Steps I've been taking to get healthier:
- Regular yoga practice, either at the studio or at home. Lower back pain is not an issue any more!
- Regular salad making with colleagues (at least twice or thrice a week!)
- Regular weekend cooking (at least one dish per weekend for the past 3-4 weekends)
- Made first juice on Tuesday night (spinach and other salad leaves + 1 apple +1 orange - not bad at all)
- Drinking waaaay more water now that it's summer and I have a perpetually dry throat even outside aircon
Salad and juice and smoothie making shall continue. Hopefully I can figure out an easy way to post pics as well. Will be good to document the recipes that works, and the ones that don't work which might be tweaked in future!
Yoga shall of course also continue.
Need to make more time to declutter and prepare to move house at the end of June. And find a new house.
Been weighing myself a bit more now that my roomie returned my scale. Stable at 65kg. Not that I ever count pounds or kgs or calories even. But it's nice to know that in Sept 2008 (3.5 years ago!) I was 64kg and haven't gotten much heavier since then. Wooo!
Today I had McDonald's for lunch (due to much pressure from colleagues - I tried hard to resist!) after about a month or two of not eating there. Big mac no meat, large fries. Then I sipped a soy almond milk from the food court post-lunch. Suffice to say my body actually felt unclean and bloated after the fries invasion. I didn't really enjoy it as much as I enjoy eating a nice salad these days. I get a happy high from good salad with many yummy ingredients!
That's it for today. Will post more food related updates on the weekend.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Rebirth
Over the past two weeks, there has been a strong shift within me with regards to the food I eat. Previously, I was very happily omnivorous, eating both plant-based and animal-based foods (without any discrimination between the animals I ate...if you can eat one animal, then why not another?). Now I have decided to avoid meat and, as far as possible, reduce my past intake of eggs and milk products for good. I have also started preparing more of my own food, either raw like salads or simple cooked vegetarian food.
These are the specific events that caused this shift:
- Watching this documentary, Hunger for Change (the full video's been taken down...)
- Following Tara Stiles' tumblr and youtube videos...http://tarastileseats.tumblr.com/ and getting curious about making my own juices and smoothies, and when I actually got down to unpacking my blender and buying fruits and veggies and looking up recipes and nutritional info, discovering a whole world of raw food eaters like Chris Sims (whose smoothie video I shared in the last post - http://www.youtube.com/user/MKrawpt) and Ka Sundance (http://www.youtube.com/user/rawfoodfamilylife). Chris Sims is a personal trainer and has interesting recipes and tips. Ka Sundance has open and lively discussions with others in the nutrition field, and I particularly like his discussion with Daniel Vitalis on raw foodism, veganism, vegetarianism and omnivorism (now I just add "ism" to the end of everything haha): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=x6eGRUbmuq8
- Reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer and learning more about the factory farming industry and the related craziness which passes for normal on an everyday basis. I'm not an extremist. I'm fine with people and myself eating meat and animal by-products as long as there are some acceptable standards of treatment and safety and hygiene and care and respect involved in the farming industry. But there isn't, and the scale of the craziness is much higher than I had previously presumed. Animal husbandry has turned into production lines which are very ethically and environmentally wrong on such a large scale, and Foer's book illuminates the level of insanity at which factory farms and fisheries run. It highlights how far from nature animal farming has gotten in terms of the genetic stock of the animals, how torturous their lives and deaths are, how lax the regulation and there is an inherent conflict of interest with regards to the , how oligopolistic the industry is and also how bad for the environment and human health this whole system of factor farms and corporation-owned slaughterhouses is. Even the farmers who care for their animals well cannot ensure them a speedy death since slaughterhouses are not under control and for some reason they seem unable to set up their own due to regulatory requirements and the cost competition from existing slaughterhouses. I'm now reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Deliemma" which further pinpoints the baseline of this system being America's excessive corn production, which is also guzzling fossil fuels in terms of fertilizers. It all comes down to the government incentives, policies and economics being in favor of the industrialisation of agriculture (crops as well as livestock) rather than traditional farming methods.
