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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?"
Bike to work. (Make living close enough to bike a priority.)
I want to start doing, but I work in an office where they'd care if I came to work sweaty and stinky. What's the solution to this?
I bike halfway to work - in California we have these "park and ride" lots, where you can drive to a transportation hub and catch public transit the rest of the way. My long commute and lack of bike trails near home make biking all the way to work impractical, but there's a beautiful bike trail along the 56 freeway that I can take once I get to the park and ride lot.
:-)
Other than that, I stretch, do crunches, and do pushups every morning when I wake up. This is not only stay-in-shape exercise, it's also wake-me-up exercise - double benefits! On the weekents, I ride my bike to In N Out - the benefits may cancel out with the calories, but at least I'm getting exercise.
To speak to your specific questions, you may want to consider pilates in the home. That gives you a pretty full body workout. You can get private pilates lessons (about $40/hour around here) to help you build a routine, and then go from there exercising at home. I tried that, but frankly I didn't like putting in half an hour to an hour per day.
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I'll add my experience into this. I'm currently getting caught up on 24. I missed a few episodes way back in Season 1, and so I stopped watching it. I use it to get roughly the same amount of time in on the treadmill each session (42:30, give or take a minute or so), and since I've just reached 4pm in Season 1, I still have a long way to go, even daily, to finish it out.
Pick a series that you've missed, one that you can get a little lost in. Press play on the DVD remote and press the start button on the treadmill at the same time. Anything that goes for a total of 30 minutes or more (any hour-timeslot TV show from The Sopranos to The Wire to West Wing works perfectly) will keep you diverted from the effort itself enough that you'll be able to pass the time without much notice.
I've only been doing this for a couple of months (started 24 a little into it), and I've managed to have to stay off of it due to foot injuries for a week at a time twice (get good new running shoes from a sporting good store!), but I'm averaging about 450 calories burned according to the built-in meter without too much stress, and I've dropped 14 pounds from my peak. I have a goal of dropping another eight pounds by October, which should be easily done well before, and may push on for another five after that, but that puts me at 140, and my family complains when I'm that low.
If you're a complete geek, graph everything available. I track time, distance, average speed, calories burned, and fat calories burned, as well as pounds burned (based on 3600 calories per pound), average per session, number of sessions, weight each day, and the approximate target date the goal will be reached. All of these are graphed, so I can see my weight dropping and my efforts returning improved numbers.
Another key point is to watch your calorie intake. I've tried doing the diet tracking and getting proper nutrition or leaving out fats or whatever, and I find that I stop this after a couple of weeks. It's much easier to track calories instead, and you don't stress over what you eat for dinner. I've read that it the average metabolism burn about 12 calories per pound per day, so if you weigh 160 pounds and can keep your intake below 1920 calories per day, you're going to do well. It's not at all difficult to maintain 1600 calories per day without much discipline, and it doesn't send your body into a crash that causes it to horde fat. It also gives you room for the occasional pizza day.
One of the things that I do to help stave off the occasional hunger is to drink more fluids. I've found that the low-calorie Crystal Light mixes give me a good variety with little hassle and little cost. If it works for you, try Diet Coke Plus. It's not everyone's favorite flavor, but it's different from regular Diet Coke, and I use it to douse my occasional soda cravings.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Shower before work and put on clean clothes before you leave. The clothes are (for your purposes anyways) sterile, as is your body. Just like you can't make a green oasis of a field from parched desert from an hour's rain, you can't stink from an hour's exercise right out of the shower. I'd recommend a shower after biking home from work however!
moox. for a new generation.
I got frustrated and decided to get scientific about it. When I did the maths I was surprised that my daily base intake should be 8000 kj - about twice of what I was getting. I realised that my body was probably in starvation mode and my metabolism was very slow.
Currently, I'm working on an energy intake of about 6000-8000 kj and letting the exercise I do increase my metabolism and burn it off slowly. Consider upping your intake to 1500 calories a day and see how your metabolism reacts.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
"The minimum caloric needs of your 380 lb corpulence are ~2700 calories/day. Any less than that and your body starts raiding your fat rolls like your raid bakery rolls."
perhaps, the fault doesn't lie in the AC, but rather in the information he's using to obtain his calories? I for one have noticed that food packaging, while usually having truthful nutrition facts labels, have downright false of misleading front of package portion numbers, the worst offender was 'great value' brand products, their microwave bacon claims the same number of ounces as their competitor, hormel, yet if you go by the nutrition facts label, and do the math you wind up with double the number of grams of meat as on the front of the package. if you go by calories per gram, and multiply by the front of the package, you'd only come up with 50% of the actual calories.
now myself, the only diet i use is pretty simple. 1. restrict sugar. sugar is evil, and i avoid sugary foods wherever possible. 2. snack healthy this means, for me, popcorn, pork rinds, whole grain baked snack chips, 1% fat cottage cheese, or small quantities of peanut butter + wheat bread (like a fold over sandwich)
anything high in protein is a priority over other snacking options carb based snacks are highly limited, once in a while for a treat i'll get a 99 cent sized potato/dorrito chip bag, or a candy bar, mostly the only other treat i allow is stride gum, which uses more carbs in chewing that chewing gum gives calories.
Since i can't tolerate asperatame (headaches) that means i'm stuck with sucralose or stevia for low carb flavored drinks. luckily a very nice sucralose based powdered drink mix is on the market under 2 brand names propel, and fulfill. for $2.50/10 pack and $2/10 pack respectively. This is my primary daily drink although i'm likely getting over vitaminized by this but they're water soluble vitamins...
since my food is also on a budget, i've been relying on some fairly cheap, but not as good for me products, and i shop almost exclusively at the local wal-mart. i was having weight gain problems when i was eating breakfast cereal daily, and i have trouble following my diet on vacations, since my relatives have no sane diet restrictions... but since i cut the breakfast cereal, my weight has stabilized. i only eat breakfast (microwave ones, though) on my grocery shopping day, so i'm not shopping on an empty stomach. i allow allow myself about 16 ounces of sugar sweetened soda(actually 1/4 a 2-liter), per day maximum, skipping days whenever possible through will power, etc.
and i sit all day in front of a computer, and don't exercise.
it's totally unhealthy, to not exercise, but i always justify my life style with the 'you can't live forever' argument.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Just be careful to ALWAYS alert the bus driver when you're handling your bike, and ALWAYS maintain eye contact while doing so. There was a case in the last year somewhere in Illinois where the bus driver didn't pay attention, and ended up running over and dragging a cyclist who was getting his bike from the rack on the front of the bus.
Self-resistence isometric and isotonic training. Costs nothing, builds muscle efficiently, surprises your friends and balances your life. Also, you can do it while posting to /. from your basement ;)