athousandwords

Welcome back, glad to see you around! No worries about a 2 week take off, we've all done it. How's your challenge going so far?

I think a lot of my 2022 goals will be based around this system! Yay, glad it's helping someone! I'll try to remember to post more pictures, I've been slacking this week.

Tuesday Food: Lunch: 3 slices pepperoni and mushroom pizza 😳 Other: Handful of peanut-butter filled pretzels Dinner: Vegan Chickpea Soup Lunch wasn't great yesterday. I was hanging out at my parents' store, waiting for my car to be finished at the mechanics, and they offered to buy lunch. Pizza was simplest and honestly I'm not beating myself up over that choice. But the the third slice was definitely unnecessary. I wasn't even hungry, just... it was there. IYKYK. However - there is a minor proud moment in those peanut-butter filled pretzel bites! aka: delicious puffs of crunchy and creamy that I don't let myself keep in the house, but my parents had a big plastic tub of them and I had a small handful with that third slice of pizza. 😬 Then, later, I got the call from daycare that baby girl was sick, and I was stressed out because the mechanic was taking forever, and my brain kept pinging me: eat more pretzels, you'll feel better. To the point where every time I walked by them I reminded my brain: "Hey, you're going to see those pretzels and that will be a cue to crave them because you feel shitty and they're delicious. But you're not hungry, you're actually over-full, and even though there will be a momentary reward, it's not worth it." ..and it worked. I never went back for a second serving. So, progress! Run: N/A 👍 Continue Healthy Habits: IF 16/8, 5-6x a week ✅ Drink 8 glasses of water daily ✅ Floss daily ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week ✅ Reading: No reading last night, worked instead 🙃

*hugs* on the hard week, but it sounds like you're really aware of your stressors and the obstacles that keep you from meeting your goals: water bottles, packing a lunch, that former work place. I feel like half the battle is just acknowledging that stuff so that you can make a battle plan. So well done! Hopefully your next week goes better! 🤗

This is so good to hear - I'm glad you're finding value in the challenge and setting your own goals. You've been totally rocking it on your meditations and it sounds like it's paying off! Love this! May steal it.

Predictably, baby girl recovered just enough to get to daycare for one day, and then started running a fever again the next day. It's exhausting for everyone and I know all babies get sick this often in daycare but I hate it and it makes me wish I could just quit my job and stay home with her through the winter. Except I actually like my job and find child-minding exhausting (despite how much I love my kids). But worse is trying to do both. I think I'll be back to early 4am mornings this week trying to get work done before the kids wake up, and juggling child care with my husband during the day. So I may be a little more absent this week, trying to keep all the balls in the air. Monday Food: Lunch: Club Sub from Jersey Mikes Other: Tortilla chips and salsa Dinner: Polish sausages, sauerkraut, roasted green beans and cubed butternut squash I don't have any pictures or recipes to share because we were just winging it last night! But the food was good at the kids gobbled up the green beans and squash, which is always a win. Husband was out running an errand during lunch and asked if I wanted take-away and I crumbled under the suggestion of Jersey Mike's. Funny story: I craved this club sub like nothing else when I was pregnant with baby girl, even though you're not supposed to have cold cuts while pregnant. I totally ate it anyway. 🤭 Run: 5k in 36 min ✅ Continue Healthy Habits: IF 16/8, 5-6x a week ✅ Drink 8 glasses of water daily ✅ Floss daily ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week ✅ Reading: Technically finished Atomic Habits but there's like 30% of the book left in the appendix, so not quite done yet. ✅

WEEK 2 RECAP Meal Plan and Share Meal plan 6 healthy recipes per week ✅ Add 5 recipes per week to Plan To Eat ✅ Log meals on NF challenge thread 5x per week ✅ Run 1 long run – 55min ✅ Run 5k 2x per week ✅ ❌ Continue Healthy Habits IF 16/8 5-6 a week 6️⃣ ✅ Drink 8 glasses of water daily 3️⃣ ❌ ‼️ Floss daily 7️⃣ ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week 4️⃣ ❌ Read Read Talking to Strangers ✅ Finish The Starless Sea ✅ Finish Deep Work Read Atomic Habits 🔜 A slightly overdue wrap up (how is it Tuesday already??) for last week. Overall? Decent week, but room for improvement. Standout areas were: reading, flossing, logging my meals. Needs work: skipped run, a few too many drinks, and yikes on that water consumption. 😬

Yay I made it to the NerdFitness shout-out!! 💪

Nice perspective! I love this idea. This is something I'm really leaning into as I get older. I think the pandemic in particular really changed my thinking on it. The time will pass anyway, there's really no rush - building sustainable momentum is truly the goal.

