Yeah, we know that resistance training is wonderful and so is high intensity cardio, but the biggest barrier seems to be motivating people to do something difficult which puts stress on their bodies. I don't feel like I see much research on HN or elsewhere that covers how to make people actually follow health advice.
I've done some sort of workout almost every day for the last 25+ years. It had nothing to do with motivation, but making exercise a part of my day like brushing my teeth.
So it isn't about discipline either, it's about habits?
I'm like you. Routine exercise for the last 25 years or so. I feel neither particularly disciplined nor particularly motivated. It is either just a habit I've formed or I happen to have the correct physiological temperament for exercise to be easy.
I took a solid 6 months of forcing myself to ignore my mind's constant excuses to not work out, to the point of my mind realizing that the excuses just weren't going to work and stop.
Exercise feels good to me. I think it felt good immediately when I started? I like the feeling of pushing myself and I kind of like discomfort/pain I can control.
EDIT
I'll also add that most people who are disciplined don't really think about it that way. They just do what they need to do.
I claim the same about hunger (within bounds of moderation etc etc). It's simply uncomfortable, but it's a discomfort that you can adapt to and live with. My general view is that both hunger and exercise work as ways to moderate weight but they rely on the exact same capacity for discomfort (and enduring that requires either necessity or motivation/discipline etc)
It's not much different from starting a business or making a piece of software. Motivation kicks things off because it's fun, but it goes away and now you have to have the discipline to keep going. When people talk about execution is everything, they aren't talking about day 1, they are talking about day 100, day 365, day 720.
My hypothesis is that HIIT and other high intensity training will have a greater effect on the rest of someone's day. I suspect the physical discomfort of keeping your heart rate at 120 for an hour is less than that of almost maxing it out in a handful of one minute intervals.
Only when you limit it to lactate levels. But you're not going to push to athlete serum levels anyway. There is a lot of tangential discomfort surrounding every aspect exercise, especially if you're not trained at all and have no routine.
It might actually be better even after factoring in the recovery time, but I think leaving out the recovery is a mistake when we're talking about public health.