#oneaday Day 825: Bull, Horns, That Sort of Thing

The Black Dog of depression has been rearing its ugly head a bit again recently for various reasons, and I’m sick of it. While there’s not necessarily much I can do about it showing up and being a pain in the arse, I can at least try and work on some things to make me feel a bit better about myself.

For starters, getting upset at one’s own reflection isn’t particularly great news, and it’s something that I can at least attempt to do something about. I have been fitness-ing off and on for some time now, but I figure it’s Time To Get Serious. That means I’m going to hit the gym every morning before I start my working day rather than leaving it until last thing in the evening when it’s easy to go “nah, fuck it”. (Of course, it’s easy to stay in bed and say “nah, fuck it” also, but I’m going to attempt to get out of this habit before it starts.) I won’t necessarily be doing everything every day, but I’m going to attempt to get at least an hour of cardio stuff in per day at the very least. This will likely mostly be done on the exercise bikes, where I can sit back and play Final Fantasy VI on my fancy-pants tablet while I’m sweating. At other times, I’ll use the crosstrainers and whack on a podcast — the Exploding Barrel Podcast from my good buddies Mike and AJ Minotti is always a favourite — or some inspirational music of some description.

As motivation and progress tracking, I’m going to be using Fitocracy, which I’ve posted about before here. I also considered resurrecting my Jedi Health Kick Tumblr from a while back, but given that Fitocracy provides the ability to post lengthy, blog-like status updates and has its own built-in community features, I’m going to stick with that. As well as tracking my workouts, I’m going to write a short post each day detailing how it went, how I’m feeling and what I’m aiming for. I’m also going to use Fitocracy’s excellent Quests feature to take on some challenges that I might not have otherwise thought of — this will help prevent complacency if I’m making a “game” out of it all.

I’d also like to eat better. I think I eat when I get depressed, and I get depressed a fair bit, which doesn’t help matters. I’d rather kick that particular habit in the face if possible — or at the very least change it so I munch on, say, carrot sticks instead of ALL THE BISCUITS, but that’s the sort of thing that will take plenty of teeth-clenching willpower to resolve. I have faith in my own ability to do this, however — if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s clenching my teeth and stubbornly resisting things. Sainsbury’s cream cakes are my most formidable adversary to date, however, so it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to defeat them using the power of my clenched teeth (and/or buttocks) alone.

So that’s the plan. We’ll see how long I’m able to stick with it. I’m saying this publicly so I have a bit more pressure to follow through on it. If anyone would care to join me and work out alongside me or just offer some words of encouragement, come cheer me on over on Fitocracy — it’s free to sign up and there’s a nifty companion iPhone app too.

#oneaday Day 813: Fitocrat

I last wrote about up-and-coming “fitness social game” Fitocracy back in… [checks] Ooh. October of last year. I thought it was more recently. I feel less guilty about writing about it tonight, in that case.

For the uninitiated, Fitocracy is a site which gamifies your exercise regime. Completing exercises rewards you with points. Points mean level ups. Level ups mean… well, nothing actually, but they provide you with bragging rights plus also give you a rough idea of how much cumulative exercise you’ve done since you started tracking it (and, in theory, “got serious” about it).

Tracking exercises can be done in two ways: manually logging them or linking to a Runkeeper account. The former is necessary for exercises which can’t be automatically tracked such as resistance machines, free weights and bodyweight exercises. The latter is the easiest way to track cardiovascular workouts — particularly those where you’ve actually, you know, gone outside — but you can also track CV stuff directly within Fitocracy if you don’t want to plaster your information over yet another site. (Runkeeper is a pretty cool app, though, so if you’re serious about your fitness, enjoy attempting to draw GPS penises via your exercise route and have a smartphone, it’s worth a download.)

