As a physical being - I'm a good animal;
As a mental being - I'm a compassionate man;
As a spiritual being - I'm a passionate soul :):
Welcome to Sharudin Jamal Blogspot
More than two decades ago, I was diagnosed of having a peculiar illness known as Bipolar Affective Disorder. My world as I knew it crumbled; I lost my business, then my job and later my sense of purpose. It was during this dark moments I rediscovered the joy of running and writing. Most of the articles here are about my rekindled pleasure of hitting the tarmac, my coming to terms with the illness and my discovery of the meaning of life.
I always on the lookout for inspirations to write in these three areas with the hope that they will shed new ray of hope to others who are in the same position as I am.
Do keep in touch if you feel connected through these essays.
Note: This is a conversation I had with a friend about wearing two watches on a separate blog. I decided to publish it here since I believe it has some value to the public even if it means entertainment.
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If I want to wear two watches at a time then I stick with the bracelet and rubber. After all, watches are not merely timepieces. They are fashion statements with aesthetic values.
I love wearing two watches, they are pleasing to the eyes. Let's see how General Norman Schwarzkopf wears his:
"I always wore two watches during the [Gulf] war. The one on my right arm was set on Saudi Arabian time and the Seiko on my left arm was set on Eastern Standard Time. That way I could quickly glance at my watches and instantly know the time in both Saudi Arabia and Washington, D.C. Sincerely, H. Norman Schwarzkopf General, U.S. Army, Retired." Words from recently departed General Norman Schwarzkopf in a letter to the Antiquorum auction house in the late 1990s when he donated one of his watches for a charity auction.
The watch was a Seiko SKX009 diver and was on his wrist for at least the entirety of the early 1990s Gulf War. According to the letter and many images from the time, General Norman Schwarzkopf indeed "double-wisted it" with a watch on each wrist. Mark of a true watch guy? At auction, the Seiko which can be purchased new for about $200 today went for $11,000.
Retired, he died at the age of 78 years old in Tampa, Florida several days ago at the end of 2012. One of his most famous quotes was "It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle."
Seriously, I love the idea of wearing two watches. Since the watches are a fashion statement rather than a timekeeper, why not double the pleasure? A man's style is a man's style. I wear my watches to my satisfaction. Why not double the satisfaction just for me? All for my own personal indulgence. Screw what other people think. If people ask, then just say - I like looking at watches. After all, they are a contrast between different models.
I guess it is an OK fashion statement. If Maradona, Castro, Lady Diana, and Amitabh Bachchan can do it, so can I.
Damn, I still lust for the NATO, but it will absorb sweat and water. It is a gooood military look though and I'm suckered by that utilitarian look. Let's put it this way, It was worn by the military. Therefore it should be robust.
I decide to buy the NATO anyway. Just to satisfy my lust for it.
The NATO looks good on a diver:
I am a sucker for diver and military watches.
This watch is a bargain for what I pay for the NATO. Selling for RM350. 46 mm width.
Why bother with a cheap homage when I can use the money to accessorize my baby with the SNE 107 "Sunburst", the iconic Seiko watch? The standard rubber strap won't cut it and I ended up having to buy a NATO in the end. Remember, with the NATO, I have an equivalent of 3 Seiko watches.
Let's settle the issue once and for all, the [the] solar technology is at the forefront of advancement in watch production. Then I have the chargeable GPS watch. The Mudman is a classic and the battery lasts for 10 years - who's complaining? I will not revert to quartz and automatic. I will stick with solar from now on. At best, I go with Orient Power Reserve technology or a Citizen Eco-drive.
Honestly, I have more watches than I can handle. If I want another one this is the one. 46 mm width - RM854.
SEIKO PROSPEX SOLAR SSC293
Or this one, 44 mm wide. RM739.
CITIZEN Eco-Drive Military 200M AW1410-24E
What do you think Brenda? I like the Seiko better. Btw, this Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Chronograph is like lusting for a high-class hooker. Nice to look at but extremely useless once you pay for it.
This is my next purchase: 46 mm selling at RM1000.
SEIKO PROSPEX SOLAR SSC295
A real military look... This watch is my final destination in watches.
Note: For the Southern hemisphere, point the 12.00 o'clock toward the sun and the halfway between the 12.00 o'clock and the shorthand is NORTH.
For the Northern hemisphere, point the shorthand toward the sun and the halfway between the shorthand and 12.00 o'clock is SOUTH.
Not that I will go into the jungle ever again, another fantasy long forgone. Anyway, I will have a reliable guide to accompany me if I ever visit the jungle again. You get that Brenda?
The jungle is insidious. I was lost in the jungle once. Don't expect to see the sun in the tropical rainforest. You look low for trails instead of bulldozing your way through using the bearing.
Alright then Brenda, tomorrow is tennis day. Gotta hit the pillow. See you again tomorrow...
Life had been generous to me lately. Therefore I decided to publish the entire content of my first ever eBook for free. I spent two months solid writing this book and therefore I reckon it deserves to be shared by the masses.
It was a labor of love. I felt compelled to write it because I believe in helping others that are desperate for a solution. Making money was the least of my concern. I just want to give back to the society.
I hope you will benefit from this reading. Please write a favorable review at this link below should you find the content valuable:
All
rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or
retrieval system, whatsoever for distribution purposes without prior written
permission from the publisher.
First
Edition August 2017
ISBN: 978-1-387-16206-2
This
book has been prepared for general information only and does not contain and is
not to be taken as containing any medical, clinical or psychological
recommendations.
The
recommendations outlined in this book may not be suitable for every individual,
and do not warrant success if not practiced thoroughly.
No
warranty is made with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the information
contain herein, and the author as well as the publisher specifically disclaim
any responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise,
which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the use and
application of any contents of this book.
A NOTE TO THE READER
Please consult your doctor
before beginning this or any new health recommendation. Not all health recommendations are suitable
for everyone, and this recommendation may be risky for those who are on
medication or in various stages of physical fitness. The instruction and advice presented though
this book are not in any way intended as a substitute for medical counselling. Keep in mind that the nutritional needs vary
from person to person, depending on age, sex, health status and total diet.
The author is not a doctor of
a medical professional, and he, on his own as well as on behalf of his family
disclaims any liability or loss sustained in connection with the
recommendations and advice included herein.
This is with the exception of the weight loss achieved through his stated
recommendations.
This book is dedicated with
ever loving affection to
my wife Liz and two
daughters, Puteri Balqis and Puteri Sarah
I am very sure many of you
had encountered many life transforming challenges in your life. They could have been the challenges of
bettering yourself in education, moving up the corporate ladder, raising a
family, quitting smoking, dealing with illicit drugs, coping with alcoholism,
living with life threatening illnesses, overcoming financial disasters,
grieving for the loss of love ones or merely getting by with day to day stress.
We are no different you and
I. As long as we are living on planet
earth, there bound to be challenges. I
too had my fair share of ups and downs.
I had went to hell and back. In
the process I didn’t stop and I keep on learning. During the good times we tend to party. It was during the bad times we sat down and
pondered on our mishaps and vouched to get above the situations and get on with
our one and only precious life.
Many times when we were down
and out with our luck, we were left alone.
The crowd love good company but when comes to dealing with tragedies only
a handful are willing to give a helping hand.
Have you ever wondered what happened to your so called good buddies when
disaster struck? Where were the “what’s
up bros” that joined you during the happy hours on the Fridays? Better still, where were the so called
emphatic co-workers and acquaintances who are privy of what’s in and out with
your progress when you were on the roll?
All vanished the minute they smell desperation.
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty who are willing to give
moral support. As long as it doesn’t
cost anything, there are plenty of sympathizers. Talk is cheap. It is effort that many don’t want to spare
and commit.
I remember when I want to
quit smoking, the nurse in the quit smoking clinic gave me a gentle reminder
why I should quit. She said, “When you
are sick lying in the hospital bed, initially there will be many visitors. They are there to show concern. However, as the days pass the number get
lesser as the illness prolongs. Only the
closest to you will endure”.
This is natural. People get on with their lives. They too had to deal with their own little
monsters. In the end, we are responsible
for our very own lifeline. Being fit and
healthy is a personal responsibility.
Eventually we are in charge of our own well-being. We got to fight our own dragons.
Think of losing weight as a
mean, not an end. With weight loss comes
myriad of opportunities. You will
realize that when you lose the excess fat, you are actually transformed into a
different person physically, mentally and emotionally. Imagine the kinds of possibilities you can
do. You look better, you dress better,
you are more athletic and of course your libido is much improved. Mentally you are more alert, you are focused,
you think clearly and your sense of purpose restored. Nothing can be more satisfying than being fit
and healthy at the emotional level. Food
is no longer a crutch. You no longer eat
because you are deprived. You eat
because you require nutrition, not because you are depress or lonely. This new you will have a higher self-esteem
and thus you will attract the right kind of people like magnet. This is the Law of Attraction; you get what
you put in.
For those who are looking for
a loving (or several) relationship(s), being fit and healthy are your tickets
to a fulfilling social life. I use the
term fit and healthy instead of being thin because there are many people who
are thin but not at the pinnacle of their well-being. Think of it as expanding your selection
pool. When you are in your top form you
are more confident to get any partner of your choice. Not that being overweight means you are being
discriminated but rather you can have the home court advantage of being liked a
lot more when you are fit and healthy.
People who are like each other, like each other. I bet you too have the desire for the hunks
and hotties out there. It is basic human
instinct even when we all agree that beauty may only be skin deep.
In the animal kingdom the
fittest survive. More likely, the
fittest will mate and able to pass their genes.
Fit and healthy means they are more likely to produce a healthy
offspring. This is the instinct of
nature. The harsh reality of the wild is
that the less fortunate among them will may never get a chance to even select a
partner. So forget about
procreation. They may not even get a
chance to have sex!
Another point to consider is,
as an unwritten rule of climbing the corporate ladder, you must be able to
perform, deliver and yes, look good. It
is not good enough for you to be an achiever, you must be presentable. It is of little wonder that the corporate climbers
invested heavily on the power suits, the branded accessories and the fancy
wheels to project success. However, have
you ever consider that the best investment is in you as a person? In addition to the knowledge and skills, you
can go leaps and bounds in your career by being fit and healthy. The first perk is less sick leaves. Being sickly is a disadvantage. That is because the higher the climb the more
the organization require your presence.
When you are unhealthy your judgments will get effected as well. You will make pudgy decision-makings. You are prone to stress and perhaps this
condition will also lead to occupational hazards and termination.
It is a tough world out
there. Humans no matter how open-minded
they may be cannot escape from being prejudice.
The truth of the matter is, fat people often side-lined for important
posts. We all want to have strong
leaders; mentally, physically and emotionally.
When you are fit and healthy you will have all these. It reflects the ability to control your
decisions; those that matters in your daily pursuits. The axiom is very simple. If we cannot get a grip with our personal
lives, how do we reckon to be in charge with higher responsibilities? Being fit and healthy is the first step we
take to be in control of our lives. We
are what we think about all day long.
It’s a journey towards personal mastery.
If you want excellence, pursue excellence. Know yourself and the knowledge will set you
free, said Socrates.
Hey, when was the last time
you went and enjoy sweating out? Sweat
is bliss. When you exercise your body
produces a plethora of neurochemicals that makes you feel good. It’s a double barrel shot gun. You feel ecstatic after exercise and at the
same time you lose weight by burning more calories. Now, if you are the sedentary type, you will
miss this golden opportunity. Exercising
is a Catch-22. Do you exercise first or
do you lose weight first? Well, to
exercise you need to create momentum to offset the inertia. Believe it or not; eighty percent of weight
loss is due to food while twenty percent is exercise. So start with managing your food intake. You can take the initial steps by walking
around the neighborhood but ultimately, you are what you eat.
Have you ever encounter
fatigue, severe migraine or depression?
How about diabetes, high blood pressure or coronary heart disease? Though most of the Metabolic Syndrome
illnesses are due to genetics, they can be slowly rectified by a change of diet
and lifestyle. No unhealthy situation is
dire beyond concerted effort. Even as
bad as cancer, there are hopes for recovery if you combine proper medical care
with the right nutrition and change of daily routines. We are creatures of habit. If we cultivate a good hygiene for what, when
and how to eat, we will stand a fighting chance overcoming any form of fatality
within reasonable means. This is because
the modern degenerative diseases are no longer due to germs. Food and lifestyle are the main offenders.
