Theme of the week: Gym and Shopping

Last week's theme was shopping and gym.
Those are the two things I "majored" on last week.

Gym

Went to the gym 4 times (actually three times only, the fourth was going on a 5k run in Central Park). I don't know why my friend and I just suddenly became so obsessed about losing weight. Perhaps it's because history tells us that we gain so much when we're here. Case in point. This is my fifth time over here in Canada and 4 out of 5 times (5th is right now), I gained a few pounds of weight when I went back to Manila. So this time around, we're focusing of killing off that pattern, and go the other way, be more fit and ready when we get back to Manila.

For the past weeks, we've been religiously going to the gym 3-4 times a week. My friend and I were both frustrated because we are killing our butts off in the gym, but we feel like there's no weight difference. But as I was reading through some articles off from the web, one article I read mentioned that we need to stop thinking about losing weight, but focus on fitness instead.

Yes, now that I think about it. I have better sleep these days. I don't get tired as much, and I'm not as cranky as I usually am especially with work being stressful these days. I'm attributing this better "mood" and lifestyle to having better fitness. And as long as I fit into those pants I love wearing, then I'd just have to maintain my fitness. No more worrying about numbers, instead worry about overall body feeling/state.

Workout

Last Saturday, I did a full body workout, following the exercise plan my trainer from Manila gave me. And holy cow it worked so well, specific areas in my body which I really worked on for that day ached! But that's aching in a good way. On weekday workouts, I usually just hop on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and then depending on the day, I focus on one area at a time. The only area that gets exercise regularly are my abs.

And now I'm up to this state wherein I'm adding exercise as part of my lifestyle already. I think a lot of people gave up on exercise because they didn't look at it as part of a lifestyle, but instead, looked at it as extra work that needs to be done. I am hoping that when I get back to Manila, I will be able to maintain this lifestyle.

Shopping

I've been making excuses of the need to go on a shopping spree because I left of couple of items back in the east coast - a couple of shirts, pant, etc. That's a good excuse to go buy new things right?

So in line with yet, another tradition that my friend and I do every time we're here, is that we go to the Roots outlet store in Grandview to buy ourselves some new stock of clothes. Well, at least I just ended up buying three shirts - two for me and one for my nephew. And spent a total of around 40$ all in all. Not bad if you compare it to Ronald, who spent almost a 100 dollars during that 1.5 hour window of shopping.

And that was last Thursday.

Last Saturday, we went to an outlet store area in Queensborough for one reason - to go to a Best Buy store to get Ronald's laptop fixed. Since we had to wait for an hour or two before he gets it back, we decided to walk around and see the goods out there. Of course, I couldn't resist and I ended up buying something else again.

Now yesterday, Sunday, we went to Costco and Walmart to stock up on some items that we'd like to send back to the Philippines. This time around, I did spend more that what I was planning to spend. But the difference is that, most of these things aren't for me. They're for my family back home. I bought chocolates, pistachios that my Dad loves and my mom's annual supply of Dove soap!

All in all, in a span of 4 days (Thursday to Sunday), I've spent close to two to three month's worth of my budget for miscellaneous expenses. But you know what, it's so much fun to do so! It's about time I reward myself with items I can really use (although I just did reward myself with a vacation last end of April). After all the shopping spree (though I feel like I want to do more!), the next few weeks will probably be slower paced weeks for us, meaning, less shopping for us.

As my mom always says, you need to enjoy the fruits of your labor, and I just did that last week, and I won't mind doing it again and again and again. :)