"It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible."

Living as well and as beneficently as possible might be higher priorities. The older folks with the desk jobs are often quite literally sacrificing their own well-being for their family's, "deprioritizing their health" for another priority.

"You could not do more with your money than get professional help in steering your body"

You could donate to help poor people survive, to help sick people get well, to heal the natural environment, to educate children, to encourage peace and justice, to strengthen your community, or to advance knowledge.

This is very misguided. If you get old with no exercise and deteriorating health, it's gonna fall upon your family to take care and worry a lot about you. It's immediatist if not selfish (by not wanting to face the different kind of discomfort) to do as you say.

Being strong helps everyone around you passively and actively, with stronger effects as the decades pass by, and remember from other research that a strong body keeps a mind keen, with better blood flow for all functions. Sacrificing that is not being smart about helping people.

Last and less scientifically, if you want to heal your environment and community, first heal thyself. It's the only subject from whom you can guarantee cooperation.

>If you get old with no exercise and deteriorating health, it's gonna fall upon your family to take care and worry a lot about you.

No it isn't, just off yourself when you feel like the time is right. I don't get why everyone wants to stretch these years out until the bitter end and would rather end up in a home than just taking a nice walk one day and not coming back.

I suspect this plan might be rather upsetting to friends and family.

Further, I suspect you wouldn't actually do this. And then you're a terrible burden to others.

The Lotus Eater by Maugham is a good read on this theme: http://facultyweb.wcjc.edu/users/jonl/documents/LotusEater.p...

I agree with you 100%. I think I’ll just get more reckless as I get older and start to deteriorate. Pick up activities with a higher probability of death. I’d rather die skydiving or in a sailing accident than from chemo.

Your first priority should be taking care of yourself. Remember the plane safety demonstration? You always put your own mask on first, even if it seems selfish.

You're in the best position to help others and make good decisions when you feel stability in your own life. Making sure you'll be around a long time also makes you last longer as a resource to society, and to your family.

You can't do any of those things you mentioned if you're dead, sick, or miserable.

Ya right. I work with politicians day to day. You have no idea how much society would benefit if they all died in their 60s.

How about before they get elected?

I don't buy that 100%. At some point you will get old and sick enough that you risk becoming a huge resource drain. It may sound heartless but I am saying it imagining myself in that position and saying no to millions of dollars in medical treatment for a few more months/years of misery and pulling the plug instead. The benefit for my kids/family would be huge.

Then look at it like this: the better you take care of yourself, the less likely you are to have a severely degraded quality of life before your luck (or health) runs out.

Lives are long and pass through many phases. We will all be dead, sick, or miserable someday, and one hopes we will be cared for as we cared for others and taught them to care.

This also applies to eg. rescue workers. Rescuing the rescuers is not just embarrassing, it also uses up so many resources!

I love the kind of discussion you can see on HN, but this is splitting hairs. He clearly means in the context of making yourself healthier and fitter.

Virtue signaling? Your main priority should always be yourself. No one, except yourself, will look out for you.

You don't have anyone else looking out for you? Imo it's give and take. You look out for others, others look out for you.

(That said, it's wise to ensure you have yourself taken care of before helping others; else you may end up making things worse. )

Apparently, family planning is rocket science.

What is your rational definition of "appropriate resources"? Public school? Public school in a better but more expensive district? Extracurriculars? Tutoring? Private school? Fully supported university education? Love is not rational... it's giving your all and more for someone that matters.

Workaholics are not inherently good parents, but good parents do go the "extra" mile to improve their child's life.

It's not. Saying it is doesn't make it so. Neither does thousands of people choosing misery for themselves and their children. Just like physical health, people very much want family planning to be complicated, because it allows them more room to rationalize short-sighted, self-gratifying decisions.

Appropriate resources are resources that give you the space to be healthily present for yourself and your child. It means time and money, or more specifically, the money to buy time.

Love is not having a baby. You can't love someone who doesn't exist, and making someone to love if you don't have the money to take care of you both is equal parts selfish and self-defeating.

