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So far this challenge is going much better than the last one. I've managed to make not drinking my default for the last few weeks. Also - I and Mr. Nyx have gotten serious about getting our home in order. So that is taking more of a priority. I will be 31 on the 22nd - so this is perfect timing to get myself into a good place before the New Year and my new year begins. Sobriety: Drink 1 day a week - not to drunkenness Do not drink calorie bombs ? Home: Put clothes in front closet Take down giveaways Pack/organize yarn Magick Personal Keys to Perception Spirit Communication Lifting the Veil ? ? Write out Coven Charter Study Group The Norse Tools Workshop Yule Health Gym 2 days a week - regardless - whichever, but 2 at least Continue to drink only water and 1 coffee a day at work (I work at the Bux) Continue to incorporate more home cooked/less processed meals Continue tea/sleeping schedule Continue lack of noise during sleep More to be added as I think of them/create habit loops/accomplish tasks. Goal is to be out of Deathknell and on to Tarren Mill by Dec 23rd!

So I posted in the respawn a month or 3 ago. But here I am again, and this time...I'm serious. (I think). So I live in manhattan now. There is food everywhere, and food is very convenient. Correction, bad food is very convenient. I don't cook, but I am going to start trying. I am basically a complete cooking newbie. So I am gonna try to find some EASY recipes around to try to get on the right track. I am not very active. However, I do walk a lot. I live in NY, so its hard to get around that. But I need to find some sort of goal-oriented exercise. So My goal starting today is to.... Track my food on my phone for 7 days (Academy quest). Try out a class or gym in the area at least twice this week. Try two recipes this week. Only have drinks twice this week. I am starting out slow so I can actually complete something. Any tips and tricks let me know!!!

So I am respawning. I moved to Manhattan and I tell you it has put the pounds on me. I don't have a scale, so I don't know how bad the damage is. But I have started a daily battle log again. Any tips on how to make my respawn successful? I am trying to cook, make good decisions. I bought some yoga sessions. I'm almost using the battle log as a journal type deal. I have been keeping a food log. I eat out a lot because I live in New York now and there is so much food here. Cooking is actually pretty tough in this tiny kitchen. I also don't have a lot of cooking supplies since I moved here and sold my my stuff back home. Any tips on how to stay healthy and on track in a big city? Thanks everyone

Moved to NY recently. Just seeing if there was anyone out there that wants to be friends!!

What with Steve being here and all, maybe it's time to plan a big meetup here in NYC. Any takers? Ideas for activities/locations/etc? It could be something simple like pullups in the Park, and Thai food afterwards, but I'm not locked into that. Tompkins Square Park might be a good option, too. I'm thinking late October. Any takers? If you know someone from New York, please spread the word around. J.

So, there are definitely nerds in NYC. I propose a meetup in the near future, details of which to be agreed on by the nerds of New York. Any ideas?

I’ve been enjoying the amount of graphic designs I have made lately for my blog and want to continue on in that vein. To that end, the “theme†of this challenge is playing with texture and font by making my own versions of those uber popular Instagram and Pinterest click bait quote images. As for challenge, I’m keeping things on the simpler side this go round. Last challenge I got really lackadaisical and really didn’t post much. I continued on (mostly, minus some completely off the rails time), but really didn’t feel like posting. NF seemed like a ghost town - most everyone on my friends list either bailed on the last challenge (last *few* challenges) or didn’t really update. I *know* these things shouldn’t deter me, but dammit, NF had been slacking for 3 challenges in a row and it’s hard to keep going when you feel like you’re screaming into the void. /rant I know myself and without the support of this community, I totally wouldn't be where I am today - and wouldn't have the stamina to shoot for my big goals this year. This year, my goals continue on from last year - I want to continue to improve my body; I have a bunch of OCRs & quick moving for bling things going on; and I still feel like I need to minimize the crap I have lying around. I also still have that GD SCARF to finish. I’m tired of that damn scarf. Oh, and to make things more interesting, I’ll be doing a Whole30 this January. So, there’s that. Goal 1: Fitness I think I want to go back to bodyweight workouts. I like barbells in theory, but I really miss my jumping all around and working on the fundamentals workouts when I'm not doing them. I plan on either grabbing a Neila Rey program or trying the January program from PopSugar's new app - and I'm starting late (on the 5th) because I'm battling some hefty thigh DOMs from last week. Goal 2: Metrics Metrics make me happy and they work for me, so I'm sticking with them. As a refresher, my metrics are: 100 grams or under of carbs, 70 grams or over of protein, under 100 grams of fat and around 1500 calories. Water is the recommended by FitBit 64 ounces, and on the weekends I like my step count to be over FitBit’s recommended 10,000. I track food with My Fitness Pal and exercise, sleep and water with the FitBit app. Last month, my FitBit Flex fell off my wrist sometime between here and the grocery store and I have yet to decide what I want to replace it with (ok, so I'm waiting to see if I want the Apple watch - shocker). Weight and BF are tracked with my FitBit Aria scale. I also use a combo of FitBit + Zombies, Run! To track my quickly moving through space workouts if they're in the wide world. Goal 3: Get My Shit Digitized I bought a Groupon waaaaayyyy back last winter to get another chunk of my mother’s pictures digitized, and just purchased another to get some of the other things scanned/duped as well. Maybe those VHSs of my tiny little blonde self singing in the church choir as a kid (BWAHAHA) won’t disintegrate after all. Goal 4: Get Out Of My Comfort Zone I’ve been doing really well at getting out of my comfort zone over the past few months, but I want to do more. I plan on going to exercise classes outside my bubble, socializing with new people, and creating new things. I’m not putting a time crunch on myself so I don’t burn my little introverted brain out, but I will continually look for new and different things to do. So far, I have at least 1 yoga class and 1 dance(!) class that I may go to in my building’s new gym + 1 yoga class out in the wild at of all places - Urban Outfitter’s flagship store. I did this class last month, and it was fantastic. And I didn’t die of exposure. Win.

