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Sedentary Lifestyles suck. Now how do you really fix one?
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I remember there being bikes and other steppers that would require you to exercise or else the game controller would stop being responsive. It was pretty awesome for games like street fighter or soul calibur because if you stopped pedaling, you were more or less dead.
Also, during golfing. I don't eat potato chips, mcdonalds, taco bell, whatever. I eat a power bar and drink water. Otherwise I feel like shit and run out of energy.
I agree with this. I've worked in call center/office for about ten years now and the best I ever did at keeping fit was when I was taking fencing classes twice a week and meeting a friend at the gym the other three days. Days I didn't feel like going she pushed me to go and days she didn't feel like going I pushed her to go. Days we both didn't feel like going we opted to hike a trail in the park instead so it was still on target.
The roads between here and there are not so friendly to things not in a steel cage, and this is the case for most people stuck in the suburbs.
Nobody mentioned finding someone to be "non-sedentary" with.
If you don't enjoy activity implicitly, then find someone to do it with. It's a lot easier to get your ass in gear if you're going to be disappointing someone else if you don't. Even if it is just going for a walk.
edit- Actually it was mentioned. It's good advice.
Failing that, purchasing a bike and riding around 3+ times a week is always a good idea. Also, outdoor hobbies like paintball may be up your alley. Gamers tend to like paintball quite a bit.
This last suggestion may sound a bit strange, but cooking all your own food might be a good idea. Cooking is a surprisingly good way to get yourself feeling productive/active, and forcing yourself to make all your own food typically improves diet (though certainly not always). I'm not talking frozen stuff, either.
I live in smalltown BC. Literally everyone I know owns their own car. I don't. You just have to run/walk along the side of the road, and occasionally pause and step back if two trucks pass each other beside you. It's no more or less dangerous then walking anywhere, really.
Someone dies walking (or cycling) on the side of this road about once a month. I don't want to be that guy.
Do you want to change your sedentary lifestyle because some is guilting you into it, or because you really want to do it?
One of these might work. The other has no chance.
Someone dies driving on the road about once a few minutes. I don't want to be that guy.
What if you live in a suburban hellscape that's nothing but bars and churches, consisting almost entirely of highways and interstates with no possible bike access that won't get you killed, and is below zero for most of the year and covered in ice?
Edit: I recently got on food stamps, which I'm not terribly ashamed to admit because my job pays pennies and I'm a student, but this has successfully shifted my diet from fast food based to cooked food based. I must say I've noticeably had more energy cooking foods with fresh veggies, as prepackaged food is generally too expensive (except for stuff that tastes terrible), and you can't buy hot foods with food stamps.
I think when I start getting paychecks (I work at the school so I really need help between semesters) in a few weeks I probably won't go back to my old diet, I've found that cooking is awesome, and I make better chinese food than the local chinese place, with less salt in it. If you have enough free time and are struggling to be less sedentary, cooking your own meals is win, win win.
You spend less money on food (mostly), it tastes better, and it's much better for you
Sex is an excellent motivator. Ask married people.
I'm much less likely to be that guy driving than walking, but I wish I didn't have to do either.
But seriously, you guys don't know this road. Blind turns, random spots where you have to sharply reduce speed to avoid going into the shoulder. This isn't uncommon. Maybe it's a Georgia thing.
Start by going for walks, hiking, etc...then start at a gym at least twice a week and bump that up to three times. Don't go all out when you start the gym either. Just because other people are there and doing these insane work-outs doesn't mean you need to start falling into that as well. Start at your comfort level and then just push yourself from there.
I am, and eventually it isn't anymore.
Move.
Anyone can rent a room in a student ghetto for $400/mo. while they get settled and find a job/real place to live. Given the number of people returning to school due to starting second careers, it won't even be that creepy.
seriously, spend 30 minutes a day on a new hobby. Make it an outdoor walk around the neighborhood, a trip to a store five or ten miles away just to window shop, whatever.
hell, it's not the cheapest solution, but start cooking your dinners nightly instead of buying in bulk. Go out every day to the grocery store, see what kinds of meats, fish, vegetables, etc look good, find a recipe book, and invest about an hour and a half total every day in shopping for, cooking, and eating dinner.
pretty soon you'll want to budget your time for other stuff too.
