ElfiKay

So for the one lovely soul thats following my challenge (thanks!! <3 ), I'll update. My workout classes start this week and so far I'm terrible In rock climbing yesterday, I only made it 10 or 15 feet off the ground... Which puts me easily at worst in the class. My fingers and hands are way too weak to get a good grip on most of the holds, my arms are too weak to pull myself up very far, and my fear of falling makes my legs shake like crazy & makes it hard to use them to stand up on the holds. So now after that class, I'm thoroughly embarrassed, reluctant to keep going, and my fingers feel arthritic. (They really do, I could barely hold my pen in class this morning...) And this evening I have pole fitness. I already know I'll be embarrassed just by being the fattest one there, but hopefully I'll at least not be the worst in the class. With my dance history, I SHOULD be ahead of people who've never danced outside club grinding... but given how out of shape I am... we'll see. :/

Better in some areas than others. My diet is going the best so far - I haven't been doing all my replacement workouts for the classes that havent started yet :/ ã„ã„ãˆã€‚。。毎日ã˜ã‚ƒãªã„ã§ã™ã€‚ã§ã‚‚ã€å¤šå°‘。

Introduction Hello, I'm ElfiKay! Although this is my third or fourth challenge, I feel like it's my first. I broke my foot a while back, and it's finally healed! I'm still not allowed to run, but I should be running again by partway through the challenge. Since there's no point in just holding my breath until I'm running again, I'm moving my focus up - literally. This challenge will be mostly about weight loss through diet, climbing, and aerial exercise (my friends and I found a pole dancing fitness studio, and I'm stoked. Won't need a good foot for that! Plus it'll be the closest to dance I've been since I had to quit ballet/jazz/hip-hop a few years ago.) Before the broken foot drama of the past months, I was getting into really great shape and showing good results, and I want those back. Main Quest Lose weight. Goals 1. Diet: Cook about 1500 calories of healthy food every day instead of eating out (or cooking unhealthy food). 2. Up in the Air: attend and all 'aerial' classes each week. 1 rock climbing class, 1 pole dance class, & 1 practice session at the pole studio. 3. Back on the Road: go for a half hour walk twice a week until my foot is strong enough to run again, then restart C25K runs. Life Quest Start strong in school! Same as last time's life quest, I want to study for at least an hour every day. At first it will be really annoying, since as classes first start up, there wont be much to do, but maybe this way I'll be more on top of my classes from the get go, rather than letting projects and papers pile up. Before classes start, this hour will be spent reviewing Japanese. Measurements Height: 5'9" [not expecting that one to change, but it's a measurement, so there it is] Weight: 190 Waist: 31 Hips: 43.5 Grading Each goal will be graded weekly & be worth 1/3 of that week's total grade. My final grade will be the average of all six weeks + 5 points extra credit if I complete my Life Goal. I need to make at least a C+ (75%) to pass the challenge. I used to say 70% was fine, but I got that last time, and felt like I really hadn't passed the challenge. So I'm upping the passing threshold. Diet - out of 10 points on a day-to-day basis. 4 points for cooking (1 for breakfast, 1 for lunch, 2 for dinner), 2 points for staying under 100g of carbs, 4 points for staying under 1500 calories. The week will be the average of my daily grades. Up in the Air: Percentage of classes attended each week. Back on the Road: Percentage of walks/runs completed each week. EXCEPTIONS FOR GRADING: Any workouts and their accompanying stretch scheduled for days that I am sick or injured are excused. HANGOVERS DON'T COUNT. If I have an interview, or a career fair during a class, it may be replaced by either CC or the abdominal 5 that day. Also, since classes dont start this week, I can replace the workouts with bodyweight workouts in my apartment until they do start. I will post my weekly grade every Sunday evening before bed, including my Life Quest grade for that week. Motivation At this point, I just want to get back to where I was. Once I'm there I can look forward again. I'm tired of moping around all the time and falling farther and farther behind in absolutely EVERYTHING. I'm tired of watching my hard-earned muscles melt back to flab. I'm tired of making excuses every time I order delivery or eat out. I want to feel good about where I'm at again and see myself make progress again. As for super-concrete motivation - I have rewards! Passing the challenge will earn me a workout clothes shopping spree! The amount will be based on my financial situation at the time. Right now, I could maybe afford a pair of socks, but maybe by the end of the challenge I'll have the money for something, haha. Attribute points will be assigned as follows, for a total of 15 possible points. DEX(max 3) - 1 point for doing light stretching before my workouts. Another point available by being able to sit cold splits by the end of the challenge. Final point for stretching on my rest days. STA(max 1) - 1 point for starting to run again. STR(max 2) - 1 point for completing at least 70% of my workouts, another point for completing 90-100%. CHA(max 2) - 1 point for every 5 pounds dropped (this will carry on from challenge to challenge. eg - if I lose 7 pounds this challenge, and then 3 next challenge, I will earn 1 CHA this challenge, and then another 1 CHA the next challenge for hitting the next 5 pounds.) I cannot gain more than 2 points each challenge, as that would mean I'm losing more than 2 pounds a week, which is not healthy. CON(max 3) - 1 point for maintaining my diet. 1 point for averaging at least 6 hours of sleep a night (use SleepCycle app to track). 1 point for not getting drunk more than once or twice a week. WIS(max 4) - 1 point for passing my Life Quest. Another point available for getting at least a 3.5 this semester. Another point achievable by hitting 4.0. Final point by finishing the book I'm on and starting another. Alright, I believe that's everything! Thoughts?

