There are plenty of articles out there on why alcohol consumption should not feature in a nutritionally sound plan. More than enough nutritionist, dieticians and health nuts are willing to pour their hearts out on the ill-effects of this social lubricant and how it should be deplored.

This is NOT one such article. This article is meant for those who have accepted alcohol consumption as part of their lifestyle. We shall explore in the following paragraphs how we can strike a possible balance between alcohol consumption and a healthy lifestyle plan.

Let’s have a look at what the naysayers preach first. Alcohol has been linked with loss of brain cells, liver failure, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, certain types of cancer, epilepsy, nerve damage, and heart failure. Not a happy list I must say.

Yet, if you look back at history, alcoholic beverages are a common feature in many cultures and even religion. Protestant leaders such as Martin Luther King and John Calvin as well as the Catholic Church viewed alcohol as a gift from God and created to be used in moderation for pleasure, enjoyment and health! In addition, alcohol supporters have proven in studies that moderate consumption has positive effects on the heart.

Here is where a clear distinction has to be made. The difference is the extent you consume alcohol. On the one hand, moderate consumption is socially acceptable and may even be good for you. On the other hand, binge drinking leading to drunkenness is viewed as a sin. Not only is binge drinking harmful to your body, but it is inconsistent with the modern emphasis of rational mastery of self. Being drunk reduces your judgement, lowers your inhibitions and increases your chances of behaving unsuitably – not quite the glamorous, responsible look you should be going when trying to impress the birds.

So, if your goal is to go “all the way” when you’re partying, then you are erring on the wrong side of the coin. It is important to make a mental note of this distinction and on which side of the coin you stand before the party. This mental note is the key to acceptable alcohol consumption within a healthy lifestyle regime. 

I have just cooked myself some spaghetti and was reminded of a question a friend asked me last week. Is pasta fattening? In the wake of the whole low carb movement, loads of people have started becoming concern about the fattening effects of pasta.

The short answer is – depends. One of the most important thing that determines whether it is healthy or not is the sauce. Pasta by itself does not contain much calories – only about 200 calories for a full cup. The sauce is the one that kills. If you love the creams and cheese sauces, then you are in trouble. Those have a huge amount of fat and calories. The best choice is the tomato based ones.

Another thing to be concerned with is the meat you put in. Obviously, if you are using processed meat like salami, sausages, ham and minced burgers, it is going to be fattening. The one I cooked had lean minced chicken.

The way the pasta is cooked is also important. It should be AL DENTE, meaning slightly firm. Don’t go for really soft pasta because it converts into sugar faster.

Finally, if you are concerned about your waistline, be careful about the portion. Some of the ones served here in Malaysia are huge! An example would be those from Italianies. Share it or save some for tomorrow.

The single most important thing that you can do to ensure your snacks are healthy is to go through your pantry or cubicle drawer and throw away all the unhealthy stuff with reckless abandon. If you are unsure whether it is healthy or not, just bin it. The more reckless you are the better. Never ever leave chocolate bars or biscuits lying around “just in case”. These “just in case” scenarios tend to happen quite frequently without you noticing especially when deadlines and stress pile up. It is far better to be safe than sorry when it comes to snacks.

Once you have chucked all the unhealthy stuff, you can start looking out for healthier alternatives. The key here is in the planning. You must prepare yourself and stock up before your hunger pang strikes. If you don’t, chances are you will reach out for something not so friendly to your waistline. My choice of snacks are healthy but more importantly, they need minimum preparation time. Here are five of my favourites:-

1. Oatmeal

Oatmeal is one of the easiest thing to make and can taste very satisfying if you know how to mix it up. Best of all, it does not rot and can be kept in your desk drawer. It is high in complex carbohydrates and water-soluble fiber which encourages slow digestion and stabilizes blood-glucose levels. I usually buy the instant variety, mix it with hot water, add some fresh almond nuts or sunflower seeds and top it with a swirl of honey.

2. Yogurt

If you have a fridge, this is a great option. Go for the unsweetened type and make sure it has live culture (the good bacteria that will help digestion). It may feel a little sour at first but you will get used to it after a while. I like to top mine with some crunchy muesli or fruits to add some texture and to balance the taste.

3. Nuts and Seeds

This is a great snack for those who are trying to lose weight. Nuts and seeds have a filling effect. Go for the unsalted variety. It is extremely convenient and is high in monounsaturated fats (the good stuff). On top of that, it has got plenty of fiber, of which many of us Malaysians are highly lacking.

4. Soy Milk

Again, this is great for those who want to fight the hunger pangs. I prefer the powdered kind from health food stores as it is easy to keep and just requires hot water. Studies have shown that soy milk lowers cholesterol and is good for the heart.

