Fitness: Favourite Pregnancy Workouts

Hellooo! Yep, I still have that Seattle post in my drafts, but we are getting towards the end of my pregnancy and I really wanted to document some of my workouts for future reference. My friend introduced me to a YouTube channel called Pregnancy & Postpartum TV and I have really appreciated her channel as a pregnancy workout & education resource.

I was basically a sick potato for the duration of my first trimester and absolutely could not move. However, I started feeling much better in my second trimester. It took time for me to adjust back to West Coast time and get over jet lag after my trip to Asia, but after I finally had enough rest and energy, I started doing her workouts as well as taking regular walks.

I set myself a daily step goal of 7,500 steps with the understanding that my realistic goal was no fewer than 4,500 steps/day. Even if I don’t go out for a walk, I tried to do one of her indoor walking workouts. Starting late February, I was consistently exercising 3-4x/week, which has since increased to 4-5x/week. I’m still working out but it’s definitely getting harder in my third trimester and baby is growing rapidly!

I started on this New 14 Day Pregnancy Workout Challenge, which was very helpful for getting to know some of the basics of how best to exercise during pregnancy. But to be honest, I didn’t end up finishing the entire 14 days (I finished day 11) as I started wanting to her other videos instead.

I’ve since tried a decent number of her videos and here are some of my absolute favourites that I always return to:

The walking workouts include a lot of full body cardio and totally help with my daily step goal. The other two also end up with me working up a sweat (but still able to maintain a conversation!) and were extra enjoyable because I could feel myself getting stronger as I repeated them on later days.

I am pretty certain I have built up a bit of extra muscle from working out during pregnancy, especially with all the squats I’ve been doing haha. I swear pregnancy is literally the best time to build muscle: you have built in progressive overload with the increased weight of your belly, you’re already eating in a surplus and your literal goal is to see the number on the scale increase at a healthy rate.

Plus you get the added benefit of exercising helping to manage your weight so that you’re not gaining toooo much. That said, I think I’m currently trending a little high on my weight gain, BUT my weight fluctuates a lot like it always does depending on my diet, my bowel movements, my workouts etc.

The photo above was taken just a couple of days ago. I’ve definitely gained some fat and am a similar size to when I first started my fitness journey in 2020 albeit with a much larger belly, but that’s to be expected! I could do a bit better with my weight management now, but to be honest, I’d rather just listen to my body and give my body whatever it needs to keep baby growing well.

We can’t wait to meet her <3

Muchos love,

Bobbie

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Personal: A Little Self-Care

Hello! I’ve had a partial post in my drafts for literally the past three weeks and I just haven’t been able to finish writing it. So, instead of letting that hold me back from updating, I decided to just leave it in my drafts for now and write a little update. There is no structure to this post, it’s just a flood of thoughts that I wanted to jot down.

Life has been a little crazy these days. I’m not sure if it’s pregnancy or a symptom of getting old or a bit of both (probably both), but it’s ridiculous how easily I get tired these days. Actually… it’s probably 90% to do with the pregnancy.

I’m now in my third trimester and my body is feeling it. Baby is getting big and heavy! But the biggest pain point for me in recent months is how long it now takes for me to get over jet lag! Or just recover back to normalcy after a period away.

It took a solid 2-3 weeks for me to get over my Japan -> California jet lag, and then spring forward happened. Who would have thought a 1hr difference would wreck such havoc on my body? Daylight savings happened on March 12th and I’m only now back to waking up at 8:30~9am.

A couple of weeks ago we went away for a few days to celebrate our birthdays and babymoon (I would like to write about it, but who knows when I’ll get round to it. It was such a wonderful experience, albeit bittersweet since it was our final getaway as a couple). I was basically incapacitated for a solid couple of days after returning because I was so tired.

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Beauty: Favourite Holo Taco Combos

Now that I’ve had time to play with quite a few polishes and multiple different combinations of them, I wanted to document some of my absolute favourite combos that I’ve worn, mostly so I could come back to them later. Having added all the images below, it’s not lost on me that all of them are taken of my ~oThEr HaNd~ lol.

