Josh Cross

Alright! Completed a 4-mile trek through the Potholes State Park out here in eastern Washington State. It's basically a big series of canyons that have filled up with groundwater from the nearby Columbia River reservoir. A very pretty place if you're not looking for trees, wildlife, shade, or color. Here's a really old horrible website with some terribly bland pictures of the place. I like my new avatar picture better. I'm guessing this is worth a STA?

Bah, well, that was a big fat week of fail. I drank damn near every day, had a few sodas and two cups of coffee and barely worked out (though I did spam the hell out of push-ups throughout the week to beat Mini-Challenge #2) the only thing I came close to accomplishing was cutting the carbs down. I ate very little bread, drank very little beer (almost all wine) and kept my bagel count to 1 for the week. Just a complete regression from the progress I had made in the two weeks previous. Meh. Going to do Body Weight here in about 20 minutes then cook myself some chicken for dinner. I've already seen a few inches drop off my beer belly just in two weeks so I know this is working I just need to climb back on the wagon and staple my feet to it.

This is going to be an interesting one, as where I live has been virtually the same for 30 years now and I'm fairly certain I know every square foot of the surrounding 100 miles, lol.

Quick update for yesterday: Was an off day and I'm still recovering from camping so I spent most of the day just kind of laying around and burning through design tutorials. My diets was terrible, I ate the top parts of like 3 slices of pizza (I couldn't help it, it looked TOO good but at least I didn't eat any of the bread portion) That was literally all I ate yesterday, I'm not sure why, I just wasn't feeling very good. Had no soda, no beer, no carbs and did a few more chin-ups (not many but again, it was an off day) For my Week 2 mini-challenge I picked push-ups and I'm determined to NOT count the push-ups I do as part of my standard bodyweight routines. We'll see how that goes.

Posting with a sheen of sweat from completing 3 circuits of beginner bodyweight so this will be quick. Monday's Recap: No Soda: FAIL Totally drank two sodas today when I was eating... Less Carbs: FAIL Today I ate a bowl of Froot Loops for breakfast and had 2x Spicy McChickens and a large fry for lunch, complete failure here...ugh No Alcohol on weekdays: COMPLETE Strength: Was able to do not quite 5 chin-ups today and not quite 2 pull-ups, so we're definitely getting there So today was about a 50% success I'm going to go eat a big bowl of scrambled eggs after I stretch Tomorrow's another day to actually succeed! Goodnight!

I had the same problem with FFXI for...good lord...seven freaking years. That's all I would do, or if I was doing something else, all I would think about doing as soon as I got home. I got around it by doing two things (that are completely insane and manic and not recommended unless you're a drooling addict like myself) 1) I changed the password to a random mix of characters that I would never ever remember and following that, 2) Cancelled the card that was paying the monthly fee So now I had no way of accessing the account and no way of changing the payment method on the account either to try to hold it until I worked through the 79-menu Square Enix customer service system. It was totally scorched earth but I don't think there was any other way I could've quit. I think about my character often but there is literally no way I can ever get it back and there is especially NO WAY I'd ever start over after the years and years of time I spent developing the account (full crafting, god gear, all that crap that's apparently easy to get in WoW and ridiculous to fight your linkshell/guild for in FFXI) I don't know, it's an idea. Particularly for addictive personalities the idea of online (never-ending) games is super dangerous. I refuse to play anything online now for two reasons: a) Too easy to fall down the rabbit hole for months or even years at a time and There will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be a guy/girl/kid who has more free time than you and is thus better equipped/better spells/better guild that you will be chasing but will NEVER EVER EVER catch. Oh, I also took the PS2 that the game was on (like I said I'd been playing it since 2003 when PS2 was still the cutting edge) and literally just threw the whole console in the garbage. So now I have no account, no payment method, AND no system to even play it on if I did have those things (also no discs to install it)

