Mekong

I found you on the onions tag and I'm no less confused of that meaning than before I read this. All the same, pretty impressive goals! Good luck, and good luck with a speedy shoulder and toe recovery.

Suggestions on the something exciting? Yeah, I think I'm finally starting to understand some of the root causes that leave me perpetually in restart mode. The thought process tends to be 'I'm fat, so I need to eat better and exercise' > 'I'm not eating better and exercising even though I should because I'm fat and apparently this is hard?' > 'I'm fat, so I need to eat better and exercise' ad infinitum, ad nauseam. But constant tiredness is definitely one of those underlying things that throws a wrench into it and I'm finally realizing I'm looking at it exactly opposite and I can't just try to power through it and assume the sleeping issue will automatically fix itself if I get the weight/eating/exercising down.

Yeeeees so much this. Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew for me. I have a tub of Amino Energy that we never use at home and I finally brought it to work so hopefully that'll help with some of the dragging during the day that really wears down my willpower. It tastes like grape Kool-Aid and I had some today and I FEEL AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so it's a proactive step towards bandaging a known issue so I can hang on long enough to find a long-term solution (like addressing my poor sleep schedule).

Ja, Einzelganger*! Ich mochte eine Aktualisierung, bitte! *Supposedly that means like lone wolf, that's as close as Google took me to Rogue Wolf.

Doing okay. Just got back from a mini vacation and managed to not fall completely off the wagon upon returning yesterday. I actually have meals planned for the week, which is a big step towards managing to have the rest of my stuff planed for the week. Came back to AZ with a cold, the main symptom seeming to be a general feeling of being rundown and tired. Which made me think about how usually I have healthy intentions, but one of the big pitfalls is being tired. Eat healthy, be tired, too tired to cook, revert to unhealthy habits as just making it through the day becomes a higher priority, never get back on track. Instead of changing my goals to fit this obvious facet of life, I stick to "eat healthy" type goals and fail in the same way. Actually, I fail in a lot of ways, but one in particular is the sleep downfall. So maybe a focus on sleep should be one of my goals in February. Until then, I'm going to try to just wake up earlier. I don't have to do anything useful, just be out of bed and maybe it'll help me fall asleep earlier and fix my schedule a little bit. In other news, I turn 30 in exactly 6 months today and that should probably scare me a little and motivate me to do something exciting.

Thanks, you also! Good, you make me feel less self conscious about it. I haven't yet come to a consensus as far as effectiveness, though. Thanks, sir! I see you've done well in my absence. I need to catch up!

I died, but I exist again. Wow, that's a pretty nice coincidence with my quote on my first post. Anyway, updates to come. New challenge.

I saw your German tag and had to check out your post. Looks like a good start! I too am a prodigal son (daughter) of Nerd fitness, finally returning to the flock. It sounds like you've had a rough go, I'm glad you made it back. I've been off and on with learning German and I'm starting a class this month, so I look forward to reading about your progress. Good luck this month!

