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This is a place holder. I'll come back with more later, but the basics are I was wrung out at the end of the last challenge, mentally, emotionally, and physically. I realized I've taken physical rest as needed but not mental. I've been pushing for a long time. So this time I don't care. I'm not reaching for anything. I'm coasting by design. I'll spend some time focusing on finding metal balance. I'm here!

So I've been sticking with cardio as my main form of exercise because of an injury and I've noticed 2 things. I feel like I really need to do something with my hands while riding a stationary bike, besides messing with my MP3 player. Should I buy some weights to use while riding? I don't ride very fast or hard so it could be doable I suppose. Or is multitasking like that asking for trouble? Assuming it even works, I've heard it does and doesn't. #2 How do you guys fight the urge to nap after working out? I've noticed every time that I'm done, I feel incredibly sleepy.

Clearly I am behind the Ranger curve as there are so many fine challenges already up. I am almost clear of the holiday (I just have to get through tonight and tomorrow) which is good because my level of holiday fatigue is currently summed up here: I toyed with many themes but I failed to make any of them coherent so it's just a list of objectives this time around. Stay tuned for cat gifs and maybe 80's b-boy dancing if you're lucky. Do you feel lucky? Year of Living Trippily: I need to get a mammogram (and probably a physical, too), and I want to start an instagram for my street art. I also want to keep working on a new side hustle because I need to make more money. Nutrition Objective: make sure I drink a protein shake or eat a pre-planned snack after workouts, as I tend to binge-eat later if I don't. Fitness Objective: add unweighted OH squats back into workout routine (i.e. using a broomstick), and also step-ups (unweighted or light weight). I want to see if my knee can take the squatting and re-train that movement, and OH squat has a little more bang for the buck than just a bodyweight squat because you have to stabilize your upper body. Financial Objective: No-spend January. Not spending any money except for groceries and gas, so that I can reach a savings goal. Finding of free activities is encouraged. I will track my vitals and post them once weekly: blood sugar, blood pressure, weight, waist measurement I will avoid news sites during the day because they make me want to set things on fire I will stop watching the "Baba Yaga" sequence of John Wick on my phone and drooling over Keanu Reeves and his sledgehammer* Simple enough, really. Below is my progress on The Year Of Living Trippily thus far. I have to start thinking about the Crossfit Open since it starts end of February and one of the YOLT goals is to enter (I've always wanted to but never had the nerve, which is ridiculous). I'll be in the Master's 45-49 division. So my workout programming will change slightly this go-round to work towards that. I also want to train my back more without working my traps, as they're getting weirdly big again. * I will not do this. Who are we kidding here.

