So, all this talk about creatine has me wondering...

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?
b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?
c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?
d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?
e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

and feel free to add your own thoughts (and of course you don't have to answer this poll if you don't want to.  No one around here is gonna call you a wuss for being who you are!  Maybe we'll call you lard-butt, but definitely not wuss

OK, my answers:

a)Around $300 (not including going out with friends).  I tend to purchase healthy foods though, which are expensive, and Boston is expensive as it is!

b)I typically cook chicken or fish.  I love salads (little or no dressing though), and turkey

c)Well, it's easy to get caught up on a game and waste too much time on it!  However, I only play a few (2-3) hours per week.  I know I should play more...but see (e)!  However I do workout at least 10 hours per week!

d)Martial arts is my favorite form of exercise (mental and physical).  I also enjoy lifting, hiking, and running.

e)Spend too much time dating and trying to find a great woman... dang, if I had lower standards or was on drugs life would be SO much easier!

cheers,

-avatar!

heh, there is no perfect woman. Just accept the fact that they will have flaws, just as we do. I spent too many years looking for ms. right, she doesn't exist. But there are quite a few ms. great. Didn't think I could find someone compatible after last year's encounter, but I think I have a good catch now.

As for your questions:

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country? About $300, not including eating out, which I do FAR more than I should. North Carolina is not an expensive state, but very beautiful.

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?
Some kind of meat. Usually steak or chicken. Since I live alone, I tend to eat too many frozen dinners, but I do eat out about every other day also.

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?
I don’t play games any more. Working out, studying, and my gf occupy my time.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it? Weight lifting 3 hours a day, 4 days a week, and mountain bike riding 15 miles per day, 4 days a week.

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?
I eat lots of unhealthy foods. Fried foods, ice cream, buffets, etc. Luckily from my workouts, it doesn’t show, but I’m sure my blood isn’t very healthy. I need to cut back on sugars, salts, and oily foods.

a) No clue, but it's not too bad; I try to pack a lunch for work to save money and eat dinner in whenever possible

b) Breakfast is a bagel, lunch is a small sandwich with vegetable on the side, dinner varies but usually includes some kind of meat (chicken/beef/pork/fish), vegetable, fruit, yogurt, and some sort of grain product (bread/rice/pasta)

c) Exercising, sadly

d) Walking, 40-75 min/day (not counting my second job where I'm on my feet all day)

e) Working is by far the most unhealthy thing I do -- the air is worse in the city, packed traffic increases the liklihood of injury due to a car accident, work creates the stress of having to care about stuff I would normally not care about, and most dangerous of all, working interrupts my natural sleep rhythms -- not getting proper sleep increases the risk for just about everything (diabetes, obesity, inflammation, etc.)

Note he didn't say "perfect," he said "great." ^_~

My answers:

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?

I think I've budgeted $200 to $300 a month for food, and I try to stay within that range. Before April of this year, I never tried keeping track. And yes, I definitely live in an expensive state.

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?

Depends what I feel like and what food is available in the house. ^_~ I honestly don't have a typical meal. But lately, I've been trying to cut down on my meat intake.

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?

HAHAH! Should be obvious I rarely play games nowadays. ^_~ I spend much more time exercising.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?

I go walking, mainly because of knee problems. I walk for 30 to 35 mins every other day (not including my warmup and cool-down portions), then shoot for some kind of toning exercises on my non-walking days. I'd love to take up another activity -- I've been raring to go biking (need to buy a bike first), learning to swim, or trying Pilates or some other class.

By the way, to all you more athletic types on this forum...I'm going to start training for a 5K run that will be held in October. I'm aiming to finish the race in about 45 minutes, but I currently walk at about 3.5 mph. Any advice you can give me?

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

Hmm...I eat a lot, I guess.  I just haven't changed my diet very much, although I have tried to cut down my portion sizes. Sometimes I'll also binge on chocolate or cookies. Then, of course, it's just *so* difficult for me to quit cold turkey on eating the skin of chicken.... *_*

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?

Mmn...$250? Bear in mind that's for a household of 3. Here in New Beige, thing're relatively cheap.

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?

Fluctuates. Oftentimes I don't eat lunch at all, and dinners vary between a small TV dinner or a Family Feast (tm).

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?

Well, my job involves physical labor outside, so I get quite a bit of exercise, if not necessarily by choice.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?

40 hours of work a week. I enjoy the paycheck, so that works by extension.

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

Staying up late. Like, 3am with regularity.

Overall, my health is OK. Heart's good, blood pressure could use some work but nothing dangerous. An extra bit around the middle but not really noticable. My arm strength could be better but my legs are powerful and I've been told my ass is tight. I'm willing to take peoples' word on that. Balding on top, but I don't really care.

So uh, yeah.

.

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?

Totalling my grocery expenditures for the last twelve months, I get $4,319.52, or $360 per month.  However, this amount is for two people.  I live in a place that's probably about middle-of-the-road for food costs in the US.

Incidentally, my expenditures for eating out over that same period total $2,236.69, or $186 a month.  Before I had a girlfriend, my grocery bill was probably around $175 a month, with restaurants adding another $25 or so to that total.  Being part of a couple is expensive.

When I spent a summer at Los Alamos in college, I had a food budget of $25 per week.  Pretty much all I ate was pasta, cereal, and milk.  I had a similar diet and food budget in grad school (although my menu also included tuna then).

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?

Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: sandwich with potato or corn chips and milk
Dinner: some kind of meat/fish, a side dish (rice, mac and cheese, beans) and milk

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?

Video games.  This isn't even really close, as my exercise habits have become non-existent.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?

