GreySneakers Diaries

 It's been more than 5 years of not updating this blog. Yeay! Hahaha! That's a new record! Now that I'm almost 51, I have to say that I'm so thankful I can still work out at the gym as well as outdoor. I'm still enjoying dance fitness classes and started outdoor cycling last year. Not doing it often as it's very dependent on the weather. Dancing, brisk walking and some weight training are the workouts that I can still do comfortably. Body Combat and Body Attack are not in my dictionary anymore. All those high impact exercises are now doing more harm than good to my body.  I've also added some supplements for the benefits of my health. This includes probiotics and prebiotics. When you've reached 5 series, your metabolic rate becomes low and your gut are not as efficient as when you were younger. That was the main reason I did a gut reset in December 2024.  Alhamdulillah now I sleep better at night and have less craving for sweet and fried food. Although s...

Salam all! Yikes! Wawasan 2020 doesn't become a reality. We're still braving early morning traffic to work and even worse traffic on Friday afternoons. No flying cars whatsoever - sorry. However, I am starting a few new workouts this year. It's 2020! Let's do something we've been so afraid of trying all this while. So, I'm following the following classes this year: Les Mills Barre Les Mills Tone Les Mills CXWORX Besides those, I'm still joining all my favorite Les Mills dance classes. I still teach Zumba, by the way. So, I'm getting more than enough cardio throughout the week. The new workouts I'm starting this year are mainly for strength, working the small muscles and core stability. I wanted to do free weights but I'm going to need a personal trainer for that. So far, group classes are my best choice because I really love everyone's energy. If I were to work out alone, I'll give up after 5 minutes of doing squats and planks....

It's been almost 3 years since I last updated. It is now Ramadhan and in about a week, we'll be celebrating Hari Raya Aidilfitri. I usually lose between 2-3 kg during fasting month but the weight doesn't stay long. After the first week of hari raya, I would gain 1 or 2kg. *sigh* That's the problem if you stay in Malaysia. There are so many delicious food and very difficult to resist them. What I've been doing for the past 3 years, I made sure I don't go to so many open houses during raya month. Usually, I went to only 2 open houses during the weekends. My cardio classes were about 5 times a week and I would add more weight sessions. Currently I love doing X-blast classes at Fitness First. It's just a 30 minutes class but it'll work so many muscle groups that at the end of the day, my whole body would ache. Some update on my progress: 1. I am only 3kg lighter than I was in 2014. However, I've gained more muscle and lost 3% more of my body fat. ...

Yeay! I should reward myself with something really expensive this week! Too bad I don't have that much money for lavish things now. Anyway, I weighed myself this morning and yippie I have lost a total of 11kg since February 2014. *Lompat Bintang* Wore this old kebaya for Zumba Raya themed class at The Curve It has been a tough journey. This year I took another approach to weight loss. I started attending dance classes seriously since Chinese New Year. I started with 3 Zumba classes each week - on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. After getting some results, I joined Sh'bam class once a week on Tuesday mornings. After a few months, when I thought that my knees were a lot stronger, I started doing Body Jam classes once a week on Saturday mornings. So, the three types of dance classes have helped me a lot in this journey. I decided not to pursue running since my knees were not in good condition. Zumba helped to strengthen my core and legs, but I had to be really patien...

I haven't posted anything here since October 2011! That's almost 2 years of laziness, I know! So, where should I start? What should I update first? Perhaps I should start the entry with my current weight. Well, after almost a year of neglect, well not really neglecting my health, I had a bad fall in December 2011 and another fall in December 2012, I look like someone who has been on a yoyo diet. Life has been funny. I was not able to run for quite some time. My gym sessions had been reduced to once or twice a month between March 2012 - October 2012. My right knee and back were affected after the fall I had in December 2012. It took a few months to recover. I only started exercising again some time in late February 2013. Between January - November 2012 my weight skyrocketed to a new height. I was almost as heavy as my 9 months pregnant self. It really scared me when I was getting heart palpitations in October 2012. So, I went to see a cardiologist and she did all the necess...

Yeah, I'm bouncing back to the gym. After more than 2 months of not exercising (yeah, not even brisk walking), I think I've gained enough fat so it's about time to re-start gymming. I was not motivated to exercise at all after fasting month and Syawal. Although I didn't attend many open houses, the pounds were piling like nobody's business. My work schedule was also quite tight, so we ate out a lot for the past 2 and a half months. The worst thing about eating out is that I feel obliged to finish everything on the plate. Just imagine, the normal nasi beriyani serving at the mamak can come close to 1000 kCal (for those who are counting). So, nasi beriyani plus bandung soda plus papadom can simply total up to 1400 kCal!! Ok, that's scary when we know how low our metabolic rate is. I should be taking about 1700 kCal perday and my body (with this age) burns about 2000 kCal (if I don't exercise). If one meal is close to 1400 kCal, 3 meals must have been about...

