Phoenix Rising

Done. Mid week summary is in my challenge thread (link in my signature). New stats reflected below in the stat line.

So mid challenge / end of week update: All success's this week on exercising, yoga, eating vegetables and meditation. Stat points allocation. Exercising feels like it should get me strength, agility and stamina. Yoga should get me agility and wisdom. Eating vegetables should get me stamina and constitution. Meditation should get me wisdom. So far the weeks are going very well so my points allocation will be: Str 1, Dex 2, Sta 3, Con 1, Wis 3, Cha 0.

To up my protein levels I've just bought myself some quick tuna / salmon based snacks: john west season and stir salmon with lemon and pepper spices, john west infusions (tuna with soy and ginger) and some tuna pasta salads in little pots complete with forks. I can take them all into work in my lunch box and snack on them throughout the day along with some honey roast peanuts.

1) So I'm surprised to find that the challenge item giving me the most difficulty is doing yoga each day (with a minimum of 4 / week). I thought this would be easy as I've signed by to the 30 days of yoga series from 'Yoga with Adriene', it comes with daily e-mail reminders, a Facebook group with a daily accountability section, and I'm tracking my yoga on fitocracy and have found others on there that are also doing it so we are supporting each other. So all in all about as much accountability and external motivation as possible. Also and most importantly I really enjoy it when I'm on the mat doing the yoga. First few weeks went really well and now I'm starting to fall behind, I've completed day 20 when I should be up to day 24. I plan to do a couple more sessions today to bring myself back up on track before next week. So what's the problem? Firstly my shift patterns mean that I frequently can't fit my yoga in at the start of each day so I end up fitting it around my shifts (mostly in evenings). Second, is a minor point, my yoga set up isn't great not having a permanent place set up to undertake it means there's always some prep to be done rather than just getting on the mat and going for it. This means its easier to decide not to today. Also surprisingly and perhaps more importantly I've found that I'm slightly embarrassed to be undertaking improving my fitness and so when faced with telling my wife that I'm going to be stopping watching TV this evening and going upstairs to do some yoga I find myself hesitant to do so and so have missed a couple of sessions when I could have done them. I don't think she'd mind at all so I just need to deal with this somewhat irrational internal problem. 2) and 3) Solutions in articles etc. and how I've put them into practice http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/06/13/how-to-stay-in-shape-despite-working-weird-hours/ this article though not completely related reminded me that other people work shifts too so I'm not alone this this respect so it's not a valid excuse to not stick to my plan. I've reread Steve's bat cave article http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/10/21/how-to-build-a-batcave-for-habit-change/ and have gone and set up my spare room so it's ready to be a yoga workout room. My yoga mat is laid out, my iPad is sitting there ready to play the yoga workout. A bottle of water is ready as is a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a t shirt. So less excuses available regarding set up time should make it easier to do. Also I've left the door open so everytime I walk up the stairs there it is looking at me telling me to hop on the mat. I've found this article on my search which includes an awesome youtube video of bendy yoga awesomeness which just inspired me to keep going (though I suspect I'm about 20 years to late in starting my practice to manage this, but it would be cool) http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/04/02/why-yoga/

So this is really just a holding note to say that I'm concentrating on my first challenge so will be posting there about my progress rather than here each week. I think after the completion of the challenge I'll provide a summary of how its gone here, reflections on improvements etc I could make and next steps post challenge to keep things going in the right direction.

Congrats on the engagement and I'm even more impressed that you are managing to keep to your schedule as a result.

Your snack scoring option seems fine. I think a recovery plan like that seems like a good way to keep going forward.

