Whisper

I've been struggling with my plan too, the point is to keep struggling with it and not give up.

That sounds like a LOT of fun!

I hope those work out and you are able to have fun with people! Go job hitting your other goals too.

That is not a dream I would like to have!

Ok, I made a place for me to keep track of my Academy Quests Not Silence in the Library but a Whisper in the Academy. I also put an explanation for my name there, if you want to know.

Hi, I'm Whisper! Why am I Whisper? Because I used to be Whisper Lost, but I don't feel so lost any more! Why was I Whisper Lost? Mortalis, by R.A. Salvatore What miserable wretches we mortals be To build our homes in sheltered lea, To build our hopes in sheltered womb Weaving fancies of the tomb. What wretched souls we mortals be To bask in false epiphany, To see a light so clear, so true, To save us from the fate we rue. Deny the truth before our sight That worms invade eternal night, That maggots feed within the skin Of faithful pure, devoid of sin. Oh what hopeful children mortals be! Castles in air, grand barges at sea, Bed of clouds and angels' song, Heavenly feasting eternity long. What mockery made of endless night! That prayer transcends truth and hope denies sight! That all that we know and all that we see Is washed away by what we pray much be. So tell me not of eternal soul That flees my coil through worm-bit hole. For when I die what is left of me? A whisper lost to eternity. Anyway, way less depressed now then when I started using that as a username, so Whisper, instead of Whisper Lost! I still like the poem, and I still like the image of our souls as Whispers. A couple weeks back I started posting in the 4 Week Challenge, here, and I think I'll still use that for most of my stuff, but I wanted a unified spot to keep track of all of my Quest work for the Academy, rather than breaking it up over 4 Week blocks. Quest 1: Join the Nerd Fitness Academy (25 exp). I did this! Like, a long time ago... I'm back and working through it again because when I was following it, it was really helpful! Sanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting the SAME result! Quest 2: Mindset: Take Your Measurements (40 exp). Date Weight Body Fat % Neck Chest Bicep R Bicep L Gut Pants Hips Thigh R Thigh L Calf R Calf L 1-Jan-19 361.4 19.5 60.6 17.75 18 60.25 49 50 27 28 19 19 Quest 3: Mindset: Snap Those Before Photos! (25 exp)

I think you've got a good plan for your next step!

W2D1 Activity: 7,724 steps, 4,097 cals out. Went for a half hour, roughly 1.5 mile walk this afternoon. Food: 3,019 cals in. 50% fat, 36% carb, 14% protein. Higher than I would have ideally liked, especially on a lower activity day. A big chunk was letting myself get too hungry, and then overeating as a reaction. Need a better plan for Sundays. If my yogurt and frozen berries plan works, it might be worth bringing that with for after church, as lunch Sunday always seems to come late. I didn't get as much done this weekend as I would have liked (damn you YouTube!), but I do feel like I've set myself up to succeed during the coming work week.

If anyone is interested, this is some of what I played this morning. Sorry, not the best quality. O Cara Mia (Portal 2) In Dreams / This is my Father's World

Plan for today: 1. Do warm up, go for a walk, do cool down. Did NF Academy warm up. Went for a 2.86 mile walk. Did NF Yoga mini-sessions for cool down. Posture and Touch Your Toes. 2. Play through all of tomorrow's music. Check 3, BPut some more meat on the bones of my diet plan. I'll post this weeks plan below. 4. Hopefully grocery shopping, but time is limited today. Moved to 6, but got it done! 5. This afternoon, I've got a leadership training for an upcoming church retreat. Check 6. Training is followed by a pot-luck. Goal?Don't be stupid! Log as best I can. 7. Play through all of tomorrow's music again. There's lots of it and I want to do well. Check. I also got someone to agree to record part of it for me tomorrow. Activity: 9,687 steps, 4,466 cals out. Food: Best guess: 2,261 cals in 60% fat, 20% protein, 20% carbs. If I can't figure out how to display total carb count in Fitbit, I might need to start tracking in another app. The meal plan for the next week: Breakfast 0 carbs 4 tbsp Heavy Cream in coffee 1 package microwaveable bacon. Morning Snack/Lunch (depends how day is going) 17 net carbs 1 cup Fage Total 5% Greek Yogurt ¾ cup frozen berry medley Lunch 68 net carbs A chunk of protein (this’ll very) ½ cup basmati rice 1 tbsp chosen blend oil (was gonna have some mini-peppers too, but none at store) Dinner 5 net carbs A chunk of protein (this’ll very) 2 cups spring mix Salad dressing, low carb ¾ cup broccoli medley 90 total net carbs.

