Sycopat

Hey guys, thanks for the prompt to post! Honestly, it's going pretty well. I've been sticking to my diet (I did get in trouble with my fitbit yesterday when I bought a bag of cashews intending to eat it over 2-3 days and accidentally the whole thing... there is a reason I go on a bit about nuts. I like them too much. ) and getting to the gym, which is starting to feel pretty natural. I've even lost a small bit of weight, only about 1-2 lbs but it's a trend in a good direction. Even if it does mean that I've finally hit the point where I officially need to get my wedding ring resized. Because it no longer will stay on my hand. I'm currently about a half hour behind in this weeks walking though. It was snowing on monday so I got a tram home. My plan is to make it up by walking at lunch time. I really have to find a way to force myself to post more often though. I'm running into a weird side effect of going to the gym. Now I find going to the gym is great. I'm feeling better, much better,. I'm more energetic, I'm thinking more competitively, I'm more focused at work (... most of the time ), I'm sleeping better, find waking up easier and I generally feel good in myself. I'm surprised at how quickly I'm acclimating to it all. I'm even drinking less coffee.That's the good side. The weird thing is I'm spending less time on the internet. And there's no real reason for it other than that browsing is just not on my radar as much. I'm spending the time that I would normally spend surfing doing other things. And not just other hobbies like reading or playing games, but useful grown-up things like doing extra housework, talking to banks, running errands. I'm not spending no time on the internet (obviously) but when I do it's usually to actually post something somewhere, and not lurk about. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a bit weird for me.

Had to think pretty long about some of this stuff. Post is here

Getting SMART post for Mini-Challenge 1 Main Quest: Find the deku shield and kokiri sword. Aka: Getting equipped for the future. SubQuest 1: The Movement tutorial (Walking) Specific + Measurable: Walk 5 hours per week Attainable: My daily walk to and from work is 1 hour, so doing it every workday will see it achieved. Attainable and Realistic: In the event that I don't walk in and out to work, I can make up time at the weekend Timeous: This is a per week challenge, so walking more in early weeks does not get later weeks off the hook, or vice versa. Subquest 2: The Defense Tutorial (Diet) Specific: No wheat/barley/oats/corn or other grain products in my food. The exception is rice, but that's limited to a max of 2-3 meals per week. No potato. No dairy. Legumes(peas and beans) are limited the same way rice is, peanuts are out. Things I am allowed in nigh limitless quantities: Lean Meat. Fish. Fresh Veg. Fresh Fruit. Nuts. Drinks: Alcohol and sugary drinks such as soda or fruit juice are out. Coffee, tea and diet energy drinks are okay in moderation (moderate for me is < 4 coffees a day. I had none yesterday, and I'm blaming that for my killer headaches this morning.) Lots of water every day. At least one litre. Often more. Measurable: I'm logging everything I eat in my fitbit app. Attainable and realistic: Up to 3 'cheat' days: A Up to 6 'cheat' days: B Up to 9 'cheat' days: Pass (-1 Wis) >10 'cheat' days:Fail Timeous: 'cheat' days can be used to cover either days I plan on cheating, or days I give in to temptation, but I have a set amount allowable for the whole six weeks so I still need to be good. Subquest3: The Combat Tutorial (Gym Attendance) Specific: I have a program in place to perform ~12 exercises every session. Days to attend will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Measurable: Do or do not, there is no try: 3 gym trips: A 2 gym trips: B 