Tag Archives: exercise

Should You Exercise When Sick?

9 Mar

My work is swarming with germs lately…by lately I mean the past two weeks. There is some nasty bug that is making the rounds and whoever catches it basically is doomed. It’s nothing horrible like the noro-virus, it’s just a nasty cold. Whenever a resident is sick we request they call the front desk and have their meals delivered so as to not spread their illness to everybody else. It doesn’t seem that unreasonable of a request in my opinion but you’d be surprised at how many people come down, sneeze and cough their way through their meals, through the various fitness classes, through the movies, through all the different social activities we have going on and then are surprised to find a couple days later we have a huge increase in the number of sick people. sigh.

I stupidly thought I wouldn’t catch it because hey, I’m not a senior, my immune system is strong. Ha-bloody-ha! I got sneezed on, as in, directly sneezed on last Sunday and woke up this past Tuesday incredibly sick. This bug just flattens you. With how poorly I was feeling, and how hard it was for me to do anything, I can only imagine how much harder it is for the residents who get it.

I was so sick I missed both my dragon boat practices this past week, which sucks! 😦 …and is a true indication of just how sick I was/am.

When you’re sick, do you wonder how much, if any exercise you should be doing? I always do. I always think I should be pushing through, forcing myself to exercise, to go to my practices, to go for a hike, because exercise is good for you, right? But sometimes you are just sooooo sick that it feels like exercise just getting your butt up off the chair to get a glass of water.

So I went searching and I found this handy dandy visual aid to help me figure out if I should be exercising when sick, and if so, what types of exercises I should be doing. And of course I am sharing the visual aid with all of you because I am friendly like that. lol 🙂

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In case the words are too small to read just click here and it should open a new tab with all five pages in a larger size. *crosses fingers the link works* lol

Hopefully you all stay healthy and don’t need to know this for a while! 🙂

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Getting Back On Track

30 Sep

Lately I have sucked at many things, the main ones are writing on this blog consistently, writing on this blog about something other than my vacation, following any sort of eating/fitness plan and budgeting. Yeah ok, budgeting doesn’t seem to really fit in there but hey, it’s something I suck at so why not add it to the list? lol 😛

I’ve decided to stop being an unorganized annoying person who wants to see change but isn’t working towards it, and instead be someone who is actively working to achieve the change they want to see.

Man oh man will this suck! lol Well, at the beginning anyways, but hopefully soon (very soon, pleeeeease very soon!) it will all become second nature and it’ll not seem like so much work.

Officially I am starting tomorrow, I like starting things at the beginning of a month, that way when I look back at what I am tracking I can see a whole month’s worth of information instead of one week, or half a month or however long it has been. The chunk of time not working towards my goal, and therefore not tracked, looks like some gaping black hole to me when I am glancing at my accumulated information and it bugs me. Yeah yeah, I know, I’m weird, let’s move on shall we? 😉

Here is what I am starting, as of tomorrow, but technically did today to see how it went:

– I am tracking what I am eating. Every. Single. Bite.

– I am tracking my exercise

– I am tracking my spending. Every. Single. Penny. (even though we don’t have pennies anymore…am I the only one that misses pennies? sigh)

To this end I bought myself a cute three subject notebook…

hoooo! hoooo!

hoooo! hoooo!

One section is for my food, one is for my exercise and one is for money spent. I know a lot of people use smaller notebooks to track things, ones that will be easier to carry around but I tend to lose them in my purse, or forget about them, and I thought why not use a larger book, one that can hold everything, is cute (so I like looking at it), and has pages that are large enough the stuff I write down won’t be cramped or written in super small print so it fits?

Today, with the food tracking, all I did was write down what I ate, I didn’t include calories or convert it in to Weight Watchers points, I just wanted to start the habit of writing down what I eat.

I’m not actually sure what kind of meal plan I am going to follow, which is probably pretty stupid considering I am starting tomorrow but there are so many different ways to go about this and I’m not sure anymore which is the best way to go, sigh.

I could follow Weight Watchers again, but I plan on working on building muscle and that means tracking by following numbers on a scale won’t work out too well. I could follow the version of Paleo I was on before, it worked really well, but it is very strict, there is no wiggle room and I honestly don’t know if I can follow that again. I could follow a basic calorie counting plan, figure out how many calories I should be having a day and make sure that is how many I eat.

Without thinking I’ve already come up with three different ways I could go with this, and that is without research, this is just from what I know already…think how much more confusing it could get if I start doing more research? There are meal plans that take in to account your blood type, your body shape, plans that take away all sugar, all carbs, all meat…too many options!! Arg!

