This post will be updated for days 15 – 21 of this challenge.
It has been a whole week and a half lol. I’m writing this intro on Thursday 7th April because I just haven’t had the time and energy to write it until now, despite writing up my day 15 update two days ago. As much as I’d have loved to keep up with the schedule perfectly this week, I’m not surprised it’s been like this so far.
Monday was my birthday (yay!) and also the day of my green card interview (…yay?) I might do another post about it but just knowing that the interview location was a 2.5hr drive — one way — is probably sufficient to understand why I absolutely did not have time or energy to workout that day. I could barely stay awake after we got home, let alone do a 41min+ workout.
The rest of this week has also just been… interesting, shall we say? Haha. I think I’m back on schedule now so hopefully you will see daily updates according to the schedule on this post from here on!
This post will be updated for days 8 – 14 of this challenge.
Welp. It’s Tuesday evening. The past couple of days have just been… slightly insane. I was supposed to upload this post yesterday and be updating it daily, but yesterday was an entire ordeal. Everything kind of went wrong after I woke up super late. I just had no energy to wake up during my usual scheduled time and ended up oversleeping by 2hrs.
By the time I finally got a chance to exercise, it was already early afternoon, after which I just needed to eat and then became slammed with work. Today was marginally better but I still woke up an hour later than planned. To be fair, when my alarm went off at 8:30am, I was in pain from a headache. Having that extra hour to sleep it off was crucial.
All this is to say, the first two entires of this post are written today because I just didn’t have time to do it yesterday. And yes, despite being super busy I have not neglected my workouts! It really is amazing how motivating the new teams feature is. I definitely would have just skipped the workouts yesterday if it hadn’t been for teams. 100% recommend trying that out if you are someone who struggles with motivation.
This post will be updated for days 1 – 7 of this challenge.
Woohoo! The new challenge has begun! I am very excited. Well, typically I don’t like starting a challenge without having a good look at the schedule first, and I probably wouldn’t have started this challenge if I’d known ahead of time that some days had 45min worth of workouts, but I already committed.
The new teams feature is surprisingly motivating. I mean, I figured it would be, but I’m surprised by just how motivated I am to get up and work out and do this challenge. No joke – if I hadn’t already agreed to complete this challenge as part of my team, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, or at least would have skipped today.
I didn’t sleep well last night, so I’m attributing 100% of my progress today to the new team challenge feature. I don’t want to let my team down!
You may notice that the title of this post still says “Week 1” instead of “Day 1”. I did consider adding a new post for every day I exercise, but I feel like that would be more appropriate for periods where I’m not exercising regularly. Since I’m doing this as a team, I’m optimistic that I’ll stick to my daily workouts, so adding a new post every week will still be best for now.
As before, I’ll be aiming to do 5 days on, 2 days off (exercising during the week and resting at the weekend). Jacky and I are both celebrating our birthdays soon so there’s a chance my workout schedule will be thrown off a little, but I’ll do my best. We shall see.
I need to write this down before I forget. During the Great Lockdown of 2020, I started really getting into fitness and changing my diet. I dropped about 5-6lbs in the course of a year and a half, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to maintain it and have since gained back about 3lbs.
There were multiple new recipes I tried during that period – some that I really enjoyed, but many that I only tolerated. I didn’t really understand how a bunch of fitness influencers / bodybuilders were saying, “Mmmm, it tastes sooo good,” when I only thought it was okay while my husband wouldn’t eat it.
One such recipe was Coach Greg’s high protein french toast recipe. That was one that I quite liked, but always found to be too dry unless I added loads of honey, which defeated the purpose of a low calorie, high protein french toast recipe.
I haven’t watched his videos in a long, long time but one thing I remembered him always harping on about was Walden Farms Chocolate Syrup to go on the french toast. So the last time I wanted french toast, I purchased some to try and hated it. It ended up sitting in my fridge since, barely used.
This morning I had a craving for french toast. So I tried something new with my toppings… and oh my gosh, I’m in love. Well, I mean, it went from a 6/10 to an 8.5/10. And I am very happy with 8.5/10, and could happily eat it again and again. In fact, I want more now haha.
I didn’t take a photo before I dug in because I honestly wasn’t expecting to like it this much, but not only did I love it, but my husband also enjoyed it. He went from “I only want one bite” to “I should stop because I am eating all your food and I said I wouldn’t.”
It’s all in the sauce, which is also high in protein, low in calories and only uses 3 ingredients. Plus now I finally can make use of the Walden Farms Chocolate Syrup I purchased like half a year ago and can’t return at this point. So allow me to share with you this incredible and incredibly easy recipe that changes french toast from dry and a bit meh to moist and delicious.
Welp. It’s Wednesday, half way through the week and this post just came up… because I didn’t exercise on Monday or yesterday. It’s been a week, guys. I try not to go too heavy in my posts online but I’ve slowly become obsessed with Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Originally it was checking a little per day, but as Russia has ramped up the war crimes I’ve just found myself getting increasingly upset, depressed and distressed. I applaud all the international heroes who have signed up to fight for Ukraine, I am so impressed with Zelenskyy, and above all I am amazed by the Ukrainian spirit and fortitude throughout all of this.
All that is to say, I’d gotten myself to a place where mentally I had become so absorbed in a conflict thousands of miles away that I had checked out from life.
If ever I was wondering if I still had an addictive personality, this proves that I do. My husband warned me last night to not make it an idol after witnessing me basically pass multiple days having done nothing but refresh news about it for the entire day.
I think that was the warning I needed. As with all addictions, it may be best for my mental health to just quit cold turkey and stop following updates until Russia gets the heck out of Ukraine. I failed that this morning, but at least today I’ve made some progress by getting a workout done.
Mentally, I’m not in the best place right now. But after a pandemic, increased costs of living and now a war, who is?
I’m not going to be finishing off round two this week. The start date of Chloe’s next challenge has been pushed back by a week, so I’ll still have time to finish off this round next week. My body needs the extra rest days anyway, I’ve been working out quite intensely the past few weeks after all.
