How to Lose Weight - Make some Adjustments

Daily Weight Loss Report:

71.6 kg

This was the weight after running for half an hour because last night, I left my keys downstairs. But the door to downstairs was locked. It's a long story. So I just used the side door and went outdoors for a run. When I came back, the door to downstairs was open.

I think there might be a difference of 0.4-0.5 kg. So the weight reported might have been 72.1 kg.

The last week has been a hard one for me because the weight has been rocketed, as you can see from the chart above. I have been on the egg and cucumber diet. I have also been running as always, i.e. 20-30 minutes of intense interval training and 50 minutes of running on the treadmill at 7:00 pm.

But the result is not satisfactory.

So I think I should do something different.

I will follow the diet, not the exact one, but eating small portions.
And I will continue to run at 7:00 pm every night for 50 minutes, adjusting the speeds as I go.
Drink as much water as possible.
And believe I will get there.

You can call it a plateau, bottleneck or anything. But I need to hang in there until I pass it. And I will because I have been there and done that.

So basically, I will do more workout because I can not reduce my food portions any more.

I hope I will get back on the fast weight loss track again soon. Ha!

Weight Loss - High Intensity Interval Training

Daily Weight Loss Report:

72.0 kg

 When I had my first try of losing weight about 13 years ago, I started with running for more than 30 minutes because I read a book which says that only when you run over 30 minutes does the body start to burn fat.

One of my colleagues, who was very fit with abs, did something different. After playing basketball together with us, he would take sometime doing high intensity interval running. He just walk slowly for a minute, then sprint for another. He told me running at the same speed for a long time is not working. I think there is some truth in what he said.

So if you want to lose fat and get strong at the same time, it is something that you should do.

Running at the same speed for a long time would make your tissue of your muscles become thinner. In the short term, it seems as if you are losing weight. But what you want is more than that. You should want to become stronger and healthy.

That is where the high intensity interval training steps in.

Mix your routine with that. You will get more out of your workout efforts.

At the beginning, you may want to do running at similar speed for a fairly long time so that you can see that you are achieving something during a short period of time. And you will get some impetus.

But when you lose some weight, you should think about change the texture of your muscles. When that happens, your muscles will become natural fat burner and metabolism booster which works 24/7. All you need to do then will be minimal. And the weight you will increase a year will be less than a half kilo.

But don't worry for the time being if you have just started. Because you will get it and come to know what to do when you come to that stage where you should kick things up a notch.

Weight Loss Challenge - Fluctuations of Weight

Weight report today:

71.8 kg

So it looks like I am getting back to track after fluctuations during the last few days. But the fluctuations always happen after a while.

1. It gets you into bad mood.

You know what I mean by that. If you see your weight is increasing, you don't feel well even for several days until you see it dropping again.

With bad moods, you can not do things well. You may ruin something at work and destroy your day.

So just remember it is not the end of the world and only a fluctuation which happens a lot and you are going to get back on track soon.

Calm yourself down and do what you are supposed to do.

2. It makes you doubt what you are doing.

When you second-guess yourself, you will become reluctant to do what you have planned to do in the first place. This is a great deal breaker when it comes to weight loss.

If you don't believe in what you are doing now, then you might stop running today, which will lead to two and more days and finally stop it for all.

So drop your doubt and move on.

3. It make you feel stupid.

You know 5 days I was so happy about my weight loss achievement that I told my friends that I had lost 6 kg. But the day before yesterday and yesterday, I felt really stupid, not willing to talk about my weight any more.

This was all due to the weight fluctuation. So I must conquer you so that I can prove myself being not a fool.

A mint has two sides. Can you see the advantages of said fluctuations? You are going to have a lot to gain if you can.

1. Tests your patience.

It takes patience to lose weight successfully and keep it there. Nobody can do it overnight. You need to plan what you are supposed to do everyday, do as you planned and monitor your progress. It is a systematic project.

So your patience will build up, which is good for other aspects of your life.

