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Monday, October 12, 2015

Ineffective Practice that Stop You from Reducing Weight

In my 26 years experience so far, I only seen people who want to lose weight and no one is fine with being overweight or just being chubby. Even those who are considered average or thin also talk about losing weight… Of course, we are not going to cover losing weight for those who are thin here.

You may notice many new idea of losing weights. This include suggestion to consume certain foods frequently to lose weights. Scientifically proven or not, there is no way to verify that especially if you are only hearing it from the internet. There are also all sorts of products in the market that emphasis on fruits detox that helps to lose fats and eliminate toxins in the body to achieve slimming down with very little efforts. At most, you only need to consume food to lose weight.

These are the method that we should not consider regardless of their effectiveness of eliminating your body fats to make your body thinner. Losing weights should not be something that target to get thinner as the end result. It’s also to improve your overall health and improve the functionality of your body system. So my main target would be the conventional method that is proven to be effective,

But being effective is not the main and only concern. There are ways that are effective but we still need to consider the impact.

You probably thought of exercise by now. Yes, exercise is definitely a proven way to lose weights. There are unlimited amount of people who lose weights through exercise since ages ago until now and we don’t need more real life example and theory to support this fact. As I’m also one of them who go from L size shirt back to S size.

Despite many people able to lose weights through exercise, there are also many people who could not lose weight even though they have been doing regular exercise since long time ago. This is one of the main point that I'm talk about, and that’s what known as “Ineffective ways of losing weights”. Or simply, you are losing weights the wrong way.

These are the “proven” method that people attempted and able to achieve the end result of losing weights. But as a matter of fact, there are still people who are unable to lose weights effectively using the proven method below.

To avoid leading to some misconceptions about losing weights, I have to emphasis on this one huge myth:

Exercise IS NOT an absolute method for losing weight

You may or may not realize, whenever scientist and health consultants talk about losing weight in the healthy way, if they are not selling any health products, the main topics they will focus on is “Exercise”. But let me make it clear: Exercise is not the method of losing weights. It’s a side benefits that you might or might not get. So it’s not a certain thing that you could achieve.

The reason why I have to emphasize on this is because I’ve been hearing a misconception all the time and people are absolutely certain about it: people who attempted to lose weight tried exercising for a long period of time but there is no sign of reducing in weights, or seems to bring any differences at all compare to without any exercise. So exercising is not effective at all or it could be genetic problem and physical issue, exercise is just not for them.

The purpose of exercise has actually nothing to do with losing weight in the first place, it’s an activity to improve your overall health and make your body active. Sense any points about slimming down or losing weights? Nope and it shouldn’t be. This is why I need you to stop thinking that exercise is the way to lose weights..

If your main focus is just losing weights, you need to think deeper and smarter. You can achieve losing weights in exercise but you need to know exactly how. Don’t follow the so-call proven method and expect it to work because its work for other people. What I will provide below is the things that you need to know and avoid to involve in ineffective weight loss behavior during your weight loss planning.

List of Proven Weight Loss Method that Could Failed

1. Execise

At the very least, as long as you move your body, you are consider exercising. This could be the most basic reasons why misconception on exercising would eventually lead to weight loss occur.

There are wide range of activities that consider as exercise. This include warm up, slow dance, yoga, walking, simple sports, casual workout, tough workout, and extreme workout. As you might have guessed it, the hardest exercise is the one that burn most fats in your body and achieve weight loss effectively.

But you may ask: I do sports for 5 - 7 times a week and I always sweat a lot. But I’m not having any weight loss! Is that mean weight loss is not for me? Well, if you watched “The Biggest Loser” before, you should know that there are a lot of people who are oversized but after going through some hellish training and workout, they eventually got slimmed down. So the key point here is not how frequent you do exercise, is how right you do it.

There are few ways that turn your exercise into nothing:
  1. Low volume/period exercise: The type of exercise that doesn't push yourself to the limit. Or rather, you are stopping your self from going further when you only feel slightly tired or doesn't feel like performing more.
  2. Partial body exercise: You only perform exercise on certain part of the body, such as only hand or abdominal.
  3. Once-in-a-blue-moon exercise: You may or may not perform tough workout but you are only doing it like once in a week or a month.
On side note, there are people who had genetic or physical problem that results in gaining weights easily and harder to slim down. But this only means requiring more effort to achieve weight loss, but not impossible.

2. Skipping Meals

While there are facts stated that if you skip meal, you tend to consume more food on your next meal. So in the end, it make no difference whether you are skipping meal or not because you are going to eat more later on.

