Slashdot Mirror
Staying In Shape vs. a Busy IT Job Schedule?
tnok85 writes "I started a new job ~7 months ago at a very large company working a 12-hour night shift (7PM-7AM) in a fairly high volume NOC. Our responsibilities extend during the night to basically cover everything but the most complex situations regarding UNIX/Windows/Linux/App administration, at which point we'll reach out to the on-calls. I live 1.5 hours away as well, so it turns into 4-5 15 hour days a week of sitting still — throw in almost an hour to get ready to leave, and a bit of time after I get home to unwind and I'm out of time to work out. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I have a very slow metabolism, ever since I was a pre-teen I would gain weight fairly quickly if I didn't actively work out, regardless of how much or what I eat. (Barring starving myself, I suppose...) So, how does somebody who works a minimum of 60 hours over 4 days, often adding another 12 another day, and sometimes working 7-10 days straight like this, stay in shape? I can't hold a workout schedule, (which every person I've talked to in my history says is necessary to stay in shape) and I can't 'wake up early' or 'work out before bed' because I need sleep. Any thoughts/opinions/suggestions?"
Working those hours, in a night shift, that far from home, seems to me like a terrible long term arrangement. You'll cut years off your life. It'll make sure you can't get even a semblance of a social life. As a support job, it might not even pay enough as to allow you to see it as a temporary sacrifice for a better lifestyle later.
Look for another job, pronto.
Get a bike rack, a bicycle, a good headlamp and some very reflective clothes.
Map a bike route from your worksite to a terminus about 6 to 10 miles away (where you can park your car). Optimize the route for safety and speed.
Drive your car to the terminus every day and ride your bike into work in the morning and back to your car in the evening.
I have been working night shift in a NOC lately, myself. Deep into my 12 hour shifts, there is almost nobody in the building, so I can do laps. I carry my blackberry which will yell if I actually have to respond to an outage. I'm never more than 30 seconds away from my desk while I do laps. It's also easy to do jumping jacks, pushups and situps while with line of sight to my desk. Add in the occasional jumping jacks, and I'm oddly enough probably getting myself in better shape since having started this schedule. Go figure.
Of course, there is also the days off. I could theretically use those for excercise. I used to be in the habit of jogging when I had a working iPod because I could listen to education audio books while I ran. Now I can be at work while I run. I think I feel silly if the only thing I'm doing is running. As much as I know it is important, I don't really feel it is an accomplishment on its own.
Also, be careful with what you eat. Quantity is obviously a concern, but quality is a huge factor as well. On this schedule, I never really have time to cook the days that I work. The result is that I eat more burgers than would be ideal since that's the most convenient thing. When I'm at work, I often microwave frozen TV dinners or cans of soup with enough sodium to preserve an elephant. I'm trying to make a point of sticking to fruit juice instead of energy drinks, making the TV dinners the 'healthy' option, and at least squeezing in enough time to eat something better than a burger on my way home from work.
I've know people who worked 28 or 32 hour "days". That is you just treat 28 hours as you circadian rythm. it means your sleep/wake schedule drifts from the day/night cycle, but it still overlaps it so you can have productive interactions with regular humans. IN your case since you claim you are working all the time, it's obviously not a big deal if you don't perfectly sync with others socially.
if you go to that cycle then you will now have 4 or 8 extra hours of wake time in which you can exsercize. you are actually awake slightly more of the time so it's a net gain for waking activity.
people I've know who did this find it sustainable for an entire year.
if you are really productive working 15 hours a day then you probably are a candidate for this regimen.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Fiber will flush calories.
This is something that a lot of people don't seem to know about when they say, "More calories will add more weight if you don't burn them." Your digestive system isn't 100% efficient, and the human body will, at times, dump excess calories.
So in effect, your body is capable of saying, "I have enough food for now, so I'm going to poop out the rest." Some bodies seem to do this more readily than others, and science doesn't yet know all the factors. It could be genetics, emotional state, the kind of bacteria living in your gut, or what you're eating rather than how much you're eating.
But the point is, yes, someone else can have the same diet and exercise routine as you have, and still weigh a very different amount.
Seriously, I bought this thing when it first came out, and I lost 20 pounds in a couple months. I know it seems silly to think that such a non-game will hold your attention and keep you working out, but if you have a desire to work out and lose weight, it will help. If you don't really have an interest in working out, it probably won't hold your attention long. But if you do, it will teach you some basic workouts, and the videogame-esque style may give you that extra ambition to get to it.
