Fitness is a marathon, not a sprint, and over a sustained period of time, it’s the small things that add up to make a big difference. A spoonful less sugar in your coffee, getting off the bus a stop early, going for a walk on a sunday - all of these things add up fast.

But for people who work with computers, finding out where to start can be a problem. Late nights are endemic, and coffee almost a job requirement for a techy who wants to keep going all day. Takeaways provide a nice, easy, convenient source of food, and sport is often a foreign concept. The proportion of smokers seems higher (to me, anyway) among geeks than the population at large.

If it sounds like I’m promoting a stereotype, that’s because essentially I am. Most of the geeks I know, myself included (although I’m working to change), fit that stereotype fairly well.

For the geek, though, all is by no means lost - there are plenty of things that will improve health and fitness that don’t require a radical departure from the norm. This list may even prove a half-decent starting point for the geek looking to make a change - 5 tips for a healthier lifestyle, all written with the geek in mind.

1. Subscribe to and Read Fitness and Health Blogs

   It seems to be widely accepted that people who surround themselves with rich people tend to become richer. The same with fit people, artistic people and geeky people. Maybe it’s some sort of personality diffusion. Anyway, the more time you spend with fit people, the more of their habits you will take on.

   The same applies, to an extent, to reading about fitness. The more you read about health and fitness, the more you will learn. The more habits you find out about, the more you will adopt yourself. There are thousands of people writing about health and fitness, and the more quality content you read, the better equipped and more motivated you will be to spot opportunities for improvement in your own health and fitness.

2. Write Your Own Health and Fitness Blog

   Standing up and saying publically what you want to do and why, and talking about your progress, can be quite rewardig. It’s certainly worked for me so far! Readers will be able to offer their opinion on your plans, and give you much-needed encouragement. If you have the discipline to keep a blog going (something I’ve not done spectacularly well with so far) then you’ll get out of it far more than you put in.

3. Use Online Tools and Trackers

   There are lots and lots of online tools out there to help keep you on-course. One of the hardest things to do when trying to make changes to your lifestyle is to identify where to make them - that requires some fairly meticulous tracking, of diet and exercise for example. And when you start becoming more active, you may well want to see how your progress improves over time.

   The advantage of online trackers is that they can be integrated with your other online tools. Calendars can read iCal and RSS feeds from your tools, and email reminders to keep up to date can be sent to your inbox or via RSS to your feed reader. Even your phone can become an ally when you get your computer involved in your fitness.

   traineo
   traineo calls itself a fitness and weight loss community, but I’ve used it more for its tracking abilities than anything else. Unlike most exercise trackers, this doesn’t overwhelm you with demands for detail about every piece of exercise you do - it tracks what you did, for how long, and how hard it was, and then converts that into a simplistic calorie counter. It can also track your weight over time if you like, and there are forums packed with all levels to chat to.

   Joe’s Goals
   Joe’s Goals bills itself as a free online habit tracker, and its beauty is its simplicity. Create an account, and define what you want to do, or not do, on what days. The site will then present you with a calendar, and you simply tick off the items you do (or don’t) perform each day. The site will email you to remind you to fill it out if you’ve not been there in a while. Dead easy.

   SparkPeople
   If you can stomach the vast swathes of advertising and the overly detailed signup process, then SparkPeople might be useful for you - it has one of the best nutrition tracking systems I’ve seen yet. It includes a distinct water tracker (for those trying to get through 8 glasses a day), huge numbers of recommended meal plans and plenty of information about different food types. It also includes exercise tracking, forums and weight tracking - a quite complete setup.

   FetchEveryone
   FetchEveryone is a running-specific site, with a great community and lots of bloggers hidden away (no RSS and readers must log in … seriously guys, it’s 2008). It allows you to track your running performance and training in incredible detail. I include this primarily because it’s a great site to start using if you are considering running the Couch to 5k Plan, or if you have finished the plan.

4. Go Gadget-Mad!

   Most geeks are obsessed with gadgets, and there are some very cool ones out there for those wanting to try a more technologically sophisticated approach to health.

   The best of the bunch may well be a Wii (especially when Wii Fit becomes available) - it encourages more activity and motion than other computer games and, while it won’t work magic by itself, when combined with other small changes can make a big difference.

   Nike have released Nike+, an automated tracking system for runners that uses your iPod nano to help keep you going and track your progress.

   There are even such things as bluetooth weight scales, accelerometers, watches that do everything but run for you - a huge range of gadgets. And of course, once you’ve invested, you have another motivation to get up off the couch!

5. Improve Your Desk Life

   Assuming you work at a desk, as many geeks do, there are plenty of things you can do to turn this part of your life to your advantage. Sitting on a gym ball, for example, while it might look a little silly, is great for your body as it forces you to maintain your balance through the day and therefore work muscles that otherwise would do nothing. There are also lots of stretches you can do at your desk (surreptitiously if you like) that improve your blood flow.

   Drinking water instead of soft drinks is a major positive at work, as well as eating healthy snacks instead of biscuits or mars bars.