But skipping meal is able to achieve weight loss because when your stomach is hungry, your digestion will start consuming your own body nutrition like an untamed beast that eat its own part due to starvation. As it consume the nutrition in your body, you lose nutrients and eventually achieve weight loss.

Later on at the next meal, you might eat more but there is always a limit to how much you can eat in one meal. Which means, if you are able to consume a bowl of rice, 200 grams of meats and a cup of veggie in one meal, skipping a meal and eating more later on doesn’t mean you will consume two bowls of rice, 400 grams of meats and two cup of veggie. You probably only eat one and half bowl of rice, extra few more meat pieces and few more grams of veggie. So skipping a meal actually able to achieve weight loss.

However, just in case I have not mention it, this post is talking about healthy method to achieve weight loss. Even if I didn’t provide you the impression that I am, I don’t encourage dangerous diet that could cause your life.

Remember the untamed beast that eat up whatever nutritions in your body? We usually call them “hungry” when it’s growl, or we call them starvation. Realize how starvation is one of the top death toll around the world? Just because we live in a place with lots of food and you are consuming food every day doesn’t mean you are totally free from this chaos.

While skipping a meal or two won’t make you feel anything, skipping meals means not consuming sufficient food and nutritions to support your body function and losing nutritions because of the “beast” inside your stomach.

You may not face any fatal illness immediately but all sort of stomach & digestion related illnesses will happen at the matter of time and it will cause serious impact to your entire life. You might not like to know this but, do not risk this because when serious illness happen in your body due to lack of proper food consuming, you probably not achieving any weight loss at all. So it’s not worth taking risk at all.

3. Detox

If you are following the general method of detox of consuming healthy drinks and food, or consuming supplements to detoxify your body, you may have notice improvement in your overall health. But since we are talking about weight loss, as many detox method promise better health and at the same achieving weight loss, how much you actually know about weight loss in detox? Honestly, I do not know the inner details of how detox work inside human body to achieve weight loss. But I do know that detox has a strong relation with your usual diet.

As detox is a process of “flushing out” the toxins in your body, your body will eventually get better and better depending on what type of detox method you use as long as you are doing it right.

But what people usually done wrong is forgetting that their body is not a garbage disposal. When you clear out toxins from the inside of your body, don’t consume other type of toxins and expect that the detox will still be effective because you are still practicing your particular detox method. In other words, in your process of detox, you need to ensure clean food consumption without consuming foods that have lots of oil and bad fats that put burden into your body. As detox is just a method to flush toxins, not something that build long term resistance to toxins inside your body.

So when you consume more unhealthy food, detox actually doesn’t work well to filter out all those toxins that you are consuming time by time. You might or might not feel any significance in your weight loss plan, but lack of control in food diet contribute to defeating the purpose of detox in the first place.

4. Compensation Eating

The terms “cheat day” is when you are carrying out your planned diet and suddenly you decided to hack it by consuming foods that are listed in your forbidden list. Compensation eating actually referring to a worse situation than cheat days, it’s a type of mindset that think having few days of “healthy” food, it’s fine to consume unhealthy food.

While I don’t totally against this idea as I’m doing that sometimes. Compensation eating will lead you to consuming unhealthy food in a regular basis. The problem is you don’t realize it as a problem because you thought to yourself that you are consuming healthy food regularly. As a matter of fact, yes you are consuming healthy food regularly, and you are also consuming unhealthy food regularly.

And again, what’s the problem with that? Consuming healthy food doesn’t eliminate unhealthy food or toxins inside your body because there is no dual core or any high end technology to filter out bad stuff inside your stomach. Your digestion system simply digest anything that you ate.

While eating healthy food provide good nutritions to your body, the bad nutritions in unhealthy food will also be consumed when your digestion system receive it. And the good nutritions from those healthy foods have nothing to do with dealing with those bad food consumption. So consuming unhealthy food basically just means you are being unhealthy, it has nothing to do how healthy you are on a regular basis.

This is why, as you consume more unhealthy food, you are consuming more bad nutritions which might include oil and bad fats that contribute to weight gains.

And so, the Effective Weight Loss

To achieve effective weight loss, you can obtain unlimited method over the internet. But personally, I only prefer to focus on the most basic and simple method without any extra thoughts and planning that work.

