The worst part is, after a short while, you actually cross this sort of threshold where you enjoy it and begin to look forward to it, and then you start to notice it is helping your mental as well as your physical health.
Just atrocious. It’s almost like we were evolved for this.
This has never happened to me. I still hate it and I run at least 18 miles a week for going on twenty years. I feel like shit if I don’t run, but I still hate the actual activity.
Have you tried an activity you actually enjoy? I know that sounds a bit curt, but I gave up jogging for mountain biking and hiking, and now it is substantially easier to convince myself to get out and get started because I actually enjoy what I’m doing!
That shouldn’t have been as revelatory for me as it was, but the current paradigm is that jogging, gym time, or other monotonous activities are what we should be doing, and that really just sucks the joy out of physical activity.
I have extremely limited amounts of time to do anything. My wife is ill and I’m her full time care giver. So I really only have running as an option. I wake up early when she is still sleeping and go. I prefer running to biking.
I am sorry to hear about your wife, and I hope for the best for you both.
I too hope the best for this guy’s wife… and him.
the current paradigm is that jogging, gym time, or other monotonous activities are what we should be doing
I’d just like to contrast that with how getting enough exercise could work if our cities were designed properly.
it’s crazy to me that there are people out there that are able to do things they don’t enjoy doing by their own willpower just because it’s good for them and I can’t even get myself to do the things I enjoy doing.
Hey me too. 15 years working out and I still hate it except for competitive sports.
Just do something you actually enjoy instead? Fucking hell people are ridiculous, there’s so many options to exercise, find the ones you actually enjoy!
This guy stop being a rude asshole on the internet challenge (impossible)
Some people don’t enjoy any exercise, ever think about that, musclebrain?
There’s a whole lot of stuff that people consider to be activities that are a perfect replacement for what the same people consider to be exercise, they’ll love the former and hate the latter without realizing that if they just did the former often enough they wouldn’t feel the need to do the latter at all.
I used to run a ton, got a smallish dog and now I go on walks and hikes instead, most people only consider that running is exercising of those three things but all of them are a form of exercising.
I’ve always hated team sports but I love climbing, kayaking, canoeing, snowshoeing… should I force myself to do team sports because that’s what people think about when they think about sports or should I be doing the stuff I actually find enjoyable?
The goal is just for people to move.
I’m the guy that originally responded saying that I dislike running even though I’ve been doing it religiously for a long time.
All your suggestions are wonderful here. I will get right on kayaking, hiking, and the like as soon as my wife miraculously is cured and I have free time to do all this stuff that someone with a good life can do. Otherwise, I will continue to do what I can (running at 5:30am before my wife wakes up) because my wife needs me all the time when she is awake because she is in hellish pain.
Please stop being a jackass to people. There is another person in this thread that did this the right way. Gently suggesting an alternative and not assuming they knew best. It would behoove you to understand that your particular situation isn’t universal and other people have different wants, needs, and responsibilities than you.
Sorry for not being able to read your mind
A few years ago I went from 265 lbs to 195. I was amazed at how much better I felt overall.
Unfortunately, I have a relationship with sweets that is very similar to Charlie Sheen’s relationship with cocaine. I haven’t gained all that weight back but I have gained back some of it.
Getting the motivation and self control to eat right is incredibly hard work.
Damn I’m feeling you. I’m in the fall process (solidly down 15kg/33lb, approaching 20kg/44lb) with about 10-15kg to go. When my belly stops flapping I’m good I think. But I fear the rebound… Currently lots of my evening snacking have disappeared because of evening gym classes, so late home and even later dinner. So I don’t have time anymore to get snacky. Or if I do it’s almost bedtime anyway so I’ll just go to bed instead.
But once I’ve hit my goal and don’t need to hit gym that hard anymore… That frightens me. A little bit at least. Made some good connections there and got a routine going so i can probably keep it up.
For hundreds of thousands of years, we spent 2 or 3 hours a day hunting and gathering, then chilled out and had fun the rest of the time. That’s what our bodies are designed for.
Those numbers are off, and there’s some studies showing that what people simplify to “chilling out” was also work, just done in groups back at the settlement. For example, preparing the animal you caught for eating, using the tools of the era, takes time. Unfortunately there are a lot of people understanding only the bare bones cliffnotes of historic life, then using it as fuel for their (justified but somewhat misinformed) campaign against the workload expected of us in modern life.
That said, the general take away is correct: humans used to be far more active in the completion of their daily duties.
I was hoping you would say “unnaturally contorted in a desk chair for 8-10 hours per day”
Straight to shrimpin
Back when we lived to the ripe old age of 38.
(Im kidding, I know that was mostly due to infection and whatnot)
The ‘age of 38’ thing isn’t even due to infection ir disease, or even a thing at all. 38 was the average between the high number of infant deaths and the normal lifespan of someone who didn’t.
Ok, women giving birth skewed it a bit too. Men didn’t die in battle as much as people think, since most battles were decided when a small portion of the losing side died and the rest fled.
Do we have numbers for the hunter-gatherer time that can even be skewed by infant deaths?
