HEALTHY

  

I SPILLED MY GUTS TO STRANGERS ON FREE INTERNET-THERAPY SITES

Confession time: I've been in talk therapy for more than 20 years (I started when I was 15—today I’m 37). Nope, I’m not proud of that—it’s vaguely embarrassing, this commitment I’ve made to worship at the altar of my most deep-seated issues.

I go to therapy because I have to, because I’ve been doing it for so long that I can hardly remember what it was like not to have that cozy, womb-like little room to heave myself into on a weekly basis. Therapy has become a customary part of my self-care song-and-dance, despite the sad truth that I haven’t seen tons of progress when it comes to my struggles with depression, relationships, et al. Frankly, all those aforementioned deep-seated issues are still very much alive and kicking, therapy be damned.

Related: Shopping For the Perfect Therapist

So when I heard about free “Internet therapy" websites, I was curious. Could spilling my guts to faceless strangers on an online message board or chat room possibly compare to “real” therapy? Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, a NYC-based addictions and family therapist, is dubious. “Therapy that changes people’s lives is a nuanced process,” he says. “The dialogue that occurs online is much more shallow and transient. It’s like comparing an artificial sweetener to honey, or instant coffee to slow-brewed.”


I suspected as much, but I wanted to see for myself.

1. THE THERAPY SITE: Talktala.com

Talktala.com is the slickest of the three sites I tried. It has the most appealing design, and it helpfully provides sympathetic-looking photos of its roster of online therapists waiting, with bated breath, to help me. The site’s mission? For “everyone [to] have real-time, simple, and affordable access to professional advice whenever and wherever we need it.”

Talktala offers paid online support from legit online therapists—it costs $9 for an “initial help” session; $29 for a one-on-one “chat for a week” service in which you get to, yes, e-chat with a therapist one-on-one for a week; and $29 for a 30-minute one-on-one video session with a therapist of your choosing. The site also includes free therapist-run forums where users can air their mental-health challenges; a therapist will respond to up to 5 posts per user before charging a fee.

MY ISSUE: FOMO & Social Comparison

I decide to hit up Talktala’s free forums. In the “How to Manage Stress and Depression” forum, I spill out a paragraph about how Fear of Missing Out and social comparison are making me miserable (hey, it’s true). I write, “I constantly compare myself to other women—not just women I know, but friends of friends, famous people, etc.” before acknowledging that my life is fine overall, save for my obsessive quest to “constantly think about how little I have in comparison to some friends and acquaintances (especially when it comes to my love life).”

A therapist named Regina M. replies to my post within hours. “It is so difficult to be a woman in our culture these days,” she writes. “It is perfectly normal to compare ... that is what we do best as humans. It does sound like you are struggling with your own self-value. Are there reasons why you would doubt yourself?”

I write back that I have no “reasons” to doubt myself—instead I’ve got an exciting smorgasbord of your average everyday depressive tendencies and low self-esteem, yippee! I explain that I’ve been in therapy for years and have tried a zillion types of treatment.


THE RESOLUTION (OR LACK THEREOF)

OK, so the therapist’s response seems a bit... basic. I wasn’t expecting much more, honestly, so I continue my exchange, explaining more details about my mental-health history. It’s weirdly gratifying each time I get an email notification alerting me to Regina’s replies, and there is something freeing about anonymously spilling my guts with no sense of concern about how I “look” to the other person.

Still, as our back-and-forth winds down, I feel totally underwhelmed. Just as Dr. Hokemeyer suggested, my Talktala experience feels like Self-Reflection Lite—it’s not in-depth enough to provide any real insight. Not for me, anyway—a therapy newbie might find Regina’s advice illuminating.

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I LOST WEIGHT ON THE CHOCOLATE DIET

 When Dr. Will Clower tells me I can lose weight on a veritable IV drip of chocolate—eating it six times a day—I look at him like he’s Cady Heron shilling Kalteen bars. And when I buy a bar of the chocolate I need for this experiment, I’m convinced. It’s thick, but it’s the size of my TV remote and 700 calories. I can see the punchline already: “I tried a chocolate diet and gained 2.4 pounds, because obviously.”

Except I didn’t.

Instead, I adopted this asinine-sounding program, and I lost weight, snacked less, ate healthier, and slept better. I know I sound like the smug, sing-song-y women in those Yoplait ads—Is that the key lime pie diet?!—but, well, yeah. It worked. Here’s how it went down.

Preparing

I sit down with Dr. Will Clower, whose new book, Eat Chocolate, Lose Weight, set off this harebrained scheme. ECLWis almost 300 pages, but the kicker is this: You can eat whatever you want during meals, but you forego other snacks and sweets in favor of starting and ending each meal with a small piece of very dark chocolate. Every meal—yes, including breakfast—needs a “starter” and an “ender” of dark chocolate, specifically the high cocoa content kind (70% cocoa or above).

According to Dr. Clower, the cocoa speeds up your basal metabolic rate while triggering satisfaction signals in your brain, so you want to eat less during your meals (hence, the starter) and snack less between them (hence, the ender). Also helpful: High cocoa content chocolate has much less sugar than its lower cocoa counterparts, so while you feel like you’re eating something sweet constantly, your blood sugar doesn’t spike.

Once I’ve digested the plan, the Doc recommends Green & Black’s dark chocolate as the “least bitter-tasting” variety, and I’m on my way. That night I go to Whole Foods and buy four bars of high cocoa chocolate—three Green & Black’s and one Mast Brothers—because ooo red and blue nautical stripes! The latter sets me back $10 vs. $3.50 for Green & Black’s, as if God’s punishing me for my yuppie-ness.

