I'm a big fat nerd

[emptyknight]

Hi I'm Jesse, and I'm a big fat guy and a nerd. I'm 33yo, 6'0" and I recently weighed in at 295 lbs. I'm a registered nurse in Texas with 1 full time job in organ donation and a part time job in a trauma ICU. I work 12 hour night shifts for both of them. For the last year I've been eating a mostly vegetarian carb-heavy diet, lost a lot of weight in the beginning but when I started my job as a donation coordinator which involves a lot more time at a desk I gained it all back and then some. I was a gymnast in middle/high school but ever since then it's been a slow creep upward on the scale.

I've started having a lot of lower back pain (doctor/xrays say nothing is wrong that getting into shape won't fix) and I recently put myself into the hospital as a patient with a heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure from overdoing caffeine (Mountain Dew is now my mortal enemy). My PCP and cardiologist both said the same things: cardio, weight training, cut back on caffeine, and quit smoking or I'll be diabetic with heart and kidney failure in 10-20 years. I'm a nurse; I know what that looks like. This scared the crap out of me, and it's time to make some changes.

The idea of leveling up at life is one my brother and I came up with a while back, and doing some googling along those lines brought me here! I can't tell you how excited I am to find a bunch of nerds like me with similar goals and motivations.

I'm still formulating my exact plan, but I'm going to go with paleo eating, body weight training, and start out with walking for cardio. I want to make a game of it for myself: 10 points a day for eating right all day, 2 points a day for doing my workouts on their scheduled days, -1 point for each soda I drink or cigarette I smoke etc. Since quitting smoking is such a high priority for me, I'll probably give myself 100 bonus points when I go my first month without smoking at all. When I get 1000 points I'm going to build myself a new awesome gaming computer. I've already put the money in a savings account.

I could use some advice, especially from other people who have to work long hours. How do I get enough sleep and still get my workouts in when I have to work? My schedule varies a lot so I can't easily schedule all my workouts on my days off and I really need to be consistent and do SOMETHING most days of the week or I'll get complacent and slide back into bad habits.

Sorry for the long post... it feels good to get it all out.

[katscratch]

Hiya!! Athena's got a lot of great ideas!

I work in surgery, and being part of procurements is amazing and beautiful and horrible-- I am always in awe of our coordinator's skills, so props to you right there. And to making the decision to change things up! I feel like, at least in my workplace, I'm surrounded by just as much if not more unhealthy habits and temptations than my friends who work desk jobs, and the hours/needing to leave the department for breaks don't exactly help.

For me on the food front this means planning ahead, **cooking ahead--which took some getting used to!**, taking all my meals and an extra (or snacks), and having just-in-case foods in the car like almonds. I've learned that I am an all-or-nothing type when it comes to food or vices like coffee -- I can't wean off or cheat without sliding REAL fast back to my old ways. So for ME it was easier to do full paleo (although i never gave up cottage cheese or butter) because there was no question about whether i should eat the homemade cookie in the lounge. I also found that I got a lot of flack from coworkers--people in healthcare tend to have strong opinions about health

When I worked up to weightlifting, I tried different times of day until I found when the gym was the most empty, heh, then played around with different times to learn when my body best liked going. I use a 24hr gym, and with my schedule, I've ended up going before work at least once per week to not miss days (well, "normally", i'm currently working my way back!). My biggest advice would be to decide your workout days/times then stick to it strictly for 3-4 weeks, see how it feels, and then tweak as needed. You can plan a little bit around your schedule if you know it in advance, for example if bodyweight workouts fry you physically and walking relaxes you mentally and doesn't make you too sore, you could workout the day before desk shifts and walk on/before days you need to be more physically active at work.

By far the biggest thing that helped me was finding NF and starting to log my progress. Accountability to myself by having public posts on the internet is good motivation, but the support from my people here has been a huge part of feeling awesome on a day to day basis Talk through it! Especially when you're still super excited at new changes and everyone else around you is starting to get glassy-eyed at you bringing it up again....that was probably just me, though, haha

[emptyknight]

Wow good advice all around!

Athena - I think you are right about cutting out the worst offenders immediately. I don't need to wait until I have a magic plan fully formulated to make a few big improvements. I have several days in a row off starting Tuesday. I think I'll clean out the really crappy food this weekend and just give up the sugary sodas and cookies all at once. I have a new video game (Guild Wars 2) to distract me from the caffeine headache. I can figure out the rest as I research and eat my way through the less terrible stuff in my pantry. That gives me a quick, specific goal to do while I indulge my tendency to overplan EVERYTHING.

katscratch - Yeah I definitely need to start cooking ahead. Hospital cafeteria closes at 2am and if I'm busy before then I end up eating out of the vending machine or running to the 24 hr fast food place across the street. And the workout scheduling you suggest makes a lot of sense - even body weight exercises leave me sore for a couple of days, definitely don't want to do them before a shift in the ICU. I think I will need to go full paleo or at least establish strict rules for eating at some point too... if I'm allowed to fudge, I will. If I have a rule that I never break, then I don't.

Lots to think about, thanks!

[BeigeTurtle]

Emptyknight, I would also strongly encourage you to start a workout log, whether here or in paper or somewhere else. I've begun doing this, and I'm surprised at how much this has helped change my attitude. I know feel like I owe it to my log to work out - that I have a responsibility to keep up the pattern I've established there, even if it's still very new. Plus it's also interesting to see exactly what I'm doing at any given time, and to see that I've started to become more consistent.

[katscratch]

Yeah i learned the workout-scheduling lesson the hard way after i started using weights-- lifted heavy for me, then was in a 10 hour trauma spine. My back and legs were NOT happy about that!

[emptyknight]

BeigeTurtle - I've used MyFitnessPal.com in the past for tracking meals and workouts. I think you are right, I'll probably need to start using that again. If nothing else it forces me to be accountable to myself.

katscratch - Sounds familiar. The first and last time I attempted a big workout the morning before a trauma ICU shift, I ended up doing CPR half the night and then helping crack the patient's chest right there in the ICU room. I could barely lift my arms to the steering wheel to drive home after the adrenalin rush wore off. (Side note: amazingly, the patient survived)