I am happily married with three grown children and I have been working professionally for several multi-national corporations. One of the most important thing I learn in life is "perseverance". Life is full of challenges and with each challenge there is always the opportunity to learn from it. With enough drive and patience we always overcome these challenges. I have learned and collected enough life experience that I decided to share them on my blog. All that I ask of you is to join follow along and maybe you learn a few things or two. Or you can also teach me a thing or two!
Anytime we eat we usually have a drink next to us to water the food down. And believe it or not we rarely think twice of what to drink. What you choose to drink can have have impact on your health.
I remember vividly when I started working for my current employer 7 years ago I would get lunch at one of the delis or restaurants near my office. And my choice of drink was not the healthiest option. I would either go for a can of soda or some other sugary drink. I like most Americans found comfort chugging down a sugary and gassy drink. I never thought twice how much sugar I was consuming.
My wake up moment was after receiving my blood test results from my annual physical exam. My mother has diabetes and I always in denial that I would inherit her disease. Needless to say I was very surprised when my doctor told me that my glucose level is abnormal and I was considered pre-diabetic.
If I continued the way I was eating (with a can of soda) I was sure I would become diabetic in 2 years time. I came home after receiving the blood test results with a goal in mind – removing all sugary drink from my diet.
My biggest fear with that goal was “what should I drink going forward?”
It has been more than 6 years and I can tell you that the question is stupid and the fear was unfounded. Nowadays I rarely think twice what to drink because my options are very limited – water or tea. Soda and sugary drink are not in my vocabulary. The real challenge for me is what type of tea to drink?
After several years of tea drinking I can say that I have been able to maintain my glucose level without resorting extreme measures such as using medicine. While my recent blood report did not show any significant improvements I was glad to find out that it did not get any worse. In order to lower the glucose level further, I need to remove all sugar and carbohydrates from my diet. That is something I will continue to work on.
Dieting is one of the worst conundrums of life. You know it is achievable but for some reason try as you might, it is much harder to reach. A lot of us ask the question why? I ask the same question everyday and trust me there is no direct answer. But I can tell you that the answers may not lie with you.
All of us need to buy groceries at least once a week and for 99% of us we get our source from one of the local food markets or supermarkets. My family is no different – we usually buy our groceries from local supermarket such as ShopRite or our local farm store. We do not have access to local farmers to get our vegetables or dairy.
So what are the main reasons that our dieting regime fails. This is a question that I ask quite often – in fact almost every weekend when I go grocery shopping.
Easy Access to Processed Food
I have been to multiple supermarkets around my neighborhood and all of them are organized in the same way. There are the fresh food aisle, beverage aisle, snack aisle and frozen food aisle to name a few. Without doing any factual calculation and using my local supermarket as an example, fresh food aisle only makes less than 20% of the products carried by the supermarket. My local supermarket is quite large with almost 24 aisles of food. The fresh food aisle including fruits only make less than 4 of them and that equals to about 17%. The less than ideal options such as snacks, cookies, frozen food and soda could easily cover 50% of the rest of the stores. My observations note that most shopping carts of most shoppers are filled with processed food rather than green vegetables.
Time Consuming to Prepare Food
Who doesn’t want to eat healthy food. The best way to get that is by cooking the food yourself. I’ve cooked for the family for years and I can tell you that I have to spend around an hour to cook a meal. On average I spend about 3 hours a day to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is so much easier to order outside or buy fast food from Mc Donalds or Burger King.
Restaurants May Not have Healthy Options
All of us eat out once a while but getting healthy meals from most restaurants may not be feasible. We know that tasty meal does not necessary mean healthy. The tasty steak that you just had is loaded with butter and fat. Or the amazing cheesecake that you ordered after the meal would not fit well in your diet. My family cooks at least 5 days a week to maintain a good diet. When we need to order out most restaurants do not offer good healthy options at all.
Keeping a healthy diet is a constant struggle. Sometimes it works and most of the time it doesn’t. Are we to blame if we are not able to maintain our diet? We need to be responsible for what we eat. However, at the same time if the conditions surrounding us do not condone positive impact on our diet it seems like a losing battle.
