My 8 Week Challenge: Part 3

As promised, today I will talk about how I went around my diet, workouts, and time management.

I had a very clear goal in mind when I entered this challenge: To reinvent myself and change the way I look. Be fitter, stronger, faster, tougher, toner. And yes, I have achieved it in 8 weeks. However, like all things in life, there is always room for improvement.

1) Diet
What's the 'secret' to my diet? There is NO SECRET. It's very very simple. I'm pretty sure all of you have heard this a million times but somehow you refuse to believe that it works. Either that or you're feeding your body with the wrong kinds of food. But this is what I did for the past 8 weeks.

Eat 5-6 small meals a day. Which means you have to eat every 3-4 hours a day depending on how long your day is. Guzzle 1-2 tall glasses of water before each meal. Take less carbs, take wheat bread/wholemeal bread/brown rice/wholemeal pasta/shiratake noodles most of the time. Avoid carbs for dinner or supper. Avoid processed carbs (e.g. doughnuts, chips, cheesecakes, cupcakes). Eat fresh veggies (those frozen peas/carrots/corns you get in fried rice are cheapskate veggie and aren't nutritious), fresh fruits. But most importantly, eat lean and clean protein. Chicken, fish, salmon, turkey, beef, lean pork, egg whites are very very good sources of protein. Limit yourself to 2 egg yolks per day but bountiful of egg whites. With high protein diet, you will definitely get super smelly egg farts. But I'd rather this than getting carb farts. At least I know my body is digesting healthy protein. NEVER EVER eat only when you're hungry. Eat on time. Don't starve your body or else it will just store food.

In the past 8 weeks, I've substituted my processed sugar with sweeteners (e.g. Equal, Equal stevia, Splenda, and Tesco sweetener). Some of you health freaks might say "Oh! But sweeteners have aspartame! You'll get cancer and die!" Too much of anything is bad for your body. I was only taking those sweeteners for 8 weeks and I drank A LOT of water to drain whatever my body has to. So I really don't see the harm in it. Not like I've been taking aspartame for the past 8 years. The best sweetener that does NOT have aspartame is Equal Stevia. You can easily find it in local pharmacies like Guardian/Watsons/Caring. They all have it. This is how the tablet Stevia looks like. There are many variations so if you're really interested, go check it out.

The diet that I did (called Inferno diet) is very similar to a well established diet called Dukan diet. You can have a look at the diet here and they even provide recipe ideas. Very very useful website, I reckon. And absolutely free!

Invest in a very good cooking pan. If you have an oven and griller, even better! I've mastered the art of cooking with no oil, minimal salt and pepper, no sugar and just enjoy the taste that I invent in the kitchen. You'll be surprised how much you can really taste the original flavour without all the condiments masking your food.

To break it down...

Week 1-2: Purely protein. Eggs, chicken, fish, seafood, shiratake noodles were my bestfriend. My shopping list mainly consisted eggs, chicken fillets, prawns, squids, shiratake noodles, fat free cream cheese, chicken ham, fat free yoghurt, natural yoghurt with no sugar added, magnolia skim milk, low fat ricotta cheese, low fat sour cream, garlic, onions, flax seeds and herbs. Yes, I did have some constipation, but I didn't die. Flax seeds and water were really helpful in my bowel movement.

Halfway through the 1st phase, I really struggled. I hated the fact that my freedom was taken away from me. I didn't have the freedom to eat what I wanted whenever I wanted. I cried so like a child who lost her favourite toy. With every mention of the food I was craving for, 2 droplets of tears left my eyes rolling down my cheeks. It was really really tough. But when I was asked "So you want to stop the diet?" My immediate answer was "NO." Simply because I am not the type to give up. I always finish what I started. Even if I have to be slower than others, I will still finish it. 

At the end of week 2, we were allowed to have ONE cheat meal. I had banana leaf rice coz I was craving for white rice and veggie. Then I topped it off with TWO slices of cheesecakes.

Week 3-4: Veggie every other day. So one day full protein, the next day combine with veggie for ONE MEAL only. Still, very high in protein. So of course I went crazy with my veggie. Had ABC soup which tasted heavenly!

Another cheat meal at the end of week 4. I saved my cheat meal for my Tioman trip. I had to go to Tioman during the 8wc for my research presentation and man, was it tough! The cheat meal was really worth it though. Buffet at Berjaya Tioman Resort.