Oh boy, this weekend was...something else. I went on a camping trip up to the Pinchot National Forest here in Washington State and it was a total blast. I got a lot of meditation done and worked my ass off. Between chopping down dead wood, hand-sawing it into three-foot-long pieces to fit in the fire pit, and building a lean-to to keep the rain away I'd say I did my weekends worth of strength/endurance training, lol. My back and shoulders and feet certainly seem to agree! I had zero soda over the weekend, no beer (I did drink wine as it was the weekend AND it was a camping trip, who doesn't drink on a camping trip?!) and the carb situation was actually pretty good all things considered. I ended up eating a lot of meat, bacon, sausages, hamburger meat in tacos, chicken breasts and eggs. At one point one of my friends made biscuits and gravy and on the way back to town we stopped by McDonalds where I annihilated two cheeseburgers just because I could, lol. So the carb situation, again, wasn't the absolute best but I feel like I did pretty ok and I'm quite certain I did enough sweating to work off a few extra calories. So for Week 1 Recap: 1) No Soda: Total 100% success, A+ 2) No alcohol on the weekdays: Total 100% success, A+ 3) Lower carbs, I learned ALOT this week about steps I need to take to really hammer this goal home, including as mentioned above, opening a MyFitnessPal account so I can really keep track of how this is going. I will say however, that just by virtue of cutting out the wheat beer my overall consumption of carbs has to be waaaay down so I'm going to give myself a C on this goal for Week 1, I still have plenty plenty plenty of room to improve on this one. 4) 10 chin, 5 pull, squatting weight: Well, I can now do almost 2 complete pull ups and I'm close to 5 chin-ups so that's a plus, throughout week 1 I was able to move up to doing 3 circuits of the bodyweight routine (so an extra 20 squats per on day) so I feel like I"m headed in the right direction in regards to the squatting goal, I'm going to give the Week 1 progress in this area a B. Week 1 Mini-Challenge Well, while the Adventurer mini-challenge only stated we had to do ONE of the agility tests and ONE of the mental challenges I decided to get greedy and claimed in the thread I would do THREE reps of each instead. I only ended up dong the Illinois Agility Test once, so I'm going to go ahead and be a total F there but I did get the mental challenge part done (mostly thanks to camping, meditation and crazy mountain rapids just go hand in hand) so on that end I'd give myself an A. The big lesson here was that I shouldn't get so crazy about trying to make my goals overly complicated. It's ok to just succeed at something simple and be happy with it. The next mini-challenge I'll try to back off a bit and settle on a goal that is more attainable (not that this one wasn't it was just hard to find the time to take planting pots out and set up the test) Overall Week 1 was a hell of a lesson in pragmatic steps to take to help make succeeding at all of this easier. I'll be doing another post here tonight to cover Monday's (it's an ON day!) progress toward the big 6-week goals (and maybe the next mini-challenge will up tonight, who knows). Oh and thank you guys so much for the encouraging words. It's nice to know that people are out there that give a hoot, lol. I need to be more active on the boards and get around to meeting and encouraging some more people too! Gotta pass that positivity around... Also, just by the by...go buy the new Smashing Pumpkins album Oceania...fucking amaaaaazing

Thanks guys and I''ll definitely be checking out Marksdailyapple tomorrow. Today was a crazy whirlwind between job interviews and hanging out with the nephew at the park again now I'm wiped out so this is going to be quick: I did the second (physical) part of my Week 1 mini-challenge, The Illinois Agility Test three times with times of: 16.4, 15.9, 15.5 I'll do two more stabs at that and 2 more 20-minute meditations over the next two days to finish that Food-wise it wasn't bad but it wasn't good, started the morning with a banana and a multi-vitamin, lunch was a cold cut trio on flatbread, and dinner was a decent-sized burrito from a local shop (my friends were buying!) So...the carbs continue to be a problem but I keep telling myself that my average intake has still got to be crazy down just by virtue of cutting out all the beer (by this point 3 days in, I would have had at least 18 beers, that's 2592 calories and 216 grams of carbs and that's assuming I don't drink any sort of wheat-based beer which I normally would have at least one night especially for the playoffs) Eh, it's not the best of improvements but it is an improvement nonetheless and for only three days in I'll take it, lol. Really though I'm happy because today I was able to complete the third circuit of beginning bodyweight! Heading forward I'll be doing the full 3 sets on every on day. So to recap: 1) No soda/coffee: Complete 2) No alcohol on weekdays: Complete 3) Less Carbs: Eh, I'd give today a 60% lol 4) Strength Goals: Definitely getting better, I'm already stronger from just 6 days ago so I'm feeling good about my pull up/chin up/squatting goals, we'll see!

Twenty minutes to the basketball game, I guess now is as good a time to update as any. Today was an off day so I did 35 minutes of yoga and 20 minutes of meditation. I'm a complete beginner at yoga so that isn't going well yet but the meditation felt good (incredibly good actually) so I'll be trying to mix those two in on my off days. I took a long walk with my playground ball and spent two hours at the park chasing my two year old nephew so I feel like today's been a pretty good off day. No soda or coffee so I'm 100% there. No beer (it's a Tuesday) so I'm 100% there. Food wise, I had a footlong buffalo chicken Subway sandwich on flat bread for lunch, 4 scrambled eggs with some cheese for dinner and I'm sure by the end of the night I'll have a chicken breast with crushed almonds or something (I'm out of lettuce doh!). I realize there are some carbs in there but I'm happy with cut overall, no bagels, no pizzas, etc. I'm listing all this so I can eventually work out a spreadsheet. Everything's going great so far (I know two WHOLE days in huh? haha) and I'm feeling good. Still need to work on my guild's weekly challenge (Illinois Agility Test) which hopefully I'll get to after basketball or maybe first thing in the morning.

