Ravery

Hey, that sounds great. Let me know what time you'll be free! I have someone else on the Facebook forum who said that they're free on Saturday too.

Hey, it sounds like this week was kind of short notice. Some folks on facebook seem to be more free next week. Which day would you guys prefer, Friday the 20th or Saturday 21st?

Hey guys, anyone want to get dinner this weekend? I've been in Boston for about three months now, meeting people here and there, but I haven't really clicked with anyone yet. I figured I'd have more luck with NF folks. So here's my 20-seconds of courage, or however long it takes to type this. We can have Korean food (cause I've been craving soft tofu stew and short ribs) at this restaurant called Soeul in downtown on either Friday or Saturday after 4 p.m. (Address: 156 Cambridge Street, Boston) Here's a link to the menu: http://seoulfoodboston.com/ We can talk about our fitness journeys, successes and struggles we've been having, or we can simply hang out and get to know each other. Let me know if anyone's up for it, when you're free, or if there's another (better?) restaurant you think we should check out. If more people are free next weekend, we could figure out another event too. I just thought it would be fun to do something spontaneous this week. Posted this on the facebook page too, in case there's more activity going on there.

Before my next job starts in April, I am unfortunately free ANY day. I'm willing to flexible around other people schedule, but since most people work, it will probably be better if we do it on a weekend? Either this weekend 14th-16th (a bit too soon?) or 21st-23rd. If we're going to wander, maybe we can find a paleo friendly restaurant.

I'm in North Jersey next to New York City. Anyone available on March 22nd for rockclimbing, hiking, or whatever else we can do in North Jersey? I'm doing this on a whim, so suggestions for alternative dates and activities are welcome!

Great, I'm in the NY/NJ area with nothing to do at home. It is now March 12th, 2 p.m., and I just happened upon this thread. Whoops, guess I won't make it to the one at Hunter College. I'll be around until the end of March (leaving on the 29th/28th?). I'm up for rock climbing, parkour, wandering around the city or whatever. I'd really like to meet new people to do stuff with while I'm home. I've been meaning to go to other events on meetup.com, but the prospect of mingling with a whole group of people makes me put it off. I feel like I know the NF community already, so that's less intimidating!

I'm late to the party, but count me in. I'll get around to the personal records soon. I've been dying to practice parkour, but between traveling and interning and feeling self-conscious around people, I haven't gotten the chance to practice much. I did attend two beginner classes at a parkour gym in NYC, and an afternoon of newbie training in Taipei. I've also watched a few tutorials and stuff. I think this would be a good motivation to actually start practicing the moves regularly.

Hi all (A week late, but still), So I'm currently doing a three month internship in central China working with a team on a research project on the cooperative breeding behavior of black-throated and long-tailed tits. It sounds pretty cool, but to be honest I was a little disappointed after arriving. The living conditions are kind of minimal. No indoor heating (which will be more manageable as spring arrives). Outdoor doorless toilets (I don't have any against outhouses, but I can't get over the fact that they don't have doors. Just concrete dividers like with men's urinals, except for females too!) And terrible MSG & oil-laden food, which I've been struggling with since I got here. I thought I was going to be tromping around a gorgeous National Park, but turns out that the reserve is actually just out in some regular looking mountains next to some worn down villages with garbage filled streams. At least there are still plenty of birds here like they said, and I've been learning stuff about nest searching and monitoring. But I've been kind of letting myself slack in terms of things I wanted to accomplish during my downtime here. I've been writing e-mails, journal entries, fiction, and a bit of translation practice, but on and off and without much direction. I let myself skip workouts because the food was bad and I felt like I didn't have enough energy. I was actually sick for two days because I wasn't eating enough and just looking at the food here made me nauseous. I got better after snacking on some real food (apples, tomatoes, eggs, peanuts, chestnuts etc.) and using hot water to dilute the MSG out of the dishes. Hopefully I won't get sick again. I told myself I was going to get things done here. I've been here for about two weeks, so I've had enough time to settle down. It's time to get things going! Stats: Height: 5'1 Weight: Between 108-118 (Lost some weight since I got here. Don't have a scale.) Goal 1 Fitness: Follow the body weight workout from the Rebel Strength Guide. I've also been doing 7-9 45second steep hill runs, but stopped after I got sick. I don't know if I should incorporate it back into my workout, since I'm probably still running a calorie deficit due to not eating as much as I should and walking around all day. I don't want to jump into anything too intense and then get sick again from insufficient calories. Advice? I still want to cut down my body fat percentage. Ideally, I would try the bulking up diet and do more intense strength training, but that's probably not possible because of the limited food options here. Goal 2 Fitness: Follow the 28-Day Handstand program on Eat.Move.Improve. Started doing it for about a week or so, and then stopped. My goal for the end of the challenge is to at least be able to kick up against the wall and try balancing from there. I can kick up to a handstand with a spotter holding me up, but when I'm on my own I'm too scared to kick up all the way for fear of collapsing against the wall or falling sideways (happened once). Goal 3 Life: Write 500 words of fiction every day. Just write. Have fun. Don't worry about the quality. In addition to being a biologist, I also want to be a novelist. But after writing 100 pages for my senior thesis and then graduating, I haven't been able to keep up a regular writing schedule. I keep second guessing myself and then stopping when the writing doesn't turn out the way I want. I'm going to up the word count once I've been doing 500 per day for two weeks straight. If work gets too hectic (having to watch bird videos and do data entry in the evening), then I can cut down my word count for the day. Goal 4 Life: (Sorry, doing two life goals). Find a job for the summer/fall. I've been searching the job boards regularly, bookmarking the positions that I could apply to, and then letting them sit there! I've only sent out two cover letters so far. If I see something I may qualify for, then write a cover letter, and send out the application within 1-3 days. No procrastinating!

