Week 34 runs from Monday 17th August — Sunday 23rd August, 2020.
Hello hello! Firstly, yes… that’s right, I’m very sorry I didn’t complete the Chloe Ting 2019 Flat Belly Challenge – but please do read the end of that post as I have a very good reason for it. It’ll also provide more insight as to how I want to be documenting my fitness journey moving forward, which is…
I’m trying out something new: weekly updates, which will include fitness in the week, sleep throughout the week, approx diet throughout the week, and a weight tracker. I’m not sure how well this format will work, so it’ll likely change as I refine it in future. But for now, tracking everything in one place should help me better understand my body and why it’s doing what it’s doing.
Obviously if there are weeks I haven’t exercised as much, then the post will be much shorter, so I may combine a couple of weeks into one heh heh heh…
So here’s how it’s going to work:
(I’ll only be explaining this one time so subsequent fitness posts will be much shorter, don’t worry. If you want to skip past the explanation and get straight to the tracking section click here. If you want to skip to the end of week summary click here.)
Goals & Tracker Explanation
Strength Goal & Fitness Tracker
I want to be able to do 10 proper form pushups. Currently, I can do about 5 elbows-out knee pushups, and 2 elbows-in knee pushups with proper form before I collapse. I won’t be training for these every day but I’ll give an update at the end of the week if I’ve been able to improve. (One day I’d love to be able to do 10 pull ups but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.)
Once this goal has been achieved, I’ll set myself a new one! Probably 20 pushups haha.
In terms of actual exercise, I’ll be aiming to do cardio whenever I can, as well as YouTube workout videos on alternate days (or maybe even on the same day! Who knows). I’ll be updating this post daily with what videos and/or cardio I did, as well as if I took a rest day. I’ll link the videos each day so you can try them out too if you want.
I’m not following a specific workout plan, but I’ll pick videos that I want to do and am excited to try out, so that even when I don’t feel like exercising I’ll still do it because I want to do them. I’ll probably target different muscle groups on different days but we’ll see how I’m feeling. If you want to follow along, I update my workout playlist daily.
Weight Goal & Tracker
My goal is to eventually get down to 25% body fat, but since I don’t have very accurate scales to tell me that, I’m just going to aim to drop to about 115lbs. I’m aiming to lose only ~0.5lb/week (somewhere between 0.2-0.7lbs would be great).
I’m currently floating around 123lbs so this means I’ll hopefully reach my goal around Christmas. But, uh, by then it’ll be Christmas. So let’s just say I’ll hopefully reach my goal by the end of January 2021 hah.
I’ll be tracking any weight lost on a weekly basis based on my median weight between Tuesday – Saturday (so we won’t see any ‘losses’ in this post). Weight fluctuates so much on a daily basis so this should provide a better idea of whether or not weight loss has actually occurred.
I’ll still be noting down my Monday and Sunday weights, but they won’t be taken into account for tracking purposes (this is what Coach Greg does with his clients, so I’m going to do the same). I’ll get on the scale after my morning bathroom sesh.
Diet Goal & Tracker
Since the laws of thermodynamics require one to be eating a caloric deficit to lose weight, I’ll be loosely tracking my calories using MyFitnessPal. (I say ‘loosely’, because I won’t be weighing out every gram of food I use. I will do some weighing to start with so I know how much I’m eating vs the suggested portion size on the nutrition label, but once I know the amount I use I won’t measure every time).
This should help me check if I’m actually eating in a deficit, but also will prompt me to eat more food if my caloric intake is super low that day. I need to eat enough to fuel my body to go harder than last time, after all.
I started doing this last week and it really helped me realise just how much I was consuming – no wonder I couldn’t lose weight. At the same time, there were easy changes I could make to go into a deficit. For example, I was drinking 130+ calories of carbs every morning with my latte because of the oat milk I used.
I’ve now switched to either cold brew or just drinking the same latte but with half of the milk quantity. Turns out, it still tastes great, but now I’m no longer drinking 130 calories each morning. Over time, it makes a big difference. The fact that I don’t need to buy milk as frequently anymore is a big bonus too.
I definitely try to eat healthier during the week and then treat myself a bit more at the weekends (though not excessively). We just have more time at the weekend to cook and prepare nicer meals like steak dinners so… yeah. Yum.
