BASF J3nn

[J3NN]

So this is the quick view:

	To date	Committed	Reached
Track ED	5	35	14%
Weight change	-1	5	-16%
Personal diet recipes	2	10	20%
Probiotic	4	34	12%
Roadmap	0	1	0%
Steps/Amerithon	5,048	Avg Steps (5250)
Manuscript	0	10	0%
Healthy, Not Boring	3	15	20%
Fun	2	5	40%
Forum	3	15	20%
Week	Avg Steps
1	5048

 

Here are the details for each of those things...

Track Elimination Diet
If all goes well, during this challenge I will reintroduce the following food groups/items: Chocolate, Walnuts and Pecans , Almonds, Cashews, Peanuts, Hazelnuts, Pistachios, Brazil Nuts and Macadamia nuts, Corn, Soy, Yeast, Eggs, Dairy and Gluten. My goal is to lose another 5 lbs during this period. I also plan to start making my own diet plan based on what I’ve learned. I'm going to call it the BASF diet. BASF is the chemical company that makes the awesome color changing paint. Someone else made this diet, but I need to make it better for me personally, so I'm going to BASF it. I can make a category for recipes that will work and feed that into my meal planner so it will be easy to do meal planning. I will track the number of recipes I tag to my BASF diet with a goal of adding 2 per week. 
Probiotic
I’ve continued to have a problem, inconsistently, with bloating so I’m going to buy a probiotic and take it daily and record in my journal what impact if any. I will track this with my other meds, breaking out to morning, midday and night. I have been bad about remembering if I took the meds, so I need to record it so I know what I’ve taken.
Roadmap
Not sure how to track this. Now that I have the personas, I plan to create a roadmap for the next four quarters. Not sure how to break this down. For now we’ll just count it if I have a roadmap at the end of the challenge.
Steps/Amerithon
I have committed to increasing my avg step count to 5250. I will track daily and do the average weekly to make sure I’m doing better this time.
Manuscript
I still have 20 steps left to be able to submit my manuscript for critique. I would like to get through half of them in the five weeks.
Healthy, Not Boring
During the planning week I will come up with my goals for this. I want to be actively sharing and posting, at least twice a week. This week I will find content creators to reshare, and make a template for my own updates. Then I will share at least 3x a week, two from content creators and 1 personal update.
Fun
I’d like to do at least one fun item per week. This will not count whatever tv the family watches at night or my reading at lunch, if I do other tv/movie watching or reading above and beyond, it will count.
Forum
I commit to one weekly update on my own forum, and picking one person and commenting on their posts at least 2/week for 15 posts.
 

Here's to making it better:

[zeroh13]

Good luck!

 

(I've always wanted a color changing car!)

[Wobbegong]

13 hours ago, J3NN said:

Here are the details for each of those things...

Track Elimination Diet

So glad "Track ED" did not turn out to mean "erectile dysfunction"... I was seriously confused at first. 

 

Looks like you've got a great list of goals here! Best of luck, J3NN, and let us know if there's anything we can do to support you!

[Iceburner]

Yes good luck. Like your quick view table.  So organized  

[Bean Sidhe]

Glad to have you back J3NN. I am following long to support you.

[J3NN]

Update, better late than never... I don't know what's going on with me, but the forums have not been top of mind.

 

Here's my chart:

	To date	Committed	Reached
Track ED	13	35	37%
Weight change	-5	5	-96%
Personal diet recipes	2	10	20%
Probiotic	11	34	32%
Roadmap	0	1	0%
Steps/Amerithon	5,395	Avg Steps (5250)
Manuscript	0	10	0%
Healthy, Not Boring	3	15	20%
Fun	4	5	80%
Forum	3	15	20%
Week	Avg Steps
1	4861
2	7264

 

This week I have been sick; not the flu Thank God, but not well either, so I've missed three days of work and while I tried to go back, I went back too early and then took another day, so it was 1 day on, 2 off, 1 on, 1 off. Now I'm just looking at the weekend wondering what I did with this week. Other than my walking I've been mostly okay at keeping up on things, so, I'm going to remove these four days from my count and just count the healthy days.

