Search the Community

Okay, so I nearly didn't even participate in this 6 week challenge. My life is kind of in a flux at the moment while I try and figure out how to get from point A (where I am now, feeling miserable about what my 31 years on this planet have amounted to so far) to point C (a fulfilled, happy, financially feasable future that allows me to pursue the things I'm passionate about) without being restricted by the fact that point B really doesn't exist. In line with that, all of the things I'm trying to do at the moment are very long term (improve all of my lifts, acheive a pull-up, lose a lot of weight, continue to work on improving my creative writing, etc). And as a result, i was thinking that the 6 week format wasn't really conducive to helping me acheive them, when for the last couple of challenges, it's mostly just left me feeling restricted, and unfulfilled. But sometime between 23:45 on 10/11 and 00:00 11/11, inspiration struck. I'm aware that my diet is completely off the planet at the moment, and that I need to get a handle on it if I want to start moving forward in my weight loss. I'm also going to have to improve on the amount of high quality protein I put in my body if I intend to continue improving all of my lifts. And diet really is something I can get a hold of in 6 weeks (or at least put a big enough dent in to make me feel good about myself again). So here it is, the dreaded Diet Monster! My diet currently consists of mostly takeaway becausé my wife and I are generally too lazy to cook. The only meal that we are consistently getting right is breakfast. Currently that means oatmeal. My biggest problem with this is that the only protein I'm getting is the tiny bit in the actual oats, and the little bit I get from the half cup of milk I use to cook the oats in. And other than that, everything I eat tends to be bad for me. Time for a change however. My long term goal is to get myself on a diet that consists of two meals a day that are lean, clean, and packed full of micro nutrients, one snack of fresh fruit per day, A breakfast that actually provides me with some protein to go with my complex carbohydrates, a whey protein shake or two to supplement the whole ordeal, and finally a low calorie dessert of some kind. The whole thing should add up to around 1800 calories per day, which is far too low for me, but I'll be adding in 1 cheat day per week where I get to eat up to 3200 calories so long as I hit my protein goals for the day (which are anywhere between 140-180 grams per day) I'm not going to stress too much about the calorie allowances, as I've sort of done some math and figured out what that means as far as the portion sizes of each of the meals listed above, so as long as I stick to around those goals, I should be fine. The key for me will then be, how many days of the week can I stick to the diet plan, and that will be how I grade myself. 1 Day per week - F 2 Days per week - E 3 Days per week - D 4 Days per week - C 5 Days per week - B 6 Days per week - A I've left the 7th day out because I don't really think I need to grade myself on how well I can eat a cheat meal. Anyway, I'm a day late, so I'm already going to be behind the 8 ball, but we'll just have to see how I go. Ontop of this, I'm still working on my pull-up goal, to which I'm currently using just 34.3kg of assistance now, and feeling stronger almost every day. And I'm also working on my creative writing by going back to the online creative writing course I did quite some time ago now, and going through the modules again. Hopefully it will result in a stepping up of my writing abilities and help motivate me to write more. But that does mean that I won't be participating in NaNo this year, because I don't think pressure writing 50,000 words in a month is what I'm looking for. Quality over quantity until I can produce polished work that doesn't read like a 3rd grader wrote it. That's it for now, and assuming I don't become too distracted chasing my dreams, I'll be sure to try and keep you all updated.