Dusk

We are so close, Companion!! Just 6 more days! YOU GOT DIS!!!!

AWESOME!!!! How'd it go??

Week 6 is off to a good start so far! Food today was pretty awesome (except maybe the yogurt I had for breakfast - who knows what's in it - but it's cheap, so I'll go with it for now). I'm gonna have some bean soup for dinner, cos it's what mom made, but I don't consider beans quite as evil as bread anyway. Plenty of walking around between classes. Read my Bible in a bit of free time before one of my classes, so I don't have to worry about getting to bed time and realizing "Oh shoot I haven't done that yet but now I can't keep my eyes open I guess I'll just go to sleep". Need to get on the ball with homework, and internship applications. I have submitted one so far. I had planned to have four done by this point. *sigh* Hopefully some of the impending due dates will push me a little! Also, call me a dirty hippie if you wish, but I'm starting a primal social experiment. Starting today (9 Feb) I am only going to wash my hair/skin/hands/teeth with water. No soap, no shampoo, no icky chemicals. I've stopped using soap already quite some time ago (it's actually helped my acne and skin dryness significantly), so now I'm going full throttle into the no-soap zone. The social experiment part of the ordeal is this: I want to see if anyone comments on it, and how long it takes for them to do so. From what I've read, after a brief transition period your body starts functioning like it's supposed to in terms of oil regulation and stuff (which I've observed already with my face) so if anyone comments it will likely be in the first few weeks. I'll likely be wearing lots of hats during this time! But I really want to see whether I can make the transition sneakily, or whether it will be obvious enough that people will comment about it. I'm going to do it anyway - I'm just curious how observant people are. If anyone has done this before and has any tips, I'd love to hear them! If you have questions or think I'm plain crazy, you can feel free to ask me about it - I'm happy to answer all your questions!

Week 5 is complete! We're almost finished, you guys!!!!! Goal / Week Grade / Average Grade Goal 1: 3 workouts/week: 66.7% B - 93.3% A Goal 2: Eating more: 90% A - 92% A Goal 3: Moving everyday: 85.7% B - 89.42% B Goal 4: Reading Bible: 71.4% C - 82.84% B WEEK AVERAGE: 78.43% CHALLENGE AVERAGE: 89.39% B

Do eeet! Read the boooks!

Thanks alienjenn for the advice! Dunno why I had to make it so complicated for myself. Rurik: The book series is a young-adult series, but I wouldn't call it 'young adult in nature', at least in the way I take that to mean. It's not a 'childish' series. It's got adventure and danger and war and death, and I find it quite thrilling and moving. It's even got a touch of (appropriate-for-small-children) romance here and there, but it's not the center of the plot, which I like. (All of this said, I am about 5 years old inside, so perhaps I am thrilled by less mature literature than yourself.) Give it a go and see if you like it! Worst case, if you don't you can return it to the library. (If you do like it, there are 12 books in the series! Plenty to feed your imagination for a goodly while. ) You make a good point, too, even though it wasn't directed at me... Rangers really are a cross-disciplinary guild, and though its described as a mix of Warrior and Scout, why can it not be a mix of other things as well? That makes more sense with the way I characterize Rangers, anyway - they pretty much just train in whatever they deem important to their particular mission/work/etc. Thank you for explaining it this way! Looks like we'll be guildmates after all, eh?

Like alienjenn, I've fallen in love with the rangers of LoTR, as well as another book series called The Ranger's Apprentice which I rant and rave about anytime rangers are mentioned. (Sorry not sorry ) So up until about last week I thought for certain I was gonna be a Ranger. But lately I've been having a bit of a crisis, in that I think my fitness goals line up more with the assassin group.... but in my mind, the assassin skills are necessary for rangers too! So it's like, where do I draw that line between the two? What do I do?? I want to be a ranger but I want to be an assassin but I want to be a ranger but I want to be an assassin! And in this way the cycle of uncertainty continues. I'm still pondering whether to pick one and just live with the fact that my goals are slightly different, or to switch every challenge or what... maybe I'll do a couple challenges in each and see where I fit better? Idk? Advice, anyone?? *flails in a panic*

