Accountability - I need more of it!

[domobird]

Hey all,

my name is Becca and I'm 22 years old. Domobird is my interwebz name, but is also the name of my feisty little parrotlet whom I adore. I'm an avid animal lover, a gamer, an adventurer and I'm in the process of trying to be more of a health nut. I graduated a year ago from university with a BSc in Animal Health majoring in companion animals and was employed, but just got laid off a month and a half ago and still job hunting.

In terms of health and fitness, I have my parents to thank for bringing me up as a fit and mostly healthy child. I was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do by the time I was 14, I have been playing soccer (indoor & outdoor) since I was 4, I was on the swim team and swam every morning for the first semester of 3 years of high school, and I'm always down for trying something new. I never really excelled at sports, maybe just above average, and this may be due to my very shy, reserved nature. In terms of diet, I was on the completely wrong path up until last summer. Prior, I would eat bread and pasta like a beast. Toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, pasta or burger or pizza for supper. Not to mention my infinite snacking habit. I started investigating gluten-free living last summer, then came across paleo/primal (though primal resonates with me better) and jumped on board about 80%. My weight has been bouncing between 120-130 lbs my whole adult life (I'm 5'2"), but I always knew that a majority of that weight is muscle weight. When I switched to eating paleo and cutting breads and pasta especially, I started to feel fantastic. I knocked off 4 lbs to 116lbs at my lowest and it was great (though I could have been more healthy about it) and my only exercise was dancing to practice for our local Animethon and soccer. My biggest motivation was actually this dance for the Animethon, I was planning on cosplaying Rikku (FFX-2) and therefore wanted to look fabulous and my friends and I did fantastic, especially considering 2 of us are quite shy (check us out! Sorry for the horrid video quality haha XD).

Ok so that was my success and I thought I was doing great. Then winter hit again, I got a different job and went into hibernation mode. Got super lazy (besides the usual soccer and occasional dance night of Just Dance 3 ) and here I am back up at 125 lbs and my lovely flat stomach is no more. But my boyfriend, best friend and I signed up for the Vancouver Tough Mudder. It is on June 23 o.O I feel like I've got a good base start for it, but my upper body strength is nowhere near what it needs to be and neither is my endurance. I also intend to be cosplaying again in beginning of August and would love to look even better this year. Oh, and I'm also going to Maui in October - Becca needs an awesome beach bod

So ultimately my goals ATM are:

1. Be able to do a pull-up
   
2. Complete the Tough Mudder still standing
   
3. Break my bad food addictions
   
4. Look smashing at Animethon 2012
   
5. Assist my boyfriend in a achieving a 300 body
   
6. Learn to cook meat
   

My plan?

1. Use NF's guide to being able to do a pull-up. And do it!
   
2. Be a bad-ass fitness nut for the next 5 weeks (and forever?). Use the rest of my Groupon for crossfit - go 2x a week. Hot yoga 1x/week. Runs/sprints with the dog to build cardio/endurance.
   
3. I have a terrible habit of binge-eating... particularly at night, after I've smoked a bowl. (I'm already cutting back on that habit). I used to be addicted to diet coke, then I switched to sugar-free energy drinks. I know all the aspartame is horrid for me, but it was always so much tastier than water. In the past month, besides when I'm drinking with friends, I have started drinking water always. It's been working. As for food, I love my meat, so no problem eating that. I cannot control myself around snack foods though - even healthy ones. Any kind of nut butter will be gone in days, dried fruit too. So I plan to buy more veggies and healthy dips (I hate cooked veggies and can only motivate myself to eat raw if it's with dip). Any suggestions for a paleo/primal food that is great for munching on while watching TV would be great. o.O
   
4. Keep on dancing and picturing myself looking smashing.
   
5. My boyfriend works out of town at camps and such. So this is a difficult one, but just this past week, we've started texting a picture of everything we eat to each other. And I sent him the NF hotel workout. Looking out for his health will help me look out for my own!
   
6. I'm a terrible cook. Even worse at baking - good thing I don't eat baked goods anyways! I will try to cook a tasty chicken breast and it will taste oddly flavorless. My go-to meal is always ground beef smothered in BBQ sauce... but obviously I need more variety than that. I want to know how to cook all kinds of cuts of meat. So my plan is to pick a different cut/type of meat each week and try it out. And not give up.
   

Overall, I'm really looking forward to this community helping to keep my accountable. So I can't have those days where I just don't care. So I can be a part of this community that resonates with me so well - nerds that love fitness and health. It's great. So I can partake in challenges and see the success of others. I want to help others be successful as well! So all in all, very excited to have found this and to become a part of NF

[Strawberry Squatcake]

Welcome! Wow a Tough Mudder. That's a fantastic goal and will be so awesome when you finish it!

As for eating, I try not to snack at all in front of the TV because mindless eating is mindless eating for me. But that's just me. I have more weight to lose than you.

And cooking. I LOVE to cook, so I know I don't relate well to those who don't know how or dislike it. But my suggestion is to pick something you want to make, look it up on allrecipes.com and then take some time to read through all of the comments. People will say, "Do this" or "Avoid doing this" and anything that's not clear in the instructions is usually clarified in the comments sections. I love recipe sites, and have self-taught myself to cook a bunch of stuff (beer butt chicken, for example - look it up, YUM!) by trial and error and using the comments section a kind of a cheat sheet.

Good luck with your goals! I'm working toward one pullup, too!

[tigersheart]

awesome goals! welcome and good luck!

[katscratch]

Hiya! Love your intro!

And I'm guessing you're from BC not WA I grew up in WA and lived in Bellingham before moving to the Midwest, and I miss Vancouver a ton!!! We have a bit in common- I worked in veterinary medicine (as a tech) for years, but now work in human surgery--still love my animals, though! I also, having a bazillion friends on the veggie spectrum, am sadly lacking in my meat preparing and have always left that to my Minnesota-bred hunting-fishing dude friends, but am learning more and more. I am hoping to learn how to fish this summer as my idea of fishing in the PNW was to walk out into the river and pick up a salmon or trout. Oh and I've discovered that almonds satisfy my snacking-when-smoking need just as well as Sugar Babies used to Ok enough about me haha!

I love that you and your boyfriend are both committed and are keeping each other accountable, that's awesome! Sounds like you're off to a great start!