I am leaning towards counting my calories, I haven’t done that before, well, not successfully lol but maybe this time I’ll be better at it…couldn’t be much worse I suppose. 😉

The last couple times I have tried to get back on track I find a new app for my phone and try that route but this time I am going old school. I did well when on Weight Watchers and I tracked by writing everything in a notebook, not using the app. While normally I am all about utilizing technology, sometimes I think it doesn’t work as well as the low tech ways. With all the different apps I have used I have had issues, either they are American based so the foods and restaurants etc that are loaded in to them don’t match the foods and restaurants I have access too, they only track you by weight, they are rigid in their definition of meal names, they think that just because it is past midnight it’s a new day even though I didn’t get up till noon and am not going to bed until 3am, they don’t have the exercises in their database that I do…things like that…In the end I find the limitations of the apps so annoying I stop using them.

When using a notebook sure there is a bit more work, I have to look online to find the information (calories, WW points etc) or *gasp* read the nutritional information on the food package but that’s ok, am I so important I can’t find time for that? Pfft, no. Well ok, some days it might be harder than others but I’m sure I can manage it, right?

As for exercising, I will still use apps for tracking if only so I can get accurate distances, calories burned and time of day I exercised. I don’t track all my exercises, when I lift weights for example, but I think it’s more important to be tracking the cardio. Hmm, that sounds wrong, I track weights in the sense I keep a record of how much weight I lifted and how many reps, I just don’t use an app for that.

For keeping track of my success (note the optimism? 😉 ) I will be measuring myself in oh-so-many places lol I will also take pictures of myself (front view, side view, back view), I will repeat this on the first of every month. I’m toying with also weighing myself but I find that the number on the scale can have really negative effects on me and I just don’t know if I want to go there…I’ll see how brave I am tomorrow and if I think it’ll be a wise choice to step on to the scale.

BMI Scale Measuring Tape

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A Dog’s Day

11 Jun

Today was so great! 🙂

I got to sleep until my body decided to wake itself up, I am a firm believer that everyone should do that because the body knows when it is rested enough, but sadly the way society works doesn’t really gel with that philosophy so instead I try to give myself one day a week where I do that. Today was that day. 🙂

Then I got to take my landlord’s dog for a hike. I would have gone hiking anyways but the company of Steff (the dog) was much enjoyed. We had to stick to an easier trail because Steff is 10 years old and has arthritis…course, I have arthritis and that doesn’t stop me from doing the harder trails but I’m kinda dumb that way lol 😉

Steff, she will confirm I am a dummy at times lol

Steff, she will confirm I am a dummy at times lol

We also ended up going a bit slower than either of us wanted because at one section of the trail we met some random lady who had two adorable dogs and the first words out of her mouth to me were “oh so you’ve heard about the bear?” to which I replied “huh?” Pretty intelligent response dontcha think? 😉

Turns out a lady had just passed her and warned her she saw a bear on the trail so all the people on the trail with dogs were warning other people with dogs so that leashes could be re-attached to collars. Apparently dog people have some sort of gossip club lol She assumed since Steff was on leash I had heard about the bear and was taking precautions. In actuality it was that I was worried if Steff saw something that got her really excited she might run off and not come back when I called cause I’m not her person. I told her this and somehow a conversation evolved and boom! hiking buddy. shrug. The dogs got along well and I couldn’t think of a polite way to leave her in the dust, unfortunately she was a slower hiker than Steff and I so we ended up slowing down to the woman’s pace. Steff wasn’t impressed with this, she kept going as far forward as she could then looking back at me as if to say “really? Really!!”

So we hiked to the end of that specific trail, it ends at this big open space that has multiple trail options so you can either keep going on a different trail or go back on the one you just finished. Before heading back we took the dogs to this water spot where the current isn’t as fast as in other areas so the dogs could jump in and enjoy themselves. I gotta tell ya, I was really wishing I was in shorts and could wade in there with them, the water was so clear and inviting looking. Instead I stayed on the rocks and Steff seeing I was being a silly human and staying dry oh-so-kindly came up to me and shook as hard as she could so I got sprayed with water – isn’t she just the most thoughtful dog ever? 😉

Cuteness

Cuteness

We went back on the same trail we used to get to the water because it is the easiest trail and I was worried about pushing her too hard and making her arthritis flare up. What can I say, she’s not my dog, I was worried! I can’t very well take her back to my landlord and say “here is your dog, sorry she’s limping and drenched from the river!” I’d be homeless in an instant lol

Part way back Steff all of a sudden stopped, stared right into the bushes next to us and started to bark. Creeeeepy! My response was to immediately shorten her leash so she had to stay near me and put myself between her and the bushes, cause apparently I am ok with a bear attacking me before her…she’s not even my dog! *rolls eyes* She did a really good job of staying close, not even trying to get ahead of me for quite a while, then when she decided the danger had passed she started trying to pull ahead, I figured I’d trust her instincts over mine so I lengthened the leash again.

