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Hey all, long time no see! Work went completely sideways on me, and I think I knew after last year I'd either have to wait to pick this back up until I either moved up in the company and got a normal M-F schedule, or left the company. The last 3+ years have been an educational experience - but it's time to leave the job that's been eating my life and making it difficult for me to develop routines in my life that didn't involve eating fast food. The experience I gained while there has opened a couple of doors for me, and I will be leaving my current company this Friday. Which is both really exciting, and really scary. I have learned a lot for my career, but my health (both mental and physical) has taken a hit - I am tired, stressed, and my breathing issues have gotten worse which I think is largely due to lack of exercise the last few years, but working in a powder production / chemical factory while also having a sensitive respiratory system to begin with probably also didn't help. I was getting my RHR lower most of last year but added stress currently have it hovering in the mid 80's, which... is not great. I'm giving myself a couple of weeks between ending this job and beginning the new one, for a couple of reasons - one is to give myself some time to decompress and process after leaving my current job, and the other is to give myself a chance to start developing some habits before getting to the new job. Main quest - reclaiming my health bar 1 - Flee the zoms: Picking back up with Zombies, Run! as a training program, going for walk/runs on a nearby trail when weather allows, and doing indoor training when it doesn't. Week 1 plan - Train today (Monday), Thursday and Saturday. 2 - Food planning - I'm actually doing a lot better on this than I had been when I still lived in nowheresville, but right now I'm having trouble with the actual food planning part - thankfully I have some back pocket recipes that are easy to throw together (I have some chicken noodle soup cooking in the Instant Pot right now due to lack of planning/executive disfunction issues) but I would like to get more to the point of actually having a set menu for the next week, get the list together, and get what I need for that. Mealime has been super helpful getting me partway there, so my goal is to get better at planning ahead for food. Week 1 plan - I have smoothie stuff for tomorrow morning, and ingredients for soup/salad lunches and shepherd's pie dinners Tue and Wed (work days), I'll have to go get groceries Thursday for the rest of the week. 3 - Unpack and reset apartment: I moved early last year, but never unpacked all the way - I would like to get the clutter dealt with, get some new shelves and other items I picked up put up, and generally just reset my home base to be a place that helps make my life easier and less stressful. I think step 1 of this is going to be making a list, since it's been too big of a thing to tackle on its own and needs to be broken down. Week 1 plan - take stock of what needs to be done, and write it down as a list. I'll reassess after the first week a bit and try to determine whether I need to adjust anything or not. I'll also try to post on here at least twice a week to help keep up motivation.

some of you guys may remember that I started seeing a Dietician about a month ago. She's awesome! I'm down a solid two pounds after some fluctuation due to figuring out what I burn and what I need for intake, as well as I drank a LOT of hard cider the week after my wedding. (Don't judge! We had four 1/2 kegs of beer left over. I can't drink the beer due to allergies, and my hubby doesn't drink cider, so I couldn't let it go to waste!!!!!) I don't see her (the Dietician) again until the end of the month. And while I absolutely could email her, I wanted to see what you guys had to say first! How do you plan your macros ahead of time??? Right now, she has me just counting calories, (which I hadn't really and truly done until I started seeing her). And I have my macros adjusted on MFP to what she recommends. She told me to NOT worry about them yet, and to just work on hitting my calorie goals because I was DRASTICALLY under-eating without realizing it. I ask because after putting in my breakfast, what I packed for my lunch, and what I'm making for dinner tonight, I am already OVER goal on my protein, but still have 400+ calories to hit, which leaves me trying to figure out how to hit goal for carbs, fat and calories WITHOUT touching my protein!!! Again, this isn't because I'm "worried" about my macros now, but I want to educate myself, so when the time comes, i can flip that switch and get on it!

Hi there. It has been a long, long time since I've done a Nerd Fitness challenge. For a while I needed to clear my head and work out some issues I was having with food. But then I was just cruising and doing well on my own and everything was cool. And then... I had a very bad winter. My lifelong struggle with depression had a recurrance, and my family has been sick an insane amount. I feel like I need to come back to some sort of support for getting my eating and fitness back on track. Here's the thing though... I'm still miles away from the beginning of my journey. About 6 years ago I fell in love with aerial arts and circus, and now at the worst, I still go to classes once or twice a week. I have some health problems that are affected by what I eat, and so I have to mostly eat homemade food (even when I'm sick as hell and don't want to fix anything more than steamed rice). So even in the depths of a rough winter I'm still eating OK and am somewhat active. But... being less active than usual and eating plenty of home cooked food you can still put on weight. So I'm maybe 8-10lbs over where I'd like to be, and a lot of my supplemental training has fallen by the wayside. My goals are going to be fairly basic for this first challenge back: Plan and pre-prep all my meals for the month. I'm a huge fan of the book Fat Loss Happens on Monday and I know planning my food is super helpful. Being too exhausted and depressed to prep meals has been dragging me down for months. This is going to be my main focus for the next 4 weeks. Use a meal grid, plan food, get back in a good grocery routine and pre-cook all my lunches/prep dinners on the weekend. (eating) Spend some time re-thinking my training schedule & supplemental training so that I can transition from a focus on aerial to a focus on handstands and partner balancing. (training) Handstand every day. Stretching my wrists counts as "handstand training" on any day when my wrists are bugging me. (training) Make some progress revising the fanfiction novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November. (life)