I'm Such A Loser

Image by galant via FlickrOnce again, I come here and say the same thing - don't "go on a diet", especially not a "eat less" one. I've already covered why not, so just search for my previous entries for "eat less" and you should get a couple of posts on it.

I came across this website here, called Diet Recipes. I thought it's great because on every recipe that it presents to you, it tells you the calorie value of the recipe. Hence, if you're on a "eat less" diet, this site with its mouth-watering pictures and calorie-calculated recipes, should be great for you.


Personally I'm on a "eat more" diet myself, and I wish I found a website where it tells me that. No, pigging out at MacDonalds and so on doesn't really qualify, ok?

Labels: diet, dieting, healthy diet

Asians are the world's native rice eaters. If we tell you a particular rice type sucks, you bet it sucks. Vice versa, if we tell you it's good, it's good, trust us.

After some research, I learnt that brown rice instead of the usual polished rice we eat normally, is the healthier and more nutritious choice. Since I still have like 2kg left of my 5kg pack of normal polished rice, I bought a small tiny packet of brown rice, "for trials". You know, see if it's good or tasty etc.

According to the back of the pack, brown rice needed approximately twice the amount of water compared to normal. So ok fine, I scooped up the required amount of rice that I normally ate, added in water as per normal, then doubled it. I left it to cook.

Man, it sure takes a long time to cook brown rice!

Verdict?

Brown rice is grainier, and tastes different. Well one can argue that rice technically is tasteless, but let me tell you, it tastes different from our normal rice. I don't know how to describe it, but if a typical Singaporean were to eat brown rice, he/she will definitely want to put heaps of soya sauce, or gravy, or some other condiments to make it tastier. Which, effectively, cancels out the benefits you get when you eat brown rice in the first place!

Going by taste alone, I wouldn't have picked brown rice to be my "staple". I'd still prefer to eat the usual polished rice we normally eat, although they might be "useless" as far as health benefits go. Plus, triple the usual cooking time for brown rice as compared to normal rice, makes me wonder if people will actually switch to brown rice permanently as a staple diet.

Ah well, guess I might as well finish this tiny pack of brown rice since I already bought it.

Labels: diet, healthy diet

Mention the word "diet" to most people, and you can literally see them cringe. "Diet" seems to be such a bad word that must not be uttered to people who are losing weight.

General perception is that, when you're "on a diet", you have to eat very little, you cannot eat this, cannot eat that etc. In other words, when "on a diet", they are deprived of the things they love. I call this the "eat less" diets.

The problem with "eat less" diets is this - once the person has reached his weight-loss goal, he/she goes back to his old diet, ie the unhealthy one. That is when the weight starts piling back on again, and people have trouble keeping it off.

If you look in the dictionary, the meaning of diet is "the foods eaten, as by a particular person or group: The native diet consists of fish and fruit."

Hence, if you change your diet permanently, you no longer are "on a diet". As soon as you change the food you eat, ie to healthier alternatives, and make it part of your daily life, you no longer will hate the word "diet". For example, when a person decides to become a vegetarian, that person has just decided to change his/her diet.

First of all, you need to know which kind of food is bad for you, and keep those out of your new diet (and by diet, I mean the dictionary version, not the "eat less" ones). Once your new diet consist mainly of nutritional food, and you consume them on a daily basis, they'll become a part of your life. You'll no longer crave junk food, sweets, candies etc anymore.

However that doesn't mean you can't eat those. You still can, just in moderation. Don't eat burgers and hot dogs everyday for example. Have one when you feel that you haven't had one in a long time. It's fine to eat a couple every month, but not every day. Personally, I have a "cheat" day every week. This is the day where I can eat stuff I loved, before I changed my diet. For example, this week I ate pig trotters (猪脚), with all the fats and grease and everything on Wednesday. On all other days, I ate my normal, usually balanced meals consisting of fruits, vegetables, meat and grains.

Of course, if you're on a weight-loss plan right now, for the moment you need to watch your calories. Your output, ie, exercise and workouts, must exceed your input, ie, the food you eat. This is only temporary, however. Once you have reached your goal, you can go back onto your (new) normal diet. Remember, if you eat healthy and nutritional foods, and exercise regularly (once or twice a week), your weight should be able to be kept under control.

So, change your mindset. Going on diet doesn't mean you have to be on a "eat less" diet. Make a decision to change your diet permanently. Decide to eat healthy, and you will benefit by keeping the unwanted weight off.

Labels: diet, healthy diet

Is cooking without using oil even possible?