I’ll also be eating a lot of Coach Greg’s anabolic meals (i.e. anabolic french toast, anabolic pizza, anabolic protein ice cream – seriously try them out, especially the protein ice cream/shake). I love his recipes as they’re so filling and low in calories. I have that protein shake almost every day and it fills me up so much I physically can’t eat cheat foods.
I can eat hundreds of calories worth of chocolate bars but a few bites of his protein ice cream and I have to put the spoon down because I’m stuffed and I’ll puke if I keep eating. I make a small portion and put the rest in the fridge and eat it whenever I get peckish. I also really love fruit and we bought loads from Costco, so I’ll be snacking on golden kiwis, mangoes, peaches, rambutan, blueberries etc. as well.
I do not need to track my water intake because I literally guzzle 2-3litres per day without thinking.
I won’t be tracking this too carefully on these posts but I’ll probably make a small note of what I ate during my daily fitness trackers.
Sleep Tracker
I do not function well on low sleep, and, as far as I am aware, low sleep for me is less than 8hrs. I think sometimes 7.5hrs is okay, but I guess it also depends on what time I slept the night before and overall sleep quality.
I think I sleep better if I sleep before midnight, but that would be too early for Jacky so I’d have to go to bed before him. Unfortunately, I often find myself waking up in the middle of the night when that happens, so it’s a bit of a balancing game for me here.
I’ll be using my sleep track app to track the time I went to sleep, time I woke up, hours slept, hours of restful sleep and any sleep disruptions, as well as how I felt after waking up in the morning. Sleep makes such a big difference to performance, energy levels, hunger levels and basically everything, so it’s definitely worth me tracking.
For all of these, I’ll be noting them down every day, then doing an end of week summary. It’ll make more sense as the week goes on, I promise.
Note: I will not necessarily post physique update photos every week because I don’t expect to change that much visually on a weekly basis. Plus it varies so much day to day, mirror to mirror, and depending on time of day/lighting/what I ate the day before/whatever else. How I look physically is really not the goal of this journey anyway.
That being said, if I drop 3lbs and look noticeably slimmer or whatnot, I’ll take an update photo.
The Week in Fitness & Food
8/17 – Monday. Completed 10:58.
Videos completed: MadFit 5min Warm Up, MadFit 30min Full Body Dancer Sculpt, MadFit 5min Cool Down
Video incomplete: MadFit 11min Low Impact Cardio Abs
Yep. Clearly I was way too optimistic about how fit I was because half way through her 30min workout I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. My body was shaking and everything hurt. There was just no way I’d have been able to do her ab video as well.
I originally had a leg day planned for tomorrow but I’m going to have to push that back because, let’s face it, my legs need some rest. My glutes are in pain, my thighs still hurt, I am glad I’m not leaving the apt today because I’m not going to be able to handle stairs.
All that is to say, I loved the workout. It pushed me really hard and most of the moves are super unique (probably not unique to ballet dancers, but definitely unique in terms of fitness routines).
It turns out there was 1 move at the end that required a jump but, don’t worry, I didn’t have any energy to do it anyway lol. I was low on energy today to begin with though. I don’t think I slept enough last night; I slept late in the first place, and I was already low on sleep from the mosquito fiasco from Saturday night (Instagram stories for more details), then I had to wake up early-ish to make lunch for Jacky.
My sleep tracking app also says I woke up between 04:30 – 04:45 but I don’t recall that happening, so I overwrote it. However, it’s very possible something caused me to subconsciously act as if I’d woken up, which could help to explain why I was so ridiculously tired this morning.
I was also hungry before the workout so briefly entertained the idea of eating breakfast first then exercising in the afternoon. But Flora and I had already decided to exercise together and I was running late according to our agreed start time, so I just ate some anabolic protein ice cream that I’d made a couple of days ago, which helped a little.
I really think it’s a sleep issue though, because my head just felt clouded and groggy and I still feel that way as I write this. As a result, I probably felt like I pushed myself hard but my actual output was lower because I was just not feeling my best. I’m also glad I didn’t wait until later because it’s now later and I have zero energy to exercise.
Originally this week was all supposed to be 40°C+ but it seems like a nearby fire has caused smoky clouds to cover the sun, so it’s forecasted to be a little cooler now. I was planning to stay indoors to avoid the heat but now I’m staying indoors to avoid the poor air quality.
