Next Phase In My Weight Loss Journey

It's been 11 weeks since I started on my lose one pound a week weight loss goal and I've lost 10 pounds so far. The past 3 weeks I saw a slow down as old habits crept in. Weekends are especially hard because I don't cook during weekends. We either go out or we eat takeout which usually adds up to a lot more food then when I cook.

So now I'm going to start with a new base. 145 pounds and I'm going on my next phase of losing 10 pounds in 10 weeks. So, hopefully by end of September I would reach my new goal. This time I invited some online friends to join me to keep myself on my toes. Yup! Group support, encouragement and inspiration will help a lot. So that's what I will be doing.

I'm doing well so far, no hunger pangs (well, not too much), no pills, no artificial foods. Everything is natural and slowly but surely I will reach my goal. I'm looking at my calendar and thinking that if I keep at this, I will be able to buy myself a new pretty dress for Christmas this year. Yippee! Pin It

No Weight Loss This Week

No weight loss to report this week.

I started the week at 146 pounds. This week I was careless with my diet. Its not that I binged or anything like that. I still ate little but I did not eat VERY little. By mid week, I had gained 3 pounds erasing my 10 pound weight loss. Gosh! It is so difficult to lose weight but so easy to gain it!

So by mid week, I quickly filled my fridge with lots of greens and resorted or went back to eating grass salads and finally, I lost back the 3 pounds so I am back to square 1 at 146 by the end of the week.

When losing weight, it is important to track it or else it is too easy to gain back what you lost so easily.

That's all for this week. Until next week, it is onward and upwards, I mean downwards..... Pin It

Eating Out On A Diet

Weight This Week: 146 pounds.

It was not easy to keep up to the 1 pound a week loss this week. Old habits keep on coming back. Especially weekend eating habits.

When on a diet, weekend and eating out is the toughest.

I find that one of the ways to do it is either to order and super scrumptious salad like the one in the picture or share what everyone else is eating. Don't order a full portion unless it is a salad.

Hmmm... the salad was really gooood. It had kale and some peanut sauce. Ok, peanut sauce isn't all that fantastic but everything in moderation is ok. To me dieting means eating everything in moderation and reducing everything slowly. Dieting does not mean depriving yourself. When you deprive yourself, you feel a yearning which may easily backfire. So don't deprive yourself. Order the most delicious, nicest looking and scrumptious salad in the house. If you are one who likes some crunch in your salads, add seeds and nuts. Oh.  Yummy! Enjoy your food and still lose weight. That salad I ordered when eating out on a diet had crunchy kale, purple cabbages, carrots, sesame seeds and nuts and some green colored beans, I'm not sure what type of beans. I am so going to make this on my own soon.

I must work on my bad weekend eating habits too. That's my biggest problem at the moment. Pin It

Exercise Apps For My Weight Loss Journey

Time for my weekly update. Happy to report that the weight is still going down at 147 pounds. Not going to talk about me today but going to talk about the exercise or fitness apps I have on my phone.

There are many exercise apps available but currently I have 3 on my phone. They are Sworkit Pro, Tabata and Beach Body. Oh well, one can dream.

I'm not going to talk about them in detail (because I don't use it that much. Ahem! I know I really should because dieting alone won't speed up my weight loss. It has to be coupled with exercising.)

3 Fitness/Exercise Apps On My Phone

1. Sworkit Pro. I have the Pro version for free on one of those free days. Many apps give discounts or free promotions on certain days. I have an app that shows me the free daily apps so I got these for free when it was on promo. You can choose between stretching, yoga, cardio or strength training and set the timing for each session from 5 to 30 minutes. Its very flexible and you can have a full body workout. Just follow the trainer on the screen who will do the countdown and show you how its done.




2. Tabata is a high intensity 4 minute workout discovered by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo. You can try out the Tabata Lite app which is free to decide if this workout is for you. Tabata is great for time strapped people because its just 4 minutes of workout.



3. Beach Body - There are many Beach Body apps available, the one I have is the 4 Minute Beach Body app or Women's Tabata Workout. I don't use it much because the exercises seem hard with a lot of planking required. Oh well, if you want to have a beach perfect body, you gotta work for it! I should be deleting this one. Its too tough for me.




Want more workouts? Just go to google and search for fitness or exercise and fine tune your searching by going to "more" and "apps". There are just so many apps available these days, you can find an app for working any part of your body! Pin It

Weight Loss Progress

It's been a little over a  month since the start of my weight loss journey so it's time to have a look at the weight loss progress.

