Epic 12 months

The last 12 months have definitely changed my life. I've been to 5 continents, countless cities, countries, flights, gas stations. I've moved. I've shrunk. I've ate. I've drank. I've photographed it all. I tried to pick pictures that show me at my fattest (165+ lbs) in September 2008 and how Thu lost 30 lbs since then :)
Take a look at the album.

Beet Power!

Great now there's evidence that beets are awesome for your workout! Maybe I should've had some of this before I did the grouse grind yesterday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8186947.stm

Vegetarianism destroyed Kirstie Alley

Haha I love this link.
It's funny that the BUTTER or CHINESE FOOD TAKEOUT or the ENCHILADAS or BREAD was overlooked in her downfall.

WHAT HAPPENED to her?!

WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?? ok don't laugh. This was from the Pacific Mall days in highschool :)

Eating Fish

I've hit a bit of a slump in the work out arena. I'm severely lacking on the strength training, muscle building exercising lately during the week. Mostly I've been doing cardio activities during the weekends - training more for endurance and distance on my bike and hikes. Some weeks went by without a single day at the gym during the week. Unfortunately I think some of my weight loss has been due to losing muscle through the lack of exercise and the intense aerobic workouts and the lack of protein! After a month of skipping boot camp and showing up in time for a fitness test, I felt way weaker than ever.

So the rule of thumb for building muscle and repairing them is 1g / lb of body mass. That's 140g of protein a day! Edamame (soy beans) has 16g/cup which is huge compared to other vegetables. That's 10 cups of edamame a day. Holy crap, I love it, but not that much. That translates to 46% of my daily calorie intake to protein. Hmmm, am I ready to make this switch. Likely not but I realized how little protein I actually take in.

I'm all about building a new body that does all the work for me. Now that I know that my beta cells are not damaged or broken in breaking down glucose. Also, I can judge body effects of High Glycemic index foods vs low. And I am more aware of what 1200-1500 calories a day is and what is not. The next thing to target is to build and maintain muscle so I can burn off unwanted fat even faster.

So I've come to the conclusion that either I start having Protein shakes or start eating...meat. (Some readers will argue that I never really gave up meat. :) Well let's start with fish only. I finally found a useful chart that a lot of people have talked about. It shows which fish to avoid because of Mercury and PCBs. Have a look, its quite useful. Salmon seems to be safe - good thing - I love Salmon!

Any thoughts on protein, getting enough protein in a Vegetarian diet, and muscle building?

Cooking by the book

This is not an appropriate video and will offend you....I'd put an R rating on it.



but boy does it make me laugh - random video - thanks Irieeee.

SqueezBacon

I'm jet lagged and awake at 1am. So I find this:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html
- watch the youtube video it's hilarious! If it's edible, it tastes better with SqueezBacon!

Oh well, to balance it out, "dad" gave me some interesting links while I was gone:

here's a link that perfectly describes my feelings about the Winter vegetables from the CSA so far:
http://www.slate.com/id/2214524/

here's another about how what I'm doing is in style here in California and America :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22food.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&em

oh and for those of you in california, don't eat pistachios!!!

this is why you're fat

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Seeing these pictures makes me wanna gag.

Promise of Cash Prompts Smokers to Quit

I like this article. http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/02/11/promise-of-cash-prompts-smokers-to-quit.html

Mostly for this quote: "I think, in general, people have a lot of trouble making changes for the sake of delayed health benefits,".

I look back and wonder why I always thought I was invincible. And why I did such stupid things. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. It's hard to know how valuable your health is until you lose it. Knowing what I know now, I'm still not sure how I'd successfully tell a 10-year-younger version of me not to smoke and eat/drink everything in sight.

I'd probably go for the money incentive :)

Tracking

I love the Web 2.0 world of free/cheap tools such as blogger, google docs, facebook, smugmug, yelp and such. I'm not sure how they all actually make money but while they figure it out, I might as well take advantage of it.

The one thing I've been evaluating are sites that track your exercise, food, weight. I have yet to find one that perfectly suits my needs of quickly entering what I ate and what I did to find the calories consumed, calories burned and any other stats I might want. So far, the easiest one to use is Gyminee. I like the community aspect of it and the content and features has grown a lot since I had used it last. That being said, the more like-minded people join the site, the more likely some of my recipes and food will already be there so that I don't have to painstakingly enter each in each ingredient. I do like how convenient adding water and food is. The pretty graphs and 2.0-ish GUI doesn't hurt either.

Other ones like bewell.com (corporate site), thedailyplate.com, fitday.com only had my patience for a few days. I found it tedious to search and add food or the GUI was not intuitive or it just didn't have what I wanted.

If you guys have any suggestions let me know.

Ceramic Knife

Ah I left my favourite knife up in SF last weekend and miss it. So I thought I'd talk about it. I found it in the NY MOMA store during my visit. Kyocera makes chips, cell phones and...ceramic knives? I bought it on a whim and it has been the best $30 I've ever spent. It can make nice clean cuts through any vegetable and fruit that I've had to prepare. Well, in comparison, I've only had el cheapo IKEA knives before this.

Anyway, everyone who has seen it thinks its a toy of a knife until they use it. No matter what you're cutting - mango, frozen bananas, sashimi, oranges, tomatoes - it all feels like you're cutting through butter. I haven't found something that this knife can't cut through yet. It is MUCH sharper and stays that way for longer.

The only drawback is how accident prone I am and how having something so sharp might not be ideal.

I think never need another knife again.

Say NO to Food

This is a lame article to blame being female for not being able to say no to food. Although I must admit, suddenly having room for desserts seems to be a common trait amongst women :)

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1872584,00.html?imw=Y

In other news, I'm going to be an aunt in June! So excited!!

Essential Nutrients

I keep reading about how it is useless to take individual supplements which scientists have identified to help in preventing __________ (fill in the blank). Whole foods does a much better job, since its the combination and intricacies of how the fruit/vegetable is planted, absorbs sunlight, water and presents its burst of nutrients.

Nutrients I need to get more of - through Spinach, Brocolli, Bok Choy, Tomatoes, Bitter Melon, and all fruits include:

Iron - for Anemia (taken with Vitamin C)
ALA - protects cell damage and increases body's ability to use insulin
Omega-3 - Good fat from fish that seems to be all the craze right now as it helps with digestion, blood clotting, heart disease, lower triglycerides, lower blood sugar. However, it has to be delicately balanced with Omega-6. A good ratio is 1:3.
EGCG - A polyphenol in green tea is supposed to help with more efficient blood sugar control too. Caffeine in green tea is no good though for insulin resistance or weight loss or anything. Oh well, drinking green tea instead of bubble tea is still way better for me and gives me an alternative to water.

Useful link: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/diabetes/

Nicotine-free!

It's been more than a month since my clothes and breath and car don't stink of smoke.

I suppose I can count my blessings that smoking led to diabetes rather than lung cancer or instant death.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/12/11/study-smoking.html

Low-GI Diet Article

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081217.wlbeck17/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home