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A long time ago, In a six week challenge far, far away… Hello all! I am, In fact, alive! Last time you heard from me, It was back in August of 2013, almost a year ago, when I was at a breaking point. I had an unrealistic amount of commitments, and the quality of the work in everything I did was suffering as a result. I had to leave my sixth challenge part way through as a result. It killed me to quit, there are few things that I hate more than quitting. But after considering my options, It’s what needed to be done. One EXTREMELY busy school year later, I am back. And I am sad to say not much has changed. I got by, but didn’t make much progress. And almost exactly a year later, I am really disappointed to say that not much has changed. I have been really disappointed in myself lately. I just feel like I have lost my direction in life. A good chunk of my life was dedicated with the main goal of working towards Japan. And once that happened, I never found a new path. The exact details of what I am working on right now is different, but overall, I am just as unhappy as last year. And I refuse to accept that. I want to be the person I was when I was working towards Japan. The guy that worked really hard in everything he did, and loved life. AND SO I HAVE RETURNED. Nerd Fitness was a big part of my life leading up to Japan, and I have realized that this is a positive in my life, and I need it. So thank you to everyone who has supported me in the past, and those that may choose to join me in the future. *Hugs NF family* Without further ado, I give you my 7th Nerd Fitness 6 week challenge: Main Quest: Finding Makoto If you can’t tell by my profile picture, one of my biggest hobbies is Cosplay. Currently, I am working on my next costume which I plan to debut at Youmacon 2014 in Detroit, MI. This costume, though, is unlike any other costume I have done, because it involves not only making a costume for my body, but changing my body. The character who I will be cosplaying is Makoto Tachibana, from the Anime Free!! Iwatobi Swim Club. My main quest right now is obtaining this body. The other part of cosplay, besides the costume, is the acting side. To successfully wear the costume, I need to wear it not only body but with my attitude. Makoto is my favorite character because of his personality and ethics, and If I can become more like him, It will make me a happier and healthier person. I plan to work towards this costume by focusing on exercise, diet, and time management (To ensure I can find the time to sew the actual costume). Goals: Fitness/diet goals- 1) Running/Exercise goal 2) Diet Goal 3) Weight/BF% goal Life Goal- 4) Daily Work Period How I will reach these goals: 1)Running/Exercise goals This 6 week challenge comes at the end of one of my fitness goals I have been doing while on sabbatical from NF. I have been doing Insanity since May, and will have my final day on Monday, August 4 (My final “workout†is Saturday, but on Monday I do the Fit Test for the last time to assess my fitness progress). So the the first part of the fitness goal is to complete all of the remaining days of Insanity. Then, I will move onto Phase 2. Phase 2 is the scout part. I plan to Run at for least 5 hours a week, distributed among the days of the week (I should be running at least 5 days a week, I may edit this goal to make it more of a challenge should this be too easy). Because I am working towards a Makoto Cosplay body, I figured I would add in a bonus: swimming! After all, the best way to get a swimmer’s body must be to swim, right? So seeing as I live on a lake, I will be swimming 3 days a week for at least 20 minutes a day as well. 2)Diet Goal For my diet, I will continue with what I have been doing during Insanity. I have my calorie budget set, which I will stay within everyday. I will also be monitoring the quality of the food, trying to eat at least 80% paleo foods everyday. For me, no 6 week challenge would be complete without an unavoidable trip. I run on my school’s cross country team, and we will be traveling to Upstate New York for a week of Cross Country Camp. We will be running everyday, twice a day, which will be perfect for goal number one, but could give some trouble to my diet. The meals are prepared for the entire team at once, and the menu is set without our input. The food is always delicious, but not the healthiest. I will do my best to stay within these goals despite the adversity. 3) Lose 12 lbs. and body fat The Idea is to continue with my current plan of losing 2 lbs. per week, through means of the first 2 goals. I would also like to come up with a certain amount of BF% to lose, but I will figure out the exact details of that this weekend when I measure my current BF%. 4) Daily Work Period As I mentioned early, I have just felt worn out lately and I am sick of It. I want to be a productive human being who accomplishes his goals. So, every day, I will be creating a schedule down to the minute. In this, there is to be at least 1 hour dedicated to working on one of the projects that I would like to have completed by the end of this challenge. I have a list of things, but some of these include summer homework, working on other projects I have committed to, and planning a few events I have told people I would take care of. The idea is to spread this out evenly so it isn’t overwhelming, but I still accomplish my goals. NO PROCRASTINATION!!! I will be assigning points when I get a little more time. This is a very busy week for me coming up, so I will probably get to this after Friday. If you have any other suggestions, I will gladly listen! I am not sure that these are all the goals I want, but I feel it is what I can handle with the situation, but still feel challenged. Thanks for looking and the Support! Let’s find Makoto!!! P.S. - Thank you to my new friend, Croberts654 (His challenge can be found here), who convinced me to join this challenge, and is participating along side me. We met online a few days ago, and discovered we had similar stats and goals, so we teamed up! If you would all be so kind as to stop by his challenge thread (It’s his first!) and say hello and give some encouragement, it would mean a lot. Thank you! P.S.S.- Sorry For Joining Late, I wasn't sure If I was ready come back yet or not. Best of luck to everyone!

Paleo Recipes For Kids – Family Friendly Recipes For Delectable Cuisine (The Easy Recipe) by Scarlett Aphra Paleo Cookbook For Beginners: Delectable, Easy-To-Make Recipes For Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner (The Easy Diet) by Scarlett Aphra Paleo Pizza and Dessert Recipes – Delicious, Quick & Simple Paleo Recipes by Brian Y.T. Delicious, Quick & Simple – Paleo Bread and Pizza Recipes byMarla Tetsuka Modern Mediterranean: Christmas and New Year; 25 Gluten-free, Paleo-friendly Mediterranean-diet recipes (color photographs) (Modern Mediterranean: Cook Yourself Healthy) by Conner Middelmann-Whitney As before, these are probably short-term offers, be sure to check the price before you confirm it.

I subscribe to a list of free Kindle books (always changing). Today one of the entries is for a free Kindle paleo cookbook. BE SURE TO CHECK THE PRICE - THIS MAY END VERY SOON http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E4CNMW8

“The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone.†Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering Unlocking KnowledgeMIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. View a list of our most visited courses Empowering MindsThrough OCW, educators improve courses and curricula, making their schools more effective; students find additional resources to help them succeed; and independent learners enrich their lives and use the content to tackle some of our world’s most difficult challenges, including sustainable development, climate change, and cancer eradication. Read more about how our materials are making a differenceThis is a completely free site, with all materials offered free-of-charge to anyone who wants to use them to further their own education. I am EXCEEDINGLY stoked to find something like this, as I've always been a fan of continued education even outside the confines of college. And to answer those who immediately scoff and think, "Why waste your time when you're not even earning credits toward getting a degree for it?", I'd like to introduce what seems to be a foreign concept to far too many people: the CLEP test. And even if your college of choice doesn't offer that option for a particular class you might be willing to invest your free time in prior to paying out the ass for it, think about how much easier that class will be if you've already learned the vast majority of the material - and how much time that will free up for you to really concentrate on other classes you're not already familiar with. Anyway, I am excited to have this kind of opportunity literally at my fingertips and free of cost! So I thought I'd share the opportunity with the rest of NF, and maybe some of you will benefit from it too.

An iPhone app that I use to track my running, iSmoothRun, is free today in the app store. If you're really a geek and you run, then this app will make you wet your pants. I don't have a horse in this race. I just figured free is good and y'all might dig it. iSmoothRun Pro GPS/Pedometer Tracker for Runners