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I'm an Amazon Wise-woman Recruit. I'm almost 6 ft tall, I weigh just over 200 lbs, and I sit around all day being sagacious. I want to be a Dunedain Ranger, meaning, I want to be fast, strong, AND live a long life, making discoveries and fighting worthy battles. For my first 6-week Challenge: Main Quest: To lose 10 lbs and to be able to do five real pushups in a row (not the knee-resting kind). Smart Quests: 1. To do a body-weight workout three times a week. 2. To eat whole foods and no sugar until 5 p.m. every day, then not snack after dinner. 3. To walk for 30 minutes every day. Life Quest: To write 3,000-4,000 words per day or spend 8 hours per day editing. (I am a writer/editor, and I need to ramp up my production. I work from home.) Motivation: I'm fighting for the energy, strength and lifespan I need to make my realm a better place for future generations. Background: Over the past couple of years weight loss has been harder than ever. I used to run, but now it seems to have no benefit for weight loss, only improving cardio fitness. I stumbled across Nerd Fitness a few times and every time I read an article I was impressed by the encouraging tone and strong research. Plus, I'm a nerd. So, I've decided to do a 6-week challenge using the body-weight workout, walking and trying to eat right. I sit a lot for work, so improving my metabolism would help a lot. My Origin Story is in my profile, if anyone's interested. --Jen of Arc

Hi there ! Ellith here (aka Sophie), ex-recruit ready to kick some asses ! So, since I'm a huge World of Warcraft fan (still playing), the name of the challenge and of the quests are taken from the game . Took me some time to find them but here they are ! After a good 1st challenge as a recruit, here I am, joining the assassin . This looks like a cool place to stay and I want to focus on building strength with weight lifting and body workout and I want to increase my flexibility and balance by doing yoga (and I want to manage some awesome poses like crow pose, headstand and handstand !). I also got my weight loss as a goal but I don't want my main focus to be on this so I don't stress much about it. I know the result will come, if I trust the process (as someone awesome told me ). So here are my goals for this 2nd challenge ! Main goal : I want to feel go in my own body, want to stop hating it and instead love it for what it helps me do, by June 18. I have a festival and want to enjoy it without thinking that my thighs look big or that I need to stop breathing every time a cute guy is passing by . Goal for this challenge : I want to keep building good habits (with gym and food), build strength and flexibility and stop focusing so much on weight but instead focus on my accomplishments. So I will weight myself once on Monday and will not use it before the day right after the end . Quest 1 - Training and Discipline I managed to build a good workout habit with my 1st challenge and I will keep working on it on this challenge in order to build strength (I will manage to do a chin-up, one day, I know it !) and lose weight. I have a great trainer who made me some great workout plan which combine strength training with cardio in a circuit. The goal is to do this 3 times a week and, if I can, add some cardio only session in between (I have to train for a 5k in september). Workout 3 days/week (cardio/strength) Grades : Gym : 3/week = A 2/week = B 1/week = C Rewards : I don't know how many points we can give ourselves for this challenge so I will complete this later. It will be a mix of STR and STA. Quest 2 - Challenge to the Black Flight I took yoga classes for almost a year about 2 years ago and really liked it. I stopped (don't remember why) and now I miss it and feel like it would be a great complement to my program. I also want to master my own body and manage to do some bad-ass poses like crow pose (almost got it last time) and inversion. So my goal is to take at least 2 Yoga classes per week (in a studio or at home) and train for handstand and planks (spartan plank challenge) everyday. Grades : Yoga : 2/week = A 1/week = B Daily training : 6-7 times/week = A 4-5 times/week = B 2-3 times/week = C Rewards : Will add points later, but it will be DEX. Quest 3 - Even Thieves Get Hungry Like I said, weight loss will not be my main focus but I still have to eat right so this will stay a part of my challenge. I will keep with the plan the nutritionist gave me since it's working and I'm not starving, and will keep logging everything into MFP. The goal is to eat under 1500kcal daily for 6 days a week and log all of it into MFP. Grades : 1500kcal and MPF : 6/week = A 4-5/week = B 2-3/week = C Reward : Don't know the points, will be CON. Life Quest - Clean Up in Stormwind I'm a messy person, always have always will be. But now that I feel like my life is finally getting in order, I know that I need to do the same thing with my house. So the goal will be to clean-up the house (always harder the 1st time) and keep it that way. The goal will be to clean up once a week. Grade : This is a pass/fail goal so A if pass, else it's nothing. Reward : I guess this will be WIS. Optional life quest - (need to find a title) I'm almost done for this session class (my final exam is on April 23rd) so I want to take the time I will have to finally learn how to play the guitar. I don't know how to organize this one but it will probably be "train at least 1 hour 3 times a week" or something like this. I still need to figure this one out. So this is it for my second challenge . Feel free to give me advice if you think some things need improvements ! Really excited to start this one !

In response to that Vegen video that I admittedly didn't watch, this gave me a pretty good chuckle and is definitely worth a read. http://www.nwedible.com/2012/08/tragedy-healthy-eater.html