Healthy Dieting

Wonderful outing place for friends and family to get along during weekends

2010-12-23T21:37:00.002+08:00

Hi all, currently I’m organizing a small trip with my colleagues to our MacRitchie Reservoir Park.

MacRitchie Reservoir is one of the four reservoirs that bound the nature reserves. Other reservoirs include Lower Peirce Reservoir, Upper Peirce Reservoir and Upper Seletar Reservoir.

MacRitchie Reservoir was constructed in 1867 as the first reservoir in Singapore. It resulted from an increase in demand for water in the mid-19th century, which grew beyond the capacity of ox-drawn water carts. In 1891, the reservoir was extended and the enlarged Impounding Reservoir was renamed as Thomson Road Reservoir in 1907. Then, in honour of the Municipal Engineer, James MacRitchie, who designed and built the reservoir, it was renamed again as MacRitchie Reservoir.

This place is just wonderful for family or friends outing if you just wanna hang out without need to spend a lot. Yes, this park is entrance free! How good is that?!

We gathered at Yishun MRT station at about 9:30am. Then, we went to McDonalds to grab a nice big breakfast set and went to bakery shop to buy bread for our short trip. Then, we took bus No. 852 at Yishun Interchange. We reached Macritchie Reservoir around 11:15AM.

Estimate whole journey is 11km. We started our journey at the Start point. The trail is actually along the reservoir, the view is just superb. You can see a lot of kayak activity going on as well.

Walking along the jungle trail, breathing the natural fresh air, feeling every bit of your body cells is being charged up by this beautiful forest. Just think that how you haven’t been close to mother nature? It really helps to release the stress and tense of the fast pace city life and start appreciate the nature. We had a rest at the ranger station and have a short break. We took out our food and enjoy eating and chatting among each other before we continue our journey to the tree top. After the tree top bridge, we went to the Jelutong tower. The tower was about 6 storey tall. We can feel the tower was kinda shaking when we reach the top of the tower. After having a few photo session, we decided to go down because it seems to be unsafe to stay there. Then, we decided its time to exit but we seems to have lost our way. Fortunately, we manage to asked a kind uncle and he show us the way out. Although we were tired, we continue walking and walking. Suddenly, we saw something funny and interesting that cheers the group up! A group of monkeys on the tree! Haha…. Yes, we were seeing the monkey mother was carrying the baby with love and care. They are so much like humans. Thanks to the monkeys, we regain our energy and continue walking out the exit. Finally, we reach the main road and got up a bus. We went to a nearby restaurant and had our dinner together and our topic is non other than the experience in the Macritchie park.

I’m glad that everyone enjoy the trip and will be looking forward to arrange another trip together again.

What is Meditation and how it affect our well-being?

2010-12-05T16:46:00.003+08:00

I’m kinda feel frustrated lately due to workload and studies, not sure what kind of life path I want.Guess that some of you might have similar experience throughout your life. And I remembered one of my close friend suggested that I should try to practice meditation. I really don’t have a clue on meditation. So what I always do is ask Mr. Google. Currently I am doing a simple research on what is meditation and later on what benefits if I practice meditation.

Meditation is a group of techniques for mental training. Meditation can help to improve mental health and capacities as well as physical health. Some of the techniques can be learn through book, article or youtube, which is simple to follow up. Others might need guidance from those qualified meditation teacher.

Although there are many kinds of meditation methods, basically, meditation involves a calm state of mind with deep focus. There are some meditation involve in maintaining thoughts awareness in the mind, but not pursuing them. Other forms involve in deep focused attention to a mantra, breath or candle flame. The purpose of these is to bring the mind into a stage where it is slow down or stop, in order to achieve access to the inner peace within you. It is also possible to alter the state of awareness around you.

Control your mind. Practice to control your mind instead of it controlling you. You can achieve everything when your mind is in controlled. Meditation is more to focusing on a certain thought. It does not allow you to race with many thoughts and without direction. It pulls you back to focus on a certain thought or idea.

How meditation will affect your well-being? Through practicing meditation, people learn to listen to their inner-self and recognize their own strength and weakness. It helps in strengthen the potential self inner healing power of the human body. As we know, our mind have very big potential power, and through meditation, we can enhance the power on the mind. Meditation can also help in getting back the balance when you feel stressed, lose focus or tired.

Of course, practicing meditation requires commitment and determination. Starting may not easy for you. But I’m sure that if you really want to make a better changes in your life and intend to practice meditation consistently, you will surely see the good effects in your daily life.

