January

January

Friday, January 13, 2017

Virtual Reality and Oculus Rift Reviewed

I fully confess – as I write, my hair is on fire and my socks are smoldering.  It is difficult to contain my excitement to the point that I can even write a coherent review!  But what I want to accomplish here is twofold.  One is to review the virtual reality (VR) experience which is currently affordably available.  And two, review the top-of-the-line rated VR equipment – Oculus Rift.

Two Kinds of VR
Before I get into this, let me describe the two kinds of VR equipment available.  The first is ‘quasi-VR’, such as “Google Cardboard”, that uses a larger screen cell phone for its display.  There are some really nice, comfortable headset “VR Goggles” available.  The second type is the full range high fidelity 3-D VR equipment described in much greater detail below.

Quasi-VR
The ‘quasi-VR’ equipment, such as Google Cardboard, capture the general idea of VR by immersing the user in various two dimensional scenes of highly variable VR quality.  Many of them are panoramic scenes covering from 180 degrees to a full 360 degrees, but most of these do not envelop the entire available spherical panorama from the apex to the feet of the observer in a complete 360 degree wrap around.  These goggles are nonetheless very exciting, and demonstrate the physiology of the entire VR experience, as described below.  And the good news is that the Google Cardboard and other, more comfortable VR headsets are readily available, and relatively inexpensive; the cost is truly in nearly every price range.  I paid a mere $10 for my very nice and comfortable Tzumi Dream Vision headset on Black Friday.  There are also lots of ‘Goggle Cardboard’ type stills, videos and apps available free online for download.  But there is one key point to be made here.  These lower end VR applications are nearly all 2-dimensional (2D) and of highly variable quality.  Yet they are still great fun because of what is going on in the user’s mind the moment they strap the VR goggles on their head. 

The VR Mind Connection
The VR experience – low end or high end – works so spectacularly because of a trick called ‘visual immersion’.  We are all familiar with that idea.  Watching a movie is a much different experience on our TV at home vs. seeing the movie on the big screen in a theater.  The difference is visual immersion.  The larger the screen, the greater the experience of visual immersion in the scene.  The effect can be ramped up by employing immersive sound tracks, curved screens and 3D.  The greater the immersion, the more authentic the experience is perceived psychologically.  And yet the visual immersion experience is still limited even in a theater by the reality of people sitting all around us, by the frame of the screen, by exit signs, curtains, voices, and countless other distractions, even while viewing the largest screen.  Our mind will simply not allow us to accept total immersion in the scene before us because of the real world that invariably – even relentlessly – imposes itself on our peripheral field of vision.  We are simply locked out of perfect immersion by the world crowding in on the screen, no matter how large it is.

But in VR, all of that changes – even in the lowest cost, lowest fidelity 2D VR headset! The true magic of VR is total immersion.  The VR display, literally inches from the eyes, is specifically engineered to completely fill the visual field and specifically block out everything except for the display.  When that happens, the visual brain easily gives up and gives in!  Without any visual cues to the contrary, the brain readily accepts the new reality displayed before it.  Even the ‘knowledge’ that it is an artificial reality is not powerful enough to overcome the seamless new world before the eyes.  It is a near perfect visual immersion and, therefore, it is a new reality that is easy for the mind to accept.  In VR, the brain communicates that the person is actually ‘in the scene’ being viewed, because there is no visual information to tell the brain any different.  Thus, the term ‘virtual reality’ perfectly describes what the human brain so easily accepts once all cues to the ‘real world’ are covered up and replaced by another virtual world. 

VR Quality
VR quality is easily understood.  For example, when I was a young boy, my family had a 13” Zenith black and white television.  The immersive experience of that TV vs. my television today (52”, flat screen, 4K, 3D) is wildly different!  I can watch the same movie on both televisions and have a totally different experience because of the quality of the display.  The same is true of VR equipment.  Total immersion is defined by visual cues such as 3D, and visual accessibility to the entire spherical hemisphere all around the viewer – in a 360 arc in ALL directions.  In a truly virtual world, this extends to the capacity to walk, run or fly through the new world far beyond the starting point and still always maintain that 360 degree sphere of visual accessibility.  In less capable VR systems, the views are quite often not a 360 degree sphere, not 3D, and the viewer is fixed in one place.  In higher quality systems, the VR world is 3D, perfect 360 spheres, and movement within the VR world is permitted.

Oculus Rift Review
I have always been excited about my quasi-VR headset using mostly Google Cardboard applications and a few 2D VR adventure applications.  With that in my mind, I thought I knew what to expect when I strapped my Oculus Rift headset on for the first time just after Christmas.  I cannot adequately describe the difference between the 2D VR experience and the 3D Oculus Rift experience, but I shall try!  It was incredibly, awesomely, astonishingly different – and I had always been totally amazed by the Google Cardboard experience!  The Oculus Rift was literally one of the most astounding experiences of my life from the first moment I strapped them on.

The Ramp Up to Oculus
I have never played a video game in my life, ever.  My 5 grown sons are a different story.  Video games have been a large part of their lives from day one.  I just never caught the bug and have always been very ‘meh’ about it.  Nothing has changed.  I did NOT invest in Oculus Rift for games.  I discovered Oculus at, of all places, the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.  A special event permitted visitors to “fly through” the classic Dali masterpiece “Elephants” using an Oculus Rift.  The second I strapped the headset on, I was caught up in a surprising ‘Virtual Reality’.  Unexpectedly, I was completely inside a bizarre world created by the mind of Salvador Dali.  As I flew about the work of art from all angles, heights, and even inside the structures of the painting, I was completely sold.  I knew that I had to have this technology in my study… and not for games!  Ironically, Oculus Rift was specifically designed for video games and the only desktop computers capable of running it properly are the high end gamer computers with powerful video cards.  Fortunately, I had resisted buying a computer for several years and was due a new one anyway.  That opened the door to purchase a computer specifically powerful enough and with the appropriate video capacity to run the Oculus technology.  Note of caution: not all “VR capable” video processors can handle the requirements for the Rift.  Make sure you check all of your computer capabilities against the list of required specs on the Oculus site.  If you intend to run with the computer that you have, you can test your system in advance before you purchase the Oculus hardware by running the test on your computer available on their website.

Opening the Box
I ordered my new computer and the Oculus Rift headset on the same day (from Best Buy).  I also pre-ordered the new Oculus Touch handsets that were not released until December 1st of 2016.  The touch sensors attach to your hands and allow you to touch and move things in the virtual world.  I waited for the Touch sensors to arrive before installing everything.  When I turned my Oculus Rift system on, the touch sensors had not even been on the market for one month.

The system set-up was somewhat involved.  There are a pair of sensors that judge your position, the position of your hands, and the position of your VR headset as you look around which monitor your every movement inside the virtual world.  The headset is very comfortable and easy to adjust.

Entering the Virtual World of Oculus Rift
Quite honestly, I was totally unprepared for the first minute of high fidelity virtual reality through the Oculus headset.  Even though I had the experience at the Dali Museum, the painting was dark, surreal and of ‘oil painting quality’.  As a first experience, it was wonderful and unexpected.  But nothing like a ‘real world fidelity’ VR experience.  Further, I had many hours using Google Cardboard VR applications which I considered magnificent and exciting.  But those experiences were nothing at all as spectacular as a high fidelity, 3D, totally immersive VR experience as delivered by the Oculus Rift.

After a calibration screen (rather spectacular in itself), the screen went dark for a few seconds and then opened inside a habitat on the surface of another planet. It was the free Oculus Training Program called “First Contact”.   The first moment in that habitat was so visually stunning that I was totally unprepared for it.  I felt exactly like Neo must have felt when he entered the virtual worlds of the Matrix with Morpheus!  It was THAT spectacular!  The fidelity of the VR was nearly perfect.  The habitat was in faultless 3D and so realistic that there was no way to tell that I was not actually there.  It was not a cartoon or a drawing at all – but a real habitat with windows (facing up).  So I will go ahead and make the intellectual leap and tell you that, unequivocally, that habitat was actually real to me in every respect and there was no way to tell otherwise.  It was just real! I could turn a full 360 degree circle – look up, down, and in any direction, and it was flawless.  I could see the weave of the carpet at my feet; reach out with my virtual hands and pick up objects; drop them, toss them, and bang them against one another.  I could move equipment, drop balls that bounced, stack cans, and load videos into VCRs.  Virtual, pixelated butterflies landed on my hands if I held them out.  If I did not, they simply flew about the habitat.  I could get down on my knees and look under the tables and experience a short range of motion in the habitat.  It was not a driven game at all.  I could choose to just stand there for hours or get on with the training.  I could experiment with objects or just stare.  There was no clock ticking.  It was my habitat to spend as much time in as I wished and do whatever I wanted there.  It was in every respect a true virtual world, although there were limits in this training habitat.  I was not allowed to leave and go outside as I was supposed to be here for the sole purpose of training.  But the experience was completely at my speed and direction.  I could lollygag all I wished or get to work.  I left for diner in the ‘real world’ and returned later.  Everything was exactly as I had left it.  It didn’t matter.  It was my virtual world in my own sweet time at my speed and at my pace.  And I could come back as any times as I wished.  As for sounds – the habitat featured standard, white ventilation noises and what I will call ‘mindless background VR music’.  It is not onerous in any way – it’s just there, hanging in the background.

