imprimis5

Hey, just chiming in as a NFA member. There is a really fantastic queer Facebook group that is chock full of enbies and gender-nonconforming folks.

Week 0 Friday Update Yesterday was a rough day, y'all. Anxiety is such a weird animal. It makes you feel jittery and unfocused. It makes you unable to be productive. It makes you feel guilty for not being productive. It makes you feel worthless. That was my day yesterday. Not to mention, I was in actual literal pain for a substantial part of the afternoon. Turns out, if you consume a large-ish amount of soy after not having soy in many months, your GI tract rebels. I also failed at least one set of every exercise I did at the gym! That's good for the self esteem. To top it all off, I'm relatively certain I accidentally took my psych meds twice last night. So I spent the evening a little loopy, and I'm still not quite right this morning. Big Picture Challenges Make new local (and low cal) friends! I haven't heard anything back from St. Louis Frontrunners. I'm investigating joining up with the 501st, a Star Wars group. If you've ever been somewhere and seen a bunch of people dressed up as stormtroopers, that was probably the 501st. Drop 1% body fat. I guess I didn't eat any junk yesterday. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: Two hard boiled eggs Calories: 156 Protein: 12 g Fat: 10 g Carbohydrates: 1.2 g Lunch: Mushroom chicken, sweet potato bits, peas and carrots Calories: 311 Protein: 19.3 g Fat: 9.3 g Carbohydrates: 35.9 g Dinner: Ground beef and onions, carrots, banana Calories: 321 Protein: 22 g Fat: 12 g Carbohydrates: 31 g Snacks: Watermelon Calories: 130.5 Protein: 3.2 g Fat: .6 g Carbohydrates: 33 g Afternoon Soylent Calories: 400 Protein: 20 g Fat: 21 g Carbohydrates: 37 g Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. Gym 5x a week. Gym yesterday. 5x5 squat, bench press, barbell row. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day. Yup.

Week 0 Thursday Update The weekend is inching ever closer, and I can taste it. Four days of no stupid customer emails. Despite my being rather cranky and full of anxiety the last couple days, I've been shockingly productive. I'm kind of hoping to continue that trend today. I've been at work for an hour at this point, though, and it doesn't seem to be happening. :-P Big Picture Challenges Make new local (and low cal) friends! I emailed St. Louis Frontrunners yesterday to try and get more information. I haven't heard back yet, though. Drop 1% body fat. Resting is important to losing body fat, right? I'll be honest and say I didn't do anything that would particularly help this yesterday. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: Two hard boiled eggs Calories: 156 Protein: 12 g Fat: 10 g Carbohydrates: 1.2 g Lunch: Mushroom chicken, sweet potato bits, peas and carrots Calories: 311 Protein: 19.3 g Fat: 9.3 g Carbohydrates: 35.9 g Dinner: Ground beef and onions, carrots, banana Calories: 321 Protein: 22 g Fat: 12 g Carbohydrates: 31 g Snacks: Watermelon Calories: 130.5 Protein: 3.2 g Fat: .6 g Carbohydrates: 33 g Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. No running yesterday due to aforementioned sore back. I probably won't manage a run until this weekend. Gym 5x a week. Rest day yesterday. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day. Nope. Bleh.

Week 0 Wednesday Update Ever have those days where you just want to sit and stare at the wall rather than talk to people, move, eat, drink, or metabolise? That's my day today. I'm sore, my head aches, and I'm tired. Thankfully, it's a light day at work, and it's my rest day from the gym. Big Picture Challenges Make new local (and low cal) friends! I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to find out how to join the St. Louis Frontrunners, but their website is pretty substantially out of date. The last member meeting they have scheduled is from this previous April. Guess I'll have to actually talk to a real person. Gross. But I suppose that's kind of what this challenge is all about. Drop 1% body fat. I'm going to try Soylent! I ordered a dozen, so we'll see how that goes. I don't have a lot of faith, but we'll see. I got a 50% discount (Thanks, @animuse!), so I'm not out a whole lot if it's awful. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: Two hard boiled eggs Calories: 156 Protein: 12 g Fat: 10 g Carbohydrates: 1.2 g Lunch: Mushroom chicken (new recipe, and it was gross. tasted like wet dog smells), sweet potato bits, peas and carrots Calories: 311 Protein: 19.3 g Fat: 9.3 g Carbohydrates: 35.9 g Dinner: Ground beef and onions, carrots, banana Calories: 321 Protein: 22 g Fat: 12 g Carbohydrates: 31 g Snacks: Watermelon Calories: 130.5 Protein: 3.2 g Fat: .6 g Carbohydrates: 33 g Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. I was kind of planning on running this afternoon until I woke up this morning with a very sore back. Seems prudent not to do that. Gym 5x a week. 5x5 squats. OHP. 1x5 deadlift. 3x5 close grip bench press. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day. Done and done.

Thanks for making me not feel alone, btw. My husband and I are planning on buying a house this autumn when our current lease is up. It's so stressful!

Welcome back! I totes get you.

