The closest thing to a wonder drug is exercise
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"Many people will be surprised at how little you need to do to achieve these results. Years ago, in an effort to get in shape, I tried the P90X routine. It proved too hard for me. Later, when I tried Insanity, it beat me so badly that people at work kept asking me if I was ill. Two years ago, I tried P90X3. It was a bit more manageable, but I still couldn’t keep it up.
I’m not alone in thinking that physical activity to improve health should be hard. When I hear friends talk about exercising, they discuss running marathons, participating in cross-fit classes or sacrificing themselves on the altar of Soul Cycle. That misses the point, unfortunately. All of these are way, way more than you need to do to get the benefits I’ve already described.
The recommendations for exercise are 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity for adults, or about 30 minutes each weekday.
Moderate intensity is probably much less than you think. Walking briskly, at 3 to 4 miles per hour or so, qualifies. So does bicycling slower than 10 miles an hour. Anything that gets your heart rate somewhere between 110 and 140 beats per minute is enough. Even vacuuming, mowing the lawn or actively walking your dog might qualify."
A lot of people abstain from exercise because they think it's "hard" and "scary," when really, 30 minutes of brisk walking to and from the grocery story would do just fine.
My father has loss of mobility and strength from disuse of his limbs through their entire ranges of motion. Walking and jogging at the rates indicated do almost nothing for this. He walks 4 miles twice a week with my mom, but can barely stand up from the couch. Human walking is very efficient and requires hardly any strength and that through a fractional range of motion.
Walking and jogging is better than not exercising at all, but on the walking and jogging regimen my father has steadily deteriorated in function as he approaches his 70s. His shoulders and knees have stiffened while his muscles are constantly sore from lack of conditioning.
The other problem is the "brisk" qualifier. Walking "briskly" actually takes significant motivation, and involves either subjectivity or more monitoring than people like to do while their walking. People are rationalization engines, and if you give them a way to skirt the essence by being lazy, they will. In my experience, the objectivity of resistance training is more effective.
1) Guidelines for physical exercise for the older generation. 150 minutes of moderate exercise plus strength training on 2 days. http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/physical-activity-g...
2) Strength and motion exercises for older people. http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/strength-exercises-...
I think you're overthinking things. If walking seems to easy, jog. If jogging is too easy, run. If say, running is too hard, run when you can, take breaks by walking. If walking is too easy, you start with standing and doing basic drills in movement.
There's always a level you're at, and something you can use as a goal.
Easiest to not fall to low in what you can do, which is more of a preventative thing, unfortunately for those at a lower level of physical fitness.
Can anyone point me to some sources and readings on this topic? I'd love to see some stats on how strength compares to cardio as a proxy for mortality for instance.
ABSTRACT Muscle plays a central role in whole-body protein metabolism by serving as the principal reservoir for amino acids to maintain protein synthesis in vital tissues and organs in the absence of amino acid absorption from the gut and by providing hepatic gluconeogenic precursors. Furthermore, altered muscle metabolism plays a key role in the genesis, and therefore the prevention, of many common pathologic conditions and chronic diseases. Nonetheless, the maintenance of adequate muscle mass, strength, and metabolic function has rarely, if ever, been targeted as a relevant endpoint of recommendations for dietary intake. It is therefore imperative that factors directly related to muscle mass, strength, and metabolic function be included in future studies designed to demonstrate optimal lifestyle behaviors throughout the life span, including physical activity and diet
This is a really bad example if you're trying to show that people give up too easily because they go to extremes. 2 years before quitting is a long time. 2 years of dedication can reach most reasonable fitness goals. If you follow an exercise regimen for two years and decide it's not for you, then either the exercise regimen is crap or else it's really just not for you.
As for yoga - some people will never be able to do a certain subset of poses without dislocating their joints. And that's fine.
As for strength - height and bone structure also play a huge role. I'll never be as strong as someone who is 6" taller than me or bench 3 plates. And that's also fine.
Is this a thing? I've never heard of a woman supplementing estrogen as a general fitness "shortcut" the way some men (and women) supplement with steroids.
Also, insulin and other drugs that regulate blood sugars. More than a few celebs are diabetic and use this to regulate body fat, famously Halle Barry.
