Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What?

Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when building aerobic fitness. And that it is characterized by being able to hold a conversation, although strained.

I searched around and found atheletes like amateur ultrarunners say the same thing.

Then it hit me. I’ve probably been jogging a lot in Zone 3. Or higher? Because the harder you go the more benefit, right? That seems to be the basic logic for everything.[1] Relatively short, painful sessions. Have I been conditioning myself to associate cardio with more pain than is necessary for the average session?

So maybe I should just go on the stationary bike today, do a “conversatitional” (talk to myself) pace and listen to my audiobook for an hour? And try to not let my groin fall asleep.

[1] With nuances like go-to-failure for hypertrophy in weightlifting and more back-off-a-little for strength training.

Of course, almost no-one adheres to it unless they are already well practiced. It's just deeply ingrained in peoples heads that "only if it's hard or painful it must work". Then people check out of running because it feels like crap, which it does if you always push too hard.

In my opinion, three of the most important rules are:

- slow down! does it feel "too slow"? Great, that's the right speed for most runs

- small steps! feels awkward at first, but is sooo much more efficient and soo much better for your joints

- land on mid- or forefoot (that happens mostly automatically with small steps)

1. You want to land on the mid-foot. Heel-striking puts a lot of pressure up you leg and joints as you are basically braking with every step. Forefoot strike puts a lot of pressure on your calf and achilles as you have to 'bounce' on every foot-strike to support your body weight. A mid-foot strike is the most efficient transition of energy into and back out of the ground for forward motion. Small steps help you to find a mid-foot strike, large steps (over-striding) will create a heel-strike.

2. For lots of people taking up 'running' they (naturally) believe that they should run. But for many, running continuously will be beyond their zone-2 cardio. It's much easier to start with a jog/walk and build up. In the UK we have a brilliant app called 'couch-to-5k' which is a progressive build from essentially no fitness (walking some distance) up to being able to continuously jog for 5k.

Both of these are hard to do in typical "running shoes" which build a significant amount of rubber into the heel, while also being fairly thin up front.

Yes - this meme is extremely prevalent and extremely effective at putting people off exercise.

"Running" in the sport of "Running" means something different than "running" on the playground (which is more akin to sprinting).

I've had some knee pain recently so I've not been running much, focusing instead on knee strengthening exercise. On my last run I discovered this weird phenomenon were my knees stopped hurting if I ran faster with longer strides, it felt like I was "rolling through" each step which seemed less demanding for my knees. Perhaps my slow running style is just poor.

Low impact, good for core strength. Zone 2 approved.

If you are wealthy they make specific back packs or I bought a tacti-cool one on Temu for cheap.

Outlive by Peter Attia is pretty good for more ideas on how to lengthen the mobile portion of your life.

The two sports also complements each other very well since the muscle groups support each other and cardiovascular side of things are the same.

Zone 2 is all about giving the mitochondries a chance to get better at providing a steady energy flow over a long time, mainly by optimizing for burning fat as fuel instead of glucose, avoiding lactate accumulation during the process [3].

In between, in zones 3 & 4, you get a little of both those ends of the spectrum, it's still helpful to a degree, but it's not really optimized: that why it's deemed preferable to spend the bulk of your training time in either your zone 2 or zone 5.

The ideal composition of a training period seems like 90% zone 2 and 10% zone 5, and going for more than 1h of zone 5 per week seems not that interesting. Also, mixing zone 2 and zone 5 in the same training session is not ideal, it's better to stay focused on one thing at at time.

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/category/exercise/high-intensity-zo...

[2] https://peterattiamd.com/category/exercise/vo2-max/

[3] https://peterattiamd.com/category/exercise/aerobic-zone-2-tr...

- get good shoes! this is probably the only piece of equipment you need (with a wind/rain jacket). Go to a shop when you can get advice. For me, flat soles is the way to go but I know there is debate on that question. Change them after 1000km at max (I've seen 500 km recommendation)

- follow the advice above zone 2 / zone 5 training. If unsure, slow down !

- avoid pain as much as possible otherwise your body will associate pain and run and you end up giving up (maybe not today, not tomorrow but one day for sure)

- buy a jumping rope and practice (you'll be amazed on the resulting spring effect while running)

- prefer solo session (group sessions are good if you want to talk but the most important thing is to run at your very own pace). you are better with some music or interesting podcasts

- vary the routes as much as possible. Even if you have only one route, start it from time to time on the other direction. There is no better training than on a route you don't know. Always running the same route is part of the reason you may quit.

- start your chronometer at the beginning of the session and try to forget it.

- find a friend and do some bike and run session from time to time (one run, one on the bike for like 20 minutes and then you change). It allows you to make longer run and recover while on the bike.

