I need to get out of my desk chair more, but lately I’ve been trying to walk my neighborhood since the weather’s nice. What kinds of things do you do to stay active? I’d love some suggestions for good stretches and simple/effective exercises. Thanks!
I have an active job. I still need to add some sort of exercise to my routine.
Aggressive foreplay followed by prolonged vaginal intercourse.
I’m disabled so I spend like 16 hours a day in my chair, but I try to do 30 minutes on my exercise bike every morning.
I found a gym-quality elliptical on Craigslist a couple of years back, and if I walk/run at a pace between 50-60 rpm’s, I can walk about 2.5 miles in 30 minutes.
I alternate between spin bike and weights 6 days/week throughout the year, but with the weather getting nicer, I’m getting back out on my road bike on weekends and playing tennis with some friends after work. It helps to live in a city with a nice park!
I jiggle my mouse every 5 minutes.
Teams is such a snitch…
Currently unemployed, so I can’t exactly remember, but I used to launch a call with just myself. By default, that will change your status to “in a call”, but I believe you can override it and set it to available. Alternatively, a mouse jiggler is around $20.
Yeah, setting up a call with just yourself does this. You can also share your screen and it will go to “do not disturb”.
Yes. My mouse.
I ride an electric bike instead of driving, gentle exercise but I’m sure it makes a difference. Pokemon go walks, yoga 4x a week at a group class, weightlifting less than once a week. Yardwork too, hauling things around. I got running shoes but have not deployed them yet, I’d like to run once a week only. I do move around a lot. I read somewhere that if you wanted to be fit after you are 50 you really need to exercise 3 hours a day, and it seems true. Not like lifting for 3 hours every day but if I was retired I’d do cardio every morning, lifting every noon, yoga every evening except one day totally off everything each week.
Also, keep a glass of water at your desk. Get up to fill it, drink, get up to pee, repeat. So that you aren’t sitting for too long.
Lifelong lazy person here. I got a Fitbit. At first I just used it for counting my steps and heart rate, but after a while I decided to I crease my cardio load. Being able to see the data of my progress really helped. The steps goal is a big one too (I also work a desk job). It helped me keep mindful of how much I need to move. After a few months it was so much easier.
You can find instructions online for stretches and exercises, but that doesn’t hold my interest. I bit the bullet and joined a gym, going a couple of times a week to keep loose. Maybe I could do the stuff I do there at home (after purchasing some equipment), but I think the environment is worth the expense. I don’t talk to anyone else except to greet the staff, but I like the fact that other people are around and it’s a space dedicated to working out.
I run about 30 kms a week and I happen to live near my office, so I go there by bike. Walking is good. I do that almost daily after dinner. If I am tired after work, I make a point of taking long walks. I will still be tired, but the exhaustion will be physical rather than mental.
Lately by talking ~3 mile walks.
Being active is so important to your health. Take where you’re at and just build on it. One thing I always tell myself is that things won’t get better if I don’t act on it. Yeah, I want to loose 10 lbs so I’ll start exercising and eating less. Tomorrow. Nope, it’s got to start now. And give yourself some grace. Changing habits is hard and you will backslide. Don’t beat yourself up, just awknowledge the slip and say you’ll try to do better.
I got a puppy. I’ve spent about 30 minutes on my computer since December. But I did also get a Steam Deck.
I was fortunate enough to get invited to a ballroom dancing class in high school and fell in love with it. It’s exercise and a social experience all in one fairly affordable package. Where I live an hour long group class is $10 a head. I wouldn’t do private lessons for these purposes. And if you like it, there are so many subcultures! There are entire groups dedicated to certain dances like West Coast swing and Argentine tango. Regular social dances on the weekends in addition to classes. YMMV based on where you live, but dancing with the stars has brought ballroom into the mainstream and there are quality studios in most decent sized US cities as far as I know.
Love ballroom dancing, and especially east coast swing is my jam. Unfortunately no regular social dances in my area but I go when there’s one available. It’s really fun and playful, great way to meet new people and good exercise. Equipment cost is basically a pair of shoes. I joke about dressing up in a dress and heels for my workouts.
Going to the gym is so boring for me. I ended up finding an activity that I enjoy doing that also happens to be good exercise and started kickboxing about 9 months ago. The people there are very friendly and they text me if I don’t show up for a while, so there’s more accountability that I would typically have.
Similar. I started rock climbing about a decade ago. It’s fun, you make friends, learn new skills, and get exercise.
Rock climbing seems pretty sweet, I think I could get into after I lose maybe 60 lbs or more lol
Ngl, climbing becomes a lot easier if you are lighter. But also, there’s nothing stopping you from enjoying it at a heavier weight - you just climb routes with an easier numeric grade. And there are various climbing disciplines that are less disadvantageous to heavier climbers, like ice climbing or mountaineering. If you want to take a really traditional approach, you could enter climbing by way of hiking and backpacking, which are also a lot of fun and have a decent amount of skill overlap.
Also, I have no science to back this up, but I just intuit that when you consistently do activities like hiking, running, and climbing where lower body weight is advantageous, your brain notices and predisposes you to lose weight.
So give it a shot!
My advanced activities consists primarily of hiking and on a more frequent and casual form day-to-day, just carrying heavy and bulky stuff around.
I was born and raised in the vast wildernesses, forests, wetlands and the old mountains/fells of the Fennoscandic Lappland, so hiking and walking in nature in general has been a big part of my life since I was a wee lad. Even as a teen the closest thing counting as something close to a city was some 200km away, and I spent my pre-teens in a small remote village of 300 inhabitants not so close to anything bigger. Closest village with a church and a few shops a few tens of kilometers away. This is all to give the context in that I haven’t even had much chance to do stuff other than wandering in the wilderness, so whatever I now am has been built and predicated on that mostly.
I have found that the usual form of hiking and backpacking (in nature) in places not requiring special tools or equipment (such as for cliff climbing) seems to favor building up upper body bulk and strength as opposed to a general lightweight build. If we are to assume the logic you suggest is universal and true.
I haven’t been to gym or actively building up my mass or strength, but I’ve grown to be quite heavy on my upper body just by loving hiking and traversing wilderness and fells with a backpack and camping equipment. I’ve also grown pretty hefty thighs and legs overall.
I’ve attempted climbing (in a hall setting, you know as a total beginner) and I’ve got to say: My build is entirely wrong for that. I’m not very agile and the weight the muscles bring makes me very unstable and really bad at swinging/maneuvering. Of course it’s mostly that I’m a total stranger to that and probably would get a lot better with a lot of patience and training, but then my friends with lighter, more usual build (from hobbies in jogging, tennis, soccer or such) with exactly as little experience or knowhow in climbing, were all so much more natural in all that, in much less time and with much fewer attempts.
This is all to say, that your usual hiking and backpacking (especially on a multi-night, even a weeklong carry) is probably not so directly building towards climbing itself, or a lighter build. I think it tends to favor bulkiness to sustain the required carrying weight and the tough, varying terrain. But running of course does favor lightness, maybe the well-paved tourist trails do too, in terms of hiking, but even then you’re going to have to carry a lot and keep a modest pace to be able to sustain the energy for the long haul, while still being able to power through the hills, the ravines, the fells and the deep thick forests with a lot of trunks, large glacial erratics etc, with the weight on your shoulders and back, which I think is pretty much all of it disadvantageous on a lighter build(?)
But that’s neither here or there, just thought I’d offer a differing anecdote. Otherwise I think your (and others’!) points are great!