And still, there are people on this earth starving. The price of meat is subsidised and yet we are paying the price in other ways. Talk about how inherently messed up everything is.
The more I read and learn, the more I start to see a bigger picture, and that picture isn't as pleasant as I'd like it to be. I question why the intrinsic downsides of the systems that the world runs on (financial, agricultural, goodness knows what else) are all so obviously flawed, and yet we are never taught the full truth about them, or not taught about them at all. These are basic things that sustain us as human beings, and are supposed to sustain our descendants as well. We have a right to know and control what goes into our bodies on a daily basis, for we are what we eat. What we eat influences the physical body, which is delicately intertwined with the mind and the spiritual body.
I'll admit that a lot of things were not perfect in the pre-World War days, but the few good things like natural, closed-loop agricultural systems seem to have been wiped out. Now we have open-looped, gas-guzzling, polluting, animal-torturing supply chains.
How did we let this happen? How is ignorance bliss? How are we so caught up all the time with the thoughts and feelings inside our heads, and so unaware of the things happening around us in the outside world? Where and when did we lose our connection to the natural world? With the discovery of fire and fuel and cooking and cleaning and constructing? Or is it something more recent - financial markets, excessive luxury, automation, GDP growth, profitability?
What can we do to change things for the better? Where do you even begin, when there are millions of people who knowingly sustain these systems? Good people, who just want to provide for their families and "fit in" to whatever the latest culture is. All of us are responsible. All of us are asleep. Sometimes I really wish this world was only a dream and not the reality. And yet, there are so many things which are good in this world. The trees and the birds and the crickets chirping and the ocean and the rain and flowers. We take time off from our factory farm unnatural stifling corporate cubicles from pushing unsustainable products to ever-hungry consumers to retreat briefly into the arms of Mother Nature when it all gets too much, disturbing more wildlife and sea creatures along the way. We let ourselves get fattened up with sugary foods and drug-filled, unhealthy, fattened up meat, we chase after products to put on our outside when really we should be worried about what's going on inside, attractiveness is measured in how well you respond to cosmetics and hair treatments and diets and intense, unnatural workouts, we allow the weak of mind and body to thrive and procreate thanks to our drugs which never really cure anything, we mindlessly drone on through our lives in a system which is doomed to fail (thinking we are great successes in the process), doomed to wipe ourselves and other animals out through war and disease and economic crises and overconsumption and lack of natural resources. What in the world are we doing? Why do we even think we know what we are doing?
I have so many questions, and slowly I need to find the answers for myself. These issues are so important to bring up with the people around me, but I sometimes can't find the right words to communicate them to others without sounding like a self-important douche. I think it'll take divine intervention to figure out a way to live without further perpetuating this crazy system. Not to sound overly negative, but these things have been on my mind and I just needed to put it down somewhere. Vegetarianism is the first step in the right direction, and so far it's been pretty good.
These are the specific events that caused this shift:
- Watching this documentary, Hunger for Change (the full video's been taken down...)