The worst we can do is doing
nothing to change these two key markers.
We know we are heading for disaster and yet we keep on doing the same
things out of convenience. That is
madness!
Do you know that there are two ways we age? The first one is called chronological aging. This is very straight forward. Every year we celebrate our birthday we add
one more year to our lives. This goes on
a linear track. We cannot reverse time
like the movie Back to the Future. We
however can do so by changing our diet and lifestyle. Yes, that’s right. Depending on how rigorous you are in pursuing
quality life you can REVERSE your metabolic aging by ten to fifteen years. I am not kidding when I say this. At the age of forty I took up running and
kickboxing. My level of health improved
so drastically that within a year I managed to run a marathon and competed in a
martial art competition alongside contestants a generation younger than
me. I was in a better form then when I
was a highly strung businessman in my thirties.
This is what I can offer
you. The content of this book is based
on my experiences in pursuing fitness and health within my means as a
practitioner. I too had challenges in
managing my weight in the past. Hence, I
read many books and tried many methods to lose weight and most importantly to
keep it down. Therefore I am acting on
the capacity as a person who had been there done that in losing weight. The examples given are what works in my own
experimentation.
I guarantee that you too can achieve
your desired body within a year, provided you follow the recommendations and
eat sensibly. Which means you stop eating
when you are satiated not gorging on food as if there is no tomorrow. This is to say you establish new lifestyle
habits and stop sabotaging your own success.
Consider this… If you lose five
hundred grams a week, you lose approximately twenty five kg a year (multiply
2.2 to get the measurement in pounds).
That is the kind of result I am talking about. How do I know? Because I did it. That is a modest achievement. The best I had known is a person who lost
thirty kg in four months using these methods.
Let’s not get over excited
shall we. Be in the modest range and
inspire to go for the highest. That way
you will not get discouraged. Think of
how different life will be by losing two or three large sacks of rice or flour
that you had been lugging around.
Imagine fitting into your old clothes.
Most importantly try to envision how good you feel when you are
metabolically younger. It will nice
isn’t it?
My advice is keep on
experimenting with what works and what doesn’t.
We call this in the industry jargon as self-hacking. You don’t have to take my word for it. If you wish, you can bore through the
countless books out there to gain an in-depth understanding of what others had
discovered in what seems to be the endless battle of self-defeat and
self-actualization. Below are the books
I read and reread in order to make the content of Lose Fat Stay Fit simple
enough to be understood and profound enough to be applied.
I do not intend to make Lose
Fat Stay Fit a hefty reading.
Therefore I distil the salient points from my research and make it into
an inspiring yet practical handbook for those who are eager to achieve the end
result. If you need further references
to validate my points, you are free to checkout my sources. Here are the list of the landmark books I
refer to in order to make Lose Fat Stay Fit simple, easy and yet
effective:
Dr.
Atkins New Diet Revolution
Protein
Power
The
Primal Blueprint
The
New Atkins for a New You
The
8-Hour Diet
The
Warrior Diet
Keto-Adapted
Eat
Stop Eat
Eat
Fat Get Thin
Pure,
White and Deadly
Good
Calories, Bad Calories
Keto
Clarity
The
Ketogenic Diet
Low
Carbs, High Fat Food Revolution
Eat
Fat, Love Fat
Perfect
Health Diet
The
Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living
The
Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance
The
Big Fat Surprise - Why Butter Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet
The
Diet Cure
The
Every Other Day Diet – The Only Fasting Diet Proven by Science
I believe there is a blessing
in every calamity. In the Eastern
Culture the universe is govern by two opposing forces. The
ubiquitousyin-yangsymbol holds its roots in
Taoism/Daoism, a Chinese religion and philosophy. Theyin, the dark swirl, is
associated with shadows, femininity, and the trough of a wave; theyang, the light swirl,
represents brightness, passion and growth.
Life is like that. We have the
ups and downs, night and day, pain and pleasure, and gains and losses. Nothing is permanent. The only constant in life is change.
From
sea to shining sea
My
life too had its ups and down. However, nothing prepared me for the turn of the
worst when I was diagnosed with a peculiar illness known as Bipolar Affective Disorder in 1999. The illness costed me
my career, business and my social life.
Before that I was running a successful consulting firm serving the
corporate clients within a small country named Malaysia. When the illness hit me, I lost my
credibility and the customers’ confidence in my services. I had to shut down my company because all the
employees and associates pack their bags since they thought I was beyond
redemption. And so for the next
seventeen years I had to struggle with making ends meet while juggling with my
ailing condition.
Illness
is not something we fathom when we are high and mighty riding the wave of
success. I didn’t expect to be ill. As a fact, I was so confident with my business
upward trend that I even renovated my office complete with new furniture and
new computers for each employee and associate.
Who would have expected that within a year I made a U-turn from a hero
to a zero?
My
illness was due to the extreme pressure of trying to manage an organization in
the turbulence time of the late nineties Asian Financial Meltdown. All was not lost. I managed to secure an employment with a
local consulting firm that dealt with large government projects. So for a while I got a breathing space to put
my life together before I decided to venture out on my own again.
During
this time I did not take the consumption of medication seriously. I thought I can forgo the meds when the
symptom subside. I didn’t know that
Bipolar Affective Disorder is a lifetime
condition. So, in 2006 I had a
relapse. It costed me my job. I had to leave because I was not fit to work. Yet, I need to put bread on the table. Financial concern was the top priority. Alas, I marched on to the beat of the drum. By this time I revisited my psychiatrist for
a more resounding solution.
The
psychiatrist gave me a very potent prescription. Unfortunately the medication was not like
popping a few pills. It had side
effects. Within two years on medication,
I gained thirty kg. I became
somnambulist and my life was really a drag.
The feeling was like being a castrated cat. I lose my sense of purpose and I became very
docile. Of course I eat a lot. Somehow the meds made me hungry all the
time. No matter how much I ate, I didn’t
feel satiated. There were other
repercussions as well. My libido dropped
and I cannot perform like a normal person.
The illness and the medication grips me like an anaconda coiling a
caiman. It was during the lowest ebb of
my life that I decided to take charge of the situation. I made up my mind to find out how best to
tackle both conditions with zest.
I
started reading as much as I could about nutrition and mental health. I was on the roll. Every day I spend at least four hours
researching about these topics. Then I
came across a website about a guy who lose thirty kg in four months and joined
his Facebook group. I followed his
recommendation and within a month I started seeing positive results. I followed the plan diligently and in nine months
I lost nineteen kg.
For
a while things were going fine. I kept
following the stringent guideline until the weight loss slowed down. Then I started slacking. I became complacent. Soon old eating habits crept in and surely
enough the weight started to escalate.
It was this time I changed to another form of medication. This was a more expensive monthly jab with
lesser side effect. I had been using
this meds since then. It put the illness
under control ever since. That did not
rectify my weight situation. I was still
obese. I started to experiment with
various types of diets. Some I try for a
week and others I tested for a couple of months. In my experience, all diets work in the first
weeks or month. However, some produce
fast results while others were unsustainable due to the unsound scientific
principles behind them. There was no
consistency. Therefore I keep on
searching for the holy grail of weight loss.
Here’s
what works
I’m
going to give it to you up front. If you
don’t want to go through reading the whole book, here is the gist of it all –
all recommendations written about dieting work.
You can try any method ever written and if you implement it to the hilt,
they will produce result in the short term.
Try a diet for a week and you will see a drop of two to three kg in the
first week. The heavier you are the more
drastic the reduction. This is due to
water loss. That is why crash diets are
very popular. However if you want to
keep the fat away, you need a plan that is sustainable for at least a
year. There is no single method to slim down,
yet all agree the one that works most is by reducing calorie intake and at the
same time increasing expenditure. The key to achieve a lasting result is
that it has to be a lifestyle that you can endure.
There
are many ways you can lose weight.
However to lose fat you got to utilize your fat storage as energy. There are several ways you can combine your
food intake. You can go with the ever
popular Low Carbs High Fat (LCHF) Diet which is commonly known as the Ketogenic
Diet. Perhaps you may want to go for the
slight variation of it like the Atkins Diet.
Others may vouch for the Protein Diet.
I even read about a guy who consumed dabs of butter with his meals and
the weight still went down. Of course
the Calorie Restriction Diet works equally fine. The two questions you need to ask yourself
are, “Can I sustain this way of eating for the rest of my life?” and “Will the
downward trend continue?”
Here
are the three basic principles of weight loss:
The only proven nutritional method of losing weight is through prolonged calorie restriction
In any given situation, we are either eating or fasting
When we eat we add calories, when we fast we burn calories
That’s
right. As long as you consume high
calories of food, you will add the energy to be burned. When you stop eating,
your body will utilize the stored fat.
If you consume too much of either carbs, protein or fat, you will get
fat eventually. Food intake is a quid pro quo game, input equals
output. No doubt if you take too much
carbs you will spike the insulin surge in your body. This in turn ended by the carbs being stored
in the liver and the muscles. All the
excess eventually go to the fat cells.
Same goes with protein. Too much
and it will be converted into carbs through the process known as gluconeogenesis
and will be stored as fat if it prolongs.
What happen when you consume too much fat? Well, it will prohibit the burning of the
body fat and thus you will still stay fat.
What
I actually did
The
good news is you can eat anything in moderation and still lose weight. There is a caveat though. You must
allow your body to burn the extra energy.
If you are eating all the time, you are not allowing the body the
opportunity to use the reserve tank.
Hence, your weight will remain stagnant.
I however take it one step further and restrict my carbs intake to ensure
none of the sugar coming from food influence the surge of insulin, the hormone
responsible for moving sugar into the blood stream and eventually to the fat
cells. As for the protein and fat, I
consume moderately so that I feel satiated a long time, sufficient to last
until the next meal.
Would you believe that I only eat one meal a day
(OMAD) and still can function at my peak albeit at work and play? Yes, eating this way actually is very
satisfying and liberating to the mind and body.
That is because my body is not hungry ever since I start conditioning it
to be fat adapted. That is, I train my
body to use the stored fat as fuel. All
it takes is a proper strategy in managing food.
The challenge is not about eating frequently to feel full but rather
eating so that the nutrition is properly channeled for maximum utilization. I will elaborate this further in PART TWO of
this book.
It
is important that you finish reading this book for you to have a better
understanding of how to proceed with the long term effect of this new
lifestyle. That is why I intended this
book to be compact. It is meant to help
you quickly grasp the ideas and immediately put the principles into action.
For
those who is eager to start seeing immediate result within a week, here are
some quick hits:
Eat
maximum two meals a day – dinner and breakfast, skip lunch or lunch and dinner,
skip breakfast or breakfast and lunch, skip dinner. This called 16/8 intermittent fasting
Practice
eating one meal a day – I go with a lavish dinner
Drink
at least 2 liters of water a day excluding other beverages. Ideally drink 4 liters of fluid including tea and coffee
Eat
a lot of leafy vegetables with meals – a fistful per meal
Eat
moderate amount of protein – a palm size per meal
Take
a spoonful of coconut oil and a slice of butter to feel satiated longer
Always
keep in mind carbs is the culprit in losing weight
Stay
away from processed sugar and starches
Take
a pinch of Himalayan salt with coffee in the morning to balance the
electrolytes
Sweat
at least an hour a day – exercise only constitute twenty percent of weight loss
Know
what and when to eat – eighty percent of weight loss is due to food management
Go
easy on dried fruits – I only eat one date a day if I feel like having
something sweet
Eggs are you best friend – go ahead, eat them
any way you like as much as you need to make you satisfied
Eat well, live well
If you are a seasoned dieter and you had been
reading a lot of materials with regards to nutrition and health, you will
realize that what I had outlined is a profound knowledge also available
elsewhere. You probably had tried
several methods and some might actually work for a short while. Then after some time you either get bored or
complacent with the method. Pretty soon
you started slacking. Lo and behold,
before long you will realize that you were back where you started. The key to success is to find a method that
is sustainable. By that I mean it should
be economical and convenient. Let’s admit
it. Diets consist of carbs are the
cheapest and the easiest to come by.