Exercise is definitely a must. But if we are talking about weight loss, we don’t want exercise or workout that only make you sweats. And moreover, we don’t want exercise that is relax and easy like light sports and exercise that involve litle movement of your body If you want to focus on losing weights, weight is definitely an issue for you. So simple and relaxing exercise only make you think that exercise is not for you. We want effective and tough workout that involve the movement of your body in overall such as burpee. This will definitely be tough but going through tough workout means achieving much effective workout that you will refer to training later on. And I suggest that you take greed to another level as weight loss is no longer a target, you want to fit and strong body.

The next big thing would be food control and diet. Without this, any effective and extreme workout tend to failed terribly. In Malaysia, it’s hard to find any food that is completely healthy and free from any bad nutrition unless you cook it yourself and you ensure that you don’t add any extra oil and food that could result in a bad diet. Nevertheless, food industry only get more and more creative and bringing in all sorts of attractive foods from other places. You may stop yourself from consuming them once in awhile, but it’s not practical not to consume anything out there anyhow.

This is where the food control and diet play the important role in your food consumption. My main point in this post is not to totally eliminate “unhealthy” food. With moderate control and practice, you are allow to take the delicious yet sinful food down to your stomach but my advice is you need to know how much you suppose to take and when you should not go for it. If you have fried chicken for lunch, don’t take it during dinner just because you have the option to order that. Best if you avoid it for the week. Absolute unhealthy food elimination would drown yourself in depression unless you have the absolute mind to achieve that.

Last but not least, a healthy mindset is a must. You have to be willingly to think in a positive manner and always tell yourself that you want to be healthy. Don’t let whatever bad habits get into your life just because they are there so you tell yourself it’s your fate that you are oversized and no matter how much effort you spent, you are not going to lose any weight at all.

I seen people who serious about losing weight achieved that with extra efforts and determination. Meanwhile, I also witness people who put little effort and hope that weight loss could happen but as expected, it doesn’t. So they choose to give it up. Which one do you want to be then?
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Saturday, September 5, 2015

Nutrition Truth behind Subway’s Health Benefits


I’m a huge fans when comes to Subway. I’m invested in quite a lot in Subway and it became a habit for me to take Subway as my breakfast to the extend that if I don’t, I don’t know what else I can have for breakfast as regular bread are just too tasteless.

Most of the health benefits as promoted by Subways and from what we can see are true and there is no need to doubt it. Just that I encourage you to look at things a little different and ask yourself, if you consider Subway as a healthy meal, are you eating it right?

Just as many things have a limit and border, can you ensure that your Subway meal is 100% healthy? Why not? The moment you add any mayo, thousand island, honey mustard or just some ketchup on it, your Subway can no longer be labelled as “healthy”. Sure, your vege and stuff have nutrition and there’s no need to doubt on that. But your sauce had turn a 100% healthy meal to more than 50% unhealthy + less than 50% healthy food.

It’s also questionable on how “healthy” for the amount of green vege you added into your meal without the bad sauce I mentioned earlier.

First: understand the foundation of available nutrition in a single meal

Let’s look at a general view on how much nutrition you actually get from a typical veggie subway meal. Assume we ask for all vege with a presumed amount in grams, units, slices or the relevant measurable amount, without any meat and sauce. Just the veggie and white bread (any type).

1. White bread, 6 inches long (71 grams)

Total Fat 2.5g Sodium 340mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium -
Vitamin A 0 IU Total carbohydrate 38g
Vitamin B6 - Protein 7g
Vitamin B12 - Calcium 40g
Vitamin C 4.8mg Iron 1.8mg
Vitamin D - Folate -
Vitamin E - Magnesium -
Vitamin K - Zinc -

2. Lettuce, 1 cup (36 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 10.1mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 69.8mg
Vitamin A 2665 IU Total carbohydrate 1g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0.5g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 13mg
Vitamin C 6.5mg Iron 0.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 13.7mcg
Vitamin E 0.1mg Magnesium 4.7mg
Vitamin K 62.5mcg Zinc 0.1mg

3. Red Tomatoes, 3 small slices (45 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 2.4mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 106.8mg
Vitamin A 375 IU Total carbohydrate 1.9mg
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 4.5mg
Vitamin C 5.7mg Iron 0mcg
Vitamin D - Folate 6.6mcg
Vitamin E 0.3mg Magnesium 5.1mg
Vitamin K 3.6mcg Zinc 0mg

