u/LeftHvndLvne

Both are bad!!! Oh my god!! 

Of all the stupid nutrition advice that I see propagated time and again, the idea that regular soda is better for you than diet soda (because chemical=bad?? I guess?) has got to be one of the most idiotic takes that never seems to die.

Without fail, any time I see any kind of “how I eat” content whether from people trying to lose weight or otherwise, if they consume a diet drink, there is ALWAYS some nincompoop being like “uhmm actually diet soda is worse for you.”

I wanna be clear, as initially said, all soda is ultra processed crap that is not healthy for you. Diet soda and artificial sweeteners are unhealthy when consumed in excess. The only foods/drinks that are ultimately healthy are those which are unprocessed or minimally processed.
 
However, specifically in the context of the average American who, statistically speaking, is overweight or obese, and perhaps no longer wants to be that way, diet soda is 1000% the better option in terms of losing weight.

It boils down to the fact that diet soda contains zero calories, duh, and doesn’t spike your blood sugar. And for the average American possibly grappling with things like insulin resistance and trying to maintain a calorie deficit, that’s important.

Ideally, if someone is trying to get healthier, the best scenario is that they reach a point where they can have a soda on occasion and move on with their life, no big deal. 

However, again, the average US adult is overweight/obese, and thus struggles to moderate the consumption of ultra processed beverages and food. 

As such, switching out full sugar soda for a diet beverage in the short term while also trying to ween off high-sugar, highly processed food overall is advisable.

Telling obese people online that it is in their interest to drink full sugar, full calorie fucking soda, while they struggle to maintain a calorie deficit, break their addiction to ultra processed food, and face health threats like high blood sugar, is actually despicable.

To the point where it makes me wonder if people are really this ignorant or if they just want to see people fail. Given the absolute shit state of nutrition education in the US and our general food climate, I’m inclined to believe the former is true but who the hell knows. 

TL;DR both diet and regular soda are bad for you, one just doesn’t spike your blood sugar or contain calories and that matters a lot for people who are trying to lose weight.

Anyway, if ya’ll have any other examples of equally stupid nutrition advice you often hear from people who have no idea what they’re talking about, lmk I always need a laugh.

Had never gone to a club alone before but there’s an actual discotheque near my place and I went after I got off work last night.

I’ve realized I just enjoy dancing and going out more than almost all my friends at my current stage in life. And I’m done waiting to meet new people who wanna do the same things as me or have the same energy level before I go do fun shit.

Anyway it was so fun and as for any post being like “nobody dances at clubs anymore, the 90s were superior, blah blah,” fear not, people are just going to the wrong clubs or not going at all.

Edit to add a Trigger Warning: This post contains mentions of grooming and inc**t please do not read if you are sensitive to these topics.

I stumbled across this case when I was scrolling through the Charley Project the other day and found it notable. I was surprised to learn there's little information about it online given its unsettling nature, so I decided I'd do a write up with what I was able to find.

The Facts

According to the Charley Project, 15 year old Jessica Maglicic disappeared from Liberty Kentucky, an isolated community in Appalachia, on November 6, 2021, along with her older half-brother Collyn Maglicic.

Collyn reportedly picked Jessica up at a location on Martins Creek Road in Liberty. The half-brother and sister pair were then seen three days later on November 9, 2021 via a ring doorbell camera at Collyn's mother's home in Omaha, Nebraska, nearly 800 miles from where Jessica initially went missing from.

Collyn's vehicle, a silver 2001 Saturn with the license plate number WTL881, was then seen in Topeka, Kansas. There have been no confirmed sightings of either Jessica or Collyn since.

This is essentially all the verifiable information I was able to find, however, there is some additional speculative information that I want to include.

Unverified information

This next section is all anecdotal information I found through other reddit threads so take it for what you will. Okay, disclaimer out of the way.

I have found multiple accounts across available posts suggesting Jessica and Collyn were involved in an inappropriate "relationship" (putting relationship in quotes because Jessica was a child and couldn't consent to a relationship with an adult. If the anecdotes I've seen are true, this was clearly an ab*se situation.)

Several of Jessica's social media accounts are still publicly accessible, and contain multiple images of her and her half-brother together posing in ways that could suggest they were a couple for lack of a better term.

