Week 4

Week three is over and week four has begun, so where does this leave me?

WEEK THREE GOALS RECAP:

1. Go for three runs - COMPLETED. I did two runs at the gym and one on the road. The treadmill is a much easier option than going for a run on the road which nearly killed me. Mind you it could be my fault for going straight out of bed with no food on a Sunday morning!! If you had seen me yesterday morning I would have been sprawled out on the couch clasping my chest gasping for air haha, sign of a good run???
2. Try one new type of exercise - COMPLETED. If you read my last post you will already know about this. I gave Zumba a go and it is much harder than I had expected. I tried it again on Saturday in the heat and was melting. It's actually  pretty fun.
3. Lose 1kg - NOT COMPLETED. I gave it my best go but I fell short, I did get pretty close to the 1kg mark but the weekend put me back up a bit so I didn't achieve this one.

REWARDS:

1.  For doing my three runs I am buying a new pair of running shoes. I have narrowed the choice down to four pairs. Let me know which ones you think are best.

2. I have put $20 aside in the money tin towards some new jammies. Just need to earn a few more bucks and I can go shopping :)

3. Since i didn't complete goal three I didn't get my reward. I still have to work in order to enjoy the food at the fair this weekend

WEEK FOUR:

1. I will carry goal three from week three forward in a way. This week my goal is to weigh under 61kg. If I can do this before Saturday then I can enjoy whichever foods I like at the fair (within reason obviously) without feeling guilty
2. Do yoga three nights this week. If I do this then I will put another $20 in the tin for my new jammies
3. Do 200 burpees before the end of the week (not all at once obviously haha - im not insane!!) . The reward for this one is $10 towards my jammies.

Doesn't seem to hard this week, just enough to keep me on track and moving in the right direction. 

Let me know which shoes you perfer. I am hoping to get them in the next week YAY!!!

Zumba Zumba!

So this week one of my goals was to try a new form of exercise.

Everyone else seems to have jumped on the Zumba band wagon so I thought this would be a good one to try - also I had access to some DVD's which made it an easy choice. Much to my surprise it was actually pretty fun! (and very catchy)
Since it was a Thursday night and it was already 8.30 when I started I decided to only do the 20 minute express version rather than the 50 minute. This way I also got a taste of a couple of the different styles they do. One of the best parts of Zumba is that the music is so catchy that it gets stuck in your head and you end up Zumba-ing all around the house, so your 20 minute workout turns into 30 minutes.

This seems like it would be a great way to get some cardio in with out having to spend time on the exercycle or treadmill. It also seems like it would be a great way to add a bit of variety to your workout.

I must say it is one of those exercises where you feel like you are a real pro at it when you are dancing around the living room but in reality you probably look like a fish flopping around on dry land. But hey who cares so long as you have fun and it burns fat.

So that's one goal down for the week, and I will be putting $20 in the tin towards some new pj's from Peter Alexander. They have some really cute "Dino-Snore" pj pants at the moment as well as really interesting sailor themed sleep wear. Can't wait to go in and pick something out.

I definitely think I will be trying out some other different types of exercise. If you know of any that you think would be worth a try please let me know and I will add them to the list.

Until next time -  Be your own kind of beautiful (even if it is a flopping fish on dry land hahahahah) :)

Week three

WEEK THREE ALREADY??!! 

Time is flying by quickly and it is time to set some new goals

1. Go for 3 runs this week, whether they be at the gym on a treadmill or on the road - my reward for accomplishing this goal is buy a new pair of runners
2. Try one new type of exercise- put $20 towards some new pj's from Peter Alexander
3. Lose 1kg - when I go to the Martinborough fair next weekend I don't have to worry about trying different foods

Nothing I don't think I can handle. 800grams is about on par with what I lost last week so I should be able to accomplish 1kg with ease.

Going to keep this one brief today just wanted to update and commit my goals to writting.

Wish me luck :)

Is your food "poison"?

Its official, I have completed both of this weeks goals.

Last week I didn't manage to complete one of my goals due to a physical reason which made not completing it so hard to accept. Mentally you know you could have done it but physically you aren't allowed to.... thus meaning sadly I couldn't have my reward!!..

