October - The First Half...

Sorry for the lack of an update after the first week! Things at work got a bit busier than I expected! I also had a stressful personal situation last week that took over a lot of my mental time. (a break in) It eventually got to the point where I might as well just wait and bundle the first 2 weeks into one post! The time has also gone by so quickly. It honestly doesn't feel like it's already been 2 weeks!

No School Lunch - Success!

I have not caved to eating the school lunch even once! I'm trying to pack healthy, mostly balanced lunches. I have not been very good about taking photos of what I'm eating, but perhaps I'll try to be better about that for the future. Luckily, the boyfriend is really wonderful and often prepares lunch for me... or he makes enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch. This has made it a lot easier. However, maybe for the next 2 weeks in addition to not eating the school lunch, I'll also try to be more proactive about preparing lunch! (unless it's leftovers! I really am a big fan of leftovers! haha)

Example 1 of a leftover lunch! A vegetable noodle soup that has a lot of pickled and spicy flavor. Delicious!

Example 2 of a leftover lunch! A chicken and chickpea curry with mixed grain rice! Oh, plus an egg, because after eating them every day last month, I'm still not tired of them!

Workout 4 Days a Week - Success!

I did join Body and Seoul the first week. I signed up for 4 classes a week and so far I haven't wasted my money by skipping a class! As I expected, I've mostly focused on the Fight Fit classes. The 3 trainers I've had for fight fit have also all be great. It's nice to take classes from a variety of people because obviously, they offer variety! I hadn't done any strength training since my July challenge so my muscles were definitely out of practice. The first couple lessons were a real shock to my system. Honestly, I could barely move after the 2nd session I did and couldn't even straighten my legs all the way. I took a needed rest day and then jumped right back into it! The body is so interesting though! Even if I'm crazy sore before a workout, exercising seems to blast the soreness away... even if it's just temporarily. I can't wait to get stronger! Specifically, I can't wait to build up my upper body strength!

Try Yoga and/or Pilates - Success!

Last Friday, the 9th, I did a pilates class. It was very legs focused and really intense but I enjoyed it! It was more of a calming intense... if that makes any sense at all! Unfortunately the pilates classes at Body and Seoul are rarely scheduled for times that I can attend them. The only reason I was able to attend the class was because last Friday was a holiday and I was able to go there in the late morning.

I was talking to a lady after Fight Fit on Tuesday and she said I should stay for Yoga after a Fight Fit class, so I think I'll try that next week! She thinks it really helps to stretch out the muscles after such an intense workout! 

Practice Guitar Everyday - Fail :(

Well... technically a failure because I didn't practice every day... but also a victory because I practiced a heck of a lot more than I ever have before! I'm actually starting to build some calluses on my fingers! I really like Yousician, but of course, because I'm using the free version there are some limitations to how long I can use the app for and there are also advertisements trying to convince you to pay for it. It might be something worth considering later. But at the moment, the free version is working out just fine. 

To wrap things up... I'm happy about how October has gone so far and I'm looking forward to continuing through the rest of the month and beyond! Even though it's only been about a week and a 1/2 of actual classes at Body & Seoul, I'm already seeing changes in my body. Things are difinitely getting firmer and stronger. Also, after so long working out solo in my living room, it's nice to work out in a group again! It's also been nice eating my own meals at school. Finally... I'm excited about the progress I've made with the guitar so far and am looking forward to continuing it and improving! Maybe one day soon, I'll even be able to play an entire song! haha

Until next time!

September Wrap up and October Challenges

Hello October! It's kind of hard to look back when I'm already looking forward! October 1st certainly brought the autumn weather. It was a miserably rainy and blustery day... and I loved it! Today, on the other hand, is beautiful. The sky is clear. The morning was cool, but the afternoon will be warm. And, it's these kinds of contrasts, from day to day and morning to afternoon, that make autumn really special! 

Even though I'm excited about October already... let's start by wrapping up September... 

Egg Challenge

Although I didn't get as creative as I planned to be for the egg challenge, I am pleased with how it turned out because I did eat eggs every September morning! It was nice to set aside some time most mornings (when I wasn't picking up convenience store eggs) and have a nice breakfast. It's a good way to have some down time, rather than springing out of bed and rushing around until you get to work.