4. Cucumber, 3 slices (28 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 0.6mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 41.2mg
Vitamin A 29.4 IU Total carbohydrate 1g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0.2g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 4.5mg
Vitamin C 0.8mg Iron 0.1mg
Vitamin D - Folate 2mcg
Vitamin E 0mg Magnesium 3.6mg
Vitamin K 4.6mcg Zinc 0.1mg

5. Pickles, 3 slices (21 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 253.8mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 4.8mg
Vitamin A 40.2 IU Total carbohydrate 0.6g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 0mg
Vitamin C 0.3mg Iron 0mg
Vitamin D - Folate 0.3mcg
Vitamin E 0mg Magnesium 0.9mg
Vitamin K 9.9mcg Zinc 0mg

6. Onion, 3 to 5 thin slices (9 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 0.4mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 13.1mg
Vitamin A 0.2 IU Total carbohydrate 0.8g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0.1g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 2.1g
Vitamin C 0.7mg Iron 0mg
Vitamin D - Folate 1.7mcg
Vitamin E 0mg Magnesium 0.9mg
Vitamin K 0mcg Zinc 0mg

7. Green Pepper, 2 to 3 thin slices (9 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 0.3mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 16.2mg
Vitamin A 34.2 IU Total carbohydrate 0.4g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0.1g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 0.9mg
Vitamin C 7.4mg Iron 0mg
Vitamin D - Folate 0.9mcg
Vitamin E 0mg Magnesium 0.9mg
Vitamin K 0.7mcg Zinc 0mg

8. Olives, 3 units (6 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 116.7mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 3mg
Vitamin A 29.4 IU Total carbohydrate 0.3g
Vitamin B6 0mg Protein 0g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 3.9mg
Vitamin C 0mg Iron 0mg
Vitamin D - Folate 0.3mcg
Vitamin E 0.3mg Magnesium 0.9mg
Vitamin K 0mcg Zinc 0mg

9. Jalapeno, 2 to 3 units (7 grams)

Total Fat 0g Sodium 0.1mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 15mg
Vitamin A 56IU Total carbohydrate 0.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 0.1g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 0.7mg
Vitamin C 3.1mg Iron 0.1mg
Vitamin D - Folate 3.3mcg
Vitamin E 0.1mg Magnesium 1.4mg
Vitamin K 0.7mcg Zinc 0mg

(Note: Above nutrition information is obtained from SELF Nutrition Data and it's based on estimated grams/units as labeled above)

And here is the cumulative total amount of nutrition of each type for the combination of above ingredients.
Total Fat 2.5g Sodium 724.4mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3229.4 IU Total carbohydrate 44.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 8.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 69.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg

Nutrition highlighted in blue means providing good nutritional value for your daily needs. And nutrition that is highlighted in red means providing too little amount or consider too much which is quite bad in any way comparing with the total amount of nutrition you need in a day. Here is some brief explanation on the nutrition info according to the figure above.
For those that are not highlighted with red or blue, it means the nutrition value is considered safe to consumed for a single meal.

  1. Vitamin A (3229.4 IU): Vitamin for the eyes and immune system. Above 3000 IU for a single meal is considered a lot and thus, it's not difficult to fill up your daily needs of Vitamin A after this meal.
  2. Vitamin C (29.3mg): Vitamin C is usually available in fruits and certain vegetables, so it's not easily available in our usual meal if you don't go for fruits often. The amount of Vitamin C in this meal is quite high and able to provide you good amount of Vitamin C if you don't take too much of food with vitamin C.
  3. Sodium (724.4mg): Sodium is a form of salt. As you probably know, Malaysian food has usually high amount of salt so we can get sodium in many foods despite we want to take it or not so we always need to limit it. A sodium nutrition value of more than 700 is approximately 30% of the total amount of sodium you need in total. If you consume more meats or other foods with high sodium during your lunch or dinner, it's very easy to exceed your daily nutrition needs for sodium.
  4. Potassium (269.9mg): Potassium is a form of water. It's an important nutrition for our heart and most of our body system. We need to have approximately 3000 to 3500 mg a day to make sure our body system get enough potassium. This is why approximately 269.9 mg of potassium is too little despite having a multi-vitamin meal of many different food type, and you can't call it a balance meal.
  5. Calcium (69.6mg): Calcium is a type of nutrition for bone and body in overall. Many sources suggested an average of 1000 mg of calcium to be consumed in a day. But the average amount of calcium you can get for this meal is only 69.6 mg. And the bread only providing 40 mg of calcium. You need far more than this amount of calcium to achieve a healthy daily calcium intake.
  6. Folate (28.8mcg): Folate is a type of nutrition for our body cell. Various sources suggested an average of 400 mcg of folate to be consumed in a day. Taking less than 30 mcg in a meal got you really far away from 400 mcg of folate in a day.
  7. Magnesium (18.7mg): Magnesium plays many important roles in our body, in short it give us the energy we need and a healthier body in overall. Just like folate, people usually required average of 400 mg of magnesium to keep the body health optimized. An average of less than 20 mg in a meal give us very little health benefits.
  8. Zinc (0.2mg): Zinc is another important nutrition to regulate immune system and body recovery. Average necessary amount of zinc in a day is about 11 to 15 mg. Getting 0.2 mg in this meal is, obviously, too little and far away from 10 mg.
  9. Vitamin E (0.8mg): Vitamin E is required to prevent and fight disease, as well as providing better immune system. Average daily intake for vitamin E is between 15 to 30 mg. So less than 1 mg in a meal is too little.

