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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   750 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 21, 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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New Year's resolution check-in:

  • I'm several days behind schedule on my Substack posting. I think I'm a bit depressed and it's causing writer's block.
  • Went to the gym three times last week. 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?

Things are going well! IDR what my resolutions were but my life has been a bit of a cluster this year and I'm proud of where I'm at. Have been successfully writing a bit, got promoted, body feels good. Haven't gained a ton of weight, haven't lost any either. Overall think I'm in a good spot considering I recently ended an almost 7 year relationship and engagement.

You can take me off the ping list. My goals and priorities have shifted.

Noted.

I've been keeping. Stress levels are reasonable, though I occasionally have bad days. A single colleague calling in sick on a busy day can mean a ridiculous pile up.

I've also finally gotten to understand just how difficult managing eating disorders can be. There was a patient I was asked to opine on, who'd been seen by psych on a medical ward on a prior admission and not found to have an ED, on the grounds they weren't happy with their weight loss and had declared a strong commitment to improving.

I'd seen the patient, but didn't want to repeat an assessment or declare a new diagnosis other than possible ARFID because of the earlier opinion from a senior and a few real medical issues impairing eating. The med consultant had been rather peeved, and pointedly noted that the patient had ended up back in hospital a few months later in even worse condition. I had to concede the point, people can lie.

Or the med student with anorexia I saw recently. Both my seniors and the internists had noted her consistent tendency to use her medical knowledge to try and get her way and manipulate people, particularly her parents. Unfortunately for her, she's not very far into her course, and quite a few things she describes are somewhat ridiculous.

I'm not saying they're evil, far from it. They're very, very mentally ill, and the fallout is usually restricted to themselves. Some people can just do a very good job fasting themselves to death while declaring that's the opposite of what they want. I knew the stats, but it's another to see it for myself.

Sigh. I do what I can, when I can. It's sometimes enough.

Yeah, saying eating disorders are difficult to manage is putting it mildly in my book, and IME the ED itself tends to have other comorbidities that will inexorably come out to play over time. I don't think they're evil, either, but I do have to strongly disagree that the fallout is restricted to themselves because it exacts a heavy toll on their loved ones as well, even the ones that understand that it's something to be managed, not fixed.

I do agree that it's severely distressing to their near and dear ones, I could have phrased that better. I just don't think that the distress is all that dissimilar to what's seen with say, severe depression or schizophrenia. I'd contrast that with personality disorders, where there's more of a tendency to be actively malevolent instead of manipulation with the underlying goal of getting away with not eating.

Ahh, that's totally fair then. I'm tempted to rat-hole this whole thing further, but the truth is that I can only speculate as to the overlap between individuals with eating disorders and individuals with any flavor of personality disorder. Suffice it to say that I wonder if there isn't some underlying Thing that ties them together.

It depends on the disorder, the underlying psychology between bulimia, binge eating, and anorexia is wildly different.

Ponder the people you know and think about the people who use excess healthiness/exercise as an excessive compensatory mechanism. It's more than you might naively expect and that specific compensation is often associated with high achievers (and without gross personality dysfunction).

Meanwhile anorexia is often best modeled as a psychotic process (at least a psychotic level of functioning) that responds poorly to medication. Borderlines and other Cluster-B personality types usually have variable or sketchy reality testing, not absent.

Yeah, this is why I said I could only speculate, I'm only really familiar with anorexia, though I've been unhealthy myself in pursuit of my weight goals. That said, while I have the ability to ignore hunger until it goes away, I'm trying to be good to my body right about now.

Meanwhile anorexia is often best modeled as a psychotic process (at least a psychotic level of functioning) that responds poorly to medication. Borderlines and other Cluster-B personality types usually have variable or sketchy reality testing, not absent.

Believe me, I am aware.

Oh fuck I missed that part of your troubles. I am sorry that is some hard stuff.

Heh, yeah, I'm just sneaky like that!

Oof. I used to have a close friend who was severely anorexic, to the point of being repeatedly hospitalised. Hugging her felt like hugging a skeleton, I could feel her shoulders pressing into me. It's awful to see someone wasting away like that.

  1. Work: continue to make slow and steady progress on the last part of my PhD.
  2. Fitness. Started training a bit for Boston. I'll be following a plan by John "Hadd" Walsh which I can't start until I get to about 50 miles/week, which should be some time in mid November. Added in a 10 minute stretching routine before bed, which should hopefully help with some injury/flexibility issues.
  3. Intellectual stuff: Finished War and Peace and War (hoping to do an effort post on this book soon, it was great), and have started listening to another audiobook of Turchin's which I am also really enjoying. Spanish has fallen a bit by the wayside, but that's okay because I'm reading a lot. I've fallen a bit behind on blog posts, but that's also okay as I've published quite a bit this year.
  4. Finances: Spending has been pretty bad this month because of three big purchases (Chicago marathon for next year, Shenandoah trip, and two rounds of metabolic testing for $400). Money from parents should help with being in the green for the month (money market dividends should be very large from the extra $200k I have in the account), but I still need to practice better fiscal discipline. Spending so far: $2775.
  5. Dating. Hung out with the girlfriend all of last weekend and she met some more of my friends.
  6. Tarot. No session this week.
  7. Socializing: Spanish happy hour, saw my friend Emory at the Baltimore marathon, hung out with my girlfriend's sister and husband.
  8. Screen time: 2.5 hours phone. Big new phone is really addicting.
  9. Meditation: Butyeko meditation sessions 3 x a week before bed.

Spending is $861.64 less than the same day last year. Slowly getting back on track.

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