Salsa Dip - A Healthy Snack

My office had a pot luck lunch yesterday and we all made different dishes to bring in. I made what I like to call Nacho El Grande (a pile of Nacho chips covered in Salsa sauce, chicken and cheese and baked till the cheese melts). Everyone in the office loved it. OK not the healthiest thing in the world to be eating, but every once in while, its OK.

What I want to share with everyone is my recipe for Salsa – main reason being that is actually an extremely healthy dip for chips. Its almost all vegetables… hence its even good for you. Surprising no one promotes this as a health food item. The Nacho chips itself may be high in calorie but you can switch it to healthy alternatives like Papadam which also goes great with the Salsa. You can microwave the papadam (about 30 to 40 seconds on high) till it becomes crispy. It will be very dry, but it will be healthier than deep frying it. Another healthy option is to use tortilla bread and just toast them in your convection owen till it becomes hard. Then just break it up and you have tortilla chips. The Nacho chips you buy in the packet has 500 calories per 100g and 29 g of fat per 100g as well… so not the best of options if you want to go healthy. Safer to go with the suggestions above.

If you are going to use a dip, this is the healthiest dip out there and it tastes great. You can also use this salsa for your cooking to add that Mexican zing to any dish. So the possibilities are endless.

So here’s how you make it.

Salsa Ingredients:
1. Red Onion
2. Capsicum (green)
3. Garlic
4. Tomato
5. Tomato Puree
6. Tomato Ketchup (little bit)
7. Jalapeno
8. Chilli powder / chili flakes
9. Salt
10. White Pepper
11. Lime

Method
Finely chop up items 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7. For item 7, you only need the the Jalapeno slices. Use a fork to dig it out of the jar so you don’t take any vinegar. You don’t need the vinegar for this. The portions should be 1 portion Jalapeno and garlic, 2 portions of Onion & capsicum and 4 portions of tomatoes. Do note blend these items as it will taste different. I was lazy once and tried blending it and it tasted horrid.
Put all this chopped items in a bowl. Pour a little bit of ketchup and double the amount of tomato puree. So if you put in one table spoon of ketchup, add in 2 table spoons of tomato puree. Mix everything up till it’s evenly mixed. Add in some salt and pepper to taste as well as some chilli powder to give it a little bite.
Give it a quick taste. You should be able to taste the combination of all the chopped ingredients. If any of the ingredients taste overpowering, throw in little more chopped tomatoes to dull it. If you feel you would like a certain taste to be more prominent, throw in more of those ingredients.
Finally, squeeze in a bit of lime juice at the end for that tang which just makes it taste like salsa. I normally only use about half a lime or less, so don’t go overboard or all you will tastes is lime.

So there you have it. It’s really simple, tastes great and sure beats the heck of buying imported salsa which costs about RM 10 or more for one small bottle. Kimball or Maggi has salsa which is cheaper, but that is just sweet and does not taste like authentic salsa.

Give this recipe a try and see. If anyone has any other secret salsa recipes or other suggestions of what you can replace the chips with, please do share. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

Simple Diet Plan Anyone Can Follow

Me and a colleague started out this simple diet plan about 3 weeks ago. It may sound extreme to some, but honestly, I thought it was OK and we have both been doing it religiously and the results speak for themselves. OK not to worry, I am not going to share the cabbage soup diet here, coz I personally think that is crap. You'd be better of doing the tree diet (I will share this diet with all of you some other time)

So here is what we did.

For breakfast (Mon – Fri) we only eat sandwiches. You can choose… be it an egg sandwich or tuna sandwich or peanut butter sandwich…. Its up to you. Just bear in mind that you need to stay away from Mayo, jam and cheese. Besides that, I think anything you normally put on a sandwich is good stuff.

Lunch – Here is where many may feel is a bit extreme, but again, I beg to differ. Since our office is in Brickfields and we have an abundant amount of Indian restaurants, we decided to try this. Eat chapatti and Taufu sambal for lunch…. Everyday. With the chappati, you will normally get a free curry which is a vegetarian curry. My favourite is this dhal curry they make… high in protein, fat free and tastes good. Other days its vegetarian kurma, potato curry, cauliflower curry. Good thing is, the curry varies everyday… only the taufu sambal is a constant with both of us. Due to my rigorous lifting routine, I do my best to pack in as much protein as I can. So I eat 2 chappati’s and 2 plates of taufu sambal along with whatever vegetarian curry they serve for that day. If it's potato, I do my best not to eat too much potato… since its unwanted carbs. If its vege, well I just eat as much as I want.

