Know thy enemy

So, why is it so important to know what you eat?

You can tell a healthy perspn from one who is not based on what he / she eats. Try it. observe or ask someone you know about their eating pattern and see if it correlates to their fitness level / physical appearance / health condition.

Now if you'd just google up these information, pull out a food chart, nutrition chart and diet page, all the facts figures and ideas would come flooding your mind. Now, here's a simple straightforward page which gives a basic run down of what are the basics of what you need to know. Taken from About.com Guide.

Updated May 13, 2011

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board

Here's How:

1. Eating breakfast will help you refuel after a long night's sleep and start your day with more energy. Choose some protein and fiber for your breakfast and it's a good time to eat some fresh fruit:
   • one serving of oatmeal
   • one-half cup strawberries
   • a tablespoon or two chopped nuts
   • glass of orange juice
2. A mid-morning snack is totally optional. If you ate a larger breakfast you may not feel hungry until lunchtime. However, if you're feeling a bit hungry and lunch is still two or three hours away, a light mid-morning snack will tide you over without adding a lot of calories:
   • One serving of plain yogurt mixed with one-half cup blueberries and a little honey
   • Water or diet soda
3. Lunch is often something you eat at work or school, so here is an idea for a portable lunch you can pack and take with you:
   • A sandwich made with two slices of 100% whole grain bread, two or three ounces of lean turkey breast, a little mayonnaise or mustard, a tomato slice and lettuce
   • One-half to one cup raw baby carrots
   • One can or bottle of sparkling water
   Or if you eat at a restaurant:
   • Order a vegetable salad with the dressing served on the side
   • cup of soup
4. A mid-afternoon snack is also optional. Keep it low in calories and eat just enough to keep you from feeling too hungry - dinner is just a couple of hours away.
   • One apple and 12 walnuts
   • Glass of milk
5. Dinner is a time when it's easy to over-eat, especially if you haven't eaten much during the day, so watch your portion sizes. Mentally divide your plate into four quarters. One quarter is for your meat or protein source, one quarter is for a starch and the last two quarters are for green and colorful vegetables and/or a green salad:
   • One serving of baked or roasted chicken breast
   • One small baked potato with salsa or low-fat sour cream
   • Large portion of steamed asparagus
   • One small 100% whole-grain roll
   • Small glass of white wine (optional)
6. A light complex carbohydrate-rich evening snack may help you sleep, but avoid heavy, greasy foods or foods high in refined sugars.
   • Six whole grain crackers
   • Two ounces sliced cheese
   • Piece of fresh fruit

Tips:

1. Drink several glasses of water throughout the day.
2. Choose whole-grain breads and cereals.
3. Serve lean meats instead of high fat processed meats.
4. Avoid foods that are high in fats and added sugars.

Gym - Identifying the enemy

After so much soul searching and thinking done on my part, i've decided to put pen onto paper and set my goals.
As it is with any goal setting writing it down is definitely more effective than creating the ideas and goals in our head. So i'm setting it out in a book to document every single progress, inch by inch, exercises done and food taken. Also, you need to know who your enemy is before you step onto the battlefield.

Generally when you starts on a journey to loose weight, you'd naturally hit the gym or the park, start running and exercising, more frequently in the first few weeks and reducing it to once or twice in the next following weeks, reducing it to once a month and then to none while you see yourselves back at square one.

When starting an exercise regime itself, you'll naturally feel more hungry and tend to eat a lot more or the same portions you used to eat before consoling yourself over the fact that you've exercised and thus the food should be digested faster since you're increasing your metabolic rate. Now here's the hard fact or truth - it doesn't work that way.

Sadly, when you start off your exercise regime, be it to loose some obvious love handles, reduce your waist line or even to tone your body or to be healthy overall, food control works hand in hand with your exercise. They co-exist, not stand alone!
So, in order to combat your excess fat, know the source of it - "the enemy"

Read on to what is your enemy all about and how to combat it...

Gym Again Part 3

As mentioned previously, when I first joined the gym, I was motivated by the feel good factor it gave me when I attended the 1 hour classes. And then there was the jet-shower which had good pressure which gives you a good massage feel. Those were my reasons. 


Most of my friends who initially joined the gym did it for these reasons:
1) Check out good looking guys
2) Have something to do after work - to kill time instead of being stuck in a traffic jam
3) Join dance / yoga classes
4) Loose love handles
5) Go together with office colleagues (the more the merrier)


Among the whole lot, one or two stay on for another month or two before terminating their membership. This usually happens under 1 year of joining. Why exactly does this happen? Is the gym not equipped enough? Not enough motivation to keep going? Lost of interest? Gym fees eat into expenses and becomes too expensive?


Actually, the REAL reason behind it is their own self. Going to the gym is seen as a social activity with friends from work. And friends do fall out. Even if you're best of buddies, it's very uncommon to find a common ground in exercise. We're all built differently and just as our bodies respond differently to different medication, the same goes to exercise. Something I do is not necessarily sufficient for the one next to me, in many ways. 
The fall out usually happens when these expectations we have inside is not met at the gym. 

Gym Again Part 2

Notice that I didn't think twice when terminating my gym membership the first time? It was easy because there was no real motivation in the first place. Nothing that I could relate to, I didn't see any "real" physical changes except for the feel-good factor after a good 1 hour dance workout. The feel-good feeling was not strong enough to keep me going to the gym.
By this time, I concluded this few mistakes I must never repeat:


1) Never join the gym just because 
a)  your friends are asking you to 
b)  the whole office had a group discount and you get a cheap membership 
c)  your friend who "needs" to lose weight pulls you in with her to buddy and go together


WHY? Because the above reasons are not values you hold close to you. They are others' motivation. Not yours. 