After one last dip in the river we separated from the lady with the two dogs and jogged a good chunk of the rest of the trail. It felt really nice to be moving faster, which when I pause to think about that seems strange cause I’m lazy but oh well lol

She kept trying to eat the water, must be a dog thing!

She kept trying to eat the water, must be a dog thing!

In total we did 10.81km and it took us 2:14:22 which sounds ridiculously slow but that is because I didn’t pause the app when we stopped so Steff could go swimming and in total we stopped about 6 times. So combine going slower cause of that lady and stopping completely so Steff could swim and it totally messes with my average time to complete a hike but oh well, I had fun and I figure that should count for something, right?

After we got home Steff immediately curled up in her bed and had a nap, I went and moved furniture *rolls eyes*. A friend of mine moved recently and she had this shelving unit, the type with the cube spaces instead of traditional shelves, her new place is too small for it so I bought it off her for $40 and am replacing my dead dresser with it. I had it in the back of my suv and had to haul it in to my place, originally I thought I’d ask my landlord for help but he wasn’t home and I didn’t want to wait so I did it on my own. Lemme tell ya, this thing is not light! It is two cubes wide and four cubes tall and the wood is thick, talk about working the already tired muscles! It is currently sitting in my kitchen cause I still need to buy the cloth cubes to put my clothes in. The cat is loving it! He may be upset when it gets moved to the bedroom cause he seems to be under the impression I brought it home and put it in the kitchen as a new toy for him…so far he’s jumped on the top, hung out within the cube spaces and when running around hyper treated it like an obstacle to dive through. It’s hilarious!

He couldn't decide if she should go to the top or stay where he was lol

He couldn’t decide if he should go to the top or stay where he was lol

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Since those pictures were taken he has lounged on the top, chased his tail within one of the cube spaces and in general claimed the unit as his. At this rate I’ll never get it back! lol 😛

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Race Day: DZ 500m

7 Jun

This weekend is the DZ 500m Dragon Boat Race Festival! 🙂

My team. :) We didn't all realize there was a camera looking at us lol

My team. 🙂 We didn’t all realize there was a camera looking at us lol

It is a two day event but each team races for only one day, there are three races per team per day. In the grand scheme of things it is a fairly small festival, mostly used as a qualifier for the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival (the largest North American dragon boat festival). It’s a good festival to gauge where your team is in comparison to other teams, and a great chance to see how your team does in a 500m race since you most likely haven’t competed in a 500m race since last season.

Racing during practice, either against a stop watch or other teams that are on the water practicing is a completely different thing than racing in festival, obviously lol.

We had an early start, we met at 8am and our first race was scheduled for around 9:30am…I think…I know it was around there but these things almost never run on schedule lol When we were getting ready for warm-up we were told they (the race officials) were running behind then in an almost magical turn around they were running early *rolls eyes* Ah well, keeps things interesting! 😛

We had excellent race times for all three races! 🙂 Yay!

First Race: 2:15

Second Race: 2:14

Third Race: 2:11

wOOt! wOOt!

Even though we are racing against other teams we are also racing against ourselves, we always want to do better than our previous race and we are oh-so-happy that we got faster with each race!

Plus! Not only did our times get better with each race we came in first place in our division! FIRST PLACE! *happy dance*

This is an excellent way to be heading in to our next race festival and talk about a boost to team morale, what a truly awesome way to start the race season!

Oh and on a vain note, we have new jerseys this year and we all looked amazing! 🙂 Last year we kept having jersey issues and we ended up going the whole season without a jersey, it was really nice to actually look like a competitive team this year lol One of my teammates designed the jersey and wow did he make them look sweeeeet! I didn’t take any pictures during the day, our races were back-to-back so there was no time during the day and afterwards when we were hanging out it didn’t really cross my mind but next festival there will be more time between races and we’ll probably take a team photo so I’ll post one then so you can see the jerseys, we all love em! 🙂

I’ve been pretty good about eating healthy today, well, except for a cookie I had earlier after our third race as celebration for doing so well lol Yeah yeah, I know! I shouldn’t celebrate with food but those cookies were staring at me all day and I’d just done three races, gimme a break lol 😛 Other than that cookie I did ok, oatmeal, banana, babybell cheese, salad, turkey bacon, egg, toast with peanut butter, tea, water…I think that’s all of it…that’s not sooooo bad, right? *nods head* Right!

