Do Your Workouts Feel Like a Chore?

<h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; direction: ltr; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="line-height: 11px;">by Mark Sisson @ marksdailyappple.com</span></span></h1> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <img alt="todolist2" class="alignright" height="260" src="http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg158/MDA2008/MDA%202012/todolist2.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin: 0px 0px 2px 7px; max-width: 100%; padding: 4px;" title="Do Your Workouts Feel Like a Chore?" width="320" />Evolution tends to reinforce healthy, beneficial behaviors that improve the survival of members of a species by making them enjoyable. <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/sex-health-benefits/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="8 Health Reasons to Have Sex (As If You Needed Them)">Sex</a>, <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-manufacture-the-best-night-of-sleep-in-your-life/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="How to Manufacture the Best Night of Sleep in Your Life">sleep</a>, socializing, and <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/yet-another-primal-primer-animal-fats/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="A Primal Primer: Animal Fats">animal fat</a> either feel good, taste good, and sometimes feel <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">and </em>taste good at the same time not “just because” but because they are necessary components of a healthy, (re)productive lifestyle. And it’s not just the act that feels good. Evolution has also reinforced the anticipation of the behavior. At the prospect of <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/a-guide-to-maintaining-a-healthy-sex-drive/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="A Guide to Maintaining a Healthy Sex Drive">sex</a>, we become aroused, horny, randy, or whatever you want to call the pleasure of anticipation. Those long, delicious yawns that herald the surge of melatonin and promise excellent sleep as we slip beneath the cool covers with a good book? Nothing better. And I still get happy stomach butterflies when friends are coming for dinner and the scent of crackling <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/pork-belly-croutons-with-kale-salad/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Pork Belly Croutons with Kale Salad">pork skins</a> fills the kitchen.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <span id="more-50238" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> Okay, but what about exercise? There’s the <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-get-high-naturally/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="How to Get High on Life: 10 Natural Ways to Feel on Top of the World">endorphin and endocannabinoid high</a> from exercising intensely, but that exists to keep us moving during an activity as we near the physiological breaking point. It doesn’t get us off our butts in the first place. <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">If exercise is so good for us – and it is – why doesn’t everyone crave it? Why does it feel like a chore?</strong> Why do many people dread it so much?</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Here’s the thing: exercise wasn’t always optional.</strong> If we didn’t chase down the antelope, we wouldn’t have dinner. If we didn’t climb that forty foot acacia tree, our glycogen-starved muscles wouldn’t get the <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-honey-a-safer-sweetener/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Is Honey a Safe(r) Sweetener?">honey</a>. If we didn’t make the six mile walk to the spring, we wouldn’t have water to drink. We <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">had</em> to do these “exercises” if we wanted to survive on a day-to-day basis. There was no “Oh, I’ll just sit on this couch and eat microwaved pot pies and go to the gym some other time.” <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">There was no selective pressure to evolve a love of exercise because we were gonna do it anyway</strong>.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> Today, exercise is in a weird place. Exercise is optional, but it’s also not. Though being sedentary remains disastrous to our health, circumstance no longer compels us to move. There’s no trench-coated goon pointing a gun at us and nodding toward the treadmill, but plenty of “authorities” point their fingers and strongly recommend exercise on pain of disease. We’re buried in studies proclaiming the essentiality of exercise for good health. The message is clear and overwhelming: we’d better work out if we want to be healthy and live long. Just like they tell us we need to work the crappy soul-sucking job to pay the bills, they tell us we need to exercise for thirty minutes a day to stave off disease. <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">For most people living in the first world…</strong></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Exercise is something you do to lose weight. It’s a mechanistic way to churn through the calories you’ve eaten and make room for the <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dear-mark-maximum-4000-calories-a-week-of-exercise/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Dear Mark: Maximum 4,000 Calories a Week of Exercise?">calories</a> you want to eat.</strong></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Exercise is something you do even though it’s unpleasant. It’s like brushing your <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/nutritional-cures-for-damaged-teeth/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Beyond Sugar and Soda: Nutritional Cures for Damaged Teeth">teeth</a>, taking out the trash, and emptying the cat litter.</strong></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Exercise is about attaining a far-off goal.</strong></div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Meanwhile, the journey – the actual experience of exercising, of moving your body through space and time, of challenging your physical capabilities – is forgotten.</strong> It’s not just forgotten, it’s willfully ignored. We actually try to shut it out, because the act of exercising is all pain and suffering and drudgery. It’s the goal that matters to us, the weight lost, the<a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/gain-weight-build-muscle/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle">weight lifted</a>, the miles logged, the calories burned, the <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/health-vanity/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Mirror, Mirror on the Wall">beach body attained</a>, the tickets to the gun show redeemed.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">The evidence suggests that this paradigm doesn’t work all that well.</strong> A <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-014-9301-6" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" target="_blank" title="Is it fun or exercise? The framing of physical activity biases subsequent snacking">series of three recent studies</a> illustrates this. In the first, researchers gave healthy adult women (most of them overweight) a map of a mile-long outdoor walking course and told them to walk it for half an hour. Half were told to treat the walk as exercise and monitor their exertion, half were told to enjoy the walk and listen to music. Both groups spent the same 30 minutes <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-walking/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="The Definitive Guide to Walking">walking</a> the same course, but only the exercising group felt grumpy and fatigued. And when they had lunch, the group who’d “exercised” consistently chose soda over water, pudding over applesauce, and ate far more calories than the “fun” group.