/!\ Just an opinion here, I'm not a specialist, just a +/- 20y regular runner

I've spent a lot of time reading a lot about opinions and then looking at logs of professional athletes [1] (in cycling as I am most interested in that). My conclusion is that training comes down to:

1)do a lot of volume, the more the better

2)do some "hard stuff" - if those are hard intervals, longer "sweet spot" intervals or a a mix of those (like 5 minutes at threshold and then 15 seconds sprint, repeat n times) matters little

3)at pro level do some training specific to what you are going to do a lot in racing

1)is by far the most important and the most reliable predictor of overall fitness

[1] https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/pro-elite-training/14046 - is a nice thread with a lot of rides from whole weeks or months of training posted with power/heart rate data for various World Tour riders

[2]https://www.youtube.com/@sportscientist - Stephen Seiler's youtube channel; he has done work on analyzing how pro athletes train but his conclusions are very simplified and it seems made to sell "polarized" training idea. When you look at the details in the data no one trains like that, the final distribution is almost always pyramidal, not polarized

Seriously, I have a friend who assumes that exercise == going to the gym... and she hates the gym. But she keeps trying to force that round peg into a square hole!

I've tried asking her, "well, do you like tennis? Dancing? Rock climbing?" But apparently those don't count.

Another way to look at this: "ideal" has different definitions depending on whether it's maintainable for any given individual, as well as a definition for "what's the best way to do this if you take willpower out of the equation?"

I created a custom "track" on TrainerDay and spend about 20 minutes 2-3 times a week doing this.

It feels like dying - but I like being able to extract the most value out of the lowest time investment

Since you can dial in the assist, it basically turns a regular bike into an exercise bike. Or conversely, an exercise bike that actually rides around outside. If I want to fry my legs on a hill, I can drop the assist and really feel the grind. If I want to take it easy on the hill back home though, I can boost the assist so that it takes practically no effort.

It's just this amazing tool that reliably will trick your brain into working out. You take the ebike out because it is so effortless to ride, but inevitably you end up lowering the assist to feel the burn a bit on your rides.

Biking to work using Strava is like this for me.

It gamifies exercise in a very addictive manner. Getting a PR, being quickest on a segment or becoming a local legend. There is always someone or something to beat.

Besides, I got records and fastest times when e.g. wind was at my back or the lights all went my way - so I knew it wasn't just my effort & just happenstance.

I still use Strava - mostly as a personal blog of my efforts & take a picture of wildlife or crazy videos to share with others sometimes.

Then occupationally I try to do sprints uphill, walk down. Get ready for another uphill sprint. I have been lazy on that unfortunately.

There is also a lot of evidence that sprinting is really good. I mean if you look at the bodies of Olympic sprinters vs Olympic runners, what do you want to develop?

I now cycle for the same reasons as you do, although it's not as consistently intense as I would like.

That's really the opposite of what sports are supposed to be for 99.9% of the people. Who cares how life and training of some fastest guy in XYZ category looks like? Go at your pace, progress slowly also at your pace, also good strategy for life overall. You also don't take tips for driving in traffic from top formula 1 driver, do you, sorta worse than useless.

I do naturally push myself a bit when I run alone, to the point when even say 5-6km run makes me tired and drenched in sweat, but certainly not first 10-20 runs after some lull (like now broken foot, starting gently next week). And running is really just training for other more adrenaline sports for me, not chasing kms and preparing for races. But never pushing beyond whats OK for my body, and with experience one knows oneself very well in this regard.

Your zone 2 speed will change over time. I do most of my training in zone 1 now, and that’s like a 9 minute per mile pace. When I started more than 15 years ago a 9 minute mile felt like death. Patience. This takes a lot of time.

To explain why harder isn't better: improvement in running comes only a little from muscular strength, so that mental model is bad.

Improvement is primarily based on aerobic development of the cardiovascular system. This is your body's ability to burn mostly-fat with oxygen, deliver the energy (ATP molecules) to muscles, and remove waste products. So you develop more capillaries, your heart gets literally stronger, and this fat-burning pathway gets more efficient.

Going too hard pushes into the anaerobic zone (burning sugar without oxygen). This is good training in some ways, but it can be counterproductive to aerobic development and, most important, it's too hard to do very much volume so the amount of stimulus is limited. By keeping it easy, you can do a higher volume of purely aerobic stimulus.

I have been exclusively an anaerobic athlete for the past two years and my aerobic fitness has dropped to a shockingly low level. But I am oddly comfortable at 180-190bpm

I am slowly building in more aerobic cardio into my training but man cardio is just such a chore for me. It's always the first to go so it takes constant maintenance and it's time consuming...

It's only recently when I learned about Zone 2 training that I came to understand that my training approach has always been backwards. I have always indexed my pace on what has always been a "respectable" mile time, on the assumption that if I run at that pace over and over, eventually I'll be able to go for longer at that pace. And that kind of is true, but not ever to the extent I can keep up with my wife.

Now, I am attempting to approach my running from a "time spent running > speed", and I'm finding that I indeed can run for 40+ minutes straight with no stopping, at a much lower pace than what I had been, and that it is much easier to make progress by running slowly for 40 minutes and gradually increase my pace over time than it is to run quickly for as long as I can and gradually increase the distance.

But I don't think that way now. I want to enjoy moving. I want to move playfully and powerfully and efficiently. Exercise until it feels good, not until it feels bad. Love the body you have and take care of it and build it up, rather than hate-exercising to change it.

