Cherry_Bomb

No clever intro again this time. Sorry. I’m giving myself 24 days (starting yesterday, because my laptop’s Wi-Fi card or whatnot is officially dog water now) to lose whatever I can because I have officially put on 16 pounds in six weeks, and I’m pretty much done with everything on this planet. (I’m suspecting it’s a side effect of this medication I’ve been taking for anger management – the IRONY – because it’s not like I’ve been eating double Big Macs every day to account for this nonsense). To make it more of a SMART goal, I’ll say...hmm, three pounds sounds like I’m really setting the bar low but anything higher than that and I know I’m doomed to fail...and in the face of gaining an average of half a pound every day since the end of June, I’d say that’s a relative win. 😒 My current plans (recycled from past challenges because again, I’m done with everything): 1) 1500 calories a day, emphasizing protein and avoiding anything with carbs and sugar as much as possible, I guess (because I know I’ve been fog eating but again, it’s not with massive burgers or anything that would make this weight gain make sense) - let's go with 4 out of 7 days at least 2) 30 minutes of “I hate this but I’m still alive”-level intensity exercise at least four times a week (summarized context: exercise-induced asthma for years, long story, no puffer, no family doctor to prescribe one) – back to hula hooping I suppose… 3) 1 tsp of cinnamon every day as recommended by my naturopath (I started doing this with my coffee for a while, but that 1 teaspoon is a LOT and I couldn’t keep up with it…I’ll figure out something else) - I'll probably start with 4 days a week here too 4) Ease into taking inositol (also recommended), starting with 1 tsp four days a week, working up to 2 tsp a day every day – hopefully this will encourage me to drink water more and, you know, not eat anything 😐 5) Come back and post some kind of an update every Monday, plus one final update by the 3rd. Good luck with that one, Future Cherry_Bomb Bonus: try to find something to make me laugh or at least smile for 20-30 minutes a day so I can feel like life isn’t all that bad…which hopefully it isn’t. I don't really know anymore, I'm guessing here. Total: ___ / 20 I don’t really know what I can reward myself with or look forward to if I actually hit this goal. My current plan is to just quit NF altogether if I fail because I’m really not disciplined in keeping up with it or maintaining accountability. Maybe just seeing the number on the scale going down will be rewarding enough. And if I never post again, thanks for reading and good luck with your respective challenges.

So course it's been a month since this challenge ended. Of course. Because that's how time works when you're up to your elbows in report-card-related work. Whatever. I reached one of my two ultimate goals: it fluctuates every couple of days but I made it back to the low- to mid-150s, which I never thought I'd be able to brag about. Still not sure what's happening with my hair or my low iron, but I have a blood test this week and an initial consultation with a naturopath (still no family doctor, natch), so I'm praaaaaaaaaaaaying someone, somewhere - somehow - can narrow down what's happening to me. I'm praying to see that day come soon too; I worry every day that I won't have any hair left and/or my body will just fall apart beyond repair by the time I finally do get that in-person dermatologist appointment. And of course that's when everyone will go "ooooh (grimace) if only you had come in sooner, we could have reversed this. OH WELL." And then laugh like I'd see the humour in this situation. Insert squinting Philip J. Fry forever. 😐 And since I didn't really keep track of anything I did (which let's be honest feels like I did nothing), I'll just do a scale from 1-5 to reflect on the ease of this challenge: 4️⃣ Buteyko breathing for 35m of exercise 3 times a week: Hmmm, I guess up until last Friday this was going well. So, 4? 3️⃣ Deprivation: Easter weekend was a whirlwind of "bad" decisions, but the past couple of weeks have been WAY better. 5️⃣ Biotin and Iron: okay I've actually been killing this. 2️⃣ Daily relaxation: I don't know if zoning out after work counts as "relaxation," but I did meditate for a few mornings. 🆘 8h of sleep: It feels like I'm cheating to give it a 1, but according to my Fitbit I haven't slept that long since the before times so adding any number here feels like a cheat. Guess I should come up with a new goal and some new advice for all my problem areas. All...five of them... XD But it's so late in the current challenge. Might as well wait. Catch y'all on Juneteenth. ✊🏾 (Ooooh and I promised I'd change my username for the next challenge. Hopefully no one's taken it yet!)

