Tao of Bachelorhood

If only you could rig this up as a controller for Gran Turismo...

It’s news, but it’s not news: scientists have found that sitting for long periods of time is bad for your health. While you should just be able to feel that a sedentary lifestyle is the inverse of fitness, now there’s evidence that actual negative changes in your body occur while you’re sitting still. Healthy substances that are generated when your muscles flex don’t appear when you’re stationary.

From a recent New York Times article:

Men who normally walk a lot (about 10,000 steps per day, as measured by a pedometer) were asked to cut back (to about 1,350 steps per day) for two weeks, by using elevators instead of stairs, driving to work instead of walking and so on. By the end of the two weeks, all of them had became worse at metabolizing sugars and fats. Their distribution of body fat had also altered — they had become fatter around the middle.

It’s not just at work, either. If you come home and flop on the couch to watch TV or settle in at the computer for heavy-duty web surfing, it compounds the problem. And exercising your thumbs with the PlayStation doesn’t help much.

What’s more, you can’t completely make up for a day of sitting around by working out at 5:00. Among people who observed a program of regular exercise, those who sat the rest of their day were fatter and less healthy than those who moved around throughout the day.

The World Changed, We Didn’t

The prescription for good health is to eat wholesome foods and keep active. It’s what humans did in the days of the caveman and medieval times, through the Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century this all changed. The office job was invented, the automobile became popular, and an ever-growing percentage of the “developed” world remained seated virtually from the moment they left the house in the morning until they returned at night. And when they got home, people had fewer “chores,” ever more convenient processed food requiring no preparation, and more passive entertainment options.

The problem is that our bodies haven’t changed they way they operate. The owner’s manual is still the same. Put healthy food in and keep active.

Rage Against the Chair

Fortunately, the same modern world that tries to keep us sitting has created a wide variety of tools and techniques to get us active again. Some of them are incredibly simple, others are a complete lifestyle change—but it’s possible a lifestyle change is just what you need.

From easiest to hardest:

1. Take frequent breaks. Even if you have to sit for your job, you still don’t have to sit for hours at a stretch. Set an alarm and walk away for a few minutes. Don’t leave it up to yourself to remember—there are simple computer programs you can use to alert you every 15-20 minutes that it’s time to get up and walk around or do a few exercises. Scirocco Take a Break (Windows) and Time Out (Mac) are free and will do the job. And stop sending e-mails across the office for trivial information when it’s a perfect opportunity to get up and take a walk.

2. Exercise and stretch throughout the day. Besides your daily workout, have some exercises to do in the office or at home. Even a minute at a time will help you. Do a set of pushups or some lunges. I keep my Iron Gym in the doorway of my home office, and I find myself doing 5-10 pull-ups several times a day. There’s a list of exercises on eHow that can help you shake off atrophy at work.

3. Walk everywhere possible. If you live less than a mile from work, you shouldn’t be taking a car. Walk somewhere to eat your lunch, even if you made your lunch yourself. Walk to do errands. Walk just for the heck of it. Once you get adjusted to walking, it will seem unnatural to get around any differently.

4. Use the stairs. Are you using the elevator to travel fewer than 4-5 floors? You’re wasting energy as well as a prime exercise opportunity. One good exercise habit is to use the restroom on the floor above or below the one you work on.

5. Ditch your chair. If it’s possible, use a standing workstation at the office. Some businesses with good wellness/fitness policies will help you get one. Same at home: elevate your computer to eye level and stand while you surf. If you’re really feeling like pushing the envelope, try a treadmill workstation. If you can’t stand standing, at least consider using a balance ball (which recruits your core to stay seated).

6. Get a Wii. The hardcore gamers are going to roll their eyes, but the Wii owners will have the slimmer waistlines, so who cares? In my opinion this is the single biggest technological boon to fitness since the dumbbell: videogames that force you to move around, keeping you entertained while getting you off the couch. Just keep a firm grip on the controller.

7. Get an active hobby. Or three. Find a sport you’d like to try. Learn to dance. Take a self-defense course. Grab the evening class schedule from the local community college and find the most active classes. Even skills like cooking and woodworking require you to move around. Not only does learning new skills get you off the couch, it makes you a more valuable, rounded person.

