Lowenna

I love your thankfulness goal. I might use it for next challenge. Good luck!

Wow that's a lot of goals you've got there. Good luck. What are DEARMAN, GIVE & FAST, they aren't something I've come across before. Also what are Sui, Chi, Ka, Fu and Ku? This, however I know all about. Just keep plugging away, you'll get there. Are there any career's advice centres in your area? I've found they're not very helpful at advising what to do as a career, but they are good at checking over resumes and finding vacancies, that sort of thing.

Hi Nazca, good luck with your goals. What's you plan for cutting out pop? Are you replacing it with water? Fruit teas might help if you find yourself craving the sweetness. I'm also on a major decluttering kick this challenge. I've decided (on the advice of flylady) to go with 15-mins of decluttering a day, I've done few already and it's actually amazing how of a difference you can make in such a short amount of time if you concentrate. I'd recommend doing one room or even one small area of a room at a time, because you can see the difference quicker and it's really motivating to see some properly clear space.

Hi there, good luck with all your goals and college. It's awesome that you've found yoga so beneficial so quickly! During the times in my life that I practised yoga every day I never found any physical problem with it, you should be fine to practice every day. The great thing about yoga is you can dial it down and do a more gentle routine if you feel like you need to, just listen your body. I agree with Claudzilla about trying to find a class if you can, it's good to check you've got your form right especially as you're new to yoga. Lots of colleges have yoga classes on campus which are really good value, might be worth seeing if yours does.

Good luck! Especially with the marathon training, that must be pretty intense. Congratulations on setting up an environment club at school. I was involved in a environmental club at university it was great fun and really rewarding, what sort of things are you planning to do with the club?

Glad to be useful

Wow! Congratulations, that's awesome! It's amazing to see the difference in just the first 3 months, it's inspiring to see how quickly a major improvement can be made if you do the right things.

I have completely the opposite problem. I always feel the continual pressure to be doing stuff even when I have nothing that pressing to do and I find it paralysingly anxiety inducing. My to do list ends up so long I hide from it because it frightens me. But if you need stuff to do I can come up with a few things: Read, clean, meet someone for coffee, re-write you resume (even if your not job hunting it's good to keep it up-to-date), go to a gallery or museum, go for a swim, go for a walk in the park, organise your closet, alphabetize your books, go online and thoroughly research something which interests you, organise you paperwork, organise your music collection, organise your sock drawer, there are always things which can be organised, learn a new skill, batch cook something to freeze for later, go on a trip, 'catch up with correspondence' aka keep in touch with all your friends, make something, draw something, write, do an at home body weight workout, join an exercise class, watch a movie (not just because it's there, pick one you really want to see), write a list of things you want to do along the lines of steve's epic quest and get started on ticking things off, visit a friend or relative, just go for drive and see where you end up, if you love your job do a project for work at home, give you self a foot massage, take a long hot bath, learn to meditate, go to a restaurant on your own (it's not depressing it's fun), do a handstand, stretch, move your furniture to see if it works better in a different configuration, check you're on the right tax code, go to a library and browse, see if last.fm can turn up any bands you haven't heard of before, go to a gig, go to a poetry slam, go to a comedy night, go to the quiz night at your local pub, read a newspaper, read the archives of a blog that actually interests you rather than aimlessly surfing, buy someone care about a random gift just because you love them (doesn't have to be a big thing, just a thoughtful thing), people watch make up stories about them, get a pet, make a model of something, go on a price comparison site and see if you can get any of your bills cheaper with a different provider, wash the dishes, sort your recycling, clear out your garage, redecorate, get a kid's chemistry set and mess about with it, learn a programming language, change your OS, back up your files, find something you have a strong political opinion about and find every argument you can against you opinion to test out your opinion and/or practice you rhetorical skills by thinking up counter-arguments, read some philosophy, if all your passwords are the same change them so that they aren't, cook yourself the most amazing three course dinner (you could even invite some friends round to share it if you want), ask a friend if they need help with anything help them out if they do, I think if I go on any longer I will have turned procrastinating by thinking of things for other people to do into an art form.

Hi Itbaker I like the goals, especially the ones to add activity into your day to day life like taking the stairs and walking to school. Good luck!

Hi again tanktimus. It's great that your starting to see a difference from your yoga practice, I think that flexibility is a realistic goal for anyone it's just more of a challenge for some people so persevere you'll be amazed how much progress you can make. Good luck with you goals!

