Kauai Honeymoon Day 4: Boat Dive/Scuba

Kauai Honeymoon - Day 3: North Shore and Kalalau Trail/Hanakapi’ai Falls

Locked keys in car... Threw our schedule off but hope things will work out

Went to breakfast at Kountry Kitchen. Huge potions of breakfast but still ordered side of hash browns cuz I'm on vacay and I wanna have hash browns for breakfast

Drove over to Hanalei bit didn't stop. Drive till 56 ended for the Kalalau trail. 

Napped on Ke'e beach for a few mins

Only intended to do a couple hrs so we could go to hanalei bay after. 

7 hours later we came back. 

Swam in 2000 ft waterfall, swam under waterfall. So much force.

Treacherous terrain. Slipped, fell, and hit my back on a rock :/

On way back, took a break on our own private beach (Halaka pui falls)

Ate in hanalei and Sean fell in love with POG

Kauai Honeymoon - Day 2: Helicopter and Jurassic Park Filming Location

Breakfast at beach hut

Jack Harter helicopter

Came back to snack

Ate at kono food market for poke

Jurassic Park poles

Impromptu hike

Kauai Honeymoon - Day 1: Surfing

Did nothing. Didn't leave hotel until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

Ate at dukes happy hour

Surfed kalapaki beach. Met a local who helped us surf. Caught 100% waves

Insanity, Kayla Itsine's Bikini Body Guide, and hiring a nutritionist. 3 Weeks to go until my destination wedding in Hawaii

With 3 weeks down to go until my M-day, here is an update to what I've been doing for the last 2 months. You’ll note that I don’t even mention wedding planning because I’m basically having a packaged wedding to avoid any planning stress, yet you will see this word a lot.

Status of the Last 2 Months

I was OBSESSED with losing weight. I mean crazy obsessed with getting shredded and hoping for 6 pack abs. I developed a crazy health tracking spreadsheet that tracked every time I weighed in, my inches, my sleep, my workouts, everything. I was very frustrated all the time because I was working out so much and trying to eat healthy/clean and nothing was happening. Oh and I don’t drink any alcohol, I don’t smoke, I don’t even eat junk food (like potato chips) but I do have a cheat meal every once in a while.

Mistake 1

My biggest mistake: being so stressed out

I put a hell of a lot of pressure on myself to look like the transformed girls I always see on Instagram. I thought I was looking at these photos to be inspired but it’s possible that it caused me to just be stressed out that I wasn’t making my goal. In general, I put a lot of stress on myself to be the best that I can at EVERYTHING. 8 years at the Big 4 Accounting/Consulting firms will do that to you.

Being really stressed causes cortisol to be released and basically prevents weight loss, especially keeping your stomach BIG! Here is an easy-to-read medical article to learn more.

Additionally, lack of sleep was weakening me and adding to my stress... because I became so stressed about not getting enough sleep. I have a terrible commute to work. It takes 1 hr to get to work.... when I leave at 5:50am! and it takes 1.5-2 hrs to come back home so every day, I waste 2.5-3 hrs on the road. It also takes away that much of my sleep so my average sleep was 5 hours a night.

Fortunately, I work for a really good company and have a great boss who has allowed me to work a flexible schedule a couple of days a week which allows me to try to get more than 6 hours a night those couple of days. But the other 3 days a week are absolutely tortuous.

Mistake 2

My second mistake was: doing too much

After 2 weeks of Insanity 6 days a week, I didn't see any results and THAT stressed me out. After 3 weeks, I started to develop serious joint pain from all the high impact jumping but I think I started to notice some result. However, I didn't want to screw up my body permanently for one day/one week of looking good. I decided that I would stop.

My friend showed me Kayla Itsine's Instagram page and long story short, after seeing hundreds of transformations, I decided to go ahead and buy it. Not cheap for an “e-book”.

She's a young early 20's fitness guru who looks amazing. I’m in my mid-30’s and my metabolism sucks!

Her Bikini Body Guide ("BBG") is a 12 week program. As of today, I'm on week 7 of her guide. I'll write a separate piece on my thoughts of her guide but long story short, after week 1 of BBG, I decided to go back to Insanity BUT keep doing BBG so I combined two intense programs. NOT smart. Additionally, I had purchased a groupon for a local TRX/pilates session so I was trying to do that AND go for 10 mile hikes every other weekend. VERY dumb actually.

Doing too much was a mistake for me because it added even more stress to my body. I was already doing a good job of adding mental stress but now I added physical forms of stress to my body. All of this was very counter-productive to my weight loss. Add to that, a lack of sleep and you have a perfect storm for not losing weight.

