Because sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do...

I'm tired. Physically drained and exhausted. Yes, there are times when I feel a little sleepy and I say I'm tired, but this way transcends that. As of this moment, I feel like I'm about to just literally collapse and shut down.

Worked till 11-ish yesterday and by the time I got home it was almost 12am. Then did a load of laundry (otherwise I'd run out of uniform tees to wear today) and had my dinner-a.k.a.-pre-bed meal before I hit the sack. Eating was non-negotiable because I was starving, due to the fact that I was practically living off caffeine during the day because the only decent meals I had was brekkie (eggs and 100% sprouted wholegrain bread) and lunch (chicken breast and sweet tater). Which may seem like a huge amount of food to the average person but to me is toeing the line on starvation. I was feeling insanely weak all over that while closing the club, lifting 15kg plates felt like death. Which is pretty bad considering that when I train, I routinely deadlift more than 1x my bodyweight nowadays.

Slept at around 2am-ish last night, and got up before 5am because I was on morning shift today. Weetbix and whole milk for brekkie. First cup of caffeine, shot out of the door to get to work by 6.45am to open the gym. Literally swallowed wholewheat bread for lunch as I rushed to buy a week's worth of groceries in 45 minutes (I usually take hours to grocery-shop, so THIS, is a hurry for me). Second cup of caffeine after lunch break.

Managed to get off work just before 3pm. I was zombiefied and semi-dead but I'd planned to do my high-intensity treadmill intervals and there was no way I'd back out. Grabbed my iPhone, plugged in those headphones at max volume, and repeated to myself… "Don't just do what you want to do. Do what you have to do, to get to where you want to be."

The plan was to do 30 minutes of intervals, most of which was running at approx. 10.0km/h. Actuals: 5 minutes warm-up. 30 minutes running @ 10km/h. 15 minutes walking uphill at approx. 5km/h, 12% incline. Rest of the time was pretty much recovery. Altogether 60 minutes on the treadmill.

Exhausting but fulfilling. Well worth whatever it took to get it done.

Took a long nap when I got home. And tomorrow's just another day.

When The WHAT IF's Bog Me Down...

Lately I've been thinking about my fitness and physique goals, and somehow a plethora of doubts cross my mind. What if I'm setting goals that are too high for me to reach? What if I'm unable to achieve them? What if I'm just not strong enough? What if I just can't do it?

Thing is, the harsh reality about fitness goals is that it isn't easy to achieve them. Because when it comes to achieving those goals, most people tend to only see what's on the surface. Science and those natural laws. Things like calories in, calories out. But those are the scientific theories, mathematical equations, logical deductions. But in actual fact, they're just the tip of the iceberg.

.....

It's really the other stuff that are tougher to deal with. Things like:

Eating clean when everyone around you is having burgers, brownies and multiple margaritas.

Finding motivation on those days when you just feel like vegging out at home instead of stepping out of the door and heading to the gym.

Getting (and staying!) on that treadmill when you're feeling totally blah and you leaf through playlist after playlist on iTunes but nothing seems to be doing it for you.

Those times when you're training weights and your muscles are fatigued and after what feels like you've annihilated your delts with 4 different exercises targeting anterior, lateral, posterior delts... you wonder where you'd find the strength to face those remaining sets of lateral raises in your planned workout for the day AND progressive overload, when you're already feeling totally spent and running on empty.

The occurrences when you just don't see as much progress as you'd like to... when it's like you want to lift heavier, but at that moment your body just isn't achieving what you want it to achieve.

Those times when you have an injury and you're momentarily side-tracked. And whenever that happens, part of me wants to just 'scroo it' and work through the pain, injury be darned... but I know that's just not the right thing to do... then discouragement and frustration sets in.

And then there are those moments when you get home exhausted and hungry, and it's so much easier to just hit the drive-thru for a burger, instead of prepping a meal of chicken breast, potatoes and veggies.

Or having to deal with the temptation to snack on crap food because you had a crappy day... or dealing with upsetting stuff and feeling like if you stuffed your cheeks with chocolate, maybe the pain will go away... or fixing a peanut butter 'n' jelly sandwich (with organic natural peanut butter and 100% sprouted wholegrain bread, mind you.. just because something's healthy doesn't mean there's no calories...) because you just FEEL like eating something when you're plain bored.

And of course there's those moments when you just give in to eating something bad now and go, "I'll change from tomorrow onwards..." and we ALL know how well that always turns out.

.....

And sometimes when it gets so tough and seemingly impossible, when obstacles and situations get in the way, and it feels like my goals are just so distant and almost-unreachable... I get those moments of negativity.

So back to those questions...

What if I'm setting goals that are too high for me to reach?

What if I'm unable to achieve them?

What if I'm just not strong enough?