I was supposed to be training in the habitat, but I was so completely mesmerized by its perfect 3D fidelity that I was tracing wire bundles, examining equipment, pushing buttons, and looking out the upper window at the sky until I had my temporary fill of this amazing virtual world.  Ready to proceed through orientation training, I began to follow my prompts and it was then that I met my instructor.

The first act of Oculus VR training was to pay attention to the arrows hanging in the air that prompt the user (me) to utilize my virtual hands to participate in the training.  So, with my right virtual index finger, I pushed down on a vintage VCR door.  It clicked shut and as it did, what appeared to be a small format VCR instantly transformed into a ‘Wall-e’ type robot.  Frightened by my presence, he bounced off the walls and hid, peeking out at me.  Then he waved at me.  Nothing happened until I waved back with my virtual hand.  He approached me (floating) in mid air, chattered robot-speak, handed me a digital disk, and an arrow prompt pointed to a nearby slot beneath a monitor.  The exercise was learning how to wave, point and grip with my virtual hands, use them to move objects from one point to another, then to release them. 

I was quite mindful that this habitat and the ‘Wall-e’ Oculus Touch interface program had just been released only two weeks before, so I was one of the first users.  And so interfacing with a digital entity was made even more interesting.  ‘Wall-e’ has such an endearing personality that I focused on him much more than the training tasks.  I reached out to touch him but as I did, he moved away, just out of my reach.  As I ignored my training tasks and focused on him, he cocked his binocular head to the side, communicating his puzzlement both by his motions and in his increasing level of robot noises, trying to figure out what the human was doing instead of learning VR.  I wanted to experience and live in VR; thus, interacting with this digital entity-personality was far more interesting to me than learning the mechanics of Oculus Touch!  I was never out to become an accomplished VR rocket jockey.  Instead, I wanted to actually live in the VR world.  ‘Wall-e’ added to the incredible habitat I was in and exponentially increased its fascination to me.

There were four or so disks with various tasks to learn.  As I pushed each disk that ‘Wall-e’ handed to me into a digital 3-D printer, it would print up a new object to handle with both digital hands and fingers, demonstrating various forms of manual dexterity.  Each had its own interesting object to handle and to operate, and it was one of these that birthed a cloud of bright pink pixelated butterflies that interacted with you if you wished, or flew by if you ignored them. 

I have visited the habitat and ‘Wall-e’ nearly a dozen times, and on each visit I learn a little more about this amazing place and ‘Wall-e’.  Each trip is different because I learn new things about the habitat and its little robot.  That is why the virtual world is so much like the real world.  I awaken in my bedroom each day and things are new and different each morning, totally depending on how I interact with my space at any given time.  In another sense, each new visit is like the movie ‘Groundhog Day’.  The initial setting is always the same (unless you leave the game on all night) yet the outcome is different depending on your new actions.

As this is the very first virtual place that allows for human virtual dexterous interactions, I am very, very much looking forward to forthcoming applications, such as much larger habitats with many compartments and much more able android beings to interact with.  For example, it would be quite interesting if Siri or Cortana could be integrated into these VR worlds for a link to reality and internet data.  Oculus already has a ‘Virtual Desk” App which sets your desktop in any virtual setting you choose and responds to the Oculus fingers, but I have not experimented with this App yet.

After my first venture into the Training Habitat, as I departed it, the world round me faded to black and, in a few seconds, I heard what I can only describe as ‘mall music’ as I was suddenly standing in what I can best describe as a very large, open space that resembles the open, grand atrium of a very spacious hotel.  Remember that in high fidelity 3D VR, the space you are standing or sitting in appears EXACTLY as it is designed.  If it is created as a huge space, your mind sees it exactly that way!  It turns out, this space replaces the “desktop” of a standard computer.  This awesome space is the launching point of all VR activities and Apps.  The atrium is created with what I will call ‘virtual license’.  It is quite open on the edges and sides, outside are virtual trees with exaggerated leaves, and it is snowing with very large snowflakes drifting down.  There are very tall, cubist-structured buildings outside in the snow, lifting upward to many stories high.  The feel of immense space, openness, and a kind of surreal beauty is clearly a part of the scene.  The carpet beneath is so well defined you can see its individual threads.  Before me are holiday images, because the scene is generated real time at the Oculus company and is new each day.  My name, avatar, and interfaces are located on a big board to my right (at least 20 feet high).  In front are today’s Oculus bargains (if I want to buy more games, apps, etc.), and to the left is my recent destinations and link to my own Oculus library.