So, I've been coming here for almost ten years. In that time, I've done more than a dozen challenges with the Monks, a few with the Adventurers, one or two with the Warriors, an Assassin run or two, a Ranger run or two... but always coming back to the Monks, due to my interest in MMA, boxing, kickboxing, and all sorts of combat sports. And after ten years, I'm in pretty much the worst shape of my life, and the least parts of me that I never even considered have started breaking down. In no particular order: My beard is more white than black now The old hairline has been thinning slightly for a couple years, but it's now starting to retreat Ear and nose hair jokes are no longer funny, but a sobering assessment of documented reality Dry skin has stopped being periodic and easily treated and is now just my life I can GAIN weight faster than ever before My joints below the waist don't start properly working until I've already been at work for an hour My carpal tunnel wrist brace doesn't seem to be working anymore My left elbow just kinda hurts all the time What the hell seems to be growing next to most of my fingernails? I can't handle spicy food and hot sauce the way I used to, which is perhaps the saddest of all I've been eating my problems lately, and there's a few of them. I stopped going to MMA last summer because I just wanted to have SOME time during the week where I had some time to myself. I stopped going to the gym around the same time because my gym partner (my son) absolutely would not wake up in time to go, and if he didn't go I didn't have motivation. I stopped going jogging, because my dog becomes EXTREMELY upset if I accelerate to anything faster than a walk (she's a husky / German shepherd, but has some deranged urge to try and herd me if it looks like I'm escaping). I set up my weights at home in the garage when it was OK to park the van outside, and all of my weights immediately became covered in home renovation equipment and power tools (thanks, sweetie). I set up my punching bag in the basement once it became too cold to keep it in the garage, but the only time I can use it my daughter is asleep about ten feet away, and it wakes her up. I know this is basically a laundry list of lame BS excuses. I'm owning that. But I just turned 37, and it seems like I've aged more in the last six months than I have in the six years previous. Or more. Without any goals, I don't have any motivation to keep on top of my exercise or diets, and it can't just be the goal of "Weigh X by Y date". My previous goals were all major events. Amateur boxing events, kickboxing events, the Tiger Balm Internationals, road run events, things like that. I missed every road run this year, and I haven't felt remotely capable to actually fight again (and that was BEFORE I stopped training). My first few fights gave me an inflated sense of my abilities, and my last four kind of drove home that I'm clearly not at the level I would like to imagine. I think the final straw this week was my wife's friends all posting "before and after" collages of their significant others, mostly on Facebook, chronicling their weight loss and fitness and how hot they are now. My wife posted two identical and unflattering pictures of me as MY "before and after". An apparently random but related aside: my son has made the decision this week that he wants to try out for football at his school in April. Now, my son is... not sporty. He has (or at least had) a really good excuse for this: idiopathic ANA-neg rheumatoid juvenile arthritis. His legs have never really 'worked right'. He is also a 15 year old who is six feet tall and a solid one-ninety. He is not a runner, he's barely even a sprinter, but he's big and he WANTS to do sports, there's just so few that play to his strengths... but football has some great spots for him, and the football coach and some students have told him that he can pack on a lot of muscle between now and April. Therefore, I'm setting up the weights again, SOMEWHERE, so he can try and build muscle at home, since he acknowledges that there's no way he can wake up in time to go to the gym in the mornings. He barely makes it to the bus in the morning to go to school. He needs sleep... but when he's awake, I want to support him in this. So, there's a lot of stuff happening around me right now. This isn't the right time for me to start to let my health slide. This is around the time where it starts being irreversible. I've managed to avoid any major health problems throughout my life, and my family history is replete with men living to their 80's and 90's. Then again, they were all police, soldiers and farmers, and tended to actually take care of themselves. I sit for ten hours a day for work, then try to sit at home so I can write, and occasionally walk/drag my dog through the snow. I wake up early every morning because there's stuff that needs to be done, but available downtime tends to go towards writing, or more recently, just doodling around on my Minecraft server. If I'm going to be honest with myself, I want to be healthy FOR ME, but I want to look good purely to change how other people see me. My wife laughs anytime I say anything about fighting again, or doing anything interestingly physical. My daughters poke my stomach and laugh and run away. The rest of my MMA gym keeps winning buckets of medals at every west coast competition they go to, but they ask when I'll be back just because they need a heavyweight they can train 'against' for practice (IE, they want a punching bag that moves around). The people in my office make far more food-related jokes and comments to me than they do with anyone else. I've made the commitment (and PRE-PAID) to return to my MMA gym in January. My wife says that she wants to go to the gym at the university, where she has a free membership, but she'll only go if I go with her, so in January we'll be starting that too. She wants to go a few times in December while it's still not very busy, since in December admission is just one can of food for me, and she's still free, so she can try everything out. Food is still going to be the biggest problem, and I am currently checking out intermittent fasting which is something that I think will allow me to eat the things that I CRAVE, but not in enough quantities to pose problems. I am going to figure out some smaller goals, and lay out some benchmarks to help me get there. Small things. A pull-up. A hand-stand. Small, physical things. I just wanted to get this all down here, so I can come back and read all about my failures, and remember why I'm doing this.

