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Geeks and Weight-loss?
WideLoad asks: "A decade or so spent at a desk in the IT industry
has left me with a physique that can best be described as looking like
a half melted wax Buddha figurine. It seems to be a common problem for
those of us whose career and hobby tends to promote a sendentary
lifestyle. With the holiday gorging season upon us and in need of
inspiration and/or motivation I thought I'd ask: what are other geeks
doing about their health?"
practise "autonomous seating" while at the computer - use a chair with no back - this will improve your posture and exercise (and thus burn energy) th muscles in yr abdomen and lower back
th general idea is to use yr body properly at all times - and thus generally not require special times to "work out"
The majority of gain can probably be had from really simple stuff. Take the stairs once or twice a day instead of the lift. Walk to the park to have lunch. We recently had an adverising campaign here (NZ) where some government agency stuck stickers on bus stops urging you to walk the last two stops. If you drive in, maybe find some parking 15-20 minutes walk away.
:)
Try the simple dietary stuff too - grill instead of fry. Water instead of Coke.
If this doesn't work, then you might need to start on the heavy stuff, but the simple things don't need to suck. Anyway, it's not like I would know, I'm on the beanpole half of the IT industry
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
It's not true that the body uses up available carbohydrate before starting to burn fat. Different tissues use different sources of energy, regardless of how much is available.
The heart doesn't use carbohydrate for energy. It only burns fat. This means that aerobic exercise, in addition to being good for the heart, has extra benefits for the waist.
The brain, conversely, doesn't normally use fat at all, since fat has trouble crossing the blood-brain barrier. The human brain requires a lot of metabolic energy, so the amount of carbohydrate burned in a day can be fairly significant. Since you use up this energy even if you have your but parked in a chair, this is part of your basal metabolic rate.
Normal muscle (except in the heart) uses either fat or carbohydrate. Of course, this assumes some measure of physical activity. Muscle stores a certain amount of carbohydrate, after which it has to draw carbohydrate from the blood, which gets it from a small reserve of carbohydrate which is stored in the liver after you eat.
The metabolic effect of a very low carbohydrate diet is similar in some ways to untreated Type I diabetes. The brain needs carbohydrate, so the body tries to find a way. Fat is normally stored by the body in a form that connects three fatty acids together with a small carbohydrate molecule. The body breaks up the stored fat into the carbohydrate, which goes to the brain, and the fatty acids, which ends up being waste material. It's not normal for the body to have stray fatty acids around like this, and the fatty acids get shunted through some unintended metabolic pathways, eventually breaking down into acetone and similar substances, which evaporate from the lungs. This type of metabolism is called ketosis, and the resulting sweet-smelling breath (smelling of nail polish remover) was a classic symptom of late stage Type I diabetes in the days before insulin therapy. The diabetes analogy breaks down in that the blood sugar isn't actually elevated.
The whole point of very low carbohydrate diets is to put the body into ketosis, in which fat is broken down into nail polish remover, which is exhaled. This is faster, easier, and less hunger-inducing than exercise. I remain unconvinced that it's healthy.
Low-carbohydrate diets can also be low in water soluble vitamins, since they rely primarily on meat, eggs, and dairy at the expense of grains, legumes, and vegetables.
The excess protein in a low-carbohydrate diet, assuming you're eating meat rather than butter, gets burned up, since there's no good way to make it into fat. This places an extra burden on the kidneys.
If you're heavy because you eat from habit rather than hunger, reducing caloric intake is a good place to start. It's better to start by reducing fat intake, though, since your body already has that in excess. If you're heavy because your appetite exceeds your metabolism, your best recourse is a combination of exercise and reduced caloric intake. Again, the best recourse is to reduce fat intake.
It TOTALLY worked for me. I lost like ~40 ponds in 3 months. And, no, the Hacker's Diet isn't Mountain Dew and Twinkies. It was devised by the dude who invented Autodesk who was like, "I'm rich and I have a family and a company, and damn well everything I could ever want, but I'm still a BIG, FAT ASS!!" So he decided to do something about it.
