Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Agree regarding gaslighting. Segues into a current topic on @urgud's journal, but bosses are always trying to get workers to accept boss' concerns as more important than their own. No, buddy. Listen, I understand that, to you, the job is more important than my life. But don't try to get me to change...

I've thought of it in terms of "the rise of the middle class". People in poverty really have no options. Add better education, better health, better communication systems to share knowledge and experience, better legal rights/protections and what you end up having is a worker class better ...

I wanted to address @urgud and @delay from the employee "assert your boundary and fuck the man" perspective and @mathiverse and @fox from the employer / how it really works perspective. Yes the employee can assert their boundaries and just say "I'm going part time." In many situa...

I do not have a good answer here either. While it does probably have something to do with managing different wheaton levels, values and personalities, I think the easiest answer is framing it in the realm of authority and responsibility. If each partner has their own pool of money over which they ha...

Drywall sucks, second only to roofing. Nice job!

I agree that approaching options from the cheapest / lowest hanging fruit side is the way to go. Nutrition, exercise and sleep are the foundational pillars of physical health. But if adjusting those don't work, I'm glad to have modern medicine and the optionality that goes along with it. The emotion...

Cholesterol numbers aren't necessarily reflective of either diet or body composition. I have a very skinny friend who has never been obese who has had cholesterol readings in the 400s since his 20s and has taken medication for decades. No shame in managing issues with the available tools.

Given the other deleterious effects of diarrhea, it doesn't seem to be a positive-value long-term strategy. Edit: and to the extent of your body having more choices, it does. Hormones affecting hunger levels, activity levels, stress levels, etc., all contribute to weight and health in general. But y...

Thanks for your reply. Imagine two situations. First case: you eat sugary cookies, and your intestines work on them for a few days. Second case: you eat sugary cookies and your body removes them as quickly as it can in the form of diarrhea. How would the law of conservation of calories hold in thes...

Second the motion for a sauna. Pretty easy build too, if you want to go rustic (no plumbing, no electricity). I built a wood-fired sauna in my backyard for maybe 5 grand all in?

Ah, interesting. Yes, need to noodle on how best to structure this for me. With work and family stressors and travel and school vacation schedules and all the rest, it's really hard to get into a consistent groove. So far, all I know I want to do is to make sure I don't eat when I feel "not hun...

Thanks, @2b1s. Agree there's so many intricacies. I'm just now starting to sort through the bullshit, so my observations are really limited to just a normal, relatively healthy guy who's a bit pudgy and kinda tired of trying to figure out how to not be so pudgy, and my a-ha moment borders on "w...

Agreed. I'm not suggesting that counting calories as a method works for the various vagaries you noted, in addition to labels just plain not being accurate. It's just been helpful for me to focus on the specifics of the inputs into the calories in (or useful calories absorbed, if you prefer) side of...

I dunno. It's not a method of weight loss, it's just a fact of thermodynamics. I see the statement of "if calories in > calories out, you will gain weight, and vice versa" is just a restatement of the laws of physics as applied to "living organisms". Your body can't choose to ign...

Fair enough. But to carry the analogy a bit further, what is one optimizing? And does it always (through time) have to be the same thing? And would it be the same thing (at all times) for every person? So, to the extent you are optimizing weight loss (or FI) in your "multi-legged physical (or f...

I suppose it's time for an update. The winter was brutal on the mind, following the 2023 stresses mentioned above. I did end up surviving 3 rounds of layoffs. I ended up spending a lot of money to get gym memberships to have somewhere to go since I work at home full time. Cheaper than therapy. I fee...

I like that. Thanks, Henry.

@jp, maybe to put a finer point on it: To me, "change" is a big or drastic change (difference in kind?) while perhaps we could use "adjustment" or "growth" to be a small, incremental change (difference in degree?). I change from being an atheist to being theistic. I gro...

I used to focus on the negative stuff too (preppers excel at that lol), but now I find I make the greatest strides/leaps forward when building upon previous successes. I draw the most energy from my wins as it were; negative energy only gets me so far. I don't need to feel dissatisfied to have the ...

Sorry. Catching up here, so this is not responsive to the latest. I've always thought of "FI leading to SI" or "dropping out" as a first world privilege. You can see it in the data of household density (poor = higher, probably multi-generational; rich = low, probably limited to o...