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A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

• hinkley 3y ago
  I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse). Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” helps with the dysphoria, and being integrated helps with a whole lot of other things. Especially for men, who are conditioned to not give themselves permission to have feelings and sensations affect their behavior (and then surprise! Are affected anyway, with zero attempts at healthy coping skills).
  • jalino23 3y ago
    I don’t get it. what do you mean by “ brain being carried around as a meat sack”? >> Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” what does it mean to think of my body as me? and can you provide examples of these exercises? thank you!
    • NikolaNovak 3y ago
      Not the op but the first quote completely describes my approach. I am me. The intellect, the mind, the person. My body is what carries my intellect, not completely distinct from the way a car or bicycle or wheelchair might. I don't identify with my body as "me". I have at best a cordial relationship with my body.
    • haswell 3y ago
      A lot of people feel like “they” are somewhere inside their head. They look out at the world through eyes that are windows. The world is out there, “I” am in here. In this undefined black hole of “me”, mysterious, but definitely separate from the world and what’s “out there” past one’s eyes. They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of things that affect their body and consequently, their brain and mental states. E.g. gut health plays a major role in mental health, but this is not an intuitive concept for many people. Some have argued this is an outcome of Judeo-Christian thinking, e.g. my soul is not of this world, this body isn’t my best body, my soul passes on when I die, etc. These ideas are deeply ingrained from an early age, during the time in which one is forming their concept of self.
      • joker_minmax 3y ago
        From my perspective, the belief that the soul and the body are totally separate and that the body is lesser is not actually a Christian belief, but rather a Gnostic one. Unfortunately a lot of the Christianity of America has a twinge of Gnosticism present. The "C.S. Lewis" quote that gets thrown around, "You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body," was never actually said by C.S. Lewis. I actually got a better connection with my body from listening to an Eastern Christian priest talking about how if you think you can separate your body, mind, and soul from each other, you've created a false sense of self.
        • haswell 3y ago
          Whatever its origins, it’s what the baptists who raised me believed, and it was a view of self and body that was prevalent in the Christian circles of my childhood. And to your point, it has permeated Christianity more broadly, and arguably western thinking even broader still. I left the church in my teens. My conception of self didn’t shift until decades later after many years of intentional deconstruction. It’s a powerful illusion.
        • User23 3y ago
          The Catholic Church continues to teach that human beings are body and soul and both are essential to the human person. While Lewis wasn’t Catholic, his theology basically was.
        • luxuryballs 3y ago
          Yeah agreed, CS Lewis has said a lot about the body and the soul, a few come to mind from first Mere Christianity and then a quote from Screwtape Letters “And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral /…/this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, /…/ It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution–a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” (Screwtape gives advice to use a “body doesn’t matter” philosophy as a way of making the human distracted or ineffective) “At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
    • austinjp 3y ago
      Perhaps there's a typo. I interpreted it as "brain being carried around _in_ a meat sack".
      • hinkley 3y ago
        Yeah, but people had already quoted me by then so I didn't bother to fix it.
  • haswell 3y ago
    > suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack This was me for most of my life. Yoga has been life changing. Cultivating full body awareness and presence opened my eyes to states of being that I didn’t know I was capable of experiencing. I can feel the subtle changes in strength each day, or a touch of soreness, or the exact spot that anxiety has settled into in my gut. Gaining the level of focus needed brought with it a deeper and broader awareness of my emotional states, and the realization that I have some separation from them, i.e. they != me. This in turn helped me unwind some big things I’d been dealing with in therapy. In retrospect, it makes so much sense to think of my body as an integral part of who I am and how I feel. But that’s a mode of thinking that I was certainly never introduced to as a kid, and never experienced by default.
    • jononomo 3y ago
      I'm also a hardcore yoga practitioner -- I love the extra awareness of my body and mechanics that I have now after 10 years of practice.
      • haswell 3y ago
        I should also mention that I’m only 6 months in, and I can only imagine what a decade of practice brings. I know there is still much to learn, but I wanted to drop this here for anyone wondering if it’s worth the time investment. I knew I’d stick with it within a few weeks. 2-3 weeks was when I started noticing some definite changes in strength. It just gets better from there.
        • jononomo 3y ago
          It took me years, but I eventually got to the point where I could legitimately do the standing splits to full extension, lol. I'm now working on conquering the handstand.
  • throwaway22032 3y ago
    I agree with this. I don't think that it's unique to the mind body connection either. It's very popular for people to try and look at things in isolation, to try and "scientifically prove" that what they are doing is efficacious, to distill to first principles. In an academic context this is absolutely the correct thing to do. But for our lives? You are a human being - you evolved to think, to make love, to run, to get outside and touch grass, to labour for things, to... well, we are general intelligences - generalists. There is something to be said for accepting that and not looking for the "efficiency hack" that allows you to minimise what it is to be the thing that you _are_.
  • mudita 3y ago
    The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation. This was surprising to me. Before I tried it, I thought of meditation as a purely mental thing, I didn’t expect that the first really noticeable effect of regular meditation would be a changed relationship to my body, Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became a professional dancer, which really deepened my body awareness and transformed my relationship to being a body even more. I remember, in the beginning of my dance career, after a three month dance intensive I applied to a (Haskell) programming job again to finance my dance education and went to a computer science conference. It was a bit of surreal experience. The people at the conference were very nice and intellectually curious people and I liked them, but the contrast to the environment in dance communities was very strong. I felt like almost everybody there thought of them-self as a brain, piloting a body like a big mecha. In the dance environments, even during lunch breaks etc., it always felt like there was a lot of subtle awareness in everybody about their own body, the other bodies in the space, the distances and empty space between bodies, a non-verbal channel full of quiet energy and information. In the computer science conference this channel was just dead.
    • hinkley 3y ago
      It was tai chi for me, but I started that after Buddhism and zen. I could never get comfortable. Not as in 3 out of 10 pain scale, but 7.5-8.5 out of 10. Having people tell you to ignore the pain is unhelpful when they imaging paper cut and you’re feeling knife wound. Tai chi has a warmup that’s an easy shift into standing meditation.