Week 5 PT: 80% Strength: 60% Diet: 68% Total: 69.33% Life Quest: 100% Week 6 PT: 72% Strength: 30% Diet: 85% Total: 62.33% Life Quest: 100% So I forgot to post after last week, so here's the past two weeks. ... Not too great. But on the bright side, I finally got my boot off!!! & I'm home with my family for the holidays! I still can't run... Not allowed to do that until I've had a full week pain-free, but... it's something So, final score for the challenge: 65.74% plus 5% for completing my Life Quest: 70.74% Well... that is just barely a pass, & only with the help of the Life Quest. I don't feel too great about it, because in reality that is actually pretty bad. A 70, and only with extra credit. I did pull off all As & Bs in my classes, so I'm going to give myself that little shopping spree for my GPA, but I don't really think I deserve the Mitmunk leggings. Without all the studying, I did fail the challenge. So I'll just level up without the reward. As for the stat points, the only ones I earned were 2 WIS. All in all, challenge kinda sucked. But, I did complete it, and hopefully I'll be able to start running again sometime during the next challenge. Past Weeks: Week 1 PT: 78% Strength: 60% Diet: 72% Total: 70% Life Quest: 57% Week 2 PT: 50% Strength: 60% Diet: 72.5% Total: 60.8% Life Quest: 100% Week 3 PT: 100% Strength: 50% Diet: 80% Total: 76.67% Life Quest: 100% Week 4 PT: 50% Strength: 66% Diet: 50% Total: 55.33% Life Quest: 100%

Week 4 PT: 50% Strength: 66% Diet: 50% Total: 55.33% Life Quest: 100% I lived! This past week was hell... I stayed sick until Wednesday, & I had all of my projects and papers due throughout the week. I didn't sleep at all Wednesday night to stay up and finish a paper, and barely slept Thursday night to finish my Japanese portfolio. Ugh. But it's over! Now all I've got is two finals and I'm done with the semester ^-^ But on the fitness side, I failed so hard... I'm going to have to do REALLY awesome now that classes are over if I want to end the challenge well... >.< Past Weeks: Week 1 PT: 78% Strength: 60% Diet: 72% Total: 70% Life Quest: 57% Week 2 PT: 50% Strength: 60% Diet: 72.5% Total: 60.8% Life Quest: 100% Week 3 PT: 100% Strength: 50% Diet: 80% Total: 76.67% Life Quest: 100%

Thanks, guys I think I'm on the mend... I say that tentatively, because although my voice sounds vaguely female again, I don't feel the need to chug Dayquil all day, and didn't need Nyquil to sleep last night, my fever doesn't want to leave me in peace. Maybe it'll be gone by tomorrow?