What if I just can't do it?

Then suddenly the thought crossed my mind: "Okay Pauline, forget about the Can or Can't, what is it that you Want?" And suddenly, it hit me.

There's no such thing as not being able to do something. I re-read my list of obstacles above and I realize that they're not insolvable, or impossible to overcome or at least cope with. I realize that I already do have the answers to solving or dealing with most of them, and that it's just a matter of focusing on what I want, and not letting temporary feelings and situations keep me from achieving what I set out to achieve.

I love this quote by IFBB Figure Pro, Pauline Nordin; whom by the way, is one of my favorite bodybuilders/figure athletes...

"Remember that nothing stops you from reaching your goal except for you yourself. If you want it you can have it, the question is how much you want it and how much you are willing to put in for it."

Adductor injury. Boo.

Adductor injury =( I don't even know how that happened.

I don't think it's a tear, I think it's more of a strain. Considering the fact that I can still walk like a normal person, well almost, haha. Though if I'm sitting down for a while, it hurts like crazy when I try to get up *frown*

I'm suspecting it's from a slight twist (Okay, so was it inversion or eversion? Yes, I'm so nose-deep in my ACE CPT manual that I just couldn't resist the Kinesiology reference at my own expense *chuckles*) either from rowing or the treadmill.

Hmm come to think of it, I have a love-hate relationship with injuries. Because while injuries impede my ability to train as crazily as I want to... they - oddly - make life a little more interesting. I mean, most of the people around me find "I tore/strained my adductor" to be more interesting than say, "I deadlifted 80kg". Oh well.

Gotta scale back a little on the training now. But train, I shall. Few things in life can keep me away from the olympic bar and multi-colored iron plates :D

Chronicles of Kay-el: Day 1 of work and everything else...

I just got home from my first day of work! What a day! I love the place. And the people there. Everything there. It was awesome =)

I'm not too fond of the streets of Kay-el as of this moment. I scraped through and survived getting to work and back home. It took me an hour this morning to get to work. And more than hour to get back home. It frazzles me so bad each time I take one wrong turn and wind up in some super-long road that leads to oblivion. Sometimes it's the verge of tears. This place is crazy.

But I love the job and this gym and that I'm pursuing my passion to become a PT someday. That, is what's keeping me sane amidst the craziness of this city.

And so I shall persevere.

Helloooo Kuala Lumpur! (And a plethora of thoughts...)

I'm officially living in Kay-el now! After all the planning and prepping and everything, I'm finally settled-down for the most part.

I'm sitting in my new room, caught up in my mishmash of emotions as I'm typing this. The past few days have been spent surrounded by family and being caught up in the flurry of the bazillion things that had to be done for the whole move to KL. Somehow in the midst of the flurry of events, the whole KL thing hadn't quite permeated into the depths of my grey-matter. But now, after Zu and Wilchard dropped me off at my place and mum's gone back to Penang, everything's starting to sink in...

I'm finally here. Pursuing the life and career I love. I have so much to look forward to. Work. My ACE Personal Trainer course and certification. And working on my physique and fitness goals.

Somehow I'm a bundle of nerves… =(

I guess I just need to give myself time to get over feeling intimidated by living in KL. It's so different from Penang. Zu and Wilchard showed me the directions to get to work and the training centre and all I can say is, KL is huge. The roads are relatively bigger and there are so many highways (and byways). And like I always say, "Everything in KL is bigger" because it's like, if you were to compare the size of one McD's outlet in KL, it's probably literally triple the size of a McD's outlet in Penang. Stuff like that.

(No, I still hardly eat at McD's. It just happened to be the first thing I thought of since it seems to be everywhere.)

I guess that weird feeling I have right now is not so much about leaving Penang itself, nor is it about doubting my ability to cope with living in KL. It's just this indescribable feeling of a situation that right now feels larger than I am. Momentarily overwhelmed, possibly. I guess I just need a little time for everything to sink in, and to get myself used to all the not-familiar-yet stuff. Kinda like an emotional-jet-lag if there's such a thing, hmm.

The fact is that I do have my fears and things-that-frazzle-me. I won't deny that. But I know that emotions are temporary. And that doubts and fears are all part and parcel of life. It's like one of those moments in BodyPump class when you're in the middle of a squat track and you wonder how your quads are gonna make it through. And then the instructor says, "The pain's temporary, but the results are forever" and suddenly it puts everything into perspective.

And that's how it is. Emotions, doubt and fears are real. But just like pain, they're just a feeling, and feelings are temporary. The time will come when they'll pass. And what really matters are the dreams and aspirations for which we brave those fears. Because what we want is bigger than anything else. And the things that matter will outlast the thises and the thatses.