Dinner – I try to stay sensibly healthy with this but not overly healthy. Usually it’s a tortilla wrap kind thing, roast meat sandwich, home made burgers, pasta or on lazy days – Chicken Cornish from Secret Recipe. No pizza or fast food. That’s the only rule I have. Besides that, just about anything goes. If its going to be very unhealthy, then i try to keep the portions small.

Now since we started this diet 3 weeks ago, I have lost 4kg. I just weighed myself this morning in the gym. My abdominals looks a lot trimmer now and even my arms and chest have more definition…. All in all, it’s great. Is the diet boring? Honestly I don’t feel that way and neither does my colleague. The vegetarian curry in the restaurant (which varies everyday) is really nice so we really look forward to it. Of course if I did continue this for another 2 or 3 months, I probably would get sick of it, but hey, if I can keep it up for that long, I figure that’s pretty good already. Down side is, I feel like my strength in the gym has gone down a little – maybe by about 10%. I can lift the same weights, but just not the same number of reps as i used to. So if you are a weightlifter, this diet will take a small toll on your strength. If you just want to lose weight, then it will work miracles. In short, i guess i need to balance this diet out with some meat occasionally so i keep the additional fat off, while maintaining my strength.

Weekends – as mentioned before, I am not a big eater over the weekends… so I am safe there. Usually have a tiny breakfast, small lunch and if I do indulge, its only for dinner… but even then, its not all the time and only happens if I meet friends in TGIF or something. Otherwise, dinner is also kept pretty small. If you are one who likes to eat a lot during the weekend, you might want to watch that to ensure you see results as well. Cut down slowly and cut down where you can.

Why did we choose taufu? Simple, it’s a good source of protein, its cheap and fat free. Chicken and other animal based protein does contain some amount of fat, hence why we chose taufu. Chappati, because its made out of whole wheat flour which is complex carbs.

What’s next? Surprisingly our silly stunt has drawn some attention, and now more and more people want to follow us for lunch to try it out. Now we have about 4 people who follow us daily for lunch. Who would have guessed. I eat 2 chapattis and 2 plates of taufu because of my workout routine…of course you may vary this depending on your own nutritional needs. If you are a small eater, reduce it. If you are into gaining size, increase it.

So the plan is simple… healthy breakfast, healthy lunch and a reasonably healthy dinner 5 times a week and try your best to keep your weekend food intake to a moderate level… and your clothes will start feeling a lot looser and you will love checking yourself out more often in the mirror. Try it out and see. As usual, I look forward to hearing your comments and any other suggestions you may have.

Getting Back in the Groove

For those who celebrate Hari Raya, let me take this opprtunity to wish Selamat Hari Raya to you and your family. Hope you had a wonderful celebration. To the rest who don’t celebrate, well I know you enjoyed the long break nonetheless… I know I did.

Anyway, after a long break, good food and just relaxing, getting back into your exercise routine can seem like a daunting task. Just the idea of going back to the gym will make you feel like you have ball chained to your legs. It’s important to remember that whenever you have a break from the gym and your workout, its vital that you start slow. Meaning you can’t just jump back into it and push yourself like you did before you took your break. Before you took your break, you were performing at your peak… but now that you have taken a break, you will have to ease back into that until you reach the peak again.

Normally what I like to do is to give myself 3 weeks before i get back to my peak. That way, I ensure that I have a steady and uniform progression from now until I reach my peak. Eg. If you can bench press 160 pounds, divide it up by 4 (you will be performing at your peak on the 4th week). Hence start out with 40 pounds for the first week, 80 pounds for the 2nd week and so on. By the time you reach your 4th week you will be back to where you left off. Of course you can reduce the time you take to swing back to normal, but personally for me, the best results I have achieved is when I spread it over 4 weeks. This helps to prevent injury and also prepares your body slowly before its thrown back into its peak. Also, since you are doing lighter weights, i make it a point to do more reps... i usually do as many as i can. This way the work out still feels like a workout and not just a waste of time.

