Week 40 runs from Monday 28th September — Sunday 4th October, 2020.
For more information on what, why and how I’m tracking everything, including my health & fitness goals, please click here. To skip to the end of week summary, please click here.
The Week in Fitness & Food
9/28 – Monday. Rest.
I had the best of intentions to exercise this morning, really, I did. I woke up decently early. I woke up somewhat rested, I guess? But I ended up being very productive in different ways instead: I did 3 loads of laundry, 3 sets of washing up / putting away dry dishes, cooked, cleaned the kitchen and Swiffered half of the apartment.
My knee still hurts and I realised that I may have put too much stress on it when I jogged a little on Saturday, then I put extra strain on it during my workout yesterday. As such, resting today whilst doing light exercise in the form of household chores was the right way to go.
I’m back on track with my usual healthy foods diet and I’m loving it. I loved eating a bunch of mixed greens and vegetables in my wrap and having protein in every meal. I think my weight should remain stable tomorrow.
Sleep-wise, I wonder if my poorer sleep in the past week could have also been attributed to poorer diet. I have been eating a lot of junk lately that my body is probably not used to anymore. I’ll see if my sleep is better tonight.
My sleep app is still not tracking properly, but I’ve noticed many recent reviews for sleep tracker apps saying there have been problems since the recent iOS update.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 23:50 | 08:45 | 8hr 55min | ?? | ?? | Somewhat rested | 122.4lbs |
9/29 – Tuesday. Completed 18:40 (?? first ab circuit and walk), completed 22:35 (second ab video).
Video completed: LucyLFitness Ab Circuit, LucyLFitness Scientific Approach to a 6 Pack.
As you’ll read from Wednesday’s update, this update is written on Wednesday morning.
I slept okay but I still felt fatigued, probably from sleeping so late. As such, I didn’t have the energy to workout in the morning. I almost thought I should take another rest day, but I also felt bad because I didn’t want to admit that I exercised too hard on Sunday when I should have rested, meaning I’d have to go 2 weekdays in a row of resting.
I did end up doing some exercise because I really wanted to in the afternoon. I felt like I wanted to work on my abs and core strength, and actually focus on getting the movements right rather than getting nervous about completing everything in 45s. So I tried out an ab circuit video by LucyLFitness. I quite liked it!
Some of the exercises didn’t burn as badly as I thought it would and it might be because I wasn’t doing it right, but looking back at my recording I think my form was fine. If anything I think my form looked even better than when I had done some of these in the past. That said, I was still feeling tired from before so I only did 2 rounds and went for a walk. I really enjoyed this circuit style that forced me to target my abs with a rep-goal rather than a timed goal.
It turns out that there is now a bug in the new OS where certain workouts don’t get recorded in the Activity app anymore, outdoor walk being one of them, which is reaaally frustrating. So I lost all of that data. But from what I remember, I completed the walk around 18:40. I walked for 2.96miles in approx 49min, and my average speed was something like 16’30”-16’50″/mile.
Though the workout itself has disappeared from my Activity app, I can see that I took almost 10,500 steps, woohoo! I am going to take that with some salt though because the OS is messed up these days.
My weight dropped back to 120.8lbs, so I’m guessing my period bloat went away. Buuuut we had a gigantic sushi dinner in the evening after all my walking, lol, and since I’m writing this on Wednesday I know for a fact that my weight increased the day after. No biggie though! I thoroughly enjoyed my food haha.
In the evening Jacky and I played a board game, then I just really wanted to do another ab circuit for funsies (lol) so I did. This one seemed harder and I felt it a lot. As I was doing these, I remembered back when I used to do Alexis Ren’s ab workout but in rep form with progressive overload and I think I want to try going back to that.
Previously, I’d start on 15 reps per move then add 1 more rep per move per day but then I stopped doing it because it got too challenging after increasing to 20-something reps. I realise now that I should have just been more patient with myself and increase reps maybe every 2-3 days or even once a week when it gets too difficult. Most important thing is to not give up.
My sleep app surprisingly did not have any tracking errors so all data was recorded and it was pretty accurate too. I thought that meant it’d been fixed buuut unfortunately not. I think that might be a problem with the latest WatchOS system rather than an issue with the app itself though. Wow, it’s been a while since Apple launched a new OS update with so many bugs.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:20 | 08:55 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 20min | None | Somewhat rested | 120.8lbs |
9/30 – Wednesday. Rest.