Big Long Preface: I disappeared last March but now I'm back. I didn't go completely off the rails with fitness, just updating. I changed jobs and that took a lot of my time and it felt too overwhelming to try to update things with everything else going on, especially when my updates are all "I'm surviving, not thriving, and have no time for anything besides the basics of not gaining weight etc." And actually I just got a pretty nice promotion about a month ago and I know it'll be months before I'm comfortable in my new role, so the potential for disappearing is still there, but I feel a lot more comfortable in what I can manage now than I did when leaving a ridiculously shitty job last Spring. My new company doesn't stress me out like my previous one did* and I'm much healthier and happier than I was, so I think I can take on more than just focusing on work again. So I started some resolutions, as I usually do, for January, but I miss this community so I thought I'd pop in and try to take a stab at updating here also, despite my piss-poor follow through. *I no longer break out with random rashes, my eye no longer twitches, I don't have headaches from spending all night gritting my teeth, I don't have a constant pit in my stomach, I don't have panic attacks that I'm wasting my life in a hellscape of aggressively stupid assholes I neither like nor respect, you know, the usual bad job experience. My 2016 theme is "Opportunity favors the prepared." I'm in a better position to pursue a career opportunity when I maintain my network and resume and take time to build my skills. I'm in a better position to go on an amazing last-minute hiking trip if I'm already active and working on being fit. Sure, it's nice to dream about moving to Germany, but it's a lot more likely if I speak the language (classes starting in 2 weeks). And in general, luck seems more likely to come my way when I'm keeping myself happy, healthy, and fulfilled via self care and pursuing my interests. I want the abilities behind me to say yes when I want. And if the last few years are anything to go on, fortune does not seem to favor the person that spends hours everyday staring at her phone or the TV. And before I planned on getting back together with NF, I was planning on short monthly goals with overarching fitness/career/self-improvement and care themes, so the fact that NF has gone to 4 week goals means our relationship is meant to be! So, with no further adieu, My January goals, back to basics: -Food Mindfulness: Strict Paleo and/or track nutrition via MFP everyday. Some days it's easier to do the former, some days the latter. But either way, I need to have a plan on how I will pay attention to my eating patterns instead of saying, "Fuck it, I'm stressed/on vacation/ the recipient of a well-intentioned food gift, I'll be better tomorrow." -Take a walk and do some sort of muscle activity (lift, bodyweight exercises, yoga, stretching, foam rolling, etc) everyday. It can just be a walk around the block or a quick half mile on the treadmill after working out at the gym, the key is to break the habit of going home, plopping on the couch, and not moving until I go to bed. I want general activity to be part of my daily routine, I want it to feel weird if I didn't spend at least a few minutes each day to myself, outside and moving. -Um, this one is kind of weird but I'm trying it because I tend to get either overwhelmed and avoidant or bored and forgetful on these things, and this might help me see my goals while focusing on the immediate a little better: Write a letter to my one-month-in-the-future-self and read it to myself everyday. It's supposed to help you remind yourself why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. I don't know where I read it, but I'm trying it. I actually wrote 2 letters, the one on the first was all, "I love you and you can do anything!" and then I wrote one this morning that was more like, "You're fat and it makes you unhappy, wouldn't you rather choose to be unhappy by not eating Nutella out of the jar as a meal, rather than have the unhappy forced on you in the form of an uncomfortable body?" So between the two, hopefully it'll keep me on track all month. -Side goal: Nothing, really. I start German classes this month, I start another sewing class this week, book club starts up again next week, I'll be out of town this coming weekend, and the new job is coming along to where I vaguely know how to do some things so now that that snowball's been nudged, it'll start barreling downhill pretty quickly, so I think I have enough stuff to keep me busy and fulfilled and not on the couch letting time slip away. But I do have mini-goals in mind, like improving posture, starting meditation, cleaning all the things, so this will be utilized in the future. Okay, that's it. If you read this far, we're destined to be thunder buddies for life and you should leave a comment so I know about our new bff status. if I'm the only one rereading this looking for grammar errors, good luck to meeeeeeeeee!

Second to last day waking up early for work. I'm so ready for the schedule change, but it's making these last few mornings especially torturous. Last night I couldn't sleep and after a few hours of reading by booklight, moved to another room so I could turn on a light without bothering the husband. About 30 minutes later, the dog came in and gave me the look of severe irritation and tiredness I knew so well as a teenager coming in after curfew from my parents. She herded me back to bed and laid on top of me so I couldn't leave again. Worked out for the best, I at least got about 4.5 hours last night. Gym! Stretching! It's happening, I should work on it happening more. Self care! House guests this weekend so I cleaned yesterday. It's really quite nice when it's clean, if only it could be maintained. Plus reading and body brushing and whatnot, doing ok.

Welcome back! Glad your mom is recovering. Sleeping 6 hours isn't ideal, but if I'd finally managed to grab hold of some focus and drive to complete something I needed to get done, I'd definitely make the same choice. Especially because at that point I'd probably be wired and waste the extra time in bed with my mind racing and fretting about getting the project done. Compromising with yourself! The spice of any good NF challenge.

