Bagelyo

Managed my pushups and a handful of kettlebell swings today so that's covered. Kind of a crappy day so don't feel like writing out a big long post now. Summary tomorrow.

Jeez, I can't check in for a few days and there's like a million more pages on here. I'm with everyone having trouble with the weather - I went out yesterday evening to try and run 2.5 miles and I made it 1 and gave up. I was on a bit of a time crunch (had to be home so husband could get to the pet food store before it closed!) or I would have walked a bit and tried to get back into it. Tomorrow is supposed to be milder so hopefully I can do better!

I'm alive! The internet access issues are a bigger obstacle than I thought :/ So - this week I've had some jam but no other added sugar. Hooray! Kid's birthday this weekend, so there will be cake. I've done one set of pushups and one (short! It's hot!) run. Low for this point in the week, but I can still pull it out. That's the good news. The bad news - sort of - is that last weekend was a crazy mess with the wedding. I had a ton to eat and drink, had minimal time to exercise and frankly didn't want to before the weekend because I didn't want to be sore during the festivities. I think if I had been thinking rationally when I wrote my goals I would have left the first week out of my tally for my points, because it was such a departure from my usual routine. I think I'm going to retroactively do that, just readjust my goal numbers (of sugar, total workouts...) to be 5 weeks instead of 6. It's too discouraging to have tanked my challenge numbers because I was busy having fun and participating in a one-time-only life event and so forth.

I always had awful shin splints until I changed to a zero drop shoe (one with no extra cushioning on the heel) which forced me to switch from a heel strike to a mid foot strike. Haven't had a single sign of them since, it was like magic for me.

We're having some interruption in our internet service right now due to an argument with comcast (those jerks), and then I'm out of town this weekend so my updating might be spotty for a bit. I'll try to get as much in as I can when I can. No exercising today - super sore from yesterday. I also ate a handful of banana chips without reading the label, so I'm accidentally down 1 sugar for the week. I was trying to save them for the fun stuff this weekend, so I'm kind of annoyed.

Yes, I'm doing C25k weeks 6 (I think?) on but by distance instead of time, since my pace is so slow. That's what my runs will be - I did forget to mention that in my first post! So next time I make it out for a run my goal is 2.5 miles. Days 1 & 2 are going well - I almost messed up my diet goal at the very beginning though. I got up and went to make a Dutch baby pancake for breakfast, totally not even thinking about the sugar in the batter. Duh. I just left it out, replaced it with some orange zest and topped the pancake with sliced oranges. It was awesome, actually, and I'm going to play around with replacing some of the white flour with whole grain to make it more nutritious since it's such an easy, quick thing to make. Anyway, with that averted, I haven't had any non-fruit sugar yet. My cravings were bad last night but my motivation is high still so I held out without too much trouble. I did pushups yesterday - I'm still working on my knees, hands on the hearth, which is like 8 inches off the ground. I also did 30 seconds of plank, which was hard but not overwhelmingly so. I think I can probably add time later on. I just finished a workout for today - kettlebell swings, body weight squats, presses, and bicep curls. I was doing goblet squats before but I'm going back to basics and focusing on form for a while. I kept threatening to tip over backwards so I need to figure out what's up with that. I did some stretching after. I need to do some research and find a stretching routine that I like, I feel sort of aimless making up my own lately. Good start so far!

I love your challenge format! Pokemon brings back all sorts of warm fuzzy feelings from when I was a kid If I walked home fast enough from middle school I could get there just in time to catch the start of the show. I've been a nerd for a while. Haha. I'm getting interested in the hooping that everyone is doing - bought myself a cheapo kid's hula hoop but my coordination in stuff like this is not good. I'm going to try to follow along with this thread but if it moves as fast as yours did last challenge it's going to be hard!

Sherlock! And hooping! And hairstyles! I love it!

First post edited with my official goals.

Do you guys mind if I follow along with this thread without officially joining the group? As a kettlebell beginner I'm super interested in reading what you guys have to say, and I might have the occasional question, but it's just a fun thing for me right now and not a main goal or my biggest priority for this challenge.

Right. I can just write into the goal to DO the planks, and then add time as/if I can.

Checking in! Last challenge I finished C25K according to time, that is, I ran 30 minutes - but I am not running at 10min/mi so I still haven't run 5 actual km without walking. I've gone back to week 6 and am using the distance option - so I just ran 2.25 mi and have ahead of me 3 runs of 2.5 and then 3 runs of 2.75 miles, and then hopefully I can do 3. My goal this challenge is to scale the running back to a place where I still can do other stuff with my legs, so I won't be going out three times a week every week - and my knee is still recovering from whatever pulling/straining I did to it last challenge. It's feeling better every day so hopefully I can get back to it soon!

