In Which Sarah Barr Does Not Lose A Forfeit Three Challenges in a Row (#24)

[Sarah Barr]

ARGH

I lost my yarn stash last challenge, and I had to do street theatre in a crop top the one before that, because I am lazy and had to do my Idiot Jar forfeits. I am perfectly capable of sticking to my usual goals for prolonged periods, as I have consistently proved when I am not being LAZY.

Grumble.

 

Goal 1:

• 1600kcal/day

• 5 Freggies/day

• 2 litres water/day

• Prep at least one batch of meals every weekend. 

 

Goal 2:

• Gym 4 times a week. Pick up a bloody barbell this challenge, are you a warrior or aren't you? (Extra 200kcal of protein shake permitted immediately after each lifting session.)

 

Goal 3:

• Work on handstands, balance, and the splits, as per previous challenge, but with some actual regularity. (i.e. after lifting sessions.)

 

Tracking:

• Post daily in thread. DAILY. (Can skip weekends.) Detail Goal 1 progress, and what I did during lifting and gymnastics sessions. You can have a link to an interesting polar thing with every update this challenge. 

• Every time I miss one bullet point in my goals, £1 goes in the Idiot Jar.

• When the Idiot Jar reaches £5, it's forfeit time. Except it's not, because I AM NOT GOING TO FAIL.

 

FORFEIT:

Big guns. I am not losing this forfeit. I am not losing this forfeit. I am not losing this forfeit.

*Spend the first week of January sticking to a raw vegan diet.*

 

[deftona]

5 minutes ago, Sarah Barr said:

*Spend the first week of January sticking to a raw vegan diet.*

 

Wow, what a miserable way to bring in a year, and in the bleak midwinter too! But obviously that isn't going to happen because you will ace this! 

 

Following, as per  

[Blocky]

6 minutes ago, Sarah Barr said:

• When the Idiot Jar reaches £5, it's forfeit time. Except it's not, because I AM NOT GOING TO FAIL.

 

Yes. This. All of us are perfectly capable of doing all the things!

[Terah]

No, you are not failing, because you have the power of the doodlies behind you!

Good luck

[AugustaAdaByron]

Good luck!  

[wildross]

Good work honoring your losses .

 

Good luck this time

[Sarah Barr]

Update for Monday:

Calories: 1636

Freggies: 5

Water: Forgot to log. At least a pint?

Gym: Woke up too late, like an idiot. 

Bonus: Prepped some potatoes. But some turned out to be so full of blight they were practically geodes.

 

(Except, you know, the plain rock part is potato and the fancy rock part is rotten potato.)

 

(I ate some of the good ones for dinner, didn't feel too good after. Grumble. The person who restocks the veggies in my local Lidl just doesn't. Which is annoying because it's so much cheaper. But if I pay £1 for 2.5kg of spuds and 1kg is rotten, I might as well just spend £1.30 on 2.5kg in another shop. Boo.)

 

 

Gym today looked like:

- Warm up

- Planks, supermans, hollow body holds, cat-cows

- Warrior 1, pigeon pose, misc. lunges and forward bends, splits practice

- Down dog, forward folds, wrist exercises, wall-stands (got wall-stands up to about 20 seconds this time)

- Overhead press: 15kg x 10 x 3

- Lat pull down: 32kg x 10 x 3

- Back squat: 15kg x 10 x 3 (very light, but I finally managed to get ass-to-grass with a weighted squat!)

- More splits practice

- Balancing practice

 

 

Polar thing: 

Today I learned that you can find Arctic Charr in Loch Ness. 

 

[Shello]

On 11/28/2016 at 3:33 AM, Sarah Barr said:

FORFEIT:

Big guns. I am not losing this forfeit. I am not losing this forfeit. I am not losing this forfeit.

*Spend the first week of January sticking to a raw vegan diet.*

 

*shudders*  That beats anything my kids would have come up with.  No matter.  You won't be needing any stinking forfeit.  Rock this!

