Elennare joins The Assassins

[Elennare]

Frowning, the assassin tugged on her battle gear.  Still snug, but she was at least able to get into it again.  Pausing to first look in on the sleeping toddler and then to make sure the tiny one was tucked snugly in his crib, she headed out into the night for a training run.

 

Nothing went well.  Forced to return to the house out of breath and frustrated, she climbed into bed vowing to get back to training, starting with the very basics again...

 

Main Quest:  Back to Fighting Shape! - Lose 5 pounds over the course of the challenge.  Score: A - 5lbs lost; B - 4 lbs lost; C - 3 lbs lost; D - 2 lbs lost; F - 1 or less lbs lost

 

Quest 1:  Eat Better! - Make and follow a meal plan.  I need this both to help with eating better, and because it's cheaper and we need to work on saving money right now.  I'm also wanting to try the paleo diet, although my husband wants nothing to do with it so it's kind of tricky to make that work.  I think it's doable with prior planning, though.  Also, having seen how this attempt went in the last challenge, I've adjusted my scoring a bit. 

-Score: A - 7 days/week following plan; B - 5 days/week following plan; C - 3 days/week following plan; D - 1 day/week following plan; F - no plan at all/didn't follow plan.  Bonus points for each day following paleo diet.

 

Quest 2:  So Tired...No More! - I have been stuck in a nasty cycle of going to bed late, sleeping in too late, getting to work late because now I'm stuck in traffic, which causes me to get home late, where I have no real time to spend with the family, we have dinner late, put the boys to bed, then I get ready for bed, and by then it's late, and the cycle continues.  Exercise?  Yeah right.  I barely have time to say hi to my husband, let alone think about doing something for myself.  This must end!  So.  I will be in bed by 9:30pm, and I will leave the house by 6am (on work days, obviously.  Weekends, still shooting for the bed time, just no requirement to leave the house). 

-Score: A - meet goals; B - no more than half hour late; C - no more than one hour late; D - more than an hour late to bed, but got up no more than half hour late; F - anything later than A-D.

 

Quest 3:  Improve Fitness! - So very out of shape!  I have a very good excuse, but it's time to be done with excuses and fix things.  Given my current state of busy, I think I set the bar a little too high in my first challenge, so scaling back a bit for this one.  Goal: 8,000 steps per day, and do an exercise video, go to an exercise class, or do another workout-like activity at least once per week.

-Score:  A - goal met; B - 56000+ steps/week, but no other exercise; C - 42000 - 56000 steps/week and other exercise; D - 42000-56000 steps/week but no other exercise; F - less than 42000 steps/week with or without exercise.

 

Life Quest: Get Stuff Done! - I have several knitting projects I have started and not finished.  One of them is a (now incredibly late) present for my husband.  So, goal is to finish the 3 projects currently partway done: husband's scarf, my socks, best friends birthday present.  Also, get the Halloween costumes made!  Looking at the calendar, I have 6 weeks before the Halloween costumes need to be finished, so this works perfectly with this challenge.

[Tateman]

You can do it!  I like how you have reshaped the goals from last time.  Looks good!

[holographicSam]

Good luck getting back into the swing of things! It's smart to start out with doable goals- good luck with them!

[Batwoman]

What are the Halloween costumes?

 

Incorporate paleo slowly. Like start with paleo breakfast for a week. Then when that seems easy incorporate lunch or dinner so on and so forth. It should be pretty easy to keep your husband non-paleo while you stay paleo. Just make the typical protein, veg, strachy bits and just don't put the starchy bits on your plate and replace it with more veg

 

I'm lucky enough to have a partner that does the paleo/primal diet with me, but I've seen a lot of cases where the significant other sees results in the paleo crusader and starts to hop on board

[lolavictrola]

Good luck! Glad you're joining us:)

[Elennare]

I have a meal plan for the week!  So far, following it.   Didn't do as well with the sleep quest.  Only an hour late to bed, but left the house an hour and a half late this morning. Part of that was due to the Little One having a cold, but still.  I can do better (and I will!).

 

The Halloween costumes - Thor for Little Bug (the 3 year old), Loki for Little One (the 8 month old), Frigga for me, and Odin for Husband.

[Elennare]

Yesterday's wrap up: did poorly on sleep, as already reported. Followed the meal plan, and was mostly paleo. Got a bit over 5000 steps, so need to do some work there.

Got to bed late again (2 hours late :-( ), but was out the door less than an hour late this morning, so there's a bit of improvement!