A little background: This is my first challenge back after a long NF absence and I'm feeling pretty positive about the whole thing. I've decided to join up with the druids because I'm big Yoga fan and my main diet focus is to cut out processed junk. I'm currently squashy, weak, inflexible, generally out of shape and in the trap of doing all those easy self-destructive things which make me feel worse in the long term. I'm trying to break out of those traps in baby steps and get my self back in shape. My focus: Currently my focus is on feeling better mentally and physically, and taking better care of myself. I do want to lose weight, but I'm not focusing on it because it should follow if I do healthy things and I find focusing on my weight demotivating and upsetting. I've decided to focus on getting a good morning routine down because once the morning is good, it's easier to continue on doing good things for the rest of the day. Also I work mostly evenings so it's the easiest time for me to fit exercise in. Diet Goal: Eat a healthy breakfast everyday. I'm a skipper of breakfast and when I do eat it it tends to be leftover takeaway or something equally awful. This leaves me tired, hungry and run down well before lunch time, so my first step to improving my diet is going to be eating a proper breakfast. Porridge and fruit seems to be a good option tasty as it's easy, healthy and tasty. Grading: 100% compliance A+| 90% A | 80% B | 70% C | 50% D | Below 50% F CON +4 Exercise Goals: Yoga every morning. Yoga is (imo) the best exercise ever invented and when I practice regularly I feel so much calmer, happier and fitter, so I'm going to practice some yoga every morning. I'm mostly going to be using videos from youtube to guide my practice. Grading: 100% compliance A+| 90% A | 80% B | 70% C | 50% D | Below 50% F STR + 1 DEX + 2 Go for a 30min+ walk every morning. Pretty self-explanatory really. Grading: 100% compliance A+| 90% A | 80% B | 70% C | 50% D | Below 50% F Extra credit work: Add some jogging intervals before the end of the challenge STA + 3 Life Goal: Declutter all the clutter! To keep with the morning theme, I'm going to try to do at least 15mins of decluttering every morning. This is for two reasons. (1) Physical clutter is for me a symptom and a cause of mental clutter. The worse I feel the worse I keep my surroundings, the worse my surrounding are the worse I feel, it's a vicious circle which I'm going to try to turn into a virtuous one trough decluttering. (2) I'm moving house in March and there is absolutely no point in me moving all my clutter when I can get rid of it. Grading: 100% compliance A+| 90% A | 80% B | 70% C | 50% D | Below 50% F WIS + 3 CHA + 2 So that's it. Good luck everyone! Tracking Stats Breakfast: 2/3 Yoga: 2/3 Walking: 1.5/3 Decluttering: 2/3

Try not to tell yourself how you should and shouldn't feel, it'll just make you feel worse. I'm a firm believer that there are positive and negative feelings (as in those that feel good and those that feel bad), but no way you SHOULD feel only ways which we should and shouldn't act on how we feel. Try to accept how you feel rather than judging it. If you try to talk to friends about self-esteem I think you'll be surprised at how many other men have similar feelings. Society puts huge pressure on both genders to conform to stereotypes, for women it's to be skinny but curvy (try to work that one out) and for men it's to be ripped.

Well I have terrible self-esteem, so I might be the worst person to give advice on this one, but my self-esteem is a lot better than it used to be so maybe I'm a good person to give advice about this. One thing I find really useful is challenge my inner critic. Whenever you start telling yourself that you're worthless, challenge yourself, you're lying to yourself. Tell yourself all the good stuff that you've done, tell yourself that all people are worth something, tell yourself that you know it's a lie. If you start offering yourself a specific criticism, challenge it, offer a counter-example to that criticism. If self-esteem is really poor it may take some time to think of counter-example, but put the effort in you'll get better at defeating your negative thoughts. Talk yourself how you would talk to other people. If you have low self esteem you probably treat yourself and criticise yourself worse than anyone else does. Talk to women like they're people, we are, some are lovely interesting people, some aren't you have to talk to them to find out which is which is which. To echo earlier advice start off trying to talk to women you have shared interests with gaming, fitness, music, whatever it is that your into, clubs are good places to find people who are into similar things or friends of friends. Let things develop naturally, don't expect anything, don't put mad pressure on yourself for it to become anything in particular, just be you and talk about what you care about. If a relationship develops that's great, if a friendship develops that's great because you gained a friend, if nothing develops that's great too because you tried, you stepped outside your comfort zone and learned something about yourself even if it's just that the person in question and you aren't suited to each other. As with all things practice makes perfect, a start small if you feel like you can't cope. Try to remember that teenagers are horrible and adults are much nicer and more mature so try to leave the high school stuff behind.

