FITNESS

Do It Right, Keep It Tight With Vibrance

March 14, 2014 Leave a Comment

This year’s International Women’s Day helps to builds more knowledge in me as I spent my last Saturday morning at mYoga, The Gardens for a special intimate session on how to enhance women’s vibrance that we might not be aware of.

What could it be at a yoga center? I will slowly dive into women’s issue later in this post where I would like to think men should also take note too.

The session began with a short session of yoga great for women to garner inner strength and muscles. Could you spot any familiar face?

Iris, one of the mYoga Instructor strongly believes in discipline. We were advice to keep our hands off from the mobile and to stay back, relax and calm our minds just for an hour. In yoga, we bring ourselves closer to the nature hence that is the reason not wear any footwear even socks.

In this yoga session, Iris guided us how to stretch our muscles correctly including what’s best for women’s health. I used to practice yoga few years ago and my stretches are all rusty now. It takes time and constant practice to stretch the muscles to gain flexibility and Iris showed us how straps and wood block would help us to go further without injuring our muscles. Practicing yoga also helps to strengthen our bones and will have to be balanced with the right lifestyle. After this sweaty yoga session, we had an interesting presentation to share.

Jayne from Vibrance shared with us in-depth of the importance of caring our pelvic floor muscle (PFM) and Kegel exercise. Also, introduced to us how the Vibrance Kegel Device could help women to strengthen our PFM and why we should use it.

This is how the Vibrance Kegel Device look like in it’s packaging. They come in different sizes, lubricant and two packs of battery.

If you are still unclear of what I’m trying to address, here is a video to share about PFM and how Vibrance Kegel Device will be able to help to strengthen it and improve our lifestyle.

PFM plays an important role to hold different organs at women’s lower mid-body section. It is located at the base of the abdomen where it controls the bladder, vaginal and rectal opening. Once it’s weaken, it will loses it’s strength to hold the organs and that’s where women will face Pelvic Floor Dysfunction.

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction relates to the organs that PFM holds and with this, it affects women’s life resulting of wearing adult diapers for poor bladder control, decreased in sexual satisfaction, pelvic organ prolapse and lower back ache.

To avoid Pelvic Floor Dysfunction from happening, Kegel exercise is recommended to strengthen PFM. There are seven different benefits from the exercise to restore and prevent the unwanted lifestyle from occurring.

You think you might have been doing it right but you maybe possibly contracting other muscles. There are more muscles around the area, hence there are chances of contracting on other muscles. Locating PFM can be challenging, where are they?

With Vibrance Kegel Device, you’ll be able to practice Kegel exercise correctly. It is comfortable and safe as its sheaths are made of Medical Grade Silicon Rubber of the highest specification. It is hypoallergenic, antimicrobial, waterproof and easy to clean. The device helps to detect the right muscle training where it vibrates lightly and gently when contracting the PFM. If you wonder how to use this, ensure that it is clean and just insert to your va-jay-jay gently (do use lubricant if you need to).

By using 5 minutes a day, it helps to strengthen your PFM in many ways. This device is recommended for those have given birth, menopause, genetic disorder, heavy weight lifting and vigorous physical activity. For women who is interested in maintaining PFM could also use this device as how people always say prevention is better than cure.

Vibrance Kegel Device is pre-programmed with audio guided training. Please don’t be mistaken that the device could speak. It simply beeps when users need to contract the PFM and when the beeping ceases, it is to relax. Above is the schedule of the reps of the exercise for approximately 5 minutes. However, it is not recommended to use while you are menstruating for hygienic purposes.

After the informative presentation by Vibrance, we were delighted by another speaker, KD Ismalasari who is a Brand Image Strategist and an English language expert.

She shared how everyone has their own BLING factor and with that we build our own personal branding.

We create values in our personal branding as each of us is unique in every way. From how we dress, how we put things together and the colors we chose is our choice of branding.

Also, a special guest arrived to speak of her experience as a women and she is no strange in the blogsphere, Audrey Ooi. It ain’t easy to be a women, she believed that we faced many different stages in life where we reached puberty, child birth and menopause. Being a women holds many different character as a daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother, daughter-in-law, sister-in -law and so on. She came to a milestone when she has given birth to Jude Maximus Tiah , you could read her post here.

