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Hello, lovely people! I feel honored that you have taken the time to read my daily battle log. Well, at least, the very first post on it! I have been on Nerd Fitness for over a year now, and have been on NF chat for..... probably a year and a half. The past year, I've been doing challenges, and have not been very successful overall. I have, however, learned a great deal about myself during that time. Some of those lessons are: 1. I am terrible at setting realistic goals for myself. 2. I am easily frustrated and disappointed in myself. 3. Those negative feelings about the poor start of a challenge or a rough patch in the middle of a change sabotages the rest of the challenge. 4. I am extreme in my passion, enthusiasm and optimism, but am not as skilled in perseverance and problem solving, nor focus and consistency. 5. I have some serious issues I need to straighten out, namely my eating disorder. The solution? Trying my best every single day, day in and day out, to accomplish as much good and to take care of myself as well as possible EVERY day. I have been trying to think more in terms of every single day, rather than a week or 2 weeks or 6 weeks, and it seems to be helping a bit. My overall objectives are to: 1. Lose weight and gain muscle, strength, tone 2. Become strong and healthy in the physical, emotional and mental sense 3. Pursue my dreams and career aspirations 4. Strengthen my spiritual life and finances Some of the ways I will achieve that is to: 1. Eat paleo (mostly Whole30-approved foods) 2. Eat as close to my BMR as possible and not deprive myself 3. Work out 5x a week (hopefully running 3x a week) 4. Hopefully start lifting soon 5. Drink 100 oz water per day and take my vitamins 6. Find ways to manage my stress, prioritize and become efficient and effective 7. Focus and meet school and career goals 8. Take time to pray 9. Reduce spending and become more organized with my record-keeping I'm hoping to treat this as more of my online confessional than anything else. My posts may have just about anything going on in my life in them, so I hope you don't mind. It's going to be a whole lot of Snow being honest about where I'm at in life Right now, I am exhausted and pulling the billionth all-nighter this semester. I'm just ready for it to all be over. I am putting off working on a paper that is already late, and I have the longest to-do list in the world. I want to crawl under a rock and ignore everything, and sleep for about a week, but that's not possible. In order to get a little accountability, here is my schedule for today. I will be reporting to let you know how much I got done: 5am: 1. Do laundry 2. Pick up the house 3. Do reading assignment for Anarchy 4. Do paper slips 5. E-mail Professor Zeff, Will, Ryan and Rod 6. Write Media Paper #4 9am: Shower, eat breakfast, take vitamins, get dressed, print and fill out transcript request form 10:15: Work on Media Paper #1 11:45: Leave home, mail request, go to school 12:30: Political Research Methods class, 2: Sovereignty and Anarchy 3:15: Meeting with professor 3:45: Graduation dress and heels shopping with Mom! Dinner, homework, sleep by 1am. I expect people asking how much I got done! Hahaha help me out! I need some accountability. I have: 2 more days of regular classes! 8 more days of school! 10 days until my grad party! 11 days until commencement! 14 days until my last concert in Iowa! 15 days until I fly to NYC! Roughly a month before I need to start my new job, whatever it may be! Thanks for reading! I love you for who you are

This is my first challenge as a Druid and I am so incredibly excited about it! If you would like some background on me and my chosen namesake, here is my previous challenge where I explained a lot of stuff and where Snow White's story began To continue Snow White's story: Snow White had been living in the woods for a while now, and the cool, crisp fall had been overthrown by a harsh, long, brutal, painful winter. Snow White was doing the best she could to defeat the darkness, the bone-chilling cold, the stinging wind. She had trapped beavers and raccoons to use their plush fur for warmth, she had done her best to keep herself fed and nourished to maintain her strength (despite the disheartening lack of game and berries), and she tried to hole herself up in the hollow of a tree for as long as she could to remain warm and save her body from the deep, endless cold that threatened to freeze her flesh within minutes of exposure. But her body was so worn, tired and depleted from the struggle of trying to keep herself fed, protected and warm in the harsh, barren winter that she became very ill.... her skin turned to fire, her body shook violently with chills, her throat became raw, her ears, head, neck and body ached and throbbed, her muscles gave up, her mind became blurred, her appetite disappeared and her stomach threatened anarchy. There was nothing she could do but try to muster up enough strength to drag herself to the river for a drink of water and to her frighteningly meager stash of food buried under the weeping willow tree. Snow White could only pray that winter's cold would give way to summer's warmth before her body gave up altogether.... Now to update you on my current situation. I got sick on January 30th with mono and a double ear infection, so as I write this, this is my 29th day of sickness. It has been beyond brutal. I started with a fever, stomachache, earache, headache, chills, body aches, sore