Grayfang

Update the Sixth Not much has happened except...oh yeah - I'm officially jobless!! Yup - my last day was tuesday (my contract ended) and I have been loving this whole stay-at-home thing. yesterday I went to the needlepoint store, the book store, and had dinner with my dad. Today I obtained food and spent all day in the kitchen - trying some fajitas and BBQ sauces tonight! Anyways, this also means that I need to start focusing on my Maintenance goal. My first day was a colossal failure in terms of waking up and going to bed at a decent hour, but I'm gonna let it slide and call it a celebratory pass day. I did wake up at 9 this morning, but that was actually my body yelling at me for making it suffer all night on the futon (which I passed out on at a ridiculous hour after a ridiculous amount of tequila last night). So - I'm achy, tired, but I've been productive. I never did make my tangible to-do list, but I'm thinking that part of the goal is really going to translate to "make a plan of productive things to do and follow through" because the whole point is to keep me from wasting my days in front of a screen. so, without further ado: Sweat sessions – 7/18 Apply meds – 15/36 Days Productive - 1.5/18 PR for push-ups!

Hmm..didn't even know this was a thing and yet Saturday night I ended up doing some very assassin-like activities (climbing over ALL THE THINGS)

looking good - stay strong (and away from the desserts, lol)

sounds like you're still going strong - keep it up!

Thanks, smazoon! Update the Fifth. Haven't updated in a while - I was in St Louis for the FRC world championship! We didn't win, but we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately the trip was full of some very long days and some very bad eating (comparatively) but I did get a good sweat session in (St Louis City Museum) and I kept up with my medications! Sweat sessions – 5/18 Apply meds – 12/36 And you heard me right - City Museum=sweat session. You know how fun it is to climb on stuff or explore a cave? - it's like that - a giant adult-sized playground. I literally ran, climbed, crawled, and belly crawled through tiny spaces for an hour and a half. By the end I was sweating like a pig, knees bruised (from crawling over bars), shirt ripped (from belly crawling over rock) and shaking a bit. It. Was. Awesome! oh yeah, and there were robots...lol

Okay, started doing barbells today - totally awesome, though I'm a bit disappointed with my deadlift...oh-well - gotta start somewhere! did 3 circuits 10 pushups (managed 9-8-7) 5 deadlifts (95lbs) 5 back squats (55) 5 barbell rows (55)

Update the Forth Sweat sessions – 4/18 Apply meds – 8/36 Did a barbell workout! so much more fun than the regular one...though I think I need to work on form a bit. I'll be lurking to get some tips. Leaving on a trip tomorrow morning - FRC world championship!! I know I'll get in at least 1 sweat session, but we'll have to see about the 3rd one this week.

Update the Third Sweat sessions – 3/18 Apply meds – 6/36 First week is coming to a close and so far so good. Friday was a bit tricky because I got home and crashed - i hadn't been able to sleep the night before which made for a less-than-fun day. Saturday was also tricky, but for different reasons. We woke up to attend a lunch with Nepth's family. These are nice lunches for his cousins to keep in touch, but these people love their buffets. I had gone with the intent of it being a cheat meal, but oh man did I pay for it later. I felt sick for hours afterwards. We got home and ended up taking a three hour nap. When I got up I had a party to go to, but I knew I had missed my workout on Friday. Pounded that sucker out, then hopped in the shower and drove to the party. (also increased pushups again - 9-7-7!) I had a green pepper on my way there, but I also had 2 pieces of pizza and much booze. Overall not an excessively healthy day, but it was a saturday . Today was better - resisted ordering mcdonalds when Nepth asked to stop there and resisted even taking a bite of his burger. Spent the day making some paleo mexican and am finally starting to feel better! I also just whipped up some paleo ice cream - waiting for it to freeze. Tonight is Game of Thrones...life is good... Also - picked up my plates for my bar - tomorrow I can try some deadlifts and loaded squats!

