Fitness Challenge!

So, I've been working on getting my life in order.  Even though I've been doing great with my exercise (And by great, I'm consistently going to the gym 2 out of the 3 scheduled times a week xD), I'm still struggling with my diet.  I've passed the point where I get physically sick when I eat vegetables.  However, I still have a preference to not eating them.  So, I've decided to find a source of motivation to get me into the habit of eating lots more of them...

A fitness challenge!  Yesterday was day 1 out of 84 of a fitness challenge on reddit.  I took down my weight, and posted pictures, and now I have a solid starting point.  My approach will be as such: Workout and be active in general, and consume 1500 calories a day (1700 calories on workout days).  A majority of my calories will be from protein, in a hope to still gain some muscle, or at least curb any muscle loss I'll see from the huge deficit.  This means I'll be eating a salad with a side for lunch, and a salad for dinner.

This will be a huge will power test.  As such, I feel it's a great way to start easing back into that part of why I created this blog.  I'll be sure to cover my struggles, what I'm doing to overcome them, and see if I get any comments/support/techniques anyone has for me.

I'm optimistic though.  Although I'm 33% heavier than I spent most of college/high school, I'm also lifting heavier weights than I ever have before and just being more active than I have in a long time.  While my goal will be to lose 20 pounds of fat, my real measure of success will be whether or not I stick with it for the whole 84 days (even if it's at a minimum).  1% is infinitely better than 0%.

Journal 4

Hey guys,

So, I think I'm finally at a point where I'm comfortable trying my hand at Dungeon Mastering again.  A few lessons that have been driven home that I'm going to be bringing with me:

Slow down - No need to rush, no need to try to keep things moving along.  Rushing my story will only cause it to lack details, and trying to rush telling the story will lead to mistakes.  With regard to telling the story, I'll trust my players to inform me if I am going too slow.

Keep it simple - Prelude in C is a great example that you can do beautiful work with something simple.  I'm currently learning this for piano.  It has a steady melody, and never uses more than 5 different notes in a phrase.  I'm going to work on creating a world based on simple principles and focus on bringing them together cohesively.

Being aware that I'll make mistakes - I'm not an experienced DM, so I will make mistakes.  I will instead take this as an adventure of learning how I can be better.

Other than that, nothing too much to report new for me.  Didn't play Dark Souls 2 last night, so not much more to report on that front.  I hope that everyone has a great day.

Journal 3

I'm only going to make a habit out of something if I actually do the task I want to make habitual.  I'm not going to write a lot today, but I hope that at least writing something everyday will be useful.  

As for me, I'm doing great!  I had a nice relaxing weekend.  Wasn't as productive as I wished, but was still pretty nice.  

Things I did do this weekend: Went to a wedding at a conservation park.  The weather was beautiful and we went on a nice walk around the lake.  I also visited my father and brothers.  There, I played more Dark Souls 2.  Apparently, I've spent too much time helping other people and leveling up, because I'm at level 125 and still haven't beaten the game.  I'm switching back into dual wielding, but I'm liking sword and shield too much (I love the protection).  Therefore, I'm going to work on switching between the two more often, as the situation arises.

Finally, this is another note to myself to work on the habit post.  Also, to read my own posts again.  Let's see if I re-read this post in order to remind myself to read the other ones xD.

Journal/Diary 2

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

- King Whitney, Jr


I've been fearful.  I'm going to work on changing that.


This week I'm working on implementing even more changes.  I've been up and down with all of my other ones, but it's time to start working on solidifying those, and adding additional ones.  Even though I've been going to the gym the last 4 months, I've gained 10 pounds.  While some of it is definitely muscle, there is a significant portion that is fat.  This is what I'm working on identifying with these changes that I'm starting this week.


First, dropping my drinking.  I didn't get drunk all of the time, but I did do lots of casual drinking (What I called casual at least).  To not drink yesterday was a bit hard.  Leading me to believe that I'm more addicted to it than what I wanted to believe.  But I managed.  I'm getting great support from Kayla.

Second, working more on my diet.  I've been great with improving my eating selection.  I'm about 80% comfortable with a huge number of vegetables.  Enough that, for the most part, I won't even try to eat around them.  Moving forward, I'm switching to just a salad for dinner.


