Whoops! Launch day came early!

What's up, everybody!?

Quick update: WE'RE LAUNCHING TOMORROW! Like in just under 24 hours, Get Two Fit will be live! I'm so excited!

OH YES.

In the meantime, I kindofaccidentally posted our introduction video a day early, so you can watch it live now! Wanna know how to love yourself? Welcome to Get Two Fit!

Make sure you stay tuned until the end if you want to see an epic blink-off and find out which one of the Get Two Fit creators likes Buffy the Vampire Slayer more.

Also make sure you subscribe! Both to the blog and to the channel! It's kind of important that you do! And to this blog! Because why not!

I love you all. I have a million things left to do before we launch tomorrow, so this post is gonna be epically short and sweet, but I hope to see you all very soon over on the YouTube channel and the blog.

(Also, it's my birthday tomorrow, and I know I'm gonna be hella busy and consumed, so I want to go see Bad Moms today while I still have the chance.)

Love y'all.

Update time!

What's up, folks? Get Two Fit is now five days away from launch. Yeah. 5 days. Five. We'll be kicking off our blog and YouTube channel on Sunday, July 31, which is also coincidentally my birthday. Subscribe if you haven't already. It'd be like the best birthday present ever. Seriously. Like it would make my day. And it'll make your day, too.

The fun of roommates 

So there's some downfalls of having roommates - namely that if they're messy or unorganized or loud (or alternately excessively neat or tidy or quiet), you can clash. Sometimes that happens. Other times, it's perfect. 

We've established a plan, for now, that we'll alternate days cooking dinner. So the three of us take turns making one meal a week (because we'll most likely have leftovers for the next day). Then, one day a week, we're pretty much on our own - which could quite easily be our cheat day. 

Good, right? 

El Paso so far 

I'm settling into El Paso pretty well. 

On Saturday, I went on my second date with a guy. We ended up grabbing Jessica and heading downtown to go out clubbing for my first time since moving to El Paso (and my second time going out in El Paso ever - I went out about this time last year, too!). We had some drinks, danced the night away, ended up at Taco Cabana at 3 AM, and drunken shenanigans ensued. 

Needless to say, Saturday was, of course, our cheat day for the week. 

Other than that, nothing on the "fun and games" front. 

Donation-only yoga classes in El Paso 

Of course, during our drunken shenanigans, Jessica decided to take one of my passive ideas (an exercise class for our apartment complex) and run with it. And make us both accountable for this idea to actually take life. 

She told a guy (and then another guy, and then another) that we'll be hosting donation-only yoga classes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 PM starting on August 1. 

So now I get to teach yoga again, so that's cool. It's been a while. I'm gonna have to re-learn how to teach. But it's great practice for our videos! 

Keep on trucking 

We've crafted a lot of great content over the last couple days. Essentially, we're working on preparing at least one piece of content for every category on our site, so people know what to expect from us in the future, and be able to find a shining example of it, from day 1. Of course, this is impossible, since we're not 100% sure what forms of content we'll put out over the course of our journeys, but we do have a solid foundation prepared. Expect podcasts and audio readings of each post, infographics, downloadable content, reader stories, and much, much more. It'll be an exciting ride! I can't wait for Sunday! 

Saturday was arm day for me, so I hit the weight machines in the gym for about 30 minutes. I'm between 60 and 80 pounds for all the arm workouts I do, so that's already progress from when I started only 9 days ago (INCREDIBLE!). 

I spent most of Sunday recovering from Saturday night, unfortunately.

Today, I played catch-up from Sunday on content. I also had quite the workout - we did 5 minutes of leg lifts, 5 minutes of squats, 4 minutes of a glute exercise, and about 10 minutes total of calve raises, plus quite a bit of stretching. My elbows are hurting me today (I didn't know I had a muscle there, honestly), but I'm hoping I can get in a good arm workout tomorrow morning before I start writing. 

In the process of writing and filming videos, we've had to "rehearse" each of our workouts. In other words, I'm finding myself having to practice videos several times before I can do them successfully. I can now plank for more than a minute (in most planks - we're working on mastering another couple). I can alllllmost make it through a 5-minute squat challenge AND a 5-minute leg lift challenge (SO CLOSE!). I can hold myself in superman for more than a minute (which is a great butt workout, by the way). I'm seeing crazy results already. 

