I only do one. A simplified TableTop one but instead of one limb at a time, it's one-hand-one-leg-together at one time. I hold it for 10 secs with my belly button in and Kegel in. Repeat on the other side. Do each side 10 times. Then I'm suppose to do 4 sets, each set 10.

By the time I'm finish, my stomach feels a bit achy. Mind you, this is only one I"m doing atm. Haven't done anything yet coz my PT sessions are focusing on other things.

Actually nope. The one I'm doing is called either "tabletop" or "horse stance".

With my back as it is, I doubt that i will do the planks any time soon. ^.^

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Added on December 17, 2009, 6:59 amI can tell you an interesting story of fat loss, or rather "perceived fat loss". Rather than losing fat, I gain more muscle and yet my weight didn't drop as dramatically as my inches. This was a time when I had a slipped disc and all I could do was core strengthening exercises for my back. I wouldn't have believed how hard my stomach and abdomen became in just 2-3 months.

For the kneecap, maybe you can try what I'm doing. I take about 6000 mg of fish oil as a source for Omega 3. It helps with the inflammation. I take 2 tablets (1000 mg each) at mealtimes but I take them halfway through the meal so that when I do burp, I don't smell the fish oil. Believe it or not, I manage all my slipped disc pain with this. I used to have knee pain as well because of my weight problems and it has helped to reduce that as well.

Just a question : How small is small portion?

This post has been edited by myremi: Dec 17 2009, 06:59 AM

Your weight dropping is good.

That's not small. What I eat is small.

I eat half of the styroform. Half carbo that includes veggie, rice, potato (although I usually avoid rice and potato because they disturb my fat balance too much) and the other half is protein (lean meat, fat is trimmed, no gravy).

Chap fan has a lot of sugar in it. Yes, white sugar. The hawkers usually add in sugar so that there's no bitter or bland taste. Especially the ones with soy sauce - that's a lot of sugar in it.

LOL Syd G! Now that's a classic case of Myremi not connecting her brain with her fingers. Haha!

wilson88 : What can you cook atm? Just pester your mum or friends to show you.

Hmm...having a calorie deficit will work to a certain extent but you'll also need to balance out your food intake with the essential nutrients that your body needs just to function e.g. antioxidants. Your entire diet is lacking in fiber as well as vegetables. So change that.

Note also that fruits tend to have a higher sugar content compared to vegetables for the same amount of energy in them. So people whose metabolism is not high, will not be able to metabolise the sugar into energy but converts it into fat.

Take note that having a calorie deficit doesn't mean that a meal with the same amount of calories will give you the same amount of nutrients. A 300 kcal meal at KFC will not give you the same nutrients if you cook yourself that 300 kcal with less fat and more veg. Calorie deficit is a start but don't forget to balance it out with other stuff.

weib : I suppose my statements would be deem inaccurate depending on what preconceptions you have before reading my statements.

The danger with all the information online is that it's been drastically simplified and diluted that it can often be very hard to discern what is actually accurate and again, it often relates to what context.

Yes, the thyroid imbalance will cause problem for a person suffering from it. But the human body was design such that it could counteract such imbalances if it were to have the correct nutrients and in the correct balance. How did a person get a thyroid imbalance in the first place? It's usually through their diet. Sometimes, yes, genetics play a strong role in it but not in majority of the cases. In majority of the cases, it's poor nutrition habits over the years that eventually the body says that it's had enough and starts degenerating. This is often a hard truth for people to accept.

The KFC chicken comparison to what is cook at home is still very much so valid. I didn't say that frying is bad. Frying is ok but again, depends on the style of frying. I don't deep fry food but I stir fry them. And rather than deep frying stuff, I roast them in the oven. I control the amount of oil used and the type of oil used (this is to get a healthier fat into my body).

I'm pulling the KFC chicken as an example and not to go around bashing fast food chains. KFC also lists down the energy, fat and carbs levels so if altecaltec11 wishes to check later with homecook food, he can.

altecaltec11 : Don't be too worried about the machine calorie meter as those as approximation. What can't be measured accurately is the amount of energy burned when at rest after exercise.

Hmm...I think one thing is to use simplier English although even I am guilty of not using it simple enough.

When I see what you post up, I see that you're passionate about fitness but the part about nutrition is what I see a lot in the fitness world where it's easier to say that it's easy to watch your calories but it doesn't always give optimal results.

The problem that I see with your arguments is that it's based on Calorie in = calorie out irregardless of nutrients count. May work but the fitness level will drop and the person will not exercise to the best of his condition. There's a lot of debate about this but even top athletes are going for a clean diet for better performance.

One good place to start is "Precision Nutrition". Although having said that, I've since moved on towards "Metabolic Typing" but there are still some interesting concepts at http://www.precisionnutrition.com that makes it an interesting read.

