Seduisante

Well, you win some, you lose some. Migraine lifted for most of the day, but returned in the late afternoon/early evening. Went to the gym anyway and then off to teach karate. Tried a new script last night for the migraine and woke up at 4:30 with my head hurting anyway. Sigh - will try again today and hope for the best? Nutrition 1) Log what I eat - done! 2) Hit my protein goal 80% of the time - got within 10% yesterday, so I'm counting it Fitness 1) Some sort of exercise 4 times/week. 1/4 for the week 2) Foam rolling (back, neck, chest) - done! Only got to the back once because when I woke up with my head hurting yesterday the thought of getting down to the floor and back up to roll out my back made me want to cry. But I got it done at the gym in the evening, rolled out my neck morning and night (mostly because I can do that standing up and have figured out how to do it while I brush my teeth. LOL) Got the chest rolled out, too. Overall health 1) Turn off electronics (phone, tablet, computer, ALL of it) by 10pm. I may have gone over by about 5 minutes, but I'm still calling it a win. I didn't bring the phone to bed to with me and, in all fairness, I did,'t even get home until about 9:30 (typical for Tuesdays and Thursdays for me). 2) Take those vitamins every day - Yay! got them done yesterday. Which makes me feel good in general. Lifting went OK yesterday, all things considered. Shoulder was only a little pissed off and it feels fine today. Headache came and went throughout the session, but that was pretty much going to happen anyway, I think. Managed to increase the weight a bit on my zercher squats, so that makes me happy. It's the little things. Fingers crossed that the Maxalt kicks in for the migraine and I can function like a mostly normal human being at work today.

First, I know that you don't really know me (I'm more of a lurker) - I hit a few challenges some years ago but was never all that active. Second, FWIW, I do this, too. And I don't have a history of abuse, quite the opposite. But perhaps it's not all that uncommon? Actually, well into my 40's I'm still quite fluent in sarcasm and self-depreciation. It's part of my charm? At any rate, what I mean to say is that you're not alone and may be more well adjusted than you give yourself credit for. Re: Magnesium supplements. I use them, too for the same reason. I definitely notice less muscles tightness and cramping when I take them regularly.

I feel this in my soul! I've spent so much time being injured that I feel like I'm starting back at square one! (First the hip, now the shoulders.) Pretty sure that everyone in the gym is judging me. (They're not.) On the bright side, I've discovered some new (to me) things - Zercher Squats don't piss off any major joints and I've added in Bench Presses. But it's a slow process of building back up and, well, pride.

Well shit. Migraine apparently powered up overnight and returned. Day 7 of this shit and I've had enough! Hoping to medicate it enough that I can still get to the gym this evening. Especially since I missed going yesterday for the same reason.

For my husband it didn't show up until his 40's. Cruel, I know. On the sleep issue, I've found that reading for 15+ minutes before bed helps a lot. Cleanses my mental palate, so to speak, and helps to turn my brain off. I'll take a low does of melatonin (3 mg) if I'm desperate.

OK. Deep breaths and do the thing! I haven't done a challenge in years but figured with the 10th anniversary challenge - why the hell not?!?! So taking a shot at this while trying to not bite off more that I can chew. Any of my old challenges were all in the Monks forum. But since then I've added in lifting and I love it. So I guess you could say that I'm more of a Warrior Monk these days? Unfortunately, a mysterious shoulder injury has befallen our hero, making martial arts training nigh impossible. In fact, it's become difficult to pick up heavy things and put them back down. But I refuse to go down without a fight. So I've revamped my gym routine to work around the injury until such a time that it can be identified and eliminated. SO! All that being said, here's the plan: Nutrition - no excuses. Even if I can't exercise I should be able to keep this in check 1) Log what I eat M-Th and AT LEAST 2 weekend days (F, Sa, Su). (those damned weekends tend to get away from me!) 2) Hit my protein goal 80% of the time Fitness 1) Some sort of exercise 4 times/week. Preferably the gym. Though sometimes life gets in the way (3 kids, 1 full time job, and one part time job). But also, if I piss off my shoulders I still need to do SOMETHING. So going on a 30 minute walk also works. 2) Foam rolling (back, neck, chest) at least 1x/day. Preferably 2x/day. Overall health 1) Turn off electronics (phone, tablet, computer, ALL of it) by 10pm. 2) Take those vitamins every day That's probably plenty. Ready? . . . . . . . . GO! ETA - apparently I am unable to GIF. Must research.

