Life & Weight Loss (December 20th - 26th)

Christmas is finally here and I can't wait for it to be over lol.

Call me a grinch all you want but I do not like Christmas. There are some nice aspects about it but in general it completely sucks. Having worked in hospitality and customer service for 10+ years really leaves a mark on you because over this decade I noticed that the Christmas craziness starts earlier and earlier. I'm talking to the point that we're setting up table talkers and a designated Christmas table with flyers and stuff in JULY. No, just no. Of course it's nice to see beautiful lights and nicely decorated town centres but this year (2023) has been different. I don't know whether it's just my area but everywhere I went within Worcestershire, UK, the decorations have been pathetic. That's literally one of the only few things I enjoy during Christmas and it's been extremely disappointing. Couple weeks before Christmas I wanted to go to a Christmas market because I love me some good German sausage (lol) but I was shocked to find that even bigger towns around us (as in, 30-40 minute drive radius), had Christmas markets that only last 2-3 days over specific periods and some even finished in November! What happened to Christmas markets beaming during 2-3 weeks leading to Christmas? What a disappointment... And since we were working on Christmas Day this year, we decided to cancel Christmas altogether lol.

Week 7 weight loss progress

Day 1

+ 0.4 kg / + 0.4 kg weekly weight gain / -1.4 kg total weight loss

My viral TikTok video is getting even more popular

I genuinely thought that 700K or something will be the end but it clearly hasn't as I kept waking up to crazy numbers lol. My TikTok video was still blowing up. 

Loid Forger like my TikTok video 😂

Also I was happy to see that Loid Forger has liked my video. If you can't understand the reference then I can't help you. 🤣

Day 2

+ 0.2 kg / + 0.6 kg weekly weight gain / - 1.2 kg total weight loss

My viral TikTok video hits 1 million views

My viral TikTok video has hit 1 million views at this point but it was expected by the way it was going. My TikTok was blowing up every time I opened the app lol. It's good that I have my notifications disabled on all social media platforms, at least my phone wasn't going insane haha.

30 day weight chart

Weight wise I really wasn't happy what was going on. Even Happy Scale can't even hide the fact that the weight is going up and the green weight loss markings were slimming down. I haven't been the best at eating healthy but also I haven't been drinking much water so I'm trying my best to fix that. 

Day 3 

+ 0.1 kg / + 0.7 kg weekly weight gain / - 1.1 kg total weight loss

Lemon Posset for a private event

I didn't think I would but I actually have been enjoying working with my husband doing private chef events. Most of the main prep is done at home so I barely need to leave the house (apart from shopping for inventory) and I love being at home lol. I also get to have a go at making new things that I haven't made before. One of them being lemon posset dessert. It's basically lemon cream. I can't believe how incredibly easy it was to make it. I haven't made enough the first time as the event was for 11 people but I only managed to squeeze out 8. So I made another batches and you can see that even my pour improved the second time. In the photo above two columns on the right is the first batch and two columns on the left is the second batch. Improvement within 30 minutes or so lol.

I even made a TikTok video about making lemon posset.

Growing pea shoots for garnish

Day 4 

- 0.5 kg / + 0.2 kg weekly weight gain / - 1.6 kg total weight loss

Poke bowl lunch in between prep work

One of the few positive things about Christmas is that raw salmon gets a very reduced price at Morrisons. And salmon is one of my favourite fish due to incredible taste. I just can't get enough of it. Having lovely raw fish means time for poké bowl! Poké bowl is a Hawaiian rice bowl dish with raw marinated salmon. I think my favourite combination is salmon, kimchi and spring onions. I could eat that every day.

Not gonna lie, looking back, that bowl had a lot on it, probably not the best for my weight loss and I didn't weigh anything at all...

