Plus four approaches − minus 5 kg

After researching through thousand of articles about effective ways of saying goodbye to my 6kg I drew a conclusion that I personally will follow four BIG approaches:

Calories intake

Calories consumption

Calories fighters

Good metrics

Calories intake    I have spent the entire evening making some important calculation I would need to follow to achieve my goal. Firstly, the amount of calories I have to take each day.    According to the general opinion we need 2,361 Calories/day to maintain the weight, we need 1,861 Calories/day to lose 1lb per week, and we need 1,361 Calories/day to lose 2lb per week. I don’t really like to count calories, but to understand how much actually I consume everyday I decided to put  in some efforts.    Luckily  I have found a food tracker in a bookstore so the process is supposed to be easier. The food tracker is a simple writing book each page of which is divided into five sections: Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Notes where we can write all the food we eat during the day and it’s nutrition information.  In the Note field I will notice the physical activities I have done and the approximate burned calories per day. In addition to the food trucker we can use different phone applications, like DietHelper for instance.      To prevent  my body from stress I prefer to improve the second option in calories consuming – to reduce it from 1,861to 1500 calories/day.  As a result my daily calories intake ideally has to be like it will be written below: Breakfast – 300 calories Brunch –200 calories Lunch – 500 calories Snack – 200 calories Dinner –  300 calories Calories consumption     Clearly, counting calories is not really an optimistic option to work towards, although the result is probably more sustained than with some crash diet.    To increase the amount of calories burned in a day I decided to add physical exercises. I have found out that 1kg of fat equals 7700 kcal, so if I keep my diet the same and start working out I’m supposed to loose a kilo per 2 weeks. I turn it into numbers and here is what I  got: I have 6kg overweight, I have 3months to get rid of it, so my goal per month is 2kg, per week – 500g As I already mentioned above 1kg equals 7700kcal, so 500g equal 3850kcal Thereafter I have to burn 3850kcal per week, it means that daily I have to leave 550kcal. Calories fighters     I am not a fan of everyday 2hours work out in a gym, cause I can get easily bored and won’t do my best there, so the most successful option for me is to combine physical activities. I followed the exercise guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services and they advice to get from 150 up to 300 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity; and strength training twice per week.     Moderate aerobic exercise includes such activities as brisk walking, swimming and mowing the lawn. Vigorous aerobic exercise includes such activities as running and aerobic dancing. Strength training can include use of weight machines, or activities such as carrying groceries or heavy gardening.               Therefore the example of my exercise schedule looks like this : Monday is for aerobics, Tuesday is for hot yoga, Wednesday – gym, Thursday – swimming, Friday – dancing, concerning weekend I prefer to rest, do some light walking or detox. That was just an example of course, I will find out later the best combination for me. I have found a beautiful chart to calculate burned calories while training for an hour. Activity (1-hour duration) Weight of person and calories burned 160 pounds (73 kilograms) 200 pounds (91 kilograms) 240 pounds (109 kilograms) Aerobics, high impact 533 664 796 Aerobics, low impact 365 455 545 Aerobics, water 402 501 600 Bicycling, < 10 mph, leisure 292 364 436 Dancing, ballroom 219 273 327 Elliptical trainer, moderate effort 365 455 545 Football, touch or flag 584 728 872 Golfing, carrying clubs 314 391 469 Hiking 438 546 654 Ice skating 511 637 763 Resistance (weight) training 365 455 545 Rope jumping 861 1,074 1,286 Running, 5 mph 606 755 905 Running, 8 mph 861 1,074 1,286 Swimming laps, light or moderate 423 528 632 Swimming laps, vigorous 715 892 1,068 Tennis, singles 584 728 872 Volleyball 292 364 436 Walking, 2 mph 204 255 305 Walking, 3.5 mph 314 391 469 Yoga, hatha 183 228 273 Yoga, power 292 364 436 Right metrics     There is an opinion announced by Igor Klibanov that “counting calories most of the time is of limited use to people. Why? Because you can have 2 people who are identical in weight, age, sex, exercise levels, stress levels, etc.. But feed those 2 people the exact same number of calories and those 2 people will NOT gain the same amount of weight. One may gain nothing and the other may gain 3 pounds. Or one may lose 3 pounds and the other doesn't gain anything.    Body fat and weight are much more strictly controlled by hormones than by calories. Also, by doing excessive and exclusive cardio, yes, you may be burning calories during the workout, but due to a process called "adaptation", you burn fewer and fewer calories each time you exercise. You learn to become "fuel efficient." Doing excessive and exclusive cardio has a double whammy of also burning muscle. Muscle burns fat, so if you have less of the "machinery" that burns fat, you burn less fat”.    I partly share this view and for this reason would like to follow his advice to measure what I want to improve. So I get my camera and tape measure and track how I look and measurement of my arms, legs, hips and waist.    As Im a storng adherent of paper books and real writing instead of typing I have purchased a beautiful writing book dedicated to achieving my goals and all of the steps and changes I am gonna notice there and after summarizing it  - in my blog. So my individual plan for the goal “-5” is finished and it’s time to put it into practice.  I hope those plans seem realistic. What do you think? Have you struggle to loose weight too? Please feel free to comment below, I would love to hear your stories =)