Its got Palm Pilot tools and stuff to help you manage your weight. A diet program written by a geek for geeks.
BTW, this topic has been on /. at least twice in the past few years, but I guess this question is a pretty pressing one this time of year. :-)
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
I dropped about 30 pounds last year in 3 months (gained about 15 of it back). I didn't make a world of change in my slacking exercise habits (which would have done more), but I did change my eating habits dramatically.
Remove all those easy snacks from the house. Chips, crackers, etc. Nibble on a hunk of cheese instead.
Stop drinking soda! Or, if you must, switch to diet. I know someone who switched from Dew to Diet Dew and dropped 10 pounds very quickly just from that. YMMV. But just drinking more water will help out. At worst, it'll flush stuff out of your system. And all that exercise walking to the can 8 times a day!
Sorry to say, beer is liquid calories. I severely cut back my beer intake (I'm not an alcoholic, I just enjoy a brew w/ dinner) in that time period and it helped.
Eat a salad for lunch. My building at work has a decent salad bar in the cafeteria. This cleans you out and gets you burning stored fuel (fat). In the final week of my weight loss last year (it was a contest), I ate nothing but green stuff. It sucked, but it worked. Obviously that's not a long-term diet plan.
Exercise doesn't have to be a membership at a gym. Get out and walk around the neighborhood a few nights a week. In terms of burning stored fat, that'll do better than an intense weight-training program. Lifting weights is good, but you'll just have great muscles under all that fat. Which is why just doing sit-ups doesn't improve the look of your abs. Balance cardio and weight, but if you have to choose between the two, take cardio for starters.
Also remember that with exercise, you'll be building muscle mass. Muscle is more dense than fat, so you will be getting in better shape, but if you're near your target weight, you will not see a dramatic weight loss - just transformation.
LOL
That's exactly where I was three years ago! Same height, same weight! I always was the skinny guy in school, and never could seem to gain any weight.
All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Don't go out of your way to try to gain weight - you'll find it's difficult to stop!
My point - three years later, I'm sitting here weighing 170. I wish it was muscular weight, but no, I've got a gut that I've got to get rid of. It came on slowly - I was proud when I hit 155, then 160. Then I wanted to slow it down, but the damn weight kept on coming!
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Having "been there, done that," I can tell you that you're focusing on a symptom, not the real problem.
How much regular exercise do you get? How much "jog three times a week, rain or shine, snow or scorcher" exercise, how much "drink beer with the buddies at weekly softball game" exercise?
Exercise will not cause the pounds to melt away, at least at first. In fact it's common for people to *gain* weight initially - I've been doing a basic "get back into motion" program for 13 weeks, and my weight is back where I started. But my waist is down by over 2" and I can comfortably, if slowly, jog for 3 miles without taking a break.
Most importantly, I'm finally in good enough shape to start one of those "beginner" programs like the "Business Plan for the Body" plan. If I had tried one 3 months ago, I would have soon been injured and had to stop.
As for diets... don't bother. Eat better, not less. Cut out the soda and junk food, replace it healthier choices, and don't worry about it. Exercise is actually an appetite suppressant (unless you're in incredibly poor shape) so you'll eat less naturally. Toss in replacing hundreds of empty calories in a bag of chips with a handful of calories in several handfuls of raw veggies, and that's all the calorie restriction you need.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I've lost about 42 pounds since may, and it's been relatively easy. I'd recommend you keep it simple. Here are my 3 easy steps:
1. Figure out what your regular diet consists of, and look at the fat and caloric values. I for instance was eating fast food for lunch every day, but I was eating a burger and fries. I found that I could eat something just as filling with 1/3 - 1/2 the calories. I started my diet by switching to a chicken burger and something other than fries for a side, and instead of hitting mcdonalds for breakfast I did a bagel. Later I improved even more once I saw results (now I do a slimfast for breakfast and a veggie burrito for lunch).
2. Drink lots of water. When you feel hungry, drink water instead of a snack or soda if it's between meals. I drink several litres a day of water.