2. Puts your perseverance to test.

To lose weight effectively, you need to do exercises or diets consistently. Your perseverance is going to be put to test, especially during hard times of fluctuations.

After you lose weight successfully, you will be confident that you will have the persistence that will enable you to do something else.

3. Makes you learn a lot.

You will gain experience, bad and good, on the road to being skinny. And you will learn a lot during this process. It will not only help you to achieve your goals, but also make achievements on other areas of your life.

Quick Weight Loss Tricks - Binge Eating Once a Week

Report of the Weight Today:

73.7 kg

Yesterday, we had a celebration to receive the new colleague in the company. You know. On this kind of occasions, foods are the core for Chinese etiquette. Here is a list of the dishes that we cooked collectively:

• Braised pork in brown sauce
• Oxtail Stew
• Stir-fried pork with celery
• Stewed chicken nuggets with potato
• Stir-fried eggs with tomato
• Stewed pork ribs with winter gourd
• Deep-fried peanuts
• Stir-fried lettuce

You can see that they were all cooked with oil. Yes, I ate oil. And of course, beer.

And I didn't do exercise in the evening and in the morning today because of the waist-ache I have, which feels better this morning.

So taking a break is one of the best quick weight loss tricks that I have found.

And I have another good one, too. This is a really good trick. Yes, a trick, really.

Much information indicates that it can boost your metabolism as well as your whole weigh loss campaign.

It is BINGE EATING. No, you can not do it all the time. You should do it only once in a while, e.g. once a week.

To me, I found it advantages in the following terms:

1. It lessens the hardness of holding on to the diet all the time.

Sometimes, hard working people need to take a break, cutting himself slack. Otherwise, they would get snapped or burnt out.

Like a spring which has a range of elasticity, within which the spring can bounce back to what it was originally was. But if you exert too much force on it, it will not be able to get back at its original state.

So if you are going on diet like I am, then you need to take breaks, at least once a week. Momentum is important. But keeping yourself interested so that you can leap forward is even more important.

2. It reduces my craving.

The longer you go with the diet, the more you crave for "good foods". It is worse for food lovers. It is not starvation. It is just craving. You would know if you have salivated over the meat shelf in the supermarket.

I did. It is hard.

But with binge eating once a week, you can satisfy and thus reduce your craving. And you will find it easier for the next week.

3. It increases my shamefulness.

Shame is not a good thing in the normal sense. But when it comes to dieting, each time after binge eating, I feel ashamed of and loath myself for what I have done.

Trust me. You won't feel good about it. So this will help you to go further with the dieting campaign.

Quick Weight Loss Tricks - Breaks

Report for March 14:

Weight: 73.8 kg (March 14)

Weight: 73.2 kg (March 15)

Yesterday, I went to Gaborone to pick up my colleague from the Airport. It was a 850 km drive. That is the excuse why I didn't update my weight loss journal.

I let myself loose and ate the BBQ at the Rodizo Restaurant. You know what! I found that I wanted to throw up at the end. I think that was because I had been away from so intensely much meat for some time. I am glad of that. Maybe this was to show me that I finally get independent from binge eating.

In Journey to the West, the Pig (Wujing) has the biggest inclination, i.e. eating. When Buddha says that he might not be able to let eating go after he becomes a Buddha himself. I thought she was addressing me.

This morning I found that I have a waist ache. It really hurts. I thought that it was because of the long time driving. But maybe that was not the reason.

I have been exercising for 3 weeks, non-stop and haven't observed the rule of resting one day in a week.

So I highly recommend that you follow this rule. If you don't, your body will suffer and the result that you have expected in terms of the fat you lose will be just oblivion.

You can see this from the data of my weight in the last few days, it went up A LOT. Theoretically, I think when the body is tired, its self-protection mechanism would be initiated. It will try to prevent further fat or weight from losing your body, which would inevitably result in lowered metabolism. That is against what you are doing, i.e. losing weight. (It is just my induction. It may be correct or wrong. )

So take a rest!

