Arcanis

Alrighty Monks, back again for my third consecutive challenge. This one is going to be an interesting challenge because I will basically spend each week of the next four in a new city. I think I'll keep it simple to try and establish some habits that come with me regardless of where I am and what I have. No Excuses Exercise (Pass/Fail): Wherever, whenever, I should always be able to find a way to exercise. Plain and simple, my goal is to work out 3x a week, regardless of my environment. I have a back-up bodyweight routine from my gymnastics days that will be the minimum I do. Waterlogged (Pass/Fail): I'm going to try and make a habit of having a full glass of water for any other beverage/meal I consume, which is going to be about 8 glasses a day based on my usual consumption. I'll log my water daily to keep track. Mindful Moving (Pass/Fail): Quitting my job, moving out of my apartment, saying my goodbyes, visiting my family, moving into my new apartment, and finally, starting my new job. The next four weeks are going to be exciting, but also stressful and emotional. I am going to tackle this process with a focus on my needs, while also being kind and understanding to others in my life. I am going to keep a gratitude journal for this challenge, and write something I am grateful for every day. Wish me luck, and have the best of luck on your own challenges!

Final Report! Not the best week, but in the end, progress is progress. This challenge was hard, harder than my usual; and, although I stumbled, I ultimately grew. This is a positive outcome despite "bad" grades throughout. Track Your Macros!: Pass. I tracked most of the week, and stayed mostly on track. This week I actually found a meal replacement shake that was close to the macros I wanted: Soylent. And, I found a protein bar that was pretty good too: Perfect Bar. I'd keep an eye out for these if you are in a pinch for nutrition but only have access to a CVS. The lessons I learned over the course of the challenge have really helped me post some "warning" flags in my mind for social situations and eating out to help keep my diet in check. Good progress where I thought improvement wouldn't be too likely. Weekly Alcohol Budget: C. Again, cutting it close. As I've said before, it might not seem this way, but I've actually made progress in getting my drinking under control. Being mindful of my drinks when I'm drinking, planning for parties ahead of time, being conscious of my social calendar, and strategizing how much drinking I want to do throughout the week is all improvement. I may not be grading myself moving forward, but I think these habits will stick. The Heavy Log: C. Upper body: high reps/ low weights at home. Still sore! With Muay Thai 2x this week, I'm not ashamed of how much exercise I did generally, but I think next time I'm going to try and do strength training on the same days I train martial arts. I can use the momentum from training to keep me going. Daily Work: B. My affirmation for the week was "I welcome love and support into my life. It flows freely through me and into others." Kept up with reciting it in the mornings and evenings, though I had two mornings I was distracted and forgot. I am happy to say that this practice has seared the affirmations into my memory, and I plan on saying the whole series going forward. This has been the greatest success in establishing a sustainable habit. Thanks everyone for the continued support and I hope to see y'all next challenge.

Sad to report, this week was mostly a bust. The good thing is that I was mindful in my failure and deliberately chose to take a break this week. The bad thing is I made that choice instead of the healthy one. Track Your Macros!: Pass. The weekend was a bit of a blur, but the week made plainly clear one thing: I ate plenty of protein, but it couldn't keep up with my alcohol consumption. I need to drink less, plain and simple. Weekly Alcohol Budget: Fail. I didn't make my health a priority; instead I made the most out of a series of parties to drink with friends before I relocate for my new job. Maybe it is justified, maybe it isn't, but I need to better balance the two. I can always find an excuse to party, and I shouldn't always make it. The Heavy Log: Fail. I kept up with my Muay Thai training but I didn't train with weights. The fact that the gym at work was closed shouldn't derail my discipline. I need to be more adaptable. Daily Work: B. My affirmation for the week was "Harmony and peace, love and joy surround me and indwell me." I recited it everyday, but I missed two evenings. Not bad. This coming week is the last one, and I hope I can make up for this week and finish strong. I think I need to throw in some motivational rewards for success. Any ideas?

