Leafa

The gluten-free thing is weird but the sulphates are p important for me. I've got super curly hair and follow the curly girl method, which involves avoiding sulphates in shampoos-it gives you the squeaky clean feeling but is harsh on curly hair. Most shampoos need sulphates because a lot of conditioners and styling products have non-water-soluble silicones that only come out with the help of sulphates. So you have to avoid silicones in your styling products as well to avoid build-up. It's gotten pretty hard lately now that there's been a trend towards "natural" products. Companies will label their conditioners "sulphate free" to confuse you (it's the shampoos that have sulphates) and so you end up scanning the ingredients or looking up reviews each time you want to try a new product, haha.

I forgot to meditate on Tuesday, but I did do some yesterday night. Rather than using calm, I used candles, incense, and samhain music to really immerse myself. Food wise, I'm doing okay? It's been a lot of that cabbage casserole, trying to get rid of it. Yesterday there was free food at work and I ended up having way too much. There was a lot left over so I ended up having seconds. It was subs so it wasn't SUPER unhealthy but I probably ate my entire day's worth of calories for lunch... Today's a new day I guess. Today after work I'll be going to Walmart to get my photo retaken for my passport application and I'll take a trip down to the passport office again tomorrow morning.

The past 24 hours has been busy! I left work, went straight to the grocery store to get food, carried $70 worth of food 3km back to my apartment (my arms are so sore), spent 2 hours making that casserole, finally had supper, and then at 9:40pm grabbed a bus to my sister's place to get her to sign the last thing for my passport application. I went to the passport office early this morning and everything else was fine but they rejected my photos. I figured they would. I obviously had a small smile in the photo but I was too awkward and tired to ask the girl at Walmart to retake it. Luckily I paid a bit extra to be able to get a retake for free just in case. I've got until Monday to resubmit and get my passport on time, so I'll probably go to Walmart tomorrow and go back either Thursday or Friday morning. The building the passport office was in had a lot of mirrors, and I noticed that I'm definitely looking a bit thicker. I'm not going to step on the scale and discourage myself when I'm working on an entirely different goal, but I did start logging my food in MFP for now. Luckily that casserole is only 330 calories/serving and the recipe gave me 8 servings. Because yesterday was so stressful, I'm giving myself today some time to rest. If it clears up after work, I might go to the park and finally enjoy the fall colours like I've wanted to the past 3 weeks.

This weekend I did pretty well! I was invited to do several things over the past couple days. A friend asked me to volunteer with her for a workshop on teaching girls how to code next month. Normally I'd be all over that, I'm super invested in trying to be a role model for girls who are interested in programming. The sad thing was it'd be only 6 hours after I get back from my 4 day long trip to New York. Normally, I'd agree to it and power through it when the time comes, but I decided I'd rather not. I may not be able to volunteer, but I can do my part by spreading word around in the communities I'm a part of. I was also asked to just generally hang out, and while I didn't outright decline, I asked if we could go for next week because last week left me overwhelmed and I needed some space. I've been getting through the 7 days of Calm. I haven't skipped a day yet, my streak is finally more than 1 day! I'm finding it really soothing, though I'm not the best with keeping my mind quiet yet. And as for food, this weekend has not been good. I think I've had pizza once a day since Friday? Not intentionally, it just happened that way. I've been trying not to eat snacks at work. So far, so good, though I might grab something later this afternoon. But that's okay, as long as I don't have like 2-4 snacks in a day. I'm trying to get rid of leftover cabbage from Thanksgiving so I'll be making the cabbage rolls recipe that my mother gave me tonight. Also tonight I'll be visiting my sister to get her to sign the final things for my passport application, then I'll get up early and submit it tomorrow before work. I'll be exactly on the three week mark, so I have a feeling that I'm going to have to pay extra to expedite the process, but that's all I can do. I can't stress out over it.

