July Goals & June Reflections

Remember how I said in my post about goals in the beginning of June how I was jumping into the deep end and making some lifestyle major changes? Yeah, about that...

A few curveballs came my way and I didn't do anywhere near as good over the past month as I intended. I made meal plans but different meals and junk food snacks crept in and I even had KFC one day. I did go to the gym more than in May, but not as many times as I intended and swimming fell by the wayside.

Post-swim selfie from June 1st, the only time I went swimming last month.

However! Despite not following the plan as intended, I've still made some good progress this month. Though weight and measurements have stayed largely the same I am definitely in better physical shape than the beginning of June; I'll list some of my fitness achievements at the end of this post. And even though my diet was nowhere near as good as I was aiming for I still devised a meal plan every week, stuck to it about 60% of the time and we even learned how to make delicious sushi!

I have to say that meal planning has probably been the single best thing coming out of last month, and as long as we don't buy snack foods in future it's going to be even better at keeping our diets in a good state. We're also making an effort to try something new each week, which last week was roasted brussels sprouts, which were actually pretty okay.

Overall, though if you're measuring success by if a goal is achieved 100% June was a bit of a fail. However, I've definitely made improvements and have learned a few things about myself, or at least solidified what I already knew. Mental health is just as important as the physical, and if that means eating KFC once a month, that's fine in the grand scheme of things. I'm also getting better at learning to differentiate between moments of "I don't want to do this, and will feel better if I don't" and "I don't want to do this, and will feel better if I do it anyway". So even though June wasn't the great leap forward I intended it to be, it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Current Specs:

Bust: 104

Waist: 87

Hips: 120

Weight: 92.5 

June Achievements:

1. Made a meal plan every week.
2. Decreased rowing machine time for 2000m from 10:18 to 9:42
3. Increased elliptical distance covered in ten minuted from 1.8 to 1.9
4. Decreased assisted chin-up weight from 75kg to 70kg.

June Goals

I used to use this blog for more personal posts as well as lolita, and I'm going to start doing that again a little because James and I are starting on a fitness bonanza as of today and I want to publicly record my progress because I think it keeps me a bit more accountable. I know for a fact I'm better at making healthy meals if I instagram them! So I figure a monthly re-cap of my achievements in the health-and-fitness world would probably be good as well. As I go on I may talk about my other goals, such as writing, but for now it's fitness time!

Mixed baked veges, one of my new-found favourites.

We laid some of the groundwork for the upcoming bonanza this last month. At the end of April we revamped our diet to focus on basically making sure we ate vegetables with every meal, and lots of them. It was great. I learned to adore eggs and baked cauliflower. Part of this was also swearing off fast food, which we did successfully and don't even miss. I also did push-ups and leg-lifts every day for three and a half weeks, upping how many I did by one each day. I only missed three days and went from being able to do one pathetic push-up to doing ten with good form in a set, which was a great improvement.

But I've been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, paired with the end of uni semester assignment rush, so we slipped up a bit on diet and I stopped my daily exercises. Still, it was a good start and now we're going into our bonanza. 

I'm a funny person in that sometimes I need to take things slow and sometimes I need to go all-or-nothing, and our bonanza is going to be more of the latter. I'm aiming to do two each of leg day and arm day at the gym as well as going swimming twice a week. Diet-wise, we're going to basically go Paleo-ish [but with dairy!] six days a week and on Sunday, which is rest day, have a cheat meal/entire cheat day. Though I need to figure another term for it, because I hate the term "cheat" in regards to food and the implications it carries. We're also going to plan a week's worth of meals ahead and buy only what we need for it. I think this is going to work better for us than meal prepping did. Doing a big prep was great, but it just wasn't for us in the long run. I found I got to bored with the food and wanted fresh things instead of microwaved things.

This is going to be a pretty abrupt shift in both diet and exercise habits for me, but I think it'll be good. I've been down lately, and my increased size has not helped. I want to be fit and strong and be able to easily fit my lolita clothes and do all kinds of epic photoshoots that I'm not comfortable modelling for now.

Swimming is on the agenda for a reason... I have a mermaid tail ^__^

Like, I actually do, I just never blogged about it.

Need to learn to swim in a monofin and then do cool photoshoots!

