The next level of weight loss-

Given so many people read my first post "how to lose 350gms weight every week", I thought I should release my next theory which will fine tune the concept further.

It is essentially based around the fact that gymming needs to be used as a strategic tool rather than as an everyday / routine kind of activity. Our body has a carbohydrate bank (henceforth it will be referred to as CB in the post for my convenience) at any given point of time. The weight gain happens because the energy that the body is burning is far lesser than the energy stored in this CB. Now one thing needs to be mentioned here which is very important: CB is different than Fat and Protein calories. Eating equal amount of calories from Protein, Fat and Carbs leads to unequal weight gain (proven scientifically). The order of weight gain is Protein < Fat < Carbs.

Coming back to the point - so to lose weight, essentially one needs to keep CB in check (ideally 0 but that of course is not possible). The way to keep CB in check is to either eat no carbs or to exercise off the carbs every time you add any out of the ordinary amounts into your CB. Now here comes my revolutionary mind blowing theory. Our body has a hidden amount of CB energy. What does it mean? It is a concept similar to - why does steam at 100 degrees cause more burns than boiling water at exactly the same temperature? it is because steam contains some hidden heat which is called "latent" heat. Similarly, our body has a latent CB, so every time one decides to lose weight or start exercising, one does not see any weight loss for the first 2 weeks despite gymming our asses off! Because during those 2 weeks, the body is just burning that latent CB. Meanwhile due to gymming everyday, one feels more hungry (metabolism fastens up temporarily), eats more thinking that no harm in eating more because we gymmed today and the faster metabolism will burn it. It is here that the mistake lies in gymming everyday as routine - it just never lets the CB come down due to continuous extra eating and because one never flushes out the latent CB in the first place!

Solution - decide on a Saturday (of course after praying to the mighty lord of Saturn) that you want to lose weight in next 3-4 months. On that Saturday, don't do halka phulka mickey mouse exercises. Do a proper rigorous 2 hour cardio session and please for god's sake don't have any recovery drinks / snacks for muscle building or whatever bullshit you might have read (that stuff is for recovery of pro-soccer players...are you one? NO you are NOT). Rest for 5-6 hours and then go for a long walk, for some cycling, hiking...remember the aim is to bring that latent CB down to 0 before you can march on the path of weight loss.
Now comes Sunday, you would be feeling drained, YES great, that is a symptom of being on the right track. If you have a spring in your step on Sunday then that means your CB is huge and you need to work harder! Sunday you basically repeat what you did on Saturday. If not rigorous gymming, then basically go for a long hike. Key for these 2 days is not to add to any stuff to CB (so no recovery bars, energy bars, no bananas, no chocolates, no fruit juices, no desserts etc etc, you get the drift!) Just eat normal food, 3 times a day.

Now that CB is flushed, latent energy bank is at minimum, you basically have to keep calorie intake in check and that's it. DON'T gym unless you have cheated in your calorie intake through Carbs. If you went out drinking one night, then your goal is to burn those off within the next 24 hours. If you had 1 drink, then gym for 15 minutes. If you had 5 drinks, then you need to gym for an hour. If you had 10 then...join alcoholic anonymous, you have far more serious issues than weight problems!
You went out for an elaborate dinner coupled with desserts, you need to work out for an hour and a half. You have been sticking to the controlled diet, eating a good mix of proteins and fats with very less Carbs then you DON'T have to gym. I mean it, please do not jack up your metabolism temporarily which will end up making you eat more afterwards. Use the gym as a strategic tool to keep CB in check only.

MA


          

Gym - strategic tool

Most people who want to lose weight, either don't exercise at all OR over do it!
Though of course it is better to overdo it than not do it but what % of people overdo it vs not do it: i think 5% to 65% types ratio. So what do the rest 30% do? They exercise 3-4 times a week for about 40 minutes to an hour (mainly cardio or lifting some obscene amount of weights)

Now I was one of the people who used to gym 3-4 times a week and never seem to lose weight and then i struck this brilliant theory and tried it and did manage to lose weight!
The theory is that gym must be used as a strategic tool to create calorie deficit and not as a way to boost metabolism or increase muscle % etc etc bullsh%t which we read in various articles/books. That bullsh%t works only if you rigorously follow and scientifically do all that is written in fine front in those articles but 99% people can't really do it. They end up doing the straight forward cardio, light weights etc.

