The FastDay Forum

Interesting article
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/0 ... -exercise/

excerpt

Overweight women’s brains respond differently to images of exercise than do the brains of leaner women, a sophisticated new neurological study finds, suggesting that our attitudes toward physical activity may be more influenced by our body size than has previously been understood.

[Tracieknits]

Interesting, although not terribly surprising. It takes a lot more effort to take a 225 pound body for a walk than it does to take a 125 pound body for a walk. And the part about exercise ending in embarrassment - well there's a reason my treadmill is in my bedroom!!

[carorees]

A couple of things spring to mind:

If the overweight people were become slim (e.g. by 5:2)are their brains still turned off by exercise?
If you were previously inactive but find and take up an enjoyable activity does that affect the response to images of exercise?

Hear hear

I wonder if the school sports stars of my youth are still active? I was useless at "games" because I was small and clumsy around catching/hitting balls but realised I liked the feeling I got after running around in netball, so I could have been encouraged into jogging, but no this was the sixties, and the school would not win any cups in competitions if the PE teachers spent time with the useless kids. Now I get my highs by panting my way up fells.

Why oh why are schools willing to spend much time on kids who underperforming in maths and English and think it is OK to either ignore or humiliate the team game haters?

I was always slim until my 50s and I've never really liked exercise. When I was at school I was skinny, I hated PE and especially competing sports, although I used to play active games with my friends when not at school. The only exercise I enjoy now is walking the dog but that might be because I love the countryside, not necessarily the walking!

I'm like coffee time-except I didn't play active sport with friends but enjoyed cycling

A couple of things spring to mind:

If the overweight people were become slim (e.g. by 5:2)are their brains still turned off by exercise?
If you were previously inactive but find and take up an enjoyable activity does that affect the response to images of exercise?

If I may paraphrase the views of books from Taubes, Phinney and Volek, exercise for seriously overweight is considered both punitive and counterproductive due to the scouring of blood sugars by insulin. It's not that overweight people don't want to exercise, it's that they flat don't have the energy to do so.

In my case - as a admittedly feeble data point of one - with a starting BMI of 31, I found that I could not force additional miles and exercise without incurring a succession of thoroughly aggravating (overuse) injuries. In my experience it's just not possible to lose weight through exertion once you're beyond a certain age.

However by reversing the process - lose the weight, then increase exercise - I've more that quadrupled my run mileage in 2013 compared to 2012. In the process (now at BMI 24-n-change) I've matched a 6-year old 1/2 marathon personal-best time in 3 races and just missed beating it (by a lousy 4 seconds) in the last one.

And with technique changes I'm just itching for fair weather to bump that milease total much higher this year...

previous replies are so true - I was useless at sport at school but took up aerobics after I left and have, at times (not currently!) been a serious gym-bunny (which is what I want to get back to) - schools have a lot to answer for but I think things have improved