This week went better than last, especially since I was doing a lot more partying and still managed to track and control my drinking. Track Your Macros!: Pass. Avoiding sugary drinks paid off on the carb front, but now my fat intake is higher. I had a decent amount of fried food and pastries this week, which is obviously not good in that category. Unfortunately, parties don't tend to have too much lean-protein type food, so I may have to step it up and bring some of my own dishes to the next one! Anyone have ideas on healthy snacks I can bring to parties that would play well with a variety of audiences? I recently learned to make hummus (thanks last challenge) and brought that to an impromptu baking session for brunch, but I feel like I can do something a bit heavier hitting than that. Weekly Alcohol Budget: C. Not to make excuses, I got the job I was interviewing for! It is literally my dream job, and I couldn't be more thrilled. I did celebrate a bit much during the week, but then I spent the weekend virtually dry. The real crowning moment is that I attended a party with a plan not to drink, and I stuck to it. I don't think I've ever done that before, so, I'm proud of this C! The Heavy Log: B. Abs and leg routines logged this week. From this point forward I'll be able to compare whether I'm increasing reps and/or weight moving forward. Unfortunately, the gym at my work will be closed for next week, so I'll have to figure out an alternative. No worries, I have weights at home. I may focus on reps instead of total weight. Daily Work: B. My affirmation for the week was "I accept myself as beautiful and loved." I recited it this 6x week, rather than writing it, because it was an easy ritual to build in to my morning and evening hygiene routines. I find making them part of my routine is helpful in making positivity a lifestyle, rather than a forced habit. Overall, this was an improvement on last week. I do expect the amount of festivities in my life to remain a bit high this month, but I'm hoping I can apply the lessons I'm learning and continue to improve in the second half of the challenge.

Status report! I must confess, this week threw me for a loop. I was traveling for interviews this week, attending a big work party on Friday, and watching some sporting events over the weekend. Combined, I lost some precision tracking much of my meals and drinking, but I think I did a good enough job to evaluate my performance. Here we go: Track Your Macros!: Pass. I learned that there is WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR in most fruity protein shakes. Think Odwalla and Naked type drinks. I already drink Ensure Plus, which has a decent amount, to supplement my calories with something nourishing, but I'm going to have to avoid those fruity protein shakes when I'm trying to tweak my diet. I normally use the protein powder from Target, which has a low amount of sugar, and milk. It should stay that way. I was just being lazy not wanting to go to the store to buy milk! Weekly Alcohol Budget: Fail. Quite frankly, I lost track of how much I drank at my big work party. Based on the rest of the week, I estimate that I exceeded 18 over the course of the week, so this is a fail. Without this big work party, I believe I would've passed; and my mistake was not having a plan before going. The next time I attend a work function, I need to be mindful of how much I'm going to have beforehand and stick to it. Live and learn! The Heavy Log: B-. Although I did have two strength training sessions this week, I only logged one because the other was from an app focused on bodyweight exercises. Best to be active, but if I'm honest with myself, I could've used the hotel gym instead and stuck to my goals. I'll try and make it a priority next time. Daily Work: B. My affirmation for the week was "I am at peace just where I am. I accept my good, knowing all my needs and desires will be fulfilled." I wrote it down 10 times twice daily four days of the week and recited it with a mirror 10 times twice two days of the week. That's six days, resulting in a B. Taking the time to be mindful, I think, is helpful. The one day I didn't do it, was because I couldn't bring myself to step away from social situations to do my affirmations. They don't take long, I should make completing them a priority. People can wait 5 minutes for me to do my thing.

I'm doing these: https://www.livestrong.com/article/362611-weight-training-routines-for-martial-artists/ I'm trying to figure out the challenging amount of weight where I can complete 4 sets of 10 with a fair amount of difficulty. Also, those are great affirmations. I'll have to work those in somehow in the future.

I came to this realization pretty recently myself, and am working very hard to learn to accept help from others. It turns out it is emotionally unsustainable to "give back" to your community when you accept nothing in return. Keep the wisdom coming!

Good to see you taking steps to fix your sleep. I'm trying to study my own patterns too to see what I could be doing better. Few tips I've heard from people who struggle with waking up: 1) Wake up lamps: https://www.lifewire.com/best-light-therapy-alarm-clocks-4137028 2) Alarm in other room (cruel, but effective) 3) Shower immediately (this is my strategy, water helps me wake up). 4) Alarm that donates to charities you hate when you snooze: https://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml 5) Stepping away from/ enabling night mode on electronics (blue light makes it harder to sleep). Also, if you want to study your sleep patterns, I think most phones have a native application to track when you go to bed/when your alarm goes off. That could help you figure out if you need to go to bed earlier. Let me know if any of these work for you!

I've never seen any Avatar, and now I'm beginning to wonder what I've been missing out on. Keep up the good work! You are increasing our collective wisdom!

