Struggling to Start? Pick One of These 5 Quests.

Sky Rim

I love quests, missions, and goals.

It’s no surprise the tagline for Nerd Fitness is “level up your life” – it’s something that’s been part of Nerd Fitness since day 1, and we’re only gonna quest out more as we go along.

We love helping people who are brand new to fitness get started by using quests, remove the mental barriers to getting started, and encouraging people to just TAKE ACTION.

If questions like these sound familiar, today is for you:

  • “Do I start running every day? What about push ups?”
  • “Should I eat low fat? Should I count calories? Try Paleo?”
  • “I hear yoga is good. But so are bootcamps. And what about those dvds?”

There’s about a bazillion different ways to get started, and as a result its damn easy for us to do nothing.  We call this “paralysis by analysis.”  I was actually afraid of writing this article for that very reason.

Instead, we’re going to break the habit, and build a healthy cycle.

Level Up Quests

I’m going to present you with 5 quests.  These are 5 quests that will get you started down your path to a leveled up life.  I want you to pick one. And I want you to do it every day for the next week.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can do two of them.  HOWEVER, what we don’t want is for you to try and do all of them every day; you’ll get overwhelmed and drain your willpower meter.

YOUR MISSION: finish your week with 7 straight days of victory.  The quests below are designed to be completed daily.  We want you to prove to yourself that you CAN build a habit, that you CAN make a change, and that you CAN stick with it for an entire week.

You’re going to finish this week with a boatload of momentum – for the uninformed, that’s quite a bit of momentum.

5 Ways to Level Up

Are you struggling to start or looking for a way to reboot your journey?

Your mission is to select a quest below, and follow through with it, every day, for the next seven days.

1) Go for a 5-Minute Walk!

Stone Feet

Description: Sure, five minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time.  And a single step might not seem like much either.  However, combine enough steps together, and a small hobbit can walk to Mordor, destroy the One Ring, and save Middle Earth.

The five minutes isn’t the important part, it’s actively committing to a change in habit and making these five minutes a normal part of your day. Once you prove this to yourself, you’ll be asking, “Hey I can walk for five minutes, why not six?”

2) Veggie Powered!

Veggie Spread

Description: Every single day, for an entire week, you need to eat at least one vegetable per day. The more green and leafy, the better. Vegetables are loaded with nutrients, but generally light on calories. This means they can fill you up and fuel you up without fattening you up.  Not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of that last sentence.

Anyways, even if you hate vegetables, your excuses end here. Pick one and get started.

3) Push Ups Are Your Friend!

StevePlyoPushUp

Description: Complete 3 sets of 10 push ups (any type). As one of most iconic and accessible of all exercises, the push-up builds strength in your chest, shoulders, triceps, and core. If you can complete 3 sets of 10 regular push ups, go for it. If you can’t, try incline push ups, knee pushups, or wall push ups instead.

The goal again is to not exhaust yourself, but rather to prove to yourself that you can spend five minutes each day focusing on making a physical improvement to yourself.

Make sure you read our guide on push ups!  

4) Upgrade Your Batcave

batman batcave

Description: Every day this week, spend 5 minutes “improving your batcave.”  What I mean is, we’re products of our environment, and thus by making small changes to our environment we can actually change our behavior without expending willpower.

If you want to build a new habit, remove one step between you and that new habit:

  • Sleep in your running clothes, so you are ready to run first thing in the morning.
  • Pack your gym bag the night before and put it in your car. DING! Ready to work out.
  • Put a pull up bar in your doorway, and do one rep every time you walk past.

If you want to break a bad habit, ADD one step between you and that habit:

  • Stop DVRing crappy shows, so you spend less time watching TV.
  • Throw away all junk food from your house!
  • Block yourself from time wasting websites. More time for fun, positive stuff.

Check out our full guide to building your batcave here.

5) Cook a Meal at Home

Chicken Kabob Thin

Description: Replace one meal each day with a home cooked meal.  It can be something as simple as chicken and broccoli, or any of these other recipes. Heck, you can batch cook one meal on Sunday and eat it for the next seven days.

Just prove to yourself that the kitchen is not scary, and that you are capable of making a meal – for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner:

Start Now

Start

Alone, just five minutes a day might not seem like much.

Each of the quests above are like those steps towards Mordor.  Collectively, they add up to massive change. But they must be committed to every single day.

We are stopping the “boom and bust,” all or nothing mentality:

We are never going on a diet again: instead you are striving for lifelong lifestyle changes.

We are not going to exercise ourselves to death – we are going to build a sustainable exercise habit that allows us to succeed over the long term, and actually make us fall in love with the process.

We are going to stop asking “Am I there yet?” and understand that we never truly arrive, and that’s amazing.

I love the idea of quests, small changes, and consistent progress.

And I love the idea of leveling up, which is why we incorporated a leveling system into our Nerd Fitness Academy -to reward you with quest completions, experience, and levels when you complete challenges just like the ones above.

Heck, I just became a Level 14 Assassin yesterday 🙂

I want to hear from you:

Which of the habits above are you going to pick?  Post a comment below and pledge to your fellow Rebels. If you have somebody in real life, have them hold you accountable.

And then get started.

-Steve

###

photo source: Johnson Cameraface: Batcave, Pedro Riberio Simoes: feet, Martin Cthrae: veggies, Jay Springett: Start, Nicholas James Santiago: Skyrim

The Last Fitness Program You’ll Ever Need

Workouts, nutrition guidance, and habit-building. Never wonder where you should put your limited time, energy, and effort.

Get our FREE Starter Kit with dozens of resources today!

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.