28. EAT HEALTHY, FEEL HEALTHY, BE HEALTHY!
“You are what you eat”
According to a study conducted by British medical journal The Lancet, Malaysia is the most obese country in Asia. The study suggests that almost half the population in Malaysia is obese and the condition has been on the rise in the past few years. This is largely due to poor eating habit and lack of exercises.
We Malaysians are pampered with so many delicious local food. We have nasi lemak, roti canai, chicken curry, banana fritters, curry mee, fried kuay teow, ais batu campur ABC, cendol, pasembur, satay with peanut sauce, etc. The list goes on. Most of our Malaysian food are oily, sweet, and salty. But they are all so irresistible!
There is a saying that all unhealthy food tastes delicious. And all healthy food is plain and tasteless. Of course, if you remove the oil, the coconut milk, the sugar, the salt, what's left is rather plain - but healthy!
That's why you can see that nowadays all sorts of diet or weight management programs pop up like mushroom. All of them claim the same thing - that how effective their diet plans are in helping you to lose weight.
Some weight loss programs come with meal replacement plans. Others involve fat burning sessions in slimming beauty centres. Some involve body wrap, eating hot chili, etc.
Come to think of it, most of the weight management programs do not include exercises in their plans. The weight loss advisers will advise those who sign up for the programs to do exercise at their own accord.
You are what you eat (80% diet; 20% exercise)
I read in an article about nutrition versus exercise. The article says that in order to lose weight, 80% is due to diet and 20% is due to exercise. In a sense, a slim-fit toned body with hour-glass figure or a lean body with six-pack abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym.
This further testifies that you are what you eat!
If you eat unhealthy food, you will feel unhealthy, and you will be unhealthy. On the contrary, if you eat healthy food, you will feel healthy, and you will be healthy.
But I guess food control is the most difficult part knowing that Malaysians love to eat. Exercise is also challenging as many prefer to be couch potatoes in aircon environment.
Eating is a favourite pastime for many Malaysians. Ranging from street food, cafes to fine dining, from authentic traditional to international cuisines, Malaysia has it all.
Therefore, the question is, how and what shall you eat to ensure you eat healthily and maintain your ideal body weight?
All weight loss programs out there are just a short-term effect. You may lose weight during the program period. However, I have seen so many people ballooning back to their original weight or even heavier a few months after their so-called weight-loss program.
The portion you eat in important
In order to lose weight, you don't need to fork out thousands of Malaysian Ringgit signing up for weight loss programs. You can continue to eat whatever you usually eat. You just need to eat less. On top of that, you need to exercise more. It’s as simple as that.
Your calories burned in a day through exercise and active lifestyle shall be more than calories you consume from food. This will create a calorie deficit in your body. If you manage to eat less and exercise more for a long period of time, you shall slowly see yourself losing weight naturally.
What you eat is important
Some health experts recommend diet as one of the most effective ways to lose weight. But how?
1. Atkins diet
Have you heard of Atkins diet devised by Robert Atkins? Atkins diet promotes a low-carbohydrate fad diet. Atkins diet claims that carbohydrate restriction is critical to weight loss.
Its proponents insist that you can lose weight by eating as much protein and fat as you like, as long as you avoid carbs. Atkins diet encourages you to eat more meats (beef, pork, lamb, chicken, bacon and others), fatty fish and seafood (salmon, trout, sardines, etc), eggs, law-carb vegetables (Kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, etc) and full-fat diary (butter, cheese, cream, full-fat yogurt).
Unfortunately, there is no good evidence of the diet's effectiveness in achieving durable weight loss.
Personally, I find that carbohydrate restriction is good but I just don’t like the fact that Atkins diet encourages people to eat more meat, especially red meat like beef, pork, lamb and bacon. I also don't like the fact about eating full-fat diary like butter and cream. I think these foods are large contributor to today's main health problems in Malaysia and the world. They may increase the risk of heart disease with hypertension and high-cholesterol. Besides, when a person grows older, doctor always advises to eat less meat for the health of kidney. Too much protein consumption, especially from meat, can cause kidney failure in a long term.