However, it’s supposed to be only a high of 31°C on Thursday so I’m tentatively planning to go out for a walk on Thursday. Regardless, tomorrow I’ll be exercising with Maddie again. We’ll be doing abs. My abs are gonna die. I look forward to it. I’m aiming to sleep before midnight tonight.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:20 | 08:50 | 7hr 30min | 4hr 50min | ?? (Read above) | Exhausted, groggy. | 123.4lbs |
8/18 – Tuesday. Rest.
I don’t know what happened, but last night I woke up multiple times I barely felt rested at all when I woke up. In fact, I just wanted to sleep for another 3hrs but I got up to make Jacky his latte and had a long to-do list today, so I didn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I just feel exhausted today, but at the same time I’ve actually been able to be decently productive. I’m very thankful for that!
I think the lack of sleep yesterday made me really hungry and want to eat junk. I had a Kinder Bueno (damn Jacky for buying these and putting them in clear view in the fridge!! I’m British, how could I possibly resist them?) and then for dinner I didn’t want to cook, so Jacky brought home Indian takeaway.
Not that I’m complaining – the Indian food was lush but that was my calorie deficit out the window. Today, however, I wasn’t at all hungry when I woke up but instead felt a bit constipated. That probably also contributed to my discomfort today, or even my poor sleep last night. I realised I didn’t eat enough fibre yesterday so – lol – had a glass of chia seed with water, followed by a glass of 1tbsp apple cider vinegar with sparkling water.
I saw someone do the apple cider vinegar + sparkling water thing on a YouTube video and decided to try it at long last. It actually tasted really good! I love sparkling water anyway, and the heavily diluted apple cider vinegar provided a little extra flavour to it. It was like drinking a La Croix!
I hate it apple cider vinegar mixed with still water when I tried it in the past, so even if it has a million health benefits I still didn’t want any because it tasted vile. But if it’s 1tbsp diluted with 6oz sparkling water I could drink this every day.
Anyways, Flora was planning to taking a rest day today anyway, so I don’t have her motivating me today. But to be honest, I feel so unwell that I just have to rest regardless. Plus it is boiling today. I am still praying for rain, and hoping the weather will cool itself down a bit. That probably also affected my sleep quality last night.
Finally, I keep waking up to pee as of late, so I really need to ease up on my water intake before bed. But it is 40°C these days! I need to hydrate too… Gah. I guess I can at least drink a little less water and make sure I go to the bathroom right before I sleep and see if that helps.
Really hoping to sleep better tonight. Quantitatively: sleep by midnight, no disruptions at night, wake up having had at least 8hrs sleep.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:50 | 09:25 | 7hr 45min | 5hrs | 4-5x | Unrested, nauseated. | 124lbs |
8/19 – Wednesday. Completed 17:55.
Videos completed: MadFit 5min Warm Up, MadFit 11min Low Impact Cardio Abs, MadFit Ballet Abs Workout (half).
I don’t know what happened today… perhaps it was the fact that those ‘low impact’ cardio abs were not at all low impact, perhaps it from me hitting my head on the sofa during the reverse burpees that then made me feel very dizzy and sick, or perhaps it was low quality air (NorCal is on fire again) coming in when I turned on the air conditioning. Either way, half way through the Cardio Abs video I started to feel very unwell.
I kept pushing through despite my discomfort and the tightening of my chest, but I had to stop after the first set of the Ballet Abs video because the pain in my chest started to feel like a mild asthma attack and I couldn’t breathe properly.
I didn’t sleep very well last night, but it was certainly better than the past few nights. My Watch did not pick up on the fact that I opened my eyes to adjust the cooling fan 2-3x, meaning I probably did it and fell asleep again so quickly it didn’t count as a real ‘disruption’, so you’ll see a full 7hrs slept in my little table below, and yet I still wanted to record that I did in fact wake up a few times.
Jacky and I both went to bed at the same time, about quarter past midnight, so I’m glad we were able to sleep earlier than usual. However, for some bizarre reason, I just naturally woke up at 7:35, tired, but couldn’t go back to sleep. What?
Either way, I still am glad I was able to exercise today! Maddie’s workout kicked my butt — hard. (And my head. But that was me being clumsy.) On a difficulty level, I’d give it a 9/10 today, but that’s because I was already really tired (I did nourish my body well all day though – lots of fruit and veggies and protein).
In terms of output, my maximum heart rate was only 156bpm and my average heart rate was 125bpm. It’s about 10-20% lower than what I can usually do when I push myself hard. It’s okay, I know I pushed as much as I could without injuring myself so I’m happy with that!