I also found a reddit thread from a user claiming to be related to Jessica from a year ago. The user seemingly confirmed some of the rumors about Jessica and Collyn being involved.

Additionally, a different user commented claiming to have seen Jessica and Collyn in Vail Colorado around the same time the thread was created in 2025~ish.

I've also seen suggestions that Jessica and Collyn could be in the area of Las Vegas, Nevada, or previously have been there.

Given this information, it appears there's at least a possibility that Jessica and Collyn are still alive, possibly living off the grid somewhere.

Closing thoughts

To close, this case stuck with me when I first read about it and I wanted to spread awareness of it.

This case reminds me of other similar cases that have taken place in recent years involving teen girl grooming victims; the Alicia Navarro and the Makayla Bali cases come to mind.

Just based on what I've read, it seems within the realm of possibility that Jessica and Collyn may still be out there somewhere. Anyone with any information on their whereabouts is encouraged to contact the Casey County Sheriff's Office at 606-787-9411.

Links

Jessica Maglicic via the Charley ProjectCollyn Maglicic via the Charley Project

Flier for Jessica via the GINA foundation for missing persons

Reddit thread discussing the case

I dig some light digging and found that a net worth of $30 million makes someone richer than roughly 99% of both the US and global populations. And yes this was in a pop culture sub because of course. I know I need to stop torturing myself.

“If I can’t do something perfectly I just don’t do it at all.”

Okay maybe this is just my subjective definition but when I think of perfectionism I tend to think of it in terms of like “zeroing in on every minute detail of a project and not feeling satisfied/finished until it fits the idea of perfect you have built up in your head”

Not doing shit 24/7 or giving up because you can’t be perfect is not perfectionism lmao. Like you’re just coping and holding yourself back at that point.

I know this a bit harsh but trust, I’ve had to learn this lesson myself to improve in a lot of areas of my life. Especially when it came to career, health, and passion stuff.

I used to think of myself similarly and would equate not putting in any effort to perfectionism when I was really just enabling myself to accept failure. A tough but necessary pill to swallow I think.

“We’re back in the early 2000s” “Starvation is the new standard” “What does this mean for women everywhere”

You could not pay me a million fucking dollars to look the way some of these female celebrities and influencers are looking on a GLP-1 (many of whom were already thin in the first place). 

And no idc if anybody thinks this is “body shaming” because they all are willingly choosing to take this medication for most-often exclusively vanity purposes. 

There’s all these think pieces now about what these hunger games-esque body standards mean for the average woman. 

This kind of relates back to a post I made the other day about all sociopolitical discourse being filtered through the lens of celebrities.

And being actually fit by your own effort as the newest flex since you can't gain sustainable healthy muscle by only taking some kind of PE or shot without doing anything about your diet and exercise regimen.

Anyway, these ruling class mfs are freaks and their aesthetics are grotesque/borderline inhuman. Celebrities and influencers genuinely suck so much and prey on regular women as a consumer class.

The ones who may be convincing you to take a GLP-1 when you are already a normal weight and don’t actually need it are getting paid to fuck with your self image.

I want every regular, already healthy-weight woman on earth to reject the idea that they should emulate these new freakish aesthetics of the wealth hoarding upper class. And reject the notion that they’re better off taking a short cut instead of healthily trying to lose a few pounds if they want.

I’m honestly kind of hoping the GLP-1 craze will have the effect of making regular women stop comparing themselves to celebs since so many of them look fucking insane rn. 

Although I know this probs won’t be the case since the corporate system controls/manipulates women’s physical standards and celebrities are an extension of that. Sigh.

Very concerning aspect of modern online political discourse is the politicization of people’s private and involuntary personal preferences when it comes to physical attraction.

I like to think of this as “incel logic” because that’s probably the first online circle that comes to mind when I think of where this phenomena has gained traction but I’ve also seen it crop up in women’s body acceptance circles.

The essential idea is that anybody can be entitled another person’s physical attraction on political grounds. And that not being physically attracted to a certain body type or whatever makes someone a bigot or enemy of progress.

Creepier even is the insinuation that physical attraction/one’s sexuality is not largely an innate response but rather a choice and something people should feel obligated to question or alter the way they would their morals/political views.

