Spring in Dunedin has arrived. It is the time of the year to drag our pasty bodies and damaged livers back from the brink of collapse and get them ready for the joys of the summer season. With Unipol restricted and many sports winding up, it can be a struggle to find a routine in these uncertain times. But Critic is here to help.
Follow these handy tips for nutrition and exercise and you’ll be well on your way to getting that Dunedin summer body whipped into shape. What shape? That’s not for us to say.
Nutrition
A key aspect of getting absolutely shredded for summer is becoming incredibly unhealthy. Here are some ways to put both your mental and physical health at risk.
Sketchy BYOs
By exclusively attending BYO restaurants that have low health ratings, you can ensure that the $20 butter chicken and naan you bought ends up splattered on your toilet bowl at 8am the next morning. These effects can further be enhanced by going for the spiciest dish on offer. The subsequent burning of your arsehole is a minor price to pay for a godlike body.
Drink lots of water
You should be pounding upwards of 5% of your bodyweight in water per day. The key here is to push yourself to the limits of hyponatremia without your body totally shutting down. Drink the water, feel the water, become the water. Warning signs of excessive hydration include nausea, headaches, and confusion, so once you start to develop those symptoms you know you’re on the right track.
Eat like a caveperson
With the development of agriculture and civilization in general, we gained many vices, but worst of all we discovered plentiful carbohydrates to sustain us and help us develop further as humans. The human figure has never been the same since. By reverting to our prehistoric years with a diet of uncooked meat and leaves, you can not only gain an interesting spark of savagery but you can also trick your body into eating itself to keep your brain from totally shutting down.
Do questionable drugs
While getting shitfaced at least twice every week is a bunch of fun, the downside is that every can you consume is one extra rep that you have to do at the gym. If you want gains you have to put down the drinks. But sobriety is not really an option if you want to avoid a mental breakdown, so there’s only one viable alternative, drugs. Now you don’t have to be picky, basically anything that is not alcohol will be fine. Anytime you are thinking of buying a box, just scrounge up as many questionable substances as you can instead.
Employ revolutionary medical technology
Our very own University of Otago has made leaps and bounds in the area of dietary science in recent years by employing the deceptively simple logic of if you can’t open your mouth, it’s really hard to eat things. By inserting a magnetic apparatus around your teeth, this technology instantly limits your ability to eat anything other than liquids and forces you to speak like you are wearing the mother of all braces. Modern medical science is a marvel.
Exercise
The first thing people think about when they hear the word cardio is likely pain. But pain is temporary, and your summer body is going to last until at least December 24 — you can push through it!
Become a nudist
Wearing no clothes in public is certainly frowned upon, it may even be a crime, but wearing no clothes around your flat is totally fine. The consistent chill that you experience will keep your body running 24/7. The worst case scenario is you drive all your flatmates away because they can’t handle you being free, the best case scenario is they join you, and nothing brings you tighter with your mates than huddling for survival every night.
Use your local steep hills
Baldwin Street is pretty steep, and if you immediately run up it after doing no exercise for a while, you will likely collapse from a heart attack. But near death experiences often lead to lifestyle changes so why not give it a go? The terrifying feeling of vertigo as you uncontrollably descend will get that adrenaline pumping through your veins and push your body to survival mode.
Swimming fully clothed
Most so-called “professional” swimmers will tell you that you need to wear slim-fitting lycra to properly swim. But this is nonsense. By swimming fully clothed you add to the resistance of normal swimming. It will get you in shape in no time. If you are truly after the gains you can even swim reps in a dressing gown or oodie.
Carry textbooks
Textbooks are generally useless and unnecessary scams that your lecturers force you to buy because they wrote them themselves. But they have one thing going for them: they are heavy as fuck. By carrying around all your textbooks in your bag, all the time you can greatly improve your endurance and potentially give yourself lifelong back problems which usually come with bonus opiate prescriptions. It’s a win-win.
Take chilly showers
Exercising is not the only way to burn that fat. By subjecting yourself to environmental extremes you can get your desired gains without doing anything except for suffering. Although you probably already do this because your flatmates take 30 minute showers leaving no hot water at your flat, taking cold showers is a great way to get your body to start eating into those unwanted fat reserves. For extra effect, jump into literally any body of water in Dunedin and just stay there until you feel like you are about to die from hypothermia. The stress on your body will force it to work out just to keep you alive.