Tag Archives: healthy lifestyle

Changing How I Eat

27 Mar

I’ve been talking with this nutritionist to get help with my eating, I don’t have the best eating habits and I thought getting some professional help might, well, help. 😛

She’s been really good about teaching me how to make small changes that are sustainable instead of giving me a list of drastic changes I should make that I’d never be able to keep up with. Baby steps people!

One of the things she wants me working on is eating small meals every three hours. That was one of the things I was trying to do this past week and lemme tell ya, it takes a huge effort! I don’t like eating that often, or eating that much over the course of a day but I had promised myself I would try so I started trying to eat something every three hours on Sunday, I thought it’d be easier to do on a work day and yay me, I was right lol

It’s not that I have to eat a meal every three hours, I just have to eat something, preferably a combination of protein, fruit or veg and whole grains. Now, eating that combo didn’t happen every three hours but I almost always managed to eat something at the three hour mark. 🙂 Sometimes it was as simple as eating a hard boiled egg, other times it was veggies and hummus, I varied it so I wouldn’t get bored.

Not gonna lie, I was kinda proud of how well I managed on Sunday and Monday but I totally dropped the ball on my days off, sigh. One thing I have managed to do for 3 days in a row is cook an actual meal each day! And not just something I would consider a meal, like a spoonful of peanut butter or some toast but food that I think almost anyone would consider a meal. Go me go! lol

The meals weren’t always the healthiest but they were better than things I have made in the past. I tried to make sure I had that combination the nutritionist had been talking about and I was trying to do this other thing she taught me which is building your meal. The idea is you take the dish you were already going to make and build on to it so it is healthier and more filling and provides more of the nutrients you need in a day. For example, I made a grilled cheese sandwich one day and to build on the meal I also prepped some raw veggies and got some hummus so I ate not just the sandwich but also carrots, baby tomatoes and hummus (the hummus was for the protein). Make sense?

Wednesday I made a dish I don’t have a name for lol it had noodles, asparagus, orange pepper, beefless tips (don’t judge, they are delish!) with a spicy thai sauce. It looked like this…

2015-03-25 18.57.43The beefless tips look burned but they actually weren’t and yeah I know, it doesn’t look that impressive in general but hey, this is me, baby steps! It has veggie, protein and well, not whole grains but a carb type thing so I think it follows the rules I am trying to learn. And sure, maybe I shouldn’t have added a sauce but it needed something to give it some flavour, I may be trying to eat healthy but I’m not trying to piss off my taste buds by depriving them lol

Tuesday I made chicken fingers and veggies which yes I am well aware chicken fingers are not healthy cause they are breaded but they were in my freezer and the meal I made was a better option than the peanut butter and nutella sandwich I was contemplating. 😛

Tuesdays dinner

Tuesdays dinner

To make up for eating chicken fingers I made a super healthy dessert of Greek Yogurt with sliced banana in it and a side of some sliced up mango. Only problem was I didn’t get to eat the yogurt and banana because it turned out the yogurt had gone bad, something I discovered with my first spoonful, blech. Least the mango was good! 🙂

Healthy dessert

Healthy dessert

The dinner I made on Monday wasn’t from scratch, though I suppose neither are chicken fingers lol I made a stir fry but it is a ready made one that is frozen so all I have to do is warm it up, takes a whopping 18 minutes when cooked on the stove top, something even I can manage lol

Mondays dinner

Mondays dinner

So yeah, I am trying to take what the nutritionist is teaching me and incorporate it in to my daily eating habits. It doesn’t always work but at least I have a bit more structure to my eating. Like today for instance, I had oatmeal for breakfast, well, lunch, umm…late lunch I guess, I ate around 3:30pm so I knew that I should eat again around 6:30pm. Knowing I would be eating again at 6:30pm helped stop me from nibbling on food around 5pm when I was feeling like having a nibble, structure can be your friend! 🙂 Course, you can’t always eat every three hours, life gets in the way, and that messes me up cause if I miss the three hour mark then I feel like I’ve screwed up and that doesn’t feel good at all, sigh. But I’ll get better the longer I try! 🙂

 

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Carrot Juice Review

7 Jan

Alrighty, so in an attempt to be healthier I started researching green smoothies, basically, smoothies with lots of veggies in them (mostly green veggies), they are supposed to be meal replacements and an amazing addition to your healthy lifestyle. Or so many a blog and article say…

I was reading a bunch of different articles to find out what I should be putting in my green smoothie and in what quantities and well, the research wasn’t going great. A lot of people seem to be all “this is my way, it is the best way, follow my rules!” Bunch of green smoothie freaks happenin out there! 😉 lol