8. Take pride in your home. Everyone would like to improve their living space, and it’s a healthier way to spend the weekend than watching TV. Have a list of fixes and improvements to make around your place, and teach yourself to do tasks like putting in light fixtures and switches, re-caulking the bathtub and weeding the lawn. Paint, hang doors…you know, the things men should do.

9. Trade your car for a bike. We’re reaching the “lifestyle change” end of the spectrum here, but these days getting around your town or city by bicycle is easier than ever, not to mention much cheaper than burning petroleum. Many businesses even have shower and locker facilities for cyclist employees. Once you get the hang of cycling, you may even be tempted to get rid of your car! And why not: another technological boon for mankind is something called Zipcar, a kind of auto timeshare that lets you use a car when you really need one, without the expense of a loan, insurance and maintenance. It also frees up your garage for more bike stuff.

10. Get an active job. Why not take a break from the desk like Peter Gibbons in Office Space? You might not want to join a cleanup crew, but there are plenty of jobs that enable you to get out from behind a desk for part or all of your day. Not long ago I moved laterally in the company I worked for, and started handling trade shows. I got to travel, set up and take down a simple booth, and walk the floor glad-handing people. Not to mention that the services counter at each of these huge trade centers was always about a half-mile from our booth. If you’re doing inside sales, consider outside sales. Moonlight as a barista. Or start your own company—that could very well keep you on your feet.

The bottom line here is to put yourself in the healthiest position possible, and that position is not seated. Do what you’re comfortable with, but do something. With the options and technology at our disposal, we should be able to break through the sedentary example set by the last few generations while we improve our entire lifestyle.

Now it’s your turn: what are you doing to keep yourself active at an office job? What other ideas have I missed?

I'm not even sure how you change the plates on that. (Photo by Rennett Stowe)

If you’ve recently started a weight training program (like my starter workout plan) you’ve probably noticed a steady initial gain in the weight you can lift. But for every man there comes a time when the gains don’t come as easy. What then?

Being stuck at a specific weight can be perplexing. To gain muscle you also need to gain strength: if you use a 30 pound-dumbbell every time you do dumbbell curls, you won’t be building new muscle. So you need to move up—but how?

The answer is easier than you think: just lift the higher weight.

Perfect Your Form

First, be honest with yourself. Are you performing perfect reps at your current weight? If not, concentrate on lifting the weight in a steady motion, and returning the weight to its starting position smoothly in every rep. When you can do this with your full range of motion for at least 12 reps, you’re ready to move up.

Also make sure you’re approaching your workouts properly, getting adequate rest between workouts and proper nutrition. If you’re overtraining or tired, it will be harder to gain strength.

Kick It Up a Notch—But Just One Notch

The general rule of thumb is that you should increase your weight by less than 10 percent at a time, and in general I would keep that to five percent. Ideally the weight increase you choose should let you perform 8-10 reps with good form. If you can’t do 8 reps with good form, back the weight down a bit. Even a 1-2 pound increment is reasonable when you’re performing an exercise like dumbbell curls where your weight is likely to be under 40 pounds.

But what if there aren’t plates small enough to let you increase your weight by less? Look around—a lot of gyms have small blocks to put on a machine’s weight stack, or magnetic plates that stick onto dumbbells or barbells. If your gym doesn’t have these, or you’re working out at home, a fitness equipment store will likely have smaller plates that will let you adjust your weight precisely. They’re a good investment.

As a last resort, do as many reps as you can do with perfect form at the new weight, even if it’s 4-5 reps. Low reps will still build your strength, as long as they’re solid reps.

Change Your Exercise

Another way to improve your strength is to do an exercise similar to the one where you’ve plateaued. If you’ve hit a barrier on the chest press, try an incline or decline chest press to hit the muscles slightly differently. You might find that by the time you hit a plateau in the new exercise, you can lift more weight in the old one.

Take a Break

If you find you’re hitting a plateau at multiple exercises, and you’ve been working out on schedule for several months, take a break for a week. A good rest will help your body recover fully so you’re at 100 percent when you get back to it. Eat and sleep well on your rest week.

