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Getting Back Into Shape While At The Office?
rhuntley12 writes "Personally, I sit at a computer desk for 10 hours a day with very little actual work. I've also started to get a little belly and out of shape. I know it's real bad in my office, especially with all the beer I consume. What do you do to stay in shape? Any secrets? Recently I've started to do sit ups, push ups, and running up and down the stairs. I get a lot of odd looks, and would prefer something that doesn't make the whole office stare at me.
I've looked through some websites with equipment, but it's all serious equipment I can't/won't lug into work. Any suggestions?"
Simple. Get up and walk around. Contrary to all the paid ads on tv... just burning calories will take weight off. You don't have to target yer stomach if you wanna lose a gut. Targeting exersize is for building/toning muscle groups.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
...there are some super hot chicks there, it breaks up the day, and I get a moderate workout in. I only stay for about 45 minutes, but I guess it is better than nothing.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
if you drink pop all day, all of the sugar accumulates. try drinking water instead. you should lose a couple pounds after a week or two.
there is no secret to losing weight.
you have to burn more calories than you take in.
so either take in less calories (stop drinking all the beer) or burn more (run).
I run in the mornings and am working my way back up to 70 miles a week.
I'm in shape.
funny how those go hand in hand.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
A simple thing you could do is go for a quick job during your lunch break. Of course it would be wise to change clothing, but a quick jog every day can do wonders for you. It's good excersize and you could probably fit it into your current schedule.
And if it's a tech job, just move heavy computers around all day... it looks like real work!
I am a filthy pirate.
Something I discovered is replacing soda (or in your case beer), with bottled water. It's just as convenient, and is more filling and actually serves a purpose.
Also, a high water intake (just as long as you don't start killing off your kidneys) will help to detox you a bit, always nice in cubeville.
sounds harsh, but it works. It's all in the mind. The natural reflex of a human is to eat when yuo're hungry. Fight that reflex in 2 ways :
1. Don't stuff yourself when you're hungry. Eat a little. And eat stuff that contains fewer calories, like fruit or yoghourt.
2. Learn to appreciate the feeling of a tiny hunger. Consider it a sign from your belly to your brain saying "hey dude : you're losing weight right now ! Keep up the spirit !".
That, plus exercise offcourse. For myself, I found podBiking a great calory burner : iPod + real bicycle for 2 hours at least. Get a real bike though, not that mountainbike shit. That's for sissies. A racing bike is a bit more expensive, but it's so much more fun to ride since you don't get exhausted from rubbing the asphalt all the time with those huge gripping tires. When i switched from mountainbikes to racebikes, my appetite for cycling doubled. I do twice as many hours now as I did before.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Never take the elevator. Ever. Do you work on the 30th floor of an office building? Run them to get to your work area, then run them to and from lunch, then run them when you go home. 120 flights of steps right there. If you're like me and you live in an apartment, take the steps there every time you leave or come home, and when you are swapping laundry from washer to drier. It adds up very quickly. Last year I lived on the 9th floor and I took them at least 6 times a day to and from class, and to and from activities. 54 flights of steps a day.
Next time you walk past the elevator or are in an elevator, take a look around: what type of people are the ones taking the elevator up one story?
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
It hasn't even been three months since the Hacker's Diet was mentioned.
Basically, one of the points made is that it takes a lot of exercise to lose weight. Although John Walker (the author) does suggest exercise, he recommends using a 10-15 minute a day program based off that of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Personally, by watching my calorie intake, without exercising, I've lost about 30 pounds since April, and I'm trying to shed another 10-20 to get back to the 150-160lb range. I'm guessing that cutting out sodas has has the most profound impact on what I've changed, diet wise. Of course, I had to slowly cut back... It's not like I was drinking 3L of Mt. Dew per day, as I was in college, but I was probably drinking a good 1.5L of sodas per day. Oh...and you do have to drink water, or as a compromise, sports drinks, as fruit juices tend to have just as mushc sugar as sodas.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Seriously, when I was working a desk job, I was gaining weight, and now I'm losing weight. And this is despite the fact that I still sit on my duff 8+ hours a day while working. The differences are:
- I walk everywhere . Something about being in a college environment encourages this, but there's nothing preventing you from walking more often. Walk to the store, to the bus, to lunch, etc.
- I eat a lot less. When I was working, it wasn't uncommon to find myself eating high-Calorie fast food at my desk, sitting all day, then going home to eat a large dinner. These days, my schedule is less regular, and as a result, I eat smaller meals, more sporadically. I'm poor, so I often bring my leftover dinner to work (which reduces portion size). Finally, I just eat less now. I realize that this is harder when you're sitting at a desk all day long, but there's nothing stopping you from eating less food.
- When I get stressed, I go to the gym. This one is simple, deceptively so. You'd be amazed at how an hour of daily weight training or running can eliminate stress from your life. And it makes you healthier, too! The trick is getting in the habit, and that can be difficult. Try this: sign up for a gym with a friend. Go regularly, and go together, at least at first. You'll force each other to go in the beginning, but before long, you'll find that you need to go to feel healthy and productive. And that's when it becomes automatic.
