Come on, I'm not in the 1st world. It's difficult to buy matcha here, only a few stores offer it and it's expensive ($12+ per 100 g of powder plus my transportation costs) because of marketing. Regular green tea leaves (to be brewed in a pot) provide 3-5 times less caffeine per gram of dry matter (thus it's necessary to drink a lot of cups to get the effect) but they're still cheaper per mg of caffeine ($2 per 100 g of leaves) due to the intense competition among a lot of manufacturers.

Besides, as I've mentioned above, I have a ****ton of unused green tea leaves from the old times.

OK, but the reason I mention it is it seems like you are using the numbers for matcha. Regular green tea has pretty low levels of theanine and the caffeine content you're counting on of 25-30 mg is extremely optimistic, especially for old tea. 15 mg caffeine would be a better guess, and maybe half that. Theanine 2-4 mg. So 8-12 cups morning and afternoon, with a scoop of theanine for each batch.

I tried switching to green tea from 4-5 cups of coffee last year and the numbers were overwhelming unless I went with 10 cups of matcha per day which was a really good way to get sick of matcha. Then I realized theanine disolves in coffee...

Never mind - I've found a local dealer of dirt cheap ($6 per 120-day course) Scitec Nutrition caffeine pills (with dextrose and gelatin instead of sodium benzoate).

My plan has changed to the combination of 100 mg of pre-poker (7+ hours before sleep) caffeine with 100 mg of 5-HTP an hour before sleep - what I need is to alternate between 'turning myself on' for tasks requiring focus and 'turning myself off' (incl. libido inhibition) for the 'real life' hours (incl. sleep).

This looks accurate. Not all the sorts of tea leaves are manufactured properly, many of them lose a lot of their caffeine in the process.

Or, rather, the worst leaves are picked for those sorts. Whatever. The pills are so much more convenient.

And actually, I don't mind caffeine crashes, as I can finish a poker session almost instantly and take a nap when a crash (fatigue + dehydration) occurs.

Nope, I've become way too used to caffeine - it's not enhancing my cognition any longer, whereas its side effects are still present. After yesterday's overdose (200-300 mg in total in all those tea and coffee cups, I guess), and possibly a slight decrease in the room temperature, I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrific tonic-clonic seizure that lasted for 5-10 minutes. I thought I was about to die.

I'm still not sure which supplements to take, perhaps milder stuff like vinpocetin + ginkgo biloba + choline + noopept.

200-300mg "overdose" as in 200-300 over the 400mg that's seen as the top end "in one shot"?

Or are you saying 200-300 is too high, for you? If that's really true that's a bit crazy because that's really not that much in the scheme of things over the course of a day. For you to be THAT sensitive to stimulants is a bit worrisome I would think (?) and suggests perhaps high blood pressure to boot?

Thanks for the questions. I didn't measure my caffeine intake. I guess I was making more concentrated drinks than usual so the overall amount of caffeine consumed in the 24 hours preceding the seizure was more like 500 mg.

To my shame, I haven't measured my blood pressure for ages because my mother has taken the tonometer away for her needs. I wasn't hypertensive in childhood and early adulthood.

However, the poker career and the related anxiety and caffeine abuse might have made me pre-hypertensive already - as possible signs, I have pulsatile tinnitus (when I'm in a silent room, I can hear the pulse near my left ear) and varicose veins (which are inherited from my mother, though, but so is the hypertension) at the age of around 30 already. That said, caffeine consumption (even 2 cups of sublimated coffee) seems to make my blood pressure much higher than in the normal state.

Over the next few days, I'll be digging up random indoor cardio exercises that can be done with no equipment. To begin with, I'll try this 5-minute workout (though between 9 PM and 8 AM, I'll have to remove those of the exercises that produce a lot of foot noise, in order not to disturb my lower neighbors).

Right now, the available equipment is a pair of dumbbells and a pair of push-up bars (plus some hand trainers). When my social anxiety level drops, I'll also buy some lightweight and cheap equipment like a Cardio Twister

I must be dyslexic because I read that as 'a couple of push-up bras' and I confess, it did pique my interest.

I don't know how many bras have been left by my brother's wife when she was moving out. If I find any during a thorough inspection, I'll actually try them on My mother has large breasts so her bras definitely don't fit me.

Food log

As I mainly eat at home, I'm going to log the total amount of food bought and then use it as a checksum in order to prevent miscalculations such as 1 kg ~ 4 * ~300 g

The food that existed at home when I woke up today (all the amounts of grains are dry, not boiled, weight, unless otherwise specified):

Buckwheat: 1100 g
Oatmeal porridge: 100 g
Kidney beans: 100 g
Carrot: 1 x 50 g
Apples, red: 4 x 175 g
(Ginger marinade: 1400 g -
I'll leave it out of sum checks until it's actually used)

Bought tonight

Apples, red: 4 x 175 g
Napa cabbage: 740 g
Wholemeal crispbreads: 3 packs
Oat cookies: 2 packs
Veggie cutlets: 3 packs
(green beans + spinach + broccoli + mashed potatoes
+ a bit of breading + preservatives)
2-bean mix, frozen: 2 packs
Cauliflower + broccoli + carrot mix, frozen: 2 packs
Cornflakes: 2 packs
Beans, red: 900 g
Greek yogurt: 4 packs

June 2 consumption

Beans: 100 g
Carrot: 1

Napa: 300 g
Veggie cutlets: 1.5 packs (fried on apple vinegar)
Greek yogurt: 2

I'm probably calling it a day.