I would be lying if I say losing weight is like a walk in the park. All of us know full well the it is like putting on a battle gear and facing off a formidable giant. However, like David and the Goliath, you just need to find the achilles heel.
I have been trying to lose weight for the past several years. I am by no means overweight but I need to maintain my diet due to my overall health condition. I can tell you that it u is not easy. There are too many temptations and too many convenient food around us.
My wife is a fitness instructor for the seniors and sometimes it seems she is also fighting a losing battle. In the past year she actually gained weight instead of losing it even though she teaches virtual fitness classes. On the other hand I was able to maintain my weight even though I sit at my desk working virtually. Why?
After giving much thought I believe there are a few reasons and all of them are due to motivation and personal drives.
Sacrifice
My wife’s weakness is her love of chicken wings and snacks. Given the opportunity she could eat a few of each. On the other hand I consciously avoid eating these food because of high saturated fat and low healthy contents. While I don’t deny that I like certain foods fall in these categories I vehemently avoid them at all cost.
Activities that Pay
Once every two days I would use the elliptical machine and focus on working out my arms and abs. My wife is an instructor who mainly focus on aerobic exercises which is good for the heart and breathing. She is not strong on arms or abs. To effectively loose weight we need to have both aerobic and strength exercises.
Be Conscious of Self
Knowing that you are overweight is really the main driver in losing weight. Looking and the mirror and realizing there is a problem will help with the motivation. Some people who knows they are overweight make conscious decisions not to have mirrors in the house. I personally would use the mirror and tend to focus on getting the six pack and I realize that the journey is far from over.
We’ve been thought that we should never fight a losing battle. However, if we equip ourselves with the right tools and with the right mindset nothing is impossible. The real question how driven are we in losing the weight.
Trying to lose the extra pounds? Or maybe thinking of getting ready for the summer? What you eat is important. When is you eat is also important.
Sometimes when we so focused on our food we tend to have a narrow view. We always count calories and constantly trying to figure out what to eat. Because of that we tend to overlook important success factor when it comes to losing weight: when to eat.
When my kids were growing up, we built their habits by reinforcing certain rules. One of the rules was keeping a set daily schedule. My wife and I followed a strict regimen when our kids were young. For example, we would woke them up at a certain time; we would prepare meal at the same time and we would getting them ready for bed around the same time. The reason is we as human are habitual beings; we tend to thrive if we follow certain rules.
That is the same for our bodies. Our bodies are more efficient if they follow certain rules and know what to expect. Over the years we conditioned our bodies to metabolize the food at the same rate; our bodies would become well oiled machines. However, if we introduce certain food at different time, our bodies would need to adjust to the new regimen and the efficiencies that we spend years building would need to be rebuild.
Why does this matter? Simply put, our bodies would metabolize the food intake at different rate. Any food that is no longer needed would be converted into fat and stored in body cells. That is when we start putting in more weight. Let’s take one great example from Covid-19 pandemic. Majority of us are staying at home when the pandemic hit. Our daily activities ceased to happen and most of us would eat at different times as there is no longer a need for us to follow the set schedule. Compounding with the extra food that we eat, the weight starts to add up.
Another major reason that we gain weight is eating after the last meal of the day. Dinner is considered the last meal that anyone should consume before they go to sleep. Experts agree that prior to eating, we should refrain from further eating at least 3-4 hours before resting. This would allow our bodies to properly digest the food within limited activities during the night. During this period our bodies will continue to require energy and in turn continue to burn the excess calories. However, if we go to sleep immediately after eating our bodies would continue metabolize the food but instead of converting the food into energy, all the food would become fat.
Next time if you are wondering why you are not losing weight, consider the time when you eat. Keeping a strict schedule is as important as what you consume.
We all have challenges when it comes to keeping our weight in check. And usually when we fail to lose the weight, we tend to find excuses to rationalize our weight gain or we find reasons or someone to blame. For example, it is not uncommon for us to gain a few pounds after the holidays. And there are others who would blame their weight on heredity.
I’ve never been overweight. However, I have dealt with certain health issues that made me reassess what I did wrong. I dig further to find out what I could do better. As I consider some of the problems, I realized that weight gain usually fall into several categories. Hopefully after you reading them you could understand them and find tactical solutions to help you in losing weight.
