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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

> Running is a hunting/fleeing mechanism and it just feels wrong for me to artificially simulate that stress environment.

"Artificially simulate that stress environment?" Is that a joke? Exercise is [physical] stress. What about that seems "wrong" to you?

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No, no humour was intended by a purely subjective statement that intense exercise is more or less a deeply unpleasant experience for my body and my brain. The fact that it is beneficial to long term vitality is orthogonal to how it makes me feel and why I am almost never motivated to do it.

Just to be clear: if running is "intense exercise" that means you're doing it wrong, and you will have a much better time of it if you slow down to easy conversational pace. (People usually use the run-walk method to develop such a pace in the beginning.) The thing about exercise and human biology is that there is some room for subjective statements, but not that much room. I, for one, find it quite pleasant about exercise that it doesn't matter how it makes me feel temporarily, that it works so long as I do the right thing.

There's an argument that stress is bad, because it forces the body to prioritise immediate survival at the expense of long term health.

However, simulating a hunt should be good for the health since it informs the body that it is in a prey rich environment. The same goes for other stressful but evolutionary fitness promoting activities such as sex.

Any stress-related problems from running (not a point I'm conceding as I've never seen evidence of any) certainly outweighs the long-term problems from being overweight and out of shape with the lower respiratory capacity to boot.

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