Hi tanktimus and Laureleye, thank you the welcome ! I'm thinking my baby steps for next challenge are going to be orientated around starting my day off right, eating a proper healthy breakfast and doing morning yoga, that sort of thing, because I find if I start off being vaguely functional it's easier to continue being functional throughout the day. As you said Laureleye inertia is the strongest force in the world and the initial overcoming of it is the hardest part once I'm moving continuing to move is easier. I really like your idea of scheduling workouts like appointments, I think I'll try that.

I'm assuming that you're swimming freestyle, so all this is freestyle relevant. The better your technique is the more distance you will cover on with each stroke, so try counting how many strokes it takes you to do one lap from time to time to track your improvement. Technique tips: Really reach through each stroke. Stretch your arm out in front of you as your hand enters the water, and stretch back down towards your feet as you prepare your hand to leave the water. Don't slap the water as your hand enters the water, keep you fingers together and your thumb tucked in and sort of slide your hand into the water. Start pulling back through the water deliberately, almost slowly, to gain purchase on the water. Accelerate you hand towards the end of the stroke to really push through the finally bit of water. When you pull through the water don't pull in a completely straight line, pull in a slight s-shape as if you were tracing along the side of an hourglass. As you bring your arm back over head keep your elbow bent and high and your fingers low. Keep your core engaged to prevent your body from snaking through the water as this will just create more drag. The lower your feet are the more drag you'll create so try to keep your body as close to parallel to the water's surface as you can. Allow your body to roll in the water. If your core is engaged and you are stretching through the stroke your body will roll slightly left to right, this is all good left it happen. Don't look ahead with you head up, your face needs to be in the water. But equally you don't want to be looking straight down. Keep you neck long and look slightly in front of you with your face fully submerged in the water. Turn your head to the side to breathe, don't lift it up. When you turn you head to breathe you don't need to turn your whole head, just turn enough to breathe. This can take some practice especially if you're scared of accidentally inhaling water, but eventually with practice you should end up being able to breathe by turning your head just enough for the tip of your nose to out of the water but one eye still submerged. Try bilateral breathing (breathing on both the left and right sides), rather than always breathing on the same side, it helps to keep you stroke even and reduces drag from breathing because you'll be breathing every third stroke not every second. Kick from you hips, let you knees and ankles follow, they will both move but it's not where the movement starts. Your entire kick should be underwater, any effort expended above the surface of the water is a complete waste. If your kick is coming out of the water try to focus of the downbeat of the kick rather than the upbeat. Don't try to keep up a fast kick throughout any distance swimming, you'll just exhaust yourself. My instructor used to say that your upper body is your main engine and your kick is the turbo. A fast kick is for sprinters and that last push at the end of a distance race. The more you splash the more effort you're wasting, if you watch professional swimmers they slice through the water smoothly, aim for this. Be really aware of your body and what it's doing, if your mind wanders so does your technique. Don't try to fix everything in your technique in one go, pick one thing to work on at a time otherwise you'll just confuse yourself. Some drills: Catch-ups. This is where you leave one arm stationary over your head on the surface of the water whilst completing a stroke with your other as you fingers touch together begin the stroke with the other arm. Almost like swimming normally, just with only one arm moving at a time and the other stationary in front of you. This can help on really focusing on reaching through the stroke. Feathering. As you bring your arm back through the air gently drag your finger tips across the surface of the water. This helps train you to keep your elbow high. Fists. Try swimming a few strokes with your fists clenched, when you open your hands up again you'll really notice the resistance of the water. Arms Only. Hold a kick board between your knees or ankles, or if you don't have a board just hold your feet still. This helps to strengthen the arms gets you used to the idea that your arms are you powerhouse. There are also loads of fitness drills to try, like sprinting every third lap. Or pyramid drills, where you start by swimming a set distance, say 1 length, then you take a short rest ( we usually did 5 or 10 second rests in training), then double the distance you swim, rest, double the distance, rest, double the distance, then when you feel like you can't take any more take your short rest, then half the distance you swim, rest, half the distance, etc, until your back to your original distance. If you're feeling particularly masochistic, do a full pyramid drill and then take a medium rest (30 seconds or a minute) and do another pyramid drill, but try to swim further on your second drill. Swim further in training that you will on your race day. Doing other exercises which involve breath control, such as Yoga, or practising your breath control when your running can help a lot, the better your breath control the easier you'll find the swimming. When you're training, train! I see so many people swimming at the gym who just sort of mosey along, you need to to push yourself. I'm afraid I don't really know any good online resources as I've not swum seriously for about 7 years and most of my info then came from my instructor I hope all that made sense and some of it is useful.

