It seems that some people are misunderstanding the value in these questions and the insight they lend.
It seems potentially very useful for those with various types of executive dysfunction or mental illnesses that prevent them from either bodily or environmental introspection. If you have experienced these levels of dysfunctions or panics then you'll hopefully understand how a mindful and procedural reflection on your current state and surroundings can be very useful, and can let you escape from attacks, flare-ups or endless cognitive loops. Being prompted by such questions helps. For me, after a brain injury, I found it very useful, when in a panic attack, to step through possible issues and try to alleviate them one by one. Any marginal improvement is worth it if it helps you escape distress.
Also, some people have problems finding internal ways to articulate feelings. Emotional wheels (google it!) are very useful in those who are perhaps neuro-divergent and less able to differentiate internal states without prompts.
Of course a website like this is not exhaustive or entirely encompassing all experiences. But that doesn't necessarily reduce its utility.
I envy those somewhat insensible people in this thread, because it shows they probably never felt something close to this. It's not something I would wish upon anyone, that's for sure. The questionable diet advice is likely the only thing they can sympathize (or "antipathize"?) and pick up upon Hacker-news style.
Apart from the dieting advice, for me the flowchart was actually pretty useful, specially for someone that ends up paralized when you have too many small chores to do. Then you go through the day smelling like shit, with the house looking like crap and every hour you just feel worse for not having done that yet.
I'm thinking of printing a flowchart in the style of these questions to help me through the mornings. And thanks for the "emotional wheels" tip, it does seem like something that would help me
Are you suggesting that a badly made website is something that helps people that need a mental health professional? The website is bad with bad unscientific advice. It's a questionary about feeling shit and not ONE of the answers is see a professional if you end it with "I still feel like shit" the answer is "Well that just happens sometimes".
Honestly I had a number of quite expensive sessions with a therapist, and the main benefit I got from them was the message "how you feel is almost completely down to your physical state". This site could have been made personally for me. It doesn't replace the therapy, because in the beforetimes I would simply have not taken the message seriously without hours of someone hitting me over the head with it - but the site could have been tailor-made for me, and with it I could have skipped maybe half the sessions.
I've never seen anything like this before...but it's good to have a 'checklist' -- for something to make you feel better.
It covers a lot of bases, and has useful strategies.
When you're feeling overwhelmed or worked up, sometimes it's not easy to remember what works for you.
This thing helps.
If you're arrogant or dismissive about it...that's OK. Just notice that's a reaction and know not everyone shares it. The wisdom in these suggestions is belied by their simplicity and apparent obviousness I think. I think easily there could be many people who exist in a stressed and worked up state, and incorrectly try to take that out on others, but don't even realize that they could feel differently, nor notice they're not in a 'normal' state. I think it would be very easy for someone in that situation to dismiss this checklist or not see the value of it...but I also think, it could really have profound effects on their well-being, and those around them...if they gave it a try.
If you think this stuff is all obvious: you might be really good at managing yourself. In which case, that's great. But you also might be forgetting that recognition, not recall, is the easier task--as in you may find it hard to recall things like this when you really may need them.
It looks like it would help a lot of people...I hope you enjoy it.
So much negativity here… I once „felt like shit“ and found this on Google, and it helped me.
It’s just a little tool to suggest small (short term) things to break out of your rut, not a life philosophy. If you don’t want to eat because you ate 4h, just don‘t, and move to the next question. But maybe you were immersed in coding and forgot food.
I had the same exact idea (barring shit emojis). I'm so happy someone implemented this!
Some people with mild depressive episodes don't realize they have the power to break free and make themselves feel better by simply taking action. I imagine this kind of app might just be the thing to get them started in the right direction.
But it goes without saying: if you have any persistent issues, contact a health care professional.
I'm surprised at the negativity people have towards it. I wonder what they'll have to say when those points of critique are fixed, like the fasting crowd's issue with 4 hours span.
I find the website fairly useful. When I'm feeling like that it's hard to take care of things like window being closed and me not getting enough oxygen. Forgetting to eat is a thing too. Reminding is nice.
I find when I have a strong negative or positive reaction and subsequent outburst, that I have some form of conditioned behaviour. This is usually a sign that I should try and catch that reaction, find the cause, and try to analyze link.
At least this is how I view it--the keys are: 1) strong reaction, 2) try to find out why I have a strong reaction.
My main reaction to this was that for it to be really useful it can’t be a generic website.
For instance if you’d sit for 15 min and think about times you needed to check your situation, you’d come up with a checklist of 5 to 10 items, and could pin it in your note taking or document management app of choice.
It would fill the same niche as this site, except it’s completely tailored to your life, your needs, with the proper actions related to each items.
I mean, I have to be concentrating quite hard to feel the emotion you're referring to. The default way I experience hunger is just a generalised increasing misery and inability to think. If I'm lucky enough to get a specific cue, it's an intense desire to not be eating (which is an odd one given that of course I'm already not eating at the time).
It can be quite crippling - I was distressingly oh-god-snatch-your-children-away-from-the-monster thin until about the age of 15, and I have to be constantly paying attention to catch hunger before I lose a misery-wracked evening to lying unable to move. It's not as bad as it is for the people who don't feel pain, but taking manual control of bodily functions is not something to be done lightly. (Huel/Soylent etc are an absolute godsend.)
