questions about fitness minimums

[loop]

Hello all,

I've read through some posts on this site, and I really enjoy the detailed approach and the friendly culture, so I thought it'd be a good place to ask a few questions.

Forgive me if this is a weird thing to ask, but I'm wondering about the *minimum* amount of effort required to attain a certain health goal (specifics in the next paragraph). First, as an introduction - I'm a male, age 32, 5'10", and weigh about 150 lbs. I see that a lot of you are hardcore into fitness, but that's just not my interest. I am happy with my appearance; I don't want to change my weight, and I don't care about physical strength. Above all though, I *really* do not have a whole lot of extra time to spend on exercising. Thus:

I've read a lot about the health benefits of exercise (1-3 below), as well as of a healthy breakfast (4). In particular I am interested in gaining the following, which are touted all the time in mainstream publications as common benefits of exercise:

1) increased general energy level

2) increased general mood

3) better efficiency of sleep

4) sleep timing regulation, through eating breakfast upon waking (i.e. establishing your "morning" from a metabolic standpoint).

Unfortunately, most publications seem to either go too far with the advice they give (e.g. they assume you want to lose 50 lbs or run a marathon), or to be totally wishy-washy about exactly what amount of exercise is required to get these health benefits.

So, does anyone have any good references/benchmarks/knowledge/recommendations in this area? I know that I could experiment on my own and maybe eventually figure it out, but perhaps I can save myself a few headaches by asking you friendly people

And on the breakfast question - basically, I'm not a breakfast person. As long as I can remember, for the first 2 hours or so after waking up, I've always been averse to putting food into my body. Like, the thought of it makes me nauseous. (My appetite is fine the rest of the day.) I admit that this is unusual, and most people I know usually wake up hungry, but forcing myself to eat is not something I am interested in doing. However, I think I should be able to get the benefit above by drinking the right kind of beverage (something smoothie-like?), which I could probably stomach. At minimum, then, how many calories am I looking to consume? Is liquid alone OK for this? What are some good nutrients to include?

Thanks for reading, and thanks for any information you care to share

[Corbab]

First of all, welcome to the community! While a lot of us (myself included) are "hardcore into fitness," there are plenty of people on here just looking to improve their quality of life.

Pretty much all the things you mentioned can be attained through diet and environmental tweaks. Feeding your body things it wants and is intended to process will increase your energy, as you have more of the calories you consume readily available to burn. (I recommend paleo, as would a lot of others on here, but that's all up to you).

Sleep efficiency is largely a product of good habits—a reasonable bedtime, waking without urgency in the morning and limiting your exposure to blue (artificial) light after sunset—but things like putting blackout shades on your windows and turning off all the lights in your bedroom.

Breakfast is really a non-issue—if you don't want to eat it, don't! As Steve says "your metabolism isn't that smart;" you won't throw off your day by skipping a meal, even if you do it on a regular basis (as long as you're getting enough calories).

I recommend checking out Mark Sisson's blog. He has a book on paleo living (The Primal Blueprint), but there are some excellent free resources on his site as well. His focus is on optimal health with minimal input, which sounds like it aligns with your goals well.

[morethanjustamom]

I wouldn't say many of us on here are "hardcore" into fitness, so much as many of us have gotten to the point where we really enjoy the benefits that being fit have brought us (energy, good mood, good sleep, looking good naked, etc.). Most of us here have jobs, families, and lives outside of going to the gym a few days a week...only a few here are in fitness-related occupations.

Conventional wisdom says exercise for 30 min, 3 times a week. Anything beyond that is considered "training" for something by personal trainers and physicians.

You haven't said how you feel now, or why you're here? Is it just to find out what the bare minimum is you can do to look good and feel good? That really depends on how you look and feel now.

[Sambalina]

I second the Mark Sisson recommendation, and add that the "4 Hour Body' by Tim Ferriss might be a good read for you. He is really into maximising results with a minimum of time and effort. He covers all the areas you've mentioned above, specifically. I personally don't agree with everything he has to say (some of his approaches seem quite 'unnatural' to me), but it may be what works for you. The book is even written to read in such a way to maximise your time.

And welcome!

[wildross]

And I'll add, it will depend on you, and your body/metabolism type. Some bodies just want to be lean; some just want to be muscular; some want to be blobs...

In general, I counsel against doing "just enough" of anything. You are unlikely to put the effort into it to get the benefit. Find something you enjoy, that gets your brain and "heart" moving as well as your body, and do that.

[Georges]

For the first three goals:

Most workout plans (especially those for people who aren't already exercising) are going to start at a minimum. Even couch to 5K or marathons for beginner plans tend to start out with walking at a brisk pace for 20-30 minutes, 3-4 times a week. The free resource plans for beginners here on nerdfitness are pretty quick, too. I'd recommend picking any beginner plan, and starting with that.

