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Total Eclipse of The Heart Remember this song? Probably not, most of you weren't born. But the 80's were epic, my hair was born for the 80's. This challenge I will be travelling to Texas to see the eclipse. This will be the second total eclipse I have seen. We travelled to Oregon (driving distance) and this time we are flying with several family members. So, here is my eclipse challenge: Goal 1 : "Turn Around": Continuing habit of Bible before screen Goal 2: "Bright eyes" Levelling up on habit of getting out workout clothes, now that winter's past and" I'm no longer living in the dark", goal is to actually get dressed before breakfast .First half of challenge I'm aiming for 2/5 days. then I will go for 3/5 Goal 3: "Every now and then I get a little restless and dream of something wild:" Give myself time to dream. Chatting with @Harriet about how too much screen time sucks out our creativity. I want more time to dream and be creative. No screens (unless I'm using them for creativity in something tangible like scrapbooking) from 1-4 in the afternoon Goal 4 : "Together we can make it to the end of the line" I'm continuing my reverse diet. Right now I'm at a good point with my calories , so I just plan on maintaining that. After we return from our trip, the following Monday I will start my cut. Plan is to continue tracking calories and keep at it for 6 weeks

As a quick reminder and/or introduction, my theme this year is forging myself into the strength and beauty of a sword. I spent the last challenge in the fiery forge, shedding the dross and getting hammered into shape. But making a sword isn't all fire and anvil, my friends. In between the heat and pressure, the sword must undergo a strengthening phase known as tempering. The metal is slowly brought back down to room temperature to harden before heating again for the next round of shaping. In this challenge, I will be enduring the last bit of heat before transitioning to the tempering phase. The idea is to reduce cravings and mental resistance, improve muscle glycogen levels, and restore metabolism to normal rates before the next diet cycle. I plan to take a rather longer maintenance phase than would be minimally required to accommodate some holidays and vacation plans in the spring, so this will be the first of at least 2 tempering challenges. This challenge doesn't neatly coincide with my nutrition mesocycles, so it will fall into 2 phases. Week 0 I will be sticking to my previous challenge goals of caloric deficit (with protein target intake), 4x weekly gym training and an additional hour of daily movement Week 1-3 Will include the following goals: 1) Eat MOAR food What's not to like? To avoid losing my mind and eating back all the weight I have lost, I will be slowly adding calories back into my diet until I figure out what maintenance is. I will start by adding back half my current deficit for 2-3 weeks, then adjusting according to the results until my weight more or less stabilizes. Some weight gain due to water retention from increased carbs is unfortunately expected and normal, but shouldn't be more than a couple of pounds. 2) Avoid hyperpalatable foods Alas, this one is less fun. I will be able to re-introduce these on a limited basis next challenge, but trying to eat stuff like French fries and donuts when my lizard brain is in starvation mode is a recipe for disaster. I need to convince it that the famine is over before presenting the caloric motherlode. 3) Improve my nutrition I was going to add some veggies or recipe goals, but I feel like I lack the spoons for it after the deficit. So, I want to start with some basic daily habits that feel less stressful, namely: a) Drink 28oz of water by noon. I have a terrible habit of not drinking all morning which leaves me either dehydrated or overhydrated at bedtime trying to catch up b) Take my multivitamin and Omega-3s every morning Weeks 4-5 Eat More More Food Evaluate weight change (if any) from previous weeks and adjust accordingly to reach a stable weight. Since I only added back what I calculate to be half of the distance between weight loss and maintenance, this should mean that I will be adding more calories again. But we shall see. I am not setting a new movement goal, I don't think. I am in a pretty good groove with getting those done, so they don't feel like "challenge" goals. I can always add something later if I want to. Side quests include weekly Inktober 52 drawing submissions and keeping up my language studies in Duolingo. Let's go!

