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So possibly unsurprisingly if you followed my last challenge which was So You Think You Can Danced themed, this time around I'll be inspiring myself by sprinkling Dancing with the Stars (and Strictly) gifs around this challenge . I'll get back to my regularly scheduled nerdery in September XD So let's see, for anyone just joining me the main thing to know is that in the last year I have very seriously gotten into ballroom dancing, mainly latin (so cha cha, rumba, samba, jive, paso doble) but I dabble in smooth/standard (waltz/viennese waltz/foxtrot/tango/quickstep). I have my very first big competition the first weekend of the challenge on August 3 which I have been prepping like CRAZYYYYY during the past challenge. After that I have a small window to chillax and not be prepping for an impending big event (I've got an intramural/between studios/unofficial competition in September but it's not really a big deal) so I'm going to try to use this challenge to get a handle back on some of the things I've been slacking on in my life. Like domestic rangering, food stuffs, general organization, and being more consistent with lifting (for the past month I've pretty much just been lifting whenever I have time which sometimes is 3x/week and sometimes was 1x/week so it's just been all over the place). Here are my goals (bonuses are nice-to-dos but I won't consider it a failure if I don't do them): Goal 1: Lift Stick to a real lifting schedule of Monday Wednesday/Thursday and Saturday. My HRC meetings and private dance lessons vary from week to week in terms of Wednesdays/Thursdays so I'm OK with keeping that particular thing up in the air but I have to make a decision in the beginning of each week which day it will be. Bonus: Don't skip accessories! (usually I try to do curls, crunches, push ups, pull up work, and calf raises but I've been skimping on the accessory work as of late) Goal 2: Organize Use my bullet journal - post my weekly spreads here in the beginning AND end of the week. Bonus: Post my monthly spreads at the end of the challenge too! Goal 3: Eat Only eat out 3 meals a week or less. Bonus: Share my food log from my bullet journal here. Goal 4: Maintain ROMWOD (mobility work for those unfamiliar with it) and meditation 6x/week Bonus: Attend one or more restorative yoga class during the challenge Goal 5: Dance Continuing on from last challenge, share a dance video once a week. Next challenge I'll probably have to cut this down since I'm running out of material (I don't take the time to take videos every single lesson and don't really want to) but for now, especially after the comp, I should have 5 more weeks of stuff to share Bonus: Practice on my own 3x/week. I haven't really done this before aside from running my routines, but one of my teachers has been giving us great pointers on how and what to do for targeted practice on our own so even if it's just for 15 minutes I want to start doing this.

Welcome one and all - to Weirdmaggedon! Something you probably didn't know about me - I EFFING LOVE GRAVITY FALLS!!! Like seriously, probably one of my top 5 favourite shows of all time - up there with Buffy, Farscape and Doctor Who. The opening theme song was even Mr. Raxie's and my recessional for our wedding (I walked down the aisle to something off a Doctor Who soundtrack though so it's not like it was a startlingly nerdy thing for us). We also dressed as Dipper and Mabel for Halloween this year. Seriously, if you haven't watched it, even if you aren't into cartoons - just go do it. It's only 2 seasons and it's just so warm hearted and simultaneously nerdy and really down to earth, and the overarching plot is seriously pretty amazing and it ends so beautifully and I literally cry every time. Ugh so good. Ok anyway so after taking the last challenge off due to my life basically exploding (many many weddings/rehearsal dinner/bachelorette parties, about 900 extra dance lessons to prep for an upcoming performance, and some cat illness drama, and meeting Jonathan Van Ness which I needed approximately a full week to emotionally recover from) I am really hankering for a serious high spirited challenge. And what better than a Gravity Falls themed battle challenge to rev me back up and start prepping for the new year? I have the excites. So with all that said, here's my challenge. I'll be fighting Bill Cipher, the final and biggest of Big Bads in the show (he's the pyramid dude in my gif up top). He has brought Weirdmaggedon down on Gravity Falls and it's up to Dipper and Mabel to stop him! Each of the five weeks (starting this week!) they will be fighting one of Bill's cronies and gathering friends for the bigger fight to come. If I succeed with my goals for the week that week's minion will be subdued and a new friend will join the party. Week 4 all the party members I've gathered will fight Bill and any undefeated minions. If I've collected enough friends we will be able to handle some undefeated minions at