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Wellness Wednesday for August 9, 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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Last time, I had "lost" 4 lbs. That was a weight measurement snafu: turns out, my home scale is consistently off by about two pounds, so it would be correct to say that at the time of the post, I had lost two pounds, not 4.

However, since beginning semaglutide, I have lost approximately 12 pounds. The number of calories I managed to avoid eating thanks to sugar reduction is more than 500 kcal/day. I'll not detail the experience in too much detail, but current conclusion is that the vast majority of my weight loss comes from being able to cut down on the soda.

I will note a few extra details: Loss of interest in bread. Not terribly strange, considering most bread is a vehicle for sugars. But everything from subway, to hot dog and bratwurst buns, to regular sliced bread. White bread now has the same palatability as low-sugar sarah lee's wheat bread. Naturally, I have swapped over to Sarah Lee's. Miracle Whip is nasty now, though regular, low-sugar mayo is still good.

If you are struggling with weight loss, especially snacking + sugar, Semaglutide is a miracle drug.

I think the main reason I have been able to stay skinny is that I have a natural dislike of many carbs.

Even when I was a kid, if my mother put a bowl of sauce and a bowl of pasta on the table and we served ourselves, my bowl would be 80% sauce with a few spaghetti in it. I’ll eat most forms of carbs (except anything with semolina) in very small quantities, but it’s just to fill up, if I could get away with eating only steak instead of steak and fries, or only curry instead of curry and rice, or only the ramen toppings and broth instead of them with the noodles…you get the idea. I hate cakes or other dough-based heavy desserts, except for almond-flour cakes which I sometimes like.

The only savory carb-heavy dish I truly enjoy is french fries (and less commonly other crispy potato variants) but only deep fried in beef tallow or duck/goose fat because I dislike their taste in vegetable oil. Even so, I could take or leave them.

I’m not Keto, but it was funny reading about it a few years ago and realizing I’ve essentially practiced a Keto-lite diet since I was old enough to choose what I ate.

That sounds like you managed to avoid the worst of the Americana diet at least. I grew up on ultra-sugary oatmeals and cereals, and almost never had homecooked meals.

General mills' extra-sugary cereals were breakfast and often lunch at home.