So, I decided to start a little topic here to keep track of my progress over the next months and to allow all of you the room to encourage me and give me all the pats on the back I can carry around. (Hey, I may even burn some more fat whilst doing it!)

Current date: 03/11/2013
Current weight: 87,4kg
Goal weight: 68kg (and see where I stand then)

I’ll take some measurements tomorrow and post them here. I’ll post progress pictures on my blog: http://healthynika.wordpress.com . At least when I’m not too terrified to do so. Posting this first one was a struggle all in itself… Bluh.

Haha nice pun towards me being in China 😛
And don’t forget different things work for different people Rocky, some people really like to be encouraged by others despite also encouraging themselves 😉

Anyway, going to update my blog in a few seconds, where I’ll post a picture made this morning (be prepared I suck at making selfies).

Current date: 04/11/2013
Current weight: 87kg
Chest: 91cm
Waist: 101cm
Biceps: 36cm
Thighs: 69cm
Calves: 42 cm
Body fat: 37,3%
Muscle: 39,2%

Looking forward to dwindling numbers!!

Thanks Piper, my strange childhood crush from tv! (Charmed)

Ha thanks Boo! Actually I had a terrible day yesterday. It was supposed to be a fast day but around 14:00 I got bad stomach and abdomen cramps and felt like I just had to eat something, so I had two mandarins (normally I don’t eat until 20:00 or something so that was quite a break out of fasting for me). That helped for a bit, but then the pain just came back and I had to go home. I passed the supermarket, thinking I should buy some crackers or something to ease my stomach…
Ended up eating 6 little custard cakes, some buns, 19 dumplings and 2 chocolate pudding cups. My stomach didn’t hurt anymore though. x)

I had 37 for you and only one for me 😉 I actually thought of you when eating them.

Yes, it turned out to be 2 bad days. Another 19 dumplings (they come in these amazing 38 piece packs), 2 chocolate pudding cups (they come in four), and a bunch of crackers.

However, I had a tiny auto-intervention and had a very, very clean weekend (ate 280g of cherry tomatoes on day one, another 280g on day two together with some cucumber and lettuce). I basically told myself “So you want to get the word discipline tattooed on your back (amongst other words, in Korean characters) but you can’t even stop eating? Puh-lease.” So the scales were down compared to last week anyway.

Turns out those dumplings were around 1300 cals for the entire pack (which I spread over 2 days) so who knows, maybe I’ll make them a non-fast day treat (not the entire pack though).

About the stomach pains, I’m not sure. It could actually be that I had simply been eating too little for 1,5 weeks and my body finally caved. This is my most logical conclusion, as they (the pains) started on an empty stomach and ended when I had a good load to eat. Haven’t been feeling ill since (though I did take Friday off from work as a precaution). I’ll go for a good clean week again this week tho, similar to the last weeks – because I’ll be going to Hong Kong this weekend and I’ll most likely have plenty to eat seeing I’m with a friend who mainly loves Hong Kong for the amazing food x)

Hey BooBoo, it’s going OK. I did gain 1 kilo back last week, but I guess that makes sense with Hong Kong and all that. And I had a few days last week where I had some chocolate-y treats and not so many healthy foods. So yeah, it makes sense I guess.

I’m not so sure about measuring any more to be honest. You can never really measure in the exact same spot, so the measurements can change every week just by having the tape a bit too high on your back but still on your belly button. I dunno, it’s so… random.

Anyway. Here’s my stuff for this week (a bit late, but meh)
Current date: 20/11/2013
Current weight: 86,4kg
Chest: 92cm
Waist: 100cm
Biceps: 35cm
Thighs: 71cm
Calves: 40 cm
Body fat: 37,1%
Muscle: 39,3%
So all in all there’s like, NO change with two weeks ago.

Hong Kong was a lot of fun, I had a good time.. but my weekend was almost completely ruined by a terribly judgemental f**kwad on the ferry back from Cheung Chau. I was sitting with my good friend from Beijing, enjoying the day and the boat ride and taking loads of pictures of the beautiful islands and such.
We were sitting next to this other westerner who seemed like a nice guy, he was also taking pictures (also of two of his beer cans, bit weird but it made me laugh). Anyway, I was standing behind him (he was sitting down) at some point and glanced over his hands and his phone. Now I’m a quick reader so I didn’t mean to read the message he was typing, but in the glance I read the first few words – “I’m sitting next to what..” So I knew he was talking about me and I felt justified to read what the rest of the message was. Well, here it is:

“I’m sitting next to what might be the ultimate DWTS couple. That’s Don’t Want To See. The fat one just winked at me in a manly recognition of her ‘pull’. I thought this was Cheung Chau, not Lesbos.”

