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This is the boring truth for health and fitness: It’s very easy to be top quintile in health and fitness by putting in very little effort. The only requirement is that you do it mostly consistently for a lot of years.

The people cycling between fad diets or doing bouts of extreme Crossift every several years until they get injured or lose motivation have a much harder time with health and fitness, despite putting a lot more pain and effort in during their bursts of activity.

One of my high school friends was always a little overweight and out of shape. Later he thinned out and got into decent shape. Everyone asked him what his secret was, but most people were disappointed with his answer: He said he stopped buying junk food and drink when he went grocery shopping and he started walking a little bit every day.

Everyone assumed he was on some intense diet or getting sweaty at the gym 4X per week. Instead, he was just consistent with good but low effort choices.

EDIT: This was pre-Ozempic. I’m sure today everyone would assume GLP-1 drugs.

A small amount of exercise daily, along with giving up sweetened drinks was successful for me (and for my friends who asked how I lost weight and kept it off).

In my opinion, how consistently you exercise is more important than how much you exercise, as you will naturally increase your endurance over time.

Learning to cook your own food from scratch is also an effective way to get excess sugar out of your diet.

Even minimal exercise helps cut my worse cravings. It's surprising how much impact it has.

Also cooking food from scratch is very helpful. Yet somehow i always end up going eh I'll just eat out today.

I would say that portioning is super important as well. It is very easy if you don’t have calibrated brain to binge eat huge quantities of food while distracted.

Example you have an extra large bag of chips and you watch a show, likely you will finish before realizing. But if you just put in front of you a small plate of chips, you will likely not stand up to refill it while watching your show.

Add a bit of friction to eating more food. Brains are remarkably lazy.

Doesn't work for me. What does work is going to a store with a full stomach, and never buying junk in the first place.

"This is the boring truth for health and fitness".

This is actually the boring truth about almost anything 'achievable' in life. Consistency beats everything else, hands down.

> Everyone asked him what his secret was, but most people were disappointed with his answer

The comedian Jimmy Carr has a saying about this; Everyone's jealous of what you got, they're not jealous of how you got it. (NB: I've heard him say this, not sure if he originated it.)

Heart rate training is key for a smoother onboarding. Most beginners (myself included) simply try to do a pace that they simply can't sustain, think running is too hard, and then quit. Building that aerobic base is something I wish I understood far sooner.

This was exactly my experience years ago. I tried and failed to make a running habit several times until I got a heart monitor. When I finally did, I figured out that the pace I thought was what I “should” be running at was actually putting my heart at 185-190 and I was just getting wiped out after a mile or so.

Anyhow I just slowed down to keep my heart more like 140-160 and at the beginning I would even run three minutes and walk one, but I managed to get up to half marathon distance.

These days I don’t go all that far but I do about 3-4 miles 3 times a week. I don’t go very fast either but I feel healthier mentally and physically when I’m consistent.

Honestly it’s not clear to me that trying to go really far or fast is even all that healthy. It can actually lead to heart damage and it’s hard on your joints. Doing something more moderate seems like the sweet spot.

What heart rate monitor did you get and would you recommend it?

That was a long time ago and it was a Polar watch with a chest strap. These days I use a Garmin watch, but you could just as well use a Fitbit or an Apple Watch or a heart rate strap and your regular phone. Honestly I don't even look at my watch during a run very much anymore, because I know what various heart rates feel like. The biggest thing for me was to realize that I was just trying to go too fast, and the HRM helped me with that.

Having gone through probably twenty HRM during the last 10 years, my recommandation is now Coospo's products, available on AliExpress or Amazon.

My own experience and the one of many friends using them daily is that they are more durable than every product from the big brands (Garmin, Wahoo, Polar...) while being sold for half or less.

The only reason to go for the big brands is for the gimmick extra features that are useless to 99% of the users

Not OP but I go for daily runs and engage in HIIT exercise and found that the Schosche armband is about as accurate as you can get outside of a chest strap (which I personally find distinctly uncomfortable to wear).

https://www.scosche.com/scosche-rhythm-plus-2-0-heart-rate-m...

I think nowadays just about any smartwatch should be fine?

It does not lead to heart damage and it won’t knacker your joints.

It will suck all the time you are doing it, but you physically cannot damage your heart from over exertion.

There's significant evidence that it can: https://press.rsna.org/timssnet/media/pressreleases/14_pr_ta...

If you don't think running can mess up your knees honestly all I can say is that obviously you don't know any serious runners.

Lots of 'mays' and 'mights', and I've been running long enough, and know plenty of runners, to know that running ruining joints is a myth put about by the exercise avoiders.

Anecdata is not data.

