April 25th & 26th: not yet going overboard

Sunday the 25th was a slow day, mainly because I only went to bed at 3 or 4 am, yet was up and about by 9am. I’ll blame that birthday party the night before for resetting my body clock, LoL!

In terms of caloric intake: had a large mug of lemongrass green tea upon waking up. Later during the day I grazed on some kuih bahulu, a large mandarin orange, and a small green apple. Dinner was another rice thingy, this time at Restoran Santai in TTDI, with tom yum, daging masak halia, ayam masak kicap and kangkung belacan. It was okay. The kangkung belacan was disappointingly cair, no oomph. Dessert was at home, mango – delish!

I also had an impromptu coffee outing at Amcorp (Starbucks): my first iced vanilla latté (from such a coffee place, McD’s lattés excluded!) in a year, probably. It was surprisingly drinkable, but I found the price to be just a wee bit higher than comfortable. Inflation has hit the already high prices, I suppose?

No exercise – dah of rest mah?! LoL!

= = =

I was quite active on Monday the 26th: my father and I hit a nearby park for a 7am walk. I let him go at his own pace (remember he’s got a weak heart) while I did two sort-of rounds and was reminded of how boring it is going around the ‘lake’, how dirty the lake is, and how humonguous the mosquitoes are. I also broke out into a jog in two instances, not for protracted periods of time, but enough to work up a heck of a sweat (being in a humid environment certainly helped matters along). Note to self: BRING A TOWEL next time!

Breakfast was two soft-boiled eggs; toast with (margerine? butter? one doesn’t ask such questions at a mamak!) and kaya; accompanied by a glass of teh o limau panas (hot lemon tea), next time I need to ask for kurang manis or plain ol kosong so that it’s unsweetened.

I went into town and made my way around the Sg Wang – Low Yat area; monorailed it to KL Sentral (extra exercise because of construction that forced a convoluted way to Sentral itself) then Komutered it to MidValley, arriving a few hours early for an appointment with [Mandy].

So I treated myself to lunch at my beloved Coffee Bean: ice vanilla latté w/ skim milk, and chicken & mushroom fusili. Prices have shot up thru the roof tho, it seems: RM32 just for those two items?! Ugh.

Once she arrived, [Mandy] and I headed to Nando’s: I was too full from lunch to eat anything, but the free refills of iced lemon tea were great and the reason we chose that location. Of course, the large amount of drink filled me up too, so much so that I ended up not having anything else to eat that evening/night except a little bit of mango and apple.

It’s not like I’m denying myself food: I just really wasn’t hungry. Glad I'm not going overboard (yet) in terms of the food!

April 23rd & 24th: back in Malaysia!

I’ve been back in Malaysia for about 1.5 days now. While I won’t hold myself to the April resolutions of weekday daily exercise and raw/lightly-processed food, I will try not to fall too far off the wagon! One way to help with that is to continue keeping track of my activities, so read on if you’re not bored to tears already!

April 23rd:
Upon arriving on early Friday afternoon, I accompanied my parents to lunch, and sipped on air kelapa muda (coconut water) while they ate. Later that afternoon, I had a snack of a few pistachios and a quarter of an apple. Dinner was some sambal fish, tau foo with crabmeat, stir-fried beans with garlic, and rice from Sri Melaka restaurant.

April 24th:
Early morning (6 am) had a large mug of my lemongrass green tea (yup, I brought a box with me!). Joined my mother for her yoga class at 9:30am, then had breakfast at a nearby mamak: was good and had teh ‘o’ limau (hot lemon tea) instead of teh tarik with my roti telur, although that was accompanied by not just dhal but also some sambal and various chutneys that rightly went with my mother’s thosai! In the middle of the day I had half a green apple as a snack. Dinner was a variety of items from the buffet at a pal’s mother’s birthday party: I took just small amounts of the food, and totally skipped dessert, so I pat myself on the back for not being tempted!! I did have two glasses of teh tarik though! :D

So far so good, food-wise ... and I'm gonna go easy with exercise seeing how I'm sweating so much just by being here already! Seriously. Humidity is *so* much fun! How on earth did I survive it before, I wonder?

April 16th: pistachios binge :(

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's how I fared on Friday, April 16th:

Exercise
Step Blast in the morning was BRUTAL!

So brutal, in fact, that I sweated like I've never sweated before! Okay so part of that was the stuffy environs of the Y, but still..!

I don't think I've sweated all the way through my butt like this before! .. tmi?

Food
Breakfast: two eggs with garlic and lots of cheese cut with milk, nuked -- a quick-and-easy scrambled eggs. Almonds. A mug of lemongrass green tea with cinnamon sticks.

Dinner: The last of the dhal bukhara (wheeeee!!!!) plus diced celery. And an entire bag of pistachios. I have no idea what came over me, but binge on pistachios is what I did. Ugh.

