Cant Seem to Say Goodbye

For now..

Today I had my last hurrah with strength and high intensity training. Attended Body Pump and Body Step for the last time this quarter. Said my ta-ta's and "will miss you's" to my gym class buddies, all hoping to see me succeed on my journey and all are looking forward to teasing me with my measley weights when I return.


I intended to freeze my gym membership for the durati5on of the Cohen Diet, but I still cant wrap my head around not going to the gym AT ALL.

This place got me started. Woke up my sleeping muscles. Made me realize that I still have that strength within me and that my stamina hasnt improved ever since I left the gym. This place is my escape to avoid a 1hr traffic on the way home from work (nice eh? :D).

Best of all, when I rejoined the gym for the nth time, I finally saw its purpose to me with an ending so enticing that it made me keep going. Now, I dont see this place as something that I HAVE to go in order to LOSE weight. Like a chore that I have to do but would be great if somebody else can do it for me.

No, this is THE GYM(NASIUM), a place for movement, strength training, body building, sweat, health, sports, dance, group work, flexibility, goals and human interaction. It made me long for a fit body (not a thin body). It made want to run, jump, lift, box and kick and it made me work to achieve it too. I cannot imagine my days without it now.

So for now, I will keep it open for and I will only attend yoga classes twice a week for starters or until I see how excercising will affect my diet behavior. Why yoga? I have been going to yoga classes for the past 3 days and I like it. It provides the pressure, but not so intense that I am dead sweaty and gasping for air. It made me feel a tiny bit sore but I havent been stretching enough for over a year so the wee bit of pain and resistance in each movement is totally expected :D 

AND!!! yesterday, I was finally able to do a headstand!!! whoooohooo! even if it was against the wall.. I am sooo happehhh 8-). So i cant wait to see what else can I do and how much flexible I can become afterwards. Im giddy happy :)))

But if it will affect my discipline with CD, then I will really have to stop for a while.

*Namaste* :)

Its Here

My plan arrived today.. 2 days short of the 7day notice. So imagine my surprise :D im not ready, im clueless, plus I am recovering from flu.

I read through it very quickly as it said the start date is today?! Are you kidding me?!? I felt so overwhelmed with the measuring, the cooking, the meals, the alternating of the meals, looking for recipes and coming up with a grocery list :/ most of all, making sure that I get the right stuff. just writting that down makes me feel anxious.

I requested my consultant to move my start date to 1 mar 2014. I need to recover first, do some proper shopping, and then begin.

But before all this, i need to freeze my gym membership........... :( :?

STATISTICS

I am shy to post photo's of myself, so here are the fitness parameters (definitions below chart) that I am watching out for. Im grateful for the inclusion of the inBody fat analysis machine at the gym that I can use for free, so I dont succumb to weighing in daily.

During the Cohen phase, I will base my success on:

a) weight loss
b) clothes size
c) how much of that weight is actually from fat and not from muscle mass
d) actual measurements

As I seriously dont know how CD will affect my figures based on these parameters.

Those highlighted in moccha will be double checked and may change.. somehow measurements didnt make sense..
its difficult to take your own measurements in some parts.. :D

   

DEFINITIONS

Muscle mass is the weight of muscle in your body. Muscle mass percentage (also called lean body mass) is actually composed of your muscle, bone tissue, and the water in your body and organs. Calculating your muscle mass percentage determines how much of your total body weight is lean mass versus how much is body fat.

Body fat mass is the total weight of the person's fat and consists of essential body fat and storage body fat. Essential body fat is necessary to sustain life and reproductive functions and is 3%-5% in men and 8€“12% in women. Storage body fat comprises of fat accumulation in the adipose tissues, part of which protects internal organs in the chest and abdomen.

Total Body Water Percentage is the total amount of fluid in a person’s body expressed as apercentage of their total weight.

Fat-free mass is comprised of the nonfat components of the human body. Skeletal muscle, bone and water are all examples of fat-free mass.

The body mass index (BMI), or Quetelet index, is a measure for human body shape based on an individual's mass and height.

