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Geeks and Weight-loss? 90

Posted by Cliff from the for-the-couch/desk-potato-in-all-of-us dept.
WideLoad asks: "A decade or so spent at a desk in the IT industry has left me with a physique that can best be described as looking like a half melted wax Buddha figurine. It seems to be a common problem for those of us whose career and hobby tends to promote a sendentary lifestyle. With the holiday gorging season upon us and in need of inspiration and/or motivation I thought I'd ask: what are other geeks doing about their health?"
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Geeks and Weight-loss? More

Geeks and Weight-loss?

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  • practise "autonomous seating" while at the computer - use a chair with no back - this will improve your posture and exercise (and thus burn energy) th muscles in yr abdomen and lower back

    th general idea is to use yr body properly at all times - and thus generally not require special times to "work out"

  • I've been forcing my (oversized, and not at all pleasantly-shaped, in my opinion) butt into the gym. The best motivation for me thus far is that I've spent far too much money on the membership to let it go to waste. I get a little frustrated sometimes - the weight isn't coming off the way I would have liked, but I definitely feel more energetic and healthy overall these days.

    I'm also trying to change my way of living significantly enough that I won't have to go to the gym 4 days a week for the rest of my life just to maintain.

    A friend of mine swears by the Hacker's Diet [fourmilab.ch] ... I've started reading it before (it's free), I like the ideas as well as the author's background (some famous Autodesk guy, I believe), but I really don't know if it would work... but then, mileages vary with every diet out there.

    Now, If only I could get over my feelings of being perceived as the "Dumpy Computer Guy" in the gym while surrounded by semi-pro weightlifters and sweaty women who could kick the crap out of me if they caught me looking...

    • It isn't rocket science. The Hacker's Diet works based on an energy deficiency. If you don't have enough calories, you have to get the energy from somewhere else (ie, burning muscle and/or fat). The Hacker's Diet's shortcoming is that it's merely a reduced calorie diet, which leads to muscle as well as fat loss. You can get skinny that way, though, over time. It's a good idea to introduce weight training and aerobic activity to really increase your health.
  • The majority of gain can probably be had from really simple stuff. Take the stairs once or twice a day instead of the lift. Walk to the park to have lunch. We recently had an adverising campaign here (NZ) where some government agency stuck stickers on bus stops urging you to walk the last two stops. If you drive in, maybe find some parking 15-20 minutes walk away.

    Try the simple dietary stuff too - grill instead of fry. Water instead of Coke.

    If this doesn't work, then you might need to start on the heavy stuff, but the simple things don't need to suck. Anyway, it's not like I would know, I'm on the beanpole half of the IT industry :)

    Dave

    • 2 more ideas (Score:2, Informative)

      by eugene ts wong ( 231154 )

      I agree with the above statement, but I would like to add a couple of ideas.

      Take transit to work, because the extra walking each day makes a big difference. If the bus is near your home, then find a farther bus route with less people riding the route. [I realize that the idea of transit was touched on in the above post, but I wanted to state it in a firmer way]

      Also, try eating brown rice, lentils [or beans or other legumes], and tofu. You still get protein, carbs and other nutrients, for a rounded diet, but the added effect is that it actually suppresses appetite more than anything that I know. The rice and lentils really slow things down in the digestive tract.

      You'd still eat fruits and vegetables to get other nutrients. Go to

      www.5aday.org [5aday.org]
      www.dole5aday.com [dole5aday.com] for kids, but still has good information

      For more information, go to your public library and read about how to prepare beans for tasty, gas-free meals.

      To put things into persective, in my first year of college, I used to be this 120lb weakling who could eat a large plate of salad, a large plate of the main meal, a dessert, 2 measured cups of drink, and a bowl of soup. That's pretty gross. Anyways, I began to eat healthier and healthier as time went on. About 10 years later [just recently] I began to eat the rice, lentils [sometimes red kidney beans], and tofu. I was really surprised at how little I ate in a day. Sometimes a bowl of poridge and some friut would last me the whole day. Other times, I ate other things. I eventually lost some weight. I went from this 120 lb weakling to 116 lb weakling--not that it is good or anything. I'm trying to gain weight through exercise.

      I'm not saying that this will be easy, but I think that this will work for most people, because the taste of the food alone is enough to suppress most appetites. Also, you'll have to do more than these things, but this type of a life style will help to make it easier for you to maintain a healthy weight.

      Sincerely, and with thanks,
      Eugene T.S. Wong

      • Speaking of rice though, you should avoid white rice. That is very bad. Have you heard of the atkins diet? The idea behind the diet is to avoid foods which raise your blood sugar, and carbs raise your blood sugar. An important fact that the diet overlooks is that some carbs raise you blood sugar a lot more than others. White rice will raise your blood sugar a lot, while rice bran will barely raise it at all, making it an acceptable food. If you look around you might be able to find a glycemic index on the web which lists which foods raise your blood sugar, and by how much.
  • I'm actually going to try to GAIN a little weight this holiday season. I'm the other side of the IT geek spectrum - the '90 pound weakling' syndrome, where I'm perpetually underweight. At least for now. I'm 6'2" tall and 140 lbs, which is about 30-40 pounds underweight for my height and build. And I'm not sure if that's ever going to change.

    Now, for this, just eating mass amounts of food is probably not the right solution. I haven't seen a dietician about the situation, but I'm likely to get the exact same prescription as for the geeks of a more heavyset variety - eat healthy and exercise. *shrug* Honestly, what more can you actually do. Use the stupid "Massive Weight Gain" powders from the health food store?

    --Garthnak
    • LOL

      That's exactly where I was three years ago! Same height, same weight! I always was the skinny guy in school, and never could seem to gain any weight.

      All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Don't go out of your way to try to gain weight - you'll find it's difficult to stop!

      My point - three years later, I'm sitting here weighing 170. I wish it was muscular weight, but no, I've got a gut that I've got to get rid of. It came on slowly - I was proud when I hit 155, then 160. Then I wanted to slow it down, but the damn weight kept on coming!
    • If you really want to gain weight, a diet with lots of beer, pasta, and fried foods will certainly do the trick.

      I used to be in pretty much the same height/weight situation. Now I'm 6'2", 190lbs and I'm trying to take about 15 of that off. Bah, you can never win...

  • I lost over 40 pounds sitting in front of the computer with Atkin's diet over the last 4 months. The weight loss has increased significantly as time went on. Now I am back under 200 pounds for the first time in about 5 years. (Of course, walking 15 minutes to work helps a bit, but I was exercising before as well.)

