New post on Happy Weight blog

I bought myself a pair of Reebok Runtone shoes after more than a year of lusting for them. I took them for a “test drive” yesterday. Click here for the rest of the story.

New blog post on 120 pounds

I started exercising again after such a loooong break. Read more here: http://bit.ly/9UtVxO

Finding motivation to exercise

Try these quick tips from Real Simple readers. For the full article, click here.

If a bikini hanging on the door knob can get you off your butt, go for it!

I told you so…

Last year, a few days after my birthday — on Feb 29 to be precise — I blogged about Jennifer Love Hewitt and how unflattering photos of her were circulated around the Internet.

What baffled me was that Jen was a “size 2″ and called “fat”.

Jennifer from behind

I remember the picture vivildy. She was standing with the sea water around her thighs calf, and wearing a black bikini. She was photographed from behind. Her hip looked unnaturally wide against her tiny (probably 24-inch) waist.

IF she was a size 2 on top — which, on hindsight is ridiculous considering how busty she is. She should at least be a size 8 — she looked like a size 8 on the bottom.

Later, I saw another photograph from the same beach vacation. It appeared that Jennifer had the dreaded cellulite that, believe it or not, even perennially skinny Paris Hilton has — and the paps have pictures to prove it!

At the end of that post, I wrote that I won’t be surprised if the next time we see Jennifer on a magazine, she’d look shapelier than before.

It took almost two years for that to happen but lo and behold, Jennifer on the cover of Shape magazine looking as skinny as she was in Sister Act 2 — back when she was 14!!

A young Jennifer

You can call me jealous but I think she lost too much weight. I don’t know about you but I find it very disturbing that the 30-year-old Jen looks (and probably weighs the same when she was) 14.

Look at the cover! I think she looks emaciated — the face, the collar-bone right to the bony shoulders.

Jennifer's new bod

On the Internet, people are already commenting on her cover story. Some said that they felt cheated because Jen said she was happy with herself and then she went and lose the weight. Others were supportive of her decision and said that as long as she lost the weight the healthy way, it was find.

Me? Well, normally I’m supportive of anyone who aims to be healthier and fitter but I didn’t react positively to Jen “looking like that” on the cover of one of my favourite magazines.

Right now, I’m thinking she sold out. Well, I kinda-sorta predicted that she would do so almost 2 years ago.

I need to get my hands on that magazine to assess the situation fairly LOL. But I won’t lie. My initial reaction went from “She lost the weight?” and “Good for her she lost the weight” to “I think she lost too much weight. She looks sick”.

So right now, I’m not taking her weight loss so positively, especially since I think she didn’t really need to lose the weight. What she needed was only to tone up her arms and her thighs.

But now, it seems that she has lost even the meat on her cheeks and she looks (almost) beyond recognition. Ask me another day…

P/S: If you’re interested in the article, click here.

All you can eat weekend

Looks like it’s going to be a weekend of eating, eating and eating.

It started with my friend, Shah’s 30th birthday bash on Thursday. It was a cosy get-together. He had some food catered but many of the guests brought their own. It was almost a pot luck affair. Some of them brought triffles, roast chicken, creme puffs etc. I loved the white chocolate birthday cake. Normally, I hate white chocolate because it’s too sweet. But this one was different. It had almond in it and it was not sweet at all. Just perfect!

The venue was our friend Sh3gar’s boutique-cum-office. He’s trying to develop his own clothing line and already has, at least, two local celebrity clients – both girls have been VJs and are top local actresses. As the office is quite new, he hasn’t come round to fixing the prices on his clothes. I told him that his designs are something that I would definitely wear. If they’re not too expensive, I would definitely buy em

To burn off all the calories I consumed from the party, I went to the gym and had a good 40-minute walk/climb/run on the treadmill. I think this is the perfect routine for me because although “switching gears” is hard but it made the time fly by. Before I knew it, I was already on my 35th minute!

I discovered one trick to distract me while I’m running, especially when I’m not listening to the iPod – play games on the treadmill. By that I mean as I run, I make a square. One second I’m on the left side of the conveyor’s belt and another I’m on the right. It’s like I’m running in a zig zag motion. I found that although I was on a relatively comfortable speed, I exerted more energy just to keep up. Whatever it takes to get my heart rate up, yeah?

After the cardio, I did some squats, walking lunges, sit ups on the exercise ball and threw some punches with a 5-pound dumbell on each hand. Just moves that I remember reading from my health magazines.

