Agreed. I've always struggled with intense structured exercise. Instead I walk quickly, park at the far end of lots, run up the stairs instead of the elevator, do some jumping jacks while waiting for the microwave, and lots of small things like that and it seems to work. You can get a lot of exercise minutes and increased heart rate out of doing routine activities with gusto. Admittedly, it's not so good for building muscle, though.

You only need a 20ish pound set of weights to build muscle, oddly. Don't even have to spend a ton of time on it. Can do a basic set of curls/whatever while cooking breakfast.

Body weight exercises feel like they should be even easier to do, but realistically are a lot harder. Pushups, are free and can be done anywhere, sure; but are not a place to start at.

> You only need a 20ish pound set of weights to build muscle, oddly. Don't even have to spend a ton of time on it. Can do a basic set of curls/whatever while cooking breakfast.

Eh, you can do almost anything with anything at a sufficient intensity frequently enough that you'll build muscle, and you definitely should, but I just feel like the more important thing is to find a good feedback cycle. Everyone is a little different, some people end up liking calisthenics or climbing or hiking or a combination of them, some people like the gym or free weights at home, but you gotta engage with it enough to have a serious possibility of either feeling results or other rewards, or lack thereof enough to move onto another idea.

If you don't see or feel results at the gym in the first month, if you set yourself up right you might meet someone to chat with and that may help spur you to keep going regardless.

If you don't feel results hiking after your first time, you've at least had an outdoor adventure. You may still have no motivation, try the other idea, go swimming whatever, but there are at least some other qualities present that help reinforce the desire to do the activity.

Eventually, you might find that your new default mode of operation in every other facet of life becomes activity first rather than something to fit in just during breakfast. At that point, it's harder to not work out or get activity than the reverse. 3 days go by and it feels odd that you've not done anything demanding in a while, and although it takes effort, it becomes easy enough to maintain long term after a certain threshold.

I'm using "you" in the general sense here, and otherwise agree with you, I just think the easiest and most private activities tend to reduce your surface area for discovering other ancillary benefits.

A good feedback cycle is good. Agreed on that. A shorter commitment cycle is also good. Gym memberships are particularly tough. You have to have the time for the exercise, no matter where you do it. You also have to have time for the commute to and from if it isn't at a place you were going to be anyway. Which is why I would suggest starting with just basic dumbbells at home. Every day.

This isn't even unique to exercise. Any added friction to doing something decreases the chances of it happening. Is why online shopping goes out of their way to make it easy to buy something. Even if it is something you want.

Agreed, which is why I can't picture myself living in a situation that has such friction if my money goes far enough to avoid it in the future. Fwiw, I'm also on the side of not getting a membership unless you're able to go enough times at the drop-in rate to justify saving money on it, or just stick with month to month. I didn't register for an ongoing membership at mine until the cost if drop-in passes surpassed the membership and it was painful and irrational enough to finally commit longer.

While I see your point (0 > 1, by definition) I think this sends the wrong message.

You need several hours of relatively strenuous exercise per week. Walking around the neighborhood, or your house, or whatever has diminishing returns. You need to steadily increase load to continue to see results. The body is incredibly good at adapting. People will read your statement and walk around their house twice, sit down, and not move for the rest of the night.

My point is only on lowering the friction to do an activity. The more friction there is to something, the more likely it will get dropped. Such that I'm not aiming to get people to think just one walk will do them for the day. Rather, I'm aiming to get people to realize you don't have to "exercise." I don't know why that framing is problematic for folks. But I would wager money that it is.

Is this really a high bar these days?

Uh, yeah? Note that I'm not claiming people don't do any walking at all. But a lot of people that would easily do another walk around the house before settling down to watch TV will balk at exercise.