5. Fruits

Simply unbeatable as a snack. We all know why it’s good. Plus you can easily get them from the cut fruit stall outside your office. Do not eat them with your meals. Keep them for snack time.

Are you having the right snacks? If you are not, clear your pantry and head to your supermarket with these tips on hand!

The global snack market accounts for almost RM1 trillion in sales. Snacks advertisements are featured everywhere – from commercials on televisions, on the airwaves to the billboard you pass everyday. So, the question is: To snack or not to snack? Is it better to satisfy that hunger pang now or to wait till dinner and risk overeating? Can snacking be possibly good from a nutritional point of view?

The answer, my snack-loving friend, is a smile inducing YES. But before you run to the pantry and tear open the family size bag of potato chips, allow me to tell you why it is so. Busy schedules and the ever increasing urge to cram more things into a day has made many of us resort to 3 main meals a day, namely breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The problem with this system is that you send the blood sugar in your body into yo-yo mode. Your blood sugar goes sky high whenever you have a big meal, dips after a couple of hours and goes up again when you have the next big meal. This is not good for two reasons. Firstly, the ups and downs of the sugar in your blood means your energy levels will fluctuate wildly throughout the day. This can be very disruptive, especially when you have to concentrate for hours at a time. Secondly, the excess glucose resulting from large meals are usually converted into fat. Unless you are one of those who find love handles visually pleasing, this is not good news either.

So, what then is the alternative? Nutritionists advocate the “grazing” style of eating. It is likened to the style of the cow, wherein they eat or “graze” throughout the day. You rarely see a cow in a field not chewing or plucking on the grass. By doing so, you arguably have more consistent energy levels, your digestive systems are not overworked at any one time and you are in more control of your weight. However, unlike cows, we have to work and our bosses are not going to be too pleased if you chomp and chew throughout your Powerpoint presentation.

What I suggest is the 5-meals A Day system. Now, when I say 5-meals A Day, I don’t mean 5 full meals. Basically, I interlace the 3 basic meals with 2 other smaller snacks. They act as a “buffer”, ensuring that I do not overindulge during lunch or dinner. A typical day would look something like this:-

The Perfect Half-Boil Eggs on Toast

Eggs are one of the best breakfast foods – they are inexpensive, convenient and delicious. Eggs pack quite a nutritional punch as well. It contains loads of choline which boosts brain function and memory – something everyone would love more of. Egg whites, especially, has no fat and is one of nature’s best source of protein. Egg yolks do contain a significant amount of fat and cholesterol, so instead of having two whole eggs, I have three egg whites and one egg yolk.

Here’s how you do the Perfect Half-Boil Eggs:-

1. Boil water in a pot (doesn’t matter if it is steel or glass)
2. Once it is boiling, turn the fire off and slowly put in the eggs.
3. Leave it in the water for exactly 6 minutes for room temperature eggs. If the eggs are from the fridge, leave it for an additional minute.
4. Crack the eggs on toasted wholemeal bread, add a dash of pepper and soy sauce and enjoy!

Pole dancing as a fitness activity has been getting quite a fair bit of exposure of late.

Check out Ilse Meulenbroek and her award winning performance at the 2009 Dutch Pole Fitness championships. She displayed amazing core strength! The power-packed soundtrack from Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana mixed with Poison’s BBD was superb.

All Fats are bad
It’s a long-held nutrition myth that all fats are bad. Fats aid nutrient absorption and nerve transmission – to name just a few of their useful purposes. Not all fats are created equal. Some fats can actually help promote good health, while others increase the risk for heart disease. The key is to replace bad fats (saturated fats and trans fats) with good fats (monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats).

Skipping meals can help lose weight
If you skip a meal, your body will think that you are in starvation mode and therefore slow down the metabolism to compensate. You then tend to overeat at the next meal. Often, skipping a meal and then eating too much at the next one means that you have a higher total caloric intake than if you just ate more frequently throughout the day.

Brown Sugar is better than White Sugar
The brown sugar sold at grocery stores is actually white granulated sugar with added molasses. Unless you eat a gigantic portion of brown sugar every day, the mineral content difference between brown sugar and white sugar is absolutely insignificant. The idea that brown and white sugar have big differences is another common nutrition myth.

“Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Queen and Dinner like a Pauper”. I am sure you have heard this phrase uttered somewhere before. It basically promotes the idea that your meals should be largest when you start off the day and tapers off as you end it. Despite this popular saying, most of us, especially the working population, do the exact opposite. We wake up to a rushed breakfast (or none at all), have a big lunch and an even heavier dinner. And not long after our late dinners, we feel our energy sapped from the digestive burden and retire to our nightly slumber.