Therefore, it’s my personal opinion that Atkins diet may help you to lose weight in short term but for long-term, it's not sustainable and it's unhealthy too. Low-carb portion is excellent. It is definitely the way to go to reduce weight. But the ideas of eating red meat and full-fat diary are simply not my preferences though.
2. Ketogenic diet
Next is the very popular Ketogenic diet, which is also the hype in today's health world. It's also a low-carb diet like the Atkins diet. The idea is for you to get more calories from protein and fat and less from carbohydrates. This means that you cut back most on the carbs that are easy to digest, like sugar, soda, pastries and white bread.
According to webmd.com website, “When you eat less than 50 grams of carbs a day, your body eventually runs out of fuel (blood sugar) it can use quickly. This typically takes 3 to 4 days. Then you’ll start to break down protein and fat for energy, which can make you lose weight. This is called ketosis. It's important to note that the ketogenic diet is a short term diet that's focussed on weight loss rather than the pursuit of health benefits."
A couple of years back, I was very tempted to try out keto diet. I'm a marathon runner. And one of my doctor friends who is an elite runner finishing a full marathon in less than three hours highly recommends Keto diet for weight loss and endurance.
I wanted to give ketogenic diet a try. But I don’t enjoy eating beef and lamb. Even butter. Just the thought of eating more of red meat and fat put me off from trying ketogenic diet.
Just like Atkins diet, Ketogenic diet is also very challenging to stick to for a long-term. Just take a look around at all the local food in Asia. Which part of Asian food doesn't have carbohydrates?
If you follow these diets, you can say goodbye to your favourite nasik lemak, steamed chicken rice, curry noodle soup, burger, fried rice and others.
When you travel, you can hardly find anything without rice or noodle in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong for that matter. That means you will deprive yourself from the joy of living.
Wouldn't you want to strike a balance? Otherwise, how can you be happy living in this carbo-rich part of the world?
3. Mediterranean diet
I personally love Mediterranean diet the most amongst all types of diet plans.
Mediterranean diet has been voted as the best overall diet three years in a row (2018 - 2020) in the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings. The foundation of the Mediterranean diet is vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts, beans and whole grains.
Here are the four main components and recommendations for Mediterranean diet: i) daily consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats; ii) weekly intake of fish, poultry, beans and eggs; iii) moderate portions of dairy products; iv) limited intake of red meat.
Mediterranean diet is more plant based than animal based. Meals are built around these plant-based foods. Moderate amounts of dairy, poultry and eggs are also central to the Mediterranean Diet, as is seafood. In contrast, red meat is eaten only occasionally.
If you are an animal lover and you can't become a full-time vegetarian for some personal reasons, this Mediterranean diet will be a very good alternative.
Isn’t wonderful? With Mediterranean diet, you can still eat your carbohydrates. In Malaysia and this part of the world where rice is virtually an essential part of our daily diet, you can serve brown or wild rice instead of white ride. You can eat whole wheat Massimo or Gardenia bread instead of white bread. You can munch on popcorn instead of potato chips.
In fact, people who eat more whole grain like oatmeal also gain less weight than those who fill up on refined grains, like white rice. Whole grains keep food in your stomach longer, you are less likely to fill up on junk foods.
You can still eat meat but mainly fish and poultry, with limited red meat intake.
And of course, you can eat fruits and vegetables daily.
The time you eat is important
The time you eat is also very important. My ex-boss, Leong, who is also my mentor and life coach, once put on a few kilos. One of the key reasons was because he worked very late. He ended up having his dinner around 9.30 pm or later almost every night. An ex-colleague of mine saw him once taking his late night dinner in Subang Jaya around 11.30 pm on a weekday.
Then he realised he must do something drastic to his weight. He started to switch his dinner time from 9.30 pm to as early as 6.30 pm. Instead of eating his heavy dinner near his house after his office work and workout in the gym, he switched his schedule. He started to take his dinner near office early, followed by workout. Meanwhile, he also cut out rice and noodles from his dinner. A few months later, his weight was noticeably reduced.
It was a revelation for me to discover that we could eat the same food intake, but if eaten at different time, the outcome would have been different.
No wonder you can read in the health articles or newspaper that supper is bad for your health. Late night dinner is bad for your health. The main reason is because you will move less after such heavy meals, giving your body little chance to burn the calories.
