Yes, I know it's wrong and unhealthy and I'll pay for this, and yes, it worries me. But all kinds of exercise bore me to tears and there's always something more interesting for me to be doing.
Oh so this.
I try to do activeish things: walk places, stand up desk, water/snow ski, walks with wife to catch up on the day.
But I just have no staying power when it comes to repetitive motion to build up a sweat. I’ve tried swimming (I love to swim), treadmill/elliptical (I like to walk!), spinning (because I like to ride a bike), but it just does not last. I always grow to resent the time lost to doing other things, even if the “other things” are lazy pursuits.
I'm taking weekly tennis lessons with my girlfriend and casual basketball matches with friends and neighbors. It's good cardio while you also catch up with friends and essentially play something.
I'm sure it's not perfect, but I think the saying applies here: "imperfect action beats perfect inaction".
Point being, if you have a guilty pleasure - stuffing it into exercise can make exercise not so boring, and your pleasure not so guilty. Two birds with one stone.
Not only is it the Tetris of VR, it also gives you a pretty good workout if you play on Expert or higher.
Edit: One major contributing factor was that I never figured out how to get Sony’s VR glasses to calibrate correctly.
I couldn’t believe that I was looking forward to my run just to progress the story. Sometimes the book was getting so good I would spend an extra hour meandering around before returning home.
Worth a shot. Also, bluetooth headphones are a must (I use Jabra Elites). Accidentally karate-chopping some wired headphones out of your ears makes them insufferable during exercise.
It’s a good habit because you can also parlay it into listening to things while cooking and doing chores around the house, things I used to avoid as wastes of time until I hacked myself with audio content.
Good luck.
[1] Sci-fi by Andy Weir and Blake Crouch would be examples of the sort of fun and light-hearted listening that make sense here.
This was the last time I did any kind of exercise.
Trekking I'm 100% sure I would do. But I live in a concrete jungle :(
You need to make it an absolute red-line in your life. You wouldn't go a day without cleaning your teeth, and you wouldn't do another hobby instead of cleaning your teeth - make exercising like that.
I exercise every day, and I think that's actually a lot easier than exercising five times a week, allowing you to pick which days you exercise or not. You can't kid with yourself that you'll exercise tomorrow if your routine is to exercise every day. Sometimes I get back from work at 11pm and I'll still drag myself out for an hour's run.
... you know the difficulty of telling someone "don't get distracted" or "don't procrastinate"? It won't work. It's the same with me and exercise, I agree with you on an intellectual level, and I'm well aware of the dangers of my unhealthy lifestyle. But I just can't find the motivation to do it.
Like I replied elsewhere, I would definitely do trekking or biking if I lived in a place more suitable for those activities. I enjoy trekking and walking when I'm on vacation (my vacations tend to involve lots and lots of walking).
Do you ever get distracted from cleaning your teeth or procrastinate or put off cleaning your teeth? I guess you don't and it's a normal effortless part of your day that you hardly think about - why is that? Can you use whatever natural habit you do to get yourself to do that to exercise?
I can even think about the stuff I'm about to do while I brush my teeth. Let's compare it with doing martial arts: most teachers require you to be "in the moment", not think of something else.
I suppose this is why I think I would like trekking if I lived in a suitable location. You can walk, enjoy the scenery, and think of something else.
Have you ever tried going more than a day without cleaning your teeth? Have you ever had so little energy, motivation, or otherwise give-a-care to just not-do-it when going to bed at night?
Why do you insist on this being the baseline when you've clearly never struggled to do this?
I didn't - that's why I asked - and then qualified my advice with it applies if that's the case.
> Have you ever had so little energy, motivation, or otherwise give-a-care to just not-do-it when going to bed at night?
Obviously this advice isn't going to be appropriate for someone with serious mental-health issues. It's advice for someone who wants to do some exercise and is struggling to get going, not someone facing more complex problems as well.
I don't suffer from depression or mental health issues, I just find exorcising boring and don't have the motivation for it. There's plenty of things I'd rather be doing, it's not that I'm a coach potato watching TV all day long :)
My teeth are rotting out of my head due to poor dental hygiene from years ago. The road back up sometimes begins in a deep hole vertical-ascent, and that can feel daunting, even hopeless at times.
You wouldn't talk on the Internet unless you had experience. Everyone loves to brow-beat.
By the way did you know you've been hell-banned for five years? That's why almost nobody's been relying to your comments for the past half-decade.
The main points I think might interest you are the idea of “grease the groove” training and “program minimum” plans.
They don’t advocate for doing multi-hour gym sessions. You can get a kettlebell and a chin up bar and exercise from home. You can do a couple of sets of swings and pull-ups (or push ups or dips) before or after work if you work in an office. If you work from home, you can do a set every hour. It will take 1 minute or less and can be incorporated into your daily tasks. Since it’s not overly strenuous, you won’t break a sweat and won’t need to take a shower to interrupt your day.
Anyway, if you don’t want to do it, then enjoy your hobbies!
In my experience it's boring when you start but gets more rewarding as you start to see progress. But that's kind of true of everything new you try. When you suck you hate it. When you get hlgood you love it.