3. Regular (but doesn't have to be vigorous) exercise. I do a 30 minute work out 3 times a week (some weights and light cardio), and I go for a walk with my wife for about 20 minutes every night. It's not tough, and I'm sure it has made me much more healthy. I certainly feel better about myself.
The important thing is consistancy. I eat basically the same thing every day, so the odd day when I eat cheese fries or something I don't have to feel guilty, because I know my normal routine is good. If you start out by eating healthy six days out of the week you can look forward to the things you want on the 7th day, and you won't feel like you are depriving yourself. After a while I stopped wanting the unhealthy food and now the thought of eating a cheeseburger is not desirable.
'Tis a healthy strategy for anyone. Ex: candy/cookies/soda -> fruit/veggies/any drink sans sugar.
I agree with the above statement, but I would like to add a couple of ideas.
Take transit to work, because the extra walking each day makes a big difference. If the bus is near your home, then find a farther bus route with less people riding the route. [I realize that the idea of transit was touched on in the above post, but I wanted to state it in a firmer way]
Also, try eating brown rice, lentils [or beans or other legumes], and tofu. You still get protein, carbs and other nutrients, for a rounded diet, but the added effect is that it actually suppresses appetite more than anything that I know. The rice and lentils really slow things down in the digestive tract.
You'd still eat fruits and vegetables to get other nutrients. Go to
www.5aday.org
www.dole5aday.com for kids, but still has good information
For more information, go to your public library and read about how to prepare beans for tasty, gas-free meals.
To put things into persective, in my first year of college, I used to be this 120lb weakling who could eat a large plate of salad, a large plate of the main meal, a dessert, 2 measured cups of drink, and a bowl of soup. That's pretty gross. Anyways, I began to eat healthier and healthier as time went on. About 10 years later [just recently] I began to eat the rice, lentils [sometimes red kidney beans], and tofu. I was really surprised at how little I ate in a day. Sometimes a bowl of poridge and some friut would last me the whole day. Other times, I ate other things. I eventually lost some weight. I went from this 120 lb weakling to 116 lb weakling--not that it is good or anything. I'm trying to gain weight through exercise.
I'm not saying that this will be easy, but I think that this will work for most people, because the taste of the food alone is enough to suppress most appetites. Also, you'll have to do more than these things, but this type of a life style will help to make it easier for you to maintain a healthy weight.
Sincerely, and with thanks,
Eugene T.S. Wong
testing out my trending skills
It's sort of an anti-diet book that uses basic science to teach you how to eat adequately without a tedious amount of willpower or nutritional accounting. Here's the jist of what I've picked up so far:
- 3 nutrients in your diet affect most of your dietary health: protien, carbohydrates, and fat. Water, vitamins, and minerals make up the rest.
- Your body needs carbohydrates to metabolize food at all.
- Your body mostly burns fat to get its energy, with a little required carbohydrates to jumpstart the fire.
- If you run out of carbohydrates in your blood, you stop burning fat at all. Your body goes into 'famine-preparation' mode.
- To prepare for a famine, your body stores any fat in the blood into fat cells to protect you from starving to death.
- To get energy without carbohydrates, your body cannibalizes its own muscle tissue by de-animating the protien into carbohydrates, which leaves nitrates in the blood as a waste product (ashes).
- You're basic metabolic rate (BMR) is determined by the percentage of your body that is muscle. More muscle and you burn more calories just sitting still.
- The loss of muscle tissue caused by famine-preparation lowers your BMR, causing you to burn fewer calories in general.
- Any surplus of unmetabolized carbohydrates or fat in the blood gets stored as fat.
- Most people run out of carbohydrates 3 to 5 hours after eating.
- Digestion itself burns calories to work, but complex carbohydrates take the most calories to digest.
- The big magic secret to losing weight is: eat more often. NEVER go without food or let it get to the point where you feel a nagging hunger -- that's when your body is starting to archive fat and sugar into your fat cells.
