Yay, glad I stuck out, cause hoo boy... doing leafbiting when at a wedding was rough, but they had a looooot of caesar salad and arugula salad

Woot. Always a fun time.

Another lovely LB! Thank you for organizing these, Fosh~.

Leafs have been monched

It's been a rough time for me, not related to leafbiting. Though I do plan on returning again and being better prepared with some different meal ideas. Congrats to everyone doing the biting of leaves~

Was a nice challenge, definitely happy with the attempt and outcome, specially considering this was my very first attempt! Though of course, I was ready to drop the challenge if it became too much to bear at any point. For certain the first 2-3 weeks were the hardest between finding food replacements, and readjusting intake of pasta/rice which was giving me some extra weight.
Repeating the same dishes week after week wasn't a problem for me as I imagined, but if I can join you for another leafbitting year it would be my next focus to add variety.

With now 20 days post leafbitting, unsurprisingly I went back to nomming my precious tuna and chicken. However, I learned just how little pasta benefited me and now I'm trying to maintain part of my leafbitting diet with more lentils and chickpeas.
Unfortunately, family is not keen to let me do this and so far I can't, again with the troubles I had when I wanted to start (like food having to be for all members, limited space and money, and of course the simple prejudices). They could be convinced for 2 months (which they thought I'd fail and even said things like "You probably are the only one left doing it", "You won't be able to keep running/will lack energy to excercice" after the first month), but now that it is over they don't want the trouble and as always jobless zapcat does not have a saying on anything when money is involved.

Well .. hopefully I can at least convince them to allow me to participate in more leafbiting next year! Or perhaps better, I get a job x3
Until next time, take care and hopefully great 2025 for everybody!

I think I understand your situation a little better now. I'm sorry to hear your family wasn't supportive, you may even have found the determination to get through the full 2 months for your first time around to prove something to them. I was worried to let you go for it, obviously because it was your first time, but also because there are always other circumstantial issues that come up when switching a diet. You can't plan for something you're not aware of, as much as I try to inform and prepare everyone, everyone has their own unique conditions they live in. You promised me to drop out if it turned out you started suffering or if it was too much to handle, so I relented.

When you started showing me the photos of your dinners, it was nice to see how hard you were trying to validate my trust in you, but it still left me worrying about both your inexperience with cooking or not having the means to support yourself through the challenge.

To hear about your family and poverty afterwards I wish I had a chance to talk to you about those issues in specific to see if I could help you work out a solution. I'm so relieved you even got out the other end picking up something positive from leafbiting, like wanting to make a change to your nutritional intake and becoming more self reliant, that's what the challenge is really about.

If your family won't tell it to you, then I will. I'm proud of you hun.

Thank you Foshu for your encouraging words, it means a lot <3
Yeah .. didn't want to bother with personal stuff when we didn't know eachother for even a day, but our family disputes are usually more conected towards money than not. I wouldn't call that we suffer from poverty, we have food and pay all the bills by the end of the months. It's just that 4 adults living in the same little flat with only 1 salary does not give much room to decide on anything else that is not 'fundamental needs'.

A bit sad that despite trying my best not to make you worry my efforts weren't enough u.u;;
Cooking wasn't a problem, was used to it from the start as it's just me and mom cooking for 4, but I had no idea if I was getting proper nutrition or not. Sharing all those photos of every dinner and lunch had the main purpose of fishing for feedback, in case you or any other leafbitters noticed I was missing 'X' in my diet. But all seemed good and I did not suffer besides those initial extra kilos, so I didn't ask much in particular.

As for mental support, luckily my determination is of my best assets, it took me 9 years to finish my mid and then high technical degree in IT despite having all teachers insisting I wasn't cut for it. Kept signing up for 5 years straight into a betting webpage just claiming the daily login rewards to earn 20€ (Might not seem a lot, but all my life I only earned 108€ in total, 78€ of which were by being a lower league sports referee in local tournaments x3), and I already underwent 3 months sugar+fleur+yogurt+other stuff free to fight a gut parasite. If I only need willpower for something, chances are I'll manage x3
Still was of great help being around everybody with the same goal of course! Ameowing moral support <3

Happy new year everybody! May all of us see and increasingly better tomorrow after tomorrow and on ^^