Fat Man Dreaming

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Here is a list of super tasty foods that will wake up your metabolism and help you flush fat out of your system.

1) Citrus Fruits

Citrus fruits like, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, and limes contain high concentrations of Vitamin C (this is also called ascorbic acid). This Vitamin C has a fat burning quality.

Vitamin C reduces the effectiveness of fat. It reduces its content and can liquefy or dilute fat. By diluting the fat, it makes it less effective, and easier to flush out of your system. Vitamin C also works on cholesterol deposits. Vitamin C can help burn out the cholesterol, hence, making it difficult for cholesterol deposits to form in blood vessels.

By adding Citrus Fruits to your daily diet, try every meal and also a snack, you will great increase your metabolism, increase your ability to get rid of fat, and also help you to control your cholesterol levels.

2) Soy beans

Soy beans contain lecithin, this chemical will shield your cells from accumulating fat. This chemical prevents, like a shield, fat from forming on your cells. It will also break down fatty deposits in your body.

Eat soy beans at least 3 times a week and you’ll be boosting your bodies ability to get rid of fat. You can find soy beans in most health food stores.

3) Apples, Berries, Fresh Fruit

Apples contain a chemical call pectin. This chemical is found in most berries, and fresh fruit. The pectin is in the cell walls of most fruits, especially apples.

Pectin limits the amount of fat your cells can absorb. This will put a natural limitation on the amount of fat your cells can absorb. Pectin, once in your system, has a water binding property, it absorbs watery substances, and these watery substances in turn bombards the cells and makes it release fat deposits.

Add apple sauce (it’s loaded with pectin), apples, fresh fruit and berries, to your diet and let the power of pectin pulverize the fat that accumulates on your cells. An apple a day can help keep the fat away.

This is one of the hottest topics on the net for  past few weeks, started to trend before the Ramadan had started. Both Muslim and Non Muslim fitness experts are sharing their thoughts and believes, what and how one should go about this month for staying fit.

One of the biggest misconceptions amongst the muslims specially who dont workout is that they loose weight during this holy month. What they dont understand is that when they conclude their fast (Dusk time), they usually fill themselves up so much and get sooo lazy that it takes them around 15 minutes to muster up the courage to offer Maghrib Prayer(Evening Prayer), and that kind of eating is no way healthy in fact you will gain more weight that in any month of the calender because after that Iftar (1st meal after fast concludes) you dont do much to burn those calories you just gained from a very carb rich meal. 

Now being a Musilm and a recovering obese, it always concerns me every year what will happen when Ramadan starts. I will definitely get side tracked, let the whole month go by, because lets face it this month is about spending time pleasing and remembering your lord (Allah) as much as possible and not worrying about physical fitness. A healthy body will definitely help you with your prayers, but adopting a physically demanding fitness program on top of fasting and late night prayers is invitation to a train wreck. 

Now how do we take care or both , Ramadan necessities with a healthy life style?!?!?!?!

Did a lot of googleing and blog reading with similar discussions, and adopted a plan which is working okay uptill now, since its only 6th of Ramadan, cant say that I am seeing any results, but sure feel good and throughout the day. 

The Food Plan

What food plan? You’re fasting, right? There’s just one problem – you’re fasting. Slower metabolism. And then at night, you’re eating more than what you normally would to make it back up. And, since we’re in Ramadan, every variation of samosa, pakora and bakhlava is served before and after the main course, every night. And then to add insult to injury, you eat again after taraweeh, and then go to sleep. 

Basically you are doing everything wrong diet wise.

For those of you eating indiscriminately throughout the year, let’s not talk at all about food quality, and let’s focus solely on quantity. You know best-tasting foods will be placed in front of you everyday, you know you won’t resist it, and you know if you try to discriminate and eat one item and not another, someone will harass you about it.

Go ahead and eat a little bit of everything, but make sure the quantity stays low, meaning, take slow measured bites, and keep checking if you have that gnawing feeling in your stomach you had earlier when you were fasting, If it goes away, stop eating immediately and save the rest of your food for later.  Snack a little on dessert, and you’re done, have some tea, and eat just a little bit after taraweeh.

Make sure you have suhoor in the morning(breakfast right before the Fast starts) , and make sure it’s simply a normal sized meal, and don’t worry about stuffing yourself for the day – it doesn’t work, do make sure you’re well-hydrated, though.

Training Regimen

Before we talk about what to do, let’s talk when you do it, and why.It completely depends what kind of excursion you are willing to take 2 to 3 times a week (one shouldn’t aim more than 3 days during Ramadan).  Work out one hour prior to breaking the fast if your looking for muscle maintenance because the body is primed and ready for more carbohydrate consumption (from starchy sources). There’s debate as to whether working out in a fasted state is good or bad for the protein synthesis (meaning muscle loss), but I consider it irrelevant, one way or another.

I say this because the proposal of working out after taraweeh prayers is just a tad impractical – , ’Isha prayer starts at 9:30pm approximately, so you’re looking at 11pm before you get out of the masjid, and 1am in the morning is around when your work, shower, and post-workout meal are completed and consumed and then you can wake up for suhoor at…4am, just 3 hours later. As it turns out, studies also show inadequate sleep is also harmful for muscle-protein synthesis and fat loss. I would guess most people would not handle that beyond 2 – 3 days tops before crashing and burning.

Those who want to really focus on fat burning via HIIT or any kind of interval training, they should not workout during the fasts at any cost. The best time for such workouts in Ramadan is 30 minutes after your have your iftar. You eat carb rich and sweet food after a long fast, sugar levels are sky rocketing which you need for energy required for gruesome HIIT workout. This will help you to stay active and energised for rest of the evening, gives you a big boost for the late night prayers (taraweeh), will not feel lazy at all.

Hope you all have success with this plan, and if you want to add more useful tips please do drop your comments below.

References:

http://www.muslimmatters.org

http://www.nickmitchellblog.com

Hye everyone! I know been kinda lazy with my posts for past few weeks, heck all I have done is share some links from a website and thats it. Well you see my work is related to tourism Industry and things been really busy since this is a peak season for holidays. Any hooo just wanted to discuss some nutritional stuff in this post.

The thing is I have grown very much fond of Circuit based training (Every one knows that by now if you have been following my posts) , shuffle my workouts between TABATA, BURST and SURGE training and loving the results. But never really focused on the nutritional needs that brings out the best result from Circuit training. So I googled and found some info which I have implemented on my diet for past week, the results cannot be assessed since its been only a week, but have a good feeling that its gonna speed up the process of me reaching my target weight.

Below is what I am focusing on since last Friday on my workout days:

• High Protein Meal 2-3 hours before the workout.(chicken with spinach or Fish)
• Carb Rich snack about 20-30 minutes prior to your workout such as a slice of toast an apple or a banana smoothie, to boost your sugar levels for energy required during the rigorous Circuit Training.
• Make low fat chocolate milk your post workout drink, for some boring reason “that I ddidnt feel like researching upon” it is the new best thing you can do to your body after your workout. I’ll have to do some googling and will get back to you on this, probably has to do with the same point that I mentioned below.
• Protein and carbs are needed after a workout to help repair muscles, replenish the body’s glycogen stores and prevent muscle soreness. so after workout consume a regular meal with an adequate proportions of carbs and Protein with in 2 hours window post workout. Also do consume a lot of water. 

I still didnt get why I need a pre workout meal 2 hours prior, I mean it wasnt worth mentioning since your bound to have your meal at least 3 hours prior to any workout. But I saw I read and I typed it exactly as it was in this other article.

Leave your comments if you got any better ideas or see something you dont agree with as I am no expert or a certified nutritionist.