A quick update on HabitRPG

So, I've been using HabitRPG for a while now, and I have to admit that between the web site and the Android App, I'm actually using it daily. It's helping me with things I should be doing but don't want to do, and also I'm rewarding myself with things I already know I can do every day.

Let's take a look at what I'm using it for!

Ok, here we have my general tasks. This is stuff I do multiple times per day, or otherwise seems like it fits here. We have weigh-in and update (1x a day), Track on MFP (6+ times a day), Take the Stairs (2+ times a day), Brush Teeth and Floss (1-2x a day), Cook Dinner (1x a day), and Friday Donuts (1x a week). For each of these I have a positive (do the good behavior) and negative (do the bad behavior), with negatives like 'Don't weigh-in', 'Skip Tracking', 'Take the Elevator', 'Eat dinner out', or 'Eat a Donut'.

All of these are really easy, honestly, and that's ok, this is more about reminding me to brush teeth and to give me positive reinforcement.

Next up we have Dailies.

These are a bit harder, but still not bad. These I can do or not do once per day. If they are grey, I've already done them or they aren't due today (many tasks only make sense on certain days). If they are a color, then they are due today. Blues and greens are things I'm doing well, yellows and reds mean I'm missing them.

Finally we have the To-do list. This is stuff that needs to get done eventually.

For these, they're all red, which means 'I haven't done these in a long time'. Most of them are long term or waiting for the right time. When I finally tick them off, they'll get me more credit. This is the area where I'm really not keeping up with it like I should, as there are TONS of things I could add to here. I should start working on that soon, and add the things I want to remind myself to do but am just not doing for whatever reason.

Overall, HabitRPG is pretty clever and a great way to encourage you to do things. However, it's also one more thing to check every day, and I can see how that would get annoying quick.

Back in the Kitchen!

After eating out two days in a row (oh, the luxury!), I was surprised to see I'd lost weight again! But, we can't keep eating out every day, so I hit the grocery store and spent some time in the kitchen tonight.

Today was a stay home and clean house day for most of the day, doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, organizing some board games for Geekway to the West, cleaning the kitchen, putting away boxes, that sort of thing, but I did get out this weekend to buy groceries and go to The Container Store and Target.

The Container Store allowed me to pick up an extra shelf for our Elfa unit that is now 'Medifast central'. It also let me pick up a dozen little containers perfect for Medifast-sized almond snacks. We re-organized the unit and got more cereal and crunchy snacks in there, and have a lot of ready-to-go almond containers as well.

Target, I got two new pairs of jeans in a smaller size... they should end up being too big, but they were on sale so they will do for now. We also picked up a bunch of plastic shoe boxes to try to increase our organization some.

But, this blog post is about getting back in the kitchen! I made Ginger Orange Chicken with peppers, seasoned white mushrooms, and baked Medifast Reese's Cup Brownies.

The mushrooms were tossed into a pan with water, rice vinegar, hot mustard, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and soy sauce and boiled until they were well seasoned.

The chicken, I diced it and tossed it in a large bowl with soy sauce, ground ginger, orange peel, and green bell pepper, and then stir-fried it in olive oil with a dash of sesame oil

While it was missing rice, dumplings, and eggrolls, it was still excellent. I baked the brownies in the oven while cooking and let them chill in the fridge for a couple hours.

At some point I'm going to have to start taking pictures when I cook, so I've got something interesting to show on the blog posts!

Finally, tonight I made some edits to my blog layout... I added my HabitRPG character (just an image capture for now, I'll have to manually update it until I find a way to automate it). I also edited my World of Warcraft banners so that if you click them it takes you to their Armory pages. Now you can see just how much I ignore my poor Horde Druid compared to my Alliance Warlock.

50 pounds down! Also, I jumped back into HabitRPG!

50 Pounds? Seriously?

I weighed last night before bed and was shocked to see that I was only up a few tenths of a pound, and sure enough, when I weighed in this morning, I was down a couple of pounds. Those pounds took me to 50 pounds lost! I'm on the other side of halfway now.

Today was also a measurement day... I haven't posted about these in a while (if ever?) and so let's see where we stand!

Neck: 19 inches (was 21 inches on January 16)
Biceps (relaxed): 14.5 inches (was 16 inches on January 16)
Biceps (flexed): 16.5 inches (was 17.5 inches on January 16)
Belly: 46.5 inches (was 53.5 inches on January 16)
Thigh: 27 inches (was 28.5 inches on January 16)

Overall, this is a good trend. I'm sure I'm losing a little lean mass as I lose weight, that is to be expected. But I'm doing better than expected and I'm sure I'll end up at a point where I need to bulk up a little on the muscle mass once I get to transition and maintenance.


HabitRPG


While on MFP today, I saw a post talking about HabitRPG, and I reminded myself that I was an early adopter of this, but I never really used it. I decided to get back into it and see what was up.

The first thing I noticed was that it works a lot better than it used to. I was dead, back to level one, and my training sword was damaged, but everything made sense and worked nicely.

In just a few minutes, I was back in and had updated my tasks, keying off all the things I should do every day. You can set up dailies that only fire off on certain days of the week, as well, so things like 'take out the trash' are easier to set up as well! You can also set difficulites for yourself, so that things you don't want to do give you more gold and XP.

An adventurer is me!

I was able to add a lot more tasks to my sheet and we'll see if I keep up with it this time. I've downloaded the app to my phone, and added it to my status bar. If it is fun, I'll keep up with it. I did notice that you can 'cheat' and just give yourself XP and Gold, but there's little point in that. Despite losing my previous progress, I'm ok with starting fresh as well.

Anyone else using HabitRPG? Has it worked for you?