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Exercise and Fitness: bro science debunked


Iskaral Pust

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2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 I’ve always noticed that alcohol ruins my sleep, even a small amount.  It leaves me tired but unable to fall into deep sleep.  Plenty of people though say that alcohol helps them sleep.

Yeah, I have the same experience. I don't want to be a social pariah but I've found myself avoiding dinners just so I don't have to drink in the evening* due to the poor quality sleep that will inevitably follow. 

I assume people who say it helps them sleep means they fall asleep quicker. I do too but then I wake up constantly. 

*Instead I try to do brunch which allows me to, mostly, sober up in time for bed ;) 

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2 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

I own a Garmin Vivosport and I would take it with a very big grain of salt. I think it uses your heartrate and movement to determine your quality of sleep, and well, it recorded me as being asleep when I've been awake and have been at my desk for a couple of hours just because I wasn't moving my left hand. 

Oh, and I have occasional sleep records in the app even though I stopped wearing it to bed after a week. I can't make any sense of it.

Yeah my 945 has registered me as asleep long after I woke up in the mornings. It's had me as asleep while I'm actively using my phone, including checking the Garmin app.

Side note related to both the weight and fitness trackers issue : There's also been at least one very good study showing the calories they (fitness trackers in general) calculate for activities to often be wildly, wildly off. There's simply too much variation from individual to individual, and day to day to give a general you've walked / run / ridden / swum X distance therefore you've burnt X calories.

I don't trust those 'general health' stats at all.

But as far as a general step / sport tracker I have loved my last couple Garmins. Looking through the running stats definitely helps keep me motivated.

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I have heard a doctor friend say that everyone who owns a FitBit or similar gets no health benefit from one, and that it’s people who don’t have one who need one.

His reasoning is that if you care enough about your health and fitness to spend money on a FitBit, then you are probably already quite healthy, and the actual count of steps or imprecise estimates of health metrics won’t actually change that.  It’s the deeply sedentary people — with hypertension, severe cardiovascular problems and type 2 diabetes — who should be wearing a FitBit to fulfill a minimum daily amount of activity.

Also, steps (the original metric tracked) are a positive, but beyond a certain threshold aren’t really improving your health.  At that point you need to add actual exercise, not just walking, to further improve your health.

So if these devices help you track your running distance as you clock miles for a running program, or have a fun competition with friends on number of daily steps, then have fun with them.  But don’t get too invested in their potential for health improvement or indication.  You’re probably already quite healthy and your best work (exercise) is not accurately captured by any type of wrist device unless it comes with an EKG for your chest and a VOX mask.

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  • 7 months later...
On 5/15/2019 at 11:48 PM, RenlyIsNotRight said:

Now down to 207. Last time I was this thin was at least 3 years ago now.

Still doesn't feel like enough haha. Think I'm gonna see if I can't try to get under 200 - last time I weighed under 200 I was probably 20 and I was hanging in the upper 190s while swimming. But we'll see I guess. Pretty proud of myself regardless though.

Bumping an old af post of mine as I was passing through here as I do periodically in hopes of recapturing my personal forum glory days of 2012-2014ish, but this is really wild to read in retrospect considering in the ~8 months since I went all the way down to near 170 flat at one point.

Alas, I now feel like I'm starting to get up the other side of the plateau as I'm now averaging probably a little over 180. I think 177ish was really optimal for me but truth be told I've been stressed out adjusting to a new position at work (which happens to be at a Whole Foods so yeah stress eating has been getting pretty out of control), also recently (finally) moved out of my parents place, closer to the city, near a lot of bars and friends so my weekends have hit a level of debauchery not seen since my college years; granted I'm sure the novelty will wear off fairly soon especially considering I'm a lot closer to 30 than 20 at this point. It's also winter so I've been kinda stuck doing treadmill running as opposed to outside which I prefer to do when the weather is agreeable.

So idk, probably just a dry spell that I need to stay on myself about but I'm still paranoid about letting myself slip back into my old habits. But this was a nice reminder of how far I've come that not even a year ago I was stoked about being 207 which would terrify me nowadays haha.

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Honestly, Renly, that's pretty great. From 210(ish) to 180 is huge. I think there comes a point of diminishing returns as you noted. I did the same back in 2016, from about 210 to 175ish, and I was in super good shape. To do more though would likely require a commitment I was never prepared to do.

I did fall back into old habits, and as of last week I am at 208. 

But I have recommitted to fitness and healthy eating. I am following the same plan as 2016: I started by getting 10,000 steps a day (which once I started doing, was pretty easy to do). I'm currently averaging about 7,000 a day which is up quite a bit from a few weeks ago. 

For me, I fell off the wagon due to significant pain throughout my body. It was so bad that by 2017 I couldn't even move around my house in the morning (I was 38 then, I'm 40 now). Doctors couldn't figure it out until last spring when my pinky just decided to swell up like a sausage. I hadn't hurt it, and it was full of pain. My doc sent me to a rheumatologist and I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis (an auto-immune disease where my immune system essentially is attacking my joints, plus the bonus of bad skin!). I started biologic injections this summer, and now I am really pain free.

I am excited to get back into shape, and I wanted to share it as I go. Back in 2016 when I was in great shape, I was suffering from shoulder and hip pain (the first signs of the arthritis), so I feel like I never got to fully enjoy that time. I'm gonna make it happen.

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