Shrilaraune

Sorry, being Faye (i.e coming up with a story that fits all the sets) is a bit exhausting sometimes! I'll continue the story for sure, but for now know that I am still on track. I just completed day six (though I forgot to use my dragon for rest time) and I am flat on my back tired.

XD If you haven't done a challenge before, then yes! I'll check you out there!

I'M LITERALLY REWATCHING IT NOW. I'VE GOTTEN NOTHING DONE ALL DAY. TODAY WAS TO BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY ｡ﾟ( ﾟஇ‸இﾟ)ﾟ｡

Day 4: To Eve's abject horror, I met Ezekiel Jones. He is my platonic soulmate. Mostly because he was there to see me prove Flynn wrong. Back a bit, right. So Eve was quite...annoyed about yesterday. I kinda cheated. And so today I was to be punished. Like biblically. Then I offered to let her be there when I showed the ribbon to Flynn. My sentence was reduced. See, turns out a magical kung fu ribbon that won't come off my body is essentially proof that I haven't been hallucinating. TAKE THAT FLYNN. This made Eve smile, just a little. Ezekiel, bless his soul, laughed straight in Flynn's face. We high fived, the rest his history. My punishment involved a lot of core and back work--which was good because my legs were rubber. All in all, a good days work! Still haven't stretched today yet, but I figure I'll get to that after Ezekiel has had his fill of impressing me with tech things. Back into the forest tomorrow?

Thanks!

This looks great! I guess technically you've told all of us, eh? Check that one off the list!

OOOOOH, Fellow Neuroscience nerd!!!!! Obsessed, will stalk. Congrats on you step milestone!!

(â—´艸`) I love you.

I tried. I really did try to get through all the pages of stuff. But you popular folks...whew. I need to have some life. Without further ado.... I was talking with Stars about this too. The dumbells will be hard, and even if you buy a barbell set you'll out grow it soon. I ended up shelving my Stronglifts ambitions for another 6WC (when I finally get gym access). Also, Stronglifts FTW! You have made an excellent choice. OMNOMNOMNOMNOM YES, YES. DO THE KETTLEBELLS. JOIN THE SWINGHOOD The things we could show you. The scale is the work of the devil. Use a tape measure. Seriously. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. BlackBerry Brandy (also called Polish at bars) is great as well! ༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽ Scotch? At least love the scotch... As for learning Cyrillic, I found the Memrise app was really helpful! Also, had a really visceral reaction to this challenge. Like Star Wars trailer, lady hand holding a lightsaber visceral. You're welcome

I am your new biggest fan. ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

Wow, this looks delicious! Will try soon! You should post this in the cookbook! In other news, I did the darn thing. ┬──┬◡ﾉ(° -°ﾉ) (╯°□°）╯︵ â”»â”â”» (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻â”â”» Anyone knows what happens when we're over 100?

I must concur! The image of us chittering on at each other while the whole of their staff watches flummoxed just got me through my work out. Well met, fellow. Well met.

( ´艸｀) Details?? (*≧艸≦) DETAILS??? (*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ)) Hinterlands. THIS IS A THING I DO. So SUPER TALL black chick, carefully quaffed fro and Japanese. It's the least they deserve.

☆*:.｡.Rana the sleeper.｡.:*☆ I woke up this morning sleeping on my back with my hand on my stomach. The first thing I noticed: My stomach is almost flat. Madness ensues. I rush to my bathroom mirror--and yes! My stomach is really smaller! That's when I notice my bottom. I have an actual butt--pardon my crassness! It's round! With no weird divots or floppiness!! THIS IS A SIDE VIEW MIND YOU. My rear end was seriously challenged. So. WOOT. (*≧艸≦)