Very true, I've lived in "High Desert" mountainous areas in the Southwest most of my life and sure, most Halloweens in my childhood consisted of the one dad with the snowplow driving all the neighborhood kids through a blizzard to each house set a mile away from each other, but the next day when the snow stopped and you dug out the five feet piled up in front of your door, the sun was shining and you could go play in snowpants and a t-shirt. The coldest I've ever been in my life was a May weekend in Oregon. Something about the wet just chills you to the bone. Not a problem here, even when it snows. I'm not concerned that the scale is completely "accurate" (then again, how accurate is it at the same time to eat ultra low-carb for a few weeks and take a measurement in the morning when I'm dehydrated and haven't eaten for 18 hours, which is kind of my benchmark for the 216#?), just demoralizing to make a big jump. And you have some time to catch up, I won't be able to get back to eating strictly until at least next Monday. I should probably update my picture -my hair is your length by now- but Mt Rainier is in the background of that one and it makes me happy.

This is how I feel about steak and ribs. With eating, you were already eating before the challenge (presumably), so you're just tweaking/replacing a bad habit (eating junk) to a better habit (eating honey). With adding activity you're conjuring a whole new habit out of thin air, and that's a lot harder to integrate into your routine and maintain. Your best bet might be to tie it to something already integrated into your routine, like biking while watching a specific show or something. Man, that's some decent advice. I should really follow it.

I'm there too. I've been a little carb-heavy lately because I'm trying to get more fiber (I've been told ~30g/day is a good benchmark for most people, what's your goal?) and I was trying to avoid burnout/boredom by following a strict, more Paleo diet. But a) I tend to hold onto more water when I up carbs, so seeing the higher #s on the scale is a little demoralizing and even if I'm technically not, a less strict diet always makes me feel like I'm starting to slip, and that coupled with the higher scale numbers tends to exponentiate the issue. I feel for your kids. I had terrible growing pains at night as a kid. Apparently my grandpa used to give my mom and uncles a spoonful of blackberry schnapps to help them get back to sleep. No such luck for my sister and me. Good luck with your workout today! How the back gets back to normal.

Looks pretty good to me, assuming you follow through with dinner. My gym café has breakfast specials and the Monday one is a banana, a bagel, and an orange juice for a billion dollars (this café is pretty overpriced). I always think that for a place that freely embraces it's own version of Paleo-esque clean eating, that's a really huge sugar spike to inflict on your clients. I don't knock bananas anyway, but at least your breakfast had some fat and protein in the milk to cushion the sugar impact. Even with pizza, you had a really good Sunday, though.

I'm with you, I don't care about waking up in the dark but I don't like it already being dark when I go home. Especially in the summer, it's just wrong. Twilight in the summer is meant for hanging out on the porch, drinking a shandy, and listening to neighborhood kids run around the neighborhood. It damn sure isn't meant to be sitting at work. Of course, 3 days a week I'll be working evenings now and will have my mornings to be outside, so in this case it'd be nice for AZ to have DST and for it to stay darker and cooler a little later, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the good of abolishing this unnecessary and potentially dangerous practice. And yeah, good point about the date changing thing! If the world can do that, come on now. Just get rid of it. You can't tell me places like China will care, if time is arbitrary enough that the entire huge country adheres to one timezone. C'mon now. Northern AZ is nice, I went to school in Flagstaff, but it still has snowy winters. And this race is going terribly! I was at 216 and then the next week I was at 222! Serves me right for eating carbs? I guess? I don't know, I'm not worried in the it's-just-a-number sense, I know I didn't gain 6 pounds in 7 days, but I don't like it much either. I'll weigh in tomorrow and see what happens. I've been really up and down with carb intake, and erratically, so it's hard to tell if I'm plateauing or just holding onto and losing water while losing weight. At least another week of inconsistent eating right now (still eating well and tracking calories, just weird foods, times, higher than normal carb intake, etc), but I'm hoping next week I'll get back into a normal rhythm and be able to more easily see a weight-loss pattern again. Like the new pic!

