First run in weeks

In high school I was a TERRIBLE runner, and it wasn't until college that one of my mentors got me excited about it. She pushed me to run my first two half marathons. I took a big break after college, and then did a half-assed job running the Boston Half Marathon last October. As you can see, my pace is meh and I didn't clear 2 miles. But I'm going to try to run daily and improve a little bit each day! One of my goals in the near future is to clear 50 minutes in a 10K I'm doing July 3rd. Gotta get a lot more practice apparently!

The "Budgets" Part...

So I noticed that my first post didn't really delve much into my new sense of financial responsibility (or rather, the growing ulcer that every glance at my savings account has been giving me). I'm at a point in my life and my relationship with my boyfriend that I need to start planning ahead for big expenses, and not just living paycheck to paycheck. I'll be candid here - I do *ok* financially, but definitely not amazing. And I'm not at all smart with how I manage the kinda-adequate money I do make.

In my quest to upgrade my life, I've been inspired by Ramit Sethi's book "I Will Teach You to Be Rich." I'm (finally) going to get a 401K set up at work, and I've made some ambitious goals for saving money (at this point, it's all earmarked in my head for a down payment). On top of all that, I've got to improve my credit - I started out after grad school as a Hall Director, and didn't make a ton of money; I also stupidly bought a new car right then, and it all snowballed into missing a LOT of payments on different cards and loans. I've been really good for a while now, but I need to do something more active than just "pay everything on time." If I don't drastically improve my credit in the next few years I probably won't be able to have my name on the mortgage.

So, there we go - two big life goals, but they're part of the same "take your life by the balls finally" attitude that I'm learning to adopt day by day. I find myself checking my negative thoughts much more consciously these past few days, and it's stating to show :-) Still working out how this blog fits in with all that, but I'm confident I'll find my groove.

Thanks everyone!

First Post!

Hey everyone!  I've been thinking about doing a blog like this for almost a year, and I'm finally getting my act together.  Up until recently I've been a guy who's been best at collecting underpants (thanks for finally giving me a way to express it, Nerd Fitness!).  I would read a lot about how to lose weight, get stronger, save money, be happier; I'd buy a new DVD or book, new equipment, an entire kitchen of new food; I'd make charts and graphs and plans and everything I can in Excel and Word to get geared up.  And by Day 4 of whatever new plan I was on, I'd stumble a little and therefore fall off the wagon completely.

I've recently been inspired by Steve Kamb over at NerdFitness, who somehow combines everything I love and everything I want to be into his amazing blog.  I am a true geek at heart, and never really felt like the jock-ish world of fitness was a place I fit in.  Men's Health magazines and fitness websites always wrote in a way that assumed I was a football-playing fraternity brother.  In reality, I'm a nerd who's more comfortable reading about the colonization of Mars than much else.  Heck, I got my blog title from a scene from The Office that my friends quote at my every time I profess my undying love of BSG.  Steve at NF really spoke to me, though.  Any fitness coach who uses a vintage video game montage for inspiration totally gets me.

In the past week I've joined his NerdFitness Rebellion, read his PDF book cover to cover, started cooking better food, exercising more, etc.  But the main difference is that my mindset has changed.  I see the whole process as a lifelong journey, not a fad diet or 2-month get-fit-quick plan.  In the past I've fixated on the next beach trip, the next party, the next wedding - whenever I "needed" to look better by.  Now I realize that I look OK today, and I can make small steps to continue to improve my life overall.  It's all about setting manageable goals, putting processes in place to succeed, tracking my progress, and most importantly, STOP COLLECTING UNDERPANTS (now I'm really hoping you watched that video above and know what that's a euphemism for...)

So, here we go.  I'm calling today "Day 1."  I usually do dumb things like "wait til Monday," or the 1st of the next month or something.  But why not today?  Wednesday, May 30th, 2012.  Day 1 of taking control of my life, of adopting an internal locus of control.  That being said, I rely a lot on the support of others and I do best when I put my goals out there.  My friends are sick of hearing "this time I'm really gonna do it!" so I'm turning to the internet :-)  Once I show myself I have sticking power this time, I'll start getting my friends in on the action.  Hopefully by that point they'll have noticed on their own!

I'm new to blogging, so this will definitely be evolving over time.  My stream-of-consciousness idea right now is to lay down my Day 1 info:

Day 1: May 30th, 2012
29 years old
200lbs
BMI: 25 (not sure how accurate that is)

Some Day 1 Pictures:
 

This is pretty much the biggest I can remember being in a while.  I know that I'm not fat, and in fact I think that with some work I could look REALLY good!  That might be part of my problem; I know that the only thing holding me back from success is myself, and that if I try and fail, I can't blame it on anything but myself.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?" 
~ Marianne Williamson

Well said.  Very well said.




My plan for the next few weeks is to implement some of NerdFitness's concepts into my daily life.  I'm slowly taking on the Paleo diet, which is basically like my old friend South Beach but with fruit.  I'm setting aside 30-60 minutes EVERY weekday for the gym, either for lifting or cardio.  I'm also developing a list of goals that I'm going to share on the site soon.  Again, inspired by Steve Kamb and his Epic Quest of Awesome.  However, recognizing that I'm perhaps taking TOO much inspiration from Steve, I'm going to do what I can to make my goals list and "leveling-up" process my own.







If you're reading this, please comment and keep checking back for future installments!  I'm hoping that by chronicling my experience I can better see my success, avoid pitfalls in the future, and perhaps WAY down the road be an inspiration to others!  Also, if you have any tips of ways to make my blog better, let me know!  It's kinda drab now, but I know it has potential!