A Sedentary Lifestyle

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metabolizm

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Ever since the UK went into lockdown in March, I've not been working, and my lifestyle has become much more sedentary than normal. Presumably as a direct consequence of this, my health seems to have gone completely down the pan, despite eating really well and trying to keep stress low. There's been insomnia, anxiety, varicocele aggravation, bladder issues, to name a few of the health problems I've encountered.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is anyone else surprised by just how terrible a sedentary lifestyle seems to be for us? I mean, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise - we all know that movement is good, and important, and Ray has talked about this a fair amount, while also admitting that he's pretty sedentary himself (I can't remember where he said this, but he did say it). He's also wary of exercise, and I worry that many of his readers and listeners might use this as an excuse for sitting on their arses, and then start wondering why they feel so bad all the time. (It's worth noting that his real concern is with overtraining, and lots of general movement is something he encourages heartily).

So, if you're struggling constantly with health problems that don't seem to be resolving, ask yourself whether you are moving enough. Try walking for two hours every day, and see if that doesn't bring some relief.
 

Maljam

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Completely agree, being sedentary makes me feel horrendous. I think Peats issue are with the long distance steady state running and over training as you say. Movement is vastly underrated.
 

Peater

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It's been a glorious day today and the lockdown is in name only if you just keep to yourself. No excuses. ;)

Try walking for two hours every day, and see if that doesn't bring some relief.

Exactly that! I felt much better after a nice walk in the "countryside"
 

gaze

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Same thing happened to me from quarantine, I lost some weight, so I think the negative symptoms are from muscle catabolism from not using them at all.
 

JudiBlueHen

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Agree. But there is also the added problem of the angst caused by the stress of not being in control of our own lives, and having almost no visibility into our future ability to conduct "normal" commerce and activities with people. So it is sometimes difficult to find the will to get out and move around, but it is even more essential than before.
 
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I think if you have to make any big effort to exercise in a scheduled form it probably may not be as good as it being more spontaneous but uplifting in more better "up times" that should come about based on actual health and well-being/interests of a personal sort.

You likely know that lots of people try and "hit the gym" or exercise a lot to reach some unclear and sometimes extreme ideal of what they might think is healthy and good for them, sacrificing sometimes lots of health in an attempt to ironically gain more of it (and also to look more appealing to their target sex appeal/"romantic" interests).

Scheduled or fixed routines are like a commitment to something because you want it to work out well for you, but it isn't the same thing as just doing something whenever you feel like you want to do it or need it, schedule or regimens aside.

I mean, do some people think you must force yourself to do exercising if you have nothing inside giving you that push? Perhaps the focus should not be on the exercise or avoidance of being too sedentary but on the reasons some would be too inactive.

Like I eat everyday and usually enjoy it, but that does not mean I will force feed myself 'X' amount of calories or the like if I had zero appetite or felt tremendously sick in said window of time.

Nothing wrong with some exercises and such, but sticking to a routine might be more of a disservice for some than just playing it by ear -- or having a naturally active and fulfilling lifestyle of some sort that does not call for this rigid "gym sesh" mindset -- or sometimes highly stressful workout plans, reps/ranges and durations so strictly followed to a fine line by some.

You are supposed to design the workout plan dynamically based on needs, energy and body awareness -- not the other way around where you sacrifice yourself to meet the demands of a fixed plan that is static.
 

Energizer

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Personally I am not against exercise but forced exercise and forced movement is often counterproductive if a person is already in a weakened state and could be harmful.

Ray himself has said he always has lived a very sedentary life and doesn't seem to expend any effort trying to devise a quota or regimen to appease traditional cultural mores of "fitness" and "being active" and also said his only form of "exercise" was going on a skiing trip once every ten years.

While I enjoy going on walks into the forest, I think it's more the novel stimulation of being in nature and the sunlight that is therapeutic, the movement might be a minor contribution but I think it has been a bit exaggerated by fitness people. Being in nature is very therapeutic, imo.

‘Forest Bathing’ Is Great for Your Health. Here’s How to Do It

You simply walk into the forest. Gotta love clickbait headlines.
 
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JohnA

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Exercise (and not just lots of walking, but activities that actually raise the heart rate into the aerobic zone) is probably the most common piece of “conventional wisdom” that people on this forum excessively demonize.