The Vac - My Science Fiction Epic
Fortune Pancakes - My Gag-A-Day Comic
Some people, myself included, are remarkably adept at sabotaging the best laid plans that we ourselves make. For some people, simple determination or whatever may be enough. I literally had to go to the other side of the world before I got out of my rut. Putting oneself into a new situation forces one's hand at actually doing something. Doing something extreme may force one to devise a completely new schedule for oneself, and it's an opportunity to so something relatively extreme in routine, such as to reinvent a schedule as you suggest.
For some people, your advice may be sufficient, so you may have the proper advice for the OP. But I think a change of scenery is something that works for a good chunk of the people that advice is not sufficient for.
I can't move away from school, and I live in a student ghetto. I can't afford to go to a university or something, community college is all thats in my range for the time being.
Anyway my exercise routine is embarrassing as shit and I would never let anyone see me doing it, I just repeat what I remember from karate when I was 10 because it really gets the blood pumping and requires very little space and no money
The more you do, the more you can do. But to break out of a fugue, you need to start slow. From personal experience, it's important to not look at the rest of the world through malaise-tainted glasses.
for a good 5 months of the year I barely see sunlight much less have lots of time to go outside. I do walk a couple miles a day to and from trains which keeps me from becoming gigantic.
Don't you mean too specific? I think you can go big and wide with things that can probably help almost anyone (but don't address unique problems) or go case specific and give advice that is probably impractical for most other people (and possibly the subject if your assessment is no good).
Join the fitness thread, post your progress. Hell, just keep a chart on your own computer. Also, NO MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OF ANY TYPE WILL EVER BE GIVEN OVER THE INTERNET. Don't ask for it, because you can't get it. Vague generalities are as good as it gets.
Obviously it's not going to solve all your problems, but it's a good step.
I want to improve my work ethic. I really have a hard time mustering up the motivation to get anything accomplished.
I start so many projects and I can never bring myself to finish any of them. Even now I know I'm supposed to be studying the human figure. I'm reading the words in the book, but none of them are absorbing into my head because the only thought occupying my mind is "FUCK THIS IS BORING."
A few years ago, I had gotten into a rut in terms of writing. While setting the timer for my french bread pizza to bake, I figured "hell, I can write for the 25 minutes it takes to cook this thing." Time flew, I had a delicious snack, and I had actually written something. It felt great. There is something about the countdown that triggers action in me--perhaps its a subconscious allusion to all those bomb timers I've witnessed in action movies and TV shows.
To this day, I set a kitchen timer when I start writing. I usually keep writing even after it beeps.
Which I guess raises another round-about way of reducing sedentary lifestyles: getting involved in local politics; even if it's just to write your councilor and encourage them to support pedestrian-friendly projects, which could mean something as simple as a sidewalk or more ambitious like zoning that might allow stores or simply "things to do" to operate closer to where you live.
On an unrelated note, one thing I have been doing lately is doing push-ups during TV commercial breaks. Just a couple sets of 10 or so every break. Gives me something to do, and keeps me from forgetting to do them altogether.
They pretty much end where the municipality meets the county.
Large swaths of North America have no side-walks. Post WWII urban planning is pretty much all about the car.
I can't even begin to tell you how good a change of cities has been for me. The only way I was ever able to get out of my rut was when circumstances physically forced me to do so. It entails meeting so many more new people and doing so many more new things, just because it really presents no other option. Now I go out and do stuff with friends several times a week, which basically fulfils my exciting-life requirements. I also walk all the time. This is tricky in the frigid wastelands of Canada, but if I'm inside for more than four or five hours at a time I feel compelled to go somewhere else for a while, just to have an excuse to move around a bit.
I actually think this whole sedentary lifestyle thing seems a pretty significant social problem in our first-world society, just to judge by how many people I know have the same issues. That's ok. There are much worse problems to have than 'I have too much lesuire time and unfettered access to too many interesting things'.
Also, Loren, do you mind awfully if I ask how old you are? I'm just noticing certain parallels between my life and what I know of yours.
Most communities planned and developed in the 50s lack sidewalks. It isn't restricted to America, there are large areas of Canada that lack sidewalks.
also; lolamericans. you could just, y'know, have decent public transport.
Hahahah, good one. I live in Georgia. You try increasing taxes for that.
It's weird how people here are all gung-ho about education, but won't pay up for public transit.
And I didn't know you were in Georgia. Which part?
well exactly