If I Ever Tell You That I Love to Learn...

If I ever tell you that I love to learn...be aware it is a half true statement (half BS). In fact, I love when I learn something. The gruelling pain of learning, and screwing up, and trying, and failing, and trying again, and getting right by pure luck... that is something that I don't enjoy. In fact it is frustrating, but I know by experience that eventually I will get over that phase, and I will learn, then I will find other things I cannot do....and then the process will start over again. Today I had my first skating lesson. It was not pretty. It was painful. It was frustrating, but I cannot bear with the idea of giving up. It is not in my DNA. It is not who I am. Yes, I am stubborn. Yes, I am, and I will not let it go until I master the ice. I love the ice.

My day was long. I was up at 4AM. I could not sleep. The eating part was challenging. I badly ate today. Unfortunately, I did not have time. I had this weird feeling tonight as if I was dizzy or mentally challenged. My brain is not processing a lot of information. It is slow and I am not used to it. I am glad I can function at work and I feel quite energetic when I am in there. Maybe because I have problems to solve, things to move forward. I don't know if I should blame the 4 cups of coffee I had today or something else. All that I know is that I felt great during the whole day, even though I was hungry.

My breakfast was pretty good. I had papaya, a small salad with baby mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, and ranch dressing. I had scramble eggs(a.k.a. I could not make a pretty omelet) with yellow peppers and a laughing cow triangle. I also had coffee with milk and a brazil nut.





I had a few snacks including a low fat danActive, blackberries, and trail mix. Just for the record, the low fat danActive taste just like the original, plus water.

My lunch was a tiny portion of yucca and chicken tights (Polish style). Very good but I wish I could have more. That's were I started drinking coffee. Maybe to give me the impression that I was eating something...The whole fantasy thing did not work out at all. Anyway, just another day that I have survived, just another day.








I had the beef with mushroom leftovers from last week for dinner garnished with plain fat free yogurt.

As I track all that I eat with the "Calorie Count" app, day after day I see that my intake of fibre is too low. I wonder why as I thought that I was eating foods rich in fibre but apparently not so much. The link below may help you if you think you are not eating enough fibre. My big surprises were raspberry and navy beens. Got to stock them up!

http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/50-fiber-rich-foods


Aftermath of 01/07/2013:

1. 821 Calories
2. 1 hour of figure skating lesson
3. 20 minutes of circuit training
4. 6 cups of water and 4 of coffee
5. 6 hours of sleep

Have a great night,
Fernanda

A TEN course dinner at Barque BBQ

My phone rang early in the morning. It was my mom worried about me after my Saturday struggle. She wanted to know if I was fine. She wanted to know if I went to the doctor. She wanted to know if I slept well. She was upset at me because I am on a very strict diet and she wasn't here to see how well I was doing. She made me promise that I would never ever again leave the house without a snack in my purse. That I would not "skip" meals or eat pseudo food while depriving myself from real food after exercising. All that I could say was yes mom, I know it was stupid. Yes mom, I know it should not happen again. Yes, mom I will keep a cereal bar in my purse (while she wanted me to keep an entire box).

That was the beginning of my day. When I headed out to run my errands I could not forget about my mom's concerns so I brought two cereal bars with me. I found some Special K shakes while doing my groceries and left them in the trunk of my car just in case of an emergency. I tried to find some good cereal bars at the Wholefoods store but somehow they were all packed in sugar (minimum of 10g of sugar), so I could not buy them. I was able to pick up some nice fishes and when I asked the butcher which one was the leanest cut of the pork, his answer was "you cannot go wrong with the sirloin". I cannot wait to make juice karkówka next week!

