The Path of the Sloth

Starting day 100 till summer contest

2011-03-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today is a beautiful spring day here in Georgia. Approaching the end of a pretty interesting weekend. Went dancing, discovered a Cambodian restaurant, shopped for a few new shirts and got to fit into some of my old jeans again which definitely proves I'm losing inches. Nice to be back in a size 14 again, but I'm ready to get further down.

Starting a challenge pretty badly I suppose. Today is the first day that I bet on youtube that I would lose 14% of my body weight by the summer. Sadly, after dancing all night at a party that my friend was DJing in, I found that the drunkness I was under by the time the party ended was compromising my ability to get home, so I ended up at Waffle House and consumed some much needed carbs and coffee to hopefully work on sobering me up enough to drive. So today my calorie count starting from 3 am and ending with dinner tonight is about 3600 kcals.. but that's alright. It's a learning experience and just like accounting for extra calories needed to recover from exercise, you got to think about the extra calories you need to recover from too much alcohol.

Today is a too gorgeous though. I got some hibiscus tea and sipping it while enjoying the breeze. Talked with the boyfriend about getting onto a gluten free diet. We both watched a documentary called Fat Heads, and wanted to reduce the carbs in our diets. So after the bread is eaten from the house, we came to a compromise. I don't want to rely on gluten substitutes... which I'm afraid will bite us in the butt in a few years of research just like when trans fats were created to substitute lard and butter, ending up being more dangerous. Let someone else's body be the lab rat for new age foods I say, I'll stick with the stuff I know didn't kill my ancestors.

So our rules will be as followed:
Shredded Wheat for breakfast simply because gluten free cereals aren't going to give us the same health benefits. As an Asian, I know rice and corn products will shoot up my blood sugar stronger than the wheat will, with no other fiber options that will fuel our mornings at the same price range. I don't mind oatmeal, but I can rarely get us both to eat it when we're half asleep in the head. So lesser of the two evils here.

Veggies, meats, and beans for the rest of the day. We will not replenish any breads, pastas, or baked goods. That will makes my cooking perspective interesting. But I think this will help a lot in the long run. Here's to a 100 days of good health and fitness!

Day.. err...forgot.. Anyways, NEAT!

2011-03-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Happy Fat Tuesday everyone! I've missed a ton of days in Insanity because I'm too busy rockclimbing and running.. it's a shame, hm? Actually, I started feeling guilty for not doing it but the more I think about it, I know why I stopped for the most part.. and there's no shame there. Life had to happen. My bf and I have spent too much of our time at home and sinking into the routines of working, working out, and sleeping. And I got the Biggest Loser book and realised that they are pushing for people do to this. STAY AWAY FROM THE EVIL PEOPLE IN LIFE! So many diet books says stuff like this. Grandma is an Enabler with her banana pudding and you must absolutely stay away from Enablers because they make you fat, keep you away from your fitness, and ultimately make you die earlier. You know what? I don't want to be this person. I don't get healthier by getting neurotic, introverted, and more prone to depression and suicidal thoughts. And I've seen this on the MTV show "I Used to Be Fat" where family and trainers dogged on this one guy to basically choose between Love and Fitness and wonder why he chose Love. These shouldn't be opposing forces and part of why he failed out is because they were viewed as opposing.

