Hormone Alert!

My appetite seems to be extraordinarily voracious today. I could understand the extreme thirst as I am having my period as of yesterday but what could be the reason of such a gargantuan appetite? 

Hormone! What else could it be? It has always been like this for me, especially if I am having particularly heavy flow. Somehow the body is trying to replace whatever is loss in some way or other. I gained almost a kilo today making my current weight 64.3kg. And here I was thinking, I'd be happy if I never see the number 64 again but it was not meant to be. I am happy nonetheless, as it is at the lower range of my LDW during transition which was 65.1. Lets hope I can keep it down once this spell of the month is over.I keep looking at the newly size S kebarung I bought for Eid. Let THAT be enough motivation for me eh?!

How is your preparation for Eid coming along, friends? I am hoping to make this as memorable and fun as possible for my two toddlers. The celebration of Eid after a month long fasting is something I want them to love and grasp the right concept of. 

Have a blessed night all!

Stabilization : ME against MYSELF

I do not think I am going to have any problems eating during this Stabilization phase, I took to rice like a duck to water. I had the nasi impit for sahur this morning, two slices with the kuah lodeh, lots and lots of water and ACV. Then for iftar today, I did the suicidal thing and cooked rice in coconut milk (nasi lemak), chilli prawn, deep fried chicken again and lots of cucumber for ulam. I had 3 spoonful of the nasi lemak, 1/2 a chicken breast and lots of anchovies and a spoon of the prawn's chili. I also had some left over curry puff I made yesterday and some banana fritters. I think I must have overshot my daily calories requirement. I was eating like there would be no tomorow!

My period is here which partly explained my gargantuan appetite, plus I had a few guests over too. Yup, the usual excuse for over-eating! I am now feeling like a recently fed anaconda and is recumbent while typing this. Disgusting, right???

Well, I have to get up to prepare sahur anyway, so I hope I will not eat too much during sahur. and make matters worst! 

Stabilization : Just ME against MYSELF!

Lets stay healthy, friends!

1! - I have a plan!

Less than 24 hours to go to end my Maintenance phase. I am not really excited about it for I view eating now with some form of trepidations. Eating with no guidelines that is. After this, I must introduce sugar and starch slowly to my daily dietary intake. I have done without it for (roughly, cheating not counted) 49days and i haven't missed the bulk of it like rice or pasta. What I do miss is bread, whole meal ones. I told MG the first thing I am going to make that contain carbohydrate proper will be a sardine sandwich! Hehe, of all the things in the world! 

I hope and pray that I will maintain a healthy and balanced diet after this and will not gorge nor bow to any more gluttony in the future. My daily calories requirement will be 1913kCal and my basal metabolic rate is 1234kcal. If I want to shed the last few kilos to reach my ideal body weight of 59-62kg, I will have to reduce the calories intake and increase my activities (calories expenditure). Cest la Vie!  Eat moderately and eat regularly, chew slowly, include variety, exercise regularly and weigh myself daily. There! Does that sound like a plan?

I am having  a few guests over for Iftar today and have already made Nasi Impit, Kuah Lodeh, Sambal Kacang and I have the chicken marinating in my fridge to be deep-fried later. I also made Epok Epok Sardin (yes,Sardines is one of my favorite thing!) and later will make watermelon smoothie. I will just have the Kuah Lodeh with the fried chicken for Iftar and tomorrow for sahur will have the Nasi Impit as an introduction to rice (carbohydrate) again.

I don't know whether to continue this blog post Hcg diet. It has served its purpose and me well. A good place to rant and rave and let my frustrations out. I hope it has help others who read it as much as it had helped me!

 Selamat berbuka puasa, friends!

2!

Two more days to the end of Maintenance phase!

I had a bummer of a day yesterday. Well, actually I had a good day, with spending time with the tots at the mall, paying a visit to a good friend who was under the weather, baking my crunchy oatmeal cookies and a visit from MG(not-so-much-G anymore) with YD. It was the night, that got to me. For iftar, I had baked tofu with fish sambal and mixed vegetables stir-fried with fermented soya bean. All allowed within protocol! Then my daughter asked me for one of the crunchy oatmeal cookie i made that afternoon and from there onwards things went awry! I tasted one, it was yummy, crispy and crunchy, not too sweet and not too salty... then I had another and then another. I stopped at 3 and performed my prayer. Then my hubby had a taste and commented that it lacked something, so I took another one to determine what it was, and another and another... damn! I ended up eating almost 10pieces. That must be worth some 700KCal altogether. 