Not all top athletes uses drugs to achieve peak performances. They can achieve it through long hours of practice (usually since young) and clean diet. There's a theory that to be a success at anything, one needs to spend 10,000 hours practicing - "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell where he cited professional musicians, Bill Gates, athletes, etc. Although that supports the statement of practice and not the nutrition bit.

On the nutrition part (diet, supplements, food types), the cleaner the diet, the better the person will be although it will take awhile to feel the positive effects. By cleaner, I mean by returning back to the food that have not been processed at all e.g. purified, combined with chemicals of any sort. In today's world, it would either be food from organic farms or food foraged from nature or farmed very far into the interior (e.g. jungle food).

The human body performs better when the food is free from any form of chemicals which may be present in food, even in meat and vegetables from wet market. The research for this comes from the earlier pioneers of metabolic typing. The book most cited is "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price but you can find some mention of his works in "The Metabolic Typing Diet" book by Wolcott.

For top athlete, I only had a small glimpse at the site "Precision Nutrition". I bought the manual that came with a one-year subscription to their forums and additional info. It's an interesting site especially with a lot of top athletes posting their and sharing their experiences with clean diets.

That's true that 1 book doesn't make the truth. However, note that I only quote one book and it was your assumption that I only read one book. I have read more than one book as well as reading through websites. What I do probably have is experienced with those fashion diets and slimming products. Yes, they were all terrible experiences but they were immensely useful in the sense that they provided me with information about how it works and why it works. At times, it was hard to look for the information but over time, I either met people who knew about those products (doctors, researcher, etc.) or the information came to light in the website.

I wouldn't quite say that it's pseudo science or new age when the definition is unclear. Most times, it depends on whether people are willing to open up to different and oftentimes, radical (in their eyes) ideas. A human being is a complex being, whereby the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual condition will influence the outcome.

In today's world, a lot of emphasize for treatment (fitness, medical, etc.) is mostly concentrated on the physical. To a certain degree, the mental part is being explored now (motivational, law of attraction, mindsets, etc.) but people are not willing to open up to this. Emotional and spiritual is an even more sensitive subject but to remove it as an indicator and factor of good human health state is now looking not to be a good idea. This is where emotional eating comes into play for a lot of people, including skinny and fat people.

So when they deal with their emotional eating, they still have to find out what is good for them. The problem with carb centric or fat centric is that it works for 2 different groups of people. But there is a 3rd group of people who can use a mix of both of them. The other thing about metabolic typing diet is that it also introduces the concept that the persons metabolic type will change based on their environment and activity that they will do.

One thing about the research postings that you posted up is that it's still within a certain group of people. The best is to have a larger sample and one that is more applicable in terms of everyday life. The other thing is actually seeing the raw data rather than reading the write-up only and taking it for face value. For the larger sample size of a day-to-day person, I would actually prefer reading what fitness experts

I suppose I seem biased towards the metabolic type diet but that's because I've had an experience with it and compared to other diets, it seem to be able to fix the health problems I'm facing. Bowel movement is regulated. My skin and complexion is better. I haven't fallen sick with a cold since Feb - March 09. My mild food allergy went away. I've more energy to do more things daily. My day job is stressful as it involves global activities but these days, I don't feel the stress at all. When I compare back to the times that I did all those fashion diets and took slimming products, those times were uncomfortable period with stress, physical pain and discomfort. Even when reducing carb and fat alone, it didn't resolve my bowel movement problem. Bowel movement is a very good indication on whether your body is in a healthy condition or not.

Mind you, I am probably one of those "new age" thinkers and will make people very uncomfortable. The only reason for that is because I went with a PT who knew what worked and we did kinesology tests to check when did I feel my strongest and these were physical tests. There were a few ground rules that I put down back in Feb 09 which are :
-No medication to feel better.
-I will have to eat like this for the rest of my life. So the diet/eating habits will have to make sense and make me feel good.
-Treat the root cause and not the symptom. This applied to all that I've read and whether the diet and fitness habit was treating the real root of the problem or just the symptom temporarily.

For the top athletes, as I've mentioned, it's from the Precision Nutrition (PN) site and they occasionally post up about the clients that they have. Check out the blog as they do highlight competitive athletes and the impact of a clean diet. Although, it is a subscription site so I'm not sure if you can access the blog post entirely. Try using the RSS feed and see if it pops up there. They mostly talk about US and Canadian athletes. I go to PN to get information about nutrition and other matters but it's not quite the Holistic Fitness concept that I believe at the moment.

In terms of Malaysian athletes, I only know pizzaboy. We have strong discussions all the time but it's interesting talks.

One thing that motivated recently was walking and logging my steps on Nike+Active site.
http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikea...e/en_US/active/

I bought an iPod nano, activated the pedometer and walk. Sync with iTunes to load it up online. When you see the approximate number of steps to walk off a donut or hotdog, you'd think twice before eating them. Heh!