The body fat percentage of a human or other living being is the total mass of fat divided by total body mass; body fat includes essential body fat and storage body fat.

Waist–hip ratio is the ratio of the circumference of the waist to that of the hips

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is defined as the rate at which your body uses energy when you are resting in order to keep vital functions going such as breathing.

Muscle Control/ Fat Control - how much muscle /fat you need to gain or lose

Fitness Score- shows overall body strength  based on measured muscle and fat mass

Second Thoughts



Bro, do you even lift? :P

I think i just had my first backslide.. and you must think im crazy. I bet its not so often you find someone who actually is committed to working out at the gym :/
 

I didnt go to the gym since last wednesday as wed and thurs are usually off days for me (there are times when i squeeze in a 5km treadmill session on wednesdays). Then I also didnt on Fri as it was valentines day and decided to get myself some cupping massage and chilled out. Saturday was ofcourse my chores day and had done my blood test, was mostly out doing errands. On sunday-monday, i was down and decided to give this no workout thing a try until tuesday. A friend of mine at gym had actually buzzed me to check if i was ok as she hasnt seen me at the gym for a while.. :D
 

But today, i couldnt help it any longer! so I went.. did body combat and yoga. And oh my gawd.. how  sluggish ive become in just 1 wk! And now im sooo tired and sleepy.. could this be the no workouts for a week? Did my smoothie day had an affect on this? This morning I had:
 

Breakfast- 1cup black coffee+2 scoops protein powder+1tsp flaxseed+ice -- all blended
 

Lunch- carrot, kiwi, apple smoothie
 

Afternoon  snack- frozen spinach+ frozen corn smoothie
 

Post workout- cucumber banana smoothie
 

Dinner- 2 scoops protein powder+1tsp flaxseed+cold water
 

I just feel so icky.. i feel so weak.. like "boooo me!!" :((
 

I am now having second thoughts on freezing my gym membership and significantly reducing my workouts for the Cohen Diet period. I have 7days until I receive my online access and meal plans.. and im actually doubting myself.. Not good..

Its just 4 wks to a maximum of 8wks.. i can do without the gym!.. ? I was thinking earlier just to do yoga during the cohen time.. but it might make me hungry and eat outside my recommended meals..

What am i doing?
 

I decided on cohen as my current set up is not working for me.. a change would be good.. would it???
 

The purpose.. i have to keep remembering why Im doing this..I want to form the habit of preparing my meals.. healthy meals, measured meals to prep me for adopting a Zone eating lifestyle... I want to lose body fat..
 

Keep that in mind.. when in crisis...simplify.. focus on nutrition, focus on discipline with food, once habit is formed, integrate.. slowly.. "start from feet- up" (just watched american hustle :D)
 

Oh dear.. this is it.. levelling up hopefully... from the ground..
 

:/

The Wait

So now Im waiting for an email from Cohen's online team if I got accepted to the program or not plus my meal plans..

While waiting, I decided to give this no gym a day a try yesterday, Sunday (since Im on my 1st day of my monthlies, I figured its a valid excuse not to go). I went home early and reached by 7pm. Whoa!! A big shocker for me.. Usually at this time, I am rushing to change to my workout clothes or stacking my stepper and loading my weights before the class..

Instead, I was home. I think my cat she was dreaming when I woke her from slumber. My cat she saw me, yawned, stared a bit, and went back to sleep. My foster cat, she was awake but resting, and meowed in greeting.. :)

Dooo deee dooo what to do?

Cleaned the litter boxes.
Spent some time with my foster cat.. She is so sweet and in so need of a cuddle
Refilled food trays

Its 7:30, now what?

My cat woke up and demanding play.. So we played..

its 7:45, now what?

Switched on the tv. Browsed the net for this Cohen Diet forum, motivating myself.

Ordered! dinner by 9pm (but no Chocolates!! whoohoo) and had my fresh pomegranate juice as dessert.

Slept by 10 on the couch,literally knocked out, woke at 12 to transfer to bed.. And my cat followed..

Woke up feeling good at 6:40am.. Wow! But still didnt get up.. My bed felt so niceeeeee...

