SpiralGalaxy

Hey! Let me add my hugs along with others. It sounds like you've been through some dark times--but you're still making progress on your life. Go you!

All I can say is--Dude, that sucks. We're here and pulling for you!

Thank HN, I think I'm going to be down to visualizing those pull-ups a little longer. My cold turned into a sinus infection, and I could barely talk this morning (esp. annoying when half of my normal morning routine involves reading books that the geekling brings me. Today I had to put my foot down and refuse to read Fox in Socks in its entirety. Touch & Feel books were substituted.) AND my in-laws are coming in tomorrow, so exercise time will be even more limited. :-( STILL! I've had no trouble sticking to the diet routine even with all these bumps, I think some of my habits have permanently shifted. And I've got antibiotics now, so that should help. AND, between the cold fatigue & generous helpings of NyQuil, I've been nailing the 7 hours of sleep part of the Nerdi Clause challenge. ;-) So there's a silver lining at least.

Kids are a great excuse to get outside & get moving, if they're willing to cooperate. Any local parks or playgrounds around? Travel's rough, but give yourself some leeway and eat right when you can. You can do it! ETA: Go you for getting out and running!

Thanks HN! Bad news: I've been totally laid low by a cold that the geekling brought home from daycare. Him: slight fever, lots of runny nose, running around happy & cheerful. Me: Hit by a mack truck. So exercise? Not so much. Was shaky just taking a shower yesterday. I'm worried that I won't make my "1 pull-up" part of the challenge. :-( Good news: Through all of this I've been die-hard about eating mindfully. And I officially weigh less than I did before I got pregnant! My belt is on the lowest notch, my size 6 jeans are really loose, and I haven't been feeling deprived and whiny about eating. It helps that I've given myself permission to get good quality food to replace the junk food. I still have yummy things, they just take a little more time and money to put together. But it seems to have seriously paid off! They're not kidding when they say diet is 80% of the equation. I don't think I'll have too much trouble continuing these habits from this challenge forward to the new year.

OK, so I did the 3 hour intro to Move Natural workshop yesterday, and it was awesome! It overlaps with parkour, but more emphasis on movements that are natural to humans (proper lifting, throwing, carrying, etc.) and less on vaulting and running. So over three hours I did: rolling, many kinds of crawling, squatting sits, balance, lifting, carrying, throwing & catching (all with either 15-20 lb medicine balls or sandbags), balancing while doing a fireman's carry, jumping, landing, hanging from a bar, hanging from a bar one handed, moving sideways along a bar, traversing a bar while hanging from it with arms & legs, etc. Wow! I was very happy to keep up with it all the way. I'm really feeling it today, esp. in the quads, but I'm so grateful for all the planks/pull-up/squat work I've been doing since the start of the challenge. All of which is my excuse for not doing more push-ups for the demon-fighting challenge, sorry Nuala! Some things from the class that I want to work on in the future: get comfortable sitting in a squat with my feet flat for an extended period of time. Be able to pull myself up to having feet on pull-up bar without walking them up the supports. Balancing while carrying an off-axis load or while squatting. Jumping & landing with accuracy and lightness. Really low crawls keeping my body off the ground, and using hands instead of elbows. Anyway, it was a ton of fun, and I'm really happy with how much I was able to do. Other than that I'm on track for my goals: eating was good aside from one ill-advised late-night snack ($0.25 penalty, bringing me up to $4 for the challenge). I made tortillas again and made bean burritos for dinner last night. Oh! And I went to a Christmas party and didn't have any snacks--had a big early dinner before going. I felt a little bad though--I went to a restaurant with my son. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and ate that, while giving him about half the french fries (I didn't have any fries myself). Same thing with goldfish crackers--it feels weird to give him things that I've decided not to eat myself. But I did make him steamed carrot and sweet potato for dinner that night, so it's not like he's only getting crap. Anyway: good weekend. I'm taking today off from exercise to recover a bit, but I'm hoping to add some more reps in for the demon fighting challenge this week!

Thinking good thoughts for you on the new job!

When I was 15 I set my New Year's resolution (get on the podium in a fencing tournament) and achieved it in 3 weeks. After that for some reason I felt like I'd "conquered" New Years Resolutions, and I never made one again.

I'm with Elastigirl. I'm seeing some kind of blue plush monster for some reason, maybe like a more sane version on an Olympic mascot.

Thanks EG! My husband is a really good role model for me in this respect; I think he's a 5-gallon + donor by now. Also, my work has regular blood drives, which makes it super easy to remember when to donate. Well, things were good and bad yesterday. Good: even though I was dragging in the evening, I managed to get my workout in. I said to myself: I don't need to break any records, I just need to get some exercise in. So I did, and I did better than I thought I would, even with adding in some push-ups to the Demon challenge. The Bad: at work the lunch I brought in was just too darn small, and I succumbed to vending machine temptation. $1 for the Bad Charity. This does not derail me or mean I'm a bad person! I set a $10 limit on this challenge, and I'm still under $4 after 4 weeks! Besides, while I admit that the small bag of Doritos was yummy, I also own that I have forgotten how to digest food that's that processed, since it sat in my stomach like lead for the next 3 hours. A good reminder of why succumbing to temptation really isn't worth it. I had a good paleo dinner, and I'm right back in my eating groove. Today I'm still really dragging, I think I'm fighting something off. So I'm taking it easy today and drinking lots of fluids, and with luck I'll be all rested up for my parkour class on Sunday. (::squee:

Whew! I was feeling pretty wiped last night, so I'm darn happy with my 28 knee + 15 wall push-ups. Here's what worked for me: After my normal workout, I did as many knee push-ups as I could in one go (7). Then I did one less (6), then one less (5), etc. all the way down to one. The sets get easier each time, but you end up cranking out a good number that way. I did the same thing with wall push-ups, but started at 5 instead.

