Tag Archives: weight loss

Enter: Flax Seed

29 Mar

Alrighty so not only do I write a blog about weight loss I read a lot of other people’s blogs about their weight loss. I tend to veer away from blogs that are done by trainers, so called fitness experts, companies etc cause I feel those ones are mostly trying to make me buy into their system of losing weight and buy their products which in my opinion, so not cool. People who are trying to lose weight are a tad desperate (generally) and even once they have realized that the best way to lose the weight is in a slow and healthy manner they still wish and want and beg the universe for a quick fix. Heck, even though I’ve tried diet pills, powders, shakes, diet foods and extreme diets and I know from experience they don’t work doesn’t mean everytime I see an ad for something new like that I don’t immediately google and wiki and yahoo and just in general research the shit out of it in the hopes it might actually be legit…sadly, they never are, sigh.

Huh, totally veered away from what I was meaning to type, oops! lol

What I am getting at is I am not in some sort of bubble while on this weight loss journey, I read and research and learn, I get advice (solicited and unsolicited), I try things I would never of thought of on my own in an attempt to not only lose my excess weight but to live a healthier lifestyle.

So, in an attempt to live my healthier lifestyle I am adding Milled Flax Seed in to my eating plan…sounds oh so yummy huh? *wrinkled nose* It’s not that I’m not open to trying it, I did buy it after all, I’m just…hesitant to start adding it to my foods cause, well, it’s flax seed, just the name alone evokes images of dry mouth, icky flavour, weird texture, blech! 😛 In fact, the only reason I finally bought some was because I was reading an article online about weight loss and healthy living and it mentioned adding flax seed to your smoothies and since I drink protein shakes I realized I could most likely add the flax seed to my protein shakes and not really notice it but still benefit from it. Awesome thinking right? *raised eyebrow*

In general I don’t feel the need to hide healthy additions to my eating plan within other foods so that I can tolerate them but just the idea of this flax seed is making me make faces that remind me of a kid whose faced with a plate of brussel sprouts. Yeah, that face! I am well past the age of making that face and yet, this flax seed is inspiring the muscles in my face to morph in to the disgusted look reminiscent of a child.

I placed the bag of flax seed with my protein powder so I can’t even “accidentally” forget it tomorrow when I make my shake…I know that will irritate me tomorrow when I make my shake but for now I am patting myself on the back for thinking ahead lol.

For those of you that are wondering, some of the so-called benefits to having flax seed in your diet are:

  • Omega-3 essential fatty acids, “good” fats that have been shown to have heart-healthy effects. Each tablespoon of ground flaxseed contains about 1.8 grams of plant omega-3s.
  • Lignans, which have both plant estrogen and antioxidant qualities. Flax seed contains 75 to 800 times more lignans than other plant foods.
  • Fiber. Flax seed contains both the soluble and insoluble types.

Also, consuming flax seed will apparently help me to not get cancer, help protect me from heart troubles, help decrease inflammation, regulate blood sugar levels (this goes towards type 2 diabetes which I do not have but hey, ya never know!), regulate hot flashes (something I am a looooong ways away from worrying about) and lots of other things. It is important to note that consuming flax seed doesn’t magically make you lose weight, or boom! become super healthy. It is just one more tool to be used by those wanting to live a healthier lifestyle. Not that I believe by not eating it you are not living a healthy lifestyle…I don’t have a set opinion about it yet since I haven’t started eating it yet I just don’t want you to read this and think “oh hey, a super food, if I sprinkle this over my donut it makes my donut ok to eat”, sorry to say it just doesn’t work like that!

