Hello from England

[Chilly Breeze]

Hello everyone, the name's Joe and I just found this site this morning and it seems right up my street

 

I've been struggling to motivate myself to get into exercising for years now and having hit my late twenties and done bascially no real exercise in 8 years, it's starting to get silly.  I'm trying to make another push to motivate myself but working an office desk job for a big bank has sapped most of my soul and energy, however I'll be getting made redundant in two months now and this has inspired me to take it as an opportunity to change things dramatically.  My plan is to look into emigrating to Canada (starting with a 12 month working holiday this year) and do something totally different, so I want to get in shape to increase my chances of impressing all the Canadian ladies

 

I used to be into martial arts and got all my exercise from that, but I've always struggled with just doing exercises for their own sake, as opposed to for a specific purpose (like to get more effective at throwing people etc.) so I'm trying to find a regime that is fun for me.  I definitely hate running, and long periods of time where my brain is not occupied, so I think that this kind of strength and interval training might be best for me.  I also actually started to think about what the best kind of diet would be - I really tried to cut out all preconceptions and myths etc. and just thought logically about it, and strangely I started to come to the conclusion that we should really be eating in the way our bodies are made to, so after some googling etc. I was led to the paleo diet.  It was a relief to find that smarter people than me have already figured all this stuff out, so I'm going to try the best I can to transition over to this style of life, and hopefully learn a lot from this site, while sharing some progression with fellow nerds

 

Some nerdy stuff I'm into:

 

Photography, games (WoW, various FPS games mainly on the Xbox 360), movies, sci-fi/fantasy novels, and on occasion, comic books!

 

TLDR - I'm Joe, a nerd from England who wants to get fit.

[Teros]

hello and welcome!  the best way to get organized is to have specific goals in terms of weight and diet.  There's tons of people on the forums.  However, there are the 6-week challenges in progress so I think the new recruits section that you've posted in will be a little slow. 

 

As for strength training regimen, there is a wealth of knowledge on here, from the couch to 5k, to the beginners fitness workout; and all specific forums for exercise routine building.  I hate walking/being bored for 2 hours at a time so I know how you feel.  I've been doing something called 'shovelglove', which is a workout using a sledgehammer as a balanced weight (think of it like a kettle bell on a stick really...).  I have specific goals that I eventually want to do (triple clap pushups comes to mind). 

 

I bought wow but I knew I would get too addicted so I returned it before I opened the box.  Best choice I made.  As for fps games; are you a left 4 dead 1/2 fan?  or more of a competitive CoD/MW fan?

[sozzielou]

Hi Joe, I'm a newbie here too. I like your outlook on life.

Good luck with your goals.

Sara

[Chilly Breeze]

Good to meet you both

 

I play a bit of everything as far as FPS goes.  I have played L4D but it's mainly CoD and Battlefield that I like to play most (only really when I'm on with some friends though, it gets VERY frustrating on your own!)

 

Fitness wise, I'm not really sure on my goals yet.  I'm interested in getting back into martial arts, but I'll probably not get into that until I get over to Canada so prior to that I really just want to improve my general lifestyle.  I have always wanted to be able to do a hand stand though...

[Teros]

might want to make a plan for transitioning into paleo.  even if you can learn how to make a couple paleo meals for now- and every week learn another one until your diet is transformed.  diet is 80% + of the battle.  unless you have some huge muscle-related goal, a workout is like 10-20%.

[Chilly Breeze]

Yeah, that was already my plan really.  I didn't think of it as "paleo" but I thought a lot about it and decided that I wanted to try moving into a mainly natural diet (I say "mainly" because I'm not aiming for the perfect diet just yet) to go along with whatever workout plan I go with.  I think I'll just do like you say and start with a few meals at first, along with a bodyweight/kettlebell workout.