I did weigh myself on my first day and I was at 162 pounds - up from about 155 around a year ago. I worked hard to put on those 7 pounds. I was proud of those 7 pounds. Even if they were fat, it meant I was keeping weight on in some form (which was exciting - I'll elaborate someday. Maybe). 

On Saturday, I weighed in at only 157 - not okay. Today, I'm back up to 160, which I'm more comfortable with. 

I'm not exactly trying to put on weight (at least not until I can be confident that I'm actually putting on muscle), but I certainly don't want to lose any, either. I'll be happy if I can hold myself at 160 - better yet if I manage to hit 170 eventually. So here's hoping. 

I need to get back to editing my YouTube video for tomorrow (I'm hoping it's a great one!) for my main channel, so I'll talk to you all very shortly. 

When are we going live again?

Hey guys! It's been a few days, so it's time for a quick update!

I'm just gonna kinda lump the last few days in together, mostly because I did a horrible job of noting what I did and when I did it.

Progress on Get Two Fit

Remember how we launched our Facebook page!? Well so we've gotten some content created, too. We've scripted a longer "intro" video that we still need to record, but also put together our first workout video. We have a blog post as an aside to said workout video, plus two more blog posts. One is about a weekly planning system and tracking your progress on a daily basis (I know - I didn't write it. Don't worry). The other is our introduction post so you can read about both of us and why we started the blog. 

Graphics are done, everything's uploaded and ready to go, so now we're just waiting until, well, next week when we're actually scheduled to launch. Yay! Much excite! Don't forget to subscribe to Get Two Fit now! You'll get an email notification when everything goes live (plus a million other cool things, as they come out). 

Minor progress on main channel

I've completely neglected my main blog, so I just want to say sorry here, since I can't bring myself to apologize on my blog itself. 

But! 

I did finish a guest post I've been working on for the last few weeks. I submitted it on... I think Monday, although I haven't heard back yet. Hopefully it'll be up soon (it's another link to my site, so!). 

I published a video on Tuesday and today, so I think I may have just set myself up for a posting schedule on my main YouTube channel. In this first video, I talk about the problem of trying to describe your content (and randomly turn into a T. Rex because me). 

In the second, I talk about the importance of contributing value with every single thing you create (which applies to ALL endeavors on the internet, and not just on YouTube). 

Also, I ranted a little bit. 

Dream board! 

Today, I took some time to put together a dream board. Kind of. I made it more like a scrapbook in an old, unused photo album. I spent a couple hours putting it together. Which means my dream board served more as a tool for procrastination today, since I have a billion other things I'm supposed to be doing. But hey. It's done. 

I'm planning on putting together an article once Jessica's is done, too, and hopefully submit it as our first Get Two Fit guest post on a blog that's a little more targeted toward dream boards. If you have any suggestions, let me know! 

Dating! 

I took a slight break from boys (like... 5 days), but I'm back on the dating scene, now, apparently. I'm still talking to the infamous not-my-boyfriend back in Albuquerque, but since that not-a-relationship has stalled, I'm still considering myself single (Well, married to my work, but single-ish). So I went on a date yesterday. I have another one coming up tomorrow. And we'll see where it goes from there. 

Workouts! 

We went swimming one night (about 40 minutes - it was exhausting. We raced, too. I won). Also spent 20 minutes on the treadmill yesterday, worked on mastering the art of the plank for an upcoming workout video (spoiler alert, sorry, bruh), and did a Jillian Michaels workout DVD (her yoga inferno DVD, if you must know, and yes, it did suck). I am so not keeping up with working out like I should be, but I was so sore for so long... I'm actually still kind of sore, and then tomorrow I'm sure will be worse because Jillian Michaels. 

Slip-ups! 

Remember how Sunday was cheat day? Yeah, well, it turns out Tuesday was also cheat day, because we went and got Taco Cabana. Yes, it was amazing. Plus, I ate a personal pizza on my date yesterday. So there was that. But it was free, so the calories don't "count." 

But progress...?

