Jonny2284

Think I've got my iced coffee recipe down, little over 100 calories for 400ml or so of coffee, and I've started getting acustomed to the facilities I'll have access to. In case this thread and recipe ever comes up in future searches I've been working as such: 2 Shot espresso 2 sweetener tablets added while it's still hot. After it cools off fill the cup with unsweetened almond milk (approx 400ml in my cup) Pinch of Xanthan gum and shake/stir the hell out of it. Throw in the fridge for an hour or two(advice I've read on the Xantham gum is give it time to bind so I've worked to a couple of hours min but generally getting the coffee into my travel cup the day before, taking it home and letting it work overnight) Add ice right before serving. I'm using a Thermos travel mug so it's good and freezing for my entire commute but each to their own. Big fan of this drink and recipe, and it's far better both for me and my wallet than what I was buying before. Also had my first fail of the challenge yesterday but not for the reason you'd think, sometime Wednesday night I jostled my watch off it's charger with my phone lead, so it was dead as a dodo come Thursday morning and no time to charge it before I had to leave so by virtue of lack of logging I failed both parts of my activity goal Thursday but I'm fairly sure given where my daily average has been had it been logging I would have hit it (also it's time to buy a spare charger to keep in the car/at work in case I do this again. Had one for my old watch but never got one when I switched to the Fossil).

Interesting goals, I can certainly relate to anything where the primary goals are resetting routines. Can I ask what mindfulness app you're using? I've got a similar goal for my challenge and it's not taking much more than the form of the two minute google fit guided breathing followed by a few minutes to sort my head up to the time the buzzer goes, so if there's a better option I'd like to hear it.

It's what worked well for me last time, I just hit some bumps and lost the habits that I'd built up. Like I said, I know me, I could eat like a rabit for a few days but I'd totally lose it by the Friday. It's got to be small and consistent to stick. Got thrown a curve ball at work, starting next week my hours and location change totally, not sure if it's going to be a good thing or not, but having a consistent schedule instead of a rotating one may well hold some benefits for this challenge, if I'm being honest those "I'll just nip in to the shop on the way to work" or "I'll eat on the way" meals have probably been one of my biggest sources of nutrional problem and it's going to be sorted for me (not like they did it for my benefit but hey, silver lining right?). Not particularly looking forward to losing the week of late starts, but looking towards the bright side the new location has decent facilities. Before I had a fridge and a microwave, now I've got a fancy coffee machine, microwave, toaster, fridge and freezer which changes the game quite a bit in what I can bring and use at work on a long day. Take me some time to fully feel that one out, but I've got a couple of ideas brewing. On the drinks front, version one was a miserable failure. Not sweet enough, not thick enough, and without ice it wasn't even good iced coffee, it was just cold. When I got my little tour of the new spot yesterday though I took a couple of shots of espresso from said machine away in a thermos mug, added some sweetner straight away, and when I got home topped it off with almond milk and put it in the fridge overnight, came out lovely if a little thin for me liking. Been doing a little research into what I can use to change the texture a bit and I'll hit the supermarket on the way home to try a couple more ideas (I know it sounds wasteful, but those other drinks are 80p apiece for the cheapest one, climbing up to a couple of quid for the most expensive one so any frugal way to reliably make one I like is a winner even if a couple of other ingredients go to waste).

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing a smaller smaller challenge based around time constraints. Normal weeks are 45-55 and cover weeks for me can be nearly 70 hours so I can relate to that, especially the sleep thing, frankly when I'm that tired it's the only time I can get into any kind of consistent routine (hmm maybe next challenge for me). That daily check list idea is interesting, I've actually spent a large part of today setting a routine checklist up for myself like that at work but I hadn't considered extending it to simple stuff at home. Good luck.

I've never really tried espresso tbh, sure the coffee machine at work adds a shot if you tell it you want it strong and I've used instant coffee that's allegedly espresso but I've rarely if ever just gone for a straight black shot.. As for the iced drinks It's a mix of the texture, taste and caffeine that draws me to them, I tend not to be able to touch hot drinks early, a nice (relatively) thick drink on the other hand works wonders early on in the day. This is why I'm going to swap around different recipes until I get one I like. Today's overnight batch is fairly mild cold brew that I'm gonna top off with unsweetened almond milk and pour out into a couple of bottles for work. Might fail miserably, but if it works it's significantly better for me per pound that my usual fare.

