29 replies to this topic

[lea1117]

im 5'3'' and about 114 pounds. not fat, just kind of not feeling good about it.
ive been eating A TON for the past like year, which is what brought me from 100 to 114.
so i'm just going to try to eat like a normal person (3 good meals, only fruit or veggies for snacks), no radical diet changes, no foodgroups eliminated.

i was just wondering if anyone has noticed that eating less worsened/improved their acne?

[Marrakech]

im 5'3'' and about 114 pounds. not fat, just kind of not feeling good about it.
ive been eating A TON for the past like year, which is what brought me from 100 to 114.
so i'm just going to try to eat like a normal person (3 good meals, only fruit or veggies for snacks), no radical diet changes, no foodgroups eliminated.

i was just wondering if anyone has noticed that eating less worsened/improved their acne?

For me, eating less=less acne. Maybe my liver is too congested. but YOU DONT need to lose weight, It's good that you decided to eat regulat healthy meals. Good Luck.

[dogsncats]

im 5'3'' and about 114 pounds. not fat, just kind of not feeling good about it.
ive been eating A TON for the past like year, which is what brought me from 100 to 114.
so i'm just going to try to eat like a normal person (3 good meals, only fruit or veggies for snacks), no radical diet changes, no foodgroups eliminated.

i was just wondering if anyone has noticed that eating less worsened/improved their acne?

How old are you? You might be getting your adult sized body. Except for a few people who remain stick figures throughout their adult years, most people get quite a bit bigger during adolescence. I also went from 95 lbs. to 120-125 in a couple of years. Yes, this made me feel fat, but really it was just going from a little kid to a woman. As for your acne, this is probably a result of puberty also. Therefore, the weight gain and acne are both a result of puberty most likely.

[Danny©]

im 5'3'' and about 114 pounds. not fat, just kind of not feeling good about it.
ive been eating A TON for the past like year, which is what brought me from 100 to 114.
so i'm just going to try to eat like a normal person (3 good meals, only fruit or veggies for snacks), no radical diet changes, no foodgroups eliminated.

i was just wondering if anyone has noticed that eating less worsened/improved their acne?

How old are you? You might be getting your adult sized body. Except for a few people who remain stick figures throughout their adult years, most people get quite a bit bigger during adolescence.

"Baby Fat" in Pre-Adolescents Leads to Grown Up Fat

For some reason many people think of body weight as something abstract.
More weight, less weight, adult weight. But body weight is not an abstract measure it is either fat or muscle
Bodyfat must be a small percentage of the body weight as few is needed to protect the muscles and the organs
The rest of the body weight can only be muscle. There's nothing else

If someone get bigger during adolescience is because either his muscles got bigger or his fat increased
Increases in body fat beyond healthy levels (but fitness levels better yet) are never a good thing and certainly not a normal unavoidable event.

Also, weight increases while growing because height increases and your bones may become longer and thicker

The bottom line is throw the scales away! It just tells you how much you weigh but it doesn't tell whether it is bad weight (fat) or good weight (muscle) wether it's because your bones got larger or you became taller

Your waist size instead is a better measure. Unless someone is obese most of her extra weight will be visceral fat. If you visceral fat is low your waist measure is low if your visceral fat is high and hence you're overweight your waist measure is high. Waist line formula doesn't give you 100% exact info about your body composition but it does give you a good guideline because if your waist line is under a certain size you automatically can't be overfat and if it is over a certain measure there's no way you can be "thin" even though you look skinny

If the body fat can go down it means that you muscle mass needs to go up
Don't be mislead by the word muscle
Muscles don't make you masculine, muscles make you toned, soft ... even the bodies of young children are supposed to be comprised of mainly muscles, girls and boys alike. Baby-fat as showed by that study up there is a myth, a way to justify the poor health of children and their poor diet and lifestyle

Remember this sentence:
"NEVER attempt to gain or lose "weight!" Instead, you should always strive to gain muscle and lose fat!"
At any age and any gender

To answer your question I think that body composition would affect acne more than body weight. Fat is dead matter while muscles are alive. In other words even if you weight the same the less fat you have and the more muscles you have the better you circulation is, the better your body "breathes" and function and the better your kidney functions and cleansing/excretion systems are

