Search the Community

Do I need to introduce myself? Goals: Marbles: I've been trying to figure out what's helping or hurting my mood on a daily basis. Since coloring in a pizza was a nice visual guide for tracking junk food consumption that helped quite a bit last challenge, I decided to do this with things that affect my mood and sort out the good days and the bad days and what's contributing to each. So I bought a few mini-goldfish bowls and a bunch of multi-colored marbles. The bowl in the middle holds the reservoir of marbles, and the marbles are color-coded as follows: Red = Writing Blue = Work Green = Health/fitness Yellow = social Multi-color swirl = environmental, aka all the little things The bowl on the left is for bad days, the bowl on the right is for good days. If I had a good day because of writing, I put a red marble in the right bowl. If I ruined the day by eating too much pizza and got indigestion, I put a marble in the left jar. If I had a 'meh' day with no strong feelings about it, no marbles move. Then at the end of the challenge, or whenever, I can look at the bowls and see if something is contributing disproportionately to good vs. bad days. Greyskull: Lift weights per Greyskull. I was on a really good run, but stopped for a break last week because of tendinitis in my wrist. I'm gonna restart this week with a deload on squats and switch from low bar squats to high bar squats Cholesterol: I still have to go in for a blood metabolic and lipid panel, but I'm not sure I've done enough to change habits and see if I can lower it. I've basically dropped whole eggs and eat mostly egg whites now... and my egg white omelette game is bangin'. But, I'm researching and finding that dietary cholesterol isn't the biggest driver, and it seems like eating lots of fiber is a bigger help. So starting the day with a bowl of oatmeal, and eating a can of beans daily should skyrocket my fiber intake. If I skip one or the other, I have some psylium husk fiber to make up for it. Writing: It's looking like we're going to keep going with our workshop, though without the author that kicked off the whole thing, so we'll see, but I likely won't need a writing goal since one of the driving forces of the workshop is daily accountability for word count and reading. Other stuff: I'm still playing chess regulary with kishi and KBGirl, and I have a 44 day streak on Duolingo studying Ukrainian.

folx, we're getting dirty for this one i probably should be doing this challenge with the assassins but i'm a warrior at heart and like it here so deal with it. this challenge i'll be training for my first tough mudder - i have done short spartan races but these obstacles look crazyyyyy sooooooo goals! 5 workouts per week go outside once per week – a deliberate outdoor walk or activity don’t buy a drink at a bar unless out for a meal; keep restaurant food to less than 3x per week roll over goals: track fiber track yoga Other things. 5/25: dinner and bowling 5/27: light hike? 6/5: mom’s birthday 6/9: dress fitting, boston pride 6/10: meet with photog., book club 6/15: friends bday party 6/17: Spartan workout class 6/23: tough mudder buy wedding shoes, moar décor, and gift for brothers practice handfasting let's do this

are snacks not the most important food of the day? here are some goals! Food. consume 25g fiber on weekend days. plan out what will be available to make this happen each Thursday eat out or take out less than 5x over challenge. eat SNACKS from home before anything at work (unless they’re providing lunch). SNACK ideas are welcome. currently it's a banana, clementines, and strawberries. Exercise. 5 workouts per week. mix of lifting and cardio sessions pull up bar play 6 min per week. must do on non-work days. yoga on the weekends (65 mins/week total). read/watch a new mobility article/video each week. Other (not as important as snacks) things. plan when drinking – no more than twice per week 2/7: supper club (plan to drink) 2/10: friend adventures (plan to drink) 2/11: pup’s birthday! 2/14: VDAY 2/17: dinner and ZZ Ward (plan to drink) 2/18: brother’s birthday! 2/23 – 2/25: VT trip (plan to drink 2/24) 2/25: apply for officiant license 2/26: dentist 3/3: mail invitations 3/4: boda borg 3/10: pack for bachelorette 3/11: friend’s baby shower (get gift!!)

