Tag Archives: exercise

30 Day Challenge x 2

1 May

I have decided to participate in a two 30 Day Challenges. You’ve seen them floating around facebook and other sites I am sure, there are all kinds of them. The two I have chosen are squats and abs. Yup, that’s right, legs and core, my body is gonna hate me! lol 😉

Here is how they work:

30 Day Squat Challenge:

30 day squat challenge

30 Day Ab Challenge:

30 day ab challenge

Now rest assured I have not dropped in to la-la land and think that at the end of the thirty days I will look as good as the women in the pics buuuuut if I follow the challenges and don’t cheat, and eat well, and keep up with all my other activities I don’t see why I can’t at least look a bit better then I look now…right? *hopeful eyes*

To the Ab Challenge I have added the same amount of push-ups per day as there are sit-ups. Crazy huh? I can totally blame this level of crazy on someone else! lol I posted the Ab Challenge pic on my facebook page and one of my dragon boat team members saw it and said he was gonna do it too, yah for a partner! So I texted him the squat one also and asked if he wanted to join me in both, to which awesome guy that he is, he said yes! 😀 He then texted me that he is gonna do the same amount of push-ups per day as sit-ups and well, not one to be left behind I said I’d do the same thing even though push-ups are one of my main nemesis.  Seriously I suck at them! My only saving grace is I am a girl so at least I can do girl push-ups, not that that’ll help me much when I am on day thirty and need to do 125 of them *scared face* Ah well, that is thirty days away, no reason to freak out about it now! 🙂

I think I will create a Page on my blog for both these challenges, that way it’ll help keep me on track and if anyone is interested they can follow my progress…and yes, I’m aware probably no one will ever look at those pages but whatev! Let me pretend k? 😛 lol

I feel like I need a war chant to end this post with thereby signifying my drive and determination in regards to the challenges but I don’t have one…hmm…any suggestions?

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Hello Seawall, I’ve Missed You

27 Mar

Ahhhh, today was a day of getting back to activities I haven’t done since oh, last summer, and I’m so happy to be doing them again! 🙂

The day started with brunch, well ok, that isn’t an activity I’ve neglected over the winter months lol but it’s always a nice way to start the day. After that I went for a 3 hour walk along the north shore seawall/ambleside area. It has an off leash dog park area which I care nothing about but since the person I was with has a dog it was good for them…and the reason we went to that area. I enjoy dogs in the you-are-so-cute-I-want-to-take-you-home-omg-don’t-get-me-dirty kind of way. 😛

Here is a pic I took while we were chilling mid-walk and letting the dog run around like the little nut ball she is lol

I don't know any of the people or dogs in this pic lol

I don’t know any of the people or dogs in this pic lol

Then I went and met up with KL and we went to the other seawall to go get our fitness on lol. She is awesome, she got accepted on to a roller derby team and could surely kick everyones ass but she unfortunately had to leave the sport due to other obligations (she is a super busy wonder woman!) but even though she’s not on a team anymore she still loves to skate and keeps in shape so she was roller skating the seawall and I was being more boring and biking it. This is the first time this season I have pulled my bike out and while I haven’t physically been missing it (it lives in my living room so I see it everyday) it was so nice to actually take it outside and get to use it!

We got a later start then we had planned on, and even though the weather is nicer now it does still get darker semi-early-ish so we couldn’t go around the entire seawall. Before you get all judgmental and say we could have let me point out not all areas of the seawall are well lit (or lit at all!) and neither of us have night gear which means no reflective clothing and no lights which as it was getting darker and darker I think was pissing off other bikers who were on the seawall, oops!  We ended up biking about 8km (that’s almost 5 miles) so not a crazy huge distance but pretty decent. 🙂

As much as I wish we could have gone the entire way I think having to cut it short was maybe a good thing for me, well, for my knees. I always forget over the winter months how much biking hurts my knees, sigh. I don’t get it, I have great shocks on my bike but I always end up with killer pain. Not cool. 😦 On a kind of funny note, my ass is killing me! Also due to biking! lol I have a gel filled bike seat cover and a lot of shall we say “natural cushioning” on that particular area of my body but despite all that riding a bike hurts my butt! Always has. Probably always will. I don’t know how long distance bikers can stand it, I stand up in the pedals sometimes just to avoid sitting while going over a little bump cause I just can’t take it anymore, lame and wimpy I know. *big epic sigh* My butt may be wimpy but you just try taking a jab at me when I’m boxing, I can take that and hit you back without a problem!…which I guess means my face is stronger then my butt? Now that’s a weird sentence…

Here’s a view from the other side of the water from the above pic, from the other seawall, notice that it really did get darker and I didn’t exaggerate? *raise eyebrow*

same bridge but from the other side of the water

same bridge but from the other side of the water

So now I am home, and relaxing, and as soon as my laptop is off my lap I will have my heating pad on my knees in an attempt to ease their suffering…it won’t help but I hafta try, lesson in futility I suppose lol 😛

