Aurora

My last 6 week challenge was back in September and I did a whole 30 for October. I was doing really well and then Christmas began (well 2 weeks before Christmas) and I completely lost the plot!!! So, it's time to take back control and get my challenges back on track. I am taking off 2 STR, 1 DEX, 1 STA, 2 CON and 1 CHA as I don't believe I should start from where I left off. In order to earn back some of my attribute points my quest is as follows!............ Aurora's Storm Quest 'Storm' represents both the energy I want to harness and my daughter's name is Tesla Storm and she is my main motivation for finally taking control of my health and fitness - I don't want her to have the same issues I had growing up overweight and so I plan to be a good role model for her!! Main Quest To feel fit, full of energy and strong. More specifically, I want to be able to walk for long periods without pain and to be able to lift myself off the floor without something to lean on. I would like to enjoy running around with my daughter without being embarrassed. From an image point of view I want to be able to fit into clothes that I like and feel happy enough about my arms to have my tattoos out!! Quest 1 Eat Paleo . +3CON, +1 STA A - No more than 3 Non-Paleo meals during Challenge B - No more than 5 Non-Paleo meals during Challenge C - No more than 6 Non-Paleo meals during Challenge D - No more than 8 Non-Paleo meals during Challenge F - 9 or more Non-Paleo meals during challenge Quest 2 Do 3 x NF Workouts a week. +3 STR, +1 DEX A - No more than 2 workouts missed during Challenge B - No more than 4 workouts missed during Challenge C - No more than 6 workouts missed during Challenge D - No more than 8 workoust missed during Challenge F - 9 or more workouts missed during Challenge Quest 3 Walk 4 x 30 min a week. +2 STA, +1 STR, +1 DEX A - No more than 3 walks missed during Challenge B - No more than 6 walks missed during Challenge C - No more than 9 walks missed during Challenge D - No more than 12 walks missed during Challenge F - 13 or more walks missed during Challenge LIfe Quest - Spend at least 30mins a week on goal setting and law of attraction work +2 WIS, +1 CHA A - No more than 1 session missed during Challenge B - No more than 2 sessions missed during Challenge C - No more than 3 sessions missed during Challenge D - No more than 4 sessions missed during Challenge F - 5 or more sessions missed during Challenge WISH ME LUCK!!

I'm afraid I've neglected my six week challenge thread. I have actually stuck to all of my goals and am 2 days away from the end of my whole30!! Feeling pretty good for it but i still feel the weightloss is frustratingly slow. Just need to keep plugging away i suppose!!

Update, things have been good since my holiday, I had a cold at the beginning of this week which did stop me from doing one workout but in the past a cold would have sent me on a carb overload so I consider it a big win that I kept control this time. I'm still a bit sniffly but managed my workout on Wednesday and will do again tonight. In other news, I decided to not only exclude dairy from my diet but to do the Whole30 from the 1st October (lots of people are not drinking for October anyway so I figure it will be the month with least temptation for me!!). The hardest bit so far (on day 3) for me is definitely the lack of sweeteners and chewing gum. I tried coffee without sweeteners but it was horrible so I have also had a caffeine withdrawal headache for 2 days! I'm looking forward to seeing if the Whole30 boosts my weightloss as it has been very slow. I've been tracking my food daily in TwoGrand and that's been really good to see my food day and look at other people's to see how it compares. My portions are quite big but I'll leave that for a future challenge!!

Managed a ten min meditation this morning, no idea why i keep putting it off!!

feeling well and truly back on track, 3 days of eating well, tracking and 2 workouts done. I'm really chuffed because in the past it would have taken me weeks to get back on the horse after a lapse but not this time!!!

Shore leave over, time to get serious!! Unfortunately I probably over-indulged far too much on holiday and in hind-sight I should probably have set myself some kind of loose goals for the week. On the bright side, It did remind me how much better I feel physically when I'm not over-indulging and I did manage to fit in a lot of walking and swimming. I've started my food tracking on a phone app called TwoGrand (if anyone is using it and would like to follow me, I'm on there as AuroraStar). I will be posting my favourite meals on here but I'm going to track everything on there. As for assessing my performance, I've been using a spreadsheet to do that so will carry on with that, it looks basically like this Week Date Goal Type Goal Target Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Goal Achieved 2 22/09/2014 Nutrition Exclude Dairy (and maintain previous level of eating) 7 0% 2 22/09/2014 Nutrition Track Meals 7 0% 2 22/09/2014 Exercise 3 NF Strength Workouts & Inc Cross Trainer to 20min 3 0% The target is how many days I expect to achieve each and I put a Y in each day I manage to meet the goals and then a formula at the end works out the percentage I achieve for the week. This would mean that one bit of cheese would prevent me from putting a Y in for that day but wouldn't mean the whole week was a fail.