Yup, it is. I know many people would disagree, saying that using oil enhances flavour etc.

We go back to my analogy of ancient man. When we first discovered fire, we cooked our food by roasting them over an open fire. When you go camping even today, do you cook your fish that you caught in the river in oil?

Righto, you don't (you don't, right?). Well if you actually bring cooking oil out camping, I have nothing to say except "dot dot dot dot" (local Singaporean slang for "speechless").

Nowadays, cooking pans, woks and so on come with non-stick coating. If you don't scrimp and buy only cheap ones, the non-stick pan you buy today can last you for YEARS. Spend a little more, it'll last long and you'll "earn" back the cost by not having to buy a new "non-stick" pan every couple of years.

Ok why do I say cooking without cooking oil is possible? Well that's because the purpose of cooking oil is to help spread the heat from the fire out quicker and more evenly, so that all parts of the food item is cooked. Also, it helps by not letting the food item stick to the pan during cooking, and therefore you avoid charring the food. Along the way, manufacturers decided to "value-add" to the basic oil, and make food that is cooked with certain brands "tastier".

Pans nowadays are scientifically researched and engineered (if you buy the good brands), and they already do the job of whatever the oil used to do.

I cook without oil, and it's healthier. Although you need oil in your diet, and fats too, those from cooking oil could be the "excess" ones you're trying to get rid of.

Cutting cooking oil out of the equation is yet another simple and small change you can make to your current lifestyle without upsetting it too much to make you hate "dieting" :)

Labels: diet, dieting, healthy diet

Yep, most people I know dread the word "diet".

I remember what I read somewhere, a long time ago - "Whatever tastes good, is bad for you!". To some extent, it's true.

Let me clarify. First, we harken back to the ancient days of early prehistoric Man. Back then we had no processed food, no sweets, no manufactured food items. Everything Man ate was only available in nature. In some cases, Man's food fought back. Try eating a live chicken, or a pig :) You can bet the fella will struggle like hell...

So in this scenario, "whatever tastes good is bad for you" is usually not true. Fruits that aren't ripe taste awful. Man was gifted with colour vision for the purpose of telling which fruits were ripe, and which weren't. Poisonous plants generally don't taste good. The taste tells early Man to stop eating it, and eat something else that tastes good.

Plants propogate themselves by producing seeds. In order to sow the seeds further away than a few feet, plants produce fruits which have the seeds inside them. That will entice animals to eat the fruit and then perhaps, discard the seed(s) some distance away.

So, back in prehistoric times, Man only had frutis, plants, and hunted animals for meat. They had no seasonings, no mustard, no mayonaise, etc. They don't even cook their meat with cooking oil - just roast 'em over an open fire.

Fast forward 3 million years later. Here we are today. We have sweets, candies, cakes etc etc ... things that "taste good". When we dine, we have to have a generous helping of condiments, like salt, pepper, mustard and so on. All these are MANUFACTURED. When humans manufacture things, the intent is to SELL the products. To sell food products, they must TASTE GOOD. In this day and age, tasting good involves adding chemicals (which generally aren't good for the body) into the product, to make it taste good. If it tastes good, it sells. Companies don't really care about the health of the consumers in general.

So, whatever tastes good, generally is bad for you. That is true for the situation we have today in the modern society.

My point?

My point being, we need to start eating food without all the processed junk again. Stop using chilli, pepper and so on. If you need to use salt, use it sparingly. Cook your meat without using oil. Roast it over an open flame like our ancestors did. Or, what I do is to dump the meat into the toaster/microwave and cook it... yes, just like that, no oil, no marinating.

How does it taste? Same as always. The thing about me is, I normally don't use condiments with my meals. I'm strange I know. I get teased about being "scared of chilli" cos I normally don't put chilli on anything I eat, unlike all my typical Singaporean friends who apply gobs of it on their food. Even when I eat burgers, and they ask me "Chilli or ketchup?", my reply is always "nothing, thanks". Yup, I eat french fries WITHOUT chilli or ketchup! You need to try it yourself.

So when I "roast the meat over an open flame", the meat tasted almost the same as when it's cooked in oil, except minus all the unhealthy oil.

To many people, "dieting" means eating less, and the food tastes bland. The reason is - you're all too dependent on condiments. Give 'em up. It's the first step you can take to a healthy diet.

Disclaimer - I am not a nutritionist. I am not a doctor. Whatever I'm writing here is knowledge I learnt from various sources. Use of information presented here is at your own risk.

Labels: dieting, food, healthy diet