I don't even know if I can begin to explain how the past 3 months have gone for me. I graduated right into a job in May, and things were going well, until I broke up with my boyfriend and moved into my own apartment, literally a two minute walk from work. I figured whatever, I'll focus on work for a while to get over the break up. Turns out my company wasn't doing as well as i thought and days after my break up, they laid off anyone who wasn't expendable, including me, who only started 3 months ago. Laid off! I just doubled my monthly expenses and most of my money went into furnishing my apartment. It hurt a lot, I had two work terms there and they liked my work enough to hire me when I graduated. I had nothing but compliments on my work and I got along with everyone in the office, so the thought of being let go never crossed my mind. I know they'd hire me back if they could, but It's so hard not to take it personally. I didn't want to give up, sell everything I just paid off, and move back home, so I worked hard to find another job. Despite the grim job outlook for young people here, I got back in with my old part-time job teaching video game design to kids with the promise of going full time eventually. But then a week before I was to start, I got an interview with the biggest tech company in town. And the interview went well and I was hired! I've always wanted to work there, every local role model I have works there or has worked there. But I already promised that I'd teach in the evenings for my old boss, and I knew that I'd screw her over badly if I left so suddenly. So then I was starting a new 40 hour job plus teaching children in the evenings. I ended up with 12-15 hour days and having to work 6 days a week. I was stressed and tired and cranky and I knew I couldn't keep this up so I managed to find someone to take my place teaching. They started last week, though my old boss was very unhappy with losing me again, she always got great feedback from the children/parents when I was teacher. Despite the fact that things have slowed down since I've downsized to one job, I still feel overwhelmed and stressed out. While on a day to day basis, work has been going well, the project I am working on is late for various reasons and I can't get over this anxiety that I'm going to be laid off again like before. Even though I have no evidence of any kind that there would be a massive lay off or that I would ever be let go at all, I don't have the luxury of feeling secure in my job anymore. I can't stop worrying, and every stall in this project, even if it's expected because I'm new, just makes me feel like like it's another strike against me. And I don't want to leave, the pay is great and it feels like working at Google compared to my other job. On top of that, I'm planning a trip to New York in November to see my favourite band and it's been causing me a lot of stress and anxiety. I still need to get my passport before I can even go there and it'll be my first time going abroad alone, or even going to a city that big alone--and a day after the national election. I'm kind of scared there will be riots in the streets or something. Even so, I feel guilty confiding to my friends about this because I'm lucky to even be able to afford to go on this trip. I feel frustrated when I talk to my friends at all about my life. I feel somewhat guilty complaining about having too much work when they're struggling to find any. All my friends think I have my life put together, when in reality I think I'm just good at school and have a hard time saying no. The economy here is awful for anyone just coming out of school. I have friends who are trained as electricians that cannot find any work at all. I went through a program with a 2 year co-op plan that gave me experience and a network to start with after graduating, and I spent the last two years building a professional network through volunteering, professional societies, and technical talks in the community. Not only do I have a job, I have a job at 23 with a salary that could support a family and great benefits to boot. I know I'm incredibly privileged to be in that kind of position, but at the same time, I find it hard to remind myself that I worked very hard to get there. So much so that I think I lost my ability to relax. While I was jobless and in break-up mode, I didn't take a vacation, I spent the whole time working on finding a job to try to take my mind off how out of control my life felt. I actually lost a lot of weight, though it was only because I lost my appetite and I went to the gym 5 days a week. So life story over. I don't even want to look at the scale, I don't want to know how much I weigh, I don't want to work on that right now. What I want is to feel in control of my emotions and my anxiety level. Since starting my new job, I haven't set foot in the gym, and I've taken full advantage of the free snacks and coffee. I try to plan for the gym, but even without the teaching job, my evenings are taken up by grocery shopping or trips to Wal-Mart, or by saying yes to outings with friends when I shouldn't. By the time I get home at 9pm, I'm exhausted, have a headache, and sometimes on the verge of tears from feeling overwhelmed. So my goal is this: Right now if I were to rate my anxiety level, it'd be around a 7. I want to be able to rate it at a 3 by the time my trip to New York comes. What do I need to do to make this happen? Hell Yes! or No - I don't have the energy to accept every invitation to outings with friends right now, I need to decide if I really want to do something or if I'm just saying yes out of politeness. This includes work related things as well, Don't accept any invitations to volunteer, or to participate in an event or go to a presentation. Don't even say you might go, just say not now. Don't even think about trying to work towards a new goal - I have a ton of things I want to work towards, drawing, dancing, losing weight, reading more. I'm not putting any more expectation on myself until I don't feel overwhelmed and burnt out. Calm - I've had the Calm app on my phone for months, and according to the record, I've used it 4 times. At the very least, I want to try to get through the 7 days of calm. I don't see why I can't start doing a 10 minute meditation every morning though. Don't do anything in the evenings unless you have to - Go straight home after work, don't try to do all those errands in one go. I get more overwhelmed the longer I have to run around. Spend time with the cats, recharge. Stop snacking and start eating the right food - I know my stress is partially due to eating crap over the past month. Start grocery shopping on the weekends again and fill the fridge up with healthy foods. There's a correlation between how empty my fridge is and how much I'm snacking at work. So that's it. I'm making this a daily log because the 4 week challenges are nearly over and I think a journal format will be easier to not drop out of. I'll give a quick update in the next couple days.

