Inky

Hi! I'm back from hiding under the invisibility cloak (ie doing some fitness stuff but not on nerd fitness). This is my second actual challenge, and first with the assassins. I did my first, then skipped the last one, and now I'm back. But during the missed time I lost weight and started doing 15-20 mile bike rides with my Dad (when I was awake) and generally have been enjoying outdoor activities for the end of summer. I also have been having a few health issues (most of which being a side effect of a new medicine), which may result in modification of the challenge. My second challenge is a modified version of my first. It worked, I enjoyed it, it just needs a few tweaks. I'll also be trying out a new grading system, just to see if I prefer it. Grading each challenge each week, then averaging GPA to determine points. I found as long as I'm tracking I can stay motivated, but needed a little more flexibility in the challenge because I'm still gone a lot of the time. Once it gets too cold to keep up with my normal activities I'll need more discipline and a different challenge. Going to the gym is less fun than trail riding with friends. Stats: Name: Inky Age: 23 Gender: Female Height: 5'9" Weight: 199 lbs (under 200 finally!) Main goals: Be able to do a pull up Reduce weight to 150 lbs and/or dress size 12 (~50 lbs to go) Side quest 1: Strength Complete 2 body weight strength workouts a week -Beginner body weight workout, 30+ minute strength yoga session, or bouldering session all count -Track successful reps and try to do better each time -Increase one rep of plank for BBWW by 5 seconds each time -Aiming to have 3 completed bouldering sessions Side quest 2: Activity So something active for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week -Side quest 1 workouts count towards this -Attend a dance -Walk around neighborhood -Bike ride -Yoga/stretching session -Swimming -Elliptical interval session at gym Side quest 3: Nutrition -Continue tracking food/exercise with My Fitness Pal -Cook at least one meal a week -Limit liquid calories to under 200 5 days a week -Be under calorie goal (as set by app) 5 days a week Life quest: Complete (draw by hand and scan and digitally ink, or draw digitally) 5 comics -1 for first two weeks (to get used to Illustrator and drawing tablet) -1 per week for remainder of challenge Motivation: I've been watching videos of Felix Cane pole dancing. She is all muscle and flexibility, and I want that. I also just don't want my body/fitness to limit what I want to do. I'll be using My Fitness Pal to track food and record exercise. I've been using Map My Ride/Walk to track those. I'm also recording daily goals with irunurun. If anyone has a task recorder they like, please recommend. I like irunurun because it's fast and easy, and you can link with other people to see if they have done their goals for the day. My big problem is you can't look at individual past weeks, just an averaged success score. The first week may only be nutrition, because I'm getting LASIK on Wednesday and the papers have a warning about exercise before clearance, which I will ask about Thursday at the followup. One of the weeks may also result in reduced goals, because I'm doing a final backpacking trip of the season for 2-3 days.

I think for me the biggest lesson was not overestimating what I will do on vacation, specifically that I can say I plan to do one of my bbww when I am visiting friends, but in reality I am there to spend time with them. If I haven't seen that person in awhile, then no I am not going to actually take even an hour off to do my own stuff. It just means I have to edit what I expect to do, and get as much done before I go as possible. I should also probably come up with some modified 20-30 minute total (including warmup/cooldown) thing I can do on busier days. And yes! I can't wait to join everyone!

I meant to post my catch ups last night and then fell asleep -.- hopefully nobody minds. Week 5: The Cafeteria I'm not following any particular plan, just trying to eat real food that tastes good. I have two vegetarian and one non that have become my goto recepies (ie easy, cheap, and tasty), which besides a little bit of chopping vegetables have little actual cooking interaction. Vegetarian mostly because I cannot be trusted to remember to thaw meat ahead of time. Carrot lentil casserole, I double the spices and add more vegetables, usually a zucchini, yellow squash, and extra pepper. Vegetarian chilli, again I throw in a chopped zucchini. Hummus crusted chicken. Week 6: Choosing your major So if there was any doubt, I will be joining the assassins for the future. While I'm considering trying 5x5 (which would be warriors) and working towards long term backpacking (scouts or rangers?) for individual challenges, the assassins is where my main interests lie. I'm looking forward to continuing with the other assassin initiates I've been following this challenge and meeting higher level assassins too

