Living Healthily

Since I was young, I have never watch what I eat. My belief was that since I was young, I can burn off anything that I want. In fact, my rationale was that the more I eat, the better off I was since I would be motivated to burn off more fats or calories by doing more or exercising more. This means that since I enjoy working or playing sports, I could eat more because I would be burning them off when I do these activities.

But as I grew older, I begin to realise that this rule does not hold. In fact, I began to realise that the rule I had earlier was totally incorrect. I was always about 10% to 20% heavier than my peers and I always attribute that to having a larger muscle mass as I was school runner and I seem to more bulked up than my friends who were skinny. I was wrong. The reason for my bigger mass, partly due to larger muscle mass, most of it were due to the diet I was eating. I was eating disproportionate amount of rice, eating lots of fast food and processed food, not eating fruits and vegetable and eating too much meat. It was simply bulking me up. During a corporate trip to Denmark, with heavy American breakfast and meaty lunch and dinner, I put on 3kg in 10 days. I was simply not exercising enough and eating unhealthily.

This bulk up in weight was made worse when I started working. When I was studying, I would play football once a week, had to climbed the stairs around the campus from the car park, I had tried to run once or twice a week. The moment I started working, my favourite part of the day was laying back in front of the television and eating chips. [ that I still do quite often actually]

Working unlike studying is a lot more stressful. We have incessant deadlines to meet, targets to hit and meetings to catch. We often eat unhealthily to make up for the lost time, to make us less high-strung and also to give that extra boost.

The reason for this unhealthy lifestyle is that we are always looking for ways to give us a boost in our energy. I used to drink 3-4 cups of coffee to give me that extra boost. Whenever I feel abit down, I eat- especially carbohydrates- to give me that extra boost. I am not sure whether it is scientific, but I always feel more energetic after I eat a bowl of noodles or you tiao. I don't have depressive issues so I don't eat to make myself to feel good but I eat as a "pick-me-up". Vegetables and fruits somehow always fails to give me that extra kick in my step.

Because we are constantly looking to kick up our performance, we always look for that extra thing that would give us that extra energy to help us achieve a notch higher in our results. That is why all these stress lead us to over-eating on all these foods.

I am not familiar with the exact science of it all. According to my dietician, I was eating way too much carbohydrates and I should cut down on my rice and increase my intake of fruits, vegetables and fish. Carbohydrates makes us put on weight fast. I used to eat more than a bowl and half of rice everyday but following my dietician's advice, I reduced it to just one bowl of rice and my weight loss has doubled in the same period. Of course at the same time, I reduced my intake of saturated fats by drinking low fat milk and creamer instead of the standard creamer.

Because I was not exercising regularly, exercising was a big thing for me. And for some reason, after a hectic round of exercise, I always craved for Macdonalds. And all my exercise would have gone to waste. I would eat one full meal plus Mcflurry. I always feel accomplished after the exercise and I wanted to reward myself and so I had my fast food fix. Because all these Macdonald's are processed foods, and they contain lots of trans fat which is unhealthy fats, it made my health worse in spite of the exercise earlier. My rule that I had mentioned earlier was no longer working.

All these extra boost and limited exercise can lead to one thing: lethargy during the down period after a period of hyperactivity. Because energy is such a finite resource, we feel depressed and down after a flurry of activities and we engaged a range of vices when we don't feel good after the initial boost. Some smoke, other's take drugs and look for the second kick, but for me I look for food.

Firstly it was lesser of two evils and it was easily accessible. I look for coffee, a snack, chips or any form of processed foods that made me feel good and I would be good to go again. I wasn't doing anything addictive and yet I was able to get a second kick. But unbeknown to me, my weight gain was ballooning. I signed up for the gym but it was not insufficient to stop this vicious cycle. I was not "exercising enough" to offset this additional food intake- again my rule is no longer valid.

My advice for everyone is that look at your lifestyle. Are you working in spurts or bursts and always looking for the fix to boost your performance. My advice is to eat healthily, eat lots of vegetables, fruits and fish, avoid processed foods and fast foods and exercise more, you will realise that you will perform more consistently as you will be more energetic throughout the day rather than performing in swings. You are pushing yourself too hard, if you are always looking for the next mountain to climb, my advice is to make it up slowly, surely and healthily. Because all the chasing for the next challenge can only lead to health risks of bingeing and unhealthy lifestyle.