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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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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So...last week I expressed skepticism at the idea of exercise boosting one's mood. I got some good responses about what to do (lift, more intense exercise, etc.) but I wanted to hold off on some of them because it's basically a law of the gym that, if I do any strength training, I overreach and injure myself.
So...I overreached and injured myself! I can't even be mad this time because it's so absurd: I deliberately didn't touch weights and injured myself doing...Kegels - which was supposed to be light work. I was literally doing 5 a day and I still managed it. Low WIS + CON is a helluva combo.
But! It did give me an opportunity to test out if I feel worse without exercise and...eh?
I was annoyed on Monday, but I honestly can't tell if that was just my usual cyclical moroseness and depression and stress at work.
One thing I did notice was that fasting was harder without the cardio. Not much harder (a 16:8 schedule is pretty easy) but I just feel hungrier (which might explain why I'm more irritable). Still not sure exactly why moderate-to-vigorous cardio would make me less hungry. Maybe it's that I'm just wasting an hour and a half working out and walking home that I would otherwise been thinking about food?
Anyways, besides that I do feel somewhat uncomfortable not being able to go to the gym because working out early was becoming a keystone habit and I feel like I'm losing that progress. But I don't feel significantly worse.
In retrospect I should have kept a log right after the injury. But low WIS strikes again...
How do you injure yourself doing five kegels a day? If that's a literal and accurate description of what happened ... I have no idea how that's possible. You must use those muscles at least that intensely just going about day-to-day activities
My muscles are pretty weak, which pairs badly with a small bladder- which was more the motivation to do it rather than the... other alleged benefits.
Based on my research I think it's a failure to adequately unclench that throws something out of whack in a most painful way.
It's like all other cases of overstrain. Did it very lightly. Felt it was working. Then a little more forcefully. Then I was a bit sore but it's not too bad so I decide to do it lightly and reassess the next day.
Next day? Pain
I genuinely don't understand how that can happen, and strongly suspect there's things that you either know but haven't said or don't know that are important to strategy here. I can't see a way of "doing five kegels" that could cause injury outside of a medical problem or some other bizzare situation.
How many steps do you take per day / how often do you walk, roughly? The best advice I can imagine outside of 'provide more information' is 'do more very light exercise across all muscle groups, go on walks more, don't ramp up at all because ramping up seems to cause issues', but that is very weird advice
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