew/soup-type veggies in the same pot pot (e.g. chopped onion, carrot, celery, chopped tomato). Then add the beans and water.
When the beans are almost done, add some leafy greens (kale, chard, etc.) or chopped scallions/chives/&c to the pot.
Before adding the beans and water, cook a little bit of chopped garlic or other spices in the pot with a little bit of oil.
Before adding the beans and water, fry up some chopped bacon or turkey bacon, chopped sausage, or anchovies (use low heat for anchovies).
After adding the beans, add a little bit of cured meat (e.g. prosciutto, bresaola, etc.).
Add a couple of bay leaves with the beans and water.
For the meats, a little bit goes a long way and you may not need extra salt.
Pasta
Follow the instructions on the box (but remember to salt the water heavily, at least a full teaspoon, probably more) to cook the pasta. When it's done, drain it in a colander. Optional: You can stir in a little bit of grated Parmagiano or other hard cheese for added flavor and protein/fat; if you don't want a "cheesy" pasta just stop adding cheese when it doesn't seem to be absorbed into the pasta anymore.
For sauce, here are some options (add spices to any of them if/when it seems like it might be a good idea):
Use pre-made pasta sauce
Brown some garlic in a little olive oil or butter, add anchovies at a low heat, then once they dissolve in the heat add some chopped tomatoes.
Sautee some subset of (chopped onion, chopped carrot, chopped celery) then add either chopped tomatoes or canned crushed tomatoes or canned tomato puree.
Also, I found the results-to-effort ratio on this mac-and-cheese recipe to be quite satisfactory.
Some non-batch items you might try are baked potatoes. All you have to remember is punch a couple of tiny holes in the top so it doesn't explode. You can make them anywhere you have at least a microwave by putting them in for 7-10 minutes depending on the power of the microwave.
I can vouch for the Pasta recipes with great enthusiasm.
Another food I'd recommend for ease of eating and cheapness, is Shepherdess pie, Shepherd's pie with the meat replaced with vegetables, which I personally prefer. Linkage!
http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/5397/shepherdess-pie.aspx
I did a google search for 'batch cooking', and this result may be of interest to you.
http://www.netmums.com/food/Batch_cooking_and_freezing.721/
I suspect that the most useful component of advice may often be mentioning the relevant search term or the name of the relevant field. Cf. Lukeprog's point about not being able to find good resources about the neuroscience of desire until he found the term "neuroeconomics."
I should give advice like that more often, e.g. "google 'batch cooking'." There are often implementation details available elsewhere.
The last time I made lasagna, I made 5 of them - one we baked and ate that night (and as leftovers over the next few days), and the others we wrapped and froze. This requires you to have several Pyrex baking pans (currently 10-15 US$ each), and substantial freezer space (both of which we already had), but the work required for making 5 pans was perhaps 2x making a single pan, and if we are hungry and don't want to cook we can just take a pan out and bake it, dinner in 30 minutes with no effort. Baked and refrigerated they last several days, enough to eat over several lunches and dinners. Enchiladas also work well for this. Both make a nice alternative to the classic frozen stews, soups, and chilis.
I too have the seeming common problem of not eating enough vegetables. However I seem to have different reasons from what others have posted.
First, I don't have a car so I tend to need to shop in spurts, vegetables tend not to stay good long enough to get loads of fresh ones. I buy some frozen vegetables but I don't think it's sufficient (or as delicious as I'd like).
Second, I tend to put off preparing vegetables or have only one way of preparing them. Learning to cook new ways, and even cooking things in ways I know, tends to take more time than what I'd do otherwise. Also, if I start cooking something else, I'll often continue with that and forget to start making a vegetable alongside it until it is too late.
Third, I can be a bit picky in terms of what vegetables I like, though I have started to come around to several recently. I need an arbitrary decision mechanism for trying new things, ideally including a vegetable, a time to buy it, a specific recipe that isn't too much trouble, and a specific day on which to prepare it.
As a side note, a month or so ago I did a similar exercise with respect to alcohol; I used to not drink at all, but a combination of having more money, needing new things to do to be social, a change in my social group, and plans to visit Italy and Germany (famous for their wines and beers) became sufficient conditions for me to try it out, and I have had a good time learning how I interact with the substance.
I cannot wake up on time for things more than 80% of the time even once my circadian rhythm is set in place. Ive tried alarm clock in the closet>two alarms everything my body always seems to bypass the issue. Does anyone have some methods i may not have tried yet?
I personally set 5 alarms :)
If that sort of thing isn't working, try opening a window to get sunlight in, or if possible have a friend call you when you want to get up.
When I was attempting to transition to polyphasic sleep, I set 9 alarms. This was not overkill. In case you don't want to buy 9 alarm clocks, I used my cell phone, iPod, and computer for alarm functions.
Or have the internet call you.
I don't have this problem, but I'm told this article is excellent: How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
Suggestion: If you have financial constraints for your solution, be specific.
If there's a known cost for a solution, check financial constraints to make sure the cost doesn't exceed them.
I really need to get far more strenuous exercise than I currently do, but I can be very uncomfortable exposing myself to any criticism from people I don't already know. I live on the edge of a village nearby to a woods which I currently walk in occasionally. Other people use it regularly, and as a teenager, I often get the impression they think I'm there to drink or do drugs if I'm there at any time other than approximately three o'clock, when my school gets out, although in fairness drunken teens do litter the area regularly. I often find myself lacking energy and motivation, and I've always heard that good exercise can help with depression... I just can't seem to ever work up the determination to start going running,
If someone with better social skills than I could give me some instructions on how to deal with them, that'd be great, although any other advice is very welcome. I always did my best to keep to the sidelines during PE. I have Asperger's if that's any help...
If you can afford it, you may be able to nonverbally signal to onlookers that you are there for Serious Running by showing up in a Serious Running outfit with corresponding accessories.
Thanks, that would be a simple solution. It seems rather obvious now, I just nod, mutter 'good morning/afternoon' and run on... which they accept as a response without question because I'm there for Serious Running!
My family's relatively well off, and my birthday is coming up, so the cost isn't likely to be a problem unless it's very expensive. I'll check out the sports store next time I'm in town and see what sort of kit they have available. Thanks again.
...and I recommend getting an iPod and noise-dampening earphones. Even if you don't listen to music, they're good so you don't have to deal with hearing people and can ignore them more easily.
If you just want to have an excuse to ignore people, the player is superfluous; the earphones are the signaling part.
Duplicate, with a suggestion for the next set of changes: Have what is written in the comment disappear after it is submitted.
I agree with the suggestion
Working slower to avoid mistakes. (I don't want to, I'm just told I should.)
Unless the person complaining is the person who checks your work, or there's some reason to believe that they'd have more information about the ideal speed to mistakes ratio than you do, I suggest just ignoring it. If one or the other of my caveats is true, I suggest asking the person who checks your work for more information about the issue, so that you can see why you should want to work slower and avoid more mistakes.