Making caramel hazelnuts

Another new thing that I've made was caramel hazelnuts. I was proper freaking out because I've never made caramel before and I've read some horror stories of people messing up caramel but it was actually pretty easy and I made it perfectly first time! There was only one problem... It was meant to harden but for whatever reason once it sort of hardened it started melting again. It didn't make sense because it was stored pretty cold. Our conservatory is just slightly warmer than outside. We stored half of them in the conservatory and half of them in the fridge. But the result was the same no matter the location. In the end I had to make fresh caramel hazelnuts on site which is not the best as clean up is a right pain. But at least it was solid when it arrived at the client's table. I never learnt what the reason behind this melting episode was lol. Anyway, I did make a TikTok video about my caramel hazelnuts. 

Day 5 

+ 1.3 kg / + 1.5 kg weekly weight gain / - 0.3 kg total weight loss

A little whisky on Christmas Eve morning lol

It was my husband's day off before the big Christmas event and the day was filled with prep work again. After we were mostly done we quickly popped to Morrisons to see if we can get any last minute pre-Christmas deals and we were not disappointed. Loads of meat was on sale! 

Raw Steak Tartare

Of course we grabbed the best looking bits and we had a feast of raw steak tartare. What a treat!!!

Great evening sorted: Delicious wine from Naked Wines and anime

Day 6

+ 0.4 kg / + 1.9 kg weekly weight gain / + 0.1 kg total weight gain

It was finally Christmas and we departed home around 11am for the big event. The whole thing took so long and by the time we left the client's house it was around 6.30pm. I was exhausted but we have planned a hangout with my friend who was spending Christmas by herself. Plus we had a ton of leftovers so no cooking needed! We may or may not have drank a bit too much that day and we may or may not have suffered from hangover on Boxing Day lol...

Day 7 

- 1.1 kg / + 0.8 kg weekly weight gain / - 1 kg total weight loss

Week 7 weight loss chart

Well, it's the end of Week 7 and the chart is looking very much disappointing. I blame the business Christmas season to be honest. Working loads and prepping and maybe indulging too much on alcohol. All you can do is just do your best and keep pushing. Let's go!

My Podcast: A Pint Of Rice | My IG: Lina B 🦭 | My TikTok: Lina

Byeee~

Lina (Rinatsu)

Life & Weight Loss (December 13th - 19th)

Well, week 5 was rubbish... Change in tactics?

I can't lie, the dedicated weighing and food input to MyFitnessPal has been getting a bit to me. While it does help me watch what I eat, it's also making me too fixated on it. It almost felt like a full time job, just constantly thinking about what my next meal should be and how many calories I've got left. It was affecting my mental health and not in a good way. So I had to make some changes. Do I want to count my calories for the rest of my life? Not really! Nothing has changed in terms of portion control. After many years of learning about nutrition at specialised institutions, doing my own research and testing out things on my own I understand the portion sizes and dietary requirements so whether I input data somewhere or not makes no difference. So I say bye-bye to MyFitnessPal for now while I work on something else. 

One of the great things I noticed is the accountability while writing this blog. Even if nobody reads this I still feel responsible. Mostly because I've been in the position of trying to find somebody's story, day to day life details when reaching certain goals. I like reading blogs for topics I'm interested in. I'm back to blogging after so many years and it feels really good to be creative in the writing area again. 

Another new thing is that in the past couple of weeks I've been pretty busy as my husband took on a new work opportunity as a private chef. He was originally planning to do it all by himself but after some deliberation and we realised that it would be very difficult for him to do it all by himself (confirmed after the first event) so I joined him in this venture as a manager / chef de partie / waitress / kitchen porter. 🤣 

So, my updates from now on will be general weight loss and life updates because I don't want the fight for weight loss to consume me too much and that to define me. I'll be sharing food photos/videos and interesting life updates.