Amen brother!

Last night was nice and quiet--I know that if I exercise after blood donation that bad things happen, so I took it easy. Lots of water at work, milk with dinner, leftover chicken & rice for dinner, and then a PB&J sandwich after the geekling went to bed. Ironically, I also finally slept well--go figure. Got a little over 7 hours last night. We'll see how tonight goes when I get back to trying pull-ups.

Congrats on the handstand! And it sounds like you're rocking the challenges. Go you!

Cross posted from the NF Meet-Up forum: Hello! A few of us have been expressing an interest in parkour, and I just found this excellent opportunity: http://www.urban-movement.org/blog/1...3-hour-class-0 These are the Urban Movement folks that Nordictxpk mentioned upthread. It's a 3 hour intro to parkour class taught by a certified trainer. It runs from 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday, Dec 16. I know that's not much notice, but it looks like at least 2 NF members are planning to make it as of now. The class is only $20, and taught indoors. The gym is located in the Heights. The address is: 2215 Lawrence St. Houston, TX 77008 Check it out, and let us know if you can make it. What an awesome starting point for anyone interested in parkour!

Hello! A few of us have been expressing an interest in parkour, and I just found this excellent opportunity: http://www.urban-movement.org/blog/12-12-12/umove-movnat-3-hour-class-0 It's a 3 hour intro to parkour class taught by a certified trainer. It runs from 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday, Dec 16. I know that's not much notice, but it looks like at least 2 NF members are planning to make it as of now. The class is only $20, and taught indoors. The gym is located in the Heights. The address is: 2215 Lawrence St. Houston, TX 77008 Check it out, and let us know if you can make it. What an awesome starting point for anyone interested in parkour!

Yeah, if this gym was over on my side of town, I'd be there every weekend. As is, it's 37 miles away on the other side of an urban traffic nightmare. :-( But I love that they have outdoor classes on Saturdays, I might be able to join a few of those. BTW, having just started to play with them, it seems like a 45-deg slope would be harder to do cat balance on? You wouldn't get as much friction/control from your toes?

Holy shlmoly, I bow to your push-up prowess. That's freaking amazing. o.O

HN--Well, they're too far away from me to take regular classes (sad), but taking this should give me a foundation to build off of. And I'll be able to go back occasionally, maybe for their outdoor classes in the spring. I successfully donated blood today (and I've now finally donated back as much blood as my mom needed during a major surgery back in 2006), so that's it for exercise today. However, before I donated I went out to JSC's rec center and played around with their outdoor playground stuff. They've got some low bars perfect for cat balance, so I started working on that, and some park benches that are an easy vaulting height for me. So I worked on that a bit as well, including barking my shin when I reached out with the hand that wasn't on my take-off leg side. Lesson learned!

Thanks EG! GUYS GUYS GUYS! I just found out about a 3 hour intro to parkour class being offered in Houston this Sunday, and I've signed up to take it! That should start me out on the right foot. ::squee:: I hope it works out... If anyone else in Houston is interested: http://www.urban-movement.org/

Oh, and here's another resource for younger women who are interested in STEM fields (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math):http://wish.aerospacescholars.org/ My understanding is that all the activities for that one are online, no travel necessary. Don't you wish they'd had these awesome things (or told us about them) when WE were in school? ;-)

Yeah, treadmills can be hell on joints. I avoid them like the plague (of course, I also hate running, so I'm not a good source of advice.) BTW, does your young friend know about the NASA co-op program? It's the best way to get your foot in the door at any of the NASA centers. It's for college students, and is essentially a series of semester-long paid internships that give you a clear path to get hired at NASA. It's actually the *only* way to get hired right now, since otherwise we're in a hiring freeze. There's more information here: http://www.nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/default.htm JSC, Ames, and MSFC are the best centers for Aerospace Engineers. I try to spread the word, because I had no idea about this when I was in college and I *really* wish someone had told me. ;-)

Man, did I pick the wrong week to try to meet a sleeping challenge! Despite exercising, and eating real food, and meditating, and winding down with a good book, and going to bed on time & turning the lights out on time--INSOMNIA. Bleah. So I was in bed with the lights out for 7 hours, but probably only solidly asleep for 4-5. It was like that last night, too. I may have been a little dehydrated, I'm going to try drinking some more water in the evenings (although that didn't help the night before...) I go through these phases, so with luck I'll get out of this one eventually. BUT, yesterday was generally positive. I got up to 13 knee push-ups (perfect for the Assassins Demon challenge), and added some pull-up hangs for the Nerdi Clause challenge. Dinner was stuffed chicken over veggies in the crockpot, so was ready when I got home. I'm reheating the rest of it for dinner tonight.

I've put in my first round of knee push-ups--let's go get 'em!

I definitely want to look at the parkour, but I need to work through some of the sources and tutorials etc. and figure out what a reasonable goal/progression would be. It's so much easier to say "do 1 pull-up"! ETA: Although I was looking at the American Parkour site that Spezzy linked to as part of the Nerdy Claus challenge, and it seems to have some really good starting points...