8 Hour a Day Office Job, 30 Minutes of Exercise a Day Not Enough

I have an office job sitting and only exercised about 30 min a day 5 days a week and lost 78 lbs in 14 months. So I think it's still CICO.

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

DetroitDarin wrote: »

What hits me most is this: Studies are crap. Everyone is born with knowledge and folks need to make better choices based on instinct. We humans want a study or authority figure to tell us what to do so we can avoid responsibility if we end up not liking the outcome.

Humans are not born with knowledge, they are born with instinctual response. That instinct is actually what makes people fat in a land of plenty and ease. Knowledge and effort are required to undo it.

Not at the base - not at the core. The core - the foundation is simply "Want-to". Knowledge will fix nothing.

shiningstar93 wrote: »

I have an office job sitting and only exercised about 30 min a day 5 days a week and lost 78 lbs in 14 months. So I think it's still CICO.

I got up to 230 pounds working a desk job. I still work a desk job, but now I've lost 60 pounds. I definitely agree that CICO has a huge part to play in it. Course my Fitbit has logged 924 mile since I bought it in February so I'm sure that's helped too.

stevencloser wrote: »

midwesterner85 wrote: »

stevencloser wrote: »

I'd tackle the issue of a job where you take 2 hours of travel each way while working 10 hours. That can't be healthy psychologically.

Some of us work FT jobs with less commute (and average more like 9-9.5 hrs. / day) and are also full time grad students. Or work more than 1 job.

In that case I'd tell you I'm envious of your schedule because when I was a student my classes were all over the place and could start anywhere from 8 am to 6 pm, impossible to have a full time job with that.

When I was in the last 2 years of undergrad, I worked a FT job (many more hours than I do now), 2 PT jobs, and did contract work on the side. Classes were Sat. morning (7:30am - 1pm) or evenings (5:45pm - 10:15pm). I worked my FT job all day and some evenings / weekends. I worked my PT jobs on other evenings (until 2am-3am, whenever we got done) and on Sun. mornings (5am-1:30pm). I would do homework or contract jobs on Sun. afternoon or any evenings I didn't have class or work. Since Sat. nights were the busiest at the 1st PT job, it wasn't unusual to be there until 3am and then be at the other job at 5am. I had barely enough time to get home and shower. Fortunately, traffic is light at those times and I could make it back from the first job in 10 min. and to the 2nd job in 20 min., which still left time to shower and a few min. to eat.

Now I live in a rural area that takes much longer to travel anywhere (because of distance, not traffic). However, my graduate degree is being done online. I still have time commitment to get everything done, but the assignments are given and deadlines are never less than 2 days apart... so as long as I can find the time somewhere during that window, it works for scheduling. I found that scheduling multiple jobs / classes was soooo much easier when I lived in the city. A big part of that is the close proximity of everything.

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

DetroitDarin wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

DetroitDarin wrote: »

What hits me most is this: Studies are crap. Everyone is born with knowledge and folks need to make better choices based on instinct. We humans want a study or authority figure to tell us what to do so we can avoid responsibility if we end up not liking the outcome.

Humans are not born with knowledge, they are born with instinctual response. That instinct is actually what makes people fat in a land of plenty and ease. Knowledge and effort are required to undo it.

Not at the base - not at the core. The core - the foundation is simply "Want-to". Knowledge will fix nothing.

Hence the effort part. Knowing and doing are generally useless by themselves. My knowing how to track food intake would be pointless if I didn't do it. My tracking food intake would be pointless if I didn't know to weigh (or at least get a very good estimate) of what I was eating. We see examples of both here, daily.
The exact same thing can apply to exercises. I know what lifting regimen works for me. That doesn't change theh fact that said knowledge was useless to me, during the last three years when I was being lazy as *kitten*.

And that goes to my point - studies are silly. Study results are based on interpretation. Tomorrow some new study will say after 8hrs at work one should nap for 2 hours then eat an oreo pack. (shrug)

Studies to guide us are goofy. We - anyone semi-enlighted about their body - know what to do.

I set up my office and desk so I can stand up and move my feet for at least half of my working hours. If I really want to sit, I can do that too.

There a little things you can do:
* park as far as possible from your office door so you have to walk
* fidget at your desk -- I sometimes march in my chair under the desk while I'm typing, or I do ankle circles
* my industry occasionally offers stress management classes; last two I learned how to do some desk yoga -- you can literally do it for 10 minutes at a shot sitting at your desk
* try to get up & do a lap around the office at least once every 2 hours
* always take the stairs

stevencloser wrote: »

midwesterner85 wrote: »

stevencloser wrote: »

midwesterner85 wrote: »

stevencloser wrote: »

I'd tackle the issue of a job where you take 2 hours of travel each way while working 10 hours. That can't be healthy psychologically.

