// Training report part… …um… …sumthing…

Posted on | August 17, 2010 | 2 Comments

Sorry, it has been awfully quiet in here. The new beginning in my training, going back to work after holiday and the continuing warm weather have took their toll. But this will change eventually… …I’ve done one very neat little collaboration project recently — back to that soon — and there are two very, very interesting fashion shows in my calendar, in near future!

Now it is bit over two weeks when I shifted a new gear in my training — so naturally there are not much news about my actual fitness level nor appearance. The training… …six days a week… …bit over hour at a time. This week two of the long workouts will be changed to shorter ones. After the first week I was pretty much exhausted and felt regrets about applying the program in the first place — but I pulled through — and it was definitely worth it! I’ve never experienced this much benefits from exercise in such a short time. I’m in better mood, I feel physically well all day long — and I think that I’ve even started to sleep better. Nutritional habits are introduced gradually, one habit at a time. That was wise, add a strict diet mode to the sudden increase to training volume — you get nothing but huge fail. I’m very, very curious what will happen in the future!

Posted on | August 17, 2010 | 2 Comments

// I have decided…

Posted on | July 28, 2010 | 9 Comments

…to invest a good deal of time and lots of effort for my fitness and well being in the following six months. I have my reasons — like vanity — ah! and this thing called health. I have realized that even though I have improved a great deal of things in my diet and daily activity I happen to be a person with some genetic burden — and some behavioral patterns too difficult to kill just by myself.

So I signed in to Lean Eating program in Precision Nutrition, starting on next Monday. I considered personal training, too — but it is too expensive for me right now. Plus I actually don’t need help in the gym — and selecting the right professional is really difficult — and I’m an unsocial bastard and don’t really enjoy fiddling with the calendar. The online support will hopefully be sufficient.

I picked this particular program, because it is centered around actually changing the habits and lifestyle, is long enough to give results — and permanent changes in habits, the credits of the coaches are impressive, the best results of people who have attended this program are even more impressive, I believe that I can get relatively personalized coaching plus peer support in the program, Precision Nutrition principles are very much about what I believe the healthy human diet to be and I would very much like to look like Linda Hamilton in T2 one day (minus the guns and cig, I’m all about world peace and fresh breath…).

So, I’m just asking… …are you interested in reading some updates about how it is going?

Posted on | July 28, 2010 | 9 Comments

// Pirates, ahoy

Posted on | June 30, 2010 | 9 Comments

I wanted to reward myself for my exercise project with something that I have wanted for a long time, something I believe I do use a lot and something I don’t consider completely outrageously out of my price range. So now I’m a happy owner of classic slouchy shaft Vivienne Westwood pirate boots in suede. The taupe color goes well with my wardrobe and I love the lightweight construction, these can be well incorporated to summer outfits as well.

The weather is very warm and summery, so the dressing is simple. I’m wearing an old Diesel sundress covered up with H&M cardigan — this piece has been probably my best high street purchase from this spring. The slouchy cut is excellent and I love the lively material. One of my Pilgrim pendants is hiding underneath the dress.

So… …this was the last month for my start for more physically active life — and although this month either was perfect from the exercise perspective (traveling and now the flu) I think I have actually changed something in my habits because I’m actually missing regular exercise when I’m not doing it. On this period I did not focus on weight loss, but I got down 4 – 5 kg and it certainly has not been my muscle mass.

Naturally this was not the end of the project. My summer holiday starts tomorrow and when I get well I’m planning to have a physical activity filled semester. And I could really focus on weight loss for a while. I’m still quite chubby.

Posted on | June 30, 2010 | 9 Comments

// Really short training report

Posted on | June 2, 2010 | 2 Comments

Ok, because of my injury the training last month was not exactly what I had planned (like three weeks break plus light conditioning work for the rest of it combined to infrequent upper body workouts). So I have decided to extend this “starting period” with a month. No rewards or end reports until beginning of Juni.