- Eat some complex carbohydrates (grains, beans, legumes) every 3 to 5 hours, along with a complete protein (amount doesn't matter, almost "any" protein, however little, is "enough"). Check out something on vegetarianism for an explanation of "complete" protiens. (It's easy)
- Don't eat so much that you feel "full". Digestion takes a lot of power to run. That sleepiness is your stomach diverting energy away from the rest of you to digest. If you eat more often, you don't need to eat so much each time to feel satiated (try it).
- Eating too much at once overloads your digestion and causes excess food to be either stored as fat or just expelled (which dehydrates you).
- Moderate eating throughout the day will burn calories just through digestion without making you feel tired.
- If you eat enough carbohydrates, your body can add protein to your muscles, which will increase your BMR.
- A little aerobic exersize slightly damages your muscles. They will heal back a little larger if you don't work them too hard. A 30 minute walk is "enough" of a workout.
- Don't go crazy and hurt yourself. Overworking your muscles will gradually make them smaller. Too much exersize exhausts your blood sugar and causes your muscle protien to be deanimated into fuel. The process that heals back protein into your muscles needs carbohydrates, so overexertion very quickly (a few weeks) will make you weaker.
- Once you have enough muscle, your body will burn fat mostly, provided you feed it enough carbohydates. Eventually, you won't be able to eat more carbohydrates by volume than your muscles can burn, if you stick to natural food (not granulated sugar).
- Last and most important: you may not lose any weight. It doesn't matter. Your body composition will change from being a lot of fat with some bones, organs and muscles hiding underneath to a bunch of bones, organs and muscles with some fat in between for insulation (you need to be 5 to 20 percent composed of fat). Muscle is much denser than fat, so your "weight" may actually go up. Scales are useless and tell you next to nothing about your health. Don't weight yourself.
At that point the whole thing kind of runs itself. Supposedly. We'll see, eh?The diet world is full of scams. Your first clue that something isn't legitimate is if it requires you to continuously shell out money (diet pills, "nutitional" shakes, health clubs for people who aren't atheletes...). The only thing that I see different about Body Fueling is that doctors look at it and give it a thumbs up. Real doctors. The kind with bad hair, ill-fitting clothes, and that far-away look in their eyes left over from years without sleep in medical school. Not the actors wearing stethoscopes you see on TV. PBS did a spot on Body Fueling in the mid-90s, which is where I heard of it. My mom is a biologist who teaches pre-med to would-be nurses and doctors, and she said it checked out with her understanding of human body chemistry and metabolism.
So eat a piece of fruit, some complex carbohydrates (like pasta, rice, lentils, peas, corn, beans, or wheat bread), and a complete protein. Drink a cup of water, juice, or tea before you eat. Drink a cup after you finish (not while you eat, if you can help it -- it defeats the digestive effect of saliva and chewing your food). Do this every 3 hours (not 5, especially if you are just starting out). Use your watch to tell you when to eat. You should stop feeling hunger pangs at all after a few days. If you miss a meal, eat a little something as soon as you can, then set your next meal 3 hours from then. Life usually doesn't cooperate with our intended schedules, so just work around interruptions. Take a 30 minute walk once a day, or something on that order. Until you get fit FIRST, any real level of exersize will probably be counterproductive. But I can't even spell exersize, so what do I know? I haven't even finished the book.
If you have a habit of eating a lot of junk food, fast food, or subsist on soda/coffee (my problem), do the body fueling first. Then see if you still feel as hungry for those things. I find if I bring 2 sandwhiches, 4 peices of fruit, and 1 cup of some entree from home (like lentils or spaghetti) that I can make it through work without the temptation to get a Coke or Mountain Dew to supress my appetite. And I don't feel jittery or tired, just alert.
YMMV. Good luck to you.
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
Water is *the single* most important dieting device for several reasons ...
:)
..
:)
1: Breaking a fat molecule off of a lipid chain is a hydration reaction (I don't recall much more then that cuz its been years since I read that). The more water you have around, the more likely a reaction can occur
2: Its just good for you. Its almost impossible to drink too much water, it washes away all the shit you put in your body (however this includes nutrients so take vitamins).
