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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Late last year I posted a comment here asking how I could convince my girlfriend to start eating more. Now, I'm posting an update.
Frankly I was annoyed by some of the replies to my previous post that said I should "enjoy my slim girlfriend", or that implied that I was making more of a problem out of it than it actually was. She actually lost more weight and now weighs 98 lbs. It took several months of patient intervention for me to convince her that yes, I do actually want her to gain weight, and yes, I absolutely would still think she was pretty if she weighed 120 lbs. Recently she finally caved and went to her doctor for a formal medical opinion, and he backed me up on this by telling her that she was at risk of osteoporosis and anemia if she didn't change her diet and gain weight. My cause has also seen some support from her older sister, a very intelligent woman whom she trusts a lot, telling her that she needs to start eating more red meat. So in theory, at least, I've been able to convince her that her ordinary diet and habits aren't healthy or sustainable.
The problem, at least as I see it, is that even with this realization it's been hard for her to break her habits. We go out to brunch and she still eats her little vegan salads. I tell her she should add some chicken or other protein to the salads and she declines. She still consults the app on her phone that counts all her calories for the day. It's hard for me to figure out what the line is between pushing her to be healthier for her own sake, and being outright controlling over her lifestyle. Do I just put my foot down and confront her, pushing her to be serious about her health?
Speaking as a man who was once described as "manorexic", who genuinely believed I was a fat blob when in reality I was just a regular guy with some muscles, I'm not entirely sure how you deal with this specific case, but I certainly have experience dealing with and eventually overcoming comparable issues so maybe you'll be able to extract some value from that.
I will say, a previous comment seems to have hit a number of salient points, that this occured at a point in my life when I felt I had very little control and that the extremes I went to in pursuing my fitness and diet goals were an attempt to regain control over some aspect of my life. It later turned out I was trying to ignore/brute force a whole bunch of issues and that this really wasn't sustainable long term. As soon as I was removed from the stressors and able to accept the issues I was facing, I was actually recalibrate mentally, that burning need to reshape my body evaporated and now I have a much healthier approach to fitness in general.
Another big factor for me was the content I consumed and the websites I frequented online. I spent a lot of time in bodybuilding and weight lifting forums and it definitely distorted my idea of what was normal.
All of that said, I think it would be great if you could get your girlfriend into fitness in general and weightlifting in particular. While it is possible to go too far and harm yourself, it's a hell of a lot harder than it is with simply starving yourself. The thing that will really help to shift that mindset I think will be her watching female fitness influencers and getting her into that whole eco-system, one where women are striving to be more than just skinny, but actually fit and healthy. The company you keep does influence you and your outlook on life and to our monkey brains, influencers and social media types are company. Also it might help to explain that looking attractive is not simply a question of bodyfat percentages, but also what is underneath the fat. The video I linked earlier actually has a decent breakdown of bf% versus muscle mass for men and what that looks like.
Oh and it would probably be a good idea to one day figure out the source of the problem, I'd seriously recommend looking up things like what female autism looks like and just trying to explore things of that nature. It can seem somewhat orthogonal to the problem at hand, but the mind is a funny thing.
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