Maybe it's because it feels kinda entitled to think that depressed people have problems at this level. It's like a children's book. OTOH a generic 5min guide like that can't really help in non-trivial cases.
I think that your calling it a "children's book" is even worse. I have depression and I sometimes feel paralyzed because even small chores like drinking water can be challenges. So having this flowchart actually helped me a little.
It won't cure the chronic depression, but at least today I managed to tidy up the house a little. It's not 0 or 100%.
Depressed people do often have problems at this level. It helps sometimes to deal with the basic trivialities of life when more complex issues are having their way with you.
Eh, people with all sorts of backgrounds can have a lot of knowledge about other fields. What you did at university shouldn't restrict your entire knowledge domain.
I assumed Firefox would be the problem since opening it with Chrome worked, even after disabling plugins that I considered might have been a problem. Another, clean installation of Firefox DID work though, so I got to tinkering a bit and it turns out that, somehow, the one that is a problem is dark reader, which returns a
>Some files on the server may be missing or incorrect. Clear browser cache and try again. If the problem persists please contact website author.
For those of you who think that fasting or low blood sugar does not affect your personality, you probably have a number of other social-interaction issues you need to be working on.
Sure, a good diet should make a meal last 6 hours. You should adopt good habits. But if you're acting like a smug jerk right now because you're blood sugar is low, eat something. I see a lot of commenters here who need to have a quick snack and reevaluate their dietary habits.
Really cool idea. Saved it to my home screen. Only thing is that is that the questions feel like roadblocks. For instance, last night I got 6 hours of sleep and it says I should come back after I nap. But I can't nap right now.
I guess I could just say I did and see what the other questions have to offer. I wonder what another decision path would look like where you can select "I need this but can't do it right now".
Getting enough sleep is really important. But sure, disregard the science, your hunch in the matter is probably worth more than the cumulative body of sleep science
Getting enough sleep is important. But some nights you will not achieve the ideal of 8 hours. Once this has happened it is a sunk cost and you need to get on with your day.
Psychorigid and neurotic attitudes towards sleep do not promote good sleep. You can not "catch up" on lost sleep by napping. Instead, you risk throwing off your sleep for that night and perpetuating a pattern of sleeplessness. Afternoon naps are bad sleep hygiene. They are something you unlearn in treatment for insomnia and many other sleep disorders.
AFAIK, in the USA this seems to be common practice but in Germany people are more reluctant to take painkillers, for good reasons: You will be more careful when using the respective body part.
As an American, I'm frequently told by people around me to take painkillers or other medicines if I even mention that I have something wrong with me, no matter how little.
When I object and refuse, they attempt to pressure me into it.
I wish I could teach them that not everything needs to be medicated, and letting your body do its job, even if there's some discomfort or pain involved, is fine.
I prefer not to mess with my body chemistry unless it's a serious situation.
Not sure what the other poster means by 'extremely hard to get'. Ask for it at the counter at any pharmacy and there you go. Maybe they're referring to it not being available at the counter in supermarkets? (Whereas paracetamol is.)
I'm in the unfortunate situation that Acetylsalicylsalicylic acid (wow, that's a mouthful!) is the only thing that really work for my headaches... so I might be counter-biased wrt. your experience.
It's just that I perhaps seek it out by default and it's not difficult to obtain from that perspective. (Though you always have to listen to the lecture...)
Aspirin works as a painkiller, but it is not appropriate for regular ingestion as self-medication if you don't know what you're doing. It can be used sparsely for relieving pain+fever or pain+inflammation (IF the inflammation actually needs to be treated).
Paracetamol is a much safer option with almost no side effects, as long as you stick to the daily limits.
>Aspirin works as a painkiller, but it is not appropriate for regular ingestion as self-medication if you don't know what you're doing.
It might or might not be safe, but the parent claim was that nobody they know uses it as a painkiller, and that thus it's a "strange choice" if someone does, when it's (a) very common worldwide, (b) described as such in every medical website or source.
Paracetamol is pretty much useless for inflammation. It's pretty facile to dismiss osteoarthritis when you're young but if your work with your hands (like a software developer does) it's a serious blockage to productivity.
Acting as an anti-coagulat is a recently-recognized minor side effect of a medicine that's been a recognized analgesic and anti-inflammatory for millennia.
If you're still a kid ASA is not recommended as an anti-fever medication because of the risk of Reye's syndrome. Perhaps that's why no one you know uses it. Perhaps it's because the patent on it expired a century ago (a result of war reparations, no less) and drug companies find it more lucrative to push their alternatives.
Both paracetamol and ibuprofen are sold as generic medicines, so I really don't think being lucrative is the reason. I had a quick look through some pain relief pages on the UK's NHS website, and every time a drug is referenced by name it's either paracetamol or ibuprofen.
I've first seen people randomly using aspirin on US television shows, so perhaps it's just less common elsewhere.