Check In the 2nd Sweat sessions – 2/18 Apply meds – 4/36 I'm starting to get a bit smug about my workouts, last challenge I finally managed to start doing pushups with correct form. Before that I would say "I can do x pushups" then learn that my form was still off, and then my number would go down, This happened about once a month, so I never really was able to see progress there, Now that I've got the form down I'm seeing my numbers increase almost every workout. My max is currently 8-7-6, very manly pushups, which I'm pretty smug about considering I'm female and 7 years ago when I was at my most fit I couldn't even do 1. I am liking the definition I'm seeing in my arms and my chest muscles are feeling very solid (you know, under the tits, lol). We're off to pick up a bench I found on craigslist tomorrow, so if you never hear from me again we were probably sold to human traffickers. I also found an old gym that is selling plates for $.90/pound - I think I'll be able to move onto barbell training soon!

Don't get discouraged - a lot of us are new to the board or the site in general and it always takes time to make new buddies. Your goals are really impressive. I might have suggested not setting time requirements for your workouts if you were a noob to fitness in general, but it seems like you've been working out for a while and have a pretty good idea of what you can do and what's realistic for you. Keep going!

Update – the First Sweat sessions – 1/18 Apply meds – 1/36 Eat healthy – check PR for manly pushups (8) – check New computer parts in – check Went outside and checked out my new flower beds - check Berserker-ed myself to doing my workout – check Fitting better into last loop on belt – check Monday rocked - check

4/11/13 Food: -grapes -thai (not quite sure what was in it – it appeared to be mostly veggies and meat with rice, but I have no idea what was in the sauce) -paleo chicken and sauce -paleo chocolate mousse -paleo margarita -wine -3+L water + tea Thoughts: I missed the salad yesterday – I was sleepy all afternoon – but it was a social thing since it was my coworker’s last day. They picked thai food, which I never have (though this place was pretty good), and I focused more on trying something new rather than sticking to paleo. In other news, I tried ‘breading’ the chicken in coconut flour last night, and it worked surprisingly well. Added bonus – it doesn’t taste obviously coconut-y, so Nepth will eat it. This weekend I plan on making it again to use up the sauce, but I’ll mix spices in with the flour. I also decided that I don’t think I want to wait until my wedding to get a new juicer. My paleo margaritas are great (orange juice, lime juice, club soda, tequila), but my juicer sucks ass; I’m blaming my shiny new stab wound on it. And no – I wasn’t drunk this time. I do think that if the paleo margaritas were easier to make I could really cut down on my drinking calories. I love wine, but that’s a lot of liquid calories. Set up my thread for my second challenge. My only food related goal is to track down some grass-fed beef. I think I’ve got this paleo thing down, and I was actually doing better on it before the challenge. Making it a goal seemed to put it in a weird place, mentally. It seemed more like a temporary thing, and cheat ‘items’ became gorged out cheat days. I will still track my intake and output here though – I do better when I document it.

Way to go with the weight loss! 12 kg is a great start. How are you doing not smoking today? Keep it up, and let us know when you make it that whole day!

I get most of my recipes from nomnompaleo and omgpaleo - they have a few good ideas

Meat Last challenge I took a closer look at grass-fed butter; this challenge I’m going to take a look into grass-fed beef. For this challenge I’ll have to research both large online sources and local farms, decided which one is right for us, and order said beef. This challenge also might require me to find a chest freezer, depending on how much beef we’ll be ordering. Goals: research, visit farms if possible, order beef, acquire chest freezer if needed +2wis +1con Move The workout goal is to get 3 good workouts in every week. I did this last challenge, but it didn’t go very well so I’ll try again. Right now a ‘good workout’ will probably be a bodyweight workout, but I am in the process of finding barbell equipment on craigslist (have the bar so far), so ideally I’d like to replace it with a barbell routine. Training season for the Crim (10 mile race at the end of august) starts soon, so running will also be a common workout. Other things that might count (depending on how sweaty I get) are getting to a rock-climbing gym, and planned visit to a trampoline gym, and a visit to St Louis’ city museum (which isn’t a museum at all – it’s an enormous adult sized jungle gym). Goal: 18 sweat sessions (bonus goal: acquire bench, weights, and maybe squat rack) +3str +2sta Medicate I have psoriasis. It’s a delightful skin condition that I’ll likely have for the rest of my life that results in oh-so-attractive patches of dry scales. I’ve been dealing with it for years, and it doesn’t really affect my daily life except for itching and an occasional question. The issue I face is that despite the fact that I have a plethora of topical meds, I tend to apply them only when patches of skin flair up worse than usual. If I applied them habitually the scales would fade away and probably wouldn’t itch, so I wouldn’t pick at them, which wouldn’t agitate my skin to make more patches. So every night we are going to slather up all the visible spots! Goal: Apply meds as needed for 36 days +2cha Maintain What are we maintaining, you ask? Lots of things. My contract ends at the end of April, and I’m not looking to start working again until June (I just had a nightmare about cubicles at a wedding last night – I’m taking a break). So, first we are maintaining my ability to function without caffeine by maintaining a weekday bedtime and waking up with Nepth (the fiancé). I am going to maintain our new house by spending a few hours each day working on our long to-do list when I’m not working. Goals: transcribe to-do list, go to bed no later than 2am and wake up no later than 9am on workdays in May, spend four hours every workday in May working on to-do list (should be 18 days). Bonus goal: spend time every day working on novel. +1str +1sta +1con +1wis +1cha

