Saturday 3 December 2011

/k/ haz a brain.

Valid point from margafred in /k/

http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=2130739&st=80&p=47148723&#entry47148723

LoL i like it when they said opposition is draught of issues to bring up for their political schemes

Lets see what opposition has
- Auditor's report
- NFC
- Government scandals
- Cronyism
- Corruption
- AG/MACC related
- PDRM
- Election reform
- Economy problem
- Altantuya
- Scorpene
- Datuk T
- Various government related scandals
- Project IC
- Sarawak CM
- Rosmah
- Assembly Bill
and the list continues

Lets see what UMNO has
- Sex
- Sodomy
- Video tape
- Bra
- Malays
- Racism
- Royalty
- Religion
- Anwar ver 1
- Anwar ver 2
- Anwar ver 3
- Anwar ver 4

So who exactly doesn't have issue to play around...

Friday 2 December 2011

My workout - Triceps

I categories my weight workout into 2 . Cut days and bulk days. On cut days my aim is to cut those fats so usually I do 12 repeatation in 10 sets. On bulk days the aim is to increase muscle mass so I did 6 - 8 repeatation in 5 - 10 sets.

On cut days I used light weights which allow many repeatation and sets but challenging enough. The most important thing. And on bulk days I use heavier weights which is very challenging on the last set, you can find yourself struggling to keep a good form even on first set.

I usually have 1 rest day after bulk days to allow healing. Usually I feel a bit sore on the target muscles after bulk day which for me is a good sign.

Triceps workout:

Dumbell triceps extension



Triceps Press Back



Lateral raise



Cable triceps extension

Wednesday 30 November 2011

My workout - Biceps

I categories my weight workout into 2 . Cut days and bulk days. On cut days my aim is to cut those fats so usually I do 12 repeatation in 10 sets. On bulk days the aim is to increase muscle mass so I did 6 - 8 repeatation in 5 - 10 sets.

On cut days I used light weights which allow many repeatation and sets but challenging enough. The most important thing. And on bulk days I use heavier weights which is very challenging on the last set, you can find yourself struggling to keep a good form even on first set.

I usually have 1 rest day after bulk days to allow healing. Usually I feel a bit sore on the target muscles after bulk day which for me is a good sign.

Here are my biceps workout:

i) Dumbbell biceps curl



ii) Dumbbell hammer curl



iii)Cable curl



iv)Barbell curl

My workout - Cardio

Here are a list of workout I usually do.

Cardio :

I usually vary my cardio exercise so that it wont get boring and to prevent my body to adapt to it.

i ) Treadmill 40 minutes at 7.5 kmh or
ii) Treadmill 20 minutes at 9 kmh or
iii) Treadmill 20 minutes interval of 11kmh and 5.5kmh
iv) Swimming 40 minutes - 1 hour mix of freestyle and breast stroke.
v) Elliptical trainer at medium intensity for 30 minutes
vi) Bicycle machine for 30 minutes at medium resistance. Try to hit 15km -20 kmh
vii) Walking on treadmill with 15% incline at 3.5-5.5kmh

I've hit 71kg! and healthy BMI (American Scale)

It's been a short 4 months and 14kg lost so far. Which mean I kinda lost 0.875kg per week , a bit shy of 1kg target lost per week but still a good number. Here are my progress chart :



A lot of people asked what I did to loose those weight. Here are what I did and did not :

I did not :
1. Follow fancy diet, e.g: protein only diet, no carbs diet ,
2. Use any weight loss supplement.
3. Starve myself.
4. Skipped lunch , dinner , breakfast etc..
5. Went to weight loss centre.

I did :

1. Eat moderately, according to food pyramid.
2. Try to have all nutrients in a meal and achieve at least 100% nutrients according to RDA.
3. Mantaining a deficit of 500 kcal under daily calorie need.
4. Live an active lifestyle.
5. Workout and exercise.

I believe you can't sustain the weight loss achieve by following fancy diet , supplement and starving yourself. Human need carb as an energy form and as much as someone love meat, he/she will crave carbohydrate after a few days of eating just protein. S

Supplements are mostly junk and doesn't work at all. If there are those that work, it will only help 10% and cost a lot. I believe most people can't afford supplements as well.

And people can't starve too in long run. For myself, although I have a deficit of 500 kcal, honestly I didn't feel starving at all. All I did was for example, skip cordial drinks after dinner for example, have 0.8 serving of rice instead of full servings, and have fruits or salads as snacks. I let myself to have one or two cheat days per week and have pizza, burger etc.. but usually this doesn't reach more than 2000 kcal and I compensate by doing workout day after that.

I also believe weight loss centre doesn't work for most people. I've asked a few friends and they spend RM5k to RM20k going to weight loss centre. Most of them can't sustain the weight loss, if there's any.

What I did was eat like how we supposed to eat. 4 servings of grains, 5 or more servings of fruit and vege , 3 servings of meat , 2 servings of dairy and as little oil as possible.

I try to workout every other day. During workdays I work at 12 hours shift and being given 1 hour break. I use 40 minutes of break for workout and manage to burn 300 - 400 kcal during those 40 minutes.

