Best jobs for fitness

SLUDGE · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 02:12 PM

Who has the best employment that lends itself to fitness? I made no consideration for my physical health when choosing my career path, but now I'm finding it's a bit annoying to be sitting all day.

Personally, I work in an office, programming software. Game programmers generally work long hours. My job is no exception, having logged 16 hour days behind the monitor in the past.

On the bright side, I have no imposed schedule, as is also common for game developer companies (sometimes there are 4 or so core hours in a day) - I can come and go as I please. My routine takes heavy advantage of this fact as I sleep in after weight training days to maximize the recovery benefits.

I lost most of my weight when I was a contractor out of my own home, being self employed and having no one waiting on me. I just made a policy of never eating in my room where my computer was, and got into a serious loner routine of developing software and eating properly day in and day out.

So how does your job help or hinder your fitness goals?

houtexan26 · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 02:21 PM

Well, serving in the military pretty much forces you to be in shape, one way or the other! But now that I work for a bank I do a lot of desk work. Not much fitness there. But I do have a regular schedule, so I am able to plan workouts accordingly. I rarely work overtime and never on weekends, so I am free to come up with the best possible fitness schedule.

Rockman · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 02:56 PM

During my college years and a couple years after I worked as North American adventure guide taking international (Europeans/Aussies) travelers around. Everday was jammed packed with fun stuff. Hiking the Grand Canyon, water skiing, horseback riding, caving, bungee jumping, scuba diving off the Florida coast, kayaking in Alaska, rafting in Calif and Canada, mtn biking at Moab. We'd camp every night and usually prep our own meals. Only draw back was that it was so fun that beer drinking parties happened nightly. Bad part of it was I alway on the clock. Never had a day off for 6 months at a time. When I did find time to be alone, say in Las Vegas, I'd go gorge on pizza. Fast food became my comfort. But that's just me. All the exercise pretty much negated my poor eating/drinking habits.

JeremyLikness · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 03:16 PM

Check back with me in 3 weeks, when I will be working completely out of the house. Most of the entrepeneurs I know share the common belief that free enterprise the key to wealth and health - creating a schedule on your own terms to exercise, prepare healthy foods, etc.

Jeremy

kimc · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 06:29 PM

Hi guys, you are all so young, hope you don't mind me posting.. lol.
My son ( 23) introduced me to this site about 3 weeks ago and I'm well into my start of getting fit and loosing some weight that accumulated over the years of raising a family. It feels great, I must tell you and I guess it is never too late. I work in a Nursing home, dementia unit, and so am fairly active, with caring for these wonderful folks, who can keep you on the go a fair bit of the time. Even still... it is not enough. Have recently joined a women's gym and it feels great. Have lost 10 lbs to date, but I have found a great improvement in my stamina and each day I'm able to increase the length of my cardio workouts. So I must thank all who post here and John Stone and my son, for all the great support and info...

Kim - 48, from Eastern Canada.

SLUDGE · Wed, March 24th, 2004, 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeremyLikness

Check back with me in 3 weeks, when I will be working completely out of the house. Most of the entrepeneurs I know share the common belief that free enterprise the key to wealth and health - creating a schedule on your own terms to exercise, prepare healthy foods, etc.

Jeremy

Sounds like your business is growing. Good for you!

Working outside of the house threw me for a loop. When my company got offices (we were previously working out of our houses), I had to work my running in differently, and I found that it took a lot more pre planning to integrate work, fitness and punctuality. I made an extremely hard decision to stop lifting for six months while everything stabilized within the company.

Lots of small things started creeping up -- If I want to run from the office to home, I need to allocate my running gear the night before. How do I keep a definitive copy of a spreadsheet at two locations? Where do I put my massive tofu stockpile?!?

It's all mundane, but it really is a load of preplanning forcefully inserted into your routine and it requires you to be psychologically ready for an interruption.

rhelt100 · Thu, March 25th, 2004, 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SLUDGE

Who has the best employment that lends itself to fitness? I made no consideration for my physical health when choosing my career path, but now I'm finding it's a bit annoying to be sitting all day.

