Mistr

You did great! I really appreciate you organizing the team and encouraging everyone.

Great job on meeting your goals! I really admire your resolve on avoiding fast food. That is a tough habit to break. Also being able to do chin-ups is awesome. Congratulations!

Good for you! You did really well on everything at least part of the time. What are you going to try next?

Oops, that really is not clear in this context. Physical therapist.

End of challenge check in - success! Overall I feel much more energetic and cheerful. Clearly these goals hit on some of the key areas where I needed to focus. Sleep: final grade B. I was much better about getting to bed on time for the last six weeks, but not perfect. I can tell I'm doing better on sleep because I was waking up before my alarm fairly often in the last couple weeks. I still have dark circles under my eyes so I'm not done with this one yet. I have not had any coffee and only a few cups of green tea over the six weeks. On the the right track for this goal. Eat veggies: final grade A. There was only one day when I failed and only a few days when I ate less than 2 cups of veggies. I learned a lot about my eating habits. Also that it is really hard to find anything fast that has veggies other than salad. I am spoiled by having fresh organic veggies in the summer. I cooked a lot and still could not keep up with the abundance of produce. I am going to keep doing this but it no longer needs to be its own goal. Exercise: final grade A. I missed two days in six weeks. I learned a lot - this will be its own post. Life goal: B-. I have gotten better on playing jigs and reels but not ready for prime time. I can play at tempo or avoid mistakes but not both. More practice time would have made a difference.

Wow! That is quite the surprise! Good for you for dealing with a huge change in your life. I hope your new goals for getting in shape and changing your life work well for you.

I did my upper body workout yesterday and was really pleased with how easy it was to do three sets of 18 push-ups. Still knee push-ups, but much less shaky than they were five weeks ago. I probably could have done more if I tried. I am keeping it to one more rep per set each day. Once I get to 20 I will switch to regular push-ups. I did not manage to do as many reps as last week in the bent-over rows. I am making steady progress with the dips and incline pull-ups. The incline is getting much steeper. In a few more weeks I may be able to do the pull-ups to a table. My arms felt very tired after the workout but not sore. That seems to be a good sign. Today was legs. I've been doing these same exercises for a long time and am at a plateau. I need to talk to my PT about what to do next.

You have done really well on being active. Consistent too! Only two more days to go.

Thank you both for the advice on planks and lunges. I'm going to take a look at my progress next week and start putting together a more structured plan for exercises. The do-something-every-day plan is not going to get me past this level. I am finding the improvements in strength motivating. I think flexibility would be good too, I just need to measure it. Having a progression of exercises to do is very helpful for me.

I've been eating more protein and less carbs overall. Partly this is an accident of the cooking. I've made some big pots of food that lasted for several meals. I've also gone to the small local grocery more often and taken advantage of their meat specials. I was eating vegetarian meals several days a week before the challenge. Not because of any ethical or health concerns but because meat does not keep very long and my cooking time is limited. I hate it when I buy a relatively expensive ingredient with good intentions and then it goes bad because I don't have time to cook when I thought I would. My normal breakfast was either toast or yogurt and granola, depending on the temperature. On weekends we like to good more elaborate brunch with eggs, sausage, waffles and fruit. Toast and cereal seem pretty flimsy to me now. Apparently that week of eating leftover chili for breakfast changed my perception on this. I've made scrambled eggs with veggies a couple times this week. I am planning on making a pot of sweet potato and black bean chili to have for breakfasts. Part of my reasoning on my food goal was that I get contrary when I feel that I am depriving myself. On the current challenge I can eat all the carbs, sugar, fat and protein that I want. My sugar intake is still higher than ideal. Starchy carbs have dropped off just because I'm full of veggies. I'm going to see about taking steps to control processed sugar in the next challenge. I will be very curious to see if I have actually lost weight at the end of the challenge. I can tell that my clothes fit better. Time management is really key to making it all work. I'm getting a little better at this. I seem to need one weekend afternoon and one weekday evening devoted to cooking every week to keep decent food in the house. I could get away with less if the guys would cook real meals that provided extra servings for later meals. I'm not holding my breath about that happening. At this point I'm trying to get them to eat veggies so that I am not stuck eating the same salads six days in a row. It also gets more difficult when CSA season is over and I have to buy veggies at the store. Now my cooking choices are based on what I have to use up. From late October through May I need to think of things to cook. Not my strong suit. Good thing that is more than six weeks away.

Being just slightly "off" after a week on vacation is really good! Eating well half the time while travelling is also good. Yep, it is the last week. Time to finish strong!

