Healthy “on-the-go” foods

Did you know that John West make Tuna & Beans in a can? Each one comes packaged with a little fork too! They are located in the canned tuna section of the supermarket.

I purchased one of each of the three available flavours to try – I will let you know my thoughts when I’ve eaten them.

These will be perfect for me to keep a can in the nappy bag. I’m sure I’m not the only Mum out there who sometimes gets too busy looking after kiddies to eat something herself! And by the time you’ve fed, changed, and done whatever else you need to do for bub, it’s 3pm, you’re starving and it’s no wonder cos you haven’t eaten since breakfast!

There’s only so many times you can eat a peanut butter sandwich or crackers with dip before you start to wonder how much you are devoiding yourself of essential nutrients at lunch time. Surely there’s got to be something better for us to eat out there!

If you’ve got other suggestions for easy/convenient foods that are both healthy and budget friendly, please share!

P.S. the website calls these a “delicious snack” – I think they would do well as a light or on-the-go lunch too. If you’re eating breakfast as early as I do, you could have something like this as an early lunch, followed by an afternoon snack later on. Or reverse that – an early light lunch, and have this in the afternoon.

Post Pregnancy Weight Loss

I had a great question (thanks Cassie!) the other day, but given it was written in the comments section I thought some readers might miss it, so I’m re-posting the gist of my answer here.

Before I begin – Disclaimer: even after reading what I am about to present here, you still need to do your own research to find what works best for you, and consult with your health practitioner if you are unsure about anything!

Much of the content of this post is related more to breastfeeding Mums. I have one child and currently still breastfeed her, so my own knowledge and experience in the area of Mums who aren’t breastfeeding (or exclusively expressing) is close to non-existent. However there may be some tidbits that non-breastfeeding Mums can take away.

As far as post pregnancy weight loss goes, it needs to be gradual! It took you nine months to gain the weight, so expect to take eight to twelve months to lose it. Some women may find they lose the weight faster than that. Also, it could be dependent on how much weight you gained. I returned to my pre-pregnancy weight by the time Lily was five months old. However, I didn’t have a lot of weight (five kilos) to lose. My rate of weight loss was relatively slow – if you are able to comfortably lose weight at a faster rate that is fine, as long as you stay within recommended rates.

A few things to be aware of when embarking upon a weight loss journey:

• It is generally advised to wait until six weeks post pregnancy to begin more vigorous exercise. It may be longer for certain exercises too, such as abdominal work, especially if you have certain conditions, such as abdominal separation.
• The waiting period may be also longer  if you had a C-section, although when I was looking up info on C-sections, all I could find was six weeks as the recommendation which surprised me considering it’s fairly major surgery! It would be best to ask your health practitioner for exercise guidelines.
• Don’t specifically try to diet/lose weight until at least two months after pregnancy. Your body needs time to replenish and recover from everything it went through during pregnancy and labour, internally and externally.
• Breastfeeding Mums, you need to prioritize establishing your milk supply in those critical first few months – waiting that bit longer to ensure your milk supply has settled is totally worth it!
• A healthy rate of weight loss is about half to one kilo per week. Slower is fine too. Faster than that could compromise your milk supply.
• Don’t restrict your calorie intake – a highly restrictive calorie intake could decrease your milk supply.
• Your diet needs to be healthy and balanced and include all essential vitamins and other nutrients. The good news is that if it’s less than ideal, your body will still make nutritious milk for your baby, but at your personal expense.

Breastfeeding Mums, you may find that if your diet is balanced, your snacks and meals healthy, and your serving sizes appropriately proportioned, that the weight will simply come off in its own time. Your body will consume between 200-500 calories extra per day just making milk. If you happen to burn closer to the 500 calorie per day mark, then you’d lose almost half a kilo of fat per week provided you don’t make up for that 500 calorie loss by eating it in chocolate!

Even if you burned at the lower end (200 calories per day) you’d still lose around half a kilo of fat per month.

This is what happened with me. I wanted to lose the extra weight, but I did it by simply being mindful of what I ate. I didn’t even eat zero junk food, I just didn’t overdo it. A lot of people think it was easy for me to lose the weight because I’m an instructor, and that my returning to teaching three months post-pregnancy was what did it for me. But not so. When I first returned to teaching, only one of the three weekly classes I taught involved me doing any exercise. Apart from that one class, it was just walking – and not even daily walking, maybe a couple times per week. Now, with five weekly classes on my schedule, only three involve me doing exercise. Lucky me, that’s about to go up to six weekly classes (four active) from next week. So I’m hardly exercising at an amount that is above the general population.