    Here's a summary of how it works. I may have the details wrong, so you guys correct me if I am. You should read his book anyway, whether or not you think he is right.

    We gain weight by taking extra food and converting it to fat. (DUH!)

    We lose weight by burning fat. (DUH!)

    How do we start burning fat? We have to use up our body's food supply - the carbohydrates - before our body will switch to fat-burning mode.

    How do we do that? We cut the supply of carbohydrates. Our body doesn't HAVE the carbohydrates to burn, so it turns to the fat and starts burning that.

    Interesting effect #1: When you eat fat, you don't feel hungry. Hence, you eat less and feel more full.

    Interesting effect #2: Your body converts fat to a certain chemical (lypo-somethings) then it burns that. Injecting that chemical into an animal triggers weight loss. So, just having a little bit of this chemical in your body is enough to keep losing weight. You can lose weight slowly, steadily, and healthily.

    Interesting effect #3: Most people who are fat are addicted to food with carbohydrates. It can often take a lot of willpower to break this addiction, but once broken, you will stop thinking about food all the time! This might be related to ...

    Interesting Effect #4: The whole reason you might be fat is because your body doesn't respond to carbohydrates like skinny people do. You are probably somewhat intolerant to insulin. This means your body has to compensate by making more insulin to handle the carbohydrates. Which leads to more insuling intolerance... and eventually diabetes. When you reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat to normal levels, your insulin will return to normal, and eventually, your whole body will reduce its insulin intolerance and you will be able to eat like skinny people without gaining weight and such.

    The way Dr. Atkins suggests doing this is to go for 2 weeks with an extremely dangerously low level of carbohydrates. After this, you should start to lose weight. You should feel different. Your body should be in fat-burning mode. The next step is to find your balance. If you eat too much carbohydrates, you will stop burning fat. Too little, you will lose weight too quickly, which is not good for you. He also suggests taking vitamins and exercise, but not overdoing either.

    Again, read the book, don't take my word for it, and give it a try.
    • without wanting to just sound like a yes man, I
      can actually vouch for all that was said above
      about Atkins. I lost 20kg in about 3-4 months,
      and found the interesting effects mentioned to
      indeed exist.
      I also found a week at the snow doing some snowboarding caused a heap of weight to be lost -
      no doubt due to the exercising whilst in fat burning mode...
      I dunno, as people have said, each to their own, but I can certainly recommend this one..

    • Re:Atkins (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mark Gordon ( 14545 ) on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @09:56AM (#2749176) Homepage
      It's not true that the body uses up available carbohydrate before starting to burn fat. Different tissues use different sources of energy, regardless of how much is available.

      The heart doesn't use carbohydrate for energy. It only burns fat. This means that aerobic exercise, in addition to being good for the heart, has extra benefits for the waist.

      The brain, conversely, doesn't normally use fat at all, since fat has trouble crossing the blood-brain barrier. The human brain requires a lot of metabolic energy, so the amount of carbohydrate burned in a day can be fairly significant. Since you use up this energy even if you have your but parked in a chair, this is part of your basal metabolic rate.

      Normal muscle (except in the heart) uses either fat or carbohydrate. Of course, this assumes some measure of physical activity. Muscle stores a certain amount of carbohydrate, after which it has to draw carbohydrate from the blood, which gets it from a small reserve of carbohydrate which is stored in the liver after you eat.

      The metabolic effect of a very low carbohydrate diet is similar in some ways to untreated Type I diabetes. The brain needs carbohydrate, so the body tries to find a way. Fat is normally stored by the body in a form that connects three fatty acids together with a small carbohydrate molecule. The body breaks up the stored fat into the carbohydrate, which goes to the brain, and the fatty acids, which ends up being waste material. It's not normal for the body to have stray fatty acids around like this, and the fatty acids get shunted through some unintended metabolic pathways, eventually breaking down into acetone and similar substances, which evaporate from the lungs. This type of metabolism is called ketosis, and the resulting sweet-smelling breath (smelling of nail polish remover) was a classic symptom of late stage Type I diabetes in the days before insulin therapy. The diabetes analogy breaks down in that the blood sugar isn't actually elevated.

      The whole point of very low carbohydrate diets is to put the body into ketosis, in which fat is broken down into nail polish remover, which is exhaled. This is faster, easier, and less hunger-inducing than exercise. I remain unconvinced that it's healthy.
      Low-carbohydrate diets can also be low in water soluble vitamins, since they rely primarily on meat, eggs, and dairy at the expense of grains, legumes, and vegetables.

      The excess protein in a low-carbohydrate diet, assuming you're eating meat rather than butter, gets burned up, since there's no good way to make it into fat. This places an extra burden on the kidneys.

      If you're heavy because you eat from habit rather than hunger, reducing caloric intake is a good place to start. It's better to start by reducing fat intake, though, since your body already has that in excess. If you're heavy because your appetite exceeds your metabolism, your best recourse is a combination of exercise and reduced caloric intake. Again, the best recourse is to reduce fat intake.
      • Go ask people who eat "from habit" what happens when they try to eat less. They go crazy. They can't do anything but think about food. Then people try to tell them to reduce their fat because they're going to get a heart attack. A low fat diet drove me up the wall because all I could do was think about food.

        Eating fats, while it sounds disgusting, and people claim it's bad for your heart, is the only thing that keeps me sane. I can sit down, eat only one hambuerger (no fries, no coke) and I can barely finish it. I can have one egg and two slices of bacon for breakfast and last until lunch. I eat less than normal people, and I am hardly ever actually hungry anymore. And besides - you admitted - the result of eating fats is you don't have to burn it away - it just evaporates away! Wish your excess glucose and carbs would do that, huh?

        Now, go read Atkin's book. You'll find that a low fat diet actually increases your chance of cholesterol build up. In fact, Atkins was originally a heart doctor trying to find a way to lower cholesterol. This whole diet was a bit of a random discovery he made when he was researching the effects of a high-fat, low-carb diet.
    • Well I have a couple things to say about this:

      Meat and vegetables/nuts/other proteins is a caveman diet. Cavemen died of infections from lack of pennicillin, and you don't find many caveman skeletons from folks who weighed 350 lbs. So besides the food, the other aspect of the caveman lifestyle is exercise.

      Chasing down a wild boar is hard work. Wrestling and killing it even harder. Carrying it's dead butt home even more hard work. With this in mind, hit the cardiovascular and weights. Ladies, low weight, high repetition for strength, Guys, high weight, less repetitions for size. If you're more than 20 lbs. overweight you should try and get access to an eliptical exercise machine. These minimize the jarring impact to the knees, which can be a big deal if you're real big.

