connally7

Seconded!

This is last week's report as well as an overall wrap-up so fair warning....this is gonna be a long post. HEALTH/FITNESS GOALS: Goal #1: Drink 64 oz. of water daily. I honestly just missed one day of this and I was probably 10-ish oz. away from hitting my goal on that day. Overall not too shabby. Score: 85% (+55%) Goal #2: Workout at least 3x a week, and yoga at least 2x a week. Hit 2 TRX workouts and both yoga workouts, but I went out of town this weekend for my best friend's bridal shower and to compensate for the missed time, I worked a ton this week. So by Friday morning, I was pretty much dead on my feet and couldn't quite drag myself into doing my third bodyweight workout. Score: 80% (NO CHANGE) Goal #3: Eat 80/20 Paleo. Did much better at eating good food this week. The only nights I missed were when I got home super late from work and was too tired to cook so dinner just ended up being ramen with shrimp and veggies for moi. Score: 50% (+50%) LEVEL UP GOALS: Goal #4: Practice Italian 15+ minutes a day, and speak Italian with another person at least 1x a week. My Italian buddy had projects and lots of studying for finals because she graduates from college this month (hooray!!) but it meant no free time for non-school related hobbies. And every time I opened my DuoLingo app, I was bored out of my skull within five minutes. Definitely prefer social interactive learning over solo vocab studying. Bleh! Thinking of looking for some language tutoring classes in my area. Score: 0% (NO CHANGE) Goal #5: No TV. Did good on this one! I missed Thursday and Friday by just not turning the TV off when my husband left the room (fail!) so yah. But overall, I felt pretty good about this goal in general. I definitely feel like I've been more productive the last couple of weeks with my mindfulness focused on utilizing my free time. Score: 70% (-15%) OVERALL REPORT: I definitely feel like I took too many goals on at once. My first challenge went pretty well, so I assumed that I could do even more the second time around but I definitely think I got overwhelmed about halfway through. Also I need to take into account what's going on in my life in the weeks of the challenge and adjust accordingly. There was a lot more stress and last-minute traveling that I had planned on and it showed in the rundown of discipline I had towards the end of this challenge. I think I'm gonna take this week off to rest and recover, and really analyze why I met some goals and not others before starting up another challenge. But I will definitely be back for challenge #3! Just not until May 8th. Goal #1: Drink 64 oz. of water daily. {+1 STA} Score: 68% - D No points awarded. {+0 STA} Goal #2: Workout at least 3x a week, and yoga at least 2x a week. {+1 STR, +1 DEX} Score: 92% - A Full points awarded. {+1 STR, +1 DEX} Goal #3: Eat 80/20 Paleo. {+1 CON} Score: 36% - F No points awarded. {+0 CON} Goal #4: Practice Italian 15+ minutes a day, and speak Italian with another person at least 1x a week. {+1 CHA} Score: 49% - F No points awarded. {+0 CHA} Goal #5: No TV. {+1 WIS, +1 CON} Score: 79% - C 25% of points awarded. {+0.25 WIS, +0.25 CON}

Thanks. I really needed to hear that like you have no idea. So thank you! And I will!

Tough month. Sometimes all you can do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue to put one foot in front of the other. Good on you for recognizing the difficulty and choosing to plan well for the future anyways.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. That's the summary of my past week. And on to the report: HEALTH/FITNESS GOALS: Goal #1: Drink 64 oz. of water daily. I got two days out of seven. I drank water every day, but mostly only around 32 oz. on average. Sigh. Score: 30% (-40%) Goal #2: Workout at least 3x a week, and yoga at least 2x a week. I missed a yoga workout. I was actually super proud of myself for bringing my TRX straps on our trip at the beginning of the week and doing my bodyweight workouts at the hotel. But my energy was sapped for the rest of the week. I still got my 3 strength workouts in and one yoga session, but I fell a little short this week. Score: 80% (-20%) Goal #3: Eat 80/20 Paleo. Nope. On our trip, I had pizza and beer and whiskey and Reuben sandwiches and cookies. I promptly got violently ill. Then I had no appetite for two days. And then, cue the sad emotional grazing. Mostly of chips and ice cream. Very uncool and my body was definitely screaming mutiny at me. Score: (-30%) LEVEL UP GOALS: Goal #4: Practice Italian 15+ minutes a day, and speak Italian with another person at least 1x a week. Not even once. This week was hell, and studying was the furthest thing from my mind. I did set up an Italian study date with my language buddy for next week so getting back on track for the future. This week was a big fat failure though. Score: 0% (-80%) Goal #5: No TV. This goal went surprisingly well. I only gave in on one day to binge watch some Fairy Tail with my husband, which has pretty much been par for the course this challenge. I did watch the premiere of GoT last night (which I slapped a disclaimer on at the start of the challenge as not counting as a *miss*) and it was awesome! Score: 85% (NO CHANGE) So yeah, not a great week. Kind of the worst week ever. But hey, my Monday has been alright so far. Picking myself back up and gonna finish out this last week strong. PS this post is Stiles-centered because he's one of my favorite fictional characters ever! And I definitely needed the reminder of someone sarcastic and painfully human who is anxious and prone to depression and yet still triumphs over the big, bad things that lurk in the dark. You do you, Stiles.

Glad to hear you're doing awesome post-surgery and that everything went smoothly! And hooray for family support an encouraging support system is invaluable in situations like this. Enjoy all the downtime, and here's to a quick recovery!