Basically, the goal of the two month long bonanza is to get some good habits underway before the next uni semester starts in two months and also in the process lose 8cm off my current bust and waist measurements [my hips don't ever want to go away, so I ignore them]. Given that my diet is currently not very good and my exercise is minimal, I don't think this is too much of a stretch. I'm not being too concerned about my weight, though I do want that to go down as well, because that will follow naturally. I've always felt measurements are a better thing to go off than weight because so many things can throw off the number on the scale. And I'm not just going to do two months then stop; I'm doing two months then evaluating my progress and my methods.

Left is current, right is goals for the end of July.

The thing I'm trying to keep in the front of my mind is that I've done this before. My typical measurements since my late teens was 102/82 on the bust/waist and at the beginning of last year I had gotten down to a 93/75. So this is achievable; I just want to achieve it in a more holistic, prepared way this time. Last time I tried getting fit I was jumping from idea to idea and I was definitely getting fitter [I could even do a pull-up, which is a goal I'm working towards achieving again] but as soon as life threw me a curveball I lost momentum and found it very hard to get it going again. This time I have what I think is a manageable but challenging plan and I'm committing to it for the next two months and then I'll go from there.

So at the start of every month, at least for a while, you're going to get one of these posts from me. I'll put my updated weight and measurements down and recap my achievements over the month. But don't worry! Most of my posts will still be about lolita ^__^

Current Specs:

Bust: 104

Waist: 87

Hips: 120

Weight: 91.5

May Achievements:

1. Maintained almost daily exercises for over three weeks. Wasn't perfect or what I was completely aiming for but it was the first time I'd sustained momentum like that for a long time.

2. Can now do ten push ups [proper full ones, that is] in a row with good form, which is way up from one with bad form.

3. Did not have fast food at all.

Meal Prep #11

Last Wednesday [yes, yes I'm being a very late and lazy blogger] was meal prep time again!

First up, and no picture because it didn't come out well at all, was a repeat of a meal from last week: satay mince on beans, corn and carrots. However, we couldn't get kangaroo mince this week so we had to use regular mince and wow... cooking normal mince  really makes you appreciate how lean kangaroo is. It still tastes good, but it's nowhere near as healthy.

This was salmon and sautéed spinach and zucchini with garlic on a bed of baked potato, sweet potato and carrot. As usual, the sweet potatoes were fresh from the garden. The sautéed greens are absolutely delicious and I'm already thinking of making them a regular addition.

Another repeat from previous weeks: satay celery and beans over brown rice, topped with chicken. Still a great meal. And so cheap! For reals, these work out to maybe $3 per meal which I think is pretty good for something with meat in it.

Lastly we have honey soy chicken and corn on a bed of baked potato, sweet potato and carrot. Simple yet tasty.

The more we do this the more I'm finding that, as a general rule, we need to put one "exciting" thing into each meal. That is to say one thing that makes you eager to eat that meal. If it's just plain meat with plain vegetables yes, it's very healthy, but it's not particularly appealing. I find I'm way more likely to stick to eating just these meals and not cooking up something different if there's something to look forward to in every box.

Meal Prep #10

Anoher week, another meal prep. This is from the day before yesterday because I've been a good girl doing uni work and haven't felt like blogging about it until now. it was an overcast day, so ym photos aren't great, but wahtever.

Above, both served on brown rice, is satay green vegetables and chicken and stir fry mixed vegetables. The stir fry isn't that great but the vegetable mix has been in the freezer for ages so I finally bit the bullet and decided we had to use it up. By contrast, the satay vegetables are amazing! I diluted the sauce more this time so it mixes delightfully with the rice.

This one doesn't look like much, but it is also delicious. Satay kangaroo mince over corn, carrots and green beans. Can you tell we're on a satay kick at the moment?

Lastly we have sausages with beans, corn and broccoli. What's funny is that sausages have featured somewhat regularly in our meal prep... but only because our mums give them to us! Given that the meat portion of one of these preps is easily the most expensive, and we try to keep them as economical as possible, free meat is always welcome.

I was quite happy with this prep and also very proud of myself because I got it all done in 2.5 hours and planned it out in such a way that I used only a single saucepan, a single frypan and a single baking tray. I rock.

Meal Prep #9

Another day, another meal prep. This one isn't technically finished yet, because I need to make up some salads, but the interesting part is done. Picture lettuce, cucumber, celery and cherry tomatoes with salmon on top and then you've go the complete picture of our prep.

