Sunday, 29 July 2018
Moving on to Simply Carnivore
Wednesday, 6 June 2018
Low Carbs High Fat, Ketogenic Diet and Training
This is a long post and it is technical.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Doc. Just sharing my passion.
Sunday, 21 January 2018
Chasing LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) Losing fat? Water or Mass?
- Too much sodium or an imbalance between sodium and potassium
- A weak kidney. This is what Chinese medicine theory will state. In fact, people will real weak kidney will have water retention as well.
- Lack of exercise
- Hormonal changes
- Medication
- Pregnancy
If you are someone with weak kidney whether it is real or by Chinese medicine definition, then water retention is inevitable. It is a symptom of your body or your kidney not able to flush out the fluid from the body through urine. For such issue, then it requires medication attention. I will not explain further. If you suspect your water retention issue is due to this issue, please check yourself into hospital or see your family doctor ASAP. End of story.
If you lack of exercise, then definitely you will start losing water. Assuming you exercise and you lost lots of fluid through sweat or urine, if not your body weight may stays the same.
So these are the common issues of water retention. Once you resolve it, your body weight will drop and you will be surprised how much water you are keeping in your body.
Just a word of advice. If you are the active type, always riding, running and doing some of exercise daily, you may be dehydrated. So there is a need for you to drink small amount of water regularly to get your body hydrated. This will increase your body weight but who cares. This is not important.
Losing Mass
Losing mass is a serious issue. You may lose mass due to losing calcium from the bone or muscles. A good example is old folks or people suffering from eating disorder AKA anorexia. Once you start losing body mass, a whole lot of other issues will into play. From osteoporosis to accelerated sarcopenia with aging. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as accelerated sarcopenia (muscle loss) with aging, once you start losing muscle mass, you will start to lose stamina. Once you start losing stamina, you will start to lose your habit to exercise. Furthermore, once you stop exercise, HGH (Human Growth Hormone), insulin growth factor and some other hormones will be of lower concentration in the body. This is not a good news.
Thus, you must exercise. Whether walk or a simple weight training exercise with a few reps is good for the body.
Conclusion
When someone said I had lost some weight, take a step back first. Ask yourself, is it water? fat or mass? The right question will determine the way you handle weight lost. Remember, dieting is temporary. Changing habit is permanent. Change your habit and the rest will follow through.
Friday, 12 January 2018
Everyone is chasing Low Carb High Fat diet
To me, dieting is temporary. Changing the way you eat and forming good habits are permanent. We need to understand what we want to achieve from the new habit. Everyone talks about I want to lose weight. I always question them. What actually are you trying to lose? The usual answer is I want to lose weight. But do you know weight is just a number. The question I will ask again is this. What are you trying to lose? This is a very fundamental question. If we don't get this right, we will be doing it wrong. Let's take a look at this.
There are three things that we can lose when we want to lose weight.
1) Fats
2) Fluid or water
3) Body mass such as muscles or bones.
Losing Fat
This is what everyone wants to do. I want to lose fat. So my next question will be. Which part? Overall body fat or tummy? Because the strategy to lose overall body fat and tummy fat is very different.
Losing overall body fat
Let's talk about overall body fat. Losing overall body fat is easy. If we use the 80/20 rules, you just need 20% effort to achieve this 80% result. How? Cut your calories intake. Exercise. Increase your saturated fat intake such as Omega 3 and reduce Omega 6/9 intake. Cut your carb (which gives you blood sugar) to control the release of insulin and increase your protein intake. Wow... magic will happen. You will start shrinking. You will see you will start wearing your old shirts again. Old pants again and etc... The strategy to reduce shirt size is to lose overall body fat. I have a friend who had a medical condition. He was overweight. What he did was straight forward. He started running 5km to 10km a day or every other day. He started to reduce his fat intake (although I don't recommend). He started to eat brown rice (since everyone said it is good) and etc... Within 6 months, he had shrunk tremendously. His cholesterol level was normalised and everyone who knows him was like wow!!!
I had a meal with him the other day. Although he runs everyday or every other day (I could see it from his Strava ), his fitness level had plateau. He said he want to lose more... So I asked him what do you actually want to use? End up we had a 3 hour lunch... Of course business conversation is one of the topics.
