Fitness for Geeks

Fitness for Geeks

Released April 2012
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781449399894

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Book description

If you’re interested in how things work, this guide will help you experiment with one crucial system you usually ignore—your body and its health. Long hours focusing on code or circuits tends to stifle notions of nutrition, but with this educational and highly useful book you can approach fitness through science, whether it’s investigating your ancestral health or using the latest self-tracking apps and gear.

Table of contents

  1. Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health
  2. Dedication
  3. Preface
    1. METs Anyone?
    2. The Food Angle
    3. The Mashed-up Ancient Angle
    4. Annals of Experimentation
    5. The “Measure First” Mantra
    6. How to Use This Book
    7. Acknowledgments
    8. Safari® Enabled
  4. 1. Fitness and the Human Codebase: Reboot Your Operating System
    1. The Cubicle Blues
      1. Movement, We Hardly Knew Ye
      2. Free-Falling
    2. Homing In on a Design Pattern
    3. Preinstalled Software
      1. The Pre–Convenience Store Era
      2. Ancestors
      3. Five Seconds to Midnight
    4. Designed to Get Our Butts Kicked
    5. The Cranky Anthropologist
    6. Hey, the Stone Age Was a Nasty Time
    7. The Modern Diet—It’s Lame!
      1. Evolutionary Discordance: It’s SAD
      2. Don’t Crash Your Own Software
    8. A Useful Template
      1. Chair Men of the Bored
    9. The Amazin’ MET
    10. Force Quit—Reboot
    11. And Now for Something Completely Different
      1. Mindfulness
      2. Geek Gear
      3. Hard-Boiled Eggs to Go
      4. Dude, Take the Stairs
      5. OCD About Health
      6. Hey, He Likes Me!
      7. Knock Off Some Bench Presses
      8. It All Adds Up to Something Good
  5. 2. Fitness Tools and Apps
    1. Quantified Self
    2. Sports and Fitness Tracking
    3. Personal Metrics
    4. Gear ≠ Health
    5. Fitbit Tracker
      1. The Dashboard
      2. Nifty Charts
      3. Logging with Fitbit
      4. Mobile Version
      5. Online Community
      6. Fitbit API
    6. Endomondo
      1. Exporting Files from Endomondo
      2. How Many Times Around the World?
    7. Fitocracy
    8. Garmin Connect
    9. NutritionData
    10. FitDay
    11. The USDA National Nutrient Database
    12. Pointy-Headed Searches
      1. PubMed
      2. Google Scholar
    13. Connected Devices
  6. 3. Food Chemistry Basics: Proteins, Fats, and Carbs
    1. Empower Yourself
    2. Macronutrient Ratios
      1. The Ole 30-50-20 Maneuver
      2. RDAs
    3. Carbohydrates
      1. Major Sugar Buzz
      2. Glucose Is Energy Fuel, but Not by the Ton
      3. Analyzing Your Carbs
      4. Polysaccharides, or Starches
    4. Protein
      1. Proteins Do Important Stuff
      2. Essential Amino Acids
      3. Eating Protein
    5. Fats
      1. SatFats vs. PolyFats
      2. Eating Fat
      3. Omega 6 vs. Omega 3 Fat Ratio
        1. Bump up those n-3s
        2. Our genes are selected for closer to 1:1
      4. Health Hack: Testing for Omega 3
    6. Ketones
  7. 4. Micronutrients: Vitamins, Minerals, and Phytochemicals
    1. The Nutrient That Roared
    2. Apples vs. Twinkies
    3. It’s a Snap to Keep Yourself Topped Up
    4. What’s Ahead?
    5. What Are Micronutrients?
    6. Figuring Out Your Daily Micronutrient Requirements
    7. Aim for Farms and Markets
    8. Cooking Alters Micronutrient Content
    9. Grade School Nurse Fondly Recalled
    10. Vitamins
      1. Fat-Soluble Vitamins
        1. Vitamin A
          1. Vitamin A toxicity
        2. Vitamin D
          1. We geeks are often indoor creatures
          2. The biosynthetic process
          3. It’s a dessert topping—it’s a hormone!
          4. Sources of Vitamin D
          5. Supplements
          6. Supplement thoughtfully
          7. Testing for D
        3. Vitamin E
          1. E and C supplements
        4. Vitamin K
      2. Water-Soluble Vitamins
        1. B vitamins
        2. Vitamin C
    11. Minerals
      1. Macrominerals
        1. Calcium
          1. Vitamin D and calcium work together
        2. Magnesium
        3. Phosphorus
        4. Potassium
        5. Sodium chloride (salt)
        6. Sulfur
      2. Trace Minerals
    12. Getting Micronutrient Information Online: Web Tools
      1. NutritionData
      2. FitDay on Vending-Machine Fare
        1. Needs work: Potassium to sodium ratio
      3. USDA National Nutrient Database
      4. Linus Pauling Institute Micronutrient Information Center
      5. USDA Interactive Calculator
      6. National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements Factsheets
  8. 5. Food Hacks: Finding and Choosing Food
    1. Eat Local: Leave the Big Boxes for the Extras
      1. Choosing Foods Locally
      2. Farmer’s Markets
      3. Community Supported Agriculture
      4. Your Own Victory or Rooftop Garden
      5. Community Gardens