5 steps to set my goals and 3,5 dreams

   This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything. I have read plenty of articles about setting goals and reaching them, so I am aware I need an accurate plan, therefore I’m turning on my music and start to dream, certainly without no limits and barriers. All those plans and wishes are coming into my mind: to learn another foreign language, to master Photoshop, to travel here and there, to lose weight, to become a volunteer for an orphanage, to start yoga and dancing classes and many others.....such a mess. It looks like I need to categorize them, so I divide another sheet of paper into 8 sections and entitle them: family, education, career, financial, artistic, attitude, physical, pleasure etc.  After having some order it’s time to establish a priority – I numerate my dreams from 1 to 50 where one is the most reasonable for me. And finally I set deadlines.

My watch shows midnight and my mind defines 3,5 goals for the next three months:

1. Eternal problem of losing weight has never become so sharp for me as now. Nearly 5 years ago I had good shapes and was quite satisfied with it, thus it made me lazy and relaxed so I didn't bother myself with training or healthy eating. As a result +5kg, and if you are almost 1,5m high you can understand that 5kg is a big “achievement”. So finally the crucial day has come and I have to say bye to my 5 kg. The goal number one – minus 5 kg.

2. Since many years I have been so hopeless cook and actually didn’t suffer much, but 2015 has become my year of changing and I feel a huge need to turn into a cooking expert. Mostly because of the first goal ( I mean willing to loose my 5 kg), but to live without sweets is impossible mission for me, so I have to find the compromise, mine is to cook healthy but delicious sweets – without sugar, butter, oils etc.  The goal number two – 10 healthy but toothsome sweet dishes for daily pleasure.

3. I have never been interested in IT, but this year I realized I have been passing over smth very important. Either we want it or not but IT is the future and as it turned out I am absolutely far from this future, for this reason my third goal is to learn the basic of maintenance of the websites - Web design.

FOR SURE GOAL

                                                                                             Read

So I am a kindergarten teacher and I love my job a lot, for this reason I always call my group “my kids”, cause those children have made a really long and deep path into my heart and I think my kids are the best in the world (of course =) ). Being 4-5 years old they can count to 150, add, subtract and write; they play theatre, flute and violoncello, they do karate and dance ballet , they can name 20 famous pictures and  artists, recognize the most popular European sightseeing and even tell you the difference between for instance gothic and renaissance style, moreover they do it in fluent English, Spanish or Chinese. Yeah, I am not joking here – they can do even more. And only few weeks ago my goal would have been to teach them reading, but I went to Birkenau recently and that trip had changed my plans completely. Probably everybody has heard those horrible stories about that place, but it was nothing in comparison with the real feeling, when I was walking the same way those poor people did and felt their pain and horror, my guide did a perfect job, cause at the end of the excursion just in front of the main entrance to that death camp I recovered my sight. I realized so clearly that all of that was created by super smart people: scientific, psychologies, mathematics, doctors, lawyers etc., the system was perfectly planned  and worked, they did their job, got money for it, they were returning home to their families, kids and were becoming loving parents and husbands or wives, next morning they started their black duties again....how come? How could it happen? I was nearly crying there, torturing myself for the wrong priorities I had established in teaching. Surely I do educational job, but the priority is still knowledge, facts, materials – the things they will always be able to gain, but the humanity is smth you have to lay at the very beginning, it’s smth that can be lost, can be missed and then the consequences can be too painful, too incorrigible. I taught them to be smart, now I have to teach them how to use their knowledge in a good, positive direction. So my goal is to teach my kids humanity, to make it a compulsory subject in my kindergarten, to create an entire curriculum for it. This will be MY FOR SURE GOAL, so the 4^th one in my list. I believe I can do it so I will

Hello People and Welcome here!

You’are in a special place where everything is about inspiration, motivation, setting goals and reaching them (honestly, it’s a crucial experimental project on my will-power and self-discipline).

I’m Valentina, a positive, dreamy and in general kind girl with a bit poor time perception and lack of will power, but with a huge desire for transformation, and as you know desire decides.

   A wise guy said that all our dreams could be reached in a year. My calendar shows the date of April,8^th 2015, watch me next twelve month and the flighty girl will turn into a strong and reliable lady (I believe I will).

Every three month I will set up goals which I always wanted to achieve but for many reasons and excuses couldn’t. Life gives us opportunities and I will use them to finally change my life =) and maybe somebody’s life as well =)

*Be careful! Attending this blog can make all your dreams come true =)