Your life is more than the hours you crank away in the gym or the time you are guzzling your diet chow. Your health is more than your body fat percentage. If you are skinny but is perpetually fighting with your spouse, I don't think you'd even want to increase your lifespan. If you're not taking vacations from your constantly stressful job, your immune system is going to wreck havoc despite your gym hours clocked. So lets look at the things we're doing while we're not working out. Got in a discussion about using Swiss balls at offices, and how it's useless because it's not effective exercise. Now, I used to sit on balls alot when I was in college and it's a godsend on my balance, if for no other reason than it helped me to NOT slouch. The time at work as a sedentary person completely outweighs the hours at the gym. I do shoulder exercises like a beast and I still feel pain in my left shoulder because I sleep on my side. There's not enough time in the day to counter the 6-8 hrs of sleep I do in that position with exercise. Heck, if we do exercise in the same timespan as our jobs, we would be considered insane. But that's no reason not to pay attention to these non-exercise-activity-thermogenesis (NEAT). I work my heart out when I'm awake, but I've been spending non-exercise time asleep on the couch, so I'm probably kicking my ass just to make it to normal metabolic activity levels. Even the simple act of being awake is more helpful than being asleep till noon. Fighting this tendency so hard.. because it's really important. I lost more weight running around as a waitress than I do now doing hardcore workouts. And this is just for passing food back and forth at a casual pace across maybe a distance of 5 yards over and over.

And don't forget your social lives guys. Last weekend.. we went to movie night with an old friend of mines, then had dinner with some other friends. They are not fitness junkies. In fact, my friend's wife would look at us angrily if we don't take home her homemade macaroni and cheese which we know probably packed at least 500kcal a cup. But you know what? I think we're healthier after that weekend. Sure, I gained about 2 lbs of salt retention from all the food, but I'm back at my weight of 195 lbs after a few days of cleaner eating. You can't gain 5 lbs of true fat in a day, most of it will be poop and released bloating after a bit if you jump back on track. But what we gained in mental health is so worth it. My BF gained perspective from seeing his old college friend and I see his anxiety levels reduce, his productivity and ambition rise, and his self esteem boost up just because he's not relying on his own neurotic perspective on people. Which is what people wished to gain from weight loss right? Take mental efforts to cure a mental problem, people. Fitness may help boost seratonin levels but practicing talking to people and finding success in social situations is what actually helps stop depression. I'm going to have an interview tomorrow for working in the library, and I feel so much better about it after seeing my friends. They don't care about my scale weight when they're going to interview me, as long as I can hold some heavy books and reach the top shelf, that's as much as they care about that part. But my ability to talk, smile, and show confidence is what's going to win this interview.

So what's for dinner tonight? After crapping some high fiber cereal for breakfast, lentil soup for lunch, air popped popcorn for snack... I'm treating this fat tuesday to some bojangles fried chicken.

With a breast, a thigh, a biscuit, cole slaw, and dirty rice.. which is about 1000 kcals total.. my total for the day is still about 1600 kcals.. so you can pig out and keep a diet, buddies. Moral of the story, do what you got to do to get your weight down, but always laissez les bon temps rouler!

Day 10/ Now where was I..?

2011-03-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

I'm amazed at how wasted I am today. Yesterday I did my best run on the treadmill ever and did Pure Cardio on Insanity with the least amount of breaks and best adherence to form that I have done on any of the workout videos. Throughout my life I've always felt wasted after 20 seconds of sprinting or about 10 jumping jacks, so this is the first time I've really been heart strong enough to not only go the 20 seconds but run it up to 3 minutes and kept good form.

Well, today showed virtually nothing of yesterday's strength. I finally got back down to 195 after gaining to 197 during the early part of this week. I was bits and pieces of sore all over this morning, which isn't as bad as first starting up. It's weird, I've worked harder with more soreness, but I kinda clocked out this morning and stayed in bed. Spending the last two days trying to nurse my bf to health probably took it out of me as though I was waiting till he got better to give myself some rest.

I did my plyo pretty late today and so much about me was whining about it. I took alot of breaks particularly in the burpees and abs ski jumps parts.. I did some.. but there was so much whining inside me. Even though I wasn't tired or exhausted I just stopped the video and sat down alot. Like I could feel my lazy inner self try to take ground. But, as long as I do something every day, I can't go backwards in my cardiovascular health, my muscle strength, my diet choices. So while my mind is trying to make a tantrum, my body just keeps going. When my mind is ready, it just has to catch up.