Each individual has different needs of total nutrition value of each nutrition type in a day. To find out more about the average daily intake for each nutrition type, you can refer to a general average daily intake for most people in Reference Values for Nutrition Labeling by Netrition or calculate your own recommended daily intake here.

Second: Add additional nutrition value according to your chosen menu

Now we are going to add more value into the defined nutrition above according to the type of menu you chose. I'm going to use the bread and veggie above as a foundation and add the extra nutrition right into what we have.

Just a side note for this additional info. Some people do not want cheese added into their meal, so I excluded one slice of cheddar cheese as they will usually put into the bread. If you are adding one slice of cheddar cheese, you can add the following significant nutrition value into your meal.

  • Cheddar cheese (1 slice, 28g)
    • Protein: 7g
    • Sodium: 174mg
    • Potassium: 27.4mg
    • Calcium: 202mg
    • Vitamin A: 281 IU


Disclaimer: The nutrition values provided for each type of meal below are based on estimation and it's not the actual nutrition value as served in any Subway's outlet. It's solely for reference purpose and some of the nutrition values are incomplete.

Steak & Cheese (340g)

Total Fat 35.8g Sodium 1886.4mg
Cholesterol 79mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3829.4 IU Total carbohydrate 113.2g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 56.2g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 339.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg


Chicken Terriyaki (279g)

Total Fat 6.5g Sodium 1634.4mg
Cholesterol 51mg Potassium 507.9mg
Vitamin A 3275.4 IU Total carbohydrate 104.1g
Vitamin B6 0.5mg Protein 34.3g
Vitamin B12 0.4mcg Calcium 79.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 35.8mcg
Vitamin E 1mg Magnesium 41.7mg
Vitamin K 84.4mcg Zinc 1.4mg


Meatball Marinara (139g)

Total Fat 18.5g Sodium 1364.4mg
Cholesterol 30mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3229.4 IU Total carbohydrate 60.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 21.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 69.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg


Seafood & Crab (71g)

Total Fat 19.5g Sodium 1144.4mg
Cholesterol 20mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3229.4 IU Total carbohydrate 51.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 13.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 69.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg


Tuna (74g)

Total Fat 25.5g Sodium 724.4mg
Cholesterol 40mg Potassium 552.9mg
Vitamin A 3242.7 IU Total carbohydrate 44.5g
Vitamin B6 0.5mg Protein 20.3g
Vitamin B12 1.9mcg Calcium 73.0mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.9mg
Vitamin D - Folate 33.1mcg
Vitamin E 2.8mg Magnesium 47.6mg
Vitamin K 87.9mcg Zinc 0.6mg


Chicken Slice (112g)

Total Fat 2.9g Sodium 1940.4mg
Cholesterol 40mg Potassium 345.1mg
Vitamin A 3229.4 IU Total carbohydrate 46.4g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 27.1g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 75.4mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.7mg
Vitamin D - Folate 30.0mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 28.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.6mg


Roasted Chicken (236g)

Total Fat 7.5g Sodium 1724.4mg
Cholesterol 45mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3529.4 IU Total carbohydrate 91.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 31.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 129.6mg
Vitamin C 50.3mg Iron 7.7mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg


Roast Beef (222g)

Total Fat 7.5g Sodium 1624.4mg
Cholesterol 20mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3529.4 IU Total carbohydrate 89.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 27.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 129.6mg
Vitamin C 50.3mg Iron 8.6mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg


Turkey Breast (71g)

Total Fat 2.5g Sodium 724.4mg
Cholesterol 0mg Potassium 269.9mg
Vitamin A 3229.4 IU Total carbohydrate 44.5g
Vitamin B6 0.1mg Protein 8.3g
Vitamin B12 0mcg Calcium 69.6mg
Vitamin C 29.3mg Iron 2.3mg
Vitamin D - Folate 28.8mcg
Vitamin E 0.8mg Magnesium 18.7mg
Vitamin K 82mcg Zinc 0.2mg



So you have decided on the menu right? Now you got the total estimated nutrition value that you will consumed as you swallow your Subway's meal.