Through life, we all have good and bad experience. This is part of the journey through life, and through those experiences that help us learn and grow. Be positive in your life. No matter the experience is good or bad, it happened for a reason. Learned as much as possible from it. That’s why through meditation, we will learn to accept all our life experience, no matter it is good or bad, we accept it as experiences. We try to strive happiness and peace in our life by accepting all aspects in our life. This is why meditation is so powerful as it helps in achieving all these.

Here is the fact .... (3)

2010-11-27T16:44:00.002+08:00

Work out everyday differently

Muscles can help to burn fatty acids. But do you know that too much or too excessive exercise can actually damage your muscles? Try to do resistance exercise or weight lifting as same as every other day, don’t push yourself too hard. If you are just starting out, suggestion is do weight lifting not more than once a week to get a better result. Try to allow your muscles to have enough time to reshape and repair themselves between the workouts.

Relax, keep your stress away

I found out that stress hormones can actually add up additional fat to be stored in the tummy, become tummy fats! I do understand if we are living in city life, eventually we will stress ourselves up. Some people suggest that by doing meditation will really help in relieving the stress within. Try to have 5 minutes of meditation a day might just help you to release your stress. I might just try it, although not very sure how to do a real meditation, or is it the correct way. I always refer to Google on more information on these. Personally, I can tell you that through exercising, it can really be a BIG BIG stress reliever. When I am stressed out due to work or whatever, I will just go for a jog or a swim. After a 30 minute to 1 hour exercise, I can feel myself much more relax and start focusing back on the things that I need to achieve. Anyway, try to keep up with the total body workout, it will help in reducing overall body fat, tummy fat as well as more relaxing and focus.

Have enough sleep

A lot people including me overlook a very simple lifestyle that has a very big impact on losing weight. Normally, human need 7 – 8 hours of sleep in order to help in proper food digestion and also recuperate from our day. So, if you have enough sleep, your body will be able to digest well and have bigger chance to burn off the food that you ate for the day. There is a study show that those people that have less sleep are more prone to obesity. This is indeed a very simple and healthy lifestyle, but as I said, a lot people neglected or overlooked it.

Final word for today, fat loss is not easy, but it is not impossible. It requires consistency and determination to maintain a good and healthy diet along with exercise program that help in losing tummy fats. You might have some plateaus along the road, just take a step back and try to re-evaluate the situation and try to adjust so that you can improve on continuing your fat loss target. Good luck.

Here is the fact .... (2)

2010-11-27T16:43:00.006+08:00

Avoid junk food

Besides that, try to reduce junk food intake, salt intake as well as sugar, especially soft drinks which contain high level of sugar. Try to have more health proteins, fruits and greens throughout the day. Whole grain breads and beans are good for health and digestion too.

Blueberry helps

Important tip. I found that blueberry is believed to be a very good food ingredient to help reducing tummy fat. Study was done on rats, it as found that rats which fed on blueberry rich diet lost abdominal fat. So, it is time for blueberry love I must say.

Calories count does matter

You must stay conscious about your calorie intake. This is very important. You can find a lot of calorie chart in the internet which suits you. In fact, you can also try the calorie calculator in my other page as well, just to give you a rough guide on how much calorie intake you need. This is one of the free ways. You can also seek for physician or dietitian to help on preparing the right calorie chart that suits your needs. Please make sure that you have more or less the exact calories intake for your each meal. Remember that extra intake of food, means extra calories intake, which may turn out to be fats and attempt to store as tummy fats. So it is crucial to control the portion of food consumption and it is a must to have frequent eating.

Exercise and Cardio Exercise

Exercise and cardio exercise is quite different. Exercise is like walking. Cardio exercise or workout means that you get your heart pumping for a longer period of time. Examples are like cycling, running and swimming. Your body will need additional energy to keep up with the intensive activity. The energy will draw from fat. This is the time when your body will break down fat very quickly and covert it into sugar and hence supply it to your muscles for energy.

A word of advice, try not to wait until it is too late. You should really start your cardio exercising planning today. The main point here is, by doing cardio exercises, it will boost up your body metabolism. The best duration of each exercise will be at least 30 minutes a day. And try to maintain at least five times a week. Then only you will see the great effect.

After doing cardio exercise, you can do some abdominal exercise to burn your stomach fats. Through abdominal exercise, it will help strengthen your abdominal muscles and tone it up. Examples are like crunches and sit ups.