The thumb rule is not feel extra hungry when you are going to the gym. As soon as you start feeling that or you realise you are eating more than normal, you need to stop gyming and just concentrate on eating normal. This ofcourse works in totality if you stick to a definite number of calories everyday and maintain a deficit on it.

e.g. suppose you weight 75kgs and your goal is to reach 70kgs. The amount of calories you need to maintain the weight constant would be around 2000 with light activity (daily routine types). To cut 5kgs you need to basically create a deficit of about 30,000 to 35,000 calories and depending on what period of time you want to achieve it, you can eat accordingly. Suppose every second day you think you need to cheat by a bit, then you should use gym as that tool to create a buffer. If suppose you go to a party and you have 2-3 extra drinks, then you basically need to burn it out in gym to get back to the schedule. Idea is to gym to stick to calorie number and not gym for the sake of it and then hog away thinking that hunger is a result of the boosted metabolism and no matter how much you eat, it is getting burnt.

Try this and I am sure within a month you would start seeing the results. Also I have an extra theory for the slightly advanced which is called the "carb bank" theory. More later on that.

MA 

The art of hiking-

Most friends I have like hiking and want to hike but are always afriad to do so citing fitness issues.

HK is a great place to hike, there are many marked trails with proper distance posts. I think an excuse like fitness is just too lame an excuse to miss out on all of these great trails (only valid excuses according to me are body injuries and good old fashioned laziness:)

There are only 3 necessary things required to complete mushkil se mushkil trail/hike and those are 1) enough water 2) some sugar, in any form but preferably solid 3) perspective / referencing.
A clarification: what kind of hikes are we talking about here - anything between 3km to 50km in distance and anything between 0mts to 2000mts in total ascent. Anything shorter,you should probably want to watch cartoon network for better use of time and anything longer/harder, you should skip to nat geo channel, they show how to tackle that monstrosity!

1) Enough water - this is most important and often underestimated. While you hike, forget everything, no distance, no tiredness, no thinking, no doubts on how you will do it. Just focus on drinking water, every 10 minutes you gotta drink 200ml. Aim is to pee every 2 hours. Yes correct, you have to pee. If you are not peeing in 2 hours means you are not hydrated enough, means the lactic acid is not getting flushed out, means you will get cramps and more importantly the body functions are not smooth. So drink water, the first pee is the tough one but you gotta reach it.

2) Sugar - this is different to food, for example if you take spinach with you instead of sugar, will that work? NO, that shit works only in popeye the sailor cartoon! You need sugar! Juices and fruits qualify but i usually prefer solids and in fruits eat something like bananas (instead of blueberries etc - you are here to hike, poker will come later!)
Sugar basically keeps the body from hitting the wall and keeps the mood upbeat. A very respected friend of mine used to try this technique where every 1km he would reward himself with something nice like a bite of chocolate or a toffee etc. I think this is a good technique.

3) Last but not the least, Perspective / referencing - sounds ambiguous and may be it is. May be i am not describing it correctly but what i mean here is that if say, you are going on a hike of 20kms, try getting a few important distance points for memory like the cemetery is midway (no double meaning intended here) or like there is a lake which comes at 5km, a bridge at 10km, a long ascent at around 15km and then last 2km is a flat patch till the end. Basically you need to know the layout of what is about to come. In HK where most trails are marked with distance posts, linear flat distance is fairly easy to reference but the difficulty comes in the vertical one! And that is where this point has so much importance. When you are out of breath, when your each and every body part is aching, when you are just exhausted, irritated ki kambkht kab khatam hogi yeh wali climb - and you see that tombstone on your right hand side, you will go AHAAAA bas iske baad to 2min hi bache hain, i know it ...why?...coz i read it online where it was written that it marks the end of the climb! Do that research and the above things and trust me, no hike is tough for you and no amount of fitness is less for you! Happy hiking :)

Special shout out for 4 people:
Suting Fu: i have the highest amount of respect for you, you are solid platinum of a guy. i learnt so much from you and i hope i paid it fwd and will keep doing so.

Archish: you are a stud, completing two - 250km runs is mind blastingly stud. my respect.

VJ: dude that 127 hours experience is still fresh in my mind, i would have died had that happened now! thank god i was ok then.

Garry Bhai: i miss our weekend hikes, you are my guide, my smart phone, my google map and my distance meter- only literally though :ppp

MA

How to lose 350gm every week without exercise?