For cardio, you want to start out at a lower intensity and lower speed and then work your way up again. Again... allow about 3 weeks and then on the 4th week you can push yourself as usual. If you like to run and usually run for about 1 hour, start by doing 15 minutes and then working your way up. What I like to do for running is to do 15 minutes of running and then walking for 5 minutes, then doing 15 minutes agaain and then walk again and keep the overall time to 1 hour. As time goes by, increase the 15 minutes gradually until eventually on the 4th week, you are back to running for 1 hour.

The other important reason for starting slow is, everytime you feel like you don’t want to go to the gym, just tell yourself “hey, its going to be a light and easy work out”. By telling yourself this, you will be convincing yourself that the work out isn’t going to be that torturous… hence making it easier to go back to the gym. The reason why most of us feel heavy hearted to go back to the gym, is because our last memory of gym and working out was when we were at our peak. However all the days of not working out makes us realize it is difficult to push that hard. Hence listen to your body and start slow. By the time you go through one week, you will be looking forward to the next week and soon you will be looking forward to reaching your peak again. That’s the result you want… where you look forward to going to the gym again.

So starting slow is the correct way to go about re-starting your routine since it helps to prevent injury and also prepares your psychologically to get back into the groove. This technique can be applied any time you take a break, be it festival time or just when you go on a holiday. It really helps to make a big difference. So try it out and see. As usual, I look forward to hearing your comments on this and any suggestions you may have on how you deal with post holiday work outs.

You can eat healthily anywhere - Pizza Hut

Let’s continue with the challenge that was put forth to me, stating that you can’t eat healthily outside. As you know, I am of the opinion that you can eat healthily anywhere, and so let’s continue our journey of other “so-called” unhealthy places and see how we can work around and make it healthy.

Again, my usual disclaimer before I proceed with showing you how to eat healthily here.“If you only eat in this place once in awhile, then I say go ahead and enjoy. But if your visit this place regularly, then you might want to follow these tips carefully to ensure your gym workouts don’t go to complete waste.”

So this week I decided to talk about Pizza Hut. Any Pizza parlour in Malaysia is probably considered one of the worst places to have a meal if you are trying to maintain a fit figure. So how do we go about eating there and still try to keep our hard earned body? Here are some tips.

1) Pizza Hut and most other pizza parlours have a salad bar or salad on the menu. If you can have an order of this and ensure you eat this first before indulging into the pizza. This way you feel yourself about half way with healthy crisp vegetables and then just indulge into a few slices of pizza. No point eating the pizza first, coz chances are you will eat too much and by then be to sick to even the vegetables. So vege’s first, pizza later.

2) For those body builders who are looking for protein, Pizza Hut and other pizza parlours also have Chicken Wings. It may be a little pricey to eat only this, but I guess the decision is in your hand. Spend a little more, get lots of protein or spend less and eat unhealthily. The bottom line is, there are options out there if you want to take them. My usual trick… eat the chicken wings first and then the pizza. Same concept as the veges.

3) If its possible, try to stick to plain old H2O for your drink. That will shave off a good 300 calories… and when you are eating pizza, every calorie you can save from something makes a big difference.

4) Avoid the breadsticks and garlic breads are far as possible. I know Pizza Hut has the set lunch deal where you can get breadsticks and soup. Bad idea. Bread sticks are nothing but carbs topped with some parmesan cheese for taste. Double whammy. The soup is also another killer. Any time you have a soup which is creamy, you know its high in calories as well as fat. That’s how they make it nice and creamy. There is no way that low fat milk will ever make anything that creamy. So if you can, avoid this Lunch Set at all costs. Go for some proper food.

5) When you order their Personal Pan pizza, the actual ingredients / toppings like meat comes in a patheticly small portions. Reason is, they are trying to keep the cost down to make it attractive to you, the user. Because it is so small, most people don’t mind it and think you get so little ingredients because it is small. So eating the Personal Pan is like eating bread, tomato puree, and cheese. Almost 0 nutrition value. You are honestly better of getting a Large Pizza shared by 2 or 3 people. It’s harder for them to cheat on ingredients when the pizza is large.

So there you have it. Some simple tips for you eat healthily at Pizza Hut. This way you can still join your colleagues during lunch and eat there (and not become a social outcast) while maintaining that body which cost you a lot of sweat. Most of the times we end up in these places because everyone wants to go there. With these tips, you don’t have to be left out. Try it out and see. It really isn’t that hard and anyone can eat just about anywhere and still be healthy.

