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Hello fellow Rebels. I am Valkyrie Rising and this will be my second challenge. Im still trying to figure things out, about myself and Nerd Fitness, so I figured this was a good place to start. I'm working hard on preparing for the year ahead but with not a lot of down time between X-Mas and New Years I had some issues trying to decide what my second challenge would be. What are my goals. What am I doing. I keep wanting to do all the things but I have to take it slow and easy due to some health issues I'm still working with and working on. So I'm keeping it simple for one more challenge to try and ingrain in my brain the habits my body needs. Main Goal: To return to the healthy state of being I was in 3 years ago. I don't want to lose a set amount of weight or be able to lift a certain amount of weight or run any races. (Yet) I just want my body back to feeling healthy as it was 3 years ago before cancer. This means getting back into eating healthy instead of just eating whatever is easy or quick or you can choke down without being sick. (Im pretty sure Im a giant mashed potato after 3 years of alot of mashed potatoes). Im barely into my 30's, I want my health back. I want to feel good walking up stairs and running and hiking and going back to Crossfit and eating good food that tastes good. But this is a process and it took 3 years to go from feeling good about myself to WTF BODY stop doing that to me! So to get to this goal here are my challenge goals. Goal 1: I will sleep a minimum of 6 hours a night. I learned the hard way in my previous challenge that if I don't get sleep it ruins my chances at achieving my other goals. Im a zombie, my body breaks down. I can barely manage to get through a work day because my body is still in recovery mode. I'm still recovering from anemia that put me in the hospital with multiple blood transfusions as a side effect of chemo and cancer. So not getting sleep when running on an exhausted body already just compounds the issue. So the key to making sure my other goals are met, which in turn works towards my main goal, is getting a good amount of sleep at night. I probably need 8 but Im not too horrible with this. However with finally being back at work Im noticing a pattern of not getting to sleep as early as I used to so want to keep that from becoming a bad habit. Goal 2: I will plan my meals and prep them ahead of time every week so I can bring them to work with me and avoid bad for me food and meals. I did this last challenge and it worked well once I got the hang of how it works for me. Im going to keep it up this challenge because I want to make it a habit and not a chore. Right now Im struggling to find delicious foods that dont bore me every week. Last challenge I think I had Harissa Chicken with chickpeas for 15 days in a row. So Im hoping this will help my branch out into new areas of cooking again while working to keep my calories and processed foods under control. I relied on convenience foods a lot during chemo treatments when I could eat and so I became too dependent on takeout, Grub Hub and stuff out of a box or can. Goal 3: Healthy Mind and Body needs a healthy environment. I need to clean my house. So my house isn't horrible. However trying to take care of myself and my home I had to make choices. At one point my closet rod fell and (Im ashamed to admit) I was too weak to lift it back up so alot of my clothes stayed laying on my closet floor. My clean laundry is piled on the guest room spare bed and when I need to get ready for work I go in there and pick through and run them through the dryer to get rid of wrinkles. My dishes get washed but sometimes I dont unload the dishwasher for a day or two. I have wood floors downstairs but upstairs is carpet and Ive been avoiding trying to drag the vacuum upstairs so the carpets are probably not in the best of shapes. In other words the house isnt a mess but its a mess. So Im going to clean one of the big rooms each week and one of the little rooms each week. Big rooms: Kitchen. Living Room. Bedroom. Master Bath. Little rooms: Guest room. Dining Room. (Just because I havent used it for anything in like..2 years so its clean just unused and dusty.) Guest bathroom. Half bath. Theres one room however that needs to see the light of day. It needs scrubbing from top to bottom, cleaning, airing out with fresh cold winter air. The computer room where I have lived for the last few years and existed. Its been my salvation. Playing games, talking to my online friends in games and through Discord. Wow, Destiny, Elder Scrolls. The fantasy world helped me forget the reality and made things easier but it needs to be returned to it's cleaner state. Bookshelves are empty from where I took books out and then let them pile on the floor. Cords are a mess from getting a new rig and not making it nice and neat behind my desk. New consoles means theyre all just stacked on top of each other, not good for heat issues and such I know. This is a big project so one week it will just be the computer room/3rd bedroom. So those are my goals. A little simple but with the start of the New Year my goal is keeping the healthy habits Ive started so they stay just that. Habits. Thanks and HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all. Oh, and just like last time.

Good morning fellow Beginners, Rebooters and bewildered individuals. I am ValkyrieRising and have decided to dip my toe into the water and drink the Kool-Aid of Nerd Fitness. A little about me. I'm a history Nerd who had been working on being accepted to do her PhD overseas in Denmark when I got a rather unpleasant medical diagnosis. (No prizes for guessing my area of interest given my Nickname/BattleTag/Secret Identity/Hero Name etc) Im a 30 something years old and struggling with my health after that medical diagnosis and just the fact I'm not as young and sprightly as I used to be. I finally have the all clear from my doctor to begin the long road back to good health and good eating that was me 3-4 years ago before my diagnosis. Currently my focus is just on eating healthy again as during my fight with my body and the treatment I devolved into eating comfort foods when I was well enough to eat. I indulged in anything I wanted, telling myself I deserved it because I was going through tests/chemo/hospital stays/transfusion/whatever excuse I felt like using. So for my first challenge this is going to be my focus. Main Quest: To eat healthier and get my eating habits under better control by not gorging on whatever I feel like and sticking to a measurable goal of between 1650-1900 calories each day based on my activity. Smart Goals: 1. I will weigh and measure my food until I can re-orientate my brain as to what a proper serving size is. (A whole pan of brownies is not one serving.) 2. I will track my consumption and calories through an online Food Tracker. (I'm using My Fitness Pal since it seems easy enough.) 3. I will cut my sweet tea consumption out and focus on drinking water each day instead. I accept that this will be a struggle and I may slip but a small slip is no reason not to press forward in this challenge. 4. I will meal prep my food during the beginning of the week in order to ensure I do not eat mindlessly. I recognize this as a big pitfall of mine, sitting at home and being bored so grazing through the fridge for food. If I prep my snacks and food ahead of time I hope to graze on that and not overeat during the week. With all of this I am allowing myself 2 instances where I will divert from these plans. The first is on December 14th and the premiere of the next Star Wars movie. I've had tickets since October and intend to go and enjoy this occasion without worrying about myself and what I'm indulging in.The second is a Christmas party my friend throws that I am finally healthy enough to attend after missing it the last couple years. This is part of being mindful and accepting that constantly saying no to the things I enjoy will lead to me failing and binging. In my reading, here and other sources, I really grew to like the idea of the 80/20 approach. As long as I am doing well the larger majority of the time and don't let myself slip and keep on track then those small indulgences have less of an impact and value. I look forward to reading along and travelling with you all through this journey and hope to grow not only in my health, mind and body, but also in my challenges as I see how creative and all in many of you go. Its awing and inspiring! I leave you with the following words to consider in life.