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Health

‘Reverse Dieting’ Is Not a Weight Loss Cheat Code

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Photo: Lolostock (Shutterstock)

To hear the TikTok girlies tell it, there’s a hack that will let you EAT MORE FOOD! While NOT GAINING WEIGHT! And it’s great if you are SICK OF DIETING! Never mind that one can achieve all those goals by a simple trick called “not dieting anymore.” No, it needs a name and a strict protocol: reverse dieting.

The basic idea of reverse dieting is that you slowly add a few more calories to your diet every week. So s you normally maintain your weight on 2,000 calories per day, but you’ve been eating 1,500 calories to lose weight. You might then “reverse diet” by eating 1,600 calories a day next week, 1,700 calories a day the week after that, and so on. Eventually you’ll be back up to 2,000 calories, or maybe even more.

This is not a trend that originated on TikTok. The term seems to have come from bodybuilders, whose sport requires that they engage in extreme cycles of bulking (gaining weight to gain muscle mass) and cutting (losing as much fat as possible before stepping on a stage). While the process can create dazzling physiques, it also fucks with your metabolism and overall health.

Reverse dieting is one approach for transitioning from an extreme cut, to maintenance or bulking: Instead of just pigging out the day after your bodybuilding show, you might rather slowly increase the amount of food you eat as you find your maintenance calories again.

This idea spawned the current trend of influencers pitching reverse dieting as the cure for all your diet-related complaints. But it doesn’t work that way.

The science behind reverse dieting

Some of the claims you’ll hear from thin women flexing their abs on TikTok, and from the bodybuilders saying to just trust them, bro, are true. Among them:

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  • Your metabolism adapts to dieting, so over time you have to eat less and less food to keep losing weight (this is a known thing).
  • After dieting a long time, you may be eating a miserably low number of calories.
  • Eating more food will allow your body to stop being so stingy with the calories, and can increase the number of calories your body burns.
  • After increasing your calories, someday you may be able to lose weight again while eating more food than when you were in the depths of your diet.

There are also a number of untruths and half-truths that come up. You may hear that increasing your calories too fast after a diet will make your body pack on fat, or that you can add 1,000 calories and still be losing weight, or something something hormones something cortisol. (Scroll long enough on fitness TikTok and somebody will explain that all your problems are due to cortisol. Take a drink.)

In any case, this is where “reverse dieting” comes in. Supposedly the cure to all of these ills is simply that you need to add 50 to 100 calories to your diet each week. The process is slow and requires patience, but stick to it and you too could look like this girl (imagine me moving my head to point at the before-and-after photos I’ve greenscreened behind me) on 2,400 calories instead of 1,200.

So what’s actually true about reverse dieting, and why is everybody so into it? Let’s take a closer look.

When it goes right, “reverse dieting” is just “not dieting” but with more rules

After reading all of those bullet points above, you might think, OK, so why not just stop dieting? You’ll get to eat more food, your body will burn more calories, and from there you can either diet again or—crazy idea here—just not diet anymore. Heck, you could give gaining weight a try.

And that is, in fact, the real answer. Just stop dieting. The world will not end. You can eat food again, and you will be fine. So why reverse diet?

As Eric Trexler, a nutrition and metabolism researcher, puts it here, the original reverse dieters’ goal was to smoothly transition from a calorie deficit, to maintenance, to their first bulk after a bodybuilding contest without gaining any more fat than they needed to. One problem with this approach is that after bodybuilders diet that hard, they need to regain fat. You can’t stay dangerously lean forever, and that’s true whether you’re a meathead or a TikTok girlie.

On social media, reverse dieting is often described as a way of continuing to diet while eating more calories. It’s true that if you’re in a 500 calorie deficit and you’re only adding 50 calories a week, you’ll continue to be in a deficit for a very long time—10 weeks, at that rate. Trexler notes that “this would serve only to delay even the most basic and immediate aspects of recovery, and make [the dieter’s] life unnecessarily difficult.”