My eating was a bit weird today, as I suspected it would be what with being out of the house from about 10am onwards. I had wanted to eat a healthy brunch but we went to this place that has a yummy breakfast, served all day, that is $3, I can’t bring myself to order something more expensive when that super cheap option is there lol. Only thing is they don’t have turkey meat so the meat options for the dish are ham, bacon or sausage, yuch! I don’t eat pork so this is a yuck not only on a holy-fatty-meat level but also on a yuch-I-won’t-put-that-near-my-tastebuds level. The only items I could swap out for were another egg (there are already two on the plate though so no way am I eating a third!) or mushrooms, which were not an option I was expecting but I took em. So my brunch was 2 eggs over easy, two pieces of brown toast with margarine, hash browns and fried mushrooms. I mean, it was tasty, but it was basically two eggs and a whole lotta carbs, sigh. I’m trying to cut back on those! It actually left me feeling a bit um, icky? Slightly unsettled tummy, which is unfortunate. I don’t know that the unsettled tummy is due to the food, it could be cause of anything but regardless, it happened after eating which is now leaving me with the association of that dish and not feeling well which I’m not gonna lie, I don’t mind (even if it is wrong) cause it’ll help me resist ordering it if I go there again…which I might not since I can’t get a turkey meat option. shrug. Later I had a vegan organic power bar, home made (not by me! lol) from a coffee shop, it was tiny, and had no nutritional info, and was weird, I got it cause I really wanted some protein but was still full from brunch so I wanted the protein to come in a small package lol. After the ambleside walk but right before the seawall bike ride I got a six inch turkey sub from Subway, hey, don’t judge, I needed actual food otherwise I wouldn’t make it through the bike ride! Even with the sub in me by the end of the ride I was quite hungry so KL and I split a chocolate covered pretzel we got from Starbucks on our way back home and I guess I’ll confess, I also got a grande half sweet peppermint hot chocolate made with skim no whipped cream. I hate having such a long order request, makes me feel like a snob lol. By the time I got home I wasn’t hungry anymore (totally thought I would be) so I decided not to eat anything but now it’s almost midnight I of course feel hungry and want food, which is so not gonna happen, it’s way too late to be eating, so I’ll have water instead and hope the hunger pains are a signal fat is leaving my body. 🙂

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Kick Ass Week

24 Mar

Ok, so right now I’m not feeling so great, not sick, just not well…if that makes sense? It’s not like I caught a cold or something, I just feel off, I have a bunch of little things that are wonky right now that don’t add up to any one illness, and by themselves wouldn’t be that big of a deal buuuuut when combined, and when I’m uber tired I become cranky and less able willing to deal with them by continuing on in my regular routine. 😛

None of that matters though because it is almost the end of my week and my week has been beeawesome! 😀

Tuesday afternoon, I was informed that I may be done physio! DONE!! Finally! YAH!! I am super excited for this for a couple reasons: (1) it’s freakin expensive and I couldn’t afford to do anything else while paying for physio, (2) it means I am better so I don’t have to worry about my neck and back anymore and (3) it takes a decent chunk of time out of my life twice a week and I want that time back! I mean c’mon, I could be sleeping…which is an excellent use of my time because it makes me happy and doesn’t cost anything! 😉 lol The small print to this news is that my being done physio is dependent on how I do for the next 3 weeks, sigh. I have to gauge how my back and neck deal with the crap I put them through and if at the three week mark I have experienced pain, discomfort, loss of agility blah blah blah then I have to go back, ugh. Soooooo, I am really trying to not screw this up and do something that’ll mess with my neck and or back again…I have decided, the way I am going to look at things, is that I am done physio because that thought puts a huuuuge grin on my face!

Tuesday evening, omgomgomgomgomg first dragon boat practice of the season!!! Hellz yah! It was awesome, and cold, and rainy, and dark, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything! By the time warm up started, which is held outside, it was still pouring rain and while it had been raining earlier but wasn’t cold it was now raining and cold, lovely. Kinda made warm up interesting as we were all wanting to keep moving more than normal lol. We had to rebuild the team so this first practice was more a getting used to the feel of the team in the boat, seeing how strong we were, stuff like that. We didn’t focus on form or strength or speed but we will, oh how we will! I fully expect our amazing coach to kick us all in to gear and make us a winning team! Personally, I think we already are a winning team, we felt great when paddling and that was only the first practice of the season! so how can we not win when we will just keep getting better and better? *raised eyebrow*

Wednesday, I had my volunteer dealio, I am a Big Sister…as in The Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program, know it? I don’t know why but people don’t recognize the organization when I just say Big Sisters, they only get the lightbulb of understanding when I say “ya know, big brothers and big sisters…” what’s with that? I think Big Brothers has better advertising then us…? Ah well. So my little sister, who incidentally is a bit taller then me (which is kind of rare in my world since I am 5’8″ ) turned 16, ahhhh, sweet sixteen, remember those years? Cringe a bit? Yeah, I did too! lol. Why do people get all excited about being a teen, and reminisce about it so much when being a teen sucks? You can’t do anything adult yet, can’t drive, can’t work, can’t decide when you are going out or for how long, can’t decide what your cell phone plan will be or if the house will have internet or cable, depending on the parents you don’t get to decide your own wardrobe, can’t randomly get tattooed, generally don’t get to choose what’s for dinner…there’s all kinds of things that as adults we can do that we don’t think about, that teens want to be able to do but are denied and yet! Adults expect teens to act like, dun-dun-dun, adults! Double standard I think, shrug. But regardless of that, she is super happy to be 16! She’s one step closer to driving (her thoughts, not mine) and getting a tattoo (also her plan) and is constantly trying to figure out how to survive as an adult once she is an adult. She wants to be a teacher and live in a co-op but also do her art (she’s a wicked awesome artist!) and she basically is like every single 16 year old in that her life plans change almost weekly and she wants to do everything possible and is only now realizing she doesn’t know how she is going to manage all these dreams and ideas and goals. I am loathe to say that some dreams she will have to drop in order to pursue others, so I keep my mouth shut about that and encourage her weekly in what she has now decided is her new plan.

Thursday, the weather was amazing, like super amazing, as in sunny and warm but not hot, no wind, gorgeous! So I did what any normal person would do, I skipped the gym and went for a hike! 🙂 I was slightly misled about the hike so the workout wasn’t exactly what I planned for but that’s ok, it was such a lovely day and I had such a great time that I am cool with how things went down. The hike starts about 25 minutes drive from where I live and I was told it is 2 hours, now, I took this to mean 2 hours up and 2 hours down so I planned for a 4 hour (give or take) excursion. Yeah, no, so didn’t happen like that! Even with my pausing at the top to admire the view, sit and chill and actually just be in nature (turned off my music an everything! shocking!), also with my pausing on the way down to take pictures of pretty waterfalls etc the whole thing took me an hour and a half. I feel whoever climbed this thing and gave the time estimate for the climb must be a hobbit and take super itty bitty steps, cause anybody taking 2 hours to do that is either going so slow they might as well be going backwards, somehow manages to get lost (which me being me I almost sorta kinda did since I veered off the path and into the bush a couple times, oops! lol) or like I previously said, is the size of a hobbit. But it’s all good, it was a great hike and I’m glad I did it. I think I will use it as my go to hike during the summer when I don’t have a lot of time but really want to do something outside. 🙂

Friday, I got to take part in a make-up thing a friend is doing. She’s in school to be a make-up artist and she used me as her model, she made me up into total glam, it was sweeeeeeet! I looked great, all thanks to her! don’t take that as me being all valley girl vain (like omg, I am like, sooo hawt I practically sizzle! giggle…gag me! lol) I don’t have copies of the pics yet but I will and they will be a superb addition to my portfolio…even if they don’t do anything to minimize the look of my eyes (long story).

Saturday and Sunday I worked and both days I was in this not feeling sick but not feeling well funk so I didn’t hit up the gym, opting to sleep and hope my immune system figures out what the frak is going on and fixes it…so far that plan is a failure but never lose hope! All in all, I think I had an awesome week! I didn’t write about what I ate but everyday I tried to make healthy decisions, and I feel I managed it for the most part. Sure, I had some chocolate one day, and maybe definitely ate more bread then I should have (seems I’ve totally jumped off the no bread bandwagon as I keep buying the freakin stuff!) but I also made healthy meals, chose healthy options when eating out, was physically active (some days lol) and all in all, just feel good about most of the choices I made. 🙂

the view from the almost top of my hike! :)

the view from the almost top of my hike! 🙂

Not sure what those lines on the bottom left of the picture are…I’m going to pretend I chose for them to be there, creative licence an all! 🙂

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So Many Things

18 Mar

I have so many things I want to blog about tonight it’s crazy lol I have had post ideas almost everyday since my last post but never had time to write them up so now they are all circulating in my head and want to be released in this one post, how oh how do I pick just one? Maybe little bits about everything and in the future I can elaborate if I want to write more? Seems as good a plan as any! 😛

I said in my last post I want to be physically active daily and boohya! (that is so not how to spell the marine sound is it?? lol) I was! *happy dance* Not always in an organized gym visit type of way but in some way…oh wait, I had one day of rest I think, hmm, yeah, yeah I did, due to scheduling and muscle pain (from the previous days workout) but I don’t feel bad about it cause I was active all the other days and ate better then I had been so all in all, I made a lot of improvements in my “healthy living lifestyle” this past week. Personally, I think that deserves a happy dance, don’t you?

Now, what did I do for exercise? That is the fun part! I went to the gym a couple times, one of those visits was after a work shift that ended at 9pm, certain days my gym is open till 11pm, sweet huh? I didn’t get to complete my entire workout because I didn’t get to the gym until 9:45pm and I requested some help for the stairmaster (I wanted to try a new piece of cardio equipment) and the help was long in coming and not really that great, sigh, oh well! I also ran on that visit and used some weight machines aaaaaand did some free weights. I was that annoying person who worked out till literally the last second the place was open lol. You should’ve seen the guy working, he was so irritated but whatever! You are open till 11pm so I am staying till 11pm! neener neener 😛 lol

I also had a great time with my friend KL. Normally when we hang out we go to a movie or dinner or something else sedentary. Not that there is anything wrong with those activities but now that weather is theoretically getting nicer and while we are still young enough to have energy in the evening after a day of work why not do something active? The evening we went out it was pissing rain so no outdoor activity for us! We did something way better though, we went to this boxing class thing. I can’t call it boxing cause it wasn’t us with a boxing coach actually boxing in a ring or anything. It’s basically a twist on that Curves place – ya know, that place where you show up, do a 30 minute circuit training exercise deal and then leave? Ok, so imagine that idea, the 30 minute circuit training but based around boxing, oh, and only for women so no intimidating smelly men to get in the way, lol. Cool huh? I had a lot of fun, it was a really great workout, we were both sweating by the end and neeeeeding water. There is a trainer there who kinda helps push you along, motivationally I mean not literally, and there is a buzzer that lets you know when to not only switch stations but when you are at your station when to switch from normal speed to double time. See, you stay at each station for 2 minutes and in 15 second intervals you go from normal speed to double time. Oh, and the stations are organized so you go from a high intensity activity to a lower intensity activity, so the first station is hitting a punching bag using a left-right jab combo, the next station was abs I think…I can’t remember the order but you know what I mean right? Please say right! lol If you already having boxing or kickboxing training like we both do it is a breeze form wise to get through the circuit and you can really focus on speed and intensity. If you don’t have any experience it might take a bit of adjusting but you’ll get the hang soon enough. 🙂 I would like to join there, switch it up between the gym and that place buuuuut it is expensive, I think it was $50 or $60 bucks a month, something like that, just to do a 30 minute circuit where you’re mostly hitting punching bags and cushions, no sparring or anything…so I am hesitant to join…I think it’d really help me with getting in shape and being stronger for dragon boating but if I do join it won’t be till next month cause of budgeting.

The other exercising was using my exercise bike and doing stuff at home, I didn’t wimp out though, I was doing high intensity and then low intensity exercises to get my heart rate up and get real benefit from my at home workouts. Sidenote, the cat thinks I am nuts, lol, and he sits behind me when I do a sit up so when I go down I bump him and then he has hurt feelings and I have to give him a treat later to make it up to him, brat. 😉

The abso best workout I am going to get though is tomorrow when, dun-dun-dunnnnn…Dragon Boat  season starts!!!!! You can not find a person more excited then me right now! We start training tomorrow so at 7:30pm I will be out on the water, rain or shine, warmth or cold, in sickness or in health lol Seriously, so psyched for this! 😀

hmm…I didn’t get to all my post ideas and already this post is pretty long, guess I’ll have to leave the rest for next time. Let me leave you with a picture of tonights dinner which I actually cooked! No buying dinner for me tonight, I slaved away 😉 and made a healthy meal of grilled red and yellow peppers, steamed asparagus and three skinless boneless chicken tenders that are sweet thai chili sauce flavour. Oh heads up, there is a story behind those, which I guess I am saving for another day lol

Tonights homemade dinner! Mmm!

