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The liturgical calendar marks this as the season of Lent, my favorite season of the Church year, one marked by dedication and gratitude. Through mindful application of ourselves and our spirit, the Way opens before us, as if lit by small lights that bolster us in our efforts. This is the Way. Last challenge I took stock of where I am, of what worked and what didn’t. This round I’m applying a bit of a honing blade, sloughing off that which doesn’t serve me and narrowing my focus and efforts onto what does. Also last challenge I resurrected the old-school skills tree, marking my progress in somewhat less-than-orthodox ways, but meaningful ones nonetheless. I’m interested to see what comes of this next segment, and would like to level up a point in each. Sometimes the Universe gives me the opportunity to level up a second point as well. Constitution: This is wellness, and includes Acupuncture, gym time, good food, and plenty of water and sleep. It also includes the apartment work that I’ve been doing, because being at home while I’m at home is a comfort and an anchor. Strength: Go to work, each day and every day. I know this seems simple. It’s not as easy as it sounds, physically, and I’m seven months into a six-week contract. Being a contractor has a lot of uncertainty with it, so part of my job is also cultivating and nurturing having my job. (See Dexterity) Additionally, my doctor as given me a PT regimen beyond the routine walking. I’ll be doing exercises with bands in the hopes that additional physical strength will help relieve some of the tension and inflammation that is everywhere all the time. Dexterity: Lots of emotional balance going on between the job and the relationship with my daughter. It feels like significant moments are on the horizon for each. Any movement stat also has to take into consideration transportation, which is once again in the Challenge column. I’m hoping to get more fluent with public transit this round. For everything else, there is Uber. Wisdom: Speaking of balance, there’s also perspective. This is the “choose well” portion of keeping my center and being able to choose well during the chaos. It’s also about lightening my debt load. I’d loaded up some debts with scary interest rates over the last couple years, and I’m grateful I was able to leverage my way out of a bad situation, and now it’s time to put that behind me as swiftly and neatly as possible, without wrecking anything else. Possible bonuses to other stats as well. Intelligence: The class wraps up this challenge, and I’m glad I’m taking an accelerated course. Also, there’s a fair amount of work that gets to be done for the dissertation. Before I take on the next project, there’s a lingering, overdue paper that I really want to finish up and move on from, probably next challenge, but definite bonus sparkles if I get it done this round. Charisma: Alliances and support. We aren’t meant to be on this path alone. Thanks for being here.

Hello! So this is totally insignificant I'm sure...but for some reason I'm harping on it. I've noticed some people have character stats in their signatures and I think that is SUPER cool. How did you all determine it? Was it from a NF article I missed or did you all just decide to start at a number and randomly give yourselves' stats when you feel like you deserve it? I gotta know.

Noob question here. I've noticed lots of posts with stats in signatures: STR: | DEX: | STA: | CON: | WIS: | CHA: I think this would be fun. How is everyone calculating their stats? Even if not everyone is using the same method, I wouldn't mind hearing what several people are doing. Thanks!

Hello All, Im Tkbird45. Im just recently graduated from High School. Im 18, and im ready to finally shed those baby pounds so im below the Freshman 15 for college. Anyway. Im Male From California, San Diego Im 6'2" I am a bit chubby in the midsection and thighs and would concider my "race" to be either Human or Half-Giant. Weigh 236 lbs as of today. I go to the gym once a day. Im currently transitioning into the Paleo diet. And i take protein powder and creatine. My ultimate goal is lose my gut and go down to 175 lbs, i weighed about that much about 2 years ago and was in much better condition health wise and would really like to get back to that. Similarly i would like gain muscle, so that i can visibly see it, my goal is not to look like a body builder but to appear fit and healthy.

ok, so i'm sure we've all wanted pokemon to become real at some point in our childhoods. how we all have tried to capture a fly to have it being or pokemon, or a spider just for the sake of it. To be honest, I still wish for pokemon to become real one day. just think about how fun it would be to go on a proper adventure with your friends, your pokemon and as well as getting in shape sanctimoniously? Thinking of this, i got an idea. Why can't we make it real? not like we "tried" to back in elementary school, but by making an app, that would let us catch, train and battle our pokemon with others? We could use quite a lot of code and visual design from the original pokemon games, as well as developing it ourselves. IRL, this means that once a year we would go out for a certain period of time with our pokemon and friends, and we would challenge each other, along hiking trials, as we travel from town to town (cabin to cabin for some of us). We could also have gyms and leagues set up for each region, and maybe even an international leauge at the end of each season? However, this is easier said than done. it takes lots of organizing, and a precise, down to ground, small crew working closely connected, to get it done. That's why I came here. You guys are the perfect audience for such an idea, so i'm wondering... Who wants to catch them all with me?