Mindset
One of the major reasons that one is overweight is “Denial”. My family came from Malaysia and it is not common to have wellness check up. Most Malaysians (even today) would only visit doctors only when they are sick. Getting a wellness check up is unheard off. One reason is they don’t want to hear the bad news; they don’t want doctors to tell them they have high cholesterol or they have high blood pressure. They know that the bad news means they need to change their lifestyle.
That goes to show the same mindset is in this country as well. Most overweight people do not like to look in the mirror because they are afraid to see what they look like. Even if they “glanced” themselves in the mirror, they rationalize that they are either not too bad or they will lose weight starting tomorrow.
Solution: We just need to reconsider what is important in life. Is it food or our health? If it is health we need really sit down go over our diet, our lifestyle and our goals. Set SMART goals and go through one by one.
Lifestyle
We’ve heard this time and time again every time we visit our doctors – we need exercise. The more active we are the better we will be in losing our weight. Obviously this is easier to say than actually doing it. Believe it or not, eating a muffin will need an hour of exercise to burn it off. This is not easy task consider that there is very limited time in a day. A lot of us fail in losing weight because of this – how do we balance our lifestyle when there are so many other things in life require us to focus on?
Personally, I have the same problem. Working remotely for the past year seem like a luxury but the truth is I sometimes can’t separate work and personal life because there is no commuting. Taking the train to and from work is the indication that tells me when to start and stop working. Working life starts to bleed into my personal life that I rarely have time to workout.
Solution: Consider come up with a plan on how to put several hours of workout in a week. Gradually add more and more time to the plan. One option is to reduce the amount of time watching tv or using the smartphone.
Unhealthy food
Our lives revolve around food and with limited time available in a day we tend to resort to fast food. I’m guilty of that too. Besides fast food, we tend to buy convenient food that we can easily put in the microwave. Unfortunately these options to not go well when we need to lose weight. We tend to overeat and many consume food that is tasty but not healthy. Combining with lack of time to exercise, the end result is we add more weight instead of losing it.
Solution: It is unavoidable if we don’t have time to cook healthy food when there are other important priorities. One solution is to limit certain food (i.e. fast food) only once a week. Other solution is to select food that are low in sodium, saturated fat and chemicals. I find that this is hardest to maintain because there are so many options of convenience food at supermarket. Finding the right mix is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Surplus of food
We gain weight during the holidays because we tend to overcook. The more food we cook the more merrier the event is. Instead of cooking for 5, we would cook for 20. Why? Because when we take photos, the food on the background “make” a memorable moment. Also, we would stuff ourselves as much as possible because we can. What we don’t realize is we also make ourselves overweight. Usually when we are unable to finish the food, we either divvied up the food or we put them in the freezer as leftovers. None of the options are healthy.
Solution: We need to break from “tradition.” This tradition is man-made and never existed prior to early 20th century. There is no reason for us to cook so much when there is only so much space in our stomach. We need to consider small portions and avoid having any leftovers. Healthy food is something that we eat on the same day. As we stored the leftovers, the nutritional values of the food deteriorate.
Lazyness
The “tomorrow” excuse is used quite often. We feel like getting up and exercise every time we sit down and notice extra bulge on our waist. However, that rarely happens because we starts to rationalize that you will work on in tomorrow. Why is this separate from the lifestyle I listed above? Because this is something that we can tackle today. When we have this feeling that we feel overweight, get up and pick up a pair of sneakers and walk around the neighborhood.
Solution: Don’t procrastinate. Place a pair of sneakers next to your sofa to remind you what is important. Every time you feel “heavy” after a big meal, look down at your sneakers. Either they make you guilty or make you move.
The reasons I listed are not new. It’s just that we rarely think about them when we have other distractions. However, none of us can avoid the fact that we’ve outgrown our clothes or we look different in the mirror. If you are on a quest to a better you, rethink your priorities and come up with a plan to make the quest a reality.
Recently my wife received an advice from a friend on Facebook that she will start a dieting regime she learned from some “experts”. The first thing to do in the morning is to drink two full cups of water and skip breakfast altogether. The belief is that by filling your stomach with fluid instead of food, our body will start burning fat and calorie thus better chance of losing weight.