Third: Check if you are getting enough for your daily needs

All of us need to know how much we need to consume for each type of nutrition to ensure we are getting enough to maintain our body system and keep us healthy.

As mentioned above, you can refer to a general average daily intake for most people in Reference Values for Nutrition Labeling by Netrition or calculate your own recommended daily intake here.

Now you got yourself the daily intake for your nutritions and the amount of nutrition provided by the Subway's meal that you chosen. Next, you need to get yourself a piece of paper or open a spreadsheet to compare and check if you are getting enough nutrition from your Subway meal.

Here is a demonstration of how I compare the daily intake and amount of nutrition available in a Subway meal. I will be using the general average daily intake for people who need to consume 2000 calories as provided here. I will divide the total of each nutrition amount by three to assume that I'm taking 3 meals a day. And then, I will insert the nutrition value for one type of Subway's meal above to check if I'm getting enough nutrition for a single meal. In this case, I will use Chicken Slice as my meal.

Nutrition Type Daily intake (One meal) Nutrition for Chicken Slice
Total Fat 21.7g 2.9g
Cholesterol 100mg 40mg
Vitamin A 1666.7IU 3229.4IU
Vitamin B6 0.7mg 0.1mg
Vitamin B12 2mcg 0mcg
Vitamin C 20mg 29.3mg
Vitamin D 133.4IU -
Vitamin E 10IU 0.8mg
Vitamin K 26.7mcg 82mcg
Sodium 800mg 1940.4mg
Potassium 1166.7mg 345.1mg
Total Carb. 100g 46.4g
Protein 16.7g 27.1g
Calcium 333.4mg 75.4mg
Iron 6mg 2.7mg
Folate 133.4mcg 30mcg
Magnesium 133.4mg 28.7mg
Zinc 5mg 0.6mg

Here is a brieft explanation of the highlighted nutrition info above:
  1. Cholesterol/Vitamin A/Vitamin C:

    Cholesterol is a nutrition that you need to limit because you have a high chance exposing to food with high cholesterol in many places. So a low amount of cholesterol in your meal means you have lower chances to exceed the limit of cholesterol in a daily basis. Same goes to Vitamin C. It's a good nutrition but it's dangerous when you have too much of vitamin C intake.

  2. Vitamin K/Sodium/Protein:

    These amount exceed the required intake for a meal. If we assume 2100mg of Sodium to be consumed as a daily basis, the above Sodium level in one Chicken Slice subway meal had almost reach the amount you needed for a day. Same goes for Protein as a good nutrition if you have a proper intake level.

  3. Vitamin B6/Vitamin B12/Potassium/Total Carb/Calcium/Iron/Folate/Magnesium/Zinc:

    These are the nutrition that have too little intake for a single meal. Some of the foods during your lunch and dinner probably have much higher nutrient to compensate the small amount of nutrition value above, but consider some of the massive gap for some of the nutrition like Potassium, Carb, and Magnesium, they are very important to our body and a Chicken Slice subway meal only able to provide very little of nutrition value so it's not consider a good choice for a breakfast.


Fourth: Adding sauce.... NOT!

Adding some sauce make the Subway meal a huge differences comparing to not adding any sauce at all. I don't have any nutrition info about the sauce because the method to produce the sauce vary depending on all places, and there is no info about what brand of sauce Subway is using.

However, it is not recommended to add any sauce at all, if possible. Sauce definitely make your Subway meal a lot tastier, but so far there isn't any sauce that is consider healthy enough, or beneficial to your body if you are considering a healthy Subway meal.

No matter which sauce, and no matter what ingredients are used in producing the sauce, it contain certain level of fats and cream that, usually, has high amount of cholesterol and bad fats. Once consumed, it's not easy to detox your body to flush them out of your body and it's fattening effect could be worst that the fats contain in meats that are cooked in unhealthy method.

In Summary

Based on the info above, we can think of the nutrition info in few ways.