I tested MG about it and she commiserated. I felt really bad though, and it put me in one of the worse mood I had for a long time. I was mulling and regretting it and feeling sick to the bones about it that I couldn't concentrate on my son who wanted to do the jigsaw puzzle and build an aeroplane from his Lego blocks. My daughter took refuge with my niece who was baking another batch of chocolate chips cookie when I refused to change the TV channel to astro 611. I avoided the kitchen like the plague!

You are what you eat after all! The sugar I had consumed in one go must have short-circuited something! That and the nearing time of the month made me susceptible to mood swings. One bad deed really wiped out 46 days of good deeds.

So, the moral of the story is, DO NOT CHEAT! It'll make a monster out of you...

Stir-fried bitter gourd with prawns and bell peppers

For iftar today, I cooked bitter gourd stir fried with prawns and bell peppers, lamb curry and chicken soup!

I hope today is a better day than yesterday for all of us! Wishing all of you a Good 10 last nights of Ramadhan Al Mubarak! May we be able to reap the benefits Allah has bestowed on these 10 nights!

P/s : despite it all, i recorded a 700gms loss today. Current weight is 62.9kg. Huh???

Monster

There's a monster
If you look inside your heart
You really have to be afraid
Of what you are

There's an anger
If you reach into your soul
And the sorrow that you know
Will boil away

And then a monster comes along
With the fury to carry on
And you cast your reasons aside
And you know you can destruct

So when you feel like hope is here
Look inside you and see the wrong
And you'll finally see the truth
That a monster lies in you

adapted from Mariah Carey's "Hero"

3!

Just 3 more days to Stabilization!!


Boy, do I have big plans for it! In a way though, THAT will be the real challenge to the new more health-conscious ME.Used to having guidelines and protocols from the previous phases, being let loose in the Stabilization phase is a bit daunting.It'll be just ME against MYSELF.....


Hopefully, the more health-conscious ME will prevail! If not maybe the new size S kebarung I bought for Eid might do the trick. Although it is loose and airy (as a kebarung should be), putting on weight post-Maintenance phase will make it tight and it will end up as a white elephant in my closet! God forbids! No more wasting money on such things I hope, with the help of the weighing scale and ingrained good habits developed from this diet.


It is a beautiful Friday morning here. I am off work today and plan to take the tots out for a while and maybe bake some more cookies to take home to my in-law's place when I go back for Eid. There will be an endless stream of visitors there for Eid and more people to share the calories around hehehe!

What are your plans for today and the weekend? Hope they are healthy ones! Have a good weekend!

S is for shopping S size!

5 more days to end of Maintenance phase, the countdown begins! 

Let me tell you something about my day today, I had a little ME time today, as Ramadhan’s elective list are few and quite apart, and that left me with a little time to walk the mall and did a little unnecessary shopping today, but hey, what is money if it is not to be spent, right? 

Subang Parade was buzzing with people; I was there just before lunch time and lucky enough to get a parking spot without hassle. There are stalls all over the place and all of them are selling Eid’s stuff. I told myself that I needed to get the traditional baju kurung for my daughter, one which will fit into our color theme this year but in the end I ended up trying a few pairs for me as well. 

The sweetest and the darnedest thing happened then! I fit nicely into a size S pair of baju kurung! I had been around this weight (64.0kg) a year ago. I remembered because it was near Eid too and I also remembered that I had shopped at the same outlet that I liked and frequented in Subang Parade and had fit into M size snugly. This year though, when I tried the M size pair of baju kurung, it was loose! I asked the proprietor who recognized me as a regular customer if they had made the cut bigger this year, and she denied it. She even told me that I am slimmer now and needed size S! Woohoooooooo! Go Me!

Elation got the better of me that I bought my daughter’s pair right then and there but I refrained from buying mine. It is too much to take in. I have never been able to fit into a conventional S size before! I have been an M, L, XL and even XXL but never an S in my entire life! 

Just to make sure though, I went to two other shops at random and tried on their S sized baju kurung. Voila! Nice fit! Although I have to admit that my bum is really in dire danger of disappearing! But who cares! I am so loving it! Just you wait my friends, your time will come too!

SO, what is for iftar? I will be having prawns in chilli with tapioca shoots cooked in coconut milk with sardines. No sweets today, as I am determined to be protocol correct for the next 5 days until my Maintenance phase is over! 

Happy iftar people, hope your dishes are as nutritious as they are healthy and tasty!