[Herring]

The problem with exercise is everything in modern life is set up to discourage it. The economy is all about paying money to make your life easier. We design our cities to require cars. Work schedules and commutes eat into free time. Screen based entertainment displaces more active pastimes, etc.

Then our body instinctively hoards calories like a squirrel hoards nuts, because evolution takes thousands to millions of years and this era of abundant calories and sedentary lifestyles emerged in the last few decades.

It doesn't matter how potent it is if nobody wants to take it.

[zfnmxt]

Modern life enables the most effective exercise (really "training" is the correct word) in the history of humanity.

There is no more potent stressor (in regards to the degree of adaptations that result---I guess getting shot in the face is a more potent stressor, but it's hard to recover from) than weightlifting. For example, you can radically change your physiology just doing a single (hard) set of 5 deadlifts a week. Spending just ~30 seconds a week under acute stress can take a human male who cannot lift 185 lbs to one who can lift 405 lbs in a number of months. It's radically, stupidly, unreasonably, and absurdly effective.

We have the most understanding and most effective tools to take advantage of the adaptive mechanisms of our bodies than ever before.

I think people think that "exercising" has to be this pervasive, incessant thing that invades every facit of life and requires constant discipline. Even the linked article hints at this---walk 45 minutes daily, stand all the time, etc. All that shit constitutes (for all but the most untrained) extremely small stressors that are rapidly adapted to (and hence no longer do anything but maintain your existing level of fitness) and that take a lot of time (and can be rather uncomfortable, like standing for hours). More is not better. If you disrupt homeostasis with one set of 5 deadlifts, you've disrupted homeostasis! The adaptation is in motion. It doesn't matter that it only took 30 seconds. And unlike standing or walking, it's easy to effectively increase the stress to reap more adaptations: add weight to the bar. (To be clear, I'm not discouraging walking/standing/Zumba/whatever---they're all better than doing nothing and they can complement weightlifting. I'm just pointing out that there are much more efficient ways to rapidly accrue useful stress (well, I'd argue the amount of useful stress you can accrue from walking or Zumba or whatever is limited because the activities themselves can't be effectively scaled to result in more stress) and if you were to choose only one, the choice should be weightlifting.)

Deadlifts are life's panacea. You should be doing them.

[pjc50]

> Spending just ~30 seconds a week under acute stress can take a human male who cannot lift 185 lbs to one who can lift 405 lbs in a number of months. It's radically, stupidly, unreasonably, and absurdly effective.

185 lbs is 83 kg; 405 lb is 183 kg.

As someone who has been doing a 5x5 deadlift set every week (plus other stuff) for about three years: this is a wild exaggeration that sounds like some sort of supplement marketing claim. Perhaps you forgot a few hidden variables? For example, I'm over 40.

(It was also very apparent when I had COVID and was out of the gym for over a month that I "lost" about 25kg from my working weight)

[zfnmxt]

It's not a wild exaggeration and it's possible for most (healthy) middle-aged men within a year (usually a lot less), except for the truly unendowed. (We don't control our genetics and/or other ailments, but I think it's better as a policy to not try to rank yourself in this regard and just be Pollyannaish about it and assume you can achieve it.)

5x5 deadlifts is generally too much volume and probably constitutes overtraining for you if they're sufficiently heavy. Admittedly, when you're not particularly strong it's less stress and more recoverable (because they can't be that heavy).

Not being able to deadlift 405 after three years is generally indicative of poor programming (if you're trying to get stronger, at least) and/or poor recovery. You have to eat, you have to sleep, and you have to increase the weight each time.

[sn9]

If you're an adult male who's been training consistently for 3 years and can't deadlift 405 for a working set, you probably need to change your programming.

Being 40 isn't really an excuse. You're 40, not 80.

Try looking into 5/3/1, Hepburn style programming, or Tactical Barbell.

[sawmurai]

If those 30 seconds are the total time the bar is in your hands and off the floor it sounds reasonable tho, doesn’t it? The numbers quoted match about what I personally experienced

[zfnmxt]

I don't know about that, 30 seconds is for the whole set and was just a rough estimate. Time-holding-the-bar isn't particularly relevant here (other than to emphasize the point it doesn't take much).

