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.
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.
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.
What are you doing in lieu of these detestable activities?
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.
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
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 able to read your mind
And then you get to the weird addiction space where I feel guilty if I haven’t gone for a run in 2 days. Humans are weird.
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.
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.
One of the many reasons I value living in a walkable city. I don’t have to go out of my way to walk. It’s just a part of daily life.
I biked to work every day as my only regular exercise and was relatively happy with my body and endurance - COVID taking that away by turning my job remote only really showed me how important that daily activity is - first time in my life signed up for a fitness studio after those could open again.
For me it’s the time. It takes me from 7am to 9pm to get my hours done at work, do the school run and get the kid fedded and bedded. I’m doing all the hacks I can: cycling during lunch and in the weekend, as much as possible, but it’s not adding up to enough. You just get a good routine going and then they throw in a school holiday to wreck everything up.
it got me and my elderly dog in better shape. We were both lazy fatties before. Now we’re less lazy and somewhat healthier fatties.
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…
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.
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.
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’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.
10kg of salad…are you a young hippopotamus?
Young? Sadly no.
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
Don’t you just hate it when health fanatics are right?
good to know. I think i will start walking tomorrow.
Have to ditch a wheel chair, too bad.
I hang out with horses 2-3x a week and if I can’t go for any reason, I actually feel like shit physically and mentally until the next time I go. I also burn like 2400-3000 calories when I work with the horses, so it’s hella crazy exercise for someone who lived a totally sedentary life until I started doing this horse stuff about 4 months ago.
To the people who dont feel better after excercise, maybe you just haven’t found a sport or excercise that you like?
For me it is biking but yours could be different.
People who try to start an exercise activity very commonly do too much their first time(s) at it, and end up injuring themselves or hurting too much which makes it hard to continue and even harder to start doing it again after they inevitably quit. The best thing to do is to start with something absurdly small - like biking a half-mile, walking (or running) 200 feet, or driving to the gym and then driving home without even going inside - and then very gradually ramp things up. The most important thing is to establish exercising as a regular habit, and then worry about turning it into actual physically effective exercise later on.
I’m not sure why but I find pretty much all excercise mind numbingly boring. I found that walking my dog in the park is a lot more stimulating mentally because you gotta look out for your little critter and she always does interesting things. The only thing is she gets cold easily so I can only walk her properly in the summer…
Dog tax: https://imgur.com/a/rEII2ih
I dislike exercising, I often have to “parent” myself into starting, I have to fight the urge to stop several times during a session, and I almost always feel worse immediately after. Sore, tired, sweaty, or various other uncomfortableness, and I haven’t found a recovery activity that erases that temporary badness.
But, my life when I’m not exercising has gotten better, and it’s at least partially due to the exercise.
Well, maybe try something else. For example:
- swimming - can’t be sweaty of you’re surrounded by water
- cycling - do errands on your bike; you’ll still be tired and sweaty, but at least you also got groceries
- hiking - see nature and get the exercise for free
I have tried swimming and hiking, and while I can enjoy doing those activities, I fail to maintain an elevated heart rate if I’m enjoying them.
I live in a rural area, the Grocery store I use is 15+ miles up a US Hwy.with narrow/shoulders in places. I can’t do errands on a bike. I haven’t actually been on a normal bike in years, but on the stationary bikes at the gym, it’s another scenario where I won’t maintain my heart rate.
What about a local library? Fruit vendor?
I’m in a suburban/semi-rural area (some farms, and lots of single family homes), so I’m spoiled for choice, but anything that’s within about 5 miles is perfect for running errands on a bicycle.
As for elevated heart rate, I guess that comes down to personality. I’m very competitive, so I like to see how fast I can do things, and very much dislike doing anything slowly. When I hike, I pass other hikers; when I cycle, I set time goals; when I swim, I try to increase the number of laps; when I lift weights, I try to increase weight or reps (I target 5-10 reps with “one in the tank”). If you’re not competitive, I can see how motivating yourself could be difficult though.
There are places I could get to on a bike, but none that are currently in my routine errands. I suppose I could hit the post office on the bike.
I set time goals for my 5k treadmill sessions, but I only meet then by converting over to a pace and setting the treadmill there. I continue to increase my weights, too, though I generally don’t go up until I can do an “extra” set.
I get close to the NIH recommendations and I keep pushing myself to be better, and I still dislike exercising. It’s just non-optional maintenance for this shell until I can shed it.