Week 0 Tuesday Update It's the first day of this challenge. Yesterday, I didn't have any of this planned, so don't except it to be fully in line with things. I am going to go into some details for how I plan to accomplish some of these things, at least. Big Picture Challenges Make new local (and low cal) friends! First of all, I'm going to look into joining up with the St. Louis Frontrunners! This is a chapter of an international queer-focused running club. They do two group runs every week on Tuesdays and Saturdays. They also sponsored the St. Louis Pride 5k race that I ran in this past weekend, which is how I heard about them in the first place. I don't know if this will necessary be the right fit for me, but it's a place to start. Drop 1% body fat. First of all, I eat some real crap sometimes. I don't always report it. I need to quit that. Having a specific reason for not eating it should help. Second, I need to drink more water. Thirdly, I want to do a little more high intensity stuff at the gym. Running regularly will help, and it's already in my plan. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: Two hard boiled eggs Calories: 156 Protein: 12 g Fat: 10 g Carbohydrates: 1.2 g Lunch: Mushroom chicken (new recipe, and it was gross. tasted like wet dog smells), sweet potato bits, peas and carrots Calories: 311 Protein: 19.3 g Fat: 9.3 g Carbohydrates: 35.9 g Dinner: Wasn't feeling well. Just ate watermelon. Calories: 130.5 Protein: 3.2 g Fat: .6 g Carbohydrates: 33 g Snacks: Red Velvet Cookie Calories: 140 Protein: 1 g Fat: 6 g Carbohydrates: 21 g Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. I ran a 5k race this past Sunday. That counts, right? Gym 5x a week. Trainer time yesterday. We worked on shoulders primarily, especially since I was complaining of some tightness in my Achilles tendon. Since I'd taken the weekend off doing any exercise except for running, I did phenomenally well. It made me feel good about myself. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day. Done and done.

I have a new challenge up! I'm going to try to be friendly!

It's new challenge time already? Wow. Well, here I am! Reporting in! This month's challenge focus is on... getting social! Doing it through fitness-related things is ideal, but I'll take what I can get. An aspect of this challenge is being social without spending a ton of money or consuming tons of unhealthy calories while I'm at it. Why is this a challenge for me, you may ask? Well, the long and short of it is that I play an extrovert on TV pretty well, but that takes a lot of energy. Not to mention that I struggle on a daily basis with depression and anxiety. My husband is even more introverted than I am. That leads to us having very few local friends, even after living in this city for two and a half years. So I'm going to change that. This may be my biggest challenge yet. Along with that, I'm continuing to work out, run, and eat right. Physically, my focus is on lowering body fat percentage this month. I've let it slowly creep up on me, so I'm setting a modest goal of dropping it by 1% over the four weeks of this challenge. Finally, you may notice that I'm tracking more than just calories on my food log. For right now, I don't have any specific goals. This is just to see what my numbers are at so that i can adjust them as needed. Next month's challenge will probably see action taken based on what comes from this month. Big Picture Challenges Make new local (and low cal) friends! Drop 1% body fat. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: Calories: Protein: Fat: Carbohydrates: Lunch: Calories: Protein: Fat: Carbohydrates: Dinner: Calories: Protein: Fat: Carbohydrates: Snacks: Calories: Protein: Fat: Carbohydrates: Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. Gym 5x a week. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day.

Hello! I'm here! I heard you needed a faerie for some dust?

Following along, but slowly losing ground since you're so much faster than I am.

I'm here for the follows!

I don't know too many details, but I don't know if it's a running club you'd be interested in, honestly. It's primarily an LGBT group. Everyone's welcome, but it definitely has a target demographic.

I work for a mid-sized board game publisher. A major part of my job is managing our convention presence. So I'll be working in our booth, all day every day!

Wrap-up Overall, I think I did reasonably well on this challenge, given the hurdles of travel. Big Picture Challenges Figure out diet. What I've learned since last Tuesday: Well, I've learned that I need more protein in my diet, in general. Also, I need to move the needle more in the green and yellow veggie direction and away from the sweet potato direction. That should help with things in general. Sign up and train for a 5k race. Signed up? I signed up and ran the St. Louis Pride 5k. Training progress. I did it! My final time was 33'34". I got a leg cramp at one point during the run, so that hurt my time a little. Log meals: Note: Anything in bold is not paleo. Yesterday breakfast: I don't even remember. I know I ate something, but I was fixated on running. Calories: ? Lunch: Brie, smoked salmon terrine, carrots Calories: 635 Dinner: Ground beef and onions, carrots, banana Calories: 678 Snacks: Almonds, watermelon Calories: 248 Little Picture Challenges Run 1-4 miles 1x a week. I did pretty well at this, and I want to keep it up. I learned of a running club here in St. Louis that I'm seriously considering joining up with. They run every Saturday in one of the local parks. Gym 5x a week. I'm really good at this one. It's not much of a struggle. Fill Activity ring on Apple Watch every day. Mostly. Travel (especially trans-Atlantic flights) made this one hard.