Asayake

Yes, I believe the olive oil industry is an industry that makes profit from sugar being seen as something bad, just like the energy drinks industry, coffee, adhd meds, chocolate, seed oil, meat, protein powder and more industries either try to replace the energy increasing & stress reducing effects of sugar or the taste by adding oils and/or sweeteners. Or they simply make money by selling something that's free of sugar. I am more of a believer in the China study than in a mediterranean style of eating. I believe in a meditteranean style of eating they eat other things that cancel some of the negative effects of consuming olive oil like a lot of wheat and vegetables. I believe oil is a bad source of energy(every cell in the body runs on sugar). I also believe oil/fat increases insulin resistance which gives sugar the brain fog effect people complain about(the insulin resistance causes elevated blood sugar which is responsible for brain fog, not the spikes), and makes people add on weight which is not bad for everyone but obesity is a bigger problem in the western world than being underweight. Unless one is underweight or wants to gain weight I see no reason for eating oil. Regarding the article I believe blood sugar spikes are not a problem so I would say I generally disagree with her view on the matter. I believe sugar spikes are a natural way for the body to regulate cortisol levels. Basically I believe that sugar spikes is how the body knows it's getting enough fuel and without them the body will release cortisol to compensate and crave energy in other forms like stimulants(weed, coffee, chocolate, amphetamines, modafinil). You can test this out for yourself by eating a big bowl of rice or rice & heinz canned beans in the evening, you will be hit by a strong relaxation and have an easier time falling asleep. What is called feelings of fatigue in the article is not actually fatigue imo, it's strong feelings of relaxation from crashed cortisol levels, which is a good thing if you're trying to relax and will happen only if you eat a very big meal of starch or A LOT of sugar. The stronger the blood sugar spikes, the harder the cortisol plummets. Cortisol is the body's way to compensate for low blood sugar, it gives you this fight or flight caffeine like feeling/headspace. it's the body's stress/survival mode hormone. If you avoid blood sugar spikes you will avoid diabetes but you will miss out of the benefits of blood sugar spikes which includes increased motivation(dopamine), increased content & mental clarity(serotonin). When I need energy I eat fruits. canned fruit in syrup, low oil cereal & white sugar. If I need to relax I slam down a big meal of rice, potatoes or pasta. I believe a better way to avoid diabetes is to cut out oil & fats because that's what causes insulin resistance, which is what we should really be fearing, not blood sugar spikes(as long as the blood sugar levels return to baseline afterwards which requires good insulin sensitivty).

Good post. To the carbs point I would like to add that I consume 100-150g of white sugar added to my food per day and my blood sugar levels are very stable, no brain fog. I believe it's because I eat no oil and no fatty foods and it increases the body's ability to regulate blood sugar because there's less fat inhibiting insulin function. I do think that oil is bad though, unless you want to put on extra weight but that's probably healthier to do with whole food anyways.

Just saying, comparing that Discord server to Heaven's gate is a strawman. I don't see why being in that Discord would have made me more likely to believe such a thing than being anywhere else, because no one I met in the Discord seemed to have that belief as far as I could tell. In fact I'm pretty sure people would have argued against me if I would have proposed that as an idea there just like on this forum. This disproportionate fear I sense here regarding the Discord posing a risk for being a cult seems more like a projection of the fear that this forum could potentially become a cult more than anything else in my opinion. As far as the value of forum vs chat I think they both have pros and cons. I think it might be easier to open up about stuff in chat in a sense because you can have a casual conversation that can naturally lead to a vibrational frequency where both parties can open up more easily and share stuff with eachother and connect in a way that is not as likely to happen on a forum for some people, it can simply put feel safer. There's also less pressure in a chat to put forward well formulated ideas. Sure, this can amount to lower quality of content some of the time, but that's a part of the process, chat has a more creative and personal flavour to it while the forum feels more academic, there's great potential in chat just like in a forum. When you put things out on the forum you know a lot of people will read and judge you based on it. In chat it can feel better to share because you feel more easily that there's other people you're connecting with there. And you can develop another kind of chemistry there because of more dynamic range with faster as well as slower replys available. The most beneficial conversations I had personally on this forum were 1 on 1 conversations through DMs or 1 on 1 chats via Discord. The forum boards seems to to be more useful for sharing insights, useful resources and sharing things like trip reports or book reviews and discussing specific topics but not as good for connecting with others which is also important for healing and spiritual growth. A benefit of the forum is that it can host a lot more people than a Discord because the conversations would become very chaotic with a huge Discord chat where as on the forum they are organized by threads and post timers. But I still think chats are better suited for connecting with and understanding others more deeply, it just feels more human, like chatting with irl friends contra communicating with them on a forum, it's a different vibe and you can get a better sense of who people are through chat than through their forum posts, because it tends to be less polished. Forum and Discord simply have different strengths. Don't underestimate Discord just because it is new technology. Connecting with people through chat can make you understand them better which reduces conflicts based on misunderstandings which seem common on the forum.

