[MaeradCase]

Greetings and salutations to you, my fellow rookies, rangers, and nerds in or out of those categories!

 

'Tis I, Maerad, on the third step of my long journey. My first two challenges have gone well. I started the first one unknowingly because I decided to look through Nerd Fitness articles and figure out where I could begin. After a couple weeks of walking daily, I discovered the Nerd Fitness Forum and found that I was right on time with the current challenge. So when the five weeks had passed, I joined the rebellion to make my way down the path of my preferred resistance.

 

I was consistently posting throughout my second challenge because if there's one thing that helps me stay motivated, it's being validated, cheered on, and encouraged. I spent the challenge getting into the habit of doing the NF Bodyweight Exercise routine, increasing my sets from 1 to 3 every two weeks. This resulted in a full chart and the satisfaction of my hard work being complete.

 

I had also spent the five weeks working on consistent oral hygiene by flossing nightly. I did pretty well with that assignment until the final week when I skipped a few nights, but I'm still satisfied by my success in the matter. 

 

This challenge I'm keeping up my exercises, and my walking on the off-days. I'm giving myself a small rest for the zero-week by doing 1, 2, and 3 sets of only five reps of everything. I'm also supposed to try the replacement for lunges, but I need to find Steve Kamb's video again to make sure I do it right. 😅

 

In addition to maintaining my exercises, I'm doing something I've never done before: I'm downloading a food tracker. My sister used one a decade ago, paired with her exercise routine, and had a lot of success. The thing is, I'm doing this based on the recommendation on NF to use it for familiarizing yourself with your intake values. So I am not challenging myself to restrict anything at this time. Instead, my challenge is to record.

 

I will use my zero week to download and fiddle with 1, 2, or 3 of the suggested apps to see if one in particular suits me best.

Starting next week, my challenge each day is to input one meal. My other challenge is to input recipes so that I know the caloric value of what I consume. I'm starting off with how I am portioning already, and maybe I'll make changes to that over time as needed.

 

So my zero week expectations are to go easy on myself for the exercises, and to investigate apps until I've determined which one I'll be using. For the five weeks of the challenge:

 

Three days of body weight exercises alternated with walking days

 

Daily registration of at least one recipe or serving of food/drink I consume

 

Daily log of at least one thing I've consumed

 

I think as I have things entered into the app, it should be easier later to select a serving of it as a meal I had, so when it's easy to log my food I might find it easy enough to log the whole day's consumed goods. But by keeping my goal at "at least one" I will allow myself the space to improve my catalog as it were, and the time to get accustomed to logging at any point in the day.

 

Feel free to comment below your preferred food-tracking app, and your favorite function on it! 😉

 

Thanks for joining my on my journey!

Sincerely,

Maerad

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I used my fitness pal back before I swore off calorie counting forever.

 

Following again. 

[Salinger]

Yeah I use MFP when I do use tracking ! X

[Salinger]

Good luck, will be following along and cheering you on xx

[MaeradCase]

28 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I used my fitness pal back before I swore off calorie counting forever.

 

Following again. 

Well, I'm not swearing onto it forever. 😅 Just tracking where I am now for five weeks. No preset expectations to continue afterward, but I may if I enjoy it and find that it makes it easier for me stay accountable to my goals.

 

Anyway, thank you for the tracker vote, Tank!

 

15 minutes ago, Salinger said:

Yeah I use MFP when I do use tracking ! X

 

Good luck, will be following along and cheering you on xx

Thanks for the tracker vote!

 

Thank you, Salinger! 😃

[Rookie]

I've used MyFitnessPal off and on for years. I like it and it seemed to have the biggest food database.

 

I generally pair using MFP with using a food scale for most effective results. 

 

 

[Sovalis]

I've used MFP off and on for ages, too. Highly recommend pairing it with a food scale for most accurate information. I often short myself on cheese unless I measure it by weight. Nobody wants to be short on cheese. 😉

 

Here to cheer you on! 💜

[MaeradCase]

2 hours ago, Rookie said:

I've used MyFitnessPal off and on for years. I like it and it seemed to have the biggest food database.

 

I generally pair using MFP with using a food scale for most effective results. 

 

 

Thanks for the tracker vote, Rookie! That's a pretty good reason - less effort to set up the meals being recorded.