Alrighty, fellow monks, I'm back again for another challenge. For those curious, here was my first monk challenge: https://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/110268-finding-peace-at-the-eye-of-the-storm/ I'll be tackling some new challenges, and reinventing some of my old ones, ever hungry to improve mastery over my diet, fitness, and overall wellbeing. There will be a lot of work using data and building routines for this challenge, so the mascot simply must be this awesome Thai Boxing Bot I found online: Track Your Macros!: This quest will be to learn more about what I'm putting in my body. I've lost a lot of weight since I've begun to train and I'm looking to gain back some muscle. There seems to be a decent amount of support for the idea that diets having a certain ratio of protein, fat, and carbohydrates promote muscle development. As such, I will try to track these macro-nutrients across the meals I'm eating. My objective here is to diagnose one food/drink trend a week that I should tweak in order to hit a ratio of 30% protein, 35% fat, and 35% carbohydrates in my diet. I've rigged up a Google Sheet to help me track these details and spit out a graph with the ratios. Feel free to PM me if you are interested in getting a link. Weekly Alcohol Budget: This quest is a rework from my last challenge in an effort to moderate how many alcoholic beverages I consume. For that quest I limited the days I drank, and how much I could drink each day that I did. It was effective at limiting my drinking, but it also encouraged drinking the maximum number of drinks on the days I drank. This time I've decided to limit the number of drinks I can have per week to a specific number. I will grade myself as follows: 12 or fewer drinks is an A; 13-15 drinks is a B; 16-18 drinks is a C; anything else is a fail. This may seem like a lot but, this is still cutting back for me. The Heavy Log: This quest is another rework from my last challenge in an effort to keep up my strength training in tandem with my Muay Thai lessons. I did great in getting my workouts in, but I felt somewhat aimless in my strength training. My objective here is to track the weights and reps that I am doing for my strength training days. My goal is to increase weight and reps, but I will measure success by my diligence in measuring the changes. Similar to my last challenge, I will grade myself as follows: 3 workouts logged is an A; 2 workouts logged is a B; and 1 workout logged is a C. I don't anticipate missing Muay Thai because I trust myself to keep going since I enjoy it a great deal. Daily Work: This quest is an effort to put into place some mindfulness habits. If I'm honest with you all, I struggle a great deal with keeping a positive outlook on life; my thought bubbles trend towards mistrust, avoidance, and harsh judgment. I've decided I don't want to be that way anymore. If what modern psychology teaches is correct, the mind can be retrained. One common method is to recite/write affirmations throughout the day. My objective is choose a weekly affirmation, and recite/write it down ten times, twice a day. My grading rubric will be 7 days a week= A; 6 days a week = B; and 5 days a week a C. I'll be back to report at the end of the 9/17 week, where I hope to have good news on my quests. Thank you, as always, for your continued support on my journey, and I hope I'll make more time this round to pop in and say hi in more threads. Til next time!

Fellow monks, I am proud to report my first completed challenge since I was in law school in 2014. The holiday and other circumstances proved to be a bit of a derailing to my exercise and drinking goals during the week, but I managed to make up for it over the weekend and come in with passing grades! Here is how it went: Triple New Cooking Quest: A! Roasted medley root vegetables at 425 with olive oil, including beets (my new ingredient), boniato (aka batata), and yuca (aka cassava). My new tool was a vegetable peeler (so basic, I know, but it was an essential purpose). I think the beets were probably the star of the dish, adding color and flavor. I think they'll be added to my assortment of veggies that go into a roast. Alcohol Allowance: C. All things considered, I could've done better. I drank too much on the holiday, and I drank too much when my friend was in from out of town. To make matters worse, I had some casual drinks two other nights during the week. That made me hit 4 nights with 2 heavy drinking for a C. Still, I faced the weekend with determination, chugging sparkling water and non-alcoholic beer even when others were drinking. It may not be the best grade, but I think this represents a lot of growth on my part. Training Montage: A! Somewhat similar to drinking, I slacked during the week for my strength training. Still, I improvised with what I had at home to do some strength training with my bodyweight and lighter weights. Gear Upgrade: Pass. I got rid of some button-down shirts that were plain old, ugly, and ill-fitting and replaced them with some casual button-downs from Untuckit. Now I can look decent in casual settings with m new jeans! IN CLOSING: NF Friends, first and foremost, I'd like to thank you for your time and attention in supporting my endeavor to get healthy. I have never had more success in doing so than when I hopped on these forums for a challenge, carefully planned out my goals, and received the kind and caring support of this community. This challenge was no exception. I want to share what I've learned in these four weeks in order to memorialize what worked, what didn't, and hopefully provide insight for future challenges for both myself and any readers. Without further ado: Cooking Lessons: In order of most motivating, the biggest drivers of cooking have been 1) the tools, 2) the ingredients, and 3) the recipes. Cooking is an endeavor in which having the right tool for the jobs pays in dividends. When you get tools that make cooking easier, it becomes less of a chore and often improves the end-result. And, it helps unlock new ingredients and recipes you've never dared to try before. The star of my purchases has to be the food processor, which has been indispensable in streamlining most mundane of cooking tasks. Plus, it is dishwasher friendly. Nothing like making healthy habits easy to keep them in your day to day. Alcohol Lessons: Limiting drinking by days was an exercise in willpower, but I don't think it did the best job of encouraging moderation. For example, on drinking days, I often drank three alcoholic beverages to "make the most of it." Similarly, on heavy drinking days, I often drank a great deal to "make the most of it." I think I'll stick with a weekly drink allowance for my next challenge to better navigate a social beer at a party, and mitigate heavy drinking that'll exhaust a beer here and there during the rest of the week. Exercise Lessons: Martials arts have been in and out of my life intermittently, but I don't think I've had as much fun and success getting fit as when I'm doing martial arts. It hits all my buttons: It is social, it is scheduled, it gives a meaningful sense of progress, and above all, it feels useful. Plus, it motivates me to do strength training for reasons other than "bulking." I want to be strong to improve my fighting. All in all, my closing thoughts on my exercise regiment is that this seems to work for me. I hope everyone finds their rewarding physical pursuit in their quest for fitness. Gear Lessons: I've often rejected buying new and fashionable clothes as materialistic and vain. I don't know where I picked up this belief, but it isn't one that serves me well, so I'm ditching it. Having a sense of personal style in which I feel comfortable and happy with my appearance is beneficial to my continued motivation to get fit. Regardless of my quests, I think it is important that I continue to make adjustments to my wardrobe (more than once every 8 years). With that, I declare this a successfully completed challenge. Until next time friends! I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks so much.