so they may not have a cool catch phrase before going into battle, besides, "try not to die" but they're a fun and mostly smart team. i would like to be fun and mostly smart this challenge. Exercise. MOLLY – keep up that mutant strength. 5 workouts per week. I’d like to get at least 3 lifting sessions and 2 cardio sessions GERT – use what you have. like a telepathic link to a dinosaur or, ya know, a pull up bar. pull up bar play 6 min per week. especially do this on non-work days. KAROLINA – embrace your free spirit and solar energy absorption. do yoga on sundays (65 mins/week total). read/watch a new mobility article/video each week. I’ve pinned a lot of mobility stuff “to read later” time to do that. Food. CHASE – as the oldest, he knows it’s not all science and fun gloves. consume 25g fiber on weekend days. plan out what will be available to make this happen each Thursday: beans, berries, prepped vegs, etc. NICO – just because you can magically summon food to your door, doesn’t mean you should. eat out or take out less than 7x over challenge. i have 4 already planned meals out this challenge. no more than 3 more beyond those. let's do this.

For almost a year now, I’ve been on the quest to travel to foreign lands and find the healing herb that can save my husband. For the last half of that journey, I’ve been sitting in a horse-drawn carriage, eating my way through the enchanted cotton candy forest. I can see daylight break through the pink clouds of sugary hell, so it’s time I prepare myself for the rest of the journey - I’ll be no use whatsoever in my current state once I get out of here and actually have to walk and possibly even fight monsters. Oh the horror! [My husband got really sick last year. He’s had three surgeries and is taking medication, but so far it’s not gotten any better. My apprenticeship ended in December last year, and I’ve not been able to work since then, in parts because I had to stay home and take care of him/be his translator at local doctors’ offices and hospitals, and because I haven’t been able to find a job. I tend to embrace laziness in times like these instead of using my time to better myself. Aka eat my way through cotton candy forest while letting the carriage do the moving for me. That needs to stop now.] Main Goal: Get ready to leave cotton candy forest [stop being lazy and get back into the habit of actually doing things] Life Goal: Find a good side quest line to replenish the funds for my journey. All that sitting and eating hasn’t exactly helped replenish my little chest of gold, and my benefactor has forgotten about me! It’s time I help someone herd their kittens or farm some crab meat to fill up my chest again. [Check job adverts. Send out applications. Ideally, find a job. But mostly, don’t give up hope and keep putting myself out there.] Diet Goal: Cleanse my body with the orange potion of gut health All the cotton candy has wreaked total havoc on my body and the wizard I’ve met along the way has given me a big cauldron full of orange potion. It looks quite vile, and I need to gulp down a lot of it at a time or it won’t work. But I gotta be strong clear out all the remnants of sugary webs the cotton candy spiders have spun in my body. [Drink fiber at least twice a day, ideally three times. Before meals. Add laxatives to one drink per day. I started that to help out my husband, since he has to do it and that’s one small way I can support him, and noticed that it makes me feel a lot better, so I want to stick with it.] Fitness Goal: Shake out those stiff bones and get out of the carriage! I’ve been sitting for so long, I don’t even remember what standing up feels like. Or walking. And dear god, don’t even get me started on running or pushing the carriage out of the sticky cotton candy puddle it’s currently glued to. I’m going to have to start moving if I want to make it out of those forest - especially if I want to continue with my quest! [I’ve been lazy. I haven’t exercised properly in forever. Rather than setting myself two different fitness goal, my goal is to move. Every day. In whatever way feels good that day. I’d rather have a five minute dance party with myself and make that count than getting frustrated with myself for not doing a certain workout on a certain day and giving up because of it. Any movement counts, but I want to focus on the following especially!] Train like a warrior! [strength training at the gym] Run circles around the carriage! [go for a walk/run/any combination of the two] Dance among the stars! [have a dance party with myself - e.g. dance a couple songs on Just Dance or turn up the music and dance around the house while doing the laundry] Stretch like a cat! [Do yoga or any other stretchy thing that looks good to me, like floor ballet] Seek guidance from my coachmen and -women! [Attend a class at the gym] There is no one way for me to start moving again and fight my way out of this darned forest. The only way I can continue instead of returning home without the cure is to just start moving and not stop, and to take tiny steps on days where the big ones seem like too much. TL;DR: Life goal: Actively try my best to find a job Diet goal: Drink fiber drinks Fitness goal: Move every day I am still tweaking my workout. I am aiming for a full body workout rather than split workouts at this point, because chances are I’m not going to be going to the gym every day all of a sudden, so I want to make the most of it when I do. I would appreciate any advice you have on how to improve that workout! Right now, I’m going for lower weights/more reps so I can get used to the movements and learn to do them correctly with lower chance of injury. I’m planning to change that up once I’m more comfortable with the exercises. Gym workout plan: Warm up on bike/run a couple laps 3x10 shoulder press (machine) 3x10 chest press (machine, the one that’s sorta like a bench press but without having to have someone spot you) 3x10 butterfly (machine) 3x10 triceps pushdown (cable machine) 3x10 wide-grip lat pulldown (cable machine) 3x10 1-arm bent-over rows (each arm) 3x10 (decline) crunches 3x10 deadlift 3x10 glute bridge variations (add weight, incline or lift a leg - or all of it!) 3x10 dumb bell lunges 3x10 inner & outer thighs machine If any of you have suggestions, recommendations or advise regarding that routine, please feel very free to let me know. I would appreciate it! I'm going to the gym with a friend today and will do each of those exercises so he can check my form and give me advice and help where I need it before I just try it all on my own and screw up my back. I'll add my starting weights to it afterwards. Time to channel my inner Xena and escape this sweet, sticky forest!

