It is My Cup of Tea..........1

Tea, according to documented evidence in various sources on the subject ; originated from China and has been drunk for centuries because of its medicinal values....                                 

a day's entry in my food diary

Here is an example of what I eat....please note that I am breastfeeding....

Weigh in as @ day 21 of 360 days weight loss challenge

Today I weighed in

Weight loss and your health

Being overweight is gone beyond just looks.....it is the conducive atmosphere we are creating in our bodies for debilitating illnesses that is scary.

    As I slowly but steadily loose weight I feel my energy level soaring and the knee pain I have felt since I put to bed is starting to get better......all this are the dividends of exercising.

Which is why just fad diets aka starving yourself is not a healthy or sustainable way of loosing weight.

    Are you still popping weight loss pills or drinking all kinds of concoction in the name of loosing weight.....stop endangering your life.......

  OR you are still deceiving yourself that we cannot all be 'lepa' .....that BIG is beautiful.....I challenge you you to shock people around you and help yourself to reveal a new level of well-being to your life

Take charge of your health today.

Sign up at a gym, start eating fresh and healthy, eliminate junk food, read tips from this blog......

                                    Let us help one another to our weight loss destination.
             

  You can enter in your details here lets start a movement of weight watchers *wink*. That way you will accountable to all of us and me as I am accountable to all you silent blog readers.
                     

 

Instant noodles can ' sabotage' your weight loss efforts.

Instant noodles are a highly processed food that lack tangible nutritional value-
they are low in fiber, vitamins and minerals.

They made their way into Nigeria in the late 80s and have since been widely accepted and regarded as a meal.


                       

Train your tastebuds to like healthy food.

As we start another week , let us remember that a little compromise in terms of unhealthy food choices goes a long way to set us back on this weight loss / healthy lifestyle journey.
                                 

    Let us try to cultivate a taste for fresh fruits and different types of vegetables.
                                         

                             
  Remember that all the tastes we know now are all learnt so we CAN unlearn them and choose food wisely for the best possible nutrition and long term disease prevention and possibly reversal.



                            Have a restful day..........

Help.......my body aches......

I had a stressful night and an equally crazy morning. I did not sleep well because baby was cranky; in fact, this morning I actually considered not exercising......


               

Yummy West African yams; BUT........

Yam is another breakfast of choice for the average Nigerian whether at home or in the diaspora and why not ? ....they are yummy.....Oh how I craved yams when I was pregnant....lol......Back to the topic

                                   

 According to Wikipedia, yams are...

Weigh in as @ Day 14 of 360 days weight loss challenge

           

         

Today I weighed in at...

I just can't give up now.......

I JUST CAAANNNTTT GIVE UP NOW ....... ##singing##.... I have come  too far from where I started frommm....nobody told me the road will be easy......

And four other things.............

I was exercising for 30 minutes 5 days a week........From my earlier experience of weight loss (before this baby making business lol) the first week has the most impact in terms of the weight loss.

How I lost 4.6 kg in one week

It  has become necessary for me to publish a day of my food diary in the first one week of my 360 days weight loss challenge so as to encourage someone out there and at the same time give out food ideas.
 

Track your diet progress.

In the quest for weightloss or healthy eating being accountable is key. Whether you you are just starting out or are half way there you need some things to track your progress in order to keep you motivated in the short term.

Struggling with weight loss?

      Imagine yourself going on a road journey and you get all dressed with your suitcase packed and have your bus fare in your purse; yet you refuse to go to the bus station to board the bus to your destination choosing instead to wish yourself there. I can 'hear' your mind go ......don't be silly who does that?
       

Commercial bread and its ills

Bread is a breakfast food of choice for a lot of us and understandably so. We live in a fast paced world and we are juggling so many things at the same time...career, raising kids, family and heck some people are even in school for extra qualification.
   
        Since this is not a fad diet

Time to Revv the weight loss engine

Since we have established that breakfast is the most important meal in a day and introduced us to the freshly squeezed lemon water daily cleanse; it's time to talk about healthy breakfast ideas.

weigh in as @ Day 7 of 360 days weight loss challenge

Today I  weighed in at

Join me to loose weight steadily and rediscover yourself

The first thing we should never compromise on this journey to a new US is breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal in a day....I know you have read/heard it countless times but it can never be over emphasized.