The day ended with yummy lunch and as part of the sponsor, Himalaya Herbals team was there with us to provide free skin analysis .

To find out further updates of Vibrance Malaysia, remember to like their Facebook below. Vibrance Kegel Device can be found in selected SHINS outlet, beauty centres and pharmacies. They are also available for online purchases MyVKD.com.

~ ♦ ~

This is a sponsored post and event by Nuffnang.

xoxo,
Traclyn Yeoh

15 Ways To Keep That Belly FLAT Healthily

July 23, 2013 4 Comments

From my physical appearance, I may look like I’m all slim and slender. Just because I have smaller bones that doesn’t mean that I do not have excess fat accumulated in my body. The lower portion of my body is slightly bigger especially on my belly and hips, I always have trouble fitting into the right pair of jeans. I blame the amount of hours that I spend sitting in my office for my expanding belly. In this past month, I have been discovering and trying out ways to work on it. These are the friendly healthy ways for a flatter belly and some of these tips may help you to lose weight.

Image Courtesy of Culligan, Coca-cola Consolidated, BoldSky

1. Drink Water

Many said to keep yourself hydrated with at least 8 glasses of water a day or I like to put it in another formulation approximately 2.6 litres. Water not only hydrates your body, it promotes blood circulation that also helps to burn out fat. If you think drinking water is too plain for you, add some lemon into it.

2. Avoid Carbonated Drinks

Carbonated drinks are usually contained high in sugar which slows down the fat burning process and of course, excessive sugar intake will lead to diabetes. Instead, take in fruit juices that has natural sweetness to it or different types of tea such as green tea, ginger tea or peppermint tea. These teas helps to ease digestion and bloating. Add a dash of cinnamon for that greater aroma if you want to.

3. Chew Slowly & Discover The Taste of Your Food

By taking your time to chew your food, it helps to produce more saliva and it helps to soften the food for better breakdown in your digestion. It takes a while to deliver the message that you’re filling up your tummy to your brain, so chew slowly or if you eat fast, you might tend to overeat.

Image Courtesy of Facts List, theKitchn, Shehrizat

4. Call out for less salt and sugar

Salt can be dehydrating and causes water retention while sugar doesn’t directly causes water retention but taking it in excessively will lead your body to overproduce a hormone called insulin which causes water retention. When insulin combines with sodium found from salt, they retain even more water.

5. Eat Enough, Do Not Overeat

I love my food, we all love our food. Its hard to resist delicious mouth watering food especially in a buffet, some of us may eat to the worth of what we have paid. Fair enough and I can understand so. Do bare in mind that overeating could cause indigestion and your stomach doesn’t have enough time to burn the calories. When the calories remains, it becomes unused energy that turns into fat.

6. Lesser Carbs

Most carbohydrate has greater calories and it takes more time to burn it. Food such as rice, noodles or bread are high in carbohydrate but we can still enjoy the goodness of it by taking it moderately by cutting it half of the portion that you usually take.

Image Courtesy of Bookmarked, Fitness Is The New Thin, Altitude-Blog

7. Allow four hours of digestion

The standard duration of our food to be fully digested in our body is 4 hours. It really depends on the metabolism rate of each individual. Do allow your body to digest for these 4 hours especially before sleeping and even napping. When you’re sleeping or napping, your blood circulation are no longer be concentrated on your stomach hence it slows down your normal digestion period.

8. Break Some Sweat

I highly recommend this because I’m doing it myself too. By exercising, you’re promoting greater blood circulation to your body. When this happen, it is easier to burn out fat and reduce water retention. We’ve heard a lot of advices saying that we should exercise 2-3 times a week, I would say just exercise the most that you can for half to an hour. Sweat is good because it helps to crunch those fats away.

9. Snack Healthily

At the early stage of controlling our diet is tough, I got to admit this. We tend to get hungry easily when we were trying to reduce our food portion of our previous meal. If you eat a coupled of times a day with controlled portion is fine and try to opt healthier option of food such as oats bar, fruit crackers, preserved or dried fruits or different types of nuts.