The so called experts say women who are preggos or breast feeding shouldn’t eat flax seed but it seems like women who are preggo or breastfeeding are restricted from a lot of foods so guess adding one more to the list won’t freak them out all that much. 😉

There are countless websites you can visit to find tips and tricks and suggestions in regards to flax seed, everything about how to eat it, how to store it, differences between the types of flax seed blah blah blah. I won’t retype all that info here since (1) it’s easy enough to find on your own (2) I won’t bore the bejeebus out of you who are reading this who have no interest in trying flax seed and therefore don’t care how to store it etc and (3) it’s late and I’m tired. 😛

Hopefully my little flax seed experiment works, otherwise I’m stuck with a bag of the stuff and no one to unload it on to lol I’m hoping to eat it daily for a month, I figure that’s a good length of time to monitor myself and see if I feel any differently because of eating it. It will be a completely subjective rating of the flax seed since I’m not tracking any changes within my body with medical tests etc (cause uh, who would do that?? *rolls eyes*) but at least by tracking how I feel, how much of it I eat etc over the next month I will be able to decide if it is something I want to continue adding to my food or if I can cut it out and thereby save the money of buying another bag once this one is gone. 😛

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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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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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To The Gym – Finally!

11 Mar

WooHoo! I am finally allowed back to the gym!…on a conditional basis but whatever! I’m allowed back that’s all that matters to me! lol It’s not that I miss the gym exactly, more like I miss working out and not feeling like a huge blob sitting in my living room getting bigger and bigger and bigger…I mean c’mon, who wants to feel like that? Not me!

The conditional basis for my return to the world of exercise is this: I am allowed back for two weeks and I must ease in to things, sigh, I’m not good at “easing in” to things, I like to jump right in but fine, *pout* I’ll try to ease in…kinda 😉

After two weeks I have to go back to my physio and he has to reassess me to see how my back and neck are dealing with my normal routine. I don’t know what happens after that…

I’m not sure how well my body is dealing with my normal routine to be honest. I am lifting heavy stuff at work again, I am doing my normal activities, admittedly I haven’t been to the gym as often as I would like because life got in the way and I am totally out of the habit of prioritizing exercise in to my life (I plan to fix that!) but if I don’t make it to the gym I try to use my exercise bike or at least do some core work on my living room floor. I made a rule that if I am watching more then one hour of tv I have to ride the exercise bike for at least an hour while watching tv, and well, me being me, once I’ve done an hour of cardio I’m not going to stop there so then I do push ups, sit ups, core work, stretching, ya know, the normal stuff. However, by the end of the day my neck and back are hurting quite a bit and that is not normal…if I use a heating pad and rest it it seems to do a bit better but it shouldn’t be hurting right?

I’m trying not to think about it too much, I’ll just wait and see what the physio says next week. 🙂

Going back to the gym was…odd. I was actually kinda scared, something I was not expecting. I think the fear was partially because it was a new gym so I wouldn’t know where anything was and it’d take me a bit of time to get oriented and I didn’t know what to expect for how busy it would be or what type of people would be in there (I have noooooo desire to go to a gym that is full of snobs, ugh). The other reason was I have lost muscle mass, my muscle definition is not at all what it used to be and I am squishier around the middle, sigh. While I hate the squishy look I know it’s only a matter of consistent workouts and proper eating to help get that lessened but the big fear was how much my cardio ability and strength ability had declined. I worked hard to become good at running and to be able to lift weights I never thought I’d be able to lift. I was terrified to find that was all gone.

Guess what? It’s gone. 😦

After my first visit to the gym I was torn between being happy I went and feeling good about myself and wanting to cry because I wasn’t able to do as good of a workout as I used to be able to. I ran but not as fast or for as long as I used to, I just couldn’t do it, or couldn’t manage to push myself to do it. Oh, and get this, I totally blanked on my free weight routine. I thought I’d do back and arms but I get to the free weight section, I’m surrounded by buff guys who are lifting ridiculously heavy weights and I blanked on my exercises. I couldn’t remember everything I used to do, was worried I didn’t remember the proper form for some things, didn’t know what weights I should start with (cause I figured I’d have to start with smaller weights than what I used to be able to lift but it was a guessing game of what size) and something new, I was embarrassed to be lifting such small (in comparison to those guys) weights. That is just down right stupid, I am a girl, a girl who is soooo not a body builder so of course I can’t lift the same weights, or anything near! Plus it was my first time back after months away due to injury so nothing to be ashamed about!…and yet…I guess part of the embarrassment was because they were watching me and I was feeling kinda judged by them, not cool, but also probably all in my head so I can’t blame them for that. sigh.