Reverse dieting is not a cure for chronic dieting

There are two things going on here, I think. One is relatively harmless. Let’s say you’ve been on a diet and you’re ready to start gaining weight. Instead of eating an extra 1000 calories each day (to go from a 500 calorie deficit to a 500 calorie surplus), you can eat an extra few hundred this week, and add a few hundred more next week, and so on. You’ll be less surprised by changes in your weight (eating more food means there’s more food in your belly, so the scale might tick up a bit just from that) and it may be easier to figure out approximately how many calories you should eat going forward.

But that’s not how it’s being described on social media. Thin women are telling chronic dieters that they can eat more food while continuing to be very thin, if only they follow a strict reverse dieting protocol. But the strictness and the expectations can be damaging on their own.

For an extreme example, check out this video from a registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist. She describes a woman who was getting help for eating disorder recovery. The woman had such a low body weight, with associated health issues, that the dietitian says she “need[ed] to gain weight immediately.” But instead of following guidance from her care team that would have her gaining a pound a week, she secretly put herself on a reverse diet protocol. By adding just 50 calories each week to the too-low amount she was already eating, it took her three months to gain a whole pound of body mass—basically delaying her recovery by three months.

And here’s where I think we need to take a closer look at why reverse dieting posts are so popular in corners of social media that are focused on weight loss. While eating more sounds healthier—it’s a good start!—following a strict reverse diet is just another way of restricting.

Reverse dieting is sometimes just a way to restrict more

Let’s say, as in many of the examples on TikTok, that you are somebody currently eating 1,200 calories (officially a starvation diet) and no longer losing weight. Even if you are a small woman who never exercises—maybe because you don’t have the energy?—a healthy amount of daily calories will likely be 1,600 or more. So you’re supposed to eat 1,250 next week? And then 1,300 the week after that? At that rate, it would take eight weeks to get you up to the number that should be mere maintenance for you. Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, you’re creating the same problem for yourself as the ED patient in the dietitian’s case study.

What’s even more concerning to me is that 50 or even 100 calories is an extremely precise amount. If I’m aiming to eat 2,000 calories a day, maybe some days I’ll have 1,950 and some days I’ll have 2,100. Over time it balances out. But if you’re trying to hit exactly 1,850 and not 1,900 (because 1,900 is next week’s target) you’ll have to track your food meticulously. This is the kind of lifestyle where you’ll be weighing your toast before and after you spread the peanut butter, and you won’t want to eat at a restaurant, because how many calories are in each menu item? What if they’re heavy handed with the sauce?

In my scroll through #reversedieting TikTok, I found women saying that they had to miss out on family meals and deal with concern from their friends during their reverse diet. Clearly, they have not taken a step very far out of diet-land. For these folks, it actually seems like the “reverse” is essentially a way of extending their diet. You could be eating at maintenance for those eight weeks, but you’re restricting instead. And then what? Reverse dieting is often described as a way of increasing your calorie burn so you can diet again.

Even when the influencers show themselves gaining muscle and eating genuinely healthy numbers of calories (assuming that the numbers they cite are true), it’s still all couched in language around leanness and thinness, and features photos of their abs. Prioritizing leanness even while gaining muscle is some backwards-ass shit. It’s okay to not be able to see your abs while you are trying to make yourself bigger. As strongman JF Caron famously put it, “abs is not a thing of power. Is just a sign you don’t eat enough.”

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Technology

These Apple-like Target Tech Accessories Are 50% Off Right Now

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Photo: JJava Designs (Shutterstock)

Target’s first exclusive electronic’s brand, Heyday, is having a 50% sale on many of their products right now—and you may notice that a lot of these products have a striking similarity to Apple products. So if you’re in the market for an Apple-like product and don’t mind not having the real deal, this might be the time to give Heyday a shot. These deals are online-only.

What is Heyday?

Heyday was first launched in 2018 by Target as a way to target millennials and Gen Z shoppers. The line includes headphones, earbuds, Bluetooth speakers, Lightning cords, Apple Watch bands, phone cases, and other accessories. Their main aim is to have affordable, quality tech accessories that Gen Z and millennials would want. Here are some of the best deals you can get right now from Target’s Heyday sale—and how they compare in price to their more expensive Apple counterparts.

This Heyday silicone case for AirPods with a clip is half off, and it’s comparable to Apple’s equivalent, which goes for $30 on their website. Honestly, nobody will know the difference.