Image Courtesy of Bliss Returned, One Result, KG Fit

10. Fruits & vegetable in your diet

Always incorporate fruits and vegetables in your diet as they are packed with natural vitamins and nutritions for your body. Not to mention that they also helps your digestive system. Take pineapple as an example, its highly recommended to consume it because it contains bromelanin, an enzyme that helps from bloating tummy.

11. Eat Lean

In Malaysia, people love chicken wings or thighs because of their smoother texture in comparison with the dry lean breast meat and they are cheaper here as the demands isn’t as high. Eating lean is important but that doesn’t mean you can’t have the wings and thighs, what I do is I tend to pick out those fats that’s accumulated. Also, try to avoid food like instant noodle or canned food, go as fresh as you can.

12. Beat Late Night Hunger

Sometimes we do have the tendency to have supper and remember about the 4 hours digestion? For this, we need self-discipline and determination. What you can do is have a small bite of healthy snack and gulp half a glass of water. Chew and drink slowly, allow it to go into your stomach entirely, rest for 10 minutes then head to bed. If you stay up any longer, the hunger will strike again.

Image Courtesy of Hella Wella, Kootation, Mercola

13. Avoid fast and fried food

Make a habit to look at the nutritional fact sheet when you purchased a set of fast food. You’ll notice they are usually high in calories and fat amount. Look again to your fast food set, it does include a bunch of fries and carbonated drinks. The sugar and fried food is one of an unhealthy combination.

14. Eat Fibers, Protein, Iron

However you reduce the amount of food you’re taking, don’t forget that you always need your vitamins and nutritions to stay healthy. You can find protein from eggs, iron from red meat and fibers from vegetables. Fibers are really important to help to pass out your stool easily and it is recommended to go daily. It helps to eliminate toxins thus making fat burning much easier.

15. Alternative to milk

Instead of milk, you can always consume soy milk that has less carbohydrate and fat. The monounsaturated fatty acids in soy milk helps to inhibit fat absorption and storage during digestion. For yogurt and cultured drink, they contained friendly bacteria that helps your digestion and promotes healthier body too.

To keep this regime, you definitely need self-discipline and determination. It’s alright to go out of the way occasionally but do remember to resume back to it. As for me, I have been practising all these as much as I can and I usually tend to eat slightly more during weekends when I’m out with my friends. On weekdays, I’m totally on it and another tiny tip is to keep your posture straight while sitting. It helps to remain greater body posture and reduces the chances of fat storage. So straighten up now!

Let me know what do you think or if you have any effective method, please do share it with me in the comments below.

Celebrity Fitness Express @ Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur

January 4, 2011 13 Comments

Some of you might already know that I headed to gym about a couple of weeks ago from my Facebook. I received a voucher from visiting Glam Bazaar and my bestie, Fyda and I decided to go for it.

It’s a free trial at Celebrity Fitness Express @ Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur for three weeks and lucky me because I believe that if they’ll be give out free trial like this, it’s usually for just a week. I used to see Celebrity Fitness in 1 Utama and Amber Chia was the face of it but I never know there’s one so near to my place. Pardon the above image quality, I made final decision right at the reception to blog about it and quickly grab a picture of it with my cell before registering.

I’m registered by the consultant named Kallon, very polite and attentive when I get to the reception. However, I didn’t like that right after explaining to me about the details of trial membership, he seems to hurried me asking if I’m interested in joining membership without any brochures or leaflets on the fees. I mean give me a break, I have not even go around and try anything yet. At least give me some time and come back to me when you see me around again?

The trial membership sheet has to be shown on every visit. It’s about half of an A4 paper, which I think they should improvise on this because this paper can be easily torn and lost.

Anyways, the staff at the reception has been very nice and friendly all the time and the one on the right smiling widely is Fadhli (if I didn’t get his name wrongly). They were very helpful when Fyda forgot her trial membership sheet and get her signed in with just her cell number. We usually get a towel card each but sometimes they don’t give it, we still get our towel by showing our trial membership sheet.

This is some clonking metal stairs that I climb up and down everyday. I went to gym right after work on weekdays and my heels are still on. I had to be really careful with the steps, there were a few times I almost lost balance from it.