And then went to work.

I love that I slept that much :))))) its been a long time.

----------------------------------

Monday

Came to work, not sleepy. Still reading that Cohen forum site for motivation. I am getting excited every minute. Uff!! When will they reply to me?!??

What if I dont get accepted? :(

Im contemplating if I should go to the gym tonight. I most probably would.. 100%, I miss my pump class.. Im not yet on the program am I? SO I can still workout.

Im also thinking of buying the food scale, if in case I dont get accepted, I will still aim to do the Zone.

Body Statistics from the Inline Fat analysis machine will be up 1day before I start the program, and I will track my progress from there. Im too shy to post pics :D

Happy Monday! :)

Reduce to Gain - No to Skinny Fat!

What do I mean by this?

Reduce all the excess fat and build from there. As my utlimate goal was to become lean at a 22% body fat (whew.. that is pretty lean), I need to reduce all this fat all over my body. As I have seen that even though I kill myself to workout, these unwanted fats wont seem to go away. So the only direction that I can go is via my nutrition. In my ideal world, these two will go hand in hand, but its been almost two years and I wasnt able to accomplish this. For some people, this is easy. But for me, it is not

So for now I would like to try to focus on this, and once achieved and I feel the benefits of it, hopefully before the start of the 3rd month , I will start with another goal, incorporating both in my life- slowly building the fit body that I want to achieve.

no gym.. just walking.. nyaaahhhh.. this is too less.... :((( way too less...
plus I know at the end of it, I may have lost all the fat I needed to lose but I will have to start lifting from scratch again (a measly 2 kg per side of my barbell) so as not to shock my depleted muscles...

(fingers and toes crossed people!!)

How do I do this in the quickest possible time?

Cohen Diet.

Heps. I am welcome to all criticism and advise, but for now nothing can convince me not to do this otherwise. I just want to try it. I am expecting a lot of muscle loss, but I am no expert.. I just want to know how will this work for me. Or if it will work for me at all..

I have been wanting to try it since last year, but was too much of a chicken with the small portions, food preparations, cooking and the NO exercise condition. Ive seen a lot of amazing results, even after refeeding. But, what was lacking was any review, after the refeeding. I did read reviews after refeeding, that they maintained their weight as they have totally accepted the lifestyle change.

But what about those people like me? Who dont want to be skinny? Who wants to be lean, strong, flexible and within the healthy weight range? I do not wish to stay in the skinny fat zone...

Hence, the reduce to gain came to mind. A lot of work, but what to do eh? It has to be done.

I already paid for the online fee, and bloodwork and just waiting for my diet to come and to start..

First 2 months of healthy eating.. Dear Lord, please help me...

New Era

On this  post, I have unintentionally defined what I wanted to achieve- health and fitness wise:

I want a strong, tight and lean body. I dont want to be skinny nor skinny fat, and I do not want to be bulky (bulky with fat) either. I never wanted to. I want to be Lean, Lean, Lean!!!!. Have those toned muscles, a body fat % of 22, a BMI of 20, a healthy size 6 :))), ideal weight of 120lbs. I want to beat the shit out of people during bootcamps, circuits, and mud races. I want to skydive without worrying if I will breach the weight limit. I want sexy shoulders. I want to walk from my core, and feel my core work in every movement like clockwork. I want to do Les Milles Grit, without dying. I wanna kill it! I want my body to work freely.

Overwhelming, I know.  But everything starts with the first step.

My fitness is fine. Not its best, but its fine. I have reached a point that I know how important it is for me to regularly workout. However I was not really able to coordinate diet and fitness. Maybe its too complicated for me (still).It is difficult for me, I admit, that is why my body fat is not dropping.

Also, it is all too easy to compensate for a bad diet. I worked out so hard, hell, I can eat what I want, and I'll just work it out tomorrow. Easier than actually teaching your tummy to eat smaller portions, and getting your palette used to certain tastes other than fast food.

