Lan

Goal 1: You Snooze, You Lose I totally blew this one. After doing well the first week, I started slipping more and more to where I am sleeping late almost every day now again. Grade: F- Goal 2: No Eating After Hours On this goal, I ended up doing pretty well. I only slipped from it a few times during the weekends when my schedule got thrown totally out of whack. All in all, a success. Grade: B Goal 3: Phone Home This was the scariest of my goals and I think I did pretty well on it. I met all of my phoning home goals, plus some. And the family enjoyed (or pretended to enjoy) the conversations. Grade: A Goal 4: Pull with All My Might! So this was definitely my most successful goal. I wanted to be able to do 3 sets of 5 pull ups and ended up at 10,8, then 7 for my 3 sets. Mega woot! Grade: A Total Rewards : +4 STR, +3.5 WIS, +2 CHA, +0.75 STA, +0.75 CON Ding!

I just realized I need to check in for the last days of the challenge. I've stayed true to all of my goals so far except for that blasted snooze button one. Epic fail on that front. However, I am up to doing sets of 10, 8, then 7 pull ups from the 1 I started this challenge at. So all in all, I think it has been a win. Plus my family loves the weekly calls. I had plenty to talk about this week since I hit a bad driver on the way home from work the other day :/ Who knew that a left turn yield meant pull into oncoming traffic?

Oh nooo! I love my sleep-in Saturdays!

As it turns out, I just turned off the math problem thing on my phone alarm and started snoozing less. Weird. Maybe my brain got mad at having to think in its slightly post comatose state and rebelled by going back to sleep. Either way, today I actually didn't sleep in late like I did the past few days. So slight victory! Still progressing on pull ups even though I've met my goal. I'm up to 6 now with regular grip. Woots. And so far on this challenge, I've only broken my "not eating late" commitment twice, so I consider that pretty good.

Oh man, I think my mom likes these calls home for my challenge. She sure does like to gossip I'm still struggling with the snooze thing. I think its time to increase the difficulty of the math problem I have to solve to turn the alarm off. I'm too good at double digit addition/subtraction in my sleep to wake me up sufficiently. While I am doing good on my dietary goals, I would like to set my own personal mini challenge to start making some of my meals a little healthier. Commence epic meal cooking!

Tomorrow is day 1 of my renewed effort to not sleep in. I am going to keep track of when I get up and if I sleep in, then I will write the reason why. My guess is that after a few of these excuses, I will start to see that they don't really have any merit other than mentally not wanting to get up. My other goals are on track, aside from a minor slip up in the midnight snack department last night. Although, after an 8 hr Walking Dead marathon, eating a "snack" at 4 am might almost be counted as breakfast

One thing that really helped me kick the smoking habit was when I started saving all my empty packs. Once those started to pile up, I realized just how much I was dependent on those little buggers and it really renewed my determination to keep going with it. I had also quit smoking once before, but I don't recommend the method I (unintentionally) used. I had bought nicotine patches that were waaay too strong for what I needed, so if I left one on too long, I would get violently ill. Eventually, I started associating the nicotine rush with being ill and I just couldn't bring myself to smoke. But like I said, don't try this one at home kids!

Well if there is one thing I've gotten good at lately, it is streamlining my morning. But I'd rather have time to loaf around a little before hopping in the car for the drive to work. I'm going to start keeping track of how long I sleep in each day in a spreadsheet or something. I think seeing it written down will really help me visualize how much time I'm wasting/losing. My other goals are on track still. Although I do need to make a call home soon.

Hey I just wanted to pop on and give a quick update since its been a few days. I have been doing well on my goals so far. I am able to do both hammer grip and wide grip pull ups for my goal now. I've also not slipped up at all on my late night eating. The snoozing thing is going a little better as well, and even if I do snooze, I still make sure to start with breakfast each day. I got a bunch of greek yogurts with fruit on sale and they are delicious and fast

I haven't made an update in the past few days, so I figured it was about time. I'm doing quite well on my diet goals. Definitely seeing the benefits of more regular meals throughout the day in the form of not being wiped out at certain times. I've been pretty lax on my workouts this week since I really wasn't feeling the best earlier in the week, but I got back into it with some HIIT yesterday. I will most likely continue on my pull up progression tomorrow. Where I've been failing majorly is in the snoozing department. I did well for the first week or so, but have been lapsing back into sleeping an extra half hour to hour. So for the next work week, I'm going to limit myself to one snooze (which is 10 minutes on my alarm clock). Obviously, I won't get full credit for that goal by now, but I would rather take small steps to achieving it then to fail completely out. I also called my grandma this week and we talked about quilting and stuff.

