Health & Wellness – Page 15

Health: Tracking My Weight Loss

Bobbie September 13, 2020

(These are the most recent photos I have of my physique, taken on 9th Sept – I was trying on some newly purchased yoga pants so it wasn’t intended as a physique update. The fuzzy photos and orange hue are due to darkened skies from nearby fires.)

Hellooo thanks for joining me on this journey! :) About 3-4 weeks ago I started to take weight loss more seriously after I learned about the “right” way to do it thanks to finding Natacha Océane and Greg Doucette’s YouTube channels.

They’ve helped dispel a lot of myths and misinformation about fitness, diet and weight loss that I previously believed in, which had always caused me to give up on losing weight after only trying very half-heartedly in the past. (I’d diet for a few days then decide I loved food too much).

I’ve been on a more serious weight-loss journey recently, and I think it’s perhaps now worth tracking in a separate post to get a more holistic view of how I’m doing. I will still be tracking my diet and weight in my weekly fitness posts but this is for me to get a better idea of where I’m at weight-wise overall.

It’s also interesting to see how my weight fluctuates on a daily basis, and getting to know these fluctuations help me to be unsurprised when my weight increases after a day of ‘healthy’ eating, and similarly unaffected when it decreases after I’ve eaten a bunch of junk food the night before. There doesn’t seem to be causation between the two because it’s whether or not I’ve eaten an overall caloric deficit that will enable me to lose weight.

My goal is to lose ~0.5lbs/week and it looks like so far I’m perfectly on target. Thus, seeing those fluctuations don’t alarm me into changing or doing anything drastic to my diet to ‘make up’ for weight loss; I’m able to just keep my diet as is since it’s currently working just fine. If/when at some point this changes, I’ll adjust as appropriate.

In this post, I’ll be taking the median weight for the entire week (rather than just Tues – Sat). It’ll just be a table, and further details can be found in my weekly posts. Here it is:

Diet: What I Eat In A Day To Lose Weight

Bobbie September 9, 2020

Hello! I figured I could try to do one of these posts so, if you’re interested, you can see what my diet looks like these days. I do seem to be consistently losing a little weight every week right now while eating these foods — that was the goal, after all — and what I’m eating is definitely a little different from what I was eating before. I am really not used to doing these so I kinda forgot to take photos half the time (gah!) but at least I can write down what I ate.

I try to switch up my meals daily but keep them healthy and balanced as best as I can. I also like to have at least one of Coach Greg’s recipes every day. What I eat really varies a lot, but here’s a snapshot of one day!

Date: 8th September 2020

Meal 1: greek yoghurt, figs, berries, oat milk latte.

I did not add honey to my bowl because the figs were sweet enough for me. The latte in the tall glass was for Jacky. I am lactose intolerant but it seems that no-fat milk is actually acceptable for my stomach.

I don’t love the taste of greek yoghurt though, and my yoghurt-to-fruit ratio was a bit high for my liking, so I actually gave some of my spoonful to Jacky because I felt like it was too much for me. I definitely enjoyed it. I loved the fruit, and I’m glad I ate the greek yoghurt for the health benefits.

Health & Fitness: Week 37, 2020

Bobbie September 7, 2020

Week 37 runs from Monday 7th September — Sunday 13th September, 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

9/7 – Monday. Rest (ish).

Today was Labour Day in the US so Jacky had the day off. Because he had the day off we just lazed around and had a leisurely breakfast this morning instead of exercising. I was also feeling a little tired and sluggish, probably because it’s been so hot lately, but also because I slept late last night.

In the afternoon we decided to go to a nearby mall to walk around, be outside but not actually outside, and — more importantly — get me Cinnabon. Haha. There were loads of sales going on but I was just interested in the Cinnabon buy-one-plus-a-drink-and-get-one deal. I ate half of one and am saving the rest for another day.

I didn’t exercise today, so I took a random photo just now. The top I’m wearing looks a little large for me and the bat wings under my arms look to have shrunk significantly, both of which are perfectly fine by me haha.

To be honest, I’m very not used to not exercising two days in a row anymore, especially if one of those days is on Monday. Or maybe it’s just I’m really not used to not exercising on a Monday (I did walk a lot more than usual but it was only 6,000 steps). I feel a bit bleurgh and want to work out. It’s too late now because it’s bedtime, but I cannot wait to get back to challenging my body again tomorrow.

I’m taking that as a good sign because I’ve learned that exercise is a reward and it is a joy and pleasure to take care of my body by pushing it to grow stronger. I love working out now; I love working hard during a workout, I love the feeling of accomplishment when I’m able to do one more rep than last time, I love the challenge of keeping good form, I love how energised I feel afterwards.

I did do my weekly pushup test today though!! I did 10 elbows-out knee pushups with actual good form (Jacky was very impressed) plus 3 more where my form was getting increasingly poorer. I then did 1 elbows-in knee pushup with good form (I think?) before I collapsed. I rested for a few minutes and was able to do 5 more elbows-out knee pushups. Result!

