In the inaugural post of the Geek Fit series I may have painted a slightly misleading picture of “the geek.” I was an overweight couch potato, but obviously not all geeks are. I once had a discussion with some friends via Twitter regarding the modern day definition of the word “geek.” We came to the conclusion that geeks are not just people who read comic books, adore gadgetry, have at least 5 level 80 characters residing in Azeroth, and know the words to every Rush song ever. Instead we agreed that a geek today is anyone who has a passion for something that leads them to near-obsessive and sometimes annoying level of fandom or appreciation for a particular subject. It is at the nexus of this definition and the classic stereotype where this series exists.
That said, I believe I gave the impression that this series would only be beneficial to people that were in my particular situation (overweight and sedentary). The fact is that the vast majority of my friends who were (and are) geeks are all variety of shapes and size. I have had the privilege of working out with and learning from a variety of different individuals. You see, part of what made getting in shape possible for me was that I truly geeked out about it. I became passionate and as such wanted to learn as much as I could about fitness and getting in shape. I would take learning directly from someone else’s experiences rather than just reading books and so I began to really pry into the fitness habits of my friends and colleagues.
The most important thing I learned is that not everyone gets in shape the same way. The biggest lesson I learned was that, it is much easier for an overweight person to lose weight than it is for a smaller person to gain weight. For a fat kid, it is hard to even comprehend why someone would want to gain weight, but it’s not just about the poundage. Muscle weighs more than fat and so gaining weight often is associated with gaining muscle. That doesn’t mean when you check the scale this week and went up a few pounds that you grew some muscle, but for a skinny guy it could.
Yes, I am familiar with the plight of the skinny man. Skinny guys are often skinny because they have naturally more efficient resting metabolism rates. That is, they can sit and level up without doing much but their body is still burning more calories than the average person. For someone with a slower metabolism it is very difficult to improve your resting metabolic rate. Conversely if you are the skinny guy with the blazing fast metabolism you have to eat more than the normal person to gain weight and keep calories. When you begin working out your body consumes more calories than normal, therefore making it even more challenging for a person with a faster metabolic rate to gain muscle. There is a lot more science that I don’t know about that goes into and frankly I am probably a smidge of already, but the point is, skinny guys have to fuel their body more (and correctly), while heavier guys already have a surplus of fat cells your body can convert to energy.
This is just a short intro to the plight of the skinny guy, but I wanted to let some of you know that I do understand a bit. I hope to help by sharing some stories from some of my skinny friends that have managed Hulk up. It’s no easy task for anyone to really get in shape but this is another area where I can provide you examples of great workouts and diets that have worked for all shapes and sizes of folks. Protein, Creatin, Whey, oh my! There are some options out there and we will explore them!
What sorts of things have worked for you? What have you tried that hasn’t worked? Talk to me in the comments and maybe I can help point some specific advice your way!
Stay tuned my geeks of doom!