In terms of weight, though… I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when the scales said 122lbs this morning. I mean, what? Is it because I drank a little less water last night? At least I wasn’t feeling constipated this morning. But a 2lb difference was very unexpected. I even got on and off the scale 3x just to double check.
Woah re: fluctuations. I have been eating to satiety recently though. I even tried out Coach Greg’s protein chocolate brownie lava cake last night (didn’t like it because I didn’t add sweetener, so this morning I added a little almond milk, blueberries and PB2… and now I like it a lot more) so it’s not like I was starving myself.
Let’s see where I’m at tomorrow, but if I really have lost about 1.5lbs or so in the past week I’m slightly concerned it may be a little high. It’s more than 1% of my body weight, which means I could start losing muscle if I keep losing weight at this rate, so depending on what the scales say for the rest of this week I may need to adjust my diet a bit so I don’t lose too quickly.
Also, I have a bad habit of seeing my weight going down a few pounds and getting excited, then suddenly feeling like, “Oh, I’m doing super well so I’m going to reward myself with some junk food and rest.”
But then junk food run lasts months and I end up gaining everything back before I realise I’ve gone too far the other way and need to start exercising and eating more healthily again.
I don’t want that to happen again so hopefully noting my progress on my blog will keep me accountable.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:35 | 07:35 | 7hrs | 4hr 15min | 2-3x | Tired | 122lbs |
8/20 – Thursday. Completed 18:04.
Video completed: Cooling Yoga Practice with Briohny Smyth.
Last night we both went to bed well before midnight but just as I was about to fall asleep, Jacky and I started a mini-debate about walking being able to raise your heart rate enough to be considered cardio.
Eventually I just got really frustrated and decided we’d talk about it later. Also, since he kept me from sleeping, I wasn’t going to force myself to wake up early to prepare his lunch anymore because I’ve been low on sleep the past few days and already told him I needed to sleep early… so I slept in and slept decently well haha.
We’ve resolved it now (he now acknowledges that it is considered a form of cardio; low-intensity cardio is still cardio), but because I woke up later than usual, I felt a little constipated. Imagine my surprise when my weight showed as 121.6lbs. What the??
We’ll see what happens tomorrow but I’m really surprised at the sudden – large – drop. I don’t know if it’s good to lose weight that fast. But it’s not like I starved myself either; I ate until I literally couldn’t stomach more food yesterday.
As for exercise today, I did want to go out for a walk, but the air quality has been really poor and I don’t want to risk my asthma flaring up so I stayed indoors.
I loved the yoga flow I did today. It’s been so hot lately I really appreciated it was a flow to cool me down. It gave me such a nice stretch and relaxed me so much that my heart rate at the end was actually my sleeping heart rate hahaha. I did wish it was longer, though.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:35 | 09:30 | 8hr 40min | 5hr 35min | 1x | Decently rested | 121.6lbs |
8/21 – Friday. Completed 11:50 (set 1) & 14:23 (set 2).
Videos completed: Natacha Oceane 10min Warm Up, MadFit BTS Boy With Love Full Body Workout, MadFit 10min Beginner Lower Abs, MadFit 15min Cool Down (set 1)
MadFit Taylor Swift Folklore Dance Workout, MadFit 2010’s Dance Party Workout (set 2)
Flora and I exercised together for set 1 and that was originally going to be it for my workout for the day. Originally I wanted to do another lower abs workout by MadFit but by the time I finished her Beginner Lower Abs video I was pooped.
In terms of the workout, I really, really enjoyed her beginner lower abs routine. I could feel my lower abs working pretty much the entire time and my lower body was mildly shaking at the intensity.
I don’t know if the shaking is necessarily a good thing since it could mean that it’s too hard for me, however, I felt like it was juuust a little too difficult, and made me want to keep working harder at this video so that one day it won’t be as difficult. As such, it’ll definitely be my go-to lower abs routine for the time being.
The BTS video… well, that was just fun. HARD, but fun. Because BTS. Haha. Since the warm up and cool down took 25min and I didn’t have enough willpower to do another video, I did some pushup training and ended it there.
I feel like it’s possible I’ve regressed a little with the pushups because I was limited to 3 elbows-out knee pushups and couldn’t even do one elbows-in. But I think it’s more likely that my body was already tired from the BTS and lower abs workout video. I think the fact that I was exercising fasted when I already felt a little bit hungry affected my ability to work hard too.
