tandempower

LCF could be classified into a more general category of lifestyle-choices that seek to integrate fitness activities into everyday life. While LCF is probably the most logical option for replacing time spend sedentary behind the wheel of a motor-vehicle with time spent engaged in physical activities like biking and walking that replace motorized transit, there may be other methods for integrating physical activity into daily schedules and routines that are worth sharing and discussing.

- Have you found ways to integrate physical activities into your workday that required modifying aspects of your work or scheduling?

- Have you sought out or created activities near where you live or other places you spend time that facilitate or motivate you to walk and bike more, or engage in other physical activities?

- Have you sought out or created vacation and weekend activities that afford more physical activity? What kinds of less-active pastimes were wasting your time, which you decided to replace?

- Are there things that you have tried or would like to try to integrate more physical activity into your lifestyle that are obstructed in some way or that you have otherwise become discouraged or distracted from pursuing? If so, what are they, what is stopping you, and what do you think it will take to achieve your goal (eventually)?

Finally, do you find that you have plenty of time for physical activity in your schedule and existing lifestyle patterns and, if so, did you have to make sacrifices to achieve it? Do you think most people have the same opportunities as you or are there certain general sacrifices (such as driving) that you see possible that would help people integrate more physical fitness into their daily routines? E.g. if you were a L.I.F.E. counselor and your job was to help people integrate more physical activity into their daily life, what kinds of questions would you ask them and what kinds of suggestions would you give?

Machka 

- Have you found ways to integrate physical activities into your workday that required modifying aspects of your work or scheduling?

I integrate physical activities into my workday without significant modifications of my work or scheduling.


- Have you sought out or created activities near where you live or other places you spend time that facilitate or motivate you to walk and bike more, or engage in other physical activities?

Yes. Always. Wherever I am.


- Have you sought out or created vacation and weekend activities that afford more physical activity? What kinds of less-active pastimes were wasting your time, which you decided to replace?

Weekends and vacations are for physical activity.


- Are there things that you have tried or would like to try to integrate more physical activity into your lifestyle that are obstructed in some way or that you have otherwise become discouraged or distracted from pursuing? If so, what are they, what is stopping you, and what do you think it will take to achieve your goal (eventually)?

Nothing is stopping me.


Finally, do you find that you have plenty of time for physical activity in your schedule and existing lifestyle patterns and, if so, did you have to make sacrifices to achieve it?

Yes, I do ... no sacrifice involved.


... and your job was to help people integrate more physical activity into their daily life, what kinds of questions would you ask them and what kinds of suggestions would you give?

I suggest that people incorporate activity as part of their lives. Actively commute. Walk or cycle or go to the gym at lunch. Take the stairs. Be active after work. Be active on the weekends.

wolfchild

I get more then enough physical activity and exercise in my life. Makes no difference if I am car-free or not, I make sure to set side some time few days per week to train and workout plus my job is physical.

Jim from Boston

Lifestyle-Integrated Fitness Enrichment (LIFE)

This thread is very relevant to my immediately current lifestyle, as I posted previously in March on this LCF Forum. I have interspersed @tandempower’s follow-up questions into my post.

This is week 7, and I have listed my Cycling Miles for the first six weeks, the cumulative “Activity Miles,” My current standing for the week out of the 40 participants, and the cumulative Activity Miles of the First and Tenth Places (there was no listing on week #2).

Week 0 / Cycling Miles = 28 / cumulative Activity Miles = NA / My Standing = NA / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles =NA

Week 1 / Cycling Miles = 59 / cumulative.Activity Miles = 14.31 / My Standing = 25 / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles = 114.52 to 25.85

Week 2 / Cycling Miles = 58 / Activity Miles = – / My Standing = – / 1st to 10th Place Activity Miles = –

Week 3 / Cycling Miles = 56 / cumulative Activity Miles = 120.77 / My Standing = 5 / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles = 347.23 to 90.85

Week 4 / Cycling Miles = 98 / cumulative Activity Miles = 201.86 / My Standing = 4 / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles = 453.66 to 131.86

Week 5 / Cycling Miles = 98/ cumulative Activity Miles = 264.61 / My Standing = 3 / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles = 518.63 to 167.66

Week 6 / Cycling Miles = 86/ cumulative Activity Miles = 339.46 / My Standing = 4 / 1st to 10th Place cumulative Activity Miles = 631.23 to 199.6

- Have you sought out or created vacation and weekend activities that afford more physical activity? What kinds of less-active pastimes were wasting your time, which you decided to replace?

The competition for spots 1 to 5 is tight, and one can’t let up. I’m hoping to soon go into my 10 week century training schedule and ramp up the Miles with weekend long rides (greater than 40 miles). See attached bar graph below.

Walter S

One of the things I like about a car free lifestyle, cargo trailer, and 40 mile bicycle commute is that exercise is built in. I don't have to make time for it. And I don't keep track of it and measure my performance all the time and concern myself with whether today is a good workout etc. It all fades into the background and just becomes a high-functioning baseline that I virtually take for granted.

B. Carfree

Your comment took me back to a year in which I had no time at all to ride, except for my daily 50 mile commute. Since I rode that commute for all I was worth, averaging around 25 mph and sometimes faster, I didn't hesitate to take off on a cycling vacation to celebrate my grandparents golden anniversary 1000 miles away. My wife and I had ten days to ride 1000 miles through the California coast range, the Siskiyous and the Cascades as well as a bit of flat stuff and unpaved roads on our then-new first tandem. Sure, the first day I needed to take a brief break after about 50 miles, but we arrived with time to spare. After the celebration we stayed on the road for a few more weeks and totalled over 4000 miles in that wonderful month. I don't think I would have had nearly as much fun if I didn't have that baseline from my commute.

Walter S

I know exactly

Aside from going on tour (which is all too infrequent with my job) a long commute makes for really great bicycle camping weekends. I used to go on long weekend rides before I started commuting by bicycle and living car free. It was fun and all, but it was also kind of a draining experience to ride 60+ miles for two days back to back hauling camping gear. On Monday morning I'd be groaning. And the cycling was 100% of the experience.

Now I go on those weekend trips and don't stress about whether my energy will hold up. I love the cycling but my mind has room for more. It takes me less time to get there and so I can do stuff like fish etc. Monday morning I'm not groaning. I'm more wishing I was starting day #3 on my tour!

tandempower

This is an awesome story and something I would aspire to, but I want to point out that L.I.F.E. doesn't need to be anywhere near this vigorous to be fulfilling. I never average more than about 15mph cycling, and the number goes down to @12mph on longer trips, but I still feel like I'm in top condition when I'm biking that much. Also, my daily commute is only a few miles and, though I sometimes regret that I don't get more exercise, I still think my general level of fitness when I'm not taking long trips stays higher than if I was driving for work and errands and driving to the gym. It seems like when I make special time for exercise, I just try to get through it really quickly and I'm lucky if I spend a half-hour to an hour engaged in physical activity, whereas if I'm running errands by bike and doing other physical labor because there is a project that needs to get done, I end up spending more time physically active, even if the level of physical exercise is less intense than if I was at the gym burning my way through a strength-training regiment.

In short, my body feels better and healthier when I'm more or less persistently physically active at a less intense level than when I'm mostly inactive/sedentary the whole day, but then I take some time to do intense physical exercise for a while. Compared with doing nothing at all, the short intense workout would leave me feeling 100% better than having skipped it, but having a whole day of light exercise integrated into my daily duties leaves me feeling far better than just the isolated workout. And then, the irony is that when I'm getting sufficient exercise to feel great, sitting and resting feels that much better and I realize why we've created a culture with such an abundance of sedentary activities in the first place.

Machka 

Another fitness discussion ...

Ekdog

Having a dog keeps my wife and me honest because she (the dog) needs to be walked twice a day.

Seattle Forrest

It could be. Or, it could be a way to save money vis-a-vis car maintenance and insurance. Or it could be the court-ordered result of a DUI conviction.

Rowan

You DO have a sense of humour!

I work physically for a living. That's the ultimate LIFE... and I did it, too, when I didn't own a motor vehicle and travelled almost everywhere by bike.

Interesting thing is that work keeps me fit enough that I maintain my weight within my acceptable range, and I can ride long-distance randonnees without having to specially train for them.

I should point out that while in the US horticulture is considered a low-level job (for illegals and low-lifes) here in Australia it pays very well for someone like me. It's certainly enough for me to live comfortably, I work normal hours except during harvest, I work outdoors, I work with various types of machinery, and I get a workout that can last for seven hours at a time!