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Admitting The Truth

6 Jun

I didn’t think I was that person who lost weight, then gained it back. After all, I’m nowhere near the size I was at the beginning of my weight loss journey buuuut…I’m also not the smallest I have been on this journey.

I haven’t wanted to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else, but it is time I faced the truth…I rebounded a bit. Does this mean I am now a yo-yo dieter? I dunno. Does it mean I am doomed to gain back all the weight I lost? I dunno. Does this mean I am destined to gain and lose and gain and lose for the rest of my life? I don’t know that either…sigh.

Seems there is a lot I don’t know.

I know that I have to get back on track, but I feel lost and not sure how to do that. I keep thinking I am not going to go back to Weight Watchers because I plateaued so badly on that program. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful for Weight Watchers, I lost 35 pounds with them, I learned about proper portion sizes with them, I learned I can happily swap out junk food for fresh fruit and enjoy healthy eating but I also feel there are limitations to that program and that I outgrew it. I don’t feel like going back to Weight Watchers is the right choice for me but that doesn’t mean that I know what the right choice for me is.

I also know I am not good at extreme programs. I can only maintain eating paleo, or the bodybeach program, or super restrictive low calorie eating plans for so long before I cave. Even if I like the food and am getting good portion sizes it is more about all the foods I am not allowed to eat. Knowing that on an extreme program having even one spoonful of peanut butter could be considered cheating messes with me. I need a bit of wiggle room, space so I don’t get all down on myself when I step outside of the food rules that I am following.

I need something realistic, and affordable!

My scale has been tucked away for over a year and I am scared to pull it back out, I am scared to see what the number will be when I step on it. I’d rather be back in boxing class getting hit during sparring than stand on that scale again. How pathetic is that?? I originally put it away because I was building muscle and the scale number was no longer an accurate way to measure my progress. It was sloooowly going up as I was getting more trim and it was messing with my head. For so long I relied solely on the number it gave me every week to know if I was doing well and to see it go up, even though I knew it was because of muscle gain, made me feel like a failure. I started gauging my success/failure by other means, how my clothes fit, what size I could now buy, every now and then I would check my size with a measuring tape. For a while these methods of tracking worked but then they didn’t work so well anymore and I was left with no solid way to hold myself accountable.

I’m thinking that is around the time I started to slowly go up in size. For a while it was easy to ignore, my clothes still fit, just maybe a bit tighter, I could still reach the same levels at the gym, even though I wasn’t at the gym as often, I was eating roughly the same amount calorie wise but the calories were coming from more processed foods than fresh healthy foods.  The pounds snuck up on me and now I have to face reality that I have gone up an entire size, so that’s what, ten pounds? That’s depressing. All that work I did to lose weight and I have gone and gained some of it back. What was I thinking?! 

What’s twisted is that even with the weight gain I am more active then before, just in different ways. Instead of going to the gym daily I will swap out gym visits for a hike, or a run or my dragon boat practice. I am still active just not in a regimented gym equipment kind of way, and I guess the activities I am doing now aren’t as good for weight loss or weight maintenance as following a gym program is. Kinda sucks cause I enjoy the hikes an such but if I have to choose between enjoying the activity and getting results from the activity I will choose results every time…well, except for dragon boating, I will always choose dragon boating lol.

I don’t want to be writing this, I don’t want to be that person that gained weight back. But ya know, I follow a lot of other blogs that deal with weight loss, healthy lifestyles etc and I’ve noticed over the years I don’t seem to be the only one this happens to. It seems a lot of people, before they reach their goal weight have a slip up and gain some of the weight back. Most take a while to admit it to themselves and the longer you take to admit it the more weight you have gained back. I know with me part of it was the way I was thinking about food, I started getting cocky, thinking I didn’t have to be as strict cause I’d lost so much, I could let down my guard a bit. Well, proved that idea wrong! I let down my guard and look what happened! 😛

Even though I’m feeling down because I am facing the truth about my weight gain I am glad I am facing this truth now rather than a couple more months down the road when I will have possibly gained back even more weight.