This is true when you eat out.
The fast food restaurants are full of choices that will somehow
incorporate some forms of carbohydrate in the ingredient. I am not demonizing carbs. I am just saying eating too much of it is a
harmful practice in the long run.
Other diets may suggest that we eat plenty of
protein. This is equally bad. Although you can never eat too much protein,
there are side effects you might be wary.
If not fully utilized the protein will put high demand on your
kidney. You may later encounter kidney
stone problems. I had this experience
and ended with me having to get the stones surgically removed. Protein also increases uric acid. Those who have gout can testify how painful it
is when the uric acid crystals accumulate at the vital joints. If it gets to the feet you will be
limping. Only a powerful pain killer can
alleviate the excruciating pain.
Besides eggs, chicken and beef don’t come
cheap. They also require longer time to
prepare. So we tend to opt for a quick
fix by eating out, which then limit our choices of food. My favorite when eating out will be the fried
chicken, not really a healthy option by and large but it is among the few
selections of low carbs food available out there.
For whatever reasons we tend to lose the edge
that made the diet worked in the first place.
That is because we see a diet program as an interim solution. When we achieved our target, we let loose a
few notches. Before long, things get out
of control and the cycle repeats. Are
you tired of this recurring patterns? Do
you ever feel that you might lose hope in your quest for a slim tummy? Well I hope I can be of help. You see, just like you, I too was in the same
position before. Therefore I share the
same concern as you in this journey.
Most importantly, you must realize that losing
fat is not rocket science. With enough
knowledge and practice you can master this technique and well set for
life. Let me take you through the
journey. I wish you all the best in your
quest for a better you. At this point I
want you to know that success is within grasp.
All you got to do is follow the guideline given and you will be on your
way to greater heights with your newfound body.
So sit back and enjoy. After all,
life is a journey.
While you climb the footpath towards the
greater you, enjoy the scenery and stop worrying about the end result. If you focus on getting the steps right,
slowly but surely you will get the desired outcome. Remember though, we can only control the
effort we put in, we cannot control the result.
What we can control we do our best, what we cannot control we let
go. That way we will not be stressed out
over nothing. Allow me to be your guide
in this journey.
I had twenty-five years of experience as a
consultant, trainer and coach. That
makes me a grey hair on matters pertaining to peak performance. Speaking from the elderly side, I can say you
are prime for change. The initiative you
took in purchasing and reading this book indicates that you are not going to
remain where you are. You are already
making a positive move toward the right direction.
“All our dreams can come
through – if we have the courage to pursue them”.
Walt Disney
Do
you know that the best time to create the desire to act is during the time of
fight or flight? This doesn’t happen too
often but if the decision to act means you survive or perish, you bet people
will do whatever it takes to stay alive.
This is the gift of nature to all creatures on planet earth. That is why if you put a frog in a boiling
water it will straight away jump for safety.
Alternatively, if you put the same frog in a lukewarm water and slowly
heat it up, the frog will idly swims in it until it is too late for it to act
upon when the water temperature becomes unbearable. Thus, this is the nature of all creatures.
There
was this parable about a great hunter explorer.
He went around the world to collect exotic animals. Once he came into a remote area. Legend stated that in a hidden valley away
from the privy of humans lived a group of animals that grazed the land but
never been seen by anybody. The natives
only saw the droppings and the hoofs prints scattered in this vast region. The hunter explorer was excited. He wanted to be the first person ever to
catch these fine creatures. “I will
spend the next one month to capture these elusive beasts”, he announced to the
natives.
He
began by studying the droppings and where the hoof marks commonly found. Next he collected the vegetation similarly
found in the droppings and put it at the center of an open space. He then waited. The next day he went and check the spot. The food was left untouched. He removed the food and replaced it with a
fresh batch and waited for another day.
At the crack of dawn the next day he went again to check. Still nothing happened. He kept doing this for seven consecutive days
and it remained the same. Then on the
eighth day he noticed there were some changes.
The food was eaten. Thus he kept
doing the same thing the following day.
More food were eaten.
The
next day, he started planting one pole in the ground. Every day when he came to refresh the food,
he added another pole, encircling the open space. Once he had done that, he started to put a
wire around the poles. Each day that he
came to refresh the food supply he added another layer of wire on top of the
previous line. Finally on the last day
he built a gate door and left it open.
On the eve of the last day he sneaked in quietly and while the creatures were busily eating the food, he closed the door. He managed to capture the whole pack without
much resistance from the animals.
Have
the right mindset
These
two stories illustrate the significance of our mindset in dealing with being
fat. You see, we don’t become fat
overnight. If you realize, the fat on
our belly accumulates throughout a lifetime.
When we were in our teens, we were very active. Our metabolic rate was higher. We play sports and we were in the process of
growing up. Most likely then, we ate
plenty of unhealthy stuffs and yet our body weight maintained. We thought it is OK to carry on living like
this. The food of choice may be high in
sugar and calories yet it doesn’t bother us.
Little do we realize, the choice of food we made in our younger days
becomes the comfort food when we get older.
Food like ice cream, burger, pizza, and chocolate become delightful
treats when we want to indulge ourselves in sweet and high caloric
consumption.
When
we were young, these foods may be consumed on occasional basis. Perhaps once a month or during special
occasions. However, as time passed we
began to enjoy a more affluent lifestyle.
Instead of monthly or yearly treats they become a must have grocery list
of the week. Every time we eat out we
will go to the fast food joints. This is
prevalent when we had improved our financial standing or when we lack the time
to prepare our food at home. Worst, we
have children and because the kids taste buds are incline toward high carbs
high caloric food, we too succumb to their whims and fancies by eating what
they eat. It could be out of convenience
more than anything else.
By
the time you have a family of your own, you may experience a different
lifestyle. Work is more demanding and
thus you spend less time exercising.
Many times you want to have something quick while on the go just for
satisfying your hunger. If you are in
this category, you don’t really care about what you eat as long as it makes you
full. Eating is just another routine for
you to get on with your day. There are
many out there that eat out of necessity without thinking much about what
actually goes through their mouth. As
long as it tastes good, cheap and fulfilling that qualifies as nutrition to
them.
At
home, you or your spouse may prepare food that is traditional. Depending on your culture, the dishes may
consist of plenty of carbs, little green leafy vegetables, moderate protein and
oily in nature. There is nothing wrong
in eating rice or potatoes but combine with greasy cooking, it spells
disaster. Either you eat high carbs low
fat or low carb high fat to stay lean but never high carbs high fat.
I
experimented eating our Malaysian delicacy called Nasi Lemak, a high carbs high fat breakfast for a month while doing
a 16/8 intermittent fasting. Usually in
the morning you will find street vendors selling them with assortments of ingredients. The normal Nasi Lemak consists of rice, anchovies, peanuts, a quarter boiled egg and
some chili paste. My own super combo
concoction comprises of the usual rice, a scoop of beef rendang cooked with coconut oil, clams in red chili, peanuts, one boiled egg
and a spoonful of chili paste. The
taste is heavenly but the side effect is I gained three kg in one month!
A typical serving of Nasi Lemak
In
order to keep your weight at an ideal level you may have to reassess the choices
of food you take consciously during the initial stage. Chances are you had been eating these foods
out of habit for so long that you consume them mindlessly. It becomes auto pilot to have those ice cream
or chocolate after dinner. Perhaps you
may have your favorite weekend or any particular day food; spaghetti and
meatballs on Fridays for example. Or you
have this regular joint you visit during lunch hour, day in day out. This automatic decision-making is helpful to
help you reduce the time thinking on what to eat. Alas, it may be inappropriate if the choices
that you make then is no longer beneficial to you at present from the nutrition
point of view. Therefore you need to
calibrate your routine again for upcoming weeks or months based on the new
information that you receive.
It
is awkward initially, I’m sure. You
already used to the routine. In the first
few weeks you will crave for the familiar food.
Food that is high in sugar and fat can be addictive. Not to worry.
Within two weeks your body will adjust.
Before long you will see the unhealthy food for what it is.
It
is important that during the first two weeks of your new routine that you stay
away from those foods that you crave. If
you give in, it will trigger the memory and there might be a possibility that
you will binge. Losing your favorite
food is a trade-off. Some will miss the
food because they miss the feeling that the food gives them. It’s the same feeling of quitting cigarettes. The brain had developed the pleasure pathways
that link a particular food with certain delightful experience. Your challenge is to break the connection so
that you can establish a new eating pattern.
This
is very true if you are an emotional eater.
Food then becomes a friend when you are lonely and depressed. Some use food as a reward while others eat to fill up their time. Whatever it may be,
remember that you are in charge not the food.
Attitude
is everything
Do
you ever consider why some people are successful and why some fail miserably in
their undertakings? If you ask the crowd
out there many don’t know what is the root cause. Many will point out that the successful
person has an advantage over the other.
They are well-off, born in the right family or much luckier. Definitely those with more resources has the
advantage to head start but that does not guarantee success.
The
most dangerous of all is believing that since you are at the disadvantage
point, you are doom to fail for the rest of your life. This is known as learned helplessness. People with this mental condition sets
themselves to fail from the beginning.
Imagine you have two temperature regulators. When it gets too cold the heater sets in,
when the room gets too hot the air conditioner kicks in. Now, we normally will react to various life
situations differently as well. When
thing starting to go south, we will normally start to feel the pressure to
act. Soon after we start producing the
desired result, we will cruise for a while and just when things are getting to
move to the right direction, we will sabotage our own success. This is known as the Success Syndrome.
The
cycle repeats until we learn to manage the two variables and maintain a state
of homeostasis. A person with learned
helplessness on the other hand does not bother to do anything. He or she will see a critical situation as
irreversible and let circumstance sets its own course.
Having
a bad attitude is your entitlement. That
doesn’t mean you will live with it for the rest of your life. There are three basic inhibitors you need to
be aware:
Let
it be attitude – This is the “I don’t care” type of
attitude. “Whatever happens just let it
happens”. “It doesn’t matter to me”. “It was intended for me to be this way”. “I am fated to be in this way”. This is the defeatist attitude. The person already surrender before even
putting up a fight.
It’s
OK attitude – This is “I am happy the way I am”
attitude. “So what if I’m fat?”. “This is me”.
This attitude is a combination of being a conformist as well as being in
denial. Deep down inside the person
knows he or she needs to do something but maybe fearful or lazy to take action.
I’ll
start tomorrow – This is “just a few minutes more”
attitude. “It can wait”. “I am not in
the mood”. “Let me think about it”. “One more day”. The person in this category is a champion
procrastinator. Perhaps he or she is in
a comfort zone and taking action means more stress.
Let
me set the record straight. Positive
attitude means you will rise above the circumstances. Forget about the past setbacks. Tomorrow is a new day and you can keep on
having a fresh start every day of your life.
What if you tried and you failed before?
It doesn’t matter. Start
fresh. What if even that you fail? Same o same o, start again. Well how long do you have to keep trying
until you call it quit? Never, you will
keep on doing until you produce the desired result. All the time while you trying to figure out
what works, your keep on tweaking your approaches until you make it!
Have
you ever come across a person who bought so many books on dieting but is still
fat? These type of people may enjoy
buying books and may not read them. They
are actually get the satisfaction from buying instead of reading. There are others who read but don’t take
action from their reading. There is no
magic formula to be fit and healthy. You
need to participate in the process. It
is not an armchair effort. You got to
use your knowledge in the playing field, in this case your body.
We
are granted two powers as human beings.
The first is the power to choose. There is no such thing as a human being
without a choice. Even while in prison
the Dalai Lama said though his body is imprisoned his mind is still free to
soar. If you accept your condition as
permanent that means you made the choice to forfeit your privilege to be
free. You can always choose the state of
emotion to be in at the very least. Then,
we are given the power to act. In doing so, we must do it immediately,
excessively and without excuse. If we
apply this three principles to act, we then will be granted the third power,
which is the power of momentum. When that happens, we will overcome the bumps
on the road ahead and proceed with certainty.