You're best off trying going to a few classes with a good instructor to make sure you're getting your form right, I think DVDs are best for people who have practised before but want to be guided through a routine. If your local yoga studio allows you to pa for classes one at a time, rather than becoming a member or pay in blocks, you could try just taking one class a month so that you have some contact with an instructor. If you can't get to a class start out gently with a DVD. When you're practising you will feel you muscles working and feel them stretching, but it should never hurt. If it hurts at all ease off the pose a little or if that doesn't stop the pain stop doing the pose and see if you can find an alternative pose which stretches or strengthens the part of the body being worked. Yoga journal Is a good online resource, it has details of lots of poses and their adaptations. It will take you through how to do poses in a step by step fashion and tell you where to breathe, breathing is a very important part of yoga. As for DVDs try some free ones on YouTube before buying anything if you're broke. I like Tara Stiles This is a series of 5 ten minutes beginners sequences which you can put together into a 50 min practice or do separatelyThere is also quite a bit of beginners stuff in this , but be careful as not everything there is suitable for a beginngerHer youtube channel has a variety of yoga videos on it at various levels as well as stuff on food, meditation, motivation, etc. There are plenty of other free videos on youtube, you might find you prefer others but Tara is one of my favourite 'celebrity' instructors. So good luck and remember, if it hurts you're doing it wrong for your body.

Hi Minnie, I'm glad to see some other people who have had/currently have mental health difficulties on the forums as I also have some mental health problems. Hopefully we can all support each other. It's great that you've managed to get off the meds and are feeling better. Having experienced a range of anti-depressants I'm very sceptical about their effectiveness. Taking things one small step at a time and, as Defrock said, playing good mind games with yourself are the best things. This might sound a bit strange, but is your birth control is it the pill? If it is, have you tried not taking for a month of two to see how you feel? I know that the pill is something that triggers of major depressive episodes for me and I've heard of other people have similar experiences, so it might be worth coming off it for a while to see if it has a positive effect on your mood. Sorry if that was a bit outline. Also big congratulations for getting stir fries to be one of your houses regular meals, making progress with diet is a big achievement especially if the people you live with aren't very supportive. Good luck!

Good luck with the triathlon, it sounds epic! As an ex-competitive swimmer I can safely say that upper body strength is massively important especially over longer distances (and I didn't even have to run and bike afterwards). Try doing lots of arms only training drills in the pool, that should help with getting stronger. I don't know anything about Team in Training, do they offer coaching on swimming technique? If they don't see if you can sign up for some swimming lessons somewhere to make sure you've got your technique really nailed down. Having good technique reduces the work your muscles have to do dramatically.

Hi all As it's the traditional time of year for starting out on projects I thought that I'd re-start my getting healthy project. A quick recap of my fitness history: I was very fit as a child and teenager ( at various times I swam competitively, did ballet, gymnastics, yoga, pilates, horse riding and played hockey for my school) and ate healthily because my mum cooked healthily. I never really thought about my weight or my diet because it all just worked so I didn't need to. Then I went to college, stopped exercising almost overnight, started eating way too much takeaway and gained 3 dress sizes in 3 years (UK8 to a UK14). I joined nerdfitness a while a go and had some success with my first two challenges and actually lost weight for the first time in my life! But then I flaked out and let everything get back the way it started, but now I'm back and this time I want to make it stick! Where I am now: A lot squashier, weaker and more inflexible than I want to be. Eating badly, not exercising, all the usual self-destructive stuff we do because it's the easy way out. As well as all the usual difficulties of changing habits we all have I have an extra challenge to overcome; I have depression and generalised anxiety disorder, so finding the motivation and courage to take control of my health is incredibly hard. I know that improving my physical health helps improve my mental health, so I'm going to try to keep that in mind to keep me going. Baby steps are certainly the order of the day. As my favourite types of exercise are swimming, walking, yoga and pilates, and I want to focus on eating clean (i.e. nothing processed, lots of fruit and veg) you'll probably find me hanging out in the Druidy places. Thanks for reading xx