Today was my second time to the gym and I wondered if I was going to feel the same way. I struggled on the treadmill, more then I ever have and that annoys me. Thing is, I think I could have pushed harder, could have done better, but I’ve lost that ability to push myself, to reach a limit I didn’t think I could. Where did that go? Where did that voice in my head that used to encourage me, yell at me, push me to give that little bit extra so I accomplished the goal I set for the day go? That voice is my version of Jillian Michaels, it’s not quite as mean, but it is what got me through some harsh running sessions. I miss it…I’m not sure how to get it back…I’m not even sure when I lost it…and more importantly, what does it mean that I lost it? Has some inner part of me given up? I know some days I feel like that, like I have given up on myself, my future, my goals. I don’t like the feeling, I don’t want to have given up but some days the fight just isn’t there and I don’t know how to get it back. Maybe just jumping in to my routine, starting back at dragon boat practice, just in general being more active will make me feel better about myself and that in turn will help me get that voice back? I dunno…I do know that I neeeeed that voice cause todays running session was lame in comparison to what I used to do. I’m a little lost…

So for now, since I don’t know what to do, I am going to start with the basics. I am going to be physically active everyday. I am going to eat healthier and do my best to follow the 80/20 rule. I am going to surround myself with motivational posters, youtube videos, phrases etc so that when I falter I can find inspiration where ever I am. I am going to research and reteach myself proper weight lifting form, create an actual strength routine so the next time I am in the gym it doesn’t matter if I blank because I will have something written down that tells me what to do. I am going to make this weight loss happen! I am going to find my inner voice! I am going to reteach myself how to fight! I am going to stop giving up and reach my goals! (I feel like I should make that marine noise they make in movies after all that lol)

 

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Dreams

12 Feb

Dreams.

We all have them, some people don’t remember them, others remember in vivid detail. Sometimes they tell great stories, help you sort through something you can’t face when awake, scare the crap out of you or are just plain weird.

I am a master of weird dreams, no seriously, I have always had vivid weird dreams. They usually turn in to nightmares at some point, you wouldn’t believe how many ways and times I have been killed in my dreams, sigh, those dreams I don’t like, duh. The other dreams though, usually those I like.

My dreams are always a story, shown in chronological order that I remember in vivid detail for a couple hours after I wake up. If I make a point of remembering a dream then I’ll remember it longer, if I don’t dwell on it then it fades by about hour three of my being awake and I don’t think of it again. I’ve never been able to continue a dream the next night which is annoying when I am woken mid dream and don’t get to finish a story lol I wonder if anybody else gets annoyed over that?

Last week I had a dream where mermaids are real and were portrayed much the same way vampires were in the Blade movies. So, limited numbers of humans know about them, they operate sneakily in our society, they are like a sub-culture that if you discover them odds are good you are gonna die. In the dream, the mermaids had learned of a way that they could walk around on land for limited amounts of time which meant they could basically mess with people and then escape back in to the ocean. Mermaids are also basically one big mafia group so in my dream two cops were chasing a group of 4 people through a store, wanting to arrest them when they realized they were being lured in to a bad situation and lo and behold the guys being chased turned on them, shot them all and then dived in to the conveniently placed ocean where they turned in to mermaids, reported to the head of their organization (which, fyi, was Ariel from the Disney movie lol) and well, it kept going from there but you get the idea. lol.

This, in my world, is a fairly normal dream, least I was on the planet the entire time in this dream…I’ve died while saving the starship Enterprise D from exploding…yes, I watch Star Trek, no I don’t look like I do. 😉

Why am I going on about dreams? Simple. I had one last night that was about my body and it freaked the hell out of me!

