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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Has anyone here actually experienced the alleged improvement in mood after exercise? How long did it take you?
Cause I'm going to the gym again (nothing serious; half an hour of cardio a day) for a couple of weeks and I'm wondering if this is a false bag of goods or if there's some threshold.
Stop doing this shit and start lifting.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss cardio (and I say that as a gym-bro who much prefers lifting).
Lifting is fundamentally about vanity, whereas cardio has objective benefits for wellbeing (better mood, better sleep, improved cognitive function). I wish I had the willpower to do more cardio.
Lifting is fundamentally, for me, about doing something hard, taking a challenge and beating it. When I try to lift for vanity, which I've done dozens of times, I quit. I need a goal, and I need to work for it. This is positive for my mood over time, because it means that even if I'm getting bad grades or the deal I worked on falls apart or my wife is mad at me or the Eagles lose or [political party] wins, theres this other more or less totally decoupled yet concrete and meaningful part of my life that can be going well, progressing, and that evens me out over time.
Cardio activities like distance running or rowing can do this too, but probably not 30min elliptical workouts. My standard advice on this is that your primary workout should be something people either compete in, or aspire to master at a high level (the exceptions that fit here are things like dance and yoga).
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