Losing weight by eating less may worsen your acne only if it results in decreasing your intake of essential nutrients. Eating many vegetables is a good way to prevent this from happening because they're so low in calories that you can eat tons of thme even if you've decreased your calories intakes

Another good thing you can do is estimating your protein need so that even if you eat less and consume less calories the amount of protein remains the same. This is a problem with many bad diets and the reason why hypocaloric diet have an higher percentage of protein, because you must maintain the same intake of protein even if you consume 1000 or 1500 calories less

Another important thing is that eating TONS of food is not bad. What is bad is eating TONS of food at the same sitting. The higher is the amount of food you eat at a sitting the higher are the levels of after eating lipemia (fat synthesis) and insulin levels. This is a good way to put on fat and lose muscles

If you realized you're eating too much you may want not change the amount of food you eat but instead divide it evenly through your day. Have bigger snacks and smaller meals so that you're never "full" and "bloated" after your dinner or lunch

Danny

[Danny©]

For me, eating less=less acne. Maybe my liver is too congested. but YOU DONT need to lose weight, It's good that you decided to eat regulat healthy meals. Good Luck.

Well if she thinks she has increased in weight because of bad eating then eating regular meals will anyway result in fat loss
I think there's a sort of TABU aura about this thread, a sort of "don't feed the girl strange ideas or she will have eating disorder"
I'm sorry but I've known girls who suffered from bad eating disorders and the worst thing to do I believe is underestimating their concerns, it does the opposite of helping them. Telling them they're imagining it or that it's not an issue is what triggers the disorder in the first place. Honest information about their weight and their body and respect for their concerns is way better
So I won't feel guilty because I have provided few info to this girl instead of claiming "stop worrying" and almost ignoring her concerns
Ignoring someone's corcerns is asking for disaster, not empowering them with info

Danny

[KnowShow]

For me, eating less=less acne. Maybe my liver is too congested. but YOU DONT need to lose weight, It's good that you decided to eat regulat healthy meals. Good Luck.

Well if she thinks she has increased in weight because of bad eating then eating regular meals will anyway result in fat loss
I think there's a sort of TABU aura about this thread, a sort of "don't feed the girl strange ideas or she will have eating disorder"
I'm sorry but I've known girls who suffered from bad eating disorder and the worst thing to do I believe is underestimating their concerns, it does the opposite of helping them. Telling them they're imagining it or that it's not issue is what triggers the disorder in the first place. Honest information about their weight and their body and respect for their concerns is way better
So I won't feel guilty because I have provided few info to this girl instead of claming "stop worrying" and almost ignoring her concerns
Ignoring someone's corcerns is asking for disaster not empowering them with info

Danny

enlightening stuff, genius point of view.

[Kristin21]

Hello. Id like to add my experience on dieting and acne.. I went on a crash diet and lost 20lbs in 2 months. It was a very strict high protein VERY low carb diet.. My acne actually got worse then when i was eating fried foods, sugary snacks and startchy foods, I couldnt belive it was getting worse.. I was eating chicken and salmon and veggies , cornflaks and 1% skim milk(strictly).. I was actually suprised to see it get worse.. I use to eat junk food every weekend. Im a sucker for fried foods.. I was also exercising and ONLY drinking water.. I am 21 and now weight 112lbs i was 132lbs, In the end it didnt help my skin at all.. I dont recommend these crash diets, I am now suffering from severe hair loss, stomach problems.

[lea1117]

Thanks so much everyone for responding.
Just so you all know my doctor/parents/friends are really on top of me because in eighth grade (i just finished freshman year of highschool, btw), I dropped from 101 to 94 pounds pretty quickly, not anorexic just kind of obssesive. So, no need to worry about eating disorders.
And I really don't have a "weight loss" plan in mind right now, I just know I will lose weight as soon as I start eating normally. Last year's ridiculously bad for you school lunches and vending machine trips (read: calzones, fries, macaroni and cheese, chips, candy bars, etc.) combined with decreased exercise, a lot of stress (3856092344 snacks at home), no sleep (2-4 hours a night), and an over-caffeinated existence basically made my body a mess. Also, I really hate water for some reason so I don't currently drink enough.
Oh yeah, and I've had acne since I was like 11 so none of the above really created the acne, though I' m thinking it probably made it worse.

