... or Fitness 1. First post for the new section.

I don't have a ton to say right now. I think that I'll likely use this mostly for links to articles and websites related to fitness and health, but for now I'll just talk about my life in fitness.

Ideally, I work out 4 - 6 days a week. I have to remind myself every month or so to get a good 4 - 5 day break to allow my body to rest and rebuild. My workouts are typically around 2 hours long and I really have a hard time getting out of the gym in less time.

Understand that this is not how things started with me. And I am by no means a some muscle-bound meat-head nor cut jock/model. I'm an average dude that has to work REALLY hard to maintain his health. Years ago I started working on being active as much as possible to try and boost my metabolism after I got really sick and lost a ton of weight.

Since then I have discovered a lot about my body and that I need to keep active to maintain a healthy appetite, regulate hormone levels (specifically to avoid depression) and to stay in otherwise good health so I don't get fat or have a heart attack at an early age.

I originally started with Aikido classes 2 - 4 times a week and then moved onto add in Tae Kwon Do as well. Soon after that I got into running. During the winter months it rains a lot where I live and gets very cold so I got a gym membership. From that point I continued to keep up the cardio and started fitting weight lifting into my routine. I eventually had to stop with the Aikido and Tae Kwon Do just because I couldn't fit classes with set times into my crazy schedule, but I'd like to get back into one or both of those martial arts at some point, given I fight the right school with a teacher and philosophy that fits my martial arts philosophies.

I try to maintain a mostly healthy diet, but unfortunately I not always healthy in every other area. I have my vices and I hope that I can just maintain enough of a balance and moderation that they don't cause too much harm.

Lately I haven't been getting to the gym as regularly due to scheduling issues with the band and also softball season has started. I usually play upwards of 60 - 70 games a season, I would estimate.

That's all I got for now. I suppose I could go more into softball or something, but I really don't have the motivation so I'll instead leave you with this sudden and poorly-worded conclusion.