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Wellness Wednesday for June 5, 2024

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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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've only barely resumed a fitness routine (push-ups, given that I can't be bothered to take a gym membership for the months or so till I leave the country) after several years off, so I can't comment for myself.

But my younger brother? He's absolutely insane, he's hitting the gym like it owes him money, and when I ask him why the fuck he bothers since he doesn't give a shit about female (or male) attention, his justification is that "I'm doing this to mog women".

So yeah, his entire impetus for being fit is just to flex in front of women who are into him while ignoring them entirely. I'm in awe, I think he's the only sane person on the planet, and approaching levels of based I can't comprehend.

I really doubt that it's his real reason why he's hitting the gym so hard. For me, after around 3 months of hitting the gym consistently without skipping, it actually became really enjoyable and now I'm looking forward to every workout. I feel on top of the world after every workout, the mental clarity and physical pump is incredible. I thin your brother is addicted to that.

I must respectfully disagree, given that he's my own brother and I do know him.

We used to hit the gym together back in the day, and I was far more serious about it to boot. If he was addicted to lifting for the sake of lifting, I'd have known by now, but no, mf genuinely only does it to make other people seethe with jealousy. Sure, he probably does get some satisfaction out of starting to build muscle, but it's not the driving motive given how much he bitches after leg day.

Fair enough. To me, it just sounds like something an edgy teen/twenty-something guy that watches too many tiktoks/ig reels would say to own brother/friend to sound cool. I'm myself in that age range and have been around people with similar attitudes. But regardless, if that's truly what motivates him, more power to him.