While I’m not a nutritional expert I can tell you that common sense says this is all wrong. There are multiple articles published on this subject showing the pros and cons. One article that debunked this idea was from Time that states it may not help with dieting but could potential cause more harm.
Everything we read on the internet should be read with caution. Not everyone of them can be cited or supported with studies, including what I am writing now. What I intend to do today is to give a few common sense arguments and hope you can make proper decision if skipping breakfast helps with dieting.
One of the most important things I learned while taking biology course in college is that human body is a well oiled machine. It learns to adapt to its environment and adjust its metabolism accordingly. Prior to the turn of the century before the invention of electricity, the world was dark and the citizens of those era had different meal cycle. Because of lack of lights, eating dinner at 6 or 7 PM was rarely practiced and eating breakfast was not something that is being done consistently. Fast forward to today, a lot of our habits were shaped by commercials we seen on the TV. “As part of the healthy breakfast” selling point could be heard on TV even today. The point I am trying to make is we can skip breakfast and be healthy but at present times our body has already adapted to current habit and changing it could take time and may not work for everyone.
Breakfast is a word coined in the 15th century which refers to first meal after rising from a night’s sleep. Essentially it means that we were fasting after yesterday meal and we break the fasting cycle by eating the first meal when we wake up. During the sleep cycle (between 8 to 10 hours depends on your age), our body went through a rest with minimal activity. The first meal is supposed to fill our body with enough nutrients that will help our body getting the energy to start the day.
Skipping breakfast means we exhaust our body the necessary energy. Our body is smart enough that it stores what we ate before in other cells in our body as energy cells (as fat cells). However, it takes time for our body to convert those energy into usable source of power. By not feeding our body with the essential fuel we could cause harm. Let’s take a car as an example. Could your car start if you pour water in the fuel tank in a cold winter morning?
Once our body is awake it would constantly need to have enough fuel to continue its activities. The same fuel is needed for the brain cells to function properly. Without the necessary nutrients, our brain becomes lethargic and becomes sleepy. If you are attending school you will have difficult time in concentrating. If you are driving to work it could have a disastrous consequences when your brain starts to feel drowsy.
Skipping breakfast does not necessary help with losing weight. I noted earlier that our body can adapt to the environment. That includes how much we eat. If we starve our body in the morning, it will automatically adjust itself to ingest the necessary nutrients to supplement the energy it lost. One of the ways for our body to do that is our brain will instruct our appetite to increase. Instead of feeling satisfied during lunch or dinner, one may feel the need to eat things that are sweet (sugar is the main source of energy).
One of the best ways to successfully diet is to light breakfast or eat small portion. Instead of skipping breakfast, I recommend that you eat something that has protein (an egg) is starchy (such as oatmeal) and sweet (such as a banana). These are the several ingredients that our body can metabolize easily and be turned into energy that is essential for our body to function.
Breakfast is sometimes considered the most important meal of the day. It can either make or “break” what lies ahead. If you want to diet successful, skipping breakfast is the last thing that you want to do.
Obesity is a major problem in the USA and trends suggest that this is not going away. Numerous studies were done and multiple programs to tackle obesity were undertaken by federal, state and city governments. However, most of them seem to be futile. As more and more people are aware of this problem, many seem to suggest that this could be a heredity problem. Or is it?
According to Wikipedia, Obesity is defined as a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to an extent that it may have a negative effect on health. People are generally considered obese when their body mass index (BMI), a measurement obtained by dividing a person’s weight by the square of the person’s height. And according to CDC guideline, anyone who is 30% and above are considered obese.
Obesity carries a tremendous cost and risk. Not only the cost of healthcare to treat obesity has skyrocketed, it also creates cost when one could not work because of obesity. Obesity is linked to over 60 chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. The Covid-19 also impacts people with underlying conditions more severe than healthy individuals.
According to one of the publication that states that as of July 2020, one-third of Americans are obese. And one in six of children are obese. And according to CDC, obesity rate for adults is on the rise. One of the most interesting fact of obesity, it appears to be more prevalent in the mid and Southern states where greasy and sweet food seems to be common diet.