But gradually I could hold a lower heart rate while running and now my zone 2 runs are actually faster than my fastest pace I could hold a year ago. Now I enjoy running more than cycling (though my fitness are still probably mostly derived by cycling).

Even just walking on an incline can get your heart rate into the right zone so you get cardiovascular benefits while being so low in fatigue that you can get a lot of volume in.

Eventually your fitness will increase such that you'll run out of incline and speeds you can walk and you'll have to jog to stay in the zone.

I don't know what the current research says, but I believe jogging is pretty hard on your joints vs running. I'd recommend hiking and fast walking as an alternative if you're looking to transition into running.

I've only really been getting into it in the past ~6 weeks or so, so still a beginner. Just wanted to chime in and say that running while fat is totally doable and you just gotta ease into it and try to avoid pain! Discomfort might be a part of the process, but running slowly in zone 2 has become quite relaxing and a great part of my day, despite having hated running when I was in the best shape of my life.

I used to only run in zone 4-5 because I focused on speed and just assumed misery was a necessary part of the running experience. It's been a total blessing to learn that it doesn't need to be like that at all!

Hope you can find a good balance for what works for you as a heavier person. Listening to your body and knowing your limitations are super important. Just wanted to share my experience as a heavier guy too.

> around 30 years old

These two things go together. I'm almost 50 and in my experience you're not going to want to do this after 40 but it depends on many factors (shoes, joint health, body mechanics, what you run on..).

I've just seen people my age and younger suggest that running while fat is too hard and give up on it but I've started to enjoy it for the first time in my life despite my weight.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Most injuries from running come from repetitive motion overuse and are muscular. People go out way too hard then discover that their muscles are weak for running (especially hips and glutes). Easing into running and doing some weightlifting or bodyweight exercises to supplement can usually keep you injury free and running well into old age. Some research shows it actually reducing the onset of osteoarthritis.

I'm the only one among my friends that do this, and I find this to be highly correlated with my running style: Really comfortable pace 7-10km through local forests, only (I tend to do more 10km more than 7km as I like it so much).

I learned this one time when I ran on a threadmill and realized the enormous difference between a slight variation in speed (from 11 to 9 km/h in my case, but the exact numbers don't matter), where I realized with this slight change I could go on indefinitely instead of being quickly exhausted.

Another trick was to focus on the whole body, I had a bad back but ran all my life like this, I now do light deadlift to restore better posture and better range of motion. Bad posture will make your muscle shrink and impede your running too.

As I understand it you can increase vo2max with exactly the type of training you are describing. Long efforts at zone2 can improve vo2 max, but the best improvements involve training at higher zones.

I certainly remember all the stories / headlines "walking is as good as running for cardiovascular health" etc which support the "just train zone 2" approach, but this study seems to me (a layperson) to contradict that.

Can anybody who is more versed in the research chime in? Does this study suggest that HIIT could reduce all cause mortality by improving vo2 max which improves baseline CRF (which is the value this the meta-analysis actually examined)?

You can sustainably improve your cardiovascular health by just slowly increasing your volume of work done at 120-150 bpm over time. Say start with a program like Couch to 5k, then slowly add a day of light jogging here and there, adding 5 minutes here and there, until you're jogging 30+ miles per week.

If you want to more "optimally" improve your cardiovascular fitness, after building an aerobic base as above for 12+ weeks, you can introduce a high intensity session to get some of the unique benefits of those, but your low intensity steady state zone 2 stuff should remain at least 80% of your time spent endurance training.

I understood the idea was that by running / cycling mostly in zone 2, you can put in more distance / time as you can recover more easily. It would not be possible to bike 30 hours in a week in zone 3, you would trash yourself.

But for someone like me, biking like 6-8 hours a week, I could easily do a lot of higher intensity, recovery time is not a bottleneck, other obligations in life are. So I really wonder if that still applies if you're only running / biking a few hours per week?

I prefer it since it's at a pace where you can easily use your phone/browse the web at the same time.

Walking is also far more practical given that you walk 99% of the time in modern society. Might as well train for the thing you actually functionally do

If you only run 30 minutes once a week, you won't see as many gains if you do it in zone 2 than zone 3/4. But you also can't run 10h/w zone 4/5, so that's where the zone 2 comes into play. It allows to increase volume without increasing fatigue/risk of injury too much.

It also makes them more likely to feel pain, since pain has biological, psychological, and social inputs.

I was "forced" into biking a few years ago (had an injury that prevented running) and had the same problem with the groin. I thought it was a natural thing with biking, but it can actually be quite bad for you in the long run, and it's very fixable! Sitting position and saddle makes a huge difference. Ofc position is the cheaper thing to fix, but saddle is easier.

Go to a bike shop and explain the problem and they'll help you find a saddle that fits you, don't go on with getting your groin numbed.

My goal was strengthening hip (one side has a three plates and a few screws in it) and knee mobility, with losing weight being an extra that I only reach this spring due to diet changes. I did find my Zone 2, where I can chat with a running buddy, and slowly extended the distances I run: Now 5km at 5:40m/km are the norm and 10km is just as possible. Injury-free so far and no ambition for a Marathon. The thing I now have to work at is the cadence which I (at 193cm) had trouble with on the bike as well, but shorter strides at a higher cadence are important to prevent knee injuries.