throat, exhaustion, dehydration, nausea and no appetite. The fever and the chills left after a couple days, but the rest of it has stayed around for 29 days, along with extremely swollen lymph nodes all the way from my ears down my shoulders and back and an insanely swollen spleen, which has caused me to have pain right under my left breast 24/7, along with difficulty taking deep breaths and feeling sick and full very quickly whenever I eat. For the past week, they have been afraid that it was going to rupture, so I have been at the hospital every couple days to monitor the situation. I am finally getting good news! The swelling is going down and today was the first day that I have been better than the previous day! I am very glad, because I have a very busy and stressful life. I am currently a senior at Drake University studying politics and history, I sing and tour with Drake Choir, I work 21 hours a week at Nationwide Insurance and I am the recruitment director for a Congressional campaign in MN. I will be moving there in June after I graduate to work as the assistant field director. I also have a huge family that I have many responsibilities with and I am a local political activist, and I hold several positions in local politics. I desperately need to get well to graduate with good grades, keep up with my two jobs, my family and my activism. My main quest is to heal! I need to make sure that I take care of my body and allow it to heal. I have difficulty eating enough, drinking enough water, sleeping enough and not running myself to death. It has been a long, painful, difficult winter physically and emotionally. It's been a really hard winter in my life and I am ready for it to end. 1. My first goal is to eat Whole30.... but not until the nerds leave I am SOEXCITED because some of my closest and most favorite nerds in the WORLD are coming to visit me this weekend!!!!!!! Actually, erm, the first one gets here in 38 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you tell I'M EXCITED?! LMAO. Anyway, I will eat Whole30 from Monday, March 3rd-Sunday, April 13th AND I will drink 64 oz of water (at least; I'm still really dehydrated). Also, I will do my best to take my vitamins and supplements. I'm a bit forgetful. But that's not a requirement, just something preferable. I will be blogging everything I eat every day and whether I meet these goals. I will be keeping track of the days (if any) where I don't fulfill all of these requirements, A = 0-2 days without a problem = 3 CON points B = 3-5 days = 2 CON points C = 6-8 days = 1 CON points D = 9-11 days = .5 CON points F = 12+ = 0 CON points 2. Sleep 42 hours a week! This averages 6 hours every night. This sounds really easy, but I have massive amounts of homework to do, I'm an insomniac, I like my alone time at night annnnd yeah. I have trouble sleeping. My sleep week will go from Sunday/Monday sleep until Saturday/Sunday sleep. I'll keep track of it on my battle blog and on here. Here's my grading system based on number of weeks I achieve this goal! A = 5 weeks = 2 CON points + 1 WIS point B = 4 = 1.5 CON points + .75 WIS points C = 3 = 1 CON point + .5 WIS points D = 2 = .5 CON points + .25 WIS points F = 1-0 = 0 con + 0 WIS 3. Exercising 3x a week for at least half an hour. I didn't define what type of exercise because, right now, I am limited to walking and very easy, careful yoga. The intensity of workouts I am capable of will increase each week (hopefully), but I definitely want to keep active, whether it's just walking and yoga or whether I'm running by the end of the challenge (I really hope so!!! I miss running!) Here's my grading system based on the number of workouts I miss! A = 0-2 workouts missed = 3 STA + 1 STR + 1 DEX B = 3-4 = 2 STA + .75 STR + .75 DEX C = 5-6 = 1 STA + .5 STR + .5 DEX D = 7-8 = .5 STA + .25 STR + .25 DEX F = 9+ = 0 points 4. I have missed so many classes because of mono and being at the doctor or the ER, and I am so often tired and in pain from mono that it's really hard to force myself to go to class some days. But this needs to happen. I can't be skipping class in my last semester, with so much on the line. My goal is to not skip a single class for the next 5 weeks! My grading scale will be based on the number of classes I miss until the end of the challenge. A = 0 classes missed = 2 WIS + 2 STA B = 1-2 classes missed = 1.5 WIS + 1.5 STA C = 3-4 classes missed = 1 WIS + 1 STA D = 5-6 classes missed = .5 WIS + .5 STA F = 7+ classes missed = 0 points Side quest: I am a Christian and I am dissatisfied with the amount of time I spend reading the Bible or praying right now. My heart is often stressed, anxious and overwhelmed right now, and I know that the best way to calm my heart, find shelter and gain strength is to read the Bible and pray. I won't grade myself on this because that feels wrong somehow, but I'll be making little notes to either track how often I do so, just so it reminds me to do so more often. I am very excited to get going on this challenge and I am thrilled to be a Druid! Thank you for reading my challenge, and I wish you the best of luck in your challenge! Long live the rebellion! P.S.: Special thanks to Mel_Issa for helping me come up with the framework of the challenge, LorenWade for the Classic Crime song that's been keeping me going when everything feels cold and dark, AlienJenn for nursing me through mono from 1,000 miles away, and all of my dearest NF friends for loving me through a dark couple months and making me smile when nothing else could; you all know who you are