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It's a New Year and I've been planning this "respawn" for awhile. Since I am new to Nerd Fitness, I decided it was not an official respawn. I will copy my bio from my first post right before the new challenges started: A bit about me. I'm 37, weigh 450 or so pounds and miserable. in 2012 I had gastric bypass surgery. I lost some but I also got divorced shortly after (a surprise with my ex-wife telling me the day of the surgery she wanted a divorce) so the stress kind of messed me up. Here I am 4 years later and realizing it is time for a change. The biggest change needs to be from within, not a doctor or surgery or anything else. A complete lifestyle change. I decided to stay a rebel as I am unsure what class to chose. I am thinking of two different ones: Warrior - I figure my choice of doing strength training would have me fit here. However... Adventurer - While I am out of shape now, this class seems closer to where I want to be. I would love to hike more, really enjoyed geocaching in the past, and honestly want to travel and explore more. I am leaning toward this. I'm unsure if switching means my goals need to align closer to the class I chose. And here are my goals: Diet Continuing a ketogenic diet No sweets No soda Log the foods I eat daily in MFP Drink more water, at least 6 cups Fitness Strength training 3 days a week in the gym in my building. Life Continue studying at least 30 minutes a night toward changing careers to web development Attend the 2 Meetups in the area for web development I started this challenge right before New Year for the fitness and life goals and the diet goals on January 3.So far I have been successful in maintaining it. Here is where I am as of today: Diet I started a ketogenic diet on January 3. Prior to starting it I removed all the tempting foods from the house and started researching the best foods for the diet. I did this diet before and lost about 30lbs. Fitness Started on December 27th and been consistent so far. Here are my logs: 12/27/2016 Standing Shoulder Press 25lbs 3 x 8 Biceps Curls 25lbs 3 x 8 Triceps Extensions 25lbs 3 x 8 Chest Press 50lbs 3 x 8 Leg Press 55lbs 3 x 8 Reverse Grip Lateral Pull Down 25lbs 3 x 8 12/29/2016 Standing Shoulder Press 30lbs 3 x 8 Biceps Curls 30lbs 3 x 8 Triceps Pushdowns 30lbs 3 x 8 Chest Press 50lbs 3 x 8 Leg Press 55lbs 3 x 8 Leg Extensions 45lbs 1x8; 27lbs 2 x 8 (45lb was too much) Seated Row 50lb 3 x 8 12/31/2016 Chest press 60lbs 3x10 Seated Machine Row 50lbs 3x10 Leg Press 70lbs 3x10 Cable Rope Triceps Pushdown 50lbs 3x10 Cable Standing Biceps Curl 40lbs 3x8 Cable Shoulder Press 40lbs 3x8 1/3/2017 Chest Press 80lbs 3x10 Seated Machine Row 60lbs 3x10 Leg Press 70lbs 3x10 Cable Rope Triceps Pushdown 60lbs 3x10 Cable Standing Curl 35lbs 3x10 Cable Shoulder Press 35lbs 3x10 1/5/2017 Chest Press 80lbs 3x10 Seated Machine Row 70lbs 3x10 Leg Press 70lbs 3x10 Calf Press 70lbs 3x10 Cable Rope Triceps Pushdown 70lbs 3x10 Cable Standing Curl 35lbs 3x10 Cable Shoulder Press 40lbs 3x10 Life I have been consistently studying each night and so far been successful! I have attended one Meetup so far on 1/4/2017 for CharmCityJS. I will attend another one next week. I have also completed two projects in the #Javascript30 challenge!

Sleep - Get To Bed As Early As 10:30 PM Gotta get that sleep. I'm still shooting for 10:30, but shooting for earlier seems to help occasionally. If I try to go to bed earlier, I procrastinate earlier. ^ This still remains true. Most nights, i'm going to bed at 10:50-11:20 PM, which gives me little more than (generally less than) 6 hours of sleep. I'd like to bump that up, and I know exactly how to do so. The key is getting myself to follow through. Food - Make and Eat Good Balanced Meals I'm in an interesting state of not knowing what the heck is going on. For a few weeks now i've not been eating a solid breakfast. That had been working for quite a while, but now i'm unsure. There are lots of things going on that could be causing me stomach trouble, a major one being stress. That makes narrowing down the problem really difficult. I'm going to make a best effort to fit a solid breakfast back into my late morning (9-ish) to see if that alleviates the problems. Workout - Practice Aam Ka Jutsu and Kettlebell My martial art is my priority and I want to spend more time training and practicing. The last few challenges, i've split my four workouts per week into two lift days and two training days. I want to try having one lift day (say Monday) and 3 training days (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday). This is a trial run of sorts, for when i'll be back at school next challenge. Code - Work On Projects and Track Time I'm going to continue to work on my projects and log my time. –––––– Feel free to follow along and call me out if I need it. Keep being awesome. Hail Hydrate.