One of the common arguments, particularly point out that obesity is mostly heredity. I’ve never been obese so I can’t say that is it true. However, I believe it is a problem of being responsible for oneself instead of blaming on heredity.
You are What You Eat
Food is the major contributor to the obesity crisis. The abundance of fast food, convenient food and processed food help create the the 30% plus obese Americans. If you go back to the 1970s obesity was not in the vocabulary. However, with renewed interest in the food and explosion of food industry there were more unhealthy and processed foods created. Nowadays you see fast food restaurant almost at every street corners of American cities. If you have the opportunity to travel to Asian countries you will notice that majority of the population are not overweight. However, current trends suggest that obesity is on the rise as more and more Asian countries begin to adopt American lifestyle.
One of the most interesting fact of the map that CDC put together clearly shows that states that have higher rate of obesity tend to concentrate on the Southern and Mid states where greasy food, such as “fried chicken” and BBQ, are normal diet. Another common diet is the amount of sweet desserts after meal.
Unhealthy Lifestyle
Smartphones, social network and media streaming have been a blessing and a curse. They provide us all types of entertainment and we feel content by just sitting on the sofa all day. Many would rather going through each post on Facebook or every videos that YouTube. On the flip side we are becoming less active. Getting the required exercise is no longer on the to-do list. To be able to successfully lose weight we need to exercise often and be consistent. Laziness is not a heredity trait.
I agree that losing weight takes a lot of effort and it is not easy. Blaming it on heredity is just and easy way out to avoid responsibility. It takes less than 5 minutes to eat a burger but takes 2 hours to burn off the calorie. If you have been following Rebel Wilson, you would know that nothing is impossible. Changing of diet and lifestyle is the only way to achieve your ideal body weight. And it has nothing to do with heredity.
If you have read my earlier blog, I’m on a mission to build a better me in 2020. This is not by choice but something that I have to do for myself and my family. There are two very important persons (my wife and my daughter) in my life who I adore dearly and I made personal commitment that I will be there for them whenever they need me.
One of my goals to achieve that is eat healthy. However, that is not an easy feat consider that we are inundated with fast and convenient food. And both of these food are neither healthy nor beneficial to us if we want to eat healthy. While most packaging would state the fact that they contain the necessary nutrients and minerals for our healthy lifestyle they are just of part of their marketing efforts. Of course all of us will continue to consume these food because they are “convenient” and I’m no different.
The big question is how do we maintain a healthy diet and keep it that way? Many people have tried but most have failed to maintain the diet. Hence, big companies that are in the dietary industry understand this and will continue to use this weakness to benefit from us. These companies are not interested in getting any of us thin and healthy; they are only interested in the bottom line of the company.
I have my own successes and failures. Thus, I am not in the position to tell everyone that my methods will guarantee that you will lose weight. Most of these are common sense and you may have already read about them. This blog is just to reiterate and reemphasize some of the key points.
Set Achievable SMART Goals
Don’t set goals that are so far that you will not be able to reach. Or don’t set a goal that is so vague that there is no way for you to measure if you are successful. I highly recommend that you set a SMART goal that continue to update as you go along. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Many people have a new year resolution to lose weight. To achieve that goal they commit to join a gym and at least go there once a week. While these goals seem appropriate, there is nothing to measure if it is successful. I suggest the following goal: lose 5 pounds in the first month and commit to have active workout for 5 hours the first week. As you completed the first goal, set the next goal by increasing the difficulty gradually.
Commitment
Commitment is required to ensure that you are on track to meet the SMART goal. It is easy to set a goal and then forget about it. Many of us (including myself) tend to find excuses not to make the commitment. Similar to setting a SMART goal, you need to keep reminding yourself the importance to stick to the goal. There are several ways that I find work really well for me:
Look at the mirror everyday – Some people are conscious of how they look and stop using the mirror. This actually has a negative impact on how we feel about ourselves. Use a full size mirror to gauge your progress. A mirror can determine if there are any changes in your body and if there are any areas that you will need to target.