In the long term, exercise (including very light things like stretching, easy yoga, etc.) is probably the more robust solution to aches and pains (excluding severe or chronic things that you would go to a doctor for). Plus, good for depression which obviously is a big reason to feel like shit.
Yeah, I stopped right there. If we are going down that road, might as well take something stronger and get your brain foggy enough to be not in pain any more. Sure it works, just see the homeless people.
FWIW, Dr Karl, the Australian medical doctor / science communicator, often advocates early use of painkillers to avoid neural plasticity problems that lead to more pain as the pain related neural pathways are reinforced.
"Aspirin is an everyday painkiller for aches and pains such as headache, toothache and period pain. It can also be used to treat colds and flu-like symptoms, and to bring down a high temperature." (NHS)
"Aspirin works by blocking the production of prostaglandins, the on-off switch in cells that regulate pain and inflammation, among other things. That’s why aspirin stops mild inflammation and pain." (Washington University)
>It literally does nothing. It is placebo at best.
Says who? Not science.
Significant benefit of aspirin over placebo was shown for aspirin 600/650 mg, 1000 mg and 1200 mg, with numbers-needed-to-treat for at least 50% pain relief of 4.4 (4.0-4.9), 4.0 (3.2-5.4) and 2.4 (1.9-3.2) respectively. (...) Reviewer's conclusions: Aspirin is an effective analgesic for acute pain of moderate to severe intensity with a clear dose-response. Drowsiness and gastric irritation were seen as significant adverse effects even though the studies were single-dose. The pain relief achieved with aspirin was very similar milligram for milligram to that seen with paracetamol.
Other study:
Results: The results of the dental pain study for aspirin and acetaminophen with codeine suggest statistically significant efficacy for all measures compared with placebo at all time points. Aspirin provided statistically significant efficacy compared with acetaminophen with codeine for SPID(0-4) (P = 0.028). In the tension-type headache study, aspirin and acetaminophen with codeine provided statistically significant efficacy compared with placebo for SPID(0-4) and SPID(0-6) (P < 0.001) and for total pain relief (P < 0.001). (...) Conclusions: These 2 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies demonstrate that treatment with aspirin (1000 mg) provides statistically significant analgesic efficacy compared with placebo use and comparable efficacy with acetaminophen (300 mg) with codeine (30 mg) therapy after impacted third molar extraction and in tension- type headache.
And so on. There are lots of studies for its use as a painkiller.
And the above don't even touch arthritis and pain from inflammation, where it excels...
It works for like 30 percent of people and its effect is weak. It is actually not used for pain management, outside of some people at home with something minor.
A word to the owner: eating every four hours is probably a reason you feel like shit. Fasting is not a bad thing. I stopped eating breakfast over a decade ago, it actually made me feel better in the mornings.
Everyone's different. I can skip lunch occasionally, but never breakfast. Also, nowhere does it say that the reader needs to stuff themselves till they're uncomfortably full every four hours!
The issue that I take with this website (and by the looks of things, many other people do, too) is that it's assuming _there is no way you cannot be eating anything right now_ without being hungry (there was no option for, "no, and I'm not hungry").
Their advice is: "You feel like shit? Eat some food." I have an issue with that, and I'm surprised you do not.
I most certainly do not believe in eating to remedy feeling shitty. That's _your_ conclusion :)
I was merely taking exception to the _opposite_ point of view that eating less, to the point of skipping one or more meals a day, was universally good for everyone, without exception.
> I can skip lunch occasionally, but never breakfast.
That's because you're addicted and you're experiencing withdrawals symptoms. Just like when I tried to stop coffee, I felt like shit for days/weeks before my body went back to its baseline.
People are used to eat three meals a day and your hormone cycles adjusted to that schedule, now if you skip a meal your body feels like it's starving even though you probably have weeks if not months of stored energy.
> Everyone's different.
Not really, different conditioning but mostly similar response to food intake.
How are you so confident with your diagnosis? Are you a qualified medical researcher? Not snarky, genuinely curious. A sample size of one does not a clinical trial make.
It's not a sample size of one, we're millions doing intermittent fasting and it's been studied a lot. After a while you basically don't have cravings anymore, especially for sweet things. Most people have no idea and no desire to know about how their body work but once you got the basics you can tweak things to your advantage instead of being a slave to food
From the studies I looked at this is due to how your body handles hunger, hunger seems to mostly be caused by an hormone called ghrelin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin)
Ghrelin seems to be secreted by your body, not only when it _needs_ food but also when it anticipates food (that's why you start craving food after seeing a tasty food video/ad), now for the funny part, it also is influenced by meal timing, meaning that if you eat every day at regular interval your level of ghrelin will go up and peak slightly before the actual meal. And this is why most people "trained" to eat three times a day every single day of their life can't skip one meal without feeling bad, even if they have 0 physical activity they'll still crave food. As the wiki points out it's also part of the dopamine reward system
> Consistent with previous data from other species including humans, there is a learned, preprandial increase of plasma ghrelin when individuals have been trained to anticipate their food at a fixed time.
