Rethinking My Health: Fitness and Diet
This post is definitely something more personal that has nothing to do with beauty, and written more for myself more than anything else. Last year has taught me to prioritize my health, not just in the physical aspect of it, but also my diet, mental and emotional parts of it. I have had to undergo a few surgeries and also had some health scares which helped me gain a new perspective on why I really feel the need to prioritize my overall health not just with working out, but also with what I’m putting in my body food-wise and how I’ve been processing all the stressors in my life. This made me reevaluate what I want to accomplish in prioritizing my health, not just for my physical body but also for everything around me that contributes to my overall wellness. Obviously, this is going to be a big process for me and it will be comprised of small, realistic changes that will hopefully add up to make a bigger positive impact in my life, hence why I felt the need to write about it. I wanted to be able to put my thoughts into paper, have a list of thing to refer and look back to and maybe have a few readers to be accountable to.
In this post, I’m tackling the easier aspect of the change that I was able to do before, which was fitness and a healthier diet,and hopefully will reintroduce in my life again. Before I even thought about these, I actually had to sit down and think about the actual reasons as to why I wanted to be healthy - beyond my reflection in the mirror - because I remember being 5o lbs. smaller and still cringed and thought I was fat when I saw photos of myself at a bad angle, but now looking back, I really did look leaner in all of those photos. Weightloss and body image — what a crazy relationship we have with it! But what really makes me want to be healthier is that I want to be physically be active and not be beholden to the limitations my weight has, I want to live a long life that does not make me reliant on medication, and lastly I want to set a good example for my parents and my future family.
Fitness
So in the past 2 years, I have lost about 60 lbs, that took about 10 months, kept it off for about 6-8 months, and then slowly gained back half of the weight I’ve lost in the previous year. As I’ve mentioned I also had to deal with some health issues that prevented me to be more physically active in the past 12 months — at least not as active as I was back in 2017. I always saw the post that fitness and health is a lifestyle not just a goal, and I thought I understood what that meant before, but I think I’ve gained a new perspective and deeper understanding of what that really means to me. I have been looking forward to the Spring of this year, not just because it meant warmer weather for me to run in, but also because it meant the end of my last recovery from my last surgery. From here on out, I will slowly be able to ease back to my regular workout routine again and try other fitness classes I’ve been wanting to. Below are some of the workouts I plan to slowly incorporate into my lifestyle to help me get back in shape and maintain it.
Workouts:
Soul Together - I always do SoulCycle’s Spring Soul Together (formerly known as Turn It Up) Challenge which usually starts mid-April and ends mid-May. The idea is to do 10,20 or 30 Soul rides in 30 days. What better way to kickstart my new health goals than by doing this challenge? I am aiming to do 30 rides, but to be fair, I also know that I may not be as fit to achieve that goal without taking the toll from my body, so definitely if I achieve anything between 20-30 rides, I’ll be happy with myself.
More Weightlifting - I initially started weightlifting last Summer, but got constantly sick and had to pause weight training. I definitely enjoyed the strength I gained from weight training, especially on my upper body, and want to incorporate a session or two into my weekly workouts again.
Training for Another Half Marathon - My cousin and I are finally doing the Chicago Half Marathon this Fall. I’ve only trained and finished one Half Marathon before and that was in 2017. This year, not only am I training for it, but I’m hoping to finish in less than 2 hours. Now, I am aware that this is quite a lofty goal, so I definitely need to work on building a good stamina for longer runs. I’m hoping that having a head start with training will help me be better at keeping a good pace. Since I haven’t ran in a year and have gained a significant amount of weight, I’m planning to roughly follow a couch to 5k training for 4-6 weeks and then hopefully depending on my running progress do a 12-week half marathon training program for a sub-2 hour pace after that which will basically take me to race day at the end of September. This will all kickoff after the Soul Together challenge.
Sweat - I was able to get a 3 month trial for the Sweat app during the beginning of this year. Although I wasn’t able to try out her workout program, I really like Kayla’s BBG program structure and the fact that it should take 30 minutes or less to complete — perfect for getting a workout in when I’m travelling or in a time-crunch. I’m hoping to incorporate her workout plans during the second half of the year.
