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I'm Bee! For the past six months I've been focusing on my health and wellness through nutrition and mindfulness. Over the course of 3 years I gained about 30 pounds and struggled significantly with depression, anxiety, and accumulating health issues. After many failed attempts at restrictive diets and all-or-nothing workout regimes, I finally found that taking a simplistic approach toward changing my eating habits a little bit at a time allowed me to develop a greater awareness and appreciation of what I put in my body. I also dug deep into the core of my compulsive overeating and began to repair my relationship with food while rebuilding self-confidence. In the second half of 2015 I lost almost 15 pounds, quit my soda addiction, and transitioned to a fully vegan diet. I'm happier and healthier than I've been in a long time! I have many goals on the horizon and I'm ecstatic to be starting a new year (for perhaps the first time in my life) with a positive outlook on the months to come. Back in college I was a very basic runner (a few miles a few times a week). Since then I've been itching to get back into running but have never been able to find my groove; I either start too fast too quickly and injure myself or don't follow through in order to build a habit. I'm SO excited to get started again. I've been reading books and asking questions and setting myself up to be successful one step at a time. I'm not concerned about speed or distance at this point - I'm just ready to lace up every day and discover what works best for me. Main Quest: Within the next 6 months, my goal is to drop 1 dress size and be able to run a 5k. Run and/or Walk 30 Minutes/Day As a newbie runner I'll be following the Couch to 5K app, which calls for a walk/jog three times per week. The rest of the week I'll decide: either adding walk/jog days, or simply taking a long walk. This coincides with my need to walk our dogs more often. Why every day? I need to build a habit. I only have to commit to the 3 days of C25K -- if necessary, the rest of the days can be a slower walk. 5 STA = 37+ successful days // 4 STA = 36-32 successful days // 3 STA = 31-28 successful days Stretching/Flexibility Work Daily Whether it's a basic stretch after my jog or a yoga session, I need to loosen up my limbs. I always struggle with sore knees when I first start running, and know it has to do more with my strength and flexibility rather than the act of running itself. 3 DEX = 37+ successful days // 2 DEX = 36-32 successful days // 1 DEX = 31-28 successful days Snacks = Fruit, Veggies, Nuts/Seeds My nutrition has improved tremendously over the past six months. Inherently, in cutting out all meat, dairy, and eggs there are far fewer junk food/fast food items readily available that I'm interested in eating. I have increased my fruit and veggie intake and worked to balance my sweets intake. Chips, however, are something that have wiggled their way into my daily snacking habits. Like soda, chips are something I can certainly live without. Update: As noted above, I'm a bit of a compulsive overeater. And as much as I've started to balance some of my eating habits, I have found over the past few weeks that I can easily replace one bad habit with another. Last challenge I committed to not eating sweets, yet replaced that habit with eating chips. I am already forseeing that I'll replace chip-eating with sweet-eating. So instead, I'm sticking to my original plan at the end of the last challenge: snacks are limited to healthy, whole food options. 4 CON = 37+ successful days // 3 CON = 36-32 successful days // 2 CON = 31-28 successful days Finish 4 Books in 4 Weeks Brain food. 3 WIS = 4 books // 2 WIS = 3 books // 1 WIS = 2 books ... Possibly to be updated with some stats and more refined quest descriptions. For now - lace up!