the end, but also if I don't collect any friends but manage to beat all the minions then just Dipper and Mabel will be able to beat Bill on their own so that's where some flexibility on the challenge comes in. My goals will be the same each week so it's just a matter of keeping them consistent to take down Bill. The final showdown with Bill will have different rules than weeks 0-3 which I'll post in a follow-on post. Initial rules are below with my goals! The Goals: "Reality is an illusion the universe is a hologram" - Bill Cipher Dance 4x/week = 100 HP damage to enemy per party member Usually I don't set a goal for dancing because I'm going to be going anyway, but I really need to push myself to practice separately from my lessons and classes for the upcoming performance we have in December so I'll be tracking it. "This party never stops! Time is dead, and meaning has no meaning. Existence is upside down." - Bill Cipher Lift 3x/week = 100 HP damage to enemy per party member I've been pretty consistently been able to work back in 3 sessions vs 2 for the last 3 months ish, I find that the only time I fail to do this is when I don't plan ahead so I've just got to make sure I know when I'll be doing what each week ahead of time. "Songs Are Like Hugs that Mouths give to Ears" - Mabel Pines ROMWOD 6x/week = 1 new friend added to party I've been pretty good about ROMWODing, a few times a week but I need to get back to prioritizing it since I really started seeing improvements in my flexibility last time I did it almost every day and I want to be flexy. "If you're curious don't wait." - Dipper Pines Updates 3x/week = 1 new friend added to party One MAJOR thing I will be working on this challenge is my perfectionism. You know the whole "if it's not perfect why bother doing it" feeling that causes so many people (myself included) to say oh I can't stick to my meal plan so I might as well eat 100 slices of pizza? Or if I don't have time to clean my entire house why bother doing the little that I can? I've somehow gotten over all of this in my real life, but for the forums I somehow have not. I always want to post all my happy (or not so happy things) and battle-log style catalogue how things are going with me, to the point that if I don't have time or space to do so I just...don't. I need to seriously get over this because it has hindered me from keeping up with a lot of my past challenges, and ultimately I probably could have done the last challenge if I had just been OK with myself doing it all through Tapatalk. So this challenge I am redownloading Tapatalk, and I will be using Habit Bull to track my goals. If I don't have time to say anything, I can just post my Habit Bull progress screen shot and have that be that. Yes Tapatalk results in ugly posts and it makes me sad but it makes me sadder that I'm preventing myself from being here.

I'm rewatching through Boy Meets World right now (thanks Hulu) and I decided to make my theme this challenge based on my very first original TV spirit animal - Topanga Lawrence! There are so many reasons I love her but I think the above two quotes pretty much say it all. If I have a moment of non-motivation during this challenge I'll just ask myself What Would Topanga Do? Be a badass independent woman and do what needs to be done, that's what. Prologue My first love is powerlifting, and have recently-ish started getting back into trying to lift heavy instead of just for maintenance. I'm still living the Stronglifts life right now but will probably be looking to graduate to an intermediate program before the end of the year. I also have semi-seriously been getting into ballroom dancing since December 2017 and it's kind of taken over my life. I love it. I'll be doing my first competition on my own (ie not with the formation team I'm on which I've done one competition with earlier this year) the end of the first week of this challenge doing a waltz to Hedwigs Theme. I recently did a huge decluttering of my apartment and am trying to settle on a good method of keeping-it-that-way. Last challenge I tried small daily tasks, I don't think it worked for me, so this challenge I'll be focusing on a new approach to this. I am really also into mobility (ROMWOD and Unbreakable Feet are my two go-tos, I've been dabbling in GMB's Focused Flexibility program) and fit that in where I can. I am a sufferer of Rangerbrain and earlier this year had to declutter my goals in order to focus on a smaller amount of things more seriously. I'm thinking of maybeeee trying to squeeze one of those things back in maybe before the end of the year? Things I wish I could do but just don't have time for and had to cut out but have potential to bring back: yoga, OCRs, rucking, boxing, rowing. Honestly I've got my eyeball on boxing but we shall see. It may make an appearance this challenge. It may not. I also volunteer for HRC and it takes up a lot of my non-work time. I've got meetings every week if not twice a week with them and then have to actually do the thing aside from that. Between that and dance my calendar is pretty much always full. I like it that way though. Goals 1) Lifty Lift Lift Strength Train 3x/week Self explanatory methinks. 