I appreciate that more and more fitness researchers are moving toward “move your ass up off the couch literally at all and thats beneficial for your health” cause so many people read these things...
I appreciate that more and more fitness researchers are moving toward “move your ass up off the couch literally at all and thats beneficial for your health” cause so many people read these things and they’re like “my knees hurt I cant walk for more than 2 mins guess I cant exercise” and then they give up and it gets worse.
I think the problem is that people don't want boring solutions that involve consistently putting in a bit of work for a long time before starting to see results. Even when people aren't explicitly...
I think the problem is that people don't want boring solutions that involve consistently putting in a bit of work for a long time before starting to see results.
Even when people aren't explicitly looking for shortcuts or trying to make sweeping lifestyle changes all at once, they're still looking for "the best" routine that somehow produces instant results with as little change to their status quo as possible. For a lot of people who are looking for any excuse to avoid accepting accountability, if they can't get that, why bother trying at all?
There's already so much misinformation in the health and fitness industry that it's no wonder why people get paralyzed with indecision before trying anything. I'd love to assume that common sense should dictate that any choice to eat a healthy thing or to do any sort of exercise, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. It turns out that that's the incredibly boring secret that the wellness industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to keep you from realizing.
I know I've been recommended to either go for full run 3 times a week or don't bother exercising at all by a professional, because it will give nothing. I've never believed it. I've also been told...
I know I've been recommended to either go for full run 3 times a week or don't bother exercising at all by a professional, because it will give nothing. I've never believed it. I've also been told that walking for 20 minutes to work instead of taking the bus is meaningless from a person with serious interest in exercise. That stuff can kill motivation for sure. I've also been told that if I want to start meditating, I only need to do it for 40 minutes every morning. I don't think that person understand what it means to have kids.
Just saying that even if you start out motivated, other people giving bad advice with good intentions can really break that down.
The 20 minute walk to work being useless is nonsense. I walk 25 minutes to the train station, 25 minutes home, and spurts of walking around my destination during the day. I get between 10,000 and...
The 20 minute walk to work being useless is nonsense. I walk 25 minutes to the train station, 25 minutes home, and spurts of walking around my destination during the day. I get between 10,000 and 15,000 steps a day from that and I don’t have to think too hard about it.
People are also too demanding with what "seeing results" means. The results mentioned in the article manifest slowly and are invisible (who's to say why you lived longer and better). People want...
People are also too demanding with what "seeing results" means. The results mentioned in the article manifest slowly and are invisible (who's to say why you lived longer and better).
People want to exercise for 15mins twice a week and look like professional athletes.
I don't think the wellness industry is trying to keep people from realizing the secret. It's not even a secret. There's plenty of boring, practical wellness advice and products out there. It's...
It turns out that that's the incredibly boring secret that the wellness industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to keep you from realizing.
I don't think the wellness industry is trying to keep people from realizing the secret. It's not even a secret. There's plenty of boring, practical wellness advice and products out there.
It's like you said: people don't want boring solutions. They're eager to pay for a magic one, and there are many entrepreneurs willing to oblige.
The title is very sensationalist. I assume this must have been the headline at one time? It's different when I look at it now. I thought we had a good understanding of "lifestyle fitness" for well...
The title is very sensationalist. I assume this must have been the headline at one time? It's different when I look at it now.
I thought we had a good understanding of "lifestyle fitness" for well over a century. It's been a long time since the invention of the blue collar / white collar divide, so we have a lot of information about people who live active versus sedentary lives.
Heck, the kinds of activity mentioned in the article - climbing stairs - is something that is easily observable in a person's life. When I was a very out of shape teenager, I found it slightly taxing to climb the stairs for the upstairs apartment I lived in at one time. But just a few years later I went to a high school with multiple stories, and that meant climbing a larger set of stairs multiple times a day, and as a result it became very easy for me to do and I wasn't worried about having to climb multiple stories, even.
The one thing the article mentions that is a good piece of new (to me) information is that doctors are talking more in terms of activity rather than just exercise. For something like 90% of the population, I think that telling people to spend time exercising is the second single most useless piece of advice to give to someone, surpassed only by "lose weight". Both are essentially the healthcare equivalent of a financial advisor telling you to make more money.
On a relevant tangent, I think activity level is one of the more sinister things about car dependent societies that should probably be talked about. Even if it's just something to deal with two times a day - the trip to work and back home - the health impact is a really big detriment that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. The lack of physical activity that is nurtured by the necessity of driving is probably killing us faster than the pollution is, and car culture in general encourages you to walk as little as possible. I'm sure you've seen people clamor over the parking spots closer to the building when there are tons of free spots further away.
For the life of me, I just can't understand why people do this. Why bother dealing with all that extra mental processing and stress (more pedestrians, more cars) just to save yourself from an...
