Monday, August 17, 2009

Effective Diet Planning to loose weight


One of my friends has consulted me a bout one month back. He told me he is extremely confused with so much diet plan suggestion. Yes, you named it. There are plenty of diet plan out there such as South Beach Diet, Atkins Diet, Glycemic Index Diet, Cookies Diet, Cambridge Diet, Lighter life Diet & so on.... so on.........

Most of them does work in certain way. One may be more risky than the other. Most of the plan has certain consideration or planning in mind. So what is the best way?

In fact, I had tried many different diet plan. (I really research into all area of exercise & diet. I believe, it is no point to be just with theory but no practical experiences) Some of the plan is so low in calories or nutrient that made your body feel so weak. I am not over weight. In fact, far from it. I am 5fts 6 inches and my weight is usually around 130 pounds and seldom exceed 140 pounds. In my late twenties, I weight about 150 pounds with intensive weight training. From mid 30's, I focus much more on long distance jogging which build on my endurance. From then on, I usually maintain at around 130 pounds. So with my lean body weight, it hardly requires much energy to support it. Yet those low calories diet will make you have quiet a lousy feeling. With that, it in facts slow down my body metabolism. Many people only look into the calories, carb or fats.. but they forgot the most important factor...... their body.
Yes! your body is a self regulating machine. It will try to adjust itself based on what is given to you. When you in take less food, it will try to put your body into conservation mode. Of course you can try to push it further by doing more exercise, but it is dangerous and could be harmful to your body. You will started to have a lousy feeling.

So, it is no point to have such a lousy feeling. It will lower your morale and it is bad for your weight loss in long term. My friend, you need to lift up your feeling to battle the long term weight loss plan. If the journey is enjoyable, you will feel motivated and press on in long run.

I would suggest that you should at least have 4 meals in a day. (If you are doing a lot of weight training you might wanted to go for 6 meals in a day). Did you get it wrong? If you are trying to loose weight & loose fat, isn't it you should consume less meals? When your body noticed that you are taking less, it will try to store more fat. Yes, it set provision that you might not have food down the line and started storing. When you break down into 4 meals or more, your mind get the signal that supply is sufficient. So it will continue to burn off the excess and even tap into the reserve. Especially if you breakdown, to smaller meal, the body can absorb the nutrient better and there are less extra for the body to store and it can be burn off properly. ( Yes, you can burn off more fat if your body did not feel starving.

So how should you distribute the 4 meals? I encourage breakfast to be bigger as we are not consuming any food for abt 9~11 hours when we sleep. Most of our proteins has also been used for tissue repair. Lunch should be lighter than breakfast. Dinner & supper should be lightest. ( Especially supper, it should be mainly be protein based so that it can be useful for tissue repair. The carb should be low as your body is not going to need a lot of energy while sleeping.

It is quite complex with the detail planning. So, if you have any question, I will try my best to answer your comments here. So do leave me a note.

My finger has it fair share of exercise today. So do look out for my next post. With you great success in your weight loss. Thank you for reading my effective weight loss program.

Photo : courtesy of stock.xchng

Friday, August 14, 2009

Died of Crappy diet program

Just came across this news over the web. Sad to hear that this women had died with drinking too much water by taking the lighter Life Diet program. She was died of swelling of her brain with too much water cause by saturation of water in her body. The Quote extrated from the news articles on her husband comments.

"Mr Henson, 40, said: ‘I would like to discourage any women from doing this kind of crash diet. Even if you are healthy like my wife was, these diets can still be risky."

In my view, Lighter Life is a crappy diet program. One should NEVER EVER taking part in a drastic plan in loosing weight. Practically Lighter weight advice people not to eat & replace it with meal replacement & drinking water. It is a Very Low Calories Diet (VLCD). In fact, I would encourage people not to take more than 1 meal replacement in a day. Weight loss should be gradual and it should be fun. Although drinking more water does make you feel "full", but nothing is better than a good natural nutritional meal.

As mentioned in my Effective Weight Loss Master Plan, one should always keep a journal and plan the weight loss gradually. A good balance is important. You should not have too much shock to your body. Too drastic changes to your eating pattern is extremely dangerous.