Nutrition

I always wondered about nutritionists. I even wanted to quit my consulting job and become one. I was excited to be introduced to a friend who was a nutritionist who said I would be an easy case because I was already so dedicated with my food log. She’s eats “plant-based” but is not a vegan, meaning she mostly eats plant based but can have a burger every once in a while.

So I met with her on June 18^th. We did a body scan which included my body fat %. My stress hormones were high (no surprise). She introduced me to a concept called Intermittent Fasting (“IF”).

Long story about IF: you can fast for 16 hours and eat within an 8 hour window. Sounds crazy right? Fast for a 1/3^rd of your day? I LOVE breakfast… I mean, it is my absolute favorite meal of the day so having your last meal at around 8pm, attempting to sleep 8 hrs (but really getting 5-6), and then not eating until basically noon? Sounds impossible.

Well, it seemed like from what she read, it worked for a lot of people.

I stayed dedicated to IF by basically drinking 10 cups of water by noon. Some days, I didn’t feel very hungry. Other days, I watched the clock tick. A couple of days, I broke my fast at 11am because I couldn’t handle it.

After a few weeks on IF and no progress, I freaked out and wanted a hybrid. I didn’t want to quit something else with the clock ticking so she said for me to eat plant based during my 8 hour windows. It sounds easy but it’s not when you don’t normally cook and you’ve eaten meat all your life.

So, with 2 months passing by, here’s a little comparison of my stated goals and what actually happened.

Goal	My goals on June 5, 2014	Current Status
1	Complete the 60 day Insanity work	I did the first 3 weeks of Insanity every day before I started to feel serious joint pain. I switched gears and purchased Kayla Itsine's Bikini Body Guide. I also hired a nutritionist and did Intermittent Fasting.
2	Lose 4-6 Inches (not counting pounds because I expect to gain some muscle and offset the fat lost)	I lost one solid inch :| but about 4-5 lbs.
3	Lose 5% body fat (being realistic)	I didn't lose 5% body fat
4	Eat clean and prepare meals always with occasional cheat meals without the guilt.	I tried to eat clean most of the time. I had my occasional cheat meals. I ended up trying to eat more plant-based. But there was also a loss in our family so there a few set back days :(

At this point, I'm trying to let go and just be happy. It still kind of makes me angry that I was SO dedicated and worked SO hard for the last 2 months with a small amount of weight loss (but that was probably because I was working TOO hard). In other words, that I'm not going to meet my goal. But I need to go back to the thought of letting go and being happy that I am going to be marrying the most amazing guy in this world in 3 weeks. He tells me every day that I look amazing and my body is already perfect.

Trekking the World AND Getting in Shape with Insanity!

I know I am so overdue for the write-up of Kilimanjaro. It actually took me 2 years to finally write up the Mt. Everest Base Camp trip. I promise I won't take another 2 years to write up the Mt. Kilimanjaro trip.

I am on a new journey and thought I'd use this space to document my fitness journey, especially since I can't afford to travel around the world constantly and blog about it. Besides, fitness and trekking the world can go hand in hand.

Our Hawaii wedding is coming up in Aug. 2014. that leaves me approximately 2+ months to get in really good shape. I'm not even all that concerned about the wedding dress since it seems like most girls these days accept their shape and don't try to kill themselves trying to fit into a wedding dress. Good for them!
My issue that I'm going to be Hawaii and hanging out at the beach in my swim suit. THAT, I do not want to look back and regret not working harder to shred some fat.

I've been pretty obsessed lately about fitness and nutrition.

I started using Instagram to follow other fitness/nutrition gurus and other personal journeys. It's fascinating and inspiring. I LOVE seeing people's transformations, what they eat, what exercises they do, and their 6 pack abs! I hope to have the same results one day.

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So here are my goals:
1. Complete the 60 day Insanity work
2. Lose 4-6 Inches (not counting pounds because I expect to gain some muscle and offset the fat lost)
3. Lose 5% body fat (being realistic)
4. Eat clean and prepare meals always with occasional cheat meals without the guilt.

My body is pretty stubborn so I'm going to have to keep at it and not give up! Which i already feel like it because after watching what i eat (relatively/ transitioning slowly) for a month, I haven't seen much of a change.

Kilimanjaro - Success and a Surprise!

Hello everybody! There will be a more detailed post to follow (Couldn't update earlier due to no reliable internet connection in Tanzania and I'm currently battling traveler's "sickness").

In the meantime, I wanted to very briefly share two of the most important events:

Summit to Kilimanjaro was a success

Then... my amazing boyfriend proposed at the top of Africa! (after a grueling midnight start/9 hour trek up, while battling freezing cold and major altitude sickness... Well I had AMS. He was the strongest one in the group of 11)

Here is a video to the amazingly epic proposal :)

Ok - I will be updating about the rest of the trip and ALOT more details very soon!