Hacker News Reader

Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

I'm reluctant to be this commenter, but this honestly reads like "sky is blue" kind of thinking.

Worse: it is likely that nobody knows the "best" formula for physical-activity-unto-staying-young. Think about how difficult a problem this is.

And even if there were a plausible, scientifically defensible answer in terms of the effect of specific routines on a sample population, it's still very difficult to generally apply it.

There's room for good common sense here: do what makes you feel good, what seems to increase your fitness, and what you can do without causing serious injury.

Right?

View on HN

>> elderly women who sit for more than 10 hours a day with low physical activity have cells that are biologically older by eight years compared to women who are less sedentary.

It's always interesting to consider whether the direction of causality might point the other way:

Elderly women who have cells that are biologically older by eight years prefer to sit more compared to women with younger cells.

Yes. I often think of reports about studies this way. And then I add likely confounders and draw the causality arrows in all directions, and most are often just as reasonable sounding as the reported causal relationship.

Given two possibilities:

  1. Sick people would rather sit.
  2. Sitting makes people sick.

#1 sounds much more reasonable to me than #2.

The great philosopher Wally agrees http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-05-09

I think (and maybe it's quite obvious) the trick is that exercise makes you feel temporarily worse. It's difficult to evaluate how you'll feel deep into a routine before starting to build those habits.

Depends on your definition of "feel worse".

Is it bad to feel out of breath? I quite enjoy it in certain contexts.

It also depends on your definition of exercise, and sex as you are hinting doesn't necessarily count :)

It's not just definitions, it's also that a lot of people experience actual adverse reactions to exercise [1]. The typical social script is to condescendingly explain to them how they must be doing it wrong, and doctors often have trouble finding a medical explanation (even when it actually is caused by a medical condition), so people often blame themselves for having problems. This is, to put it mildly, not an optimal experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_intolerance

Now I'm wondering if I have some degree of that. I've just commented on a sibling comment that while I love exercising, I just feel terrible right after it.

I also have this funny thing where I can't build endurance. I've been doing push ups on every work out and I can't for the life of me do more than 20. But I have no trouble increasing difficulty (putting hands closer, elevating feet, etc.) or weight (for things with weights like squats).

How old are you? Some people don't develop endurance until their 30s, 40s, or even later! (see Diana Nyad)

I had pretty good endurance in my 20s, but noticed a huge boost in my early 30s.

Interesting! I'm 29. Looking forward to my 30s :)

One interesting data point is to look at the age of UFC champion for your weight, who is probably one of the most fit people in the world.

However, you need to (sadly) keep in mind that weight-cutting is a thing and compensate for that.

So, for example, if you weigh, say, 175-210 pounds, presumably you'd be in either Welterweight or Middleweight.

The champions of these divisions are 34 and 37, respectively.

Of course, they cut a substantial amount of weight, which favors younger fighters. It's possible they'll be at their max fitness in another 5-8 years, even though their capacity to cut weight will have diminished.

There's a message in the zeitgeist that max fitness happens in early 20's, but the evidence, at least in the martial arts world, is that it's late-30's to late-40's.

How often do you do workouts? How far do you push yourself on number 20?

Oh my, that sounds horrible. Maybe worse than not liking spicy food.

And by "a lot" you mean a minority of people...

> The typical social script is to condescendingly explain to them how they must be doing it wrong

This is a bad situation when the person has a problem. I have family with chronic fatigue (+chronic pain) and it's mentally hard to get how they feel, but I've learned that I cannot have the same expectations for them as others.

I think it's an acquired taste :) Certainly took me many years to learn to enjoy it.

I think it's a question of how much you "go at it".

Unhealthy people who begin exercise take themselves to a point most people rarely do when training. How many regular runners go until they feel like being sick? It's no wonder unfit people don't maintain their routine. Frequent runners might do one session in a few where they push themselves, but even then they don't feel like obese people do when they go out and try to run hard.

People should run until they feel quite sweaty and a bit tired. If you are fat and that is 5 minutes then yes it's going to take you a long time to get fit, but better to start small and build up. Don't expect too much too soon.

