The Basic: Eating Habits

Most people think that the amount of calories one consumes and the amount of calories one burns a day determine whether one will be overweight or underweight. However, that is not always the case if we looks at friends who eat more than anyone in this whole wide world and still remain relatively slim. Those friends’ bodies react differently to food that they consume, because of three factors: temperature, genetics, and hormones.

First, the warmer the body temperature, the greater the effect of diet. The major difference between a person who is overweight and who is not is the body temperature. In fact, overweight people have relatively cold hands, feet, and thighs. If the body temperature drops, then the blood circulation is not as smooth as it is supposed to be, ultimately leading to more accumulation of fat near places like thigh.
On the other hand, when the body temperature is high, the smooth blood circulation deposits minerals and vitamins to body cells, making diet easier, and keeping the day bright. If one is going for the effect of killing two birds with one stone, then one should make habits of taking foot bath or lower-body bathing regularly, and drinking hot tea. (Below are pictures of food that can raise your body temperature.)

Second, healthy eating habits prevent one from developing fattening genes. (Yes, you can develop genes, in fact, over the life time. So, usually, when the parents are skinny, so is the child.)
If one have tried diet at least once in one’s life time, there is one common question asked: “I don’t eat much, but why do I gain weight?” If this is the case, then it’s a red alarm for one’s eating habits.
For example, people usually eat a candy or two, ice cream, cookies or drink a cup of coffee right after their meal (even if they reduce the amount of actual meal that they consume). This type of eating habits only develop the fattening genes (FTO genes) further, bringing unbalanced hormone levels. It will be harder to control appetite and form adipose cells more quickly.
The best way to close this problem is to fix one’s eating habits. Based on healthy eating habits, one can succeed diet more easily. Also, it would be better to eat a snack at least one and a halt to two hours after the meal.

Third, sleeping is the BEST (I repeat, BEST) way to prevent release of fattening hormones.
Our body is programmed in a way so that we are able to regulate the amount of stress and the appetite. The one way our body achieves this task is by sleeping. While we are asleep, hormone called melatonin is released, and this hormone melts the adipose tissue to use it as an energy source. Also, the hormone that blocks excessive appetite called leptin hormone is released, ultimately keeping dieters eat just enough.

According to the experiment results from University of Columbia, people who usually slept over seven hours a day had 47% lower chance of being overweight than people who usually slept only five hours. One might have misconception that if one does not sleep a lot, one will burn more calories, but that is wrong, because the more we sleep, the more hormones will be released.
For those dieters who are still starving to succeed in diet, think again.

If you continue your habits, you have also promised to be on that horrible diet forever.

I mean, FOREVER.

Why Not Flour-based Food?

I said, “no more cakes for you, honey.”

I should have said, “no more flour-based food for you, honey,” more specifically.

If you cannot manage living like an herbivore for the next month or two, I suggest you an anti-flour diet. This is the basis of all diet plans, because flour does nothing but obstruct you from loosing weight. It promotes your body to release stress hormones, which adds extra weight on you.  I’ll try to limit my words; I don’t want to exhaust you from all this scientific diet knowledge. Enjoy.

Carb-addiction

On top of various addictions floating around the world, one of the major one is the carb-addiction. It is when one cannot stop consuming carb-high food such as muffins. I don’t want to explain the science of it, but you should know that when you take a bite of a muffin, you want another bite, and then another. All of a sudden, you realize that you finished an entire muffin by yourself. Flour-based food causes most of the carb-addiction, which naturally leads one to consume more calories than needed. First step is to not take that first bite. Stop it right there.

TOO much Copper (Cu)

In your body, magnesium, calcium, and other vitamins are essential when you limit your food choices. Unless your cells get enough minerals and vitamins, they will be in desperate need of them all the time. Once you leave the cell in that “hungry” state for too long, they start refusing and break the hormonal balance. Flour-based food contains a great deal amount of copper, which is an element that WIPES OUT all other essential minerals and vitamins, creating a “pseudo-hungry” state for the cells. So, if you eat fresh vegetable, and then a piece of bread, those vegetables will have no positive effect on your body. Thanks to you, copper.

GI level

One piece of bread can instantaneously raise your blood sugar level way over the standard level. Once it goes over a critical point, it signals the body that it is too much. This then causes a sudden release of insulin. Insulin will immediately convert the excessive sugar in blood to glycogen and store them, subsequently reducing the blood sugar level lower than the optimal range. This is when you feel hungry all of a sudden. Hunger will get more and more intense, and make you eat, when your body really doesn’t need that extra calories. Excess is fat.

Usually high in calories

Flour-based food doesn’t only come in pure 100% flour products. They are usually made tasty with additional butter, salt, and sugar. Butter is a typical example of a saturated fat; it stacks up tightly and nicely on to your fat layers. Consumption of excess salt will cause the osmotic balance to be broken, making your body to consume excess water, and letting your body KEEP IT. This may or may not, depending on your future meals, become fat. Sugar. Do I even have to explain it? It’s pretty self-explanatory that it’s fattening. All these fat-builders come with flour-based food. I repeat: “fat builders.”

