My best friend is a cutter. Now, I don’t know anything about cutting or depression or anything like that but I know cutting is a serious issue.

She started cutting in high school (about five years ago) and she stopped. She went through a lot of crap in high school which made her self-esteem plummet and she suffers from anxiety attacks, and her family has a history of mental conditions. She used to be a gymnist but she stopped gymnastics because of her bad bones in grade nine. And the result of it was bad joints, bones, and large upper arms. The arms is her major problem. Becuase of them, she doesn’t wear short-sleeved shirts, or dresses, or anythign that bares her arms. And her upper arms is where she cuts. I was always friends with her but we became best friends after graduating highschool. That’s when she confided in me her past (she cut, she was a binge eater, was severely depressed and suffered from mental attacks due to her being on improper use of birth control) but she told me that she was over it. And for a little bit, she was.

But last winter, she again, got depressed (she doesnt know what the cause was) and made an attempt at suicide, but backed out at the last minute. Then she went through a feeling okay phase. I spent a good summer with her and we had a lot of fun. By the end of summer though she started feeling “fat” again. I’d just like to say that she is five feet tall and weighs less then 110 pounds and believe me, she is petite. Her arms are muscular though due to gymnastics.

So I told her to come with me to the gym. I’d been going for the last two years consistently and although I didn’t lose a lot of weight (I wasn’t looking to, anyway), the gym makes me feel good about myself. She agreed and got a gym membership. Every week, while we walked home from the gym together, she would say things like “So it’s been 2/3/4 weeks, and I haven’t lost anything. I might as well give up.” But she kept on going.

Then a few months ago she started to tell me that if she didn’t look perfect by the time she was thirty, she would just die. She said she didn’t understand how older people could be “fat” and be okay with themselves. And she said stuff about giving up and why should she bother trying at anything. She would say it jokingly, but it scared me. And then she told me she started cutting. She did it two times in a period of about three months. This was last month, and she hasn’t been cutting since then. I told her that she needs to talk to her psychologist and I’ve told her (the obvious) that cutting is not the solution…And she tells me that since im not a cutter i dont understand what it’s like. She says the cutting she does is not the suicide-type but it’s a release from the pain. She says she would turn to alcohol instead but her father is an alcoholic so she doesnt do it. She tells me that it’s harmless.

And…I just DON’T know what to do. I feel like I should tell her family if it’s life-threatening but her cutting isn’t life-threatening. She’s not suicidal anymore (but she may become, again…), and her cutting is just when she’s feeling down and like she says, her way of “dealing.”

I’m very frusterated and sad when it comes to her because she always says things like “I’m so fat. I need to lose weight.” She won’t go out with other people because she feels self-conscious.

She also is trying to control her binging habits from high school. She mostly has it under control because she is over the severe depression of her past but there are times (like the times she cuts) when she eats and eats. after she eats she gets so angry with herself.

And to top it all off, I don’t know what sickness this is but I KNOW THAT IT IS. She takes supplements and vitamins by the bulk. She says they’re natural but I don’t care. She takes about twenty pills a day and I don’t understand WHY. I’m not sure what her family is thinking. They see the bottles of pills but I’m not sure they really know what she’s doing.

I love her to death. I don’t deal with any of these problems, I’ve always been healthy and I’m an advocate of the gym and it works for me. I’ve tried helping her in the way that I know works for me. She seems okay (emotionally) these days but I’m sure her problems will come back and her cutting and everything else.

Plus her attitude with life and herself is affecting me. I like the way that I am but there are days where I’m bloated and jealous of the girl walking down the street with thin legs and I’ll say it and she’ll look at me and say “yep, you need to lose weight”. The thing is I KNOW i don’t have to lose weight but when your best friend says that you should…It sucks.

Actually, just yesterday, we worked out for a good hour and I like to treat myself to steaming or using the sauna after a workout. So we were putting on our bathing suits and (she and I tried out a new gym) when it came down to using the steam room, we had to walk past the pool. We basically had to walk twenty steps to get into the room but she couldnt do it because she was in a bathing suit and couldnt bear the thought of walking past people (mainly, guys) in her suit. So I had to give up the steam room, and left the gym kind of bummed. But I find myself spending a lot of time with her to cheer her up and help her, and I’m not complaining…she and I get along fantastic and she truly does care about me, but I feel like she’s kind of a burden. I absolutely hate to put it that way, but it’s the way that I feel.

Sorry for the rambling!!! I just feel like I need to vent. There are a bunch of things in this post and I don’t really know which to focus on so I kind of wrote a whole bunch of everything.

Anybody who has advice for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

To put that into perspective, it’s just about four cups of coffee. Almost a liter.

That’ll get you wired, to say the least.

So, what is Starbucks going to call this 31 ounce monstrosity? Since they’re known for all those catchy names, it’s the “Jitter-Maker.”

No, not really. It’s named the “Trenta,” after the Italian word for 30. Mamma mia!