Whatever you do, I think sticking to it at least three times a week so you look forward for the next run, feel well during it and keep healthy. This is more important than beating records or running insane distances. Those goals are for those with the right genetics.

when i've been running i do similar. though i also do accellerate a bit and slow down, because its... more fun.

That's unfortunately not fully how it works. For maximum benefits, you would want to train your aerobic energy system, and to do that without risking injury, zone 2 is the recommended zone. The claim is that pain is gain, but more often than not, pain is your body telling you you are over the limit. By the description of your running experience, you were possibly closer to zone 4.

Of course, the body gets lazy, so you will want to vary your training. Repeat the same type of load, and your body will get efficient operating at that load, meaning your fitness gains will eventually stagnate. That's where the other zones come in.

At the zone 3/4 threshold you start using your anaerobic energy system more, with a stronger build-up of lactic acid as a by-product. Training in that range means your body will get more efficient at faster-paced work. Of course, as you build-up lactic acid, it also means that it is not a pace you can sustain.

But if you do short bursts of exercise at the lower-end of the anaerobic zone, you are actually contributing to making you aerobic energy system more efficient, without over-straining your body too much. And it's exactly the type of exercise variation your body needs to not get into the "lazy" mode.

The traditional way of approaching that is to have a base of zone 2 days (say 80% of your runs), and a few days of zone 3/low 4 days (say 20% of your runs), so that you alternate your loads.

Another approach with similar benefits, especially if you train less often, is the Fartlek approach, developed in Sweden in the 1930s. That's a type of training where you mix-up the load intensity during your runs, in about the same proportions. Fartlek means "speed-play", and it describes the method well. It's generally about approaching your training as you feel it that day. At some point during your run you might decided to increase the pace for a short time. Or you see a small hill that you can decide to attack at a faster pace, thereby changing your training zone. It's all about having fun and making your trainings less boring.

There was this belief in some circles until not that long ago that if you would enter a zone 3 or zone 4 training load during a zone 2 training day, you would mostly destroy the benefits of a "pure" zone 2 training. (Or the other way around, having some zone 2 stretches on zone 3/4 days). That turned out to be nonsense.

All in all, for good progress, and against boredom, Fartlek is the way to go, all the while keeping the bulk of your training in zone 2.

Then I moved to a bike-friendly country and I started biking all the time. 30 minutes commute one way, 30 minutes back. I live right next to subway but god I hate public transport, and owning a car in this city is a massive headache.

Often I go for a small one-hour ride in the evening. I put on some music, start cycling, and thinking about things. I feel like I get into some kind of trance. When sitting at home I constantly feel "now what now what now what now what", but while cycling, I get into a rhythm and often; not always, but often; I get into a state where my thoughts kinda flow more easily, I can just think about something happy and focus on it, or maybe listen to the music. I live in a low-density area with biking lanes separated from most car traffic, so sometimes I get drunk or high and go cycling, which feels amazing - I have to focus and make it through one intersection, and after that the worst thing that can possibly happen is falling off the bike and getting a few bruises.

Sometimes I go for longer whole-day trips. When I reach the point of complete exhaustion the part of my brain that constantly worries about getting fired or possible WW3 shuts down and it's like being high but without drugs. I plan these trips so that I fight against the wind on my way "there" and then enjoy the help of the wind on my way back which becomes almost efforless. When I come home exhausted, the body experiences relaxation in ways impossible to achieve in other ways.

If you want advice, from my experience: 1. Stationary machines are a scam, 90% of pleasure comes from being outside. 2. Do exercise at a pace "I could keep on going like this forever" and then after an hour "oh not anymore" 3. Get something that keeps you entertained but doesn't require your attention. I don't recommend audiobooks because you need to keep actively listening. I recommend music or radio because if you zone out and stop listening, nothing bad happens. And sometimes try not having anything at all, just watch all the things around you.

Its weird though because HIIT is meant to be amazing for your body as well.

I suppose a mixture of both is good, and if I really think about it, we pretty much evolved to do that - low energy wandering to find prey, medium energy to chase prey and exhaust it, brief high intensity to catch up and finish the job. Then you get dinner.

Man, I should go back to the gym.

People implying that the study shows only correlation really don't seem to understand how we establish causality in science.

Or perhaps you don’t fully understand the challenges of establishing causality? Just because an intervention causes an improvement in some bio markers that are associated with lower mortality (unfortunately) does not mean that the intervention will cause lower mortality.

The classic example is vitamin D supplements: Higher vitamin D levels are associated with lower mortality in many medical conditions. Vitamin D supplements increase vitamin D levels. But vitamin D supplements seldom lower mortality.

Why? Probably because vitamin D is produced in the skin when we are in the sun. The more healthy subpopulation of any study will typically spend more time outside, so they will have higher vitamin D levels. But it’s (relative) health that causes higher vitamin D, not the other way around.

The only way to reliably establish causality is really an end-to-end randomized controlled trial (RCT). Stitching together two RCTs is not sufficient.