Hi everyone! I'm alive, I promise, and even keeping up with my quests (with some missed days) but I've been away a lot these past few weeks, and then recovering when I'm at home, so I haven't been good about posting. But I finished my challenge mostly strong, so I'm pretty proud. My bodyweight workouts suffered the most from being away, since if I was gone 3 days a week and busy that entire time it only left 4 days to try and fit 3 workouts in and that didn't really work. Keeping up with food tracking was...interesting while I was away. A little difficult because it was more eating out, but I wasn't trying to hit a calorie goal, scary because of how not good a lot of the food was (so much junk), and hard because I was busy. Taking pictures of the food and a list on my phone (the tracking app is on my phone but entries take longer than a list) helped keep me up to date on it. It seems I lost about eight pounds over the course of the challenge, and I feel stronger, so even not trying to hit the calorie count and just being more mindful was good. The thing I'm proudest of weirdly enough is I kept up with my drawing quest better than I thought I would. Are each of my daily drawings masterpieces? Hell no, a lot of them were done in 5 minutes and are cartoon drawings. But I learned that I kinda liked drawing cartoons a lot, and they don't cause me the stress that life like drawings do as a beginner. Plus the long term comic project that came out of it is bringing me a lot of joy. I did miss days drawing, just with me falling asleep after a long day before I remembered to do it, and two days of forgetting when I got back from backpacking. So I'll post my final stats later today when I figure out how many days of each I actually missed, but overall I feel pretty good which is more important. It was also a learning experience for creating my next challenge, which probably means a reduction in days needed for success as I'm still traveling a lot between now and...mid October. Since I haven't been updating I also want to make a quick note that I went to an intro parkour lesson at the con I was at! I went last year but had to leave early because I was working at the con. That was fun and gave me some basic exercises to practice, which I will integrate into one of my next challenges.

Weeks 3 & 4 completed here.

Mini Challenge 3: The Library 1. Pinpoint the quest in your journey that is giving you the most uphill (or one that you're struggling to achieve). For me the hardest part has been the beginner body weight workout. My legs have still been sore from the previous time when I go to do it again, and while I can usually complete all the squats without pain, I can do half the lunges I'm aiming for on a good day, and usually have to struggle for that. They don't seem to be getting easier. 2. Search through NF (forums or articles) to find one that is able to offer some assistance Luckily I am not the only one with this problem (imagine that!). While my knees have never had any particular issues, my higher weight means the lunges have been causing some strain. I found three places with suggestions, 1, 2, 3, 3. Apply it to your challenge (no collecting underpants here). I still want to stick with the lunges, but I need an alternative I can swap in for a day, a set, or do AMRAP lunges and then x number of alternative. On my next workout I am going to try stepping back into the lunges, with door frame assistance if necessary, to see if that alone helps. If it solves the problem, great I will do that. If not, I am going to try AMRAP lunges followed by step ups to a total of 20 reps. Mini Challenge 4: Checking your starting credits 1. Goal allocation: Quest 1, Strength: Beginner body weight workout 3x/week, +2 Str Quest 2, Activity: Be active for 30 min 6x/week, +1 Dex, +1 Sta Quest 3, Nutrition: Track food everyday, cook 1x/week, limit liquid calories to under 200 5x/week, +3 Con Quest 4, Flexibility: Stretch after every workout, +1 Dex Life quest: Draw every day, +2 Cha 2. Mid Challenge Summary: Quest 1, Strength: 6 workouts completed + 2 days subbed backpacking, full points earned Quest 2, Activity: 18 active days, 100% Quest 3, Nutrition: 18 days tracked, 2 meals cooked, no 3rd day above 200 calories any week, full points earned Quest 4, Flexibility: 6 post workout stretches, 100% Life quest: 18 drawing days, 100% Note: Quests do have a few flex days, 1 used in each Strength and Nutrition, but do not currently count against success rating. Drawing and food tracking not counted Friday-Sunday of third week, but planned misses not skips. 3. Challenge allocation: Level 1 | STR: 2 | DEX: 2 | STA: 1 | CON: 3 | WIS: 0 | CHA: 2

WoodNymph, Um, as ready as I could be, which given I am out of shape and it takes time to change means not overly ready. I got in a couple hour easy hike with a fully loaded pack on Tuesday, which didn't feel super easy despite relatively flat terrain. But I did survive my trip! It was really fun, if totally exhausting and now my feet hurt and my legs are stiff (which I think gentle exercise will help). Chris-Tien Jinn, I think I figured out my adjustments, where I am just counting the days hiking as workout days. Not a lot of upper body stuff, yeah, but backpacking definitely counts as leg and even core, so close enough. It was an adventure and now I can add having backpacked in the rain for two days to my list of experiences. So I survived and (mostly) completed week three! Much was learned, and experiences were had. Shout out to the couple who offered wine to everyone that first night, it was delicious. The trip was so difficult though, though not necessarily because of the weight from the pack, I think even packless hiking with that terrain in the rain wouldn't have been easy for me. I'm trying to decide if I want to try and through hike the AT, or half one year, half another. It was great talking to the through hikers, and would be amazing to complete, but I don't know what I'm trying to do with my future at this point, and because I don't have commitments at this point it makes time more accessible, it also feels like a cop out going for something that would not advance my schooling/career/income. At any rate, we have another short trip (max five days) planned for August to try and go further along the AT from where we left off last year. So, um, 30 miles out of 2200 done? For adjustments, week three went...ok I guess. A lot of time spent planning, resetting sleep schedule, getting ready, and packing (the combined shopping and packing I am counting as activity). So I'll count the two days of hiking as workouts, but say I did end up missing one for the week because of weird sleep. I also didn't get around to cooking, as what I count as cooking for this quest means leftovers, so I'll count that as one day not tracked nutrition wise. I'm not counting off drawing or tracking for Friday-Monday. So I used up one day of slack for food tracking and working out, and halfway through this challenge that isn't horrible. I do have to catch up on the mini challenges this week, and also figure out how to fit my third body weight workout in. I count Monday's hike as one, tomorrow I'll do the second, but then I'm leaving Thursday for the Holiday weekend with friends and don't know how to fit it in and still do the hiking we planned to do. Also have to choose something to cook.