The weekend was great on the veggie front and so-so for exercise. I started well doing leg exercises on Saturday morning. After that I picked up CSA veggies. Boy, am I glad that I am splitting a share with friends. My half was two big bags of veggies. I spent most of the afternoon prepping and cooking them. Veggie prep turned out to be much more exciting than I expected. Last spring I bought a Wolfgang Puck food processor to replace my long-suffering mini Cuisinart. The new food processor has a diverter spout to allow fast processing of lots of stuff into a bowl. Nice theory. I started with shredding a head of red cabbage. I cut the cabbage into sections that would fit in the feed shaft and put a big bowl under the spout. The food processor has a tall base so the spout sits about 6 inches over the bowl. This was the first time I tried the slicer and grater blades for the food processor. The first piece of cabbage got stuck and had to be trimmed to fit. Once I got it in, it got sliced in no time flat and flew all over the counter. Maybe a third of it went in the bowl. Purple confetti everywhere! My partner took pity on me and offered to hold the bowl up next to the spout. The actual slicing is certainly faster than cutting cabbage with a knife. I'm not sure if the overall time is any less once I figure in cleaning the kitchen afterwards. Since the counter was already purple, I continued with grating beets and carrots for a salad. That also worked well (with the assistant holding the bowl). Instant grated veggies. Red and purple juice all over! Keep this in mind if you want to set up a horror movie scene. I think the salad turned out well but it was not popular at the potluck. Maybe the colors were just too much. Good thing I like it because I'll be eating it all week. On Sunday I made a cucumber salad and a tomato salad with about 8 of the 12 or more tomatos I brought home. (This was half the tomatos in the share!). I cooked the cabbage with onions, kielbasa and apples. Yum. Then went and taught dancing. Too bad telling people how to exercise for two hours does not actually count as exercising. My feet hurt more than they would have if I'd actually been dancing the whole time. I took Labor Day off and puttered around the house. I even sat on the couch and did embroidery for a while. Luck for the challenge the sun came out in the afternoon and I went for a long walk. I did not scrub the kitchen floor even though it desperately needs it. Hopefully the beet juice won't stain the tile. I am sure it will still be there until I have time to deal with it. Now I have to cook the eggplant. That will not still be edible if I wait. And I have more veggies coming on Thursday. Eeep!

The sweet potato ice cream sounds really good. I am making ice cream for an ice cream social in a couple weeks. That sounds like a good version for the non-dairy people. I've been using coconut milk which is also tasty. That still uses sugar. What are hallow, arch and gymnastic planks? Do they work different muscles than the plain vanilla front planks? Good for you for keeping up on the exercise and reading. I admire you keeping perspective when things don't work.

I know what you mean about wanting to relax your brain in a story and get away from the day. I find it very hard to put down a good book. I had to limit myself to short stories when I was in grad school. Novels took too much time. Is there a way you could move your reading time earlier in the day as a reward for doing something else? I switched to playing piano or doing fiberarts before bed. I find the repetitive movements of fiber arts to be calming for my brain. Piano is fun and works out some physical energy, but I won't do it for hours because my hands get tired. Do you have other activities that might help you transition from the day to sleep?

Hi Aikigoth, I started reading your posts because I do aikido too. I also have hit one of my senseis. Earlier in the class he was emphasizing giving sincere attacks and not tracking as one's partner moves. A little later he told me to hit him and I did. I was fully expecting him to move somewhere at the last minute and throw me. I don't think I hurt him much, but I bet he had a bruise the next day. He did not hold it against me. It is really the senior person's responsibility to set the pace of practice. That said, it is a really good skill to be able to punch or strike with committment and stop if your partner freezes up. I think of our Friday night weapons class as "practicing not quite hitting people over the head with big sticks". I have a long way to go in control and precision on my weapons work. One of my senseis often says that the ability to readjust on the moment is essential to henkawaza and real freestyle practice. Watching him do this with another person at the same level is truly amazing. You can't tell who is trying to throw who, it switches back and forth every second until one of them finally gets an overwhelming advantage.

Are you still having trouble with the sleep and caffeine cycle? I found that really the key to moving forward on everything else. It's really hard to be motivated about anything when your body just wants a nap. Caffeine is a tough thing to drop. You can get it a lot of ways and it takes a long time to get out of your system. This is the same negative cycle that I'm trying to get out of. Are you a cold turkey kind of person or a gradual change type? Either way, removing caffeine is the first step. It makes people ignore being tired - that is only going to perpetuate the negative cycle. Try splashing cold water on your face when you want to wake up. Cold water gets all the "oh no, we might drown!" responses going in your body. This is a much shorter-term affect and is not associated with eating sweets. You've made it through bad days before, you can do this!