My biggest problem up until I joined Nerd Fitness was that with just about everything else in life, I had an immediate gratification for nearly every action, and especially in video games. Every time you completed even a basic task, you could see that it was impacting your experience, stats, or both. And then I read one of the articles on here, I forget which, where the phrase, "Level up your life," came into my dictionary. And I wanted to know why it wasn't that simple. Why couldn't I gain experience points every time I did a half hour of intense martial arts training? Why didn't I have a strength stat that I could boost by going to the gym? So I wandered on over to my computer, and decided that no one, no where, said that I couldn't. I designed a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel where I made a list of specific actions for the five attributes: Wisdom, Intelligence, Speed, Strength, and Dexterity. Every time an action is completed, I earn experience points, with 100 experience points earning me a level, and five experience points in one attribute earning me a stat point for that attribute. And then I took it a step further, by making quests: Main quests, and Side Quests. Side quests, I decided, would be daily things that I wanted to turn into habits, such as exercising for an hour straight, or taking 10,000 steps, and earned a little bit of experience. Main quests earned whole levels, and were the things that were major stepping stones towards my overall health goals, such as losing ten pounds, or being able to do fifty pushups in a row, and these were worth whole levels. And then I decided no roleplaying game was complete without classes, so I manufactured a formula that would give me a class based upon what was my highest stat, or if I had multiple stats at the same level. Wisdom is Druid, Intelligence is Monk, Speed is Scout, Strength is Warrior, and Dexterity is Assassin. That is how I solved my need for immediate gratification. And at this point, it serves as my fitness introduction, to show just how I decided to nerd out on fitness. P.S.: This was all done in Microsoft Excel. So if there is anyone out there who is proficient in Microsoft Excel, I'm having issues with a formula (below) where finding the second highest in the list of cells, renders a secondary class. However right now, it's saying that D10 does not equal D10, because I have to be able to extract the cell address to make it work. Any suggestions? =IF(CELL("address",OFFSET(D10,MATCH(MAX(D10:D14),D10:D14,0)-1,0))=$D$14,"Assasin",IF(CELL("address",OFFSET(D10,MATCH(MAX(D10:D14),D10:D14,0)-1,0))=$D$13,"Warrior",IF(CELL("address",OFFSET(D10,MATCH(MAX(D10:D14),D10:D14,0)-1,0))=$D$12,"Scout",IF(CELL("address",OFFSET(D10,MATCH(MAX(D10:D14),D10:D14,0)-1,0))=$D$11,"Monk",IF(CELL("address",OFFSET(D10,MATCH(MAX(D10:D14),D10:D14,0)-1,0))=$D$10,"Druid","None")))))

I'm very excited to starting my second challenge, and I have to say how awesome NF is for getting me to work out like I've been in the past few weeks. I never, ever thought I would be stoked about buying a heavier barbell (or even using a barbell) but I AM. Got a new one yesterday. So excited to start using it. Here are some stats on my goals and current position. I'd appreciate any encouragement - I thrive on words and my family, while supportive, doesn't say much about my fitness goals and it's kind of discouraging feeling like I'm doing this alone. Help me, Rebels! MAIN GOAL Reduce bodyfat percentage and increase muscle. GOALS Get strong enough to do real pushups. I'm astoundingly weak-armed, and can barely pull off one regular pushup, so I will be working on pushup progressions in the next 6 weeks by adding them to my already established strength training workout routine 3x per week. Dance! I will dance 2x per week (alternating with my strength training workouts) for at least 30-45 minutes. I find dancing enjoyable so it's a good way to get in a workout that feels like a reward for having done strength training the previous day. Eat more Paleo. I've been having some stomach problems (mainly killer acid reflux) so I'm going to cut out most non-Paleo foods to see if that will help me. I will also continue drinking lots of water because it's good for me! Specify my career goals. I've been freelancing as a graphic designer for the past year and there are pros and cons about it. I've been considering going back to working at a company but I'm on the fence about it. For the next 6 weeks I will continue to freelance but I will carefully monitor my work habits so I can decide at the end of the 6 weeks if I want to keep freelancing or not. Yikes!

So next week I'm starting strength training, specifically the StrongLifts 5x5 program. Is it a good idea to keep measurements of gains and losses? If so what measurements should I take? Curious to know what everyone else does in this matter, and how you record them.

Current stats 5'4" 171lbs 25 years old BMI 31.1% Current Fitness Goals The most important is that I aim to improve my quality of life Bring BMI down to 23% with in 1 year Increase strength to improve my abiulitie to do things like areal and hiking Increase stamina, I would like to be able to jog 5 miles with out stoping or having an asthma attack with in one year Improve flexibiltie, maybe one day I will be able to do a split Today I did areal for the first time in over two months, and lyra for the first time. I did a total of two hours, about split between the two. Im sure that two hours was a bit of over kill but I work out with a friend and we split time, spotting each other as we work on the fabric or hoop so its more like an hour tiem total plus time spent warming up and stretching. If you have no idea what I am talking about yous hould look up areal and lyra, they are both fantastic forms of excersize and a lot of fun. Areal is the silk fabric acrobats you see in ciquise de sole, and lyra is the metal hanging hoop. You do acrobat type stuff with each one and they both take a lot of core to keep your movements controled, you use a lot of back and arms to pull your self or support your weight well getting in and out of positions or "tricks" and legs to climb, support your weight both well going up the fabric, getting in to positions and well in leg/foot/hip locks and doing drops or hanging up side down. Its an amazing all over work out but as much fun as it is you have to do a lot of working out to get your muslces to be able to support your weight well doing these things. that was a bit more then I planed on tryping any way its all a lot of fun!!!! Tomorrow i have strength training ar 7 am, wooo. I am not a morning person so im not really looking forward to getting up at 6:45, Im also going to try and get to the gym at least once between thursday and saturday for the mundaine cardio routine.