This fear of cults is getting ridiculous, has it ever occured to you that this place is more likely to be a cult than that casual discord channel ever was? There is no comparison to be made to Heaven's gate, it's just a ridiculous comparison. Sure there might be cult Discords out there but that Discord server was more like a casual server where people chatted about random stuff and psychology. Reminded me more of my friends Discord groups than some spiritual haven. If the Discord proposed suicide as the solution I would have quit it instantly. Also, this forum is no guarantee to not misunderstand spiritual teachings. I'm sure people misunderstand spiritual teachings on here all the time.

I would like to double up on Cinema Paradiso and Manchester by the sea. Great movies!

How is it possible she was eating too much fruit? She was surely eating other more calorie dense foods as well, 20 bananas = 2000 calories that puts into perspective how difficult it is to overeat most fruits. I guess it could be possible if she ate a couple of watermelons a day. I whole heartedly agree with this thread, I am currently pouring white table sugar on my fruit as well to compensate for the fact that most fruits available in my country are in poor, unripe condition and it gives me energy when I need it and helps me lower cortisol and relax when needed. I am currently on 90/5/5 carbs/protein/fat ratio and have been for a couple of weeks. Short term this feels amazing but personally I think it's sustainable longterm too.

Am I intepreting you correctly, are you going to attempt a 1-year no fap? If you can pull that off you might have stumbled upon an entirely new path to enlightenment.

My INFJ sister told me the same thing

I'm trying to post a video but I couldn't get it to work so I'll just drop the link instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMRCNgy6b78

I'll give you an alternative view that I'll expand on here later, it's late night here and I'm getting some overdue work done so I don't have a lot of time to respond in full length right now, but I'll expand on this later. The idea is simple, sugar is not a drug, it's a nutrient. It's the most readily available form of energy for the body and every cell runs on it. Our body has become very well adapted to make use of sugar because our early ancestors lived and thrived off of it. Animals that thrive off of eating grass ate grass back in the days and so their bodies adapted to make use of the fiber in grass for energy. Our bodies are not so well adapted for eating big volumes of fiber dense foods, like grass, or broccoli. But our bodies will make use of sugar rich foods like fruits, sugar cane, rice and potatoes. It is our natural form of energy being deprived off it puts the body in a starvation mode, especially when we are putting the body in a caloric deficit. This can make us lose motivation and energy and make us suffer more psychologically than necessary. Start your morning with a banana, date & water smoothie with 800 calories of carbs and take note of how your drive to get things done and energy levels will improve significantly. Starting the day fasting will put you in a fasting state, you will have energy but it's a different kind of energy fueled by increased cortisol levels. To recover optimally after training you want carbs/sugar because the sugar spike crashes the cortisol levels so the body can exist fight or flight mode and go into recovery & rest mode. We dont have teeth to easily crack open 1000s of nuts. We dont have a biology designed for hunting animals. Before we were able to create tools we did not have much hope for eating high amounts of protein, we were simply not designed to gather those foods. We were designed to walk around gathering sweet fruits all day. Moving into less forgiving terrain forced us to become smarter to survive but for the longest time we thrived off of high sugar plant foods. We have a craving for sugar for a reason, it is natural so why bother surpressing it. I ate a high protein omnivore diet for 1 1/2 years while training and I believe it was a big part of why I became sick. For the past few months I have been battling a myriad of symptoms that I had acquired on what I used to believe was a healthy diet. Now I believe sugar deficiency is one major cause of a bunch of illness and mental suffering. Most people I know try to restrict sugar intake and most people I know rely on caffeine or other stimulants(chocolate, weed) to cope with the lack of energy. I am currently eating less than 10g of fat, no oils. Whole food plant based with a heavy emphasis on fruits, rice, potatoes, sugar. Fat + sugar combined leads to insulin resistance, diabetes type 2. So if you want to try something similar it's important to know that just upping your sugar/carb intake can be bad if you don't cut down the fats big time. If you want to look into this further I recommend the Youtuber Durianrider. I am on his protocol currently and the benefits are undeniable, even though I'm just a couple of weeks in still. I will write more here later.