- Following Tara Stiles' tumblr and youtube videos...http://tarastileseats.tumblr.com/ and getting curious about making my own juices and smoothies, and when I actually got down to unpacking my blender and buying fruits and veggies and looking up recipes and nutritional info, discovering a whole world of raw food eaters like Chris Sims (whose smoothie video I shared in the last post - http://www.youtube.com/user/MKrawpt) and Ka Sundance (http://www.youtube.com/user/rawfoodfamilylife). Chris Sims is a personal trainer and has interesting recipes and tips. Ka Sundance has open and lively discussions with others in the nutrition field, and I particularly like his discussion with Daniel Vitalis on raw foodism, veganism, vegetarianism and omnivorism (now I just add "ism" to the end of everything haha): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=x6eGRUbmuq8
- Reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer and learning more about the factory farming industry and the related craziness which passes for normal on an everyday basis. I'm not an extremist. I'm fine with people and myself eating meat and animal by-products as long as there are some acceptable standards of treatment and safety and hygiene and care and respect involved in the farming industry. But there isn't, and the scale of the craziness is much higher than I had previously presumed. Animal husbandry has turned into production lines which are very ethically and environmentally wrong on such a large scale, and Foer's book illuminates the level of insanity at which factory farms and fisheries run. It highlights how far from nature animal farming has gotten in terms of the genetic stock of the animals, how torturous their lives and deaths are, how lax the regulation and there is an inherent conflict of interest with regards to the , how oligopolistic the industry is and also how bad for the environment and human health this whole system of factor farms and corporation-owned slaughterhouses is. Even the farmers who care for their animals well cannot ensure them a speedy death since slaughterhouses are not under control and for some reason they seem unable to set up their own due to regulatory requirements and the cost competition from existing slaughterhouses. I'm now reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Deliemma" which further pinpoints the baseline of this system being America's excessive corn production, which is also guzzling fossil fuels in terms of fertilizers. It all comes down to the government incentives, policies and economics being in favor of the industrialisation of agriculture (crops as well as livestock) rather than traditional farming methods.
And still, there are people on this earth starving. The price of meat is subsidised and yet we are paying the price in other ways. Talk about how inherently messed up everything is.
The more I read and learn, the more I start to see a bigger picture, and that picture isn't as pleasant as I'd like it to be. I question why the intrinsic downsides of the systems that the world runs on (financial, agricultural, goodness knows what else) are all so obviously flawed, and yet we are never taught the full truth about them, or not taught about them at all. These are basic things that sustain us as human beings, and are supposed to sustain our descendants as well. We have a right to know and control what goes into our bodies on a daily basis, for we are what we eat. What we eat influences the physical body, which is delicately intertwined with the mind and the spiritual body.
I'll admit that a lot of things were not perfect in the pre-World War days, but the few good things like natural, closed-loop agricultural systems seem to have been wiped out. Now we have open-looped, gas-guzzling, polluting, animal-torturing supply chains.
How did we let this happen? How is ignorance bliss? How are we so caught up all the time with the thoughts and feelings inside our heads, and so unaware of the things happening around us in the outside world? Where and when did we lose our connection to the natural world? With the discovery of fire and fuel and cooking and cleaning and constructing? Or is it something more recent - financial markets, excessive luxury, automation, GDP growth, profitability?
What can we do to change things for the better? Where do you even begin, when there are millions of people who knowingly sustain these systems? Good people, who just want to provide for their families and "fit in" to whatever the latest culture is. All of us are responsible. All of us are asleep. Sometimes I really wish this world was only a dream and not the reality. And yet, there are so many things which are good in this world. The trees and the birds and the crickets chirping and the ocean and the rain and flowers. We take time off from our factory farm unnatural stifling corporate cubicles from pushing unsustainable products to ever-hungry consumers to retreat briefly into the arms of Mother Nature when it all gets too much, disturbing more wildlife and sea creatures along the way. We let ourselves get fattened up with sugary foods and drug-filled, unhealthy, fattened up meat, we chase after products to put on our outside when really we should be worried about what's going on inside, attractiveness is measured in how well you respond to cosmetics and hair treatments and diets and intense, unnatural workouts, we allow the weak of mind and body to thrive and procreate thanks to our drugs which never really cure anything, we mindlessly drone on through our lives in a system which is doomed to fail (thinking we are great successes in the process), doomed to wipe ourselves and other animals out through war and disease and economic crises and overconsumption and lack of natural resources. What in the world are we doing? Why do we even think we know what we are doing?