If you are worried about your weight, you may have to relook at how you distribute your calories throughout the day. To test whether time of eating alone can affect body weight, researchers at Northwestern University studied two groups of mice who were fed identical diets. For the study, half of the mice were mostly fed during the time they would normally be sleeping – simulating late-night dinners in humans. The other half were given the same food on their regular eating schedule. At the end of six weeks, the mice in both groups had consumed the exact same amount of calories and performed the same amount of exercise. However, the mice that ate when they normally would have been sleeping posted two-and-a-half times more weight gain than those who ate on a regular schedule!

It’s quite clear that making dinner your most calorie-laden meal is not a good idea, especially when you are watching your waistline. Yet, many of us who have been toiling throughout the day are guilty of having the tastiest, fattest and ultra-high calorie food at the end of the day. It’s the reward for the hard day’s work. Nothing better than deep fried chicken and fries to soothe the soul and relief stress right? Well, your heart and waistline will disagree.

Granted, it is sometimes a tad difficult to choose only low calorie, low fat food for dinner. In the Asian culture, dinner is viewed as time for family or relationship bonding. It is a time when everyone catches up with one another on the happenings of the day. Unlike breakfast and lunch, we sometimes do not have full control of the exact types of food that we can consume (especially if you are still living with mommy!). This is especially so when we eat as a group or family unit.

There is one thing we can do though – portion control. Instead of focusing on the types of food you consume, focus on the size of your portions. Ensure that the dinner portion is NOT the biggest portion of the day. It would be a great idea to consume less of the oily stuff, but it is more important to ensure that you consume less of everything. One way to do this is to pile everything on your plate before you start eating. Do this instead of refilling your plate as you have your meal. This way, you can see outright how much you are going to consume for this meal. Your eyes would not deceive you – if your dinner is larger than your lunch, you will notice it.

How are you going to consume smaller portions if you are used to having massive dinners? The best way is to EAT SLOWLY. We are usually quite rushed during our earlier meals. We have work on our mind and meals are secondary to completing what we have on hand. Dinner on the other hand, is a time when we have left work – a time to wind down. Instead of gobbling down on half chewed food, take smaller bites, chew each bite slower and longer and enjoy your meal longer. I suggest that as a general rule, we should chew our food no less than 10 times each round. It takes 20 minutes for our brains to register that we are full, so do take your time when having your meal.

Try to view dinner as a gastronomic pleasure by taking your time. It’s hard to enjoy food if it goes by too quickly. If you want to eat something that is tasty, might as well eat it slowly and savour the taste. And if you eat them slowly, you can have less going into your stomach but yet still savour the taste of the food. Another trick you can employ is the “Fork Down Method”. You basically put down your cutleries after you put something in your mouth. If that is too cumbersome, just ensure that you do not start picking food with your fork and spoon before you finish swallowing the first time.

Dinners are an important end to our hectic, fast-paced and stressful day. We rush through our day doing one mindless task after another without taking the time to enjoy it. Don’t make that mistake by gobbling down your dinners. If you have the ability to choose healthful dinners, great. If you don’t, just ensure that slow it down, control your portions and enjoy the process. Let’s learn from the Slow Food international manifesto which was written by founding member, Folco Portinari and endorsed by delegates from 15 countries: “May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency”. Try it and you may just find looser pants as a pleasant side effect.

Us Malaysians are surrounded by deep fried foods. Curry puff for breakfast, ayam goreng for lunch, pisang goreng (fried bananas) for tea and fried fish for dinner. Is deep frying really that bad? How bad is it actually.

Let me be as straightforward as possible: IT IS EXTREMELY BAD. There are no two ways about this method of cooking. Deep fried food is one of the worst (if not THE worst) type of things you can put in your mouth. Let me explain why in non-technical language.

Firstly, deep frying uses a whole lot more oil than all other methods of cooking. This is quite obviously for your waistline. The extra oil also masks the taste of food, making it simply taste ‘oily’.

Secondly, when you deep fry, the temperature of the oil goes up to 600-700 degrees. This is really hot! At this temperature, the oil undergoes a transformation. The hot temperature makes vegetable oil (which are unsaturated and non sticky) behave like saturated oil (similar to that of lard) which will stick to the walls of your arteries and cause hardening. Not good news for the heart at all.

Thirdly, causes cells to die . When oil is heated up to such a temperature, it undergoes many changes to it’s molecular structure. Loads of unnatural structures are created oil is heated like that. These new structures are foreign to the body. Repeated ingestion of such structures over the long term interferes with our body chemistry and degenerates cells.