Food today. Today is very important for keeping calories up. My bf has gone without eating for the last two days, so I was doing what I could to build up enough food for him to regain his strength. so we had peanut butter chocolate and fresh strawberries on toast as a sweet treat and I added lime juice to the soup to give it some flavor. After today's workout, the first thing that came to my mind was a thick juicy cheeseburger. Particularly from Checkers which is only a block from my apartment. But then I took a second bowl of soup, slurp up that meat flavored water and lentils.. and slowly the craving is released.

Some people have sweet tooths. Me, I have a carnivore's sharp tooth. When it comes to meat, I can go toe to toe with the Bizarre Foods guy. I can pass a cheesecake but it'd be hard for me to pass up a rack of ribs. If it comes off an animal, I'm all on it. But even a red meat loving person like me can find her healthy alternatives. So tomorrow.. I'm probably gonna up the protein and make some egg whites drops to stick in the soup. Something I realised: Whenever I buy a diet alternative to a food I like to eat (I.E. Egg whites vs Eggs, or Yogurt vs Ice cream) I end up avoiding eating it all together. Maybe it's the fact that when I'm honestly on a diet, I'm less likely to reach for anything that has a nutritional label on it period.

Day 9: Weight loss Literature

2011-03-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

When it comes to the businesses that banks on weight loss, it's never as simple as eat less and exercise more. It's got to be eat only organic, workout at only 65% of your heart rate, no fruits, only fruits, no soy, nothing but soy, cardio is the devil, cardio is what you got to do.. blah blah blah. For every claim there's a counter claim.. and it's not like people outside of these faux pas aren't capable of getting healthy. We're always told that we shouldn't burn more than 2 lbs of weight a week or we're just going to get massively unhealthy, but we watch on shows like the Biggest Loser that it's not only possible, but it's proven over and over again that those people are doing it and they're healthy afterwards. I've read diet books where people are freaking out on whether or not they can eat a banana as a treat. Are you kidding me? I think we're viewing the weight issue the wrong way. It's an addiction for many people trying to get back on track. And as we see people who are addicted to other things such as smoking, cold turkey and playing mind games just doesn't cut it when you're trying to get people out of an addiction. Yes, the nicotine patches contain nicotine that we're trying to get away from and bananas contain sugars that we're trying to get away from. But I don't care how addicted to food you are, it's very unlikely for a person to binge on a whole bunch of bananas in a single day. But it can still carry that person away from their former habits. And whey is milk. If you drink milk, you're already drinking whey. You just don't have to keep adding chocolate and peanut butter and all this other stuff to make it endurable.

So today.. there's nothing new in my soup. But damn it, it's spring. I want to taste food that tastes as nice as flowers budding, cool breezes and warm sun, not powdered milk by product or compressed cardboard bars covered in chocolate. Strawberries and bananas

As far as my workout today, I did a speedy interval run on the treadmill then lounge by the pool and take in some sun. (which still isn't open yet) My heart rate was at about 185 bpm which is well above my "fat burning" zone but you know what? My heart wouldn't have been able to get strong enough to hold that rate for the time I held it there if I didn't train it. I used to have chest pains when I jog but now I don't. My BF and I almost got the same cold/virus but after my workout I almost hold no symptoms of it while my bf is bedridden. I might not be gaining muscles, and the scale isn't moving, the inches aren't coming off, but I am already healthier than I was a week ago. You don't need increase muscle mass to create increase strength and flexibility. You don't need to be a size 4 to gain confidence. The success happens during the act. Just keep reinforcing your good habits, take note on what makes you completely happy, and you don't have to worry about the mind games everyone else is trying to play with you.

