“Come, our stomachs will make what's homely savory"

The above is a quotation from the most famous English sonnet and writer, William Shakespeare. Indeed, he has a very valid point that must have been felt by everyone who had been through hunger and starvation, he just said it better.

The VLCD (very low calorie diet) of 500Cal per day is really a humbling experience.Not only now I understand better the pain of hunger and starvation, but several other facts had been brought to light as well. Let me share them with you! 

As a Muslim I have fasted before, for at least 10-12hours a day during the month of Ramdhan, abstaining from food and drink and things which will make my act of obedience as null and void. But at the end of the 12hours or so, i know that a feast awaits me. Food glorious food! Multiple dishes,sweet, savory and creamy comprises of all the group of food in the food pyramid will be there, and in 20minutes of breaking fast you could replace whatever calories deficit you had while fasting that day.No hardship there.

On the other hand, complying with this diet, you must eat one type of protein with one type of vegetable in the amount permitted for lunch and dinner. You can have one fruit and a small stick of carbohydrate at both times. No more, full stop. You can eat less than the allocated calories but NOT MORE. You eat more, you pay! From this practice, I realized from that it is actually enough to have smaller meals as long as u eat regularly rather than wait until you are ravenously hungry where you tend to wolf down your food like there will be no tomorrow.

Looking at it closely too, I realized how healthy that is actually as well as not mixing various type of food group together. Our prophet Muhammad SAW(peace be upon him)way of eating was exactly as how Dr Simeon recommended. One type of protein should not be mixed with another, especially if they come from a different source, such as a land animal e.g. chicken vs fish, which comes from the sea. The chemical reaction that happens when they interact has some negative impact on our body which might not be discernible to us who had been mixing them all through life. The same goes for vegetable. It is the chemical reaction which helps us in burning the fat as well as boosting up our metabolism therefore making us lose weight. 

I also come to like and appreciate the taste of individual food, which I have taken for granted all these years. Spinach, blanched and ate with just a sprinkle of salt and a little pepper tasted divine. Asparagus, steamed with garlic and ginger played havoc with the taste buds. Grilled chicken with tomato salsa, Shrimp with grated cucumber soup, Dory or Cod cooked in sour broth with tomatoes, tummeric and lemon grass and the list went on and on.Somehow along the way, I found my creativity in creating recipes to satisfy my appetite!

Never a picky eater (which was the trouble to begin with), I now am more careful of what I put in my mouth. If you have limited things to eat, you would make sure that only eat the best! heheh

I also vowed to incorporate this healthy way of eating as much as possible even after I am done with this diet. Healthy living means healthy eating too!

I also learned from this experience that hunger could turn me into a monster. I snarled and grumbled, whined and whined at my friends and my husband, and snapped at my children. I was letting my tummy took control of me, my mood and my relationships.I saw how ugly it was I could be and made efforts to change immediately! It took me a while to school myself from being governed by my appetite and hunger pangs. I trained myself to stop, and control my mood and exercise patience and control. I am still trying but it is not so hard now these days as compared to the first week.

I learned that this diet brings me closer to my friends. A thing in common that makes us lend support to each other and push each other into reaching our goals, whatever they are.

I am still in the transition phase but I am sure there will be more lessons to be learned from this humbling yet enriching experience. Until it comes to light, healthy living my friends! 

Nothing To Lose .... Just fat, but everything to gain!

My weight and I have a tumultuous relationship. I have been yoyo-ing all my adult life and always had been bordering on the heavier side. I had never been classified as obese but I have crossed the barrier of ' severely overweight' from time to time. Being a woman, I blamed it on multiple factors such as hormonal imbalance, depression, work pressure, family stress, marital discord and everything under the sun except my laziness, procrastination and gluttony.

My relationship with food however had always been a loving one, I love food, I love the smell, the look,the taste, the preparation, the cooking and of course the EATING! My intense and passionate love for food can only be matched with my intense and passionate hate for physical activity unless it is mall-walking. Hence the weight problem!

My wake up call came in the form of two delightful blessings that God has bestowed to me in 2007. I had twins! Being a mother really inspired me to become a better person in so many ways. I was 86kg then, the heaviest I have ever been ( I am 157cm tall, by the way, making my ideal weight around 57 to 59kg). I was unhappy about the weight but not happy to do anything about it either until I had a vision of myself running around after my two-would-be-very-active twins and falling and rolling and stumbling, turning blue and breathless from the exertion. Duhhh!  That was not a very pretty sight. That and multiple other factors such as health issues associated with being overweight, the Humty dumty image, people who are close to my age calling me 'makcik' (talk about self-image, duhhh!!!), knee pain, loin pain, elbow pain etc, Zara, British India and a whole lot of idiot boutiques that do not carry plus sizes, and concerned friends who I am grateful for until now, I was spurred to lose 20kgs in about 5 months by cutting down calories and exercising. 

Oh! and what a transformation it was! I was happier , leaner and fitter than I have ever been in my life, The satisfaction carried through to my relationship with others, my husband, my friends and collagues and even God! I tend to blame HIM less when something didn't go my way .... hehe... Until I went over again after my gall bladder surgery early this year. My surgeon told me not to do any strenuous exercise up to 3 months post surgery. I happily obliged but continued to consume the same amount of calories with occasional rise in calories intake whenever i met up with friends. I extended the no-exercise break until 5-6months post surgery and the weight crept up. I felt my new clothes getting tighter but being the asinine that I was, I continued to be in denial and avoided looking at the scales which cost me 8kg by May this year. Panicked and frustrated, I went back to the old regime of calories cutting and exercising to lose it again. It is a long and tough process although I was healthily losing about a kilo every week, which was OK until i heard of the HCG diet from a friend who had tried it and sworn by it. She was the living the proof that the diet works. Not only does it work, it works fast too! You can lose up to a kilo per day if you follow a certain protocol! 

Being a doctor I was skeptical at first, especially upon hearing that I need to go on a very low calorie diet which only allows 500Cal per day and have to eat only certain food to get to such a loss. But one look at her slimmer, leaner and healthier body and disposition told me that she had not suffered from malnutrition or a diet scam. I went home and did my research and was convinced to give it a try. A kick start or a jump start to get my old weight back so that I can fit in into my new wardrobe again. 

And oh!!! what a kick start it was, as a friend put it, it was like Christmas morning everyday standing on the scale and watched the kilos whittled away. I lost 8.1kg up to today which is my 27th day of the 500Cal per day diet (VLCD). I survived the hunger pangs, the stalling, the gain-after cheating and the weird craving for food that I actually never liked before. On the other hand, I gained a slimmer and leaner ME, a camaraderie with my friends who started the diet with me around the same time, an appreciation towards healthy eating and food choices, a tool to be used later if, and it is a very BIG if, God forbids I ever go above my desired target weight ever again.

I was not tired nor lethargic and able to perform my physician duty, motherly duty and wifely duties as per normal. 8 kilos in 27 days! I had only planned to do the minimum days required by the protocol which is 18days but seeing the drops in 'pound and inches' urged me on until today.

For those who wants to know more of this diet, you can read it here,I am currently on my second day of transition phase and looking forward to the Maintenance phase in two-days time, which I will share with you, if you care to read more, that is!

Until then, healthy living, my friends!