Aaaaaaall righty, coming back while I have the day (Easter Monday) to actually regroup and try to remember what I've been up to: Keep doing 35m of exercise 3 times a week, concentrating on Buteyko breathing ✅✅✅ No = chips, chocolate, or candy between Sunday and Thursday ☑️☑️☑️☑️☑️ Biotin gummy (AM) and iron pill (PM) – I think I just missed one iron pill ✅✅✅✅ Daily relaxation (esp. scalp massages) – ehhh I didn’t do this a whole lot…DEFINITELY skimped on these massages…so half points? ☑️☑️ At LEAST 8 hours of sleep ➡️ changing this to 7 to be more realistic 😐 ✅✅ Total: 16/20 (or 80%) - not bad, considering I wasn't feeling well the week before and I now perfectly well that I did not exercise in any shape, way, or form. And according to this morning's weigh-in, between today and Saturday I've re-gained that 2.8 pounds I thought I'd never be able to lose and then actually lost. But now they're back. I want to say I'm disappointed but it's happened so many times in the past year I'm feeling extremely apathetic. I'm also supposed to have pie later today, so that might also be adding to the lack of emotions. Right now I'm planning my workouts and potential meals for the week to see if they'll make any difference for by next Monday. Tonight I just want my pie. (FTR I added this gif because my pie plans involve binge-watching this show. I love it to death (no pun intended) and I haven't even finished the series yet)

Thank you. I've been scouring Google for ages trying to find decent “net positive healthy rewards” (my diabetes prevention coach suggested I look for ideas using that term) and I don't know if I'm just weird or there's something going on in the world and I just haven't caught on yet. A lot of the rewards suggested are things I already do, or at least try to do when I'm in a good enough mood, so it doesn't make sense to turn them into "rewards" for health goals. Or I've already done them, so what's the point in doing them again? Like, how many new water bottles and workout outfits do I need to keep buying? 😐 I guess COVID also nixes 85% of the rewards I could do under normal circumstances (e.g. "See a movie," "Take a road trip to your favorite local town and spend the night," "Go to a concert," "Attend the next Olympics" T______T ). But I've found tons of lists that just leave me asking...what do people normally do with themselves??? "Read your favourite book!" Listen to your favourite music!" "Take a bath!" Like...WHAT? Anyhoo, my current "up-and-coming" rewards are just going to be YouTuber merch (once it's back on sale) and a PS5 because I'm done trying to be creative.

Aw, thank you! ^__^

WELL. Shocking weigh-ins these past couple of days...I'm now 2.6 pounds away from my ultimate goal weight (the ultimate goal weight I've had for the past like five years) - the day before yesterday I was 0.8 pounds away... ... ...you know what, it's fine. I might gain it all overnight (again) so I'm just going to adjust my "10" to a lower number. Can't let my guard down just yet.

(Kudos if you got that reference by the way. I honestly didn’t know how to make this post interesting, but the phrase seems kinda fitting...also low-key this show is all I can think about these days. 😅) I don’t know how I’m going to keep track of all this, but I don’t care. XD I weighed myself the other day and after a year of gaining 4-5 pounds overnight after eating 80g of plantain chips, I’m almost the same weight as I was about five years ago (just before I skyrocketed to class I obese a few months later). So my ultimate goals are to weigh less than 155 and get my hair back (TL;DR it’s half gone and I’m praying it’s due to iron deficiency and not something more serious because I DO NOT have a doctor willing to investigate, let alone diagnose me with anything). Maybe I'll set a reminder on my phone or something to update every Friday to keep myself accountable. We'll see if it works. Keep doing 35m of exercise 3 times a week, concentrating on Buteyko breathing (might ease into 38m x 4 or 30m x 5 depending on my freaking time management) 🟩 🟩 🟩 Depriving myself of everything I enjoy no chips, chocolate, or candy between Sunday and Thursday until Easter; Friday and Saturday = "treat" days in the form of a small serving of chocolate (this probably won’t include Easter weekend, but I'm currently planning around that) 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟦 Biotin gummy (AM) and iron pill (PM) – both are required to get one point 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 Daily relaxation (esp. scalp massages because I need my hair back) 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟦 At LEAST 8 hours of sleep (I currently get like 4-5) 🟩 🟩 🟩 Total: 20 points a week (halfway through I might bump this up to 25 because I like percentage-friendly numbers) It'd also be nice to reward myself with something every week for getting an A- score on my points, but I'm so used to using food and monetary rewards it'll be hard to find things (and the net doesn't really help with COVID-friendly suggestions). To be continued, I guess.

I signed up - look at me being early for once! I might quit NF Prime next month, so this is more incentive to go hard AF for this next challenge. Bring on the Euro training!