= = =

This weekend we have a wedding celebration to attend, so I'll try to be good for all other meals. I also am leaving for Malaysia very soon, and have no illusions about attempting to achieve any sort of healthy eating habits, but I will strive to at least work some of the food off... if I don't keel over from the humidity!! :p

April 15th: back on track

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's how I fared on Thursday, April 15th:

Exercise
Power Pump in the morning, followed by 25 mins elliptical, and 3 sets of racquetball.
In the evening, I also went for Yoga.
It was good.

Food
Breakfast: half cup of Fiber One cereal, half cup of MultiGrain Cheerios and a serving of banana strawberry yogurt. This violates the raw/barely-processed food edict, but I really wan't feeling the pull of yet another round of dhal bukhara! This was followed-up with almonds and an apple.

Dinner #1: a small bowl of dhal bukhara (yes, still!!) with a nuked bag of Wal-Mart's Mixed Garden Medley veggies and taters.

Dinner #2: a can of tuna mixed with leftover salad dressing from Chipotle from last week when I got myself a salad, plus two stalks of diced celery.

Late night/early morning snack: went to bed early, but was wide awake at 2am. Grrr! And I was hungry... ended up snacking on quite a few stalks of celery.

April 14th: body says no!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's how I fared on Wednesday, April 14th:

Exercise
No Nia in the morning, class canceled :(
I couldn't sleep the night before, nor could I sleep during the day, I was so wasted I didn't feel up for any evening exercise. So today was a total day off. My body demanded it!

Food
Early morning snack: Ho Yan Hor chinese herbal tea with a spoon of honey
Morning snack: an apple
Breakfast: oatmeal with milk and two spoonfuls of honey, and a serving of craisins (weird combination - not doing that again!)
Dinner: a steak burrito with almost the complete works, from Chipotle (I *so* needed a treat!)

Finally passed out and got my rest. I'm going to blame delayed effects of having done a lot of exercise within a small period of time on Tuesday/Wednesday! I'll be sure to pace myself better next time.

April 13th: Power Pump, elliptical and racquetball!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's how I fared on Tuesday, April 13th:

Exercise
Power Pump with C (with light bar, was feeling a bit wimpy), followed by 20mins elliptical, followed by two sets of racquetball (I lost, again!). Was pleasantly sore all day -- and why not, I'd worked out for a total of over 4.5hrs within 18 hours!

Does doing laundry count as exercise? :D

Food
Early breakfast: (and I mean early -- 4am!) a bowl of the dhal bukhara

Breakfast: a soft-boiled egg and half an avocado with a handful of almonds

Dinner: a large bowl of dhal bukhara mixed with a can of tuna, with two handfuls of almonds

Note: Didn't drink enough today!

April 12th: 2h 15m evening workout!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's how I fared on Monday, April 12th:

Exercise:
Since I wasn't keen on a Turbo Kick session with K (I found it boring last week, remember?), I decided to skip the early morning workout. Instead, I hit the Y in the evening:
- 15mins Strictly Abs (N)
- 1hr Zumba (J)
- 1hr Pilates/Yoga (T)
I could have gone the Power Pump and Step n Sculpt route, but I knew I'd be doing the Tuesday morning Power Pump, so chose to go for the general cardio and core/stretching. It was good.

Food:
The weekend had been typical in terms of bad food: Thai for Saturday dinner (and leftovers for Sunday lunch/dinner); greasy spoon breakfast on Sunday, plus gas station crappuccino. So Monday needed to be a good day.

Early breakfast: a mango

Later breakfast: homemade country (red) potatoes with onion and capsicum. I cheated before I could catch myself, seasoning the 'taters with fish sauce... plus a ton of other spices... everything still tasted kinda bland, so I shook in some of that Chicken & Pork Rub from Stonewall Kitchen, and ooops that kinda took over everything! So it ended up being saltier than I ever fix things usually :p. Had that with a soft-boiled egg.

Dinner: a bowl of the dhal bukhara and a container of Greek yogurt.

Snack: almonds, both wasabi and regular types

April 9th: oops!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for Friday, April 9th:

Exercise
It was my first time attending the early morning Step Blast class (last Friday I chose Yoga)... and it was also the first step class in YEARS for me. Had a lot of fun, though - I guess muscle memory does exist?! Sure I kept stumbling over one or two parts, but still... I was happy to know I easily fell back into an easy rhythm! Sweated like mad too! :)

The hubs wasn't done with work by the time I finished, so I tacked on 15mins on the elliptical: nothing fancy, the Random setting at Level 2.

Called it a day after that.

