How Do Geeks Exercise?

An anonymous reader writes "I have always been thin but all the sitting in front of the PC is taking its toll now that I'm getting older. I have begun to get a little heavier around the waist. I don't eat a lot but the weight seems to stay on these days. Most of the time I don't have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office. And being an introvert, I'm not enamored of the idea of exercising in full view of *shudder* people. I regularly do press-ups (60 per night) and sit-ups (30 per night) and some fetching and carrying, but that is all and these days it isn't enough. I need a solid and effective routine that will tone all my muscle groups efficiently. Do any Slashdotters have a regular workout routine that can be performed in the privacy of the home to stave off those pounds?"

Comments

Bike to work

[evw]

Bike to work. (Make living close enough to bike a priority.)

Re:Bike to work

[Anonymous Coward]

and makes you better than everyone else.

I laughed at this, but why do some cyclists have that attitude? I'm talking about the type who scream at motorists to "share the road" because "bikes have the same rights as motor vehicles," and then proceed to run the next four red lights.

/rant

Re:Bike to work

[Flapjack]

That's simply not true. Muscle mass burns calories all day long while aerobics only burns while you perform that particular exercise. Metabolic rate is increased around 11hrs post-resistance training & only 1 hr aerobically. You really need to do both to be fit though, as well as the 3rd piece of the puzzle - flexibility.

Re:Bike to work

[u.hertlein]

I'm sorry you're an introvert.

Don't be sorry for us (you insensitive clod!)

It's not like it's a disease, bad in anyway, or meaning that one does not enjoy being outside.
It's probably different for everyone - for me it means that I don't like being in crowds and
am more likely to relax being alone or with (a few) close friends.

But I digress.

Re:Bike to work

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a myth that's been going around for quite some time...there's absolutely no basis for claiming that a well muscled person burns more calories when sitting on the couch.

How about the fucking laws of a physics? If that extra muscle isn't decaying, and is being maintained alive, it takes energy to do so.

The same thing is true for fatter people too. They burn more energy just sitting around. It's one of the reason for the yo-yo dieting. They lower their food intake, lose weight, thus their body requires less energy for maintenance of their thinner body. Now their lower intake of food isn't enough to make them lose weight at the same rate, and eventually they'll stop losing weight altogether. This causes them to becomes disheartened, they quit the diet thinking their new weight is good enough, and start eating at their older levels. Except that their older levels is far more energy than they need and they quickly gain the weight again.

Advice to everyone who intends to lose weight. This sucks, but until you accept this as the truth, you'll never succeed: you don't go on a diet until you lose the weight and then it's over. You go on a diet, you lose weight. If you stop losing weight, it means you'll have to cut more calories. Eventually you'll reach the weight you want. Then you don't get to eat any more calories. You just found your equilibrium calorie point. That's the maximum you get to eat forever.

Unless you put on some muscle and do enough cardio to burn more calories. Then you get to eat a bit more.

Re:Bike to work

[blitziod]

accept you are confusing phsyics with biology. the caloric content of food is based on what the average person should be able to get from it. If the posters body can extract more of the energy from foods( or certain types of foods) than average he will get more energy than the caloric contents on the label. those are not based at 100% conversion to energy.

Re:Bike to work

[dubl-u]

The minimum caloric needs of your 380 lb corpulence are ~2700 calories/day.

I've seen other people make similar reports. You're quoting an average number, but I've never seen good data on the outliers, which this guy could well be.

Also, data like that you quote is generally taken from people on normal diets. The body has a number of low-calorie adaptations do deal with times of famine.

Although the AC you reply to is not typical, you won't be able to know that he's actually wrong until you get him in a lab for a week. Which, given that you feel confident enough to be a total dick about it, I'm sure you've already done, right?

Re:Bike to work

[sir fer]

A lot of good suggestions here, but what you people are also missing (amongst other things) is the number of calories that get used up building extra muscle. It takes something like 24 calories to build a gram of muscle which would only yield 4 calories if eaten (insert cannibal jokes here), so there's a lot more to the weight-training-picture than all of the above posts take into account by focusing on the number of calories that get used in the activity.

Also, people who only focus on calories are missing 90% of the nutrition picture. If calories were the only thing that mattered when it came to body composition, then we could all drink vegetable oil and eat sugar without any worries. There is a lot more to the nutritional picture than calories, such as vitamins, minerals and the "side effects" and chemical interaction of any food upon the body. For example one can obtain amino-acids from nuts or tobacco leaves but I can guess which one we would all prefer.

When it comes to diet, just try and eat "clean" i.e. stay away from food you haven't prepared yourself and learn to read food labels. This will generally keep a lot of hidden crap out of ones diet. Learn to like rice, lean meats/fish, raw/lightly cooked veges and fruits. Eating a good deal of fibre and nutrient-rich food will go a long way toward moving ones body composition in a favourable direction, and in my experience will solve 90% of the problem

Re:Bike to work

[KGIII]

There are some great ideas here as you say but there are also some dangerous ones from my learning experiences. I will quantify/qualify...