Exercise for its own sake sucks, which is why I like replacing other things I need to do anyway with something that includes exercise. When I lift weights, I listen to podcasts or audiobooks between sets, and when I was in school, I would do pushups or situps as a study break. My first job was about 10 miles from home, so I would ride my bike 2-3x/week (we had a shower), which would take 35-45min, which was about twice what driving would take, but I’d get home and have already gotten my exercise for the day.
I honestly can’t just do exercise for its own sake, it needs to be accompanied by some other activity I enjoy or need to do.
Podcasts or music are not essential to my gym experience, but they are important. My pace on the treadmill certainly suffers if I forgot my headphones.
A few weeks ago some “commedian” decided he needed to get my attention (pause playback, turn off noice cancelling, “yes?”) twice for idiotidic jokes like “When are you going to be done with that machine, because there aren’t any others: gestures to empty gym with only He and I”.
He did pay me an appreciated comment during one of those interruptions, but overall his behavior was grating and made the session worse than average.
I haven’t yet found a combination activity where I still feel like I’m getting sufficient exercise. I think combination activities work better for many people and you gotta find a way that exercise works for you, or you really won’t get enough.
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.
Audiobooks.
Listen to an audiobook and just walk, it does depend where you live though. I’m lucky there are a lot of trails and paths around my town.
I walk about 5km every day, done so for more than 2 years now and listening to audiobooks helps the time pass quite quickly.
What also helps a lot is doing some pushups at home as well, for a few months I did 100 pushups throughout the day and it really makes a difference.
Man, seeing a ton of people all experiencing great returns on their hard work just makes me feel even worse for never experiencing any of it beyond the weight loss itself. For literal years. No good feelings, no endorphins, even some of my joints felt worse simply because they were being used more.
And now the exact same thing two days in a row!
Its great. I’m fine. This is fine. I’m not jealous or spiteful at all. Have fun working out for me I guess.
I’ve also never, ever felt endorphins or wanted to exercise - this despite being verifiably “in shape” for at least five years of my life and running half marathons during that time. I always just suffered through it because it was part of my job. Oh, occasionally I would find something fun, like when I went to a boxing or BJJ gym, but the fun never lasted more than a week before it just became like anything else.
Though I do want to see my dog happy, and that motivates me to get walking twice a day these days 👍
The only time I’ve ever felt the “runner’s high” they keep talking about was in the mosh pit at a concert, and I think the music and crowd did more for it than the activity.
Sadly, the local YMCA doesn’t have mosh sessions available.
When I work out all the blood leaves my brain, it’s a medical thing my family has. I stay thin by just eating very little.
Just take drugs. Problem solved!
I do both, I’m playing both sides so I always come out on top
I don’t really get endorphin highs from running. But what it does do is make teenager level randy.
I started weight lifting and intermittently doing cardio (intermittently because it’s boring and I hate it). It fixed basically all the random aches and pain shit I was having but I also never got any endorphins out of it. I look good naked though so there’s that.
Yeah… this shit’s killing me. If walking improves your “chronic pain” you were just lazy and out of shape 🤣
It didn’t help ME with chronic pain, but it does help my wife with her fibromyalgia.
I’d wager if you are up in weight, and chronic pain is in any of your weight supporting areas (hips, knees, ankles, lower back, etc) then chances are your pain could be weight related.
My parents are 100% weight related issues, and when I was trying to lose weight in 2013-2015 I tried to get them to do light stuff with me. Walk around the trees behind the house a few times. A couple light calisthenics. Ride some shitty cheap bikes around the park.
Since then their knees, hips, and ankles are their biggest complaints.
It’s nice to know a bit of light exercise is beneficial for some folks. I suppose my definition of chronic pain is probably a bit limited.
Just find a form of exercise that you actually enjoy, running and going to the gym aren’t the only options…
My dude I appreciate you, but I spent years doing all kinds of exercise from yoga to iron man segments and not one has been enjoyable.
I loathe exercise for it’s own sake. I kayak the creeks and swamps, canoe the rivers, build stuff at my camp, hike around the woods, all that. The things I see and experience and create are the reward.
And by the way, saw a family of 5 teenybopper armadillos foraging last week! They weren’t babies and there wasn’t an adult around, guess they were siblings. It was hot as hell, but there was a cold creek to swim in at the end of the trail. Lifting weights and yoga won’t get you that kind of experience.
wtf is exercise people? lmao people losing it
