A Fitness Adventure Begins!

[ScottSandberg]

Hello, Everyone!

 

My name is Scott. I'm 21 and I'm working on my BS in English (with an emphasis in professional and technical writing). I'm 6' 2" and right now I'm weighing in at 245 pounds. Currently, my favorite video games (ever) include the Legend of Zelda series, Pokemon (up through firered and leafgreen), the Age of Empires games, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic, Age of Mythology, Skyrim, Halo (all of them), Dishonored, Mafia 2, and a bunch others that I don't care to ramble off.

 

I was introduced to video games way back when I was 3, but I didn't actually own any (I just played at my friends house) until I was 8 years old. I got a Playstation and a Gameboy. While I used to only play video games once per week, I went from a fairly active lifestyle to a sedentary one. While I had played baseball, I had recently developed an allergy to a mold found in grass. I became miserable playing baseball, so I stopped. I quickly became overweight in the 3rd grade and I remained pretty overweight until my senior year of high school.

 

During the course of my senior year, I went from weighing 250 pounds to 200 pounds by cutting out fast food and soda and exercising like mad. It was a great accomplishment for me. Then I went to college. My first year, I did a fairly good job at keeping the weight off (no freshman 30 for me, no sir). I became more and more adventurous and although I was taking 18 credits, I still managed to stay active. Life was good.

 

I then got into cliff jumping to overcome my fear of heights. I went a couple places with my roommates over the course of a couple weeks, but never jumped off of anything over 30 feet. We then went to Gunlock Reservoir and found a really sweet 75 footer near to a waterfall. A couple people were cliff jumping there and we watched them for a bit to see how the area was. After they left, we started jumping. Long story short, I dislocated my shoulder on my second jump. Strangely enough, I got over my fear of heights that day.

 

I had to wear a brace for 2 months afterwards, and I had difficulty doing much. That's when I got back into a high fast food diet and slowly gained 20 pounds. After I got my brace off, I slowly started doing more exercise, but I still ate a lot of fast food. I maintained my weight, but I constantly felt like crap. Then I got a job working at Taco Bell full-time. Nearly every meal became fast food because I was going to school full-time and working full-time. Since I never had enough time for anything, I got a car. Suddenly about 90% of my exercise disappeared (I was walking a good 10 miles per day before I got my car).

 

I worked fast food for a year, getting 3 hours of sleep every night, and surviving off of fast food. Over the course of the year, I put on another 25 pounds. I cut back my school schedule to part time and that little bit of extra time gave me the opportunity to weigh myself and take a good look at myself for the first time in over a year. I was almost back to my fat-guy weight. I needed to make some changes.

I found a new job that payed twice as much as my fast food job, which allowed me to cut down my work hours to 24 per week, but this new job is a desk job, so suddenly I was at no exercise at all, but I cut down on fast food, so I'm maintaining my weight. That was 4 weeks ago. I found this website 2 weeks ago and have been reading a lot of the articles. I decided about a week ago that now is the time to get my life back in order. I don't need to wait until I graduate in the Fall. My senior year of high school I lost a bunch of weight, why can't I lose a bunch of weight for my senior year of college?

 

I'm hoping to get my weight down from 245 pounds to my ideal body weight, 180 pounds by the beginning of Fall semester (end of August). That's 65 pounds in 5 months, 13 pounds per month, 3.25 pounds per week. Starting tomorrow, March 25, 2013, I am cutting all liquid calories from my diet along side all fast food. I'm going to use the Rebel Fitness guide to help me along the way. I'm going to start a mainly Paleo diet, start weight training at the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and focus on running and walking on Tuesday and Thursday, and I'm going to pursue hiking on the weekends. It is going to be a lot of work, but I believe that through hard work and perseverance, I can reach my goal. I'm going to use this forum to show my progress and keep track of my diet. I'll post my updates (food logs, weight, and exercise logs) here. Hopefully this will help me stick to it.

 

For the Rebellion!

 

-Scott Sandberg

 

Here is day one!

[JustAStudent]

Hey Scott, welcome to the rebellion! I'm definitely a video game nerd too, though due to budget restraints (and a not so great laptop in terms of specs) I haven't got many of the most up-to-date games. The Spyro series definitely brings back many happy memories, as well as Pokemon and Age of Empires, though at the moment I mostly play Mount and Blade, The Witcher, Skyrim, and Assassin's Creed (just number 1 for now, I have number 2 waiting for when i complete it).

 

You've certainly set your goals high, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to achieve it, or at last get pretty close, if you stick to it. Never tried paleo myself, but a lot of people on here seem to have a lot of success with it. Careful you don't go overboard on the exercise too soon, the last thing you would want would be to get injured. Take steady steps toward your goal and the weight will come flying off.

 

Good luck! If you make a battle log I'll be sure to be following your progress!

[sumdawgtwigg]

Another video game nerd here! Zelda is my all time favorite series. Good luck with all your goals and kudos for putting up a picture already!