jonfirestar

Yep. Give yourself one less excuse to be lazy!

Hey your getting there! Remember every positive decision that you make is amother step towards your goals. It is not easy to change bad habits. If it was none of us would be here. If it helps I find the only way I can really deal with eating the right stuff is to have my whole week planned before I start. It might also be worth pre-preparing some meals so that the decision to eat veggies on a hard day is the easy and quick option. Well done with posting. Keep it up. We're rooting for you.

Admittedly I found it a little tough today and for the first time I felt like I wouldn't have enough time to do everything. Of course the time commitment outside of the gym was only 20 minutes and I did find the time to do it but normally this is where I would have blown off a few things. Survival: Continue to take my pre-prepared lunch to work instead of nipping across the road for fast food. I took a brisk walk in the afternoon. It was very hot and I burnt myself out a little. Continue to log my food. Score: 5 (+2) Training: My back was really stiff today and although it is certainly getting better I really wasn't liking the idea of lifting heavy things and maybe aggravating it. I decided to do my cardio workout today instead. Focusing on distance rather than intensity as per the mini-challenge and was able to push my max time doing the workout. I will continue to play it by ear this week a little as to whether I tackle the weights. Score: 2 (+2) Mind and Spirit: Had to force myself to actually crack open the book and read for 15 minutes. But I did do the reading and afterwards I did my meditation. Not my best day but I did put the effort in. Score: 6 (+2)

I agree but, alas, my manager beat me to the punch. Leaving me in charge of the office while he enjoys the sun. I will remember to book the week off early next year.

Yeah I do. I don't begrudge it, I've had great times, there and at other festivals myself but when all you want to do is get home from work it can be a nightmare. If the weather really is good I'll loathe to stay inside so I'll probably end up heading out. The festival just makes getting in and out of Reading practically impossible.

There are certainly worse ways you can spend your weekend! Like hiding from the Reading festival crowds, which is what I am going to be doing It looks like it might actually be a nice weekend too this week so I hope you have a good one.

Day 2: Still going strong. My back is feeling a little stiff and it has me a little worried. I had a really busy day both at work and after and ran around quite a lot but I'm feeling far more energetic these days so I'm happy with it. Survival: Made my lunch yesterday so I'm good for 3 days. Haven't been feeling the urge to eat fast food recently. I'm thankful for that. I'm also not feeling hungry all day long any more. My new 'diet' is really good and I'm very happy. All food is logged to mfp. 2 points Score: 3 (+2) Training: Nothing to record necessarily. I did get a good walk in and had to hurl a few heavy objects around. Not a work out day and my bike is still not ready to depend on to get to work but a lot of good movement today. Score: 0 Mind and Spirit: Started my morning with meditation, not the best session I've had. Sometimes it feels amazing when I do it but I'm looking at the long term benefits. 1 pointy Study. I did about 25 minutes worth of study. Working my way through the material. 1 point Score: 4 (+2)

Hey, You are doing an amazing job! Great stuff. Damn right. Don't be in a rush to put too much on your plate. Especially when it comes to working out. If you go too hard too quickly you increase the chances of it making you hurt rather than feel good. Better to do exactly what you are comfortable with and when you are comfortable with pushing yourself further go for it. Yep thats pretty much the idea Good luck with the rest of the week!

This sounds amazingly fun!

CBT nuggets do training videos and presentations for IT stuff. The one's I've used are pretty good! You start VirtualBox by turning it on, downloading an ISO for some OS and installing! It basically walks you through it all. It's an excellent tool for learning about virtualization and learning IT stuff (because if you break a vm its no big deal). Also, if you do go down the info sec route, its a great way of trying out things without getting arrested Challenge is awesome. Love the theme and the energy!

Well, maybe embarrassed but you'd need to go to a lot of effort to actually offend me. I tend to hit the 10K during the work week. I'm going to bed now so there is plenty of time for you all to beat me

Great going. Keep it up

Welcome aboard! You've gotten off to a great start. It is very difficult to break habits like buying a sweet every time you stop for petrol but I'm sure you can do it!

Embarrassed or offended? Me? Never!

Thanks! I can deal with it running on US central time.

Hey, thanks I got the request. Definitely interested in joining in!

Great stuff.

Clicked in becuse if the awesomeness that is Raven. You are doing amazing things with so much going on.

