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Hi all!!! I have missed you and your banter the last month or so, and I am excited to be in a place where I can rejoin the fun! I am sure you have lots of questions about where I disappeared to last month. The simple answer is down a deep dark rabbit hole. The good news is that I am changing jobs next week! Wahoo! So that means no more deep dark rabbit hole of emotional despair. I am back, and I am happy, and I am ready to take on the world! Thus the challenge title...despite not being a gamer I thought it fit nicely. So what is the new plan? Well, the new epic quest is to be in the best shape of my life. How will I know when I have gotten there? I have metrics, to be discussed in a later post. But it ultimately means, I can say to someone, "I am in the best shape of my life," and mean it. This is going to be a long journey with many segments and challenges to accomplish. The first segment will end 1/29/2016 - aka my birthday. Why this point? well for one its approximately 90 days away which is a nice round number for goal setting, two I went and did a bodpod measurement and was told to come back in 90 days, three who doesnt want to celebrate another year by feeling great and knowing they are making progress towards being the person they want to be? Okay new quest, that means the first thing I have to do is reset and start developing healthy habits.This challenge is all about breaking the old bad habits and creating a foundation for new healthy habits. I have 4 challenges this time around, and they all play nicely on one another, so if I am successful in one, it will help me succeed in another. They also are not broken out by healthy and fitness and life they each have an element of both. Okay on to the plan... Deficit Daze Getting the bodpod assessment means I have an accurate estimate of what my BMR is, and a nutritionist's recommendation for caloric intake to accomplish my goals. As such for this challenge I shall strive to eat within the recommended range, 1100 cals on non active days, and 1300 cals on active days. (I use MFP to track food) Scores shall be awarded by how close I get to this recommendation each day. Since eating under will be nearly impossible for me, I know from previous CICO tracking experience, grades are going to be assessed by how far over I go. A - <10% over (1210/1430) B - <20% over (1320/1560) C - <30% over (1430/1690) D - <40% over (1540/1820) F - >40% over Sugar Slayer I am not going to hit my deficit goals if I keep consuming sugar at the rate I have been. I stress eat, and lord knows there has been way too much stress in my life the last month. As such my sugar consumption is through the roof, typical day is at least 1 soda and a candy bar. I must slay my sugar habit once and for all! For this challenge I am going to try gamification. We shall see how it works, my husband pointed out Im not into RPG games so why would it work in health and fitness land? But I am stoked about my plan and want to give it a go. I want a healthy relationship with sugar, not an all or nothing. My goal is to get to what I consider healthy sugar consumption, which is 2 sugar filled treats a week. Since this is a journey and probably my biggest weakness, I know this habit is going to take the longest to turn around. I have developed levels to indicate where I am on the path to becoming a master sugar slayer. These levels are based on how many consecutive days I have gone without an "overload", aka more than 2 sugar treats in a week. For this challenge the goal is to get to apprentice level....if I dont mess up once, I can get to master for my birthday... Initiate - fewer than 30 days Apprentice - fewer than 90 days Master - more than 90 days I have developed some other rules to make this successful. I get one overload every 28 consecutive days. Additional overloads send me back to the start of the level and I start over with no consecutive days carrying over from the previous level. So if I have too many overloads as an apprentice, I stay an apprentice, but I have to start over on building up to 90 days, the 30 days from the Initiate level dont count anymore. Money Manager Okay next goal, I need to curb my spending on food. Its silly. I have prepped meals sitting in my fridge and I choose to go buy breakfast and lunch out. This makes my budget ( and my husband) very unhappy. Instead of making this about taking the meals you have I am making this about how I spend my money, because I know I will do better, since money motivates me. We each get fun money in cash each month. With the idea being we can spend it how we want and the other person does not need to know where it was spent. For this challenge, I am laying down the law that if I want to eat food by myself, breakfast, lunch, snacking, SUGARY TREATS, I must buy this food with my fun money. There is a total of $140 in fun money on the table for these 6 weeks. I will come up with some awesome way to spend what is left at the end of the challenge. No grades or levels here, I will just report fun money amount, and what awesome thing I can buy with it at the end. Lazy Bones Last thing I want to work on is my activity level. I have been super lazy the last month and that needs to stop. For this challenge its is about changing my habits at home, so its a combination of 3 challenges into one. The goal, have 120 active minutes each day. This is not fitbit's definition of active either, active minutes to me is time spent not on my butt watching tv, crafting, reading, or otherwise being lazy. In order to achieve my goal each day, I must get so many active minutes from certain activities. 20 minutes yoga 30 minutes fitness 30 minutes house 10 minutes food prep Notice, that only adds up 90 minutes...which means I have 30 minutes to fill as a please. Some days maybe my workout will take longer, some days will be house intensive, some days will be a fun activity. I am also making a rule that if one activity type is not completed that day, I cannot get bonus minutes added on. For instance, if I spend 5 hours on a Saturday working on the house, but dont go work out, I only get to record 90 minutes of activity for that day instead of the full 5 hours. The goal for this challenge will be to record 5000 minutes of activity. Okay thats the plan...Im sticking to it! Good luck to everyone on this challenge. I know we face many difficulties ahead as the holidays approach.

Embracing the day Make a pot of tea every dayAccount for what I did during the dayStart adding mild stretches once my legs stop hurtingComing out of cyber-space Work on getting the house clean and organizedDo an activity that doesn't involve computer interactionBonus activities Start preparing to blogRevise the chore list Notes for next challenge: I think next challenge I need to work on a food waste goal. It's been a problem that started creeping in over the last couple months, so by the end of this challenge I need to clean out the fridge and start working on a plan. Also, I think I should prepare to get into a "pristine kitchen" goal, (knives washed and hung, cutting boards clean and in their holders, big frying pan and lid can live on the stove but they need to be clean, figure out what to do with the small frying pan and lid because they're constantly dirty,) which should make life easier.