The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Female here, with one point that's missing from the previous thread: you don't mention how old your wife is, but if she's anywhere in the mid 30s- mid 40s range, then normal perimenopausal hormone shifts will absolutely cause a natural change in body composition and fat distribution, particularly increasing visceral fat in a way that gives that "pregnant" look, without any changes in diet or exercise. Stress and sleeplessness make this fat-deposition pattern worse (so if you see things that could reduce her stress levels, that might be a good approach), but I'm not aware of anything that can fully reverse it. Just go to the mall and glance around and see how many 50-year-old women you can find who still have a 25-year-old's waist shape, regardless of overall fitness or weight: it's a vanishingly small proportion.
Thank you for your reply!
I wasn’t aware of this, and you make a good point that I should keep in mind. I was instead prepared to blame it all on American culture and obesity patterns.
But no, she’s in her late 20s and has only suffered the post-teen slowdown so far—and also as a teen her belly wasn’t flat, which I found cute at the time because the fat was staying near her belly button, and not creeping below.
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Yes, I hit my 40s and rapidly developed a belly, after having a flat stomach my whole life. It's distressing!
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