Yeah I found the same. After I did the exercise grind for a bit of time I suddenly found out that my cravings for usual unhealthy foods have been reduced.
My trainer and doctor say that we have various receptors in our bodies tuned for our current way of life and that diet and exercise re-program these receptors which, yeah, is what I observed as well.
RE: your lack of motivation for working out, I found it is related to the type of exercise. The start of my journey was a series of train wrecks. I constantly stumbled on 22-year old boys whose wisdom was "get on the bench press, bro!" which didn't work for me. It was almost harmful even.
After going to physiotherapy for a while I then started training under the tutelage of the same people and I am already better. They are very careful not to over-strain me, give me just enough cardio to keep my heart pumping but not to make me wanna die, exercises are carefully tuned to strain me a bit but never too much. They don't give me big pauses between exercises (60 - 90 seconds) however. Some exercises are mostly stretching and "activating" a certain muscle (meaning just exercising it a little without any strain).
Not sure I can translate that to a workout strategy for you but these items might help:
- Do 3 series of each exercise. If it's too much then 2;
- Do more reps per series;
- Rest until your heart calms down slightly but not beyond that;
- Introduce a hard cap on the workout session -- mine is 1 hour. This was a huge struggle because I wanted to do all the exercises but there's no way to fit all in 1 hour (did that mistake several times);
- Start with slight cardio -- 5 or 10 minutes. Don't make it the focus of the session, it's just to start you off (a mistake I made many times);
- The moment you start feeling a tormenting strain is the moment where you train for 2-3 more minutes and cut the session short;
- If that moment doesn't come, still stop at your time cap.
The main point is to feel energetic and rejuvenated after the workout. Not "OMFG I wanna die!". My trainer / physiotherapist / masseur told me this is an extremely common problem for men because a lot of them just hang out in the gym and their main motivation is show-off and competition with others. He says there's a million ways to make yourself feel better by exercising and honestly? I believe him because it is happening to me.
Finally, it's the most normal thing in the world to fine-tune the exercise session to your specifics and you shouldn't try and imitate other workout regimes if they don't work well for you. My trainer quickly found out I have strong arms, shoulders and upper back and is rarely giving me exercises for them -- just for maintaining them a bit. But my legs, abs and lower back are weaker so 80% of my exercises focus on that. Works great.
If you are willing to press on, I wish you good luck. I am exactly like you, I view physical maintenance as nuisance and it's not easy to change the mindset. But I already started having that little little voice in my head that's sometimes nudging me to do a session because I know it makes me feel a bit better after.
In programming terms, I'd say reduce the size of the program/tests until it's manageable for you. My trainer said it's much better to train every day for just 35-40 minutes compared to two workouts of our and half a week.
I'm 40 and I recently started Stronglifts 5x5. It's stupidly simple and makes me want to come back for more as the weights increase every training. So there's always a personal record to break.
It also doesn't take a lot of time. About 45 - 60 minutes, 3 times a week. I can do it in my home gym as everything I need is a barbell, some weights and a bench/squat rack.
First time I actually have fun weight lifting/going to the gym.
I started with Stronglifts! It’s the program that finally gave me a degree of health and made lifting enjoyable/satisfying. Eventually went to something a little less leg heavy (although squats will always be my favourite exercise) with a better system for breaking plateau’s and more accessories, but Stronglifts was what finally made the gym fun.
> The main point is to feel energetic and rejuvenated after the workout.
The only thing a workout has ever made me feel is sore and tired. Light or heavy, long or short, cardio or strength. Doesn't matter, that only changes how sore and how tired I am after, and how long those feelings last.
I'd exercise way more if I ever felt "energetic and rejuvenated" after a workout. The only thing keeping me doing it is knowing how critically important it is to me long term cardiovascular health.
Some context: I'm overweight and could definitely stand to be more active. But I do value exercise and a couple of months ago started going to fitness classes, have played sports casually but regularly in the past, used to regularly go to a gym, and have dabbled with a few different kinds of home workout, including running. The game aspect of sport is fun, but the physical activity involved still only left me sore and tired.
> The only thing a workout has ever made me feel is sore and tired.
Just backing up what others are saying, I think it's a combination of it being an acquired taste, and also finding what works for you.
For me, I love swimming and cycling and get nearly all my cardio that way, but running or lifting weights? Just leaves me feeling defeated and in pain.
Wish I could help you but I'm not a therapist myself.
One thing I really have to assure you of however: there IS a way to feel energetic after a workout, you just haven't found it yet.
