Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

To anyone good with pc building, is there anything I should change for better?

Son wants a tower for Christmas and trying to see what best imaginable build would cost to start saving for.

His big weakness now with laptop gaming is always running out of room, that’s why it has 20 TB built in

That’s very good news. You might add a good 5-10 years on your lifespan with these efforts.

And I can’t judge seeing as I actively crave Diet Coke ever since getting addicted to it as a kid.

I know it's tough, but I did this years ago and it's one of the best things I've done for my health. Cutting refined sugar entirely is a LOT harder (doable but hard to sustain), but cutting your soda intake to 0 will reduce your sugar intake dramatically and I found I slept better, felt better, was less irritable, had more energy, and my appetite was easier to manage.

I also found that they just don't taste good. Most of the off the shelf sodas taste kinda shitty when you stop drinking them. The smaller companies are a little bit of a different story and although I rarely drink any of those (MAYBE one a year if that), Coke/Mt Dew/Pepsi/etc just take shitty to me. I realized a lot of heavily processed, sugary things like this just aren't good when you stop eating them then try again. I think I was just conditioned to consuming them and never knew any different.

It's a tough hill to climb for sure, but you are talking a week out of your life if that before you adapt and start feeling better. You'll feel like ***for a day or two at least, but you will find you don't crave it after a while. You can always return to it if you end up finding it doesn't help, but in my case at least it was a huge change in my quality of life. You definitely hit a point where it becomes easier to just drink water or something else, then you never really think about drinking soda again.

I also had to cut caffeine out due to my arrhythmia issues, so I can't drink coffee anymore, but YMMV on that.

I thought cutting sodiepop would be impossible.

It really wasn't, the only hard part was water was really difficult to start drinking. Getting into primarily water was incredibly harder than just cutting out pop. (water filter probably wouldve help but it wasn't normalized yet, most bottled water is terribad!)

I haven't had a soda since winter 2004. When you break the habit, they become disgusting.

Personally I never considered drinking coke something bad for my health, but considered it bad for my weight.

Time and time I try to reduce my intake of it to control my fattening.

Currently, I think Im in the lowest consumption of it in my life: back then I used to drink like 1l per day, early this year I limited myself to 2 cups per day, and currently Im at 2 cups per week or lower.

TBF, I dont think my life got any better. My weight also doesnt seems to respond linearly with the reduction of drinks: its not because I expressively cut out coke that my weight suddenly dropped. No at all.

Drinking it or no, I feel it doesnt actually affect my body fat.

The explanation for that probably is because most of my fat is concentrated around my waist. That region is notoriously known for being hard to burn. You can only burn fat around the waist with extensive exercises. So much that the body favors burning muscle before burning the side fat.

And thats kinda my place. I do want to reduce my fat waist, but its not something I will manage only by cutting out coke.

Given it also doesnt feel like providing any major benefit in my life, I slowly have been adding little by little coke just for stress relieve in a hard work day.

As I never feel bad drinking coke, I also never had the psychological benefit of "cutting off coke".

The idea is to cut sugar, but you never realize sugar is in LITERALLY everything.

It's not just pop you quit to cause change, it's the sugar IN the pop. That is damn near impossible. Look at the sugar content in damn near anything, it's inescapable.

I just found out there are sodas that contains fiber. Olipop is one. No idea what they taste like.

It's really hard to cut refined sugar out entirely.

I did it for about 9 months in 2019 and it made a huge difference in how I felt, even considering at that point I didn't drink soda. Same effects I mentioned above. These were all a surprise to me, I mainly did it to see if it helped my neuropathy issues, which it didn't much, but the effect on my sleep was the most pronounced to me.

It's just hard to sustain it. It's in everything, plus the cost of groceries has gone up so high that stuff that is high enough quality to not depend on being injected with a ton of sugar is unsustainably expensive. Sugar and salt are easy ways of making shitty food taste better, along with making it cheaper, so it's in everything. Unless you eat just meat and vegetables, it's very difficult to remove it entirely. It was expensive and a lot of work, so I'm in a place now where I've cut down my consumption as much as practically possible but not down to 0 again.

One thing that helped me initially when I was drinking a lot of soda was seeing something like the image above. I went to a dentist office for a cleaning and they had measuring cups filled with the amount of sugar per item. When you visualize the quantity of sugar in those drinks, it became a lot easier for me to realize how much I was consuming that just wasn't necessary. There's no world where that quantity of refined sugar isn't damaging to your health if you are consuming it as regularly as some do.

You also realize there are much better things to eat with that much sugar in them. If I'm gonna indulge in something with that sugar content, locally made baked goods taste far better to me than anything made by soda manufacturers and it's easier to manage since it isn't always available everywhere.

I bought a basic *** bread maker so it's been great just to throw some flour and water and etc together to make a quick loaf overnight and wake up to fresh bread with no crazy additives and be slightly freer of that system. I have to freeze it upon slicing it since zero preservatives but the tastiest toast and jam ever for breakfests.

