I’m impressed with those of you who cycle to work. I live in Louisiana, land of rain, steam and swamps… Fortunately, I have a 1200 sf office upstairs (that’s exercise, right?)…
To seriously lose weight (65+ lbs over 5 years), I started bike riding. However, my wife banned me from road bikes after 3 wrecks in 9 months (and 25k+ in hospital bills, a month off work, etc.). I now ride a ‘tadpole recumbent trike’. Though I’m much lower to the road than on a bike, cars ALWAYS see me. It’s double the weight of my road bike, so, more benefit in less time. Though it’s SLOW going uphill, nothing touches it downhill. I’ve been over 40 mph on a medium (hey- We’re in Louisiana-- It’s almost FLAT here) hill.
While I may not do the ‘century’ rides with some of my friends, 50 for my 50th birthday was FINE. (And I’m still losing weight.)
I have been programming for over 20 years now. I do no excersize (except for some canoe paddling and dog walking) and I still fit in the size 34 jeans I wore in high school. I find that keeping my waist size down involves three things:
- Portion control. Seriously, you don’t need three scoops of mashed taters or a whole big bowl of ice cream.
- Eat the right food. Stay away from the over processed white flours and fatty, salty pre-packaged, pre-prepared foods. Eat lots of fiber from fruits and keep your protien levels up.
- Don’t snack. Eat three healthy meals a day and then keep your hands out of the damn goldfish box. No late night snacks, no mid-day snacks, no sugary sodas. Drink water, ice tea or coffee. (Moccachino is not coffee).
It’s that easy. Aerobic excersize for me is trying to keep from being killed in Battlefield 2142.
I started with Tae Kwon Do in college and loved it. I was in the best shape of my life. Now, 10 years, 1 broken ankle and 2 knees that hurt with every step, I am not sure it was a good idea. The physical aspects of training are wonderful, but competition sparring and heavy bag work can ruin your body. Just take it easy.
That said, I am about to start teaching TKD and cardio kick boxing at a local gym. I am going to focus on forms and technique over sparring, but hopefully the classes will go well.
Keep your geek cred - ride a recumbent.
There are quite a lot of weird bikes available if you want to be all technical about it, right up to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth_(bicycle) that is more geek than thou. Or you could just get all freaky about some tiny aspect of the bike, or instrumenting it. Alex Wetmore (a geek) runs www.phred.org that has a few interesting lists on it (for bike geeks anyway), and there’s the www.IHPVA.org for the less hardcore.
But for those that live in high-traffic areas that are not too bike-friendly, an upright bike with mudguards and racks is still the best way. Just ride the fricking thing.
I’d say that the rate of the overweght is less that 10%
Welcome to outside the United States of America. 
http://www.annecollins.com/obesity/worldwide-obesity.htm
In the United States, obesity is the most common chronic disease, affecting more than 1 in 4 of all Americans, including children, and its incidence has been steadily increasing for the past 20 years. In Europe, Australia/New Zealand, the Middle East, and the remaining portions of the Americas, the occurrence of obesity appears to be increasing and is now between 10 and 20 percent. The prevalence of obesity is still fairly low in China, Japan, and many countries in Africa.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/
If it’s not worth driving to, we don’t go there.
Some hackers discover that real women are better than net p#rn, this corrects the weight problem.
Can you imagine if the World of Warcraft players had to use some sort of treadmill to run around the WoW universe? I wonder how that would affect WoW subscription numbers. hehe.
Hey Jeff,
Great post - I’m all for bringing health awareness to the geek community at large. One thing to consider though is that eat less/exercise more is not always the best solution. To summarize some points here, as well as adding a few of my own:
1.) Eat more (but smaller) meals throughout the day to keep the metabolism going.
2.) Drink lots of water throughout the day as well.
3.) Stay away from processed sugars. Use fruit to get your sugar intake.
4.) Green veggies are a must. Most people never get enough.
5.) The obvious - low-fat foods at every meal.
