Arctic_Frost

Respawn! Go Eira. Stretching is so good for you, I should do that more too.

1. I will commit to going to bed at 11pm for a whole week.  Feb 24-Mar 2: 6/7 Mar 3-Mar 9: 6/7 Challenge Total: 20/28 Giving money to Brightlord and checking in with him every day really made a difference for the last two weeks of my challenge. I didn't lose a single dollar to excessive failure! I took the surviving $20 and transferred it into my travel savings account. I'm hoping to go to Spain with Brightlord later this year and every little bit helps! I think that I'll continue with having one of my challenges have a monetary incentive and a weekly extra life. It really makes a difference! 2. On Sunday nights I will commit to zero screentime 1 hour before bed. On other nights I will try for 30 min. Feb 24-Mar 2: 4/7 Mar 3-Mar 9: 3/7 Challenge Total: 12/28 This one was a bit harder to keep up with. Perhaps doing two sleep related challenges at once was not a great idea.  3. Do 15 minutes of bodyweight exercises twice a week. Work on holding a plank for longer than 30 sec. Feb 24-Mar 2: 1/2 Mar 3-Mar 9: 2/2 Challenge Total: 7/8 This one had the highest success rate, I only missed one workout! I did most of them at home, but I did a few of them at a local fitness centre. Cardinal and have started going there for Super Sunday workouts. First we work our way through the Beginner's Bodyweight Workout and then we do some exercises of her choosing. So far it's been really helpful to have a workout buddy. She's given pointers on my form and she's also been good at providing me with encouragement. My plank didn't extend to 60 seconds this challenge. I discovered that I was counting too fast and not using proper form. My actual plank record is 15 seconds. Something to work on. Final Thoughts During this challenge I've noticed that I've been way less tired than I usually am. I've also noticed that my muscles feel looser and more mobile (kind of like how the Tin Man feels after he gets the oilcan). I've even noticed improvements in my skiing! I'm less sore at the end of the day and I feel more stable when I'm on the hill. There just might be something to this whole fitness thing!

Feb 17th-Feb 23rd 1. I will commit to going to bed at 11pm for a whole week. 3/7 Fail high five! I didn't do as well as I did last week. I had a few nights where I missed my target time and ended up not going to bed for another couple of hours (if you're gonna fail, go big, right?). So for this next week, I've decided that I need to increase the accountability factor. I've given $20 to my boyfriend (who I shall refer to as Brightlord) and I've instructed him to put $5 into a random donation box whenever I miss my 11pm goal more than once a week (we've agreed that I get one extra life per week until the end of the challenge). So we'll see how that effects my results!  2. On Sunday nights I will commit to zero screentime 1 hour before bed. On other nights I will try for 30 min.1/7 Another fail high five! Not only did I miss my Sunday goal of 1 hour, but I missed most of the 30 min goals as well. This was not a strong sleep week for me. Next week can only be better! 3. Do 15 minutes of bodyweight exercises twice a week. Work on holding a plank for longer than 30 sec. 2/2! I may have failed at the others, but this was one that I succeeded at! Not only did I do my two workouts, but I also went outside of my comfort zone and went to a Zumba class for the first time (and by myself). I was terrible at it! The moves were so fast and I felt lost for moat of the choreography, but oddly enough I still had fun. The music was infectious and I wasn't the only person in the room with two left feet. I think that I might go again! I also found a "bonus room;" I discovered that paying for a drop-in class at the rec centre near my work also gave me access to the fitness centre. So I can access a gym without needing to get tied down with a monthly gym membership. I can even pre-pay for a 10 visit pass (which would give me one free visit). I'm also continuing to go to weekly Tai Chi classes. This whole fitness thing is more fun than I thought it would be. Weird!

Sleep challenge success! Nicely done.

So far the most effective thing I've done is to make my wake-up time fluid depending on whether or not I can meet my goal. If I can get to bed at 11pm, then I'll set my alarm later depending on what time I start work (7:30am wakeup for example). However, if I fail, then I have to wakeup at 6:50am (even if I don't have to work till 10am). In the past I would stay up late and then try to push my wake-up time as late as I could to still get some sleep. Flipping that tendency on its head has proven to be oddly effective. Give it a shot! I believe that you can hit your goal tonight Eira. Make that the most important thing for you tonight.

No sweets is such a hard challenge to do! I would almost be tempted to tweak to it no sweets two days in a row (but of course it's your challenge). The small goals thing is actually really helpful when trying to do these things. I know that I'm already looking at scaling back some of my challenges... Have you checked to see if your local library offers any free career programs? I know that mine offers weekly sessions where you can meet with someone that can go over your resume, help you narrow your job hunt or even give you a chance to practice your interview skills. Might be worth checking out! Thanks again for supporting me with my challenge. Good luck with yours!

