Weight Loss Report #5 + Re-Thinking Blog Goals

Sorry for the late update. It’s been a busy week in my household — moving house and all. Fun times. We’ve almost settled in and now I have to get ready for the return of Uni. But this time I’m not that excited but instead glum resignation of my upcoming fate that involves stress, assignments and obligations. I admit… what I was studying, it’s somehow lost its charm for me. I still enjoy it, but I’m not as passionate about it as before and over the last year I’ve been slowly developing new interests which I get passionate and excited about, and love studying.

Anyway, measurements: 38.5″/31.5″/36.5″. Nothing to see, I have gained a little as I’ve veered off a little in my diet thanks to moving/cleaning/doing other new house things. Although perhaps all that box-carrying and running around town doing errands made sure I didn’t gain too much 🙂

I’ve also gotten digital scales. They are funny little things. I weighed myself 4 times in oneday and was anywhere between 59kg to 61kg. Way to go for accuracy. It also taught me not to take those things too seriously, except as novel curiosity every now and then. Like reading your horoscopes.

I’ve also been re-thinking my weight loss goals, especially after reading some women’s weight loss threads on Mark’s Daily Apple forum. The general idea I got from the threads is that eating primally is firstly for health and general wellbeing and secondly, weight loss can be a restrictive and narrow-minded way of seeing the big picture of health.

I’m sure I stated at the beginning of this blog that my reasons for losing weight were largely vanity-based and also for the experience of being a member of the flat belly club. Often I would eat and exercise and live life with the frequent thoughts of ‘If I don’t do X, Y or Z… I’ll be part of the fat belly club forevaaaaahhh!!111!’ — so my mentality felt narrow, flat, controlled and fear-based. I would also have thoughts of ‘Can’t eat sugar, sugar is BAAAAADD. Makes you look old and gives you arthritis!!’ or ‘Bread’s bad. Bread’s poison.’

So it was a mix of ‘Must do this to look and feel good or else’ and ‘Bad for health. Avoid avoid avoid.’ – there never was a clear or concise mentality or motivation but a muddy mixture inside my mind. To me, it seems that eating right and do things right is more than actually doing it and going through the motions, but having the actual spirit and mind behind your work. A clear, strong spirit… not something muddy and confused.

What do I want? Do I just want a flat belly? Or do I want lifelong good health? What are my driving reasons? My current actions? I feel like I do a lot of things in my life out of obligation and for shallow reasons like prestige, social respect/popularity, vanity, because ‘it’s the right thing’ (whatever that means)… and most of what I do consequently feels empty and pointless and I soon forget about it. I feel like having a re-boot, but I have to be careful. Too fast and enthusiastic and I’ll come crashing down like Icarus, but too slow and cautious and I’ll never get there and lose motivation.

WUT. Foiled by the body fat machine.

Well, today I got a chance to have myself expertly measured up by a body fat machine – well that’s what I think it is. You put your feet on two metal plates, press your thumbs on these metal grooves whilst holding these odd handles. Anyway, discovered my body fat was 27.3% WAH. I must be using those calipers wrong. I weigh 59.5kg — so not much change from two weeks ago either.

I admit I was quite disturbed to learn my body fat has hardly budged since I first measured it. Also I learnt that I (obviously) carry most of my weight in my trunk or belly. Well, of course. It seems to me as if I can never budge weight off that area either. I know I’m losing it everywhere else, except there. It seems to happily swing anywhere between 31-32″ in circumference. My thoughts have immediately turned to my IUD – 4 weeks and I’m still 27%. Am I not working hard enough? I feel like blaming myself, and sometimes the IUD.

I feel like my joy at what I thought were successes last week weren’t really real at all, and somehow I was seeing the wrong thing in both my head and the mirror.

Well I’ve still got another 4 weeks left to see if it is the IUD and to see if I can lose anymore weight. It’s also another 4 more weeks to plan my game better, but at the same time I have to make concessions for uni, especially now that I will be living further away from it. I will look at my diet first… I can’t really say I’m screwing up in the exercise column – I spend most of the days doing aikido, going for walks, running around on errands, sometimes house cleaning, and doing bodyweight exercises (I did one two days ago and my shoulders are still a bit sore!) — so no fault there. Of course, other factors could be stress (and Uni will be no help in that area!), lack of proper sleep; yes despite being on holidays, I find it hard to fall asleep — I get tired but as soon as my brain/body clicks on that I’m going to bed, it suddenly decides to wake up again like some errant 5 year old child. Or it’s the IUD *dun dun dun*.