Manchester by the Sea is too good for its own good! Warning, spoiler:

Good luck! Coming from someone who has quit daily heavy weed use twice my best tips for you is to eat a lot of carbohydrate rich foods like fruits and rice/potatoes so you get blood sugar spikes that will help lower your cortisol levels, as well as help your body make more dopamine. And cutting down on fat radically/excluding oils as this will improve your body's ability to use sugar/carbs. Your body is going to go through a period of lower dopamine so you should distract yourself with other activities that give you that dopamine that are healthy. Going on walks or light excercise like yoga or jogging will help you in multiple ways. It will give you a release of feel good chemicals that help compensate for the temporary dopamine deficiency. It will also help flush out your lymphatic system, getting rid of detox waste products. Drinking sufficient water will help your kidneys run clean, aim for close to clear or clear pee every 2-3 hours. If you have a dry mouth, drink more water. You can experience dehydration symptoms especially in the beginning. Expect withdrawal symptoms to get better progressively but they might last for a few weeks. It could take 3 months before you start to feel normal again if you have mental cravings starting out. But your symptoms will likely improve in big increments from the 4 week mark onwards.

This thread is interesting to me because I have suffered allergy symptoms for a long while similar to what you're describing. Stuffed nose, especially when waking up, takes a while before I can breathe through my nose after waking up. I also usually have bloodshot eyes when I wake up. I did experience intense chest pain at the end of summer/beginning of autumn but that's gone now. I changed up my diet recently and am 100% vegan right now again and eat extremely low fat and this did ease my symptoms somewhat but they're still present. I'm going to follow this thread and see if you get to the root of your problem. I suspect my own issues could be related to either mold or dust mite allergy.

Are you going to make a toplist with ratings at some point?

Right now I'm trying a high carb vegan 90/5/5 diet for a few weeks. I'm almost 2 weeks in I believe and it's feeling good so far. Breakfast: 8 bananas or other sweet fruit(strawberries, oranges, melon etc) + 8 tablespoons of white sugar Lunch: Fruit juice + sugar Dinner: White rice, as much as I can eat. Sometimes I add some steamed broccoli and salt. Somtimes I switch it up and eat white pasta with oil free tomato sauce for dinner or some low fat cereal like weetabix or cornflakes with sugar, almond milk and berries. Kind of excited to see how this diet will affect me moving forwards

The solos in this one are so amazing.. Piano & Sax solos of part 2 & 3 are just.. mindblowing

Frank Gambale was a real monster back then! 5:22 onwards from Holdsworth though.. my god! So cool You might enjoy this "Thrill Minute" from the same album is also sweet.

Love to see it!

I don't think so, maybe a little. I don't really have many urges right now though. But it feels different than when I started in November. But around the start of week 2 I started experiencing a certain 'dullness' or mild depression if you will. I think that was the flatline, basically the brain wanting dopamine, I'm guessing. I think I'm neither at square one nor at a flatline. Just a lot less sexual thoughts & urges than I had in the beginning, but feeling better than during the week 2-3 flatline I experienced.

I failed on the 19th. I experienced some discomfort down there and I figured my body was not adapted to go further without negative health impact yet so I stopped it there. But it was going well until then, I think I was experiencing the flatline the last week or so. I am going to try to rejoin the challenge til the end of the month now, so while I didn't succeed NNN atleast it'll be only one occasion in a month which is far less than my usual habit, and I didn't turn to porn. Psychologically I liked the effect of especially abstaining for 1 - 2 weeks. The flatline is not as pleasent psychologically. I think I'm going to aim for about once every 1 1/2 to every 2 weeks from december onwards and see how that works for a while. I'm still abstaining from porn entirely and not planning to return to porn for a few months.

I see, too bad. I loved Cinema Paradiso but: I have not seen any of Lars von Trier's works as of yet. But I have been interested in watching Dancer in the Dark for over a year so I'm going to start with that one. I'm aware he mostly makes dark movies, which I'm a fan of in general. I'm a big fan of David Lynch for example.

Did you make a thread on Dancer in the Dark? I'm gonna watch that one next as I love Björk, curious to hear your thoughts on it. And also, when are you gonna get real and watch Cinema Paradiso

Love this one, I can recommend his album The Rainbow Goblins if you haven't checked that one out yet!

I'm not sure where to place this topic but I was wondering if there's any possibility of implementing a spoiler tag function on the forums. This could be useful in several situations. Now that the Off-Topic subforum is added more threads are being created about movies, games, books, music and other media. I think it would be useful to have a spoiler tag function to be able to reference and discuss specific things in said mediums without spoiling them for people who don't want to be spoiled. This would be very useful for movie reviews, book reviews, etc. so that the content in movies & books can be discussed properly. If you don't want this function to be available on the entire forum maybe it could be possible to make the function exist only in the Off-Topic and Book Review subforums. What are your thoughts on this?

Keep belitteling people trying to challenge and improve themselves, it's an admirable trait.