This is what I do

It's been over a week since my last post. I missed out on last week's RFSC weekly update because I didn't feel like posting. Anyone who knows me in person can tell you that I'm quite a moody person, and it's reflected in the frequency of my blog updating... both this blog and my main blog.

So updates... updates!

Things went up and down since the last post... nothing unusual in my story I guess. Last week (Week 4 RFSC) I put a goal of getting exercise 6 days in the week, and I ended up with 5 days. Not too bad. But the eating part didn't go well, I mean I had cake every day, and salties, and they kept on giving me cholesterol-trigger food at work. And being the true Indonesian girl, I eat what's been served for me... no waisting food! :P. In addition, I had quite some "digestion blockage" (if you get what I mean ;P ), and I practically gained 1 kg by the weekend! Can "junk" in your system really weigh that much??

Week 5 came and at that point the negative voices in my head told me, what's the point of posting goals in RFSC if you're not keeping any of that? I didn't know what goal I would put in to the challenge and so I didn't post anything.... so much for accountability, right?

But it's not all down hill from there. Even though my head was not completely in the game, somehow I did exercise on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (just hours before I wrote this post). I've had more veggie and fruit the last 3 days, plus returning to my morning protein shake for breakfast, and as result, my weight seems to be stabilizing again around 57.5 kg, my "blockage" is resolving, signs or high cholesterol is wearing away. I feel better now.

It was the words from this article on Daily Spark that somehow nudged me and helped me to get a grip and not completely got lost in my slump.

"You do this because that's what you do"

Because I've committed to this path, and this is what I do. Exercise, watch my diet, try to improve my health and fitness.

"You can do less, but you can't give up. You don't quit, even if you do need to take a day off because life interferes."

This past few weeks, it's really starting to sink more into my mind that I can't let go of this path. My body has come to that stage in life where it just can't take so much laziness and gluttony. As much as I like yummy fatty salty food and lazing in front of the computer all day, my body can't seem to take it anymore. Let's face it, I'm in my 30's. Metabolism is slowing down significantly. It's not like when I was teenager or in early 20's when I could practically eat over 2000 cals a day but didn't gain anything.

If I don't want to have headache and stiff neck everyday, if I don't wanna keep buying new clothes cos I keep gaining weight, if I don't wanna be winded just after a day of more physical activity, then the only way for me is to stay in this path. There's no real ending to the journey.

Stay on it, take it one day at a time.

I've lost count on how many times I've derailed since I started in late 2009. At times I derailed for months, other times I only derailed for a few days. But I came back. I'll keep coming back, because this is what I do.

Mid week, not bad :)

Half way into the week and so far it's going absolutely better than the past two weeks as I'm still keeping up with my exercise goal for the week!

Tuesday I did Leslie's 2 miles walk/jog which is about 25 minutes, plus 10 minutes toning. Then on Wednesday night I decided to kick it up a notch with Leslie's 4 miles walk/jog interval for about 45 minutes which felt great. And just this evening, I switched to the Biggest Loser workout, doing the low intensity cardio for 25 minutes and sculpting for 10 minutes.

I'm pretty happy that my knee didn't act up during exercise, especially today which involved quite a bit of lunges and squats. The reason I started the week with walks is that I was still kinda worried about the knee. It's strange that it still hurt a bit going up/down stairs, but it didn't hurt at all going on a walk/jog interval or jumping jacks, although it sometimes feels uncomfortable doing lateral movements like sidesteps. Well at least now I can already do some lower intensity workout! :).

Btw, I almost forgot how much I enjoy Bob Harper's workout in Biggest Loser. In fact Biggest Loser + Leslie Sansone got me losing weight the first time around in 2010! I'm definitely putting back Bob's workout in my rotation.

So exercise is going pretty well, but the eating department still needs some work. I've been snacking too much and already drank some diet soda :$, plus I'm not getting fruit and/or vegetable daily. Gotta control myself better!

Well, that's 4 days... 3 more days to next RFSC check in, and this time I'm gonna have better report! :D

PS: I've turned off the comment verification setting. Didn't even remember that I have that setting on :P.

It's getting better

I'm happy to report that I got my first workout in 2 weeks tonight. It was just an easy 2 miles walk and short toning session with Leslie's video, but it really felt nice :).

I almost didn't workout because I've been feeling sick-ish since last night and got only a little sleep, so I was kinda drousy the whole day. But a dear friend at work said that maybe a light workout would do me good. And it did :). It made me physically feel better and made me happier knowing I met at leas one of my goal for today, that is 30 minutes of workout! I didn't do so well with eating though...  but it's ok, it's getting better!

Thanks everyone for leaving encouraging comments on the last post :) I'm thinking of how to get through a week of meeting coming on 30th April and will try to come up with a strategy. I've also visited everyone's blog in RFSC, although I didn't leave any comment... I'm pretty bad at it :$. Just letting you know that I'm wishing everyone a great healthy week!

Btw, just thought I'd share a pic from my field trip last week, I was about to board the small - single propeler - plane from Medan to Padangsidimpuan. It was quite a fun ride! ;)

RFSC Week 3/Week 4

First of all, I wanna thank everyone who left kind and encouraging words on last week's post. This is another reason why I join this challenge in the first place, to connect to other bloggers and have that support system. So thank you guys, you're all wonderful!