100 storey building is 5,000 steps. 160 storey building is 7,000 steps. The burger + fries was 16,000 steps.

Good on you!

Well, the pedometer helps me keep things in perspective and be more mindful of what I eat. 16,000 steps is equivalent to about 800 calories which is like a hamburger and fries together. And I'm still trying to walk it off for the past 2 days!! Haha!

The problem is that I overused my thigh muscles when they have been inactive for awhile so they are protesting atm.

You could be less active in the morning because of the Circadian Cycle and not eating a clean diet. By Circadian Cycle, I mean your sleeping patterns. Try to goto bed by 10:30 pm every night and wake up by 6 am. The physical repair for the body happens at 10 pm to 2 am and the psychological repair for the body at 2 am to 6 am. I've been doing this since Sept 09 and I find that after 10 pm, if I don't sleep, my body is more tired the next day. The other thing is to make sure you're sleeping in a completely dark room. I had to cover the window panes with black cardboards so that the lights don't shine through. I got this from a book with me called "How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy!" by Paul Chek.

The clean diet will give your body tissues and muscles better nutrients and it gives the liver an easier time because of less toxins in the body for it to clean up. I don't eat a clean diet 100% of the time but I do notice that if I eat out too often, my skin becomes redder and it will also itch more.

As for walking, yes 10,000 steps in a normal workday is hard. Depends on how fast you walk. 30 min for me was about 3.9K steps this morning in the park at 6 am. I'm planning to go walking for 30 min around the office and I'm at the gym this evening. So should be able to hit the 10K steps of thereabouts. You just have to try and factor in the time to do the walk.

The early morning walk helped to wake me up and I feel more alert at work. ^.^

Eating early is ok. What most nutrionist may not tell you is that not only eat early but sleep early so that your stomach doesn't have a chance to make you feel hungry to look for more food.

Clean diet usually means less processed food i.e. tin food, low fat stuff, or anything that is processed into it's final state. Probably an interesting rule of thumb is "if it's not there 10,000 years ago, it's processed food". The other thing is eating organic food but there's poor control here over it so you may be getting semi-processed food or food that contains leftover hormones or antibodies injected or feed to livestock. Plants are no exception either because of genetic engineering or chemicals from fertilizers. Going clean isn't easy and probably the only ppl in the world that is eating clean are indigenous ppl living deep in the wilderness.

Yeah, I can understand about the safety bit. I woke up early and found a lot of ppl walking around 6 am already so I don't feel so bad. And I called the local city council to fix the lights that aren't on. Haha! Have to call them again because today, it's still pretty dark.

Yoga is great to do in the morning and better yet if you went barefooted and in the garden facing the morning sun. It's not too hot in the morning. I stand barefoot in the garden facing either the rising sun in the morning or setting sun in the evening to de-energize for the day. Seems to work. ^.^

ameeyn : how did you come up with the figure of 2 kg per month? How much do you have to lose? The reason I'm asking is because ppl of different sizes lose weight at different speeds.

Hmmm...sometimes even though the weight doesn't go down, your body fat% may change but you can only check with a scale that can measure body fat. Another way is that your body is changing physically so it's making adjustments i.e. you're shedding inches.

One method that works for me is reducing my dinner portion to half my lunch or breakfast portion and sleeping by 10:30 pm so that my stomach doesn't start growling.

U don't need to eat a lot to have enough energy. But your body may tell you otherwise in the beginning because you're so used to over-eating.

Have a look at this site :

http://www.watercure.com/

It poses some interesting questions about drinking water for health, including weight loss.

U should goto nutrition.com and check the sugar level of your fruits.

Actually, how far away are you from your targetted weight? Am lazy to check through the postings. Too many of them!

The old school of thought was that fruits are ok because the theory was that fructose will not get converted into fact. Later on, it was found that people were still fat so more research done. The finding was that unused carbs/sugar will get converted to fat.

Fruits are ok in general. Just watch your portions.

And watch your dinner potions. Dinner is suppose to be your smallest meal of the day!

What's your BMI range? For your age and height.

The other thing that you could look into is changing the ratio for your metabolic rate. Some ppl can take more carbs to lose weight, others need less carbs. And carbs come in many form, including fruit.

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Added on January 13, 2010, 10:41 amHmm...with any exercise, it's not about the amount of time and difficulty that you put in that makes you burn the most calories. It's the building up of your metabolic rate and muscles that will help you burn more calories throughout the day.

The other thing is that you need to shock your body by doing different things everyday. Or rather, change your exercise routine. ^.^



This post has been edited by myremi: Jan 13 2010, 10:41 AM

I'm looking at my muscles and it's not getting big and ugly. Rather, I'm getting toned up nicely.

If people want to be trap in their safe yet wrong assumptions, it's ok too. It's their choice. Or they could be like the small view, taking everything with pinches of salt and trying it out to see what works.