Today I was hanging out by my ruins shack when I heard some shouting outside. I peeked, and saw some guy literally mowing down ruins rats. I was dazzled by the sight and decided that I needed to win a fight.
So I grabbed my hoarded stack of rations, went to the gym, and started to exercise like I never exercised in my life. Good god, I burned through those rations and my stats grew like never before. I still am the lowest ranked tier two in TAU, but now I can actually defend myself. I ran down to the ruins with my new muscles and beat the crap out of a coyote before stealing his stims and running away.
I actually won a fight, even if it's against some level four dillweed! Yay!
(BTW, just to let you know how bad my stats were, I was at 11.09 for my strength at lv 6, now its a slightly better 12.08)