There is also another fun way to lose belly fat. That is by getting a weighted hula hoop. Try to buy a heavier hoop as it is a lot more easy to control and stay on your hip for a longer time when you play with it. Good thing is, you can buy hula hoop in a very cheap price, compare with those gym equipments which cost at least few hundred dollars minimum. You can even watch television and twirl hula hoop too!

Here is the fact .... (1)

2010-11-27T16:43:00.004+08:00

Hi all, its been awhile since my last post. I was very busy with my tight schedule, working and part time course at the same time. It was really tough. Yes that’s right, I don’t really have the energy to go for exercise! But, good news is, I’m still able to maintain my current weight as I am very conscious about my food calorie consumption. Anyway, currently I am writing a post regarding on how to loose my tummy fats and have fit nice abs. Yes, I always envy those people that have nice abs. So, I have decided to do some research on it and try to loose away my flabby tummy and also share with you all.

Fact is, it is very hard to achieve a beautiful and fit body with flat and slim abs, but it is so easy to just eat what you want. I know, there are a lot of people are facing dilemma on how to reduce the tummy fats effectively. In fact, there are a lot people are good at start and get tired after that. Results? Zero.

I have done some readings about how to reduce tummy fats, because I seriously want to have a better and fit body. There are some of the interesting points that I want to share it out.

To reduce tummy fat effectively, you must change some of the habits. You need to consider the type of food that you consumed, as well as adding exercises into your lifestyle. Exercises include normal exercise and cardio exercises. Try to avoid excess alcohol and beer, as those will really make your belly coming out.

You must eat

I find that most people, including me, is making the same mistake thinking that by not eating will solve their tummy fat problem. It is very important to get rid of this starving yourself idea out of your thoughts and start committing to a healthy way to reduce weight and tummy fats. Because, if you don’t eat, you will not have enough energy to go for exercise and this I confirm that it will not lead to a weight loss target. The most it will only maintain your currently weight. I know, because I tried it for a month time by only eating less without exercise, it really didn’t help to lose any weight, don’t mention about reducing the tummy fat.

Eat more smaller portions than three larger portion of meal

There are a lot people suggesting that instead of eating three larger portion meals per day, it’s better to have six smaller portion meals throughout the day. This action will force your body metabolism to work extra during the same amount of time as it will help to burn more fat. You may wonder why? Well, let me tell you this. By having larger portions, indirectly your body is going to a inactive phase which will slow down your metabolism. If you having smaller portions of meal throughout the day, it will tell your body to remain at an active stage, so your body will constantly burning calories for the whole day. They call this as calorie shifting. And it does works for many.

How to build muscle effectively

2010-11-09T22:24:00.002+08:00

To build muscle efficiently, first of allyou should follow a healthy lifestyle, which is free from any types of“medication” which they “proved” that it can help to build and grow muscles. Itis not surprise if you can see there are a lot of different types of musclebuilding drugs selling in the market. It is best to avoid all these drugs as itmight have different effects to the human body which might have side-effect orharmful to your body.

To have the best workout routine, mostimportant thing is you must always change your workout routine to confuse yourbody in order that it can react to the unexpected changes. By doing this, itwill have great effect on building up muscle mass in the body., it will have greaterchance that the workout is ineffective once your body is used to the routineexercises. If you always change the workout routine, your body will have bigreaction to the unexpected changes, thus leading to more muscle growth.

You can actually have your workout at homeif you are those that always busy with work schedule and no time for gymsession. Just a cheap fitness ball or a set of dumbbells will do. You can getthem in a reasonable price at those sports equipment shop. Once you obtaineither one of the equipment, you can start doing workouts at home too.

For dumbbells training, you can starttraining one limb at a time if you want to have greater results to attainfaster and bigger muscle growth. By doing this, you can actually able to life heavierweights. This concept is called bilateral deficit. As the body is using moremuscle to perform the weight lifting action, therefore, more muscles will bedeveloped. Besides that, you will perform a longer training as well, resultingyour body to be able to burn more energy or calories.

Please remember one thing for weighttraining that speed is not the most essential thing. Try to work out themuscles slowly to the maximum. It will have much better effect by doing thisway.

Of course, it is not enough by just doingweight lifting. Correct nutrition intake is very essential as well. Althoughprotein is part of the nutrition needed, a lot people thought that protein isthe only nutrition needed, this is so not true. Balance nutrition is far moreimportant if you want to have effective muscle building.

