Staying Healthy When Working 12 Hours a Day? 204
dwija asks: "I just got a new job where I just sit in one place all day and work for 12 hours at a stretch. This goes on for 4 days a week and I get 3 days off. The journey to and from my office takes up about 3 hours of my day. I am a little worried now cause i am becoming really weak and I am not as healthy as I used to be. I want to ask others on Slashdot about the kinds of weird times in which they work and what they do to take care of their health and stress."
That's bad... (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to stick it out, though, I'd say keys are:
Re:Avoid caffeine & carbs (Score:5, Informative)
Did you mean avoid high-sugar foods? You might have something there. Eat complex carbs, not sugars. Eat cereal for breakfast, for example - the carbs will slowly break down giving you energy throughout the day, rather than a quick burst of energy that leaves you feeling worse once it wears off.
If you really need a quick burst, eat something sugary (dextrose sweets are designed for just such a time) and some more complex (a sandwich, for example) at the same time (well... one after the other is fine... they might not mix well). That way once the sugars wears off the carbs will kick in.
Smart commuting and exercising. (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, find out how to commute smarter. Those 3 hours involve only you behind the wheel, then it's going to take a toll on you -- mentally and physically. Be creative on how to commute. For example, in the DC metro area, there's a growing phenomenon called slug lines [slug-lines.com], which are "unofficial meeting places where commuters catch free rides with drivers who need additonal riders to use high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. [commuterpage.com]" If you don't have to drive, you can at least use that time for personal enrichment, like reading the paper, book, or listening to music or audiobooks, or you can do some work if you have a laptop, etc. That's 3 hours that you can have to yourself. If you buy an Archos AV340 [pricegrabber.com] and have a ReplayTV (or a networked TiVo) at home, you can even catch up on your favorite shows during the commute -- it makes the workday more bearable.
Re:Avoid caffeine & carbs (Score:3, Informative)
A PB&J sandwich would work. The jelly/jam should have some sugar(either added or from the fruit), then you have some protein from the peanut butter(you will likely have some sugar in there as well depending on the brand), and the complex carbs from the bread.
Actually, crackers and jam/jelly would probably work as well if you want a bunch of bite size snacks. Just make yourself up a plate to snack on.
Rice/Corn Cakes with PB & Jelly/Jam also work if you don't want/can't have bread.
Honey would also work if you don't want jelly/jam.
Go to the gym (Score:4, Informative)
Now, before you give the standard nerd excuses like "I'm not a gym guy" or "I don't want to get all big like those guys" let me tell you that there are a lot of other things you can do there besides lifting weights. There are tons of classes, swimming, sometimes there's a heavy bag to hit, etc. I do lift, personally and recommend lifting over those other things, but that's my preference. As long as you exert some energy and leave there at least a little beat, you are doing a good thing.
ft
Re:Quit before you die (Score:2, Informative)
Quick tip: if you taper off caffeine, ending with circa 1/2 cup of soda per day for a few days, you can generally avoid the headaches.
Also, one of the best things I did for my health was to stop using my alarm clock most of the time. That forced me to go to bed on time.
Re:Quit and find a new job (Score:2, Informative)
cbd.
Re:Quit and find a new job (Score:2, Informative)
He means if the job makes you feel that bad, you'll feel bad at work and at home. 168 hours per week.
Re:Quit and find a new job (Score:5, Informative)
It's the three-hour commute that's killing him.
For a lot of the last 10 years, I've worked a 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off schedule with 12s. It really isn't bad.
Look at it this way, with his schedule, he's working less than 50 hours a week. Most people work at least 9 hours a day. The employer takes an hour for lunch leaving you 40 hours. If you ever work a weekend or stay late more than twice a week, then you have gone over 48 hours.
But that commute...
It's simple: Live where you work. Get an apartment close to where you work and live there. If you have a family and are not willing to move, then quit.
Another idea is to get a hotel close to work once a week. If the pay is good enough to offset a $60 hotel room, then try it. Staying in a hotel the 3rd night of your week will feel like a dream.
What you really need to do is get some 15lb dumbells and start using them.
Do 10 pushups every other hour. Aim for 50 the first 2 weeks and add a few more each week after. Shoot for 20 pushups at a time and 120 per day.
