theophilus

Ahoy! Late to the party, but better late than never, right? The optimism at the start of my last challenge quickly deteriorated into bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms as the stress of finals and studying for the bar was just a teensy bit more intense than I expected. Ok, it was way more intense. I was pretty miserable. But I dragged myself across the finish line and took the bar. And then the funniest thing happened. Instead of eating like garbage and drinking too much because I was stressed about the bar, I ate like garbage and drank too much to celebrate being done with the bar. So odd! Amidst all this, I weighed in at my heaviest ever, ran less than ever, was in a rough spot mentally, and just generally felt like garbage. So now that the bar is behind me, and I don’t start work at my firm for another 8 weeks, I literally have nothing else to do until then but focus on my own health. (Well not literally on account of being a father and all, but nothing academically or professionally.) Still going for simplicity here because I want to be successful also also because I fully expect to be short on free time when I start work and I want something easy to maintain. Goal 1: Exercise - Run on odd number days, any distance - Resistance band training on even number days - Rest on Sundays Goal 2: Food - Intermittent Fasting, eating window from noon - 8pm - No alcohol except for date nights with the wife Goal 3: Mental Health - 10 min meditation, five days a week - Intermittent Fasting on the phone, access hours noon - 8pm

Lost my way since the start of the challenge (stress monster, etc.), gained a few pounds, lost some of them, currently at +0.8 from the initial weigh-in. Refocusing on IF to redeem these last few weeks.

[posted to wrong forum!]

Setting aside my tardiness I’m off to a fine start. Ran 2 mi Monday, did about 2.5 hrs of bar prep. Tuesday: no running but did IF and another 2 hours of studying. No meditation today though, because it’s the end of the day now and I’ll just fall asleep if I try.

I did it! I finished law school! I want to feel: But I still mostly feel: I'm completely exhausted and feel kinda burnt out to be honest, but I'm sure that as I begin to catch up on sleep I'll be able to better process this accomplishment and feel gratitude for what this last three years has meant. The immediate difference, however, is now that I have some more time on my hands I can refocus on my health and running. Goal 1: Meditate 10 minutes per day Bumping this up to slot #1 this time. I have a new therapist that really emphasizes mindfulness practice. Which is great because when I do it I really feel the benefits. Goal 2: 10k training Haven't picked a race yet, but I want to get a 10k in this fall. Going to start training with this challenge. Start with 3x running per week, then start an actual plan at some point. Goal 3: Consistent Intermittent Fasting Lost this completely over the past few weeks. I feel so much better when I follow IF consistently, so I'm bringing it back. (Exception: I have family coming to town for graduation in a couple weeks, and most--if not all--bets are off. I'll try to be smart, but there's no guarantees.) Goal 4: Bar Prep I really want to get ahead of this before my kids finish school next month so I have more time with them later in the summer. Shooting for 4-6 hours per weekday, 2-3 per weekend day.

Well, that was rough. Time to rinse and repeat this challenge next time. Finals are done Friday, so I'll actually have a little mental capital to put towards the challenge.

Things just not clicking this challenge. And that's ok. I've got a metric shit-ton of work to do for finals while continuing to balance family responsibilities, registering for the bar, doing some research with a professor, trying to find a new apartment, and planning for the summer. I had basically discarded the challenge up till yesterday, falling into my usual all-or-nothing mindset and being super hard on myself for being in the "nothing" camp. Then I decided to do a quick bodyweight workout yesterday and felt a bajillion times better. So here are my revised goals for the next couple weeks: - Eat more veggies (when I can) - Run or workout (when I can) - Meditate (when I can) - Don't stay up too late working (when I don't have to) Modest as all get-out, but should allow me some modicum of success between now and the next challenge.

Yeah, bit quiet for sure. This week-ish has been batty. Mixed bag so far: Running has been my best category. Logged ~12.5 miles so far, going to get out for another 3-4 later this afternoon. This is pretty much on track for where I want to be. Strength training has been a drag, only done two workouts so far. IF has been a mess, very inconsistent with that. Same with booze, had a glass of wine a couple nights in a row. Meditation has been ok, a few decent sessions. I started listening to "The Stoic Way" series on WakingUp, and I'm really digging this approach as a supplement to focused meditation time. Really good exercises to do throughout the day that don't require me to set aside chunks of time for meditation. Screen time has been a disaster.... I think a reset is in order? Yeah, let's do that.

