Anyeong Noona

Anyeong! As you can see from previous few posts, Noona has been trying to religiously key in her calorie intake in a health app named MyFitnessPal. After a month of logging in, unfortunately, she does not see any weight loss despite the target of losing 0.5kg per month. Hmm...

Based on Noona's personal observation, these few points may be the main reason of why MyFitnessPal does not work for weight loss:

(1) The misconception of you can burn your over-consumed calories

While this is technically true if you are looking at it from mathematical point of view, Noona tends to eat higher calorie food for dinner especially when she sees she has enough calorie "quantity" left to consume for the day. So yeah, most of the time after gym session, she will see a whopping available calorie of 900 - 1000 kcal. Instead of sticking to the plan to eat healthy, she usually succumbs to food such as this bowl of fried rice. Uhm...

(3) You cannot always find the food in the apps' database

Some of the food that Noona consumes are not available in the database and she has to log in using similar food to key in the calorie intake. The thing is, while both food may be named as "fried kway teow" or whatever, they may have a way different calorie numbers contained in the dish. Because after all calories do depend on a lot of factors such as the way the food is cooked, the condiments used in cooking, the sauces, etc. 

With those reasons being mentioned, MyFitnessPal seems to be able to give more accurate calorie data on more popular food such as McDonalds' or hawker food (if you are living in Singapore). So yeah, while it is not foolproof, you can still check estimate number of calorie for those popular dishes. Hopefully, it will help you to choose healthier option when you are eating out. 

Meanwhile, the weight-loss journey continues. Let's just hope we can find a better way to reach our ideal body weight.

Fighting!

Anyeong! Noona has never thought that the day when her boss got laid off really happen during her time of employment. Well it is no surprise nowadays knowing that nowhere is safe if you are working in the year 2017 but to witness this laying off happen to your own boss is no joke. Everybody assume that you are safe if you are pretty high up there and seems to have good connection with everybody. Turns out that's not enough to save your ass. Oh well. Not sure what Noona is going to do next but for now, since the holidays are booked, let's go enjoy life first. 

BREAKFAST (306 KCAL):

1 piece of Chocolate Danish (170 kcal)

0.5 piece of Chikuwa Cheese Bun (136 kcal)

LUNCH (833 KCAL):

1 bowl of Nabeyaki Udon with Shrimp Tempura (542 kcal)

3 pieces of Kani Mentaiko Sushi (147 kcal)

1 cup of Lychee Alishan Tea (144 kcal)

 Noona did not really have the chance to tell her lunch buddy about what's going on in the office. Instead, we talked about common friend who's currently enjoying her life in Sydney. She just showed off about how sweet and lovely her current beau is treating her currently. Instagram is really the app to show that life is all good and rosy. Add the filter effect and you'll see good good life. Not saying that Noona does not have a good life currently since she feels grateful she can still enjoy the yummy pot of nabeyaki udon from Sushi Tei. Yumz.

DINNER (579 KCAL):

1 piece of roasted chicken thigh (289 kcal)

1 meal of pasta marinara (290 kcal)

SNACKS (80 KCAL):

4 pieces of M&S Chocolate Chip Cookies (80 kcal)

Did not really have the chance to snack a lot today because Noona's gotten disturbed by some people who ask technical question at 5+. Oh my gawd, could we please don't be so workaholic? Although 5+ is still considered working hours but Noona is a human being who needs a break. 

EXERCISE (782 KCAL):

1 hour of Les Mills' Body Combat (441 kcal)

11,434 steps of normal-pace walking (341 kcal)

Pissed off by various annoying instances, thankfully there is a Body Combat class where you can punch and kick while burning calories. But new release is coming up soon and heard the movement is so damn complicated. Simple is better, no?

REMAINING: 184 KCAL

Surprised to find out that there is calorie balance left for the day since Noona had a pretty high-calorie lunch and dinner today. LOL.

"I still don't have the reason

And you don't have the time."

Anyeong! Oh my gawd, where did the time fly? May's gonna be over soon and Noona has not finished the task that she's supposed to finish by...uhm, end of June. Oh well, there is time to go and she has decided to think one thing at a time. Kinda pity her unnie but then again the unnie's acting like bitch to here sometimes. Like don't even act like you are going to help if you're not gonna do it at all. But then again, unnie is in-charge of approving Noona's annual leave so let's not get on bad terms with her. Geez. Dunno what is her problem sometimes. 

