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! 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~

"Nobody said it was easy, noone ever said it would be this hard"

Anyeong! While Chris Martin is not referring to the journey of weight loss, the lyric of "The Scientist" applies well in Noona's MyFitnessPal (MFP) journey. Even on the first day.

The start of the challenge

In order to know how much calorie intake you can ideally consume within a day with a weight loss target in mind, you have to key in certain information such as your current weight, your goal (e.g. Lose 0.25 kg per week), your activity level, height, gender and your age (DOB). Based on what Noona has keyed in, she only has 1,200 kilo calories to consume each day (with the goal of losing 0.25kg per week). Her starting weight is 54 and she aims to reach 50 within the next...uhh, 4 months! #failatmath

As usual, when you just start any new goal, you are bound to start with a delusional level of optimism and MFP journey is not an exception cause after all, 1,200 kilo calories seems to be a lot. 

That optimism did not last long though, especially after a glass of iced chai tea latte from Starbucks later on during the day.

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!