      While I agree that eating ZERO carbohydrates is not a good choice, I have had nothing but positive health affects from the diet. My goal is to eat around 30g of carbs per day. I'm down about 60 lbs from my original weight. I'm under 300 for the first time since high school, and one day want to be around 240. I'm 6'4", so this works out just fine.

      Although the Christmas holiday is a difficult time to stick to any diet, I know that when January First comes and I get it together again, I'm going to be back on course for my goal.

      I went on this diet because I was dying on my feet everyday. Dying physically, destroying my knees, ankles and feet by making them carry such a huge load, and pushing myself straight towards diabetes, heart attack and death. I was also dying emotionally as the things I always wanted got further away from me behind a wall of fat. I can honestly say that this diet has saved me from an early grave. (Early as in: Next 5 years I would've bought the box condo.)

      If you feel lousy about the way your body looks, you should see two people: A doctor (M.D.) and a psychiatrist. You're not crazy, but a lot of people who are more than a few pounds overweight are stuck with crippling emotional scars and these are just as treatable as your weight problem. Losing the weight and still being miserable are a distinct possibility if you don't get treatment for your whole self.

      Get examined by your doctor before you start this or any other diet: Find out your cholesterol, get a blood sugar analysis test (Are you already diabetic?) etc. If your doctor doesn't like Atkins, get a second opinion.

      If you don't have health insurance because of a layoff (or whatever), ask around: Some doctors have what's called a conscience and do low-cost health clinics for flat fees.
    • I had success with the Atkin's diet too. It's time to do it again though :(

      I will use Atkin's again. Major reasons: it's simple and it worked. I couldn't be bothered with scoring and counting things. It was just easier to eat as few carbohydrates as possible.

      Major insight: The link between carbs and craving. Your appetite drops dramatically after dropping carbs, and not because you hate your food choices. When you come off the diet and eat your first chips, fries, whatever, you'll "need" another and another...

      • Your appetite drops dramatically after dropping carbs, and not because you hate your food choices. When you come off the diet and eat your first chips, fries, whatever, you'll "need" another and another...

        It's important to note that you can't really ever "go off the diet for good" and expect to maintain your weight loss. If your weight problem was caused mostly by eating too many carbs, going back to eating too many carbs is just going to make you fat again.

        This is an aspect that many people miss about the Atkins and other low-card related diets: It's not really a diet, it's a lifestyle choice. Much like a lifestyle choice to exercise, worship Buddha, or wear polka-dot pants.

        And you shoudn't un-do a lifestyle choice without giving it serious thought... That's why they call it a "lifestyle choice".

        That being said, I know it's hard to say no to "just one" christmas cookie or "just a piece" of pecan pie on christmas day... And once in a while you can have these sorts of treats, just not on a daily basis.

        But if you go back to eating fries and drinking regular pop at lunch every day, you're back to square one.
  • Sitting in front of a PC for hours on end, staring at a bright light, not moving anything on a regular basis except for your shoulders down - you are just now getting around telling me this is going to be bad for me??? Seriously, the posting from NZ Dave is right on; walk just a little extra every day, switch to water (they make caffeinated water), maybe some sugar-free or lower sugar snacks (pretzels, nuts, and homemade trail mix are working here), and don't always have the double quarter pounder @ McDonalds. It doesn't take much to start, but starting is the most difficult. Have a great holiday!!!
  • The way I see it, there is no point in punishing yourself with a diet for 4 months to loose weight. Or exercising like hell for a few months. The only thing that works is to turn your lifestyle around - and just a little will help.

    * Ride a bike to work
    * Stop eating candy - Quit cold turkey and you wont miss it at all in a short while
    * Start playing tennis, soccer, basket, or swim.

  • How many times do i have to say this???? (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Iconoclast ( 24795 ) on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @09:57AM (#2749177)
    HACKERS DIET!! [fourmilab.org]

    It TOTALLY worked for me. I lost like ~40 ponds in 3 months. And, no, the Hacker's Diet isn't Mountain Dew and Twinkies. It was devised by the dude who invented Autodesk who was like, "I'm rich and I have a family and a company, and damn well everything I could ever want, but I'm still a BIG, FAT ASS!!" So he decided to do something about it.

    Its got Palm Pilot tools and stuff to help you manage your weight. A diet program written by a geek for geeks.

    BTW, this topic has been on /. at least twice in the past few years, but I guess this question is a pretty pressing one this time of year. :-)

  • Was the Dr. Atkins Diet.
    No Carbs, at all.
    Eggs and bacon for breakfast, lunch meat for lunch, and steak and a veggie for dinner.
    I went from about 250 to 180 in about a year, losing about 50 the first 4 months or so.
    People say its bad on your liver, but as long as your semi-healthy, it won't hurt you.
  • My wife goes out regularly for walks and I go with her in spirit :)
  • Now i'm not fat or anything but then i'm only 19.. but most guys my age are alot more fit.. Now thing is that I hate physical exercise, as I guess most of us nerds do... How do you motivate yourself to exercise..?? I think the best way to avoid the bad health effects computers might have on you is to change your life... get a social life... change your eating habbits and get other interests besides sitting at your comp like swimming, watching birds whatever.. get new friends which aren't interested in computers and so on.. A few years ago I mostly sat at my comp now I tend do socialize more with people and sit less at the computer.. So the point is change your life overall not just your eating and exercising habbits
    • The need to excersize, the will to motivate yourself, comes later than 19.

      At 19, the motivation is all superficial. At 25 - death, the motivation is entirely self apparent. When you get winded helping to bring in the groceries, when you feel compelled to notify someone you are going out to mow the lawn, shovel the walkway, because you want to know someone will check on you in 30 minutes...

      At 19, your body is still growing, at 21 - 22 your body starts dying. ( in the sense of mass cell-multiplication vs. just cell-replication )

      The best thing you can do know is fing something fun now, so later excersise doesn't feel like a burden, and therfore neither will your weight.
  • Lately i've been feeling a little portly... i'm not one for much exercise (sure walking is fine... and i'm on a lasertag team, so that is a workout). So, i completely cut out all soda from my diet. Substituting water or juice for the caffinated beast. I started noticing a difference about a week into it. I lost about 10 lbs over about 6 weeks just by not drinking soda and having about 70oz of water a day.

    My parents and girlfriend even noticed it.

    Drink a LOT of water, and instead of reaching for that green can... reach for a glass.

    Oh... and no ice in the water, it's just a personal preference, but you can drink more if your body doesnt have to expell energy to warm up the water.