I'm sure you've seen people clamor over the parking spots closer to the building when there are tons of free spots further away.
For the life of me, I just can't understand why people do this. Why bother dealing with all that extra mental processing and stress (more pedestrians, more cars) just to save yourself from an extra 20-30 seconds of walking? I can't think of any good reason outside of certain weather, like pouring rain.
Obviously, people do have mobility problems, but that's why we have handicapped parking spots.
Yes! I'm always towards the back of the lot, don't have to worry about door dings with no one around you plus I get a free bit of exercise. My other hacks- I will almost always take the stairs...
Yes! I'm always towards the back of the lot, don't have to worry about door dings with no one around you plus I get a free bit of exercise.
My other hacks- I will almost always take the stairs when there's an elevator available. I do short reps of miscellaneous bodyweight exercises whenever I'm feeling cold. And if I'm taking a stretch/pee break I'll usually do some quick dead hangs or shadow boxing.
You're shadow boxing on your pee breaks? That does explain the state of a lot of the urinals I've come across. Unless you've got some sort of chicken-head thing going on down there?
You're shadow boxing on your pee breaks? That does explain the state of a lot of the urinals I've come across. Unless you've got some sort of chicken-head thing going on down there?
For me it’s because it ranges from unpleasant to downright despicable to hike through a parking lot in barren industrial/commercial wasteland with vehicles idling so I can get to the entrance...
For me it’s because it ranges from unpleasant to downright despicable to hike through a parking lot in barren industrial/commercial wasteland with vehicles idling so I can get to the entrance store. And so I’ll try to park closer. Also, carting whatever heavy/bulky stuff I bought is easier if the car is closer.
Movement-tracking studies show even tiny, regular bursts of effort --- as short as 30 seconds --- can capture many of the health benefits of the gym. Climbing two to three flights of stairs a few times per day could change your life. Experts call it VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. "The message now is that all activity counts," said Martin Gibala, a professor and former chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Canada... Just taking the stairs daily is associated with lower body weight and cutting the risk of stroke and heart disease --- the leading (and largely preventable) cause of death globally. While it may not burn many calories (most exercise doesn't), it does appear to extend your health span. Leg power --- a measure of explosive muscle strength --- was a stronger predictor of brain aging than any lifestyle factors measured in a 2015 study in the journal Gerontology...
How little activity can you do? Four minutes daily. Essentially, a few flights of stairs at a vigorous pace. That's the effort [Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney] found delivered significant health benefits in that 2022 study of British non-exercisers. "We saw benefits from the first minute," Stamatakis said. For Americans, the effect is even more dramatic: a 44 percent drop in deaths, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently accepted for publication. "We showed for the first time that vigorous intensity, even if it's done as part of the day-to-day routine, not in a planned and structured manner, works miracles," Stamatakis said. "The key principle here is start with one, two minutes a day. The focus should be on making sure that it's something that you can incorporate into your daily routine. Then you can start thinking about increasing the dose."
Intensity is the most important factor. You won't break a sweat in a brief burst, but you do need to feel it. A highly conditioned athlete might need to sprint to reach vigorous territory. But many people need only to take the stairs. Use your breathing as a guide, Stamatakis said: If you can sing, it's light intensity. If you can speak but not sing, you're entering moderate exertion. If you can't hold a conversation, it's vigorous. The biggest benefits come from moderate to vigorous movement. One minute of incidental vigorous activity prevents premature deaths, heart attacks or strokes as well as about three minutes of moderate activity or 35 to 49 minutes of light activity.
I thought we were pretty clear on this being bad record keeping
Scientists aren’t certain why, but they’ve proposed several reasons, including diet, genetics, social connection, purpose and daily physical activity, especially on hills and stairs.
(Off-topic) I knew the whole Blue Zones thing had been largely disproven, but this quote from this article is wild: I even fact-checked it because it's such a shocking statistic: the same...
(Off-topic)
I knew the whole Blue Zones thing had been largely disproven, but this quote from this article is wild:
The government then launched a review which found that 82 percent of Japan's centenarians—230,000 people—were missing or dead.
I even fact-checked it because it's such a shocking statistic: the same statistic (82% of 230,000 are missing or dead) was reported in the Guardian, Al-Jazeera, and the BBC.
I appreciate that more and more fitness researchers are moving toward “move your ass up off the couch literally at all and thats beneficial for your health” cause so many people read these things and they’re like “my knees hurt I cant walk for more than 2 mins guess I cant exercise” and then they give up and it gets worse.
I think the problem is that people don't want boring solutions that involve consistently putting in a bit of work for a long time before starting to see results.