Epic sleep fail. Went to bed with my phone and stayed up too late. Woke up at 5, left the house about 5:30 to go to work. Except when I got in my car it said 4:30. Go back in, the oven clock says 4:30. Microwave, coffee maker, wall clock, 4:30. My stupid, fucking, bullshit phone doesn't have a MST-AZ option and changed my time an hour forward with the rest of this miserable slave to DST country*. I know I'm being the asshole Louis CK rants about, but fuck this fucking Samsung Galaxy S4, it makes me miss iPhone. I said "fuck it" and went to work anyway. And now I'm going to hunt down coffee. *I always say if I'm ever President my day 1 actions would be a) get rid of pennies and get rid of Daylight Savings Time. But it turns out pretty much the entire world does DST, it's not just an antiquated farming days US thing, so I guess Arizona is wrong, not the rest of the world. Again.

It's good to have a coach that can read the room well enough and respond accordingly. And if you have to do badly, it's nice to have the perspective to know where to improve next time and to feel some solidarity and have your low the same time as everyone else. Hope your elbow's okay!

Yesterday: Shoulder Press 25 lb ×3 Row to Press 25 lb x 1 legged deadlift 30 lb x3 1 legged squat 30 lb x3 1 armed bosu pushup 10x3 Side crunches on the bosu 5 lb x3 1867 calories, 84g fat, 100g carbs/175g protein. ~1 gal water Today: Beginner Body Weight Circuit x3 20 squats 10 push-ups (knee) 10 lunges/side 10 rows/side 10 lb 15 s plank 30 jumping jacks (Rows were silly but 10 lb is the heaviest dumbbell I have at home. Didn't trust the table for inverted rows.) 2 hrs slow paced walking and throwing a ball with the dog. Sent from a Game Boy Pocket using Tapatalk

Goals/Bucket List, to be updated often: Fitness: Run/jog 5k without stopping. Do a pushup. Do a plank for 1 minute. Do a pull up. Learn to ride a bike. Do a handstand. Lift a cumulative 500 pounds between the big 3 (deadlift, squat, bench press). Lift bodyweight in one of the big 3. Life: Get credit score over 700. Learn how to use the grill. Learn how to use the sewing machine and sew something. Update resume, LinkedIn. Learn German (benchmarks to be added later). Reading List Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn...) Sent from a Game Boy Pocket using Tapatalk

Ah, yeah that makes sense. Ugh, you have my empathy. I grew up in a cinder block house with a big stove as the central heating, in the middle of nowhere. It snowed from the beginning of October through April and the pipes froze more than once. I'm sure my parents fed me something nutritional, but I mostly remember eating a lot of snow ice cream (snow mixed with sugar, milk, vanilla, etc... that's a thing right? Not just my parents being weird?) Actually, I think I remember them washing dishes in the snow, or bringing it in to melt and use. Nothing like the eternal winter to turn you into an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Just think how wet and green spring will eventually be... Sent from a Game Boy Pocket using Tapatalk

I've lunged and followed my way into the heart of this mini. Actually, I kinda forgot about this lunging mini but a couple rounds of Steve's Beginner Body Weight Circuit got me there today. And tomorrow when I'm sore I'll have something to whine about to my new mini-mandated followers! It's all coming together, I can see it now. Sent from a Game Boy Pocket using Tapatalk

Officially signed up for the sewing class. I didn't realize it was teens and adults, ages 13+. I wonder if I'll be the only adult, that can be fun. Oh well, by the end of May I'll be ready for Project Runway, that's the important thing. I've managed to take vitamins 3 DAYS IN A ROW NOW. I'm pretty much unstoppable at this point. Took the dog out for 2 hours and sunburned my nose. Now she's passed out in my lap but when she wakes up I'll foamroll and then go cry in the shower until the pain subsides. Weekends! Sent from a Game Boy Pocket using Tapatalk

W00t! Nothing's better than a deserved "fuck."

It seems like a lot of people's slumps have come earlier in the challenge this go around. Just stick around and keep chugging. Winter will eventually end, you got this. Do you have a crockpot for cooking?