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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So, I've been struggling with my weight since I first went on antipsychotics, almost two decades ago, and I'm losing the will to keep trying — why bother? How do I find the motivation to keep at it?
One trick that occasionally works for me is to think of today-me and tomorrow-me as separate people, close as twin siblings, and to try to have today-me do favors for tomorrow-me.
For weight gain specifically, you might try fasting. In my experience, the first two days are the hardest, after that it gets much easier (when ketosis kicks in). It helps if you learn to appreciate unflavored tea. (A major contraindication is if you're on medication that needs to be taken with food.) And in my opinion, exercise is fun when I'm in shape, and miserable when I'm not, and I think a lot of people get the correlation/causation thing wrong there.
As for whether to go on living... I don't particularly, either. It's more of a habit; I can get some enjoyment out of daily life, and occasionally there are specific things I look forward to. True, it would be very convenient to die in my sleep, and I've gone to bed plenty of times hoping that would happen. But ultimately, there are some people out there whom I love, who love me, and as long as they're alive and in touch with me, I don't want to hurt them. (Did you ever watch "The Wire"? The end of season 2? I don't want to do that to them.) In the meantime, I try to find little pleasures in life, like smelling flowers, petting kitties, taking hot showers, and so on. It doesn't help with motivation toward long-term goals, but it fills the days. I wish I could help more.
Already got you there. Never been a coffee person, and have quite the selection of loose-leaf teas in my cabinet. (It helps to have a "tea and spice" shop half a mile away.)
This is the same position my therapist takes. It works, somewhat, but there are I times where I seriously begin weighing the benefits of "being selfish," and at what point ending my suffering will outweigh any grief I may cause my family. (At the very least, once my Mom passes…)
Nope.
Yeah, I don't really have those — not nearly enough to "fill the days."
Yeah, same here, and I'm not quite sure how my decision process will go after that. But I do have some nephews and nieces, and some little first cousins once removed, and maybe they'll keep me going.
There's an old children's book of Greek mythology I had when I was a kid, "The Greek Gods", by Evslin, Evslin, and Hoopes. It's got the story of the twins, Apollo and Artemis, and part of the story is that Artemis gets to choose her own gifts. Among her requests is "I wish to be your maiden always, never a woman." And Zeus' response is "You shall have the gift of eternal chastity, and also the gift of changing your mind about it at any time, which will help you not want to." I feel the same way about suicide.
There's another part of my situation which makes the choice a bit easier. I shouldn't go into detail, but I'll just say that sufficiently strong anger appears to be able to overwhelm any other emotion I can feel, including despair. I don't know whether this is actually a good thing, but in the spirit of honesty, I thought I'd share.
Well, personally, I consider it the best TV show ever made. Opinions differ, but I'd say it's definitely worth trying out a few episodes.
Hm. I suppose one thing I have going for me is that I got into Buddhism enough to be able to "live in the moment", most of the time. Even just eating plain rice, if I pay attention and go slow, I can actively enjoy it, the flavor and texture and the entire process of the thing. I don't actually know whether this is good for my long-term mental health - I think there might be ways in which this partial half-assed approach has crippled my internal mechanisms that could lead to recovery - but it does work on a moment-to-moment basis. You could try taking a look at "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts, if you want an overview. It's short and a good read, anyway.
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Do you know the mechanism of the weight gain - I think that first you have to find out how they fuck you up - let's say they lower your impulse control - the solution will be different compared to something that fucks up your insulin regulation.
I will start looking at some other different addictions (wow, tiktok, porn, doomscrolling, realclearpolitics) you may have and see if you can cut them down - for some reason those things cascade.
Also remove artificial sweeteners from your life - one of the things I did couple of months ago was cut sugar free energy drinks and replace them with carbonated water with the juice of a half to one lemon - my health and weight took a turn for the better.
Movement - like simple walking or swimming could make a big difference if done regularly.
My opinion - you have to try and build (and remove) habits because they don't need much willpower to sustain once formed.
But why should I bother to do any of this at all? What reason to lose weight at all? Why not eat myself to death, given that I want to die?
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I will try to give you at least three reasons to motivate you:
If you have a major problem with your weight, then there is a positive side of it, since you can make a notable change without a big effort. Any intervention that you will undertake is very likely to result in a significant drop of BMI, for example walking a couple of miles twice a week.
Body fat isn't only some passive, excessive weight, but physiologically active organ, that messes up with your hormonal regulation. If you decrease the amount of body fat, it is very likely that you will feel better in general, have more energy, better sleep etc.
If you have a major weight problem, there is a lot of things and movements that are difficult to do. I think that it's worth to fight for this freedom of movement, movement is one of the primary human joys. You can try to stick with small goals, like walking certain distance. Your aim is not some utilitarian objective but being able to enjoy life a little more in general.
If young hang up around rationalist community, you may have heard about potato diet, which is said to not involve much willpower and gives overall positive results. Why not to try, even just for a couple days and just for fun? If you want to read more, like half of Slime Mold Time Mold blog is about it. They explicitly write about weight gain in response to medication here.
I don't own a car, and public transit here isn't great. I go for walks daily, either to get someplace or for exercise. Thus, I'm already doing at least this mutch.
And, again, why bother? "enjoy life a little more in general"? Life sucks. It's terrible, and the sooner it's over, the better.
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This is a common side effect of that class of medications, you should discuss this with your primary care doctor and psychiatrist, they may recommend medication changes, dietary counseling, ancillary medications like statins etc.
I did, many years ago, and got the pat "diet and exercise" advice I mostly already knew. Edit: because it at least partially comes down to what Medicaid covers.
If you are willing to explore changing medications (may not be safe depending on your situation) some of the medications in that class are more weight neutral than others.
Additionally depending on the pathology an alternate medication class might be available, especially if you haven't really revisited it in the years since you started (some things will require that type of med though).
Medicaid may cover a dietician which is better than nothing.
Your primary care may have some routine health suggestions (again a statin, some preventative care etc) or maybe even something like Ozempic.
From what I've seen (with respect to relatives trying to see a dietician), the answer to that is "no." Besides, I'm not sure what more information they can give me.
"Eat less, work out more." That's what she always says.
And the key point is — why should I even bother with all this effort, anyway? It sounds like so much effort… to what end?
Why shouldn't I just let the fat pack on and on?
Why do you want to continue to live at all? Whatever your answer to that is, it probably works better when you're not getting dragged down by half a ton of flab.
Also, what's wrong with diet and exercise? Eat half, move double, problem solved.
That's part of the problem… I don't, really.
Well eat away then, champ.
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I personally felt terrible when I couldn't climb a flight of stairs and slept badly every night.
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Do you have a major problem with your weight or is it a minor one? If your BMI is in a range 25-28 then I think that's fine, maybe even healthier in the long run than aggressive diet.
Do you have a major problem with your weight or is it a minor one?
My BMI is 40. When I was first put on antipsychotics, I went from
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This answer is context dependent on you, your mental state, your genetics, your environment, your socioeconomic status, your friends, your geographic locale, your romantic partner (or lack thereof), your health, your projected health, etc, etc. I.e it's so fine-tuned to the various dimensions of your life that it is practically impossible to answer, without being you.
The best one can give you is generic motivation answers or tell you what worked for them (unlikely to work for you because you are not them).
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