[phatbyte]

I baffled by how many tech guys/girls don't understand this. This is so obvious it hurts. At my company's last year medical checkup the results were just absurd, specially for men above 30 years old. Abdominal fat, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc..Yet, nobody gives a damn, almost no one changed their habits.

Guys, just get up and move. 30m-40m a day, you can fit this into your daily schedule, don't come up with excuses. If you can fit your TV shows/gaming or your accumulative time on social media, you can redirect that to your health instead. And the output will have a major impact not just to your health, but to your appearance and your confidence.

Eat healthy, exercise and go to bed on time. You don't have to go to a gym, you can buy some gear and follow a plan from your home. Trust me, the change can be quite dramatic.

Before work, or after work, pick a time, have a working out plan, track your progress, create the habit. After two months it will feel like not taking a shower if you skip it.

[kitsunesoba]

It might sound stupid but one of the things that's stood in the way of establishing a workout routine for myself is lack of consistent private space to do it in. The self consciousness and embarrassment is just too overbearing, and between an open office at work and having a roommate at home, adequately long contiguous blocks of privacy just aren't there. Gyms aren't really a solution either, as not knowing those surrounding me doesn't help the issue at all.

[jpzisme]

From time to time, I see very out of shape people in the gym. The only thought in my mind when I see them is, "Good on you, goddammit." However, I don't say that aloud because I don't want to put them on the spot. If anyone says anything negative to you for working out, screw them. There are far more people who would rather have you work out and be healthy than not. Please rack your weights though! Haha

[sliverstorm]

Gyms are actually pretty great once you "get it". I totally understand self consciousness around co-workers and friends, but I can completely guarantee you that at the gym, nobody cares. Everyone is in their own world.

(Unless you're being a jerk, e.g. hogging equipment)

[tasty_freeze]

Holy crap, the number of people who do a set, then sit for five minutes playing with their phone before doing another set is just horrifying. They probably wonder why they aren't seeing a lot of benefit despite "working out" for an hour three times a week.

[sliverstorm]

To be fair if you're working hard it can take 3-5 minutes for glycogen stores to rebuild for the next hard set.

[xinyhn]

Especially in a shared environment where people may be waiting, excessive rest periods are inconsiderate. However, there is certainly some merit to longer rest periods between sets being beneficial.

https://suppversity.blogspot.com/2016/05/not-resting-long-en...

[rufius]

If your income permits, I highly recommend getting a personal trainer. It's probably the best decision I ever made for my personal health.

I knew that if I didn't have a monetary consequence and someone holding me accountable, I'd never use the gym membership I paid for.

[shawabawa3]

You could just go for a walk.

Even 30minutes walking daily makes a huge difference

[zzalpha]

You can do a remarkable amount of bodyweight exercise with minimal equipment and not a lot of space.

http://www.startbodyweight.com/

Planks, push-ups, and squats of many variations require no equipment at all.

Add dip bars and a chin-up bar/rings and you're basically set.

Variations mean people who've never exercised before can start very small and work their way up to incredibly challenging routines.

For cardio, good ol' walking and running work. And if you try running, don't think you have to immediately start running continuously; interval training is a thing, and is a great way to start small and work your way up.

[shallot_router]

Surely you must have a private bedroom at least?

[magic_beans]

Perhaps you should think about why you can't work out in a non-private space? No one is judging you. No one cares. Each person in the gym only cares about his or her own workout.

If you absolutely can't do the gym, you can run. You can go to yoga (another place where absolutely no one is judging you or even looking at you except the teacher).

[0xfeba]

As a powerlifter who's been going to various gyms religiously for years, I don't visibly judge anyone. Except people who use equipment egregiously wrong, or worse--people who don't put up their weights.

[the_cat_kittles]

worth noting that its probably less about time and more about energy- so make it easy to get 30m of exercise. do something you like, make it near where you are, etc...

[phatbyte]

The funny thing is, since I started my energy levels increased. I can sustain much more time focused on a subject than before I didn't do any exercise. So, the first two or three weeks will be painful (physically), but afterwards, trust me, you will feel with so much more energy and less tired after work.

[logfromblammo]

I understand this. It's just that my brain is a bunghole, and has decided that any maintenance task that the body may need is about the most boring thing it can imagine, and it would rather die than be bored. The body retaliates by pumping the brain full of chemicals that make it want to eat.

The perfectly rational part of my brain has set up activity reminders at work for 11AM, 1PM, and 3PM, presuming that walking to/from the parking lot counts as activity. They literally just say "Get up and move." The lazy jerk part of my brain always responds, "...or don't, and just click off the reminder."

And sometimes it wins. It shouldn't ever win, but it does.

Ultimately, the problem must be that part of me doesn't want to live a long and healthy life. It would prefer to die sooner rather than later. Tracing it, it seems linked to the future prediction part of my brain, which seems to believe that the future will be worse than the present.

I can't really fault its reasoning. If I knew civilization was going to collapse next week, I'd quit my job and spend some time partying. If I knew it was going down in a month, I'd probably check out at work and party at a more sedate pace. So I think I can understand one of the reasons for the US opiate epidemic. For those people, the world as they know it is ending, so they're checking out and partying. Their job is probably gone and not coming back, and maybe no one really cares about them anymore, if anyone ever did. So they can face a long, slow, downward spiral of pain and despair, or they can jump off a cliff and make it a quick rush of euphoria, then no more pain.

Sedentary lifestyle is more of a response to a general malaise. I sometimes don't think I'll ever be able to retire. Most of the jobs I have held have absolutely sucked. And many of my ancestors were at least octagenarians. Rather than spend the next 40 years working for The Man, part of me might be whispering, "being dead is a great excuse to stop working so hard for the exclusive benefit of other people."

So essentially, I probably don't change my habits because I believe that living longer would just allow other people to use me as their pack mule for more years. I don't really want to die, but I haven't really been living for the last 20 years, either. I earn like a software pro, spend like a stingy hobo, and have nothing to show for it, not even social capital.

Why would I invest in myself without even the possibility of getting equity in return? And that's just a really difficult argument to counter. What could I do to get more enjoyment out of life, that would make me want more of it? If America has epidemics of drug addictions and obesity, what does that say about its opinion of the future? Are we all a Rat Park Experiment writ large, pushing our levers in our Skinnerboxes just because there is nothing better to do?

The world needs something new to believe in and spend money on, but I'm not charismatic enough to give it my dreams.

I may be overthinking this.

[jpindar]

Have you tried podcasts? I find going for a walk is much less boring if I'm listening to a podcast.

I don't particularly care if I live a long time either, but I want whatever time I have to suck less.

[maxerickson]

You forgot lawyer up.