Update End of Week 2: So a mixed bag. Eating vegetables 3 / week: Success (Salad, Broccoli, Green beans). Exercise 3 / week: Success: 2 x bodyweight, 1 x bodyweight exercise class. Meditation 1 / day: success (amount varies between 5 mins and 10 a day, trying out guided meditations at present which seem to work well). Yoga: not so good. My aim was to do yoga each day with a success set at a more achievable 4 / week. However this week I only managed 3 days of yoga (though today I'm catching up by doing a number of sessions). What I've realised is that with having to get up really early for work I'm never going to get yoga done until I get home in the evening. On my exercise nights yoga and exercise together seems a bit much so therefore yoga 4 times a week should be doable. My ideal place to do yoga would be in the living room so I can stream the yoga videos onto the TV, however that relies on my wife being out at work in the evening (we both do shift work). This week that didn't happen so my evening yogas were in a somewhat cramped spare room using my laptop. Worked OK modifying a couple of poses to make up for lack of space. However in essence rather than doing yoga on a couple of nights I choose to stay downstairs and watch TV together using the excuse that I could always do the yoga later in the week. Later came and passed and now I find I've run out of days to manage 4 separate days of yoga this week. So all in all, 3 success, 1 failure. Planning to do better next week where the challenge will be the exercising as I'm working 10-21 shifts all week so can't attend my exercise classes and know already I won't feel like exercising when I get home at 10pm.

@starsapart, thanks i'm well chuffed. @fultonator rewards have to be the way forwaed. I'm excited just to think about coming up with one a week. Guess it may be a sign i enjoy shopping a bit too much!

I'm looking at ways of adding protein easily to my diet as well. I'll found some nice little pots of tuna with different herbs in the supermarket that you can just eat straight from the packet, also i tend to buy a large pack of pre cooked chicken drumsticks and add a couple to my lunch pack for work as snacks. I'm thinking of buying some protein shakes to try as well.

I've just bought a load of healthy food too. I've found that the co- op do little bags of mixed veg like sweet potatoes and butternet squash or cauliflower, broccoli and carrott. Just tip them into a saucepan and boil and i have an instantish no hassle healthy addition to my meat/fish protein filled main dish.

Hey Red Phoenix, Don't be ashamed about things not working out, sometimes life's like that. You need to pick yourself up, work out what you can adjust to lessen the chances of it happening again and look forwards to the future you. Looks like you are already on your way to do this so i look forward to your respawn.

Rewards. I've decided that I'm going to add some rewards into my challenge to keep myself going. So successful completion of my first week means I've just ordered myself a lovely new yoga mat and a yoga block (it would seem that daily yoga has resulted in my cheap current yoga mat starting to fall apart). If I manage to complete the next week with complete success I'm going to buy myself a kettle bell so I can add using it to my bodyweight workouts.

A bit late with the week 1 mini quest (having started at week 2) but now complete having reviewed my aims they meet the smart criteria with the exception of what I'll do if I become ill / injured. Thinking on that my plan would be to continue eating greens, continue with the yoga but drop to 3 times a week and continue with the exercise at 3 times a week but drop the amount of exercise down to something more achievable. I think it's important to do something even if it's just some stretching and a bit of light jogging to embed the habit. Week 2 mini quest completed. I now have a signature which includes my challenge link. I've commented on the threads of and am following Lillucia and tkdgirl.

Hi Tkdgirl, Don't be down about the recent snacking. As you say it was a planned event and in my book provided you knew it was going to happen and made a conscious decision to enjoy the evening then that's fine. What's important is that the next day you got straight back on with your plan. I think that's why plans should never be a 100% I'll do X, to allow a bit of leeway for real life events. By the way, I've found that Naked fruit bars taste pretty nice, they do a chocolate and orange chocolate tasting one that are actually mostly dates, so better for you that most snacks.

Hi Lillucia, Just a quick post to say that I love your goals. Being a bit of a weakling myself I can completely empathise with your wish improve things in that respect. Looks like you are making great progress.

Hi Texelsaur, I know what you mean. Adding weight seems to be so much more difficult that I thought it would be.

Thanks TMedina. I was just trying to work out how to use the website properly and your signature has a load of great links.