Love your heart with your oil

In order to protect our heart from avoidable cardiovascular diseases in the long run , we need to choose the right type of cookingoil. Except you find the cold pressed variety of even the mono unsaturated oils then it is not worth it.

 From the you tube video in my earlier post we can see that commercial production of oils not cold pressed strips the fat of nutrients by the heat generated from the machines and it involves use of harsh chemicals like solvents....the oil is bleached,deodorised and so on to give us a clear odourless and nutritionally dead liquid.


 We can deduce that the pure groundnut oil from the north is not too healthy simply because of the extraction process.

I was privileged to see it being made when I did my National Youth service in the North. The groundnut  is first milled and then shaped into the desired kulikuli shape and finally fried in a very big frying pan. The oil increases as you put in more kulikuli to fry so at the end of the day what you get is burnt and overcooked oil. Unless you lay your hands on a cold pressed variety......

    Oil is best packaged in glass bottles because of the chemical BPA found in plastics that leech on food and has been linked to causing cancer( except the packaging is BPA free)

     Be aware that oil should be used in little quantity in food including our stews; 2 to 3 tablespoons for a medium sized pot of stew.

 Finally, know that rancid oil is bad for your health so always throw out bad tasting or foul smelling oil.

Food portion control is key; my fellow nigerians

If you like to pile your plate high, then this revealing graphic is likely to depress you. But it could also help you lose weight on the so-called 'hand diet'. 

It shows exactly how much of certain foods we should be eating - and it's probably a lot less than you think.

Experts say that a lack of portion control is one of the main reasons so many of us are overweight - with many of us eating way more than we should be.

Experts say that a lack of portion control is one of the main reasons so many of us are overweight - with many of us eating way more than we should be

For instance, a portion of meat should be no bigger than the palm of your hand - and carbs no bigger than a clenched fist.

When it comes to butter, the maximum amount you should be spreading on a slice of bread is the size of a finger tip.

The information comes from the website Guard Your Health.

The American Cancer Society says that many of us regularly eat way bigger portions than we should - for example, up to five times the recommended portion size of pasta. 

Research has continually shown that when bigger portions are served, we eat them, because of the 'must clear plate' mentality.

HOW NORMAL PORTION SIZES LOOK

•    1 oz. meat: size of a matchbox

•    3 oz. meat: size of a deck of cards or bar of soap -- the recommended portion for a meal

•    8 oz. meat: size of a thin paperback book

•    3 oz. fish: size of a cheque book

•    1 oz. cheese: size of 4 dice

•    Medium potato: size of a computer mouse

•    2 tbs. peanut butter: a ping pong ball

•    ½ cup pasta: size of a tennis ball

•    Average bagel: size of a hockey puck

Source: American Cancer Society

Even a decade ago, researchers at New York University's Department of Nutrition and Food Studies found that food portions were consistently larger than in previous years.

• 
  

They found that cookies were as much as seven times standard portion sizes, while muffins weighed in at over three times standard portion sizes.

In their book, The Gastric Mind Band, Martin and Marion Shirran provide eye-opening examples of how portion control can make a huge difference to the waistline. 

They say: 'Spread butter on your toast, but be aware that a teaspoon of ­butter (enough for a thin layer) is 37 ­calories, but a ­tablespoon (a ­generous covering) is three times as much (111 calories).

'Put dressing on your salad, but learn to weight the vinegar in favour of the oil. A teaspoon of oil may be 45 ­calories, but a tablespoon is 135. That one extra tablespoon of oil every day amounts to a stone weight gain over a year.

'Switch to sweetener in your tea or ­coffee.

 Cutting out two spoons of sugar in your tea three times a day creates an annual calorie deficit of 37,000 calories, which could be enough to shed more than 11lb.

'Have ice cream occasionally, but just one scoop (about 150 calories) and never eat it straight from the tub. Enjoy a few nuts with a drink, but stop at one or two (a small 4oz bag will set you back 600 calories).'

Kathleen Zelman, Director of Nutrition for the health website WebMD, has drawn up another way to manage portion sizes.

For example, she says that a pancake should be no bigger than a CD, a bagel should be the size of a can of tuna and a serving of mayonnaise the size of a poker chip.

To gain a pound in weight, a person need only consume an additional 3,500 calories and the massive increase in portion sizes explains why so many people are unwittingly putting on weight.

