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Original by Sidsel B on DA ABOUT ME: I am a 36 year old genderqueer person who lives in the Chicago suburbs. I am a clinical psychologist who loves fantasy novels, table top role playing games, and fiber crafts. I used to be extremely active, but between schooling and working, the active hobbies have fallen by the wayside. We are currently house hunting and looking to move back into Chicago, so I will be transitioning to public transportation for commuting. I need to be able to move my body and do so with confidence and without hurting myself. I also miss cute clothes and having a style that better matches my gender. It is really hard to find stylish clothing when you are fat that is not hyper feminine. So yeah, that's me, taking a crack at being accountable. 4 WEEK CHALLENGE: GOAL 1: Diet. I am going to resume eating at my low-carb macros, tracking on Myfittnesspal. I will have 50g of carbs or less 6/7 days with one day off since we rotate food responsibilities on game days and I can't control the options. I will log food and count calories all 7 days. GOAL 2: Fasting. I plan to do 2 24 hour fasts weekly on Monday and Friday. Since I did not fast today, I will make it up by doing it tomorrow. For this month I am allowed 3 cups of coffee on fast days, one of which can be bulletproof, plus 2 cups of broth if I feel like I need it. Unlimited water. GOAL 3: Movement. I plan to walk for 10 minutes 5 days a week. If it is too rainy, I can substitute with rowing on my rowing machine. I always overdo cardio and end up hurting myself or killing my motivation, so I am going to stick to super slow build up. LEVEL UP MY LIFE: Work. I am starting anew job next week and I am feeling very nervous. Plus, I have not worked with adults regularly for over 2 years. To help with this and improve my competency I am going to work through the Learning ACT workbook throughout the challenge. Because a lot of the content is review for me, I am assigning myself multiple chapters a week. I only have 2 hourly clients out of a planned 25, so I will have plenty of down time for personal enrichment. I'm shooting for 2 - 3 chapters a week, finishing all 11 by end of challenge.

This game was amazing and I am using Aloy's journey as a structure because in August I have my very own Proving coming up in the form of a vacation with my skinny fit sister. I CAN DO THIS Quest 1: Surviving as an Outcast: in order to survive without a tribe Aloy needed to learn to hunt, gather cook and care for herself. I need to relearn some of that too. I want to revamp my diet so that I can lose weight. I am very unhappy with how my body looks and with the exhaustion and general discomfort that carrying all this weight around with me entails. I want to have more freedom of motion, more options at the clothing store, and less self consciousness in my skin. Challenge Goal: Lose 4% of my body weight - Log food on myfitnesspal daily - Pack my lunch for work 5/5 days Goal 2: Train for the Proving. Aloy trained for her entire life to be fit enough to win her way back into the tribe. My Proving is taking a different form. In August my sister and I are going to England. I want to be able to keep up with her on hikes and tours and I want to be comfortable on the plane and on rides or buses. No matter what I need to raise my endurance and cardiovascular health by then. Challenge Goal: Complete Darebee: "Foundations Light" daily Goal 3: Becoming the Seeker. In her role as a Seeker for the Nora, Aloy has to go outside of the sacred lands and learn about new cultures. I need to broaden my language competency to make me a more versatile and employable therapist. I want to become fluent in Spanish. I was fluent in college, so methinks it will come back faster than picking another language to focus on. Challenge Goal: Do one Duolingo Spanish lesson daily Goal 4: Collect the Histories of the Metal World. I love stories and I have been writing in some from or another almost as long as I can remember. Depression did a pretty good job of eating all my creative juices in the past 10 years and I know that if I will ever complete this dream, I have to get back in the habit of writing again and I need to rebuild my skills. My goal is to take a stab at NaNoWriMo in November. Challenge Goal: write at least 100 words from a writing prompt 3 x per week.

