What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

Vacations, among some other things, can be used to break the routine. Well, depending on the routine, they can be dangerous. For instance, how many of you quit gym at the same time you started the vacations? I did, and not even for long vacations. This problem can appear also with the diet we follow, especially in people, like me, who get used to good things, or bad depending on the point of view, very easily. To avoid that, an alternative would be to try to follow the diet during vacations. Honestly, I don´t even think that´s possible. I can´t imagine visiting an unknown place and not tasting and enjoying the typical local food. Or, in my case, visiting my family back in Spain and not going for tapas or enjoying my mother´s meals.

What’s my alternative? Be focus and have clear that vacations will last whatever they will last, and that’s all, they’re over, don’t try to hold them. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or you can easily fall into gambling problems. For instance, the first thing I did yesterday, when I arrived from the airport, was to notify my parents that I was already at home, and go to the supermarket and buy all I needed to cook my normal meals. That’s it, back to normal, the days of Bravas, chocolates, biscuits and eating like if it was the last day in Earth were left behind. I don’t know how many kilos I took, and I don’t care. When I’ll take the measurements next Saturday, it will be like if it was the first day. Maybe I took three kilos, well, I’ll lose them again, the same way I already did. The target is keeping a healthy weight and nothing changed in that sense. With the diet I follow, since around one month ago, my weight was stabilized, so I was not losing more weight. The diet and the work outs were making me lose fat in one side, and gain muscle in the other.  

And in honor to my last vacations, today you´ll find a typical Spanish meal, a Spanish omelet. 

Spanish omelete

Ingredients:

1 egg

1 potato (medium size)

1 small onion

200 grams of tomatoes

1 slice of bread

Preparation:

Peel the potato and the onion. Cut them in small slices. Put them together in a plate suitable for microwave. Put some salt and oil. Cook them in the microwave around 5 minutes. When the potatoes are cooked add the beaten egg. Add the mix in a hot pan and cook around 1 minute for each side.

 

It´s one of my favourite dinners. Bon appetite!

Hello, I´m Antonio and I´m chocoaddicted

I’m sure about two things about chocolate, the first one is that whatever they say, my skin doesn’t like it, and the second is that I’m addicted to it. Regarding the first point, I’ve read many articles saying that it’s not true that chocolate makes acne get worst. Maybe, but that's not my experience, and so, when I can motivate myself enough, I avoid eating it for long periods. And I say to motivate myself due to the second thing I said. When I eat some chocolate, even a small one, I become something like Cookie Monster, from Sesame Street, but with chocolate instead of cookies.

Source: http://elmajoy.tumblr.com/post/72249648/its-two-in-one-cookie-and-cupcake-monster

I don´t know if it's a metabolism problem but the fact is that I'm addicted, I ate more than once one kilo of chocolate tablets in one day or sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night just to finish the portion I reserved for breakfast. I just can’t handle it, I need to make a big effort to focus and stop buying it, since that’s the only way to avoid it. If I have any chocolate at home, I’ll eat in very short time, probably in hours. Another similar case is people addicted to cola drinks. The problem is that unlike cigarettes or other drugs, there isn’t the feeling that you are doing something bad. Okay, yes, cola and this kind of drinks have caffeine, but if that was the reason I guess they would be addicted to coffee also, and the ones I know, they’re not.

Why mention this now? Well, because a few days ago I got a box of chocolates from some friends as a present and they have awakened something that was sleeping for more than half a year. The box is still full but not for long, the only thing that saved it was because my mother opened another Swiss chocolate box, which is almost finished by now. During this holidays I haven’t follow my usual diet which make it harder to not eat it, but it will only be a matter of some days. Once I’m back home, I’ll be back to my usual meals and my schedule and, unlike what is in my parents' house, I won’t have an assortment of chocolates near me. So for now I’m enjoying this sweet addiction.