Welcome back! No time like the present to jump on board!

Friday/Saturday Food: Friday Lunch: Turkey and cheese, mac and cheese, broccoli-kale slaw Dinner: Stew and homemade sourdough bread Other: 1 glass red wine, probably several Halloween candies Saturday Breakfast: French toast made with homemade sourdough milk bread Lunch: Leftover stew Dinner: Wendy's quarter pounder, fries, diet coke Run: Skipped Friday, ran Saturday ✅ Continue Healthy Habits: IF 16/8, 5-6x a week 5️⃣ Drink 8 glasses of water daily ✅❌ Floss daily ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week 4️⃣ Reading: 70% through Talking to Strangers ✅ First, let's talk food: I made an absolutely amazing so-good-you-can't-believe-it stew on Friday. It was a labor of love, it took most of the day to make, and I would absolutely do it again. It called for 2 cups of red wine, so hubby and I split what was leftover in the bottle while watching GBBO that night. My husband baked three sourdough baguettes for sopping up the stew and it was just *chef's kiss*. He also baked a sourdough milk bread, which (ironically) over-proved while we were watching Bake Off, so it came out ginormous, with a giant hole in the middle. Paul Hollywood would be very disappointed. 😆 So food on Friday was great. And I've been eating stew leftovers all weekend (without the bread to cut down on calories), and it's even better reheated. Yum. We also made french toast on Saturday morning with the insane gargantuan milk bread and that was delicious and fun and worth having breakfast for. On Saturday I made up for the run I skipped on Friday (I had the baby home sick (again) and wasn't able to get out for a run). And it was just perfect – sunny and cool and crisp. I struggled a little to get started, but once I got going I felt like I could run forever. I ended up running the total length of my podcast (The Maintenance Phase) which was 55 minutes and 4.7 miles. Then I got annoyed that I hadn't just run the extra 5 min and maybe gotten to 5 miles. Ah well, next time! Saturday dinner though - well. Around 2pm we discovered a leak in our main water pipe in the utility room, and thankfully and completely by chance, we caught it early. There was some minor puddling on the carpets and concrete, but no damage. I spent a couple hours cleaning and trying to engineer a temporary solution while we desperately called a plumber – the leak was on the back of a pipe inches below the main water shut off, so turning off the water to the house didn't help. Once I had it pretty much contained and at least dripping into a bucket instead of our insulation, I was able to run out to Home Depot and get some silicone tape and a hose clamp to keep it under control. Ended up just getting Wendy's for dinner because I was exhausted and tired of making decisions and in no mood to cook. And that burger was just crazy good after being stressed and tired and hungry. Also we still haven't gotten a plumber out, but the leak is completely blocked for now and we're still able to use the water with no issues, so at least it's not an emergency situation anymore. Today is a slow day. We had plans to make peruvian chicken and have my husband's parents over for dinner, but baby girl is still sick and we have a bunch of yard work from yesterday that we didn't get done since we were dealing with the leak. So we rescheduled with them for next weekend and we're just going to cook up some salmon filets that are easy and try to get the leaves and stuff done while the kids play outside.

Samesies! And I definitely listened to the episode Jesse did with James Clear!

