Jlailin's Balancing Act

[Jlailin]

I feel like I was very gung-ho in my first challenge and even the beginning of my second.  In the later half of my last challenge, my friend pleasantly surprised me with a visit.  Suddenly my life was no longer just about me, my fitness goals, and my intermittent fasting schedule.  I had to figure out how to be social while not wandering too far off the path.  The holiday season is nearly upon us along with my vacations to visit family where I will have very little control over my own scheduling.  

 

This challenge will be about balance.  I want to keep working towards my goals, but I still want to be able to go on a vacation and be with my friends and family.  ...and I just now realized that this challenge's dates won't cover my next vacation for Thanksgiving, but I guess I'll just be practicing for it.  

 

Goals:

• Lose weight from fat/build muscle
  • Body weight routine 2-3 times per week
  • Dance classes 3 times per week
• Refine choreography for Ko Ko Bop by EXO
• Learn basic choreography for Power by EXO (assuming this stays on the dance schedule and I learn it during this challenge)
• Learn the fallen angel pose on the left side and hold for ten seconds
• Continue with intermittent fasting.  Fast 14-16 hours each day.
• Be social!  Find a way to hang out with someone for fun or go to a social event at least once every two weeks.  Learn how to not be completely thrown off by this.  After doing the social activity, get back to your regular schedule within two days!
• Resolve financial situation with business partner

 

[Jlailin]

Challenge Start Measurements

 

So I was silly and forgot to take all my measurements on day 1.  However, I did weigh myself.  And I ended up having such a huge jump between day 1 and day 2 that I think I still want to start my weight tracking from day 1.  Measurements take longer to change, so I don't mind that those are a day off.

 

Day 1 -10/16/17

Weight: 131.6 lbs

 

Day 2 - 10/17/17

Weight: 129.6 lbs (THIS IS AMAZING!  I haven't been below 130 in... years.  I don't even remember when it was.)

Neck: 13"

Shoulders: 17"

Chest: 34"

Bicep: 11.5"

Waist: 30.25"

Hips: 38"

Thigh: 22"

[Wobbegong]

Yussss Jlailin is back! Following! 

[Siferiax]

Ha! Sounds like you have some solid goals again! Love following along with all your enthusiasm!

[Jlailin]

Day 1 - 10/16/17

 

Intermittent Fasting

- Started eating at 2:00pm for 18.5 hours of fasting

- Ate soondoobu jjigae for lunch.  For dinner, I ate a snack bag of cheetos and drank a peach milkis.  ...Not the healthiest, I know.  >_>

- Stopped eating at 6:00pm for 4 hours of feasting

 

Fitness

- Went to beginners hip hop class today!  I really love the way this woman teaches.  There are people who just dance and then there are people who study dance.  I've never really been taught by the latter until now.  I never knew what a big difference it makes.

- Hit 10,000 steps!

 

I forgot to measure myself this morning.  I need to remember to do that tomorrow morning and actually wake up early enough to do it before work! 

[Wobbegong]

1 minute ago, Jlailin said:

drank a peach milkis

I don't know what this is but is it like calpis? I love calpis. (It's so gross.) 

 

2 minutes ago, Jlailin said:

I forgot to measure myself this morning.  I need to remember to do that tomorrow morning and actually wake up early enough to do it before work! 

Me too! If I manage to remember tomorrow I'll remind you, too. 

[Jlailin]

14 minutes ago, Wobbegong said:

I don't know what this is but is it like calpis? I love calpis. (It's so gross.)

I think so... I've actually never had a calpis.  xD  I see it all the time, but I typically go for ramune if I want a soft drink thing at a Japanese restaurant.  I suppose milkis is the Korean version.  They look similar--it's a kind of milky soda that's often flavored with a fruit.  I love the orange ones because they taste like an orange julius, but I never see them anymore.  It's like everyone stopped stocking them.  T_T

 

16 minutes ago, Wobbegong said:

Me too! If I manage to remember tomorrow I'll remind you, too.

Ok!  Yay!    I've put my tape measure on top of my work bag, so that I'll at least see it before I try to leave.  Hopefully, I will wake up early enough to use it!

[Wobbegong]

2 minutes ago, Jlailin said:

I love the orange ones because they taste like an orange julius, but I never see them anymore.  It's like everyone stopped stocking them.  T_T

.......That happened to me with the mango calpis. It was the best one far and away, but then when I was a senior in high school my asian market stopped stocking it. I asked why (since obviously I was buying them all the goddamn time) and they said they were no longer being sold in the US. 

 

Years later in college I was at a different asian market and they had them, but only in HUGE containers. So now if I can't find someone stocking those, I usually can't get it here. Although I haven't checked lately... maybe it's back?

[Wobbegong]

Hopefully it's not too late/you haven't already gone to work! Don't forget to do your measurements!

[Jlailin]

1 hour ago, Wobbegong said:

Hopefully it's not too late/you haven't already gone to work! Don't forget to do your measurements!

