Why do so many people give up on physical fitness after hs and college?

The silence is a social cue that you have just become one of those guys who thinks they are better than those they are conversing with, so they stop talking because you broke the rude meter, smashing it into tiny particles. Learn some manners and you will not be an outcast any more.

ho hum wrote:

People get lazy. They make excuses. They continue to eat junk. They get more lazy. They make more excuses. They become more sedentary. They accumulate visceral fat. They become hormonal messes. They get hypertension, diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease. They have much bigger problems now.

tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

I stopped sports after my sophomore year in college (soccer) and slowly gained weight through the next year. Work back then did accommodate working out. I dieted to lose the weight (55 pounds) and then began to run in the evenings and weekends at age 23. I enjoyed it and decided that whatever my lifestyle running was going to be part of it.

I made a conscious decision. So throughout my career, marriage, raising kids...whatever, I continued to run.

The key was not acting what others felt about running.

My lunch became my major running time throughout my work years. I found others who ran too and trained with them. But if others weren't there I ran anyway.

The silence is a social cue that you have just become one of those guys who thinks they are better than those they are conversing with, so they stop talking because you broke the rude meter, smashing it into tiny particles. Learn some manners and you will not be an outcast any more.

[Silence]

Let's not forget this:

http://i.imgur.com/EHOlr.jpg

rrr wrote:

Fitness is not even that necessary. With a great diet you will be thin, low cholesterol and blood pressure, no diabetes, low cancer risk.

diet beats exercise by a wide margin.

incorrect, my friend.

Both have many positive effects on one's health. However, one of the strongest predictors of health (longevity, CVD risk, etc) is FITNESS (cardiorespiratory fitness/exercise capacity) . This holds true for even former smokers, and overweight people. As you age, if you can hop on a treadmill and score in the top 20%, or even better, top 10%, of people your age for a cardio fitness test, you will be much less likely to die than someone in the lower brackets. Diet alone will not achieve this.

You can't eat a low-cal, healthy diet and not be active at all and be very healthy (fairly healthy maybe). Furthermore, the amount of time one spends sitting is another major predictor of all cause mortality. So if you sit all day long, are very sedentary and hardly move around at all each day, yet eat extremely healthy and are thin, the odds of your overall health being robust are low.

Fitness matters. A lot. And sure, it doesn't have to be extreme fitness, but taking walks every day, at a fairly hard pace, will even do the trick.

Exercise capacity and mortality in older men: a 20-year follow-up study.

CONCLUSIONS:

Exercise capacity is an independent predictor of all-cause mortality in older men. The relationship is inverse and graded, with most survival benefits achieved in those with an exercise capacity >5 METs. Survival improved significantly when unfit individuals became fit.

--------

Being highly fit negates many of the negative effects of being overweight/obese-

(this is from a commentary on the above article-

"Our study showed that cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is related to coronary heart disease-related death in hypertensive and normotensive men, and as well as in obese and nonobese men. Similar findings have been found in those with different combinations of common risk factors. In previous studies too, investigators have consistently observed that low CRF is related to the risk of death in normal weight, overweight, and obese subjects. These findings support those from cohort studies suggesting that the risk of death associated with low CRF is comparable with those associated with conventional risk factors including smoking, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, obesity and diabetes."

Bad Wigins wrote:

I notice that a lot of people are confusing physical fitness with distance running ability, as if they're less fit just for being slower over 10k.

The vast majority of high school and college runners were not suited to long-term running. They started when they were skinny teens and prolonged that life phase until their early 20's, then proceeded to build strength and bulk, which is vital for overall fitness. Years later they may run 5 to 10 minutes slower for 10k, but if they can lift heavier weights or throw things farther, then they have lost no fitness, in fact their overall fitness has improved.

You noticed wrong. I think most people realize that if they put on 20lbs of muscle because they've spent the last 10 years lifting weights and increasing their protein intake, and are now much stronger than they used to be, but run slower at the 10k than used to, that they are not less "physically fit" (in an overall sense). I am pretty sure they know they are in good overall shape (maybe even better overall shape if they still run and/or do cardio too).

However they are often less fit in a cardiorespiratory sense (sometimes not, because they are moving more muscle mass) if they only do pure strength training with no circuit training and or aerobic exercise that raises their heart rates significantly. And as I listed above, this does matter for health and mortality.

It is possible, I suppose, that being able to lift heavy weights or throw things far, by themselves, may confer similar health benefits to having high cardio fitness (i.e., being able to well on a a fairly high intensity, endurance test), but you will have to show us the studies that demonstrate that. There are a lot of big, overweight guys that can lift a heavy object that pass out if they try to jog a few 11 min miles. those people are not healthy.

Bad Wigins wrote:

The vast majority of high school and college runners were not suited to long-term running. They started when they were skinny teens and prolonged that life phase until their early 20's, then proceeded to build strength and bulk, which is vital for overall fitness.

Many former athletes start out fairly thin and, yes, "then proceed to (add) bulk". Many of these people don't also build much strength in this equation, i.e., they are just getting fatter and less fit.

As I said above, if they are consciously, and purposely building muscle with lots of exercise, again, I think they know they have not gotten out of shape. But most people "building bulk" are not doing that, they are just exercising less and getting fatter and less fit, albeit, maybe a bit stronger (fatter people usually have more muscle mass).

