When I cycle for fun/exercise, with a heart rate monitor, I've burned (an estimated) as many as 650 calories in a half hour. A "normal" ride is typically closer to 800-1,000/hr. According to this chart[1] - a 150lb person cycling at a "moderate" pace would burn 563 calories.
In the study, people sitting in hot tubs for an hour burned about 150 calories per hour, which is about 2x what you'd expect to burn during an hour of sleep.
According to the study, sitting in a hot tub for an hour is more like 25% of the (calorie burning) benefit you'd expect from an hour of moderate cycling, and just under 20% of the benefit you'd expect from an hour of vigorous cycling.
For my workouts, I've found sprints and lifting weights on the heavy side to be great because my body spends a lot of energy rebuilding that muscle for a day or two after.
I'd be surprised if baths can change your resting calorie burn rate but I could see them improving circulation and heart health. People should probably still exercise though. Heh, finally I have an excuse to get that jacuzzi in the living room...
No, that kind of exercise is what you do to assure that you are maintaining muscle in a deficit; not having that kind of exercise and having a calorie deficit is how you lose muscle instead of fat.
Its 50% the caloric benefit of walking which seems a pretty low bar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_phy...
Serious question. With pre- and post phases (changing clothes, shower) and the post-sluggishness, the exercise that you are doing in your free time just to do exercise can be quite an extra time investment.
(no anti-exercise opinion here, but I find it better to combine exercise with commuting or real hobbies)
Studying without exercise would be like studying by only skimming text. It's really not worth the time if you can't understand and retain what you are studying.
Because she can't find 30 mins per day (or less) not devoted to programming skills or other stuff, to do exercise?
Does the question takes into account the less years of practicing those programming skills because of earlier demise due to bad shape?
If yes, please name the type of effective exercise that you can complete in 30min, including preparations and clean-up afterwards. Really curious.
(Commuting and hobbies that are not for the sake of doing exercise don't count because they were already mentioned.)
Yes, and I find it wrong.
I'm not sure what "preparations" and "clean-up" afterwards you imagine, sounds like excuses not to do any or overthinking it.
It can be just doing some sets of repetitions of body only exercises, without any equipment to put out (a towel on the floor will do). Or a jogging run -- no preparations, just putting on your running shoes and a shower afterwards. Or dancing around in your room. And countless other ways (e.g. getting some gym equipment, a stationary bike, etc).
One showers at the end or start of the day (or should) anyway, and that doesn't have to take more than 5 minutes. And 30 minutes, or even 15-20 minutes, of exercise per day is more than enough to see health benefits.
In fact: "For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends these exercise guidelines: Aerobic activity. Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity".
Hobbies are for fun. Commuting is for travel. They may involve physical exertion, but they repeat the same movement patterns over and over. You don't exercise all your muscles.
E.g rock climbing is hard but doesn't exercise any pushing movements. Which can become a problem when only one set of muscles is trained.
Good exercise will not only make you fitter in a generally useful way, but help you fix problems like flexibility or posture. I.E we are trying to fix your weaknesses, not just cater to your strengths.
I've never been able to motivate myself to do that when I'm not forced to.
I seriously doubt, however, that that is an actual trade-off being made in real life. As in, no one I know or have ever met is _actually_ making that trade-off. I've known people that claimed similar reasons for not exercising regularly, but the reality is that they just don't want to -- not that they are making a conscious trade-off based on opportunity cost.
Reality: Most people are probably better off taking 1-1.5 hours of low quality work/fucking around on their computers and use it to exercise instead.
It was one of the most important lessons I learned at the time because I had gone through a year or so of no real exercise and when I started again everything became so much easier.
I get that other people enjoy it. Wish I did, but I hate it. The only choice of activity that makes physical work bearable for me is some sort of tangible payoff - I can work hard building things. Some of my heaviest physical activity is carpentry and light construction. I still don't enjoy it, but working towards making something is enough payoff to make it worth it. For this reason, I do quite a bit more of that sort of thing than is probably normal for a desk jockey. I also walk about two miles a day, just two and from work.
For whatever reason, my brain wiring doesn't see "vaguely feeling a bit better in three months, maybe living an extra year or two when everything is falling apart anyway" as sufficient.
The puritans can start on with the you-weren't-raised-right judgements now. I've heard it before.
I had a roommate that refused to shower for a week when we ran out of gas because he couldn't even bear the thought of a single 30-second cold shower.
I hate every moment of exercising, but as soon as I'm leaving the gym, it doesn't matter anymore and I'm glad I did it. Even if I wasn't glad, it's necessary for my health. Tough potatoes.
I don't think anyone is surprised that people hate exercise. That's why a tiny portion of the population exercises daily, and everyone else has excuses for why they can't, like "it's particularly unpleasant for me, you just don't understand."
Saying no to another donut also sucks, but that's not a very good reason to eat donuts.
In my experience, plenty of people are surprised when I tell them there is no form of physical activity that I enjoy for its own sake. They start listing activities ("but what about skiing? Playing soccer?") and they seem genuinely surprised when I say that no, in fact, I really don't enjoy any of those things.
I don't understand their surprise either, but there it is.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: If done at a proper relative intensity, everyone finds exercise extremely unpleasant in the moment. It's why we give up on planks, wuss-out on an uphill run or climb, back off the pace, listen to music, blab with others, skip the next rep, try to squeak out a few extra seconds before the next interval, and all sorts of other distractions while exercising. So your friends are BSing themselves or not working hard enough.
