I particularly found the following section in the article very compelling.<p><i>"Many people will be surprised at how little you need to do to achieve these results. Years ago, in an effort to get in shape, I tried the P90X routine. It proved too hard for me. Later, when I tried Insanity, it beat me so badly that people at work kept asking me if I was ill. Two years ago, I tried P90X3. It was a bit more manageable, but I still couldn’t keep it up.<p>I’m not alone in thinking that physical activity to improve health should be hard. When I hear friends talk about exercising, they discuss running marathons, participating in cross-fit classes or sacrificing themselves on the altar of Soul Cycle. That misses the point, unfortunately. All of these are way, way more than you need to do to get the benefits I’ve already described.<p>The recommendations for exercise are 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity for adults, or about 30 minutes each weekday.<p>Moderate intensity is probably much less than you think. Walking briskly, at 3 to 4 miles per hour or so, qualifies. So does bicycling slower than 10 miles an hour. Anything that gets your heart rate somewhere between 110 and 140 beats per minute is enough. Even vacuuming, mowing the lawn or actively walking your dog might qualify."</i><p>A lot of people abstain from exercise because they think it's "hard" and "scary," when really, 30 minutes of brisk walking to and from the grocery story would do just fine.
I've had a few occasions where I had to perform some strenuous work even when I was unwell, and in most cases, after the physical labor was concluded, I felt almost miraculously better. On one specific occasion I had a migraine type headache that 3 200 mg Advil's wouldn't touch, but then I was in a situation where I had to walk several miles carrying 50 lbs of gear. Headache was gone after a few miles.
> Anything that gets your heart rate somewhere between 110 and 140 beats per minute is enough.<p>There's a related point that people often get really wrong when they take up distance running: you can (and should!) actually run within that easy heart rate range. It may seem unbearably slow at first, but that just means you aren't ready yet to go faster.<p>When the goal is "faster pace at low effort", it's tempting to think you can train at faster pace + high effort and wait for the effort to fall. But that doesn't reliably work. You're better off training at low pace + low effort and wait for the pace to rise, holding low effort constant. Mostly this is because you (definitely) reduce the risk of getting hurt and (probably) don't waste a bunch of energy training the wrong metabolic pathways.
Wait until we get the pill that does what exercise does. Supposedly, many groups are trying to create a pill off this research:<p><a href="http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131%2815%2900458-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131%2815...</a>
When I get on an exercise kick and do it every day (intense 15 minutes and warm down), after about two weeks, my life gets very smooth. It's fascinating.
"23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health"
<a href="https://youtu.be/aUaInS6HIGo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/aUaInS6HIGo</a>
I like to post this as a PSA in HN weight loss threads. Every legitimate long term study of non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people.<p>1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "](<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453</a>)<p>2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."](<a href="http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full" rel="nofollow">http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full</a>)<p>3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."](<a href="https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/" rel="nofollow">https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/</a>)<p>4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.](<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...</a>) This is borne out by the above data.<p>5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.](<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/</a>)<p>Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.
I don't like the "diet, not exercise, is the key to weight lose" matra because exercise goals(run a 5k in X minutes, bench press X lbs 6 times) in my experience are the far bigger motivators(though I've never been severely overweight).