Thank you!  I did them!   I'll get them posted up in my reserved post at the top some time today.  

 

13 hours ago, Wobbegong said:

.......That happened to me with the mango calpis. It was the best one far and away, but then when I was a senior in high school my asian market stopped stocking it. I asked why (since obviously I was buying them all the goddamn time) and they said they were no longer being sold in the US. 

 

Years later in college I was at a different asian market and they had them, but only in HUGE containers. So now if I can't find someone stocking those, I usually can't get it here. Although I haven't checked lately... maybe it's back?

Ohhhh~  Mango flavor sounds delicious!  I now want to go and try to hunt for this too.  The H-mart new me carries tons of calpis--more than milkis (or the milkis just runs out really fast).  I will have to go look to see if they have mango!    

[Wobbegong]

H-Mart is where I was able to find the family-size bottles of mango flavor. HOPEFULLY Calpis has gotten back on the individual-size for the US mango Calpis train. 

[Jlailin]

I have updated my reserved post to have measurements for today and yesterday!  Yay!  I'm ready to go for this challenge!    

 

1 hour ago, Wobbegong said:

H-Mart is where I was able to find the family-size bottles of mango flavor. HOPEFULLY Calpis has gotten back on the individual-size for the US mango Calpis train. 

They've got lots of individual sized bottles at mine.  I'm crossing my fingers they have mango.  I remember they had strawberry and melon for sure.  

[Wobbegong]

33 minutes ago, Jlailin said:

They've got lots of individual sized bottles at mine.  I'm crossing my fingers they have mango.  I remember they had strawberry and melon for sure.  

Strawberry has always been around but I'm not very fond of it. I haven't tried the melon. With Calpis you have to be careful because sometimes their drinks are just fruity, not milk-fruity. I tried pineapple Calpis in Japan and it was like that, it was terrible. 

[Jlailin]

54 minutes ago, Wobbegong said:

Strawberry has always been around but I'm not very fond of it. I haven't tried the melon. With Calpis you have to be careful because sometimes their drinks are just fruity, not milk-fruity. I tried pineapple Calpis in Japan and it was like that, it was terrible. 

Oh no, that sounds unpleasant.  Have you ever tried the little mini yogurt type drinks?  Those are actually pretty delightful.  Some of them are flavored.  I don't really know what's a good brand, but I was happily surprised by how good it was when they gave me a sample the last time I was at H-mart.  It did remind me a bit of milkis in the way that it was milky and fizzy.  

[Wobbegong]

I haven't! I'll have to check them out. I was always a little leery of yogurt served with a straw in Japan, but I'm not sure why, since I love lassi drinks so much. 

[Jlailin]

I was too at first.  I felt like fizzy yogurt would be weird.  I only ended up trying it because it was a sample, and I had just eaten another sample of a dumpling with really spicy sauce.  It was a very happy accident.  xD 

 

Lassi drinks are sooooo good.  I miss my Bengali roommate who made the very best ones.  I don't know what she did, but even when I try doing the same things, it's just not the same.  

[Jlailin]

The earlier and earlier sunsets are killing my productivity drive.  When I get home, all I want to do is hibernate.  >_< 

 

Day 2 - 10/17/17

 

Intermittent Fasting

- Started eating at 1:30pm for 19.5 hours of fasting

- Ate kimchi fried frice for lunch.  For dinner, I ate tuna, soda crackers, an apple, and cheese curds. 

- Stopped eating at 7:30pm for 6 hours of feasting

 

Fitness

- I was supposed to do strength training, but the darkness and cold keeps sapping my motivation away.  My building hasn't turned on the heat yet, so I always feel like being a blanket monster when I'm home these days.  Ugh.  I need to get back into the schedule of my body weight workouts.  I've been struggling with doing individually driven workouts since my stay-cation.  Classes are fine because as long as I get my butt there, my brain doesn't have to think.  When it's just me, I have to get my brain into structuring the workout (not such a big deal because I do have all the exercises written down already), set up my house for circuits by moving furniture, etc.  

- I did mess around with squat progressions to see if I could start my shrimp squats.  Close feet squats are good, but not much different for me than regular stance deep squats.  The actual shrimp squat is a bit more difficult.  I can go down, but then I get stuck.  I ended up going down and then just using my door frame for a teeeeeny bit of assistance to help pull me back up.    ...I'm wondering if the forward leg assisted ones would be easier.  Progression chart says no, but my brain thinks it might be easier to balance that way...

- Hit 10,000 steps!

[Jlailin]

Day 3 - 10/18/17

 

Intermittent Fasting

- Started eating at 12:30pm for 17 hours of fasting

- Ate kimchi fried frice for lunch.  For dinner, I ate a tiny slice of leftover deep dish pizza and potato skins.