Losing visceral fat
You may have lost overall body fat, you may not have lost your visceral fat. This is what we call skinny fat. You look skinny but actually, you are fat internally. This is called the deep fat wrapping your major organs. To lose this fat is a different ball game.
To lose this fat, you need to have new habits. Stick to it and take it slowly. The first sign of visceral fat is tummy fat. If you can reduce your tummy fat, you will be reducing visceral fat in the body. Tummy fat is affected by both insulin and adrenaline from our body. I do not want to go into the details. In a nutshell, insulin tells the muscle, liver and fat cells to take up blood sugar so that our blood sugar level in the body is normalised. Because of this function, it tells the body to stop burning its fat stores and instead, absorb some of the fatty acids and glucose in the blood and turn them into more body fat. So remember this. The more insulin you have flowing in your blood, then more fat will be manufactured in your body. So this is something you don't want.
Let's talk about this hormone called Adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the Adrenal glands. It is called the flight and fight hormone because it is produced when we are excited or when we are under stress or we are in an extreme dangerous situation. This hormone is secreted to get us ready to save ourselves from a dangerous situation. Our blood circulation increases, our breathing becomes more rapid and our heart beats faster. Our muscles contracted faster too. We are getting ready to sprint out of a dangerous situation.
If we always in a stress environment, we will start experiencing adrenal fatigue. That means we will feel tired when we wake up. We need coffee or some strong caffeinated stuff to kick start our day. We are addicted to sweet stuff. If you always like to eat sweet stuff, this is also a symptom of someone having adrenal related issue. This in turn spike the insulin level in the body. That means cannot lose fat.
Let's talk about another hormone called Cortisol. Adrenaline is related to heart and Cortisol is related to fat cells, liver and pancreas. When Cortisol is released, it increases the glucose levels in the body and get it ready for the body to use. It stop other systems such as digestion and immune system from functioning properly. And increase in glucose levels also mean there will be an increase blood sugar levels. An increase in blood sugar levels means there will be an increase insulin too. This also means the body cannot burn fat. The accumulation of extra calories due to eating more than you need coupled with stress hormones flowing around, this is where you start accumulating visceral fat or tummy fat.
Actually to lose tummy fat is straight forward, but to form the habit to lose it is tough to many folks.
1) Lead a simpler life. Leading a simpler life means it reduces stress. The less stress you have, the less stress-related hormones you have flowing in your body. I know this is tough. It is up to you. Ask yourself. Do you need to keep up with your neighbours? Or ??? The less stress you have, the better you will be.
2) Control your free flow of insulin the body. Anything that is free flow is bad. Just like buffet, free flow of soft drinks. Now that is a killer. Production of insulin is all about the level of blood sugar in the body. If we reduce the blood sugar levels, we reduce the insulin needed in the body. Cut the carb to almost as little as possible. Increase both protein and fat intake. Protein will still spike insulin but not a lot. Fat does really not spike insulin (I'm simplifying it) because it does not increase blood sugar level. So it makes sense we should eat more fat, medium protein and low to zero carb. But you still must eat your vegetables like those with leaves and flowers. Nothing under the soil.
3) Exercise is key to lose tummy fat but only relaxing exercise helps. If you do interval or VO2 Max kind of exercise, you will lose overall body fat but no that tummy fat. The best way to lose tummy fat is to take a walk. Walk faster than your normal walking pace but slower than your running pace. Walk at least an hour not counting the number of steps and you will see tremendous results. If you do it daily, you will see your tummy becoming smaller and smaller.
In my next post, I will talk about point 2 and 3. That is losing water and muscle mass and vice versa.
The New Me
- Meta-sprint
- Tri-factor
- City60
- Singapore International Duathlon
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
4th Change: The Start of Wearing Made to Measure Pants 5 years ago
What is more interesting is that I started to wear S size shirt instead of M. I had shrunk from L to M and then to S. I used to hover around 76kg to 80kg but nowadays, I hover around 75kg. Fat percentage is around 20%.
My colleagues around me had noticed how much weight I had lost. I have also started to recycle my clothes. Letting go my size L & M shirts.