Tonights homemade dinner! Mmm!

OMG! I almost totally forgot! I watched the finale of The Biggest Loser tonight and am so psyched that Danni won! By one freakin pound! Holy crap! She was always my fave contestant and I am so so so glad that she won! I am going to use her as my inspiration for the next while, when I have a day where I think I can’t do it I’m gonna think of her and how she kicked ass and decide that if she did it then so can I! 😀

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A Slight Delay, sigh

18 Feb

Ok, so my plan for today didn’t work out but I have hope for later in the week, kinda lol.

I woke up this morning sick, ugh, talk about timing! My plan for today was to go to the gym after work, use my One Free Session coupon I printed off the website and assuming I liked the place sign up for a membership. I was so psyched for this (also kind of scared, but mostly excited lol). But yeah, so didn’t happen. All while getting ready for work this morning, and all during work I kept thinking maybe I’ll be ok by the time I’m done work, maybe I can still go! By the time I was done work though I was exhausted, and not the normal didn’t get enough sleep the night before exhausted but that lethargic tired you get when sick, and I was so so so cold and couldn’t get warm and my throat was killing me and…and…and…why go on listing symptoms right? We’ve all been sick so you know what was going on over here. Bleh.

I had no appetite all day but I made sure I ate a small breakfast and a provided by work lunch and I eventually managed to choke down some dinner. I’m pretty sure I could have gone the day without food cause that is how squashed down my appetite is but since I am trying to correct my not eating properly habits I figured it was better to force a mildly healthy days worth of food down my throat then not eat. Isn’t it feed a cold, starve a flu?…or something like that…or is it drown a cold as in I should have been drinking more fluids then normal? *confused face* hmm…I’ll have to google this cause I’m not sure which way it is supposed to go lol 😛

I am super annoyed that I didn’t get to the gym today cause I won’t have another chance to try until Wednesday, although maybe that is for the best cause that’ll give me an extra day to feel better…meh, whatever, I am still annoyed. I know some people think you should still work out when sick but I find that if I do that I take even longer to get better and the day after the work out I am in even worse shape then I probably would have been if I’d just stayed home and let my body rest. I figure each person has to figure out what works best for their body and go with that. 🙂

This cold is like a harassing little mosquito that won’t leave people alone. A couple people at work have also had it and it comes back, and back, and back! I was sick about two weeks ago, not so sick I was bedridden but sick enough getting through the work day was pretty hellish and on my days off I cancelled all my plans and just stayed home and tried to get better. I finally did get better, obviously, but then today was like some weird resurgence of the cold only instead of coming on gradually it hit me all at once. The same thing happened to two other people at work, they were sick with their colds 2-3 weeks ago and around the second week of being better they got sick again. So TF is sick again at the same time as me and CJ was sick for the second time last week, she said she only really felt sick for two days the second time around so I am hoping I only have one more day of this and then my immune system gets itself organized and kicks some invading microbes butts! *crossing fingers*

I don’t want all my plans to go out the window cause look at how long it took for me to stop being depressed about how I am and get motivated to change it! If I lose this momentum and end up down in the hole again thinking “what is the point so much damage has been done it is not fixable” can someone come slap me upside the head cause seriously, that is not a fun place to be. 😦

I did try to drink more fluids today but I don’t think I managed to drink as much as I normally do. See, I am a tea-aholic lol I drink tea like it is going out of style! I have a travel mug that I use at work that is constantly filled with tea, as soon as I finish one cup I make another, it’s like a never ending 8 hours of tea! 😀 Granted, I don’t drink it that fast cause the cup keeps it hot for a long time (the whole reason I use the travel mug and not a normal mug, sneaky huh? lol) but I definitely go through a lot of tea while working. Then when I get home the first thing I do is make a cup of tea and depending on my plans for the evening I either am out or home and if I am home I will be drinking more tea. Hey, there are no calories, it’s a fluid, holding a hot cup helps keep me warm-ish and I have English blood in my veins which basically means my blood is half tea 😉 being  a heavy tea drinker is practically my destiny lol. But today, I didn’t really want it as much. I wanted the hot cup to hold but that’s about it. My tea drinking was definitely not endless, shocking! When I got home I did have two cups of tea over the course of the evening and about a glass and a half of water, all of which were drunk in an attempt to make my throat feel better (fyi, totally didn’t work, sigh). As a result, now I am feeling mildly dehydrated and yet, my tummy doesn’t want anything in it so I guess it’ll be a battle of the body systems, wonder which will win? Will the body parts that want hydration be strong enough to tamp down the upset tummy feeling long enough that I will be able to drink some more water or will the tummy win and the water be a no-go mission? Ooooh, the suspense! 😉

To be honest, right now I don’t really care, about the missing out on the gym or the possibility of being able to drink something or anything cause I feel like crap and the only thought I have in my brain right now is going to bed…which is where I am headed riiiiiight now! *yawn*

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I’d Forgotten

28 Jan

I have been banned from exercising, which is sorta why I stopped blogging…again, sigh. I was in a car accident right before my bday and Christmas and got some oh-so-wonderful neck and back injuries from it which has caused my doctor and my physio to say I’m not allowed to do anything more strenuous then walking…oh, and the limit to the walking is that I have to go slowly and for short distances. Laaaaame! 😛

I HATE it! I can’t believe I became that person that misses going to the gym but, I am totally that person. 😦

