jaxjaxjax

At the end of week three now, and well, I got a little distracted by life...again. So a quick summary for two weeks. Exercise week 2 - 4 times, one really hard one. Proud of that one. Exercise week 3 - 3 times. Sick kiddo made a couple of days tricky but at least I hit my minimum goals. Also got out for a walk, but it was very slow with the recovering kid so not quite a workout, but something at least. Sodas - I don't want to talk about it...but I will Week 2 - my resolve waned. I had soda at work and 1 extra and one at the fancy restaurant. Week 3. - Sick kids/family drama and stress = big old soda EVERY DAY Fruits and Veggies at every meal. - I feel like this is working well. Week two I missed 2 meals, and week 3, 4 meals. My garden is also growing so veggies are becoming available there too. I realized I need a better phone based way to track my goal, because sitting at the computer is just not happening. Going to work on that this week. But although its not perfect, things are still better than they were. I plan to kill it this week though.

Thanks for the encouragement Severine. I am following you too. I am not quite up for an accountability challenge yet. After I finish this challenge though and prove I can do this again, I will totally be up for it.

Some things are going better than others. Exercise - I managed to exercise all 5 weekday mornings. Compared to the 0 mornings I was exercising that is HUGE. Hoping to keep that up next week. I think I will need to up the difficulty of the exercises on the days I am not working. I was able to exercise and did not really feel any muscle soreness at all. But I know on the days I work (which is a new job and I am not quite used to either), I stand for 8 hours so I held back a little for fear of not being able to stand. This week I hope to increase the difficulty level of the exercise days Tues, Wed and Fri. I will still keep it easy on Mon and Thursday. (5 exercise days completed) Sodas - did great til the weekend. I actually worked Friday and didn't drink any soda so gave myself the excuse to go ahead and enjoy it on Sat. I got soda at the restaurant we had lunch at and then just kept going. Three sodas later that evening, I slept bad, had a belly ache and realized my mistake. So although it wasn't a gas station soda, I did manage to fill up my car and NOT buy a soda, it still counts (+1 soda) Eating fruits and vegetables - I missed 3 full meals without any vegetables or fruit of any sort. (18/21 had vegetables or fruit). Lunch is the most challenging as I usually just forage for whatever is left when I am home or eat at the cafeteria at work. I am trying to make sure there is always something I can at least throw on my plate in addition to my food. Its working but its slow. This week I will try and plan out better lunches for myself. Planning session (One and a half down) I am thinking I actually need to do this twice a week. A small planning session on Sunday and a larger one on Wed (grocery day). Learning as I go.

Off to a good start. Ate fruit and veggies with each of my not so great meals. Banana with my yogurt for breakfast and pizza with carrots for lunch and fruit with pancakes for dinner. But it wasn't sonic burgers and soda and there was some actual food in there. Nursing myself back from a bug so I wasn't in charge of getting healthy meals together.

Backstory: Three to four years ago I found this site, worked really hard, lost a lot of weight, got really healthy....then I got really lazy after 2 injuries that laid me up for quite a while. I realized that Krav maga and fighting other people is probably not the best way for me to stay healthy because I couldn't stay uninjured long enough to get really strong. So in the last two years I regained most of the weight, left behind the healthy lifestyle and just let life get the better of me. I have spent the last 6 months feeling sick and tired, often sleeping through the weekends just to recover from the week, eating bad food because I am too tired to do much else. My energy is spiraling ever downward as the scale climbs up. So enough of the whining about what I was doing and could have done. Its time to focus on what I can and will do going forward. So this gnome ninja has to go through a complete respec. Starting over. I spent the last 2 weeks really concentrating on what I need to do trying to focus on where I can find some baby steps for success. First I realized I need to come back here to get support. My IRL accountabilabuddy and I have totally different styles of going after success and we have both realized in the last weeks that we are part of each others problem. She is an all or nothing and I am a baby steps person, so we both push each other the wrong way. We also excuse each others bad behavior instead of forcing the other to a higher standard. So that is part of being back here too. Second, as I can't be a ninja, I need a new class. I decided on battle druid, because I am going to have to find the inner beasts to fight through all the temptation and get myself strong again. MAIN Goal: to get healthy enough to do a 5K obstacle course in October. Challenge Goals: Eat like a Bear: My goal is to start to remove processed foods again and move back towards the clean diet I once had. But baby steps. For the next four weeks, I will eat a serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal. Onions on pizza don't count. It has to be a real serving. By upping my vegetable and fruit intake, I am hoping that cuts down on my processed food intake. There are a total of 84 meals over the challenge so for the results: A=84-75 meals B=74-66 C=66-57 D=56-45 F= less than 44 meals Drink like a Dolphin: Dolphins don't spend their days swimming around in gross murky chemically darkness, well at least they probably don't like it if they are. I will be starting to take on Diet Coke, my nemesis, yet again. This time with baby steps. Every time life gets stressful, I go back to the diet coke. I need to find a way to relieve stress and tiredness without it. So I will only drink Diet Coke at work and at fancy restaurants. Since I only work 2 days a week and go out about once a week, this will be at least a 50% reduction in my soda intake. I will NOT buy any of the 52 oz 69cent sodas from the gas station that have become a part of my daily routine. Hopefully by the end of the challenge I will be able to drink even less, but that is the starting point for now. Soda only at work and fancy restaurants: A 1-4 gas station sodas B 5-10 gas station sodas C 10 or more F Train like a ox: Oxen are strong and just keep on going. Now that the weather is nice, I am trying to get outside and exercise there and begin training for a 5K obstacle course in October. But sometimes I let the bad weather keep me inside and not do anything. So basically I need to do something - anything four days a week. Just to get stronger. I don't care what I do just something for now. Exercise 16+ times A Exercise 12-15 times B Exercise 8-11 times C Exercise 4-8 times D Exercise less than 4 times F Life Quest: Planning planning planning. In order to achieve the success, I need to get organized. My goal is to spend 1 hour each week getting organized for the rest of the week. This includes menu/schedule for the next seven days. I think this has to happen on Wednesdays as that is my free day to do things. So 4 Wednesday planning sessions A 3 - B 2 - C 1 - D 0 fly by the seat of my pants for the next four weeks F

