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Hi Rangers! I'm Sky Elvenword and I am here with an invitation! As part of my first Rebel challenge, I created a backstory for my character, in which she discovers her true identity as the daughter of two visionary scholars who died trying to bring enlightenment to a backward people. She joins a group of Rangers who also happen to be students or scholars; and together they are going back to the savage borderlands and try again to bring education and progress to these people (actually hobbits). I was thinking about this story last night at 1AM, and I started wondering if any of my fellow college / university / graduate students here on NF would be interested in forming a loosely coalesced "Scholar Ranger Corps". I have no expectations that this would involve any extra duties or challenges; but we could put it in our signature lines if we liked, and have a thread in each challenge where we supported each other's quests to pursue health/fitness and academic achievement at the same time. Eventually we could figure out a way to work this into our challenges if people were interested. What do you think? Would anyone like to create a Scholar Ranger Corps?

(Note: cross-posted in my Daily Battle Log) Sigh, my friends, sigh. It has been a while since my last post. Having a little downer of a week in terms of eating. Time to get back to being more engaged with NF forums and the academy. The good news: *I have been keeping up working with my trainers and average 3 workouts per week - 1 with him and 2 on my own (mostly weight training and small amounts of cardio) *I still prepare my lunch for the week over the weekend - paleo-ish style Bachelor Chow (as my husband calls it) - Ground Turkey or Grilled chicken, peppers, onions, mushrooms, garlic, 1 can of beans. I eat 1.5 cups or so of this with a small avocado. *I have lost weight overall! When I started this journey (3+ years ago) I was 210 lbs. I have managed to stay around 180-184, so I do consider this a success. The bad (Less-good?) news: * I have plateaued in terms of weight loss. I have read some of the opinions on this topic (through here and otherwise) and I understand that usually when you get to this point you have to shake things up again. I'm just not sure where to go next. *My eating is good, not great. I have been experimenting with intermittent fasting (my hours are 11-7) and it doesn't seem to be helping (it hasn't been PERFECT based on my work hours sometimes, but better than 90% for sure). I do very well just drinking tea or water in the morning until 11am, and then dig right in to my prepared Bachelor Chow/avocado... HOWEVER - there are times where I am just crazy hungry and a very opportunistic eater still! Whatever happens to be around (especially at work) I will graze on. It makes me so upset at myself when I give in, but I still have the thoughts of "I've been doing really good with workouts" and "I'll just have a little" and I am still treating food as a reward. * I have stopped doing much on the days in between lifting days. I think this is partly timing, partly motivation/soreness, partly just wanting to do other things. I have also found myself thinking a lot about the people in my life and how I wish I had more close friends (Yes, I know, if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak ^_^). There was always a stage of my life where I had people around me to be closer friends with (high school, undergrad, professional school) but eventually you move on from those life stages and those relationships tend to fade, both due to proximity and partly because priorities and interests shift. Of course now, there are coworkers and of course my husband and I have our couple friends that we see on a fairly regular basis. But I'm not sure I have that one friend that you go to for everything- chatting, hanging out, whatever it may be... So that has been keeping me down a little bit lately. But it comes and goes. Sometimes you get too busy to notice - until you're not. So I have taken a few steps to working on some of these things: **First, I am going to Nerd Fitness Camp in the fall! I am bringing my sisters along, so we are going to make it a sister bonding trip, but I really hope to find some people to connect with. **I'm looking around for some clubs to join. A running club strikes me as good, but I'm not really a distance runner, and I haven't run for a while, so not sure I would be of benefit to anyone else trying to improve.... **Speaking of not running for a while, I have a goal to run on my non-lifting days. No specific time or distance goals. Just to keep moving on my days off -and I do like running but I tend to shy away from it in the cold weather, so I jog maybe 6 months of the year (sometimes). Maybe signing up for a 5K this summer (finally)? I am hoping that summer and good weather will help improve my habits and mood overall. There's always time for a respawn, right?