I'm happy to hear that it is helping you. Learning to accept things can be a difficult process, but it is a valuable tool.

Welcome aboard! Keep us posted as you go and we'll be sure to give you all the encouragement we can.

Ok, I got up and weighed myself this morning under the same circumstances as I did last week! .....Drumroll please.... I lost not, 1, not 2, not 3, not 4 pounds last week, but an astonishing 0.0 pounds! I'm totally ok with this for a few reasons: 1. It feels like a bit of a thumb in the eye to people that oversimplify weight loss. 2. I know for a measured fact that I made much better food choices last week than I have made most other weeks of my life. 3. If you managed to slog through all my posts last Saturday, you saw that I didn't trust what the scale said then. I feel much more comfortable with the idea of losing 9.5 pounds over two weeks, than losing it over 1. Plan for today: 1. Do warm up, go for a walk, do cool down. 2. Play through all of tomorrow's music. 3, But some more meat on the bones of my diet plan. 4. Hopefully grocery shopping, but time is limited today. 5. This afternoon, I've got a leadership training for an upcoming church retreat. 6. Training is followed by a pot-luck. Goal?Don't be stupid! Log as best I can. 7. Play through all of tomorrow's music again. There's lots of it and I want to do well.

Challenge day 5 Activity: 9,804 steps. 4,000 calories out. I haven't done the warm up and cool down in a week now, been feeling to burned out. Food: 1,910 cals in 49% fat, 33% carbs, 18% protein. Had to do a bit of guessing today. Sleep: Fitbit says I had the best sleep all week last night. Was extra tired all day. Scheduled the appointment with the new sleep doc for the 23rd. Found some reviews of her online. She is either the most amazing person ever, or the devil. Who's ready for more "Fun With Math!"? Fitbit says I've burned 31,438 calories this week. Food log says I've eaten 15,273 cals. If both are correct, I should have burned 16,165 calories more than I've eaten, which should be 4.62 pounds of fat. We'll see what the scale says in the morning. Time to practice music, then head to bed.

Challenge day 4 Activity: 12,980 steps and 4,428 cals out. Food: 1,734 cals in. 44% fat, 39% carb and 17% protein. A bit lower than I was aiming for, but not feeling hungry for anything else. Still not really on a plan, hopefully I can use time this weekend to get that together, but just the mindfulness of logging food is helping. On a fun note, I got to spend an hour and a half with my church's music director this afternoon. Our organist is out for a bit, so she and I are doing all the music for the "Traditional" service this Sunday. I'm going to be doing a medley of the hymn "This is Our Father's World" and "In Dreams" (Lord of the Rings) for the Offertory song, and she and I are going to play "O Cara Mia" (Portal 2 Turret Opera) for the postlude. She's also going to have me do "Sad Romance" (Final Fantasy X) during Lent, and I'll be working on "Concerning Hobbits" for sometime this summer.

Challenge Day 3 (posted a day late) Activity: 12,258 steps, 5,535 cals out. Food: Logged 1,963 cals in. Then I had a really stressful time after a really long day at work and ended up bending some and not measureing what I was eating. Remember how I didn't buy chips? Binged on almonds, pumpkin seeds and pistachios. My takeaway? Need to pre-portion the stuff so that next time I go off stress eating, I can account for it afterwards.