My calorie count today stopped right before dinner and honestly there is no way I can come up with a number for all that I ate. I had dinner plans with my group and we went to a smokehouse. The issue is that I was completely unaware that on Sundays they have a set menu "family style". That said, there was not too much left other than enjoy the TEN course menu and try to eat only small portions. Here is the list: Rouladen Sliders with mustard and bacon, Pommery and dill potato salad, Creamy leek and onion soup, Mixed green salad with wiessen vinegar, fennel, corn, and peppers, Beer braised cabbage, Herb spatzle, Herb & garlic chicken, Pork schnitzel with smoked bacon and caper sauce, Griffon gold BBQ back ribs, and strawberry gelato.

I have to confess that the sliders, the ribs, and the spatzel were my favourites. The soup was pretty good too. I just wish the meats were warmer :( Next time I will get it to go.

Here is what I had today before dinner:

Breakfast was super easy and not boring as I did not have to resort to eggs (not that I don't like them, just because I cannot have them every single day). That said, I had a salad for breakfast with mixed greens, baby corn, buffalo mozzarella, and smoked salmon. I also had the usual coffee and milk, and a brazil nut.

Lunch was a bit of a cheating as I got 3 types of quinoa salad and a green beans salad from Wholefoods and I roasted wild sockeye salmon.

I had a small portion of beef with okra before dinner as I needed some food right after my workout.

You already know about dinner. As my mom said, you need to screw up from time to time, otherwise, it gets boring.

Aftermath of 01/06/2013:

629 calories before dinner
15 minutes of workout
4 glasses of water
9 hours of sleep

I wish you a good week,
Fernanda

A Lesson to be Learnt

Today was a promising day. I was going to work out at the gym, try to stick to vegetarian options, in summary continue working towards my weight loss goal.

I went to the gym as per plan and I was able to go through 45 minutes of the bootcamp class. I was very happy with the results even though I acknowledge that I have lots to improve. After I finished at the gym, I decided to do something fun downtown, and as there is a movie theatre near the gym, I was able to finally watch Skyfall. The issue is that by the time I finished at the gym I was hungry and the session was about to start. I walked through the complex and the food options were not suited to someone on a diet. They varied from chicken tenders, fried chicken sandwich, pizza, chocolates, candies, popcorn, and soft drinks. The least bad option I found was popcorn and a diet sprite. This was where my diet went wrong :( I was surprised that after the movie was over I was not dizzy nor having a headache. I was very hungry but nothing out of the ordinary. I was able to wait to get home and have a bowl of lentil soup. Unfortunately, it did not fill me up. To be honest the rest of the day was a small nightmare because nothing I ate after it could make me feel satisfied. I could not think about anything else other the food.

Breakfast was pretty healthy. Mixed baby greens with ranch dressing, papaya, and a ham, cheese, and pepper omelet. I also had coffee with milk.

My pre-lunch was a small movie theatre popcorn and a medium sprite diet. Lunch was a bowl of lentil soup garnished with light yogurt. My pre-dinner was a large salad with mixed greens, smoked salmon, red and yellow peppers, fresh mozzarella, and ranch dressing.

I had half of a toast of low card, no gluten bread with hummus as an evening snack and boiled yucca and chicken for dinner.

Aftermath 01/05/2013:

1169 Calories
3 cups of water
9 hours of sleep
45 minutes of bootcamp

I truly hope that tomorrow will be a better day!

Fernanda

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

I had ordered a bath scale at amazon.ca last weekend and it is finally here! I have done some tests and the scale seems to be pretty good. I can see the difference between my weight late in the evening and early in the morning (2 lbs) and I can see the difference in weight (with and without cloths).

I am very happy with the purchase and it arrived in 4 business days even though I chose the free shipping option. The brand is EatSmart and it costs after taxes CDN$ 31.95. The step on feature is great. This means that you don't need to tap before weighting yourself. You can step on the scale and very quickly you can see your weight in the LED display. I like that you can see increments of 0.1 lbs. Not too shabby.

