About Me

My name is Joshua and this is actually my 2nd major blog project. I did a previous blog while living in San Diego, CA that covered all the unique food spots I found over 3 of my 5 years living there. That ended in August 2017 shortly before I left San Diego for St Louis, MO. Now here I am 17 months later starting up a new blog but this time in northern Italy in the province of Pordenone, 45 minutes from Venice. Unlike the last blog I did that was focused only on the food, places and people of the amazing restaurants I routinely hit up in the area, this one will be a general broad focused blog of my new lifestyle while living in Italy. It will cover my job,  tons of food, travel, struggles and challenges of adapting to a new culture and country and my own particular lifestyle as an athlete and fitness professional.

I moved here to take on a dream job as a tactical strength and conditioning specialist for the 57th rescue squadron (paratroopers) of the US Air Force. I did a similar job with the US Navy for 5.5 years when in San Diego. I was a DOD civilian NAF employee for that role. Here I am a government contractor through Nobilis SRS as my employer. I am set to work with the US Air Force as that contracts assignment. My term is 3 years long minimum with up to 5 years being possible pending funds. For now, my goal is to make the very most of this 3 years by eating, traveling and living the best life I possibly can in the time I have.

Note that I have been to Italy before. Back in November 2007 I spent a month in Italy with my dad after college before going to graduate school. We spent time in Rome Florence, Naples and Palermo, Sicily when we were here. I freaking loved it! Everything about it! It's largely part of what drew be back here for this role as well. I speak a little bit of Italian and hope to learn much more as I become more exposed to the local culture and people. In fact I hope to become fluent in reading, writing and reading Italian before I go back to the states.

Special factors to note about me. I compete in powerlifting events and have since 2008. I intend to keep competing in such events here as I find them. I also love doing obstacle course races and mud runs but more so for fun rather than being ultra competitive. If I find those I plan to do them as well. I train like an athlete 5-6x a week mostly strength training and some strongman type training as well as I currently wish to find a meet to do within Strongman if possible. The base gyms and the squadron gyms I have access to are going to make training easy and fun with such great gyms and equipment to use all day every day right where I work!

On the diet side even though I am a foodie at heart I also watch what I eat in that although I eat 4000ish calories a day or more, I don't just eat crap all the time and in fact not much at all. I hate how I feel when eating too much garbage, hate it! I thus eat as wholesome as I can as often as I can with a few well worthwhile treats in there now and then. I also tend to avoid flour as it makes me very very sleepy very quickly. It has nothing to do with health or nutrition, I love pasta and bread and all that stuff but hate how lethargic flour in any form makes me so I avoid it. Since graduate school I have sadly been lactose intolerant to the point that even lactaid pills do little for me even in double dose amounts. Soft cheese and dairy items wreck my digestive system so I avoid those kinds of foods. I can however do OK with aged cheese, hard cheese and most plain greek yogurt types so there is some hope yet! I mention these things as many may wonder why I seem to avoid or rarely consume certain items. Now you know why.

So thats that folks. My short backround, my goals with the blog and my intet to share with all of you what the heck I am doing here in Italy for the next several years living life like an Italian!

PS....according to my 23andme report, I am 18.4% Italian, so I am not just living LIKE an Italian, in part, I am one!