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Why Exercise Is a Miracle Drug
- voat 1y agoMaybe not a drug. But if the improvements in health come from bio chemical signals, it should be possible to activate those signals without engaging in exercise. Eventually?
- DaveZale 1y agoyes and no. A couple thousand myokines at work here. Even lactate, formerly regarded as simply a waste product, is one. But sure, a cocktail may be possible at some point, beyond getting a blood transfusion from someone fitter and maybe younger.
- sctb 1y agoStrictly speaking, any intervention other than exercise is going to give you a subset of the total stimulation. A drug acting on the tissues directly would bypass the neurological component, for example. If the idea is to avoid the effort of exercise, perhaps it would be worth considering the possibility that the effort itself is essential.
- Bnjoroge 1y agonot entirely true. you can have drugs that directly act on the respective receptors, either inhibit or excite them.
- maccard 1y agoIf we were good enough to have drugs that could work with that precision we’d eliminate an enormous category of things. The side effects are usually the scary things. We have drugs that can cure the symptoms of depression and anxiety - they just so happen to be insanely addictive, cause respiratory depression, loss of coordination, and you quickly build a tolerance to them.
- gonzo41 1y agoThis is so bleak. Go for a walk.
- Loughla 1y agoWhy? My best friend uses a wheelchair and has dexterity issues in his hands due to a stroke. Exercise for him is (a) expensive and (b) really really really painful. If he could take a pill that simulated this it would be amazing for his life.
- raddan 1y agoI was struck this past week to the extent that even a mild physical impairment can cause. I overdid it last week on a run and I spent this week nursing a swollen knee. What kind of exercise to do without involving my knee? I lift weights sometimes, but I can’t do that every day, and it also does not give me the mood altering effect that a good run does. I was drawing a blank glumly in an armchair when my wife suggested swimming at the local pool with pull buoys (so that I can keep my knee immobilized). After a few experiments that felt more like drowning than swimming I finally got the hang of it. But it left me seriously worried about exercise in my future. After all, joint problems are likely going to happen again in my future. And I started to wonder: how do disabled folks do this? It must be incredibly difficult (and expensive!). I really am incredibly lucky across multiple fronts to have the life that I have.
- navane 1y agoCycling is really good as it doesn't strain joints, merely gently lubricates it. I broke my knee and was put on the bike real quick, as soon as I had enough mobility to make a full round, for rehabilitation.
- toss1 1y agoYup, +1 for cycling! For me, it's some ankle cartridge destruction from an old fracture that finally put a halt to my formerly extensive trail & XC running & recreational racing. But cycling is coming back to the core of my exercise program (Mountain/trails: really miss road biking but traffic & drivers' attitudes seem to hazardous now). And not expensive either - plenty of bikes on Craigslist good enough to not give you bad habits and still get good exercise, even decade+ old race bikes. It is really all about working with what capabilities you still have, and maximizing those. Even that may provide enough healing & fitness to get back to a bit of previously constrained activities.
- socalgal2 1y agoThe article has an opinion on this > When I asked Ashley if it was possible to design a drug that mimicked the observed effects of exercise, he was emphatic that, no, this was not possible.
- stuckinhell 1y agosooner than later glp + myostatin inhibitors seems to be a big winner. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_1/207-OR/149796/207-OR-Myostatin-Inhibition-Synergizes-with-GLP-1R https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/72/Supplement_...
- tomalaci 1y agoSteroids. You will be growing muscle while sitting on a couch, even better than someone that naturally trains. However, you very likely will develop asymetries or other weird complications because you didnt properly work out. My point is that, even though we might find even more ways to improve/modify our bodies, they will come with slew of risks that are just not worth it if you can achieve it naturally. On another note, I feel like there is severe muscle inflation in media which would distort how fit a person should be. You really do not need to kill yourself in the gym or hop on a some reddit-approved juices to get very fit. Just gotta experiment and find a comfortable full body workout that you can do consistently, like you brush your teeth every day.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoYou get plenty of asymmetries working out too, it's natural. Don't think just weight lifting, think of: tennis, boxing, baseball
- samiv 1y agoActually, that's not how steroids work. It's a common misconception that one can take "roids" and just sit on the sofa while munching on potato chips and get shredded and pack on muscle but in reality what the steroids do are to move ones natural limitations further away thus enabling larger muscle mass than naturally. But this still requires one to put in the work, i.e. the stimulus to trigger the muscle growth and to rest and eat properly.