Antibiotics are also popular. They kill bacteria in the skin (acne) but also play havoc with your gut, which is great if you are trying to not eat.
From trainers that overexert students, things like P90X that do work IF you manage to survive and a large amount of people pushing the "go hard or go home" mentality
Most of the people you see their are over the hump, young and in shape. The people that give up feel it as a personal failure and keep paying on the assumption that someday they will go back. They also train people to make canceling seem like failure.
Further, if you keep up a demanding schedule you will see rapid improvements until injury. Which further pushes the health halo effect.
* http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36208003
Even in very polluted cities you would have to do much more cycling/walking than anyone would normally do to negate the effects of exercise (7 and 16 hours respectively)
There's a related point that people often get really wrong when they take up distance running: you can (and should!) actually run within that easy heart rate range. It may seem unbearably slow at first, but that just means you aren't ready yet to go faster.
When the goal is "faster pace at low effort", it's tempting to think you can train at faster pace + high effort and wait for the effort to fall. But that doesn't reliably work. You're better off training at low pace + low effort and wait for the pace to rise, holding low effort constant. Mostly this is because you (definitely) reduce the risk of getting hurt and (probably) don't waste a bunch of energy training the wrong metabolic pathways.
http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131%2815...
Now, the general rule of thumb for drugs is there's no such thing as a free lunch, what are the possible negative outcomes of supplementing those kinases and AMPK substrates? Because obviously their effects wouldn't be limited to influencing the neurotransmitter system exclusively.
If you had asked scientist how long it would take to cure cancer in the early 1970's, I'm sure they'd have guess 50 years would have been more than enough time.
Doing something challenging and feeling accomplished, the mental strength you develop from a rigorous training regime can't easily be replicated by a pill... yet
So we've established that people are lazy, and that "just exercise" would do them wonders (or at least be a lifestyle improvement). And they still don't take the dog for a 30 minute walk. Given that, rather than chastising and feeling superior about our own fitness (for example, I ran ten miles yesterday; mmm, I'm practically marinating in smugness right now), what can we do to get people out the door?
Of course, if I could answer that, I'd be at my book signing and not shouting at the wall on HN.
Diet is more important than exercise. A 300+ lb person can lose 100 lbs in half a year just by changing their diet and doing no more exercise than they currently do. (I advocate the keto diet, especially if one has tried other diets and failed, but it's not the only way.) You can't out-train a bad diet.
I have no idea, I can only imagine. Skinny all my life, competitive runner since I was 12, I've never once put on a pair of skimpy shorts and a singlet, and headed out the door for a run worried about my body image. But let me tell you a story...
Buddy of mine on Xbox, played with him for years when we mutually worked at MSFT, but never "met" him. I remember he once mentioned that he weighed 400lbs. Well, one night we're playing Halo as we do on Friday nights, and he's cutting out early. "I've got a 5K to run tomorrow." Wait a minute, what? Hey, $GAMER_TAG, am I remembering right that you weigh about 400lbs.? "Used to. Doctor said to lose weight, so I started running. Lost 175lbs. so far, still have XX to go."
I had to mute my microphone because I cried. I was so proud of this person I'd never met in person, but knew for years. No, I don't know what it's like to be 400lbs. But I can imagine. I can imagine what it's like to walk around with another me riding piggyback. And I can imagine the mental hurdles to overcome, the body image issues, and the other barriers that make it easy to just sit back down on the couch and say, "who am I kidding?". Instead, this person said one day, "today, I am a runner" and went out and did it. And then did it again, and again until the weight started to come off.
Why, so I can expose my gross body to the world?
Fuck 'em. Tell 'em this sub-3:00 marathoner said it's okay, and they can just look the other way if it bothers them. And if you see a skinny guy with a brindle pit bull dog running by you, don't worry about what he's thinking about you, because he's silently cheering you on.
Diet is definitely important for sure, but so is exercise. Diet is controlling what's going into your body. Exercise will improve your body's metabolism, and have a host of other benefits.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, several of my coworkers lift weights exclusively and can't believe I prefer running. It bores them out of their minds.