Yeah idk there’s obvious nuance and limits to this but I just find this kind of discourse bizarre and akin to dystopian thought policing framed as political correctness.

When I look at my life so far I often find myself coming back to question whether or not I made the right decision by leaving home when I turned 18.

I moved half way across the country to go to college on a scholarship at a fancy school and have been living and working in said city ever since.

I love the life I’ve built for myself here and am lucky to have had so many crazy experiences. From living in a 10-roommate DIY venue in an old warehouse, to working in crazy bars and navigating my first-ever job as a journalist.

I’ve always been super independent so moving out young wasn’t something I thought too deeply about at 18. I also had a difficult childhood, think constant exposure to fighting and mental illness, and being tasked with adult-level emotional and practical responsibilities as a kid.

I think I had a lot of residual anger towards my parents when I left that I was trying to work through. And having space to live my own life away from them afforded me a different perspective and the ability to really forgive.

But now its been almost a full decade since and the guilt I feel every day not being able to be there with them for milestones and life events is starting to weigh on me heavily. I miss them all the time.

My grandma, my last remaining grandparent is about to be 90 years old and I can’t be there. My dad has an auto immune disease that can shorten the average lifespan by a lot and he’s already in his late 60s.

I grew up catholic and in a city where moving far away from your family in adulthood is not commonplace whatsoever.

Me choosing to live my life this way instead of staying relatively close to where I grew up and more or less following the same life path as other women in the community do is something that has been hard for my mom to cope with especially.

She won’t outright say it but I think deep down she wishes I had stayed closer to home, chosen a conventional career like being a nurse or a teacher, and opted for marriage and kids in my 20s.

I just didn’t want those same things for myself.

But she tells me a lot about her coworkers whose kids are grown and stayed in the same neighborhood/city, have their own kids now and are still around for support.

Now I often just feel like I’m letting my family down and have these broader existential fears of like damn, how much time do I even have left with them. Like if I keep living the way I am, how many more moments do I realistically even have with my grandmom, my dad, and the rest of my family.

At the end of the day I know if I had stayed where I grew up I wouldn’t have been happy. But I just feel so stuck sometimes, like every big life decision I make is wrong. I also feel on a figurative level like I don’t really have a home anymore and there's no going back.

I talk a lot about diet and fitness on this sub but realized I’ve never made a singular post outlining specifically the lifestyle changes I made that have helped me lose 15lbs and rid myself of lifelong disordered eating and body image issues.

So I’m going to do that and hopefully it can be helpful for some. This is a long one, so bear with me. I wanna preface this by saying that all of these tips are intended for contextualization within the life of the average U.S. adult, not people with rare health conditions, physical deformities, or other uncommon outlier factors.

I also want to say that while I know I can be kind of blunt, I genuinely deeply care about trying to educate other women on how to get healthy in the current era.

I look around me everyday and see women who are visibly carrying an unhealthy amount of adipose weight and it just makes me sad. This mortal coil tests us all, but being fit and agile (and I mean actually fit and athletic not just "skinny") improves your quality of life on so many levels.

I personally think all women deserve this improved quality of life and hate the way the modern diet/fitness landscape and influencers often obfuscate the core principles of weight loss/fitness behind these vague and ideological platitudes like “love yourself at any size” or “eat in moderation (doesn’t specify what moderation is)” in order to sell people shit.

I also find that weight loss or healthy eating is often treated as this no-brainer thing and people are afraid to admit they might not understand it fully. Like they’re stupid for not just inherently getting it. This isn’t the case. Upwards of 75% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, it is very apparent that many people don’t have the proper tools or knowledge outside of just any lack of motivation.

I’ll also add that I’m just a writer and a fitness hobbyist, not a doctor, so there might be things I miss. Do your own additional research about any of these tips and also talk to your doctor if you’re looking to get started on a major weight loss/fitness journey.