The Bad:

Today was a super busy day. Meeting after meeting, after meeting (the scheduled meetings, the impromptu meetings...) The issue is that when you have too many meetings you end up having to stay late to do some of the work that was not done during the day. Unfortunately I was only able to leave work at 7PM and I was so tired that I did not feel like going to the gym at all (boo). Even warming up / eating dinner was a chore as all that I wanted to do was to sleep. Tomorrow I will try to make it up by going to a bootcamp class. I will see if I can stick for the full hour but I don't know if my bad shape will allow me to handle it. LOL... Yes, I am being very critical of myself, I acknowledge it ;)


The Ugly:

Friday is definitely my favourite day of the week as me and my coworkers go out for lunch and have a good time. This was a much more pleasant activity before the diet as I was never giving too much thought to what I was going to order, other than the most delicious thing in the menu. We went to this italian restaurant in Woodbridge called Peperoncino Trattoria (http://peperoncinotrattoria.com/food/). They have a wood oven for pizzas and I heard that their pizzas are amazing. Most of us had a sandwich and a salad. The only exceptions were myself and another coworker. He got the penne with salmon while I got a huge bowl of mixed greens salad and another huge bowl of stracciatella (an Italian egg drop soup). The soup was delicious but it looked pretty ugly.

Breakfast was unusual. I had a huge salad with red and yellow peppers, bocconcini, baby corn, a boiled egg, cucumber and ranch dressing. I also had coffee with milk, and a brazil nut. It was delicious!

Lunch was difficult as I preferred not to chose a lasagna, a manicotti, or a veal parm sandwich, but I was very happy with half of the portion of the stracciatella. The mixed greens salad was eatable but far from being delicious. The trick I used was to have 1 1/2 cup of cauliflower soup before going to the restaurant. I did not feel that I needed to stuff myself with their food because I had already eaten something healthy and that I knew how many calories were involved in the preparation of the meal. I almost forgot about my espresso without cream or sugar.

I had an orange as my afternoon snack.









Dinner was composed of leftovers from the beef with mushroom that I cooked earlier in the week paired with cucumbers and plain yogurt. Very good the mix of a comfort dish with the refreshing cucumber and yogurt.

Aftermath for 01/04/13:

1015 calories*
0 minutes of exercise
4 cups of water
7 hours of sleep in the night before

I am happy the day is finally over. Time to hit my bed and hopefully sleep a great night.

P.S. I will be starting testing a sleeping app called Sleep Cycle. It claims to analyses your sleep and only wakes you up at your lightest sleeping phase. I heard good comments about it. I will let you know my review in a week.

* approximate value

The Ugly Truth & Extreme Fitness (the scam)

Today I went to the gym to get a fitness assessment. I am an Extreme Fitness member and i just found out that I had the right to have a fitness assessment every month. The goal of this exercise is to meet with a trainer who will get you to step in a machine that will read your weight and give you the percentages of fat and lean mass you have in your body. Then the trainer will ask about your goals, show you what you need to do in order to reach your goal, then finally he/she will show you that you should get a personal trainer and a nutritionist to achieve that goal. The issue is that once upon a time I had agreed in having a trainer within Extreme Fitness and my experience was less than pleasant. Bottom line is that after I signed the $1000 contract, no one at the gym never ever followed up with me to know if my sessions were going well or if I was happy with the services, or if I was having any results. Today when I went to the fitness assessment, when one of the trainers tried to pitch the " I really should get a personal trainer", I was very honest to her and said that I had a very bad experience with a trainer at the gym and as the gym never cared about my customer experience I did not trust the gym. She decided to talk to a manager to see if he could do anything about the situation. I met with the manager and explain the situation (I was probably not in my best behaviour as I was telling him politely that the whole thing a a rip-off), and at the end I asked him if there was anything that he could do for me so they could regain my trust and the answer was "no answer" He did not propose anything but took his time to say that I should have contacted a manager during the period I had a trainer not after my sessions were over, he also told me that I could have paid sessions monthly instead of signing a big lump-sum contract. My conclusion with the whole thing is Extreme Fitness is a nice gym to go and do your workout, they have some good Pilates classes, spinning sessions but their main goal is to sell you personal trainer and nutritionist services, and good luck if you have any benefit or not from it.

So, here comes the "ugly truth", even though my measurements were not taken as they did not have a single tape available at that huge gym, my lovely trainer(not being sarcastic this time around) was able to get my weight and the percentages of fat and lean mass.

The unexpected news was that my weight (139lbs) is actually normal for someone who has my age and height. The bad news is that 32% of my body composition is fat, and the level is so high that I could have health issues if I maintain or increase it. According to the trainer, women with a healthy percentage of fat have the levels between 10 to 20. She advised me to be on 15% as my goal was just to lose weight and become toned. To get to that level I should lose 23 pounds of fat. That will be a challenge a bit bigger than I anticipated but it is all part of life and I will take one day at time.

Diet wise, I am doing good. Today i completed the 5th day of the diet and in average I have been eating 1093 calories per day, and this is extremely low compared to the amount of energy I am burning per day. In average the net calories are of - 852 calories. This is the difference between what I ate and what I have burned. That said, if I keep my motivation in the same levels and continue in the rhythm, it should take me 13.5 weeks to get to my goal.

Eating today was hard during the late afternoon and early evening because I had the gym appointment at 7PM and I did not bring my dinner to work. That said I had to resort to trail mix and for a tiny 1/4 cup I used 145 cal from my calories budget. Not a very good deal but it was that or starvation and I was pretty hungry by 6PM.

At breakfast I had scrambled eggs with ham, yellow pepper, and a laughing cow triangle, a small salad with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese, a brazil nut, and coffee with milk.

I had half of a pear for my morning snack.











           


For lunch I had half of the portion of beef with okra, and a salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and buffalo mozzarella. I also had dessert today! Two tiny squares of camino 71% chocolate.




In the afternoon I had a meeting that ended 5 minutes earlier than expected and then I run to the Tim Hortons and had a small coffee with 2% milk and splenda. Later on I had a handful of blackberries, and when I was about to head to the gym I had the delicious trail mix.

For dinner I had a lentil soup, it was super easy to make it and pretty delicious. The slow cooker did again a great job!








Aftermath for 01/03/2013:

• 1039 calories
• 30 minutes of exercise with a trainer
• 6 cups of water
• 8 1/2 hours of sleep at the previous night

Now it is time for me to sleep. Have a great night!
Fernanda

Back to Reality!

The holidays are over and now I am back to my regular routine. Luckily I woke up super early (even though I managed to sleep eight hours last night) and then I was able to take my sweet time to prepare breakfast. It is great not to feel rushed in the morning!

I think (but I may be completely off on this one) that my body is already in ketosis, which is when the body starts using fat as an energy source as I have been eating a very low carb, low fat diet for the last four days. I felt a lot of energy today even though I am sick. I am no longer feeling dizzy, and I have felt thirsty the entire day.

I was able to do 20 minutes of circuit training after dinner, and I have scheduled an assessment at the gym for tomorrow. The assessment will be nice because I did not have time yet to get my current measurements and weight. I know the picture is not pretty but I don't know how bad it is I ordered a bath scale from Amazon but it hasn't arrived yet.This will definitely help to track my results.

I have found today a pretty good article at the Harvard School of Public Health on Carbohydrates: Good Carbs Guide the Way. It was great to see which carbs can help on weight loss. One of my colleagues suggested quinoa and lentils as good carbs. I found green lentils at the Polish store today and I have placed them on water so I can let them in the slow cooker tomorrow. This way I can have some non animal protein into my diet. I also got some smoked salmon and cold cuts. All so I don't get sick of eating eggs every single morning. Here is the article in case you are also interested in the science of how the carbs are processed in our body, which carbs can promote weight loss and which ones you should have only once a while:


http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/carbohydrates-full-story/index.html



Breakfast was a ted different today. I avoided eggs for the first time in a while and had half a toast with hummus (this bread is a gluten free and low carb version that I found at the local Wholefoods store. They also have similar options at other grocery chains.) I paired blueberries with fat free plain yogurt (a bit hard to eat as I am used to have plain yogurt together with salty food but it was okay), broccoli tossed on garlic, salt and olive oil, a brazil nut, and coffee with 1% lactose free milk. I have to admit that I loved the broccoli.

Today I had cucumber and hummus as a snack in the morning, and a handful of blackberries in the afternoon.

Lunch was very filling. I had beef with mushrooms and I complemented with an apple (just in case you though that I was eating a bunch of potatoes ;)

Dinner was 100% vegetarian. I had cauliflower soup with fat free yogurt, a beautiful salad with mixed greens, tomato, and fresh buffalo mozzarella. I splurged a bit and had 30ml of red wine. Not too shabby, eh.

Aftermath of 01/02/2013:

• 1021 calories
• 20 minutes of circuit training
• 5 cups of water
• 8 hours of sleep

I got another A from the calorie count app! Still very excited!

Cheers,

Fernanda

Day 3

01/01/2013

Today was the last day of the holidays. I woke up with what I think it is a sinus infection and my body just did not feel right today. I had no energy to exercise and I spent most of the day in bed. Luckily I was able to cook a few dishes so I could eat well during the rest of the week.

Breakfast was what is becoming the "usual". I had blueberries with danActive, an omelet with yellow peppers and a laughing cow triangle, a brazil nut, and coffee with 1% milk. I did do some research today on the web and most of the low carb breakfast options were very heavy on fat. I don't want to eat eggs every day but after removing bread, fruits with high GI, and yucca from my morning routine, I really don't know what to eat. One of the tips I have found today was that some people eat leftovers for breakfast. I also read about some low carb breads and I bought a gluten free/low carb bread at the nearby Wholefoods. I will keep it in my freezer just in case I want to break the egg routine one of these days.

It took me a long time to feel hungry today. Maybe because my breakfast was pretty heavy, maybe because I spent my morning in bed and I did not need that much energy to be burned. I had a snack while I was preparing my lunch (red and yellow peppers with macedonian feta).

Lunch was simple but very tasty. I baked one zucchini and a wild sockeye salmon filet. I also had cucumber and some salad dressing. 

I felt very hungry today around 5PM. I made this very easy (cheating) soup with a small V8, 5 shrimps, and seaweed. It was feeling and kept me in a good good until my dinner was ready.

Dinner today was something completely out of my ordinary. I made a homemade burger patty with lean ground veal, spices, worcestershire sauce, and 5 tiny grams of gouda (my favourite cheese). I complemented the burger with cucumber and fat free plain yogurt.

Aftermath of 01/01/2013:

• 1131 calories
• 0 minutes of exercise
• 4 cups of water

Here is one of the recipes that I prepared today. No extra fat added, and very low in carbs ;)

Beef with Okra:  

Ingredients:  
145 gr of lean beef for stew (300 cal)
253 gr of okra (78 cal)
200ml of beef stock (24 cal)
2 tbsp of red onion (8 cal)
2 garlic cloves (5 cal)
Salt to taste

Preparation:  Cut beef into 1-1/2-inch (4 cm) cubes; pat dry with paper towel.
Season with salt and two chopped garlic cloves. Let it sit for at least half an hour (I left marinating in the fridge overnight).
Set your oven to grill. Place beef into a over safe container with finely chopped red onions, and let it grill until is half way cooked.
Place into a pot with 50ml of beef stock, and let it simmer for 45 minutes stirring every now and then. Meanwhile, chop the okra into 1 inch pieces, and set aside.
After simmering the beef for 45 minutes, add the okra and the rest of the beef stock.
Continue simmering until the okra is tender.  

Total number of calories: 413



Cheers,
Fernanda