Even when people aren't explicitly looking for shortcuts or trying to make sweeping lifestyle changes all at once, they're still looking for "the best" routine that somehow produces instant results with as little change to their status quo as possible. For a lot of people who are looking for any excuse to avoid accepting accountability, if they can't get that, why bother trying at all?
There's already so much misinformation in the health and fitness industry that it's no wonder why people get paralyzed with indecision before trying anything. I'd love to assume that common sense should dictate that any choice to eat a healthy thing or to do any sort of exercise, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. It turns out that that's the incredibly boring secret that the wellness industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to keep you from realizing.
I know I've been recommended to either go for full run 3 times a week or don't bother exercising at all by a professional, because it will give nothing. I've never believed it. I've also been told that walking for 20 minutes to work instead of taking the bus is meaningless from a person with serious interest in exercise. That stuff can kill motivation for sure. I've also been told that if I want to start meditating, I only need to do it for 40 minutes every morning. I don't think that person understand what it means to have kids.
Just saying that even if you start out motivated, other people giving bad advice with good intentions can really break that down.
The 20 minute walk to work being useless is nonsense. I walk 25 minutes to the train station, 25 minutes home, and spurts of walking around my destination during the day. I get between 10,000 and 15,000 steps a day from that and I don’t have to think too hard about it.
People are also too demanding with what "seeing results" means. The results mentioned in the article manifest slowly and are invisible (who's to say why you lived longer and better).
People want to exercise for 15mins twice a week and look like professional athletes.
I don't think the wellness industry is trying to keep people from realizing the secret. It's not even a secret. There's plenty of boring, practical wellness advice and products out there.
It's like you said: people don't want boring solutions. They're eager to pay for a magic one, and there are many entrepreneurs willing to oblige.
Oh, I guess that's true, I'm the weirdo here I love routines...
The title is very sensationalist. I assume this must have been the headline at one time? It's different when I look at it now.
I thought we had a good understanding of "lifestyle fitness" for well over a century. It's been a long time since the invention of the blue collar / white collar divide, so we have a lot of information about people who live active versus sedentary lives.
Heck, the kinds of activity mentioned in the article - climbing stairs - is something that is easily observable in a person's life. When I was a very out of shape teenager, I found it slightly taxing to climb the stairs for the upstairs apartment I lived in at one time. But just a few years later I went to a high school with multiple stories, and that meant climbing a larger set of stairs multiple times a day, and as a result it became very easy for me to do and I wasn't worried about having to climb multiple stories, even.
The one thing the article mentions that is a good piece of new (to me) information is that doctors are talking more in terms of activity rather than just exercise. For something like 90% of the population, I think that telling people to spend time exercising is the second single most useless piece of advice to give to someone, surpassed only by "lose weight". Both are essentially the healthcare equivalent of a financial advisor telling you to make more money.
On a relevant tangent, I think activity level is one of the more sinister things about car dependent societies that should probably be talked about. Even if it's just something to deal with two times a day - the trip to work and back home - the health impact is a really big detriment that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. The lack of physical activity that is nurtured by the necessity of driving is probably killing us faster than the pollution is, and car culture in general encourages you to walk as little as possible. I'm sure you've seen people clamor over the parking spots closer to the building when there are tons of free spots further away.
For the life of me, I just can't understand why people do this. Why bother dealing with all that extra mental processing and stress (more pedestrians, more cars) just to save yourself from an extra 20-30 seconds of walking? I can't think of any good reason outside of certain weather, like pouring rain.
Obviously, people do have mobility problems, but that's why we have handicapped parking spots.
Yes! I'm always towards the back of the lot, don't have to worry about door dings with no one around you plus I get a free bit of exercise.
My other hacks- I will almost always take the stairs when there's an elevator available. I do short reps of miscellaneous bodyweight exercises whenever I'm feeling cold. And if I'm taking a stretch/pee break I'll usually do some quick dead hangs or shadow boxing.
You're shadow boxing on your pee breaks? That does explain the state of a lot of the urinals I've come across. Unless you've got some sort of chicken-head thing going on down there?
Don't even ask what other activity I use for practicing squats...
For me it’s because it ranges from unpleasant to downright despicable to hike through a parking lot in barren industrial/commercial wasteland with vehicles idling so I can get to the entrance store. And so I’ll try to park closer. Also, carting whatever heavy/bulky stuff I bought is easier if the car is closer.
Previous discussions can be found here.
Good catch, not sure how I missed that!
I thought we were pretty clear on this being bad record keeping
(Off-topic)
I knew the whole Blue Zones thing had been largely disproven, but this quote from this article is wild:
I even fact-checked it because it's such a shocking statistic: the same statistic (82% of 230,000 are missing or dead) was reported in the Guardian, Al-Jazeera, and the BBC.
Unbelievable.