What Is Metabolism

Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns its calories just to keep your body alive—for the functioning of the vital organs, such as the heart, lungs, brain and the rest of the nervous system, liver, kidneys, sex organs, muscles and skin. Your body is burning calories 24-by-7, even while you’re hiding from your boss reading these articles. Basically, an average man burns about 11 calories per pound of body weight every day. If you weighed 150 lbs, then your metabolism rate is around 1650 calories.

Okay, now you know your metabolism is helping you to burn calories. What else is burning your calories other than this?

Way #1 – The Physical activity..
..still need the explanation? The more muscles you involve in your physical activity, the more calories you will burn.

Way #2 – The Thermic Effect of Food..
TEF in shorthand is the increment in energy expenditure above resting metabolic rate due to the cost of metabolizing for storage and use. The magnitude is about 10% of the caloric intake of a given time period, though the effect varies substantially for different food components. Basically, a complex food component such as protein, high fiber food, and low glycemic index carbohydrate has a much larger thermic effect, compared with dietary fat and simple sugar.

You can read more details about Thermic Effect of Food here.
I also recommend you to check more about Glycemic Index here.

Bingo! Now after reading these, I believe you already got the idea – how to incorporate your diet plan, exercise plan into your weight loss program. Exercise and pack some muscle to raise your metabolism, choose good that has larger thermic effect as your natural fat burner, and be physically more active. Thats it.

Awesome Usain Bolt versus Michel Phepls

Fantastic!Fantastic!Fantastic. It is awesome. 2 world records from Usain Bolt and 7 world records from Michel Phelps. It is really fantastic. Both of them are very fast and they are the best in the world now. I can say that, nobody in the world can challange their record after this. It is very hard to achieve the achivement shown by this 2 persons. It must have a lot of effort, good mental, and high desire. They are very strong and brave to conquer the world.

Datukship for Misbun Sidek

Datuksip for Misbun Sidek? Yes,it is not too much. Why? Can you imagine what he contribute to our country. He should be award for what he had done.Contributions to the country were great as he not only successfully trained Lee Chong Wei to win a silver medal at the Beijing Olympics but had himself tasted victory as a national badminton player.

Fraudsters use women to obtain contracts

Nowadays there are many type of people in the world and it is sad to say that more peolpe are bad than good people. Why this happened? It seems to be that, more crime occur are professionally planed by crimer. They planed it well and they do anything to get what they want. It is very sad when the crime also involved by the authority. Some of them are very weak to women. So the fraudsters use women just to get the contract. "These factors show that it is human nature to desire maximum pleasure with minimum pain," .We have to solve this problem in other to get better life.

Real Man Real Strength

I've been subsribing newsletter from Men's Health mag since April 2007, to keep me updated about latest health news, research, workout, etc.

Somewhere on January this year, I received a great article that changed my perspective on weight training. The America's top strength & conditioning coach shares his golden rules to gain explosive strength, and it works for everyone.

Before you step in to any gym in town, I really recommend you to read this article first. This is fundamentals of what does it mean to train hard. Watch the video clip below, or view the articles about strength training principles from Mens Health here.

If you understand these golden rules, I bet you will find bodybuilding exercise which targets on specific muscle group using isolation movement is not really applicable to real world's life.

Think about the legendary Bruce Lee, small, hard and lean physique, but his punch? Could send you to hospital for days. That's the strength I'm talking about. Anyway, we don't have to be like him, but certainly, other than in sports, the strength and functional fitness could benefit us in our real life.

As for me, a non-athlete nor martial arts practitioner, just an average Joe, I'm now building my strength and functional fitness, so that I could be well prepared in the event of emergencies, if any.. What does it feel if there is a critical situation, say about saving one's life, but you don't have that capability to take right action over the situation? Think about it..

Man Health Malaysia August Run

I've been waiting for MensHealth July's issue for almost a week, and finally yesterday I found them in bookstore nearby my office. So I grabbed one..

The most interesting part on this issue, they are going to have 10K run on August 24th at Lake Gardens, maybe to celebrate our Malaysian Independence Day on August 31st. If you're amateur and season runner, join this race..

Now here is another reason for you to join, and you would probably love to hear this.. The race is only open for Malaysian, Singaporean and PR, so expect no African runners will be participating, which mean higher chance of winning. Haha. Actually I hate endurance running, but 10K is not distance enough for me to hate.

I don't expect to win the race, but just hope I can train this month and break my personal record on 10K. I put as my mini goal this Quarter. Chasing numbers begin.

Hopefully my new pair of Brooks will bring me luck..

Journey With Workout Partner begin

Its been couples of months since I started my weight loss program, I'm getting familiar with my swiss-ball and dumbell workout. One day, I was working in my office when my long time no see friend ping me on my MSN just to have some chat.

Carl was asking my opinion on what Levi’s jean to purchase, and then I started browsing for good jeans in the Levi’s website and recommended him a low hip kinda jeans.

“Poor you, this jean do not suit you,” he said. “Why not?” I replied..

“Oh, is that your built just not fit them” and laughing at me. “Duh, sorry I’ve had to tell you this – I’m now 74kg! And that is 14kg lighter than I was when we were at KSM (our previous company)”

After telling him how I changed my diet with regular workout, finally we met on weekend in the morning. Well, seeing is believing.. He is kinda inspired about the changed I've gone through, and by adapting some principle of my workout, he started to revised his own workout plan in order to drop more fat.

Well, actually Carl has been a runner for years and own a commercial gym membership, famous gym in town. But still he has problem losing any more fat. He kinda stuck at 18%, while I at the same time at about 17.5% from my original >30% within 5~6 months.

First Month Of Transformation Program

On July 2008, I bought a couple of running shorts and a pair of running shoes. And that was my first running shoe ever in 29 years. What a shame. Its a pair from New Balance – a new father need a balance brand. Hahaha.

This time I really promised to myself, I'm going to get back in shape and start running every weekend. I did my own research how to do good running from the Internet, invested on lot of Health magazines, and started to cook my own dinner. I make sure not to skip my breakfast, limited my carb intake and at the same time try to get high quality protein in my diet.

The first month I lost about 3kg. I was quite satisfied by the result but another problem begin to happened – its my knee! It seems my knee hates to take the impact from running by an overweight person like me. And also I doubted my running technique.

I was 85++ kg at the moment when I started running. My knee really de-motivated me. I stopped and hope I could recover immediately...

Overcoming The Knee Pain

Things did not run smoothly and not always on my side after all. I've been suffering a serious knee pain for more than a month. Until one day I decided to meet my doctor.

An early 50s man is just an outpatient doctor, but I was lucky because the doctor is a runner too. He has experiences participating in many half marathon competition locally.

And his precious advices really cure my pain – R.I.C.E method, strengthen the Quad muscle using body squat exercise, including high quality of protein into diet for recovery and Fish oil as supplement. And within 2 weeks, I recovered from my knee pain.

I got my motivation again. Thanks Doc!

Obesity VS Global Warming

Don't be surprise, obesity could contribute to global warming too.

I know what you’re thinking: How could obese people add to this? They are not releasing extra heat? lol..

Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture.

The researchers found that obese people require 18 percent more than someone with a stable BMI, just to sustain normal energy and to maintain daily activities.