 

Other than that... being home sick I had the opportunity to do nothing, a lot, and while it was good for R&R, I'm feeling pretty restless now. You can only watch so many Olympic events and news stories on another tragic shooting. So then you watch movies like Me Before You and after you're done crying, you ask yourself what you're doing with your life and if you're living it to the fullest. You wonder what that even looks like. Like, we have real life, jobs, chores, and all that. Does living life to the fullest mean you just do whatever you're doing with a happy heart, or does it mean more than that. If you could have a fresh start, what would you change? And if you wouldn't change anything, then how do you stop feeling this societal pressure that what you're doing in your happy fulfilling life isn't enough? 

 

On another note, I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons last weekend. It was kind of awesome and kind of overwhelming. I learned (no, I knew this already) that I suck at role playing, especially in unknown situations. But I still had fun. I don't know if I'll have the chance to play again. I might like to. Especially if I was snowed in or rained in or something.

 

Hope everyone is doing well, time to go check in now.

[Bean Sidhe]

I hope your feeling better. I know how being sick can really make you feel restless. Hopefully you were able to do some stuff over the weekend and are feeling more yourself now.

Glad you had fun with the role play. And you may not be good at it to begin with, but its still fun.

[Iceburner]

You did good for a week where you were basically sick the whole time. Get completely well, get inspired by the incredible athletes at the Olympic Games and then get back on track.

[J3NN]

Update for the week. I'm on day 54 of the diet and this reintroduction is soy products. Could definitely be having a reaction, will be watching this one closely. We get yeast starting Tuesday so I have bread rising. Just the act of opening the packet of yeast and pouring it into the water was a scent overload. I'm afraid what smelling this bread cooking is going to do to my senses. Everything bread, ever, came rushing back to me with  one whiff of the yeast. I've had breadlike things on the diet, tortillas, corn bread, biscuits, pancakes, cupcakes... but apparently my senses think I have a thing for plain old bread. I can't wait to taste this on Tuesday at breakfast. I hope it lives up.

Here's my chart:

	To date	Committed	Reached
Track ED	22	35	63%
Weight change	-2	-5	48%
Personal diet recipes	8	10	80%
Probiotic	19	34	56%
Roadmap	0	1	0%
Steps/Amerithon	5,265	Avg Steps (5250)
Manuscript	0	10	0%
Healthy, Not Boring	11	15	73%
Fun	9	5	180%
Forum	4	15	27%
Week	Avg Steps
0	4861
1	7264
2	5045
3	5638

 

Regarding weight loss, I'm only down 1.8... at one point I was down a full 4... Adding bread in isn't going to help that I'm sure, I'll have to be more cautious about portion control. We also found gluten free, dairy free cookies, but I've only had one of those so far! I think it's the nuts for snacking. I need to work on lower calorie snacks, or better filling meals that make me not require snacks.

Regarding the BASF diet, I have come up with my weekly plan:

• Surfing Sunday
• Mexican Monday
• Moa Tuesday (Moa=Poultry in Samoan, Poultry Tuesday didn't do it for me) 
• Vegan Vednesdays
• Leftover Thursdays
• Friday Favorites
• Slow Cooker Saturdays

I've also gone through all the recipes I've made on the diet and tagged the ones we like to the appropriate days so it will make it easy for me to put together meal plans. I also added snacks and desserts and lunch and breakfast. I've taken a couple of the recipes and re-written them with more convenient food items, like pre-cut brocolli and stuff like that, just to help with my prep time. 

 

The probiotic seems to be helping, it's expensive so I'm not sure I want to keep at it, I'm hoping when we finish reintroduction I will have my own healthy probiotics and won't need to keep taking this. But for now, I can see that it helps with less cramping for sure.

 

I have done all the prep-work for my roadmap and we're prioritizing the items on Tuesday. I plan to have the first draft done by next Friday. This is so exciting. I've not felt this good about work in a very long time.