No nutritional value

On top of copper, which wipes out the essential minerals and vitamins, flour has no nutritional value. When you are limiting food during diet, it is important to consume nutritionally rich food to maintain the hormonal balance. You need vitamin A, B, C, E, iron, calcium, magnesium, omega 3, and omega 9 fats. Vitamins function as cofactors during digestion, and some vitamins, like Vitamin E, relieve stress. Calcium and magnesium is crucial during muscle contraction.  All are essential to our body, but flour contains none. When you are eating flour-based food, you are eating nothing for your body. NOTHING.

It’s your choice. Remember, brain cells die, but fat cells don’t.

Embark.

I should take a break from giving lessons, and give you a glimpse of my new diet plan. Spring is approaching soon, and summer comes next. That means, clothes are thinner, and tighter, showing the truth of my body lines. That is indeed tragic, or it may be good news for those of you with gifted body.

Since I’m not gifted in any shape or form, I need to work to “look” gifted. I guess I’m still healthy, so I’m gifted in that sense. I’m in a different situation from many of the girls, because I have been dieting for so long that my body is immune to losing weight. Its resistance is greater than anybody else, and so I need to be extra careful with my plan. I have tried almost every single method of diets, and I have more diet books than (my mother language) Korean books. That’s partially because I don’t read Korean books that fast, and I’m more comfortable reading English books, but anyhow I’m starting to run out of resources.

Out of all the types of diet, the ones that actually worked were only few. Some of them were intentional, others not. For this time, I have created my own plan, independent from scheduled plans online or in books. I merged three to four different methods in which were successful.
They are:

Potato diet
Bicycling diet
Dancing diet
Lower body bathing diet

These are the basic methods, which I’m going to stick to. Of course, guidelines that are too obvious like avoiding oily food and eating healthy are basis.

Potato Diet
I discovered this around sixth grade, and it was totally unintentional. After school, I always looked for snack such as apples or pears. However, because I was fond of fruits, I consumed enormous amount of calories just from those fruits. Without realizing that, I just happened to taste steamed potato one day and it was amazing. With was soft and warm; plus, it made me full very easily. Exactly what I was looking for. So, I started to eat two potatoes for snack every day. The result was awesome. I think I lost at least two kilograms just in a week.

Bicycling Diet
During unintentional potato diet, I liked to go outside and ride bicycle. It was not a hard-core exercise; I rode it for fun. I liked to feel the breeze and feel alive. I think this diet and potato diet synthetically produced the successful result.

Dancing Diet
This one, I am not so sure of the effect, but it is known to burn a lot of calories. Also, it is a great way to release stress. It’s very simple; you dance for 30 min~ 1 hour listening to your favorite dance songs. I like it because this is almost like the only time I can act the way I want to and think about only me.

Lower body bathing Diet
This is especially good for people with thick legs and huge hips, but relatively small upper body. Lower body bathing itself does not burn loads of calories, but it give synergy effect, by allowing smoother blood circulation. This cannot be conducted one week per month, though (for girls). In that case, you can feet bath. That is another good way to raise your body temperature.

Detailed Food plan:
Breakfast:
One potato, A cup of Ma+ no fat milk, egg
Lunch:
Two potatoes, fruit (1/4 pear OR 1/2 apple), milk
Dinner:
10 Tofu cubes, water OR
Korean meal with vegetables

Exercises:
30 minutes of bicycling OR
30 minutes of dancing
20 minutes of lower body bath

Now that I look at it, I’m going to eat other healthy food as well. I’m still a growing girl; i think; i hope.

Goal. Change it.

Now, before you embark on the diet journey, there are several things you need to change the objective. You are NOT trying to lose weight, you are trying to lose fat, more specifically you are trying to lose adequate amount of fat, so that you look healthy, not skinny. I am sure that at least 90% of the population of dieters are trying to lose as much weight as possible. That is stupid idea because if you lose weight, you are putting focus on muscle and fat. You want to retain muscle so that the amount of calories you burn per day is greater. But, you need to get rid of the excess fat in your body.

This is more of the girls’ problem; to not eat. If you don’t eat, you lose weight. Well, yeah DUH. But, it will come back later: the Yoyo phenomenon. This, I will talk about it in the next blog post. Anyhow, your objective of the diet needs to be “let’s lose adequate amount of fat.” You might be surprised to know how many different types of functions fat serve in your body. The hormonal balance, energy storage, insulation, cushioning, and many more jobs can only be done by fat.

I am telling you to have the right objective because diet is a prolonged fight between your temptations and determinations. In order to win this battle, one needs to have a single goal: health. I hope you have made up your mind to lose fat for the purpose of quality life.