10am: Woke up.
11am: Went to lab.
1-3pm: Lab meeting. Had to read comics on the phone to stay awake for the last hour. It was interesting stuff but my eyelids just couldn’t handle it. I was sitting in the line of vision of my PI… I hope he didn’t see me doze off.
6:15pm: Left lab. Dinner time!! I heated up some leftovers from dinner yesterday. I ended up on YouTube watching Australia’s Next Top Model (the most legit series of the NTM series if you ask me). I love watching TV while eating—one of the habits that I know I should stop. Note to self: Put a timer on when I am watching TV. Considering I should be knee-deep in secondaries writing while I actually haven’t written a single word, it is time for me to control my time spent on entertainment.
I finished dinner, and I wasn’t hungry anymore, but my mouth wanted more. I had a tangerine. It wasn’t what my mouth wanted. I couldn’t resist the temptation of the Bixby chocolate bar so I ate half. Then I ate the rest. That was 220 calories.
7:30 pm left for gym. When got back and showered and left for lab it was 9pm.
Considering I did 216cal of stationary cycling today, I basically ate a chocolate bar, then burnt it off. Fair enough.
People tend to think of weight control as this scale thing where you add food and subtract exercise. Perhaps this movie quote will serve as a good example of such a belief:
Tommy (Woody Harrelson) Quote from Friends with Benefits. Everybody want a shortcut in life, my guidebook is simple: YOU WANNA LOSE WEIGHT? Stop eating, fatty! YOU WANNA MAKE MONEY? Work you ass off, lazy! YOU WANNA BE HAPPY? Find someone you like and never let em go!
I used to think like this about exercise, but I have come to a conclusion that exercise means more than negative calories. It makes you more goal-oriented, and it makes your tenacious and patient. It makes you hope again, and allows you to belief in your willpower. With a simple 30 minutes of your day, you are given all the benefits of a ho-hum self-help book.
I know it is easy for me to say because I know I am on a roll since I ran yesterday with Mr. O. I know how hard it is to start, because all of last week I was too tired to go exercise, and I ended up not going to the gym all week.
That brings me to …
Cardinal Rule of Exercise #1: Get yo a$$ off that chair/bed
Come last Saturday, I knew I had to change so despite my love for my cozy bed, I put of workout clothes and went down the toe path. When I don’t want to feel the pressure of time/speed/distance of a workout, I just run outside because I know my body will just set its own pace. I looked at the time when I began and I tried to not think about the time.
After a while I was tired. It was blazing hot and I just didn’t want to exercise anymore. I looked at the clock. 20 minutes in. Gosh darn I never seem to get past 20 minutes of non-stop running.
I decided to walk. I usually don’t like walking because it is too easy and feels like an inefficient use of my time. And I also get a feeling of failure because I couldn’t run for longer. But this time, I just had to walk.
As I was walking I realized how stupid it was of me to choose to not exercise rather than walking. The fact that I had to walk was just the true state of my fitness that day. And I was sweating and my blood was pumping and ANY exercise is beneficial to my body than me snacking while watching TV. And I know that I tend to get addicted to watching TV to forget how lazy I am when I am not exercising.
Walking was not stupid. I broke my cycle. I felt lighter running with Mr. O on Sunday probably because of the exercise that I did on Saturday. Yes I was a TV/phone game addict last week. But I am improving. And it was all thanks to just getting out and doing something, even walking, on Saturday.