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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1975 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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I've always seen .5 g / lb as the benchmark for "minimum" for a semi-active person.

I would be very curious, too. I have a fun anecdote that makes me believe the real minimum is extremely low: I went vegetarian in my mid 20s, and because I did it totally uninformed that absolutely cratered my protein intake for at least 2 years. Rice and potatoes must have been my main sources of protein.

But I started out fit, and absolutely nothing happened. I climbed difficult rock climbs and progressed as before - slowly. I hiked 7000' of elevation in a morning and was sore for one day after. I destroyed people in beach volleyball and socker.

I only noticed because I was totally immobilized by an injury for weeks and lost around 15 lbs of muscle. Rehab took a year, and I obviously only started to build muscle once I fixed my protein problem.

So yeah, if you want to see the numbers go up, eat plenty of protein. If you're happy to just be active and fit, eat whatever macros you want. A protein deficit threatening (even high level) maintenance is almost impossible on a western diet.

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