Eat to live or live to eat? If one is concerned about maintaining a healthy weight, one should follow the former principle. But if one enjoys food, then the latter holds true.
Diet.......what a cliché? Do we have to go on a diet plan to lose weight? When there are so many weight loss diet plans around with their own pros & cons, including Atkin's, Heller's, Pritikin, Paleo, Sugar Busters, Suzanne Somer's, The Zone etc, how do we choose which one to follow?
A meta analysis by Robert H. Eckel, a physician and chair of the American Heart Association's Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism Council stated that "It is also important to note that in most of the studies contained in the analysis, weight loss occurred when study participants were on diets for longer periods, and when they ate fewer calories".
But wait a minute! I am not interested in diet plans. I just want to lose weight & keep it off. Maintain a healthy weight in the long run. The one effective way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories. In addition, we have to burn more calories than we consume. In other words, EAT LESS, EXERCISE MORE. But it's easier said than done!
Malaysian culture & our eating habits could work against us. We Malaysians love food. In our country we celebrate all major festivities with binge eating. Where else in the world could we get "nasi lemak, roti canai & teh tarik" 24/7? We tend to have heavy breakfast. We have heavy lunch. And we tend to have heavy dinner after 8pm & then heavy supper after 10pm. It's no wonder "Malaysia has the highest obesity rate in Southeast Asia and ranks sixth in Asia-Pacific region".
Even though we can't change our culture, we can change our eating habit. How? Just simply healthy eating. The key to healthy eating is balance, variety and moderation. In short, that means eating a wide variety of foods without getting too many calories or too much of any one nutrient.
Fact: One pound is equal to 3500 calories. In other words, you have to burn 3500 more calories than you take-in to lose one pound.
To be continued
This part of the plan i.e healthy eating is really hard to do esp when you are trying to change decades of bad eating habits. Change can't happen overnight so I have to do it gradually.
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