Elk

Weekly Goals Week 1 Focus: The Fear of Taking Up Space Sunday: Just put on some music and play it through the speakers. That's all. ^^ Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: Saturday: Sunday:

Okay, so things have been MAJORLY stressful this summer. Sudden-and-unexpected-death-of-a-young-person level of stressful. So, you know, often, healthy habits fall to the wayside during these times. Which is what happened to me. After this big ol' storm, I'm hoping to find some balance again. Processing emotions has always been a challenge for me, so I'm particularly focused on yoga/meditation. I may not update much during the first week, since the memorial is on Tuesday, and afterwards I'll be heading off to visit my Dad in my hometown until Sunday. Alright, let's go~~~! Goal 1: Yoga and meditation. Work inwards to find calmness and strength. How: a yoga video every day. If I don't have time (i.e. when visiting family/attending the memorial), I'll do a 5-minute meditation and see how I feel after that. On the ideal day, I'll do both, but one or the other is considered a success! ^^ Goal 2: Healthy food. Healthy food makes for a happy Elk! How: Start packing salads for lunch again. Cook one new recipe from my simple meals cookbook per week (excepting first week). May add more to this later, depending on how things go~ Goal 3: Drop fears and attachments, through reflection and small, concrete goals. Work on recognizing the things I am attached to. The things I am afraid to do, or to live without. How: Identify one thing per week, reflect on how it influences my life, then make a goal to change it. For each day of the week, make one subgoal to help me achieve this. Week 1: The fear of taking space. I tend to repress my emotions so as not to inconvenience other people, and to bite my tongue when I have my own preferences, even when these "preferences" are very important to my life goals, mental wellness and all-around health. Time to work on that! Goal 4: Continue learning Polish. Work on learning my partner's native language, for when we go to live in Poland. ^^ How: Duolingo every day (2 courses), and do one Polish lesson on Polishpod101.com per week (again, excluding first week). Bonus Goal: Do creative stuff! Draw, sing, etc. ^^

Love your goals! Straight to the point. How do you find mindfulness about eating works for you? Yeah, seconding what Leimanu said - would love to see your comics!

I went for a run for the first time since developing Achilles tendinitis in December! ^__^

Went for a run today; tried a pilates workout yesterday. Back to eating meat, sadly. I've tried many times to go vegetarian, but my body just doesn't take to it. Despite taking a multivitamin, checking to make sure I'm eating enough iron, B12, omega-3s, protein, I feel weak and tired all of the time. My mom says she had the same experience trying to go vegetarian when she was my age. So I had some sushi today and chicken yesterday. Still have to sign up for hot yoga. Continuing to learn about music, and have been practicing singing a lot. Yay.

Thanks everyone for your responses! Lots of good feedback and strategies. I am an emotional eater, so that might be a problem. And since I've been eating intuitively, I am SO hungry, seemingly all of the time. I have no idea what is going on or why this is. :/ I'm eating really healthy, too - plenty of protein and spinach and all that good stuff, and consistently meeting all of my body's nutritional needs.

This challenge isn't going as expected. It's possible to set plans and goals, and it's good to remind myself occasionally of what those are. But usually, once I start working on my goals, things develop in an intuitive way, and begin to diverge from the original plan. Sometimes I have to trust my internal compass, instead of imposing pre-determined goals upon myself. At least, that's how I see it. The yoga goal has shifted to: -Sign up for hot yoga, and recognize how much stronger and more open my body and mind feel when I do yoga. Use this feeling as a source of encouragement to keep at it. The exercise goal has shifted to: -Do new exercises when I feel brave enough to. Anxiety whaaaaat The eating goal has shifted to: -Make sure I'm getting enough iron, and work on my tendency to emotional eat. And the music goal has stayed the same. I also want to do some professional development reading in my spare time~ wahoo.

I used to have a really healthy relationship with food. I naturally gravitated to foods that were good for me - salad is one of my favourite foods! - and had a fairly low weight. However, somewhere along the line , I decided I wanted to lose an extra five pound*, and began calorie counting. (This body dissatisfaction have been partially due to a nostalgia kick that resulted in repeated exposure to Britney Spears' abs circa early 2000s.) Calorie counting totally backfired for me! I became divorced from my body's natural signals of hunger and satiety. Instead of feeling the physical rewards of eating well, I was obsessed with a number. Ultimately, I actually wound up gaining weight. Now I'm trying "intuitive eating" - trying to get back to that natural regulation of eating healthy food. Part of this entails making no food "forbidden," though, which is scary! I'm so afraid that I'll gain weight. Yet, I am finding that my cravings for healthy food are returning, so maybe it's working. Has anyone else tried this? What sort of results did you get?

Rest is important! Your body needs time to adapt to the change in activity and repair the muscles. In fact, from what I understand, when you overwork your body, it can start pulling energy from the muscles themselves, essentially breaking them down. Pretty counterproductive imo! Also, you could injure yourself running so much, and develop shin splints or something like that! Trust me - this is coming from a person who developed Achilles tendinitis by rushing into a more intense workout schedule. Now I haven't been able to go for a run or do jacking jumps or anything for almost three months. Don't repeat my mistakes. ;D

Same here - I don't want that stuff going in the landfill! Dang, that's cool. Lots of respect for championing the rights of developers! I work at a company that does online marketing for charities. Lots of Wordpress and sending out emails, and occasional minor styling edits. I'd like to get more deeply into development, though! Props to you for deep-cleaning the kitchen! Too bad your body assumed this was a holiday, though. It's pretty interesting that the human body can postpone getting sick until you're in a position to rest, but... it's also kind of lame when it happens once you've finally got some spare time!