When I hit plateaus, I find that simply raising my weight anyway gets me unstuck. Part of the issue with plateaus is the mental factor: you might get it stuck in your head that you can’t lift more, and if you can’t visualize yourself lifting more your body may just have to agree with you. By increasing by less, performing fewer reps and varying your exercise, you should be able to bust almost any plateau.

I found this video recently (it’s an ad for a super-healthy food chain called “The Pump”—next time I’m in Manhattan I’ll have to try it) and it got me thinking:

Everywhere you turn there’s crap.

I watched a special on Coca-Cola recently where a company executive defended his product by declaring “people just want to take a break in their day to feel good.” The fast-food burger joints long ago stopped pretending to be healthy, instead focusing on the “good times” you have while eating unrealistically large and juicy-looking versions of their menu items.

A lot of crap is masquerading as “healthy” food, too. The worst cereals in the world, packed with as much sugar as a soda, declare “10 Vitamins & Minerals!” Protein “workout” bars are filled with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup. A recent commercial tells you that by choking down Chicken McNuggets you’re “eating like an athlete!” The frozen dinner aisle is packed with the words “lean,” “gourmet,” “smart” and “healthy”—read the long, fine-print ingredient list to see just how much they’re stretching the truth. Even canned fruit is frequently packed with corn syrup.

But you know what? At some point you’ve got to sack up and take responsibility for your own life, for your own health. And there’s only one sure way to make sure you can always eat healthy…

Cook.

I can’t tell you how many single guys I know who boast about their inability to prepare a meal from scratch. Hell, I know a lot of women who seem inordinately proud of that.

Part of this isn’t your fault: since the rise of fast food and “casual dining” restaurants, cooking is a skill that has fallen out of favor in America. By some calculations, we’re on the third generation to not be coached on basic food prep skills. Why, when for a mere $2 you can get a double cheeseburger and a soft drink with 30 grams of sugar? Or buy a prepackaged meal with a list of ingredients you couldn’t pronounce with a gun to your head?

But at the point where you consider yourself a smart man, the responsibility becomes yours.

Look, I’ve written about this before, but I’ve come to believe that there’s nothing more important for a single man to learn than to cook for himself.

Cooking is Easy

There’s no big secret to cooking. It’s not hard. And there are two ways to learn:

• Take a class. You’ll get some structure, learn some basic recipes you can repeat as often as you like, and maybe even start a cooking group with your classmates. Classes are also a great way to get out and be social—even to meet women.

• Learn to cook in the comfort of your own home. The steps are easy: You think of what you want to eat, you find a recipe, you buy ingredients, you cook, you taste, you learn.

Everything you could possibly need to know about cooking is at your fingertips. Recipes by the thousands can be had at Food.com and Epicurious. So are instructions for everything—with video. Never heard of “zesting a lemon” in your life? Look it up. What people used to have to attend cooking schools to learn, you can find in minutes. A couple of good books never hurt either: I recommend books by the host of Food Network’s Good Eats, Alton Brown. They’re very practical, and probably the most manly cookbooks in existence.

Buy the ingredients and equipment you need when you need them. There’s no need to outfit a gourmet kitchen until you’ve become a gourmet cook. You can use the links here to stock a basic pantry, and from there it depends on what’s cooking.

Of course, there will be bumps in the road. Anyone who’s cooked much can tell you of their recipes that somehow didn’t work out as planned. (Tip: never make crab-stuffed sole with imitation crab. Yuck.) But by trying things, substituting when you just realized you’re out of a certain ingredient, and using your own taste buds to tell you when you’ve seasoned something just right, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

Just Have Fun

As with everything, there are cooking purists out there. Ignore them for now. Non-organic vegetables may not be as healthy as organic vegetables, but they’re still miles ahead of the dried, reconstituted vegetables in that prepared package. You don’t have to fret over whether your beef is grass-fed or your milk is raw, unless you want to. Eventually you’ll be able to taste the difference in tomatoes from the farmer’s market and the ones from Gigant-O-Mart, but regular fresh tomatoes still taste pretty awesome in a homemade pasta sauce or salsa.

There are some items you don’t want to substitute, like extra virgin olive oil, but even there the point is to first get used to the process, and then start thinking about the quality of your ingredients. Just go crazy. Try any recipe that looks good.