To see the news, you can visit the link below

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Nutrition - Key to weight Loss

I have many friend asking me. What should I eat to loss weight ? Should I take more,carbo, fat or protein? Even if you do a lots of reading on books or publication, you will see one diet plan try to preech against the other. So what is ready the best way to eat? Seriously, I am also quite quite confuse 20 years ago when I started to research into nutrition & diet planning. It is like hunting into the wild jungle.

Is there really a simple way? Hmm............. Just any how eat lor.......hahaa.....



Wrong !! Luckily, there is a simple guideline. Phiew !!

The basic fundamental is nutrition. Once your diet plan is nutrition enough, it will burn more fat and make you feel less hungry. Basically, our body have requirement for vitamins, minerals, fibre, protein (9 essential amino acids), carbohydrates, oil & fat. So a balance nutrition approach is important. So in order to determine what do take you have to have a basic understanding of the followings:-
Good carbohydrates vs bad carbohydrates
Not all carbohydrates are bad. In fact carbohydrate give us a good source of energy. The challenge is process carbohydrates is very low in fibre & has almost no mineral & vitamins. So as much as possible try to avoid white rice, white bread, french fries & high sugar drink (contain chemical & extremely high sugar content but zero in nutrition). Consume more good carbohydrates like fruits (apple,grapefruit,Kiwi & etc) & vegtables (cucumber, lettuces, pumpkin & etc).

Protein
Protein are general good especially it is the main ingredient to build muscle. If you are very conscious about the quality protein. You might like to go for fishes instead of beef. White meat is considered as a better source of protein. There are really no necessity to avoid egg if you do not consume too much. In fact, the egg yoke is full of nutrient. Fat should be avoided from other source rather than from egg. For most body builder, they usually consume a lot of eggs with only 2 egg yoke to avoid too much fat.



Fat & Oil
Olive oil & Salmon fish oil are healthy source of oil. In fact, both prevent the oxidant of LDL. So it is a good form of cholesterol. Especially for Salmon fish oil which is extremely rich in Omega 3 fatty acid (contain DHA) which is good for the brain. Avocado is also a form of good fat. All these food in fact will regulate the glucose level in our blood stream thus reduce the insulin being produce. It causes our body to have the feeling "full" effects.



Another important fact to consider beside the nutrition facts. One should also avoid food that will cause allergy to them. For example, for those people that are high in uric acid, they should avoid soy protein unless it is specially treated to remove the purine. Beside than, one should consider a wide variety of food to ensure a good spread of nutrient rather than simply based on calories, carbohydrates, proteins or fats.



Remarks : people with medical condition should consult their doctor or nutritionist before planning or executing their diet.



Image source : Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures.net
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?picture=three-peppers&image=615

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Preparation for the North Face 100Km Relay

It is really great to complete the Adidas Sundown Marathon on 30 May with a timing of 5 & 1/2 hrs. Although the timing is not as great as I use to have but I am quite satisfy with this achievement after stop running marathon for more than 10 years.

Now, I am teaming up with my jogging buddy to to run the North Face 100Km relay (50Kmx2) on Oct 2009. This is something I really have not try before. My longest distance ran so far is only marathon (42km).

So I am doing my preparation. For long distant running, you have to ensure that you are taking enough of antioxidant. So today, I am taking salad in this Salad bar. They really have nice dressing that is perfectly healthy. ( Olive Oil, lemon & vinegar. Totally no sugar) The ingredients are really fresh and the lunch was very enjoyable.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Glycemic Index - Essentials criteria to weight Loss

If you are serious about your weight loss, Glycemic Index (GI) is one criteria that you must consider seriously. It is one of the far most important criteria. Most of the diet plan monitor the GI index of the carbohydrate food intake, be it Atkins diet, South Beach Diet, diet for diabetic or etc. So why is Glycemic Index so important? How it work help you to burn more fat?



Firstly, we will look into how GI is measured.