I woke up tired this morning. In fact, I woke up much later and it was a struggle to get up. I felt like I had a mild headache too. I basically did my morning duty, gave Jacky his coffee and rolled myself back into bed as he was walking out of the door.
I definitely slept enough last night, but I probably slept later than I should have because I could tell I was forcing my body to stay awake to finish up some stuff when all it wanted was to sleep. I didn’t even have energy to write my blog update last night so I’m writing it this morning instead.
I was just about to say that my sleep app is finally functioning as normal again because when I looked at it, when I woke up at 9ish, it had all my data tracked. It was showing that I was drifting in and out of deep/light sleep all night, though I’d clocked up about 5hr 20min of restful sleep.
Unfortunately, when I looked back at it just now as I’m writing this, it’s showing chunks of no data again and thinks that I went back to sleep during the time I was just laying in bed after Jacky left. And now all the previous data it thought it had on me is gone. Sigh. So I’ll just note “??” down below again.
My abs hurt this morning from the circuit yesterday, and it’s honestly been a while since I’ve felt soreness on my abs. I wonder if that’s a sign I haven’t been working it as effectively previously, or if it was just an issue from not stretching after (whoops). My arms and legs are a little sore too. Ahhh soreness all over = not a good way to train!
Today ended up being a rest day, but the rest of the week I am actually hoping to do more walking and abs rather than exercise videos at home.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:30 | 09:15 | 8hr 45min | ?? | None | Somewhat rested but very tired | 121.6lbs |
10/1 – Thursday. Rest.
My sleep app is going absolutely nuts but thankfully I was able to pull some data from it before it cleaned itself out of all useful information.
This morning I woke up and did not feel well. I had a headache and felt fatigued. The headache was more painful than yesterday and I just didn’t want to do anything all day. I ended up resting.
It was like my body just wanted to hibernate because I found myself fidgeting a lot less, or even just walking around the apartment doing housework etc much less than usual. Thankfully Jacky was working from home today so he took good care of me at home.
I feel like I opened my eyes multiple times in the middle of the night or drifted in and out of deep sleep, which my app actually originally showed. So despite having 5hrs of restful sleep (apparently), the fact that I wasn’t able to have prolonged periods of deep sleep really affected me.
It was difficult for me to get to sleep and stay asleep last night as well, and I think that’s what the two disruptions were earlier on in the night. I realised that it could be caused by the diet cokes that I was drinking later in the evening — all that late night caffeine was probably messing with my system so I didn’t drink any today.
My weight dropped back down to 121.0lbs because I was eating my healthy diet again, but today I switched between healthy foods and eating poorly. Just because I wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t want to bother with ‘diet’. Plus Jacky was at home so I ate whatever he fed me.
I did try the lactose free greek yoghurt with chia seeds and fruit (with frozen blueberries for breakfast, with golden kiwi as a snack later in the afternoon) and it tasted really good. I was surprised!
I didn’t like greek yoghurt in the States when I first tried it here. I thought it was very different from the UK greek yoghurt (which I find to be more viscous in consistency vs US greek yoghurt that’s almost solid) and couldn’t get used to it. I guess my tastebuds have changed a bit? But also the combo of sweetness from the fruit and the slight crunchy texture from the chia seeds worked so well.
It’s an incredibly healthy breakfast so I’m glad I now enjoy it because I’ll be eating it much more frequently in future.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 00:35 | 09:00 | 8hr 15min | 5hrs | 2 | Not rested | 121.0lbs |
10/2 – Friday. Completed 16:38.
Today I woke up with a headache worse than yesterday, but it’s come and gone throughout the day. I’ve been watching a lot of dance videos recently and have been a bit inspired to try dancing again. I ended up spending about an hour trying to learn 10 seconds of a BLACKPINK dance properly.
I repeated the same moves over and over and recorded myself each time. There was marginal improvement, I’m afraid. I always thought my movements weren’t that bad when I looked in a mirror previously but according to recordings I have 2 left feet.