I feel my most athletic and manly, and most alive when I’m consistently running outside in the aerobic zone (I follow the Maffetone 180-age as the heart rate max) and playing other active sports such as tennis.

We always talk about going back to the metabolism of young children, who in addition to being warmer than most adults also seem to have boundless energy to run around all day... There’s definitely some circular thing going on where they run around more because they have more energy, but the running around also improves their energy creating systems.
 
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It could just be my speculation, but don't lots of those "health articles" that promote exercise use lots of shoddy science on the so-called "benefits" of endurance exercise, resistance training and etc. to argue in favor of it as if there are no cons? The whole "exercise more" preaching doesn't seem to help the increasing rate of deaths from heart problems, cancer, diabetes and loads of other conditions people face more and more anyways.

When you repeatedly do something one might eventually feel that what they do is okay or even good. For example look at stressed out and ill people who still continue to work, exert themselves, embody themselves in a self-fulling stress cycle and "press on" mindlessly despite their ill health possibly making it clear that it is the source of their destruction as they ride it to their grave with a misconstrued impression of it.

They might mention (off the top of my head): vague references to high-pulse during exercise being intrinsically good for some reason, while also mentioning that their lower resting pulse is also good (mainstream view probably leans more in to the idea that lower pulse is better, going off the whole "rate of living" theory or etc. maybe); might mention "inverse relations" between those who are somewhat active and living longer vs. those less active and dying more often; might mention mental benefits of those "feeling better" or "reporting better" results from initial testing; and also might mention things like bodyweight, bodyfat, BMI, and incidence of "heart disease" or such (which of course doesn't say much -- just being lean and able to run a lot isn't exactly proven to be any sort of irrefutable health pinnacle).

I also think FAO or just "burning loads of fat" at high rates is gospel to some in the fitness world, whereas here you'll definitely get decent rebuttal on that subject. Just Googling "exercise benefits" and some of the propped up articles in favor of it tend to heavily rely on medical journals, government sites and inconclusive data that you could make heads or tails of regarding exercise and pros vs. cons.

Also, another "angle" to the whole discussion on exercise vaguely being good or not in and of itself is the correlation between desire to do exercise and health. Often many may not make the connection that those who seek out exercise and enjoy it (not in a forceful way) are already in a better plane of health than those who may be avoiding it due to depression, metabolic issues, feeling weak/unmotivated, etc. It becomes really easy to say that "exercise is what's good for them" when you could just as easily state that "their good health led them to be more favorable toward enjoyable activities" which then more reasonably can explain the so-called "inverse relations" between those who exercise or do active, fun things and are less likely to die from 'X' cause vs. those who don't exercise and die because they had suboptimal metabolism, hormones, desire to partake in activities, you name it -- not merely because they did not "exercise" point blank.

Personally the only valid pursuit I had regarding a need for lots of exercise routinely was for sports -- but since that ship sailed I can't find any real driving force to want to just "get out there and exercise" merely for the sake of ... just exercising? Pretty empty in my view, but it is true that some relish in it psychologically whereas some find it pointless as if it has no meaning behind why you should get up and do it other than a driving force of fear regarding your state of health if you don't (which sounds like it's off on the wrong foot to me, but some literally do exercise purely to try and avoid bad health rather than out of real, undivided enjoyment or "craving" for it initially).

The chicken and the egg problem. Does one use exercise to feel good as a result of the exercise/physical benefits, or do you think exercise is supposed to make you feel good and thus you use that point as a self-serving mode of reassurance in your endeavors/efforts? Not saying there is no middle-ground, but often
 
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Jib

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Been walking a lot lately. I do strength training as well but don't always feel like it.

Esther Gokhale has some great videos on YouTube about walking. I wasn't engaging my glutes. Feels much lower impact now as well as a strengthening exercise. Funnily enough since improving my gait, walking seems a lot more attractive to me. I just want to do it more. I've heard, and it also feels, that walking reduces cortisol. Not only the movement, but being outside in nature.

A couple hours or the recommended 5 miles of walking a day seems like a lot because I've been so sedentary. But it's one lifestyle change I'm working towards. Doing 2 or 3 miles a day to start.
 
