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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Living a long and healthy life is simple, but it isn't easy.

Which is to say almost everybody knows this, very few people live it. The toughest battle isn't yet again telling people that 1+1=2, but rather figuring out ways to make it more accessible to people (read: cheap, low time commitment) and more sustainable as a lifestyle.

That's why ideas like HIIT[0] and IM[1] are interesting, not because they're superior to getting doctor recommended levels of exercise and eating the recommended nutrition but because people actually do them and stick to them, and they're "less bad" then doing nothing.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" is the enemy of people's health too, and the medical profession obsessed over what the Greek God tier lifestyle should look like while ignoring "easy wins."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

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> because people actually do them and stick to them

Do you have data to back this up? I would have thought the exact opposite. That HIIT and IM are techniques that people try after having seen a Ted talk or something like that and don't make a life discipline out of them.

I also think plenty of people have some "common sense discipline" such as cycling/walking to work, and not eating junk food and sodas, and trying to eat fruits and vegetables. I feel this is very sustainable with a high ratio benefit/cost.

Appreciate this is a sample size of one, but IM has worked reasonably well for me. I lost nearly 3 stone, my weight's up a little since then but I'm still within a pound or two of my lowest fat mass over a year on.

All it really is to me is skipping breakfast and not snacking after my evening meal. I only ever had breakfast because people told me it wasn't healthy to skip it. Not so sure they were right now. I still pig out at lunch, dinner and in between times.

https://i.imgur.com/v0OGPVz.png

How did you measure fat mass?

The graph is from an app that comes with Withings smart scales and it's that I've used. (So take the absolute values with a pinch of salt, but I suspect they're in the right ballpark).

Withings smart scales are garbage for body fat measurement. I have the Body+ model and it fluctuates by ±4.3% day to day which is obviously not physically possible. And even the highest readings are still about 1.5% lower than my most recent DXA scan, which is far more accurate. (Yes I did try the scale's "athlete mode" but that was even less accurate.)

In general electric measurements of body composition are just toys and not to be relied upon.

> Do you have data to back this up?

Yes e.g.:

Fasting: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/5/1138/4598070

Intermittent exercise: https://www.nature.com/articles/0800533

> I also think plenty of people have some "common sense discipline" such as cycling/walking to work, and not eating junk food and sodas, and trying to eat fruits and vegetables. I feel this is very sustainable with a high ratio benefit/cost.

I agree. Those are also examples of "easy wins." We need more of exactly that, maybe even with support (e.g. cataloguing your life and looking for such wins). IM and HIIT are only as good as their adherence rates, but anything that people will stick to is worth serious evaluation and promotion.

Aren't your two links not showing your earlier claims? The claim was that they stick to it, the outcome/benefits of sticking to it weren't disputed. I am asking because I also can't believe that people stick to IM or HIIT long term.

Both of my links very specifically look at adherence rates.

> Results: Dietary adherence remained high throughout the controlled food intake phase (days adherent: 86%) and the self-selected food intake phase (days adherent: 89%).

And:

> For both groups, moderate intensity, intermittent exercise showed excellent adherence and this may be a useful model for future research studies.

So I'm not sure, having read both links, you came to the conclusion that it "doesn't prove my claims." They both very directly do.

Both of your links have nothing to do with general population adherence rate though. They are adherence rates within a pre-selected group of people for a specific study (apologies if i am reading this wrong).

I was actually surprised by the low adherence rate. The studies were done on small sets of folks for a very short period of time (2/8months) with little effort to adhere and yet the participants couldn't even do that. I figured adherence rates for this would actually be 100%. After all, the researchers asked for 6 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

The question I was interested in is roughly: If i randomly select 1000 people from the population and introduce them to HIIT, how many will do it 3-5 times a week 6/12/18/24 months after the introduction without any reporting and supervision?

Again, sorry if i am totally misunderstanding the links.

> They are adherence rates within a pre-selected group of people for a specific study (apologies if i am reading this wrong).

Yes, that's generally how studies work.

> The studies were done on small sets of folks for a very short period of time (2/8months) with little effort to adhere and yet the participants couldn't even do that.

You have to view it in context, diet and exercise changes have a very low adherence rate historically. It may be "low" but even that is a marked improvement over a lot of the alternatives.

You asked for data that showed these strategies had good adherence rates, which I provided. I could find additional studies, but those too would have a scope and would therefore be dismissed just as readily. I don't have a population-level study to link.