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This Bluetooth keyboard is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Chrome (that’s two more than Apple’s keyboard). You can connect up to three different devices and switches between them with a tap, and it uses two AAA batteries. Or if you’d rather pay $100 for Apple’s equivalent, it’s your money.

Sure, Heyday’s iPhone stand will not hold your fancy Apple Watch along with your iPhone, but it will hold your phone just as well and charge it with the same MagSafe wireless charging. And it’s less than a fifth of the price to Apple’s (really Otterbox’s) equivalent at $130.

This charger, or wall adapter, gives you the ability to charge up to two devices at the same time. It’s compatible with Android, Apple, and personal computers. It also has surge and short circuit protection. Apple’s equivalent will run you $59.

Heyday’s charging pad has the same MagSafe technology to charge your phone wirelessly. It has a display charge indicator light to let you know the device is charging. Just place your phone on top and watch it magically juice up. Apple’s equivalent costs $39.

This one isn’t Heyday’s, but it’s still over 50% off on Target. The iPhone 13 Pro case has MagSafe technology just like Apple’s and will run you less than half the price as Apple’s equivalent.

OK, Heyday’s power bank is not nearly as good as Apple’s MagSafe battery pack, but look at those pretty colors. Also, it’ll run you a tenth of the price for the minor inconvenience of being a wired charger.

Straightforward win here: Unless Apple is getting their plastic for their Apple Watches’ band from a different planet, you’ll very likely to get a similar product for five times cheaper.

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Health

The Eight Types of Cheese You Should Have in Your Fridge at All Times

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My fridge is very dairy-heavy. Currently, it is stocked with whole milk, half & half, heavy whipping cream, two types of yogurt (store-bought Greek and a homemade recipe I’m tweaking), sour cream, butter, and all of my various cheeses. (I usually have some labneh in there as well, but I just ran out.) The cheeses are a category onto themselves. At any given moment, I need at least eight.

I do not need eight specific cheeses, but I do need at least one cheese from each of the following categories. (If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me tweet that I need seven cheeses, but someone pointed out I was missing cream cheese.) These are the cheeses I need to keep myself full and functioning. They are tailored to my particular lifestyle and desires, but I think everyone could benefit from identifying and categorizing their specific cheese needs.

My cheese needs are as follows:

  • Snacking cheese: These are my string cheeses, my Babybells, my sticks and pre-wrapped Tillamook “snack portions” that I shove into my mouth as a pre-lifting snack, or in those moments when I’m feeling peckish, but don’t know what to eat.
  • Cooking cheese: This is cheese that gets mixed and melted into dishes. It’s usually bagged and pre-shredded, but Velveeta also counts.
  • Salad cheese: Ah, my crumbles. This is usually a pre-crumbled blue cheese, though it can be a nice feta, and sometimes there is overlap with our next category (finishing cheese).
  • Finishing cheese: This is the cheese you use to finish a dish. It is usually “nice,” and packed with flavor, like Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino Romano, and cotija. Finishing cheese can sometimes double as salad cheese.
  • Sandwich cheese: These are (obviously) sliced cheeses that go on sandwiches. I usually have two—Dubliner (either a block or pre-sliced) and deli white American (both honor my heritage in their own way).
  • Hangry cheese: This is just cottage cheese. It fills a more urgent need than snacking cheese, as it can be shoveled into my mouth.
  • Cream cheese: She’s in a category of her own.
  • Treat cheese: This is usually a small portion of something aged and crystal-flecked (I’m really into aged gouda right now), but sometimes it’s a super gooey washed rind specimen. I usually eat it with a really good apple.

That’s just me, and though I value my own opinions, I’d love to hear yours. How many cheeses do you keep stocked in your fridge? How many do you need to function? How many do you want? Tell me your cheese categories, your cheese desires, your cheese dreams. Identify your cheese needs, then demand they be met.



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Technology

When It Is (and Isn’t) OK to ‘Double Text’ Someone You’re Dating

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Photo: Antonio Guillem (Shutterstock)

Dating comes with its fair share of rules (“wait 24 hours until after the date to call”), and so does texting (“never end a text with a period unless you want to be a jerk”). Put them together and it’s no wonder we’re so anxious about sending and receiving texts from our latest crush. Texting etiquette is already a tricky area to navigate within the throes of a new relationship, so how do you handle the double text?