This is the quote you responded to:

>The older folks with the desk jobs are often quite literally sacrificing their own well-being for their family's, "deprioritizing their health" for another priority.

We are not talking about impoverished one-night-stands having babies out of ignorance of contraceptives. These are tech workers who are well-off but still intentionally sacrifice their long-term quality of life in order to improve their children's.

I will probably fall in that group, I had to work through college and want to ensure my child does not. It's a probabilistic utilitarian argument, my cumulative change in quality of life gained from switching to a less demanding career is less than what my child gains from the freedom to explore more opportunities in college (plus my joy at seeing their happiness). Of course, love is an essential part of that calculation. I would not make those sacrifices for some arbitrary child.

Remember that while family planning may not be rocket science, it does require coverage or money for contraceptives, a doc who'll prescribe them, a guy who'll use the condom or get a vasectomy, and the ability to get an abortion if the above fail. In many parts of the US that's not so easy. https://harpers.org/archive/2016/12/with-child/

I was with you up until "donating to the poor". Does that include feeding those who dont want to work but could and should? Unless we're talking about donating time to guide and counsel, to awaken them, and if they're on the right track, supporting them.

How does donating encourage justice? What is the definition of justice? It's the light which reveals 'what is' in a society. That is not accomplished by donation alone, and in fact, generally it's easier for the opposite to occur. One can draw the conclusion that to donate without confirming how it's used is equivalent to a misdeed.

You could, for example, donate to an organization fighting for justice like the ACLU or SPLC.

It'd be just great if you gave some of your self-care time to guide and counsel.

People try in their own ways. So there are some organizations who do good. But they cannot revive justice after it has gone to sleep, in these circumstances. Would you play a game someone has rigged against you? Are those organizations capable of undoing what has been set in motion and of redesigning the game at this stage?

Secondly, what self-care time? lol

> It's crazy how people will deprioritze their health.

> Also, if you're struggling with getting fit, GET A PERSONAL TRAINER AND NUTRITIONIST.

There are tonnes of people out there who are just scraping by, who have to work two exhausting jobs, who have to spend all of their free time looking after kids, etc., who can't afford the gym, let alone a personal trainer and nutritionist.

If you have the time and money to do those things, then they are very good ideas. But they are out of reach for an awful lot of people, so perhaps try not to view the people who don't do this stuff as people who are making insane choices.

I'll warn that that advice is like "get a therapist". They're weakly regulated/certified titles, and there are many people calling themselves as such offering terrible advice and plans.

I don't think they're worthless by any means, good ones are great. However, you need to carefully vet them rather than trusting their advice by default to the degree you might (or should be able) to trust a doctor or the like.

The primary function of a personal trainer / nutritionist is not the advice they give, but that they force you to show up at the gym and keep track of what you're eating. It's 90% outsourcing of willpower and 10% knowledge.

If you're treating that as their primary function, you're just throwing away money, tons of money.

If you decide you want to work out and eat right, take responsibility for it and truly make the personal choice. Or buy a couple of self-help books to learn some techniques. E.g. The Power of Habit. It'll be orders of magnitude cheaper.

This argument is a bit self defeating. You can easily replace the information a personal trainer gives with a standard training program and YouTube videos that show proper exercise form. You cannot easily replace its willpower function with a book.

That doesn't work for most people, so they put money on the line.

A regular personal trainer at a top gym is $12k/year. That’s not that much. It’s approx $23k pre-tax which isn’t a game changer tbh.

You do realize that for an average American that’s half of their annual income?

But we aren’t average are we, Bruce?

I worked as a GMAT/GRE tutor for a while. The same was true in that field.

This doesn't describe the fast majority of out of shape people. Poverty has always been an issue, but obesity and poor health from a sedentary lifestyle is a very new issue.