    -Tim
    • Perhaps, but did you know that your body burns approximately 200 calories trying to warm up again after drinking a glass of cold water?
      • no it doesn't. the calories that are related as heating up a certain amount of water one degree, are the REAL calories. in food, they are really kilocalories (1000 calories = 1 foor calorie). i believe the formula was 1 calorie = 1 cm^3, 1 degree C, at 1 ATM pressure. for food people, you have to add a factor of 1000. so, since 3500 calories equals one pound of weight, you'd have to warm up 3,500,000 cm^3 of water to lose a single pound. i could be wrong on this, i took a nutirition class in college, and the professor didn't even know that equation above.
  • I dropped about 30 pounds last year in 3 months (gained about 15 of it back). I didn't make a world of change in my slacking exercise habits (which would have done more), but I did change my eating habits dramatically.

    Remove all those easy snacks from the house. Chips, crackers, etc. Nibble on a hunk of cheese instead.

    Stop drinking soda! Or, if you must, switch to diet. I know someone who switched from Dew to Diet Dew and dropped 10 pounds very quickly just from that. YMMV. But just drinking more water will help out. At worst, it'll flush stuff out of your system. And all that exercise walking to the can 8 times a day!

    Sorry to say, beer is liquid calories. I severely cut back my beer intake (I'm not an alcoholic, I just enjoy a brew w/ dinner) in that time period and it helped.

    Eat a salad for lunch. My building at work has a decent salad bar in the cafeteria. This cleans you out and gets you burning stored fuel (fat). In the final week of my weight loss last year (it was a contest), I ate nothing but green stuff. It sucked, but it worked. Obviously that's not a long-term diet plan.

    Exercise doesn't have to be a membership at a gym. Get out and walk around the neighborhood a few nights a week. In terms of burning stored fat, that'll do better than an intense weight-training program. Lifting weights is good, but you'll just have great muscles under all that fat. Which is why just doing sit-ups doesn't improve the look of your abs. Balance cardio and weight, but if you have to choose between the two, take cardio for starters.

    Also remember that with exercise, you'll be building muscle mass. Muscle is more dense than fat, so you will be getting in better shape, but if you're near your target weight, you will not see a dramatic weight loss - just transformation.
    • Agree with the Water thing. I've totally cut soda out of my diet and I saw immediate changes. The other thing I started doing is going to the gym. (my company has an in house one) Basically my weight stayed the same (195-200) but my belly went away as I converted it into muscle. The other areas that this has helped is my snowboarding, I feel much stronger overall.
  • It's lots of fun!

    And if you regularly hang of your fingernails over a 50m freefall, you'll really appreciate trimming down any non-vital weight. Trust me, you'll feel the difference day to day (instant gratification)

    (of course, i'm 1.84m tall and have never been over 60kg, that's the s+:-- part of my geek code)

  • Focus on your real problem (Score:4, Informative)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @12:41PM (#2749438)
    Having "been there, done that," I can tell you that you're focusing on a symptom, not the real problem.

    How much regular exercise do you get? How much "jog three times a week, rain or shine, snow or scorcher" exercise, how much "drink beer with the buddies at weekly softball game" exercise?

    Exercise will not cause the pounds to melt away, at least at first. In fact it's common for people to *gain* weight initially - I've been doing a basic "get back into motion" program for 13 weeks, and my weight is back where I started. But my waist is down by over 2" and I can comfortably, if slowly, jog for 3 miles without taking a break.

    Most importantly, I'm finally in good enough shape to start one of those "beginner" programs like the "Business Plan for the Body" plan. If I had tried one 3 months ago, I would have soon been injured and had to stop.

    As for diets... don't bother. Eat better, not less. Cut out the soda and junk food, replace it healthier choices, and don't worry about it. Exercise is actually an appetite suppressant (unless you're in incredibly poor shape) so you'll eat less naturally. Toss in replacing hundreds of empty calories in a bag of chips with a handful of calories in several handfuls of raw veggies, and that's all the calorie restriction you need.
    • Exercise will not cause the pounds to melt away, at least at first. In fact it's common for people to *gain* weight initially - I've been doing a basic "get back into motion" program for 13 weeks, and my weight is back where I started. But my waist is down by over 2"...

      Remember, also, that the concern is fat, not pounds. Adding muscle mass is the best way to speed up your metabolism and burn fat. Especially after age 25, you start losing muscle and strength-training exercise is the best way to retain or build it. I hate lifting weights, but it is the best way.

      Exercise is actually an appetite suppressant (unless you're in incredibly poor shape) so you'll eat less naturally.

      Plus, if you're anything like me, how much do you eat just because you're bored? For me, the net of going for a run is a) the calories I burn, b) eating less later because my hunger gets smoothed out and c) the peanut butter sandwich I didn't eat during the hour I didn't spend watching TV or flaming Your Rights Online.

  • It will get your heart rate and adrenaline going, strengthen your throat muscles and improve your throwing arm. Not to mention that yelling at the computer is great stress relief.
  • I've lost about 42 pounds since may, and it's been relatively easy. I'd recommend you keep it simple. Here are my 3 easy steps:

    1. Figure out what your regular diet consists of, and look at the fat and caloric values. I for instance was eating fast food for lunch every day, but I was eating a burger and fries. I found that I could eat something just as filling with 1/3 - 1/2 the calories. I started my diet by switching to a chicken burger and something other than fries for a side, and instead of hitting mcdonalds for breakfast I did a bagel. Later I improved even more once I saw results (now I do a slimfast for breakfast and a veggie burrito for lunch).

    2. Drink lots of water. When you feel hungry, drink water instead of a snack or soda if it's between meals. I drink several litres a day of water.

    3. Regular (but doesn't have to be vigorous) exercise. I do a 30 minute work out 3 times a week (some weights and light cardio), and I go for a walk with my wife for about 20 minutes every night. It's not tough, and I'm sure it has made me much more healthy. I certainly feel better about myself.

    The important thing is consistancy. I eat basically the same thing every day, so the odd day when I eat cheese fries or something I don't have to feel guilty, because I know my normal routine is good. If you start out by eating healthy six days out of the week you can look forward to the things you want on the 7th day, and you won't feel like you are depriving yourself. After a while I stopped wanting the unhealthy food and now the thought of eating a cheeseburger is not desirable.
  • Bowflex with all the trimmings: $1,650.00
    Fold-up Treadmill: $700.00

    Sitting in front of the TV to watch 'Enterprise': Priceless

  • Slowly replace high cal junk with low cal food (Score:3, Informative)

    by mlinksva ( 1755 ) on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @02:26PM (#2749618) Homepage Journal
    'Tis a healthy strategy for anyone. Ex: candy/cookies/soda -> fruit/veggies/any drink sans sugar.
  • I try and keep up my nightly aerobic workout. Sex is a wonderful way to keep off the pounds and reduce your cholesterol level at the same time. Plus, if you partner gets into it (and mine does, believe me), she'll get a good workout as well.
  • No, not that kind of surfing, dummy.