> The constant abundance of palatable foods together to the excessive stress levels that we suffer in modern societies places the ghrelin/GHSR‐1A system in a new role in which it likely cause adverse consequences, including overeating beyond metabolic need and body weight gain. Therefore, the action of ghrelin on the mesolimbic system may have been a ‘great spice’ from an evolutionary perspective, although it no longer represents an advantage for modern human beings
Yes, and more precisely that "I'm different" for things like above is more often than not due to habbits and cultural/family/learnt preferences than to some unique physiology or body needs.
I think a far better question is "have you drunk any water in the last 2 hours"
Most of the time I think I'm hungry, I'm actually thirsty. Take now for example, I've just eaten lunch and a coffee, but I'm feeling like I could really do with an apple (I had one for breakfast). I suspect that's because I'm dehydrated rather than hungry.
Instead it's the other way round (have you eaten? If yes, drink water)
Does anyone really think that this is going to tip any scales in terms of knowledge about you?
We got a new dog a few days ago. I immediately -- almost instantly -- noticed that tiktok started showing me new-dog videos. Things like "How to kennel train your dog" and so on.
I was very confused, and reasoned that the most likely explanation was that I had subconsciously been liking dog videos in our run-up to getting a puppy. But then it occurred to me that it's quite realistic to think an ML model got me: I'm logged into tiktok via Google as myself; there's certainly data sharing agreements in place; my purchasing habits are no doubt tracked by multiple vectors; and I know from experience that ML can infer some surprising things from sparse data.
My point is, in an era when algorithms know the instant you get a new puppy, or the month you get pregnant, or the week you get fired, or have an extremely accurate picture of just how much disposable income you have...
... are you really going to care about sharing whether you feel like shit? That's the hill we pick? :)
> I was very confused, and reasoned that the most likely explanation was that I had subconsciously been liking dog videos in our run-up to getting a puppy. But then it occurred to me that it's quite realistic to think an ML model got me: I'm logged into tiktok via Google as myself; there's certainly data sharing agreements in place; my purchasing habits are no doubt tracked by multiple vectors; and I know from experience that ML can infer some surprising things from sparse data.
I think the answer is probably more mundane: someone an edge away from you on their social graph looked at dog videos, and they correlated it based on that.
If you are concerned by that, you can mirror it (wget -m) and run it locally.
Out of the box, it will yell at you and styling will be broken, but it will be functional. The entire mirror is also smaller than most web pages nowadays: 500k and 100 files total.
Can you explain a little more? Does google analytics also track each clicked page uniquely for a user? How do you know that google analytics is turned on? I didn't see any indication of it.
Site feels heartwarming, but why do people think it’s a good idea to throw random life advices at strangers that might be on the other side of the earth and live a life they can’t even imagine ?
Horoscopes and fortune cookies usually make a outsized effort to come with as bland advice as possible. I’d imagine the owner of the site getting buckets of death threat level of feedback if this gets any traction.
Death threats? Why so extreme? Or why even take the whole thing so seriously?
I didn't think all the questions (or the options to choose from) were great but the general idea of checking whether you're okay physically, and then checking whether you're okay mentally, is very valid.
> why do people think it’s a good idea to throw random life advices at strangers that might be on the other side of the earth and live a life they can’t even imagine ?
People are sharing what they've learned. Advice doesn't need to work for everyone to be good advice. And it doesn't need to be perfect advice to teach you something useful.
I see HN as a very supportive community, and you can see the overall negativity of the feedback. This would be way worse in a facebook thread for instance.
> Advice doesn't need to work for everyone to be good advice.
This is a valid approach for personal advice, or at least advice from someone that identifies as an individual speaking for themselves. It’s a different matter when it is broadcast indiscriminately and sets itself as a self-help resource.
The only feedback I have is that, if I was feeling like shit or in a depressed mood then having to click through all those prompts would probably p*ss me off even more.
Perhaps there's another way of presenting the content, without (again, my view) patronising a potentially depressed person.
True... but that might be hard to make suggestions.
> Yes, I took a shit in the last 24 hours -> Continue to next question
> No I didn't take a shit -> Go take some laxatives, smoke a cigarette, or go sit on the toilet and push one out (don't give yourself a Hernia though!)
> Yes but I have diarrhea -> Continue to next question
The content is adapted from the incredibly helpful and popular twine You feel like shit: an Interactive Self Care Guide developed by Jace Harr, with permission.
This site reminds me of every person I knew that never got better. Self-care is about long term health promotion. Not short term comfort maximization and pain avoidance. The first question alone tells me that an obese person wrote this.
Not necessarily. An obese person would know that feeling well without eating constantly throughout the day is not only possible but necessary. It is depressing to think otherwise...
There are plenty of sugar-addicted lean people who can't bear the thought of four hours without food.
Questions like "Are you feeling anxious/depressed/depersonalized" would be better if accompanied by a list of symptoms for these states. For example, when someone feels depressed, they don't always feel sad, which is what most people associate with depression. They may feel anhedonia, a reduced interest in activities they used to enjoy, or a decreased ability to feel pleasure.
I think this extremely well done! I love the simplicity of the design and the flow, and I think the wording is excellent (tone, conciseness, everything - I bet it wasn't as easy to write as it looks!)