1. Sleep; Get in bed before 11 PM or as early as 10:30. Gotta get that sleep. I'm still shooting for 10:30, but shooting for earlier seems to help occasionally. If I try to go to bed earlier, I procrastinate earlier. 2. Food; Eat healthy stuff that makes you feel good; avoid junk food. I still feel that i've been doing well with this goal. However, I have been essentially skipping breakfast for the past few days. That's not good. I'm going to try to remedy that as best I can. 3. Workout; Practice Aam Ka Jutsu and work with the kettlebell. I still want to do kettlebell workouts and work toward justifying a heavier bell. I am also going to continue my martial arts training (my main focus). However, i'm going to switch my workout schedule around so that my lifts will be on Monday and Thursday, and my martial arts training will be on Tuesday and Friday. I don't know if that will stick, as I have yet to register for classes. I do know which classes I want, but I can't be certain that i'll get them. We'll see how that pans out. 4. Code; work on your projects at least once a week, hopefully more. I need to keep improving my skills, so i'm going to commit to doing as much work as I can when i'm not working on homework. Feel free to follow along and call me out if I need it. Keep being awesome. Hail Hydrate!

It's been a very long time since I successfully completed a challenge, so I'm jumping back in here with something like a plan to make sure that doesn't happen again. I've already got some good habits forming, but I think I need the structure of setting actionable goals for myself in order to keep from running out of steam. Though I think it's really cool how NF is growing and changing, I really just want all my updates to be in one place, so I'll be giving myself (old school) stats for accomplishing these goals. Goal #1: Be Prepaaaaaaaaared! I've used my boyfriend's absolutely awful food choices to justify my better-but-not-nearly-as-healthy-as-I-want-them-to-be food choices. To help avoid that, we've made an agreement in regards to meal planning. I work Tuesday-Saturday and he makes way more money and has an extra fridge. Without getting into the rather unfortunate details of my living situation, this is what we've agreed: he'll buy most of what we need to feed both of us for the week and I'll stay at his place during the day on Mondays to actually prep the food. We tried it out yesterday and it was actually pretty great! I really love cooking and having a day off when most other people work allows me to get a lot done. Weeks prepped: 4 => A, 3 => B, 2 => C, 1 => D, 0 => F Progress: 4/4 Goal #2: Grain-Free Livin' My food choices have been less than stellar lately. (I may or may not have eaten half a box of Thin Mints before deciding to come here and write out my challenge goals!) I will maintain a grain-free existence six days out of the week throughout the challenge. Grain-free days: 24+ => A, 22 => B, 20 => C, 18 => D, 14 or less => F Progress: 21/24 Goal #3: Hitting the Gym My personal trainer and I shared some Real Talk the other day. He was basically like, "Aisha, you need to prioritize your health and I don't want to hear your excuses." He's super tough, but he's pretty much always right about stuff like that and he doesn't back down. I felt forced to take an honest look at my own behavior and it hurt to really see and understand what I'm doing to my body out of habit. I already have two appointments with him per week, but I've been avoiding the gym when I don't have a scheduled session. I'll go to the gym at least 3 times per week during this challenge. Gym days: 12+ => A, 10 => B, 8 => C, 6 => D, 4 or less => F Progress: 8/12 Goal #4: Answer the Call There are a bunch of tech conferences out there in the world and I don't have the money to attend them. It's much, much easier to attend a conference as a speaker because my small company doesn't really have the budget to send us anywhere. Since speaking is the only way I'll get to go to a lot of these awesome events, I have to actually take the time to respond to calls for proposals. By the end of the challenge, I'll have applied to: Frontend Conference Zurich CSS Dev Conf (volunteer) Abstractions (GOT A FREE TICKET!! WOO!) The Women in Tech Summit - Raleigh Write/Speak/Code Chicago (WoC scholarship) Forward Web Summit 5 Applications: 5+ => A, 4 => B, 3 => C, 2 => D, 1 => F Progress: 5/5