I know something is wrong. I dont see myself as an overeater. I eat normal to above normal portions, but not over eat. What I dont do is eat healthy. I dont have scheduled feedings and I drop on and off between healthy, normal and unhealthy eating. I have these 3 on the same day. I dont sleep well.

I am giving so much time on the fitness part that I am neglecting the nutrition part and sleeping part.

For now, in my feeble attempt, I am going to focus on these two for about 3 months. I will freeze my gym membership for 3 months maximum and focus on eating healthy and getting enough sleep. I know I can always attempt to juggle these 3, believe me I did, but I failed miserably. And I cant wait to succeed any more. I want this done and over with.

Writting that freezing my gym membership seriously scares me.

What will I do now with my free time? -- plan meals, cook, read, go for a walk
What if I still choose to be lazy at home and not cook? -- I gave myself enough motivation (next post)
What if I cant do this nutrition part at all? -- I gave myself enough motivation (next post)
What if I end up still watching tv late at night and not sleep at all? -- throw that TV away? its almost broken anyway :D
Will I have gym-withdrawal syndromes? End up unfreezing my gym membership and go back to my old ways? -- Its not so bad, but would you like to be on the same wheel like a hamster, running but going nowhere?
What if I stop working out, I stop burning and wont lose weight even with proper nutrition? -- really? you have heard this a thousand times, have read it across the net, your instructor had verbally warned you about overtraining and no results, nutrition is 80% of the battle.

(Im not even scared of not being able to go back to the gym, because I 100% know that I would.)

What about my lean body mass and my muscle mass???-- you are no expert and right now you dont know anyone who can advise you, so just go ahead and try, experiment with it. you wouldnt know until you try...

The reason for freezing the gym is two-fold:

     1) to give myself the TIME that I was using as an excuse
     2) to serve as a motivation to stick to cooking healthy until I form the habit -- I know it will make me super guilty not to use this time off the gym to do what I had intended to do, super guilty to the point that I will hate myself.

Dont get me wrong I will still workout, but to a maximum of maintaining 15K steps a day, which will require me to walk for an additional 5kms a day based on my sedentary work load. The 3 months is the maximum I will stay out of the gym, no longer than that. I will freeze it monthly and hopefully, by the 3rd month, the integration will start..

So what next?

REDUCE.. Reduce to gain

But first things first, force myself and learn to love cooking for myself.

Ignorance is not totally blissful

Here I go again, blogging.

 

I come here when I am about to try something new. Something new that I would like to keep track of. That something could be someone's something too :)

 

If you have been a reader of my Bangkok Pills blog, then it must have led you here and my underlying reasons as to why I started this blog. The prelude to all of this is because of this blog entry

 

You see, I've always been on the heavier side where I blame my genetics and my skewed definition of a balance diet as the main culprits. And I am fooling myself that discipline had nothing to do with it (duh).  It also boiled down to not knowing what good nutrition was and how it affects my body. I grew up eating the way my parents, my friends and everyone around me did. It didnt made me grossly overweight, but it didnt make me thin either. I was on that chubby side. Maybe my portions were more, or my metabolism is a tad slower than the rest, or maybe I didnt move/play as much as everyone else. But all through my life I was chubby.

 

There were certain points in my life though where I have significantly reduced my weight but was never ever able to maintain it:

 



Can you do this for month?

Cracker diet for 1 month
I ate nothing but this, maybe a taste of tuna occassionally and I lost 3inches on my waist in a month! But once I stopped everything I lost came back by the 3rd month; attemped several times in my 20's, results were never the same as that of the 1st time

 

 

 

The Zone diet by Dr. Barry Sears

 

The 30% - 40% - 30% ratio. I started this while I was still staying with my parents and i was the only one eating this way.

 

I did lose weight, and felt healthier with my normal medium active lifestyle but I fell out of this as I was not able to keep up with it as my folks dont eat the same food and found it too tedious and expensive for me then

 

 

Gym and Nutrition 

 

Actually went to the gym and ate Zone healthy again. But when my University days got hectic, I stopped completely.