Ok, I last updated in March 2011. Since then I've only been to the gym once a week. That's how not frequent and not consistent I was. March, April and May have been really hectic. I have three concurrent projects whereby I'm actively involved in the deployments. Having a Team Leader title is not an excuse to be a generalist. There are still a lot of technical stuffs that I have to have hands on skills. Otherwise, technical certifications won't be put in my appraisal plan, right? In April, I discovered that my BP was slightly high. Well, let's just say that it was high that the Doctor looked worried after taking the third reading that week. I was actually really frustrated. Having lived a rather healthy life for the past 3 years and cooked at home more frequent than ever and yet the BP still shot up. Even my bad cholesterol level has gone down significantly. So, I have been on medication since April. The meds made me feel like floating and I couldn't really foc...

I've been doing my little runs since June 2010. So far, I've done one outdoor brisk walking session last year and yesterday I decided to run along the roads near my house. I brisk walked for about 200 meters before started running. Firstly, it was a totally different experience than running on the treadmill in a comfortable, air conditioned gym with encouraging music and TV screens showing ASTRO programmes. I noticed that there was more stress on both of my knees, perhaps whenever I run on the treadmill it helped to lower the impact. Running against the wind was also another challenge. Usually it was not too windy in my area but yesterday, when I ran I could feel that extra effort was needed to bring my body forward. Having these extra kg on my body was another big factor. Big body, bigger friction against the wind? Haha. I also had to be extra careful on the grassy areas as I could see piles of dog poo left there by the dog owners. Too bad our Majlis Perbandaran never thou...

How did I fare in my running in 2010? Well, here's some statistics. Since I only started running in the middle of 2010, so these data were for 6 months period.  I was so proud to see this. I haven't ran this far since I left school. Although I need to run more frequent than just once a week, I have to be happy to stick to brisk walking on weekends. Slotting in running sessions in my currently extra busy schedule is a real challenge now. A few adjustments need to be done this year if I were to improve on my running.  My best month was July and I think I know why. We went to the UK in June so being there alone was inspiring enough to start running more seriously. I saw so many people ran in the UK during summer. In fact there were people running as late as 10pm. In my housing area in Puchong many neighbors have started running in the morning and weekends too.  So this year I hope I'll be continuously motivated to run. 

Many friends asked what keeps me sticking to my gym routine and the fact that many of my friends have terminated their gym membership made some people wonder why I haven't give up yet. Although I slacked a few times and thinking about it I think I'd slack at least twice a year. Once during puasa/raya and then once again during year end period (Nov-Dec). It's a recognizable pattern now so hopefully next year I'll have a Plan to ensure I don't slack. I don't have many tips on motivating myself to work out. So, in this entry I'll share with you some of the things that really helped especially when I was down and lost interested to exercise. Good music I researched, borrowed, bought, copied songs that can be used for my cardio sessions. Now that I'm more into running, I Google suitable playlists. Sometimes, I go through the old CDs I keep in some forgotten boxes in the house. With iTunes Genius, now it's easier to group songs and create playlists. M...

Syawal is not completely over yet in this country but I've declared end of celebration (for me) after the 5th of Syawal. I still visit friends and relatives but I kept on reminding myself that festive mood has been turned off, just to discourage me from eating too much at those houses. 'Open house' is a term used widely in Malaysia for the usually small feast organized by families/corporate organization/school/departments/ministries so that their friends/relatives/work colleagues/customers/vendors would come and celebrate Syawal. Since eating is the favorite past time in this country, Open Houses are very popular and people will try their best to attend each invitation. This year I decided to only attend a few Open Houses: my mom's, my customers' and my vendors'. It's a tough thing to do as I had to apologize profusely to those who invited me. Well, that's one of the sacrifices I had to do to make sure I don't spoil my calorie intake plan. If I...

.. and I don't have the energy to work out at the gym during Ramadhan. Fasting in this hot weather is very challenging for me. Although working in a fully air conditioned office, once I hit the road to travel to/from work the sun really drained my energy. The children's and my lips cracked and bleed yesterday. On some days, Shawqi looked rather dehydrated but continued fasting. He broke his fast at 6pm last week because he couldn't stand it. I'm not going to force him to complete his fast if his body cannot take it. He's only 8. However, something is quite different this Ramadhan. I managed to control my hunger. At a certain hour of the day I could still feel the pang of hunger but it's manageable. Usually, my lips would turn really pale at 5pm and I'd start suffering from gastritis after the 4th day. I think I have to thank BLA for this improvement. I never practiced portion control or monitored calorie intake before. Now that I've learned the tricks,...

Muslims are blessed with a very clear guideline on living a good and healthy life. Every year we have one month to give the digestion system a good rest during the day time. It’s the fasting month – our Ramadhan. Usually I didn’t go to gym during Ramadhan, I always made a point to go to the front desk and requested for my membership to be frozen for the whole month. However, this year I totally forgotten about it. So, in order to avoid feeling guilty for paying the gym for nothing this month, I’m going to try doing some light workout in the morning. This might sound quite ambitious, but I think I will have the energy in the morning to at least do brisk walking on the treadmill and then some cycling. One of my colleagues plans to workout right before the break fast time, so that she could replenish everything soon after. I might do that too if I don’t have to go back early and prepare (or buy) meals for break fast. The biggest culprit during Ramadhan is the bazaar. They can be found eve...