[Balthazar]

I have a meal plan for the week!  So far, following it.   Didn't do as well with the sleep quest.  Only an hour late to bed, but left the house an hour and a half late this morning. Part of that was due to the Little One having a cold, but still.  I can do better (and I will!).

 

The Halloween costumes - Thor for Little Bug (the 3 year old), Loki for Little One (the 8 month old), Frigga for me, and Odin for Husband.

those costumes sound great, I love how you have a family theme

[Elennare]

It's probably our only chance to do a family theme, because I'm thinking next year Little Bug is going to be old enough that he'll be picking his own costume in no uncertain terms!

 

Now we just have the hard part - finding time to actually make them!

[Batwoman]

Yay! I'm going to be Thor too! But probably to less adorable effect.

[Elennare]

Well.  Yesterday I stayed on my meal plan, and got a bit over 6,000 steps. Yay, getting some slight improvement there!

 

Unfortunately, I got to bed 2 hours late (I blame having my mom over to celebrate her birthday, but still) and left the house over an hour late this morning (totally the baby's fault.  He kept nursing every time I wanted to get up, and then spent a while crying if I tried to put him down.  And no, Daddy wasn't good enough.).  I also didn't have time to make the bacon for my salad for lunch today, as planned, so I am pretty much completely off the meal plan today.  Maybe dinner will still be per it, but the rest of the day, not so much.

 

On the up side, I'm taking my bike in to the shop to get fixed, and will hopefully start riding it to the bus stop instead of driving!  Will have to test the route out over the weekend, because there's no way I'm trying it for the first time when not fully awake!

[Whiskey_Shivers]

I take my bike into work every nice day I can, it'll def wake you up for the day!  Keep it up.

[Elennare]

Guess what? I got to bed only an hour late last night, and left the house only 45 minutes late this morning! Yay improvement (even if everything else about yesterday was a complete bust). :-)

The Little One decided to sleep completely thought the night for the first time last night as well. And I don't mean the baby definition of thought the night (which is 5-6 hours), but "still asleep at 5:45" through the night. I got the best night of sleep I've had in close to a year, I think!

[Batwoman]

[Elennare]

Yesterday wasn't too bad as far as following meal plan.  Dinner wasn't per plan (stupid bus!), but everything else was.  I got somewhere between 5 & 6k steps, so still cruising along at "alright" on that front.  Got my bike back from the shop, too.  I plan to take it out for a spin tomorrow!

 

Also, last night got to bed only 45 minutes late, and left only 45 minutes late this morning!  Which was impressive given how long Little One took to eat his breakfast and fall back asleep soundly enough that I could put him back in the crib (yes, he slept all the way through the night again! Woo Hoo!)

 

About the bus, and how that messed up dinner plans...  Normally it takes me around an hour to get home.  I have to take a bus from the P&R near my office to the transit center downtown and then transfer to the freeway express but to take me to my car (soon to be spot I'll bike from!).  There are 6 different routes that run from the P&R to the transit center.  Last night, when I got there, there was a bus sitting there, ready to head out.  It wasn't a route I had taken before, but I figured I'd try it.  Big mistake!  An hour later, I got to the transit center.  When I then had to wait for 20 minutes for my express bus.  Of which there are 2, with slightly different routes (one makes more stops than the other, and thus takes longer).  So, of course it was the longer one that showed up.

 

By the time I had gotten to my car, driven to the bike shop (5 minutes from my house), picked up the bike (took all of 5 minutes), and gotten home, it was 7:45.  Yeah, not cooking. Oy.  Will not be taking that bus again!

[Elennare]

Today's update: 2 meals more out less to plan, one very off. Got over 8k steps, played with the boys a lot, and I rode my bike!

I will probably not be able to move tomorrow. Haven't ridden it several years, and I went for an 8 mile ride. Well, two 4 mile rides with a short break at the store in between. However you want to look at it, though, I think I over did it a touch.

Up side, I proved I can ride the 5 miles to the bus stop. Down side, I found out I'm way too slow to get to the bus in any sort of reasonable amount of time. So, I'll have to work on that for a bit first.

[Batwoman]

Awesome! Hope you aren't super sore today.

[Elennare]

I did get a bit sore from the bike ride, but not nearly as much as I expected.  I am rather surprised, in fact.

 

Wrap up for the week:

Sleep:  I did pretty abysmally on this one.  I may have to re-think my goal slightly, since the baby seems to have decided he will not go to sleep before 10.   Score for the week: F

Food: I made a meal plan, and did a pretty good job sticking to it.  Spread out over the week, I had slightly less than 2 days worth of meals not per the plan.  Score for the week: B

Exercise: 42,582 steps for the week (which averages to a smidge over 6k steps per day), and I had a nice long bike ride. Score for the week: C.

