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by EricHolden12 1208 days ago
Literally just by showing up.

People have a distorted view of exercise, thinking that every work out, every gym session has to be intense but in fact the most important thing is to do something.

Have a gym membership? Just show up and walk on the treadmill for half n hour and go home.

Don’t have a gym membership? Go for a walk around the block.

All that is exercise.

The magic happens when the repetitive act of showing up starts compounding in unexpected ways.

You feel the benefit so going the next time is less effort, and you may walk a bit longer.

That in turn affects the choices you make about what you eat, when you go to sleep, the quality of you’re sleep, the increase in dopamine from all those activities, which then feeds back into the cycle.

So literally the easiest thing you can do is do something, don’t expect overnight results because that kind of expectation informs the perceived effort (which is high), which results in people doing nothing.

2 comments

An interesting thing after being 6 weeks into my first serious strength training program: I found you needed to build strength to build strength. In the beginning, everything feels a little sloppy because you’re just trying to stabilize your bodyweight in weird positions with the best form you can. It doesn’t feel like much is happening then, but you’re building stability you’ll use to build strength. If you keep showing up, then by like 3 weeks in the motion smooths out and you can more easily direct power where you want to train.
>That in turn affects the choices you make about what you eat, when you go to sleep, the quality of you’re sleep, the increase in dopamine from all those activities, which then feeds back into the cycle.

It's really hard to eat a candy bar when you know how much exercise is going to be required to burn it off.