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

rrr wrote:

Fitness is not even that necessary. With a great diet you will be thin, low cholesterol and blood pressure, no diabetes, low cancer risk.

diet beats exercise by a wide margin.

incorrect, my friend.

No, those things are only correlations and not causal effects. In a very healthy eating populations being fit is not a very effective way to reduce mortality. It increases functionality at old age, but lifespan not really.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

Being highly fit negates many of the negative effects of being overweight/obese-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19617881

This is correct. Still, it is only partially causal. And in very healthy eaters I don't think there's much of an effect.

Because if you actually care about fitness, you will be lambusted on the LRC message board as hobby joggers. You will be told to be sedentary, remain fat, and put a "0.0" sticker on your car.

you get married and your wife gets fat and you no longer have the motivation to stay fit to attract your fat wife.

Because most people do physical activity in school only to impress others or to fit in, or because it's what's expected of them.

rrr wrote:

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

incorrect, my friend.

No, those things are only correlations and not causal effects. In a very healthy eating populations being fit is not a very effective way to reduce mortality.

1) I could just as easily say: your 'very healthy eaters = reduced mortality' (whether being fit or not) equation is a "correlation and not causal". And then add: in very fit people, being a very healthy eater too is not a very effective way to further reduce mortality. There.

(and as far as fitness not being "Causal" towards improved health, this is simply not true: exercise improves many health measurements directly and by itself, regardless of weight loss. This without a doubt)

2) You will have to prove that in those "very healthy eating populations" there are very unfit people who live just as long and are as free from disease as the very fit people who are also healthy eaters. Maybe you can? it is true that often the two are often confounded: the very healthy eaters are also often physically active.

However, as the studies I referenced (and others) point out, being fit reduces mortality rates across all types of people: thin, overweight, obese, smokers, non-smokers, etc.

1) No amount if exercise will prevent high cholesterol level from killing people (cardiovascular diseases). Diet can prevent these diseases almost completely if started young. Over 40% die from cardiovascular diseases.

2) Diet prevents cancer too. This is about 20% of all deaths.

3) Outdoor exercise can be risky.(accidents)

Simple statin drug will beat exercise in lifespan competition. :)

So you're saying it's easier to have a workout routine if you're a truck driver without a real set schedule, or maybe if you work as a landscaper you're just as likely to get off work and go for a 10 mile run as the office worker or professional?

Is THAT what you are attempting to prove?

Have you ever been to a road race or a tri? It's not a crowd filled with the blue collar workers.

As a 35 year old who still runs around the 60-70 mpw range, i think I can take a good crack at answering this. i don't see myself as soft, but a lot of the time I just do NOT want to go out and run. I do it, though. Maybe it is because I always have, or because I know how good it feels to lay down in bed after a solid double. I don't know.

I also know how hard it can be to train with two kids. Maybe if my wife didn't work out, but getting in more than a n hour of work out time can be tough, especially when you both need an hour. I try to find ways to kill two birds with one stone. Now that my daughter is 7, she rides a bike next to me while I push my son in the BOB. We can go 6:30 pace on a flat route, so I have my standard stroller/bike route.

It is fvcking hard. If you are not in love with owrking out, it will diminish greatly after kids.

To the med student bragging about his work ethic. Dude, I am a doctor, too. ENT surgeon. Med school, rotations and all of residency sucks. Fellowship is better depending on the location. It sucks big time, but wait until you are working full time and have a family. All of a sudden you'll realize that having a the will to run is only one of the factors. The time is the main issue, not the will. Even if you work 7-6, it is hard to get in a decent amount of training. Out the door at 5am, will you be ready for surgery at 7am sharp? Probably not. Even if you are, can you do that 5 or 6 days a week? No. So after work is the answer, right? Well, kids go to bed at 7 or 8, so you'll totally miss seeing your kids if you go after work. Okay, so You'll go right after they go to sleep, except that is the only time you get to be with your wife. Not so easy, see? If you can, go during lunch and have access to a shower. I have met with more than one patient while I am suffering through post-shower sweats during the summer. You know, the kind of sweating that doesn't stop, even after a cold shower?

There are really one two reasons for this.

1. General laziness of the masses

2. Have found a partner and no longer need to try.

Sorry folks, but since when did running mean you attracted women? Go storm to a win in a local race and have women throw themselves at you? Not likely. Sorry, but (2) is bonk. Skinny pond birds are not attractive, regardless of how fast they might be.

I know that I (professional, 30, wife, house) run because I like to (a) run, (b) go fast, (c) be fit, (d) win races/PR. I never did it "for the chicks."

That said, I'm totally in agreement with (1). So many of my peers/co-workers appear to be working toward their inevitable deaths while doing as little as possible.

When folks claim they cannot "find the time" I'm borderlines irate. There are many PhD students, medical residents, married professionals with kids etc on my track club. They "find the time" even if they just put in 18 hours all night at the ER to get in a run. You've got to want it. Sadly, most Americans don't.

ProTip™, ditch the TV. Got rid of cable myself a few months ago and I've got more time. 10 years from now, would you have rather watched some inane sitcom that's been discontinued or have gotten in a PR and 15K miles? Decide what you want to achieve in life.

Sorry, typed on my phone and my post is atrociously spelled/worded...