Having
the right attitude warrants us to be positive and faithful in the result of our
effort. It will propel us toward the
desired outcome DISPITE the challenges we are facing in our course of
action. Don’t be dishearten when
initially you find it difficult to adapt.
Everything is difficult before it becomes easy. Just like mentioned by Cher some time ago, “If
good body comes in a bottle, everybody will have one”.
Empty
your cup
Once
upon a time, a young apprentice went to learn from an old sage. It was a far and distant journey. When he reached the place where the sage
resided, he got so excited about his journey that he cannot stop talking.
“Let’s
have some tea,” said the sage. He then
started pouring the hot tea into a cup.
The young man continued talking about his trip.
The
sage said nothing but continued pouring the tea.
He kept on pouring until it overflowed.
The young man was puzzled.
“Master,”
he said. “The tea is overflowing. You should stop pouring.”
The
sage replied, “Yes the tea overflows because the cup is full. Just like you. As long as you don’t stop talking, you will
never learn anything new.”
The
young apprentice was silent, dumbfounded by the simple wisdom of the old sage.
Precisely,
when you want to learn something new, you got to unlearn what you had
learned. Otherwise you will form
prejudgment. You already have your own
idea on what to expect based on your past experience. Therefore you have preset expectations based
not on actual experience but based on inferences. You become prejudice of the input. Do not discriminate knowledge. There is no taboo in learning. Knowledge is like a two-edge sword. It cuts both ways. It all depends on the user. It can cut to the left or to the right.
So
use knowledge towards your advantage.
Read everything and only then you decide. It is important that while you are learning
for you to suspend judgment. Otherwise
you will have doubt even before taking action.
This is not good. A clouded mind
creates fear and uncertainty. You will
be paralyzed even before you even take the first step.
As
I mentioned, losing weight is not a great mystery. The fastest way is not to eat. I watched a You Tube video about a guy who
water fasted for twenty-eight days and lose twenty kg in the process. Anybody can achieve this with the right
determination and technique. There was
even a person who refrained from consuming other than water and vitamins for a
year and arrived at a spectacular result.
This twenty-seven years old from Scotland fasted for three hundred and
eighty two days and lost one hundred twenty five kg.
There
are many ways to lose weight or rather fat.
I am showing you one of the many methods. Most importantly my method works for me and
many others. It’s not about shedding the
pounds alone. It’s about having a peace
of mind and the elated feeling of being able to take a firm grip of our
relationship with food.
So
don’t listen to the naysayers including that little voice inside you that say
this method doesn’t work. Dive in and
drink from the fountain of knowledge like a dessert traveler stopping by an
oasis. Satisfy your quest for the
knowledge to be fit and healthy.
If
you are ready, let’s begin with the first prerequisite…
Be
enthusiastic
You
must be excited with this newfound knowledge.
After all, you had saved tremendous amount of time researching various
sources by reading this one book. All
the digging and planting of the tree had been done by those who had went
through this path before you. You just
come for the picking.
Don’t
act as if you already know enough so this is nothing. If you are so well-informed why are you not
taking action? If you are so smart, why
are you still fat?
Be
like Einstein, look at what being tabled to you with curiosity and wonder as if
as stated by him, a kid entering a library for the first time; full of awe and
wonder.
Don’t
let new ideas that are unfamiliar or unorthodox offend you. After all the purpose of you reading this
book is to help yourself. Let me help
you help yourself. We should be striving
for the greater good. Don’t fight
it. Move with certainty and zest. Feel that power within you awakens. You had enough of this fat body of yours and
now you want to permanently change for the better.
I
know, when you are fat and sluggish, you feel there is no hope for
victory. Restore back the faith you had
on yourself and you will see that Providence will come to aid you. You must be patience. God’s delay is not God’s denial.
Not
a drag
Hey,
this is your life we are talking here.
Do you value yourself? Don’t you
want to uncover that magnificent you underneath that blobs of fat? Do you know that there is an Armani suit
underneath every parka? That beneath
every lump of marble is the statue of David?
It
takes effort mind you. You cannot sit
back and expect things to work miraculously.
You got to work the magic. You
got to have the self-control, the determination and the willpower to endure the
initial inertia.
At
most, the feeling of hunger and discomfort will last for a week. After that you will enjoy your stomach being
empty. It’s a good feeling. No wonder those who are used to fasting look
forward to not eating for the entire day.
I am referring to the Muslims who practice not eating for the whole
month of Ramadhan. These people welcome
the fasting month with joy and sadden when the month passes.
The
true practitioners even fast every Mondays and Thursdays. Some strict followers fast one month ahead of
Ramadhan and added six more days in Syawal, the month after Ramadhan, to
complete the inclusion of the merit count of a year’s deed.
For
the devoted, there is no complaint at all of not eating for thirteen hours at a
stretch. The key here is the body
adapts. Look at your tummy, people. You have enough storage to last you for two
months without eating. Surely you can
stand not eating for twenty-four hours?
All you need to do is train your body to tap into this unlimited
reserve. To do that you have to refrain
from sugar and starch for two weeks.
Your source of carbohydrate will be from leafy vegetables. Don’t worry, you won’t die of
starvation. Starvation only happens if
your body fat is below four percent. In
the first two to three days you may experience some lightheaded, dizziness, or
sleeplessness. These are known as the
Ketone Flu or the Atkins Flu. It will
pass I assure you.
The
only thing that may differ about from your normal routine is that your bowel
movement will spread from the daily morning routine to three to four days
intervals. Nothing to worry about.
Never
give up
There
are initially false starts for some people.
Your schedule may not be appropriate, you may have sugar cravings, you
cannot withstand hunger or you may feel a bit edgy doing something new. Rest assure these things are normal. Don’t get dishearten. There is no failure except if you give up.
Consider
this, if you start today, within a year you will look back and feel totally
satisfied with your achievement. The
only regret is you don’t start sooner.
Some are fast trackers, some are slow starters. This is not the hare and tortoise race, this
is a race within yourself. How long have
you been fat? Ten, fifteen years? A lifetime maybe? Well, this effort I’m talking about only
require one year of dedication. Here are
some proofs.
All these people took one year or less to lose
more than thirty percent of their body fat:
You too can
achieve the same result if you persist.
This too shall pass
The
biggest challenge in doing something new is not about actually doing it but
rather having the initiative to start the process. Let’s admit it. We are creatures of comfort. Normally we are used to doing routine stuffs. If we are used to eating three meals a day,
changing that routine to one meal a day (OMAD) is very distressing. Not because it is not scientifically sound
but rather our past limiting beliefs make it so.
We
tend to worry that we will get out of our routine and thus that will derail our
day. This is natural for us humans. Change means uncertainty and uncertainty will
lead to discomfort. It is very important
that we see things for what it is; we are doing things to improve our well-being. Therefore we are making progress. Hence there is nothing to fear. After all, skipping one or two meals will not
kill you. Your body is full of reserves. You won’t die of hunger and if you do it
right, it can be an enjoyable experience.
I
started my new way of eating by skipping breakfast. I eat normal meals for lunch and dinner. After a while I tweaked a bit and started
eating low carbs, moderate protein and high fat diet. Since eating this way is so satisfying, I
then started to skip lunch and have dinner only. After a couple of months eating OMAD LCHF, I
decided to do extended fasting for twenty-one days. That is, I only drink water, coffee with a
pinch of salt and tea throughout the duration of the fast. I feel great physically and I have such a
mental clarity that I don’t miss food at all.
That is because on the third day the body started utilizing the fat in the
body and ketones (the byproduct of body fat metabolism), a very potent source
of energy.
Of
course like anybody else, I was apprehensive initially. I however did not allow my fear, uncertainty
and doubt (FUD) to control my rational thinking in trying something new. There are plenty of resources to refer to if
you need further clarification. The best
information you can check is form The
Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung. He runs a clinic that prescribe intermittent and
extended fasting for obese and type-2 diabetes patients.
I
hope that up to this point you had concluded that the only way that you will
lose that extra few pounds is for you to take a firm action to do something
about it. Knowledge is just a potential. The real power is in the action. You may not get it right the first time but
at least you are moving towards the right direction.
Here
is what I like you to do. List all the
reasons why you should lose weight. This
is call the green lighting process.
Don’t think too much about whether the answer is right. Just list down all the reasons that pop in
your mind. They could be social,
emotional or physical reasons. As you
write, think of all the pleasures you will derive from losing that weight of
yours. Is there a time limit you want to
aim for? Write down the target dates. Do you want to achieve a certain size of
dress? Write that down too.
This
list should be an exciting one.
Something that propels you towards this new behavior.
Next,
list the reasons that you might fail.
This is the red lighting process.
It could be something that occurred in the past that hindered your
progress. It could be a pattern of
self-sabotaging. It could be a
self-defeating script that you follow over and over again. Perhaps it is a fear within you. You can also list down anticipated events
that may derail you of your plan to lose weight. Don’t stop at the first few, keep on going
until you exhaust the possibilities.
Once
you are done these exercises you will have a clearer perspective of who you are
with regards to your experience in dealing with weight loss. You will see a trend or a pattern of what
makes you successful and why you failed before.
It is very powerful. Give it a
try.
“Every man builds his world
in his own image. He has the power to
choose
but no power to escape the
necessity of choice”.
Ayn Rand
Is there a right way to lose weight?
The
answer is absolutely not. There are
people who do calorie control and lose weight.
There are people who restrict carbs and lose weight. There are also people who restrict fat and
lose weight. Definitely there are people
who don’t eat and lose weight!
The
question is not about losing weight but rather which of the ways is more
expedient and easy to follow. We don’t
want to follow a certain plan which will later on backfire on us. For example, we don’t want to lose weight for
a month only to regain the weight back again two months down the road. Certainly we don’t want whatever plan we
follow only works for a short term.
A
diet plan should not be a plan at all.
It should be a lifestyle that we can comfortably follow for years to
come. The only way to do it is to have
something that allow you to restrict your calorie consumption and allow you to
eat anything in moderation.
Below
are the various options that I had tried and the experience I had with each of
them. I will not discuss in detail what
are the various protocols involved but rather share with you my personal
journey with each one of them.
Atkins Diet Phase I
I
started my diet regimen with Atkins Diet Phase I. Of all the four phases with Atkins, Phase I
is the most significant in losing a lot of weight. Atkins Diet Phase I require for you to limit
your carbs consumption to twenty grams per day.
Which means you only limit your carbs to a fistful of leafy greens per meal. Atkins also encourages the consumption of
moderate protein and fat.
I
lasted nine months with Atkins. During
the duration I lost nineteen kg. After
the nine months my weight stalled to only losing one kg per month. I stayed in Phase I all the while because I
was still far away from my ideal weight.
When
I was on Atkins I ate a lot of protein but moderate amount of fat. After a while the diet became a bit boring
because I feel that I was missing some of the carbohydrate based food. Once I am off the diet (meaning I started
eating carbs) my weight steadily increased.
Ketogenic Diet
I
then switched to the Ketogenic Diet. It
is quite similar to Atkins Phase I with the carbs restriction between fifteen
and twenty grams per day. The
significant difference with Ketogenic Diet is the high amount of healthy
fat. Depending on you source, the fat
consumption is between sixty to eighty percent. It was during this time I started eating
coconut oil and butter on daily basis.
My intake of protein was reduced as compared to Atkins (in Atkins I eat
as much as I can stomach).
The
introduction of the healthy fat is a big boost in my general well-being. I fell more alert and I have laser-sharp
clarity. I feel less hungry too. Nevertheless, my weight loss is not that
fast. About one kg a month.
Warrior Diet
Soon
after, I read about the Warrior Diet. This diet was made popular by Ori Hofmekler,
an ex-Israeli army personnel, a martial artist and a body builder. Ori suggested in his book for us to eat
lightly during the day but feast in the evening. This according to him follows the circadian
rhythm of our body. It also coincide
with the way the ancient Spartans and Romans army practiced in the olden days.