I went to Walmart yesterday and bought a container of whey protein and a whole bunch of fruit (and some whole wheat bread and peanut butter) so I can shove some healthy food down my throat and try to pretend it's a cheeseburger. I actually like most of this stuff, so it's not quite as painful as trying to eat quinoa. That said, I know I'll get tired of eating the same things over and over, so I'm going to work on expanding my tastes while I'm working on some new recipes for the fitness blog. So hopefully I won't be such a child anymore. 

I'm especially interested in comfort food alternatives after tonight's session, in which I decided to write an article about that very thing. So we'll see. 

Many exciting things we've got planned! I just have to force myself to sit down and really crank some good stuff out over the weekend, and we'll be ready for launch this coming week. Stay tuned! 

Day 2: Facebook is live!

What's up, buttercup!?

Eventful day today!

Our morning plans didn't go exactly as, well, planned. Jessica decided at 6:00 that she'd rather wake up at 7:00. I'm not one to turn down an extra hour of sleep, so I jumped back into bed (she literally texted me as my alarm went off and I was putting on pants).

At 7:00, she elected to skip our workout ("It's the Sabbath day...") so I figured Jillian Michaels can wait another day or two before she kicks my butt into submission. I let Jessica have her sabbath day sleep, but I got cracking on articles. I started drafting a post for my personal creating blog (actually, two posts), reorganized the categories (it needed to be done months ago but I just didn't have the will to do so), and worked on drafting an ultimate guide to social media strategy, which should be submitted as a guest post pretty soon.

I took a short trip around the neighborhood while Jessica went and ran errands, and then I attempted to watch Age of Adaline again. I love Blake Lively, and I love that movie, but I could not bring myself to focus for long. I ended up making myself lunch, and then Jessica came home shortly after.

Cue workouts!

We did two workouts (both for abs) and filmed both of them. For science. It was painfully awkward and we both kind of realized how much work we have to do on our exercise, but we made it through (kind of). We also did a couple sets of a booty workout and a squat challenge. My. thighs. are. on. fire.

Jessica took a break for her afternoon personal development reading, so I sat down and got cracking on a video. Surprisingly enough, I got enough usable footage to create an actual video! And there were weird comedic parts (because us), and it happened to make the perfect channel trailer! Success!

Of course, just in case it needs mentioning, you should definitely subscribe to our channel. We need 97 more subscribers to choose our custom URL!

I figured having a finished video would be the perfect chance to create the Get Two Fit Facebook page (yeah, I've been slacking, I know), so I whipped one up really quick. Turns out it's pretty easy when you know what you're actually trying to accomplish, have a logo and a usable-ish banner, and have set up like a bajillion pages already.

We went out to dinner (which may have been a mistake, but we're calling Sundays our going-out day, now). While out, we went ahead and did invites to our page from both of our friends lists. We launched our Facebook page literally 6 hours ago and it's already almost at 100 Likes (we went from 79 to 85 in the 20 minutes I spent writing this post). I am AMAZED at the turnout we've had so far. It's incredible! And kind of totally unexpected!

Finally, we ended the evening with some beers (for a job well done) and an hour-long swim (to burn off the beers).

My arms, thighs, and abs are killing me, but I'm starting to feel really satisfied (and much less terrified) than I was on Thursday (or even yesterday). I can't believe that this has only been my life for 48 hours - I feel like I've already accomplished so much in such a short period of time (and had so much fun). I'm excited to see what tomorrow, this week, and maybe most important the next couple months have in store for me.

I can't wait to have a success story to tell.

For the record, here's what I ate today:

• Spaghetti (just under 1/2 a pound, with a very small amount of sauce) 
• An apple with peanut butter (of course)
• Herbalife meal replacement shake 
• One beer (Sam Adams lager - it was free so the calories don't "count" right?)
• A bacon cheeseburger with fries, plus chips and queso (AMAZING!!!) 

I know half of this is terrible, but even my cheat day is an improvement over how I've been eating for most of my life (including this past year). 

Day 1: Welcome to El Paso

It's been an eventful few days!