I was going to work out and hadn’t done so in a long time, for some reason I took a pair of capris I use in the summer to wear while working out. I was with a bunch of people, my mom, close friends, a random grouping that will most likely never happen in reality as they don’t all live in the same city. We were all changing to go run on a track (something else that would never happen lol) and when I put on the capris they were oh so tight that I could barely close them and when I looked in a mirror I was horrified by how I looked. Not only were they super tight I was way bigger then I am now, a completely different body shape then what I have ever been, I was super round, super large and round all through my torso. I am far less accepting of flaws in myself then I am in others and I started panicking about how I had let myself go. I put on a loose fitting shirt to try to hide how bad the fabric stretched across me and all I could think was “start running! start running! all you need to do is start working out and it’ll go away!” in my dream I knew with that certainty you can only have in a dream that all I needed was one good workout and it would all go away and the capris would fit properly again.

Oh if only it was that simple, *big epic sigh*

In reality, I am horrified by how I look right now, and sometimes I do feel that all I need is one really good session in the gym to alter how I feel about how I look but I know it will take more then that. I hate that it’ll take more then that since I am a needing instant results kind of girl lol. You’d think after my nice an slow, healthy weight loss I’d be used to not getting instant results when working on my body/health but…I’m not! lol 😛

I think this dream was my unconscious mind bringing to my attention just how unhappy I am with how I am looking right now. The dream exaggerated how large I am, and exaggerated how I feel about my looks and exaggerated how easy it would be to fix what my laziness and then not being allowed to exercise due to my car injuries has done to my body. I was at a point where I was proud of how defined my arms were, how perky my ass was getting, how my thighs were noticeably thinner, how my cardio numbers kept improving and my strength was increasing. Now? Now I am nowhere near proud. In fact, I am terrified about how long it will take to get back to where I was and then keep improving.

I so desperately want to go back to the gym, I finally got clearance from my physio (admittedly for a way limited exercise regime but whatev! it’d be exercise!) but I can’t afford even the cheapest of memberships because of having to pay for twice weekly physio sessions. It’s driving me insane! I do what I can at home but it’s not the same as having access to a treadmill and free weights and a freakin bosu ball, how insane is it that I want a bosu ball so so so much?! lol I keep thinking once my physio is over and I have money again I should look in to investing in to some work out equipment so I’m not so reliant on access to a gym to get to use decent equipment buuuuut once I have money again I have other things it has to go towards and oddly enough, bosu balls are kinda pricey. *rolls eyes*

Ah well, I know I shouldn’t bitch and complain about it, there are lots of people out there who have things a lot worse but some days I just get so frustrated with how stuck I seem to be. 😛 But hey, I won’t be stuck forever right? 🙂

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I Forgot Wordless Wednesday!

13 Dec

Geez, it would have only been my second Wordless Wednesday and I forgot it! Does this mean I am destined to not do Wordless Wednesday in the future? Nah, I think it’s just cause it’s a new thing so I have to get used to it…I hope lol

Yesterday was Wednesday, duh, so I was supposed to take pictures of what I did and ate that day so I could show you instead of tell you…well, that was an epic fail if ever there was one, sigh. Too bad too since I had an awesome lunch! I was at the mall with a friend and we stopped at the food court for lunch. Now don’t go getting all “uh-oh, you screwed up didn’t you??” cause I didn’t! So there! 😛

I went to one of those grill places where you pick your veggies and protein from fresh raw selections then they grill it in front of you using a hot grill (shocking huh?) and a bit of water so it doesn’t stick, they then add the sauce of your choosing (I chose teriyaki) and was pleasantly surprised at the minimal amount of sauce the guy used, then it is served with some rice. Not so bad huh? I was heavy on the veggies but did put some crab, tofu and beef in there cause hey, ya gotta have some protein! I can’t remember all the veggies I chose, I love places like this though cause sure I can make a stir fry at home but somewhere like this has every veggie you could think of so you’ll have way more variety for your meal. I won’t remember them all but I know I had: carrots, zucchini, green beans, water chestnuts, baby corn, pineapple, bok choy, mushrooms, yellow and red peppers, celery…hmm, I know I am missing something, meh, it’ll come to me later probably. I also put some peanuts on there cause I am weak and I love peanuts in stir fry. 😀 All in all tasty and (I think) healthy.