When the next four weeks roll by and there’s been no measurable improvement, I’ll say I get down to 56kg/123lb or I lose another inch off the waist, or my body fat goes down by 1.5% — I will definitely start thinking about getting the IUD pulled. But of course this is determinant on me creating a tighter plan for eating and maybe exercising too and really sticking to it, and this will make sure my results can be more clearly attributed to something else besides lax attitudes.

 

Weight Loss Report Week #4

It’s been about a month now since I started my blog and I’m happy to report some new measurements this week, plus some other little findings. My measurements now are 38″/31″/35.5″. Here are some photos:

Sorry for the slightly crappy quality. My regular photographer, BF, has been a bit sick lately and needed his rest. So here are some selfies lol. Unlike last week, I can definitely see a bit of difference now. Stomach looks less flabby and smaller. Boobs look a touch smaller too 😦 I wish you could direct where you lose fat, I tend to lose it off my boobs/bum/legs and pretty much everywhere else before my belly. I also see that my body has more shape, or definition perhaps? Whereas before my body fat would throw off my shape and if I wore the wrong clothes, it could look a bit unflattering.

So I’m pretty happy this week, I’ve finally started to lose some off the belly. I do think this is related to the fact that I’ve really stuck to not eating any grains, ate a lot of fat and protein and said no to most of the food when I’m out – as most food outside my home is grain-based or full of “God-knows-what”. I’ve also only had a little bit of dairy, mostly in cups of teas and coffees. I feel because I was more dedicated this week than the other weeks, that I’ve been able to make more progress in shaping up and now I’m finally starting to see that diet really is connected to weight loss. It probably helps too that I’ve been making good gains at exercise too, mainly aikido.

Well hope you guys have a good day, I’m off to have brekkie 🙂

Primal Experiment: Wacky Flaxseed and Coconut porridge

The Beach

Yesterday was a great day; we finally got approved for a lovely little one bedroom  place. It’s small but newly built and very nice. It’s a bit far from my uni, but that’s okay. I’m sure I can cope/find a way around.

We also went to the beach yesterday. It was beautiful. Big blue sky and big rolling sea. We had a walk along the shore and I wished I had brought my swimmers. The air smelt fresh and there was a cool breeze out too. It was quiet too, hardly anyone there and I found a couple of amazing shells.

I also decided to play scientist and invent my own primal porridge! It turned out to be quite yummy and filling, here’s the recipe below:

LSA Meal and Shredded Coconut Porridge

The finished product. Yum!

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of LSA meal
2 tbsp of shredded/dessicated coconut
1 tbsp of flaxseed meal
3 tbsp of coconut milk
1/3 cup of almond milk
1 ripe banana
1 tsp of stevia
Berries of choice (I like chopped up strawberries and blueberries)
Slivered almonds (optional – makes porridge have a nice crunch too)
Pine nuts (again optional – I love my pine nuts)

Method:

1. Mix up the LSA meal, shredded coconut, flaxseed meal, coconut milk, almond milk, banana and stevia together. Put in microwave on high for 2 minutes. Or if you are using the stove top, heat the mix till very warm to hot, but not boiling.
2. Mix in slivered almonds and pine nuts. Top porridge with berries of choice. Enjoy 🙂

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll be enjoying aikido again today, hopefully lure the bf to the beach again sometime this week (him and the sun are arch-enemies apparently) and getting that rising pile of dishes under control 😛

Eating Primally Part 2 – A Most Excellent Breakfast

Well this was my breakfast this morning. Banana pancakes with strawberries and blueberries with a splash of coconut milk and a bit of honey. So yummy! I also had a light dusting of cinnamon on top too. It was very good. But could probably have done with a bit more. I got fairly hungry within 2 hours.

This was my dinner. Sliced turkey with tarragon and lemon, the compulsory pesto (of course!) with a mix of veges (snow peas, zucchini, carrots and onion). Very yummy and have enough for my breakfast tomorrow 😀

Cooking and eating like this isn’t cheap but it’s very filling and satisfying – both mentally and physically. But I do feel it is dollars well spent. Also I’ve learnt the delight of buying just that one carrot, that one zucchini for one or two meals. One carrot is 16 cents!! So now I have enough veges for 2-3 dinners without them spoiling on me and wasting my money. There’s a lot more trips to the shopping centre but I am very lucky to live near one.