I've been training seriously for rock climbing for several years now (I've been a climber for a long time, as well as an endurance athlete--runner, cyclist), and the conventional wisdom being applied from other domains (general strength training, weight lifting) is that if you want to get strong (not necessarily bulk up, but just increase your strength), you never work to the point of feeling completely knackered. It's totally counter-productive. That said, picking up heavy stuff requires a lot of effort, but it taxes your central nervous system, and that's a whole different thing than feeling wasted after a run.

The advice I hear from coaches about losing weight generally has three parts:

1) Watch your diet

2) Get out and walk 30-60 minutes each day

3) Start doing some form of strength training, or interval training, as those burn fat and build muscle better than just running.

True, but I don't think interval training (without weights) will help in building muscle.

I started climbing, and consider it the most practical exercise:

It's less boring than regular gyms, so requires less will power - climbs are actually puzzles, hence there is an intellectual effort in technique. It also helps gauge progress wrt difficulty levels.

It also requires less willpower to push yourself, due to the innate fear of falling.

It strengthens the chest and arms, which is what most men want, cosmetically.

It's strengthens the arms and hands, so (IMHO) is more practical day-to-day, since I think humans use their hands a lot more, ever since the advent of tools.

It doesn't take too much time - you very quickly run out of strength, so there is not as much second-guessing yourself wrt how long you can continue.

It's a community sport. It's best to take rests, during which time you can watch others climb, and compete for progress.

> it's going to take you a long time to get fit,

Not really - you'd be suprised how much energy is expended on this change of state (and the stress that accompanies it) as opposed to the paced effort of learned distance running. That's what HIIT is based on, and I'd argue that for an average unfit person it's much easier to quickly expend lots of energy than for a trained athlete.

Not my main point, my point was you can't keep wanting to feel ill 3 times a week.

Part of the problem here is the obesity angle. Obese people are sick, they have a serious disease, they cannot pursue fitness until they fix their underlying weight problem. Obese and overweight people need to focus on getting their diet healthy while doing very moderate exercise. Fitness only comes after you hit a healthy weight.

Exercise feels great. It wears you down but it makes you feel alive! Exercise is the time during the day I am most at peace and relaxed. No work bullshit, just me and my goals.

After insisting on it for quite some time I am at a point where I love working out and hate missing a day in my routine. But I definitely DON'T feel great after exercising. I get this horrible feeling like I'm close to passing out, my whole body shakes and I just want to curl up in a corner and wait until that feeling is gone. I look forward to exercising and making progress but definitely not to how I feel right after it.

Mindless 2¢ observation, you might need to review your intensity when exercising and scale it back a little until you find a better pace. This sounds like how my evening runs are after long breaks, and that's almost always due to me being over zealous and very bad at pacing. Once I correct it my evening exercise is very pleasant sans the mosquitoes.

It should be tiring you but the description you gave sounds like the intensity might be set a little too high at the moment. Scale back a little and build into it.

Keep in mind that there is a significant enough portion of the population who are overweight, get absolutely no exercise, eat mostly take-out and junk food, drink too much, and/or smoke cigarettes.

You don't need a study to spell out the result. You don't need scientific evidence to compare an individual with a healthy lifestyle vs. someone who matches the criteria above. It's not about what "makes you feel good", it's about what is plainly obvious when you put two people with different lifestyles side-by-side.

You only run into anecdotal micro-analysis bullshit if you're trying to compare two people who are identical in every category above, where the only difference is 30 mins of exercise a day vs. 3 hours.

Source: someone who does everything listed in my first paragraph. You would never put me next to any person in the 80th percentile of health, and make claims about "how difficult a problem this is". It's clear as day.

You're absolutely right: the basic outline is not a difficult problem.

The "difficult problem" I was referring to is taking a sample population and drawing conclusions about how much sitting is OK, what kind of exercise is OK, and whether the above are casually related to factors we otherwise describe as "aging."

For a substantial segment of the population, sitting all day, even with 30 minutes of intense exercise somewhere in the middle, probably does contribute to unfavorable health outcomes.

For others, that might not be so.

For many people, there may be underlying causes of both unhealthy habits and unfavorable health outcomes.

That's a real unfortunate analogy you have chosen there :)

http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com