6 ms·

I ride my bike to work, and have been for the last 3 years. I lost about 50 pounds quickly (I was about 250 at the time) and then kind of hit the wall around 19

by ax0n 17y ago

I ride my bike to work, and have been for the last 3 years. I lost about 50 pounds quickly (I was about 250 at the time) and then kind of hit the wall around 190. I'm still fat, but my lungs and heart are in great shape. My round-trip is about 29 miles, but I also have several multi-mode options that involve mixing bicycle and bus, shortening the bicycle part of my trip to anywhere from 2.7 to 7 miles each direction. This time of year, it's not uncommon for me to ride to the bus on chilly mornings and soak it up with a 14-15 mile homeward ride. At this point, I'm suffering from T-rex syndrome. Massive, muscular legs, good overall health, and very little upper body. I started 100 pushups a while back ago, then dislocated a shoulder. I'm about ready to start it back up again. Pushups were really working my core and arms. Cycling and pushups seems like a good start at full-body workout without a gym membership. Oh yeah, and watch what you eat, I guess.

itistoday 17y ago
> Oh yeah, and watch what you eat, I guess. We may be complimentary hackers in this sense, so I'd like to expand on this sentence of yours. I don't exercise very much, but be it good genes or not, I'm very healthy--ahem, as far as I know, where'd I put that piece of wood..? From my years of exposure to the topic, what I've found is that your last sentence deserves far more than a sentence dedicated to it. For some (and only some) of the reasoning along this line of thought, see the TIME article "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin": http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.ht... To stay healthy, I try my best to eat healthy. This means buying as many organic veggies that I can satisfactorily afford, and cooking and eating them at home. If you want to have a delicious and healthy dinner, don't go out, make it yourself at home. Besides saving money on the food and gas, you'll have yourself a healthier meal and you'll be doing the planet a favor. It'll probably taste better too. Although I don't really think of myself as one, I'm typically a vegetarian as well. Meaning, I'll eat meat, but only if that meat was organically produced at a local farm. As such meat is hard to come by at the store, and completely nonexistant at the restaurants near me, this tends to be a very rare occasion indeed. Avoiding meat not only means that I spend less money on my groceries, but it also means I'm helping the environment, and am healthier as well (as a result of what "industrial meat" is). Of course, discussions on healthy eating, and food in general, shouldn't fail to reference the movie Food Inc. and the book that inspired it: Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma". If you haven't read that book, or seen that documentary, you may disagree with what I've said, and there's a decent chance that what you're eating is going to put you, and a decent chunk of American society, in an early grave. ;-)
- Luc 17y ago
  I also think reducing meat intake, and selecting only bio-meat from animals raised with a certain amount of respect is the ethical thing to do. It doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing (i.e. vegan)...
- ax0n 17y ago
  Obviously, my "I guess" was tongue in cheek. Volumes upon volumes have been written on it. It should be common sense that you don't fuel your daily existence with ho-hos and mountain dew. Unfortunately, a lot of hackers opt for that -- or worse! some days, I'm guilty of it, but I do burn about 1,800 kCal on the bike daily. Still, burning the calories you eat is only part of the deal. The whole "organic" thing doesn't strike me as any sort of requirement for being healthy. If you think it helps, good. But having grown up in a Nebraska family where a good wholesome meaty meal that probably came out of a feed lot 20 miles away, I can say I've seen plenty of people grow to be slender, muscular and very healthy without adopting the organic/granola/veg*n mindset. However our species got where we are, everything between our teeth and our colon is configured for a balanced diet of meat, fiber, legumes, grains, and veggies. And that's what I eat. My great grandfather did the same. He croaked at age 107.
  - itistoday 17y ago
    When was your grandfather born? He and his generation may very well have been eating what today is labeled "organic food". Factory farming is a relatively new phenomenon that has swept the country in only recently, and with phenomenal speed. >> In the 1930s, 24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002; in 1940, each farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers.[23] >> The number of farms has also decreased, and their ownership is more concentrated. In the U.S., four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens.[24] In 1967, there were one million pig farms in America; as of 2002, there were 114,000,[25] with 80 million pigs (out of 95 million) killed each year on factory farms as of 2002, according to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council.[23] From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming And that wiki article is missing a lot of information that's mentioned in Pollan's book and the film Food Inc.

by ax0n 17y ago

itistoday 17y ago

> Oh yeah, and watch what you eat, I guess. We may be complimentary hackers in this sense, so I'd like to expand on this sentence of yours. I don't exercise very much, but be it good genes or not, I'm very healthy--ahem, as far as I know, where'd I put that piece of wood..? From my years of exposure to the topic, what I've found is that your last sentence deserves far more than a sentence dedicated to it. For some (and only some) of the reasoning along this line of thought, see the TIME article "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin": http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.ht... To stay healthy, I try my best to eat healthy. This means buying as many organic veggies that I can satisfactorily afford, and cooking and eating them at home. If you want to have a delicious and healthy dinner, don't go out, make it yourself at home. Besides saving money on the food and gas, you'll have yourself a healthier meal and you'll be doing the planet a favor. It'll probably taste better too. Although I don't really think of myself as one, I'm typically a vegetarian as well. Meaning, I'll eat meat, but only if that meat was organically produced at a local farm. As such meat is hard to come by at the store, and completely nonexistant at the restaurants near me, this tends to be a very rare occasion indeed. Avoiding meat not only means that I spend less money on my groceries, but it also means I'm helping the environment, and am healthier as well (as a result of what "industrial meat" is). Of course, discussions on healthy eating, and food in general, shouldn't fail to reference the movie Food Inc. and the book that inspired it: Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma". If you haven't read that book, or seen that documentary, you may disagree with what I've said, and there's a decent chance that what you're eating is going to put you, and a decent chunk of American society, in an early grave. ;-)

Luc 17y ago
I also think reducing meat intake, and selecting only bio-meat from animals raised with a certain amount of respect is the ethical thing to do. It doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing (i.e. vegan)...
ax0n 17y ago
Obviously, my "I guess" was tongue in cheek. Volumes upon volumes have been written on it. It should be common sense that you don't fuel your daily existence with ho-hos and mountain dew. Unfortunately, a lot of hackers opt for that -- or worse! some days, I'm guilty of it, but I do burn about 1,800 kCal on the bike daily. Still, burning the calories you eat is only part of the deal. The whole "organic" thing doesn't strike me as any sort of requirement for being healthy. If you think it helps, good. But having grown up in a Nebraska family where a good wholesome meaty meal that probably came out of a feed lot 20 miles away, I can say I've seen plenty of people grow to be slender, muscular and very healthy without adopting the organic/granola/veg*n mindset. However our species got where we are, everything between our teeth and our colon is configured for a balanced diet of meat, fiber, legumes, grains, and veggies. And that's what I eat. My great grandfather did the same. He croaked at age 107.
- itistoday 17y ago
  When was your grandfather born? He and his generation may very well have been eating what today is labeled "organic food". Factory farming is a relatively new phenomenon that has swept the country in only recently, and with phenomenal speed. >> In the 1930s, 24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002; in 1940, each farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers.[23] >> The number of farms has also decreased, and their ownership is more concentrated. In the U.S., four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens.[24] In 1967, there were one million pig farms in America; as of 2002, there were 114,000,[25] with 80 million pigs (out of 95 million) killed each year on factory farms as of 2002, according to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council.[23] From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming And that wiki article is missing a lot of information that's mentioned in Pollan's book and the film Food Inc.