Exercise should be Fun!

Exercising and working out is supposed to be fun and challenge at the same time! I’m having so much fun working out and trying new things.

If you don’t think working out if fun, try to find some music that you like with a happy and upbeat beat. Or try working out to a video to mix things up.

I’ve almost reached my goal!!

How to Calculate Calories for Weight loss

When you have decided that you want to lose weight, it is a good thing to start out by calculating your calorie requirement per day to find out how much of a deficit you will need for your weight loss.

I’ll try to keep this short and simple, so it is easy to understand for everybody.

1st – Calculating your BMR

The first thing to do, is to calculate your BMR, which is short for Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of energy or calories your body burns just by being alive (and doing nothing). To find your BMR you can use an online calculator which uses your height, weight, age and gender. Please note that it is only an estimate.

I used this calculator from MyFitnessPal or you can simply use another site, just search for ‘BMR calculator’.

My BMR is currently at 1391 calories/day. This is how many calories I’m burning just by doing nothing. Now we have to know our total daily calorie requirement, which is also how many calories we will need to maintain our current weight.

2nd – Calculating your total daily calorie requirement

For this step you have to take your BMR number and multiply it with your level of activity. The level of activity is how much exercise you are doing right now and planning for your weight loss.

For me, I exercise 1-3 days per week at the lowest. I like to pick the lowest because on weeks where I get in more exercise I’ll just have a bigger deficit than planned. Anyway, you have to take your BMR  number and multiply it with the factor for the level of exercise.

For me, the calculation would look like this: 1391 calories x 1.375 = 1913 calories/day.

That means that my total daily calorie requirement is 1913 calories I would need to eat in a day to maintain my current weight.

But because we want to lose weight, we go to step #3.

3rd – Creating the right Calorie deficit for you

In this step you have to think hard about how fast you want to lose weight. Please don’t just pick the fastest way, for many people that doesn’t work or last for long. I think it is better to pick a normal steady peace and lose weight in a healthy way. But it is your body, so it’s all up to you.

As you can see on the table, the higher daily calorie requirement you have, the greater the deficit will be to lose weight. The percentage of the calorie deficit also decides how long it will take you to lose weight. You can calculate your own deficit based on the table like this:

[your daily calorie requirement] x [percentage caloric deficit] / 100 = your calorie deficit.

Then take your calorie deficit and subtract from your daily calorie requirement like this:

[your daily calorie requirement] – [your calorie deficit] = how many calories you can eat per day.

Just to show you an example, my calorie deficit equation would look like this:

1913 x 25 / 100 = 478 calorie deficit and then it would be 1913 – 478 = 1435 calories that I can eat per day.

Your calorie deficit should be from both exercise and diet. There is two ways to make a calorie deficit and that’s by ‘saving’ the calories (not consuming them) and by burning them (exercise). For a healthy weight loss it is recommended that your deficit should be from both exercise and diet. That means from my 478 calorie deficit which I have, I can choose to either save them or burn them. I do a combination of both and how I do that is by only consuming my 1435 calories per day and then on days where I exercise and burn more calories, I consume more calories than on days where I don’t work out.

Let me explain:

Days where I don’t work out (rest days) – Consuming: 1435 calories.

Days where I work out – Depending on how many calories I burn, I can eat half of the calories I burned as extra calories for that day. Like, If I burned 300 calories form exercise a day, I would eat 150 calories extra that day. That is because when you exercise your body needs more energy to keep going. You can eat all the calories which you burned without gaining weight, I just like to only consume half.

Now, I can’t give you an estimate in days, but I can tell you that, the lower the percentage is the slower/longer your weight loss process is going to take and the higher the percentage the faster it will go. You can adjust the percentage to your liking depending on how much of a deficit you want. Again, please don’t just opt for the fastest way. It really depends on how much you weigh from the beginning. You can always change your deficit, if you feel that you need to eat more calories or less, just remember that eating more will result in a slower process and eating less in a faster process.