6.) Cardio should be mixed with strength exercises - either free weights, or muscle stress like in martial arts.
You might find that in measuring calories your intake is actually okay, and you simply need to modify what sort of foods you eat.
I’ve actually written fairly extensively on this on my weblog, since I used to be significantly overweight. I used to weigh about 265, and now weight 165, and am an amatuer triathlete, among other jock-ish ventures.
You can read about my weight loss tips here:
http://www.nickschweitzer.net/CategoryView,category,Losing%2BWeight.aspx
And my triathlon experiences here:
http://www.nickschweitzer.net/CategoryView,category,Triathlon.aspx
Perhaps it will help a few who are looking to drop some pounds.
I’ll go ahead and chime in as well. I’ve lost about 40 pounds of fat and gained about 10 pounds of muscle over the past year. I was going to give some tips but Brian gave all the rights one’s above.
The only thing I’ll add to what he said is that you need to run, not walk. Walking pretty much only burns calories while you are doing it. I know that you can find lots of articles on the web telling you that walking burns the same number of calories that running does. But they are wrong! Walking only burns the same number of calories as running does DURING the excercise. But like other muscle stress workouts, running continues to burn calories after you are done excercising. It is important to stress your muscles and push them to the point of needing “recovery”. Your body burns many more calories during the recovery stage than it does during the actual excercise stage. Like the body builders say: “you don’t grow in the gym”. The same holds true for losing weight.
So work out hard and run hard. Walking is fine if you are just starting out or you need to just get out of the house. But for long term health and weight loss you need to actually exercise and walking is about as poor of an exercise as you can get.
I’m fat =( but I love food so much
I’ve been programming for 25 years, spent 10 years as an MMORPG addict. 6 years ago I looked at a picture of myself and thought, “who’s that fat guy?” I was 35 then and I realized that things were only going to get worse fast if I didn’t change my lifestyle. I started walking/running until I worked my way up to 3 miles a day 3 times a week with the occasional weekend 6-miler. After a few years, I added in a 30 minute workout at home using dumbbells. The key for me was committing to exercise as more important than work. Once you stick with it for awhile, you really become addicted to exercise. I feel out of sorts now if I go more than a day or two without working out. It feels like not brushing my teeth in the morning.
Living in Houston, I sub in an hour of DDR when it’s too hot to run. I’ve found this is more than equivalent to running three miles.
Oh c’mon Jeff, I’ve managed to maintain my street cred and continue to play soccer, the one true sport. 
If Bill Gates can pursue a career in male nerd modeling, anyone can!
Here’s a good tip -
When you feel hungry, drink a glass of water instead. Thirst and hunger feel like the same thing initially, but we normally go for the snacks. Try it and see after 5 mins if you still feel hungry.
Obviously, you’ll still need to maintain the status symbol of a true programmer – the pyramid of soda cans on your desk proving you work later than everyone else…
I heard about someone that made a One Laptop Per Child computer run by the power of a bike. That would make for the exercise (I guess it might be a rumour but it’s quite fun anyway)!
Imagine you are 2 person. One can use the computer for 30 minutes wile the other runs the bike and then you switch. It would be really fun!
Keep your geek street cred by taking up Geocahing. You get out and do stuff, explore your city, find parks you never knew about, go hiking and have an excuse to own and play with a GPS. Very geeky.
I am using “the Google 15” widget on my Igoogle home page to monitor my weight. The math are based on the hacher diet. Doing so for 6 month and no need for a spreadsheet.
Great comments so far. Particularly from people who have instituted a geek diet/exercise program and seen results. It’s encouraging to think that making a few small changes in your lifestyle (with discipline) can have fairly large effects.
The key that turned me around were the “exercise doesn’t burn many calories” numbers.
This surprised me too. I found this corroborated a number of places, such as the NY Times:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/and-now-the-exercise-resistant-dieter/
Exercise is of course important for mental and physical health. But as a weight loss option, moderating your intake of calories is much more effective.