I realize that this sounds a lot like the "eat less, exercise more" advice you're hearing from others. The thing is, they're right, but it seems impossible to follow their advice when you're out of shape and chained to a desk. You have to force these things to become habit. Start slowly (say, with walking daily), and gradually build up your exercise regimen. As you get bored, change what you're doing, and try something new. Before long, it will be an important component of your life (and as I said before, exercise is a great stress-reliever!)(Side note: whatever you do, you don't have to kill yourself doing it. I used to make the mistake of exercising way too hard, giving up from the pain, and as a result, rarely exercising. Whatever you do, stay in your aerobic heart rate range, and realize that the fact that you're not dying doesn't mean you aren't getting exercise.)
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
if you drink pop all day, all of the sugar accumulates.
I agree with that one 100%. At my previous workplace, we had free soda fountains for the engineers, and I would literally consume up to a gallon of Mountain Dew each day. Switching to diet Dew, though I had to buy it myself, cut literally 1500 calories per day from my diet, and it didn't "hurt" (in the sense of having to go without something) at all.
As a fairly typical geek, I tend to dislike most sports (particularly those involving "teams" - stupid primate dominance rituals). I also cannot stand going to the gym - You have to deal with too many people unless you go at obscene times of the day, bad smells, paying attention to which muscle groups you work, and at least one of my friends who go almost always have some gym-related injury they need to work around (Pulled neck, crunched knee, hyperextended bicep, blah blah blah). And, I personally consider going to a gym just incredibly boring.
You might, however, find that you enjoy an alternative form of exercise.
Personally, I enjoy hiking, and just getting out at least once each weekend for a good 4-6 hour hike will both keep you toned and keep the weight down.
Alternatively, swimming burns massive amounts of calories, and you don't even need to sweat while doing it.
As another nice alternative, though it does tend to involve a small number of other people, try taking up a martial art (a "real" one, not cardio-kickboxing or one of the cheesy pseudo martial arts designed just to give you an aerobic workout). I formerly took Kempo (and will again, when I find a good dojo in the area to which I moved), and found it quite enjoyable. You'll find yourself in the best shape of your life, it won't bore you nearly as much as going to the gym, since it engages your mind as well as your body, and as a side effect you'll gain the ability to defend yourself if you ever have a need to do so.
The real "secret", though, doesn't count as a secret at all. Limit your caloric intake and/or get more exercise. No other "fad" will help you, they all just find ways to hide the discomfort of denying our genetic predisposition to eating as much as possible in case of a famine. Find something you enjoy, and do it. Try a lot of different activities, you must like something. And find little ways to burn more calories during the day (walk/bike to work and/or lunch, if possible; Always take the stairs rather than the elevator; walk to a coworker's cubical rather than calling or emailing someone 50 feet away).
Not a problem. Wear bike clothes on your way to work.
In the Panniers described earlier in the thread you carry your work clothes, some deodorant and a dampened towel in a large Ziploc bag.
Get to work, hop in the restroom, use a stall as a changing station. Wipe down with the towel & put it back in the bag. Apply deodorant. Change into your work clothes and comb hair.
When you are sitting around and sweating, the sweat is more oily and you will stink. When you sweat from constant physical exertion, the sweat does not tend to stink as much.
Change back into the bike clothes for the trip back.
BTW: Real cyclists don't wear underwear.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
And lay off the carbohydrates too. This might start a flame war (Atkins diet arguments and such.) You should lay of the bread, chips, orange juice, and other things that have a lot of carbs. This stuff gets absorbed by your body and makes you fat.
Yes, excess carbs do get turned to fat. However, so do excess protein and excess fat. The difference is that carbs and protein are 4 cal/gram, while fat is 9 cal/gram. You do the math.
Actual fat is more or less just passing through and makes it into the toilet with your centrum multivitamin.
Don't know who told you that but they didn't know what they were talking about. Fat is readily absorbed. Notice how people who eat a lot of fried food get fat? That's right. Fat makes you fat. Shocking, I know, but it's true. The only way fat isn't completely absorbed is to eat a ton of it really quickly. The problem is that 1) your body is then absorbing fat as fast as it possibly can, which is enough to make you morbidly obese, and 2) any fat in your poo gives you nasty diarrhea, which I'm assuming isn't an attractive solution. Otherwise, pretty much all fat is absorbed.
Cutting back on the carbohydrates and stepping up on the exercise is really what makes the difference.
Excercise is of course good - particularly intensive cardio, as the longer it takes you to get your heart rate back to normal after excercise, the more calories you burn. Additionally, doing a lot of frequent cardio can raise your metabolism. Think of it as excercising when you aren't excercising. Good deal, eh?
Regarding the carbs fiasco - I guarantee you, if I eat 1 pound of carbs, and you eat 1 pound of fat, you will put on twice the weight as you consume (more than) twice the calories. The mitigating factor is that simple carbs are broken down much faster. Put a cracker in your mouth, and within seconds it tastes sweet - because it's broken down into simple sugar before it even hits your stomach, and simple sugar is readily absorbed like nothing else.