Actually, fats are very important to ourbody. There is two kinds of fats which is useful in building our body muscle,that is monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fatshelps to reduce the fat stored in our body. You can get monounsaturated fatsthrough olive oil, nuts and avocado. For polyunsaturated fats, you can get itthrough banana, salmon and whole grain food. Polyunsaturated fats can help tobring down cholesterol.

Muscle building really takes time anddetermination to do it. No matter if you have thin or fat, exercises andtraining determination is a must.

Simple Home-made healthy and low-fat cream of mushroom soup recipe

2010-11-06T11:39:00.004+08:00

Do you know that those restaurant’s
mushroom soup are high in carb and calories?

I know because I have a close friend who is
working as a sous chef in a semi-fine dining french restaurant. I must say….a
lot of tasty food are really very high in fats and carb.

I love the mushroom soup served by his
restaurant as they are using 100% pure mushroom. And I do ask him for the
mushroom soup recipe and want to try it. After knowing the recipe, I notice
that the ingredients that they use is really high in carb which is not health
conscious.

So, I decided to try my own method in
modifying the recipe into a low-fat, low-carb, healthy and tasty mushroom soup.
I would like to share here to those that love mushroom soup like me….

Cream of mushroom (2 serving)

Ingredients

5 Button
mushroom 20 cal

1 tbsp(15g) Plain
flour 52 cal

1 tbsp(15g) Reduced
Fat spread 74 cal

1 tbsp Olive
oil 126 cal

500ml Skim
milk 192 cal

1 tbsp White
onion

Salt and pepper

Fresh flat-leaf Parsley (minced)

Thyme leaves (minced)

2 pcs Whole wheat bread 100 cal

Total calories about 570 cal for 2 person. Each person only take in 285 cal.

This can be a very healthy and delicious breakfast to start a day.

Directions

Clean the button mushrooms by wiping with
dry paper towel. Remember not to wash them. Trim off any bad parts and chop
them into mince.

Heat the olive oil in a pan. Add the
chopped mushroom, onion, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and cook in
medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes. Check if they are browned and tender. This
is to bring up the fragrance of the mushroom and let it be soft as well. Add a
cup of water, bring to a boil. Turn off the fire and leave it there first.

Meanwhile, use another pot, heat up the butter,
add plain flour and stir it using low heat. Keep stirring until the flour mixed
well with the butter. Don’t get shock when you see a thick mixture forming in
the pot. Add in the mushroom mixed that we prepared earlier into the pot with
medium-low heat. Stir gently. Let it blend in for another 5 to 10 minutes. You
still can add in some water if is necessary. After that, add in skim milk to
the pot and mixed well. Try not to put high heat because we don’t want to burn
the milk.

Now, start adding in minced thyme leaves
and minced parsley. How much you need to put depends on your personal favorite.
If you can’t find any fresh thyme leaves, mixed herbs can be added in as well. Add
in salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 15
minutes, taste it. Serve hot in a bowl with a piece of whole wheat bread. Final touch just sprinkler a bit of
minced parsley on top of the soup to make it delicate.

Below is the mushroom soup that I cooked. Hope you guys enjoy the recipe.

Swimming Towards Good Health - Start Now

2010-11-04T23:34:00.003+08:00

You can start putting swimming as yourregular form of exercise. By having frequent swimming workouts, it is one ofthe best and fun exercise you can do to keep yourself fit and healthy. As waterprovides resistance to your body movements while you are swimming, it reallybuilt a complete workout for your whole body. Best effects I see is the limbspart and arms part.

Firstly, you need to deal with the water ifyou decided that you want to take up swimming. Good thing about swimming is,you don’t need to get very sophisticated equipments or any special skills. Somebasic accessories such as goggles, sun block lotion, floating board will do. Regardlessof their age, swimming is a nice sport which anyone can practice.

Swimming really paves way for you to attainweight training as well as providing cardio benefits similar to running. Inother words, swimming provides you the greatest of both ends. It’s very good tobuild up your lung system as well as reducing the risk of diseases such asdiabetes, stroke, heart attack and etc. It also helps a person to sustain hisor her cholesterol and blood pressure levels. As water have a opposing force ofmore than 12 times compare to air, that’s why swimming requires more work to gothrough. Through swimming, you will not only aids in strengthening muscles, butalso assist in building lean and flexible muscles too. Additionally, it alsomaintain the cardiovascular health and muscle flexibility.