What people actually enjoy is the feeling of accomplishment that comes after the fact, getting out in nature, or the validation of being in shape, being able to cheat more on meals... basically all the side benefits. It's fine that you don't want to do whatever you prop up in your head as "extremely unpleasant" exercise... just stay active like you are already doing. But please, cut out the mental baloney that you're some special snowflake because you find exercise unpleasant... we're all feeling the pain here.
Are you positing that everyone hates exercise to the same degree? I don't buy it. It's pretty obvious some people enjoy running. It's also pretty obvious some people hate it. Why should running be any different in that way from Brussels sprouts?
The other poster already addressed this, but I'll add: this is the sort response that always comes up.
It clearly costs different people differently, in terms of mental energy and willpower. This "we're all feeling the pain here" is a vaguely polite form of the sort of "just suck it up, wimp" response that I've come to expect.
Comparatively speaking, we are all wimps anyway. A Kenyan elite marathoner can run my old mile PR twenty-six times over. An elite powerlifter reps out my squat max for a warmup.
Which is why I said "proper relative intensity." If 10 pushups for you scores a four on the pain scale, but 100 pushups for me scores a four, then you do 10 pushups while I do my 100, and we both feel the same amount of "extremely unpleasant" feelings together. Both of us gain in terms of adaptation to capacity for work and pain tolerance.
I'm not sure what you're envisioning in your head as "extremely unpleasant" pain, but the saying goes that you don't have to train AT your max to UP your max. Exercise done at relatively comfortable levels of pain will still produce positive adaptations. That's why Couch->5K is so successful, it basically starts people off walking instead of running. But again, I don't care if you dance, run, row, lift, bike, hike, walk, whatever... it sounds like you are staying active already, which is great.
As it happens, I dislike exercise as well, and it's not because it hurts. (As you point out, it doesn't have to hurt.) It's because it's unpleasant in a lot of ways, it's boring (no matter what exercise I try), and I don't get anything else out of it. I don't enjoy being out in nature, I don't get a feeling of accomplishment from moving around, I don't feel better afterwards. This is true for exercise at any intensity level. As it happens, my life is active enough to keep me fit without extra exercise, but if I had to dance/run/row/lift/bike/hike/walk/roller skate/rock climb/ski/anything in order to stay healthy, I'd dislike it. That's just how it is. Some people do not like physical exercise, period.
I exercise nearly every damn day, and I find it UNPLEASANT. Of course it's unpleasant! My brain screams at me to just sit down and sleep.
But exercise, if anything, is a mental challenge. The brain screams at you to stop, but your body, deep down, wants and needs to move. So I make myself do it, and OP makes themselves do it.
I'm shocked that OOP doesn't seem to get any exercise-euphoria. That high is absolutely worth it.
> Your body WANTS to move around. There has to be some sport or physical activity you enjoy!
Once you are middle-aged (and even before for many people) it is much more than "vaguely feeling a bit better". Without reasonable muscle-tone and fitness your joints will ache every single day and you will begin losing mobility and getting injured more easily.
I hate exercising. I do it because it is too costly not to.
The difference between 39 and 46 at the same apparent level of non-fitness is shocking. Stuff hurts that never did before.
Getting and staying in shape is key after 40.
It's not the admission that's problematic. It's that, until said magic bullet is found, this mindset leads a person nowhere health wise...
Hard or not, that's a bad attitude in life in general. Instant gratification seldom got people places...
Anything important has a "poor reward system". General education for one. Better eating. Advancing at a career. Playing a musical instrument.
Personally, I wonder how much of the benefit comes from facing and overcoming that unpleasantness. I feel that must be a part of how exercise engages your mind as well as your body.
Couldn't this be a result of not exercising? It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that people who've made exercise a habit generally seem to enjoy it more.
The only way I've found to keep myself in shape is to find activities I enjoy. For me it's dancing and rock climbing. But I had to try a bunch of things to discover that. I never imagined I would like dancing before I tried it.
Also, not everyone responds equally to exercise. Some people improve much faster than others. Some people see no progress at all unless they exercise at high intensity. Understandably it's harder to get motivated if you see little progress. I'm lucky in that, while I'm not athlete material, it's not super hard for me to gain muscle and improve my cardio.
See: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitne...
I would find running without music to be frustrating and boring. Although, after about 15-20 minutes, I just drift off into thought-land and kinda forget that I'm running, so maybe it'd be doable. I guess that's runner's high/endocannabinoids for ya.
I find weightlifting less fun but it's SO healthy (and quick) that I push through and do it anyway.
My inspiration is simple [0]. Ultimately, I'm in control of how I look and feel. Exercise sucks - but it's the best way to keep myself looking how I want to look. That's the only motivation I need to suffer through it.
Exercise is tiring enough as it is (that's the point). You should at least find something you enjoy, otherwise it's even more likely that you won't do it.
The gym is a few minutes up the road, I'd jog but it's on an incline - terrible for the knees.
Scan in, get changed, throw some weight around, wipe off the sweat (not enough time for a full shower), leave. It's convenient enough and something I've managed to stick with long-term.
I always enjoy having exercised.
I would add not only "unable", but "unwilling". Some people don't get any pleasure by exercising, and perhaps having 50% of the benefits of cycling is better than having none.