Think about someone you care – Dieting is not only for yourself, you need to remind yourself who you are dieting for. Thinking about other than yourself will help you prioritize your goals. As an example, I always think of my daughter because I keep reminding myself that I want to look at my best when I hand her to her future husband when she gets married. And I want to be there for her when she needs me.
Resist Temptation
Food is a necessary evil. We require food to sustain our well-being. At the same time food can also kill us if we have too much of it. Caveman in the pre-historic age only knew how to hunt and eat. Cooking was never in the vocabulary. However, over the last several century human became curious with the food and start experimenting different kind of food and taste. Instead of calling it food we began to call it cuisine. Chef became a profession and his main job is to make the food tasty and enticing. Before heart disease became a number one killer, no one thought that food could kill.
When food is tasty we could never get too much of it. To maintain a healthy diet we need to be able to resist the temptation of eating it. If you are allowed to eat one slice of bacon, can you resist yourself from eating the second slice? How do you control how much you can eat? One of the best ways that I find work really well for me is to remind myself how bad the food is if I eat it. Eating the bacon is great but I would tell myself how much salt and fat in that slice and if I continue to eat it I will need go to the gym for another extra two hours to burn it off.
Eat Small Portion
All-you-can-eat buffet is perhaps one of the worst restaurant that was ever invented. When you go into one of these buffets you are encourage to gorge yourself because you already paid of the meal. Our natural response is we want to get our money worth by eating as much as possible. Unfortunately, our body is a machine that can only synthesize that much food and convert it into energy that our body requires to function. When we take in too much food, our body will continue to break down the food and will store the energy as fat when the energy is no longer required. To top it off we as human has become less active and we use less energy. This compound the problem as more fat continue to be stored.
The better option is to eat less but more often. One way to do it is use smaller plate during meal. This will trick our sense to eat certain portion instead of filling a large plate. We need to have strong will to keep our appetite in check instead of continue to satiate our desire for more food. Sometimes I find this very hard to do especially when I am having a good meal with my family.
Choose wisely
There are certain food that tastes bad but it is good for our overall health. And there are those food that is so good that you cannot eat just one, but you know that eating more could have detrimental health issue. For example, eating steamed vegetables is not the most exciting food to eat when compared to eating 5 sticks of bacon. Obesity has become a number one problem in the US is because of this reason. People tend to choose something that they like instead of something that is good for them.
Make Sacrifice
This is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do when you are on a diet. The sacrifice I am referring to is you can look at the food but you can’t touch it. I remember very well that when I went on a cruise with my family there was so much good food on the cruise. I kept reminding myself that I had to eat healthy and did not eat the food my kids were eating. Instead of choosing the steak, I opt for the fish. Now I learn to look at my kids enjoying the food while I stick with greens and fish.
Avoid Certain Food at All Cost
Nowadays you can see all kinds of warning labels on our food. Not only that many food companies started to add all kinds of food preservatives and chemicals that were intended to preserve the food but became a toxin to us. Food can be tasty but they contains compounds that could cause problems to our health and kill us.
Another type of food that everyone should avoid is food laden with sugar. Sugar is perhaps one of the greatest discovery of mankind. It was originally discovered that sugar can make disgusting food palatable. However, overtime sugar became the main ingredient to make food tasty and appealing. Soon doctors and nutritionists found that sugar is the main cause of diabetes and obesity in America.
Plan Ahead
I can’t stress this enough. Preparing a meal requires a lot of planning; we should use this opportunity to plan what we want to eat. Instead of eating the fatty or calories loaded food, plan to include vegetables in the meal. If you plan to go on a vacation, plan ahead of what type of meals you want to eat. Can you afford to eat Bar-B-Que restaurants or would it better to eat something light at a Sushi restaurant? All these planning will help us to choose better without any regrets. Whenever I cook for the family I make sure there are greens on our dinner table and chicken white meat. If there is no chicken, I always replace it with fish instead of red meat.
Dieting is hard. What I suggest above have work well for myself and family. There is no magic bullet when it comes to successful dieting. If you have to ask me what is the key to success I have to say commitment is key. Without commitment all the planning and goals you set for yourself will be for nothing.
I recently started reading a book by Dr. Robert Maurer, a psychologist and kaizen expert. The title of the book is called One Small Step Can Change Your Life. Obviously the title of the book caught my attention and as a self proclaimed “continuous improvement” buff I just couldn’t resist myself and bought the book. I was curious as to what I could learn from this book.
