There is a theory out there about cold weather and what it does to our calorie burning. I tend to believe this one over the hot weather version.
The theory is that you burn more calories in cold weather (or just in the cold) than you do in hot. The reason is your body needs to work to maintain it’s steady 37C core temperature. When you’re out in the cold and you’re shivering because you’re cold and you get goosebumps, they are ways that your body is saying it’s cold and is trying to warm itself up. It takes a fair amount of energy to warm up water. Now, since our bodies are mostly made up of water, it takes a lot of energy to warm up the water in our bodies and to maintain that temperature. I’ve been trying the theory out of standing out in the cold doing my exercises.. I’m definitely not saying to the extent where I’m harming myself by giving myself a cold or the sniffles from being out in the snow or the rain.. No. Just on a clear, calm day when there isn’t a wind chill problem. Don’t treat unhealthy ‘cold’ weather as a good plan.. use your common sense.
The other theory, and one that I enjoy doing, is drinking cold water burns more calories than drinking room temperature. Same general theory exists here. It takes a lot of energy to warm cold water, so when you drink it, it takes your body more energy - essentially more calories, to heat up the ingested water to a suitable body temperature level so that it can be digested properly. We’re not talking like 2 times the calories by working out in the cold (or just standing in it)… but there is a slight difference. Makes sense to me… and I studied science at uni!

That’s right! I was doing some research online with low fat information searches and calorie burning and I came across about 50 sites (found in the search.. so I know it’s not just one person’s “assumption”) talking about negative calorie food. What is it you may ask? In a nutshell, the negative calorie food is low fat food (pretty much vegetables and fruit from what I’ve found) that makes you burn more calories digesting it than the amount of calories you get from eating it! So, in a whole, you burn more calories than you eat. We all know vegetables are healthy, but I’d never worked out quite why (I’m not talking about the low fat values and low carbohydrates they have). Here’s a list of some of the vegetables and fruits I found that have the ability to burn more calories digesting than ingested.

asparagus
broccoli
carrot
cauliflower
hot chili peppers
cucumber
garlic
green beans
zucchini
apple
cranberries
grapefruit (also good to increase metabolism)
orange
pineapple
raspberries
strawberries
lettuce
onion
spinach

Just looking at the list, you know that these fruits and vegetables are healthy anyway - now there’s another reason! If you eat these, it will help you to lose weight. It’s pretty much a given… provided you’re not eating all the other nasty things out there on top of it thinking it will balance out.

Had a delicious eye fillet steak (least amount of gristle and fat of all the steaks) with some steamed vegetables, a side salad and a jacket potato (with the sour cream at a minimal). Ok the sour cream is pretty bad, because it was at a restaurant.. but, the good thing about sour cream is that it doesn’t soak into the potato when the potato is baked, so you can choose if you want to eat it or just scrape it onto the side. It does add a different flavour though. All those carbs, but I don’t believe carbohydrates are all that bad anyway - they just need to be consumed responsibly.

Remember, if you get the choice of mashed potato, chips or jacket potato (usually baked in alfoil with its skin still on) in a restaurant, I would probably suggest trying the jacket potato and asking (as a precaution) that no butter be used in it. That way you will only get the sour cream with it.

Chips are deep fried… so I would give them a miss.

Mashed potato in restaurants is not low in fat. To get a delicious taste, chefs usually add a lot of butter and always use full cream milk. They’re all about the taste, not the healthy side of the dish. If you’re making it at home, try what I do, a splash of low fat milk, some chopped shallots (or spring onions), and a clove of garlic. The amount is relevant to how many potatoes you put into it. If you need to, add no more than a teaspoon of butter. It’s still tasty without the extra butter or sour cream etc.

Don’t be afraid to ask for your vegetables to be cooked a certain way. No matter what restaurant I’m in, I always ask for them to come without butter. I ask for this not just because of the healthier choice but also because I tend to find the vegetables all end up tasting like butter. I don’t want them to taste like butter. I want them to taste like the delicious, low fat vegetables that are on my plate! Chefs don’t usually mind making your meal the way you want it. In my opinion, if you’re paying for it, you should get it served the way you want it.

Well my birthday has recently passed and it was great. My sister took me out to a Yum Cha lunch in Chinatown in my city. It was delicious. She brought her kids along with her and we had a ball. It was delicious. Yum Cha can be a very healthy meal… depending on what you choose from the menu. It literally means “drinking tea” so, in a whole you could call it ‘Dim Sum with tea’.

Green tea (the tea you drink at a Yum Cha meal) is very good for you. From sources I’ve found, green tea is suggested to helpful with rheumatoid arthritis, high cholesterol levels (it can help lower them), impaired immune functions and cardiovascular disease. Green tea has powerful anti-oxidants and is often said to be healthier than the normal black tea that many of today’s people drink. Green tea is believed to help with your digestion as well. I believe this is why it is served at a Yum Cha lunch. You can eat the small portions of tasty food and help with your digestion at the same time.