[Archon]

Holy Forfeit Batman!

Best of luck to you this challenge!

[Sarah Barr]

Update for Tuesday:

Calories: 1786/1800 (Idiot Jar Total: £0.00)

Freggies: 5/5

Gym: Lifted and did gymnastics work

Water: Why do I never log water? One litre or thereabouts (out of 2)

 

 

Rest day today (I'm going to aim for Mon, Tue, Thu and Fri in gym, and saving this week's Monday make-up session for Saturday morning). 

 

 

Polar Thing:

You know what? I'm switching this back to a general Marine Thing after today, because it gets too depressing. Today's big heap of candy canes and sparkles is an article about the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica melting from the inside out. 

[jmk]

Here!

[Sarah Barr]

3 hours ago, jmk said:

Here!

Hello!!

 

Update for Wednesday:

Calories: Unknown. Had some big dizzy spells, tried to make them go away with extra food. Downside: Didn't get rid of dizzy spells. Plus side: Now I know that doesn't work, I can save myself some more calories. Not counting this towards Idiot Jar because it was illness related and I didn't eat like a dick.

Freggies: 3

Rested as planned

Water: 1.5 litres (Closer!)

 

Gym today looked like:

- I slept in, so focused on bodyweight stuff today in the half hour I had. (I'll get used to waking at 6am again soon.)

- Warm up

- Core work: planks, locusts, cobra, cat/cow, side bends

- Handstand practice: extra wrist and shoulder warm ups, that-thing-where-you-rock-about-in-down-dog, managed to hold a wall stand for 25 seconds!

- Splits practice: Extra inner/outer thigh warm ups, Warrior 2, Pigeon pose, that-thing-I-call-lizard-pose-but-may-not-be, attempts at the splits. Getting closer.

- Balance practice: Finally figured out that the way to cope with having a fat inner thigh for tree pose is to press my foot against the skin just in front of the femur instead of against where the bone itself is, then it doesn't slip. Managed to hold tree pose for 20 seconds either side and come out of it without stumbling. 

 

Marine Thing:

Video on Nat Geo's Twitter feed showing how young moray eels are see-through. (And adorable.)

[Terah]

4 minutes ago, Sarah Barr said:

Had some big dizzy spells, tried to make them go away with extra food. Downside: Didn't get rid of dizzy spells. Plus side: Now I know that doesn't work, I can save myself some more calories.

That sucks. I hope they will go away. Food does help for me when I'm having dizzy spells. Especially the sugary kind  

 

[miss_marissa]

Another warrior/gymnast! *gasp!*

[Sarah Barr]

Update for Thursday:

- Calories: I lost the slip of paper I'm using instead of MFP which isn't working on my phone. I can't remember the total but I'm idiot-jarring this because I know there were too many chocolate frogs and too much wine*. Total: £1.00

- Freggies: At least one

- Water: 2 litres

- Gymmed as planned. 

 

Didn't sleep last night. One of those mornings where I try to unlock my coat with my house keys, so decided maybe attempting to be upside down or underneath a barbell wasn't a good idea. I'm looking forward to gym tomorrow, though, since I've got lots of time to do everything.

 

Got to be careful today - going to the Christmas market on my lunch break. Kind of grateful that I can't eat most of the food there (meat), and I can't drink mulled wine with work later. Pretty sure the garlic mushrooms are about 50% butter though. It still counts as a portion of freggies.

 

*There's a group of my friends who get together every fortnight and learn about a composer and listen to their work. It was Tchaikovsky this time, which made me very happy. Might be a plan to find a lower calorie substitute for the wine though.

 

 

Marine Thing:

New research indicates that almost three quarters of the food that manta rays eat may come from the deep sea. 

[DrFeelgood]

MFP gets periodically stupid on my phone, too.  The fastest way for me to get it working again is to dump the app then reinstall it.