The double text is when you send two or more text messages to someone before they respond to the first, and it’s often considered “cringe” as it can come across as a little needy or desperate if you just started seeing someone. When it comes to texting, patience is everything, says Laura Bilotta, founder of Single in the City and an expert date coach and matchmaker. “If you’re still in the early stages of a relationship with someone new, try showing some restraint. After all, one message may be all that’s needed for your crush to respond back!”

If you’re guilty of sending a double text, don’t worry. Bilotta breaks down when it’s appropriate to send a double text, and when you need to double down and refrain from sending one.

Should you send that double text?

If you’ve just met someone, you’re probably better off not pressing send. “Double-texting someone can come off as desperate or clingy, leaving your conversations feeling less than romantic,” Bilotta says. “Taking the time to give a person space before following up is essential in any meaningful text conversation.”

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Instead, Bilotta recommends understanding your motivations behind sending that double text. “Think about what you’re wanting out of this exchange: Is it something meaningful or just an attempt to soothe away those anxious feelings we all experience when communication doesn’t go as planned?” If you’re feeling sad or anxious about not receiving a text back, Bilotta says that’s perfectly normal. Process your emotions rather than texting that person back. “It can be tough waiting for that text back, but if it does happen eventually, the patience will pay off.”

And remember: It’s totally normal not to hear from someone for a day or three or even a week, especially if you’ve just met them.

Is it ever OK to send a double text?

Of course it is. There are no hard fast rules since every situation is nuanced. According to Bilotta, it’s OK to send a follow-up text if you’re wondering about the other person’s feelings or trying to ward off potential hurt, disappointment and rejection, but “try to give them a chance to respond to your first message before you do so. By sending an extra message, you may get that response your heart desires—never let yourself feel like it was something more than just missing notification timing.”

It’s also OK if you send a double text for logistics purposes, like if you’re trying to reach them for something important, like rescheduling or confirming plans. “Sometimes one message doesn’t do the trick, and that second nudge might be exactly what they need to respond quickly so things can move forward,” she says.

Just make sure you’re not relying on the double text to manipulate the other person’s time or get them to share something with you that they’re not ready to express yet.

“It’s important to remember that the person on the receiving end of your messages has a life too,” Bilotta says. “If they aren’t responding, there’s a good chance they’re busy with something else and aren’t able to get to the phone right away—you’re just putting extra pressure on them and showing them that you expect them to respond immediately whenever something comes up.”

What to do instead of sending the double text

If you’re feeling down because someone didn’t respond to your text, don’t feel discouraged. Bilotta says you should process those emotions and take time for yourself while also taking an intentional break from your phone. “It’ll give both of you space while also giving the chance that they might reach out when least expected.”

At the end of the day, Bilotta says the most important thing is to remember your worth. “Everyone deserves to have people in their life who they can count on and appreciate them. If your feelings aren’t reciprocated and you don’t hear back, it’s all right—you could be missing out on a whole world of possibilities. So take this as an opportunity to explore and meet new people.”

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Technology

Clever Ways to Manage All Your Cords and Cables

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Photo: Octavian Lazar (Shutterstock)

With so many devices (and their various accessories) needing to be charged—not to mention the lights, appliances, and other electronics that need to remain plugged in—your cords and cables situation is probably out of control. Keeping cables neat and well organized is tough, whether it’s for the stuff you use every day, or the battery charger for an emergency flashlight you use twice a year.

There are some tricks you can use to keep things tangle free, however. Here are a few of the best.

Store your cables separately and keep them organized

When it comes to storage for cords you don’t keep plugged in, storing them separately is a must. The more they interact with each other, the more chances they have to get tangled up, even when just sitting in a drawer. You can buy a special case with elastic pockets that keep cords perfectly organized, but you can also use a tackle box, a jewelry organizer, or a hardware box you already have around to get the job done. Anything with compartments sized for small parts will work, so you can get creative with what kind of organizer you use.