 

1 hour ago, Sovalis said:

I've used MFP off and on for ages, too. Highly recommend pairing it with a food scale for most accurate information. I often short myself on cheese unless I measure it by weight. Nobody wants to be short on cheese. 😉

 

Here to cheer you on! 💜

Thank you for the tracker vote, Sovalis!

 

So far there's a unanimous cry for MFP, so unless I get other suggestions I'll probably download it and start fiddling with it. 

 

As for a food scale, it's not an unreasonable suggestion, but I don't think I'll invest in one for this short-term investigation process. I'll stay open minded to getting one if this seems like something I'd want to pursue longer. Thanks for the advice, though! I appreciate it!  

[Salinger]

Have a brilliant day!!!! xx

[RES]

I also use MFP, I stopped for a while but it does help to make me aware of what I'm eating instead of mindlessly eating...

[MaeradCase]

8 hours ago, Salinger said:

Have a brilliant day!!!! xx

Thanks, Salinger!

 

43 minutes ago, RES said:

I also use MFP, I stopped for a while but it does help to make me aware of what I'm eating instead of mindlessly eating...

Thanks for the tracker vote! That's where I'm trying to be for this challenge. 😉

 

Good morning, all! Best news first: the carpet is installed! 💃🎉🎊 No longer is there a gaping hole between the bed and the closet. Instead there is better padding than before, better color than before, and slight varigation of color and texture so my brain can enjoy it more.

 

Similar thread: we have our furniture back in place. Most of it is going where it was, but some of it we're fiddling with reorienting for the sake of using the opportunity we've been given to reorganize. It's game night tonight, so we won't have much opportunity to unpack things until tomorrow, but thank goodness we did the bed last night after everything else was in place because I was immediately ready to fall asleep. 😅

 

Not looking forward to the bringing back of stuff to slowly sift through it for removal of unnecessary things, but I know we've been needing to do it anyway, and the fates have decided no better way to motivate us than to make us remove all our things from the house (and realize that if there was less stuff, it would've taken fewer boxes and fewer trips). We'll probably spend tomorrow night starting to sift through what wasn't in a shelf on the floor (i.e. the contents of the closet, kitchen, and bathroom).

 

News relating to zero week's restful exercises: I did a single set of 5 reps yesterday (planks are the only exception because I'd rather do 10 seconds than 5 since there's no on-off muscle change involved). I did toe-touches, which isn't quite the Good Morning exercise, but close enough. 😅 I watched the video yesterday to refresh my memory of the posture and motion, and I think I'm ready to try them tomorrow when I do two sets of only fives. As for today, I went outside for a brief walk - not nearly my full scale twisty turny path around the neighborhood, but I did go outside.

 

Final news: I downloaded MFP this morning since it has been unanimously recommended. I was good with the questionnaire at the beginning (though I felt conflicted about whether I care more about muscle tone or muscle strength...), and they ended up recommending a lower intake value than the estimate I've gotten from the NF calculator. That's fine, and doesn't surprise me. But then I saw they're offering a one month free trial... and that won't last 5 weeks. So I think I'll postpone that action just long enough to finish this week out, which means I can't fiddle with it in the meantime.

 

On the other hand, I might check out the other two mentioned by NF alongside y'all's ubiquitous MFP. 😂 If I can find one to fiddle with that doesn't have a short-term free trial period, I will probably be going with that since I want to guarantee I can use it until the end of the challenge, without being compelled to give money for something I currently only want temporarily.

 

I still do appreciate you all piping up with your own experiences, since I'm jumping into unfamiliar waters.

 

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Maerad

[Salinger]

You dont need the paid version of MFP.... i use the free version and never felt i was missing out xx

[Rookie]

Did you remove your stuff just to fix the carpet? That is quite the task to empty your house!  but I imagine it would present lots of opportunities to purge and organize :P  so good job seizing that opportunity!

 I also never got the paid version of MFP in the stupid amount of years I have been using it. Maybe 10-15 years haha (off and on though).

As for calorie intake you can change your calorie limit in goals I believe?  I don't usually go based on the MFP one because it always come out a bit lower than other sites I have used (NF/bodybuilding.com).  I like to do an average from the sites I trust.