- retrac 1y agoThey do work that way. Lots of studies show gains in muscle mass even with no excercise when people are on steroids. Consider average men who never excercise vs average women who never excercise. The men will have more muscle. That's what testosterone does, among other things. That's part of why steroids were and sometimes still are used medically for people with cancer and other wasting diseases. It makes them eat more (they're usually strongly appetite inducing) but they also just help develop muscles even if sedentary. (Of course it would be far more effective to also engage in high intensity resistance training.)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mythrwy 1y agoYes we could also in potentially in the future manage to block pain signals when we stick our hand on hot stoves and that should be super!
- vmg12 1y agoIt would take a lot of different drugs to simulate what exercise does. - Impact and stress strengthening the muscles, bones and tendons / ligaments - energy use that leads to better sleep - increased blood flow, development of new capillaries, stretching of blood vessels - if you exercise outside, exposure to sunlight - the release of all the associated neurochemicals I have a suspicion that anything designed to mimic exercise would hurt as much as the actual thing given that so many of the benefits of exercise involve damaging bone and tissue then repairing it
- DaveZale 1y agofor those who are biochemically inclined: Myokines aka exerkines
- chickenzzzzu 1y agoUntil you injure something particularly nasty, like a joint, tendon, muscle tear, etc...
- NeutralForest 1y agoYou can also walk and bike, it doesn't need to be crazy intensive.
- chickenzzzzu 1y agoAs if no one, ever, in the history of time, was injured by walking or biking?
- serpix 1y agoThen we switch sports and start rehab. Aerobic exercise can be done in so many ways.
- dfee 1y agoIt will happen. But, that’s part of the game. The alternative? A mind in a useless body.
- zoover2020 1y agoLove the description!
- darth_avocado 1y agoThere will be mind but not a healthy one.
- olddustytrail 1y agoLack of exercise is vastly more likely to cause injury to your body than exercise is. Unless you're an elite athlete pushing your body beyond what is reasonable, but that really doesn't apply to most people.
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- LeftHandPath 1y agoThe best way to make a happy, healthy person into an unhappy, unhealthy person is to keep them lonely and keep them still. It should come as no surprise that the inverse also tends to hold true. On a tangent, I think that's part of why volunteering can be so rewarding.
- siva7 1y ago> The best way to make a happy, healthy person into an unhappy, unhealthy person is to keep them lonely and keep them still. So becoming a software developer?
- LeftHandPath 1y agoOr taking up any white collar job! There's a reason I spend a lot of my free time swimming and hiking.
- psyclobe 1y agoHaha.. ouch.
- Aurornis 1y agoMost non-freelance software development I’ve done has been a group effort. I’ve met a lot of my gym partners, biking friends, and climbing friends through software work.
- deadbabe 1y agoNo, they mitigate this by getting paid a lot of money.
- to11mtm 1y agoThis is an interesting comment because I've lived a lot of sides of this. At my first job (where I kinda 'weaseled' my way into doing software vs my job title) it was an incredibly collaborative experience. It started with finding ways to make tools that helped my colleagues do monotonous tasks faster. Which then evolved into fun dialogue. "Hey can you make a button to do X" and we'd get to talk about it, I'd hack the feature together, hit publish and wait for the team to give feedback. "Oh I got this error" I'd get up and walk over. It wasn't perfect but I was never lonely and only as still as I wanted to be. At my second gig, It started a little lonely but thankfully the culture was just laid back enough I got to socialize (thankfully it was a shop full of fun and interesting people!). Third gig, Uggh it was very 'heads down' for most of my time there, nobody liked small talk except the conspiracy theory guy. I learned a lot about what I did and didn't like in company culture there. It did get a little better before I left... Fourth gig was a dream. It was the second place where I didn't just get to collaborate with my team, but the first place where it was a lot of software engineers. We even had a teams room for nothing but sharing music and it was always heartwarming to see a reply to some obscure tune and someone would reply with something that yes you would absolutely appreciate given what you originally posted. And it was hectic enough that I did get a reputation for being a 'floor runner'. Fifth Gig... well it was 100% remote. And in fact one day I was so focused on a problem I sat in the wrong position too long and permanently fucked up my left ulnar nerve... But that was such a good group, and Ironically I was able to -take- the lessons from #4 and #2 and turned them into traditions that stuck around even after I left (hell even after they fired everyone, we kept doing the 'game night' for a while...) Won't say anything about my current place, that's all still a work in progress <_<
- socalgal2 1y agoI find it interesting that the article is about exercise and the title picture is yoga. In fact near the top > To a best approximation, aerobic fitness and weight-training seem to increase our metabolism, improve mitochondrial function, fortify our immune system, reduce inflammation, improve tissue-specific adaptations, and protect against disease. Yoga is neither aerobic fitness nor weight training note: I do yoga probably about twice a month (should do more) so I'm not dissing yoga. I'm only noting that the picture of yoga seems to have nothing to do with the article.