BREAKFAST (117 kcal):

1 slice of multigrain toast bread with ham and cheese

LUNCH (761 kcal):

3 pieces of Din Tai Fung's xiao long bao (183 kcal)

1 bowl of Din Tai Fung's zha jiang mian (482 kcal)

1 cup of Koi's green tea macchiato (96 kcal)

Bitching session at Din Tai Fung in Chinatown is kinda risky because Chinatown is frequented often by people from both Noona's office and bitching buddy's office. After checking our surrounding, we have deemed to place to be safe from unwanted spies and intels and we can bitch all day (ok, at least 1 hour+) about those nuisances at work. Noona does not think she can last without releasing all those raging feeling that she had endured at work. By the way, do you know that girl friend make the best bitching buddy (but pick the right one, of course)?

Anyeong! The challenge to update this project has become more and more apparent especially when you are busy shielding yourself from a lot of attacks at work. People are not helping in times of needs, really. If there is someone who's helping you in time of needs with no return expected, cherish them at all costs. They are rarity in the end times. Really. 

BREAKFAST:

One blueberry cream roll (186 kcal)

One piece of super nuts bar (51 kcal)

 Proofer's blueberry cream roll is a dope and it's so worth the price tag SGD 1.80 because it's big. The only cons that Noona can think of is that bigger size means bigger calorie. Oh well. 

LUNCH:

Niku yasai teishoku from Yayoiken (538 kcal)

Iced mocha from Jewel Coffee (150 kcal)

Goal 1,200 kcal - Food 1,781 kcal + Exercise 767 kcal = Remaining 186 kcal

Not much calorie left but since today has been pretty cruel on Noona, she decided to let it go. LOL. 

Anyeong! Hope everyone has an amazing day. It has been a series of up and down here at MyFitnessPal journey. Noona has never thought her daily calorie intake looks like a yo-yo. Hahaha. Needless to say, her weight at the end of day 7 of using MyFitnessPal has not moved to the desirable direction. Thankfully, the weight scale does not move to the undesirable direction either. Phew. 

 BREAKFAST:

Egg cheese toast (200 kcal)

LUNCH:

Pad ee sew with grilled chicken (690 kcal)

Yakut grapefruit green tea from Woobee (257 kcal)

 Noona's friend who is currently working at Harbourfront agreed to meet at Chinatown Point for lunch and she wanted to try Kincow. Noona was initially not really interested in Kincow because it seems that the restaurant only sells brisket beef noodle soup and Noona is not really a fan of brisket. Turns out Kincow has other things such as dry noodle/ kway teow. 

Anyeong! Noona has some free time now so let's get this project started before the laziness bug bites her and she rolls back to the bed to nap. Hahahaha. Sometimes singlehood is awesome when you just want to laze around and doing nothing.

BREAKFAST:

1 Market O's brownie (120 kcal)

1 Crown's cheese cracker (18 kcal)

1 Bourbon biscuit (42 kcal)

7 M&S chocolate cornflake bites (371 kcal)

LUNCH:

1 almond waffle biscuit (120 kcal)

2 Tohato's green tea cookies (34 kcal)

1 Tip Tip's tom yum puff (246 kcal)

Laziness does kill in terms of MyFitnessPal (MFP) project because if you are living on snacks, the calorie that you consume from those snacks and tidbits are crazy high. It can be even higher than real meal such as rice, etc. The morale of the story is, the next time you want to laze around, make sure you have proper meal in stash. On another thought, maybe singlehood is not the best way after all, you have nobody to "ask around" for help to buy food. Noona got a feeling that her hubby may be the one ordering her around though since her need to lose weight is probably more critical than the hubby's needs. LOL. 

