13 kgs AND BEYOND!

Your home girl lost 13 kgs in 6 months…

I KNOW! I KNOW! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT MYSELF!

I AM STILL SHOOKETH!

Let me explain…

(here is also my youtube vid on the matter fyi)

THE WHY!

Stretch marks…

Seeing new angry red stretch marks on my very round stomach slapped me to my senses. It’s surprising that it wasn’t seeing the scale go up to 96 kgs that made me have the epiphany that I was obese but instead seeing those red stretch marks caused me to (FINALLY) pay attention.

THE HOW!

Intermittent Fasting

The majority of my weight loss happened during Ramadan of 2018 where I lost a whopping 6 kg’s and this is when I have yet to incorporate consistent exercising (I wasn’t physically active at all during the first three weeks of Ramadan and was only exercising during the last week because I had my period).

Exercising

After losing the 6 kg’s I decided that it would be a waste if I didn’t continue this weight loss thing and so with that I renewed my gym membership and HIT THE GYM!

I focused on cardio exercises for the first few weeks because I haven’t been to the gym in awhile and I was too self-conscious to try using dumbbells just yet in fear of doing it in public with the wrong form.

Slowly but surely I started to incorporate weight lifting and joined what is now my favorite fitness class which is the Step Up class.

It was also during this period of time that my office organized a fitness bootcamp for overweight staffs.

So, my workout routine would be where I exercised 5-6 times a week with the majority of it focusing on cardio as I became more comfortable at the gym the cardio on all the cardio machines slowly became just a warm up exercise for me and I’d focus all my energy to doing weights as it was more fun for me.

I don’t have a set workout routine that I do but at the present moment I am into doing fitness challenges as a way to push myself not only physically but also mentally. The challenges I am doing now is the 30 days Blogilates challenge (Abs, Inner Thighs, Arms and Booty).

THE STATS!

Previous weight: 96 kg

Current weight: 83 kg

 

THE BEFORE AND AFTER!

 

I just really like how my butt looks here #sorrynotsorry

Review: The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn

Title: The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband

Author: Julia Quinn

Published: 30 May 2017

Publisher: Avon

Rating: 3/5

Goodreads Summary

While you were sleeping… 

With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, orphaned Cecilia Harcourt has two unbearable choices: move in with a maiden aunt or marry a scheming cousin. Instead, she chooses option three and travels across the Atlantic, determined to nurse her brother back to health. But after a week of searching, she finds not her brother but his best friend, the handsome officer Edward Rokesby. He’s unconscious and in desperate need of her care, and Cecilia vows that she will save this soldier’s life, even if staying by his side means telling one little lie…

I told everyone I was your wife 

When Edward comes to, he’s more than a little confused. The blow to his head knocked out six months of his memory, but surely he would recall getting married. He knows who Cecilia Harcourt is—even if he does not recall her face—and with everyone calling her his wife, he decides it must be true, even though he’d always assumed he’d marry his neighbor back in England.

If only it were true… 

Cecilia risks her entire future by giving herself—completely—to the man she loves. But when the truth comes out, Edward may have a few surprises of his own for the new Mrs. Rokesby.

Review

Man, I have not been lucky in my choices of books these days because like the others, the book is just okay for me. It isn’t as enjoyable as other Julia Quinn’s books that I have read but it was decent enough that I still had some fun reading it.

The plot was predictable and the romance again was predictable. There wasn’t much drama in the book, the heroine was the typical, brave sweet heroine borderline to being a saint and the hero was basically the same.

I was hoping that the whole Thomas issue would be some sort of undercover spy mission or that Edward was a rebel or like a spy and lost his memories and now needs the help from Cecilia to finish his mission but nope it didn’t happen. Everything was so humdrum.

Hence why I felt the book was just an okay read.

Review: The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Title: The Wife Between Us

Author: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Published: 9 January 2018

Publisher: Pan MacMillan

Rating: 3/5

Youtube review: https://youtu.be/jQengW1ofpI

Goodreads Summary

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.

It’s about a jealous wife, obsessed with her replacement.

It’s about a younger woman set to marry the man she loves.

The first wife seems like a disaster; her replacement is the perfect woman.

You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships.

You will be wrong.

Review

This book was decent for me nothing much for me to say about the plot nor the characters; they were okay, engaging enough to for me to be interested but not so much so that I was completely mind blown but the part I would like to discuss was the first part of the book (the book was split to three parts btw).

I truly felt that Part 1 of the book was the best because it truly bamboozled my mind and left me so off balance that #siswasshook.

In part 1, there are two POV coming from Nellie and Vanessa. Vanessa being Richard’s unhinged and unstable ex-wife and Nellie Richard’s beau and newly minted fiancee’. From Vanessa’s POV you get to see how she is struggling with her divorce from Richard and how is barely coping with her new job and is basically a shadow of her former self and with Nellie’s POV you get to see how she met Richard, how she fell in love with this guy who is practically a Prince Charming incarnate.

