Unfortunately many of those “exercise people” this tweet is referring to do not take any disabilities into consideration. I can’t tell you how many people have told me to just “go for a walk” when my disabilities require me to do specific exercises from a horizontal position. At some point I might be able to do slightly more intense recumbent stuff (very slow, low resistance cycling) but walking/running will unfortunately never be something that helps me. And don’t get me started on the HIIT fad. I would die lol (not joking though)
Swimming maybe? Is that an option?
Yeah, if you mean laps etc it’ll be when I can move up to more intense stuff. Right now I can basically sit and float around.
Right now the exercises I do feel like I’m doing nothing (until later, then I’m exhausted for days). It’s frustrating because before all of this happened I was doing a lot of incline and strength training, which I can’t do anymore. The exercises I’m able to do now basically amount to a few flutter-like moves and some shoulder work. Even that was too much this week so going to have to tell my trainer we have to pull back even further.
wtf is exercise people? lmao people losing it
The idea that I could be doing less activity than walking 3 miles a week and not understanding how bad I’m feeling because of it… Is extremely depressing. I’m so glad I figured this out like 12 years ago!
Just the idea of not doing something that you are doing makes you depressed?
The initial comment resonated so much with me, that I feel the need to answer, even though I wasn’t even asked: YES
A few years ago I was in a really dark place. I lost 3 kg in 2 months and when I wasn’t at work, I was lying in my bed on the verge of crying, half-listening to YouTube just to scare the thoughts away.
But the thing, that finally got me out of the loop, was getting myself a houseplant, after watching a plant YouTuber for a while. And when I got home, rather than cry, I obsessively cleaned every speck of dust off the leaves, measured the soil moisture with a stick and just watched it be. And something just clicked inside me and I realized that I had found something I wanted to do; probably forever, if given the chance.
Still have the same plant; cut, repotted and propagated. And while I’m at a much better place now - physically, mentally, financially - just thinking about giving that (houseplants) up feels like going back.
Nice story but not the same thing at all. If you already had the house plant and watched a video about not having a houseplant and got depressed, that would be the same thing.
I love this story. I’m so glad you found something that made a difference for you!
Yeah. I was super depressed then and it was worse because of being fat. Thinking about that is sad. Ya know, words aren’t always meant 100% literally
Literally is exactly how you take words. You just made a mistake. I understand what you mean now.
Literally is exactly how you take words.
Except for constantly, where the reverse is true
Specifically people say “depressed” to mean “sad” quite often. You’ve surely seen/heard it many times if you consume media in English
The worst part is, after a short while, you actually cross this sort of threshold where you enjoy it and begin to look forward to it, and then you start to notice it is helping your mental as well as your physical health.
Just atrocious. It’s almost like we were evolved for this.
Even when I was young and healthy, I never looked forward to exercise and it never improved my mental health, even when people insisted that I do it all the time. I would always feel in a mental fog for the rest of the day after exercise. Any day without exercise and I was (and still am) very sharp mentally.
This has never happened to me. I still hate it and I run at least 18 miles a week for going on twenty years. I feel like shit if I don’t run, but I still hate the actual activity.
it’s crazy to me that there are people out there that are able to do things they don’t enjoy doing by their own willpower just because it’s good for them and I can’t even get myself to do the things I enjoy doing.
I’m about to go on my 6 mile mile run and it is five thirty in the morning here.
I think the key for me is to just make the connection that the pain of not running (for me, the discomfort of my breathing being slightly worse when I’m really out of shape and just general feeling of shittiness) is worse than the activity itself. I also add treats to my run when I’m getting back into the habit. Fun size candy bars and the like. I also reserve my favorite podcasts for my run. I’m about to listen to behind the bastards which is always a good time.
Hey me too. 15 years working out and I still hate it except for competitive sports.
I like to think of it as a reverse hangover. Instead of a few hours of fun and a day of pain, i do a hangover on purpose for a few hours and get a whole day buzz.
It helps cuz i too like most people (?) hate exercise
Have you tried an activity you actually enjoy? I know that sounds a bit curt, but I gave up jogging for mountain biking and hiking, and now it is substantially easier to convince myself to get out and get started because I actually enjoy what I’m doing!
That shouldn’t have been as revelatory for me as it was, but the current paradigm is that jogging, gym time, or other monotonous activities are what we should be doing, and that really just sucks the joy out of physical activity.
I have extremely limited amounts of time to do anything. My wife is ill and I’m her full time care giver. So I really only have running as an option. I wake up early when she is still sleeping and go. I prefer running to biking.
I am sorry to hear about your wife, and I hope for the best for you both.
I too hope the best for this guy’s wife… and him.
the current paradigm is that jogging, gym time, or other monotonous activities are what we should be doing
I’d just like to contrast that with how getting enough exercise could work if our cities were designed properly.
I think that’s the most common experience. For years I hated exercising almost as much as I hated not having exercised
Just do something you actually enjoy instead? Fucking hell people are ridiculous, there’s so many options to exercise, find the ones you actually enjoy!
