[evanjrowley]

Balancing health while being productive as an average adult seems like an impossible equation today.

Many people tell me I need to lift weights to lose weight.

On mornings when I actually put in real effort, I pay for it with a significant cognitive performance penalty for the remainder of the day. I want to do nothing more than sleep an hour after a workout, which is bad timing, because that's when I need to clock into work.

I stay hydrated, get enough sleep, etc. People tell me that I'm over training, which is ridiculous, because anything less would be easy and contravene the purpose of the workout.

This is why I prefer to exercise in the evening, but there are known negative effects [0] of physical exertion on sleep quality.

If I actually did all the exercise I needed to do at the gym in the morning, then I'd probably have to sleep at 9:00 PM and wake up at 4:00 AM. There's no room to live in that schedule.

[0] https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58271-x

[soared]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are likely over training. Check out heart rate zones, optimal workouts for weight loss/muscle gain. IE for endurance sports most of your training time should be zone 2, which if casually “a level of breathing where you could have a conversation”. So not breathing hard. It’s counterintuitive, but you should do workouts pretty close to easy.

[RealityVoid]

I am... not sold on this? The adaptations happen quite fast and you should get quite fast to have the basiline ability for training quite high, so I would say push through the first months. Personally, I feel no adverse cognitive effects form training. On the contrary. So I'm a bit confused a bit about this whole conversation.

Training light is a great way of winding up doing a whole lot of nothing.

[mamcx]

Yeah, in special if you "stop-start-stop" constantly.

Give time to ramp-up. I like to start 2-3 days with things like the "7 minute workout" before dive in into anything more complicated.

Is better quantity than "quality" until you actually can put the discipline and consistency. If not, just walk is good enough

[diogenes_atx]

Something else you might try is changing your diet. After I became a vegetarian and eliminated refined sugar and excess sodium from my food, my health improved, as well as my sleep. I am no longer pre-diabetic. And the food that I eat is wonderful, many different ways of preparing beans and lentils for protein instead of meat.

[throwaway-11-1]

I couldn’t believe how much more alert and awake I would feel after lunch when I quit meat and dairy. Also highly endorse avoiding refined sugar and reducing sodium. Wish I had switched to this diet earlier in life

[EPWN3D]

Exercise is a magic pill in every sense except for losing weight. That's almost entirely controlled by your diet.

If you're exercising to lose weight, you're probably thinking that more exercise means more weight loss, which means that you could be overtraining.

I recently got a second Apple Watch to wear to bed to track my sleep, and it's given me some really great insights into when I'm hitting the red zone and need to dial back training. For exercise, more intensity is not always better. What matters is consistency, not consistently high intensity.

[ap-hyperbole]

> Many people tell me I need to lift weights to lose weight.

No you dont. Exercise does help, and has many other benefits but is not the main driving factor for losing weight. Diet is by far the most important one. Calories intake vs expenditure is the only thing you need to worry about if your primary goal is weight loss.

[rKarpinski]

> People tell me that I'm over training, which is ridiculous, because anything less would be easy and contravene the purpose of the workout.

This doesn't mean you aren't over training.

If it's strength training... Without knowing the specifics what you are describing sounds like too much volume (and training for hypertrophy). Lower reps (3-5) & higher weight will have more of a strength stimulus and be less taxing.

If it's cardio... you probably should be at a lower intensity and going for longer.

[ChoGGi]

> Regardless of strain, exercise bouts ending ≥4 hours before sleep onset are not associated with changes in sleep.

Exercise a little earlier in the evening?

[xiphias2]

,,Many people tell me I need to lift weights to lose weight.''

This is stupid. All you need to do is to get used to being hungry to the point of losing 0.1kg/day and measure yourself a lot (I'm doing the same).

Actually for me working out increases my appetite, and I feel like I have to eat so thar the gym session doesn't go wasted.