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!

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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.

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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

Weight Loss Journal Blog Update

I was hopeful to go below 150 pounds this week but alas .....

I started at 152 pounds from last week and did everything the same as I did in terms of food reduction. No more teas or snacks, no rice, and salads instead of full blown meals for meal replacements. I did not overdo it. Meal replacement would be only once a day, either lunch or dinner.

The lowest I went for the week was 150.2 pounds but all it took was my a birthday in the house and a slice of cake and eating out to slow me down. I skipped the rice too when eating out and exercised lots of self control too. Hmmm....

In terms of extra activities, I was very busy this week. I managed to go for my once a week 5km walk but other than that it was no go and I spent hours sitting instead of moving around. I downloaded an exercise app which I shall share next time as I only used it once this time round.

I've lost 3-4 pounds since I started 2 weeks ago but there's no sign of it yet. All the clothing are still tight and am still unable to get into many at this time. Double Boo Hoo.

That's all for this week. Not an encouraging week despite feeling hungry most of the week but I shall PERSEVERE. I can do it! AND I shall do it the natural way, without supplements or starving myself too much, slow and easy. Pin It

Weight Loss Diary - I Downloaded A Weight Loss Tracking App

I started on my weight loss journey last week with the goal to lose one pound a week. Let's see how I am doing. Last week I was 155 pounds. This week 153 pounds. Tadaa! It's been hard. I was hungry. I tried not to get too hungry though, eating slowly and taking snacks whenever I felt hungry. I had lots of salad, soups and shared foods of others so I won't overeat.

In terms of activity, I did more housework but not quite enough. At the moment, I take a 5km walk once a week but that is as far as I go in terms of exercise. My goal this week is to increase my activity.

The weight loss tracking app is called Fitter Fitness Calculator & Weight Tracker. It is supposed to help you measure your BMI, BMR (whatever that is), Body Fat % & Waist to Hip Ratio. I don't care about all that. I only care about my weight loss. The rest will adjust itself.

There's this tracker page where I can key in my goal of 1 pound a week, my start weight and it will calculate how many days I will need to take to reach that goal. My target is 125 pounds. 125 is a tough target for me. I've never seem to be able to get below the 135 pounds barrier in recent years.

The weight tracking app says I will take 189 days to reach that target. Ooooohhh. There is a progress chart too. At the moment all I see is a straight downwards line. That's good. Down is good.

I've got the whole family in on this. I told the man "In a few month's time, you will have a cleaner house and a thinner wife" to which he quipped "a not so fat wife". Men!

My sisters said that I should cut out a picture of me wearing my wedding evening gown and paste it somewhere I can clearly see it frequently to motivate me. I told them I didn't need that. Walking pass the mirror and seeing the me now is enough to motivate me!

My son said "Mom, I am surprised you don't feel stressed". "Stressed about what?" I asked him. "Stressed about preparing food but not eating it. This was said after I laid out the subway sandwiches and cookies for them for lunch. The thing about dieting is, it is harder for someone who has to prepare 4 meals a day, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner for the family. Especially the tea part where I sometimes bake muffins or prepare pancakes with ice-cream and fruit. No snacking while cooking. That's hard! These days I just prepare marmite toast or garlic bread for them for tea.

I've been telling my kids to organize their school bags so they don't have to carry all that extra weight to school each day and here I am with extra baggage stuck to me which I carry around all day! Tsk! Tsk! That weight is not good for my knees, my back and my heart plus overall health. Better do something about it before a health scare.

My brother in law showed me the iphone health app which shows that I walk about 10,000 steps on Saturday and just 1000 steps on other days.

I was thinking of buying myself a dress I like in a smaller size and working towards wearing it but I don't need to do that really. There's plenty in the closet waiting for me to fit into them again. I'll do the buying part as a reward later on.

That's my weight loss journal for this week. Next week, I start anew at 152 pounds.


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