When you combine bike and pedestrian hostile cities with the extreme fitness image many have, which requires drives to the gym, excercise becomes that much more difficult to achieve daily.
Some people I've talked to seem to think exercising as much as I do requires superhuman willpower. The opposite is true in this case. It's much easier to get exercise if it's an unavoidable part of your day. I don't own a car, so cycling just happens on its own. If I need a car or truck I can easily rent one. Even in the bike-hostile US one can plan to make this lifestyle possible.
After that I play a few VR games that are full body/active type stuff (room-scale). For example, Space Pirate Trainer is my current jam; I currently hold the #3 spot on the world leader board and my games of late tend to take around 45m from level 1 to 70+. My heart-rate btw routinely hits around 130-140 toward the end of one of those game.
Extreme stuff is awesome too if you are trying to maintain a high level of fitness for specific needs but most people can get by with way less and have pretty excellent results in day-to-day wellness. Tabata, burpees, pull-ups all have their place but even those you can do much less frequently than most think and benefit hugely.
If you always overdo it, it will not stick. And continuity is the most important part.
Boy, me too!
I think most of my days fall into several categories: 1. hygiene: exercising, flossing, shaving, making my bed, eating, etc 2. spirituality: something like mindfulness, not meditation though, but rather just looking at the evening sky more often or being acutely aware of this moment and the next, of the very food I am eating, or not interpreting every experience I experience and just allowing this moment to be, etc 3. simplifying: decluttering, eliminating ideas or things that I become aware of and come across that I find aren't capital-t true or that I don't need, internally or externally 4. play: interests, going to class, studying, learning, working, hanging out with friends, sitting in traffic, paying the bills, swimming in the ocean, etc
A lot of people have "friends by default", the ones they gather on their way through life.
But it's important to try actively to make friends, friends in social circles we seek or with interest matching out goals.
It seems artificial, but a non natural encounter can turn into a good relationship if nutured, and it will help ones to grow.
It's important to remember it's an option.
I can assure you that once you commit to a regular exercise schedule, it is both highly stimulating and an end in itself.
I think one of the keys to exercising regularly is finding "lifehacks" like this that reduce the misery.
I was super-active until I had ankle problems at 19: football three to four times a week over winter, basketball all summer almost every day, running, and so on. I kept up in my 20s by walking a lot and the semi-periodic footie or basketball game with colleagues, until about 28.
Then I bought a car and had kids, and my body exploded. A lot of athletes end up pretty big once they retire.
“Starting young” for regular exercise is fundamentally meaningless, imho. It’s much more important to find ways to fit regular exercise in everyday routines that adults with commitments can stick to without having to spend mental energy on it. Whoever can come up with a simple way for a 30-40-yo to keep fit without having to think about it is going to be a bazillionaire. Walking is a good start, but the combination of car-friendly cities, the need to care for minors, and a society constantly running at breakneck speed, makes it an unrealistic choice for most.
Maybe they are right. Life expectancy in Europe is about 80 years old. I may be wrong but I suspect most people who are 80 years old now never exercised. They probably were physically active but didn't exercise in the modern sense of the term.
If you are reasonably active in your daily life and eat healthy food, I'm not sure exercising is such a necessity.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/56/suppl_...
In the app there's a statistics page and if what it says there I think many of the other users of Cardiogram surely must lie on their deathbed or are severely sick. :-(
For example, on a slow weekend where I don't even leave the house I still get numbers that my 5000 steps inside my apartment are "higher than 83%" of the other users. Likewise with pulse and other metrics.
The thought of so many people moving so much less and probably eat a lot worse than I do makes me really worried. Will the human body adapt in time or will this turn into an almost plague level of dying soon?
Taking pride and pleasure in one’s ability to endure pain is certainly a trait that exists, but not a universal one. It would very surprising for someone who does not share this affinity to engage in regular, focused, deliberate practice at doing work whose sole purpose is its vigorous unpleasantness.
Of course there are people who have pleasant and unchallenging movement as part of their daily life (I walk and bike to work on flat ground, for example) but that is a far cry from going to the gym for a serious exercise routine.
The problem is that most of the fulfilling things in life exist outside of our comfort zone. Hence we have a society full of comfortable unhappy people.
It's ironic, given that the previous generations were unhappy because of the lack of comfort.
I'm 23, I've been exercising regularly since I was 18 and I cannot imagine life without a 20 min run and some weight training daily.
I workout for the high it gives me, it's the most sustainable form of high for weekdays. The benefits cannot even be counted if one exercises carefully and consistently; society should embrace it and make it a daily ritual like brushing teeth.
Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise. Some people have to work two jobs just to pay rent. Some people have children that take up all of their time, we're not all brought up in nurturing wealthy homes with supportive parents making sure we learn all the things we should.
People can't find a moment to have a minute of rest in their lives, can't even afford healthy food and here you are being condescending about what is wrong with all these other people you don't know a thing about.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191558/average-daily-tim...
As for commute time. More the you make the longer your commute.
http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/CA11-4.pdf
I bet if you looked for studies on income level and hours worked a week its correlated. Ask a CEO or senior executive how many hours they work a week i bet its 80+.
As for healthy food. Its really easy to eat healthy without spending a ton. Chicken breast is frequently $4 to $5 a pound which is enough to feed two meals. Vegetables are really cheap. How much is a head of lettuce? $1.50 to $2.00? Lentils and whole grains don't cost much. And easiest way to eat healthy, limit your consumption which is cheaper than over consumption.
I'm not sure there is anyone who "can't find a moment to have a minute of rest in their lives". The busiest people I know are also some of the healthiest. Not having time is a poor excuse at best. The vast majority of those in poverty who "can't afford healthy food" do not work, or do not work more than 20-30 hours a week. They have ample time to exercise. (Body weight exercise is free, I might add - as is walking.)
For full-time wage earners, there's actually a slightly negative correlation between wages and leisure time - people who earn more money have less free time. There has been a major long-term trend towards greater leisure time across all socioeconomic groups. Unemployed and retired people are not significantly more likely to exercise than working people, despite their obviously greater amount of leisure time.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
>can't even afford healthy food
The richest American households only eat 0.6 more servings of fruit and vegetables per day than the poorest. The overall average intake was 4.76 servings, so this difference in intake is clinically insignificant. Education level was more strongly correlated with fruit and vegetable intake than income, but differences within socioeconomic groups are far more significant than differences between them.
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/87/6/1883/4754427
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361...
The shortcomings of American diets and lifestyles are a hell of a lot more complex than just a lack of time and money.
5 minutes is sufficient if you have good pain tolerance, and pain tolerance can be trained. There's a great deal of evidence that high-intensity interval training is effective for improving cardiovascular fitness.
Diet is admittedly more difficult, but even if you can't eat healthy food you can still benefit from exercise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...
"Surprisingly few, it seems. According to a new review of studies related to running and health, jogging for as few as five or six miles per week could substantially improve someone’s health."
That's about an hour of running for most able bodied adults who have been making it a habit for three or four months. If you can't budget an hour a week for exercise, you're booking yourself too tight.
Seems like a generic rant against someone who might have said "anyone who doesn't exercise is a failure."
How about this part, where you compare anyone who doesn't exercise to a spoiled child?
I don't think it is smug to challenge people to take the smallest, tiniest, bare minimum amount of personal responsibility.
It is incredibly hard to go from zero to minimal exercise, especially when even basic exercises seem to flare up old injuries. Where do you start? A poorly done crunch might throw out your back again -- do you risk it? Ten push ups might flare up your old tendonosis, should you do any? Your knees are weak from lack of exercise for years, and now 20 free weight squats makes your knees ache the next day -- is this good pain, or will the problem get worse as you do more?
Even without pain, it isn't hard to imagine people being too busy for _most_ of their day to find the motivation to exercise for a simple 10 minutes. Your day might start with a long, early commute to a tedious job. After a long commute back home, it may be hard to say "well, time to strain my body!" That is mentally tough, especially so if you have to prepare dinner, interact with kids, answer late night emails, etc.
I don't scoff at people who fail to exercise. I feel bad for what is going on or had happened in their life that drains them of the motivation or ability to exercise.
But the vast majority of Americans eat way more than they should and don't give it a second thought. For most of America it's a cultural issue, not a physical or practical problem.
So scale it down to something you can do. No shame in that.
> I don't scoff at people who fail to exercise. I feel bad for what is going on or had happened in their life that drains them of the motivation or ability to exercise.
Pretty sure for most of the people in my socio-economic bracket it's just laziness. I know they have money, I know they have time to binge on Netflix, I know they have similar jobs to mine. And yet so many people I know from work fail to exercise.
I for one would very much like to exercise much more, and had in the past invested a fair amount of money and time into it. I enjoyed it immensely most of the time, even without the other benefits mentioned in the article.
However I rarely exercise now, and since I lost health insurance some years ago I feel the financial risk too great. Even basic yoga / pushups could lead to expensive treatment for anti-hemophilia factor treatment if it was needed.
I see many other people have more serious issues with mental and emotional health which take priority over exercise and growth too.
