How Chris Used the Riddle of Steel to Get Fit!

Editors Note: Since I am still recovering from San Diego Comic Con, and not entirely capable of writing more than a few coherent sentences, I thought it might be helpful to have a one of my geeky compatriots share some thoughts about health and fitness. So today, 1/3rd of the Geeked Out Fitness gang decided to share the first leg of his personal journey…

There comes a time in every nerd’s life when you stop, look around at the wasteland of empty soda cans, crumpled chip bags, and crushed pizza boxes and think…

“IS THIS WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?!?”

I had an epiphany one day as I stood before my feast of Hamburger Helper and realized that the only green colored sustenance I had consumed in weeks was Mountain Dew. Not a vegetable in sight for miles…

The worst part of all?

I was in the military at the time. I was supposed to be in the best shape of my life but I couldn’t run a mile without wanting to hack up a lung. The reality of the situation was that I had gained a bunch of weight, it certainly wasn’t the good kind, and I had a really unhealthy diet.

The challenges were numerous to say the least.

I worked on a flight line as an aircraft maintainer (go pointy heads!). That particular profession had its perks. I witnessed many magnificent sunsets as the jets I maintained took off for night training. I became virtually immune to the elements working in all manner of weather from freezing cold (working on a jet in driving snow is a lot more fun than you might think) to blistering heat (working on a jet in 100 degree heat is not… at all).

But, the job definitely had its downsides. Working swing shift meant 12 to 14 hour shifts in the prime time of the day; usually 5 days but sometimes more (weekend duty was the suck). My shift started at 4PM and usually ended sometime after 4AM.

That sort of a schedule left me few options for food unless I brought my meals with me. Being a 23 year old at the time, there was not a chance I would be doing that. So, fast food or our squadron snack bar was where most of my meals came from.

If I’m being honest… the biggest problem was that I had no idea how to cook!

I was living on my own, so the chow hall wasn’t an option for most meals, and the easiest thing I could do was make something out of a box when I got home.

At some point, I just got tired. Physically tired from a brutal schedule, yes, but mostly tired of an unhealthy lifestyle! The human body is an amazing thing and it can put up with a lot of stress and punishment, but only if you are treating it well… and I wasn’t.

I knew I had to change things.

My schedule was immutable so I looked to things easy things which I could control:

Soda:

I’m serious when I say that cutting out the massive volume of Mountain Dew I was drinking throughout the day resulted in the loss of something like 8lbs almost immediately.

Getting a handle on your weight is a numbers game. Yeah, the type of calories you put in your body matters just as much as the quantities… but it ultimately comes down to the numbers. Drink a soda with breakfast on the way home after work? Drink a soda with lunch? Drink a soda with dinner on the way in to work? Drink a soda at a break? All of that soda drinking ended up being more than 600 calories a day! I’m not suggesting that I cut it out entirely, I didn’t, but I decided to drink way less and start drinking more water.

It’s amazing how much better I felt once I started drinking enough water.

Snacks:

Our snack bar in the squadron was jammed full of candy bars, chips, nachos.. pretty much every sweet or salty snack a person could want; and none of it was doing me or my waistline any favors.

Instead, I decided to take a small step and bring my own snacks. At least I could eat something reasonable instead of the snickers bar/mountain dew combo. So, I brought in a jar of peanut butter and some apples. I got some side glances from my coworkers when I broke out a jar of peanut butter and cut up an apple while they were all eating the stuff I had just forsaken but, meh, who cares.

There were plenty of easy snack choices after I started looking

• Bags of string cheese (These little guys were DELICIOUS)
• Bulk bags of pistachios (I love pistachios and I could keep them in my pocket)
• Large containers of yogurt and boxes of granola (I just brought my own spoon and bowl)
• Turkey hotdogs (I would just microwave two of them and eat them with as a snack)

There is another side to these food and drink habit changes too; exercise.

But that’s a subject for another blog so keep an eye out…

There you have it! My true life lessons on kicking some bad habits.

Fire away in the comments below if you want to share your own experiences, lambast, or compare notes!

Chris Mooney – Geeked Out Fitness

About the Author: Chris Mooney wholly embraces the ‘and’ culture. He works his day job and he’s a co-founder of Geeked Out Fitness (makers of fine, nerdy workout gear) and he regularly kicks butt on the field of battle (Warhammer, that is) and he loves tromping through various mud runs and you can find him at Chris@GeekedOutFitness.com!

(Photo #1 credit)

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