Hi! I'm NTB and my special talents are oversharing, bop-it extreme, and getting headphones really tangled in a very short time. Let's do an icebreaker! What are your special talents? And also, will you remember that I asked this by the time you get to the bottom of this post? I was planning a slightly different challenge for this month, but after my post-vacation struggles with food last challenge, I haven’t been feeling as aggressive. So. I read an article a few years ago that mentioned a culture where people consider anything that is too perfect to be an insult to the gods, because only gods can be perfect. I thought that was neat, and the idea stuck with me even though I remember literally nothing else about what I read. I’m not a perfectionist like some people around here, but I do get frustrated easily when I start to backslide. My only benchmark is myself, but I have had some pretty awesome challenges in the past, so there’s still a lot to live up to. Last challenge I tried to be a king, and that failed miserably. So I guess this challenge my goal is still to do pretty much all the same stuff as usual, but also to remember that not every week will be my best week, and that’s the way it should be. Goal 1: Food Goal 2: Maintain Fitness Workout 3x/week (usually two at-home bodyweight workouts and 1 bootcamp class) Run 1x/week - After the Spartan is over, I’m going to resume experimenting with sprinting. I also get points for remembering to do ankle alphabets before and after each run. Walk. My walking is usually really strong, but that’s suffered lately too. So instead of walking 16 miles/week this challenge, my goal is just to walk deliberately every day, even if it’s just a loop around the block. Goal 3: Movement Focus I don’t actually have any formal goals this time. This is just kind of a mishmash of things I want to do and might potentially get around to: Leading up to the Spartan: prioritize frequent yoga, excessive walking, miscellaneous burpees, and trying to climb stuff September: I’ve been daydreaming about trying out a GMB program for months now, so I am thinking of trying either their elements or flexibility program. I have 0 plans for integrating this into my current exercise schedule and complete #doallthethings rangerbrain about it. I would still like to haul the bike out and get riding, even if it’s just in the parking lot next door. Goal 4: Life Goal - Swimming This should be the easiest life goal ever. I’ve been wanting to take swim lessons for ages since I never learned to tread water. I don’t even have to sign up for anything yet. I just have to contact at least once place and get moving on this goal already. Bonus Goals: I get a bonus point for each week I accomplish one of these goals, but I cannot complete these goals at the expense of others: Meditate daily Yoga 4x/week Clean the sink 4x/week Go to bed around 10pm on Sunday nights

