Exercise/mention

This subpage is for more stuff that should probably mentioned somewhere:

Things that mess up your ability to exercise properly

Clothes

Restrictive clothing can mess up your running form or lifting form.

When wearing jeans in general, any proper lifting form would probably rip the crotch. People compensate for this by unconsciously rounding their backs more.
Sweat pants are much better for running & lifting, until you actually sweat in them. Once they stick to you, it again restricts the way you can move your legs - and again, people usually don't notice this consciously. They just unconsciously change their exercise form, which causes problems later

Digestion

In two ways:

when your body is digesting food, there is less blood flow available to muscles. but more importantly...
when your body is digesting food, your core muscles can't be activated the same way because the food in stomach/intestines gets in the way.

This is reflected in the fact that the body has two systems opposed to each other. The fight-or-flight system ("sympathetic nervous system") and the rest-and-digest system ("parasympathetic nervous system). Also, keep in mind that food stays in the digestive tract for at least 5 hours.

This is why I suggest the following kind of intermittent fasting:

eat late in the day, up to 2 hours before bed
allow yourself to be lazy after eating
be ok with drinking water before bed (better to wake up to pee than to sleep dehydrated) (water is even more essential when you eat food)
sleep nice and full
wake up, chug some water (or some caffeinated drink if that's your thing), go to the bathroom, and then start your day
do some exercise before starting anything sedentary
don't start eating until a few hours later

Advantages

gives your digestive system a true break
offers opportunity to exercise with a clear digestive system every day
allows your teeth to have a full 14 hours rest with no food sitting on them (as long as you brush them after your last meal of the day)

Post-sitting

After you're on your computer or phone or studying at a desk, your body will have a sort of residual stiffness - could be in your neck, back, hamstrings etc - also your glutes may be temporarily weakened. If you go straight to exercising, you might strain yourself (or worse, "snap some sh*t up"). A easy solution is just to take a 10 minute nap where you slowly stretch out - the stiffness will work itself out as your body returns to more neutral positions. Consider the "straighten out on your back with no pillow" method (this should probably be its own page). Or also, consider exercising when you first wake up before starting anything sedentary or even eating (see above). Of course that's only better if you woke up naturally after getting enough sleep. (should probably have some other page about alarm clocks, why they're unhealthy, why most of the solution is societal (reduce labor hours) but maybe there are some personal hacks that could help in some cases idk)

Shoes

Footwear, even the best kind, still brings about some level of repetitive strain (overworking some muscles and underworking others). Barefoot running is perhaps the best ideal (...)( we evolved to do it - but then again, we didn't evolve to walk on paved surfaces; even nature trails have harsh things sticking up from the ground where plants were cut to make the trail. Wild grasslands are much softer and comfortable for walking barefoot ) but if you've never done it before, be careful, as it takes time for your feet to adapt to not wearing shoes. Grass is a good option for barefooting, but pick a spot where there isn't a chance of broken glass or needles. Also, some grass is softer than other grass. If you find a good soft patch of grass and wear suitable pants for running (see above), you can use that for both your warm-up and your most intense sprints. After getting the blood flowing, you can put your shoes back on and run elsewhere - your feet will be more ready to handle the repetitive strain of shoes. Btw this section could maybe be a whole page on barefooting.

Note on these things

On one hand, these above things could be excuses not to exercise. On the other hand, these above things could inform good habits surrounding exercise, that set the foundation for exercising more often and even spontaneously. Also, there obviously has to be some sort of compromise (i.e. "yes i feel a bit stiff right now but it's not bad enough to need a nap, i should just go exercise now even if my form isn't perfect, better than not exercising at all, and besides, i can ease into it with longer lighter [[#warm-ups|]].

Hydration is key

Hypothesis: Staying hydrated is essential to staying lean. Reason: Muscle is 76% water [1], while fat is just 10% water.[2] If you eat a meal without enough water, then the protein cannot be stored as muscle - the body has no choice but to convert it to fat. Nuances:

Water isn't the only limiting factor to muscle mass. There's also vitamins, minerals, protein, calories, exercise, genetics. How often is each of those the limiting factor? We should analyze the population and see * maybe do a pie chart.
How much water do you have to consume, in order for water to be no-longer the limiting factor?
What about people who don't drink a lot of water because they don't want to pee too much? Is that a valid reason? Would those people be no better off drinking more water, because their bodies wouldn't hold on to it anyway? Note that vitamins & minerals also play a role in holding on to water.
Mild dehydration can also impair brain function.
Moderate dehydration can also contribute to aging, via glycation. I would assume this applies more to chronic dehydration - perhaps the body could recover from acute dehydration without any permanent effects, if the glycation doesn't get a chance to become "advanced" enough.
Under extreme dehydration, the body probably can't store fat either (not because of the tiny bit of water in fat, but because of the water needed to sustain the biological processes involved). But at that point, other health problems are of greater concern.

[1] The Role of Water Homeostasis in Muscle Function and Frailty - NCBI www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › pmc › articles › PMC6723611
[2] Understanding Body Water Percentage | FitTrack Weight Loss blog getfittrack.com › blogs › weight-loss › understanding-body-water-percentage

Warm-ups

Sometimes the simplest most effective warm-up is just to do the same exercise but less intensely. Lift with light weights first, with full range of motion (gets the good form going, and provides dynamic stretching on its own). Let your warmup be as long as you need to get comfortable before lifting heavy.

Terrain affects your running form

"Heel striking is bad, overstriding is bad", they say. But actually, if you're running on uneven terrain (which includes nature trails, grass, and even sidewalks) (especially downhill), you need to overstride - you need to absorb impact to stabilize yourself and not trip and fall. The most efficient way to absorb impact is to lead with your heel and then slap the ground hard. Because if you try to absorb impact on your toes instead, you'll feel a lot more pain later (including in your knees and hips). Now if you're on a race track, then it's a different story. You might have heard that "sprinters run on their toes, endurance runners run midfoot or healstrike" - that's true just because the sprinters' race track is so smooth that there's no need to overstride for stability. So if you're on the track, try running with a toe-strike or mid-foot gait (especially when accellerating - you can still do the "heel-strike ground-slap over-stride" when you put on the brakes at the end of the race).