Day 6 Diet goal has been downgraded to "no refined sugar and no beer", it's a baby step, but a baby step in the right direction. Has been stuck to. 30 mins yoga, felt lovely. Day 7 New diet goal achieved Rest day Day 8 (Monday) New diet goal stuck to once more. Did my 30DS, noticed a real improvement in my fitness!! I was told that it'd be that quick, but I didn't believe a word of it, didn't think that my fitness could improve that quickly. Time for a little celebration. Felt fantastic all day. Need to get serious about the job hunt this week. Nighty night.

Thanks for this Ms Fairy, loved reading you story. Also love the Dr Who monster marathon thingy. I'd definitely run faster with The Silence chasing me, except the whole forgetting problem, might have to run backwards.

Congratulation on thwarting the evil snooze button, it's a insidious little monster with a friendly face but an evil agenda.

That would be overwhelmingly lovely, thank you. Still working on it, right now. Swear it's the hardest thing in the world to write, not made easier by having recently graduated and not having much experience in the area I'm trying to go into. Day 4 Calories - 1926 Carbs - 32.2g Did half an hour of yoga, reminded myself of how much I miss doing regular yoga practice Day 5 Did the 30DS again, still kinda enjoying it. It's really tough but in a good way. Wrote the first draft of my CV and did the layout stuff. Still need to reword some bits of it and get it checked over, but it's about 80% done. Calories - 2233 Carbs - 152.5g As you may have noticed, the diet has gone a little off track today. I'm very tempted to downgrade the diet goal to some like 'no refined sugar' or 'no wheat', I think I may have set a target that I can't really manage. There may have been some perfectionism going on, rather than realism. I feel like my entire life has been about deciding what to eat, buying food, planning food, cooking, making sure that I've got the right foods with me, worrying about what I can and can't eat. I hate it and it's making feel really angry and down. I don't want food to dominate my entire life and this is like having an obsession. My diet is my biggest problem. I eat very badly, mostly convenience food, whereas I lead a fairly active lifestyle. I'm on my feet all day at work walking most of the time (I'm a waitress) and I don't have a car so I cycle a lot, with my commute, going to town, going to the shops, visiting friends etc, I spend at least 7 hours a week cycling. That's why I picked my diet goal as the biggest and most ambitious goal, but I think I forgot how hard I find changing my diet. Although I find getting out of the habit of regular exercise quite easy, I also find getting back into the habit of it fairly easy too and I enjoy exercising, I like to sort of intense exercise where you're trying so hard you feel like you legs are just about to give out, I like pushing myself. On the other hand, I find changing my diet really hard, I've always had a bit of strange relationship with food and I find having to think about what I eat very very hard. Perhaps, baby steps are a better option for me, or perhaps I'm just making excuses. Sorry, that really was a bit of a whinge I'm just feeling really down today, will try to be more positive tomorrow

Don't get me started on tea! I'm a complete tea devotee. I'm English and I don't know if these teas are available in America or not, but these are my favourite teas: Whittard's have an amazing teas range of loose teas. White tea with lemon and rose, English Rose and River of Clouds are all very yummy. Twinning's Lady Grey is an excellent everyday tea. I'm also a big fan of any Lapsang Souchong, bit it has a very smoky flavour which isn't to everyone's taste. If you like Whiskey you'll probably like Lapsang, if you don't you probably won't, they have similar notes to them. I like Clearspring's Mu Tea, which is sweet and spicy too. I like Pukka Teas a lot too, their Cleanse and Refresh blends are both really good. But my absolute favourite tea ever is Pukka Three Ginger tea, it's really energising and the best thing first thing in the morning. The English Rose, Lady Grey, Lapsang, White Tea and River of Clouds will all have caffeine in them, so avoid them if you're trying to cut caffeine. But the Pukka Teas and the Mu Tea are all caffeine free.

Under 50g of carbs a day? That's pretty intense! Good luck. And congratulations so far.