    • divan 3y ago
      One of the most amazing comments I've seen on HN. Thank you for sharing this!
    • mieubrisse 3y ago
      That sounds like a fascinating journey that I'd love to read; have you written anything about it? I'm a born-and-raised software engineer (read: meat mecha mindset), but I recently became interested in dance when I moved to Brazil as many people there have this unconscious connection with dance and their body that I envy. In my case, I'm dimly aware of that non-verbal channel you mentioned, but I struggle to comminicate on it and - if I'm being honest - doing so makes me feel vulnerable and awkward.
  • nomilk 3y ago
    For a fundamental appreciation of how the body affects mental state, see Robert Sapolsky lecture biology lecture. It doesn't talk of exercise specifically, but it leaves no doubt of the strong influence of the body on the mind (and vice versa). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA
  • chiefalchemist 3y ago
    > We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true... We are RE-learning. Look at all the "new science" on psychedelics. Or gut bacteria. Etc. I'm not sure what the bottleneck is...we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens. It really is *that* simple. p.s. While nothing revolutionary new per se "The Comfort Crisis" by Michael Easter goes a solid job making the case for "this is where we came from, stop thinking where we are is compatible."
    • hinkley 3y ago
      > We are RE-learning. Fair point. I got accused of the “noble savage” myth recently in another post and I went the wrong way with it. In trying to be better stewards of the natural world we are looking at vestige civilizations that never lost it, but the fact of the matter is that if you watch history shows, one I’m thinking of was a recreation of feudal life in Tudor England, Western Europeans used to “know” many, many of these things too, but they forgot it all in the Industrial Revolution, then encountered civilizations that hadn’t forgotten, and ground them to dust, instead of remembering. After hundreds of years of trying to solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them, there’s always a set of people who are asking questions about the trip we are on. There’s a fine line between pastoralism and compromise that we haven’t worked it out yet, and we don’t even always see it when it happens. There’s a circumstantial chain of evidence out there that David Hume injected Eastern Philosophy into The Enlightenment. If that’s even a little true, this big philosophical Step Forward was really a step “back”, or maybe sideways. And I think we still don’t know where the Stoics got their ideas from. Themselves, or Buddhism?
      • NovaDudely 3y ago
        It is most likely that both the Stoics and Buddhism got their ideas from simple introspection. I didn't read Buddhism and have an epiphany, I came to it the same conclusion by myself and then saw that others had done the same.
        • somenameforme 3y ago
  • joker_minmax 3y ago
    Our society has suffered massively from this disconnect. I honestly do feel like our computer and avatar-oriented society is fuelling it. Like the benefit for men you mentioned, I think women have a unique benefit too: a lot of women's healthcare knowledge has been suppressed, and developing these skills of bodily awareness helps with self-knowledge of those things.
  • johnea 3y ago
    Mostly the kind that involves getting up from your seat and going outside... After that, the more cardio exercise you get the better...
  • cgb223 3y ago
    > the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse What are some examples of this?
    • kennyloginz 3y ago
      vagus nerve stimulation for treatment resistant depression.
    • sph 3y ago
      Also breathing with a constant, calm rhythm to switch the brain from panic/anxiety mode into coherent thought.
    • tikk 3y ago
      ADHD people who eat stuff they really shouldn't, their vagus nerve "starts acting up" (i'm too lazy to get my notebooks) and their ADHD-symptoms are amplified. same goes for a lot of food-induced conditions. different exercises targeting the vagus nerve help to alleviate (the) stress.
      • naasking 3y ago
        Do you have any links with further information on vagus nerve association, these problematic foods, and the exercises?
      • hirvi74 3y ago
        Please get your notebooks if you can. You have piqued my interest, and I have not read more information correlating the waxing/waning of symptoms of ADHD with food. The idea seems completely rational, but I am curious what foods make a difference, which should be avoided, etc..
    • hinkley 3y ago
      Late reply, but I have a friend with panic disorder who has had attacks from her heart fluttering, or even just eating food that makes her gassy. It's a straight shot from the vagus to your adrenal glands. I heard a term for this somewhere but Google is failing me utterly today. She's in some sort of program now that if I understand what they're actually doing, they're trying to manage the vagus response.
  • Noumenon72 3y ago
    My brain is still "me" more than the meat sack I use to to ice skate, lift weights, and ski. I just think of my body more like a mech I can learn to pilot via telepathic control interface that gains sensitivity over time. I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory, but I've really enjoyed learning enough about my body that I can use it the way it was designed. It feels good when you go from "some part of me is always hurting" to "every step I take recruits muscles from foot and ankle to upper back because I learned how to use all of them against gravity".
    • kennyloginz 3y ago
      Have you ever tried psychedelics, or pinball?
    • tikk 3y ago
      > I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory. Oh but you absolutely must try it! I assume being in the zone mentally is a familiar thing to you, so you really ought to try the physical equivalent!
      • Noumenon72 3y ago
        I have been trying this with ice skating because you mentioned it, letting my legs go loose instead of lining up every push, and it's actually kind of fluid and fun.
    • haswell 3y ago
      > I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory A lot of people feel this way, but the reality is that we already do almost everything without conscious control, we just don’t tend to notice. Not to mention the majority of the systems in our body are also beyond conscious control, and for many, beyond awareness completely (e.g. the nervous system). The book “Flow” is a really interesting read, and describes how one’s approach to daily life can lead to something closer to that athlete’s state. This is closer than most people realize.
  • arvinsim 3y ago
    Reminds me of a quote “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” — Thucydides
  • noobdev9000 3y ago
    There are even studies about how gut bacteria can affect brain. Mind-Body distinction is a dead end philosophycel cope.
    • elmolino89 3y ago
      Not exactly. Try to meditate out diarrhea.
  • computer-user 3y ago
    I like this comment and am intrigued by your dance experience. Meditation, however has exposed to me that I am certainly not (just) the body. To feel like I “am” something at all is both an assumption and the final hurdle.
  • pawelmurias 3y ago
    > I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. The prevalence of psychotherapy perpetuates this approach with promotes talking over countless problems with some pseudo-science witch doctor while having a horrible lifestyle that will cause endless ones to appear.
