My 21 Day Challenge Ended! - Results

Sorry for not posting for the past few days! I had an 8 AM midterm for my neuroanatomy class, and just couldn't find the time to write out my thoughts. The good news is, I have been working out everyday regardless of how busy I was. My 21 day challenge ended yesterday, and I have to say that it was the best experience ever. First, you're always checking in to the 21 day challenge Facebook group, so you feel obligated to keep them informed of your nutrition, what workout you did, and how you felt afterwards. Everybody's encouraged to post motivational quotes, their concerns, and just how they are doing with the challenge. If you have any questions, there are coaches on that Facebook group. You have easy access to help whenever you need it. It's a great way to stay accountable, and stay committed on your new workout and clean eating routine.

Now, I'm sure you're all wondering how I did. I took a before picture, and an after picture to show that just 3 weeks of strong commitment and endurance will help you see results. After 21 days, you honestly get into the habit of eating clean, and wanting to work out daily. As your workout routine gets easier, you end up having more fun. You end up looking forward to your workout (at least for me it did). The most important thing is not the numbers (i.e. your weight, waist size, etc.), but the way you feel after eating clean and exercising. The change wasn't very dramatic, but it was still there. I now have less fat on my abdomen, and my legs feel so much stronger. I get less tired when I go for longer walks, and running became easy. I don't get headaches, light-headedness, fatigue, bad bowel movement, indigestion, and random pain here and there. I actually feel like I think faster now that I'm constantly working out. Exercise has been proven to help in ridding many disease symptoms. You just get healthier overall with exercise. It also helps with posture as well.

As far as confidence goes, you just feel a lot more confident than you were before. Even if you didn't reach your ideal body shape, you still feel confident because of how much you were able to accomplish. Stress tends to make you think negative thoughts, but when you exercise, you end up feeling so much better. You start thinking positive thoughts, and less negatives. When you run an extra mile, or for a longer period of time, you feel accomplished and satisfied with your improvement. Within only one week into the 21 day challenge, I started to feel more confident. I was able to wear leggings with a regular t-shirt without feeling self-conscious about what others would say about the shape of my butt or thighs. My thighs aren't perfect, and they're not something to brag about, but exercising just made me not care about who's watching me. I used to think that people always judged others on a daily basis, but I realized nobody really does. It's all in our heads. 

I know there's going to be people who say that I wasn't extremely fat to begin with. But everybody has their own goals and starting point. You can start working out whenever you want. You can commit to a healthy regime whenever you want. It doesn't matter if you're already skinny, or if you're overweight and want to lose fat. Exercise is a lifestyle. It's not something you should feel obligated to do everyday, but something you should enjoy doing as part of your daily life. At first, I felt the obligation. It's very hard to actually begin and incorporate exercise into your daily life. But slowly, you will surely get stronger, and with strength, you will enjoy exercising. Your body is capable of doing more than you think. 

So, that's basically what I wanted to talk about today. I know several individuals who've complained to me saying that they're either too old to start working out, or they're too busy. For those of you who think they're too old, it's never too late to start. For those of you who are too busy, it's ok to start working out when you feel ready to make it a commitment. But even if it's just 5 minutes, it's really healthy to exercise a little bit everyday. 

For those of you who are interested in joining a 21 day challenge, 4 day challenge, or any challenge to get you motivated, please feel free to let me know. I highly recommend starting with a challenge group to help you stay motivated. It definitely helped me, and I know it takes a lot to motivate me. If I can do it, so can you. Shoot me an email or comment below, and I can let you know more about the next upcoming challenge. 

Have a nice day, everyone!

Keep Pushing Towards Your Goals!

Managing school and a consistent workout regime is very difficult to do especially when you have an exceptionally difficult course. Today, I had a neuroanatomy class at 8:00 am and a neuroanatomy lab at 1:00 pm. Every neuroanatomy lab has a quiz that I have to study. I was going over my notes from 10:00 - 1:00, and my professor opens the door to our lab while saying, "there's no quiz today". So I spent 3 hours studying for nothing! Well, when you make poor choices and cram a whole bunch of information at once like I did, your brain feels like it took too much work, and you start to feel tired throughout the entire rest of the day. For me, psychological effort is a lot harder than physical effort. When you work your muscles and burn, you feel like you're dying at that moment, but after you finish, you're only sore for the next couple of days and it disappears. But psychological work takes longer to ease out of. When you're psychologically tired, it's very hard to get yourself to work out. You just want to rest, and everything seems too tiring to do. But I figured out that it's all just in our heads. You may think you're tired, but you're actually not. You may think that you should rest on days when you're feeling down, but it's actually better to workout more during days when you're feeling negative. Stress releases cortisol in your body, which leads to your body storing fat right in your belly. It's a defense mechanism that's supposedly made to help you escape from dangerous situations (flight or fight stimulation). So, utilize that survival instinct you have in your body, and go for a run! Exercise releases oxytocin, which is basically your happy hormone. When you go out to run, dance, swim, stretch, hike, climb, or whatever, you'll feel so much better afterwards.