I'll have to give that a go, my initial thought was to switch straight out to a sweetener (or sweetened milk), but I know me, and I know going too drastic will just lead to that "screw it" moment, so maybe a taper down approach might go better. Same reason I'm limit it to one food issue per challenge to be honest. Early on this challenge is definitely going to be a mess of different takes until I find the one I can stick with, going down the pinterest rabbithole on this just made matters worse and gave me 2000 possibilities

Challenge Number 2: I'll admit the first challenge didn't exactly go quite as planned, had some bumps, had some problems and the change in the scale was small (but what was there was in the right direction), but this is never something that was going to be right in single a five week challenge, this was all about the opening stages of building those good habits and this challenge will continue with that path. Challenge 1 - Log Everything (before it's eaten) A repeat of last time I'll admit but things that came up last challenge prove I'm not there on this yet, so I'll repeat it as many times as required until it is. Last time iniitially it was just log everything, and honestly that led to quite a bit of after the fact logging, while I logged everything to the best of my recollection I suspect that means I didn't really log everything. This time, be it logging it as I put it in the oven, prelogging my packed lunch or just taking a second before I eat it, I want everything in myfitnesspal before it goes down the chute as I tried in the last few days of the challenge. Bonus Challenge - Give a quick check to the accuracy of what other people have put in as I'm scanning barcodes. Didn't figure this out until I had to 2 cans left out of a large case but as I learned last time I can't trust other people's input everytime (long story short I was drinking a lot of coffee drinks, scanning them in good faith and trying to keep to my calorie limits when it turned out the MFP record was way off because whoever created the inital record had used the per 100ml values for the whole can. I shudder to think how many days I was a few hundred calories over after that was corrected) Challenge 2 - Get Moving Another slight variation of my something I did last challenge and mainly for the same reason. This is the basic stuff and I need to have it down before moving forward. Last time it was a rather arbitrary "do something 3 times a week for half an hour", this time I'm going for a slight twist on it. I've been quite big on my wearables for some time, but haven't really been taking proper advantage of their fitness features, but I'm quite liking google fit as a central hub and quite like their idea of the heart and movement points. So this time, I'm keeping to the basics on that. 45 movement minutes every day 30 Heart points. Far from unreasonable (and still in baby steps mode), but keeps me moving Challenge 3 - Less Drinks Somewhat related to the iced coffee story above, I drink far too much and I don't mean alcohol I just mean in general, far too many of my calories come from liquid sources.That's quite apparent viewing my MFP data for the past few weeks. This is going to stop. For the next challenge I'm setting a limit, two calorie laden drinks per day. Doesn't matter if those are the fancy coffees from the machine at work, iced coffee,cans of pepsi, fruit juice bottle or whatever. Hard limit of two of those per day. Probably still a little high (part of the ongoing climb down on such things) but on average that would be anywhere from 200-400 calories per day. Iced Coffee is my biggest weakeness, so I'm going to play with recipes see if I can find one I like that's both low calorie and nice. Life Challenge Gonna make this into two smaller challenges, one personal to me, and one a bit more social. Personal - Practice some mindfulness. Set aside 10 minutes per day to just sit and sort out my head, no reddit, no music, no headphones, just me and my thoughts. On an ongoing basis my head has been put nicely, a shed and some time to decompress is required. Social - Participate more here. Last time people popping into my topic, reacting, replying and generally keeping my spirits up was a big help and frankly outside of a litle surge on initial enthuisiasm I didn't return that favour like I should. This time I want that to be different and keep on top of other peoples challenges and if I have something appropriate to say chip in. Going to try and take a few minutes at work each day on the old tapatalk and keep up.

End of challenge. Really should have kept on top of updating this, but we got there. Had one more fail on the fast food front, so while against my original goal I failed the challenge compared to where I started I'm not going to consider 3 fast food meals in 5 weeks a failure, if going forward I keep a fast food meal as something of a cheat meal once every couple of weeks I'm fine with that. Probably something I'll be keeping an eye on, use it as a "no you can't have that, wait till Friday when you get a burger" type thing. I'm still not convinced I've got the habit of logging down totally, even with my phone pinging at me multiple times per day it was still too easy yesterday to just not get there and add it at the end of the day so think I'll be repeating that next challenge. Also, fun story - worth a quick check that the figures in MFP are actually right, for two weeks of this challenge I've been logging something I was drinking incorrectly because whoever made the initial entry set up the per 100ml figure to represent a full can. Ditto for the movement, I did enough but what made it my logs isn't everything (considering I wear my band all day every day think I'll switch to google fit's move minutes/heart points if I repeat the challnege) It's hard to get an accurate read on my weight, on a day by day basis there's still a significant swing to it, but the thing I can take away for certain is the line, she goes downward, not as much as I'd like, but for a challenge where I wasn't really enforcing calorie limits, just logging it's the right direction. I'll try and make sure not to slip in the week off before we start a new round, what's gone on this challenge has given me a few ideas of stuff to focus on as we carry on, and what I need to keep an eye on if I fall backwards. See you all next challenge..