I have to wonder if many people don't exercise because they find it boring and unsatisfying, not because it's difficult.
don't even get me started on swimming...
so as you can see, i've done plenty of exercise in my life, and at this point i'm 100% comfortable saying that i just don't like doing it. i admit it is a major personality shortcoming of mine. i'm not a negative person, this kind of stuff doesn't leak into areas of my life -- i just wasn't born with that selection of genetics that drives me to love this stuff. to me it's basically like a second job, a manual labor job, i have to do.
yes, i feel good afterwards, but to me sitting my ass down on the couch also feels good. as i understand it, to some people, sitting down for an hour feels disgusting, like a physical revulsion in their body. they're very lucky. i could sit on my couch for days on end and it takes effort to not actually do that.
my desire to make money, be presentable, and contribute to society override my natural laziness, but i totally understand how those people get to 800 pounds and are couch-locked. they simply do not have any kind of social drive, which is the built-in mechanism that is supposed to balance your built-in human condition of laziness (in my case).
be thankful that you take to running/exercise like we take to computers/technology -- it's definitely an asset in life. it's something i have to constantly overcome, i'm envious of people who get the urge to get up and move around without any kind of outside motivation. i've spent a lot of money on extrinsic motivation and it's clearly the inferior choice!
What worked for me was to stop associating exercise with working out. Instead, I just started seeking out more physically demanding hobbies/activities. I enjoy yard work; when I had a yard, I spent a lot of time creating a garden and pathways and trimming trees and whatnot. In an apartment now, but still help friends out with that because I genuinely enjoy it. I also like woodwork and building things, but again apartment. So I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity frequently. I also frequently rearrange parts of my apartment when I get bored.
I can't stand the gym - to me it feels like wasting time because I don't independently enjoy the activities the gym offers. Or running, or cycling. But I enjoy what I mentioned above, so the "exercise" stemming from them are ancillary benefits rather than the primary purpose.
Exercise can certainly be tiring, if you're training for performance, or rehabilitating an injury. But, a basic yoga class, a few laps of the pool, or walk around the block isn't going to noticeably tire an otherwise healthy adult.
Time-consuming? That's likely short-sighted when you account for reduced longevity, time spent ill, etc. A few hours a week isn't that much time in the overall scheme of things.
And exercise should almost never be painful. The only exceptions would be rehab or training for a specific event.
What's left: 2 hours. If I spend 30 minutes exercising, that's 25% of my discretionary time every day. That feels pretty time-consuming, even though I do think it's worth it.
Though even with 4 hours, depending on the person, every day after work might feel like they need their entire 8 hours of free time between work and sleep just to survive, ideally they'd have more. Technology was supposed to give us more leisure time we can put into things like exercise but here we are still slaving away at desk jobs for 40 hours a week.
That's why I have a problem with things like CrossFit, P90X and the like. Time-consuming, that I can't help with. But "tiring" and "sometimes painful"? Unless you're a competitive athlete, you're doing it wrong. The article points this out (and I'm basically echoing the sentiment of the article). A 30 minute walk with the dog? That shouldn't be tiring or painful (or if it is, you really need to do it more often).
But I'm guessing that some folks get the impression that "exercise" must be EXTREME!!!!11!! or it doesn't count. Why work on bringing your half-marathon time down (which is a much more appropriate goal for the 20 mile/week runner) when you can slog through the death march of a six hour marathon?
A little overweight? A lot overweight? Don't exercise because you don't think you'd survive the CrossFit your cow-orkers are doing? Don't think epic mountain bike rides are really your thing? Meh, fuck all that, put your shoes on, go for a walk for a half hour. Your cow-orkers won't be impressed, but I will be. Yes, a guy with multiple marathons (and a whole list of other shit you don't care about) under his belt whose idea of a good Saturday morning is running up some mountain for a few hours, will be impressed. Because inertia is really good at keeping you on that couch, and if you can overcome that and make that first step out the door, in my book your ahead of this guy who gets out the door out of habit more than anything else.
So true. It works the other way too. Once you get into the routine of exercising it becomes easier to work it into your schedule.
I also agree that exercise should never be painful. Unfortunately, we have a "no pain, no gain" mentality about exercise in this country. I don't even think the exercises advertised as "extreme" (ala P90X/Insanity/Crossfit) need to be painful, but some people will push themselves more than they should (Crossfit in particular is notorious for poor trainers overpushing people to injury).