From Vanessa’s POV we understand that she has stalking tendencies and is stalking Richard’s new beau and the more you read the more you feel like Richard sure has a specific type of woman he likes as Nellie and Vanessa sound like a carbon copy of each other until towards the end of Part 1 where you realize holy shit you got everything wrong.

Nellie and Vanessa are the same person and the POV is not between two people but in actuality between two time lines. Nellie being Vanessa’s pet name by Richard when they first met and how they fell in love and Vanessa the woman she is in the present, all broken and suffering from PTSD and shit.

I don’t know about you but the writing style completely threw me off and from there I had high expectations that the consequent parts of the book would blow my mind as well but then part 2 dragged because I wanted answers. I wanted to know why Richard was such a threat to Vanessa. What exactly did the man do?

I mean, yes I understand what the authors were going for but really I was close to finishing the book and still I have yet to read why was Richard the antagonist and even when I did find out it wasn’t explained well. Like what was his motive? and what is up with him and his sister. She seems oddly obsessed with him all incest-y. Like whutttt???

And the plot twist at the end felt so ugh. At the moment when I read it, I was all for it because I thought it was so cool how Richard’s actual new beau (named Emma btw) was the daughter of the lecturer Vanessa had an affair with when she was younger and she stalked Vanessa to get revenge by stealing Vanessa’s husband and essentially ruining the picture perfect marriage that Vanessa supposedly had.

I genuinely thought it was interesting how Vanessa laid the plans for the affair to bloom between Richard and Emma so she can be free all the while Emma was also conspiring to take the husband anyway. Unknowing co-conspirators ya know but now in hindsight it is a bit much because like how even? I just felt like it it needed to be included it could’ve been written better.

But other than that, the book is still a pretty decent read.

Review: I Am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll

 

Title: I Am Watching You

Author: Teresa Driscoll

Published: 1st October 2017

Source: Library

Rating: 2/5

Goodreads summary

When Ella Longfield overhears two attractive young men flirting with teenage girls on a train, she thinks nothing of it—until she realises they are fresh out of prison and her maternal instinct is put on high alert. But just as she’s decided to call for help, something stops her. The next day, she wakes up to the news that one of the girls—beautiful, green-eyed Anna Ballard—has disappeared.

A year later, Anna is still missing. Ella is wracked with guilt over what she failed to do, and she’s not the only one who can’t forget. Someone is sending her threatening letters—letters that make her fear for her life.

Then an anniversary appeal reveals that Anna’s friends and family might have something to hide. Anna’s best friend, Sarah, hasn’t been telling the whole truth about what really happened that night—and her parents have been keeping secrets of their own.

Someone knows where Anna is—and they’re not telling. But they are watching Ella.

Review

It’s no wonder that my reading slump is just getting prolonged. I have been reading sub-par books after sub-par books that just slowly eat away at my enthusiasm and passion for reading as this year comes to an end.

As you guessed it, this book is also a sub-par book for me. The premise seemed interesting but what hooked me in was the cover, it’s so in your face and just reels your attention it that I decided to give this book a go and soon after regretted it.

The first problem for me was that the book had far too many POV’s. Far too many. You have ‘The Witness’ (Ella Longfield), ‘The Friend’ (Sarah bestfriend of Anna Ballard), ‘The Father’ (Anna’s dad), ‘The Private Investigator’ and ‘The Watcher’ (I can’t really remember the title given in the book) and because there were so many perspectives that you don’t have enough time to connect with them all which disables my feelings to empathize with what they’re going through making me not caring as to what is happening in their lives.

Also, it is annoying how there are a lot of POV’s yet they are almost indistinguishable from each other. They are all slow and dreary and utterly boring and what’s worse, repetitive. Each chapter always has a cliffhanger of what a character is hiding and it is repeated again and again and again yet the author prolongs the reveal that by the time it is actually revealed you are far too annoyed to even care.

Another point that annoyed me about this book is the pacing and the reveal of the antagonist. The pacing of this book is so slow which I am assuming supposed to be a slow burn or something yet towards the end suddenly the pacing went from a 2 to a 10 immediately that the reveal of the antagonist feels extremely rushed and not explained properly. What their motives were, why they had done so and so.

Plus, the reveal of the antagonist came completely out of nowhere that it is just mind boggling and leaves you confused as to how did the author even get this antagonist anyway? There were no clues, no nothing and suddenly I am expected to believe that this is the true antagonist and the reason for their motive was obsession? Where tell me where did it show?

Long story short this book was a dud and I am disappointed.

Reasons for Blogging Slumps. #BookBlogger #BookBloggers #Blogger #Bloggers #Blogpost #Blog #Blogs — The Tattooed Book Geek

Today I’m looking at blogging slumps. When you think about blogging and end up asking yourself WTF am I doing?! Questioning, why do I even bother?! And, wondering who cares about my opinions and reads my guff anyway?! You just want to turn and walk away from your blog, the sight, sound and thought of […]

via Reasons for Blogging Slumps. #BookBlogger #BookBloggers #Blogger #Bloggers #Blogpost #Blog #Blogs — The Tattooed Book Geek