[RES]

4 hours ago, Salinger said:

You dont need the paid version of MFP.... i use the free version and never felt i was missing out xx

Same here, I've never used the paid version.

I do suggest that you set your own calorie goal, MFP is not the best at determining how many you need, it goes off what the average person needs to sustain their weight (generally 2,000) and subtracts 500 a day from that per pound you want to lose a week. Not very sustainable, I would recommend entering the one you got from NF instead as your goal.

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

On 7/25/2022 at 9:33 AM, MaeradCase said:

Feel free to comment below your preferred food-tracking app, and your favorite function on it! 😉

 

 

My Fitness Pal --- because I can track macros on it pretty easily.  

[MaeradCase]

22 hours ago, Salinger said:

You dont need the paid version of MFP.... i use the free version and never felt i was missing out xx

Maybe the 1-month free trial was to dabble with the paid features until they get locked, but I want an app that I know is exactly what I'll have at the end of the five weeks.

 

22 hours ago, Rookie said:

Did you remove your stuff just to fix the carpet? That is quite the task to empty your house!  but I imagine it would present lots of opportunities to purge and organize :P  so good job seizing that opportunity!

Oh my gosh, it was a task. Honestly we got everything non-essential moved out over the course of two weeks, and managed to fit everything else into laminated floor nooks & crannies, and into our cars for one more delivery trip to Cidran's mom's house.

 

The purge begins tonight with closet, kitchen, and/or bathroom. I'm leaning toward closet. We'll trickle our things back home until we have everything back and all things sifted through. 

 

17 hours ago, RES said:

Same here, I've never used the paid version.

I do suggest that you set your own calorie goal, MFP is not the best at determining how many you need, it goes off what the average person needs to sustain their weight (generally 2,000) and subtracts 500 a day from that per pound you want to lose a week. Not very sustainable, I would recommend entering the one you got from NF instead as your goal.

Good to know.  

 

17 hours ago, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

My Fitness Pal --- because I can track macros on it pretty easily.  

Thanks for the tracker vote, Jinn. Good reason, too.

 

Good morning, all!

 

I've finished my two sets of five this morning. My knee objected to the squats, so I corrected my stance and didn't go as low... and I think it popped into place during my dumbbell rows. Sooo, that's fun.

I increased my dumbbell rows from a 20 oz bottle to a half-gallon jug, so that's 3x my previous weight. I plan to use it this challenge. I also did my Good Morning exercise. Hopefully my legs don't mutiny because of it.

 

After stretching, I decided to try my next choice in app since (like I said above) I don't want to get an app that will function differently after a month, whether because I start getting charged or because they reduce the functions that I can access for free. I'd rather start with the basics, and have no deadline.

 

So despite the unanimous votes for MFP, I've got the second suggestion on NF downloaded: Fat Secret. I plugged in yesterday's breakfast during their walk-through. I think I'll enter today's breakfast, and then get ready for an early start to work. (Part of me wonders if my one-meal registration a day will make the app cry out that I'm malnourished... my minimum requirement is one entry, but I can enter more should I choose to)

 

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Maerad

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

1 hour ago, MaeradCase said:

second suggestion on NF downloaded: Fat Secret.

 

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on it.  I'm currently using WW and committing to using it until I reach my goal weight OR the end of the calendar year, whichever comes first.  Then, I might be back into seeker mode.  

[Rookie]

5 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

Oh my gosh, it was a task. Honestly we got everything non-essential moved out over the course of two weeks, and managed to fit everything else into laminated floor nooks & crannies, and into our cars for one more delivery trip to Cidran's mom's house.

 

The purge begins tonight with closet, kitchen, and/or bathroom. I'm leaning toward closet. We'll trickle our things back home until we have everything back and all things sifted through. 

Good luck!!! That sounds crazy busy lol

 

5 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

I've got the second suggestion on NF downloaded: Fat Secret.

Cool I haven't heard of that one. I am also curious to know your thoughts after using it

[MaeradCase]

22 hours ago, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

 

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on it.  I'm currently using WW and committing to using it until I reach my goal weight OR the end of the calendar year, whichever comes first.  Then, I might be back into seeker mode.  

I'll try to do a good job talking about it.

