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Staying Healthy When Working 12 Hours a Day?
dwija asks: "I just got a new job where I just sit in one place all day and work for 12 hours at a stretch. This goes on for 4 days a week and I get 3 days off. The journey to and from my office takes up about 3 hours of my day. I am a little worried now cause i am becoming really weak and I am not as healthy as I used to be. I want to ask others on Slashdot about the kinds of weird times in which they work and what they do to take care of their health and stress."
avoiding carbs is basically the same thing as starving. carbohydrates should be your main source of energy - fat and protein don't work anywhere near as well (hence the atkins diet being so bad).
Did you mean avoid high-sugar foods? You might have something there. Eat complex carbs, not sugars. Eat cereal for breakfast, for example - the carbs will slowly break down giving you energy throughout the day, rather than a quick burst of energy that leaves you feeling worse once it wears off.
If you really need a quick burst, eat something sugary (dextrose sweets are designed for just such a time) and some more complex (a sandwich, for example) at the same time (well... one after the other is fine... they might not mix well). That way once the sugars wears off the carbs will kick in.
You at least have at least 3 non-work days. Although it's probably better for you to exercise every other day, my med school teacher said that exercising three days straight is better than no exercise during the week at all. So find the discipline to do that.
Secondly, find out how to commute smarter. Those 3 hours involve only you behind the wheel, then it's going to take a toll on you -- mentally and physically. Be creative on how to commute. For example, in the DC metro area, there's a growing phenomenon called slug lines, which are "unofficial meeting places where commuters catch free rides with drivers who need additonal riders to use high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes." If you don't have to drive, you can at least use that time for personal enrichment, like reading the paper, book, or listening to music or audiobooks, or you can do some work if you have a laptop, etc. That's 3 hours that you can have to yourself. If you buy an Archos AV340 and have a ReplayTV (or a networked TiVo) at home, you can even catch up on your favorite shows during the commute -- it makes the workday more bearable.
Linux at home
A 4&3 is not a bad schedule. Even with 12-hour shifts.
It's the three-hour commute that's killing him.
For a lot of the last 10 years, I've worked a 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off schedule with 12s. It really isn't bad.
Look at it this way, with his schedule, he's working less than 50 hours a week. Most people work at least 9 hours a day. The employer takes an hour for lunch leaving you 40 hours. If you ever work a weekend or stay late more than twice a week, then you have gone over 48 hours.
But that commute...
It's simple: Live where you work. Get an apartment close to where you work and live there. If you have a family and are not willing to move, then quit.
Another idea is to get a hotel close to work once a week. If the pay is good enough to offset a $60 hotel room, then try it. Staying in a hotel the 3rd night of your week will feel like a dream.
What you really need to do is get some 15lb dumbells and start using them.
Do 10 pushups every other hour. Aim for 50 the first 2 weeks and add a few more each week after. Shoot for 20 pushups at a time and 120 per day.
Same with situps. If you work buisness casual, a towel will keep your shirt clean. Get a sit-up bar for your feet or just hook them under the edge of your desk.
Do curls, squats, upright rows, military presses, and other creative exercises with the dumbells. Agian, no more than 10 or 20 at a time. But you will be doing them throughout the shift.
It'll keep your metabolism high and make you feel a lot better.
Get some alcohol, talcum powder, hand lotion, and a clean rag for your drawer.
If you feel sweaty, use the rag doused with some alcohol to clean the sweat. Use talc to prevent sweat to begin with. Hand lotion is for your hands; push-ups and dumbells can wreak havoc on girly-hands.
Anyway, good luck.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
3 hours by car is frequently more by bicycle
And sometimes it's pretty comparable. Occasionally in LA I've had to drive to meetings in the morning where it would have been much faster to pedal (I'm a pretty strong cyclist, but even if I weren't it would be comparable and more pleasant). From my house to downtown LA is more than an hour at rush hour by car, but I could probably do it in less than 45 minutes on a bike. In group it would be a lot less than 45 minutes.
One option that I've seen people use occasionally is to drive partway and bike partway-- find a safe parking spot about 10 miles from the workplace, and bike the last 10 miles (or whatever is comfortable). Or park about 20 minutes by foot away-- even a brisk walk like that twice a day can help a lot. Especially if it breaks up what would otherwise be 15 hours sitting on your butt.
Point the second: It is not a fad diet. The atkins diet has been used for ages to control seizures by reducing the amount of glycogen in the brain. It just wasn't called that.
Point the third: Atkins is based on the idea of a fairly well-known state of the body called ketosis in which the brain is run on ketones (actually more efficient than running on glucose) and during which the body does not store fat. It is often confused with ketoacidosis, a state in which ketones build up in the body, and which sometimes afflicts those with diabetes. They are not the same thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"