Paleo Diet

I've been intrigued and reading more and more about a Paleolithic diet in the last few weeks. A friend of mine mentioned it since she does cross fit and everyone there is all about eating Paleo. At its fundamental - eat natural foods rather than processed foods should be common sense but it is not and it is pretty hard to do living in an urban city. So she is doing a month challenge of a paleo diet and I decided to tag along.

These youtube videos are so amusing and hilarious and a good introduction to a Paleo lifestyle:

A Running Newbie

When I first moved to Vancouver I started doing intervals to train to run 5km. Then laziness kicked in and running went out the window. Now there's rain and a billion other excuses on why I don't run. Which really has to stop. In Hawaii, we found out we were in Maui the same time as the Maui Marathon! Also, the day before the marathon there was a 5K Maui Taco Run! After a week of a lot of eating and drinking (and no running) we woke up bright and early and did my first 5K run!

Well running might be an exaggeration. I probably ran the first km, third, and last km. The rest was lots of walking and sweating under the sun. The race was in Ka'anapali along a few nice hotels and golf courses. It felt good that I wasn't last and even got a compliment of being so fast for a walker ;) I sprinted the last 200m and got in at a time of 38min and felt woozy.

All in all it was exciting since I've never taken part in any organized runs before! It showed me how nutrition is not enough and that I really need to start exercising and running to reach my ideal weight and health. My time was pretty terrible but I guess it's a start. It's a love/hate relationship that I have with running. The thought of doing it and how my body hates it makes it tough to gather the will power to go out and do it. But once you're doing it, it's a great feeling. Running in the sun and seeing palm trees and clear water also is pretty awesome. I think my mind just remembers the day after and two days after where my body hurts all over. If I can just overcome this hump...I'd like to get a decent 5k time in a month. Any tips on how you made peace with running?

In other news, I finally broke under the 130lbs mark that I haven't been able to cross for 5 months! 128lbs to be exact. Let's see how the next 2 months pan out!

Old vs New

Ewwwwwww. Who is that girl?!?!

June 2006


June 2009

Comfort food

I have to admit, the last week or month has been a slump in the healthy cooking at home or even packing lunch or waking up early. Lemme try to get myself out of it.

Today:
Hue Food for lunch - Banh Bot Loc, Banh Beo, Com Hen
Chinese for dinner - Bok choy and other veggies, Fish, Chicken

Yesterday:
Burrito in Alviso for lunch - ok fine I had beef tongue + beans + rice :|
Pluto's in Palo Alto - gigantic salad and garlic fries
Red Mango - small frozen yogurt with mango and blackberries

Tuesday:
Pasta Pomodoro calamari spaghetti with salad and bread
Quickly frozen yogurt and Fried stuff

These were definitely 2000 calories/day with 50% fat - but oh so good.
I don't even wanna update that scale on the top of the page, as I'm back at 139-140.

Ricky/Lobster you might be ahead now...but just you wait.
Time to get back into the healthy swing of things!!

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?

Goal #5: Stop being Pre-Diabetic.

What a great great day in the life of 2. I had a blood test a few weeks ago and got my results today.

GUESS WHAT!!!! I am NOT Pre-Diabetic anymore!!!!

Yup that's right, my fasting blood sugar is in the normal range! It means my body is working to break down glucose again! My cholesterol is back to normal. My liver is back to normal. My kidney is back to normal. My good cholesterol is still a little low so I need to keep at the exercising.

There's no longer a need for an endocrinologist. There's no finger pricking in my future.

Its definitely a life changing experience to realize how badly I treated my body. I don't know how many people are as lucky as I to turn their lives around like this.

Essentially all I did was:
- enjoy fresh vegetables and ingredients to make yummy dishes for myself and my friends.
- enjoy water and observe the side effects of sugary alcoholic drinks and wake up the next morning to a productive weekend instead of a hang over.
- explore the bay area bike and hiking trails with my camera.
- pack enough fruits and snacks and food so not have to cave into fast (disgusting) food.
- focus on how disgusting the layer of fat surrounding meat looked.
- try to get as much as endorphines as I could through sports and workout and bootcamp which is like getting high
- realized that most people also enjoy being healthy, active and eating good food.

It probably seems like common sense to some people but definitely to me it was all new and now it all makes sense.

Thanks for the support through all of it!!!

(Hamster dance is repeating in my head all day long)

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/