And don’t forget that because tastes are different, you’ll need to taste while you’re cooking—and do it often. Although recipes specify amounts of seasonings, your own taste buds should be the final judge of whether your meal is ready to eat. As you get to know which seasonings go best with which foods, you’ll eventually be able to “freestyle” your own flavor.

Mark Your Progress

As with any new endeavor, you can get a lot more out of cooking if you keep track of what you do. Keep a journal of the recipes you’ve made. Make special note of any modifications so that if that broiled salmon turns out to be the best you ever had, you can duplicate it the next time. When you find a “go-to” recipe, make sure to mark it so that you can find it again. Make a list of the ingredients and equipment you’ll want in the future.

It’s also inspirational to compare creations with friends or online acquaintances. The message boards on the poker site I used to frequent had a “What’s Cooking?” forum where guys would take a picture of what they’d made for dinner and/or offer recipes. Some guys would feel such a spirit of competition that their creations would become more and more elaborate. I think a couple even tried aging their own beef. In a forum like this you can ask questions, see what others who prepared the same dish may have done to improve the flavor or consistency, and of course, brag.

Good Food In, Crap Out

In your personal war against crap, the ability to prepare your own food is your greatest weapon. And if you ever have a family to care for, cooking is of even more critical importance.

Did you know that diet-related disease and illness kills far more people in America than traffic accidents or homicides? I leave you with another video, this one more serious. British TV chef Jamie Oliver spoke at the TED Conference, where he was awarded a prize to pursue his vision of reversing the trend of obesity in America.

His topic: crap kills.

I would suggest waiting until he's done with the dumbbell. (Photo by darkpatator.)

This is the busy time for fitness clubs everywhere, as people who made bold New Year’s resolutions to shed pounds or gain muscle make a valiant (or maybe just half-assed) attempt at their goal. Every day as I go through my workout I see my gym’s sales rep leading prospective customers on a tour. “Over here we’ve got 86 different exercise machines, and over there another 22 benches and platforms, and in this room 66 cardio stations.”

The visitors follow, bug-eyed, staring first at the battalion of alien machines, then at the muscular guy in the super-tight white shirt completing his dumbbell flyes with a loud grunt and dropping the weights with a crash. Then at the trio of 20-something already-thin women on the stair climber machines, silently stepping sideways and backwards and sideways again. Then at the couple performing yoga poses including (I am not making this up) the husband lying on his back with his legs up as his wife balances in “Supergirl” position on the soles of his feet.

It can be daunting for someone new to this environment. How do you use the machines? What if you get in the way of the “expert” customers? What is that thing with the padded dual armrests and outstretched swivel handles?

It’s a lot simpler than you think.

First, every machine is for a specific exercise. All you need to do is find the ones you need. They’re usually clearly marked “Leg Press,” “Biceps Curl,” etc. The most obvious machines are usually the ones you want to use. Many machines even have instructions listed on them. Get a workout plan (here’s one) and have at it.

Most gyms have a free trial period. Always use the free trial. If there are multiple clubs in your area, try them all. There are a wide range of amenities at different clubs: some have free shower towels, others may cater mostly to free-weight users. Make sure of what’s included in your membership so you’re not unpleasantly surprised when you have to pay extra to use the pool.

When you start a new membership, many clubs offer one or two free sessions with a personal trainer. This is usually to try and sell you on personal training, which earns the club an extra fee. Make sure to take advantage of the free session, and have the trainer show you everything you need to know about the equipment. Additional personal training is great if you can afford it, but if you can’t there are plenty of self-guided workouts to get you where you want to be.

Finally, your membership fee is just as important to the gym as that of the guy with the sinewy glutes. If you’re using a piece of equipment, as long as you’re obeying the rules and using common courtesy, he can wait until you’re done. You might offer to let him “work in” a set while you’re resting, though—he might return the favor by helping you with a new exercise or “spotting” you on the bench press.

There are alternatives to working out in a gym—some dumbbells, a bench and a mat can create a fitness club in your own home, and guys have even been known to train on playground equipment—but a gym is an environment with fewer distractions than at home and more equipment than a set of monkey bars. Wherever you can focus on an intense workout is where you should be, and that’s often the dedicated environment of a gym. Learn and practice proper gym etiquette and you’ll be fine.

