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!
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| 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!
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| Sept. 8 - 2 Hard-boiled eggs, 2 plums and ice coffee |
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| 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! |
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| Sept. 10 - Sunny side up! |
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| Sept. 11 - Hard boiled eggs and plum! |
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| 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! |
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| 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. |
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| 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!
