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Happy Anniversary! I haven't been here as long as a lot of people. I started in May of 17 and I've completed 26 challenges since then. Some have been more successful than others. I've started powerlifting, and stopped again. I've started running, and stopped. I took up cycling and then left it aside. I was fairly serious about kettlebells for almost a month. I counted calories and tracked macros and tracked weight, and I don't do those any more either. I've been on and off of protein powder and raw eggs. I'm sure there have been other schemes and plans I've tried and then left aside. It's a theme of my whole life, to shift and drift like sand at the edge of the sea. The thing is, I don't look at these changing tides as failures. Every one has been a valuable learning experience, and I know myself better for having tried them. Now I know that while I can have some success with carefully tracking food and body weight, it's not sustainable for me in the long term. I know what it means to be actually hungry, and to be satisfied without being stuffed to bursting. I know that endurance work is important to me, but running is out of the question, and with my geographical limitations I'd rather walk than cycle. I know I enjoy weight training but getting over my perfectionism is going to be hard work if not impossible. I know that hiking in the woods is my forever sport. Intuitive eating seems to be working for me, and I'm maintaining my health and pants size without having to track anything. I know my biggest challenge in all of this is making my own well-being a high enough priority that I will actually do the work. I know that coming here to hold myself accountable to you nice folks helps me with this. So I'm going to keep on keeping on. Which brings us to the current challenge. This will mostly be a continuation of the last few challenges, with one new addition. I have three goals: 1 - Eat Mindfully - this is a little difficult to quantify because mindful eating doesn't track anything with numbers. Instead, I count it a success if I adhere to four principles of eating, which are to honor hunger, fullness, nutrition, and taste. This allows of a fairly broad interpretation of what is a success at any given meal. Basically, it's about listening to my internal signals and following them, while also making some kind of effort at eating whole foods. It sounds a bit vague when I write it out, but it's not hard for me to discern when I've succeeded or failed at it. I will be really happy if I can eat mindfully 6 days every week. 2 - Exercise - I want to move every day. My focus right now is walking. I have a 2-mile loop and a 3-mile loop in my neighborhood, and I have a couple of long walks planned where I'll do the 3-mile several laps around. I also am involved in a 10K pushups in a year challenge with several IRL friends. I also still own kettlebells and barbells and a bike and honestly sometimes the stairs to the basement are challenging so really anything is fair game, as long as I do something intentional for exercise every day. I am aiming for a perfect score in this, because it's so open there's no reason I can't do it every day. 3 - Tracking - My two challenge goals are so relaxed that if I don't keep careful track of them, I'll easily forget from one day to the next what I've done. I use an app on my phone to track my success each day. I just need to make sure that when I lay down for bed, I open the app and click pass or fail on those two items. I will try to also log in here every day and report my progress, but with my work situation being not very nice just now, I can't promise that I'll be really consistent here. However, when I do an update here I should be able to report all of my progress to that point. I think that's it. That was a lot of typing for such a simple challenge, but thanks for hanging out with me for a few minutes. 🙂 Happy Challenge!