Week 5-6: One day veggie and protein, another day full protein.

End of week 6 I had another cheat meal. It was at Concorde Hotel. Had buffet. By then, my jeans were already falling off my butt. Each time I got up to get more food, I had to wiggle myself in my jeans before moving.

Week 7-8: Happier days! One day veggie and protein (with a bit of dark chocolate, wholemeal bread, brown rice, wild rice, and also one fruit) and another day full protein. Apples and oranges have never tasted so good! By this phase, my life was colourful again. hehe.

2) Workouts 
A diet without proper workout will only show minimal results. If you really REALLY want to see results and you want to see it QUICK, you HAVE to workout. Cardio goes without saying. We sometimes incorporate weight training during bootcamp sessions and other times we just use simple body weight workouts. We have a lot of High Intensity Interval Trainings (HIIT). A lot of the workouts combine cardio and strengthening so they're very very efficient for fat loss and muscle building.

Regarding weights... Girls, pls stop your stupid mentality of "Ew! I don't want to do weights because I don't want to bulk up and look manly!" *Bitch slap!* Naturally girls have less testosterone as compared to guys. Even some guys have a hard time bulking up! Girls that you see that are really really bulky are either injected with hormones/steroid/drugs. And very very special cases occur whereby girls will have higher male hormones than other girls causing them to have extra strength and extra bulk. You want to get rid of that stubborn bulge of fat? Then stop your whining and just do the damn weights! 

For optimum results, it was recommended to workout 5-6 days a week and rest on weekends. That was what I did. In the beginning, I was allowing my body to cope with the muscle soreness so I worked out just once a day, 5-6 days a week. By week 2-3, I started on doing twice a day of workouts on alternate days. By week 4-5, I tried doing twice a day, 6 days a week. Week 6 onwards, I was doing twice a day workouts for 6 days a week. Of course I had the exceptional days when uni workload was too heavy and I really needed the extra sleeping hours, I skipped one workout for the day. But basically, the rule remained. Workout 6 days a week, twice a day whenever possible. Very tiring but I knew I had to do it.

3) Time management
Here is an example on how I planned my weekly meals. On every Sunday, I would spend a few hours just to plan out what to buy from Jusco for the entire week. With all the things I had to juggle, time management was very crucial.

This was basically my schedule...

445am: Wake up and get ready to leave house.
5am: Get picked up (I don't have a car in KL so I am somewhat crippled. I gotta rely on whoever that's willing to transport me to workout. Very very thankful. Thank you.)
510am-640am: Transcribe interviews and work on my Honours thesis in the car while feeding mosquitoes
640am or 7am: Workout for 1 hour
830am: Breakfast (I usually pack my breakfast to make life easier. Others don't have to think of places that are safe for me to eat and they can eat whatever they want while I eat my own diet-safe food)
930am: Reach home. Cook. Prep food for the day. Shower. Go uni.
11am: Snack on whatever that's on my menu
1pm: Lunch 
330pm: Tea break
6pm: Light dinner
830pm: Workout for 1 hour
10pm: Supper (Yes, it is FINE to have supper as long as it's not fatty carbs. I had mostly chicken meat)
1045pm: Reach home, cook for the day after if I know I will not have time the next morning
1130pm: Shower
12am: Sleep

[REPEAT]

I don't have the luxury of having a partner or maid to prep my meals. I had to do everything on my own from the planning right down to the packing of food (like most other 8week-challengers anyway). The rest of them had work-related stress to deal with. I had a thesis to deal with. The emotional, mental, physical stress all of us had to go through was really tough and challenging. Still, we all pushed through because we knew why we were doing what we were doing.

I could go on and on about my 8 week challenge. A lot of you have been asking me to tell you EVERYTHING I did. Even if I did, NOTHING will happen if you just read my responses and then move on with life as if you knew it all. The change in YOUR BODY comes from YOURSELF. If you have other sources of motivation, good. Bonus.

Mind you, I never had any sports background. Those who knew me from school days would know that I was never able to do ANY sports and I have always been chubby. Not fat, just fleshy and flabby. But I still managed to push through in just 8 weeks and you saw the results.

8 weeks ago, this pair of shorts was tight. Now I can simply tug it down my hips and it would fall off. 

If I could do it, why can't you?!