Compared to not exercising, any decent plan should help you sleep better, feel better, and have more energy.

Then comes the next part. Most people hit a plateau and have to figure out how to get past it. Unless you completely change your mind and fall in love with working out, you can just hang out at that plateau. If your goals change, your plan can change, and if your goals don't change, then you've met them!

I can't really help with your 4th goal - but your idea of trying out smoothies sounds like a good start.

[leadchipmunk]

I'm one of those people into "just get healthy" phase right now. I may switch over to "hardcore fitness" level later, but for now I'm trying to feeel better.

People have mentioned most things I was wanting to, but I'll add a few points. I'll +1 the vote for paleo. It is (in my opinion) the best diet for general eating the right things. It increased my energy, I lost weight and I feel a lot better than I did before it. Then again, I ate horribly before that.

Metabolism isn't smart and many people do intermittent fasting. That is, not eating for so long and then eating normally (not going overboard) for a peiod of time. I naturally do that and it hasn't been a problem. When I regularly work mornings, I don't eat breakfast, or lunch and I eat 2 meals, once between 4 and 5pm, and the other closer to midnight. Don't eat again until the next afternoon. It hasn't bothered me and I'm rarely ever hungry until around 2pm. I've always done that naturally.

Get your 8 hours of sleep, or however much your body requires. It doesn't necessarily have to be at night, if you work night shift, try to follow points Corbab said. As long as you get enough restful sleep, you are good. A good plan is to have a set time to wake up (if you have a job with regular hours), and just go to sleep when your body naturally wants to sleep. It will decide for itself when it is ready and will adjust for the optimal duration.

And finally, smoothies are great! Try adding a handful of kale or spinach or other leafy greens. It doesn't change the flavor at all (I've once used 4 or 5 big handfulls of mustard greens in 2 glasses worth of smoothie and couldn't taste it), but it adds all the nutrients that the greens offer.

[loop]

Thanks everyone for your replies!

First off, I wanted to make sure I didn't come off the wrong way - I didn't mean "hardcore into fitness" as any kind of slur If you love it, and you're into it, then it's a good thing for you. I just wanted to express what my interest level is. I find that some people can proselytize pretty heavily about fitness, and that's a big turn off for me (thanks for not doing that!)

To address morethanjustamom's question, and to touch upon the paleo diet recommendations, I'll add some information.

About 3 months ago I took stock of my health and I noticed that, while everything was fine in a strictly medical sense, I could see a long-term (4-5 year) steady downward trend in:

- my attention span/ability to focus/motivation level

- my ability to deal with not getting enough sleep (obviously if anyone tries this too much it won't work, but it has reached a point where just one night a month of less than 7 hours can be absolutely hellish)

- my ability to deal with anxiety/overall "calmness" and "collectedness" level

Upon noticing this trend, I made an appointment with a naturopathic doctor to see if I could get any insight. She suggested a version of the candida diet, which is similar to paleo in a lot of ways (basically minimize carbs - so no grains/starches/sugars, subsist on meat, eggs, nuts, veggies, occasional legumes, and plain water or seltzer only). I thought that the candida theory could possibly have explained my observations, since I did need to do a course of strong antibiotics back in 2007, and that could have kicked off a digestive imbalance. After reading up about it some more, I learned that a lot of "western" medical sources consider the benefit of this diet to be primarily due to generally eating healthier, not due to any particular microorganism in the body, but I gave it a shot anyway.

So I did this diet for about 6 weeks, and noticed absolutely no difference in any of these symptoms. My doctor said that just about everyone notices a difference after about 4 weeks on the diet, so we concluded that it wasn't doing anything for me and I went off the diet. I did lose about 5-10 pounds from the diet, but that's to be expected from not eating carbs for 6 weeks - and as I said, I wasn't really trying to adjust my weight anyway...

I'll look into the Sisson and Ferriss recommendations given, and think about how I can incorporate 20-30 minutes of activity 3-4 times per week.

By the way, here's another odd thing. At my job I alternate every few months between working from home and working in an office. When I commute, I take 2 subway lines, which for me involves a quarter-mile walk on either end, as well as 8 flights of stairs every day for train transfers/exiting and entering stations. I tend to naturally walk and take stairs at a brisk pace. The strange thing to me is that, even at times when I've been doing this commute, I didn't notice any difference in my mood or energy level. Wouldn't you think that a one-mile walk (in total) and 8 flights of stairs, 5 times per week, should satisfy the exercise requirements recommended here for basic fitness?

Thanks again everyone

[morethanjustamom]

The body is adaptive, so if you're walking briskly and taking stairs every day, no, your body doesn't recognize this as "exercise"...it's just the daily effort expended to get from point A to point B, and your body/brain sees it that way. I'll bet during the time you're not commuting to work, you're also not sitting on the couch all day either, or staying home all the time doing absolutely nothing.

