Don’t you just hate it when health fanatics are right?
Meanwhile I have a body that tries to kill me when I exercise.
😥
Counter-example: tried to exercise, ended up doing more harm than good. Walking always made me barely able to move for a couple of days and continued trying, even once every few days, still hurt me, got worse, and I think it’s responsible for how I am now (severe sciatic nerve damage).
Fuck exercise.
I’m sorry that your experience has been crappy. And yes, not all strong exercises are great for everyone.
Still, there are advantages for not being sedentary and being active, as in light exercises does not have to disable you for days. You should look into that as it is not necessarily common.
It differs per person.
I can walk rather long distances even if sick, but that’s because I’ve been doing that a lot in my childhood. Not so often today - but the parts about correct posture and movements and breathing rhythm are still very useful.
Try with something so small that you don’t even get tired, just feel heated up a bit. Do it every day. When that effect stops being notable, increase the load so you feel it again. Keep doing that, and in 3 months your life should be better.
Of course, I’ve never been able to keep doing something regularly, so this is just repeating advice often heard (and correct in terms of your body, but not in terms of executive dysfunction and what it does to one’s ability to exercise regularly).
That sounds like a disability and definitely is not normal. Far from a “counter-example”, especially when the overwhelming evidence is that being sedentary IS harmful
I’ve tried to find a nice balance of exercise. I always figured I was supposed to go to the gym and lift and run on treadmills and do push-ups. I’ve honestly found that a simple 30 minutes of walking is all I need
walking has significantly improved my life
Audiobooks.
Listen to an audiobook and just walk, it does depend where you live though. I’m lucky there are a lot of trails and paths around my town.
I walk about 5km every day, done so for more than 2 years now and listening to audiobooks helps the time pass quite quickly.
What also helps a lot is doing some pushups at home as well, for a few months I did 100 pushups throughout the day and it really makes a difference.
This is the advice (audiobook) I heard way back and it worked for me. Specifically, I listen to podcasts, but only when I’m working out or comminuting to the workout.
Eventually you get invested in whatever you’re listening to and want to just listen to it, but the workout limitation means you have to make time for exercise before you get your fix.
I try not to listen to audiobooks unless I am walking/shopping just so they last longer.
It’s a bit difficult for me to find something I want to listen to, I like a very specific type of writing and I seem to stick to it and look for similar.
I mostly listen to Terry Pratchett’s books and at this stage I have listened to most of them a few times.
Pratchett is evergreen. I’ve looped the Discworld series a couple times now. Nothing wrong with just listening to them on repeat.
I’d recommend YA fantasy for similar vibes, though they’ll never be anything exactly like Pratchett’s writing. I just recently got into A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin, and it left me feeling really good.
It won’t make me feel any endorphins though, because my brain don’t work right
The thing to adapt to with this information is goal maintainence, and improvement tracking.
I HATE exercise, PLUS the humilation aspect that got pushed into me growing up as a fat kid.
The thing that gives one good feelings for me, isn’t the exercise, it’s the improvement that gives/gave me pride.
Instead of group exercise, I started doing bouldering. Going up the difficulty levels, being able to literally get over obstacles made me feel proud of my achievements.
Try tracking progress. it could help give you pride and self esteem.
Yep, I get no positive feelings from exercise. I do it to keep my blood pressure down and I fucking hate it. People say after a while it begins to feel good and you look forward to it and I want to punch all those people in the face. I started about 4 months ago and I’ve hated every day I’ve gone.
Exercise fucking sucks. I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards. The only positive emotion is a vague sense of relief that it’s over when I’m finished.
“Jogging is the worst. I mean, I know it keeps you healthy; but God, at what cost?” -Ann Perkins
My wife is doing a genetics study and said there is some evidence that CoQ10 can help people who hate exercise. 🤷♂️ Ymmv
I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards.
Have you tried swimming? Hot and sweaty definitely won’t be a problem there.
For the record though I also hate cardio. It’s fine at levels which I can sustain for hours on end, that is, not jogging pace, definitely not interval training, but hiking pace. If you want interval training without grinding your brain field sports might be an option, it’s different when you have teammates and a ball.