Had the same problem, eventually got fed up and went to physiotherapy and doctors to see if something's wrong with me -- and yes, actually there are a few things wrong with me that prevent me from reaping more benefits of exercise.
I'm working hard on addressing these deficiencies (one of them is a pre-diabetic condition; it's absurdly hard to reverse this thing).
Treat your health like a program that both has a bug and broken dependencies: you have to do a deep dive to solve the problem.
Please don't give up. The fight is very hard but the result is worth it. I'm probably 10% into my journey and I already know I'm never giving up.
the more you do it, the more your body will adapt and then after smaller workouts, say a 30min run in the morning, you will start feeling energized instead of tired, as your time to tire yourself out increases over time.
I have to say that I kinda like the feeling of achievement afterwards and also like feeling sore and tired for some reason. That's also the only time when I allow myself unhealthy food nowadays and don't even feel bad about it. I lost 10kg and am fitter at 40 then ever before.
I actually love being sore and tired. In my 20s I’d ride a bike until my legs fell off and would revel in just laying down in complete exhaustion. Not much has changed, 15 years later.
What has changed is my appetite- an all day bike ride used to be followed by a giant pizza; now it’s just a normal meal. My all day hikes are somewhat challenging even wanting to eat. A variety of tastes at my disposal (sweet, salty, sore, bitter, savory, Unami) helps.
I’m almost 190lbs these days and muscular. I started out much lighter.
In this context it's counter to the GP's posting that exercise is followed by feeling energetic and rejuvinated.
I do not want to feel sore or tired (I think "fatigued" might be a better word choice than "tired" here for what I was trying to communicate).
They are not pleasant sensations. They limit what other things I can do while experiencing them. Their presence is a negative reinforcement against exercising again. Plus I feel ripped off when so many others rave about how good exercise makes them feel while it just makes me feel crummy.
Hopefully you see this, a bit late to replying. The trick is sticking with it long enough that it goes away. I started weightlifting about a year ago (was always healthy and enjoyed cardio based exercise regularly) and I was regularly sore and tired. I set some ambitious goals that required dedication and effort. After about four months weightlifting three to five times a week, I no longer got sore or tired. Feels worse to not lift than to lift.
I personally really enjoy achieving things, so I put some ambitious goals on paper, staked my plan with some cash that would pay out to a close friend if I failed, and got to work. I paid out enough cash that it would hurt if I didn’t achieve my goal. I paid it up front and if I succeeded it would be handed back to me. And damnit I pushed hard to get that cash back!
Finally, I never would have done this without purchasing home equipment.
Exercises are typical compound weightlifting. Bench, squats, deadlifts, presses etc. set up home equip so I could fail on my last set of bench and recover (remove fear of failure).
Gained 12lbs pure muscle, dropped some fat, look better than I’ve ever looked.
Finally, I clearly upped my testosterone level a bit with the exercise, energy and behavior changes (all positive) were noticeable. Same with posture.
Just stick with it way past what you would normally do and you can reprogram yourself!
I completely relate and it was the same for me for a LOOOOONG time -- as I mentioned, I got some pretty dumb "personal trainers" few times in a row; they were more like guides to show me around the gym equipment and not actual trainers. Shitty luck but I didn't give up.
And the negative reinforcement isn't completely gone for me even today. I still mis-step sometimes and over-train a bit and then I don't want to do it for 5-7 days after. It's still a constant internal fight.
However, I'll still say that you haven't found what really works for you. My mother is 69 and she gets absolutely revitalized just by stretching for 25-30 minutes with almost zero strain or cardio. Weird, right?
It really depends on the person. There are almost no formulas.
You can find what works for you. Don't be discouraged to experiment -- pilates, light cardio (running, swimming, hiking, buying an elliptical at home, or a treadmill etc.), tai-chi / qigong, aerobics -- it doesn't matter what your thing will turn out to be. It is still out there waiting to be found by you.
But for me to start reaping even basic benefits I had to do no small amount of other things like stopping all dairy and most carbs, eating more veggies (which I still hate months later btw!), get various physiotherapy treatments -- electricity, laser, ultrasound -- and even take melatonin pills to attempt and make my sleep schedule less erratic. Only after persisting at maintaining like seven parallel operations, for weeks, did some first small positive effects of the exercises start to show.
It's a nasty grind. Think of it as overcoming huge negative inertia. It can be beaten but it can be an extremely thankless job for a good long while.
As a rather non-encouraging example, my wife had a friend who was fat and a bit unhealthy ever since she was a kid. When they were both 16 that girl figured she had enough and got a dietitian and a trainer and completely changed how much she eats, what does she eat, when etc., and also worked out 5 out of 7 days. It took her ONE YEAR of doing this, consistently and without skipping, to drop even one kilo and to start truly becoming healthy and losing weight. Ouch. But it did happen and she's completely transformed now.