Gah! Completely forgot about my strength training goal! I'll add it to the original post, but gonna keep going 2-3x/week with the bodyweight stuff. Yesterday was decent: got out for a short run, kept IF, didn't drink; screentime was mixed, meditated but definitely dozed off.

I was with you up until all those u's at the end. Then my yankee brain just exploded. 'zactly. There was something that was just too logically inconsistent for me to use my screen to try to manage screen time. I think I'm stuck with an app for meditation at least for a while though. Getting to a place where I can do unguided meditation is going to take quite some time for me. But I did rearrange my apps to foreground the actually helpful/good-for-me apps (alarm, maps, Waking Up, Nike Running) and exiled my other apps to later pages. That's redirecting my attention and helping limit my time a bit.

Amazing goals, what a huge accomplishment that would be. Following!

Week 0, Day 1 Glorious weather in New England yesterday, got out for a lunchtime 4-miler. Kept IF and no booze. No meditation though. Screen time was a bit out of hand, but I only devised my goal at the end of the day so I'll give myself a free pass for yesterday. Things are looking much better so far today.

I didn't even realize this was a thing! [*Theophilus adds this as zero week goal to challenge*] Looks like a great challenge and you seem to be off to a great start. Wishing you swift healing!

Back to basics. Nothing fancy. Totally lo-fi. (Challenge title comes from a line in this song, one of my perennial running mix favorites:) So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek dig at the self-important, well-to-do, esoteric hipsters of the ever-gentrifying Greenwich Village... I guess that's what passes for inspiration 12 months into this mess, but I'm going old school for my goals and my tracking system this week, trying all I can to get off my phone and onto paper. Running Keep making progress to 270 miles by July. I lost steam at the end of the last challenge, so now I need to log 59.5 miles by the end of this challenge to stay on track. That's just over 10 miles a week counting week zero; I can do that. I'll probably do 3-5 runs a week in the 2-5 mile range. Eating/Drinking Sub-goal A: When I do intermittent fasting, it really works, so I'll do it again. Back to doing it consistently each day, eating between noon and 8 PM, fasting the rest of the day. Looking for full compliance, will consider it a success at 90% (missing <4 days). Sub-goal B: No booze for the next 5 weeks. Adding this one because I've felt like shit the last few times I've had even 1-2 drinks. Again, aiming for 100%, will take 90% (sober all but 4 days). Meditation Renewed my Waking Up subscription last week, which means I've been at this off-and-on for over a year now. Using the motivation gained by having to shell out to renew my subscription to refocus on this goal a bit: just do some meditation each day. It'll probably be guided most days. Aiming fro 100% here too, but will take 80% (all but 8 days). Screentime This is my white whale this year. Started last challenge strong but need to bring it down more. My goal is no days with greater than 2 hours on my phone, and a weekly screen-time average of less than 90 minutes. Finally, I'm going old school for my tracking this go-round. I'll still have the fancy spreadsheets and whatnot, but I've made an insert for my daily planner to log each of my major goals. I'm tying to start my day with this at my bedside to orient my day. And this should keep my goals at the forefront:

Weighed in at 170.7, which I’m happy with considering I went pretty off the rails this weekend. Good starting point and looking forward to breaking 160 for the first time in years by the end of this thing.

I started exploring meditation after my therapist recommended it as a way to deal with some anxiety and identity issues, mostly to combat a lot of really unhelpful and unhealthy narratives that are constantly running in my head. I find meditation to be helpful to the extent it helps me "quiet the thinking mind" as the Headspace guy calls it. Or, as Sam Harris talks about it, cutting through the "illusory self." But I think those are related to dealing with stress too, because for me at least, I find that my stress ratchets up more from my reaction to stressful events than the events themselves. As for the timing, I like to do it in the morning because once my day gets going, it's hard to find time until the very end of the day. I really like the idea of a mid-afternoon "reset" though, so I may have to give that a try. Glad to hear from another NF meditator, and I hope you're finding meditation helpful!

I'm going 12 for 12 here. Same basic approach as last time: intermittent fasting, running, strength training. But I'm also going to cut booze this time around. I haven't been drinking much lately (once or twice a week), but when I do it's always after my IF window closes, and I always feel like garbage the next morning, even after 1-2 drinks. (Getting old sucks I guess???) I'm also not going to log calories this time unless things stall/regress. It'll be my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency tool. I've logged long enough that I have a fairly decent sense of what and how much I can eat and still be good. If I start logging, I tend to fall into an all or nothing mindset. ("Forgot to log breakfast? F*ck it, I'll eat a whole pizza for lunch.") Alright, let's do this!