2) Dancey Dance Dance Practice outside of dance class/lessons 1x/week I'm going to go to dance class and take lessons regardless of this challenge. I literally rearrange my social calendar so as to not miss classes sometimes so I'm in no way worried about that. I think the next step in upping my game is practicing things I'm struggling with at home. I'm not going to go too hard on this, I just want to get a feel for what it would entail. So 15 or more minutes once a week is all I'm shooting for for right now. That's enough time to practice one figure or something a few times. Or run a routine a few times. 3) Cleanity Clean Clean Comprehensive maintenance cleaning 1 day a week. No more daily tasks, do all of them in a few hour block once a week, for now scheduled for Friday but I think it might switch between Fridays and Sundays depending on the week. Reward I think I want to get a pair of practice dance shoes. I don't really neeeeeeed them, I have a pair of latin (strappy sandal-y) and a pair of smooth (closed toe and bendy) shoes but for days when I'm doing a few classes in a row and my feet hurt, or for salsa and hustle where I don't really want to be wearing either my latin or smooth shoes and feel weird when I do... I would really like to have a plain practice pair. So if I 100% this challenge I will get them - which sounds like a lot but I'm really only asking myself to do 2 things a week (ie goals 2 & 3, lifting is in my habit now so it's not something extra I'm doing but I'd like to keep track of it here), one of which is a 15 minute thing... so 100% is reasonable. I'll probably get black but like, there are also some crazy ones that I really like. I almost certainly won't get them, but look how cool they are: There are also ones with lips all over them hahah. Not sure if I'd absolutely love wearing them or regret it instantly. Anyway, that's my challenge. Here we go!

I think I may have done a Harry Potter themed challenge semi-recently BUT I'm doing it again because I have a dance performance coming up and it's to Hedwigs Theme so I'm feeling pretty Hogwarts inspired right now However since I probably exhausted all the good old fashioned Potter gifs in my challenge a few months ago, this challenge will be hilarious and no-good HP gif themed. #sorrynotsorry Yeah we will see how long this lasts. Some background on me - my two main pursuits are powerlifting and ballroom dancing. Powerlifting I've been doing for a long while now and ballroom dancing I just got into back in December. I did ballet for 15 years when I was growing up so dance isn't super foreign to me but ballroom is SO FREAKIN' different and it's been 13 years since I've danced at all so it's definitely a challenge. I've actually got my first ever competition coming up in September (AHHHHHHHH), even though it's a super friendly not serious between some studios competition and not like... a real one. I did something similar with a performance team back in March but this one it will be just me doing a showcase (it's the Hedwig's theme dance I am basing this challenge around mentioned above). I'm ascared. But also still pretty darn excited. Lifting wise I've been more or less doing as a maintenance activity but the past 2 weeks I've been starting to step my game up again because I want to be stronger and I am finally feeling I am in a place where my body is used to how much dancing I am doing and it won't exhaust me. So far so good. As far as my challenge goes I usually end up using them kind of as a glorified battle log but I here are some goals anyway: Goal 1: Clean Fly Lady Daily Tasks 5x/week Last challenge I mostly focused on decluttering and making my apartment presentable and I succeeded! I have had people over semi-regularly and don't feel a wave of nausea inducing panic anymore at the thought of house guests. My first goal this challenge will be to maintain this as the status-quo. Honestly, I've been trying to do the Fly Lady thing for 3-ish years but I've never had a good baseline to go off of and it always just feels so overwhelming. Now that I've got a clean baseline apartment I feel like I can *gasp* actually do some maintenance cleaning?!?!?!? Should be interesting. Goal 2: Lift Strength workout 3x/week I have generally failed every darn time I tried to re-up my strength training from 2 to 3 days a week over the last few months and I think it was because I was still adjusting to my new dance schedule. The last few weeks I've been actually doing it super successfully and feeling pretty great about it so I want to keep this up. Goal 3: Dance Private lesson 1x/week I probably don't need to make this a goal because I'm going to do it anyway, but it's an easy win and I want an excuse to talk about it so there you go. So there you have it, a few days late but what are you gonna do. Time to do the thing!

