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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1003 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 7, 2026

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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  • 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.

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New Year's resolutions check-in (mainly just to keep myself honest, but feel free to post your progress as replies):

  • Posted my first blog post of the year on Monday, about what the recent Bondi Beach shooting implies about the efficacy of Australia's gun buyback programs in preventing mass shootings. One down, twenty-five to go.
  • Went to the gym twice last week and on Monday, going again at lunchtime today: can deadlift 1.68x my bodyweight, squat .77x and bench press .64x.
  • Have not consumed any alcohol, fast food, fizzy drinks or pornography since waking up on January 1st, although I did unfortunately snack between meals on Sunday and Monday.
  • Have completed the first of 11 modules in the SQL course.
  • Have practised guitar for roughly one hour every day since January 1st.

Went to the gym twice last week and on Monday, going again at lunchtime today: can deadlift 1.68x my bodyweight, squat .77x and bench press .64x.

And I thought I had a weak bench press. My 2RIR is 2*0.84x. My deadlift is puny in comparison, 2RIR is just 6*1.1x. I think I could go to 1.2 if I did fewer reps and dropped the bar, maybe 1.25.

I've been deadlifting a lot longer than I've been bench-pressing. I recently realised that I'd been doing Romanian deadlifts rather than actual deadlifts: the real deal is significantly harder, but I can still reliably do 5 reps at 1.68x bodyweight. (Hoping to do 1.7x tomorrow.) I'm really struggling to make progress on the bench press though, and the less said about my overhead press the better.

I recently realised that I'd been doing Romanian deadlifts rather than actual deadlifts

I had wondered along these lines when you previously posted your weight/reps on deadlifts.

Bench press is weird. There's a lot of delta that depends on training it specifically.

I rolled at BJJ with a random kid the other week, and I was tossing him around pretty good all round, and after he asked me how much I benched. I told him I could do 225 (1.1bw for me) for maybe 3 reps, and I could probably do 235 if I tried, but I hadn't trained bench a lot in a while. He looked at me stunned and told me he just did 225x10 for multiple sets.

Like cognitive ability, so much of this is innate. e.g. Ratio of fast/slow twitch muscles, the strength of tendons, CNS drive, limb length etc.

innate

I'm not out to claim that "genetics don't matter" or something, but off the top of my head at least two of those attributes sure seem trainable.

Fiber type: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30006671/ (and see the fairly extensive animal literature as well e.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004410050647)

Tendon strength: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18556433/

I am pretty sure "CNS drive" is also fairly trainable, but my eyes glaze over every time I see the phrase and I'm not sure it's terribly well-defined.

I'm quite far away from pressing 100kg. I got to around 80kg 1RM after concentrating on it, but right now it's probably 70kg.

It helps that I'm like 10kg heavier than you. Anyway, the whole point of the story was that bench isn't that predictive an exercise anyway.

Which SQL course are you doing?

It's just a free one on a website called Simplilearn.

My goals are about the same as last year:

Do a spring hiking trip around 100ish miles (about a week)
Do a summer hiking trip around 200ish miles (around 2-3 weeks)
Read a bunch of books
Do a trail race in the fall

Right now I need to work on putting some weight back on, which, despite being in my 40s, is harder than it seems since I can't have lunch. My chicken and rice lunches were very good at adding some pounds.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, though I think they probably serve a useful function in terms of signaling (but not costly enough) and as a form of pre-commitment.

The important things I have to do? Those are already on a schedule. Can't afford to fuck those up. Everything else? Buddy, I'm drowning, the last thing I need is a regimented swimming lesson plan.

My only New Year's resolution is to save more money in 2026 than I did in 2025. So far, I'm about $125 under last year's total spending.

It's not much, but it's a start.

I wrote my resolutions in a Discord server. I'll post them here first, and then my progress:

  • this has already been ongoing for a while but I'd like to continue lifting and gaining muscle mass in 2026. overhead press for reps over 100 pounds would be awesome, and 10 chin ups in one set would also be great (current OHP is 85, current chin up record is 5)
  • I want to lose at least 25 pounds. earlier this month, the scale measured 200 pounds for the first time in my life (I am 6'1.5"), however lately it seems to trend around 196.8 pounds. I aim to get down to 170 pounds. I am on a diet between 1700 and 1800 calories each day and I am trying to get either weightlifting and a small amount of cardio or a big amount of cardio in every day (30 minutes or more, mostly zone 2 bpm stuff). will have to see how my weight is trending in a couple weeks, but I aim to lose about 2 pounds a week. the food scale and XL air fryer have been VERY useful in this regard.
  • I want to learn more japanese, putting in at least 4 hours per week on this between flash cards and actual practice, plus reading grammar explanations when I find new grammar. previously I'd been doing easy "comprehensible input" content, but if I clean up my anki cards, I hope to start reading actual native level news articles, mining every word I need to to be able to comprehend the article.
  • probably a bad thing that this is so low on the list but I want to get a new job.
  • also probably a bad thing that this is so low on the list but I should probably get a girlfriend if I ever want to get married. part of that means that I have to take some good photos somehow.

