Socksy

I've heard people say cracking your knuckles is good for them and people say it's bad so I have no idea, really!

I think I can describe it best as rotating my wrist until I can feel it crack, like cracking knuckles. I'm not sure if it's really swelling, actually, that's just the most logical thing I can come up with, but I think the cause is that I occasionally put too much force in and the end result is my wrist getting less mobile until the pain goes away. The pain ends up being around the point where the bone of my index finger and thumb meet down by the wrist.

I've done tape measures of my neck, waist and hips and tracked them on MyFitnessPal but I haven't checked them in a while - can't find my tailor's tape measure. The wrist is slowly getting better, I just have to remember not to try to crack it and get in this situation again since this always seems to happen if I mess with it too much to try to relieve tension after typing for a while. Working out seems to help so I'll keep that up.

So handstands aren't working out so well, since I messed up my wrist a couple weeks ago and can't really bend it until the swelling goes away, which might take the rest of the challenge time. Saving money isn't going so well either, but I'm hoping things stop coming up (and my roommates stop being stupid with their money and costing me mine) so that I can drop a few hundred in at once. I also keep spending money on books, which is both a good and bad thing I suppose. Losing weight is on track-ish. It's tough to really tell since weight can vary drastically due to water, sodium, mood, and muscle gain, but I'm still going down rather than up so I'm ok with that. Keeping up the bodyweight workouts well, but I had to modify my push-ups to push up with my fists due to the wrist thing. Procrastination and chronic spending are the enemy.

Well, I didn't do my handstand workout yesterday like I wanted since my sleeping aids kicked in sooner than expected, but my bodyweight workouts are going according to schedule. The money thing is going well so far, hopefully nothing comes up to derail that. And I lost 5 lbs so far, I'll have to see if I'm still on track this coming Saturday since I weigh in once per week - every Saturday morning before I do anything else.

I am the worst at this whole 'do this thing daily and don't forget!' thing, so this is a week report, I suppose? I lost 5 lbs this past week, so that's nice. I had a spinach, baby kale, and chard salad every day of the week along with a banana for lunch and apple for breakfast. I've been chugging water like my life depends on it (because it does!) and I'm starting to feel much like an actual human being again. I do need to fix my sleep schedule, because any progress I make with diet and exercise is going to be kicked in the nads otherwise. No matter how much better food and water and exercise makes me feel, if I don't fix my sleep, I'm never going to feel like I can actually do anything or have the energy to do anything, I'll keep being in pain, and I'll never be able to focus. So I'm going to go to sleep at 9:00 - 9:30 PM every day from now on, and I'm going to take sleep aids when I get home if I need to. I've got a new pillow coming in tomorrow that should help me get to sleep as well, since I sleep on my side and all of my pillows are old and ineffective. I'm keeping up with my exercise, slowly making my way through progressions and correcting my posture for squats and push-ups. It's going to take a while for me to get the balance I need in order to do a squat without holding on to something since I'm used to crouching down on my toes rather than with my feet flat, so I have to break that habit and make my ankles more flexible. Handstands are coming along slowly as well, since my wrists and hands are messed up from work and not actually stretching them, so I'm doing the wrist flexibility exercises in the Handstands post on Nerd Fitness in order to make them more mobile and heal the damage that I allowed them to sustain. It's making me better at my job, since I haven't been able to type like I'm used to due to lessening mobility and hand pain. Which is good - the better I do at work, the more money I get! Yesterday I felt like an actual human being despite no sleep at all the previous night, after my workout and eating. I used a foam roller to ease out a knot that has been making workouts difficult for me for a month and holy crap did that feel amazing. I'm going to do it again today since that's what I was advised to do with foam rollers - keep doing it consistently and stretch as well. It's going to feel even better today, since I went to sleep on time and got a decent night's rest - so I'm looking forward to everything. In addition to the loss of 5 lbs, I'm much more agile than I was a month ago, and I walk around with a lot more energy and agility. I can feel the changes that stretching and yoga have done to my muscles, and I'm looking forward to what the 1st of December holds for me to report. Already my flexibility is increasing! it feels good, and at the rate I'm moving I'll be hitting my goals by year's end or the end of January.

Yesterday I did the whole nerd fitness bodyweight workout and ate a nice banana and red delicious apple, on top of a salad! The salad had chard, spinach, baby kale, carrots, chia seeds, real bacon crumbles, crushed walnuts and italian dressing. It was pretty good! Likely going to have another one of those today, but with half an enchilada since yesterday I didn't get nearly enough calories. Today I've also done my handstand practice. Looking forward to wall walking soon, but for the moment the wrist exercises are amazing simply because my wrists are problem areas due to my job in data entry.

Rats are cute! I'm a cat person though, I can't see my cats getting along with rats. I'd love to find somewhere to check out for improving mental health, because it's becoming debilitating for me - depression, anxiety, chronic procrastination, apathy, etc. I sadly don't know anywhere to check for that, so I don't have suggestions. What I do know is that everyone suggests physical activity and going outside to improve mental health.

I'm using the progression outline from right here.

All right, I did the handstand practice outlined in this Nerd Fitness blog post. While doing them I came to the conclusion that my wrists are horribly maintained and I should do the wrist stretching exercises every day, preferably in the morning since they're easy and quick and it'll get my wrists fired up for work. I figure eventually they'll gain the flexibility I'm going to need in order to do handstands! Today I ate: Nothing for brekkie. A spinach Bullrito with extra steak, queso, lettuce, and fat free refried beans for lunch, with a Mountain Dew Code Red when I got home. It was a relaxing, given I was forced to work today. Drinking lots of water, and going to eat less for dinner today to compensate for the Bullrito and Dew calories.

