The article in the New York times 2 days ago about people blogging til they dropped has stirred up a lot of discussion on the web. John Chow and David Peralty have both written posts today about how being fat and blogging on a regular basis has little or no connection and I agree 100%. Kelby Carr also touched upon the subject today on BloggingTips.
Blogging is the same as any other desk job, infact any other job, in that if you spend too much time working and don't make time for exercise you are likely to put on weight.
“If you consume more calories than you burned off on a given day then you will put on weight“
That's it. The average daily calories recommended for men is 2500 and for a women it's 2000. 3500 calories is equal to 1lb of weight so if you eat 500 calories over what your body needs every day you will put a pound on every week. Once you understand that you quickly understand that by sitting at your pc all day you are not burning many calories and so if you snack a lot at your desk you're going to put on weight.
On a serious note
I train about 5 or 6 times a week (taekwondo, jujitsu + gym) and I'm very interested in health related topics and I think it's good that this kind of thing is being highlighted and discussed more. After smoking, being overweight is the most likely reason for years being cut from your life (ie. via weight related problems). The main problem that the USA and the UK has with weight issues is education – we are simply not educated enough on the subject. When I was at school the cafeteria's main meal was hamburgers, chips with an equal portion of salt (I assume it still does!).
Personally I'm currently trying to trim up and lose a stone in the next 1-2 months. According to the BMI scale, I'm not overweight and I eat pretty healthy too but I'd like to be more toned. I don't eat junk food or drink soda (soft drinks) that much, my main problem is eating too much bread and other carbohydrates and of course my weekend drinking sessions don't help!
Have you found yourself putting more weight on the more you work on the net? What do you do to ensure you don't let your work affect your health?
* The original article in the NY times talks more about blogger's not getting enough sleep and putting themselves under too much stress so this post was more in reply to the posts which have arisen since then :)