My mother was a keen swimmer, and she lived with depression. I wonder if she found the same respite in the water that has helped heal me since she passed away

It was early morning in late September, off the coast of Kaş in Turkey. Watching the slightly choppy sea from a boat, the last thing I felt like doing was embarking on another 5km (3-mile) swim. Mind fog had sapped my energy, and my mood was decidedly Eeyore-like. But as I pulled on my cap and flippers, adjusted my goggles and took the plunge, something shifted.

Head in the water, the knotted feeling in my throat began to loosen. Breathing came properly. There was respite.

A game is not a moral exemption to your usual self. Sometimes the best way to puncture ‘it’s just a game’ is to show people that you’re judging them in reality

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My sister-in-law is nearly 40 but cannot handle losing at board games. No matter how high or low the stakes, she has to win. When she doesn’t, she becomes explosive with rage, and often upends the game, sweeps dice off the table, or storms off in a rage. She is otherwise a normal and lovely person, with whom I get on very well. Seeing this side of her makes me deeply uncomfortable and it feels really childish and inappropriate. Will she behave that way with me if I say or do something she doesn’t like?

I think in an effort to smooth the tension, my husband’s family always laughs and teases her about her reaction. It’s like her “special little characteristic” that everyone pretends to love. I wish there was a way to address it but everyone seems to just sweep it under the rug. My husband is aware of how I feel about this.

Food safety campaigners have long been concerned about pesticide residues on lemons, limes and oranges – and now a social media post about it has gone viral. How safe is it to eat lemon cake or drink a G&T with ice and a slice?

Do you sprinkle citrus zest on to your cooking or drink hot water with a slice of lemon? According to an Instagram post that went viral last week, you shouldn’t. “Select citrus fruits at Lidl now come with a ‘Peel unfit for consumption’ warning,” posts @wholefoodwarrior. She photographs some of the supermarket’s labels, which list the post-harvest chemicals used to conserve the fruit: azoxystrobin and fludioxonil (limes) and imazalil, 2-phenylphenol, thiabendazole, pyrimethanil and fludioxonil (easy peelers), plus E903 in the peel’s wax coating (both).

The 10,500 comments on the post are largely appalled. So what are these substances? And how worried should consumers be?

It involves the fracturing of a patient’s ribs, before they spend three months laced into a corset. Some of those who have had this cosmetic procedure say it is like being ‘hit by a bus’. Why is it becoming more popular?

Daniela Cesin was 14 when she began thinking about her looks. “I was a little bit chubby and I started to work out at home and lose weight. I saw the difference in my body: my abs, the muscles in my arms, and I started liking it,” she says. By 31, she had the slim, toned body she had hoped for, but something was still missing. “I wanted to have that guitar hourglass shape.”

In August, Cesin travelled from Miami, where she has lived for the past 15 years, to her native Venezuela for liposuction and a fat transfer to her hips. She met her cosmetic surgeon for the first time the day before the procedure, and he realised she didn’t have enough fat to go ahead with it. Instead, he offered to perform RibXcar: a rib remodelling surgery that would involve fracturing three of her lower ribs on each side and binding them in a corset for three months, to set the ribs in a new position and give her a wasplike waist.

In her new book, Envy, Stacy Kim explains how to understand the feeling, identify your deeper desires and use them to achieve your goals

In the 16th-century poem The Faerie Queene, envy is a ghoulish figure riding a ravenous wolf, sad to see the fortune of others and “wonderous glad” of their hardship. It’s not a flattering depiction; better to be thankful for what we have, rather than dwell on such a bitter and self-destructive feeling, right?

Maybe not. “I think that when we don’t examine our envy, that’s when it leads us astray,” says Dr Stacy Kim, social scientist, life coach and author of the new book Envy: Why Wanting What They Have is the Key to Getting What You Want. Kim wrote the book after seeing the way envy came up for her coaching clients and reflecting on the role it had in her own life. The book is informed by social science and philosophy research, as well as her personal and professional experiences.

Similar target: “You remind yourself: ‘Hey, the reason why I’m feeling this envy is because what I want is within my reach,’” she says.

Intangible desire, as mentioned above

Relevant comparison: Identify which specific domain – something you care about or already participate in – is relevant to your desires

Negative emotion: How long does it last? How intense is the message it’s sending? This tells us how important the feeling is.

Envy by Stacy S. Kim is out now. To support the Guardian, order your copy of the UK edition at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

A new report has found many crops are far less nutritious than they once were, so we need to eat more of them. Here is how to get your five portions of fruit and veg a day, easily and affordably – and potentially increase that to ten

When Eva Humphries first started working as a nutritionist, she met a client who had just found out he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and was on the verge of type 2 diabetes. He had no idea how to change his diet or lifestyle.

The man broke down and cried for 45 minutes, leaving Humphries with “no idea of what to do”, she says. In the final 15 minutes of the session, scrambling for a quick but helpful message, she finally said: “When you look at a plate of food, can you just make half of it veg for me?”