- Otek 1y agoThere are different yoga styles - there is Yin Yoga which is more still, there is Ashtanga Yoga which is more Strength-Based. Something like a Hot Vinyasa or Bikram will definitely be a great cardio workout. So telling us that you are doing yoga is like telling you've eaten pizza. There is lot of different toppings mate :P
- antoniuschan99 1y agoHiit yoga too. Also in a hot room too.
- jonathaneunice 1y agoI do several styles of yoga. Most provide substantial strength training via moving and suspending body weight. All feel like they have exactly the increased heart rate of aerobic exercise. Flowing e.g. from standing to high plank to low plank to cobra to downward dog and back to standing N times in a row is quite the workout. Maybe there are gentle, stretching-only forms that would not, but I haven't found them. Slower and more careful, yes, but from an effort point of view, really not much different from the burpees or calisthenics I used to do in Crossfit. If the proposition is "exercise is a miracle drug," my experience at least is that yoga 100% qualifies.
- Etheryte 1y agoI think you might've misunderstood the parent comment. Yoga is exercise, no one doubts that, but it specifically is not aerobic exercise (like running) and it is not weight lifting (like gym).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bob1029 1y ago> The author Daniel Lieberman has put it well: Exercise is healthy and rewarding even though it’s something we never evolved to do. We have ostensibly spent much of our evolutionary budget on the ability to run ~indefinitely no matter what. Compared to virtually any other animal, we can vastly outperform them in the most arduous environments. Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level. We have connective tissue that stores and releases energy. Our bodies can reject on the order of 1kW+ of heat steady-state through the magic of evaporative cooling.
- pmarreck 1y ago> Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level My flat feet (and those of my mom, and those of one of her parents, ad infinitum) would beg to differ lol Also, most of the energy our bodies burn to run just turns into heat, it's all very inefficient... even if sweating itself works pretty well, and even if our heat tolerance is high assuming we have a source of fresh water
- Invictus0 1y agoI mean, would you prefer we add in some evolutionary pressure? Note also that there are numerous champion runners with flat feet.
- pmarreck 1y agoOne contributing factor to human weight gain when given a non-limited supply of food is apparently the knocking-out of the gene that produces uricase, which pretty much every other animal has (and they usually don't get fat, even when given unlimited food supply). Not a single human has a working uricase gene. It has been hypothesized that famines throughout human history (there's your "evolutionary pressure") have contributed to this. My point is that selection pressures do not always lead to optimal outcomes... https://chatgpt.com/share/688e4822-4e44-8004-9625-21a254fa026d https://chatgpt.com/share/688e4822-4e44-8004-9625-21a254fa02...
- tristanMatthias 1y ago
- sharkweek 1y agoI can directly tie my mood to how much exercise I’ve had in a given week. It’s also easy, given how busy life feels, to let the proverbial frog boil in water when it comes to this. My partner often comments when I’ve been a little grumpier than usual by saying, “you should go on a bike ride.” It really works wonders on the soul (and the more physical heart and lungs) getting out for a spin in the fresh air.
- quora 1y agoAbsolutely, as much as everyone says eating right, exercising and sleeping well are the answer I totally neglected myself. Boosting cardio and dropping some weight has been an absolute lifechanger
- david-gpu 1y agoThere is something about riding a bike that lifts people's mood like nothing else. It's the closest thing to flying like a bird that most of us will ever see. It lets you experience your neighborhood in a different light.
- kccqzy 1y agoRiding a bike lifts my mood certainly but it doesn't let me experience my neighborhood. I zoom past the neighborhood and at 15mph you can hardly experience it. You might have some vague ideas about architectural styles in the neighborhood but that's it. If the neighborhood has shops, you can't easily visit them without first parking the bike. You need to walk to really experience a neighborhood.
