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What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

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Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#81

Post by TureMasing »

COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS DISCUSSION BELOW. Spare yourself 76 more or less useless comments and STOP HERE.

You sit. That's it. There is almost nothing you can do about it. It's called work. Anyway, it's NOT dangerous.

Get a coffee, go to the men's room, get lunch, stand for a while, go to the silent reading room... That's automatic and stops you from being seated more than an hour at a stretch.

Add 30 minutes of walking every day (7 minutes to the office, 7 minutes home, 7 minutes to get lunch, 7 minutes to get back and then maybe to and from a meeting) and you should be OK as long as you don't stuff yourself with cheeseburgers and fries everyday.

If you on top of that add 4 hours of weight lifting (actually 1 hour lifting and 3 hours resting) you can get extremely fit; Gladiator contender or Fear factor kind of fit. Like I am.

Also, don't forget intermittent fasting everyday 16:8-style.

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#82

Post by ekidd »

awjr wrote: post #50

I would strongly suggest anyone looking at this and saying they don't have the time to invest in this to also consider the mental benefits that exercise brings. I don't feel I have time (which I know is wrong) and I particularly do not like gyms, but I cycle to work (2 miles) and on the way home I'll take a detour and add an extra 5-10 miles to my trip home. It clears the cobwebs. Cycling can be very meditative as we…

If anybody needs to optimize exercise time, also consider high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and bodyweight or dumbbell exercises. These can both be done at home, and they consistently have more effect on my overall fitness than long, medium-intensity cardio.

HIIT is an old, popular technique; it's basically intervals of intense cardio separated by rest. For an introduction, see Couch-to-5K or the Zombies Run training app. Bodyweight exercises can be done anywhere. One reasonable introduction is You are Your Own Gym, but there are others.

If you raise your exercise intensity high enough to force your body to adapt, you can do a lot in 20 to 30 minutes several times a week without a health club membership. I'm not saying this is optimal-I'm not at all an expert—but it's certainly better than nothing, and I generally see far better gains doing this than when I do long, lower-intensity exercise.

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#83

Post by mathattack »

awjr wrote: post #50

I would strongly suggest anyone looking at this and saying they don't have the time to invest in this to also consider the mental benefits that exercise brings. I don't feel I have time (which I know is wrong) and I particularly do not like gyms, but I cycle to work (2 miles) and on the way home I'll take a detour and add an extra 5-10 miles to my trip home. It clears the cobwebs. Cycling can be very meditative as we…

"FYI before starting this I weighed about 310lb and have got myself down to 275lb within a year without focusing too much on what I eat."

Keep it up!! Every incremental pound gets harder as your body gets smaller, but it's still worth it!

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#85

Post by Amadou »

ZoFreX wrote: post #66
Amadou wrote: post #20

I once knew a guy who thought he could eat as much junk food as he wanted as long as he made up for it with "super-foods" (moringa MLM scam actually). Regular workouts don't decrease death risk if you're also a couch potato -- http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38385104/ns/health-fitness/ People who sit for most of the day are 54 percent more likely to die of heart attacks -- http://health.yahoo.net/experts/menshealth/most-da…

First sentence of the first link: "Hitting the gym every day might do little to decrease your risk of death if you spend the rest of your time sitting down, a new study suggests ." (I've emphasised the weasel words) In the realm of health you can find a study to say anything . I've seen ones that say standing all day is an improvement over sitting, others that say it's the same, and even some that say standing is wor…

Second sentence of the first link:

"The results show the time people spend on their derrieres is associated with an increased risk of mortality, regardless of their physical activity level." No weasel words.

Yes you can find a study to say anything, that does not mean all studies are inherently untrustworthy. There are lots of studies showing that long-term sitting is unhealthy. This idea that it is a major risk factor regardless of other additional activities is not new.

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#86

Post by agumonkey »

marti wrote: post #28

Between the two 'extremes' of standing and sitting, there's also the saddle chair [1]. I've used one at home for over a year now, but only up to a few hours a day, so can't really tell how much it has affected my posture in addition to regular exercise. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_chair

I wanted to try something like this but didn't have one so I used a stool (4 legged IKEA with thin cushion). Not good, exhaustion feeling comes quickly, bad blood flow I suppose. I never bother searching for a real saddle chair but your post makes me wanna buy one.

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#87

Post by bmj »

stass wrote: post #54
jarjoura wrote: post #3

100% agree. Also a perk of living in a city (such as San Francisco) is I can walk EVERYWHERE, including work and I do. Like the OP, walking to and from work and hitting the gym most days has vastly improved my quality of life and it doesn't even take away from much of my evening. If you need something to get you motivated, grab a Fitbit tracker and/or scale and track yourself. It'll only work in the beginning, but if…

> Also a perk of living in a city (such as San Francisco) How is it related to living in a city? At least in the Bay Area you can walk/cycle pretty much everywhere if your work is close enough to your job. And cycling in suburbs is usually safer/healthier than e.g. in San Francisco. You're out of luck if your job is far from your home though. But one will have the same problem in city as well in that case.

How is it related to living in a city? At least in the Bay Area you can walk/cycle pretty much everywhere if your work is close enough to your job. And cycling in suburbs is usually safer/healthier than e.g. in San Francisco.

This depends on location. In my area, the suburbs (designed as they were in the 1950s-1970s) tend to be very pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly places, particularly in those areas with business parks. If you want to get around without a car, then you really need to be in the city.

Your second point, however, is right on. I've always made it a point to find jobs within 10 miles of my home, so the bike commute is reasonable (having briefly done a 40 mile round trip commute, I can say that it took up too much of my time).

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#88

Post by Amadou »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #73
adwf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it." I guess the rule about time management applies even when asking yourself to do something.

Reminds me of something I read from Arnold Swazenegger: "While on maneuvers, Schwarzenegger and his fellow soldiers would use the hot spots (areas of metal over the tank’s engine) as a makeshift cooking stove, grilling up steaks and frying eggs. The eventual Mr. Universe continued his bodybuilding training even while off base, having stowed his workout equipment (plate weights, barbells, and a collapsible bench) in t…

I've had a couple of trainers -- the kind with degrees in sports-medicine, not the kind that were selling cell-phones in the mall last week -- say that Arnie was the single worst thing to happen to modern fitness.

Their complaint was that his genetics are exceptionally rare. That very few people, like 1 out of 10,000, could ever hope to come anywhere close to achieving the same physique. That by becoming a sort of fitness idol he set up everybody else up for disappointment and often giving up because it is literally impossible for the rest of us to do what he did.

As an aside, if you ever watch his first movie, a documentary of sorts called Pumping Iron, he says that smoking pot was a part of his regimen. He even lights up on camera.

Re: What happens when you sit at a desk for 13 years and also exercise

#90

Post by taber1 »

TureMasing wrote: post #81

COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS DISCUSSION BELOW. Spare yourself 76 more or less useless comments and STOP HERE. You sit. That's it. There is almost nothing you can do about it. It's called work. Anyway, it's NOT dangerous. Get a coffee, go to the men's room, get lunch, stand for a while, go to the silent reading room... That's automatic and stops you from being seated more than an hour at a stretch. Add 30 minutes of walking…

With that kind of logic, most discussions would be meaningless. Basically we are all dying from a disease called "life". The point is how you want to die: either miserably from chronic illnesses brought by long years of bad habits or gracefully from old age. However, there are no guarantees, but if you don't buy a ticket, you have zero chances of winning. Anyway, eating "healthy" does not beat exercise.
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