"Exercise" by definition is a state of work, whereby your heart rate and breathing should be elevated, and you will probably be sweating, due to a rise in body temperature. Being healthy and being fit are two different, yet not mutually exclusive concepts. 'Healthy' tends to be defined more by medical tests than by physical abilities: weight, blood pressure, resting heart rate and cholesterol levels are all healthy indicators, but not fitness indicators. I was healthy before I decided to become fit...at 5'4" and 135lbs. My blood pressure and cholesterol levels were excellent, and my resting heart rate was low. My weight was considered normal. All I did to maintain this level of "health" was eat whatever I wanted and run 30 min. 3-4 times a week.

I didn't feel well though, even though from a medical standpoint I was healthy. I had cluster headaches several times a week, my energy levels were generally low, I felt sluggish and lethargic, wasn't getting good quality sleep, and I just felt like my quality of life had gone down over the past few years. I also didn't feel good about the way my body looked and my clothes fit, even though I was considered normal.

"Fitness" was a whole other focus for me, outside of "healthy". I'm fortunate that I can be healthy with little to no effort on my part, really, but being fit requires me to want to be better, look better, and feel better...even on the days I don't feel like working out. I've lost very little weight since February (5 lbs., maybe?) but my clothes fit better and I'm happier with the way my body looks. I sleep better, and have far fewer headaches. I'm less moody and more upbeat, and I have more energy for the things that need doing every day. When I focus on eating right, I maintain a mental clarity that eludes me when I allow my diet to slip. Fitness for me has become a life choice...one that while I don't intend for it to consume my life, I know that I will make the effort to spend 30-45 min. 3-5 times a week focusing on, because of the rewards I am now enjoying from it.

[loop]

To clarify, the difference between what you're doing now and what you were doing before is just the diet? Since the amount you've stated for the exercise is roughly equal? I guess we're different, since diet alone didn't have any effect for me.

I don't think a brisk walk would cause me to sweat, and I strongly dislike running, so I'll have to figure out something else I can do, I guess. Ideally, I want to avoid anything that feels like a chore. It's slightly disheartening that just to feel normal and productive would take so much time, effort, and forethought. Do you think most people experience this problem?

[leadchipmunk]

I too find it very disheartening. The reason I keep up with it is because I have been very unhealthy, and the time (I don't do too much time, around half an hour over the day, 4-7 days a week), effort (this is my biggest problem), and forethought is worth the increased health and hopeful increased life span.

[morethanjustamom]

To clarify, the difference between what you're doing now and what you were doing before is just the diet? Since the amount you've stated for the exercise is roughly equal? I guess we're different, since diet alone didn't have any effect for me.

I don't think a brisk walk would cause me to sweat, and I strongly dislike running, so I'll have to figure out something else I can do, I guess. Ideally, I want to avoid anything that feels like a chore. It's slightly disheartening that just to feel normal and productive would take so much time, effort, and forethought. Do you think most people experience this problem?

The difference was mainly diet, because I found out I was allergic/sensitive to a few foods, but another difference was the exertion that I had to put forth for running/jogging vs lifting. The running was leisurely, and although I do plan to get back into it, I'll have a different focus now. It will be an endurance trainer for me in the future.

The purpose for me is to build the body I want, plus increase my level of functional fitness. I want to be healthy and strong not just now, but when I'm older too. I'm hoping to maintain a high quality of life until I'm at least 100.

[loop]

The difference was mainly diet, because I found out I was allergic/sensitive to a few foods, but another difference was the exertion that I had to put forth for running/jogging vs lifting. The running was leisurely, and although I do plan to get back into it, I'll have a different focus now. It will be an endurance trainer for me in the future.

The purpose for me is to build the body I want, plus increase my level of functional fitness. I want to be healthy and strong not just now, but when I'm older too. I'm hoping to maintain a high quality of life until I'm at least 100.

Well, that's certainly a respectable goal. For me, it's one thing at a time. Don't want to get ahead of myself here. Thanks for the help!

[BarefootDawsy]

I second the Mark Sisson recommendation, and add that the "4 Hour Body' by Tim Ferriss might be a good read for you. He is really into maximising results with a minimum of time and effort. He covers all the areas you've mentioned above, specifically. I personally don't agree with everything he has to say (some of his approaches seem quite 'unnatural' to me), but it may be what works for you. The book is even written to read in such a way to maximise your time.

And welcome!

I'm not so sure about the 4 hour body route. It smacks a lot of unsustainable short cutting that may not be great for you in the long term. That being said there's some decent stuff on sleep in there, just skip the bit about polyphasic sleep because it's been debunked and is basically rubbish (I wish it wasn't though!)

[Bamboozel]

For the minimum amount of effort you might want to try this. 2 minutes of push ups, 2 minutes of sit ups and run 2 miles as fast as you can. I do this most mornings and feel like i have more energy and feel good all day.