Week 2 PT: 100% Strength: 50% Diet: 80% Total: 76.67% Life Quest: 100% So the stress got to me - I've been really sick since about Wednesday. So the grading on this week (except for life quest. school doesnt stop for illness) is based off of the few days I wasn't dying gracelessly. Past Weeks: Week 1 PT: 78% Strength: 60% Diet: 72% Total: 70% Life Quest: 57% Week 2 PT: 50% Strength: 60% Diet: 72.5% Total: 60.8% Life Quest: 100%

Week 2 PT: 50% Strength: 60% Diet: 72.5% Total: 60.8% Life Quest: 100% Wow, so I actually failed this week. Last week was close, but this time it's actually a fail. But at least I'm studying every day... Let's see if it's enough to get me through the semester. :/ There's this week (which is just today and tuesday, the rest is thanksgiving break) & then next week, & then finals & thats it. Hopefully I'll get everything done... I'm actually already finished with one class - no final & my group was the first to present our final project, so thats one down at least... I really might fail Japanese if I can't get my portfolio finished though... the portfolio is 30% of our final grade & it keeps getting pushed to the backburner by projects in other classes with earlier deadlines. Also, I'm getting really depressed - my friends keep posting how they have jobs for after graduation... & I still haven't been interviewed once... ( Past Weeks: Week 1 PT: 78% Strength: 60% Diet: 72% Total: 70% Life Quest: 57%

11/19 PT: 50% Strength: 100% Diet: 70% Life Quest: 100% I'm so stressed out right now... even making sure that I do at least an hour every day (it's been more like all the hours every day this week though), I feel like I'm just not going to make deadlines... I'm going to bed at like 4am, and then lying awake too stressed to fall asleep. Last night I only managed to actually sleep for a single hour. I've been skipping meals and ordering delivery for others, and PLEASE DEAR GOD LET CLASSES END. I am about one more tight deadline away from just breaking down and crying. Also, I may as well cancel my WoW subscription because I haven't been playing this week anyways... Can't pretend I have the time. & I'm stupidly upset that I haven't been playing, even though I technically know that's a good thing. Gah. Rant over.

11/17 PT: 100% Strength: 0% Diet: 80% Life Quest: 100% 11/18 PT: 0% (oops) Strength: 0% (dammit) Diet: 100% Life Quest: 100%

11/16 Report PT: 50% Diet: 40% Life Quest: 100% Oops. I forgot to go get groceries, so I had two meals out, and just skipped the third. Basically, I only got points for calories... Going grocery shopping today instead. Also, I don't workout Sundays, so I didn't list strength. My 5 workouts a week SHOULD be all the weekdays, but I can do one on Saturday instead of one of the other days if I want. As for PT... I did the thing where I kept putting it off until suddenly I was going to bed and only had time for one. I really need to stop doing that. But I did finish my part of a big group project for one of my classes, so yay! I did studying on the weekend for the first time in forever! ^-^

Hello then, new fellows. I'm ElfiKay and I'm in recovery after breaking my foot. Until I get my peg off and my foot back, I'm pretty limited, but I'll be puttin as much effort into me work on the ship as I can! If ya would like to keep a weather eye on me progress, the thread is here: http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/56457-elfikay-recovers/

OMG GYRADOS!!! That's one of my favorites ^-^ Other top faves are Jolteon and Rapidash <3 <3 <3 Lol, glad to see I'm not the only Pokemon cross-stitcher. You should message/email/text/smoke signal me when you're working on it to motivate me to pick up mine, haha. As for the depression, you're not alone in it. I don't know how bad mine is, and how much is me just being self-absorbed and stuck in my own head, because I refuse to go to a doctor and get diagnosed (If it's not official, it's not real, right?), but I can commiserate with you on at least some level. (And support you on all levels! <3 ) Keep going you're doing great! )

A wooden thunk startles the crew and breaks the tense atmosphere. A battered little rowboat had knocked up against the side of the ship, manned by a weary, peg-legged lass. "Ahoy there! The sea didn't like the taste of me and has spat me back out! Permission to come back aboard?" She scanned the strange faces on the ship, only recognizing a few of her old mates. "Seems I've got an introduction to make if you'll take me."

So this week wasn't so great and I can definitely point fingers at one of the biggest reasons... New WoW expansion dropped I went from playing a few times a month to EVERY DAY. I need some way to manage how much time I spend geeking out on all the new stuff in it, because clearly I don't have the self control right now. In a few weeks, I'll be over how exciting the new content is and be back to my normal habits on it, but in a few weeks finals will already be over. I don't want to straight up cancel my subscription until class ends... any other ideas? Week 1 PT: 78% Strength: 60% Diet: 72% Total: 70% Life Quest: 57% Edit: I think I might start posting my grade for each day. I'll be less likely to go, "ehh, I'll make up for it tomorrow," if I know I have to come on here and say how bad I did. Thoughts?