Gyms aren’t smelly, dark places anymore—not even “hardcore” chains like Gold’s Gym. In an article in the Shawnee Dispatch, a reporter found that clubs are clean, well-lit and inviting in his aptly titled story, “Even fat, old men are welcome at gyms.” That probably sums it up as well as anything.

Finding fitness information is easy. For every man, woman and child looking for advice, there’s someone willing to dispense it.

Finding good, usable fitness information is hard.

One place I’ve found it is Fitness Spotlight. Bloggers Mike O’Donnell and Scott Kustes take a balanced, sensible approach to fitness and healthy eating that can especially help guys who are just getting started. Looking rationally at concepts like fasting and simplifying your daily life, they can also help if you’re currently at a plateau. Does relaxation actually help weight loss? (Yes.) Is soy good or bad? (Bad.) They’ll tell you why.

In fact, right now they’re in the middle of their 30 Day Challenge, which looks like a good way to jumpstart yourself into a fitness routine. Some of what they suggest might be a little drastic for some, like cutting out all alcohol and caffeine, dairy, grains and sugars—if you have a hard time cooking for yourself, you might struggle with this challenge—but they do provide a “real food” shopping list to help you hunt down the right ingredients.

Like everyone who lives this stuff, the guys do surface some biology geekdom from time to time, and every once in a while make an error like calling skim milk “heavily processed” (I’m not going to get in the middle of the respective arguments over the benefits of milk and saturated fats, but if you buy organic, un-homogenized whole milk you can quickly and easily skim it yourself at home).  They’re at their best when they’re guiding you through workouts and meal plans, and that’s what you’ll find the most.

Hop over to Fitness Spotlight and see if it meets your needs, and let them know I sent you.

What is exercise?

That’s the question raised by the “Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index,” compiled on a monthly running basis by pollster Gallup. In fact, the bigger question could be, what is “well-being”?

According to the first question in Gallup’s poll, the definition of “exercise” is apparently “30 minutes or more of whatever you call exercise.” And based on that definition, hey, a lot of people exercise! Depending on the month, anywhere from 63 to 72 percent of Americans do it at least once a week – not enough to really help get fit much but it gives us a much less depressing number than when they ask who “exercises” at least three times a week (49.6%).

People who exercised at least 30 minutes one day per week (Source: 2009 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index)

The first problem is that 30 minutes of mystery exercise tells us nothing — are people counting 30 minutes of incidental walking in a day? We don’t know. But it’s really a big difference whether they ran or walked or exercised with weights or just changed into gym clothes and hung out.

The half-hour minimum is arbitrary too. My Crossfit workout yesterday took me a total of 22 minutes, so it doesn’t count, but if I go on a 40-minute nature walk on a Sunday it does. So the survey fails to assess who’s actually doing a healthy amount of exercise. Kind of knocks the wheels off the whole thing.

But that explains why fewer people say they “exercise” in January than in June: to exercise in January you have to have a shred of commitment, and either go to a gym or brave the elements or find something you can do at home.

The whole thing takes an even uglier turn when Gallup tries to break down the results along socioeconomic lines:

Percentage of Americans who exercise 3+ times per week (Source: 2009 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index)

Look! Rich people can afford to exercise and poor people can’t! Or the poor people have to work more and rich people don’t, or something. Gallup leaves that up to our imaginations. Mine tells me that “rich” people have more reason to exaggerate to the pollster than poor do: there’s much more implied status in that answer. But let’s assume the answer is what it is. Gallup then asks another random question:

People who can find a "safe place" to exercise (Source: 2009 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index)

What the hell? Well, on this one Gallup takes it upon themselves to interpret: “Lower income Americans, a group less likely to report frequent exercise, may tend to live in neighborhoods where there aren’t safe places to exercise.” (By the way, Gallup could easily gather and include location data as proof that most of these low-income Americans live on the mean streets, but chose not to. I mean, it’s not like they do this for a living or anything.)

If only you could exercise in your own home…

In the battle to define what exercise is — what it is that people need to be more healthy, crave more wholesome food and acquire more self-esteem — surveys like this are a colossal failure. The sad part is that they could do it, if they wanted to; they just don’t want to. Their findings get picked up by the New York Times just fine as it is, thank you.

