It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you have a clear goal in mind.

Six months ago, I received an email from a reader named Stephen who told me that he had a wedding coming up in May 2012, and that he hoped to get in shape for it. After managing to go in the opposite direction through most of the Holidays, Stephen finally woke up in early January and said “enough is enough.”
Since then, he’s become an absolute machine, day in day out, dominating his workouts and putting a huge focus on eating right.
Yesterday, he got married weighing in at 213, a full 57 POUNDS lost since January.
This is his story. (cue the Law and Order theme!)

Oftentimes, when I’m at a Nerd Fitness meetup, a rebel will ask me, “Do you mind if I have a beer?”
I usually laugh and say, “Nope! Will you get me one too?”
Yeah, I run a fitness website, but as you’ve hopefully been able to tell up to this point, it’s not normal. I write about Optimus Prime, Office Space, and the Legend of Zelda. I generally do my workouts on a playground and run around the world for fun.
I happen to also enjoy the occasional adult beverage.
I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately from people with questions like, “I want to try the Paleo diet, but I love beer. What can I do?”
I hear ya, friend.
Let’s take a look at alcohol, its effect on the body, and see if it can be consumed while still living a healthy life.
[side note: if you aren't 21 or of legal drinking age in your particular country, this article isn't for you. Instead, look at these baby sloths getting a bath!
Also, I'm not a dietitian, doctor, or anybody with any sort of important sounding credentials. I'm not an expert of any kind. I'm probably not even wearing pants right now. I'm merely a nerd who likes to dig into these things and present my results.]

I time-traveled yesterday.
Over the weekend, my friend/design Yoda Mike Bridgman wanted to give Nerd Fitness headquarters a more nerdy, retro look that screamed “NERD FITNESS!” Boom – I honestly get giddy just looking at it.
Seriously, if you’re reading this in an email or RSS reader, come check out the site
Anyways, during the weekend we also updated a whole bunch of other stuff and plugins on the site; one of those new services managed to revert EVERYTHING back to November 2011 yesterday. Things SHOULD be back to normal now, but for a few hours there I felt like I was trapped back in time, six months ago.
It was a rare (though forced) opportunity for me to see what the site looked like, what the message boards looked like, and how many members we had.
It taught me patience as well, as we’ve run into all sorts of snags, problems, glitches, and so on over the past two weeks getting this read…and then the site just didn’t work yesterday!
Last but not least, it also had me thinking of what my life was like six months ago (thanks to Mama T for the inspiration), and what life will be like six months from now.
Shall we go back in time?

Mega Man is going to blow your mind today.
Well, him and dozens of his side-scrolling friends.
Last week, a friend of mine emailed me a link to a video that instantly made my day and almost brought me to tears (seriously). If you’ve ever played an old school NES game, or grew up with a Sega or Super Nintendo, this video will take you on a nostalgic adventure down memory lane.
On top of that, if you’re anything like me, it’ll inspire the HELL out of ya.
Now, if you’ve been reading Nerd Fitness for a while, you’ll understand my obsession with drawing thought-provoking life lessons from the most random of places (Underpants Gnomes, Shawshank Redemption, and Mike Tyson’s Punchout!! to name a few).
Today, we’re going to learn how to level up our lives from 8-bit video game characters.
If this isn’t the best 2.5 minutes of your day, email me and I’ll send you a free NF t-shirt. Just kidding, we’re almost completely out of stock (though more are coming in the next week). And if they WERE in stock, you’d have to do something way cooler than just complain to get one
Enough about shirts though, let’s get back to the epic awesomeness that is “Go Right.” Make sure you watch it at least once, but preferably 10-250 times.
I’ll wait.
Done?
Great! Time to get educated by Mario and company.Keep reading »

What did you accomplish in the past 6 weeks?
Every six weeks here at Nerd Fitness, we house a completely free 6-week challenge over on the Nerd Fitness Message Boards…and we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people make drastic life changes in just six-weeks. Our goal with these 6-week challenges is to push you outside of your comfort zone, help you build new habits, and support you to make positive changes that influence every aspect of your life.
Today is your lucky day, for a new challenge begins…NOW!
Make sure you get signed up before Wednesday at 11:59pm est to be eligible to win!
To join: pick three diet and fitness goals and one life goal, and write about your struggles and victories along the way. Make new friends, accomplish some goals, and who knows…you might even win a place in the NF Hall of Heroes!
NERD ALERT!Keep reading »