Search the Community

It's hard living a double life. I mean, by day, I'm a mild-mannered office manager, hustling for work in my freelance career, building my business to become a full-time copy editor. Some weeks (like the past two...), I end up working two full-time jobs simultaneously. By night I am Agent Katia. I kick the asses of evil super spies, one workout at a time; I outrun the infected and continue to survive the Zombie epidemic; and I break out of the stifling sugar prison—all with enough time to get to bed by 10pm. Let me tell you. It ain't easy. But you know who gets it? You guessed it. Jem, a.k.a. Jerrica Benton. Successful music industry exec by day, Jerrica, with the help of Synnergy, a holographic computer (the 80s were so FUTURE-Y!), transforms into mega rock superstar JEM! of Jem and the Holograms. Her super-secret identity is kept secret from EVERYONE except her band, including her complicated relationship with her boyfriend who is kind of dating both Jem and Jerrica? Awkward. So, I'm changing it up. While secret identities are great and serve an important purpose, I had a revelation last challenge. They make it hard to add new things to an already busy double-life schedule. While it's fun to push myself and try new challenges, I have this unconscious expectation that I will maintain whatever I established in the prior challenge, no matter what I add on top of it. And it just hasn't been happening. But no more. My double-life isn't going anywhere, but I can create a challenge that will be fun and successful for me. My biggest barrier is maintaining, so this challenge I'm rewarding myself for that. And to support this, I'm adding totally manageable and smaller new goals to the challenge, to keep it fresh and interesting. Approximately half of my points will come from maintaining (depending on difficulty), and the other half will be from a new, manageable challenge. A New Approach Epic Quest: Maintain! It sounds so, well, not epic. But I want to create a healthy foundation that I can keep up on a daily basis, even when those days are nuts. The goals I created last challenge totally support my Most Truly, Truly, Truly Epic Quest of reducing my body fat percentage to 24%. Motivation: Increase my athleticism to improve my chances of surviving the Zombie Apocalypse or other End-of-World Scenario; have a healthy foundation to maintain and return to during crazy life times; and to get ready to wear a bathing suit in front of my husband's slender and fit family at his cousin's Hawaiian wedding in October. To embrace my inner Hologram, I need to: 1. Dance it out! My friend and I got a Groupon to a Barre Method-type class, so I'm going to add that in to this challenge. I'd like to hit three of those by the end of the challenge. To maintain, I'll continue the Rebel Fitness Basic Training three days per week and interval runs with Zombies, Run! 5K Trainer two days per week. (And by maintain, I mean add back in starting this week! The two weeks off were chaos... part of the motivation for all this maintenance business.) Goal: Hit the gym five days per week (75%); take 3 Cardio Barre classes this challenge (25%). [sTA 1 / STR 1 / DEX 3] 2. Just say no! To sugar, dairy, alcohol, and wheat. Pretty much my favorite food groups. I'm still struggling with this one, so those things get more weight. In addition, I'm going to stop buying coffee before the gym, and week three, I'm going to begin to wean myself off of caffeinated coffee by the end of the challenge. (Caffeinated tea and decaf coffee are still okay.) I know I'm going to have a few days of already planned activities when I eat my forbidden foods, and I accept those will be fail days. Which makes me even more determined to make the other days great! Goal: Keep out refined sugars, dairy, wheat, and alcohol (75%). No coffee before the gym. Week 3, wean off of caffeinated coffee (25%). [CON 2 / CHA 2 / DEX 1] 3. Goodnight, Los Angeles! It was really good for me to focus my attention on getting to bed early. Now I'm going to add NO SNOOZING. Eep! Goal: Go to bed at 10pm worknights (50%), and get up workdays without snoozing (50%). [sTA 1 / CON 2 / CHA 1] 4. Book Club! In the last challenge, Vortex of Sleep and I discussed how interesting Michael Moss's book Salt Sugar Fat looked to us, and we made a pact to read it together as part of a challenge! It's totally an experiment, and anyone is welcome to join in the discussion. The book is divided into three parts, so by the end of Week 2, we should have the first part read, etc. Goal: Read and discuss Salt Sugar Fat with Vortex, and any other Rebel Nerds who would like to geek out about the food industry and such. [WIS 1] Grading System As ever, my grading system will be on a percentage scale. The math is slightly more complicated because I have two-part goals this time, but it still applies. Anything under a C is a FAIL. (I let myself slide by with a 60% on one of my goals last time... but not this time.) A 90% Success Overall in Challenge B 80% C 70% D 50% F Under 50% Starting Stats My current body fat is about 31.5%. I'm going to wait and measure again at the end. It's showtime, Synergy!