As a way of measuring if you are getting sufficient or too much of nutrition in a daily basis, you can use the average daily nutrition intake as a benchmark. Not only that you need to use the nutrition value according to your chosen Subway menu above for calculation, you also need to consider the food consumption for the rest of the day. If you took too much of Vitamin A in one Subway meal, try to limit food that has good amount of Vitamin A such as tomato and carrot.

On the other hand, despite some of the nutrition value is consider very high in a single Subway meal, there are lots of nutrition that has too little value and it's difficult to consider them in your balance meal plan. You can measure this by considering 3 main meals and 1 or 2 light meals/snacks in a day. Due to the reason that some of the nutrition has really high value, it's not recommended to consider it to be your light meal/snack. But if you consider it as your main meal, you are lacking lots of important nutrition such as Vitamin B, Magnecium, and Calcium. You can still get them from other meals, but you need extra consideration in order to achieve the proper daily nutrition intake.

Planning and measurement to ensure that you are getting sufficient nutrition and avoiding or limiting overdose of nutrition could be troublesome and require lots of time to identify food that could make up on the nutrition that is insufficient in your Subway meal and certain nutrition that you need to avoid could be troublesome at first, but the end result is that you are able to get balance diet and optimize your body system so that you can perform your best in your daily activity.
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Monday, February 2, 2015

Sugar Craving/Addiction: What to do?

The moment you had sugar craving/addiction, is the moment you knew you had a high sugar intake level, you wish to stop or reduce it but you know that you wish to take something sweet now. That's really annoying because it's a trade off between health and taste.

Sugar is a part of our body needs. However, following my previous post about why you should avoid sugar at all cost, I had mentioned that we don't need to take extra sugar because most of our food contain of sugar. You have a high chance of consuming sugar whenever you eat. So, it's not necessary to take in extra sugar because that is no longer a need, but an addiction.

Understanding that we don't need to consume extra sugar as it will only turned into a component that do more bad than good in our body, there are still time when we crave for sugar all of a sudden. And it's not like the craving will go off really soon. Therefore, we need to take extra step to stop ourself from the sugar trap.

Before we talk about avoiding sugar at all, here is a good news: you can get sweetness from fruits. Fruits are source of natural sugar, provided that you eat it raw, which means not getting it from canned, dried fruit snack, bottle fruit juice, or any other processed method. So to fight sugar craving, always remember to fill your fridge with your favorite fruits and when sugar craving hits you, get the sweetness from the fridge.

But what to do if you are at outside or in any circumstances that you can't reach any hea;thy fruits? This is something that can't be helped, but you can fight sugar craving with water. Water is the purest drinks in this world. It has unlimited benefits that we can't describe all within 10,000 words. When sugar craving hits you, you can drink lots of water until you don't feel like eating or drinking anything. Soon, sugar craving will go away. It's best if you can take cold water to fight sugar craving. But usually it's better to take warm water thou.

But hey, plain water is tasteless, how do it help to sugar craving? Remember, we are talking about addiction here. There is no sweet way for you to handle it and let it go away while take your time to enjoy some sweetness. You need to force it to go away. Which means forcing yourself to drink water instead of trying to take something sweet.

Sugar craving is the addiction that happen at your tongue and throats. That's where the sugar craving come from. And it's an endless hole that you can't stop by filling in sugar whenever you feel like it.
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Monday, January 26, 2015

Why You Should Avoid Sugar At All Cost

Of course I'm not talking about putting a spoon of white sugar into your mouth and swallow it. Lots of foods are contain of sugar as you know. Perhaps I make it more clear on the type of foods that you will absorb sugar into your body as you consume them.
  • Sweets/Candy
  • Chocolate
  • Ice cream
  • Flavored Drinks (Canned/Bottled fruit juice/tea, soft drinks, Chatime, Mamak Teh, etc)
  • Cake
  • Bread with cream
  • Honey
  • Sweetener(For coffee or other drinks)
  • Biscuit/Cookies
  • Sauces/Gravy (Such as pasta gravy, adding extra sauce for cooking food)
  • Junk Food

You might wonder, are those foods & drinks with the label "sugar free" counted in the list above? I say yes. I don't have any specific information if there is any pieces of sugar in it but it's better you avoid rather than risking it.

Before I talk about why you should avoid sugar at all cost, here's something you need to know or you already know: Sugar is essential for our body. It's not something that you must eliminate at all cost because sugar do all harm to our body and the only benefits is, we feel better and more enjoy on the food we consume. However, I still say you should avoid at all cost because you will consume extra sugar anyway.