- endoblast 1y agoI go for a decent walk most days and it doesn't require effort or get boring. It goes well with listening to headphones and relaxing the eyes on the horizon plus seeing a bit of nature and humanity in action. This does me a lot of good however the only upper body exercise I get is playing the piano! I can't see myself joining a gym or doing press-ups reliably in the long-term. I need to find a suitable hobby which has upper body + other benefits while being fun/interesting and low-risk. Carrying logs has helped but we have enough firewood now.
- fsiefken 1y agoVR boxing, sword fights or tennis. Synthriders is very nice
- PsylentKnight 1y agoIn this vein, Ring Fit Adventure is pretty cool if you have a Switch
- SonOfLilit 1y agoConsider rock climbing
- datameta 1y agoWalking is exercise. Never forget that. Consistency over sporadic herculean efforts always wins out.
- evilduck 1y agoYou're right of course, consistency is safer and more sustainable but ego is a bitch and nobody is ever bragging or impressed about an average adult being able to walk their dog daily, or doing ten 50kg squats twice a week, or even jogging a mile three times a week (except maybe your doctor, and probably only then if you're over 40).
- eastbound 1y agoTrue, but if you can afford to hike in the mountains, you can then brag about seeing a groundhog, a chamois, a valley, joining paths, waking up with the sun (never hike in afternoons because storms and night approaching). Which is the best of both worlds: You don’t index yourself against an herculean performance, and yet you still do exercise. And walking 8hrs in the mountains actually does wonders to weight, MUCH better than my herculean 1000m-in-70-minutes climb.
- xandrius 1y agoOn a generic day, I walk at least 10k steps and for some colleagues that was herculean and thought I was kidding. Also if after passing your 20s, ego still defines your behaviour on such a personal and private aspect of your life, I'd suggest to look into doing meditation/mindfulness, as it's a bit strange (or at least it should be).
- gooodvibes 1y agoThere are positive physical and mental change that happen with more intensive cardio and with resistance training that you can't get from walking no matter how much you walk. And there's nothing herculian about those modes of exercise.
- OldfieldFund 1y ago
- otterpro 1y agoExercise "simulate the arduous tasks that were once necessary to make it through a life" makes sense, as most of our ancestors were blue-collar workers and farmers. I try to integrate more physical activity in my life, which seemed like labor before, but now feels like life-saving activity. For example, I am intentionally trying to fix/diy things with my house like painting my garage, mowing my lawn instead of hiring someone else to do it, and even learning woodworking and gardening. Even in the heat of the summer, I feel more invigorated working outdoor whenever I can, and helps offset the sluggishness I feel after a day of sitting, coding, and staring at the monitors at work.
- stavros 1y agoAh yes, the evolutionary pressure of being a blue-collar worker.
- thrance 1y agoThe human body didn't evolve to do farm work, or mow lawns, or more generally to do "blue collar" work. Also, our ancestors weren't known for their exceptional lifespans.
- SoftTalker 1y ago30-60 minutes pushing a lawn mower is good low-impact exercise. Riding around on a lawn tractor with a beer, not so much.
- LiquidPolymer 1y agoI hate exercise. The only thing I hate more is not exercising.
- jcynix 1y ago>Like someone already said: what if you get an injury going to hard at it? There's no need to go hard, even steady walking for 20 minutes a day is healthy. And recent studies show that you don't need to jog or run, walking is almost as efficient and less stressful for your joints. One of the best ways to exercise as long as you aren't a brain in a jar is to use an indoor rowing machine. Rowing will engage about 80% of your muscles.
- dusanh 1y agoAny recommendations on a rowing machine?
- jcynix 1y agoThe C2 machine is fine, I use it regularly in a nearby studio besides other training and it's perfect for training. If the studio wouldn't be easily available I would buy a C2. And, by the way, my wife too started to be an avid rower after giving the machine a try. I was rowing on real boats during my school and university days, but sadly never found the time afterwards to get join a club and row in teams. Rowing machines with a water container are en vogue, but they are heavier (if filled with water) need regular water maintenance and the training effect isn't better. Edit: here's a good intro to using such a machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHHy0KpFKvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHHy0KpFKvE
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI think you might be underselling the C2. I only ever row occasionally, but it is my understanding that it is the BIFL model. The type most gyms will buy - way more utilization hours than you will ever hit at home.
