Need advice getting started exercising.

[super_nerd]

Hello fellow nerds,

I'd like to introduce myself to the forum, and also ask some advice to help me begin leveling up my stats(fitness):

I am an 18 year old physics and computer science nerd from Southern California. I am going to start college soon, and want to major in computational chemistry or computational physics. I like mathematics, video games(when I can find time to play them), computer programming, chess, linguistics, playing acoustic guitar, backpacking, and martial arts. I am quite terrible at all of these but enjoy them immensely none the less.

I am about 6' 3'' and weigh 140-150 pounds (or 1.9 meters and 64-68 kg) so I'm certainly not fat. Rather, I am weak and lazy when it comes to my health. Here's the thing, I hate exercising. It always feels like self-torture. Because of this I have trouble forming a regular torture(oops, exercise) routine. But I also am tired of feeling out of shape, and weak. There are certain physical things I passionately love to do even though I suck at them: I do martial arts twice a week, and go on about a dozen backpacking trips per year(mostly weekend but sometimes up to a week) including climbing Mount Whitney.

Summary of my (lack of) fitness:

I have both good and terrible stamina; I can walk all day up hill with weight on my back. I have done 14 continuous hours up hill going from 6,000 to 12,000 feet elevation gain with 45 lbs on my back on two occasions. I'm not kidding. But I can't jog for 10 minutes without my sides aching, being completely winded, and feeling nauseated. Once again I'm not kidding.

My resting heart rate is around 68 bpm. I can do like 20 to 25 push-ups, like 40 - 50, bodywieght squats, and like 40-50 full sit ups, depending on how out of shape I am. Also, like 3 chin-ups but no pull-ups. I have almost no experience with weights yet.

My first goal for fitness is not not hate exercise. My little experience with life tells me if something seems ridiculously difficult, you are probably doing it wrong, so I want to get to the point where I enjoy my exercise, as much as I enjoy reading or computer programming. If I want to exercise, I won't have to rely solely on intense will power, which, sooner or even more sooner, fails me.

My specific goals with fitness are to build up my stamina and muscular endurance and later start adding weight training:

More specifically, by no later than the end of summer when I start college, I want to be able to run, not jog, for 30 minutes without stopping, do 100 pushups, 200 bodyweight squats, 200 situps, and 20 pullups. After that I will start incorporating weight training.

Also, I have terrible posture, so I look like a neanderthal, and my back is always quite uncomfortable because of this. This came about from adopting the "thinker" pose as my default body position in junior high school; I would spend all of my time during recess and lunch thinking or reading, and hardly ever doing something active. Since then, I have spent tons of time hunched over a computer, which contributes to the problem. I'd like to fix this problem as well, because it looks incredibly unattractive and I feel like I'm at risk of gradually doing permanent damage to my back.

Now, on to diet:

I love healthy foods! I love junk foods! I love ALL foods! I literally cannot think of a dish I do not like when its prepared properly, and I've tried a huge variety of foods. I prefer gourmet cooking to instant crap food, but have not yet progressed my culinary skills beyond scrambling eggs. Also, I am always hungry and usually am too impatient to make something healthy. I eat lots of fruits and veggies, but also lots of starchy and processed grains.

However, I hate the way crap food makes my body feel. I will feel slightly sick for a few hours after eating a doughnut for example.

Also, I don't particularly have a sweet tooth or like candy. For example, I prefer 100% baking chocolate to a Hershey bar, black coffee to a latte or whatever fancy stuff people drink, dark beers to root beer, unsweetened yogurt to icecream, scotch to schnapps, black tea to sweet tea, coffee beans to candy, etc.

I don't smoke or do any drugs either, except that I drink like 1-2 cups of coffee most days of the week, and infrequently have a few drinks(like 3 over the course of an evening once in a while). (Unless you count things like tetris, minecraft, and rubik's cubes as being drugs; they are highly addictive LOL xD ).

However, the one thing I do consistently crave is calories. I always need more calories, and usually the most convenient sources are not the most healthy. I tend to reach for the quickest source of calories like the junk food my parents buy and leave laying around the cupboards, rather than take a few minutes to make myself some oatmeal or scramble some eggs. In fact, I am so impatient when I'm hungry that I've have been known to desperately raid the fridge, stuffing everything in my face, and later realizing the whole grain bread, turkey, tomato, spinach, onion, and swiss cheese I ate all separately among other things would have made a very nice sandwich, if I had taken the 5 minutes to assemble it.

My goal for food is to eliminate nearly all processed foods from my diet, and this should be easier when I do my own shopping. In the meantime though, if anyone could suggest some quick, healthy, and filling snacks to help me satisfy my calorie cravings without resorting to junk, that would help immensely.

I would greatly appreciate any advice, opinions, etc. as I begin my journey to become healthy. I want to feel better in general, and I want to be better fit for martial arts, and backpacking. I want to be stronger for ground fighting and have better anaerobic and aerobic stamina so I don't burn out so fast, and I want better upper body strength so I can try rock climbing. Also, I want to look sexy for the ladies but functional strength is much more important to me by far. I think the most important thing though is forming the habits of eating right and excising regularly, which I have failed so far.

Thank you!

Also, apologies for my lengthy and poorly written wall of text. Writing is not my strong point so I please forgive me if my post is terrible.

[Egg and Lettuce]

Hi mate,

New here myself and having started a fitness routine a couple of months ago I can pass on what little I now know.