“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”

― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

I see you are down voted, but there must be some truth to this. In my group at work there are a couple of other guys the same age as me - mid 40s. I cycle to work and am in decent shape for my age (resting pulse around 60). The other two are overweight and look a lot older than me. They must be paid well enough and they clock off at 6pm. As for poverty - most of my exercise is cycling to work. The bike saves me money - I have had it for 7 years and it originally cost less than a years worth of public transport.

You’re not wrong, but I know a lot of people who just don’t prioritize it in even though they could. Sure, people scraping by to make ends meet don’t have this luxury. But the people that go to happy hour all the time and then complain about not having time to excercise just don’t have their priorities correct in my opinion

There are a lot of people who use not enough time, money, etc as an excuse. If your doctor told you the only way for you to see another year was to get in shape and eat right, how would you prioritize then? Would you still go to the movies? Go out for drinks and food?

For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online. My point is that for many of us, we treat professional help as a luxury or explain it away rather than embrace it as a necessity.

The real wealth in life is your health.

> For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online.

There's also tons of it that's downright horrible or outright dangerous. The simple truth is that most professional help in the US is out of reach of most people unless they're willing to take on a significant debt the their salary doesn't support. It's not as clear cut always as "health is most important" -- it's not even clear how much any given procedure will cost two different people with the same insurance for the exact same process.

>If your doctor told you the only way for you to see another year was to get in shape and eat right, how would you prioritize then? Would you still go to the movies? Go out for drinks and food?

Maybe not a good example, as if my doctor told me the only way to see another year was to basically cut out a few pleasures in life, I'd just bite the bullet on this one, and I imagine quite a few others would also. This isn't suicide ideation or anything, it's more just a value judgement; how great will my life be during that year? Right now, without the mental stress of imminent death in my mind, an enfeebled life or one that just racks up a huge bill for those legally closest to me seems pointless.

Ultimately I agree with you that we can make time for ourselves -- an hour walking is better than no time walking, and if you can convert that into 15 minutes of jogging, even better. It's the same time we spend watching our shows on Sunday, and I think we can at least do that for ourselves.

But as someone who loves to cook, hates takeout, etc, there are days when even I just don't have the usual energy to go through and prepare a proper meal or to put the hour into my regularly scheduled run: 12+ hour days do that to you.

"For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online. My point is that for many of us, we treat professional help as a luxury or explain it away rather than embrace it as a necessity."

Only that the good information is often vague and mixed in with horrific information. Or is grand information for someone in decent shape but horrible advice for you in your health condition.

I'll add that there is more to it than simply getting the right advice. There is basic equipment. I'm not talking about anything fancy: For example, I wear an odd bra size. I'm thin and have large breasts. I have not had surgery to enlarge them. I have to buy at specialty stores here (Norway), and could not find my size in stores in the states (indiana). A regular bra is expensive.

I've never had a sports bra that fits. I often can't find them large enough and the ones that come close and actually offer some support are expensive - plus I have to order them. These are, in general, $60-$100 each. I have a similar issue with bathing suits, so even if I had free access to a pool, I couldn't actually use it.

Shoes have been an issue in the past as well. Buying the cheapest shoes possible, I was wearing through shoes withing 2-3 months and trying to keep them for 4-6 months. This is without exercise putting additional stress on the shoes.

The other issue I found with such things while being poor was hunger. Even if I walked, had an active job, and/or wasn't too strenuous with motion, increased hunger was an issue. $25/week for food doesn't go far. Especially not in a house with bad heat (60 degrees if it wasn't too cold out). More activity meant that I was miserable more simply due to hunger.

OP: article linking a study suggesting a strong correlation between exercise and mortality

Top reply: I really really like to go to the gym, and I fast because I think it's really, really good. Get a personal trainer

You forgot "and therefore everyone else should too."

Yes, you should! Take care of your body!

Call your mom!

You got downvoted even though you were funny

> “It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible.”

Why? I personally don’t want to live as long as possible, definitely not if I develop some kind of neurodegerative disorder. I’d honestly be happy with 65. I don’t see too many people over the age 65 who I envy.