- bob1029 1y ago> use an indoor rowing machine Humans evolved to run but rowing is much better in many ways. I'm up to 1.3 million meters this year so far (C2 Model D / PM4). I've missed zero days since the first of the year. The only way this is possible is because the impact is whatever you want it to be. You can scale all the way to ~zero if you are having a really shit day and just need the mental checkmark. You can throw the MacBook on a chair next to the rower and watch some dopamine slop to keep you distracted for the 30 minutes. Whatever it takes. Achieving 500 calories/hr is not difficult even if you've never looked at one of the machines before. Going outside in any capacity has a lot higher physical/mental barrier. Other erg machines like treadmills and stationary bikes are something that my particular monkey brain doesn't like as much for whatever reason.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoGLP-1 is a rare opportunity for our overweight nation to "get back on the treadmill" in both a literal and figurative way. If you have been sedentary for a long time and are overweight, you obviously have too much weight for your muscular strength and connective tissues, which have concurrently atrophied with inactivity, in addition to reduced neuro-biomechanic maps in your brain since you haven't used the circuitry. This all adds up to a high initial injury risk in starting exercise even if you have the mentally focus. But GLP-1, if it is the miracle it purports, should be able to drop overweight people, even if it is temporarily, to the point where you can being exercise much more safely, and/or with more intensity and duration to get more benefits sooner. On a macro level a universal health care system that is cheap and effective is really a generation or two away with heavily incentivized exercise, and not without precedent, if I am to understand what Iceland did. We will live longer, live far better, feel better, look better, be happier, more connected, less anxious, more adventurous, smarter, more productive. These aren't 1-2% improvements at macro levels. 10% improvements, which in pharma land are considered exceptionally effective drugs, and a minimum, and 30-50% miracle drug levels of outcomes are on the table. But our medical establishment is either drugs or surgery. The extent of insurance company inducements are "silver sneakers". The perverse accounting involved in extreme obesity may demand a national level program of "Biggest Loser" (although, not to that insanity) for financial inducements to get people to lose weight, because the loss of "caring" for the obese (FORTY PERCENT of Americans are obese and it keeps getting worse each decade).
- masfuerte 1y ago> We will live longer, live far better, feel better, look better, be happier, more connected, less anxious, more adventurous, smarter, more productive. There's a song about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4SzvsMFaek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4SzvsMFaek
- bad_username 1y ago> That I was born in the capital of the world’s richest country is one of the greatest strokes of luck in my life—a pure accident of timing and gametes. There is no way to pay back this good fortune, and wallowing in guilt over it would do nothing, either. Why in the world does the author have to feel so bad about beibg lucky in some way? How does luck deserve the feeling of guilt? This has to be as unhealthy as exercise is healthy. Grateful, yes, appreciative, absolutely, motivated to do good, of course. Having to pay "back" (to whom?), feeling guilty? Absurd and corrosive
- only-one1701 1y agoWhen you see how much suffering is allotted to those less lucky than yourself it’s natural to feel a little bad or guilty. It shows that you care about the wellbeing of others. Not helpful to beat yourself up but to shrug your shoulders and go “sucks to suck” is bad.
- krembo 1y agoI've traveled to some of the poorest parts of the world. I try to donate regularly to the less fortunate. Yet, I've never felt guilt. What does guilt have to do with admitting the world is a cruel place?
- imcritic 1y agoWhy do you donate? Do you owe them anything? No. Yet, you still donate. But how much do you donate? Why that amount and not nearly everything? Surely there are people in need!
- krembo 1y agoCan donations be egoistic? Wanting to improve others lives will lead to a better world also for me, even if that's one dime a time.
- 1y ago
- starchild3001 1y agoThe evidence for exercise reducing all-cause mortality is more nuanced than many assume. It's crucial to distinguish between findings from RCTs (Randomized Controlled Trials) and observational studies. A meta-analysis of RCTs with ~50,000 participants concluded that exercise did not reduce all-cause mortality or incident CVD in older adults or people with chronic conditions [1]. However, for specific high-risk groups, the causal evidence from RCTs is strong. A separate meta-analysis found that for cancer patients and survivors, exercise led to [2]: - A 24% reduction in mortality risk - A 48% reduction in recurrence risk The commonly cited large benefits (e.g., 40% lower mortality) come from observational studies [3]. These are very susceptible to the "healthy user bias" or reverse causation—people who are healthy enough to exercise are already at a lower risk of dying. This makes it difficult to prove the exercise caused the benefit. So, while exercise is strongly associated with lower mortality, the direct causal evidence for the general population isn't as definitive as it is for specific subgroups like cancer survivors. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10512580439138189982 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10512580439138189... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7273753/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7273753/ [3] https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2031 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2031
- SeanAnderson 1y agoThis article feels like a bait-and-switch. Why isn't it two articles - one on the benefits of exercise and one on US foreign aid policy? At a minimum, I don't feel the HN post title properly reflects the full contents of the article.