I don’t have a solution for this, I wish I was concluding this post with some great awesome plan that would get me back on track but I don’t have one…yet! For now I am going to aim to get a new battery for my scale (mine died) and I plan to stand on that scale Tuesday morning. I also have a 4 week eating plan that I am going to research a bit more, see if it is doable on my budget, and I am going to schedule exercise into my days instead of leaving it as an up-in-the-air thing that happens more sporadically then it should. Hopefully I can get myself back on track within 5 days or so and huh, look at that, I may not have a solution yet but it seems like I actually do have a bit of a plan, at least a plan in the making…I’ll cross my fingers it works!…Uh, anybody wanna step on that scale for me? 😉 lol

Must remember this

Must remember this

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The Chief

4 Jun

What did I do today? Oh, nothing much, just climbed a mountain…yup, re-read that, it’s ok if it takes a minute to sink in, it would take me a while to comprehend that about me also 😉 lol

Today a friend and I went and climbed to the first peak of The Chief which is a mountain about an hour outside of Vancouver, it is overlooking the town of Squamish BC. There are three peaks to the mountain, all three can be climbed in one day if you so desire, I did not lol. Or rather my cardio and knees did not desire that. 😛

It’s a beautiful climb, hard, but beautiful.

If you want to read all the facts from the official website for the mountain feel free to click on the following link http://www.vancouvertrails.com/trails/stawamus-chief/

According to my Runtastic App (of which I am still using the free version but am seriously considering for the first time ever paying for an app and getting the full version) we went a total of 10.33km and it took 3:30:39, we burned 1105 calories and had a 33 minute break at the top to have a snack, a rest and enjoy the view…oh and get to feed the most adorable chipmunks, everybody say awwwww! lol

I took some pics during the hike so sit back and enjoy the prettiness!

Shannon Falls

Shannon Falls

Ok, so Shannon Falls looks way better in person (obviously) but at least I tried to get a picture of it lol

One of the warning signs

One of the warning signs

This is more funny than anything else lol Sucks somebody vandalized it but I found the caution sign amusing. This sign is partway up the trail, past where the people who just wanted to see the falls will be, the sign says “The trail is NOT a “walk in the park”.” then goes on to list all the things that could go wrong, talks about some dangerous aspects of the trail and gives a list of things you should take with you. I am not sure why it doesn’t also mention the wild animals you could encounter…perhaps they didn’t want to overly scare tourists?

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I really like pictures of water, I find them soothing.

 

 

The below pictures are of ladders that are attached to the rock face in two different sections because without them it’d be freakin hard to get up the mountain. I was impressed with how sturdy they are, no wobbling or loose parts. Quite a relief when you consider where the ladders are placed lol

Ladder number one

Ladder number one

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Ladder number two

You can just barely see that at the top of the second ladder my friend is starting to climb on a steep section, she looks kind of funny because she was using a chain that is attached to the rock face, you basically straddle the chain, grab on to it for dear life and use it while climbing (and descending) because the rock face is so slippery you can’t make it safely up or down without something to anchor yourself to. It is really easy to do and kinda fun. 🙂 Those chains were set up in hmm, two sections? Maybe three, I can’t quite recall right now.

The next four pics are views from the first peak where my friend and I had a bit of a rest…

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And of course the day wouldn’t be complete if a cute animal didn’t make an appearance, this little guy and a friend kept darting in and out around where my friend and I were sitting. He was even brave enough to take some of my granola bar from my fingers. They were so cute I wished I could bring them home but of course I would never do that, they make out quite well up on the top of that peak getting food from most of the people that stop and have a snack, it’s like the mecca for little cute furry animals who can beg food from humans lol

I want one!

I want one!

This was the first time I got to use my water backpack and I really liked it. I sorta wish I’d bought one a little bigger but oh well. I’ll just have to be careful how I pack it when I go for large climbs. It held an apple, granola bar, energy gummies that I didn’t eat, sunscreen, the water bladder, ID, chapstick, phone, small package of kleenex…I think that’s about it, and it was packed. When I bought it it seemed large enough I’d be able to stuff a jacket in there but I’m just not sure I’ll be able to, I will have to see if there is some way to tuck the jacket under those stretchy ties on the front that will for sure secure the jacket and not let it slip out when I am climbing. I’ll figure it out eventually. 🙂

The day was fairly awesome, healthy breakfast, climbing with a friend, home to chill. I was a lot slower than my friend and I felt bad she kept having to wait for me to catch up, that doesn’t often happen to me and I didn’t like being the slow one in the pair, sigh. I think it was because it was a much steeper incline than I am used to, I hike that distance on different trails in a much shorter amount of time but on those trails the inclines are steep but for a shorter distance which is easier on my knees. I’ve been babying my knees since I got home to try to make sure they don’t give me trouble tomorrow, I’ll just have to wait till tomorrow to see if my babying worked! lol

All in all I’m glad we went and yay for getting to check off climbing the Chief from my list of things to do! 🙂

 

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Thyroid Update

16 May

I had a doctor’s appointment today, to find out the results of the tests done on my blood from last Monday. It would appear that everything is working a-okay within my body.