Right after gym, I had a shower and met my husband who played three rounds of volleyball on the rooftop. After both of us were done, we went straight to my husband’s cousin’s place. An@s (the cousin) had a going away party/kenduri doa selamat. He and his wife, A1re3n will be leaving for Istanbul on the 12th as he will be doing a three-year dentistry postgraduate course there. Istanbul is also where his parents-in-law are. His FIL is the malaysian ambassador there, if I’m not mistaken. I think by the time they come back to KL, they would have had a kid or two Insya-Allah.

Just this afternoon, his uncle of his had a housewarming party. I’m still stuffed from the beriyani and ayam masak merah.

I suppose tomorrow we will be eating in. But since Mak Na (his aunt) and her husband, Uncle J0hn and two children – Ad@m and B3n, are down here from New Castle, mom-in-law is sure to have some dinner plans. 

Now usually all this eating would make my stomach go haywire. But since I started taking DigestAid, I have had little to no problem. The only uncomfortable side effect is the flatulence. Either I’m farting all the time or I’m having difficulties passing wind. But that beats needing to urgently pass motion. It’s one evil or the other, I guess. Remember, beggars can’t be choosers!

But I think I’m going to try to substitute my DigestAid pills which contains papaya and pineapple enzymes for the real thing – papaya and pineapple fruits. Like on Friday, I missed breakfast, so I took a long piece of papaya just before lunch. After lunch, I took a pill. The surprise was, I was fine. No stomach cramps and urgent need to go to the toilet. Success!

I think Princess wants to do dinner on Monday. More eating! But I must reconfirm with her. So, later!

P/S: I have Rihanna’s Take A Bow minus one. Next singing contest, I’m singing Rihanna for sure

Guess who’s back in the mack

After spending hours in the office staring at the computer screen and pages for this weekend’s issue, the last thing I need right now is spending another 30 minutes or so staring at the screen writing this blog entry.

I got a shock (a pleasant one) looking at my dashboard. I knew that the layout for the page where I post my entries has changed but I had ZERO idea that the new dashboard has been pimped as well. Now I can tell who had recently linked me from their blogs/websites, how many blogposts I have so far — fyi it’s 542 (incl. this one), how many people read my blog on certain dates and my most popular post, which happens to be my review of Everyday Minerals makeup.

So, mineral makeup fans out there are gonna love this entry because *drum roll* I just got my package all the way from Austin, TX a couple of days ago. Actually, I could have picked it up on the 8th if I had wanted to but I was away in Hanoi. So, as soon as I had some free time on Wednesday, I laced up my walking shoes and speed-walked all the way to the post office (about a 10-minute walk). I swear I was back at my desk in less 20 minutes – the day was threatening to rain, so I HAD to walk fast.

After thoroughly enjoying my free samples kit last year, I decided to make my first purchase from Everyday Minerals website. I chose the personal custom kit (mini) where I get to pick 6 items from the categories below:

* Foundations
* Blushes and Face Colours
* Concealers
* Eye Colors
* Finishing Powders
* Lip Colors

and pay only US$18 (plus US$9 shipping and handling charges). For those living in Malaysia, that translates to around RM88. Not bad, huh?

Anyway, this time around, the products come in purple-lided containers weighing 4 grams each. They are the size of your average lip pots (lipgloss in pots) (see picture below which I lifted off watercoloursky.blogspot.com. Thank you for the picture!)

The colours I picked were:

• Medium Beige Summer and Sandy Medium for foundation in intensive (intensive refers to the formula and it’s suppose to be the best for oily skin like mine. Other formulas include matte, semi-matte and original glo)
• Intensive Medium for concealer
• Weekend Getaway and Apple for blushers
• Cherry Fizz for lip colour

The morning after I picked up the package, I mixed both foundation and chose Weekend Getaway to complete my makeup. But mixing the foundations — which I thought would produce the perfect match for my skintone. Nope, not exactly, as I found out later. I looked too done up. But I loved my blusher which looked quite natural.

So this morning, I just went with Sandy Medium and what do you know, it’s quite close to my skin. I’m sure Medium Beige Summer isn’t too dark for me. It’ll be suitable for certain days when I need a little tan. I’m sure I’ll have one of those days

I haven’t tried Apple because, frankly, it looks a little dark. Maybe it’s more suitable for night.