 

I'm doing good on my steps. I do have pain and I'm not sure what to do about that. The compression socks help with the leg and feet pain, but I've been having pain in my left hip joint. I think I'm going to schedule a doctor appointment after I finish the diet, I may ask him what his thoughts are. It's not debilitating, just annoying.

 

I've decided to set my manuscript on a shelf and start a new story. With the lessons I've learned I think I can write a much better story. Right now I'm just coming up with ideas. I haven't settled on one  yet.

 

I've created a newsletter for myself on Paper.li to curate content for sharing with the Healthy, Not Boring group, I've also scheduled five posts this week, so we'll see how that goes. I really hope to see engagement increase. It's pretty much died since the other admin stopped posting regularly.

 

I've been doing a lot of fun things, and this challenge has been noticeably better, so I think I'm on the right track. The number one fun thing I've found so far is watching tv and movies. It's been helping with my own story writing. I haven't been tracking listening to pod casts, that would truly be #1, and that has REALLY helped with the stories. I listened to a great one, a story, about a female medic, straight out of school in rural America and her first cardiac call, in the winter. It was good!

 

The forum is my weakest area. I'm just not connecting here and I'm not sure what's keeping me from it.

 

So, all-in-all, things are going very well!

 

Hope everyone else is doing well too!

[Bean Sidhe]

Sounds like your doing great. I am sorry about the hip pain. Hopefully its just sore from "something" and will ease up soon. I will say it looks like you are doing great overall. I do understand the forum thing. Some challenges its easy to be really connected and some you need to dial back a bit so you can recharge and come out fighting next one. I am in and out this challenge a bit too.

We are here, we enjoy your company when your here and are glad to hear things are going so well.

[Lateral Planet]

 

On 26/02/2018 at 11:43 AM, J3NN said:

Update for the week. I'm on day 54 of the diet and this reintroduction is soy products. Could definitely be having a reaction, will be watching this one closely. We get yeast starting Tuesday so I have bread rising. Just the act of opening the packet of yeast and pouring it into the water was a scent overload. I'm afraid what smelling this bread cooking is going to do to my senses. Everything bread, ever, came rushing back to me with  one whiff of the yeast. I've had breadlike things on the diet, tortillas, corn bread, biscuits, pancakes, cupcakes... but apparently my senses think I have a thing for plain old bread. I can't wait to taste this on Tuesday at breakfast. I hope it lives up.

I LOVE homemade bread! We never really have bread because two people just can't eat a whole loaf before it goes stale, but I love it. I'm super jealous, hope you enjoyed it!

 

Definitely get your hip checked out if you can if you're worried, joint pain isn't fun but hopefully it won't last. And I totally hear you about the forums. I've been trying to keep up with reading everyone's stories but haven't had a lot of time for interaction so I'm a bit of a lurker

[zeroh13]

How are things going, @J3NN?

 

Did your bread live up to the hype?

[J3NN]

On 3/7/2018 at 4:35 PM, zeroh13 said:

How are things going, @J3NN?

 

Did your bread live up to the hype?

The bread was actually surprisingly good. Maybe after months without regular bread your standards change, I don't know. But I enjoyed it. It didn't rise very well so it wasn't good for sandwich bread, but just to have a slice with dinner was nice.

 

On 2/28/2018 at 7:08 PM, Lateral Planet said:

I LOVE homemade bread! We never really have bread because two people just can't eat a whole loaf before it goes stale, but I love it. I'm super jealous, hope you enjoyed it!

 

Definitely get your hip checked out if you can if you're worried, joint pain isn't fun but hopefully it won't last. And I totally hear you about the forums. I've been trying to keep up with reading everyone's stories but haven't had a lot of time for interaction so I'm a bit of a lurker

In my house, we COULD eat a whole loaf of bread between two... that's the problem

 

I have an appointment next week, but my hip hasn't been hurting, of course. Why do bodies always do that??

