8 Week Challenge Day 4 - Saturday

It has been a very good 4 days so I decided to photo-blog day 4.


A.M. 1 peice of Burgen Rye, 1 egg, 2 Swiss Brown mushrooms, 1 kiwifruit, 1 cup of tea

Lunch: Well I got distracted and didn't eat my usual early lunch and I was starving! So I went to my emergency meal. I actually planned this a couple of weeks ago for when I was dying for superquick takeaway- to just make this. It takes 4 minutes and totals 400 calories. I don't want to use it too often as it is processed. all foreign ingredients and high in sodium. But I don't really care because it's a very satisfying answer to food that could be alot worse. The idea came because last year I discovered Trident 3 minute laksa noodles and after eating heaps of them I looked at the calories - 1200! Yes one packet, looks just like 2 minute noodles, was 1200 calories, what you should eat in a whole day!!! I think it is because the noodles are fried, it has sachet of powdered coconut cream and a sachet of chilli oil. So I looked for alternatives and found this Tom Yum soup with rice noodles in the soup section for 200 calories. It is very very tasty and has a hot chilli sachet, I have never used more then half of it and it is a spicy chilli soup. Then I thought hey I could just throw in some frozen ingredients and presto a meal to rival most Asian takeaways.
So anyway Lunch was Tom Yum rice noodle soup (200cal) with a spinach portion and 8 spinach and prawn dumplings (200 cal) heated in the microwave.

Afternoon Snack: 2x 2cm pieces of licorice (how weird American spell check does not recognise this word? Do they have licorice in USA?) and 1 kiwifruit.

Dinner: Waldorf Salad (2 celery stalks, 1/2 apple, a few walnuts, dressed with 1/4 lemon and a smidge of mayo) small tuna tin. Followed an hour later by 2 spoons of sultanas, pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

Some dieters may think I have too many fats in by diet but I have decided it is the one nutrient I am not willing to give up as I am very concerned about my skin and hair issues and I am finishing uni so I need healthy brain function. I take a multi vitamin and alternate taking magnesium, vitamin B, chromium and fish oil so that I take each a couple of times a week.

Exercise:

A.M. Walked 5.42km/55mins/burnt 471 cals around streets.

P.M.75 mins of BL DVD - consisting of
                       5 mins Warm up
                       20 mins Boot Camp

                       20 mins Sculpt with weights

                       20 mins Low Impact                       10 mins Stretch routine

I think I burnt the same calories in exercise as I ate. I would guess at my weight and how hard I worked - I would have burnt about 800 calories in the P.M. so about 1271 calories for the day.

My cat usually ignores me and just continues sleeping when I am working out but today she kept curling around me and when I was doing floor work she was smooching and jumping on me.   Then she just fell over and fell asleep in this position while I sweated and puffed profusely.

So I'm going well. I jumped on the scales and it reads 107 kg so I think I have lost 2 kg this week. My metabolism is alive finally after months of working towards this point.

8 Week Challenge Day 2

Food
A.M. Cup of tea with light milk
         Large nectarine
         Cup of cabbage soup
Lunch: 4 corn thins with butter and Vegemite and celery with spoon of cottage cheese
P.M. Approx 1 cup of fresh pineapple and a spoon of cottage cheese
Tea:  Stuffed Red capsicum with turkey mince, carrot, zucchini, garlic, chilli, ginger & 1cup of Basmati Rice
        

Dinner, also made up and froze 2 more serves.

Exercise
A.M.  60 mins of BL DVD - consisting
                       5 mins Warm up
                       20 mins Boot Camp
                       5 mins on stepper machine
                       20 mins High Impact

                       10 mins Stretch routine

P.M. Some vigorous vaccuming. Desperately wanted to go for walk but constant rain. I couldn't think of another exercise to do as I really couldn't do any DVD's as my shoulders, arms and legs were hurting from boot camp. Note to self I really cannot do pushups. With winter coming up I must think of an alternate (must be free) exercise when I cannot go outside.

Speeding up my Metabolism

I am absolutely done with losing weight so slowly. This post is a summary of what I have learnt elsewhere and what I have discovered by trial and error to speed up my metabolism and lose weight at a more appropriate rate. 