This guy stop being a rude asshole on the internet challenge (impossible)
Some people don’t enjoy any exercise, ever think about that, musclebrain?
There’s a whole lot of stuff that people consider to be activities that are a perfect replacement for what the same people consider to be exercise, they’ll love the former and hate the latter without realizing that if they just did the former often enough they wouldn’t feel the need to do the latter at all.
I used to run a ton, got a smallish dog and now I go on walks and hikes instead, most people only consider that running is exercising of those three things but all of them are a form of exercising.
I’ve always hated team sports but I love climbing, kayaking, canoeing, snowshoeing… should I force myself to do team sports because that’s what people think about when they think about sports or should I be doing the stuff I actually find enjoyable?
The goal is just for people to move.
I’m the guy that originally responded saying that I dislike running even though I’ve been doing it religiously for a long time.
All your suggestions are wonderful here. I will get right on kayaking, hiking, and the like as soon as my wife miraculously is cured and I have free time to do all this stuff that someone with a good life can do. Otherwise, I will continue to do what I can (running at 5:30am before my wife wakes up) because my wife needs me all the time when she is awake because she is in hellish pain.
Please stop being a jackass to people. There is another person in this thread that did this the right way. Gently suggesting an alternative and not assuming they knew best. It would behoove you to understand that your particular situation isn’t universal and other people have different wants, needs, and responsibilities than you.
Sorry for not being to read your mind
I miss walking regularly.
“i bless the rains down in castamere” is a top notch display name
She’s also just top notch in general. Her and her ridiculously charming pet pig Rufus (pictured below) are two of main things I miss from Twitter…
There is only one Rufus and that’s not it.
Imho, anything you can do to increase overall bloodflow is beneficial to your entire system. One of the reasons caffeine makes us feel good is the increased bloodflow. If that can be increased without drugs, youre one up on the masses. Enjoy it dont hate it
… lol.
If the effects were truly the same, I’d rather drink a few coffees a day than go for a walk. It’s faster and tastes better.
I feel like they are both bitter tastes people only like through aquirement. Have you tried sweetening your exercise with sugar?
A few years ago I went from 265 lbs to 195. I was amazed at how much better I felt overall.
Unfortunately, I have a relationship with sweets that is very similar to Charlie Sheen’s relationship with cocaine. I haven’t gained all that weight back but I have gained back some of it.
Getting the motivation and self control to eat right is incredibly hard work.
Damn I’m feeling you. I’m in the fall process (solidly down 15kg/33lb, approaching 20kg/44lb) with about 10-15kg to go. When my belly stops flapping I’m good I think. But I fear the rebound… Currently lots of my evening snacking have disappeared because of evening gym classes, so late home and even later dinner. So I don’t have time anymore to get snacky. Or if I do it’s almost bedtime anyway so I’ll just go to bed instead.
But once I’ve hit my goal and don’t need to hit gym that hard anymore… That frightens me. A little bit at least. Made some good connections there and got a routine going so i can probably keep it up.
But once I’ve hit my goal and don’t need to hit gym that hard anymore… That frightens me.
I’m pretty sure the notion of not needing to exercise as much after you’ve hit your goal is a misconception to begin with, if it makes you feel any better.
I personally disregard weight goals because I find it can be discouraging to feel objectively better, but then the number on the scale says you’re no different. So I just walk by the scale now.
Anyway, but that’s me. For snacking, I find drinking a lot of water after meals, and having healthy snacks that I like (chopped carrots, mixed nuts, chia seed pudding, really dark chocolate, etc) helps.
Also I personally don’t believe in “cheat days” but I like allowing myself to enjoy some junk socially. Like we have a local doughnut+coffee shop nearby, and my buddy and I will usually meet there on our dates. It’s fun, it’s local. I don’t feel bad about it.
Hopefully there’s a helpful tidbit in here and I didn’t come off as preachy!
Numbers fuck people up. You make a goal to lose 100, finally see the scale tick down by 2, “Damn! 1/50th of the way?!”
Yeah I hated the process of becoming one of the exercise people, but it really is the lowest effort to increase in happiness activity I’ve added to my life
Eating well is even lower effort, but inversively fun.
Can confirm. Health nuts dont seem so nutty anymore.
And then after some time, you come to expect your body to feel sore, and when your body doesn’t feel sore that feels weird. So you do exercise for no other reason than to feel sore again…
And then if you don’t go for a week or l for whatever reason you get a new kind of achey muscle thing. That’s weird
Kurzgesagt did a video on exercise! It’s a good watch, and it shows that while exercise is not a cure for all that ail’s ya, it does increase your overall quality of life.
Of course don’t overdo it- during lockdown I began to run a 5k a day during my lunch break. I set Sunday as a recovery day, but still I was 25 and had the last bits of my “made out of rubber and magic” era, so ya know, I’d stretch for 60 seconds and call it good.
