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> Here's my problem: Exercise is extremely uncomfortable. It's hot, humiliating, and painful. I would say a few things to this. Regarding the comfort level: F

> Here's my problem: Exercise is extremely uncomfortable. It's hot, humiliating, and painful. I would say a few things to this. Regarding the comfort level: First, exercise is fucking brutal for the first few weeks, and then you just get used to the brutality. It never gets easy, but you do get used to being uncomfortable pretty quickly. Second, unless you're on some sort of program where you can measure progress granularly, you're going to quit. The enjoyable part of activities like lifting is seeing yourself make demonstrable progress over time in terms of weight being moved for X amount of repetitions. If you just come in and do a bunch of random shit as opposed to a structured program, you will never see that progress because what you are doing is inefficient; you will get bored or discouraged; and you will quit. Check out a program like strong lifts or starting strength if you are interested in strength training. Those are the canonical beginner programs. Regarding the humiliation aspect: I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym or while starting a new sport. Everyone starts out as a noob in lifting, even that guy who is squatting six plates easily. No one just shows up and immediately has success, so it makes no sense to be embarrassed about being a beginner. Many new lifters believe that experienced lifters judge them for the amount of weight they are moving. I can tell you this is not true. I would never judge someone who is squatting the bar or 65 lbs or whatever as long as they are attempting to use good form; I would assume that person is a beginner, and would be pleased that they are focusing on fundamentals early. I am also always happy to critique form or provide advice to new lifters, as it is an opportunity to teach and I enjoy cultivating interest and knowledge in my sport. Amusingly, so many noobs are so afraid to look ignorant or weak that they never ask for help, reinforce terrible technique patterns, and then get to a point where they are moving weight they clearly cannot handle well with terrible form. At this point, experienced lifters WILL judge you harshly, so why not just engage them early on and get free help and camaraderie? Regarding embarking on a diet or exercise routine. I posted some general advice on how to properly get started (mostly with dieting) and how to think about best practices here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15604761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15604761

