Week 2, Day 2

I knew this was coming. My first bad gym day! I hate those. Here is what happened: As usual, come 15 45, I went to the gym only that as soon as I hit the treadmill, my lower leg started hurting – hurting, not as in physical pain you would associate with pulling a muscle but pain you would think originates from an extreme build up of lactic acid. It also did not help that I felt weak and physically incapable of going on. I didn’t last 5 minutes on the treadmill. I decided to slow down and walk for a while. After 3 minutes, I tried running again. This time I hardly lasted 3 minutes.

NOT GOOD.

I had half a mind to take the day off but I didn’t. Instead I rested for a while and stretched doing two cycles of the following 3 stretch exercises (60 seconds per leg for each exercise, then repeat).

Stretches
Pictures from GirlsHealth.gov

Then I got back on the treadmill and IT WORKED!! So, although my gym day started badly, I believe I salvaged what I could.

Ok then, let’s talk food.

Meal 1: Tuna and 1 slice of brown bread (at 17 00)

Snack: Milk (1 glass with vanilla essence), 1 mango, 3 strawberries (at 19 30)

Meal 2: Boiled vegetables and egg salad (1 serving) (at 22 00)

W2D2-food

Gym

Not taking into account the initial 5 minutes I ran on the treadmill and the subsequently 3 minutes, I did 10 minutes steady rate cardio at speed 8.0 followed by 10 minutes HIIT at speeds 5.7 (walking speed) and 10.2 (sprinting speed), finishing off with another 5 minutes steady rate cardio at speed 8.0.

W2D2-gym

Week 2, Day 1

80.8 kg (178 lbs.)!!!!! 1 week in and I am 3.4 kg (7.5 lbs.) down. This is fantastic. And I still had Subway on Friday and you know, steak and chocolate soufflé on Saturday. This is really working and if I keep losing weight at this rate, I should be down to my target weight, 55 kg (121 lbs.), in time – 10-14 weeks leaving plenty of time for toning up before summer. Actually, I will start weight training as soon as I hit 65 kg (143 lbs.) but more of that later. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I am basking in this amazing feeling of having dropped over 3 kg (6.6 lbs. +) in one week.

1-Week-In

But this is hardly time to celebrate. I have loads more to do and get done. From experience, I am expecting Week 2 to be brutal and the reason for this is: The first week, you are all determined and fired up to eat well and go to the gym but come Week 2, you might find yourself craving normal food and slacking gym-wise because it gets old to workout everyday.

You see, habits are formed through a process called ‘context-dependent repetition’.  For example, if each time you get home from school or work in the evening, you have a snack, a mental link is formed between the context of getting home and your response to that context: having a snack. Each time you subsequently snack in response to getting home, the link strengthens, to the point that it becomes automatic; a habit has developed. It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to develop a habit.

So I am not used to eating healthy and going to the gym yet. It’s going to take another 14 days and this week will probably be the hardest and the most painful. I am definitely bracing myself for the worst.

Right then, moving on, let’s talk about food. Today, I had:

Meal 1: Brown bread (2 buns) with sardines (1 can) (at 17 00)

Snack: Yoghurt, 1 banana, 1 pear (at 19 30)

Meal 2: Indian-style roast chicken, 2 slices of brown bread (at 22 00)

W2D1-food

Gym

Steady rate cardio for the first 10 minutes followed by HIIT (20 minutes) at speed 8.0 for steady rate cardio and speeds 5.7 (walking speed) and 10.2 (sprinting speed) for HIIT.

Week 1, Day 7

And here we are…the last day of Week 1. This feels awesome. I actually did it this time. I did what I planned to do. I can’t wait to see the numbers on my weight scale tomorrow; they better be good!

With that said, after the last two eventful days, today was pretty routine. I woke up and went to the gym. After gym, I had my first meal followed by a snack after 2 hours and a second meal after 5 hours.

Meal 1: Tuna and 1 slice of brown bread (at 15 00)

Snack: Yoghurt, 1 banana and 1 pear (at 17 00)

Meal 2: Indian-style roast chicken, 2 slices of brown bread (at 20 00)

When I say Indian-style roast, I know it creates the mental image of chicken marinated in loads of spices and cooked in a generous amount of oil. But this is not the type of Indian-roast I am talking about. My Indian-style roast chicken contains chicken, garlic, pepper, very little salt (a pinch), cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, onions (chopped roughly) cooked in merely 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.

Cooking

Gym

Steady rate cardio at speed 7.7 for the first 10 minutes followed by 20 minutes HIIT at speeds 5.7 (walking speed) and 10.0-10.2 (sprinting speed).

W1D7

Week 1, Day 6

Classic. This always happens. You plan on having one cheat meal a week but then events pile up. I woke up this morning to a message on Facebook and I was invited to a dinner. Of course, I could have said no but I didn’t. Here is why: Just because you are going out for dinner does not mean that you need to have the most fattening lasagne dish ever. You can just as well have a steak without any sides and substitute your Pina Colada with, say, plain water. I wouldn’t normally do that. If I go out, I eat normally. But I already ate “normally” once this week and I can’t really afford another “normal” meal, not if I want to see a good number on my weight scale on Monday.

Since I woke up to this message on Facebook, I figured, I will have the one meal today and nothing else. At the restaurant, I ordered a steak, no sides and no sauce. The steak came with a mushroom and peppercorn sauce which I did not touch. And I had water. I know, I know, not the greatest combination but you have to do what you have to do. I’ve had enough amazing meals over the last year and a half. It’s now time to make some sacrifice.

Steak

Also I had dessert. HALF a dessert to be precise! It was a Belgian chocolate soufflé with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I had half and left the other half.

Gym

As I talked about in my previous post, unless you are past 36 hours of fasting, going to the gym should not be a problem. In fact, I took the game up one notch today. I did 15 minutes steady rate cardio at speed 7.7 and 15 minutes HIIT at speeds 9.0-10.0 (sprinting speed) and speed 5.7 (walking speed).

Week 1, Day 5

First off, Happy Valentine’s Day. I had a great one this year. I thought it would suck on account that I didn’t have a valentine this year but thank God for friends, right?

So, today was another fasting day for me, like I mentioned before and I broke my 48-hour fast with this incredible Subway dinner. I had a footlong sub, not the 6 inch one, the point here being that if you plan on eating out or indulging in a normal meal, you might as well do it all the way. Obviously though, you can’t go crazy either. I mean, my friends with whom I had my dinner date brought cake and although it was so good that I would have liked to just eat the whole thing, I stuck to one serving, a relatively normal-sized serving but I did have a footlong sub (when I could have had the 6 inch one) and I did have coke and sprite and apple juice to go with it.

Right then, so what I ate and drank today looks like this:

  1. A footlong sub (with cheese, Chipotle Southwest Sauce, the whole shebang)
  2. 0.5 L Sprite, 0.25 L coke and 0.25 L apple juice
  3. Cake (A regular serving)
  4. 1.0 L water

sub2

This was my first normal/unhealthy meal since I started weight loss. I think while having it, I was feeling more guilty than happy. That’s how you know, you are ready for this journey: When your body physically rejects unhealthy food.

Gym

As for what I did at the gym today, I didn’t go. I was 36 hours in my fast at the time I woke up so I made today my rest day. Ideally though, I should workout Monday-Saturday and take Sunday off. And this is what I will do every other week that I don’t have something lined up in terms of event.

Note that if you fast for 24 hours, you can totally go to the gym. I do. It won’t be a problem. BUT, past 36 hours of fasting, I tend to feel a little weak and I’d rather not push myself too hard, especially since this is Week 1.