I'm fairly certain that I ended up here at this respawn point, because I stumbled into a PVP area and was shanked in the back by an Imperial Operative. So while I sit here and let the medical droid tend to my wounds, let me consider how I got in this mess in the first place. I think it's important to acknowledge what went wrong without fear of being told you're just making excuses or complaining. The fact is, the situation is what it is and now that we're here it's time to dust off and get ready to move forward. So let's start where it all started getting derailed... In June I was doing well. In all honesty, I had gotten in a good routine, making sure to stop at the gym on the half-way point on my daily drive home from work. And after every workout I was logging it via IG to keep myself accountable. I was doing well, even with the impending move on the horizon. Once July hit, we had to hunker down and finish packing without knowing where we were going to go before August. In truth, the housing market is tough right now for renters. Prices are super high and places are getting snatched up in the blink of an eye. A huge truckload of stress came slamming down on me and my family (and extended family) during this time. My wife and I, by the grace of God, managed to find a place through a friend, and began moving. The majority of the move was my wife and my parents moving over the course of the course of the last two weeks of July. In addition my wife and I ended up with strep throat during this time. We eventually got everything moved and no one got injured during the process. Now, aside from the expected un-boxing, things were looking good. It took us about two weeks to recover from the sickness. My drive to work also shifted and lengthened by about 15-30 min each way, since we moved to a different city. That also put the gym out of the way rather than en route. Since the move I've been out of sorts and been struggling to get into a routine again. In short, it's been hard. Now, I feel like I'm back to my old higher weight again (can't find our scales amidst the myriad of boxes left), but regardless what my weight IS, I certainly feel it. It's time to dig my heels in and stop losing ground. I'm certainly not getting any younger. (Had a birthday in August, yay!) TL;DR 1. Was doing good, logging workouts via IG. 2. Stress of finding a place and moving hit. 3. Moved to a new city further away from work. 4. Got sick and recovered. 5. Had a Birthday. 6. Lost old routine. 7. Need to get back on track. I haven't decided how I'm going to go about really getting back on track yet. I just know that I need to take that first step mentally, and this is it. Funny how it seems when you fall off the wagon, you forget all the things you got situated and settled in with in the past run. I do know that I really want to avoid counting calories/carbs if I can help it, but that won't be a deal breaker if I have to do some sort of number crunching along the way. Anyway, it's good to be back...

This morning was a huge milestone for me and I wanted to brag! I didn't make it to sleep until about 3am last night (well, this morning I suppose); probably ate something bad and my body voicing its objections :-P. My normal routine calls for me to get up at 5:30 to hit the gym before my daily grind. The OLD me would have readily and justifiably said "nuts to that, we're sleeping in!" But not any more! Today was the first day I purposefully decided to kill that thought and get up and do it anyway. End result: one of my best and most personally record-setting days ever! Feeling tired, yes, but also pretty much like king of my own little world right now :-)

Hello all. Old, overweight, super-nerd here. (6' 0", 225 lbs., 58 year old programmer, gamer). I can't believe someone actually created a fitness forum specifically for moi. So starting today I am back at trying to strip off 40 lbs., that I don't honestly need. Though I did spend a lot of effort collecting it. hmmmm..... When motivated I tend to do a good job of moderating the food in-take. I don't "diet" per se, just watch the extra junk food, and eat better. What I need is a better work out routine. I live a long way from a gym. Like a 40 minute round trip to the closest one. I've got a nice Weider free weight system, but am kind of scared to use it without a spotter close. And I don't have a lot of time. My current job has me commuting 4+ hours a day. 9 hour work day, 7-8 hours sleep, 4 hours commute and there just isn't much time left. My normal day starts around 4:30. I typically jump on the keyboard for a couple of hours before getting ready for work. That's the time that's going to get sacrificed. I'll be lucky if i can carve out 30-45 minutes, but that's the goal. I do get a chance to walk a couple of miles around the office park most days as well. I'm leaning toward junking the thing and just going with a body weight work out. (Googling "body weight workouts" is how I stumbled on this great place.) I don't really have much in the way of questions. Just wanted to say hi, and that I could use some help later to stay motivated. Thanks, Steve

