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.

 

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 😀

Tea Tree Oil vs Blackheads

I’ve been using a salt wash to clean my face for the last week, sure it’s kept my face seemingly clean. Well cleaner than it was before I bothered with any cleaning :O BUT I’ve discovered little blackheads popping up like daisies and discovered quite a few big ones too. No big pimples (except for one on my nose that won’t go away).  So in a moment of madness I decided to to go on a blackhead squeezing spree, the forehead got quite a battering and now I was left with big ugly swollen red spots.

However, thanks to some quick googling, I discovered a few methods to deal with the red spots after getting blackheads. So here’s what I did:

1. I cleaned the area with cold water and apple cider vinegar.

2. I put a cold compress on my forehead, and got my hands on the following lotions and potions: DermAid (a 0.5% hydrocortisone cream), 100% Thursday Plantation Tea Tree Oil and Invite E 100% Vitamin E Oil.

3. Cleaned the spots again with tea tree oil and put a dab of the cortisone cream on each red spot. This was for the rest of the day.

4. At night, I cleaned the area again with tea tree oil and put vitamin E oil on each spot. Went for my beauty sleep.

5. The next day woke up and checked the damage. Not bad. A little bit red still but not as bad as the other times when I would go on impulsive blackhead attacks. Cleaned whole face with tea tree oil this time and put vitamin E oil on spots. I figured they weren’t too inflamed at this point and were probably healing up. Since I didn’t want to be left with nasty dark spot, I dabbed on the oil. My previous experience with the Invite brand was with my own father, who in a workplace accident severely burnt his arm and face. A combination of quick thinking (dunking himself into a lot of water) and diligent upkeep with the Invite Vitamin E cream has ensured that today he has NO scars from that accident at all. So with this mind, I felt the oil could do a lot of good for my beat up skin.

6. Have just cleaned face again with straight tea tree oil (well two cotton balls soaked in cool water with 4-5 drops of the oil) and face feel fresh and tingly. I love the smell too! Will apply vit E oil and see how we are tomorrow.

I’m also hoping from cleaning my face with pretty much straight tea tree oil that it will keep most blackheads at bay, let alone pimples. I know my oily face must feel like some oasis to bacteria.

I’ve also cut out ACV toner, or just toner in general. I felt it was drying my face out and I think I was right. I just cleaned with salt wash and put on jojoba oil (I felt coconut oil was a bit too heavy for me) and my face always felt quite nice throughout the day.

Besides my blackhead bashing, the boyfie and me are house-hunting. The joys of competing with 50 other people for one place. Our lease runs out soon and cross my fingers we get a place. Aikido is going well and went for an hour session today. It was about learn the basics, which was good (and easy 😛 ) and it was good to review basics in the coming up for a grading (which I’m thinking about doing). Although exercise has been easy to upkeep (rain has finally cleared off!!), I keep making little errors with my diet. Most of the time I’m on track but it seems I always stray. One Macca mocha here, a macaroon there. The rest of the time: meat, vege and tons of fruit. Been having lots of lychees and enjoying how yummy and cheap they are from Aldi.

IUD + weight loss

As an addendum to my previous post of my weight loss plans, another reason of why I’m recording my weight loss is because I have the sneaking suspicion that my IUD (which I’ve had for about 5-6 months) could stall weight loss. I’m not gaining anything but I’m not losing either. I’ve done aikido for a number of months before deciding to start this plan… and I just thought it was a little odd that I didn’t lose even a little bit but stayed a steady 134-136 pounds/61-61 kg. Of course, it could of been my diet through the last months, lots of bread, many sugary treats, other fast food type junk. Plus the stress of uni in the last few weeks probably didn’t help much either.

But I’ve been reading a lot of anecdotes from other women who claimed to have gained weight or had a difficult time losing the weight on an IUD. A few even said they lost quite a bit once they were off the IUD. Of course, this worried me a bit but at the same time I wasn’t going to assume my IUD was completely at fault.

Anyway besides that tidbit, I’ve have been doing 45-60 min walks almost everyday. I’ve been doing it for a week and a half now, and even now it’s becoming a little bit addictive to go on these walks. It’s interesting exploring the neighbourhood and everyday I usually take a different route to prevent boredom. It’s also good that where I live it’s very hilly. Lots of real steep hills with great views of the city at the top 🙂

I’ve also been reading more of ‘The Primal Blueprint’. Interesting stuff on the perils of excessive insulin and mishandled cholesterol. However, I admit I’m pretty keen to get into the chapters about food and exercise. Sisson, the author, also makes occasional references to the link mind and body and that’s something I hope he expounds upon later in the book.