    Almost everyday that I don't work in the office, I go to the beach for a hour or so before lunch. It's christmas day and I'm just checking /. before putting my damp wetsuit in a bag and heading off.

    I would recommend it, physically and mentally. Although living in Southern California helps at this time of the year...

  • I think Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do." With that in mind, think of your body as a time-lapse mirror of your activities, a footprint of your lifestyle. If you want to change that, it will require a commitment to change your daily habits. Unless you are under 21, there is no easy way to lose weight.

    Personally, I've dropped from 235 to 165 lbs (106 to 61 kg) in the past 11 months. My girth broke three chairs in a month; out of that frustration I decided to take drastic steps. My program:

    • No meat. I am not a vegetarian, they belong to some strange club with which I do not affiliate myself. But I do not eat anything with eyes: no meat at all. Dropping meat from my diet has eliminated a great deal of the food that I was turning to for comfort eating. Further, it has forced me to evaluate my eating habits thoroughly. I don't stick anything in my mouth without thinking about its contents. This habit has eliminated the junk food quotient.
    • Exercise. I started walking in the evenings and hiking on the weekends. In one month, I had built the stamina to jog a mile. In another month I was able to jog two. Now I run three miles, four nights a week. Besides the improved muscle tone, I benefit from better flexibility from the pre-run stretching. The exercise used to be a chore, now it is a treat I indulge in after a good day of work.

    Find what works for you. Have no regrets. Stop letting your bad habits bring you down.

  • Body Fueling by Robyn Landis (Score:3, Informative)

    by iankerickson ( 116267 ) on Tuesday December 25, 2001 @07:15PM (#2750198) Homepage
    I'm reading this [amazon.com].

    It's sort of an anti-diet book that uses basic science to teach you how to eat adequately without a tedious amount of willpower or nutritional accounting. Here's the jist of what I've picked up so far:

    1. 3 nutrients in your diet affect most of your dietary health: protien, carbohydrates, and fat. Water, vitamins, and minerals make up the rest.
    2. Your body needs carbohydrates to metabolize food at all.
    3. Your body mostly burns fat to get its energy, with a little required carbohydrates to jumpstart the fire.
    4. If you run out of carbohydrates in your blood, you stop burning fat at all. Your body goes into 'famine-preparation' mode.
    5. To prepare for a famine, your body stores any fat in the blood into fat cells to protect you from starving to death.
    6. To get energy without carbohydrates, your body cannibalizes its own muscle tissue by de-animating the protien into carbohydrates, which leaves nitrates in the blood as a waste product (ashes).
    7. You're basic metabolic rate (BMR) is determined by the percentage of your body that is muscle. More muscle and you burn more calories just sitting still.
    8. The loss of muscle tissue caused by famine-preparation lowers your BMR, causing you to burn fewer calories in general.
    9. Any surplus of unmetabolized carbohydrates or fat in the blood gets stored as fat.
    10. Most people run out of carbohydrates 3 to 5 hours after eating.
    11. Digestion itself burns calories to work, but complex carbohydrates take the most calories to digest.
    12. The big magic secret to losing weight is: eat more often. NEVER go without food or let it get to the point where you feel a nagging hunger -- that's when your body is starting to archive fat and sugar into your fat cells.
    13. Eat some complex carbohydrates (grains, beans, legumes) every 3 to 5 hours, along with a complete protein (amount doesn't matter, almost "any" protein, however little, is "enough"). Check out something on vegetarianism for an explanation of "complete" protiens. (It's easy)
    14. Don't eat so much that you feel "full". Digestion takes a lot of power to run. That sleepiness is your stomach diverting energy away from the rest of you to digest. If you eat more often, you don't need to eat so much each time to feel satiated (try it).
    15. Eating too much at once overloads your digestion and causes excess food to be either stored as fat or just expelled (which dehydrates you).
    16. Moderate eating throughout the day will burn calories just through digestion without making you feel tired.
    17. If you eat enough carbohydrates, your body can add protein to your muscles, which will increase your BMR.
    18. A little aerobic exersize slightly damages your muscles. They will heal back a little larger if you don't work them too hard. A 30 minute walk is "enough" of a workout.
    19. Don't go crazy and hurt yourself. Overworking your muscles will gradually make them smaller. Too much exersize exhausts your blood sugar and causes your muscle protien to be deanimated into fuel. The process that heals back protein into your muscles needs carbohydrates, so overexertion very quickly (a few weeks) will make you weaker.
    20. Once you have enough muscle, your body will burn fat mostly, provided you feed it enough carbohydates. Eventually, you won't be able to eat more carbohydrates by volume than your muscles can burn, if you stick to natural food (not granulated sugar).
    21. Last and most important: you may not lose any weight. It doesn't matter. Your body composition will change from being a lot of fat with some bones, organs and muscles hiding underneath to a bunch of bones, organs and muscles with some fat in between for insulation (you need to be 5 to 20 percent composed of fat). Muscle is much denser than fat, so your "weight" may actually go up. Scales are useless and tell you next to nothing about your health. Don't weight yourself.
    At that point the whole thing kind of runs itself. Supposedly. We'll see, eh?

    The diet world is full of scams. Your first clue that something isn't legitimate is if it requires you to continuously shell out money (diet pills, "nutitional" shakes, health clubs for people who aren't atheletes...). The only thing that I see different about Body Fueling is that doctors look at it and give it a thumbs up. Real doctors. The kind with bad hair, ill-fitting clothes, and that far-away look in their eyes left over from years without sleep in medical school. Not the actors wearing stethoscopes you see on TV. PBS did a spot on Body Fueling in the mid-90s, which is where I heard of it. My mom is a biologist who teaches pre-med to would-be nurses and doctors, and she said it checked out with her understanding of human body chemistry and metabolism.

    So eat a piece of fruit, some complex carbohydrates (like pasta, rice, lentils, peas, corn, beans, or wheat bread), and a complete protein. Drink a cup of water, juice, or tea before you eat. Drink a cup after you finish (not while you eat, if you can help it -- it defeats the digestive effect of saliva and chewing your food). Do this every 3 hours (not 5, especially if you are just starting out). Use your watch to tell you when to eat. You should stop feeling hunger pangs at all after a few days. If you miss a meal, eat a little something as soon as you can, then set your next meal 3 hours from then. Life usually doesn't cooperate with our intended schedules, so just work around interruptions. Take a 30 minute walk once a day, or something on that order. Until you get fit FIRST, any real level of exersize will probably be counterproductive. But I can't even spell exersize, so what do I know? I haven't even finished the book.