There is neither darkness, nor light; There is only the Force. There is passion, yet peace. Serenity, yet emotion. Chaos, yet order. I am the shadow cast by the sun, I am the candle burning in the night, And the Force alone shall guide me. A Gray Jedi walks on both the Dark Side and the Light. I walked in the darkness for a time. Now it's time to come back to the light. A chunin (in the fanon) doesn't have a lot of explanation. The role is described as being, and I paraphrase, good enough to teach and lead whilst learning and being led. As I don't feel I can teach or lead well by word alone, I must stand in the sun, stark and simple, and cast my shadow as far as I can. The overarching theme of this challenge is to keep things simple. I am fighting the urge to complicate everything. I seek, as Bruce Lee put it, the daily decrease, the elegance of doing little and reaping much. It'll take longer than six weeks to be sure, but as the overall epic goal is to Know Myself, I think this is the next step. I started off with goals of spiritual discipline, and then moved on to attempting to apply those (and boy, did I get a lot of opportunities to apply those). Now it's time to build something again. Or to tear it down, as the case may be. Goal 1: Write Camp NaNoWriMo is in full swing, and I let myself get fooled into thinking I'm gonna do something productive with it. I need to take that lie and make it true. 15000 words at the end of the month - quality words, too. Should be feasible, because I've finally given myself the permission to not be identified by how original my thoughts are. It might just turn out to be thinly-veiled fanfic, but so what? That's most pop-lit anyway. Goal 2: Log Reads like a cop-out unless you've watched me long enough to know that I'm prone to jumping ship at the first sign of not getting what I want. The point of this goal isn't to log. I do that already. The point is to keep myself to what I'm doing, and to have the accountability to stick to the damn program. Which I like. And have no reason to change. Yet. This goal is to carry me to the end of the month, at which point, I will reassess and adjust as necessary, and then carry on to the end of the Challenge. Goal 3: Read A Praying Life So, I gotta admit, most of the religious stuff I read about cultivating discipline doesn't really appeal to me. It doesn't seem honest on a fundamental level - it doesn't acknowledge that a disciplined life is hard. It tacitly blames you for the lack and just seems to think that if you just say this formula and do this thing that you'll have an easy life. This is not the truth. Not even remotely. Fortunately, I've read this book before, and I know that it has good in it. It's a hard read, but an honest one, and I can stomach the difficulty because of it. One chapter a week. And if that makes you uncomfortable, you can think of it as me tuning myself to the Force. It works. Goal 4: 20g of Fiber per Day So, in my calculations and such, I've noticed that I tend to go really low in my fiber intake. It's not really bothered me before, but for all the probiotics I eat and such, I don't seem to see much benefit. I want to fix that. But I also know that if I go too far too fast, my body will react... poorly. So, goal this challenge is to ingest at 20g per day for the rest of the challenge. We can upgrade that further later. Means lots of veggies and some gluten-free psyllium I managed to score. Should be... cleansing. And, that's it. You'd think I'd have more Karate-flavored stuff in here, but until sensei gets back to me about getting in to build, there's not much to do there but keep on practicing with the processes I've got in place. Set it on fire, Monks.

I'm sitting here with a J-Pouch and not a clue how to eat around it well. My diet nowadays is meat cheese and rice. I fear leafy greens because it feels like razor wire later. Spinach Lettuce all that scares me, basically anything high in insoluble fiber. I eat rice for fiber and plantains have been helping but I was hoping you guys would have some ideas for me to work with. Other insoluble fibers etc.

Hey all. I'm a big fan of the low-sodium V8 (I make Virgin Marys, love the spicy). I was looking at the label because I'm counting added sugars, but I'm not really sure how the carb count works in this case. From what I've found online, there is no added sugar except what is naturally found in tomatoes (the highest volume of the beverage). It DOES have fiber, and the glycemic load is very low. It even has a few grams of protein, to my surprise. So what's the deal? Do I not count it as any added sugar? Do I subtract the grams of fiber from the natural sugars (12-3) for a net 9 grams? Or the total carbs (15 g) for a net of 12? Is this different from a *food* with a similar nutritional profile despite the fiber? I have to say, sugar is the least fun addictive substance I've ever measured in grams :/ It's like crack addiction, but not as exciting!

I'm sitting here with a J-Pouch and not a clue how to eat around it well. My diet nowadays is meat cheese and rice. I fear leafy greens because it feels like razor wire later. Spinach Lettuce all that scares me, basically anything high in insoluble fiber. I eat rice for fiber and plantains have been helping but I was hoping you guys would have some ideas for me to work with. Other insoluble fibers etc.