Short update. Doing better with veggies. Still need to make food prep a habit. (I see a goal for my next quest!) Still staying off the scale. Sadly, I think I figured out why my measurements dropped so much over the last month. I measured at night at the beginning of the quest and in the morning at the end. Oops. II did a little trial last night and this morning and the difference overnight was significant. Only morning measuring from here on out! Stupid knee is still giving me issues, so I'm in PT for a bit. When she tested hip strength the difference between my left leg (my kicking leg, since I fight left side forward) and my right leg was HUGE! So now I need to spend a little focused time on bringing the right hip flexors up to speed.I think after my black belt test in May I'm gong to start fighting right side forward for a while, just to balance things out and add to my personal skill set. Things sort of slow down for a while after black belt test (2 years until the next testing opportunity), so finding my own challenges will be key. Class after my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day above was not the confidence boost I'd hoped, sadly. Just a few weeks ago I had told DH that I thought that my hook kicks were improving. Sadly, instructor spent some time correcting my basic hook kick form. Which I guess I'm still not getting despite all the work I'm putting into them. (I HATES them! I need a good Smeagol gif here, but those are sadly blocked at work.) So a new approach is clearly needed. I'm just not sure what that is, yet. Sigh. Will update my quest count either tonight or tomorrow. For now, I'm off work and have to run home to begin the crazy that is my evenings. Yay?

It's Thursday and I STILL hurt from Tuesdays workout/shenanigans. Oy Vey! Karate last night was tough, considering how sore my quads and adductors are. Ah well, such is life. Veggie quest this week: Lunch: 3/7 meals included veggies Dinner: 1/7 meals included veggies So I only missed Tuesday for lunch. Dinner is a little rough since I eat at karate on breaks on Wednesdays and Thursday. I bring what I consider a healthy-ish dinner (grilled chicken, a couple of Baby Bel cheeses, and a protein bar (though tonight it's chia pudding)). But there are no veggies in there. So I'm realizing that I'm going to have to start revamping my go-to grab and go dinners. Do sweet potatoes count? Because I could bring some sweet potato hash (assuming I get around to making some) to heat up and have with dinner. Going to have to ponder this one. No class for me tonight. I assist from about 4 - 8 and then it's home to get the kids in bed while DH is in class. Maybe I'll get a decent shot at getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Maybe. Getting enough sleep is definitely going to have to be a future challenge as I don't get NEAR enough. That particular beast is going to be a tough one to tame.

Nothing throws me for a loop quite so badly as this. Makes me want to throw a toddler-esque temper tantrum, take my ball, and go home. Woe be unto my DH if he does something outside the plan in my head. You know, the one I haven't told him and he doesn't know about? Yeah, that one. I have to remind myself to take deep breaths and, in my case, grow up and suck it up, buttercup. So good for you for carrying on. That is its own accomplishment. In all fairness, these are things out of your control and hitting the pause button for a few days is reasonable.