I have so many questions, and slowly I need to find the answers for myself. These issues are so important to bring up with the people around me, but I sometimes can't find the right words to communicate them to others without sounding like a self-important douche. I think it'll take divine intervention to figure out a way to live without further perpetuating this crazy system. Not to sound overly negative, but these things have been on my mind and I just needed to put it down somewhere. Vegetarianism is the first step in the right direction, and so far it's been pretty good.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Smoothie time!
So today I finally opened up the brand new Philips HR2011 blender with glass (not plastic, yay!) jar which I bought in DECEMBER 2010!! Suffice to say, it took longer than necessary for a person of my technological skill to figure out how to assemble and work it. So exhausted today for no reason other than self-doubt. Working out some issues. Sigh.
Anyway, I gathered up all the dying fruit in my house and made a smoothie with the following:
1 pear
1 apple
1 large banana (overripe)
A handful of green grapes
A handful of dried cranberries
A dash of milk
Whrrrrrrr....
The blender works supremely well and didn't blow up, much to my satisfaction. The pulser was good to use in the beginning when all of the solid fruit was floating on top of the initial mash and not getting pulverized and needed a bit of a jerk. It was a bit scary though, so I switched back to the "1" setting.
Taste-wise, I could have gone easier with the banana, which totally takes over the flavor. Consistency wise, it was the thickness of baby food mush which my mum probably fed me as a wee babe. If I had used ice or water instead of milk, it would've probably been smoother. The dried cranberry didn't quite blend fully, but was flavorful and provided something to chew on, and also lent the drink a purplish coloring overall.
I got 2 considerably large servings out of that lot. Slowly imbibed one as my post-yoga dinner and was stuffed enough to forgo the beans-on-toast I had planned to eat earlier. Will have the second serving for breakfast tomorrow.
For next time, I'll try going minimalist with the ingredients and quantities. Too many flavors forced together might not be as nice as just 1 or two with a dash of honey and/or cinnamon (note to self, get cinnamon powder and more fruit). Also would like to try adding greens, such as this here smoothie from a British smoothie (heh heh):
Today's eats:
Breakkie: Chicken curry puff [I MUST stop buying this. Fried, potato, meat. Bad. Rawr]
Lunch: Veg Hong Kong noodle. Post-lunch coffee and ginger lemon tea until work end.
Dinner: Above-mentioned smoothie.
In other news, I have been using my google calendar (finally!) to schedule yoga classes and library volunteering and social events. I even managed to motivate myself to go for yoga on Mon and Tues thanks to that. It's nice to have an overview of one's time to fit more important stuff in. Now I need to add de-cluttering, apps and studying to that calendar. Long weekend coming up, shall get into a nice groove. Toodles =)
Anyway, I gathered up all the dying fruit in my house and made a smoothie with the following:
1 pear
1 apple
1 large banana (overripe)
A handful of green grapes
A handful of dried cranberries
A dash of milk
Whrrrrrrr....
The blender works supremely well and didn't blow up, much to my satisfaction. The pulser was good to use in the beginning when all of the solid fruit was floating on top of the initial mash and not getting pulverized and needed a bit of a jerk. It was a bit scary though, so I switched back to the "1" setting.
Taste-wise, I could have gone easier with the banana, which totally takes over the flavor. Consistency wise, it was the thickness of baby food mush which my mum probably fed me as a wee babe. If I had used ice or water instead of milk, it would've probably been smoother. The dried cranberry didn't quite blend fully, but was flavorful and provided something to chew on, and also lent the drink a purplish coloring overall.
I got 2 considerably large servings out of that lot. Slowly imbibed one as my post-yoga dinner and was stuffed enough to forgo the beans-on-toast I had planned to eat earlier. Will have the second serving for breakfast tomorrow.
For next time, I'll try going minimalist with the ingredients and quantities. Too many flavors forced together might not be as nice as just 1 or two with a dash of honey and/or cinnamon (note to self, get cinnamon powder and more fruit). Also would like to try adding greens, such as this here smoothie from a British smoothie (heh heh):
Today's eats:
Breakkie: Chicken curry puff [I MUST stop buying this. Fried, potato, meat. Bad. Rawr]
Lunch: Veg Hong Kong noodle. Post-lunch coffee and ginger lemon tea until work end.
