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It’s not secret that I’m not a fan of conventional wisdom, overhyped programs, and fake fitness products.
These products and services are designed to prey on people’s insecurities, trick them to expect quick results as long as they pay four payments of $39.99, and then get them to buy the next product in the series. They’re built to line the pockets of their creators with money, not to help people reach their goals.
On top of that, these products help make us feel inferior when we don’t succeed with them!
This makes me furious.
Fortunately, there is hope!
Despite what you may have read on Nerd Fitness on April 1st, Nerd Fitness did not sell out to the Empire.
Instead, we’re fighting against these ridiculous companies and their ridiculous buzz words.
Let’s recognize them for what they really are and take these violators down.
You did it.
Months and months (or even years and years) of hard work, proper habit building, smarter food choices, and quality exercising habits have lead you to reaching your goal weight and size!
First and foremost, congratulate yourself! DING! You’ve leveled up. Feel free to pat yourself on the back, post your message in the Woot Room, and look in the mirror with pride: you rescued the princess, defeated Ganon, saved Hyrule.
Now, once you reach this goal, you’re probably wondering what the next steps are. After all, this goal of yours was the ‘carrot on the end of the stick’ that was dangled in front of you for so long…you might not really know what’s next!
- “Do I keep trying to lose more weight?”
- “What if I’m at my goal weight and like how I look, what now?”
- “Do I just keep doing what I’m doing?”
Today I want to discuss what can do after reaching that first big milestone, how you can continue leveling up your life, and how you can keep going right.
But first, a cautionary tale...
We’re big fans of the Paleo Diet around these parts.
If you’re not familiar with it, essentially it’s a ‘lifestyle choice’ of consuming certain foods based on we’re how we’re allegedly designed to eat from an evolutionary standpoint.
In short: cut out processed foods and grains, load up on veggies, meat, fish, eggs, fruits and nuts.
It’s no shock that Paleo is a hot topic around the Nerd Fitness Rebellion: our Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet has been viewed over three million times and our iPhone App, Paleo Central, has already helped over 25,000 people make more informed decisions on what to eat.
Now, as this way of life has continued to grow in popularity, it seems like more and more critics are coming out of the woodwork to bash it and present arguments as to why the Paleo Diet is a fallacy.
Within the past few months, a TEDx talk on debunking the Paleo Diet has been making its way around the internet, and a recently released book, PaleoFantasy, has brought the “is this Paleo Diet a fad/dangerous/a waste of time?” to the front of the conversations throughout the blogosphere and mainstream media.
Being the nerd that I am, I wanted to respectfully address the most common arguments, explain my experiences with the diet, and then invite you to share your story too.
Let’s do this thing!
“I wish I looked like him.”
“Look at her! Why can’t I look like that!?”
“Ugh, I just wish I had his genetics.”
We all do it; we’re humans, and thus we are hard-wired to compare ourselves to those around us, wondering why we don’t look as good as that guy/girl next to us in line (while also patting ourselves on the back for not looking as unhealthy as the person on the other side of us).
Over the past few decades, thanks to the power of the internet (thanks Al Gore!) and advances in science and technology, it’s pretty damn easy to find ways to feel inferior:
- Fashion magazines tell women that they’re not skinny enough or not pretty enough because they don’t look like runway models.
- Any men’s health magazine will tell us that we’re not big enough, that our muscles need to be more defined, and that we need to look more like Hollywood actors.
- Gentlemen: Unless we have a six pack, we’re not real men.
Whether you’re looking enviously at that girl/guy on the treadmill, or feel inferior because someone half your size just lifted twice your max, I’m here to tell you there’s only one true comparison that needs to be made.
Although it’s easier said than done (I know this all too well), this change is going to remove tons of anxiety, lift a huge burden off of your shoulders, and allow you to RELAX.
Let’s do this.
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Got ya, didn’t I?
Yeah, yesterday’s article, “The Future of Nerd Fitness,” was an elaborate April Fools’ Joke by yours truly.
Initially, I thought It was a bit too silly and probably wouldn’t make people laugh:
It turns out, I gave at least a thousand Rebels a heart attack, and those were just the thousand I heard from! 500+ comments, 200+ emails, 130+ facebook comments, and hundreds of tweets.
Did you pick up on these TV and film references?:
- If you Google the name of the company that “acquired” Nerd Fitness (or any of its parent companies), you’re lead to a wikipedia page for Arrested Development. Same goes for Teamocil, the fabulous drug that I was promoting that lowers your sex drive
- I was moving to Scranton, PA, home of the TV show, The Office.
