Aloine

I haven't done many updates recently, but things have been going pretty okay, so not super worthy of remarking upon. Currently on soda #2 of the challenge. I won't deny that it is delicious, but you know what's also delicious? Iced tea. The dining hall I usually go to has both sweet and unsweet tea, and there's a specific ratio of the two of them that is a glorious time. Strongly recommend. Walking has been going well, too. I usually go over my goal without too much effort, although if I'm coming up a little short for the day I'll go for a walk after dinner or something. I don't think I'm noticeably stronger or more flexible yet. However, I do have my yoga routine memorized, so that's good. Lastly, I finished my first book (Dune) and yesterday I checked out a new book at the library- an anthology of short stories, which is titled "Tell me a story." Idk, I just liked the title. And it has stories by Ray Bradbury, so yeah.

So, here are my goals, based on my successes and failures of March's challenge. (Basically, I did a lot better than I expected on diet related goals and exercising is hard because I'm lazy.) 1. Only one soda per week 2. 15 minutes of yoga 2x per week (I'm thinking this routine, and also specific days- probably Tuesday and Saturday) 3. Walk 12,000 steps on weekdays and 8,000 on the weekend days (the difference is due to the fact that I'm a college student, so walking around to class already gets me around 10,000 and it just takes a not super long walk to get me to 12,000 steps, but on weekends I don't really have to go out much so it's a lot harder to get more steps in.) 4. Read 20 minutes per day. Reading for class does not count. So fun story about my day today. Due to misadventures with google maps, I got super lost looking for an apartment, ended up being out walking around for almost 2 hours when I expected to only be out for one, with a short break in which I could sit down and do some reading. In addition to that, it was eighty degrees, super sunny, and due to an uncharacteristically chilly morning and my dislike of shorts, I was wearing sweatpants. I was tired, sweaty, lost, confused, and also possibly sunburned. Eventually I made it and started on my way home, extremely thirsty. All I wanted was a soda. Surely if there was any time for a soda it was now, I reasoned. But instead, when I got back home, I opened my fridge and poured myself a glass of grapefruit juice. And it was one of the most delicious drinks I have ever tasted. I really can't say I recommend this experience. Right now I kind of just want to not move for a while. I'd suggest just using google maps correctly instead. However, I did get to over 21,000 steps by 4, so yay?

Alright, wheeeeee, I finished!!! Meaning... it's reflection time!!! Running: Eugh, I sort of stopped running much in the past week or so. I did walk the miles instead, but still, not quite what I intended. We're going to give me a C+ for this. Vending machine: I slipped and got a soda once. However, my diet definitely improved in general anyway- now I'm at the point where if I'm at the store I'd rather get a piece of exciting fruit than a candy bar, so I call that extra credit, and give myself and A+! (also if you have never eaten a cactus pear, they're actually super delicious. Try it at home) Drinking water with dinner: I did pretty okay with this. I didn't always drink exactly water (like sometimes it was lemonade or iced tea), but I did never drink soda, which was the real intention, so I'm going to give myself an A- for this. Cleaning my room: I did mostly okay with this? My room is a lot cleaner than it usually is, but I definitely was not super strict about the 5 minutes every night. And I somewhat have a method of organization now, so yeah. Let's go with a B+ on this one. I actually finished it! Going to have to come up with some sort of rewards for myself and figure out what's going to happen next month

Sprinting is a pretty good time I didn't do a super whole lot of it, but my favorite thing about running is that afterwards I usually feel pretty awesome. Speaking of which, I've been kind of lazing out on my running lately, walking instead of running, and rationalizing it. But, you know, I haven't quit entirely, so that's something I'm pretty okay with. The challenge is almost over, I can make it

Mile 14 today Today's run was interesting, I decided to do more of a sprinting type thing than just standard running or alternating between walking and running. Nothing too intense, just changing things up a little because the route I run here is not exactly the most exciting place. Also, fun surprise, I was able to weigh myself today and found that I'm five pounds lighter than I was when I weighed myself last time I was here! I try to not put too much stock on the numbers on the scale (as evidenced by the fact that I haven't weighed myself in 2 months) but I think that's an indication that I'm headed in the right direction

I like your fitness goal, seems like it'd let you try a lot of new things without forcing you to keep doing something you don't like

I like the motivation- it's something I think of a lot when I'm running, mostly because I'm pretty sure snails pass me sometimes. Can I ask what you've been reading lately?

My room is clean! Ish. Or it will be once I finish packing and have my life together. So, fun story, when I was running today, my stomach started hurting. It could have been from my lunch, or I could be starting to get sick, but I think it was from the more-than-a-few pieces of easter candy I had eaten earlier. Life advice, don't do that. Ah, well. 11/30, more than 1/3 of the way there!