Pack weights, calories TBA.

Macro content reference table

Meal title	Pack, g	Protein	Fats	Carbs	kcal/100	kcal/pack
Wholemeal crisps	100	10	2	57	290	290
Cornflakes	325	10	2	81	380	1235
Oat cookies	250	6	16	63	420	1050
Kidney beans	450	21	2	62	350	1575
Buckwheat	800	12	3	72	335	2680
Greek yogurt	140	8	2	4	68	95
Veg cutlets	150	3	2	16	93	140
Veg trio	400	2	0	6	30	120
2-bean mix	500	2	0	5	30	150
Oat porridge	420	12	6	62	350	1470
Brown sugar (tsp)	12.5	0	0	99	400	50
Red apple	175	0	0	14	51	90
Napa	100	1	0	3	16	16
Carrot	50	1	0	10	40	20
Ginger	1400	0	0	12	51	715

As new titles appear, the table will be quoted and updated.

Alternatively, advise a food logging platform other than MFP. It repulses me that MFP displays a message, 'We discourage ana/mia - we won't make the day count unless you log more food for the day'. This way, they're not going to cure bulimia but are only going to turn it into the binge eating disorder. This is like treating only the hypomanic phase of type II bipolar while leaving its worse - depressive - phase intact.

Errata:

100 150 g of kidney beans I had today morning & ate then.

1100 2000 g of buckwheat, 100 520 g of oatmeal porridge and 0 500 g of brown granulated sugar - that's how much I had available in the morning and didn't use so add that to my resources.

300 350 g of napa eaten.

0.5 pack of crisps eaten tonight and not logged above.

'Veg trio' refers to cauliflower + broccoli + carrots (a trio of quite filling, quite alkaline vegs to be used to plug random hunger).
_______________________

Thus the energy tally for June 2 is 1145 kcal and likely not going to change. The maintenance is 2000.

This means that my energy balance is in a huge minus for today but I wanted badly to reverse the personal trend of binging on every shopping day. As you might have noticed, there's a ton of 'comfort carbs' (sugarfree cornflakes - I like them this way, as an analog of chips - plus oatmeal cookies that are a bit sugary and that I tend to binge on) and so I still might go over 2K on some of the non-shopping days when I have a craving to tap into those fast carb reserves to help tryptophan cross the blood-brain barrier.

Enough thinking about food tonight. Tomorrow, I'll assess the total caloric content of my food reserves and try to spread it out as evenly as possible among the next several days.

A note about fat: my basket was full during today's grocery shopping so I didn't buy chicken eggs, but in general, I'm going to incorporate up to 3 whole eggs a day, which are a significant source of fat as well as protein. And carrots are surely going to make a comeback, just I was out of luck - were none of them at all at the store.

What's mia?

nocountryforoldmen.jpg

Ana / mia = anorexia / bulimia. It's a standard shortcut, I thought.

I can bear a whole shopping cart's worth but I only take a basket to prevent myself from buying too much junk food. Sometimes it results in a failure to buy something essential but I can get it on the next trip. The benefits of this 'responsible nutritional gambling' measure outweigh its shortcomings.

June 3 food

Cornflakes 0.5 pack
Veg trio 1
Wholemeal crispbreads 0.5

Oatmeal cookies 0.5
2-bean mix (green + yellow bean pods) 1
Crispbreads 0.5
Apple 1

Veg cutlets 1.5
Greek yogurt 1
Crispbreads 0.2

Total kilocalories 2155 - ouch
10 min of lowish intensity calisthenics

I did underestimate the impact of the crisps when I was binging on them but they're hella addictive by fibery meal standards. I'd rather remove those oat cookies that have turned out relatively junky (containing palm oil, out of all oils) despite being next to the baby food shelf and fructose-based sweets in the store.

The macro content backlog will be cleared as soon as I make a dedicated Excel file.

Thanks, it probably is. I'm not really into instagram.

I normally don't look for male bodies on IG but it's a decent source of fancily dressed female pics.

Grocery trip

Napa 2310 g
Carrots 10
Greek yogurt 3
Eggs 20
Corn crispbreads 2 x 75 g
Pumpkin seeds* 1 x 100 g

* A candidate for an alpha-linoleic acid source substituting for flax seeds which are not so available here for some reason. Incidentally, a zinc source too.