Sorry I've been missing, guys. Last week was rough. The last three days came pretty damn close to impossible. Life is just hard right now. So last week's report, here we go: HEALTH/FITNESS GOALS: Goal #1: Drink 64 oz. of water daily. Started strong but faded by the weekend. Extra shifts at work and lack of sleep pushed coffee to the forefront to keep me going and my water intake suffered. Jumping back on that train today. Drink all the water. Score: 70% (-15%) Goal #2: Workout at least 3x a week, and yoga at least 2x a week. Fortunately, hit this goal. Unfortunately, it was mostly as a stress response. Feeling out of control in other areas of my life can manifest in harder workouts because the muscle soreness and cardio rage helps keep me calm. Cathartic maybe? Score: 100% (NO CHANGE) Goal #3: Eat 80/20 Paleo. Tanked this one. I worked at our new booth in the baseball stadium (tons of fun even though it was exhausting) which pushed my work days really long because I added it to my original work schedule. No time for eating led to snacking at work which basically consists of sandwiches and crepes. Decidedly not paleo choices. I also got to see my brother on Sunday night, and that always includes beer and pizza. Sigh. It wasn't a great week food-wise. Score: 30% (-40%) LEVEL UP GOALS: Goal #4: Practice Italian 15+ minutes a day, and speak Italian with another person at least 1x a week. Monday night practice with my Italian study buddy and about 20 minutes of vocab every day except Sunday so not too shabby. Practice is starting to feel stale though, and I'm for sure going to have to start looking for new ways to study to keep everything fresh and engaging. Score: 80% (+15%) Goal #5: No TV. Made it every day except for Sunday. We stayed at a hotel and watching TV just kinda happened. It was mostly Fresh Prince and Friends while we hung out so nothing too crazy. Still though. I'm hoping to get through one whole week without TV before the challenge is over. Score: 85% (NO CHANGE) All in all, the weekend was the hardest part. Severe stress is difficult for me to deal with, always has been. Especially when I can't just remove the thing stressing me out from my life. Adulting is frickin' difficult!

Ugh, family crap can be the worst. Sorry to hear it made this past weekend rough. You're gonna rock this week!!

Seconded!

So this weekend was rough emotionally. Really rough. And the worst part is that I know it's just beginning. Lots of family junk going on right now. Luckily, both my husband and my best friend are solid rocks of sanity and logic to talk me through my overwhelming emotional breakdowns. Me This Entire Weekend At Work: HEALTH/FITNESS GOALS: Goal #1: Drink 64 oz. of water daily. I made it every day this week except for Friday so that's better. It's still not what I automatically reach for, even when I'm majorly dehydrated and my brain is like "hey, water is awesome! Go drink some, ya nerd!" I still have to make myself. I like water. I really do, but I forget all the time to just drink it throughout the day. It's still a conscious effort to get those 4 water bottles down in a 24 hour period which can be frustrating when I feel like it should be second nature by now. Score: 85% (+15%) Goal #2: Workout at least 3x a week, and yoga at least 2x a week. Nailed it! I love my workouts, and yoga is really helping to keep the soreness at bay so I can go all out in every workout. Pretty ecstatic about this one! Which means I already know I'm gonna have to really challenge myself in this area for the next go-around. Score: 100% (NO CHANGE!) LEVEL UP GOALS: Goal #3: Eat 80/20 Paleo. A little better than I thought though this weekend was a struggle. I grazed a lot at work, sneaking bites here and there and trying to keep it as paleo as possible by strategically picking food out. On Sunday night though, I was a wreck from the weekend which added up to...let's see, long work hours + family drama = one sad Chinese takeout fueled cry session. Yep. Oh well, I guess it could have been way worse. I'm more worried about my self-control for this week as I'm making triple dark chocolate whiskey ganache cupcakes for a coworker's going away party tomorrow night! I've already committed to myself that I'm only allowed to have TWO total, which is gonna be a hardcore willpower test as they will be sitting in my kitchen overnight. Score: 70% (+40%) Goal #4: Practice Italian 15+ minutes a day, and speak Italian with another person at least 1x a week. I tweaked the scoring method on this one. I was just doing it 7 out of 7 for my daily practicing time. But since the vocab is beginning to get repetitive and I feel as if my speaking time is much more valuable to get in, I'm placing a 3/3 for getting at least one verbal study session in a week with my friend (0/3 if I don't get any talking time that week) added to a 7/7 for my daily practice sessions alone (total of 11 points possible out of 11). We've also decided to start learning more vocab revolving around work-related things so that we can start quizzing each other and have relevant Italian conversations throughout the work day. Hooray for sporadic learning opportunities! Score: 65% (-35%) Goal #5: No TV Sunday night: Chinese takeout and Fairy Tail happened. Sigh. You win some, you lose some, I guess. Every other day last week went surprisingly smooth so I suppose that's a general improvement over my reaching for the remote every single time I wandered into the living room. Score: 85% (+15%) So yah, not looking forward to the next several weeks. It's gonna be rough emotionally and physically and there will be a lot of traveling. Which will be hell on my workouts (the only part of this challenge that I'm really crushing) so it's definitely going to take extra focus and willpower to finish this challenge strong.

It was!!! I'm so sick of baked chicken and steamed broccoli so finding some new, easy paleo recipes to try is fantastic!

I love that you're making this a focus! I have a little spot in my planner that's titled "Good Things That Have Happened" and I'll jot down some stuff throughout the week. Focusing on the positive really helps put everything in a better light. You've totally inspired me to start looking for something to write down for every day, because making that a part of your daily attitude is so awesome. Yeah, you!! You're gonna crush this challenge!

Batch cooking like a boss!! Paleo meal prep for the win Thanks to some recipe link help from the amazing Raxie, I made chipotle coffee pulled pork last night with some roasted brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes. One hundred percent paleo and equally as delicious!! Now I have leftovers for days and it was soooo much easier saying "no thanks" to the decidedly non-paleo work food and just driving home to eat some real food. Hooray!

Hooray for an amazing, supportive work environment!! Good managers are difficult to find. Keep being awesome!