Vian

Ugh. Its been a rough weekend. I called in sick monday just because the thought of going back to work in this capitalist hellscape made me sick. As far as my goals, I didnt track anything, and it was too smoky out to go outside, and I couldnt work up the motivation to go to the gym either. I did ok on what I ate, and did some physical stuff around the house like hanging two new rabbit cages (manhandling them into place on my cramped back porch was definately a workout) did some chores too, but I was pretty absorbed into the audiobook series ive been listening to, so I did a lot of sitting on the couch listening to it. Back at it today I guess.

Forgot to update yesterday. I forgot to take my meds so I was kind of out of it. Still went to the gym and mostly stuck to my calories. I did eat a donut at work which probably put me about 150 over, but ill take it. I need to find ways to make food later in the week easier. By wednesday ive about given up on cooking much. And by friday im wanting takeout. This morning i got some more chicken breasts marinating to grill tonight and I roasted some potatoes too, probably toss some broccoli in the air fryer with a little sprinkle of parmesean and call it dinner. Thats a lot better than i do most weeks. And a pic of my dumpster goblin, Odin just because. He is my reason for living, honestly. I love this dog more than words.

Another day in the books. I did my morning walk, quiche for breakfast, made a salad for lunch, chicken tacos for dinner. I think the metformin is helping, as I am not having that overwhelming urge to eat something sweet after dinner and I'm just not as hungry overall. It seems perfectly reasonable to stick to 2000ish calories a day. I have been trying to only weigh myself once a month, usually on the first, but I forgot and ended up doing it yesterday. Down about 2.5lbs.

I do eat other proteins, i swear! Lol. I just got a bunch of chicken breasts on sale so i am working through them. Thanks for the encouragement!

Day 3. Went to gym, did a full body workout on the weight machines. Had quiche for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch, and a salad with chicken for dinner with some iced tea (sweetened with half monkfruit sweetener half sugar). Also had a protein shake while i made dinner because i was starving. Did pretty well i think!

Day 2. Got up and went for a 25 minute walk, had my quiche for breakfast, leftover burger and sweet potato fries for lunch, and chicken and pasta salad for lunch (its actually mostly veggies!) Even had enough calories for an ice cream bar for dessert.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1024214142326550?mibextid=9drbnH Woke up to that this morning. If the link doesnt work, the transcript is as follows (from Maverick Willett aka Emotional Support Viking) "New levels in life require new levels of integrity. A big part of attracting higher caliber people is embodying high caliber integrity. Making my word to others be my bond was the beginning of modeling integrity. Making my word to myself be my bond is the perpetual ticket. Its easier to keep our words to others than it is to ourselves. If you tell someone you're gonna do something, you imagine the steaks are high because doing that thing affects how that person percieves you. But if we say to ourselves "I'm going to walk 5000 steps today" and we dont..."eh, who cares. Nobody else knew I told myself that." Thats the error. Your word to yourself is MORE important than your word to others because its the definition of integrity. Your mind and heart are always behind closed doors. Everything else is essentially for show." So, I guess the theme to this challenge will be keeping promises to myself. I will update as the day unfolds. So my weekend got derailed a bit. Saturday morning I had to process a litter of rabbits (I raise them for meat for me and my dogs) and doing so is a pretty good workout so I counted it. My triceps are sore as proof. But it took a lot longer than anticipated so I wasnt able to do my grocery shopping. I always grocery shop at 8am because the stores are less busy and its not as hot. I have sensory overwhelm issues, so busy stores and being very hot are not my friends. Anyway, that meant I didnt go on my hike this morning because i was shopping. I also got clarification from my nutritionist/lifestyle coach that i dont have to weight lift AND walk. She is just looking for 30min of exercise a day. So I will adjust my goals. As for food, I was not off to a good start. Yesterday was kind of a hard day so we ended up getting pizza and today for breakfast and lunch i just had leftover pizza. However, I didnt overeat it. I actually logged it in mfp and the ammount i ate fit within my calorie goal, so I'll take it. For dinner I made burgers (97% lean ground beef, 5oz. Patty) on lettuce wraps with a mix of bacon, grilled onions and jalapenos and some ketchup. Made some sweet potato fries to go with it. I also made a quiche with spinach, shallots, bacon, and oyster mushrooms to have as my breakfasts for the week. Hope the rest of the week goes a bit better.

