Hello, fellow journalers, how have you been? Can you believe it's already June? Avocados and mangos are starting to fall on our heads, here, but thankfully, my head is ok; no collision so far.

My life has been hectic for a while, even more so these past few weeks since my aunt is visiting the family from abroad. We not only picked her up at the airport (she made a rare request to prepare some water bottles for her to keep in the hotel), but we've been also constantly inviting her over to our house for lunch or dinner, or both. We also take her out for anything, anywhere, whenever we can manage. Honestly, it's exhausting. She doesn't seem to mind spending six to nine hours straight with us, talking our ears off with all the stories she's stored in her arsenal, unleashing them like a machine gun, while my elderly mother tries not to nod off as she listens to her much younger sister. She's staying for more than a month. This is why my recent schedule has been crazy, many times going haywire. However, I've managed to adhere to my workout routine despite the mayhem I've found myself in. I'm darn proud of that. And you know what? Drum roll, please! I just reached the first goal of my diet plan.🥳

Some of you may recall, but I've gotten back into exercising for several months now. In fact, I could say I've been on a diet, but it's more of a lifestyle or habit change. Being on a diet implies that it's something temporary, and once it's done, you're likely to go back to the old lifestyle that led you to the health issues in the first place. My goal is to keep doing this for the rest of my life as much as possible. Of course, once I finished reaching my goals, I will decrease the amount of exercise and stop being in a caloric deficit, but other than that, I plan on sticking to my new healthy habits. I'm at a crucial age, especially as a woman. I have to prepare for the worst to come (you know what).

Since last September, I've lost more or less 22 pounds (10kg). You can see the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows of my weight-loss journey on the graph in the header image (Don't judge my artistic skills, I was just playing on Canva). As expected, there were plateaus here and there, too. As you may or may not know, when it comes to dieting, you shouldn't put too much importance on weight, but rather on your body fat, both subcutaneous and visceral fat. Weight management can be tricky and if you don't do it right, you just lose too much of your precious muscle mass or even bone mass. Muscle weighs more than body fat, so you have to make sure that the weight you lose comes mostly from your fat and not your muscle. The ideal weight loss is really about fat loss while keeping your muscle as much as you can. Some people might call it "cutting." This is easier said and done, especially for women (of my age🦕). Resistance training and ensuring adequate nutrition are the key.

In my case, I have a body composition scale that I brought from Japan, so I could track numbers of my body composition. It's common knowledge that these types of scales are never accurate. The weight figure is the sole exception. However, if you use the scale at the same time every day under the same condition, they can effectively track the change you make over time. It doesn't matter if the numbers of body composition are inaccurate, what matters is whether the measurements are improving or not. My Tanita scale says, in addition to losing 22 pounds, that I've lost approximately 10% of body fat mass and 2 pounds of muscle mass. My visceral fat level has gone down by two numbers, whatever that means (good, I'm sure). My BMI has gone from obese to overweight range, now bordering on normal. Overall, considering my age, I guess I did a pretty good job not to lose too much muscle while shredding fat.

It's an average loss of 2.4 pound loss per month. You might find it quite slow, but it really depends on the individual and the initial weight. In the US, experts usually say 1 to 2 pounds per week is an ideal/healthy weight loss, however, in Japan, the usual recommendation is to lose 2.2 pounds a month. Since I'm Japanese and of short stature, I believe my current pace is fairly good. Nonetheless, weight loss should be slow and gradual, or else you risk losing muscle mass and gaining back the weight easily afterward. As for my second goal, I need to get rid of another 5% of body fat and bring my BMI into a comfortable normal range. It might take longer to wade through all this, but I'm not in a hurry.

By the way, I'm currently taking a week off from exercising, thus the time for a bit of writing. I did the same two months ago, as I mentioned in this post. Folks, I really needed the break🥴. Unfortunately, I cannot mentally unwind the way I want because I still need to run errands for my aunt and invite her over on the weekend. However, at least I can relieve some of the physical stress this week and be free from muscle soreness. Thank the universe for small mercies.

Happy June!