Jangles

Here's me if I can be added please! https://www.fitbit.com/user/2XTBLG

Posting this to remind me to do this later! Week 4: Checking your starting credits Well done, you've made it to the end of week 3, so now you get to level up to Level 1 and you get to allocate 10 stat points to your challenge. We use 6 attributes in NF Real Life Roleplaying: Strength (STR) - physical strength Dexterity (DEX) - agility and speed Stamina (STA) - Endurance and Energy Constitution (CON) - ability to resist damage and disease (also related to diet) Wisdom (WIS) - intuition and sense of things around himself (any learning that you've done is also included) Charisma (CHA) - force of personality and physical attractiveness (sociable aspects of your challenge are also included) So your quest these week will be as follows: 1. Allocate 10 points to your quests 2. Do a mid challenge summary and rate yourself on a percentage scale 3. Using your rating, allocate points to your challenge so far. You can round up/down if you don't like fractions (like i do). 4. Update your signature with your points 5. Let us know how you've allocated Example: 1. Goal allocation: Q1: Walk 5k a day = 2 STA Q2: Eat Paleo 5 days per week = 3 CON Q3: Go to gym 3x/week = 1 STR & 1 DEX LQ: Have 3x social interactions per week = 2 CHA & 1 WIS 2. Mid Challenge Summary: Q1: Walked 5k 3 days a week = D (45%) Q2: Ate paleo 3 days/week = B (60%) Q3: Went to gym 3 days/week = A (100%) LQ: Had 3x social interactions per week = A (100%) 3. Challenge allocation: Q1: D (45%) = 0.9 STA Q2: B (60%) = 1.8 CON Q3: A (100%) = 1 STR & 1 DEX LQ: A (100%) = 2 CHA & 1 WIS 4. Signature: STR 1 | STA 0.9 | DEX 1 | CON 1.8 | WIS 1 | CHA 2

Mini Challenge Week 3 So your challenge for this week has 3 parts: 1. Pinpoint the quest in your journey that is giving you the most uphill (or one that you're struggling to achieve) I'm struggling to get in a BBW. I prefer to do them in the morning, as soon as I've done my walk with the dogs but haven't been doing it then as the kids are up, watching telly, playing Minecraft or Skylanders and whine and moan and complain and cry (they're not really brats, just tired!) about leaving the livingroom (the only place in the house I can exercise) for 10 minutes. So, I think, I'll do it in the afternoon when I'm childfree. But I haven't been. I've been too tired, or doing housework, or finishing orders for the small business I've started. It's harder now as the school holidays have started so I don't have kiddy free time, except in the evenings but that's the only time I get to spend with the husband. 2. Search through NF (forums or articles) to find one that is able to offer some assistance I didn't search but someone posted this one which sort of applies in the Campus Tours thread. 3. Apply it to your challenge (no collecting underpants here). I've spoken to my eldest today about how when I get back tomorrow from my walk, I need him and his brother to leave the livingroom for 10 minutes while I do some more exercising to get fit and healthy. He agreed but we'll see how it goes. I shall get my nagging practiced!

I'm not sure what day it is except Monday. Last week was rough for me. OK, it was more than rough. I was heading for a breakdown (I know what caused it and there's nothing I can do to stop this happening right now). I didn't do anything except a walk on Friday morning. I did walk up a very steep hill, chase kids round a park and walk home again though. I'm feeling better today, but I couldn't drag myself out of bed at 5 so only went round once today. My wonderful, wonderful husband bought me a FitBit! I'm going to go and join the FitBit accountibillibuddies group. If there is one, but I'm sure there is. One other thing that I forgot to mention the last time I was on here, even if I sit on my decreasingly lardy arse for the rest of this challenge and even though I've not done as much of the BBW as I said I'd have to do to pass, I'm still going to count it as a pass. Why? Cause I can run up the 12 stairs in my close! I managed it the week before last and have done it a fair few times now, enough to notice a difference in my speed up them and my breathing at the top. Today my breathing was just like I'd walked up them!

No puppies here except mentally but yep, getting them out every Monday to Friday morning for a big walk round the local reservoir. They're loving it, as am I!

I have a couple of dogs you can borrow...

Week 2 mini - done! I have a rubbish signature but I'll work on that and I follow Asa Pond, Babyfishfish and chloehawker

Day 5 Another 4.30 start this morning, my phone ran out of charge halfway round my first lap but did two today again. Bought a Fitbit today so hopefully that will be here soon and I won't have to worry about my phone anymore as it's annoying me not seeing my stats. (About 17 months ago my phone was immersed into strawberry milkshake, cola and then dropped into water by an inquisitive two year old. It still works but sometimes when it's charging it discharges but says it's still charging and sometimes it says it's charging when it's not plugged in.)