Sept. 22 - Andrew (the boyfriend) is really good at making super fluffy scrambled eggs without adding milk or cream! They're amazing and so tasty. Here are some of his scrambled eggs with a 1/2 slice of toast, salad and plain yogurt with kiwi.

Sept. 23 - Andrew's scrambled eggs again with bacon/olive/cheese toast

Sept. 24 - Fried eggs with the same bacon/olive/cheese toast

Sept. 25 - Same convenience store eggs and Tuna triangle kimbap

Sept. 26 - I was so enthusiastic about eating breakfast I forgot to take a photo until the very last minute! Andrew's scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast... I think there was more, but I can't remember!

Sept. 27 - I made Shakshuka again. this time with a side of toasted baguette pieces

Sept. 28 - Fried eggs and garlic sweet potatoes

Sept. 29 - An egg sandwich from The Beastro. This was a really "egg"cellent egg sandwich!

Sept. 30 - My eggs aren't as fluffy as Andrews (even though mine are plus milk!), but here are my scrambled eggs with 2 slices of bacon and yogurt and granola!

Walking, Week 4

Unfortunately I didn't hit my walking goal the final week. Aside from the final day, when I was feeling miserably sick, I don't know what happened. I guess I didn't make much extra effort to get my steps in and wasn't being as mindful of how it was all adding up together. For all 9 days I only got 105,641 steps in, which averages out to 11,738 steps per day. 

It makes a nice color pattern though, right?

October!

I'll be honest, a couple days into October and I'm kind of at a mediocre start. I did suddenly get pretty sick the final day of September, which stayed through the first day of October. It must have been a 24 hour bug though because I'm feeling pretty good now. 

Anywho... for October, 4 new challenges...

Challenge 1: No School Lunch!

When I was keto dieting I couldn't eat the school lunch, so I gave it up completely. When I stopped keto I mostly continued to bring lunch to school, but when I was feeling too lazy to make lunch, I would just eat the school lunch... this was once or twice a week. For September, with all the life changes and stresses that were happening, in order to relieve one burden, I just ate the school lunch every day. 

Now, let me be clear. The school lunch in Korea is in no way unhealthy compared to the school lunches in America, which are disgraceful for the most part as far as I'm concerned. However, there are 2 big problems with school lunch at my school for me. Number 1, because I don't make it, I don't know what's in it. This makes tracking my calories really difficult. Number 2, my school lunch is served buffet style, and it's really delicious! Therefore, I have a lot of trouble controlling my portion sizes! 

Here are some examples of lunch: 

Challenge 2: Workout 4 Days a Week!

Related to this... join a gym. I've already polled some people and have decided on Body & Seoul, which is located not far from my house. It's actually a martial arts center, offering classes in Muay Thai, Grappling, MMA, and Women's self defense. However, the class that I'm most interested in is called "Fight Fit." It looks like intense interval training, which is what I usually enjoy! One thing I like about the gym is that you pay for how many classes a week you would like to attend and you can attend any class you want. So, I can try a lot of different things and if I'm busy at a time that I usually attend class, I can just attend a class at a different date or time. 

Challenge 3: Try Yoga and/or Pilates

Like I said before... I've never really be interested in stretching and with that... yoga. However, I've never really done a yoga class before. Body & Seoul also offers class in Yoga and Pilates. I've decided that I should at least give one, or both of them a try before I pass such harsh judgement. I really want to work on toning, and they're probably really good for that! Also... I still want to be a more flexible person and that's not going to just magically happen on it's own, haha! And, finally. My posture in universally acknowledged as terrible. It's something that I really need to work on, and perhaps yoga/pilates will help!

Challenge 4: Practice Guitar Everyday! 

Ok... this isn't exactly a physical health or fitness challenge... but it is a mental health challenge! 

I had a guitar but the action was really high so it was extremely difficult to learn on as a beginner and discouraging! Luckily a friend (thanks Yi!) has given me her guitar. This guitar is a lot easier to play so I'm out of excuses! It's been a goal of mine to learn guitar for a long time. I played clarinet when I was younger, but I've always wanted to be able to play an instrument that I could sing along to. Andrew heard of an app called Yousician from a friend and told me about it. I've gone through a couple of the lessons on it and so far it's been really helpful! Partially because it feels like I'm playing a game! If I can dedicate a little time to playing guitar every day, I'm sure I'll improve quickly!