I am also Taiwanese, and most well-cooked Chinese food is good, but this is nothing like it! The main thing that's turning my stomach is how oversalted the dishes are. I can't taste the original flavor of the food. Also, I feel like it would be rude to the staff here to ask my food to be cooked a specific way. The thing about people getting strong on prison food is comforting though. I will try hard not to be lazy like I have in the past few days. I'm also trying not to complain to the people here about what they can provide, but I needed an outlet, haha.

So as I've posted in my newbie introduction, I'm now doing a three-month internship in China. Little did I know how limited the food options are here. A basic meal consists mostly of white rice and some vegetables (not sure what they are, but they're oily and oversalted), sometimes tofu, one or two pieces of fatty meat, shredded carrots or sprouts. I have been trying to get more of my nutrition from boiled eggs, cartons of raw milk, and apples, but I'm not sure how long this food will last since we don't get a chance to go to town that often. And I'll feel a bit bad if I eat too much of this food, since it's supposed to be shared among the research team. Now I'm still trying to make some fitness progress while I'm here (getting stronger in general, building more endurance and explosive power), but I'm really worried about what the lack of nutritional variety will do to my body. If I continue working out consistently, do you think I can at least maintain my current muscle mass? Any suggestions on what I can do to make this situation better? EDIT: I feel like I might running on a calorie deficit, because sometimes I get hungry before the next meal.

Hi all, So here's my story. Last winter, my blood test results came back, and at age 21, I had high cholesterol and four other abnormalities. I was had always been a big meat, dairy, and egg eater. I often overate and was pretty much sedentary except for the occasional hike and swim. My mom had also developed this inflammatory disease that bloated her legs and made any slight movement painful. Now she has to take steroid medication to keep it under control. I probably have a higher risk of developing this condition when I get older since my grandmother and aunt had it too in their mid-fourties/fifties. So I returned to school determined to live a more healthy lifestyle. I cut back on red meat, started trimming the fat off my chicken, and ate egg whites only. I didn't know much about how to work out efficiently, but I went to the gym everyday and added strength training to my 40 minutes of medium-intensity cardio. My initial goal was to lower my cholesterol, so I was pretty surprised when I found that there was less to grab around my abdomen. Now, standing at five foot nothing and weighing around 115-120 lbs at the time, I was not overweight, but had considered myself incredibly unathletic because I was always one of the worst in gym class. So, this gradual change gave me more confidence. My muscles felt more firm, and I could run longer distances without running out of breath. I became more interested in general fitness and building physical strength. I did more research on diet and exercise and tweaked things here and there, though I still struggled with cravings and overeating and skipping half a month of working out due to the stress of staying on top of my work. I came home for the summer and did another blood test. My overall cholesterol had gone down to normal, though my LDL was still high (but it had decreased by 25%). I started doing P90X because I had no access to a gym and had no idea how to design a workout that covered all muscle groups. I went to visit my dad in Poland for a month and a half, and continued the program at his apartment, but had to skip a few weeks here and there when we went travelling. I finished P90X after I returned to school in the fall. Now, I know that these popular workout programs aren't the exactly best, but ir worked for me at the time, and I was probably the fittest I had been in my entire life. Though appearance wise, I still hadn't reached the goal that I wanted. I started doing Insanity, but being back at the school dining hall where food was always abundant, I still had problems with overeating. Halfway through the term, I made the shameful decision to stop going to the gym entirely because I was juggling two senior theses. My diet went to shit. I gained some weight back and lost some of the strength and cardio endurance that I had been working towards. After graduating in December, it took me about half a month to start working out regularly again. It's easier for me to eat healthy at home when there aren't so many temptations, though sometimes I have my slipups, like the time I finished a 1.5 pound bag of pine nuts in three days, most of it during late night hours. I've been on track with Insanity since the start of 2013. But I'm kind of worried about sustaining a workout habit, since I'll be living in a national park in central China (~3 months) for an internship assisting a research project on bird breeding behavior and biology. I'll be living closely with the research team, working irregular hours, and eating whatever food the research station provides. For a while, I'd given up on the notion of eating healthy and staying fit while I'm there, but I recently came across Steve's article on Staying in Shape While Travelling, and it's really inspired me to stick to my goals. I've made the decision to abandon video workous since they're not tailored to my needs, and with the promise of getting you the best results fast, I think they either take up too much time or don't give you enough recovery time in between, and a myriad of other problems. I want to work only with my body weight, build on strength and agility, specifically getting better at explosive and plyometric moves (secretly hoping to at least do some basic parkour one day). My mom and I have always been very bad at anything that involves jumping, so I'm hoping that training extra hard will overcome my genetics. My main concerns are 1.) After a long day of working, I won't have the energy/motivation to workout 2.) People giving me weird looks while I attempt not even complete push-ups and pull-ups outdoors 3.) Having very little choice in what I eat. Aside from having to eat rice at every meal (I did that for the first 18 years of my life), I'm not sure what else they're going to feed me at the research station. At least currently, my motivation is still going strong. Today will be my first workout without Insanity. I'm going to be doing a 45-minute full body routine. Starting right about now.