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!).

A New View

I'd like to welcome myself as the originator of this blog's, younger brother.

I stand at 5 Feet 6~7 inches tall (depending on my mood that day), and a blubbery 137 pounds.

The words weight loss or diet are not in my lexicon (at this stage in my life), but I firmly believe the principles of losing weight and my own goal of gaining weight go hand in hand. Simply, there are different mechanisms of practice towards polar opposite goals. A descriptive, proven and flexible regimen, along with an undying and consistent desire to reach ones goal, and finally an in depth evaluation examining ones pitfalls (i.e not eating right for a day) and gains yields results that can aid someone to reach either of these goals.

Back to my blubberyness. A month ago I strained my hamstring playing football (it exploded at the last second while trying to stretch for an overthrown ball). Two instances of trying to test my hammy prematurely, resulted in a reaggravated hammy both times (Once while running/playing basketball the other snowboarding..both of which were stupid ideas). This injury along with my brand new computer centric desk job has resulted in galores of fat and hibernating muscles.

This month long hiatus from physical activity has made me a slop to some degree, especially with the vast consumption of food items that I have devoured. Luckily most experts agree that nutrition remains the paramount trait to any manipulation of body weight. In this longer than expected layoff, I have devoured numerous indo-pak dishes many of which are high in yogurt content. The high influx of yogurt along with my natural inclination towards a diet with copious amounts of milk, have allowed me to maintain a relatively steady body weight, though I've been victim to a moderate amount of muscle definition loss. Nonetheless, a few weeks of hard workouts will hopefully get me back to the state I was in before.