That's OK, because nobody's provided anything other than anecdote.

In the UK there is a program called couch to 5km. It's possible for anyone to follow and get to running for 30 minutes. It mostly emphasises running at a sustainable pace - even if that is just above walking.

Worth adding that there are a bunch of paid-for apps offering 'couch to 5k', but the 2012 podcast version by the NHS was such an elegant and effective idea—essentially, a free audio coaching program of progressive run-walk training.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nhs-couch-to-5k/id3943...

https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/get-active/get-running-with...

Yeah, there are both free NHS versions of the app and the podcasts. Fwiw I preferred the podcast form as I found the app unreliable (it's hard to keep an app running in the background using GPS and suddenly playing the next blurb). Though you do have to put up with the royalty free music (to be fair it's not awful).

It was popular here in the US too, and I agree it's a great program.

It's amazing how adaptive the cardiovascular system can be when you focus on the right things and keep it very consistent.

I went from having a resting heart rate of 70-80bpm to the upper 30s with a rowing regimen. The positive effect this has on moment-to-moment existence is really hard to overstate.

Wow, I've never heard of a resting heart rate below 40bpm.

Can you describe some of the effects on your moment-to-moment existence? Do you never run out of breath? Is it easier to "get up and go"? Any mental differences? Appetite & metabolism?

When I was doing swim sprints in my 20s, my resting HR hovered between 35-38 BPM. While I am still very active, I haven't engaged in that level of intense cardio for years, but resting HR still hasn't peaked above 45.

Sounds amazing. Please do share details of how you did it?

That’s why most beginner programs state “you should be able to have a conversation” as the pace marker. You don’t need a watch or a fitness monitor - just to be able to say a sentence or two

Please don't consider 38 years of age "old." I just turned 48 and thanks to boxing 6x a week for a year I lost about 50 pounds. I now clock in at 6'1", 168 pounds and love to go shirtless at the local public pool. I look and feel the best I ever did in my entire life.

GSP’s trainer Firas Zahabi prescribes to this. I remember his mentioning this in a Rogan podcast. His philosophy to training is minimal to 0 pain/soreness.

Instead of doing pull ups till you drop start with 1 and do it daily. I started running after a long time. I’m 49. I work out with weights but needed mild cardio. I started with 0.25 m run / 0.25 m walk cadence. I can easily do that for 5-6 miles and keep my heart rate below 165.

Bottom line is - take it easy. The goal is to burn calories, stay mobile and not get injured or sore.

This realization was what finally allowed me to stop bouncing off exercise. The "no pain no gain" mindset of exercise was baked in and the result was years of smattering short burst of extreme exersion (1-2 weeks of running until my lungs hurt) between months of inactivity because being uncomfortable sucks and motivation is fleeting.

This time I started slow and consistent - run/walk three times per week without pushing myself until I was wheezing and hurting. Over time I got better and eventually I could just run for a while without feeling out of breath or painful.

At some point I actually started to enjoy it. Two years later, running is one of my main hobbies and I do it basically every day. I'll be running my second marathon in October.

A 25cm run / walk sounds way too short.

The m is miles, not meters.

No laughing. Heart rate training is the best way to build endurance

I worked out half seriously for years and then fell off the first 10 years of having kids. I just couldn’t figure out how to balance it and being a dad. About 3 years ago I got back into it.

I was 245lbs at 6’1. Big frame but fat. My gym was near a college so just packed with people in their prime. I was able to get back to benching 315lb in the first year back. Set a goal of 405lbs and just been trudging on day by day for ~2 years. Hit it last month at 46 years old and 211lbs.

Just takes time.

In most gyms people start watching when someone unracks 315lb. I tried and failed at 405 4 times over 3 months before I got it. There is something odd feeling about failure in such a public setting. I can only imagine how a professional athlete feels and soldiers on.

For honesty, im also on steroids ;)

Awesome. I agree with the habit building. My knees are shot so I don't run, but I try to walk for 90 minutes a day. I look forward to this every day.

I normally start to wind down around 6pm, so around 8pm I close my computer and go for a walk. Come home and sleep.

Biking (mountain) is my groove. Worth a try if you have some tracks as it does not put pressure on your knees like running.

Used to LOVE mtb.

Unfortunately my knees are busted and I don’t have full range of motion on my right knee. And I’ve broken every toe lol.

You have probably thought about this already, but shorter cranks (150mm or so) might let you avoid bending your knees as much.

ChatGPT and Claude are perfectly acceptable for this. I’ve used them along side my training plans in Runna as well as just getting some baseline for my progress in Golf.

Shoe Dog is a great book. That book + "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Murakami also had a similar effect on me.