Week 6: December 13th - December 19th

Day 1: 

- 0.4 kg / - 0.4 kg weekly loss / - 2.2 kg total loss

The craziest thing starter happening to me. Couple days before Week 6 of my weight loss started, my husband got inspired and decided to make a video for this dish he came up with. The dish is sort of like Hawaiian Poké Bowl / Japanese Donburi inspired Surf & Turf style rice bowl. It consisted of ribeye steak cooked blue/rare, salmon fillet and some veg on a bed of rice. I was responsible for all the filming. So after we ate and finished up the meal I made a quick silly video from all the footage I've got and uploaded it on TikTok. Since my husband started his private chef job he wanted a bigger social media presence so I've been uploading things here and there but nothing very consistent. I'm not also not very keen on TikTok. So when I uploaded this video I didn't think too much of it:

@rinatsuchan When professional chef only cares to make one photo op worthy dish. It progressively gets worse and worse. 🤣🤣 #cheflife #chefsoftiktok #chef #cookingathometiktoktv #cookingtiktok #cookingvideo #cookingvideos #cookingshow #cooking #professionalchef #privatechef ♬ Música de Comidas para Video - Carabina Sounds

If video isn't playing you can watch it here.

Pretty much immediately after I uploaded it, the views started climbing much MUCH quicker than before so I knew that something is different this time. 2 days after the upload we were looking at 303K views:

My TikTok video started going viral

I've been uploading all sorts of things throughout my life to social media. From nature photography, make up videos, to crafts and funny easy going stuff but I never had any video go viral like that so I had to grab this opportunity and do something about it. I started making videos about the food myself or my husband makes. Before this my phone only had fancy food photos every week weeks. Now it started to become every few days kind of occurrence lol. 

Homemade wontons with mushroom dashi. This is actually my husband's bowl as it looked better lol

 

Day 2: 

+ 1.1 / + 0.7 kg weekly gain / - 1.1 kg total loss

I had to get these tiny tools at The Range. As funny as they look, they've been very useful at our private events

Salmon poké bowl

I love fish. Or seafood. Either one. I think they're amazing. If I have to choose between meat or seafood I'll definitely choose seafood. The amount of flavour in seafood is actually insane. You can't get that just by eating steak. Don't come at me, it's the truth lol. I love sushi but it's a pain to make and eating out in UK can be very expensive so I love making a sort of deconstructed version of that. It could easily be called salmon donburi, as donburi stands for rice bowl with toppings. But we like to jazz it up a little bit and make a dish more similar to poké bowl, consisting of different veg and seasonings. It must be one of my favourite homemade foods.

Day 3: 

+ 0.6 kg / + 1.3  kg weekly gain / - 0.5 kg total loss

You know you live a good life when you know an Egg Man 😁

Day 4: 

- 1.1 kg / + 0.2 kg weekly gain / - 1.6 kg total loss

Thai inspired coconut curry with salmon

Day 5: 

0 kg / + 0.2 kg weekly gain / - 1.6 kg total loss

Pan-fried salmon with brandy cream sauce

Day 6: 

- 0.8 kg / - 0.6 kg weekly loss / - 2.4 kg total loss

His name is Murphy!

My friend recently got a puppy. I drove her to pick him up and he's the cutest. I feel like a proud auntie. He loves me so much and gives me so much attention. My heart is happy. 😁

Day 7: 

+ 0.6 kg / 0 kg weekly loss / - 1.8 kg total loss

Week 6 weight loss chart

Two sets on a row machine completed

It's the end of week 6 and I feel frustrated again as there has been no changes all week. Apart from usual jumping up and down, at the end of the day I'm at 0. To release my frustration I went to the gym and done a cardio workout. I absolutely hate cardio but I know that I really need it. The problem is that I'm easily distracted and I get super bored really quickly. So if I'm on a treadmill (I usually do an incline walk for a period of time), I watch a show on Netflix lol. My heart is weak af so to make it pump I went on a row machine for the last 5 minutes to really make myself sweat. Well, that was definitely achieved. 

Already at 702K views!

At this point my viral TikTok video has doubled up in views and my profile was blowing up with likes, comments and follows. The most shocking part would be waking up in the morning, checking TikTok after 8 hours and seeing crazy numbers lol.

Waking up to crazy numbers

Well, that definitely didn't stop there but I'll tell you more in my next blog post. It's been a rollercoaster week (just like my weight loss lol). And while I didn't achieve anything in the weight loss area I definitely had some interesting events throughout the week. Let's see what next week brings!

My Podcast: A Pint Of Rice | My IG: Lina B 🦭 | My TikTok: Lina

Byeee~

Lina (Rinatsu)