    • antonfire 3y ago
      Throwing blame on "the prevalence of psychotherapy" into this conversation, writing it all off to "pseudo-science" and emphasizing "lifestyle" (as in "if you exercised more you'd be better off", I guess) reads like a just-so story from a brain in a meat sack that's missing the substance of the conversation. Just like "meditation" is many different things, and "exercise" is many different things, and "healthcare" is many things, and "thinking" is many different things, "psychotherapy" is many different things. One of the first things by current therapist asked me was more or less how embodied I was. I suspect of all the relationships with other people in my life, the one with my psychotherapist is the one that's most likely to be help me build out a fuller relationship to my body in the way the grandparent comment is advocating. The therapist before that focused on behavioral "lifestyle" changes when feelings came up, in a way that I guess superficially follows the "I am a body" model, but really felt like it only added distance and abstraction to my relationship to myself. I guess that approach was grounded in a scientific evidence base that those kinds of interventions are what moves metrics.
  • ChatGTP 3y ago
    This is why I think all the "meatbags" and "hardware running on software" analogies are actually really primitive and silly, even though I know some find them funny. If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things. This does not follow, except for stripping away the religious/spiritual part. Computers are amazing! So is hardware! And so is the dance of software and hardware that makes magic happen. I've seen nothing so far in this whole thread that would convince me I should stop thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain, as every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard. This is not to say the body isn't an important and tightly integrated part of the experience. But the fact remains that a hand or a heart or a lung can be removed or replaced without loss of self. A brain can't.
      • ChatGTP 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • TeMPOraL 3y ago
          > If your brain is meat, which is squishy, how can it be hardware? This isn't what those terms mean, but nice try :). A better argument could be built around malleability of the brain. > Isn't your brain just software too then? Isn't it all software running on software? Yes and no. "Hardware" and "software" aren't fundamental. Think about ASICs vs. FPGAs vs. emulation. Which parts are "hard" and which are "soft" and which are something in between, is a matter of convenience/economics. Fundamentally, it's all compute though.
  • stef25 3y ago
    > the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse Can you expand on that and / or provide some links? Very curious. Thanks.
    • embeng4096 3y ago
      Here[0] is a blog post by someone who identified it as playing a part in a severe case of selective mutism that deeply impacted their professional ambitions. The description is interwoven with a narrative of their time at some sort of week-long retreat, but there are sections (mostly in italics, as they're memories) that describe the mutism, their efforts to identify its source, their learning about the vagus nerve interactions, and the takeaways about the vagus nerve and its role in their experience. [0]: https://fortelabs.com/blog/groundbreakers/ https://fortelabs.com/blog/groundbreakers/
  • kpennell 3y ago
    Kevin Kelly has a great essay on this called 'thinkism' : https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-thinkism-fallacy/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-thinkism-fallacy/
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • firecall 3y ago
    Indeed, as I’ve learned this is a western perspective! Old Alan Watts lectures cover this nicely, and can be listened to for free on YouTube and elsewhere.
• hisnameisjimmy 3y ago
  A key unlock for me was doing exercise where at some point I was trying so hard and breathing so aggressively that I couldn't really think anymore, I could only focus on the task at hand. For me, that's been biking up steep hills. I like biking because I get to see a bunch of cool stuff and if I go up hills I get a dope view. I joke that doing these rides feels like I'm re-boring my arteries because my heart pumps so hard. I feel great afterward. Recommend!
  • GoRudy 3y ago
    Same same. Also when not biking bootcamp classes get me to the same place of only thinking about the workout / excercises at hand. 50 min - 90 min feels like the sweet spot in terms of time.
  • throwaway22032 3y ago
    Yep. Another example - it's pretty damn hard to think about doing the laundry when you have 100+ kg on your back.
    • ehnto 3y ago
      I can barely think for a good few minutes even after heavy squats/deads. I have found my biggest mistakes were all when I had gotten comfortable with a weight and ended up losing mental focus. Thanfully no injuries. It seems I have to be nearing my edge to be forced into focus. I am better at opting in to focus now thanks to lifting I feel. Similar to downhill riding, all my crashes have been on easy stuff as I lost focus.
  • hinkley 3y ago
    When I was trying to integrate a definition of “flow” that covered my many experiences, it wasn’t biking up hills per se, it was those moments where bad shit almost happened and I saw a way through and just did it. Riding through gravel, loose dogs, when the “fast guy” tried to drop the pack and found me on his wheel. I think I agree with you that these experiences are pivotal, because they are moments when you just are without thinking. That constant monologue some of us carrying our heads is gone, and the universe didn’t end. Taking that information and finding the spot halfway between the two is the real lesson, IME.
• comfypotato 3y ago
  I’d never seen “an overview of systematic reviews” before — I would have thought this was already common sense, but it should be now more than ever. I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I think it just meant diminishing returns with more exercise, but it says that less is actually better.
  • Swizec 3y ago
    > I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I ~workout~ train 20+ hours per week. This is definitely bad for my mental health, but the goals won't achieve themselves. Turns out qualifying for Boston is no joke.
    • mupuff1234 3y ago
      So why do it?
      • Swizec 3y ago
        Type 2 fun. I enjoy overcoming challenges.
  • formerly_proven 3y ago
    WHO recommends at least an hour of moderate+ activity per day which virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do. The notion that you could accidentally do too much exercise is ridiculous unless you go all-in-gym-bro.
    • comfypotato 3y ago
      The statement was referring to mental health. The data is clear for things like cardio that more is always better. I’d never heard that less (read 2.5 he/wk) is a sweet spot for mental health.
    • coldtea 3y ago
      >virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do An hour or more of moderate activity per day? Dunno about that impossibility of one hour. Perhaps you're talking about some hectic Amazon-style working environmen,t or people that just had babies, or commute for 1 hours each way?
• paddw 3y ago
  The article does not answer the question. (I don't believe there is a straightforward best answer but the article does not so much as make a conjecture beyond the most obvious prerequisites.)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • comfypotato 3y ago
    It promotes higher intensity exercising. If you’re breathing hard, that’s a good sign. (For mental health.)