On the first day being there, there wasn’t any appointed trainer to bring us around. Sad, we had to explore bits of the machines by ourselves first. We didn’t know how to use other machines than the treadmills and RPMs. We usually run for 20 minutes to warm up ourselves, my top speed on treadmill is only 8.7. GAH, I wish I could be better.

Later, we were approached by a random trainer who is willing to bring us and teach us around. Finally, we have our own trainer to show us around and for our personal training. I’ll introduce to you our trainer later on the post. We’ve been mistaken to be sisters most of the time, many kept asking if we both is. Apparently, people are saying that we both look similar and we get it all the time since high school. We were also mistaken to be at the age of 17-18, we’re really happy since we turn out to look younger on the public’s eye.

We learned a lot of different machines that be able to work out on different parts of our body. My mission to the gym is to kick the fats off me? Maybe? But I want more flesh on my cheeks!

Oh, just a friendly reminder. Try to snack 1-2 hours before your gym session because that will provide you enough energy. If you have taken heavy meal try to rest about 3-4 hours before going to one. On the first day, I was a little starving and I ignored it. After the 20 minutes of treadmill, I was extremely dizzy. The dizzy-ness lasted for more than an hour and a half.

One of the main reason that I wanted to join the gym is yoga and I totally in love with how beautiful the surrounding of the outside. It felt so serene and peaceful. The yoga studio is slightly warm and I’ve joined twice on yoga for beginners. Love it so much! I never thought I could sweat so much from just a couple of mild stretching. I learned yoga isn’t just about the flexibility and balancing, it involves the mind, body and soul, breathing concentrations and lifting our own body. The music that the instructor played was so relaxing and the session always starts and ends with five minutes of relaxing the body. The yoga mat smells really bad whenever my face is so close to it but I can’t complain it, it’s been provided.

This is the aerobic studio and active movement classes are being held here. We’ve joined the belly dancing and Ritmo Zum. I love all of them! I love dancing since I was a child. I think I started dancing on stage ever since 6 years old and I never lost interest on it although I never attend any classes. My dancing interest grew more when I was in cheer-leading at the age of 16. I think I dance pretty well in those classes, just that I wasn’t so good in remembering them. I love to feel the flexibility of my tummy during belly dancing and I think I have never fail in shaking my bum so far silly . Ritmo Zum was quite a happening class, it’s about more than 20 people participated. It sounds crowded but the class was really lively. It’s like a freestyle dancing, the combination of Latin, cha-cha, body combat, body shaking and etc. Whenever we came out from that class, we always learned something new.

Regarding on the classes, I like the convenience of checking the timetables available from their website. Therefore, I don’t need to always check the time table upon my visit.

We were provided three personal training sessions and remember the random trainer that I mentioned earlier? He is no longer random and we are just like friends teaching and guiding each other. It’s very easy to get along with him.

This is our trainer, Fauzi. If you have the chance to choose your trainer, I highly recommend getting him as one of yours. You could just quote my name to him and I believe he could still remember me. If he’s being mean to you, just let me know. I’ll poke him for you, LOL silly .

He is friendly, careful, funny, flexible yet firm during the training. During our training, he assisted us carefully and never try to be funny in handling the machines and always ask if we know how to use them. Most of the time, we don’t know and he end up demonstrating it to us all the time before we start. He always try to be right beside us especially when we did on heavy weight lifting, just so you know we don’t get injured ,drop it and /or break anything around us. He did tease us sometimes for not capable to go further. It’s part of the fun isn’t it?

Surprisingly I noticed that when he assisted men trainees, he seems to be much strict and staying right in front of the trainee during weight lifting. There was once I saw him just sitting in front of the trainee and just did the counting. Didi is another trainer who did join to train us on the first session because Fauzi wasn’t allowed to monitor both of us at the same time but in the end, Fauzi took care of us very well. Professionally, I would think that he wasn’t allow to do so because accident can happen to both of us at the same time and pretty much didn’t happen. Fyda and I seems to be together so much during gym sessions, kind of inseparable even for personal training sessions.