After that, I had my brunch, during which time YouTube alerted me that Maddie had just uploaded a 15min Dance Workout routine to Taylor Swift’s Folklore.
…Welp, it’s absolutely true what they say: go do a form of exercise that excites you, because I literally could not help myself! I didn’t even care if I’d digested properly (bad of me, I know) but the more I watched the video the more I just really wanted to workout.
I wanted to follow it up with one of her older dance party videos that had a little less jumping because I’ve been eyeing those for some time as well, so picked the 2010’s one.
I had so. much. fun. 10/10 would do it again. So much fun! Although the 2010’s one was killer. She moves ridiculously fast and gracefully at the same time. Meanwhile, I was a flailing elephant.
The best part of it was that without realising it my max heart rate was in the 190’s and every time I looked down my Apple Watch was telling me I was around 168-172bpm.
The Folklore video was more subdued and so my heart rate was lower for that, but ultimately my average heart rate for the dance workout was 155bpm, and I didn’t even feel like I was going super hard because I was just enjoying it a ton. It was the best, and I felt totally energised afterwards. (My average heart rate was around 120 for the morning’s exercise.)
I did have to pause multiple times to drink water, but between the two workouts I did I’ve probably already burned off my brunch. I want to eat again but I’m not hungry. In fact, I feel so not hungry that I don’t think I can even stomach my vitamin supplements.
Food-wise, I ate until I was very stuffed yesterday (plus I had a Kinder Bueno, a bunch of coconut rolls and some homemade curry with takeout garlic naan for dinner) and felt certain that I would gain weight but to my surprise, I had lost another 0.2lbs.
I didn’t bother counting calories in my evening meal but I reckon I was probably still in a deficit for the day. Now I kinda wished I counted because losing 0.2lbs/day is more than enough. I’m not sure I want to be losing more than that.
I’ve now come to realise that some of Coach Greg’s recipes are so filling for me that even if I eat other crap, I still managed to be in a caloric deficit. The one that probably makes the most difference for me is his protein brownie lava cake.
I had to change up the recipe because I don’t want to add sweetener and mine is already thick enough without the guar/xanthan gum. For mine, I used a little less water and egg whites, added a bunch of blueberries, a bunch of PB2 and a little bit of almond milk to help it blend (plus it makes it creamier – in hindsight, I should have just subbed the water for almond milk to begin with).
I dunno, I kinda played it by ear and kept tasting it as I went along. It tasted gross without sweetener so that’s when I started added a bunch of other stuff that is naturally sweet, healthy and low in calories. It still isn’t very sweet though (I’ll tweak the recipe more next time) so I often eat it with some fruit.
My portion size is less than 1/4 cup, and BASICALLY, that tiny <1/4 cup portion fills me up a lot and is only like 50 calories or something. I had a tiny one an hour before dinner last night (Jacky was still cooking and I was hungry), and I ended up being very upset that I wasn’t able to eat more dinner because I was still so full.
I still have the rest of the batch sitting in my fridge but I have to make sure I don’t eat too many in a day because I literally will not have enough stomach space to eat other food, and I need a lot more sustenance than that. I don’t want to lose what precious little muscle I have. Plus I love food!
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:55 | 09:30 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 30min | None | Well rested | 121.4lbs |
8/22 – Saturday. Completed 10:53.
Videos completed: MadFit 10min Warm Up, MadFit Toned Ballet Legs Workout, MadFit Dancer Thigh Sculpt Workout, Pamela Reif 15min Daily Stretch. Bonus: MadFit Britney Spears Toxic Squat Challenge, MadFit Ariana Grande 7 Rings Workout.
Ahhh my weight! I needn’t have worried, looks like it’s gone back up today haha. (Though, to be fair, Jacky’s weight also increased. We’re guessing it was due to the Korean fried chicken we ate for dinner last night :p) However, my median weight has now been calculated: 122lbs. This is my new starting point!
I know I said I wouldn’t be seeing any ‘losses’ in this post, but I kinda can’t not mention how it is the first time I’ve dropped to this in a while. In fact, I haven’t seen myself lower than 122.8lbs since my quarantine fitness journey began.
It is cool to see, and I’m kind of amazed because I didn’t realise my body was capable of doing this; I just thought I was that one anomaly that was not going to be able to lose weight unless I starved myself, and I was not about to try starving myself – ever. I’m also glad that the weight loss hasn’t been that extreme because I don’t want to lose muscle, especially since I didn’t have much to begin with.
