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I'm continuing to lose weight from semaglutide (down 25lbs so far in about 3 months), these past few weeks at a rate of 2lbs/week. I'm also working out 6 times a week doing high-volume bodybuilding style training in order to preserve every shred of muscle I've built over the past 10 years of intermittently working out, and of course eating very high amounts of protein.
I'm still roughly 22 or 23 percent body fat, so not shredded by any means, but beneath the fat I have about 165lbs of lean body mass at a height of 5'9.5, and the large body frame that caused me so much anguish as a teenager is starting to play in my favour because it turns out that my shoulders are wide as fuck (21inches across from shoulder to shoulder measured on a wall, and 53inch shoulders circumference, and it turns out that girls like wide shoulders the way guys like tits?) ... so the overall figure is starting to come together, and the face has slimmed down too. Overall I look ok and muscular in clothes, but kind of unimpressive naked.
I have noticed... changes... to the way I'm perceived socially. Lots of furtive glances when I pass by (and some direct staring), lots of girls staring at my chest when I talk to them, a lot more inexplicable hair-playing and lip-licking, groups of high-school girls giggling when I pass by (which caused me a fucking spike of anxiety when it first happened, high-school-girl-giggling was not associated with anything good the last time it happened to me). I notice that people seemingly want to integrate me into conversations significantly more than before, I've noticed a subtle shift in energy when there's a casual group discussion.
It's also kind of fun to see new people I meet kind of be perplexed after talking to me for the first time. Bear in mind that my fundamental personality is that of a physics nerd (though now I do machine learning), that was the archetype that crystallised inside me during my adolescence, and getting muscles and a bit leaner has done nothing to that aspect of me. But this means that people kind of get visibly perplexed when I ask good questions during ML poster sessions, and when I don't fit their idea of a dumb muscle-bound jock. So far this has mostly amused me, we'll see how It'll get as I get even leaner.
As I get leaner the changes accelerate, every 5lbs decrease has produced more changes of this sort than the last. Overall this has been a strangely emotional experience, I'm basically in the process of fulfilling the dream of my 14-year-old self, and I don't really see any obstacle that could prevent me from getting to 12% body fat in a few more months.
I'll write a much longer top-level post with pictures and everything once this is all over.
How does semaglutide work on you? Do you eat smaller portions now, or have no inclination to snack between meals?
It's kind of both, smaller meals fill me up more than before, before semaglutide I'd still kind of be hungry after eating a full 12'' subway sandwich, now eating like 650 calories makes me satiated and good to go for the next 6 or 7 hours. It also calms late night cravings (which were my main weakness), so I don't go to sleep hungry if I eat in a calorie deficit. There's also massively less desire to buy sweets at the weekly grocery run. But hunger signalling still works: I still get hungry before a meal, it's just a lower level than before.
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Keep in mind that even non-doctored photographs of fit people are often taken in the context of using dehydration, pump, some alcohol, posing, lighting, or all of the above. I've been as lean as 9-10% body fat and still didn't really love how I looked if I just stood in front of a mirror with my body relaxed (not slouching, decent posture, just not flexing). At that weight, I could produce photographs of myself that looked strikingly different from that real-life impression by coming back from a run dehydrated, having a drink or two, knocking out some pushups, turning at an angle, and flexing. Not fitness-model tier because I'm less muscular, but still way more impressive than walking around.
Meanwhile, my wife says I always look basically the same. Shrug.
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Would you say that semaglutide makes a large difference? Personally, I've never had much of a problem just eating less - I'm losing weight now, and without counting calories or being particularly strict or doing much cardio.
Regardless of what you see on social media, most people, even people who are in shape, do not have visible abs, assuming that's your barometer for 'impressive'. Plus I think abs are fetishized too much. Simply having a flat stomach and a slight taper to your torso is enough
Yeah semaglutide is making literally all the difference for me, but only through the "I'm much less hungry" pathway, I don't think it has some special fat-burning ability outside of its appetite suppression, so if that hasn't historically been a problem for you, then semaglutide probably won't help.
How long did it take for things to "kick in"? I am starting with a different GLP-1 agonist and while the initial nausea has passed I don't feel like my appetite has dropped that much.
