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Wellness Wednesday for July 22, 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 can no longer stand catching the reflection of my beer belly when I walk past a window in the street, so promised my better half I'd commence a diet the Monday after I returned from our holiday. Since Monday the 13th my regimen has consisted of the following:

  • Intermittent fasting (only eating solids between 4pm-midnight)
  • No snacking between meals
  • No fried food
  • No fast food
  • Only one caffeinated beverage with milk per day (e.g. if I have a cappuccino in the morning, I cannot also have tea with milk that day – any other teas or coffees must be taken black)
  • No fizzy drinks (with the exception of sparkling water, or mixers like soda or tonic water)
  • No drinking alcohol on school nights

I grant myself one cheat day a week. The two bagels I ate on Saturday morning may have been the subjectively most delicious things I've ever eaten.

If my bathroom scale is accurate, I've lost 3.5kg so far. Will post here every week to keep myself honest until I've met my target weight or something approximating it.

I grant myself one cheat day a week.

be careful. You can easily undo weeks worth of progress by one cheat day, especially if you're too harsh with your diet throughout the week, which would make your cravings stronger. You can consume whatever you want, the most important thing is your caloric intake/macros. I ate whatever I wanted when I was on a caloric deficit for 4 months, the 'bad' food was frontloaded at the start of the day so that it was easier for me to keep track. For example, if I wanted a piece of cake, I would eat in the morning and the rest of the meals would be a bit lower fat than usual since cake is high in fat. A little bit of foresight goes a long way.

I also suggest a 45-60 minute walk 2-3 times a week, it would speed up your results by 20-30%, not to mention all the other health benefits.

Thanks for the advice. I consistently walk at least 10,000 steps most days (over the last six months my average was just over 11k/day), so I think I'm alright on that front.