Macro content reference table #2

Meal title	Pack, g	Protein	Fats	Carbs	kcal/100	kcal/pack
Egg (chicken XL)	67	13	12	1	157	105
Corn crisps	75	10	2	70	350	262
Pumpkin seeds	100	28	46	13	540	540

June 4 consumption

Oat cookies 0.5
Wholemeal crisps 0.3
Apple 1

Napa 390 g

Eggs 3 (milkless omelette)
Napa 360 g
Greek yogurt 1
Sucrose 8 g ~ 32 kcal (in the yogurt -
I took 1 blueberry pack by accident)
Corn crisps 0.5

1395 kcal
15 min lowish intensity aerobic

June 5 consumption

Eggs 3 (scrambled - that's how it's called in English)
Corn crisps 0.5
Greek yogurt 1

Pumpkin seeds 0.75
(got tired of peeling and threw the rest out*)
Cornflakes 0.25
Corn crisps 0.5
Greek-like yogurt** 1
Carrots 4

* I've found a supplier of cheap flaxseed oil so I'll add that as a source of ALA instead of pumpkin seeds that take a notorious lot of work to become edible.

** Total in 140 g: 140 kcal, protein 10 g, fat 8 g, carbs 6 g

1585 kcal
15 min aerobic

A note about goals (or, rather, about the lack thereof)

Actually, the only remaining weight-related task is to prevent ballooning back - stabilize the diet and ensure that I'm able to maintain the average consumption below 2K kcal/day. Otherwise I'm more or less OK with my body composition - even though it's a weirdness thread, some things are way too weird and I don't want to discuss them in H&F.

June 6 coonsumption

Beans 0.3 (135 g dry mass)
Carrots 4
Oat cookies 0.5 (125 g)
Apples 2
Napa 300 g
Greek yogurt 1 (140 g)
Wholemeal crisps 0.5 (50 g)

1545 kcal
10 min aerobic

Mean±SD over 5 days: 1565±372 kcal

I'll no longer be bumping this thread with food logs because making them public is inefficient anyway and occupies the valuable space of the first forum page.

The omega-3 fat intake is going to increase as I've bought flaxseed oil and chia seeds. Also, I can order whey concentrate to boost the protein intake.

Here's the nutritional content table for the week.

	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Mean	StdDev	Of energy
Protein, g	70	72	59	85	57	55	90	70	14	17%
Fat, g	14	33	48	73	26	63	25	40	22	22%
Carbs, g	184	394	185	157	275	245	280	246	81	61%
Energy, kcal	1145	2155	1395	1585	1545	1750	1660	1605	313

Bye for now.

Time for a weird coonfession

I didn't want to write this publicly but I've realized that many of the H&F'ers are misunderstanding my unusual motivation.

Let me start with a seemingly irrelevant question.

Setting health considerations aside, is it more pleasant for you to fondle a muscular girl or a skinnyfat one?

Well, I for one prefer soft skin.

And it's much easier for me to caress myself than to be tough and have to recruit someone else to serve as my pillow at hard times. Dealing with anyone other than myself is difficult because people have complex inner worlds. I'm never going to be abandoned by myself. I'm never going to misunderstand myself dramatically. And I'm guaranteed to die at the same time as myself so I'm never going to have to mourn myself.

So as long as my skin is elastic enough, I'd rather be plump at least a bit, and I'd rather maintain a rack to put a bra on in the privacy of my apartment and be easy on my own eye, taking the notion of the love for myself on a whole new level.

To clarify, I don't want to be in any intimate relationships with males. I don't even appreciate them aesthetically.

I don't mind my genitalia as they are, and I'm against unnecessary surgical intervention anyway.

I'm aware that frailty reduces the life quality at the old age but it can be dealt with when the time comes. For now, safe in the knowledge that there's not much immediate diabetic risk after I've turned from obese to just skinnyfat, I'll let myself enjoy the short remainder of my youth to the fullest

Do you have someone in RL to whom you can talk? A friend whom you trust and feel comfortable with? Therapist?

I mean you are rational enough to realize that you have issues and that to get rid of them would improve your quality of life. Things like mentioning suicidal thoughts, your social anxiety, dealing with women, issues with your parents.....

I don't think that it is possible to get rid completely of many of them. But I believe that in the right environment, they would improve immensely. I think that it is good that you are present here. It is already big step to have some kind of outlet for few issues.

I don't know...... I get that you don't necessary want to get muscular or so..... I think stability of your mental state is more important for now. And you already mentioned two things, that you actually like, and I think they would contribute to a better place mentally, if you would them on the regular basis: Yoga + Hikes in a forest.

I know that at the moment it is kind of difficult to go to a yoga school, but you can take a beginner vid and just do it for 30 min every day. If you add to this a walk in a forest for 1 hour every day, it would be a step forward for you . And if you log it here and add a pic or two of the forest, you will get cheered by at least me probably a bunch of other people here.

I mean ...... You will have difficulties to find a rational objection to this plan :P.

None.

Public logging didn't really help me in the past. I have no external motivation; I'll only do something if I persuade myself that I really need it.

I have a difficult relationship with forests as I once almost got lost while having no cell phone with me. I'm at odds with the sun too as the most awesome things in my life tended to happen when it was down and the relatives were sleeping.