As usual, look forward to hearing your comments and if you have any other healthier suggestions. Also, if you think of a place which you feel is impossible to eat healthily, let me know and I will show you how to go about it.

Having Big thighs could save your life?

For those of you who have big thighs, this posting may be of some interest to you. I read this interesting article on Star last Saturday which was talking about a new research which was done in Denmark, and funded by the Danish Medical Research Council. This research found that people with thinner-than-average thighs may have a higher risk of heart problems or an earlier death. So all you women who hate looking at your big thighs, it may actually turn out to be a life saver after all.

This study has looked at around 3,000 adults between the ages of 35 and 65, to see whether the circumference of their thighs, measured just below the bottom, was linked to their risk of getting heart problems or dying in the next 10 or 12 years. Contrary to what you might expect, thinner thighs were linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. The average measurement around people's thighs was 55 centimetres (22 inches). Thinner thighs than this were linked to a higher risk of getting heart problems or dying during the study. Having thighs larger than 60cm made no difference to people's risk. People were most at risk if they had a thigh measurement of less than 46.5 centimetres (18 inches). This group had roughly double the chances of getting heart and circulation problems or dying during the study.

How is this possible? Well the simplest possible explanation I can think of is people with smaller thighs might have less muscle mass. This means they may not be able to deal with insulin properly, which could put them at risk of diabetes and therefore heart disease. Or less muscle might be a sign that someone does less exercise. Unfortunately, the researchers didn't measure whether people's thighs were composed of fat or muscle, so we've no way of knowing. However, I am guessing that what they mean is those who have more muscle in their thighs which results in the circumference being above 60cm have a lower chance of heart failure and an early death.

This study also did not take into account other factors such as waist measurement, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and whether or not you smoke. Once they take all this information into account along with the thigh circumference, only then will they be able to substantially state if this really makes a difference.

So what can you do now knowing this information? Well, assuming that the researchers are on to something when they suggest that lack of muscle might be the problem, you could try to build up your thigh muscles with exercise. After all, as we know, any form of exercise is good for the heart, so you know for sure that it won’t be bad for you. Best form of exercise for strengthening and growing the size of your thighs… doing heavy squats at least once a week. Alternatively, you could do some endurance based training such as running – it still works out your legs and your heart as well.

Do you need another reason to work out? As usual, look forward to hearing your comments on this.

Trip to Chiang Mai

I am staying away from our fitness topic for this week and want to talk about my recent trip to Chiang Mai in Thailand. All in all it was a pretty good trip, and probably one of the few non-beach holidays I have done. To be honest, I had more fun than I thought I would.

I stayed in Holiday Inn, which was next to the river… from the description I read on line, it said the hotel offered various river / water activities, which was the reason why I chose that hotel. Problem was the description was very false. Yes, its next to a river, but the river was extremely calm and murky like kopi susu. There was no activity at all around on the river and it was just still water. The other whammy about this hotel, it’s a little far from everything… meaning no restaurants or shops nearby. So we had to depend on the shuttle to shuttle us to and from town.
The hotel itself was very nice… after all it is the Holiday Inn, but just the location could have been better.

What is there to do in Chiang Mai? Well there actually are quite a few things to do. One main thing, is shopping… and traveling with my mom, one of her friends and my wife… you can bet we did a whole lot of shopping. But even then, I still managed to do a few fun things besides just shopping which made the whole trip worth it.

Chiang Mai is the 2nd biggest city in Thailand after Bangkok. It is on higher ground, but unfortunately, it did not feel any much cooler than KL.
Some of the activities you can do there are:-
a) shopping – Famous spots include the Daily Night Bazaar, Sunday Market & the Shopping Complex
b) visiting temples – there 4 to 5 big temples in Chiang Mai. The crown jewel of these temples is on which is located on a hill
c) Factories – Silk Factories, cloth factories, rare stones etc.
d) Animal Shows – Tiger shows (I mean the animal and not the other Tiger show, please see below), Snake, Monkey
e) Waterfall – I think there are 2 huge waterfalls, but as it was raining everyday, even the water of the waterfalls became like coffee
f) Shooting range – I shall talk about this shortly
g) River Cruise – Have dinner on a boat as it cruises down the river
h) Bars – from your standard Irish bar to the Go Go kind, you can find it all here.