Nowadays, I don't really take bulletproof coffee per se. Instead, I will ensure drinking a cup of black coffee with a piece of butter. Whether I'm at a cafe or a coffeeshop. A long black with a piece of butter is a must.
I will share with you about the 5th change in my next post.
Saturday, 20 August 2016
3rd Change: Starting the journey with Bulletproof Coffee
Yup. A lot of people around me were stunned with this new habit of mine. Although a few friends know what I'm doing, many don't know what is that. It is called Bulletproof coffee. You guys can google it. It is out there.
So what is my first hand experience with Bulletproof?
1) It totally remove my dependency on sugar. The need to have cup of teh in the late afternoon. The need to have a cake after a meal. The need to have something sweet. It is all gone.
2) The need to have a large portion during a meal. This is gone for some reasons. The body started to tell you when to stop.
3) The increase in mental capacity and energy level.
4) You never look at fat the way you used to look at it.
I don't worry about oily or fatty food these days. However, there was still a problem, which I will share later.
I drink at least once a day with my coffee with butter. If at home, I will use aeropress to make my bulletproof coffee. Mix with grass fed butter from Anchor and coconut oil. If not, I will request long black with butter from the cafe to have my "Bulletproof" coffee.
Because of this coffee habit, I started to lose a lot of fats with little change in weight. I did lose a bit of weight but I started to lose fat. My cloth size started to shrink and this is a good news. I started to wear pants that were made to measure 5 or 6 years ago. Amazing...
Shall end here. Will share the next change.
Thursday, 18 August 2016
2nd Change: Coconut Oil Pulling in the morning
I read online on the many benefits of coconut oil pulling. Basically, just have some coconut oil in your mouth first thing in the morning. And before doing that, have a cup of water. I always do that in the morning. Drinking water first thing in the morning helps to activate the organs.
So why do I want to do it? One of the benefits stated that it will help to grow back the gums. To me, that is wonderful. Hence, I started to do it daily and miracle happened. A bit of gum start to grow back. And when I first started the pulling, I kept on having phlegm coming out from my throat. I don't know why.
Then came one day, it stopped. And since then, I believe coconut oil pulling helps to improve my health.
Will share the next change. It is my journey with Bulletproof coffee.
BTW, when you do coconut pulling, you don't need to use toothpaste to brush your teeth. Just brush it with the coconut oil on your teeth. It feels clean.
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
1st Change: Coconut oil before sleep
I had been taking coconut oil for a long long time with results but not good enough. My weight always hover around 75kg to 80kg. To some folks, I'm not overweight and seriously, from the outlook, I just look a bit round not fat at all. However, it does have some issues. My breathing wasn't smooth or to certain extent, you don't feel regulated when you breath. Secondly, the constant urge to buy new clothes due to new waistline. It can be quite frustrating. My father has diabetes and high blood pressure, that means there is a chance I may get it too since I'm the eldest in the family.
Everything change when my friend introduced me to bulletproof. Initially, I took it with a pinch of salt. I mean we all had read about Atkins (high fat high protein almost zero carb) and others. So how the heck this one will work? I was still taking my coconut oil in the morning.
The 1st Change:
The first change from Bulletproof. I read about taking coconut oil before sleep helps. You will have read somewhere that taking coconut oil before sleep is like taking coffee before sleep. You are not going to sleep. I took the leap of faith and I slept well.
https://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-top-6-ways-to-improve-your-sleep-using-food/
Point 1:Fill up with fat at dinner. I didn't fill up fat at dinner. I fill up fat before sleep.
When I woke up next morning, I felt good. Really good. But there was a side effect. I was hungry. Very hungry. For the entire day, I just ate and ate. I couldn't control my hunger. It just went on and on for the next few days. And then something happened. My tummy shrunk a little bit when I was eating the whole day.
Stay tune for the next post.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Resting the digestive system
Starting weight: 78kg
Fat: 26%
Basic stuffs:
- Drink lots of water
- Eat organic fruits if possible.
- For coffee and tea, take without sugar
Day 1: It is a fruit day. Some folks focus on more water content fruits. I called it the day you just eat all kinds of melons.