for some less big picture stuff

  • I want to finish The Brothers Karamazov
  • I want to start and finish Dark Souls III
  • I want to try at least one pick up game of badminton or tennis. I know of a couple indian guys at the gym who play badminton that I'm going to try worming into, putting on my best social autist face. there are also tennis courts all around town that I can hang out at and practice my swing while I wait. never played tennis before, HAVE played badminton before and liked it.
  • I only did one lifting session last week, but I've done one this week and aim for one more. Switching to dumbbell bench press has made me lose a lot of pounds on bench press, but it feels safer. I haven't really had an opportunity to test my pull-ups, but I am mostly happy with not having lost any strength from the weight loss yet.
  • The scale yesterday read 192 pounds. That could be an aberration, but it was trending downward before, seemingly. I need to measure consistently; I think I will always slip off my shoes and take my keys and wallet and phone out of my pocket before weighing. I've already had some hiccups with the dieting; I got a lot of food for Christmas, and I spent one cheat day finishing the worst of it (spicy Thai chili crisps are high calorie but low satiation). Aside from that, I also have difficulties when I'm with family and want to eat at a restaurant. One day, I didn't do too badly; I fasted all day and then had an order of fajitas. The day after, I donated blood and ate a bunch of stuff, to the point of satiation but not to the point of feeling full. That will probably have to be good enough for days when I am eating with family and can't track calories with my food scale. As for the cardio, it's going pretty well, actually. I find cardio easier to do than resistance training, and it's been nice spending more time in zones 2 and 3 instead of pushing myself through zones 4 and 5. I feel good after doing these workouts. However, I have failed at doing them every day. On weekends, it's difficult to motivate myself to leave the apartment/house when I'm home.
  • I've caught up on one Anki deck, but the other one is proving more difficult. I guess those kanji haven't sunk in enough yet. I am mostly failing to practice on native language articles every day, though I did learn the word for "drug cartel" last week thanks to Trump. 麻薬組織！
  • Nothing for the last two yet, predictably. I'm coming to realize that I have pretty cripplingly low self-esteem, which makes these two much more difficult. I'm not even sure if I want a girlfriend anymore. I had an embarrassing online relationship last year (she was a real woman, I promise) and I found that my anxiety was significantly increased about all kinds of aspects of her. I still have a huge amount of mixed feelings about relationships. I guess that that won't change until I interact with women romantically more, but the fact is that it's going to be painful and I wish I could just avoid everything.
  • No progress on Karamazov yet. I stopped shortly after the time skip after the arrest of Dmitri.
  • I can't start Dark Souls III until I beat Metro 2033; I'm on Chapter 5 out of 7, I think. I haven't been playing much because I typically spend too much time either studying Japanese or putting off studying Japanese. Or playing Caves of Qud mindlessly.
  • I've decided I should probably take up tennis, not badminton. I'd want to play with other white people, and there's a lot more tennis players in America. Just anything other than pickleball. I need to buy a racket and practice my swing, but it's cold out and rackets are expensive. Hmm, do I need to be a member of the tennis club to attend their social events? Getting some tennis friends would be nice.

I feel you on the romantic front. I'm a little more self-confident than you, but have found dating to be absolutely soul crushing. I need time to get to know a woman before I am attracted to them but by the time I do that it's the friend zone for me. I'm not a shut-in: I have social activities almost every night (dancing, run clubs, language happy hour, hanging out), I've continually compromised on my standards (veganism, environmentalism, religion, wokeness) and still nothing seems to work out, although tons of women seem to want to be friends with me.

I've continually compromised on my standards (veganism, environmentalism, religion, wokeness)

Do you mean your ideal woman is vegan, environmentalist, the same religion as you, and woke? Or am I misinterpreting?

Vegan (or vegetarian/pescetarian, basically don't care too much as long as they don't demand we cook meat for dinner every night), environmentalist, tolerant of many religions, not woke. Of course #4 doesn't go with 1,2,3 and unfortunately I can't stand woke because it usually means there can be no compromise in the relationship. Hence the compromising.

I hope to start reading actual native level news articles, mining every word I need to to be able to comprehend the article.

Me again but how would you feel about doubling up on this? Maybe having a mini discussion group or swapping points on a Google Doc or something? I've been meaning to read the newspaper more (I tried reading Yomiuri a couple of times) and it would be great to have a buddy.

Sure. I'm not very good, mind you. Google Docs could work, Discord could work, mini discussion group somewhere else could work, any of those would definitely be motivational to me, too. Feel free to send me a message. My main goal is to find actually interesting stuff to read. There are so many NHK articles that are like "bad weather incoming" or "oh no! earthquake again!".

I need to measure consistently; I think I will always slip off my shoes and take my keys and wallet and phone out of my pocket before weighing.

Strongly recommend doing it completely naked first thing in the morning when you wake up, before you eat or drink anything. That will give you the most accurate reading, uncontaminated by water weight.

Nothing for the last two yet, predictably. I'm coming to realize that I have pretty cripplingly low self-esteem, which makes these two much more difficult. I'm not even sure if I want a girlfriend anymore. I had an embarrassing online relationship last year (she was a real woman, I promise) and I found that my anxiety was significantly increased about all kinds of aspects of her. I still have a huge amount of mixed feelings about relationships. I guess that that won't change until I interact with women romantically more, but the fact is that it's going to be painful and I wish I could just avoid everything.

Strongly recommend reading this book. I found it very insightful and helpful.

Re: scales, make sure you use something does a rolling average e.g. Happy Scales app. The measurements jump around day by day due to changes in water + feces etc. and the only time I ever lost significant weight it was by being laser-focused on the downward progress of the average even when there were big day-by-day spikes.

  1. Work: Have been working since Monday and feeling on the upswing. Raw hours still aren't there, but I think I will get there much faster than expected. No longer feel stressed, but rather excited!

  2. Fitness: hit 7 hours last week, and am track for 9 this week.

  3. Intellectual stuff. First blog post of the year is up and I finished Harry Potter 6 in Italian!

  4. Finances. Lots of unexpected subscriptions this month, but planning ahead for the Boston marathon has saved me a bunch on travel.

  5. Haven't looked at porn or had sex, but have masturbated two times. These have both been because of times and situations that exposed me to softcore porn (instagram) at times when my willpower was low (early in the morning/late at night).

  6. Tarot is going well, breath work hasn't happened yet.

  7. Phone screen time is down under 2 hours again!

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