Today has been an interesting mix of serendipitous wins, major frustration, and some pretty damned good choices. Last night I packed my bag for cross fit. If I'm going to go on Tuesdays I have to go straight from work and Tuesday's is on of the few days I can go. So bag was packed and by the back door. It's been too long since I went. I even packed a change of clothes to go by the grocery store on the way home to get my missing ingredient from last night. Left work with just enough time to get there, change, and make the 4:00 class. On my way there, I realized that I had not packed ponytail holders. Since I have a metric shit tonne of hair, this is a deal breaker. But wait! I keep some in the car just for this reason. We have bad weather coming in this evening (schools cancelled all after school activities) so I half expected the place to be closed. It wasn't. Got into the bathroom to change. Realized that I forgot to pack a sports bra. I considered wearing the underwire I had on, and was just about to pack up and leave, when I found my sports bra in the bottom of my bag. Yay!? So out into the gym I went. Then the workout started. And it sucked. The short version is that I hated the entire thing no if I want so damned stubborn I might have just given up and walked out. Warm up was fine - bear walks, ring pull ups, dips, handstands (which I adjusted to my level). The strength for skill portion was ok - practicing for muscle ups and double unders. Fine. The WOD Seriously sucked. AMRAP of 7 muscles ups, unless you can't do those yet, then 7 pull ups and 7 ring dips (both of which I have to modify). 50 (!) Wall Ball shots. My knee did NOT like that at all. Then 100 double unders. Unless you can't do those, then 200 (!!) single jumps. WARNING: MAJOR TMI AND CUSSING FOLLOWS. Because Jesus fucking Christ on a pony I can't even jump rope. At best, I could do 10 in a row before I ended up tripping on the fucking jump rope. Not to mention the fact that within the first few jumps I peed on myself a little. (Yup, there's the TMI.) Being a woman really sucks sometimes. I barely got through 100 of those twice damned things. Much less 200. Meanwhile everyone else, is smoking me. Even the new girl got through two rounds of that shit. I was seriously close to tears when we were done. And I rarely cry. If I didn't have a contact there to finish out I'd quit going. I almost always leave there feeling worse about myself. I went to change to go home and realized that my plan to go to the grocery store would have to wait since I did not have clean underwear with me and didn't particularly want to go commando. So home I went. BUT, I changed when I got home and went to the store. Was still feeling pretty crappy and I SO wanted to "treat myself" with something while I was there. Settled on a cold Diet Coke before I even walked in. What I was buying put me right across from the ice cream. Briefly considered a whole fruit Popsicle, but couldn't justify all the sugar. But at the end of the aisle was jerky! I never get jerky because it's expensive. Started looking at the jerky and again, sugar. I had just about decided to get some, even with the little bit of sugar in them, and saw at the vwery end, they had Primal Jerky!!! Sold! So I felt pretty good about my treat and I ate the whole damned bag. Because, you know, reasons. Came home, cooked a yummy dinner with plenty of leftovers for the rest of the week. I get to go to karate tonight. I'm holding on to the hope that class will help me feel a bit better. My injured knee is a little sore from cross fit and tonight will be ALL the kicks.

Sounds like a great Day 1! I miss walking. I switched jobs in December and lost my walking track at the office and the options at the new office require walking on the road and people drive stupid. I approve of the bare-footedness. I would never wear shoes again if I thought that I could get away with it. Especially grown up shoes. Grown up shoes suck.

Doh! Crockpot! I use mine for general family meals, but for some reason never really thought about it for meal prepping for the week. I have a 3 day weekend coming up, so my excuses are thin. I will likely have enough downtime at work this week to look up some decent recipes, even. Yesterday evening was a portrait of best laid plans gone awry. I had PT for my knee at 4:15. Figured that I could get done with that (5:15 ish), run through the grocery store on the way home to get supplied to make lunches for the week, head home and get back out the door by 6:00 for the 6:15 crossfit class. But then things took longer than expected, as they are wont to do, and by the time I made it home it was almost 6:00. And my knee hurt from PT. So I dumped crossfit. Then, when I went to unpack groceries and start cooking, I realized that I had forgotten to pick up a major ingredient. No time to run out to the store and back before DH had to leave for his karate class. Fine! I'll pick it up tomorrow (today) and make it another night. SO I ended up having leftover pizza for dinner. Oh well, I needed to get that out of the house anyway, right? Today, I have a bag packed to go to crossfit on the way home at 4:00. I don't have to pick up kids from karate until 7:15, so I should be able to cook. Then I have my karate class at 8:00. So yesterday, was a partial win.Today will be better. Today I get to pick up heavy things AND kick and punch things. Who could ever ask for more?