                                                                                                                                                             Culled .....The Mail

change your cooking oil 2

   Palm oil is HIGH in saturated fat (bad fat that increases one's risk of heart disease) so eliminate from your diet or use sparingly

    Please stop buying that concoction called 'groundnut oil' measured from drums and kegs in the open market.....protect your health.

   The oil we really should be consuming are the monounsaturated oils --extra virgin olive oil (though it does not have a high smoking point so its best used to cook over low heat for short period or added to food as salad dressing),

 macadamia oil, avocado oil(this has a high smoking point so ideal for stir fries, frying,grilling,searing etc)

High oleic sunflower oil

coconut oil (which has a high level of saturated fat but research has shown it aids weightloss and population that consume it a lot have not shown high incidence of cardiovascular disease)
  
Then I hear someone say but Eniola these oils are expensive---- all the better because you will then have to use sparingly in order to save cost #wink#

                                                                                                To be Continued

And Two other things

Smoking point is the heat limit oil can get to before becoming unhealthy. It is important to match oil type with cooking type.

 Saturated fat is also found under the skin of chicken and turkey. These white meat are best eaten skinless so chicken and turkey wings should be eaten sparingly  *wink*

Change your cooking oil

For the purpose of making this easy to understand for everybody the oils you should not be consuming are those high in polyunsaturated fats ( example the regular sunflower oil) because they are not very shelf stable-- they get easily rancid (tasting or smelling unpleasant because of not being fresh). 

 

 You should use these oils (sunflower, soyabean,canola,corn,rice bran)sparingly because the store bought ones are subjected to all sort of chemical processes during extraction and as we all know the fresher the better. mother nature is never wrong.

 Rancid oils are thought to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer 

****so if you eat roadside fried foods (oil also becomes rancid after using it to fry many times) note that you are injecting 'poison' into your system**** yeah you read right...... 'POISON'

Some people will snicker at this and move on but these debilitating diseases are long term results of poor food choices and being overweight or obese just makes the body conducive for them to grow 




watch the video and be enlightened....

                                To be continued.... 

Lets stop killing ourselves

Scientists agree that a diet high in saturated fats raises the bad cholesterol in the blood which has the Impact of increasing the risk of heart disease

   Saturated fats is found mainly in animal products like fatty meat, (beef, rago meat aka salah meat, pork) organ meat( tripe aka saki, cow intestine aka roundabout), fat under the skin of these animals ( check out the fat when you cook any part of cow head or legs).

 So if you want to clean up your diet to improve your health, eliminate these from your plate or at least eat sparingly. This will not only aid your weightloss but it will significantly cut your risk of heart disease in the long run. In the category of red meat I eat only goat meat.

  The good fats (let's leave the big names they are called) are found in most nuts and seeds groundnut, sunflower seeds, canola seeds etc. This where we get our cooking oil. For the purpose of choosing healthily we need to know the process of extraction and the impact on the finished product plus the shelf life.
                                                                   
                                                                                  To be Continued.



NB.... How do I know all this and am still fat? #wink# I lost a lot of weight 2011/2012 on diet and exercises but gained a large chunk back due to pregnancy( was too tired to cook healthy stuff then so was eating ready meals).
My quest now is to loose the weight and keep it off.

360 Days weightloss and diet Sanitation challenge

So the countdown to my 'forever lepa' status has started....lol...don't laff at me oooo cos all I have to do is to make healthy lifestyle changes a step at a time and voilaaa am at my goal. Humour me and just forget how far I am to the finish line

This is me as at today January 9th 2014 weighing 105kg....KG nt POUNDS chaiiii. 








   Ponder on this........
        There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

                                                                                                         Nelson Mandela

On your mark........

I checked my weight today and  I weighed in at 105kg; chaiiiii I don't even want to think about how far I am from my goal. Hmnnnnn my pre pregnancy weight was 74.5kg.

   For those of you that are joining me on this challenge, the first thing we need to do is set clear goals.

My goal is to get to 70kg latest by December 2014 ( set realistic goals). This means I have 11months+ to get to my target. So this also means I have 3.2 kg to loose monthly.

Organise your time so u can exercise for at least 45minutes daily ......then keep checking this blog for tips. If you have any questions feel free to drop me a mail.

I will start this challenge on Thursday by God's grace.