I know this is HN so half the comments will be about magnifying this one sentence that they think is wrong, but FWIW this is the first self-help thing that's actually put a smile on my face. Thanks! Bookmarking.
> most of the people who would need a flow chart like this have a mental health problem of some type
Now that made me feel like shit! Because it means that either a) I'm a whiner who has no justifiable reason to complain about feeling bad or b) I'm too deluded to admit that I have a mental illness.
One of those could be true, of course, but at least in my case, that line is working against the stated purpose of this website.
That was their explanation for asking about mental health. "You, of course, might have different needs, but starting here can't hurt." was the next sentence.
Having just woken up feeling like shit, I think the first question should be whether or not you just woke up and if the answer is "yes" it should prompt you for water instead of food. Most people are dehydrated after sleeping through the night and don't realize it.
I volunteer on 7cups and recommend everyone who can spare the time to do the same. It’s basically chatting with strangers in distress, although the system keeps reminding you to focus on “active listening”.
>Drink a glass of whatever liquid you like best. Water is ideal, but don't beat yourself up if you'd rather have tea, soda, juice, or milk. Soda will actually make you feel thirstier, but if it's easier for you, then that's okay!
Is this a joke website?
Pro life hint: drinking soda and similar is why you feel like shit.
You're not alone. Positivity is not a personality trait and I seriously question the competence of ideas or people who compensate for something with positivity.
Your best friends will hurt you small now to prevent you from being an idiot in the future and causing tenfold damage be it socially or otherwise. I consider friends "too positive" to have given me such warnings as flawed.
No reason to. That is an ignorant opinion. A vetted flow chart for health problems is an excellent idea. Not only for health, but for car problems, computer problems, anything. As long as it asks the right questions and provises the right advice. A perfect chart would be indistinguishable from an expert brain.
Apparently this is a reason to feel like shit, according to this site. If you feel crap after only 4 hours since your last meal, quit eating so much sugar and eat decent food that keeps you filled and energised for a while. In fact, I reach my peak productivity at least 4 hours after a meal, when my body isn't spending much energy digesting food. Have you ever experienced the mental clarity of 12 or 24 hours of fasting?
The idea that we need to eat many small meals is such a Western, privileged world wife's tale that keeps being repeated. We're designed to function and hunt after some prey after days of starvation. We're not designed for the modern blood sugar seesaw. Not eating for 4 hours isn't gonna kill you, and if it is, stop eating Mars bars for lunch, and ingest some proper food.
Did you get any further and find something else to feel weirdly personally attacked by? Not all of this has to apply to you and while I think the whole thing is a bit overwrought and silly this is a pretty visceral reaction to a relatively innocuous question.
Personally I actually can use a reminder to eat because I have little appetite and won’t realize I haven’t eaten anything until the headache kicks in, which is a potential migraine trigger for me as well. To be clear I don’t want/need to eat something every four hours but that doesn’t make the question less valid for the purposes of reminding me to consider when I last ate.
Heaven forbid you explore a noncategorical perspective and consider that the usefulness of the website is not contingent on your experiences alone nor on your insistence that it completely encompasses you.
I'm sure these people had the guts to click on the wrong answer out of curiosity. The problem is that this site gives very inadequate lifestyle advice from the first question.
If it is asking him actual questions and gets the first question wrong in terms of him I kind of see his point that is doesn't seem to apply to him very well?
Well, I also stopped after the first question, because the options to choose from, made me go away as it implies I MUST have eaten in the last 4 hours to feel good, which is BS. So why should I see whats more, if it starts so bad?
If it would have been worded differently, to suggest that eating something might be a good idea - then I probably would have clicked further. But it has this absolute tone, that puts me off.
> Have you ever experienced the mental clarity of 12 or 24 hours of fasting?
I have never experienced a difference between eating more or less frequently (apart from hunger), only between quality of food (i.e., after a few days of not eating well, I feel less sharp).
> We're designed to function and hunt after some prey after days of starvation.
Natural arguments are not valid arguments. We're also "designed" to walk barefoot and yet I bet you wear shoes when you go out. It isn't like someone designed humans to work for a certain use case: we reached some adaptations to the environment, but it doesn't mean that original environment is the optimal one.
When half of western country inhabitants are overweight, obese and have the physical strength/endurance of a 12 years old I think this argument holds a lot more than you think
Is your body designed for swimming? Or for going on a bike? I don't think so. These are modes of exercise we invented (even when we aren't optimally designed for them) and yet they are good for us. If you followed the "primitive people did it/did not do it" argument you'd have to say that going swimming must be bad for you.
The more we rely on an instrument of protection, the more we need it. I went barefoot through a particularly thorny patch of land the other day. I expected hurt but because of that I was more ginger and careful and intuitive where to step as I walked, I didn't stop, I kept moving & trusted my instincts to avoid pain, it worked.
In some instances you'll be able to walk barefoot, but at a certain cost (attention to terrain that you wouldn't need to pay so much attention with shoes). In other instances you won't be able no matter how much you train: go walk in roads or large stones in the summer, and you'll burn your feet. Walk in the snow, and you'll get frostbite. Walk in a forest full of fallen branches and sticks, and you'll get an injury.