- My boss’s name was Lumberg, the name of the evil boss from Office Space.
On top of that, I sure had fun adding increasingly ridiculous dystopian changes to Nerd Fitness, changes that go against every fiber of my NF Rebel being:
- Ads for supplements and popup ads!? I hate ads more than you do. Yeah, I know.
- A focus group of people who hadn’t seen Star Wars: Do these people even exist?
- The Rebellion would be renamed “the Fun Fit Squad” to be less controversial. Never!
- I’d have to stop writing nerdy articles! That’s the whole point of this site: I get to write about nerdy stuff and call it a ‘job.’
- The stuff I’d sell on QVC? See-through yoga pants, protein vodka, low-fat microwave meals! I almost vomited just typing that.
- Shorter articles and the Steve-Algorithm-Article-Generator? Wait…that actually sounds amazing.
If you happened to be one of those duped by my clever trick, I’m mostly sorry. Hopefully you can forgive me, but you have to admit…it was pretty damn good
I wanted to share with you some of the favorite (over)reactions I received from distraught readers who panicked when they thought I actually sold Nerd Fitness!
[Yeah, this was an April Fools joke DEEP BREATH!]
Bust out the lightsabers and start celebrating like the Death Star just blew up.
After four years, nearly five hundred published posts, thousands of emails, and months of back-and-forth negotiations, my lifelong dream has finally come true.
It’s been a long time coming, and although it’s somewhat bittersweet, I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out.
I’m excited to share this news with you today.
Deep breath.
Nerd Fitness has been acquired.
I’m sure you have a lot of questions, so I want to make sure I explain myself.
Growing up, I had a tremendous number of fictional characters that influenced my life.
I spent a good portion of my childhood dressed up in costume, whether it was as Daniel-san practicing crane kicks in my backyard, as Superman saving the world for five Halloweens in a row, or as Maverick sitting on a couch pretending it was an airplane.
However, before all of these influences molded me into the nerd that you see before you, there was the greatest kid’s show to ever grace the airwaves…Sesame Street.
Every morning I’d crawl out of bed and hurriedly make my way down to the TV, excited to discover what letters and numbers the muppets would talk about that day.
Just last week, out of the blue, my favorite characters suddenly jumped into my head, and I had an epiphany: Sesame Street has so much to teach us about fitness.
Let’s take a trip to where the air is clean, shall we?
(Oh, and we just added a whole bunch of new stuff to the NF store! Details are at the end of the article!)
When Robin was just 26 years old, her dad passed away at the age of 51.
“It rocked me in a way that made me finally start to open my eyes and look at the girl in the mirror.”
She was 267 pounds.
“In a world of physical and emotional pain, I was just plain unhappy”.
She tried everything — diet after diet, Atkins, pills, low-fat, low-calorie, extreme cardio, etc.
“Everything seemed like it worked for about a month, but I always slid into my old familiar ways. Unfortunately, these ways and learned behaviors were the same ones that killed my dad, and they were killing me too.”
Finally Robin decided to make a change. But she didn’t start from scratch, she wanted to keep the things she loved and use them to grow and change — not become something she’s not.
Here’s her story, and how she’s lost over 100 pounds, finding herself and finding happiness in the process.
This is an article by Nerd Fitness Team Member Staci, as the third article in her series on strength training. You can read the first installments here and here.
Picking a gym is a big decision.
You’ll be spending a lot of time there (hopefully), commuting there, and regularly interacting with staff and other gym members.
Your gym can be an important part of your life, and if you don’t find one that fits your needs, you could end up paying for something that you never use and feel like you’ve made a huge mistake.
Now remember, you don’t necessarily NEED a gym to strength train or to get in shape. There are many different options, like focusing on bodyweight only work (Steve’s favorite), sandbags, or making your own garage/basement gym.
However, for those of us who want to focus on barbell training and don’t have the space (or resources) to build our own gym, a gym membership ends up being the best option.
Today we’re going to talk about the ins and outs of finding the right gym for you, as well as how to pay as little as possible for it.
This whole “diet and exercise” thing can be stressful, even panic-inducing. This poor lego above couldn’t decide which health and fitness sources to trust, and unfortunately, went a bit crazy.
However, have no fear, my dear Rebel!
Today we’re going to learn one simple technique to break through the clutter and chaos and finally start leveling up your life.