Week 14 Summary

Is pain a good sign of progress and achievement or not?

Diet & Fitness

I received my weekly summary from Daily Mile and I have beaten a personal record. I achieve to walk / jog 44 Km for the week ending of 1 April and boy am I feeling it. I took my dog for a walk on Monday and the remaining days of the week became hard to work out. My thighs felt like the muscles were being torn off the bones (might be exaggerating a little).

My legs felt really tight and it was painful when I did simple things like walking up stairs. I really felt it over the Easter period. Having to kneel down at church was painful and I really hard to force my muscles to get back up.

I took the week off and got a 2 minutes massage from my dad as I couldn’t handle being massages for any longer. Hope I get back into the swing of things by next week.

Can any of recommend good stretches for the sides of your thighs and sides of the knees?

Career

Well I found out that I didn’t get the University position. But the Manager of the department was very impressed with my resume and interview that he has asked me for my permission to circulate my resume around the University. Let’s hope that something comes from it.

The temp position is going well. I was hired to help out with their education program but so far I am doing a lot of photocopying and collating. Which in hindsight isn’t bad as it’s a smoother transition into the workforce than getting a full time job and being thrown into the deep end to learn a new system.

The people there are very lovely and welcoming. By the end of the week it felt like I had melded into their little department. The person that I report to is very nice and has informed that there is a full time position available in their department. After talking to her about my previous roles, she advised me that I should apply.

I did my research some research and found the position online. After reading the job ad I feel like I have a good chance of getting the position, just need to apply for it now. IT doesn’t pay as much as I was getting at old workplace but I think I need a workplace that has a good environment than paying a lot of money.

Week 13 Summary

Not smoothly cruising through Dukan.

Diet & Exercise

The Cruise phase has really been playing with my mind this week as I was only losing 100 grams daily for the first few days of the week. I couldn’t understand why because I had increased my exercise this week. I have been walking 5km for most days but I persevered through.

Towards the end of the week, I do have to say that I had given into my cravings and had a chocolate croissant and also several fun sized chocolate bars (Twix and Snickers). Luckily they didn’t make a difference in my weight and actually stopped my continuous loss of 100 grams and moved to losing 200 grams. I am not quite sure how that works but I’m happy that it was a loss instead of a gain.

I think I spoke too soon as I had a gain of a 100 grams the following day due to eating at a restaurant the night before. I had Thai fried rice with some yummy Thai noodles. Luckily it was only a 100 gram gain.

This week, I decided to start to the C25K program. I downloaded it after seeing that a lot of my friends on Daily Mile had used it and since I wasn’t enjoying the running program that I had been undertaking the few weeks I thought I would try it out.

Week 1 down and I am loving this training app!

Career

Well good news (finally). I got accepted for a temp position, working 3 days a week for 3 weeks with a possibility of extending the timeframe.

I had a great interview at a University that I had applied to work in. I would absolutely love to work there.

How was your week?

Week 12 Summary

Diet & Exercise

I completed the first 100km on Daily Mile since joining roughly over a month ago. I am so proud of myself and I am astounded that I have clocked up 100km already.

This Dukan Diet has been quite enlightening. I have to say that I have changed on so many levels. I have been cooking a lot more since my food needs to be prepared a certain way and I have to say that I am quite enjoying it. On odd days, I do get lazy and don’t really want to cook but I have to since I cook a meal at a time.

The diet has made me more focused and more resilient to wanting to binge which was something that I would do quite a bit on previous diets that I had undertaken.

Since being ill the week before I had gained a little over a kilo and this I found that I had been losing it quite quickly an average rate of 300 grams a day which is great. I am now back to a low 92 kg.

Saw my doctor this week to get an updated medical certificate and he mentioned that I should get some blood work done to check whether or not my blood sugar levels had dropped back to normal and if my vitamin D levels had risen. I get the results next week. Hopefully, it will be good news.

Work

I had a Centrelink appointment this week to finalise my application and was 10 minutes late due to not being able to find parking in that area of town. I spoke to a consultant and they advised me that I would have to wait in line as I missed the appointment and would have to reschedule. I cursed in my head as the line was a little long and I knew that I would be waiting at this god forsaken place for hours once again.

After 25 minutes, I was seen by a consultant who took 5 minutes to tell me that I would to take a seat and wait to see someone to make an appointment. I was furious as this just seemed so ridiculous and such a waste of time. After a 35 minute wait, my name was called and it took another 5 minutes for them to make my next appointment and I was done.

I seriously loathe that place and I don’t believe that I had to go there once more next week.

Love

I am still talking to architecture guy but it’s been a bit of a slow process as he doesn’t go onto the site much and neither have I lately. Lately I haven’t really been in the mood to shop for a boyfriend / potential husband. I just feel a bit over it and that I should concentrate my efforts on finding a job for now instead of a man.