Before I begin, I want to confess that I have not finished the book but upon reading the kaizen concept, I was intrigue. According to Wiki, the Japanese word kaizen means “change for better” and the word refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small. This was a method used by Japanese businesses after World War II to improve on their processes, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers.
Dr. Maurer book essentially provide a guide on how to ease into new habits—and turning your life around. He basically list several steps to steadily build confidence and make insurmountable-seeming goals attainable. So why am I bringing this up today as part of dieting? Well, for the large part majority of us who tried many dieting programs and failed, the kaizen way will likely help and may to achieve the impossible.
Before going over how kaizen can help, let’s look at why most of us failed in losing weight. Most of us would look at the mirror and feel “big” and bloated. And most of us are always looking for the magic pill to help us remove all the fat and feel fit again. The truth is there is no magic pill and even if there is, the likelihood to attain the perfect weight is risky (remember fen-phen, the magical diet drugs?). Also, to achieve the perfect weight requires a lot more effort than just sitting on the couch.
One of the method that I’ve seen many tried is using the “Big Bang” method. Big bang refers to sudden change in behavior and body chemistry. This involves drastic method in losing weight such as go under the knife or ingesting drugs. This method is usually effective short term. Our body is a well oiled machine and will adjust itself to the change and begin to resist the change. Over time, our body will begin to fall back to its old self. That’s why you hear those stories how one could lose weight one day and gain back the weight the next day.
The kaizen way basically helps us control the diet slowly and consistently until our body starts to adjust to the change slowly. Essentially, to be effectively in controlling the diet is to take small steps that you are comfortable with. Below are some of the steps that I believe may help.
Reduce Sugar Intake One Can a Day
I can’t say enough how sugar is perhaps one of the worst inventions of mankind. Over the last 50 years, sugar has single handedly caused obesity and all kinds of disease. Americans are infatuated with sugar. Many rely on Coke as their preferred choice of drink. Other drinks such as the gourmet coffee from Starbucks are loaded with sugar too. The convenience food that we buy from supermarket has no shortage of sugar either. The question is how do you reduce the intake of sugar effectively – one-day-at-a-time. Start the kaizen way by having one less coke a day; or stop eating one less Oreo cookie. Over time you would have achieve the impossible by removing sugar from your diet.
Add Exercise Routine Slowly
Exercising is extremely important, particularly for those who are at risk of heart disease. And a large percentage of people who are obese are in this category. However, if you ask these people to start exercising is like asking them to climb Mount Everest. Not only that they are incapable to make the climb, they are likely going to injure themselves. The kaizen way I am proposing is to start slow and keep adding new routine every other day. As an example, instead of running 5K on a treadmill, maybe start walking for 5 minutes. Two days later add another 5 minutes. In two weeks time, start running for 5 minutes. In 6 months you should be able to run 30 minutes non-stop.
Add a SMART Goal Every Month
It is impossible to have a 6-pack abs in a year if are overweight. Trust me, I tried. It takes time and effort and a lot of commitment. Instead of setting the bars so high up, let’s set a goal that is easily achievable. For the New Year resolution, start a goal by reducing drinking a soda. A week later, add another goal on top of the first one. Perhaps stop buying soda altogether and replace all sugary drink with tea.
Celebrate Achievements the Kaizen Way
How do you continue to ensure that you are on track to meet your goals? How do you continue to motivate yourself? By celebrating as you reach the milestones. Instead of just looking at the major goal, try celebrating each milestones. The kaizen way is simply document each achievements. Other option is to list all the achievements on the board so it is visible. Not only that is a great motivation, it will help in ensuring that you are on the right track.
Kaizen is a method that is used by many companies to achieve continuous improvement. Without the kaizen way, the Japanese automakers today would not be where they are. They continue to strive to improve their products and over the last several decades, Japanese automakers are perhaps the top tiers in terms of reliability. I believe this method is well suited for anyone who is challenged in meeting their diet goals. Start small but be consistent; success could be achieved over the long run.
Balancing and Enjoying Work Life 