Day 8/ Stress and Sickness

2011-02-28T14:26:00.000-08:00

I just finished today's workout at Cardio Power and Resistance. Day 7 (6) with plyo was a disaster to follow through. Not for lack of vigilance but for the fact that the day brought up some bigger issues I had to work through. The morning started out well, my bf and I took a walk from the house to the shops, climbing and exploring various stairways in the city. It was a nice spring day and helped out alot with the cabin fever. Unfortunately, when we came back home to our one bedroom apartment, we were faced with some challenges. I have never worked out Insanity while my bf is home simply because my gym is also his office. And we both have a right to do what we need to. I need to workout to get in shape just as he needs to do his programming skills to develop his career. So what happens when we need the same space at the same time? After some harsh words, screaming and crying from both of us... we finally got into a point where we needed to compromise. But being angry and tearful and stress really takes it out of you, so unfortunately I didn't do the workout for yesterday and he didn't get as much done on his work as he like. And through the extra calories I ate at my family's plus the stress retention I got from the fight, I'm sitting at 197 lbs right now.

It's okay though. Because life isn't perfect. And the only mistakes that becomes permanent is the kinds you don't learn from. We plan on going rock climbing together next weekend instead of going out to eat. And I'm going to take advantage of the morning and the gym I never walk into for weekend days.

I would be lying if I said I didn't feel miserable this morning. My eyes were swollen, my chest and my head were throbbing, the sky is gray and rainy, and my emotions are just gloomy. Turns out, we probably both got sick from something. He's still in bed and I'm dragging tired and in pain. I sip a couple extra cups of broth to get myself back into workout mode, which I'm glad I did.. because now the pain from stress and sickness is almost eliminated from my body.

Moral of the day is this.. while your fitness and diet routine is important, take time to take care of the rest of your life as well. What's the point of living longer if you drive all of your loved ones away? There is always tomorrow to tend to your needs and fitness is a gradual thing anyways created by consistency not perfection.

For today's soup ingredient we're having lentils with some sesame seed flavored seaweed on the side

Day 6/ Family

2011-02-26T07:35:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! I'm switching Insanity day 6 with the rest day in day 7 for this week simply because I'll be going out to visit family which is about an hour drive to and an hour drive back if we're lucky. My little brother is turning 13! W00t! They grow up so fast.. It's hard to believe how time passes. To prepare for this birthday party, I went ahead and called my mom asking her what's going to be served today. So I know to expect Vietnamese fresh spring rolls (the kind that's not fried), birthday cake, and something very common and special to our Cambodian family.. Cawh (Sweet Pork Stew).

For those who don't know what Cawh is, it's basically a bbq sauce sweet stew flavored with cloves and star anise containing hard boiled eggs and everything you could find on a pig except for the oink. So yeah, this is literally an extremely fattening dish, probably one of the most fattening dish in Cambodian Cuisine. But I am planning so I wrote down what I will eat in calories for today's tracker and just do what's planned. Funny thing is, even though is is pretty much pure bacon and eggs, an average sized bowl full with a cup of rice is still less than a grande Frappuchino.

When having a weight loss program of any kind, family has a way of making you or breaking you. When my mother was still in Cambodia, obesity wasn't a problem because there was simply not enough food to go around to be fat on. My uncle had diet of starvation, and the rest of my family barely sustained on a few grains of rice till they finally found refuge in the US. Because of this, food is very emotional topic for my family. My grandmother would insist that we ate as much as we could so she would never have another starving child, but at the same time, we all became obese because of this. How can you throw out food that could have been used to save your relative's life? This was the issue that went in my head when I was a growing up. So much guilt and shame went into our food, but eventually I had to come to terms that putting more food into my own mouth would not bring my uncle back and what I need to seek out in my food is not abundance but the ability to survive as healthy and as long as I can and to appreciate every bite that has been blessed to me.

Another thing that happened with my mother, being a teenager amongst starving 3rd world country peers, her body image when she came to the bountiful US was shot. She was used to seeing people 100 lbs or less, herself merely at 80 lbs when she was in her late teens. But as she was eating three meals a day, having children, and struggling in a world that she didn't know how to speak the language, she became super critical of herself and her children's bodies. When I look back to my own teenage years, at about 140 at my current height I wasn't actually fat at all, but because I was 60 lbs over what she remembered herself being at that age, I was constantly told I was. My self esteem was shot because my mother's self esteem was shot. And the depression from feeling so low just made both of us eat more and more. I had no idea I was even mildly attractive to anyone till I moved out of the house into the college dormitories, and finally heard some opinions outside of my mother's skewed vision for me.