(yeah I know that title sounds real intense and then it's just a cartoon hahah - bait and switch!) Background: For those just joining - I'm Raxie! This will be my 33rd challenge here. I recently got really into ballroom dancing and have been focusing a lot on that, but my other love is lifting. I have three kitties that I love dearly and I have a severe case of RangerBrain(TM). So! I really love how I set up my last challenge where I went hard on the goals, but also gave myself a lot of cushion to fall back on if I needed it. I ended up really needing that cushion in the last week, and that's fine! I passed, and I had a high bar that was quite ambitious that inspired me throughout the challenge. This challenge I am going to do kind of the opposite. I am going to set up some really rigid rules that are simple and not too ambitious... but I'm not going to give myself much leeway in terms of a grab bag of freebies. I find jumping back and forth between these two approaches has really helped me up my game slowly over time and I love it! Part of my problem with a lot of my goals in the past is I have an x times/week goal and I'll push it off and try to squish it all in towards the end of the week, but then it's the weekend and then I either don't do it or rush it. This time around I'm going to assign specific tasks to specific weekdays. If I don't do them, I can't "make them up" later. I just didn't do it, move on and I will do the task for the next week day. AND THAT'S OKAY. My inspiration for this challenge is Rick and Morty's Get Schwifty song -- two of the most inappropriate non-musically talented people on the planet went for it and created a song that won an intergalactic song contest, saving the earth from certain doom. If they can do that... my sometimes uncoordinated self can certainly go out on a limb and do The Scary Thing that is different dance styles and start competing in the future! (OK so that's a stretch - real talk I actually I don't have a theme that relates to my goals for this challenge and just wanted to throw some Rick and Morty gifs around because I love that show.) Big Picture Stuffs: I will be dancing. A lot. My goal is to do a non-group competition before the end of the year. That may be under ambitious but knowing me and my imposter syndrome that line in the sand needs to at least be drawn somewhere. As long as that line is there I could be convinced to move it to sooner, but I want to have it far enough away for now that I don't feel like I need to push it back if that makes sense. I want to focus on Foxtrot, Jive and a yet-to-be-determined Latin dance (I'm thinking maybe Rumba because it's so darn pretty). I will also continue to lift because I love it so. I re-started the beginner Strong Lifts progression for my OHP and Rows last challenge since I've been not doing them, the other lifts (DLs, Squats, Bench) I'm in intermediate Strong Lifts, but I'm shopping around for a more progressive intermediate program that I'll probably move on to either this challenge or the next. ROMWOD has become my backbone throughout the last two challenges and I will keep on keepin' on with that as well. Cleaning. Ugh. My eternal enemy. I feel like I would be the perfect adult and have my life together SO HARD if I could just keep my freakin' place clean! Why won't it just stay clean?! I am going to go full Fly Lady this challenge in terms of daily tasks so I have more of a direction in my cleaning, since last challenge I feel like I cleaned every day but nothing really... got done. Food. I've been eating kind of boarderline bad lately. I was away a bunch last week and am feeling I need to be more accountable about it, so I'm thinking I will report every day what I eat. No calorie counting, no paleo-compliance, I've just got to say here what I ate. That's it. The accountability will inspire me more than trying to meet macros and probably forcing "compliance" upon something that I know I'm just trying to game a system with. Goals: Under the spoiler is my "skeleton schedule" that is my baseline. Each Monday I will post a slightly altered schedule based on travel or volunteer meetings I may have to skip stuff for (I'm traveling almost every weekend this challenge so that will probably be the biggest struggle for sure). Grading: Points for each week will be out of 14 - basically each day I did the things I said I'd do I get a point, and each day I report what I ate I get a point for a total of 2 possible points a day. At the end of the challenge I need to have accumulated at least 55 points out of a possible 70 to pass! I'll be starting now, in week zero. Let's do this thing!

Considering that my user name is a Doctor Who reference, and that it is one of my most intense nerdoms (I’ve seen almost every episode of the old doctors 1-8 from 1963 and on, even sat through some horrible animated and audio recovered versions of the “lost” episodes) I was shocked to realize that I’ve somehow never done a full up Doctor Who challenge since I joined in 2013?! I think I subconsciously wasn’t ready to do something so close to my heart and have the chance to screw it up, so a few times I’ve considered it and said to myself “next challenge” or “oh I’ll have to put more thought into that before going forward with it”. Well you know what? It’s time. After a couple of taking-it-easy challenges ramping back up from taking a while off last year for my wedding planning, wedding itself, and honey moon, I’m ready. Last challenge was the most successful I’ve had in a really long time, and I have recently discovered a new love (ballroom dance) and started really diving into it, and am ready to ramp it up to full gear. I’ve got my sonic and I’m ready to travel time and space and get. shit. done. So as still not to dive in too quickly, because I've learned my lesson there, I’ll be ramping up my goals all through the challenge, each week I will face off against a new Doctor Who enemy alongside a different regeneration of the Doctor. By the end of the five weeks (I’m starting this week in zero week!) I’ll be all up to speed in All The Things. Well, not all the things because I’ll still be focusing on dance and lifting (continuing to suppress the Ranger Brain and not add other things in like a nut job) but I’ll be diving in HARD. I’m also going to go back to lifting 3x/week and give up doing barre once a week. I wanted to do it to get posture work in, but I’ll just add in more core-type accessories to my lifting days instead. I miss it too much. So without further ado, I present Raxie’s Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Challenge!