There are probably other attractions as well, but these were the main activies.

Anyway after waiting for so long, I finally got my chance to shoot a hand gun. It was a little pricey. RM 170 for 30 bullets, but since you can’t do it here in Malaysia, I thought what the heck. I asked them if I could split the bullets over 2 guns – meaning 15 bullets for the revolver and 15 bullets for the Glock 9mm. It was extremely fun, but shooting is not as easy as your TV shows make it out to be. What you aim at, ain’t necessarily what you will hit once you pull the trigger – due to the kick back. The Glock 9mm was a little easier to shoot, but the revolver had very powerful kick back so my shots flew everywhere. Out of 15 rounds, 12 rounds hit the target (not bullseye unfortunately) while 3 was a miss. Not bad for first time shooting. With the revolver I only managed 6 hits out of 15 rounds. Although I workout heavily, my shoulders still felt sore the next day… so it does take a toll on your arms and shoulders. Like I told everyone…. Feeling the force of the gun, I cannot imagine the pain of actually being on the receiving end of the gun.

We did check out one waterfall and we hiked for about 1km up… but the water was too murky to swim in. So me and wifey just dipped our legs in the water, took some pics and hiked down. It was a pretty good hike as we had to climb over rocks and other obstacles to proceed forward. Check out the pic below… as I was hiking down, I saw this and it looked like a perfect spot to meditate.

We also did the river cruise dinner… food was so so but it was an experience by itself. You have dinner on this wide boat, which tavels at a ridiculous speed of 1 km per hour while the sun sets. Its something different all right, but if i do go back to Chiang Mai again, I might skip this altogether.

We visited the night bazaar almost daily. Just like Petaling Street, there are loads of things to look at and buy in these stalls and yes you can bargain for a cheaper price. I bought a few cool items for myself and it was actually fun to walk around and see what each store had. Cool.

So, all in all, it was a good holiday…but I do miss the beach. So the next holiday I do, has to be a beach one again. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

PS: OK time for a new poll. Similar to the previous one, but this time its about whether its OK for your PT to be overweight / looks out of shape. Cast in your votes and make them count.

Poll Results

Alright… I know this has been long delayed, so lets review the survey results of our recent survey. Sorry for the late posting. Just got back from Chiang Mai, Thailand yesterday. Will post some pics about that trip in my next posting.

Anyway, back to business. In this survey, I asked if people would be bothered if they knew their Personal Trainer was a smoker and the results are as expected.

More than half of respondents said - Yes. They would be bothered with this fact. Interestingly, I interviewed about 20 full time Personal Trainers and almost half of them are smokers while some others said they were casual smokers and only smoked when they went out clubbing with friends. Interesting stats… it seems to match with the demographics of their clients. I asked these trainers if any of them have been turned down by customers because of their smoking habit. Some said they tried their best to hide their smoking habit from their clients, while others said they couldn’t care. For them, they said there are lots of customers out there and there is bound to be mismatches – so if they don’t want me to be their personal trainer, there are loads of others out there who wouldn’t mind.

29% of the respondents said, they don’t mind they trainer being a smoker as long as they knew their stuff and was able to impart that knowledge to them. I am guessing the logic behind this is who cares what the trainer does to themselves, I am paying them for their knowledge and nothing else.

I also asked if its OK as long as their trainers looked fit and 6% said that is more important to them than anything else. This was kind of a trick question / answer. When Brad Pitt was bulking up for his role as Achilles for the movie Troy, he was still smoking as usual. Did he look fit? Absolutely. Would you have wanted him to be your Personal Trainer. I am sure all the women are wishing they could change their answer now.

And finally, 12% of respondents said the didn’t care at all. For them, personal training is just a job like everything else. Just like you have doctors who smoke and people working in McDonalds who eat in KFC, there is nothing wrong with that. I actually put in my answer as this, as I feel what a PT does outside his/her job is their own business. But at the same time, I do understand if some clients feel uncomfortable with this… so it is a matter of personal preference.

So what was your asnwer and your reasons for choosing the answer. Do share and as usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

New addition to the family

I wanted to write on the results of our survey, but then I finally got my car yesterday evening…which I have been waiting for for the longest time, so I thought… why not. So this week, I decided let’s break away from all the fitness talk, and let’s just talk about cars.