Through swimming, our body muscles such aschest muscles, arm muscles, abdominal muscles, waist, hips, leg muscles will betrained. It also improve our lung and heart function. Besides that, swimmingcan relieve stress, burn more calories, improve our respiratory system andgrowth process and also for the sake of self-safety too. It also helps indeveloping other skills like sportsman spirit, setting goals and timemanagement. Another word, swimming really has many benefits if we make it asour regular exercise.

Of course, if you really want to getsignificant results, you really need to learn and understand the proper strokesof swimming. After learning up the correct technique, you will be able tosynchronize well with your hands and legs in each stroke, just like rhythm.Through that way, your body will be slimmer as fats are burn more effectively,and you will be able to tone up your abs.

As I mention earlier, swimming can help youto relax from stress. Swimming is recommended as a kind of mental therapy. Justimagine that you are floating in the middle of the pool, kicking the water onceawhile relaxingly and lazily, viewing at the big blue sky, letting all theworries away.

Now since you can see that swimming clearlygiving you lots of benefits if you swim on a regular basis. You can still go tosome public swimming pool or gym pool which is affordable if you don’t own apool. There’s nothing to stop you from achieving what you want besidesyourself. Believe in yourself and have fun swimming.

Healthy food that can help you loose weight

2010-10-26T00:28:00.004+08:00

I heard that by having the correct healthy food, it will helps you burn the fats in your body. Although I’m not very sure about it, I definitely would like to try it. So I start digging into some research. Below are some of my findings which I’m planning to try it out.

Try to select food which is high in anti-oxidant. High anti-oxidant fruits, for example, apple, grapes, cranberries, orange, raspberries, blackberries. For vegetables it will be asparagus, avocado, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, mushroom and etc. As I heard that anti-oxidant food can help in burning fats in your body.

I personally suggest you to have salmon too. As we all know, salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and high in vitamin D content. Salmon can be eaten raw, serving as sashimi (Japanese style) or with salad. Salmon can also be cooked as a dish too. It is high in protein and contain “good fats”. You can try to grill or poach the salmon as well. It served as a nice dish.

Garlic is another type of weight loose food. A lot research being carry out saying that garlic can assist in managing high cholesterol levels. It also consider as a powerful natural antibiotic too. It is also include as a powerful antioxidant.

Eggs are also another good type of high-protein food. One egg is only 68 calories. And it is low-cost food too.

Mushroom is another excellent choice of food. As it has a very low carbohydrates, zero fats and cholesterol, high protein and good fiber amount. You can eat it raw, grill, steam….Mushroom fit perfectly well in almost every dish. It also helps in preventing cancer and is an ideal food for diabetes.

On top are some examples of healthy food. I’m sure there’s a lot more that you can search online too. For food preparation, I find that the best way to prepare is keep it fresh. Try to consume the food while keeping its natural level. Certain ways like steam or boil the food is the best.

Calories Needed per Day for Normal Individuals

2010-10-25T23:36:00.005+08:00

First of all, you must know how many calories is needed to maintain your current size, then start to reduce it from there. I believe there is a lot calories measurement out there which you can refer to.

For lasting weight loss, normally you must focus on two things, which is increase your regular exercise and follow a stable diet. This is to ensure there will be more calories out of body (by exercising) and lesser calories intake (by dieting). It is quite impossible just to loose weight by just dieting and without exercising. By doing so, it will normally have temporary weight loss effect, but I am sure that it won’t last long.

Normally, you can refer your current body weight to calculate a minimum intake of calorie needed. Then, from there, try to reduce your daily calorie intake by 10-20%. This figure is just a reference for you. It also depends on your personal weight loss goals as each of us is different. Best practice is loose weight to a healthy state.