Hi everybody, this is my first 6-week challenge and one of my goals is to strength train three times a week. I've been pretty proud of myself since I really started to strength train two weeks ago. I've even moved up from 10-15 lb weights! I'm currently doing the Dumbbell Division workout on the NF Academy. The last couple days though have been hard. This is how I felt like after my last workout: Today's workout consisted of deadlifts (3×8), Push Press (3×8), Lunge (3×20) (10 per leg), Rows (Since I can't do pull-ups yet), and Hanging Knee Tuck (3×10), All with 15lb weights, except for the hanging knee tuck. The first set through I feel fine, the second set I feel tired, and I am pretty exhausted by the third set. Also, since I'm so short (4'11") I have to climb up the machine to reach the pull up bar where I'm two feet off the ground, then jump down afterwards, so the whole ordeal requires extra effort for me. So, my main question is am I supposed to be so tired when I get to that third set? Or should I use less weights? Should I be feeling like I need to take a nap afterwards? Will this all pass when I get stronger (and if so, when??)? And last, but most importantly, can a hobbit become a warrior?? Any help is greatly appreciated!

In the words of Obama, I want change. All my life I've been waaaaayy overweight, but now it's time to take a stand. I'm tired of feeling clumsy because of my bodyweight (im 15 and 20kgs over) and I'm tired of finding myself regretting eating a bag of crisps. So, after finding nerd fitness, I've decide that 2014 will be the year that I achieve my (hopefully easy to achieve) goals. But as I've found from numerous amount of times in the past, I can't do this alone, and i am weak in the face of cake and pizza. So I've joined the forums for help and support from local rebels. 2014 should be a good one. (I'm Jay by the way)

Hey guys, So this is my very first post here. I've been looking at this website on and off for quite a while, as I've gone down various weightloss ventures in the past. I've yoyo-d a lot with my weight, doing all different things from calorie counting, to GF SF DF, the failsafe diet, and have gained it all back due to emotional stressors/binge eating problems, and probably the biggest one - medications I'm finally on the right track with the binge eating, I feel like I have it under control and haven't binged in a while. I've come around to embracing the paleo way of life, and it's my second day eating 100% paleo, but I've been incorporating these changes slowly for a while. A large part of my weight gain has been the insatiable hunger I experience on two different drugs I'm on for various reasons - prednisone and seroquel. I am weaning completely off the prednisone but have been on as high as 25mg/day, and have halved my seroquel dose from 200mg to 100mg/day. All the reading I've done about paleo seems to suggest that it isn't necessary to count calories, but with the increased hunger from these drugs, I'm just not sure how much to trust my body. I've put on 16 kilos in the last six months due to the drugs and binge eating. I'm a chronic calorie-counter, and use myfitnesspal to check all of my macros and total calories. I'm 200lbs, (my heaviest ever), 20 years old, and 171cm tall. I'm currently netting around 1600 calories a day tracked through myfitnesspal, but finding myself very hungry even with an increased intake of fat and protein (my ratios are about 40% fat, 40% protein, 20% or less carbs). I'm also very tired, and wondering if anyone else has experienced this when taking the plunge to full paleo. Finally, although I am undertaking this diet and lifestyle change to become healthier, and look after my body and myself better, weightloss is still a large concern for me. Even when I was a healthier weight, I've always been at the heavy end of the scales for my size and my goal weight is around 140lbs. I'm looking for advice on the calorie intake I'm currently at and whether this will be enough to see a shift in my weight, if I'm eating too much or too little, and if the calories are even that important. Currently for exercise I am just walking, at least 30 mins a day. I used to run a lot and have got the rebel running guide which is excellent, and something I want to start, but for now I'm just concentrating on cleaning up my diet and losing a bit of weight, and getting out each day for a walk. I have been diagnosed with OCPD so doing things slowly and one at a time and giving myself lenience and flexibility is incredibly difficult (it also makes not weighing myself three times a day difficult and contributes to the obsessive calorie counting), but something I am aiming to do, to make this a permanent shift and not one of the many weightloss fads I've done. Thanks in advance guys, Verit