All right! First day of the challenge complete and just about all the goals were met. I ate two 7-layer burritos for lunch, thinking "Hey, it's just a tortilla right? There can't be *that* many carbs in there!" Cut to an hour later when I'm looking it up online and sure enough, 66 grams per burrito. So lunch was sort of a wash but for dinner I ate an enormous piece of chicken with nothing but lettuce so I feel like that was a win. I finished two circuits of the bodyweight routine and totally avoided coffee/soda/alcohol so overall I'd say today was pretty good. Tomorrow for off-day I'll be doing some running and yoga I think. Now I'm going to sit back with a big glass of water and watch some lucha libre.

Oh hell yeah, a Bell nerd *AND* an Americorps volunteer! Can't wait to watch you rock this.

That sounds amazing. Particularly that field...wow. Hurry up and cure something so you can afford a NerdFitness Island or something!

Hey everyone! I'm psyched for this challenge! Get that shirt ready! Name: Josh Age: Will be turning 32 during the challenge Race: Hume Class: Adventurer Height: 5'11" Weight: 163.8 lbs Measurements: Chest (nipples/armpit): 31", Bicep: 11", Stomach (belly button totally unflexed): 37", Forearm (left mole): 9.5" Diet Goal: Cut out ALL soda/coffee. Soda has basically been my go-to since I quit smoking last November. For awhile there I was drinking like 10 sodas a day. I'm much better about it now but I would like to remove it completely. I figure +2 CONS (Originally I wanted to cut out all alcohol for six weeks but I think that goal is *way* too ambitious. Frankly I've been a near-daily drinker for 15 years, I'm not even sure how my body would react to six weeks sober. More on this later...) Diet Goal: Cut the crap out of my carb intake. This goal in general is focused on eating better but particularly I want to cut out the carbs. I'm the carbiest carb eater that ever ate. My whole life has been spent eating bread/bagels/pizza/pasta/crackers. This is going to be a two-fold goal because I'm going to have to really keep track of what I eat now. I know I will eat some bread but if I can flip my intake from like 80% carbs to even 30% I'll be very ok with it. CON+3 WIS+2 Fitness Goal: At the moment I can do three chins up and *almost* a pull-up. I can do two circuits of the beginner body weight routine. My goals here are simple: 10 chin-ups, 5 pull-ups, and squatting weight (even just the bar). I have a pull-up bar I welded together and try to tug on every single day so this seems pretty realistic. STR+3 Life Level Up: This is where things are going to get *really* tough. My long-term goal here is to keep alcohol to the weekends. I feel like this is reasonable for two reasons: as previously mentioned I've been a daily drinker for quite a long time so I'm unsure of what my bodily reaction to 42 days of no alcohol would be and; I don't feel like 6-weeks is a goal I can actually accomplish. I just know I'll fail and fail *HARD*. So I feel like rather than 1 monstrous challenge doing it this way is actually going to be six individual personal challenges lasting five days. That's way more realistic *and* it's repetitive practice which I'm fairly certain is supposed to make perfect. Even the goal as is will certainly be the hardest thing I've done since quitting smoking. CON+2 CHA+2 WIS+1 SO TO RECAP: 1) No soda/coffee 2) Less carbs 3) 10 chin-ups, 5 pull-ups, and squatting weight (even just the bar) 4) Alcohol only on the weekends (Friday counts but only if I don't drink Sunday) Whew. This is going to be crazy. I'm printing off an 8/5x11 with all my goals stated to post on my mirror and in the wall in my bedroom. As far as weight goes I don't care if I gain, as long as it's not visible in my stupid baboon belly, I'd prefer it being seen in my arms and shoulders but as long as I cut an inch or two off my gut I'll be happy (hi carbs). All the rest of the measurements are included out of a sense of duty to my nation of completist nerds. Here's the awful. In the interest of lol'ing I must admit these are the first pictures I have EVER sent from my phone that I selected "MEDIUM SIZE FILE" on...hahaha [ATTACH=CONFIG]3934[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3935[/ATTACH]

Awesome! Congratulations! A four year degree is a crazy epic accomplishment. That is a hell of an impressive level of dedication.

Dang it, you caught me right as I got done showering off a days worth of yardwork! 20~!