Geeky Fitness

So, lately (who starts a blog like that?) I’ve been feeling less and less good about the shape of my body. Not just my physical shape, but also how fit I am. I get winded too easily and I don’t feel as energetic as I think I should. Sure, I could blame my sleep apnea on my constant tiredness, but I don’t feel like it is all to blame. You see, for my job, I sit in a chair eight to ten hours a day. That’s a lot of sitting. When I go home, I play with my kids and eat dinner, then help put them to bed. After that, I might sit on my butt again for another hour or two before bed. That’s when I’m home. Since I’ve been travelling regularly to California, when I get off work I go to the hotel and sit for the rest of the evening. If you add it all up, I’m sitting for over 14 hours a day while I’m not at home. Not acceptable.

I’ve decided to do something about it. Since I’m a problem solver at heart, I went about coming to a solution in a methodical manner.

First step, identify the problem. Easy enough, I’m not in shape and I want to be.
Second step, identify a goal. Also easy, get in shape. Okay then. Now comes the hard part.

Third step, identify a solution that will attain the goal. I know from my history that I don’t like going to the gym or exercising on my own. Even the Wii Fit has failed to keep my interest, though it worked longer than the other two items. You see, the problem is that I don’t feel motivated to do these things. Sure, I want to change, but change is hard and I’m quite lazy. Just the desire to change isn’t motivation enough to do so. I needed something new that would motivate me to accomplish my goals.

I also happened to be reading the book, “Geek Dad”. In it are many geeky projects and activities for parents just like me, geeky. Starting on page 79 is an idea on how to get your kids to do their chores, do better in school, etc. The idea is to create a character sheet for each child and they gain XP by completing pre-defined tasks and objectives. The outlines in the book are very good and are loosely based on D&D. For those of you who know me well, you know that I’ve extensively modified the D&D rules for my own use in the past and the idea that the author, Ken Denmead (editor of the blog by the same name as the book), describes to motivate your kids greatly intrigued me. I finally had a rough idea of what my solution would be.
I began brainstorming ways to use Ken’s idea and my own experience to devise a system that would motivate me to get healthy. I quickly decided to broaden my scope from just physical fitness to other areas that I wished to improve in (more details in a later post). I ran the idea by my wife and she was tentatively on board to make it a competition. I suggested that the first person to level 10 (since we’ll be characters that can level up) would win and get a Major Prize ™.

I began work on the system. I was so excited that I did the whole thing in one sitting this week. It only took me about two hours to get the spreadsheet up and running. It’s a simple version of the character sheets that I used to create in Excel for D&D. Stay tuned for more details on the spreadsheet in my next blog entry.
I’ve done one full day so far, so I’m not sure how fast I’ll make it to level 10. I’ll keep you all posted as to my progress.

Favorite song of the moment: MC Chris – MC Chris is Dead

I keep wanting to type MC Christ… :D