    • pasquinelli 3y ago
      that's not how i understand the term "high intensity." jogging makes me pant, but i wouldn't call it high intensity, because i can do it for twenty minutes. high intensity would be work you can do for only maybe a minute, not twenty, and as a result it won't keep your heart rate elevated very long. so if they're basically saying 30 minutes 5 days a week, that's low intensity exercise.
      • GavinMcG 3y ago
        > high intensity would be work you can do for only maybe a minute, not twenty Actually according to the article, high intensity can be done for twenty minutes. So what you’re calling “low intensity” is actually “high intensity.” (Funny how this works both directions, isn’t it?)
      • EatingWithForks 3y ago
        Low intensity shouldn't involve panting at all, because low intensity exercises are designed for people with specific health issues where anything above slight exercise is dangerous to them. [consider: significant osteoperosis, serious heart disease, etc] Stretching is low intensity exercise. Also, an exercise you can only keep up for 20 minutes at a time is pretty high intensity.
  • 3y ago
• formerly_proven 3y ago
  Any exercise is much much better than sitting around for hours researching and reading articles about which exercise would be best. According to reader mode this article is about 10 minutes long so instead of reading it, go for a walk.
  • mlyle 3y ago
    > Any exercise is much much better than sitting around for hours researching and reading articles about which exercise would be best. This is true if you're going to exercise once. On the other hand, finding an exercise that's good for you and that you can keep with might be worth investing some time, because you can use this knowledge for years. Even a 10 hour research project is only .75 minutes per workout when amortized over 2 years of 4x per week workouts.
• x3874 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• chaostheory 3y ago
  > The benefits of exercise might not be immediate, says Singh, but they should show up within weeks or months. Beyond that, the longer people engaged in exercise, the less beneficial it became for their mental health. This may be because they were sticking to the program less, due to waning motivation or, perhaps, injury. It could also be because the exercise itself began to feel less novel and more repetitive. This is exactly why I use a Quest 2 / pro to workout. When you’re killing zombies, fighting ninjas, or boxing fighters, working out is almost always novel. I’m just playing VR video games, which is why it’s easy to keep a routine even after 3 years I hope Apple Vision can provide this benefit to people who are still skittish about even trying the current generation of VR headsets
  • ghotli 3y ago
    Mind sharing which games on the quest you find yourself returning to?
    • chaostheory 3y ago
      Thrill of the Fight - boxing sim Beat Saber Les Mills Body combat - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars FitXR - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars. Subscription only but has HIIT, boxing, and dance workouts Ninja Legends - you’re fighting ninjas Knockout League - Punch Out in VR with lots of variety synth riders - music rhythm game that has a lot of variety on its own Holopoint - shooting targets with bow and arrow. Lots of moving and dodging involved Mothergunship forge - bullet hell shooter. Lots of dodging Pistol Whip - bullet hell music rhythm game. Lots of dodging like Neo Path of the Warrior - double dragon in VR Until You Fall - slashing sword game GORN - gladiator game Creed - another boxing game Punch Fit - minimalist boxing training game Racket NX - racket ball inside a dome Rezzil Player - lots of mini workouts like heading soccer balls Stride - mirrors edge in VR I tend to rotate these games, but I always try out new games for novelty. There’s also a lot of games where you can walk or jog in place like Fallout or Skyrim that I didn’t count here. Not to mention a fighting game and soccer game with full body tracking that’s PCVR only
  • cpursley 3y ago
• throwaway22032 3y ago
  The last part of the article has the best takeaways IMO. Start slow, find something that you enjoy. Escalate as and when you can. Too many people think of exercise as like, get on the treadmill and run as hard as you can and make yourself feel like shit to the extent that you can't go again for a week. The vast majority of people, even people who train hard, don't do things like that.
• teekert 3y ago
  I like mountain biking on very technical tracks, I can't really think of anything other than the track, it requires full attention. I like that. Put me on a speed cycle (not sure what the English word is), it gets boring, my mind starts to wander, I don't even remember what route I took.
  • 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y ago
    Road Bike (as opposed to Mountain Bike)
    • cpursley 3y ago
      No Semis, Brodozers or Soccer mom SUVs on mountain bike rides. Road biking is unacceptably risky. Not judging, it’s the other people on the road who I don’t trust.
  • Toutouxc 3y ago
    Exactly, there’s something about the forced attention. I’ve upgraded my flat-bottom touring kayak to a faster one that’s kind of narrow and tippy and it forces me to think about my technique and movement a lot. Compared to my older boat, the trips have gotten much less sightsee-y but at the same time more relaxing.
  • exabrial 3y ago
    +1 for MTB and agree on technical climbing. You have to plan the line about 2-3 moves ahead.
  • uejfiweun 3y ago
    This sport didn't really click for me. I think I'm just not coordinated enough for it. No sport has left me bruised and bloody and just mentally broken like mountain biking has. I also didn't really enjoy the experience of having to sit on an extremely bumpy bike for hours on end. To each their own, though - I am jealous that folks get to enjoy a sport that takes them deep into the beauty of nature.
    • 3y ago
• Yajirobe 3y ago
  Nobody mentioning rock climbing? Come on, I bet half of Hacker News partakes in it
  • coldtea 3y ago
    Sounds like a hugely echo bubbly view of the popularity of rock climbing and the HN demographic
    • eastof 3y ago
      Indoor climbers are all software engineers in some cities. In Seattle and San Francisco in particular, nearly everyone I meet there is also a software engineer. The gyms are so expensive that they are the only ones who can afford it with FAANG subsidies. Outdoor though you're right, totally different demographic and very few of them are software engineers.
      • spacemadness 3y ago
        This is what turned me off from rock climbing. I couldn’t handle the monoculture version of it in the Bay.
      • 93po 3y ago
        I heard a lady in my indoor gym loudly complaining about an outdoor spot being full of tech bros. Seattle area.
  • pcthrowaway 3y ago
    I climb, but I doubt 5% of hacker news does. In fact, among software engineers (few of whom rock climb in my experience), I suspect the ones who climb are less likely to be on HN
    • hinkley 3y ago
      If all my joints worked the way I would like I’d be spending half as much time talking about my hobbies online. It’s what I do in the in between times.
