M:0 W:0 D:5

 

Better not to give in to it.

It takes ten times as long to put yourself

back together

as it does to fall apart.

 

-The Hunger Games



Strength is beauty.



 

 

So I have quickly come to the conclusion that posting everyday is not going to work in between my class, my study time, my work hours, and what little time I have to myself. Not to mention my school is putting on a musical/performance at the end of this month and things are going to get crazy busy, plus we have a couple major field trips planned as well.  Thus, this will have to become a two or three times a week venture with more summary than detailed information. But, hey, live and learn, right?

This week I didn't do too terribly with my eating, though I do have a couple confessions. I totally had some chocolate (white and milk) and of course some of the cookie dough truffles I had been planning on making and did make (great success, in case you were wondering). I also probably had a little too much rice. I need to cut down my portion sizes by a lot. And I'm also one of those people who eats when I'm bored (hello three day weekend with no plans). So those will both be goals for this week.

I have to say I did better on my workouts this week too, though I still have room for improvement there too. I did some Insanity (which I both love and hate), a Jillian Michael's workout video, and a 3 mile walk. I'm planning on doing a three mile walk every morning (if I can find the motivation to drag myself out of bed), and then if I'm up to it, doing a more intense workout at night after work (except on Wednesdays when I have my Korean class).

So there you have it. A nice summary of my week, my shortcomings and my accomplishments. Have a great weekend!!!!

M:0 W:0 D:1

(This will be how I keep track of how many

months, weeks, and days I've been at this. M=months, W=weeks, and D=days)

 

GROCERY SHOPPING &

MONTH 1 PICS
 

 

I think there's a certain delusional quality that all

successful people have to have; you have to believe

that something different than what has

happened for the past 50 million years can happen.

 

Being realistic is the most commonly travelled

road to medioctrity.

 

What's the point of being realistic?

 

It's unrealistic to walk into a room, flip a switch, and have light come on,

but fortunately Edison didn't think so.

 

-Will Smith

 

 

Alright, so grocery shopping!!! I love grocery shopping :) So the basics I will be getting this week (I usually shop for a whole week's worth of food) include eggs, broccoli, tomatoes, frozen blueberries, thick sliced bacon, red leaf lettuce, seasoned seaweed (usually seasoned with olive oil and sea salt), rice, tuna, sesame seed oil and mayo. Foods I already have include green onions, mushrooms, fresh garlic, spinach, bell peppers, carrots, sweet potatoes, chamomile and peppermint tea, lemonade mix (which I use with the teas), honey, sweetened soy milk, basic spices, apples, and canned pineapple. I also have a few other random supplies like baking soda/powder, coconut, almonds, wheat flour, maple syrup, baking cocoa, and such that I use for baking, but I don't plan on using those (though I will fess up if I binge a little every now and then with some chocolate pancakes).

 

There are some recipes/meals I make multiple times a week. One of my favorites is smoothies. I just got a blender, so I'm going crazy with my smoothies. I stick with a 50/50 rule. 50% vegetables and 50% fruit. My main vegetable is spinach (I used to use kale as well, but I haven't been able to find that here in Korea). My default fruit is frozen blueberries, but I mix it up with apples or pineapple on occasion and every so often I'll do strawberries or kiwi depending on what's on sale at Homeplus. I usually use either plain water or sweetened soy milk as a base.

 

Coming to Korea, I discovered a new love: lettuce wraps!!! Koreans use everything from kimchi to garlic, to onions in their lettuce wraps. I usually stick with thick sliced bacon and red leaf lettuce. I need to start buying kimchi, but I'm sensitive to spicy food so I don't want to get a kind that's too spicy. For those unfamiliar with kimchi, it is a famous Korean food. It is basically spicy fermented cabbage (or sometimes radish or other vegetables). It doesn't sound too appealing, and yes, it is an acquired taste. I tried it before coming to Korea and it was certainly not my favorite thing. I could swallow it, but I never thought it would be something I would choose to eat. Now that I've been in Korea for a few months and since kimchi is a staple here (and by staple I mean you don't see a single Korean meal without kimchi), I've grown used to it and actually found a couple varieties that I can say I like.