That's what I try to do for work stuff, it's fairly easy for those times, like today I already have breakfast and lunch logged because it's what I brought with me. It's the homelife stuff where I just grab that biscuit, or just have dinner and then try to retroactively log it from memory where this falls down.

Should have updated earlier but onto Week 3. First fail of the challenge as I ended up having a couple of fast food meals. Been helping a friend move fast and when he offers to pay for lunch for helping I really couldn't say no when the rest of the group was in. That said I did look back at my old challenges and realised there I'd done it as "three meals during the 6 week challenge" so if I stay away from it for the rest of the challenge I'm still going to look at it as a win. Exercise is more than covered. Three days of lugging furniture about counts for sure even if I didn't do anything else. Logging has been the biggest issue, there's been a lot of logging after the fact and it's making me thing I may be missing things, so I'm going for it to be logged before going down the gullet for the remaining challenge time.

End of Week Two Still no fast food (not entirely convinced what I'm eating is much better but substitutions are gonna be a focus next time) Everything logged (though a couple of days turned into doing it retroactively which I need to stop doing and do it live lest I miss stuff) Missed one day of getting the heart pumping. Given the initial challenge was 3 sessions a week I'm not going to quibble at that.

End of week one. Nailing it so far. No fast food so far all challenge (like I said above this week is easier on that due to the alternating shift pattern and nothing being open) Everything logged. Done something to get the heart going every day. My mini challenge for this week: remember to take my bloody iron supplement everyday. Its been consistently lower than it should be for years even when my diet (logged and verified by the doctor) was providing what should be more than enough iron. If it means avoiding getting to the injections stage it needs sorting.

Good start to things.

Yeah I'm not sure long term what my plan is there to avoid relapses (of course long term the plan is also that fast food now and again is not the end of the world, but that key bit is of course now and again). Probably need to start looking into meal preps so I can have something ready and/or already be full at that point, so far making sure my water bottle is full as I start driving and taking a swig anytime I'm getting tempted is working. Anyway, start of day 5: No fast food again, concerns about the amount of places aside for a moment I still think if I can beat this week I'll be good to go, earlies next week so much easier time, nothings open as I go to work and it's like an hour after I eat my sandwiches when I drive home. Everything has been logged, so far my closest issue has been a "crap, you ate that did of cheese before bed and didn't put it in" that was rectified the next morning. Done something every day and been over 30 minutes every day (been alternating it up between eliptical sessions, a shadow boxing session and running through some basic DDP Yoga stuff)

It's why I made it a challenge for myself as well. I figure it's a purgative thing to have a very visual clean break line as you start on the longer journey. Good luck on your challenge.

If you don't mind me asking, if you drank 600ml of water, but no coffee or soda where di the rest of your fluids come from?

Day One Not that I intend to do one of these everyday, but for day one I need to set the tone. Maybe it's just that initial rush of enthusiasm but all has gone well. Everything was logged, certainly not saying it was the best food for me, but it all went in. As well as plenty of walking at work I got a little 30 minute push on the elliptical (well one that that in the end, I did 30 minutes, it said I was at 90 or so calories burnt so I kept pushing to make it an even 100) No fast food. Decided to have a little count to reinforce how I got into this mess on the way home, 43 takeaways of various descriptions all passed on the way home. Little wonder my town was recently given the dubious honour of being the UK's unhealthiest highstreet, honestly on this one I figure if I can get through the first week that'll be the worst part. And I didn't believe my starting weight on the scale yesterday (in a it's down far enough from last week I thought it was a mistake kind of way) but second day running it comes out exactly the same so I'll take that figure as my starting point for the challenge.

Nice straightforward, positive goals, go for it, you can do this. (edit to remove that silly mobile app sig)

Good luck. Fairly simple and easy way to resize a photo I taught some of the more old school guys at work (instead of turning them into postage stamp size like the email was doing for them) is to open the picture in paint , click the resize and you can scale it down by percentage to get it within tolerance. If it's a picture you took on a decent digital camera or phone with the settings all ramped up you might need to drop it down significantly. As an example I just did a quick selfie to get a check file sizes and that came out at 2176 x 4608, weighing in at 1.93mb, this place has a limit of 0.05mb so to get it in regulation it had to be dropped down to 10% of it's original size and like DarkFoxx suggested, whatever format it originally was, save it out as a JPG for extra compression.

It'll be a fairly large change initially, more on my late shift pattern than early one. I work a rotating 6--14:00 and 11:00-19:00 shifts and when I'm the late shift I've gotten far too comfortable with just not packing anything at all and stopping at somewhere that has a neon sign on the way home instead of cooking or taking something to work with me. At the minute even if I come home and cook myself the same burger or pizza I would have bought I'll be happier (and it'll probably still be better for me) For now, like a lot of my challenge it's about the habit than the initial outcome, start with getting in the habit of eating at work or at home even if it's something equally as bad for me and then start to focus on substitutions from there.