Some of us work FT jobs with less commute (and average more like 9-9.5 hrs. / day) and are also full time grad students. Or work more than 1 job.

In that case I'd tell you I'm envious of your schedule because when I was a student my classes were all over the place and could start anywhere from 8 am to 6 pm, impossible to have a full time job with that.

When I was in the last 2 years of undergrad, I worked a FT job (many more hours than I do now), 2 PT jobs, and did contract work on the side. Classes were Sat. morning (7:30am - 1pm) or evenings (5:45pm - 10:15pm). I worked my FT job all day and some evenings / weekends. I worked my PT jobs on other evenings (until 2am-3am, whenever we got done) and on Sun. mornings (5am-1:30pm). I would do homework or contract jobs on Sun. afternoon or any evenings I didn't have class or work. Since Sat. nights were the busiest at the 1st PT job, it wasn't unusual to be there until 3am and then be at the other job at 5am. I had barely enough time to get home and shower. Fortunately, traffic is light at those times and I could make it back from the first job in 10 min. and to the 2nd job in 20 min., which still left time to shower and a few min. to eat.

Now I live in a rural area that takes much longer to travel anywhere (because of distance, not traffic). However, my graduate degree is being done online. I still have time commitment to get everything done, but the assignments are given and deadlines are never less than 2 days apart... so as long as I can find the time somewhere during that window, it works for scheduling. I found that scheduling multiple jobs / classes was soooo much easier when I lived in the city. A big part of that is the close proximity of everything.

So, how much sleep did you get?
And yeah your classes seemed to be at the light side, we had ~20 hours of classes per week at those all over the place hours and were expected to self study up to double that outside of classes. Barely anyone did that though so I'm not counting it. But for anyone that did do that, university would have been their full time job.

You are describing a typical large U.S. university, which doesn't structure courses for efficiency of students. I specifically selected schools that would maximize my ability to work and gain experience sooner. I have type 1 diabetes and this was before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but after HIPPA. Everyone knows about the Privacy part of HIPPA because they have to sign something to acknowledge privacy policies whenever they see a physician. However, the other P was much more important to me because without Portability, I would never have coverage for type 1 diabetes related health care expenses ever again in my life if I didn't have a group policy within 60 days of losing coverage under another group policy (co-pays were still super high). My parent's plan would kick me off at age 21, so I had to work FT before then. I started at a 2 year school 2 weeks after graduating high school and went year-round until I graduated. Because that particular school designed their associate degrees for only relevant classes, area employers recognized that as equivalent to a 4-year degree. Still, to be competitive outside the area (and generally to be competitive), I still needed a bachelor's degree. So I started working FT in my field and went through satellite campuses of another school that structured courses around working adults (so they specifically designed classes at nights and weekends for people like me). That took me from 16 hours of classes per week to 10 hours of classes per week and designed around a daytime worker's schedule. I did all the extra classes needed for a 4-year degree (I took a movies class, a class on HIV/AIDS, topography, etc. - for an accounting degree... because I had transferred all the relevant classes from the first school).

So I had to have a FT job to have a group insurance policy by the time I was 21 and specifically selected schools that would allow that to happen. I graduated with my first degree and was working FT less than 1 month after my 20th birthday.

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Agree with steven that the 2 hour each way commuting time seems intolerable to me, but that is not the US norm,

It's pretty common in the UK. My train is standing room only from the 65 minutes to London point, and people who live in London suburbs are still travelling in the order of an hour.

Days I work at home are easier, and as upthread my company takes the financial impact of mitigating the travel time, but that's not an option for a great many people.

I've been commuting for more than an hour for at least the last 20 years, with only a short amount of time less than that, largely as a result of clients giving me the opportunity.

This backs you up: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/09/million-people-two-hours-commuting-tuc-study

I see you get 15 minutes walking -- is there no way to add more, like by walking to the train station? Not that you need to, as you get the exercise in as is, as you mentioned doing weights in the evening. Also, of course, if you have the option of some home days, that makes a difference.

Anyway, this is interesting to me, as people always seem to slam the US for having long commute times and commuting structures not conducive to including movement in our days vs. Europe and elsewhere. Ours don't seem so bad by comparison, even in places where they are on average longer, like where I live.