    If you have a habit of eating a lot of junk food, fast food, or subsist on soda/coffee (my problem), do the body fueling first. Then see if you still feel as hungry for those things. I find if I bring 2 sandwhiches, 4 peices of fruit, and 1 cup of some entree from home (like lentils or spaghetti) that I can make it through work without the temptation to get a Coke or Mountain Dew to supress my appetite. And I don't feel jittery or tired, just alert.

    YMMV. Good luck to you.

  • I eat on average 4-8x the amount any person I know...
    I'm 6'0, 165lbs, I eat anything I want and don't gain wait, I exercise and don't gain weight, only thing that really causes weight gain is excessive muscle workouts, ie. working with garage doors all day long (no not fixing them, moving them by yourself).

    Keep in mind everyone's different. :P
  • My diet originally started as a way to save some money since I was laid off and out of unemployment for about 2 months, but has changed since I can actually afford the $25/month to go to the health club now. My goal is to be "swimming suit" friendly by the beginning of summer, which I think is pretty reasonable.

    Essentially what I do is eat food which doesn't have a lot of bad stuff in it-- namely fat. I don't watch my carbs too much because I work-out 4 times a week, but I do try to avoid empty calories.

    I always start the day with a Frappucino(sp?) in the bottle, and either a Balance Bar or a Slim Fast bar. I know most people like to skip breakfast, but it helps you not be so hungry at lunch if you get something in your stomach early.

    For lunch I'll usually go downtown (Denver, CO) and grab a Jamba Juice. If I'm particularly hungry, I'll also get a pretzel there, or go to a rice and chicken bowl type place for a small bowl of rice and chicken.

    At dinner, I typically have a bowl of chicken and rice, TexMex style rice & bean soup, or a big rice & bean / rice, bean, and chicken burrito.

    This does get old, so on the weekends I allow myself one "bad" meal which usually consists of pizza or chinese food. I also take supplements from time to time such as DHEA or EAS Ultra Beta Trim to help build muscle and burn fat. No idea if they work or not, but it can't hurt since I take the reccomended doses when I do take them.

    I also do weight training 4 times a week, and usually get on an exercise bike or something for around 20-30 minutes once I'm done lifting weights. This is certainly something I had to build myself up to. It does make for late nights before finally getting home, unfortunately.

    I did a bit of clothes shopping while I was picking up xmas presents, and was presently surprised to be able to fit into jeans which were 2" smaller than my current ones.

    Anyhow, this is what is working for me... if you need more details, feel free to ask.

    DISCLAIMER: I used to be in good shape in High School, so YMMV.

  • Water and foods that inhibit weight loss (Score:3, Informative)

    by OmegaDan ( 101255 ) on Wednesday December 26, 2001 @12:50AM (#2751018) Homepage
    Water is *the single* most important dieting device for several reasons ...

    1: Breaking a fat molecule off of a lipid chain is a hydration reaction (I don't recall much more then that cuz its been years since I read that). The more water you have around, the more likely a reaction can occur :)

    2: Its just good for you. Its almost impossible to drink too much water, it washes away all the shit you put in your body (however this includes nutrients so take vitamins).

    3: It helps you loose weight because, if your drinking alot of water -- your not going to be very hungry very often ..

    Ive lost 30 pounds this year upping my water intake to around 2 gallons/day. At first this sounds like self abuse, but very strangely I *enjoy* drinking this much water. However, I can get up to use the restroom anytime Id like at work :)

    If you want to seriously diet you must limit your intake of caffine, and of nitrates (hot dogs, baccon, processed/packaged meat etc), both which inhibit your bodies ability to loose weight. Also some compound in bananas does this as well, I dont what or why but my mother told me "at weight watchers they told us if you eat a banana, expect to loose no weight for two days"

    the only other diet I've ever had any luck on is the atkins diet (protiend diet) but these diets are very dangerous and you shouldn't do it unless you've exhausted other options.

    btw, IANAD (dietician), but these are my personal experiences
    • This combination can be... risky. Excess water consumption can mess up electrolyte balances because you cells try to balance sodium et al across the cell boundary. If you drink a lot of water (no salt), it suck the sodium out of the cell. This can interfere with muscle contractions - in the worst case it can trigger a heart attack.

      On a related note, low potassium levels (e.g., due to exercise) can also mess with cardiac function and cause dizziness and even blackouts. Bananas are a good source of potassium, which is why a lot of athletes always toss a banana into their protein shakes.

      Considering the typical weight watcher, that advice might have just been a corrupted warning that the potassium in a banana might cause modest water retention. If that's the case, you'll be far better off eating the banana.
      • this is true ... however I look at the waters ability to wash things out of your body as an opertunity to put the *correct* things in :) Still one must be carefull and yours is good advice.

        as for the banana, your guess is as good as mine.
  • Go swimming! I used to be on a swimming and diving team, and it was rather humorous, since nearly 1/2 the team was a bunch of "geeks" =). As surprising as it may seem, us "geeks" took 1st place at quite a few state events and a couple went on to nationals. Nothing beats swimming, especially when you are given the opportunity to float along with beautiful mermaids =] TRiPTMiND

  • For me: (Score:3, Informative)

    by ConsumedByTV ( 243497 ) on Wednesday December 26, 2001 @05:18AM (#2751325) Homepage
    I was once very over weight in my opinion. However now I am at my optimal weight and body shape. I have a well defined muscle structure and have great stamana. My secret?

    I am a vegan [vegan.org]. I exercise by walking around. I am also pretty depressed. However with the first two being a change in my life style that has since become stable. I was able to change my weight from 230 pounds to 154 pounds in less than 4 months.

    If you want to lose some weight, become vegan. You will find out that the american diet mainly consisits of things that keep you really fat. However it's worth the change if you want to live to hack tommorrow.
    • Um.. losing 75 lbs in four months seems rather steep, especially since it's about 1/3 of your original weight. Doesn't the body have trouble accomodating such a pronounced change ? Sudden weakness/near-fainting, spontaneous nausea, that kind of stuff ?