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Yeah, I'm lucky in that I can be in my local park, and it's big, in less than one minute, so am walking 3-4 miles a day. It has just become routine and I miss it when I don't.
 

Quelsatron

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I think if you have to make any big effort to exercise in a scheduled form it probably may not be as good as it being more spontaneous but uplifting in more better "up times" that should come about based on actual health and well-being/interests of a personal sort.

You likely know that lots of people try and "hit the gym" or exercise a lot to reach some unclear and sometimes extreme ideal of what they might think is healthy and good for them, sacrificing sometimes lots of health in an attempt to ironically gain more of it (and also to look more appealing to their target sex appeal/"romantic" interests).

Scheduled or fixed routines are like a commitment to something because you want it to work out well for you, but it isn't the same thing as just doing something whenever you feel like you want to do it or need it, schedule or regimens aside.

I mean, do some people think you must force yourself to do exercising if you have nothing inside giving you that push? Perhaps the focus should not be on the exercise or avoidance of being too sedentary but on the reasons some would be too inactive.

Like I eat everyday and usually enjoy it, but that does not mean I will force feed myself 'X' amount of calories or the like if I had zero appetite or felt tremendously sick in said window of time.

Nothing wrong with some exercises and such, but sticking to a routine might be more of a disservice for some than just playing it by ear -- or having a naturally active and fulfilling lifestyle of some sort that does not call for this rigid "gym sesh" mindset -- or sometimes highly stressful workout plans, reps/ranges and durations so strictly followed to a fine line by some.

You are supposed to design the workout plan dynamically based on needs, energy and body awareness -- not the other way around where you sacrifice yourself to meet the demands of a fixed plan that is static.
Your desire to spontaneously exercise is heavily dependent on outside factors. I live in a half wasteland and have to keep my bike inside due to theft risks, there goes a lot of my spontaneous will to exercise. Having a nice beach to swim at vs having to go 30 minutes to the public swimming pools, being alone vs having a friend or brother you can wrestle and race, chopping wood, etc. Your choice of planned exercise is also very important for how much you want to do it, compare team sports vs weightlifting vs running on a treadmill, the attraction is very different but the healthiness isn't necessarily proportional to that.
 

Jessie

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I think sedentary lifestyles are a sign of a high serotonin personality, and thus almost always tend to be unhealthy. But I think it's also important to distinguish the absence of sedentary from the excessive workout culture of today. You have people stuck in traffic jams on their way to a gym so they can ride their stationary bikes, lol. This lifestyle can also breed the high serotonin personalty. I think both the lack of movement and exercise are unhealthy. Instead, healthful activities would be walks in nature, gardening, recreational sports, etc. Even workouts that rely on body weight resistance (pushups, situps, pullups, etc.) are probably okay. But I'm not sold on all this cardio and iron pumping culture of today.

EDIT: also, fwiw, many centenarian cultures around the world show a surprisingly low level of exercise in comparison to western populations.
 

TheSir

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Exercise (and not just lots of walking, but activities that actually raise the heart rate into the aerobic zone) is probably the most common piece of “conventional wisdom” that people on this forum excessively demonize.

I feel my most athletic and manly, and most alive when I’m consistently running outside in the aerobic zone (I follow the Maffetone 180-age as the heart rate max) and playing other active sports such as tennis.

We always talk about going back to the metabolism of young children, who in addition to being warmer than most adults also seem to have boundless energy to run around all day... There’s definitely some circular thing going on where they run around more because they have more energy, but the running around also improves their energy creating systems.
What many miss is that exercise is something you will crave when your energy production and oxygenation are good enough. For example, many are at a level of health where walking isn't stressful, but a stimulating leisure activity. To someone with higher state of health, same would be true for jogging. I'm personally at a level where I crave to go on long walks a couple of times a day. It satisfies an itch and improves my mood/metabolism, the two of which are fundamental characteristics of healthy behavior in the Peatarian framework. As such, to a person of sufficient level of health, aerobic exercising is very much a pro-metabolic activity - so long as there exists a craving for it.
 