How messed up is it that I’m a little disappointed right now? *rolls eyes* I was sorta hoping I’d have a thyroid problem and that I would get medicated (even though I hate taking medication) so that I would then have an easier time losing weight (although from what I’ve heard the meds don’t always help with that…) but instead my thyroid is apparently functioning as it should be so nooooo meds for this girl.

Which really, in the long run I am happy about because meds are so not my thing lol In the short term though, grr! and Boo! lol 😛

The doc says the reason I am having trouble losing weight is because I am subconsciously restricting my movement/activities due to the hip problem. She says it is normal for someone whose had an injury to hold back a bit and not be as active as they used to be because they have to baby the injured body part but most people don’t change their eating habits so they are eating more than they should be considering the reduced activity and bam! Weight gain! Then, as the person starts to regain their active lifestyle, they, without realizing it, hold back, or just do a bit less day-to-day which of course means the weight doesn’t come off as quickly as they would like.

Speaking as someone who was badly injured years ago and took for freakin ever to become fully mobile again and then even longer then freakin ever to lose the weight she gained while gimped I am not impressed with this analysis. I understand it. I just don’t like it.

I am back to being active. I mean yeah, I am a lazy person in general but I am back to my twice weekly dragon boat practices, and my hiking (though not as often as I would like but that is not my fault! life gets in the way *pout*) and my random other activities that are generally not planned but just happen. I mean c’mon, I just ran the BMO Run two weekends ago, isn’t that a sign of an active person??

Apparently not. sigh.

How much more do I have to do to be considered active and for my body to stop being a jerk and drop this weight? *glares at body*

I know that when it comes to weight loss it is 80% what you eat and 20% your exercise and I will admit that I am not the greatest when it comes to food. I try, sorta, in spurts lol I’m pretty sure though that I undereat, shocking I know! Except for the days I indulge in something stupid and them boom! Overeater in the house! *groan* I annoy myself. 😛

I’ve got to get my food back on track but no big gimmicks, no weird tricks, just, I dunno, normal healthy eating, in the proper portion sizes, and no more treats just because. I mean yeah ok, I’m not going to cut out every single treat but I have to be more careful with them, actually have them be treats and not daily occurrences ya know? Oh, and I think maybe I should be eating more than once or twice a day…but I always find that hard, sigh.

I’m starting with baby steps, which may seem lame, but I figure every little change will help and will eventually grow in to a big change *crosses fingers and hopes* So, in that vein, when I got home from work this evening I had a cup of tea but no snack. Not gonna lie, I miss having a snack, but my night time snack was almost always something not nutritionally beneficial to my body and not really needed for anything other than taste bud happiness and those little buggers can just suck up the loss as far as I’m concerned lol

I will have to come up with an actual eating plan of some sort otherwise nothing will actually change, but that can wait for tomorrow, when it’s not one in the morning and I’m not kinda tired. 🙂

ecard-complicated-food

 

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Monthly Round Up – April

8 May

Alrighty so I’m a tad late with this, what can I say, punctuality is not my strong suit lol To hold myself more accountable for my fitness related actions I have been tracking them on my calendar. Every time I do something fitness related I write it on the calendar and then highlight it in pink. The highlighting is so that at a glance I can see how much or how little I have been doing so far within the month and it will either (1) re-enforce I am doing well and help me to keep going or (2) force me to realize I am slacking and push me to get my butt in gear.

Here is my calendar from the month of April…

Such a slacker! sigh

Such a slacker! sigh

As you can see, there are huuuuuge gaps where I had lots of days in a row where I did nothing that counts as exercise, sigh. Must. Get. Moving!

It is hard to tell from looking at the picture but some of those days I did two different workouts/activities which helps to make the month not quite as bad as it could be lol

In total, out of the 30 days I exercised 17 times. I am not impressed with myself *rolls eyes* I learned from tracking in the previous month that Fridays through Mondays are my worst days for getting my butt out there and doing something. It is due to my work schedule but I can’t let that keep holding me back, I have got to figure out a way to work around the hours and my laziness.

