21DFC Round-Up – How Has Your Experience Been?

1. How was 21DFC for you?
It was a great challenge!! I told myself: if I could get through this 21DFC, there’s no reason for me not to exercise 3 times a week!!

2. On a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is most useful and 1 is not useful at all), how useful has 21DFC been in pursuing your fitness goals? Why did you give that score?
I give myself a scale of 8 as I didn’t achieve one of my goals: lose weight.
However, I managed to reduce my waist size.

3. What did you like most about the challenge?
This is the first time I joined the challenge officially together with the community in PE. I learned a lot from other members, makes me feel great!

4. What did you like least?
Hmm… so far, everything is great to me.

5. Anything you would like to see at PE moving forward?
Same as Mrs and Monisha, I wish to see reading / listening to music challenge for 21 days if possible.

21DFC Day 21 – Create Your Fitness Plan Ahead

*Part-1 Review:*
1. How have you fared against these goals? Have you achieved them? Give as objective an assessment as possible.

My objectives were:
1. To exercise for at least 10 minutes without fail for the next 21 days.
2. To reduce my weight for at least 3kg.
3. To increase my stamina to run

My weight is still the same… But, my waist reduced for 2 inches. =.=
However, I managed to exercise at least 10 minutes everyday, and my stamina increases a little bit. I measured my stamina through climbing the stairs in my college. Besides, before this, whenever I finished exercising, I felt very tired, and just feel like going to sleep as soon as possible. Now, I feel even more refresh after exercising.

2. For your answer in #1, why?

I reflected, my main problem was that I didn’t really control my intake food well. Although I have tried to eat vegetables as much as possible. At the same time, I still eat meats a lot. I guess that is the reason why my weight didn’t reduce (and luckily it does not increase too). =.=

3. What are the key things you have learned during 21DFC?

Within these 21DFC, I learned a few types of exercises from the member of PE, through the comments posted by the members. I guess I would try out a those new exercises!
Also, I just got to know 2 days ago, the vertigo that I had earlier, was probably caused by jumping too much, especially if there is any injury caused to the ear previously.

*Part-2: Your Fitness Plan Ahead*
1. What are your fitness goals moving forward?
I will keep on continue until I can lose the weight until I reach my ideal weight (for now).

2. What are your key steps to achieve them?
Plan up the fitness activities and make sure that I stick to my plan as much as possible.

3. How are you going to ensure you stay true to your daily fitness habit moving forward?
Get some more friends to share the same goals and workout together, encouraging together.
Tell myself: *Busy can never be an excuse for not exercising!!*

21DFC Day 20 – Share What Has Worked For You

For me, I think that my mum is the biggest supporter towards my 21DFC. When she first heard from me about 21DFC, she said, “Good!! You really should exercise more to keep you healthie. I have asked you to but you are so lazy!!” XD
After that, she even invite me for jogging / walking in the evening after she finish cooking for dinner.
She also keeps on reminding me “Have you exercise today??” “When do you want to exercise??”

I feel grateful to have a mum like her!!

For myself, I’m using my own fitness mantra to keep myself from doing exercise: Busy can never be an excuse for not exercising!

No matter how busy I am, still, I will at least do some body stretching for 10 ~ 20 minutes.

Today, I haven’t done my exercise, just back from dental side. Later I will do for 30 minutes Home aerobics. Tomorrow, I must remember to bring my tower and sport shoes for gym after my class!! >.<

21DFC Day 19 – Try a Different Fitness Activity

I wish for a lot of sports, I admire people who go for diving, but I don’t have the chance to go for that, just had a chance to go for snorkeling a few years back. I wish to get a diving license, but I guess it needs good stamina and good in swimming. That is the reason why I wish to increase my stamina and learn swimming. :P Of course, money is one of the issues too…

Today, I have event tonight, so my time was quite rush, until I just took bread for dinner. Now I would just do around 20 minutes of stretching, then quickly go for meditation and sleep after all. I feel kind of exhausted today… >.<

21DFC Day 18 – Seek the Path of Highest Enjoyment

I completed my workout of 20 minutes today. It is not a long workout, but as what Celes mentioned, choose the workout that I want to do. This weekend, I will plan for swim most probably, or maybe got for hiking if possible.

Love the workout, then only we can keep it going.

21DFC Day 17 – Integrate Fitness into Your Life

Yesterday, I did a 20 minute run in place. As my mum left for a trip to Kuala Lumpur, my dad will not allow me to go exercise alone, so I can just do the home aerobics or run in place at home.

By the way, I noticed that my waist got slimmer for one more inch~! From 38 inch –> 37 inch last week, and this week become 36~~ Although, my weight is still the same…

About how I integrate fitness into my life, I set a reminder towards myself in the Microsoft outlook to remind me to exercise everyday. :P (I feel that I’m a bit of abusing the usage of Microsoft outlook reminder… haha) Alhough I have set my time to exercise everyday, but sometimes I might run out of time, so I use the reminder to remind me for an exercise, either stretching, or a formal exercise, or any physical activities.

21DFC Day 16 – Schedule The Time To Exercise Every Day

I know that we should set the schedule for exercise everyday. My schedule will be different from day to day in a week depends on my timetable in different semesters…

For this semester:
Mon – 5.30pm ~ 7:00pm
Tue – 7:30pm ~ 9:00pm (If I don’t have a function) / 11:00pm ~ 11:30pm (If I have function on that day)
Wed – 7:30pm ~ 9:00pm
Thu – 2:30pm ~ 4:30pm
Fri – 5:30pm ~ 7:00pm
Sat – 5:30pm ~ 7:00pm
Sun – 5:30pm ~ 7:00pm

This is my current schedule… I have function on Tuesday night twice a month, so I will do only simple stretching on Tuesday night. I hope this schedule will last until the end of this semester.

Today, I only did simple stretching for around 15 minutes as I was at outside the whole day, just got back home, and it is time to sleep. I will continue with my meditation before I sleep.

21DFC Day 15 – Create Your Fitness Mantra!

In these 15 days, I have created a few of mantras for myself without my conscious.

When I feel that I’m busy and no time to exercise:
–> Busy can never be the excuse.

When I feel tired to exercise:
–> 10 minutes of stretching must be able to refresh myself.

When I feel lazy to exercise:
–> The more I exercise, the better stamina I will have for traveling.

n general, I always tell myself since 1/1/2012:
–> Exercise can make me healthy all the while in year 2012!
(I fell sick for more than 6 times last year… broke my record >. I want to look thin and healthy.

The sky looked dark just now, so I just ran in place for 40 minutes. However, until now, I haven’t even seen a drop of rain… =.=

21DFC Day 14 – How Would You Rate Your Progress So Far? (And How Can You Make Week 3 Your Best Week Ever?)

It’s already 2 weeks~! After 2 weeks, my weight is still the just losing 1kg… However, my waist has become lean for about 1 inch. I hope that I can make it better in the last week! If I would to rate myself, I would rate as 8/10 this time. This week, I did better workout compared to last week, although it seems not shown up from my weight.

Today, initially I planned to go for gym in my college after class, but my forgetful brain asked me to leave my sport shoes at home!!! >.<
In the end, I decided to take a walk in a recreation park. When I reached there, then only I recalled, there were a few simple exercise equipments as below (I took these photos 7 years ago).

There is an archery field and a skateboard area in that park. While I was exercising using those machines, I also enjoyed seeing people practicing archery and skateboard.

I exercised for 45 minutes, then I went for the "stepping stone" road in the park for 15 minutes. I'm not sure what it is called… It is a road that fulled of small and sharp stones, which are for leg massage purpose. That was really painful when I first stepped on the stones, but I enjoyed the pains. XD

The feeling was nice to enjoy the natural environment while exercising, but I felt unsecured when I took the shower in the public bathroom. :S

21DFC Day 13 – What Do You Love About Exercising?

Honestly, I seldom exercise in the past, should say, I didn’t practice exercising weekly until last October. I’m still in the progress of embarking my interests towards exercise, so that I have full zest on it.

I remember, when I first decided to exercise 3 times a week, I noticed that I always feel tired after exercising, my eyes got smaller and smaller and I always yawn. So I slowly drop the practice. =.=”

Recently, I returned to the exercise practice. At first, I still feel tired, but after a month, I started to feel that I’m still fresh after exercising~~ ^^

However, today, still I did only 10 minutes stretching because of the internet connection issue at my home. When I was about to start to exercise, my house’s internet connection dropped, so my brother and I were trying to fix it. After one hour only we managed to fix it.

Tomorrow, I have the plan like last Thursday, go for gym after my class, then continue to my zither class. ^^

21DFC Day 12 – Why Did You Join 21-Day Fitness Challenge?

I joined 21DFC because I wanted to increase my stamina and also to drop 3kg of weight.

Today, my time was full, woke up at 5am, get ready with breakfast and some house chores. Left home at 7am, back home at 6.30pm then straight away headed to a functional event until 10:30pm. Just reached home, and I just can do 10 minutes of stretching, no heavy exercise for now as I need to sleep earlier for tomorrow’s early wake up again…

21DFC Day 11 – What is Your Favorite Time To Exercise?

My favorite time to exercise, it depends on the activities.

If it is to swim or hike, I prefer it to be in the morning, when the sun is still young and soft, or even before the sun wakes up. The feeling is nice when I can swim in the pool without many people swimming together. And, if I could hike up to the hill to look for the sun coming up, that feeling would be fresh and excited!

If it is to walk, jog or cycle, I prefer to do it in the evening, around 5 ~ 6 pm. It is the time when the sun is about to get back home and I would have the time to appreciate the few-minute of sunset. Besides, I will be able to capture the moment of sunset with my camera. ^^

Today, I went for an evening walk with my mum again, for one hour. We changed our walking route.
On Day-9, we walked for 1.29 miles; Today, we walked even more, 1.93 miles in total.

We went through the gardens in neighborhood and 2 playgrounds, looked at the vegetables and flowers they plant, looked at the children playing around in the playgrounds.
It made me recalled my life when I stayed in my father’s house in the village. We used to plant a lot of vegetables, and that was the time I learned to differentiate the vegetable plants, and captured many photos of caterpillars, spiders, insects, etc. My sister-in-law also captured a caterpillar to show to my nephew and niece on how a caterpillar transforms to a butterfly.

Those are good memories~! When I retire, I have a plan to have this kind of village life too~ ^^

21DFC Day 10 – How Committed Are You To Achieving a Healthier, Fitter Body?

If I would to rate my commitment to achieve a healthier, fitter body, I would rate as 7 for now.

Why? Because I still can hardly control on my diet. I’m committed to do exercise everyday since the first day of 21DFC, but in term of diet, I still need to put in more effort to control it.

I guess I will need to start on tracking what I have eaten through out the day again like what I did during the 21DHL previously.

—————————————————————-

Today, I didn’t go for sweating exercise, I just finished my 30 minutes of body stretching. It’s late now, so I don’t want to take bathe again, just do some body stretching.

It’s already 11:55pm…Time to go to bed.

21DFC Day 9 – What is Your #1 Obstacle to Becoming Fitter – and How Do You Plan To Overcome It?

Today’s question: What are my #1 obstacles to becoming fitter?
I think, that would be my laziness. I rather spend time to do my work, or play games, watch anime, write blogs, and I didn’t even think of doing some exercise.

Whenever I think of exercising, I look at the outside and tell myself:
1. So hot….
2. It’s going to rain
3. Ah… need to go out again?
4. I wish to have a nap first…
5. I’m busy now, will try to do it later if I have the time.

So now, I have to integrate fitness into my life.
1. If it’s hot – good time to go for a swim
2. If it’s going to rain / don’t want to go out – home aerobics / run in place
3. Instead of having a nap, try to do some exercise or do something that I like.
4. Tell myself: Busy? Busy can never be an excuse! Do or do not, there’s no try!

By the way, today, my mum asked me to go for an evening walk with her. She read an article, saying that in fact, walking is better than jogging. There are many people having knee problems after frequent jogging. Some of my friends’ parents are having the same problems too. I was thinking, is it probably that they jog in the wrong way? What is the correct way of jogging? That’s my thought, maybe I can do a simple research on this matter later.

I went for the walk with my mum for one hour. Along the way, I took a few photos, and I saw rainbows!! It’s been long time that I haven’t seen a rainbow! And there were 2 layers of rainbows in the sky! ^^

Below is the link to the photo album of the photos taken during the walk.

21DFC Day 8 – What is Your Favorite Fitness Activity?

It was Day 8 yesterday. From the blog post, a question was posted to ask what my favourite fitness activities are.

I have a few favourite fitness activities. When I do fitness activity, I always need to consider the weather if it is an outdoor activity, thus I prefer more on indoor activities, especially the activity that can be done at home. So, both home aerobics and run in place at home are my favourite activities. I don’t feel bored when doing these exercises at home as I have something to concentrate on. I usually concentrate on movie, anime or mucic.

For outdoor activities, I like swimming the most. I’m a person that easily get sweat, so I like to stay in water. XD
I like cycling, hiking and jogging too. With all these activities, you will know that I seldom join other people for sports. I love to take my own sweet time to do whatever I like, without bothering who I’m staying with, what time I should end my exercise. =.="

Back to yesterday’s exercise, initially, I planned to go for cycling after I got back home, but I was exhausted when I reached home, so I went for a nap. By the time I woke up, it’s already 6:30pm, time to have dinner. =.="

I finally decided not to go for cycling, and changed my plan to run in place in my room for 45 minutes while enjoying my anime. I watched an anime about playing piano, so there are a lot of time that piano music was played in that movie. Again, I enjoyed the piano music, although I haven’t learned piano before.

Besides, yesterday, I weigh myself, I have lost 1 kg!!! Yeah~~~ I hope that the number will keep on decreasing~!!! XD

What about tomorrow’s plan? Tomorrow is a Saturday… Maybe I can go for a swim if time permits or else I will go for cycling as I missed it today.

P/s: Today, I counted, I have climbed 10 storey of staircase, separately. Haha~~ In the morning, I went up to my office in the 3rd floor, so I climbed 3-storey staircase. Then I get down to the venue of my class in the first floor of another building, I climbed one-storey staircase. After the class, I climbed up the 3-storey staircase back to my office again. After that, I went out to have lunch with my colleague and come back, climbed the third time of 3-storey staircase. In total, I have climbed 10 storey of staircase… >.<"

21DFC Day 7

It’s been one week since I started this 21DFC!! Yesterday was Day 7, I planned earlier that I would go for gym in my college one hour after I took lunch.

I went exactly according to my plan! ^^

My class finished at 1pm, went to have lunch with colleague until 1:30pm, rest for 1 hour+, then bought a ticket to the gymnasium in my college. I started to run on the treadmill at 3pm, and stopped after 30 minutes. I ran for 2.6km, burned 153 calories. ^^

After taking the bathe and came out from the club house, I could see the mountain at the back of the club house, felt the wind, the feeling was really nice and relaxing!!

Again, I hope that I can make it happen for every Thursday of this semester!! ^^

21DFC Day 6

It supposes to be the journal of 2 days ago, 8 February, Day 6. I got back home late. One hour after taking dinner, I ran in place for 30 minutes while watching anime. I usually run in place either by listening to music, or watching anime. To me, I enjoy activities like this to relax myself.

Although it was only half an hour, but at least I moved on with the plan.
And, on that day itself, another colleague said that I look thinner even I was wearing the same shirt like before!! That really motivate me to continue moving!

Day 7, my class will end at 1pm. After the class, I will go to have lunch with colleagues and then plan to go for gym in my college around 2:30pm for only RM1.50 per entry. After the gym, I will take a bathe in college then go to zither class straight away. I hope this plan moves for every Thursday of this semester (7 weeks) ~

21DFC Day 5

Today, Day 5, finally I got the chance to do home aerobics for about 30 minutes. Below is the video clip of the home aerobics that I follow usually.

The actions are not too hard as I have knee problem, yet I start sweating after 5 minutes.

Tomorrow I will have class until 5pm. By the time I reach home, it will be late, so I guess I will only go for running in place as normal. Listening to music / watching anime will running in place is quite enjoyable to me. :P

P/s:
I just got to know that, yesterday I felt dizzy, and that was the vertigo effect. I knew the word in Mandarin, and today my friend just told me the word in English --> Vertigo. It is because of a dysfunction of the vestibular system in the inner ear. As far as I know, there is no medicine for this type of dizziness, usually it is caused by the heat within the body.

I ate too much of biscuits and Mandarin oranges during the CNY... That's probably the cause of the vertigo happening.   :p Luckily, the dizziness has gone now.

21DFC Day 4

Day 4, this morning, I had a sudden dizziness. When I was reading something on the computer, I suddenly felt that I was unable to balance my head. I laid down on my bed, and I felt that the room was spinning!

I fell asleep after all, but the condition remained the same after I woke up. In the evening, I took a bathe then suddenly I heard a sound “wong…”, and the dizziness had gone.

It was weird. However, I managed to do a simple walk for around 15 minutes, cannot make it for home aerobics again as my plans were massed up by the dizziness.

I really hope that I can make it for home aerobics tomorrow…

21DFC Day 3

Day 3, or I should say, 5-Feb, I ran in place for 20 minutes. Due to short of time, I didn’t do home aerobics and the video clips I have for home aerobics are more than 30 minutes usually.

After all, I went out for a gathering with friends again until now, I just got back home after 12am. Because of the Thaipusam festival in Malaysia, it was all traffic jam everywhere. So I had to park my car far far away from the shopping center, which I needed to walk for around 15 minutes to reach the shopping center. It was a long way along the seaside, but I felt good breathing in the air from the seaside.

Tomorrow, I will do my home aerobics which I planned to do today earlier.