I'm Such A Loser

Mom knows best, and in this case, it seemed mom knew more than she let on.

Now, we all know that it's good for bones and teeth. Today, I came across this article that shows that it may actually be good for muscles and weight-loss too!

According to the article, the group who consumed skimmed milk after workout, registered greater loss of body fats and packed on more muscle mass. Looks pretty good to me. I must start thinking about having milk handy with me when I workout now.

The other point of interest, which is in the article, mentions that:

As reported in the first phase of the study, the milk drinking group came out on top in terms of muscle gain with an estimated 40 per cent or 2.5 pounds more muscle mass than the soy beverage drinkers. In addition, this group gained 63 per cent or 3.3 pounds, more muscle mass than the carbohydrate beverage drinkers.

This seem to confirm an earlier entry of this blog, which states that soy actually isn't good for you. So I guess this busts the myth that soy contains lots of proteins. I still know many people who tell me soy contains heaps of proteins. When I tell them about the article on soy, they say it's just marketing bull and they're sure soy is a good source of protein.

Ok then, guess I'm gonna go shopping for skimmed milk pretty soon!

Labels: lose weight, milk, soy, soya, weight loss, Weightloss, workout

Well this is just great.

Just when I thought I might be getting back on track, I have to go and fall sick. Damn!

On the bright side, I'm down 1 more kilo, and I'm starting to see some definitions in my arms and chest. THEY FINALLY CAST SHADOWS! Woohoo!!! I missed them!

As I said before, the Steel Bow is a really great and handy workout equipment. While I may not be really doing much cardio due to the crazy hours available to me, I can grab a quick 10 or 20 minute workout while planting my ass at the computer. Yeah it's great, and I can even work the legs and abs too, in this position.

Oh yes, a quick word about abs - it's a total fallacy that you can get rid of the "spare tyre" around your waist by doing sit-ups or crunches. When you get fat, you get fat ALL OVER, not just there. It just so happens that in the male genes, more fats tend to deposit themselves at the waist area.

Imagine if you could do spot-weightloss... you'd look really funny if you have a slim and trim waist, but your arms, face, and everywhere else are still fat.

What your body does when you lose fats is to "take 'em out from the last place they put it in". If you're a geek (or a financially inclined person), you'll know the term LIFO - Last In, First Out. If the last place your body stored the fats are at the waist, it'll come out from that place first. Also remember, your body doesn't always store fat at the same place. It'll distribute fats all over the body for "insulation", because that is what fats are for - to protect against the cold in winter.

In nature, bears hibernate in winter, and that is common knowledge. Before they do, they'll eat alot first, to get fat. When they come out of hibernation, they'd have lose alot of weight due to the cold. The fats get "burned off" when the bear's body notices it's getting cold and the body tries to fire up the furnace to regulate the body temperature. Since the bear is in suspended animation, it's not eating, hence no fuel to burn. So, the body grabs its store of reserve fuel - the fats, and burn 'em as fuel. Yeah, it's the same in all mammals, including us humans.

So, you'll just have to work at the routine, to make the body lose fats. Let it slowly pull 'em out from wherever they got stored. Doing crunches and sit ups are fine, they tone up the abs area, but they do NOT "lose fat" there. You could do 1000 sit ups and the fats that get pulled out might be from your ARMS (if you actually worked hard enough that the body decides to burn fat).

Ok enough rambling - I need to sleep and get well. I hate being sick! It throws me off schedule, and makes me spend money (to see the doc and get medication).

Labels: burn fat, lose weight

... or is it? :)

Labels: diet, lose weight, pep-talk, Peptalk, Weightloss

In first post, I was saying I needed a home solution for workout. To recap - I'm a lazy person. I won't say "Singaporean", because humans are inherently lazy. You can be in any country, and chances are, they'll be as lazy as everyone else...

But, I digress..

Back in 1998, I did mostly cardio... you know, those mindless 30 min running, jumping, Power-Rider-ing stuff, and very little strength/muscle building. This time around I thought I'd really start to put on some muscles for a more "permanent" solution to losing weight and keeping them off. Besides, with a set of muscles I might be motivated to exercise regularly like twice a week to maintain them :)

In any case, I scoured the net for a few home workout solutions, or "home gym" as they like to call it. I then remembered that as a kid, I saw adverts in the newspapers for a "Bullworker" machine. At the time, I wanted to get it but my dad would always refuse, saying they're just "gimmicks".

