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PaperclipPerfector  6hr ago (text post)   166 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 28, 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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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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New Year's resolution check-ins

  1. Work: Have my committee meeting at the end of February, and realizing I haven't done that much on my primary project in the last six months so am panicking a bit. This has the positive side effect of making me work more, which I need to do.
  2. Fitness: hit 11 hours this week past week (10- dancing), which felt great, although I need to do a bit better job of eating slightly more food. Down week this coming week (~8-9 hours, including dancing). Need to make sure I start getting in strength training again. If all goes well I'll be able to XC ski this weekend for a few hours, which will be awesome!
  3. Intellectual stuff: feeling very overwhelmed on this angle: I've committed to do my clubs/projects. Going to turn my Italian class into an audit which should help, and finishing up Marx in a few weeks. Look out for an Outlive effort post today or next week!
  4. Finances: On track for this month financially! Did most of my taxes, although am waiting for the 1099 from my investments to finish up. I owe much less than I thought (only about 2.5k), which is big because I can put a bit more into my IRA!
  5. Dating: Locked down my devices pretty hard: I can't get to porn sites, only fans, or even stare at instagram or photos for more than five minutes. It has, perhaps unsurprisingly worked, and I've been porn and masturbation free since last week. The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest. If she reaches out to tell me she wants to go on a date I'll give her a shot, but I'm not interested in putting in effort.
  6. Tarot continues to go well. Ex-roommate quit his job (terrible financial decision, but great for his mental health), so we had a pretty great conversation this week.
  7. Screen time. Due to the adult content and other restrictions, my screen time on my phone plunged to 90 minutes. This week I expect it to be around an hour. It is still quite high on my computer, but that is because of the large amount of computer work I am doing at work!

How goes it @FtttG and @oats_son

  • I fell off on lifting last week, but got in my lifts on Monday this week and plan to do so again Thursday. Yesterday, I ran for a while, running at 5 MPH for half a mile and then walking for 2 minutes at 3 MPH. Sadly, this got my heart rate up to about 185 by the end of each half mile. I am still trying to find the best way to get the aerobic base to jog for a long time. In the end, I might have to try 4.5 MPH. Today I'm just going to go for a brisk walk during my lunch break, though. That can get me lightly breathing out my mouth, and I suspect from previous observations on the treadmill that that's probably at zone 2. It's easy and I don't break much of a sweat, and it's warmer today, so not much reason to refrain. I was excited to find one day that I could do 6 chin-ups instead of just 5, however, on the same day, my overhead press suffered a lot, which is confusing, but that's apparently just how overhead press is. Still trying to figure out squats... going all the way to parallel is very close to ass-to-grass for me, and it seems like my abs get worked out a lot on the way up because they have to work somewhat to shift my weight and allow me to rise.
  • Scale this morning read 184.6 pounds. I think it read 182.5 on Saturday, but that was probably because my stomach was almost completely empty. I seem to be trending around 185, good progress in my books. I took @FtttG's advice and try to weigh myself every morning after peeing, with no clothing. It's been very informative, which is what I needed. I need to go shopping because I'm basically totally out of produce. I want to get a LOT of broccoli this time. Eating it without oil or cheese, just salted and microwaved is just fine for me and it's very filling. Romaine lettuce salads seem bad. The vinaigrette costs a lot calorically and I generally like to throw other stuff in like sunflower seeds and cheese and it will end up being a lot of measuring. I was excited last night when I managed to peel a bunch of hard-boiled eggs in a row without losing any white. I baked an absolutely fantastic turkey the weekend before last thanks to an excellent thermometer I bought, and found that turkey breast is slightly better for protein than chicken breast. Finally, I've thrown off my diet a bit by going out to eat with my mother last weekend and eating to the point of satiation on accident, and also practicing making a margarita too much. The recipe I used seemed to add too much lime. It was a recipe for a cucumber margarita because I tried a flight of margaritas in October and the cucumber one was the best. It was pretty good when I tried it, too, but I'll have to play with the lime ratio. Rather, I'll try a different recipe with a different lime ratio. I think I'd want to get a blender for putting blended fruits in.
  • I've cut down my Anki backlog by about half. The mined word deck is difficult because there are no sentences to help me until after I reveal the answer. Kanji sucks! But I'll get there. My main problem is how spotty I've been in working on it; I skipped last night because I was too tired. On the other hand, I'm reading a lot more stuff designed for natives thanks to @Corvos's collaboration. And I'm also trying to learn the grammar as I go this time rather than taking a comprehensible input approach.
  • No progress on jobs or relationships, but it'll be alright. I now intend to read that book FtttG linked about attachment theory.
  • No progress on Karamazov, but I've played like 5 hours of Dark Souls III, been good so far. I fought some holy knight NPC invader but got ganked by some stupid enemy that I accidentally aggro'd, and I was disturbed enough that I restored my ember and kicked his ass.
  • No tennis yet. I swung by the nearest park and their tennis court has been converted into 3 pickleball courts. Now that's a culture war! You can find evidence for it IN REAL LIFE right there! It's literally Tennis Replacement Theory, and tennis players on the internet are not happy about it. But it's too cold, you know. I would want to use public courts, but I doubt I'd find anyone at any of them in this kind of weather.
  • Posted my third blog post of the year on Monday, listing all the books I read last year and which of those I most enjoyed (expanded from a comment I posted here).
  • Went to the gym three times last week, then again on Monday evening. Planning to go at lunchtime today. Can deadlift 1.75x my bodyweight for 5 reps, squat .9x for 13 reps and bench press .72x for 9 reps.
  • Have not consumed any alcohol, fast food, fizzy drinks or pornography since waking up on January 1st. When it comes to snacking between meals, I have failed absolutely.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.
  • Have practised guitar for roughly one hour every day since January 1st.

The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest.

No point pursuing it if she's not putting in the effort. It's funny though: some people are very good at expressing themselves, but hopeless when it comes to texting. The fact that she's responding in monosyllables doesn't necessarily mean she's not interested. But yeah, don't waste your time.

Also – is it "Argentinian", or "Argentine"?

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