DINNER:

1 glass of iced chai tea latte (240 kcal)

0.5 plate of crab cake with sweet potato (270 kcal)

0.5 plate of scotch egg (289 kcal)

Noona is not the type who can laze around for one whole day at home. Especially when she does not even stay at her own home, she can't even turn on aircon when the landlord is at home. Driven out by the hot weather, she made appointment with Momo, who is living her singlehood lifestyle since her hubby is out of town for the whole week. Momo's doing that lifestyle better than Noona, the real singleton. For a start, Momo was only fully awoken up after noon and then she's busy procrastinating on whether she wanted to clean the house or not. Obviously after procrastinating and turning on her laptop to do some browsing, she rolled back to her bed and continue dozing until it's time for her to at least, taking a shower before meeting Noona. She even pushed back the meeting time to 4.30PM because she needed more time to wash her hair. Epic singleton (who unfortunately got married), this Momo.

Anyway, to cut story short, our cafe-hopping date at Curious Palette has given Noona a chance to finally try out crab cake which turns out taste like potato patty because there is not even a lot of crab put inside the cake. Hahaha. Oh well.

Anyeong! Noona has troubles keeping up with her own project, the MyFitnessPal (MFP) journey. There are some days where Noona just does not feel to write anything to be honest with you, don't know why. Apparently you need to have some "inspired" moment when the mood to write is in the air. But if Noona relies on this kind of feeling every time she needs to write something, she probably should not consider full-time career as a writer. Her salary will be so turbulent like a plane flying through cloudy weather. Oh gosh. 

BREAKFAST:

One piece of french toast (120 KCAL)

One piece of banana cake (144 KCAL)

Noona usually does not eat more than one item for breakfast but she was feeling kinda starving that morning and she would not be able to drag her butt to the gym for lunch-time exercise in starvation mode. So yeah, there you go the french toast and the banana cake. 

LUNCH:

One smoked turkey on ciabatta bread (450 KCAL) 

Noona did not realise that there is a small sandwich shop (which is part of a mini market) in the passageway between One Raffles Quay and Marina Bay Link Mall. Why is this sandwich shop catching Noona's eyes? It's because the sandwich here is way cheaper than those sandwiches sold at Cedele or Swissbake. Noona can get her smoked turkey on ciabatta bread for 6.50 SGD. Woots!

DINNER:

4 pieces of chicken wings (445 KCAL)

0.5 bowl of nacho cheese fries (440 KCAL)

1 glass of wheat watermelon beer (150 KCAL)

Noona was so excited to finally be able to visit Lola's Cafe despite its far location at Kovan. The cafe is so popular up to the point that prior reservation is required to secure seats here. It is a sister cafe of On The Table which is located at Pasir Panjang. No wonder the chicken wings looks kinda familiar. Fabulous wings, worth every calorie.

EXERCISE:

60 minutes of Les Mills' Body Combat (441 KCAL)

11,299 steps of normal-speed walking (336 KCAL)

Thankfully Noona managed to squeeze some gym time in the afternoon otherwise she could just consider this day a failure. 

OVERALL:

GOAL 1,200 KCAL - FOOD 1,749 KCAL + EXERCISE 777 KCAL = REMAINING 228 KCAL

Whoa, 228 kcal remaining? Noona starts to wonder if she keys in the portion wrongly for all her food log in MFP. But there is no way to find out unless she buys food scale and brings that food scale everywhere she goes. That can be pretty much embarassing. 

Anyeong! Noona is still awake at this hour because tomorrow is a holiday. Yeayyy! Public holiday which fall on Wednesday is not often in Singapore so this is really a rare moment to celebrate. Thankfully the celebration did not lead to over-consumption of calorie. Hahaha.

BREAKFAST:

1 PIECE OF BAKE CHEESE TART (194 KCAL)

Noona bought two cheese tarts from BAKE because this was the first time she saw short queue at the cheese tarts store. Despite its high price tag (1 piece for SGD 3.50), the cheese tart really tastes yummy. By the way, do you know that the cheese tart taste better when it's cooled?

Anyeong! Noona feels so tired today but anyway let's track down the day 3 (and day 4..arghh!) progress in MyFitnessPal (MFP) for records. Since there's no point to assess the effectiveness of MFP without logging in everyday. Wednesday is a holiday here in Singapore so Noona's short term target in life is to reach Wednesday in one piece. Hahaha. 

