All my life I have been hard working. At the age of 15 my parents divorced and moved away, I was left to take care of the house and my grandmother. There was firewood to cut, lawn maintenance, house maintenance, snow shoveling and all the other labor intensive work that is involved in taking care of a home. Not to mention I was still in high school. After this I moved on to more hard working jobs such as farming, landscaping, and oil field work, all of which requires you to be in good physical shape. Even if you were not in good shape you would be after about 2 months of work. Now what does this have to do with fitness for computer geeks? This is where my story changes…I left my labor-intensive lifestyle and went to college, and of course started this magazine at the same time. Now instead of a shovel or axe in my hands I am typing in front of a computer monitor 6 to 8+ hours a day. The activity in my life has gone from 8 to 10 hours to about 8 to 10 minutes! Being a larger built active man to begin with I still eat my typical big meals 3 times a day and snack in between just like I always did but this time I'm not active enough to burn off the energy. All this extra energy is just sitting inside of me and turning itself in to a nicely formed roll around my middle. So what am I to do? I don't have time to be as active as I use to and I still crave food every 10 minutes. Well here is my advice to anyone else in the same situation as me:

First thing you need to do is change your diet! I use to eat fatty take-out food at least 5 times a week and BBQ huge steaks for midnight snacks. This is obviously the wrong approach. The same goes for the other end of the spectrum as well for those people out there that are under weight from lack of activity. You need to start with a diet.

Make a list of everything you eat, or at least what you like to eat. From that list pick out all the healthiest foods that you know. If you are unsure of what is healthy and what isn't then pick up a nutrition guide at the local drugstore or bookstore. Next I suggest finishing up all the groceries that you have in stock before you even start your new diet. It's no point to begin eating right when half the food you have is junk/fatty/etc. Learn a couple new recipes and prepare yourself for a different routine of eating.

The next part is not so easily done. You have to be even more disciplined that what it takes to diet. That is you have to be able to pull yourself away from the computer at least 5 to 10 minutes every hour. That is minimum. You NEED to rest your eyes and stretch you muscles to stay alert longer.

This still doesn't make up for the lack of physical activity that your body is going through. This is where the final step of the process comes in. You HAVE to squeeze in 1 hour of physical movement a day, over and above your basic movement (walking to the car, around the office, etc) I suggest breaking it up into two 30 minute routines. The best thing about it is you can squeeze 30 minutes in anywhere. Get up 30 minutes earlier, use 30 minutes of you lunch hour, right after work or after supper, whenever it's convenient to you.

What you do with you 30-minute breaks is up to you. As long as you are ACTIVE! Play your favorite sport, walk, run, swim, even vigorous housework can do it depending on your physical ability. All in all at the end of the day know that you have accomplished an hour of activity, you will be surprised at the results and how much better you feel at the end of every day.

--Lestat