The steamed selection is the preferred if you want to lose weight. This is pretty much a given considering you have a choice of steamed or deep-fried (including spring rolls). In my opinion, the steamed selection has a wider variety of flavours anyway so that’s naturally my choice. You can ask for a menu if you’re not sure what to order. I always make sure I order steamed vegetables (I think it’s chinese spinach). It always comes out hot and with a delicious sesame and oyster sauce.
If you can, and if you don’t mind Chinese food, I strongly recommend giving it ago. There is a large variety of flavours, comes in beef, pork, chicken and seafood and steaming food is probably one of the healthier ways of cooking. If you don’t gorge on the deep-fried stuff (including going for the steamed dumplings instead of the deep fried variety) and go for the steamed healthier selections you will come out of lunch feeling full yet not uncomfortable.

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas break. I know mine was good.

Hope everyone has a great time over the break… try not to eat until you’re totally stuffed… I know it’s hard but remember, putting the idea of “oh, it’s Christmas, I can celebrate… this is the one time I can eat what I want just this time of year”… is going to make it very hard on you in the new year. If you do decide to eat a lot of all the yummy goodies, make sure you set yourself a limit, or maybe this year avoid certain naughty foods or at least have minimal of them. It will help in the post-Christmas exercise you’ll need to do .

When you’re out buying Christmas presents this year, and I know we’re all normally exhausted by the end of it, but try using the steps instead of the escalators. You’d be surprised how many calories you can burn in one big presents’ shop! It will also help for the upcoming Christmas binge that we all can’t help but do… you can lose weight and get that metabolism burning away before Christmas day comes.

Ok, so it’s been raining pretty heavily where I am in the world lol.. and it’s Winter.. coming into Spring so it’s understandable at the moment. Proactol’s been helping me through the naughty cravings of winter and rainy days so I’m not feeling anywhere near as bad as I thought I would by this time of the year. I’ve changed some of my usual Wintery eating habits too. I make up a big soup mix packet with fresh vegetables etc and have myself a healthy, warming meal.

When Winter hits, noone wants to do exercise because it’s just too cold! Well, if you have an exercise bike or treadmill or one of those great blow up exercise balls, you should use them indoors, where you can control the climate a bit better than outside and don’t have to battle the elements. It’s important to keep exercise up over Winter because most people are less active as it is, and since you’ll be wanting to eat more because it’s cold, you need to maintain a good amount of exercise to make sure you don’t pile on the pounds!

 I find it difficult to get interested in exercise when it’s raining because it’s the type of environment where i just want to lie down and relax. Rainy days…

This is GREAT! Seriously, I’ve tried a few pills and stuff but never really gotten much benefit from it. There are no chemicals .. it’s just fibre etc. It absorbs the fat you eat! It’s not the type of thing people say “hey! I can go out and eat KFC and other fast food and it’ll absorb all of it!” … while it will absorb like 30% or something of the fat you eat, that is still not a good way to lose weight! It’s called Proactol and it rocks! I have a few friends who are using it at the moment too… still! Tracy and Sonya have lost 39kg in the last 4 months between each other and they’re looking stunning! Tracy got a new boyfriend too lol. Rob won’t tell me how much he’s lost (men… lol) but he’s looking much healthier!

As for me, well it’s just the beginning of my ‘mega’ weight loss time.. I’ve lost 6kg.. I think it’s been like 4 -5 weeks or so since I started using Proactol, of course coupled with exercise (not obsessive.. I’ve missed a few days lol) and a … semi-healthy diet (… I can’t always avoid Indian Friday nights lol mmmm).

PLEASE believe me! This stuff really does work! I’m not feeling sick, not starving myself, not malnutritioned and I really am feeling a lot more energised now and am losing weight! I thought it might work but didn’t realise it would be this successful! Woohoo!!!! Best choice I ever made for my health! Only way I think I could lose weight faster is liposuction but ahhh.. no… that’s a last resort lol. Come on! You’ve got nothing to lose except your weight and you won’t be disappointed! Try it and you’ll know first hand how happy I am because of it!! Click this link to go straight to the order form!

Trust me! Try it - No BS - it really does work!

Heya! Super busy here today. This will be a short one unfortunately. It’s good to keep in mind that you need to vary your diet! don’t always have the same old food - it gets boring… you should still keep it healthy.. at least.. reasonably healthy… but try to vary it.. like have fish, chicken, beef, pork, quail, duck, venison, crustaceans… there’s a huge variety of meat out there.. then try other veges and fruits! mix them up a bit, maybe try a semi-healthy gravy over the top if you get bored!

Proactol update:
Proactol’s good so far - nothing negative to report lol.. but like everything that’s repetitive and potentially (hopefully) habitual, I’m sometimes forgetting to take the pill before a meal lol. But I’m keeping my exercise up to 4 times a week. I don’t feel like I have the energy to do much more at the moment lol. Click here for easy assistance on losing weight!