21DHL-Day 15: Practice Conscious Eating

Day 15's task is to practice conscious eating.

Since I was young, my grandmother always stopped us from talking while having our meals. I can't remember, since when that I started to talk while eating, read while eating, watch movie while eating, and even play game while eating sometimes.

Today's task is a good opportunity to review back all my bad habits, all the teachings from my grandmother. Yes, I should start to practice conscious eating again. It is not only good for health, it shows appreciation towards the person who prepared the food for me.

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After I got back from the family trip, I gained weight of 1.5 kg!! >.<

Then, I controlled my diet and did some exercises, finally my weight returned back to 76 kg today. I still have only 6 days to go for 21DHL. It seems hard for me to reduce even 1 kg...

Anyway, as planned, I exercised today, and I will continue for the rest of the days in this week. Then, as a continuation of this challenge, I have signed up for the next challenge - 21DEC to do more exercises, vary my exercise activities!!

And tonight, I took 90% of vegetables for my dinner. Although I didn't stick to my ideal meal plan, but at least I attached to my goal of eating more vegetables. After dinner, my mum found a Mandarin orange from the fridge, and of course, it is in my stomach now. =.=" Luckily, there's only one Mandarin orange left and not more than that...

Again, below is the update of my daily intake food. I recorded it everyday.
Daily Food Record

That's all for tonight, it's time to sleep now...

21DHL-Day 14: Review & Plan for Last Week Ahead!

It's been 2 weeks for this 21DHL!! One week left... When I look back my first post of the challenge:

I hope that I will be able to lose at least 3kg from my current weight of 76kg. At least 3kg, that means, I hope to lose more than 3kg if possible. XD

It seems that I can hardly reach this target...
Never mind, as long as I have done my best!!

Now, review back my past one week, although I was traveling, but it was good that I still could follow the challenge everyday. However, if I would to rate myself for the performance of the past one week, I would only rate it as 7 (slightly better than the first week's performance).

I continued drinking at least 2 liters of water everyday.
I did workout 5 days out of 7 days although for some days, I didn't do workout for more than 30 minutes but just purely walking because of the travel.
I did meditation more than 3 times a week.
I sleep before 11pm most of the days because I needed to drive for long journey on the next day.
For the past few days, I kept on reminding myself to eat more vegetables, and I did eat more vegetables.
I didn't eat much of junk food other than formal meals as compared to the first week.
I hope that I can keep this record, or even make a better record!

Now I'm back to my home, I started to control on my diet again, eat less Mandarin oranges (In fact, the Mandarin oranges have all been finished). I finished more than 38 Mandarin oranges counting since the beginning of 21DHL... =.=" Gosh...

For the next one week, the last week of 21DHL, I plan to exercise everyday. How long? At least 20 minutes. I'm a person that sweat a lot, 20 minutes of running in place can wet off almost quarter of my shirt. If the time is allowed, I plan to go for swimming again~!

Also, EAT MORE VEGETABLES!!!

21DHL-Day 13: Explore Your Relationship With Food

Today is the Day 13 of this challenge, started with the task: explore my relationship with food. This task needs my deep thinking on why do I overeat, or why do I eat even when I’m not feeling hungry.

So, I have to keep on asking myself the question “Why?”. Here I started the questions…

1. I asked myself, when do I overeat usually?
The answer is when I have meals with my family or friends, especially when I have gathering with friends / colleagues.

2. Why do I overeat during those occasions?
Because I see a lot of NICE food on the menu, which I like to eat a lot.

3. Why are those food that I like so much?
Those are meat food. Again, I like chicken and pork a lot.

4. Why don't I choose the food with more vegetables?
Honestly, I don't really like to eat vegetables. Or, I should say, I eat only a few types of vegetables. Besides, if I could get food with meat, I would automatically go for it, instead of getting a food with more vegetables.

5. Why do I dislike vegetables?
Simply because of the taste / smell. I don't like the taste of vegetables, such as bell pepper, lady fingers, leek, bean curd stick, mushroom, etc.

6. Why does the taste not good?
It is my personal taste habits...
However, when I think back about the vegetables that I like, there are many types too. I eat cabbages, carrots, long beans, tofu, potatoes, etc. It depends on me, whether I want to eat vegetables or not. When I see the food with chicken / pork, I feel like not missing the chance to eat them.