I kind of went through these phases: Anger – Extreme anger – Defeat – Sadness. And I felt insecure and ugly for a few hours afterwards. Here I was, in Hong Kong, very proud of the fact I’d lost almost 20 pounds, finally wearing a tanktop again without feeling too bad about myself and having a great time with my good friend and feeling like “hey, all this might not be so bad after all. I’ll be out of China before I know it and everything will be fine when I come to New Zealand.”

Needless to say I wanted to throw his ass over the railing down into the sea but that probably wasn’t the best thing to do. I did walk up to him and told him that what he wrote was extremely hurtful and I just didn’t understand why he would send something like that, but I hoped that he and his friend got a good laugh from it and that it was worth it. Whilst saying that my voice kind of cracked (which probably got the message across quite well) but which I hated. I hate crying. He just asked “Feel better?” and I said “Yeah, actually I do” as I walked away (I didn’t, but well.)

Anyway, it’s become a bit of a rant, sorry about that. It wrecked my mood for hours, feeling insecure and fat and I even skipped dinner when my friend got noodles and I just had a glass of water. That kind of angered my friend and at some point after that I pulled myself together again and had a Subway sandwich at the pier before taking the boat back to Kowloon. We went to a night market where I bought a new leather belt, leather wallet and some other souvenir stuff for people back home.

So I didn’t let it wreck the entire weekend! Which is a good thing! Still get mad writing this whole story down again though.

Current date: 24/11/2013
Current weight: 85,0kg
Body fat: 35,8%
Muscle: 39,6%

I’ve shifted my weighing day from Monday to Sunday, because Saturday is now a fast day and I like weighing after fast days.

So, four days and 1,4kg. Not bad, I think. I’m mostly quite happy with the fat reduction, 1,3%! I think that must be thanks to starting HIIT again, so I’ll continue that this week and see what happens then. Only 4% away from the “healthy range” for women! Funny thing is that at that point my fat% will say I’m healthy, but my BMI will probably be just below 30 so I’d still be considered obese or severely overweight. I don’t really trust BMI though, it doesn’t take your build or muscle mass into consideration at all!

I’m looking forward to seeing 84 on that scale!! And then 83! Actually, I’m already looking forward to dipping beneath 80… which I really hope to do in the next 4 weeks.

Oh and yeah we also have Slimfast in the Netherlands. My dad knows a woman who was extremely proud she lost “80lb without any exercise at all!!” but she just looked like a scarecrow who couldn’t even lift up most patients (paramedics). And what I’ve heard is that most people just gain it all back because they just go straight back to their old eating habits when they feel like they’ve lost enough weight. Stupid people. 😉

I had a bit of a treat day yesterday. Saturday I only had one chicken breast filet and some cherry tomatoes, so Sunday I allowed myself a bit more. Had a brown bread bun with some ham and cheese, but the f-ed up Chinese people don’t know what cheese should taste like so I threw the rest away because it tasted horribly like plastic. I had some dumplings for lunch, a few cookies and a bag of crisps with some movies and then a salad and fish for dinner. And yoghurt+fruit for dessert! (2 beers don’t count right?)
So not the most terrible indulge days ever! I think I’ll keep Sundays like this. They’re my only no-exercise days and I think it’s good to then give my body what it craves for a bit (and within boundaries of course) to make sure it’s up for another week of fasting!

@sassy, yeah I do think it’s a contributing factor. Fasting every day certainly helps. Now I’m also counting on normal days, going low or zero carb 6 days a week and exercise 6 days a week… So all in all I think I just do everything a little more ‘extreme’ than most others, contributing to the weight loss ^^ It’s not something I’m planning on doing for the rest of my life of course, at some point I want to go to regular 5:2 like most people around here do. That’s probably when I get to NZ or something, but I’ll see then.
And the muscle mass – my scale measures it together with the bodyfat. I know it only measures the lower body, but I like the indication that they’re both changing.

@zec & toms, I agree on the meditation ^^ My mind is always wandering though. It’s one of the few downsides to being very creative, my mind jumps all over the place. I do walk to work instead of biking, the route is quite nice (lot of green) and with music on the traffic doesn’t bother me as much. I guess that count as my daily meditation as much as anything else.

And last Aud, thanks! 😀 Your enthusiasm makes me happy all over again. I didn’t even have the dumplings 😉 I did something even worse… I bought the dumplings and some other stuff I allowed myself today, then on the way home past ‘BreadTalk’, where it smelled oh so lovely… so bought more bread stuffs and ended up eating so much my stomach now physically hurts x) After eating less than I would before though, so that’s good! Mostly had bread type food and some spring rolls, nothing really sugar-y so that’s good. Did buy a Snickers but decided eating it now would be a waste (seeing I’m not craving it at all) so I’ll keep it in the fridge as an incentive for next Sunday.
I’ll have to eat the fruit I bought tomorrow though, it’ll go bad in a week, which means I’ll be eating carbs on a monday… not really happy about that. I’ll just lower the calories a bit.

So after today I need to have a really good week to get results similar to this week! 😛