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).
Jump in the discussion.
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People that went from not exercising regularly, to exercising regularly: what motivated you to do that? What got you started?
Personally I've enjoyed exercising since my mid-teens. I carry on doing it because I like having functional strength for the demands of daily living; and I also need agility and stamina to do well in sports I enjoy, especially tennis. When I was younger, I was also driven by the desire to look better. I did have success there, but I don't think about that aspect much anymore.
There are a couple of people in my family who, while they have normal or at least not-terrible weight, simply do not exercise. It isn't part of their life. While I know such a change largely has to come from within, I know from conversations with them that to some degree, they simply have never seen a reason to - having, perhaps, never really thought seriously about it. I'm curious about what angles I might take to try and convince them to give it a shot. I have a lot of social capital in this setting, and I do think I'd get a fair hearing.
I guess I may begin with the reason I want them to do it: as a defense against all-cause mortality, and as a method for keeping quality of life high well into middle and older age ranges. But I'm not sure how to back this point up or drive it home. Maybe if I had the right anecdote, blog, or article from a well-spoken source, it would help me.
I'm easily disgusted, and I became disgusted with myself. I was disgusted by the little bit of flab under my chin, I was disgusted by my skinnyfat paunch, I was disgusted by my weak forearms, I was disgusted by my diet of microwave dinners and Diet Coke. I resolved to have a body and life I could look at without feeling disgusted. I don't know if this is considered the "healthy" thought process or motivation for physical change, but I don't really care if it isn't. I like feeling the difference in strength when I move things around, I like being able to run and swim longer, and I like the difference in how women behave around me. But I've also been doing it for long enough now that it's become an integral part of my daily routine, so I just do it without thinking too much about it anymore.
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