Walk, Just Walk

It's Sunday, it's late morning and it''s raining a lot but my feet are telling me they feel like walking in the nearby beautiful park. Walking in the rain? Why not, I have an umbrella. The fresh hot coffee afterwards makes me already smile.

When I started the difficult road from fat to fit, I was in an extremely bad shape and was sure I didn't had the time or mindset or anything in my power to exercise.
Plus, I was convinced exercising is useless in a diet. Just eat less a.s.o.
Plus, I find jogging, aerobic and other "extreme" fitness chores even now boring. Sorry folks, I can't help it.

Then I've stumbled upon some interesting and useful science items on www and started my new life.
To make a long story short, you don't need extreme fitness (although if you do it, bravo for you).
Just walking for at least half an hour can help a lot.
But you have to do it every day. No use walking only in weekends.

Walking every day is not an easy thing to do in the beginning if you are a computer or TV freak, if you have a very busy office life or if you have quite a lot of excess fat (a nice way to say you're really too fat to move easily). You need outside help.
What really helped  me to keep moving, besides science, has been the South Beach Diet Forum.
Very supportive, excellent ideas and a lot of advice.

Just walking might be boring, if you don't have some friends to walk with. Here comes technology to the rescue. Try any mobile device with music, audio books or radio programmes.
Investing in an Omron Pedometer has been one of my best ideas so far. I've started very low, less than 2000 steps a day and increased the number from week to week.

In my experience walking is good for your feet and brain but it's not enough for your body.  You need more to feel fit and wit.
A bit of gymnastics will come naturally. Simple exercises like cycling now and then on a static bicycle, some exercises with small weights. Any kind of physical activity will do, in fact, including dancing, cleaning your house, shopping, gardening etc.
A sport, any sport, will do wonders for your body.
I've  been lucky that I and my husband are nuts about swimming. Must have been ducks in a previous life. We've enrolled in a swimming club (not easy to find and quite expensive in Bucharest but cheaper than doctors and medicine).
From time to time we  manage to find some pond, lake or sea to swim a whole day long.

A few days ago, I've analyzed the data in my daily journal.
Such a journal is extremely useful for your diet. Besides controlling better what you eat and drink, it's good to look from time to time at historic data. They can tell a lot, even  if you don't  have the basic knowledge of statistics and Excel.
For example, my journal  shows that the best recipe to put a pound on is to eat a bit more for several days while exercising too little or at all.

Checklist

• Start walking. Start with 20 minutes every other day and increase this from week to week. 
• Try to find a community of people helping each other to become fit to support you: a forum on www, some  friends, relatives, a club, a team.
• Put technology to work and invest in a mobile device with music or audio books or radio.
• Invest also in a pedometer (step counter) device. 
• Find other opportunities of physical activity, even if this means just cleaning your house or shopping.
• Try to find a sport you can afford and enjoy.
• Aim for at least 90 minutes daily of physical activity.
• Eat less 2-3 days a week (less than 1600 kcal but no less than 1200 kcal), eat good food like veggies, beans, fresh lean meats, fish, eggs, a bit of cheese, 1-2 portions of fruit a day, yogurt or kefir, some vegetable oil like sunflower and olive oils, nuts, whole grains. 
• No need to ruin yourself with fancy or exotic dishes. Stick to your local market and the traditional recipes.
• On days you eat or drink more than you'd need to (like a party or some emotional burst for ex.)  try to exercise a lot more. Dance, swim, walk as much as possible a.s.o. A couple of days will do the trick and bring you back on the path.
• Keep a "diet journal".

The Science behind it


Is diet or exercise more important in combating obesity?

"Diet and exercise has the same importance if you are trying to lose weight.
Research shows physical exercise on its own or diet on its own is not an effective weight
loss strategy, they need to be combined. Weight loss will only be achieved if energy input
(food and drink) is lower than the total energy expenditure ( activity of daily life and physical
activity). Research shows that to lose weight you need to exercise more than 60-90
minutes/day at moderate intensity if energy ( food and drink) intake is not modified."

Epigenetic Changes to Fat Cells Following Exercise

The cells of the body contain DNA, which contains genes. We inherit our genes and they cannot be changed. The genes, however, have 'methyl groups' attached which affect what is known as 'gene expression' -- whether the genes are activated or deactivated. The methyl groups can be influenced in various ways, through exercise, diet and lifestyle, in a process known as 'DNA methylation'. This is epigenetics, a relatively new research field that in recent years has attracted more and more attention.