- Bought a water melon, rock melon and honey dew. Thinking I'm able to finish all these in one day.
- Feasted the entire day on rock melon.
- What else did I do?
- Did a 5km run both in the morning and evening.
- Had a flat white in the afternoon.
- Had some home made tofu at my mother in law's place.
- Bought seedless black grapes in the morning. Ate most of the grapes in the entire day.
- Had egg salad for lunch. Remember, you must tell them to put salad sauce by the side.
- I had two or three apples in between. Cannot recall what is the actual number of apples I took.
- What else did I do?
- Had a cup of soya milk and soft bean curd for breakfast.
- Did a 5km run in the evening.
- Had coffee together with my egg salad.
- Had dinner at my mother in law's place. Couldn't resist her cooking. Had fried vegetables, home made tofu plus 1 big bowls of barley rice. That means, I ate most of the barley that was used to make barley water.
- Had half a honeydew for breakfast.
- Lunch was cooked vegetables and sliced salmon sashimi. No choice as I had to attend an event.
- Ate lots of grapes and apples in between.
- Had an apple for supper
- What else did I do?
- Had a tall Americano in the morning, Mocha in the afternoon and a Latte in the evening
- Had Sushi salad at Sushi Tei
- Had the other half of the honeydew for breakfast.
- Had another apple plus a tall latte.
- What else did I do?
- I had 2 more apples throughout the day
- Lunch was tofu and vegetables
- I had a mocha in the evening
- Neighbour passed me a bowl of curry fish head. Ate the vegetables and some fish
Day 5: Today you should be eating beef and six tomatoes.
- Ok. I didn't eat my banana yesterday. So I'm going to do it today. Furthermore, I hate tomatoes.
- Breakfast was one apple.
- When I reached office, I had a banana and 500ml of soya protein shake.
- In the entire day, I had 6 bananas.
- What else did I do?
- I had a piece of steak in the evening.
- And a bit of curry chicken and vegetables. Left over by wife dinner. haha...
- I had a banana for breakfast.
- In the mid morning, I had a plate of tao pok, cabbage and lots of tou fu.
- Feast a big bunch of grapes.
- Dinner was a plate of omelette with onions and chicken meat.
- What else did I do?
- Did 30 mins of cardio exercise.
- I had a banana and protein shake for breakfast.
- In the mid morning, I had the Starbuck eggwhite roll with black coffee. However, I did not eat the wrap.
- I had Ding Tai Fung 1 basket of 10 xiao long bao.
- Another banana and an apple for tea.
- Dinner was another banana and a piece of pan-fried Salmon steak.
- What else did I do?
- Had a flat white together with my kids at Starbucks. They had babycuino.
- Had been feasting on grapes throughout the day.
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Why billions eat unhealthy rice - and shouldn't
I'm an advocate of "rice-less" diet. Or, I should say "no white rice diet." In my numerous health talks in the past, I had mentioned many times why white rice is so dangerous. I just want to raise it again in this blog.
1) Eating white rice is no difference than eating pure white sugar, except without the sweet taste. If you can imagine eating a bowl of white rice is equivalent to eating a bowl of sugar, will you still eat it?
2) White rice does not have any nutrition versus non-polished rice. Although white rice is cheaper, it gives you problem versus brown or non-polished rice, although they are more expensive. So the case is very straight forward. Cheaper but will kill you eventually, or more expensive but will save you. Take your pick.
3) Diabetes, kidney problem, heart and etc... all these health challenges have a common characteristics. These individuals may have pursue what I called a high calorie diet. In Asia, most likely, it will be white rice than anything.
A white rice loses the following nutrients: Fibre, vitamin B and plus some other nutrients. If you think it this way.
If you eat a bowl white rice, would you agree with me that you must take fibre tablets before eating your rice? Thereafter, you will still need to take B-complex and Daily or Double X.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
What to bring when you travel frequently
I will usually bring both Omega fish oil and daily with me, which I think it is easiest to bring. I will take both daily and fish oil one each three times a day. Helps to reduce stress and keep me going.
It will be even better if I take B-complex and Bio-C with me as well. Just that my vitamin box is not big enough. Perhaps, I just making excuses. Hahaha...