Being a couch potato after dinner is a favourite past time for many. After watching television or catch that movie on Netflix, it's then time to sleep. Imagine all the food stored in your body with nowhere else to go. They then end up becoming fat stored in your body.
However, if you manage to eat earlier, you might still have a few more hours to allow the dinner to digest. You may have more chances to move around - gardening, walking from office to your car, playing with your kids at home, or even an evening workout before you sleep. All these activities will help to burn your dinner away before you sleep!
During one-month period of Ramadan every year, all Muslim friends around the world abstain from eating any food, and drinking any liquids, from dawn to sunset. In fact it's another form of fasting with absolutely nothing to eat or drink for about a twelve-hour period.
In my circle of friends and office colleagues, I know of many who have tried various forms of fasting to lose weight.
Some friends even jokingly said that they lost more than 30 kilos in their entire life. That was because after losing a few kilos, they started to eat heavy again and put back the weight they lost earlier. After going through several rounds of this yo-yo weight-loss weight-gain cycle, no wonder they could lose up to 30 kilos in their entire life. Yet, at the end of the day they are still overweight.
This is meant to be a joke but it's the hard reality as well. Finding a moderate, sustainable weight management plan that is suitable to you is more important than some extreme, instant, fast-result weight loss program.
If you can fast intermittently and watch out when you eat and what you eat, you can greatly control your weight to maintain good health for a long term. Whether you are young or you have retired like myself, it's good to start taking care of your health as early as possible.
What's intermittent fasting then?
According to Harvard Health Review, "Intermittent fasting is a diet regimen that cycles between brief periods of fasting, with either no food or significant calorie reduction, and periods of unrestricted eating. It is promoted to change body composition through loss of fat mass and weight, and to improve markers of health that are associated with disease such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels."
The three most common intermittent fasting methods are:
1. Alternate-day fasting
Alternative-day fasting is when you alternate between days of no food restriction with days that consist of one meal that provides about 25% of daily calorie needs.
For example, Monday-Wednesday-Friday consists of one meal while alternate days (Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday) have no food restrictions.
I personally have tried alternative-day fasting. I continued to eat as per normal portion one day, then I ate very much less the next day and so forth.
However, I found it very tough to stick to such regimen for a long term. I was working. I was rushing from meetings to meetings. I had to meet up with clients to close sales. I had to have entertainment dinner with clients. My time wasn't in my control. My bosses, my work, my clients controlled my time.
It was so challenging to stick to this alternate-day fasting method. I couldn’t tell my clients, "Sorry Sir! Today I'm fasting! I can go out to have lunch with you but I will only drink sky juice while you eat. Is it okay?" or tell my boss, "Sorry boss! I will only eat salad for my lunch today. I'm on this alternative-day fasting. You go ahead and eat your steak." I definitely would make them feel bad and embarrassed about their own eating habits.
Besides, keeping track of which day to eat normal portion and which day to eat less was rather confusing to me. I couldn't adjust to such method for long term.
2. Whole-day fasting
Whole-day fasting is when you perform complete fasting or up to 25% of daily calorie needs 1-2 days per week, and with no food restriction on the other 5-6 days per week.
For example, the 5:2 diet approach advocates no food restriction five days of the week, cycled with a 400-500 calorie diet the other two days of the week.
I also tried this whole-day fasting method with a twist. Instead of 5:2 diet, I modified it and come up with my own version of 2:5 diet.
Instead of complete fasting or up to 25% of daily calorie needs for 1-2 days per week, I ate as clean and as healthy as possible by cutting down on rice, noodles, bread, oily food, fried food, salty food, etc for 5 days per week, namely from Monday to Friday. I also ate less by reducing my intake portion during those 5 days. I didn’t really count my calorie intake but perhaps I consumed up to 75% of my daily calorie needs on those 5 days.
During those 5 days per week, I still ate same portion of vegetables and fruits as usual. But I replaced fried chicken with steamed chicken. I replace fried fish with steamed fish. I still ate rice or noodle for lunch but I reduced my intake portion. If possible, I also replaced white rice with brown rice, rice vermicelli with yellow noodles. As for dinner, it was strictly no rice or noodles.
