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squidlogic10/11/20245 repliesview on HN

In my experience fitness is less about self control or will power and more about creating routines that lead to fitness.

For example, I have a routine of going to a group fitness class at my gym in the morning. I don't need to summon willpower, I just have a morning routine that involves doing x thing at y time. No thought required.

Given the abundance of options for fitness classes and meal plan services, you really can just put this on auto-pilot and have a lifestyle that is healthier than 99% of your peers.


Replies

ethbr110/11/2024

> Given the abundance of options for fitness classes and meal plan services...

This is part of what's fucked up about modern American lifestyles.

We shouldn't be promoting layering healthy behaviors (fresh foods and exercise) on top of our default lives -- we should be doing a better job of engineering our environment to make those things the default for all people.

F.ex. what if we highly taxed automobile entry into urban cores and shopping districts?

llamaimperative10/11/2024

Unfortunately we know that simply convincing people to change their behavior is very, very, very fucking hard. Individuals can and do pull it off, yes, but we're talking about a society level change that needs lots of people to succeed at this.

It is empirically and demonstrably ineffective as a solution.

skeeter202010/11/2024

Routines help because they reduce the impact and uniqueness of the good behaviour. Another approach is to do things that have high positive pay-off but include health benefits you wouldn't target but get "for free". Example: I ride my bike to work because it's awesome, faster and makes me feel superior. That I get exercise and help out the earth is a side effect; I'd probably still ride my bike if it was unhealthy and produced more CO2

justinator10/11/2024

Habits are great, but I'm in great shape because what I do is fun. When it's not fun I called it "training" and that's usually for some huge goal that'll at least be fun to look back at 10, 20 years down the line to marvel that I did a thing.

I guess what I want to express is habits are one step closer to a lifestyle change and that's what keeps one ultimately healthy (mentally, too). We can't have nightmare commutes to soul-sucking jobs to continually have people addicted to looking at screens and think that there's no fallout. Adding, "but now there are drugs!" isn't an advancement.

elijaht10/14/2024

There is still a certain degree of willpower involved in routines. I wakeup every morning and workout, and every morning I have to fight my brain to get out of bed. I've been doing that for 10 years.

That being said - I do feel like reducing the amount of willpower needed is the key. I love junk food, but if I never buy it at a grocery store it's much easier to cut it out. If I have no chips in the house I could still get some at the corner store, but I need to be much less disciplined than if the chips were in my pantry