Then after my failed dance session I did some pushups (at least 5 elbows-out, knee pushups with actual perfect form) then did Alexis Ren’s ab workout moves according to her video description (note she misses one of the moves in her video recording) and did 15 reps of each, or 15 reps on each leg depending on the move. For the planks, I ended up following her 30 second planks.
It. Hurt. A. Lot. And I quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed the moderate cardio that the dancing gave me as well, though if I were to do it again I’d do the strength/endurance training first.
Sleep-wise, my app has been working on/off. Today it managed to keep all my data in tact, yay. For a decent amount of restful sleep, I certainly didn’t feel that rested when I woke up. It’s possible that my headaches and physical discomfort are related to the increasingly poorer air quality due to new fires recently.
My app has also been suggesting I sleep at 00:45 to go back to waking up at 08:45 haha. My sleep patterns have been a little out of whack lately and it’s true that sleeping earlier for longer hasn’t left me feeling more energised, but sleeping later hasn’t been great either.
Weight-wise, honestly I’m really surprised it went down. Yesterday I did not really diet well. We had shrimp tomato basil pasta for dinner washed down with some white wine (half a small glass each) and then I snacked on 3 macarons as we played a board game before bed.
I also ate some 85°C Bakery brioche bread, 2 half-portions of greek yoghurt with fruit, Jacky’s omu-cauliflower-rice and 1.5 protein bars.
Today I ate in a similar manner with the yoghurt with fruit, some brioche and a hefty dinner (steak), except I ate even more protein bars – 2.5 in total. Ugh I actually feel a bit sick from them. I think I’ll be limiting myself to 1 per day max from now. Tomorrow I am expecting my weight to increase for sure. As well as the day after, because we are going for AYCE Korean BBQ for lunch. Awww yeaaaah.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:25 | 09:05 | 7hr 40min | 5hr 15min | None | Somewhat rested | 120.8lbs |
10/3 – Saturday. Rest.
My sleep app is insane. Sigh. Thankfully I caught a glimpse of my stats on my Watch app before my phone app wiped it clean. There are clearly many bugs in the new iOS and WatchOS that are affecting a number of apps so I’ve been trying to catch all the info in the morning when it’s most accurate.
Jacky and I ended up not doing our grocery run because the air quality was so bad outside I was struggling to breathe. We also couldn’t go for Korean BBQ because they didn’t have outdoor seating (and even if they did, I wouldn’t have been able to sit outside due to the unhealthy air quality).
Instead we ordered some of our favourite dishes from the Korean BBQ place we would have gone to (including a fried half chicken!), as well as got a couple of banh mi from Lee’s Sandwiches and went home and feasted.
By the time we came to eat, it was already something like 3pm and we were both starving. I ended up eating an entire banh mi as well as a portion of fried chicken and half a summer roll. I felt so full after I couldn’t eat again for the day.
To be fair, what I had eaten was high in calories and I ended up eating the meal quite late in the day, so I’m not surprised I wasn’t hungry again. I’d also had a matcha latte and a little brioche for ‘breakfast’ and didn’t exercise, so in terms of weight loss it could go either way.
My median weight for the week is in though: 120.8lbs. So as expected, my PMS bloat has gone away and I’m back on track on my weight loss. I say ‘as expected’, but really I remain kind of impressed and surprised that I was even able to predict it at all. I’m still learning about my body and losing weight, so the fact that my body is actually responding in the way that I thought it would is still cool yet new to me.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:10 | 09:30 | 8hr 20min | ?? | None | Decently rested | 120.6lbs |
10/4 – Sunday. Rest.
My app initially showed 5hrs+ of restful sleep despite 2 disruptions overnight and then it all disappeared. I don’t know if the disruptions happened tho I do know I briefly opened my eyes once overnight. I noted the 2 disruptions anyway.
Jacky told me that apparently Apple have released a note about it saying that I should try to unpair and reset my iPhone. Lol, so I’m giving that a go and hoping it’ll fix things.
I’m still nursing a very mild headache and general lethargy today, as well as the stress and anxiety from backing up my iPhone to restore it — only to discover that my restores required a password that I did not set. I exhausted a bunch of passwords that I’ve ever used in the past and honestly I’m not sure when I ever set that password that was accepted, but it was a password that I have used once upon a time.