Good luck man, sounds like you've already on the right track and we'll be rooting for you.

Starting over. (explanation below but if mods want to relocate this to somewhere they feel is more suitable feel free) Technically this will be my fifth challenge, but the last one before this was 5 years ago so this is a new start for me. Something about having to account to myself and you guys here made it work better than any attempt I've tried solo before or after. Five years ago I did a few of challenges here and got dropped quite a lot of weight, then I hit some lows, lost focus, drifted away from the site and shattered every good habit I built up during those times, it's time to start back up and do it right, so while I call this a fresh start those previous successes and failures need to remain and learned from. The most striking and frankly depressing bit was finding a part where I'd hit a good stride and wanted to hit a certain weight before my 30th birthday, well I turned 35 this June and not only did I not hit that bar, I'm heavier than I was walking (stumbling) into my first challenge. I'm keeping with it being a restart I'm keeping it simple, want to build up proper habits as a springboard to going forward. Main Goal - Weight loss The big, big goal is a long way away down a long road but the first stop on it is to lose approximately 15kgs. Challenge one - Log everything I've struggled over the years to get into and stay in the habit of logging my food input properly. This has got to be the foundation of any change going forward, doesn't matter if I get a decent exercise bike, doesn't matter how many reps I can do or how many steps I take a day if uncontrolled eating is putting me at a surplus. Now initially I'm not concerned about strict calorie limits more than making sure for good or ill everything makes it in, I've already got a few notes in the back of my mind about problems foods and potential substitutions going forward but baby steps... Anyone who wants to add me on myfitnesspal to kick my backside if I start to slide feel free here https://www.myfitnesspal.com/profile/sanityisrelative tl;dr version - Log everything Challenge two - kickstart the heart Similarly to the food logging I've struggled with getting any kind of regimen going fitness wise, sure I hop on the bike now and then, pick up the weighs and do a couple of sets but it's never been structured enough to do much good. Again while I'm in the habit forming stages I'm not overly concerned about optimal workouts or pushing too hard but just to get into the habit of that bit of time put aside as "workout time" and do something. looking for three half hour a week sessions to start with, get the blood pumping, get a sweat on. tl;dr version - Three workouts a week Challenge three - stop the neon sign meals Don't need my food logs to know this one, I think initially at least one of these per challenge os going to be devoted to locking onto a single bad food habit and adjustments and substitutions. Four weeks, no fast food. Seems very doable and a great chance to reset my brain a bit when it comes to some bad habits. tl;dr Version - no fast Food during the challenge. Life challenge - Clean up You may have noticed the recurring theme of not building habits properly and this one is no different. Every couple of weeks spending an hour or two trying to blitz is a losing war of attrition. I'm looking to get more regimented with this and I think 10 organised minutes per day should get me further. Not strictly challenge related but early one spend special attention to the area near my desk for a future project and it needs to be clear, sparkling and ready to be moved.

End of Week 2 (Well couple of days into week 3) Goal 1 - Logging. A = Everything logged this week (a few things were logged retroactively thanks to some computer problems Goal 2 - Avoid the bad stuff A = No fast food Goal 3 - Cut the sugary stuff A = 4 litres or less during challenge (averages at around 2 cans per week) - One 500ml glass of pepsi down the pub in week 2. 1 Bottle of Ferimans cola in week 2, not quite sure how to count this since it's brewed differently to normal soft drinks and barely has any sugar but for completeness I'll put it here so we're now at 800ml of soft drink in 2 weeks. Life Goal - Brown Envelopes. Kept under budget, just.

Well end of week one and all is well. Finding it easier than I thought so far, if I can keep this up we should be on course for a good run. Results Goal 1 - Logging. A = Everything logged this week Goal 2 - Avoid the bad stuff A = No fast food Goal 3 - Cut the sugary stuff A = 4 litres or less during challenge (averages at around 2 cans per week) - One 500ml glass of pepsi down the pub. Still on course for an A. Life Goal - Brown Envelopes. Kept under budget, still got £20 and a few coins left over this week. Gonna be spending a couple of days in Sheffield in a couple of weeks time, any UK NF-ers recommend somewhere decent to eat so I don't wind up having a fast food infraction?

I wouldn't mind taking on that stair bit actually (although part of the reason I want to replace my Flex is the newer models having the stair recognition, I spend a fair bit of time doing flight of stairs that to the Flex are bugger all steps and aren't getting logged for height). I've been back to pacing the office if there's nothing to do rather than sitting on the internet just to try and bring my figures up a little, trying to average 5k per work day and go from there. First minor slip up today. Took the family to the pub for dinner and ended up with a Pepsi since I was driving, one 500ml glass so I can still pass my challenge but I was hoping to avoid it totally.