Great, great health issue is that I have probably found relatively safe substance that helps me with my sleeping problems. After I started taking 5-hydroxytryptofan before going to bed my sleep patterns have significantly improved. I have bad history with sleeping pills, one variety made me drowsy all the time, one made me forget completely what I had been doing about a hour before getting sleep… …so I have opted for improving habits (caffeine reduction, sleep hygiene) and testing those natural metabolites instead of medication. Tryptophan did not have huge effect, neither did melatonin — they both might improved the sleep quality a bit, but my main problem is that I have difficulties falling asleep. 5-HTP seems to help with that. It is not a miracle pill, but combined to my habit changes it seems to give just enough help to set things to the track.

Posted on | June 2, 2010 | 2 Comments

// Training report

Posted on | April 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

My fitness project goes on pretty decently… …on the end of February / beginning of March I had a short period of not-that-regular exercise, but otherwise everything has gone really well. On the last weeks I have even lost some weight, and it is surprising how soon it affects to images. Or actually selecting the images; there are less and less those ones on which I look like grounded whale. Actually almost all front and back images are usable now (excluding the ones I have the infamous zombie face — for amateur model it is surprisingly difficult to remember that it actually helps to have some sort of expression going on on face when shooting) — but my side profile could still use some reduction, haha!

In my case I guess that the last step necessary to really see some results was cutting down the wine consumption, dramatically. On the best case that will affect positively to my chronic condition, too.

I have also adjusted the amounts of interval training vs. weight training in favor of intervals… …I realized that my weakness truly is the aerobic condition and for my well being it might pay off to focus to that for a while. Plus the cross trainer machine is gentle enough for my knees and hips, even if they have slight inflammation action going on.

Now I’m planning to have two intensive months with four days training cycle: intervals, weight training, intervals, rest. When the weather gets better I might even take the aerobics outside for some variation. And on the end of May I will critically evaluate the results.

Posted on | April 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

// Pine mouth incident

Posted on | March 3, 2010 | 5 Comments

Oh, this is so totally unrelated thing… …but it kind of explains the blog silence of the past few days.

On Monday I recognized a strong metallic taste in my mouth. First I thought that I had just licked or inhaled some nasty chemical (I hate aerosols for this particular reason, I get the foul taste to my mouth so easily). But it just continued. Everything tasted bad, especially wine made me almost nauseous. My appetite was plummeting. Googling taste symptoms does not give particularly encouraging results and I started to feel very bad about this — I’ve been struggling with my health so much lately.

Then I just accidentally ran in the article about pine mouth — curiously pine nuts can cause this funky taste distortion to some people. Not all pine nuts do it — nor all people do get the symptoms. It takes usually 1 to 3 days from the ingestion of the nuts for the symptoms to appear — and from few days to couple of weeks for them to disappear. On Saturday I made a delicious side dish with roasted pine nuts, spinach and garlic. And on Sunday I followed the example of Anu and whipped up a homemade nut müesli, containing pine nuts among everything else. These nuts are from different sources so I can’t be sure which ones caused it.

What an enormous relief to find a very likely explanation with no health implications involved at all.

Posted on | March 3, 2010 | 5 Comments

// Christmas wrapup

Posted on | December 26, 2009 | 5 Comments

How outrageous my previous “wish” posts were, the Santa lived out — or exceeded all my dreams.

Welcome, Lotta, you will be my dear friend in the future DIY projects.

What can I say, I’m speechless! I love London! (And could not resist arranging my cheesy tourist pics to an even cheesier postcard )

My new spiky friend will hopefully help me sleep better. Oh, it looks friendlier than the example here — but less photogenic… Image by Herbert Ponting.

Feeling: overall happy, stuffed, well rest, quilty for the carbon footprint expanding actions *sigh*.

Posted on | December 26, 2009 | 5 Comments

About

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Contact: kamicha (a) gmail dot com

I'm especially interested in young designers creations, non-established labels and indie fashion. So if you have something interesting to show, feel free to contact!

You can find Finnish design from both specific and some outfit posts - but both are tagged.

You might be also interested in DIY posts, How-to posts, DIY ideas - or my adventures in Etsy =).

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