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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   2675 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 12, 2022

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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First, the good news: Have made a number of concurrent improvements in my life over the past ~3 months. Went to gym or pool almost every day since late July. Cut way back on carbs, sugar, drinking. Dropped 25 pounds, BMI has gone from obese to merely overweight (goal is to lose another 25 and get ratio down to "normal" by April). Deleted Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from phone, with hard-to-quantify but palpable benefits for calm and focus.

All well and good. If anything it's seemed too easy at my age. What I could use advice on is how to sustain it. Work is likely to get more stressful in the coming weeks. Soon the weather will be colder outside and the sky will get darker earlier in the day. Put all these things together, and the temptation to backslide into bad habits (indulging in "comfort" food, self-medicating with beer, skipping the gym "just for today") is liable to rear its head. Suggestions to keep the momentum going?

More granularly -- any recommendations for inexpensive CGMs (Levels looks awesome but well out of my budget)? And any advice on trying intermittent fasting -- e.g. the relative merits of "16/8" vs "5/2"?

The one lifehack I can share, assuming it's real and not woo, is I've started developing a taste for apple cider vinegar, which supposedly is good for weight loss. I mix 1 tbsp into my (plain Greek) yogurt in the morning. An acquired taste, but it's growing on me. May start using it as salad dressing soon. Also finding soup is a great way to fill up at meals without overeating.

Thanks all....

Congratulations. -25lbs in 3 months is impressive progress. Don’t be disappointed if you can’t achieve that again.

I’m also looking for ways to not slip into hibernation mode in the cold winter.

oh shit it's Friday not Wednesday... sorry.

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