Fourthly, CANCER. This is the killer reason. There is a high chance that acrolein, a proven cancer causing agent is formed when food is deep fried and ultra high temperatures. This is more so when the oil is repeated used such as that from your friendly pisang goreng seller

There you go. 4 reasons to not consume deep fried foods. Is that good enough for you or is KFC still part of the weekend plan?

You have a hearty and satisfying lunch. You head back to the office, blast the air-con and start on the paperwork or head for a meeting. Within minutes, your eyes are like sandbags and you are fighting with all your might to lift those defiant eyelids. Sounds familiar? This is known as the "Post Lunch Dip" or "Post Lunch Drowsiness". Many have put their work on the line because of this embarrassing habit. An even more dangerous scenario is if you are required to drive when the Post Lunch Dip hits. Studies have shown that accidents occur more frequently right after lunch between 2.00pm to 4.00pm compared to the mornings or evenings. Drowsy driving is considered one of the most common causes of accidents.

What to eat for lunch can be quite tricky. In my previous article, I wrote about breakfast and how easily we can control what we ate because we can do it at home. However, for those of us who have day jobs (which should be most you hardworking readers), the situation is a little different when it comes to lunch. Lunctime decision making is much tighter. Most companies only give you a meagre hour off. Combine this with deadlines, tight schedules and always-on-your-ass bosses, lunchtime decisions are not top of the priority for many. Hence, it is easy to fall into the trap of eating whatever it is that is most convenient or with the least walking distance. Preparing healthy lunches from home? Forget it. That thought scares the jitters out of us average readers with no maid to prepare the necessary. Fortunately, with a few tricks and tweaks you may have a lunctime meal that is satisfying, good for the waistline and avoids the dreaded sleeping-on-the-keyboard syndrome.

After lunch, the body focuses on the digestive system. The digestive process requires a fair bit of energy. The body generally redistributes some of the energy you have to the gasteral area for digestion. Thus, the harder the stomach has to work, the more energy is required. With this in mind, it is best to consume a smaller meal or one that is less rich or has lower calories. Instead of having the oily fried noodles, have a soupy one. Avoid nasi lemak, nasi beriyani, chicken rice and have normal rice instead. Or have half the rice you normally take. Avoid curries and thick sauces which are calorie laden. These are all excellent ways to reduce calories without cutting down on satiety.

Two things you should try to avoid during lunch: stuff made out of white flour and things that contain sugar. Both these things are highly refined and will flood your blood with sugar very quickly. The body recognises that high amount of sugar in the blood is not good and will excrete insulin to lower your blood sugar. Studies have shown that when insulin is excreted and your blood sugar level drops, you will feel sleepy. If you want to avoid nodding off in the all important post lunch meeting, cut out the white flour and sugar.

Our bodies are 70% water. Drinking water is essential for the human body to function. I am sure you have read somewhere or was (and perhaps still is) bugged by mummy to always remember to drink more water. So, it should be the right thing to drink loads of water during lunch right? Wrong! To digest the food ingested, the stomach has to be in an acidic environment (or alkalinic, depending on the types of food we ate). By drinking loads of water, we neutralize the acid or alkaline in our stomachs. Hence, our stomachs have to work harder by producing even more acid or alkaline to process the food. This results in higher usage of energy and makes us even sleepier. What I do is to have a glass of water 30 minutes before my meal. I do not have any water during the meal. This takes some getting used to, but after a while, it is quite natural as long as I chew my food properly. I only have the next glass of water 30 minutes after my meal. If this feels unnatural to you, you may have small sips of water during the meal but not the whole glass. Needless to say, a whole can of coke or glass of sugary drink should be a no-no.

What about fruits? Similarly, it’s something we are constantly reminded to take more of. So, it is a good thing to gobble some up immediately after your meal right? Not exactly! We ingest a variety of different food during lunch. All this food forms a chunk of mush in the stomach while the gastric juices are excreted to break down the food. This is a slow process. Fruits contain sugar (in the form of fructose). When you add the sugar into the chunk of mush with the gastric juices, there is a tendency to ferment a little. The fermentation process releases gas and this can lead to that bloated feeling. Bam! Before you know it, you are fighting Mr. Sandman again. A better move would be to save your fruit for later. Have it two hours after your meal as your tea time snack. Not only would it digest better, it would also help ward off the hunger pangs before dinner.

Eat fruits on its own and not with meals

Now you have more reasons to make some healthy changes to your lunchtime habits. Try these simple changes and you may just shock your colleagues with your post lunch energy while showing off your leaner waistline!