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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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've been trying, in the most casual way imaginable, to lose weight since the start of Lent. My basic strategy is: try to avoid truly terrible junk decisions with food, three days a week MWF eat nothing until 2pm and aim to stay light throughout. I also switched from a heavy lifting plan to more cardio and climbing, and swapped some supplements around.
I'm down seven pounds, putting me at 199. I'm looking to lose another two or three pounds, then reassess progress to make sure I'm not losing more strength than I'm comfortable with. Ultimately I'd like to continue to cut until I get below 195, which was a good weight for me long term for a number of years, before I change gears entirely.
I'll probably gain a pound or two back this weekend visiting the in laws for Easter, there's a lot of fluctuation just in simple stuff like that.
I can already notice a difference. Some of my clothing fits a little looser. My abs are a lot more visible, and other muscles are more distinct. Climbing is noticeably but marginally easier, seven pounds off every rep can add up. Definitely motivated to continue, though I suspect it will get harder from here or involve more tradeoffs.
My actual primary lenten pledge, giving up alcohol and weed, turned out to be pretty bullshit for me. Super easy. I've had to turn down drinks from people a couple times, and other than that it wasn't difficult for me. There was one moment I was tempted to get wasted because I was tired and upset and frustrated at work, but I just...didn't. People did it around me, my wife and friends, and I didn't care, was not tempted. I'm reminded that whatever the genetic status of addiction is, I didn't get that gene. Just, absolutely not on substances. Smartphones maybe. Junk food probably. But I have no susceptibility to alcoholism.
I kinda did the weightloss thing to coordinate with the sobriety, because I figured sobriety would keep me from making bad decisions. I'm a little worried that I need to manage use vs. weight going forward. We'll see.
How are you finding the cardio? It sounds like you and I have both similar exercise histories, and almost exactly the same weight lol.
I have really been considering following a similar plan to you; I just find it hard to make myself do cardio because it bores me. But it sounds like between that and diet you're having success that would make it worthwhile.
I'm shit at cardio, hence the username. My rowing is going pretty well, I'm getting back towards a decent 2k on the erg after barely touching it for a while. Running, it's pretty shit. I'm mostly just trying to make myself run for longer time periods without worrying about speed. I can't really do a speed+time goal well at the moment, I'm bad at hitting moderate paces. On the erg I still have the leg strength to push a <1:30 pace for 250 meters, but I struggle sustaining a 1:55 pace for 2k.
I'm hopeful that working on cardio will carry over to conditioning in other goals, but either way I should improve it.
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