[RobKohr]

Yeah, I was doing 5x5 forever. It is a good starter, but you will plateau.

Everyone will have their own methods here, but after years of having marginal growth per year I changed it up.

I now only do 1 set per exercise, 3-4 exercises per day. For arm focused exercises I do 15 reps in 1 set. For everything else, I do 20 reps for a set.

If I succeed, then I up the weight for the next exercise (2.5lbs for arms, 5lbs for everything else).

If I fail, I do a drop set and shave off 20% per set taking just 30 seconds per drop.

I use the drop set as both the thing to help the growth, and the thing to punish me for failing to increase the initial set. If I get my 20 reps, I get to move on, so I push really hard because the drop set totally sucks.

If I fail 3 weeks in a row, I drop the weight.

Been doing this for the last two years and I am 47, and each year I have increased my strength by 20-40% depending on the exercise.

I also keep the number of exercises per day to be minimal. With 5 days in the week, I do just 3-4 exercises per day. M, W, R are 1-2 from the 5x5 program (squats, deadlifts, bench, should-to-overhead, rows) along with some extras that I want to focus on. Tues, Thur are more extras, and ones that I am willing to sacrifice if I have a busy week. This means I can still hit the gym just 3 days a week, and hit the core exercises. Also, the core exercises are rough, so Tue/Thur are almost like easy days.

Here is my schedule:

M: Bench, 20degree lying dumbell curl, Squat

Tues: Lat Raises, Hip Thrusts, Neck exercises (put a plate on your head and do lifts from 4 different angles while lying down)

Wed: Overhead press, Deadlift, Cable Row

Thur: Tricep Rope Kettlebell swing Lat Pull down

Fri: Dumbbell Bench Dumbbell Shoulder Barbell Row Front Squat

You'll notice their are some repeats in there with cables and dumbbells. This is helps hit the muscle groups twice a week, but with some variation and some different stabilization. I chart all this in a google spreadsheet with each column being a week so I can see my progress, and so I can see if I missed anything from the core days in the week, and I happily change up days so I ALWAYS hit the core 3 day exercises.

[sawmurai]

Agreed, it’s like doing static HTML instead of an SPA for a simple website. It’s not glamorous, it’s not exciting but it’s incredibly efficient.

I have been lifting for 18 years now and it’s become like brushing my teeth: I just do it without thinking much about it. Just basic stuff - squats, bench, deadlift, few vanity additions. The older I get the more I see how much my peers physically suffer without it.

[econ]

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

One can also do 10-20 seconds of cardio a few times per week and have real results.

[block_dagger]

I've found that training yourself to enjoy the feeling of hunger (intermittent fasting) is a boon to weight loss. Another tip: fully chew your food, and eat slowly. Don't try to satiate yourself at every meal. It takes a lot of effort at first, but it's very effective. You start to respect food (and your own body's processes) much more.

[refurb]

Backing it up a bit - not only enjoy being hungry, but recognizing it in the first place.

Lots of overweight people have never been hungry in their whole life. They eat on a schedule, so have an appetite, but real hunger? Never more than the grumbles of an empty stomach.

But it would benefit them to not eat until they are hungry. Then have a small meal. Feel what it's like to be satiated, not full, just satiated. The notice how long it takes to feel hungry again.

Then try being really hungry. Like "I woke up from a deep sleep at 3am and felt a ravenous need to eat something".

I've found that my sense of hunger was reset by this process. I get hungry if I don't eat a meal, but it's not a big deal. I can ignore it. Another 6 hours and I'll start to be really hungry. Then I can have something small.

I don't find it hard to keep a healthy weight any more. It's not difficult to eat to a slight caloric deficit and lose weight if needed.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I suspect it's different per person, when I'm hungry, I cannot think properly and it negatively affects work

[MrMcCall]

I like to say, "Make hunger your friend."

That is the way to begin the process of getting a little hungry and then appreciating it as it grows. Taking that extra time then makes finally eating more enjoyable, in my experience.

And your tip on fully chewing food is subtle but powerful. It's very much in the spirit of being more engaged in the moment, where gratitude settles us down and keeps our worries at bay, for at least some small moments.

[ehnto]

Also helps stop you choking to death. A non-trivial issue, in the context of increasing isolation in modern society.

