site banner

Wellness Wednesday for May 10, 2023

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).

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

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.

Overall I look ok and muscular in clothes, but kind of unimpressive naked.

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.