Do YOU feel fat and ugly? 
Do YOU feel unhealthy or facing health problems such as difficulty in breathing or walking caused by overweight?
Were YOU advised by the doctor to lose some weight to keep your heart from getting clogged by fat?
Any reasons which relates to YOU are the only reasons you should use to join a gym. The decision to join a gym should be only about you, not about your friends / neighbours / siblings.


The only exception to this rule is NONE. Do it only when you have a REAL need to either keep fit or lose weight or tone your body. Only then will your efforts pay off.


I have REAL reasons to why I'm claiming the above. Read on to know why..

Gym exposure

The first gym I enrolled in was California Fitness (CF). This was in 2005 and I joined because the dude who signed us up was good looking. Actually the main reason was also to accompany my friend Roc who then was very determined to start working out. Notice that it wasn't purely "MY OWN" intention. They were intentions of my friend and a cute guy who was a total bore anyway and none of those were concrete enough reasons to keep me grounded to stay on.


CF then was in Midvalley and I used to work at Central Plaza along Jalan Sultan Ismail. My routine was to be up by 7am, take a commuter train from Sentul to Mid Valley to attend their 8am yoga class. I did this religiously for at least 3 times a week. Work starts at 11am then (Middle East timing) so I had ample of time to continue this schedule. After workout, I would take a bus to KL city centre near Central Market and switch to another bus which heads to Jalan Raja Chulan where i'd get off and walk to office. Looking back, I'm surprised at my own perseverance to endure the waiting time (public transport services back then wasn't so great as the waiting time was usually between 20-30 minutes and can go up to an hour sometimes).


I still think that a bulk of my keeping fit was contributed by my walking stint. Eventually, CF moved to Menara Standard Chartered which was right next to my office building! What a great timing it was. Roc and I used to meet a few times in a month (the number of times can be counted by hand) at the gym to attend a yoga or pilates lesson together. I used to hate the machines so we'll attend a class, sit in the sauna room while chit chatting and then shower and head home. So gym activity for us was a social meeting. Sometimes we'll walk to secret Recipe for dinner and at other times we'd head home. The routine of going to the gym in the mornings before work continued on for me and i'd go in the evenings when i'm meeting Roc.


Eventually I started getting more busy at work and gym took a back seat. Therefore gym sessions were reduced from 12 times a month to 4 times a month! I didn't see any more reason to go there to do a 1-hour dance class since I also started taking up salsa lessons outside.  Salsa was a long pending plan so I took it up in fear that my knee will be too weak to dance as I grow older. So I dropped out of gym and terminated my membership without second thoughts thinking my money was being wasted. Sigh.. this only marks the beginning of an even longer ordeal.. Read on.

My exercise history

I'm not exactly a very health-or exercise concerned person. Even in school, my only "active" involvement in sports is during PE when we used to play hand ball, did some warm up, long jump, sprint and such. I was very interested in playing badminton so I joined this club and went through intense training with the team coach who was hired by the school. So my Friday noon activities revolved around badminton practise and then i'd head home.

The more important point to note here is the non existant motivation from anywhere to pursue such an interest so young. Even form 6 was the mundane racquet games and running sessions to contribute marks for our sports group. A proper coach was never there to guide, unleash and polish our talents. Be it a talent or a non existant one.

Nearing school sports day even, my stamina is so low that I usually can't run all the way without panting half way. Emphasis in sports was never really given to me. No one at home were actively involved and in turn it wasn't exactly became a habit for me to keep up. The fact that my parents were small framed, never too fat but just right, and we were always walking from anywhere to everywhere kept us in our shapes. We never had an urgency to keep fit or get into shape because we always were in shape.

However, in growing up and being exposed to the real world and outside food, realisation hits. It's not all rosy and healthy food outside where control in salt, MSG overuse and sugar content is out of our hands. When exposed to these, having been accustomed to home cooked food all my life, the stomach had to adjust readjust and also rebel.
Once the turmoil was over, I could mouth and digest anything I wanted including spicy food with loads of ice water and tissue at hand. And then comes the exercise conscience since bad fat keeps adding up and as the age adds a year getting rid or back to shape gets even harder and requires more effort.

In my case, it's literally starting from scratch considering my zero exposure to exercise since birth. I'm going to dedicate the next few pages to my getting back to shape ordeal. This is no easy task as I'm struggling just as every normal individual would to get rid of fat without the aid of steroids or medication.

Keep following.

Back on the roll again

After a long series of silence, I am coming back to this site. It's not good to leave something dormant for too long. Like a garden. When you leave it dormant for too long weeds grow longer than your own hair and getting rid of it will be one hell of a mess!

The same applies to relationships. Leave it without effort or work and see it crumble and fall right before your own eyes. So what has happened in life surrounding for the past 1.5 months that i've been missing?

Well, to start with, I've resigned from the job I held since 2009. Well this transition is rather weird considering that I was based in Subang office for 1 year, was offered to move to KL office in beginning of 2011, plans changed before I moved, offered to be transferred to PJ office instead, I ended up breaking my toe and held on MC for 2 months. Thank God that I went for my Cambodia trip before the incident. Chronologically, the timeline goes something like this:
End of Jan 2011 - Cambodia Trip with Nim & Esther
End of Feb 2011 - Break Toe from kicking bed post
Entire Mar 2011 - Bed rest and home based doing absolutely nothing but catching up on reading & watching movies
End of Apr 2011 - Back to work at PJ office
End of May 2011 - Tendered resignation and served 1 month notice
End of June 2011 - Jobless (current)

In between changes were some new habits introduced: Gym activity. I started going back to workout to get rid of excess fat accumulated throughout the period of being dormant since the only activities done then was eat-sleep-watch movie.

The next series of post will be about the gym workout, the whole work of it. Some mind-boggling revelation and also self awareness. Stay tuned!