Sounds like you're doing great! But definitely see if you can alter your schedule a bit to allow for more sleep - if you aren't getting enough sleep, your body won't be recovering as much as it should and you'll be more likely to hurt yourself.

So the doctor has okayed me walking around in the apartment without my boot! Showers just got a whole lot easier He still wants me to use it when I leave, but this is nice all the same. It also means that I was able to weigh myself for the first time since I broke my foot... I haven't gained back EVERYTHING I lost in the first challenge, but I still regained a lot of it... & now I'm depressed.

Subbed! You've been making great progress, excited to watch you keep on going in this challenge!

Subbed )

Sorry to see you had a rough time of it, Jazzy. Let's get back on the horse together. I'll be subbing your next challenge & cheering you on the whole way! (I won't drop out to mope this time, promise!)

New challenge is up. I'd meant to put it up this weekend, but then it turned out I had to pay for wifi at my hotel. Lolno. So here it is now! http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/56457-elfikay-recovers/

Introduction Hello, I'm ElfiKay! This will technically be my third challenge, even though I didn't finish the second! [You can see that train wreck here: http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/53587-elfikay-joins-the-assassins/ ] I broke my foot at the start of that challenge, and it still hasn't completely healed - though it's well on the way. Main Quest Refocus and recover. Goals 1. Physical Therapy: Do my physical therapy exercises twice a day. If my therapist changes anything, I'll update this goal to match. (Side note, my doctor recommends I take up swimming since it won't strain my foot and might even help strengthen it. I don't have a swimsuit other than a bikini or goggles or know the rules for my gym's pool, but I'm going to try to do that about once a week if I can get a hold of the above items) 2. Strength: Workout 5 days a week - pilates class twice a week, and Convict Conditioning for the other two workouts. Put some extra effort into arm workouts - crutches gave me some guns & I mean to keep them! 3. Diet: I let my eating go to crap while my foot was really bad for no reason other than self-pity, time to get that back on track. I'll do the same set up I did for the first challenge - 1500 max calories a day and all home-cooked meals. Life Quest So I'm dropping the cross-stitch quest I've been trying to get going on. Not because I'm giving up on it, but because something more important has come up - the end of the semester. During my ridiculous extended pity-party, I not only slacked on the diet, but on studies too, and now I'm SO BEHIND and there's only a month left. In the words of Illidan, I am not prepared. So, my Life Quest will be to do schoolwork/studying for AT LEAST an hour every single day until finals are over. And then, since the challenge goes longer than what's left of school, I want to use that hour to read every night before bed. I started doing that this summer, and stopped for, once again, no good reason. I pretty much spent the last two months doing nothing but moping, watching netflix, and playing xbox. Measurements Height: 5'9" [not expecting that one to change, but it's a measurement, so there it is] Weight: 173 Waist: 30 Hips: 42.5 Grading Each goal will be graded weekly & be worth 1/3 of that week's total grade. My final grade will be the average of all six weeks + 5 points extra credit if I complete my Life Goal. I need to make at least a C (70%) to pass the challenge. Physical Therapy - each day is the average of the twice a day PT exercises, each week is the average of the days. Strength - percentage of completed workouts. Diet - out of 10 points on a day-to-day basis. 4 points for cooking (1 for breakfast, 1 for lunch, 2 for dinner), 2 points for staying under 100g of carbs, 4 points for staying under 1500 calories. The week will be the average of my daily grades. EXCEPTIONS FOR GRADING: Any workouts and their accompanying stretch scheduled for days that I am sick or injured(in excess of the current injury, of course) are excused. HANGOVERS DON'T COUNT. If I have an interview, or a career fair during a pilates class, it may be replaced by either CC or the abdominal 5 that evening. The same applies to finals. I will post my weekly grade every Sunday evening before bed, including my Life Quest grade for that week. Motivation At this point, I just want to get back to where I was. Once I'm there I can look forward again. I'm tired of moping around all the time and falling farther and farther behind in absolutely EVERYTHING. I'm tired of watching my hard-earned muscles melt back to flab. I'm tired of making excuses every time I order delivery or eat out. I want to feel good about where I'm at again and be ready to start making progress again once my foot is totally healed. As for super-concrete motivation - I have rewards! Passing the challenge will earn me a pair of Mitmunk leggings. It's getting cold, and I'll need things like that once I start running again. (Plus they're awesome. I want the chainmail ones I think.) If I get a 3.5 or higher for the semester I can buy myself something worth up to $50. This can be from Amazon, Etsy, ThinkGeek, or I can just go shopping. Whatever I feel like at the time. Attribute points will be assigned as follows, for a total of 15 possible points. DEX(max 2) - 1 point for doing light stretching before my workouts. Another point available by doing some extra stretching on the days I don't workout. STA(max 1) - 1 point for swimming at least once a week. STR(max 3) - 1 point for completing at least 70% of my workouts, another point for completing 90-100%. Final point achievable by getting to Step Three on any of the Big 6 in Convict Conditioning. CHA(max 2) - 1 point for every 5 pounds dropped (this will carry on from challenge to challenge. eg - if I lose 7 pounds this challenge, and then 3 next challenge, I will earn 1 CHA this challenge, and then another 1 CHA the next challenge for hitting the next 5 pounds.) I cannot gain more than 2 points each challenge, as that would mean I'm losing more than 2 pounds a week, which is not healthy. CON(max 3) - 1 point for maintaining my diet. 1 point for averaging at least 6 hours of sleep a night (use SleepCycle app to track). 1 point for not getting drunk more than once or twice a week. WIS(max 4) - 1 point for passing my Life Quest. Another point available for getting at least a 3.5 this semester. Another point achievable by hitting 4.0. It's still possible if I really put my nose to the grindstone. Final point by finishing the book I'm on. Alright, I believe that's everything! Thoughts?

