Day 16/28 – Listen to your body, it’s OK!

I was told this would happen, feeling a bit weak and sickly, apparently the last two weeks of a diet is the toughest, when your body feels the effects of lower calorie intake.

Friends have joked that it’s alcohol withdrawal – haha, hmmm, maybe, most probably.

Either way I’m listening to my body and curling up in bed with a DVD. To push myself now might end up with me feeling a lot worse for longer.

I did find something really useful today via Pinterest, a breakdown of calories burned per hour via one’s weight (and a few other useful factoids).

My favourite? 1 pound = 3,5000 calories, which is a little more than twice the calories burned when I do a McRitchie run.

I’ll remember that the next time I bite into a McDonalds Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (that’s 739 calories NO fries and NO sauce included).

Print this out and stick it to your wall

Day 15/28 – No dim sum, no Champagne!

Fresh from the oven and NOT in my mouth 😦

One of the biggest perks of my job is the constant stream of invites to every new opening in town.

Normally this is great but when you’re on a month long diet, this equals torture.

Today, not only am I missing out on trying one Michelin star dim sum by Tim Ho Wan (24 hours before it opens to the public) but I’m also having to give a Veuve Cliquot party a miss in the evening.

Life feels like a bag of poo right now 😦

I could go to both and be sociable but i know myself I wouldn’t be able to resist and tomorrow morning ill regret it.

How determined am I to dissuade myself? I chose one of my more casual work ensembles just so I wouldn’t be able to change my mind.

Know your weaknesses and play to your strength… Another golden diet rule!

Day 14/28 – Stay enthused, stay focused!

2 weeks in and I’m off my target by 0.5kg.

And this after all the exercise I’ve been doing!
Okay, I didn’t exactly follow the diet all the time this past 7 days and looking at my food log I’ve has a few too many cheats.

Extra slice of ham (35 calories), maple cookie (80 calories), caramel popcorn (I’m too scared to check!)

If I’m going to do this right it’s got to be done properly – time to scale back my social meals and rejig the food/exercise schedule.

2 weeks to go…

Day 8/28 – It only takes one…

Gin o’Clock? I am always happy when I have a cocktail in hand.

I wish I had an excuse but I don’t. Not only didn’t I manage to wake up early enough to exercise BUT I also ended up eating and drinking a little too much today.

I should know better than to have a Cheat Day right after my Victory Day, BUT I caved and now I’m going to have to make it up on Wednesday (and the rest of the week).

Disclaimer: It has been a hard two weeks at work but still… no excuse!

For the record, this cocktail probably cost me 200 calories – according to this gem of a website: Wasted Calories – which works out to be 25 minutes of running according to Run The Planet (check out the nifty calories calculator).

I do love my drink but how much, when I have to run it off?

I drink, I run…

Day 7/28 – Victory!

I did it!
I lost 1kg in a week 🙂
It wasn’t that easy but truthfully it wasn’t that tough either.
It took watching my diet (sticking to 1200-1400 calories daily), daily exercise ( some days 30 mins, more when I knew I was going out ) and I still had a few cheeky vodka sodas!
It’s a great start to the month and just the right amount of encouragement I needed.
73kg and counting!

Day 6/28 – I biked it, I steak it!

I crave red meat

Going into this diet, I was just as determined to shed the weight as I was about not cutting back on my lifestyle too much.

I’m pretty social so turning down meals can feel like torture. Enter Easter Sunday brunch with my friends… hmm, do I stay away or… do i go for a long bike ride to pre-burn some calories.

8am, Sunday: I was on my bike and pedaling pretty hard from Longhouse-Kranji-Bukit Timah-Home which left me winded during some bits but got my heart racing hard enough to burn 1,000 calories in 1:45 mins.

There were a few times I thought of packing it in to escape the honking cars and the blazing sun but I wanted to enjoy brunch and I was going to have to earn it.

Almost a shade darker later, I found laughing and sitting with friends as I tucked into a beautiful 120 gm steak (apprx 500 calories) and even had the “allowance” for a few gin & tonics (bliss!).

Cliche as it sounds, I enjoyed the meal so much more because of the work put in before. Perhaps sacrifice isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it fetches unsolicited compliments!

Day 4/28 – If you can’t do it for you, do it for someone else

Me, my best friend and Billy

I’ve been on/off diets since I was 15 years old. The first diet I went on was the British Heart Foundation diet and by the end of it, I hated beetroot with a passion.

I remember losing weight but I don’t think I kept it off for too long.

One of the big (if not the biggest) goals of this 28 days challenge is to get myself eating and exercising in a healthy, sustainable manner. What I’m doing isn’t just for 28 days, it’s hopefully for life.

As with all important life matters, I go to my best friend for advice. No one else knows how to put things better to me, AND to get me to stick to my goals.

Sitting at her dining table, she got me to explain in detail why I was doing this and why I wanted it.

When I was done talking, she followed up plaining how tough it really is to shed 4kgs in a month – the woman knows I underestimate most things! – and she should know, this is a woman who looks better and sexier 20 months after giving birth. RESPECT!

Walking me through the importance of portion control (and how challenging it can be), the need for daily exercise, she reminded me that I needed to understand and accept some sacrifice would be needed – not my greatest trait.

Countering my “But I’m too busy!” plea, she gave me an easy, no reason not to solution:

“For the next 7 days, go for a 20 minute run, do some bicep/tricep curls, and crunches, and I promise you you’ll see a change. And once you do you’ll be hooked!”

I felt like I was talking to my own personal trainer.

“I’m so proud of you for doing this and I really want you to succeed BUT I don’t want you to set yourself up for failure. Please do this for the next week for me okay? I really want this so badly for you!”

How could I say no? So when I wake up groggy and not in the mood to start my day with a run, I’ll remember her words and draw strength from it.

Day 3/28 – Breathe in, breathe out, and perve

Early morning swim somewhere in The Caribbean  – It doesn’t get better than this!

I’m a water baby.

From the moment my parents took me out for my first swim-and-dip at six months, I’ve been hooked.
Swimming never feels hard for me, it just feels natural and utterly relaxing.

I’ve had the fortune of going for long ocean swims in The Maldives (thanks Napha, Mark and Pat!) and in The Carribbean (oh Skimpy!) and nothing, almost nothing ;-p feels better first thing in the morning. If I had my way, I would start every day with an ocean swim.

Being a decent swimmer however has made me lazy when it comes to triathlon training. I hardly spend any time in the pool, I rarely push myself and often find myself switching to breaststroke when I should be working my heart rate up doing non-stop laps of freestyle.

Tonight, I found some additional inspiration swimming beside me. Two cute guys with killer swimmer bods (one was even wearing Speedos!) and super smooth strokes. Suddenly I found myself swimming faster, attempting to keep up even though all I did was eat their wake or dodging them as they barreled past me.

Near accidents aside, I was happy for anything to make the 45 minutes go by faster (and more pleasantly). On a more serious note, swimming alongside these guys made me push and push till my arms felt that so good it hurts burn. Something tells me I’ll be going back to that pool again, and soon.

Hey, it’s all in the name of training right?

Day 2/28 – Some sacrifices work out after all

Embarking on this diet goes against SO many of my fundamental inclinations.I’m not disciplined, I love to do whatever and I have a pretty busy social life which I hate missing even a moment of.
Last night, I had plans to go to Russell Peters with a group of friends. The subject of meeting earlier for dinner popped up, as always I did the organisation, except this time I planned not to show till the tail end of dinner.
It was too early in my diet to face the temptation of beer and pizza so I decided that it would be better to eat an early dinner (according to my meal plan) and avoid the temptation. All the way in the cab over, I tortured myself thinking about the fun I was missing out on, the jokes I wouldn’t hear – it sucked.
I rocked up to the sight of my friends standing by the river putting away takeaway pizza and warm beer – table issues. Suddenly my sacrifice didn’t feel so bad after all, and I even managed to dodge the temptation of having a beer.
I did feel bad of my friends though but the evening’s incident showed me I was on the road to developing some personal resolve.
Baby steps… Baby steps…

Day 1/28 – Don’t just weigh yourself, weigh your food!

No escaping the scales!

I’m not a disciplined person by nature; determined, but far from disciplined.

I grew up in a household that dissuaded me from eating a full bowl of white rice but encouraged me to heap on the ingredients – there you go, the start of a lifelong portion control delusion.

I honestly don’t know how much chicken breast I should have, or if one small tub of yoghurt is a single or double serve. Or if four slices of lean ham was too much – it was, this explains a lot!

I realize portion control is going to be the key to my success and since this life skill isn’t going to be learnt or perfected overnight, I should buy the help.

A kitchen scale, two measuring cups (1 wet, 1 dry), measuring spoons, smaller containers, even smaller plates – I needed all the right tools to make this easier.

And right because Day 1 breakfast already presented a quandary. The meal plan called for 2 slices of bread, but what if I got thick cut toast?

Yes, you can eat carbs, just don’t go crazy

I was spot on, I only needed one of these babies and midway through breakfast, I was already full!

This portion control stuff is going to take some learning – did I mention I hate numbers? – but if I nail it, I’ll be buttoning up those pants a lot sooner than I think.