Favorite?  Volleyball and tennis.  However, I haven't done either in a good long time (six years or so with volleyball, one year for tennis).  The only form of exercise I do now is walking back and forth between my apartment and work, which takes about fifteen minutes, four times a day.  Unless you count IIDX as exercise...

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

Not exercising, by a long shot.  I used to have six-hour marathon DDR sessions and barely feel winded.  Now, I'm out of breath if I play two games.  I used to run four miles three times a week.  Now, I'm lucky if I can make it four blocks.  I don't have any injuries or chronic conditions, but I just keep putting off exercising.  I'm 5'10", 156 lbs., but I have no muscle tone.

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?

Absolutely no idea what I spend but I live in Dublin, Ireland, and it is ridiculously expensive over here.

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?

I don't eat a massive amount and would eat even less if my wife didn't make fantastic dinners. I eat a small sandwich or wrap thing for lunch and then, depending on the day, a small snack type dinner like beans on toast or a proper chicken and whatever or steak. I like meat and don't eat many vegetables.

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?

Video games easily. I have never been an active person.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?

Well not being into exercise, I guess 'favourite' is the wrong word but I cycle to and from work a lot these days (about three days a week). That would mean I'm getting just over an hour's cycling on those days. Aside from walking (I don't drive many places) that about covers my exercise.

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

I guess drinking maple syrup isn't all that healthy.

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?

Being single has its benefits - mainly, your mom buys the food for you. I probably drop around $200 a month on food for myself, counting snacks, meals and the occasional grocery store run.

b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?

It always varies, from peanut butter and jelly to red basil Thai. I just try to eat something at least somewhat healthy for a meal. No more Doritos and Dew for lunch anymore.

c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?

Playing video games, definitely. I have to walk to my office as part of my commute, so there is always walking involved - at least an hour's worth each day, between errands and work. But Shadow Hearts and NSMB always takes precedence. I'm lazy.

d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?

Moving furniture, every several months.

e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?

Drinking alcohol. I've cut back recently, much to Miker's chagrin, but going to Central Square and hammering back 90 oz of beer on a Tuesday night probably isn't the best of ideas. Well, it was at the time, but not health-wise.

a)How much do you spend on food per month, and do you live in an expensive city/state/country?
500 a month
b)What's a typical meal (lunch or dinner) for you?
I'm a vegetarian so I eat tofu, stir fry, curry, Asian vegetables, rice etc. mostly. I also eat veggie subs or spring rolls.   I very rarely eat cheese or eggs and if I do eat cheese it has to be the expensive veggie kind
c)Do you spend more time exercising, or playing video games?
Video games
d)What's your favorite way to exercise, and how often do you do it?
Running, abdominal crunches mostly- I spend 1 hour 30 min or so every other day exercising
e)What do you think is the most unhealthy thing you do?
Eating candy lol or spring rolls (I can be a carb junkie)

a) I honestly don't know.  I would guess that my numbers would end up being some of the highest here, though, for a couple reasons.  First of all, Japan is just plain more expensive for both groceries and eating out than anywhere I've been in the states.  I also tend to spend a lot of money on expensive imported food from specialty stores here, so I probably spend way more than a lot of people do on food.

b) There's really not any "typical" meal for me, though when I do my own cooking (which is relatively frequent, as I enjoy it and can also control the nutritional content better) it tends as of late to be Asian food or Mediter... rr... ann... Mediterranea... Mediterann... whatever food.  I tend to make a lot of Thai food and it very frequently involves rice and a lot of vegetables and chicken.  Interesting thing about Japan: the Japanese tend to prefer fattier meat and find chicken breast to be the worst part of the chicken.  Therefore it is the cheapest.  For this reason nearly all of the meals I cook use really nice chicken breast bought very cheap (it's also sort of shocking that I can use ground white meat chicken as a substitute when a recipe calls for ground meat).

c) Video games, easily, though considering how much time is spent doing all the domestic stuff I do around the house on weekdays and how infrequently I'm around on weekends, sometimes it might become a closer ratio.  I almost always make the time to exercise on any given day, but I don't always take the time to play games.

d) I've never been the athletic sort and generally dislike playing most sports, so the exercise I do is just walking.  I take a brisk hour walk pretty much every single day.  I live up in a rural area, so it's nice being able to take these out through rice fields and along river banks without having to deal with *that* much city sound. 

e) Driving where I live is definitely the least healthy thing I do.  Ibaraki prefecture is nearly always first on the list for both accidents and fatalities in Japan.  I'm so glad that I always learned to be a very attentive and cautious driver from back home, because absolutely no one up here seems to have ANY concept of what's going on outside their own vehicles.  Every week I encounter incidents where if I hadn't been really watching out, I would've been hit by people doing incredibly stupid things on the road.  The roads back home in Chicago have never seemed safer.  :\

Anyway, I think I'm doing relatively okay with health.  I've always been a rather... well-rounded... individual, but I've been trying to shape up and have lost 10kg since Christmas not by dieting, persay, but just trying to eat healthier things and exercise more often.  I don't smoke or drink and very seldomly even drink coffee, plus I always am told everything is good when I have check-ups at the doctor.  I definitely need to keep shedding pounds, though, as I've grown tired of just carrying all this extra weight around and seeing myself look awful in pictures with Japanese people.  x_x

Addendum: I inherited a couple small (5kg) weights from my predecessor and have thought about starting to use them, but I don't really know what I'm doing.  Is there any kind of guide to that anyone knows of that tells specifically how to lift properly?  I've had pretty limited success searching online, for some reason.