sid.icarus

Today I saw the first bit of progress. I could walk a few kms without my shins screaming murder. I even ran a couple of times. Not breaking lifetime PBs or anything, but easily the best I've been in probably a year or two. I was preeeetty sure I was gonna die during some of it, which is great. Because having cardio be my limiting factor means I'm pushing through those early muscle gripes. Then, about 800m from home the heavens opened up and I got very soaked. It was a legit joy. A freezy cold joy. Bonus pics of my incredulity. Anyway, gonna do it tomorrow and try to get a bit more progress!

I did the things. The before photos. Had a lot of thinking about why I'm doing this but I don't have much aside from "i just want to feel comfortable in my own body again". We'll keep adding to that. It's a start. Moving away from the bad will work for now. @TheDitz I feel that entirely! Everything you're saying about passion. I feel that at a very visceral level. We're fed a lot about passion being this insurmountable force that will always lead to victory, but that's just not true. Passion is one thing, determination is another, and they're not synonymous. I've had some nice wins across this weekend. I've got a job interview on Monday, and I turned down my roommate's offer to join him in ordering pizza the other night. My victories are tiny, infinitesimal things right now, but they're still wins. And that's more than I had a few days ago. thank you.

Man, this has been so difficult. So I got home, and I've just been buried in exams for the last few weeks. Add to that, I started to exercise again and my lack of fitness just crushed my spirit. There's this weird cycle of failure that I've been getting stuck in. I wanted to get back into running but boy my fitness isn't even up to the jogs I used to do (my shins! MY SHINS!). I wanted to be on here every day keeping myself focused, but as soon as I spent one day studying it just got easier to keep avoiding it. In order to break out of failure, we have to...kind of own up to it first? It's easier to just keep ignoring it, right? To stop sucking we have to say "so, I suck right now". That's really hard to do, so I kept putting it off. A good mate of mine was a ridiculously dependent alcoholic and it's crazy to see me echoing the kind of evasive behaviours I saw in him before he got up the guts. But yesterday...I don't know, I just felt it. I've been doing this interview series lately with Tabletop RPG designers about success and failure, and a lot of them have pointed to early acknowledgement of suckery as an important skill for creative work. And while I was looking at my designs to acknowledge their flaws and failures, I realised I needed to do it to me as well. I'm studying Paramedicine. 3 year degree, and I'm almost done (6 months left). I know why I have GORD and pluertic pain sometimes. I know that my weight puts me in risk factors for really shitty diseases that leave me either dying early (or worse) less capable. These extra kilos are killing my quality of life now and into the future and I'm just struggling so hard to actually fix it. So let's talk about progress: I've been putting off things like before photos and writing goals. Because once they're down, I feel like I'm beholden to them. You can't let yourself down if you don't set expectations, right? And my biggest fear has been failing...like I did with my goals up there. So I kind of need a push to actually do that. I think it's the Big Why that I need to get down, but it's a difficult thing to start with ("hey do you mind just starting with your core reason for trying?"). Any advice here? I don't know if i can engage with something big. Is it okay for my "big why" to just be removing the damn chronic cough my overweight GORD is giving me? Is it okay for my big why to be not feeling my pants cut into me when I kneel over a patient during my work? Food. My food is oscillating again. I tend to eat well for a few days, then I run out of food and time to grocery shop, so I go to fast food and then...I'm back in that cycle. I will say that oscillating is way better than how I was in March or so. Little victories? I guess. I don't know, it's hard to feel like I'm finding little victories when there's so many setbacks. It's better, but it's definitely not good enough. I started my exercise again today (Shortest respawn timer ever). Instead of starting with jogging, I'm starting with a couple of kms walking. Baby steps. My mum is a 62 year old woman and she could literally outrun me right now. How did I fall this far behind? I used to crack out 2.5km runs once a week, now brisk walking it is killing me. It's really shitty to feel my muscles so wrecked half way around that park. It's devastating to realise this is the least fit I've been in 15 years. I think, as small as I tried to start there, I just need to start smaller. Not for my physical limitations, but because of my mental limitations. Because of that lack of discipline and structure that I have at the moment. I think I need some reward structures, some routine. It's weird, I feel 1000% worse than I did before I clicked on this thread and decided to own up to how badly I've been going. But I know that once I hit "post" I'll feel 1000% better. I really appreciate the support on here. I really appreciate that if it weren't for needing to have some little modicum of forward momentum when I posted here, some little excuse for you all to stick with me and not just forget me, I wouldn't have exercised yesterday. I do need to keep this momentum, so I do need to come back, and if you'll do me the pleasure, I need you to come back. I do need to keep admitting to my missteps, I do need to keep refocusing my goals to be attainable. Y'all ever seen the thing about "drawing the owl"? Draw three circles, draw the rest of the fucking owl? That's where I am right now, struggling to get past 3 circles. Failing, erasing, failing again. Right now, 4 weeks is too long for me. I need a day goal. 24 hours. Let's just do that, then we can look at the next 24 hours, and the next, and the next. So I'll be back on friday. And by friday I will have achieved only three things: 1) Pass my final exam for the semester tomorrow (christ, this'll be a thing) 2) Have taken Before photos. 3) Have written a first draft for my motivating whys. All those health and lifestyle and functional reasons I've been thinking of. That's not much, that's two minutes of work. But if I do that, it'll be enough. I started this with a lot of excitement and what I thought were moderate dreams. But now, well, maybe I'll just bring the dreams down to meet the man for a little bit, then we can start pushing them out again. Everyone deserves a win sometimes, right?