Now that I live on my own with my boyfriend, food is 100% in my hands and not what is served to me by my mother. I am a city away from the negative criticism of my mother, and within constant positive feedback from my bf. It took a long time for me to get over poor body image, and I'm not sure if I were to live with my mother again if I would keep this positive outlook on myself. Learning to love your body is not something you can learn overnight. But as long as I keep it in my head that I'm beautiful, then eventually the rest of the world will see this too.

Day 5 Insanity/ Tentacle Soup

2011-02-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

I am not a Beachbody coach... nor do I endorse all of their products... (milkshakes got me in this mess, so I doubt milkshakes would get me out of this mess). But, I like plyometrics (jumpy jumps) and Insanity seems to fit the right amount of jumpy cardio for my needs. And if you're looking, there's no day 1-4 posts because I wanted to see if I could get here in the first place. Sum those days up: Sweat. (Fit Test) Sweat. (Plyo) Sore. (Cardio Power) Bored. (Recovery). Moving on..

Today's video was Pure Cardio, Which is your normal warm up, stretching, then a lot of jumpy cardio for about 20 minutes straight with no built in rests like the previous videos. As always, I'm sweaty after doing this. In fact.. I think my workout clothes smells ten times funkier than they did any other day this week. I had to do things slow a few times and paused the video about 5 times to catch my breath. Day 2-3 aggravated my left knee cap, which I think it's more because I was too wasted during their stretch section to really hold good form. It's probably the yoga talking, but I took out the video stretches for yoga poses I know I can do safely regardless of how tired I was. So unless you have had prior hands on instructions to safely place the feet correctly during lunges and standing/balancing leg stretches.. save your knees and and do more stable positions. Hamstrings and calves: Downward Dog. Alternate bending one knee to get it a little deeper. Outer thighs: Hero pose or camel's pose. Inner thighs: Wide angle seated forward bend and bound angle pose. Lower Back: Cobra/ Upward Dog. and roll your head down side to side to hit your shoulders. Same effect as the stretches in video but lot less chance of falling down and twisting something. Besides that, even with my sore knee cap, I was able to do the rest of the moves on this video by keeping form even if it was slower (Even those nutty froggy jumps).

Diet this week at our house is kinda amusing. On Sunday we had leftovers Lamb Shank from a Moroccan restaurant, so we decided to take advantage of this awesome bone and make what we like to call "Endless soup." Basically.. Stick bone, spices, veggies, water, salt, bay leaf into a crockpot and keep adding veggies, water and salt into the soup till the giant bone is no more or we finally get sick of soup. To change up the flavor, I'd add a different ingredient and spices to the soup every day and the broth gets more and more complex and nothing like the day before. Today's ingredients:

Yummy tentacle soup. Basically I added about 2 oz of small seafood mix (shrimp, squid, mussels, baby octopus) and a few splashes of soy sauce to balance out the flavor. (Every pint of water I put back in the soup, needs about a tsp of salt or salty sauce to keep it from being bland.)

Usually I spend my time eating soup with Hoyt twice a day, but he's working hard so I ate alone for lunch. Having soup as a constant for the last week really helps me understand my reaction to other foods. Yesterday I was under calories, so I decided to eat waffles, bacon, egg whites, and hash browns for breakfast. Sounds like a lot of food, but I kept it under 500 by some simple observations:

Pan fry the hashbrowns on a non stick pan

Egg whites instead of eggs (duh)

Canadian Bacon instead of bacon

Apple slices with my waffle instead of having syrup on it for sweetness

So that's how it went down today. Time to hit the showers and contemplate Friday Night Activities.