I tried to compensate for the restriction in my exercising by cutting way way way back on what I am eating…which led to me going for days with maaaaaybe a proper meal being eaten over the span of every two days or so and then caving on like day 5 and eating pretty much anything I could get my hands on, effectively screwing over my weight loss efforts. *rolls eyes* I just kept thinking “stop eating! for the love of carrots stop eating you have no way to burn it off!!!” so I scared myself in to not eating, or barely eating, and then I’d be so hungry for so many days I’d eat waaaaaay too much and then feel horrible about myself because I over ate a meal. Guess I can’t start wondering where my metabolism is since I just knocked it on its head and it is now slumped unconscious to the side of my body. *groan*

But! My physio said I could go snowshoeing as long as I stayed to the path…which yeah, ok, kinda makes it lame snowshoeing cause who wants to stay to a path? But hey, I’ll take what I can get…and surprisingly, even sticking to the path I got a good workout and had fun! 🙂 I went with some of my friends from dragon boating and I felt like such a lard ass! Usually I have good cardio and am decently good at endurance but over a month of no exercising has killed killed killed that! I am so bitter about that! I worked hard to get to a level of cardio I could feel proud about and now that is gone…I sure hope it doesn’t take as long to get back as it took to get in the first place…

The craziest thing happened after the snowshoeing though, something I had forgot about, I felt…brace for it!…good about myself…craaaaaaazy times over here! 😉

Since I haven’t been able to exercise I have been feeling like I am getting fatter everyday, and I’ve been feeling really down about myself, my stupid ass solution to feeling down was to eat badly. I got in this rut of “who cares, I can’t exercise anyways, I’m disgusting and fat, just keep eating, what does it matter…” fairly blah uninteresting thoughts (hence the no blogging about them). After snowshoeing though I was all “yup, worked up a sweat, burned calories, had fun, wanna do it again” and all of that turned in to feeling good about how I spent that day…a feeling I haven’t had in quite a while. I guess, without my really noticing it, things had pretty much gone to shit over here. Stuff bringing me down that I can’t control, and then also me bringing me farther down by not giving my body the proper fuel. So, instead of eating healthy normal portions of healthy normal foods and at least keeping the chemicals that pump out of my brain nice an steady I was eating junk that gave me sugar highs and lows, made me feel heavy and lazy and slow and once the high wore off from eating them I had the double whammy of feeling bad about my actions and feeling bad because of what the food was doing in my system…talk about a wicked bad cycle!

So there I was, after snowshoeing, headed home and I had to detour to the grocery store because I needed milk for tea lol Oh me and my tea! 😛 I decided to make an investment, an investment in myself and I bought groceries, real groceries, real foods that aren’t processed, in boxes, filled with extra sugar and salt and who knows what. I bought fruit, veggies, milk (hey, a girl still needs her tea! lol), yogurt (the healthy kind) chicken and then even more veggies lol I haven’t had a proper grocery shopping trip since before I moved in to this apartment (which fyi, was Nov 1/12), rather pathetic when you think about it!

I used to cook everyday, I always cooked my dinner, and my lunch was (when I was working) cooked by me the night before and later (when I was laid off) cooked by me the day of…breakfast was usually fruit with a side of fruit and maybe some yogurt or before I cut back on processed foods I would have a measured out portion of cereal with a measured portion of skim milk on it. There were healthy snacks thrown in there too by the way. I had a plan back then, a plan I followed, I maintained, I lived with. Sure there were some concession to my social life (I was that person who snuck fresh fruit in to the movie theatre and would grab a 6″ subway sandwich instead of getting sushi with my friends) but somehow I was able to look at the big picture, see that the small sacrifice now would be worth my greater happiness later. What happened to that? *raised eyebrow* Where did that go? Somewhere along the way I stopped being proud that I had lost over 30lbs in a healthy maintainable way and all I started focusing on was the amount of weight I had left to lose. The more I focused on that last 15lbs the bigger it seemed, the bigger I seemed in the mirror, the harder it became to accomplish, the farther away that end goal was. Eating stopped being about eating tasty healthy foods that were good for me and became about restricting and punishing myself for eating at all. I don’t like the outlook I have on food anymore, I don’t like that I see it as an enemy, something to hate, something to feel negatively about every time I eat (whether I eat healthy or unhealthy). This isn’t a battle I can win, I will always need to eat, it’s not exactly a substance I can quit. But now I have to learn how to come to terms with food, how to get back on a healthy level with it and remember that when I eat healthy meals consistently and exercise consistently (once allowed that is) I will feel better about myself, I might even start to feel confident again…after all, I have lost over 30lbs, which compared to where some people are in their weight loss journey doesn’t sound that impressive, but I can’t compete with them anymore, I can only look at myself, just do better then yesterday, push that little bit farther when working out, eat a little bit healthier, cut out a bit more of the crap food that I don’t really need, find my balance again. I had it before, now it’s time to get it back.

So now that I am stocked up on healthy foods my new goal is to cook more this week then I eat out or not eat…does that make sense? I want to make my meals more often than not and they need to be healthy, balanced meals. No more having ten baby carrots and calling it dinner after having no breakfast and a small bowl of cereal for lunch…my plate will have a protein, a veggie and well, ok, a protein and a vegg…I don’t eat rice or pasta or potatoes (unless they are a treat!) cause I cut waaaaay down on grains etc but a protein and a veg for lunch and dinner plus a real breakfast of maybe some yogurt and fruit (or something like that), that is my goal, to have that more often then not this week. I already know that a couple of the days will be hard to manage just cause I have a crazy schedule this week but that is where pre-planning comes in to play right?