So I've already started getting more sleep and trying to drink more water, now I just want to start eating healthier. I also think I'm going to try cutting back on dairy and taking calcium supplements because something about milk and cheese just makes me feel gross in general and gives me a stomachache, so that can't be good.

[KnowShow]

I barely drink any water, yet I get all the water I need. I eat alot of fruits and vegetables. And I mean ALOT::

5-6 Apples a day
1 grapefruit
3 handfuls of rasberries
some blackberries
some strawberries

2 cucumbers
2 tomatoes.

Who needs water? just make sure your urine is almost clear with a hint of yellow and your good.

[DMBsDreamGrl]

5'3 and 114 lbs is no where near heavy or "fat" ...anywho just make sure you're getting enough protein and healthy fats when you do go on this healthy diet, also if you don't already you should workout, I'm sure you'll feel much better about your body

[09rules]

Women are supposed to have a higher percentage of body fat. Dude... boobs? Basically fat and glands! Biologically, we have more fat because our bodies need to be better insulated to be able to survive if it is cold during pregnancy. There are healthy and unhealthy levels of body fat. Too low is almost worse than too high. If you get too skinny or lose too much body fat your periods can stop (because your body knows you wouldn't be able to have a successful pregnancy so it stops letting you be able to get pregnant), you can start growing hair on your body (it tries to keep itself warm with hair instead of fat) you can lose bone density (which, by the way, you only have until you're 30 or so to build), and get all kinds of other problems.

I don't think it's a good idea for a girl that's average height and below average weight to lose any of those pounds. I'm 5'6.5" and 140lbs (168 cm and 63.5 kg), I look fine, I feel fine, and I see no reason to change my shape. Yeah, I've been trying to exercise more and eat healthier, but it's because I'm at a place in life where I want to develop good habits before my metabolism starts to slow down. I have to be conscious of my health because I can't stray too far from healthy... type 2 diabetes runs in the family.

I used to think I was too heavy too... and that was when I was at 135! I realized that it didn't make any sense to pine for the days when I had just hit my maximum height and was 125, because back then I had no boobs or hips either!

[Danny©]

The hoax of bodyweight and BMI have done lot of damage ...
Bodyweight is useless measurement and BMI is even more stupid
The changing aspects of our body composition are fat and muscles
The scales can't tell your body composition and therefore is simply useless because the pounds
you weight can't really tell whether you're fat or lean, healthy or not
There are underweight people whose body is mainly comprised of fat and they're obese even if they're underweight
There are overweight people whose body is mainly comprised of muscles and they're lean even if they're overweight
It's not your indiscriminated weight that determines hormonal balance, insulin resistance, proper blood flow but the balance between fat body mass and lean body mass
There are people losing weight with their diet and yet they're fatter now that they have lost weight and much less healthy. Anorexic subjects when they're ospitalized are actually fat even if they look emaciated

It's especially important to throw the scales away and focus on body composition because it is known nowadays that extra visceral fat is actually way more dangerous than being obese.
Yes, being skinny fat, underweight but fat, normal weight but obese is more dangerous than look big fat, the reason is that subcutaneous fat is not as dangerous as the visceral fat which is what influences the body metabolism and physiological processes
So many people are actually ruining their health by focusing on the scales and waiting for the numbers to go down or up indiscriminately, many people who believe that what they're doing is healthy and will make them healthier

It's all true: too little bodyfat is not healthy and too much body fat is not health, too little muscles is extremely unhealthy (it's muscle loss the cause of death from undereating) and as long as we don't take synthetic hormones the amount of muscles we can put on is self-regulated by the kind of external stimulus our body has to cope with ...

In other words we must be conscious of your body fat levels and muscle mass levels in order to know whether our body composition is healthy or in need of a change and the scales is not the tool we can use to do this. The scales alone is a useless object ...