Days 2-4 It's been a rough few days here. My phone stopped charging during the night so didn't wake me up on Tuesday, yesterday I was utterly exhausted and miserable and my stats didn't save. Last night I fell asleep reading a book on my phone so it wasn't on charge but I woke up at 4.30 feeling nice and refreshed for a change. I was up at the reservoir for 5.35 and did a lap myself then met M and did a lap with her too. I'm very lucky in that I've made some good friends recently who have lost a lot of weight in the past few years or are still in the process of changing their lifestyle and who are an incredible support. Two of them have bought me water bottles to help me make sure I'm drinking enough water.

Week 2 Day 1 The walk this morning was hard and I don't know why. I think I was shattered as I didn't get much sleep over the weekend (mostly self inflicted or just my stupid body saying I've not been awake long enough to go to bed yet) but from my front door to the reservoir, round it and back it was 2.05 miles and a total of 4133 steps. I'll hopefully remember to put it on for the school runs tomorrow. On a more painful note, I have blisters on my little bloody toes. Yes, plural. Both feet have blisters. I was wearing my new trainery walking shoes today with socks I made (my first pair that were done cuff down so the toes are a bit weirder than I prefer) and after school we walked to a park a good walk away from home (and uphill!) then home and I now have blisters. The one on my left toe is really just a mountain of blisters. Mr Jangles is under orders to bring blister plasters home so he'd better or I really don't know if I'll be out tomorrow morning. I had a bad weekend too. I didn't get any walking with the dogs done, I didn't do the BBW. I've not even done it today. The livingroom is a mess and that's the only place I have to workout, the kids think I've been away for a year when I get back in the mornings and act like I've just stomped on a kitten if I ask for 10 minutes to workout. I'm struggling for motivation and energy. Please pass me some?

Huge congrats on your Uni stuff! Most impressive! The clue to why you eat fish is in your name... And what part of New Vegas did you discover? I thought I'd found somewhere new once but I'd come to it by a different direction so didn't recognise anything then got the 'this looks very familiar' feeling and then felt like a dumbass.

Day 5 Today was a lovely walk but a hard one. A gorgeous wee dog jumped up to see me and I dropped my phone as I was putting my pedometer app, so the battery came out and as my phone is half borked from being dunked in strawberry milkshake, cola and water by youngest monkey not long after I got it over a year ago, I couldn't get it turned back on so no stats today and I wonder if that's why it felt like a hard walk today. Also, my trainers are seriously gubbed. They're so worn out now that I need a new pair so hopefully get some on Sunday. I didn't manage to get the BBW done today. Kids were all over me again when I got home (seriously? I'm only gone half an hour max from them getting up!) and then it was biggest monkeys sports day at school then off to meet some other women who all run their own small businesses where we meet up and craft and gab. I've noticed I'm quite cold a lot now, is that unusual? Am I just weird? Is it cos I'm not used to the sun which we've had for 5, yes FIVE days in a row now? Tomorrows another day and I'm still on target for passing everything.

I haven't done the BBW today yet. I was walking home from the nursery run (yay me, I went the long way which is twice as long as the way I usually go) and heard about Christopher Lee. I promise I'll do it tomorrow. I've to do it again on Saturday, will I be in trouble if I don't have a rest day between them? I really can't be bothered just now. I just want to climb into bed and hide from the world. I'm so fed up of pretending to be an adult and who decided I was grown up enough to be a parent? I can barely take care of myself! Bad word this depression! It can bad word, bad word, very bad word off.

Day 4 That was a lovely wee walk! I forgot to set my pedometer app when I left the house but I left it running for the walk home so it says I walked 1.64 miles in 38 minutes 27 seconds. I took 3308 steps and will have a blister on my left heel as I couldn't find socks and wore a pair of my hubbys that now have a hole in the heel. OK, it didn't say that about the socks but it's still true. Plasters ahoy! Kids are still all over me so I've not been able to do a bodyweight workout yet so I'm doing the school runs all smelly and sweaty. Again. On another note, I think I'm going to lie and say that the Dobie is getting worse with pulling every day as for half the walk, he was great! There was slack in the lead for the first time ever at the start of a walk. He's still got energy to go round again and is pulling a bit on the way home but not much. The Border Collie has started wanting to chase cars again. Le sigh. I mean, the dogs were just horrendous today! The dobie pulled so much that my right arm is hanging on by a couple of bits of skin, there's blood all over me and it's actually quite hard to type with a semi-severed limb... I'll update again when I've gotten to do my BBW.

Week one challenge complete! Woohoo!