My other hand painting skills still need improvement so bear with me, but that doesn’t change how I adore these polishes together.

Everything is from Holo Taco, of course. Currently I still purchase from this brand exclusively.

On the left I am loving: Blue Ain’t Slick + Aurora Unicorn Skin (excuse the Rory hair!)
On the right I am super into: Missed Shift + Cosmic Unicorn Skin

I’ve also tried Blue Ain’t Slick + Sonic Unicorn Skin but I’ve found that the two are little too similar, which ends up making the Unicorn Skin topper a little too subtle for my taste. It’s still lovely, just not one of my favourites. Aurora Unicorn Skin, however, provides the ideal pink contrast over the blue-purple shifty multichrome base. When the sun hits it, you see it glowing yellow, orange and even a hint of lime green. Ugh, stunning.

The combo of Missed Shift + Cosmic Unicorn Skin was not one I was expecting would look that good. I don’t like Missed Shift on its own so I threw on a random topper I thought would work and oh my. I can’t quite put my finger on what it reminds me of, but it’s such a beautiful combo. It looks so Eastern… like Spring in Japan, with sakura petals floating amid a sea of teal. It’s breathtaking and I can’t and won’t get over it lol.

Multichromes have got to be my favourite Holo Taco formula. With a Unicorn Skin on top? Perfect.

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Beauty: My Peely Base Mani Lasted 7 Days

Hello! Or, I should say: holo. I promise the Seattle posts are still coming, one has been in my drafts for 5 days. I’ve just hit a bit of a writer’s block and there’s too much to write about so I’m overwhelmed. Plus the sheer level of busy that I’ve been lately is… insane.

Anyway, it’s been almost exactly 2mo since I received my first ever Holo Taco order. I have since, um, ordered so much more that I’m already Holo Royalty lol. That said, a solid 75 points came from bonus ways to earn. I realised a couple of days ago that I could have just signed up for SMS messages and become Royalty before a bunch of recent Holo Royalty surveys were sent out so I totally missed out on those.

But with the new launch releasing this week, I’m glad I’m now Royalty and able to receive advanced teasers woo! And yes I’ll be buying more polish this weekend, lol. I guess let me know if you want me to actually review everything else I got from Holo Taco too. So far, I’ve been purchasing polish from them exclusively.

In my first Holo Taco review, I mentioned that I used Peely Base and it lasted a total of 5 hours.

After I followed the tips and tricks from Cristine’s video about how to make your Peely Base/mani last longer, I was able to make my Peely mani last 3 days… then 4-5 days… and most recently, a full week or more, if we count the day I did my nails as day 1.

Above shows days 3 and 7. I was already getting bored of this mani and was planning to get rid of it soon anyway, so it deciding to yeet itself came at the perfect time. Oh dang look at that nail growth… and this boomer finally learned to start watermarking lol.

Allow me to share how I did this with more progress pics below. And the weird ridges in my nails will be explained as well. If you only care about the tips & tricks, click here.

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Bullet Journal: August Setup

This is the first month I decided to do a clean title page + calendar. I also thought the verse would take up a lot more space than it did, so after it barely took up half of the page I decided to add a monthly to-buy and to-do list at the bottom.

I really like the clean aesthetic and am incredibly pleased with how the colours worked together. Those were not planned, I kinda wanted to go with grey to match the colour of my walls haha and somehow the mint just popped perfectly. I really like this look; no wonder bullet journalists use it so much…

The centred calendar + ‘august’ with all that negative space gives it so much breathing space. I feel at peace when I look at it and it brings me so much joy. I think I’d definitely like to continue doing a page like this for the following months too, and next time I’ll better plan out the spacing with the verse.

I’ve gone back to the rolling weekly task list for now. I realised I wasn’t really using the daily boxes apart from a few select days like returning-keys day or IKEA-trip day, and the rest of the time I had felt a little paralysed or too exhausted to do anything beyond surviving my day-to-day tasks.

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