Above is beef mince with onion, spinach and peas served with broccoli and baked carrots, sweet potato and [just a little] potato. The potato and sweet potato were fresh out of our garden!

This is a very simple, but tasty, meal. Broccoli, corn and satay chicken thigh. We both like corn, a lot, and broccoli is so good!

Lastly we have chicken thigh and satay green vegetables served over brown rice. This was our first time doing a satay vegetable mix and it turned out really nicely!

Meal Prep #8

Another meal prep, but with very few pictures this time because I finished up quite late at night yesterday. I made six each of  salads, chicken and veggies, lamb and veggies and straight veggies... because I messed up quantities of meat. Normally I'm great at eye-balling measurements and volumes then occasionally I get it very, very wrong.

I did something new with the chicken thigh this time, which turned out rather nicely. Sesame, paprika and lime flavour. Sesame seeds are just divine.

Above is a selection of the finished meals. The mashed potato is mixed with home-grown sweet potato and, even though it's lumpy because I'm not a good masher apparently, it's quite tasty.

Meal Prep #6 & #7

Long time, no meal prep posts. That's because for most of January, we haven't had the time to do a proper prep. We did one on New Years Eve and just did another yesterday and since I never posted about the NYE one here's a double post. And man, is it good to be back into it. I ate one of yesterday's meals while writing this and it is so good to have an easily microwaveable, fairly health bundle of varied foods from fridge to mouth in under five minutes.

This is how our fridge looks right now, meals all taking up one shelf with fruit salad and other bits above. Grainy as hell photo, because it was like 9:30 when we finished up, but wanted to share anyway.

For our NYE prep we made five lots of meals. Salad and stir-fry aren't remarkable enough to warrant photos, but here are the other three meals we made.

This was roast lamb with sautéed mixed zucchini and mushrooms and baked potato and sweet potato. The great thing about this was the zucchinis were fresh from my mum's garden, and the sweet potato came from ours. Super fresh veggies for the win!

More fresh veggies here too, the beans are also from my mum! Roast lamb, corn and beans over rice.

And this meal is the potato and sweet potato mix with sausage and broccoli.

That's what we cooked on New Years Eve, keep scrolling for yesterday's cooking bonanza. Actually, you don't have to scroll far, I just wanted to write "keep scrolling". In addition to a big bowl of fruit salad we made six each of the following meals.

Firstly, canned salmon with a baked potato and carrot mix and beans. In case it's not obvious, baked potatoes is one of the best things ever.

Second, more salmon! This time with cauliflower, corn and fried rice. I love plain rice, but James isn't as much of a fan so I made a simple fried rice to change it up a bit. Just peas, onion, rice and soy sauce but definitely a step up from regular rice with a few herbs.

This lot is the baked potato and carrot mix with lemon herb chicken and corn. You know how I said I was eating one while writing this post? This was it, and it was tasty.

Lastly, honey soy chicken with fried rice, beans and cauliflower. I do pretty damn good honey soy chicken.

So that's the last two lots of meal prep we've done. We're planning to get back into a regular routine with it, so there'll be more posts of this nature. Feel free to share any of yourown meal prep ideas or recipes in the comments ^__^

Meal Prep #5 and a pre-Christmas blogging update

Wow. I've been a busy little bee lately, and I haven't been able to keep up blogging like I wanted to, and with Christmas coming up I'll probably be a bit sporadic again for a while. But I have some more wardrobe challenges in the works, another $500 wardrobe post, and there'll be some new lolita reviews soon as well!

That's the blogging update part of this post, now onto the meal prep side!

I present to you... a single photo. We didn't really do a proper prep this time around, or at least not to our usual scale and all in one go. James made a delightful pasta which gave us five meals worth of leftovers. A couple of days later I made 9 meals worth of meatloaf muffins, rice and vegetables which is what you see in the picture. I was meaning to make some containers of salad up but just haven't gotten around to it yet so all in all this meal prep was a bit all over the place. But still, even when we don't do as much it's still great to have ready-to-go food, and I'm keen to keep this practise up in 2015.

Meal Prep #4

Meal prep time again and today I was lucky because James did nearly everything while I played LOL and bummed on the internet. So I'm not actually sure how long it took, probably about 3 hours today plus a couple of hours last night to roast a leg of lamb. A usual, we made six each of four different meal types.

First out is roast lamb with corn, beans and baby carrots. I also want to say forgive the shoddy pics, it started storming while James was cooking so the ktichen was dark.

