I have never mentioned what I do for a living but I am a computer geek. I do application support for an airline in Canada and have spent my share of hours over the years in server rooms, at desktops, buried in code on my laptop and now deploying software.
One thing that I think that all computer guys have in common is a pretty sedentary lifestyle. The stereotype tends to fit. I know this because I stare into my laptop most of the day everyday.
So in keeping with the idea that one of the big two new years resolutions is to lose weight I will appeal to my geek friends and colleagues to make these changes along with me.
6 Tips For Geeks To Use Yo Get Healthier At Your Desk
1. Make sure that you get away from your desk once an hour. I know that this can be difficult but it is important. The more time that we spend at our desks the more we get done but there is a couple of downsides.
First your concentration tends to drop after an hour dug into a problem looking for a solution, second of all as time goes on your posture gets worse and you will find your shoulders falling and your body will start to hate you for it. The aches and pains in your shoulders and upper back are directly caused from this bad posture.
2. Stretch your body at your desk. There are lots of stretching exercises that you can do at your desk when talking to a colleague about code, Windows problems or even last nights crappy TV shows and when you do this stretching you will increase your blood flow.
Your increased blood flow will increase your metabolism and this rise in your calorie output will help you lose will sitting still.
3. Have lots of fruit and veggie snacks at your desk. This is a critical one for me. If you are grazing like a cow then you will not resemble one.
During the holiday season I seem to up my intake of chocolate but at the same time I have been eating a lot of fruit and veggies by bringing little bags of these as snacks to work everyday.
I have been doing this for years and it is easy as you can plan and execute the packing of the food in the evening and then in the morning you have everything you need in the fridge.
This eating constantly during the day will increase your metabolism as well because you body will burn calories confident that more food is always a comin’
The other great thing about eating fruit and vegetables is that they have a high water content so you will feel more full without having to take in the calories for it.
4. Drink lots of water throughout the day. I know that some people try to say that you do not have to drink water to be healthy but really depending on your life style where are you supposed to get the hydration?
If you eat low water content foods, have your body constantly robbed of moisture by air conditioning (I will not even get into the problems that server rooms cause on your body), and then you do not try to replenish water.
If you drink water starting first thing in the morning it will casue you body to start the furnace of your metabolism and you can go through the day -in and out of the washroom- with more energy and better concentration.
5. Breath forcefully a few times a day. I believe that the way that we breath will help our metabolism by raising our heart rate from nearly zero.
If you do some deep breathing every hour or two at your desk you will be simulating some of the effect of exercise but at the same time not getting that run or bike in. breath in deep and breath out completely four or five times and you will feel your mind clear as well as getting a bit of stimulation though your body from the stretching of your chest muscles.
6. Big Balls are for sitting on. I know that most people do not want to look like the cute admin sitting on her big blue ball to work instead of an office chair but it really is a good practice.
Those big balls that you can sit on to work force your body to use your core muscles to do the work of stabilizing your body instead of having the chair do this work.
One way to start using a ball is to start the day on the ball and alternate between that and a chair for an hour at a time until you are up and running full time on the ball.
It would not be fair to say that this will be all that you need to lose weight. To really lose weight you need to do 20-30 minutes of cardio a few times a week and do some weights three times a week.
I wanted to just concentrate on the deskside stuff and not the others that every trainer will tell you that you need to do.
One fact that you can take away from this article? Blood flow is very important.
Just by stretching, breathing and getting up to walk around you are going to increase your blood flow and this blood flow is going to make a world of difference to your productivity and your health.