The rest of the day was spent hanging with my friend at the mall, we were Christmas shopping, then coming back to the apartment to check on the poor cat. Oy! The day prior was his first visit to the vet, er, first visit since I have known him that is, I’m sure he was taken prior to our meeting. Well let me tell ya, this cat does not like going out of his comfort zone, he’s a bit of a worrier, hides a lot and has really sharp claws…not a good combo for stuffing him in a cat carrier and driving him to see a vet he’s never met. Oh, and he’s quite dramatic, if this cat could write he’d be writing his story and it’d be coming off as a Greek Tragedy! I of course would be the villain…despite my feeding him, changing his litter box, buying him treats and toys and a bed, moving when he wants the chair, letting him have half my bed even though he weighs ten pounds and I weigh, er, let’s just say I weigh considerably more then ten pounds 😉 lol shrug, he’s adorable though, so oh well, I may bitch but I love him (which really means I am whipped and he knows it!) So yes, I had to check on him cause he was still recovering from the ordeal of the vet. He was extra clingy so I cancelled my evening plans and stayed home with him, I figure he’s my cat right? I took responsibility for him which means when he is not in top form and wants comfort I stay home and be there for him. He’s lucky he’s cute! lol

Not the most interesting day out there, I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t try to take pictures of the day cause what would you have seen? Mall Christmas decorations, my lunch, the cat, um…that’s about it, oh well, dinner, wait, did I have dinner last night? hmm…I had the stir fry, oh! I had a totally delish small milkshake, so because of the milkshake I didn’t do dinner…so yeah, not a lot of great pictures would have come from yesterday. I’ll attempt to make next Wednesday mildly more interesting so I have some decent images to upload.

For today I have to tell you about a yum dinner I made, a salmon steak with maple smoked apple something or other sauce with roasted sliced yam and roasted red and yellow peppers on the side. It was tasty and, the best part! *drumroll* I cooked it myself! Yeah, that’s right, you read that right, I cooked it! In my kitchen, with my stove, served on my dishes! Perhaps this is the start of getting back to normal eating? I’d like to think so. 🙂 Tomorrow I can eat dinner at work but I’m going to attempt to remember to cook an egg for breakfast, here’s hoping I remember and don’t automatically go for a Clif Bar lol. 😛

Oh, a little sidenote, I was watching the movie Oceans 12 today (watched Oceans 11 last night) and seeing Brad Pitt eating something totally delish looking in every freakin scene has totally made me hungry! So not fair! Grr Brad Pitt, Grr! (I don’t really mean the “Grr” I still luv ya! 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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Different People Different Portions

6 Dec

I find it interesting how who I eat a meal with can affect what I think a proper portion of food is. I know that all food can be measured out and the “real” proper portion size found but that doesn’t usually happen when eating in a restaurant or at a friends place or when a friend is eating at your place…in fact, there are a lot of situations where you can’t actually measure/weigh the food so you have to eyeball it and hope you are sorta right. Usually in those instances I tend to eat less just to be on the safe side, after all, I’d rather go a bit hungry and know I didn’t eat a ridiculous amount of food then feel overly full and wonder just how many calories I consumed…but that is not how everyone approaches food.

I ate lunch out today with three friends, my credit card was very happy that it was considered a “working lunch” so one of the guys paid for everyone so he can write it off in his taxes, go taxes! lol The group of us went for sushi and there I am reading the menu, my eyes being immediately drawn to some of my favourite dishes and trying to decide what to order. My first thought was I’d get some agedashi tofu (spicy of course!), sashimi and a sushi roll. Thank god I didn’t order first! The first person to order got a mango and avocado salad, now, we all know a salad in a sushi restaurant is not like a salad in say, Original Joe’s, her salad was super duper tiny, just some slices of fruit piled on top of each other with some sprouts underneath…not my idea of a salad but oh well. Thing is, when I heard her order that and only that I was all “oh crap, I can’t order three things, I’ll look like a freakin pig!” The next person to order got two sushi rolls and some miso soup, that made me feel a bit better, least she got two things (three technically cause she got two orders of rolls but she got the same kind twice so it doesn’t feel like it should count somehow…) My turn! Big breath, I can do this, I can order without looking like a pig, right??? I got an appetizer sashimi and one sushi roll, phew, that’s not so bad, go me! 🙂 The fourth person ordered two rolls I think…so, except for the person who just got the tiny salad we all got roughly the same amount of food, and of course in the spirit of sushi we all tried each others – don’t you love that about sushi? 😀

Afterwards though it really got me thinking, some friends I know would have looked at what we each individually ordered and been appalled at the lack of food. They would have ordered 3-4 items for themselves and expected everyone else to do the same, and even then they might still order a second round of food later because to them, that is normal portion sizes.

