Thank you for the kind message. It is good to hear that it is possible to have it great even after a miscarriage. I have had two miscarriages and two biochemical pregnancies. I did not really have time tomprocess this yet, as I had to continue treatment as my fertility is further declining due to my age. I think that might be part of the emotions as well.

It is difficult for me to not wager my personal happiness on it. I have a small nephew and when I take care of him, it just makes me very happy. It makes me feel like I would be as happy or even happier with my own child. Also, I was abused as a child and I feel that I did not have parents that really loved me. It feel unfair that I am not able to experience the mother/child bond from the perspectives of a child as well as that of a motger.

I also tried to take care of my younger siblings when I was a child. I was able to provide them with some of the emotional support my parents failed to provide, but because I was too young myself I always felt like I was not able to give them what they need. I am an adult now and I feel like I am capable now of providing children with a safe and warm environment. And I feel like I have all this love to give, but there is no child to give it to. I do not know where to put it.

I don’t know. Having a child will not fix all of this and a child does not exist to fix this or to make me happy. However, it could have been an area of my life that could have been beautiful and where I might have been able to give something and be valuable. And instead, this also does not work out and is another thing that goes on the pile of things that have failed in my life.

I agree that staking my life’s success on it is not a good idea. But I am not sure what else I have left. I am trying to become a writer and I am writing down all my experiences from my youth and with my sister who passed away and my fertility treatments, and so on. Maybe it can help some people who experience the same things. I think that might be fulfilling maybe and a way to create something positive out of the things that feel negative now.

Sad and empty. I love kids. I had fertility treatments for years, but that did not work out. I will start IVF again in a couple of days. Hopefully it will work this time. It is one of my last chances.

I would like to adopt or have foster kids. However, I suffer from PTSD and in my country it is very difficult to adopt or foster if you have a background with mental illness. Even though my psychologist and the people in my environment all say that they think I would be able to do it and my partner does not have any mental illness, my chances are very low.

To be honest, looking any further than the next IVF makes me panic. I do not know how to live with not having kids and how to deal with that. I had a lot of bad stuff happen to me. Having children would be something I believe would have made me very happy. It feels like I failed at life. However, I just turned 40, so I know I need to give up at some point.

I have hyperphantasia according to these kinds of tests (although I am not sure how accurate they are). In any case, the ball was white with a green glow it was smooth and looked like plastic but no seams where the halves were joined, male, like a large blue bird I saw in a cartoon, a bit larger than a baseball, the table was a very long rectangle shape. It was also white. The ball was pushed very hard from one end of the table to the other and then it bounced on the wall, the floor and the ceiling. The room was a bit small, with only a very small window rectangular window. It was black behind the window. The room was also rectangle shaped, with concrete grey walls. It was a bit dark, but there was some artificial light from a lamp. The bird acted very cartoonish when pushing the ball. I think that is all.

( ͡°❥ ͡°)

Give

The oldest church was built around 1200, on the remains of an older church from the 7th century and you can go below ground to view those. We also have some Roman ruins from a castellum build around the year 47 you can also go and view.

Edit: The castellum is gone, but there are just some walls and stones.

This is very scary.

Very solid argumentation…

It is not. I am not saying people should not eat healthy or should not try to lose weight. I am just saying that pushing the oversimplification that for everyone it is just calories in vs calories out and that it is only about willpower is not correct. People should get the right help with losing weight and the factors that cause the weight gain or makes people not losing the weight should be addressed.

There is lots of scientific work on this. I copied some links from another comment I made.

For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

If you disagree, please provide some substantiation. I would be interested in reading it.

Thanks! I think you are describing what a lot of people experience. Weight loss is highly complex and by oversimplifying it, lots of people do not get the help they need and are made to feel bad about themselves.

There is actually quite some scientific work supporting what I am saying. For example, this is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

The presence of beliefs and perceptions to support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.

I think for most people it is not the best advice. In most cases, there are many other factors at play than just willpower and “calories in vs calories out”. Obesity should be viewed and treated more like a disease, because it is. If you are interested, I can link you some interesting papers on this.

My experience is that if you spend time on providing sources, people usually are not interested in them and will not change their mind anyway. So I do not feel like it is worth the effort in every discussion. However, if you are interested in the work on this topic that substantiate my claims, then I am very glad to provide some links to some interesting articles.

This is an article in Journal of Obesity. It discusses the role of willpower and provides an overview of some of the research on other factors that affect whether people lose weight, such as metabolic compensation.

This is another interesting paper in the Irish Journal of Medical Science on patient’s view on obesity as a disease. I think the conclusion of this study aligns well with some of my claims:

In conclusion many people with obesity who agree obesity is a disease appear to have an imperfect understanding of the causes and treatment options. The presence of beliefs and perceptions that support the narrative that obesity is a choice, that choosing to eat less and move more effectively treats the disease and willpower is a principle determinant of weight loss maintenance may negatively impact long-term treatment. A belief that obesity is a choice will see prevention and treatment strategies continually focus on education regarding eating less and moving more, which may be suboptimal. Therefore, the narrative must change and align with the science regarding the biology of obesity as a disease.

[This] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521000029) paper on weight regain also claims that it is not just about compliance with a diet, but that, amongst others, metabolic adaptation and changed appetite play an important role as well.

I am personally quite interested in work on obesity due to eating disorders. The reason for this is that I suffered from an eating disorder causing obesity for most of my life (fortunately, I do not have the disorder anymore). The constant pressure to just eat less and getting blamed if you fail, severely increased my eating disorder and I saw the same thing happen to others with similar issues. I know that this is anecdotal and not everyone that is obese has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is the same. However, there is some limited evidence that weight neutral treatment of binge eating disorder has better outcomes. This and treatment for my CPTSD is exactly what worked for me.

