Datapirate's Progession... Progress

[datapirate42]

Alright, I'm a bit late to the party but not too late to get started, so for my first real action as a member I'm going to try to set some goals for myself.

Fitness/Health:

I currently float somewhere between 135 and 140 at 5'10" and I'm actually pretty happy as the skinny bastard that I am, but I'd like to be a more toned skinny bastard, so to quantify, if I can either

Lose 5 pounds of fat or Gain 5 pounds of muscle

I'll consider it a success. I've never really worked toward a goal like this before so I'm not sure which way its going to end up going... the only way I ever had to quantify my fitness before was my 800 time in high school track, so if anyone has any ideas for a better measurement for the same general goal I might consider reassessing later, fat% perhaps? I'm not sure of a good way to calculate this with the resources I have available tho.

Challenges:

For the time being, I don't have access to any sort of facilities with the purpose of working out (this will change when I go back to school in the fall). So I'm pretty much limited to bodyweight exercises and improvised workouts. Also its freaking HOT out. I think I almost got heat stroke on a bike ride the other day...

Diet

in general I just need to eat healthier. My whole life it never really seemed to matter what I ate or what I did; I never fluctuated more than about 5 pounds (and I still do fluctuate that much) but this all resulted in me having a diet consisting largely of junk food and soda... A lot of soda... seriously a lot... My mom tells me that my first words were something to the effect of "Gimme a drink of that Coke"

so goals...

Protein, Fruits, and Vegetables with EVERY meal.

Learn to actually cook for myself.

Cut out soda COMPLETELY.

Challenges:

Wholly Flying Spaghetti Monster am I addicted to soda, since I started college I've progressively started cutting down on it to one or two a day... which is still way too much. I've been replacing it with water and tea as much as I can.

And just generally I was raised by people with shitty diets. I don't blame them and don't feel like explaining the reasons for it right now. But thankfully I'm not picky when it comes to food... in fact I actually purposely try stuff I don't think I'll like sometimes. But until Mid-August I'm still living with my Dad and his girlfriend... I'm probably going to have to start cooking for everyone.

Life

The simplest measurable goal I could set for myself here is grades but unfortunately that's not really going to be applicable in the short overlap with school of this 6 week challenge. But to summarize my problems with school... I'm a very smart person and a very bad student. (AP Calculus in high school, I had a D in the class, and got 5/5 on the AP test and a 95% on the final) My problem is probably some sort of undiagnosed ADD, and I believe what I need is some sort of Order and Discipline when it comes, not just to school, but everything else in my life. So to actually make an observable goal(s)

Exercise every day including at least one activity focused on strength, and one on cardio

Learn something every day

Practice a language every day

Post my progress on here every day

Challenges

Just me myself and I... I need to overcome the basic laziness and excuses I've had my whole life and gain the discipline to do what I should regardless of what sort of sense of immediate gain I get out of it

Alright! I think that should be a good start for now... I welcome input and comments, especially on the first goal I've listed above...

[RussTheAerialist]

Looks like a great set of goals! Good luck! I'm right there with you on the undiagnosed ADD/ADHD thing. I had similar situations in school with me and every lab class I ever took. I rocked at the labs, but got bored having to write the lab reports.

For the exercise goal, body weight resistance training can do alot for you! Pull ups, squats, etc. And if you need to add weight to the exercises and since you are in school, a backpack with text books in it, cheap and easy for sure and a great way to add weight, especially for pull ups!

[theanne]

Lose 5 pounds of fat or Gain 5 pounds of muscle

I recommend going by inches/how your clothes are fitting/pictures. You can get a $2 measuring tape at Walmart.

Take "before" pictures and put them either up here or somewhere that you're kicking yourself in the butt every time you see them.

Now, the trick is to find out HOW you're going to do this. Since you're cutting out soda, that's going to be a huge help. Diet is 70%.

Pick a few routines, pick a schedule and stick to it. 3x a week should do you good for starters. Are you interested in weight lifting? Body workouts?

Learn to actually cook for myself.

I'm in the middle of a "new recipe every day" challenge for myself. I posted a huge list of recipe resources here and I'm posting pictures of the recipes I create and instructions on how I'm doing it so feel free to follow along there

Exercise every day including at least one activity focused on strength, and one on cardio

Like I said before, I'd modify this to leave yourself rest days. 3x a week is a good start. Work on leveling those workouts up every time you workout. Make it more intense every time.

Having some specific goals like "5 pushups" or "bear crawl a city block length" will give you some focus on what you're working towards and gives you something to measure improvement.

[datapirate42]

Thanks for the advice!

On the exercise front, I know I want to do something every day because I'm not really looking to pack on a lot or anything like that. I do, however, sort of differentiate between simply exercising and actually working out.

I say every day because sometimes I hardly even leave the house so I want to make sure to myself I at the very least go jog around the block or something every day and if I do it everyday it's phenomenally easier to get motivated for when I do want to do a more intense workout.

I didn't make any specific goals for individual exercises because I don't want to end up focusing on any one thing like how many pushups I can do or how much I can bench... I will keep track of what I do accomplish with these sorts of exercises tho to make sure I am making progress towards getting in better shape. Especially with upper body which is my biggest weakness at the moment. I do like the idea of bear crawling a city block tho... Downtown here I come

I'll start taking pictures and measurements tomorrow, but its worth mentioning I'm not trying to look like the guys from 300. So I guess I can only hope the fit of my clothes isn't going to radically change because I can't afford a new wardrobe lol.

[datapirate42]

Alright, my vitals and benchmarks from my first full day

http://nerdfitness.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=491&d=1311385508

http://nerdfitness.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=492&d=1311385511

Measurements (in. unless specified)

• Height 5'10"
• Weight 145 lb
• Neck

  14

• Shoulders

  43.5

• Chest

  36

• Bicep

  10.5

• Stomach

  30.5

• Waist

  31

• Hips

  35.5

• Thighs

  20.25

• Calves

  14

• Hair (just for fun)

  21.5

as far as a workout goes, it's still way too hot to go outside... maybe if I wake up early enough tomorrow I can head out for a run or something, so for what I could do in my bedroom I attempted a bodyweight circuit

30 bodyweight squats... too easy need to find a way to add weight or otherwise increase the difficulty

5 real pushups... all I could manage should I work on inclined pushups for a while?

30 bent over dumbell(backpack) rows... with my giant calc book and Russian book... should probably add a couple more for the weight

30 reverse crunches.. also too easy

at the rec center at school we've got this... Structure? its not really a machine it's essentially just a pair of handles and a half a yoga ball for back support... it's the same motion as the reverse crunch but because you're standing so it makes it phenomenally harder and I've never been able to do more than 10 at once. I need to find a way to do that at home.

I went grocery shopping! My dad doesnt really keep much in the way of fruits and vegetables in the house, so I took it upon myself. I've always liked eating the stuff but I never seem to remember I have it and end up having to throw it out...

so yeah, things I need to work on:

Upper Body

Find harder exercises for Lower

Eat before it goes bad

Alright, I'm gonna go make a sandwich and practice Russian... Comments Suggestions are more than welcome

[datapirate42]

So no post yesterday because I turned in early so I could wake up before it got too hot to go outside...

Turns out that might have been a bad idea... ended up banging my shin on a rock and having to go get stitches.. Woo! aftermath is the new avatar.

anyway I'm ok, it mostly just feels bruised but overall progress with the goals has been going well.

I was looking around at the NF blog and saw came up with an idea for a nicely specific goal to add,

I want to do

, but instead of just moving to the side to move in a circle, and I want to do one full circle for starters which should be somewhere around 10-15

so yeah 360° pushups