Yeah, i am definately an abstainer, and i need to know exactly how much I can eat because otherwise I will not know when to stop. Thats how i got here in the first place, thinking I could moderate myself.

Hello all my fellow nerds. I was diagnosed ADHD at 37 years old about a year ago. It explains so much. I am looking for hacks. Ways to keep myself accountable as i try to lose weight for the umpteenth time. Ways to keep myself on track with both my fitness goals and nutrition goals when I have an all-or-nothing mindset and an inability to form habbits. I need a routine and triggers in place to make me stick to that routine. Thanks for any input or insight!

Thank you. I think eliminating refined sugar is definately in the cards. My poor nutritionist doesnt seem to realize that moderation doesnt really work for me. I cant just eat a little or something. I have ADHD and that comes with an all-or-nothing mindset on more than just food. I think they are going for "sustainable" and nothing is really sustainable for me because my brain does not form habbits. I need accountability and routine instead.

Ideally i would, but this challenge is coinciding with a medically supervised weight loss program ive joined through my work and these are basically the goals i have set with my nutritionist. She is not a calorie counter person and wants me to just fill up on veggies, but i already eat quite a bit of veg, and still end up way too high on calories, so I figure i need to drop the sugar and fat as well.

Goals 1. Go to the gym 3 times per week for weight training. The biggest obstacle here is fitting it into my schedule. One day on the weekend is easy, but weekdays are much harder. Im thinking tuesday and thursday mornings before work might be the way to go. I prefer going in the mornings because its less busy. 2. Walk for 20-30 minutes on non-gym days except Sunday when I go for a hike. 3. Be more mindful of how i eat. This is a combo one. I need to eat more protein and veg, less sugar and fat, and less overall calories. This is hard because I have ADHD and my impulsivity drives me to food. I crave sugar like cocaine and i eat when i am bored. Im going to try and just stop having things in the house that i cant control myself with.

I got a gym membership at planet fitness. I have wanted to do free weights for a while, and i am looking for guidance on what to do. Form, which weights to do how, basically everything. I did a couple months of crossfit years ago, but dont remember much. Right now i am doing the weight machines and rowing for cardio with a couple friends after work a couple days a week, but i want to try going early in the morning and do free weights also. I basically am looking for something like "you take this piece of equipment and do this motion with it" kind of thing. Thanks for any input!

Thanks for the replies. I was feeling kind of down and hopeless when i ppsted, but now i am feeling better i will give more info: I am at about 280lbs, 5'9" tall, female, 36yo. I have a job that requires me to be on my feet all day and when i get home i just want to sit down. My diet is pretty high quality, the carbs in question are home-made spelt flour sourdough bread, organic basmati rice, gluten-free pasta (i have a reaction to wheat processed with glyphosphate as a harvest aid, easiest way to avoid is gluten free, but spelt is safe so i make spelt sourdough) and i eat high quality proteins: eggs, chicken, beef, turkey, greek yogurt, real cheese. I already did paleo, keto, AIP, calorie counting, etc. They work, but i just have a hard time sticking to them long term. I like ice cream and chocolate and potatoes and my sourdough bread too much. And i am often too busy or too tired to count calories religiously, not to mention being hungry a lot. Depression also makes me just not care anymore sometimes. I think i will start with walking the dogs in the morning and being more mindful of what i am eating. I will keep ya'll posted. Thanks for any additional advice!

Its been a long time since ive posted, and i am at my heaviest weight yet. I was wondering about carb cycling, if anyone had any advice? Is it like every other day you eat carbs? Like even days are carb days and odd days are fat days? Or is it 3 days carbs, 4 days fat kinda thing? Im really struggling honestly with all of it. I am heavier than ever, but also have no desire to restrict what i eat. I want to eat potatoes and bread. So carb cycling seemed like a possible solution.