“I don’t believe in running unless something awful is chasing me.” – Buck Henry
It’s the shmell.
I had the same problem. Then, I was prescribed a medication used to increase dopamine, and adrenaline, production, and now it does.
Not saying this is some trick to make exercise suddenly release a bunch of endorphins, but it very much did that for me, and when I told my doctor about it, she said that was something that commonly reported. It has even been looked into as a performance enhancing drug, by a number of sports regulation organizations.
Well, there are a lot of exercise options, surely you haven’t tried them all…
For example, I like riding my bike to do errands. Not only do I get exercise, but I also save some money, cross off items from my list, and feel hardcore. I don’t actually like cycling, but I hate driving more, so being able to get my exercise and avoid driving while doing errands feels like cheating.
This is my take on your comment but going to the gym and doing exercises does the same for me. I did it, I knew why I did it but I fucking hated every second of it and didn’t get any high.
On the other hand, even middle level exercises in rugby or cycling gets me that high, fucking love it. It doesn’t even matter if I’m good at it or not.
Sometimes, it’s more about the sport than the exercise.
I felt good once when I found out I could leg press the full stack of plates, but that was like a year into exercising regularly.
Only thing that actually changed is that I don’t absolutely hate it anymore I just dislike it now.
I like lifting, I genuinely hate core Day. Something about it convinces my body I’m dying and all I want to do is vomit.
The core is connected up quite intimately to the whole digestive system and when nerves reorganise there it can get funky indeed.
That said, try hanging. Not necessarily pull-ups… though while you’re at it might as well do some negatives at least: jump up, let yourself down as slowly as possible until you get that rotation in the shoulder and then you are hanging properly. Then stay there, move your legs, explore the load shifts, such stuff. That’s going to tickle nerves that you might never have tickled before, but which need occasional tickling or your whole back gets confused because we happen to be monkeys and hanging from stuff is in our biomechanics, the nervous system expects those kinds of loads. Generally works miracles when it comes to back issues, and core issues are often just reflections of that.
I never got a runners high before 10k or so. But even then it’s not a “high” it’s a strong feeling of well being and the sense that I could keep going indefinitely.
Now that I don’t jog so much the mood improvement I get from regular exercise is even more subtle, but I still feel it’s significant.
I used to be like this, then I found a competetive sport I really like and now get that feeling after a game. It’s also way more social than just running around aimlessly by yourself. So
I’ve tried eating salad. I like salad. I eat about three or four kilos of salad a day. Five, maybe. Six, if I’m hungry. Rarely more than eight. Hardly ever ten. Still not losing weight. Diets are such bullshit.
10kg of salad…are you a young hippopotamus?
Young? Sadly no.
Well what ELSE do you eat? Adding salad and not removing other stuff will not do much. And what do you drink?
Couple of pizzas, a kilo or two of mac and cheese (I’ve heard carb loading is a thing athletes do), thirty or forty chicken wings (white meat protein, right?), half a dozen burgers (red meat for the iron content), and a millionaire shortbread traybake (helps with success visualization). To drink, I keep it purely healthy and have a half gallon of Sunny D.
But that’s just lunch, I have my main meal in the evening.
Lmao
I hang out with horses 2-3x a week and if I can’t go for any reason, I actually feel like shit physically and mentally until the next time I go. I also burn like 2400-3000 calories when I work with the horses, so it’s hella crazy exercise for someone who lived a totally sedentary life until I started doing this horse stuff about 4 months ago.
“hella crazy exercise… doing this horse stuff”
Lol for me it is. I have a chronic pain condition, so stuff that isn’t intense for others, is intense for me lol
Oh, for sure it is work. I just chuckled at the innuendo.
Omg I didn’t even catch that lmao
If you hate exercising, there are other ways to get it “for free” that don’t involve tediously lifting and dropping weights over and over, etc. For example, play ball games with friends. Take up climbing (indoor or outdoor!). Rekindle your love of cycling around town on a bike. Paintball with friends. Take up a martial art. Pretty much anything that has movement as a side effect, rather than it being the ‘main event’.
