New rebel reporting

[Ex_Nihilo]

I've never been entirely sure how to introduce myself, so here goes! I'm Ben, I turned 26 two days ago, and like everyone here I'm a nerd. I'm currently half way through a master's degree in Education, and I work as a line cook at the fast food dine-in restaurant known as Red Lobster. My nerdiness expresses itself in a number of ways: gaming, computers (hardware and software), music, and trivia. Ultimately, I think why I decided now is the time to change is because I realized that I'm not getting any younger and with each passing year, it will become harder and harder to reverse the trends I've caught myself in.

My battle with the bulge: I've been overweight for much of my life. I don't remember when it happened really, except that it happened when I was a kid, maybe early teens. I picked up a lot of my mother's eating habits as a child and she was significantly overweight. When I was 17, I maxed out at 280 and then lost 70 lbs. However, ever so slowly, the weight crept back up and now I'm back at 280. I've always had an interest in health and fitness, unfortunately, it usually manifests in academic knowledge, rather than applied knowledge. Every so often I get the desire to toss some weights around, but it doesn't last. Typically, I attempt to go it alone, and I've failed every time, which is what brought me here.

My NF goals:

1: Eat better. There is no way around this. No matter how much I work out, I will not be able to get anywhere without a diet that is consistent and locked in. My resolve tends to break down when there are fresh french fries from the fryer sitting there just begging to be eaten. So yeah, no more processed, fried foods.

2: Get in shape. This seems like one of those duh type statements, but I'm recently married and I'll be damned if I am going to sit idly by and kill myself at 40 via pizza and Taco Bell and leave behind my wife and future children. I recognize I have issues with follow through, but with a greater network of accountability, I hope to succeed. My ultimate shape goal is that I would love to see single digit body fat percentages.

3: "The first rule of Zombieland: Cardio. When the zombie outbreak first hit, the first to go, for obvious reasons... were the fatties." I want to attain and maintain a consistent level of functional fitness to be able to handle anything from kids, to muggers, to zombies, to in-laws (arranged in order of least to most difficult to survive).

So yeah, that's all!

[Dantes]

Hey there:

Welcome to the rebellion!

Reading your post it is remarkable at how similar the situations are. Luckily here you'll find people able to help you through every part of your journey from just beginning to running marathons to crossfit to stronglifts. Got a nice cross section here I think you'll like.

I know completely what you mean about the academic side of it. Some days I feel like I know all the health information I could possibly need to know, doesn't help at all when it comes to applying it though right?

Have you checked out Zombiefit?

http://zombiefit.org/

Seems like it would tie in nicely with your third goal and they post daily workouts so you'll always have something different to challenge yourself with.

Hope you enjoy your time here, just remember although the power of the internet is vast it is still unable to make the first move, if you're struggling with something, talk to us. We'll do all we can to help you with achieving your goals.

[Ex_Nihilo]

Hah! That zombiefit site is great. I'm incredibly interested in Parkour and bodyweight exercises, so thanks for that!

Yeah, motivation is tough, but fortunately my wife is rather insistent about going to the gym, so tomorrow we're going! We have pretty different philosophies behind eating/exercise, but if we just focus on getting through the door first, I think it'll be okay.

[Dantes]

The best philosophy is one you don't have to think about.

Try to make eating right and working out as natural and essential to your day as say... Sex?

If you do I don't think you'll have any problem finding the motivation to keep going!

The thing about bodyweight exercises is that they become easier the lighter you get.

Use the time at the gym now to build a decent strength foundation so that when the time comes to do sets of pull ups you're not starting from scratch!

If you want to simply ignore the free weights and simply focus on bodyweight exercises you'll need to apply a touch of physics.

Change the inclination of your body to increase or decrease leverage and hence create a varied resistance.

Add a rotation/twist/bend to a movement.

Move through a smaller/wider range.

The trick is to use your imagination, whatever you do don't get into a rut of simply smashing out press ups every day. It can get a touch boring.

[emclinux]

Also if you are into bodyweight exercises like me I would check out this book.

Y\You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises for Men and Women

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Your-Own- ... 0971407614

I love the book a there are a lot of exercises (107 in all) that I would have never thought of. And the book was written by a US Air Force Combat Controller (Special Forces)

[Ex_Nihilo]

Dantes, the main reason I'm interested is because of a lot of the Parkour movements, but I certainly won't forsake the weight room. I just returned from my 3rd day at the gym, and I scoped out everything they had there to see what I can do.

Emc, I've seen that around at the bookstore before. Also, morbidly curious, what distro do you use? Gentoo guy here. 8-)

[emclinux]

Right now I am running Debian and Ubuntu. My servers are LFS and CentOS