If you want to know how EM looks on my skin, just check out my current Facebook profile picture. In that photo, you’ll also notice that I am sporting a new hairdo. So far, I’ve got positive comments from people. I suppose if they have nothing nice to say about my hair, they probably won’t say anything *lol*. But I like my hair. If I had it my way, I would prefer a bob better but this cut is suited for my curly/wavy hair type. At least I don’t have to tie my hair when I run/walk on the treadmill. When I wash my hair, I use less shampoo and it takes less time to dry as well. I don’t need to use pomade to flick the ends of my hair because my natural curl does it for me FOC in my sleep I wake up and voila… instant swingy, bouncy curls.

Speaking of curls, today a colleague asked me if I had permed my hair? Hahaha. It’s all natural, baby!

I think I look boyish with this cut. Someone in the office says it makes me look younger than I already do. And my husband swears it makes me look taller(?!). Whatever!

I actually love long hair but I think I needed a makeover. Seven years is too long to have the same haircut, don’t you think?

Anyway, I do mean to post pictures from Hanoi soon. I still had long hair then. Right now though, I am too exhausted to even finish this entry and go grab a glass of cold water to drink. I promise, promise to do it before the end of the weekend. The Internet has been really good here in the new house so that’s a motivation to get it out of the way.

Ok, I’m so tired that the speaking voice in my head (which is narrating this entry) is slurring Night night then!

The sweetest things

On Yahoo! News today:

Verizon recovers man’s missing recording

An 80-year-old man can hear his late wife’s voice again, any time he wants. Verizon has recovered a lost message recorded by Charles Whiting’s wife, Catherine, before her death in 2005.

When Verizon upgraded the man’s telephone service, his wife’s voice disappeared from his voicemail system. The message said “Catherine Whiting,” and her husband said he listened to it every day for comfort.

Company spokesman John Bonomo said Tuesday that a contractor found the recording in an archive and restored it to the new voicemail system.

Charles Whiting says he’s very happy.

Tell me this isn’t the sweetest piece of news you have read today *gets all teary-eyed*.

My colleague, As*wad says Obama’s speech (the last portion of it) tugged at his heartstrings. When I have the time, I shall read his speech too.

P/S: Tonight American Idol is on tv. Don’t miss it!

P/P/S: According to my pedometer, I took nearly 7,000 steps today. I walked and ran for 32 minutes this morning on the treadmill (warm up = 5 mins; switched between walking and running = every 1 min until minute 27; cool down – 5 mins). So that alone gave me about 3,838 steps. Cool eh? The daily number recommended by health experts is 10k steps. I got 7k. Not bad, not bad at all!

The fourth week

I can’t believe that the 2008 Self Challenge is already in its FOURTH week! That means, my birthday (the day the Challenge kicked off) was four weeks ago. How time flies!

Anyway, I thought that it would be nice to post a link to my fitness progress for the last three weeks HERE. I say three weeks because the fourth week (this week) has not ended. I hope you guys can see the chart, or else, I’ll have to find another way to make it work — either reproduce the chart or save it as jpeg and upload it here or something. I’ll figure that out later.

If you visit the link, you will see that there are no changes to my stats because I haven’t measured myself since the last time. I honestly don’t think there is any drastic changes to my measurement, so I won’t measure myself until at least the end of this month. My eating plan is basically empty because I really have no clue how to follow the eating plan since I don’t cook and all that.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what I put into my mouth. I do — although I have been snacking on junk food (fast food, Chipster, cheese-flavoured Ridges and Sour Cream-flavoured Lays *getting really nervous and shifty eyed as I type the names of these sinful products) a lot of late. I was PMS-ing last week, hence the snacking. But I think I’m better this week, I promise! In fact, I have been to the gym twice just this week!

Yesterday morning, I did my 2-minute walk/jog interval routine for 17 minutes ( excluding 3 minutes of warm up and 2 minutes of cool down). After that, I jumped on the cross-trainer/elliptical machine for 10 minutes before heading for the shower. I weighed myself on the way to the locker room and was pleased to see that the scale hadn’t budged. I’m still 121lbs. Phew!

I know I said that the number on the scale doesn’t matter BUT after a week of snacking on chips, I was convinced that I would immediately put on a pound or something. To find that I haven’t just gave me a huge relief. Because, let’s face it, if I gain weight, I’ll have to make sure I burn the extra calories because my target was 120. I could still lose another 8 pounds and still be healthy — but a tad skinny and boob-less — because I’m still within my healthy BMI. But gaining another 2 pounds would put me back to near “overweight” (according to my BMI) category, which would be a shame.

