Slashdot Mirror
IT Workers Are Getting Fatter
buzzardsbay writes "While technologies such as virtualization, multi-threading, and blade servers have made the data center leaner, those who work there are getting... well... not leaner. According to a new study by CareerBuilder.com, 34 percent of IT workers say they have gained more than ten pounds in their current jobs. And 16 percent say they've gained at least twice that. The culprits seem to be the stressful-yet-sedentary nature of tech work coupled with our famously poor eating habits. According to the survey, some 41 percent of IT workers eat out for lunch twice or more per week, making portion and calorie control difficult. Eleven percent buy their lunch out of a vending machine at least once a week."
IT jobs like to hand you infinite snacks these days, there's a load of chips and such in the break room. Company culture tends to gravitate towards dubbing a measure of weight gain "The ACME Corp 20" or such nonsense, to which newbies gain some 20 pounds or so and then start limiting snack room visits.
Me, I use the stairs to get to floor 5. I have leg weights. I was in a martial arts class but a shift change took that off my plate, damn. Need to get back to the dojo. Diet? Exercise? Screw that, my entertainment and normal transportation (that is, without elevators) keeps me from being a fat ass.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I didn't RTFA, but one thing to mention is a lot of companies these days have lots of food just laying around.
Where I work there is always a meeting with food somewhere in the building, and they always order more than they can eat. So of course as soon as the meeting is over, everyone goes and gets the leftovers. Next thing you know, you've had two lunches, two cookies and a bunch of soda you don't need.
It was the same at the last two companies I worked for and I asked a few friends and it's the same where they work.
weird hours
This is actually probably a major part of IT weight gain. I was going to the gym and working out (actually working out, not standing around watching everyone else work out) for a long time, and my weight and my pants size just kept creeping up. Went to the doctor because I figured something must be wrong, and long story short, the problem was getting home at 8-9pm, making dinner, eating dinner, and going to bed. Doc told me to take my dinner to work and eat it at 6pm every day.
In the past 5 months since I got that advice, I've lost almost 40 pounds, putting me at the lowest weight I've been since sometime in the middle of college. Can't say it's made my life great (food is so boring now, since I pretty much have to make the entire week's dinner on Sunday, by Friday dinner is just depressing, and I have to spend the weekend to figure out what dish I'll hate next week...) but I'm sure I'm healthier for it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program has worked for me. I wrote a long summary of it a while back, and I'll just link it:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226411&cid=18343433
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Jokes aside, I spoke with someone who used to do government work for the IRS (he worked in Treasury but not directly for the IRS) and one of their people got audited, because they had to conduct large financial transactions for the government under their name (depositing large sums of cash from the feds into govt accounts, which triggered a FTR and required the depositor's information). Long story short, the IRS was auditing the government's money.
While I agree with much of what you say (I walk to lunch if I'm going out to eat, and I take the stairs all day), I've found that stress alone can actually cause me to *gain* weight. A study in a recent volume of Men's Health (can't find the link right now) also pointed to a link between high stress and weight gain.
The caveat is that for me, high stress can be the motivation I need for an extra-hard workout at the gym or an extra 2 miles on my run that day. Recently, after a manager whose job title could officially be "chief roadblock" sent me an email (CC'ing my boss) accusing me of being a "PowerPoint Engineer" (because he couldn't understand my UML diagram since he has no background in software), I hit the gym for 2 hours and took a 15 mile run in the same day. I definitely felt a lot better after that.
It's not a bug, it's a feature
Except nutrition is about balance. Of course you should eat fruits and vegetables etc, but a hamburger has nutrients too. And besides just eating nutritiously won't make you loose weight! A soda has about as many calories as fruit juice.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
I lost some weight when I became vegan (going from omni), but I later went back to my normal weight.
I attribute to not knowing what junk food was vegan in the beginning, and later learning. :D
For losing weight, the Hacker's Diet (google it) and exercise is working for me, but I'm never more than 20-25 lbs above my ideal body weight. It is rare I stray outside of a "healthy" BMI -- but I do tend to keep a little fat around my middle even if the BMI says I'm healthy.
People here are giving well meant advice like 'Cycle to work', 'Change diet', etc.
However, I've observed that most of my geek friends - including my once slender geek buddy now turned fatso - have gained the habit of eating far beyond their appetite. And my fat buddy does a lot of exercise.
Newsflash: Exercise doesn't help you lose weight very effectively. There is a far more effective solution: Eat less.
Whenever I notice my jeans pinching and my belly gaining (my thighs have gained to much allready - I ought to get them a tad thinner aswell) and my belt going up a notch I simply eat less. It's become something of a bi-monthly rythym of eating normal or what my spoose has trained me to consider normal (read: eating to much!) and barking at her or simply refusing to eat when she heaps to much on to my plate despite me telling her that I'll help myself.
Eating over your appetite has become a social thing, and if you refuse to do it you get queer looks from all sides. Especially if you're still what other *call* slender. Well, guess why I *am* slender, fat-ass!? It's not because I'm doing Aikido twice a week. I simply restrain myself from stuffing my face. Eating slowly helps btw. Eating to fast is one of my prime cause for overweight tendency.
Bottom line: If you can't come up with anthing better, switch to scheduled Broughth and Ramen for 10 weeks and you'll be suprised how well your body starts eating away at those extra pounds stored all over the place. And train yourself to eat less, even if it takes a few ups and downs along the JoJo String. You'll eventually reach your ideal weight if you apply reason to your image in the mirror.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
15%... dang... if only... my weight from before I met my wife to now (7 years on, of which 4 have been "married life") has been 120%
now that being said...
Before: 6 foot 2, 100 pounds even... competative ballroom dancer... 19 years old
now: 6 foot 2, 220 pounds... IT worker, 2-year old at home.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
This remark, while funny to the morons who don't know about the shit companies put in your food, is not quite correct.
:|
:|
It should read, "Because the food is not laden with appetite inducing chemicals and additives, you just won't have the desire to overeat."
Food production companies put all kinds of shit in your food to help you, essentially by drugging you, to eat more food.
One of the most common is sweeteners like sugar, corn syrup, and fructose, glucose, etc... which increase appetite all by themselves.
So maybe if there wasn't this pervasive availability of appetite increasing (as well as mind and body destroying) foods that are ruthlessly pushed by companies for profit$$$ then people wouldn't be so fucking fat.
Note: I became a vegan recently... just in time too, the government just asked the meat companies to stop testing for mad cow disease... yay
Eating breakfast is essentially a bunch of "free" calories. Since doing so ups your metabolism for the whole day. Or at least that's what I think the evidence suggests.
No matter how you slice it though, there's a huge positive correlation with eating breakfast and losing and maintaining a healthy weight.
See:
Skipping Cereal and Eggs, and Packing on Pounds
Lose Weight: Eat Breakfast
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Actually, it's not therapueutic.
Pop psychology has adopted a model of the human mind from the early days of the industrial revolution: the steam engine. You correct a dangerously overheated boiler by "letting off steam". You can't fix an overstressed mind that way.
The human mind is something for which we don't have an exact mechanical analog yet, but it certainly doesn't work such a simplistic way. True, you feel better after "letting off steam" by complaining, but you would feel better after doing anything else you found pleasant and companionable.
The truth is that complaining about your situation only reinforces your thinking about it. In return for some modest short term relief you saddle yourself with a tiny bit more of long term burden. So complaining is not therapeutic, even if it makes you feel better. What would be therapeutic is developing alternative ways of thinking about and acting in your current situation. This might make you feel worse in the short term but reduce some of the stress burden you carry in the long term.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.