That sound awful to go through, I’m sorry you experienced that. I feel like I wouldn’t be able to get back on a bike after having major incident like that. Kudos to you for getting back into it. I live in a bike phobic city where people will openly harass you throwing stuff at you like drinks and shout at you if you are riding a bike in the designated bike lane. And there’s been I think 3 - 5 deaths in the last month alone here since it’s too expensive to own a car so there’s more cyclists now. North America needs to work on its car centric problem

Who would’ve thought? Just like everywhere else, I guess … (Humans are terrible)

Yeah sorry if I got a bit heated in my response. Maybe I misunderstood your point.

Okay, I can really understand what you are trying to say. I feel like there needs to be a different or new word for this kind of experience maybe? Because choosing to abstain from a food group or what have you doesn’t make your minority in the sense most of us think of, even if it’s technically correct. And we don’t want to minimize what true minorities go through when our food choices in this case our truly our own choice. But it is definitely a different experience when someone finds out you choose not to eat the type of food they do. They take it so personally you are not eating meat. I actually had the same issues when I was doing Atkins ages ago, which is mostly protein based. People questioning my food choices because it wasn’t what they they eat and they took it as a personal judgement against them.

Getting bullied is not the same as being a “MINORITY”. White kids who are not minorities in North America but get bullied all the time in school. Not eating flesh of a mammal or fish etc doesn’t mean you are a “minority”. Like I said, I’ve experienced life as a veggie. Is it annoying? The stupid questions, the comments people make? Yes. But I’ve never had a cop pull me over and worry about whether I’ll die that day because I don’t eat beef. Or worry, walking down the street, alone at night as a single woman, if I’ll be assaulted because I don’t eat chicken. Non-meat-eaters aren’t minorities in the sense that they are discriminated against in the idea that the word “minority” conjures up. They deal with, at most, someone tricking them into eating meat. Which I’ve had done. It felt violating and offensive but wasn’t any sort of level as someone who is an actual “minority” in our continent.

I used to be a vegetarian for a decade and then a pescetarian before apathy fully set in and I saw how pointless it all is.

Vegans and vegetarians can be some of the most judgemental gatekeeping assholes out there. Many of them aren’t, but the ones that are militant and overbearing are the worst and only push others from their cause. Those ones desperately want to feel better than others, so become borderline eating disordered to elevate themselves to some holy god level in their minds because they eat beans and lentils.

They aren’t in the same class as minorities. They choose to eat the diet they do. And no one can visibly tell they are vegetarian/vegan until they tell others they are.

Did you fit all 458 clipboards in your backpack at one time?

Sorry who is underselling the sprawl? That’s a really neat image thank you for sharing

Wow, that’s really bad. I had no idea. Thank you for explaining

What is Irving?

I completely forgot about this. What the hell is happening or happened there to these poor people?

Personal hygiene can suffer when you are deep in a depressive episode. Mobility might also be compromised due to a disability or chronic pain and not directly weight related.

Excellent 👌

What do you consider a huge city? Doesn’t Ottawa have over a million people living in it now? It’s kind of spread out over a large area I guess…

I think you look very nice 👍

Wasn’t the forbidden fruit in the garden of eden originally a fig or date or olive or something? It was changed to apple in the later translations. Something like that .

Weren’t boomers the ones who helped build the internet and technology like that? I don’t think they were “given” anything.

When it’s 1500 calories for one damn meal… Does 100 calories matter that much for something like an infographic? That’s my entire daily calorie intake in one meal. If I ate that 3 times a day I’d be 600lbs. It’s trying to demonstrate a point, that this is an unreasonable amount of calories for a single meal. Also different countries use different ingredients for the same fast food joints so the calories could vary that way. Also x2 depending how long the person making the fries holds it in the deep fryer it could affect the calorie count based on that. Or whatever it is they are preparing… the amount of sauce or mayo they put on a big Mac could be 100 calories difference, whether they added extra cream cheese or butter to your bagel, or poured more or less cream into your Starbucks latte.

