Rivet

Well frig apparently the updates I make on my work computer aren't going through. Lame. Oh well nothing really spectacular has happened buuuut I can ALMOST palm the floor now. And I can do 2 chin ups if I jump haha little victories.

Well dang I made an update for week one but...I didn't post it I guess??? I did made it at work, maybe I just didn't actually post it and I thought I did. BUT OH WELL HERE'S WEEK 2 So I can officially touch my toes now haha Which is a big improvement from not being able to go past my shins before. My sleep schedule is getting way better too. Week one was really hard and I was late a couple of nights but only by 15 or 20 minutes. I'm being much more consistent now in week 2. Not having coffee to wake me up has been an adjustment too oh man but a lot of the blehness has been wearing off and I'm starting to feel much more awake in the morning. Old habits die hard I guess. OH MAN THOUGH haha soooo as of now if I give myself a little jump and can do a chin up. That's a VAST improvement from Jan 1. I still have a long way to go for pull ups but it is so encouraging to see progress.

Well it isn't really cold turkey on the coffee. I've allowed myself 1 Starbucks on Friday mornings as a treat since I open at work early in the morning. I don't know that I'll ever completely give it up. But I know I was really getting out of control so I'm taking this time to cut back. my regular venti white chocolate mocha has freaking 75g of sugar!!! What even is that?! And I was having like 4 of those a week! Not ok haha. Not to mention I usually have them put 2 pumps of raspberry syrup in it. And all of that is expensive. heh and like I said, I don't just go to starbucks for coffee. There are a few real coffee houses around here that'll serve you up a real latte with perfect dark roast coffee aaahhh. One place will even draw those designs in the foam...absolutely delicious. Oh man I want to go get one of those right now. It's snowing outside and everything. T-T

So far it's killer I gotta admit. But going to bed at a consistent time does a lot to help me not NEEEED it so bad in the morning like I usually do. I freaking can't wait until tomorrow though since it will be Friday and I can go get one in the morning before I open at work hahaha

this will be my second challenge on Nerd Fitness and now I’m super pumped to start this next one! For my second challenge I decided I really needed to work on my flexibility. I focused on bodyweight workouts last time and really discovered a lot of limitations in my body that would really benefit from loosening up my muscles. As a kid I was super limber and was in gymnastics and could bend my body in all sorts of stupid ways. But when I was around 12 I found out I had scoliosis and so I had to wear a back brace for 5 years, 23 hours a day. I went from being able to do the splits and pretzels to not even being able to touch my toes. I’m 23 now and while I don’t see myself being able to do splits and pretzels any time soon, it would be nice to be able to bend over and touch the ground again haha. SO HERE’S HOW IT GOES Goal 1: Yoga and stretching!! (+3 Dex) So I don’t have any money for yoga classes or anything but youtube is pretty dang helpful at hooking you up with just about anything you wanna do. I’m going to commit to at least 30 minutes of yoga a day with a light bodyweight circuit every other weekday (MWF) with Sunday being an off day but still stretching out for 5 or 10 minutes to keep from stiffening up. Honestly if you guys have any suggestions about how often to do yoga or other advice I’d appreciate it. I’ve done a bit of yoga before but it is still pretty new to me. Goal 2: SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP (+3 Wis) My body has to be physically in my bed, lights off at 11:00pm no excuses in addition to getting my body physically out of bed at 7:30am to get ready for work. No snooze buttons allowed! (With the exception of Friday nights when bed time will be no later than 1am and I’ll sleep until I wake up with no alarm) I’ve finally admitted to myself that my sleep schedule is absolutely not ok and it is time to be a freaking grown up about it. No more of this staying up until 3am lying to myself that it’ll be fine the next day and giving myself excuses to get coffee at Starbucks in the morning to wake me up. My body and my wallet can’t take that abuse anymore. Which brings me to my next goal… Goal 3: Cut out that dang coffee (+2Con) Only 1 cup of coffee on Fridays, the end. I’ve been really proud of myself for cleaning up my diet during the first challenge and I really did see some results. But I’m a coffee addict. And I’m not talking just Starbucks coffee, I mean like any coffee that I can get my hands on. I love the taste, the smell, coffee is just great. But I know I’m getting into a bad habit of overdoing it these days. I’ve cut out soda for 2015 to get rid of all that sugar in my diet but I sort of just replaced it with coffee. That was not the point. I know I have a caffeine addicion too. And like I said, I let my horrible sleep schedule give me way too big of an excuse of getting a cup in the morning so I can wake up. BUT HERE WE GO I'm posting this a day late but oh well heheh

