[Slimming] Carb counting to loss weight and maintain your silhouette

Few years ago, I was working as a nutritionist in one of the famous weight management company. I had been writing several types of meal plan to fit in different individual’s health conditions. Before I start designing a meal plan for them, I would need to know their dietary habit, occupation & working condition and lifestyle. All these information was crucial for a highly individualized meal plan to modify their dietary habit without compromising their personal and cultural preferences.

After years of working on meal planning, I found that most of the people have major problem in managing their meal portion size. In another word, they tend to overeating. Overeating was something that on the top of the list you really need to get rid of to keep yourself fit and silhouette. So if you’re someone like that, you could start with “Carb Counting” to control of your meal size, especially your daily carbohydrate portion size (which the major constituent of daily meal).

((Well, it remind me to again pick up Carb counting to reduce some weight for my wedding))

Atkins diet was kind of popular in the past few years, the diets promotes a high protein low carbohydrate diet. The switch of main energy source from carbohydrate to protein might lead to ketone acidosis which I refuse to introduce to any of my customer and friends. Yet the diet wasn’t suitable to be adopted and practiced for long term which might have adverse health effect. I prefer Car-counting as it could help to modify a person dietary habit to achieve a long term weight management. So I find “Carb-counting” as a perfect method for all the people who wanted to lose weight and maintain it easily (Say no to Yo-Yo weight).

This method involved some calculation, where you need to calculate the number of servings of carbohydrate you could have for a day. So let’s start with the calculation:

1.         our daily calorie (kcal) = body weight (kg) x 25(kcal/kg)
2.     Your daily calorie from Carbohydrate (kcal) = Your daily calorie (kcal) x 0.5
3.     Your daily serving of Carbohydrate = Your daily calorie from Carbohydrate (kcal)/ [15 x 4 (kcal)]

Example: 

1.      My weight is 50kg, so my daily calorie will be 1250 kcal (50 kg x 25 kcal/kg).
2.     From which, 625 kcal ( 1250kcal x 0.5 )of energy come from carbohydrate.
3.     625 kcal of carbohydrate equal to 10.4 servings (625 kcal/ (15 x 4 kcal) ) of Carbohydrate .

Now you know what is the maximum servings of carbohydrate you could have in a day, so simple spread the numbers among 3-4  (or 5) meals. I would take more carbohydrate in the morning and afternoon, so I usually plan for 4 servings for breakfast, 4 servings for lunch and 2 servings for dinner.

But how much is one servings? One servings equal to 15g of carbohydrate, and look at the picture below to find out what is the serving size of food that you eat every day.

You can play around with different kind of food with same carbohydrate serving and have fun with the food game. 

Sometimes if you crave for some sweet dessert, just find out the carbohydrates count of the food, and minus a little from breakfast and lunch for the room for dessert. Never give up the pleasure from eating, that’s could keep your mood up and enjoy the lengthy process of weight loss.

Bear in mind, start it slow, and take your time to adopt the whole method. Meanwhile you could make use of some free app or website to help you on adopting this method.

Note: This is not a quick method to lose weight, please be patient and practicing it from day to day, coupled with exercise.

[Nail art] Set the sky and the grass on my nail

As you know, I was having a very busy month that I don't have time for mani/pedicure, eyebrows trimming, facial and eyelashes curling. I looked so untidy and dull. Before I really feeling shame of my look, I managed to squeeze a day-off for all these girly treatment.

Besides from facial and massage, I really love doing mani/pedi-cure. Every time I got some new polish on, I would stare on it for a few minutes and it will bring my mood up. 

This time I have decided to try on something a little flattering (flatter for career) for this seasons. I went to OPI in One Utama, and told them I wanted a gel nail polish with a Sundae ice-cream design ( well, I mean to looks as delicious as a Sundae ice-cream). But I end up picked a light blue and imagined the sky blue decorated with marshmallow white cloud. Here's the outcome. Whenever I move my finger on the keyboard, I can feel the invisible breeze,  that lightened my tension. Somehow, a nail polish do more than beautify my nail, it makes me happy by just looking at it.

The other day, I was having a banana as breakfast on the way to work, the contrast of the color turn to be a perfect match. I was just of in love with the mismatch but perfect shade.

And of course, never forget about the bright green on my toe. It was so spring, and make all my sandals looks great. Most importantly, my skin looks fair after wear it!! :)

[Skincare] Escape from tanning

Biotherm SPF 50 sunblock

Ha!! I got it at half price!!
Told you, Galleria is a good place to do shopping!

After the first trip, we realised we both needing a sunblock badly. I assure you can´t spot  us out of a a group of indians by now, my mate was so upset with his skin tone, I´m.. not really ok with it, but I think I could live with this tanned skin if my mate is going to be such tan FOREVER.
The fact is, he wouldn´t be like this forever, to be on the safe side, I got this and applied it EVERYDAY. He did apply it, but the thing is we got to remove it like removing make up after day long, as a guy he might do it when I´m around, but he wouldn´t do it after all, as he did´t have a make-up remover! XDDDD

Picking Biotherm had 3 major reasons, where it was cheap (in Galleria), reliable (in accordance to my sisters, where I listen to their suggestion as I believe we all have the same skin type) and thirdly I used Biotherm before and it cause no skin problem to me.

The best part of this product was it didn´t have a bad smell like the one I used years ago nor fragrance, sometime frangrance added cosmetic wasn´t that good to  your health, so I´m aware of it (especially fragranced sanitary pad). Also, it fluidness make it easy to apply and bring no stickiness to our face. However, I don´t know if it works (slow down the tanning process), but I hope it can be a good barrier to UV light, slow down aging process and reduce white head (closed comedo).

[England] The last snippest of life

The place we stayed in Hatfield has a outlet mall (Galleria) within 10minutes walking distance.This outlet mall has a big range of branded stores, from Laura Ashley to FCUK, it was a pity that I´m not going to settle in UK, where I could get every single piece of furniture from Laura Ashley outlet store and transform my tedious room into a lovely vintage style.

Anyway, I´m moving back to my lovely home in Malaysia, I can´t ship Laura Ashley back. I leave it for my child(ren), they will do the job for me.

Back to the reality, I got something reasonable to save my crackled, sore feet. I have never done anything on top of this problem, until the day in Germany, it got so serious that my whole feet cracked even my toes cracked. Plus the non-stop walking tour, the soreness was inexplicable.

I was lucky enough to pack a sample size Mavala foot gel into my cosmetic purse, I rubbed it to my feet, it was amazingly refreshing, curing my soreness in a night, and it dry in second that I could walk on carpet without stickiness or adhering dirt to my feet.

However, my feet cracked so serious that using only foot gel has merely no effect on it.



As soon as we back from the first trip, we went to the outlet mall I bought a normal size of Mavala foot gel and a hard skin remover. After 2-3times hard skin removal, and various times of foot gel and lotion application, it resume a smooth texture. With a pair of smooth feet, I dare to use  it to smooth my partner hair, and play a silly phone game with him (shaking my foot right beside his ear and ask him to pick it up, XDDDDD)!!

I though I would post some culinary work on my last page of UK life, but shopping filled our time, and cooking was aimed to clear our stock, so it wasn´t that yummy.I´m looking forward to my new page of life in Malaysia now, so kicking the old UK life away with my foot gel post!