I've been observing my diet.  Between getting up and when I get home, I'm following my diet pretty well.  This means the increased vegetables, the dropping of snacks, and the high amount of calories in the morning to supply energy all day.  I start to fail miserably when I get home.  Huge meals (And the drinking) supplied my body with tons of extra calories that it didn't need to make it through the night.  But focusing more on only having a light dinner and light snack in the evening, I'm expecting about a 1,000 calorie swing.  Putting me from the (I'm guessing) 500 calories over to 500 calories under basal metabolic rate (Normal amount of calories my body spends in a day).  We'll see how this goes for a couple of months.


Finally, the more fun stuff!  I played lots more Dark Souls 2 last night.  Holy crap, I'm loving this game.  It's been quite a while since I've been this enticed by a game.  I've got some changes from yesterday.  I've been doing a lot of co-op to help people defeat bosses.  With two other people usually, I'm only being focused about 1/3 of the fight.  I've wanted to do more damage, so I've been experimenting with a halberd for those fights.  And it's definitely helping.  The only unfortunate part is that I've still yet to get a stronger weapon, and all of my levels last night went into faith.


I don't have much to say on faith yet.  It was a considerable investment to begin implementing it.  I'm only faith level 16 and attunement  level 10.  The level 10 attunement only gives me one spell slot.  Also, my lightning spell requires a faith of 22 (There is a ring I can buy that increases my faith, so I might invest in that).  This means I need more attunement (If I want the heal, force spell, and the lightning), and a bunch more faith.  At 10k+ souls a level now, it's going to take awhile.


I'll keep you posted on how that turns out tonight.

Change

No matter how long you've been doing something, if you want to, you can change it.

Journal/Diary 1

Work, which hasn't been too great, is finally starting to ramp up again.  I had a frustrating last few weeks with trying to troubleshoot issues that weren't making much sense.  It ended up being partly my lack of complete understanding, and partly from having to wait for someone who was the connection between me and the customer experiencing this difficult issue.  

On top of that, I've been really itching for more development work.  And now I've gotten it!  Unfortunately, it's due to someone on our team leaving, Zach.  It does mean that in the near future, I'll have more responsibility in terms of releases and maintenance.  But it also means I have more responsibility.  Which means more opportunities to prove myself.

As for home: Cleaning up has still been slow.  The office still has quite a few boxes to unpack.  It will be slow progress, but as long as I get a box or two done a night, I should be good.

Now on what I've really been enjoying these past few days... Dark Souls 2!  Holy crap, this game is fun.  (Not so much with Keyboard/Mouse or a crappy PS3 wired controller).  After we bought an Xbox 360 controller receiver for the computer, the game became so much smoother, and so much more fun.  I'm already up to level 63, but I'm pretty sure I'm not all that far into the game.  

For my character, he's a dual-wielding swordsman with a bow.  I'm calling it the Legolas build.  He's pretty good at starting fights with one or two people, and if I position myself properly, I can even get a couple kills if they are in a mass coming down a hallway or funneling through a door.  I'm going to keep spoilers out of here, but I will say that I've fought 4 bosses.  There seem to be more bosses overall, but there have been a couple that I would deem mini-bosses.  

I'm really wondering if I should dive into magic.  I'd have to allocate quite a few levels now, which are starting to get significantly more expensive.  But I think I would do well with a faith build.  The extra healing for sustainability, the burst damage from the lightning, and the positioning tools from the force knockback all appeal to me.  We'll see.

Til next time.

Understanding

My first amusement with the concept of understanding was that I didn't fully understand what it meant to understand something.  After looking at the word for a few moments, I quickly broke it down to under and stand, or to stand under something.  Why would anyone stand under something?  I don't know... so, I went off to this wonderful place called the internet. 


Define Understanding: the ability to understand something


Well crap.


Define Understand: perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or speaker).


Much better!


Well then, what is the intended meaning of the word "understand"?  I'm pretty sure it was lost in time (Or so I hope, as I'm too lazy to search for it right now), so I'm going to forge my own ideas.  And to do this, I'm going to stick with my original train of thought of standing under something.  So, why would someone stand under an object?  The simple answer that I came up with: Because they have enough knowledge about it to know that it won't fall on them.  Or if it does, it won't hurt them.


At this point, it's getting increasingly difficult to talk about this topic without using the word "understanding".  To me, this means that this is a great word.  One without a lot of fluff tied to it.  So, I'm going to wrap up and start thinking about my next topic of how to go about "Understanding" things.   It requires a knowledge of relevant properties of the object, and the relationships that those properties has with the world and other things in the world.  The more numerous those properties are, or the more complex the relationships are, the more difficult it will be to understand something.


Silly final thought:  If you stand under something you thought understood won't fall on you, and it falls on you, you didn't understand it well enough and shouldn't have stood under it :P.