Labeling is key

The real game changer when you’re storing cables that aren’t in use: Label everything so that you remember what it’s for. You might think you’ll remember what a certain cable does when you put it away, but speaking from experience, I’ve moved a box of cords with me throughout my entire adult life because I never know which one I’ll need or what each one specifically does. Using a sharpie or a label maker to note the device(s) the cord works with with can really help when you’re struggling to remember which battery pack/tablet/portable speaker some tiny cord belongs to.

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Keep plugged-in cords organized

If you’re struggling with tangled cords that stay with your devices, that can be more trickier, since you often don’t have a lot of control about where they will be plugged in. Cables can fall behind desks or get lost under furniture, making it hard to get things to their proper charger. Using a cable wrap that’s reusable and doesn’t stick to anything is an excellent solution. Anchoring cords to a furniture leg so that they don’t come undone when you’re not using them is also a good way to keep them together. A slotted cable organizer that fits on your desktop is one solution to this problem, keeping the chargers you use regularly at your fingertips. You can also use an under-desk tray to hold cables, whether you have a desk or not—they can also be used on a shelf or wherever you want to set up your charging station.

String lighting and entertainment cords along your baseboards

For lighting and appliance cords that you need to leave plugged in most of the time, using a baseboard cord channel can keep things neat and cords less noticeable. If you have some distance between an outlet and your cables, this will make it much more streamlined and also keep cords from getting tangled. For cords that need to travel across the floor, a rubber cord protector will prevent tripping and keep the cord from getting damaged by regular foot traffic. (These aren’t meant for heavier traffic like furniture dollies or hand trucks, so if you’re moving or doing renovations, it’s best to unplug power cords while you’re working.)Rather than packing a nest of cables into a power strip with a short cable, use a corded outlet cover, so you can run just one cord from the outlet instead of a few.

Kitchen cords

For kitchen appliances, as well as some tools, a cord winder can be very handy to cut down on messy tangles. To keep appliance cords off of the counter top, you can also use cord clips mounted underneath your cabinets. When you’re not using the appliance, leaving an extra clip under the cabinet to store the plug will keep it handy when you need to plug it back in. For items that are stored in a cabinet or cupboard, a velcro cable tie can help keep the mess to a minimum.

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Technology

The Best Places to Find Free Audiobooks

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Photo: fizkes (Shutterstock)

The audiobook industry is in the cusp of a major change, with a new technology from Apple using AI-narrated features that promises to make audiobook production more accessible to independent and indie publishers, according to Apple’s website. This means we, as audiobook listeners, could potentially enjoy more audiobooks selections at lower prices in the future. In the meantime, though, here are several ways you can score audiobooks for free.

Net Galley

You’ve probably heard of free movie screening websites, like Gofobo, where you can get invited to watch an upcoming movie before it comes out—there’s a website that does the same thing for audiobooks. Net Galley gives you access to the latest books and audiobooks by distributing digital galleys, or advanced reader copies (ARCs), in exchange for an honest review with the intention of creating hype for the book.

You need approval from the website, but it’s easy if you use Goodreads, Amazon, or BookBub to write books reviews because you can sync those profiles when setting up your Net Galley account. Even if you’ve never used those accounts or written a review of a book, you can still apply; they want regular book advocates in addition to professional book reviewers to review as many ARCs as possible.

Libby

Libby is OverDrive’s mobile app to get free access to e-books, audiobooks, and magazines from your library—all you need is a library card from your local public library. Like a library, Libby only allows you to borrow a certain amount of audiobooks or e-books at a time, but the app allows you to listen or read your borrowed content off-line. Plus, all your devices are synced, so you can listen on your computer at home, and then pick up where you left off on your phone when you get in your car.

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Libby is only for digital content and is available for Android and iOS, browsers Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, and the Microsoft Store if you use Windows. You can also send your borrowed content to your Kindle if you don’t want to read it on your phone or computer (if you have one of the newer Kindles that supports the feature).

According to OverDrive, over 90% of public libraries in North America have OverDrive, so odds are, your library uses it. You can check if they do here. OverDrive originally had an app named after their company, but it was discontinued in early 2022 and replaced by Libby.

