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Well, nothing is more inspiring than anime, amirite? With a new season of My Hero Academia released, I figure that'll get me all hyped for a new challenge theme. So without further ado... “If you wanna stop this, then stand up! Because I’ve got one thing to say to you. Never forget who you want to become!” -Shoto Todoroki Goal #1 Train Like Deku I often feel like I got handed the controller with the game difficulty set to extreme mode. If that's the case, then Deku started his journey on Nightmare mode. “I have to work harder than anyone else to make it! I’ll never catch up otherwise..." Consistent, intentional movement is essential for health, weight-maintenance, strength, and general ease of doing life things! With 6 years of NF experience under my belt, I know what works best for me based off past challenges. The new twist is to take it as slow as a I need it. Gains will come at their own pace. Doing the thing for the simple reason of "it's good to do it and my body will thank me" is enough. Track: Move 5x/week 2-3 must be strength days. Other days can be ANYTHING, even just a leisurely walk, or hike, or yoga/stretching. Goal #2 Be Cool and Composed like Todoroki (when it comes to food) I too quickly lose my composure when it comes to foods I like. I need to be more collected and thoughtful with it. Hah, every time I am about to go stupid on food, I will picture this look from Todoroki. “Get a hold of yourself, you’re an adult aren’t you?” I did very well last year Sep-Jan by doing two things. Cooking at my friends house for every night we had D&D or gaming, and making sure to then use those left overs on a subsequent night. And also calorie tracking. I don't feel I'm in the best place mentally to count calories again just yet, so we're doing a 1-2 week 'Don't Eat Like a Dick' mode of tracking food where I will update my daily meals and make mention if I went 'bingey' or not. If I feel like that is working and I see the first hints of progress, I'll stick with it. If it doesn't curb my game night fiascos, then weeks 3-5 will go back to tracking in MFP. TRACK: Keep a food log daily (concise/simple) If binging still a problem by end of week two, Weeks 3-5 track calories 6/7 days. Goal 3 - Create like Yaororozu! Keep up the creating of things. The more I work on it, the more I'll be able to create. "We should always start with the basics to develop depth of learning. We must strive to devote ourselves wholeheartedly." I love doing art. I've been on a great streak with #inktober - but I don't like putting in honest work sometimes... it's easy for me to look at a reference picture and just draw and tweak it for my own. I had been gaining progress and skill on drawing totally free form before I stopped going through the lessons and tutorials on Udemy. So, take Momo's advise here and get back to the basics. I have 3-4 courses I can work through and I want to do that and keep in better practice! TRACK : Maintain #inktober until the end of the month. Remaining weeks: 1-2 lessons/week; art practice /doodles 3X/week And that's it for hard goals. I've not completed a challenge in a while, so we're not going overboard with this. Food and exercise getting back under real control is the priority here. Art has been great for me mentally lately, and so that makes it on the board as well. I will probably set some weekly "to do" list type goals, and re-tweak finance stuff going into the new year, but these are the focus.

STARPUCK JOINS UA ACADEMY This anime is full of wisdom and motivation in all the right areas for me. It's also been a while since I plotted out a challenge where the goals are meshed into a theme, and I am feeling like this could give me an extra boost in getting back into the routine of it. A recurring theme for me (came up in the anime's I've watched, and now our church sermons too) is Endure. If I were to take a moment to be completely honest with myself -in an eye opening, epiphany kind of way- I've been kind of a quitter lately. And by lately, I mean the last couple years. So here are some quotes that I am going to be embracing, and building upon through this challenge. Midoriya once said, "I'll have to work harder than anyone else to make it. I'll never catch up otherwise!" He has to work harder to do things that come easy for other students. This hits so close to home for me because I have often said that I need to work so much harder to be fit/not overweight/healthy, etc than 'the normal person'. I watch my hockey teammates chug beers and Doritos after games and not gain a pound, whereas I can gain an inch from just smelling a pizza. It might in fact be harder for me. The options remain the same: do it anyway, or give up. Which leads to the next quote, by my all time favorite character. I want to become healthy, strong and fit. I want to do active things my whole life. I want to be a bad ass chick! Well then - I need to stand up and remember that, and push forward and never give up. This is a hard one to admit. I am the ultimate planner -/ dreamer -- but I fail at being a doer. My dreams end midway because I go through all the trouble of dreaming them up, but leave them on the shelf as 'dreams' rather than goals that I am working to. This is usually because I end up being too afraid to pursue stuff. Fear is a problem that needs facing and as All Might has said, "I smile to show the pressure of heroes and to trick the fear inside of me." So this first post I suppose is mostly just me sorting out my feelings on the challenge and what I need to tackle. Unfortunately, a lot of the things in THIS post aren't very quantifiable, so the next post is going be specifically about what I feel I need to do, to train myself, and to keep going without giving up, and yet still do this in a way that is sustainable for the long haul. (This one ties right in to the single most profound comment I heard in yesterday's sermon: God's best for us, comes through our times of moving through fear.)