Recoen

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I used to lift but more because it was keeping my stress hormones high so I would feel “normal”. I had to take a few years off weightlifting as my health crashed and I lost a lot of muscle from recurring bouts of rhabdomyolysis. I now feel an immense desire to lift and am putting on muscle again as I am in a way better health state. I have been doing a full body lift every 4 days or so. Depending on how my muscles feel, and if my temps and pulse rate are good. I am having “newbie” gains again and it’s nice to see the muscle and strength come back quickly. I also don’t kill myself and am staying more in the hypertrophy rep range because I found a strength range was destroying my CNS.
 

JohnA

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EDIT: also, fwiw, many centenarian cultures around the world show a surprisingly low level of exercise in comparison to western populations.

I think there are two things here.

1. Sure, people in centenarian cultures don't run marathons or deadlift in gyms, but they often did a lot of everyday activities that raised their heart rate into the aerobic zone (working in the fields, walking long distances while carrying heavy loads, etc.). John Day's The Longevity Plan (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MECO99C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) does a good job chronicling how a lot of people in one Chinese village continued doing strenuous fieldwork and housework into their 90s.

2. Centenarian cultures today don't look like what these cultures looked like when the current centenarians were growing up. These villages may have cars and tvs now, but the current centenarians were born in the 1910s/1920s and grew up in an era that required much more physical labor. Even if they've been sedentary for the last 20+ years (which like I said earlier, often isn't the case), these centenarians developed robust aerobic / mitochondrial bases over the first half of their lives. This probably gives them a lot of protection and reserves to use in their later years.
 
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Jessie

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I think there are two things here.

1. Sure, people in centenarian cultures don't run marathons or deadlift in gyms, but they often did a lot of everyday activities that raised their heart rate into the aerobic zone (working in the fields, walking long distances while carrying heavy loads, etc.). John Day's The Longevity Plan (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MECO99C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) does a good job chronicling how a lot of people in one Chinese village continued doing strenuous fieldwork and housework into their 90s.

2. Centenarian cultures today don't look like what these cultures looked like when the current centenarians were growing up. These villages may have cars and tvs now, but the current centenarians were born in the 1910s/1920s and grew up in an era that required much more physical labor. Even if they've been sedentary for the last 20+ years (which like I said earlier, often isn't the case), these centenarians developed robust aerobic / mitochondrial bases over the first half of their lives. This probably gives them a lot of protection and reserves to use in their later years.
I agree, well said.
 

Uselis

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Feb 5, 2015
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I think sedentary lifestyles are a sign of a high serotonin personality, and thus almost always tend to be unhealthy. But I think it's also important to distinguish the absence of sedentary from the excessive workout culture of today. You have people stuck in traffic jams on their way to a gym so they can ride their stationary bikes, lol. This lifestyle can also breed the high serotonin personalty. I think both the lack of movement and exercise are unhealthy. Instead, healthful activities would be walks in nature, gardening, recreational sports, etc. Even workouts that rely on body weight resistance (pushups, situps, pullups, etc.) are probably okay. But I'm not sold on all this cardio and iron pumping culture of today.

EDIT: also, fwiw, many centenarian cultures around the world show a surprisingly low level of exercise in comparison to western populations.

Indeed, they do but usually their lifestyle built in a way that you have to move a good amount. Using legs for transportation, some sort of labor mostly farming, playing some games as a mean to socialize, etc. This type lifestyle builds CO2 which as we know central part of all Peat philosophy.
 

Uselis

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Personally I am not against exercise but forced exercise and forced movement is often counterproductive if a person is already in a weakened state and could be harmful.

Ray himself has said he always has lived a very sedentary life and doesn't seem to expend any effort trying to devise a quota or regimen to appease traditional cultural mores of "fitness" and "being active" and also said his only form of "exercise" was going on a skiing trip once every ten years.

While I enjoy going on walks into the forest, I think it's more the novel stimulation of being in nature and the sunlight that is therapeutic, the movement might be a minor contribution but I think it has been a bit exaggerated by fitness people. Being in nature is very therapeutic, imo.

‘Forest Bathing’ Is Great for Your Health. Here’s How to Do It

You simply walk into the forest. Gotta love clickbait headlines.

Somebody mentioned in this forum that Ray likes to walk and sawing ☺
 

Runenight201

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Un or negatively stimulated sedentary behavior is degenerative. Positively stimulated behavior, even if sedentary, is generative.

A negative physiological response to movement is degenerative, while a positive physiological response to movement is restorative.
 

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