   Finally, get away from your desk! Most geeks I know work through their breaks and lunch breaks. However, taking a break every couple of hours to go for a five minute walk, and getting out and getting some fresh air at lunchtime will not only improve your health, it will help you to concentrate when you are working, as well as de-stress and deal better with the day’s challenges.

6. Bonus! Avoid Stereotypical Geek Behaviour

   Just because your stereotypical geek stays up till 4am writing code (or whatever other geeky pastime keeps them up late), gets up late, avoids breakfast, smokes like a chimney, eats tonnes of pizza and drinks lots of caffeinated drinks, doesn’t mean that you, as a geek, are letting the side down if you don’t do the same.

   It took me about a year to cure that short list above, and I feel much better for it. I still write lots of code, still love my gadgets, still find plenty of time to spend with my XBox 360 and Wii to make sure they don’t get lonely - still a bit of a geek by all accounts. But a slightly fitter geek.

Alix Spiegel over at NPR has posted an interesting piece about a study by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer on Hotel Maids and the Placebo Effect.

Essentially, the study takes a look at hotel maids (who are of course very active) and how their perceptions of how much they exercise affect their bodies. The results are enlightening.

The maids were split into two groups. One was educated - shown how much exercise they actually got. The other was a control. All of the maids, before the experiment, counted themselves as not exercising, despite walking large distances and carting around heavy equipment all day.

A month later, the enlightened group was actually measurably healthier.

There are alternative explanations for this, but I’m rather a fan of the idea that a positive outlook on your lifestyle can help you improve your lifestyle. Certainly things like blood pressure can be affected by stress levels, so why shouldn’t they improve when you feel better about yourself?

Definitely an interesting read though - Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect.

I distinctly remember, oh so long ago, having legs. Definitely. I can picture them now, dangling beneath me and providing a crude form of propulsion.

That time seems so long ago now. At the moment, instead of legs, I possess a pair of almost completely useless - and rather achy - limbs. While they are the shape of legs, they are certainly not functionally the same.

Today, as it happens, was the first time I used the gym at work. Over a year and a half after starting at my job - a job that included access to an extremely well equipped gym in the building - I’ve finally made it in to the gym for a resistance session.

I put off going to the gym for a while, preferring to start my road to fitness by stopping smoking, drinking smarter, sleeping better, improving my diet, playing more squash and racketball and following a basic running plan. It’s been a busy past year, but I’ve still got a long way to go before I’d consider myself in decent shape.

Going to the gym is certainly a good way to get some highly specific and targeted exercise, and it’s even better when it’s free, so I’d always planned to use it in some way, but really didn’t (and still don’t) know what I want from it. I have no ambition to pack on mountains of muscle, but a little wouldn’t hurt. I certainly want to shed some fat and improve my fitness.

I think I’ll just go with the flow for the first few weeks and then look at creating (or having created) a fitness plan that targets those specific things, rather than drift aimlessly.

So today we did some strength training - and it was all about legs. The machines look rather like devices of torture, but so far have been simple enough to use. They can all be used to target different areas, and I can vouch for the effectiveness of that - there’s no muscle group in my legs that doesn’t hurt.

Three things that will prove interesting …

1. I’m told that the real pain won’t kick in until tomorrow or maybe friday. I can’t wait.

2. I joined the league at my local squash club and am now into month 2 of that. My next game is … tomorrow. I hope I’m in a state to have a decent game, but right now it does not look hopeful.

3. Friday is my next session, and rumour has it that could be an arms and chest strength session. If it’s anything like today’s session, I’ve probably got a weekend of being unable to perform simple tasks to look forward to. Blog posts may be thin on the ground!

Most of the adult population will have been celebrating in some small way for the last few days. Some may still be nursing hangovers, having overdone the beer/spirits/champagne.

Peer pressure issues aside, it’s not actually easy to find a healthy alternative drink in the pub. Sure, there are other drinks than beer or JD and coke, but most are still bad for you. Fruit juices are very high in sugar and while fine in moderate quantities are not really suitable for drinking by the pint. Some wines are ok, but reds are no good over a glass or so.

5. White Spirits

That’s spirits, plural, not spirit. Don’t go getting confused.

White spirits like vodka, gin and bacardi are generally comparitively very low in calories. Cocktails (low-sugar ones) and with mixers are both ok.

4. Dry White Wine

Of the wines, dry whites tend to be the lowest in calories. Most pubs in Britain now not only sell wines, but they even take the time to teach their staff the differences between their wines.

3. Bitter

If you’ve got to have a pint (and remember, nobody is forcing you) then stick with draught bitter. It’s usually significantly lower in calories than lagers and other by-the-pint drinks. Some of them even taste good too.

2. Diet Soda

Diet coke tastes awful. There’s no arguing on this one - it’s dire. However, if you can stomach it (or the myraid of alternative “diet” drinks), it’s very low calorie and you can drink it pretty much guilt-free. There is some debate about whether the aspartame in diet coke is bad for you - you have been warned.

1. Water!

Yup, they sell/serve water in bars and pubs. With ice, with cordials … plenty of options, and all very low calorie. True, it’s not exciting, but most people don’t drink enough water and you could save yourself burning off a serious quantity of calories by replacing just a few beers with water on a regular basis.