I agree dieting is as simple as counting calories.
(Calories Eaten - Calories burned)/3500 = weight change [lbs]
figure out how many calories you burn in a typical day, and eat less than that, the amount less than that you eat will determine how fast you lose weight.
I put on A LOT of weight when I first started working in IT and I was busy enough that I rarely made it to the gym. I THOUGHT I was eating less, and eating healthy and even tried all kinds of stupid diets that never seemed to get me anywhere. About 4 months ago I decided to look for a diet that was specifically tailored to a programmer's lifestyle (I figured there are enough smart people out there that someone must have come up with something) After about 2 minutes of searching I found The Hackers Diet. I read it and it made a lot of common sense... I decided to try it. and so far I've lost 35 lbs and I haven't set foot in a gym since I started.
in short it's just calorie counting in a way that makes good logical sense... I don't even follow the diet plan that closely, I weight myself every day so I can plot my change, and the first week I took a closer look at how many calories the foods I typically eat contain. The first few days I had some crazy hunger pains but after that I don't feel hungry anymore than usual and I the only time I even really think about how many calories I'm eating is when I break away from my normal daily eating habits (ie: family BBQ, or a party, etc.) and even then I just make a rough guess and eat a little less during my meals earlier in the day.
I still go out for ice cream, have pizza at lunch, etc. I just keep a mental tally of roughtly how many calories I'm taking in so I can adjust my other meals accordingly...
Collector's Edition
This is so true. I too have an incredibly long sedentary job stuck behind a desk.
While metabolism does adjust based upon various factors, which alters how efficiently you burn calories (as opposed to flushing them out) the body is remarkably efficient; if you can digest it (i.e. not fibre), you will either burn it or store it. If you can't adjust how much you burn by substantial exercise, then the answer is to reduce how much goes in at the front end. Most people, like myself, who think they have a slow metabolism simply don't realise how much they eat.
Lets say you do an hour of moderate exercise in the gym a day; that's maybe 500-700 calories. If you work really really hard, that's 1000, absolute tops. 500 calories is the difference between a medium meal and a big meal; or a couple of cans of energy drink. Or a slice of cake. Or even just little snacks between meals. 130 calories a day over how much you expend (a can of coke), and that's 14 pounds weight gain a year.
I've read the hackers diet and it's good advice for guys like us. I've started counting how much I eat. You know what? I massively underestimated how much I was really eating. All the little stuff really mounts up. Even when I thought I was being good, I wasn't.
So now I count my calories (reasonably roughly) mainyl by weighing my food when I'm cooking it. I've cut down my portions by around 30% - which sounds like a lot, but honestly isn't considering I was eating past when I was full. I've substituted my crap snacks with fruit, and cut out the sweets, second portions, junk food and normal desserts. I record my weight daily on physicsdiet (which has a nice smoothing function for when you go up or down a few pounds due to water weight - it shows the overall trend very nicely)
I still have three proper meals a day, and even have low-calorie desserts. I can put my hand on my heart, and honestly say I do not feel hungry. I'm eating 1700-odd calories a day, which is about half of what I'm expending. I don't go to the gym, and have only slightly increased how much exercise I do - parking at the far end of the carpark and walking the extra two minutes, a short stroll at lunch, that sort of thing.
Going by the scales, I've lost 21 pounds in 6 weeks. According to the bodyfat it's almost entirely fat. I'm under 280 pounds for the first time in years. I can certainly wear trousers I haven't been able to wear for years. I've lost 4" off my waist. While I may not look much different, I do feel better - I certainly never feel starved. I'm going to try to fit some time in the gym a few days a week, but that will be in addition to the 1700 calories I'm already dieting.
So my advice to you, original tnok85 - estimate how much you eat in a day. Then keep a food diary, and record how much you eat, in full detail. Record your weight daily on physicsdiet (which is basically an online version of the hackers diet spreadsheets), or even just in excel. I bet you'll be surprised at the difference between what you think you eat, and what you do eat.
Then work out how many calories you'd likely spend in the gym, and see if you can cut that from your diet with low hanging fruit - the no-S diet may help here. Keep recording your weight daily. And see how you go.
Me? I'm going to lose all this weight I've put on in 20 years through inattention, whether it takes 6 months, a year or 3 years. I'm likely going to have to keep a close eye on how much I cook, and weigh myself regularly for life. But the diet? It's not a diet. I'm just eating like a normal healthy person, instead of a normal healthy person who eats big meals and has the odd slice of cake.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.