2. Find a way to work out by yourself, where no one else is aware. Cycling makes this incredibly easy, but I also drive back to the office at 7pm to use the empty gym for weightlifting. I work hardest when I’m only accountable to myself.
3. Find why you like exercise. I love it when I’m already stressed out, but if life is fine and easy I don’t excessive. Create stress so that working out can resolve it.
Taking a class got me to push myself much further and harder than I ever did solo, and these days I'm making do with online classes because they keep me going in a similar way (though without the same social commitment since it's not actually social).
Weights? You just put them down and you are done.
I should do more resistance work, but don't. Something in one shoulder does not care for push-ups. Well, in the summer I do yard work.
Anyway, I'm glad you found something that works for you. Would that I had the same body-fat ratio that I had in college.
You can break bricks karate style and be fine, if you build up and take it slow and steady. You can also just tap or lift bricks 1k, 10k times per day and be fine.
However it won't end well if you use bad form, try to go max on day 1 (didn't build up), or try to break 1k bricks/day, every day¹.
Stupid running can be 1k-10k impacts per day with bad form (twisted joints), high stress (stomping on concrete), low regeneration (cartilage needs squishing for nutrients) - use it like this and you will lose it blazing fast.
¹ I kind of guess.
Takes some time to build up a base, and of course you need to be careful if you are quite heavy initially like I was. If you just listen to your body and don't overdo it, it all comes together pretty naturally. While bad form is a risk, a lot of what I've read seems to indicate that your body will naturally find a running gait that is optimal for your body and minimizes impact. Running without headphones also helps, just listen to your footfalls and adjust your stride to minimize impact. (I can't find any studies on this, but I can't help but feel that a lighter footfall is likely minimizing impact on joints somehow)
Simple: less stress (impact) => less damage (impact).
Listening to you body helps a lot. You body will (usually) tell you when you're doing something wrong, but it can be hard to understand.
I wanted to warn, because misconceptions like: I'm running => running is good for body => I'm doing good for body, even though my knees hurt every time; they can ruin many knees. Usually it won't get far, but there are always those who push.
My mileage was never that high, even during my late 20s: maybe forty miles per week as maintenance, rising to around sixty when training for a marathon. And frankly it wasn't that fast.
There are also additional upper-body and off-day stretching routines that you can do on off-days, but I am personally just doing yoga on off-days so I can't give you a review of those aspects of the program.
Eventually it got to be a habit and then something that is hard to live without. I've substituted taking long walks while working from home.
When I worked from home for a few years and now again with COVID, I have to think about working out. When I ride to work it's just natural. I always thought of it as free workout because it only takes a little more time on bike than driving. Plus you save a bunch of money on gas and wear on your car.
This is really the key. I workout out every morning and have for years. The exact time has bounced between first thing and mid-morning, but I do it every day. Eventually you stop thinking about it and it’s just what you do, just like brushing your teeth.
Yep, same here. I am bad about other sugars though.
> 2. Find an exericse regimen that requires you to show up, on time, and be accountable to others.
I just focus on regular workouts (bike rides in my case) with friends. We have a Wednesday night ride and a weekend ride every week. As you say, it's a habit. If I don't text location by Monday night, someone is asking me where the ride is. Likewise for the weekend. I keep fit on other days too so I don't hold up the pack.
> 3. DO NOT treat exercise as a priority.
I break from you here. But much of this is because I have a different attitude about exercise in general and that is:
4. Make exercise fun. If you find some activity you love doing, you look forward to getting your workout in as opposed to dreading it. For me, riding is not just physical well being, it's mental and sociological. For me, riding is a priority because having fun and hanging out with friends is a priority.
While all the above is mostly about cycling, I've been taking up kayaking now too and seeing a similar effect.
Start by cutting out high fructose corn syrup completely but still allowing other forms of sugar
Your suggestion about making exercise a habit is spot on. Just do it as a routine without even thinking and enjoy the rewards to do important things.
> 3. DO NOT treat exercise as a priority... I really like this philosophy. It's more or less how I've come to treat exercise, but phrasing in this way helps to justify and find reason for the habitual act. ("You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.") Cheers to continued health!
That said, I'm still seeking the curiousity driven exercise where you're not in passive mode but playful and trying stuff for the sake of trying, it's an internal pleasure and a hygiene you know.
Happy healthy life man
That’s a good little hack there.
My father is 77 and two years ago started exercising after a life of enjoying food a lot, being relatively inactive, and years with a troublesome achilles tendon.
He started with gentle walks, aiming for 5k steps a day. After several months, he added weekly circuit training with a group (he now does that three mornings a week). Then during Covid lockdown, gym with a boxing bag in his garage and long walks in the hills. And more recently fast rounds of golf, carrying his clubs, at 6am when the greens are empty.
He's now in the best shape he's ever been. Stronger and with more endurance than when he was in his 20s.