But this week I have crossed, jabbed, hooked and ripped  my way to victory. WOO HOO!! This morning I did my final of three sessions of boxing. It wasn't easy, in fact after the second round I was hanging off the side of the couch gasping for air, but I did it. AAAANNNNNDDDD I got my tea.. YAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!! Now I didn't just get one tea, oh no, I got 4 teas. As I have said, up to $15ish is pretty good for my weekly reward. $15 got me two teas, Pink Tea - this is made in such a way which makes it turn pink, (weird right) and I got a Vanilla Almond tea which I thought sound really interesting.

Now where do the other two come in? I was just lucky, during the week I won a tin of Mango flavoured White Tea, and I got another packet -I got ginger - from my loyalty card. Double Yay!!

An interesting thing happens when you make a decision to stop eating bad foods, you realise that bad foods are everywhere!! In everyday life you just pass it by and don't notice but when you do start taking note of it you see it in EVERYWHERE!! And if I am honest, its like torture!!!

When your sitting on the couch watching TV craving junk, every second ad is for take aways. When you get out of the car in the mall car park, all you can smell is KFC chips (what do the do to those chips, no matter what they smell amazing!)  When your walking through the mall there are fast food places, cafes, food stands and they all smell great - just because you can't have it. 

However I learnt a very good lesson this week.  I was watching an episode of Jillian Michaels' TV show Losing It where go goes to a Native American community in attempt to change the was they see food and exercise. She went to one of their local community gatherings where they all cook food and bring it along. 

The family she was working with  made something called Fry Bread which they claimed was part of their culture - she made a great point of saying "now why is it that I don't think your ansesters used enriched bleached flour?" "Fry bread is 100% not part of your tradition". Anyway in the middle of the gathering, she took the whole lot of fry bread and threw it in the bin - wasting food is a cultural disrespect!! When an elder confronted her and said that we don't believe in wasting food, Jillian turned around and said, that wasn't food, it was poison, if I hadn't done that what would have been wasted was your communities health. 

Her statement is so true. So many of the foods we crave because they taste or smell so good are POISON!! I grabbed a few foods from my fridge and cupboards to look at what actually goes into them and I found things like additives, extracts, flavours, emulsifiers, regulators, stabilisers and much more. Now it may just be me but that doesn't sound like stuff my body needs a lot of. 

Your challenge this week is to look at the foods you are eating, read the packets, look at the ingredients and see what you are actually putting into your body. Real foods don't need all the extra crap in it. I remember looking at a bottle of juice one day and one of the ingredients that was in it was natural apple flavouring as well as apple juice concentrate - if it already had apple juice in it how do you add the natural apple flavour?? I thought it was a package deal....

I'm not saying give up all of the foods that you love but try to think about what you are putting into your body. Part of loving yourself is showing your body some respect and trying your best to keep it healthy!

Before you eat think, would this be spoiled after 80 days? If the answer is no, do you really need it?

And remember  "to give yourself a compliment doesn't mean you think you are better than another person, it just means you respect yourself"

What are your reasons?

I am pleased to announce that after over a year of not going to the gym, I am back. Well for a month at least.

Peter has recently gone back to City Fitness and in them attempting to get him back offered me a free months membership - woop woop!!!

Once my month is up I am pretty sure that I am going to have to continue my membership. I was already starting to feel like I missed the gym but after being back there for a week I can say for certain that I did.

I have been trying to ease myself back into it. Well Peters version of easing back into it anyway - and by this I mean that I know that i am going to be sore the following day. As proved by Tuesday when I did calves, I have never curse so much walking up a hill as I did on Wednesday and I must say that it feels a little bit wrong when it hurts less walking in heels than walking in flat shoes haha. (good excuse to wear heels I might add)

So why did I give up the gym in the first place. After we brought our house in November 2011 I came up with excuse after excuse until I didn't even think about the gym anymore. So

But what is an excuse - its definition is "Attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify" so in all honesty not going to the gym was just shear laziness!!!

