Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health: Perry, Bruce: 9781449399894: Amazon.com: Books

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Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health 1st Edition

by Bruce Perry (Author)

3.3 36 ratings

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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.

Tune into components of your health through discussions on food, exercise, sleep, hormesis, and other issues―as well as interviews with various scientists and athletes―and discover healthy ways to tinker with your lifestyle.

Learn to live in the modern digital world and still be physically vibrant
Examine apps and widgets for self-tracking various fitness issues
Zero in on carbs, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals
Find and choose food, and learn when to eat and when to fast
Reboot your system through movement in the outside world
Select from more than a dozen techniques for your gym workout
Fuel fitness by focusing on the science of nutrition and supplements
Apply lifestyle hacks, such as high-intensity exercise and good stress

Amazon.com Review

Top 5 Fitness Tips from Bruce Perry, Author of Fitness for Geeks
Sleep
Sleep a lot, and consider monitoring your sleep to work out the rough spots with gear such as the Zeo Sleep Manager. We all know that life intrudes on sleep, but the idea is to maximize your sleep when you have the opportunity. Go to bed early (e.g., to catch the restorative deep sleep that can happen before midnight when the body secretes the repair mechanism called growth hormone), and don't skimp on the final long REM sleep in the early morning.
Exercise
Choose exercise that makes you run faster or physically stronger over long slow exercise that breaks down your body. This means up to 30 minutes of effective resistance training about twice per week (with experience, lower reps and higher weights), and interval training as opposed to moderate jogging. A recent study discovered that 30-second bursts of cycling (4 to 6 times per session with 4 minute rests in between) was just as effective as traditional endurance exercise, but involved 90 percent fewer miles.
Eat
Eat food that's grown or pastured locally. Find a local farm, and become one of their good customers for pastured eggs, which generally offer higher levels of vitamins and minerals, grass-fed meats, berries, and veggies (in season).
Fast
Fast once in a while (This advice is only for adults, not for growing kids). Consider narrowing the window of eating to around 8 to 12 hours per day. An intermittent fast a couple times per week (such as fasting overnight and extending it to about 15 hours) can help with blood-glucose metabolism and reduce inflammation.
Challenge
Do something once in a while that represents an acute challenge. (Meaning, it scares the crap out of you then makes you laugh and/or tell stories about it afterward). The reason wilderness treks, for example, are so gratifying and exciting is because they seem to stimulate built-in instinctive pathways, according to the author Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival. Although unproven, maybe they represent hormesis or "good stress." For even more fun, bring along self-tracking apps such as Endomondo or Backpacker GPS Trails Pro.

About the Author

Amidst a varied career in journalism and software engineering, Bruce W. Perry has moved on from numerous long runs and multisport events to hiking, skiing, weightlifting, and general fitness tracking and pursuits. He's written two recent O'Reilly software books, and occasionally climbs in the summer with mountain guides, including Mt. Rainier and Mt. Whitney's Mountaineer's Route.

Perry lives in Warren, VT with his wife and two kids.

ISBN-10

1449399894
ISBN-13

978-1449399894
Edition

1st
Publisher

O'Reilly Media
Publication date

May 29, 2012
Language

English
Dimensions

8 x 0.78 x 9.75 inches
Print length

331 pages
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (May 29, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 331 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1449399894
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1449399894
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.78 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,365,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #549 in Vitamins & Supplements (Books)
- #1,240 in Health, Mind & Body Reference
- #8,134 in Other Diet Books

Customer Reviews:
3.3 36 ratings

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Bruce W. Perry

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I'm a big fan of good stories, and sharing them. I've been reading a lot since I was a towheaded kid, growing up in a small town with a reading and writing tradition called Concord, Massachusetts. Our house was about a half mile from Walden Pond. That didn't make me a better writer by osmosis, but it darn sure made me a reader! I was the kid sitting under a tree, head buried in a book. I read every hardcover and paperback I could get my hands on.

A family friend gave me anthologies of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells when I was in the third grade. They encompassed the first adult narratives and science fiction I had read. They were hardcover, heavy, and I couldn't put them down, until I had to put them down, because they were heavy.

I tend to read and write in several genres, mostly science fiction/dystopian, adventure, thriller, and detective, but I've written stories that don't really fall into either of those categories, as in the war romance Tree Of Life or the satire Lost Young Love.

In my work life I've been a trade newsletter writer and a software engineer, as well as a landscaper and an unaccomplished waiter. I've also written non-fiction books on fitness and software, including Fitness For Geeks.

When I'm not writing, I'm a nomad. I love to travel. I prefer writing outside with a pen, legal pad, and a nice view.