Hey nice going! Can you believe we're almost done with week 5 already? The challenge is almost over already! My challenge is going pretty well, too, though the last couple weeks haven't been as good as the first few were. But imma keep going, cos all progress is good progress. I hate running as well. It's very boring. Have you looked into other forms of cardio? I've quite fallen in love with jump roping of late (Though it's gonna take some practice to keep the rope from getting caught on my feet!). I also like going on long bike rides or hikes as opposed to running on a treadmill. Maybe once it warms up you can give those things a go?

Sooo, I haven't done the squats yet. *sigh* I'm gonna do my strength workouts today and tomorrow, I guess. I'll be a little easy on myself since, by my innate ability to procrastinate, I left myself with only two days for two strength workouts. Instead of jump roping, I went to my little brother's school dance last night, with him and my mom. We danced our butts off! I think that counts for my sprint day, don't you? It was pretty intense, and my heart was pounding. Especially when Gangnam Style came on, because that's one of the only songs I know an actual dance to. The rest of the time I was pretty much just jumping around like an idiot. Yesterday (the 6th) was my cheat day. I've decided to make one day per week a specific cheat day, to make it easier on myself, because I end up cheating too much if I just have a rough idea of "80%" in my head. So that was delicious. Homemade pazole, gluten-free cornbread (I've at least got my mom on the gluten-free bandwagon now! Soon, I will bring her to the dark side of the Food Pyramid xD MUAHAHA), and cake. Mmm. I weighed myself this morning, since I'm coming off my "moon sickness" and am not horrendously bloated anymore, and I've lost another 3 pounds! Yay! I know weight isn't entirely important, and I'm trying very hard to not let it get obsessive, but since my stomach still hangs over my jeans, I know it's a good indicator at this point in my journey. I'm gonna start hanging up pictures that inspire me on my bedroom mirror. Namely, awesome kick-butt fictional characters that I want to emulate! Altair Ibn-La'Ahad, Peggy Carter, Will Treaty, Aragorn... etc etc etc. Maybe if I look at all their combined epicness more often, it'll motivate me to push myself harder. I can pretend they're yelling at me and giving me scornful looks when I don't try hard enough.

Woof, I've been busy lately. My professors are assigning so much homework, and combined with my innate ability to procrastinate, it seems like the work never ends. So, quick update, since I've missed several days. This week is going really well so far! I'm eating mostly good food (except for a piece of Turkish delight I had today; does that count as candy, d'you think?), walking every day at school, and I've only missed one day of Bible reading (really I shouldn't miss any, but I couldn't keep my dang eyes open anymore). Tonight I'm gonna do my strength workout and incorporate some bodyweight squats back in! Yaaay! I'll be wearing my knee brace just in case, and going slow and easy the first few to make sure my form is good and that it wont hurt my knee. Tomorrow will be jump-rope sprint day. I'll check in again later to let y'all know how the squats go!

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT Work out: [x] Eating: [-] I ate enough, calorie-wise, but it was pretty much mostly bad. Dangit, Superbowl. Moving: [ ] Bible: [x] Week 4 is complete! The results are in: Goal / Week Grade / Avg Grade 1) Exercise: 100% A -- 100% A 2) Eat more, eat clean: 85% B -- 92.5% A 3) Move: 85.7% B -- 90.35% A 4) Bible reading: 85.7% B -- 85.7% B Week average: 89.1% B Challenge average: 92.13% A