 

 

Master Cleanse by Stanley Borroughs

Made famous by the now Mrs. Carter, I did this for 13 days. The 1st 3 days was difficult but the rest were good. It did make me drop weight fast, visible results by 10 days. I felt skin was better, but I did this near to the Christmas season, so on the 14th day, I gave in to pizza and all that merry food, and the rest was history.. back to fat..

 

Bangkok Pills

One of the most famous and controversial weight loss fix in the 90s. I finally gave in to try these stuff as Ive read the dangerous side effects were already 'eliminated', which could be true as I never had those when I was taking these. It made me lose my appetite, lose weight fast without the exercise and the conscious diet. I went on and off with this, and my tolerance for the pills got higher and I decided not to take it anymore. I know these cant be good for me in the long run
 

Working out, Working out hard

This is my current fix and I have been doing this for about 1.5yrs already and couldnt imagine my life without exercise at all

 

It took me this time to realize and finally admit that although 1-5 were effective, all of those were quick-fixes, with no actual goal supporting it, but a simple "to lose weight".

 

Lose weight and then what?? -- didnt matter, and didnt bother to ask..

 

And for item 2 and 3, I did it because I know these are what are supposed to be done to "lose weight".. Both were the right actions (by the end of this journey I am aiming to live by the Zone), but an action without a strong underlying purpose is what? just that- without a foundation that is bound to crumble when the peak is reached. And its a tiresome process to keep that achieved goal without proper support that in end will collapse into nothingness.

 

Why did i even wanted to lose weight then? I dont know. Because I was fat. Was I really fat? Because everyone kept telling me then (before I hit number 6) that I was fine, fairly proportion for my size. But due to the skewed image of what's beautiful aka: thin, I did all these things, to "lose weight"

 

Ignorance is not totally blissful.

 

Upon reaching the action to take on number 6- working out, I had made this conscious decision to workout as I had reached an all time high of 100kgs. 220 f*cking pounds!!! my word.. I cant even begin to think how!?! And so far, after more than a year of working out, I am down to 75kgs and still working out and had successfully integrated it in my everyday life. I couldnt imagine my life without it.

 

However, I am at that point that I am working out too hard. Too hard for my own good. I was told that I am doing this to subconsciously compensate for my bad diet, which is partly true. I can fully attribute all that weightloss to working out as hard as I do. But my nutrition was not at par as my fitness level, so all in all, my fitness level is not at par to the time I have put in to develop it. I am still limited.

 

And I am fed up of it. I am fed up of being physically limited.

 

I really have to do something about my nutrition. I figured that if I focus on one thing I can really bring on the results that I wanted. There were several times that I tried to eat healthy whilst I was on this routine of working out regularly, but I always fell out. Who am I kidding? I am lazy to cook! Anything that has anything to do with cooking, well.. count me out! So how can I do this?? Too many excuses, but the strongest of them all was:

 

           1) I didnt have the time, as I reach home almost everyday from the gym at 10pm, and on those days that I dont, I use that time to relax (tv time) or have an ounce of social life as I dont get that much time on gym days

 

           2) I want to eat according to my taste- and whether that were chocolates, deeply fried chicken, tons of rice, at any time of any day, I would

 

These are fixable right? Solutions can be made with the right amount of sacrifice and time. BUT the approach is different for each person, and I plan to tackle it in my way that I deem possible. Solution:

 

         1) Make time. From where I work and I live, it will take me until 8pm max to reach home daily without working out

 

         2) Cook.. JUST.. DO .. IT!

 

Seems fairly easy right? I scoff..

 

These 2 scares the shit out of me, because I know I will fail. But I can always choose not to. As they say, it takes 21 days to develop a habit. I want to achieve this balance.

I have successfully learned that I love exercising and had limited my weightloss to just doing this.

Now I need to successfully learn to like cooking for myself, in order to take care of my nutrition needs

And finally, learn to join this 2 together for the balance that I want to achieve

 

1) Reduce 

2) Rebuild

3) Achieve and Maintain

 

4 words, 3 phases, 3 plans.. 

 

Easy peezy.. I scoff..

 

It will take time, and it will take most of my willpower to achieve my goal, but I will.

 

My way.