The Health and Fitness Challenges

When I was younger, albeit looking skinny and frail and pale as a ghost, I was quite the athlete! I adored sports and outdoor activities. My main sport was golf. I was a State player for golf when I was 14 through 18 years old. But in between that, I was playing all sorts of sports!

1.    Athletics: I was a 100m sprint runner and represented my high school. Discovered I could do long jump too so represented that too and actually went into State! The funniest though was shot put. Yup, my gangly arms could throw a flippin’ shot put and made it top 3 in my District. Say whaaaat.

2.    Softball: Malaysian high school girls generally sucked in this sport so even if you were half decent, you’d be winning medals…. And thus, we were. Represented school and went straight to State (due to lack of teams in our district) and made it to top 5… out of 6 teams. Yay! Not last! In College, I was invited back into my high school to coach the softball team, which made me a legit softball coach. My main position? Catcher. Tallest catcher probably in history of softball.

3.    Cheerleading: Of COURSE I was a cheerleader… I know I give off a pretty bimbo vibe but hey! Cheerleading ain’t an easy sport, okay! Takes a lot of discipline and a ton of practice to be super good. Made it to Nationals during my senior year snagging the Runner-Up trophy! We are Dynamitez, say we are Dynamitez!

4.    Then, there was handball, basketball, netball, volleyball, dodgeball… all sorts of ball… ping pong, tennis, badminton, squash, swimming, you name the sport… I’ve done it. Or tried it at LEAST once. Even unconventional ones like ice-skating, roller-blading, rock-climbing, paint balling, kickboxing oh, and futsal. Now futsal…… THAT was a disaster. Clearly not my sport. My record as a goalie is still a perfect one though… so I have that going for me, which is nice. And I’m gonna keep it that way by never playing that position again ;D

How I found the time to do that amount of sports through high school, college, and university…? Still boggles my mind! On top of that, I was even in a dance group making decent bucks in College and later working 2 jobs in University. I guess that’s how I got so good at multi-tasking. 

Errr.. back to my point (stop bragging already, Nat!). So basically, Imma pretty sporty person. Due to this, I never bothered visiting the gym in my teens. Gym was a complete bore to me. Once I got into the “working” world and there was no high school, college, or university grounds I could be sports-involved, I was stuck with my sporadic badminton and occasional dodge ball games.

With the lack of sports routine and with the number of years I was putting on (hence the slow-down of my once awesome metabolism boo-hoo-hoo), I slowly but surely gained unwanted and unhealthy weight. You see, because I was always so sporty, I never cared to have a diet. In fact, I had a pretty crappy diet. I had absolutely zero control over what I ate and acquired a see-food diet. Also, living in Malaysia makes this see-food diet incredibly easy.

So now, in order to monitor my daily fitness activity and to keep myself really motivated to keep fit, I recently started wearing a fitness band!

I started off wearing the Jawbone UP and it was great… for the first month until it went busto… on all 3 of us. Apart from the fact that it busted so quickly, I really liked this fitness band! The app was super user-friendly and the design of the band was pretty sweet as well. But unfortunately, it’s not super water resistant which was probably the reason why it KO’d so quickly.

Hence, we decided to make a switch to the pioneers of the fitness band:

The Fitbit!

Picked up the Fitbit Flex and now, a ton of friends are part of a fitness community and it’s awesome! I think that’s really the key thing. Most fitness bands do what you need it to do, which is basically tracking your steps, calorie intake, active minutes, sleeping patterns etc. But as long as you get your friends to be in the fitness community, exercising becomes really fun! Otherwise, it’s like going to the gym alone… it gets pretty boring after a while.

The Fitbit Flex’s app is honestly not as good as the Jawbone UP but I do like the bluetooth function unlike the Jawbone UP and Nike+ FuelBand where you’d have to plug the band into your phone/computer to transfer the data. With the Fitbit Flex, all’s you gotta do it switch on the bluetooth function and voila! Easy peasy lemon squeasy. 

And just recently, the Fitbit came up with their latest tech:

The Fitbit Force.

Which is just better all-around! Clock display, better battery life, more functions… So excited to get my hands on this newest bit of tech!! 

Keeping my fitness level up was a challenge that I managed to overcome and I’m super stoked about that.

However, not once in my life have I ever managed to keep a proper diet. So for the next 5 days, I want to challenge myself to go for one of the toughest All-You-Can-Eat diet created by General Motors.

The GM Diet (with slight modifications)

DAY 1: All you can eat fruits… except bananas.

DAY 2: All you can eat veggies… no stir-fry, no oil. Preferably boiled or steamed or made into soup.

DAY 3: All you can eat fruits and veggies… basically the combo of Day 1 and 2.

DAY 4: Bananas (between 5-8) and milk… may drink veggie soup from previous day.

DAY 5: PROTEIN BAYBEH!! Steak day, wheeeee.

For the original GM Diet, click here!

A lot of you are probably thinking I’m nuts for going on this diet because I’m already underweight but I have a couple of substantial reasons why I really want to do this:

1.    Overweight people always complain and complain how difficult it is to go on a diet and by all means, I cannot disagree that it’s really difficult! But I want to prove that even with my lack of motivation to lose weight per se, I can still follow through with this diet. At least overweight people actually come out of this diet experience losing an average of 3-5kg after 5 days. I probably won’t differ much in my weight… but at least I’ll be able to come out of this diet telling overweight folks that YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE!! And honestly, if I can do it? So can you.

2.    Maggy wants to lose weight and since I’m an awesome friend, I’m gonna sacrifice 5 days of my regular see-food diet… and on Chinese New Year season too! #truefriendship

Wish us luck :p We may tear each other’s hair out 0_o

So really, I just want to have something to prove. Mind over matter. If I can do it, you can too. Nothing great every comes easy. You work for the body you have.

I hope to be some kinda inspiration!

But first, let’s hope I don’t give up on the first 2 hours of this diet!! My first attempt to diet…. LESSGO!!!

PS, You can keep up-to-date on my progress (and probably lots of whining) on my other social media assets:
Twitter: @natalia__ng
Instagram: @natalia__ng
Facebook: facebook.com/nataliangofficial

Wish me luck!!

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