Oh, I thought it had been around for awhile too! I feel like it gets mentioned all the time. Also, I thought I was the only person who took lifestyle advice from budgeting sites! 😄 Now I need to know what site you use to see if it's the same one! I love this!! Enjoy your first class! I absolutely believe you are a person who does parkour - now you can believe it too! ❤️

Thursday Food: Lunch: Leftover Chicken tortilla soup, with sour cream, cheese, and tortilla chips Other: A couple chicken nuggets Dinner: Apple-Chicken sausage, broccoli-kale slaw, mac & cheese Run: N/A 👍 Continue Healthy Habits: IF 16/8, 5-6x a week ✅ Drink 8 glasses of water daily ✅ Floss daily ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week 3️⃣ Reading: ✅ I wasn't in the mood for Talking to Strangers yesterday, so I started reading Atomic Habits and WOW I'm so inspired! I'm already writing up a checklist of activities after reading just the first 3 chapters. I expect this is going to influence a lot of my challenge "goals" for 2022. I know there's other people here on NF who have read this book and gotten into the method, or maybe people who read James Clear's blog? And I know Steve is a fan. So I'm curious about what other people's success has been, or how people have structured challenges using this system. What else? Baby girl is still sick, but she was very good at the doctor today and was negative for covid, flu, and ear infections. So it's just some daycare crud going around. I'm making stew today the whole house smells delicious. Hubby baked some sourdough bread too, so it's going to be an amazing dinner. 🤤

I had one the next morning for sure! Welcome, thanks for the follow! And that's a great idea – I'll look into it.

Wednesday Yesterday was my husband's birthday! 🥳. It's been a real long, stressful week and yesterday baby girl woke up with a fever. We had to keep her home from daycare and were worried we would have to change our plans to celebrate at home. Thankfully she was doing better by the afternoon and my parents were still ok coming over to watch the kids. Hubby and went to the movies for the first time in 2 years (!!) and saw Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, which was just epic and so fun to watch on the big screen. Then we went out to a local seafood restaurant and froze a bit on the heated patio, but still enjoyed an absolutely delicious meal. Baby girl is still sick today and things are still a little stressful and off-kilter, but it was so nice to have an evening of normalcy and spend some quality time with my love. Food: Lunch: Leftover Eggroll in a Bowl Other: A couple mini-candies, a hard cider Dinner: Mussels in tomato sauce with crusty bread, a Lobster Roll, thin fries, a cob of corn and 2 glasses of wine Run: 5k in 36 min ✅ Continue Healthy Habits: IF 16/8, 5-6x a week ✅ Drink 8 glasses of water daily ❌ Floss daily ✅ Limit alcohol to 2x a week 3️⃣ NOOO water yesterday. Yikes. Mini goal for the week is to get back on track with drinking water! Reading: ❌

Woohoo! I've been neglecting the post run stretching. It's so important though! Love this! It can be real easy to lose mindfulness around alcohol consumption at the holidays. Can't wait to hear the final plan!

Those sound awesome! I'd love to see what they look like! Wow. People suck.

Thank you for being a good citizen and beyond! Yesterday was a looong day for many of us. I'm having to focus on the positives today and thought of you when I woke up and decided to be grateful. ❤️

Thanks for sharing! What book is it?

I don't think it was an overreaction at all. Pets are so hard and you really just want what's best for them – sometimes that means not letting them suffer. It's realistic to plan for the worst when you're not sure what exactly you're facing. And none of us are experts in cat physiology; trying to predict what you're going to fi nd out at the vet is like looking for symptoms on WebMD. Best case? Weird runny nose. Worst case? Cancer. 🤷‍♀️ All of this is good news. Hope you get a break for a bit.

I've had the exact same thing sneak up on me. I don't think I'm reliant on alcohol or using it in a toxic way, but I don't drink soda, so beer or wine just became my default 'I want something that tastes good' drink. I'd find myself having a glass of wine or a beer or more every night and it took some hard snapping out of to force myself to choose a different beverage. Hope you find something that works for you!

Congrats - sounds like you had a great start to your challenge! The best part of a challenge like this is that it forces you to sit and think about your priorities and what you're doing on a day by day, week by week basis to achieve them. And it looks like that's helping you and you're going about it the right way. Sorry to hear that! It sounds exhausting and mentally draining I hope you're able to find a new fresh start soon. Awesome, glad it works for you!! Glad you had a great Halloween and are making good progress on your goals. Hope you have a good week ahead!

Thank you for voting and being informed!!

Sounds like a very healthy approach! ❤️ Best of luck and every onward into week 2!