Anyone up for a meet-up in NYC Central Park or Botanic Garden? If yes then what date? I can do any day this month, earlier in the day preferable but i can go later in the day as well as long as its not monday or thursday. I guess since most people work or go to school a weekend should be better. We can plan a few games, or a picnic where we can share all kinds of healthy tasty foods. OR both XD Plus this could be a good chance for people to meet workout buddies or make whole teams

Fellow rebels! Next month I'll be in NYC for a weekend and then in Boston for a few days after that... this will be my fifth visit to NYC and I've lived for a couple of months in Boston, so I can skip stuff like the Empire State and the Old North Church, but I still want to be a tourist I like museums, the weirder the better, and most outdoorsy things (weather dependent). (I'm already lining up my NYC tradition - trapeze lesson at TSNY) So I'd love to know - where do you bring your friends in NYC and Boston? What's your favourite thing to do there? All suggestions welcome!

Hi So much has changed since my last challenge. So many exciting things to ramble about! I'm really good at rambling. It's a talent, I know. Anyway, I'm technically a college student in the process of transferring schools. I'm currently taking a year off to sort all of that out, and in the meantime, I'm an intern in the marketing department of a healthcare company in Manhattan. On October 1st, I will be moving to the city for a few months, so that's terrifying and cool. I want to expand my horizons and see some awesome things before I go back to school. I'm really trying to use this next year to develop some healthy habits and to better myself and yeeeeeah. Basically, by this time next year, I want to be a happy, healthy bad ass bitch. Can I say bitch on here? Yeah? Right? Here's a random string of things that I like: animals. anything teal. hot yoga. nice teeth. happy people. talking to (friendly) strangers. almond butter. sickenly rich chocolate. paleo food experiments. ron weasley (I have a life size cutout of him in my room...judge me). ukuleles. people who sing in the subway. singing. painting. apples. ingrid michaelson. city & color. exploring. being awkward. things. I also blog sometimes! So here's some shameless self-promoting for you. Peep www.gapyearthings.com if you're interested in hearing about some of the random things I ramble about. CHALLENGE STUFF WOOOOOOOO Main Quest: Lose weight, and get back to the where I was before college. Yeah I went to school and did the whole freshman 15 thing...make that freshman 35. But same thing right? So yeah, this is the main quest. It'll take a while, I know, but I was happy and confident at that weight, so I want to be there again. I'm hoping I'll get there around May. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Goal 1: Complete the 21 day sugar detox. Once that's completed, maintain eating paleo (at least) 6 days a week. I'm hooked on sugar. Specifically fruit sugar. So I'm going to deal with that. Goal 2: Work out in some way, four days a week. If I didn't push myself, it doesn't count. I'll be honest about it, I promise. When I move, I plan on starting up with CrossFit NYC, so I hope that'll keep me motivated. Goal 3: Sleep more. I don't sleep nearly enough. Most nights, I'll get 4-5ish hours if I'm lucky, so I want to change that. So the rule for this is at least 7.5 hours every night. I know I should say 8+, but it's just not really realistic for me right now. It will be in like October, so at that point, that'll be my goal. Life goal: Volunteer. I've wanted to help out the community in some way for a long, long time. And I've just been lazy and not done anything. So now I'm gonna do it. Motivation: Confidence. When I get to work tomorrow, I'll write it, hang it in my cubicle, and post a picture of it. Promise. So yeah . Here we go again. Talk to me if you'd like. Ok. Bye .