I
tried this method for a month but the result was pretty disappointing. It was difficult to control the portion of
fruits that I ate during the day. So I
end up overeating most of the time. I
guess if I follow this routine to the hilt, I might gain the benefits from this
method. Nevertheless I like the concept
of the circadian rhythm of eating. So I
incorporate the concept for much later implementation.
16/8 Intermittent Fasting
Also
known as the 8-Hour Diet, this protocol requires you to eat within an eight
hour window and fast for sixteen hours.
The simple way to look at it is; either you eat lunch and dinner but
skip breakfast or eat breakfast and lunch but skip dinner or eat dinner and
breakfast but skip lunch. According the
author of The 8 –Hour Diet, David
Zinczenko, you can eat anything within the eight-hour window and still lose
weight. At the same time he did
recommend certain food to take for overall health.
I
tried eating anything within the eight-hour window while fasting for sixteen
hours. It didn’t work. I gained three kg in a month. So I ditched the protocol right after that.
One Meal a Day (OMAD)
Immediately
after that I switched to OMAD while combining it with Atkins Phase I. This is a very simple protocol, I only eat
dinner. I find this is very practical
because dinner is the time my family and I get together. They will eat the normal course with rice,
vegetable and protein. I however will
skip the rice and only eat the main dishes.
Of
all the protocols I experience, this is the most successful one. I lost ten kg in two months. During the day I will drink at least two
liters of water, coffee with a pinch of salt and some tea. That kept the hunger at bay. During dinner, I will eat a tablespoon of
Extra Virgin Coconut Oil and two slices of grass fed New Zealand Anchor Butter.
My
mood and mental clarity improved much.
There is a feeling of emptiness in the stomach but it comes in
waves. Nothing much to worry really.
One
thing worth noting though. On the sixth
week I started introducing rice into my diet.
Immediately my weight jumped extra two kg. This is due to water retention resulting from
the carbs intake. It took me two weeks
to lose this sudden gain. My lesson
learnt was carbs can make our body retain water even if we eat once a day.
21 Days Extended Fast
After
two months on OMAD Atkins, I noticed that my weight stalled. That was just about the time I started
reading The Complete Guide to
Fasting. The book dispels many if
the myths we had about prolonged abstinence from food. The gist of it is our body can sustain
without eating as long as we have fat storage.
Honestly
speaking, it was not as bad as I imagined it to be. Since I am already fat adapted from the OMAD,
I ease into it without much hassle. If
you want to try this protocol, it is important for you to have your daily salt
intake in order for you not to dehydrate.
It also helps to maintain the essential mineral and electrolytes from
depleting.
The
weight loss with this method is pretty dramatic. On the first week I lose one kg a day without
any loss of vigor. By day three I
was completely alert probably due to the ketones in the bloodstream. The feeling of hunger disappeared too. Extended fasting didn’t feel any harder than
the OMAD. That is because the hunger
doesn’t accumulate as the days go by.
Furthermore the hunger comes in waves.
Anytime I’m hungry, I drink a few gulps of water.
This
experience is very liberating. I thought
I will be thinking about food all the time.
Turned out it was the opposite. I
can free myself to do other things like reading and writing. There was no loss of energy or lack of
concentration. I can even exercise regularly
without losing the normal vigor.
The
thought that kept me together during the extended fast was I actually utilizing
my fat storage to the optimum. There was
no guess work whether I am burning energy from the food or from my belly. Surely the burning of the Basal Metabolic
Rate was from the stored fat because I am still functioning well without eating
for three weeks.
Putting it together
It
is obvious to me from this self-hacking that there are certain principles
involve in losing weight. Here are some
takeaway points:
Eating carbs will increase insulin and retain
water. By eating carbs excessively (over
one hundred grams a day), we will invoke the pancreas to produce high amount of
insulin. This in turn will force the
body to store the extra glucose into fat cells.
In this case eating large amount of carbs makes us fat.
Contrary to popular belief, dietary fat doesn’t
make us fat because eating fat doesn’t trigger the secretion of insulin, the
hormone that clears sugar from the bloodstream and converting it into fat.
Eating clean is important; which means we
should eat wholesome food. Sugar and
process food will spike insulin and thus will eventually make us fat.
Coconut oil contains Medium Chain Triglyceride
(MCT) which means it will not be converted into body fat. It is broken down in the liver and be
utilized as energy.
Butter is highly demonized. We need fat for the creation of new cells and
hormones regulation. It is highly
nutritional and very safe. What we
should avoid are the trans-fats and margarine.
Skipping a meal or two is actually very normal
for our body once we are adapted to do so.
It is a liberating experience. No
longer do we eat out of rote but out of necessity. If you trace back the history of the human
civilization, it was very recent that we have three square meals. Our body was built for feast and famine. Therefore we can recondition our body to eat
stop eat, not necessarily eating every three to four hours interval.
Eating
low carbs, moderate protein and high fat works!
Couple that with eating OMAD and on evenings proved that you can lose
considerable amount of body fat.
For those who are willing to go the extra mile,
I encourage extended fasting. It is not
only good for the body, it is also mentally and spiritually sound. Don’t worry about starving. The body will start utilizing the stored fat
and converts it into ketones, the preferred form of energy for the brain.
Allow two weeks of gestation period for your
body to be fat adapted and you will experience a new source of energy. The feeling is euphoric initially and for those
experiencing depression, you mood will improve dramatically.
Drink at least two liters of plain water and
add a pinch of salt to your beverages, in my case, coffee. You will be surprise how invigorating the
feeling is. I recommend the Himalayan pink
salt which is rich in minerals and iodine.
A word of caution: if you are on medication please consult your
physician before you decide to start a new diet regimentation. The weight reduction might offset the dosage
of medication you are taking.
Conclusion
There
is no hard and fast rule in dieting.
Nothing is carved in stone. That
is why for every diet plan there is a success story. What is more important is what works for
you. Some people are happy losing one kg
a week. Others want to lose weight
faster, while others are pretty contented in taking the slow train to
China. It all depends on the goal you
set at the beginning of the journey.
There
are people who swear by a certain method and they become adamant with the diet
protocol. I remember this one person
from a Facebook diet group that I joined insisted I wash the soy sauce I eat
from the chicken teriyaki before I eat.
All because soy sauce was prohibited in the diet. I wanted to comply with the regulation but
I’m not going to wash away the remnant of soy sauce from my chicken
teriyaki. Where is the joy in doing
that?
Even
when I first started eating OMAD Atkins, I still craved for sweet things. I therefore eat one or two dates after dinner
to satisfy my cravings. After one week
the craving naturally disappeared and I never have a need to abstain myself
forcefully. By the way, if you have
cravings, eat a few dabs of butter. The
cravings will disappear instinctively.
Always
be mindful, the key to success is flexibility.
If you crave something sweet, it is better you take some dried fruits just
to get the sweet taste than to later on gorge loads of chocolate chip cookies
because the craving is surmounting. If
you fall out of the wagon, quickly re-calibrate and get back on track. You don’t want to compound the slip-up and go
off tangent for long. Be mindful, this
is a one year journey at the very least.
Therefore one or two derailments are understandable especially when you
just starting.
“Happiness is not something
you postpone for the future.
It is something you design for
the present”.
Jim Rohn
Every
time you want to do something significant like losing thirty kg of fat means
you got to be mentally ready to tackle the task at hand. It is a daunting task if you consider losing
thirty to fifty percent of your body weight.
It requires concerted effort on your part to stay on track. This is because change will happen gradually
and at times, if you don’t keep track of your progress, you might get
disheartened along the way. The picture below is my daily inspiration. It is a thirty kg rice container. That is equivalent to the amount of fat I got to lose to be a competitive runner:
Allow
me to share with you some basic tools that I use on daily basis to monitor my
progress:
Digital Weighing Scale
This
is the first form of feedback mechanism that you have. Of course there are other forms of feedback
that you can use, like the mirror, the waist line or the one size smaller jeans
you keep on trying. However nothing
beats the scale. There are many who said
not to rely on the scale on daily basis because our weight fluctuates with the
water that we retain. I however weigh
every day so that I can tweak what went right and what went wrong the day
before. I then take the weekly
difference in weight as the indication of progress. Normally I do this on Saturdays.
The
daily weight might fluctuates but the weekly difference is more realistic. I weight myself every morning before I consume
anything. Do not let the scale dictates
your mood. It is just a form of
feedback. When I was consuming carbs the
night before, I gained two kg the next day.
This is not fat mind you, just water.
This is because carbs binds with water thus the term carbo and hydrate.
Monitor Your Weight Apps
You
can get this application in Google Play Store.
This is a very encouraging application.
It charts your daily progress and it will tell you the estimated target
date for you to achieve your goal. It also
gives you the indication of your Body Mass Index. In addition, it will automatically calculate
the total weight you lose so far.
As
a routine, I will weigh myself and immediately I will key in the result in my
tablet. The application then plot a graph
that shows the current, monthly and overall progress. Pretty neat huh?
Evernote Apps
This
is another cool application. You can
have two devices accessing the same application if you are a nonpaying
user. So you can have one residing on
you PC and the other one on your hand phone.
The
way I use Evernote is I turned it into a monthly calendar. You can create a table using the feature in
it and create a seven columns (days) times five rows (weeks). Next I put dates in the boxes. It’s good if you have a desk calendar and
calibrate the days with the date.
Normally the week starts with a Sunday.
After
the date I put in what protocol I am doing for the day. It could be any of the following:
16/8 – If I only skip breakfast and eat normal
16/8 LCHF – If I skip breakfast and eat ala Atkins for the day
OMAD – If I eat one meal with carbs
OMAD LCHF – If I eat one meal ala Atkins for the day
Normal Feed – If I eat normal three square
meals
Extended Fast – If I am fasting more than
twenty-four hours
Then
I enter my weight followed by the time I wake up.
Next
I put the list of food and drink I take including the time.
I
also entered the time I sleep
Finally
I record the amount of water I consumed for the day.
Throughout
the years I had added a few additions including when I had bowel movement and
how much money I spend for the day.
You
don’t need all these if you don’t believe in keeping a personal journal. I however had been doing this since 2013 and
I find it quite informative in monitoring my progress. It gives me a monthly snapshot of where I was
a month or a year ago. Just like a
calendar, I also keep track of my appointments and exercise activities using
this system. The advantage of this
calendar over any other is that it is very flexible. The columns can extend limitlessly so you can
record almost anything.
The
best part in my opinion is I have a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in the
week and the month. If you going to
track just the food intake, MyFitnessPal
is just fine. It however won’t give you
the flexibility of your own self-created calendar.
Since
Evernote resides in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about losing the
data. It also allows you to use
different colors for different purposes.
For example, I use red to indicate the high carb food. So at a glance I can tell if within the week
I eat too much carbs.
Blogspot.com
For
monitoring other things like mood, progresses and setbacks, I use Blogspot.com. This allows me to have a narration of my
experience while on this journey. I also
use the blog for linking articles from You Tube that are relevant for future
references. I am heavily influence by
the songs that I hear. Therefore I also
save copious amount of songs in my blog to fit the mood of the day.
The
nice thing about Blogspot.com is you can set the setting to private. That way only you can see your entry. Since it is a cloud repository, you won’t
have to worry in losing your data. It
also means you can access your entries from your hand phone and tablet.
I
also use Evernote for journaling purposes but between the two, Blogspot.com is
more relevant because information can be organized hierarchically base on the
date of entry. In short the blog is to
capture your journey – to look back as a reference. The entries need not be daily. It is sufficient that you record your
observations once a week.
Putting
Scientific Method into action
This
is very much like a scientist doing an experiment. In this case you are experimenting with the
food and its effect on your weight loss.
A term commonly used in the scientific world is the Scientific Method. This is outlined in the diagram below:
In
the Scientific Method you start with a pivotal question such as, “How do I lose
thirty kg of weight within one year without having to depend on medication or
food supplement?” You then do the
necessary research to find the various alternatives.
Next,
you construct a hypothesis or in a layman’s term, an assumption. This could be eating in a certain
manner. It could also be eating a
certain food. It could also be eating in
a certain window of feeding. After that
you test the validity of your assumption by taking action. Observe what works and what doesn’t. You then draw a conclusion. If the result is positive, you carry on with
the successful method. If it doesn’t
then keep tweaking until you get the right outcome.