I'm lucky to have 4 days off days. So during every other offdays I try to spend at least 2 hours in gym burning at least 1000 kcal.

It's been a fun 4 months. My next target would be

1. To have 10% or less body fat.
2. To run 1/2 marathon in less than 2 hours.
3. To complete full marathon.
4. To have those abs. (its a bit showing now, just a little bit more.)

Monday 31 October 2011

Polar FT4 watch review

Been abandoning this blog for a while. Mostly because I have a lot going on lately, with workout, going out etc and partly because I've lost my laptop.

I've bought Polar FT4 two months ago and been using it as my Heart Rate Monitor and also Calorie counter.

The packaging is quite simple :



The package come with your watch , the chest strap and a transmitter.

The strap is quite comfortable and I don't realise I wore it sometimes. For those who don't know, most gym equipment can also pick up signal from the transmitter, be it Polar certified machine or not. Polar claimed that it's color coded so it won't interfere with other gym equipment but what I observe is the gym equipment next to me displayed my heart rate when I'm 1 - 2 metres away. I haven't have anyone next to me wearing a HRM too so I'm not too sure if this interfere his reading.


It's quite a reliable gadget with no problem using it at all in this 2 months. Although quite basic it has major feature that you need such as Calorie Counter, which should be quite accurate after you key in your age and weight. You could set the HRM counter to Beat Per Minute or %Max Heart Rate.

Overall this is quite a good buy for RM220 from ebay.

Thursday 29 September 2011

Portion control for common Malaysian food and tricks to control portion during festive seasons.

It's pretty easy to overeat in Malaysia where you are often served much more than what you suppose to. Malaysian also are generally generous people.Try to go to any open house and people will comment "Why you eat so little, go go take some more" and you still have 5 more houses to go!. So typically its pretty easy to eat over 2500 calories for every Open house trip a day, thus the reason why people tend to gain at least 1kg on every festivities, like Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, Deepavali, Gawai, so that's 4 kg at least, for Swakian. Here are tricks I use every time I go to open house :

1. Have bee hun in your plate. Bee hun contain least amount of calories for main dish compared to rice, noodle or other main dish. While make your plate look filled up.

2. Have lots of fruits and salad if available, skip the dressings or have minimum amount.

3. Try getting as lean meat as possible, rendang is great source of lean meat but minimize the gravy. Sate is great too but skip those juicy skin. I'll go for breast meat and

4. If possible go for plain water instead of carbonated drinks, alternatively fruit juice is OK too. For cordial drinks, if it is too sweet, add up mineral water.

5. Have high fiber, low cal crackers for your "Dinner" or "Lunch" if you go for open house at odd hours.. e.g 3pm.. too late for lunch, too early for Dinner. This prevent gastritis if you are a person like me who must eat something at a set time.

Well, even after extensive measure as above, its quite difficult to go down at least 1500 kcal per open house trip. So maybe burn it off the next day by going hiking, gym etc.


Picture source :

Anyway back to portion control. There are various food pyramid, for example the ones by USDA, Malaysian Health ministry etc. For me pesonally here is how I divide my portion for weight loss:

Grains, cereal group (e.g rice, pasta etc) = 4 servings a day

Fruit & vegetable = 5 servings a day

Meat = 2 servings a day

Nuts = 1 servings a day

Oil = max 4 teaspoon.

Milk = 2 servings per day


Take note that I reduce the intake of grains and meat which is the main contributor of calories and mantaining the recommended amount for others.

Following these guideline, I manage to bring down calories intake by 20% a day while still mantaining other nutritions such as Vitamins and Minerals ( I always achieve 100% or more RDI of Vitamins according to MyfitnessPal). By cutting down only 20% of calories, I still feel energetic and full and although at times, usually close to a meal I feel slightly hungry but it is not starving (where your hands shiver and you feel extremely weak). People tend to overeat when they starve but this way I find its easier not to overeat.


Rice:

I realise in Malaysia a "normal" portion of rice per serving per meal is about 1.5 . That's about 150 kcal extra, or 450 kcal extra per 3 meal, equivalent an extra meal per day! .

A portion is actually 1 bowl of unheaped rice, or perhaps slightly bigger than an average Malaysian male fist. So it looked something like this:




or




or




Meat :


1 serving of meat (beef,chicken breast etc, including salmon block) is equivalent to 1 deck of card, which is slightly larger than a palm without fingers




Vegetable :


1 serving of vegetable look like this:



Fruit :

1 serving of fruit will be the size of your fist.



or 1 handful of smaller fruits like this:



Nuts :

Hands is also great to measure nuts serving:



I wish there were picture's of serving size for common Malaysian food such as noodles, rice noodle etc .. But I think I will update this entry in the future with my own picture.

Of course all these counting calories are just estimations and it wont be correct to the last digit, I doubt that it is correct to 2 digits too, that's why the reason why I give myself 100kcal or 10% margin of error. Eg if my Polar watch says I workout 1000kcal, I record it as 900 kcal. And if my estimated calories taken that day is 1500 I will record it as 1600. It wont be pinpoint accurate, but if you follow the rough guideline above, it should be fine and there is no need to be so obsessed with fine accurancy.


Great blog with picture of portion/ source of most of the picture above: