The First Week of the Pre-training

So, I got through the first week of the pre-training and I haven't cracked a bone so far. It's a good sign, hey? Although, I have to admit it was extremely though at the start, I was sore all over my body for the whole week, I could barely get up in the morning. However, at the same time, I feel good and happier. Yes, it's a good kind of pain for me.

After completing the first week I now realise that my upper body is stronger than my lower body, therefore I use my upper body a lot more than my lower body. That's why I am focusing more on training my legs and lower back, while keeping my upper body trained as much as well.

Aside from the training, I am now completely changing my habits to healthier ones. For example, I wake up two hours earlier in the morning to do my high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On rest day, I do 35 minutes of walking/running or swimming. At the same time, I am also cutting off bad carbs and avoiding sweets, chocolates, deep fried food, and alcohol. In substitute, I now consume more vegetables accompanied by brown or quinoa rice. I also eat more fruits like berries, avocados and bananas. In the morning, I drink warm lemon water in an empty stomach and I have no digestion problem ever since. Bye bye constipation.

A few friends asked me why I suddenly change and do all this stuff. Well, I simply answered because I want a healthier body. I figure that if I'm going to live alone in my old days, I would like to at least stay healthy, body and mind. My decision is also supported by some good people around me. My manager, who is among them, has been quite a support and resourceful. She's been sending me all kinds of information regarding clean eating plan and healthy food recipes, and motivation. One of my friends was more than happy to do my groceries shopping and filled my cart with healthy food. I've also been stalking Aryuveda page on Facebook for health tips.

Starting today, it's my second week of the pre-training. I did my legs this morning and I could do more squats and lunges compared to the first week. Hopefully I don't get too sore tomorrow. I still have 15 weeks to go to complete the training and I am quite determined to keep going. This also reminds me to make an appointment with a chiropractor to get my body a proper check up, in order to prevent injuries since I am now doing a quite intense training. Not to mention that I injured myself a few times before and left it untreated.

This is a total change for me and it's not easy to tackle the old habits. But I'm quite hopeful and determined to keep going.

Until next post.

A New Plan, a New Goal

I have mentioned before about how flat my life is after graduation with nothing to achieve and how my days are filled merely with work. Sure, I do now have a free time to do whatever I like and not sitting on my desk, frantically typing on my laptop and struggling to finish an assignment (which oddly enough, I miss it so much now). And, as you know, I have also been catching up friends, acquaintances, and just people in general. Yet, knowing me, a few weeks of going out and meeting people exhaust my soul and therefore I would much prefer to go back to my natural habitat; solitude.

In my solitude I have been reading more books (am aiming to complete my Goodreads reading challenge), and watching TV shows. An awful lot of TV shows, I admit. (I currently just started watching Black Sails. What are you on?) Yet, again, it gives me nothing but pure entertainment to kill the time. Although this, I'm afraid, is me procrastinating. But it will be another piece of thought to write about next time as I don't want to deal with it for now.

A few weeks ago, I was completely occupied with my Temporary Residence (TR) visa application, but that was it. I've submitted my application last month, uploaded all the required documents, and completed the IELTS test and medical examination. I am currently awaiting to be officially granted a TR. In the matter of this, I have plenty other things to do in order to get a Permanent Resindence (PR) visa. Getting the score of 8 on each band in the IELTS test, for example.

So far, I've been quite successful in getting a score of 8 in Reading and Listening part. In Speaking and Writing, unfortunately, I scored only 7 on each part. It resulted in overall score of 7, which is more than good enough for TR visa, but not competent enough for PR visa. Therefore, I have to do a lot of practices in order to achieve the required score. However, my friend, it feels more of a task or a chore to me and is definitely not, even in the slightest, the kind of achievement I am talking about.

Still in the terms of finding something to avhieve, I've been spending some time thinking about many different goals I could achieve that fits my budget and wouldn't scrap out my savings, which unsurprisingly turn out to be not so many options. The first thing that came to my mind was traveling. I was thinking of backpacking to the New Zealand. However, the word 'backpacking' doesn't make it any less cheaper apparently. Thanks to the obligations that happen to be the number one priority. But since I love to travel, in solitude of course, I will keep the plan on the list while saving money little by little. Thus, it makes to the long-term goal I would like to achieve and it's giving me another reason to get up in the morning and go to work.

In the meantime, I am still in search of an achievement, and it brings me to the plan I'm about to tell. I recently found out that I have lost weight. It was during the medical examination 3 weeks ago, I found out I've lost 4 kgs since the last time I weighted. That, and some people claimed that I have, indeed, lost some weight. No, I assure you, I am not on diet, and never was. This must be due to the series of event that stressed me out I lost my appetite. (One being my TR process.) I remember awhile back I couldn't even finish my normal portion of meal and ate only once a day. I was always exhausted by the end of the day and acquired sleepless nights, sometimes I had nightmares too. That's how badly stressed out I was -- am, considering the nightmares still remain.

Regardless the nightmares, I'm feeling quite jolly with the losing weight business. This is me taking whatever positive out of something that is completely negative, if you know what I mean. So, I would like to keep this going in a more healthy way. I've forgone through a plan of joining Virgin Active, the best fitness club and cheaper than Fitness First. Unfortunately, as I am also planning to start a phone plan because my iPhone 4s is technically a dinosaur and dying, I gave up joining any fitness club. I'm not being tight arse here but, considering (again) my obligations, I am absolutely tight in terms of budget. I graduated in accounting, of course I did the math already and knowing me, I'd like to be (or feel, actually) financially secured so when I say I'm tight, it means I just have to spare one third of my earnings apart from my savings as crazy money. (Oh, I know it's never fun talking about money with me.)

So, it then brings me to another plan with the help of an acquaintance, whom lately I've been close to. Well, she's my manager actually. She emailed my a pdf file of a cardio workout plan, which I believe she paid quite some money for. Being a swimmer, I've never liked doing cardio, to be honest. But I read somewhere that it is best to do a workout that we don't like. Because doing a workout that we like, in my case swimming, our body gets too comfortable with the activity therefore it is unlikely to achieve the best result of the plan. Hence, the cardio workout plan for me!

Speaking of the plan, it consists of 4 weeks of pre-training for beginners, meaning me, and 12 weeks of training. Each week contains 3 days of workout session, where each session has 2 different circuits of workout need to be done in certain time. I've also done a bit of research of clean eating. This will be quite a challenge because I don't cook. I mean, I suck at cooking. And most of the healthy food I know is tasteless. But I think I could alternate it with something else. For example, giving up on Doritos and Twisties on the weekend. No more chips.

Now, that's the short-term plan and goal, and what I want to achieve out of this is a healthy and fitter body, rather than just losing weight out of distressful mind. I'll start the pre-training next week on Monday. I am quite hopeful to get through this. I want to and am going to. I will surely update it here on how I'm going with the plan.

Until next post.

P.S. If you're interested on the workout plan, kindly drop me an email so I can send you the link to the workout plan. Clearly, I couldn't distribute the pdf file to another third party due to copyright reason.