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

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 Some of the info is outdated, but the meat and potato info is still good and it gives you good ideas on what metrics you would want to monitor.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.

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.

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.