People didn't invent shoes because it was aesthetic, it was a necessity when adapting for certain terrains.
peole are different. I loose appetite and forget to eat enough and regularly enough when depressed, found the "last 4 hours" prompt to be a useful reminder and it would definitely not serve me well if I was told to eat less frequently
I don't think shoes are aesthetic. Temperature, grip, protection against injuries, hygiene...
> In a lot of cases I think natural arguments are correct. Our environment has changed far more than we have in recent times.
Precisely because we can adapt to that environment by means other than evolution. If you think something is bad/good, you need a real argument for it, not just "we did it this way before".
Oh boy. Have you tried walking barefoot on snow? Or on a rocky path that has been in the summer sun for the past 6 hours? On gravel? In an area with thorny bushes?
Lol, no. Walking barefoot in snow is something you can use to, so that you walk for short time. Eventually the cold gets you, even if you trained. Frostbite is a thing, no matter how much you train.
It actually continues on in this direction suggesting it's fine to drink soda if you don't like water... I'm pretty sure the site was designed specifically to annoy me.
This question is so strange to me! What dialect of English do you speak? Soda generally means like Coca Cola or some other sweetened, carbonated beverage. It doesn't mean soda water (though I can understand the confusion), which we can seltzer or sparkling water.
It absolutely does not include lemonade! I never in a million years would think of lemonade as remotely related to "soda". Our lemonades are not carbonated, and are just lemon juice, water, and sometimes sugar.
The question is so surprising to me. Where are you from? To you, what does "soda" mean? What does "lemonade" mean?
Hehe, sorry for the language confusion and derailing the topic! I'm not a native speaker and have always assumed that "lemonade" can be used as a generic term for all carbonated soft drinks, cola drinks included. I think my confusion comes from the Finnish loan word "limonadi" which is an umbrella term for carbonated sweet drinks.
And now checking what real lemonade looks like -- I think we'd call that lemon soda but it wouldn't definitely belong in the "limonadi" category. So a bit confusing inversion of terms during some cultural adoption!
Edit: I see the usage is closer to UK naming convention, so maybe that's the history.
Yeah, here in the US, I don't think you can call a carbonated beverage "lemonade", even if it has lemons in it. That would be "lemon soda", I suppose, though I don't think I've ever seen that. Lemonade is a mixture of still water and lemons, sometimes sweetened, with ice, that you drink out on the porch during summer in the afternoon.
Your question hit me like: "does 'wine' always mean 'beer', in Finland, or only sake (rice wine)?" I knew there must be a culturally different usage of language somewhere but I had no idea where! Turns out it was lemonade that was different. TIL that other places have carbonated lemon drinks.
They might be in Australia. Lemonade here is carbonated (like 7Up). Soda would be soda water. Sweetened, carbonated drinks are generally called "soft drinks". Lemon squash would be more like a homemade lemonade, but still sweetened and carbonated (can't remember if you have Solo in the US).
A 1996 linguistics study inspired a map [...] showing “soda” prevalent on the coasts, while “pop” held sway in the Northwest and Midwest, and the generic “coke” took the South. There must be some electoral significance to this.
Was about to write the same. I've lived in the UK 21 years and I can't recall ever having heard "pop" other than from Americans.
An entirely unscientific search on some sites (Deliveroo, Ocado etc.) shows "pop" either not returning any drinks (Deliveroo near me) or returning pretty much the same as "soda", with Ocado returning the "fizzy drinks" category for both searches.
When I was a child in Yorkshire I used to hear pop all the time. My parents and grandparents would say it. Nowadays it seems to have faded in favour of soft/fizzy drinks, but my grandma still says "pop".
In US, soda is a catch-all term for all types of carbonated drinks. Though, sugary types, especially coke, come to mind before the plain carbonated water.
Good! Is there anything that can be done to let you refrain from posting comments as well?
On a more serious note, your comment would be a lot better if it had a constructive tone (like "good concept, but for many people going 4 hours without food will not make them feel bad").
It was a simplistic pop quiz site, but your answer to that is as simplistic. People eat different amount, digest things differently.
If with the little info you get your first thought was to blame sugar, it feels to me you’re on a journey against some giants/windmills, because really life is more complicated than that.
Some people feel good after fasting (me, slightly overweight and too much sugar consumption), some people feel like shit (my gf, her hands tremble after 8h without food, but she had problems with thyroid).
I was going to comment same thing. Apparently if you are feeling like shit and didn't eat in last 4 hours then you should eat something. I am wondering if the website is HAES propaganda in disguise
People are unusually angry about fat activism. I mean, it promotes unhealthy habits, but so does pro-ana (which targets vulnerable younger girls, too), careless discourse on psychedelic mushrooms (even on mainstream media like Rogan) and even marijuana (it’s really not for everyone, and people do experience psychotic breaks from time to time).
> The idea that we need to eat many small meals is such a Western, privileged world wife's tale that keeps being repeated.