(Not saying that exercise does not lower mortality BTW, just that it’s complicated, and a study such as this is probably picking up two signals: one causal and one purely correlational.)

> Or perhaps you don’t fully understand the challenges of establishing causality? Just because an intervention causes an improvement in some bio markers that are associated with lower mortality (unfortunately) does not mean that the intervention will cause lower mortality.

> The classic example is vitamin D supplements: Higher vitamin D levels are associated with lower mortality in many medical conditions. Vitamin D supplements increase vitamin D levels. But vitamin D supplements seldom lower mortality.

That is quite a simplification. The research as far as I know is that too low Vitamin D levels are associated with higher mortality, but that supplementation above a certain level is meaningless (and most caucasians can get those levels through normal sun exposure). So yes vitamin D supplements in general don't improve mortality.

Note also the situation here is completely different. The link between mortality and morbidity markers and exercise have been established in other studies. The study here establishes that this directly translates to a correlation between fitness and mortality. So in a way it's the opposite of the vitamin D case.

> Why? Probably because vitamin D is produced in the skin when we are in the sun. The more healthy subpopulation of any study will typically spend more time outside, so they will have higher vitamin D levels. But it’s (relative) health that causes higher vitamin D, not the other way around.

You realise that you are proclaiming causality here?

> The only way to reliably establish causality is really an end-to-end randomized controlled trial (RCT). Stitching together two RCTs is not sufficient.

A RCT does not establish causality. That's essentially my point. A single study/experiment never proofs causality. You need a theory to explain the causality and multiple studies that falsify other possible causality mechanisms. That has been done extensively for excercise and morbity/mortality, the current study just establishes that this also correlates in the bigger picture. So yes the study itself does not "proof" causality, it's just a piece in the bigger puzzle of causality.

> (Not saying that exercise does not lower mortality BTW, just that it’s complicated, and a study such as this is probably picking up two signals: one causal and one purely correlational.)

> You realise that you are proclaiming causality here?

Yes, with emphasis on the word probably. Just like I will happily proclaim that exercise probably lowers mortality.

> A RCT does not establish causality. That's essentially my point. A single study/experiment never proofs causality. You need a theory to explain the causality and multiple studies that falsify other possible causality mechanisms. That has been done extensively for excercise and morbity/mortality, the current study just establishes that this also correlates in the bigger picture. So yes the study itself does not "proof" causality, it's just a piece in the bigger puzzle of causality.

The beauty of an end-to-end RCT is that it effectively neutralizes other possible causality mechanisms. You do not seem to appreciate this. My impression is that your reasoning is more in line with evidence based medicine (EBM), rather than the hypothetico-deductive method that I personally subscribe to. In my way of thinking there will never be definitive “proof” of causality, but I will happily take a drug that has gone through sufficiently powerful RCTs that failed to prove its ineffectiveness (and harm).

This might be a good heuristic for assigning confidence to results, but in theory, an RCT absolutely does establish causality, assuming internal, external, construct, and statistical validity of the study.

Multiple studies may not be better than one good study (assuming the above), which can be tested by looking at the leverage in a meta-anlaysis.

Having a theory is kind of orthogonal to a study finding a true positive result. Almost every published study, true or false, invokes some kind of theory, true or false. There is a joke in the soft sciences along the lines that you make up a new theory for every study.

I think that in science we have to be extra careful just what we are saying. And saying that this study proves causality would be wrong. I am sure there are other studies that could (do?) prove it but this statistical analysis can only prove correlation.

There's no reasonable path to reverse-causality with smoking. "People prone to developing lung cancer are more likely to take up smoking" doesn't really make sense.

On the other hand, "Fat and unhealthy people are more prone not to exercise" is a reasonable reverse-causality position, for all kind of reasons. Your knees hurt, you're self-conscious, it's extremely uncomfortable, your fat jiggles, etc.

I'm not saying direct causality doesn't exist here, I'm just saying that reverse-causality is reasonable, whereas with smoking it is not. Assuming causation from this particular correlation is harder than it is with smoking.

I think that we just have to look at the best explanation for the current data to determine causality, but it’s always a guess.

While "causality" is a strong word in the sentence above, the data is much stronger than simple correlation. Of course, outright causality has not been established, but the evidence to determine a predictive association is strong.

This is where explaining how causality is established really helps people understand what they are reading better, especially when confronted with something that is not light reading and summarizes a much larger, even heavier read. In other words, instead of saying people don't understand, maybe help people to understand.

If you’re on the fence and reading this definitely give it another shot

    - a tiny step to do small one leg squat
    - a kettle bell or any weight for deadlift

once in the morning, once in the evening.. or maybe more as one sees fit, until you feel the drive to do more (usually a month of slow and pleasurable exercise will naturally lead to a desire to try more)

[0] real slow, like taichi slow.. no muscle burn, no fast breathing..

It's stats on stats on stats and essentially creates a "character health" panel for your own body. Charts, metrics, real time tracking and exportable data. There are achievement badges and social connections if that's your thing too (good for you and your SO).

For me, being able to see real-time metrics and real time improvement really amped up my motivation to go out an exercise. Rewards were no longer this mysterious ethereal thing that will maybe show up sometime in the future if I keep grinding. Day by day, I could see improvement and sure enough could feel it too.