What amuses me, is that today's my birthday and yet it seems to be the last thing on my mind because it's taken a backseat to everything else :P

Pre-RPM Banter...

I went for RPM the past 3 consecutive days! That's even more than I've ever done before my whole back thing. It feels good to get my momentum back =)

Howzever, what really got me thinking was the few minutes spent outside of the spinning studio yesterday, whilst waiting for the class to begin. There were 3 other females at the same table, asking each other the oh-so-overused "How much weight have you lost?" And when one of them asked me, I just diverted the conversation.

Thing is, I have nothing against disclosing if I've lost weight or made progress. But somehow I just didn't want to get into some banter of who lost more weight or who knows more. And most of all, it's because when it comes to losing weight, I don't compete with people. I compete only against myself. I don't believe in comparing myself to other people's goals or progress. To me, it's all about working towards my own goals and the physique I want. And knowing that I'm giving it everything I've got, and pushing myself beyond the imaginary self-imposed limitations, to get to where I want to be.

But most of all, it's because to me, it's not just about losing weight anymore. It's become so much more than that.

So yes, I am working on losing. But it's not just about "losing weight" in the literal sense. I want to lose, but to lose fat. I don't want to get into crash diets, overdo cardio, skimp on the weights and wind up with pounds upon pounds of weight loss, only to find it's all muscle loss… because to me, that's just counterproductive. And to me, my goal physique is not about having a tiny number show up on the weighing scale anymore.

Lately my focus is on other things. Things like, a low bodyfat percentage. Muscle definition. Being lean, not being skinny. Measurements. Working on packing on some dense muscle once I'm done with lowering the bodyfat percentage. Eating right. Eating clean. Getting fitter. Being stronger. Not feeling like I'm about to pass out post-cardio, haha. It's things like these which matter more to me nowadays.

I don't deny that the number on the scale matters, because it does. But it's just not the be all and end all anymore.

I find it a lil distorted when people think fitness and hitting the gym is all about losing weight or being unhealthily skinny. Or eating things which we know are clearly bad for us*, but we do it anyhow and justify it by saying things like "I'll burn it off at the gym tomorrow" or "It fits into my caloric allowance so it shouldn't be bad for me." Or overdoing things in an attempt to look better than the person next to us. I used to wrongly focus on such things because in the past, thinking that was the right thing to do… but today, I've know that's not what it should be.

*Note: When I say food that's "bad", I don't mean carbohydrates or fat, or a certain food group, no way. I'm referring to those processed foods that are bad for the body, like high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fat, et cetera.

In a way, I feel that I've grown up. It feels different now. And it's a good kind of different =)

Ahh, BodyPump... finally! =)

I went for my first BodyPump class today, after countless months of not getting to do it during the whole my-spine-got-botched-thingy. Darn, I can't even remember without checking my old workout logs, when my last BodyPump class was. (Although I somehow do remember it was the Thursday class and I had like 10kg for the chest track... hmm.) That was a looooong time ago.

So back to today. I loved, loved, loved the class! Both today's class and BodyPump in general.

I have a thing for BodyPump. It always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside =)

(The fact that I still think triceps push-ups on toes are torture is besides the point.)

I'm tempted to go for tomorrow's class. If the DOMS doesn't kill me when I crawl out of bed tomorrow morning, that is :P

I knew it. Get back to one BodyPump class and once again I'm hooked. I get into the whole "Oh how I missed those barbells and plates!" followed by various sentences gushing about the programme, which will eventually lead to "I wanna pile on more weights..."

As if you didn't see that one coming, LOL.

So now I'll have to constantly repeat (silently of course, duh) the whole "gotta take it slow" (which to me, is no small feat) mantra. See, I KNEW this would happen. I go for one class and that's it, I'm hooked. I can already hear the lil nosy voice at the back of my mind saying "I told you so!"

I can almost smell the whole situation that's about to come... the following weeks are gonna revolve around the internal dialogue along the lines of...

"Off to the gym. I feel like going for BodyPump today!"

"...but I gotta go for yoga *tone gets a lil less chirpy* because Dr. Aaron says I gotta keep up the thrice-weekly yoga/pilates/taichi."

"...but I feel like going for Pump. I miss those barbells and plates..."

Ahh, nevermind the fact that I can't totally live every gym-day immersed in BodyPump (YET!). Gotta keep up the core-stuff. Else if my spine pulls a fast one on me, it'll so chip at my sanity to be weights-deprived again and I'd go out of my mind then.

I must, I must remember to remind myself to not go too crazy with the nifty stuff just yet... gotta take it easy... gotta take it easy...

Darn, I'm happy to get back to BodyPump. Insanely happy. Unbelievable. That class to me is like a drug. Oh, I'll go ahead and use the L-word. This ain't just an addiction... It's love, as I like to call it =)