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN I tried out my new jumprope today, doing 1 minute on, 1 minute off for 12 minutes per an idea from Mark's Daily Apple about finding ways to sprint during winter. It went pretty well! I suck at jump roping though xD I don't think I've done so since middle school, so it'll take some practice to get it to STOP WRAPPING AROUND MY FEET ARGH. Also, I came down really hard on my foot at one point, so my foot and ankle are kinda sore now. Gonna have to be extra conscious of my feet next time I give it a go, and make a conscious effort to tread lightly. I heard about cold-brewed coffee at some kind of organic hippie food show at my school (I kid, I love organic food, even though it's cost prohibitive for me personally, I think its great), so I tried out a similar idea today by sticking a tea bag in my bottle of cold water. It's great! Takes a bit longer to steep, but the tea is much less bitter when its done this way (just like cold-brew coffee), and now I don't have to stick to just plain water (which, as much as I love it, can get boring). We don't often have lemons around the house to flavor water with, but we have plenty of tea Also, another side note: check it, guys! I discovered some motivation in my MyFitnessPal app! This is my weight ever since I started using MyFitnessPal. My long-engrained Conventional Wisdom was in its death throes in that plateau section in the middle; I had heard about primal eating but wasn't ready to try it yet. I really, really like graphs. Especially because, like I've remarked on a few other peoples' challenge threads, it's hard to see changes day to day, but when you see something like this, it makes it apparent that changes are happening even if you can't see them. You can see the end of that plateau is sometime in November; that whole segment of the graph is the heaviest I've been in my life (I know, not bad really, but my health has been a slow and sneaky decline, so I had time to turn that particular freight train around), and that's also when I started eating Paleo. It's kinda crazy; all the calorie counting I did with the app before, all the watching what I ate and reducing portion sizes did nothing, but when I started eating paleo, BAM. Pretty awesome. (Plus I can eat as much of the paleo food as I want to, which is awesome because I LOVE FOOD) (That said, I still try not to overindulge too often xD) I've met all my goals for the day except Bible reading, but I expect that will get done, and the eating-more part because it's still the middle of the day but otherwise I'm pretty much set for today! Huzzah.

Yuuuuuukiiiiiiii~! Just checking in. How is your challenge going?

DAY TWENTY-FIVE: Everything but reading my Bible. I couldn't keep my eyes open by the time I actually remembered. DAY TWENTY-SIX: Today was awesome!! I ate pretty well throughout the day, and my efforts were rewarded by a last-minute trip to Hu Hot with my best friend. Unlimited meat-and-veggie stir fry?? COUNT ME IN! Oh, I ate like a pig. It was delicious. And for "dessert", I got a bowl of just veggies, put some orange slices on it, and once it was all cooked and delicious I put shredded coconut on top. Mmmm - it was one of the best meals I think I've eaten all week. I ate way too much, of course, as is usually the case with all-you-can-eat joints, but it was all good-for-me stuff, so I'm not worried. All my other goals for this day were met. I finished Exodus, which is cool, even though I'm technically behind in my reading from the days last week and this week that I've missed. Also mom picked up a jump-rope for me, so I'm gonna try doing some Tabata-esque jump rope sessions for my sprint days, until it's warm and not-icy enough to sprint outside again. We'll see how DAY TWENTY-SEVEN goes!!

DAY TWENTY-FOUR Eating: [meh] I cheated WAY too much today, but there was, like, NOTHING I could eat at Wednesday church, and I didn't particularly feel like going hungry. Soooo I may have had pizza and cookies. *facedesk* It's bad too, because I have awoken the Sugar Beast, and he is clamoring for MOAR COOKIES. I'll have to be extra strict for the remainder of the week to tame him once more, and stay within my 80/20 cheat allowance. Moving: [x] Bible: [x] Workout: [x]

Hey, good for you! I'm happy to see new victories every time I come on here! Keep at it, my friend. You are on your way to awesomeness.

DAY TWENTY-THREE Eating: [x] Moving: [x] Bible: [x] Tried to do my strength workout, but I was really stiff and tight, so I decided I'd try again the next day. Didn't want to hurt myself. (Again. Stupid knee. It's almost better now, though. I think perhaps next week I can start working squats back in.) (Also, I'm having way too much fun putting in random colored text. xD)