TOP: WOW! What an accomplishment it is for me to finally be able to share this post with everyone. It has been a long journey to get back to feeling like my best self. When I started sharing about how I gained the quarantine 15 (gained about 12 pounds), there were so many of y'all that could relate and have been so supportive as I worked on losing that extra weight/quarantine roll. First off, I do want to acknowledge that it isn't about losing "x" number of pounds. I acknowledge that someone similar to my size that has more muscle mass and lookmore fit can weight much more than me on a scale. It's not about a number but feeling your best self. Personally, being around 118-122 is my normal weight number so that's what I'm going off of.
A little quick summary! About 4 1/2 months ago, I hoped on a scale and saw that I had gained 12 pounds. I'm sure the weight gained started in February but really escalated during the first few months of quarantine. I had gotten into a bad habit of binge watching shows, staying up late, and snacking! Everyone in my family noticed and that's when it started to really become aware that I had gained a lot of unwanted weight. These are what I incorporated into my new daily routine to knock off the extra pounds.
BEFORE CHANGING MY LIFESTYLE:
Workout Routine: None, lol. I took my kids on neighborhood bike rides and that was about it.
Diet: I personally feel that my meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are healthy on average. I eat a lot of Vietnamese food which consist of poultry, soups, rice, and veggies. It was the dessert and late night snacks that killed me. I would stay up until 3am watching shows while eating a bowl of Ramon and other snacks every night. That also caused for a horrible sleep routine too.
MONTH 1:
Workout Routine: We all start somewhere. Whether I was running or walking, I did at least 2 miles 5x a week. For the first two weeks, I could only run .5 miles. As the weeks went by, I would slowly increase my running distance and go to a 1 mile run (without stopping). I also incorporated other active activities like volleyball, tennis, biking and sports that I really enjoyed doing 2-5x a week.
Diet: I started to be conscious of the late night snacks and cut it down by about 50%-75%. I started to sleep a bit earlier which made it easier to stop the late night snack too. I also cut out sweet by 90%.
Weight: I dropped about 2.5 lbs the first month.
MONTH 2:
Workout Routine: Now that I worked up a better endurance, I started running at least 2 miles per day 5-7 days a week and added about 3 hours of other physical activities as well (volleyball mostly). Working out can be really fun but when you find a sport or activities you really love, it makes it 10x easier to be active.
Diet: My diet stayed pretty much the same as month 1 except I started to cut down on my dinner portion sizes and cut out all snacks and desserts. I would treat myself maybe once a week to ice-cream or chick fil a but that was pretty much it.
Weight: I dropped another 2-3 lbs the second month.
MONTH 3:
Workout Routine: I started to notice that I wasn't losing weight as fast as the first 5lbs because my body was getting use to what I was already doing. I really turn it up a notch month 3. I started to add in daily ab work outs and 20-30 minute hit workout. I tried out Chloe Ting's 2 week shred and I've never seen such fast results on my stomach area. Out of the 30 days, I would say that I did the workout 25 of the 30 days. It became a habit really fast. I also tried out several of her HIT workout videos and really loved them all. She makes it seem easy, quick, and pushes you to do it. I also tried adding in 3000 jump ropes per week (1000 per day). I added these all into my routine 5-7x a week and was running 2-4 miles 5-7x a week as well.
Diet: For my diet, I started to incorporate more greens and less rice into my diet. If you get a good salad, it is just as tasty as a regular meal. I love salads from Panera, the "Fuji apple chicken salad" is my favorite. I wouldn't say that I'm on a "healthy" living diet but more of asking myself if this choice of dish is healthy? What other dish could I eat that would fill me up and be a better choice?
Weight: I could see more muscle and toning come into play and lost about 3 more pounds.
MONTH 4 TO CURRENT:
Workout: My workout routine now consist of 50% weight lifting and 50% cardio. I know a lot of us may not have access to a squat rack and all of your typical gym equipment. I'm very fortunate to have my brother and Tommy who are very serious about working out start getting in items for their home gym. You do not need tons of different weights to do the workouts I'm currently doing. Target and Amazon offer very affordable dumbbells and kettlebells that you can easily incorporate for weight workouts. I think you can easily get away with a 8lb and 12 lb dumb bell
How did I learn the proper form to some of the workouts?
I'm still working on perfecting my form but I would say that Tommy was the one that helped me understand form years ago. I've also watched videos on certain workout and studied how they look and if the correct muscle part was doing the work.
Which workout do I do?
I personally love referencing to Chloe Ting, Whitney Simmons, , and Sweat. If you're new to working out, I highly recommend The Balance Life and Sweat They give you wonderful workouts and share great instructions.
Diet: My diet during month 4 is the same as month 3 but now it's different. Because of school starting back up, I'm starting to eat out in restaurants more and I kinda want to cut back on that for sure.
Weight: I'm officially down 10lbs and am working to get maybe 2/3 more pounds off and then building up muscle weight.
ADVICE! My biggest advice would be to start and be consistent. It doesn't matter if you're only walking half a mile a day, as long as you're consistent. Give yourself realistic goals and build up as time goes by. My family has really helped keep me going so if you know someone in your family that has similar active goals, support each other. You can do it virtually as well!
I wanted to share some images of my progress. Unfortunately when I started changing my lifestyle 4 months ago, I didn't take a before picture. I did want to share a picture I shared with everyone in January because I had a very similar lifestyle and eating habit during the beginning of the year as well.
LATE JANUARY 2020
EARLY AUGUST 2020
TODAY SEPTEMBER 2020
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