The holidays are upon us! And you know what that means. Lots of socializing around booze and food, y'all. Lots of it. It is the true boss battle of the year. Acknowledging that this will already be hard, my goals are simple this challenge. 1) New program followage. I picked up Ben Pollack's powerbuilding program. I am going to do this program. Yessirree, all 16 weeks of it. 2) Reverse Diet. My cut ends literally tomorrow, but instead of just going directly to bulk cals, I'm going to step up 75 calories a week and continue the semi-IF approach I've been doing. Rules: Hit protein of 100g+. Don't go over on cals. We're not meal planning this challenge, but we are going to write down days we liked a lot as templates and log here when that happens. 3) One drink rule. One drink a day max. 12 oz for beer, 5 oz for wine, 1.5 oz for liquor. (Note: i don't actually drink remotely every day, more like once a week, but only one drink when I do drink is the challenge) 4) The budget continues out of necessity, since I had to take Zu to emergency and it was an obscene amount of money. Same as last time, but instead of a reward for following budget, 5) Every word written is .05 I can spend at the end of the challenge And yeah, I bought Sims 4 Cats & Dogs >.> (Before the cat vet issue, because I would not have justified it after, for sure...) Squat shoes should arrive tomorrow in time for Friday squats! (Assuming I have time for them, we leave around 10 am, which in sister-time is probably 11 am?)

The remedial portion of this year is over. I'm all caught up (at least strength-wise) with where I left off in 2015, and now it's time to start collecting upgrades on my way to becoming Mega by the end of the year. With 8 challenges remaining in 2016 I thought it fitting to tackle them according to a well-known and well-loved classic game: Eight bosses = eight victories with eight new abilities and armor to gain. First up is Metal Man. He's fast, he's nimble, and the entire stage is built with conveyor belts that are constantly changing direction; but he's got the Metal Blade and that's the weapon I want first. Plus, my current fitness regimen is built around iron so this is the most natural place to start. Since this is the first Robot boss I won't be able to use any new abilities during the challenge, but I will gain one at the end to use in my next challenge. In each successive challenge I'll add a physical/culinary/life skill to learn in order to defeat that particular boss' stage. Metal Blades are powerful, broadly effective, and can be aimed in any direction. Ability to gain: the two-minute prayer. New armor: a red or yellow shirt. Goal 1: Workout - Warm-up and stretch at every workout. - Continue my barbell regimen. - Progress with my accessory work, i.e. pull-ups, dips, rows, etc. Target is for 7 pull-ups by the end of this challenge. Goal 2: Eat - Stick to eating clean, whole foods that are high in protein, natural fats, fiber, and micronutrients. Avoid refined carbs and sugars. - Continue rebuilding metabolism with progressive calorie increases from week to week. Target is to be at (calculated) maintenance by the next Week Zero. Goal 3: Drink - Only water throughout the challenge period: I'm keeping this rolling at least through May. Goal 4: Sleep - In bed on time every night. That's 10 pm before work days and 11 pm all others. Goals are pretty much identical to previous challenges. I'm going to keep doing them until I get them right. This should be the last challenge of reverse dieting to rebuild my metabolism, so I'm going to work really hard on being disciplined, especially during the weekends where I've struggled the most in recent challenges. Week Zero (post Easter, no less) was a bit extreme, so I pushed back my composition measurements to Monday morning to coincide with the start of this challenge. I'll make that my standard from here on out. This morning's scale weight was 222.1 lbs, for a small increase after the holiday week. Yesterday was the annual health fair at work, and one of the booths was from the local med college with students who wanted to practice taking my blood pressure and reading my blood glucose. Pressure was higher than I'd like to see (it always seems to be these days) but non-fasting glucose was only 92 mg/dl! Given my family history of adult-onset type II diabetes this was extremely good news indeed, and doubly so after a week of eating Easter candy and drinking soda. The end of the last challenge coincided with the partial closure of my usual gym--they've severely truncated their hours. The good news is that our new facility is finally open, so I did a single deload workout last week to get familiar with the new setup. It's new and clean so there's a lot to like, but there are fewer power racks and only a single deadlift platform. Hopefully I'll still be able to get my lifts done in a reasonable time frame, especially on Wednesdays because we're finally making some friends through a small group from church that meets at 6 pm each week. At any rate, I'm pretty much back on track as of yesterday and intend to hit this challenge at full speed. Come Monday morning, I'll press start on Metal Man. He's going to wish that Dr. Wily had never created him.