Personally, I work in an office, programming software. Game programmers generally work long hours. My job is no exception, having logged 16 hour days behind the monitor in the past.

On the bright side, I have no imposed schedule, as is also common for game developer companies (sometimes there are 4 or so core hours in a day) - I can come and go as I please. My routine takes heavy advantage of this fact as I sleep in after weight training days to maximize the recovery benefits.

I lost most of my weight when I was a contractor out of my own home, being self employed and having no one waiting on me. I just made a policy of never eating in my room where my computer was, and got into a serious loner routine of developing software and eating properly day in and day out.

So how does your job help or hinder your fitness goals?

I'm currently in a computer related desk job, which isn't great for fitness. However, during summers while I went to college I was a roofer. You wanna talk about getting built, my legs, shoulders, and arms were enormous. Didn't do much for my abs though.

marcus · Thu, March 25th, 2004, 07:13 AM

I'd say the ideal job would be anything that allows you to keep a regular routine and you al least have time to workout. I always work fulltime during holidays off from Uni and I do rotating shifts. eg. 1 week of day shift (0630-1430) then 1 week of afternoon shift (1430-2230) and then 1 week of night shift (2230-0630) and then you repeat the cycle. It is terrible, you never develop any kind of sleeping, eating or training patterns and you feel shit all the time. Its good money and I only do it for 2-3 months but there are guys that do it all year round and I think it will shorten their life spans. Anyone here do rotating shifts?

Thats why I love it when school starts becuase I can develop a good routine and actually feel normal.

Marcus

marcus · Thu, March 25th, 2004, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rockman

During my college years and a couple years after I worked as North American adventure guide taking international (Europeans/Aussies) travelers around. Everday was jammed packed with fun stuff. Hiking the Grand Canyon, water skiing, horseback riding, caving, bungee jumping, scuba diving off the Florida coast, kayaking in Alaska, rafting in Calif and Canada, mtn biking at Moab. We'd camp every night and usually prep our own meals. Only draw back was that it was so fun that beer drinking parties happened nightly. Bad part of it was I alway on the clock. Never had a day off for 6 months at a time. When I did find time to be alone, say in Las Vegas, I'd go gorge on pizza. Fast food became my comfort. But that's just me. All the exercise pretty much negated my poor eating/drinking habits.

Thats sounds like the best job

woeisemma · Fri, March 26th, 2004, 04:41 PM

You dont have to be physically fit to do my job, but working at Nike, I get a great discount on everything fitness related

Quote:

Originally Posted by SLUDGE

Who has the best employment that lends itself to fitness? I made no consideration for my physical health when choosing my career path, but now I'm finding it's a bit annoying to be sitting all day.

Personally, I work in an office, programming software. Game programmers generally work long hours. My job is no exception, having logged 16 hour days behind the monitor in the past.

On the bright side, I have no imposed schedule, as is also common for game developer companies (sometimes there are 4 or so core hours in a day) - I can come and go as I please. My routine takes heavy advantage of this fact as I sleep in after weight training days to maximize the recovery benefits.

I lost most of my weight when I was a contractor out of my own home, being self employed and having no one waiting on me. I just made a policy of never eating in my room where my computer was, and got into a serious loner routine of developing software and eating properly day in and day out.

So how does your job help or hinder your fitness goals?

DougD137 · Tue, March 30th, 2004, 02:23 AM

Well with my job you have to be in some sort of shape or you'll be hurting by the end of the night. I work for Fed Ex as a driver. You get to work at 8 (most people get there earler) sort boxes lift boxes till about 9 then your on the road delivering to about noon. Then I take a break from 1230 till 300 then I do a Pick up rte. Which is a lot of lifting boxes into your truck.

I get a good workout just from my job but it's not enough to lose weight.