- arijun 1y agoWorse, it never even attempts to answer the question the title poses. It gives some recent evidence that exercise is good for you, and then goes off on a topic so unrelated it can’t even be called a tangent.
- softwaredoug 1y agoIf you exercise a lot, be sure to fuel your workouts. Eat a healthy calories surplus so your body doesn’t go into panic mode and sacrifice muscle and bone tissue. I’m in my 40s and have exercised my whole life. But still did intermittent fasting (skipped breakfast). I’m a standard deviation below average bone density and have lost some cartilage in my knee from underfueled long runs (I was diagnosed with RED-S). Now I work with a sports nutritionist, and do a mix of strength, running, cycling with good rest days. I’ve learned I’d rather have a bit of a belly now but very strong than underfueled and lost muscle/bone mass
- jon-wood 1y agoI took up climbing a couple of months ago and for the first few weeks felt really rough, it took me that long to realise there were days when between the actual climbing and walking to and from the gym I was burning an extra thousand calories. I’ve since started making an effort to track how much I’m eating and how much I’m burning and feel tons better, if slightly full on the days I get home and realise dinner should be as much as I’d eat in a typical day before I was exercising.
- anal_reactor 1y agoI tried to outrun my depression but then I became too depressed to run. It's so frustrating to feel that exercise doesn't give me the boost it used to.
- glitchc 1y ago> This is a staggering return on moral investment. What exactly is moral investment and why should government be in the business of making moral investments, especially for foreign countries?
- blargey 1y agoThe expectation that a healthier globe = global economy will be healthier for the US economy, even if it's not literally an interest-bearing investment vehicle?
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]
- broof 1y agoWhen I got laid off from my first job, I used the extra time to start going to the gym. Years later the habit has still stuck, and I actually think I was so incredibly lucky to get laid off. Working out has been such a massive improvement in all areas of life. Health problems went away, mental health got better, sleep quality got better, it truly is a miracle drug. It’s a shame that the habit is hard to form.
- bmacho 1y ago> Exercise is healthy and rewarding even though it’s something we never evolved to do. OTOH we have billions or more mechanisms (basically all of them) that assume that we exercise regularly, at least when we are healthy.
- rootusrootus 1y agoIt's difficult to overstate how much better my life has become after starting tirzepatide, consequently losing weight, and steadily increasing exercise as I've gotten lighter. If I were the richest guy in the world, I'd negotiate with Eli Lilly to make tirzepatide (or maybe the forthcoming orforglipron) basically free for anyone who wants it.
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoIf you ever struggle to exercise consider: for thousands of years humans needed to walk and hunt and cook and run from predators just to survive. It’s sedentary lifestyles that are the anomaly. Not exercising is a miracle NOT drug! Exercise is what your body is engineered for by nature and thousands of years of evolution. So exercising is the more normal thing, not sitting around :) Get out there and have fun with it! Even walking you’ll get to see the sky, sunset, sunrise, and all the big houses in your neighborhood.
- doright 1y agoFor a long time I tried to start an exercise habit, but it didn't stick. I could jog 15 minutes every day for a month and instantly be sick of it a few days after. I was only able to gain an exercise habit by addressing my mood and anxiety first. First, with my mental improvements I became actively motivated to exercise and didn't hate it anymore. I kept at it for several weeks, only stopping every so often due to fatigue. Eventually I did earn the habit of exercise. This wasn't intuitive to me, but the typical causality was backwards. Exercise was not what directly made me healthier, but being healthier (mentally) from the start allowed me to initiate and keep exercising, from which I earned even more health benefits. A mental deficit in being able to form habits is arguably even worse than a lack of exercise, since you would try to apply the "exercise cure" advice and just burn out after a while like I did. It's not like you didn't exercise, but you could not internalize what all those people typically say must be the case if you just exercise a lot. Even as my mood fluctuates I am now able to still go for a jog once in a while. These days I understand that if I had started off exercising in a state of low mood, I would have no chance of making it stick. The habit carried over from when I persisted at it in my limited window of improved mood.