No excuses here!

[EdF]

      So… I failed my first challenge. First of all I'd like to apologize to the ones who tried cheering me up and checking out my progress on my first challenge topic, I didn't respond any comments after I started going downhill, that was not cool and I want to say that you people are the best. I won't give any excuses for not achieving my goal at my first go, those were some harsh moments, but ultimately I was the one failing and nothing can change that now. I won't start this challenge with my head down, I actually learned a lot about myself in those 6 weeks and for that I'm grateful for finding this site, this community and going thru everything that happened.

 

      I'll start with the why I failed, as I said, no excuses here, just an objective observation of the facts.

 

Discipline

1.    My willpower bar is just too low, after some days of doing everything right I tend to wake up one day and with my morning coffee I chew down a bread full of butter and cheese, and then the rest of my day goes havoc.
2.    Exercising is easy when you're bored and you don't have tons of exams to study and classes to attend or even personal responsibilities that will ultimately take away your exercise time. It takes discipline to exercise everyday at the same hour and don't let anything else get it the way of it. Body weight calisthenics works great for me, but I failed on respecting the training times, skipping days and stopping working out altogether.
3.    Studying everyday is hard, but necessary in my situation. The thing is, I started my first challenge during my exam period and as usual I tried to study everything 3~4 days before the exam. You can guess that this plan of action was destined to failure due my lack of discipline. I went well on my exams, but that was consolidated through caffeine, nicotine, sugar and sedentarism.
4.    Though I didn't drink much I couldn't stop smoking. I guess I need some professional help for that and a different course of action. That will take some discipline too, but I have to stop thinking that it's not and addiction yet, because it surely is.
5.    I picked too many quests and goals and planning. As I already said, my willpower bar is low, and every decision we make throughout the day bites a chunk of that bar and If its not big enough or regen fast enough, we will go back to our old habits that takes no willpower at all.

 

Eating

1.    I found that paleo is good for me, although I still need to make some changes on it and make it a habit. Bing eating and sugar cravings surely had a part on everything that went bad and the “Discipline†topic up there surely walks hand to hand on that one.
2.   I lack diversity when on paleo, since it's new to me I don't have a variety of choices when it comes down to meals. It's easy to get bored of only eating the same kind of protein source and a simple salad. Also, I need better quality fat to be introduced in my everyday diet.

 

      Now I have a different approach to this challenge. I learned that sometimes planning is a disguised procrastination that fulfills your needs for feeling productive and going somewhere in your life, but instead it takes your energy from taking action and really achieving something. I'm not saying that planning is evil, its not! But I found that I function better after I get my gears warm and going and then I do the planning.

      So I decided that I would do a nano 1 week challenge alone, before posting my second challenge here on nerdfitness. I have the basics of what I want to achieve and I'll focus my energy on acting towards it and organizing my thoughts during this week. If I succeed, then I'll post my challenge!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Welcome back. That is some very good self awareness and a good plan for starting over. I really like the idea of a mini challenge to set yourself up for success before you go rolling into the next challenge with some momentum. I look forward to your success!

[CandiRose]

great insight!

good luck with your nano challenge

[Raincloak]

sounds good!

 

If you crave bread and butter first thing in the morning, try "bulletproof" coffee (coffee with a scoop of coconut oil or butter in it) and a microwaved sweet potato, to soothe that need for carbs.