Also, for most of the weenies here, an $800 purchase isn't too rough. They have decent $500 and $300 dollar options, but the available amount stats and tracking goes down.

It sounds like I can hit you a 1,000 times, you feel pain a 1,000 times and you still don't believe there's a causality.

"Every time we send 5 fire trucks to a fire, the damage is 10x than when we only send one fire truck. We've observed this 1000 times. And still you don't believe that the fire trucks are causing the damage."

In this case it should be absolutely clear that A (lots of trucks) aren't causing B (lots of damage), but rather a third aspect, C (size of fire) is causing both A and B. Insisting that A causes B will result in completely counterproductive interventions, like "send only one truck to all fires".

The same thing could be true for cardiovascular fitness. If people are sick, they're much less likely to running or hiking up a mountain. So rather than poor cardio fitness (A) causing high mortality (B), it could be that a third thing, sickness (C) is causing both A and B. If that is the case, then shaming people who are sick into trying to exercise, instead of making them healthy enough so that they feel like running, is likely to make things worse rather than better.

How do you tell the difference? Well the "gold standard" is randomized controlled trials. Pick 3,000 random people. Tell 1000 of them to exercise more, and 1000 of them to exercise less, and 1000 leave alone, and compare. If the "exercise more" group is healthier at the end of 10 years, that's decent evidence that "exercise more" is a useful intervention.

Failing that, you can think of other possible confounding factors and control for them. Don't just ask how much they exercise; ask how old they are, and how well they are, how stressed they are, and loads of other factors which might both cause both A and B, and use statistical methods to detect whether one of those factors is actually a better explanation than "A -> B".

The same scepticism would not be brought against many "hard science" experiments, even though they do the exact same thing, falsify alternative explanations until they have high certainty that they have causality.

There was a ted talk that said bicycle helmet laws would kill more people than save.

The reasoning was preventing people from riding would also prevent increased fitness, and more lives were lost from that than saved from accidents.

EDIT: I think this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

They might be more inclined to cycle because they don’t need to wear a helmet.

After years of cycling with helmet you get so used to it and it doesn’t bother you. But how many skip the bike because they never got used to wearing a helmet?

It was only a week but it was so refreshing. I think about this experience daily when driving because I think of how much time would be saved if people just knew absolutely when to take their turn and took it; instead of processing each decision and deciding based on their current mood. People knew the damn rules and norms.

So, I think it’s a function of having a critical mass, being necessary, and being embedded already as a norm. I don’t believe a city could make riding without a helmet legal and expect any sort of increase in safety …

1. Almost everyone cycles. So all drivers are themselves cyclists. So they treat other cyclists with consideration.

2. The road/cycle infrastructure is set up to separate cars and bikes wherever possible. And where they share routes, cars are often explicitly second class users ("auto te gast" - cars, you're guests).

3. In any collision between a car and a bike, the driver will almost always be the one found at fault.

Most biking in the US is biking shared with cars. You probably won't have a bike lane. Most likely, you aren't commuting or going to the grocery store - the grocery store might take 15 minutes of driving but 30 minutes of biking - if you can even go the most direct route legally. Longer biking sessions generally means more risk. I'll take the helmet in places that I must defend myself against automobiles on an unsafe path.

If you have to ride alongside cars, make sure you practice defensive riding.

Also look at those 'old' basic bikes they use there, you don't need more on those flatlands and everybody is fine with 20-25kmh. Add tech bros or generally young folks with fast ebikes and escooters going 50kmh and things change.

That's why we point to them. The infrastructure didn't exist in Holland either, until they choose to build it.

Even Amsterdam has streets which have 0 room, but generally city center is blocked/too expensive to most car traffic to even enter so they manage.

If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point. And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.

Many Dutch cities don't either, that's why they disallow cars entirely. Really only Rotterdam has spacious roads thanks to the bombings. Ann I understanding you correctly?

> And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.

I'm not sure where you are the casuality here. In my experience it's the more human centred infrastructure design that encourages a higher level of social engagement and respect for others.

But regardless I would find it tragic to condem certain cultures as being inherently incapable of these things.

> If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point.

It wasn't begun that long ago in the Netherlands. The vast majority of infrastructure has been built since the turn of the century. It takes a while for other places to really realise that their current models aren't working, and even longer for them to really learn the lessons of the Dutch.

But if you look at cities like London, Leipzig, Barcelona, Paris or further afield to Montreal for example then many cities are actually beginning to successfully integrate Dutch design practices.

Amsterdam’s answer to faster vehicles is to move them to the main road with other faster traffic. Although it is now moving to slow down nearly all traffic inside the city to a 30km/h limit, which will improve cyclist safety a lot.

I've fallen many times and not once I've hit my head. They are probably useful in high speed impacts, but then you are fucked anyways.

Gloves are much more useful on a daily basis. Saved my hand many times.

I've also seen a friend have a high-speed impact: he was airlifted to hospital, survived and has mostly recovered. Looking at the state of his helmet I have no doubt that he would have died at the scene without it.