This battle log will not be daily. But I would like to leave something of my progress behind, just in case someone like me comes along and needs that extra push or second wind. Starsapart was that person for me, and I'd like to be there for someone else! First things first...or perhaps second things second, I am not at my goal. Not by a long shot. At this point in time, I am a novice, just beginning to count the fruits of her labor. I am into my second real 6 week challenge--not including my novice training. And I have told myself, I will give nerdfitness 7 challenges to astound me. But at this point in my journey, I feel like I can offer some words of encouragement to the me from four months ago and her compatriots. 1) Scales are the Devil's work. Abandon hope all yee who approach. The End of Overeating by Dr. David Kessler is worth it's weight in gold. It helped develop my distaste for junk food in a way that spoke to the intellectual in me. Not that I ate badly at all, mind you. Perhaps at my worst, as a child. But if I learned anything in college it was how to eat and eat well. Still, Dr. Kessler's work ended any lingering temptation fast food represented (now a freshly made burger and properly made chips? Nothing wrong with real food my dears). He also revealed to me my triggers. We all have them, even if we are not aware. Triggers that sabotage our efforts, induce us to eat or feel or stress. I had a few I could point out immediately, but the most important one is the scale. The scale was a trigger for me. Even when the number made me happy! I immediately switched to body measurements with a tape. 2) Captain Steve is right, cardio is pointless This isn't to disparage those who are dedicated to it. Cardio does have a time and place. But the benefit you get from cardio, can easily be matched and over come by an intense bodyweight workout with a cardio element. Now I'm not saying HIIT--that word scares me and might scare you--but I have had much more sustainable (not to mention quicker) results swinging a kettlebell or doing jump squats as part of my routine. For those of you in the middle of C25K or Zombies Run!, don't stop. That's building a habit of discipline in you. And showing you how to do something you thought impossible just a few weeks ago. Finish it out. 3) My Fitness Pal will save your life It took me a while to get over my hangups about measuring my food on myfitnesspal. But if I can attribute anything to my success, it is my adoption of this. Using my fitness pal has made the process of weight/inches loss a science, rather than magic. Science is predictable. You can anticipate it. I promise you: If you use this tool, this FREE tool and take up an exercise regimen, you will lose fat, weight, inches etc. Give it one 6 week challenge and if you haven't budged a pound or an inch/cm, you can come find me and punch me in the face. Secondly, buy a food scale--this will make tracking on myfitnesspal literally a child's errand. And finally, my fitness pal has a recipie import feature. If you have a smartphone and you are browsing a lovely website with lovely food, you can share that recipe to myfitnesspal and it will tell you how many calories per serving that lovely food has. If you switch through recipes that you have saved on myfitnesspal and keep under the calorie limit? Fat will flee. 4) Don't forget to stretch and walk I barely have time to stretch. In my first 6WC with the Assassins, I stretched maybe twice. But those two times, especially when I went out for a walk afterwards, I felt amazing. Now, in this challenge, I am working out everyday. I have EVEN LESS time and I am still stretching everyday (I'm working on the walking part). Give yourself 5 minutes. While watching TV. You can time yourself. And if you want to stop after 5, you can. If you don't--which is more likely--then you've just made time to stretch. See how that works? 5) "Don't hate your body. It's just trying to keep you alive" Maaya, or starsapart--a very wise woman--told me these words in my proverbial darkest before dawn moment. If you are healthy, and that is a relative term, if your body is not actively and seriously unwell. If like me, being overweight is the one thing it seems to be doing wrong, then don't hate you body. The difficulty your body is having shedding weight and inches comes from a survival instinct. It's not your body's fault. Your body isn't a malicious being trying to make your life a misery. So be kind to yourself. And then teach your body to thrive. So why Sabriel? Why the Abhorsen saga as the inspiration for my battle log? Well the newly leased warrior in me would say it is because I put the dead down. The dead being dead weight. That I have taken up the fishscale armour, silver key dusted halberd and bell bandolier of my office to hide the tears fat sheds as it wrung from my body (anyone see what I did there?). But in all honesty, and we can be honest here can we not my dears? In all honesty, this is not just a journey to put down fat. I'm putting to rest everything that ever went bump in the nights of my tearful youth, any silly insecurity I ever had, any belief that I can't. I may be the most ignorant Abhorsen in centuries (and pretty old to be starting at 25), but blood is blood and the Charter is the charter. And this Book of the Dead? I hope it will serve as a woot guide for the like minded. If I can do it, anyone can. And that's just me being honest. Does the walker chose the path or the path chose the walker?

