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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How do I convince my girlfriend to eat more?
She's very skinny; usually not skeletal, but there are weeks where she oscillates between skeletal and skinny. She denies having an eating disorder and I don't think she does, but she is very finicky about her food and hardly ever eats meat (sushi being her one exception, she loves that). She says she's not a vegan, but vegan options are always her first choice and she'll only go non-vegan if there's no other option. She's 5'5'' and weighs about 100-105 lbs, so she's underweight, but not to the point where the casual observer would be concerned about it. I think she'd look and feel a lot better if she had another 10 lbs on her frame and a less restrictive diet, but when I raised the subject once she just said "You don't want me to get fat, right?" and insisted everything was fine.
I've never really had this problem with a girl before; it's usually the other way around where they might not stay in shape, and I've generally found that easy to handle because when I work out and stay fit it creates an impetus in their minds to do the same. Do any women here have any advice for how they'd like this subject broached if they were on the receiving end of the conversation, or if they think this sort of thing is fine? Do any men here have any experience with this?
OK, I qualify. It's much more effective to ask what her body can do (in terms of physical activity) rather than what her body looks like. If, despite her skinniness and near-veganism, she's strong as an ox and endures like a camel, then there is no problem with her diet.
Do the two of you do any physical activity together (other than intimacy) which puts her strength and endurance to the test? Do you go for long hikes? Swim? Play tennis? Climb? Go hunting? Clear debris? Dig ditches? If she does any physical activity that brings her to the brink of her strength or endurance, then improving her strength / endurance is a motivator. If, on the other hand, she avoids any activity that requires strength / endurance because she has none, you have an opportunity to start doing an activity with her at the beginner level. Not long hikes, but going for a walk. Not swim but splash in the pool. Not climb but gentle scramble. Once she starts doing the physical activity (with the motivator being your shared company), and she gets to enjoy doing the activity (positive reinforcement is a hell of a trainer), then she'll be in the position where she'd value increasing her strength / endurance.
As for looks: once your girl is into a physical activity, she'll put on the muscle, look less skinny, and (yes) feel better.
I think this is probably a good starting point, but I will observe that there are plenty of professional athletes, even successful ones, who have eating disorders. The term of art there seems to be RED-S these days. For those, the concerns are more "are they getting injured more often than they should" (energy deficiency can cause bone density issues), and, for women, if they are menstruating regularly (hormonal birth control can mask this issue).
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