LittleWyvern.com

Over the past year my general lifestyle has fallen apart in a significant and unhealthy way. I spend nearly all of my time either sitting in front of my computer or sitting in front of my tv. Most of my meals could generally be considered “fast food” and my trips to the gym went from occasional to rare. No surprise, I’ve really packed on the pounds.

Right now I am easily the fattest and most out of shape that I have ever been in my life. Not only do I see it, but worse: I feel it.

It Sucks. So Much.

I’m not at all big on New Year’s resolutions – ones involving weight loss in particular – but I AM a fan of arbitrary resolutions. Deadlines and goals, general and ill-defined though they usually are, seem to work well for me. Pride seems to be my greatest motivator (right up there with Fear), so the plan is to make my glorious return to health a public spectacle. Whether anyone actually cares or not (and I would bet heavily on the Not), I can easily delude myself into thinking that a public failure in my endeavor would be a source of horrible shame. I fail not only myself… but also you.

I actually first thought about inventing an arbitrary weight loss target and deadline and then offering cold cash to each of you for every pound I come up short. That incentive worked well back in the days of NaNoWriMo, but while researching weight loss and exercise routines I discovered that a 1-2 pound weekly weight loss is considered “fast.” The Biggest Loser makes it look so much easier.

My rough goal is 2 months and 20 pounds, but since I expect to be adding a good amount of muscle – I’m not sure I have any right now – a more realistic expectation is probably closer to 3 months and 15 pounds. I won’t be doing any special diets or calorie counting (that offends my sensibilities on a deeply personal level), but I’ll be making an effort to generally improve what I eat. I figure that semi-healthy eating coupled with twice-daily trips to the gym will go a long way towards achieving my goals of lowering my body-fat while increasing my strength and endurance.

Anyways, I won’t be offering up free money but I will be publicly recording my daily efforts. I have prominently displayed a link (it’s bold!) to my new exercise log in my right navbar for anyone who cares to occasionally check in. It still needs some work (header image?), and I won’t be writing full posts over there, but I will be sure to make daily notes of what I am doing for those who are otherwise bored and curious. Like I said, I don’t actually believe anyone is especially interested in my weight-lifting schedule, but simply having that schedule available to the public serves as a strong personal incentive for me to stick to it.

Whether anyone reads it or not, I feel horrible having to write “I’m a huge pussy” on the days I decide to blow off my workout. Oh, and write that I most definitely will.

As for the schedule itself, it is something that I put together after an afternoon of online research. In particular I read through these two websites and then crafted a hybrid approach of my own. Both sites seem to especially focus on gaining weight and building muscle, but my goals are to get lean and gain strength. They are both anti-cardio / pro-creatin, whereas I am more anti-fatface / pro-flexibility.

Aside from what I’ve read, I know basically nothing about exercise. While the jocks were all taking weight lifting in high school, I was busy dominating at pickle ball in co-ed gym. Still, I see no reason to blow a few hundred dollars on personal trainers just to be told one of the seemingly hundreds of equally valid opinions on the subject. I see personal trainers mostly as a motivation for the otherwise lazy – whether to knock out one more set, or even just to show up in the first place – but I’ve already solved that problem. My only real obstacle is in knowing what to actually do once I get to the gym. The program I’ve come up with seems like a pretty good starting point, though, and I’ll stick with it for a while and see how things go.

Still, if anybody has a suggestion I would be grateful and eager to listen.