Food

Food is such a pleasurable material to eat and yet it can cause a lot of problems as well. Over the years, I’ve had my ups and downs from eating without realizing that I was an emotional eater. Coming to terms with that took a lot of guts because I was obviously procrastinating on making a commitment to seriously lose weight. This procrastination got worst a couple if months into 2010 as my weight started to plateau around 80 kg.

I’ve now caught my second wind of motivation after realizing that there was nothing to fear except fear itself. Once that happened, it was a lot easier to eat for nourishment and not to feed my emotions.

So here are the rules that I use when preparing my food:

  1. Eating according to my metabolic type. I am a Mixed Oxidizer so I take in 50% carbohydrates, 40% protein and 10% fat. Since sticking to this ratio of macronutrients, my gas strict problems went away and my bowel movement has been a lot better.
  2. I try to eat organic vegetables as much as I can. However, at the moment I only eat locally grown organic vegetable as imported ones are extremely expensive. Hopefully, the imported vegetables will go down in prices by a wee bit or unless I go into some sort of money making venture.
  3. When it comes to organic meat, I can only find organic chicken at the moment. I eat imported beef but will try cooking lamb once day on my own. For fish, I either eat local fish or I buy imported white fish or salmon. Meat and fish has always been more expensive than vegetables but I find that since I eat a smaller portion now, the costs are manageable.
  4. I manage my portions so that I don’t overeat. If I’m eating outside, I try to eat from a medium sized plate that isn’t piled up with food. When I take food from home, I put them into containers that aren’t so big and it’s still filling enough
  5. I drink at least half my body weight in water. E.g. If I weigh 100 pounds, I drink 50 oz of water. I drink a bit more than that so that my liver, which breaks down my body fat, can transfer the fatty waste out through water. I don’t overdrink beyond that. So I take something like 4 liters of water daily. So far, I haven’t had any problems going to the toilet and it’s regular.
  6. For frying, I use Carotino, a unhydrogenated palm oil, that is stable at high heats and does not contain any transfat. The only problem with Carotino is that there is a subtle aftertaste to it and all the dishes may look slightly more orangey than usual. Once my bottle of oil runs out, I’m switching to organic butter and see if that will give a better taste.
  7. I avoid as much as possible ingredients that contained processed food or ingredients that are not natural. However, this isn’t always easy to do so there are times when I do use them but a minimum.
  8. As for eating out, I also minimize that as much as I can because the hidden sugars and the carbs can be too detrimental for my weight loss plan at the moment. I’m not always successful so I have to try to keep things to a minimum.
  9. I usually do not eat rice or noodles or pasta. However, there are the rare occasions that I do eat some sort of complex carb noodles or a bit of rice to satisfy my tastebuds. However, it wouldn’t usually be in a detrimental amount.
  10. I keep a journal of my thoughts of what happens throughout the day and that includes eating correctly and not correctly. It’s not always easy to say why I haven’t been eating correctly and being brutally honest but I find that it helps me to stay on the path.
  11. Because of my back injury, I take supplements to assist my body in repairing the damage. It’s not quite food but because the nutritional value of food today is a lot less than when I was growing up, I supplement my nutritional intakes with supplements. I buy them at a discounted price locally at a pharmacy where I get a fairly good discount of 20%-40%.

That’s about it that I can recall at the moment. The list will get longer as I recall more of the rules that I abide by. I try to eat as organically as possible but it isn’t always easy in Asia to find out how the food was grown or prepared. So I just wing it. I am fortunately enough that I do not have any life-threatening disease or illness that stops me from getting into problems.

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