You can change things about your page through ‘Settings.’.  To do so, you touch buttons in front of you with your virtual fingers.  But instead of regular buttons, your finger enters into a pool of vertical standing water on each touch, which is a totally astonishing effect all in itself.  Remember, this is all happening in a setting of perfect, total immersion so that it is indistinguishable from what we know as ‘reality’.

And I haven’t even opened up any other Oculus apps yet!  I cannot wait to see what lies even deeper in the Oculus experience! 

Personalizing Oculus
It is one thing to integrate yourself totally into a high fidelity 3D adventure created by someone else or by a VR team – but it is yet another to integrate your personal vision and mind in a high fidelity, 360 degree, perfectly spherical image or video that you took of your own life, you home, your family, your vacation or adventure.  This exciting technology has kept pace with VR technology so that anyone can fuse and preserve their personal life in perfect VR photo and video fidelity. 

Let me compare this technology with what we are all accustomed to.  The difference between the best, highest resolution electronic photo capture from the top of the line cell phone or electronic camera, and a 360 degree high fidelity VR image, is like comparing the best electronic photo to a crude civil war tin-type image.  In the future, a standard, everyday image will always be in 3D high fidelity 360 degree VR.  Therefore, (this is essential to understand) the VR images of today are the first to preserve the early days of the 21st century for the future in what will soon be considered standard imagery.  Our old 2D snapshots of a single frame of time and space will soon be absolutely obsolete antiques.  The questions our children’s children will be asking is this: are there any VR images or videos of our grandparents or our parents?  They will ask that because all other photographic technologies will be considered crude, at best. With the older images and videos, they will only be able to look at them, not actually enter them!

The difference is stark.  The 2D photo we now take for granted is flat, limited and represents only an instant in space and time.  But a 3D 360 degree spherical image or video represents the entire surroundings at the moment of capture.  With such an image or video, future generations will not see a flat image, but will actually enter into the photo or video – literally walking into the time and space – and be able to sit or stand before us as though they were standing there at the moment of the capture.  They will see and hear us in full fidelity; not as tiny, flat head shots – but literally standing before us in full height with the world we stood in surrounding us and our future descendants!  

The most amazing things is that this technology is available right now!  In fact, as I write this, I am looking at the camera that will capture this VR reality in the highest resolution available today – 4K 360 degree video or stills.  The one that I have purchased is called the Samsung Gear 360.  With this camera, we will be able to leave our family with images and videos they can literally walk into and experience as though they were standing there with us when it was taken!

The Samsung Gear 360 (shown) has a pair of special lenses that captures dual 180 degree spherical images and videos and then internally links them together into a perfect image or video sphere.  When loaded into Oculus, the personal image or video becomes a full fidelity 4K VR experience, not just an image. 

Now, if you will allow me a few wide-ranging thoughts on VR.
1.  Is it really all that perfect?  The realistic answer is no, it is not.  I say that because these are truly the first steps in high fidelity VR.  I predict that by this time next year, all headsets will be 4K so that the image will be even more crisp and detailed than what we know of as true reality.  The facemask is probably as comfortable as they can make an eye-hugging mask.  After an hour or so, you can feel it.  Look for full face masks, or even VR helmets, with ventilation in a year or so.

2.  Look for even more spectacular destinations.  As I said previously, I anticipate much more detailed and much larger worlds and living spaces with far more intelligent android characters.  Eventually, there will be VR rooms (similar to the holo-decks of Star Trek fame). 

3.  Is it dangerous?  It has that potential for sure!  It is easy to imagine a lonely or disaffected person getting lost in VR worlds and not wanting to come back to a sometimes bitter, dangerous and harmful real world.  And who could blame them?  The VR worlds are astonishing beyond description and can even be made ‘virtually’ perfect.  And we have only taken the first primitive baby steps with this technology.  What we have today is nothing compared to what will soon be.

