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Wellness Wednesday for June 28, 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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  1. Note that I wasn't fat when I started dieting, I weighed 77kg, but wanted to lose some of the fat around the midsection. From what I've seen, people that are unambiguously obese have a harder time curbing their appetites, especially if they like drinking.

  2. I already didn't drink alcohol, soda or juices or eat cookies or chocolate or use fatty sauces when I started dieting. I have been drinking protein shakes between meals and eating protein bars for dessert. I was lucky to find a brand that tasted great and gave me that "meal capstone" feeling.

  3. Counting calories is essential. After the first few weeks when you're still entering the data, it becomes a breeze and lets you plan your lunch and dinner to ensure that both sound appetizing.

  4. The biggest changes I did were fixing my shakes, my breakfast and my sides.

    • I stopped using so much milk in my protein shakes. Milk is surprisingly caloric. Or maybe not surprisingly, as mammalian babies subsist on milk alone.

    • my wife had been cooking me breakfasts that were fine nutritionally but were simply too large. By removing a single sandwich, I was able to scale them down to about 500 calories.

    • vegetable sides and salads are great. Lots of volume and quite satiating. Various forms of beans and cabbage make for great sides. I still ate curries with white rice on the side (there's no real difference between white and brown rice) but added more broccoli to the dish itself. Pasta carbonara, on the other hand, became a special occasion dish, as it's basically a plate of fat and carbs.

    • chicken breasts, seafood, lean fish and lean cuts of beef are A-tier meats, you can eat them with anything. Fatty fish, pork, chicken legs, steaks, pork and lamb are B-tier, you should check the recipe and the sides. Ham and salami are F-tier.