It's been four days and I am really still confused as to what I want BUT three of the days I did something. I spent two hours gardening, walked the dog for an hour on Monday and today did the beginners body weight workout. While I don't know where I want to be but I know where I am is bad. So I figure at least doing something is better than the nothing I had been.

So... 18 months after a second fighting injury landed me in the Er thinking I was having a heart attack (I was not. I pulled a muscle in by rib cage.), I have decided that perhaps ninja is not the best class for me. Perhaps there is a reason there are not a lot of gnome ninjas around. So a complete character respec is in order. However, since Jan 2015, I have basically done nothing fitness wise or any way to make myself level up. I keep trying to go it alone, hit the gym, but its not working. Its not fun and I am not enjoying it. I loved fighting but, my body didn't. Just not coordinated and flexible enough to keep myself from hurting myself. At this point I am not sure where to put my energies into and what I want my goal to be, other than to loose the 20 pounds I have gained in the last 18 months. I just keep having excuses after excuses. I was hurt, then we got ready to move, then I got a new job and I hate winter and tend to hibernate. blah blah blah. I also ate all the stress of a new life in a new city. Although it was delicious, I need to stop now. I know the next challenge starts in two weeks so my main goal is to come up focus on what I really want to do and can do. In the mean time, just do something every day. Goals - Beginners body weight workout 3x this week Walk other 3 days in the week. Spend time this week figuring out a real plan

So far I got to 2 pilates classes. I know I am not going to make the class this week because I have been sick but I will do some at home with a DVD once I am feeling up top it, or maybe hit the class tomorrow I am up to 22 push ups, crunches and lunges. Since in August I was at 0, things are getting much better. I have cut way back on the soda but not quite to the one a day I was hoping for. Its looking more like none for a day or two then binge and drink a lot and the a day or two off. But still way less. Hoping by new year to have the urge small enough to go completely off the stuff. Definitely glad I started now before the holidays. So far I am not up or down any weight, passing the beasts of Halloween and Thanksgiving up only 10 lbs from my goal. That's where I have been hanging out since I hurt myself in August, so at least the scale isn't going up any more. Trying to maintain until after Christmas when things will get back to normal and I can really refocus on better eating.

2 days in, one new Pilates class done. Only 2 sodas in 2 days. And added did the extra bonus crunches, lunges and pushups. So far so good. I also took my before picture, to be posted as soon as I have an after picture. Meausements were 33 inch waist and 371/2 inches at the belly button. I bet I can get that down quite a bit.

After 2 months of no exercise what so ever, and 2 months of slow and steady recovery, I have an arm again. I named it dead arm, because althoug I can use it, its not doing much. I also noticed something else I have. A big soft belly that is making my pants VERY, VERY tight. I actually haven't gained or lost any weight during this time but I am really noticing, squishyness where there used to be muscle. Why? Because not exercising made me all sad and then I ate whatever I wanted, ALL the time. I also, went back to drinking diet soda. I bought 4-2L bottles for our Thanksgiving guests who ended up not coming. Somehow, between Thursday and today I drank them all by myself. And also a cheesecake, again all by myself. And lots of drinking as well. Also, life has been busy and I have been lazy. Also, I realized I haven't been sleeping well. Hmmmmm perhaps finishing off a 2L of soda every day is not a good thing for sleeping - so that's gotta stop. But, I was able to level up my Krav Maga last week, back to where I had been before I got hurt. Now I am a P2, which was my main goal in starting the classes. Passed my test right before Thanksgiving, but I am still struggling with a lot of weakness in my right side, and a complete loss of core strength. Now that I passed out, I have to change up my schedule and get to the higher level classes which is also going to be a bit of a challenge. So here is what I am going to do between now and New Years. 1. Reduce soda to 1 per day. 2. Starting a modified PLP challenge. Since there is no way dead arm can support me hanging, I will be doing a CLP, cruches, lunges and pushups challenge for myself. 3. Add in one pilates class per week to up the core strength in addition to my normal 2-3 times training during the week. Its only 3 additional classes before Christmas. I totally can do that. If I get those things under control, perhaps I can say farewell to captain tightpants before the holidays.

