I was underweight most of my life, not severely, but enough where I'd get comments. I hated summer because I hated my skinny arms being exposed. Often avoided wearing shorts even in the heat. Almost never went swimming or to the beach. People don't say "wow you're a fat fuck" to people they know but they WILL comment on how skinny you are.
I started lifting, put on 25 lbs so far. I look better, have more energy, and more confidence in my body. Fewer random aches and pains. My mood has improved (turns out not eating can worsen anxiety and make you tired and depressed). While bulking I've paid attention finally to what foods digest well or not and so eating has become self-care rather than a chore. I've had to replace my entire wardrobe except shoes and hats so I took the time to overhaul my look. I don't dress flashy now but I dress a lot less like an ignoreable wallflower and more in shit I like. I get more positive attention from hot people and I'm not even super jacked yet, I just went from skinny to normal.
I like to read a fun or interesting book before bed too, in order to wind down. It's good to have a bedtime routine that is calming. Some yoga, low light, deep breathing, etc. Sleep hygiene.
Boring books work great for when I'm up because of anxiety or nightmares and want to fall back asleep.
Basically, the thought is that you want to keep the bed for sleeping (and sex). If you're in there awake for a while it's telling your brain that the bed is an awake space and breaks the association bed=sleep. So if I'm gonna be awake for 15 minutes or more anyway I get out, get in my chair, flip through the boring book until I'm calmer.
I love finding ephemera in books. My favourite are bus tickets and receipts. Imagine the ordinary life of whoever bought a 60c loaf of bread and used the receipt as a bookmark.
I remember somewhere that nomadic people (hunter-gatherers) would let their kids play with machetes. They would keep a close watch but not stop them. Kids would grow up with many scars but also would learn how to handle machetes safely.
If you play by the rules while your enemy doesn't, you'll be destroyed. Machiavelli said as much. So USA's traditional allies have to start playing dirty to survive.
Every macronutrient has to have its day in the sun, I guess. Maybe all the seed-oil-saturated-fat-tallow-is-good nonsense is preparing the ground for a new diet where 70% of your calories come from fats?
There's a lot of obsession over protein, but most people don't need a lot. 50g per day is a common recommendation, and it's very easy to get that much without focusing on "protein source" foods. If you're an athlete and especially putting on muscle then you need lots more. I have seen vegan bodybuilders out there but I suspect a lot of them build most of their muscle on a meat-heavy diet and then went vegan later.
I suspect a lot of the high-protein discourse and anti-soy nonsense comes from animal agriculture lobby groups (and the seed oil bullshit). High protein milk?? Just a way to charge 2x for milk which is already high in protein. Greek yogurt? Look at the ingredients, it's yogurt with added whey protein - just buy Balkan yogurt for half the price and add your own protein powder. Your mixed nuts are high in protein? Yeah no shit, and potatoes are gluten-free and water has no trans fats.
And hopefully HUR can whack him if he gets too successful.
A foreign power propping up a militant to destabilize their enemy can work, or have massive unintended consequences. Refer to Lenin being sent to Tsarist Russia on a sealed train.
New years' resolutions don't really work for 2 reasons:
You're in survival mode so a year-long project is impossible to keep up, you're living from one day to the next or paycheque-to-paycheque.
Or,
You're doing well enough to think of long time horizons. Likely then you have many medium- to long-term goals on the go, and you don't have to start them in the new year.
I find myself luckily in the latter case. I'll take the new year as a chance to evaluate where I am with my goals and adjust priorities, if needed.
Fitness is my slow hobby. Nobody is gonna get swole in 30 days. Not even in 3 years. The results pile up though. It's like gardening but for my body. I started with an arid wasteland and it's slowly blooming.
Any program I do must have those. Beyond that, isolation exercises as needed. I'm adding shoulders and arms as I want big ass arms.
This year I mostly did 3x a week full body. Now I'm gonna change to Upper, Shoulders/Arms, Lower. More ShArms to bro out, less leg frequency as they're growing faster than everything else.
Eat in a caloric deficit. You will need to weigh your food and track calories, at least for a while.
Weigh yourself and see if the weight is going in the right direction and not losing too fast either. Adjust calories as needed.
It's way harder than just these steps but this is the foundation. Personally I found the food weighing and calorie counting massively stressful but I got a good sense of how much to eat from doing it from a few weeks. Now I check the scale and log weight and make sure it's going the way I want it.
Also talk to a therapist. I needed one to get over certain mental barriers and to re-evaluate my relationship to food and my body image.
That's awesome! People can put on muscle at any age. At some point there's no way you could get massive but you can still benefit from it.