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> The second study placed a group of men on the same mile loop. Half “exercised,” half walked for fun. After the walk, they were given plastic baggies, access to an unlimited bowl of M&Ms, and instructions to fill the bags with as many as they desired. The exercise group filled their bags with twice as much candy as the fun group.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> Finally, the researchers approached runners as they finished a relay marathon race and offered them a choice of snacks: a gooey chocolate bar or a “healthy” granola bar. Those who said the race had been difficult and unpleasant were more likely to choose the chocolate, while those who’d enjoyed the race usually chose the granola bar.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">When working out feels like a chore, we demand compensation upon completion, often in the form of junk food.</strong> This can derail weight loss efforts, but it also perpetuates an abusive relationship with physical activity. There’s also evidence, at least in non-human animals, that <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016643" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" target="_blank" title="The Effects of Voluntary, Involuntary, and Forced Exercises on Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Motor Function Recovery: A Rat Brain Ischemia Model">voluntary exercise is less stressful than involuntary or forced exercise</a>. If that’s the case, workouts that feel like chores heap additional systemic <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/rethinking-stress-it-could-save-your-life/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Rethinking Stress: It Could Save Your Life">stress</a> on top of the local stress the exercise already applies to the muscles. This could make it harder to <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/7-things-impair-workout-recovery/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="7 Things You May Be Doing That Impair Workout Recovery">recover from exercise</a> and easier to recover from <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/15-concrete-ways-to-play/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="15 Concrete Ways to Play">play</a> – even if the total work done for each was identical.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">How do we change our relationship with physical activity?</strong> How can we reframe exercise to make it less unpleasant and more effective? How can we train ourselves to appreciate the journey of movement?</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> Reframing our own activities and appreciating movement for movement’s sake can be tough. You won’t have a guy in a white coat wielding a clipboard and considerable amounts of authority telling you to “enjoy the <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/17-reasons-to-walk-more-this-year/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="17 Reasons to Walk More This Year">walk</a>” you’re about to take like the people in the studies.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> You can’t expect to make everything fun and games. Few people think of hill sprints as “fun.” I can’t ever recall seeing a powerlifter rock a Cheshire grin in the power cage. But it has to be rewarding. You have to get something from it immediately. The activity must be its own compensation. <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">The key, I think, is finding immediate value in the activity rather than relying on some far off goal, like weight loss, to motivate you.</strong> The weight loss, the hypertrophy, the fitness gains, all those “bigger” goals will happen anyway, but they’re not enough of a primary motivator for most people. I mean, everyone has those goals. They’re the reason most people decide they need to start exercising and why there are <a href="http://www.ihrsa.org/media-center/2011/4/5/us-health-club-membership-exceeds-50-million-up-108-industry.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" target="_blank" title="U.S. Health Club Membership Exceeds 50 Million, Up 10.8%; Industry Revenue Up 4% as New Members Fuel Growth ">over 50 million gym memberships</a> in this country. But by and large, <a href="http://greatist.com/health/exercise-weight-loss-071213" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" target="_blank" title="Americans Are Working Out More Than Ever. Why Aren’t We Losing Weight?">they’re not reaching those goals</a>. Something’s gotta give.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> That’s easier said than done. Undoing a lifetime of acculturation isn’t easy. You have to willingly appreciate the flowers along the sidewalk, the birds in the trees above, the sunlight shining down, the refreshing sensations of unused muscles finally used. You have to realize that our bodies are built to move and need to move. We’ve got these shoulders that rotate almost 360 degrees. We can draw our knees up to our chins and touch our toes with straight legs and do the splits (in theory). It’s a crime not to use them – and you have to <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">feel </em>that. You have to find something of worth in the exercise as you’re doing it.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> That could be a PR in the squat, or discovering that <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/15-reasons-to-sprint-more-this-year/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="15 Reasons to Sprint More This Year">sprinting</a> up the steep hill outside your place is getting a lot easier. It could be the the perfect high-five shared with a <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/p90x-and-crossfit/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="P90X and CrossFit">CrossFit</a> bro after Fran that seems to make time stop and the universe shudder for a moment. Or maybe it’s the meditative <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/flow/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Total Immersion: How to Recognize and Tap Into the Power of Flow">flow state</a> you reach when training, the peace of <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/hiking-around-the-world-what-to-eat/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Dear Mark: Hiking Around the World">hiking</a> through an ancient redwood forest, or chatting with your power-walking partner. It can also be the sheer joy we feel doing something we love to do, like play <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ultimate-frisbee/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #668318; line-height: inherit; outline: none;" title="Ultimate Frisbee">Ultimate Frisbee</a> (winning doesn’t hurt).</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">It took me a long time to reach that place, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I suggest you try to do the same</strong></div> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />link to article: <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/do-your-workouts-feel-like-a-chore/#ixzz35RZbS3zh" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #003399; line-height: inherit; outline: none;">http://www.marksdailyapple.com/do-your-workouts-feel-like-a-chore/#ixzz35RZbS3zh</a></span>

attitude, Determination, exercise and fitness, fitness, fitness goals, good habits, healthy lifestyle, Motivation, strategy, strength, weightloss, workouts

Do Your Workouts Feel Like a Chore?

by Mark Sisson @ marksdailyappple.com Evolution tends to reinforce healthy, beneficial behaviors that improve the survival of members of ...