Hello fellow nerds, geeks, gamers, etc...

[qgroff]

Hello world!  I found this site a couple years ago before the Nerd Fitness Academy existed in its current form, and made "plans" to join some day.  We all know how "plans" go sometimes... well fast-forward to now and the weight that I had just started to gain above a not-great-but-manageable baseline has only added up more.  Time to stop the planning and start the doing!

 

Okay, I'm kinda talk about myself a lot now, because what's better than telling your life story to strangers on the Internet?  Feel free to ignore me.

 

Stats

I'm about a month short of my 1/3 of a century birthday (which I fully plan on celebrating more than my normal birthday), just shy of 5'11", and as of last time I braved the scale, about 215 pounds.  I have a build where I wear weight pretty well, such that the first 20 pounds I put on a few years ago was barely noticeable; I went up an inch or two in waistline but I didn't really look different, you know?  That let me get complacent and I put on 25 more.  Damn.  Even in my current state I can do at least 20 pushups, tread water for minutes at a time, and can run jump and climb when I need to... just not nearly as well as I used to.  And I get way more tired doing it.

 

Life

I grew up in NJ, currently live in Austin, TX with my partner (who I may try to get involved on this site, we'll see how he feels about it--he's skinny but eats terribly and is bordering on "skinny fat").  Also sharing our apartment: an 8-year-old dog Basset/terrier mix who still acts like a puppy, a pushover of a black cat who could use some fitness help himself, and two sugar gliders.  By day I work for a software company as a QA engineer.  I like my work a lot but I occasionally get some serious impostor syndrome.  I've had varying degrees of depression over the years, doing okay right now despite being un-medicated.  Yet another thing regular exercise and a better body image would help!

 

Fitness/Nutrition background

I generally understand nutrition pretty well--when I eat poorly I know I'm doing it, I just love food and don't have as much willpower as I'd like.  I know that good-for-you food can taste good--I've had it, I've even made it occasionally.  But bad-for-you food that tastes good is quick and easy, and that's the part that's hard to get over.  Fitness... I'm kinda a noob.  I've done very little beyond some running around my neighborhood/apartment complex, some pushups/situps, and some very simple weight training--always using machines.  Free weights kinda scare me, but I have both an apartment gym and a work gym freely available to me and I know I ought to put them to use.

 

Short-term goals

Lose some weight, not be tired getting to my third floor apartment.  Do it while living my way-too-busy life.

 

Long-term goals

Lose lots of weight, get fit.  I'd really like a six-pack one day, but I know that's a long way off and there's plenty of milestones to be happy about before then.

 

Nerd cred

I call myself a gamer, though it's kinda gamer-lite.  Mostly WoW (Guardian Druid main, Alliance on US-Alleria), occasionally a console game here or there.  I like them but other things eat my time and the TV is often occupied.  I love board games too, I'll go whenever a friend hosts a session.  Dominion and Roll for the Galaxy are a couple of my favorites.  I play D&D 4e (Zeitgeist--really cool campaign!) about once a month, as a level 11 Razorclaw Shifter Gunsmith Seeker.  I love movies, especially Action and Sci-fi.  I love fantasy novels; Brandon Sanderson is my absolute favorite.  I like TV but prefer it when I can treat it as a movie and binge-watch.  Back in the day I would encourage Heroes and Lost marathons (interested to see how the Heroes reboot turns out, but not getting my hopes up).  Nowadays it's usually Food Network.  Race to Escape is fun too.  The other big part of my life is a local community show choir (it's like Glee for adults) and weekly karaoke.  Singing is fun; it makes me actually willing to get in front of a crowd, unlike any sort of public speaking, from which I will run screaming.

 

If you just read all that...

Why?  I mean, I'm flattered, but wow.  That's dedication.  You're my new best friend.

[SpecialSundae]

Karaoke friend!

You know we have been known to have international Nerd karaoke hangouts?

It sounds like you've got a handle on where you are and where you'd like to be but not quite on how to get there.

I'm a huge advocate of barbells and heavy lifting during weight loss. It did me a world of good and made losing all the weight I did much more pleasurable because I realised I loved lifting... But you have to find what you love.

Maybe start out as an adventurer and try things out. Weight loss is about diet for the most part, so have a bit of fun with fitness until you click with something.

Anyway, always glad to have another singer around!

[qgroff]

Nerd karaoke?  Sounds like fun

 

It sounds like you've got a handle on where you are and where you'd like to be but not quite on how to get there.

Nail on the head.  As for heavy lifting, I just don't really picture myself doing it.  I'll lift, I just don't see getting really into it.  One thing I have really enjoyed the 2 or 3 times I've done it is yoga.  But all the people I know who do yoga regularly... they seem happy and enjoy it, but they really haven't lost much weight.  Since that's my primary goal I've been less inclined to really jump in with both feet.  That could be all on them, though, or my own false perception, or a little of both.  Doing a balanced lifting/yoga thing might work well for me, though.  And diet, of course.  Ugh, diet.  The food doesn't scare me, the time to prepare it does.

[SpecialSundae]

Lifting and yoga make a perfect counterbalance for one another, but weight loss comes through diet for the most part.

Lifting just let me eat more whilst I lost weight, and then I realised I was good at it.

What's your diet like at the moment? Eating healthy (or eating less) doesn't have to be horrendously time-consuming.

[qgroff]

Pretty awful, honestly.  Mostly fast food.  I rarely take food to work so I go to lunch every day, sometimes I'll get something halfway healthy but sometimes it's just whatever's quickest.  It's also expensive.  On the way home I'll grab something else, or eat the leftovers in the fridge, which are also usually terrible.  I cook maybe once every couple weeks.

 

Last night was an exception, though.  I made some really good stirfry with fresh veggies and salt-and-red-pepper tofu over jasmine rice.  Delicious and pretty darn healthy, but it took over an hour to make.