Food
Breakfast: I neglected to be very specific about what I was choosing not to eat during weekdays, so when I agreed for Kosh to get us an eggy breakfast from the hospital cafeteria, I just said "no muffin for me"... should have also said "no biscuit"... said biscuit totally violated the raw/barely-processed food goal.... I'll be quiet about the cheesy hash browns, LoL!

Snack: finished off the banana chips

Dinner: another violation of the raw/barely-processed goal... I just didn't have the mood to do anything except crack open a can of chipotle chicken chili: it contained hydrolyzed corn starch, and smoke flavoring, among other things that make it very processed :p It was edible, but wow did I pay for the beans later! Toot toot!!

Late night munchies: oatmeal in milk with ground cinnamon and honey. Also almonds.

= = =

I didn't drink as much I should have. Also, the two main meals were major violations. Perhaps subconsciously my overcoming temptation the day before twisted itself into today's behaviour? Who knows. But it's now the weekend, time to ease off the food policing. Monday starts another week :)

April 8th: dhal bukhara

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for Thursday, April 8th:

Exercise:
The early morning Power Pump with K was nowhere near as good as with C on Tuesday. Yes, this is the same K who had me not enjoying Turbo Kick on Monday morning. Hmmm. Well, now I know. I'll still stick to early morning workouts until my vacation starts... once I get back, I'll probably not bother with any of K's classes. Sorry hun, but you and I just don't seem to click :(

Since my arms were still sore from Tuesday's Power Pump workout, I went ahead and used the lighter weights for today's workout. So the fact that I hardly broke into a sweat - was that from the low weights, poor exercise structure/instructor, or yes?

Later in the evening, I went back for a session of Yoga - bonus!

Food:
Post-workout snack: an apple

Breakfast*: two soft-boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, and cheating potato chips with water to drink

Pre-dinner snack: an apple, followed a while later by more cheating potato chips

Dinner: two bowls of my dhal bukhara experiment (read the full write-up at Life After Work).

Late night snack: too many wasabi almonds, lots of water.

= = =

Wow was the dhal filling! And the double exercise session was good too. Today was a good day.

* was SO tempted to cheat for breakfast, i.e. talk the hubby into a horseshoe or something, but I figured I was almost at the end of the week, and I give myself license to be bad on weekends, so why not wait? Phew! One temptation faced and overcome!! :)

April 7th: more Chipotle

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for April 7th:

Exercise:
Due to the weather when I woke up, and considering how things didn't go as planned last week, I decided to forego the Zumba class at the Y in order to pick the hubby up from work at 6:15am so he wouldn't have to walk back in the rain (even though it has stopped by the time he was ready for pickup!), and to just go to my Nia class at 9am which I missed last week because I didn't feel like doing that after the Zumba class. My Nia instructor was missing her iPod so the session was essentially just free dance. Sweated a lot, don't know how much of it was from the dance vs dancing in a really stuffy studio! (I'll expound on Zumba vs Nia in another post)

Food:
Early morning snack: a mug of a Chinese herbal tea with a spoon of honey. This was the first time in YEARS that I'd fixed myself this drink: glad I pre-emptively added the honey, it helped dull the 'thick' taste I remembered, which I used to be able to palate easily enough, way back when. It's supposed to be good for general wellness, though for me it was recommended to reduce my 'heaty-ness', the ubiquitous bane of everyone in Asia, it seems, LoL! What with my loose bowels, and flare-up of my face (I wonder if it's Rosacea), I figured it wouldn't hurt to have this drink once a week or so.

Breakfast: A half cup of oatmeal in a half cup of warmed milk topped up with hot water. It needed something sweet, but wasn't going to go back to the kitchen just for sugar/honey. Also had banana chips, and water.

Lunch: a cup of Greek yogurt

Dinner: a barbacoa salad from Chipotle (smothered with sour cream, oops!), followed by an unnecessary amount of pistachios! More water.

From never having had anything from Chipotle, I've now been there twice in one week! It's not that great food-wise, and $7 for that salad seemed a bit expensive, but since they are more responsible about the source of their ingredients than most other food places, I think I'll shift my default go-to fast food option from McD's to Chipotle.

April 6th: pistachios!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for April 6th:

Exercise:
This morning was my second time round doing the early morning Power Pump with instructor C. Perhaps it's because he's older, or perhaps it's just the format of the class that's more mellow, but find I enjoy this class quite a bit. Then again, I've always preferred focused controlled attention to weights & reps, rather than a frantic running through of sets.

For this workout, I also upped the weight of the bar: last week I used two 2.5lbs discs; this time around I took the next level up, making my bar weigh just over 10lbs. It made a huge difference, and by the time we were done with the various bicep curls, I was doing one rep for every two counted by the instructor!

Then came about 45mins of racquetball with the hubby.

About two 500mL bottles of water were consumed just in the morning - yay!

Food:
Pre-workout snack: pistachios!