That
is why it is impossible to fail. As long
as you keep on getting new information to improve your experiment, then you
will always be making a positive advancement towards the desired result. The key is you need data that can be analyzed
on periodic basis. Without the data you
will not have the vital information to act.
For example, without my daily weighing I would not have discovered carbs
intake can increase my weight by two kg overnight. Having the information alone is not good
enough. You will need wisdom to decipher
and make meaningful conclusion out of it.
Back to my example, I would have thought that
the two kg increase of weight is due to fat.
Fortunately I didn’t take the information at face value and dig
deeper. Turned out it is just water
retention. How do I know? Because the minute I stopped taking carbs the
weight dropped again, steadily.
P A R T T W O
“A little starvation can really do more for the average
sick man
than can the best medicines and the best doctors”.
“A people without the
knowledge of their past history,
origin and culture is like a
tree without roots”.
Marcus Garvey
Time will flow and I will follow
It
was not long ago that we as a species undergone a series of changes in the way
we eat. As far as human history goes we
started as hominids scavenging the Savannah for leftover carcass abandoned by
the predators. Our ancestors were also
foragers and gatherers of fruits and tubers when the seasons were aplenty. Once humans developed better thinking skills,
they developed stone tools for hunting.
Living the life of hunter gatherers had been the bedrock of human
evolution for millions of years.
Then
somewhat ten thousand years ago, humans started agriculture. This was the shift from being Paleolithic to
Neolithic. Humans started incorporation
grains in their diet and slowly the way of the hunter gatherer gave way to farming
and craftsmanship. Life was very much
dependent on the success of the crops.
Humans took up rearing of domesticated animals and so the birth of the
agricultural society.
It
is interesting to note that if we take the existence of humans as the face of a
wall clock, agriculture way of living only appeared at the last one minute to
twelve o’clock. For the longest time
humans obtained their food supply either through scavenging, foraging,
gathering or hunting. Eating grains was
not natural for the Paleolithic society.
A
typical day in a life of the Paleolithic men will be rising before sunrise to
embark into a journey to hunt wild animals as far as five km radius. That means they walk at least ten km a day to
put food on the table. Not all hunting
expedition were successful. At times
they came back empty handed. During
spring and summer there were plenty of fruits and berries for the picking. Come winter, food were scarce and they have
to undergo a process of calorie restriction.
Therefore they were subject to feast and famine cycles. Imagine, this kind of lifestyle lasted for at
least 2.6 million years.
The
lifestyle they led and the food they ate shaped the body condition that lasted
until today. We are all descendants of
these prehistoric people. Our body had been
conditioned to adapt to the eating style of our ancestor through the genetic
coding.
Alternately,
the Neolithic lifestyle was too recent to be coded in our genes. That is why once we incorporate grains in our
lives the problems like obesity and type-2 diabetes started to appear. Early records of these illness already
appeared in the scrolls of the Egyptians as early as 5,000 BC.
The
world of instant gratification
Fast
forward to the Industrial Revolution which was only two hundred years ago. Humans started to mass produce process food
from sugar and flour. Prior to sugar the
next sweetest thing humans can find in the wild was honey. There is a big difference between sugar and
honey. Sugar had been processed until
there is nothing left except empty calories.
In contrast, honey contains enzymes and minerals that the body can
benefit from, Besides making food and
beverages sweet and giving instant energy, sugar is as John Yudkin described in
his book is Pure, White and Deadly.
I
highly recommend you read this book to understand the damage sugar can do to
your body. The effect of sugar is like
heroin. It is addictive and it messes up
with our neurotransmitter, dopamine. It
also accelerates the aging process. Once
you quit sugar for two weeks, you will realize that your taste bud can pick up
the natural sweetness from the food that you eat. At one point I even taste the sweetness of
the mineral water though it is quite subtle.
Flour
is another culprit. Never in our entire
existence as humans actually prepares us to consume flour. It is highly processed and quite alien to our
digestive system. The nutritious part of
the wheat which is the wheat germ is removed during the sieving process to
ensure the flour’s texture is even. What’s
left is the part of the wheat that is high in starch. Eating flour or its byproduct albeit cakes or
breads is not natural for the body. It
will skyrocket the secretion of insulin because all processed food are high in
Glycemic Index.
What
is Glycemic Index? You may ask. It is a relative ranking of carbohydrate in
foods according to how they affect glucose levels. Carbohydrate with a low GI value (55 or less)
are more slowly digested, absorbed and metabolized and cause a lower and slower
rise in blood glucose and therefore usually secretes lower insulin levels.
This
is why process food in general is bad.
Our body is not programed to handle the sudden influx of glucose in our
blood. To be fair, insulin as a hormone
is not bad. It helps to clear our bloodstream from access sugar. Otherwise it will become toxic. However, overflowing of insulin means the
sugar will be stored as fat eventually.
Have
you ever experience this? You are
already about to end the day and you are ravenously hungry. Therefore you look forward for dinner and
celebrate the closure of the day with a nice meal at your favorite
restaurant. While waiting for the main
dish, you drink some beer or perhaps some ice lemon tea. The restaurant provides you with some buns as
a starter. Later your salad with
Thousand Island dressing arrives. You
chow it down in a hurry. Finally your
main dish is served. It is Chicken
Enchiladas with strained rice and generous serving of cheese. You eat wholeheartedly.
Within
half an hour you finish the whole plate.
By right you should feel energized.
You just put some extra energy in your body. Instead, you go into a food coma. Your stomach bulges and you can hardly sit
without protruding your belly. On the
way back home you feel stupor. The food
that you eat makes you drowsy. By the
time you reach home you can hardly open your eyes. Straight away you go to bed feeling tired and
miserable.
This
scenario can be a bit disturbing if it happens on a daily or weekly basis. Food doesn’t supposed to make you feel
bad. It should replenish your mind, body
and spirit. However because we seldom
make a decision to eat food based on its nutritional value, we fall into the
trap of eating “See Food”; we eat food that is pleasant to the eyes. Next we choose food that is pleasant to the
tongue and lastly the selection is based on what is pleasant to the stomach.
To
eat smart require some conscious effort initially. You need to be mindful of what is good and
what is bad. What is healthy and what is
not. Unfortunately our eyes can deceive
us. The food marketer understand this
very well. That is why when you see a
burger advertisement, the picture is more appetizing than the real thing. If you are to depend on your eyes to make
that smart decision, you will realize that the decision is seldom rational.
The
decision based on the tongue can be deceiving as well. There are places where you can go just to excite
your taste buds. This field of culinary
is known as the molecular gastronomy.
People who subscribe to this concept are looking for fresh perspective
in eating. Not so much for nutritional
purposes. If taste buds is the prime
criteria for selecting your food, then sugary and fried food certainly will be
at the top of the list.
Of
course there are people who eat because they just want a full stomach. In order to do so many will not consider the
percentage of the macronutrients they eat.
Chances are these people will end up eating high carbs high fat food.
The
first thing that should come to your mind when eating is whether the food is
healthy. It may look unappetizing but it
has to be nutritional. It is really
simple to make a bland protein dish looks palatable. Just add lots of greens and lace it with
tomato, carrot, pepper and mushroom.
When
you eat out, opt for food with generous portion of protein in the serving and
incorporate salad in the side dish.
Instead of having the protein to go with French fries opt for grilled
vegetables instead.
Eating
fast food can be tricky. So instead of
having the usual Big Mac, opt for the chicken or the fish. Always order ala carte unless you plan to share the fries and soda with your
family members. A good thing to do is
drink water instead of fizzy drinks.
Those drinks will not satisfy your thirst anyway and are loaded with
sugar.
Eat
to live, not live to eat
It
is worth noting that throughout our lives, human civilization centered their
lives on food. When we have festivals or
special occasions there are normally food to be served. We also tend to plan our activities around
our meal intervals. Food becomes more
than nutrition. It is a symbol of
prosperity in some culture. There is a
common belief that when a person is overweight, he or she is doing well
financially. This could be due to the
situation in the early part of history where poor people sometime starved to
death.
As
time goes by we slowly shift our priority towards food. Instead of eating to live, we live to
eat. This is very common in Malaysia where
following the fasting month of Ramadhan, the Muslims will attend open houses
for the duration of one month! Already
there are countless breaking of fast buffets during Ramadhan, the feeding
frenzy continues for a duration of two months with the coming of Syawal. No wonder Malaysia is the fattest country in
South East Asia. Comparatively Vietnam
has no issue of being overweight because on the average, Vietnamese eat one
meal a day.
Some
people use food as a crutch. When they
are stressed or depressed they eat particularly high carbs high fat food like
chocolate and ice cream. This unhealthy
relationship with food will only temporarily alleviate the problem. It will give you a short rush but soon it
will be followed by guilt and a feeling of blah.
Why
not take food for what it is? A source
of energy and nutrition. If you look
past the smoke screen then you will see that most of the time you don’t need to
eat unhealthily. You will be mindful of
what goes in your mouth and not gorge comfort food and festival food as they
will impact your digestive system. You
know that high caloric food is bad for the long term. This should then prevent you from
overeating. Remember, what nourishes you
will destroy you in the long run, if left unmonitored.
Cancer
feeds on sugar
Cancer cells love sugar! That is why refined
carbohydrates like white sugar,
white flour, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and soft drinks are extremely
dangerous for anyone trying to prevent or reverse cancer. Sugar essentially feeds tumors and encourages cancer growth.
Dr.
Thomas Seyfried and Dr. Dominic D’agostino, two experts on cancer treatment
indicated that for anti-cancer benefits, fasting should be done roughly
quarterly (four times a year). In
particular, blood ketone levels should reach a certain therapeutic level
(somewhere around six or seven on a ketone meter). This is done on a seven-day interval, distil
water only fast.
Part
of the anti-cancer has to do with autophagy (the cell eats itself up), but the
other part is the metabolism of the cancer cells. Many types of cancer cells ferment glucose as
their source of energy. While healthy
cells can survive without glucose by burning ketones instead. Many cancer cells cannot use ketones, so they
starve to death.
Caveat being
that some cancer cells thrive on ketones – so it depends on what kind of cancer
you have as to whether fasting will help you or not.
Another
way to fight cancer is to go on a Ketogenic Diet. That means very low carbs intake and high in
healthy fats.
Fat people always hungry
It is an irony, you probably think that because
someone is fat, he is more satiated with his meal. Furthermore he has so much energy stored in
his body that he will never need to eat for a month! This is however is not true. It’s like having a tanker with gallons of
fuel that it carries in its trailer. The
tanker cannot access the trailer compartment.
Instead the trailer has to depend on the small gas tank that has a
direct access to the engine.
Same goes with the fat guy. He may eat a lot but the food got transported
to the fat cells instead of where it matters.
In another word, the fat cells hijack the food. He ends up lacking of
nutrients where he needed most which is his body. In addition because he eats a high carbs
diet, his body is sugar adapted instead of fat adapted. There is so much sugar that the body can tap from where else the fat stored in the fat cells is virtually limitless.
The remedy is pretty straightforward. Switch to low carb high fat diet (LCHF) or do
intermittent fasting. Within two weeks
the body will switch to being fat adapted and start using the excess fat.
“To safeguard one’s health
at the cost of too strict of
a diet is a tiresome illness
indeed”.
Francois Rochefoucauld
Let’s
keep it simple. You got your
macronutrients and your micros which are the vitamins and minerals. If you eat sensibly, you will derive your
micros from your food source. You don’t
need supplements. For example of you
take butter, then your A, D, E and K vitamins are taken care of automatically. In addition you will also benefit from the lauric
acid which is the medium length long-chain fatty acid also found in coconut oil
as well as Omega 3 fatty acid which normally found in cold water fishes.
Another
good example is eggs. If you eat eggs
then you will get access to choline which helps in liver function and selenium
which plays a role in preventing cell damage.
Eggs are also a good source of high-quality protein, vitamin D, vitamin
B12, phosphorus and riboflavin. In
addition, eggs are rich in the essential amino acid leucine, which plays a
unique role in stimulating muscle protein synthesis.