THERE IS NO EXCUSE!!!  Every excuse has a rebuttal, a reason why you can do it. A reason why you have to do it!!

So rather than finding an excuse how about we find reasons. For example:

What are your reasons to work out? Your list of reasons should always be longer than your list of excuses.

Anyway enough about this (for now)
I have completed one of my goals this week. For the last four days I have made my lunch for work, and it was just as good as what I would have brought. Previously I was buying my lunch 5 days a week, on average this was costing me about $35 - $40 a week!!  Even if I don't make my lunch every day, I work about 49 weeks a year. I will be saving over $1000!!! 

After posting my last blog I realised that I didn't put a reward. So I have decided that I will go to a specialty food store and buy a new type of spice or flavouring to change things up a bit with my eating. 

I am also tracking well with my other goal of boxing 3 nights this week. I have done two sessions with one more planned for tomorrow night. My reward is so close I can almost taste it...

Until tomorrow, signing off and preparing for the pain caused by legs day.

Week two begins

So its the starts of the week which means I have done my first week already.

Week one in review
I must admit that I haven't had a large amount of success with my goals this week. One has been a hit and one has been a miss.
Goal One – go for one run. before the end of the week. This was completed on the first day and I suffered for the rest of the week with sore legs. Thankfully my reward for this goal was a calf and foot massage from Peter.
Goal Two – complete three boxing sessions by the end of the week. I managed to get one boxing session in but since I had a small procedure on my arm boxing was out of the question for the rest of the week.
So this means that I was not allowed to buy some new tea :(
However this isn't the end of this goal

I haven't been to good  with my eating this week. I have tried to clean up a little bit but haven't been to strict yet. This means my weight hasn't changed much. In fact it has stayed at 62.2 kg for most of the week going up to 62.3 one day and finishing at 61.9 kg

Starting week two
Goal One– I am brining the boxing sessions forward to this week and resetting it. So I have to complete three boxing sessions by the end of this week. From what I can tell I will have two or three days left of not being able to do it but that leaves me with plenty of time after that. Just as it was last week, if I complete this I get to buy some new yummy tea form KapiTea
Goal Two – To make my lunch at least four days this week. Given that I brought my lunch today this means I need to make my lunch every other day this week for work.
If I succeed at this I will

As it turns out coming up with new goals is fairly easy but coming up with rewards is hard. If any of you have ideas for me - ideally I want to keep the weekly rewards under $15 if possible - please leave me a comment here or on my facebook page.

Remember... "Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever!!"

Signing off for the evening and going to enjoy a nice cup of blueberry tea (yes from KapiTea)

Watermelon, Squats and Temptation

So four days after my run my legs are just about pain free, although I must admit that it is probably my own fault that it has taken a bit longer than I expected. You see in my infinite wisdom I decided that it would be a great idea to do some squats on days two and three - as a result I have now decided that I am an idiot!! Doing squats with sore legs just makes them worse - who knew haha.

Nom Nom Nom, Doughnut cake - could you resist?

Quick question for you guys. Why is it that whenever you make a decision to do something like eat healthy, unhealthy food is EVERYWHERE?
On day three of being healthy it was my brothers birthday so suddenly my world is bombarded with Junk! McDonalds for breakfast, Thai for dinner,   and of course there is going to be pudding, and lets be honest who in their right mind is going to turn down these foods after they are put in front of you?
But I did feel pretty proud of myself. Yesterday we had a little goodbye afternoon tea for two of the girls at work and without a second thought I resisted the temptation of the gooey  yummy slices that were put on the table for us.

Ouch!!!

Now i have found myself in a bit of a predicament. After making a goal of doing three boxing sessions a week i have hit a wall. I decided that I would start my boxing on day two(Wednesday night) only issue is that I then remembered that I was booked into the doctors the following day for a minor procedure on my arm which meant cutting and prodding, leaving my arm with a cut, bruising, bandage and pain. This brings me to my dilemma. I have done one boxing session and given the state of my arm won't be able to do any more until mid next week. So I think I am going to have to throw in the towel for the boxing and sub it in for some other form of exercise and reset the goal for next week.