It really took me like 6 weeks to see the full effects. These have half-lives of about a week, which means that the concentration in your blood after a few weeks of taking it is actually twice as high as it was the first week. The initial weeks were also spent slowly escalating the dose to make sure I minimised side-effects. I'm taking 1.0mg/week of semaglutide spread into 2 injections each week, at this dose my appetite is very clearly suppressed, and I could already feel effects when my dosing was 0.6mg/week.
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I don't know anything about this stuff, but I thought I remember hearing people (maybe even Motte people) say that it's much easier to have weight loss cycles separate from bulking cycles. I'd be curious to know, because I'm also losing weight and working out, though I'm more focused on losing weight, and I'm working out much less intensely than you. I'm just working out a few times per week, and if my smart scale is to be trusted (I don't actually trust it, it's too inconsistent day to day), I'm losing muscle, despite the working out. But still, my body fat percentage is still going down, meaning in losing more fat than muscle.
Yeah cutting cycles and bulking cycles are different, but your training in the gym shouldn't differ too much between them. The things you do in the gym to gain muscle during a bulk are the things you need to do to maintain muscle during a cut. What I do is a 6 weeks training -> 1 week deload cycle. So for 6 weeks I eat in a hypocaloric diet, and add weekly sets to all my muscle groups over those 6 weeks, then I take a week completely off from training to recover, during which I eat at maintenance, then repeat the cycle.
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It's the ladder of building muscle:
noobs can gain non-trivial amount of muscle while dieting or later eating at maintenance
intermediates can gain non-trivial amount of muscle when bulking
advanced bodybuilders can only gain non-trivial amount of muscle when bulking on a very strict diet
In general, skeletal muscles are luxury organs. Your body will get rid of excess muscle as soon as it convinces itself it needs to conserve energy and it doesn't really need them that much. That's why it's necessary to keep all your muscles well-fatigued during cutting, especially when you have bigger muscles that usual: your body goes, "shit, not enough food, what can I convert into energy? These fat stores look useful for a rainy day, how about I start with these biceps?"
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Yeah, it's generally more efficient to cut and then bulk than to do a recomp at maintenance. It is possible to gain muscle while on a deficit but it depends on certain things like, starting body fat %, training history, previous training history, size of the deficit. If you have a higher body fat % it's easier to maintain or gain muscle on a cut (until you get to a low bf%), if you're new to training it's easier to build muscle, if you have previous experience lifting but took an extended break and lost muscle mass your body will put it back on faster than an untrained beginner and if you diet more slowly it's easier to maintain or gain muscle than if you lose the weight fast.
Still important to train while dieting though to maintain as much muscle as possible, and usually cutting diets have even higher protein targets.
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If it changes your emotional reaction at all, I think you're finding out that you're really a good looking dude rather than just that you're better off not obese.
I'm bigger than I think you are now and probably been a little leaner, and I did not have schoolgirls giggling as I passed by. And for that matter, I'm a pretty dude myself! dropping the weight has revealed that you've been gorgeous all along.
Okay... Today on the subway a ridiculously attractive girl literally started blushing when our eyes met, like, her cheeks and nose became very visibly red, and she wasn't wearing blush make-up, this also happened a few times over the past few weeks. Is that a muscles-dependent effect, or a "you're handsome" effect?
It's not one or the other, it is BOTH together.
I have friends that are built like a brick shithouse, but the finishing on the brickwork was bad, ugly, poor face shape unfortunate haircut bad skin bad style. They don't get stared at.
If you literally have hot women stare at you in public, it's everything you are doing. The styling, the mannerisms, the body, the facial features. In the past, the body was letting you down, and hiding all those other qualities, now it's picking you up and displaying them.
That's the point I'm trying to make contra the Black Pill attitude of "they only love me because I'm not fat now and that's depressing." No, everything else about you is awesome too and was before, it just used to be hidden under the fat.
Keep in mind that visually, if I have a good idea of what your body looks like (mine), if you are losing belly fat that increases the contrast and angle from your shoulders/lats/chest to your waist. You might look bigger and more imposing at a glance than you did when you were actually physically bigger but rounder and softer so you read smaller.