So let's all begin to stop talking about "our weight" to talk of our "body composition" instead

BTW
Before I changed my body with diet and sport my weight was normal, I wasn't fat by weight or I wasn't skinny by weight but my body composition was unhealthy, I had lot of extra fat and pouch bloated belly which made breathing hard for me and compressed my spine, my legs and arms was skinny and I had very little strength, I had bad metabolism, indigestion and high blood glucose levels.
I didn't like what I saw in the mirror and I didn't look healthy but lucky me I knew I had not to blame the weight but my body composition. When I choose to change this I completely forgot the scales and I didn't whether my weight went down or up I just observed my fatty belly to disappear, my face to look more toned and healthy and my body to tone up by increasing the lean body mass

Danny

[Danny©]

Reccomended body fat levels according to ACSM:

Dangerous:
Male - below 3%
Female - below 11%

Low: (fitness/athletes)
Male - 5% to 10%
Female - 14% to 18%

Average (average for healthy non athletes)
Male - 11% to 16%
Female - 19% to 22%

Obesity
Male - over 25%
Female - over 30%

- - -

There are evidences nowadays that it's not dangerous fat levels the cause of menorrhea, and osteoporosis but the undereating and subnormal calories intakes necessary to reach those low body fat levels
Women wich body fat as low as 6% were found to consume less than 1000 calories daily and once their caloric intake was increased to meet their needs, menstruation returned and bone density increased even if their body fat remained low for some time before it came back to healthy levels. That would explain why anorexic subjects suffer from menorrhea too and yet they have high levels of body fat not low
Even if lack of calories and not body fat is probably the true cause of menorrhea dangerous body fat levels can be fatal and you feel very sick anyway when you have such low body fat levels, the good news is that you can't reach those low dangerous body fat levels without seriously undereating which is eventually the cause of of metabolic problems seen on 6% body fat women

Danny

[09rules]

There are evidences nowadays that it's not dangerous fat levels the cause of menorrhea, and osteoporosis but the undereating and subnormal calories intakes necessary to reach those low body fat levels
Women wich body fat as low as 6% were found to consume less than 1000 calories daily and once their caloric intake was increased to meet their needs, menstruation returned and bone density increased even if their body fat remained low for some time before it came back to healthy levels. That would explain why anorexic subjects suffer from menorrhea too and yet they have high levels of body fat not low
Even if lack of calories and not body fat is probably the true cause of menorrhea dangerous body fat levels can be fatal and you feel very sick anyway when you have such low body fat levels, the good news is that you can't reach those low dangerous body fat levels without seriously undereating which is eventually the cause of of metabolic problems seen on 6% body fat women

Danny

Uh... so you're saying people can get dangerously low body fat by not eating enough? Wow, that's not obvious at all... But lower body fat, not necessarily lower caloric intake, can be the cause of periods disappearing and loss of bone density. Some very athletic women don't have periods because of low body fat and yet they consume huge amounts of calories--they just burn all the calories they consume.

I've read that anorexic patients have higher body fat levels because their bodies start consuming their own muscle tissues for energy, since they're not getting enough from food. And their bodies go for the muscle first because they need the fat to keep them warm.

[Danny©]

There are evidences nowadays that it's not dangerous fat levels the cause of menorrhea, and osteoporosis but the undereating and subnormal calories intakes necessary to reach those low body fat levels
Women wich body fat as low as 6% were found to consume less than 1000 calories daily and once their caloric intake was increased to meet their needs, menstruation returned and bone density increased even if their body fat remained low for some time before it came back to healthy levels. That would explain why anorexic subjects suffer from menorrhea too and yet they have high levels of body fat not low
Even if lack of calories and not body fat is probably the true cause of menorrhea dangerous body fat levels can be fatal and you feel very sick anyway when you have such low body fat levels, the good news is that you can't reach those low dangerous body fat levels without seriously undereating which is eventually the cause of of metabolic problems seen on 6% body fat women

Danny

Uh... so you're saying people can get dangerously low body fat by not eating enough? Wow, that's not obvious at all... But lower body fat, not necessarily lower caloric intake, can be the cause of periods disappearing and loss of bone density. Some very athletic women don't have periods because of low body fat and yet they consume huge amounts of calories--they just burn all the calories they consume.