Okay, so I was going to put up my new challenge, but the new one isnt up yet cus extra long break? Oh well. So, foot update. I'm totally off crutches (though I keep them in my car just in case) & I start physical therapy this week. Yay. The doctor didn't specifically SAY that my foot has started healing, but I'm assuming it has, or he wouldn't have told me to start PT, right? Anyways, my challenge this go around is going to be based on getting me back on the horse. Not necessarily to start riding again, but just to get all saddled and mounted. I think my three goals will be to keep up with my physical therapy, refocus my diet (I got all pity-party and have let my eating go to shit lately), and either to start studying every day again (again, pity party stupidity = slacking in school) or to do strength workouts (Crutches have given me some pretty decent guns, I'd like to keep them). Now that that's all typed up, it makes sense to make the studying my Life Goal. So that's that! Thoughts? Side note - I'm going to be at BlizzCon this coming weekend! I'd love to meet up with some fellow Rebels if anybody else is going. Let me know

Hello again, friends. So, I'm not dead, just very broken and depressed. Towards the end of week 2, I went back to the doctor and was told I had to stay on crutches for a while. That's when I stopped logging on here. In the following weeks, my foot continued to have absolutely no progress. The doctor told me it was stabilized at least, but it wasn't healing at all. I have my next X-ray tomorrow, & if it has still shown no progress (after a month and a half since I broke it now), then we will have to discuss 'options'. Which I'm pretty sure translates to surgery. Also, they are starting to think I may have also sprained my ankle. To put the icing on the cake, I also got an infection & stepped on glass with my good foot, all in the past month. Basically, nothing is going well medically. But Jazzy emailed me last week asking up on me, and encouraged me to at least try to keep up some exercise in my upper body. That combined with the workout of using crutches every day means that my arms are stronger than they've ever been (which sort of makes me feel better about the fact that my left leg has atrophied A LOT). So that's where I am now. I may have failed this challenge by letting myself get wrapped up in my foot, but I'm going to come back for the next one. Tomorrow I find out how my foot is doing, and I'll design my next challenge around that. Most likely, I'll base my goals around diet, any physical therapy the doctors give me, and upper body strength. Not gonna lie, I'm still really upset about still not really being on my feet, since I was originally aiming for speediness in my fitness goals, but I'm going to try to not let this drag me down anymore. Thanks again to Jazzy for getting me back on my feet. Figuratively speaking, at least.

woah! thats some serious business, thanks!