They do use "change on approach" lights outside of the cities way more, but in cities it's usually only for trams and buses.

not riding a bike because a helmet is ??uncomfortable?? is ridiculous and probably self-selecting

There isn’t going to be anyone consciously thinking “I’m not gonna ride because I have to wear a helmet” but instead “eh I can’t be bothered riding” without digging too much in to why.

About finding my helmet, I always attach it together with the bike with the U lock. Unless I’m parked in a secure place where I let it hang on the handlebars.

I’m not especially advocating for mandatory helmets and I’m the first to say absence of helmet shouldn’t prevent you to ride, but if you are a regular cyclist, having one at hand is not a ridiculous idea.

Come on man, I have never rode a bicycle more expensive than $100 despite riding at least 5000km annually. I bet that your helmet costs more than all of my 3 bicycles.

Back when I did bike, I'd fall off and hit my (helmeted) head once a year or so.

I was always thankful for having a helmet.

Granted it was typically doing something stupid (jumping a curb or such), but still, I was thankful for having a helmet!

The down-voted comment of mine tells that gloves are far more useful than helmet for a bicycle rider. But I know I have messed with the holy cow so c'est la vie.

It might be the case that helmets are a net negative for casual riders. But whenever I've done a spontaneous unplanned dismount at 20mph I didn't find that knowing how to fall helped me much.

What was the circumstances (type of road and type of bike)? Have you touched the ground with any other parts of body except of palms, elbows and knees? If yes then consider to keep learning how to fall because your falling skill is not that proficient. If not then the helmet was not that useful.

(I guess it doesn’t work if you don’t have public healthcare)

People who don't use helmets for whatever reason would be more inclined to do so if they could just go pick one up, and didn't have to pay for them in a store. Even if those reasons are not that they are expensive. It's a great idea.

All the cities maintaining a bunch of locations full of helmets for free pickup would just create more waste. I bet people would pick them up and just discard them when it wouldn't be convenient to use them. And nobody wants to pickup and wear a discarded helmet that is dirty and was in the elements so there would be huge waste. You can have a similar effect without any waste by just having a class that teaches children to ride bycicles at school and tells them the benefits of helmets and keeps helmets there for that one class. This memory would be with you for life, and you'd make your own decision.

If helmets were cost prohibitive I'd be with you, I believe in using tax money for that kind of stuff, but price is not the reason people don't use helmets.

People do understand that with government programs, "free" means taxpayer funded. As in, almost everyone understands that. The comment isn't needed. Those comments are the reason I put things like "fare free public transport" - not because it is more realistic, but because arguing with these comments is exhausting.

Society is full of things other people helped pay for - and you most definitely use them. Your health insurance company pools money together to cover everyone's ills, for example. You don't pay individually for your infrastructure use - other people help you pay so that you can get electricity. And so on. You can't have modern society without this.

1. Redesign a 2-lane (each direction) highway into a 4-lane highway at the cost of several hundred million tax dollars, over the course of a few years.

2. Leave the highway smaller. Re-zone a city to allow small shops within residential neighborhoods, and up-zone all residential land to allow up to 4-story townhomes and condos. Spend tens of millions of tax dollars building a robust cycling highway, and make it safe for people to accomplish basic errands within a close proximity to their home.

For #2, spending of tax dollars is less and people are healthier. You still have roads, but people need to drive on them much less often.

So when the next city proposes an $840M highway revamp [1], consider how you could spend 10% of that funding to increase mobility around the city for residents ($84M could build a lot of safe separated bike highways). While at the same time allowing private development to make natural improvements to neighborhoods by opening new corner stores and shops along bike routes

[1] https://www.i395-miami.com/

There is a reason why life expectancy was dropping in the US years before covid hit.

When it takes 50 years, the statistic probably doesn't hold because you will be dead by then due to the negative influence of smoking on your health.

Most humans are just incredibly bad at impulse control.

When we're bombarded with advertisements of highly caloric, processed, sugary foods engineered to flood our taste buds and trigger dopamine, we can't be surprised that people get addicted to it. Combine that with forms of entertainment, transportation, and a work culture that keep us sedentary, and it's no wonder many people struggle with being physically healthy.

People aren't going back to the farms, so we need to adopt new behaviors and norms around self control. There is simply no viable alternative.

I don't think it is very sustainable to have 50% of the population on a biologic medication to help self control, but hopefully it will help individuals and societies change norms.

Being fit is not just about low fat. It requires a similar discipline required to control what you eat.

There are plenty which are unrelated to self-control or personal discipline. One is a sugar tax (not a huge fan personally but it exists).

One I do like is to regulate the advertising and labeling of food. Frankly I'd like to know how many calories I'm eating or being persuaded to eat, pretty much all the time. This is a work in progress with the FDA gradually expanding the types of restaurants that are required to disclose caloric and nutrition info about their food. Frankly I'd like to see it required in advertisements too, if you're advertising a pizza, the advertisement should disclose that there are 2,000 calories in that pizza, many people actually are not aware.