Breakfast: banana chips, a ¾ boiled egg, and pistachios!

Afternoon snack: pistachios!

Dinner: "tuna guacamole" made by mixing a can of tuna with an avocado, diced onions, leftover mild salsa from Chipotle, and a dash of red wine vinegar. And pistachios!

Night snack: some grapes.

... I've been plagued by loose bowels for a few days now... not sure if it's my system adjusting to the food change, or if there's something specific I ate that's upsetting my system. Either way I'm just gonna grin and bear it! :p

April 5th: some cheating today, plus stuffed eggplant!

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for April 5th:

Exercise
This morning was my first time catching the 5:45am Turbo Kick class at the Y. I didn't enjoy it. I don't know if it was the choice of music, volume of said music, or the routines the instructor (K) put us through, but within 15mins I was eyeing the clock thinking 6:30 couldn't arrive fast enough.

This was followed by 2 sets of rather frustrating racquetball. I have noticed that if I'm running on empty (and I'd not had much sleep before getting the day started) I tend to play suckily, and that gets me frustrated, and if the situation persists long enough there can be incidents involving the smashing of racquets against walls.

Yeah. So it wasn't a particularly fun exercise session for this Monday.

I drank lots of water though, at least 1L just from the exercising!


Food
Breakfast: a mango, a small sample of hubby's leftover steak burrito (it was from Chipotle, so it's not a cheat per se in my book!) and a few spoonfuls of the spicy roasted chickpeas.

Snack: major cheat.. I was starving while shopping and bought a pack of reduced fat kettle-cooked potato chips. I guess I thought kettle cooked meant baked. Wrong. But I munched on them anyway while putting away the groceries. Washed it down with half a bottle of Bolthouse Farms' Vanilla Chai Tea -- another 'cheat', kinda!

Dinner: Fixed myself stuffed eggplant, based on this recipe, sans bread crumbs; washed it down with the other half of the Vanilla Chai Tea.

Snack: a bunch of grapes, and water to sip on.

So despite having started out as a meh day, and despite the cheats, I think it was still a good day overall. ... I just need to keep on eye on my arm to make sure there are no delayed injuries from the racquetball meltdown! :p

April 2nd: eggs, fruit, roasted chickpeas

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for April 2nd:

Exercise
Knowing full well I'd be sore from the workout the previous evening, and since I had a choice of Power Pump vs Yoga for Friday mornings, I went for Yoga. It was my first time on a Friday morning and with C as the instructor. It went pretty much as expected, with one or two moves that were new/different to me. I like how one can still work up a sweat doing what are essentially stretches!

Food
Breakfast: two ¾ boiled eggs, half an avocado and a mug of cinnamon & lemongrass green tea.

Dinner: a mango, and snackage on a delicious new batch of roasted chickpeas. Sipped lots of water. Actually went to bed relatively early, but woke up wide awake at 1:30am!

Proceeded to catch up on some Ghost Whisperer (don't judge me!) while working my way through 4 kiwi fruits. Still couldn't sleep, so munched a bit more of the roasted chickpeas and drank another bottle of water while messing around online.

I had been tempted to say that the weekend started when I woke up, but decided I could very easily hold off on being bad until the hubs got back from work. Yay.

In general, I'm amazed at how full I feel.
I hope the rest of my weekdays continue as smoothly as these two have been!

April 1st: an "egg salad", and three fruits

My Resolutions for April are two-fold: weekday daily exercise, and raw/barely-processed food consumption. Here's the report for April 1st:

Exercise
Since I couldn't wake up in time for the targeted morning workout, I instead went for 1hr 20m of "Strictly Legs" and "Body Conditioning" in the evening. It was my first time with this instructor (M), whose style I would describe as mellow - doesn't mean it wasn't a good workout, it just means things weren't done at a frantic pace, as is the case with the Tuesday evening instructor (N)!

There were one or two places where I decided I was better off sipping my water and catching my breath rather than trying to push through. My feet were unhappy with me at many places during the workout, but as usual there was no lasting effect. I'm guessing I just need to strengthen my soles - I wonder if I've gotten flatter-footed over the years?

Overall it was a good workout, and I knew my muscles would be pleasantly sore the next day. Drank a lot of water as a result of this workout.

Food
Breakfast: scrambled eggs with mushrooms, capsicum and cheese on a bed of lettuce. So technically it was an egg salad? Ha! It was bit of a weird combination, but I didn't want toast or bagel... and the whole wheat tortilla that the hubby used still had a list of ingredients longer than I would allow myself to consume. I cheated with the cheese, I suppose, but there's no way I'd have eggs without cheese! :) Don't remember what I drank.

Dinner: I had a mango; half an hour later an avocado; and as a late night snack an apple. I was surprised that I felt full, and that I wasn't tempted to cheat. I drank some water.