PCOS has really deadened my metabolism and endocrine system. This year I have eaten quite well (like thousands of calories less then I used to) and exercise two hours a day and get very small results. I do go offtrack sometimes and recently I just gave up for a week, ate badly and then started eating 'normally'. I dropped a couple of kilo's! Ofcourse I put it back on as I notice my body takes about a week to register if  I was good or bad a week ago. So anyway that probably doesn't make sense but I think my body was finally starting to respond. I always give up right on the precipice of succeeding with everything I do (like right now I am all of a sudden blogging when I was just getting the point of being ready to write an assignment due next week).


This is my system I have recently pulled together as I have had bits of success from these strategies, but haven't done it all together. I am expecting better weight loss results now:


Exercise:

• I can't out-train a bad diet. I tried. It has to be both.
• Exercise in the morning before breakfast to burn fat stores and again before dinner.
• After warm-up, start out hard and then slow down. This way you kick you body from burning fuel to burning fat stores quicker and also burn a few more calories in your second part as its kind of like interval training, your go-hard burns through your go-slow. *tip from somewhere?*
• Have mini excercise bursts throughout the day to fire up your metabolism. I have a mini-stepper. I could only do a minute at a time on it 2 months ago and now I do 5 minutes with some hand weight exercises. *This may have no scientific basis as I have come up with the idea myself as I figure if interval training works then there must be some small benefit from firing up even if you go back to your resting pulse rate 3 minutes later.*

Diet:

• Eat less. Though I am large and think I can sneak in more food because I use more caolries then the next person, I can't. Due to my lifelong PCOS and pre-diabetic insulin resistance, I am physically metabolically and endocrinalogically  programmed to hold on to all this damn weight now that I have it. And that is science.
• To eat less and walk the line of not going into 'starvation mode' or ketosis (where metabolically this is just not good) eat regularly, with more protein and less carbs.

So I eat 4ish times a day  and I tend to eat the same foods pepared in lots of different ways. I eat:

• Oats, low fat milk, LSA, banana, blueberries and strawberries as smoothies, porridge.
• Vegetables - zucchini, red capsicum, carrot, silverbeet, spinach, lettuce, rocket, tomatoes and mushrooms in a variety of ways like omelettes, garden salads, grilled, stuffed.
• Eggs, Chicken, turkey, cottage cheese, a few nuts or sprouted legumes as a protein component of every meal, even if its a really small amount.
• Soups made of veges and legumes, chickpeas etc.
• Apples, pineapple or other seasonal fruit
• Flat bread and occasionally rice

My favourite meals have become waldorf salad, pizza (under 100 calories for a wholegrain flat bread, tomato paste, lots of herbs and veges, and yes a spattering of full fat mozzarella cause you have to use so little of it to get the flavour) and stuffed veges.

8 week challenge Day 1 - Wednesday

There is nothing special about this challenge, it's just a book I bought at Aldi a few weeks ago for a couple of dollars. Its called Walk off the weight and had a really good diary section so I am filling it out. Because I probably won't update my blog everyday - it is too distracting sometimes, I'll just spend hours on here.


I have though been slowly increasing my knowledge and refining my practices through trial and error. Which is why I thought I would blog for the next couple of days. To keep a record of what I am learning.


Food
A.M. - Porridge: 5 spoons of oats, honey, light milk
Lunch - Waldorf Salad - 3 celery stalks, 1 red apple, 1/2 lemon, 8 walnuts, light mayo
Snack - A few spoons of filling as pre-preparing dinner
Dinner - Whole red capsicum filled with grated zuchinni, carrot, turkey mince, ginger, chilli, garlic & sweet chilli sauce.
Snack - Weak hot chocolate with light milk. 


Excercise
A.M. - 60 mins of BL DVD - consisting
                       5 mins Warm up
                       20 mins High Impact
                       5 mins on stepper machine
                       20 mins Low Impact
                       10 mins Stretch routine
P.M. - 25 minutes brisk walk until I got caught in very heavy rain. Luckily I was right at outside the local club and sat in their covered verandah for about 45 mins. It was still raining and dark so I went in and asked if their courtesy bus could take me home when it next went out. So lucky as I joined the last time I was there 9 months ago so they looked me up on the computer. Phew! The walk home would have really sucked!!!