Dinner: Above-mentioned smoothie.
In other news, I have been using my google calendar (finally!) to schedule yoga classes and library volunteering and social events. I even managed to motivate myself to go for yoga on Mon and Tues thanks to that. It's nice to have an overview of one's time to fit more important stuff in. Now I need to add de-cluttering, apps and studying to that calendar. Long weekend coming up, shall get into a nice groove. Toodles =)
Monday, April 2, 2012
Getting focused
It's a time of upcoming transition and uncertainty. In another three months, where will I be? What will I be doing? Time to focus. I can feel the hours and days slipping away.
1. Apps
2. Daily yoga and meditation
3. Daily German
4. Minimising possessions
5. New house (May onwards, spread word now)
These should be the focus, with less focus on reading fiction, browsing the web, watching movies or partying. Socialising is definitely needed once in a while, but only if it involves my core group of close friends. All others are secondary for now or should somehow be relevant to the above listed pursuits. More travel may have to take a back seat for the rest of the year due to lack of time and money.
I should also just take leave from work some time to actively pursue apps and do some hardcore yoga and german study sometime in May. Around the birthday, perhaps? =)
Today's eats:
Breakfast: Bee hoon, veg, egg, coffee
Lunch: Yong tau fu with rice
Ginger lemon tea
Dinner: Post-yoga felafel wrap. Pear in the fridge, if still edible.
Today's eats:
Breakfast: Bee hoon, veg, egg, coffee
Lunch: Yong tau fu with rice
Ginger lemon tea
Dinner: Post-yoga felafel wrap. Pear in the fridge, if still edible.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Optimus subprime
So yesterday I didn't go to the library. Instead I read a book at home and ate dal and rice for dinner. So much for exercise heh. Will go to the library this evening and do some house work that is pending and read more!
Breakfast: Peanut butter toast slice and kopi. Apple snack.
Lunch: Hopefully yong tau fu or something else vegetarian and fruits.
Dinner: Curd rice.
Breakfast: Peanut butter toast slice and kopi. Apple snack.
Lunch: Hopefully yong tau fu or something else vegetarian and fruits.
Dinner: Curd rice.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Azure fireflies
I HAVEN'T GONE TO A YOGA CLASS IN A MONTH. Waste of money. Been doing yoga at home about three-four times a week. Even did yoga and lots of walking in Bintan! Still, this is really bad, I need to get value out of the membership. No more excuses. I should go tomorrow for the 8pm class on relaxation yoga.
I realized that I haven't been eating healthy too. I need to eat more raw fruits and veggies and less bread and cheese. Also need to drink a minimum of 4 snapple bottles of water per day. So far I have had zero and it's already 4pm. Yikes.
Today's meals:
Breakfast: French toast, 1 apple, kopi c
Lunch: Rice with beans, lentils, raita and papaya, guava
Dinner: Yong tau fu
Today's exercise:
Walk to library, walk back with books and groceries. (total 40 mins brisk walking).
I realized that I haven't been eating healthy too. I need to eat more raw fruits and veggies and less bread and cheese. Also need to drink a minimum of 4 snapple bottles of water per day. So far I have had zero and it's already 4pm. Yikes.
Today's meals:
Breakfast: French toast, 1 apple, kopi c
Lunch: Rice with beans, lentils, raita and papaya, guava
Dinner: Yong tau fu
Today's exercise:
Walk to library, walk back with books and groceries. (total 40 mins brisk walking).
Friday, December 16, 2011
Resolutions for 2012 (and Dec 2011)
- Learn more German
- Meditate
- Write GMAT and apply for MBA programs
- Trip to the US
- Get somewhat closer to being able do this:
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