Trying to rely on self-discipline is equivalent to just trying to will yourself to be better. You’re much better off trying to change the environment so that it’s easier to behave in the way you want and harder to behave in a way that you don’t. An easy example is that you shouldn’t shop for food when you are hungry, and you should only buy food that you think you should ever be eating (even if only sometimes). If you have less food lying around that is bad for you, and especially if it’s not lying out but up in a drawer or something while other options are lying out, it often becomes much easier to make better choices. Certainly it’s helped me a lot.

I don’t think it’s turning 30—it’s burnout and routine. Long workdays make healthy habits a lot harder. Start with one small change instead of trying to fix everything at once

I feel like this if I stop exercising

Therapy requires action on your part to be effective. Finding a therapist match can be difficult, but it isn’t just a place to vent. Therapists can’t tell you what you do.

You’re likely depressed. Your life is just work and your brain’s pattern recognition is seeing the trend and cutting a rut in your neural pathways. The older you get the harder it’ll be to make changes to those ruts, but it is doable. Start small and do something out of your routine for a couple of weeks and see if you notice a change.

Granted, this is my first 5 years of working full-time,

I’d guess it’s much more this than anything to do with age

If you are constantly exhausted from work then that will impact your capabilities in all facets, and can lead to mental stagnation and even degradation. No amount of therapy can fix that.

If you want an easy trick to work on your food habit while being chronically exhausted: meal prep food that you actually like to eat after a long work day. Let it be less healthy than you’d ideally want, if it’s even a little bit better than what you’d order otherwise then it’s a win.

I think I might actually be chemically dependent on the refined sugar, carbs, and fat

i’m pretty sure sugar in particular is literally physically addictive yeah

So you got a degree and you are not using it, do I understand that correctly? That’s pretty typical honestly. What kind of work are you doing now? 10 hour days, so is it a 4x10 schedule or are you working 50 hours a week? What’s your living situation?

Not trying to be invasive here, just trying to understand your situation better.

Try thinking of your life in terms of where you have agency, and how much agency you have in each place.

You should be able to come up with a list spheres where you have agency and rank them from most to least.

For example: eating healthy, this could be a high agency item.

If it’s just you that you have to worry about, then you have a lot of agency to here to make the changes you want. One way you can make this change is by creating friction between you and the easier choice. This means removing apps from your phone, for example, removing saved cc details in the food app accounts, anything to make it harder or more annoying to do.

This can go for all kinds of things. The more friction you put between you and the easy/undesirable choices, the less likely you’ll do them.

But you also need to make the right choices easier. Initial this might be hard to do, but it can be a compounding thing. Sometimes you might need a codependent to kick you into gear. If you have someone in your life willing to chill st your place while you food prep, that might help you get it done. Depending on your situation that could be easier said then done though.

It’s not enough to talk about your struggles, you should try and sort out what is actionable and what isn’t, then break down the actionable stuff into manageable bites, making it easier to get started.

And I should say that, I should be following my own advice more. Theory means nothing without practice afterall.

I think we sometimes catastrophize our situations, we extrapolate all the ways something might not work, instead of trying things and seeing what does work and what doesn’t. I’m very guilty of that.

Correct, therapists are actually incentivized NOT to help you. I tried three.

I’ve had similar thoughts, I’m in my mid-30s. But everything wrong with me came from my abusive parents. I often wonder what my life would have been like if it hadn’t been scrambled. Maybe we’re just past our prime; or maybe we were sabotaged.

Plus, we have plastic in our brains. Maybe not as bad as the lead the boomers have, but still pretty bad.

Alienation is real. Can you change to shorter, nine or eight hour shifts? Or is that not an option? It would make you less exhausted and give time for exercise and hobbies.

around 30 seems to be the age when it’s most allowed to settle into a life of incurious stagnation. the bosses and banks don’t care if you learn anything new or try to develop mastery in a skill.

i went back to finish school around 30 in a completely different discipline, so honestly my timetable has consistently been off the rails (dropped out at 20, changed careers/quarter life crisis in late 20s). i found higher education and retraining in my 30s to be much easier.

i don’t put any weight into western “studies” about cognitive decline happening before like 60, because our society does not reward curiosity or edification. they want almost all of us to be incurious treat seekers. the brain is an adaptive organ in an adaptive body that will do its best to adapt to and survive the conditions it is subjected to.

if i could distill my advice into a directive for people at any age or stage of life: cultivate curiosity.

Feel you. You gotta build discipline and rigor into your own life, around your work hours. Fucking hard and sucks ass but is rewarding when you can pull it off.

Also be understanding and positive with yourself. Every good choice is a win.

Is mental stagnation and unhealthy habit forming just part of turning 30

No. If anything I think I’m stagnating less in my 30s than I did before; same for the unhealthy habits. I sometimes wonder how much of that is due to my regular psychedelics use, mind you. In fact I hesitate to suggest it but if you have no counter indication at all exploring such a use yourself (if you never did) might be valuable.

I work 10 hour days and then I’m too exhausted to eat healthy

I prepare gigantic meals on Sundays that last me and my partner all week. Even if you like diversity during the week this isn’t necessarily a problem if you have freezer space (I don’t): make several such gigantic meals and freeze it all in portions; unfreeze what you need/feel like eating when needed.

This is both better for your health (including your mental health), and the environment. Got to like cooking though.

I used to be vegan, and I still think vegans are basically correct, but I no longer have self-discipline.

This is genuinely weird to me. Been vegan for close to a decade and it doesn’t take discipline at all to not consume animal products (well it did for perhaps the first initial six months I’d say); it doesn’t even register as food anymore - pure disgust. This includes smells of cadaver parts being cooked that I remember I thought attractive before switching. Didn’t you get disgusted by cooked flesh after a few months ? I assumed this was universal (it certainly happened to my partner as well, switched together).

It does take incredible discipline to be around people that do consume them, though; seeing people you sometimes appreciate actively participating in the greatest act of continuous, industrialized exploitation, torture and murder in the history of the planet is depressing.

I’m 45 and that feeling has always appeared as the impetus and precursor to change. The thoughts and feelings you are having feel bad but trust that feeling. There’s sort of phases of self awareness that develop through adulthood. Maybe you’ve heard people talk about getting a “fuck it” attitude going into 40. This is probably something similar, but it’s like an urge to take things more seriously. We can’t really get to the “fuck it” phase without going through the phase where we learn what our priorities actually are and aren’t.

My advice: trust yourself and listen to yourself. You can’t change everything all at once, but you can make incremental changes which will amount to real change in less time than you realize. My 30’s were a period of incredible personal growth, and it started with some of the feelings you’re experiencing.

~40 y/o vegan checking in: What you’re describing sounds like burnout. I got it around age 35 after failing to establish good professional/personal limits, and using food and pot as pressure valves.

For me, I had to make a bunch of lifestyle changes that weren’t easy, but were necessary. The first one was quitting my job. If you change your situation, then fix your food, get moderate regular exercise and sleep your brain will indeed still work. For many decades in fact (or so I’m told).

Now I will stray further into ‘what worked for me’, so I risk telling you things that are tuned for my personal situation, but you still may find them useful. A therapy recommendation: just read Feeling Good by Burns and self-service. Therapy doesn’t need to be a lifelong subscription service and, outside of severe cases, anti-depressants mask and delay dealing with depression. Meditation is similarly a free tool that can be quite useful. As are walks outside looking at trees.

Good luck!