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I didn't expect a banana to give me trypophobia today. Out of a desire to upgrade my diet from becoming 100% junk food to merely 90%, I bought a bunch of them.
They arrived at a non-ideal level of ripeness, and then I let them sit for a few days. Now they're nice and yellow, but have a pattern of spots on them makes my skin crawl. Just about the only image on earth that otherwise does that is a photoshopped pic of someone's tits with holes added on, purportedly from worms.
Riddle me this, Doc Wonder: If you want to keep trim and build muscle, why rely on Ozempic and why not eat clean or at least eat something besides junk food 90% of the time?
Use the bananas for banana bread.
Just because I give out good advice doesn't mean I take it myself. Besides, my diet isn't literally >90% junk. A more realistic figure would be ~50%.
Work sucks, so I usually come home sapped of the will or energy to cook, and I'm not very good at it in the first place. I just tried figuring out my new place's oven, and the markings have worn off the dials. There are so many dials! I can't even tell what they do! I even tried all sorts of searching on Google, and asking my friendly neighborhood AI, to no avail. I just about managed to make some roast chicken without killing myself, so I'm not sure banana bread is in the cards. There's only one banana left, and no bread.
I can easily afford semaglutide (Ozempic, while a convenient and borderline generic name by now, actually implies the injectable form. I take tablets). It's remarkably safe. I probably save around 30% of the price of purchase via simply eating less.
I have, in the past, lost far more weight via a combination of a strict diet and working out. I happen to find the experience unpleasant. Some people enjoy going to the gym, alas, that's not me. I do it because I'm single, and need to up my market value unless I end up being sold as a lemon.
This time around, if I can't meet both my goals of losing weight and gaining muscle at the same time, I'm content settling for the former. When I'm at a more ideal BMI, I can stop the semaglutide and focus on musclar hypertrophy über alles. I'm aware of the fact that taking semaglutide causes me to lose muscle as well as fat (but not any more than simply dieting would do, that's just how the body reacts to a caloric deficit).
And last, but certainly not least: I have a realistic enough model of my own self that I know that if I didn't have the option of Ozempic, I would likely neither lose weight nor go to the gym as much as I should. The bottleneck in most of my life has been a lack of executive function/willpower. I can either hide behind a diagnosis of ADHD, or just accept that I'm lazy. Both might be true! Semaglutide simply short-circuits that dilemma.
I have some life advice that will work wonders for you, perhaps phrased poorly by me, but its essence has been passed from father to adolescent son for generations, to excellent effect: Stop being lazy, and grab the goddam reins. Because no one else is going to.
I say that, but it actually seems to me that you do a lot, and are not one of the perpetually unmotivated. Your substack is active, and mine has only one lonely post, so you're way ahead of me there. You mod here. You're a friggin' doctor.
Gym time will ultimately make you feel good. I am sure there is a physiological reason and I am equally sure that you know what this reason is probably better than I do, but perhaps haven't reached that point of that good feeling, and you perhaps doubt that it is a point you will likely reach.
Have you read the studies suggesting there could be a relationship between macular degeneration and regular use of semaglutide? Admittedly there are many caveats by the authors (admirably so) regarding the design of the study and how it was not designed to establish causality. But still. How are the peepers?
I appreciate the advice. It's even good advice! The failure I envision is on my part, and yes, I'm aware of the risk of self-fulfilling prophecy here.
My own dad has said the same to me, on many an occasion. He's the opposite of lazy, being an extremely hard working man who has, time and time again, worked himself to the bone to ensure his family and children wouldn't need to.
Thank you, but a lot of that is simply a consequence of my natural proclivities! Everyone has hobbies, some people are lucky enough to have hobbies that are quasi-productive.
I intrinsically enjoy writing, enough to outweigh the chore it can sometimes be. I like arguing with internet strangers, and can usually stay polite while doing so.
Medicine? I hated med school, and was a slacker for most of it, doing my best to cram at the last minute. Most doctors are rather type A individuals, I somehow survived despite being the opposite.
I eventually got better, after graduation, I spent several years working very hard to avoid the fate of never entering higher training, and for the purposes of escaping India. I suppose that is a concrete example of me becoming better, the previous exams were ones I "had" to give. Everything after was something self-directed, and I'm justifiably proud of myself, even as I've found many things about life and work in the UK disappointing and a chore.
If you had to sum up my laziness, it is rarely truly catastrophic. If I'm worried about my house catching fire, I'd probably do something about it instead of waiting for a fire to tickle my ass hair. But my life would definitely be far better if I was more motivated to do the things that I really ought to do, and earlier. For the sake of privacy, I won't go into too many details, but it has had personal and professional consequences.
