athousandwords

Congrats Congrats Congrats! A full body plank is FANTASTIC! And so happy for you to have that one more hurdle cross on your way to Latvia. I know how hard it is to live in waiting, at least you know he's done all he can do to advance the posting.

So smart to log it early so that you know how your day is going to be impacted. Good luck getting to your mini-workout tonight! Love the mindset of not skipping twice. Also: charcoal toothpaste is gross. I would honestly just take the loss and toss it.

I'm glad I'm not the only nerd who makes spreadsheets to relax. One thing I've loved about reading your updates from this week is how your family is all uplifting you with your goals - you mom playing RingFit with you, your dad going to the gym, a family meeting to decide to make healthier lunches. I know we don't get the fully story, but it sounds like you have a great circle supporting you with your healthier lifestyle. I love that for you.

How dare you drop this still and not the name of the movie! Sounds like an awesome day! Congrats on getting so much accomplished.

Seriously - every summer I think about getting rid of my treadmill and every winter I'm reminded that I can't survive outside when it's less than 40*F! I just read the series less than 3 years ago and I'm shocked how much I didn't remember. Those books are SO dense! And yes, a reread is taking forever... but journey before destination I suppose... ------- M T W T F S S Week 1: Barely scraped by with that W yesterday. Despite thinking about it all day, I never actually did go outside for that walk when the weather "warmed" up, so at 8pm I was forced to make a decision: with an otherwise excellent day, do I hit the bare minimum for walking or try for big goal? And since I'm still riding high on happy Week 1 energy, I hopped on the treadmill after the kids went to bed and walked 45 min to get that green. Alright, let's figure out today: - I have no meetings that are good to walk through, so I'll have to find some time on my own And it's even colder today than it was yesterday, so definitely a treadmill walk. Schedule on my calendar for the end of the day, which is an awful time, but it's not a great day for it. - I've planned out meals through lunch, but I'm actually not sure what we're having for dinner yet, so I'll have to come back to that. - Most Important Priority today is investigating a sporadically failing test - I don't know that I can fix it, but I'll commit to spending 2 hours working on it.

It's basically a copycat for the Campbell's ham & bean soup, which was a staple of my childhood. ------- M T W T F S S Week 1: Off the bat, one thing I'm liking about this new challenge format is that it encourages me to start the right way. Even if I don't end up having a great day, I'll can still end up hitting a few of my goals with just a few healthy changes, which feels like a good mindset shift from where I was previously. But for now at least, willpower and and energy are high and it feels like a comfortable start to the challenge. Most important thing today: Prepare for annual review with my direct report. I don't have any meetings on my calendar today that would be good to walk during, so I'll have to find a less convenient time to go for a walk. But I guess on the bright side, it's going to be slightly warmer today (40*F/4*C) so maybe I'll go outside. Maybe.

Aww I'm happy your Thanksgiving went well. And like, far be it from me to contradict your therapist and invalidate the work you've put in, but yes, it does feel lucky when a holiday unexpectedly goes well and nothing burns and or floods and no one gets sent to the hospital (all things that have happened to me on various Thanksgivings). Glad you got to spend some time with all kinds of family and hopeful that this continues to go well for you. Excellent edit! Absolutely my favorite genre of Christmas cards. Hard to choose a favorite but this one sends me.

-------- M Week 1: Yesterday started off great! Meal planning was easy peasy - we have a bunch of leftover ham that we cooked on Sunday so it was ham sandwich for lunch and my favorite ham and bean soup for dinner. I ended up having calories to spare, but I wasn't hungry and I'm trying to get out of the habit of snacking after meals, so I brushed my teeth early and went to bed to read. (I'm 25% into Oathbringer, trying to re-read all four books before I buy the new one!) Other good things: - I did an hour treadmill walk during my afternoon meeting - Had no problems drinking 8 cups of water - Decided the most important thing yesterday was getting my challenge up here - and that was done! Today I have a couple things that I need to do, but the most important is code reviewing a PR from a colleague, so I'm tackling that first. Also need to figure out when the best time to go for a walk is... I have an hour meeting at 10:30 I could walk through, so that's probably my best option. Hope everyone here is having a successful start to their challenge!

Yes yes yes! Exactly this. Happy to have you! Gosh it feels like a good idea - but let's see how it's going in 4 weeks? Hello and welcome back!! Hope you have a successful challenge as well! It only took me 30+ years to figure out that I can't just willpower my way to a good day every day.

One important thing I realized during the last challenge is that I was holding myself up to the impossible standard of having a great day every day, for an entire 5 weeks. After all, it was meant to be a challenge - so I set goals that were meant to stretch myself. But when that didn't pan out? Well, I crashed and burned. The next four weeks are going to be full of days where I can't quite do everything. It's the holidays and priorities are crazy and not always in line with the healthiest version of myself. There are going to be days when I'm in survival mode and the bare minimum is all I can do. Realizing that, in advance, is the goal of this challenge. This is officially a JUDGEMENT FREE ZONE Every day I'm going to put in an honest effort - and some days will be great and some days will be not-so-great. My job here is just to record what kind of day it is. High Day - Preplan my day in LoseIt and log all food - Drink 64+ oz of water - Walk 45+ minutes - Finish most important priority Mid Day - Log all food in LoseIt - Drink 48+oz of water - Walk 20+ minutes - Start most important priority Low Day - Log daily weight in LoseIt - Drink 8+oz of water - Walk (around the house) for 10 minutes - Identify most important priority I haven't fully decided how to log this yet - a single color for each day? Nice and easy but not very nuanced. Or maybe a different color for each goal if I want to get credit for having a great walking day but not so great at drinking water. But I'm sticking to my plan from last challenge to log every week day, and keep myself accountable here - except maybe on Christmas Day.