So cheap and so quick, so if one has access to a store with flour, one can do this too np.

I've almost completely cut out refined sugars. I always have oats with whole milk and protein powder for breakfast (little bit of sucralose in the powder unfortunately). Lunch and dinner are meal prepped a few days at a time using some combination of meat, vegetables, basic spices. I don't use any prepackaged sauces or ingredients with my meal prep, and I stick to water all day. Still have a iffy relationship with caffeine, and drink an energy drink most mornings(more sucralose). Been able to cut that for a month or two at a time, but always comes back if I have a busy week and tends to stay around for a while.

I make an exception once a week to either go out to dinner, cook a nice dinner at home with my gf, or if we have a social event to go to. I don't worry much about what's in that meal, so frequently there is probably some form of sugar or heavily processed material in it.

Anyway, long story short, my energy levels are much higher and more consistent. 3 years ago, I'd struggle with walking a few miles. When I traveled to japan last spring, I had no issues with 10 mile+ days. I run 3 miles(at a 10min/mile pace) on the elliptical w/ high resistance every day, and usually add in some yard work and walking to go with it if weather permits.

Nothing the earlier posts haven't covered, just another testimonial that inconsistent and unhealthy eating habits have a real and measurable effect on how you feel day to day. If you've been in that habit for a long time, you should try to work on improvement. You'd be amazed how much better you feel, we're not just a vegetable cult or anything(which is definitely how I would've viewed this sort of advice prior to actually doing it).

That effort does go a long way for sure; Any time I cut back on sugar consumption it was only positives attached.

Sunday mornings I tend to drink one too, since it's the roughest day of the week working all night then working all day at a busy day job. The sugar free ones aftertastes though man, *shudders*

Missed this last page, but I lost 70 lbs without ozempic. I can afford it. I tend to agree with Nynja here. People on ozempic might lose weight, but they're not improving the quality of food they are eating, they're just eating less of it. Maybe it's better than remaining fat, but if you eat nutrient dense food instead of empty oils, you'll be full anyway.

Ozempic isn't some cheat code. It's a halfassed substitute for the real thing, and even if you are okay with staying on it forever and there are no side effects, you won't be anywhere near as healthy as someone who loses the weight by eating better instead of just eating less. Those are some pretty big "if"s too, most substances that replace or alter your body's signaling mechanisms eventually result in the original signaling mechanism performing less effectively.

I'm sure it will give everyone cancer etc, but we'll just say "what doesn't" and "yes it's worth it" anyway.

Like I said in the post, the part that's missing. It's just cocaine but maybe safer and legal. Side effects be damned, ain't no one care.

"it gives you cancer"

"Ok then can you make it cheaper? I'm not going to not take it" Cancer will just make you lose even more weight. Talk about a win/win.

My apartment complex sent out an email today that they were going to reduce their water consumption, so we could expect to see a lot of dead grass. Texas is running out of water, especially to the south. Its so hot and dry down there that people are just abandoning their farms and leaving. But no one expects the Republicans to do anything about it. It's not like water is important.

NB: Not trying to divulge into politics, but guy literally closed his post with “republicans bad!”

Were you born in TX? If not, why stay in the republican state you say is so terrible and problematic, just uproot again and move to a democrat run state?

My entire family lives in Texas, and I enjoy living in Austin. But the Republicans in the last 4 years have been so incompetent its crazy. They control the state House, yet they impeached their own Speaker. Then their own Attorney General. When those efforts narrowly failed in the Senate they control, they have just been boycotting each other's bills so nothing gets passed. There was no such thing as a lame duck supermajority until the Texas Republicans brought it into being. All you can do is laugh.

I bought a car in Austin a few weeks ago and drove it home, stepping off the airplane was like walking into a running hairdryer. I can't imagine living there unless I absolutely had to.

(I hate hot weather and the sun)

This isn't really a Republican problem as much as it is a gerymandering problem.

You can't vote them out. They don't need to listen or even care. There are Republican supermajority states where they do need to listen because their supermajority is not a stranglehold.

James Earl Jones died. :(

Also stop with the politics already.

Was typing that Vyre....

But yeah... what a legend - RIP

RIP.

My computer battery went down like 80% in 30mins

James earl jones was keeping it efficient.

Not what I had in mind but tonight gonna be pizza

With a nice coke in cheers for you, you fattsos

I personally dont think im addicted to coffee, but today i didnt drink a cup before 8am.

I was feeling so slugish before i decided to drink the first one.

Impressive the effect of waking up the coffee gives

Wow Sony, $700 for the PS5 Pro that we don't even need? Digital only, no less. I love my PS5, but no. They are releasing MVC2 collection this week for PS4, that says it all. It's not time for a mid-generation upgrade, and it will never be time to spend that much money on any console.

Stop watching hi definition porn with ray tracing.

Pass