For those who are unfamiliar with what this car is, it is a Mazda 6 2.0. To be honest, this is the first time I am buying a car that I truly wanted and not just buying it coz that’s all I can afford… so I hope you guys can bear with the excitement.

I got loads of questions asked about this car, so I thought I would paste them here to tell you a little about the car and why I chose it among all the other cars out there.

Why didn’t you go for the 2.5 model?
Firstly, 2.5 model is a little over my budget. Not to mention it comes with 18 inch wheels (expensive to replace), and a lot of eletronic gadgets which I honestly don’t care about. Like auto wipers, auto headlights, push button seat adjuestment. Also, I think too many eletronic gadgets also mean, more things to go wrong in the car. The only 3 features I wish my car had which is available on the 2.5 and not on mine is… the bigger engine (more power), Sun roof and HID headlights. Besides that, I thought the rest of the features were just gimmicks.

Why didn’t buy Honda Civic or something… cheaper and more features.
1) Personally, I think this car looks better than the Civic – no offense to Civic owners
2) Yes its expensive, but it’s a CBU… mean it comes fully assembled from Japan.
3) It's rare…. Have you noticed how hard it is to find a Mazda 6 on the road? That alone was the main selling point to me. Not much of a "crowd follower" I guess.

How does the car feel?
It’s big… so I am still getting used to it. And also, don’t want to really push the car till I go for my 1000KM service. But it feels like it has enough power… so I am not complaining. Plus, it has trip-tronic auto gear, so when you really need to rev, you have that option… but using the trip-tronic takes some getting used to.

Let me know what you guys think. I am just truly excited with this car as it really makes driving a joy.

PS: I know the pictures aren’t very clear, but it was taken last night and it was raining… so hence a bit blury. Once I get more pics I will post it up for all of you. Or you can come to meet me and see it for yourself.

Beer Drinking Experience

This week, I decided to take a break from the challenge of eating healthily anywhere as I wanted to share some findings with all of you. We will continue the challenge once again next week. Also, this break will ensure that everybody doesn’t get too bored with reading the same thing again and again.

Anyway, I went for a party last weekend, and drank a total of 6 beers. Ok I know that is a small amount by some people’e standard, but since I rarely drink these days, believe me, 6 beers was enough to tip me over. Now if you are wondering why I am posting this in my blog, I believe I have found the reason for why alcohol makes you put on weight. What’s better, now that I know the reasons, I believe I am quite close to finding a definite cure for the beer belly…. Meaning how to drink beer and avoid that beer belly. That will be in another post. But for this post, I just want to share with everyone, the reason why drinking alcohol makes you put on weight.

By the end of the night, after I had consumed my 6 beers, I was extremely hungry. I honeslty felt like I hadn’t eaten all day. So what did I do…. You guessed it, I visited a Mamak nearby to fill this hunger which felt like it was burning a hole in my stomach. I also noticed that at that point, I had this bad craving for Roti Canai or other simple starches. So instead of eating 2 Roti Canai’s I decided to make it into a Roti Telur and had plain ice water.

The next morning when I woke up, yet again I felt extremely hungry. Of course this was partly due to the fact that my stomach was emptying itself at a rapid rate the next morning… also better known as the “beer shits” to some. Usually, when I don’t drink, I don’t really feel hungry in the morning. I just force myself to eat a slice of toast. But this time… it felt like the night before… like I had been fasting for a whole 24 hours. Again, there was this craving for simple carbohydrates. I ate 2 slices of toast (whole meal bread) and an hour later, I was hungry again. Since I only woke up at 10am, I decided to have an early lunch and see how things proceed.

So I ate my lunch (I think it was Wantan mee) and I ate the usual portion I would normaly eat. 2 hours after lunch, I felt hungry again. OK I think you can see where this is going. I literally felt hungry all day. I couldn’t believe how quickly my stomach kept begging me for more food. It was riddiculous.

So based on this observation, I figured out 2 things:-

1) Yes, alcohol itself has high calorie content. So if you are going to drink, you need to cut out that additional calories somewhere else. If you drink once a week, you need to find out how much you drink on average, and start minusing out those calories through out the week by eating smaller meals and so on. So when you do drink, you have created enough deficit, where the total for the whole week is still the same.
2) These hunger pangs are probably the main culprit for you putting on weight. I drank on a Friday night and I think the on Saturday (recovery day) I ended up eating almost twice as much as my usual. That’s quite a bit.