In
this sense food is panacea to the body.
Eat right and the body will heal itself.
We however put too much emphasis on what to eat. The truth is we should be focusing on
abstinence. In the case of food, less
is more. In a study where the
researchers reduce the caloric intake of mice by thirty percent, they
discovered the mice live thirty percent longer.
By eating less we live longer.
That is why you don’t find obese people over seventy years old. They will be dead before their time is up.
In
dealing with the macros, there are very little that we need to know. Namely what to eat and by how much.
We
start with carbs
Carbs
is the type of macros with the highest varieties. If you look up for types of carbohydrate in
Google, you find it can get quite complex.
For simplification purposes I will divide carbs into three categories:
Simple Sugar
Starch
Fiber
Simple sugar are the
carbs that taste sweet. This include
table sugar, sweets, maple syrup, honey and tropical fruits. This type of carbs need to be taken in moderation. The reason being, these types of carbs is
high in GI and will spike insulin production.
While
artificial sweeteners are not really sugar, they too will spike insulin and may
result you being hungry more if you are on Ketogenic Diet or is doing
intermittent fasting. As much as
possible avoid artificial sweeteners and just allow your taste buds to adjust
to the natural sweetness of the food itself.
There
are people like the Weight Watchers that use fruits and vegetables
interchangeably. Unfortunately they are
not the same. Fruits contain fructose,
another form of simple sugar. When you
eat fruits you will still spike insulin although some argue that fructose get
processed in the liver. Sugar in any
form is still sugar. Having it in excess
will lead to the storage in the fat cells eventually. So if possible stay clear from simple sugar.
Starches are
things like rice, potatoes, oats, wheat and cereal. They are also known as complex
carbohydrate. Here is the deal. All forms of complex carbohydrate will be
broken down to simple sugar eventually.
The only difference is these types of carbs have low GI. So it takes longer to be broken down and it
will moderately release insulin in the blood stream.
If
you want to eat starches, a good guideline will be to eat a hand scoop a
meal. If you are active then two scoops
will be fine. In comparison, this should
give you about twenty grams of carbs per hand scoop.
Fiber is what
you get from the vegetables. The
cellulose in vegetables is made of carbohydrate. The good news is our body cannot process
fiber. Hence it will pass through our
intestine as bulk roughage. Fiber effect
insulin the least.
A
good guideline in eating vegetable is to have one fist size per meal. It will keep you full longer. It is important when you are on Ketogenic or
Atkins Diet to eat plenty of leafy veges.
This allow satiety and balance off the lack of carbs in your meal. Often times, the mistake people make in these
diet protocols is to have too much meat.
Although Dr. Atkins didn’t go against this practice, the latter
proponent of Atkins diet like Dr. Eric Westman highly recommends the
consumption of leafy green in his book, The
New Atkins for a New You.
Interestingly
our body can do away with consuming carbs.
There is no such thing as essential carbohydrate. This is not true in the case of protein where
we have the essential amino acids and with fat, the essential fatty acids. Without carbs the body can compensate using
protein to be converted to glucose and for fat being converted to ketones. Therefore we only need small amount of carbs
to metabolize our food. That is why
fifteen to twenty grams per day is sufficient because this amount will
stimulate the production of ketones, the preferred fuel of the brain.
Eat
protein in moderation
Protein
is the building block of muscles. Even
though we can get protein from plant based food, it won’t be complete. We still need to get our essential amino acid
from animals. Of the twenty amino acids
in our body’s protein, nine are essential in our diet because our cells cannot
manufacture them. These are histidine,
isoleucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and
valine.
The
common source of protein are eggs, chicken, beef and seafood. Most of the animal sources such as meat,
eggs and milk are considered to be “complete protein sources”. Meaning that these contain all the essential
amino acids that your body needs.
Vegetables are also good amino acid foods sources (especially soy, nuts
and beans) but most of them do not usually contain all of the nine.
Amino
acids provides the cells the building material to maintain their basic
structure, helps them to produce the energy body needs and are essential for
every metabolic functioning.
The
best form of protein source according to Dr. Eric Westman are eggs. Eggs are complete food. Think about it, from one egg nature produces
a whole chicken. You can have any amount
of egg in a day. When I eat eggs, I
normally have three at a go. It is worth
mentioning that you eat the yolk as well.
That is the nutritious part.
Don’t worry about the amount of cholesterol in eggs. It does not effects the LDL (bad cholesterol)
in the body. It actually helps with the
production of HDL (the good cholesterol).
As
a general guideline, eat a palm size of protein during meal. Too much protein will be converted into
glucose which in turn spike the production of insulin. Another way is to eat protein until
satiety. Not to worry, you can never eat
too much protein. This is because the
body has a shut off mechanism to make protein less appetizing when eaten too
much.
Fat
is your friend
It
all started in in the 1950’s when a biochemist by the name of Ansel Keys
produced a report called the Lipid Hypothesis.
In the report he stated that eating saturated fat made people fat. It was a manipulated finding by Keys that
indicated certain countries that consumed high amount of saturated fat had high
number of heart disease cases. What he
didn’t do is to include countries that consumed high amount of saturated fat
and didn’t have high cases of the same illness.
He also excluded countries that consumed low saturated fat and yet still
had high cases of heart disease.
And
so the crusade to demonize saturated fat began.
It went through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Butter was replaced by margarine. Lard and tallow were replaced by hydrogenated
corn oil. Yet the cases of obesity,
coronary heart disease and type-2 diabetes were on the rise. So much fear on saturated fat was ingrained
in our belief system that we still have an unsettling feeling of guilt when we
consume saturated fat; even after numerous recent reports had stated saturated
fat is healthy.
Let
me give it to you straight. There are no
evidence or study done that prove saturated fat causes heart disease. As a fact saturated fat is really necessary. It helps with the development of new cells
and the production of various hormones.
Butter as a fact helps with the production of leptin, the hormone that
reduce the hunger appetite thus making you feel full longer.
Many
studies were done in the past to link excessive consumption of fat to
illness. In the end there is none. Here is one such study:
Putting
His Life on the Line: Stefansson’s Inuit
Diet Experiment
In
1907, a Harvard-Trained Canadian anthropologist went into the Canadian Artic to
study the Inuit culture. Whether by chance
or design, he spent his first Artic Winter living among the native people of
the region without any external food supply.
Eight months later, he emerged speaking their language and empowered by
the fact that he should live well off the available food of the region.
A
decade later, Vilhjalmur Stefansson left the Artic, having traveled where no
person of European origin had gone before, sometimes for two years without
resupply. Upon his return to
‘civilization’, he wrote copiously about his experience among ‘The People’
(which is what “Inuit” means in their language).
Unfortunately
for Stefansson, the decade between 1915 and 1925 was the era of vitamin
discovery – the period in which scientific nutrition hit its stride. Suddenly, we had scientists to tell us what
was good for us, replacing grandmothers and cultural wisdom. And scientist now said that all humans needed
fruit and vegetables to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy and beriberi.
To
the newly-minted nutritionists of the 1920s, Stefansson became the proverbial
buck wearing a bulls-eye. To salvage his
reputation, he consented (along with an Artic explorer colleague) to reproduce
his Inuit diet under continuous observation in Bellevue Hospital in New York
City. After a year, he and his colleague
emerged hale and hearty, much to the disappointment of the scientists in
charge.
The
published results if this experiment tell us that Stefansson ate 15% of his
daily energy as protein, over 80% as fat, and a few percent as carbohydrate
(from glycogen naturally found in meat.
What
Stefansson’s experience (and many other subsequent studies) demonstrated was
that dietary carbohydrate is nutritionally superfluous in the context of a
well-formulated low carbohydrate diet.
Excerpt from: The Art
and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living
There is a general guideline
to eating fat. Take about a thumb size
with every meal. Not because eating too
much is dangerous but rather it will stall weight loss. Reason being, the body will have to burn the
incoming dietary fat first before tapping into the fat reserve.
I take a tablespoon of
coconut oil and two slices of butter with every meal. They helped me feel satiated for twenty four
hours without much hassle. I also take
three capsules of 1000 mg of Wild Alaskan salmon as an Omega 3 supplement. These three sources of fat is just nice to
stabilize my mood and to deter me from carbs craving.
“There is nothing new,
except what has been forgotten”.
Marie Antionette
There
is nothing more liberating than fasting without being hungry and thinking about
eating all the time. Although I had been
fasting since I was small, the newfound knowledge that I have about fasting
from The Complete Guide to Fasting by
Dr. Jason Fung is truly an eye opener.
Previously as a Muslim I fast from sunrise to sunset for one month in a
year. It is approximately thirteen hours
of nothing including water.
This
method of fasting cannot prolong indefinitely because you will be dehydrated at
the end of the day. So one month is the
most I can sustain on no food no liquid diet.
Do not try to extend beyond one day with this form of diet. Water is essential for the bodily
function. Extended abstinence from water
may damage your kidney.
Then
I discovered the 16/8 method where I fast for sixteen hours and eat for eight
hours. Compared to the fasting I used to
do, this is a breeze. I simply skip
breakfast. Then I discovered the OMAD
method. I find this very exhilarating. I look forward to the meal during dinner time
after a whole day of abstinence. Finally
I decided to try the extended twenty-one days fast. This went beyond my wildest expectation. I don’t miss food at all and I feel great.
The
takeaway point here is to be successful in fasting you need to be
well-hydrated. You need at least two
liters of water and a pinch or two of salt a day. Otherwise you will feel fatigue or you might
suffer from severe migraine. On my third
day and beyond of my extended fasting I felt completely normal. There was no hunger pang beyond
ravenous. Every day after that is a
normal day for me.
Human
beings had been fasting for thousands of years.
It was either done out of necessity or because of religious
obligations. All great religions of the
world impose fasting to their followers.
The Muslims fast during certain days of the week and certain months of
the year. The Buddhist practice water
fast and the Christians has the twenty-one days Daniel fast. Certainly fasting creates a sense of affinity
to the Creator. The Muslims even
practice additional prayers at nights in Ramadhan to enhance their spiritual
well-being with their Maker.
Fasting
can be done for a number of reasons. You
can fast to lose weight. What is more
assuring than not to eat in order to lose the extra pounds? You can also fast to heal your body like the
cancer patients do. Also you can fast to
gain mental clarity. There are people
who fast for spiritual reason too.
All
the other diet programs are about what to eat.
With fasting the emphasis is not to eat.
It’s a subtraction, not addition.
The beauty with fasting is that you can incorporate it to any form of
diet plan. Whether you are on Ketogenic,
Calorie Restriction or Atkins diet, it doesn’t hurt for you to subtract one or
two meals a day.
Fasting
is also very simple. It takes away the
trouble of preparing a meal. It frees
your time to be more productive. It
eliminates the gestation period required by the body to process food. Of course it frees your mind from being
occupied with what to eat next.
For
those who never fasted before the task may look quite daunting. However, fasting is like jumping into the
swimming pool. Sooner or later you just
decide to take the leap of faith. It’s
OK if at first you don’t succeed, you can always try again the next day. I believe fasting, if done properly is not as
bad as it sounds.
Start
with a few weeks of the 16/8 fasting. As
long as you are well hydrated this is a very easy task to accomplish. Then slowly graduate to the OMAD. I lasted for two months on OMAD before going
for the extended fast.
It
is important that you don’t gorge yourself when you break your fast. Eat like normal with perhaps twenty percent
more food intake.
If
you feel fatigue during fasting, that is because you lose too much minerals and
electrolytes. It is a simple problem to
solve:
Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated
Take small amount of Himalayan salt
I
know I am repeating myself here but honestly speaking I survived extended
fasting based in these two principles.
Oh yeah… DO NOT EAT.
That’s
about it. Give it a try and I assure you
the feeling is invigorating. Not to
mention that the weight loss and all the key markers like cholesterol level,
blood pressure and sugar level dropped at a promising level.
Initially you will feel the
hunger pangs. This is not real hunger
like those who are starving. It will go
away in five minutes per interval. Drink
coffee or tea to avoid being hungry.