I mean. Large changes in physical attractiveness in either direction tend to produce cynicism. Read some accounts of fat people that lost a lot of weight. Or of people that got medically-indicated surgery for their puny jaws. Or on the other side...stories about people that became disabled or disfigured.
Returns on physical appearance, like returns on most things, are logit-curve-shaped: it rocks to rock and sucks to suck. Luckily, OP has now managed to be well above average for physical appearance. Good for him.
I would go so far as to say that people get weird and cynical about any strongly attractive traits they have. It's a pattern I've noticed in people regardless of what the trait is. Money, Ethnicity, Fame, perfect breasts, a huge cock, whatever. It becomes a question in their mind whether their partner is attracted to some mystical "real self" outside of that one strong trait.
Which is why eyes are the best thing to compliment about anyone, no one will get weird about it. Except occasionally East Asian girls in America, but you can normally get through that.
And any strongly unattractive traits they have.
No, if anything people with singularly strong unattractive traits become Romantic rather than Cynical.
The guy with a huge dick becomes cynical about his strength. "Women only love me for this thing, they don't love the real me."
The guy with a micropenis romanticizes it. "Women would love me, I'm wonderful, except for this thing."
Hmm. Maybe a micropenis isn’t exactly a great example here: it’s not obvious and doesn’t lead to discrimination in social settings. Someone that looks like Freddy Krueger, on the other hand…he’ll conclude that people kind of suck and are slinging a lot of bullshit about being inclusive and accepting. I’ve read about (but never personally knew) Freddies; I’ve known a couple of Fridas. I don’t know if a deeply unattractive woman becomes cynical while her equally-ugly Quasimodo-like twin brother develops a sense of romanticism.
I’d contend both are like “damn, people suck and are superficial”…
EDIT: Frida told me that she felt her personality didn't matter. That all that mattered was physical appearance, or rather that her face was too ugly to ever find love. I don't think she thought her personality was remarkable or that she had any kind of exceptional inner beauty: she was sad, angry, and cynical. Also blunt and hilarious and caring.
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Hmm, somehow I doubt that. It's not like all schoolgirls I pass by giggle, but it's happened like 3 times over the past month (I probably pass by more schoolgirls than you because I take the subway). But then I'm curious, what things did you notice in your case?
Hard to say, I don't really have the transformation you're undergoing to talk about. When I started lifting in college I went from 5'11" 165 to 185-195 for ten years, but I kept wearing 32 pants and a 40 jacket they just fit differently over time. I generally am in Thibs' old Muscle Migration Theory, my weight and general muscle stayed the same it just varied from half assed Oly lifting to climbing to powerlifting. It's only in the last year I changed up my lifting and my supplements and packed on another ten pounds to 205 and just can't find fucking anything that fits right without stretch. I'm definitely the attached meme here, my level of female attention has barely changed from 18 to 31 despite carrying 20 or 30 more pounds of decent muscle, at varying distributions and levels of leanness. Lovers will often compliment things like my shoulders, or my forearms, or my biceps, but only after we get together and I strongly suspect that they are pretty secondary to the attraction.
In general my model of human, and especially hetero male, attractiveness is that the curve is very discontinuous. The return to a good vs a great personality is more or less zero difference if you're a totally unfuckable 1/10, and even getting to a 2/10 won't change much, but get to a 5/10 and all that starts to come into play. An 8/10 handsome face attached to a 3/10 fatbody doesn't deliver much, but put it on a 5/10 ordinary body and all of a sudden it's go time. Essentially the biggest returns are all at that point between 3-6/10 when you go to average and then slightly above average; then there is almost no return until you get to 9/10 and you're actively everyone-in-the-room-looks-at-you gorgeous. The factors all kind of hang together and need to be in line for any one to really give you returns.
Which is to say: You've been a good looking smart charismatic dude all along, you finally dropped the literal anchor holding you back. Better living through chemistry. Mazel tov!