Back to the question #4 again, why don't I choose the food with more vegetables?
I feel that it is more worth to have food with meat, in comparable price. =.=" In some restaurants, both food with vegetables and meat are almost the same price, yet food with meat makes me feel full.

It seems like now come to the problem of worthy in term of money. =.=
All right, I should change my mindset on that... I should throw away the term "money" ($$) in my heart to compare the prices of the food with / without meat. I should think about my health before money.

I have to train myself on that. Eat more vegetables! It is not the problem about those vegetables that I don't like, it is the problem if I'm willing to eat vegetables.

Yeah, keep it in my mind when I'm eating --> Healthy!! Vegetables!!

21DHL–Day 12: Evaluate Your Relationship With Food

I just realized that I skipped blogging on Day 12’s task yesterday.

Day 12, it's already more than 1 week of this challenge. Today's task is to evaluate the relationship between me and food.

According the thread, from the 12 Indicative Sign of Emotional Eating, I have 3 signs, out of the 12 signs of emotional eating.

1. You have trouble losing weight (due to the way you eat)
2. Your eating is out of control (You can’t stop yourself from eating)
3. You use emotionally-charged words to describe food / eating

From the test (?), I have the following result:
Group B: You have an okay, somewhat average relationship with food, which can be improved much further. While food doesn't cause you much anguish, it certainly doesn't serve your healthy living goals either. The next steps in the today's exercise will help you do that.

I have the same type of parents like Celes, my parents buy a lot of food for me and my siblings. They always afraid that the food is not enough for us, so they buy extra food. My mum always cook the food that we like to eat, so mostly are the food of chicken / pork / fish.

Besides that, sometimes I don't have regular meal time too especially during weekends, I may have only one meal for the whole day and I don't feel hungry.

I have to take off this habit off. I'm still doing my best to stick to the ideal meal plan...

I will post Day 13’s task later…

21DHL-Day 11: Identify Your Healthy Living Pitfalls

Today, Day 11’s task is to identify my healthy living pitfalls.

Here are my pitfalls:

• Laziness - If the time is too late, I skip doing exercise on that day.
• Being choosy in food - I always like to have meat in my meals, instead of vegetables.
• Meeting up with friends / family and have NICE food
• Interested in many things, all activities need to spend some time to complete them - I'm a person that always like to make myself so busy, busy in anything that I'm interested in. For eg: reading, drawing, doing handicrafts, playing zithers, editing photos, being active in club activities, etc.
• Reading blogs, view other people's art work, etc.
• watch anime / movie - Although I seldom watch anime / movies, but once I started to watch a series, I can hardly stop myself from watching it, until I finish the whole series.

If I would to categorize my pitfalls, then they would be...:

• Feel unmotivated to continuous exercising
• Being choosy in food
• Poor in planning

I have fixed my exercise days, but often due to some unforeseen incidents, like helping my family in doing something and it drags my time -- This is the excuse that I always give to myself.
So, I guess I need to adjust my exercise time...

And, to avoid choosy in food, I think I need to force myself to have more vegetables... Or... is there any better way to make myself to eat more vegetables? (Yes, I'm kind of forcing myself to take more vegetables these few days... =.=" )

Of course, this would be a continuous journey through out the whole life. I hope that I can do it.

By the way, today, I didn't take caffeine for the whole day. No coffee at all. Tomorrow, I will be going for breakfast with family, which will definitely drink a lot of Chinese tea. But the Chinese tea does not contain caffeine. :)
If anyone of you take Chinese tea, please take note on the content of the Chinese tea. Some Chinese tea contains caffeine, which I seldom take usually.

21DHL-Day 10: Have A Caffeine-free Day

Today is already Day 10 of 21DHL. Today’s task is to have a caffeine-free day.

Honestly, 3-in-1 coffee and black coffee are in my ideal meal plan. I'm not a caffeine-addicted person. I put that those two items in my ideal meal plan because it is the easiest drink I can get for breakfast and lunch (Again, I'm a lazy person...). XD

In that case, I would change my ideal meal plan again. Usually, if I'm not rushing for early classes, I blend fruit juice as drink for breakfast and therefore I don't take 3 in 1 coffee for my breakfast on that day. Whereas during lunch, I still can change to order other drinks when I have lunch in the food court... Let me think, maybe I can get a cup of hot barley instead of coffee.

Hmm, yes, I can change my ideal meal plan as stated above.
Today, I already had my 3-in-1 coffee as my ideal meal plan. =.="
So, start from tomorrow onwards, I will do my best to have caffeine-free days until the end of this 21DHL.

That’s all for today.

21DHL-Day 9: Eat 5 Servings Of Fruits / Vegetables

Now, come to Day 9: Eat 5 servings of fruits / vegetables.

I read through the list of items in the thread, it seems that is a little bit hard for me to get those vegetables / fruits. But, how can I measure whether I have enough of the servings of vegetables / fruits?

I went through the other websites, found out from this site, saying that one serve of vegetables is 75 grams, and one serve of fruits is 150 grams. With this guide, I will be able to measure if I have enough vegetables / fruits.
In terms of fruits, definitely I'm taking enough of fruits these few days. Mandarin oranges, I can take more than 5 per day =.=" I also eat apples, bananas, etc.

Whereas for vegetables, it is a little bit hard for me. I seldom eat vegetables and I'm now doing my best to eat as much of vegetables as possible. Keep on reminding myself that I need to eat more vegetables.

Keep going

21DHL-Day 8: Get A Great Workout

Yesterday, I did the Day 8’s task: Get a great workout. But, because I felt tired last night, I didn’t update in this blog.

The thread said that we can increase our daily activity level. Yes, after I changed my job, I would need to climb 4-floored stairs everyday, not only once a day, but many times a days. In fact, I'm a lecturer in a college. My office is at the 4th floor, without a lift. Everyday, before / after the classes, I need to climb up and down the stairs back and forth my office and the venues. Some lecturers said, everyday, each of the lecturers climbs a 10-floored stairs averagely.. I agree. =.="

One thing I realized was that, my stamina does increase since the first day I start my working life in this college. Now, I can "educate" my students when I see them climb up to my office with all the hard breaths. XD
Other exercises that I usually do (just the matter of frequency of the exercises...):

• Cycling
• Jogging
• Home aerobics
• Swimming
• Hiking

Today, I didn't do formal exercise, but I walked. Tomorrow will be a rest for the whole family. I will take this chance to go for a swim or jog.

One thing, I would like to share with you, the aerobics that I do following the youtube video clips.

21DHL-Day 7: Review & Plan for Week 2

Today is the Day 7 of the 21DHL: Review & Plan for Week 2

If I would to rate my performance on my health and fitness in the past week, I would give myself a 6 from scale 1 ~ 10. Why? It's just because I couldn't follow my meal plan. I could follow my fitness plan to workout for 1 ~ 3 days in a week, but not for meal plan.

I didn't eat too much as compared to my meal plan, but I ate too less. I didn't eat vegetables. I did eat fruits, the Mandarin oranges especially. =.=" I ate a lot. Today, finally, I managed to control it because I was traveling for almost the whole day. XD

Still, I drank a lot of water, to prevent from illness in the CNY period of time. I really hate being sick while traveling...
Also, I didn't do meditation for many times. In fact, I plan to do meditation 3 times a week, but ended up done only once in the past week. Reason? I was busy preparing for Chinese New Year --> valid reason? By the way, any valid / invalid reason is invalid to me. I was just giving excuses to myself for being lazy. Ish... Doing my best to avoid from laziness.

Alright, for the 2nd week, I will be traveling for the whole week. I hope that I can continue with my meal plan. For the fitness goal, I believe I will be walking a lot through out the journey. In term of life style, yes, I would need to sleep earlier... and do meditation 3 times a week!!

That's all for today... and it is 10:20pm now, time to prepare to go to bed as my stated goal. ^^

21DHL-Day 6: Follow Your Ideal Meal Plan

Today, come to day 6: Follow your ideal meal plan.

Today, I gave a good excuse to myself: reunion dinner.
Since it was a reunion dinner, I couldn’t eat less, right? XD

I know, I know, it is not a valid reason. Well, I still managed to control myself within the range of my TDEE calories. It was just that, I couldn’t stop myself from eating Mandarin oranges!!! >.<

Sigh… I just couldn’t help myself on that. I could control myself from eating other favorite food, or even junk food, but only this Mandarin oranges!! Why? Because I can only eat that during the Chinese New Year period. =.= This shows that I really appreciate the chances I have for anything at anytime.

Right, back to topic. After today (in fact, it should be today, the time is 12:21am now), I will be leaving for a family trip during the Chinese New Year period. I hope that I can still stick to my meal plan everyday. I will do my best! However, I might not be able to follow the challenge daily. Only when I have the time to look through the challenge’s tasks, then I will be able to follow the challenge.

That’s all for now. Time to go to bed. For those Chinese around the world, hereby, I wish you Happy Chinese New Year! Happy Dragon year!!

21DHL–Day 4: Create Your Ideal Meal Plan

Day 4’s task: Create Your Ideal Meal Plan

Nothing much today, again, I spent a lot of time in creating this ideal meal plan. I kept adjusting the plan, and I uploaded the image file below a few times (5 times uploaded because of the adjustment). Well, here it is:

Hmm, when we say “Ideal”, yeah, it is really my ideal meal plan, but how many days can I maintain it? or how long can I maintain this plan?

Hah! Today itself, I didn’t follow it, I ate a lot of junk food today. I couldn’t stand with those junk food putting in front of me without putting into my mouth! Gosh! Especially mandarin orange, my favourite fruit for the whole Chinese New Year! You cannot imagine, I took 5 mandarin orange today! =.="

Definitely, the total calories taken today is already over, much much over from the TDEE calculated earlier on. Hmm… Tomorrow, I would need to control it back… Control, control, control!!!

Today, I updated the excel file again, added another worksheet Daily Calories, which is to summarize how much of calories taken everyday. For now, I just show until the end of this challenge, 21 days.

Alright, it’s time to sleep. After watching a nice detective movie series, I could feel the feeling of satisfactory! XD

Good night, all!

21DHL–Day 3: Calculate Your Daily Energy Expenditure

Coming to Day 3’s task of 21DHL: Calculate your daily energy expenditure

Today, I spent 3 hours to complete this task… Not much actually, just that I wanted to go through what is talking about in the calculation process.

We are able to calculate the total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) by using the following formula:

TDEE = Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) + Calories burned from activities

BMR means the calories burned when a person do absolutely nothing. For BMR calculation, it depends on 4 variables: gender, weight, height, age. I’m using weight and height in metric unit, so the formulas are as below:

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) - ( 6.8 x age in years )

After the BMR is calculated, take the BMR to multiply with a number according to Harris Benedict Equation to obtain the minimum energy needed for the body. In my case, my BMR calculated is 1537.
Then, I’m a lazy person, do exercise only once a week, so I take my BMR multiply with 1.375 ––> 1537 x 1.375 = 2113.38 calories

That means, If I were not do anything in one whole day, I’m burning 1537 calories. Whereas if I were to do exercise, then I will be burning 2113.38 calories.

Also, another task, I was requested to calculate the difference of my ideal weight and current weight, and see how much of weight that I should reduce. Now, I go for my targeted weight first because I’m having a bet with my friends to see if I can reduce 10 kg before 10 April.

Now I have reduced 2 kg, thus I still have 8 kg to go. 8 kg = 2.2 x 8 = 17.6 lb.

To lose 1 lb, I will need to reduce 3500 calories; 17.6 lb will require to reduce 3500 x 17.6 = 61600 calories.
Assume that I wish to reduce 61600 in 80 days, meaning that everyday I will need to reduce around 770 calories.

Meaning, if my TDEE is 2113.38 calories, then I should intake only 1343.38 calories, or if I intake more calories, then I will need to do more exercise to reduce the calories. What a hard job… But I will still do my best, but I know, if I would to reduce that much of calories, it is not healthy. Again, I will do my best in a healthy way.

Anyway, I have updated the google docs: 21DHL_Calories
Added 2 worksheets:

• TDEE for the calculation of Day 3's tasks
• My daily food record - I hope that I won't lose track for this worksheet...

I will keep it updated from time to time.

21DHL–Day 2: Create A Calories List

Today, the 2nd day of 21DHL, which came along with a difficult task for me: Create a calories list.

The task required me to come out with a list of food taken within the past one week, and find out the calories and fat contained in the food listed.

Hmm… I have never done this before. To me, it is very difficult for me to control my eating habit, that was the reason why I didn’t create one. However, when I started to create this list, then only I realized… how hard to create a list of this. Since I’m following this challenge, yes, this is a challenge to me, and I will complete it.

It spent me hours to search around for the calories contained in the food items. Although I didn’t take much of different food, but it was still hard for me to search in English. >.<

Well, my English is not so good, and the English websites categorize the each food item in a very detailed method, include how the food is cooked. Wah… that was tedious to look through all items and figure out how the food was cooked… =.=" Luckily, I found a website in Mandarin that was recommended in the thread, which allows the users to check the calories in Mandarin. XD

Here I upload the excel file into the google docs: 21DHL_Task2_Calories

I included the food taken today, as requested in the Day 2’s task. And yes, this is also a continuous task until the last day of this challenge.

Lastly, today, I drank around 2.5 liters of water – just a record for myself.

That’s all for tonight. Good night!

21DHL–Day 1: Drink The Right Amount of Water

Yesterday, I started another challenge: 21 Days of Healthy Life. Today, here starts the first task: Drink the right amount of water.

According to the thread, we can roughly calculate the amount of water that needed by our body everyday. There are 2 ways of calculations:

1. If you calculate your weight in pounds, divide your weight by 2. That is the amount of water (in ounces) needed by your body per day.
2. If you calculate your weight in kilograms, divide your weight by 30. That is the amount of water (in liters) needed by your body per day.

Then, assume that the fluid contained in the food you take contributes 20% of the water we needed. So you may take the result calculated earlier, multiply it by 80%. That is the water you should take in everyday.

For me, I use the second method. My current weight is 76 kg, so the amount of water needed by my body per day:
76kg / 30 = 2.53 liters of water needed per day

Then, deduct 20% of the fluid contained in the food intake:
2.53 liters * 80% = 2.02 liters of water need to be intake per day

In this case, I'm wondering, should I change my ideal vision to be around 2 liter of water, instead of 3 liter of water per day? In fact, I'm taking more than 2 liter of water everyday. As mentioned in the thread, I usually drink water before I go to bed, after I wake up, before / after my meals and during my working hours.

I started this habit only 3 months ago. Before that, I seldom take water, and I didn't feel thirsty at all. I drank water only when I felt thirsty. I knew it was a bad habit, but I always forgot about drinking water. Now, I put the water bottle in front of me most of the time, either in office, in class, in my room, or anywhere. It is to remind me of drinking water.

I will continue this habit not only in this 21DHL, but the rest of my life.

21 Days of Healthy Life (21DHL)

After a rest from this blog, again, I’m back; again, I’m following a challenge in Personal Excellence. What is new now? Again, I’m late, late to this challenge again. I just started it today.

This is a challenge that touches my aim in losing weight. This challenge is 21 Days of Healthy Life (21DHL).Yeah!! What an encouragement! So, I began.

First of all, I’m requested to start a pre-work task before I really start it off. There are 3 steps:

Step 1: List down my ideal life style, ideal weight and ideal diet

1. My ideal weight is 65kg, not too thin, but fit.
2. I'm well-fit into those dresses sold in the market.
3. I have good stamina for hiking in shorter time.
4. I'm taking less chicken and pork, more vegan diet and fish
5. I drink at least 3 liters of water per day
6. I take more iron contented food to increase the volume of hemoglobin
7. I exercise 3 times a week: Monday, Wed, Sat / Sun
8. I sleep between 10:30 ~ 11:00 pm every day

Step 2: State my target achievement after this 21DHL
Definitely, I would like to lose weight! I hope that I will be able to lose at least 3kg from my current weight of 76kg. At least 3kg, that means, I hope to lose more than 3kg if possible. XD

Step 3: List down the necessary steps to complete this target in step 2

1. Exercise at least 3 times a week, at least 45 minutes every time
2. Take less chocolate food and meat
3. Take more vegetables and fish
4. Have dinner before 7pm every day
5. Go to bed before 11pm
6. Meditation for half an hour, 3 times a week

Whether or not I’m able to achieve it, it depends on my determination. There are too much temptation out there. How much I can control myself? Let’s work it out! I know I can!