this will be my second challenge on Nerd Fitness and now I’m super pumped to start this next one! For my second challenge I decided I really needed to work on my flexibility. I focused on bodyweight workouts last time and really discovered a lot of limitations in my body that would really benefit from loosening up my muscles. As a kid I was super limber and was in gymnastics and could bend my body in all sorts of stupid ways. But when I was around 12 I found out I had scoliosis and so I had to wear a back brace for 5 years, 23 hours a day. I went from being able to do the splits and pretzels to not even being able to touch my toes. I’m 23 now and while I don’t see myself being able to do splits and pretzels any time soon, it would be nice to be able to bend over and touch the ground again haha. SO HERE’S HOW IT GOES Goal 1: Yoga and stretching!! (+3 Dex) So I don’t have any money for yoga classes or anything but youtube is pretty dang helpful at hooking you up with just about anything you wanna do. I’m going to commit to at least 30 minutes of yoga a day with a light bodyweight circuit every other weekday (MWF) with Sunday being an off day but still stretching out for 5 or 10 minutes to keep from stiffening up. Honestly if you guys have any suggestions about how often to do yoga or other advice I’d appreciate it. I’ve done a bit of yoga before but it is still pretty new to me. Goal 2: SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP (+3 Wis) My body has to be physically in my bed, lights off at 11:00pm no excuses in addition to getting my body physically out of bed at 7:30am to get ready for work. No snooze buttons allowed! (With the exception of Friday nights when bed time will be no later than 1am and I’ll sleep until I wake up with no alarm) I’ve finally admitted to myself that my sleep schedule is absolutely not ok and it is time to be a freaking grown up about it. No more of this staying up until 3am lying to myself that it’ll be fine the next day and giving myself excuses to get coffee at Starbucks in the morning to wake me up. My body and my wallet can’t take that abuse anymore. Which brings me to my next goal… Goal 3: Cut out that dang coffee (+2Con) Only 1 cup of coffee on Fridays, the end. I’ve been really proud of myself for cleaning up my diet during the first challenge and I really did see some results. But I’m a coffee addict. And I’m not talking just Starbucks coffee, I mean like any coffee that I can get my hands on. I love the taste, the smell, coffee is just great. But I know I’m getting into a bad habit of overdoing it these days. I’ve cut out soda for 2015 to get rid of all that sugar in my diet but I sort of just replaced it with coffee. That was not the point. I know I have a caffeine addicion too. And like I said, I let my horrible sleep schedule give me way too big of an excuse of getting a cup in the morning so I can wake up. BUT HERE WE GO I'm posting this a day late but oh well heheh

I love all of your goals. Especially the ones about making a point to be with friends and family. It's a perfect checklist for having a peaceful and content life. I need to work on some of these things too. Seeing your goals have inspired me though.

bah so I had a pretty stressful week last week. Mostly in good ways. I had a job interview and it went really well so I've been anxious about hearing back about that. then my best friend/roommate is getting married and I'm maid of honor so I've been doing wedding stuff with her. the amount of starbucks I had last week was stupid so I'm reeling it in this week. I already have some plans for the next 6 week challenge and I'm looking forward to the future. But first things first. I want to finish this challenge strong. so so close!