Example of finding the numbers of calories needed

Check the normal weight rule

BMI = mass (kg) / (height(m))²

Underweight from 15 to 18.4

Normal from 18.5 to 22.9

Overweight from 23 to 27.5

Obese from 27.6 to 40

Morbidly Obese greater than 40

Women aged 19 through 50

• Sedentary, not active, between 1,800 and 2,000 calories per day
• Moderately active, between 2,000 and 2,200 calories per day
• Active between 2,200 and 2,400 calories per day

Men aged 19 through 50

• Sedentary, between 2,200 and 2,400 calories per day
• Moderately active, between 2,600 and 2,800 calories per day
• Active, between 2,800 and 3,000 calories per day

How to adjust your calorie balance to reduce your weight

Basically, you need to do two thing for energy balance adjustments

1. Stimulate your body metabolism by increasing your exercise level

In order to burn off the calories in your body, you need to try to increase your body metabolic rate and stimulate the body metabolism. For starting, you can go with a short walk or short jog in the park every day, then slowly increase the duration of walking or jogging of 30 minutes minimum. You can start gradually and slowly increase the time period and intensity of the exercise if your body still can’t cope with too much exercise. After that, you can slowly add in few short sprint into the activity. By doing that, you can increase your heart rate and hence helps to boost up the metabolic rate. Besides, you can gain more body muscle tissue as well. As we know, replacing muscle tissue in the body can burn fat faster, as muscle tissue have higher metabolic rate. That’s why some of us say, body muscle is our primary energy users. Please do take note that in order to build body muscle, sufficient protein consumption is needed in your diet too. Some of the best way to build more muscles are static exercises, weight training, push ups and sit ups. Weight training preferably small weights if you are not aiming to be body builder.

2 . Body calorie consumption must be reduce

This is very important. Why I say so? Because, if you have intense exercise, but didn’t control your diet with adequate calorie consumption, it will just be waste of time. Normally we recommend high protein diets and low carbohydrate diets.

You can start by taking complex carbohydrates food and reduce your total carbohydrate consumption. Try to avoid those refined food because there are evidence that refined foods contain large amount of simple carbohydrates which is readily absorbed by the body, will cause excess concentration of glucose and store as fat. So, try to avoid those processed foods such as cookies, cakes, sausages, junk food and etc. If you are those that have become “addicted” with these kind of food, try to cut down slowly, have discipline, and you will get through the appetite craving of those food. Some people suggest to take those appetite suppressant pill. But for me, its best to have self discipline than relying on pills.

Jogging for a start

2010-10-24T17:06:00.001+08:00

I used to hate jogging. First of all, I don’t like the feeling of suffocation while jogging (because I was overweight and can’t move). Second, overweight people tend not to like to sweat, because sweating will produce more heat and I will feel very uncomfortable with the sweating. Third, I don’t like to wear those sport suits, as it just shows out my fats, so embarrassing.

But, what I found out there are more benefits on jogging.

Jogging, you can do it anywhere, preferably walking streets or parks or gym(if you sign up for any gym which might cost you some money). For jogging, it only require you to have a pair of good quality running shoes (but don’t need to buy too branded running shoes which might cost you few hundred dollars). You can jog solo or with your friends or jogger mates. Jog at your own sweet time. And best thing is, you don’t need to buy expensive exercise equipments for it. How cool is that?

What I suggest here is, go for outdoor jogging. I never tried indoor jogging(which is using the treadmills jogging equipments in the gym). But what I heard from few of my friends saying, outdoor jogging is way much better than indoor jogging. Why so? For outdoor jogging, you can actually feel the freedom while you jog. The freedom I’m saying here is the fresh air and nice scenery, enjoying the nature.

When you start jogging, most important thing is do some warm up exercises, such as body stretching, leg muscle stretching and so on. This is to avoid any muscle strain during your jogging session. Try to search in youtube or library books for some warm up exercise tips, suggest warm up exercise that spend around 10 to15 minutes. For starting, suggest you can try to complete 15 to 20 minutes walking/ jogging. After that, complete your jogging workout by doing a warm down. Warm down is kinda same as warm up, because by doing some warm down exercises, you will relax your muscles. This complete cycle of jogging, which include warm up, jogging, warm down is very important. As if you start or end without the warm up and warm down exercise, your body muscles tend to get strained or pain during the jogging session of after the jogging session. So, protect your body by completely the whole cycle.

While start jogging, start by a gentle or light jog, just to let your body get familiar with the jogging rhythm. It’s is very normal if you feel suffocation or breathless while jogging for the first couple of meters. Try to reduce the speed if you can’t catch your breath. Just take it slow and keep the speed that you feel comfortable with it. Only start adding up your jogging speed after a few consecutive jogs. Try to add jogging as your exercise routine by jogging 3 to 4 times a week. If you are those normal office hours working professionals, you can start by doing 2 times jog a week, perhaps Wednesday night and Saturday/Sunday morning? It’s a lot better than sitting in your comfort sofa, drinking beer, having snacks and watching TV during Wednesday night or lying in the bed until late afternoon during weekends. Come out and have a short jog, enjoy the nature and fresh air.