• foobarbecue 3y ago
  Surfing, obviously.
• sgtcodeboy 3y ago
  Certainly can't speak for everyone, but the most effective form of exercise that I have found is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Couple of reasons. First: The deeper you get into it the more you learn its primarily an intellectual pursuit - its just hidden in a very physical endeavor. When I'm doing Jiu Jitsu, I have to actively think, engage my problem solving skills, I can't go on auto pilot as I do in other things - rowing machine for instance. Second: Anyone can do it, at nearly any age with any body type. If you're older and not super athletic, your Jiu Jitsu will be different than say a 20yo who is very athletic. But that in no way means your Jiu Jitsu or experience will be any less effective. First time posting on HN. Hope this helps someone.
  • jcpsimmons 3y ago
    This seems to be all the rage right now but there is a significant risk of CTE with BJJ. Concussions are normalized to an alarming degree among all BJJ practitioners I’ve spoken with.
    • sgtcodeboy 3y ago
      It all depends on how you train. WRT CTE/Concussions, I can't speak to that. No one I've trained with has had that issue, maybe that's more of an MMA thing - ie striking. If you go 100% full competition all the time and never want to tap out - then yes I would agree there is significant risk of injury. But that's true with any physical endeavor. If you instead train with the long run in mind, pick and choose your rolling partners, and tap out when you're not in a good situation then you can mitigate those risks quite successfully. Having weight trained, ran track and trained BJJ, I've had far more injuries in weight training + track despite having far more time on the mats than weight training and track by a very large margin. We're taught in my academy - you are accountable for your own safety. Just tap, come back another day. Fully understand and admit not all schools are the same.
    • jshaqaw 3y ago
      Two years into the sport and I’ve never had a close concussion call or seen anything close. Heads could hang into each other on a crowded mat I suppose but that risk is darn low if you are paying attention.
• ryanSrich 3y ago
  It’s a bit cliche at this point thanks to people like Joe Rogan, but Jiu Jitsu is, imo, the best possible form of exercise. It’s not only physically exhausting, it’s also mentally very difficult. And not just because it requires deep levels of knowledge to be good, but it also resets any preconceived notions of strength. It’s not uncommon for a new white belt male that weighs 200lbs to get absolutely waxed by a 100lbs brown belt female. I see it happen all the time. Of course, as you belt up, and gain more understanding of the sport, there are ways to utilize a size and strength advantages. But that’s secondary to knowledge.
  • oscribinn 3y ago
    Judo is even better, as you also learn how to throw people from your feet rather than starting on the ground all the time, and you pretty much have to lift weights off the mat to stay competitive.
    • com2kid 3y ago
      An ideal combo is submission wrestling combined with BJJ, you'll find MMA gyms train this way. As someone who used to train at an MMA gym, going to a pure BJJ gym is weird because yeah, I'll shrimp out, get up to my feet, and my training partner is sitting there on their knees waiting for me to re-engage and my first thought is "this would be a great time for a kick to that completely unprotected noggin right there..." Of course once on the ground, the BJJ peeps dominate, which is what UFC spent 3 decades demonstrating!
    • Mordisquitos 3y ago
      > rather than starting on the ground all the time BJJ does not start on the ground as standard, let alone "all the time". Matches start standing, and if you are only training from the ground you are missing out. That's not to say that stand-up and takedown training aren't much more in-depth in judo than in jiu-jitsu, though.
  • com2kid 3y ago
    I keep trying to tell people this. Jiu Jitsu is like playing chess and your limbs are the pieces, it is a serious mental and physical workout. Though don't discount other forms of martial arts, the amount of mental effort in kickboxing is still high, the coordination needed to be planning your foot work and balance out 2 or 3 moves in advance is non-trivial and that alone can take years to master! (Also IMHO kickboxing is a more intense workout than rolling, my opinion consisting of a polar heart rate monitor strapped to my chest ;) )
• deleted 3y ago
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• 1MachineElf 3y ago
  To what extent? Being too tired and exhausted to have negative thoughts doesn't necessarily mean that exercise itself is a fundamental solution.
  • spiderice 3y ago
    Did you read the article? It says 2.5 hours per weeks is the sweet spot. Spread between 4-5 session. Hardly enough to exhaust you to the point of not being able to have negative thoughts.
  • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    They don't say you needed to do a lot (in fact they say that you get best results by NOT doing too much). There's a bevy of feel good effects that fall outside of just being "too tired".
  • hi41 3y ago
    I think you are learning different skills as you explore different forms of exercise. As you develop those habits of exercise and connection to people, you are able to answer the call of depression with walking one day, running the second day, doing Yoga the third day, cycling the 4th day, communicating with people and so on. It’s no that you won’t face depression and anxiety but now you have groked the skills in your body, you are able to answer it with action and not just give mental arguments.
• uejfiweun 3y ago
  A lot of people are saying Jiu Jitsu. I'd actually extend that to most contact martial arts. I wrestled in high school and it was fucking brutal. In fact, wrestling made me appreciate my life a lot more, because it's so much easier than wrestling. They call it "the most fun you never want to have again". The grueling, daily, multi-hour practices... the extreme physical conditioning required to succeed... the extremely nerve-wracking matches, especially the lead up to them... honestly, my FAANG job is a total joke compared to the difficulty of this stuff. I think wrestling prepared me quite well for life.
  • otoburb 3y ago
    Could the same be said for serious student-athletes (e.g. Division 1)? My understanding is that most Div1 collges have pretty stringent/strict minimum training schedules in order to maintain scholarships and team slots.
• x86x87 3y ago
  Weight lifting. Barbell. Compound movements. That is all
  • dnsco 3y ago
    I love heavy compound lifts, but find it does something different than cardio. I get maximum benefit when I do both.
    • Noumenon72 3y ago
      They are complementary for me. The way my body recruited my lats when running hills taught me how to knit the top and bottom together when I squat. The mind-muscle that squats woke up in my hip flexors carried over to foot placement in ice skating.