Vary your routine - continually doing pushups, sit ups and pull ups will bore you and you will soon quit. Look for some supplemental exercises for all of these for example leg raises, Russian twist, leg thrusters to help with sit ups. dead lifts, suitcase dead lift, goblet squat etc will help out with your squats. Band row, cable pull-down, renegade row will all help out your pull ups. Barbell and dumbbell bench presses will both help out your push ups, if you are at 25 of these already with good for start doing them weighted or decline push ups aim to do 1 handstand push up.

My posture wasn't quite as bad as you describe yours but I found as my overall fitness and strength improved my posture began to correct itself. You could throw in a mobility WOD mobilitywod.com everyday to help with flexibility and stretching out your back. I went back to the beginning of it and do 2 a day.

If you can start some weight training. Starting Strength is a recommended read, I also found Strength Training - The complete step by step guide a valuable source of information as it highlights the muscle and body parts each exercise is targeting.

As far as diet goes, I am not so knowledgeable... I tend to make things up as I need them. I keep a lot of simple ingredients around the home. wraps, turkey, avocado eggs etc. A handful of nuts is quick and easy as are some pre hard boiled eggs. It sounds like you have an extremely efficient metabolism and once you start training you will most likely need to consume more.

Hope this helped.

And welcome from a fellow recruit.

Remember keep your routine varied to keep boredom at bay. Make up some sandbags so you can carry out sandbag training, you can also use them as cheap adjustable kettle-bells.

[unicornassassin]

Welcome!

My advice on how to start enjoying exercise: do stuff you like. That seems really dumb and obvious when I type it out, but I used to do stuff I hated!

Also, as far as bad posture, in the Ask A Question thread I read about how if you tape an X across your back it helps you to remember to stand/sit up straight. I want to try it, but I keep forgetting.

[tigersheart]

Hello and welcome!

And I will just restate what was already said above....make exercise fun! I don't hate exercise, but my gods the regular old do this many reps...this many times...over and over bores the living hell out of me.

So find what you enjoy doing, and then make it exercise. Now I have been exercising pretty steady for 2 years now, just not traditional type all the time.

Some suggestions taken out of what I do, and they may or may not be viable, but be creative.

1. Climb stuff. Trees, walls, rocks, what ever you can and is legal and safe for you at your level.

2. Lift heavy things once in awhile (at least once per week), more often if you are looking for better strength.

Body weight exercises you can make lots of fun if you make them creative. Try them at a park on playground equipment...but just 'play'.

I have 2 big rocks in my yard I play with. One is very heavy, and one light enough that I can throw, but big enough I can't throw far. Between the two of them, I can do dead lifts, over head presses, rows, throws.

3. be creative, research on exercise, and then get the techniques down, then be creative with them.

Be playful with your exercise, keep learning and trying new things with it, keep it varied, and it makes it much less like exercise.

[js290]

Hello fellow nerds,

I'd like to introduce myself to the forum, and also ask some advice to help me begin leveling up my stats(fitness):

I am an 18 year old physics and computer science nerd from Southern California.

[Red1263]

Heya Super_Nerd, I'm a SoCal Resident myself, and in terms of your motivation, I've learned that you need something deep within you to help you stay focused on your goals, For me, personally it was finding the balance between the desire of getting stronger/living a better life, and my loves for nerdy things. This place has brought me that balance and thus allowed me to combine the two into one massive force to help me become the best person I can possibly be! If you can find that deep desire to become a better person, you need to hold on to it as long as possible!

I'd say go with Physics but that's because I hate Chemistry!

[renange02]

Heyy!!!!! super_nerd! I'm from Chile and a future Music major. From what you say we are very similar, although I'm like the literature/artistic nerd. You are a bit taller than me, I'm 1.7m and weigh aprox 65, so I am also not fat, but feel the same way about my body, weak and would like to be healthier.

I discovered an excellent exercise that has been underestimated by many (although Steve Kamb wrote a pretty good post about it some weeks ago), which is yoga. I loved yoga because it is varied and the exercises are really interesting to do, also you can actually feel the first results like in a few weeks (during our summer, in January-February, I practiced for a month and by the end I could actually touch my toes, something which I had never been able to do).

About the diet, I also feel these sudden attacks of hunger, for what I started eating bananas. Yep, bananas, they are amazing because with one or two you can feel pretty full and also they have a sort of calming effect (which would eliminate the hunger anxiety). Also, on the supermarket you can find some crackers that are made from corn, they are like 5cm in diameter and they come in large packets. I like to eat them with avocado and with four or five I have for at least three hours. I find them here in Chile, but they are from an American brand, so maybe you can find them in the whole foods alley or something like that, they look like this: http://nackea.com/img/home/packs_nackis.png.

Let's keep in touch, I will very probably be studying in the US in the fall

[VorJoshigan]

Hey Super Nerd!

I totally hate exercising too. If you don't mind getting some advice from a fatboy, I recommend a few things:

1) tabata training http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/06/29/tabata-the-most-efficient-4-minutes-of-your-life/ For me, it's a 14 minute workout, and I feel like it's telling my body "Hey, you there! We need to get fit and strong!" There's a lot of variety in those 14 minutes & you just don't have time to get bored.

2) Kettlebell. For one thing, it's just a fun word to say. For another, it's easy enough to learn the exercises and do them while you watch TV/music/audiobook. I find the gym to be mind-numbingly boring and a little embarassing, so this works out well for me. There are also lots of full-body workouts you can do with this one tool.

3) This may be controversial, but I recommend against frequent long-form cardio. It burns energy fine, but it doesn't tell your body to be strong.

Good luck whatever you do!