31–40 of 133 posts
To say exercise lowers depression, disease, and death normalizes inactivity.
You can define normal how you want, but I prefer to think of exercise as normal and that lack of it contributes to depression, disease, and death.
It's great to have a dog that will be walked every day on every weather. Ok if you have a cold it's not such a great thing but as a desk worker you must go out and walk at least one hour per day around.
Exposure to weather conditions, hot and cold is also critical.
First time I have heard that. Got any references, I would like to read more?
It's great to have a dog that will be walked every day on every weather. Ok if you have a cold it's not such a great thing but as a desk worker you must go out and walk at least one hour per day around.
I agree with this. If you like animals and are responsible enough to have what amounts to a light version of a child, then dogs are excellent for encouraging activity since they require daily walks.
Just in case you need to read this again, exercise changed my life. It simply get rid of the fatigue. Dont take drugs to stay awake, go run half an hour (it really doesn't take more than that to feel tremendous effects).
I think it's amazing the way we've completely sidelined physical activity - not exercise per se, but any physical activity - in our western lives. Unless you live without a car, there is no requirement for you to walk more than 1000 steps during the day. Wake up, drive to work, sit at your desk, drive to a restaurant for dinner, drive home, plop down on your couch. Rinse, repeat. Even if you do decide to work out, it…
It's great to have a dog that will be walked every day on every weather. Ok if you have a cold it's not such a great thing but as a desk worker you must go out and walk at least one hour per day around.
I reversed diabetes with diet alone by doing my own research[1], taking charge of my health. I lost 180lbs in the process. No exercise (disabled). Very much a work in progress. I'm not rejecting the importance of exercise for health - I follow the general principal of eating to get healthy, exercising to get fit - but I think we skip over the absolute tragedy that is the Standard American Diet at our peril. Recoverin…
I've found that when I tell people this, they worry about my health even more than they did when I was 80lbs heavier. It's bizarre.
Never mind the fact that my blood pressure is now a pristine 110 over 70, all my pre-diabetic symptoms have disappeared, my sleep apnea is cured, my gastroesophageal reflux disease is completely gone, my cholesterol and triglycerides are back to normal, etc.
The fact is exercise has an almost negligible impact on weight loss.
Let's be very generous and say an hour of typical exercise burns 350 calories. If you're overweight, compare that to the 120 calories you burn per hour spent sitting in your chair. That's an extra 230 calories you burned by exercising for an hour.
That 230 calorie expenditure costs you:
* 1.5 to 2 hours of disruption to your daily life
* An hour spent being extremely bored and uncomfortable
* An ever-growing amount of generalized aches and joint pains as you put together consecutive days of doing this
And at 230 calories per hour, doing an hour of exercise every single day nets you 1610 calories per week, which is less than 1 pound of fat loss every 2 weeks. You turn your whole life upside-down, make yourself miserable and in pain every single day, take significant time away from work and studying and family, and all you get is LESS THAN 1 additional pound lost every 2 weeks.
I honestly think the net impact of promoting exercise as a weight loss option is people getting and staying fatter. People have a tendency to dramatically overestimate the calories they're burning, people want to use exercise as a way to avoid having to eat less, and people use exercise as an excuse to eat more. It also causes an amount of disruption and discomfort in people's lives that's probably the number one cause of people giving up on their weight loss goals.
As far as health impacts, I'm still not convinced on the cause-and-effect here. I want to start doing some physical activities soon, but that's not going to cause me to be less depressed, that's a result of me being less depressed because of all the weight I've been losing. All the studies I've seen on exercise and health draw the same sort of "playing basketball makes you taller"-conclusion.
Ah yes, let me just conjure up some motivation to get rid of my lack of motivation.
I reversed diabetes with diet alone by doing my own research[1], taking charge of my health. I lost 180lbs in the process. No exercise (disabled). Very much a work in progress. I'm not rejecting the importance of exercise for health - I follow the general principal of eating to get healthy, exercising to get fit - but I think we skip over the absolute tragedy that is the Standard American Diet at our peril. Recoverin…