The Challenges of Intermittent Fasting

For the past six months or so, I have been doing intermittent fasting to help with my weight loss. It’s something that I have tried more than once before but I found it to be too challenging for me so I stopped. 

These days, however, I finally got the hang of intermittent fasting. Usually, I fast for 18 hours, then have a six-hour eating window. When I can, I even go for a 24-hour fast once a week. If I don’t have much time to fast because of certain occasions where I have to eat with other people I go for a 16 hour fast at least. 

Photo by PublicDomainPictures on Pixabay

When people ask me what I did to lose weight, it sounds simple to say calorie deficit, intermittent fasting, and exercise but it is not as easy as it sounds. Just with intermittent fasting alone, there are challenges that go along with it:

Netflix Picks: Emily in Paris Season 2

Finally got around to watching Emily in Paris season 2. Took me a while to digest this second season compared to the first one for some reason. No binge-watching for me this time around. Not that it means that the show was bad, it’s just that I wasn’t able to do it this season even if there were (still) only ten episodes that lasted less than an hour.

Makeup Under Your Mask: Yes or No?

To all the ladies out there I have a question: how many of you wear makeup underneath your mask?

I only ask this question because I do. But I have also had people talk to me about how silly it feels for them to wear makeup during this pandemic because it makes them break out from wearing it under a mask all day. Some have commented that they did not see the point of wearing makeup if people won’t see it anyway. 

Photo by RobbieWi on Pixabay

Wearing makeup under the mask is not easy. During the first few months of the pandemic, I tried it and realized that the normal way I put on makeup meant that everything was going on the mask. By the time I took it off to eat lunch, most of my makeup was practically wiped off by the mask. Maybe it was because my makeup, while normally smudge-proof, was underneath the mask and I was probably sweating underneath it. 

For a time I found the whole smudge thing annoying so I stopped wearing makeup altogether. But then I realized that I wasn’t feeling “dressed” going to work without makeup for some reason. I felt like mentally without makeup I was not in a professional mode so I decided to try wearing makeup to work again. 

It was not easy to find the right combination of makeup that I could use that would not smudge off underneath the mask. Here’s what I do for makeup at work:

Netflix Picks: Made You Look

After I graduated from college, one of the first things that I wish I could do for a living was to be a museum curator or someone who worked in an art gallery. The arts was one of my two majors in college and it was something that I was passionate about. Unfortunately, life happened and I went on a different career path.  The closest I’ve been to art now has been visiting museums and watching documentaries on TV like Made You Look on Netflix.

Made You Look tells the story of fake art, particularly how one person was able to dupe one of the oldest art galleries in New York in a span of ten years into certifying works of art from artists such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock despite the lack of provenance (proof of history and ownership).

The Annoying Act of Catfishing

This pandemic has everyone going online for everything. Shopping, food deliveries, dating…just about anything that you can do online is currently being done online. Apparently, even scammers have become more active online as well. 

Photo by vojta_kucer on Pixabay

There are so many people that I have encountered online recently who have been messaging me on my Instagram account. I never had a problem with it before but it seems that with my weight loss I have had messages from men a lot lately who are showing “interest” in me. I told my family about it and they said it wouldn’t hurt to see if it was real or not and that I should reply. I tried it a couple of times but every time I did there were all these red flags that showed that these guys were just catfishing (pretending to be someone they’re not) to message with me. I have read about instances where people do this to get the woman’s interest and scam them out of their money. No way will I ever be interested in that. 

Netflix Picks: The Blacklist

One of the TV shows that I loved watching since it started was The Blacklist starring James Spader and Megan Boone. I remember watching the first season in 2013 and following this crime series as much as I could. I think I watched the first season from start to finish, then for the next seasons, I would watch a few, enough to catch up on the storyline until the eighth season. I think at some point I was merely reading up episode recaps then deciding which episode to watch/catch up on (since we get the show on the same week as the original airing).

Recently, as a way to pass the time on the elliptical on my daily workouts, I have started binge-watching The Blacklist. I’m on the elliptical for more than an hour daily, so there are days when I watch the show when I’m on it, Since I work out daily, I have been able to finish catching up on all eight seasons available on Netflix. I think the current 9th season is being shown somewhere on cable, but I haven’t been able to figure out the time. I think I’ll catch up on it when it goes to Netflix later.

Netflix Picks: Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed

Does anyone remember Bob Ross? He was this painter who was on TV who would make these works of art during his TV show called The Joy of Painting during the 80s and early 90s. I don’t remember when I was able to watch his show exactly, I just know that I got to see the show on one of the local TV channels when I was younger, probably in grade school. It was fascinating to watch him paint and he made it all seem so easy. I think that it was because of this show that when I was in high school I decided to choose art as an elective so I could learn more about making art myself.