Congratulations, that's great! For the question, I think if inclined pushups feel easy, push for AMRAP on the normal. If you still feel like you're gaining from the inclined, you could continue with that. I feel that, the excitement of the first week definitely wore way down by the second for me. I just keep looking back at my motivation for my quest and trying to push forward, which helps a bit, but it's also just more stubbornness. It's only 6 weeks, we're a third through, we can totally do this. The weight thing does suck, hopefully your measurements reflected your effort a bit better than that silly scale. If not, remember that the body can be very reluctant to give up its fat stores at first, but if you keep it up it should give in. In the meantime you are still becoming healthier and stronger.

Wow, I didn't realize I hadn't gotten around to posting all week. I've been keeping track, but never updated. I did finish all of my goals for the week, so that's really good. The theme for the week was exhausted and bleh though, so it definitely felt harder. My sleep schedule is back to being really weird after a short and difficult time of being mostly normal. This is not unusual for me, but now that I've been trying to get stuff done it's complicating things. Energy and motivation have both been down, and I had to modify using sleep/wake cycles instead of days with specific dates to keep on track with goals. On the plus side I think I'm less overtly sore from the bodyweight stuff, in that I can feel the exertion but not as painful as the first week. I focused on making the squats deeper, upped my dumbbell weight, and worked on extending the plank time. I might need to start using my gym membership and doing the workout there though, as I don't have a heavier dumbbell at home when I get used to this one. I might try my friend's pullup bar and see if I can do inverted rows at that point, and just switch them out for the dumbbell rows in preparation for my pullup goal. Those lunges though, I'm not seeing any progress in them. If I try and push myself for one more per leg I just end up with my leg giving out and half falling over -.- I need to figure out how to modify my goals to let me take it easy for backpacking this weekend. Maybe a light bouldering session instead? That works arms more than legs for me. It was supposed to storm this weekend, and it did a bit, so I'm pushing my loaded pack test to Monday/Tuesday. While I'd have been perfectly fine testing my rain gear if it was just rain, I think hiking by myself on a mountain during a thunderstorm would not have been a smart move. Went to a latin dance instead, a few hours of salsa is more than enough activity. So I did the bodyweight workout today, which counts as Sunday in wake cycles, but obviously I am not going to do anything else major today. I'm thinking tomorrow hiking, Wednesday bouldering or bodyweight workout with modified legwork, and then easy walking/gentle yoga for the rest of the activity. Though since I have to pack, that and cleaning/laundry probably count as activity too.

That's great! There are so many different types of cardio/exercise in general, you don't need to use the treadmill unless it's something you enjoy.

Have my signature done, if I make a battle log I'll update it then. I'm in the Assassin Initiate and Great Pullup Quest AB groups. I'm also officially following Annalise, Tyro, WoodNymph, fitgirlcarrie, and Eskcanta currently, and I unofficially follow a couple other people's challenges/have posted in them.

Yoga is great because it'll help with both quests. All those plank poses help towards the pushups too. If you're only at ten pushups now the first week could possibly be a challenge, but doable. So I think your plan looks good. I miss having access to all the lessons/free studio time I did in college ^^ I was just moving up to silver when I left, and training for about 20 hours a week. I started social dancing again recently and my technique has definitely suffered from the months away, but it's nice to be dancing again. Hopefully your schedule has some time for dance.

Hehe it reminds me a lot of QWOP ^^ But I laughed through the whole thing, especially with the music.

Another ballroom dancer! And general dancer. Sorry I got really excited. I can also sympathize with the lack of upper body strength. So you have your goals, they're definitely obtainable and you have some metrics to see if you have achieved them. Do you know what you're going to do to get from now to your goal? Do you plan on doing pushups x times per week, or have a stretch routine in mind for the splits? I'm rooting for you =)

That is a O.o very interesting image there. It's great that you had a productive day. No matter what else happens, that can't be taken away from you. I've dealt with some of the same stuff as you mental wise, so I know it can be really hard. But it looks like you're overall moving forward, which is great =)