If Fitocracy was just an exercise-tracking system with a levelling system, it’d be pretty decent. But the team behind it has gone the extra mile and included a bunch of other stuff, too. There are Achievements for a variety of things ranging from engaging with the site’s social features to performing challenging exercises. There is a Quest system that provides specific, one-off missions for you to undertake — a good means of setting yourself long-term goals if you can’t think of any of your own. You can save your favourite routines so you can easily recall and record them. There’s a solid Groups system whereby you and your friends can work together and even set up mini-challenges to see who can earn the most points in a set time period. And the whole thing is wrapped in a straightforward, conventional but effective and highly-polished social interface that encourages interaction and encouragement between “players”.

All in all, it’s an excellent motivational tool. Everything combined together forms a powerful system that makes you feel like you’re being “rewarded” for bettering yourself when, in fact, you’re simply making a variable go a bit higher each time or occasionally unlocking intangible shiny things. The thing is, though, you are actually rewarding yourself. You’re bettering yourself. You’re getting fit. You’re learning how to self-motivate. And, assuming you’ve managed to badger some friends into joining up too, you’re also being rewarded by positive encouragement and reinforcement from other people who are going through the same thing. It’s a social network for people who are serious about their fitness — or who want to get serious about their fitness. And it does its job extremely well.

Fitocracy was in closed beta for a pretty long time, and during that period it was only possible to use the service if you had an invite. Now, though, the whole thing is open to the public and is completely free to use — though power users have the option of shelling out $4.99 a month to become a “hero” and get early access to new features. The service has had a fresh new coat of purple paint, its site looks great and the new iPhone app is a pleasure to use with its simple, intuitive and attractive interface.

So why not give it a try? Here’s my profile. I’ll be your friend! NOW GET MOVING, MAGGOT!

#oneaday Day 636: A Vote for Fitocracy is a Vote for… Wait, No

Andie and I joined the local gym yesterday, and had our induction sessions today. All is good and we’re feeling suitably motivated to proceed. This will likely mean leaving EA Sports Active 2 by the wayside — boo, no PSN trophies for me, but seriously, who gives a toss? — in favour of using actual proper exercise machines. And also not having to strap on those motion sensors which occasionally disconnect for no apparent reason.

Don’t get me wrong, EA Sports Active 2 is great, and it offered enough to get me motivated to start gymming it again, but there’s no substitute for the “real thing”.

The thing with being a member of the gym is, of course, maintaining your motivation factor. There are lots of ways you can do this — going along with a friend, keeping a log of your progress or, increasingly, using some form of website or app to both track your progress and brag about how awesome you are and how swell your guns are looking.

There are plenty of these available — Runkeeper Pro is my app of choice on my iPhone — but a lot of them are relatively simple affairs that just track what you’ve done without any particular form of motivation bar what you make up for yourself. Runkeeper does email you every time you break a personal record, but that’s about it.

Enter Fitocracy, an up-and-coming website that’s still in beta. Fitocracy takes the concept of fitness tracking and jams it firmly up the arse of social gaming. This means that every time you track some fitness, you get points. Points mean levels. Levels, as we’ve seen from fifteen billion social games that really don’t need a levelling system, are a powerful motivational tool — and, as each level gets progressively harder to achieve, they inspire you to push yourself a little bit further, whether that’s demonstrating your patience with clicking on a Facebook game, or feeling the burn a little bit more with your workouts.

There’s also a Quests function, which is an awesome idea. Take on a Quest and you’ll challenge yourself to do a specific exercise or combination, with points on offer as a reward upon completion. Obviously a large amount of this is down to your own honesty — but then so is fitness tracking itself, and the only person you’re cheating if you lie is yourself. Levels don’t get you anything per se, they simply provide a degree of motivation to the whole experience.

I will be trying out Fitocracy with some interest over the next few weeks — and possibly longer if it turns out to be awesome. It’s invite-only at the minute, but if you’d like to try it out for yourself, get in touch and I can hook you up with one of my remaining ones so you can check it out.

In the meantime, I have some grinding to do.