That said, mostly vegetables, maybe by volume, but if you are counting grains/cerials/starches as a separate category, then mostly wouldn't get you enough calories, and often not enough protein on average. Not to mention those mildly allergic to soy.
In general, the practice of even tracking everything you take in tends to make you very mindful of the calories in everything. Knowing what you should probably be taking in on average in combination with tracking can go a long way. I would suggest getting a variety of foods in to your diet, this should include some vegetables, but the majority of your calories will come from protein, carbs or fats. The sources may be vegetable based, but vegetable fats, specifically refined vegetable oils aren't so great a lot of the time. If you stick to fats/oils that are either cold-pressed or animal based, you're better off.
In other words, it's pithy, not helpful and sounds smug and condescending.
We should be able to support maximal health in everyone, regardless of if they live the ideal middle class lifestyle that gives them time to exercise, money to afford food, and the many things that go in to a good nights sleep.
I gather no, it's more like a basic guide to life. Depression is a real thing and requires treatment above & beyond basic exercise/eating/sleep.
I could get my calories from the dollar menu for quite a bit less. My target intake is around 2400-2800/day (metabolic support for 3800 at my size), trying to lose about 2#/week. Though, I'm diabetic, so tend to avoid a lot of fast-food, and often when I do indulge, I get only the sandwich/burger without the bread, with tea and/or water. Though the baked cod at ljs (green beans and broccoli), and chicken and green beans at kfc are serviceable options.
I also make soup a couple times a month, which gives me about a week's worth, give or take.... soup is usually suprisingly low in calories and glycemic load (even vichyssoise subbing the potatoes) but tend to have 3-4 cups to feel sated (usually coming in around 450-600 calories depending on the soup for 4 cups).
A big thing for me is getting a couple snacks in, especially for the afternoon (apple, carrots, nuts, kind bar), which helps with the cravings to overeat later in the day.
If you go for beans, rice, grain, that's under 1$ per day for 1/2 your calories. Leaving 5-6$ to for the other half. That's plenty for a 500-700 kcal in chicken breast / eggs / other cheap protean, and vegies etc.
PS: 9oz of meat per day will generally cover your protean needs. But, less is fine depending on the rest of your diet.
Second, eating out 3 times a day takes non zero time and you can spend less than 7 extra hours a week cooking / cleaning / shopping vs. eating at the Golden Arches / microwaveable meals etc. However, this is a case where being efficient tends to end up being boring.
Imho the days of answering every health problem with exercise alone should end. We must acknowledge the approach has failed and we need to deal with the wider environment impacting individual choice. That means healthier foods, but I'd support tax deductions (preferably credits) for exercise-related costs. Make the money back with a tax on unhealthy foods/things, as we did with cigarettes.
First get rid of subsidies... second might be a tax on products containing sugars not in their natural state (okay in whole apples, not in juice, or added to breads/candy/pasteries).
Another large issue is simply education and advertising. Child-targeted advertising works surprisingly well. Also, people assume that "natural sugar" is significantly better for you than refined sugars. Once it's juiced/pureed and/or cooked, it's far more digestible and far more unhealthy than whole fruits.
Wow. You're really reaching there.
1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453)
2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full)
3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/)
4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...) This is borne out by the above data.
5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/)
Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.
That doesn't necessarily inform weight loss in general. It sort of points to external interventions not being hugely useful.
Personally, I'm about 25% down from my heaviest and a bit more than 10% down from a decade ago. I've never gone on a program, I've just examined my habits and worked to improve them. I would say that it's taken many years to have my weight and habits stabilize at the new lower levels. But that's fine.
I think it's because HN does auto-link shortening and you copy and pasted a previous comment?
I do, however, agree that it's easy for people to drift. The key is emphasising lifelong change, rather than "diets" per se.
I guess I will have to settle for being one of the impossible people for whom keeping weight off worked.
While I agree with you that it's a much more compelling motivator, that still doesn't change the actual fact that diet is (oftentimes substantially) more important to weight loss.
My entire point is that you won't want to have a bad diet if you're setting serious athletic goals.