I have been battling weight issues for over 2 years now and the below things work 500% on any body type, any gender etc etc (unless you have hormonal issue - get a thyroid check in that case first).
These things must be done everyday without fail, in this particular order and without any change/substitute. Some things are non vegetarian so deal with it, i don't have an alternative as of now. Each ingredient has it's utility, google it up but don't skip any of it.

1) Morning get up - eat 50gm oat meal with 2 table spoon honey and 1 table spoon cinnamon made in skimmed milk just enough so that after cooking it in microwave for 2 minutes it has some left on side. No fruits and no sugar (not even artificial sweeteners)

2) After 1 hour of your oatmeal, drink 1 glass (275ml) of cranberry juice (fresh or canned, anything is fine as long as it doesn't have any artificial sweetener added

3) After 1 hour of that, take 4 egg whites, add as much tomato as you want, as much capsicum as you want, as much onion as you want, some pepper, minimalist salt and some chili (green or red or both) and eat it in any form you want. Omelette, half fry, full fry, sunny side up with no sun, whatever...it doesn't matter. Only thing to note is, don't use oil to make it (not even olive oil, doesn't matter if it sticks to the pan, deal with it) and keep the salt to the extent just to take the egg smell/taste out of it. Cooking tip- remove the pulp of the tomato, it doesn't let the eggs cook well

4) After 2 hours, drink 1 glass (350ml - yes this is a bigger glass than the cranberry juice one, ikea sells both) of watermelon juice

5) After 1 hour of watermelon juice, take 300gm chicken breast (something you needed to have done in the morning while eating oat meal - marinate this chicken in 1 table spoon olive oil, some salt, some pepper, chilli, lemon juice, and any other herbs you can think of and zip lock it). Slow cook the chicken breast in a pan (or for that matter - fast cook it, or roast it or do whatever, doesn't matter) but make sure no oil (yes, not even olive oil). Keep the tomato ketchup handy in case you don't find it edible (in all honesty, it should be fairly decent and eatable)

6) After 1 hour of chicken breast, repeat step 4 i.e. drink watermelon juice 350ml

7) After 1 hour of watermelon juice, eat as many strawberries and blueberries as you want. Yes just those 2 berries, nothing else. Ok fine, eat 10 almonds and 2 walnuts. Poker tip: Jamie Gold won the main event in 2006 and he attributed it to purely to eating blueberries everyday. 2006 was the biggest prize money at ~12mm for the winner at WSOP than any other year which average ~8-9mm

8) After 3 hours, buy fish (300gm of salmon), marinate it same way as chicken but add some soy sauce and white wine this time and eat it. Also 2 broccoli (steamed/sauteed), 1 carrot (raw, steamed, cooked). 1 glass of red wine (no single malt / whisky or even white wine and of course no Bacardi coke etc etc). Hygiene tip: Keep a room freshener handy, broccoli causes flatulence and if you are married then you don't want to be sleeping on the couch , would you?!

9) After 2 hours, repeat step 3 i.e. eat eggs

10) After 1 hour, drink green tea and sleep (pu-erh to be precise, it apparently cuts fat, i doubt it, but even if it doesn't, the above eating schedule most definitely WILL)

2 side notes:
1) Drink 2.5 litres of water for every 70kg of body weight but not less than 2 litres even if you weigh really less like 50kg or something (why the fkk will you do this eating schedule then though???)
2) Every time you feel hungry apart from the times that a step from the above schedule is just about to come or pending, drink 1.5 glasses of water (the 275ml type). If even after that you feel hungry, curse god and note that this precise moment is the reason you are fat and proceed to eat 10 almonds. If hunger still doesn't subside, curse more and this time just eat a dam% chewing gum and wait for next step to happen, TOO BAD!

MA

Time to kick some lazy retards-

woman power in hk speaks...4 wives tell their pot bellied under fit men that this sunday they will be going a trek, Grp led by Mayut and Lulu. Hahaha prrrrrrrrrrr phati kisi ki...
Common guys toughen up....it is 2.5 hour stroll lined with pret sandwiches every 45 minutes. last 1 hours is walking down in a park.

this seems to be a major "inflection" point as per my boss in determining whether we will be doing more such stuff in hk or not. any suggestions to make it more picnici? (only within limits).

for the first time in 6 months, this got me excited, i think it can breed future 100km oxfam racers from within this pool.

MA