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Hello everyone! It's been a long time since I've been around these parts... you have my apologies. At the end of 2014 I started getting more and more to do at my job and as I got more and more stressed out there I found myself checking less emails and coming onto the forums here less and less until I just hid away from everything. Slowly over the past year (and a half almost) I've been letting my fitness slide more and just coming home to veg out in front of the TV. I wanted to come back here with you guys but always shied away from it. UNTIL NOW! Now I am vowing to stop my slow slide into the pasty, podgy world of the unfit and clamber back up the slope to where I once was before! I want to turn from Poliwag to Poliwrath! Let's do this! Quest #1: Eat within calorie limits and try for 80% or more as paleo (+1 CON +1 CHA +1 WIS) The 80% paleo has always worked well in the past, especially using the all-powerful NON-PALEO TOKENS (to be said in the booming voice of a god from on high in sparkly clouds). Basically, for every meal that I eat that isn't paleo I use a Non-Paleo Token (NPT) and given that I eat approximately 2 meals a day (I hardly ever have breakfast) that means over this four week challenge I get ~11 tokens to use. And I figured out my TDEE is about 2,400 for maintenance (actually more than I thought as I'm a relatively small guy) but I'm carrying a bit of fat around with me too so my MINIMUM calorie intake is about 1,200 so that's quite a bit of fat to burn... As that's the absolute minimum I'm going to go down to 1,500-1750 and see how that does me for this challenge. That should mean I lose 1.5-2lbs a week. Which is a brilliant amount to be losing if I can keep it up! Quest #2: Run 2+ times per week (+1 CON +1 STA) I used to run a lot, and it used to be one of my favourite ways to spend a summer evening. Running out of town and through the fields as the sunset turns them gold was a wonderful way to wind down. I did a half marathon at the end of last year and almost haven't run since. With the ruins of a castle nearby (just over 2 miles from my flat) I did run to the castle and back and it's about time I started doing that again. And I also have some squash games planned with a friend so those can take the place of a run although it would be best to do the running as well. Quest #3: Strength Training 2+ times per week (+2 STR +1 DEX) One of my favourite things about being an Assassin is being able to control your own weight, and I remember I was so chuffed when my Assassin training helped me to do my first pull up... which I can't do anymore! So my mini-goal here is to be able to do a pull up again! I’m umming and erring about whether to include HIIT/sprint training in with this quest - not least because this is me jumping straight back into things and adding in sprints may be too much. Quest #4: Complete a Life Quest at least 5 days a week (+1 WIS +1 CHA) With this one I wasn't really sure how to distil down doing something productive in terms of career/life goals into one quest... So what I have decided is that I will have a list of 'Life Quests' and that I must do at least one of those things to tick this off. Here they are: Write at least 500 words (or do an hour of story planning) Apply for a new job Practice proofreading Do an exercise in my copy-editing course Do an hour's work on the anthology and/or another book to publish Write a book review for the BFS (and/or Fantasy Faction if they'll have me) Read and critique a story on my online writing group I see that character stats are still an option although not mandatory so I will be using them as that was one of the best ways to motivate myself. I know it used to be 15 points per challenge, but that was for a 6 week challenge so I'm going to decrease it down to 10 points up for grabs this challenge. (But 15 points for my new level 1) As I'm obviously not at the same level I was before I'm going to be hitting the reset button and having my previous level as a high score and aiming to beat it. Current Level: STR: 2 | DEX: 2 | STA: 2 | CON: 3 | WIS: 3 | CHA: 3 Right... sorry, that went on a bit didn’t it... Let's do it!