Haven’t done much in the way of exercise for the past few days. Tomorrow I will go to aikido and might go for a walk afterwards. Quick tip: Banana Boat sunscreen for babies (comes in a pink bottle) is quite nice; not too greasy, leaves my skin soft and protected. I do like. I am also going to test out another sunscreen called ‘Invisible Zinc’ and see how I go with that one.

A quick update on my house-hunting – bane of my life – no, nothing so far 😦 Renting sucks – I look forward to the day I can own/build my own home.

 

Eating Primally – Best Dinner Ever!

Well that was my dinner — don’t worry, I didn’t have that small of a serving! I had squid in sweet chilli lime with pesto and a side of mushrooms and tomatoes. Om nom nom. I’m so used to having rice as a side in my meals, that I decided to see if I could make a meal that was filling without a big ol’ dollop of rice. Turns out you can just have heaps more veges and/or meat. Yes, I know pretty obvious in retrospect but as someone who comes from a big rice-eating family, it was not so obvious. It was pretty much a staple in my family, even more than bread and it’s weird… but I feel like I’m shunning another family member when I cut back on my rice intake.

Today I also went to see my friend to continue working on our project (which is a digital magazine) today. We laid out themes for our magazine, looked at other magazines that we considered good reference material and discussed a lot of ideas. It was a fun afternoon. It’s rare I get a chance to real have a dig at ideas with someone else.

Besides a primal dinner, I had banana pancakes. They were very good! Just like the old ones I made with flour. Finally, I had a hot chocolate made out of coconut milk watered down with pure unsweetened cocoa. I added a dash of stevia to sweeten it up a bit. Good stuff to drink whilst typing out this entry.

I enjoyed eating today. Trying out new things, but also re-creating old favourites but in a new, grain-free fashion. It tells me I can eat like this for the rest of my life without feeling deprived. Eating less grain stuff has an interesting side effect for my teeth – they’re less furry at the end of the day! I may have already mentioned that but they are. They look cleaner in general too. Perhaps grain-based is like food heaven to bacteria?

I’ve also been researching ways of handling social situations where I’m with people who don’t eat like me. The main points that stuck out to me were either:

• say you have a condition, eg: gluten intolerant
• don’t make a big fuss about it and the other party won’t either
• just don’t eat and wait till you get home – yes another Captain Obvious moment for me, but there you go

My bf told me also that if people mock you for your eating habits (it does happen now and then), it’s because they’re jealous, feel threatened or honestly don’t get the point. Of course, why someone would get up in arms about the eating habits of a relative stranger is a bit bizarre… but anyway.

Eating primally has also made me re-think again the way I spend money. With the exception of meat (which is usually quite expensive in my part of town)… it is fairly viable to go out every few days and spend a few dollars refreshing veges and buying a little bit of this and that — but as long as you know where to shop to make your dollar stretch. It also goes back to the point that even if eating like this is expensive, it’s probably worth the money to protect your health and pays off in the long-run. Plus it’s nice to eat different and new meals every few days and taste things I’ve never tasted or used to just wonder about.

Well that’s all for tonight. Hope you guys had a good day 🙂

 

Fat loss report week #3

Well today I have some interesting results. I measured myself this morning and  I got: 36″/32″/38″. Why is my belly stuck in neutral?? I’ve lost 2kg and my body fat is now 25.40%. A 2 percent loss!! My bf’s been complaining of shrinking boobs lol, so I guess I’m losing something even if when I look at my photos I see little difference. He’s also been saying since I’ve been going to aikido I’ve gotten very strong in the wrists and arms, he compared me to when I began aikido with this terrible little pantomime of “I’m sooo weak, my arms are floppy” *tears of self-pity*. Haha whatever. Well, he won’t be saying that anymore now >:)

Photos:

Okay, so comparing my very first photos with these ones, there is slight differences. Stomach doesn’t stick out as much, posture is a bit better. Ass looks a bit flatter. Um, yay?