BREAKFAST:

1 PIECE OF BAKE CHEESE TART (194 KCAL)

1 PIECE OF M&S FLAPJACKS MINI BITES (65 KCAL)

1 SMALL PACK OF M&S MINI MULTIGRAIN TORTILLA (95 KCAL)

Uhm, it seems that Noona is pretty hungry on a Sunday morning. Hahaha. Oops. But this was the first time Noona was able to buy the famous Hokkaido BAKE cheese tart because there is usually a long queue forming just to buy these tarts. Noona is not willing to queue for hours just to buy cheese tart which is priced at SGD 3.50 each. When she passed by the stall, the queue was so short she could not believe it but then again, apparently a year has passed since the first time BAKE opened its outlet in Singapore. The hype has gone down, it seems.

Anyeong! This is the second day of Noona's challenge for MyFitnessPal (MFP) project and apparently she does it better today. Although this is on the assumption that she keyed in the calorie correctly. Hahaha.

 BREAKFAST:

1 SLICE OF LEMON CHIA SEED CAKE (160 KCAL)

If you have been working in Raffles Place area for years, you will know that there is a small food stall at the basement level of One Raffles Place (which was used to be called OUB Centre) selling egg tarts, etc. However, since the building was revamped into One Raffles Place, the yummy egg tart stall moved to Clifford Centre. Inflation may have boosted the price of the cakes and bakeries sold at this stall but nowadays apparently they have embraced different type of cake such as earl grey and lemon chia seed cake. The lemon chia seed cake taste pretty good and it costs SGD 1.50, which Noona feels affordable for CBD area.

LUNCH:

1 MCDONALD'S FILLET-O-FISH (351 KCAL)

8 PIECES OF SUN CHIPS ORIGINAL FLAVOR (70 KCAL)

1 CUP OF GREEN TEA MACCHIATO (96 KCAL)

Noona was so tempted to try out the latest fancy burger introduced by McDonald's which involves crispy buttermilk chicken but they were not available. A friend has told Noona that the latest chicken burger is currently so trending up to the point McD's running out of stock for some of its key ingredients. Huh, apparently this country is not as healthy-holic as Noona has thought. Bummed, Noona ended up buying fillet-o-fish instead which has less than 500kcal (whoa, this is a surprise). Which means a combination of fillet-o-fish burger and green tea macchiato from KOI gives you less than 500kcal in total. Revelation!

DINNER:

1/2 PLATE OF CHEESE DDEOKBBOKI (273 KCAL)

1/2 PLATE OF SEAFOOD PASTA (279 KCAL)

1 CUP OF MATCHA PARFAIT (550 KCAL)

Since it was Saturday, Noona and her friend are in the mood to eat out and they chose to have their dinner at Patbingsoo (which judging from its name, should be famous for its bingsut). But since both of us are not really a fan of bingsut, we ordered the main dishes instead. Surprise surprise, the portion given for both ddeokbokki and seafood pasta are not actually big (although this can be subjective and it is entirely possible that two of us are hungry gluttons). But anyway, assuming our judgement is accurate, we celebrated the weekend by having parfaits from Tsujiri. Cheers to the weekend!

EXERCISE: 

ONE HOUR OF ZUMBA FITNESS (475 KCAL)

13,257 STEPS OF NORMAL SPEED WALKING (407 KCAL)

SUMMARY:

1,200 KCAL GOAL - 1,779 KCAL FOOD + 882 KCAL EXERCISE = 303 KCAL REMAINING

Overall, Noona contributes today's success to two factors: (1) Exercise and (2) No time to snack during the day. But it is so freaking hard to maintain no (2) especially when you are bored doing your work in the office. Let's see how the challenge goes. But for now, MFP says that Noona shall reach 51.6kg in the next 5 weeks if she keeps this up. Woots~

Anyeong! Noona thought today is only Wednesday but since Monday was a public holiday, this week seems to move somewhat faster than usual. Obviously, that is something to rejoice for, especially in Singapore where public holiday is scarce. How has everyone been?

Noona has been kinda in a demoralised state of mind after finding out that apparently you need certain injection and operation to achieve beautiful long legs which are owned by K-pop idols (unless your genetic trait is so good). However, she knows that despite difficulties and challenges, something must change in her lifestyle to achieve weight loss of 5kg, uhm wait, let's make it 3kg for now. My dear cheesy pizza, it will probably a while since Noona can eat you happily and greedily. Oink!