I had a similar experience in some ways. I’ve seen many health professionals over the years, some counsellors, some therapists, some psychiatrists. It is very hard to find a good one that helps. It really depends on how good your mental health professional is, whether the diagnoses is going to be useful or not.

I have a couple stories about the doctors I’ve seen when I was in my 20s.

One was a psychiatrist. I would see her in person and like you she would barely look at me. She would spend 5 to 15 minutes with me. I told her about my very serious trauma and she didn’t say anything and didn’t try to discuss it. Completely uninterested, didn’t care at all. Just gave me drugs. She even prescribed me a stimulant meant for ADD. She didn’t say why or what it was for. I was too scared to ask her so I looked it up on the internet and found out it was for ADD symptoms, so I assumed I had ADD. Then about 8 months later, when the side effects were getting worrisome, I finally asked her about it. She said she thought I was a bit fat so she put me on it to make me lose weight. I never asked for help with that, and I was only 20lbs over weight at the time. We had never discussed my weight or anything, it was unhelpful and not why I went to see her. That medication would actually induce mania in me and I’d become impulsive and make really bad decisions while on it.

My next psychiatrist was worse. I was on a merry go round of meds all the time, changing nearly every month or two. It screws with your functioning getting use to one med, and then having to go off it. Withdrawals suck. And I was on multiple meds at one time so it was even worse. I was taking 8 different mental health meds at one point. I’d get side effects from one, then I’d get prescribed something to “help” with the side effects of that one, then get more side effects from this newest addition of drug, and again put on something to combat the side effects of that one. Or I’d mention something small that happened to me during the week, or a tiny thought that she squeezed out of me by her questioning and suddenly I’m on another drug with a brand new diagnosis. I got diagnosed and medicated for a tonne of different issues. I have no idea which ones are accurate. I don’t trust psychiatrists now.

When I would tell her I want OFF a medication, she would get insulted, as though it was a personal offense to her, and would interrogate me because I dared to question her. I’d have to prove it to her that I needed off them. Even though it was my body and if I wanted off them for absolutely any reason, even “I don’t like the way its making me feel”, I had a right to do so.

She also asked leading questions, and if I didn’t answer the way she wanted she would get irritated. So I started changing my answers to please her and her ego. I should have ended my sessions earlier than I did but I trusted her because she was a doctor, and because of my past I used to be a push over, especially with authority figures.

Her sessions could last 3 to 4 hours. It was mostly her talking at me about GMOs or television shows or whatever crap that had nothing to do with my issues, or doing office work like faxing prescriptions, or writing crap down after our appointment, or making phone calls. But she wouldn’t let me leave until she had done all that for some reason.

She was constantly late because she’d do the same with her other patients. I remember one time the patient after me knocked on the door and was justifiably annoyed. He said “it’s been 2 hours since my appointment was supposed to start”. She told him his current patient (me) was in total crisis breakdown and she needed to handle it. That was a lie. I was fine, I wasn’t crying or anything, I was normal. She was acting like I was actively suicidal or something and I wasn’t at all. Before the guy knocked on the door she was talking about where she bought her scarf. She was using me as an excuse for her poor time management. It was humiliating walking out into the waiting room after that in front of the patients out there knowing they heard her say that.

She would also gaslight me. She’d claim I never mentioned something before, when I know with 100% certainty I had. She would rifle through her notes and say “Nope it’s not here, you never said that.” As though it was final. Just because she never bothered to write it down didn’t mean I never brought it up. Luckily one of the times she claimed that, my partner was with me during those sessions and backed me up because he had heard me say it.

And these two long winded stories are only 2 of the people I saw. There’s more that were bad too. There was 1 that I wish I could have kept seeing because she was actually helping but we had to move.

TLDR I think if someone is just starting out trying to seek a diagnosis, I would not begin with a psychiatrist. They will dole out meds like candy. Go to a therapist or a counselor first and get an idea of what it could be before stuffing pills into yourself. Pills can help but it needs to be the right ones. Also if your mental health professional isn’t helping, end the sessions sooner rather than later. You should know by session 1 to 3 if they are going to be able to help you.

So cute! Well done