It’s a new year! New Chloe Ting website, new challenge, I’m excited. I have been meaning to blog a lot over the past few months, but unfortunately work and life got incredibly busy. I’ve also started streaming lately, which has been taking hours of my free time.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas with Jacky’s relatives. Our house is finally feeling like a home with the majority of furniture items purchased. We hosted dinner for 10 for the first time, as well as hosting multiple groups of friends overnight. It’s been a blessed time of friends and good food.
And little to no exercise. Lol.
Needless to say, working out again has been very much necessary, and this new logged in experience feels like exactly what I needed to get myself back on track. My screenshot above is from a guest user’s experience, but once you log in, you’ll be able to see your daily workout and mark it as complete in your own account, after which you are greeted with the cutest Chloe cheering animation:
I dunno, I kinda love it. There are a lot more features to come but I’m just glad to be getting back on track. There’s supposed to be a Fitness Journal feature launching soon, but even after it launches I still kind of like the idea of writing about my progress here, so let’s see how I get on. If it gets too much, then I’ll stop blogging and just log there.
It’s honestly been so long. Let’s see if I still remember how to do this haha.
Week One
1/3 – Day 1: Completed 17:53.
Videos completed: New Warm Up, 12min HIIT, Flat Stomach Abs, 15min Cooldown.
Oh DANG I am unfit. Maybe I ate too many crackers before I started exercising (definitely) or maybe I’m just that unfit now (probably) but not even half way through the working I had to take a long break since I felt like I was going to throw up. Thankfully, I didn’t. But I felt like it.
Jacky joined me today. Both of us went hard and were totally winded for a good 5min before we were able to continue. I looked down at my Apple Watch when I felt like I was doing too much and realised my heart rate was at 175bpm. Previously I wouldn’t be able to go above 171bpm without feeling light-headed and sick, so, yeah, no wonder lol.
Jacky thought I said it was only one video, so he went all out whereas I conserved some energy since I didn’t want to actually be sick. He rested while I completed the ab video alone.
I haven’t found these two videos to be super difficult, per se, but I’m just mega unfit so they were difficult for me. I hated but enjoyed the new ab workout. Those boats and scorpions, man… My Twitch workout training didn’t do much to help unfortunately. Sadge.
As usual, Chloe had me howling in pain, but I know I’ll be able to do these exercises by the end of the challenge as I rebuild my stamina, strength and endurance. Forgot to take a photo immediately after – my hair would have been much more dishevelled if so – but cheers to a new year and getting back into exercise!
1/4 – Day 2: Completed 17:12.
Videos completed: New Warm Up, Full Body No Jumping, 10min Upper Body & Core, 5min Cooldown.
I must admit, I don’t love the new warm up. However, I do love the new Full Body No Jumping workout. That was actually perfect for my weaksauce body, especially since I was already feeling sore from yesterday.
I focused on my breathing and mind-muscle connection. I felt the right muscles working at the right time, and was able to go all the way through with only a slightly longer rest after set 2. Despite being no jumping, my HR was still going up to 169bpm at its peak, and floating around 145bpm on average. That tells me I had a really good workout without it being too intense that I couldn’t take it anymore.
I’m also loving the music for this new challenge! It’s surprising how much the music affects my enjoyment of a workout, but there were definitely a few challenges/videos I didn’t want to do/complete last year because I didn’t like the music. So far, I’m loving this one.
Unfortunately, I can’t say I liked the 10min Upper Body & Core video as much. The exercises were fine overall, but there were just so many moves that were the same as sets 3 & 4 of the No Jumping video that it felt too repetitive, and the strain on my wrists became a bit too much that I began to lose motivation.
I also didn’t engage my core as much just because… well, my core was in pain, alright?! After that abs video and 20min of engaging my core already, she decided she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. So she gave up. She did not have a good time.
I still finished it, but I changed up a few of the moves because I didn’t want to do the same ones again. For example, instead of the last couple of planks, I ended up trying some incline pushups against a coffee table. It was my first time trying incline pushups and I’m pleased to say I managed to do 3! My form wasn’t perfect, but it’s a start haha.
Now, my entire body aches. Yey :’)
1/9 – Day 3: Completed 17:02.
Videos completed: 12min HIIT, Flat Stomach Abs, 10min Booty.
Working out 3x/week isn’t too bad!! I mean, it wasn’t what I had expected or hoped for, but this week got a little crazy. Wednesday was just very busy and somewhat of a blur. On Thursday we found out someone we had close contact with recently tested positive for COVID. On that same day I started feeling a little unwell, and the day after I got worse.