      I had once lost a fair chunk of weight (30lbs) after being bed-ridden for a month, and I felt sicker from the weight loss than the illness itself.
  • I was a little overweight this last fall. I started a 3 month excercise program called body for life [bodyforlife.com]. It wasn't the easiest thing to get started, but I can say after 2 months of hard work I went from 6'6" 245 with 17.9% body fat down to 220 with 6.9% body fat. I haven't worked out in about 2 weeks and I am now down to around 110. This program has seriously changed my physique and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to do the same. The biggest thing for me was that I stopped eating so much sugar and I started eating six small meals a day. Voila the rest is history.
  • one thing i've learned is that not only should you run/walk and do cardiovascular exercise, but you should also lift weights, even if you can't do much and probably won't get huge or strong or anything, it helps a lot!
    you should do some sort of cardio exercise at least 3-4 times a week, everyone has their own opinions on this but make that the minimum - you should also do a light and simple lifting program 2 or 3 times a week in conjunction with that - nothing that will really kill you, it'll help a lot

    of course not only exercise, but eat well, i find diets to be stupid considering a person's diet must be tailored for them anyway, just make sure to eat well, lots of fruits and veggies and all around healthy food - just follow the food pyramid, it actually does know what it's talking about - also cut out the pop and beer, i know they taste good but they do nothing good for you - just stick to water/milk/juice

    there's my 2 cents - that's all what i did/do and have maintained a consistent 145, down from 165 - of course i'm also 17 so take it with a grain of salt...
  • I wanted to lose weight, so I thought about it.

    Do I want to change my diet?
    Do I want to exercise?

    The answer was yes. I want to hit this from multiple angles. I want to do this in the way that maximizes my enjoyment of life - because thats really what this is all about, isn't it?

    So I took Atkins wisdom...i didn't cut out carbs, but I ate a bit less of them, and ate more meat and proteins. Not a huge change, but a small change. I changed the balance of them. (frankly, looking at the evidence, I do not believe the straight out Atkins diet is healthy)

    Then I moved closer to work (for other reasons) so I started walking to work a coupl eof days a week. I started just generally walking more.... its a nice way to spend time, seeing the community, having itme to clear my head before work and really wake up.

    I also cut down on what I ate, stopped eating till I couldn't eat anymore and really felt full. Cut down on sweet stuff, and soda. Started drinking more tea (being mindful of caffeine intake and careful not to let it become an addiction) and water.

    Then, for the first time in my life, I lost weight. I went from 265 to 240 in a couple of months. I had to add 3 notches to my belt because it was too big for me!

    All in all I feel much better. Getting out more, spending less time just sitting around. No heavy dietary restrictions, I still eat everything I used to, I just eat certain things more or less often, and eat less of them.

    Now I feel quite full after eating much much less than I used to have to eat for that feeling. All in all its been quite a success. Lately I think I have been adding muscle because me waist still got smaller but my weight has stayed the same. Must be all that walking.

    -Steve
  • I've lost about 15-20 pounds since around August. It probably would be a little more by now, but I pretty muched stopped losing when Thanksgiving rolled around. I'm getting back to it starting today.

    Anyway, I made a few minor changes in my diet. Mostly I eat the same things, but I substituted a piece of fruit (banana for me) instead of chips at lunch and replaced about 80% of my drink consumption with water. At home for my evening meal, I eat the same type of stuff as before, I just don't go back for seconds.

    I have also been taking karate classes since July. The classes are 1 hour a night 3 nights a week. It really helps motivate me to exercise and I feel like I might be learning a little self defense out of the deal. My life is so uneventful that the only thing I've had to sacrifice to go to karate is that I now watch a few of my favorite tv shows on tape when I get home after class instead of live.

    Anyway, I really gained a lot of weight when I went to college and stopped playing basketball. I went from 170 to 235 in those 4 years. I've tried to lose it a couple of times in the past, but I've always lost motivation. But now, I'm down to about 215 and I don't really feel like I've worked that hard at it.

    I think that you have to change diet and exercise both, but for me the important thing was to not make such a drastic change in diet that it would make me feel like I wasn't eating what I wanted because then I would just revert back to the old diet. Exercise wise, I think it is important to pick something that you enjoy. It was also helpful for me to do something that was on a set time schedule. Going to the gym doesn't work because I can go whenever I feel like it. The problem is, I never really felt like it. Now, I know that karate class happens at a certain time on certain nights and if I don't go I'll miss out. I can't just put it off like I did before.

    Well, there you have it. That's what works for me. Hopefully a few bits of that will help you too.
  • Basiclly, the trick to wieght loss is the MOTIVATION to keep on excercising and eating healthy. The best way to do this is to fall in love with a girl you've got no hope of getting cos you're a fat bastard. Then you can delude yourself into thinking if you stick with it (the diet/excercise) you've got a chance. Works for me.... ....oh, and shagging a new bird is fantastic cardio excercise, good for the abs too...all that thrusting....erm, yeah.
  • I found it was a short trip from being a computer geek to being a bike geek. I got a bike as an adult because I couldn't afford parking on campus in grad school. Once I discovered that grad school was a pointless waste of time, I still had the bike, and found it was a great way to blow off steam. I also find bugs and get great ideas when I'm out riding and supposedly not thinking about computers. When conditions made commuting possible, I'd commute by bike, otherwise I'd try to get in a half hour or so of riding three or four times a week. After a short while, you get used to whatever level you put in, and get cranky if you miss it.

    For years, though, I refused to become a bike geek, even though I rode regularly. I'd even take flat tires to the shop.

    Eventually, I stopped fighting the urge to become a bike geek. So now, in addition to my software job, I have a weekend job in a bike shop, and I do more riding than ever. Like many computer geeks, I was never very athletic in high school, but now I've gotten into racing. Here in the SF Bay Area, there seem to be many techies who have found bike racing to be a hobby to start in their 30s.

    There are plenty of things to geek out about in cycling: many numbers for measuring fitness, many ways to measure rides, all the dietary advice you've seen so far. And that doesn't even get into the bikes and all the tweaks you can make. I think anybody who enjoys programming would like building a wheel, turning a tangled web of spokes into a functional device with just the right amount of tension.
    • I've become something of a bike geek myself (though rather than racing I've gotten into long-distance riding).

      A boss started me riding by his enthusiasm (and desire for a riding partner to work), and I shortly found out why---it's very enjoyable for me. I'd tried running, walking, and karate, and skipped swimming because I couldn't hack the hassle (drive to pool, change clothes, shower, change clothes, ...). But with cycling I don't mind the hassle, and best of all I live about five miles from work, and so commute by bike most days (~four out of five), plus weekend rides.

      As my title indicates, that exercise has to be something fun for you, or you won't do it regularly (unless you have a will of iron, in which case you probably don't need any of this).