Okay, here are the things I’ve learned:

Understanding that calorie deficits work 100% of the time - Eating in a sustained calorie deficit will cause you to lose adipose weight 100% of the time, point blank period. It boils down to the essential law of energy wherein energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Calories are energy, if you consistently consume more than you burn, you will gain weight. If you reduce your limit below the amount of calories you burn for a sustained period, you will lose weight. To determine what a deficit looks like for you, you simply need to calculate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) and how many calories you consume daily. This fact is vital to understand and is true across the board, even in the case of conditions like hashimotos, PCOS, or other hormonal type conditions. Also if we’re to consider things like GLP-1s, those medications work by suppressing appetite and thus creating a calorie deficit so the principle remains the same even then. You don't have to eat in an extreme deficit either, just shoot for like a couple hundred calories under what your maintenance is or so. Reject the all or nothing mindset at all costs when it comes to eating. It's about balance.

Structured eating and big meals - This is seriously one of the biggest changes I made when I got healthy. I eat three large structured meals a day, breakfast-lunch-dinner, every day with minimal to no snacking. The main reason I have found this helpful is simply that it’s easier to track how many calories you are consuming when you eat in a structured way. When I think about my old diet habits, one of the most glaring issues is that my meals were often very small but I snacked frequently on nonsatiating food. Constantly taking small bites of things, eating random empty carb snacks and other tidbits makes it hard to track your food, stay full, and maintain a deficit, plain and simple. This advice varies a lot from lifestyle to lifestyle, I am a highly active person so three big meals fits in well with my activity level. For somebody who is more sedentary, three large meals might not be ideal so something to consider.

Eating an 80-90% unprocessed/minimally processed diet - This is huge, and ties into what I mentioned earlier about moderation. People often say “oh just eat in moderation” but most people don’t actually know what true moderation looks like. They’ll espouse moderation then document themself online eating fast food multiple times a week. Around 80-90% of your diet consisting of unprocessed food is moderation. No health expert on the planet will recommend anyone to eat a diet high in ultra process foods (UPFs). The gist is that it’s okay to eat UPFs from time to time, but they should not make up a daily part of your diet if you are seeking to get healthy and maintain a calorie deficit. UPFs are designed to be calorically dense but non-satiating, so you can consume a massive amount of calories without ever feeling full. The way I think about UPFs is by likening them to another unhealthy vice I occasionally engage in: alcohol. Like the occasional drink, UPFs are a sometimes thing not an everyday thing. End of discussion.

Getting active - It gets a little complicated here because the main determining factor in weight loss as mentioned is simply how you eat. BUT exercise is extremely good for you and it makes it easier to maintain a calorie deficit. For example, I eat typically around 2000 calories a day, which to some may sound like a lot, but I live a highly active lifestyle so I almost always burn at or slightly over 2000 calories per day. The average U.S. adult is sedentary, and while this might kinda sting to admit, there’s a good chance you are also mostly sedentary. Basically if you have a office type job or similar and aren’t getting some kind of intentional exercise every day, it is highly likely you are considered sedentary by the medical definition. So yeah, you ultimately can’t out exercise a bad diet and exercising while still eating like crap is a lost cause. You don't need to do insane amounts of cardio or any dumb celebrity crash workout. Just incorporate exercise into your daily routine and I promise it will help you feel good while also maintaining a deficit.

Metabolic adaptation and the starvation mode myth - this is something I see often in women’s online diet circles that aggravates me because it simply is not true. There is this misconception that people can somehow gain weight while eating in a sustained calorie deficit by way of something referred to as “starvation mode.” There’s a lot of nuance to this topic but essentially starvation mode doesn’t work the way people tend to insist it does. This is often phrased as “When I start to lose weight my body thinks there’s a famine and holds onto fat/keeps me from losing weight.” This isn’t how things work. What’s actually happening is that as you lose weight, the amount of calories you need to consume while still maintaining a deficit decreases. You need to adjust your deficit in line with your weight loss. Women at higher weights are going to have a higher deficit than women only needing to lose a couple pounds. It’s also true that as you lose weight your metabolism can slow but the amount it slows is negligible and nowhere near enough to override a proper deficit. People not accounting for this adjustment is often what results in weight plateaus or the starvation mode misconception.