I am certain that it was the breastfeeding that’s done it. It’s been very slow, a rate of around one kilo per month, but I’m happy with that.

So, breastfeeding Mums, take advantage of the opportunity you have. Don’t use breastfeeding as an excuse to eat extra empty calories that you want but don’t need. Instead, use this opportunity to help make your weight loss easier than if you weren’t breastfeeding. Of course, if you are constantly feeling hungry between meals (like I often do!), by all means have a snack. Maybe instead of reaching for that chocolate bar you could opt for some fruit and yoghurt, or a bowl of muesli.

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Some extra reading – most of the above was taken from the articles below, but there is also more information beyond what I shared with you today:

• Can I diet while breastfeeding?
• Nutrition, Exercise and Weight Loss While Breastfeeding

Bodypump Tip: Modifications during Pregnancy

This official Les Mills Bodypump pregnancy guide says it all… read it and follows it’s guidelines! Enough said! 🙂

Comfort Eating

I’ve been having a bit of tough week. This morning was the last straw. I won’t go into details but it’s times like this when I am tempted to turn to the chocolate hot cross buns sitting on the kitchen counter, or the Connoisseur ice cream in the freezer.

I’ve always had a tendency towards comfort eating, really for as long as I can remember. I have no idea how it started or why it’s been that way for me. But if there is one thing I know, comfort eating seems to offer the promise of making me feel better, but it never makes me feel better – not during the act of eating, and certainly not after.

If anything, it adds to my problems because it is inevitably followed by a sense of guilt immediately after – an emotion that I do not need to have to deal with when I’m already down – as well as either weight gain or having to commit to exercising or being extra good with my food for the next few days to make up for it!

One thing you could consider is doing a project of some sort. Something that will distract you from comfort eating, but will also give you an emotional pick-me-up, to help put you in a better frame of mind to deal with the situation that’s got you down in the first place.

This morning, I turned to paint.net, a free photo editing program on my computer. So instead of reaching for that Choc Cross Bun, this is what I did:

Looking at pictures of my cute daughter never fails to eventually put me in a good mood. Admittedly the cute pictures typically work better whilst she’s asleep, not so much when she’s in the middle of screaming her head off… although if she is screaming her head off, a Choc Cross Bun is probably the last thing on my mind.

P.S. Blogging about it this morning has helped me too!

Losing Weight: Doing the Math

Ever wondered why it seems so hard to lose weight?

Weight loss is, most simply put, a game of math. Calories in versus calories out. If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight… and if you use more calories than you consume, you lose it! Simple!

Unfortunately simple is not necessarily easy – if it were, we wouldn’t be one of the fattest nations in the world.

The experts say that a good rate of weight loss is around half to one kilo per week. Any more than one kilo per week and you risk losing not just fat, but also muscle. You don’t want this, because the amount of muscle you have is what drives your metabolism. More muscle = higher metabolism = more calories burned by your body, even whilst you sleep. If, in your efforts to lose weight, you lose muscle, then you are making your job harder, because as you lose muscle, your metabolic rate will decrease.

Let’s break this wait loss down mathematically – we’ll be conservative and aim for half a kilo of fat loss per week.

• 500g of fat contains 4500 calories (9 calories per gram of fat).
• So that’s 4500 calories you need to burn in excess of what you consume.
• This equates to 642 calories per day.

That is a lot of calories to be in deficit per day, and all for a measly half kilo of fat loss?  Yup! To put that in perspective, on The Biggest Loser, I think they put the female contestants on meal plans of around 1500 calories per day. So 642 calories is more than one of their three daily meals!

If having an energy deficit of 642 calories per day seems like an insurmountable task to you, here are a few suggestions for how to make the task of weight loss more manageable:

#1: Reduce your weekly weight loss goal.
When I’m in weight loss mode, I tend to go at a rate of about one kilo per month, or 300 calories per day. It’s much a slower rate of weight loss, but for me personally, it was better to do that than get discouraged on a weekly basis if I didn’t meet my half kilo goal.

#2: Don’t just diet, and don’t just exercise – do both!
If I did both, then achieving a 300 calorie deficit each day meant I only needed to reduce my daily calorie intake by 150, and increase my daily activity so that I burned 150 calories extra per day. If a standard group fitness class burns 300+ calories, then doing exercise every second day would help me to achieve the 150 calorie per day exercise.