4.  Are there positive benefits?  I believe that there are far more positive benefits to VR than negative.  It can be used for training, or for vacations that last one hour or one week.  It can be used for virtual meetings, or it can be the ticket for literally anyone to explore other planets in real time.  But the most positive benefit of all is that, for a very reasonable cost, it allows regular people like us to participate in experiences and visit places only dreamed of, or only previously available to a few select, wealthy individuals – not to mention off-world and other world locations.

5.  Are there any health effects such as visual or balance issues?
A.  It can induce you motion sickness.  If you are prone to motion sickness in the real world, it works exactly the same in VR. 
B.  Since your eyes are completely covered and you are literally in motion in another world, it can cause accidents to you and others in this world.  Everyone using VR should have a safe, clear VR space.
C.  Having a small screen inches before your eyes is causing some concern, but there have been no studies yet about its long term effects.  Many users complain of eye ‘fatigue’ after a certain period of use.
D.  There is the potential that VR could interfere with normal socialization among younger users.  I absolutely do not believe that is going to be a significant, widespread issue because we have nearly two generations experience with younger users all being tied to non-stop video gaming.  They turned out no better or worse than their pre-video-game-generation parents.  VR is no different except that the screen is much closer while the exact same gaming immersion is going on.  And, parents should ALWAYS have their hand on the technology switch if things start looking iffy.
E.  Again, disaffection is a potential issue for both young and old alike because of the sheer power of perfection of the escape mechanism.  But I feel it is unlikely to capture otherwise ‘normal’ people and cause them to disappear from society.  VR disaffection is more apt to be a problem with people who are already undergoing some psychological trauma.  Ironically, in a virtual world of perfection, it may be that they will return much better off than before they entered!

The VR Safety Valves
There are several built-in VR safety valves that immediately come to my mind that will ALWAYS force anyone back into the real world.  Bathroom breaks.  No VR space I am aware of has a toilet – and because of real world plumbing, it’s not likely!  Food breaks.  No virtual refrigerator is going to dispense real food and nourishment.  Cell phones.  If there is a medium more powerful than VR, it is cell phones, email, social media, texts, etc.  And finally, sleeping.  Sleeping in a VR headset would have to be torturous. 

Bottom line
My review of Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch: hair still on fire! 

Friday, January 15, 2016

January 15
There are few things more powerful in your fitness and dietary regimen that integrating periodic rewards.  But most ironically, in our culture, one of the most prevalent rewards for almost anything is of course, eating!  It makes no sense, obviously, to reward one’s self with food after a long and arduous program to cut calories and weight.  Therefore as you begin your program it would be very helpful to think in advance about what rewards would be powerful enough to give you an incentive as you step through your program.  Some examples would be treating yourself to a concert or articles of clothing and so forth.  But linking in tangible rewards as you reach your milestones is very important and is very powerful and can make all the difference in the short run and especially in the long-term.  Treat yourself often because – you are worth it! 
January 14
There is a two edged sword in forging a new lifestyle called ‘goal-linking’.  It has both positive and negative qualities, but there is a secret to making to work for you at the same time minimize its undesirable characteristics.  Using this technique will enable you to develop a continuous motivation that links goals together in a never ending chain.  For example, you may wish to get in shape for a family event that is happening a couple of months in the future.  This is very powerful motivational tool that enables you to focus on a goal that has energized your healthy lifestyle.  But after the family event is over, the focus in the motivation has suddenly disappeared.  This is frequently a very common deathknell for many lifestyle programs.  And yet it is such a powerful tool that the alternative is; by using your fitness calendar, you can link another goal on your calendar ahead of you and chain your fitness program to another motivational objective in the near future.  Thus by goal linking continuously ahead into the future from one objective to another, you can use this powerful tool to your advantage and not have to suffer the unfortunate reality of sudden loss of motivation just when things are looking good.
January 13 
One of the most powerful of all tools in forging a collection of new habits, (which is defined as ‘creating a new lifestyle’), is consistency.  The opposite of consistency, is of course, complacency.  Because developing a fitness lifestyle is not easy, the human mind will attempt to take the easy way out and try to talk you out of your fitness and nutritional regime, one small decision at a time - all the time.  Eventually, the habit that you were trying to develop turns into a disaster and a failure, one small seemingly insignificant decision at a time.  Therefore consistency is vitally important in any lifestyle change and in any fitness and nutrition program.  While it is very true that “life happens”, and that our habits are sometimes interrupted by everyday events, those interruptions must be exceptions and not become the rule.  One of the best tools that I have used to enforce consistency is a calendar.  I mark major activities, weight goals, nutrition goals and other data points each day on my fitness calendar.  This allows me to see at a glance my record of consistency.  And when I go back to that calendar and I look at those days when my consistency lagged I am also able to see that the results of my program lagged right along with it.  Without that tool it is easy to lose track of what you’re doing and slip right back into the old lifestyle that you are diligently trying to escape.  You can purchase a ready-made calendar, print a custom calendar from the Internet or just make your own out of a plain sheet of paper.  But that piece of paper is a powerful tool that will help you develop and maintain the consistency that you need to develop a new lifestyle with full success! 


