Coming straight to the point, this is typically what I eat for my breakfast + lunch, 5 days a week. I have been doing that since a few months ago since I was diagnosed with cancer. The answer to this question is important. Do you envy or sympathize with me for this diet?
You'll be surprised to know to date, no one told me they envied me. Everyone expressed their horror in some way or another. That's surprising, considering all of them exclaimed the meals were 'so healthy'. I thought all of us would like the privilege of eating healthy food and being healthy. Otherwise how do we explain the trillion-dollar health and wellness industry? Probably due to the fact all of us know what we have to do but we are not willing to put things in action. Humans.
I am one of the guilty ones who should be running after work instead of running after enemy players in Guild Wars 2. Forget about losing weight. We need exercise for our well-being. So we should allocate time to do it. Sex is not counted, unless you can last 30 mins continously or longer, thrice a week no lesser. We need stuff like swimming, cycling, walking or jogging and other boring stuffs.
Exercise however, is part of the losing weight equation but it doesn't help you lose weight alone. It is as good as saying someone who earns a million a year will never be a bankrupt. Exercise is one of the least efficient way to lose weight ever. The logic is simple. Imagine putting in a block of cheese vs grating the same block of cheese into a bowl. Which process is faster? We are actually putting food into our stomach wholesale all the time. Exercising is as slow as grating cheese or melting butter as compared to the intake process: eating.
So does it makes sense to focus a bit more on our eating habits instead of the output processes such as passing motion, vomiting, exercising or surgery? Will anyone believe me if you will lose at least 5 kg by eliminating sugar completely from your diet? I think that is simple enough for anyone to follow. It has to be simple because no method is useful unless it can be implemented. Scroll up and look at my lunch boxes again. If you eat that everyday at work without joining any colleagues for lunch-outs, you'll get labelled as a weirdo and be outcast in no time. Over here, everyone brings their lunch boxes and no one gives a hoot what you eat. So I am not expecting anyone to do this.
It isn't that bad really. Every dinner and all breakfast/lunch during weekends, I eat whatever I want at home. There is meat and humane tastes like soy sauces and other stuff. Even lots of sugar actually. I am coming to that. When I said laying off sugar, it doesn't mean just added sugar but every by-product. That Pokka Green Tea has a lot of sugar. Your Teh-O has sugar. Your sweet-and-sour pork contains lots of sugar in the sauce. The same goes for lemon chicken. Don't even think about ice cream, cakes, muffins, brownies and everything nice.
Some would suggest moderation. At a certain stage, moderation is not the answer. Moderation only works for people who has been on moderation all the time. Not for fatties with lots of flab. Trust me, when I first changed my diet drastically to fight cancer, I had to fight ADDICTION. I didn't even know we can be addicted to something as simple as sugar. We can and I bet you, most of you are. Try challenging yourself to lay off sugar and anything that contains any trace of sugar COMPLETELY from your diet for just 1 week, you will realise what I mean. Don't be surprised if you do strange things such as opening the fridge door and staring thoughtlessly before closing it only to repeat that not too long after.
The second step is crucial to laying off sugar. If you skip this step, you might as well go back to drinking ketchup (it contains lotsa sugar if you don't know) with your fried rice. The step is: Drink water. Make sure you drink at least 2L of water everyday. An easy way to do this is drink 500-700 ml the moment you wake up. Most of us will be dehydrated when we wake up so a dose of 500ml will make us pee in the train on the way to work. Once we reach the office, drink another 500-700ml before we start work. The urge to urinate will come not long after but you should be alright after just one visit to the toilet. Drink another 500ml around your break time or at lunch time latest, before eating if possible. After you eat, just take sips. Plan the rest of your 2L quota for the rest of the day.
Lay off sugar and drink not less than 2L of water a day, you will start losing weight and looking better. Within a few months, the changes will be significant. Ask my neighbours, who organised the Project Fatten after they saw how much weight I lost during my 6 days visit in Singapore. I didn't exercise a minute during my recovery months from late Autumn to the whole of Winter.
Your packed lunch looks yummy! And you have meat and walnuts in your salad, certainly an upgrade, compared to my veg-fruit-nuts nonsense salads. I guess being in Australia is crucial to living on such a diet, Nix, with the abundance of fresh fruits and greens, and yes, the packed meals culture. It's pretty tough to do that in taipei since mst landlords forbid cokking in the home, "angmoh" veggies are damn expensive, and self-catering offers zero cost savings in relation to eating out, and bubble tea/flavoured drink stores are literally everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post, Nix. Timely reminder to myself that I need to work out a way to maintain a healthier lifestyle in the land of cheap, salt-and-grease laden takeouts.