Not that I ever thought they were serving health food at the Cheesecake Factory, but I recently learned that their peanut butter cheesecake is 1650 calories per slice! Almost a full day's calories in one slice of cake! Nearly everyone I've talked to about it knew it was a gut buster but no one guessed that high.

Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control. Apologies to C.F. but with the nation's obesity rate cresting 50% I consider this a wholly reasonable imposition on their free speech rights or whatever.

How is eating a cake from a store "nothing to do with self control". It's not like you were buying vegetables and turns out big sugar made the vegetables be worse for you. You not knowing if the cake was 800 calories or 1.6k calories makes it no less about self control. Even to avoid eating it at 1.6k, it's still all just self control.

I mean this is common sense, the more clearly you understand the negatives of an action, the more likely you are to avoid it. And we have plenty of evidence that this works to alter people's behavior through looking at the effects of e.g. cigarette labeling.

Like up until the 1950s we actually didn't have good evidence that cigarettes were bad for you, and doctors actually got on TV and endorsed specific brands, so a lot of people weren't sure. Eventually the studies were produced and doctors started recommending against smoking and smoking started to decline. It didn't decline because people became Badass Willpower Monks, it declined because they were given access to more and better information.

There is no amount of labeling that will make a different if there isn't a human expressing agency to read the label and take action.

I think there are tons of helpful strategies, but the critical infrastructure t Needed is more self actualized agency.

This isn't an insult or dismissal, but a hope we can all become better humans.

"It is also possible that the long-term reduction in BMR represents methodological artefacts. In the early years, measurements of BMR were often made using mouthpieces to collect respiratory gases, and recently such devices have been shown to elevate BMR by around 6%. A second possibility is that early measurements paid less attention to controlling ambient temperature to ensure individuals were at thermoneutral temperatures."

The authors suggest that the decreased consumption of saturated fats over the last 30+ years is likely to contribute to the reduction in basal metabolic rate and gains in weight. The mouse model component of the study provides some support.

It seems that a largely sedentary lifestyle free from exertion matches both.

It would be insightful to see the sensitivity analysis for BMR with respect to strength, activity, muscle mass, ect.

I know there is a body of data about environmental hormones and BMR, ect, but my understanding is that the impact is barely measurable with large sample sizes. I expect that it can't hold a candle to activity. In my personal experience, my BMR can easily modulate by 1000 calories based on body composition and behavior. That is a huge impact.

Or make life harder! Quit the elevator. Quit the automatic transmission (and car). Quit the online shopping.

Making some progress with self-checkouts and pointless lineups at airports.

Less jokingly (hard to outrun a bad diet) but more pedanticly: drinking less (alcohol and calorific beverages) might be a better start than eating less.

lower testosterone = lower lean body mass (you gain tens of pounds of muscle on TRT even without exercising)

lower lean body mass = lower BMR. an average doughy 200 pound guy and a 200 pound athlete have vastly different caloric requirements.

People are faced with the choice between eating more or living longer, and nearly everyone knows it.

Well compared to the food industry industry that's nothing. Incidentally they learned their trade from the tobacco industry who invested heavily in the junk food industry in the 60s. [1]

All to say, much of modern food (and the advertising around it) is designed to get people hooked on junk food from a very early age. So saying just eat less is a simplistic solution that requires people to act against a conditioning that has been aggressively imprinted on them from a very early age.

[1] https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-new...

Every solution to every problem involves overcoming ones own detrimental impulses in favor of positive ones.

That said, people can make pretty rapid weight loss without eating. skip eating 1 day a week and that is 30 lbs a year for an average obese man. skip 2 days/week and that is 60 lbs/year.

    > people can make pretty rapid weight loss without eating

I think conflating between mental health and eating is at the heart of the obesity epidemic. Nobody will die if they skip a few meals. They will suffer some moderate discomfort depending on how much they fixate on it.

I can go a week without eating and a few days is trivial. The longest a human has gone without food is 381 days and they lost 275 lbs

Instead, they are reinforcing that the path is clear, and the the barriers Are entirely psychological. Effort to build habits, effort to exert self control, effort to find solutions when you stumble.

If people are looking and waiting for a strategy that makes weight loss easier than inaction, they are bound for disappointment.

Some rare people find a passion that makes the process of getting healthy and fit more fun and easy than getting fatter, but that is exceedingly rare.

The first few weeks, at the end of a 10 minute sprint, my heart would be racing and I would be out of breath for 5 minutes after arrival.

I was amazed after 2 months of doing the same thing I wasn't out of breath, it took maybe 1 minute for my heart rate to slow back down.

The typical human body is very responsive when pushed.

If you've never lifted before and you hit the gym consistently and have the proper diet, you will get some serious "newb gains." The first year can be amazing.

But if you've lifted seriously for a decade, it's totally different. Muscle mass is very hard to add now.

Cardio gains from a coach potato introducing a serious routine will be incredible. I went from not being able to run more than 30 seconds to running a 5k in 4-5 months, and that's without pushing myself extremely hard.

The point is about how the body adapts.

My VO2 max as reported by my Apple Watch has been making steady gains, though I'm still far below average for my age.

I didn't train hard, just consistently.

The human body can make incredible cardiovascular leaps when starting from a relatively low point