Tag: lifestyle

Dave Goes Barbarian – Stuff Wars

Mrs. Dave is enjoying sunsets over wine-dark seas. Dave is ruthlessly culling The Stuff. The Wee Horde rampage. I have two small goals for today. The first is to clear the table of excess stuff, and then shrink it. The fewer flat surfaces there are to collect more Stuff, the less clutter will be to make my eyelid twitch. The second, and arguably more vital to my personals barbaric goals is to clear a lane in the garage so I can lay out the battle rope. I’m nearly there, already. Just have about twelve cubic feet of stuff to shift.

Of course, right now I can’t lift for the Stuff.

I’m Dave, and this is the story of my war with the Stuff. Continue reading “Dave Goes Barbarian – Stuff Wars”

Dave Goes Barbarian: Sealegs

 

Hello, my barbaric brethren (and sistren)! It’s another Friday, and we find ourselves here, once again, together. The fire burns, the skulls of our enemies are top-filled with libations, and meat roasts on a spit.

Which, seriously, we ought to do some time, sparing only the skulls of our enemies, perforce bowing to legal requirements. There will be swords and fellowship aplenty. But to business! Continue reading “Dave Goes Barbarian: Sealegs”

Fat Acceptance And The Future Of Humanity

Are we doomed to be the humans in Wall-E, or is there a choice?

(Photo by cocoparisienne from Pixabay )

I get where the fat acceptance movement gets it’s motivation from. It annoys me, particularly as a former fat guy, but I get it. There are people who want to treat those who are overweight as subhuman filth. They’re mean, cruel people.

But the problem is that fat acceptance isn’t really the answer to this issue. Instead, it’s going to take us places that we, as a society, shouldn’t want to go.

Continue reading “Fat Acceptance And The Future Of Humanity”

The Weight Loss Mindset

Why so many people put weight back on after losing it.

I’ve lost a pile of weight. I’m creeping up on 57 lbs lost so far, and I have every intention of maintaining a healthy weight.

However, most people don’t really lose weight and keep it off. A study found that something like only three percent of those who lose significant weight actually keeps it off. Statistically, that means I’m going to get fat again.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. I know it.

So I thought I’d dig into the science behind weight loss–and not just nutrition–to see what I could find out about how to actually keep it off.

Continue reading “The Weight Loss Mindset”

Style And Substance

Why Fitness Equipment Should Be More Than Just Functional

Do you want to know one of the things I like best about kettlebells? What I like is that you’re far more likely to find kettlebells that don’t look the same as everyone else’s.

You see, kettlebell makers–especially smaller operations–are willing to look at the kettlebell a little differently. They’re willing to take a look at the implement and think, “How can I make this bad boy even cooler.”

This weekend, the Arnold Fitness Festival is taking place in Columbus, Ohio, and earlier today the strongman competition athletes went toe-to-toe with a piece of equipment that is both style and substance, and it made me wonder why we don’t see more of that kind of thing.

Continue reading “Style And Substance”

Reach For Greatness

Most of us like to believe that we have value. We demand others treat us as though we do, and for good reason. We’re free men and women. We have a right to expect to be treated as if we matter.

But then we go through life, eventually dying, and what do we leave behind?

Oh, we have our families who will miss us, but what about beyond just that?

Continue reading “Reach For Greatness”

Why Do People Want To Be Told What To Do?

I remember being in school and studying Islam (no, this isn’t about Islam per se, just bear with me) and how Muhammed wanted to both attract Jews and Christians to the faith and lay down all these new restrictions on those who converted.

At the time, I started thinking, “So you’re going to tell them to stop doing stuff they might like to do, make them pray a good chunk of the day, and this will convert people?” I thought it was a miracle Islam didn’t die right then and there.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed something. People seem to actually like being told what to do.

Continue reading “Why Do People Want To Be Told What To Do?”

You Can’t Control Your Luck, So Control What You Can

Very recently, the lottery jackpot was insane. Something like $1.6 billion dollars was set to go to just one person.

Like everyone else, I spent a fair bit of time daydreaming about what I could do with that kind of money. Yes, even knowing that you’d only ever really see a portion of it, I had lofty plans for so much of it, plans that I’m still kind of impressed with, to be fair.

But alas, I didn’t win. My guess is that you didn’t either. Unsurprisingly, the lottery tickets of everyone I knew came up depressingly short of even a nice fraction of that jackpot.

It’s unsurprising because the odds of winning a jackpot is so astronomical. I probably have a better chance of being drafted into the NBA while accepting an Oscar and being struck by lightning simultaneously. It’s just not realistic to place your bets on something that relies on pure luck.

You can’t control your luck, so it makes more sense to control what you can, like how hard you work.

Continue reading “You Can’t Control Your Luck, So Control What You Can”

Trying To Find One’s Way

In the time that this site has existed, it’s been both a masculinity blog built in part to support a book I wrote on the subject and it’s been a blog dedicated to all aspects of personal defense.

In each case, I’ve intentionally created what the goal is to be. I’ve decided I would write on X topic and only X topic here at the site. This is the standard operating procedure for blogs. It’s what I’d done in the past to varying degrees of success and it’s what all the advice posts on starting a blog tell you to do.

Yet, in the year since I refocused this site, I’ve noticed something. I’ve noticed that I’m not talking nearly as much about some stuff as I thought I would.

Which means that I’m not actually creating the site I intended.

The question is, is that good or is that bad?

Continue reading “Trying To Find One’s Way”

It’s Not The Lofty Goals That Will Change Things, It’s Changing One Habit

Once upon a time, I was the kind of person I didn’t like very much. I was lazy, expecting the world to fall down in front of me despite doing nothing at all to deserve it, and I had a real problem with acknowledging my own screwups.

That last one shouldn’t have been a thing, either, simply because I had so many screwups, I should have been well-practiced in admitting them. But no. I wasn’t.

Then my son was born. Looking down on him, I realized that it was time to get my crap in order. I couldn’t afford to screw up the rest of my life because it was screw up his life too. It’s one thing to sabotage myself, but doing it to another who had no choice in the matter? No, I couldn’t do it.

So that meant it was time to figure out what I wanted out of life. What I wanted to be when I finally grew up….even though I was 28-years-old.

To be sure, I had these lofty ambitions start to form, but things didn’t change. The reason? You have to start small. You have to change the habits.

Continue reading “It’s Not The Lofty Goals That Will Change Things, It’s Changing One Habit”