Don't be afraid of setting tiny goals that you can achieve even when out of town - even like 20 jumping jacks in your hotel room every night is better than nothing. Try just tracking what you eat - take a notebook with you and jot down everything you put in your msouth. I've noticed that even without setting solid diet goals, tracking can have a positive effect on your eating habits.

4/10/13 Food: -grapes -salad -asperagus -paleo biscuits and gravy - paleo chocolate mousse -3+ L water +tea -paleo margarita Workout: -3 circuits of BWW (switched from water jug rows to barbell row) Thoughts: Compy decided to die just in time for WoW Wednesday and not the nice "Nepth can fix it with some voodoo and programing" dead - this kind of dead means I have new components in the mail

I keep wanting to claim these well-respected authors like tolkien or orwell, or GRRM, or JKR (all of which I've enjoyed) but honestly that'd be a lie. My favorite author is Anne Bishop. Her books are not masterpieces of literature (probably closer to smut and fluff), just dark fantasy, but they've been my companions since I was 16 (10 years). I've literally reread Queen of Darkness so many times that my copy split in two. *sigh* guess I'm just not cultured enough... (lol!)

Okay, we're gonna get back in the habit of logging daily, because I do better when I do it. Kinda fell off the logging bandwagon after i got sick last month. 4/9/13 food: -apple -usual salad (now permanently has oil and bacon bits) -grapes -paleo biscuits and gravy (figure that one out, lol) -3+ L water +tea -wine Thoughts: was determined to try a new dish - biscuits and gravy - why not? The biscuits are mostly sweet potato (which I wasnt sure about - im not a fan of the sweet potatoes) with some coconut flour, eggs, and a combination of either bacon and chives or shrimp and jalepeno. we made both kinds. the gravy is a rue made from clarified butter and arrowroot powder (i learned how to make a paleo rue!) with spices and coconut milk mixed with sausage. Honestly i think the biscuits need the gravy for the sweetness of the potato not to overpower the flavors, but fans of sweet potatoes probably dont. I was surprised i like the shrimp jalapeno combo better - i think it adds a bit more savory to the dish; as a rule i avoid spicy things. Only problem with dinner last night was i think it needed a green side dish. and the sweet potatoes add a lot of starch. it's healthy starch, but i think we'll push the beef stew with root veggies back to next week.

...yeah...hi again. 4/8/13 Food: -grapes -paleo chicken -paleo salsa -maybe an egg Workout: -2 circuits of my standard BWW. I intended to do 3 like usual, but I think all the junk I ate over the weekend was making be feel sick. Either that or I was overheating because I was wearing more clothes than I usually do. Woot: Attended my first chapter meeting of the American Needlepoint Guild. One lady yelled out "Hooray! I'm not the youngest any more!" She was 55...lol Thoughts: Ended my first challenge today - went okay, but I will do better next time!