Hey everyone! So this is my second and a haflth challenge. Why the half? I sorta dropped out in the middle of the last challenge I did a few months ago. I love this site, but unfortunately I'm pretty terrible at forums...I always seem to wander away. Hence the thread title...why do we fall? So we can learn to get back up again. Determined get back up now, and here's why. After several years of job-related struggle, it seems that I've finally landed a job in my career field (transportation engineering/planning). Because of bureaucracy, I have to wait a few weeks before I have an official offer and start date, but I've been told by the department director and hiring manager that I've got it. While the start date isn't nailed down yet, it will probably be somewhere in mid-October, conveniently near the end of this challenge. I've made great strides in the past couple of years with health and fitness, but I want to make sure that doesn't get lost in this huge life transition I'm about to make. So with that in mind, here's the challenge! I apologize in advance for my incredible verbosity. Main Quest: Create and maintain healthy habits to carry through this new chapter in my life. Goal 1: Work out four times a week. No less than three! I started CrossFit at the end of May/beginning of June and really enjoy it, though my attendance has lapsed in the last week and a half. My goal is to work out at the box 3 times per week. Usually I go to afternoon classes on my days off or on days when I have later shifts. However, over the next few weeks, I will gradually shift to earlier classes, so that when I start my 9-5 job, I will be able to attend the early morning WODs before work without it being a huge transition. I still have a regular gym membership. My plan is to go here once a week (generally Sundays) to work on lifts I think I need extra practice with, do movements that the CrossFit programming hasn't done recently, etc. Goal 2: Eat to grow! I used to be a heavy guy. I've successfully lost almost 50 pounds by following the Paleo/Primal way of eating and not constantly stuffing my face. So now I've successfully met the goal of "don't be fat." The next step is "be strong and fit." Goal 1 obviously plays into this, but I need to eat to fuel myself. Part of me is terrified of the "eat more to gain muscle" idea because I'm afraid I'll just get fat again. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to get past that, and it's been working out well so far (get it?). I aim for about 3,200 calories per day from primal-friendly sources, though my carb intake will be higher on workout days (particularly post workout). I'll be tracking with MyFitnessPal and monitoring my weight, body fat percentage, etc throughout this, so if I need to adjust up or down, I can. A corollary of this will be to eat home-cooked meals as much as possible, so I'm not dropping obscene amounts of money on food. At the end of the day, I don't have a particular weight goal. It's more about performance, plus a side of how I look Goal 3: Tone down the drinking. I have a bad habit of going out to bars (well, a particular bar) by myself when I'm bored and nobody is around to hang out. No more. My worst episodes of inebriation have happened in that situation, since there's not much do do besides drinking and texting. Also I will decrease consumption when I go out with friends. It's hard to quantify, because I don't drink beer (makes me feel like crap) and mixed drinks can vary in alcohol content from place to place. But basically, being relaxed is fine, but I want to make being drunk a rarer thing. Mark's Daily Apple had a rule of thumb: "If you feel off the next day, you had too much." I'll start with that rule and go from there. This will have side benefits too, like being better for my budget and better for sleep. I've got a couple of friends on board with this, so that should help too. Life Goal: Finish the Codecademy Python course. This is a goal from my aborted last challenge. I'd always assumed that I was terrible at coding, but never really gave it a chance. For the last challenge, I was learning Python on Codecademy, but stopped halfway through. Now that I know I'm starting a job that will include using ArcGIS, this has become more important, as the reason I wanted to learn Python was for ArcGIS scripting. So I'm going to get back into Python. It's been so long that I think I will just start from the beginning again. If I have time, I will practice using this in ArcGIS itself, so I can be extra prepared when my job starts. Motivation: Defy expectations. Ever since I was little, I'd assumed that I'd be a fat, weak guy with a distinct lack of self-confidence for the rest of my life. Well, little by little I've been chipping away at that. I'm not heavy anymore. I do better with people than I used to. The next six weeks are to get me moving in the right direction to be healthier and stronger, and to start this important next step in my life with confidence. Here's to it! I may add attribute points later, but at the moment, I've got to run to CrossFit.

I've noticed that there are quite a number of us that live in or near NYC, so how about we plan some meet ups, yeah? In order to specify a date, which month(s) works best for you guys? What do you all think about meeting up in April? May? June? July? August? How about making monthly meet ups? Secondly, what are you all interested in doing as a group? We can go volunteering as a group, go hiking, plan a potluck at a park and play sports/games, play billiards, play at an arcade, paintball, walk the High Line, go on a bike ride, pillow fight, visit a comedy club, go see the cherry blossoms at the Botanical Garden, go karaoke, saunter around Manhattan, join a parade...the number of things to do are endless! Spring is here, so NYC has a thousand events happening. There's no need to be cooped up indoors! If you're up for a meet up, post the month(s) you believe you'll be free, or can fit a meet up in, along with the days you believe you will be available! Finally, if you have a suggestion, post it! =D So yeah guyz, LETS GO.