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sunday summary

Fitness, Health, Sunday Summary

Game Plan

May 26, 2014

Hey everyone!

For all of you who are in America, I hope you are having a lovely weekend and enjoy this long weekend for Memorial Day. For everyone else, I still hope you had a fab weekend 🙂 I totally had this post all ready to go last night but I went to Kokkari Estiatorio (a really nice Greek restaurant in San Francisco) and it was so late by the time I got back that I just went to bed haha.

Anyway, I want to be really honest with you all in this blog post. Even though I did see progress and improved muscle tone, I did not get the results I wanted after completing Kayla’s bikini body guide. I am extremely proud of the progress I have made and the fact that I can now do a bazillion push ups, jumping lunges and all the other extreme exercises buuuut … I still have a long way to go. I have been musing about what it is exactly that is making it so bloody hard for me to lose the last 5-8 pounds. I exercise smart and I watch my portions and eat healthy foods. I suppose I tend to go overboard whe I eat out and have the mentality of ‘oh it won’t hurt if I take a small bite …”.

Therefore, even though my mantra is about balance (which I am STILL for), for purposes of eliminating the extra few pounds once and for all, I believe I have to be rather strict and reflective with myself. Going crazy when I eat out and having those extra few bites does make a difference in the long run. If I was at a happy weight and body composition then no, being a little silly at times would not matter. But the fact of the matter is that you have to be smart when embarking on a weight/fat loss journey. Eating for weight/fat loss is not the same as healthy eating, and that is something I really need to just tattoo into my brain.

Which is why I am creating a game plan for myself! As part of a year long process of reforming my eating habits I will be keeping an eye and trying to implement the following:

  • Do not nibble mindlessly – this is my biggest problem, because even though I am full, I tend to pick at food if it is in front of me. This will prove to be hard at restaurants so I will let you all know what works for me (usually drinking loads of water helps)
  • Incorporate more veggies throughout the day
  • If hunger pangs strike at night, drink tea and make some veggies such as celery sticks with a dip such as tzatziki or hummus
  • Stop buying lattes! During the semester time I genuinely need some coffee to tide me through my late classes, but I should probably just stick to plain coffee or an espresso. Or at least only drink latte’s on days when I have class and not otherwise.

I am going to stick with these for now. They are not rules but more of a general guideline. I have also been working on decreasing the amount of alcohol I drink (which is not much at all, usually no more than once or twice a month) and eating out less. For the most part, my friends are incredibly supportive of my lifestyle and do not peer pressure me to eat differently at all which I am SO grateful for. The people who surround you have a profound impact upon you; if they are eating crap, chances are you will tend to eat worse than you normally are.

I genuinely look forward to the future. I have come a long way in the past few years and I am proud that I have become someone who genuinely craves healthy foods and loves to exercise. I can only improve!

What is your biggest obstacle in your quest to be fit and healthy?

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary: Kayla Itsines Week 12

May 18, 2014

kayla itsines week 12

Wow. I cannot believe I have finished Kayla Itsines 12 week bikini body guide! Feels surreal that it has already passed so quickly … 12 weeks is a really interesting amount of time. In the grand scheme of things it really is not that long, but at the same time, so much can happen in 12 weeks. In the course of these past 12 weeks, I have:

  • finished Kayla Itsines bikini body guide (try it here for free for a week!)
  • finished my first year of graduate school (don’t know how that happened lol)
  • watched my blog grow, receiving over 1,400 visitors at its peak
  • became an I’m Fit Possible ambassador
  • joined the POPSUGAR select fitness program
  • continued my yoga practice and am much more flexible
  • can do over 180 push ups in a 30 minute workout session
  • can now do 70 pound lat pulls

Okay, I will stop there haha! Those are the accomplishments I am most proud of 🙂 And of course I am extreemely proud of my boyfriend for getting into the PhD program at the University of Utah, but I can’t really count this as my own personal accomplishment now can I? 😉

I am so grateful to everything that has occurred in the last few weeks, and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store. Your reality is what you make of it, so make sure you are doing what makes YOU happy. Do not focus on what others will think of you or what they will say. Although for the most part people are supportive of what I do, I still get some passive judgement about the choices I make. But I don’t really care and if I have to continue to state why I am doing what I am doing, then I will continue doing so.

kayla itsines week 12

You are probably all wondering whether or not I will be posting progress photo’s, huh? 🙂 I do want too, although I am not sure when (check on my instagram because if I do post them, I will post them there). Don’t get me wrong, I am EXTREMELY proud of my progress, although I do worry about the negativity I may receive: “There’s no change.” “She look’s worse” etc etc. It isn’t like I have developed a six pack or a thigh gap lol, but I have tightened up a lot and am much stronger although I do not really think the photo’s can accurately convey this. I am definitely going to continue with the bikini body guide and will probably just repeat it until Kayla’s new book comes out. Maybe that time round the abs will be showing 😉

Also I just wanted to share this graphic with you that my friend sent me. I think it is fantastic and fits in well with my philosophy that diets are unnecessary!!

Good diets fad diets and ugly diets

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary – Kayla Itsines Week 11

May 11, 2014
review Kayla Itsines Week 11 BBG

Kayla Itsines Week 11

Kayla Itsines Week 11 BBG

I literally spent Tuesday through Saturday with the stiffest and most sore legs I have EVER HAD!!! For those who follow me on my bikini body guide journey, you will know that I have now completed week 11 of Kayla Itsine’s bikini body guide .. yay! On Tuesday, I did my leg workout and although I have done it once before in week 9, I truly pushed myself to the max this time. Hence the stiff legs for almost the entire week! It was pretty ridiculous, every night I would go to bed thinking ‘okay, so tomorrow they won’t be sore anymore’ and then wake up with equally sore legs -__-

I love the workouts for week 11 though. They are so intense and really make you realise just how strong you are. I have to say, the ab workout for this week has been my absolute favorite of the entire guide. It hits every part of my abs and makes them feel oh so tight and toned afterwards.

The arm workout is great too, although I have much more of a love/hate relationship with it. I did approximately 157 push up variations when I did my arm workout for this week, so hopefully that gives you some indication as to how ridiculous it is. But hey, at least now I can do that many push ups!! I normally do my workouts in the group exercise room at the gym, but for some reason an unannounced class was being held in there when I arrived on Friday, so I had to do it in front of all the cardio machines. A little embarrassing to say the least but I did look pretty bad ass doing all those push up variations, so it didn’t really matter in the end.

In other news, I was doing SO WELL on my #HFsugarfreemay until this weekend. It was my boyfriend’s graduation and so I wanted to bake him some yummy treats which inevitably ended up with me tasting these yummy treats too .. oops. Regardless, I think trying to stick to sugar free as much as feasibly possible as it is really quite helpful. It made me stop putting honey in my tea, stevia/brown sugar in my coffee and just made me think more about whether I really wanted that dark chocolate or not 😉 I am all about balance so having sugar/sweets/ice-cream or whatever once in a while is alright as long as you are being mindful about your choices and not completely gorging on whatever your indulgence is. With that in mind, I will leave you with a photo of my boyfriend and I at his graduation, haha.

Kayla Itsines Week 11 BBG

So all in all, it was a great week and I am so excited (but kind of sad) to be finishing Kayla Itsines bikini body guide next week. Be excited for that next week and also for a really, REAAALLLYYY exciting post on Tuesday. Trust me, you will not want to miss it!

Honestly yours,
Alice