Again, it's a grind. Motivating yourself to endure it is 50x harder than doing the exercises -- at least for me. My fight still continues (yep, even with the first positive results in). I hope yours will continue as well.
Thanks for the advice, but I hate cardio and running and aerobic exercise especially. Bench pressing and "cardio but done 'worng'" - eg. heavy biking or thredmill running, but with rare/insufficient breathing. Maybe swimming.
Problem is I fee either afraid I'm doing the exercises wrong so I stop doing them, or I find others impractical (eg. swimming or freediving).
Probably I should research into anaerobic that are actually considered helpful or somethig, since my brain seems to dislike the least these low-oxigen-effort types of exercises. Dunno...
It's frustrating because all the exercise advice I find seems targeted at people that are practically a whole different species from me...
That will not help you of course but before I began I hated all exercise with all my heart. It will pass if you keep at it though. :)
That "hate" is just hormonal dis-balance. And yeah I know that explanation doesn't help because you can swear on everything that's sacred that this is exactly who you are and it can't be false... But yeah, it still is false and no that's not you. Hormones are a b1tch, a chemical programming agent that's specifically designed to lie to our brains. It's how we're wired.
Not trying to convince you of anything. I know how I felt 6 months ago and I know nobody and nothing could have changed my mind back then; I would have likely physically lashed out at somebody if they tried to press the matter even.
I am only here to tell you that it can get better even if you are 100% sure that it can't. That feeling is false and it's our brain trying to avoid a change and that's why it fills us with doom scenarios and unreasonable hate to the source of the change. It's still just a facade for "but I don't wanna, I am comfy now!" and that facade can fall relatively easily.
> It's frustrating because all the exercise advice I find seems targeted at people that are practically a whole different species from me...
Nope, you just don't belong to the statistically significant group, that's all there is to it. If you keep looking you'll find your exact alien homies. ;)
My trainer and doctor say that we have various receptors in our bodies tuned for our current way of life and that diet and exercise re-program these receptors which, yeah, is what I observed as well.
RE: your lack of motivation for working out, I found it is related to the type of exercise. The start of my journey was a series of train wrecks. I constantly stumbled on 22-year old boys whose wisdom was "get on the bench press, bro!" which didn't work for me. It was almost harmful even.
After going to physiotherapy for a while I then started training under the tutelage of the same people and I am already better. They are very careful not to over-strain me, give me just enough cardio to keep my heart pumping but not to make me wanna die, exercises are carefully tuned to strain me a bit but never too much. They don't give me big pauses between exercises (60 - 90 seconds) however. Some exercises are mostly stretching and "activating" a certain muscle (meaning just exercising it a little without any strain).
Not sure I can translate that to a workout strategy for you but these items might help:
- Do 3 series of each exercise. If it's too much then 2;
- Do more reps per series;
- Rest until your heart calms down slightly but not beyond that;
- Introduce a hard cap on the workout session -- mine is 1 hour. This was a huge struggle because I wanted to do all the exercises but there's no way to fit all in 1 hour (did that mistake several times);
- Start with slight cardio -- 5 or 10 minutes. Don't make it the focus of the session, it's just to start you off (a mistake I made many times);
- The moment you start feeling a tormenting strain is the moment where you train for 2-3 more minutes and cut the session short;
- If that moment doesn't come, still stop at your time cap.
The main point is to feel energetic and rejuvenated after the workout. Not "OMFG I wanna die!". My trainer / physiotherapist / masseur told me this is an extremely common problem for men because a lot of them just hang out in the gym and their main motivation is show-off and competition with others. He says there's a million ways to make yourself feel better by exercising and honestly? I believe him because it is happening to me.
Finally, it's the most normal thing in the world to fine-tune the exercise session to your specifics and you shouldn't try and imitate other workout regimes if they don't work well for you. My trainer quickly found out I have strong arms, shoulders and upper back and is rarely giving me exercises for them -- just for maintaining them a bit. But my legs, abs and lower back are weaker so 80% of my exercises focus on that. Works great.
If you are willing to press on, I wish you good luck. I am exactly like you, I view physical maintenance as nuisance and it's not easy to change the mindset. But I already started having that little little voice in my head that's sometimes nudging me to do a session because I know it makes me feel a bit better after.
In programming terms, I'd say reduce the size of the program/tests until it's manageable for you. My trainer said it's much better to train every day for just 35-40 minutes compared to two workouts of our and half a week.