Okay, I'm going to add my finalized goals to the top of this post, and leave the original post at the end for posterity. This time I'm even actually going to decide my attribute points at the beginning of the challenge! Maybe next time I can do one better and make my post interesting like so many others here do My main goal is to do at least one real, full, good form pushup. My second goal is to run for 5 km without stopping to walk. I feel like I can work on these goals at the same time without them negatively affecting each other, so I'm going for it. 1. Pushups! 2 STR 2 STA I'm still doing pushups on an incline, using the 100 pushups program to increase my numbers. I plan on testing myself every week to see if I can move my incline down. I'm also going to add a plank after every pushups session to increase my upper body and core strength - holding for at least 30 seconds. More is fine if I feel like I can, and I will probably do different planks (forearm, side...) to keep interest because I am easily bored. Summary: 3 workouts/week, 5 sets of pushups and at least 30 sec of plank each time 2. Legs! 2 DEX 1 STR 1 STA I want to keep running, but my legs are weak and my ankle and hip mobility is poor, which is all coming together to affect my performance and my knees, so I want to make time for bodyweight and kettlebell exercises and STRETCHING, which I have been really neglecting. I want to keep this flexible so I can adjust for how I feel and for the weather and my attention span, doing different workouts in different quantities from week to week. Summary: 1-3 runs and 1-3 workouts incorporating squats, lunges, or kettlebell swings per week, and stretch after EVERY time. (Got that, self?) 3. Sugar! 2-4 CON Last summer I did a challenge with no added/refined sugars, and I loved it. My energy increased, my cravings decreased, and it kickstarted 20 lbs of much-needed weight loss. I added sugar back into my life on occasion afterwards, and it has been slowly creeping into more and more occasions. I haven't been feeling super good lately, so I want to cut back, but I don't feel ready to commit to no sugar at all - so I'm setting a limit of 4 servings/week, but giving myself an incentive of extra points if I manage to keep it below an average of 2 or 3 servings/week. So, no more than 24 servings for the challenge gets me 2 CON points, 18 servings for 3 points and 12 servings for 4 points. Summary: No more than 4 servings of foods/week with added sugars. Bonus points for less. 4. Life! Participate! Socialize! 1 WIS 2 CHA So I just came back off a bit of a board break for last challenge, and I was pretty iffy about keeping my thread updated towards the end and also about participating and engaging with other posters. This is an important part of being part of the community here, so I'm making it an official goal and a priority and giving myself a minimum number of posts per week to make here. I'm going for at least 3 updates for my thread, 1 for my accountabilibuddies group, and 5 for other threads - other member's challenges, mini-challenges, whatever. These are minimums, so more is always better! This will helpfully keep me reading along better, too. Summary: Minimum of 3 posts/week in this thread, 1/week in accountabilibuddy group, and 5/week in assorted other threads. Phew! Hopefully that's coherent! I'm ready to get started! Original post below: ---------------------------------------------- I haven't got this all formulated yet, but I'm going to start a thread and get my ideas out and come back and finalize it for the official start of the challenge. Okay? Here we go. 1. Pushups! This is my official, main goal - to get to a real, legitimate pushup. I made some great progress last challenge with this and want to keep up what I was doing but with a bit more. I was doing incline pushups with the 100 pushup program, which is a workout 3 times a week, and every week testing myself to see if I could move the incline down or otherwise increase the difficulty. Partway through I had the thought that adding planks would be helpful but didn't really follow through with that so I want to add that to my goal - planks at the end of each pushup workout. I will probably change it up and do variations so I don't get bored, not sure if I want to make variations a part of my goal or not. I do need to decide how to measure how much I do - obviously a certain amount of time is how you measure planks, but do I want to make it consistent throughout since I will be adding difficulty with the pushups or add time? Start with 30 seconds a time and add 10 seconds a week, or something like that? 2. Legs! My other, secondary goal is to run a 5k distance with no walking breaks. Last challenge I tried to run 3 times a week and finish out C25K, which I did by time spent running but my longest distance ran so far is 2.25 mi or 3.6 km. 3 times a week along with my lifestyle (lots of walking everywhere) meant I had to limit any other leg workout (squats, kb swings, lunges...) in order to have time to rest my legs. Getting stronger is also important to me, and I know strengthening my legs will only help with running, so I need to find a balance. I'm not sure how to phrase my goal here so it's attainable - my thought is 1-3 days a week running and 1-3 days a week performing bodyweight or kettlebell lower body exercises. This would allow me to adjust based on circumstance and how I feel - maybe a rainy or especially hot week would have more indoor stuff and less running, maybe I do light runs one week and that allows me to do a higher number of things total. Complicating this, my knee is not 100% from tweaking it towards the end of last challenge so I want to be careful at the beginning. I also want this goal to include a focus on mobility and flexibility - I noticed during the mini-challenges last time that my ankle mobility is rough, and I know that and hip mobility can affect knees while running, so for sure I want to stretch and make sure some bodyweight sessions include squats with careful attention to form. 3. Sugar! My first challenge included a no-sugar goal, and I loved it and found it evened out my mood and reduced my cravings for things I don't need quite a lot. Since then, I've been letting sugar creep back into my diet and I want to try to get it under control, as I can tell I am not feeling super good. However, I don't feel ready to commit to no sugar right now - it's summer and I want the occasional popsicle, and I will be attending a wedding during the challenge time period and my sons birthday is soon also, so, cake! I want to set a limit of number of servings per week, maybe 3-5, with extra points available if I fall below that number. So I have the option to indulge occasionally, but also the option to go totally no sugar if that feels right. 4. Life! I have a history of totally falling on my face and failing completely at my non-fitness life goal on these challenges. So I'm keeping it simple and related to the challenge - I'm going to set a certain number of posts a week, both on my own thread and other users' threads to keep me updating and participating and socializing. I'm not sure what's a good number - at least 3-4 a week for my own updates, maybe the same number for other threads? Bonus points if I go over? Any and all feedback is welcome! I'm going to stew over this for the next few days (while I rest my crap knee) and then clean everything up into nice tidy goals and add to the beginning of the post.

If you have access to a sharp, heavy-ish knife and are somewhat coordinated, I like to cut the backbone out and flatten the chicken out. This is called "butterflied" or "spatchcock" if you want to search for more thorough instructions. I cut up some onions and whatever else (garlic, lemon...) and make a bed on a sheet pan and then lay the (salt and peppered) flat chicken on it and roast at 425F for a little while - depends on the size. It cooks more evenly and faster this way than when it's whole and round and you get a more even crispness on the skin. I don't like to rinse - there's no real need to, and you just end up spreading bacteria all over your sink and using extra time and paper towels to dry it off after.