Finally, a quick product recommendation. After trudging up all those hills today, it’s nice to soak my feet into a warm bowl of water with the Milk Bath from The Body Shop. It’s about $15.00 and it’s great. You add probably about tablespoon or so of this powder into the water, and it all turns all milky white. Smells good, but better yet my feet come out all clean, soft and relaxed. I also add a bit of coconut oil just to make it a bit more moisturizing too.

Well, that’s all for tonight, I’ll see you guys again soon 🙂

Hi there – what this blog is about and more :)

Hi guys,

I’ve started this blog as a challenge to myself. I’ve decided to blog my efforts of weight loss and skincare over a period of 60 days and planning to post 4 to 5 times a week. The main goals/topics of this blog is recording my weight loss/shape up efforts, skincare (I’m an oily skinned girl who used have blackheads a-visitin’!), discussing the placebo effect/motivation/all that pop-pysch stuff, and finally maybe the odd product review too.

I wanted this blog as a public record to hopefully help others out with similar struggles, but also as a way of being publicly accountable for my actions (so there’s less chance for me to be nomming away on chocolate mousse and somehow thinking it’s okay). Finally, I’m doing this blog as a way of facing my weak spots as a person and growing from this experience.

So with that done, let me introduce myself; I’m a twenty something woman from Australia. I’m obviously into health, skincare and ‘inner mental game’ (confidence, motivation, etc) and believe the three are all related and reflect upon each other. I also enjoy reading, drawing, aikido, cooking (baking in particular) and hanging out with friends. I’m currently doing a degree in graphic design and am in my 3rd year.

I’d also like to talk about my plans to lose weight. Though generally slender for most of my life, I’ve always had a belly. It’s something about myself I’ve never liked and despite trying to mentally to reconcile with it (and that proved mostly fruitless), I realized the only way to deal with this discontent was to make a concerted effort to lose that belly weight through diet and exercise.

I’m currently reading through Mark Sisson’s book ‘The Primal Blueprint’ and taking a lot of notes. It’s a good read. Last year, I did have a brief experience with eating ‘primally’ and I did lose a fair bit of weight. This got me pretty excited, however, my belly even then was quite a stubborn little thing and though smaller was still hanging around. BUT, I didn’t take the exercise component too seriously as I was trying to get a handle on the eating part before bothering with the exercise part. Unfortunately, this weight loss came to an end when I went home; land of bread, carbs and endless sugary treats.

Anyway, not this time! Hopefully with this blog I’ll be at least motivated to cough up results (as base as that sounds), if not doing it for my long-term health and happiness annnd achieving that forever lusted for flat stomach.

Secondly, my skincare plans. As a teenager I had a perfect skin. Looking back I didn’t realize how lucky I was and how I took my great skin completely for granted. As I got older, this was not the case. My face became oily (mainly T-zone) and I got lots of blackheads, tons in my forehead and pimples. Occasionally I’d get pretty bad pimples too. My skin also became blotchy and just ‘messy’ looking. It was dull, greasy and always suffering from something.

Sure compared to others my skin condition wasn’t that bad, but again it was something that really bugged me and I wanted to change. After fiddling around with some store bought cleansers, etc. and even just washing my face with soap (eek!), I still had nothing to show for it until I had a bit of revelation when I went to the beach oneday. After splashing around for an hour or so I went home and noticed how my skin looked and felt. It looked good and felt soft.

My boyfriend had the idea of washing my face in warm water with lots of salt. I was a little hesitant about this. At the time I was a firm subscriber to man-made stuff and I kept thinking what could a little old bowl of salt water do for my skin but I went ahead with his suggestion anyway and well I can say my skin is looking pretty good these days. A lot less blackheads and pimples, skin looks clearer in general. I know some people say that salt dries out your face, but I’m going to say that perhaps my skin is so oily it could probably take the salt water.

After a while, I added apple vinegar cider as a toner. I just use it straight on a cotton ball and I’ve noticed my skins a little less oily in general. Finally and most recently, I use coconut oil as a moisturizer. This one works good too. My skin feels lovely and soft but not all dried out or too oily either.

I do feel my skincare is largely down pat, but I’m still working on how to get rid of the dark blemishes/spots left by my blackhead days plus I’m also working on ways of minimizing my dark circles. They’re probably genetic, but I’m not really a fan of walking around with these dark circles and why look/be okay, when you can be better?

Anyway, that’s all for now and will be posting on my weight loss plans in more detail tomorrow.