1 or 0 gym trips: Fail Attainable and Realistic: The Gym's open on holidays and I work around the corner from it. Any excuses not to go will have to be pretty damn good. Timeous: I will be varying my gym attendance time during the first two weeks in order to discover a time that suits me to attend. After that, I will try and not vary the time very much. Questions: Is your overall quest achievable (over a short or long period of time)? Is it reasonable? I think my main quest is pretty reasonable. As a newbie, I'm mostly interested in getting myself to a base level of general fitness and giving myself the tools I need to aim for more specific goals further down the line. Long term, I have some vague idea's of where I'd like to end up. Too many even. But I'm not in a position to strike out for any of them yet. Do your 3 quests all build towards your main quest in little ways, or are you taking on too much? Do your quests have sub-quests or is it just one thing to focus on? All of my quests fit together pretty well I think. They compliment each other. Are your main goals realistic? Can you scale them to smaller steps to fit your life better, even if it will make it take a little longer to achieve them? My long term goals are not at all realistic. My long term goals never are I think that's why I've already scaled down my main quest to what it is. Are your goals able to be measured and tracked? What will you use to track them? All of them are measurable and trackable. Mostly, just by counting them as done or not and making sure to make space for them. The diet one is trackable through phone apps. How are you grading your goals? Are they pass/fail (“every dayâ€, “not even once over the six weeksâ€)? Is there a reward for the effort, or are you only grading yourself on whether or not you “lose the weight†or “run the distanceâ€? My goal is habit building so I'm grading myself based on the repetition each goal. Subquest 1 requires a set number of hours per week, subquest 3, a set number of gym attendances. This is harder with the diet, and more prone to disruption by things like stag parties or public holidays, so I've accounted for that by allowing myself an allowance of cheat days that should cover any issues. For rewards, well I have two levels of stat points to assign (assuming I finish) What is your plan for continuing/altering/grading those goals if you become ill or injured? I'll work around it. If I get ill or injured, I may fail a week of a quest or something but unless we're talking 'broken leg' levels of serious injury, my other goals should be able to accommodate it. Did you take into consideration any special occasions (Labour Day, Independence Day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc) that may occur during the challenge? What modifications do you need to build into your goals for those? Yup. I don't get public holidays off, my gym doesn't close on them either, and I have enough cheat days built in to my diet to cover foreseeable issues, and enough wiggle room in my grading to cover unforeseeable issues. Do any of your main goals conflict with each other? Will one goal make it hard to do another? No. I've specifically avoided setting things like calorie limits, weight goals and strength goals to avoid this issue for now. Do you already have the time in your schedule to actually complete the goals you’ve set? If not, what are you planning to do to make time for them? I have the time, but I do need to organize it better. That's definitely part of why I've structured my goals this way. Are you trying to build multiple habits, or is all your energy focused on your main quest? It's kind of both I guess. I'm building multiple habits, but theyre as unrelated as I can get them, and together should give me a good balanced starting point for the future. C+C is welcome