I've always had long, thick curly hair and this is what works for me: put it in a bun, but to make sure the bun is either very low (so it fits with the natural curve of your neck) or up high so it's not between your head and pillow.

So I'm 23 and growing up I didn't really do any sports or anything that worked my co-ordination. I was a klutz and I grew up a klutz. It's just part of my personality at this point. That being said, I really want to get into dancing. Back in October I got into K-pop in a bad way, and inspired by some of the YouTube dance covers, I'd really like to learn the dances to my favourite songs--but I'm absolutely horrible at it. I've been taking some music based fitness classes and while one problem is I don't have the stamina to go the full hour, the bigger problem is that I have to really focus or I'll fall out of sync with the instructor (ie, stepping left when I should step right). I'm so bad at it that it's embarrassing. I've been practicing myself alone in my room using some of the dances I'd like to learn but even then I still feel completely out of sync. Are there any exercises or things I can do to practice being more co-ordinated or am I SOL?

Hi again, I posted a lot here last fall. I was trying to lose weight through home workouts and eating less food. And I was doing an okay job at it, but then I left my work term and went back to university to finish my engineering degree. It was hell. I gained like 15 pounds in 4 months, stress eating with my teammates and classmates. Not only was the final project completely stressful, but drama with another student targeting myself and friends added on even more pressure. There were some days I'd eat out all day just because I was in the lab that much. I've tried this losing weight thing so many times, I even found some notes where I wrote that I wanted to be 30 pounds lighter by now, and I had a plan to get there. But I focused too much on the weight, and when it didn't budge I got discouraged and I focused on things I could change right away: to-do lists, emails, assignments. This time will be different. I have goals that have nothing to do with weight. I want to fix my posture. I want to not struggle to open the heavy doors to work. I want to eat less meat and try to transition into vegetarianism. I adore asian fashion, particularly Korean fashion and Japanese lolita/mori fashion, and they look best with a petite figure, if I could slim down so these clothes would look good on me, I'd be so happy. Instead of focusing on the number on the scale, I want to focus on a whole lifestyle change. A "warrior princess" style really appeals to me: as graceful and beautiful as a princess but can totally beat the crap out of you. I've joined a gym chain, and the closest one is 24 hours and right across the road from my house. Joining came with a health check-up where the guy guessed I worked at a desk job before I even told him. I was told to focus on strength training since I had little to no upper body strength. My shoulders roll forward because my upper back isn't strong enough to keep them where they should be. He also told me the muscle along the back of my leg and ankle can't stretch enough. Completely normal for office jobs, and easy to fix, all it takes is consistency at the gym. So here is me starting again. Today is my birthday so hopefully by my birthday next year I'll have improved.

