Fitness: Doing Chloe Ting’s 2020 Summer Shred Challenge

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2020 Summer Shred Challenge

Edit: Click here to read my first Chloe Ting challenge experience – 2 Week Shred
Click here to read my third Chloe Ting challenge experience – 2019 Flat Belly
Click here to read my fourth Chloe Ting challenge experience – Get Peachy

This post was completed on 7/21/2020.
Jump to starting numbers.
Jump to week one or end of week one update.
Jump to week two or end of week two update.
Jump to week three or end of week three update.
Jump to week four or results and final thoughts.

It’s that time again where Jacky and I take on another one of Chloe Ting’s workout challenges. Yes, last time I said that we would start the new workout on Wednesday and that did not happen. We were both very tired that week and then my period started and I ended up feeling way too tender.

I was still nursing a headache this morning but I finally decided enough was enough, I can’t keep excusing myself from exercise, and now I can finally fill in that ‘exercise’ column of my new bullet journal, lol.

I checked out a number of her programs and ultimately decided this one would work best. Jacky’s a trooper and is just happy to do any exercise with me so he let me choose. He’s the best <3

I’m glad this challenge has a lot more rest days. But of course, you can afford to take more rest days if it’s more of a long-haul program. I think after doing her 2 Week Shred Challenge I’m less intimidated by a slightly longer program, it’s only approx. 22-45min per day, and now that we have a bit more strength from completing the previous challenge I do feel it’s a lot more doable. Oh! And I actually like the music for this one haha, which I learned is more important to me than I thought it would be.

We had a noise complaint from our downstairs neighbour last time (with whom we’ve now made peace by the grace of God and some homemade banana bread hehe) so we’ve decided to replace her “Ep 1: 12min Full Body Workout” video with her “Ep 4: No Jumping HIIT” video. This should also be easier on our bodies while still giving us a great workout.

Unlike last time, I’m not going to post my weight, but I will still post my waist and hip measurements. This time, Jacky made sure to take photos of where on my body I measured my ‘before’ from so we can make sure the measurement results are accurate.

Last time I measured my hips at the smallest part, but this time I’ve taken the measurement from the largest part of my hips as you’re supposed to. In addition, I’ve made mini-videos of my progress pictures so we’ll be able to better perceive if there is a difference.

I took these photos just before we started exercising. I ate in the morning (albeit not a lot) and had an iced coffee in my system, but these are pretty close to what I’d look like in the morning anyway.

Without further ado…

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Horticulture: Growing Avocado – Huge Surprise!

This post was last updated on 7/6/2020. To find the next instalment of my Avo plant growth, please click here.

Following on from my trying to grow everything post, I wanted to do an update on the avocado pip I attempted to germinate. Spoiler alert: it failed.

However, the most surprising thing happened. When we went to Trader Joe’s two weeks ago, we’d bought a bunch of fruit and put them in our new fruits basket. (That’s not the groundbreaking revelation. I know, fruit in a fruit basket, imagine.) We put bananas on the bottom rack and the avocados in the middle. As the bananas ripened, we noticed the avocados ripening at a fast rate, and when Jacky went to cut open one of the avocados 5 days later, he noticed that the seed had germinated and started to root inside the avocado.

He reported to me after that he thought he’d accidentally cut off the root when cutting open the avocado. I didn’t take photos of it, but I figured that even if the root had been cut off maybe it can re-grow, so I shoved the seed into some soil, watered it and left it outside. We’ll name it Avo1.

A day later, suspecting that it could happen again, I carefully cut open a new avocado to reveal…

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Sermon Reflections: A Resolved Response

Image credit: Unsplash.com

These are some immediate reflections as I listen (back) on sermons from CBCWLA, often resulting in brain hurting, always accompanied by caffeine. It’s a brain-dump and won’t necessarily be cohesive or coherent, most certainly won’t be exhaustive of all important parts, but will be personal to me. Here are the questions I’ll attempt to answer with each sermon I review:

  1. What sermon did I listen to today? Title/Link.
  2. Summarise the key points in 1-2 sentences.
  3. What did I learn this time that I didn’t catch/forgot about when I heard it the first time?
  4. How has it challenged my thinking?
  5. What practical applications can I take from it?