 

17 hours ago, Rookie said:

Good luck!!! That sounds crazy busy lol

 

Cool I haven't heard of that one. I am also curious to know your thoughts after using it

Just a bit. 😂

I'll be sure to bring it up.

 

Good morning!

 

I went on my walk this morning. My hamstrings are still tight from the new exercise, but it's a good level ache. Looking forward to continuing the use of Good Morning exercises.

 

Last night I felt like doing additional entries for Tuesday/Wednesday meals into Fat Secret. I created a recipe to list a serving of home-made lasagna. After entering all the ingredients (not entirely streamlined because not every food item you find has interchangeable units (since a serving size for lasagna noodles is 2 noodles, I had to say the dish was prepared with 4 "2 noodles" so that was weird...)), and saying it made x servings, I can just enter that I had a serving.

 

I don't know yet if I might need to change my goals. Maybe that if I don't need to register a new entry for a thing I've eaten, then I should log double that day. It's pretty easy to do, and logging an entry in a category brings up previous entries to choose from (so listing for breakfast starts with breakfast items you've had). On good days I may be able to maintain full tracking. My minimum will still be one meal (or two if no new foods to add) that way I'm not turning the pressure too high.

 

Thanks for reading! See you again tomorrow!

Sincerely,

Maerad

[fearless 2.0]

hi MC, this sounds like a solid and great challenge. I have worked with MFP too and had it synced with my Fitbit. liked that a lot.

looking forward to you smashing your goals!  

[MaeradCase]

23 hours ago, fearless 2.0 said:

hi MC, this sounds like a solid and great challenge. I have worked with MFP too and had it synced with my Fitbit. liked that a lot.

looking forward to you smashing your goals!  

Thank you, FL, and thanks for the tracker vote. I don't have a smart watch, so I'm not able to use that function, but it sounds helpful!

 

Good morning, everyone!

 

It's Friday of week 0! I had a bad dream wake me up early, so I slept past my workout time. No worries: I still did my workout despite the time crunch my early shift has put me in. I was so tired I thought I might only do one set instead of the expected three, but I did manage two sets.

 

I was also interrupted by spotting ants in our kitchen. Don't know why they passed up the one-month-old bait traps, but I placed a third one nearby and stopped the exploration expedition funded by their queen. 

 

Then I finished what I had left, stretched, and have just finished my breakfast.

 

With as much work as sifting through stuff is, I wonder if that's part of this 5-week challenge. I'll keep track of it, but not set goals. Monday was furniture-shifting and bed-making (in both senses of the term). Tuesday was a game night, so we didn't work on anything. Wednesday we tackled the closet - started a box to sell, bagged 2 trash can liners worth of clothes, and I think threw away some things, too. Last night we finished the closet - I adjusted my shelf spaces, and put out the things I don't wear and won't actually get around to mending, resulting in another trash can liner of things.

Then I also went through our very cluttered bathroom drawers. Very cluttered = now organized. My hair stuff isn't all over, his balding shears aren't in my way, we no longer have 7 free toothbrushes from the dentist, and we won't have to pack toothpaste or floss in the travel bag. It was pretty messy. XD

 

I am proud of how well I'm entering foods into Fat Secret. I created another recipe last night for our chicken stir fry made with PF Chang sesame sauce. Very tasty, though our vegetables ended up overcooked for me this time (Cidran prefers soggy to crunchy in vegetable textures, but I definitely am the opposite). The worst I did this week was Tuesday when I ate out twice because I had no... wait... I did have leftovers for lunch that day. Oh yeah! Brain of a goldfish. I'll fix it later. Needless to say: don't eat out twice. It blows the count out of the water. 😂

 

Anyway, I've got to scurry off to work.

Have a great day, and a good weekend if we don't see each other til Monday.

 

Sincerely,

Maerad

[Jarric]

On 7/25/2022 at 3:33 PM, MaeradCase said:

In addition to maintaining my exercises, I'm doing something I've never done before: I'm downloading a food tracker. My sister used one a decade ago, paired with her exercise routine, and had a lot of success. The thing is, I'm doing this based on the recommendation on NF to use it for familiarizing yourself with your intake values. So I am not challenging myself to restrict anything at this time. Instead, my challenge is to record.