On another note, I think today really proved to me that if you find an exercise you really enjoy, you will not find it a chore to do. When I put together my own workout schedule, I was so excited to try out the videos that my previous rule of “I’m too tired to workout on the weekends” got thrown out of the window.
I didn’t need any prompting to jump out of bed and go do them. Jacky was just waking up when I was already getting out my exercise mat. Today was leg day. I had been looking forward to it since last night heh heh heh.
I wasn’t able to do the jumping parts of warm up but it was still a great warm up for today’s set. I think the two legs videos worked really well together to target all areas of the legs and glutes. At least, I know my legs and glutes got a very good workout today.
How? Because I know I pushed myself hard. Like, I don’t think I understood what it meant when I previously said I’d pushed myself hard, because today, for the first time ever, I couldn’t tell if the wetness on my face was from tears or from sweat. I could barely keep my eyes open and I was oscillating between grunting through my gritted teeth and actually wailing as a cry of determination to encourage myself to keep going.
My legs and glutes were on fire and shaking but I was so determined to not give up. It was harder than I’ve experienced before and it was definitely harder than last time. I was so proud of my body for pushing through it all.
This was the result:
Guess where I was lying! Lol. If you look closely, there are 5 droplets of sweat on the left side of the yoga mat – sweat was just pouring down my face during the last move of the first video (the rest of it was from the second video).
I just loved this workout today. I am very excited to do it again. And Pamela’s stretch video was a great way to end off the set. I do feel many aches over my entire body but I can still move around just fine, which I take to mean my body is recovering well. I will probably rest tomorrow though.
Also, I need to stop watching her videos after I’ve already done a workout because they look so fun I just can’t help myself. Doing that Toxic Squat Challenge in the afternoon was just… maybe not the best idea I’ve ever had. And then I went and did her Ariana Grande 7 Rings video. Lol. I’ll try to rest tomorrow :p
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:50 | 08:25 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 45min | None | Well rested | 122.8lbs |
8/23 – Sunday. Rest.
Technically I am checking my pushup count today but besides that, I am resting and filling out the summary. I was amazed I was able to do 10 knee pushups with my elbows out!! Amazing! I was not expecting that at all. I did try for 11 but my form was messed up and I didn’t have enough strength to push myself back up. But 10 is already exceeding my expectations.
I also did 3 knee pushups with my elbows in, which is also great progress. Granted, I did these after my elbows out pushups with only a few minutes rest in between, so it’s possible I’d be able to do more when I’m more rested, but I’m happy to count 3.
My weight did not change this morning, and it’s interesting to note that if I’d been going by my median weight for the entire week, I’d be at 122.8lbs. However, I think it’s wise not to count Monday/Sunday because I imagine most people tend to eat more cheat meals over the weekend that would cause more bloating or water retention, which will skew your overall data.
I wasn’t planning to upload photos, but I think there was such a big difference this week that I felt like it’d be unfair not to, so… please check out the summary below for more!
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:15 | 08:45 | 7hr 30min | 4hr 50min | None | Decently rested | 122.8lbs |
End of Week Summary
Days Exercised: 4-5 (I did some light yoga on a ‘rest’ day)
Pushup Count: 10 knee pushups with elbows out, 3 knee pushups with elbows in.
Median Weight (Tues – Sat): 122lbs
Days Slept 8hrs+: 1
Workout Summary
Overall, this week has been about discovering and falling in love with new workout videos whilst being stuck indoors. It’s been super fun for me. I wake up and am excited to exercise. Sometimes I literally have to control the urge to get out of my chair and start following along to exercise videos as I’m compiling my list for my next workout! I love that.
I’ve gotten stronger! I was able to do more pushups than I have done before. I also pushed my body so hard on Saturday I thought I was crying during the workout (I wasn’t, but it felt like I was) but not in a way that was damaging to my body.
I thoroughly enjoyed pushing myself and seeing how far my body can go, and I’m even more thrilled that my body has been recovering well. I have soreness, but it’s not like I can’t walk or can’t even lift a glass of water after a workout like I have done in the past.
Weight Summary
This week was to identify a ‘starting weight’ by tracking daily, and counting the median weight between Tuesday – Saturday for future comparison. I wasn’t actively trying to lose any weight but was loosely tracking my calories to try and gauge my weight loss/maintenance calories.
