Stop Thinking of Exercise as a Way to Lose Weight, You May Actually Enjoy It

Something i have personal experience with -- I knocked off 80 pounds a few years ago.<p><i>Diet</i> controls <i>mass</i>.<p><i>Exercise</i> controls <i>fitness</i>.<p>They&#x27;re mostly[0] decoupled. This is not intuitive to reason about.<p>[0] there are some interesting things in difference in metabolic rates of tissue types, but it doesn&#x27;t really matter much for mere mortals.

I once did a research paper on how exercise affects depression for a persuasive writing class. I don&#x27;t remember much about it, but one particular study compared people with active jobs and people who were only active in their free time. It suggested that exercise as a form of leisure was more effective in combatting depression than just overall activity.

Great article - we saw the same lack of correlation between activity level and weight when analyzing data from 750+ fitness tests:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hack.fitness&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;what-we-learnt-from-750-fitness-tests&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hack.fitness&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;what-we-learnt-from-750-fitn...</a><p>Increasing activity however does have a positive impact on your fitness (specifically VO2Max) -- the challenge is that this increase in fitness is invisible to most.<p>That&#x27;s a big part of the reason why we started Revvo (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;revvo.co" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;revvo.co</a>) - to make it easy to measure the vital but often invisible elements of fitness.

I am lifting (and doing some cardio) for 7 years now. The truth is there&#x27;s nothing to enjoy, it&#x27;s just routine. Just like having a shower, brushing teeth, making diner and washing dishes. It&#x27;s hard and monotonous work, not leisure. I&#x27;ve seen people who seek &quot;to enjoy it&quot; come and go all the time, because they just don&#x27;t have the right mindset.

That&#x27;s good because I do enjoy it, and it doesn&#x27;t help in the slightest.

I do not like repetitive motion without productivity. I understand the argument that this type of movement (&quot;exercise&quot;) leads to enhanced capacity for mental labor, and less healthcare budget. What bothers me is not getting anything done.<p>Riding a bike is repetitive, but you instantly see results (going somewhere).<p>Swinging an axe into a tree over and over is repetitive, but a felled tree can be a useful resource.<p>Rearranging all your furniture may seem repetitive, but you are creating a fresh space, simultaneously cleaning. Doing this with others further reinforces community.<p>&quot;Exercise&quot; became a common term as we gradually started expecting machines to do the heavy lifting.<p>Now we pay a &quot;membership&quot; fee to go somewhere safe and climate controlled so we can simulate labor (mostly iron going up and down up and down).<p>The hydrocarbon killed creativity and fortitude?