Feel free to contact me at this email: bruce.perry.author@gmail.com

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3.3 out of 5

36 global ratings

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Full of good information

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2019

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The author seems to be a little against gadgets and metrics which was a surprised for a book for geeks, but he that doesn't stop him from fully exploring gadgets in this book. Some of the info is outdated, but the meat and potato info is still good and it gives you good ideas on what metrics you would want to monitor. Overall, a good book, but I feel it could of been better with more gadgets ideas.

Getting in shape: using agile and other development methodologies

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2012

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If you know what agile is and want to get in shape, this book is for you! Unlike other fitness books that focus on just one aspect of getting (or staying in shape) this book is a great broad overview that doesn't tell you what to do, but empowers you with the information to do it yourself. No wonder, since it's part of the Maker series affiliated with that great DIY publication and culture.

I've been on my own weight loss journey and really wish I had this book when I started. No "program" for losing weight or getting in shape is included but rather various modalities such as diet, exercise and sleep and analyzed. In each section the reader is empowered with various alternate theories on the subject (when is a good time to eat, what is a good sleep schedule, etc) and since this is a book for geeks, a whole slew of smartphone apps, websites, and electronic gadgets are included to assist you along the way.

Readers looking for a how to guide or a diet program won't find it in this book. Just like a manual for programming won't make you an expert coder, this book provides you all the objects you need to assemble the right set of changes for yourself. A great example of this was the sections on fasting. I've read mixed theories of a 16/8 or 15/9 fast vs a 24 hour fast, etc. After reading the book I felt comfortable experimenting a bit more and playing around with my windows of meal times.

Programmers and other tech geeks: this is the book for you! You are used to this style of writing and deriving benefits from a set of feature guides and menu options. It's up to you to put all that together to make something worthwhile.

Think of it as hacking your body and this is about overclocking your aging processor and lack of RAM.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Fluffy advice for programmers

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2013

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

This book provides basic nutrition and fitness information for cubicle dwellers of the technical sort. Perry is a software engineer and journalist as well as sports enthusiast. In this book, he provides a basic introduction to nutrition and fitness for folks who get their meals from vending machines and otherwise rarely leave their desks. Chapter titles include "Fitness and the human codebase," "Fitness tools and apps," "Food chemistry basics," "Food hacks," "Hello, Gym!", and "Code maintenance". Along the way, Perry defines health, fitness, macronutrients, repetitions, and a slew of related concepts in terms made simple for those who have not given much thought to them before. The book is illustrated with black and white drawings, photographs, and screen captures from various nutrition and fitness apps. Sources are cited with end notes with a heavy emphasis on web pages; only a small proportion of the sources are from peer-reviewed journal articles or standard print references.

I found this book quite disappointing in the shallowness of its detail. The word "geek" on the cover misled me--I thought the book might be for nutrition geeks or other people with a special and informed interest in the topic. Instead, the word "geek" here is intended to refer to programmers. Perry uses examples of programming code as analogies to help make some of his points, a technique that may not be of much use to general readers. To make nutrition and fitness habits more appealing to technophiles, Perry suggests a variety of apps on the current market (mid-2012).

Material in the book is sloppy and inconsistent in places, and not always based on sound nutritional advice or published research. For instance, Perry becomes so concerned with the dangers of fructose, he advises against eating store-bought apples, misinterpreting the issues associated with concentrated fructose, as in high-fructose corn syrup. Yet elsewhere in the book, he repeats the well-worn adage of including fruit, even apples, in your daily diet. Production of the book seems rather sloppy as well; photo captions mention colors, yet all photos are printed in black and white. Overall, this book is a very basic introduction to lifestyle changes for programmers looking to upgrade their physical condition. But if you already know a little about the topic or want to learn more than the basic information available on general websites, you might find better information elsewhere.

One person found this helpful

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Urse

Informative and helpful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2020

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I really enjoyed the balance of detailed analysis and pragmatism - it's a pity that the tracking tool sections have become a little dated since the time of writing so perhaps less on them could have been better. Also, men and women, not men and girls (that dichotomy appeared a few times and was a bit of a mental jolt considering the otherwise meticulous approach of the author).

Freddy

OK

Reviewed in Italy on February 6, 2015

Verified Purchase

Divertente, qualche spunto interessantem, ma non "for Geeks".
Un buon riferimento per avere una panoramica sui vari aspetti del fitness con un approccio abbastanza schematico.

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Louise

Not funny enough

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2013

Verified Purchase

My own fault, the title suggested a more tongue in check look at fitness for geeks. It is however a little dry and full of information that perhaps I am really nor geek enough to care about. This is more for the serious reader than the joy geek!

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