Stir fry vegetables over udon noodles.They don't look so appealing in these photos but they taste so good!

Roast potatoes, carrots and mixed broccoli, zucchini and asparagus with lightly fried chicken thigh on top. Normally we bake all the meats but with the amount of vegetables we were roasting in our tiny oven it was better time-wise to fry it this time.

Same assortment of vegetables with roast lamb on top. So much tastiness!

Meal Prep #3 and a blogging update

Things have gotten a little hectic on my end as I'm approaching my final exam of the semester, amongst other things, so it'll be a little while before my next regularly irregular lolita post. But we've been keeping up with meal prepping so I thought I'd quickly share our newest set of meals.

My individual meal photos turned out pretty dodge, but in the picture above there's two sets of meals. The first is kangaroo mince with spinach served with baked carrots and potatoes, corn and broccoli and towards the back is salmon with baked carrots and potatoes, sautéed spinach and with corn or beans.

In this lot first there is salmon with spinach, corn and broccoli and then kangaroo with beans and cauliflower, both with rice on the side.

And by some fluke of nature we even had leftovers, so these four bowls feature rice, kangaroo mince and a little each of bro coli, cauliflower and beans.

This week's cooking only took about two and a half hours, which was great. We're really getting into the swing of meal prepping. Do you meal prep, or know any bloggers who do? I'm always on the look-out for more recipes to try.

Meal Prep #2

Yeah, I think this is going to be a regular thing now. Today I spent four hours in the kitchen and made 23 meals in total, as well as a new big fruit salad. It was tiring, but it has been so good the past week and a bit to just be able to go to the fridge and pull out a healthy meal that just needs three minutes in the microwave and a fork.

I filled up our big blue mixing bowl with five apples, six oranges, a can of pineapple, a can of peaches and a punnet of blueberries. Apples, oranges and pineapple are my basic fruit salad "recipe" and it's good to add different extra fruits each time to spice it up a little. Last week it was rockmelon, this week, the blueberries. Next week... a mystery!

First meal is mixed baked carrots and potatoes with lemon and herb chicken thigh, green beans and sautéed spinach.

The second meal is very similar: again baked carrots and potatoes and sautéed spinach, but this time with roast lamb and broccoli. We only had enough carrot and potato mix to make five of these, as opposed to what is becoming the usual six.

Third is cauliflower rice, roast lamb, beans and corn. I love cauliflower rice, but it is time consuming and I don't think I'll make it regularly.

And last is rice, honey soy chicken, broccoli and corn. Forgive the shoddy photos in this post, it was stormy outside so I had to use the flash on my phone to get these. But we have another week;'s worth of food ready to go, and it's a great feeling!

Meal Prep #1

And now for something completely different... a really brief post about James' and my first bout of meal prepping. It's something we've been planning on doing for a while and today we actually did. meal prep Monday...on a Sunday ^__^

We made 24 meals in total, six each of four different ones, and have leftovers as well. I also made a gigantic fruit salad for breakfasts and snacks, and am planning on making egg muffins as well. We were intending to make a fifth meal [stir fry!] as well but I'll probably do that in a few days time. All in all we spent only three hours in the kitchen, around $50 each and now have a very well stocked fridge! I think that's not bad at all for a weeks worth of food.

Of course, since it was our first time, I had to document everything we made, and may make that a regular thing as well, because I like looking at other people's food and maybe people will like looking at mine!

First up we have two of James's tasty, tasty salmon cakes with herb rice, baby carrots and broccoli.

Second meal is about a 100g of chicken thigh, lemon and herb flavour, with cauliflower "rice", green beans and corn.

Third, and sorry for the kind of shoddy photo, is honey-soy chicken thighs, rice with a hint of curry flavour, sautéed spinach and baby carrots.

And lastly we again have two of James's salmon cakes with cauliflower "rice", corn and sautéed spinach.

I really liked what we came up with for this week. There's plenty of variety and it's all fairly healthy. Even though it was kind of tiring cooking for so long it was definitely worth it, and I'm looking forward to a. not cooking for the rest of the week and b. doing it again next Sunday!

If any of my regular lolita readers have made it this far, fear not! I'm almost done with the next wardrobe challenge and will resume my regular irregular lolita blogging soon. There just may be a few more meal prepping posts scattered amongst the flounces and frills.