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Wellness Wednesday for September 9, 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 resolution check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week and again yesterday evening. I can deadlift 1.82x my bodyweight, squat 1.33x and bench press 0.82x.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

  1. Work: Working on starting to write up my thesis
  2. Fitness. Alumni meet was a bit of shock to the system: went out very hard and died very hard for a pretty bad 5k (16:49). Not too worried as I've been doing a lot of mileage and a lot of marathon pace stuff. Hours: 9 running, 67 miles
  3. Intellectual stuff: One blog post this month so far. Reading is going well. Finished the dev bio book, am still working on the other two (Lenin, Jared Diamond follow-up) as well as Brandon Sanderson in Spanish.
  4. Finances: Big divvy month which is nice, hoping I can save a little bit more so I can buy some more stocks. Spending so far: $2149
  5. Dating. Fourth date this weekend with this girl. I've stopped using Hinge and deleted my instagram, as I think this is going to go long term.
  6. Tarot. No session this week.
  7. Socializing: Was in Boston all weekend and had too many social events before.
  8. Screen time: 1.2 hours. Really good especially since I was on the train all day.
  9. Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority.

a pretty bad 5k (16:49)

A sub 6:00 mile for the full 5k is bad?

The best mile I ever ran in my life was 5:58 and I literally spent the rest of the day coughing blood. How do you do it?

I'll let @thejdizzler comment on his training for himself. But don't discount his elite level dedication to diet.

Reading that, it makes sense. He puts as much effort into running as I do into lifting.