Hi

Dear readers, I crave your indulgence to be away for a few days. It is due to reasons beyond my control. You know as we are getting close to the end of the year, it is good for one to seek redress and meditate on the events of this year. It is good for spiritual growth.

 

I promise to be back in the next two weeks or earlier for more juicy tips on weight loss. Then we shall explore a very wonderful topic meant for December. 

Thank you very much. Love you lots.

How To Look Good Naked part 2

Hi friends, howdy. Hope you are all fine. Thanks once again for visiting the blog, for your comments and for helping to share.

While I was looking for a topic for this piece last week, I stumbled on a the title 'how to look good naked' and I decided to use it. I did because it made so much sense to me.

When I was big, I cried one day to my brother who promised to link me up with someone selling weight loss products. To cut the story short, I was offered a body girdle which would make me wear clothes 2 sizes less. The offer was tempting though expensive! I would be able to get into smaller clothes! Wow!

  I was almost committing myself when my mind just told me that it meant I would always look good only when wearing clothes. But when I am naked what would I look like? My old fat self! Nooooo!  I wanted to look good both in clothes and naked. That sealed it for me. 

 I am not saying you should not try all those things but you must understand the arithmetics of losing weight. It is strictly about what you put inside you (by eating or drinking) and how much of those calories you burn. C'est finis. No more no less. Do not be deceived with the many options that may be offered to you. Mind you those offers are much more expensive than what you really need.

When I came across someone selling slimming tea and capsules, she told me I had to use them religiously for two weeks that I would see changes. With hope in my mind and my brain shut down( I guess!), I took the regimen as prescribed. Only for me to step on my scale after two weeks and to God be the glory, I had added 2 kg! I shouted yeeeeeee, mo gbe, ki l'eleyi. I then called the woman who sold it to me and she said I should try it for longer time that probably my body was just getting used to it. See marketing strategy o! She wanted to sell more to me. That was when my brain woke up from deep slumber and the scientist in me decided to query the components of the drugs I was taking. I felt like an idiot when i found out that the supposed weight losing drugs I had been taking were actually vitamin supplements for convalescent people! Just imagine that. So be wise when buying such products.

 Losing weight is not an easy thing. It's a lot more easy to gain weight than it is to lose weight except in a few cases like disease, famine, war, mourning which we do not pray for. Having that at the back of our minds, I guess it won't be out of place to drum it into our ears that losing weight requires above all determination and perseverance. If you are looking for a shortcut, then you are not ready to lose the weight. You have to be very disciplined. See this as a mission to be completed. Set a monthly goal and a yearly goal that must be met. Do not set unrealistic goals.

  For example if you weigh 100kg today, you may not lose more than 1 kg per week depending on your weight loss methods which means you will only lose 4kg in a month. You can not say you must lose about 20kg at all costs and drive yourself to death. You have to go about it systematically. Afterall, the weight was not added in one day.

 We must not also forget to consider genetics. We are products of both nature and nurture. While we may be able to effect changes with nurture, we may not be able to do much about nature. Consider people like Queen Latifah or Khloe Kardashian, no matter the amount of workouts or dietary modifications they may do, they still remain big due to their genetics. But you would see that despite the weight they look very fit. That is to tell you that even though you may not lose the weight, it is very important that you be fit. The diagram last week highlighted the different diseases that may result from obesity, so being physically fit goes a long way in preventing those deadly diseases.

  Now to the business of the day which I know my friends have been "impatiently" waiting for. Lol.

As earlier said, to lose weight there is no other recipe than the following TWO:

- Diet

-Exercise 

Today I will talk on diet and then we will conclude next week with the exercise.

 DIET

The following are important in your choice of diet.

- Do not restrict yourself to just a particular diet:called FAD diets. if you do, you are likely to be non-compliant and go back to your old way of eating because you would miss all the lovely food so much that the idea of weight loss would be repulsing compared to what you are missing.

- What kind of activity do you do? Are you active or sedentary? A sedentary lifestyle obviously requires less food than the person who is active because you are not using anything you are eating.

- Determine how many calories you need daily and make sure you do not exceed it. I would like you to go to www.myfitnesspal.com There you can log in any food you are about to eat and it will sum up the calories in it for you. You don't have to worry about our local diets like amala, majority of our foods have been included. DO NOT EXCEED YOUR DAILY CALORIC INTAKE. To lose one kg, you must have lost 7000 calories. So if you can remove 500 calories from your daily consumption, you will lose a minimum of 0.5kg per week.