It's easy to armchair quarterback and say "oh that persons is lazy watching tv, drinking or smoking" for example, and not realize that they are actually suffering greatly and are prioritizing working, paying bills, and getting a small amount of comfort in doing one thing that another may think is just lazy, is actually a sad form of self medication for issues that perhaps could be treated better if they had access to better care.
Of course this is not an excuse for all who don't, just another way of seeing some things that I have learned over the years, not everything is always the way it seems to us and others do not always have the same things stopping them as we do.
I think it helps for many different reasons too, some physical, some just seeing the world differently.
My point with statement above was just not to be a blanket absolutist.
There was a time in my life when I looked at my obese friends and wondered why they did not get that X calories - X movement = whatever.
I learned later in life that sometimes it's not so simple, whether it's genes, or types of food that are different, the way they were raised, emotional issues that were not treated, medications for one thing that caused another... there are so many things I do not know just by looking at someone. The same with them looking at me.
You stopped exercising because you lost health insurance and you feel the financial risk is too great?
I'm assuming you're not accounting for the health effects and treatments you're going to need because you stopped exercising?
believe me, I want to exercise like I used to. There were times in an Aikido dojo where the exercise was so good that I felt better than after sex.
Right now I stand consciously for times, and I got on walks on occasion. However the past 30 days I have had immense pain from my lower back to my left knee, which at this point I am pretty sure is an untreated bleeding in my left gluteous, which makes sitting in most positions difficult.
I do some slow tai chi on occasion, but have to be careful not to over extend and cause injury. This is great, but it certainly doesn't burn the calories and get blood flowing like other things I could be doing, at least not the way I do the tai chi steps at home. I know there are more vigorous ways to engage in it, it's me that is limiting the type, not the available / advanced tai chi options.
So yes, I stopped most vigorous exercises soon after I lost health insurance, the financial risk is indeed too great.
"not accounting for the health effects and treatments you're going to need because you stopped exercising?"
- It would be an interesting comparison. Unfortunately I can not afford either, so I guess it's a matter of try to play safer for now so I can prolong the time between now and then.
But for some things being smart is being dumb. Why always take the shortest route to minimize walking? Why go over the lawn instead of around when walking is good for you and only <30 seconds will be saved? Is it smart when you'll likely end up overweight, unhappy and with cardiac problems in the next 20 years?
And what about your discipline, patience and character in the long run?
Doing exercise(lifting in my case) makes you realize your limits and over time you realize that being consistent can really help you change yourself.
There are precious few people who can't actually carve out time to exercise. Not wanting to is a different matter - but not wanting to is a choice you make, rather than a circumstance you're forced into.
Some jobs have lunch breaks that are really short, especially if you have to drive somewhere to find food or wait in line.
Additionally, I'm not convinced that waiting in line at lunch is not itself a niche behaviour. I'm guessing it must be a US tech/mega Corp thing, is it like a children's tuck shop or school canteen or something? I do remember I did some work experience when I was younger with some NASA guys out at tidbinbilla, and they had like a work canteen...which I found really weird and put it down to "an American thing". Is that what you mean?
Because I'm still struggling to comprehend what it involves...a line for what exactly? A fridge? Shops? Seats?
Additionally again, at least here, with sub $8 AUD lunches available, the marginal gain of buying ingredients and preparing one's own is getting less and less.
And you can then sub off that preparation time into doing something like exercising. Even if it's simple as going for walks while eating your lunch for most professionals...
That said, prep time is the most time consuming, but only takes about 10 mins. for me. Cooking, while linearly can take a lot if time, doesn't because I'm doing other things while the cooking is happening.
The line thing can be many things like walking to a restaurant/food service, getting seated, ordering, waiting, eating. Or walking up to a food truck, ordering waiting. Going to a sandwich shop ordering, waiting. Going to a supermarket, deciding, ordering waiting checking out.
On site food service is the quickest of course, but not all techs or star-ups do or have that.
Part of caring for a family is caring for yourself.
Hey, then you'd be exercising! Look at you go!
It's actually not that difficult to find ways to move your body. Go for walks (to work, school, store, or just orbit your neighborhood). If you have kids, drag them out too. Childhood obesity is a problem now, don't let your mistake rub off on your kids!
I find some of what you say agreeable but the victimization of yourself or those you are speaking about is intolerable for this topic.
Entering my 30s, a somewhat regular exercise routine is something I expect in the people I date.
Yet some of those people reject the idea that it's something they should do at all. They just don't like it the same way a kid doesn't like vegetables, as if that's an option. It blew my mind the first dozen times I'd heard someone say that they just aren't interested in it.