Huh, this post became way more serious then intended, I was just gonna yap about how good I felt after snowboarding and how that inspired me to get healthy food in the supermarket, didn’t mean to go all woe-is-me I’m all down about myself on ya…I’ll be cheerful again next time…most likely! lol 😉

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Apps for Weight Loss Part 2

10 Dec

Finally! The second Weight Loss App blog review, I know you were all just diiiiieing for this! 😉 lol

This app is so much fun it makes me want to go to the gym just so I have an excuse to use it, talk about weird motivation to work out lol This app is:

Gym Goal

Because you’re wondering, it is free. I’m pretty sure there is an upgrade option so you can get it without ads but that would undoubtedly involve money and I am cheap…and poor… 😛

When you open it up the home screen gives you options to look at your workout routines, your history, a list of exercises for cardio and strength training, a body map, your measurements (eek!) and tools. There is a 4 step process that the main page tells you to follow, which I have partly done…hey, I said it made me want to go to the gym and workout not that I’d had time or the ability to get to the gym and workout lol It wants you to enter your workout routine (you can custom make one or tell the app what you want to focus on and accomplish and it will create a routine for you), place the routine into the front page schedule, log your workout and use the history button to track your progress. Fairly simple.

At first you might be all, so what? I can put in my measurements and it can help me design and track a workout, big deal, I could do that!

Here is the fun part!

It has videos showing you how to do all the different exercises, er, the weight exercises that is, not the cardio…if you can’t figure out how to run by now, well, I worry for you and not about your fitness level…

Soooo, if you hit Body Map it brings up a picture of a guy but it’s a muscle view, not a look-he-has-skin view, then you pick a body part and it brings up a list of exercises for that muscle. It gives multiple options for the same exercise, by that I mean for arm curls it gives you the option to choose arm curls with: barbell, cable, cable one arm, dumbbell incline, dumbbell seated, dumbbell standing…it continues on with different types of curls (ex. concentration, preacher etc) but I’m sure you get the point. 🙂 From there, I can select any of the versions of the exercise I am interested in and it will take me to a video that shows a guy (with skin and clothes this time!) performing the exercise you chose. The video plays in a loop until you tell it to stop and the dude moves decently slow so you can really see the form, there is also a written description of what you should do which will also help you get the right form.

There are also little things like daily tips, one is a Fit Tip, one is a Muscle Tip (well,  today anyways, I can’t remember if the tips are the same topics daily, guess I’ll find out tomorrow lol) todays tips are both things I already know but having knowledge re-enforced can’t be a bad thing, right?

In the tools section you can do all your backing up to server stuff but you can also read articles on how to work out to build muscle, how to work out to rid yourself of fat and information about protein…all good types of info to have access too. 🙂

In the measurements section you (obviously) can put in your measurements, not just for the normally measured body parts but also things like your neck, shoulder, forearm, wrist, calf…probably more important if you are looking to build muscle but also good if you are looking to lose weight cause if you are tracking not just via a number on a scale but by inches lost this will give you a better picture of where you are losing. There is also a lil camera icon so I’m thinking you can take a pic of each body part to help with the tracking of progress. A little lower down that screen you can put in your One Repetition Max, Target Heart Rate, Body Mass Index, Basal Metabolic Rate, Total Daily Energy Expenditure and Body Fat Percentage. Some of these provide you with information on how to officially get the data, like the target heart rate it says to get the Max Heart Rate you should ask your doc for a cardiac stress test, it also says if you want to do it yourself get a doctor’s ok first (I’m thinking because you’re kinda killing yourself to get this info and I guess if you fall off the treadmill cause you’re having a heart attack they don’t want to be liable lol). Some of them you just have to enter info and it will calculate for you, so, for your BMI you put in your height, weight and age OR your weight and body fat percentage and boom! BMI right there on your screen. Easy peasy!

This app is a lot of fun to play with, and when I discovered the videos showing the different exercises I was psyched, that was when I got all I wanna go to the gym now! The reason? Simple, my form when using free weights is always something I worry about so having the written description and the video to help me with that makes me want to go to the gym with my phone and see if I can perform the various exercises the way the information says too lol. I guess  I want to compare myself to the dude on the screen, *rolls eyes* go ahead, call me a geek, see if I care lol 😉

I tried the option of letting the app pick a work out routine for me, I told the app I wanted a full body workout, intermediate level, with free weights and I liked what it came up with. Most of the exercises it picked I know how to do and I agree they are what I need to be getting back to doing. There are a couple I am not familiar with but that’s good I think, I get to learn something new and I’ll be working muscles that I was possibly overlooking before…ok, to be honest I don’t think I was overlooking them cause the exercises it chose that I haven’t done work out muscles that I work out using different exercises, but like I said, change is good. 🙂

This app has a lot to play with and I’d recommend fiddling around with it for a couple hours or so to fully understand it and be able to utilize it to its full ability, or as full of an ability as you want to lol. I know there is a timer in there so when you’re working out it can let you know how long to rest between sets, I’m thinking I’ll find that when I actually you know, work out and tell it I am working out lol

There we have it, the two apps I am going to be using in an effort to get myself back on track with my weight loss and physical fitness. They are both fairly easy to use, informative, fun-ish and if you actually work out and use the apps I bet they will both be helpful…I can’t claim that yet though since I haven’t ya know, been using them all that much yet…oops? 😉

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Fitspiration

1 Dec

You don’t get it by

Fitspiration from Nike

Fitspiration from Nike

Staring

You don’t get it by

Wishing

You don’t get it by

Drooling

You don’t get it by

Hoping

You don’t get it

Easy

You get it by

Getting off your ass

Working for it

Every second

Of every day

For the rest of your life

-Nike

I didn’t have a chance to play around much with that second app I am going to review for you guys an gals so I thought I’d do a fitspiration post today instead.  🙂

Fitspiration, what an odd trend, I wonder if it is something that was always there and I just didn’t notice or if it really is a rather new phenomenon (which is how it seems to me). I read an article talking about the negative effects some of the fitspiration images can have, how they are showing unrealistic expectations for how fit us average folk can really get and how if you look at a lot of the women in the fitspiration images they are still being sexualized and not just shown for their fitness levels. I guess there might be a point to all that but I figure I am able to distinguish between something I might be able to accomplish and something that is unattainable and even if I wish I could reach the unattainable level I am well aware I will not be going around my whole life being photoshopped sooooooo no real damage done if I look at the unattainable images and use them to motivate me, shrug.

