Struggles

I have yet to fully implement my diet.  I keep dropping the ball during dinner time.  I'm going to have to address this.  This will be the first focus for my self-evaluation.  I'm going to start taking notes on how I feel/reasons I come up with for not sticking with it in the evenings.

Introspection

This is more of a reminder post for myself.  I'm about to go on a week long vacation with my In-Laws.  I'm excited, as it should give me a week away from the stress of work, and plenty of time to read/write/do what I want on the way down and back.

I'd like to spend that time in order to understand what it means to be introspective.  I have a definition in my head, but I haven't really applied it to my own life.  This trip should provide ample time for me to go into my own world and think about things.

I'll try to make some posts while I'm down there, but I won't make any guarantees.  I will get back to you guys after the trip, at a minimum.

Writing Pt. 3

He flitted in and out of consciousness.  Each time, the world shone a little less brighter through his eyelids.  However, the pain lingered through his dreams.  His subconscious brought him to the outskirts of the burning town.  There stood no place where the flames didn't rise several feet into the air.

The guilt of the destruction his actions wrought upon the town pushed him to walk into the flames, toward the town square.  Everywhere he looked, the scared and scornful looks of all the residents drilled deep into his soul.  Walking past each one, his shame grew and grew, until he wished with his whole being that death would save him from it.

The world started rocking around the man, so he burst into a run.  As the street he was on opened into the city square he knew so well, he expected to find the shallow pool drained of all liquid.  As he slowed down and approached the lip carved with all of the names of the past mayors of the city, he was surprised to find that the water stretched infinitely downward.

He spun around to the voice of an elderly, female voice, represented by an unclear specter.  "Let the guilt go.  Take the plunge and purge yourself of everything holding you back right now."

The man stood dazed, not knowing what to do.  The specter chuckled softly and said, "It's alright.  I'll give you a hand."  Before he could react, the figure pushed him backward into the pool.  As the cool water washed over him, he made the transition from unconscious to conscious again.  This time, he found himself sitting up in darkness, breathing heavy and sweating.

"Shhh shhh shhh, relax," the voice from his dream whispered.  "It's not yet your time to die."

6 Month Quest

Inspired by the main blog that I follow, Nerd Fitness, I am going to begin a 6-month quest.  Now, I've already stumbled.  I intended to begin this on July 1st, and have it end on December 31st.  However, I'm just going to recover from my stumble and start on the right foot.  This quest will begin today, 7/8/2014, and end January 7th, 2015.  I'll do an overview of what I accomplished then.

This quest will revolve around self-improvement of my whole life.  My body, my mind, and where they overlap, what I'll call my spirit.  I'll outline what I'm going into this quest intending to improve.  I expect that this will change as the months go on.

Body: 

One of the things I've been focusing most on recently has been the welfare of my body.  Over the past several months, I have gone from not working out and eating horrible lunches, to going to the gym 2-3 times a week.   As of this morning, I'm 212 pounds with what the scale says is 28% body fat.  Doing some simple math, that puts me at 59.36 pounds of protective casing covering my body.  That is quite a bit extra to be carrying around.  It's going to be a huge focus on dropping this down.

Stats:

Here are my weightlifting stats right now.  All I'll be looking for in this is an improvement, as I don't understand enough how I'd improve to give a realistic goal.

Bench: 145 lbs.

Shoulder Press: 80 lbs. 

Deadlift: 75 lbs.

Lat Pulldown: 105 lbs.

Row: 125 lbs.

Squat: 80 lbs.

In 36 minutes (30 minutes of activity plus 3 minutes warmup and 3 minutes cooldown), I can get 2.75 miles.

For the Fitness test, I fail out at 8:00 minutes.

My sitting heart-rate is 72 bpm.

Goal: 

My long term goal is going to be to drop down to 9% body fat.  After doing some more math, going by the numbers above and assuming I don't lose or gain muscle, I'm going to need to drop 44 pounds of fat to make this happen.  Optimistically, this is safely doable in the next six months.  The maximum recommended weight loss is 2 pounds a week.  However, I'm going to take into account holidays, delicious family dinners, and other unforeseen factors, and set my goal to be at 20% body fat by the end of this year.  That will require me to only drop 21.45 pounds of fat.  For reference, that's a little more than two and a half gallons of water that I'm carrying around on my body all the time.

Approach:

Here's how I'm going to approach this.  First, in regard to my exercise plan, I'm going to work on kicking up my workouts to 5 days a week.  I'll still be strength training 2-3x a week, but for the rest of the time I'm going to put a heavy emphasis on cardio.  Strength wise, I'm squatting 85 pounds 3x10, benching 150 pounds 2x10 + 1x10 @ 145, and in one 35 minute period, I alternated jogging 5 minutes and walking one minute, and manage to complete 2.75 miles.  Dietary wise, I'm going to work more on calorie replacement.  I've cut back my sweets a lot and my fats a little bit, but I can do much better.  On top of my daily lunch salads, I'd like to decrease the calories of my dinner and make sure they revolve more around vegetables and lean meats instead of cheeses and heavy carbs.  I'll work on documenting my diet a lot more, and then making tweaks where I see fit.  Go science!

Mind:

It took me awhile to decide what would be categorized as my mind.  I've come up with what I'm training in Lumosity, and crystal memory (What I know).  This will be a lot looser, as I haven't decided strict goals in this area.  As I work on the spirit portion of my quest, and understand my mind better, I will come up with my goals and approach more clearly.  As for now, my goal is to improve my BPI in Lumosity, finish my machine learning class, and take at least one more class.  I'm also not sure if this belongs here, but I'd like to work more on my writing.  Having confidence in myself and just getting stuff done.  More on this in the future.

Spirit:

This is where I'm hoping the most noticeable changes that might be viewed by others would occur.  Spiritually, I'm not very in-tune with myself.  I have plenty of processes that are inefficient, and my mind is usually uneasy/unfocused.  I'm going to work on mainly on attempting to understand myself better, and to improve on developing good and healthy habits.  This is also more or less undefined, but I do have an approach.

Approach:

Weekly, I'd like to work on a process.  At the beginning of each week, I'd like to meditate and determine which of my most commonly used processes could be evaluated.  I'd like to make a move toward thinking about how I do things, in order to determine if they are the best for me.  As the week goes through, I'd like to formulate a new way of doing the process, if I think that a new way would work out better.  Finally, at the end of the week, or during the next week, I'd like to reflect on the change and see if I want to keep my process the same.