I've been leaving Elastic Heart on repeat lately. I saw the video and it was just gorgeous so I downloaded it and now I can't stop listening to it.

OH MAN SO I have totally lost an inch around my hips and my waist GET AWAY FROM ME ARE YOU SERIOUS FREAK YEAH!!! I thought I was seeing a difference but wasn't sure if it was just in my head but flakdfjal;kejaflkj yeeeeeah! I'm so pumped! Freakin' ready to kick the crap outta week 5!

whoo ok late update but yeah week 3 was kind of uneventful. I'd say in a good way too. I've finally hit a stride I think. Workouts, check. Water, check. Paleo days, check. A lot of my cravings for soda have gone away too. Haha at the beginning of the year I'd see someone drinking a Dr. Pepper and I'd want to go drop kick them to chug it down myself. But I'm not even really tempted anymore. Feels good to be in a groove. Half way there!

I've just replaced the pull ups and chin ups on the advanced bodyweight circuit with the appropriate negatives. And since I'm going through the circut twice I've been dping 2 sets of 10 each. Hopefully now that I've come back from monday it won't be as bad of a backlash this week. Eating wise I've been sticking to the 3 days of paleo. Also I've only had water with the exception of buying a starbucks on friday because I opened very early on fridays so I get a coffee to wake me up and treat myself for getting up amd going so early. I'm a total coffee junkie but I decided for this six weeks I'll just have the one on fridays. Sleeping I'll definitely work on. I usually get about 6 hours a night which is not ideal heh. That'll be something I focus on this coming week.

Ok week 2 down and it was a little weird. I did the bodyweight circuit on Monday and I've been doing assisted pull ups with the help of a chair but I decided they weren't really doing much for me and read about doing negatives and gave that a shot. HOLY COW my arms are still sore today I'm not kidding. On tuesday and wednesday my back and arms were so sore it hurt to move haha. I took a break from doing the bodyweight circuit this week but I did sub with HIIT routines so that I wasn't doing nothing. I'm going to just jump back on it and keep going. I am actually really encouraged about where I felt all my soreness though. It was exactly all the places I have been wanting to work the most so I'll defiantly be doing the negatives now that I'm recovered. IN THE MEANTIME I just got back from Sprouts and I'm about to cook up some chicken and green beans uuuuugghh it sounds so good right now.

Week one has been for the most part successful. I've been doing really good with my eating and I've had more water this week than I have in my life haha. I only got to work out 3 days this week but that's a start I got my belly button pierced this week and it was really tender for a couple of days...obviously, so I couldn't stretch in a lot of directions without it hurting. But it's healed up a but now and I can move around without it bothering me. Looking forward to week 2.

Heh right now I can do none. I can get about half way up on my own. I keep being told that once I can get myself to do one they come a bit easier. And thanks! I'll be sure to look into the assassins stuff. I can use all the help I can get

Thanksgiving I googled “working out for cosplay†on a whim and found Nerd Fitness and it has been the most educational and motivational thing ever for me. I’ve been lurking the message boards since then and gotten so inspired and now I want to take my first 6 week challenge and really give it my all and stop messing around! I don’t have enough money for a gym and I live in a tiny apartment so I’m just going to focus on bodyweight exercises for now to really get back into shape. I’ve been working out for the past year but not nearly as regularly as I should be and I need to recommit to being consistent and cleaning up my food. Main Goal: To be able to do 10 pull ups by 2016 and work on building overall strength. Quest 1: Complete the Advanced Body Weight Circuit twice through, 4 days a week (every other day) It's freaking going to be killer but I can do it. Quest 2: Eat 100% paleo 3 days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) I'll still be around 80% the rest of the week but at least that gives me some wiggle room while I'm learning new recipes and whatnot. Quest 3: DRINK MORE WATER (At LEAST 1 liter a day) I know I should drink more but this is a good start I think. I'm the worst about drinking water. Just the worst. I'm really pumped to do this! Here we go!