NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS 2014

2013 has been quite a monotonous year for me. It seems to me that it is the saddest year that I have went through so far. Although there are definitely good and fun things that happen, I can only remember the negative ones.  So, for 2014, I must make it happier and more eventful. I have never did a new year resolutions before but I will do one this year so as to make myself feel that I have done something good this year. 

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS 2014

1) Complete a half-marathon.

         ONGOING. Manage to run 15 km recently. Will definitely join a half-marathon next year. Probably Sundown marathon. 

2) 10 km timing to be under 60 min.

         ONGOING. Recently my pace is up to 6.20 min per hour. 

3) Reduce weight to less than 55 kg and lose the stomach and inner thighs. Also, fat percentage to be less than 20% because I want abs!! And be more flexible. 

          ONGOING. Refer to my previous posts.

4) Increase my social circle. 

         ONGOING. Went to a touch rugby meetup and will be going for another meetup this Saturday and next Friday. 

5) Backpacking/diving/hiking overseas.

6) Family holiday to HK or beach country (eg. Boracay, Phuket, Koh Samui, Bali, Langkawi)

7) Beautify skin especially on my face. 

           ONGOING. Since very long ago. 

8) Have job satisfaction.

Just saw a video by the Fung Brothers from Youtube with regards to New Year Resolutions where they said it sucked (how ironic). True that we nowadays have a lot of distractions around us that will bring us away from our goals so we have to be more mindful and keep our goals always in sight. Eg. we can print a copy out and read it every night or just tattoo it on yourself (just kidding k?). 

Anyways, the video is linked below for those who are interested. HAPPY 2014 TO ALL!

|ser|

Day 20: Motivation-less

I think I have just reached a plateau in this diet plan. I feel no motivation to continue with this plan. I have not exercised for this week. I was eating after 9pm again. This is so contradicting when I did a post before about motivation and now I am feeling low and without motivation. This is not only happening for my diet plan. My motivation-less is affecting my work and my life as well. Everyday I will be going home, have dinner and stone in front of a computer (again) and watch some videos while eating something. 

I tried looking for motivation in my favorite fitness websites like Fitsugar and also motivation phases on Tumblr but it seems like I am not absorbing anything from them. I will just read, understand and close the page. I do not have the urgency, the feel to do the exercises or the recipes on these websites even if they look exciting, attractive to me. 

What is going on with me? I think the most likely reason is that I am feeling unsatisfied with my work now. I am now actually typing this blog post during my work. It is now about 10am and I have just started work but I do not feel like doing anything because I know I will finish it in a short while and will be left with nothing to do for the whole day. It seems like I am wasting my life over here. I want to do something important, something useful to the company. However, just because I am a contract staff here, I am unable to be involve in many of the projects here. I do not want to feel like this but I can't help it. 

What should I do?

|ser| 

Day 14: 2 Weeks down!

It has been 2 weeks after I have started on this 99 Day Plan. Honestly, I have not seen any weight drop at all but I do feel like I became lighter and cleaner (if this makes any sense to you). One thing that I am quite happy is that my humongous thighs has dropped about half an inch. YEAH! This is probably due to my exercises like running and muscle toning. Hopefully, I can see some losses in my tummy area soon. 

For the next week, what I will do to increase my intensity is to put in 5 - 10 minutes of exercises before going to work and when I reached home after work everyday. Exercises may include push-ups, crunches and lunges (with variations). This will boost my metabolism and keep my heart and lungs moving especially in the morning. Also, it can provide my body with energy to kickstart my day.

And today is the last day of school for all primary school children. How I wish that I am back in school now that I have started working. I want to go to a holiday. I remembered during my school holidays, I went to Genting! It was so fun! I want to go back there again! When doing my research on Genting, I found out they have many new things that I have never seen before when I was there. For girls out, they have actually a late night shopping at their First World Hotel which opens from 10am to 1am during this holiday period of 9 November to 31 December. This is so exciting. The link to shopping is this http://www.rwgenting.com.sg/en/shopping/index.htm

http://www.rwgenting.com.sg/en/shopping/index.htm

Not only their shopping, they have their awesome theme park which seems so much better than the one in the past. Coincidentally, First World Hotel is the hotel that I stayed in when I went Genting. It seems to have so much more facilities now. I want to take leave to go there!

Anyone want to go there with me? =D

|ser|

Day 12: Food Diary

Source

Do you have a food diary? I just started mine about a few days ago and have been very religious in updating it. The point of having a food diary is to keep track of what you have been eating daily so that you will not overeat and have a well-balanced diet. I used to have a food diary but once I stopped using it, I started to eat without thinking and this is why I am going back to having a new food diary at My Fitness Pal. Make sure your food diary shows you the amount of calories, carbohydrates, sugars, protein, fats, salt and calcium that you have consumed. These few parameters are the basic requirements that your body needs. Other requirements such as vitamins and minerals should be provided for if your meals are rich in vegetables and fruits. 

Some points to take note to have a good food diary:

1. Be religious to your food diary.
   Make sure to update it EVERYDAY. In that way, you will be able to keep track of your meals and make sure you do not step over the allowed intake everyday.
2. Be truthful to your food diary.
   What purpose is the food diary if you are not truthful to it? Do not lie to your food diary and if you have eaten something sinful, write it in so that you will take note of it and not eat so much of it in the future. 
3. It is okay to exceed the required amount.
   Lets' say that you have exceeded the calorie amount for today. It is okay for you to do that. Do not fret too much about it. Read into your food diary and find out the reason and work on it. It may be because the day require too much of your own physical energy and therefore you consume more food. Do not stress too much when you exceeded your calorie intake. 
4. Do not starve yourself for one day and think it will be okay for you to indulge the next day.
   If you starve yourself, your body goes into the starvation mode in which the metabolism slows down. When food comes into the body, the body will store these food as fats so as to prepare the body for another starvation period. 
5. Find a buddy to do this together with you.
   By finding somebody to track your diet together with you, you will have someone who keep you on schedule and to nag you regarding your diet. It will of course be more fun to have someone to go through the diet journey with you. 

Go and create your own food diary. Enjoy!

Bye!

|ser|

Day 10: Motivation

What motivates you? There are 2 types of motivation. One is the positive motivation which is the one I like to use. This type of motivation, as the name suggests, is to have an incentive after the completion of a goal. The other type is the negative motivation. Negative motivation is where you punish yourself when you broke a rule or when you did not do what was expected. Is like reducing spending money after eating something sinful for example. 

I myself find positive motivation more useful than the negative one because the positive one makes you feel good and gives you "energy" to move on. Whereas for the negative motivation, it may backfire on you because it does not make sense to torture yourself further when dieting/exercising is difficult to your mind. 

Why do people not exercise even if they do know that it is good for them? Technically, the health benefits that people get out from exercising should outweigh the time and energy required to do these exercises. However, people think of short term benefits rather than the long term ones. These people do not think that exercise will make them happy and feel good in the short term because is tiring, is a waste of time. They would rather do something that they think will make them happier or have more benefits to them (eg. working). This is the economics of motivation. 

To get people motivated, government or health authorities have make sure to educate people about the health benefits of exercise. However, there are still people who does not listen. Then, they proceed on to scare tactics (negative motivation) where they post gory pictures and statistics to force them to live a healthier lifestyle. To many people, these scare tactics does not work at all because of the overwhelming advertisements of the many unhealthy food to encourage people to eat. These lead to having some governors to lobby for Soda Tax. 

We are smart but we are eating to die unlike the animals who eat to live. Why are we, the smart animals, doing this to ourselves? This is what many people should actually question themselves. 

Till next time! Bye!

|ser|