GI is an index ranging from 0 ~ 100 where 100 being the highest reference to glucose. (the most common methods as some method is using white bread as reference) The higher the GI reading, the faster the carbohydrate will breakdown into glucose and release into the blood stream. High Glycemic Index food are generally processed food such as white bread, rice & baked goods. High GI food cause the blood glucose to raiser rapidly. Low GI food are mostly food which is high in fiber and slow in breaking down into glucose in the blood stream. Whole grain & vegetable make up the low GI food category.



How the low GI contribute to your weight loss?

The main grouping of food are carbohydrate, protein & fats which product as the sources of energy. Carbohydrate itself has no nutritional value and mainly is to contribute as an energy source for the body. As the carbohydrate enter into the blood stream as glucose. Insulin is release by our body into the blood stream to balance off the glucose and burn off as fuel. Any glucose that is not consumed will be brought to the liver and converted into fat and stored for futures usage. during this procedure the insulin will drop drastically as the liver converted the glucose into fat and hence causes the insulin drop. Due to the drop in insulin, you will feel a sense of hunger. Therefore high GI food cause you to get hungry faster and intake more calories. whereas low Gi food will keep you full for a longer time and also intake less calories. In fact, while the low GI food is unable to supply glucose to meet your body demand in energy initially, it will triggered your brain to start converting some of your stored fat into carbohydrate and burn of as energy.



So if you are able to use the GI index wisely in your dietary planning, you will be able to eat less & burn more fats. Scientific studies has showed that people that using a low GI diet is having less likely with type 2 diabetic disease & heart disease. So in order to have a more effective weight loss program. Always check the GI chart and plan your meal properly. The glycemic index table is easily available from USDA.



Good luck! Thank you for reading the effective weight loss program and I wish you great success in reducing the extra kilos.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Effective Exercise to burn fat

Exercise is one great way to burn of the extra fat. Exercise will increase a higher metabolism rate. Hence, it will help you to burn off more fat. However, intensive exercise is targeted more into building cardio strength and the effectiveness of fat burning is lower.

For effective fat burning, increase the exercise duration rather than increase the intensity is more fruitful. It is important to have a long term planning to ensure that your exercise routine is sustainable in longer terms. Intensive workout tend to induce more sport injuries and also stressed out the body. Water losses actually formed the main losses for intensive workout. In fact, weight training is one of the effective way to burn fat at the same time, it help you to build up muscle. scientific studies showed that weight training is a very effective to stimulate the growth hormone and hence improve the muscle growth and burn more fat.

While planing your exercise schedule, it is always better to spread out the exercise program. For fat burning, it will be better to schedule a 'fast-walk' for 4 times a week rather than running for the same duration 2 times a week. A well spread out training program will help you to formed the habit of exercising

Quick Instant replacement to turbo charged your fat burning

Your have been monitoring your diet faithfully. You have been eating healthy yet you are not seeing your weight reducing. What's wrong?

A lot of time we did not realise that the healthy salad that we consume actual contains one of the most sinful devil. Yes, we are eating healthy with salad which contain vegetable with high fibre. However, the dressing is very high in fat & carbohydrate which most of the time we miss out our guard totally. One effective way is to replace your dressing with vinegar, a bit of lemon juice & olive oil. Not only it help to aids your digestion, the olive oil is a good fat and the monosaturated fat will help your body to reduce the need for generating insulin to neutralise your glucose level in your bloodstream.

So control your salad dressing wisely and you will be on your way to effective weight lost for the long term.

Weight Loss Diet Tips

Diet is one of the most important area in your weight loss program. Whatever extra calories that we are not able to utilise in our diet will be converted to fat. The equation is as below

Weight ( Gain / or Loss ) = Calories intake - Calories burn

So if your body can burn more than the diet that you consumed, the stored fat in the body will be burned to support your energy requirement. However, it is important not to trigger the hunger signal in your brain in the process of lower your food consumption. When the hunger signal is trigger, your body will try to slow down the metabolism to conserve the calories burn to avoid tapping into the fat reserve. So how do you achieve that?