#3: Cardiovascular activities are key exercises in calorie burning
At the end of the day, the more cardio you do, the more calories you will burn. If you fitness and general health allows it, higher intensity cardio will burn more calories than lower intensity, provided you can do it for an extended period of time (say 20-30 minutes and build up from there to as long as your schedule permits)

#4: Do some resistance training
Many people tend to focus on cardio, cardio and more cardio in their efforts to burn calories and lose the fat. However resistance exercise is really important too, because it will maintain the muscle mass you already have, and possibly even help you to gain a little more muscle mass which will increase your metabolic rate. And for the women out there, you need not fear bulking up! I do resistant training and I lift as much weight as I can safely and effectively manage, and I have not yet been called anything other than “tiny” or “skinny” (or, as my Mum likes to put it, “you have no bum”…)

How much resistance training? 2-3 times per week is ideal, preferably as spaced out along your week as possible so your muscles have time to rest and recover between sessions.

Something that Works

Continuing on from my previous post, hopefully you have started thinking about what activities you enjoy doing. Not just enjoy, but love – and can’t wait to get back for more!

Thankfully, for some people the difficulty ends there. Doing something they love works well for them, as they are motivated to make time for that special activity. This is particularly true for those who love activities that are very flexible in when and where they can be done – running and walking are classic examples.  All you really need is a good pair of shoes, feet to put them on, appropriate attire, and you’re off… even if it’s raining, because some hardcore runners especially love running in the rain!

But for many of us, it’s not quite that simple.

You might discover that you absolutely LOVE Zumba classes, but it is out of your budget to spend money on casual classes or a gym membership. Or maybe all the classes at your local gym are at times that don’t suit your family schedule. Which means that your next task is to find something that works!

That may mean doing a little extra research to find a timetable that suits you, maybe at a different gym. It might mean changing gyms to one that has a creche because you don’t have anyone else available to babysit. Or crunching the numbers at home to somehow make some money available to pay for classes. Or making a sacrifice and asking for a gym membership for your birthday or Christmas, instead of that handbag you’ve been eyeing…

Sometimes, it could even mean doing something that you don’t actually love so much.  Yes, unfortunately that is right!  Let’s face it, we all go through seasons in life when we can’t always be 100% doing only the things we love.  We have roles and responsibilities too… and sometimes it is more important to maintain our health doing something we don’t like so much, than doing nothing at all.

So I would like to share my journey into the activity of running, something which I never did enjoy much, although the more I did it, the more I grew to enjoy it more, probably because I got better at it  – after all, who doesn’t enjoy doing something they’re good at?

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Running and me did not go together. But at one stage in my life, my beloved aerobics classes were not working out for me, because they were either too early for me to get to on time after work, or too late such that I was getting home much later than I wanted. So I resorted to using the cross-trainers and bikes at the gym. Unless there was a good program on the TV for me to watch whilst working out, I generally found this activity BORING. But I persisted, and over time I noticed that some of the women who worked out at the same time as me were spending their entire time on the treadmill RUNNING! All 30-60 minutes, nonstop!

So I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to get better at running, and be just like them. Why? I dunno… I just thought I’d give it a go. I started out going at a snail’s pace on the treadmill and feeling agony at every step. Eventually my pace improved, and then I participated in a 10km fun run that the gym organised. Except it was probably more like a 2km run followed by 2 km of stop-start running-walking and then 6km of walking. lol.

I have a friend who loves her long distance running – an easy recovery run for her is probably 15km or so! She suggested I sign up for a fun run to help motivate myself. For me, that worked. It gave me a goal to build up to 6km by the date of the run, because the run itself was 8km and according to my friend, to train for that I only needed to be able to run about 80% of that distance (she was right). Also, I had to pay to enter the fun run, and let’s face it, there is no Chinese person alive on the entire face of this planet that likes to see even 5 cents go to waste. So once I was signed up and paid for, there was no way I was backing out of that run. After that fun run (which my friend kindly accompanied me on, going at my pace – except for the last few hundred metres where she pulled ahead of me and challenged me to keep up), I signed up for the next one, and the next one… and before I knew it, somehow I got myself signed up for a half marathon, urgh!

Another thing that worked for me with my running training, was to organise a running group, which was essentially a group of us who got together once a week to do a training session.  Sometimes the session was just going for a run together, other times it was specific drills like hill sprints. We even did the Thousand Steps – twice in one session! This worked for me because, as mentioned in my previous post, I enjoy exercise in a group setting.