That is bad because eating a lot of simple carbs spikes your blood sugar, causing your body to release a ton of insulin. However, because it was a short-term sugar spike, you now have too much insulin, causing blood sugar to plummet. At the same time, your stomach has emptied, making you really hungry. That's why simple carbs are bad.
So what to do? To lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than you use, of course. Naturally, that means regulating your blood sugar and keeping yourself non-hungry with the least calories possible. A nearly all-fat diet is bad because, while you're satisfied (fat digests slowly), you also consume massive amounts of calories. Simple carbs are the opposite - each binge is small, but you're hungry every 10 minutes. The best recommendation is a good amount of protein, complex carbs, and a diet with 30% of calories from fat. That way, you don't eat too often, and you don't get 2000 calories/meal, either.
Complex carbs are things like whole grains and such. So brown, whole-grain bread is good. If you like pasta and rice, again get the whole-grain stuff, and cook it less time than usual - cooking carbs in water breaks them down, effectively digesting them. The more they digest in the pot, the quicker they are absorbed in your body.
Bottom line is the Atkins diet is dangerous, containing way too much saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories from fat, and too much protein can be bad on the kidneys. Eat a balanced diet low in simple carbs, substituting complex carbs instead, and you'll do well.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The numbers don't lie for a proper implementation of the Atkins Diet: higher HDL, lower LDL, reduction of risk/elimination of Diabetes (type II), reduced volatility in blood sugar levels, etc...
A proper implementation != bacon and eggs for breakfast, 1 pound of macadamia nuts for lunch, and large quantities of prime rib and lobster for dinner, with butter and cheese for snacks. Although these foods are welcome, it's all in moderation. Atkins is a well balanced diet (not a fad diet) with an emphasis on severe reduction of carbs. There's a mini-conspiracy brewing with the food industry and their disagreement with this diet. The profit margin for serving hamburgers on enriched flour bread is substantial, and the extra value meal has an even larger profit margin %.
The FDA recommends that individuals ingest approximately 300g of carbohydrates a day. This amount is awful for just about any individual other than one who ingests pasta and whole wheat exclusively, and bikes 25 miles/day. For everyone else, this is simply a recipe for a spare tire (man) or a bubble butt/hips (woman). Obviously, the individual beginning this thread is not a threat of doing significant bike riding daily.
And the bacteria feed on the secretions that come out of the sweat glands. Eccrine sweat glands are what cause you to cool off while exercising, Apocrine sweat glands are responsible for the bacteria B.O. fest:
Types of sweat glands
Eccrine sweat glands
The release of sweat from eccrine glands is the body's cooling process. Sweat is produced in a coiled tubule in the dermis and is transported by a sweat duct through the epidermis to be secreted. The entire body surface has 2-3 million eccrine sweat glands and can produce up to 10 L of sweat per day.
Apocrine sweat glands
In humans, apocrine sweat glands serve no known function and are regarded as vestigial glands perhaps useful to our ancestors. They are located mainly in the underarm and genital areas. Like eccrine sweat, apocrine sweat is also produced in coiled tubules in the dermis, but the apocrine duct drains sweat into a hair follicle from which it reaches the skins surface. Contrary to popular belief, the sweat from apocrine glands is odorless. The action of normal skin bacteria on excreted apocrine sweat is responsible for body odor.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I have a whole bunch of friends in the IT industry all going fat. I'm a little better off because im only in the IT mill for a few years having studied stage dance before :-). Stage dancers, especially ballet dancers are the people with the least body fat ratio. :-). I also can get very anoyed at my wife when she thinks I *must* eat because it's dinnertime.
Now, especially with my wife into really good cooking, I often notice that I eat beyond my appetite. I'm absolutely shure that people who become fat in 'sitting jobs' have the same problem. Far to often do they eat beyond their appetite, be it due to frustration or just bad habit.
Whenever I notice that I have to widen my belt by a hole I simply eat less. Period. I switch from a 3 course meal to Ramen and Broth. I don't eat 2 buns with peanutbutter and chocolate in the morining, I eat one. I don't take 3 balls of Icecream I take 1 and so forth. I do this for 3 weeks and then I'm down to ideal weight again.
The problem overweight people often have is that they then tend to be disturbed by the slightest notion of not feeling absolutely fed up and allways have to think about eating. They often also eat because it's dinner time and not because their really hungry. The best way to handle this is to learn not to center your life around eating. I actually had times when I wouldn't eat for a day or two simply because I was so occupied with other things that are far more interresting. It's really strange when you get really *hungry* (when the last time you're been really *HUNGRY*?) at 11o'clock at night and then come to notice that your last food is 36 hrs away
Bottom Line:
Apart from other things I'd suggest that have been mentioned allready (check out the Aikido posting further down, it's right on!) the solution for tendency to overweight is so simple it hurts: If you're gaining weight simply switch your diet and/or eat less.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca