? Month Update - The End

I don't know exactly how many months it's been, but it's sure been a while. My updates are that I have continued to eat as much raw food as I can and am now completely vegetarian and mostly vegan. I may at times have traces of dairy in my food at restaurants. I've taken up some new activities, including running, rock climbing, and yoga. I've always done yoga, but I'm more intentional about it now and incorporating mindfulness instead of using it as a physical workout, which it really is not supposed to be. I find the mindfulness is extremely helpful for overall health. Which brings me to my next point, which is that since I decided I wanted to adopt a healthier lifestyle, I've come to a place at which I am no longer concerned about my weight. I have continued to lose weight since my last update, but I don't think it's important for me to report exactly how much or even know for myself how much it is. I've come to love my body for all the things it can do, its strength and flexibility, its ability to act as a tool to help me interact with the people and places in my world. Because of that, I think this is a good place to end my short little blog. Maybe I'll repurpose it again for my next obsession!

4 Month Update

No update for so long! I just forgot. No excuses. Anyway I wanted to give an update on my fitness journey. I started this blog around the new year so I'll consider this my 4 month update. I see myself having gone through 3 stages so far this year:

Late December-January: Insanity 6x/week and watchful eating
February: Insanity 3-4x/week and calorie restriction to 1100 cal
March-April: Insanity 1-2x/week and transitioning to raw veganism

Which stage did I lose the most weight in? March-April, no contest. I lost of couple of pounds in January and February, but it was most fluctuating due to water weight. I remember telling people who asked me how Insanity is going that I hadn't lost any weight, but my stamina was good and I could run up and down flights of stairs without stopping midway.

At some point, I started watching YouTube videos of raw vegans who were promoting their lifestyle. I was really intrigued, because I was calorie restricting and it was really hard for me. I was constantly thinking about food and using those iPhone apps, which did really help me realize what bad foods I was eating. Despite how helpful they were, I was getting bogged down in the details and for me, thinking about my calories obsessively wasn't good for my mental health. I know this works for a lot of people, though, so I'm not saying it's a bad idea and as I said, it did help me in the beginning.

I saw that raw vegans can eat a lot of food: 2000-3000 calories for people with smaller frames, including women. One of the videos that really shocked me was this one. That was double what I was eating! At that point, I didn't care if I was only allowed to eat salad, I wanted to eat more. But I've been transitioning for about a month now and of course, there's a lot more you can eat besides kale.

It's been really delicious to eat clean, with fruits and veggies making up about half of my diet. The other half is oatmeal, yogurt, granola, boiled dumplings that my dad brings me, and eating out. When I eat out I just eat whatever I'm in the mood for, which is sometimes a salad but sometimes a burger. I don't try to restrict these days, I just try to eat as much fresh raw food as possible, and in the end there's not as much room for cooked meat, dairy, and wheat.

Although my cravings for cooked food haven't gone away, I notice now that when I eat poorly I don't feel great. Yesterday I had an order of fries from one of my favorite restaurants and felt sick afterwards, when before that kind of greasy meal would not have affected my body.

So how much weight have I lost overall? So far, 10 pounds. Going to keep going.

iPhone Apps for Intake

Watching your diet is essential when transitioning to a healthy lifestyle. I don't think you need to calorie  count your whole life, but when starting to eat healthy, finding out the calorie content of what you often eat can be extremely helpful in busting down your some of your misconceptions about food. For example, when I started to count calories, I realized that the hummus, bananas, avocados, and pineapple that I would previously gorge on unlimitedly actually are pretty calorie dense. For avocados, those calories come from fat, and for pineapples, the calories come from a ridiculous amount of sugar. Whole foods are great, but if you are trying to lose weight the calorie dense whole foods should still be eaten in moderation. After I reach my goal weight, I hope to not have to be as restrictive, but by then I also believe that my body will crave healthier, and not crave calories that I don't need.

When I was younger, I used to look up how many calories are in what I ate and write it down in a notebook. These days, I use technology to help me keep track. Lots of people use MyFitnessPal, but the iPhone app that I'm using is called Lose It! I don't think it matters which one you use because they're pretty similar. You can get a weight loss goal, such as 1 pound per week, enter your weight, and the app will calculate how many calories you can eat. What I really like about it is that it tells you the nutritional content of the food you eat as well, so you can easily keep track of your carbs/protein/fat ratio and keep that in check. I try for 50/25/25 but often end up higher in fat and lower in protein, unfortunately. The other great thing about this app is that for packaged foods, which you should obviously limit, you can scan the barcode to input the food. For everything else, you look it up in their pretty extensive catalog. One thing is that they don't have a lot of Asian foods in the catalog, so if you eat pho and dumplings, you'll have to calculate those on your own and input them. Once you input a new food once, you can save it and use it again. Here's what the interface looks like:

Of course, how many calories you eat is not the only important factor in transitioning to a healthier diet. One thing I've learned from watching a lot of raw vegan YouTube videos is that 2,000 calories from a ton of fruits and vegetables, which raw vegans eat every day, is not the same as 2,000 calories from two Cheesecake Factory burgers. Although that seems obvious, it's easy to start counting calories and "make room" for your favorite greasy, processed foods by eating less of other foods, but this is not a good idea and should be done sparingly. Eating whole foods gives your body the vitamins and minerals it needs to function properly, as well as giving you more energy so that you burn more throughout the day from activity. So I found another great app that helps you keep track of the quality of the foods that you are eating called The Eatery. You upload pictures of every meal, and other people who use the app rate the fatness or fitness of your meal on a scale from 1-100. Of course, the opinions of others are not that reliable in determining the health of your diet, so it's still important for you to keep track of your calories and nutrients quantitatively. I just like the interactive nature of The Eatery because it keeps you accountable to someone other than yourself. It's good to make a rule that you will take a picture of everything you eat, so you don't portray a biased version of your diet. It's great to look back at what you ate throughout the day or week and figure out your eating patterns visually. 

I'm sticking to a 1 pound per week weight loss plan on Lose It! and trying to keep my fitness scale on The Eatery at 80 and above. Took a break from Insanity, but going to do a workout right now, actually.  Going to start month two after moving into my new apartment this weekend. I hope my roommate will do it with me for extra motivation.

What is a "cheat" day?

I have heard that some people who are living a healthy lifestyle or dieting temporarily (not smart) give themselves a "cheat" day during which they are allowed to eat more than usual, or eat less clean foods. It can range from eating whatever you want, all day, to eating about 500 calories more than you usually do, to eating the same amount of calories but allowing yourself to have ice cream or something. Some say it's good to shock your body by eating more than you usually do once in a while to keep your metabolism up. However, I find that hard to believe. Eating a lot, especially of junk or processed foods, tends to spike the blood sugar and thus insulin, which leads to our bodies storing more fat even when we switch to clean foods. I think that having the same diet all the time is actually ideal, because we teach our bodies to be fat burners by giving them a dependable schedule of calorie and nutrient intake. When we let our blood sugar get down too low by not eating, we train our bodies to hang onto every calorie they get and store them as fat instead of burning them. Rather, I think it's healthy to allow ourselves little "cheat" moments in which we give into strong cravings for food, or when we really want a bite of something delicious from a friend's plate at a restaurant, and loosen our restriction rules to live realistically. In the end, I would rather take actions that will contribute to my ability to eat healthy for life than actions that will help me lose an extra pound, which I will eventually gain back, this week.

Thus, I have to come to the conclusion that I don't approve of my Thursday night actions of eating cookies and drinking vodka. Of course drinking made me really tired, so I also didn't do my Insanity workout. Today I had to do double Insanity again. It's really a bad habit for me to skip because I don't think doing two workouts in a day is as beneficial as doing the intended workout every day, and I feel that it's a slippery slope. 

Daily Workouts and Hair Washing

I recently dyed my hair at the tips, meaning I processed it about 5 times to get the proper ombre effect, which left my ends dry as the Sahara and splitting in a million directions. I tried to self remedy with a trim, which yielded acceptable results. Anyway, my problem now is that I really cannot wash this fragile hair more than once every other day, which puts a kink into my workout routine. Insanity is a 6 day/week program, and no matter how I put it up my hair always gets a bit sweaty around my face. I've had to compromise by accepting my slightly dirty hair on Day 2 and freshening it up with LUSH No Drought dry shampoo. THIS IS NOT IDEAL. I do not enjoy. I've considered just doing the workout every other day for this reason and because it's more reasonable for my study schedule, but then I realized that making excuses now will likely lead to falling off the wagon. So I've decided that I'm going to continue the ascribed schedule until I finish the 60 day program, but then maintain with every other day workouts after that. Looking forward to that day.

Ramen and Double Insanity

I just got out of the shower after doing double Insanity. I had to pick it up because I am also planning on visiting a new ramen shop tonight with my sister. While she's here, I have more excuses to eat poorly! Anyway, this morning I did:

Cardio Abs
Cardio Strength and Resistance
Cardio Recovery
Cardio Abs

It was surprisingly less hard than I thought it would be. I was completely wiped out by the end of Strength and Resistance, so I took 5 minutes and washed my face and stuff. At that point my mind was contemplating stopping there, just counting yesterday as my recovery day, blah blah blah, but my fingers pushed the next DVD in anyway. Luckily, Recovery is not too intense and it was the workout I missed yesterday so we're still on track. I redid Abs at the end because of ramen.

I don't know if this is healthy, but on days when I'm planning on eating something I really enjoy that is high in calories, I try to sharply reduce what I eat for the rest of the day. For example, I wasn't planning on eating anything this morning, but then I thought I had better get my metabolism going so I had:

8 oz green juice
1/4 cup quinoa with 1/8 cup homemade tomato sauce
2 Brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons blueberries

This all totaled about 200 calories. I'm not sure if it was the right move, but honestly I really wanted to finish up the tomato sauce and that's what got me started. When I start eating, it's so easy to continue, and I really need to work on that.

Green Smoothie Recipe

I drink this in the morning after a glass of cold water, and after a workout.

2 cups kale
1 cup spinach
2 stalks celery
1 green apple
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup frozen berries
1/2 cup water

Makes 1.5 L of green swamp juice! Once I used blueberries instead of strawberries/raspberries and it turned a "delicious" brown color. Last time I added 2 kiwis, which made it taste a lot sweeter. I think it's cool to put whatever you want in there, but try to keep the kale, spinach, celery, for the nutrients and fiber, and the lemon juice for its alkalizing power. Store in a glass jar to avoid plastic leaching into it.

In other news I did not do well today. I made avocado egg rolls for my sister and ended up eating 2. Then I fell asleep before working out! Double dose of Insanity tomorrow. Fun.