Hi all I'm Noor, the Halfling Assassin and wielder of arcane forces. If you have followed me for a while you may have read about my various exploits working to remove a curse where I spent time as a stone giant, along with my friend Sovellis. I have a tendency to add fiction into my challenges because it makes it more fun, but life has been so busy lately that I decided to take a break and to reground with some Druids I know. Now, I'm back and I am working to get healthy so I can return to sports I love like climbing and dancing. ACTing Assassin Quest: Main quest: reduce my body size by 4% a loss of 15.12 lbs Goal 1: Log all food using myfitnesspal, remaining under total calorie goal Goal 2: Eat primal consistently, whole 30 style (basically this is a whole 30 with dairy added in) Goal 3: In addition to my daily yoga for my back pain, I will work out on the elliptical machine daily, adding more time each week. I am going really really slow on this because I am so sedentary and my back is so painful if I am not careful, I want to give my muscles enough time to adjust and catch up. This is the planned schedule, which I can slow down by repeating a week if things go awry. 05 minutes - week 1 10 minutes - week 2 15 minutes - week 3 20 minutes - week 4 Lifestyle Goal: Complete the first 4 weeks of ACT bootcamp from The Weight Escape. ACT is the school of therapy that I use in my work as a psychologist. It is really more of a lifestyle and worldview than a series of techniques and I find that the more I focus on my values and on living in the now ( the two main tenets of ACT) the more I ma able to find joy and meaning in my life. The boot camp allows me to mindfully check in with my values and this particular series of exercises are tailored towards those of us who struggle with weight management, so it is ideal for me right now. I am not bothering with grading this time around, since NF is in the middle of implementing the new leveling system and I am not sure what that will look like yet. Expect intermittent fiction and hopefully daily status updates though! --'--,--@

To break the curse, to shed the stone For actions taken you must atone Free yourself from habits staid Run, walk, jump, dance, Fight with sharpened blade. A body reflects how we dine Whether mutton or breads, Sweet grasses, water, mead Or glowing elven wine. If a Halfling’s body you do seek Then with Halfling’s pride you must eat. "Hafling's pride Halfling's Pride... Do you think it refers to a specific food? my favorite food? A food that Dorashire trades in?" Noor paced the length of her cabin thinking. She knew that she had a fingerhold on some of the strings. Since vanquishing the fey and freeing Sovellis' mind, Noor had felt like her old self inside. It was time to make her body match her soul. She tugged the strings of magic through her fingers like yarn, tying and untying them as she moved. She spread her toes and stretched her arches, luxuriating in the feel of her bare feet no longer clad in magical stone. She knew that she was almost to a breakthrough, she cloud practically taste it. @--,--'-- What I have learned so far is that in order to properly balance my life, I need to make smaller goals that are easier to achieve. I am prone to pushing my body in ways that it doesn't want to be pushed.That never works, it always just leads to injury, pain, and unachieved goals. So I am going to take a page from Noor and model my goals after the rhyme that she has almost solved. I think this challenge might be a big one for Noor's curse breaking and for my own milestones. 1) To and Fro: one of the things that Noor takes for granted is her ability to walk anywhere. I used to be able to walk anywhere too- Chicago is all about walking too and this is the time of year that is best for walking. Since the last challenge, I have gained back some of my ability to walk, or at least my memory of how good it can be to move and to get places under my own power. My goal for this challenge is to walk for 40 minutes 3 or more times a week. At the half way point, if I am successful, I will add a 4th day. +3 STA 16 or more workouts completed +2 STA14 or more workouts completed +1 STA 12 or more workouts completed 2) Springy is What Halflings Do: I need to get more mobility and flexibility. Adding yoga last challenge helped somewhat but I am stiff and sore a lot of the time now that I am moving more. Starting work next week is only going to make me more stiff due to long hours of sitting. I am going to make 90 minutes of stretching a week a goal for this challenge. That's 5 - 10 minutes 5 days a week and a yoga class on the weekend. +3 DEX 482 or more minutes of Stretching +2 DEX 432 or more minutes of Stretching +1 DEX 378 or more minutes of Stretching 3) What Halflings Eat: I have to track my food religiously. I have never lost weight in my life without doing this. Plus it will help me maintain paleo eating and help me stay mindful of food. Food is one of my pillars of health. I love cooking, I love eating, I love sharing food with others. In order to make