So the moral of the story? If responsibilities and other commitments are genuinely preventing you from doing those activities you love and don’t really need much motivation to do, and you have to resort to doing something you don’t really like all that much, then try to add an element in there that you do enjoy. For me it was turning the single person activity of running into a group activity.

And if that fails, think of something else that makes you tick and try and add that factor in somehow. For me, that was the money factor – the fun runs I signed up for well in advance, I didn’t back out of. But there were a couple of runs where I told myself, “I’ll see where I’m at closer to the date before signing up”… and guess what? I never ended up doing them.

P.S. Ultimately what works best for me is to attend group fitnesses classes that I love, but the above were strategies that worked for me in a setting where the activity was not my first choice  🙂

Nov 2006: About to go to my first fun run

Jan 2007: Running Group session

Apr 2007: Run for the Kids

May 2007: Geared up for the Great Ocean Road half marathon

May 2007: I Survived the Great Ocean Road half marathon!

Something You Love

My brother is the sporty one – when we were kids whatever he picked up, be it a ball, a bat, a racquet or a pair of nunchucks, if he wasn’t automatically good at it, he would be after one practise session. Me? I was the chubby, non-athletic, accident prone bookworm. What I did not know was that my brother was actually more gifted than your average person, that it’s not actually normal to be good at practically every sport you try. At the time I just thought I was the abnormal one.

So I stayed away from physical activity as much as possible because I thought that being more active meant having to play sport.

Then I got to uni and discovered the gym. And Step Aerobics. And I was hooked. I found myself arranging my schedule so that I could attend classes taught by my favourite instructors. I even *ahem* skipped the odd lecture here or there in order to attend a class. And with each class, my fitness improved. It was almost like a side effect of doing something I loved.

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The older we get, the more responsibilities life throws at us. First it’s school assignments & exams, then jobs, then family… leaving us less and less time for ourselves. Getting fit, and then staying that way, is no longer as easy as being a side effect of doing something you find fun, but rather requires planning and prioritising and setting aside specific time to achieve.

So the last thing you need is to spend that precious time doing something you hate. Just because your cousin lost all that weight doing Yoga, doesn’t mean Yoga is for you. Yes, it is totally worth giving new things a try – that’s how I discovered my love for Step Aerobics – but don’t persist in doing something you dislike because someone else is making you go, or because it worked for someone else so you figure it has to work for you.

Find something you love to do! If you enjoy doing it, it will make it that little bit easier dragging yourself out of your warm bed and into the cold outside first thing in the morning, or last thing at night. Figuratively speaking of course… something I love doing could never involve me getting up in the dark of the early morning to do something outdoors!

My husband is not exactly inclined towards moving in time to the beat of a song. So aerobics is really not for him. In fact, group fitness classes are probably not for over 97% of the male population in general (with the exception of certain kinds such as indoor cycling and boxing). Research suggests that most men prefer to either work out alone, or within a competitive environment. And my husband is a classic example of this – give him a Step Aerobics class and he’ll persist with it, get an okay work out, but can’t wait for it to be over. However give him a team sport and he’ll play hard, run fast, get a killer workout, and love every moment of it.

Me, on the other hand? I hate most team sports because I’m a really sore loser so I dislike doing anything where I might have a chance of losing. I also don’t particularly enjoy doing things on my own. My ideal atmosphere is a non-competitive group environment, which is why group fitness classes are ideal for me.

If you take the time to try a variety of activities so that you can find something you truly enjoy, then instead of reluctantly forcing yourself to exercise several times a week, you’ll find yourself looking forward to the next session before the previous one is over! You might even find yourself rearranging your time so you can get to that activity! Finding things you enjoy doing will also make it so much easier to stick with them when life’s responsibilities make it more challenging to get to them. It can also double over as time out for you to focus on yourself, away from life’s worries.

Goodbye, Gong Gong

I just got word this morning – my grandfather (whom I call Gong Gong) passed away last night. Gong Gong lived to the ripe old age of almost 91!

He was the longest living grandfather on both sides of the family – so now between James and I, we have three living grandparents left, all women. So does that mean my chances of outliving James are pretty good? I mean, Gong Gong was quite a few years older than Po Po (grandma), but both of James’ grandmothers outlived not one, but two husbands each!

Me, Dad, Steph, Mum, Gong Gong & Po Po

 

It’s times like this, faced with death, that I am reminded of the importance of family. I can’t quote it exactly, but I’ve heard it said by someone, somewhere: No one lies on their deathbed thinking to themselves, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office!” If we’re going to have any regrets on our deathbeds, they are most likely going to be family-related.