Barry’s Bootcamp, Air Yoga and Rumble - I love taking group fitness classes and I definitely want to explore other types of classes aside from cycling and yoga. I’ve done AIR a few times, and really enjoyed the upper body strength workout it gives, but I think what I like most about it is the mental training that you get. The class has more to do with letting go of many mental limitations and comfort zones more than anything else, which as much as it was frustrating, felt very rewarding in the end. Barry’s Bootcamp is a class my friend Sophiya has been asking me to go since I started my fitness journey, but somehow I never got around to coming with her. I hear it’s an intense workout class that involves high interval training which I’m looking forward to trying out. And last but not least, I am ecstatic to learn that Rumble is finally coming to Chicago. I’ve tried Rumble last year when I was travelling to New York almost every other month. I really enjoyed the mix of boxing and circuit training of the workout. I also like that you get to workout your upper-body but also have some self-defense training built-in ;)
food
My biggest problem with food stems from the fact that I tend to overdo my portions, plain and simple. I also have a sweet tooth that definitely doesn’t help on top of my larger food portions. Another issue I have is that my everyday diet does not really incorporate eating lots of veggies or fruits. There is definitely a few things I need to tackle, but I’m definitely going to have to slowly change my eating habits. Below are some of the switch I will slowly be incorporating to my everyday diet.
Healthy Eating and Food Habits:
Incorporate veggies in my meals - So I thought I loved veggies, but maybe not quite as much as I though. Well, I do, but I didn’t realize that while I do love eating veggies, I am horrible at making sure I cook some for myself. Basically the veggies I eat either come from eating out, in which case, they most likely are glazed with some high-calorie sauces, or mixed with high-calorie foods. With that said, the beginning of this year, I’ve spent some time thinking of realistically incorporating veggies to my everyday meals as much as I can. To do this, I’ve realized that the easiest for me is sauteing some vegetables and adding some spices/light sauce to them on top of my usual rice and protein meal. That way, I have my rice and protein, but I also get to have my daily serving of veggies.
Overnight Oats - I used to eat overnight oats almost everyday when I was eating healthy. It provided a very easy breakfast option for me, especially as I was so busy. The best part about doing this is that I was also able to satisfy my chocolate and sugar craving in a healthy manner because I tended to do my chocolate overnight oats recipe my friend Effie gave me.
Cutting Back on Sugar and Refined Carbs - This is really a rather simple concept. The less I eat sugary food, the less I crave these unhealthy and calorie-dense food. I realized that my sugar addiction was back when at the end of each night I was constantly craving a sweet fix/dessert. Now, don’t get me wrong, a well-portioned sugar treat everyday is not a bad thing and may even be necessary for some people to keep going on a well-balanced diet, but the problem was this sugar fix was causing me to crave and eat more sugary junk food the next day. Because of this, I’m slowly working my way into getting my sugar cravings under control.
Counting My Calories Through MyFitnessPal - Honestly, I almost didn’t want to start doing this again but counting my calories before helped me reconfigure out my portions for my meals. Doing that was when I realized that although I was technically choosing healthier options, I was eating way too much or my food choices were more calorie dense that I’d hope for. I did went on a spiral that caused me to basically not go to any restaurant without spending half an hour perusing through the menu and looking up the calories for each thing, which honestly was really mentally unhealthy for me. I wanna take a healthier approach to doing this again. I’ve slowly been logging my food again, although not as consistently, but one change that I noticed was that I definitely was more mindful of my portions when I knew I had to log all of my food.
Vitamins, vitamins, vitamins - I suck at taking my vitamins everyday, combine that with poor eating habits, and you’ve got a Kristine with a low-immune system who easily gets sick. The best way I found to help me fix this is by having a daily alarm reminder for me to take my vitamins.
After typing up all of these, I feel as if most of the stuff I have written down is a rehash of what I did before, but hey, it’s the lifestyle that helped me lose all those weight a few years ago and it’s what worked for me, so if it ain’t broken, I’m not going to tweak it. It is worth noting that these are more of the foundational ways to do so, I am open to any other options as well and might be trying out others as I go on this journey. Last thing I want to touch on is the fact that I definitely want to document my journey this time around. I was hoping to do that the last time I did this, but never got around to doing so. No, this won’t turn into a fitness blog, but maybe at least once a month or so, I want to talk about my progress. This will help me stay on track and also be more accountable to myself, so I hope you enjoy reading about this topic! Do you have any fitness goals/lifestyle changes you are also trying to incorporate in your life? Share some in the comments, I would like to know!
