.:: Run Fat Boy .net ::.

How do you relate to a 60 year old grandma that being 50% overweight is a risk?  Do you tell her that she’s twice at risk for heart disease, diabetes, or colon cancer?

No, I don’t think the average individual can conceptualize the above diseases.  Sure we’re all aware of the illnesses, but the actual effects are hard to put into frame.

The health industry certainly doesn’t lack information; health risk assessments have well been established.  What is needed is a bridge, a verbiage from which average citizens can take health information and ask "what does that mean for me and my family?"

One way to do this is to make the assessment personal. Take smoking for example; if a 55 year old grandpa is a smoker, he can expect to lose at least 5 years off of his life.  If the average male lives to be 70 years old, this grandpa can only expect to live until 65.  Now let’s say that grandfather has a two-year old grand-daughter. In the end, this grandfather can reasonably expect to miss his granddaughter’s high school graduation.

Lung cancer may mean nothing, missing a graduation may mean everything.  We must learn to build bridges.

My name is Jim Jones and I am a software engineer living in Lincoln, NE.  I’m fascinated by the strange, the weird.  I probably day dream too much. 

My goal is to create the next "Big" thing (for whatever that is).  So far the only thing getting big is my waste line which leads me to the development of this site.

There’s a lack of websites dedicated to the fitness inept.  We’re not talking about the stick that debates whether she should be eating 80 grams or 90 grams of protein a day.  There’s no shortage of those freaks online.

I’m talking about the individual that walks into the gym and looks clueless. Where to begin? I realize that it’s scary.  I used to be in great shape in high school and actually did collegiate sports my freshman year.

Now, when I walk into a gym I can’t help but feel the eyes in the room gravitate towards my breasts flopping wildly while my feet pound the treadmill like a three-legged elephant.  I weigh as much as a baby panda.

So what’s the resolution?  I’ve come up with a few solutions that I will share in the coming weeks but I still struggle like everyone else. Why do Twix bars have to come in pairs?  Do the peanuts in Snickers count as my daily protein intake?

Nutrition sucks, fitness sucks harder, but being fat sucks the worse.  I want to be able to ride a roller coaster without worrying if the harness will fit.

Let’s get things off to a semi-geeky start.  All superheroes start with an origin story.  We learn of how the hero’s parents were killed, or how the hero found a ring with gnarly powers, or even how the hero discovered that after touching hands with his sister, he could turn into a bucket of goo.  This is the moment where the hero *becomes* the hero that we know and love. 

So what exactly is my, ahem, "bucket of goo" moment?  The truth is, I don’t really have one, and I think that those who’re successful working out don’t have those either.  This is going to be one of the running themes of my blog posting; as Dave Draper says, the secret is "there is no secret"; it all comes down to hard work, done day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.  To do anything great, you just have to be in it for the longhaul.

I’m going to talk a lot about working out, a lot about writing, a lot about learning.  And I’ll mention my first misguided attempts at all of those.  But there’s never going to be a "this is it" moment, because all the things that I mention above are things I love doing precisely because there’s never going to be an end, and there’s always going to be a potentially higher PR.