Why does my body go through so much water so quickly? I feel like I'm constantly drinking water and it's never enough. Like every twenty minutes I drink about a cup of the stuff or so! I'm starting to hate the taste of it too

Looking forward to the minichallenges, still not sure how this stat system works though.

What were the techniques?

I figure I should probably make one of these for accountability. I know myself well enough to know that I will at some point - likely sometime soon - get hit with the usual feeling of apathy about the whole 'bettering my life' thing, so this might help offset that. I don't have any big lists or anything of the sort yet, but I'm going to be adding those - likely sometime soon, with my endgame goals outlined in something of a tree breaking down each endgame in to individual steps. But that can be for later, since I just finished my last workout of the week! And what a workout it was: 20 body weight squats 10 push ups 20 walking lunges 10 dumbbell rows 15 second plank 30 Jumping Jacks All in rapid succession, like the beginner bodyweight routine recommended, plus the warm-up and static stretching routine from Startbodyweight.com! For foodbits, I had: A golden delicious apple A golden delicious banana A golden delicious Red Robin burger, macaroni & cheese, and some brownies. Creatine in water! Not really the healthiest day, but today's my cheat day and my ex's birthday, so I wanted to stick it to her by actually enjoying the day. Tomorrow, after work, handstand practice! I was also trying to find more ways to gamify my life, so if anyone has suggestions I'm all ears. Also I could use more books.

Just throwing it out there that I'd also love to climb a glacier someday.

That's the plan! I kept it at 1200/day in calories all week long. I'll adjust as needed as I go along for sure though, depending on what the loss is looking like with how things are going right now - and I'll see if I can't figure a more reliable way to measure fat loss since measuring weight while I'm also working out is iffy at best.

All right, so my first challenge went well with the beginner goals and the like - although I couldn't really go to sleep ten minutes earlier like I wanted. I'm going to come in for the whole four weeks this time around, since I only got a week and a half of the last one - and with my own goals this time, too! Diet Goals Lose 2 lbs/week. 7000 calories. Fitness Goals Practice Handstands on my rest days: Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun. Do Nerd Fitness Bodyweight Routine 3x/week: Mon, Wed, Fri. Level Up Your Life Goals Put $100 in to Savings every Friday. These goals are a mixture of what I've broken down my Feb. 4th goal of visiting my parents for the first time in five years, and my goal of being more physically fit so that I can look damned good when I do visit. Plus, I want to get in to parkour and martial arts, so being better at working with and moving my own body weight is essential.

All right, so I did both of the diet ones and the fitness one, eating oodles of veggies and eating less fast food; I feel much better, actually! I've even went and started drinking significantly more water since I'm pretty sure I've been chronically dehydrated for a very long time. I didn't so much do the sleep thing, unfortunately. My schedule has been wonky, but I did it most of the days I had left.

SMART challenges would be a great start I think, since a lot of the times people don't stick with these things - diets, exercise, their own well-being and health in general - because they have Resolutionitis and go about saying "I'mma lose ALL THE WEIGHT this year!" and it's just downhill from there.

Any tips for improving sitting/standing posture? I try to sit up straight but I'm not sure what good posture even looks like, and I keep reverting back to my old, bad posture without noticing while I'm working or sitting at my desk. I know my current posture is bad due to all the back pain and various other things, plus I'm slouching. Tips for noticing I've reverted, too?

I'm in much the same situation - and I'm in Houston, too, where the drivers here are insane and seem to actively try to kill you, and there aren't really an open areas to practice unless you drive three hours out of the city. I tried learning once, just driving around an empty parking lot, but the person teaching me wanted to start me off at parallel parking lol. Then we went from that to driving through a subdivision and I was just like nope. I have to learn, though. It's Houston, and to get anywhere here you either shell out tons for a cab/Uber because public transit is trash, or you learn to drive with all the reckless people on the road. That, and it's becoming prohibitive - I'm 100% reliant on another person for my job at this point, because if I don't get a ride I'm boned. That, and if I want to do any of the stuff I want to do, like doctor visits, college courses, and schooling in a martial art or dance or archery and the like, I'm going to have to be able to transport myself. My roommate's girlfriend said she'd help me out when she got her car back for the winter though, so here's hoping!

I'm curious if anyone else has the same thoughts I do when I think about where I'll be when I do all of my quests and make myself better: I think on it, a thin and muscular me that can talk to people, has a significant other, has energy, makes good money, and has actual skills to show off and it just feels like this future me is... Unfathomable, I suppose? Like I have no frame of reference for how that would be, like trying to think of what it's like inside a black hole. I'm not sure if I'm describing it correctly. It's not causing me to think it's impossible or anything negative like that, I just seem to find it hard to imagine myself in the future and think, "Yep, that's me!"

Fast food will be easy for me, since I told my ride to and from work not to let me buy any of it. That effectively eliminated it from my routine. Tracking I do on the Character Sheet and I want to try it on my signature once I figure out the old stat system. I use My Fitness Pal for calorie and food tracking. I need something better though, I keep forgetting to do things. Still not sure on rewards though. Might pick myself up a new game, or sign up for archery or martial art classes. I'm really not sure what to do beyond that, I've already got books in spades and get those more because I feel reading is a requirement to keep my brain active.

So far I'm using the character sheet on Nerd Fitness to track things - I'm not sure if there's a better way to go about it. Nor what I could do for rewards.

Currently listening to The Lies of Locke Lamora during work. I think I'm 75% of the way done. It's nice though, I'll listen to the next four released books and then be sad since there's three more after that and the series won't be done until I'm about ready to kick it in my 70s or 80s.