Jamie Eason's 12 week plan - week 2

So a major element of my goals include finishing the Jamie Eason Livefit 12 week plan. Basically this is a 12 week workout program on bodybuilding.com which is largely focused on weight training, but has cardio in later weeks as well. So, I'm not training to be a bodybuilder. Frankly, Jamie Eason's arms are a little too jacked for me, hot as she otherwise is.

Jamie Eason and her incredibly jacked arms

But lately I've been slacking on working out. In the past I've been pretty good, but since my last placement I ended up so exhausted coming home every day that I barely exercised. After that, I found it hard to get back into the swing of things. Now I'm living back with my parents I'm also finding myself putting on fat (I can't say weight because I never put on weight) and overall I just wasn't happy with the way I was looking or feeling.

In general I do best in fitness goals with a fixed plan to follow. I managed to start running with Couch to 5k, but struggled to keep going once it had finished. I need structure or I end up just aimlessly drifting from one thing to the next. I suppose this is why I've never really enjoyed sandbox games - I much prefer to know what objectives I could be completing next.

So far I've completed 2 weeks of the program. Thus far it's been fine - I'm doing fairly high reps (12 per set) but trying to push the weight up every time. I'm always sore the day (and sometimes 2 days) afterwards, but it's a good sore. It also only takes me 45 minutes, which is great for a morning workout. I hear the time it takes really ramps up in later weeks though, so maybe I'll have to start waking up earlier...either that or work out in the evenings. Next week 10 rep sets begin, so I'll be pushing the weight up even higher.

In terms of the diet...I am ignoring it entirely. Bodybuilders and anyone obsessed with weirdly specific performance (I'm looking at you runners and triathletes) tend to get very precious about diet. You may only eat egg whites, you must eat every 3 hours, you must eat constant protein, you can only eat 'bad' food on a 'cheat' day. Pfffft. Whatever. I've tried to clean up my diet a bit (a lot more fruit and vegetables, a lot less chocolate, biscuits and cake) but I'm not going crazy with eating a lot of unnecessary protein (read anything by Anita Bean - she makes a pretty convincing argument that we don't need as much protein as we eat) and I'm eating 3 times a day. I'm also eating junk food if I want it. I rarely want it. But I'm not aiming to look like a fitness model, just a fitter version of myself so I don't see any point in torturing myself with denying myself things.

So far I think I'm starting to look a bit 'tighter' if that makes sense - my muscle definition in my arms is improving and my stomach's looking a little flatter. I'm quite lucky in that my body seems to respond to exercise quite well and quite quickly, which is always gratifying.

Oh well, another 2 weeks and I can cross Phase one off my list and give myself 20 experience points. For now I'll keep working on my essay - should be able to get 20 experience points by mid next week if I push it.

What is levelling up my life?

So I've been researching the potential uses of computer games as part of my Occupational Therapy course, and in my research I came across the concept of "levelling up my life" or "gamifying my life". (If you want to see the essay I wrote based on the use of video games in Occupational Therapy, it's here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwJ43ntaNOZ1c3d4VkhrTS0xSkk) Now I'm a pretty avid gamer, especially of RPGs, and I've been known to play the odd game of D&D as well, so this idea intrigued me. A guy called Jon Guerrera approached this pretty interestingly, but most of my inspiration for this has come from Steve Kamb over at Nerd Fitness. He set about developing an Epic Quest for himself - a series of goals he wanted to achieve and levelling up when he achieved a certain number.

It seemed like a cool idea and I've been toying with it for a little while. I've also been playing around with Fitocracy and have enjoyed the quests and being able to level up in that by improving fitness as well (I'm Femshep on there!)

So what is levelling up your life? Essentially, it's using the short term gamer reward system for achieving goals. Every gamer knows the great feeling you get when you level up, or fight a tough boss and get a cool piece of gear. Every non-gamer points to people who get addicted to computer games and do nothing but game. Well, the best and worst thing about computer games is the behavioural conditioning it puts you through. The best video games make you want to keep playing because you've had this behaviour reinforced through intermittent reward. Cracked.com wrote a great article about the fact that operant conditioning is used in computer games to make you want to keep playing.

So that's what I want to do with my goals. I want to give myself that immediate gratification positive feedback for relatively long-term goals. No good game has a gamer sets off at level one and sit there focused on getting to level 60 and get bored because they don't feel like they're making progress. It takes a lot of time and effort to get to a high level, but it doesn't feel like it because you're incrementally improving, and regularly getting that "Ding! Level up!" feedback.

Looking at other people's methods of levelling up their lives, I've been able to pick bits I think work and other areas which I think need developing. Jon Guerrera makes the point that social interaction can make a game, certainly it's worked for Fitocracy, so this is why I'm making this blog. I may also invite friends to join and have their own quests and compete. Steve Kamb has a great system which mine is largely based on, but I think a lot of his goals are too long term and difficult to achieve, which doesn't lead to that immediate gratification I'm after. I love Fitocracy's quests and levelling up, but once I've levelled up I don't feel like anything's really happening as a result - I think I need more solid real world feedback than that.

So this is my plan.
First of all I'm going old school RPG gamer. That means my goals will be organised into stats: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Broadly, Strength stats will be weight training; Dexterity will be cardio or more acrobatic fitness; Wisdom will be financial and health related; Intelligence will be work, learning and skill related; and Charisma will be social.

Secondly, every time I achieve a goal, I will get 20% of a level (unless otherwise specified).

Thirdly, every time I level up, two things will happen. 1, I get to buy myself something I've been after, whether that be a computer game, clothing or anything else. 2, I get to allocate three  points to my stats based on the areas I levelled up in the most (e.g. if I achieved 3 STR goals, 1 INT goals, and 1 WIS goal, I'd give myself 2 in STR and 1 in either INT or WIS).

Now, I'm not entirely sure what to do with my stats yet. A big part of me wants to play a game like Dragon Age: Origins or Star Wars: The Old Republic using the stats I develop in the real world, but in those games specialisation is how to get ahead and I really want to be quite balanced here in the real world. However, it's something I'll keep thinking about. Part of me quite fancies restarting Dragon Age with a character developed from my own self-development. I always did like role playing the character as I would react.