ergothus 8y ago
> I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym or while starting a new sport. I don't need other people to be present. That doesn't help, but even by myself I feel utterly stupid. The humiliation is self-imposed and a nasty spiral - I can stop feeling humiliated by not having to face it (aka stopping). And the next time I have to face it, I'm not only worse at it by virtue of being in worse shape, but also because I know I felt this way before. The same thing can happen with coding if you aren't careful - take on too much at once and you have only failure, no sense of satisfaction. But with exercise I have no sense of "win" by accomplishing something small the way I do with something small-but-new in coding.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  Thanks for explaining your situation so eloquently. I run regularly, but I have been injured and unable to run for 6 months once. When I started back again I experienced that feeling where everything just feels difficult and bad, nauseous. Trust me, that bad feeling does go away. It was fairly easy for me to get over that hurdle because exercise is such a big part of my life and I knew what I was aiming for (probably two weeks for me). But from that I do feel that I understand what people are talking about when they say they don't enjoy exercise. You're too out of shape to get over the hurdle to eventually feel good. You don't even know what you're aiming for because you've never felt it. It will take longer for you but you can get there. > There's no "endorphin high", no sense of satisfaction. IMO it's completely unrealistic to expect an endorphin high when you're talking about only minutes of exercise. I have had real and strong endorphin highs while running, but only after over an hour of fast running at almost race pace, when I was at my fittest. There is no way you are ever going to get there as a beginner. That's real endorphin high, I mean. You do feel overall much better all day every day being fit. What you can achieve as a beginner however is the satisfaction that you are getting stronger every day. Eventually you will realize that you're not feeling bad, and after that you will start to feel good, for longer and longer periods of time. A long time after that you will find that you feel worse when you don't get exercise. Just from that I think it sounds like you have an unrealistic idea of the time it should take for your body to adjust. It literally takes years and years. People who are very out of shape seem to think if they go for one walk a week that they will show noticeable effects which is totally wrong. You need to incorporate it into your life as daily activity. Is there really nothing you enjoy that has any exercise component? I love almost any kind of exercise anyway, but I'd go crazy if I didn't at least make it outside for a walk every day. Basically I believe you need to try to split it into little chunks that you can handle. Instead of taking the lift, take the stairs. If you can't go all the way on the stairs then just go halfway. Even doing that every day you will notice in a month that you are doing it easier than when you started. Try to get that incidental exercise here and there and eventually you can do something more substantial like walking significant distances. For me, getting a GPS heartrate watch was a revelation. I could see every second that I cut off my average pace at the same average heartrate. I found that very motivating, and there's no way I'd be able to measure such small changes in any other way. You're basically running for weeks to see a few seconds difference. Also, I can run virtual races against myself from a year ago. Perhaps you can find something as motivating for you. You can even listen to coding podcasts while you walk. That's all assuming you want to change. If you don't, then just keep doing what you're doing and you'll get what you've always got... Using your coding analogy, you wouldn't start expecting to be able to write your own OS from scratch, you'd start and practice with small things first. One fact that I learned and still think about sometimes is that every cell in your body is replaced every 7 years. So if you start doing exercise now, 7 years from now every cell in your body will have been doing exercise from when it was first created. That's how I think about the timeframes involved when you are planning to do exercise. Anyway, just get out there and do something, it's better than nothing, and maybe you can do one and a half somethings the next week, and so on. Also, I echo the sentiment of the other poster. A home gym is the way to go. It's such a big investment of time to get out to a "real" gym and back. I can go to my home gym, do "something", and have a shower in the time it takes to just get my clothes ready to go to the "real" gym... And I only wear pants when I feel like it. As a beginner all you'd need to start is a yoga mat or a towel to do some bodyweight exercises. Much better than nothing...
mmt 8y ago
> I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym or while starting a new sport. I don't, either, but, because of that, I wouldn't presume to give out advice regarding this aspect without first understanding better what it is. Too often, especially in the realm of mental illness (if I may work in the original article topic), advice comes from good intentions but ignorance, and that can be unhelpful, if not insulting. I happen to have much of the same experience with exercise as the original commenter, except that it was not always so, which makes for an odd perspective. I know what was, at least, previously possible, including the relatively immediate benefits of endorphin high and feeling more energized later that day and/or the following day. It's just that somewhere along the line of too many years of essentially no exercise at all, that stopped happening. Now, even a small amount of exercise (10-15 minutes of cardio, like walking) will result in feeling extra-lousy later that day and/or the following day, instead. Given even this knowledge, I can tell you that the cliches (which, your advice is one of, if one of the better ones) just don't provide an actionable potential solution. The vast majority of people may not have quite this hard of a problem to address, and maybe not even the majority of people suffering from depression, but that's part of what I would say makes depression so hard is that it can present with (or be co-morbid with) other issues that, were they not so hard, might make the depression "itself"[1] much easier to treat. [1] I only use quotes because of the lack of distinct lines between symptoms of depression and disorders in their own right.
DrScump 8y ago
I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym I think it's a common insecurity, especially given the degree of body shaming in a society. Newbies need to be encouraged with the basic fact that generally speaking, nobody cares what you do (or don't do), what weights you lift, etc. A stranger can't know if you are new, or injured, or rehabbing, or weakened by a chronic condition. As long as you learn basic safety and etiquette, anybody of any ability can blend in seamlessly. Sure, jerks exist, and it's generally illegal to kill them, but just ignore them (if they become a problem, tell management -- they don't want a toxic environment).

ergothus 8y ago

> I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym or while starting a new sport. I don't need other people to be present. That doesn't help, but even by myself I feel utterly stupid. The humiliation is self-imposed and a nasty spiral - I can stop feeling humiliated by not having to face it (aka stopping). And the next time I have to face it, I'm not only worse at it by virtue of being in worse shape, but also because I know I felt this way before. The same thing can happen with coding if you aren't careful - take on too much at once and you have only failure, no sense of satisfaction. But with exercise I have no sense of "win" by accomplishing something small the way I do with something small-but-new in coding.