[f1shy]

Hunger is the feeling that we feel when the body is about to start using fat reserves. There is no way to loose weight without feeling hunger.

Much more still than hunger, you have to fight the “I would like to eat something” feeling.

[ConspiracyFact]

>Hunger is the feeling that we feel when the body is about to start using fat reserves. There is no way to loose weight without feeling hunger.

I don't know what the science says, but from personal experience, this is false. I've lost weight without feeling hungry.

[f1shy]

Science says in most normal cases, should be like that. The hunger can be masked by other pleasure hormones, that is why exercise is important, to set endorphins free.

Mind to give more insight in how to loose weight without ever feeling the need to eat at all? There are thousands of books that claim that, but no one delivers… ask me how I know.

[hilux]

> Hunger is the feeling that we feel when the body is about to start using fat reserves.

None of that is true, but particularly the first part.

Hunger is what you feel when your ghrelin levels rise.

[f1shy]

I find absolutely shocking that you say what I claim is false, and your justification is “ Hunger is what you feel when your ghrelin levels rise.”.

Ghrelin is one of many ways to feel hungry, and also has many other functions: also participates in regulation of reward cognition, learning and memory, the sleep-wake cycle, taste sensation, reward behavior, and glucose metabolism, for example. The exact mechanics of hormones in the body is far from being completely understood.

Independent of that, the fact that you know the name of an hormone, does not even remotely make my claim false. The question is “what triggers the ghrelin?”. Part of the answer is circadian timing (what I mean with “I would like to eat”) but also the body need for energy (start using reserves).

So yes ghrelin is involved. So what?

[hilux]

From reading that non-sequitur, I'm guessing that you are a bot, powered by someone's home-trained LLM.

Which is fine(?), but usually these go to reddit.

[AnimalMuppet]

Personal attacks may go on reddit. Don't do that here.

Even more: He made a reasonable reply. You answered with an ad hominem. When you don't actually answer, it makes it look like you can't actually answer.

[f1shy]

I am not a bot. I’m just answering with the best knowledge of what was told to me by people much more smarter than me, in the hope that it can help somebody else.

[d0mine]

People feel hungry when it is time to eat (ghrelin, leptin hormones). You can eat once per day and feel hungry just before the meal.

More extreme example: hunger typically subsides after approximately three days during a water fast (you eat nothing and no hunger)

[1209412comb]

You can just eat calorically less dense food a.k.a more veggie. Fasting is very hard, and also dangerous if you faint while driving.

[block_dagger]

I've never fainted from caloric restriction. If you faint when you fast, get checked for an underlying health issue.

[hilux]

> Fasting is very hard, and also dangerous if you faint while driving.

What is the logical connection between the first part of that sentence and the second?!

[f1shy]

Fasting for less than 24hs should bot be a problem. If it is, there is something wrong that has to be checked.

[mcdeltat]

Yep, you hit the nail on the head. I think a similar train of thought with mental health. Every time there's a new study on how terrible chronic stress is, or how many years of life chronic loneliness loses you. Well how about - radical thought incoming - we stop constructing a society where we are increasingly exploited and isolated? "Oh but the free market" (or whatever other excuse) we bemoan. Crap, yeah, guess as long as someone makes a dollar, the wellbeing of millions doesn't matter...

[illiac786]

Toure really contributing to the problem here. Hearing people complaining about the state of the world is stressful for everyone and causes people to isolate even more.

I recommend to be constructive and make actionable recommendations, and have a positive tone. I know it’s not easy in the current state of affairs though.

“ stop constructing a society where ….” really doesn’t tell anyone what you think we should do.

And I agree with you btw, I think the root cause is, we have anonymised too much, revenue is the only thing that matters, because before that, there were things like traditions, shame, ethic, etc. but they went all out the window when money making became possible anonymously via funds, VCs, etc. You can switch to child labor to save 0.1% margin because, guess what, no one is responsible anymore: the shareholders, these anonymous mass, want it.