Diet and exercise are big contributors to preventing heart disease, but when it comes to things like the vast array of cancers it’s mostly luck or the draw. You can do everything right and still die at 40.

I wonder if there are any large scale, long term regressions that attempt to get at exactly how much diet and exercise contribute to extending life. I get the feeling that outside of heart disease it doesn’t contribute as much as one might hope it would.

You sound 'young.' When you start looking 50 years of age in the eyes, your attitude will assuredly change. Like with everything in life, there's a balance. You actually need to work-out more as you age than when you were young.

Mid-30s. My attitude definitely has changed. When I was younger I thought different. I thought I would want to live forever, and figured I could if I did all the right things. The older I get the more I realize that it’s luck that determines the majority of outcomes. I’ve been surprisingly lucky, literally zero health issues in my life. But I see what happens to the people around me and it just seems like mostly luck. When my luck inevitably ends I don’t think I’m going to want to stick around.

The fittest people around me seem to actually be the most miserable. Arthritis, bad headaches from whatever fad diet they are doing, agitation from fasting, various food sensitivities, back problems, etc.. Antecdotal of course, but that’s my experience. There’s probably some confirmation bias here too, as people seek out fitness as a way to compensate for various conditions.

I just don’t know what to make of it. I’m not saying you have no control, I just think it’s vastly overstated.

> The fittest people around me seem to actually be the most miserable. [..] back problems

This caught my eye. Back in highschool I rollerbladed for fun, a couple times a week. During that period, and for years before that, I had pretty regular soreness in my lower back, for no apparent reason, which would persist for most of the day.

Then in college I stopped rollerblading and gained about 30 pounds, ticking over into the "overweight" BMI category, and the soreness completely vanished. Since then, ~10 years ago, it's only reoccurred a couple times.

Since it was still gone during breaks and back home after college, all I can figure is the extra fat added some support or padding that's stopped whatever was causing it.

That's a very shortsighted statement, but I can see where you're coming from.

I thought the same way when I was in my late teens/early twenties. Was a way for me to justify unhealthy food, smoking and alcohol.

Now I'm 30 and slowly realized it's not true. Living healthy when you're young doesn't have short-term reward. But I'm pretty sure when you're 50+ you'll be happy that you ate healthy, exercised and had a way to deal with stress (e.g. meditation).

If you're mentally and physically fit, you can do as much with 65 as you do with 20 today.

Also, I believe that our understanding of how sicknesses work and tech advances, we'll be able to live much longer. So, in 40 years from now, 65 might just be "middle-aged". Heck, it's even possible that you'll never have to die if you don't want to.

I’m older than you. When I was younger I thought you had more control over your health. Now I realize the amount of control you really have is minimal. It seems like a crapshoot. I see older people who did nothing to take care of themselves doing just fine, and plenty of fit people whose health is surprisingly bad.

I see some people over 65 who can do what they once did, but they are the exceptions.

I see how diet and excise impact heart disease. That’s obvious, particularly in the extremes. Other than that… it seems like the genetic lottery determines the majority of outcomes.

Of course you could be perfectly healthy and then get a bad disease, or get run over by a bus. But life is about probability.

And living healthy increases your probability of living a longer, healthier life. And as this study shows, it increases it by a significant factor.

Of course, the wonderful thing about life is that you can make your own choices. And if you don't want to eat healthy and work out, and are fine with the consequences, that's totally ok.

That crosses into personal attack. I assume you didn't mean it that way, but we ban accounts that do this on HN. Please make your points without resorting to it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> "If you're mentally and physically fit, you can do as much with 65 as you do with 20 today."

Can you, though? You're definitely long past your peak physically and in terms of testosterone. I don't know if intellectual decline is a factor at that age.

You can definitely still do a lot, but I don't think you can come close to your abilities at age 20.

Yeah, I mean it'll be harder to become a professional athlete or something, but you can surely do 99% of what people normally do in their lives.

