About Geek Fitness Network

Geek Fitness Network is a blog that I started to try and help fellow geeks and nerds to have a spot where they can go to learn about how it is still possible for anyone to get fit and in shape. If any of you are like me and enjoy doing physically inactive hobbies such as playing video games, watching anime, watching movies at the theater, watching tv shows, and playing card games or even if you work at a desk job all day you know it makes it more challenging to stay in shape. All of these activities or jobs typically don't aide in helping to keep you fit and make it more challenging but that doesn't mean it can't be done. I've come to learn over the past few years that it is still possible to get back in shape and wanted to be able to share some of my experience in this blog so that others might be able to pick up some useful tips. I also wanted to share my experience so that others could learn from some of my mistakes and might be able to avoid them so that they can travel down the road to fitness faster and safer than I did. Along with my personal experiences I wanted to share general tips about fitness and nutrition, as well as post motivational articles to help people find the drive and motivation to pursue their own fitness goals. Lastly to tie in with the whole geek theme I wanted to be able to post a few articles here and there about geeky things I find interesting.

The MY TRANSFORMATION section is where I will discuss all the different things I learned and mistakes I made along the way during my endeavor to get my health back. This section starts from back in May of 2011 when I decided that I had finally had enough of being unhealthy and was going to get back in shape. Throughout the various articles I post in this section I cover the various stages of how my diet and workouts evolved as well as what I did to motivate myself and how I made several mistakes and what I learned from them.

The FITNESS TIPS section I will cover a wide variety of fitness tips from beginner to advanced and it will also cover all sorts of workouts. I wanted to cover from beginner to advanced so that any reader can find something that might be able to help them no matter what level of fitness they are currently at. The workouts will range from simple workouts you can do from home to serious routines that will help you to build muscle at the gym lifting weights.

The NUTRITION TIPS section will cover a wide variety of things including diets, nutrition science, and general recipes that I like that I think are delicious and healthy. There are so many diets to talk about there should be one that could be tailored to meet anybody's lifestyle and requirements. Nutrition Science will have a bit more advanced articles about nutrition to help better build muscle or lose fat.

The GEEK NIGHTLY NEWS or GNN for short will be my section to talk about all things geeky. It has sub sections for video games, anime/manga, tv/movies, technology and a final section for anything else geeky. Posts here will just be about something I found interesting from my geeky hobbies and wanted to write a small blurb about it.

The MOTIVATIONAL section will be devoted to articles that will hopefully be able to help any readers that visit my page to find motivation and determination to pursue their fitness goals. I also have a section for what I call Picture of the Month. These will be a motivational picture with a short post about how I interpreted it and how I think it will be a motivation to the reader. Lastly there will be a section for success stories of fellow geeks who have made an awesome transformation for themselves.

Intro to GFN author Karl Keim

Hello my name is Karl Keim. I am the author and writer of Geek Fitness Network. I decided to make this blog to help provide a means for people to come to the understanding that it is possible to be a "Geek" and be healthy and in shape. I know for a lot of people out there feel like it is an overwhelming task and that it just isn't possible, well I'm here to show you that I'm living proof (as well as many others) and that it is possible.

Growing up I always preferred doing the dorky things like playing video games or working on computers. I did however do lots of sports growing up as a kid and was very active pretty much year round. When I was in middle school I did wrestling and baseball. In Junior High I did baseball and basketball and Karate. During my high school years I did basketball and baseball. All the sports that I did along with the fact that I was still growing made it so I was able to overlook the fact that my eating habits were horrible. For the most part during my younger years I was in pretty good shape and only ever had a little bit of belly fat. At the end of my senior year I was 195 pounds.

After high school I went off to college. At college I was more content to just sit around and play games, watch anime and TV because I was no longer involved with any sports teams. Shortly after I started college I had a overwhelming life crisis that put me into a depression which only further stemmed my inactivity. This is where my lack of a good diet started to wreak havoc. I didn't know what I wanted to do so I quit going to college and started working at a job in retail. My retail job was a desk job where I sat and processed paperwork to order product for customers. I worked at this job for four years and then finally decided what career path I wanted to do and went back to college to get an associates degree in Information Technology. At this point in time is when I started to have a real concern about my health because I was at that time 270 pounds.I was also having all sorts of physical problems like my right knee was very weak and hurt me, being short of breath, low energy levels and even things like bending over to tie my shoes was noticeably difficult. Shortly after I started to be concerned about getting my health back. It wasn't too long until one morning I had an epiphany and realized something needed to quickly change. I decided to jump in to the fitness thing whether it was sink or swim. I am quite the stubborn bastard so by god I was going to swim!!

  

This is when I started my trek to get in shape. I didn't know anything about fitness or nutrition but that didn't matter I was going to do it. I knew from all my hard work in sports from my younger years that if you move you'll get in shape. I scrounged together with a buddy and found some rusty dumbbells and a workout bench and a old treadmill and went to work. As far as nutrition I didn't know anything other than I should eat less food so I aimed to have smaller portions in my meals and overall eat less.

All of the subsequent posts regarding my transformation will be about how I went through the trials and tribulations of getting healthy. I will go over the things I tried along the way and what worked and what didn't. These days there is a lot of information about ways to get healthy and lose fat and be in shape, some of it works and some of it doesn't. I am writing my story to try and clear up what people should expect, failures I had that you can avoid, and the methods that led to me finding success.

At the end of my story you will be able to see how I went from being 270 pounds, out of shape and physically deteriorating  in May of 2011 back to being fit and healthy at 198 pounds where I am at today. And I managed to accomplish this while keeping true to being an astounding geek and aiming for a path in an IT career!

I managed to make my fitness work even though I work in the IT industry at a desk all day. I am currently progressing in a career aimed at network and windows administration. As most of you can figure this entails lots of sitting in front of computer screens and not much in the way of physical activity. When I get home I also enjoy playing several computer and console games in my free time. In addition to gaming I have a slew of other numerous geeky activities such as reading manga, watching anime, playing trading card games, watching TV, and going to the movie theater. The only physical hobbies I currently enjoy, besides getting fit at the gym, are playing disc golf and baseball from time to time.