Edit: as it turns out, yes, absolutely. Wikipedia says the lifespan is around 21-37 years but 57% died before 15 and 64% of those that don’t would also reach 45.
One of the many reasons I value living in a walkable city. I don’t have to go out of my way to walk. It’s just a part of daily life.
I biked to work every day as my only regular exercise and was relatively happy with my body and endurance - COVID taking that away by turning my job remote only really showed me how important that daily activity is - first time in my life signed up for a fitness studio after those could open again.
If you hate exercising, there are other ways to get it “for free” that don’t involve tediously lifting and dropping weights over and over, etc. For example, play ball games with friends. Take up climbing (indoor or outdoor!). Rekindle your love of cycling around town on a bike. Paintball with friends. Take up a martial art. Pretty much anything that has movement as a side effect, rather than it being the ‘main event’.
Running on a treadmill is fucking awful to me, I hate it so much. But running as a consequence of playing a sport or moving around a boxing ring or whatever, that’s different. I don’t hate running per se, but on its own? I’d rather take the L and die years earlier than I should. Seriously. Gyms and gym equipment make me want to fling myself under a passing bus.
I don’t really like cycling, but I’ve found I dislike driving more, so replacing car trips w/ bike trips has worked really well. I get exercise, save money, I get better parking spots, and I’m not stuck in a stupid car. Oh, and I’m quite competitive, so I like to see how quickly I can get from A to B, so my heartrate stays high.
I also have gymnastic rings in my garage for my upper body. I’m not a fan of that either, but it at least feels cooler than lifting weights. So I’ll alternate between doing errands on my bike and using the gymnastic rings.
“i bless the rains down in castamere” is a top notch display name
She’s also just top notch in general. Her and her ridiculously charming pet pig Rufus (pictured below) are two of main things I miss from Twitter…
I’ve tried eating salad. I like salad. I eat about three or four kilos of salad a day. Five, maybe. Six, if I’m hungry. Rarely more than eight. Hardly ever ten. Still not losing weight. Diets are such bullshit.
it got me and my elderly dog in better shape. We were both lazy fatties before. Now we’re less lazy and somewhat healthier fatties.
Audiobooks.
Listen to an audiobook and just walk, it does depend where you live though. I’m lucky there are a lot of trails and paths around my town.
I walk about 5km every day, done so for more than 2 years now and listening to audiobooks helps the time pass quite quickly.
What also helps a lot is doing some pushups at home as well, for a few months I did 100 pushups throughout the day and it really makes a difference.
This is the advice (audiobook) I heard way back and it worked for me. Specifically, I listen to podcasts, but only when I’m working out or comminuting to the workout.
Eventually you get invested in whatever you’re listening to and want to just listen to it, but the workout limitation means you have to make time for exercise before you get your fix.
I try not to listen to audiobooks unless I am walking/shopping just so they last longer.
It’s a bit difficult for me to find something I want to listen to, I like a very specific type of writing and I seem to stick to it and look for similar.
I mostly listen to Terry Pratchett’s books and at this stage I have listened to most of them a few times.
Can confirm. Health nuts dont seem so nutty anymore.
And then after some time, you come to expect your body to feel sore, and when your body doesn’t feel sore that feels weird. So you do exercise for no other reason than to feel sore again…
It won’t make me feel any endorphins though, because my brain don’t work right
Yep, I get no positive feelings from exercise. I do it to keep my blood pressure down and I fucking hate it. People say after a while it begins to feel good and you look forward to it and I want to punch all those people in the face. I started about 4 months ago and I’ve hated every day I’ve gone.
Exercise fucking sucks. I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards. The only positive emotion is a vague sense of relief that it’s over when I’m finished.
“Jogging is the worst. I mean, I know it keeps you healthy; but God, at what cost?” -Ann Perkins
I never got a runners high before 10k or so. But even then it’s not a “high” it’s a strong feeling of well being and the sense that I could keep going indefinitely.
Now that I don’t jog so much the mood improvement I get from regular exercise is even more subtle, but I still feel it’s significant.
I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards.
Have you tried swimming? Hot and sweaty definitely won’t be a problem there.
For the record though I also hate cardio. It’s fine at levels which I can sustain for hours on end, that is, not jogging pace, definitely not interval training, but hiking pace. If you want interval training without grinding your brain field sports might be an option, it’s different when you have teammates and a ball.
Yeah I hated the process of becoming one of the exercise people, but it really is the lowest effort to increase in happiness activity I’ve added to my life
Started walking 10k steps a day after seeing myself in pictures and hating how I looked. I’d been fairly active in the past, but some injuries sidelined me. I found getting out and walking was much better for my mental health and creativity than staring at a screen. Embraced the zen of walking when it was cold or rainy out - I’m lucky to often see animals around me that I know most people near me are never seeing. Now instead of dreading exercise, I have the opposite problem of getting restless and pissy if I don’t get my walking or biking in.
Imho, anything you can do to increase overall bloodflow is beneficial to your entire system. One of the reasons caffeine makes us feel good is the increased bloodflow. If that can be increased without drugs, youre one up on the masses. Enjoy it dont hate it
Don’t you just hate it when health fanatics are right?