• oldstrangers 3y ago
  It's not exercise (outside the hiking) but ... camping is amazing and a great start if you're not inclined to do much. Limited responsibilities, and the responsibilities you do have (cooking, staying warm, not dying) help sort of reset some biological imperative that gets lost when you're entirely too comfortable at home on the couch. Any form of cycling really clears my head. The sensory stimulation, the forced focus, the sense of freedom, it's wonderful.
• nonameking2026 3y ago
  Jordan Peterson mentioned free weights - the balancing requires a lot of minute balancing moves
• newsclues 3y ago
  Weight lifting, walking in a forest, hiking up mountains have all been beneficial to me.
• gmiller123456 3y ago
  The best exercise is the one you'll stick with. For me that's cycling and kayaking, alternating every day. I had tried running just because it's convenient and requires very little gear, but found it incredibly boring. But many of my friends absolutley love running. So asking others might help with some ideas, but ods are, you'll prefer something else.
  • nradov 3y ago
    Cycling and kayaking are great, but they don't deliver the repetitive impacts necessary to maintain high bone mineral density as we age. Have to add other sports to that mix.
    • gcoakes 3y ago
      Wait, the impact is beneficial? I've been worrying about running out of cartilage in my knees throughout my life. I had considered running to be a limited time thing that will just run out at some point.
      • nradov 3y ago
        The impact is beneficial and running won't damage your knees, at least if you're at a healthy weight. But other sports such as weight training, rucking, or certain martial arts might be more beneficial than running from a bone mineral density standpoint. https://peterattiamd.com/ama37/ https://peterattiamd.com/ama37/ https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to-run-make-my-knees-wear-out-faster https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to...
      • AndrewVos 3y ago
        Yes the impact is beneficial
• karmakaze 3y ago
  I've read sudoku bing good exercise to avoid early deterioration as you age--use it or lose it. I find Go (board game) to be more interesting and develops a lot of cross-transferable skills outside of only games or memory. Playing StarCraft 2 is also a fun(?) way of maintaining speed.
  • hinkley 3y ago
    Aji is my favorite concept from Go. In Go is it common for a failure to persist on the board. There are better moves, and some fights have to be won twice if you capture, so it’s better to leave them until the end. But Aji is attacking near a loss, turning the loss into a win (very, very rarely, resurrecting the dead pieces). The existence of a failure on the board can put pressure on neighboring areas, and they can still sometimes be turned to a redemption story. Lose ten stones here but gain 8 nearby. Still a loss but maybe enough to win the overall game.
• johnea 3y ago
  Mostly the kind that involves getting up from your seat and going outside... After that, the more cardio exercise you get the better...
• oscribinn 3y ago
  2.5 hours a week is insanely low for any young person in good health. I'm positive that at least 8-12 hours of determined, physically intensive training compared to a measly 2.5 hours of "exercise" per week will do a hell of a lot better for anyone's mental health than treating the usage of one's body as somehow secondary to the "knowledge based" work we're all forced to do to make a decent living in modern society.
  • shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    The latest recommendation is at least 16 hours of at least moderate physical activity per day. Basically, be moving from the time you wake up to the time you sleep, like our ancient ancestors. Turns out that's what the body evolved to optimize for. Problem?
  • plutonorm 3y ago
    At one stage of my life I was running 10k every other day for months at a time. I was miserable. Also irritable.
    • laeri 3y ago
      Maybe not getting enough rest might have offset the positive factors?
• joewhale 3y ago
  My wife had severe post partum depression twice. I wonder how much of it is linked to lack of exercise.
  • joker_minmax 3y ago
    It could be a factor, but it's also worth noting the full extent of the effects of the hormonal changes during and post-pregnancy still aren't well understood. Estradiol messes even with your body's usage of adenosine for petesake
• weare138 3y ago
  But you have to be able to break the depression cycle to begin with in order to do things like exercise. It's the chicken before the egg problem.
• lethologica 3y ago
  I’ve had major clinical depression for the last 15 years or so. The first 4 months of this year was the lowest I’ve ever been. During that time though I was going to the gym 6 days a week doing weight lifting and then I would cycle 50km a day on top of that. All of it was on autopilot however, my depression just wouldn’t allow me to focus on anything but it. Luckily I had been building up the habit for years in advance but that was the most I had ever exercised and it was also the most I had ever been depressed. In my case I don’t think the exercise helped at all. Perhaps if I hadn’t of been exercising maybe I wouldn’t even be here now though… I’m not entirely sure. Finding the right medication and getting therapy has been what has really helped me. With those two I can see an almost day and night difference but with the exercise I noticed no difference at all. At least I had a great physique though!
  • qumpis 3y ago
    Sorry to hear that. I guess you experienced major setbacks in your life this year?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • soultrees 3y ago
    I bet you look great though.
  • ansc 3y ago
    I did pretty much the same during a longer dip. I guess it's a way of dealing with the always-on fight-or-flight mode, so you exercise way more than your body is able to recover from and only end up digging yourself further down. Now that I am in a healthier state of mind, I find that exercise helps a lot more as long as I can do it in a healthy way.
  • bratbag 3y ago
    How much were you sleeping at night? I find that exercise without adequate sleep grinds me down into a twilight zone state of everything seeming a bit unreal. Last time I had a period similar to yours, the problem was too much screen time on social media and gaming, which was disrupting my sleep. I cut those out, started feeling tired enough to sleep again, and bounced back to normality.
• gatane 3y ago
  Dunno, I was in Taekwondo as a kid and it made my anxiety worse, because I was always watched by my parents or had to do the moves in certain way. Could not do exercise on my own, and school was already lonesome.
• paulpauper 3y ago
  Not really a fan of most exercise . find it tiring and repetitive. but i tried windsurfing a long time ago and found it exhilarating.. maybe i need to try that again.
• AlbertCory 3y ago
  Exercise is the best drug there is. When you hurt afterwards, it's not your body saying, "do that less." It's your body saying "do that more!"
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • fhars 3y ago
    No, ist is your body saying "you've been doing it wrong."
    • AlbertCory 3y ago
      sometimes. And sometimes you just haven't worked that muscle at all.