I read that it was debunked the correlation between body fat and menorrhea because in those studies they raised the caloric intake of the girls with menorrhea and even if they body fat with still dangerously low their periods came back even if the fat levels were still low. Likewise girls with an high body fat developed menorrhea if their caloric intake was very unsufficient. I don't think there are evidences that one can get dangerously low fat just by exercizing a lot because you would lose a huge percentage of muscles before you could lose all that fat. Athletes like gymnasts reach a dangerous low body fat level by chronically eating below maintenance and when they reach that low fat levels they have also wasted most of their lean body mass.
Of course the BMR of an athlete will be higher but they know this and know they're undereating and they do it on purpose. I also think that some kind of substance is involved in getting that low body fat levels because it's very hard as the amount of calories necessary to maintain lean body mass would never allow someone to lose too much body fat
Athletes get that low body fat on their cutting phase so I think they're very correlated because either the low body fat causes menorrhea or low calories causes menorrhea, when there are those low body fat levels there's always a below maintenance intake and that alone would make very low body fat levels dangerous
But I guess that when the body reaches very low body fat levels the effects are way worse as I don't know how can the organs within the function when there's a lack of body fat

I've read that anorexic patients have higher body fat levels because their bodies start consuming their own muscle tissues for energy, since they're not getting enough from food. And their bodies go for the muscle first because they need the fat to keep them warm.

Exactly, that's a reason why is so hard to reach very low body fat levels without being involved in a very peculiar lifestyle and using substances which raise the metabolism like hycroxicut stuff, but those levels are also short lived because so much muscle mass is sacrificed. There are certain athletes who maintain that low body fat only as long as competition, contest, match lasts then they goes back to a normal bodyfat

My point was that it's a myth and a dangerous and hideous myth that weighing yourself on the scales is the best way to know whether you're overweight, underweight, fat, lean or healthy. It is simply useless because weights doesn't discriminate between body fat levels and lean body mass levels and therefore between health and lack of health between balance and unbalanced body

The dangerous side of this myth is that one would eventually judge whether he/she needs to lose or gain weight by the numbers on the scales, so maybe someone would try to lose weight even though his/her body fat levels are already very low (but the scales can't tell). Muscles weigh 75% more than fat and if one ignores the scales and knows his/her body fat levels and lean body mass level than one can consciously know how much fat is safe to lose or whether there's no fat to lose and in that case focus on building more lean body mass.

Danny

[09rules]

My point was that it's a myth and a dangerous and hideous myth that weighing yourself on the scales is the best way to know whether you're overweight, underweight, fat, lean or healthy. It is simply useless because weights doesn't discriminate between body fat levels and lean body mass levels and therefore between health and lack of health between balance and unbalanced body

The dangerous side of this myth is that one would eventually judge whether he/she needs to lose or gain weight by the numbers on the scales, so maybe someone would try to lose weight even though his/her body fat levels are already very low (but the scales can't tell). Muscles weigh 75% more than fat and if one ignores the scales and knows his/her body fat levels and lean body mass level than one can consciously know how much fat is safe to lose or whether there's no fat to lose and in that case focus on building more lean body mass.

I agree with you there, you can't tell just by looking or weighing whether you're healthy. But body fat percentage measurements are extrapolated figures (ususally by comparing your weight to your height and age and/or doing measurements of the fatty parts of your arms and waist)--there's really no way to measure them 100% accurately so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

But back to the original point, I don't think that the girl who started this thread needs to lose any weight... it's certainly possible that she may have a high body fat percentage, but I'm inclined to doubt it.

START A REVOLUTION: STOP HATING YOUR BODY!

[Danny©]

My point was that it's a myth and a dangerous and hideous myth that weighing yourself on the scales is the best way to know whether you're overweight, underweight, fat, lean or healthy. It is simply useless because weights doesn't discriminate between body fat levels and lean body mass levels and therefore between health and lack of health between balance and unbalanced body

The dangerous side of this myth is that one would eventually judge whether he/she needs to lose or gain weight by the numbers on the scales, so maybe someone would try to lose weight even though his/her body fat levels are already very low (but the scales can't tell). Muscles weigh 75% more than fat and if one ignores the scales and knows his/her body fat levels and lean body mass level than one can consciously know how much fat is safe to lose or whether there's no fat to lose and in that case focus on building more lean body mass.

I agree with you there, you can't tell just by looking or weighing whether you're healthy. But body fat percentage measurements are extrapolated figures (ususally by comparing your weight to your height and age and/or doing measurements of the fatty parts of your arms and waist)--there's really no way to measure them 100% accurately so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

That's true even though calipers are accurate enough

But back to the original point, I don't think that the girl who started this thread needs to lose any weight... it's certainly possible that she may have a high body fat percentage, but I'm inclined to doubt it.