Today was okay. No meditation today, but a lot of digging into some uncomfortable feelings, so I guess that counts. I didn't get much done otherwise, though, since I was feeling so down about it. :/ I didn't do a new YouTube workout last week, so I'm planning to do one tomorrow. If I'm up for something exciting, I might try some pilates. Or, if I'm not, I think I'll start small to shape the behaviour. Eight minutes buns will do for that. So much cheesy goodness! ;D

A karma class, at this studio at least, is a drop-in class with a reduced fee. The proceeds go to a charity instead of the studio, so you can pay more if you want. It's really nice! Thanks! I do as well, haha!

Short and simple - I like it! Congrats on meeting your goals this week, and best of luck to you!

The Brothers Karamazov 1, by Dostoyevsky. And Intuitive Eating. And manga.

Good couple of days. ^.^ Five minutes of meditation yesterday, and ~hot yoga~ on Friday night! I really loved going to hot yoga. One of the local studios has a karma class on Fridays from 8-9, which is the perfect time for me. I'm going to make attending it a habit. I think it really gets the weekend off to a good start. Actually, would like to buy a pass, but since the pass doesn't apply to the karma class, it almost doesn't seem like it would be worth it! Started taking a multivitamin, which hopefully will help with some of the iron deficiency problems I've been having. I lose more iron than, uh, the average woman, so that was a challenge even before going vegetarian. Also - music? Going well! Going for "a little bit every day." It builds my confident and adds up. ^.^ Well, on to the next week!

I love your goals! I totally relate to being a person unable to get rid of stuff - it can't just go in the landfill! But then it clutters my apartment instead. Sounds like you're tuning into what you need! Congrats on deactivating Facebook! Sorry to hear you've been sick, though. Also, curious, because you mentioned working in computerland - what's your chosen profession?

Thanks, you two! It's encouraging to hear about other vegetarians' experiences. I'll be sure to check out your challenges! Today: very little music and exercise, unfortunately. I went to Costco with my sister, and didn't feel any compulsion to eat free meat samples at all. I also did some reading about body image, and a lot of personal reflection. So while it wasn't a great day for physical fitness, it was an overall win for wellbeing. :>

~reserved~

Ack, new challenge started and I haven't set mine up yet! D: I'll make this spiffy later I guess. QUEST: Eat a balanced vegetarian diet, get a decent amount of exercise, do yoga, and generally focus on keeping a clear mind and becoming integrated. Goal 1: Vegetarianism If you've watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, you'll know that airbenders are vegetarians. So, uh... me too. :} To achieve this, I'm going to order produce from the local community centre, watch vegan/vegetarian YouTube videos for inspiration, and occasionally track my nutrition to make sure I'm getting enough iron (but not every day, because calorie counting turned into disordered eating once upon a time, so I don't want to enter that unpleasant little spiral again). I'm also going to read Intuitive Eating, to cultivate a healthy relationship with food. Yay. ^,^ Goal 2: Yoga It's hard for me to do yoga when I'm not in a good place mentally and emotionally. Sometimes forcing myself isn't good, but I'm going to aim to do yoga multiple times a week, since, generally, it does help clear my mind. Good stuff for computer desk jockeys. x.x To achieve this: select a video a day in advance and do it. If I find that I just don't got the energy to next day, I'll do a minimum of 5 minutes of meditation instead. Goal 3: Other exercisey stuff. I developed Achilles tendinitis in December, so I've got to take it easy and find alternatives to the exercises I used to do. :[ At least I still have biking! So: one day/week, I'll try a new workout on YouTube! Life goal: Music I wanna learn to make electronic music, so I'm going to practice that every day. Again, laying out a plan in advance = bueno thingy. So tomorrow, gonna make one cool drum loop. Wahoo.

Good tips, thank you! Now I just have to decide what to cut out during the day, I suppose. I just hate being hungry. It's irritating and makes me moody. :<

The body can fluctuate a lot! I'd recommend checking this out: https://www.fitnessblender.com/blog/36-hours-of-body-fluctuation-cheat-meal-before-and-after Also, in the grand scheme of things, 2cm really isn't that much. It's amazing that you've come this far with your fitness journey, but you don't need to be so hard on yourself! Even if you did gain some weight back, the sun would keep shining, and you'd find a way to work through it. You've already come this far - take your successes as evidence that you will meet your goals!

Often, when I'm lying awake at night, I get up and have a bit to eat. I find it really helps me fall asleep, especially if I eat carbs like cereal or bread. The only problem with this is that... well, eating a little bit extra, over time, can thwart certain goals. I.E. the goal to trim down. Does anyone have any tips to replace this habit with something else? I've been trying chamomile tea, but so far it doesn't quite get the job done.

Thanks for checking in! I totally disappeared into the holidays and stopped going on NF. I'll have to check out your thread to see how your challenge ended up! I didn't do great. :/ I didn't earn my badges. As for my fitness and nutrition goals, I'm realizing that I'll need to make some clear decisions about which way I want to go with my fitness, and set much more specific goals. Still, I've taken a lot away from this challenge, and honestly, I think a bit of breathing room was what I needed to gain perspective on where to go next. :>

You're rocking this challenge! Congrats! That article about habits was really interesting, by the way. I like the idea of habits being adaptable, and I agree that these 6 week challenges do help. Also, what sort of martial art were you thinking of trying, if you do decide to go that route?

Awww yeah. 8) Catching up on the Polish lessons! Continuing to exercise and notice changes. I think my body adapts to fitness pretty quickly, which I suppose is lucky. That makes me... what, a mesomorph? I could quickly Google that to find out but whatever. I think I can still get a few badges before the challenge is over - maybe all of them. Can I buy a compost bin, visit the Polish deli, spin fire poi, write a song, do 5 yoga sessons, and do 5 cardio workouts in 10 days? Possibly!! If I'm okay with a really crappy song.