But in the end, rich or poor or overweight or “safe,” this survey should mean nothing to you. The only person who should matter to you is the one in the mirror. Start simple, start at home, or yes, even walk for a half-hour a day if that gets you started.

Just get started.

Americans Exercise Less in 2009 Than in 2008 [Gallup]

Scientific proof that the Neanderthals had take-out. (Photo by Lord Jim, original art by Banksy, duh)

I’ve heard of the Paleo Diet off and on for a while now, but according to this New York Times article it’s gaining momentum. The assumption behind Paleo is that human bodies were intended to consume only the food that existed in the Paleolithic era, before agriculture gave us breads, pasta and Hungry-Man Dinners. That would mean you eat the things you can hunt (meat, seafood) or gather (eggs, fruit, vegetables) but not those you must tend and harvest (grains, legumes), extract (dairy) or process (sugar, salt, frozen pizza). Under the diet you theoretically (and in practice, many do) look and feel healthier, prevent disease and build strength.

That’s the basic gist, and not a bad way to go. These foods are nutrient-rich and if the meat is lean, the overall diet is high in protein and fiber and low in fat.

More Than a Diet?

But the NYT piece shows that there is a purist element to Paleo-ism: to truly mimic our distant ancestors, some go on regular fasts (representing the periods between successful hunts) and exercise like cavemen, crawling on all fours and even performing what I’d call a primitive version of Parkour (although many Paleo devotees are also Crossfit disciples). Alcohol is verboten. One man scoffs at another for growing his own tomatoes (they didn’t exist for most humans back then), and some even frequently give blood to parallel the injuries ancient man may have faced. (Note: how much of this was played up for the benefit of the reporter is unknown.)

I was surprised they stopped there. Shouldn’t “primal living” include a kind of Fight Club to represent the battles between tribes and males fighting over the most desirable females? Why don’t they live in homes without heat or electricity? Should they listen only to music consisting of sticks beating on logs and rocks?

As with everything, part of this comes from the human need to be part of a tribe — one trait that hasn’t changed at all over the millennia. Someone devises rituals to bond the tribe together, and the explanations are merely secondary. And a lot of these have modern-world value: giving blood helps others, and exercise is almost always good, whether done with barbells or rocks and boulders. A hardcore Paleo also walks whenever possible, which can only be bad in certain parts of town.

The Catch (There’s Always a Catch)

Fasting, however, while not the worst idea when done infrequently, can be dangerous if it’s not done right, and regular fasting doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose other than to feel a bond. Getting enough calcium, especially for older participants, can be a challenge without taking a supplement. And experts say that Paleolithic man did consume legumes and grains (maybe even wine), although probably in much smaller amounts than we do today.

Then there are the masses who hear of the “new” diet and try it half-heartedly. I lived through the Atkins craze of the early 2000s, so I know there’s about a 90/10 ratio of people who try a diet to people who actually live the diet, even for a short time. I can see guys eating bad cuts of domestic crap-fed beef and chemically treated vegetables by the ton, deciding their “one cheat” will be to liberally salt everything, and ending up worse off than they started. If you’re gonna do this, do this. Otherwise try the Zone.

Doing Paleo right means eating lots of fresh and raw fruits and vegetables, cooking without sodium, and giving up sugar, rice and bread. You also want to be sure your staples are organic and that your meat is lean and grass-fed — so you’ll be paying a lot more for the ingredients. On the other hand, it’ll be hard enough to find a restaurant serving truly Paleo meals that you’ll do most of your cooking at home, so you’ll save money there. (Maybe that’s why Paleo followers band together: they need meal partners.)

To tell the truth, when I started writing this I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about a Paleo diet, but as I researched more and stripped away the pseudo-science and tribalism it made sense. You’re eating the best, healthiest food and cutting out all the crap that we just can’t resist adding to each meal. You don’t have to live like a caveman to get most of the advantages of the diet itself, as long as you’re maintaining a consistent, vigorous exercise plan.

I may have actually talked myself into trying it. But am I willing to give up coffee? Stay tuned.

The New Age Cavemen and the City [NY Times]

Paleolithic Diet [Wikipedia]