There are definitely people worse off. I'm not lazing in bed high on weed all day without a job, I have a relatively demanding one, even if most other flavors of doctor have to work harder. I occasionally do things that people appreciate, but can I really take credit for that? It's just a fact about my preferences that I like writing instead of say, only video games and going out clubbing.
I'm not sure about ultimately. Back in med school, after a messy breakup, I was motivated enough to lose about 10 kilos while working out at least twice a week, for 6 months. I was even doing HIIT on the side, dodging the odd cobra outside (not a joke). I think six months of solid effort should normally be enough to figure out if I enjoy something for its own sake!
I didn't like going to the gym at the end, the only thing that got better was that I stopped having DOMS after the first few weeks.
I did read them when they came out, and was slightly concerned, but not to the degree it put me off. I'll probably have to look at follow ups, but the fact that, AFAIK, medical bodies haven't immediately begun recommending regular eye tests to patients on Ozempic is suggestive. I'll have to look more into it again, but I'm not worried enough to not take the meds.
My peepers are currently rather sore. But before you get alarmed, that's because I spent this afternoon looking at Magic Eye images on Reddit and ended up straining them.
(You should have fewer qualms about throwing most things you write onto your substack. Your slice of life and the odd wistful recollections are a pleasure to read, and I'd certainly follow along. Link your substack again, if you don't mind, I'd be happy to give it a follow)
It's here. Do not have high expectations.
As for the important part, the banana bread: All you need is one perhaps over ripe banana. Also flour, sugar (brown or granulated white), an egg, some vanilla essence, butter, baking powder or soda or both, an oven, and a thing to hold it in that is bread-shaped. Throw in some chocolate chips. It's good. All sorts of quality ways to make it. I have to watch my potassium due to dubious kidneys, but I recommend making it and eating it. Maybe in the winter when it's cooler. With some coffee. Invite your latest complication over and while chatting, make that bread and serve it. Then the sweet sweet romance. Or something.
My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.
I take all your points. I was drinking cognac when I wrote my previous reply, which is itself pretty pretentious but I want a new thing and I think a cognac before bed is it. But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.
You've got your cognac, I've got a bottle of cheap rosé from the nearest supermarket. Life, if not good, is doing okay today.
Alas, I can't get much in the way of goat-mutton in Scotland. That's what I was used to back home, but to be fair, well-prepared lamb comes close. Evidently your culinary skills came in handy! If Mrs. Hale doesn't like lamb, you can't go wrong with making chicken kebabs. It's too late at night for me to order some, but the idea itself has got me hankering.
Your innate suspicion is far too common. Modern culture has primed everyone to be suspicious, to look for things that are "too good to be true". That might work for narratives or literary fiction, but reality isn't quite the same. Sometimes, the uncaring universe is kind enough to give us things that are unalloyed goods, and also good. So it was for antibiotics and vaccines, and so it goes for Ozempic.
While not literally perfectly safe (what is? No drug I've ever heard of, and I've heard of most), it is a paradigm shift when it comes to one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is a solution to the obesity epidemic, even if that is somehow dissatisfying to some. I can only stress that the universe is uncarinv, not actively malevolent. Good things happen, or are even discovered, every now and then!
If you need to lose a few pounds, or many, you can't do much better. You can always stop once you hit your target, and seek other ways to keep yourself there. I would hope that getting my own mother, as well as myself, on it would be a sufficient signal of confidence.
Followed, which costs me nothing at all. Hopefully you'll get around to writing more!
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Second banana bread, though I put way more than one banana in. About three bananas per loaf, if memory serves. Also have some butter on hand for when it comes out of the oven; you'll be glad you did @self_made_human.
For this and for all other things baking related, I will forever shill the King Arthur Flour website. They have a ton of recipes, as well as detailed blog posts explaining the reasoning behind why some things work. They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores. But the ingredients in banana bread are so basic I'd be surprised if they didn't have them.
The UK might be poor and shabby, but not quite that poor!
If the two of you are so keen on it, I'll keep my eye out for ingredients. I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't identify the make of my oven or what the settings do, and I'm entirely a noob at baking.
I didn't mean that in terms of being poor, though I can see it now that you point it out lol. I just meant that what ingredients are commonly stocked varies from country to country - for example I have a recipe for cupcakes that involves clotted cream, which (to my understanding) is commonly available at UK stores but you have to go to a specialty store to get it here.
I wouldn't worry too much about being a noob at baking, especially because quick breads (the type of bread banana bread is) are made to be easy to make. Literally just put all ingredients in a bowl, mix them together until the wet and dry ingredients are decently combined, then pour it into a pan and bake. Even if you make a mistake somehow, the worst case scenario is that it'll still taste good but maybe it'll be denser or drier than normal. So worst case scenario, you still have tasty bread!
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