Exercises to Lose Weight - First Principles

Report:

Weight: 72.6 kg

 Another bad day! But that is not a reason to lose sleep because if you really think about it. During the same day, it would have up to 2 kg's difference if you weigh yourself in the morning and in the evening, sometimes even before and after a meal.

So the most important thing is the long term trend.

To make it comparable, I weigh myself always right after I get up in the morning.

*       *       *

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the place where the voluntary Chinese medical team to Botswana stay to play basketball.

As a government delegation, they have all entertainment equipment and a well-equipped gym.

It has been a long time since I last played. So the muscles became sour this morning. It made me think that running might not be enough for training.

Mixing different kinds of sports into your matrix as often as possible will be better if you want to get your body ready for any challenge. But for now, you can just live with running and, once in a while, basketball or badminton.

*      *       *

1. Take an Exercise as the core.

Running is mine. I like running because it is easy to do. You don't have to get the complex and expensive equipment to run. Just a pair of sport shoes is enough. Sometime, you don't even need them. Yes, you can run barefooted.

You can run at any time and in any kind of weather. You can do it right after getting up from bed. You can do it in the evening when the traffic is gone. And you can even do it on your way to work. Of course, if you want to do it under bad weather, you may need a rain-proof jersey or coat.

There is another reason why I love running. It is an exercise that you can do it alone on your own. You don't have to wait for your team player or an opponent to begin to play, like basketball and badminton. They are certainly good exercises and, if you do it often and long enough, help you to lose weight.

You can do it the way you like, i.e. you can adjust your speeds as you will. The best way is to mix and match. Just think about it. You get slimmer everyday while your exercising skills becoming better and better.

2. Mix and Match with other exercises when you've got a chance.

Just like what I did yesterday, the muscles get sour, which feels nice. You know what I mean if you start to like exercising. And I slept so well last night that I could open my eyes in the morning. It is nice if you start to enjoy sports.

3. Rest.

I read many weight loss books which say that you should take a day's rest every week. If you don't think you should take that rest, you should think again. The body, including the muscles, need to take some time to recoup itself.

Whatever exercises to lose weight you want to take in order to get the perfect body, take the above points as the primary principle. Good luck!

Healthy Eating Plan - What a Healthy Diet Looks Like?

From the hanging clothes in the picture above, you can imagine how round my figure was before.

Actually, I am wondering if I should buy new clothes now because:

1. I am an eater.

I am confident that I can lose weight every time I want. But I am not sure that I can maintain what I get. That is because...

2. I have a easy-to-bump body texture.

It has been really easy for me to get fat. Eating the same amount of food, I would get fatter than others.

And on the same weight, other people would have more fat than I. So it is harder for me to lose weight than others.

3. I am not sure that I can keep as fit as or even fitter than today.

To be honest, losing weight is easy. But the problem is maintaining it. I have "successfully" lost weight SIX times and rebounded back six times. As long as you work out, you will lose weight. I can assure you of that. But to maintain it, it is quite another story.

But one thing is sure. If you resume eating as much as you did before deciding to lose fat, then you are going to get fat again and even fatter than before. I have done that and been there.

That is why I wanted to try something else, something like this weight loss diet.

Healthy Eating Plan

1. Eat Less.

I heard that Taoism believes that the quantity of foods that one consumes in his life is predetermined. If he eats out his quota, then his life ends. So if one wants to live a long life, then he should eat less.

20 days ago, I was one of them who absolutely refuse to lose weight through dieting. But after I started to eat less, I found out that I have gradually come to like it.

Believe it or not, being full all the time can really make you sleepy, which is not good if you want to live your life in a more efficient way.

2. Eat after intensive exercises.

If you do exercises, like running, after eating, the stomach would get more pressure and the digestion may be impacted, which is not good for your health.

3. Drink more water.

During the dieting, when you feel hungry, water can save you and lose your fat. Just keep a glass of water within reach and drink as often as possible. Sipping is better than gulping.

All in all, don't worry about malnutrition if you go on diet. Nutrition is enough from any source, as long as you can mix and match what you eat. For example, just try to consume all colors of vegetable during a day.