• MavropaliasG 3y ago
  The article is very badly written. Better to read the abstract. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/02/bjsports-2022-106195 https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/02/bjsports-2022-...
• scrapcode 3y ago
  The benefits of exercise are abundant and I don't know many that would argue against that. If exercise is so beneficial to the whole being, why is it such a difficult thing for us to implement regularly on a long-term basis? Even during periods of life where I've been in a good routine with working out, there still seems to be some sort of internal resistance to going to "do the thing."
  • chaostheory 3y ago
    Because most exercise is both repetitive and boring, and people tend to have continued interest in new novelty
  • laeri 3y ago
    The brain tries to minimize energy expenditure due to evolutionary factors and only wants to expend energy if absolutely necessary. Therefore you need to trick your brain into doing the right thing.
  • bratbag 3y ago
    Our reward centers evolved in an environment where nutrition was hard to come by and exercise was a daily fact of life already. Our bodies use of exercise for healthy regulation of our mental state is probably an evolved dependency of that life as well.
  • nradov 3y ago
    Sure that happens to everyone at times. Even champion ultra marathon runner David Goggins talked about sitting and staring at his running shoes for 30 minutes before he could force himself to get out the door. I find it helpful to set up fixed schedules and create some sort of accountability to a coach or teammates. That way there's no decision making involved in the moment, you just go out and execute the plan.
• claytongulick 3y ago
  It surprises me that this is "new". When I was active duty in the navy through the 90's I specialized in psychiatry and worked at an inpatient psych ward. One of the things we did for all patients was force them to go to the gym every day. Yes, force. Military psych wards were a bit different than civilian. You could give orders. In this case, it was necessary - the last thing you'll willingly do when you're suicidally depressed is exercise. Getting a nearly catatonically depressed patient out of bed was a huge challenge, getting them to the gym even harder. But we did it. Every day. In my experience, this was more effective treatment for depression than any meds or psychotherapy. It worked wonders, way faster than SSRIs. Not so great for the psychotic disorders though. We had some "interesting" incidents at the gym.
• fnord77 3y ago
  I've had life-long depression exercise has made my anxiety and depression worse. I've done all kinds from weight training to ramping up to a full marathon I don't believe this metareview one bit
  • itscodingtime 3y ago
    I’m in the same camp as you. I still exercise because I can’t see myself not exercising; plus I know it’s benefiting me physically. For some reason I really dislike casual talk amongst people about this subject. When people causally give simple solutions to their depression I wonder if they were actually “clinically depressed.” Or they say X helped but forgot to mention they were also on drug Y and seeing a therapist Z many times a week. My favorite internet depression cure is travel.
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  When I was less wise, I remember suggesting exercise to someone suffering from depression. Didn't go so well. You reach an unfortunate point when depressed that makes it difficult to listen to actually useful advice. It's an unfortunate state of mind to say the least.
  • HKH2 3y ago
    You wouldn't dare call it pride, would you?
    • denlekke 3y ago
      when i've been in that position, it was hopelessness not pride that made it hard to act on good advice
  • harry8 3y ago
    Someone tells you about something that absolutely commands their total attention. It's of very little consequence to you. You suggest they try something /obvious/. It's reasonable to assume they might have considered it. How is that going to be perceived positively as a suggestion? Do you think it possible? For someone with major depression, maybe it's like suffering from major arterial bleeding and we suggest an band-aid because it "can help stop bleeding"
    • bratbag 3y ago
      My direct experience with depression was that escaping it required a combination of the right events at the right time to create an upward cycle. For me it was fixing a shower by myself that started that upward cycle. For someone else it could be a single exercise session that leads to it. It's always worth a try to encourage someone to take that first step.
      • laeri 3y ago
        This is a great comment as it reflects the situation quite well.
• kickbutt22 3y ago
  Graduated high school almost at the bottom of my class, nearly didn't graduate. Working out changed my life. I recently graduated summa cum laude with my degree in data science while working multiple jobs, taking on a minimum of 18 credits each semester. Some of my best semesters were when I was extra consistent with my workout routine.
• abhaynayar 3y ago
  I never liked the gym, but I do three things in terms of exercise regularly: yoga, walk, and tennis. I like playing tennis way more than doing yoga and walk, and I look forward to it so much. But I'm only able to do yoga and walk daily, playing tennis has way more friction, so I can only do it a few times per week.
• annie_muss 3y ago
  I am affected quite badly by ADHD and related anxiety/depression issues. Absolutely get out there and do some exercise. There are so many benefits it's untrue. I exercise every day and I think it's one of the most important things I do. That said, don't expect magic. There are no silver bullets. I often see people asking about ADHD and related issues being told to go out an exercise. In my experience you'll be a slightly fitter, slightly healthier, slightly happier person with the same ADHD issues as before. Absolutely go do it, but keep your expectations realistic.
• tomcam 3y ago
  Exercise just makes me feel worse. Junk food makes me feel integrated, whole, and calm. My body fucking hates me.
  • w-ll 3y ago
    have you tried trailmix and beef jerky instead of junkfood?
    • tomcam 3y ago
      Sure have, thanks. Trail mix in the quantities I like just ends up being junk food!
  • bratbag 3y ago
    The trinity is exercise, nutrition and sleep. If your sleep or nutrition is trash, exercise will help you identify that.
    • tomcam 3y ago
      I haven’t been able to get more than four hours of sleep a night for 50 years and it’s fucking agonizing. Whatever you think I haven’t tried, I’ve probably tried it, unfortunately. Sleep schedules, meditation, melatonin, light cardio, heavy cardio, lifting weights, reduce screen time, mask, manual labor, every sleep drug on the market, etc. About once every two or three years I get 6-7 hours and I feel like a god.
  • plutonorm 3y ago
    same here
• TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  For anyone looking to start exercising, try a rowing machine. It’s practically a shortcut to getting in shape and building muscle (when done with proper form and pushing yourself). Even 5 minutes of HARD rowing a day and you’ll see amazing results.