Weekly Check-in (Feb 10th-16th) First off, I would like to welcome WhiteGhost, scalyfreak, Eira and RES to my 4 week challenge. It's nice to know that there are other members of the Rebellion out there that are cheering me on. I wish you all success in your current challenges! 1. I will commit to going to bed at 11pm for a whole week. 5/7 victories! I did a lot better at this than I thought I would, but I have to say that this goal is a lot easier to achieve when I'm not hanging out with other people! On one of the nights where I failed at this, I failed hard! I hadn't seen my best friend for over 3 weeks and I stayed out chatting with her for far longer than I should have. Even though I failed twice, I made sure that they weren't consecutive losses ("never miss two in a row!). The two in a row rule actually reminds me a lot of the retrieval system in Bloodbourne and Dark Souls. Die once and you still have a chance to regain your lost blood echoes/souls, but if you die again before you can retrieve them, then they are gone forever! I'm not increases the difficulty for next week, I wanna keep shooting for 11pm. 2. On Sunday nights I will commit to zero screentime 1 hour before bed. On other nights I will try for 30 min. 3-4?/7 victories... This one was much harder than I thought it would be! On Sunday I was able to unplug 1 hr before bed and I was able to meet my 30 min cutoff for at least a few of those other nights, but I didn't track my progress from night to night (note for next week!). This is something to work on for sure. No difficulty increase this time. 3. Do 15 minutes of bodyweight exercises twice a week. Work on holding a plank for longer than 30 sec. 2/2 victories! I'm really happy that I was able to complete this challenge for my first week! Until Nerd Fitness, I hadn't really done a lot of exercises for about the last 4-5 years (and even that was only because I had to do physio exercises to help me when my left knee was hurting like crazy. Years of skating, kneeling down to shelve books and sliding my knee cap around as a kid (yeah that last one was really not smart) had taken their toll. Thankfully I haven't had as much trouble since then and now I know some really good stretches to do when my knee starts hurting). And before the physio exercises the last time that I had done regular exercises was probably high school gym class (about 9 years ago, yikes!). For this week I had been doing a combination of my physio exercises (hip raises, squats and clam shells), parts of the Nerd Fitness Beginners Bodyweight Workout (planks and pushups) and my own additions (diagonal raises and bicep curls). However, I think that next week I'll just follow the entire NF Beginners Bodyweight Workout. I've been using the sleep timer feature on Google Play music to workout while listening to music. This way I'm not constantly checking the clock and I get to really zone into the music. I spent some time this week crafting a soundscape that puts me in the right mindset for leveling up my strength stat (Eye of the Tiger anyone?). I'll probably continue to focus on my two sessions per week for now, but I may increase the time of my workouts by a little bit. On the days when I'm not working out, I still try to at least go for a walk, go ice skating or go to a Tai Chi class. I've probably done more movement this year than in the last couple of years! General Rambling Music suggestion: So I mentioned that I'm a big fan of Jazz music (Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Duke Ellington are some of my top artists), but I've also really gotten into Electro-Swing and some modern jazz artists. One in particular that I really enjoy is Caro Emerald; she's a Dutch artist with a good voice and great energy. If you want to try her out, listen to That Man from the Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor album. Shoutout to my co-worker that introduced me to NF (I'm gonna call her Cardinal since she's a big fan of the St. Louis Cardinals). She has been really good about keeping me accountable during my quest. She helps celebrate my victories and she has good workout advice. Thanks Cardinal! Alright, this post is way longer than I thought it would be...looks like 11pm is shot for tonight *insert "You Died" screen*...Tomorrow I shall endeavour to collect my fallen blood echoes. Until next week!

Greeting fellow members of the Rebellion! I'm Arctic Frost and this is my first 4 Week Challenge. I've recently joined Nerdfitness and I'm looking forward to leveling up! One of my co-workers told me about this site and so far it has proven to be a truly useful resource. I work at a library in Canada, so that already identifies me as a bookworm! I also love ice skating, downhill skiing and walking around trying to catch Pokemon (go Team Mystic!). I like playing Monster Hunter, Red Dead Redemption, Harvest Moon, Dragon Age and many, many other titles. I'm also really big into music, I always need to have the perfect soundscape to match whatever I'm doing. I particularly enjoy power metal, jazz, 90's country and indie electronic (so a bit of a wide range). My main focus this month is to improve my sleep, but I'm also looking to increase my strength stat. My 3 quests are as follows: 1. I will commit to going to bed at 11pm for a whole week. Optional difficulty increase: sleep 15 min earlier each week. 2. On Sunday nights I will commit to zero screentime 1 hour before bed. On other nights I will try for 30 min. Optional difficulty increase: add 1 night each week. 3. Do 15 minutes of bodyweight exercises twice a week. Work on holding a plank for longer than 30 sec. Optional difficulty increase: add one extra day each week (limit 4 per week). We'll see how those go. I've always had difficulty pulling myself away from my phone and getting to bed at a decent hour. That usually ends with me being tired the next day, so I'm hoping that I can build some good sleep habits. Sound the hunting horn! It's time for me to depart of my quest. Good luck fellow level 1's. -Arctic Frost