Whoo! Technically, I've met my pullup goal. I did 5-5-5 just barely today of hammer grip pull ups. So I'm going to spend the rest of the challenge working towards increasing my regular grip pull ups, which I am still weak on.

I've been taking it easy the past 2 days. Haven't been feeling my best because of some stomach issues but I decided to tough it out and go for some more intervals today anyway. Made it about halfway through my planned session before I wasn't feeling well again, so continuing to take it easy. I think I'll use this downtime to meet my call home goals.

I'm happy to report that I have increased my pull up count! I did sets of 2, 2, 2, and 3 last night, up from my previous 1 max. I think a lot of it has to do with sticking to the regular meal plan. I have decided that even though I was meeting my goal of getting up and eating breakfast every day (mostly), that I was cheating myself by just having a bowl of cereal. Since I'm not trying to lose weight, the opposite in fact, I've upped my intake by a lot. So for the past couple days, I've had something like 4 eggs, some ham, a bowl of yogurt, blueberries, and granola. Apparently this is the way breakfast is meant to be, because I haven't been super hungry 2 hours later like normal. Still, I'm having trouble forcing myself to eat enough to gain weight.

Those look like some tough goals. It looks like you definitely have the determination to pull it off though! I'm glad you could enjoy the Ren Festival. I was saddened to miss ours this year, which meant I couldn't consume "Drunken Woodchucks" (a lovely high alcohol drink we get at ours consisting of rum and woodchuck cider).

Update of Shame Well, I sorta screwed up today. I slept in an hour and a half because I was wiped out from going out last night. Although I had a lot of fun at the Drink and Draw event I went to, I probably shouldn't have stayed at the bar so late on a Tuesday! That's the second slip-up on snoozing, so I must become more resolute to break this silly need to sleep all morning. I did manage to do my pull up workout before going out though, so yay for that!

Hey all. Actually from St. Louis here, but I will be in KC for the Warrior Dash in April. Supposedly one of my friends will be joining me but we will see if he follows through It would be nice to have some others to run/hang with while we're there!

A quick little Update I've been keeping up with my challenges so far. I haven't slept in late in the morning once and I even have time to write this update before heading in to work. I called my mom this weekend, so my phone home goal is underway now as well. The only thing I've been slacking on is that I missed a dedicated upper body workout in favor of doing burpees this weekend. I took yesterday as a rest day to let my quads and arms recover from doing the burpees, so I will get back into the pull up regiment today.

Nice job on getting your 5k goal!

I think the snoozing is more of a mental thing rather than just needing that extra 20 minutes of sleep. At least for me. No matter when I set the alarm for, I would always seem to snooze the same amount of time each morning. That's why I'm just cutting it out altogether. It really serves me no purpose I'm debating going back to re-read WoT, but I may just move forward with as yet unread material, namely the Foundation series I just picked up.

My name might have indeed derived from a mega-long as yet unfinished (STILL) series of fantasy books. Actually, my original screen name was Lanfeaer, since I played a female wizard in Everquest. That doesn't really work for me as a personal screen name though since I am not a woman. Oh and the giant cat picture up there, her name is Alanna, also from said series.

I'm so proud of myself. I resisted temptation to eat another dinner last night around 1 am when I got home. I went to sleep and got up to make breakfast like a good little ranger. Yesterday I also did my pull up workout which mostly consists of sets of negatives since I can barely do 1 regular pull up. I'm beginning to think that my goal of sets of 5 may be too ambitious, but I won't give up just yet. As for today, I am continuing to push the burpee challenge and I am really feeling that. Doing so many push ups is definitely hurting right now but I like the challenge.

Excellent goals! As a night owl myself, I know how those late nights just tend to happen a lot. I know that melatonin did wonders for me when I had to readjust my sleep schedule. Although that stuff made me have some whacked out dreams on nights that I took it!

Wow, I did 100 of these last night in sets of 15. I've never done more than 5 at once, so it was really hurting. But in a good way! Gonna try for 100 each day of the challenge.

Day 3 Well I started to slip today. I definitely did not meet my goal of getting up on time for work. I slept for an extra hour, telling myself I wasn't feeling well, but I'm pretty sure that was an excuse. Other than that, still doing pretty well. I am planning a pull-up/arm strength workout tonight and looking forward to that.

Day 2 (yawn) Man, I had no trouble getting up in time today for breakfast today. At 4 AM, my feline alarm clock decided it was breakfast time and who was I to argue. I also succeeded in not eating late last night. Woot! I made dinner when I got home and even had leftovers for lunch today, so no eating out. On a side note, I just signed up for mint.com and looking at my restaurant spending for last month made me cry a little. I'm hoping the 6 week challenge helps me to cut that number down for good! Still no progress on phoning home. That is probably going to be my hardest goal in this challenge. Can't wait to get home and do some burpees!