I hope that this provides you with enough evidence to at least take the things I was saying into consideration. Please let me know if you find this useful. I have a lot more to share if you are interested.

Like I said, that is an oversimplification. There are many other factors that play a role, like the body working against the weight loss and lowering metabolism and increasing appetite, as I already discussed. There are also psychological factors and environmental factors that can have a big impact on weight loss.

Just ignoring those makes losing weight more difficult and means you have to do it entirely based on willpower. If you are one of those people for which these other factors play a big role it becomes very difficult to keep the weight off in the long term just based on willpower. This can be the case, for example, if you have an eating disorder, very high stress, untreated medical conditions (e.g. hypothyroidism), not enough money to buy healthy food, problems with the body signaling hunger or fullness, unsolved emotional issues, and so on.

Of course there are some people who just eat too much and who can just lose the weight easily by eating less. However, especially for people who are very overweight, these factors will play a role. They hear they should just eat less all the time and if they fail they are made to feel like a failure themselves and as if they have a lack of willpower. This is not the case. For them losing the weight is more difficult and the underlying issues should be addressed. You cannot just generalise like that and apply what works for you to everyone else.

Edit: please find sources for my claims in my comment below.

Thanks for saying this. I think the idea that it is just willpower causes so much unnecessary suffering. As someone suffering from an eating disorder and thyroid disease, I was getting a bit down reading all the “it’s just calories in vs calories out” remarks. It is so much more complicated than that.

It is not as simple as just calories in vs calories out. Your body has a setting point for what weight it thinks it should be. Once you are overweight, your setting point will be higher and your body wants to get back to that higher weight. It will start working actively against you. This might mean your appetite will increase and your metabolism will slow down. I think that is what you are describing here.

Trying to push yourself to lose more weight despite your body working against you can cause rebound weight gain if you are not able to keep the diet (which might become increasingly difficult due to increasing appetite). The most important thing is to keep a healthy diet that does not reduce your quality of life too much and is doable on the long term, I think. If you are struggling everyday, then it might be better to eat a little bit more and stay on a higher weight a bit longer to ensure that you will maintain the weight loss.

Maybe this is already what you meant. But the phrase “calories in vs calories out” and stating that nothing else matters made me want to respond. I think it is a popular oversimplification that causes a lot of unnecessary suffering for people trying to lose weight.

Eating fruits and vegetables might definitely help and it is in any case very healthy! However, people should not always expect to lose more than 10% of their weight in the long term (over years). This 10% can already provide great benefits for your health, so definitely try to lose that weight if you are overweight.

Often it is said that it is just calories in vs calories out. This is only true up until a certain point. For many people, after losing about 10% of their weight, their body starts to work against more weight loss. Their metabolism starts to slow down and their appetite will increase, making it more difficult to lose weight. It might make it almost impossible to keep on a diet and it might even cause people to gain more weight back than they lost.

The theory behind this is that your body has a set point or settling point for what it thinks your weight should be. When you are overweight, the set point changes to a higher weight. When you lose weight, your body wants to get back to this higher set point. The set point can be changed to a lower weight, but that might take years and years. There also is some limited evidence that building more muscles might help somewhat.

I think it is important to add this to the discussion, as often there is the idea that weight loss is just based on self-control and limiting calorie-intake. While this might play a role, the idea that these are the only factors that determine your weight causes a lot of suffering for people. It might also cause more weight gain in the long term.

So, try to lose about 10% of your weight and if you feel like you are struggling after that, go to a specialised doctor who can help you with losing more weight (doctors without this specialisation are often clueless about weight loss in my experience). In addition, a psychologist might be able to help if your are overeating due to an eating disorder.

Even if you are against abortion and feel your opinion is so important you need to force it upon others, it makes no sense to block this medication. There are many medical reasons for needing it. I needed it twice myself because I was pregnant, but the pregnancy was not vital and my body did not miscarry on its own. I would love to have children, but in those cases there was no unborn life to protect as it would have never become a baby. I was very happy to have access to this medication, because being pregnant for months while wanting a baby and knowing that you will not have a baby is very difficult and confusing psychologically. Taking the medication was difficult as well, but in the end I was glad I did.

(I am not against abortion, I just cannot see why it would be logical to ban this medication even if you are.)

Oh, I did not know that. I have been doing it wrong all these years then. Could have been drinking cocktails on the beach instead of reading all these papers.

I am sorry, but what is wrong with your professor? You were doing exactly what you are supposed to do in a peer review. You should go look for things that are wrong or should be improved and only if the paper can withstand that process, it should be published. Only providing positive comments is really harmful to the scientific process and, in the end, to society.

To be honest, I think I reject more than half of the papers that I review. The rest require major or minor revision. It is not that I have a target or anything for how many I need to reject, it is just that most papers are of such low quality that I cannot do anything else. I think the number of papers I reject is quite normal in my field.

So, not all your comments need to be positive. If there is reason to be positive, you should mention it. And your comments should be constructive and respectful, but definitely not always positive.

In the case you are describing where the authors seem to only have read the titles of the papers, I would definitely reject. This is fraud. You are saying you did a literature study and you did not. So, I would be quite clear about that. I would also be a bit angry that they wasted my time. So, in my opinion, that is how a reviewer should respond in this situation, not with only positive comments.

To be honest, I was thinking about the man who was trying to show me his penis when I was hiking in the woods a couple of weeks ago, when I heard this question. He was white. Actually all men that harassed me were white, thinking about it now.

Racist stereotypes are a real issue and I am not trying to deny that. And if women needed to imagine some hypothetical situation when thinking about dangerous men, you might be right. However, I think you might be underestimating the number of women who have been harassed, or worse. Most women do not need to imagine, they can just remember.