- Take a lot of water. Water is beneficial to you in the sense that it rehydrated you and prevents dehydration and keeps your kidneys in good shape. Then if you drink water, your stomach sends signals to your brain that it is full and thereby  preventing hunger. This is a very effective method of staying off food.

- Take a lot of fruits and vegetables. They are filling. They help digest food because of the high fibre content and cleanse the bowels. At this stage you are advised to reduce your portion of food to a quarter of its normal size and fill the rest up with fruits and vegetables.

- Stay off pastries and processed foods: Do you know that if I eat 2 meat pies I would add 2 kg? That is because the meat pie dough is basically flour and butter which have high caloric contents. You can do without it. The calory in each pie is probably enough to carry you for a whole day but it won't satiate your hunger giving the need to eat more food which you actually do not need.

- Stop taking soft drinks. You need to stop taking processed drinks e.g coke, juice, nutri c etc. they are packed with calories even when they write on them "no sugar" . You can do without them. I did. I used to love coke so much that I could beg a beggar to give me the one he was drinking! In short I was addicted. But now I can tell you the number of months I have been off coke proudly!

- Do not eat after 6p.m . Your body mechanisms rest when you go to bed. So do not eat late into the night so that the food can be properly digested before you sleep.

- Do not starve yourself. Starving may make you lose the weight initially but later your body recognises it as normal and then the weight becomes static. Besides you need a minimum amount of calories per day to function. The brain, eyes, muscles etc all need the calories to work perfectly.

  

Myself as case study.

I have a sedentary lifestyle and when I calculated my daily intake, it was just 1200 calories that I needed per day. I chose my food carefully. I wouldn't eat indomie because 1 super pack size had 623 calories excluding the egg or fish or meat or pepper, sweet corn, baked beans and green peas that I would add. If I ate it I would have eaten about 800calories at once which would not carry me throughout the day. So I chose a simple breakfast e.g quarter cup of rice with plenty vegetables and fruits with fish which would amount to only 280 calories. I would then fill my tommy with water and say bye to hunger for the next 6-8 hours. Lunch with amala and plenty soup to fill the tommy. Snack on apple or watermelon. A very light supper if need be. Any food I do not eat before 6 would have to wait till tomorrow.

I hope that my method won't be too hard to try out. But if you do try it, you will be glad you did.we shall convene soonest to discuss the different exercises that you can try.

Thanks so much.

How To Look Good Naked

Hi friends! I promised to walk you through November with tips about weight loss. But before we venture into this interesting stage, let us know what we are dealing with first of all.

Today I want to discuss an entity called obesity.

OBESITY

 This is a condition characterised by the excessive accumulation and storage of fat in the body. This is both a nutritional and medical problem.

- Nutritional problem because it connotes overnutrition which is a form of malnutrition.

- Medical problem as it has been linked to a number of health risks, such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus etc.

The picture below summarises the disadvantages of obesity.

How do we classify obesity

We usually classify obesity using the WHO classification which makes use of Body Mass Index (BMI), but it may also be classified using the following:

 - waist / hip ratio

 - waist circumference 

 - hip circumference, 

In younger children, mid upper arm circumference, head circumference etc may be done.

Body Mass Index

This is calculated using both weight and height of the individual. The unit is kg/ m2.

Thus BMI= weight(kg)/ height2 (m2).

It is important to know your BMI as this will guide you in your weight loss program. 

Below is the WHO classification of obesity based on BMI.

Underweight.   = <18kg/m2

Normal weight = 18-24.9kg/m2

Overweight.     = 25-29.9kg/m2

Obesity class 1= 30-34.9kg/m2

Obesity class 2= 35-39.9kg/m2

Morbid Obesity=>40kg/m2

Please note that morbid obesity means that the obesity has become a disease.

So, today step on your weighing scale to check your weight, get someone to help check your height, then calculate your BMI to know which level you are. Then we can go on into the next stage of losing the weight.

I watched a program recently on TLC about 42 stone mom. She was a Haitian woman with 6 daughters and divorced. She weighed 625lb (284kg). How is that healthy for goodness sakes. It got so bad she was confined to the bed permanently yet she didn't stop eating. She practically ate herself to death. She did not comply with healthy diet. She just kept eating and eating and gained more weight (of course) and the doctor out of compassion for her took her in for gastric bypass surgery at weight 689lb (313kg). While she was in recovery she called 911 that they should rescue her! Unfortunately she died shortly after. Imagine that. 