Well, things have been going, although I'm starting to see slight snags in my original plan. One of them being that I have spring break next week, and I won't be at school, so there's some slight weirdness with that. I'm going to alter my goals slightly for next week, mostly that I'm going to get my room to a fairly clean state (what that will be is TBD) and call it good for the week. My vending machine goal is going to be altered to not purchasing any candy or soda anywhere, since if I'm not around any vending machines, that seems like a decent alteration. The running will be kind of weird with travelling and not being in a place where I can easily walk to a good place to run, but we'll make it work I'm still aiming for 30 miles, but if I only end up with 25 or so I won't beat myself up over it.

Running has been good stuff 4/30 miles down! Today's run was a particularly good time, too. I recently discovered a path to one of my favorite places to run that doesn't involve darting across a busy street, and the weather was beautiful and I saw flowers and when I finished I was at this park by this lake and just stayed there and stretched. It really was quite a lovely experience. I can see the ice water thing being helpful. I'll try that next time I need to wake up more quickly and don't have time for a nap or a cup of tea

Hi! So, I have been successful in avoiding vending machines so far, although it hasn't been easy. Usually I have a cup of coffee in the morning, but for the past couple of days, for whatever reason, my coffee has smelled undrinkably bad. Normally in this situation I'd get a soda or something to caffeinate myself, but since I'm not doing that, I'm relying on tea and taking naps instead XD any excuse to take a nap is a good time, though

I started a challenge a while ago, but that didn't end up going too well for me. Neither did my first semester of college, in terms of being healthy, anyway. But rather than dwelling on that, let's just do this. 1. Run 30 miles over the course of the challenge (don't worry, I'm not starting from nowhere, I already run 2 miles every other day ) 2. No food from the vending machine--it's supes unhealthy, not to mention overpriced (If I could give one reason why I gained weight last semester, this is probably it.) 3. Drink a glass of water with dinner every night Life goal: Spend five minutes each day cleaning up my room a bit.

Despite not being much more flexible than I was before, I feel like my yoga is improving. Like today when I was doing sun salutations, I was impressed with how graceful I felt while doing it, which is weird because that isn't a word I usually associate with myself. It's a good way to be, and now I want to keep going to be impressed with my own ability and to keep on improving. I guess that's a pretty good benefit to doing the same sequence each time; it's easy to keep notice improvement in it. I'd been having some trouble with reading lately, both in finding the material and motivation to read. However, despite the fact that I'm not really an audiobook person (I can read a book in a lot less time than an audiobook takes to listen to and I don't really take in information as well from listening) I've been listening to the audiobook for Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris in the past few days. It's been great- I really like listening to it at night before I go to sleep and throughout the day when I'm doing other things. I think I still much prefer regular books for most purposes, but this kind of feels like someone telling me a story at night. And that's awesome. Water has been kind of hard because recently I've discovered that the dining halls serve soda. Every day. Every meal. Usually my favorite plan to drink water instead of soda is to not have soda be available, but obviously I'm going to have to try a different approach. Maybe bring a waterbottle to meals or something.

So... marching is a thing. Band camp started a couple days ago, and we're marching or playing pretty much all day. In addition to walking across campus. It's hard work, but it's pretty fun, and I think I'm making some new friends. For the amount of water I'm drinking, I can't say exactly how much it is, but it is a LOT. Right now my main goal is "enough," however much it may be. It's definitely more than 2L, though. For yoga, mostly I've switched to doing about 5 sun salutations a day instead of following videos, due to the weirdness with scheduling and time and internet and all that jazz. When things get a little less weird I might switch back, but for now this is what's working best for me. I've also been relating marching to yoga in ways that I didn't expect to- lots of engaging the core to help with balance, paying attention to all parts of the body, and it's taking the same kind of focus that I find myself doing with yoga, in that without even trying to I'm not really thinking of anything else. Also, I finished my second book a few days ago. (It was a short book, so it didn't take me that long, but still, I finished it!) Haven't started another one yet, but it's still week 2. Until tomorrow morning, anyway XD

Alright, so start of week 2, time for an update. Yoga's been going okay, I only took 1 day off last week so I could take 3 off this week. All the preparation for moving and then a day that's almost completely driving, I needed to make some extra time. As for water, there was 1 day last week in which I drank the proper amount of liquid. Unfortunately, 1 bottle of that liquid was soda. I will not count that as a completed day of water drinking, but it's 1 day missed so far. Not too bad. I'm considering temporarily altering the rule for when I'm driving, in which needing to go to the bathroom as much as I do would be really inconvenient. Something more like I can drink as much or as little as I want, but everything I drink has to be water. Is that an ok thing that I can do? Bookwise, I finished my first book on Saturday... and haven't started another one yet. Definitely going to do that today.