Same with situps. If you work buisness casual, a towel will keep your shirt clean. Get a sit-up bar for your feet or just hook them under the edge of your desk.
Do curls, squats, upright rows, military presses, and other creative exercises with the dumbells. Agian, no more than 10 or 20 at a time. But you will be doing them throughout the shift.
It'll keep your metabolism high and make you feel a lot better.
Get some alcohol, talcum powder, hand lotion, and a clean rag for your drawer.
If you feel sweaty, use the rag doused with some alcohol to clean the sweat. Use talc to prevent sweat to begin with. Hand lotion is for your hands; push-ups and dumbells can wreak havoc on girly-hands.
Anyway, good luck.
Re:Quit and find a new job (Score:3, Informative)
At least that's the story he tells my sister; I don't know what he tells his family in the other city. :)
Re:Take solace... (Score:5, Informative)
And sometimes it's pretty comparable. Occasionally in LA I've had to drive to meetings in the morning where it would have been much faster to pedal (I'm a pretty strong cyclist, but even if I weren't it would be comparable and more pleasant). From my house to downtown LA is more than an hour at rush hour by car, but I could probably do it in less than 45 minutes on a bike. In group it would be a lot less than 45 minutes.
One option that I've seen people use occasionally is to drive partway and bike partway-- find a safe parking spot about 10 miles from the workplace, and bike the last 10 miles (or whatever is comfortable). Or park about 20 minutes by foot away-- even a brisk walk like that twice a day can help a lot. Especially if it breaks up what would otherwise be 15 hours sitting on your butt.
Re:Avoid caffeine & carbs (Score:5, Informative)
Point the second: It is not a fad diet. The atkins diet has been used for ages to control seizures by reducing the amount of glycogen in the brain. It just wasn't called that.
Point the third: Atkins is based on the idea of a fairly well-known state of the body called ketosis in which the brain is run on ketones (actually more efficient than running on glucose) and during which the body does not store fat. It is often confused with ketoacidosis, a state in which ketones build up in the body, and which sometimes afflicts those with diabetes. They are not the same thing.
Re:Avoid caffeine & carbs (Score:3, Informative)
1) You don't starve just because you don't have carbs - see Inuits.
2) Given the quantities popularly consumed - it doesn't matter even if protein and fats are inefficient energy sources as the OP claims.
The main issue in the USA seems to be people are consuming way too much.
The Atkins diet is just one of the less evil diets for the typical US folk given the quantities they've grown accustomed to eating.
I suspect that if a typical obese US American went on a "Japanese" diet, he'd stuff himself with tons of sushi (or ramen). And that might not be that healthy.
The Atkins diet isn't as annoying as the USDA food pyramid. Whilst carbs probably aren't as bad as the Atkin's people say, carbs really aren't that good for you - just look at the various studies.
In fact I don't see that many decent studies backing the popular "food pyramid" diet. The original proponent of the high carb diet was the USDA.
The USDA = US Dept of _Agriculture_. Their food pyramid probably mirrors the "US Agriculture Production Pyramid", and I wouldn't be surprised if their priorities are the health of the agriculture industry and not the health of the consumers.
In the era of the Food Pyramid, the US people have just got more and more obese. If you look at the photos of US people in the 1960s/1970s pre the USDA, they sure weren't that fat (see college photos ).
They had a lot more hair (including facial hair), but even then that didn't make them as heavy or unhealthy
IMO the main contributor to ill-health in the US has probably been rise in consumption of carbonated sweetened beverages (whether artificially sweetened or not). (the increase in standard food portion sizes is also to blame).
With lots of sugar in _solution_ hitting the bloodstream, either the sugar remains in the blood which means you have diabetes, or it converts to fat - which means you're getting fat.
Whilst there's just so much potato you can eat (or want to eat) and digest, drinking sugar water doesn't quench thirst that well, so people drink more. Even drinking that much plain water can be unhealthy - and so most healthy people start to feel bloated/too full.
Re:Take solace... (Score:3, Informative)
It's really got to be something that you enjoy doing and want to do anyway. If you want to do it, you can make the time.