Understanding how different macronutrients affect you - This one is also so important and often gets overlooked imo. Different macro nutrients (carbs, fiber, protein, fat) serve different purposes in the body and it is important to be aware of how they work. The average American consumes too many carbs in line with their energy output, especially refined carbs. Carbs are the body's primary energy source and are processed through the body when you deplete your glycogen through exercise/movement. If you are not depleting your glycogen the carbs get stored as fat. This doesn’t mean carbs are inherently bad, especially whole carb sources like potatoes or fruit, but it does mean that if you live a mostly sedentary lifestyle, you simply do not need to eat a lot of carbs day in and day out. If you like carbs, cool, you just need to supplement your lifestyle to account for them and prioritize whole carb sources, not crappy carbs from UPFs.

Weight loss and fitness take a ton of time and consistency - this one I'll keep short. I hear this all the time on women's social media where women will say "I've tried everything" but then unintentionally kind of tell on themselves by mentioning they've never maintained a diet longterm. Consistency over a long period of time is what will give you results without taking a medication. However long you think it will take to lose weight, build muscle, etc., it will probably take longer. You just have to accept this, take it in stride, and not give up!

So yeah, these are the main pieces of knowledge that have helped me and I hope they can be helpful for others also. If anybody has any additional tips, elaborations, or experiences to share feel free to chime in. Peace.

I’ve been wanting to make a post about this for a while but haven’t been sure how to articulate my point. Going to give it a shot.

I’ve been thinking about how the overarching system reinforces itself by subconsciously encouraging people to project their political interests and existential plights onto celebrities. 

It’s very bleak and disheartening to time and again see political efforts or legitimate good faith social causes turn into these watered down stupid concepts framed through the lives of ruling class celebs.

I guess a really basic example would be feminism getting levied as a reason for Taylor Swift being a billionaire. But there’s tons of other less obvious examples of this phenomenon, I could go on endlessly. 

It feels like a kind of covert brainwashing to get normal everyday people to feel like their political interests are being vicariously fulfilled through the act of celebrities gaining additional capital. 

In this way, people end up focusing their energy on sympathizing with the exploitative ruling class, and believing that these, for lack of a better term “rich person problems,” are a top social priority. And thus ending up alienated from their own issues and the necessary tools to combat them.

Another thing I find very insidious about the current moment is how some celebrities appear to be aware of this, and are intentionally farming these weird ass persecution narratives through the press. Again, seemingly to gain additional capital or sympathy or who knows what else.

And yeah basically this reality sickens me.

I work in media so granted I’m exposed to celebrity news more than the average person by way of having to do my job. So it’s not as simple as “oh just ignore it” because believe me if I could I would lol.

Anyway I’m probably unintentionally regurgitating an argument that a political philosopher has already made. 

I guess I’ll end with saying I think as much as possible we should all question any kind of thought strain that indirectly or directly results in us defending celebrities of all kinds, even the quirky fun ones, who don’t care if we live or die and feed off of our work. 

I also feel that part of going against the system is disengaging with pop culture to an extent, at least in the sense of decentering celebrities and their problems especially in political discourse.

I started watching clips from this show after somebody mentioned it in this sub a while back, I hadn’t previously heard about it. It’s actually so insane the depths of delusion and bad faith people on this show resort to as, I guess, a coping mechanism.

Never in my life have I heard a woman tell her husband that he should be happy for her for cheating on him because she felt it was a healing experience. Or describe cheating with someone as “connecting” with said person, as opposed to, ya know, fucking them. Until I saw this show!

Is this what being in a long term relationship inevitably devolves into? Just a toxic stream of denial and selfishness? I hope not and figure it’s just a TV show at the end of the day. But still, unsettling to see these kind of dynamics play out over and over again with all these different couples.

Question for any UK people on here and apologies in advance if anybody feels called out I’m fr just trying to understand.

I’m watching the Lucy Letby case documentary that just came out on Netflix and one of the investigators they interview has the typical modern English white girl makeup look with the super orangey foundation, thick penciled on eye brows, and weirdly pale lipstick combo.

I’ve seen this exact look on dozens of British women across social media since forever and I don’t understand why the makeup culture across the pond is seemingly so regressed and over the top like this.

I’m aware in some countries it’s more usual for women to wear a full ass face of makeup in their day-to-day whereas in America *generally* I feel like it’s not as common. But specifically in England the makeup looks always seem atrociously bad. What is the reason for this lmao.