brokenmachine 8y ago
Thanks for explaining your situation so eloquently. I run regularly, but I have been injured and unable to run for 6 months once. When I started back again I experienced that feeling where everything just feels difficult and bad, nauseous. Trust me, that bad feeling does go away. It was fairly easy for me to get over that hurdle because exercise is such a big part of my life and I knew what I was aiming for (probably two weeks for me). But from that I do feel that I understand what people are talking about when they say they don't enjoy exercise. You're too out of shape to get over the hurdle to eventually feel good. You don't even know what you're aiming for because you've never felt it. It will take longer for you but you can get there. > There's no "endorphin high", no sense of satisfaction. IMO it's completely unrealistic to expect an endorphin high when you're talking about only minutes of exercise. I have had real and strong endorphin highs while running, but only after over an hour of fast running at almost race pace, when I was at my fittest. There is no way you are ever going to get there as a beginner. That's real endorphin high, I mean. You do feel overall much better all day every day being fit. What you can achieve as a beginner however is the satisfaction that you are getting stronger every day. Eventually you will realize that you're not feeling bad, and after that you will start to feel good, for longer and longer periods of time. A long time after that you will find that you feel worse when you don't get exercise. Just from that I think it sounds like you have an unrealistic idea of the time it should take for your body to adjust. It literally takes years and years. People who are very out of shape seem to think if they go for one walk a week that they will show noticeable effects which is totally wrong. You need to incorporate it into your life as daily activity. Is there really nothing you enjoy that has any exercise component? I love almost any kind of exercise anyway, but I'd go crazy if I didn't at least make it outside for a walk every day. Basically I believe you need to try to split it into little chunks that you can handle. Instead of taking the lift, take the stairs. If you can't go all the way on the stairs then just go halfway. Even doing that every day you will notice in a month that you are doing it easier than when you started. Try to get that incidental exercise here and there and eventually you can do something more substantial like walking significant distances. For me, getting a GPS heartrate watch was a revelation. I could see every second that I cut off my average pace at the same average heartrate. I found that very motivating, and there's no way I'd be able to measure such small changes in any other way. You're basically running for weeks to see a few seconds difference. Also, I can run virtual races against myself from a year ago. Perhaps you can find something as motivating for you. You can even listen to coding podcasts while you walk. That's all assuming you want to change. If you don't, then just keep doing what you're doing and you'll get what you've always got... Using your coding analogy, you wouldn't start expecting to be able to write your own OS from scratch, you'd start and practice with small things first. One fact that I learned and still think about sometimes is that every cell in your body is replaced every 7 years. So if you start doing exercise now, 7 years from now every cell in your body will have been doing exercise from when it was first created. That's how I think about the timeframes involved when you are planning to do exercise. Anyway, just get out there and do something, it's better than nothing, and maybe you can do one and a half somethings the next week, and so on. Also, I echo the sentiment of the other poster. A home gym is the way to go. It's such a big investment of time to get out to a "real" gym and back. I can go to my home gym, do "something", and have a shower in the time it takes to just get my clothes ready to go to the "real" gym... And I only wear pants when I feel like it. As a beginner all you'd need to start is a yoga mat or a towel to do some bodyweight exercises. Much better than nothing...

mmt 8y ago

> I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym or while starting a new sport. I don't, either, but, because of that, I wouldn't presume to give out advice regarding this aspect without first understanding better what it is. Too often, especially in the realm of mental illness (if I may work in the original article topic), advice comes from good intentions but ignorance, and that can be unhelpful, if not insulting. I happen to have much of the same experience with exercise as the original commenter, except that it was not always so, which makes for an odd perspective. I know what was, at least, previously possible, including the relatively immediate benefits of endorphin high and feeling more energized later that day and/or the following day. It's just that somewhere along the line of too many years of essentially no exercise at all, that stopped happening. Now, even a small amount of exercise (10-15 minutes of cardio, like walking) will result in feeling extra-lousy later that day and/or the following day, instead. Given even this knowledge, I can tell you that the cliches (which, your advice is one of, if one of the better ones) just don't provide an actionable potential solution. The vast majority of people may not have quite this hard of a problem to address, and maybe not even the majority of people suffering from depression, but that's part of what I would say makes depression so hard is that it can present with (or be co-morbid with) other issues that, were they not so hard, might make the depression "itself"[1] much easier to treat. [1] I only use quotes because of the lack of distinct lines between symptoms of depression and disorders in their own right.

DrScump 8y ago

I've never understood this idea of feeling humiliated at the gym I think it's a common insecurity, especially given the degree of body shaming in a society. Newbies need to be encouraged with the basic fact that generally speaking, nobody cares what you do (or don't do), what weights you lift, etc. A stranger can't know if you are new, or injured, or rehabbing, or weakened by a chronic condition. As long as you learn basic safety and etiquette, anybody of any ability can blend in seamlessly. Sure, jerks exist, and it's generally illegal to kill them, but just ignore them (if they become a problem, tell management -- they don't want a toxic environment).