And my readers, I know you're there, are you also addicted to chocolate or have noticed something similar to what I described with some other food or drink? For example, I felt the same with a few puff pastries in honey that I bought a few days ago with the intention of bringing them to Prague so my colleagues in the office could taste them... well, that was the intention.

It´s not only a matter of exercise

In previous posts I mentioned that one of the keys to realising about your own physical condition is starting to do some sport. I wanted to sign up for historical fencing, in Prague is quite popular, but the schedule was not good for me, so I decided to join taekwondo. What I remember from the first class is one thing, the master told us to do 50 sit-ups, I did around 15 and I was already dead and had lost the count. Horrible, few times I have felt so useless. The idea was that by doing some sport I would slowly get in shape. Yes, slowly, very, very slowly. After two months and seeing that did not lose weight, although I was feeling better, I decided to return to my old diet. It was June and the season of taekwondo classes was getting into an end so I talked to my master, who is also a personal trainer and we decided to start going to the gym a couple days a week with him. But he insisted a lot on the diet, that's where there was the key to everything. What I can say is that is true, in the first two weeks of the diet, when my sport was still three hours of taekwondo, I lost about 5 kilos. Before, my physical activity had increased but I was still eating too much, the diet is what really changed the trend.

Well, two weeks after I started the diet, I began my gym sessions with WarriorFitness Prague. The first day was "just" the assessment day. Like school exams (1 minute of squats, 1 minute of push ups, 1 minute of sit-ups ...). I ended up half dead. In words of my trainer I looked stoned. This feeling has not changed too much. Really, every time I train in the gym I feel that way, the difference is that the exercises are becoming more demanding. The progress is undeniable. In the chart below you can see the evolution.

Progress after 5 months

And a little story for you to see how far my fitness level has changed beyond what is visible. A few days ago I had surgery. The next day there was a complication and I needed a second surgery. The story is that when I was already in the operating room, a nurse asked me if I was a low frequency, I asked what she meant and she said she was also with me the day before and saw that my heart rate was very low, so she assumed I was a sportive person. The truth is that it is a good confirmation that I'm on the right track.

The gift for today is the breakfasts and snacks that I usually take. Guess which one is my favourite snack.

Breakfasts (1 to choose):

1 glass of juice, milk or coffee. 2 slices of bread. 1 slice of low-fat cheese.

1 glass of juice, milk or coffee. 2 slices of bread. 1 slice of ham.

1 glass of juice, milk or coffee. 2 slices of bread. 1 slice of turkey breast.

1 glass of juice, milk or coffee. 2 slices of bread. 1 slice of chicken breast.

1 glass of juice, milk or coffee. 2 slices of bread with a tablespoon of olive oil.


Small snack:

20 grams of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts).

Snacks (1 to choose)

1 yogurt

1 banana

2 oranges

4 tangerines

1 apple

2 peaches

1 slice of bread with 2 ounces of chocolate

Advising is free so...

First, if you can’t cook, you should learn. In my opinion the best way to control what you eat is cooking yourself.

Buy a good scale, and ideally one that tells the percentage of body fat. Also one meter seam to take measurements of your chest, waist and, for the girls, also hips. It's good to weigh yourself and take the measurements on the same day of the week. I usually do that the morning of the day off.

Look for a motivation to get started. It can be serious, like having had a health problem or as silly as mine, the biggest pants I had, started to not fit and did not want to go buy new clothes, well, okay now I have to buy clothes just because I have lost 3 sizes, but that’s not the point. Motivation is very important at first at that time your brain is kind of cheating telling you that you want to eat more even not being hungry. That feeling is what we have at the beginning and is in those moments where the motivation comes. Gradually the feeling goes away because your mind got used to the new portions.

Related to this, aesthetics is not a good motivation, and I say this because this issue is too dependent on people’s opinion. Yes, many people will tell you that you look better, but some people will not notice the change at all and that can frustrate a lot if that’s your motivation. Felling leaner, more energetic, or needing to use smaller clothes, are more objective indicators and much more motivating.