Below is a typical picture of an obese person eating as usual. You would say why eat?  And a hot dog at that! But that is what big people do best. They eat and eat instead of trying to burn the calories.

 I know that might be to the extreme but as long as you eat any food you don't need, you are indirectly killing yourself. It is not unusual here in Nigeria to drink an Orobo bottle of coke after downing a full plate of food just to show how affluent you are. You have just drank enough calories to last you a whole day on top of a full plate packed with calories as well!

  It is imperative for us to adopt healthy lifestyles and you can start by substituting all your beverages with water. Yes, water. Water is life and it does not add any calories. It even helps to flush out your whole system. So, drink at least three(3) litres per day.

We shall continue from here next time peeps. Thanks for your time. Love you lots

Happy new month

Hello readers! I wish you a very happy November. May this month usher in all the goodness we have anticipated all year long. Amen.

I want to start a series this month on weight loss. It is a topic that is paramount on my mind having gone trough a similar path. I will like to discuss how our lifestyle affects our body and ultimately our mind.

I know a lot of overweight and obese people who look at themselves in the mirror and hate what they see. Then they become depressed because of their looks and continue to eat more.

Being obese has absolutely no advantage at all but it's disadvantages are numerous. A lot of chronic non communicable diseases are associated with obesity. I am not trying to abuse or upset those that are obese but I am challenging them to take matters of their health in their own hands and have a lifestyle modification.

Before I start my series I would like to share my own personal experience with obesity to you. Below is a picture of what I looked like as at February, 2013. The other picture is what I looked like 3 months after my self made therapy.

I was always a slender girl and I loved myself, though a lot of people felt I was too thin (maybe I was, with my bony structure). But I loved the way I looked. I cared less about what anyone else thought. I was athletic ni jor. All of a sudden because of my changed status from student to worker, I was no longer a walker. I started gaining some flesh. People started deceiving me that I looked better. Men! Okan ti bale! 

Before I knew it I added 10 kg out of nowhere to fill in the bones. Lol. Then my tommy started coming out and my beloved Ibo friends felt it would be 'good for 2 wrappers' . Then I got married and more of peace of mind and then with pressures of work, I ate a lot of junk without exercising. To cap it up, I got pregnant and added about 15kg extra weight.

After giving birth I expected to lose at least 10 out of the 15kg pregnancy weight since I was breast feeding but no I was not to have such luck. And that was how the battle began.

I just hated seeing myself naked. I felt as though i was hiding in the new body. As though the cocoon would burst and the me I knew and loved would emerge. I tried different exercises. From cardio to strength, to boot camps to yoga. Nothing worked. This was so frustrating. I met some people who told me that since I was married and already had a child why should I care about the way I looked. Iro and bubba would do well to any figure!

By this time my Body Mass Index was 30.8kg/m2. (I ll discuss BMI later). I knew I had to do something. I was already obese. Mo ti di iya oberekete machine gun. I would sit in a chair in the parlour and call my house girl in the room to come and open my parlour windows or get me the remote control. ROTFL. It was that bad. My thighs were brushing themselves so I had to wear tights always. I could not run even if my life depended on it. Walking was difficult. I was having breathlessness if I walked a little. Sex was horrible. My libido was fllllaaaaatt.

There was fire on the mountain for me. Fat would kill me. It made me slower, lazier and eat more. I then decided to turn my situation around. When I thought of which form of exercise to turn to, I was confused because  I  had tried several with no positive effects. My weights only increased (they said I was adding muscle. Who needs the muscle? abeg, i just want the weight to drop). I then turned to my husband for advice and he told me that i was not serious about losing weight. I asked what he meant because i was like 'see this man o, if i wan come serious nko. Upon how much i dey complain, you still think i'm not serious. O ga o'.  He then asked me if there was anything that I wanted to do with all  mind that was not successful. I was quiet for a while  and I reflected on his question. My answer for him was then 'NO'. He then said "you see why I said you are not serious". 

I then got my mission . So I prayed to God for grace and determination and I achieved success. Not that it was easy but my determination saw me through.

I wrote this piece so as to encourage those who feel they are trapped with the fat that there is hope for you. I hope you will make it a date with me this November as we walk through weight loss together. 

Thank you very much.

God bless you.