What ended up happening, however, is that I’d actually lost some weight from my previous week/month. I think I sort of know how much I should be eating to lose ~0.5lbs/week now. I want to take this slowly so that I don’t end up losing muscle that I actually got a bit alarmed to see the numbers on the scale dropping so much on Tuesday/Wednesday.
That said, weight loss is more of a side-benefit, but it is one that I’d love to have because the same reasons still exist as noted on my failed intermittent fasting attempt – my BMI is still on the high end for an Asian woman, and according to my scales my body fat percentage is over 30%, which is um… pretty high haha.
25% would be ideal, but if I have to drop to a stupid weight to get there, I’ll pass. That said, it can still be my long-term goal. Might take me 10yrs to get there, but that’s fine. Slow and steady for my health :)
Diet Summary
So, this week I tracked my calories a total of… like, 3 days? Haha. We had quite a lot of takeout so it was hard to accurately track those. I put in my best guess for some of them, but otherwise just ignored them and only tracked what I knew I’d eaten. Or just didn’t track for that day at all.
It has been interesting to note that I tracked a calorie surplus on Monday (due to Indian takeaway for dinner), but somehow ended up 2lbs lighter on Tuesday. But on a day where I tracked a deficit, I only lost 0.2lbs the next day.
Either I’m really bad at tracking (very possible, meaning it’s kinda pointless for me anyway), or I really don’t need to track that strictly, or whatever I eat takes longer to metabolise into my body so the fluctuations could even be a result of what I ate last week. Or the human body is just a mysterious thing and I can just keep tracking loosely and just roll with it.
It turns out that simply by incorporating some of Greg Doucette’s recipes into my diet I ended up automatically eating in a deficit – sometimes I have to ensure I don’t eat in too much of a deficit because I’m so full on low calorie-dense foods.
But the best thing about Greg’s recipes, for me, is that I can enjoy them liberally as snacks to curb any late-night cravings, knowing that when I’m so full I have to put the spoon down, I’ve probably only ingested 100 calories.
I do need to improve on not over-eating though. This happens seemingly regularly because I like to snack mindlessly whilst watching TV with Jacky in the evening. Because I’m distracted while I eat, I end up eating too much. On the bright side, usually it means I’ve eaten too much mango or kiwi or protein lava cake so it’s low in calories and fairly healthy, but it’s just not a good idea to ignore my hunger and full signals on any sort of basis.
Sleep Summary
Looking at the table below, my sleep has been pretty consistent at between 7.5 – 7.75hrs per night, so it looks like that could be more of my happy place in sleep hours, and my waking up decently rested depends on my sleep disruptions rather than hours slept, no matter how high my restful sleep hours are.
Given that I should still aim to wake up by 8:30 to prepare coffee/lunch for Jacky during weekdays, I should still try to be in bed by midnight and asleep before 1am. My preference is to not sleep too late anyway. Next week, my sleep goal will be 7.5hrs/night instead.
Things to change next week: Sleep goal: 7.5hrs/night, asleep before 1am.
Date | Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 8/17 | 01:20 | 08:50 | 7hr 30min | 4hr 50min | ?? | Exhausted, groggy. | 123.4lbs |
| 8/18 | 00:50 | 09:25 | 7hr 45min | 5hrs | 4-5x | Unrested, nauseated. | 124lbs |
| 8/19 | 00:35 | 07:35 | 7hrs | 4hr 15min | 2-3x | Tired | 122lbs |
| 8/20 | 00:35 | 09:30 | 8hr 40min | 5hr 35min | 1x | Decently rested | 121.6lbs |
| 8/21 | 01:55 | 09:30 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 30min | None | Well rested | 121.4lbs |
| 8/22 | 00:50 | 08:25 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 45min | None | Well rested | 122.8lbs |
| 8/23 | 01:15 | 08:45 | 7hr 30min | 4hr 50min | None | Decently rested | 122.8lbs |
Photo Update
I took these after eating 2 meals and coffee in the morning (because I had church in the morning and got hungry after). I guess whatever I ate did not bloat me, which was great. My shorts are starting to look big on me. I wore them for easier comparison with my Flat Belly Challenge photos but I don’t really think it matters that much so I’m not going to bother putting them side-by-side.
Overall, this week was great! I loved it. Looking forward to next week :)
Muchos love,