A funny thing happened on the way to Mordor

Good afternoon! So today's blog deliberately comes to you on Thursday because yesterday was July 4^th and since we're 'Mericans we decided to go spend the day with my parents and nephew so we were not at the house all day. I did remember to step on the scale yesterday before leaving and I'm proud to say I have now lost 16.8 lbs! 

Very proud of this achievement!

I'm so excited I'm so close to my goal for Twitchcon! I set myself up for a reasonable goal to hit for Twitchcon, I started at 289 and I wanted to hit 250 by then so that's only 39 lbs but I didn't start doing Keto until May which is also when I started doing a friendly weight competition among Convert to Raid friends. CTR is a WoW guild that has a lot of friends in it that I have gained over the years and they have a friendly competition through out the year for folks to work towards fitness goals and hit them by Blizzcon, well since I'm not going to Blizzcon I'm going to Twitchcon which is the weekend beforehand that's my goal. I'm very excited to see that I'm heading in the right direction for my goal and I have to say it's very nice to be in the fitness groups here in CTR and in other Discords I'm a part of like our GirlStreamers discord. Having the conversations and tips really help me stay on track even if I fall off the wagon there's always someone that helps encourage me to hop back on. I hope that it helps others as well!

Speaking of fitness I've been pushing Ron to walk with me more even if its just a little bit because we have to get more active, walking is one of my favorite activities I mean I love hiking which is essentially walking up mountains! Anyway, I re-downloaded the Pokemon Go app to add to the pleasure of walking. I actually quite like the updates to the app since it first came out. It's much easier to level up now, you have so many more Pokemon compared to what you had last time, I don't feel overwhelmed with Ratatta constantly, I feel the gym system has improved and there are so many more PokeStops now! There are lots of other improvements too so it has most definitely made walking more fun and Ron is more likely to go if I ask him if he wants to go Pokemon hunting. I know that sounds really nerdy, hey we are nerds what can I say, but he'd rather go to the gym and lift weights for his workout. The problem with that is he's not going to the gym so I'm trying to do something to motivate not just myself but also Ron to get more active. Hopefully, once we get into the habit of catching Pokemon a couple days out of the week Ron may then go to the gym and start lifting weights again. We've both become so lethargic and the heat hasn't helped so it's definitely a pain to get ourselves out but yay for apps like Pokemon Go and Walk to Mordor that help with motivation!

Oh you haven't heard of Walk to Mordor? Well, let me just educate you a little bit! Last year I heard about someone who calculated the amount of miles it would take to actually follow Frodo's footsteps to Mordor to destroy the ring and then back, 1932 miles according to the app. So as someone who would love to hike the Appalachian trail some day this intrigued me! Yes that is still a dream of mine but its expensive to live like a bum for 6 months out of the year so I've had to push it aside for the time being and work on other exciting adventures. Anyway, I was using a google doc form I had found for awhile but it was very hard to keep up with and I kept forgetting to add my miles in but one day I decided to just look on the app store and see if by chance someone had made an app for that and low and behold someone has! It's literally called Walk to Mordor and is available on the Google Play store, I'm not sure about iPhone but I'd imagine if Android has it so does Apple. It's a pretty simple app, you're still logging the miles yourself but it's so much easier than the google doc. What's cool is it will also give you excerpts from the books when you hit certain key points along your journey. I'm really having fun with this and its another cool thing to help me stay motivated. I use my Fitbit to calculate and keep up with everything and then transfer that information over to the WTM app and it's quite fun. On top of that I do the friendly week and weekend competitions with friends which helps me step up my game. I actually have found that I'm more competitive with myself than others but I still like doing the challenges with friends because I have some power walker friends so they are my step goals I'd like to hit so having them there keeps me going as well.

Walk to Mordor app

Walk to Mordor App

If you're interested in running apps when I was able to run I used to use an app called Zombies, Run! It's a very well done app and I had a lot of fun with it. If you have music on your phone it will pull from those playlists on your phone which I think is really cool and you pick up supplies and other things while running. Actually talking about the app makes me kind of want to download it again, it was a lot of fun and I never got into chapter 3 so it would be nice to learn more about the story. It is geared more towards runners than walkers, but it's a lot of fun and I highly recommend checking it out!

So, wasn't expecting this to turn into an app review but I hope these cool apps that I've used can help you in your motivation somehow. If you have any suggestions on motivation or apps you use let me know! I'm always down to try something new.