Finally feeling good enough to do things. Still eating Ok but not great, but so far I have lost about 3 lbs on this challenge although I am pretty sure its muscle. At least I didn't gain ten lbs sitting on my butt for a month. I know I shouldn't be, but I am still a scale slave, so it going down was at least something. Got to work out this week for the first time. Finished out a Krav class on Tuesday and I even managed two knee push ups before the arm gave out. Ran/jogged/shambled three miles yesterday. Things are a bit sore today but I think things are finally healing. Trying to balance starting up working out again without actually hurting myself and I am having difficulty figuring out how hard to push which right now feels like I am quitting earlier than I should on things, but I can't really tell. Haven't eaten out all week so feeling pretty good about that this week too and cooked at home. Even made a new thing which all the kids loved. Its not fancy but took the precooked somewhat healthy chicken breasts and made chicken bacon ranch wraps for taco Tuesday. I know its not something fancy but all three ate it and liked it so huge vixtory there. Onto the rotation it goes.

So, I took myself on a vacation to see all my friends since I couldn't seem to pull out of the funk that no exercise, working or any stress relief was causing. Not exactly healthy eating but the mini vacation pulled me out of my grumpy nasty attitude. My DD6 have also created a very Lord business-like lego farm that had taken over my entire dining room table until my husband made us move it after a week. After that, I am home again, still not fully healed but able to work a half day at the zoo. I have healthy groceries in my fridge and a menu plan already made up. I plan to be back on track with everything this week except for the exercise. I was able to do some stretching and can actually lift my arm above my head again and sleep comfortably, so that is big progress. Going to try and do some walking this week and start using my arm again. My poor beast of a dog can't take any walks with me because I can't hold his leash and he is going crazy so hopefully that will change this week. He did get to go on vacation with me and visit his best doggy friend so that helped a bit.

Been resting all this week. I can finally do big things like brush my own teeth and hair with my right hand. One more week and I should be back to normal, hopefully. Tried some simple stretches this morning and they weren't too painful. Came off the pain meds and hoping to avoid needing physical therapy. Didn't do much of anything this week, and eating wasn't too good either. Going to try some simple walking this week and small stretching without any weight on it and see how that goes.

Week two summary - Thanks for all the encouragement here on getting better. I have mostly been a big nasty grumpy baby around the house but things are getting better. This week was a bit of a mess. Once I figured out I was actually hurt, things have started to get better. I can even lift up things like my toothbrush and coffee cup without wanting to cry. So that is a start. Eating - Things are improving here. We ate at home 4 out of 7 dinners. They were OK, but not great. No new recipies this week, No paleo meals, and mostly quick and easy food since I was drugged and out of it and my husband was cooking. French toast, Grocery store chicken, pasta. But I was staying under 2000 calories every day but 1 when we went out for Mexican, and I pity ate my way through a giant slice of carrot cake. Weight remains unchanged, but I was able to wear my size 10s for the first time in 6 months. Hopefully, it will stay that was as I slowly return to exercise over the next couple of weeks. Fruits and veggies - definitely increasing the intake. I will actually make sure its happening this week. I know I was thinking I should eat more but I did not track it very well last week. Not lifting things - I am asking for help carrying all the heavy things. Although its much easier to do it myself, I am making the kids carry all their own laundry and help with the chores. Prayer time - Doing this. Hopefully, it will help me to focus and do what I am supposed to be doing. On the upside - can't go shopping at target, because I can't lift the stuff into and out of the cart or try things on at the store. So I am saving money. This week, I will be much more organized and actually cook all the veggies I bought before they rot in the fridge.

New goals until I am better. 1. Lift none of the things. Two things I will be working on is not carrying all the laundry up and down the two flights of stairs and getting people to help me. Second is lugging the vacuum cleaner around. Probably a bad idea for now. 2. Eating good things. Tracking my food and calorie intake until things get back on track. Goal is to keep calories per day under 1580, but if it is under 2000 per day I will be happy. Calories will be tricky since the medicine makes my stomach flop, and the thing that makes it feel better is dairy so I am giving myself a little leeway in calories. If I don't gain any weight on the next two weeks or so, I will be very pleased with that. 3. While I am eating plenty of fruit, I need to add in more veggies. Include at least two vegetables at lunch and dinner. Do this along with the other meal goals of cooking four meals at home for dinner and trying one new recipie and one paleo recipie. 4. 5 minutes of prayer. Spend some time focusing on what is really important.