 

I also love doing tuna rolls (rolls as in the asian kind of rolls with rice and seaweed). I generally cook up the rice and put some sesame seed oil in it, make up the tuna with mayo, then wrap them together in a piece of seasoned seaweed. Yummm!!! Hmm, it might be good with some kimchi too... Not the most healthy meal, and I try to stay away from too many grains, so I will be cutting back on this. 

 

The tomatoes and bell peppers I tend to eat raw. They act as my munchie snacks in place of chips and crackers. And I usually keeps some apples around to satisfy my sweet tooth (and boy do I have a sweet tooth).

 

So those are the basics for this week. I'll update with specific meals just to see if I actually stuck to the plan or not.

 

 

Today's meals:

 

Lunch (I was up really late so I slept in and missed breakfast, oops):

• blueberry/spinach smoothie with soy milk base
• one small sweet potato mixed with two scrambled eggs and a meddly of vegatables (mushrooms, green onions, spinach, carrots) with garlic and salt.

Dinner:

• apple
• popcorn

 

Snacks:

• canned pineapple

 

Today's exercise:

 

•  Zumba latin dance 15 minutes

 

*Just a forewarning: I will probably be having some cookie dough truffles this weekend because I'm making some treats for my coworkers because I haven't cooked anything for them yet which is kind of a shame becuase I love to cook for people (not to mention I love to show off my cooking skills). I will attempt to control my truffle consumption, though.

 

And now on to the pictures. I guess you could dubb these the "before pictures." I will apologize in advance. I only have my bathroom mirror and my phone camera, so please forgive the poor quality.
 

 

 

Well, I have to go study my Korean now. I've got class in just a few hours. And then I need to catch a couple more episodes of Supernatural. Loving this show!!! I just finished the episode with the rabbit's foot. Hilarious!!!!!!

***Because of uploading pictures and such (I don't have wifi at my apartment, so I have to wait until I'm at school to upload photos) the posts may be published a day or two after they were written.

 

 

It's the job that's

never started

that takes

longest to finish.

 

-Samwise Gamgee

THE BEGINNING...

 

 

Strive for progress, not perfection.

 

 

Well...where to begin? I guess a little background wouldn't hurt anything. You're probably reading this blog because you're some kind of health fanatic or at least hoping to make your way there (like what I'm trying to do). Okay, maybe fanatic is a bit harsh. I don't necessarily want to be fanatical...more like health conscious--yeah, that's a nice way to put it, right? Health conscious.

 

Right, I was going to give you a bit of background on me. Let's not get sidetracked. So I'm 26 years old and the last time I weighed myself I was 145lbs (that might have changed because it's been 4ish months since I last weighed myself, but I still fit fine in all my clothes so we're going to stick with that). I don't want to focus on just weight becuase as we've been shown time and time again, weight isn't what's important. A girl could weigh just as much as me but be super fit (taking into account muscle weighs more than fat, and she could be taller than me as well...not too difficult to be that...). I'm 5'2"...okay, okay 5'1  1/2" but I'm rounding up :) One major aspect of my life that affects my health that you will see pop up often in the blog is that I am type 1 diabetic. (completely different than type 2...if you don't know the difference and want to, just google it). I was diagnosed a decade ago (almost to the day actually) which was when I gained the extra weight. Before my diagnosis I was a healthy 125lbs. I was diagnosed in June and by the end of the year, I was up to 145lbs despite the fact that my diet and exercise didn't change. Since then, I haven't been able to get the weight off (partly because I haven't tried that hard, if I'm being brutally honest with myself).

