Slimming Tips

[Suet Seung]

@Hoju: I was actually considering a pedometer, but I heard that not all of them are accurate. I might reconsider.

Kidd,

It's actually advised that you eat breakfast. The body requires to be refueled a few times a day. People who skip breakfast everyday is more likely to gain weight than lose it. Breakfast starts your metabolism. For a healthy body weight, it's said you need to eat breakfast that includes protein and fiber because it'll keep you full until lunch time. I usually eat instant oatmeal, banana or eggs. You can try a hardboiled egg, an orange and a small bowl of whole grain cereal with low fat milk. I think with a good breakfast, you can fuel your brain and body with some energy. Usually when I skip breakfast, I'd feel tired and low on energy. Breakfast is suppose to be good for your memory.

If I feel lazy with breakfast, I'd buy some carrot juice. Carrot juice is an excellent source of vitamin A. It's good for your eyes, your immunity, hair, skin, with a whole bunch of other health benefits. It's naturally sweet and has a nice creamy taste. For me, I feel alert after drinking it in the morning. I'm waiting for another sale to buy more.

Have you heard of the Japanese morning exercise called 'Radio Taiso' or 'Radio Calisthenics'? I've heard it's a famous and has been a longtime Japanese tradition done in many social setting for morning exercise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNTKdQjVZ2A It looks interesting.

[Banh Mi]

Pedometers are not 100% accurate. But when you average tens of thousands of steps a day, the inaccuracy becomes a nonissue. A rough estimate is good enough. When I was working at the casino, I took one of the pedometers they gave out at one of the banquets and I started doing little experiments.
When I worked, I averaged consistently around 35-40,000 steps in an 8 hour shift including time getting to and from work. Then I compared if I took more steps when I was serving food for the day or if I was serving drinks. Sure there might be like an error of 5 steps every 200 steps, but I still got a rough estimate of in the 30,000 or 40,000 range. I didn't use it to calculate how often I walked, I knew from how my feet blistered up after work. But it was fun to compare stats of different days and different tasks.

I remember getting to work was around 6,000 steps. 10,000 a day is easy and quite weak for keeping health.

[HuangYushi]

Read this in the newspapers today: Some dim-witted twit decides that "syabu" (local name for methamphetamines) can be used weight-loss.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story...667&sec=nation

[blueberry]

My friend lost a bunch of weight when he went on Atkins diet. The other believes on only eating 30g carbs/meal (=90g/day). This doesn't work for me since I love rice + bread.

I'm also trying to lose weight now....so I've been trying to exercise more & watch what I eat. Reduce sugar (drink tea at work instead of 2nd cup of coffee to cut sugar + creamer), walk more, eat fruit + veggies more, switch to whole grain / wheat bread & pasta instead of white.

I also try to eat "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper". Try to do bit exercise/cardio in the morning to increase the heart rate which will help more calories burning throughout the day (it's tough to do since I usually don't have lots of time in the morning).

I just started, so I haven't really seen a big weight loss....but hopefully a little change here & there will give me good results.

[HuangYushi]

I gain 2.4 kg within 3 months.

Once, I ate roti canai (out of sheer convenience) three times in a week and gained 1 kg at the end of the week!

Sufficient exercise and controlled food intake are still the best ideas when it comes to losing weight.

Here are some suggestions according your current living situation:

1. Breakfast: 2 slices of bread with 1 slice cheese (little preparation) and 1 cup of drink of your choice (whatever you want, including teh tarik from the local mamak ). I heard on some radio show that eating breakfast before 7.30 a.m. helps to prevent weight gain. That should keep you going until lunch-time, since your job is quite sedentary. If you need a mid-morning snack, either have a drink, a couple of pieces of cream crackers, or something similar.

2. Lunch: Something light, like kuay teow soup or "har meen". The soup fills you up. Drink plain water or fruit juice, and have some sliced/whole fruit if you want.

3. Tea-break (optional): Another drink, preferably non-sweet, and a small portion of anything convenient, like cream crackers, plain cake or more fruit.

4. Dinner: Go to the nearest "chap fan" place and get a small portion of rice, with 2-3 vegetable dishes and 1 meat/egg, depending on what's available. If the choice of dishes is wide enough (i.e. the seller has like 40 dishes or something), you can don't have to repeat what you eat for at least 3 days in a row.

*Note: If you are the type that won't fall asleep at your desk after lunch regardless of what you eat, you can swap the dinner option with the lunch option. Will probably work better in helping you to lose weight.

If you can (and it's safe to do so), use the stairs at your workplace. Walk at a brisk pace. Drink plenty of plain water throughout the whole day.

Most importantly, avoid KFC, McDonald's, roti canai and junk food (potato chips, peanuts, etc) for 3 months ... unless it's a special occasion and you have no choice.

If you put a regular and disciplined exercise schedule into the above, I'm sure you'll see results faster.

---

A lot of people mistakenly think that skipping meals is a good/fast way to lose weight, but unfortunately, it's not. I had one colleague who was a bit fleshy but not really overweight or fat, who thought she could lose weight quickly for her wedding more than a year ago by skipping meals. So her entire daily meal schedule went haywire: She had breakfast at 10.30 in the morning, lunch at 3 or 4 p.m. and dinner after 9.00 at night. The odd hours were especially bad for lunch because she was making do with food that was no longer fresh (lunch was provided by the company at 12 to 1 pm; and she kept hers until 3-4 pm). She ended up having all sorts of stomach/gastric problems that eventually led to her baby being induced for delivery this week because she had another bout of stomach problems with diarrhea and vomitting.

[kidd]

Thanks HYS for the tips.

My colleague has recently join Herbalife. I've also gone to listen to their intro. I want to try that. It seems that besides weight lost, they can also improve your health. I've asked the person whether Herbalife can cure sinus and she said there are several cases of success story. Anyone try Herbalife before?

[PJ]

I need an appetite-suppressing obesity drug. I love fat, greasy (aka good tasting) food too much, and I have no interest in healthy food.

But, life is all about doing the right thing when you know what it is. So I shall overcome my hunger for big fat cakes and juicy steaks.