You face the risks of consuming extra sugar if we take outside food often. You see, can you find any restaurant, cafe or food out there that are tasteless but they ensure you it's healthy? Such business idea probably exist but couldn't last because people want food that has lots of taste. As you consume food out there (as long as not self-prepared and ensure no single piece of sugar is added), sugar will be part of the food that you consumed. That's how you consume sugar without realizing it.

There is one thing for commoners like you and me MUST know. Our body can only accept approximately 40 grams of sugar on a daily basis, which is like 9 teaspoon of sugar. Sounds like shouldn't be easy to exceed the limit? It's actually the other way round: too easy to exceed the limit, under the condition that you don't realize it.

Look at the list of food above, how hard for you to consume any of it? The moment you recall consuming it recently, you are consuming unmeasurable amount of sugar into your body. The more variety of food you consume from the list above, the higher sugar amount you had consumed. As you may know, the food above are sugar with high sugar. How high is high? How much you consume on the list above will exceed the limit? No one knows because you can't measure the sugar intake by each bite, slice or pieces. But the more variety of food you consume, the nearer you are to the limit.

What happen when you exceed the limit of sugar your body can accept? The extra sugar will flow into your blood because your body system is burdened with too much of sugar, and don't know how to handle them. To-cut-all-scientific-explanation-here-and-there, in short, it causes all sort of health problems like diabetes, cancer.... and you-know-what.

In summary, this is why you must avoid sugar at all cost as you will eventually consume unmeasurable amount of sugar as you eat.

On the info below, I also like to clear some doubts for those who might have misleading information somewhere about certain food that contain of sugar, which specifically cover why this food contain sugar, why food company want to include sugar.... and so on.

Foods with extra sugar and Why

Honey
Honey is healthy in many ways, and good at the moment you put into your mouth, slide down the throats, until it reach your stomach. Why add sugar in this wonderful elixir? Because "real" natural honey is not sweet. I got no chance to taste real honey but it's kinda like bitter and not easy to put into our mouth. This is sugar is needed when honey being processed so that when consumer take honey, they more willingly to consume it when it's sweet.

Flavored Candy
It's basically two things: sugar and artificial flavoring. The orange candy got nothing from real orange. Just the fake taste. So don't bother to think that taking orange candy can provided you any Vitamin C. Same for any candy with food flavor. Remember, it's just "flavor".

Flavored Beverages
This includes bottled/canned fruit juice, soft drinks, milk, yoghurt, and drinks from the proclaimed-healthy-drinks stall or business. Milk and yoghurt also consists of sugar? Yes and it's quite high because natural milk and yoghurt, just like honey, can't be easily consumed due to its natural taste. This is why food producer need to make sure their consume can accept the taste by adding more taste into it.

Fruit juice are naturally contain of their own taste, why sugar need to be added? Mainly for two reasons: for more taste, and to make it more drinkable by most people. Adding more taste is like making apple juice more sweet but definitely not natural sweetness, the fruits itself can't always be sweet, so sugar need to be used to ensure the sweetness; Certain fruit juice need to be made more drinkable, because some natural squeezed fruit juice is not sweet, and it's really hard to be acceptable by some or most people. Like orange juice that is sour in natural.

Drinks that produced with the advertising idea that provide health benefits are usually not healthy here. The moment they add some pinch of sugar into the drinks, the bad health impact immediately cover the healthy side. And you need to consider how "real" is their ingredient. Imagine you order green tea or tea, are they using actual tea leaves to make the drinks? Usually they use powder that has the tea flavor, so it's only narrow down to two things: It's processed powder that you have no idea what is inside the powder, and it's only flavoring.

Ice cream/Bread with cream/*Anything* cream
Same like most of the food above, cream itself is not sweet. But ice cream, bread or any food that has cream but not sweet is not normal here. This is why, again, sugar~

Sweetener
It is sweet, and making things more sweet. That's why.

Biscuit/Cookies
You don't usually take cookies that are only salty without any sweetening stuff. Most biscuits are full of butter and flour, but there are lots of biscuits with the dressing of jam and sugar glaze make them really sweet.

Sauces/Gravy used for cooking
You might not find much sauce or gravy that are sweet, or you don't taste anything sweet at all. Do bear in mind that not all sugar are used as the main source of the taste, some of the good usage is to covered up certain taste and make certain taste better. So you might not taste anything sweet but doesn't know if its contain of sugar until you read the package label.
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