I’m still very active, and I switch between running and climbing, but only after being sidelined for 2 weeks to take care of my IT band. I now have to stretch for a good 15-30 minutes before and after. My recovery day now is a good yoga stretching session.
Thank God I am self employed so I have time in the day for it, but still, exercise is awesome but you need to be careful and do it right. You only get one body, so take care of it. It’s the best instrument you will ever own.
Anyway, time to hit the wall with my buddy and then grab an IPA. 🍻
I’d stretch for 60 seconds and call it good
I used to stretch for 30 to 45 minutes before a run (5K to 10K) and I still found the running part to be incredibly painful. I couldn’t understand why I found running to be so unpleasant when 50 mile bike rides were no problem for me, and I eventually considered the fact that I never stretched or warmed up at all before a bike ride. I tried not stretching before a run and the pain went away. There is a growing view in exercise physiology that static stretching before strenuous activity is not good for you.
Come to think of it I remember that too! Maybe I just need new shoes…
FWIW it’s worth stopping running altogether. I used to run six miles every other day, but I developed severe arthritis in one knee and had to quit. The knee feels a whole lot better since I stopped. There are just so many cases of runners getting their bodies all fucked up one way or another eventually. For me, bicycling is where it’s at.
I might be a little more country than this community, but exercise to me is grabbing wood from the local yard waste site to split by hand. Some good clean fun to clear the mind and keep the body strong, and just the right amount of danger to keep it interesting. Not to mention the lifetime supply of campfire wood.
I maybe just might also like to grab wood that requires a chainsaw because chainsaws are neat(fricken awesome). It actually takes all my restraint to not start a rampage through the local woods. It’s addicting, the chainsaws not deforestation. I’m a tree hugger by nature and deeply conflicted by alot of human’s creations.
100% agree. It’s practically meditation. I grew up a little more country, and I miss clearing out trees and brush, then making a burn pile for the stuff you’re not keeping as firewood.
The whole process is cathartic.
I grew up in the country and I don’t mind the shit you’re talking about at all, but I never got this whole zen bullshit thing people claim to get from it lol. Wood needs to get cut, I cut it. GG.
I get what you’re saying and maybe zen or meditation isn’t necessarily the right words to describe it. More like a stress reliever. Like a punching bag with a productive outcome that adds to its satisfaction. For me, the wood does not need to be cut, yet I cut it. Maybe someday I’ll need firewood and I’ll be ready.
I’ve tried eating salad. I like salad. I eat about three or four kilos of salad a day. Five, maybe. Six, if I’m hungry. Rarely more than eight. Hardly ever ten. Still not losing weight. Diets are such bullshit.
Well what ELSE do you eat? Adding salad and not removing other stuff will not do much. And what do you drink?
Couple of pizzas, a kilo or two of mac and cheese (I’ve heard carb loading is a thing athletes do), thirty or forty chicken wings (white meat protein, right?), half a dozen burgers (red meat for the iron content), and a millionaire shortbread traybake (helps with success visualization). To drink, I keep it purely healthy and have a half gallon of Sunny D.
But that’s just lunch, I have my main meal in the evening.
Lmao
10kg of salad…are you a young hippopotamus?
Young? Sadly no.
I’m one of those forever-exceptions to many rules. I don’t doubt that exercise is good for me, but it has never made me feel better or happier. Lots of people report pleasure from physical activity, but all I ever get is pain. Oh, and no, I’m not a disgusting slab of fat, my BMI is 21.
I used to exercise quite a lot, I know what the runners high feels like and how being sore and able to use motion and stretching to alleviate the soreness felt so good. I could easily lose myself when I exercised.
I don’t get that anymore. I have bad joint pains, I never get that high feeling anymore, and everything is a distraction. I want to go back, but whatever happy chemicals used to work no longer do and what’s left over makes the whole endeavor feel the opposite.
This works for the first few years but here I am in my 40s, running 1000km per year and still gaining weight.
I just didn’t gain weight all of my life until my 40s no matter what I did, so I think that’s just y/our biology.
From what I’ve been hearing lately, exercise might not cause you to lose much weight. There was a kurzgesact video giving a vulgarisation about it anyway, so take that as you will.
But exercise is still really really good for you, especially your mood. Just don’t count on it alone if you have other body goals
Yeah, totally agree. It worked really well for me at first, but I think my body is used to it now and I need to diet.
There’s a new theory going around that we age stepwise at 44, 60, and 78. Plus/minus a few years, individually, because biology is fuzzy.
And exercise isn’t very good for weight loss. There’s about the same calories in a 15 minute run as a 12 oz beer or a 30 gram “serving” of potato chips.
The expression you can’t outrun your fork has hit me hard. I’m up 30lbs since I started running a decade ago, some of it’s muscle, but most is I just need to eat better.
It’s for sure my diet. I eat alright, but really suck at dieting, which is why I took up running nine or so years ago. It was great at first and I lost 70lbs but now I’ve gained at least 40 of that back and still running a lot.
