While I agree that exercise can become repetitive and boring, it is far from an intellectually sterile endeavor.
You are literally hacking your own body. Also, since no two people have the same genetic code, determining a fitness regiment is a highly experimental process optimized for you. Since this is a highly quantifiable process, you can make the development as data-driven as you choose as there are all types of variables to measure. There was a popular HackerNews post about applying Machine Learning to a ketogenic diet. See https://github.com/arielf/weight-loss
You are literally hacking your own body. Also, since no two people have the same genetic code, determining a fitness regiment is a highly experimental process optimized for you. Since this is a highly quantifiable process, you can make the development as data-driven as you choose as there are all types of variables to measure. There was a popular HackerNews post about applying Machine Learning to a ketogenic diet. See https://github.com/arielf/weight-loss
I try to avoid lifting weights as much as possible. Instead, fitness for me includes olympic ring travelling (http://travelingrings.org/about/where-are-the-traveling-ring...), rock-climbing, free-running, and acrobatics.