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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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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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.
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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.
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I've lost about 70 lbs since January. Go me!
Some notes:
how is your blood pressure so low? mine was at 140 even at 180. congrats on weight loss . CICO is technically true in that sense that obesity reflects an energy imbalance, but also limited in the sense it's hard to predict how the "CO" variable will change.
this is a good point:
at least 75% of the US population is overweight through no effort. something is wrong. it's more than just "eating too much," as there is evidence people consumed similar or greater calorie counts hundred+ years ago without becoming as overweight. historically, when food was cut off during war or other famine , people rapidly starved to death , even on 1500 kcal/day like in Holland or Russia, yet we have entire Reddit subs where people cannot lose weight on 1200-1500 kcal/day (obviously, miscounting calories is an issue).
Theory time:
100 years ago or even 50 years ago, you naturally got a lot more exercise than we do today. Just doing normal activities without a separate exercise program was probably more movement than most of us do. You manually cook, clean, mow the grass, and other chores. If you needed something you had to walk around a store, and might visit several. Add in a more physical factory or farm job and you’re probably adding the equivalent of an hour of exercise or two a day — but it’s just living life.
Also, because most people entertained themselves by doing thing with other people, rather than doing sedentary activities alone. Before there was a TV in your home, you probably did things with other people. Go bowling, or golfing. Kids would play pick-up sports. Teens would dance. People walked around and rode bikes. Again, this kind of thing was exercise that modern adults often don’t get.
Food was also more expensive and less available. Modern Americans are probably never more than 50 steps from a snack that requires no preparation. Go to any store — hardware, clothing, crafts, whatever. They also sell cheap ready to eat snacks. There are vending machines in every office and schools and in some cases parks. So for a couple of bucks, an American could buy a snack everywhere he goes. If you don’t have good willpower, it’s likely you’ll eat at least some of these foods between meals.
Our foods also taste better. We have a lot of good foods available and there’s a lot of variety. Spicy, sweet, Indian, Thai, Korean, you name it, you can get that kind of food. This coupled with the easy preparation (or no preparation), low cost, and easy access has kinda turned food into entertainment more than simply fuel for your body.
This could answer the CI aspect but it does not explain how so many people do not lose weight as they should when dieting. Historically, people quickly lost weight when food was cut off. The Minnesota starvation study made this clear. if people's metabolisms are actually slowing, this can lead to propensity towards weight gain.
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