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| Picture courtesy of Google |
“Get
a frigging real life!”, “You’re not enjoying your life!”, “You seem fine. Why
bother to eat all these things when you can get a nice food at the stall?”
These are the probable comments from your friends and relatives when you’re
trying to change your diet. Diet, not referring to starve or limit yourself in
order to reduce your waistline, but diet here means the kind of foods that a
person eats each day. The year 2006 was
the first year I began my diet plan and the first year I struggled with the
plan. I started my diet plan according to my ‘feeI-plan’ and the plan was
definitely erroneous and misguided. On the get go, I substituted white rice for
the white bread which initially I thought there’s no limitation to how many
pieces I should consume. I believed that the white rice was the culprit and the
main cause to the growing waistline, without even considering the scoop of rice
that I’ve scooped onto my plate. There’s nothing like bad foods but I believe
in quantity. You consume much, you gain much. Consume less gain less. It’s as
simple as that but why do we still having that bewildered helpless expression
glued on the face? Attitude I’d say.
The
first thing that you need to bear in your mind is that breakfast is the most
vital meal of your day. Never leave the den without breakfast. You sleep almost
7-8 hours without food, and definitely your body needs to be refuelled. You may
probably say that you don’t have time for that. Well breakfast doesn’t need
hours to prepare, it takes just how much you take time when you brush your
teeth. As for me, I’ll have 3 half-boiled/hard-boiled/scrambled eggs with a
toast (wholemeal bread) which I usually dunk it in a tumbler of low-fat milk.
It’s important for you to eat protein in your breakfast because it will keep
you less hungry and help you to survive until your lunch hour. Breakfast is
like any other meal; you need protein, fats and fruit or veg.
There’s
no such thing as too much veg. Regardless of what you’re eating, your plate
should be about half-full of them. Remember green is good. People who refuse to
eat vegetables I found very infuriating. There’s this one guy in my class, he
is a brain of the class, fast thinker and ingenious, kudos to him for that but
he hates veg so much, so much that he able to spare some time to remove the
tiny little pieces of salad and shredded cabbage in his burger or even in his
noodles soup, and bean sprout is also included, no chance. That’s what I call
passion (eyes rolling)! Hey you people remember to include vegetables on your
plate. Make vegetables the foundation of your diet, along with the two pieces
of fruit a day. Vary them as much as you can.
Although
most of us know that eating some fat is essential to a healthy diet, but still
there are some of us avoiding fats totally. After all, it’s too easy to make
mental connection between eating fat and getting fat, so you end up simply
avoiding it. But what about those who aren’t giving damn about eating or
avoiding fats? That’s the worst. My option of fats will be olive oil. It works
wonder with the omelette and when it comes to marinate, olive oil is the best.
My advice on fats, don’t go too much just take few fats that you’re familiar
with like olive oils. Pretty good bet!
Have
you seen any guy or girl counting their calories daily intake? Yes? No? Well
according to an article in Men’s Health magazine that I have came across, calories
are not a good indication of what a food is like and the effect it’s going to
have on your metabolic rate. Not convinced ke? Do you know that two poached
eggs contain the same amount of calories with a can of Coke. Not convinced lagi
ke? Well think of it this way then, would you say that a couple of poached eggs
are the same as a can of coke because they share a similar amount of calories?
Definitely not. Poached eggs are clean and high in protein, but the Coke isn’t
clean as it contains aspartame (a chemical substance to sweeten the drink
instead of sugar). Think quality, not quantity. Eating nutritious food is much
better than sticking rigidly to a certain-calorie-a-day limit that comes from
crisps and crackers.
Last
but not least, eat real food. Real food means only eat food that grows out of
the ground. This is the key to eating properly I’d say. Whenever I go for
groceries, and see something on the shelf, I ask myself if it would have
existed 5000 years ago. If the answer is no, it probably isn’t anything that
you should be eating. Avoid things containing preservatives that you can’t even
spell or ingredients you wouldn’t keep and maybe impossible to keep in your
fridge. Eat things that will rot eventually. We’re human and eventually we’ll
rot too, so we don’t need all those super sophisticated, high-tech foods cause
all we need is fresh food. Eat food, not products pretending to be food.
And
you don’t need a diploma to eat properly. Have a blast!
