caolan

Awesome!

I did week 7 day 3 today. I agree that the LMI's still seem a bit lame. Coming back to LMU's after a few weeks, it found them a lot easier to do with good form. I can see the effect this program is having on my strength. I did 12/12/12 on all exercises today.

Week 7 Day 2 this morning The Toyotas are still tough for me. I am close to failure by the end of both sets. Otherwise, this was a good workout. I did 5/12 on all sets, and added a plank and some hip raises to the end for good measure since I need to improve my core a lot.

Week 7, Day 1 It's been a few weeks since I have done so many reps of these exercises. My arms feel like rubber right now. I forgot how much I love ladders. Military Press - 70 Push-up - 70 Close-grip Push-up - 48 Seated Dip - 63

Challenge Wrap-up Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. I succeeded with this goal, averaging nearly an hour per day over the length of the challenge. I am really happy with this goal. +2 DEX, +2 STA Track all of my meals in MFP every day and finish under my net calorie goal each week. I configured MFP for a 750 calorie deficit, and finished under that plan for 5 out of the six weeks. Week 5 was epic - several thousand calories under plan. Week 6 was my poorest week - about 800 calories above plan. Overall, I am happy with this goal. Although week 6 was a bit of a disappointment, I saved the week by getting back on track for the last 3 days of the challenge. In the end, I finished the challenge 11 pounds lighter than when I started. +2 CON, +2 CHA Complete at least 4 weeks of the YAYOG PVP challenge. I completed 6 weeks of the YAYOG program, so I exceeded on this goal. +4 STR Process all of my 2014 photos. I processed some of my photos and got out shooting a couple of times, but I really did not make much progress on this goal. I will give myself 1/3 credit for this goal, so only +1 WIS, instead of my planned +3. +1 WISAll in all, this was a good challenge. I continued to make progress, and my eating and exercise habits continued for most days in the challenge. I also stuck to the earlier bedtime I put in place during the last challenge on most nights. I am happy to be six weeks and 11 pounds closer to my primary goals. I had to start replacing some of my clothes near the end of the challenge - my pants and belt sizes have dropped by 4 inches in the past two challenges. Thanks to my NF friends and PVP partners for helping to motivate me and keep me on track.

Week 6 Wrap-upExercise: I stuck to my exercise plans all week. 3 points for this goal. MFP: I tracked every day and finished the week about 800 calories over plan for the week. The start of the eek was poor, but I got it back together on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. 2 points for this goal. YAYOG: I did all 4 of the week 6 workouts and moved up the ladder. 3 points for this goal. Photography: No photography this week. 0 points for this goal. Total: 8 points this week. By itself, this week was only so-so, but my challenge is going to finish with an "A" because I did so well in the first 5 weeks, and didn't fall completely off the wagon in week 6.

Day 41: Friday Exercise - I walked for 25 minutes and did a 17 minute YAYOG workout. MFP - I tracked today and finished exactly on target. YAYOG - Week 6, Day 4 (core) was today. I am now done with week 6! Photography - No photography today. Day 42: Saturday Exercise - I rode my bike for 41 minutes and walked around an amusement park for several hours. I'll call that 30 minutes of exercise walking. MFP - I tracked today and finished 100 calories under plan. I am glad I finished on plan after my rough start to this week. YAYOG - No YAYOG today. Week 7 starts tomorrow. Photography - No photography today.

Squatting while brushing teeth is pretty funny. I guess whatever it takes to find time for your exercise is good. Congrats on all of your progress with YAYOG. It sounds like you have been doing great, and are now almost done with week 7. I am starting Week 7 either tonight or tomorrow morning, and I am feeling a bit daunted by the stories I am reading about it. I am also starting to think about the next challenge. One thought I have is to stop doing so many PVP and other challenges. I signed up for 3 PVP's and started doing the Rangers weekly mini-challenges, as well as my own goals and I started to get lost. I ended up dropping one PVP early in the cycle, and for my 20-in-10 PVP I am really only recording my weekly weight because I don't have time to keep up with everything. Let us know your plans. I will sub your next challenge, too, so I can keep up with your progress.

I'm sorry to hear the gym didn't work out. It sounds like the right equipment, but I would be very suspicious of any place that won't allow you to do a short-term trial. Even if you have to pay for it, a 1 or 2 week trial would be a good idea. Chicken and waffles really is amazingly good. It sounds like a very strange combination, especially if you include the sausage gravy in the recipe, but wow, does it ever taste great! MFP does not really like it very much, though. You should be really proud of the decline push-ups and the close-grip push-ups. They are both very hard, especially for people of our size. Great progress on that part of your goals! I don't know what it is about this challenge and the quiet message boards, but you are right. It seemed like from about the start of week 5 until the last day or two, the boards were all very quiet. Good luck planning your next challenge. I'll try to sub so I can keep up with what's going on.

LadyShello - If you are losing inches and feeling stronger, then you are making progress. I bet that there is no way you could have done 2 YAYOG workouts and then done your running on the same day 6 weeks ago. Even if the scale doesn't show it, that is progress. I know this is hard to accept. When I got back from my amazing hiking weekend last week and found that I had actually gained half-a-pound, I was really mad. I had several bad days early this week, because my motivation (particularly for eating according to plan) had just fallen away. I am now picking myself back up on the diet, and trying to finish strong because I know that I just need to be persistent and make a little bit of progress every day. Eventually, it will show on the scale again. Balance is important, because you (and I) have family responsibilities, too. One thing I have tried to do to make time for fitness without wrecking all of my family time is find a way to get the family involved. They have no interest in YAYOG, but I now do a daily walk with my wife in the morning. It's not high-intensity cardio, but it is exercise and it helps us start out our day together, which is really nice. We are also going out for family hikes once every week or two. This means the whole family spends a few hours together, has some fun, and gets exercise while doing it. If I can succeed in making exercise part of our regular family fun, I will have helped my family level up, too.

Cn3wton - Don't be too hard on yourself. If you set your goals low, then achieving them all doesn't really mean very much. I think Steve had a blog post recently about how we make the most progress when we push ourselves to our limits - even if you don't finish the extra set, the fact that you started that set and did a few reps makes more of a difference than the first set that was really easy. Your progress on your art sounds great. I am so glad you are progressing with that part of your life quest. Begin fit and healthy is important, but knowing what you want to do with your time once you get there is really, really important. I'd be happy to help test the new PVP.

I finished week 6 today. I subbed 60-second planks for the V-ups and 20-rep sets of hip raises for the Russian twists to protect my back. Otherwise I did 5/12 on all of the sets. Week 7 sounds like a killer. I'll see you guys there next week!

Day 36: Sunday Exercise - I bowled with my kids for about an hour. MFP says bowling burns a fair amount of calories, but I am not convinced. MFP - I tracked today and finished 200 over. Not a very good start to the week. YAYOG - No YAYOG today. Photography - No photography today. Day 37: Monday Exercise - I walked for 40 minutes and swam laps for 40 minutes. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 100 over. Still not doing so well on the calories this week. YAYOG - YAYOG rest day today. Photography - No photography today. Day 38: Tuesday Exercise - I walked for 40 minutes and did a 20 minute YAYOG workout. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 500 over plan. Uggh. Part of my problem this week is being in training, where I am making poor choices for snacks and lunch. I know better than this. YAYOG - Week 6, Day 1 (push) was today. Photography - No photography today. Day 39: Wednesday Exercise - I walked for 25 minutes and did a 20 minute YAYOG workout. MFP - I tracked today and finished 600 above plan. I am way out of sorts this week. My challenge for the rest of the week will be to get back on track. I probably can't get to zero for the week, but I need to finish this challenge with a few strong days. YAYOG - Week 6, Day 2 (legs) was today. Photography - No photography today. Day 40: Thursday Exercise - I walked for 25 minutes, swam laps for 36 minutes, and did a 20 minute YAYOG workout. MFP - I tracked today and finished 500 calories under plan. That is exactly what I needed after a few days of really poor eating. Now I need to finish this challenge with two more days that are on plan. I can do this! YAYOG - Week 6, Day 3 (pull) was today. Photography - No photography today.

Week 6 Update After taking a few days off from YAYOG so I could focus on my hiking trip, I have been back at it this week. Day 1 - Monday 5/12 on all exercises. The close grip push-ups seemed a little easier this week. I used a higher chair for the decline push-ups to add a little more difficulty to those. Day 2 - Tuesday 5/12 on all exercises. The toyotas are fun and they certainly seem to work a lot of muscles, but they are really exhausting. Day 3 - Wednesday 5/12 on all exercises. I did a little better on the assisted pull-ups this week. I positioned my chair under the tree a little better, so I feel like I did not use the chair to assist me quite so much this week. I still have a long way to go before I will be able to do an unassisted pull-up.

Week 5 Wrap-upExercise: I did so much exercise it is almost ridiculous. Four days of YAYOG, 7 hours of hiking, some swimming, walking, etc. Wow! 3 points for this goal. If my challenge scoring rules allowed assigning 5 points to one goal, I would assign them to this one this week. MFP: I tracked every day and finished the week almost 5,500 calories under plan because of my crazy exercise on Saturday and Sunday. 3 points for this goal. YAYOG: I did all 4 of the week 4 workouts and moved up the ladder. 3 points for this goal. Photography: I went out shooting twice while hiking. This was a good week for my creative side, although I didn't do any post work. 2 points for this goal. Total: 11 points this week. I am still right on track to earn an "A" for this challenge. All of that exercise left me with two really awesome MFP summaries. I mean really - who finishes 2,974 calories under plan for a single day? The really odd thing is that I actually gained 1/2 pound this week. Go figure. I'll chalk that up to strange things that a scale does sometimes, because I definitely was doing the right things this week.

Day 33: Thursday Exercise - I did 45 minutes of lap swimming in the morning (1,000 meters) and 40 minutes of walking in the evening (about 2.5 miles). MFP - I tracked today and finished right on target. YAYOG - No YAYOG today. Photography - No photography today. Day 34: Friday Exercise - I hiked in the mountains for 4 hours carrying a pack that weighed around 20 pounds. This was 8+ miles and 1,500 feet of elevation gain. MFP - I tracked today and finished nearly 3,000 calories below plan for the day. That sounds ridiculous but I burned about 3,600 calories hiking, and I did not try to eat them. YAYOG - No YAYOG today. Photography - I did a lot of photography today while hiking. My four hours of hiking time does not include time to eat and shoot; I was actually out for closer to six hours, but subtracted the time I was not moving from my exercise calculation. Day 35: Saturday Exercise - I hiked for just under 3 hours today with a 20-pound pack. This was a little more than 6 miles of hiking in the mountains, with more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 2,000 under plan. Similar to yesterday, I burned a lot of calories exercising - roughly 2,400. YAYOG - No YAYOG today. I plan to start Week 6 on Sunday. Photography - I took a bunch of photos while hiking today. Once again, my hiking time does not include the time I spent taking photos and eating lunch.

I set a PR today in the pool. I did a 1000m swim (mixed free, breast, and back strokes), which is definitely my longest single swim workout (up from my old best of 900m). I also got to 800m about 2 minutes faster than I have in any prior workout, so I guess I can say I set 2 PR's in one morning.

So I dove right in to my mini-challenge yesterday. I went out to lunch at a mediterranean-style restaurant and ordered grilled salmon kabob with rice, couscous, and a lot of vegetables. The good thing about this meal is that I had plenty of options to create a mixed "salmon plus something-I-actually-like" bite. The salmon didn't kill me, but I didn't finish the meal excited or in love with fish. I'll try to find another chance this week to incorporate something that lives in the water into my meals.

Day 32: Wednesday Exercise - I did a 20 minute YAYOG workout plus an extra 10 minutes of core exercises. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 75 over plan. I expect to be well under for the next few days, because I have a lot of exercise planned for the weekend, so I am not worried. YAYOG - Week 5, Day 4 (core) was today. Core is not my strong suit. I need to do some more core work throughout the eek to catch up. Photography - No photography today.

I finished week 5 tonight. This was not a good workout for me. I need to do more core work in between YAYOG core workouts. Superset 1 x2 V-ups 5, Russian Twists 4. I was terrible at these and felt a popping sensation in my back, so I stopped them. Superset 2 x2 Hyperextensions 5, Swimmers 12. Superset 3 x2 Supermans 5, Leg lifts 12. I finished them, but not without some real lower back discomfort thanks to superset 1. I did some other core work to make up for my weak sets: 2 sets of hip raises 4 30-second planks 2 sets of pointers 5 minutes of back stretches

I am a bit behind reporting on my Week 5 progress. Here goes: Day 29: Sunday Exercise - I walked for 30 minutes, did a 20 minute YAYOG workout, and paddled a canoe with my kids for 30 minutes. MFP - I tracked today and finished 20 over. Close, but not the best start to the week. YAYOG - Week 5, Day 2 (legs) was today. Photography - I took some photos of birds and scenery at a wildlife refuge this afternoon. Day 30: Monday Exercise - I walked for 30 minutes and practiced my karate forms for 10 minutes. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 70 under plan. YAYOG - YAYOG rest day today. Photography - I did some initial triage on my wildlife refuge photos and cleaned off several memory cards to make sure I had captured and backed up all of my keepers for the past few months. Day 31: Tuesday Exercise - I walked for 45 minutes and did a 20 minute YAYOG workout. MFP - I tracked today and finished about 300 below plan, in part because of the extra walking. I was tempted to eat some of the calories tonight, but decided I didn't really want anything else to eat, so I am banking them. YAYOG - Week 5, Day 3 (pull) was today. Photography - No photography today.

Congrats, Dasein. Great work again. My proposed side quest for this week is to pick a healthy food that you don't like and find a way to include it in your meals at least once. As a bonus, post details or a recipe to share. The food should be "healthy" (I realize there are multiple ways to define that word). It should be appropriate for the diet you are following - paleo, vegetarian, or any other diet that currently suits you. Be a little creative if you can - if you don't like the food, you probably don't want to eat it plain. My big challenge is fish. I really can't stand seafood, but I know I could improve my diet by eating fish now and then. So my goal is to eat fish at least once this week - and like it!

I did the Week 5 Day 3 workout this morning. I have some work to do on all three sets. Superset 1 x2 Assisted Pull Ups 5, Let Me Ins 12. I did my Assisted Pull Ups on a large tree branch, but it was a little too low. I used my legs a little too much. I'll need to find another place to do them for Week 6. Superset 2 x2 Let Me Ins with 4 second hold 5, Towel Curls 12. I still haven't mastered the towel curls. I feel like my shoulders are doing half the work on these. Superset 3 x2 Let Me Ups 5, Let Me Ins 12. The LMU's were tough - I had to try hard near the end to not use my hips to move me half way up.

You're doing great work. Sometimes we all have an off day, or maybe your muscles were still tired from some other activity yesterday. Keep it up!

Good job on finishing week 5. I hope your wrist improves quickly.