Beast Mode - Day 7

Breakfast: Banana; small coffee = 90; 110
Lunch: Grilled Chicken wrap; small salad; tall iced skinny vanilla latte = 150; 315; 60
Snack: Half a bowl of rice w/tomato and pork soup & tons of Chinese broccolli = 250 (eta)
Dinner: Full bowl of rice w/tomato and pork soup & even more Chinese broccolli = 500 (eta)
Calorie intake = 1475

Exercise = half hour of kettlebell exercises
Calories burned = 500 (est)

Sleep = 7 hours

Today's calorie intake and burn doesn't quite qualify for calculation but I did it anyway. It's really hard to judge the amount of calories I actually ate today because, well it's home food. Can't really judge there... especially when food is prepared by my dad and not me. I can only control the amount I intake. Nonetheless, home food is wayyy better than restaurant food when it comes to calories so I got a bonus there! LOL
Same goes with the kettlebell exercises I did. Even though it was only half an hour, doing cardio along with weight training (kettlebell exercises) burn a lot more calories than doing cardio and weight training seperately (according to my 3rd degree black belt boyfriend. Yes, he was used to be jacked! and health conscious! LOL)
Yesterday (Day 7), I was planning on signing up officially for the martial arts gym then going to two classes: a half an hour of kettlebell class & and hour of muay thai fitness class. I only got to do one. I was sooo exhausted after that class that I decided to run for the door and not even consider the 2nd class. Yes, yesterday I was a wimp. Although I was exhausted, after 10 mins of driving home, I had so much energy that I could've taken that class!
If you don't know what kettlebell exercises consists of, think of heavy weight lifting in combination of low impact cardio. This burns calories like no tommorrow! I would recommend going to this if you're planning to lose weight. It sounds hardcore... but after a few classes, you'll find yourself stronger and with lean muscle!
Basically, you have this heavy ball of weight that has a handle on it (they call it the bull ring?) and you do exercises with that. I find that some exercises uses the momentum of the ball to reinforce the weight and your ability to move around it. Some exercises simply use the ball as dead weight to tone.
Some examples we did were:

Swings:
First, we used both arms then used 1 arm each.

1. Hold the kettle ball in between your legs. Your legs should be bent and your back flat (like a squat position)
2. Swing the ball backwards then quickly and forcefully swing upwards up to chest height. Your arms should straight and your squat position should be jerked up while swinging.

Cleans:
We did this for each arm, not both arms.

1. Keep torso straight but bent forward at hips slightly.
2. Quickly raise the kettlebell by extending hips, legs and ankles (almost like jumping straight up)
3. While "jumping" and using the momentum of the bell, immediately raise the bells up to shoulder height and quickly twisting wrists so the bell falls to the back of your shoulder. Your arms should be as close to your body as possible.
   

Jerks:

We actually did this in combination with the cleans

1. Lift up. lol

We also did some other exercises but the site I got these cute animations from don't have them. After doing about 20-30 of these, we then did a circuit for 15 mins. The circuit consists of doing each of these sets for 30 seconds (as much as we can) then resting for another 30 seconds. We did this non stop and by the end of the half hour, I was almost as exhausted and sweaty as an hour of hot yoga! yes!
The workout itself is quite intense and hardcore but I love it!