Finally, actions speak louder than words. I’m going out for my jog now. Hope you guys enjoy too.

How I started?

2010-10-23T13:20:00.002+08:00

Well, I’m those type that enjoy finger food. Some finger foods are junk food as well. As you all know, junk food have little or no nutritional value to our body. Junk foods are also known to contain high level of saturated fats, salt or sugar, which are the substance to cause overweight problem if consumed too much. So, what I did is I will select my list of finger food very carefully. If you go to a supermarket, you will notice a lot of different type of finger foods which is healthy. For example, potato chips is one of my favorites. I will select those potato chips that is made out of 100% pure potato, less salt or best is non-salted. I also like cheese. Choose those less fat or non fat cheese. I do cut down on consumption of rice, noodles and bread.

Shopping tip: aim for those foods which stated low fat, non fat, less salt, non salt, less sugar, non sugar, pure, natural, organic term. Of course it might cost you a few more bucks. But hey, by spending few more bucks, you have a healthier body, it’s worth it!

I’m kinda like those type of meat-lover. Select the types of meat carefully. Choose chicken breast, fish, pork lean meat rather than those fatty type. I checked online there is a lot of people asking us to eat only vegetables or salad for whole day. Oh my, I can’t survive with that for a single meal. So starting, I try to consume mixture of lean meat with vegetables, along with those non-fat finger food.

Besides that, I started a short jog/ walk of 10 to 20 minutes per day or alternative days. Which ever that my body can cope. Yes, I do it step by step at a time. Bare in mind that rushing to get results will not help at all. Patient plays a very important role.

If you follow the above, I guess you can start loosing weight 1 to 5 kg in one month time. When you start noticing your body having some good results, you will tend to continue a much more healthy balance lifestyle. It always motivate me the most.

Why I started?

2010-10-23T00:39:00.003+08:00

I was thinking for a day what topic should I write for my next post.

Starting I was thinking of writing about “How I started?”. But when I start to think deeper, it’s not the “How” that is so important, it is the “Why” that is important.

Without knowing why, I won’t be even thinking of starting my healthy dieting lifestyle.

Why I started healthy dieting? The reason is simple, I realized that I ignore myself too much, and I didn’t give enough intention to myself. Another word, I didn’t give myself enough love to love my own self. A dear friend of mine once told me, “hey, you can look really good, but why you did not take good care of yourself and ended up like this?”. I was kinda stunned when I heard her comment. My brain was trying to digest what she is saying at that time. Me? Can look good? C’mon, don’t make a joke out of me ok? But when I look at the mirror, I really can’t recognized myself in the reflection mirror if I compare myself few years back. Man, it totally looks like two different person. From that day on, I finally decided that I need to “love” myself and take good care of myself. And this is the main reason that I am still sticking on healthy dieting and exercises.

Get to know your “why” followed by “how”….

2010-10-21T01:17:00.001+08:00

Mindset of Dieting

2010-10-21T00:49:00.003+08:00

I noticed that every New Year, millions of people will have resolution of quit smoking or want to lose weight. A lot of them started a drastic decrease of food intake and massive exercise. After a week or two, they just give in to their favorite moose chocolate cake, chips and comfort sofa watching TV. And the whole plan for the resolution just ended up unfinished.

I would like to share a couple of things which I find it very essential if you really wanna start weight lose through healthy dieting.

1. Have the right mindset

First of all, your mind is your biggest asset. You need to change your way of thinking of you really wanna permanently lose weight. Stop thinking of short term dieting and focus on the long run.

Regular meals of balance and healthy nutrition food are necessary for the long run.

2. Take it step by step

Reduce your calories intake slowly. Don’t rush on reducing your calories intake drastically. As a result, your body might be unable to accept this sudden change and will “think” that you are in starvation. Body will automatically “protect” yourself by changing the consumption of food to fats and store in your body. (Believe me, this is what you don’t want most)

3. Muscle VS Fats

Start doing exercise. By doing more exercise, you will convert your body’s fat into lean muscles.

As muscle will burn more calories compare to fats, that’s why its better to build more muscles. One thing to take note of is, when you started doing exercise, you will notice that your body weight will drop 1-2 kg and just stop decreasing. Don’t be panic ok? As after exercise, your body’s will start building muscles and muscle density is more than fat. So, you might gain weight but look thinner. But eventually, you will lose weight if you keep continue doing exercise.

