Zumba and being healthy!

April 1, 2013 marks the start of my daily healthy regimen. It's not related to April Fool's day you know. This is true. How? Well my officemates with the support and approval of our office management joined together and have our M-W-F (Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays) Zumba class program. Zumba is a Latin-inspired dance-fitness program created by a Columbian dancer and choreographer during the 90's. 

"Zumba involves dance and aerobic elements. Zumba's choreography incorporates hip-hop,soca, samba, salsa, merengue, mambo, martial arts, and some Bollywood and belly dance moves. Squats and lunges are also included.^[2] Zumba Fitness, an organization that sells Zumba videos and products, does not charge licensing fees to gyms or fitness centers.^[3] Approximately 14 million people take weekly Zumba classes in over 140,000 locations across more than 150 countries.^[4] In 1986, Alberto "Beto" Perez forgot his tape of aerobics music for a class he was teaching. He took the tapes he had in his backpack – consisting of traditional salsa and merengue music – and improvised a class using this non-traditional aerobics music." (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Normally, a Zumba class takes an hour of your physical strength. It is rigorous yet a satisfying feeling after all the sweat is coming out in your body. It is also challenging since my goal here is to shed of unwanted calories and burn those excess fats sleeping in my tummy. Last month, our office personnel invited some nutritionists and doctors and gave informative facts about eating the right food at the right time. Though I wasn't able to attend it but one of my officemate told me that for breakfast one should eat protein rich foods. Among them are: 

• Poultry (Chicken, light meat only/ Turkey breast, deli, skinless)

• Beef (Sirloin top steak, broiled, lean only)
• Fish (Salmon, fresh, Atlantic farmed, baked, broiled/ Trout, rainbow, fresh, farmed, baked, broiled/ Tuna, bluefin, fresh, baked, broiled/ Tuna, canned, solid light in water)

• Dairy (Milk, fat free)
• Soy, Nuts, Eggs, Beans (Black beans, canned/ Boca Burger, Vegan/ Egg, hard boiled/ Egg, white only/ Peanut butter, creamy/ Soybeans, green, boiled, drained/ Tofu, raw, firm)

Notice there are no carbo-overload here which means no rice or bread as what we all knew by eating more at breakfast. And by the end of the short "seminar", we weighed ourselves using their not the usual weighing scale as what we have in our bathrooms. Aside from the usual weighing, it also calculates the number of calories in our body and your metabolic age. As for me, I am 33 years old. But my metabolic age is that of a 39-year old person. And that means my body is 6 years older than my number of years of being alive. Yay!

So now that everything in me is not in proportion, I am hoping that it will lead me to a healthy lifestyle starting from attending Zumba classes and later on choosing the right kind of food and eating at the right time.