There was no change in my weight, but that’ll probably go up tomorrow given my Cinnabon and lack of exercise heh heh.

Sleep Time	Wake Time	Hrs Slept	Restful Sleep	Disruptions	Awoke Feeling	Weight
01:25	09:25	8hrs	4hr 45min	None	Somewhat rested	122.4lbs

Bullet Journal: September Setup

Bobbie September 3, 2020

Hello hello! This post is late, I do apologise! I have no excuse except I was in the throes of an awful YouTube addiction last week, so I never got round to writing this post. Then I quit digital entertainment (story for another time) and I’m finally back on track with writing.

September’s set up is fairly different because I realised that I really wasn’t using my journal much in August. Probably because of aforementioned YouTube addiction that was causing me to not want to do anything except lazily let my brain rot through hours of entertainment on a daily basis so production level was at an all-time low, but also I realised there were just some pages that weren’t working for me.

Bullet journalling is all about exploring and amending to fit your individual needs, so for September, I have made a few amendments:

Removed my reading and dates tracker – I realised I really… didn’t need those.
- In terms of reading, it was to track reading books as a habit, but it’s no longer something I care to track. I am not really interested in how many pages of a book I read in a month anymore.
- In terms of dates, Jacky and I hang out together regularly at home and we still aren’t really going out-out due to COVID; I realised it wasn’t really important for me to track all the different TV episodes we were watching together and put a ‘date’ label on them.
Added a “Bobbieness post ideas” section – so I can write down post ideas that I want to do for the month without necessarily scheduling them for any specific day.
Added a ‘key dates’ section, as well as a mini calendar on each page. I wanted one, so I added one. It makes life much easier than having to refer to my Google calendar each time I wanted to check the dates.
Shrunk my brain dump section – I’m trying out a notes section on every weekly spread so I don’t need a large monthly brain dump page anymore. I’ve mainly been using those for recipes and meal planning anyway.
Changed up my habit trackers – I didn’t want to keep turning to the front page, and I realised I was trying to ‘track’ too much. I decided to just turn the habits I wanted to keep tracking into tasks on my weekly spread, but noting which ones I wanted to track on my month summary spread.

Health & Fitness: Week 36, 2020

Bobbie August 31, 2020

Week 36 runs from Monday 31st August — Sunday 6th September, 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

8/31 – Monday. Completed 11:21.
Videos completed: Natacha Oceane 10min Warm Up, Natacha Oceane 20min Full Body Workout, MadFit 15min Folklore Dance Workout, MadFit Ariana Grande 7 Rings Workout, MadFit 15min Stretch & Cooldown.

Today was really cool! I managed to get through the entire workout without taking breaks outside of the ones that were built in/letting the video play til completion. I have been recording myself to watch my form and um, looks like there’s a lot to be desired at times. But for many of the movements, my form was really not bad at all.

I realised that my pushup form is actually poor. Despite how much it hurts and kills to get back up, it turns out watching my form in the mirror was one thing, but actually recording it to see how it looks is an entirely different beast. I will probably have to reset my pushup count, sigh.

I do think I was able to do one arm-in, knee pushup with good form though. Natacha’s video has them built in, so I was able to watch back the footage and see how poorly I’d been doing.

I’m really glad I added in Natacha’s 10min warm up to this set because (aside from no longer being weak from PMS) it really helped to prepare my body for her actual workout. She said in the video that she used the first movement as a workout, but she is 10 different levels of athlete above me, so my poor body definitely needed a proper warm up.

Flora was amazed I was able to keep going (to be honest, I was too) because she was really struggling, and her fitness level is typically way above mine. I also struggled hard the first time for Natacha’s video because my body was just not used to moving that way (see last week Thursday).

But today, my body was more familiar with the movements so it was a matter of stamina. Flora wasn’t feeling her best anyway so that probably made it harder. I imagine next time she does the video it will be no problem for her!

I didn’t manage to sleep well last night unfortunately. Technically there were no sleep disruptions and I suppose the restful sleep figure is great, but I had vivid dreams that kept me from sleeping soundly. I was also in bed by 00:30 but I just could not sleep.

I kept trying to figure out what it could have been because I literally did not remember drinking any coffee in the afternoon, but then I realised it must have been the 2 diet cokes I had after our Costco run, one of which I had at like 9pm. Lesson learned.

Thus, I’m even more pleased that I managed to have a really good workout today! Yay for getting stronger. My average heart rate for Natacha’s video was 148bpm, and for the two MadFit videos it was 162bpm! SO pleased with that because I think it means I am now able to go harder by maintaining that higher heart rate for a longer period of time.

I took the photo above just now. If I look healthy, it’s because I really feel it too. Yay!

Sleep Time	Wake Time	Hrs Slept	Restful Sleep	Disruptions	Awoke Feeling	Weight
01:30	09:15	7hr 45min	4hr 20min	None	Groggy but decently rested	122.8lbs