Day 3 There's this hallway in the library, a set of doors that all lead somewhere...miraculous. But according to Flynn, none of those doors lead to a forest. In fact the only place like the one I'd described is the Heart of the Library (??) which I could not have gotten to through the doors. His conclusion? I hallucinated everything. Of course that doesn't explain the bruises, now does it? So I decided to sneak back this morning, before anyone else got up. And just like yesterday, the door opened up into a beautiful forest wreathed in a sudden burst of sunlight. It looked like...like the sun was setting. What the heck? I hadn't really thought beyond arriving in the forest. Fortunately, Ghost took care of that for me. I saw...it nosing around a tree at the edge of my vision. It was watching me. And pensively too. What to make of a pensive direwolf? I approached Ghost cautiously, aware it's apparently benevolent mood could shift at any time. Ghost closed the distance with utter surity and narrowed it's eyes as if in question. It was then I noticed the red ribbon. What I realized I had mistaken for blood yesterday and at a distance this morning. "Wow, what've got there?" Ghost's ears twitched in response. Then, I found a wet nose in my palm. The giggle this elicits, fundamentally unlike me, is involuntary. Ghost makes a pleasant snuffling sound and retreats as I feel the ribbon...slither up my arm. Naturally, I freak out. Later, I'm training with Eve. I haven't been able to get the ribbon off my arm, which is unnerving. As soon as combat training begins though... I'm a machine. The ribbon senses my every move, my every aggressive intention and guides me, wrapping around my arm in a punch, along my leg in a kick, supporting my limbs and making them strong and precise. I land 300 kicks. Eve is stunned. I realize I'll be sore for weeks.

Why thank you!

So you're a real life super hero? XD The Librarian is a set of movies (kinda campy) that TNT has now made a TV show (much better, less campy). Check them all out! I think the TV version is a lot more fun when you've seen the movies. I hadn't realized darebee had yoga stuff!! That's awesome!! And a song based Challenge? I hadn't even realized that was possible! Such a good idea!

Thanks so much!!! I can't wait to see more of your challenge! Day 1 and Day 2 ------------------------------------------- Freaking Ninjas. I guess I should start from the beginning, right? UGH Eve if you ever read this just know I hate you. And love you. Mostly hate. ODI ET AMO. Day one seemed like it would be easy enough. Eve dared me to land 60 solid kicks on her. Anywhere on her--easy enough right? HAH. JOKES ON JOKES. I guess while I've been off peacekeeping, she's actually been getting paid to kick ass and take names. Worse yet, every time I missed I had to do a squat. I missed. EVERY. TIME. Then--perhaps out of pity--she asked me to try and dodge her. For every hit she landed, climbers. I hit 60 climbers before despaired of me. On the one hand, I'm a total newb. On the other, I had time to stretch? Bearing all this in mind, it totally makes sense, her sending me through one of those doors to explore. It was a harmless forest really. Beautiful, all dew dropped with morning mist. Which brings me to the ninjas. It wasn't awful. At first. I'd been tracking...something or someone. I couldn't quite tell because the signs of their passage were so light. Eventually, I neared a clearing ringing with the echos of clanging steel. And in the clearing, a literal horde of ninjas. Or would they be a murder or ninjas? Like ravens? In the clearing, a literal murder of ninjas. And what should I find in the midst of this...murder of ninjas? A wolf, naturally. The ninjas were attacking a wolf. It all made perfect sense, didn't it (no)? And if I were being honest, the wolf was really more of a direwolf in some beautiful armour. Yup. Ninjas and Jon Snow's Ghost in plate mail. I was entirely prepared to mind my own business...I mean this was straight out of a crack fic and surely that way madness lies. But something about the odds of that battle hit me the wrong way. And Ghost--yes that is the name I have given it in my head--was already slowing, nicks here and there on those bits that remained unprotected by armour, bleeding and marring an otherwise perfectly snowy pelt. So I did the hero thing. Fortunately they became somewhat predictable--approaching me in five different groups. By the time I was able to dispatch them...Ghost had disappeared (o rly?). So not an intelligent direwolf. Or maybe just a jerk? Whatever. Something tells me I did the right thing.

Yup! The premiere of season 2 was Sunday night, so I had it on my mind while I was coming up with my challenge.

Whoa. The way you organized this is super cool! Subbing!!

Final Results (For those interested)!! Well, girl. Bust: -3.2 cm (1.25 in) Waist (measuring at my widest): -3 cm (1.18 in) Hips: -0.9 cm (0.35 in) L: -3.3 cm (1.29 in) R: - 2.34 cm (0.92 in) (I'm probably gaining a butt but losing cm in my thighs. BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS)

Mmmmm, lunges are hard for me but I don't have too much difficulty with squats. Burpees on the other hand...well I just haven't done many. We did them all throughout my fencing career, but that was usually as punishment XD

Seconded!

Heal well fellow team mate! We'll be cheering you on!! I hear you on the pull ups too! I was going to make that my next challenge but eventually went in a different direction. Maybe I'll add it back in??