this pillar a healthy one, I need to remember why I love food and stop looking at it as a chore. +3 CON 38 or more days tracked +2 CON 28 days or more tracked +1 CON 14 days or more tracked LIFE GOALS 4) To simulate Noor's magical studies, I am going to take on studying money management. I am not trying to become an accountant or anything, but I want to have a better understanding of financial planning and I want to get my own financial ducks in a row. In order to do this I am going to complete the following objectives: a. Call Vanguard and get instructions on how to reactivate my online account so that I can get access to my retirement fund. b. Order all 3 credit reports so I can see where I stand and begin to clean up my credit c. Read one article from Money Magazine weekly d. Reread The Money Book for the Young Fabulous and Broke over the course of the 6 weeks. Each completed objective is +1 WIS LONG TERM GOAL I lost 8 pounds last month! I also found out that my thyroid meds were still too low, so hopefully I will be able to do even better with this challenge. In order for Noor to crack her spell and get smaller, I need to lose some more of this 200 Lbs, so I am focusing on reduction until I hit my first major milestone of 50 Lbs. Only 48 more pounds to go. (one) (two) (three) (four) (five) (six)

Noor awoke to find herself deep within the earth. She heard the songs of roots and worms, felt the sifting layers of silt and sand under thick pine needles slowly compressing into new top soil. She was at one with the deep crystalline coldness of the rock that lay safe, shrouded in dark earth, the heart of the mountain. Underneath it all there was a feeling of slow movement, the lazy roll of heat and magma and pressure Below. What a funny dream, she thought, and upon thinking, woke. The mountain air was fragrant with pine and felt soothing, almost warm, on her skin. The feystone of the castle’s walls lay crumbled around and on top of her, pinning her within the wreckage of a fallen tower. She shifted her limbs, and to her surprise, lifted the rock as though it were made of cloth. Her armor looked funny, dusted with the same weird purple lines as the grey wreckage around her. She looked down over herself, assessing for damage and froze in shock. Instead of the blackened leather and tightly wrapped sandals she was used to, her body was skinned in the same stone that composed the tower. She stood, brushing at this new skin, stumbling backwards, sending trees tumbling as she crashed into them. She spun, eyes darting about and realized she was looking out over treetops. “I’m… I’m a giant?†Her whispered words were gravelly and foreign sounding in her ears, adding to her fear. How could this be? She entered the fight as her normal self, a Stoutfoot Halfling, small and quick, deadly with spell or blade. If only she could remember… Noor shook her head and began to turn slowly, looking down for signs of battle. Maybe there were clues to this new curse in the crumbling wreckage of this tower. She took a deep breath and began to walk a spiral. She would figure this out. She would find her way back to her proper form. --,--'--@ Starting Statistics: I am 33 years old, a full time graduate student, part time therapist, and part time psychological test administrator. I am 5'10'' 370.2 lbs and my current lifestyle is very sedentary due to all my jobs and school responsibilities. I am very interested in both the Assassin and Druid paths and I plan to dual class over the long term, focusing on one class for each 6 week challenge. Main Quest: I want to lose 200 lbs so that I can resume hobbies like rock climbing and horseback riding. I do not have a finish date for this, because slow steady weight loss is better, but I think 3 years should do it. I would love to be at my goal weight before my 35th birthday. Goal 1:(STA) I will walk 10 minutes a day 7 days a week. (at week 3 re-evaluate, possibly raise to 15) A= >37days B= >33 days C= >29 D= >25 F= <21DaysGoal 2:(CON) I will log my food daily and remain under my calorie goals A= >37days B= >33 days C= >29 D= >25 F= <21DaysGoal 3:(STR) I will complete the Beginner Bodyweight Workout training circuit three times a week.Each completed circuit will constitute 2 points (3 circuits per workout), leaving a possible 108 points in 6 weeks. A=90 – 100 pts B=80 – 89 pts C= 70 – 79 pts D=60 – 69 pts F= 59 pts or less.Life Goal:(WIS) Timeliness. I am late to things all the time. I am late to work, late to supervision, late getting to class. If I’m on time, I have usually had to cheat, like driving to class when I should be taking the train, in order to make up for my lateness. I am late getting to bed and late getting up in the morning. A= 90% or more B= 80-89% C= 70-79% D= 60 - 69% F= 59% or less Motivation: I want to be healthy again. I want to be able to complete tasks without panting. I want to feel comfortable in my body. I want to feel strong and sexy. Campus Tours: weekly mini challenges (one) (two) (three) (four) (five) (six) (week 1) (week 2) (week 3) (week 4) (week 5) (week 6)