Please don’t eat under 1200 calories for women and 1500 calories for men. This is the absolute lowest calorie intake we need to keep our body healthy. The National Institutes of Health recommends eating between 1000-1200 calories for women and 1200-1500 calories for men. If you eat less calories than this recommendation, it can lead to dizziness and unpleasant side effects. What is worst, is the fact that eating less calories than needed won’t help you lose weight, but you’ll actually gain weight.

I recommend that once a month you look at your current weight and calculate your calories, just to see if your on track or you need to adjust your deficit. Remember to listen to your body, if you feel hungry at the end of the day, maybe eat a few more calories and if you want, you can add in some more exercise to burn more calories.

4th – Keep going!

Remember that weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise, so you have to get in some exercise and eat healthy.

I want to mention that I’m not a doctor or an expert in this field whatsoever! This is just what has been working for me and it might or might not work for you. I would strongly advice you to contact your doctor or a fitness/health expert especially if your weight loss is of greater scale!

This only functions as a guide. I recommend reading more on the subject by searching on Google (or another search engine).

I do hope it helps somebody out there.

The First Before and After Pictures

These pictures are taken some time ago (before in the red bikini is July 2014 and the after picture in purple is from March 2015). I wouldn’t normally post pictures of myself almost naked, but what the heck, it’s only my body.

It shows how much weight I’ve lost and how far I’ve come! Since 11th March I’ve lost more and now weigh 64,4 kg today. Yay! I’ve actually lost 10 kg since December/January! Yay me! I think I have to celebrate later today, maybe with a good workout?
And what the heck happened to my skin? It got so much more even! And a lot of the stretchmarks aren’t that visible anymore (They have actually become lighter than before now). I really like my body now that I’ve lost weight. Before it looked like my body was about to blow up or something.. I also feel so much lighter! Yay!

From Black to Golden Blonde

It has actually been about a week since I bleached my hair, and that’s why I think it is time to do an update about it.

I was supposed to film the whole process, but our bathroom is so tiny, I can’t use my camera with my 60 mm lens and studio lights in there (there’s also not enough light in there) so I decided that I didn’t want to film it anyway. And that was probably a very good idea, because the sent of the bleaching product made my eyes all watery and red. I looked like a person that had been crying for days without sleep! I have some pictures, but I’m grateful that I didn’t film it like I had originally planed.

But I’ll still tell you a bit about my experience with bleaching my hair with Manic Panic’s Flash Lightning Vol. 40 anyway. Of cause you have to follow the instructions on the package, but here’s a few other things to keep in mind when bleaching with this product:

• Only bleach your hair in a room where you can open a window, because you are going to need the fresh air! The bleach has a very intoxicating smell and you shouldn’t breathe it for too long. If you need it, go outside and take in some fresh air. (that’s what I did).

• Use tinfoil to wrap the hair, that way your old t-shirt doesn’t get too dirty or bleached.

• I like to have straightened hair when I dye it. For this process, I only straightened the ends.

• If you have really long hair like me, don’t bleach it by yourself! That’s what I did and because I parted my hair in two sections, there’s a color difference in my hair because one side had the bleach in it longer than the other (I tried my best to give the two sections the same amount of time, but I guess I failed). If you have another person or two to help you, you can dye all the hair at the same time, eliminating too much difference in color.

• Also, I almost ran out of bleach. If I were to bleach it again, I would use two containers instead of just one. Before bleaching and buying the product, you should really think about how much of your hair you want bleached and if you are going to need only one or two products. The color difference is also partly because I ran out of bleach about halfway…

• Think about where you want the color to be strongest and start with that section of the hair. I started from the back and then to the front. If you want the front to be brighter, you have to start there.

Well, that’s the extra advice I have for you when bleaching your hair. And I guess it goes for plain hair dyeing too. I hope this helps, so you don’t make the same mistakes as me 🙂

I was very pleased with the results and the color! I love the golden blonde so much that I’m thinking twice about dyeing it red now. Maybe I’ll stay with this blonde look for the summer and dye it red for fall.