There are definitely 65-year-olds who are fitter than some of the 20-year-olds you see :-)

I will be 65 in a few months. I did my first ever dead hang strict pullup about a year ago. Lately I can do six. This time next year, probably twelve. It is fun slowing or reversing sarcopenia, which is mainly a societal result, not a genetic curse.

Roger Daltrey famously said "I hope I die before I get old" in 1965.

He's 74 now...

That's essentially Trump's response to climate change haha. We're already screwed so let's just keep on the same track. Personally, I find that nothing in life is certain, but I certainly thing that we can increase our statistical chances of success by making good decisions.

Also, you'll certainly feel different about dying once you are 65.

reminder that getting a professional trainer and a nutritionist is a luxury, you can easily learn how to diet and exercise off the internet the way that people learn programming

How many articles on programming techniques have you seen that were written by non-programmers, by people who are just writing about coding in order to try to sell you hardware, or by kept spouses, programming to justifying their existence, and to have a 'job' to tell people about at cocktail parties?

Fitness and nutrition information is drowning online in a sea of woo.

It's so funny but it's so true. I do feel it takes a similar degree of ad hoc research though, if you have the ability to learn how to program an app with certain degree of complexity then I believe you have the capacity to search, find and judge information pertinent to fitness and diet. Of course, it's not as easy as googling "how to be fit" and clicking on the first 5 articles.

Your priorities may not be the same as everyone else’s. I think there is a certain moral incumbency on people to remain healthy for the benefit of others, but that only goes so far. Cost of maintaining life is an issue: just because there is some intervention that could prolong an individual’s life, doesn’t mean it’s not prohibitive for that I dividual to take it for a variety of reasons. Financial burden is obviously one, but let’s take up the primary case you seem to be arguing, the sacrifice of other pleasurable activities. Some people find exercise excruciating, either due to physical limitations or just because. If we lived in a world where taking forty lashes a day prolonged life, but only with great suffering, would it be so universally recommended?

I think you're taking the argument to a moral extreme which really does not help much. You could say that reading, or thinking critically, are excruciatingly hard for some ... would you say that they should just give up on it, despite the benefits that it provides to a person?

The argument for exercising seems to be similar.

To be completely fair, I have a more visceral reason to agree with the OP in that I too have been quite alarmed by how obese some of my older coworkers are, and that has contributed pretty strongly to my desire to not be that way.

> It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible.

Not for me. Living healthy yes - and then dying quick and painless. I don't care if that happens with 50, 60 or 70. Another 10 years to go would nice, still.

> unless I can devote more time in the gym to bulking.

I have experience with IFing as well as with bulking. And if you ask me - especially with respect to the specific reasons why IF is good for you - bulking is one of the worst and unhealthiest things you can do to your body.

> that there's still no scientific consensus and it still has a fad smell to it.

Do you not feel the difference? When bulking I feel heavy and bloated - it's tiring. Especially when dirty bulking - eating crap just to get those additional calories? Pushing and squeezing more and more food through this delicate and soft tube (your gut) in your stomach. It's more like plumbing than eating.

Having said that - I might do some bulking again at some point - but for aesthetic reasons - not because I believe it's good for me.

>It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible.

I think your number one priority should be to avoid suffering.

Then one could just die and be done with everything.

it’s always on the table.

often we stay alive because dying would cause others suffering.

That's not much of a reason. Why don't we convince them to kill themselves too.

/s

> It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible.

Then a career change may be one of the most effective ways towards that goal. An environment where your employer provides a gym may be a bit too stressful...

When you get into your 50's, unless you've won the genetic lottery, you need regular exercise or things will go badly wrong if you also have a tech industry workload. I nearly died ignoring that. Now I exercise every day, usually on my bike or a rowing ergometer. Less need for caffeine, better alertness. The time spent is returned in better productivity.

The only problem I see with this kind of pitch is these days hospitals, docs and the pharma industry keep physically inactive people alive decades past their expiry date.