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Hmm. I kind of disagree here. Being 2/10 probably sucks a good deal less than being a 1/10. At a certain level of unattractiveness...say bottom five percent or so, rough ballpark...it's kind of understood that you're not interested in sex or relationships, and to be interested - even in the abstract - is transgressive and creepy. Nope: Quasimodo doesn't get to join in when the guys are shooting the shit about attractive celebrities, there's an awkward silence. If Quasimodo hits on Jane Average, there is a good chance that he will be considered creepy for doing what would be unremarkable for Joe Average. Once you aren't experiencing what disability theorists call desexualization...yes, you're right there. It's a logit-curve-shaped distribution.
No, I am not pulling this from my ass, incel boards, or other crap. I've personally experienced this (although it was due to a combination of autism and physical unattractiveness; I've had friends tell me on several occasions that I either should never have a relationship or that my only hope was gold diggers). And my experience aside, I've had similar conversations with unattractive men and women that described the same phenomenon I'm talking about...not to mention the disability theorists' description of this.
This is NOT "You're unattractive; I'm not interested" but "Damn: you're unattractive as fuck - how dare you be interested in anyone, ever?". It's doing poorly on the basketball court versus being told you shouldn't even be on the court at all.
My point coincides with yours, my man.
I think of a 1 and a 2 as equally more or less unfuckable grades, so moving up one grade delivers nothing at all. Being Disney Quasimodo rather than Hugo Quasimodo delivers no advantages.
Going from an unfuckable 2 to a merely unpleasant 3 is a HUGE return, going from 3 to a below average 4 and to average 5 and above average 6 are each delivering returns. But getting from above average to slightly more above average delivers less.
Yep. There’s either three or five classes. A lot of average in the middle to chug through. Like…there’s 0s, 1s, and 2s. Or 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
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Also highly relevant in the middle tier is dressing well and getting a decent haircut. Contrary to what the Russians mentioned in the thread the other day think, maintaining a decent haircut isn't gay and doesn't take any real effort. If you're going to be wearing a suit, do get it tailored. Buy shirts that conspicuously display your forearms when they're rolled up. Whatever positive features you have, accentuate them.
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You should know that this continues as you go down this path. I've heard that as you get better muscle mass to fat while retaining size (eg endomorphs), girls will continue to react, including becoming more brazen around you. If you are good at not fucking up, things will turn out very very well for you. Enjoy.
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I'm glad to hear that it's working out for you! It's not often you get to hear the outcome of both semaglutide and strength training, since the people on the former are usually more concerned with losing weight than anything else.
Hey, if you want to get laid that's good enough, by the time clothes are coming off she's probably not going to say no ;)
Guilty.
As someone who became a pure cardiocel (couldn't get sema so I just white-knuckled it and fasted) to lose weight...goddamn, this thread has me checking out Stronglifts again.
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Yeah, the only thing that's preventing me from getting laid a lot right now is my own internal sense of perfectionism and fairly high standards (both for myself and the girl).
There's also a strange sort of muted anger towards women that I have to work through. I don't feel like I've changed internally at all, I'm the absolute exact same person as I was 40lbs ago (I lost 15lbs before starting semaglutide), and it feels like losing the fat shouldn't make such a big difference in a fair world. Of course this is naive of me, and I'd absolutely treat an obese girl differently from a slim one, but the black pill is still hard to swallow...
Indeed. A few years back I developed a physical disorder which caused me to lose about 50 pounds and also lose all confidence and personality. Where before I made lots of jokes, teased people, and sort of commanded the flow of group conversations, afterwards I couldn't even do bare minimum things like maintain eye contact or finish sentences without pausing to gather my courage, among many other issues. It was a transformation from maybe a 3 in looks, 7 personality to maybe a 7 in looks, 2 personality. As you might guess by now I got about 1000x as much attention from women during this period.
It really shouldn't be a blackpill; I think the issue is that we have misplaced higher standards for woman than for men, and then we're incredibly disappointed when those higher standards aren't met.
Large changes in physical appearance produce cynicism in many.
I wonder why more people aren't getting plastic surgery, to be honest. They're not exactly leaving $20s on the ground in Grand Central...but they're failing to climb the stairs to the top of the Empire State building for $1000 in many cases.
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