Thanks, Alanna. Yeah, surprisingly the vitamins was the easiest one. I definitely need to increase my exercise and figure out a work-around for what I'm 95% sure is exercise-induced asthma. I think I'm also going to keep NF Prime for another three months and then I'll probably quit. I know strength training is super-important but I'm just not using the app at all - I'm getting a ton of nutrition and wellness info from a diabetes prevention program (and that goes until August) so I don't feel like I'm getting much out of it. I have like 50+ unopened crates. ಠ_ಠ And Lent will hopefully help me cut down on stress-eating my favourite snacks for a few weeks. We shall see.

Never mind, I sat down to figure it out now. I'm going to be late for this stressful job anyway so... 1) Go back on vitamins – wow I’ve actually been really good with this one: ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅ 2) Nerd Fitness app challenge – nope: 🟦 3) Meal plan – yeah this definitely didn’t happen: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 4) “Before” photos and measurements – crap I forgot about that chart: ☑️☑️☑️🟦 Bonus/5) Finish For Health and Home with at LEAST three lives – wow I actually did this one: ✅ Total score = 12 / 20 Hmm. I guess I passed.

That's a great question 😅 As usual I fell off the wagon at some point and completely forgot to update ANY of this, so I'm going to go back later tonight and see how I did. To be honest, the days between January 30 and February...10th?...were such a clusterf--- that I don't even remember what I set out to do. Guess it's a good thing we're already ten days into the next challenge, eh? *laughs until she cries*

Yooo I didn't even THINK it could be iron-related! 😐 (I've been battling anemia on and off for years) Good suggestion though - I just Googled it and it looks like I can do a private blood test, it's just going to cost an arm and a leg. I'm in Canada so our healthcare covers a lot, but it doesn't look like these would fall under any coverage category. Oh well, good to know it's an option in the worst-case scenario. Thanks!

Looks like the December 2021 challenge didn’t go so badly thanks to these checkmarks I realized I can add to keep myself accountable…mostly…when I remember to actually post on here. 😐 So, let’s keep that up, shall we? (We shall). For this challenge, I’m going to: 1) Go back on vitamins – I bought some with biotin to see if they’ll help my spontaneous hair loss (because spoiler alert: my doctor doesn’t care that I’ve lost about 40% of my hair and outright refused to do a blood test to see if I have any deficiencies or an autoimmune disease…so I’m just going to pray it’s not the latter and tend to my hair in the meantime – don’t really know what else I can do at this point). I want to aim for every day, but I tend to be quite the lazy sod so let’s say 5 times a week for the next two weeks. On second thought, make that 4. I don’t trust myself. 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 2) I might not renew my Nerd Fitness app subscription because I’m really bad at keeping up with it. So just in case, I’m going to try and finish as many unfinished (or mildly enticing) quests as I can. If I can finish ONE by the end of this challenge, I’ll call that a win. 🟦 3) I’m 90% certain my wellness program coach is going to have me start this meal plan she asked me to get used to looking at very soon, so I’ll try it out and see if I can still do at least 3 days a week. 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 4) I lost a little bit of weight last year, so I think this is the year I’ll experiment with…before and after photos. I’m dreading every moment of this, but worst-case scenario I can always delete them. I’ll also take some to record my flexibility, particularly my bunion-ish feet. (Not that I plan on posting them ANYWHERE because update, the weight and hair pics are really horrible to look at.) 🟦 🟦 🟦 🟦 (for body measurements, hair, flexibility benchmark chart, and feet) Bonus…nah I’ll just call this 5) I want to finish For Health and Home with at LEAST three lives, so I’m going to try not to lose more than…two? 🟩 Total score = ___ / 20 Five things seem like a lot in writing, but this challenge is more like three because 2) and 4) are more like to-do items than ongoing tasks. Only time will tell. (I’m full of shrugs these days, so this felt appropriate) Good luck with your challenges, everyone.

Ah, that's true. It definitely affects my ability to do anything that involves getting dressed and made up and leaving the house - most times I do and I run super-late, and sometimes I go "nope, no point now" and make up an excuse not to go anywhere. It's...sad. 😐 I've brought it up with so many health professionals over the years and they all dismissed it, like it was a one-time thing I did so they'd say "well, don't do that", so I don't think I'll bother getting anything official. I'm just gonna take care of it. ^_^" As for my rehearsals, we have a giant spreadsheet of all our dance moves. I've been reviewing the steps and the cues, and watching our old practice videos to remember the moves I've forgotten about. Our troupe leader isn't very encouraging most of the time, so when we're back in the studio together I don't want to give her any excuse to call me sloppy, lazy, etc. I want to blow everyone's minds out of the water! ...but now my part of the world has like 10K COVID cases so that might not happen for at least a few more months. Oh well, no need to worry about leaving the house for a while.

Thank you! 😅