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Thank you for staying this. (again) I've always really hated exercise, and I still do. I've never been able to get into the 'exercise zen' that some people ta

Thank you for staying this. (again) I've always really hated exercise, and I still do. I've never been able to get into the 'exercise zen' that some people talk about. No matter what approach I take, even going back to when I was young, exercise was unpleasant. Not surprisingly, nothing I tried over the years for exercise stuck very long. Until I arranged my life that I had to ride my bicycle to get to work. I absolutely do not look forward to riding each day. I will subconsciously look for excuses to not ride. (We do have a car, but my wife is the primary user of it. So sometimes if I know she won't need the car that day, I'll cheat and drive that to work.) But overall, it's been a pretty revolutionary change. I'm getting a reasonable amount of cardio nearly every work day.

btrettel 9y ago
Your experience is similar to mine. Some of my friends have tried to make exercise inherently enjoyable, but I see this as usually a lost cause. Using myself as an example, there are very few exercises I would enjoy. And would I even do an exercise I enjoy regularly anyway? Basketball can be fun, but I never felt motivated enough to play unprompted, so it's not enough. Plus, basketball is nowhere near as good cardio as cycling. Given that excuses are easy and that you probably can't make exercise enjoyable enough, the best option I can see is to make exercise unavoidable. Active transportation is my favorite here. Reducing friction helps a lot too, and might be enough for any particular person reading this, but I prefer to leave as little to chance as possible.