All foods are like this, not just sushi, people have different ideas of what is a “normal” amount of food to order or cook and it can be hard when eating with someone who has a drastically different portion size in mind because either someone ends up feeling starved or someone ends up feeling obligated to eat more then they want…neither is a good spot to be in. You’d think people could just be happy with letting the others at the table eat the amount they are comfortable eating but nope, generally that doesn’t happen…why can’t that happen??? *confused face*

I can actually divide the people in my life via portion sizes ordered/eaten at restaurants. It’s kind of funny, and really indicative of what career path that person has chosen. Everyone I know who acts orders small, just like today at lunch. We are all actors, we all have to think not only what do we look like in real life but on camera and so we all tend to order small. I think actors also tend to be more cautious about what they will eat in front of other actors just because you don’t want to be judged or thought negatively about because you ate too much. Hey, it’s a visual media, it’s just how it goes, shrug. But my friends who don’t act tend to order/cook larger amounts of food. So, when I am with my non acting friends if I am not careful I tend to match how much I eat to how much they eat which in the long term? not a good way to go. In the short term though, sooooooo nice to order a pasta dish and not ask for half of it to be automatically put in a to go box and to get a salad with dressing (even if I do put it on the side lol) I love going out to eat with my friends who aren’t going to look at my plate and judge me because I ate everything on it, or who might raise their eyebrows at me because I ate carbs, or used dressing or whatever. At the same time though, some people I know push food at me and it makes it really hard. If food is pushed at me I tend to eat even less of it because I don’t like having someone trying to force me to eat an amount of food they think is right. If my stomach holds less than yours, or I am less willing to overeat at a meal or eat a meal sized portion of something that is bad for me I don’t want you demanding, forcing, cajoling me in to eating more then what I say I want. Just respect my food limits and maybe I’ll stop judging you for eating what I think is way too much food. 😛

Sorry, this turned in to a bit of a rant and I didn’t mean it to, food is just a sensitive subject with me and since I’ve been trying to get my food balance back lately I’ve been more aware of just how out of whack it got due to the influence of others. Not cool. 😦

I know some people say eat whatever you want as long as you work it off, that is a myth and not a healthy way to live. Stuffing your body is not good for your body, it over taxes your system, you store too much of the food as fat (even if you don’t look fat you can have health issues related to obesity because you are a skinny-fat person…hey, totally a real thing!) and to top it off over eating messes with the chemicals released in your brain and your energy levels and all kinds of things. I know under eating isn’t good either but that’s why I am trying to find my food balance again, I used to have it, in the old apartment, when I had my eating plan and exercise routine all worked out…I’ve really got to get back to that because this up and down way of eating I am doing right now isn’t any better for me then under eating at every meal or over eating at every meal. Man, it sucks that food can be so hard sometimes, sigh.

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The Skinny on Juice Diets/Cleanses

3 Dec

Ok, let me warn you right off I have no solution for this debate, the end of this post will not reveal the amazing truth about juice cleanses and if they are actually good or bad, this is really just me yapping about them and trying to figure out just how good or bad they might be…

The idea of doing a juice cleanse/diet came to me when out with a friend last night, she had read up on one (I’m not sure which specific one) and was saying how she was going to do this for a month or so just to get rid of that final bit of weight. Now, she is not fat, nowhere near! But like me she acts which means there is even more pressure to be super thin then what the average non-acting person feels, which is pretty freaky when you think about how much pressure the non-acting person feels, especially women, but that is a topic for another day! 😛

So, she’s talking a bit about this and it got me thinking, maybe that is what I need, something drastic, something I have never done, something that will get me over that bump in the road, and hey, even if it doesn’t work no damage done right? Welllllll, maybe not “right”, maybe, depending on which article you read, maybe really wrong! Oh dear.