  • chrismartin 3y ago
    Ditto! It's kind of an acquired taste. It's kind of tedious. But it's a full-body workout in one motion, more than running or cycling. It's a great way to dose yourself with exercise if you're short on time or the weather isn't good outside. I appreciate the mindful aspects of maintaining form, controlling my breath, and pushing myself to finish a workout. I basically never have a _bad_ day after rowing 5000 meters.
  • miklosz 3y ago
    Exactly! The best purchase of 2020 was the Concept2 after I was certain I'm will not go back to the gym for another winter due to covid. It's very convenient, weather independent, joint-stress free, measurable with an app and multitasking-friendly! I just attach an iPad there, get the noise-cancelling headphones and row for an hour with my YouTube playlist that I fill regularly. For Concept2, be sure to add additional cushions, my a.. hurts after 30 minutes without them, and after 1.5h with...
    • TheCaptain4815 3y ago
      I do kind of the opposite and focus on 2-3 sets of 500m as hard as possible (with perfect form of course). My average is around 2:04, and the difference between that and even 2:14 is incredible. I could go for 1,000+m easily at a 2:14 pace but feel like I'm about to collapse after a single 2:04 set... It's helped me stay in incredible cardio shape and has built a lot of my leg muscle.
    • rats 3y ago
      Agreed - with the start of Covid I manage to buy a Concept 2 (which wasn't easy - they were all sold out and you had to pay premium for used ones on Marketplace) but this is the best purchase ever. Since 2020, I managed to lower my hr, improve overall fitness for other sports I do and in general much happier. On my way to sub-20 min 5k, yay
• Giorgi 3y ago
  Do bad it's very boring.
  • rozal 3y ago
    Agreed
• jokowueu 3y ago
  Soon we might get excercise in a pill when it comes to mental health We are close in getting inhibitors that block enzymes from breaking down endocannabinoids !
• 55555 3y ago
  Find a sport you like. Exercising shouldn’t be a chore. Even playing pickleball with friends will get your heart and lungs working, and wont require any willpower.
• ddlutz 3y ago
  I'm on the unfortunate side of having panic disorder. Some exercise, like weightlifting can trigger panic attacks due to the sudden spike in adrenaline. Steady-state cardio is usually fine.
• Turskarama 3y ago
  > The benefits of exercise might not be immediate, says Singh, but they should show up within weeks or months. Beyond that, the longer people engaged in exercise, the less beneficial it became for their mental health. This may be because they were sticking to the program less, due to waning motivation or, perhaps, injury. It could also be because the exercise itself began to feel less novel and more repetitive. Not mentioned here that I think should be considered is how much of the benefit was just due to _novelty_. If the effect wears off over time then at least part of it may be going out and doing something different.
• bratbag 3y ago
  The only thing more consistent than the benefits exercise has brought to my mental health, is the strange irrational hatred some people have for the idea that it can help.
  • ant_li0n 3y ago
    Yeah it's complicated. I guess an analogy could be like walking up to a fat person and shouting, "Calories in, calories out, bro!". Simply, it's not helpful. Fat people know they're fat because they have a caloric surplus. They've tried eating less. They're not stupid. I think the defensiveness people exhibit is a byproduct of their cumulative reactions to a bunch of unsolicited advice. My own (unsolicited) advice would be: don't give people advice, unless they specifically ask for it. I can guarantee you that every depressed person on the planet has heard that exercise is good for your mental health. Instead, you can say something like, "I'm very sorry that you're having a hard time. I want you to know that you're important to me, and if there's ever anything I can do to help, let me know"
• vaughan 3y ago
  I recently stopped doing exercise in the morning. I found that it spikes my dopamine too high too soon which makes it harder to work. I wonder if anyone has studied this...
• cortic 3y ago
  >Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements in symptoms. Haven't read the whole study, but i assume people with fewer symptoms of X are able and motivated to exercise more because they have fewer symptoms.. And the article is just inventing the most interesting causal link for a study that doesn't travel far from correlation?
• satokema 3y ago
  I walk to the store when it's reasonable. I wasn't top tier at it, but the most exercise I could tolerate was playing DDR, because there was a game to it that isn't just physical activity. These kinds of articles are always annoying because it invites a certain kind of person who will gush unendingly about how great exerting yourself is. For me, exerting myself sucks, it is only something I want to do when it's attached to a game I want to play (and even that gets stale). It's only ever something I am either forcing myself to do (yuck) or doing for something besides the physical aspect of it (saving gas, playing a video game). But instead of health advice being tailored to someone with my neurological makeup that causes this dislike of useless exertion, I'm just told that I need to "meditate" more or do yoga/X. If anything, meditation makes my body seem less like "me". Just to add my contrarian two cents to a comment section that is otherwise mostly the former.
  • prox 3y ago
    What is the definition of “you”? If I may ask. if your identity is mostly mental, I can see why any bodily exertion might seem less “you”. This is coming from someone who was in his head a lot. Most people don’t even realize it that they are.
  • furyg3 3y ago
    I'm not in your camp, but I get where you're coming from. I used to be marginally active, trying to get a run in every now and then, but it sucked almost every time. I pushed and pushed and it still was terrible. Then I found sports / activities that I really liked. Hiking in nature, squash, rock climbing. The latter two feel more like games / puzzle to me, and while I am confronted with exertion, I get totally lost in the moment when doing them. I still run, it's still grueling, but I do it to be better at the things I love doing, which motivates me.
  • user_named 3y ago
    Exercise is great for everyone including yourself. It's up to you to exercise. Don't complain when people list the benefits of exercise.
  • Shrezzing 3y ago
• plutonorm 3y ago
  Exercise makes me irritable and miserable. I've tried large amounts and medium amounts, obvs small amounts are included in daily life. My kids are similarly effected. One size does not fit all.
• harha_ 3y ago
  I get inermittent extreme anxiety, for a reason I'm unaware of. However regular gym and running helps with it immensely. It's just difficult to sometimes go to the gym while being so very anxious...
• taeric 3y ago
  I would fully expect that exercise done socially would have direct mental benefits. Even if it is just having someone to exchange hello. Indeed, the suggestion of an "exercise buddy" seems lined up in that direction. I am interested in knowing if my thinking on the benefits of socializing are out of date, on this.