Running on a treadmill is fucking awful to me, I hate it so much. But running as a consequence of playing a sport or moving around a boxing ring or whatever, that’s different. I don’t hate running per se, but on its own? I’d rather take the L and die years earlier than I should. Seriously. Gyms and gym equipment make me want to fling myself under a passing bus.
I’m the opposite. Never much liked sports, and when I am not held to a pace like a treadmill does, I’ll not maintain enough heart rate elevation.
So, for me, if I don’t get to the gym a couple of times a week, I fall well short of the NIH guidelines.
The full report is quite clear that heart rate elevation is the most significant population-wide contributor.to general health. 150 “points” per week, which you can in theory knock out with one long (~75 minutes) high-intensity work out.
Resistance training across all major muscle groups is secondary, and really only needs one set, on two separate days each week. Your don’t need to build bulk or anything, just keep then fully active. Add some weight if you could do an extra set before exhaustion.
Stretching is good, in particular if you don’t reach a range of motion, you are likely to lose it as you age, but no specific recommendations are given
I don’t really like cycling, but I’ve found I dislike driving more, so replacing car trips w/ bike trips has worked really well. I get exercise, save money, I get better parking spots, and I’m not stuck in a stupid car. Oh, and I’m quite competitive, so I like to see how quickly I can get from A to B, so my heartrate stays high.
I also have gymnastic rings in my garage for my upper body. I’m not a fan of that either, but it at least feels cooler than lifting weights. So I’ll alternate between doing errands on my bike and using the gymnastic rings.
Gym allows me to safely play sports, run around after the dog, swim without feeling like drowning is inevitable etc
I’m not a gym nut by any stretch of the imagination but as I approach middle age I can’t be as spontaneous with breaking into a run or lifting heavy things. Too many injuries and anatomical idiosyncracies have built up over the years.
The gym maintains all my muscles so I can use them when I want without injury. It’s made a big difference going about 2-3 times a week for 45 min. Then I can do all the stuff I enjoy (mostly all outdoors) without worrying about a tweak or a joint blow out.
I miss walking regularly.
“i bless the rains down in castamere” is a top notch display name
She’s also just top notch in general. Her and her ridiculously charming pet pig Rufus (pictured below) are two of main things I miss from Twitter…
There is only one Rufus and that’s not it.
The idea that I could be doing less activity than walking 3 miles a week and not understanding how bad I’m feeling because of it… Is extremely depressing. I’m so glad I figured this out like 12 years ago!
Just the idea of not doing something that you are doing makes you depressed?
Yeah. I was super depressed then and it was worse because of being fat. Thinking about that is sad. Ya know, words aren’t always meant 100% literally
Literally is exactly how you take words. You just made a mistake. I understand what you mean now.
Literally is exactly how you take words.
Except for constantly, where the reverse is true
The initial comment resonated so much with me, that I feel the need to answer, even though I wasn’t even asked: YES
A few years ago I was in a really dark place. I lost 3 kg in 2 months and when I wasn’t at work, I was lying in my bed on the verge of crying, half-listening to YouTube just to scare the thoughts away.
But the thing, that finally got me out of the loop, was getting myself a houseplant, after watching a plant YouTuber for a while. And when I got home, rather than cry, I obsessively cleaned every speck of dust off the leaves, measured the soil moisture with a stick and just watched it be. And something just clicked inside me and I realized that I had found something I wanted to do; probably forever, if given the chance.
Still have the same plant; cut, repotted and propagated. And while I’m at a much better place now - physically, mentally, financially - just thinking about giving that (houseplants) up feels like going back.
I love this story. I’m so glad you found something that made a difference for you!
Nice story but not the same thing at all. If you already had the house plant and watched a video about not having a houseplant and got depressed, that would be the same thing.
It was in the Olympics. Also going to plug: https://lemmy.world/c/running and https://lemmy.ml/c/fitness
I was single when the pan hit and had no car so I was super isolated. I lost 25 lbs walking and listening to podcasts. I regained that weight when I got a car, got a partner, and moved to a place that isn’t conducive to walking (rough neighborhood).