I could follow this method during my working years in corporate life with not much problem. My version of 5:2 diet was rather flexible. I could go out for lunch or dinner with bosses or clients. I still ate with them following their time and choice of food. I just chose to eat healthier, and lesser. That's all! My bosses and clients wouldn't even notice a difference if I didn't shout out to them. As for dinner, I usually ate at home. Hence, there was no issue at all.
How about my weekends?
Instead of no food restriction on the other 5-6 days, I allowed my Saturday and Sunday to be the only 2 cheat days in a week. During these 2 days per week, I had no food restriction in terms of portion and types of food. It means I could eat whatever I wanted.
I didn’t call my 2-day weekend my cheat days for no reason. I tried not to be too harsh on myself. After 5 full days of eating clean and eating less, weekend was the time for me to go out with friends to catch up over dinner, to watch movies, to go to bookstores, etc. Weekend was the time to relax and enjoy.
I would allow myself to eat my favourite Chatime's bubble milk tea, Family Mart's Hokkaido ice cream, yummy fried rice or chicken rice, or even occasional McDonald's chicken burger, French fries and Coca Cola. Sometimes I still went for ‘tong sui’ dessert after movies. Or I would eat heavier dinner on Saturday evenings with a lot of carbohydrates because I usually ran long distance about 21 km the following Sunday mornings.
However, when the weekend was over, I became stricter to my diet again based on my own version of 2:5 diet on weekdays. I would start the 2:5 diet cycle all over: healthier, less food on weekdays and permissible sin food on weekends.
3. Time-restricted fasting
Time-restricted fasting is when you follow a meal plan each day with a designated time frame for fasting seven days a week.
For example, meals are eaten within an eight-hour period from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm, with fasting (only liquid with no calories) during the remaining hours (sixteen hours) of the day seven days a week.
If you are still working at a 9-to-5 job, it's very challenging to practise intermittent fasting with sixteen hours daily without food. Your irregular meeting and working hours can easily screw up your diet plan.
I tried to follow this time-restricted fasting when I was still in fulltime employment. I personally found it so hard to follow through with office meetings, appointments, and long working hours.
However, after my early retirement, I'm able to stick to this time-restricted fasting combined with my whole-day fasting (my own version of 2:5 diet) more easily and effectively.
As I no longer need to go to office for work, I can plan my daily eating time more effectively. I basically try my best not to eat anything except water from 5.30pm in the evening until 9.30am the following morning. That's sixteen hours (16 hours) of intermittent fasting.
My daily time window for food intake is the 8-hour period from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm. I try to follow as close as possible to the Mediterranean diet. I take my breakfast at 9.30 am, lunch at 11.00 pm, followed by dinner at 5pm on weekdays. If I get hungry in between, I will the munching on apples.
As for weekends, I still go easy on myself, especially on Saturday evenings with late night dinner. But on Sunday evening after 5.30pm, I try to go back to my time-restricted fasting again to start a new week.
Recommended approach to eat healthy, feel healthy, be healthy naturally
I have shared that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise. In order to lose weight, one needs to eat less.
I have also shared about what you should eat through different diets: Atkins diet, Ketogenic diet and Mediterranean diet.
I have also shared on when you should eat through intermittent fasting, namely alternate-day fasting, whole-day fasting and time-restricted fasting.
In order to stay healthy after retirement, I would like to recommend the followings based on my own personal trials and errors. I hope perhaps some of you may find it to be effective and sustainable. I hope that some of you may find this approach to be able to blend well into your daily healthy living without the yo-yo effect.
Please bear in mind that I'm not a health expert. Perhaps this recommended approach may not be suitable for you. And if you have any health or medical issues, do consult your personal health professionals.
1. Eat less through intermittent fasting
Find a sustainable, long-lasting intermittent fasting method that suits you, that you can stick to making it into your healthy lifestyle.
It has to be a method that you can motivate yourself to follow through on your own.
Just like what we have discussed, you can opt for alternate-day fasting, whole-day fasting or time-restricted fasting.
Of course you can have a combination of two methods, whichever suits you best. Just try out to see which methods fit you best.
I personally combine whole-day fasting (own version of 2:5 diet) and time-restricted fasting (16 hour fasting) and make it into my lifestyle with two cheat days in a week.
