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Wellness Wednesday for February 18, 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).

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

New year's resolutions check-in:

  • Was moving last week, and so didn't manage to get to the gym until Thursday. I went again on Friday, and during my second deadlift set I managed to throw my back out. I'd mostly recovered by Sunday morning, and decided not to push myself too hard and just did some cardio instead. Went again last night and was sure to do some stretching before deadlifting: the first three sets were absolutely fine, but after the fourth set I started to feel a little twinge in my lower back, so decided to stop there. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 4 reps, squat .98x for 8 reps and bench press .77x for 7 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.

@thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son: you're up.

Spending to date for this year is $1330 lower than last year at this point.

Month over month spending is slightly higher than last month, which is almost entirely due to gas and junk food when driving back and forth to my father's. I'm not sure what to do about that, exactly. The gas is non-negotiable, and on the way back I'm usually not in a kind of mental state that where I can resist the impulse buy on the way out of the building. I think for now I'm just going to focus on the rest of the week as best I can.

Next month is going to involve some expensive dental work that my insurance is trying to avoid covering, so I'm guessing that my progress will likely get wiped out after that.

Month over month spending is slightly higher than last month, which is almost entirely due to gas and junk food when driving back and forth to my father's

Under the circumstances, I wouldn't even count this as an expenditure. You have enough to be dealing with without worrying about small stuff like this. I'm sorry for your troubles.