I love that song. Its infectious. Count me in. Strength: Beat PR on pushups, squats, overhead press and curls. Combat: Pullups have always been a weekness. Work on improving my ability with body rows and assisted pull-ups during each workout. Distance: I've started to cycle. Im not particularly good at it yet so it's something to work on. Add 10 minutes to my weekday stationary bike exercise and at least an additional 5k to my weekend ride. Recovery: Perform a beginner yoga routine 3 times in the week. Have fun and diggy diggy!

Not a great deal to do today for my first recorded day. Did everything I needed to including my study! Full marks. Survival: 1 Training: 0 Mind and Spirit: 2 The real challenge starts tomorrow!

Well, the morning today started off pretty crappy! I had a really hard time getting to sleep last night and even when I did fall asleep I ended up waking up super early. Long before my alarm was set at 7. To top it off I discovered that i've lost my fitbit! Sigh. I think I dropped it at work so I am hoping i'll find it Monday but I'm not holding my breath. Still I managed to turn it around and got a heap of positive stuff done. I played with my bike for a bit. Two pairs of pliers and a bottle of oil and I fixed the major issues caused by it being sat unused for 3 years. There are a couple of bits and pieces that still need doing but I took it for a test ride and I'm mostly happy with it and I know exactly what needs replacing so I can prep for that. At home I started to clear the junk out of the spare room. It's a job that I've been putting off for far, far too long and it felt good to get started with it finally. Come early afternoon I got a little worried that I'd burned myself out early and felt really cautious as I made my way to the Gym for my workout. I killed it. Haven't felt so good since... well since I can't remember when. Once I got started I worked out for a good hour and felt pretty great once done. I got pretty addicted to the gym once in my life and I really want to encourage that behaviour again! Oh and just as the icing on the cake, the scale shows 3.8lbs lower than it did last week. Given my biggest goal (and longest term) is to lose weight. I'm always happy to see that number reduce.

If you want to be the ultimate badass train like one. And who is more BA than Todd!? Nightwing is just a completely different vibe. I find Jason's dark brooding character to be much more relatable (might way something about me) and like you said he is just a more compelling character. I feel you man. Keep up the good work though!

Well it really depends Networking and Security are both deep fields in their own rights. Security permeates everything these days and it is important to know no matter what you end up doing. If you are looking to get into something like pen testing or security resarch you will absolutely need a decent understanding of networking. That being said you may already feel like you know what the network+ offers in which case it is an option to skip it and take a deeper albeit more specific course later. I don't disagree that who you know can give you an advantage but I personally have never had that. One piece of advice I can give is that, while the certs might get you into an interview. It is far more important that you can demostrate that you know your stuff. I say this as somone who is deeply involved in the hireing process. You'd be amazed at how many certified people can't answer simple technical questions. Anyway best of luck! I'm sure you'll nail it!

Thanks! This is awesome I think I might need to borrow this idea. I love to walk and, whilst my job doesnt keep me on my feet much, I get a decent number of miles in each day. Its a great way of encouraging that extra mile. I mean who hasn't fantasized about being part of the Fellowship! Best of luck with your progress! I hate to think about how many frogs it takes to make 20lbs of of frogs legs lol!

I’m not scoring my goals yet but given the list is more or less a formalization of my current strategies with more concrete goals I’ll go ahead and give an update. For the first time since I started I really had trouble starting my workout but I did start and that was good. I’m beginning to really feel the benefits of the exercise though. I’m already able to do things that I wouldn’t have believed possible. Especially with my cardio training. I did the workout I set out to do. 38 minutes on the bike non stop. On a moderately hard program. It got a little uncomfortable towards the end but I persevered to make it to the end of the program. Food is going pretty well too. I’m accomplishing my goal of bringing my own lunch to work. Roughly translated as - do not eat fried chicken for lunch. I still like to get out of the office though and that translates into a nice walk around the lake. Since I’ve been actively working out it’s turned into a gentle stroll. It's about 2.5 miles and I can walk it in the 45 minutes or so I give myself without stressing. I’ve been keeping up with my food diary and been hitting my targets there so all is good. I’ve hit on some food combos that really keep me from being hungry during the day so I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing right now. We had a mass of food in the office yesterday. Cake, pecan slices, brownies, donuts, cookies and chocolate wafers. I hate to say it it isn’t unusual huge amounts of sweets to be in the office because one of our engineers runs a soup kitchen and we often get the surplus from that. However I’m happy to say that not only did I not touch a damned thing. I also didn’t care. Previously I would have been obsessing over it being there. Especially if I was denying myself. The victory for me was not that I resisted but that no will power was required. Other than that I’m keeping up with my meditation. 7 days in a row now yay. I'm really happy with where I am right now. Like I'm goddamn Batman