I checked with some friends who drink all the time and still stay thin and here is what they said. Most of them don’t feel hungry the next day. Which means, whenever they drink, they actually lose their appetite the next day and it slowly comes back to normal the day after that. On top of that, most of these guys are very active. They play lots of football (maybe 3 times a week) so there are additional calories burnt there as well. So when you combine these 2 factors, it all balances out which results in no weight gained.

I got the active part covered, now it just comes down to the eating. Maybe I need to feed my hunger with high fiber foods which take longer to break down, and also less fattening and this should equate the entire formula. I am still doing a little bit more research on how alcohol consumption affects muscle tissue (since I train for muscle mass)… so once I have that sorted out, I might actually try it out on myself and see what happens. Maybe drink every weekend for 2 months while cutting down on food and see if I do gain any weight. If I don’t I would have successfully discovered the formula on How to drink beer and not have a beer belly.

As usual, look forward to hearing your comments on this issue.

You can eat healthily anywhere - McDonalds

Following my previous post and continuing with the challenge that you can eat healthily anywhere, for this post, I decided to cover McDonalds.

Who doesn’t love McDonalds and even their tagline says “I’m Lovin’ it”.

Again, my usual disclaimer before I proceed with showing you how to eat healthily there.

“If you only eat in this place once in awhile, then I say go ahead and enjoy. But if your visit this place regularly, then you might want to follow these tips carefully to ensure your gym workouts don’t go to complete waste.”

OK… so how do you eat healthily in McDonalds? Simple. Follow the tips below and you will be surprised at just how healthily you can eat.

1) Change your drink to Coke Light. This will instantly shave off a good 200 plus calories from your meal. Avoid the Milo and Ribena at all cost if possible. I can’t tell the difference between Coke Light and normal Coke, but I know some die hard Coke fans call Coke Light an insult to the Coke brand.
2) Stay away from the fries – Fries is a whopping 300 to 400 calories and poor fill up factor. Fill up factor is how full you feel after eating a certain food. So if you had to choose 2 different kinds of food which both have 400 calories, you want to choose something that is more filling – ie higher fill up factor.
3) If you are hungry, instead of whacking fries to fill yourself up, it is better to eat a burger (or maybe half). Burgers in McDonalds is around 400 to 500 calories (almost the same as fries, but higher fill up factor). Being a glutton myself, I usually eat 2 burgers at McDonalds, as 1 burger just ain’t enough. But since I rarely eat McDonalds, I guess its OK to enjoy properly every once in a while
4) I have friends who will buy 2 Fillet-O-Fish burgers, throw away the buns for one of the burger, and the other burger becomes a double patty burger. Good protein, less carbs. Good technique, I tried it once, and didn’t quite like it. But if you are one who lifts heavy and going for size, this is a good way to get in your protein intake at McDonalds, while reducing the carbohydrate content.
5) Generally, the food in McDonalds isn’t all that bad as people say. What makes it bad are the Fries, drinks (Ribena, Milo & Coke) and the portions are small, which causes us to overeat. So be weary of this and order wisely. If you can slip in a healthy snack before you hit McD’s, you will be partially full and less likely to indulge full on. This way, just one burger might be enough and you won’t have to whack your fries or chow down that second burger.

How often should you eat McDonalds where you can just eat and enjoy? Well it really depends on your total activity per day (exercise and any other activity like walking etc) as well as your age and body make up. If you workout regularly, then its ok to indulge in this every week and not see any difference to your waistline. If you are just a couch potato who drives to work, sits on the office chair for 8 hours, drives home and sits on the couch to watch TV, then once a week will make your waistline grow. Of course we also have some people who may be couch potatoes but have high metabolic rate, so even eating it everyday won’t make a difference.

My advice – Eat whenever you want to and try to be healthy like mentioned above. If you feel your waistline growing, then you know you need to cut down somewhere or do more exercise. It all comes down to balancing everything. A good benchemark to start with is once a week. If you feel once a week doesn’t make a difference, then maybe you want to try twice a week and see what happens.

So now you can eat healthily even in McDonalds. Of course its not the healthiest choice for eating, even when you eat carefully like suggested above, but its still better than just eating eating away without knowing some tricks and facts. Also, we all need to enjoy every once in awhile… so enjoy and as usual, I look forward to your comments.