Beginning of Week 4 Update, Labor Day Edition: What a week! Straight As! Triple New Cooking Quest: A! Homemade hummus (new recipe with new ingredient = tahini) with my new Ninja food processor (new equipment). Simple, healthy snack food that helps me keep my calories up in a healthy way. This may stay in my rotation as it is super easy. Alcohol Allowance: A+. I not only kept my drinking to three days and only drank heavily once, one of those days I only had one drink. It was a social beer and I didn't feel the need to have three to justify drinking on that day. This is really huge progress, so I'm giving myself the A+. Training Montage: A! Keeping up the good work on this front. I'm really loving the afternoon classes. They kick my butt, but they're so much fun. Gear Upgrade: Pass. Casual pants acquired! I'm actually quite pleased about this one. I'm pretty short and most malls in the US don't carry my size. I decided to roll the dice anyway and was rewarded with excellent fitting jeans! I should be able to order from this store online and expect a good fit. Yay! Hard to do better than I did this week, so here is to hoping I can keep it up and finish the challenge strong. I'll have to come up with an incentive. The holiday makes for a tempting time for unhealthy practices.

Beginning of Week 3 Update: Drinking improved, and otherwise holding steady for Week 2! Triple New Cooking Quest: A+! Experimented with a sous vide to make pork chops (new tool/new recipe) and roasted brussel sprouts (new ingredient/new recipe). Good grade for going out there, but I don't think any of these recipes will make my standard rotation. Oh well, more experimenting to come in the following weeks. Alcohol Allowance: B. I did it! Only drank heavily once this week, though I did have alcohol on three other days. I'm going to go for the A this time and keep it to three days! Training Montage: A! Another good week of getting my exercise in. I've also started to add more calories to my diet as the amount of exercise I'm doing was taking a toll on my physique. Turns out I struggle with eating enough calories on the days I don't drink, so I'm experimenting with nutritional shakes to maintain weight. Gear Upgrade: Pass. This week I donated two pairs of shorts and a pair of sweat pants and replaced them with athletic wear that will actually fit me from UnderArmour. Helps to have clothes that are actually designed for working out. I'm happy I improved on my drinking this week while maintaining the rest of my goals. I'm hoping I can do even better this time and limit my drinking to three nights this week. Also, working from home to go to the higher level Muay Thai sessions is super rewarding... Don't tell my boss.

I too recently started kickboxing, of the Thai variety. It is such a fun workout! Looking forward to hearing about your progress on this challenge.

I'll take a stab at your snacking question. I think everyone is a bit different, but I find it easier to eat three square meals a day rather than light meals and intermittent snacking. To the extent I snack, I typically only do so deliberately, like before or after a work-out to make sure I maintain energy levels. I find that when I graze, whether with food, drink, or alcohol, I just lose track of it and keep at it indefinitely. I don't know the science behind it, but I think a moderately sized high-protein meal (400-600 calories), lets my mind break from the animal instinct of "I haven't eaten enough, time to locate my next food source" and focus on work, hobbies, etc. That's usually engaging enough to get me to my next meal. I also find that limiting myself to meals allows me more control over healthy eating. I would speculate that a majority of snacks fall into the unhealthy and unsatisfying camp, whereas meals tend to have some healthier options. Hope these thoughts help!