Bootcamp week

Hiya! This week was a "semi" bootcamp. I say semi because although I worked out real hard, 4 times this week, I pigged out a few times lol. I worked HARD this week and my muscles are still hurting. I realised that whenever I take a break from working out (I haven't worked out almost 3 weeks due to exams) I tend to feel unfit and less energetic.

On Monday, I went spinning and guess what? I have improved a lot. I am able to keep up with everyone else for almost 30 minutes, I think this was my 6th lesson. In the first 4 lessons, I could only keep up for about 10 minutes- btw I don't mean I stopped after 10 minutes, I just slowed down.  We have to do a lot of standing and increase the resistance gradually.. The instructor makes us stand for about 20 minutes, no lie!So that was 45 minutes of intense cardio.

On Tuesday, I went back to Tone Zone class despite the incident happened last week. This week we had a different instructor and he made it easier. Actually not easy but bearable. We started off with a warm up for about 5 minutes with no weight and had regular 30 seconds breaks to take a sip of water. Whereas the previous instructor jumped straight into working with weights and didn't give us any break, it was 45 minutes straight working from head to toe and core. Anyways, this week the routine was different (that's why I like it when we sometimes have different instructors, makes it more interesting) and as well as working with dumbbells, we also worked out with a bar for our upper body and lower body. We did a lot of jumping too. I actually enjoyed working out with the bar.

On Wednesday, I went to the gym with my boyfriend at 8am. That is early for me! He worked me hard and the gym is a body building one so the machines are a lot harder than the ones in fitness center. We did 2 sets of 20 for each exercise. Here was the routine:

Hip abductor
First we started with the hip abductor ( inner and outer thighs). I am able to lift 45 kg on the hip abductor at my gym but at this gym I was just about to do 25kg.

Abs
We did crunches on the crunch machine (I think that's what it is called). It was hard. You put your legs through these bars, your hands holding on to the bars above the head. Then you pull the bar to raise your upper body and pulling your legs simultaneously so your knees meet your elbows. I didn't add any extra weights as I already struggled with the weight of the machine itself. But my boyfriend added 20kg! Damn!

Leg press

45 Degree Leg Press

To work out our legs we used a 45 degree leg press machine (I think that's what it's called Lol. See the picture on the right). You rest your shoulders and back on the  cushion at the bottom, and your feet placed on the panel at the top. You can then add weights to increase resistance. I added 10kg and I started getting tired after 7 reps.

Bench press
I only do this when I'm working out with my boyfriend. Because he makes me do it lol. This works your chest and arms.

Other Arm workout
First we did some punching movements with dumbbells in hand.I held 2.5kg in each hand. Then we did curls and shoulder press together.

Obliques
I had 7kg dumbbell in one hand and leaned side ways. Then changed to the other side.

Curls
I sat at this machine where you rest your arms and elbows on this cushion in front of you. Then lift the bar keeping your elbows on the cushion. This really worked both my bicep and tricep. I lifted 12kg.

Captain Chair

Back workout
We used this machine that works your back muscles and triceps. I'm not sure what it's called and I can't find a picture of it on the internet to show you. You sit down and rest your chest against the cushion then you pull back those handles as far as you can go. So your elbows go past your chest.

Abs Again
To finish off we did some ab workout again on the captain chair. Lifting legs to chest level and sides ways. I started off lifting my legs straight out but I got tired so just lifted my knees like the picture on the left.







On Saturday I went for a morning jog in the park with my boyfriend. The park near my boyfriend's has the Adizone gym; exercise weight machines sponsored by Adidas (See below). We ran two laps with power walking, medium pace jogging and sprinting. Then we used some of the Adizone equipment. You see that pink machine in the picture, that works your arms. You push those bars forward, you're actually lifting your own weight. So its not easy if you have weak arms. After a year of training, I am STILL not able to do pull ups but I was able to push my weight on this thing. YAY! I'm getting there....slowly. I also did some walking lunges, haven't done those in a while and boy they do work your thighs!

Adizone Gym

Now on to my pig out days. On Wednesday, I had lunch with some class mates. We went for Vietnamese food in Soho, Cay Tré. It was pretty good. We had classic pho and chicken leg pho- the chicken was the best-, grilled aubergine with some shredded pork in spring onion oil, mince pork wrapped with crispy leave, pork rice pancake. The chicken pho isn't in the photo because we ordered it after we finished everything else as we were still hungry. Or maybe it was me who was still hungry lol. I still had dessert, but we shared one between the 4 of us. Banana fritter with coconut ice cream.

Vietnamese Food @ Cay Tre

On Thursday night, I went to Big Easy, an American restaurant, with my friend Rushka. We went there for the seafood, we both had lobster and shared a basked of fried jumbo prawns. Big Easy does daily deals on lobsters; £14.95 for 1.25lb lobster, £19.95 for 2lb. Both served with salad and chips and a choice of either margarita or beer for drinks.

Big Easy

We both chose 1.25lb lobster with margarita. I was a bit disappointed with the lobster, there were hardly any meat (are you thinking 'you did choose 1.25lb' but Rushka has been there before and that time she ordered 1,25lb and had a lot more meat. I guess either we were unlucky or she was lucky to get a big 1,25lb lobster). It wasn't fresh either. Usually if its fresh the meat would come off the shell easily but it was sticking to the shell and the texture was very soft and sandy. But the prawns were amazing! They had that crispy texture, and they were huge!

On top of the lobsters we also ordered macaroni cheese, onion rings and extra drinks; she had fizzy lemonade and I had strawberry shake. The waiter seem to be reluctant to take our order when we said we wanted to order extra drinks and side dishes. He probably was thinking 'you girls are not going to be able to finish all that, the table isn't big enough either.' In the end the two side dishes DIDN'T come, I think it was deliberate. Because they were not listed on the bill, I mean what a coincident that ONLY the sides didn't come, right? We didn't ask about it because we thought it might be too much anyway lol. The strawberry shake was so gooooodd!

On Saturday after the workout in the park, my boyfriend and I went out for lunch at an American Diner. I had a double beef burger with chips and strawberry shake again.

As for other days, they were a lot healthier.

Top Left: Quinoa salad with tofu, halloumi cheese, cherry tomatoes, 1/2 green pepper and lettuce.

Top Right: Hemp protein shake made with banana and soy milk. Papaya with organic Greek yoghurt and manuka honey.
Middle Left: Carribean Flavour- Coconut rice with beef and sweet potato stew and fried plantain- I made all that for me and my boyfriend.
Middle Right: Blueberries, nectarines, rolled oat, plain Greek yoghurt and manuka honey. This was just a snack.
Bottom Left: Chinese flavour- Steamed tofu topped with prawns. I love this dish.
Bottom Right: Cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwich.

My mum bought a massive papaya and a box of mangoes. So I've been making papaya milk shake, I used; 1/4 papaya, greek yoghurt, 1 cup of almond milk and a tablespoon of oat. You can add honey for a sweeter taste.

Papaya Milkshake


This morning (Sunday), I made some mango and apple smoothies. Chick pea fluffy pancakes. The pancakes were a bit different this time.

- 3 egg whites

- 2/3 cup of soy milk

-1 cup of chickpea flour

- 1 tablespoon of baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon of ginger 

- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder.

I also added some of the juice from the mango into the batter, but I didn't put enough. Adding egg white actually made the texture more fluffy.

Sorry for the long post. ^.^ Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.