[mcdeltat]

What you say is true. Although I'm conflicted on whether a 100% positive approach is best. Thing is, we're currently doing a pretty shit job of building a good society, and it needs to change ASAP, for our benefit and the benefit of the planet. I'm partly of the mindset that people need a huge wakeup call. While we are humming and hahing and saying "no don't worry, it's not THAT bad", the world probably doesn't get any better. Bad actors prey on complacency. How long do we need to wait for cost of living to soar, inequality to increase, mental health to decline, etc until we take a hard stance and put a stop to it? You and I may be in the privileged position to take a nonradical stance and ultimately still live decent lives.

Also, I think many people don't think we are headed in the wrong direction, or are generally uneducated about the topic. Blissful ignorance... during which they continue being good consumers to keep the hamster wheel spinning. We are sleepwalking into some sort of societal disaster. You're probably right that people need to be addressed with a positive tone. But it's hard.

[Herring]

Well you saw how those millions recently voted in the US. I've largely stopped worrying about this. Slavery took hundreds of years to get phased out, and Europe took hundreds of years to mostly-stop going to war. I only have a couple decades to my life.

I got a nice exercise bike, which I use for 30m most days. I got one for my parents too, but my mom refused to use it and promptly got a heart attack. Can't win them all. I do what I can, but I've stopped trying to lift mountains.

[econ]

That's right, convenience is the enemy! We should start some kind of movement and convince others in the least productive way. I know, it sounds like a lot of work.

There is one more funny twist to the picture you've painted. What little physical labor we have left is piled onto as few people as possible while others are dying in cubicles.

[scelerat]

The hardest part about exercise is the mental aspect of pushing past the inertia of habit and comfort.

As Dr Ashley says in the OP, if you can just walk 30-45 minutes five or six days a week, you're already doing your health a great service. The hard part isn't the walk itself, it's the motivation to start, and the discipline to make it part of a routine.

Once you have ingrained exercise into your routine, it becomes easy. Not exercising feels uncomfortable; feeding your body with things which do not support your more healthful state will feel more innately uncomfortable. Once you establish a routine of exercise, you have the basis for a virtuous cycle.

[tsimionescu]

> feeding your body with things which do not support your more healthful state will feel more innately uncomfortable.

Getting used to exercise every day will in no way make you like McDonald's less.

[elevaet]

> It doesn't matter how potent it is if nobody wants to take it.

Nobody? I can't agree, lots of people want to, and do "take" exercise. Most of my friends are super active and they look good and feel good and are living really healthy lives.

It's true that a lot of society is set up such that we can totally avoid exercising, but on the flip side we've probably never had more access to great ways to be fit that are tailored to personal interest, aptitudes, needs.

Sadly I agree that most (north Americans at least) are extremely under-exercised, but it is a choice.

[D13Fd]

It’s a “choice,” but the extremely strong default is a sedentary lifestyle.

Many people have to actively fight that default to overcome it, day in and day out, and it’s hard.

[thefz]

America is not the world and plenty of cities are designed around people.

[pjc50]

The article mentions the difference in health outcomes between bus drivers and bus conductors. An outcome that is effectively dictated by the employer. And of course, since then, one of those jobs has been eliminated: the one that required more exercise.

[tzs]

> The problem with exercise is everything in modern life is set up to discourage it

Psychologically manipulative gamification can address that.

Soon after I got an Apple Watch the reminders and rewards for the activity rings got me to make sure to close all three of them daily. That was 2063 days ago and I've not missed a day.

Before I got the watch I rarely deliberately exercised. I would choose stairs over elevators, and for a while I would do a 10 to 15 leisurely bike ride a couple times a week (but that stopped about a year before I got the watch due to problems with my bike that weren't worth fixing), but other than that it was mostly sitting at my desk or on my couch for me.

I'd get in about a mile of walking during normal daily activities and maybe 2500 steps. Those are both 2.5x to 3x as much after the watch.

What's interesting is that there were no days during that 2063 (and counting) streak where I had to force myself to continue. I got sick occasionally with a cold or a flu (or something flu like--I never got sick enough with flu like symptoms to actually go get tested to see what it was), but never bad enough that I just wanted to stay in bed until it was over.

In the several years before that I would maybe once a year get something that would leave me with no will or energy to get out of bed for a day or two. So something seems to have changed, and increased exercising seems like a decent candidate.

[jmyeet]

Take that to its logical conclusion: the key problems are car-dependence and, well, capitalism.