[J3NN]

Final update... Here's my overall summary:

	To date	Committed	Reached
Track ED	35	35	100%
Weight change	-4.6	-5	92%
Personal diet recipes	10	10	100%
Probiotic	31	34	91%
Roadmap	0	1	0%
Steps/Amerithon	5,226	Avg Steps (5250)
Manuscript	0	10	0%
Healthy, Not Boring	12	15	80%
Fun	21	5	420%
Forum	6	15	40%
Week	Avg Steps
0	4861
1	7264
2	4967
3	5274
4	5221

 

Here are the details for each of those things...

Track Elimination Diet
I reintroduced the following food groups/items: Chocolate, Walnuts and Pecans , Almonds, Cashews, Peanuts, Hazelnuts, Pistachios, Brazil Nuts and Macadamia nuts, Corn, Soy, Yeast, Eggs, Dairy and Gluten. I lost another 4.6 lbs during this period. I start making my own diet ,the BASF diet and my own meal planning guide. This was a win. I found I have reactions to Soy and some Dairy. That's kind of sad. The soy gives me headaches... The dairy, tummy issues, but it only seems to be whole milk, not other dairy products. So at least there's that. I also found that hemp milk seems to be a decent substitute when making hot chocolate, if nothing else.
Probiotic
I missed three days of the probiotic and I noticed that I had issues every time I missed, so I'm assuming that means it's working. Still not happy about having to take it, but glad it's an option.
Roadmap
My workgroup got close, but we didn't finish this, I'm hoping it will be drafted this week, but the way things have been going, I'm not holding my breath.
Steps/Amerithon
I made 5226 avg step count to, not quite 5250, but this was a stretch goal since it went up 750 steps/day over last month, so I'll call it a win. Tracking the average weekly helped keep me on track and motivated.
Manuscript
I decided to put my manuscript on a shelf. I'm coming up with a story idea that is my own, not something I'm trying to pigeon hole for an anthology submission. I'm also exploring other types of writing. Non-fiction, research, guest posting. So this is going to morph.
Healthy, Not Boring
I started out good but failed by the end. I really need to connect with the other admin, but our paths keep missing. I'm not sure what to do with this.
Fun
I knocked this out of the field, and seeing it written made me feel better about things. I DO have fun, it may not be what other people count as fun, but it makes me happy, and I do fit it in. So I feel better about this.
Forum
This didn't happen, and honestly I didn't stress about it. Which leads me to my next thoughts.

 

I've been doing these challenges for over a year now. The challenge format works incredibly well for me. But I don't feel like I'm committed to the forum or need the accountability like I did at the beginning. That being said, I'm going to continue with challenges, on my own, and will be leaving the forum. I'll pop in once in a while I'm sure, but I won't be coming by regularly, it's just not working in my life at this time.

 

Thank you to all the people who carried me along and inspired me and continue to support me:

 @Bean Sidhe @Wobbegong @zeroh13 @Lateral Planet @Plazmotic @Iceburner @Vibrantella

...and others

 

I'll miss the people, and I wish you all the best. If you'd like to connect in one of the other social media outlets, hit me up, I'd love to keep up.

 

Good luck on your continued challenges!

Jenn
 

[Bean Sidhe]

@J3NN
 

We will miss you here and your always welcome back whenever. I am so glad things are going so well for you. I am sorry I kinda poofed this challenge. Good luck and come visit if you get the chance.

 

 

 

[Iceburner]

Congratulations on your challenge. Please don't hesitate to come back whenever you need the support of the Forum again.

[zeroh13]

On 3/12/2018 at 12:09 PM, J3NN said:

 

I've been doing these challenges for over a year now. The challenge format works incredibly well for me. But I don't feel like I'm committed to the forum or need the accountability like I did at the beginning. That being said, I'm going to continue with challenges, on my own, and will be leaving the forum. I'll pop in once in a while I'm sure, but I won't be coming by regularly, it's just not working in my life at this time.

This is great. Of course we'll miss you. But, I think deep down one of the purposes of the challenges is to get you to a point where you can do challenges on your own, and from there to where you no longer need structured challenges like this.

 

Good luck with everything!!!