 

Averaged together, my overall score on my quests is a D for the first week.  Got lots of room for improvement as we go!  I can do it!

 

Need to work a bit harder, though, because this week isn't off to the greatest start...

Sunday got up ok, not so good on the food, and then Sunday night the baby didn't want to sleep.  He went to sleep late, then woke up a bit after 2 and wouldn't go back to sleep until 3:50. o_0  As a result, Monday was a complete lost cause.  I did get a nap in, though, which helped a bit.

 

My meal plan for this week isn't as solid as last week's was.  However, I have a fridge full of veggies, and the plan for the week is to eat them before they go bad!

 

I'm thinking I may adjust my "get in bed by" time to 10pm, but we'll see how this week goes first.

[Elastigirl]

I think adjusting your sleep goal is a good plan, since with a baby you don't have a lot of control over it. That's a lot of steps in one week-great job!

[Elennare]

Thanks!

Sadly, this week is not going so well. Last night, the Little One did not want to go to sleep, so I didn't get to bed until 2am. I got 4 hours of sleep, and have been a complete basket case all day today. I think I have gotten back on track with eating, after a day or so not following the plan (such as it is this week), now I just need to work on moving more. And pray harder that I'm allowed to get more sleep, apparently...

[Harika]

One step at a time. It is super hard to have events prevent your new habits from happening, but as long as you do what you can when it is not completely impossible then you have done something.

[Elennare]

Week 2 down.  Food - C.   Exercise - F.  Only got 29,936 steps for the week, but I did sneak in a bit of exercise playing with the boys.  So, not a total loss.

Sleep - F.  I need to re-adjust this goal, since Little One refuses to go to sleep before 9:30, apparently.  I do still need to leave by 6 to get to work in time to get home at a reasonable hour.  So, new goal is: leave the house by 6 on weekdays, in bed by 9:30 or no more than 1/2 hour after Little One goes to sleep.

 

Got a massage on Saturday, and the lady was actually able to get my hip flexors to relax/release.  It was pretty crazy to feel my hips "drop" back to where they are supposed to be.  Yesterday evening I tried doing a lunge stretch...I can now get about twice as far down as I could before!  So, now I have extra motivation to step up my exercise - need to get all my muscles back in proper balance before they seize up again.

[Elastigirl]

How is week 3 going? Now, I'm typing that and it makes me think, wait we're at week 3 already?!  

[Elennare]

I know, how did we get to week 3 already?!?

 

It's going...alright.  Meal plan is still "use what's in the fridge" and have mostly managed to stick to that.  I think next week we'll need to do some grocery shopping, so I'll need an actual plan.  We've also signed up for a CSA box, so that has made some of the grocery shopping easier (and I think maybe cheaper?), and keeping us well supplied with veggies.

(side note: does anyone know a good way to cook a "delicata" (not sure I spelled that right) squash?)

 

Sleep has been a mess, because Little One has not been sleeping well due to having a cold.  The other night, he didn't go to sleep until almost 11 (I got to bed around midnight) woke up at 2, then didn't go back to sleep until 4.  Propped up on my arm.  Which made getting up on time interesting.  As in, not gonna happen.  Thankfully, he seems to be on the mend, so hoping for better sleep.

 

Need to walk more, but I think I'm maybe doing better than last week?  Hopefully I'll manage to squeeze in some sort of workout in the next couple of days.

 

Edit: forgot to add, I must still be doing something right, though, because my pants are starting to feel a bit looser on me.  Not like "need a new pair soon" looser, yet, but definitely not as snug as they were!

[Elennare]

Week 3 down!  Yikes, how'd we get halfway through this already?!?

 

Sleep, big mess this week.  F.

Food, doin' alright.  Can be better.  C.

Exercise: 37497 steps.  And, I got some exercise...a body weight workout, but using someone else's body!   Walking around at a festival yesterday, carried one or the other of the boys for probably at least a half hour.  Sadly, I did not meet my minimum step goal, so, rather than a C, I get an F for the week.

 

I did manage to pick up fabric/patterns to start working on the boy's costumes.  Still missing some stuff for the Thor costume.  Realized I already had most of the fabric needed for Loki (score!), and haven't started anything on mine or The Husband's costumes.  Oh well.  Can at least get started on the "easy" ones.