I should be feeling very guilty right now for I have been slacking in my diet and exercise program for the past 10 days. It started with a 4 days training where the organizer served us deliciously sinful food 5 times a days between 8.30am to 5.30pm. And then at night, I still cooked and had dinner with my family. I tried not to eat much during the day but with 5 meals during day time, I got too tired to count the calories so I just had whatever looked delicious enough. During the 4 days, I didn't go to gym as the training was held in KL. Driving back from KL was challenging enough so going to FF IOI Mall was out of question. By the time I reached home, I was too tired to move a muscle and it was drizzling most of the days. So, couldn't take the baby out for a stroll. I just had a short nap and woke up for bath, prayers and prepared dinner. I always felt exhausted during trainings. The same thing happened during my Uni days. I was always too tired, perhaps it was mental tire...

I received this from Srikandi egroup and loved it so much. This is good for all women's mental health. Girlie Wisdom!    1. A friend of mine confused her Valium with her birth control pills... she has 14 kids but she doesn't really care..    2. One of life's mysteries is how a 2-pound box of chocolates can make a woman gain 5 lbs.   3. My mind not only wanders, it sometimes leaves completely.   4 . The best way to forget your troubles is to wear tight shoes.    5. The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you are doing, someone else does.    6. The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends..   7. Just when I was getting used to yesterday, along came today...    8. Sometimes I think I understand everything, and then I regain consciousness.   9. I gave up jogging for my health when my thighs kept rubbing together an...

I've sort of given up using the Biggest Loser club website as the access has been very poor for the last few months. Usually it took me about 10 minutes just to update what I've eaten for a day. I don't know why the website performance dropped so suddenly. Perhaps it's being hosted elsewhere, and the network infrastructure there sucks, well  I don't know. However, now that I've purchased the Nike + Sportband, I'm fully utilizing Nikeplus website to track my running. Although I'm not able to track the rest of the cardio and resistance training I' doing, I think this is good enough. I chose one program from the Nikeplus coach and try to follow as close as I can. Actually I haven't ran much. I tried my best to run at least twice a week, depending on my work schedule. Lately I've been having many late afternoon meetings that usually dragged until 6 or 6.30pm. So, there goes my workout time slot. I have to admit that I do envy people who can...

What does the instructor always tells you? Push your limit. Prevent injury. Those two are the often heard whenever you attend Group Classes (or if you watch too many Biggest Loser  episodes..) These days I try to push my limits. From running at 7.0 speed to 8.0 to 8.5 and sometimes 9.0. I also increased the weight for resistance training. For abdominal crunches I have also increased from 20 to 25kg. Everything was going okay. My body could keep up with the challenge. Although sometimes, more muscles became sore. Well these are the (muscles) that have turned into MUSCLES, I guess. Then suddenly on Tuesday, I decided it's about time to increase to 30kg (for abdominal crunches). I set the weight, set my position right. Towel checked. iPod checked. Favorite rock song checked. I was so ready, took a normal breath and pulled. Then I felt something snapped in my tummy. The left side of my C-sect incision. I exhaled, returned to sitting position and tried to relax. After a minute I tr...

Yup, I am dead serious about this. I am planning to become a runner by the end of the year. Might not be a marathon runner. But quite a serious runner. I want to explore country roads, hills, valleys, riverbanks and not forgetting the treadmill and tracks. I want to run more often and I want to run further and faster. I am seriously serious, I am tracking my run. As a start, here's some statistics: I am not that disciplined yet, but someday I know I'll be there. I wish myself a lot of luck and health and energy.

It has been a yo-yo diet and not much work out since mid March 2010. That was after I fired the maid and my baby had a serious case of diarrhea. I took a few days off work to take care of him at the hospital. It took more than 9 days for things to return to normal. After that, I tried going to the gym according to my program but too bad, the new contra flow lane opened at LDP was causing a whole new mess - it took me 50 minutes to drive from SJ to IOI. The nearest U-turn has been closed and I have to take the third U-turn which cost me an additional 20 minutes. I've been missing the 5.45pm classes and resorted to doing cardio/weight/resistance on my own. There are days when I could join the 5.45pm classes at FF WC (now have moved to Empire) but I always prefer IOI for its space and it would only take me roughly 10 minutes to reach home from there. So I've been slacking. Have only been working out once or twice a week. Usually the total calories burned was around 200 - 300, ...

When I started going to the gym almost 5 years ago I couldn't run. I climbed the stairs to my office lobby with great difficulty and couldn't run at all. My right knee was giving me problems beside having to carry such a heavy body weight. I could do the crosstrainer, stationary bikes, elliptical and stepper at the gym but I couldn't even jog on the treadmill. When I joined GX classes, the instructor always reminded me to do the 'options'. I.e no jumping, no hopping and no quick lunges. After about 6 months of regular exercise I tried running but my joints were still not good enough. I started using guards to protect them. I could jog for a few minutes after about a year or so. My joints got stronger but I started to feel breathless after 3 minutes of slow jog. I knew I was still not fit enough to run. The fact is I was never a runner. Back in high school, I participated in the 100m and 400m races because they were compulsory. I also participated in the annual ...