Hoopla

Similarly to Libby, Hoopla is an app that allows you to borrow audiobooks and e-books from your local library for free if you have a card, but it also gives you access to movies, music, and graphic novels. The way you borrow on Hoopla is different from Libby, though; instead of working like a real-life physical library, Hoopla allows you to borrow any of their content immediately with no wait time. So you can get the latest popular audiobook regardless of how many people are checking it out at the same time. However, Hoopla limits you to 10 items you can check out each month.

Hoopla’s interface is not as user-friendly as Libby’s, but it has a larger selection of content to choose from. It also syncs across devices and picks up where you left off. They both have their pros and cons, but they are both free and can complement each other.

Public domain websites

Content that enters the public domain is any book where nobody holds the copyrights to them, and are therefore free to distribute. Most are converted to audiobooks and e-books by volunteers and distributed through many websites. Most of the content is old-time classics published before 1923, meaning you can find nuggets like Homer’s Lliad and The Odyssey, The Richest Man in Babylon, and The Great Gatsby. Here are some websites where you can get these audiobooks from.

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Health

Don’t Waste Your Time With These Terrible Diet Tips

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Photo: Viacheslav Nikolaenko (Shutterstock)

It’s the new year and everybody’s on a diet—I mean, a wellness journey. Whether you want to lose weight or not is none of my business, but I do beg you to please, please let all the following silly weight loss “hacks” die. Many of them verge on disordered eating behaviors, while others are just ways to make yourself miserable for no reason.

(By the way, if you feel like your relationship with food is out of control, the National Eating Disorders Association has a screening tool, helpline, and more resources here.)

Smaller plates don’t make us eat less

This one is a classic: Serving yourself on a smaller plate is supposed to make a small amount of food look bigger. Therefore, you’ll eat less food overall, and eventually lose weight.

But our brains and bodies are too smart to actually be tricked by that. The idea that smaller plates promote smaller portions came from a lab that was later found to be engaging in sketchy research practices. Other labs ran their own plate size experiments and found that people usually don’t eat less when given smaller plates. What’s more, we get better at estimating portion sizes when we’re hungry. The small plate hack wasn’t fooling us after all.

Drinking a glass of water isn’t going to satisfy your hunger

There’s a common healthy eating tip that says if you’re hungry, you should have a big glass of water, because sometimes our bodies can’t tell hunger and thirst cues apart.

But there’s no evidence that this is true, or that drinking a glass of water will help. One of the oft-cited papers on hunger, thirst, eating, and drinking found that we actually get a little hungrier after drinking—so even if it were true that our bodies mix up the signals, the proposed solution isn’t likely to help.

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with drinking a glass of water if you think you might like one, whether you’re hungry or not. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that hunger pangs are your body telling you that you’re thirsty. Your body knows the difference between food and water, okay? That’s why you haven’t starved or dehydrated to death yet.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to eat like a bodybuilder

There’s a stereotype about bodybuilders eating nothing but chicken breast, brown rice, and broccoli out of little plastic containers. They eat with discipline and end up shredded, so this must be a healthy meal choice, right?

While it can be a fine meal if you enjoy it, this combination is not the best or only way to meal prep—especially if you aren’t a fan of the individual components. Chicken breast and rice are both notoriously unforgiving when it comes to meal prep, anyway. They tend to dry out, especially if you prepare them without marinades or sauces.

So ditch your idea of what healthy food looks like, and make a plan that involves foods you actually enjoy. Upgrade to chicken thighs, learn to use a good marinade, throw that dry rice in a waffle maker, or just make an entirely different recipe. It’s okay for food to taste good.

Oh, and while we’re discussing bodybuilder habits: no, eating many small meals does not “boost” your metabolism.

It’s a diet, not a lifestyle change

This last one isn’t so much a hack as an oft-repeated platitude: “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.” If you’re trying to lose weight, please do not make this a lifelong process. Dieting is the act of deliberately undernourishing yourself. If you want or need to do it for a short time, then own that choice, and do it in the healthiest manner you’re able. But once you’ve lost some weight, get back to fully nourishing your body again.

After all, it would not be healthy or smart to lose weight forever. Since the way we lose weight is by eating fewer calories than we burn, the exact meals and habits that help us lose weight are not going to be the ones that help us maintain our ideal weight once we get there. At the very least, you’ll have to increase your portions.