Yesterday morning I was still feeling a little headachey and groggy, but by the afternoon I was more or less fine. We have scheduled a COVID test for me for Tuesday just in case, but I’ve pretty much fully recovered already. My symptoms also may not necessarily indicate COVID. It was mostly headache and swollen lymph nodes with a minor cough for a few minutes.
The cough could have been due to how dry it’s been here lately, and the headache subsided very shortly after I took an iron supplement. The swollen lymph nodes? No idea. But Jacky has been absolutely fine, and I think I’ve just been sleep deprived, causing my immune system to weaken.
Today I was considering skipping my workout again, but I’m very glad that I just sucked it up and exercised. Jacky joined me and our collective pain was actually quite hilarious.
I stuck to all the low impact moves but I’m proud of myself for getting through almost all of it without stopping. I felt a bit overwhelmed with 3 videos when I was thinking about doing it, but when we finally got down to actually doing the workout it wasn’t bad at all. Day 4 is a rest day, but I guess we can just say I’ve already taken it? Haha.
1/10 – Day 5: Completed 17:12.
Videos completed: 15min Full Body HIIT, Abs in 2 Weeks.
Day 4 was a rest day, and I took 3 rest days last week, so there isn’t much point in noting all of them down. I wasn’t sure if I was going to work out today but since we were only scheduled a 25min workout I figured why not. 25min is definitely doable. 30min is… eh, still doable. It’s when I get past 30min, or when we get to more than 2 videos per day, that I start to lose motivation it seems.
I guess I don’t like the idea of clicking more than 2 videos, it just feels like a lot, you know? Even if, in reality, three 10min workouts are (meant to be) the same duration as one 20min video plus another 10min video, it just takes extra mental energy to click that third video.
For example, Day 6’s videos I’m fine with (theoretically), but Day 8+? Ehhh… we will see.
I dunno, maybe I’m just making excuses for myself, or just trying to analyse my own weaknesses here. But admittance is the first step to recovery or trying to do something about it! So, if it’s true that I struggle with motivation when it’s more than 2 videos, then I can just go ahead and only do the first 2 videos per day. Until I get stronger at least.
I’m pretty sure the reason I can’t motivate myself to do more right now is because I’m so weak. It takes 40min+ to get through a 30min workout. Once I’m stronger and can breeze through 30min, then this will probably be less problematic.
Today’s workout was fine, I did a mixture of high and low impact moves for both videos. Oh man I really felt my abs today… which was great, but also ow. Haha. I’m looking forward to doing the No Jumping video again tomorrow. I really liked that one!
1/13 – Day 6: Completed 17:39.
Videos completed: Full Body No Jumping, Upper Body & Core.
Okay, I am genuinely and pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the upper body workout. Especially after Day 2, I was apprehensive that I’d have to repeat exercises from the Full Body video, so I was very glad when that wasn’t the case.
A part of that enjoyment could also be that I felt stronger when doing the exercises in this upper body video; I could feel myself being able to perform the movements better with decent form, and I wasn’t as wobbly as I usually am. Also, all those pushups from my Twitch streams probably helped with my arm strength.
I’m still not able to get through the full duration of the movements for everything, but there’s progress!
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the no jumping workout as much as I thought I was going to but that might have been because I wasn’t warmed up properly. I loved that 10min flew by for me though. Without realising it we were already half way through the workout, and normally I’d be struggling towards the end of a 10min workout.
I began to lose steam towards the end of the video, but immediately after I thought of quitting, Chloe declares “don’t give up now, it’s almost over” and I was okay dang I guess I’m not giving up anymore O_O I worked decently hard for both – my max HR was 166bpm and my average was 138bpm for both videos. Not bad!
Next workout is Day 8. I’m excited to try her new arm video! Not sure when I’ll get round to doing it, but I should be able to get it done this week. Once again I won’t be noting all the “rest days” I have as I’m sure there will be many more than scheduled. My poor, old bones ;p
Finally, I realise this is called the “Weight Loss Challenge” but I’m not reporting my weight. I am not really using this challenge to lose weight – if it happens, wonderful. I just needed to get back into exercising for my health, and it’s so hard to stay motivated on my own. Chloe’s challenges have really helped to keep me somewhat on track.
Thus, I won’t be posting my weight change or even ‘result’ pictures. If, eventually, there’s enough of a visible difference that others comment on it, I’ll weigh myself. These days, I only weigh myself with and without my cat to figure out how much she weighs haha.
And with that, Week One is complete! Woohoo!
Muchos love,