So I am going to give that site a rest and only log in to reply to architecture guy. Going forth there won’t be a love portion in 

5 Km Running Program

Since I’ve been taking advantage of my treadmill a lot more lately, walking seems to be getting slow. Though the way that I have been using the treadmill lately you wouldn’t quite think that it was only for walking or running. It has been my dance floor while I exercise. I have been shaking my booty to some very exciting tunes.

I am not bored it yet but I have always wanted to be able to run 5 Km and since I’m in a motivated state at the moment, I thought that I should incorporate training to be able to run 5 Km.

Since joining the Daily Mile website and seeing everyone post their km and achievements onto the site it has amped me into wanting to be able to get back into running. When I downloaded a compatible app to record my workouts, I noticed it came with several running training plans.

So I decided to start the 5 Km beginner running training program which I started this week. I will provide my progress on this training plan within my weekly summaries.

I would love to hear your experiences with starting a running program.

Week 8 Summary

The weather seems to be going through puberty in Sydney. One minute sweltering heat and the next I find myself looking through my closet for warm clothes and getting the heater out.

This is affecting my body tremendously as it means “The return of the headaches and migraines”. Two consecutive days of pain and me popping my strong painkillers like they were Skittles.

Diet & Exercise

Luckily the headaches didn’t occur until the end of the week, which meant a healthier diet than the weeks before and a lot more exercise.

Here are some photos of the foods I ate this week.

This was my first attempt at preparing Japanese foods. I was really hoping that I wouldn't end up with food poisoning. Luckily I didn't and it was a lovely dish that I had it twice for dinner.

This was delish. I bought it pre-seasoned so all I did was to cook it. So nice that I had it twice for lunch.

This meal was a meal on the run while shopping and being completely hungry. Tried to stay away from carbs but little did I know that the chicken tenderloin was thickly battered, the devilled chicken was also crumbed, the chicken ribs had some really sweet sticky coating on them and the marinated chicken was cooked with it's skin on.

Overall, it was a great disappointment as the only thing that tasted nice was the marinated chicken and devilled chicken.

Late night snack

I had a chilli craving and it's quite hard to ignore a chilli craving when you are a chilli addict.

Ended the week with a bad drink and food

While browsing some blogs and sites, I came across this amazing site, Daily Mile. I have been on there for a week and have found it quite helpful in terms of motivation to get my ass off the couch and workout.

The members on there are motivating and supportive. There’s a great functionality to send someone a motivation icon to help them continue with their goal. The forums are great for finding friends with similar interests. There is a section that allows you to join the currently active challenges and also to create your own challenge. I ended up creating my own challenge instead of joining. A while ago, I had mentioned that I had wanted to walk the distance between Sydney and Melbourne. I had started that challenge but hadn’t kept up with it much as it got to be a pain to continually calculate the total amount that I had walked and also the remaining amount. Well now I don’t have to do that because the site automatically records that for me.

Click here if you would like to join me in this challenge too.

Work

Just when I was starting to despair and think that I was only second best in the employment area as I always seem to miss being employed as the employer had found someone who’s has a slight edge over me because they know the system or have slightly more experience in a particular area, I get phone call from an agency regarding a job I had applied for.

On the way to the interview, I receive another call and it just happened to be someone from the same agency. My one interview with the agent turned into two interviews with two agents. I got along well with both agents and felt confident as I was now in line for two positions.

This week has also been a week of reflection about the future for me. Being turned down because you are only slightly less good than someone else had made me think about furthering my studies and getting a degree that would give me an edge above other candidates.

I originally wanted to enroll in a Bachelor of Adult Education as I coordinate and manage courses and seminars but the course was only available during the daytime, which would interfere with work.

Further investigating led me to a Bachelor of Training and Development, a one year course which had quite a few prerequisites. I called and I found out that I had to have at least 196 credit points of prerequisites in the form of previous courses undertaken and work experience which I have both. I have some issues though one of my courses may not be recognised as it does not have a national recognised logo on it and I also require a letter from my employer stating that I have the length of experience I mentioned (very difficult since I am in a legal dispute with them). So possible solution could that I ask my previous employer for a statement of some sort which could be quite tricky.

Love

As I was in the city for my interview, I had arranged to meet with one of the guys I had been talking to online. We met at a bar in the city and had a lovely conversation and it seemed like we had quite a few things in common. The only downside would be that as the night progressed and I was looking at him, he kept reminding me of a cousin that I have. Once I made that connection, the attraction bug flew out of the door and he was slotted into the friend basket. I actually mentioned that he reminded me of my cousin in an attempt to subtly hint that I’m this quite odd but I don’t think he made the connection and now he is trying to setup other dates. I am not as keen to catch up now because I am not attracted to him and also because he lives quite far away (about 40 Km from where I reside) and he does not drive.

How do I tell him gently that I just want to be friends?