Try taking collagen as a supplement. You can get it as a powder that you add to beverages, or as caps/tabs. It helps improve skin elasticity, as well as being good for joints, hair, and nails. Nourishing vitamins (A, D, and E mostly) taken internally and rubbed on externally can help too. Gelatin can also help. There are a number of skin-tightening lotions and creams that might help as well.

This maybe isn't necessarily women's only (If a dude wants to belly dance, more power to him!) but I figure it's more likely that the ladies of NF would have info about this. I took belly dancing classes for a summer about 5 years ago. The person I was taking lessons from had a studio in her garage and is a professional belly dancer, etc. It was tons of fun and I really enjoyed it, but it was on the expensive side and she shut down for the winter to lessons, so life and finances got in the way and I stopped. I thought it was great exercise and tons of fun and I've been listening to Beats Antique recently and really want to try it again, but I think I'd rather just do it at home. Does anyone know if any youtube instructional videos, or DVD's I can buy that are good beginner bellydance classes? I'm willing to invest some money into this, just not $50 a week. thanks!

I had a goal to lose 1.5lbs a week for this year. That's what I have to lose to reach my goal of losing 80lbs by the end of the year, so it's frustrating to stall. I knew it would happen, and I know there's a reasonable chance I won't meet my goal by the end of the year, and that's fine, so long as I'm making progress. I started keto because it seemed like an easier way to lose weight without feeling deprived or hungry all the time. At this rate though, I feel like it doesn't matter what I eat so long as I count calories. I lost 40lbs on a low fat conventional "healthy" diet just by counting calories and exercising. I was hungry all the time, but it worked. I'm just not sure how much to eat anymore. I used MFP back when I lost 40lbs before and I know that I put in sedentary and did not eat back exercise calories. I DID exercise, like 20-30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week, but otherwise I was going to school at the time and I was sedentary the rest of the time. Now I have a lot more incidental movement with my job and yard work on the weekends, but I'm not really working out intentionally (though I plan to start doing that more soon). I only eat about 80g protein because I'm not an athlete and excess protein is converted to carbs and can knock you out of ketosis. Women only really need 50-75g protein a day unless they are very active/building muscle. Even when I was paleo and set my macros to have like 145g protein, I never hit that goal and was usually closer to 100g.

I don't work in a retail pharmacy, we do a lot of bubble packing for facilities. I'm moving pretty much constantly and get 10,000+ steps a day according to my fitbit.

Went back into MFP and re-calculated my BMR and found that I had set it to lightly active (standing all day) so I switched it to sedentary and it dropped my calories to 1580. But if my fitbit is to be believed, I'm burning between 2700 calories per day on weekends, and 3200 calories on weekdays... 1580 just seems really low... Should I keep it set to that, but eat more based on my fitbit's exercise adjustment? At 1850 calories between 2 meals, I'm not hungry. Like I get hungry before meals, but the meals are plenty satiating and plenty of food and keep me full 5-6 hours. I just don't want to kill my metabolism by starving myself.