I decided after I had typed out the fitspiration message I would also add the poster so you could see the image paired with the message, I think that is a fairly attainable goal for most women, or at least something close to that…at least, I hope it is cause something kinda like that is where I hope I am heading!

 

 

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Apps for Weight Loss Part 1

30 Nov

On the advice of a friend I installed two new apps on my phone, both are geared towards helping you lead a healthier lifestyle, one is for your eating plan the other is for your fitness. I thought I’d review the apps, give some deets on them and what not but in the effort to not make yet another horrendously looooong blog post I am giving each app it’s own post.

App numero uno!

Lose It!

-disclaimer, the app title uses the exclamation mark, that is not me trying to make it sound more exciting lol 😉

This app is free and is very user friendly. I had it before when I was still using my blackberry phone but I didn’t have it on my blackberry because that phone was a piece of crap and couldn’t handle, well…anything 😛 So I had it on my iPod touch, it worked ok on the touch, it is one of those apps that once it is installed you are good to go, can use it anywhere, you don’t need a data plan or to be hooked in to wifi to use it so that was nice. As far as I can tell (I’ve only really played around with this new version a bit here and there) it is still the same, you install and are good to go. 🙂

This version has some new things that I already love but before I start explaining those let me give you a quick run down of what the app does.

This is a food tracker, so goodbye little notebook that I used to take everywhere and write my food and drinks in to, now it can be conveniently written down in my phone which, being the person that I am, is never far from my grasp lol.

When you first set up the app you tell it how much you weigh now, what your goal weight is, your height, your gender and your age, it then asks you how quickly you want to lose the weight and gives you options to choose from (if I remember correctly the options are 1lb a week, 1.5lbs a week, and 2lbs a week…hmm, I think I am missing an option, I’m sure there were four to choose from…I know it topped out at 2lbs a week so it does try to make sure you lose the weight at a healthy rate). It then very nicely calculates how many calories you can eat per day so you achieve your goal 🙂 Oh! and it tells you when  you will reach your goal by if you follow the amount of calories it says to eat.

The main screen shows the current day, how many calories you are allowed, how many you ate, how many you burned and your net calories for the day. There is also a bar graph that goes from 0 to 2500 and it has a line marking how many calories you are allowed, as you add food to the tracker the bar lights up to show you how close you are to your caloric limit.

The next screen is your Log screen, it shows in detail the food and exercise you have logged for the day, you can toggle back to look at previous days. Along the top of that screen it shows your allowed amount of calories per day, how many calories you ate, how many calories you burned and your net total. It also has a box that tells you if you are over or under your calories for the day…if you are over that box is bright red so you can’t miss it…no matter how hard you try 😛 When you input the food you put it in as breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack so when you read your food log it shows the food separated by what meal you ate it in. You can select any of the foods on the list to bring up a detailed nutritional information screen, that screen also lets you adjust the quantity of food, so say you put down that you ate two pieces of bread but you actually only ate one, you can go fix it. 🙂 This is also where you enter your exercises for that day, you can select from a database of exercises (the list is quite extensive) or you can enter your own exercise. For all that the list of exercises is long and varied it still doesn’t have dragon boating, sigh, maybe one day…

After that is the Motivate screen, this one will require you to be hooked in to wifi or have a data plan. This is new (to me anyways, maybe it has been around a while) and I like the idea of it even though I haven’t used it that much yet. There are Challenges that you can sign up for which, depending on the type of person you are, could really help to motivate you. I signed up for one, it is a Holiday Workout Challenge, it was made by an American so it says there are 33 days from Thanksgiving till Christmas and the challenge is to keep active as much as you can in that time frame despite all the extra festivities you will be attending. You can invite friends to join the same challenges as you, you can see how well other people are doing (currently the leader in this challenge has logged 32 workouts – don’t freak out! She is logging “real” exercises  as well as things like housework and shopping) and you can even earn badges, ooOOOooh! Ok, so I’m making fun of it a bit *rolls eyes* they are virtual badges, I mean come on, are you gonna show your friends your phone screen and be all “look, I earned another badge that in the real world means absolutely nothing!” lol I’m thinking no!

The next page is the Goals page, this is the page that shows you your start weight, your goal weight, your daily calorie budget (just can’t get away from that!) and gives you an option to modify your program. There is also a snazzy chart that shows where you started weight wise and as you lose weight the line will go lower on the chart till it gets to your goal weight, the dates are along the bottom and the weights are listed at the side. I remember this chart from last time I used this app and I loved it! I am fairly visual with most things and seeing the line going down down down on the chart made me feel so good about the progress I was making. 🙂 Go line graphs!

There is of course a More page where you can change  various settings for the app, read summary reports an stuff like that. What I like about the More page is you can create custom foods (so, say you drink a protein shake everyday and you make it the same way every time, add it in there and when you are putting in the food log that you drank the protein shake you don’t need to put each and every individual ingredient, you just put in the shake that you saved to memory, easy peasy!) You can also add recipes, pick which nutritional info is entered and tracked, see a list of all the foods you’ve entered in to the app previously, update the list of foods in the app, all that kind of stuff.

Something I absolutely looooove is the new ways to enter a food in to the tracker. you can search the database for the food you ate, you can take from the list of foods you have entered previously, you can take from your recipes or your previous meals, you can search brand name foods ooooooor, the best part, you can scan the freakin barcode!! Oh yah! I think this is sweeeeet and the best addition to the app that I have discovered so far! I tried it by scanning the bottle of wine I was drinking and it was brilliant! It seemed even more brilliant then it is at the time due to just how much of that wine I had consumed teehee. 😉

One last thing, when you are on the main screen you can change it so you can see how you are doing that week (a basic over/under for each day and by how much) or you can look at a macro-nutrient breakdown of the current day and the week so far. So, if you are trying to be low carb or high protein or whatever, this will help you to follow that. It’s pretty amazing how quickly some of the things add up, like carbs, there are so many carbs in veggies that if you are going low carb you can totally go over your carb intake for the day just by eating a quarter cup extra of veggies that day, crazeeeee!