Thank you both for you inputs. I think I do like the idea of a more long term place to keep track of my quest stuff and personal stats over time; easier to reference things like old measurements that way. I want to spend time working on the Academy stuff this weekend, so I'll probably make one then.

So, I'm thinking about starting a separate "battle log" type thread to keep track of all of my Academy quests. My questions are: 1. Should I do that, or just post that stuff here too? 2. Should I upload my before pictures? I've been debating the second question for a while. I wasn't going to do it if they just showed up, because it seems really damn mean to make people look at them; but I've just satisfied myself that I can indeed upload images, but keep them from displaying without active choice by the viewer. There is a part of me that thinks it could be an important part of "owning" where I am now, and my Big WHY of why I am trying to change, but I'm not sure if it is a good idea or not.

This is a test, this is only a test...

Challenge Day 2 Activity: 4,446 cals out. 11,514 steps. Food: 2,620 cals in. 44% carb, 36% fat, 20% protein.

That would be nice, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Been dealing with sleep problems for at least twenty years, and actively looking for answers for the last 7. I haven't found anything that fits better than Narcolepsy, but there are some critical areas where that doesn't fit either. It's just been a long, crazy mess. But I got a good 6.5 hours of sleep last night, and today I feel pretty good, so that is something.

Challenge Day 1: In which I spent an instructive two hours at my doctor's office talking about things like hypoglycemia and catecholamine rush, and I got to try valium for the first time... It has been an amazingly long three days. Oh, I also might not have narcolepsy; I might have something else disrupting my sleep badly enough that it looks like narcolepsy. So I get to go to another sleep specialist. I only lasted three hours at work today. As soon as I started, I knew I was in worse shape than I had been on Sunday, even with adding back carbs and focusing on hydrations and electrolytes. Got worse as I was there, and left to be at my doc's office when she opened. Fortunately, there were able to squeeze me in fairly quickly. Didn't get as bad as Saturday, but i was getting really not good. Doc wants me to try a variation on Keto with a higher carb count, around 100g instead of under 20, but focused mainly to a single meal. There are some places that suggest doing the carb meal at dinner, but she thinks I'll respond better to doing it at lunch. So, Keto breakfast, "normal" lunch, Keto dinner. So, that will be the general plan. I'll need to work out the fine details over the next few days and put it into action. Today's activity was about 4,800 steps. Fitbit is showing 3,500 cals out thus far. Food was 2,610 cals in. 50% Carb, 37% Fat and 13% Protein. With the valium, I was able to get some sleep this afternoon, bringing the total sleep for today to about 4 and a half hours. Getting ready to go to bed now, and am feeling hopeful that I might finally get a full night's sleep in.

Thank you. So, how does one get Diplomatic Immunity?

Day 0 Thank you everyone for the encouragement, support and feedback. This is what I was missing in my last several attempts at losing weight, and I know it is a huge part of why I'm still in this thing now! 2,343 cals. 67% carb, 22% fat, 11% protein. I have no idea what I'm going to want those numbers to look like, but today I am happy with them. I still have no appetite for food, but find myself in the rare position today of finding "empty" calories better than no calories. Hopefully I'll feel more up to eating my food tomorrow. Fortunately, drinking isn't a problem, so focused on staying hydrated and replenishing electrolytes. I have been feeling increasingly better as the day has gone on. I'm still really tired, but that just makes me hopeful of a good night's sleep tonight. Even the "brain fog" has gotten better. I'll try to nail down a longer term plan tomorrow, thinking I might try something closer to Paleo than Keto, but want to see if there are any other diets recommended for Narcolepsy.

I might be doing life on hardcore, but I can still be grateful for a whole lot of things, and sadly, there are people running this life on nightmare and insanity. I don't wish it on anyone, but knowing that it really can be worse, makes bearing what I've got a bit easier in comparison.