Anywho, today I decided to do the 25-minute Self Challenge Strength Training workout for Month 1 (after having downloaded the files weeks ago). It was fun to listen to instructions on how to perform certain strength moves, instead of following a video, for a change. I was doing fine until the Chairmaster — where I had to go on a (man) push-up position with my legs on a bench and was required to tap my left foot on the floor and then my right foot on the floor. Try doing that for 10 repetitions (1 rep = left foot and right foot tapped on the floor).

Beads of sweat from my forehead dripped down to the floor almost instantly. I really felt the burn on my arms and stomach as I tried to maintain good posture. I actually had to stop on the 8th repetition to gain back the strength on my arms!

I did the last two reps without Megan’s voice cheering me on to complete the rep (sorry Megan, I needed to do those last two reps one on my own). That was when I did something to my phone — I use my mobile as my mp3 player. I thought I had pressed the pause button to un-pause it. Turned out that I had unwittingly played the whole mp3 file from the beginning.

When I realised what I had done, felt like looking to the ceiling and scream: “Nooooo!” (like in the movies).

This is not an mp3 player where I can just forward or rewind to my heart’s content. Once the audio file has stopped, you have to listen to it from the start *groan*! Thank god for the short video of the Self Challenge, which I downloaded from the website, which allowed me to copy the remaining exercise moves and end the 25-minute strength challenge on my own. According to the website, I burned about 70 calories in that 25 minutes. Not a lot but it’s still something.

So, that’s my workout progress so far.

You know, it’s still not too late to join the Self Challenge workout. You can register HERE. If you start now, you have 3 more weeks to follow the programme. That’s still something. At the very least, you get to download FREE exercise videos and mp3 files which were created by American fitness experts just by signing up.

Ok, enough blogging. Better get back to doing “actual” work. Later, alligator!

Too much fast food ain’t good for ya

I’ve been eating a lot of fast food of late. I had Big Mac for dinner Thursday night and then Quarter Pounder for lunch yesterday after my assignment because McD’s was just next to the college I went to. Today for lunch, my husband wanted KFC. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, no I don’t want another fast food lunch, because it’s not often that we have KFC anyway.

I think I wouldn’t mind so much if I had been strict with my exercise regime but my hectic schedule this past week made it near impossible to slot in even 20 mins of exercise. I woke up early two days in a row but both occasions were to make time for work. I was thinking that I could start again this morning but I woke up at 11am. By then, I had to start with the packing (we’re shifting house some time end of this month). Now is my one hour break from packing.

It shocked me that I may need to do something equivalent to mowing the lawn for an hour to burn off the calories from the Quarter Pounder I ate yesterday. I read that here.
Guess, I should really start finding a full 30-minute today to fit in some cardio *lol*.

Well, as long as I get my butt off the chair or bed, I’m good right? Better get cracking now.

Save the last dance for me

I bought Denise Austin’s Fat Burning Dance Mix last Chinese New Year on a whim. I was in Speedy in Ipoh Parade and I just felt like getting myself a new workout dvd. The dvd stayed in the tv cabinet drawer until I picked it up on Saturday.

It was so much fun, it didn’t feel like I was doing much of a workout safe for the fact that I was drenched in sweat by the end of two 10-minute dance sequences. I managed to follow the dance moves well although my room is pretty cramped right now with boxes (I’m shifting house in a few weeks). The lack of free space in my room was the reason I put off trying out this dvd.

Anyway, I don’t need to worry about fitting in running on the treadmill at work anymore because on crazy-busy days, I can just wake up a little bit early, pop this dvd for 30 minutes and dance away. I fully intend to continue my 30-minute walk/run intervals at the office gym but dancing for 30 minutes on busy days sounds like a good alternative to me. If I’m sweating (i.e exerting myself) as hard from dancing as I do from walking/running, should it matter what I do to stay fit? I didn’t think so.

Anyway, I found another inspirational blog today. The site is called Running For Two and the blogger is Lisa Jhung, a pregnant runner who is in her third trimester. I suppose in the States, I shouldn’t be surprised if I happened to run into a runner with a really noticeable bump. I’m sure the idea of a pregnant runner is scandalous in good ol Malaysia but if these mothers were runners in the first place, why shouldn’t they continue doing it in their pregnancies (if they are fit enough)? If and when I am pregnant, I would like to stay active too. I don’t think I’ll be running but you can expect to see me on the treadmill doing my regular brisk walking on an incline.

Oh well… that is if and when I do conceive…. *sigh*

It’s late and I better get some rest. I wanna wake up bright and early tomorrow to fit in some dancing, Pilates and a little bit of work before I head out the door. Later!