I thought it was finally working, then somehow the restore failed. So I had to re-do it and wait more hours for it to finally restore. My phone and watch was therefore out of commission for more or less the entire day, as was my laptop as I tried to restore it. I’ve managed to restore my phone now but my Watch is still throwing some errors at me, which, whilst not being a dealbreaker, is still frustrating.
We also were originally going to attend my friend’s wedding at 2:30pm today, so I was going to leave my phone alone while we attended the wedding… only to find that actually the wedding was yesterday. Oh my gosh, I thought this stuff only happened in movies. I even got their emails leading up to the event and still misread the contents and the date.
I am guessing my brain just wasn’t working in my headache-and-asthma-induced haze. I felt absolutely awful for that. I can make excuses about my health all I like but at the end of the day it was really poor planning on my part.
Also, after the wedding we were planning to clean the apt, but everything kinda got thrown off course today and I was just a bit too stressed I think. Either way, very minimal exercise done today. I’m resting. I think my body needs it anyway so I am absolutely fine with it.
Weight-wise, I stayed the same, woo! Actually the first time I stepped on the scales it said 120.4lbs and then it said 120.6lbs for the 2 times I tried again thereafter, so we’ll go with the 120.6lbs.
| Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 01:00 | 08:35 | 7hr 35min | ?? | 2x | Somewhat rested | 120.6lbs |
End of Week Summary
Days Exercised: 2
Pushup Count: ??
Median Weight (Tues – Sat): 120.8lbs
Weight Change (if any): -1.2lbs
Days Slept 7.5hrs+: 7
Days Slept Before Midnight: 1
Workout Summary
So this week was a major rest week, I guess. Either I went too hard last week and my body was not able to recover, or I’m just suffering the effects of unhealthy air quality this week. Or, it could be I’m getting iron deficient again. Either way, I was only able to exercise 2 days this week.
I think my previous schedule of 3-4 days of exercise/week was my sweet spot and a frequency I was able to maintain whilst feeling challenged by. Hopefully next week I’ll be feeling a little better and will go back to that.
Weight Summary
This was cool – I’m back to the same median weight as the week before shark week, so that means I should be back on track to lose 0.5-1lb next week :)
Diet Summary
I started eating a lot of greek yoghurt + fruit + chia seeds + flax seeds this week. I absolutely love this combo and it’s full of protein and fibre. I ate a much more varied diet with more takeout this week because I wanted it. However, I do love the salads I make so I did pair whatever we had (potstickers & instant ramen, steak & baked sweet potato etc.) with a salad.
I also was worried that my anaemia was coming back so we had steak for the first time in a while. Whilst I haven’t been too careful about what I’m eating, I do try to ensure there’s a decent balance of protein and veggies with my carbs, as well as being mindful not to overeat.
Sleep Summary
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Sleeping more than 7.5hrs (and often more than 8.5hrs) per night really doesn’t leave me feeling rested. But it’s probably because I haven’t had good, restful sleep so I make up for it by sleeping longer. Even if my restful sleep hours are higher, what my app has tracked shows me that I’m often drifting in and out of light sleep rather than having long periods of restful sleep, which I imagine is a problem.
I can’t self-diagnose but it could be caused from anxiety, bad air quality, the most recent mini heatwave… a myriad of things. So I just made sure I rested well throughout the day this week.
Date | Sleep Time | Wake Time | Hrs Slept | Restful Sleep | Disruptions | Awoke Feeling | Weight |
| 9/28 | 23:50 | 08:45 | 8hr 55min | ?? | ?? | Somewhat rested | 122.4lbs |
| 9/29 | 01:20 | 08:55 | 7hr 35min | 4hr 20min | None | Somewhat rested | 120.8lbs |
| 9/30 | 00:30 | 09:15 | 8hr 45min | ?? | None | Somewhat rested but very tired | 121.6lbs |
| 10/1 | 00:35 | 09:00 | 8hr 15min | 5hrs | 2 | Not rested | 121.0lbs |
| 10/2 | 01:25 | 09:05 | 7hr 40min | 5hr 15min | None | Somewhat rested | 120.8lbs |
| 10/3 | 01:10 | 09:30 | 8hr 20min | ?? | None | Decently rested | 120.6lbs |
| 10/4 | 01:00 | 08:35 | 7hr 35min | ?? | 2x | Somewhat rested | 120.6lbs |
Muchos love,