That said, I'm afraid I don't have any good news for week 3. I spent the whole week out of town, in fact I'm still stranded in a hotel room as I write this. from Tuesday till Saturday morning, I went to this small town called Padangsidimpuan, somewhere in North Sumatera. Spent approximately one day in meeting, one day doing some field check on several areas on the border of the town... and by field check I mean spending hours driving around, and another day in the hotel wrapping up the data we gathered and writing reports.

Whenever I'm out of town like this, there's no other option but to eat out. And Padangsidimpuan had very little option. I mean there's a lot of "warung makan" (small restaurants), but they all serve pretty much the same kind of food, spicy & fatty food with little or no vegetable at all. It seems in this part of the country, they cook nearly everything in coconut milk. You can just tell how fatty there are because you can see a layer of "oil" floating on the serving bowl. Imagine that.

After days of that plus the lack of physical activity, I ended up with a slight headache and tension on my shoulder. Oh... cholesterol strikes again :(.

I can go on and on ranting about it, but the truth is, this is not the first time it happens. Every time I'm out of town for meetings and such, this happen. And instead of complaining about it, I should just find a better way to deal with it. All the meeting and spending full weeks in hotels is a part of my job, so I should find a solution.

Apparently, I'm lacking self control. I'm lacking the determination to make the best out of every situation with regards to my health choices. I tend to just give in to the situation at hand, instead of finding a way out of it. And thereby, I keep failing at meeting my goals. I'm sabotaging myself. I'm sabotaging my health.

I can't keep going like this.

So, on to week 4 challenge. I don't want big goals. I want small attainable goals. But the biggest goal I'm setting myself up to is to complete all my small goals.

Weight loss: maintenance, as simple as that.

NSV : Meet ALL of this week's challenge. It's mind over matter!!

Nutrition : No soda, eat at least one fruit and one portion of vegetable everyday, no cholesterol inducing protein (i.e. shrimp, squid, crab, fatty red meat, egg yolk).

Exercise : minimum 30 minutes of any kind of exercise for 6 days.

Wish me luck guys! Your support means a lot to me :).

RFSC Week 2/Week 3

I honestly don't feel like posting this. Week 2 had been a big failure. I didn't exercise at all. At first it was because of my knee... then I got scared of hurting them again... then I think I just got lazy. I had 3 glasses of soda last week, and 2 out of 7 days I didn't eat my fruit. Yeah, so that was week 2. The only bright side of week 2 was that I dropped 0.5 kg and have maintained for the last 4 days. Not that it matters because weightloss is not suppose to be my measure of success anymore.

What about goals for week 3? I'm going out of town for a little field work from Monday to Saturday. Needless to say I won't be putting up any goals for next week because the odds are I will not be able to meet them.

So yeah, that's it. I hope I'll have more positive posts after week 3.

Short pause

I haven't exercised this week. As much as not exercising bothers me, the thought of having long term knee injury like 4 years ago bothered me more. And so I decided  to take a few more days off Body Revolution and/or exercise.

Sunday was my rest day, and that's what I did mostly, just rest and put ice pack on my knee, in hope that the next day it would feel better and I would be able to exercise again.

Monday morning came and my knee bothered me even more. Not only my knee hurt going up and down the stairs at work, but I felt discomfort and stiffness running through my upper and lower leg. Sitting in my desk was not comfortable that I often left my desk to stand and walk around a bit in the office. So in the evening I decided not to exercise, and put my feet up with hot pack on the knee.

This morning as I woke up, I was happy to notice that the discomfort and stiffness in my knee and legs was almost completely gone! Even walking up the stairs of the office didn't hurt anymore... yay! I thought that I can exercise again tonight. But this afternoon going down the stairs of the office, I felt just a slight pinch in my knee.

Right now I'm having hot pack on my knee again and I decided that I won't exercise tonight, just to be sure the knee is completely healed. I think it will be all good tomorrow and I can continue with Body Revolution - taking it easy though.

Thank you everyone for your kind comments on the previous post, and wish me luck with the knee! :)

RFSC week 1 recap and week 2 goals

Week One

Week one had it's ups and downs, but overall it was pretty good. I accomplished my nutrition goal to not drink any soda. To be honest giving up on "calorie - sugary" drinks (except for low fat milk) had always been the easiest part of dieting for me.... cutting back salties and carbs on the other hand, always a struggle.As for the NSV, I have yet to try on that dress again cos I'm pretty sure it's still snug... hehehe, I'll wait longer ;).

Exercise wise, I did finish week one of Body Revolution! It was hard in the beginning but by midweek my body was adpating well. I'm happy about this, but sadly I'm now dealing with some knee issue as I mentioned in earlier posts.

Week Two

So what's it gonna be for week two?

Weight loss : hmmm, same as last week. If I don't gain, it's all good.

NSV : Hehehe, I don't know... make more posts for my main blog. Does that even count as NSV goal? :-P

Nutrition : Still no soda, and in addition no other calorie/sugary drinks except for my daily low fat milk. Oh, and eat fruit everyday!

Exercise : Body Revolution week 2! I think it's still doable because week 2 is still low impact, plus I'll wear a knee support. But I promise if it gets more painful I will stop. I honestly really don't wanna stop exercising because of this knee, but if I really need to rest my legs, then I'll figure something else. Maybe just do upperbody conditioning or something.

Okay, that's it! Goodluck for everyone on the second week of the Ready for Summer Challenge!