During personal training sessions, we learned on the cardio exercise on treadmills and RPMs, dumbbell weight lifting for arms and shoulder, machines for arm, leg, shoulder and back, sit ups (which I’m pretty bad at it because my foot kept moving around) and kick fit.

Anyhow, he did explain to us on joining into membership package which includes personal training sessions and a month of free access. The fee was out of our boundaries, however he did not push hard on us into getting one which I like because I never like pushy people afterall.

On the right is Didi where I mentioned earlier, who joined us on our first personal training.

Other trainers that never kept their smile away whenever they see us. See the punch bag behind? That’s what we’ve been getting on with it on kick fit session.

Kick fit was one of the personal training that I never forget. What we had is to get hand wrap around our knuckles and palm, then wear the boxing gloves. The boxing gloves was HOLY STINKS! I get the idea that whenever people use it and start to sweat a lot in it but something must done because the smell stunk my hands even after bathing. Please get some sanitizer or air freshner (at least) to get rid the smell.

Kick fit is pretty much punching on the punch bag and we learn different movements from it. It’s pretty funny realizing that many gym users were looking at us as they pass by when we’re punching the bag. I hope in their mind was thinking, we girls could still rock on this. Although with the hand wrap, my knuckles went red for the entire day. It was pretty painful and my skin burned a little, I probably pushed myself too hard. We both get pretty tired at the end because it doesn’t only involve arm strength but legs too. It was that bad that the pain lasted for a couple of days, I even had trouble going to the loo.

We also did a body assessment, I weight 48.8kg now. Gosh, I think I put on 0.8kg and I think it’s coming from the belly. My body fat is 23.4 % (normal) and body age metabolism rate is at 18 years old. That has lead to my BMI 17.9 which shows that I’m underweight but I feel fat! Visceral fat are the fat surrounding our internal organ and mine is at 1 which is normal. However I don’t have enough muscles around my trunk and legs.

Oh, I almost forgot to show the towel counter. This guy’s name is Farhan, it was really cool of him to pose in front of my camera when he was busy with the towels, I felt bad in disturbing him. All gym users will always be given two towels, one bathing towel and one small sweat towel. I use the sweat towel as hair wrap after shower.

Let me give you a short tour of how does the rest rooms look like, the only thing I forgot to snap a shot is the amazing lighted mirrors with hair dryers around.

These are the L-shaped lockers around and everyone has to bring their own locks, which is troublesome. If I wasn’t informed by Fyda, I wouldn’t know that I have to bring one. It wasn’t even mentioned during my registration. I recommend using number coding locks because it’s really troublesome to use ordinary that comes with keys. The chances of you losing your keys around the gym pretty high and that is what happened to Fyda. She lost her key once and gotten the lady assistant to cut off her lock to open up her locker. I don’t have pockets on my pants and I had to secure the key ring onto my ring.

They even have changing cubicles which is really good because not everybody will be able to change their clothing right in front of the locker or at the bath cubicles.

This is how the bath cubicles look like, they have provided shampoo and shower gel but they smelt like insecticide so I recommend bringing your own. Many doesn’t know that there are hooks on the outside wall of the cubicle to hang their towels. Take this picture for example, people hang their towel over the metal bar instead.

These are one of our favorites, steam bath and sauna. Call us crazy but we used both on the first day and we learn the lesson not to go both after another. You’ll get pretty much dehydrated and dizzy. We love the steam bath and the longest we stayed in there was for 20 minutes.

The weighing scale is your friend especially when you want to lose weight. When I was in school I learn this weighing scales are more accurate than digital ones but you just have to be patient on getting it right.

Overall, we both enjoyed a lot at the gym for the three weeks. Just need some improvement in several areas. I would love to join but I just have other things to come across financially. I was wishing that there will be separate packages for classes and gyms. I do recommend this gym, they do have water stations around the gym which again, I forgot to take a shot of it. I wished that they have a swimming pool (I believe they could because there is a sufficient area right outside of the gym) but this is the express gym I wouldn’t want to expect much. I heard from my friend said the one in Mid Valley (head quarters) has swimming pool.

Celebrity Fitness is available in selected countries such as Indonesia and India. For more information, please visit their website here.

My rating: 4/5

xoxo,
Traclyn Yeoh