One additional point worth noting is that physical health has an enormous impact on mental health. Exercise (along with good sleeping and eating habits) is valuable even if it didn’t make you stronger.
This alone trumps any other argument mentioned in the post. None of the other arguments seem universal and can be argued with on an individual basis.
I actually like doing things with my body. I like hiking and kayaking and mountain climbing and dancing.
As some other commenters noted, what if you just don’t?
I think it would be valuable if someone made a post just focused on collecting all the evidence for the positive cognitive effects of exercise. If the evidence is indeed strong, no other argument in favor of exercise should really matter.
Well, I’ve always been quite skeptical about the supposed huge mental benefits of exercising. I surely don’t feel immediate mental benefits while exercising, and the first time I heard someone else claiming this I seriously thought it was a joke (it must be one of those universal human experiences that I am missing).
Anyway, I can offer one reference digged up from SSC:
Although the role of poor diet/exercise in physical illness is beyond questioning, its role in mental illness is more anecdotal and harder to pin down. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of studies showing it works. But there’s also lots of anomalous data, like how exercise performed as part of your job doesn’t help. This has led some people to suggest that the physical effects of exercise are less important than the social role – the feeling of doing something to fight your depression and conform to a virtuous mode of life.
To me, this makes a lot of sense. If you are lucky enough to actually enjoy exercising, I have no problem believing it might as well lead to some mental benefits (for the same reason that having fun is generally better than doing nothing). What I find quite difficult to believe is the claim that exercising will improve your mood and mental health even if you exercise Because You Have To and hate every minute of it.
It was actually this post about nootropics that got me curious about this. Apparently (based on self reported data) weightlifting is just straight up better than most other nootropics?
Anyway, thank you for referencing some opposing evidence on the topic as well, I might try to look into it more at some point.
(Unfortunately, the thing that I actually care about—whether it has cognitive benefits for me—seems hard to test, since you can’t blind yourself to whether you exercised.)
One additional point worth noting is that physical health has an enormous impact on mental health. Exercise (along with good sleeping and eating habits) is valuable even if it didn’t make you stronger.
This alone trumps any other argument mentioned in the post. None of the other arguments seem universal and can be argued with on an individual basis.
As some other commenters noted, what if you just don’t?
I think it would be valuable if someone made a post just focused on collecting all the evidence for the positive cognitive effects of exercise. If the evidence is indeed strong, no other argument in favor of exercise should really matter.
Well, I’ve always been quite skeptical about the supposed huge mental benefits of exercising. I surely don’t feel immediate mental benefits while exercising, and the first time I heard someone else claiming this I seriously thought it was a joke (it must be one of those universal human experiences that I am missing).
Anyway, I can offer one reference digged up from SSC:
To me, this makes a lot of sense. If you are lucky enough to actually enjoy exercising, I have no problem believing it might as well lead to some mental benefits (for the same reason that having fun is generally better than doing nothing). What I find quite difficult to believe is the claim that exercising will improve your mood and mental health even if you exercise Because You Have To and hate every minute of it.
It was actually this post about nootropics that got me curious about this. Apparently (based on self reported data) weightlifting is just straight up better than most other nootropics?
Anyway, thank you for referencing some opposing evidence on the topic as well, I might try to look into it more at some point.
(Unfortunately, the thing that I actually care about—whether it has cognitive benefits for me—seems hard to test, since you can’t blind yourself to whether you exercised.)