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Health Report
So one of colleagues show her her report card and asked her how? So without much delayed, she called me. This what she told me. Couldn't remember the exact words.
"I think something about protein somewhere. I think is kidney." My wife said.
"ok. What about Liver?" I said.
"Got a asterisk there too." She said. BTW, this is very common. If the kidney has problem, usually the liver is already having it.
"what else?" I said.
"There is something about her red blood cells... Don't know what is that. Cholesterol no good." She said.
"What else?" I said.
"Got calcium also..." She said. Chee...Is she dying or what? That was the first thing in my mind.
The conversation didn't end there actually. However, I shall stop here. Thereafter I asked a couple more questions to confirm my assumptions.
- Unhealthy lifestyle. Fried food more than anything.
- Over weight.
- Lack of exercise. Of course, if not point no.2 won't happen.
- Start taking more fresh food than those that can last many days. Fried foods are meant to last for days. Even ants or flies won't go near it. Fresh food is good for the liver and less strenuous for the kidney.
- Start a low impact exercise. Start sweating so that the body Qi moves. This is a very Chinese thing, but we believe in it.
- Read more health books, mix with the right people who cares about their health than those who care more about McDonald. Sorry McDonald, one of those who like you but not your food.
- 2 scoops of protein powder with positrim in the morning. Start having more quality protein will help the body to repair.
- Double X both in the morning and evening. A high quality multi-vitamins give the body a boost.
- 1 capsule of Salmon Omega fish oil 3 times a day. Start giving the body good oil rather than those bad one. Improve cholesterol level and brain function.
- 4 tablets of Milk Thistle before sleep and after breakfast. Repair liver. Save kidney.
- Take lecithin E as many as possible during the entire day. Take it as a snack rather than eating sweet. Lecithin helps to remove bad fat and vitamin E helps to repair body.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Cancer
WAKE UP CALL FOR ALL
|
Heart Attacks and Drinking Warm Water
This is a very good article. Not only about the warm water after your meal, but about
For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this 'sludge' reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.
Common Symptoms Of Heart Attack...
A serious note about heart attacks - You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting . Be aware of intense pain in the jaw line.
You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack.Nauseaand intense sweatingare also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.
A cardiologistsays if everyone who reads this message sends it to 10 people, you can be sure that we'll save at least one life. Read this & Send to a friend. It could save a life. So, please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends you care about.
I JUST DID - -
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
11 danger foods for diabetics
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Health advice from a taxi uncle
- No canned drink.
- No canned food.
- No take away drink in plastic material.
- Eat or drink only at the food store.
- No bubble tea because his wife got diabetes after drinking bubble teas. BTW, bubble tea is full of artificial colouring and sugar.
- No vegetable that is grown in the air. Try putting man in the air and see what happen to him.
- No vegetable that is grown in the water. Try asking a man to submerge for one day and see what happen to him.
- Vegetables are meant to grow in the soil. Anything that is not is artificial. To me, I think this is a damn good advice.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Putting Comments
First thing first, I really appreciate that you have been visiting this site regularly, finding it useful. However, I also appreciate that when you put your comment, it does not have a URL to another site that sells something else.
There has been a significant increase to such posting and I hope, kindly stop doing it.
Thanks
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Supplements for long distant runner
However, the other day he told me he is thinking of changing brand. So I asked him why since you have been doing that for a long time? There is a difference between powder and tablets type. Powder type offers you convenience. Save time like a 3 in 1 coffee. Tablets type requires you to pop different tablets in a day, but it gives you more control. So I ask him, which do you prefer? He couldn't answer me. Next question was, what should he take them?
Let's review this question. For a long distant runner, what does your body need them?
- A strong heart. That will be COQ10.
- A clear highway for blood to flow. That will be Lecithin E and Salmon Omega fish oil.
- Requires a lot of repair, especially those lean muscles. That will be protein.
- A high level of oxidative stress. That will be multi-carotene, Bio-C and Lecithin E.
- Efficient energy conversion. That will be your B-complex.
- Always maintain good joints. That will be either Glucosamine-7 or Glucosamine-HCI.
- Relax muscles: Calcium and Magnesium
- Last but not least, maintain health. XX or Daily.