Ekdog

I am glad to hear that you earn a living wage. What you do is hard and demanding work, and you deserve to be paid well for it. As to farm laborers being referred to as "illegals" and "low-lifes" in the United States, let me assure you that such disparaging terms are normally used only by those of a certain ideological bent, one that, ironically, based on many of the comments you have made in this forum over the years, it can be safely assumed that you identify with.

By the by, a quick check on Google brought this to my attention. I hope such exploitation is not common in Australia.

Seasonal farm workers receiving less than $10 a week after deductions, investigation reveals

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-25/seasonal-farm-workers-receiving-as-little-as-$9-a-week/7196844

Rowan

You really know how to turn a compliment around to being a complete and utter joke, don't you.

Roody

True, there are many reasons and benefits with LCF. But this particular thread happens to be about LCF and fitness. I'd love to hear anything relevant that you and others can contribute.

I credit LCF wih saving my life, in an overly simplistic view. The exercise has contributed greatly to getting my health statistics (weight, blood sugar, lipids, blood pressure, etc.) into a good range. I know you can be fit without being carfree, but the CF lifestyle is very conducive to fitness and pverall health, in my own experience. YMMV.

Roody

I love that bike riding is such excellent exercise, but for the carfree/carlight person, it is also incorporated into other exercise. Even riding to the gym, bike riding gives you a great warm-up and cool-down.

A perfect summer day for me would include riding to a local park, and then renting a rowboat there for an hour of rowing, followed by some time swimming at the beach. One key to good fitness is a good variety of exercise and activity. Both my son and grandson enjoyed doing this with me, starting when they were very young and continuing to the present, with my son now being 41 and my grandson 17. We're lucky to have a couple parks within ten miles of home. We often pack a few sandwiches and make a day of it.

I have also frequently ridden to a mountain bike area, spent a couple hours on the singletrack, then rode back home.

I'm not a skier myself, but my son is an avid snowboarder. When we used to spend time in northern Michigan, he would strap a snowboard to his back and we would ride a few miles to a ski slope near town. I just hung out while he hit the slopes for a while. The Italian writer Primo Levi told how he and a friend, as young men, would ride their bikes up into the Italian Alps and ski out of bounds for a couple days, with just a little food that they carried in their pockets.

Personally, ice biking is the funnest thing I have ever done. Whenever we have a good cold winter, I will ride on the rivers and lakes for miles. Even close to the city, it's like being in the wilderness. I always see wildlife that you never see around here in the warmer months. Walking on the ice is almost as much fun, and even better when there's a lot of snow over the ice.

tandempower

I wish there was more awareness of how good physical activity is as part of work activities. I have the feeling that the 'western' culture of the developed world has a tradition of relegating physical/manual labor to those with less education and thus lower pay, while 'liberating' (i.e. depriving) people with more education from that healthy physical activity.

Nowadays, much construction work seems to pay well because the skills are viewed as being beyond common ability, but power equipment has replaced much manual labor so hard work like manual digging gets limited to spot-digging where the big power equipment can't reach. Then, of course, the work of operating the equipment becomes a sedentary job that pays more because of skill, risk, and environmental hazard/exposure.

How I hope to see a day when construction workers are liberated from harsh sun and dust by working surgically to create structures and pavement between the trunks of a well-shaded canopy instead of within large, cleared areas covered in fill-sand. That might mean more manual labor of spot-digging and cutting/trimming back of branches and ground cover, but there would be less dust and direct sun-exposure.

Imagine riding your bike to work on a narrow paved trail through a forest to carve out niches for small construction projects that barely harmed the ecology they are nestled within. Industrial machinery would be sparser and smaller, with less noise, danger, and exhaust. It would take longer and require more physical/manual labor but workers would be healthier for being outside in a less hostile environment and the physical demands would be less pressing if workers didn't have to keep up with large machines whose high-cost accelerated productivity also requires accelerated manual support labor.

Walter S

I see physical activity disappearing from the workplace, schools, etc. I think part of it is related to liability. It's cheaper to give you equipment than to pay for expensive workmens comp claims. Also job discrimination. Why do you unnecessarily have a job that probably calls for a strong male. Must have something against other people.