Hey, I'm Sidney. I look like this (25 December 2017....obviously): Unless I get lazy, and then spend three weeks outside of my kitchen, riding Ambulances in New York City and Toronto, Canada. Eating fast food and drinking a whole lot of terrible American beer (that, honestly, was NOT worth it). Then I look like this (23 May 2018): Nice Belly, Mr Got-a-Belly I'm a paramedic student in Australia. I sit around studying on night shifts, eat fast food, and drink lattes. Ooooor I used to. Because now things are different. So today I joined NF, and when I land in Australia, that day (THAT DAY) our 4 week challenge starts. So we're doing that! Focus for this is about building into better habits, and edging my way into a First Success. This is not about knocking y'all out with my awesome lift gains over the next 4 weeks. It's about attainable success. So here are my goals, starting with a framing desire, then breaking down into what I'm actually going to do about it: Diet: Framing - Weight loss and Control (ie prepping food, not relying on fast food because I have nothing in the cupboard). Goals - 1. Record all food, each day, that I put in my human mouth parts. 2. Reduce fast food to max twice per week. 3. Take great pleasure in cooking/preparing at least one meal per day. Fitness - Increased strength for assertion of own body. Build endurance for 14 hour shifts. 1. Complete bodyweight 2A and 2B at least once a week each. 2. Walk/run while listening to school notes for 20 minutes, 3 times a week. 2b. (I'm allowed to have sub-goals you're not the boss of me) Once per week, record school notes of 25-ish minute length so I can walk/run to them on the next week. Life - Focusing on goals. Refocusing each day. Figuring out what success is. 1. Write these goals (and one or two school related goals) down on index cards on the 28th. 2. Read over and engage with goals each morning. 3. Read over and engage with goals each night. Y'all are gonna hear from me daily. Which is exciting. Some days it might not be anything, but I'll poke my head in and at least show you it's happening. For y'all, I'm going to try to make it as entertaining as possible. Each day I'll tell you a (secret) ME, SID, FACT about myself, and if you want to ask specific questions about me and the person I am or will be, I'll answer them as part of my exciting 4 week journey. As a primer, the 28th May's ME, SID, FACT will be about my favourite animals. If you mention an animal type in this thread, I'll tell you about my favourite one that I've ever met. And if I haven't met one, I'll probably just gush about why that animal is the coolest anyway. Who's excited?