Week 1 - Let's Get SMART So you've set up your challenge and people have popped in and said hi, given you some advise on your goals and just generally cheered you on for the start of your challenge. There's so much information to go that sometimes it seems like you're being overwhelmed. How do I allocate attribute points? Which guild do I join? What should my workout look like? Can I join an Accountability Squad? You don't need to worry about these things right now. What you do need to worry is your challenge. For this first week you should be focusing on your own quests. Once you're comfortable with them you can move onto other questions. Your mini quest this week will to really really look at your goals and make sure that they're SMART. S = Specific M = Measurable A = Attainable/Achievable R = Realistic/Reasonable T = Timeous Here are some questions to put your goals to the test: Is your overall quest achievable (over a short or long period of time)? Is it reasonable? Yes. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be fit enough to run up 12 measly steps! Do your 3 quests all build towards your main quest in little ways, or are you taking on too much? Do your quests have sub-quests or is it just one thing to focus on? Yes, they do. Two of them are to build strength and fitness which will help, the other is just plain common sense and will help my body to recover and keep me healthy. Are your main goals realistic? Can you scale them to smaller steps to fit your life better, even if it will make it take a little longer to achieve them? This is a smaller step of a main goal. I don't actually *want* to run up steps two at a time but I want to be fit enough to be able to. Are your goals able to be measured and tracked? What will you use to track them? I'm using here and Facebook to say that I've done them but I don't know how to prove that I'm not lying about it. The walks in the morning I do with a friend so I have no way out of doing that, even if I wanted to. How are you grading your goals? Are they pass/fail (“every dayâ€, “not even once over the six weeksâ€)? Is there a reward for the effort, or are you only grading yourself on whether or not you “lose the weight†or “run the distanceâ€? I haven't actually thought about this before. I'll amend them once I've done this. What is your plan for continuing/altering/grading those goals if you become ill or injured? After being thwarted twice before by illness, I should have this sorted but I don't. I suppose it's my friend who I'm dogwalking with that will kick my butt if I don't keep it up and will encourage me to keep going at it. If I get injured or become ill again (bugs, don't even THINK about coming near me!) then I'll fail unless I actually am able to do some of my quests. Did you take into consideration any special occasions (Labour Day, Independence Day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc) that may occur during the challenge? What modifications do you need to build into your goals for those? I don't have any special days during this challenge but I'll have to think about for the next one as I think there might be one then. Do any of your main goals conflict with each other? Will one goal make it hard to do another? I don't think so, they should all work together in sweet harmony. Do you already have the time in your schedule to actually complete the goals you’ve set? If not, what are you planning to do to make time for them? The bodyweight workout doesn't take long in the grand scheme of things so I can either do that whilst littlest is at nursery in the afternoons or first thing in the morning (which I prefer) while both kidlets are amusing each other and aren't interested in me. Again, the dog walking is something that I'll be doing whilst kidlets are at school/nursery in winter (too dark to take the dogs where we walk in winter) but during the lighter mornings, I'm getting up earlier to take them out. Are you trying to build multiple habits, or is all your energy focused on your main quest? I dunno? Bit of both? I can't complete my main quest if I don't complete these. These are basically the foundations of the magnificent temple that my body will become, rather than the Temple of Doom that it is at the moment. Once I've taken care of the foundations, I can start on all the fancy brickwork and decorations. Your mini quest: Make sure your goals are definitely SMART. For completing this mini quest you will receive an additional +1WIS at the end of the 6 weeks.

For me, I do have a long term goal in mind, but I've broken that down into smaller bits to help me make it more achievable so they're my main quests on here with the sub quests to help me achieve the small parts of my bigger quest. If you know what I mean?

Day 3 I really didn't want to get up today. We had a bed invader last night who didn't leave until about 1.30 so I didn't get much in the way of sleep until then. Got up at 5.20 (I'm setting my alarm 5 minutes earlier each day so that I can get two laps of the reservoir next week), went to the loo and it was blocked. It took ages to unblock. Bed invader woke up and wanted to play Skylanders so turned the Xbox on and it needs an update. Fine, it's a few MB it'll take 20 seconds. It took 5 minutes. Then it had to install. I gave up and let my hubby sort it, so much for his lie in! Quite annoyed by everything by now and then the Dobie seems to remember where we're going so seems to be getting worse on the lead, rather than better. We met my friend on the way up and swapped dogs so I didn't have him pulling but her dog wanders and I kept having to move the lead around or turn in circles to untangle myself. After all that, I forgot to start my pedometer app so I don't know how long it took but it seemed to only take two minutes. I was a lot calmer afterwards, although my hayfever flared up but that's gone after taking a tablet so all is fine in my world now. Have a good day anyone that reads this!

LOVE IT! Please tell me you tell people your name is Pond, Asa Pond. I'm following this mission and wish you the best of luck that you complete it!