Just before Christmas, his step counter said in the previous 4 months, he had walked 1.4m steps, 1000 km.
Good luck with your dad!
This might be expensive, but it is so worth it.
Testosterone and no exercise produces more lean muscle, than exercising without it. Yes, it makes that big of a difference: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607043350101
Thanks for sharing.
Please will you quote the section backing that claim, I've just spent a few minutes looking at it and can't find it - just the expected stuff about testosterone increasing muscle generally.
Edit: the mean cross-sectional bit muscle size? Basically, they make some muscles bigger but not stronger? It sounds like bloat, a mostly cosmetic thing (which has its uses) tbh.
The summary results could be clearer in their highlights perhaps; you would think your observation would be a headline and its not mentioned, though perhaps I've missed it.
From a quick google it appears to be 6x the replacement dose.
It's also still bad for your teeth since it's acidic and has some unclear negative effects on gut bacteria.
I don't buy the gut bacteria effect, or at least I haven't seen anything clear that's positive or negative - just vague comments that it's bad.
Maybe the taste of artificial sweeteners encourages people to eat more, but as long as you don't then the diet soda is fine.
There was a famous story of a man who lost weight eating a calorie deficit of twinkies. And it worked! But it’s also hard.
So the real question is whether diet soft drinks make it harder to feel sated eating an appropriate amount of calories.
The main finding from an admittedly quick look is that drinking artificially sweet soda may encourage people to eat more calories and gain weight. If you're controlling your calorie intake then that's irrelevant.
Outside of that other claims seem highly questionable.
I push back a little on this, because most of the time I've heard people say diet soda is as bad or worse than regular it's because of unsubstantiated woo. Is drinking only water better for you? I'd guess almost certainly.
Is diet soda particularly harmful? I doubt it - and it's almost certainly better than regular soda (or all of those high sugar fancy juices). It can also be really helpful when losing a lot of weight as a zero calorie snack.
It's relevant because controlling caloric intake without relying on the bodies natural hunger signals seems to be close to impossible for most people. The alternative is to ignore your gnawing stomach all day and carry a food scale to every meal. Only the most dedicated athletes can sustain a routine like that. Everyone else eats until they are satiated and will gain weight.
There's an obesity epidemic in the US and discounting mounting evidence of a substance modifying our eating habits in a potentially unhealthy way as "unsubstantiated woo" strikes me as counterproductive. We should be taking a very critical look at the American diet as something is wrong.
On an individual level where diet soda is replacing regular soda, or where diet soda is used as a treat when controlling caloric intake otherwise I find the generic “diet soda is bad for you” to be misleading enough to be wrong.
The “woo” is that usually it’s not some commentary about artificial sweeteners increasing caloric intake, but some nonsense about artificial sweeteners being unnatural or causing cancer, etc. it’s not too dissimilar from 5G warnings or anti-vaxx.
Large observational study referenced in this article:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the-red-light-distri...
Some decent primary sources in this article, specifically interventional animal model studies:
https://ketodietapp.com/Blog/lchf/artificial-sweeteners-the-...
This interventional study was ended early on ethical grounds because the depression caused by diet soda was too severe:
I don’t get this - what do you drink then? You can’t literally mean you only drink alcoholic drinks? Is water not a soft drink? Surely you drink water?
Water is water. Juice is juice. Soft drinks are fucking diabetes in a can.
Actually, so is juice - the amount of sugar is pretty much the same in both, and the amount of vitamins in juice is not that big, certainly does not outweight the damage done by sugar.
The secret is to eat fruits whole - this gives you a lot of vitamins that are contained in the solid parts (those which are thrown away when squeezing juice), and a lot of fiber which makes you feels satiated much faster, before you take in too much sugar.
Fair point. It's not as crazy bad, but in some cases pretty close. I try to avoid drinking any sugars.
1. Absolutely no soft drinks at all. Not with sugar, not with artificial sweeteners. Nothing. Just seltzer. I used to drink a LOT of Dr. Pepper, and was told that they were contributing to my frequent kidney stones. So I stopped cold turkey, 30 years ago. I've had, I think, two Dr. Peppers since then. (I try to avoid processed foods in general, but I'm not a fanatic.)
2. Find an exericse regimen that requires you to show up, on time, and be accountable to others. I want a trainer to tell me what to do, turn off my brain, and just do it. That external accountability is crucial. I could find crossfit routines online, but then I don't do them. (I tried that, early in the pandemic.)
3. DO NOT treat exercise as a priority. Because then it is subject to your other priorities. Instead, make it a habit. You don't schedule brushing your teeth, and it is never traded off for other activities. You just do it when you're supposed to.
When circumstances pull me away from my routine (pandemic, extended family emergency), I feel like shit. My joints get creaky. Certain muscles start hurting. I have no energy. This all goes away once I return to my exercise routine. I hate it, but I love having done it -- I feel so much better in general. The high point of my day is when I am walking OUT of the gym.