I’ve read a whole wackload of articles, checked out a bunch of websites (that seem to be run by fanatics from one or the other side of the juice fence) and have ended up confused. What the hell? I am an educated, decently smart, grown woman, and yet, I can’t figure out which articles to put more faith in, which side to give my vote for, how is this possible?

Well, it’s possible because nobody seems to want to give an unbiased opinion or refer to unbiased research or references. The topic of juice cleanses/diets really seems to bring out the fanatics and everyone knows you can’t trust them, anyone who claims anything is all good or all bad and has no wiggle room and isn’t open to listening to other opinions is not giving you the whole truth, how can they be when they are blocking it even from themselves?

Which means, brace yourself for this, I’m on my own when it comes to making this decision, *dun dun dun* This is not a good place to be! If so many of the articles I read hadn’t said that doing a juice cleanse doesn’t only slow down your metabolism but can also stop it almost all together (a sentence that made my blood run cold!) and that your body starts using your muscle to feed itself (which means all that weight work down the tubes!) aaaaand that you only lose water weight which you will of course gain back once you start eating like a normal person again (or as close to normal as you get…although, with how obese North America is what is normal and do we want to be eating that way? hmm…) well, then I’d be jumping on the bandwagon no problem. I have no issue doing something that may be considered an unhealthy way to lose weight, I’ve done the healthy route, I lost a bunch of weight that way and am keeping it off (which is awesome) but I’ve been stuck at this weight for a year and no matter what healthy route I try nothing happens (or what does happen is so tiny of a change and reverts back if I even so much as look at a cinnamon bun) that there doesn’t seem to be any point, sigh. The problem with healthy routes to weight loss is that they are intended to get you to a healthy weight, well, I am technically aiming for being underweight (hey, don’t judge me, that is the industry I am in) and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that to get to a weight that health people say is unhealthy (I’m only talking like ten pounds underweight people so don’t go freaking out or anything as you read this) I’m going to have to do something unhealthy. I don’t know what took me so long to come to this conclusion, why I didn’t see the logical route to my goal a year ago, but I see it now. 🙂

The articles still don’t help me though…I am so pumped full of health and fitness information from all the books, articles, websites etc I researched and studied since starting my weight loss journey that I read the deets on a juice cleanse and all I see are the ways in which it is bad for me *rolls eyes* All that sugar, ugh, no protein, hmm, fruit and veg have lots of carbs, oh dear…and what about food groups? and portions? and sustainability? (by that I mean, can I do a juice cleanse everyday for the rest of my life? uh, by the way, the answer is no!) How is this a good option? What weight I do lose won’t be “real weight”, it’ll be water weight and loss of muscle mass, which means as soon as I start eating again, even if I eat super duper healthy my body will be so happy to have food in it again and so worried I might turn in to an evil dictator and force it to survive on just juice again that whatever I do eat will be tucked away as fat and held on to for dear life. Erg…

But! My brain keeps thinking, if I can manage to lose even just 5 pounds doing a juice cleanse who cares where the weight came off it’s off and surely there is some way to keep it off, extra gym sessions or cutting back on calories or something…

I keep circling around the same pro and con arguments in my head, I know logically why the juice route won’t help me long term, but I also don’t care about long term, I care about now and right now I need to lose ten to fifteen pounds and this seems a quick route to do it…yin and yang, up and down, black and white, I could argue both sides of the juice cleanse/diet for hours and still be nowhere…told you I wouldn’t have a solution for you! 😉

Lil sidenote, something I found entertaining, an article I was reading that was listing all the reasons juice cleanses/diets are bad had an ad on the side for some pomegranate drink that will apparently make me look better naked…gotta love the health/diet industry, even while they are saying a certain system doesn’t work they are making money from that system via advertising or whatnot. 😛

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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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