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Comment by alexfromapex | Hacker News Reader

I was in bad health, i.e. raised adiposity (which is a beautiful euphemism, I might add), for a while and it's because I spent so much time working to pay my bills. I had almost no time to exercise. That is especially true when I spent my free time with friends or working on hobbies. The additional stress of work and lack of time drove me to drinking which messed up my liver (was diagnosed fatty liver) and added to my bad fat metabolism. Recently, I've been taking a break from working and have had time every day to go running and go to the gym twice a week and I've dropped 7 pounds in 2 months and feel way healthier.

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For me it was kids. Love them, but they're sleep deprivation and stress 24/7. Better now that they're older but the weight has been hard to lose.

If only there was a magical food that gave you energy, satiated hunger, tasted like pepperoni pizza, and had no calories.

Life's a bitch.

I imagine this affects many parents. I would love to know how many parents successfully manage this (or, perhaps, success is simply defined as raising your kids well)?

People seem to have all sorts of problems from having kids. Some have no problem with weight gain but their marriage falls apart. I guess I'm glad I got what I got instead of that.

You absolutely need to prioritize getting 30-60 mins of exercise at least 5 times per week. Block out time on your work calendar if you have to. The cognitive / health / mood benefits will make up for the lost time.

A home gym setup will save you the 30-40 mins to and from the gym. Barring space for any equipment / weights some exercise bands and a yoga mat will do. App based fitness classes such as AppleFitness+ also make it much much easier to program your workouts.

Turn your chores into exercise. I get miles per week sweeping and mopping.

The "successful" parents become very good at time management and focus. IMO, it's our super power.

You're working against millions of years of evolution. If a cave man is given the options of 4 foods, the cave man who eats the most calorifically dense food is more likely to live and have energy through the next lean time than the cave man who eats the leaves. It sucks but that's just how we're evolved and it's shockingly hard to "trick" those sense with fake sugar etc.

I'm sure you know this, but today one must learn to make smart choices in the face of modern foods which are readily available. I refrain from sugar in my diet and to me citric acid (Vitamin C powder) and sometimes vinegar hot sauce taste sweet.

Fruit, a rare treat, tastes like candy.

It depends on what you've become accustomed to eating.

Many hot peppers actually have a good bit of sugar in them. I was making some Tabasco sauce I'm the fall and the bees were very interested in it. I also grew some cayenne peppers that didn't have any heat and they were quite sweet.

Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, not citric acid, though both are ubiquitous in citrus fruit.

Some people do seem to make it work though, going for a run with the baby (Thule strollers etc) or later on together with the kids. It's awesome to see and it still gives me hope but I have the feeling that some kids are just much easier to handle from the moment they are born. Nothing to be mad about. Just something to accept while celebrating the absolute wonder of them being with you including your survival of yet another day (without eating yet another cookie).

Every bit of parenting advice ever formulated sounds utterly deranged to 20% of parents. Have you never met a child? They think.

Running/walking with baby is advice I've never seen fail.

We're hunter/gatherers.

Babies are designed to shut up and be happy when we're walking around with them and jiggling them. That's a survival feature.

Hahahaha. I would have had so many idyllic hikes if this was true of my kid.

Strollers sometimes worked, but they never lasted more than 5 minutes in a papoose/backpack type deal.

Same here unfortunately. Strollers, carriers, carrying-without-carriers. All ending in tantrums very soon.

I'm relieved to hear this is not a unique problem. I was contemplating going back to the stork with a defective baby.

Ha. Babies absolutely do not always shut up and be happy walking/jogging/whatever.

I assume you had the best intentions with this comment (it does probably apply to a lot of children) but it also is a top contender for that “HN comment of the day” ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKmDGWv9gRk

;-)

I did that a lot with the first child. Was hard to do with two (jogging double strollers are a thing, but bulky and best with twins or similar aged kids).

When we had a third, I took my first (who was 6.5 years old) on bike rides with the youngest in the stroller. Worked ok until but a lot harder to juggle.

Pandemic helped but now that we are going back to the office (twice a week for now), morning exercise is the first thing to go (home cooked meals a close second).

Totally hear you. We just added kids 3 & 4 in the fall (twins! Yay!) and so far I’m on paternity leave and just managing a bit of a workout (push-ups, squats, etc) but I have this feeling it’s going to be really hard to balance almost anything against full time employment. I may just end up taking a 30 minute bite out of my work day and seeing how my performance reviews fair.

A salad will do it except the tasting like a pizza part. Pretty damn good compromise.

Only problem is, to make a salad taste good most people add in chicken, bacon bits, cheese, egg, mayonnaise, heavy dressings and hey presto, you've got 1000 calories in there.

Only 1000? Must be a breakfast salad!

The "Real Men of Genius" advertising series from the late 90s touched on this very well with their "Mr. Giant Taco Salad Inventor" ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXWq2AVlrsY

Real Men of Genius still stands as the greatest ad series of all time. Surely created by a real man of genius.

The taste is a pretty important part.

It's a funny thing. The more important you think it is, the more important it becomes. If you allow yourself to think, maybe everything doesn't need to taste decadent and delicious, and that maybe a neutral green salad can taste fresh and palatable and that's good enough, you'll find it to become true.

In theory you're not wrong, of course, but in practice "just eat salad instead of a pizza" is so simplified it's not even useful. And I can't even comprehend what's the "damn good compromise" you referred to.

You can eliminate the daily cravings with this change of habits, but you can't change the caveman psychological reaction to eating a pizza. It will always taste much better and yield way more dopamine than a green salad ever will. Much like an ex-smoker and cigarettes.

Unfortunately most people have trouble to convincing themselves that the yellow crayon tasted of bananas when they're forced to scrape wax from their teeth.

I'm not certain what value "just pretend it tastes good" has here. This surely doesnt work long term?

Intermittent fasting works for me, one coffee in the morning, lots of water, tons of dinner. Always on my feet, standing desk, cleaning constantly:)

My struggle w/ an 18 month old is that the house is always full of 1/3 eaten plates of food, and I don't want to throw out 2/3 of a bowl of oatmeal or 2/3 of a little burrito...

I've been doing intermittent fasting and only garbage collect in the evenings, but the temptations are high when you WFH.

Once the kiddo gets older and starts going to preschool or kindergarten, you're gonna have to be okay with throwing out some half eaten kids food. That's the fastest way for me to get sick (garbage collecting my kids' dinner trays).

Like the parent comment I also have been doing garbage collection from the plate and slimming my own servings in anticipation. It seems to have worked, but now that my toddler is almost 4 I've noticed that my rate of stomach bugs has increased to levels I've never experienced. I wonder if this is the reason... I hate throwing away food so, so much.

Get used to throwing out food that you shouldn't eat.

> gave you energy [...] and had no calories.

What does this even mean :-D

one burns the same number of calories running as walking

Running burns them in less time though.

Dude.

Buy caulipower brand pizza (either the pepperoni pizza or the cheese and add your own slice two of pepperoni.

Let thaw for 20 min.

Bake at 425 for 9 min.

Checks all the above.

If you don't mind me asking, how much did you have to drink to get fatty liver? What symptom did you have that made you get yourself checked?

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