One Month Mark

With a naturally petite figure, it's hard to gain support for any weight loss goals. Maybe I can inspire those who find themselves in the same position as me of being "skinny fat" and just wanna lose that fat. Though I may look skinny (I'll include a gym selfie from today in this entry), my body fat to lean muscle ratio is pretty high. I don't want to share numbers on here because it's embarrassing for everyone. That being said, according to my percentages, I'm overweight- closer to obese. And if I'm overweight... Wake up, America. I'm kinda on/off new to the whole fitness scene, so try to keep the flaming low.

It's been an entire month since I started working out regularly at the UFC gym. Despite not seeing any a big difference in my body, my fitness/cardio has greatly improved. I'm proud to say that I've pushed my body to achieve what I haven't accomplished in once upon a really long time ago of which I don't remember 7 years: run a mile in less than 8 minutes. I actually hit that milestone a few days ago and I'm currently down to 7:30, the lowest time I've ever ran. That's 8 miles an hour, people. Compare that to my beginning time, 15- I've cut it in half! Now that I've accomplished my goal, there's nothing else to do but to keep pushing forward.

Every day, I plan to run for 30 minutes at a constant speed of 5 miles an hour to improve my cardiovascular strength. In total, I will be running 2.5 miles daily. I've actually already been running that much for the past few days now with my 8-minute miles, but I think it'd be a smarter idea to further improve my time for when I'm actually fit. So I'll resume running an additional mile with the sole purpose of decreasing my time in a month or so. I lift weights too to increase muscle mass and in turn increase my metabolism, but cardio is my main concern. And with consistent cardio training, fat loss will soon follow.

My heart health is the biggest issue to me because when I began, my resting heart rate was a whopping 92 beats per minute. A healthy heart is supposed to be 60bpm. After a month of running a mile on a daily basis, it's now at 84!

Running a lot can be fatal because you sweat out water and necessary sodium from your body. Don't expect that water alone replenishes you because it can lead to the swelling of the brain. So the way to counteract this is by eating salty foods; eating carbs is also needed for cardio; and drinking gatorade to replace electrolytes can be a real treat.

Heather gray isn't the most flattering color for athletic apparel.. Now, I understand why everyone opts for black.

I chose this photo to share because my back is my problem area. My front side looks aiite fine because I kinda already have abs far from a 6-pack. But I want them to be more defined; I also want Venus (lower back) dimples, which will eventually show through if I lower my body fat. Neither are apparent in the photo, but I can tell my muscles are developing. Toned is the new thin.

Since my progress is slow (& steady!), I'll probably type up a monthly report.

For now, I'll share with you guys what I've been doing for a month to get my body adjusted to exercising.

First of all, I changed my diet. I never rarely eat rice, ice cream, boba, asian goodness, etc. But the biggest change for me is drinking water. I started from drinking one bottle a day for a week, then added another bottle the following week, and so on. It would have been dangerous for me to have jumped to 4 bottles a day, so that's why I did it gradually. Now I'm at 5 and I think that's good enough. One bottle is equivalent to two glasses, so I drink 8-10 glasses a day- the recommended amount.

As for exercising, I did resistance training combined with cardio. Mondays were strictly cardio days: I'd workout for 45 minutes doing a combination of using jacobs ladder for 30 minutes and the treadmill for the last 15. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I did resistance training only for the first week. Resistance training includes lifting weights, so I'd do assisted chin ups at 120 lbs, barbells at 20, dumbbells (5, 7.5, 10, 15), bench presses, leg curls, etc. This is in addition to things that don't require equipment: push ups, supermans, squats, and plank. The following weeks, I added on 30 minutes of cardio. Again, I gradually added on more exercises/equipment as the weeks continued to ensure progression. For example, I started off only doing 2 sets of 10 reps, but ended at 3 by 20. Because if you start at your maximum capability, you'll have little improvement; if you start off slow, you can build up better because you've strengthened your foundation.

Every other day (not mentioned above) were my rest days. However, I didn't completely rest because I still ran a mile to improve my mile time.

Hello, August!

Rereading my previous blog entries from 2 years ago on here, I've realized that I haven't changed for the most part. Which is good and bad: good because my personality remains consistent, but bad in the sense that I haven't gotten much done. I feel like I could have written those posts just yesterday. In fact, I wrote them around the same time of year as well!

I've maintained a design-turned-randomness blog on tumblr for the past year, but I want a place to publish well-thought-out posts. And hey, why not give this another chance. So this is tinataketwo.