I am very curious. I have always lived in the West and I have never heard that once. I have always been told to eat 3 meals a day : Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
In the US a lot of people seem to think they will die if don't constantly eat something. I have had quite a few discussions with people who wanted to lose weight. They had huge resistance when I told them to cut out the snacks and eat only three (or two) times a day : "this is not healthy"
It used to be said. The origin is supposed to be in diabetes medicine - small regular portions made insulin management easier when technology sucked. Somehow it became general advice. I think it kinda sounded like common sense too, you add fueal as it is needed instead of in one bang.
You know, I read it as completely different: a lot of people who feel like shit will put off making meals. This can lead the person to feeling worse. The app is talking about self care, and a lot of depressed people can be helped by being reminded to eat.
And then, I’m on a whole food plant based diet. I eat lentil curry and brown rice, salads, nuts, and two liters of veggie and fruit smoothie a day. I have maybe a tiny amount of sweets in the evening. And I eat a little bit constantly throughout the day.
I think you’ve read way in to that question in the wrong way.
The author of the website looks to have experience in using food and soda as a feel better method, like the website encourages. There’s also advice on taking aspirin for an ache rather than the more common advice around my culture of identifying the source of the symptom.
I agree. The recommendation for cooking is (one could say) interesting:
> Here are some ideas for easy foods
> you can eat right now:
-Pasta with butter, sauce, cheese, vegetables, and/or meat
-Ramen noodles
-Sandwiches
-Rice
-Grilled cheese (This can have meat on it, if you want!)
-A smoothie or milkshake
-Baked or fried potatoes
-Eggs, pancakes, and/or bacon
-Macaroni and cheese
-Canned soup
-Salad.
-Boxed mashed potatoes
Absolutely. For me the mental health benefits almost outweigh (sorry) the physical ones - however of course it also demonstrates just how connected the two are.
On top of that my thinking is so much clearer too; it doesn't even have to be a big session for this to take effect, so I often sneak a quick one in if I have two meetings with only a small gap.
For example I get nowhere the same effect from 10 minutes of walking as I do 10 minutes of squats - perhaps lights for reps superset with shoulder presses, very short breaks.
You're free to do squats. Any exercise has benefits though. Walking is something almost anyone can do anywhere without special equipment. And most people can spare more than 10 minutes.
I’m bipolar and fasting is a mania trigger. Even just skipping lunch because I’m late for work. (In the bad old days I used to work in a noisy open office and lunchtime was the best time to work.)
Edit: not everyone experiencing their first manic breakdown notice it; pdocs tell me people usually go to them after the crash. I encourage everyone experiencing unusual feelings or omnipotence and euphoria (or, on the contrary, a restless kind of angry anxiety) that can’t be explained by drugs to take the Young Mania Ratings Scale, there are several copies online.
I very rarely eat before noon, and I have been like this my whole life. Also, I am a small eater in general - so I very often, when eating out at a restaurant ask for a to-go container at the same time as I order my food. THen I immediately put half or more in the container before I eat it.
And I am very active, for example, I rode nearly 1,000 miles on my 29" mtn. bike in the month of August alone (26 miles a day for almost the entire month)
and I eat very healthy, and well (My GF works at the french laundry and we are big foodies...)
BUT - we both do crave sugar a lot...
I want to do a water fast but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
The real culprit is carbs and for my GF, gluten - she has ciliac and gluten is extremely hard to avoid in the 'modern' food world.
One distinction: Reactive Hypoglycemia. Even with low GI carbs, it may still happen. Small meals or keto is the fix.
When it comes to health, things are rarely that simple. Even medical professionals have knowledge gaps, let alone someone who isn't one. I'd be careful to make assumptions.
Heck, many people assume the other person's a snowflake, when in fact their patience and pain tolerance may be miles above yours.
It's the same as reductionists advice on complex health issues where you advice someone to try X based on your 5-mins reading material, when surely someone suffering for years have tried all of that in thousands of hours of searching for the magic fix.
I need to learn not to eat anything in the evening. I always used to, but lately it's started to upset my stomach (or maybe I'm just more aware of it now) when I go to bed. As long as dinner is the last thing I eat, I'm fine.
That said, when my wife gets cranky, it's usually because it's been too long since she are something. Either dinner is too late or she skipped lunch. My oldest son might have the same issue; he prefers to skip breakfast and sometimes even lunch, and then becomes unbearable. So eat something healthy at set times, not unhealthy crap at every hour of the day.
To add to this, for the last year I've been sticking to a low-carb, one-meal-a-day diet with intermittent 5 day fasts every couple of months. I've been feeling great and I've foud although I really look forward to my daily meals I don't feel like I need a meal to function either mentally or physically any more.
Over Christmas my family brought me quite a lot of chocolate and as it was Christmas I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to take the week off my diet and allow myself to enjoy some sweets and carbs over the holidays. However after consuming a few bars of chocolate on Christmas day I felt terrible... I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but I felt similar to how I feel after fasting for 5 days. Weak, light headed, a little nauseous, etc... I read online somewhere that when you're very insulin sensitive spiking your insulin levels with sweets and chocolate can cause your body to quickly pull out excess sugar from the blood and this can then cause a temporary dip in blood sugar levels. Not 100% sure if this is correct, but apparently there are other people who practise low-carb diets who experience a similar thing to me. That experience really highlighted to me how bad sugar probably is for us, it's just that most of us don't realise it because our bodies have adjusted to being bombarded with sugary, high-carb foods for so long.