Before we begin with the reflections, I have to admit this took about 2 months to complete. I’m trying to figure out why it took me so long, but my initial excuse is that the audio cuts off half way through, and that just broke my concentration for the longest time. Then, when I’m having to read through just the sermon notes when I’m not a big reader, it takes me longer to get into it.

It’s not a good reason, but I’ve also been busy or distracted and have had other things to write about that require less brain power. I don’t know how realistic it would be for me to do one reflection per week so maybe if I target myself one every other week, it’d be less daunting and I’ll actually be able to stick to it.

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Feminine Care: The DivaCup Model 2 Review

This post was last edited and updated on 4th June 2021.
Skip to advantages, disadvantages and final thoughts.

I guess I’m hopping on another trend that I’ve seen around the internet. I think I first heard about it and researched it a year ago but never took the plunge. But those damn pesky Instagram ads started targeting me a lot recently and I’m ashamed to say at long, long last, they won… not for the poor brand that targeted me though, haha.

I am also trying to be more environmentally conscious so making the switch to a menstrual cup has been on my mind for a while now. DivaCups seems to be the OG menstrual cup with thousands of glowing reviews. It just so happened that they were only $33 on Bed Bath and Beyond and I had a 20% off coupon. So I finally got one.

I’m typically a tampon girl except on the night of day 2, where I’ll wear a maxi-pad to prevent leakage, since day/night 2 is usually the heaviest flow day for me, so I figured it should be an easy transition.

I got the Model 2 because it’s the recommended model for women who are aged 30+ or have had children. I haven’t had children, so I guess there’s no pretending I’m 21 for the n-th time now :p

These are my thoughts having used it for my most recent period.

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Productivity: My Bullet Journal Setup

Yes, pretty late to the game but I have now hopped on board the bullet journal train. Actually I started watching BuJo videos for entertainment a few months ago because I really enjoyed seeing the creativity of YouTubers but also love seeing how people organise their lives.

But what I really found could have been helpful for me was the habit trackers and mood trackers spread. I really liked the idea of tracking my habits (and also having on paper the dates I watered my plants rather than arbitrarily remembering, “Oh, I think I watered it a couple of weeks ago.”)

I started trialling just the habit and mood trackers in mid-April on a very basic spread, and again in May… and June… before, finally, I purchased my own journal.

(I also prepped a July habit / mood tracker while I was prepping my June one, but obviously now no longer need it.)

I have separate notebooks for my devotionals/misc/blog/YouTube stuff, which I’m keeping separate because I want all of my related materials to be in one place. However, I also have a random monthly to-do list that didn’t fit in with the other notebooks as well as a period tracker which I had been tracking in yet another notebook for 7 years now, so I decided to buy a bullet journal to keep all my misc monthly stuff in one place.

What I discovered the few months I tried it:

  1. I really did not need the mood tracker – my mood is typically very stable except the day or two leading up to my period where I’d get a bit more emotional.
  2. I did not find it helpful to track watering my plants because I have so many at this point and they’re all on different watering schedules.
  3. Using so many different colours, whilst looking pretty, is a bit of a pain in the rear to fill in everything.
  4. I stuck the tracker paper my wall or on my desk so it was even more of a hassle to fill in at the end of the day because I’d have to be in the study colouring with 5 different highlighters.

Once I committed to buying a journal, I did a bit more research and realised that I could just make my habit tracker even more basic hahaha. So just one or two colours was more than enough, and I can just stick my colours of the month in the pen loop and take the journal with me to fill in before bed. I also really liked a few general tracking spreads that were inspired by other YouTubers so I incorporated some of those too.

With all that in mind, my bullet journal has been split into 2 sections: the overall trackers, and the monthly spreads. The notebook I purchased is this one from Amazon (only $9.54!) which, given the simplicity of my needs, I felt would have been perfect.

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