So you all know that I'm on this 21 day challenge. Today is Day 18. I only have 3 more days to go! At around Day 17, I realized I was getting tired of working out, things felt repetitive, and I just had no motivation. The workouts seemed to be too tough, I felt like I wasn't getting better, and nothing seemed to be going the right way I wanted it to go. This is usually when I stop working out, and I start eating junk foods. But I decided to try and challenge myself further, and see what would happen if I kept pushing myself to include all my workouts that I always do everyday. I was feeling psychologically worn out, and I didn't feel like doing anything. I decided to put on my workout clothes just to try and get in the mood. I dragged myself to my group fitness class even though I was tired, and guess what. It was the best workout I ever had. I had so much fun at Zumba, that I didn't even know time was passing. I just felt like I was dancing all by myself with nobody around me. I sweat bullets, and I felt amazing. I came home to two packages that had my "Train like a Beast. Look like a Beauty" sweater from ogorgeous.com, and my 21 day Fix Challenge Package with a 30 day supply of Chocolate Shakeology! I felt so pumped that I decided to finish my blogilates workout strong.

So the moral of the story for today is whenever you want to quit, don't quit and keep going. You'll realize how much you've improved both psychologically and physically. If you think you're not getting the support you need to continue, buy a new workout outfit that you'd want to use for future workouts, and to stay motivated. If you feel like you're doing the same workouts over and over again, try changing things up so you don't get bored. Look for cool ways to spice up your dishes, but in a healthy way through other awesome fitness blogs, Pinterest, and Instagram! You can even get creative and make your own dish! Take a friend with you to workout to help you stay accountable. No matter what you do, stay committed and keep going. It'll all be worth it at the end, I promise.

As mentioned above, I am planning to start my 21 day Fix Challenge. I'm planning to start in the beginning of March. So for those of you who want to join me, please feel free to let me know, and we can work together towards a stronger body.

Burn Those Arms!

Today's post will be my first check-in ever!! As I mentioned in my previous posts, I have been working out for about a month now, but the actual decision to reveal what I do to lose weight and tone my muscles came later. The first few days of staying committed and continuing a consistent workout regime was very tiring. There were many times when I wanted to quit, and when my dad brought a huge double chocolate cake in front of my face on valentine's day, I had to fight my inner temptation with all my might. Valentine's day was on a Saturday, so I told my dad to share the cake with fellow church members on Sunday since I was not allowed to eat any of it. I still think about that cake, but I know that the temptations felt temporarily at that moment is not worth changing your entire future goals and dreams.

For my diet, I follow a clean and healthy diet consisting of 3 full meals with 2 snacks in between. The snacks are there to prevent hunger, but also to increase my metabolism. So that would be a total of 5 meals a day (Breakfast - Snack 1 - Lunch - Snack 2 - Dinner). You can also get rid of snacks, and just eat your 3 big meals in smaller portions to make 5 small meals a day.

What I ate today:

Breakfast: Greenberry Shakeology with 1 banana and 8 fl oz of hemp milk blended together.

Snack 1&2: 10 Unsalted Almonds. I'm in love with almonds. I never really liked almonds before, but after I started eating them as snacks, I'm really getting addicted to them. 

Lunch & Dinner: Brown rice with glutinous indian millet mix, and chicken breast with celery, onion, and Bragg's amino soy sauce to taste. The chicken breast side dish I made was amazing. It tasted just like chicken noodle soup except it didn't have the noodles!

My workout for today:

- 30 min of running on the treadmill nonstop

- 60 min of Blogilates from the Fabruary 2015 calendar!

My thoughts on today's workout and diet regime:

I was very happy with what I did today. Being able to run 30 minutes straight without stopping is actually a new record for me. I always stopped at 20 minutes or at most 25 minutes, but I was never able to get to 30. I know a lot of people don't agree with eating right before you work out because it gives you cramps, but when I ate my chicken breast side dish and ran on the treadmill, I didn't get any cramps at all. I actually had more energy, I was able to breathe more easily, and I actually felt like I could've lasted longer than 30 minutes. The only reason why I stopped at 30 minutes is because I felt like I should take things slow rather than try to improve quickly. I want to make sure that I stick with this workout regime, and a sudden increase in intensity can overwhelm me and make me stop working out completely. I'm also very glad that I pushed myself to increase the speed to 6 for the last 5 minutes of the 30 minute run. I have always ran at speed 5, and I'm hoping to increase my speed to 6 slowly. Just in case you don't know, make sure that you're breathing rhythmically as you run. I've found that breathing in twice and then breathing out twice keeps me from getting out of breath. At first I wasn't used to breathing in and out twice, but after several tries, I got used to it. And now I use it all the time! 