End of Challenge - and here are the results. Practically Paleo in Every Way - perfectly paleo 22/25 (88%); APAP 4/5 (80%) I'm not too clear on the grade system - is everything above 75 a B or an A? I'm gonna go with an AB, cause I did well but could have done better. There was a bit of tripping at the finish line here, but not too bad. I learned that barring illness, I got this thing down for the most part. CON:+2 CHA:+1.5 (out of 2) Quality Time - switched to clarified butter for cooking Made an effort, but not a big effort - giving myself a CD Not exactly the progress I had hoped for, but steps in the right direction. Some good research got done, and as soon as my almond powder runs out I'll head to Whole Foods to grab some Kerrygold. WIS:+1 CON:+0 (out of 2) I Got To Move It Move It - BBW 7/15 (47%); Days Moved 13/20 (65%) Big 'ol C here Slacked big time in the middle - traveling, getting sick, and other excuses. I'm going to repeat this one for the next challenge. I did severely improve my lunge, squat, and pushup forms though! For STR:+2 (out of 4) DEX:+1 Hobby Lobby - hobby-ing 30/30 Big A+ Nailed it! I got a lot of needlepointing in, and this being robotics season really helped. Plus I also started writing a novel - over 13000 words so far! For WIS:+1 CHA:+2 And I am better than I was 6 weeks ago *ding*

Q1 - perfectly paleo 20/25; APAP 4/5 (looks like Ill end up with a B here) Q2 - no new progress (not as awesome as I'd hoped. if i follow through with plans to but some kerrygold this weekend I'm think a BC is accurate) Q3 - BBW 6/15; Days Moved 13/20 (yeah...this one was kind of a bust, but I am rocking it this past week, lol. probably a D here) Q4 - hobby-ing 28/30 (nailed this one- probable A+) Started thinking about quests for the next challenge. I'm keeping Q3, with some modifications, but i obviously still need to work on it. I think I got this paleo thing down- I'm just gonna keep eating good and move on. I still want to work towards more natural animal stuff, but not sure if I should hit chicken, eggs, or beef. The issue i think will be that these things arent really in season, but we'll see. I think the task to replace paleo will be cracking down on taking my meds (dont panic- i'm in no danger!). Now for the life goal, im a bundle of ideas. I have some christmas stocking that need to be stitched, a long list of to-dos around the house, a self or two of unread books, a novel to write, and a whole month where i dont plan on working but need to maintain some kind of schedule. my off-week goal is to find a bench and weights to go with the olympic bar i bought this week. I used it for squats on wed, and holy crap what a difference! i squat so much better with weight than i do just body weight.

okay, another check in- not much to report. I feel a tad guilty about my 4th goal - Ive suddenly acquired a lot of free time at work and have been getting my hobby-ing done there (writing) which has meant I could spend more evenings internet-ing or just watching tv. Not gonna feel too bad about using this loophole though- I'm 9k words into my first novel and last night I almost finished another needlepoint ornament while rewatching buffy, lol Q1 - perfectly paleo 18/25; APAP 4/5 Q2 - no new progress Q3 - BBW 5/15; Days Moved 13/20 Q4 - hobby-ing 26/30

Well this is familiar- life happens and suddenly you're scrambling around to finish assignments before the due date, except this assignment can't be made up at the last minute. Last week was generally a low- came down with an infection (preseptic cellulitus) which zapped energy and will-power. Then immediately went on a trip with my robotics team- we won the Buckeye Regional (awesome!) but didn't make the absolute healthiest choices possible (not as awesome, but still not terrible). then followed easter, the time when we eat. everything. and lots of it, lol. and so I face the music today and think about how the best I can do is to try to finish up the challenge on a strong note. my totals so far are my best estimate, because I didnt do a lot of tracking last week. Q1 - perfectly paleo 16/25; APAP 4/5 Q2 - no new progress Q3 - BBW 4/15; Days Moved 12/20 Q4 - hobby-ing 24/30 and I'm off to grab my usual salad!

well, it's been an interesting week since I last stopped in. In keeping with a time honored tradition I made and frosted holiday cookies with my sister. Then I came down with an eye infection (preseptic cellulitis) which effected my energy levels and appetite. after getting that checked out I left on a trip with my robotics team to the Buckeye Regional, which we won, which earns us a spot at Worlds. The finals were actually on my Birthday (3/30) and that gold medal was an awesome birthday gift. the engagement ring that finally came in and was waiting for me when I got home was even better. and then sunday was easter. So, we had a lot of downs, followed by some awesome ups, and none of them were really in keeping with my goals, lol. oh well- that's life. New day, new week, new month- ready to rock it! Another woot- got my first actual "have you lost weight?" as I was stuffing my face at easter from my cousins. That felt awesome, as did using the final hole on my belt this morning (went back to the old one after filling up on water, but huzzah!).