We completeely design our cities around cars. Just the act of walking 30 minutes a day makes a huge difference. If you can get that just going about your day, then it's kind of built into your life, almost "free". But walking (like every other form of exercise) has to be an intentional activity in a car-centric city.

Car-dependence didn't just happen. It was intentional and relates heavily to economic segregation.

So what about capitalism? Well, leisure time, from the perpsective of capitalism, is lost revenue. Where once you needed 1 full time job, now you need 2 plus 3 "side gigs". Housing costs, student loans, education costs, your cars and student loan debt are all designed to keep you working, creating wealth for someone else.

[lrog]

> We completeely design our cities around cars. Just the act of walking 30 minutes a day makes a huge differenc.

+1. Car-centric design stands 99.9% for US. In contrast, many cities in EU have grown organically over decades both with walkability, accessibility in mind and quite decent public transport. With business offices often still being pretty centric.

I've been moving around EU, working in different big cities and had a luck of renting flats within walkable 30-45 mins from the workplaces / client offices. If the weather sucks, I can count on public transport. It's always a bit of extra budget stretch to rent something more centric, but it's really worth it imho.

A morning walk to the workplace, while grabbing a coffee / breakfast on the way or a walk back home while disconnecting from the virtual world is a routine that can highly recommend. It gives also more motivation for either passing by the office or marking the work/leisure boundary when working in hybrid/remote mode. No need to live in a constant hustle mode.

[Gigachad]

Moving inner city and getting rid of my car changed my life. I walk every day now, lost the excess weight and live a lower stress life.

It’s hard to overstate how poisonous cars are to your physical and mental health.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Cars are great for mental health. They let people access a lot more things in less time. And plenty of people drive cars who are in fine physical and mental health.

[Gigachad]

They don’t actually allow you to access more things in less time. They reshape cities to spread things further out so you spend the same time accessing the same things, but you get there by sitting in traffic rather than walking or riding a bike.

When I used to live in the suburbs it would take me 15 minutes to drive to the supermarket. Now I can walk there in 5 minutes. Walking is faster and healthier than driving.

[ConspiracyFact]

>They don’t actually allow you to access more things in less time. They reshape cities to spread things further out so you spend the same time accessing the same things, but you get there by sitting in traffic rather than walking or riding a bike

You're equivocating. In some vague, general sense, over a long period of time, cars might make it harder to access things. For any given person at any given moment, having a car gives greater access to more things in less time.

[tsimionescu]

Cars don't reshape cities, people do. It's a deliberate choice, and there are plenty of cities around the world that have not gone anywhere near to the extremes that American cities have.

[hilux]

"Plenty" may be in good health, but since the median person in the US is NOT in fine physical health, we can confidently say that "most" (by far) people who drive cars are not in fine health, and the situation is trending worse, much worse.

[pjc50]

We should probably put "car commuting" in there.

[asveikau]

> The problem with exercise is everything in modern life is set up to discourage it.

That sounds like a problem with modern life rather than a problem with exercise.

[ijidak]

That's why I feel GLP-1 meds are the game changer we need.

Our bodies are insanely efficient at using and saving energy.

They fact that I can walk for an hour or more on the calories from a single snickers bar is depressing. Ha.

And the body is convinced a calorie shortage is around the corner, but in modern society calorie shortages never occur.

I think GLP-1 medications, and other medications that attack hunger signals at the source are the only viable long term solution.

[koljghu]

Exercise and GLP-1s are very different interventions. To liken them appears fallacious.

Exercise is much more than weight loss; it is heart health, bone health, immune health, etc.

You can walk an hour on the calories of a candy bar, but you’ll get malnutrition relying solely on candy bars.

Healthy nutrition requires more than eating less.

If someone develops an injection that makes you want to cook yourself some whole foods then we’ll be talking.

[aydyn]

They are different but two sides of the same coin

> Healthy nutrition requires more than eating less.

Except in specific cases, this is mostly not true. Food in the modern era is very nutrient dense. This is why vitamin pills are mostly a placebo; you're getting an overabundance of nutrients in your diet already.

The first principal component of healthy nutrition is simply _eating less_. Eating less reduces your risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, injury when you are older, and on and on.

Calories in calories out as they say.