Today's Blogilates workout was intense! It was all focused on toning the arms. I know for sure that I have very weak arms. Whenever I do any type of arm workouts, I fail terribly. But this time around, I made sure to try my best. I still stopped once in a while during the workout video, but I'm sure I'm going to get better as I continue to try harder through the next upcoming videos. For those of you who don't know Blogilates, it's basically pilates with different types of workouts combined. For example, there's HIIT (high intensity interval training) and pilates, yoga and pilates, dance and pilates, and so much more. Definitely check them out. They may look easy, but once you try some of the moves, you'll realize how hard they actually are. At least for me it was. If you'd like more information about Blogilates, you can visit this website - http://www.blogilates.com. When you subscribe to this website, you'll get monthly emails from Cassey Ho (the founder of Blogilates) with the workout calendar for each month and a password to access it through her website. It's completely free, and she makes sure to have different workouts everyday. So you'll never do the same moves on a different day, which will prevent your body from plateauing. 

As for my meals today, I was actually very satisfied. The one thing that I'm not too sure about is using Bragg's amino soy sauce. I wonder if it might contain too much sodium. I did dilute the soy sauce with water to make it less salty, but I still wonder if it's ok. I normally try to opt for any of Bragg's products when I look for condiments. I am a big fan of their product line because they seem to make all of their products naturally. I always use their apple cider vinegar whenever I'm not feeling very healthy, and also when I'm craving sweets. Diluting 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in 1 glass of water, drinking it in between meals can help reduce cravings. If you have a sensitive stomach, you can dilute this mix even further. You must dilute vinegar at all times. If you don't, you will hurt your stomach. The Bragg's amino soy sauce supposedly contains the essential amino acids you need all in one bottle. So you're getting your amino acids in while eating delicious soy sauce seasoned food. It's supposedly healthier than regular soy sauce. 

So, that's all I have for today. I hope you liked my post, and feel free to follow my blog to get updated information whenever I post a new post. 

I also would like to ask what you thought about my diet plan, and my workout regime. Was there anything I could change (add or remove) from my diet? How is your working plan going? 

I hope this post was helpful to some, and let's stay strong and committed to make a change! 

Some motivation to get you started!

Hello, everyone! It hasn't even been a day before I started posting again. I just thought I'd share an inspirational quote with you just to get you motivated. When you're starting to feel discouraged because you either plateaued, it's starting to feel like you're alone on this journey, or you're just getting bored of the same workout routine, I want you to remember why you started this journey to begin with. It could be because of that guy/girl that hurt your feelings and you want to show them that it was their loss for letting you go. It could be because of all those bullies who bullied you about your body and you want to prove them wrong. It could be because you had health issues, and you want to help yourself get better. Regardless of what your reasons are to start your fit journey, that "trigger" story is what will help you to keep going. Know that you're not alone on this journey, and I hope this post helps to motivate you into moving forward. Keep going. I'm right behind you, and cheering you on! Let's prove to the world we can change. :)

Introduction - My Motivational "Trigger" Story

Hello, everyone!
My  name is Gabrielle Kim. I know my introduction section is located on the upper right corner of my blog, but I'd like to introduce myself before I get into the details of my story. I am currently an undergrad at Cal Poly Pomona studying General Biology. I am trying to get into Medical School in hopes of becoming an Internal Medicine Physician. Despite my interest in getting into a conventional medicine field, I am always interested in natural remedies, homeopathic remedies, ayruvedic remedies, and alternative medicine. I'm always on the lookout for natural skin care routines to try out, and I'm always researching on what works and doesn't. I also love nature. I like to hike, go to the beach, and try out new outdoor activities if my physical strength permits me to. I grow lots of african violet varieties at home along with orchids, cacti, succulents, hoyas, alpine plants, and others. I hope to get into growing my own vegetables and herbs to reduce my grocery bills. :)

Before I get into posting about my progress (workout routines, nutrition, etc.), I'd first like to start off with a little story about myself that triggered me to go on this health and fit journey.

Disclaimer: I am in no way trying to depress or discourage anyone through my story. I am merely trying to show how I also went through bullying and big changes in my life to cause my weight gain, which in turn led me to start this journey. I hope my story will inspire some of you to follow through my progress and get fit alongside with me.

My story is long, but I promise it'll all come together and make sense.
I was born in San Jose, California. I lived a majority of my life there from preschool to senior year of high school. I moved to various parts of California in between, but that's irrelevant. As a kid, I never really understood the concept about body image. I knew some kids were fat and some kids were skinny, but I never had any opinion about others based on their body. It was only until my uncles and aunts started to mention that I was getting fat that I understood that body image was a big part of society. The first two jokes about my fat belly were tolerable, but as I got older and the jokes became more and more consistent, I started to feel discouraged and self conscious about myself. I questioned whether being fat was something that defined a person. As I went through my middle school and high school years, I went through many rejections, which led me to think that nobody liked me because of how my body looked regardless of the real reasons why.