2. Eat more vegetables and fruits through plant-based Mediterranean diet
Vegetables and fruits are good for your body. It has all the nutrients a body requires.
If you are the type of people who don't like to eat vegetables and fruits, then you can try juicing them. Just make sure you don't add sugar and you don’t over consume glucose from the fruit juice. If juicing, please eat the juice extract (for its fibre) as well.
Personally, I find that it's better to eat fruits fresh without juicing them. By munching on them, your stomach will feel fuller psychologically. You also allow your teeth to exercising through chewing.
As you consume more vegetables and fruits, you shall take less meat at the same time.
If at all, you shall stick to white meat (poultry) and not the red meat like beef, lamb or pork. Fish is superb, but not crab, prawns, squid as they can affect your cholesterol level.
Whole grain is also an integral part of Mediterranean diet. As a start, you can simply replace your white rice with brown rice. That's quite straight forward and easy to do. You may not like the taste of brown rice due to its coarseness. However, you shall get used to it slowly.
I personally love fruits and vegetables. I am very happy to have fruits and vegetables in my daily diet.
I have tried once before to be a full-time vegetarian. No meat, No eggs. Only vegetables, fruits and grains. It lasted for three full months. It wasn't so sustainable for me because I love to eat fish often, and eat chicken occasionally.
But Ketogenic diet and Atkins diet focus too much on eating meat, including read meat. They also emphasis on seafood beyond fish for the high protein content. Personally, I don’t like to eat other types of seafood like squid, crab or prawns. I also don’t like to eat beef and lamb. I am also worried too much meat and animal protein may cause my kidney to malfunction one day, or end up with high cholesterol.
Mediterranean diet seems to be the most perfect diet for my personal liking. With meals being built around plant-based foods, moderate amounts of dairy, poultry, eggs and seafood, and limited red meat, I can definitely easily blend this diet into my daily lifestyle.
Besides, it's easier to stick to Mediterranean diet than to ketogenic diet or Atkins diet. For Keto and Atkins diets, I need to cut my carbohydrates. But for Mediterranean diet, I can still consume carbohydrates with a twist.
3. Replace unhealthy food with relatively healthier food whenever possible
Most foods that are oily, salty, sweet, and processed can potentially be unhealthy.
I know it’s very challenging not to eat unhealthy food completely. However, we should still be more mindful and conscious on what we put inside our mouth each time. Even though we can’t replace all the unhealthy food with healthy food all the time, we can always make an effort to replace them with relatively healthier food instead.
In order to do that, you simply apply a replacement tactic to replace unhealthy food with relatively healthier food (even though it may still be unhealthy):
· If you see potato chips, replace it with plain pop corn
· If you see snacks, replace with apple or guava or any fruits.
· If you cake, replace with a healthier version of cake made with whole wheat that’s less sweet and without cream.
· If you see fried chicken, replace it with grilled or bake or steamed chicken.
· If you see ice cream, replace it with yogurt.
· If you see fried crunchy snack, replace it with sunflower seeds or plain peanuts.
· If you teh tarik, opt for less sugar or replace it with hot lemon tea without sugar.
· If you see curry laksa, replace it with assam laksa.
· If you see nasi lemak, reduce the oily chilli and curry sauce.
· If you see curry noodles, replace yellow noodles with mee hoon or rice vermicelli.
· If you see creamy carbonara pasta, replace it with Aglio e olio spaghetti.
This also happens for fruits. If you see fruits with high glucose content (i.e. durian, mango), replace them with fruits with less glucose content (guava, avocado, etc)
Our body is our temple. We are what we eat. It’s better to feed our body with healthier food than unhealthy food whenever possible. If all else fails, just replace the unhealthy food with a healthier version.
Afterall, a healthier version of unhealthy food is still better than the unhealthy version of unhealthy food.
With this recommended approach, along with your strong determination, perseverance and self-control, hopefully you can have a total change of your lifestyle permanently, not just a mere three months or so.
You will become a healthier, better version of you.
SECTION 5
Life after Retirement:
Health, Happiness, Gratitude, Being Significant
“If you have health, you probably will be happy. And if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it’s not all you want." -- Elbert Hubbard
F I L L
Financial Independence, Live Life
achieving financial independence from 9-to-5 job before 50