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Hotdogs are a witch’s brew – hoof of cow, eye of rat, filler of unknown origin – extruded into a wiener, and put into a bun. Condiments optional.

They’re gross. No one REALLY knows what’s in hotdogs. But at every barbecue, carnival, and Fourth of July, you’ll find hotdogs. And, kids love them. That’s the problem.

Doctors insist the hotdog shape presents the perfect choking hazard for kids, so they want hotdogs to be “redesigned.”

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I am a 32 year old, working women. Height 5 feet and weight 36kgs.
I want to put on weight.
I do exercice for 20 min in morning and 20 mins in the evening.

Daily diet i followed is:

Recipe made of wholewheat (Indian chapatis – 3 medium side )+ vegetable curry in the morning.
1-2 carrots at a break at 11am
Lunch at 1:30pm (rice + vegetable curry)
4 PM fruit (banana or grapes)
6:30 pm some juice
9pm dinner made of wholewheat (Indian chapatis – 3 medium side )+ vegetable curry

Can someone advise how to put on weight and maintain good health?

The “small changes” philosophy, touted by health experts and First Lady Michelle Obama alike, took a big hit this week in Tara Parker-Pope’s Well Blog post, In Obesity Epidemic, What’s One Cookie?.

Pope writes an essential truth the some health experts dodge, fearing it will scare people off: If you want to lose a significant amount of weight, you’ve got to give your lifestyle an extreme makeover.

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I have tried to start a healthy lifestyle over and over and over again. In the past it has never been so important though. For some reason in college I could drink every day and live off of handy snacks, dunkin donuts, pasta, and lean pockets and only gain 5 pounds here and there. Those 5 pounds were easy to lose too. Now it feels like they are nearly impossible to shed.

Maybe if I blog my daily meals, snacks, exercise, etc. then I will feel more obligated to stick to my guns. I like instant results and have little patience when it comes to weight loss, but I know that it is a slow process and I need to get motivated. So, here it goes.

Have you ever wondered why certain foods just taste so good and induce extreme cravings in some people?

We all know that our tongue tastes sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, but did you know a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, actually isolated a fifth taste back in 1908 called “Umami”?

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[ Note: This article was written by fitness and nutrition author Jon Benson. I have his permission to share it with you. Jon is the author of the Seven Minute Muscle Workout]

Got a minute?

That’s all I need to share my first of many video-based 1-minute fatloss tips.

Go here for the first of many….

click—–> How To Eat Your Favorite Foods And Drop Bodyfat

My new design is something to see too.

I have my weekly live 1-minute video, tons of new features… even a “diet quiz” if you care to test your fatloss knowledge.

Plus my main presentation: “1 Tip To A Flat Belly!”

Just don’t laugh at my ballcap/unshaven look in the video… I wanted this to be super-casual, but I may have taken it a bit too far… ; )

Oh… speaking of a flat belly… I’d like to give you yet another reason to eat and workout the way I suggest in “Every Other Day Diet” and “7 Minute Body”…

I had to go to the hospital last week. No worries… I’m fine… just a bit of a scare. Definitely enough to wake you up from walking through life like it will never end! But fortunately for me, only a scare.

Anyway, the doctors in the hospital were amazed when they looked at my heart and lungs (they had to make sure I did not have any infection… and I didn’t.)

“Most 46-year-olds do not have these around their heart,” the doctor said as he showed me the pictures they took. You could see all these vessels around the heart and branching off the main arteries.

“Peripheral vessels… they were formed by your exercise program. Well-done! These help keep your heart strong and healthy.”

Every doc that listened to my heart said, “Wow… strong heart!”

Indeed… resistance training makes it so.

Before I left, after the scare went away, I asked the doctor his opinion on my dietary plan. “Well, obviously you are very lean and in fantastic shape for a man of any age.”

Thanks doc, but I wasn’t fishing for a compliment! Since this was a heart doctor I was curious as to his thoughts.

“If you had heart disease, or if you want to prevent it, this is the exact dietary plan I would recommend.”

While I expected to hear this, it was still music to my ears.

So, my higher-than-normal dietary fat and protein, lower-carb, and relatively frequent “fun food” dietplan is “ideal” to combat heart disease according to the good doc. And according to my family doctor.

Nice to know.

Read more about my plan here…

click—–> How To Eat Your Favorite Foods And Drop Bodyfat

Remember: A good dietplan and exercise is not always sufficient to keep you disease-freee… but I love what the doctor told me. “People who exercise and eat like you LIVE through it and recover much faster.”

Fortunately I didn’t have a nasty virus to recover from… but if I did, I know my condition would have helped me do just that.

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Related Articles at Former Fat Guy Blog:

• 4 Fatloss Tricks No One Tells You About
• 4 Fatloss Tricks No One Tells You About
• I Just Lost 11 lbs of Bodyfat… On Vacation!
• 3 Ways To Eat Fast Food And Drop Bodyfat!
• 10 Fatloss Questions You Should Be Asking ( Part 1 )