Fitness goals and the taste of success!

Another one for the record again!

I promise I'm not that obsessed with weight. But I'm excited to realise I've lost more weight this morning. I seriously have not seen this number for years, a quick check on MyFitnessPal showed that the lowest I hit was 53.5kg when I just started keto 2 years ago. I had religiously tracked and followed the recommendations for my macros then, while now I'm just lazier and trying to stay on track as much as possible. I would say for most days I'm certainly dirty ketoing. Sometimes, when I have a few mouthful of rice, my diet is not even considered doing keto, but just low carb diet.

There's nothing much I can post about at this moment, as I've not been to places even in Phase 2 of post CB days. Many people were out and about for the past 10 days since they announced the nation entering into Phase 2 on 19th June, but I still try to keep to what I've been doing during CB period. It's been almost 2 months since I even go to Junction 8, which is just ten minutes walk away. I think the last time I've been there was to pick up dinner and get a new yoga mat for my workouts in May. Other than that, I've been to only three places the past 2 months. The first is of course my workplace. And I've visited my parents and celebrated Fathers' day with my family two weeks ago.

Last Monday, it was the first time I've dined out after months. The school is a nomination centre for the upcoming GE2020 so we could get off early on Monday afternoon and out we went for afternoon tea. On top of that, I've been taking Grab around and I've not taken public transport since March.

Chloe Ting rocks! 

Unbelievably, for the month of June, I only missed one day of not working out. It's crazy, I've always been quite active but I've never worked out for so many consecutive days before. It is easy to keep to this routine after I switched to home workouts, but nowadays I frequently do it late at night like hours after dinner and we dont really do together as a group on Zoom anymore. I'm now into Day 6 of Chloe's latest Intense Core Challenge and boy, it's really quite intensive and challenging. 

The month of July

I really missed Italy and traveling. We got so used to eating gelato daily during our trip then, we even had special missions hunting down gelato shops those days. I was delighted to see a post selling keto gelato last week and ordered these two tubs. Now I'm having these daily and I love the avocado chocolate one, the taste is really authentic. I've just put in my second order as I've finished the first tub of these.

Yummy Keto Gelato ice cream

Honestly I love rice and noodles, and probably noodles even more than rice. I'm able to cut out rice totally except for the occasional one or two bites of rice I pinched from P's plate. Other than that, I'm fine without rice and been doing okay with cauliflower rice for my occasional aaroz caldo dish. For noodles, it's hard to create dishes without them so I tried out different keto alternatives lately. I've been whipping up dishes using Lokarb and I've made my second purchase with just the fettucine. I also bought kelp noodles from iherb for my korean army stew, to replace the glass noodles as the texture is similar. Recently, I saw a post on facebook selling oat fibre noodles and these are now my favourites as the taste and texture is really similar to normal mee. The best thing is it does not need preparation unlike the other two options. I have shirataki noodles lying around but I had bad experiences with its taste so I've not touched those for ages. 

Different type of noodles while on keto diet 

My atas skincare collection, new routine daily

I've been buying stuff online a lot and that's the only mode for my purchases these months. Many shops are also having sales to clear off their stuff and I bought some skincare products that I've been eyeing for quite some time. I had not bite the bullet due to the price previously, but these were having such great discounts that I could not resist. 

Yippie! Another new low for my weight

With daily exercise and almost OMAD most of the times, I hit another new low for my weight, I think the whole of 2019 I did not see this number at all. I'm in the 55+ ish weight range now and I think it can hit 54kg soon. Ganbatte! 

New workout bench

P bought another addition to our home gym. He did not mention anything and just bought it offline so I was surprised when the bulky item was delivered. I was worried it will take up a lot of space but we managed to cleared up the boxes lying around and it's quite foldable. 

Post CB Phase 2 shenanigans

It's been a month since we went back to school, and from next week onwards, all students will be back in school. Just a short random post here. 

Made keto strawberry jam with very nice frozen berries from Redmart

Made a batch of these this morning. I made some blueberry ones a week ago and I actually liked blueberry better as those are thicker. Strawberry jam (keto version) is more watery so I added a lot of chia seeds to make it thicker. Not the first time I made these but the last time I did it was years ago.

