Foodlog - thursday 17/09/2015

Foodlog - wednesday 16/09/2015

Autumn

I'm finding it hard to post every day, but I'm going to try at stick to it though, I really think it helps me clear my mind. There's so much going on in my life that I can barely keep up. Went swimming again yesterday with a bunchbof my friends, which was pretty awesome. The nice thing about swimming, is that for a while you're working out, , doing your own thing, but when crossing a friend do aknowledge eachother from time to time or get a wink in encouragement. I'm finding that I really enjoy that balance between being alone in your head, being busy and being with your friends.

Had a rough day today mentally, though. A bunch of work had to be done, and I haven't been paid yet. I had to have been paid over a month ago but things keep going wrong, which resulted in me not having money to buy fresh vegetables or fruit today. My boyfriend already paid for groceries last week (usually we split each bill in half), so this week it's my turn, yet I haven't been able to put up on the table what I wanted to. I must admit, I did wallow a bit in self pity today, and I shouldn't but hey, I snapped out of it. I rummaged through my room and found a pack of frozen veggies and some salmon in the back of our freezer. Combined with a heap of garlic,  ketjap manis, dried peppers and sambal I managed to actually turn out an awesome meal in the end. Thank the gods for my mother in law for having bought us that salmon a while back. It saved the day.

I do recommend you all listening to the soundtrack of that Stephen Hawking biopic some time soon, it's perfect for an autumn-mindset.

Oh wait!!! I forget to mention that I've had a crock pot/slow food cooker clicking session again yesterday. I've been fascinated by the fact that you can cook foods overnight, with little to no oi, and it turning out extremely juicy and delicious! Especially when I see all those amazing recipes online that you can make with it. I like the idea that you prepare what you want to eat in the morning, put it in the slow cooker, and set it to cook to be ready for dinner. You're staying in your pj's, the whole house is filled with tantalising smells all day long whilst you did some chores and snuggled uo with your significant other for a daytime movie session, and come dinnertime all you need to do is grab a plate and enjoy. It basically describes a perfect sunday for me, tbh. Especially if it includes rain or snow outside.
Well, sime day I'll be able to afford one and bewaaare of the delicious foods i'll be making you'll see!! :D

Now off to my danceclass, the first of the new season!

Love,

himmin

Foodlog - tuesday 15/09/2015

Foodloog - monday 14/09/2015

Week 2 - hurray

Woohoo!  Week two had arrived and I have survived the first week! Bam! I'm actually feeling really positive about all of this, and...

I LOST 4.1kgs last week!! Woohoo! So my current weight is an even 140kgs

I know from experience that one loses more in the first few weeks than later on in the weightloss-jour, but still, always when I step on the scale and I see that I've lost something, it should be a victory. And this week it's a big one, especially with all the temptations I had last week and our 'let it go' saturday, which was a little heavier than expected since we ate gnocchi with meatballs (as you could have seen in my log), and trust me when I say I make some kickass meatballs. Maybe i'll post the recipe some day, but let me first get used to this blogging thing and then when that dust has settled and routine has rooted itself, I can start adding ideas. Like a weekly new recipe amongst other things.

I do have to talk about my swimming on saturday. It was intense. I was scared it was going to be really busy since it was a saturday afternoon, but at most there were three people (including myself) in the sepersted area where people swim laps, so that was a relief. Since there were so few people, I felt comfortable challenging myself, so I did some laps 'crawling' (I realise I don't know the correct word in English, will have to look that up) until I got severely out of breath, then one lap easy,then two more fast, etc. At one point I got a cramp in my lower left leg/calf, but it dissipated after a couple of seconds so I didn't pay attention to it. After exactly an hour and five minutes of swimming (my goal is to swim an hour each time), I wasready to get out of the pool. Swimming towards the ladder tobget out of the swimmingpool, I had to circumnavigate some teenage girls splashing around and a mother prepping her 7 yo for his swimming exams (we have those in the Netherlands :p). Finally at the ladder, I submerge myself one last time to cool off, get on the ladder, get out of the pool, and cannot move... in the third and last step of the ladder, my left lower lefs cramps up and shoots fiery sparks of pain though my body. I literally can't move my leg and have to wait it out. Longest minute of my life! I finally manage to push through, wobble my body towards the hot tub like a seal towards the sea, and slowly sink into it letting its utereal warmth envelop me. To this day still (two days later), that leg huuuuurts. After consulting some fysio -friends of mine, I apparently pushed myself a liiiittle to hard hahaha lesson learned I guess; do a better warmingnuo and cooling down next time.

See you soon,

Love,

Himmin

Foodlog - Sunday

Foodlog - saturday

More on today in tomorrows post.

Love, Himmin

Foodlog - friday

Love, 

Himmin

Bam!