So if you feel like your current diet or habits need to change, make sure to separate out what should change in general (example: cook at home more often) and what should change temporarily (example: smaller portions). Healthy eating and undereating are not at all the same thing.

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Technology

Enable This Setting to Stop Chrome From Hogging So Much Memory

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Photo: PixieMe (Shutterstock)

Chrome is a popular browser for a reason: It’s fast, powerful, and compatible with popular apps, services, and extensions. All that power, though, comes from somewhere, and ends up putting a strain on your RAM. Chrome is a memory hog. Fortunately, there’s now an easy solution to the problem.

Why does Chrome use so much memory?

Each tab you open is a new activity for Chrome to manage, and the browser makes a point of running each tab as its own process. That way, something can go wrong with one tab without affecting others. Chrome is also fast because of its prerendering feature, which takes up RAM to keep things loading as quickly as possible. Plus, the more tabs you open—and the most resource-intensive tasks you run in those tabs—the more RAM you’ll use.

It isn’t really an issue until it becomes one: If your system runs out of RAM, you run into performance issues, all because your internet browser can’t handle its RAM properly.

How Memory Saver can preserve RAM when using Chrome

Thankfully, Google has addressed these issues with a new feature called “Memory Saver.” With it, Chrome will automatically make unused tabs inactive while you’re working in other tabs. When you return to these inactive tabs, Chrome will turn them back on. According to the company, Memory Saver can use up to 30% less memory than running Chrome without it, which should solve most memory issues with the browser.

Memory Saver isn’t the only new “Performance” feature coming to Chrome. Google also introduced an “Energy Saver” feature as well, which reduces performance to preserve battery life, as essential for those of us who work on laptops.

How to use Memory Saver to free up RAM in Chrome

Memory Saver is officially rolling out to users over the next few weeks, however it’s available as a feature flag right now. Flags are “experimental features” Chrome tucks away from most users; some aren’t finished yet, which means they could have detrimental effects on your browser. However, since Memory Saver is nearly here, it seems like a safe flag to enable.

To check it out, paste the following link into your address bar, then hit enter: chrome://flags/#high-efficiency-mode-available. Here, click “Default,” choose “Enabled,” then click “Relaunch.” When Chrome restarts, head to Settings, and you’ll notice a new “Performance” tab on the left side of the screen where “Memory Saver” now lives. Click the slider to turn on the feature. If there are sites you’d prefer Chrome always keep active, you can click “Add” to add them to the list. Any time you return to a tab that was inactive, Chrome will let you know and tell you how much RAM it saved by making it inactive.

[9to5Google]

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Health

What Your Farts Can Tell You About Your Health

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Illustration: Sam Woolley

Breaking wind. Cutting the cheese. Thunder from down under. I could go on, but whatever you call it, farting is a part of life. Farting is usually caused either by swallowing air, which has to get come out somehow, or by bacteria in your guts releasing gas during the digestive process. Everything animal (human or otherwise) farts, but how you fart can actually tell you something about your health.

“Passing gas is normal,” said Eamonn Quigley, a gastroenterologist at Houston Methodist Hospital. “Everyone passes flatulence on a daily basis. We pass more after meals, and we even pass through the night.” But what do your farts mean, and what might they be trying to tell you? For starters, “when a patient complains of excessive gas, one of the first things we look at is the patient’s diet,” Quigley said.

Bloating doesn’t mean more gas 

One important thing to understand about farting is that “there is a big distinction between flatulence and bloating,” according to Quigley. As a classic study showed, the sensation of bloating is not linked to excessive gas production. Instead, bloating tends to happen when gas gets trapped in the gastrointestinal system, causing it to build up and creating an uncomfortable feeling of pressure. In contrast, “flatulence is associated with producing more gas,” Quigley said.

Why you might be farting more than usual 

One of the main reasons why you might start farting more than usual is because of a change in your diet. Whether you’re eating more protein, more fiber, or more veggies, it can cause a short-term perturbation as the bacteria in your gut are spend more time than usual digesting your food. However, “we adapt, and our bacteria adapt,” Quigley said. “If you change your diet, you may have more flatulence in the short term.” So at least you won’t be farting forever once your gut gets used to that all-kale diet.

