The worst part is, after a short while, you actually cross this sort of threshold where you enjoy it and begin to look forward to it, and then you start to notice it is helping your mental as well as your physical health.
Just atrocious. It's almost like we were evolved for this.
This has never happened to me. I still hate it and I run at least 18 miles a week for going on twenty years. I feel like shit if I don’t run, but I still hate the actual activity.
it's crazy to me that there are people out there that are able to do things they don't enjoy doing by their own willpower just because it's good for them and I can't even get myself to do the things I enjoy doing.
I’m about to go on my 6 mile mile run and it is five thirty in the morning here.
I think the key for me is to just make the connection that the pain of not running (for me, the discomfort of my breathing being slightly worse when I’m really out of shape and just general feeling of shittiness) is worse than the activity itself. I also add treats to my run when I’m getting back into the habit. Fun size candy bars and the like. I also reserve my favorite podcasts for my run. I’m about to listen to behind the bastards which is always a good time.
Have you tried an activity you actually enjoy? I know that sounds a bit curt, but I gave up jogging for mountain biking and hiking, and now it is substantially easier to convince myself to get out and get started because I actually enjoy what I'm doing!
That shouldn't have been as revelatory for me as it was, but the current paradigm is that jogging, gym time, or other monotonous activities are what we should be doing, and that really just sucks the joy out of physical activity.
I have extremely limited amounts of time to do anything. My wife is ill and I’m her full time care giver. So I really only have running as an option. I wake up early when she is still sleeping and go. I prefer running to biking.
I like to think of it as a reverse hangover. Instead of a few hours of fun and a day of pain, i do a hangover on purpose for a few hours and get a whole day buzz.
It helps cuz i too like most people (?) hate exercise
I like to think of it as a reverse hangover. Instead of a few hours of fun and a day of pain, i do a hangover on purpose for a few hours and get a whole day buzz.
Just do something you actually enjoy instead? Fucking hell people are ridiculous, there's so many options to exercise, find the ones you actually enjoy!
There's a whole lot of stuff that people consider to be activities that are a perfect replacement for what the same people consider to be exercise, they'll love the former and hate the latter without realizing that if they just did the former often enough they wouldn't feel the need to do the latter at all.
I used to run a ton, got a smallish dog and now I go on walks and hikes instead, most people only consider that running is exercising of those three things but all of them are a form of exercising.
I've always hated team sports but I love climbing, kayaking, canoeing, snowshoeing... should I force myself to do team sports because that's what people think about when they think about sports or should I be doing the stuff I actually find enjoyable?
I’m the guy that originally responded saying that I dislike running even though I’ve been doing it religiously for a long time.
All your suggestions are wonderful here. I will get right on kayaking, hiking, and the like as soon as my wife miraculously is cured and I have free time to do all this stuff that someone with a good life can do. Otherwise, I will continue to do what I can (running at 5:30am before my wife wakes up) because my wife needs me all the time when she is awake because she is in hellish pain.
Please stop being a jackass to people. There is another person in this thread that did this the right way. Gently suggesting an alternative and not assuming they knew best. It would behoove you to understand that your particular situation isn’t universal and other people have different wants, needs, and responsibilities than you.
Even when I was young and healthy, I never looked forward to exercise and it never improved my mental health, even when people insisted that I do it all the time. I would always feel in a mental fog for the rest of the day after exercise. Any day without exercise and I was (and still am) very sharp mentally.
I love walking, my family has a farm and I grew up there playing walking and doing just the usual villager kid stuff. 20 years later and I love walking. I almost always walk on the way to home from work after taking the train (about 2.5 km) my friends call me crazy but it just feels good to walk and get lost in music and thoughts for half an hour or so everyday.