Following along!

Following along! Your challenge (and your socktopus) are delightful! And I love hearing about your wonderful weekend away - so much joy! Scratches in white chalk on your wall in the middle of a highstorm: 4 days....

Honestly rude of them to have a challenge running the week of Christmas. Everyone knows that's the time of year to drown in eggnog and forget about goals.

Welcome back! Love the pictures and the travelogue! Entling seems like a great adventurer. We took my kids to Europe for 8 weeks when my son was that age and it was so much fun - they're so curious and excited at that age, and happy to put those new reading skills to the test. Looking forward to following along with the rest of your trip!

Following along for cozy holiday updates! Dropping wisdom right here. I'm in the middle of a Stormlight reread before the 5th book comes out! I think it's only been a couple years since I read them all, but I feel like there's so much I'd forgotten about.

CHALLENGE WRAP UP Well, this one got away from me a little with a cold knocking me out of commision and the onset of Thanksgiving travel. But I wanted to reflect on what worked (and didn't work) before we move into the last challenge of the year (!!). WHAT WENT WELL: Preplanning my day in LoseIt did give me more clarity around my food habits and reinforced the habit of logging food every day. Using LoseIt's reminders to show a notification if I haven't logged a meal by a certain time came in handy on days I didn't preplan. Filling up my water cup while pouring coffee worked extremely well! Even if I didn't start drinking that water cup until noon, it was helpful to have it all ready for me. Blocking off time on my calendar to update NF. I don't always stick to my calendar time blocking, but this was a great reminder to set aside some time to update NF each day. I managed an impressive 23/25 updates during this challenge! Giving myself permission to only update my only thread and limit checking in on other friends removed the excuse of "not having time" to get on NF. Being on NF more did keep me motivated in the challenge (at least for the first 4 weeks). Time blocking my walks sort of worked - on my work days it was really helpful to plan when during my day I could walk on the treadmill. Walking during meetings worked well when it happened, but my meetings were less frequent during the challenge so I don't feel like I really formed a strong habit here. Posting a weekend accountability plan. WHAT DIDN'T: Maintaining a lower calorie diet. Even though I was pretty good at tracking my food, I often went over on calories. Which is fine but it meant that I didn't actually have any sustained weight loss this challenge, even after a decent dip at the beginning. Not logging on days when I knew I was going to be over on calories (like when we went out for my husband's birthday). Yes, some days it's inconvenient to track, but it meant that I broke my streak pretty early on. Going for a walk on less convenient days. My idea to "just walk for 5 min" did not work at all. My brain was not being fooled by that trick. Which meant on days when it wasn't easy to walk for 30+min, I just did nothing instead. There were a few exceptions, but in general, I don't think I formed the habit I was hoping for. Scheduling a walk and then just... not going. This was just pure laziness - I should know by now that there is no "later" when it comes to putting off exercise. When I got sick in the last week I reverted back toward perfectionism: if I can't do everything, I won't do anything. That meant not updating NF because I didn't want to show bad numbers or explain why I was failing during the last week, and feeling like I was using being sick as an excuse. Ouch. Looking over all 5 weeks, this challenge actually went okay - there were some real low notes with the election results and getting sick twice!, but it wasn't all bad. There are some good lessons here to carry forward to the next challenge, which I'll update with the link once it's posted down below!

Following along - you are speaking my language with the hard need to shift focus and figure out a new form of compensation.

They're little ninjas, for sure. I don't think I'm at the antibiotics stage (no fever!) so I've been just suffering during the day and taking Robitussin PM at night. But maybe I should give Zyrtec and Emergen-C a try. Week 5 - Tuesday Log everything I eat in LoseIt Drink 64oz of water daily Walk every day Post on NF every week day

Week 5 - Monday Log everything I eat in LoseIt Drink 64oz of water daily Walk every day Post on NF every week day Two steps forward, one step back. I don't know what to say about yesterday except that I scheduled a walk on my calendar, but then it was slightly inconvenient to actually do it, so I thought I'd do it later... and then never did. In other news, I'm getting sick again with a sore throat and post-nasal-drip and I know it's because my four year old has the same thing and sleeps in my bed every night. Feeling a little blah all round today.

Aw shucks, but thanks for that framing

Oh man - that's got to be a lot to process! We're likely moving next summer before my youngest starts kindergarten, but it's definitely something we've been planning for a while and looking forward to. It sounds like your move is a little less expected and welcome? Sorry to hear that, I hope you can find the bandwidth to process and prepare for everything. It's a lot of work, especially with the littles around. Side note: Do not, under any circumstances, put on Bluey's "The Sign" to prepare your kids for the move. I'm still hoping my kids forget they ever watched that episode.

Please keep talking about Latvia. It's a huge thing for you and we absolutely want to hear about what's going through your head! Oh wow - I thought Sonjia was the owner, but maybe not? Any idea who would take over management if she retires?

I love this episode - gets me every time. Hope you made it to the theater okay this weekend and enjoyed the last of your time with Dave now that your guest has left. [EDIT:] Oh lol I missed the entire next page of updates. Need more coffee in me, stat.

blargh I just downloaded Threads and now there's a new one??? No regrets needed - that's a very understandable choice frankly.

Happy belated birthday Snarky! I'm happy you had such a warm, loving birthday surrounded by your family and overly-sweet presents. Hope your week picks up after yesterday's lack of sleep - hopefully being in the sunshine was a good pick-me-up for today. Best of luck with week 5!