Try to do combination of different exercise. Recommend jogging and swimming, which I find it very effective. After jogging, your body muscle will be very tensed. Swimming will help your body muscle to relax. Hence, more effective in losing weight.

4. Eat few meals but small portion

Try not to have 3 big meals, cut down to few small portions. Have healthy snacks like nuts, raisins, fruits. This is to let your body feel that it is not in starvation, and hence it wont go to starvation mode.

Currently, these are the way I’m doing it. Hope it will help you all that really in need of a change.

My personal experience of weight loss

2010-10-19T23:46:00.002+08:00

Hey guys, I’m gonna share my personal experience of successful 10kg weight loss through healthy dieting in four months time, which is from 83kg to 73kg. Briefly saying, my way of loss weight is through balance healthy dieting combine with exercises.

I used to be around 60kg while I was studying in university. After few years of busy working life, I didn’t even notice I gained weight so much. I might just notice it, but it just not in my first priority to maintain or loose weight. Why so? Human tend to be lazy. That’s what happened to me.

Obesity can really make a person feel unhealthy and weak, which impact our daily lives. I used to feel tired always, lack of concentration, having breathing problem, having knee-joint pain issue, don’t like to social with friends or colleagues, lack of self-confidence and etc.

For you all that wish to try to loss weight through healthy dieting, the utmost important thing is your MOTIVATION. It is the motivation that keeps you going. The reason I emphasis on this is because, without a very powerful motivation, most people will quit halfway. That’s why you need to ask yourself what is your strongest motivation that will keep you going. One of the strongest motivations will be family or love ones support.

Second thing will be discipline and consistency.

As I said before, human tend to be lazy. You need to be very discipline with yourself after you set a plan or strategy. Work on the plan. But don’t be too tough on yourself. For me, I started to jog once or twice a week, more like walking because I don’t have the stamina to jog yet. I take it step by step. I went to swimming too, once a week. Try to set a goal or aim for yourself. For example, goal is walk and jog for 1km; Swim 5 laps for a start. After you feel comfort with it, you can slowly add on the distance and speed. Don’t push yourself too hard, just try your best will do, slowly increase the exercise amount. If you do it constantly, you can feel the difference. Your body starting to build muscles, you feel more energetic and confident.

Why choose healthy dieting?

2010-10-18T23:43:00.003+08:00

There are different kinds of reasons why people want to start a healthy dieting. But most of all, by starting a healthy dieting, you can avoid many illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Eat healthily is more about maintaining the balance of weight, energy level and mental emotion.

Busy people need to eat healthily too. As we all know, our life now are always in rushed, stressed with work, lack of time. But this is not an excuse of not having healthy dieting and chooses whatever food that can be served quickest. As far as I know, you can easily get those 15 minutes or 30 minutes recipes online for free, which is easy and healthy.

Here are some tips which I discover which is very helpful

Tip 1: control the portion that you consumed

Tip 2: Take your time to munch the food

Tip 3: Vegetables proportion should be 70%-80%; meat should be 20%-30%

Tip 4: Choose fresh food rather than processed food

Tip 5: Select low fat or non fat ingredients

Tip 6: Add variety to your daily meals, like nuts and beans

What is Healthy Dieting?

2010-10-17T23:37:00.002+08:00

Organic or natural food that is free of chemicals, preservatives, or additives is consider a healthy diet. Expand your range of choices in variety of foods – especially whole grains, vegetables or fruits, that is health dieting.

The sole purpose of health diet is to make you feel good with yourself. You must consume the right food if you want to feel good, as in feeling a lot of energy within you. Beware that eating foods that are full of empty calories can affect your mood drastically. Eating a diet which is designed mainly for weight loss and eating a healthy diet and hoping you will lose weight is very different. When the diet is designed purely for weight loss, little thought may have been given as to whether this is a healthy way of eating that's good for you, particularly in the long term. Health diet will give you energy and help your body function to function at its best. For losing weight, motivation is very important, but diet is mainly to achieve good health. So, the utmost important thing is, eat balanced healthy meals everyday.

In order to achieve healthy diet, it won’t happen just like that. You need to put in your time and effort, as well as plan a strategy and set healthy eating goals. Healthy balanced diet is more to life time achievement rather than weight loss purposed.

Find a diet that fits you. I was tired of being overweight and I wanted a total transformation. That’s why I choose a diet that includes a lot of exercise.