3: It helps you loose weight because, if your drinking alot of water -- your not going to be very hungry very often
Ive lost 30 pounds this year upping my water intake to around 2 gallons/day. At first this sounds like self abuse, but very strangely I *enjoy* drinking this much water. However, I can get up to use the restroom anytime Id like at work
If you want to seriously diet you must limit your intake of caffine, and of nitrates (hot dogs, baccon, processed/packaged meat etc), both which inhibit your bodies ability to loose weight. Also some compound in bananas does this as well, I dont what or why but my mother told me "at weight watchers they told us if you eat a banana, expect to loose no weight for two days"
the only other diet I've ever had any luck on is the atkins diet (protiend diet) but these diets are very dangerous and you shouldn't do it unless you've exhausted other options.
btw, IANAD (dietician), but these are my personal experiences
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Go swimming! I used to be on a swimming and diving team, and it was rather humorous, since nearly 1/2 the team was a bunch of "geeks" =). As surprising as it may seem, us "geeks" took 1st place at quite a few state events and a couple went on to nationals. Nothing beats swimming, especially when you are given the opportunity to float along with beautiful mermaids =] TRiPTMiND
// TRiPTMiND \\
I was once very over weight in my opinion. However now I am at my optimal weight and body shape. I have a well defined muscle structure and have great stamana. My secret?
I am a vegan. I exercise by walking around. I am also pretty depressed. However with the first two being a change in my life style that has since become stable. I was able to change my weight from 230 pounds to 154 pounds in less than 4 months.
If you want to lose some weight, become vegan. You will find out that the american diet mainly consisits of things that keep you really fat. However it's worth the change if you want to live to hack tommorrow.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
This combination can be... risky. Excess water consumption can mess up electrolyte balances because you cells try to balance sodium et al across the cell boundary. If you drink a lot of water (no salt), it suck the sodium out of the cell. This can interfere with muscle contractions - in the worst case it can trigger a heart attack.
On a related note, low potassium levels (e.g., due to exercise) can also mess with cardiac function and cause dizziness and even blackouts. Bananas are a good source of potassium, which is why a lot of athletes always toss a banana into their protein shakes.
Considering the typical weight watcher, that advice might have just been a corrupted warning that the potassium in a banana might cause modest water retention. If that's the case, you'll be far better off eating the banana.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I found it was a short trip from being a computer geek to being a bike geek. I got a bike as an adult because I couldn't afford parking on campus in grad school. Once I discovered that grad school was a pointless waste of time, I still had the bike, and found it was a great way to blow off steam. I also find bugs and get great ideas when I'm out riding and supposedly not thinking about computers. When conditions made commuting possible, I'd commute by bike, otherwise I'd try to get in a half hour or so of riding three or four times a week. After a short while, you get used to whatever level you put in, and get cranky if you miss it.
For years, though, I refused to become a bike geek, even though I rode regularly. I'd even take flat tires to the shop.
Eventually, I stopped fighting the urge to become a bike geek. So now, in addition to my software job, I have a weekend job in a bike shop, and I do more riding than ever. Like many computer geeks, I was never very athletic in high school, but now I've gotten into racing. Here in the SF Bay Area, there seem to be many techies who have found bike racing to be a hobby to start in their 30s.
There are plenty of things to geek out about in cycling: many numbers for measuring fitness, many ways to measure rides, all the dietary advice you've seen so far. And that doesn't even get into the bikes and all the tweaks you can make. I think anybody who enjoys programming would like building a wheel, turning a tangled web of spokes into a functional device with just the right amount of tension.
Any good Junkyard Wars aficionado knows what to do in 10 easy steps:
1. Obtain a 10-speed bike.
2. Build some kind of stand that will raise the back wheel off the ground about an inch.
3. Remove the back tire from the rim.
4. Attach an old car alternator to the stand.
5. Loop a long rubber belt over the back tire rim and over the alternator. A clothes dryer belt works nicely. (Whether to use an idler pulley or a tension adjuster on the alternator is up to the imagination of the engineer who is bodging this contraption together.)
