GetGeekStrong.com

From time to time I come across someone’s personal story of fat to fit that just blows my mind and is a source of encouragement that reminds me that this can be done. One such person is John Stone. At his website you’ll read and see the results of his decision to be fit (rocked up solid). He also offers detailed information about diet and training. Because I am sticking to Body For Life right now, I can’t personally speak about his training and diet information, but the pictures on his sight lend plenty of credibility.

One of my favorite brain strengthening website has upgraded with some great new features. I’ve blogged about my affection for Lumosity.com before and they are wooing me even more with

• Two new games
  • Word Bubbles - a verbal fluency task
  • Chalkboard Challenge - a numerical reasoning task
• Brain Performance Index
  • From the site: Check your BPI Lumosity calculates a BPI (Brain Performance Index) based on your game results. Your BPI reflects your skill in each exercise, and is based on data from over 500,000 results. You can measure and track your improvement in each cognitive area using BPI.
• Speed Boost Module 
  • Designed to improve processing speed, our newest 10 session training course focuses on games exercises that help you think faster.

A compelling upgrade for sure. They even offered me a deep discount again as a thank you for beta testing. If you have not yet tried out Lumosity, give it a go today. They offer a free 30 day trial.

Last night I had pizza. It was not my free day but boy, was it good. This particular pizza had lots of meat, onions and cheese. The crust reminded me of a crunchy soft pretzel. It had that kind of flavor. It was freak nasty good and if you are ever in South Bend, IN then visit Barnaby’s. I’d also recommend dining in. The atmosphere is very pub like and I noticed Newcastle on tap.

I’ve always had a hard time with math in my head. I just have so much trouble keeping track of all the numbers floating around in my head. listverse.com comes to my rescue with 10 great tips for calculating in your head. Until now, I never understood how my friends were multiplying by nines with their hands…seriously. Go forth and learn.

Friends,

Thank you for coming back despite my horid blogging habits. It turns out that I suck at blogging. It doesn’t matter why I’ve missed posting, what does matter is how I plan on approaching this blog for the time being.

I started this blog hoping to document my 12 week journey on the Body-For-Life fitness program. I am happy to report that, even though I am not blogging regularly about it, Body-For-Life is doing well for me. I’ve lost over 12 pounds at this point and I am getting stronger as well. I feel great. I still plan on blogging about my experience but I will no longer make empty promises about daily postings. This is my revised plan for this blog:

• Personal fitness updates will come when I have something to report
• I will post begin posting links to other blog articles that are important to me and, I feel, yo
• As blogging becomes more familiar to me you may see my blogging habits and style change

So that is the plan for now. This blogging thing is new to me and as much as I desire to be a good blogger, I also desire to stay focused on other things like my family, my day job and other revenue streams. Perhaps, someday, I’ll get good at this.

Wheee! A week has gone by and it’s been great so far. Day 7 went well. I ate everything I was supposed to eat and nothing I wasn’t. We had salmon for dinnerand it was awesome! I get a larger portion of fish and so I felt satisfied but not gross when dinner was over.

I worked on upper body strength training today. I need to buy some more wight plates because I’m increasing my weight at extreme levels which is making it close to impossible to complete the exercises for each muscle group.

One difficulty I find myself running into when working out at home is time. I feel a little crunched for time and so I don’t rest as long as I am supposed to between sets. And today I had to skip triceps to get to work on time. I need to go to bed earlier and wake up in time to get it all done as well as prepare my meals for the day.

Blogging every day is harder than I thought. Sorry for the inconsistency. Days three and four went well with no turning from my current goals. I stuck to my meal plan for both days with no trouble. I have, however, wanted to eat ridiculous amounts of popcorn and Rasinets while watching a movie or two.

My workouts went well. The upper body strength training I did on Day 4 challenged me and it felt great! On Day 3 I did cardio for the first time on this program and it rocked my face off. It was only 20 minutes long but I felt it for the rest of the day. It was a good feeling.

Day 5 was my free day. I remembered how miserable I made myself on the first few free days when I last did Eating For Life, so I toned it down slightly for this one. I made waffles with my daughter for breakfast, I don’t recall lunch, went to Oktoberfest for dinner where I had beer and sausage as well as a pretzel with cheese. Later that night I had a chicken wrap from Sonic and some ice cream. It was all very gross. I didn’t exercise either and my body missed it. I think next time I will exercise and lay off the nasty.

No, Body For Life is not harder than I thought. It’s plenty hard, but I expected that. Blogging on a daily basis is hard as you can see from my sporadic Daily Recap postings. Day three through six are missing posts, I know. But I am keeping track and will post soon. Right now I must watch 300.

Brain health has become increasingly important to me in recent months. I’ve come to realize that I don’t use mine nearly as much as I could. Several months ago I received an invitation to join the beta testing program for a website called Lumosity.

Lumosity provides brain exercising games via Flash and tracks your progress over a 30 day/30 session period. Each session can be completed in about 10 minutes or less. Lumosity clains that “Lumosity is a scientifically designed brain fitness program” and they have an impressive list of advisers from the scientific community.

During beta testing I was able to participate in 28 of the 30 sessions before testing ended. In a short amount of time I improved my scores for each game and moved on to more advanced levels. In addition to improving my scores I also noticed:

• Increased focus after my session finished and throughout the day
• Better processing of my peripheral vision
• Faster reaction times
• Improved memory (a previously weak area for me)

Overall, I felt like Lumosity contributed positively to my mental health and I looked forward to each daily session. Lumosity is not free, however, and that’s okay. It’s a good product. Improving your brain health will set you back $9.95 a month or &6.95 a month if you buy a year at a time. Of course you can try before you buy, Lumosity offers a 14 day free trial with no credit card necessary.

If you use Lumosity I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Day two went much better. It started with an intense cardio workout on the stationary bike. I think my legs are still burning. I definitely reached level 10 today and my energy levels were up all day and they carried me nicely to my sleep at around 11:30 p.m.

I did not stray from today’s meal plan, although I craved honey roasted peanuts. I drank over 72 ounces of water today which is ratcheting my bladder up to level 10. That will take some getting used to.

One final note…Tonight I took my before (as in before and after) photo. I had every intention of posting that photo on this blog as some moto for myself. After looking at the photo I decided not to. I had no idea and if you’ve seen me sans shirt…I’m sorry. If I am happy with myself after the 12 weeks are over I’ll post it with the after.