 

Bonus here, if you do manage to track everything for a few weeks, and if you're also tracking your weight, you'll get a really good baseline for what your total daily energy expenditure actually is. There's all sorts of online calculators for calorie goals, but every one of them if going to be based on an 'average' person and assumes perfectly accurate tracking methods. If you can get a good few weeks of tracking and you know what your weight did each week, you can get much better calorie goals which are both specific to your body and to the way you track. Then if you decide you want to gain/lose weight in the future you can just add/subtract a percentage from that number.

 

On 7/25/2022 at 8:29 PM, MaeradCase said:

As for a food scale, it's not an unreasonable suggestion, but I don't think I'll invest in one for this short-term investigation process. I'll stay open minded to getting one if this seems like something I'd want to pursue longer.

 

Personally, I weight food all of the time, and I haven't tracked calories in ages. I'm no good at eyeballing what a serving of pasta is, or how many potatoes to put in a meal, but I do know I can weigh out 2oz per person or 150g per person respectively, and that is a normal serving for me. I don't bother weighing most stuff (a bell pepper is a bell pepper, and being a little bigger or smaller is largely irrelevant), and meat usually comes with the weight on the package, but for pasta/rice/potatoes etc. I measure.

 

1 hour ago, MaeradCase said:

With as much work as sifting through stuff is, I wonder if that's part of this 5-week challenge. I'll keep track of it, but not set goals.

 

Sounds like a good idea to me - it's a really good life task you've got there.

[fearless 2.0]

good job!!!! you really kicked some serious ass with all the sorting and throwing out! 

PS I second Jarric on the food scale front. I have one too and use it a lot.

have a great weekend!!!!   

[Shello]

Great challenge.  I like how you are taking small steps building on previous challenges.  It's a recipe for success. 

 

I'll agree with everyone else on food trackers.  I used MFP for years, always the free version.  It was enough to be able to set my own goal and maybe even the macro % if I wanted.  I never paid for it and never really missed anything.  Right now I use the Noom app for food logging.  I don't pay for it now but I did have a subscription in the past and the app still works for food tracking without the subscription.  I like it a little better than MFP because the calorie goal is based on a combination of my setting  of how aggressive I want to lose and then it takes your activity level into consideration.  The logging is simpler with less data.  I can see that would be a drawback but logging in MFP just become an information overload for me and I was looking to be a bit more relaxed about it.  Also a food scale is a great investment even if you don't end up continuing to log food.  You might not be logging but it's good to have when you are portioning certain foods.  

[MaeradCase]

On 7/29/2022 at 9:38 AM, Jarric said:

Bonus here, if you do manage to track everything for a few weeks, and if you're also tracking your weight, you'll get a really good baseline for what your total daily energy expenditure actually is.

That might end up being the final result of my efforts.

 

On 7/29/2022 at 9:38 AM, Jarric said:

Sounds like a good idea to me - it's a really good life task you've got there.

Thank you, Jarric.

 

On 7/29/2022 at 11:55 AM, fearless 2.0 said:

good job!!!! you really kicked some serious ass with all the sorting and throwing out! 

PS I second Jarric on the food scale front. I have one too and use it a lot.

have a great weekend!!!!   

*starts excitedly ghost-boxing*

More progress to be discussed up ahead!

 

On 7/29/2022 at 1:15 PM, Shello said:

Great challenge.  I like how you are taking small steps building on previous challenges.  It's a recipe for success. 

*cheers* 

 

On 7/29/2022 at 1:15 PM, Shello said:

I'll agree with everyone else on food trackers.  I used MFP for years, always the free version.  It was enough to be able to set my own goal and maybe even the macro % if I wanted.  I never paid for it and never really missed anything.  Right now I use the Noom app for food logging.  I don't pay for it now but I did have a subscription in the past and the app still works for food tracking without the subscription.  I like it a little better than MFP because the calorie goal is based on a combination of my setting  of how aggressive I want to lose and then it takes your activity level into consideration.  The logging is simpler with less data.  I can see that would be a drawback but logging in MFP just become an information overload for me and I was looking to be a bit more relaxed about it.  Also a food scale is a great investment even if you don't end up continuing to log food.  You might not be logging but it's good to have when you are portioning certain foods.  

Thanks for the tracker vote, Shello! At this point I'm convinced MFP must've been offering a free month's trial not of their app, but of their priced features. Anyway, the votes may cease because I've got good progress going on Fat Secret, and I'm already too satisfied with its setup to change my selection. 

 

Good morning everyone! 

 

I went on an hour-long walk with a coworker who I walked with two months ago when she heard I was going through some shhhh...things. Anyway, she had offered coffee originally, but upon hearing coffee isn't my thing, she offered a walk, which was what I had just been starting to do! So, this second time was a nice chance to meet up again, tell her about how the events from 8 weeks ago are resolving nicely, and talking about our lives, and looking at a lot of deer and fawns that were out and about in the drizzly morning weather.

 

In regard to tracking, I've got two screenshots from Fat Secret to share, and my thoughts already discussed with Cidran, and the reminder that I'm doing this to evaluate consciously my present eating habits, and not to make drastic diet changes that would not last past the temptation of an Andy's frozen custard.

 

 

Wednesday being the lowest count is reassuring that when I don't do anything except homemade meals and nutty snacks, I actually have a very small caloric footprint. All the other days have one or two expansions from what I see as my base consumption day.

 

Thursday's snack bump was from sharing crumbl cookies with Cidran, but I also like portioning them properly to have over the course of a few days. So maintaining my control would allow that to be an acceptable occasional treat without significant backlash.

Lunch and dinner bumps throughout the week were from eating out (carpeting situation on Monday, game night on Tuesday, a church event with my mom, and on Saturday both lunch with Cidran and a birthday party dinner with my mom). And Monday's breakfast may be exaggerated by a biscuit and gravy recipe I chose from the list when I searched it to enter, or it really was that caloric a breakfast! 😅

 

 

Again, that breakfast has me questioning my preferences when I dine out for breakfast, and I know pairing a hearty breakfast with a fast food burger wouldn't look good on here, but sometimes seeing is what it takes to grasp a matter.

Also, a consistent portion of my daily fat intake has been from using a handful of mixed nuts (sans peanuts and reduced salt) for a stop-being-hungry stomach silencer.

 

Anyway, having talked about it with Cidran, he agreed he went soft on his one-eat-out per week policy, so we're both gonna try to practice that again. (Technically I already accomplished that this morning because I wanted to make myself a pair of eggs, so I had a reason to say no to breakfast out.)

 

Speaking of Cidran, he and I put in some time yesterday to sift through movies (he brought home a car load on Friday night, wooo!) before putting them in their shelves. And boy what a time we had of that! We didn't immediately get rid of a lot of movies because we tend to get rid of a few at a time when we turn something on and don't like it. But we did weed out some that for some reason or another, neither of us would watch again.

 

We also set aside maybe 25% of what's left into a category we've classified as accelerated viewing - movies we have that neither of us has seen, movies that only one of us has seen (he has half as many as I do to watch... probably because I'm more prone to turn on a movie I like that he hasn't seen? Or because he already showed me a lot of his in advance as a strange courting ritual. lol ... Wait, that wouldn't explain why he still has fewer to see than I do... 🤔), and lastly movies that we're giving one more chance (one of them is to see it with commentary to see if it makes me appreciate the movie more because I like hearing about creative decisions. 😍).

 

Today we're gonna sell off some puzzles, games, and movies before getting back in the boxes. Cidran's sure to bring more boxes home soon. Eventually I'll be able to try my hand at creating a Lego sifter, and make the Lego collection a bit more organized with maybe less effort than the last time I did it. XD

 

Just for confirmation, my goals are now

 

Three sets of Beginner Bodyweight Exercise Routine three times a week, with walking on my off-days

 

Use Fat Secret at least once a day to track my eating habits as a study

 

Sift through possessions for the sake of discarding for trash/sale/donation the things I do not need

 

I don't think I need to list my food tracker goal two ways since it is really nifty.

I don't know how consistent I will be with item sifting, or how long I need it to be, but I will try to be positive about it as Cid and I resettle our possessions back into our home.

 

Vote of the week:

If you had the opportunity of a lifetime to travel to any time/place on earth to do something amazing, where would you be going, and what would you be doing?

I have a specific answer in mind, but I'd like to see what y'all say first.

 

See you tomorrow as Week 1 begins!

Sincerely,

Maerad