For those just tuning in, I'm Raxie! I'm returning to the boards after taking a hiatus for my wedding, honeymoon and Thanksgiving... all of which basically happened in rapid succession. It's been an AMAZING couple of months, but my brain, and my life, are in need of severe decluttering. Confession: I have a ridiculous case of Rangerbrain. I cannot. stop. wanting. to do. ALL. THE. THINGS. If I enjoy something, I try to make it so I can work it into my workout schedule (tried boxing at Camp Nerd Fitness and loved it? TAKE A BOXING CLASS! Decided rucking is great training for hiking? RUCK EVERY DAY. Went to a Nerd Meetup at the DC Spartan Race and decided it looked amazingly fun? TRAIN FOR 100 SPARTANS! Oh, and do it all at the same time!!!!). Seriously I am out of freaking control. OUT OF CONTROL! I am getting burned out and need to chillllll outtttt. I've basically made a list of all the things I want to do, and what is most easily attainable, while keeping in mind that going after a goal now doesn't mean I can't, for example, sign up for a spartan at a later date and switch my training over to focus on that for a bit. The idea here is I need to focus on something, not everything. After some brain storming I came to the conclusion that the two most important things to me right now are lifting and dance. I did ballet for 15 years when I was a kid, and then stopped when I went to college. Taking private ballroom lessons for my first dance at my wedding reignited my love of it, and I am completely obsessing over it. So I'm going to build a SIMPLE schedule around training to improve my dancing, and actual dance classes. I really want to get good at it and I haven't felt so great about myself and had so much fun in an incredibly long time. I will never be able to fully give up lifting because it is so fundamental to me and my training now, but I will *GASP* lower my number of lifting days a week from 3 to 2. (And I need to keep telling myself this is OK). It's going to be OK. So here's the goals: Fitness Goal 1: Dance! 2-3 dance classes a week, depending on holiday and work schedule. Fitness Goal 2: Lift! 2-3 lifting sessions a week, depending on dance schedule Fitness Goal 3: Accessory Work 1 Cardio Dance session a week 1 Ballet Barre session a week 3 ROM WODs a week Life Goal: Don't eat like an a-hole Declutter my belly. Self explanatory. Grading Post my plan for the week every Sunday or Monday. At the end of the week - did I do it or no? If I do it all 4 weeks, LEVEL UP.. If not, reassess and try again next time I know this is harsh, but I'm going super simple this challenge so I'll have to really slack to not meet my goals.

Hi, this is my first time on the boards and I'm excited to meet like minded, motivating and positive new peeps. I started my fitness quest after I realized that if I didn't change my ways, my parents were going to have to bury me. I was an uncontrolled diabetic [A1c = 9.2], on insulin and about 3 other meds, using a c-pap at night because my weight was crushing me and cutting off my breathing. I would be so winded after 1 salsa dance that my legs would give out. I was 5'6" and ~252 lbs [114.3 kg]. I am currently going to a supervised diet plan that encompasses not just weight loss but they have behaviorist, exercise physiologist, as well as medical doctors to help you adjust your plan. I've also changed my diet to paleo and am loving it. I never realized that I was allergic to SOY and legumes. As soon as I cut them out of my diet - my skin cleared up and I lost ~7 inches off my abdomen. I reached my weight goal of 165 lbs [74.8 kg]. my A1c = 5, which means I'm totally off all of my insulin and only on 1 tablet of medication [my vitamins now out number my medications] But now I feel the "hard part" begins -- meal planning, budgeting, and coming to terms with my new body. Sometimes I feel like a baby giraffe -- gawky and awkward. My goal is to be able to dance all night. I love to dance salsa and am learning West Coast Swing. There are many workshops were you take classes all day and then open dancing from 9 pm to 4 am. I'd like to be able to do that. So, I think endurance strength training (with bodyweight) and vinyansa yoga intrigues me. I'm also considering taking a kinesiology class(es) about movement in general and nutrition to bulk up my mental muscles too. I'd also like to participate in the next challenge but not sure what guild to choose, any suggestions? Thanks for listening/reading.