I started Keto on 1/8/18. At first it was great, I felt good, never got Keto flu, was losing weight pretty consistently. These last few weeks I feel like my weight loss has stalled and I'm tired all the time, can barely roll out of bed in time to get ready for work even when I go to bed early and set my alarm early with the intention of getting up to exercise. I have been trying to fill 2 new raised beds in my garden with dirt, and last year getting and unloading 2 or 3 loads in a single day wasn't a big deal. I'd be tired, but I could do it (I did do it last year). This year I got 1 load and was shoveling the dirt out into the bed and had to rest often, and by the time I was done with just 1 truckload I was just beat. I was sore for 3 days after as well. I ended up having to get 1 load of dirt each weekend (still have 1 more to get) because I was just too tired to do more. I started Intermittent fasting about 2 weeks ago (16/8-skipping breakfast) but found that if I just drank water in the AM until noon, I was SUPER low energy, got really hungry/hangry and was just miserable. However, if I drank my coffee through the morning (I make a 24oz. iced cold brew with sugar free Toriani syrup and 2tbs. heavy whipping cream) I felt great and wasn't hungry and had no problem making it to noon. But the 100-ish calories from the cream would technically break fast. Here are my stats: Female, 32 5'11" Starting weight: 260.6lbs Current weight: 234.6lbs Goal weight: 180lbs by the end of the year (will re-evaluate once I reach this, will probably want to lose more) Body Fat: 43% Calories: 1850 Macros: 5% carbs (<25g net carbs) 20% protein, 75% fat Workouts: No intentional exercise (would like to change that - see the part about no energy tho) but I'm a pharmacy technician and spend 8 hours a day on my feet walking around the pharmacy pulling and putting away drugs. On weekends I do grocery shopping, housework, and work in the garden planting veggies, pulling weeds, and also currently building trellises and potato boxes. I seem to be at my lowest weight for the week on sundays, occasionally I drop a little more on mondays (yes I know it's not good to weigh daily, but I just look at it as data) and then I jump back up 2-3lbs during the week, then drop part of it on saturday and the rest on sunday plus some more. It's been like that almost since I started. These past few weeks I just seem to be gaining and losing the same 2-3lbs and not dropping any lower. I have a fitbit that tells me I burn about 3000 calories on weekdays because I have a job where I am on my feet and walking around all day, and if that's the case maybe I'm not eating enough during the week? The fitbit is linked to MFP, my preferred calorie tracking app and it tries to add calories to my daily total to account for exercise, but I never eat more because of exercise. The last time I lost a significant amount of weight I learned that I couldn't eat back calories that I exercised because it would stall me, but with keto it may be different? So I guess my questions are: How do I break through this plateau? Why am I so tired all the time on keto? Do I need to try carb cycling or add a re-feed day? If I add carb cycling or a re-feed day, what would my calories and macros look like? Thanks for reading my super long post and for any suggestions you smart people might have!

Because I believe humans have evolved/were designed to be omnivores, and because even ethically speaking, there are alternatives. I buy a half a cow every year from a local farmer who raises 100% grass fed and finished cows on beautiful pasture where they can be happy, healthy cows. Wild-caught fish, pastured chickens and pigs, wild game, etc. There are alternatives. I don't believe it's ethically wrong to kill and consume an animal. I think it's ethically wrong to abuse them by depriving them of sunlight, space to move, and the ability to perform natural behaviors and social interaction due to overcrowding and stress, and also feeding them an unnatural diet.

Late to the challenge, but I'm basically just carrying over my last challenge again, since basically all of my goals are longer-term ones. Quest 1: Lose 6lbs a month for 2018. I've already lost 18.8lbs in the 1 week whole30 and 6 weeks keto, so I'm ahead of the game. 6lbs a month would equal over 80lbs by the end of the year, and it's less than 1.5lbs a week - totally doable. Keep sticking to keto, tracking my macros and calories in MFP Add in some bodyweight workouts inside while the weather is garbage (squats, lunges, kettlebell swings, pushups on the kitchen counter because I'm weak and can't do real pushups) Quest 2: Keep the house clean I want to be one of those people who cleans as they go, who doesn't just dump things on whatever horizontal surface is closest at the moment and actually puts stuff where it goes. Going to wash dishes nightly after dinner Each weekend I will pick a different part of the house to focus on and get completely clean and organized, then I will endeavor to keep it that way. Quest 3: Get out of debt This one got a big boost during the last challenge when I did a balance transfer from a high interest credit card to my credit union credit card with 0%apr for 18 months. I just have to make my monthly payment on time.

Oh, and as for washing the dishes daily, I still haven't gotten to quite daily, but I am washing them way more often than I was, about every other day, which seems to work out pretty well actually.

Electrolytes and salt are more for the Keto flu, which i haven't had. I also salt my food generously, lol. For muscle cramps, magnesium and potassium are more effective, and like I said, I've been prone to them my whole life, so no big deal. A few years ago I went through a bout with a chicken pox-like virus and had to take a round of prednisone, and after that I was having lots of anxiety and heart palpitations. I started taking magnesium and that helped some, but when I added potassium the palpitations went away. I just need to up my dose a little. Coconut water is definitely too high in carbs, but I do love it. I love that quote too. I originally found it in a book we read for a women's bible study group I was in, but I can't remember the name of it. I've held onto it ever since.