That's ironic because ... let's just make this imaginary hypothesis that the girl has high body fat percentage and hence a lean body mass percentage, she would have to make her body fat percentage lower by making her lean body mass higher, hence she would have to GAIN weight in order to lose fat and not lose weight

I often wonder whether people look the mirror or the numbers or the scales. I'm thinking of those people who are dieting and are losing more lean body mass than fat, they're losing weight and increasing their fat and I believe that when look in the mirror they can see that something is wrong, they can see that they're not becoming as they thought they would become if they lost fat and yet they keep waiting for those numbers to go down, I don't think they're actually looking at the mirror or feeling their health ... they're too obsessed with numbers.
I would forget about numbers and trust the way I feel with my body instead, whether I feel healthy and lean or skinny and fat whether my cloths fit my body or they look like losening (hence I need some "toning") and so on

START A REVOLUTION: STOP HATING YOUR BODY!

Well, for me it has always been a matter of health rather than easthetic.
For example if I accepted my skinny body as it were, without trying to change its composition for the better ... well, forbidding my body from being as healthy as it can be ... that would have been hating it more than admitting it needed to get in shape

Danny

[dogsncats]

Women are supposed to have a higher percentage of body fat. Dude... boobs? Basically fat and glands! Biologically, we have more fat because our bodies need to be better insulated to be able to survive if it is cold during pregnancy. There are healthy and unhealthy levels of body fat. Too low is almost worse than too high. If you get too skinny or lose too much body fat your periods can stop (because your body knows you wouldn't be able to have a successful pregnancy so it stops letting you be able to get pregnant), you can start growing hair on your body (it tries to keep itself warm with hair instead of fat) you can lose bone density (which, by the way, you only have until you're 30 or so to build), and get all kinds of other problems.

I don't think it's a good idea for a girl that's average height and below average weight to lose any of those pounds. I'm 5'6.5" and 140lbs (168 cm and 63.5 kg), I look fine, I feel fine, and I see no reason to change my shape. Yeah, I've been trying to exercise more and eat healthier, but it's because I'm at a place in life where I want to develop good habits before my metabolism starts to slow down. I have to be conscious of my health because I can't stray too far from healthy... type 2 diabetes runs in the family.

I used to think I was too heavy too... and that was when I was at 135! I realized that it didn't make any sense to pine for the days when I had just hit my maximum height and was 125, because back then I had no boobs or hips either!

You're lucky if your fat is concentrated in your chest and backside, but not all females are like that. Some carry weight in a kind of diffuse all over fashion so they actually just get bigger and puffier the heavier they get. Others gain weight in the waist, actually giving them less curve rather than more.

I've noticed women who are the most weight conscious are the ones who gain it in the 'wrong' spots. Instead of gaining fat in bad places, they'd rather just be skinny.

[09rules]

You're lucky if your fat is concentrated in your chest and backside, but not all females are like that. Some carry weight in a kind of diffuse all over fashion so they actually just get bigger and puffier the heavier they get. Others gain weight in the waist, actually giving them less curve rather than more.

I've noticed women who are the most weight conscious are the ones who gain it in the 'wrong' spots. Instead of gaining fat in bad places, they'd rather just be skinny.

True, not all women gain weight the same way. Women tend to have more of a "layer" of fat around their whole body because, again, the whole "keep body warm for carrying babies" idea. When I said I didn't have boobs or hips back then I meant I was done growing but not done with puberty (the original poster is still developing her adult body).

Danny89, I think that the original poster wanted to know if she should lose the weight she gained to help her acne get better. You haven't said anything about that, but instead have ranted about body fat and misconceptions about healthy weights, etc. How does this help her, if she hasn't even stated that she does indeed have a high body fat percentage? (Which I think, however possible, is unlikely.) Advising her to lose weight without her finding this out is hypocritical of you. You could be jeopardizing her health, confidence, and body image by suggesting that she has too much fat when you do not know whether she does or not.

Lea1117, I don't think losing weight will help you control your acne, though as others have said, modifying your diet may help. I gained 10 pounds when I was 14 too, so don't sweat it, you're just going through puberty! I think you are making the right choice by drinking more water and avoiding dairy if it makes you sick (you may be lactose intolerant... it's a common allergy to develop during adolescence or adulthood) and taking calcium supplements... you only have until your 30s to build bone mass for the rest of your life! Good luck with your acne, I'm sure you'll find something that helps.