I really resonate with this post, haha. Congrats on graduating! I finished up my degree as well and completely neglected my health. Now that free time is a thing again, I want to get back on the wagon and start being more active. Good luck and I'll be fighting right beside you!

I personally think that The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is like the book on habit building. He focuses on the habit loop, (cue routine, reward) and how to hack it for our own benefit (and how companies exploit it).

I think most introverts have this almost hidden power, that once you've been pushed far enough, you push back, like really push back. It's happened to me before as well during group projects when one person isn't pulling their weight. I remember I had a team member once in a competition who called his role "recon" when he was actually just socializing with friends in other teams. One day he left us in the middle of a meeting and we decided that we had had enough. I chased him down and chewed him out for not doing anything, and then we sat him down and he wrote the entire report himself. He later told me that I was scary when I was mad, which is still pretty funny to me because I look like the most nonthreatening person you'll ever meet. Something I dislike about the common working style is we value extroversion over introversion, and we mistake silence for not knowing an answer. Just because someone talks the most and the loudest, doesn't make their ideas the best or they're the hardest working.

Oh cool! What's your instagram name? I'll add you. I don't do very much on there, mostly just post photos of my cat.

This sounds delicious, thanks! When you say spaghetti squash, do you mean you use one of those machines to make spaghetti noodles out of squash? A horror story to scare everyone into wearing gloves: A friend of mine was working with jalepenos without gloves and after making supper, went to have some "alone time", He was in a lot of pain for the next couple days.

I bombed. ): Friday I went out to eat with my sister, Saturday same, Sunday was pizza, and yesterday and today have been leftovers from said pizza. I haven't done any working out since Thursday, nor have I even been tracking my progress on Habit RPG. I feel like a total slob. I feel like I'm losing my motivation to work towards any of my goals. This weekend started out with good intentions and quickly deteriorated mostly because I broke my own rules and basically said "well screw it, might as well go all the way". Part of it has been the weather, we don't have much in the way of food because this weekend has been crazy windy (like, 100km/h, no joke) and cold, neither me nor my boyfriend managed to man up and get food. Posting here helps as much as anything, being able to reflect on my actions and think of how to improve them, as well as feeling accountable in a public space not to throw it all away is really helpful. (though I've been avoiding the forums because I didn't want to admit that I've been flailing lol) I'm wondering if I should write a small note and place it somewhere I'll see it every day to remind myself how much it means to me to meet these goals. Anyway, my boyfriend brought a bunch of old cookbooks home and one is literally a 5 ingredient one which keeps it cheap and simple. We picked out a bruschetta and roasted salmon with veggies for supper tonight and hopefully tomorrow as well since it's a holiday. I'm going to get myself back on track starting today.

Hahaha over here we usually get enough snow to go to your waist, so for 4-5 months of the year, you can only go where they plow the roads. Makes travelling by foot a lot more difficult!

Yesterday: Q1: Morning 5/6 didn't end up doing my bodyweight workout Evening 5/5 Q2: 8/10 Did well! I had a cookie at starbucks but no Halloween candy! Probably helped that I was out of the house for 12 hours My soup turned out awesome, I'm just about to warm it up in the microwave for lunch now. Only thing is I made way too much, like 6 or 7 meals worth. I'm going to have to freeze (or maybe learn to jar) some of it for lazy meals, which is absolutely fine with me! Once again didn't exercise this morning, I'm not sure if I'll get to it today either, I won't be home until 8:30pm tonight and I'll have to sit down to study tonight, I've got a folklore test tomorrow evening.

Haha, it'd actually a bit late! It's Canadian custom to have your children's Halloween costume over their snowsuits and while it was chilly out, no snow fell in October! Wasn't Boston the one that got buried in snow the other year? That's crazy!

Woo! Awesome job, that's great!