Weight Loss Intro/ Baby steps

2011-02-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Hello! My name is May and I've been working on my weight loss resolution since January 1st, and since this time around I've actually started to see progress and heck, made it to February 25th, It looks like a good time to actually start and maintain a blog. Unfortunately.. I don't have any cameras besides poor resolutions webcam and my phone, so until I can make those things better or get a better equipment. So, words only! W00t.

Alright, so Jan 1st I was about 200 lbs (My height/age/gender is 5'2/24/f for people who needs that info), and today I'm sitting at 194.8 and to get here it took about 2 months worth of baby steps. So.. I'll walk you through the baby steps that got me here.

Step 1: Write down everything. For the first month I got a little spiral pad and just wrote down names of food I ate. No calories or quantity yet, because I wanted to develop the patience to just write something down consistently. It's quick to just jot down "hamburger" oppose to "2 slices bread, 3 oz ground beef, 1 oz cheddar cheese, 2 Tbl ketchup" etc.

Step 2: Go Outside. Having the sun on your skin and the wind against you has a way of lifting the mood. At first it was just to go out to the mailbox. Then a week later it was going to the grocery store on foot about a block from my house. Eventually after two months this built up to about 3 miles every few days. Really helps clear depression and stress which is probably the real reason for weight gain in the first place.

Step 3: Yoga. About Jan 20th or so.. I was feeling really stressed about being unemployed and my relationship. So eventually I bought some candles and scented oils, put on some music off a streaming site and did a 20 minute night routine off of a free yoga podcast. There was nothing impressive about the routine.. just a handful of downward dogs and stretches, but it was still building me enough to get over the anxiety of doing any exercise at all.

Step 4: Partner in Crime. Probably the most important step in combating depression and continuing what I do. My BF, at first he didn't want to do yoga and exercise at all. He works the 9 to 5 and often stays for long hours. But after a few nights of seeing how easy and relaxing my little routine was, he joined in along side me.

Step 5: Facing Fears: When I was in college, I would go to exercise classes all the time, workout till there is something I feel like I can't do, then just stop. Despite attending tons of classes over those years, I haven't dropped a pound. So I looked at BodyRock.tv and saw some really challenging moves that were still pretty short.. most of them only 10 minutes long. So, I looked at some challenges that I wanted to do but never believed I could. Most of the time I could only do about half of the challenge.. but the more I tried, the less afraid of tenser exercises I got. There's a rush of joy knowing I could do 70 burpees in a row, which leads me to more challenges.

Step 6: Calorie Count. Okay, so I've managed to write down what I ate daily, now I need to find out what the damage was. I started off, eating first and thinking later. So for the first 2 weeks of February I came to realise that I was eating 2000-nearly 4000 kcals a day! Particularly during social events-- babyshowers, club meetings, valentine's day. Felt like every other day was some kind of buffet style event. But this is okay, because it taught me what the issues were.

Step 7: Planning. Okay, so the last baby shower was filled with your cocktail everything, club sandwiches, mom's home cooking, and of course cake. I had a chance to redo the day again at a friend's baby's birthday. I think about what is expected... shrimp, cake, cheese and crackers.. what extra calories I could lend in that day for unexpected (home cooking) and what that looked like. So I got back in that scenario avoiding the oreos, crackers and cheese for the stuff I really wanted to try that day, which was the shrimp, the homecooked roasted chicken, and of course the cake. I also made sure to take a picture with my phone of each plate I picked up because it's really easy to lose count of helpings by the time you get on your calorie tracking site at home.

So now, I am currently on the Insanity Cardio routine with Hip Hop Abs as a warm up (Funny how two programs by the same person could be so different). BodyRock gave me the courage to do what I do, Yoga gave me the patience, and writing down gave me the wisdom. I'll be discussing my current workout and eating plans more with the following posts, but I hope this summary of what my first two months were like helps some of you guys out. I was literally a hibernating bear for years before this, but with baby steps in trying to find the root to your weight.. be it fear, stress, depression, anxiety... you can move up to amazing accomplishments.