So this is my explanation of the app, long enough for you? lol Hey, I tried to make it short, sorta…there’s just so much info in this app! I would highly recommend this app if you are tracking your food and/or exercise, it is easy to use, it’s on your phone which odds are is with you all the time, there are lots of different options for how to enter different foods, every screen shows you the important info so you don’t have to toggle from one screen to another all the time. All in all, it is great…long as you use it! If you install it and then just let it sit there, well, don’t go complaining you aren’t losing weight cause oddly enough, it only works if you work, go figure! 😉

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Karma Points

30 Nov

I am definitely losing karma points over here, but the situation is so funny that I can’t bring myself to stop being amused by it which in turn is bringing those karma points down.

I am harness training my cat and he is not taking to it well at all! He’s never worn a collar or harness before but I didn’t think it’d be a big deal since I had cats years ago and they accepted their collars (and occasional harness) without even a twitch of their ears. However, Striker is constantly reminding me he is not like the cats I had before and this is one more situation where he is showing his personality.

As soon as I put the harness over his head he does that thing cats do so well, you know, where all of a sudden they become a bag of limpness, total dead weight, and they somehow magically make themselves weigh 100lbs so it’s super hard to maneuver them…how do they do that?? This reaction is better then the alternative which would be him fighting to get away, so far each time I’ve put the harness on him the end result is he is wearing the harness and I come away without any new wounds…which, if you knew him and his dexterity with his claws, you’d be impressed by. (I currently have a numb and yet also in pain pinky finger thanks to his claw slicing it from tip to first knuckle through the fleshy part, it feels so gross when I bend my finger and the cut re-splits open, ugh)

I try to put the harness on him everyday for at least two hours, so he can slowly get used to it and realize that wearing it isn’t going to kill him…today was his best day yet, he crawled on to my lap as soon as the harness was on and has stayed super close since, he’s more cuddly then normal (which, not gonna lie, I am enjoying) and I’m proud to say he actually slept while wearing it! Usually he works really hard to get it off then stays near me but in a panic-ready-to-run-at-a-moments-notice mode cause obviously wearing a harness is a sign of impending doom *rolls eyes*

On a weight loss note I am not following any type of recognizable eating plan nor am I following any type of recognizable exercise program, oops? *innocent face*

When I moved I moved far enough away from the gym I was at that it didn’t make sense to continue on there, luckily I had signed up for only a year and had lived there for only a year so the membership ended the same time I left the area. Where I moved to, there are 3 gyms (well, 2 gyms and 1 community fitness centre) all within a decent distance, two would require driving to get there, one I could walk to. There are also 4 weight loss clinics…I don’t know if that is the right term for those places, they are those places that you go in and sign up for their program and do everything they say (for a lot of money usually) and in a short-ish amount of time you’ve lost a fairly decent chunk of weight but you aren’t on a program that is meant to be followed for life and from what I heard once you finish the program odds are high you’ll gain the weight back cause you’re now eating real food again and your body is all “say whaaaaa? I get real food?? hurry up! store it in case this crazy wench starts starving us again and living off vitamin shots!” So, those places I am ignoring cause, well, I can’t afford them and they are kinda weird.

I have (as of a couple days ago) checked out both the gyms and the community centre and think I have decided which one to go with. The one that is within walking distance is the cheapest (which is a very important factor in my decision making process) but it is also the smallest and offers no fitness classes. However, I wouldn’t have an excuse to not go since it is so close and really, how often do I go to the classes offered at other gyms I have been a member at? Probably not enough to justify the extra cost per month. The only thing really holding me back is that to get the cheap rate I have to sign up for 2 years, that’s a long time to stay with one gym, especially considering how often I move and that each move takes me to a drastically different part of the city. I don’t want to be saddled with a gym membership for a place that becomes super inconvenient for me to get to if I end up moving in a year. Kinda funny really, I generally don’t look more then a couple weeks ahead, I don’t see the point in stressing or planning or trying to predict too far in to the future when who knows what will come along to upset the plans or ideas or visions you have in your head? Life will happen whether you want it to or not, I’d rather plan for perhaps a week in advance and leave room open so I can adjust when life throws something at me. And yet, here I am trying to decide if I should get a gym membership at this place and worrying about if I’ll be around to utilize it for the next two years. Oy! 😛

I’m pretty sure in the end I’m going to cave and get a membership at the close and cheap place, guess I’ll have to make a commitment to them for the next 2 years…it’s like I’m selling a little bit of my soul, well, I would be selling a little bit of my soul if I had any of it left lol 😉

As for food, *throws hands in air* I just don’t know what to do! I’d reached a point in weight watchers where I had seriously plateaued and I knew it was time for a change. So I switched to my low carb, high healthy fat high protein meal plan and did fairly well with that for a decent amount of time but when I went off it I went waaaaaaay off it and now, everytime I think about going back to it and the restrictions it has well, frankly, I just don’t want to. I want to think I can get the results I want with a less strict plan but reality is I most likely can’t. Soooooo, I am probably going to have to cave and just suck it up, stop whining (which, thankfully I am only really doing in my head lol) and get my butt back on the low carb high healthy fat high protein eating plan, sigh.

I suppose I could make it a challenge, I used to do that in my weight watchers days. If I knew something was coming up where I was going to want to veer from my eating plan drastically I’d give myself the goal of following my eating plan with no exceptions for a set amount of time leading up to the big event so I had earned it and could enjoy without feeling guilt. I have my birthday and Christmas coming up so those would be my goals…hmm…maybe that could work again, you just need the right mind set right?

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