Wednesday was my last day employed at the hotel in Albuquerque. It was bittersweet. It was a rough day full of reminders of exactly why I never want to work in a hotel again, but it was also difficult to punch out that evening and go home. Cue minor panic attack over the fact that I no longer have an income (or at least that I'm officially self-employed and completely, 100% responsible for finding every means of paying my bills from now on. It's an underrated convenience to have a steady paycheck, even when that paycheck is pitifully small).

Thursday was spent packing up and cleaning out my house (and continuing with my minor meltdown, of course). Thursday evening, I had my going away party at my favorite local haunt in Albuquerque, Sidewinders Bar. The turnout was slightly smaller than I had expected, but that's not too surprising for a Thursday. I did get to see most of my favorite people before I left, which was awesome, and my good friend Hannah gave me the new Blink 182 album as a parting gift.

"Quick. Make a sexy face!" Move over, Charlie's Angels.

Camera snapshot of a Polaroid is the new DSLR. 

Friday, I was packed up and moved. I had lunch with my former general manager, housekeeping supervisor, and sales manager from the hotel and said my goodbyes. Jessica got to my house around 1 PM.

Of course, we elected not to tarp my mattress, and everything was fine! Until we hit Hatch, New Mexico. Just outside Las Cruces, we hit a massive dust storm blowing off of White Sands. This tured into a torrential downpour in Las Cruces, which continued as sunshine, wind, and sand until we'd made it to my new home. Surprisingly enough, my mattress was completely dry and not epically disgusting, so yay!

Cue waking up bright and early this morning, Saturday, for our first workout together. I woke up at 5:40 and we headed to the gym right at 6. Disappointingly, the gym was closed, as it apparently opens at 10 AM on Saturdays. I went back to sleep until 10, then we went on with our workout. I lifted weights for about 30 minutes - more time than I've spent weight training (combined) since I was about 14 years old. We also did a little bit of cardio. I realized that I'm going to need to work on developing a love of cardio.

We spent the day together working on content for our new blogs, running errands, and doing random exercises. We also played around with some different exercises (and yoga poses) that seemed worth trying while Jessica planned ten (10!!) workouts for her fit camps (and our workout video series!).

Behold: the most glamorous of all the glamorous home office spaces. 

In case you're wondering what day one of healthy eating looks like, it boils down to this:

• Two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• One peanut butter sandwich
• An apple. With peanut butter. 
• An Herbalife shake (protein powder and a meal replacement powder, plus some blueberries) 
• Two scrambled eggs
• A dish that was basically mushrooms, spinach, quinoa, and chicken (I'm going to have to develop a love of almost all these things, except chicken) 

Oh, and a lot of water. Like a LOT of water. But still not enough water. 

So far, I still have all my vices (damn), but I will run out of cigarettes very soon, so that's promising. Wish me luck! 

Now, it's time for me to crash into slumber, because Sunday holds no rest for the wicked. We're waking up at 6 AM to kick our own asses with a Jillian Michaels yoga DVD (which I consider atonement for some terrible karma from a previous life). Then we'll split ways while she runs errands and I can get some much-needed writing and scripting time in for my YouTube channel. I may even get a video or two recorded! 

My Fitness Goals: July 2016

Happy Independence Day to all of you Americans. Happy normal day to the rest of you!

I wanted to go ahead and talk about some of my fitness goals. This is especially important since I'm starting out - or more halfway through my fitness journey (more on my history later).

I don't have a lot of specific goals set as far as appearance goes. I think everybody wants a flat stomach, and I'd definitely like to do enough squats to get a butt again.

But those aren't so important to me. I care more about the process itself - the exercises I'm doing and the foods I'm eating - and what my body can do, rather than how it looks. I consider it healthier, mentally speaking, to focus on your body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. In fact, that's the entire message behind Get Two Fit.

So let's talk goals for July.

Since I'm just starting out, this is a month to lay the groundwork for the rest of the process.