Woohooooo! There I go, the end of the workweek. So glad I pushed through. Sorry that I didn't write an actual post yesterday, but it was a really stressful day. I got some news that put me way out of my comfort zone, and combined that with coffee. I have to admit: I'm a coffee-freak. I love that black, warm, bitter, energizing drink. My only problem is, is that for some reason over the past few years, I've grown more sensitive to it. So when I brew a big pot of coffee, and I like it on the stronger side, and drink more than three cups of it it too short an amount of time, my nerves get overloaded and my sensitivity-levels soar. I'm already a pretty observant and sensitive guy, in a good way. It's not that i'm overly emotional, i'm just very empathic, and feel things very strongly. When having a coffee overdose, this quadruples in strength. So go figure that after a long day, and the explosion of bad news I got, I was waaaaaay too tense and emotional to go cook, let alone go cook a healthy meal. All my senses told me to just cook huge heaps of indulgent food, without measuring or caring if it was too fatty.
That is one of my other things. I'm an escapist. I tend to have a run-and-hide reaction when things happen that I don't like, and at times can have a very low impulse-control when it comes to instant gratification. For that reason I've been sddicted to sigarettes for near eight years. Thanks to my boyfriend I was finally able to quit that unhealthy habit back in 2012, but my craving for instant gratification remained. I guess that's also one of the reason I have started eaten more and more these past few years. The food gives me a happy feeling that I don't easily get from other things. I'm not quickly aatisfied with things, am evry restless and have a busy head. I've been tested for ADHD in the past, but they couldn't determine for sure that i had it. The only conclusion back then, was that I had a really high IQ. That was it. They didn't offer me anybhelp whatsoever with my escapism, or anything. Then again, I don't really think I was open for it back then.
Anyways, back to what I wanted to say, even though I had all that going on, I did manage to cook a healthy meal in the end, of which i'm very proud. And next to that, it was the first night that I felt sstisfied and full after dinner snd for the rest of the night, i'm so glad for that. That means progress is happening. We're going forward, babystep by babystep.

***
Today has been pretty much the same, with the only exception that I was at school from 9h to 16h. My fear was that I would be hungry in between my meals, but I had carefully weighed my lunch in the morning (aka brought it from home), at my oatmeal in the morning, filled a big thermos of coffee for the trainride to school and the first few hours (since I had a sleepless night), but it remained a fear. As it turned out, it was the perfect plan. I had enough in my body to not feel hungry, resist the snacks my fellow classmates offered me, and make it to the evening without much trouble. That's a good day, i'd say.
I do notice that I get so much positive energy from my classmates. We're all so different, yet so much the same. So many different ages, backgrounds, fields of work and study, yet we all get along great, and I notice that when being with them, they inspire me with everything they say and do. In fact, one of them actually was my prime motivatiom for writing this blog. He told me about how one day, he decided that for a short amount of time each morning, every day, he would write a blog. It didn't matter if he knew what to say or not, that time was reserved for writing. I have little structure in my life, and have been looking for ways to give my days more rhythem, boundaries, focus, so that I will thrive. Because i do thrive, only within boundaries an limits set my others (eg in classes, whilst teaching, whilst working, i excel. Clear boundaries, rules, structure). I suck at setting those for myself in my leftover time. So, as I decided to get my life straight at the beginning of this week, i followed his example and started a blog. It's too early for me to say that it is actually helping me, since i've only been doing it for such a short amount of time, but I do think i notice that i'm starting to enjoy getting thoughts and feelings out in the open, in writing, in cyberspace. It's giving me an outlet for the daily routines that i'm trying to implement that i'm sure will become tiresome at some point, like the logging. For now it's keeping me oing. And besides, I love to write. I hope to have an article or paper published when I graduate at the end of the schoolyear. I don't know where that came from but yeah. Visualizing and formulating goals. Bam. Lets do this, future me!

Again, lots of love,

Himmin

Foodlog - thursday

Rough day again, but I didn't give in to temptation.

Here's my foodchart.

Love,

himmin

Busybusybusy

Too busy for a post, more tonight when I've logged my food :)

For now, here's a happy pug:

