Fitocracy and My Lifestyle Change

So I joined this site in September of last year thanks to The 404 Show. In the past eight months, Fitocracy has successfully trained me to take the stairs in my office building, so much that I am actually starting to feel guilty about the six to twelve points per day.

This is how I know that the site works: Fitocracy has helped me develop one healthy habit to the point that I no longer think of "walking up the stairs in lieu of the elevator" as a workout or even a habit; now it's just part of going to work.

Fitocracy served as my springboard into healthy living. First it was just noticing what I am doing and what I am not doing. Eight hours a day on my butt in front of a computer screen. That's my job. Seven hours of sleep. That's so I can function. Total 24 hours in a day, minus 15 hours of combined work and sleep, leaves 9 hours of whatever I want. Most of those 9 hours are spent on my butt in front of a computer screen, playing junk and watching junk. A sedentary lifestyle doesn't quite cut it; I'd go with severely sedentary. Maybe even fatally sedentary. Coming to this realization sparked the need for change.

Sometimes change is difficult and sometimes it's easy.

I wasn't always sedentary, fat, overweight, or obese. The Nintendo Wii Fit calls me obese. I was incredibly active and fit in high school; I played soccer in the fall and ran track in the spring. During the winter months I was lifting in the school weight room and over summer break I was conditioning for soccer. I was an athlete. I was fit, toned, and powerful. And I looked "good" in all the pop culture sense.

While conditioning for soccer in the gawd-awful June heat before my senior year, I questioned all of it. We were running sprints, my body ached and burned. Sweat stung in my eyes as I bolted from goal box to goal box. The moment of clarity: none of it made me happy. There was no joy in my actions. I almost quit, right there. The team mentality kept me for the season, but once soccer was over, I was done. I didn't hit the weights in the winter or run track in spring. I chilled, relaxed, and vegged out. I went from high school to college with the same outlook. Freshman fifteen? I was more of a freshman fifty.

Going from active to sedentary was an easy change for me. Because I'm naturally lazy. I'm the DoNothingMan, remember? Discipline helped me perform in high school, athletically and academically. I threw the athletic discipline out the window my senior year and never looked back. Until now, eight years later.

Making the change from sedentary to active looks to be difficult. I'm not going to post my goals up here, just yet. But I have found a number of awesome tools. Fitocracy is joining LoseIt! and Calorie Counter as my tool set to achieve healthier living. LoseIt! serves as my primary food and weight tracking app; it comes loaded with tons export features, perfect for the data junkie like me. The My Fitness Pal Calorie Counter has a very large food library, much larger than LoseIt! (I hate unnecessary punctuation in titles). This calorie counter will supplement LoseIt! and Fitocracy. I'm not starting all this craziness until May.

Which means I am eating Taco Bell tonight and drinking as much Baja Blast Mountain Dew as I can handle until they kick me out.