Monday, January 28, 2013

Rice and weight loss

At this stage of my life, I am surrounded by more and more overweight people. Yes, overweight. Even as as avid yoga practitioner and 'health freak' as some friends would call me, I, too have some fair or rather unfair share of struggles to keep the weight down. I would like to stress here I do NOT advocate a daily weighing-in as it will simply interfere with our main objective....a looooonnnggg term weigh loss.
The common talks about change of diet usually include removing rice from the daily intake. Now, why would anyone wants to do that, really??!! Why rice? Unless you were born and raised outside Malaysia or any other Asian countries for that matter, rice was the first solid food that we were fed and rice has helped us to grow stronger and healthier day by day. Putting that side, we then conveniently blame rice as the key source to our weight problem. Rather convenient, I must say!! Some even went to the extreme of substituting rice with noodles or pasta because it makes them feel 'less full'. When we eat, we are supposed to 'feel full'. The whole purpose of eating is so that we can have that 'full' feeling. Unless, you are trying to tell me that you've adopted our beloved Prophet Muhammad style of eating, most of us 'feel full' after meal.
Now, let's compare rice to noodles/pasta. I often say that when we eat or drink, choose something which is less processed and this include noodles/pasta. Of course, if we wanna go further into this, we could say that brown rice is better than white rice but I shall leave that topic for another blog entry. You don't have to be a dietician to know that noodles/pasta has indeed undergone several more stages of processing compared rice and yet, more feel better about eating noodles/pasta and even bread compare to rice.
On average, I eat rice 4 times a week. During my two months stint in Mysore, I had rice almost everyday and  sometimes, twice a day but then again, I also had minimal 4hours of yoga practice so you may say that with that amount of yoga everyday I could eat a whole chicken daily and still lose weight.
The fact is, I chose rice over many things because I believe (based on my readings and experiences) that rice will provide me the most fulfilling and lasting feeling even when consumed in small portion which brings me to the next important step of weigh loss, portion control. Take one hand and make a fist. That should be the amount of food to take on each meal. I take minimal of 4 meals a day and I snack quite a bit. Check out the photo. Fruits are usually consume between 10-11am and biscuits+cheese between 3-4pm. I have breakfast around 7am and lunch between 12-1pm. I usually have rice+vege+/meat/fish for lunch with 1:3 portion. And remember the fist measurement while you're at it.
I wish people would stop demonising food at will and start looking at the way they eat for a change.