- Stopped eating at 6:30pm for 6 hours of feasting

 

Fitness

- Kpop dance class today!  We started learning Burn It Up by Wanna One.  I thought Cherry Bomb by NCT was the dance of the squat--no, this is the dance of the squat.  We learned 1:33 of the dance, and it's like in every other measure there's a series of squats--usually on every other beat.  X_X  ...I thought this was going to be an easier dance after Ko Ko Bop, but I don't know now.  The movements are so fast!  We didn't really even make it up to full speed by the end of class.  My teacher is trying a new teaching style, so she trying to teach us all the movements slowly, which is good and all, but I feel like we are going to get slammed when we finally try to put it to music.  >_>  I dunno.  Maybe we won't?  We'll see how it goes. 

 

Tomorrow I will do my strength training like I'm supposed to.  I will!

[Wobbegong]

All the squats!

[Siferiax]

Oh dear, that does sound like a challenge! But! With all your squat training you totally got this! You can do it!
I still wonder... How do you not eat in the morning? How do you manage?

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[Jlailin]

9 hours ago, Wobbegong said:

All the squats!

6 hours ago, Siferiax said:

Oh dear, that does sound like a challenge! But! With all your squat training you totally got this! You can do it!

Haha, yes!  I do feel like my previous squat training did come in handy for this.  The other girls who don't do supplemental strength training as far as I know were much worse off in only the middle of class.  Who knew squats would be so useful in dance? 

 

6 hours ago, Siferiax said:

I still wonder... How do you not eat in the morning? How do you manage?

It definitely did take some getting used to the schedule, but for me it wasn't so difficult since I just didn't eat breakfast for a lot of my life growing up.  I would always get in trouble for it, but my stomach just isn't an early riser--it didn't like me eating right after I woke up.  ...Now, I would usually eat a really early lunch to compensate, so I had to deal with pushing back my lunch time for a few more hours.  This wasn't too terrible because I was at work and in meetings, so I couldn't go on an eating rampage anyways.   

 

As for making sure I'm not super duper hungry, protein was incredibly important for me to eat while establishing the schedule.  It's still important now, but my body is used to the schedule, so it can deal if I really, really want that meal of cheesy pasta.  Most of my meals in the beginning involved lots of hard boiled eggs, hummus, tuna, and chicken.  I did have veggies along with them, but the protein was the magic that kept me full for the 16 hour period.  ...and also a lot of it came down to being able to distract myself during regular eating time.  I like to take walks during everyone else's usual lunch time to get away from the eating environment and get in my last hour of fasting. 

 

But yeah, it's really just a matter of establishing and getting used to a new routine.  The first week was probably the toughest.  Once I got into the swing of things, it's just became normal to me.

[Siferiax]

Oh my! I wake up at like 6:30 and don't eat till 9:00ish or later. But I always wake up already hungry XD
You are incredible in my mind! Only time I wasn't hungry was somewhere into the Whole30 challenge I did in one of my NF challenges.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[Jlailin]

1 hour ago, Siferiax said:

Oh my! I wake up at like 6:30 and don't eat till 9:00ish or later. But I always wake up already hungry XD
You are incredible in my mind! Only time I wasn't hungry was somewhere into the Whole30 challenge I did in one of my NF challenges.

Aww, thank you!   ...I do sometimes have dreams of just eating everything that I love--moist dark chocolate cake, juicy, succulent steaks, rich red wine gravies, all the cheesy pasta ever.  ...Like that is my literal dream (yes, my dreams are weird ).  I'm in this magical buffet room and all I do is eat these tasty foods.  Fasting through breakfast on those days is sooooo hard.  xD

 

 

[Wobbegong]

1 minute ago, Jlailin said:

Aww, thank you!   ...I do sometimes have dreams of just eating everything that I love--moist dark chocolate cake, juicy, succulent steaks, rich red wine gravies, all the cheesy pasta ever.  ...Like that is my literal dream (yes, my dreams are weird ).  I'm in this magical buffet room and all I do is eat these tasty foods.  Fasting through breakfast on those days is sooooo hard.  xD

There's superstition that you're not supposed to eat in your dreams, but I actually really enjoy it. I've found that I can completely annul a craving just by dreaming of eating the food. Of course, getting your subconscious to cooperate is another matter... 

[Jlailin]

9 minutes ago, Wobbegong said:

There's superstition that you're not supposed to eat in your dreams, but I actually really enjoy it. I've found that I can completely annul a craving just by dreaming of eating the food. Of course, getting your subconscious to cooperate is another matter... 

Oops!  I've never heard of that superstition before!  It's a toss up for me if I feel full after the dream or not.  I think it depends when I wake up--like if my alarm interrupts me mid-bite I'm still hungry.  However, there have been a few times when I have actually made it through the entire buffet.  (Yep, it's a reoccurring dream for me. xD)  Those times I felt very satisfied when I woke up.  As for getting your subconscious to dream about something, I've found I can actually do it by thinking about the thing a lot right before bed time.  Sometimes I'll have a really good dream the night before and I want to find out what happens next, so I think about it the next night.  It turns into this episodic thing that's pretty cool as long as I remember the dreams when I wake up.