Run Hobbit, run! You can do this! I have total faith in you and your abilities to smash this! I'll be following you on this epic journey to Mordor, err, law school!

Hellloooo! I think you might have stolen my body for a bit yesterday as I sat down to play Fallout NV and got distracted by something and never actually played it. Thief! I'm going to be following you as I'm using clothes as motivation and progress tracking as before NF when I tried to get fit, I was still in the mindset of 'the scales tell you if you're healthy or not!' and now I know better. It's trying to persuade other people of that though. Hope your granny had a good birthday and enjoyed her cake!

Day 2 So, I've done the big dog walking for this morning. The stats on my pedometer app said it was 1.21 miles, 2443 steps, average speed of 2.91mph (I think, one of my sons has stolen my phone and I can't remember exactly) and it took us 25 minutes and one second. That second is very important. More importantly, I feel good! I come from a small village, where I was about 10 seconds away from fields, moved to the outskirts of a large town where I was about 2 minutes away from fields, and now I live in a large town, on a main road and I'm constantly bombarded with noise from the road. After 8 and a half years, I thought I'd be used to it by now but nope, so it was really good to get back into a nice, leafy green area with lots of wildlife to see and lots and lots of quiet compared to the road. It's helping improve my mental health too. I've also just done my first beginners bodyweight workout for the week. I moved my livingroom around last week so I've got bobblehead Groot sitting on a shelf, nodding away while he counts off the jumping jacks for me. I need to keep this up, I can't let Groot down. Edited to add, it's now 7.10am in the UK.

Thanks everyone! We have a Halti and a Gentle Leader (Halti is more known in the UK I think) and they have both failed. I think it's just that he's SO EXCITED about being outside as everything that you've all said hasn't worked on him, unless he's had a big, massive run around and he's knackered so will walk along at heel by himself and I can actually drop the lead and he'll keep following me. I think he has the brain of a goldfish as we've had him 8 years now and he still can't/won't sit on command.

Hello! I'm an Ash too! For your second goal, more stickers! Give yourself a little blue sticker for each bottle you finish. I'll try and remember to give you a virtual high five as well. You might have to remind me though. I'm old and can't remember my own age without asking my husband!

I actually thought this started last week so, yay! I'm not late! Last two attempts at completing a 6 week challenge have been thwarted by illness and hospitalizations. woo. So, let's do this! Main challenge Get fitter. I know, I know, you can't really measure that. What I want to be able to do is run up steps, two at a time. I can't do that. I can't run up them one at a time. I want to be able to run up stairs one at a time by the end of this 6 week challenge. Two at a time by the end of the next one? By stairs or steps, I mean the ones in my close. There's a set of 12 in a row that I'd like to be able to do, all the others are two or three only. I shall use these to practice on. I will do this by: Side Quest 1 Drink at least 2 litres of water a day. Grading: I need to do this every day. Pass or fail. No other option. Side Quest 2 Take the dogs on at least one lap around the reservoir at least once per day - 2.5k per lap (1.21 miles by my pedometer today), not counting the walking there and back, and the strength needed to stop the Dobie from pulling. Any advice or help on this is welcome but we've tried a Halti, Halti type thing and chest ones but he still pulls. I also think that at almost 10 now, he's too set in his ways. And he's just glaikit. Grading: I will do this Monday to Friday every week. I'll do a gentler family walk at the weekends so I won't count them as I'm not pushing myself as much as I will be M-F. Dogs need out every day, I enjoy and need to be around nature and my friend won't let me not do it unless a leg falls off, so I think again, pass or fail. Side Quest 3 Do the beginners bodyweight workout 3 or 4 times a week. I aim to do this every second day, starting tomorrow so that'll be 3 workouts this week, 4 next week, 3, then 4 etc. Grading: Pass or fail. There's 21 workouts (if I've done the maths properly), or 18 if I only get to do it three times a week so 18-21= Pass, 1-17=Fail. I think initially, I need to make these pass or fail so that I have no wiggle room to make excuses with and to make sure that I do actually set up the foundations with no cracks in them. Life Quest Stop the chub rub on my thighs. I've worn skirts every day for almost two years now. It started as a challenge on another forum I use to get people out of their comfort zones but they became my comfort zone. A friend gave me a pair of jeans that were now too big for her. I know they were worn but the still had a lot of life left in them. My chub rub has just made a hole at the top of the thighs. I was actually beginning to enjoy wearing jeans again and now I've got to try and improve my subpar seamstress skills to try and fix this hole. Or just persuade my husband to buy me more jeans. So, hello again, please be gentle with me! Any and all help is much appreciated! I've also started a Facebook page to track all this and I'm getting support from a friend in real life who will be dog walking with me. Edited to add gradings.