Progress report: All looking good and on target after the first week (having started a week late). I've managed to exercise 3 times this week as planned (2 hour self defence / fitness, 1 hour fitness bootcamp, and a session at home of bodyweight exercises). I've managed yoga on all the days I didn't undertake another form of exercise apart from Friday where a busy on call left me with no time to do it. I've made up with it today by doing 3 days worth of yoga bringing me back on track to match one session a day on average. Green veg also a success, eaten three times this week. Meditation also managed each day at 5 mins a day, next week I plan to increase it to 10 mins. Feeling great and looking forward to continuing my progress next week. Thanks all for the comments.

Milli, I tried the superhero workout app. It seemed to track my activity fine, I had to move my iPad up and down from resting on a table to resting on the floor facing me during the exercises depending on whether it was standing exercises or floor ones like pushups. I didn't get very far in the story line so can't really comment on that. My problem with it was that the exercises and length were preset so you had to do the exercises that its decided on rather than ones that you might want to do and I found this too limiting to stick with it.

Wow, these forums are huge. So much info to read through I'm tempted to just sit and read and not do any exercise! I've just posted my fitness goals for the next couple of months in the 6 week challenge thread so won't repeat them here. I'm a 39 year old man, married, working in healthcare in the UK, no children but a dog. I should have got fit years ago but it somehow was never a priority. I'm fed up now of being a skinny weak nerd so have decided to take action. I enjoy reading crime and sci fi novels, roleplaying (fantasy, star wars, cthulhu, happy to try anything), watching TV (currently programs like Doctor Who, NCIS, Broadchurch, Musketeers,The 100). I love the nerd fitness concept of levelling up your life, becoming the super hero you always wanted to be. I'm focusing on bodyweight exercises to start with form strength along with yoga for flexibility. Diet wise it's going to be a slow change, starting with adding vegetables and next increasing my protein intake. Then I plan to gradually decrease my carbs. I eat pretty much home cooked food at present already, just a lot of pasta, rice and pizza. Having done my exercise and yoga for the day I'm going to spend the next few hours happily browsing these forums.

Hi all, This is my first challenge on the road to levelling up my life, starting a bit late due to just finding these forums, but as they say, better late than never. I'm 39 years old, 6'2" weighting 70kg (11 stone), so tall and skinny. I've been doing some exercise classes for the last few months about once or twice a week which I really enjoy but due to shift work don't always manage to get to, and if I don't make it I haven't yet managed to motivate myself enough to exercise at home, apart from on the odd occasion. Main aim To improve my fitness level over the next 5 weeks so that at the end of them I (a) feel that the exercises I'm doing are easier than they were at the start and ( ideally have increased my muscle size even by 1mm. Sub aims (SMART) Undertake bodyweight exercise three times each week. This will usually compromise a 2 hour self defence / fitness bootcamp on a Tuesday and a 1 hour fitness bootcamp on a Thursday plus home bodyweight exercise using the Nerd Fitness Level 1 bodyweight exercise programme on the Saturday. In the event of shift work getting in the way I'll do one of the Nerd Fitness bodyweight exercises on a day adjacent to one of these days, but so I still manage exercise 3 times a week. I'm using the Balanced App to remind me to undertake these. For Accountability I'll log them on the Fitocracy App each time I do them and then post here once a week to let you all know how I've done. Undertake yoga at least 4 times a week. I'm following a 30 day yoga challenge (Yoga with Adrienne website) for January and so actually plan to do yoga each day lasting anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes depending on the length of that days session. Again reminders and accountability as above. Eat a green vegetable at least 3 times a week. I've been tracking my diet using MyFitnessPal app for the last 3 months and though I'm under calorie about about 600 calories a day I hardly eat any green veg and my protein levels are too low, so first step is to increase the amount of green veg. Protein I've got a source in 2 out of 3 meals a day but its not enough. I'll leave that for the next challenge (one step at a time). Reminders: balanced app as above, progress posted here once a week. Life side quest To take up meditation with the view to being calmer and less stressed out and negative. Plan to meditate daily starting with 5 minutes a day and increasing after each week by 5 minutes. For SMARTness I'll consider 5 times a week to be a success. Reminders: balanced app as above and accountability progress posted here once a week and on the SeaChange website (Zen Habits). Guild Just starting out so that makes me an adventurer. Looking forward to the new improved future me.