If you bleach your hair with this product, you are very welcome to comment about your experience and advice if you have any.

Now it’s time for all the pictures! Notice that my left side is more brighter and golden than the right side. I still think it’s pretty though, but it would have been nice if both side had the same color.

The Thing About Self-Confidence in Weight Loss

I felt that in the beginning of my weight loss journey, my self-confidence and self-esteem were very low. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a chubby young adult who didn’t like herself at all. It was so easy for me to pick on myself and mention all the parts of my body that I hated. At times, I felt so bad about my looks, that I didn’t want anybody to take pictures of me at parties and I would rather stay at home on the couch than attend a party were other people might make fun of me.

Just before I started to lose weight, I tried this exercise where you look at yourself in the mirror every day and only say positive things about yourself and your body. As the days passed, I started to like myself more and more. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. Even though I hadn’t lost any weight yet, I started dressing differently – more colorful and bright. While in the first half of my weight loss journey, I didn’t actually feel much different, mostly because I simply couldn’t see the weight loss on my body. The scale showed that I’d lost weight, but I felt like my body didn’t show it. That actually made me lose confidence in my training and I thought about quitting. My mom and the rest of my family kept telling me, that they could see that I had lost weight, but I didn’t believe them because I couldn’t see it myself.

It was only when I got my fiancée to take some new pictures of me and I compared them to some old ones, that I realized how much weight I’d actually lost. Omg. My legs, thighs, arms, stomach and head! When I saw those before and after pictures, I also realized how chubby I was before. It made me a bit sad, but so happy that I actually managed to lose half of my goal. After that day, I suddenly became much more confident in myself. I guess I had such a hard time believing it, that I had to see ‘proof’ first. If I had just taken pictures every second week, I would have seen it earlier and spared myself the self-hating. So please, remember to take pictures of yourself, so you can document your process. You don’t have to show the pictures to anybody, just keep them for yourself – as a reminder.

Therefore, the point of this post, is that, self-confidence and self-esteem is tightly connected to our weight or what we think about ourselves. Confidence is greatly about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It doesn’t matter how you look, just what you feel about how you look. Sometimes I see people that ooze confidence and they give out this ultra-positive energy. These people have realized at some point in their lives that, when they are happy and love themselves, so will other people. I want to be one of those happy people that makes other people happy! What can we do to become one of those people?

• Be thankful for what you have
  • First you have to be thankful for what you already have and accept it. When you are thankful, you are giving out positive energy that other people will notice.

• Speak positively
  • This is important! You have to stop using negative words are speaking in that manner. Surround yourself with positive things, speak, and think about all the positive things you have. Try doing a challenge, where you do positive self-talk for seven days. You will see that it gets easier after this. You have to speak positive about yourself, your body and the rest of your life too.

• Love yourself
  • Loving yourself can be hard, especially if you have low self-esteem and you just don’t see any good or positive qualities about yourself. But you are wrong. Everybody had something, that is unique to them. Try to focus on something that you like about yourself instead of the negative, like the fact that you might have beautiful eyes. When you start looking at all the things you like about yourself, you will see that loving the rest is easier.

• Brace yourself with inspiration stuff like happy songs, quotes, art or movies
  • We are humans. Sometimes we fall and sometimes we are negative. We can’t always stay happy and laugh. You can to accept that, but we can still do our best to surround ourselves with positive things, feelings and people. Therefore, it can be a great help to listen to inspirational songs, find wallpapers or inspirational art you can hang on your walls. All this will help remind you to stay positive and strive for your goal.

• Smile more
  • Smiling can actually make you happy, even when you’re not. If you are feeling down or sad and actively want to be happy, just smile, goof around, and you’ll find yourself happy again. When you smile, it can make other people happy too. Smiling is infectious and you could make somebody’s day better just by smiling. Another benefit is that smiling makes you more attractive – so smile more and feel confident! Smiling can also lead to laughter, which is funny. Smiling just feels good, so do it 🙂

My Hair Color Story (2009-2015)

This entry is dedicated to my hair. Thanks for enduring all the dyeing and chemicals I’ve put you through.