Started 8th May 2016 at 155 pounds
Today 11th June 2016 at 147 pounds
Total Loss = 8 pounds

Despite losing 8 pounds, it is hardly noticeable. I would say the progress in terms of fitting into clothing is something like this. I still have a lot of items of clothing hanging in my closet which I cannot fit into. A lot of pants too. However, for a couple of the larger sizes pants, the fit has changed like this. From totally unable to zip up (even when lying in prone position and breathing in) - See BEFORE drawing, now upon lying down in prone position and breathing in, the trousers can be zipped up but it is tight with lots of crease lines and belly flopping as you can see in the AFTER illustration. (Do excuse the poor illustration - the hands in the pocket looks out of shape just like me still).

Still, if I may say so myself, I am quite happy and proud with the progress. So going to give myself a pat on the back and say "YOU GO GIRL!" and on with the diet!

Pin It

It's Easy To Lose Weight But So Hard To Lose It

As at 12 pm yesterday, I checked the health app on my phone, the one with a little red heart on it and found that I had walked 11,399 steps for the day or equivalent to 7.46 km. This was from our 5 km jungle track (pictured above) with the kids and grocery shopping after that. Wow! Mall walking takes up 2.5 km. I think I should go shopping more often. On Saturdays, I walk about 90% for the rest of my week where I remain pretty sedentary. Boo!

Today's weight is 149. Yay! I managed to say bye bye to the 150s..... It fluctuated between 149 point something to 148 point something. So losing say 1 pound is nothing because it could merely be the weight fluctuations throughout the day. For example, the scales read 149.6 after dinner last night and 148.6 before breakfast. I also found out that my jeans weigh 1 pound and a so too does the towel I use to wrap around my wet hair because of the weight difference with or without them. Ok. I admit. I'm currently obsessed with my weight, so I check it pretty often.

When I say 149. I mean 149 pounds. I prefer to watch pounds than kilograms because it is more satisfying to say, I have lost 6 pounds since I started compared to I have lost 2.72 kg since I started. I like 6 better. Makes me think my effort is paying off much better compared to 2.72.

Having lost 6 pounds since I started does not feel any different at all. I still have difficulty fitting into my clothes. Take a pair of old trousers for example. At 155 I couldn't even get into them. Now, I can get back into them but I can only zip it up in prone lying down position. Arrgh! I cannot weight (I mean wait. See? I'm weight obsessed) for them to fit better. I shall have a gala time taking out every dress in the closet to try them to see which one fits again. At the moment, my wardrobe has been strictly limited to wearing just a handful while the rest hangs on racks in the cupboard untouched and unwearable.

Fortunately I started on the diet. Enough is enough! The slide down to weightiness is an easy one but difficult to climb back out from. It's easy to lose weight but so hard to lose it.

My next target is 145 in a 2-3 weeks hopefully. Even then, 145 used to be my peak weight and which I had great difficulty losing to 135. My gosh! It will be like starting over again once I reach 145. I remembered telling myself the second time I reached the peak of 145 that I was going to lose it but then instead I ballooned to 155. I blamed it on menopause but then really, besides menopause, there was Christmas and holiday bingeing followed by the Chinese New Year, then one birthday celebration in the house after another and you just gotta have cake for celebrations don't you? Oh, and I started trying my hand at baking. I baked buns and breads and cakes and..... Anything freshly baked smells so heavenly. I ended up finishing them most of the time!

The hardest part I find about being a mum and dieting is the food preparation part. Preparing yummy foods and not eating them is real hard. When the kids commented on that, I told them "Now, that's what you call will power." When  you want something, you have to work really hard to make it happen. I will work really hard to make this happen.

Pin It

Its Okay To Declare A No-Diet Day

Weight: 150.4 pounds

This week started off really slow. Despite eating about just one quarter to half of what I normally eat each day, I was stuck at 151.6 till Wednesday. On Friday, I celebrated my 15th wedding anniversary so I declared a No-Diet evening when we went out for dinner. I wanted to enjoy my dinner with cocktails and all. I didn't want to be salad picking and I think that's okay too. One does not have to be extremely rigid about the diet as long as you get back on track. The next day, I was back on track. Even the kids noticed the next day and said "Mom is back on her diet."

Despite that one No-Diet evening, I was happy to see the weight leaving the 151.6 station. Now 14++++ is within site. I'm so excited. Soon I can say bye bye to the 150s. The funny thing is it was so easy to move from 140s to 150s, I didn't even notice it. It happened in the blink of an eye. To reverse that is tough! I remember when I was 140, I told myself that I would reduce to 135 but then it was Christmas and Chinese New Year and one thing food led to another and soon I was at 155. Geez.

I could have done it if I had worked at it harder. Its not very hard to reduce 5 pounds. Now I have to reduce 20 because of letting myself go.