[deftona]

6 hours ago, DrFeelgood said:

MFP gets periodically stupid on my phone, too.  The fastest way for me to get it working again is to dump the app then reinstall it.

 

Be careful doing this in future on a Windows Phone because the app is no longer supported and I uninstalled it and then it wouldn't let me reinstall it again

[Sarah Barr]

Update for weekend:

- I lost my calorie slips again but did not eat like a tool. Buying a tiny notebook I can keep in my pocket at all times today. 

- Parents were here, so did not gym but did go for a walk. 

- Slipped up on water

- Freggies were sufficient, though. I even ate spinach. Willingly. 

 

Gym today looked like:

- Being 1 inch away from the splits! (I'm still not sure what exactly qualifies as "the splits" at a small scale, so I'm aiming for "being able to balance relatively comfortably on my thighs at 180 degrees without hand support". Still got an inch to go before the top of my backward-facing thigh is entirely on the mat, but getting there.)

- Wall-stand for 20 seconds, and shoulder stand. Latter was a bit wobbly but I managed to do it at all so that was good. 

- Came very, very close to doing tree pose without touching the wall for support. Just need to take it slow and be conscious of my balance at each step. 

- Plank was 35 seconds today.

- Usual stretching routine. 

Happy that I'm getting gradually better at the gymnastics, but it does take up all of my morning gym time. Maybe I should separate my routine into gymnastics on Day A and lifting on Day B. Hmm. Researching back warm ups though, because today was a bit rough on my back. 

 

Marine Thing:

This Nat Geo blog post from 2013 talks about the bioluminescent bacteria that live in Bobtail squid (and help it to disguise itself as starlight to hide from predators below it). The bacteria have been found to help control the squid's body clock. 

[Blocky]

3 minutes ago, Sarah Barr said:

 I even ate spinach. Willingly.

 

This seems weird and suspicious...

[Sarah Barr]

17 minutes ago, Blocky said:

 

This seems weird and suspicious...

Goat's cheese and caramelised onion had some heavy involvement, I will admit.

[Blocky]

Phew... that's seems a bit more normal....

[Terah]

1 hour ago, Sarah Barr said:

Goat's cheese and caramelized onion had some heavy involvement, I will admit.

That sounds yummy!

 

1 hour ago, Sarah Barr said:

Being 1 inch away from the splits!

Very impressive

[Sarah Barr]

Update for last couple of days:

 

Calories: £1 in Idiot Jar (The burrito was not worth it.)

Rested as planned on Tuesday, gymmed as planned on Monday.

Freggies: 6 on Monday, 5 on Tuesday

Water: About 1 litre both days. 

 

Gym today looked like:

- The usual handstand and split practice

- DB Rows, (1 x 16kg) x 8 x 3 each side

(About 1 hour 15 minutes total.)

 

I'm trying to find some good exercises to warm up my back for handstand practice - I think I'm finding it particularly hard on my back because of the weight of my stomach and chest. Doing my best to make sure my abs are thoroughly engaged, so the back isn't doing all the work, but I'm struggling to find ways to warm up the muscles. (Today's DB rows were done as part of that, which was why I didn't lift as much as I know I can.) I'm doing side bends, forward folds, trunk rotations, and locust pose, but I'm not sure if they're really doing the trick. 

 

Marine Thing:

Bummer about the amazing shark photo circulating on Twitter at the moment as Nat Geo's photo of the year: It's fake.

 

BUT if you want wonderful wildlife photographs that are either real or at least good enough to fool the Natural History Museum in London, here are some wonderful images by the winners and finalists of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016. 

 

[DrFeelgood]

It's a rare occasion indeed when a burrito is not worth it.

 

Then again, I've never eaten a burrito in Scotland.

[Sarah Barr]

Just now, DrFeelgood said:

It's a rare occasion indeed when a burrito is not worth it.

 

Then again, I've never eaten a burrito in Scotland.

Haha, they normally are, but for some reason this one was kind of cold and the cheese hadn't melted, and then for some reason I ate it anyway.