Like July, I've started up another health challenge for October among some friends on facebook. The ides is to support each other, keep each other accountable and cheer each other on! This was really successful in July so I'm looking forward to it for October.

Excited to write about my first week! Until then!

September, Week 3 - The Week of Boiled Eggs and another Big Change

With my boyfriend off in Japan, I spent most of week 3 hanging out with Bilbo in our new house... doing my best to get things in order. Truth be told, we were expecting a new roommate so I wanted to get things in decent shape before she arrived!

Here she is! Her name is Nari (나리)! The reason we went down to Busan was to pick up this little bundle of joy. We adopted her from Busan Abandoned Pet Sanctuary, which I heard is one of the only, if not the only, completely no-kill shelters in Korea. It's a great organization run by some lovely, hard working people. 

Here she is all cleaned up!

Settling in nicely!

Egg Challenge -

Sept 15. - Scrambled eggs with a Japanese seasoning. Also, pickled peppers and pickled artichoke hearts!

Sept. 16. - Sunny side up eggs, with garlic and paprika and a side of apple sauce

Sept. 17. - 2 hard boiled eggs and a farmers market apple (so good!!)

Sept. 18 - Sports day at my school. So, teachers are traditionally given bread. I also picked up 2 smoked eggs at a convenience store on my way to work!

Sept. 19. - Left my house super early in the morning to head down to Busan. The night before I hard boiled a bunch of eggs so I could have breakfast on the road. 

Sept. 20. - Eggs purchased at a convenience store in Busan. I think these were baked?

The cook on the eggs gives the eggs themselves this brown color. 

Sept. 21 - I think I've found my favorite convenience store eggs!

The come with salt!

And are this beautiful brown color!

Walking Week 2

Despite my worries, I was able to get all of my goal steps in this week! I ended up walking my dog, and then dogs, around the neighborhood a lot to explore things. Whenever I move to a new place I really like to get out and experience it. Finding all the hidden coffee shops and restaurants as well as parks that aren't so busy, seems like a treasure hunt! I think all the walking has mostly been good for Bilbo as well. He's certainly getting a lot more exercise than he used to!

I got 105,053 steps total for week 3! More than last week! I had been worried about my trip to Busan negatively affecting my walking goal, but it didn't at all. Even though I spent the majority of my first day in Busan driving, when we finally got there, we spent a lot of time walking around a temple, an art village and locally in the neighborhood in search of food!

Beautiful Seaside Temple!

Gamcheon Culture Village

The reason I got so much walking in the 2nd day in Busan is because of the shelter's adoption policy. In order to adopt an animal from them, you're required to attend 2 volunteer dog walking events to they can get to know you and so you can get to know your dog. However, because we were coming all the way from Seoul, we only had to attend 1. I had a great time though! I spent most of the afternoon walking these dogs so they could stretch their legs after being cooped up all week! If you're in the Busan area and you've got some time on a Sunday, I recommend going out there!

This is lovely Ingrid!

This ball of energy is Jackson!

The next entry will be a wrap-up of the rest of Sept! Here's hoping for a strong finish! Until next time!

September Week 2 - Success Continues!

With week 2 came the first big change for me this month. I moved! The move was strangely both easy and extremely stressful. The movers we hired took care of almost everything. They packed most of my things, loaded it onto a massive truck (seriously... how did I acquire so much stuff) and drove it over to my new place where they unpacked and put most things in their place. The stress came in with faulty bank transfers, a dog with an ear infection and having my washing machine stolen!

The view from my new place isn't bad!

I think that it's easy to slip back into bad habits and make excuses when you're stressed... but I really focused on making sure that I continued to hit my goals for this month. In the end, being physically active and eating reasonably well actually seemed to lower my stress levels! 

Egg Challenge - Success!

There wasn't a lot of variety in my breakfasts the 2nd week. I still need to figure out where all my pots, pans and spices are! And... I need to do some grocery shopping! I do have some interesting egg ideas coming up... so stay tuned for that!

