Falling off the wagon

I have fallen off the blogging wagon for a bit...I have been very busy and have exercised on and off. As far as losing weight... it has not happened. Well it did happen, and then it came back.

I am working with a partner to start a small business (http://startingsmallbusinessnews.com/business-start-up/ to learn). Anyways, that is keeping me occupied as well.

Avoiding Eating Rice at Lunch

I bring my lunch from home sometimes, and that is sometimes a left over from the previous nights dinner. We at a lot of rice...so obviously sometimes the dinner ends up being a rice and curry-type dish. The problem is that rice makes you sleepy...especially when you eat it at lunch!

That's a problem for me at work, so the idea is to avoid starchy foods at lunch. I don't get a lot of time to move around, so I need to do what I can to keep my weight loss diet plan whatever way I can.

That means taking simple steps like avoiding starches at lunch when possible. Even if you eat out at Chinese or Thai food restaurants, it might be a good variation to avoid the rice and just eat the dish directly.

Late Night Diets

Last night while ruminating over not so great appetizers at CheeseCake factory, my friend shared his diet plan to me that has led him to be in quite possibly the best shape of his life.

His weight loss diet plan is a common one: 5 five meals per day. The catch is that his "meals" are more snack-equivalent with the key being that he doesn't fill his stomach each meal. In essence he trains his body to accept lower amounts of food on the expectation that more food will come a few hours later. The body survives at less calories per meal, must utilize all the food as energy (since the quantity is less), and energy is processed digesting the food. Additionally, the less amount of food consumed in each of these meals prevents food from conglomerating in ones stomach and being converted to fat.

This diet has helped my friend lose 20 pounds in a little over 3 months.

Today's I made pancakes cause I was craving them but I was faced which oil to use because it seems our family is obsessed with varying oils: soybean oil, coconut oil, canola oil, or olive oil. I choose Olive oil because I thought the food would taste more fresh and less like oil, but for some reason the pancakes didn't cook as well in olive oil versus the soybean oil I later utilized.

Gearing towards full recovery

Today was rest day in terms of exercise and any sense of physical activity. Its weird how your whole body becomes handicapped and incapable of function at the slightest injury, but thats how the brain works: preoccupied with the one aspect of your physical embodiment that isn't perfect.

As it is, I've devoted this whole week to recuperating my hamstring in hopes that I'm ready to get into basketball shape by the time our community basketball league starts.

Aside from the rest day, I indulged in a gyro today, a type of food that hails from Mediterranean cuisine and is filled with meat and an assortment of vegetables. It might be my favorite food if made well (the meat needs to be soft, and the gravy needs to be subtly tasteful).

Sometimes we make it too complicated

Needless to say, sometimes we make weight loss much more complicated than it needs to be. Whether it be straight Carb diets, Protein only diets, copious amounts of exercise, the South Beach diet, the Jenny Craig diet, Weight Watchers, or even outside the box ideas such as herbal/organic based diets predicated on Oolang Tea, the nutrition world is never at a shortage of what is healthy to eat, and what we would be better off holding off on.

However, what about the novel idea of simply eating less? A nutrition professor experiments that method and chronicles his observations in this article.

Sometimes the answer is simpler than we think.

What are your Goals?

At the gym today I saw an individual whom I see EVERYTIME I go to the gym, almost to a point where I'd be worried if I didn't see the fellow one day.

Thing is, this guy fits the build of "too big, too large, too bulky, no coordination, not athletic" kind of mold. Most people have different reasons for going to the gym. Whether it may be preparation for a specific sport, weight loss motivations, bulking up, or the betterment aesthetic appearances a concrete reason always must be there. I cannot understand where the premises this religious gym-goers motivation lay.

He was already huge, was attractive enough, but his exercises didn't seem to be geared towards a specific type of functional activity (I've seen his workouts). Maybe I'm too naive to see that weight lifting can be a hobby, but personally I feel there needs to be a greater goal involved. At a certain point, endlessly going to the gym just to lift seems too monotonous for me.

Nice chicken lunch sandwich today...very healthy day. pretty proud of myself.

Re-Excercising

Today was normal aside from the 3 hour binge session of sleep in the evening.

I worked out for the first time in a few weeks, mostly upper body with a few isolation hamstring exercises to rehabilitate my strained muscle.

The Work:

3 Sets of Pushups - 20, 15, 15 = 50

3 sets of Pull ups - 9, 9, 5

3 Sets of Bent Over Rows-50lb weight, 3 sets up till 7 reps

I mixed in some of the aforementioned hamstring workouts (hamstring curl, single leg leg-press) during the rest between exercises.

I almost didn't work out cause I had a small breakfast in the morning and I was feeling really low on energy at lunch time, but then I went to get an apple to try to get some energy in my body. I read however that apples are negative calorie foods, which on the surface seems weird that I got a nice energy before my workout. I guess the sucrose rush takes affect immediately.

I had milk as post workout drink, and then Quiznos tuna sandwich for lunch with the handy coupon I used (only $3 for lunch!).