Reframing physical activity?

distinctlybeautiful

I haven't formed a solid opinion or looked into the studies mentioned in this article, but I thought it was interesting and am curious what y'all think.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/losing-weight-may-require-some-serious-fun/?_r=0

msf74

Very interesting. Thank you for posting the link.

This line of reasoning:

“The more fun we have,” she concluded, “the less we’ll feel the need to compensate for the effort” with food.

strikes me as rather obvious though. Food and drink clearly can mitigate feelings of discomfort, pain, anxiety and so on because it is a pleasurable experience. If the exerciser perceives the activity to fall in that category it may drive them towards food. If they see it as pleasurable then that driver is not there.

Packerjohn

The article quotes an associate professor of marketing as lead for the study. Not sure about their qualifications to make conclusions involving exercise.

Would much rather see the thoughts of an exercise psychologist on this idea

kommodevaran

A great article. I enjoyed reading things I have been thinking but not really been able to put into words.

KassLea22

I think a large percentage of why many people give up on an exercise routine is that they don't like doing it in they view it as a chore. I think if you can find a type of exercise that you like to do, and then exercise becomes your entertainment and you're more likely to stick with it. That's why I always suggest people try a variety of different types of exercises and classes to find something they like. I personally like weightlifting so I go to the gym and have fun when I do it. But when I was in college I used to love yoga and Pilates and I did that six times a week because I thought it was so fun.

I'm not a doctor or a personal trainer or anything like that, but I did work in a gym for years in college and I've been going to the gym several days a week for years and years now so it's just an observation.

4legsRbetterthan2

It is definitely interesting food for thought.

I would be interested to see longer term results as opposed to just a one time investigation. Does walking regularly, even when you try to keep it fun, end up becoming more of a chore just out of obligation? Do these observations hold up over time? After all, one day is pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of things.

NorthCascades

Everything in the article seems pretty obvious and straightforward.

The pleasure of riding a bike is its own reward. I get home happier and more fulfilled, of course I'm less likely to want a treat to pick my spirits up when my spirits are already high. If I don't get to go for a bike ride, I'm more likely to turn to iced cream for solace.

jeepinshawn

Idk I think it is all in how you are raised. If you are raised to put a lot of emotion and or are rewarded for doing well at something with special treats, as an adult you will continue to seek solace or emotional satisfaction out of those same treats. Now though as an adult you don't have mom and dad their giving them out on a limited basis so you treat yourself much more often.

I have to consciously tell myself it's just a cookie or donuts or pizza or whatever it is food. It will not make me feel any better, in fact if I log it and see what it will do to my numbers that is often enough to make me not eat it. I get some personal satisfaction from hiking, walking, and running, but they don't make me happier or more fulfilled. I do them because I enjoy not being fat anymore and I want to stay this way.

FreyasRebirth

I thought that was common sense. Ask a bunch of 3rd graders how much they love gym, then ask them how much they love recess. When I was little, a lot of the kids tried to skip lunch completely because they were so desperate to go for a run, er, play.

88olds

Pickleball. There are a lot of places where you can get into a game by just showing up. The learning curve is short. Loads of fun.

DannyYMi54321

My father had serious issues. I wasn't allowed to participate in sports, other extracurriculars, go on class field trips etc. Not a normal childhood. I really wanted to be like the other boys and play sports. So as an adult, still trying to shake all of that off, I really enjoy my time at the gym with the friends I've met there.

distinctlybeautiful

@msf74 I wonder if the line you quoted also implies that when people are working hard at exercise but not enjoying it that they feel they've earned more calories or earned a treat, so it's not always necessarily to mitigate negative feelings but to reward themselves if that makes sense.

@kasslea22 I agree. I think that's a pretty commonly accepted idea. I think the article is attempting to address why some people who do stick to their exercise routines don't lose weight, so they're looking at perceptions of physical activity and whether there's a connection between that and consumption.

@4legsRbetterthan2 I think it could go either way in the long term as far as staying enjoyable or becoming a chore. If you enjoy walking and do it regularly because you choose to, not because you feel obligated, I'd imagine it doesn't become a chore. I imagine that would, for most people, involve flexibility and not forcing yourself to do it if you don't want to. I think it can require some vigilance to keep an activity enjoyable. I love to lift, but over the last six months I've found myself heavily focused on chasing results and getting discouraged because I haven't been succeeding. Now that I've realized my shift in thinking, I'm shifting it back, and with that I'm starting to enjoy myself more again!

@FreyasRebirth Good point!

@88olds Oh pickleball.. that takes me back! I haven't played since middle school.

canadianlbs

i guess it's interesting, but i found it to be like a lot of similar content right now: very framed through the enormous monochrome lens of 'zomgs obesity such a problem what do we dooooooooo about it'. idk if confirmation bias is the right term, or it's just me overusing another trope that gets overused everywhere. but i do find myself wanting to use it because it does somehow give me the feeling the reporter found exactly the results he/she was looking for. or expecting to hear.

anyway. my point being more that my personal experience is the opposite. if i view what i'm doing as just goofing off or just regular life, then i'm not even aware of any 'health' benefits that i'd want to foster. i goof off eating; i goof off riding; no causation to it, just the correlation that comes from me being in a mental mode where i'm goofing off. case in point, i used to ride 20km round trip a day and stop at the gas station on the way home on most days for smarties to eat for dinner. not because i was 'working out' and i wanted to be 'rewarded' for it, but because i didn't feel like i was working out. i didn't take either the riding or the smarties that seriously.

whereas now, i might not always cop to having a plan, but i do have a specific focus and interest in what i'm doing. i eat more consciously because i'm more conscious of having a pretty finite amount of energy for work and resources for recovery from day to day.

maybe i just found the reporter's conclusion that people frame more food after excercise as a 'reward' to be presumptive and rather belittling. it's like the pre-formed assumptoin built into that piece is 'people have unhealthy / childish attitudes about food which we must now Educate them about' and that annoys me. with the amount of scrutiny obesity has been getting as a phenomemon for the past five or ten years, talk about reporting the already bleeding bloody obvious point . . . yet again.