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Wellness Wednesday for May 24, 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).

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I'll keep this short and sweet. I'm very tempted to try and hop on the semaglutide train. It seems like folks here have had decent results. I have a few hesitations:

  • First, morally, I feel like I should be able to lose weight myself. With enough physical activity (playing soccer etc) I at one point was able to have an incredible body with awful eating habits. I've improved my eating habits dramatically but I know for sure that I still have unhealthy tendencies. I should be eating less and differently. I can cycle an imperial century and it's almost trivial, but actual weight loss has remained elusive.

  • Second, I feel like this gold rush will end in tears a la COVID vax. I'm ashamed I hopped on that train so early though I didn't have any side effects and rarely encounter any through medication anyway. What are the chances this all ends up being a huge mistake and I shave 5 years off of my life in exchange for losing a beer belly?

Why not just wait? My plan is to wait 5 years and if there are still no side effects then I'll do it. I also have a BMI of 26 so I'm not a prime candidate.

I am pretty vaccine skeptical, but is there any real evidence that the vaccines did harm (except for not working very well after 2021)? It might still be too early, but it seems like all the stronger anti-vax predictions have fallen flat.

is there any real evidence that the vaccines did harm

My impression was that they did (very rarely) do real harm and were largely ineffective. My objection to having got it had much more to do with principle than practicality. I did the two Phizer doses and stopped there since I believe they slowed down folks' ability to generate natural immunity.

I think waiting is smart. Supply will be less restricted, there's better alternatives on the horizon. My BMI is closer to 27.5 and I'm just sort of over it and being impatient.

same here. the media and Biden waaay oversold the efficacy of vaccines at stopping covid.