Look at my cool new shorts

I was pretty pleased with myself yesterday, I managed to score some awesome running shorts at an amazing price. These were originally priced at $20 from the Warehouse marked down to $9.99 and then (drum roll please, badadadadadadadadadadadadad!) a further 50% off. That's right, really nice running sorts for $5.  

They also had some really nice sports bras for the same price but they only had the mark down on the ones that were sized large or over. For the small ones that I need you are still expected to pay $20!! How is that fair?????   

Look at all the fresh foods

Saturday is Market day here in Kapiti so it means that you can go buy all your fresh fruit and veges for the week ahead out in the open air from the local growers. I love going to the markets every week but I have gotten slack over Christmas. Between Christmas, Christmas left overs, New Years, New Years left overs (yes when we cook for the holidays we cook right, so there is always food for days left), two birthdays and a funeral I have barely had a chance to cook at home let alone need to shop for veges. But I am pleased to say that I did manage to get down to the markets today on this lovely sunny Saturday morning and I got myself a swag of fresh food. From onions to capsicums, watermelon to mushrooms my fridge is now overflowing with goodness.  This is the best time of year to try and get healthy in my opinion. Mother earth makes it so easy for us with all of the sweet, juicy tastiness that is summer (and yes in this analogy i am using Watermelon - which I might add is mighty delicious at the moment, even at $7 a melon!!)

Deep fried salad

It has been a very slow day today, and I do mean that literally. After my run yesterday my legs are KILLING ME!!  In an attempt to look at the bottom shelf at the book store today, I bent down in a squat, the leg pain kicked in and... i got stuck. Thank god Peter was there to drag my sorry ass back up to standing! I guess that is a down side of exercise.

On the food front I haven' started out to well. Of my  two meals today I have made exactly ZERO of them at home. But I have done my best to make healthy choices while out. 

For a very late breakfast we went to a newish cafe up the beach called Hightide. They seem to do a lot of free range, organic and gluten free options which is nice to see, we don't really have many places with those options around here. I had a Kumera and Chicken filo wrap - yum yum yum. It was so good!

Then dinner we tried out Boundary which is a local pub. Spicy  squid ring salad , a pretty healthy option i thought - except for the fact that they deep fry their squid...

So all in all my meals feel pretty healthy (if you ignore the half a box of shapes that I managed to consume)

That brings me to a question. Why do foods come in packaging with more than one serving? I saw this question asked on a friends facebook page today and it got me thinking (and unfortunitley I didn't see that until after i had demolished the shapes)  For example, the 180g box of shapes contains 7.2 servings of crackers. This means I consumed well over one serving. How many people would honestly sit down with a snack like this and stop at one serving.  Dieting/ healthy eating would be so much easier if everything came in single serve packets!!

A time to start

Hi guys

Are you looking to get healthy and in shape?  Well I am and my journey started today.

I have set my goals for the week  and month., as well as a couple of ultimate goals that I would like to achieve. Now I am not overweight, fat, chunky, chubby, whatever you might call it. I am a 21 year old female, I am 5 foot 3 and I weight 62 kg (136 pound). This is the heaviest I have ever been and in an effort to  not get any heavier I am starting my journey here and now!!

Ultimate Goals

Weight 52 kg, if I achieve this I will be rewarding myself with a holiday to the beach

Run 20 km (I am not and never have been a runner so 20 km will be quite a feet for me), I have not yet set a reward for this, any ideas are welcome.

Goals for January

Lose 3 kg - if I achieve this I will be buying myself a new swimsuit for my Holiday

Maintain my skin care regime and have beautiful clear skin (that's right this isn't all about weight loss) - if i achieve this I will be pampering myself with a facial :)

Weekly Goals (as set by my partner)

Go for one run around the block (i'm starting out small and building up here) - I will be treated to a lovely foot and calf massage by my lovely supportive partner. This goal was achieved this afternoon. And might I add it nearly killed me!!!

Do boxing 3 nights this week - reward for this is to buy some really nice tea from our local tea shop Divine KapiTea 

I look forward to sharing my journey with you and hopefully you will join me in getting healthy, strong and happy.