This is how a twenty-four
hours of fasting looks like:
Dr. Ted Naiman whose website
is Burn Fat Not Sugar suggested that
“the sweet spot for intermittent fasting” occurs between eighteen and
twenty-four hours of fasting, since this is the time period that sees the
greatest drop in insulin and increase in lipolysis – the breakdown of fat.
Eating
is very much a natural thing for every one of us. After all we start eating (having food in our mouth that is) right after we leave our mother’s womb. Since it is a common occurrence for all of
us, we normally take eating for granted.
The simplest way to practice this habit like babies do, is to eat when
we are hungry and to stop when we are full.
If you practice this as a lifestyle, rest assure you won’t get fat.
The
problem occurs when we start eating mindlessly.
We allow our emotion takes control of our eating habit. No longer do we eat out of necessity, we use
food as a mean for other purposes such as to kill boredom, to fill our time or
to calm us when we are stressed. This is
not a good way to establish a relationship with food. Because of the uncanny associations that we
have with it, we tend to over consume beyond what is necessary.
Some
of us thankfully realize it soon enough and therefore are willing to take the
steps toward the right direction. It is
not an easy path to take. The biggest
challenge is the ability to stay on course.
I am fully supportive of this initiative. Just like the band AC/DC song title, “For those about to rock, we salute you”. In this case, for those about to diet, I
salute you J.
Below
are some suggestions to ensure you stay on course with your diet plan:
Don’t
be too restrictive
When
you are just starting your diet plan, you are still in the learning mode. There are plenty of information that you need
to gather. Things like what food can you
eat and what can’t be eaten. Have the
flexibility to adjust your meals according to the information that you
receive. Although there are guidelines
you can go for, these are merely guidelines.
If you are too strict in your plan, you will feel the pressure of having
to comply with a new means of eating that maybe alien to you. This creates unnecessary pressure.
Be
mindful that you are still learning.
Your body is still adjusting. So
if occasionally you feel the urge to eat something sweet, then go ahead and
have some. If your practice is to have a
latte after a meal, have a few sips
on a few occasions. Eventually the
craving will subside and before you know it you no longer have the urge to have
sweet things after meals. Sweet tooth is
a learned behavior. Since sweet treats
are a form of conditioning, it takes a while to unlearn the behavior.
Don’t
feel guilty that you are not following the diet plan to the hilt. As long as you are losing weight steadily
then it’s OK. What we don’t want is a
recurring pattern that will eventually hinder progress.
Different
people different results
Do
not compare your result with others.
Each of us is unique in our journey to weight loss. It all depends on our current weight, age, sex,
height, metabolic rate and physical activity.
A young guy who is physically active is different from a middle age
woman who is sedentary. He can lose
thirty kg in six months while the woman may take a year to achieve the same
result.
Do
not get disheartened if the weight loss stalls after two months for
example. If the principle of your diet
plan is sound it will override the initial setback. Tweak a bit.
Maybe you should reduce carbs intake.
Perhaps you should skip a meal.
For all you know it is just water retention.
You
may find certain recommendations by certain people might not work for you. Each of us is unique in our
compositions. Have patience in your
undertaking. At times we may not be
following the exact recommendation and thus producing a different result. For example we might cut corners here and
there. Do not ditch your effort if you
don’t see result within a few days. It
might take weeks for you to see progress.
One person that I know even had his weight loss stalled for a month even
after doing everything right.
The
thing with our body is it has memory of where our previous weight stayed
stagnant. When it reaches that point it
will stall before moving to the next stagnant level. In the long run your graph of weight loss
will look like a staircase with multiple landings. Do expect some increase of weight along the
way. It is very dependent on what you
eat and the physical activities that you do on daily basis. One of the thing that may influence your
weight loss is irregular sleeping pattern.
Be mindful of that.
Enjoy
occasional cheat days
Cheat
days are different from slip-ups. A cheat
day is something that you plan based on your progress. For example you may target a certain weight
you want to achieve. Once you achieve
that target, you have a little celebration that day by eating normal food. Others do their cheats on weekends.
Although
there are many experts who encourage weekly cheats, I don’t recommend this as a
practice. This is because it takes a
while (two weeks) for the body to be fat adapted. When you do it on a weekly basis then your
body will switch back to sugar adapted.
Perhaps if you want to do it regularly, then opt for biweekly
instead. Another prevailing theory with
weekly cheats is that you can have a window for forty-eight hours of carbs
feeding and still be in ketosis the following week. I leave it up to you to decide. If the weight continue to decline, go ahead
with this recommendation.
Stay within limit – max one
hundred grams of carbs
There are people who are very
strict in their carbs intake. When I was
on the Atkins Phase I and Ketogenic Diet, I watch my carbs intake like a
hawk. However this method of eating is
not practical especially when I eat out.
Twenty grams of carbs a day following these diet is not much. McDonald’s Spicy Chicken McDeluxe is forty
seven grams of carbs. One banana
consists of twenty seven grams of carbs.
A slice of whole wheat bread is thirteen grams. That means I really have to limit my carbs
intake to the leafy vegetables when I use these protocols.
Let’s admit it. All the comfort foods are high in carbs. Sometimes we cannot help it especially when
we attend special occasions. This is
where you need to do your homework.
Check with the Nutrition Facts on your regular food carbs total. For example I love eating fresh coconut. While coconut milk and coconut oil are purely
fat, I didn’t realize that carbs content of a fresh coconut is sixty grams!
Restricting carbs too much is
not healthy. It will lead to carbs
craving. Then, because you restrict
carbs too much, the moment you get the taste of it, you gorge like there is no
tomorrow. We are all guilty of it. Who hasn’t binge on the bag of chocolate
chips or that tub of ice cream when we initially try to diet? The key here is moderation. You don’t want to go against basic instinct
when you are dieting. Don’t go for the
either or mentality.
As
stated in the chart below, by limiting your carbs to a maximum of a hundred
grams a day you will steadily lose weight on a weekly basis. Bear in mind to use this guideline on your
cheat days. If you want to see a drastic
result, it is best that you stay below the fifty grams range on the other days
while you are on your diet.
Don’t gorge on your food
One of the best thing when
you start to practice LCHF and OMAD is you tend to appreciate food more. Part of the reason is eating
this way is more satisfying. Food tastes much better especially when you eat clean.
By that I mean the food is wholesome like real chicken, real beef, fresh
fish and fresh vegetables. Eating clean
in general is taking out sugar and process food from your diet.
Eat your food slowly. Do not suck it in like a vacuum cleaner even
if you are hungry. When I do the
extended fasting I tend to eat more slowly than usual. This is because it takes time for the food to
settle in the stomach. If I eat too
fast, the enzymes may not have time to register the incoming of food and will
cause stomach cramp.
Be mindful that it takes
twenty minutes for the stomach to signal the brain that it is full. Therefore it is good to occasionally pause
while eating to check your satiety level.
Sipping water is fine but don’t gulp glassfuls during meals because it
will dilute your stomach enzymes.
Don’t expect to be full on
sweet treats
This is the last but very
important reminder. When you eat sweet
treats like cakes, chocolate and ice cream, don’t expect to get full. That is because the more carbs you eat, the
more insulin the body produces. All it
does really is clearing the sugar from your bloodstream and liver into your
muscles and later the fat cells.
Therefore you can literally eat very large amount of carbs and won’t be
satiated. You will probably stop because
your stomach can’t handle it any more or you feel sickly from too much
sugar.
Make sure you eat a proper
meal before you have your sweet treat.
That way you are not tempted to overeat.
It can make a world of difference between a scoop of ice cream and half
a liter. You will notice when you are
full, you don’t need to eat a lot of the sweet stuff. Sufficient that it stirs your taste bud. Your brain won’t go helter-skelter over some
empty calories mindlessly.
Just a short anecdote before we
end this section. In Malaysia we have
this special and creamy fruit called durian. Duri in Malay means thorn, so durian literally means thorny
fruit. Eating durian is an annual affair since the fruit is seasonal in
nature. Normally we Malaysians look
forward to this occasion. There are many
varieties to choose from and the price varies according to the grades.
Due to the richness nature of
the fruit, my family and I will eat it only once a year. Normally we will skip a meal on the day we
are going for our durian feast. There are two ways to eat durian – all you can eat or by selecting
the fruit based on grades. The gullible
of the lot will go with the all you can eat.
This means regardless of the grade, you just whack what is served to
you. These people are interested in
quantity, not quality.
It
is a big fruit; slightly larger than a rugby ball. So at most an adult male can eat is two. Since it is creamy, eating too much can make
your stomach feels queasy. I always go
for the quality of the fruit. Since this
is a once a year affair, I eat my heart out.
Normally I take it as dinner.
Once my stomach signaled that I am full, I will stop. This is not the case with the all you can eat
durian lovers. They eat until their stomach nearly explode! After all it is durian season…
Losing fat to some of us is a
lifelong battle. It may not be the first
and the last time for us searching for a solution. I hope you keep on going for the winning
streak. By that I mean you are always a
winner as long as you don’t give up looking for the answer. The reward is pretty obvious, with weight
loss the dimensions of your world will expand.
You will become an entirely new person.
Bear in mind for every disciplined action there are multiple
rewards. You don’t need to settle for
less. All it takes is for you to put a
conscious effort for a year and you will see amazing results I assure.
No longer will you be
invisible among the crowd. You will be
getting compliments from all around. You
will feel good about yourself and you will look forward to living life to the
fullest again. Obesity is not a one way
street. You have the power to reverse
its course. Keep persisting and
eventually you will get there. All it
takes is the belief towards yourself.
Once two friends were walking
in the park. As they were walking past a
tree, a little baby bird fell from its nest.
One of the friend quickly caught the bird and hid it behind his back.
“Tell me my friend,” he
quipped. “Is this bird dead or alive?”
The other guy pondered for a
while and replied, “The bird is neither dead nor alive, if I say it is alive
you will squeeze it and it will be dead.
If I say the bird is dead, you will open your hand and set it
free”.
“The answer lies in your
hands”. He answered sincerely.
Same goes with this
book. It’s neither dead nor alive. The answer lies in your hands my dear friend.
I hope you make the best of
the information and I wish you all the best in your journey. We will be seeing each other again soon.
Thank you for taking time to
finish reading this book. I hope it has
been a great help to you. If you think
the content is of value and it had helped you much, please be kind enough to
donate whatever amount to:
The proceeds will go to my
Bipolar Affective Disorder Support Group.
Some of those with the illness have no means of earning a decent living
due to this despairing illness. They
need your generosity to buy better medications and basic supplements to get
better. Your kindness is highly
appreciated.
Bipolar Affective Disorder is
an insidious ailment. It robs the
victims of their self-esteem, sense of worth and personal confidence. Without the support from those who care, this
malaise will lead to further seclusion of the patients from the real
world. Let us give a helping hand
towards a better civil society. There is
hope for cure if we are willing to extend our gratitude.
To his friends Sharudin Jamal is an adventurer and a
knowledge explorer. A member of the prestigious Alumni Sekolah Sultan Alam
Shah,Putrajaya, Malaysia and a University of North Texas graduate, later in
his career he wore many hats within his thirty years on becoming an
international corporate achiever. He had
vast experience in IT sales collaborating with IBM, Apple, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi
Data Systems and Ingenico. He also had
consulting, training and coaching background dealing with more than forty
clients nationwide. These include the
government of Malaysia, banks, insurance companies, manufacturing sectors,
public listed companies and nonprofit organizations.
His lifetime accomplishments include on being an IBM/Mesiniaga Hundred Percent
Club qualifier for three consecutive years, appearing in Selamat Pagi Malaysia (Good Morning Malaysia) - Radio & TV
Malaysia (RTM) for more than a dozen times, training two thousand Sapura Group
of Companies staff on Vision Alignment for the New Millennium and completing his
first forty-two km run in Kuala Lumpur International Marathon at the age of
forty.
His passion is reading, running and writing.
He can be reached at sharudinj@gmail.comon matters
pertaining to almost anything. A naturalist at heart, his ultimate joy is his weekend trail runs
in Bukit Kiara forest reserve. Sharudin resides in Bandar Utama,
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia with his wife and two daughters.