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Some of the foods that can make you fart more than usual include different types of sugars; beans; dairy products; high-fiber fruits such as apples and pears; sugar alcohols; vegetables with a lot of fiber such as asparagus, cabbage or Brussels sprouts; and whole grains, which contain lots of fiber. For foods with a lot of fiber, “bacteria love them,” Quigley said. “They’re going to digest them, and in the process of digestion, they’re going to produce gas.”

Why your farts might be smellier than normal 

If your farts are smellier than normal, the culprit is usually a specific food you’ve, such as asparagus, coffee, eggs, or prunes. All are likely producers of fouler-than-usual gas, often due to the presence of hydrogen sulfide. Smelly farts can also be caused by meat byproducts and if there is feces in the rectum.

When to see a doctor about your farts

If you are experiencing discomfort or if you have unexplained, persistent changes in your farting behavior, that’s a sign you should see a doctor. Bloating can be associated with irritable bowel syndrome (other symptoms including changes in bowel movements, such as alternating between diarrhea and constipation, or pain that isn’t relieved by passing gas or having a bowel movement). In the future, healthcare tech may even make it possible to detect any changes in your health by monitoring the sounds of your farts. Until then, you’ll just have to settle for listening to (and smelling) your farts the old-fashioned way.

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Health

These Are Signs That Your Dog Is Allergic to People

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Photo: Stickler (Shutterstock)

Anyone who lives with allergies knows how deeply unpleasant they can be, knocking you out with a range of symptoms affecting you from head-to-toe. Dogs feel our pain, too, and can be allergic to a number of the same things we are.

But if humans can be allergic to dogs (or, more accurately, their dander), can they be allergic to us? Here’s what to know.

Can dogs be allergic to people?

Like humans, dogs can be allergic to certain foods, skin irritants, and medications, as well as environmental allergens, like pollen, dust miles, mold, and animal dander, according to the American Kennel Club (AKC). And yes, this includes human dander.

Is this new?

Even if you’ve had dogs your entire life, this may be the first you’re hearing about the possibility that they can be allergic to people. And Dr. Valerie Fadok, an AKC veterinarian specializing in dermatology, says there are good reasons for that.

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First, she says, testing dogs for human dander allergies has only recently become a routine part of the test in vets’ offices. The second reason has to do with fleas. Sort of.

Prior to the early 1990s, when effective, modern, preventative flea control treatments became widely available, it was far less common for dogs to sleep in bed with their humans, Fadok explains.

Now that excellent flea protection exists, dogs are spending longer periods of time snuggled up next to their people (especially in bed) and being exposed to their dander—which, in turn, makes their human dander allergies noticeable in a way that they weren’t before, Fadok notes.

The signs a dog is allergic to people

Dogs’ environmental allergy symptoms are largely the same for any allergens, so if yours experiences any of the ones below, you’ll need to take them to the vet for a test to identify the cause.

According to the AKC, the signs that your dog may be allergic to human dander (or any other environmental allergens) include:

  • Scratching and licking themselves, especially around their groin, anus, eyes, muzzle ears, paws, and underarms
  • Moist, crusted-over, or bare patches of skin
  • Runny nose and/or sneezing
  • Watery eyes
  • Hives
  • Diarrhea

What to do if your dog is allergic to people

If your vet has determined that your dog is, in fact, allergic to human dander, they will also talk to you about the best ways to treat their allergies. Depending on the type and severity of you dog’s allergic reaction, the vet make recommend longer-term solutions, like allergy shots, or short-term treatments, like an antihistamine, or cortisone cream to soothe their skin.

There are also things you can do at home to help reduce your dog’s exposure to your dander (and other allergens), including:

  • Vacuuming your home as much as possible
  • Switching to washable rugs, and washing them regularly
  • Using an air purifier with a HEPA filter in your bedroom
  • If your dog sleeping in your bed is nonnegotiable, changing and washing your bedding often

Report back to your vet after a few weeks with an update on your dog’s symptoms. If they’ve stayed the same or gotten worse, your vet will help you determine the next steps.

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