Sept. 8 - 2 Hard-boiled eggs, 2 plums and ice coffee

Sept. 9 - I only had 1 egg in the fridge and very limited ingredients so I went to an old favorite. This is going to sound strange, but hear me out! When I was a kid, I always loved eating my eggs on toast, but I also loved ketchup on my eggs and peanut butter on my toast! Eventually and just started combining it all. Ketchup on eggs on toast with peanut butter! Now that I'm older, I've upgraded it! This, my readers, is my "Thai Style Eggs." Throw some coconut oil into a pan with garlic. Scramble some eggs in there. Add basil (fresh if you can!) and pepper. On top of the eggs add some warmed peanut butter and sriracha sauce and you 've got yourself a protein and healthy fat-filled Thai-tasting egg sensation! Do the same thing with a fried egg on a garlic bagel with some lettuce and you've got yourself a delicious Thai egg sandwich!

Sept. 10 - Sunny side up!

Sept. 11 - Hard boiled eggs and plum!

Sept. 12 - Moving day! In Korea McDonalds delivers! It's called... McDelivery. haha. You can actually  make your order the day before and it will show up at your apartment at the time you tell it to! After a night of organizing and packing, there was no way breakfast was going to get made on moving day, so we set up a McDonalds delivery (alarm) to get us up and moving when we needed to. I got a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, hashbrowns and ice coffee!

Sept. 13 - Post move, nothing was unpacked yet! My boyfriend and I shared this breakfast from The Bakers Table... which is a German bakery near my new house. I would definitely go back and get it again. 

Sept. 14 - More hard boiled eggs... I'm actually really digging them these days! And an apple! I picked up organic eggs and apples at a farmers market on Sunday. The apples were so delicious! 

Walking - Success!

As I said before, I was a little nervous about getting in my steps after moving. I guess I was right to be nervous! It is harder to get those steps in because it's more difficult to use walking as my mode of transportation to and from work. So, if I want to walk, I really need to set aside extra time to do that. However, in spite of that, I was really happy with week 2!

I got a new fitbit achievement! It's always interesting to put my walking into perspective! I'm excited to see which other achievements are coming! It seems like I had just achieved walking across Japan! 

For the 2nd week I really got it into my head that I wanted to hit at least 12,000 steps every day, and I did it! My goal every week is to get more than 84,000. Last week I got 91,861 and this week I got 102,243! I'm not sure, but that might be one of the highest I've ever gotten in a week!

Running - Successfully Completed!

I finished the final 2 runs of my challenge before moving and was reminded about how much I do enjoy running.

The 2nd run I did was was on Sept. 8 at Seokchon Lake! It's a man made lake (Did you know that Korea has no natural lakes?) around Lotte World Theme park. The run around the park itself is about 3km. The run from my house, around the lake and back is just under 6 km. It's one of my favorites for many reasons! The running track is padded nicely, so it's easy on your  knees. Also, in hot weather the breeze that comes off of the lake is really refreshing. Finally, the lake is beautiful any time of year but it's especially magical in the spring because the lake is completely surrounded by cherry blossom trees. Check it out!

The run was really encouraging for me after the last run. I was disappointed by my lack of stamina during my Han River run, but it seemed to come back for this one. In, fact, I did the whole thing pretty quickly! Around 5:40sec/km! 

For my final run I did the Yangjae Stream run. This was done on Sept. 10! All along the Yangjae stream there are beautiful walking, running and biking paths. In the spring and summer the area becomes incredibly lush. There's also a lot of gardening along the paths and it's interesting to see what people are planting! One of the many reasons why I like this run is because I can adapt it really easily to be short or long. On this particular day, I changed into my running clothes at work, and then ran home along the stream. It was about 4km. However, I've also done 10km runs along this stream. There are different path levels and so even though you run one direction and then turn around and run back, you can run back on a different path, so it feels different!

Week 3 has started off well so far. I'll wait on details until my next post... but my worry is my weekend trip! This weekend I'm driving down to Busan with some friends for pleasure and also to retrieve something... more on that next time! A lot of time is going to be spent in my car, so I'm nervous about getting my walking in! Fingers crossed!