Tues Wed Thurs: not going so good ...

Tuesday:
Woke up too late for smoothie-making.
Had a ¾-boiled egg (the white is solid, the yoke gooey), and allergy meds washed down with a few sips of Sprite Zero (water wasn't immediately on hand!)
Biked to the Y
Did 45mins Zumba (Gold) and 15mins Sculpt with 2x5lb dumbells.
Biked back
Had another ¾-boiled egg.
Don't remember what else I ate over the rest of the day, but I think I was pretty good apart, from some mindless SunChips consumption.
Made up for it a little by hitting the gym again in the evening for an hour of Yoga (drove).
Total water intake ~1.0L

Wednesday:
Biked to the Y.
45mins Zumba
1hr racquetball
too hungry for smoothie-making! instead had bagel & cream cheese w almond milk, water.
More poor eating ... take my word for it, the resolution for healthy eating was shot to hell with lots of unnecessary snackage of bad foods (ooey gooey coffee cake, anyone?).
At least water intake was over 1.5L, but that had to dilute 2 cans of Coke Zero, ugh.

Thursday:
Biked to the Y.
Another 45mins Zumba (Gold) and 15mins Sculpt with 2x5lb dumbells.
Biked back.
Was slightly better about food intake; had a chipotle chicken salad for dinner, drowning in sour cream, plus guacamole and snacked on potato chips out of the bag :p
At least water intake was over 1.5L and had only one can of Coke Zero.

= = =

Okay, so the smoothie twice a day is not getting achieved (heck I had two smoothie-less days!), gotta buck up on that. And the snacking... that's gotten waaay out of hand! One good thing, tho: I've not been tempted by ice cream recently, let's keep it that way!

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 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 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 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!