That's it for this week. Hope to leave 150s next week. Pin It

Juicing With Beetroot

We drink green juices several times a week. Sometimes we like to add a little red in the form of beetroots or orange in the form of carrots in our juice. It gives it a nice touch of color. It is amazing how red the beetroot is. The taste is a bit strong so we don't put in more than one beetroot for 4 cups of juice.

This concoction has broccoli, celery, chinese flowering cabbage (choy sum) and beetroot. I love the wonderful colors of nature in our juice. It is also a good thing to eat or in this case drink vegetables with different colors. 

You can check out some of the benefits of beetroot here.

Pin It

Porridge With Marmite

We have been sick and eating nothing accept porridge for the past two weeks for each and every meal!

Luckily the kids don't complain.... that much. I try to make a variety of porridge so that they don't get too bored. Adding just a little of this and taking out just a little bit of that gives the porridge a whole new distinct flavor.

Hubby likes to have his porridge with marmite. I like it too but I find the taste so strong it kills off all of the other flavors within!

Hopefully we will all recover soon and go back to our regular diet. I must say that all that porridge for two whole weeks did one thing for sure. It helped us all lose weight! Pin It

Healthy Snack Ideas For Kids

Health Snack for Kids Combo 1

The kids had this for tea yesterday. So what's this? It's a healthy quick and easy snack idea for kids. Here's what you can put in your healthy snack for kids.

1. Colorful Fruits - Bananas, Strawberries, Kiwis are great individually or as a combo including all three.
2. Cereals - Cornflakes and other cereals
3. Nuts - Wallnuts, Cashews or any other nuts
4. Seeds - Sunflower seeds and other seeds are lovely

Healthy Snack for Kids Combo 2

The colorful fruits satisfy the sweet cravings and are nice to look at. Cereals add a bit of crunch without deep frying. Nuts add flavour and texture. Put them all in a bowl as a combo meal for kids. This combo snack for kids is quick and easy to prepare. Serve with hot cocoa and you're done.

Vary your items 1,2,3 and 4 around and you'll get variety, color and excitement to your healthy snack for kids.

Our Healthy Snack for Kids Combo One consist of Strawberries, Walnuts and Cornflakes while our Healthy Snack for Kids Combo Two consist of Bananas and chocolate based cereal. You can add milk or soya milk to your own Healthy Snacks for kids if you like but my kids prefer to eat it dry and crunchy. Pin It

Taking Good Health For Granted

I’m having a flu today and I keep on thinking about how I’ve been taking good health for granted.

When I am in good health, I don’t stop to think about what a blessing that is. Instead, I complain about being lazy to exercise. I don’t exercise on those days when I am feeling fit.

Now, that I can’t stop sneezing and I’ve lost my voice, and my lips feel hot and burning because my body is slightly feverish, I wish I could do those exercises that I had been neglecting.

I was this way for about 9 months last year. Each day, I would wake up with a bad sore throat and each evening I would cough uncontrollably. I took all sorts of natural cough remedies, consulted specialists, did chest X-Rays but nothing helped and then over one week, the cough just went away by itself gradually.

How awful it is not to feel whole. To feel sick most of the time. Now, I’m sick but only for a while. When I recover, I must remind myself not to take good health for granted.

I must eat  well, get enough rest and sleep and exercise. If I don’t take care of my own body, who will? Pin It

Eat in Moderation

Have you ever gone on a diet of eating only salad all day? How about a diet of just one of those powdery “nutritious” drinks to be drunk several times a day? How about an all protein diet with no carbohydrates?
Did your diet last very long?

I am sure you will not be able to last very long on those types of extreme diets. You would be depriving yourself not only of the nutrients and energy. Even my young kids who have studied in their Science as well as Moral studies about food know that ….

1. We eat foods with carbohydrates like rice, noodles, pasta and bread in order to have energy
2. We eat foods with protein like meat and fish in order to grow
3. We eat fruits and vegetables for the vitamins to prevent sickness

In other words, we must eat a balanced diet for better health. We should also eat in moderation.



If we eat too only salad every day, we will get bored and we will be deprived of other nutrients our body needs. It will also make us crave for other foods that our body needs.



On the other hand, if we eat a feast everyday, we will be having more than what our bodies need. It will make us put on weight. Being overweight is not a good thing for health.

What we need to do is to eat a balanced diet and to eat everything in moderation. If you are trying to lose weight, then you should cut down everything, eat everything but in moderation instead of cutting down on just one group of food.

It is better to eat healthily all the time then to go on quick fix-it diets. There is no such thing as a quick fix-it diet. They are detrimental to your health.

   Pin It