January 12 
Forging a new lifestyle out of a lifetime of developed habits and practices is no easy task!  If you step back and take a look at your lifestyle, you will see that it is actually nothing more than a collection of expressed habits and behaviors that are tied to your daily clock.  If you want to experience a true change in lifestyle, you will have to individually change at least some of those habits until you achieve your new lifestyle objective.  The word ‘habit’ itself is defined as an action that is repeated over and over again, day after day, as a reflexive behavior that has become the norm in anyone’s life.  If you wish to change your lifestyle; again, you will have to change your habits.  The best way to make a new habit to replace an old one is repetition.  If you repeat a behavior in a cyclic manner day after day, it soon becomes an ingrained habit.  And once that habitual behavior is established in the course of your life, it becomes the first element of a true lifestyle change.  Therefore if the lifestyle change involves fitness and health, we will need to replace old habits of eating, sleeping and attention to including fitness activities as a part of our everyday lifestyle.  It is always a good exercise to sit down and draw a line down through the middle of a blank page.  Then in the left column write those habits that we have that you need to get rid of.  And in the right column write a list of habits that you wish to develop to replace the old ones.  This becomes a single page picture of the task that lies ahead of you!  Because the technique of habit building is repetition, your next task is to assimilate each of these new habits and began to integrate them into your daily life one at a time, every day, until they become a natural part of your life.


January 11 
The building of a whole new lifestyle is based upon the exact construct that each of us used to arrive at the lifestyle that we are living today.  As we look around our lives today we discover that we typically do things the same way every day, day after day.  We awaken at a certain time, we go to bed at a certain time.  Go to work, we come home, we have dinner, we have entertainment patterns that we engage in each evening, and then at the end we all typically retire at the time that we are most comfortable with.  The next day it all begins again.  Embedded in that day of expressed habits developed over years and decades, are our activities related to routine exercise (or lack of routine exercise) and our eating habits.  Each of those things combined make us what we are physically, mentally and define the overall state of our health.  Therefore to bring about a true, permanent lifestyle change, we each need to examine every aspect of our life and determine which parts need refining, changing and even getting rid of things that are not healthful.  Therefore in order to construct a such a lasting change, we need to first analyze our old life, plan for the new life that we wish to have and then finally go about changing our daily habits to make a lifestyle change actually come to pass and to make it permanent.  Forging whole new habits and getting rid of old habits is not easy and it takes time.  It also takes long term personal commitment to progress and to guaranteeing a healthier tomorrow.  It all begins with that personal decision to redirect our lives and while it is not easy it is the most rewarding thing in any human existence.


January 10 
A lifestyle of fitness and pursuing a healthy existence is a day-by day adventure.  We don’t accomplish it all at once – it is accomplished a single day at a time.  One recent statistic that I encountered stated that 70 to 80% of all fitness programs ultimately crash and burn.  I believe that this is so because people tend to get involved in a fitness program to accomplish the goal of losing weight or to prepare for some activity such as a race or a marathon.  Once that goal is achieved, then psychologically there is no reason for continuing something that is difficult for a certain period of time – which is a lifestyle change.  And if the goal is linked to an event or an achievement, then it was never a lifestyle change at all - it was a goal setting exercise.  At FitScience.net we are focusing on the pursuit of fitness and healthy existence as a permanent lifestyle change, not a goal setting exercise!  There is a world of difference.  We want for you the very same things that we want for ourselves and that is to rid ourselves of a lifetime of poor habits and to develop new ones that will last an entire lifetime.  While it is true that initiating the lifestyle change is difficult, once the change has been integrated anyone’s life, it is no longer difficult because it has become a permanent way of life!  And that is the new life that is full of the joys of health, longevity and freedom from all of the negative things that come from the old life, the old habits and the old expectations.  Stay with us throughout the year as we get there day by day.