Yesterday: Q1: Morning Ritual - 6/6. evening - 5/5 Q2: Food - 7/10 my meals weren't bad but once again ate a bit too much Halloween candy. LQ: Finished already, I've posted to (and I'm following) three other threads and I'll be keeping an eye on them. Plan on looking at more throughout the week as well. Yesterday I got all the stuff I needed for my soup. I spent a half hour cutting up all sorts of veggies (onion, potato, parsnip, celery, and carrot, yum!) but as I was about to throw it all in the slow cooker, I noticed the beef broth I bought had a broken seal, should've checked before I bought it.. My plan was to have it cook overnight and take some for lunch, but luckily it just so happens my boyfriend's mother had a moose meat dinner and she dropped off some leftovers for me, so I've brought that to work for lunch instead and I'll just cook my soup tonight. So this morning I walked to the store and exchanged the bad broth for a new one before I went to work, I'm calling that my cardio for the day (mostly because it took longer than I thought and had to run to catch the bus), but I haven't done the bodystrength workout. There was snow on the ground this morning, beautiful white powder on everything, even on the leaves that are still holding onto their trees. It was gorgeous, I tried taking photos but the magic just wasn't conveyed in them. For now it's exciting and all I can think of is thick sweaters and blankets, reading by the window as the snow falls, and hot drinks, but winter's begun and getting around is going to be a lot more difficult. The dogberry trees were heavy with berries this fall and my boyfriend told me local superstition says that means a harsh winter is coming. It'll be our first winter without "adult supervision" let's call it, we'll be the ones that have to shovel ourselves out and sprinkle the sand/salt on the ground to melt the ice. We don't have a car and our bus stop is a bit of a walk from our place. I'll probably be cursing the snow in a few weeks.

Ah, so jealous that you got to go to Hal-con! I'm from Nova Scotia too, but gone to Newfoundland for study. Glad you had a good time!

Thanks to both of you and good luck on your challenges! Not too good haha First day: Morning Ritual: 6/6, did it awesome Evening Ritual 3/5, didn't do 30 minutes of reading before bed and stayed up a half hour later than I meant to Food: 5/10, breakfast/lunch was good, but my boyfriend convinced me to go out for supper last night with friends and I overate, I still feel bloated and stuffed... and I didn't get my soup ingredients. Technically I didn't break any of my rules since I did allow myself to eat out once a week, but to already have done that on the first day... ha. I also ate too much Halloween candy. Today is faring better. Haven't had candy yet (I'm hoping it's out of my system now), had a decent breakfast, and got plenty enough exercise this morning.

Hey! I remember seeing you last challenge in recruits with me. Good to see I'm not the only one who chose Adventurers. Good luck on this one! I'll be following.

Not the best start today, had a little too many Halloween treats at the office, but I did bring leftovers from last night's dinner home and there should be enough left for dinner for tonight as well. Other than that, the morning went well. The clocks went back an hour on Sunday and I used that to my advantage to get up at 6:30 without any qualms. If I make it a habit now before my "jetlag" wears off, maybe it'll become easier. Did my exercise and had a decent breakfast. I'm going to grab ingredients for a vegetable soup today before I go home and I'll put it in the slow cooker to cook while I'm at work tomorrow.

Man I'm really considering it. I haven't participated since 2010, since I became so busy I couldn't find time to sit down and do creative writing. But for the past year, every night I play the same story in my head to help me fall asleep, a gay fantasy romance, something I think fantasy literature is sorely needing. I'm so out of shape for writing now though, and three days of the week I'm out for 12+ hours... Maybe next year.

Started Flipped this morning, it's ones of those books I always come back to, even though it's a middle school level book. Something about it I just adore. I shouldn't have picked it for my bus book though, I always find the chapters on Juli's Sycamore tree get to me. I'm also reading The Golden Book of Faerie as a bedside book (since it's so big!), combining The Hunter's Moon, The Summer King, The Light-Bearer’s Daughter, and The Book of Dreams by O.R. Melling. I got this book at a used book fair over a year ago so it's great to finally give it a read. Unless I really get into it, I'll probably be alternating between this and a couple other books for my nighttime reading. I also bought The Name of the Wind the other day. I wanted the smaller version so I could throw it in my purse to read on the bus but they didn't have any in stock, so I got the larger version. Probably won't be starting it for a while, though.