6. Connect the alternator to a car battery.
7. Connect an inverter to the car battery. (Or instead, the alternator could be wired to charge the gel cells of an uninterruptable power supply.)
8. Have fun designing charge indicator meters, writing calories burned programs, etc.
9. Pedal until fully charged.
10. Hack until the battery peters out. By then, you need a brain break anyway. Pedal, hack, repeat. You WILL lose weight.
The key for me was that it had to be easy. I don't like strenuous exercise and I don't like health food. I'd tried to lose weight in the past, but it made me unhappy, so I wouldn't stick with the diet.
So my plan basically consists of 2 things:
1. Eat much less food. I eat the same things, but I eat less overall. And I don't eat health food, I eat pizza and cookies, have lunch at Wendy's, and I drink beer (not light beer either). The only thing I stopped eating was ice cream.
You'll get hungry. That's ok. After you get hungry, eat a small meal -- not enough to make you full, just enough so you're no longer hungry and you have a little energy. For example, I always skip breakfast, so I'm pretty hungry at lunch time. I'll have a small lunch and I'll be pretty hungry again before dinner. Then I'll eat a small dinner, and I'll be ok for while again. After a few days of this, I'll start getting _really_ hungry so I'll have to eat a bigger meal to be able to concentrate on my work.
Just remember, hunger is the feeling of you losing weight. It takes a little time, but you get used to it.
2. Walk an hour a day. And that's every day. I missed about 10 days last year, but I had the flu for about 7 of them.
I picked walking for a bunch of reasons. I can do it inside, so the weather doesn't matter (I don't have a treadmill, I just walk back and forth while watching TV or reading a book). It's free, it doesn't cause injury, it doesn't require special equipment (not even shoes), I don't need a shower afterwards, it doesn't make me out of breath, etc. In short, it's easy and it works. The biggest problem is that it takes an hour.
I've lost an average of 5 pounds per month for the last year and a half.
A couple of other hints:
A. If you try this plan, don't weigh yourself all the time. Weigh yourself once at the start and wait a good 6-8 weeks. Your weight won't go down really fast and if you weigh-in all the time, you might get discouraged.
In fact, don't even try to lose 5 pounds a month. Try to lose 2 pounds. Lose 2 pounds a month for 2 years, and that's 48 pounds.
B. This is not a fitness plan. It's going to be a lot easier to get into running or other fitness activities when you're no longer fat.
That's it. It's easy and it works. The best thing is, I never really have to go off the diet, so there's no worries about putting the weight back on.
Hope this helps.
A boss started me riding by his enthusiasm (and desire for a riding partner to work), and I shortly found out why---it's very enjoyable for me. I'd tried running, walking, and karate, and skipped swimming because I couldn't hack the hassle (drive to pool, change clothes, shower, change clothes, ...). But with cycling I don't mind the hassle, and best of all I live about five miles from work, and so commute by bike most days (~four out of five), plus weekend rides.
As my title indicates, that exercise has to be something fun for you, or you won't do it regularly (unless you have a will of iron, in which case you probably don't need any of this).
So, I took the list below (making your own exercise machine) and stopped after item one. Works for me, but keep trying things until you find one that works for you. I've lost 25 pounds in under a year, and haven't had to change my eating at all.
[And if you're biking, go toJohn Forester's site and buy Effective Cycling. He can be crusty, but he's earned the right, and tells you how to ride to prevent accidents, rather than what to wear when you're having one.]
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
I'm in a similar boat. I got my first desk job (netadmin) about 1.5 years ago. I weighed 165lbs when I started @ 6' 1 1/2" and I'm now at 210lbs. I've never been fat in my life. I've always been the skinny guy that could out eat anyone and never show it. Well damn. It's catching up. My solution will be purchased in a month or two. I'm going to buy a Bowflex. I just moved into a house today. It has a very large living room that can easily hold a Bowflex. I prefer to lift by myself. Going to a gym after work really doesn't work unless you have a group of people to go with you. The group movtivates itself that way. This thing will be close enough to the TV that I can work out and watch HBO at the same time. I think I can pull it off that way. It can't hurt to try. Give it a whirl!