 

Now to talk about some things that have been holding me back from losing the weight. First and foremost, I am absolutely terrible when it comes to food. I have very little self discipline. If there is something yummy in the kitchen, it's gone within a day or two (which means I have to be very careful when I shop). You know how you go out and buy a nice bag of chips and tell yourself it will last you the whole week but then it's gone after a couple episodes of Supernatural, or Merlin, or Dr. Who (or whatever other fandoms you may belong to)? That's me every time. I've heard again and again that food is the most important factor in losing weight. It can be the best medicine or the slowest poison. If you're eating healthy, you lose the weight much faster, not to mention you feel better and have so much more energy and you sleep better, blah, blah, blah, we all know how this goes. So food is on my list of things to work on.

 

To go along with food: I hate counting calories. As a diabetic, I already have to count carbs and counting calories is 1. so much more complicated (especially when you cook a lot and not from a nice recipe that tells you what the calories per serving will be), 2. it's just a bunch of extra work for me that I don't have time for (I'm a teacher at a very small school so I eat lunch with my 5 year olds--not condusive to counting calories), and 3. I'm currently living in Korea (I've been here for 4 months) which makes the whole reading the nutrition label a bit difficult not to mention they have dozens of foods I've never heard of or don't even know the names of.

 

And the last (kind of obvious, I know): exercise. I wouldn't say I love to exercise, but I don't mind it. More than anything, I love to see my progress--how much better I am today than I was yesterday, this week than I was last week, and so on. I don't know why I have such a hard time keeping up with exercise seeing as I'm not one of those exercise haters. I don't even mind the sweating as some people might. I would say the only thing I don't like is people watching me exercise. I'm a very self-conscious person (even if it doesn't always show). And despite everyone saying differently, I do care what people think of me (to a point at least), especially those people I see as important in my life. The rest I have to chalk up to the whole self-discipline issue again and just plain laziness. I mean who wants to go out and sweat when it's already hot and humid out? And when there are so many good books and TV series and movies to read and watch? I'm a big nerd (if you hadn't guessed that already from the blog title), so I much prefer to sit down and read a good book to sweating up a storm and aching for days after.

 

Yet, despite all that, I want to get fit. I want to be healthy. I want to do this for a few different reasons. The first is because I'm diabetic, and diabetics tend to have a lot more health issues and a shorter life span if they don't keep up with their health. Second, I want to be able to look and feel healthy (not much more explanation needed on that front). Third, I want to do it for my future family. I plan on getting married and having kids one day, and I want to be able to raise my children to be healthy as well. I want to start them off on the right path instead of them realizing they need to change all of their habits later on if they want to lead a healthy life (and habits are hard to change, which I'm sure all of you know).

 

That being said, I plan on this blog being something like a health/fitness journal for me (and hopefully a few of you out there can help keep me motivated). I don't currently have a scale so I don't plan on keeping track of my weight. I also don't have a measuring tape, nor do I know what my measurements are, but I do take my measurements with just a basic string so I can compare one month's measurements to the next. That might change in the future, but that's what I have right now, so that's what I'm working with. I'll be uploading progress pictures, good recipes I find, good workouts, and anything I find motivational be it quotes, stories, photos, etc.

 

I will apologize in advance because some of the posts might be repetitive or downright dull (though I will try my best to be somewhat entertaining), but as I mentioned before, this is mostly for me. So you can skip what you want and read what you want, it doesn't matter to me. Well...I think that's about it for the first blog post. I'm planning on posting almost everyday with exercise and meal plans for the day (and I won't skip over all the bad things either). Complete honesty. I'll be posting the good and bad things I ate, how I was feeling that day whether it was amazing or dismal, if I exercised, etc. Plus I'll be adding in a few nerdy tidbits here and there like updates on anything good I've been reading or writing or watching. So...see you tomorrow!

 

 

Dark and difficult

times lie ahead.

Soon we must

all face the choice

between what is right

and what is easy.

 

-Albus Dumbledore