P was actually craving for these

Mum gave us some salmon as we went over to celebrate Fathers' Day last sunday. We are actually in Phase 2 of post-CB period and only five visitors were allowed into the household but we kind of broke the rule as there were two more younger kids around. It was still nice to see the folks after months.

I finally see 55!

Just for the record, I achieved this weight a few weeks ago on 7th June. It's been super long since I see 55+kg on my weighing scale. I'm now 56+ ish but doing intermittent fasting and keto diet and my home workouts really helps to keep the weight down. I'm on my 56th day of working out with only 3 days break in between. Longest streak ever!

These are some 'ho liao' we've ordered from SHC group the past month. I've kind of stopped looking at their facebook live sales for now as it does take some effort to finish these seafood. It was fun and nice to try those once in a while.

Very nice clams with kelp noodles

Live lobsters!

Seriously the best oysters we tried in SG

Uni and big tub of mentaiko

The japanese seafood haul

Post CB back to school in Phase 1 (T3W1)

Honestly, it was hard to adapt going back to school again after almost two months of no normal teaching. I felt sleepy the first day I was back and had to take naps most of the afternoons. I managed to continue with Chloe Ting's workout streak (35 days and counting, only skipped 2 days in between) even though we could only do it together on zoom for two afternoons out of four.

I would say school life is the least hectic this year as we dont have CCAs for a term already, no overnight camps, no TIE and no workshops etc. I even managed to clear all my markings during the March hols and over HBL/May school holidays period. On the otherhand, it's sad as I should be on my flight to US at this moment, instead of just celebrating the fact that it's Friday. I've come to terms with no traveling and I only realised now I can stay at home for weeks without going out. Nevertheless, I still have some hopes that we will get to travel at the end of the year.

Very nice sunset on first day of school

Last weekend before CB ends and BTS (BACK TO SCHOOL!)

CB is coming to an end in a few day's time though things are far from normalcy in the coming one month, except for the fact that we're going back to school. I guess life will take some time before it return to normalcy. Even though we're going back to school, it will be quite different from the times pre-CB period. The greatest challenge for us and students is to get used to having the masks on at all times once we step out of the house.

After a 40++ days hiatus, I was back in school yesterday. It was definitely the first time I was away from school for so long. I was at home the past two weeks and did not even go downstairs so now I'm slowly adapting to life out of the house again. 

Anyway, I'm back blogging about some of my culinary adventures the past week. Diet. Exercise. Happy life during COVID-19. 

On Friday (21st May), I cooked another round of the cauliflower and cheese. It's still yummy but I was not craving for it, only cooked it as I only use half the head of cauliflower the previous time and I need to use up the remaining half before it turned bad. 

This was my fast breaker on Saturday, my version of the big breakfast. That was the last half of the tiramisu left (made 3 portions in total) and that was also my third try cooking the cloud bread, could see that I've not given up. Although it looked odd shaped and not too presentable, I was making some progress there as it can be finally considered some kind of food and bread. For a few days, I did not have dinner after workout and only drank dalgona chocolate with almond milk. I managed to lose more weight doing that. 

However, on Saturday late night, I started craving for food and weirdly, it was korean food with the kimchi taste. Watching Youtube videos to learn how to make those late night did not help as I was trying so hard not to succumb to the comfort food of instant noodles, luckily I do not have those at home anymore.

The next day, I got busy making army stew using the recipe I saved the previous night. Most of it are veggies and quite keto friendly although carrots and tomatoes can be a little carby. The stew was so satisfying that I finished the other half in the evening even though I intended to keep them for the next day.

 I have been doing the group buy for some exotic stuff on SHC facebook group and those scallops are part of those. We had decided to do a BBQ using the instant grill over the long weekend and P enjoyed grilling those scallops and yakitori even though it left our place with some BBQ smoke. I had to keep on diffusing my essential oil in the living room to get rid of the smell. The instant grill worked amazingly well though.

I gained back some weight after the day of feasting so I continued with my workouts and very light dinner for a week to get rid of the weight gain. For Monday and Tuesday meals, I had tuna and unagi as my main meal and for dinner it was just the almond milk. 

