My Weight History, Before and After Photos

So a few years ago I was fat. I've always been a sporty guy but around puberty I started eating like a fat ass. I would eat something between 600-1000 g of food, 3 times a day. Understandably I got fat, the exercise I was doing wasn't enough to compensate for my appetite. I become unhappy with the way I looked and being younger I was happy to believe "I'll just do 100 sit ups a day and I'll get rid of my belly!". Naturally that did nothing and for a few years I was fatter than I'd like. I don't have any photos of this time, suffice to say I had a nice beer belly, despite not drinking a sip of alcohol.

Eventually I started uni and decided eating "healthier" would be enough to shift the weight, cue me eating a sweet potato with half a stick of butter for lunch. Thankfully being forced to buy my own food, and being stingy with money meant I was eating less, and walking around campus meant I shifted a few pounds.

Its Not Like Max Payne 3 Is Filling A Void In My Life Right Now

Here's a really exciting topic, websites that are worth reading!

http://www.joystiq.com/
Reasonable gaming coverage. Don't bother with the reviews though, they're full of the main tropes of gaming "journalism".

http://www.giantbomb.com/
These guys must be the bro-est gaming writers out there. Fantastic podcast, quicklooks can be hilarious. Reviews are well written, though I often disagree with the score, but you can still respect the authors opinion.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co.uk/
Brilliant nutrition blog, straddles the line between scientific accurate and readable. His dietary suggestions have some resemblances to paleo.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
Mark Sisson seems to be one of the big paleo players. His information is generally good and I would recommend the site if you are interested in improving your diet, how ever I disagree with many of his conclusions, such as his hard on for organic food. Avoid the forums like the plague, they're filled with the same dogmatic idiots that would have said "eggs are bad for you because of cholesterol!", until they discovered paleo.

http://rawfoodsos.com/
Denise Minger is somebody who has a hard on for analytics and has used her talent to look at nutrition claims. You won't find a wide berth of topics, but what she covers, she covers very extensively. Only recommended if you can stand looking at lots of numbers and data analysis!

http://redlettermedia.com/
If you haven't seen the Star Wars prequel reviews, then lol at you. Their regular series; Half in the Bag is great to listen to in the background.

Short Guide To Weight Loss: The Basics

So you're overweight or fat. You want to get in better shape,"tone", or fit into a smaller pair of jeans, but how? There is a lot of bullshit out there, which aims to make a quick buck off your ignorance. So here is a short, basic guide to improving your situation and work towards weight loss.  If you are in decent shape and wants abs or to "tone", or some such, then you'll need to read the next entry. This guide will mainly serve people who are significantly overweight.

Now your aim should be to lose fat, not weight per se. If you lose muscle, that isn't helpful. If you lose water weight, that isn't helpful. Thus it is important to have a educated diet in order to maximise fat loss, while not at the expense of muscle or anything else.  You can go on some liquid vegetable diet for a week and lose 5 pounds. But some of that will be muscle, some of that will be water weight, and you may just put back on whatever fat you lose, if you go back to your old eating habits. It is extremely important to realise that this shouldn't be a temporary diet change. This should be a permanent lifestyle change, which also means it must be reasonable and sustainable.

Game Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Genre: RPG, Action Adventure

Developer: Bethesda Softworks 

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC 

Release date: 11/11/2011

The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim is the latest in the long running series of Bethesda's open world RPGs and may be the best in the series. Set in a pretty typical fantasy world, the story revolves around you, essentially a Chosen One, who is tasked with ridding the world of evil. The story has some interesting nuisances, such as the Blades, but don't expect to be blown away.

Coming from The Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion, the world of Tamriel is vastly different with shifting political alliances, the landscape itself, wars and natural disasters have occurred since the last game. The history of what has happened the last 200 or so years can be pieced together through dialogue and books, though it is poorly paced at times, with you having no information about a particular event for hours, only to be presented with the option to ask an NPC later.

Visually the game looks fantastic, Bethesda seems to have finally gotten round to hiring good artists. There are plenty of sweeping vistas and dense forests, some cities with beautiful architecture and best of all the NPCs faces don't look like an amateur designed them! However technically the game isn't pushing the graphical boundaries, with many poor textures abound.

Why ArenaNet Needs To Communicate Better With Guild Wars 2

How could you not love these models?

Guild Wars 2 is set to be the most hyped MMO this year and ArenaNet (ANet), the developer, have ensured that a lot of the hype is deserved. The game features a brilliant art style, a shake up of traditional PvE content, gameplay focused on skill, not gear stats, and much more. It may not be a WoW killer, nor a perfect 10/10 but I'm pretty convinced it will be a damn good game.

Recently ANet enabled early purchases of the game the ability to play in beta weekend events (BWE). These events gave a snapshot of the game and were meant to be roughly once a month, starting in March. The first BWE had the sort of problems to be expected, lag, crashing servers etc, but on the whole set good expectations for the release. So after this first event, fans were eager for the next BWE, expected in May. But it didn't happen. A few days ago ANet posted on Facebook, that there wouldn't be an event this month, and that they would tell us as soon as they planned another. Some fans were disappointed, some angry, some were happy to defend ANet. I was more in the disappointed/angry camp because ANet communicated poorly and misjudged how desperate fans are for more chances to play the game.

In Defence of Fallout: New Vega's DLC; Dead Money

A while ago, when Fallout: New Vegas was still a new game, I heard about the upcoming DLC; Dead Money. Not being one to buy DLC on release I waited to see what peoples impressions where. Those impression weren't good. But a year or so later, I bought the DLC in a Steam sale and finally got round to playing. Dead Money isn't terrible, in fact its quite good.

However it has a big problem,  it isn't anything like the rest of Fallout 3 or NV. In 3 and NV, you may come across areas that you don't like but you always have choice. You can can bring alone your favourite companion. You can bring a variety of weapons, armour and stims. You can go back to town any time you want, and fully heal up and restock on ammo. If you don't like the area, you can simply come back later, when you are more powerful or have better equipment. Typically such areas are short.

Take 2 At Blogging Introductions

So I'm not much used to typing outside of forums, nor expressing myself. So lets make an attempt at a more informative introduction to who I am, and what I'm interested in, shall we?

I'm a 22 year old university student in Scotland, who is studying pharmacology. Now I don't actually have that much interest in pharmacology, or even biology, but that was the choice I made. I'm planning on retraining for finance and analytical work, which I find far more interesting.

I'm a "hardcore" gamer. Earliest console was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and I've owned a  Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii, Playstation 3, a high end gaming computer, Gameboy, Gameboy Colour and Gameboy Advance. Some of my favourite games include Super Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Portal and DOTA 2 (see I tried to choose a wide variety for you!)

I've done sports most of my life, from badminton to basketball, but the last few years I've been interested in martial arts, particularly muay thai. I train a few hours a week, part of which is sparing. The want to go to Thailand and drink in almost 24/7 muay thai is strong.

Additionally I plenty plenty of time on gaming websites and forums, read health and nutrition information, thus my beliefs are somewhat similar to paleo, rather than the mainstream garbage of "fat is bad for you! meat is bad for you! whole grains are gods gift!".

So its summer now. University term finishes early in Scotland, in March in fact (with exams in April/May) which means I have a lot of spare time on my hands until I sort out how I'm going to formally educate or get work experience. So being self absorbed, and blogging about how my cat threw up a fur ball is something I may take it, to keep myself occupied (though I don't own a cat).

I'll talk about video games, I'll talk about health and nutrition, I may talk a little about me, if I say anything at all.