Inching my way down the slope, need a push

[idealist]

Hello! I'm idealist. I'm a newcomer to this board and a college student. I discovered this board through googling 'parkour' (I've wanted to do parkour since freshman year), read a bunch of the links, and thought it was a breath of fresh air from the usual television-doctor type of garbage that took advantage of women's anxiety about their appearance and made money off of it. This cynicism stopped me from making any plans to improve my health even after my mom called me fat. Would I be giving in to their game? Don't get me wrong, part of my motivation for working out is getting rid of my gut and losing weight, but I'd also wanted to be able to DO more things. Like running. Part of what inspired me was the section about creating a superhero alter-ego and asking what they would do instead of giving up during a workout. I wanted to feel like I could live up to that and be more awesome.

I've just finished my first challenge today and I would like to post about how that went.

Don't get me wrong, I'm feel pretty good about how I did. I'm more comfortable with eating vegetables now. I've gone from having difficulty running even 5 minutes to running 20 minutes almost in a row for the first time today. As a lifelong hater of egg-dishes, I've made my first omelet. I've discovered that I can do a lot more things if I just try harder. Maybe I could even do a 5k in the not-so-distant future, and I've never really thought of myself as a marathon runner.

Before:

After:

 

 

However, I'm still not exactly on the ball yet. I'm overweight. I haven't met my goal of doing strength training every few days (I've probably done it 7 times over 6 weeks!) I haven't met my life challenge of socializing more at all. I'm starting to slip diet-wise, buying sugary coffee drinks during the school day in order to get a quick burst of energy and eating sugary cereal for breakfast because it's easier than making my own meal. I'm worried about running during the winter because I prefer the outdoors to running on an indoor track or on a treadmill, plus the days are getting a lot shorter so I might as well kiss my standard after-dinner running goodbye  .

 

So I'll keep posting on this board so that people can get me to snap out of unhealthy habits. Not really looking for anyone to tell me I'm making too many excuses (I know that already), just some constructive criticism and encouragement would be nice.

 

I enjoy literature (especially anything more modern/russian and poetry, Gibran and Whiman among my favorites), music (classical and rock in general), and some film/t.v. every once in a while. Although I like Kirk more, Picard was by far the better captain.

 

I apologize if I come off as haughty, I'm just tired right now and tend to get rather too talkative when I'm like this.

Goodnight!