> That HIIT and IM are techniques that people try after having seen a Ted talk or something like that and don't make a life discipline out of them.

I don't HIIT because I think it's more for runners (and I cycle), but Intermittent Fasting has been the easiest adoptable technique for me to keep my calorie intake in check. Just count the hours, really. I try to push a little bit more fasting hours than the typical 16:8, more like 18:6, and stick to a low carb, high fat sorta diet. I've been doing this for eight years and I don't see me stopping that soon, it's so simple to follow. There's no TED talk (not that I have seen one on IF) that can convince me more than direct first hand experience.

I love the example of HIIT. I discovered it inadvertently 10 years ago when I switched to recreational sprinting as a primary form of exercise. It results in excellent physical conditioning with a minimal time investment (about one hour per week total).

Establishing habits is difficult and complex. Finding highly efficient (in time, energy, drudgery, money, etc) ways to achieve a desired outcome is a critically important cornerstone of that process, in my experience.

Any way for lazy people to get started with HIIT without going to a gym?

There is an app by the people who invented it, afaik. And other apps, too. (7 Minute Workout, I think that's the same thing?)

There is so much information available these days!

Try this on—all you need is a little space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q20pLhdoEoY

Depending on how lazy you are, you could try running in place with the Tabata protocol.

For me, one beautiful thing about sprinting is that you can do it anywhere you have a sufficiently lengthy stretch of open, flat ground. You can also shorten the sprint and do more of them to accommodate less permissive situations. I've even done wind sprints in my basement!

I'd check out YouTube, there are tons of HIIT "classes" that you can do at home for zero or minimal cost.

But there are also more specialised classes if you have some equipment or are a certain body composition (e.g. easier on the knees).

Yes! One set of jump squats as high and as rapidly as you can do them without pause, until fatigued. Rest two to three days afterwards. Once you get into a habit where you hate to miss a workout, switch to doing burpees instead. You can do this anywhere, including a hotel room, so it minimizes reasons to skip. It is surprising how much this works your cardio as well as strength. You can get super-fit doing this one thing and you only need to do one set per workout. In each workout, focus on doing a few reps more and doing them a bit faster than the previous workout. Just be sure to start slow (maybe 6 reps on your first workout) and never increase by more than 10% of what you did on the previous workout. Never do this two days in a row. You get stronger on your rest days, not your workout days. For high intensity workouts, I find that two days of rest is better than one.

The guests in the room below would appreciate it if you utilized the hotel fitness center instead of doing burpees in your room.

This is a valid issue. If you aren't in a fitness center, you can exercise near a load-bearing wall or pillar to attenuate the floor impact harmonics, which always seems to work well for me.

I've been playing Ring Fit Adventures on the nintendo switch, which takes you through a lot of different short exercise routines. I'm not sure if it technically counts as HIIT, but I do about 20 minutes every couple of days and work up a massive sweat in the process. Also because its a game I can play from my own lounge room, I'm finding I keep it up much more regularly than I have with a gym membership.

I find the biggest barrier to doing anything like this is the laziness itself. Thinking clearly about the choices I'm (not) making, and the trade offs I'm choosing helps me decide what I'd prefer to do. Reminding myself that activity makes me feel much better helps a lot too.

I hate gyms as well (I see them as a necessary evil these days). Personally I grab my bike and go mountain biking a lot. Not HIIT per-se, but very spikey bursts of effort.

You could accomplish some high quality interval work with a simple road bike (a hill helps) and a good attitude. The benefit to this being far less impact compared to sprints.

Just be a little careful starting with high intensity stuff - you want to slowly ramp this up over a handful of weeks or more. True high intensity work with insufficient muscle conditioning is a quick way to get injured (think ham/glute/calf pulls, tears, etc), and you do need to be careful when ramping up the cardio side - heart issues aren't fun.

because people actually do them and stick to them

The same can be said of any beneficial practice while it's trendy. HIIT and intermittent fasting are trendy right now. Nothing can stop the wheel of fashion from turning, so let's wait and see if they still stand out as "something people actually do" when they're passé.

This is nonsense. Even if you do everything right, you can have bad luck. Illness can happen to anyone.

Of course you can improve your odds, but acting like sickness is some sort of personal failing is a bad mentality, and one of the reasons American health care is so messed up.

Do Japanese women do HIIT?

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