      So, I took the list below (making your own exercise machine) and stopped after item one. Works for me, but keep trying things until you find one that works for you. I've lost 25 pounds in under a year, and haven't had to change my eating at all.

      [And if you're biking, go toJohn Forester's site [johnforester.com] and buy Effective Cycling. He can be crusty, but he's earned the right, and tells you how to ride to prevent accidents, rather than what to wear when you're having one.]

  • Any good Junkyard Wars aficionado knows what to do in 10 easy steps:

    1. Obtain a 10-speed bike.
    2. Build some kind of stand that will raise the back wheel off the ground about an inch.
    3. Remove the back tire from the rim.
    4. Attach an old car alternator to the stand.
    5. Loop a long rubber belt over the back tire rim and over the alternator. A clothes dryer belt works nicely. (Whether to use an idler pulley or a tension adjuster on the alternator is up to the imagination of the engineer who is bodging this contraption together.)
    6. Connect the alternator to a car battery.
    7. Connect an inverter to the car battery. (Or instead, the alternator could be wired to charge the gel cells of an uninterruptable power supply.)
    8. Have fun designing charge indicator meters, writing calories burned programs, etc.
    9. Pedal until fully charged.
    10. Hack until the battery peters out. By then, you need a brain break anyway. Pedal, hack, repeat. You WILL lose weight.
  • Okay, quick poll: how many people posted to this column that lost the weight and kept it off more than five years? I just read through every post, and I don't think I've seen one yet.

    I know that 86.1831927% of all statistics are fabricated, but I have two damn statistics to throw at you:
    1 95-99% of all people who lose weight on a diet regain every pound they lost within five years.
    2 The diet and exercise industry in this country rakes in an estimated $29 to 33 billion each year.

    I don't know what the answer is. I wish all of you out there trying to lose fat the best of luck, don't get me wrong. But I think we're all just rodents running in a hamster wheel to feed a very, very fat corporate machine.
    • how many people posted to this column that lost the weight and kept it off more than five years?

      Does two years count? That's how long I've been riding a bike, and there are no signs of it coming back.

  • My best results have been with a combination of running and lifting weights. I run 5 days a week for a total of around 30 miles, and lift weights four days a week. (upper and lower body twice each). I'm 6'1" and 148 lbs. and have kept it that way for the last 7 years. I've found that running races is a heck of a lot of fun, and it gives you a goal to run for.

    Last year, I started doing triathlons as well. That got me into biking, which is an excellent geek sport and a good substitute for running if your joints won't do it. (a sweet racing bike is every bit as cool a machine as a high-end PC) It probably doesn't hurt that I'm vegetarian.

    There aren't any (healthy) shortcuts, but good, hard endurance and strength training work. And can actually be fun, if you find something to do like a race instead of just making it a chore.
  • 1. snort lots of cocaine
    2. work OT to pay for #1
  • The key for me was that it had to be easy. I don't like strenuous exercise and I don't like health food. I'd tried to lose weight in the past, but it made me unhappy, so I wouldn't stick with the diet.

    So my plan basically consists of 2 things:

    1. Eat much less food. I eat the same things, but I eat less overall. And I don't eat health food, I eat pizza and cookies, have lunch at Wendy's, and I drink beer (not light beer either). The only thing I stopped eating was ice cream.

    You'll get hungry. That's ok. After you get hungry, eat a small meal -- not enough to make you full, just enough so you're no longer hungry and you have a little energy. For example, I always skip breakfast, so I'm pretty hungry at lunch time. I'll have a small lunch and I'll be pretty hungry again before dinner. Then I'll eat a small dinner, and I'll be ok for while again. After a few days of this, I'll start getting _really_ hungry so I'll have to eat a bigger meal to be able to concentrate on my work.

    Just remember, hunger is the feeling of you losing weight. It takes a little time, but you get used to it.

    2. Walk an hour a day. And that's every day. I missed about 10 days last year, but I had the flu for about 7 of them.

    I picked walking for a bunch of reasons. I can do it inside, so the weather doesn't matter (I don't have a treadmill, I just walk back and forth while watching TV or reading a book). It's free, it doesn't cause injury, it doesn't require special equipment (not even shoes), I don't need a shower afterwards, it doesn't make me out of breath, etc. In short, it's easy and it works. The biggest problem is that it takes an hour.

    I've lost an average of 5 pounds per month for the last year and a half.

    A couple of other hints:

    A. If you try this plan, don't weigh yourself all the time. Weigh yourself once at the start and wait a good 6-8 weeks. Your weight won't go down really fast and if you weigh-in all the time, you might get discouraged.

    In fact, don't even try to lose 5 pounds a month. Try to lose 2 pounds. Lose 2 pounds a month for 2 years, and that's 48 pounds.

    B. This is not a fitness plan. It's going to be a lot easier to get into running or other fitness activities when you're no longer fat.

    That's it. It's easy and it works. The best thing is, I never really have to go off the diet, so there's no worries about putting the weight back on.

    Hope this helps.
  • I eat about 1/3 what I used to eat, but I weigh at least 40 pounds too much! I'm seriously considering joining a gym. Either that or get stronger chairs. :)
  • I'm in a similar boat. I got my first desk job (netadmin) about 1.5 years ago. I weighed 165lbs when I started @ 6' 1 1/2" and I'm now at 210lbs. I've never been fat in my life. I've always been the skinny guy that could out eat anyone and never show it. Well damn. It's catching up. My solution will be purchased in a month or two. I'm going to buy a Bowflex. I just moved into a house today. It has a very large living room that can easily hold a Bowflex. I prefer to lift by myself. Going to a gym after work really doesn't work unless you have a group of people to go with you. The group movtivates itself that way. This thing will be close enough to the TV that I can work out and watch HBO at the same time. I think I can pull it off that way. It can't hurt to try. Give it a whirl!

  • How about dejockifying public education?

    My experience is that many people inclined towards a compu-career have been turned off physical exercise, thanks to jocks. Competitive sports have become a religion in many schools, where nothing else matters but a winning team to bring glory. Phys-ed has become a grade factory for jocks, and a source of persecution for non-jocks. Add to that the castes that develop, based on physical size and development.

    That means:

    Making schools a place for education rather than musculotonic social dominance.

    Removing extramural sports.

    Emphasizing non-sport activities (e.g. running, swimming, martial arts).

    Replacing "team-ism" with individualism.

    Teaching students to love and respect their bodies.

    Fairness to all students, regardless of physical condition.

    Firm and consistent discipline.

    Prevention of bullying.

    Just imagine, more people having a healthier attitude towards exercise and fitness.

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