All Fat Is Not Bad: Study Shows Exercise Creates "Good Fat"

"Our work provides greater motivation than ever to get out there and exercise," Stanford
said.
These studies suggest that even if you're not losing weight, exercise is still training your fat
to be more metabolically active; even if you don't see the results on the scale, you are still
improving your overall metabolism and therefore your health.

Long, Low Intensity Exercise May Have More Health Benefits Relative to Short, Intense Workouts

Standing and walking for longer stretches improves insulin sensitivity and blood lipid levels more than an hour of intense exercise each day does, but only if the calories spent in both forms of exercise are similar.

Summer Pilaf

I've just  rediscovered an old pilaf recipe of my mother, for hot summer days.

Ingredients

1 medium size onion

1 carrot

1 green pepper

1 celery stick

A handful of mushrooms

3 tbs of vegetable oil (best results with olive oil)

1 tbs balsamic vinegar

3-4 medium sized tomatoes

1/2 cup of rice (any rice will do but choose a healthier one, pre-boiled, whole grain rice)

Your favorite herbs and spices.  Mine pepper, allspice, laurel leaves, dill and parsley.

Preparation

Just blender or chop finely a medium size onion, a celery stick and a green pepper. Cut a carrot in fine slices. Stir fry the vegetables in 2 tbs of olive oil on medium heat for a couple of minutes. Add half a cup of rice (I've used a wonderful mixture of pre-boiled and all colors whole-grain rice) and a handful of finely diced mushrooms . Stir a couple of minutes more.
Add hot water (2 cups), a bit of salt  and let simmer until the rice is almost done (it depends on the rice but probably this takes no more than 20 minutes).

You can add also fried zucchini or eggplant cubes for a better taste. Cut zucchini or summer squash or eggplant into cubes, salt them and let them on a sieve for a quarter of an hour to drain. Fry them in a bit of oil slightly, just to change color. Add to the pilaf when the rice is almost ready.

Separately, boil 3-4 medium sized tomatoes, skinless and diced, with 1 Tbs olive oil, on medium heat for 5-10 minutes or until they  change color and loose some of the water. This will give a special taste to any pilaf or soup or sauce, believe me. 

I think it's called umami, the fifth taste we didn't know we have.  

Umami, the taste of parmesan cheese

When the rice is almost done, add the tomatoes to the pilaf. Add a spoon of balsamic vinegar.  Add your favorite spices and herbs.  I prefer pepper, allspice, laurel leaves, dill and parsley. Simmer it for a couple of minutes on low heat. Cut the heat and let it rest for half an hour.

You can store the summer pilaf in the fridge and eat it along the week as a main dish, side dish or snack. Excellent for No Meat days. It tastes best if cold and is so refreshing on a hot summer day. A bit of Parmesan or Swiss cheese will make it perfect. 

Enjoy!

9 steps you should take before embarking on a Diet Boat

Warning. Consult your doctor if you have special problems with your health before changing anything in your lifestyle.

For several years I've tried a lot of diets with limited success or no success at all. I'm doing quite well now, with my own customized diet based on South Beach Diet, DASH,  Mediterranean and Romanian traditional diets. The best of all breeds, from my point of view.

If you want to follow my personal diet, I'll kind of disappoint you. My strong conviction after so many years of dieting is that there is no such universal diet, good for all. You should build your own.  

But I'll gladly share my experience with you, for free :).

First think first:

Think hard why you need to loose weight Strong motivation is a must. Maybe you've got enough of  your poor health problems, maybe you want to live more to help your kids, maybe your looks don’t help at all your social life, maybe you have a great difficulty to find a job a.s.o.

And if you really want to loose some weight, you can and you will, because science has made a lot of progress since the stupid eat-cabbage-soup-be-always-hungry diets.

The key is to build a lifestyle that you can afford and enjoy while respecting some simple rules you've set yourself.

Here are 9 ideas that worked for me and might work for you too.

There is some science to support them, but you should be aware that knowledge in human nutrition is in progress. I’ ll try to give more details in the next weeks because sometimes they are not so easy to adopt, even if some of them might look simple and evident.