Tomorrow is Friday, a day I generally don’t exercise because of working but I’m hoping to at least do a workout dvd. I’ll only be able to go to the gym if I go before work since they are closed by the time my shift is over and I’ve shown time and time again I am not good at forcing myself to get up early and head to the gym before work. I go to bed with the best of intentions to get up and go but it doesn’t happen. Sooooo, I’m lowering the bar lol I’m lowering it to getting out of bed and following along with an exercise dvd. It may not be an amazing workout but at least it is something, and something is better than nothing, right? Right! I figure I’ll work up to getting my butt to the gym before work…

 

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Stir Fry Sunday: Mediocre Is The Best Praise I Can Give

13 Apr

Hey look at me, making stir fry on a Sunday again! Sadly, it wasn’t that great of a stir fry, but they can’t all be, right?

it doesn't even look good, sigh.

it doesn’t even look good, sigh.

I used vermicelli noodles, topped with a sweet and sour sauce. The veggies are Europe’s Best brand, the Zen Garden mixture (that is code for veggies commonly found in stir fry lol), they were heated in a pan with a stir fry sauce. Then on top of that was half a honey garlic glazed chicken breast and half an avocado (cubed).

The best I can say about it is it was mediocre. Definitely not my best! I wasn’t all that hungry though so there is the possibility that I was all “meh” about it cause I would have been perfectly content not eating anything. I made enough for two meals, the other portion is patiently sitting in my fridge, waiting for tomorrow to come when I will once again eat it for dinner…let’s hope it tastes better warmed up! *crosses fingers*

The reason I made stir fry was because after work I actually had enough energy to workout (shocking I know!) and I figured my body would want dinner since it had been forced to be active, apparently I was wrong. But hey, whatcha gonna do? I already had it made so not like I was just gonna ignore it.

Sundays and Mondays are my chill work out days. If I manage even a walk around the neighbourhood I am happy. I start work at 7am which means I am up at 5:30am and since I’m a night owl and don’t sleep well prior to 3am I usually accomplish those two days on roughly 3 hours of sleep each. Sucky.

Today I was determined to exercise after work so I took my workout gear with me, the plan was to change at work and go for a run in the neighbourhood I work in. I find the drive home lulls me in to a state of “I need a nap” so well that no matter how determined I am to workout once home, it just never happens. The solution seemed to be to avoid that situation completely. Well, let’s just say I’m not always a genius lol I forgot to take my pants…yup, that’s right, I had changed my upper half and went digging through the bag for my yoga pants and hmm, nothing there…oops! I thought I would get home and say screw it, it’s a sign I shouldn’t workout but instead I lectured myself, saying I was half dressed to workout so I might as well finish changing and go, and I did! Yay! 🙂

It was a fairly pathetic workout, I ran (well, jogged/walked) for a little over 5km, then did a bunch of squats, then did some upper body weight work with a set of dumbbells I have, then stretched, then declared it time to hop in the shower. 🙂

I know it’s not a great workout but like I said, on Sundays I am happy if I manage to go for a walk and this was better than a walk! You know that quote about how it doesn’t matter how slow you run you are still going faster than the person on the couch? I hate that quote, making yourself feel better by thinking poorly about some faceless person, not cool. So I changed it, I kept reminding myself while I was running that I may be slow but I’m faster than the lazy me who goes home after work and naps, and that should count for something, right?

On a junk food sidenote, I have received two care packaged lately, one from my mom and one from my uncle, both filled with junk food from England. Man-oh-man! My tastebuds are sooooo happy! My waistline? Not so much…This evening I snacked on something called Fruit Salad & Black Jack. Don’t let the name fool you, there is no fruit lol They have the texture of a Starburst, which I love! but the flavour is, hmm, not my favourite. There are black licorice pieces which I thought would be great, I love licorice, but it tastes like licorice combined with fruit and one piece leaves my tongue numb, ick. The other pieces taste fruity, I couldn’t narrow that down to a specific fruit flavour if there was a gun to my head, just a generic fruit flavour, those pieces I kinda like. I’ll be done the bag freakishly fast since I’m only eating the fruit pieces and the bag is mostly licorice pieces, I’m trying to look at that as a good thing, saved calories ya know? 😛 lol

2014-04-13 21.23.02

I will be bombarding you with English candy updates as I graze my way through the two care packages. I would love to be able to say it will take me ages to eat it all but English junk food is way better than Canadian (I’m sorry! I know that is non-patriotic but I love the food from across the pond! Please don’t kick me out of Canada! lol) and it won’t take me all that long to decimate  what has been sent to me. Guess I’ll have to push the workouts up to the next level or I’ll be doomed! DoooOOOOoooomed! Too dramatic? Nah, I didn’t think so either! 😛 lol

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So Far So Good

2 Apr

Last month I tried this thing, I wrote on a calendar I have hanging on my bedroom wall every time I exercised and I highlighted it in pink. This way, I could see at a quick glance how much or how little I was exercising. I wasn’t going to push to exercise more than normal, I just wanted to see where, in my normal routine I drop the ball.