Joined late, but still managed to make some decent progress, even if I did fall short of the 10lb mark: Week 1: 177.6 Week 2: 176.2 Week 3: 174.1 Week 4: 173.2 Week 5: 172.8 Week 6: 172.2 Week 7: 171.0 Week 8: 170.2 Week 9: 170 Week 10: 169.4 Week 11: 169.7 Hit a really good stride during the middle of the challenge where I was running a lot and tracking my food. Let that slip as the stress monster grew over the last few weeks of the challenge, but still pleased overall with my progress. Looking forward to the next edition here for some fresh motivation and determination.

Bit of a mess the past week, busy as all get out. Running and IF took the biggest hits. Went a full week without any running, save one attempt on Sunday with the dog who just wasn't having it, so I called it after a half mile. Finally got out there again today to enjoy the gorgeous weather! (Hope you were able to enjoy it too, @Xena!) Had a shit morning so I needed a long lunchtime run, was really gonna push it and go for a 10k. My glitchy app stopped tracking for a bit and I ended up out over 5k before turning around and logged a full 7 miles. (Sorry for the metric/imperial switcharoo again @18ck, but I have no idea how many kms that is. Haha.) That's my longest run in years, so I'll thank the technology gods for that one, even as I cursed them up the hill at four miles. Cleared my current level on the bodyweight workout. I'll level up this weekend just as soon as I can feel my legs again. Meditation has been mixed. Trying it more, which mostly means I'm dozing off trying to meditate given how little sleep I've been getting. Methinks a sleep goal next challenge? Anyhow, I'll have to sort out cumulative progress another time because I have an paper due tomorrow and I've procrastinated long enough,

Wednesday 3/3 Good day today. Held the line on IF. Got out for a run. It looked warmer out than it was and it was windy as hell so I was underdressed and froze my arse off. They're also filming the new Clooney/Affleck flick on my usual running route, so I had to do a brief detour. Hoped to at least get a celeb sighting for my trouble, but alas... Screen time was very meh. Did meditation but was quite distracted throughout. Thursday 3/4 Woke up really early to try to snag a COVID vaccine appointment for Mrs. Theophilus when they dropped the new slots today. Success! I'm not eligible yet, but at least we'll have one shot in the household by this weekend. The early wakeup set me on a good path for the day: got a bunch of reading done, screen time is way down for the day, and have kept IF so far (still have dinner to go, but will definitely be done by 8). Meditation was good; I think I'm at the stage where I'm actually able to acknowledge the thoughts as thoughts. Up till now, I've been in the "don't know what you don't know" camp, and now I'm having more of those "oh my gosh I'm just thinking ALL the time." My understanding is that this somehow represents progress. Healthy dinner ahead, and then a bodyweight workout before I start in on my trademark law midterm tonight... Bleh. (tm)

Yeah, I'm really wary of going too hard too fast on something so new to me still. With running, I have a pretty good sense of my limits. I know when and how hard I can push without risking injury but still make gains. But I'm more than content keeping it slow and steady with the strength training until I have a better handle on those sorts of things. Perhaps I could be making faster progress, but I'm still happy with how things are going. Hope to have the same success you're having with this approach!

Kinda a crazy week-ish since my last update. Here's where we are: Running: Got out three time last week and hit the 9 mile mark for the week. Screentime Meh; up about 6% from my first week, still way better than the baseline Meditation: Kinda meh; Did 3 sessions last week; two so far this week. IF: Spotty compliance, maybe about half the days? Went on a real snack bender over the last 48 hours: early morning cereal, late night pastries, the whole deal. Looking for a bit of a reset this week to avoid apathy and just letting this challenge peter out. And a princess bride gif, apropos of nothing:

Down a meager 0.2 lb this week. Makes sense tbh. Kept up with my runs and workouts but just kinda let the wheels fall off food-wise. Still almost on track to drop 10 lb by the end, so I'm going to refocus and reset for the final two-ish weeks.

I'm intentionally taking it pretty slow to protect an injury from a few years back, so I'm definitely not going to push too hard (or pull too hard, I s'pose). That being said, I feel like I'm getting quite a bit stronger and am dropping some weight at the same time, so I think at least negatives are in the realm of possibility this challenge.

Ok, it's really quite simple actually. You see, there was this guy... and... um... well, he decided that... er... um... Yeah I got nothing.