But regardless of flat ass or not, I am making some progress but I do need a rethink on my food. I need a food plan which is planned 2-3 days in advance, anymore and I know I’ll want something different or food will go off. Also I have a bad habit of getting really stuck into a meal and think it is the be-all and end-all of meals. I did this with sushi once. Sushi everyday for breakfast, lunch and sometimes even dinner! It was great… for about a week. So I wanted a change, problem was now I had stacks of nori sheets, rice vinegar and tuna cans everywhere. You’d think I would have learnt, but no… I’m still doing it now, looking for my miraculous meal that will be the only thing I will want and need food-wise. Haha.

Lastly, I need to buy better underwear. I’m amazed I’ve gone this far wearing pretty daggy stuff 😛

And house-hunting? Still looking sketchy at the moment. Otherwise I’m having a good day so far 🙂

Off-Topic: Rise Design Studio

Totally off-topic but I have to rave about some beautiful graphic design work I’ve been checking out recently:

Rise Design Studio

These guys produce incredibly beautiful work. They do amazing photography and their works have this almost spiritual vibe. How they piece work together in these eye-catching collages is amazing. Can’t stop looking at their work. It’s the sort of aesthetic that really appeals to me, especially on this page scroll down to the works 4 and 5. Crazy beautiful. It reminds me of this gorgeous Indian goddess living amongst so long ago in the Himalayas; spiritual, divine. I normally don’t so purply prose and emotional, but this is great stuff and it’s this sort of quality of work that is both inspiring and gives me aspirations to do better myself.

Other than that, today was a bit rough and grumpy beachbird inducing, but it looks like our house-hunting is starting to look up for us 🙂 hopefully I will be writing to you in my new place soon :))

Lost an inch or so off the belly – surprise, surprise!

Still house-hunting. We had two leads that looked good, but for whatever reason are ignoring texts/forgot about us. Sigh. Waiting to find out if two applications we put in the other day are successful. On the upside, getting paid tomorrow so I can refill my fridge and cupboard again 😀 and also working on a small project with a good friend. It’s very interesting and exciting, it keeps my mind off my shitty housing situation lol and hopefully if it’s a hit, it could lead to some really good things later on.

Another good thing that happened was that I checked my waist and oooohh it measures 31.5″. But must keep up diet. Exercise can be easily covered, it’s the discipline to stick to eating right which is really quite hard. Like I said, my main temptation comes when I’m with friends. It’s hard to eat out and you feel like a sore thumb sticking out when you’re not gulping down vast amounts of sugar, etc.

Lastly, the boyfriend and I have decided on a little deal to lose body fat both and get fit. He wants to get down to 12% by years end (though I suspect if he really pushes himself, probably a whole lot faster) and I want to get down to 20%. Lofty goals, but whoever gets to the finish line first gets the privilege of having their feet kissed by the loser, declared King/Queen of the Universe and the loser must buy the winner a treat of their choice under $40. Perhaps I should up the odds, make losing more painful. Maybe something under a $100, a $150? That’s more ouchy >:)

Anyway, it looks like I’ll have a busy few weeks with finding a house to live, eating right and uni starting up soon again! Eeek!

 

Fat Loss Report Week #2

It has been a busy week. House-hunting for a new place. Not much success so far. I’m really worried we won’t find a place soon and I feel our process in finding a house wasn’t thought out that well, and therefore carrying out our half-baked plans resulted in half-baked results. It’s frustrating to know I’m somewhat responsible for the way things are panning out. Also had a lot of house-guests over this week. Keeping people entertained whilst trying to find a house has left my personal plans stalling. However, I haven’t gained any weight from last week. May have lost an inch and a half off the belly. So currently I’m 36″/32.5″/39″.

I’ve also been measuring my belly for bloat in the morning, and it does seem to vary depending on what I ate last night. Some days I’m almost 32″, other days I’m almost 34″. If I eat anything too much wheat-based stuff or too much milk (like a milkshake or a cafe-made coffee), next day I will be bloated, gassy and just feeling tight in my stomach area.

As for my skin, I do feel my method of healing it up did do it some good. Yes, there are some scars in the area (now to fade them!), but they healed a lot faster and weren’t as red for as long. So my next step is to find ways to fade them, try them out for about a fortnight and document here. I’ve also been putting Vitamin E under my eyes (starting to get fine lines there gah…) and whilst my lines seem to look the same, my bottom eyelashes look a bit thicker and longer. Huh? Oh well, long eyelashes it is then 😀