The official results are IN!!! Over the last 4 week challenge I lost . . . . 3 whole pounds. Whomp, whomp, whomp! I was hoping for better. Not that I had any real reason to, since all I was really doing was tracking my food intake, but still. I had it my head that my recent weight gain was temporary and not a real thing. As a result, I would drop back down to about 175 pretty quickly and then start losing from there. I had REALLY hoped to be below 175. Alas, it appears that I'm going to have to do some real work in order to lose weight. Who made up THAT stupid rule! Hmph! I does appear, however, that I actually lost some inches. Not sure how that happened since a twisted knee has kept me from lifting or increasing my activity for the past several weeks. I have a hard time trusting measurements since there’s human error involved. I figure that any difference under ½†is probably no real change. ½’ or more might be a real thing. The measurement I trust the most are waist and hips – since it’s pretty easy to hit the same spot there. I somehow managed to lose 3 inches in my waist and 1 in my hips. I’ll take it. In fact, my measurements are smaller in most places (except my hips, sigh.) than when I was 11 pounds lighter in November. So I’ll take my little victory and keep going. Since I’m fairly active as it is, losing weight and inches is ALL about what I eat right now. Meal prepping is not something I’m good at. I resent setting aside the time to do it when I have so little free time as it is. Additionally, I eat out for lunch too much. I have a few go to places where I can get a semi-decent meal (Yay Chipotle!), but I know that I need to do better. It’s much easier to control my lunches than my dinners – which are often scarfed down at karate between assisting in kids classes and taking my own class. I reviewed the NF diet levels this morning and I’m currently on Level 4. So my dietary goal is to level up to 5 (adding vegetables to more meals) this month and take a good running start at level 6 (vegetables in ALL the meals). I’m actually pretty close to Level 5 already, so I feel like this is pretty doable. I have a business trip the last week of the month, which will increase the difficulty level significantly. I don’t fly well, and I have found that if I eat carb heavy just before I fly, then I don’t get nauseous. I’ll just have to work around that as best I can. Adding to this is that this will be the first time meeting the customer, so I foresee a couple of social dinners out, complete with alcohol. I’ll have to set limits on my drinking, in particular, since even a small glass of wine often results in a nasty headache the next morning. And then the only way to get rid of the headache involves lots of sugar and caffeine. Given all this, I’m considering weighing myself and taking measurements just before I leave on the trip, with the goal of just maintaining while I travel. Anyone have some tried and true tips for eating healthy while traveling?

It seems that I really suck at posting regularly. However, I've kept up with my food log really well. [emoji4] I got buried in a house project this weekend, and fell apart on that a bit, but as of yesterday I'm back at it. The hardest thing has been staying off the scale. I didn't realize what a habit it had become. It's also been great not getting on the scale and evaluating everything I eat by how it may or may not reflect on the scale in the morning. Twisted my knee in karate last week and have been staying off it as much as possible. I took an awkward fall when practicing self defense sets with a partner who is awkward to work with on a good day. I took most of last week off from karate and crossfit. Still off crossfit, but made it to sparring last night. The good news is that it doesn't feel any worse today compared to yesterday, as a result. Trying to decide if I'm going to try to get a referral for physical therapy now or wait and see. I'm 4 months out from my black belt test, so I don't want to wait too long, but I don't want to spend the time and money if I don't need to. This getting old thing sucks. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree. Luckily this box is not terribly competitive. I mean, there always a few, but no one, except me, makes me feel bad for coming in last. I was hoping that the WOD approach would help me build endurance (black belt test will last 4 - 6 hours most likely) as it's a little bit like interval training. But I'm too cautious to rush it, so I'm not getting that effect. At least not now. I'm so OCD about form that it's not uncommon for me to be on the verge of tears when I can't seem to get it right. It happened tonight with Cleans. The coach for the class probably thought I was mental. But I did get to the dojo. And that made me happy. Best part of my day. 😊 All food logged. Yay me. As expected, the very act of logging my food is making me more mindful. As I had hoped, not getting on the scale has kept me from balancing what I eat against what the scale says. So yay for progress.