Before I mention all the different hair colors I’ve had, I want to mention the fact that my hair is actually relaxed. I used to get my hair relaxed many times when I was younger (I can’t count how many, but I know it was a lot) just because I wanted to have straight hair, like all the other girls in school. I wanted my hair to be like the girl on the picture of the Luster’s Pink relaxer, but my hair never turned out like that. That’s why, no matter how many times my mom relaxed my hair, it always remained curly. Although the curls have gotten bigger and much more manageable from all the relaxing. There has been no damage to my hair from this process.

I can’t really remember when I stopped relaxing my hair, but it was probably around the age of eleven or something. I haven’t relaxed my hair since. I started dyeing my hair in January 2009 when I was fourteen. My very first hair color was a red hair dye from Matas (a big Danish drugstore). The hair dye wasn’t for my hair texture at all, so my hair didn’t really take to the dye.

Here come some pictures. Just a warning, I was weird and ’emo’ like back in 2009. Oh gosh, that phase!

Because I wasn’t happy with the color or the fact that it just seemed like my hair simply wouldn’t take hair dye, I started wearing wigs because I then had the opportunity to choose whatever color I liked. (I didn’t just wear wigs for that reason. I already had wigs because of my interest in cosplay).

Anyway, some times after that my mom introduced my to SoftSheen Carson’s Dark & Lovely permanent hair dye. My first Dark & Lovely hair color was #379 Golden Bronze. I remember I only used one package, hoping it would cover my whole hair, it did not. Pictures are from January and April 2010.

It took some time to get used to the blonde hair, which was just like highlighting actually. In the end, I got used to the color and I actually ended up liking it. I rediscovered my love for red hair and dyed it #394 Vivacious Red (also Dark & Lovely). This result I actually loved! Later I put some blonde in it again and chestnut or some other brown color. This was were I began to experiment.

After that phase, I dyed my hair again in July 2011 before traveling to Tanzania. This time it was #376 Red Hot Rhythm. I was in so much love with this hair color, but I thought it was too red and put some blonde and brown back in the mix as stripes.

Later in 2011 just before my 18th birthday, I dyed it black with #382 Midnight Blue and the results was awesome. My hair has never been completely black, so I had to get used to the dramatic look.

I then kept it black for a year or two, just letting the color slowly fade and my natural hair color grow out. I then dyed it red yet again and let that stay for some time. Then in August 2013 I dyed it Golden Bronze again, but went for an ombre look this time.

When I got tired of that, I tried to color with black with red stripes in October 2014. It turned out a black color with a hint of brown (guess that’s what happens when you do it yourself and try to do two colors at once without separating the hair properly).

Then I decided I wanted completely blonde hair, but I didn’t want to bleach it. I went for the Golden Bronze again and sat with the dye for a long time and my roots really turned blonde. I did not like it. (this is what happens when you start dyeing your roots first, because the heat from you head will speed up the color process, turning the roots darker or lighter depending on your dye) but no, I did not know that until recently. And yes, if I had known that a few years ago, my hair colors would probably have looked better, but at least I discovered it now – thanks Youtube! 😀

Now I’m in the process of dyeing it black and red ombre. I’ve already dyed it black in the top and I’m just waiting for the days to pass so I can bleach my hair for the first time. I’m bleaching it because I really want the red color to pop.

If you want to see how my hair will turn out, be sure to check my Youtube channel in a week or two 😀

Dresses from Tanzania

Min mor har taget en hel masse kjoler med hjem fra hendes ferie i Tanzania. Fordi hun gerne vil sælge dem, havde vi et sjovt lille “mini-photoshoot” hvor vi tog omkring 250 billeder.

*host *host* 250 billeder er åbentbart et lille photoshoot :p

Fødselsdagsoverraskelse

Min dejlige kæreste har overrasket mig med pynt og gaver da jeg kom hjem fra arbejde idag – det er fandme dejligt. Jeg er så glad for at have så dejlig en kæreste 😀