What type of exercise you do is less important than doing something. You can claim that optimality of the exercise contributes to motivation, but this seems like a common failure mode. People spend more time researching optimal exercise than doing anything.
The best way to get motivated for me is to quantify the health benefits. A generic "it's good for me" is not motivating. A specific percent reduction in risk of a CVD event is.
You want to set up your home environment to afford exercise. You can keep free weights near tvs or computers, and use them while watching or reading things. You can put a pull up bar in a frequently passed doorway and do a pullup or two whenever you go through it. Similarly you can put weights on a table you walk by frequently. This is one of the ways I get myself to practice juggling: When I have clubs on the table on the way to the kitchen I often just pick them up and juggle a bit, but when I leave them in the car I never feel like going into the car to get them. You want to make it as effortless and fun to work exercise into your routine as possible.
Are there sites devoted to this? I think there should to be, especially for basic things required in modern society. I think aspects of personal hygiene aren't discussed very openly when people grow up. Things like 'clean yourself daily' are too vague. How? I think I'm fairly clean, but I haven't asked people their procedures for showering and using the toilet. I've seen a few things about washing hands, which weren't bad, but they were about hands. People don't like talking about other bits of the body much. I never got this lesson at school: http://paddy...
How does one specify haircuts to the haircutter, and how much latitude does one have before they get more expensive or require uncommonly skilled haircutters to execute? How can one predict the robustness of haircuts to hair growth, messyness, variations in hair, etc?
I have recurring chapped, peeling lips. When I take a shower, the outer layer of my lips gets very soft and then rubs off. It then grows back hard and scaly, only to soften and rub off again the next time I shower. I have a tube of ChapStick by my bed but use it infrequently; it seems to have the same softening effect as showering. Any advice?
How does one buy groceries?
The methods my parents used were very mysterious to me, and usually built a collection of edibles that were either filling or tasty or both. I don't understand how they were choosing, but I know it wasn't following any sort of plan other than their own tastes or simplicity of preparation, or cheapness. I'm not too into my food, so I was useless when asked what I would like. I also extremely dislike being in grocery stores or meandering in any store at all, so if I was sent out for groceries I would request a list that I could bl...
I'm not sure if this is a procedural knowledge gap, but I figure it's close--and instrumentally important--enough to warrant some mention here. Basically, I've never really had to formally interview (whether for a job, or something similar), and I'm sure there are some things I should know that I currently do not. There are plenty of sites that purport to offer this information, but often they are neither as precise/specific nor as extensive as I'd like--given this community's focus and high standards, I think we can do better.
Any tips to maximize the chances of winning an interview? Anecdotes are welcome, from either end of the interview process.
Some exercises you can do with barbells.
Bicep curls.
Front and side deltoid lifts (holding the weights, keep your arms straight and raise your arms in front of you or to your sides respectively.)
Chest fly and reverse fly.
Add pushups, and pullups if you can do them, and together these exercises will target all your major upper body muscles.
Plenty of good abdominal exercises can be done without equipment, like the bicycle, crunches and variations like the vertical leg crunch or long arm or reverse crunches, and the abdominal plank.
There are fewer equipment f...
If I drink water out of a cup, how long can I leave the cup sitting out before I should probably wash it? I'm in a dorm so I can't just lazily stick it in a dishwasher.
How do I cook food that is at the intersection of cheap, fast to prepare, good tasting, and good for me? It is fairly easy to satisfy 3 of the 4 conditions with any given meal. All 4 are hard.
So far I only really have various soups/curries, and omelettes. I'm on the lookout for more, though it is tedious looking through "normal" recipes and trying to figure out which ones can be made to satisfy the conditions by cutting corners and still come out okay.
edit: I guess I should note that I have a definition of "healthy" some will conside...
Stirfry: Oil in pan, add meat (E.g. chicken), stir, add vegetables (most supermarkets do premade mixes), continue stirring. You can add your preferred flavourings during the course of this (e.g. bbq sauce, chili, soy). Most things cook quickly like this, especially when in small pieces, and you can normally tell by sight when its ready. Eat either on its own or with rice.
Regarding motivation for exercise, I find competition & praise is particularly helpful, perhaps especially for those of us of the male persuasion.
Fitocracy is kind of fun and has various challenges. Last summer I did various cycling & running challenges and eventually ended up so motivated that I completed a 100 km ride and a marathon, essentially for fun.
Alternately you could make bets with a friend about some well-defined goal like being able to do 100 pushups at a sitting.
This is what I do when I workout to gain energy:
How does one get a checkbook in the US? Are there usually costs associated with them? In the year and a half I've been in the US so far I've needed/wanted a check at most 5 times, most of them in the last few months, so is there a cheaper way to get a small supply I can use as needed?
I'll start off with one of my own: What kinds of exercise can I do at home
Personally, I like Goodbye Couch, which is inspired to the 5BX, as is the fitness regime in The Hacker's Diet. Each of these takes about 10-30 minutes a day.
and what are good ways to get motivation to do so regularly?
I have a Beeminder goal to work on the Goodbye Couch programme 5 times a week.
Good for you Philip!
There are many body weight and light weight exercises you can do.
Of course, a good program depends on your goals and limits.
If you send me some more information (goals, body weight, height, any injuries, time availability per week) I'd be happy to create a program for you.
I was successful in keeping a strict (but light) exercise routine for a year. Here are the main things I think helped me form the habit:
For exercise, this is mostly going to come down to your personal preference- I like the "couch to 5k" plan http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
It's a program that alternates jogging and walking to build endurance, and doesn't require being in very good shape to start it. I haven't really done anything else to exercise, and it seems like my blood flow and energy is a bit better.
I follow up my workouts with immediate positive reinforcement (in my case a tasty post workout meal, and/or netflix), and it seems a bit easier to do them now....
With Alicorn's permission, I'm resurrecting this thread.
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
I'll start off with one of my own: What kinds of exercise can I do at home (I do have 5- and 20-pound weights), and what are good ways to get motivation to do so regularly?