 Day 1

First thing in the morning, I weigh myself and float off the scale on the narcissistic hummingbird wings of a person on a niche diet. I’ve never gone on a juice cleanse before, and I’m so psyched to be all “Everyone pay attention to me!! I’m eating weirdly and I want you to ask me questions about it.”

Day 2

I’m diligent about eating my nibble of chocolate before and after each meal. Dr. Clower says each piece should be the size of the top half of my thumb, which works because I never don’t have hands. Off the bat, I realize this experiment has great timing: Constantly carrying chocolate in your purse is probably a lot more doable in January than July, because weather.

Day 3

Oddly, even though I can barely remember to take my birth control each day, the biggest adjustment isn’t remembering to eat the chocolate (SIX times a day) it’s limiting it to a thumb-sized nibble. Some of my co-workers think the 86% dark chocolate bars littering my desk taste too intense (“coffee-flavored bark,” one says) or like a packaged letdown (see: every gluten-free baked good ever). But you know what? I like the stuff. I worry I may actually gain weight on this diet.

Day 5

I get it now. I thought this diet would be easy/ineffective because I’d freewheel through it, neither counting calories nor curbing portions, but actually, committing to all these “starters” and “enders” kicks me off autopilot, making me aware of all the junk I normally eat without thinking. Today I picked a hummus pack instead salt & vinegar chips in the cafeteria line, and I think it was the starters' and the enders' fault.

Day 7

I’m freaked out. Because the only sweet things I’m eating are these chocolate bars, I think my taste for sugar is morphing. I ate a plain Greek yogurt this morning and thought it tasted like Pinkberry. Dr. Clower said this would happen, but I didn’t really believe him. Dafuq?

Day 9

Here is when I hate the chocolate diet: breakfast. Today I wake up at 5:28AM and zombie clomp into a 6AM exercise class (casual brag?), shooting a stink eye at the instructor and her “What’s a matter guys, coffee not kicked in yet?” stock joke. On these mornings, waking up and eating a square of dark chocolate before my granola bar just feels like, seriously? But I do it anyway. At the very least, it makes me drink more water before class.

Day 10

Today my deskmate gets up and returns 15 minutes later with a Ryan Gosling cupcake, proving Heaven is somewhere within walking distance of our office building. It’s 4PM—the hour when hunger goggles can turn vending machine Fig Newtons into Nutella crepes—and yet I don’t even go halfsies on the cupcake per her offer. Not only because in icing his visage skews more Nicholas Cage than The Notebook (right?), but because I am, actually, good. I feel like I’m eating sweets ALL THE TIME, while in reality, I’m consuming way less calories and sugar than what’s in Ryan Gosling’s cupcake chin.

Day 14

One downside of the chocolate routine: Like me, it’s awkward in public. When I go a to 35th birthday party and sit down at a table of strangers, I realize I really should have my “starter.” So I claw into my coat, wrestle a block free from the wrapper and sneak it into my mouth like I’m popping a Xanax. Unnecessarily dramatic, maybe, but at this point I’m feeling the fatigue about being the girl with the weird diet hang-up. Back home, though, I sleep better than my boyfriend who ate his slice of chocolate cake (and mine), and realize the whole not-gorging-yourself-on-restaurant-desserts thing has some nice sleep-related benefits.

Day 16

I weigh myself at the same time I weighed myself to start this scheme, and I’ve lost 1.8 pounds. Maybe it’s water weight. Maybe it’s not. Whatever. Actually, I don’t really care about the weight— I was more curious what else would happen with my love of snacking and sugar. And that stuff? That stuff I liked. For someone with such a sharp, outsize sweet tooth (maybe all my teeth are sweet teeth?) the constant chocolate’s turned me off to my regular sweets. If only everything in life worked this way.

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'Silent' Heart Attacks Threaten Americans Over Age 40

Thursday, 27 Mar 2014 07:40 AM

By S.A. Nickerson

Will you suffer a fatal heart attack?

What most people don’t know is that nearly half of those who die from heart attacks each year never showed prior symptoms of heart disease. Right now, millions of people over age 40 are suffering from heart disease and do not even know it.

Most people know by now that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of both men and women in America. In fact, nearly one-third of all U.S. deaths result from heart disease.

That’s why world-renowned cardiologist, Chauncey W. Crandall M.D., F.A.C.C., has created the Simple Heart Test — a quick online test to help everyday people determine their own personal risk for heart disease. 

Focusing on prevention, Dr. Crandall’s simple, two-minute test is dedicated to identifying telltale symptoms that oftentimes go completely unnoticed — until it’s too late. Of course, this doesn't substitute for regular medical check-ups or consulting with your physicians about your heart health. 

If questioned carefully, many patients will recall some vague symptoms, such as indigestion or back pain that they blamed on something else at the time. 

Other risk factors involve family history. A recent CNN Health report reveals that out of the 600,000 people who die from heart attacks each year, more than half have a family history of heart disease. Even if just one direct family member has a history of heart disease, it can increase risk by a whopping 33 percent.

According to Dr. Crandall, “…knowing your risk for heart disease gives you a powerful starting point to take action to prevent — or even reverse — this debilitating condition,” He urges, “Don’t be caught off guard. Know your risk now.”

Dr. Crandall’s simple heart test also provides instant results, giving patients the ability to take action right away.