• First and foremost, and probably the most important thing I can do for my lifelong health, is to quit smoking. Moving to El Paso is going to shake everything up for me. I won't have my super-stressful customer service job. I'll be living with two people who bring me an insane amount of joy. I'll be focusing strictly on my health and wellness (and building my business), so I'll have something positive to do 24/7. So I think quitting smoking will happen very easily for me as soon as I move. So I've set my goal to just never smoke a cigarette once I leave the Albuquerque city limits. 
• Second is to drink an obscene amount of water. Right now, I have a slight addiction to diet soda. I'm not going to try to give up on carbonation and caffeine entirely (at least not yet), but I am going to try to drink a glass of water in between. 
• Third is planning out what I'm going to eat for each week. I want to have a plan in place so that I'm not as tempted to go out to eat constantly because I can't decide what I want and have no idea what's in my fridge. 
• Fourth, in the same vein as number three, is to stop eating out entirely once I move (can you tell that I'm using this move to really kick start my progress?). Yes, I do plan to enjoy El Paso's cuisine. But not just yet. Not until I'm looking at a big enough income to support it. It should be a celebration of milestones, rather than a daily ritual. 
• Fifth, and perhaps the most challenging, is going to be giving up alcohol and going out. I spent my time in Albuquerque wrapped up in the nightlife and getting familiar with the gay community by spending an amazing amount of time at bars. I want to get acquainted with El Paso's gay community in other ways - like volunteering and going to special events - rather than over an adios and a beer. 
• Sixth and finally, I'm going to start exercising again. I realized exactly how out of shape I've become on Saturday when I moved my first carload of stuff to El Paso. One of my boxes had every dish and utensil I own, so it easily weighed 70 pounds. I had to carry it from my car, to the back of a building, and then upstairs to my apartment. It would be challenging for most people, but I'm still sore a full 48 hours later, and I think that's unacceptable. So I'm going to start on an exercise plan. I'll be starting out by getting back into yoga (at least a few hours a week) and doing some calisthenics on the side. Nothing major until August. But I want to get my body used to working out again so that when I have access to my apartment's gym, I'll be able to hit the ground running without so much downtime in between workouts. 

If you're on your own fitness journey, what are your goals for the month? What are your goals overall? What are your thoughts on mine? Do you think I can do all this in just one month? I'm worried I'm biting off more than I can chew, but I almost feel like it'll be easier to overwhelm and overhaul my life completely in one day (and just maintain that new life) than it is to try to change one thing at a time. 

So here's the story from A to Z...

Hi!

About me

I'm Michael. I'm a blogger and YouTuber living in El Paso, Texas. I run a fitness blog with my best friend, Jessica. (Well, technically it's launching in a couple weeks, toward the end of July 2016, but you can still sign up for our newsletter!)

About this blog

Since I already have two blogs and two YouTube channels, you may be wondering what the point of this blog is. 

This blog is more of a personal journal documenting my fitness journey. See, when I decided to start a fitness blog with Jessica, I was mostly just trying to find a project that we could work on together so that I could spend more time with her. I was living in Albuquerque and she was back in our hometown of Ruidoso at the time, so we never really got to see each other. Add to it that we were both incredibly busy and... well... we only talked like once a month. 

So I asked her to join me on the project, since she's one of the most passionate and hard-working people that I know when it comes to fitness. 

She said yes. The rest is history. 

Only it's not, because it means I have to get in shape now. See, when you're running a fitness blog and your life is revolving around teaching people how to be healthy and skinny and pretty and all that other shit, you're technically supposed to fit the bill, too. 

So it meant I had to stop eating McDonald's and bust out my yoga mat for the first time in several months and start going for runs and quit smoking and all that. 

Except I haven't done those things quite yet. I'm honestly an incredibly unhealthy person, grossly abusing the fact that I have been blessed with a very high metabolism and a hyperactive personality (so I stay skinny! but not healthy). 

So I'm working on that. I don't want to document that on our fitness blog, of course, and my other blog is all about YouTube and creating and social media and business, so it simply won't fit there. So that's why I started this blog. 

I don't know if anybody will read this, but if you do, pop down below and say hi! Tell me something about you and who you are and how you managed to stumble upon this weird corner of the internet. Also make sure you check out my YouTube channel (I'm on there as Michael Noker) and maybe follow me on Twitter if you'd like. 

Also check out the Get Two Fit blog and fitness community and maybe consider following Get Two Fit on Twitter and on Instagram. 

I'm surely going to be updating this more often than most of my other blogs, just because I want to document every step and use it for inspiration for better posts in the future, so subscribe if you'd like and join me in my little fitness adventure. 

It'll be fun!