Thank you for posting the link! I really like that he covers how to modify the exercise if your knees are problematic. I plan to add these in my rotation for the next challenge. My cat litter is still in the back of my car. At least I taped up the hole in the bag so now I could carry it inside without making a mess. I should add vacuuming my car to my weekend list.

Hang in there! You can do it! Would it help if you though of it as getting good at things rather than finishing them? After all, you are not going to give up biking or meditating after the challenge. You had a good reason to start the challenge. Unless something has really changed in the last five weeks, that is still a good reason to finish it. I think it is a very good sign that you are figuring out what works for you and are planning for the next challenge. How can you implement what you've learned so far to rock the last week?

Good going on the chin-ups! I'm glad to hear that your overall exercise is going well. One more week to go.

Teirin, thanks for the link. I've tried http://www.supercook.com/ for the same sort of thing. I am not impressed with the search results. It seems to give lots of versions of the same thing rather than different ideas with the same ingredients. I completely skipped exercising yesterday. I know that my chances of working out at home after work are slim to none. I'll happily go for a walk or bike ride. When I'm in the house I want to be doing all kinds of other things. On very good days I can work out at home first thing in the morning. Note to self - next challenge I should allow at least one day off a week. I did get a lot done after work yesterday. On my way home I did errands: - stopped by the bank - bought cat litter - bought postage stamps - bought groceries I got home, put away groceries, ate popcorn and then started cooking. It was a marginal day for eating veggies. I made sauteed summer squash with onions and sweet red pepper. I also blanched, peeled and chopped tomatoes for sauce. Good timing on that since some of the tomatoes were starting to go funny. I was going to make cucumber salad but it was too late for the cucumbers. Some of the zuchini had gone limp but there were plenty left. By the end my compost bucket was full. Today was a much better day for eating veggies since I cooked them yesterday. I also bought mini carrots so that I have something easy for snacking. Eating veggies plus junk food is not really improving my diet. My cunning plan is to make granola bars before work tomorrow. That will be feasible if I do all the prep work tonight. Homemade granola bars may be high-carb but they are low in sugar compared to the commercial ones. I did leg exercises at lunch since I don't expect to get a workout at class tonight. I suppose I could make a point of having the students throw me to get some movement in.

Veggies from this week and last week (* indicates old veggies that need to be used) beets* carrots* red cabbage* mushrooms* summer squash - various tomatos* spaghetti squash (purchased to go with the tomatos) mushrooms* (for the mushroom stuffing) celery* cilantro* mint* I have fresh oregano and winter savory in the garden. Also cherry tomatos that get eaten as fast as they ripen. In the pantry I have onions, garlic, yellow potatos and one sweet potato. My weekly veggie delivery is on Thursday. My goal for tonight is to make as much room as possible in the fridge for the upcoming delivery. That and simply use things up before they go bad. Tomorrow night I'm substitute teaching the basic aikido class and won't have time for cooking. I'm thinking that curry might be a simple way to use up a whole bunch of things quickly.

Can you describe the form for lunges? I see these listed as a good exercise to include in a balanced program but I've worried about tweaking my knees. I admire you carrying kitty litter home. I find just putting the 30 lb bags in my trunk and hauling them to the garage to be a challenge. Which is on my list for tonight. I'll see if the strength training has made any difference.

Start of week 5 check in. Exercise: A Still going strong. Splitting up my workouts is clearly a win. I did something to my right wrist that aches. I don't know if this was bad ergonomics at work, while gardening, a bad move in aikido, or if I just slept on it funny. I'm worried it might have been from push-ups or bent-over rows. I may delay my upper body workout just to be on the safe side. Sleep: B+ Better than last week! I know better than to check Facebook in the evening, really I do. I just have to implement a firm rule not to turn on my computer at home after 8pm. "Just one thing" stretches out for hours. At least I screwed up on Saturday night and not on a work night. Veggies: A- for week 4. Sunday was a complete fail. I did not do any more cooking after the binge last Sunday except making salsa. Once again I have a fridge full of raw veggies that need to be cooked to be edible. That will be my project for Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Life goal: It looks like a long shot, but I could still pull it off. I did not practice piano at all this weekend. I played a little last week and it sounded better. If I make time to do this every day or two I might be able to achieve my goal. I enjoy playing. This should be an easy one.

How did your weekend go? Were you able to enjoy some of the trip, aside from the family interaction? I'm looking forward to seeing your revised goals for getting healthy.

Encumbered walking with groceries - that is a good real-world application for strength. It sounds like your other exercises are going well too. Are you finding other activities easier to do?