In my junior year of high school, I got very emotionally hurt. Through these events, I became very depressed for the next following years. Through my depression, I found out that I had hyperthyroidism. Conventional medicine physicians told me that I either had to inactivate my thyroid gland with radioactive iodine, or I could get my thyroid gland removed surgically. These two options gave me only one choice of taking hormone pills the rest of my life. I couldn't accept that fate, so my dad and I researched on any alternatives. We came across an alternative medicine clinic in Toronto. We called them and asked if they had any remedies to my condition. I was told that they could easily relieve my condition, so I stayed in Toronto for about 3 months to hopefully cure my thyroid. After 3 months, my thyroid gland wasn't swollen anymore, and I no longer experienced the symptoms I experienced when I had hyperthyroidism. I took a blood test and my TSH levels were back to normal. I rested 3 extra months from school to try and mentally prepare myself for school again. Through the thyroid treatment, I lost weight to 118 pounds from 125 pounds. My skin was healthier, and my whole body just felt healthier overall.

If you don't know, hyperthyroidism causes constant jitteriness, lack of focus, and you're always tired. Your heart is always pumping at a fast rate, and your metabolism is very high. I couldn't focus in school with this condition, which in turn affected my grades. I couldn't get into any universities that I wanted to get into. But through a stroke of luck, I got accepted to University of Missouri - Columbia. So I moved to Missouri and studied at the university for about 3 years. Moving to Missouri was a big change in my life, and it took a lot to try and adjust to my new environment. The adjustment to harsher weather conditions from a place where it was always sunny was very hard to do. Students whom I tried to become friends with had a different sense of humor, and they seemed to always be on edge (maybe for competition). I got into a student organization at my university, and I was bullied. After about 3 years of being at this university, I decided that I had to go back to California. Missouri University was a great school, but I feel that it just wasn't right for me.

I transferred to Cal Poly Pomona and decided to study one extra year to fulfill the GE requirements and Biology degree requirements required by the state of California. Cal Poly Pomona was so much easier to adjust into. I received a lot of support and help from many people, and there were a lot of opportunities given to me.

This is where I started to gain weight. Missouri has great restaurants that you can find, but in my opinion, Southern California has a larger selection of restaurants, and the food seems to taste better. That's where my problem started. I got overly excited that I was back in California, and decided that I should try all the famous restaurants that I could find. In my teens, I never got past 125 pounds. So I thought it was impossible for me to gain more than that "maximum". But when I constantly went out to eat lots of processed foods, lots of sugary foods, and foods packed with salt, I saw a rather fast increase in my weight. When I reached 135 pounds, it didn't really hit me that I should start cutting down on fast foods. It was only until I reached 148 pounds that I realized that I can easily get to 150, 160, and then maybe even up to 200. I always told my friends that I needed to lose weight, but I never really committed to start working out, cutting down on calories, and eating healthier.

I started to feel a lot unhealthier by 148 pounds. My right side of my face started to swell, my right arm and legs felt like blood wasn't circulating well enough, and my brain was always foggy. Small cardio workouts made me feel like I was going to pass out. Even when I reached that 148 pound mark and felt unhealthy symptoms, it still didn't make me start on a workout regime. It was only until I found a crush, that I realized that there is going to be someone in the future that I want to look good in front of. I realized that I now have a purpose to try my best in looking my best.

Through my journey of trying to lose weight, I found a very inspirational person who helped me to stay accountable and gave me lots of ideas on how I can improve my nutrition and keep going at my workout regime. If I hadn't met this person, I would've never started to commit to a consistent workout regime. I signed up for a 21 day challenge to stay committed, and it has helped me to keep a consistent workout regime because I know there are many people watching me progress on this challenge. So to not disappoint them, I find myself staying committed no matter what. I've been slowly getting a little lazy, so I decided to post blogs on my progress so that the world can be my accountability partner.

So, that's the end of my story. It took a lot of thought and courage to actually reveal my life story to the public via a blog, but I'm hoping that my story will help inspire others to follow along my healthy and fit journey, and to help me stay committed. Your story may not be exactly the same as mine, but I'm sure you have your own story to share about why you want to start your own healthy and fit lifestyle journey. For those of you who are wanting to start, but can't find the time and motivation, I strongly recommend going into a challenge group on Facebook, and trying to stay committed. There are a lot of great online coaches there who will help you to stay accountable. For those of you who have already started your healthy journey, keep going and I know we'll both reach our goals soon!

I know this post is very long, so I thank you all for reading through the entire post. I'd love to hear your own stories on your motivational "triggers" that caused you to decide that you needed to make a change in your life.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions! :)