Set reasonable goals for short terms. Start with something like "lose 5 kilos," "reach [insert here the nearest] kilos, thinking in small amounts makes more difficult to see how long the way will be and lose motivation.

When cooking, do it without being hungry. If you wait until you’re hungry to prepare food, it's much easier to start saying "nothing happens if I do it once" and cook fries as side dish instead of the boiled potatoes that were planned.

Prepare (see first tip) just your portion. From personal experience, cooking for several people and trying to calculate your portion at a guess does not work, plain and simple. And this extends to trying to go to restaurants because you don’t want to bring food from home, and pretend it to be the same. Well, you don’t control the portions, the sauces, the salt, so it does not work.

Do not sacrifice more than you can bear. You need to slowly get used to the diet. Feeling it as an obligation is very bad. That's what the two free meals per week are about. As I explained I usually do in one day, but that’s just my way, you can do it differently. And if you want a Tuesday dinner out and get you a plate of pork ribs, go ahead. Yes, well, you just have a free meal less for the rest of the week.

In another post I will give some advices about sports and work outs. But you can imagine that the first one is about starting to exercise, walk, dance classes, anything that makes you get up of the couch.

Tomato and tuna salad

New Recipe.
This one is very easy, it’s a simple salad. I really think this one is more appropriate for dinner, it’s probably lighter recipe I prepare.

Recipe 2: Tomato, cucumber and tuna
Ingredients:
- 1 can of tuna
- 1 cucumber
- 250 grams of tomato

Preparation:
Wash and chop the tomatoes. Peel and slice the cucumber. Add the tuna and mix everything in a bowl and season as you want.
Serve it with a slice of bread and 2 kiwis.

The diet. A quick explanation

The idea is to eat in a controlled way during 6 days and have a day off. This day off is when you can eat whatever you want and as much you want. The explanation is similar to the same idea that of drinking a lot of water (I drink between 2 and 3 liters a day), to avoid the body to retain more than necessary. Especially at the beginning, the body "realizes" that you are taking fewer calories than usual, so it tries to keep as much as possible, and that would cause weight and fat loss much slower. This day of we cheat our body to it doesn't keep anything that is not needed. This “cheat” day can be adjusted, the idea is to make at maximum 2 or 3 "uncontrolled" meals per week. I usually do it in one day, it helps me to have everything under control.

The portions, for the controlled meals, usually are around 60 grams raw rice or pasta, around 100 grams of meat and/or fish, plus another part of vegetables and/or fruit. Throughout the blog I'll show the different recipes (you saw the first one already), there´s Spanish omelet, spaghetti ala carbonara, Cuban rice, rice with cod, rice with chicken, pasta salad, and some other recipes that I “created” by myself. But as you see, all these recipes are quite usual (at least in Spain). But the portions are what they are.

I have eliminated fried foods, refined sugar and refined flour products. So, I don´t eat sweets, cakes or sugary drinks, and always whole-grain bread. The latter helps to make the digestion slower, so it takes longer to feel hungry. So breakfast is no longer based cakes, cereals and now consists of a chicken, or turkey, breast sandwich. In brief I’ll talk about the possible breakfast.

Between meals I take a handful, 20 units if you don’t know how much is a handful, of toasted almonds. They are very easy to prepare, but it can be also raw almonds or some nuts, or a yogurt. The idea is to eat, just a little, every two or three hours. So that the stomach is constantly working (burning calories), and we’ll never feel hungry, the great enemy.

Extracted from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Almendras_tostadas_sin_piel.jpg

And finally, it is good to always carry the same schedule. This is easier when you are working, at university for example it was a bit more complicated, because every day I had a different schedule. As an example, here is my schedule:

•     8am - 9am Breakfast
•     12h            Lunch
•     15h            Portion of almonds
•     17h-18h     1 yogurt
•     20h-21h     Dinner

In short, the second recipe or the breakfasts, we'll see.

The diet. Instructions and first recipe.