Aurora's Storm Quest - Main Quest To feel fit, full of energy and strong. More specifically, I want to be able to walk for long periods without pain and to be able to lift myself off the floor without something to lean on. I would like to enjoy running around with my daughter without being embarrassed. From an image point of view I want to be able to fit into clothes that I like and feel happy enough about my arms to have my tattoos out!! I am happy that my previous 2 challenges have helped me develop new habits in terms of eating and working out and so I am only going to quest new items in this challenge (making the assumption that I carry on eating mostly paleo and working out as I was) Quest 1 Exclude Dairy. Although I have been eating mostly paleo, I have had milk and cheese so I am interested to see what affect excluding it will have on my progress. +3CON Quest 2 Track my meals in photo/written form for me to get a better idea of how much I am eating from a portion point of view. +2 WIS Quest 3 Increase cross trainer in my workouts from 15 to 20 mins +3 STA LIfe Quest - Meditate once a week for 10 mins at least +1 CHA +1 WIS Shore Leave - I have 7 days of 'Shore leave' in this 6 week period and so I am only allowing myself 10 attribute points maximum for successfully completing the challenge.

Looks like my latest post was a bit downhearted but since then things got a whole lot better. I did track my calories for a week but it just showed me that what I was eating was not as bad as I thought and I also lost a few pound in the last two weeks. All in all I've lost 17lbs since I started which is an average of 1-1.5lbs a week which although slower than 'diets' I've done in the past, I am happy with the progress and feel so much better and stronger than I did 14 weeks ago! In terms of how I did on my goals this time, I give myself a B+ as although I achieved my fitness and nutrition goals, I didn't manage any meditation!! I didn't quite get the attribute point allocation thing when I wrote my quest but think I get it now. For this challenge I will level up to level 3 and give myself 12 points (lost 3 for the meditation). I will allocate 4 to strength, 2 to stamina 3 to constitution, 2 to dexterity and 1 to Wisdom I did two of the Adventurer challenges - Mini 1 - Pushups +1 Strength - Mini 4 - War Cry +1 Charisma So, onwards and upwards to the next challenge, I have a week's holiday next week so will be a 'week late' to the next challenge but will just have to come up with some seriously good goals for it!!

Well done on managing the anxiety! It is hard enough to tackle fitness and physical health but when also working on mental health it can make it even harder! My life goal for this challenge was to practice Mindfulness/Meditation twice a week and unfortunately it's the one goal I haven't managed to hit and probably the one goal that would make the most difference!!! I am also giving up the diet cokes!! I must admit I'm finding it very hard (only had the occasional one as a mixer if I have a drink on a weekend). I think I'm getting used to living without them now though and it's saving me money not buying all that diet coke I used to drink!. They do say that following a good food plan does 80% of the work when it comes to weight loss so you are probably right to focus on that first as weight loss is your main quest but when you do get to the exercise bit, there are loads of people on the NF forums that can give you some really good advice! Hope the rest of the challenge goes well!

I'm afraid it's not going so well. I'm still completing my goals and I've even done a couple of the adventurer mini quests and apart from a couple of weekends with alcohol (but still decent food) and a 'cheat' day this weekend i have been 100% on my goals..... But.... I'm just not seeing any results! Obviously i must be doing something wrong so starting yesterday, I'm tracking my food in myfitness pal ( i did want to avoid calorie counting but maybe i don't have a choice). I know i also need to change/level up my work out but find it very difficult to be imaginative with that so am going to work on coming up with a new workout plan this week.

How long does a hot last if it's made like this? I eat a lot of hot sauce and would love to try making my own.

Hi, hope you don't mind me following your quest, I am fairly new myself (on my second challenge) and I also feel I'm not as creative with my challenges as some other questers but at the end of the day, a goal is a goal no matter how you word it lol. How are you getting on with your goals? Have you managed to do your workouts? I found that the workouts are what made me feel the best during my first challenge.

Hi, How's your second challenge going? I'm on my second challenge too and although my first challenge went well, the second one is taking a lot more effort!! Hope it's going well :-)

Hi MegaShe-Ra, Sounds like you are doing great so far and Yay for smart goals! :-)

Been trying some new recipes/foods this week to get back my mojo. My absolute favourites this week were: Turkey mince meatballs in a tomato/mushroom/pepper sauce with courgette noodles Pork Taco salad - OMG, can't believe I've never tried this before! so much nicer than salad with chunks of meat!! I have a wedding coming up on Saturday, I am planning to eat what is provided (as they will have spent a lot of money per head on food) and I will be drinking but I am going to dance my a$$ off to try and burn off some of the excess!!