I went through about 13 years as a NON-PROFESSIONAL body builder. Not a weight lifter. (spacing intentional) At my peak I managed to hit 198 pounds with a 3% body fat. (For those interested in the perspective I'm a hair under 5' 10" tall.) At that time I was spending two to four hours a day in a gym and actually striving to get in a couple hours a day of some other heavy physical activity such as running or playing a sport. It was an obsession, prior to this I had been fat.

I will NOT say that I know what I'm talking about because at 33 years old I suddenly started getting chubby but, by that time, I was already down to 172 pounds, not muscle, but chub. If I'd chopped the chub off (cardio) I'd have been nothing but 152 pounds.

There are reasons at both ends of the spectrum for me.

The first is diet and exercise. I ate well, I ate a lot. I ate healthy. During build cycles I'd consume 10k calories a day and think nothing of it. (I still love me some peanut butter.)

The second, latter days, is due to lack of diet and lack of exercise.

Today I've gotten to a healthy weight of 165.5 pounds (went to the doctor's this week) and pretty much sit there. I'd estimate that I engage in some sort of low impact exercise two to three times per week.

However, I only eat two meals a day and only have two snacks per day. My caloric intake from beer is enough to maintain the weight and my limited activity keeps me from sagging.

I would say that diet, nothing else, is more important than any other aspect of weight control. For each person it WILL be different. The idea that we, as geeks, can apply metrics is patently absurd because the human body ranges in scope from person to person to such wildly different degrees that we simply can't.

This being said, I'm not a doctor and a doctor is the best choice to start with. Look to see what you're healthy enough to do and to find the best methods to achieve your weight control goals. To put it into geek terms there is no right choice nor a better choice for an OS/app but the one that works best for you. In my case it has always been diet constraints/allowances as the single most important factor.

For anyone else it may be different.

Martial arts

[Fry-kun]

They're cool enough to do in front of other people, no matter how bad you are, and you have something to show off to your friends. It's a win-win scenario.

All Muscle Groups

[nick_davison]

Unless you've got the luxury of a huge amount of space, the only way you're going to come close to exercising all groups is via free weights.

Multi exercise machines don't even come close (more on that later). Treadmills/stationary bikes are great for burning calories which'll do most of your weight loss goals but you're asking about all muscle groups. BOSU balls, steps, jump ropes are all more limited in application. The other great full body exercise, swimming, isn't really an option in the privacy of your own home unless you're rich enough to have a good sized pool.

The problem with free weights, and this comes from being married to a physical therapist who's also an ACE certified personal trainer, is: You're doing it wrong.

Don't feel bad. Just about everyone does. From the Navy guys I've watched prepping for their PRTs by holding a dumbell in one position and flapping their elbows like chickens to those who swing weights and let the momentum carry them through the weak spots to those who only really focus on a few core groups.

This is what a good personal trainer will do for you (and, yes, I hate the idea of paying the meathead ones too). A good one will slow you down and perfect your form: meaning you're actually building the weak points not just swinging past them. A good one will start you on machines (really good for isolating the exact form you need but lousy at exercising all of the supporting groups) and then slowly move you over to free weights (really good at exercising a lot of supporting groups, lousy at teaching you good form). A good one will also teach you a whole range of exercises so you're not just bulking your biceps with no work on your triceps, strengthening abs without matching your lats, working on your upper body with no attention to your chicken legs (yes, you, 95% of guys in gyms).

Look at it this way...

How good of a coder would you be if you never learned from other people's code and never had anyone review yours? Sure, you might be a prodigy and do some cool trick most people have never thought of. More likely, you'll write messy, inefficient code that seems like it works while leaving memory leaks everywhere.

In the same way, you might manage to learn everything about lifting from message boards and videos. More likely, you'll get a fair amount right but still be doing a few gastly things that it never occurs to you they're wrong.

This is why we suck it up, venture in to a gym, find a good trainer (being willing to fire the bad ones until we get that one we vibe with), and learn the technique first... so we can then get it right in our splendid isolation.

Exercise in front of people anyway

[rickward]

So you're an introvert. Big deal! Exercise in front of people anyway.

Look, no one's going to make fun of you for going to the gym; in fact, they are more likely to make fun of someone who needs exercise and doesn't go to the gym.

The gym isn't Counter-Strike. No one cares if you're an exercise n00b. In fact, in my experience if you screw up at the gym, someone who knows what they're doing will show you the proper way to exercise so you don't injure yourself.

If you can afford it, and if you really care about your fitness and attractiveness, there is no reason not to go to the gym.

Re:Crossfit

[lurker4hire]

Just want to put another nod out there for crossfit, I'm going to a crossfit gym but if you're the introvert type and can handle being extra careful to observe good proper form on your own, doing the WOD (workout of the day - scaled to your fitness level) will give you a good all around workout over time.

I watched most of the theory vids before deciding to try it out:

http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html#Clips

I'd recommend starting with the video "intro to intensity"

l4h