This is a great attitude to have. I found it so weird when I started monitoring my diet how little the volume of what I was eating/drinking seemed to match with the number of calories in it, especially when it comes to small "Sure 1 will be grand" indulgences. No point in letting it throw you off when it happens, all you can really do is shrug, make a note and get on with it.

Hey man, I think the RP stuff is great! And so is the progress, very impressive.

Haha, yeah. It was good though, in hindsight. Made it through everything on my program (at the lowest weight/number of sets for most things) only occasionally feeling like I was going to throw up, and afterwards I felt like my arms and legs were made out of jelly. But today I've only a little muscle soreness and am feeling good over all. Just need to watch what I eat for the rest of the day and think about finishing making my goals SMART.

Day 3 was successful. Walked in and out, ate good, went gym, am wrecked.

Cheers! Todays report: Today is a quiet day, walked to and am about to walk from work, Ate fruit for breakfast, had a tin of tuna and chicken soup for lunch, Dinner is planned/bought. It's herring fillets and steamed brocoli/cauliflower/carrots. Just need to head home, cook and eat it Snacks were ~40g cashew nuts, and a banana. Drinks were 1 Monster Zero, 1 coffee, 1 litre water. I'm taking this as a chance to work on making my goals SMART. Subquest 1:Specific + Measurable: Walk 5 hours per weekAttainable: My daily walk to and from work is 1 hour, so doing it every workday will see it achieved.Realistic: In the event that I don't walk in and out to work (illness, weather, and exhaustion being the things I'm most worried about) I have a back up plan. My university campus is in the city centre, so making trips in to the city for other reasons in my free time gives me opportunities to walk the same route then and make up any lost time. To grade my goals, I think that walking 5 hours in a week should be the A+ full marks condition. 4h 30 is the B condition Less than four hours in a week is fail. Timeous: This is a per week challenge, so walking more in early weeks does not get later weeks off the hook, or vice versa. Subquest 2: I've described my diet as a modified paleo diet, because that's how my doctor described it to me when we were discussing it. But I need to make it Specific: No wheat/barley/oats/corn or other grain products in my food.The exception is rice, but that's limited to a max of 2-3 meals per week.No potato.No dairy.Legumes(peas and beans) are limited the same way rice is, peanuts are out. Things I am allowed in nigh limitless quantities:Lean Meat.Fish.Fresh Veg.Fresh Fruit.Nuts. (Although, now that I'm watching it I find the number of calories in nuts is crazy. I love nuts, but damn.) Drinks:Alcohol and sugary drinks such as soda or fruit juice are out.Coffee, tea and diet energy drinks are okay in moderation (moderate for me is < 4 coffees a day. I had none yesterday, and I'm blaming that for my killer headaches this morning.)Lots of water every day. At least one litre. Often more. Measurable:I'm logging everything I eat in my fitbit app to track calories in, mostly to keep track of what I'm eating. I'll also try to post a lot of it here to keepme accountable Attainable and realistic: 6 weeks without slipping is probably not realistic for me. The things I've banned are very common, and show up in the weirdest of places. So I think I should grade myself as 1 'cheat' or slip day every two weeks (3 slip/cheat days for the challenge) is an A1 per week (6 over the course of the challenge) is a Bup to 9 over the course of the challenge = Pass>= 10 over the course of the challenge = Fail. I feel like a B should be a realistic goal, an A will be more difficult, but still attainable, and I'll honestly be disappointed in myself to settle for a Pass.As a result, if I get a 'Pass' grade, I will dock myself 1 WIS. I'm not setting a specific caloric or weightless goal on this one, because frankly, it's hard to hit high numbers of calories (without pigging out on nuts) and my main quest is to focus on habit building rather than weight loss for this challenge, and I think a severe caloric limit will interfere with my goals for subquest 3. Subquest 3: This is still a WIP. After monday I have a program to work with, but I want to go to the gym tomorrow and try to get some idea of what attainable and realistic mean in this context. I'll probably update it on thursday.

There's so many people I'm finding it really hard to keep track of everyone! But it's really inspirational to see so many people starting off strong. Also, hello and welcome to the more recent joiners!

You are of course, 100% correct. However it's not something I'm overly worried about. As is, I struggle to top 1500kcal regularly when I'm being strict with myself, and the good thing about fresh fruit is that I find it much better for dealing with between meal cravings than other options such as nuts, or cold cuts. Of course that's specific to me, other peoples milage may vary, and I do try to stay away from fruit juices, as that stuff is pretty much soda.

Still going forward! That's the main thing!

I checked and the length of my walk to work is 2.7km, which gives me a 5.4km per day round trip. Just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Ok, so first day down and I'm pretty happy with myself. Subquest 1 I walked both in and out to work, which I've checked is a total of 5.4km (2.7km each way) to put towards my pvp challenge and subquest 1 Subquest 2 I stuck to my diet, though I'm realising that I really need to describe in greater detail exactly what my diet entails. Especially if I want to make it SMART For now though, I'll list what I ate today Breakfast was 1 small (200g) fruit salad Lunch was a ham and egg salad Supper was scrambled eggs (made with just eggs, and a bit of salt and pepper) Snacking a lot is pretty essential for me to keep my energy levels up so I also had 2 banana's, an orange, an apple, a tin of tuna in brine and an energy ball. They're pretty good, they're basically figs, blended with coconut and cacao powder. All I had to drink today was water, about a liter and a half of the stuff I'll probably sneak another energy ball later (they're pretty moreish), maybe a cup of tea (black and unsweetened) but that's me for the day. Subquest 3 Made it to the gym today, so that's subquest 3 ticked off. I didn't do much because I had scheduled a meeting with one of their instructors. We basically just went through my goals and history, then he showed me how to use a bunch of the equipment, helped me get the form right, and we made up a training plan. It's about half machine based and half bodyweight and free weight exercises. I imagine it's all kind of standard stuff, but I've never done most of it before. Everybodies got to start somewhere though! I'm going to try and implement it on Wednesday and see how I go. It will definitely help with making my goals SMART though, at the very least it gives me a starting line and something to aim for.

I'll join that pvp when i get home this evening! I think my work walk will bring me close to the goal. Mmm tensions building now. Still running around getting everything together to start off strong tomorrow. Sent from somewhere where I dont know where I am