I'm proud to say we kept up with our zoom workouts daily for a month and it's sad that we have to stop after next Tuesday. I'm determined to continue with this as its easier to get things going unlike going for a jog when I had to wait till the sun goes down and sometimes I became too nuah after work. So far for the zoom workouts, I only missed two days of not working out at all as I had tuition sessions last week and got too lazy after that. Now, I've decided to wear my workout tee for tuition and start immediately after that before I get too lazy. I'm amazed by my own discipline though, sometimes I add on more workout videos to my routine after the girls had signed out from zoom.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I cooked the remainly Iberico Secreto and split it into two portions. Unfortunately, I forgot to salt and pepper those before cooking so it tasted a bit bland. I'm really proud of myself as those cloud bread finally turned out much better at the 4th try. Nowadays my appetite is really small and I dont really feel hungry even after the workouts. 

I made the lemon mug cake again this morning and grilled a piece steak. I added on the unagi as I had forgotten about finishing those the past few days. I'm hoping to keep up with the fasting and good diet plus daily workouts after I'm back in school next week. There's no time stamp on this picture as I've already gotten used to the hours of IF and dont really need the app to help me already. 

What I had been eating this week

Nothing special except a few days ago it was announced that school is reopening in 2nd June with P1-P5 doing HBL alternate weeks. As of now, I guess I'm left with 10 days of school holidays to rest and relax and we'll see how life will be in Phase 1 of post-CB.

Breaking fast with blueberry cheesecake and Arroz Caldo

This was what I ate after IF on Monday noon, I used the peanut butter cookies as the crust for the blueberry cheesecake. Honestly I loved the cheesecake but not the crust. Maybe for the remaining pieces of the peanut cookies I'll just mix it with yogurt like granola, and I'll wont bake those again.

Steak and escargots (Tuesday)

I ordered some stuff from SHC group buy and this included a pack of escargots. I cant remember if I've tried the delicacy before but I imagined it'll taste something like mussels or oysters. The texture was softer and it had a earthy taste to it so guess I wont buy it to try again.

Our dalgona chocolate drinks 

After 20 days of daily Chloe Ting workouts, I'm less hungry post workouts and for a couple of days I only made the dalgona chocolate with almond milk for dinner. My weight finally went down to 56.7kg as of this morning. P loves this drink as well and requested me to make it for him some of the days.

My very atas meal (Wednesday)

The SHC group buy also included this cut of pork call iberico secreto, it's this cut of pork so fatty that it taste like wagyu and is quite easy to cook. The only thing was I got satiated and felt 'jerlek' after eating half of that piece of pork. It was really good and fatty for my keto diet though. This is the most atas meal I had prepared at home, iberico secreto pork, escargots and bordier yogurt and butter (to cover the earthly escargot taste). I love the group buys!

Tiramisu is new kid on the block (Thursday)

I really caught on the baking and exercising flu during COVID period like most people. The cream cheese had ran out in stores over here and I learnt how to make mascarpone cheese to replace that for my baking. With my homemade mascarpone cheese, I've tried out Headbanger's recipe for tiramisu, I loved how the creamy part turned out but the texture of the almond mug cake for lady's finger didnt quite taste like tiramisu so I might try another recipe next time.

A very short COVID CB Sunday

I took part in a group buy of atas Bordier butter with one of the keto groups, and P helped me picked these up while I was having tuition this evening. Honestly I did not hear about Bordier but apparently, it's the Hermes and Rolls Royce of the butter world. The price is actually acceptable as it's imported from France. The butter were very flavourful and I could really taste the herbs, salt and stuff inside as labeled. I guess I will get more of these after I finished these. The yogurt are not keto compliant and tasted sweet to me as I've not taken the usual sugary stuff for quite some time. Guess I'll just take half a bottle daily, I'm keeping these cute little bottles as they look really nice.

Atas butter haul today

Garlic butter prawns with Lemon Garlic Cream Fettuccine

P and I only slept at 6am this morning, I was actually shocked when I looked at the clock and it was already early morning. I broke fast very late as I woke up at almost 2pm, I quickly whip up lunch, clean up and it's already time for tuition. It's my second try with the Lokarb noodles and fettuccine is actually my favourite, this is a simple dish to whip up together with Headbanger's Kitchen butter garlic prawns.

After 18 days of doing Chloe Ting's workouts non stop, I'm finally taking a break today as I missed the Zoom session due to shark week and got too lazy after that.