Thanks for explaining your situation so eloquently.

I run regularly, but I have been injured and unable to run for 6 months once. When I started back again I experienced that feeling where everything just feels difficult and bad, nauseous.

Trust me, that bad feeling does go away. It was fairly easy for me to get over that hurdle because exercise is such a big part of my life and I knew what I was aiming for (probably two weeks for me). But from that I do feel that I understand what people are talking about when they say they don't enjoy exercise. You're too out of shape to get over the hurdle to eventually feel good. You don't even know what you're aiming for because you've never felt it. It will take longer for you but you can get there.

> There's no "endorphin high", no sense of satisfaction.

IMO it's completely unrealistic to expect an endorphin high when you're talking about only minutes of exercise. I have had real and strong endorphin highs while running, but only after over an hour of fast running at almost race pace, when I was at my fittest. There is no way you are ever going to get there as a beginner. That's real endorphin high, I mean. You do feel overall much better all day every day being fit.

What you can achieve as a beginner however is the satisfaction that you are getting stronger every day. Eventually you will realize that you're not feeling bad, and after that you will start to feel good, for longer and longer periods of time. A long time after that you will find that you feel worse when you don't get exercise.

Just from that I think it sounds like you have an unrealistic idea of the time it should take for your body to adjust. It literally takes years and years. People who are very out of shape seem to think if they go for one walk a week that they will show noticeable effects which is totally wrong. You need to incorporate it into your life as daily activity.

Is there really nothing you enjoy that has any exercise component? I love almost any kind of exercise anyway, but I'd go crazy if I didn't at least make it outside for a walk every day.

Basically I believe you need to try to split it into little chunks that you can handle. Instead of taking the lift, take the stairs. If you can't go all the way on the stairs then just go halfway. Even doing that every day you will notice in a month that you are doing it easier than when you started. Try to get that incidental exercise here and there and eventually you can do something more substantial like walking significant distances.

For me, getting a GPS heartrate watch was a revelation. I could see every second that I cut off my average pace at the same average heartrate. I found that very motivating, and there's no way I'd be able to measure such small changes in any other way. You're basically running for weeks to see a few seconds difference. Also, I can run virtual races against myself from a year ago.

Perhaps you can find something as motivating for you. You can even listen to coding podcasts while you walk.

That's all assuming you want to change. If you don't, then just keep doing what you're doing and you'll get what you've always got...

Using your coding analogy, you wouldn't start expecting to be able to write your own OS from scratch, you'd start and practice with small things first.

One fact that I learned and still think about sometimes is that every cell in your body is replaced every 7 years. So if you start doing exercise now, 7 years from now every cell in your body will have been doing exercise from when it was first created. That's how I think about the timeframes involved when you are planning to do exercise.

Anyway, just get out there and do something, it's better than nothing, and maybe you can do one and a half somethings the next week, and so on.

Also, I echo the sentiment of the other poster. A home gym is the way to go. It's such a big investment of time to get out to a "real" gym and back.

I can go to my home gym, do "something", and have a shower in the time it takes to just get my clothes ready to go to the "real" gym... And I only wear pants when I feel like it.

As a beginner all you'd need to start is a yoga mat or a towel to do some bodyweight exercises. Much better than nothing...