Consume high fibre food
One way to achieve this is to replace your diet with items that is higher in fibre. It will give you a more 'full' feeling. In addition, diet that is higher in fibre will also slow down the sugar release into the blood stream so that it will not release the insulin into your blood stream. Insulin in the blood stream is actually the culprit to quickly bring the sugar to our liver and cover it into fat & store it into our body. Along with that the sugar level drop drastically and you will feel hungry more quickly. Follow that your mind will send the signal to your brain to slow down the metabolism as the hunger signal give your body a false signal that your food resources is not sufficient. In contrast, your body has a lot of store fat.

Consume mixture of complex & simple carbohydrate
With the absorption of the carbohydrate at different rate. (Glycemic index. Please check out more in our future blog on the glycemic index of various food, the lower the glycemic index the slower it will release the glucose into the blood stream) The glucose level in the blood will be more consistent. Hence, less insulin will be release into the blood stream. The glucose in our blood will be maintain in our blood stream as a fuel sources for a longer period. Hence, assist the body to burn more calories. In addition, it will also keep us full for a long period hence naturally control us to eat lesser.

Once you have a good understanding of how our food affect our weight loss. it will be very easy to tune your body to burn off more fat.

Effective Weight Loss Master Plan

With the convenient of technology, obesity has rapidly became the problem of more people in the modern days. Especially with the automation facilities such as lift, esculator & efficient transportation system, people reduce their chances of exercise drastically. In addition to this problem, modern diet of high fat with high carbohydrate has treamendously worsen the problem. It became a chanllenge to maintain an ideal weight. So to combat the obesity problem, a total approach to weight loss is essential. It is the ultimate solution to a sustainable weight control rather than just dieting where it slow down the metabolism rate. Once you stop dieting, your weight will shoot up rapidly. In a yo-yo syndrome is more harmful.



So how to plan and execute an effective weight loss program?



Mindset and determination

You have to provide yourself with strong reason why you need to loss that weight. The more reasons that you can think off will ultimately give you more support. As the motivation get stronger, the execution will be easier later. Next you have to set yourself the ideal weight that you want to achieve. Use some visual way as a gauge, eg. like a particular size of dress or shirt that you target to wear ultimately. Imagine yourself fitting into that dress and feel the excitement & happiness. When you are able to associate a strong emotion of imaging achieving your goal, you will have a stronger inspiration to maintain your program during the execution.



Keep a journal

Record in a note book all the foods that you intake and the time that you consume it. Also record the amount of time that you spend on exercising and being inactive (eg. sitting infront of the TV). By writing into down, you strengthen your determination towards your goal. It will also help you to able to adjust and review your program later on. The more details it is, the more effective it will be.



Plan a gradual weight loss plan

It will make your journey more enjoyable. This is very critical as it avoid the possibility of the yo-yo syndrome. Another major reason of doing so is due to medical reason. It is always dangerous to loose your weight drastically as your metabolism system will be totally distrupted. You might not have enough of nutrition to provide your body to function properly. Slimming down drastically is no good. With a much gradual planning, it will also give you the necessary encouragement along the way as the target is much easier to achieve and you will be less likely to give up. You can always improve you plan later on when your body is able to adopt to the changes with ease.



Plan your diet

This is the most important aspect in an effective weight loss program. Probably, you will exercise one to three times a week. However, you will be taking at least twenty one meal (based on a 3 meals per day diet). As diet is a very complex segment, we will look into it in details along the way.



Plan your exercise

Exercise is an important approach in weight loss. Always set gradual target. You need to condition your heart slowly. In fact, a lower intensity but spread over a wider duration will burn more fat eventually. It also give you better motivation as it is more achiveable. In addition, when you break down to do the exercise more frequently, it is also easier for you to form the habit of exercising. Always start off with an easy form of exercise such as cycling. It is also more convenient to carry out the exercise where you can work out on a cycling machine while you watch your TV.



Monitor your result every fortnightly and improve on your program

As most weight loss take time, do not be anixious to monitor your result daily as it will make you demoralised. If you are having some success, reward yourself along the way. It will keep you motivated and sustain your plan.



There are no short cut to sustainable weight loss in a healthy way. A slow and steady way will make you weight loss enjoyable and hence give you lots of motivation to stick to your plan. You need a master plan in place to ensure long term success.

Thank you for visiting my effective weight loss program blog. See you again soon.