    2. Choosing Food in the Meat Space: Navigating the Modern Supermarket’s Shoals
      1. Mastering the Layout
      2. It’s the Positioning, Stupid
    3. Choosing Food in the Digital Space with Apps
    4. Hacks for Finding Good Food on the Road
    5. Code Crash: Choosing Food in Hard Times
  9. 6. Food Timing: When to Eat, When to Fast
    1. Intermittent Fasting
    2. Variations: 19/5 and “Eat Stop Eat”
    3. The Basics of Intermittent Fasting: Getting Started
    4. Eating in Blocks or Windows
    5. Don’t Be a Hungry Vampire
    6. Apps for Fasters
  10. 7. The Other World: A.K.A. Outside
    1. The Sun Is Our Friend
    2. Exercising Outside
      1. Walking
        1. Recovery plan
        2. Family stroll
        3. Walking tools
        4. Little things add up
      2. Sprinting
        1. Sprint efficiencies
        2. The long and the short of it
        3. Sprint protocols
        4. Sprinting a soccer field
        5. Maximum effort, not steady state
        6. The mental game
        7. Time to go all out
        8. Specific sprinting protocols
        9. Tabata sprints
        10. Make it up
      3. Run/Cycle/Sprint Hybrids
        1. Fartleks
        2. Body speeds
    3. Body-Weight Exercises
      1. Push-ups
      2. Inverted Push-ups
      3. Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups
        1. How to do a pull-up
        2. Trick or program yourself for more push-ups and pull-ups
      4. Planks
      5. Running Jumps
      6. Hiking and Climbing
        1. Escape valve from the “thousand little stresses”
        2. Tools for hiking and trekking
          1. Endomondo mashed up with Google Earth
          2. Backpacker GPS Trails
    4. Outdoor Cross-Training Routines
      1. Beach Fit Workout
      2. Alpine Skiing/Snowboarding
        1. Alpine Replay
        2. More ski tracking
    5. Airport Fitness Hacks
      1. Create Your Own Airport Exercise
      2. Beware of the Terminal Zombies
  11. 8. Hello, Gym! Finding Your Way Around the Fitness Facility
    1. Now What?
    2. Lifting Is a Good Focus
    3. Negative Weightlifting Biases: Get Over Them
    4. A Few Jock and Physiology Terms, as Promised
      1. TEE Formula
    5. Top 40 HIT: High-Intensity Training
    6. Resistance-Training Terms
      1. Reps ‘n’ Sets
      2. Sessions and Volume
      3. The RMs: Repetition Maximum
      4. Percentages of RM
    7. What’s Your Plan? How Many Sets and Reps
      1. The 1-Set Method
      2. Pre-Exhaustion
      3. GAIN and WODs
      4. Low-Rep Methods
      5. Split Routines and Compound Sets
    8. Grand Entry, Time to Warm Up
    9. The Bench Press
    10. The Military Press
    11. The Deadlift
    12. The Leg Press
    13. The Back Squat
    14. Dumbbells
    15. Bicep Curls and Hammer Curls
    16. Leg Extensions and Cable Pulldowns
    17. Instructional Video Sources
    18. Using an App, or Not, to Record Sets
      1. Men’s Health Workouts
      2. Tracking on Bodybuilder.com
      3. CrossFit
        1. Cross-training
  12. 9. Randomizing Fitness and the Importance of R & R
    1. Shock the Monkey
    2. Shake It Up in the Morning
    3. I’m Only Sleeping
    4. RESTful Programmers
    5. Randomize It
      1. The WOD Shop
      2. GAIN Fitness
      3. Mashing Up Your Sports Devices
    6. Rest and Taper
      1. Decelerate, Strategically
      2. The Wound Healing School
      3. RestWise
    7. The All-Important Zees
      1. Sleep Basics
      2. Sleep Stages: NREM and REM
      3. Low-Tech Sleep Tracking
      4. Hacking Your Sleep with the Zeo Sleep Manager
        1. The Zeo Web API
        2. API nitty-gritty
      5. More Web Tracking
    8. Meditation Tools
      1. Vonnegut Would Have Grokked It
  13. 10. Code Maintenance: Human Fueling and Supplements
    1. Fueling Fitness
    2. Maintaining a Reasonable Protein Intake
      1. How Much Protein Is Enough?
      2. Tools
    3. Make Sure the Tank Is Full
      1. Basal Metabolic Rate and Activity Calculator
      2. Pre-Exercise Eating
      3. All Protein Is Not Created Equal
      4. Carbs and Protein: Both in the Mix
    4. Water and Hydration
      1. Guidelines
      2. Cold and Altitude Also Affect Hydration
    5. Micronutrient Replenishment
      1. RDA Levels May Not Be Enough
  14. 11. Lifestyle Hacks for Fitness
    1. Hormesis
      1. Cold and Heat Stress
        1. Tools
        2. Cryotherapy
      2. Exercise Stress
      3. Caloric Restriction and Fasting
      4. Assorted Hormetic Activities
    2. Sports Massage
    3. Conclusion
  15. A. Notes
    1. Chapter 1
    2. Chapter 2
    3. Chapter 3
    4. Chapter 4
    5. Chapter 5
    6. Chapter 6
    7. Chapter 7
    8. Chapter 8
    9. Chapter 9
    10. Chapter 10
    11. Chapter 11
  16. B. About the Author
  17. Index
  18. About the Author
  19. Colophon
  20. Copyright

Product information

  • Title: Fitness for Geeks
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: April 2012
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781449399894