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Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

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Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#111

Post by austinjp »

Waterluvian wrote: post #97
Gatsky wrote: post #92

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit…

I worry about my health and often I have a really good try and making a habit. But crap is it hard. It's not the money or the time. There's something else about willpower and boredom. I wish I could get on an exercise bike, stare at a brainwashing device, and "wake up" an hour later having remembered none of it.

Some suggestions, YMMV.

Podcasts or films or boxsets on the phone/tablet to kill that boredom if you're doing steady state cardio. Maybe immersive games like that Zombie Run game, if jogging is your thing.

Switch it up, do HIIT instead of low impact steady state cardio once in a while. Lift weights.

Find a buddy to go with you. If you're obligated (or enjoy the company) then you'll be more likely to do it - as will they, you'll be helping them out too. Professional options include: join a sports club. Tennis, kickboxing, whatever works for you. Or get a personal trainer, if you can afford it. 99% of their value is that they simply make you turn up.

Cycle/walk/jog commute if possible. If you can fit exercise into your existing routine it's far easier to keep doing it.

Best of luck!

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#112

Post by woolvalley »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #102
Waterluvian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about my health and often I have a really good try and making a habit. But crap is it hard. It's not the money or the time. There's something else about willpower and boredom. I wish I could get on an exercise bike, stare at a brainwashing device, and "wake up" an hour later having remembered none of it.

I do nearly exactly that on my phone playing Predynastic Egypt, but on the elliptical instead of on a bike. Sometimes my legs start to hurt after 90 minutes, but I want to play just... one... more... turn.

I find my gameplay performance is a lot worse when I'm moving on a cardio bike.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#113

Post by craftyguy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #97
Gatsky wrote: post #92

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit…

I worry about my health and often I have a really good try and making a habit. But crap is it hard. It's not the money or the time. There's something else about willpower and boredom. I wish I could get on an exercise bike, stare at a brainwashing device, and "wake up" an hour later having remembered none of it.

Go out and ride a real bicycle, either around town or commuting to/from work. I do a lot of cycling (thousands of miles/yr) but cannot stand to spend more than 5 minutes on a stationary bicycle/trainer.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#114

Post by themagician »

boboh wrote: post #33
themagician wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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…

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.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#115

Post by themagician »

analognoise wrote: post #105
goldfeld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

>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 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.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#116

Post by Gatsky »

Someone1234 wrote: post #107
Gatsky wrote: post #92

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit…

I personally think the research done on HIIT/HIIE-style[0] exercise has been pretty revolutionary. Sure the status quo remains: exercise=good, non-exercise=bad, but reality is more nuanced than that and something like HIIT helps people who feel they lack the time for "full" exercise to justify a minimal time commitment with proven and significant health benefits. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_inter…

Yes! I agree the HIIT research is great and very interesting and impactful - they designed and implemented an intervention with a control group and measured other correlative variables including muscle biopsies. And as you say the results are actually useful for getting some people that don't have the time or inclination to run marathons.

I would certainly distinguish this kind of research from the many redundant retrospective observational studies (often with self-reported exercise activity levels) of the kind linked in the original post.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#117

Post by kaitai »

Gatsky wrote: post #92

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit…

"More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed." This gets at the heart of things. We used to have societies in which exercise needs were often met through activities of daily living. Many places in the world still require walking, biking, hauling water, carrying children, transporting food on your back, etc. Many places in the world people still dance at community events, for fun, no matter what their age. But the US -- we've been working as hard as we can for 90 years to eliminate exercise from daily life. And now we are doing another classic US-ian thing and shifting this formerly natural and communal thing to an individual responsibility, preferably an individual responsibility that can be monetized. What so many instances have shown in the US is that when you take an activity that used to be built into daily life and 'gentrify' it -- make it something that costs money and time because it's denied to some groups by the very structures of the buildings and streets they live around -- we end up with huge public health costs and unforeseen consequences. But taking a conscious approach in the design of our cities, public housing, public transport systems, private transport systems, zoning laws, energy policy, food policy, medical care delivery, public school requirements, and private school requirements is considered to be some sort of socialist brainwashing that kills the seed of freedom in one's heart, or something. Only if you are forced to commute on the highway rather than being able to bike safely to work are you truly living the American dream. Only if you must drive thirty minutes to get to the nearest place with chicken that tastes like something other than styrofoam, rather than being able to walk to the neighborhood store for it, are you satisfying the extractive demands of our apparently-preferred economy.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#118

Post by OkGoDoIt »

Waterluvian wrote: post #97
Gatsky wrote: post #92

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit…

I worry about my health and often I have a really good try and making a habit. But crap is it hard. It's not the money or the time. There's something else about willpower and boredom. I wish I could get on an exercise bike, stare at a brainwashing device, and "wake up" an hour later having remembered none of it.

I found rock climbing to be a very effective for exercise, because there’s quite a thrill looking down from the top. It’s exciting and you almost forget you’re getting sweaty and gross and tired. Plus there’s that immediate sense of accomplishment when you get to the top, which is much more immediate and concrete than the sense of accomplishment you get after jogging 5 miles or whatever.

Also if I have a free day I love just walking all day exploring and listening to a good fiction audiobook. Audiobooks are weird if you’re not used to them, but trust me, eventually you’ll swear by them if you get over that initial hump. And randomly walking around and exploring is good exercise, you’ll forget exactly how tired you are while listening to the audiobook and it won’t be in until you stop to take a break several hours later that you suddenly realize “Holy crap I just walked 12 miles and I’m tired!”

To each his own, but I used to have your exact same attitude about exercise and these two things worked for me. I’ve lost 50 pounds in the last five years. Obviously there’s other factors like diet and mood and body type and whatnot, but these have been my main forms of exercise. Hope that helps!

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#119

Post by samontar »

gmjoe wrote: post #101
jules wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

#120

Post by kaitai »

WalterSear wrote: post #32
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>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. Family planning is not rocket science. Choosing to breed without the appropriate resources may be socially normalized behaviour, but portraying parenthood as a selfless act is to gloss over the fact that the parents knowingly engendered the impoverished…

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/
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