love, Himmin

Foodlog wednesday

Rough start

Yesterday was both fun and hard. Fun, because I went swimming with a good friend of mine and I reached my goal of swimming non-stop for an hour, hurray! I read on several websites that while swimming burns a lot of calories and is great for not overworking your joints (and in my case, my back => hernia), you only start burning calories after a good 25 to 30 minute swim. Hence my idea of just doubling that number to get a good workout. It was pretty busy at the pool, as it reopens at night at 19h30 to 22h, when the pool fills up with adults going for a swim when they found a babysitter/after work. That was oretty daunting, since I appear like a joyful secure man, but in the inside and especially in occasions like this I feel more like an insecure deer trying to walking for the first time. Luckily, when in the pool itself, everything was allright again. I was impressed by how time flew by, to be honest, and it was great to see that familiar face of a friend swim by, nodding in approval and mutual appreciation.
After that I must admit I had a hard time when coming home because all the swimming had really taken its toll and I hot 'hungry' again. So I had an apple that I couldnt be bothered to log, even though I should, but I had a surplua of more than 200 calories plus I worked out so it was fine. That's also one of the things I like about using a tracking-app, now, or in this instance last night I knew that I had eaten enough to be healthy, and that was it. I hit my calorie-goal, and all the extra pangs of hunger/munchies is basically my layer of whaleness crying out for some attention. So that gives me the strength to ignore it. Wasn't superduper fun time, but it was bearable.

Anyways, have a great day and see you tonight with my foodlog!

Love,

Himmin

Foodlog - Tuesday

Still buzzing from my hour of swimming. Yaaaaaay. Don't think I'll be logging the sports again though, I feel like ot shows I burned more calories than I did. Off to day three! (And yes, I am now fightimg the munchies). 

Love

himmin

Wow...

Talk about a rough day yesterday, foodwise. My classes on mondays are scheduled till late (from 16hish to 21h), so I knew I was going to have a little but of a rough time during dinner time, since I didn't want to get a meal outside of the house where I can't easily control the calorie-intake, but I wasn't prepared for what happened.
First, I get there and since it's the first day, in honour of last years study/fieldtrip, someone brought wine, bread and spanish ham. #aaaaah. Luckily my boyfriend had told me it'd be a smart move to take some food to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, so I ate some of that, but I did drink a quarter of a plastic cup of white wine. Then the day continued by teachers offering us candy as a was of visualising core concepts we're going to be working on this semester, and the night ended with us going out for a celebratory drink, where they ordered fried snacks. BUT I ordered a sparkly water isntead of my regular red wine! Bam!!! And I didn't touch the snacks at all, even though by that time i was pretty much starving and craving dinner. But I madenit, that's the most important part I guess.

Funny how whenever I decide I'm going to watch what are eat, the stalls all suddenly jump right at you with their delicious treats, snacks and assorted yumsies. On a regular day in town I never really have the craving for a snack, but the second I decide I'm watching what I eat, all those foods are needing to be eaten by me. Weird how that works. Forbidden fruit-principle I guess.

But I'm off today again with a fulll tummy of oatmeal (made with water instead of milk, I honestly don't notice that much of a difference really) with a bit of brown sugar (ran out of honey) and some cinnamon. And tonight I'll be using my brand new swimmingpool/gym-membership for the very first time, and there's even some friends that are coming along. So good things to look forward to, yay! :D

See you all tonight with my daily foodintake!

Love,

Himmin

Daily food intake for monday

Here's my first chart! Tomorrow more on the rough first day, now it's sleepytime :p 

Love, 

Himmin

Umpteenth First Time

It's that time of the year again. The time when schools have started again, rainy days become the rule rather than the exception, and the time when I decided yet again that I've had enough of the current state of my body. The time is now for action!
I'm turning thirty next year, and as of yet that honestly doesn't mean much to me, except that I've always had that age as a goal that I would have my sh*t together. Since I'm doing the last year of my master's degree art-education because of the lack of employment (and it being extremely interesting imo), it's the perfect time to finally shed the whalish fat that has been gathering around my 'inner beauty' (:p), and finally work towards the person I want to be on the outside, rather than focussing on getting my head together.

So here's the start. The plan? I'm using the 'myFitnesspall'-app on my phone and tablet to track my intake of food, which I will try and publish at the end of each day on here so you can see what I've been eating. I've tracked my food-intake with this app thrice before, and all three times lost around 10 to 16kgs, so I know it works for me. I just honestly have to stick though it past two months (currently my limit as to how long I have stayed focused on the healthy eating).
Next to the healthy eating, I'm also going to try and swim three times a week for an hour, and have my weekly two hour long dancetraining as my way of actually burning some more calories. Suffice it to say that this is just the start, we'll see how this plan evolves when time passes.

Let me get some stats out. I'm a 28yo man, living in the Netherlands, at the heaviest weight I've been (144,1kgs). Typing this is so much easier than actually saying it out loud. I'm honestly pretty ashamed of this, but hey, keep looking forward rigt. I'm taking some steps in the right direction.

I'm going to try and post every day, if only my daily foodintake. I want to use this medium as a back-up and way of expressing my emotions and getting things straight (ha! Says the gay man lol), and tracking my physical and mental state for future reference.
I will also publish one recipe a week that I've stumbled upon or thought of myself, since I noticed that when taking care of what I eat, me creativity in the kitchen soars.

Anyways, LET'S DO THIS (positive thinking do your work!) take care and have a great monday!

Himmin