So after basically learning only four things for sure (1) start adding green stuff slowly cause it’s an acquired taste (2) carrots will help add some sweetness (3) everyone seems to use a lot of kale and (4) hmm, I would have sworn there was a fourth…oh well! 😛 I went to the store to start my shopping cause yeah, not a big owner of kale over here…I didn’t know what it was actually and had to google it 😛

A friend recommended I check out the drinks and smoothies by Healthy Planet, they have a green smoothie drink, she said why not just read the bottle, see what they put in theirs and buy the same stuff. Brilliant! I am not above copying someone if they already figured out the best way to do something, cause ya know, sincerest form of flattery an all that. 😉

I was checking out their drinks and what caught my eye but a bottle of carrot juice by Bolthouse Farms. I read a book yeeeeeears ago where the main character, in one small scene, was drinking carrot juice. From that day I have always wondered about it. The character was super healthy, fit, ate well, I liked her, and I dunno, I got intrigued. Not intrigued enough to go off searching for a bottle of carrot juice, obviously, but it was something that always stayed in my head.

Knowing I love carrot soup I decided why not buy a bottle of carrot juice, it’s right here in front of me and on sale, it’s like it is meant to be! Adding something healthy to my list of healthy choices can only be a good thing, right? Right!

2015-01-03 13.16.49

Well lemme tell ya, I am oh so grateful I only bought one bottle cause omg no! No! No! No! No! That juice is nasty! Ugh! *shudder*

I tried. I swear I tried but I couldn’t get past two small sips and down the drain it went. So amazingly not good.

What kind of crazy person came up with this idea? I’m all for healthy but wow, just…No!

I’d like to be clear I am not blaming Bolthouse, it’s not that I think they personally made a horrible juice but that other companies have an ok version, I’m now of the firm opinion that carrots should not be made in to juice. Keep them as soup. Keep them as solids. Keep them as garnish. Just don’t turn them in to juice, that’s when you know you’ve gone over to the dark side…or would it be the orange side? 😉

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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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Sugar Overdose

27 Mar

I’ve been eating not all that great lately and I think I am (I can’t believe I am about to say this!)…all sugared out.

I am not only not craving/desiring/wanting things with overt amounts of sugar in them I am actively craving things that aren’t all sugary sweetness.

How crazy is that??

no more sugar? say whaaaa???

no more sugar? say whaaaa???

I don’t even want my go-to spoonful of peanut butter lately. If it wasn’t for having no other symptoms I’d say I must be sick! lol

Can a person eat too much sweet stuff, or just in general not good-for-you stuff and have their bodies rebel? If so, I think mine has done it.

For the past couple days all I’ve really been wanting are fresh fruit, bland meals, simple foods that have no sweetness to them. Seriously, what has happened to my tastebuds??

Now, you might be thinking that this is a great thing, that it makes it easier to say no to treats but it oddly has had the opposite affect. I’m so freaked out by this that I keep trying various sugary treats, even though I don’t want them, because I think I should want them and I feel like something has gone wrong because I am not craving them. How messed up is that?! A lot, I know!

I’ve decided to stop with the contrary, ridiculous behaviour and as of right now I am going to be eating healthier, which will result in my eating the types of foods I am craving. Keeping in mind payday isn’t until Friday sooooo the changes will be quite minor until I can afford groceries…hopefully the change in foods will get me back to feeling more like myself. I know the change in foods will be good for my weight loss, workouts, dragon boat training, self-esteem…crap, why’d I ever stop eating healthy when it has so many positive side effects?? And don’t say cause I’m a dummy, I already know that! lol 😛

Combined with my changing back to healthier foods I keep thinking about trying CrossFit. I hear amazing things about it, both good and bad and soooo badly want to indulge my curiosity. However, I don’t want to be the last person to finish, or the weakest person there, or well, the suckiest. Which I’m fairly certain I would be cause I’ve heard what some of the workouts are and I’m fairly certain if I tried doing those workouts I’d die right there in the gym lol. What stops me the most from trying it out is the cost, I have yet to find a CrossFit price that doesn’t seem exorbitant and way out of my price range. No way I am spending over $100 a month to work out, I don’t have that kind of expendable income, whiiiiich pretty much keeps me solidly in the camp of wanting-to-try-but-can’t-cause-I-can’t-afford-it. sigh.

I don't have the designer purse either :P

I don’t have the designer purse either 😛

I know a lot of people who’d say it is money well spent, totally worth it, and then question me about if I feel my health and well-being were worth so little to me. I would like to point out it’s not that I don’t think my health and fitness are not worth the expense, it’s that if I have to choose between being able to pay rent, pay my other bills and have a bit left over, I’m going that route rather than paying for one month of CrossFit and having to skip a bill because my pay cheque doesn’t stretch far enough to pay for everything. I mean c’mon, if my pay cheque stretched enough to pay for everything I wanted I’d totally of signed up for that lipo already! 😉 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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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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