And it is with family in mind that we must consider our personal health. Not just how skinny (or not) we are, or how fast (or not) we can run. You’ll hear me repeat myself like a broken record over this one – health has many aspects. There’s physical health both external and internal, but then there’s also mental, emotional, relational and spiritual health too.

This time, two days ago, Gong Gong was at home, most probably doing his usual thing – sitting on a couch squinting (due to his poor eyesight) at the local newspaper, like I saw him do many times as a little girl when we went to visit him in Malaysia. Yesterday, he was admitted to hospital. Today, he is gone.  Let this reminder of the fragility of life spur us towards self-evaluation of our priorities so that we can strive towards a better now, and a better future for ourselves and our loved ones.

Yes, you could do everything in your power to be as healthy as possible, and still meet with an unfortunate, untimely death. Or you could “smoke like a chimney” and drink like a… oh I have no idea what… and still naturally outlive those who have denied themselves many of the typical pleasures of life (too much alcohol, even more chocolate, over-indulging in good meals – to name a few) in pursuit of perfect health. Sometimes it can feel like it just comes down to the luck of the draw.

You may not have control over every factor in your life. But you can work with the factors you do have control over, because I still believe that it will lead a better version of you, that only you can be, which in turn can only benefit your family both in the short and long term.

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Gong Gong, thank you for raising my Mum, who in turned raised me. I will forever treasure my childhood memories of visits to Malaysia. You taught me important things, like how to flatten metal bottle caps so that we could use them in parking meters instead of paying real money (oh wait… that’s a bad thing! Doh!). I also now realise that when my brother and I, without fail, went running to get you every afternoon when the snack man drove by the house on his motorcycle, we were actually waking you from your afternoon nap just so you could buy us junk food.  And yet you were never grumpy with us for doing it, you always got out of bed with a smile (and more importantly, with your wallet! haha)

We had no idea at the time, but I know now that you really loved us, or you couldn’t have been so patient with us! I never knew you as well as I would have liked to, and I wish there wasn’t such a big language barrier between us, but I still love you all the same.

May you rest in peace. Love, Jin Jin. xoxo

Goodbye Gong Gong. You will be sorely missed by us all.

Chasing Lily

Okay, I know there’s probably some rule out there in Blog world about not posting twice in one day, but I couldn’t resist, as we only just took this video today, it’s still fresh on my mind, and I want to share it with you!

Plus, it’s a great exercise idea for anyone wanting to try something innovative. ;P

P.S. I am not the one doing the screaming!

 

If you have any other video ideas, leave a comment and I’ll see what we can do!

Bodypump Tip: Timing is Everything!

One of the regular features I want to have on this blog are randoms tip to help you get the most out of your Bodypump workout (well, for those of you who attend Bodypump classes, that is).  It came to mind because I know a few of you already participate in this class on a regular basis, but also because since starting this blog a few people wrote me messages saying they’d either recently joined the gym, or were getting back their gym shortly.

And this is one of the most popular class types offered at most gyms.

No idea what Bodypump is? Click on this image to learn a little more

 

Today’s tip: Timing is Everything!

The next time you go to class, focus on getting your timing perfect for every track, and every repetition. Most of the time I see people rushing just that little bit too fast through their repetitions.

Bodypump classes are choreographed and structured with the tempo (speed) of the music in mind. Songs are chosen specifically for the particular exercises and tasks at hand. So if the music seems too slow to you, that has been done on purpose – to challenge you!  Believe it or not, faster is not always necessarily harder.

For example, let’s take the squat track – if you go faster than the music, you will find yourself getting to the top of the squat (the resting position) before the music does, which means that before you do the next squat, you get a mini-rest. Multiply that by however many squats you do in that 5 minute timeslot, and that’s a lot of mini-rests. If, on the other hand, you time your squats such that by the time you get to the top of one squat, you immediately need to start on the next squat, this removes all of those mini-rests, making for a more intense workout, without you needing to add a single extra weight on your bar!

This same principle can be applied to any of the other tracks and muscle groups too.

Scientifically speaking, your muscles spend more time under tension, and the amount of time your muscles are under tension for is one of the factors that contributes towards improving strength and endurance.

P.S. This tip is not just relevant to Bodypump, but to any group fitness class in which there is strength-based work done in time to music

For more Bodypump tips, click on the “Bodypump” tag