2014-03-31 19.02.14

Uh, wow, I dropped the ball a lot! If you count the pink on that calendar page I only exercised 10 times. 10 times out of 31 days, uhhh…what?? Talk about being a lazy butt and having proof of it! 😦

I am guaranteed two times a week because of dragon boat practice but I’ve got to stop slacking the other days! The easiest day to exercise, besides my dragon boat days, is Wednesday because it is a day off. Fridays through Mondays are where I suck. Those are my work days. If I don’t get my exercise in before I go to work Fridays and Saturdays I won’t get it done because of how late I get home. Sundays and Mondays I am usually so tired after working the morning shift I do nothing but crash.

But, like I said, things have to change.

So, I changed them. 🙂

This past Monday we had beautiful weather, sunny, warm but not hot, the cherry blossom trees are in bloom, a perfect spring day. I left work late but was determined when I got home I’d go out and at least walk, enjoy some of that sunshine. I ran in to my landlords when I was leaving the house and asked if their dog might want to come with me, they said yes so I had a super friendly golden lab with me. I didn’t care where we went so we followed her nose. Lemme tell ya, her nose took us on a weird, convoluted route.

the route the dog chose

the route the dog chose

I had planned on only walking, normally I get down on myself if I walk more than run but I was tired and my goal was to get some sort of exercise even if it wasn’t as intense as I would like. The dog however had other plans, lol. She wanted to run and who am I to say no to big cute doggy eyes? I am not that strong! 😉 So, it was a jog/walk. The green parts on the map are where we walked, the yellow was a jog, the tiny little orange section was more of a run, you can see that didn’t last long lol In total we went 5.45 km in 1:02:33.

Then Tuesday I had dragon boat practice so two hours of exercise there, yay! I usually (read that as Always!) sit left side of the boat but we were short people who sit on the right at practice so I ended up sitting on the right side. It was…odd…My body is used to sitting left so it was a tad more painful than normal but not bad painful, just, the other side of my body was getting worked more than it is used to, so muscle pain. Actually, I’m still feeling it today. *groan* poor muscles! lol

Today I went for my first hike of the season. I am soooo glad it is hiking season again, I didn’t realize just how much I missed it till I was out there, on a trail, in the wilderness, away from everything. Well, almost everything, I was with a friend lol We went slower than I would have if I went alone but the point is that we went…right? I used my Runtastic App to track the hike, like I did above with the dog walk, but my phone battery was low and it died while we were still on the trail so I don’t have full data on the hike. I plan on redoing that hike so I can get accurate distance and time it took. The app recorded a distance of 8.12 km in 1:36:06 which sounds horrible buuuuut please take in to account we were on the side of a mountain, on trails, going slower than my normal pace. Take a look at the picture below, you’ll see where it stopped tracking (where the red dot is)

the hike up the mountain and back

the hike up the mountain and back

The numbers on the trail are the app marking the km’s so we went up 5km then turned around and started back down, using my oh-so-non-impressive math skills I’m thinking that means we did 10km. Pretty snazzy math that! 😉 The red dot just past the number 8 is where the phone died but obviously I am not still on the mountain and I made it down and if I went up 5km then I had to come down 5km so yay for 10km! Unfortunately I didn’t notice what time the phone died at, and I didn’t take note of what time we started the hike or what time it was when we got in to the suv at the end of the hike so there goes any hope of my figuring out the math for how long we were hiking. Hence my needing to do the hike again, to get accurate numbers.  I don’t mind doing it again though, it is a really nice easy hike, a good one to start the season with. 🙂 I try to ease in to hiking season cause it can be brutal on my knee, sigh, this will definitely be a go-to-trail when I want easy, meant to relax me hiking, not intense-push-to-the-limit hiking.

So let’s tally things shall we? We are three days in to the week and I have exercised three times, booyah! I know I’ll be exercising tomorrow so that’s in the bag. My big challenge will be Fridays and Saturdays, for some reason doing some form of exercise before work on those days always seems so impossible. I don’t know why I can’t make it happen! I irritate myself with this failing weekly. Maybe this week I’ll manage it, after four days of being active maybe I’ll be so used to getting some sort of exercise it’ll be easier to get out of bed and head to the gym…maybe?

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