Latest case I've noticed is Walmart. Used to be that gathering shopping carts from the lot took some effort.

tandempower

Efficiency is naturally biased in favor of stronger people and then ultimately stronger machines. Paul Bunyan is an iconic story about this industrialist trend away from labor. If we would just distribute labor more broadly and inclusively, the amount of labor each individual does could be tailored to a level that challenges them and improves upon their condition in a health-positive way.

The problem is, as you say, with liability but also with wages. Paying more people to do more inefficient work doesn't make good financial sense. If labor was voluntary or contributed as a form of taxation, however, it could work. The 13th amendment could get in the way, but it could also be amended to except unpaid labor exacted broadly from all citizens instead of from a sub-class of designated slaves.

I think a big part of keeping such community labor projects popular would be to limit the amount of time people have to spend on them by managing them judiciously and efficiently. If that was done. it could be quite pleasant to plan a bike ride once or several times a week for a few hours to contribute labor to environmentally-friendly development projects and reforestation of developed areas.

True, but sometimes people don't become conscious of the benefits of something like gathering shopping carts until it's taken away from them by a machine. Many people don't care anyway because they don't see more physical activity/labor as the cure for fatigue, but as adding to it. I think this is because the mind confuses mental and emotional fatigue with physical fatigue and forgets that physical labor actually builds up energy-level and thus labor-capacity that get drained by mental and emotional labor.

wolfchild

It's how evolution has shaped human species...Males have always been and always will be bigger, more muscular and stronger then females and males have always been involved in pursuing physically demanding activities with higher risk factor....If you don't believe me then look back over the last few thousand years of human history...No discrimination against anybody here, just pure evolutionary facts.

Walter S

How right you are. The more you do the easier it gets. I feel considerably more endurance and baseline strength since my daily mileage doubled a few years ago. I'm more confident and at ease with the longer ride.

Walter S

You missed the point. I agree of course. Just saying this is part of what drives removing effort from jobs. It's the great equalizer.

wolfchild

It is a fact that education and income levels are correlated with health and fitness...People who are more educated and have higher income levels also enjoy better health and are fitter then those with less income and less education... Wealthy people can afford to purchase " health promoting activities and products" such as gym memberships, recreational activities, health supplements, good medical care and good healthy nutritious food. Wealthy well educated people are also more motivated to take care of their health.
The only people who are being deprived of health promoting activities are car-free people with low income and very little or no education.

no1mad 

You do realize that odds are greater that people spend their time being sedentary behind a keyboard and display than actually behind a steering wheel?

If one has time constraints and wants to be physically fit, then pick a career path that is somewhat physically demanding in nature.

tandempower

How many unhealthy lower-income people do you think are living car-free? Most are struggling to pay driving expenses and wasting time driving around to multiple low-paying jobs to afford them. The people I see having business meetings while cycling in lycra on the bike trails are able to do so because their work doesn't require their being stationed at a particular spot, plus they have managers/colleagues who are will to pay them to have a meeting while exercising.

Expensive forms of recreation like gym memberships and other 'outtings' that require driving are part of what deters lower-income people from exercising. This is because mundane activities like walking/jogging around one's local neighborhood or using free fitness areas in public parks is deemed somehow inferior to paid gyms with fancy equipment and chic people in fashionable gym-wear.

The fact is that someone with a low-income job or kids living in low-income households could get quite fit by walking/biking to work and school and then stopping by public parks and using the fitness courses. There are many affordable, healthy foods, but they require giving up or cutting back on expensive meats and sweets and putting effort into cooking and/or eating raw vegetables, nuts, etc. Corn grits are a traditional and affordable low-starch carb/filler that can be eaten in combination with other low-cost vegetables like cabbage/cole-slaw, greens, carrots, etc. and prepared in creative, delightful ways. Inexpensive non-meat proteins like beans, nuts, and seeds are available as well as processed products like tofu and veggie burgers. For people who prefer meats, chicken is inexpensive and lean protein.

LCF can be part of a healthy, affordable lifestyle that integrates healthy activities and eating into one's schedule instead of wasting time and money unnecessarily driving around to gyms and other premium recreational/leisure activities in areas where sprawling traffic is congested because everyone else is trying to do the same.