It's also crazy how many people think I'm doing some radical diet too... I get it's extreme compared with Western norms, but it seems kinda obvious for most of our evolution we wouldn't have been eating and snaking on sugary, high-carb foods throughout the day... The fact it's considered extreme for me to eat a large single meal consisting of vegetable, fruit and meat once a day probably goes to show how bad diets considered "healthy" by Western standards is. My parents for example genuinely just think eating a varied diet is all you need to be healthy, and sure, that might help mitigate nutritional deficiencies, but it really doesn't matter what you're eating, over-eating simply isn't good for your health. They refuse to accept this though saying a normal person needs at least 3 meals a day to function well, but again I think this just goes back to how broken our diets are and how dependant most people are on carbs to function optimally.
I thought exactly the way do you until I get together with mine. I got her oh my exact diet and ... she still need to eat every four hours or she would feel like shit
> Have you ever experienced the mental clarity of 12 or 24 hours of fasting?
Unfortunately I haven't although I fasted many times for more than 16 hours and only once 24 hours. I'm always lethargic, irritable and I cannot do anything other than thinking of food. I fasted 16 hours with most hours during the day, during the night, same result.
Some people actually need that reminder. Particularly if they're on a keto diet and don't get glucose withdrawl.
I'm a bit absent minded and some days I start to feel tired and a bit anxious around ~3-4pm. I feel awful, and I'm wracking my brain for what I'd forgotten to do that day. Oh wait, it was breakfast and lunch...
Yes eating high quality nutritious food is good advice, but you don’t need to be a dick about it. Sometimes you don’t have time or resources to eat properly. Sometimes you just forget to eat. Maybe 4 hours is in the shorter end, but I often feel like shit and then remember that I haven’t eaten since yesterday.
Second, humans have clearly evolved to be omnivorous. What do omnivores generally do in favorable environments? Hint, "hunt after days of starvation" is a obligate carnivore pattern -- and not one that all obligate carnivores share.
It depends on your routine. If you skip a meal when you usually have that meal, you might experience some discomfort. You could eat one meal a day and be fine if that's what you're used to. It's the breaking of the routine that causes you trouble.
Perhaps the first question should be "when was the last time you had a proper meal?" And if it was too long, say "Make sure the next thing you eat is a proper meal".
Indeed. Studying obesity rates and historical dietary habits find a strong correlation between snacking and obesity even when the total number of consumed calories is the same.
An addendum to this is don't eat carbs. Go Keto. I'm practicing intermittent fasting and low-carb dirty keto and it still produces amazing benefits. I sleep better, I'm not bloated anymore and my energy doesn't crash a few hours after eating. Get a breathalyzer to measure acetone to learn your specific metabolism (this helps decide if a meal you habitually eat triggers an insulin response).
I think in the fullness of time we will see literature about how misreading data from a study on diet lead to the worst public policy decision on nutrition in history.
> If you feel crap after only 4 hours since your last meal, quit eating so much sugar and eat decent food that keeps you filled and energised for a while.
I can feel like shit four hours after eating a proper meal, esp. if I'm stressed and working non stop.
Another reason I can feel like shit 4 hours after eating is vitamin B deficiency. I burn through that stuff like a broken engine digests its own oil, and it creates a bunch of problems with energy, clarity, and body weight regulation.
> Have you ever experienced the mental clarity of 12 or 24 hours of fasting?
Yes, esp. if I'm not redlining my brain to work on full capacity for 8 hours straight, with no breaks.
> We're designed to function and hunt after some prey after days of starvation.
Yes, similarly we're not designed to sit in front of a computer and sweat your brains off designing software and stuff, and making our brains burn much more energy than they're designed and accustomed to do so, we need to return to that lifestyle immediately.
> Not eating for 4 hours isn't gonna kill you, and if it is, stop eating Mars bars for lunch, and ingest some proper food.
I'm not eating Mars bars or similar stuff for a year now, and I can still go through a sizeable meal under 4 hours when I'm working under load. See above.
TL;DR: Brain can consume a lot of energy. Much more than a normally active homo sapiens' muscle system, and not all humans are created equal. Genetics is a huge number of d20 rolls.
It seems potentially very useful for those with various types of executive dysfunction or mental illnesses that prevent them from either bodily or environmental introspection. If you have experienced these levels of dysfunctions or panics then you'll hopefully understand how a mindful and procedural reflection on your current state and surroundings can be very useful, and can let you escape from attacks, flare-ups or endless cognitive loops. Being prompted by such questions helps. For me, after a brain injury, I found it very useful, when in a panic attack, to step through possible issues and try to alleviate them one by one. Any marginal improvement is worth it if it helps you escape distress.
Also, some people have problems finding internal ways to articulate feelings. Emotional wheels (google it!) are very useful in those who are perhaps neuro-divergent and less able to differentiate internal states without prompts.
Of course a website like this is not exhaustive or entirely encompassing all experiences. But that doesn't necessarily reduce its utility.