Well, now I can get one on my own. So I started hunting around Singapore for it. Unfortunately, it seems like no one knows where to get one anymore. I then turned to the Internet, and lo and behold! I found a ton of websites with Bullworker-clones.

I almost bought the BullyXtreme, but the website was too "spammy" and it didn't really give me a good "feeling". Then I stumbled across BowProducts. It was here that I was sold on the Steel Bow (pic below).

Steel Bow

Anyway, I ordered one, and amazingly it took only 4 working days to get from the USA to Singapore! Excitedly I tore the package open, and unfolded the wall-chart:

Yeah I stuck it on my wall... what else do you do with a wall-chart eh?

The package comes with the Steel Bow, 2 additional springs (for intermediate and advanced users, meaning stronger springs) and a workout DVD.

Anyway, it's been a week, and I've been following the exercises on the wall-chart. What I *CAN* say is that my strength HAS increased. No visible increase in measurements yet though.

I hope my investment in this will be worth it...

Labels: Bullworker, burn fat, exercise, gym, home gym, lose weight, Steel Bow, weight loss, workout

I'm a typical Singaporean.

That means overweight, more fat than fit, and severely out of shape. Like most other Singaporean males, I cringed at the 4 letters - "IPPT". I drink, eat junk food, play games into the wee hours of the night (well I don't do much of that anymore) and do all sorts of unhealthy stuff. Even gory pictures on cigarette boxes don't put me off.

Well, no more. I have committed myself to a slightly different lifestyle. I did it once before, back in 1998. If I can do it then, I can do it again, now.

Yeah, I went on a training regime back in 1998. I lost 10kg. When I met up with my reservist buddies, they commented on how slim I was. Alas, I still failed IPPT that year.

This is the beginning of a new journey for me.

Technically I started back around 20 Sept 2007. That was day 1 of my new journey - the journey to lose this accumulated weight I have been carrying since 1998 (when I stopped my old journey). That night, I went hunting for my old journal - the one I had written down all the healthy foods, exercise tips and so forth - but to no avail. It's lost. Gone.

Well I have to start over. I have to research all those stuff all over again. However now I have a head-start - I still remember alot of the do's and don'ts I had written down back then. For example, I remember that eating more times a day, but smaller portions each time, is actually good for me instead of the popular misconception that it's bad.

Yes, eating MORE OFTEN will skew your body's rhythm. It'll make your body say "Hmmm food is becoming abundant now, we don't have to scrimp and save and push everything into FATS to store for a rainy day". I'm not kidding. I did that in 1998 and it lost me 10kg.

Next step - to start cardiovascular exercises. I know I have to do this for at least 2 weeks for the body to start recognising that exercise is now regular, and that it's easier to burn stored fat than just the calories I ate that day. I did that on 20 Sept. And, I got a sore body the next WEEK after that.

Yeah, that happens when you don't exercise for years then you suddenly kick-start everything. Your body is suddenly shocked into working.

I only did a 20 min cardio workout and some pushups, bicep curls and some crunches that night. I was then punished the whole of next week with body aches. The week following that, since my body was aching to heck and back, I could only continue on cardio workouts and did almost ZERO muscle building/strength training.

Muscle building is yet another thing I remember from my 1998 journal. Muscles burn fat, even when you're slouched in front of the TV or sleeping. Losing weight too fast without building muscles will make you look fugly. Besides, losing weight without adding muscles won't make the weight-loss permanent. The moment you go off your diet, you start to put on weight again.

Yeah I know, cos I stopped my regime back in 1998 and it happened to me.

This is now 2 weeks since 20 Sept when I started on my journey. I had started out weighing 82kg. Now, at this writing, I've already lost 2kg, almost entirely only doing 20 to 25 mins of cardio workouts every 2nd day. It's considered pretty slow actually.

Now that my body has been conditioned, my muscles don't ache anymore. However I still need a fast way of putting on muscles to help with the fat burning, and doing push-ups, pull-ups, crunches seem like hard work.

Because, like most other Singaporeans, I'm lazy :) I don't want to buy a gym membership and then have to groan and moan about going to the gym. It will end up with me dreading to go, finding all sorts of excuses not to go etc.

So, I needed a home solution....

Labels: exercise, lose weight, weight loss, workout