This post is going to have a different style that the one I intend to give this blog. The idea is to have a little story about my "journey" to get fit and adding the dishes included in my diet. But this post is to explain the system itself. It is very simple:

- Choose 12 dishes for the week (6 lunches and 6 dinners). Any recipe serves both lunchtime and for dinner. It is recommended not to repeat any dish.

- Choose a breakfast and a snack each day. It can always be the same or change every day, it's up to you.

- There is a day off, AKA cheat day. It's useful to cheat the body to not store more than necessary when it "realizes" the change in the diet. There will be a post about this.

- Drink plenty of water. I drink between 2 and 3 liters of water a day.

As you can see, it's very simple, and when you see the list of dishes, perhaps you will recall the maintenance phase that most of the diets have. So basically, this diet is about eating healty, with variety and suitable proportions. When you reach the desired weight, it´s only needed to change slightly the quantities. 

The recipe

Well, let's go for the first recipe. One of the tips which I will mention is that if you do not know how to cook, you have to learn. And one of the reasons is that I can cook but  I can't write recipes, I put salt at my will, also the oil, I cut the vegetables however I feel like in the moment. That´s why I could not write a prescription for someone who can not cook. And I've tried, I assure you. What I will do is writting the amount of the basic ingredients of the recipe and a brief explanation.

Recipe 1. Spirals with chicken.

Ingredients:

- 60 grams crude spirals (or any type of pasta).

- 1 chicken leg.

- 1 small onion

- 1/2 yellow pepper

- 1 cucumber with salt as accompaniment.

Explanation:

Boil in salted water, the pasta for about 8 or 9 minutes. The cooking time is usually written on the package.

At the same time prepare the onion and pepper in a pan with a little, more or less a table spoon,

of oil. When they are cooked, add the chicken, cut into pieces, and mix everything until the chicken is done.

Add the pasta to the pan and cook all together for a couple of minutes.

Pasta with chicken

Almost all recipes will meet these proportions, so if you want you can go on creating your own recipes, varying the types of pasta or rice, and changing the chicken by another meat or fish.

Bon appetit!

A little story

Well, first I will explain a little bit the story of how I found this diet. In the presentation I explained that I actually began in summer 2007, then I returned to the old ways and it didn’t go well. But let's go to June 2007. One of my friends was on a diet, a strict one, so I started to think about it too. I told my parents about that and my mother suggested me to go to a pharmacy in my town (Pharmacy Yañez in Montornés del Vallés, in Barcelona, I’d put a link to their site but it seems they don’t have it) that were preparing customized diets (I can’t remember if it was for free or I had to pay some money in the first visit, but it certainly was not like going to a private endocrine). So I went there, I filled out a form about my eating habits, food that I like and I don’t like and food that I wasn’t willing to stop eating. A week later I had a list of about 20 dishes, I had to pick 12 per week (a day off, remember), there was also a list with a few breakfasts and snacks to choose from, and a conversion table if I wanted to vary the ingredients of a dish. So I started, and I was going every Thursday to took my weight every, and also to receiver new recipes in case I wanted a change. When I started the diet, in June, I weighed about 86 kilos, the last check I did, around October, I weighed 68 kilos, those are 18 kilos lost in around five months. Not bad, right? One thing that helped a lot is that I started at the end of exams in the summer, which basically meant for me to work 8 hour shift, plus that summer I was working all summer, so I was much more active than during the period of study.

From that moment I made the first failure, stop weighing myself every week, and sometime later I made the second mistake which was start eating every day in the restaurant at the university. And I told you already what happens when I have food on the plate, the plate will get clean in five minutes (which saves water while cleaning it, isn’t it?). A year later I was about 75 kilos, but then I stayed in that weight for quite some time, because I went to take food from home and that helped me to regain control again. And I was like that for a couple of years, until I began to go to restaurants for lunch again. So in April 2011 I was there again with 83 kilos. The first try was to join Taekwondo to do more exercise, but 3 hours per week of exercise just don’t make a difference... I had to go back to the diet.

Coming soon...