Category: 4_y4h4@home

enjoy tasty foods+! BMI impact@@ tough #NY

Posted on by tiger40490

I wish I could enjoy my nice food without the BMI impact.

In 750/7 MS office I achieved it. So now I’m following the same techniques
* low starch … almost same as in 750/7
* high fruits + raw veg … almost same as in 750/7

I guess what’s missing is the home meal control. My grip is loose. The wrong-time temptation is way too powerful at home.

When I see the nice food at home, it’s a struggle to resist. No such temptation or struggle in Bayonne home.

Realistic expectation in our BMI goals please, but keep working on it.

[18]try2sleep b4 impending appetite kicks]

Posted on by tiger40490

— My experience in Nov – Dec 2018

Half the times I come home without the doomed, fatalistic mood about my impending need for a big dinner. I often eat fruits/veg anyway. Even after 9pm I am often free of that dreaded urge. I don’t use the word “hungry” since my system is actually not in need to calories, thanks to all the recent snacks. The psychological trigger kick in sometime after 10pm. I basically can’t fight it once it starts. But why wait for it to start?

The appetite is like an approaching train coming in to crush me, so over the years I have developed a deep fear for it, but in reality, I am bigger than it. I need to keep accumulating positive experiences to combat the negative ones. Sleeping early is arguably the #1 strategy.

Daily battle, as Alex puts it

————-

I believe if I managed to fall asleep before the appetite kicks in, then I may not feel wanting. Next morning I might feel genuinely “hungry”, but it’s easier to manage than at night.

May need to break the “not-hungry,don’t-eat” rule

During a very low-stress period, on 21 Dec 2018, I tried this technique for the first time and it worked

  1. I don’t remember any real breakfast
  2. lunch meeting with CSDoctor was nothing but chia
  3. snacks consist of 1 tiny brownie (office treat), no other starch; tomato, persimmons, grapes, carrot
  4. Around 8 to 10pm after coming home I had a half avocado with honey, and a big persimmon
  5. Before the urge kicked in, I decided to sleep.
  6. I fell asleep fairly soon around 10.30 and didn’t feel hungry and was not feeling afraid of the impending “need”
  7. In the morning I felt completely fine. So I went to gym and took a 20 minute boot camp, without negative symptoms
  8. I guess this is intermittent fasting, which is widely practiced and proven safe for many people.

leftovers/dump: wrong-time temptation case study

Posted on by tiger40490

On 16 Oct night, wife discarded fish (already boxed up), 番茄蛋, and some veg. I later told her the fish was expensive, difficult to cook in small quantities, so next time no need to discard. I would need to deal with this wrong-time temptation, which was relatively manageable in recent weeks — I had put more than 10 boxes of fish in company fridge.

Here’s the challenging situation when I came home:
* I was not hungry coming home around 10pm. This was a good starting point.
* I wanted to eat only smoothie + my favorite fruits (I recently bought a lot) + raw veg. This was a good plan.
* In fact, I called my wife at 8.15pm to request “please box up all leftovers. I want to eat my smoothie only.” But she only boxed up the fish 🙁

So the leftovers were a real derailer. I was feeling hopeless. Recent experience showed more than 95% failure rate fighting this wrong-time temptation.

So I took quick action to box up the 番茄蛋, and the veg. I could tell that within an hour I would end up eating them, against my well-thought-out plan. I felt doomed and powerless against this wrong-time temptation, just like every single day in the past weeks. The only bao3shan1 battle plan I had was using lettuce to replace rice. My success rate was 50-50.

Q: after the dramatic dump, how did my late night meal end up ?
A: much better. There was suddenly no wrong-time temptation, miraculously. I ended up eating my favorite fruits…

Clearly, I was really NOT hungry. This battle was all about hedonic hunger, or temptation.

Lesson: discard the rice ASAP, or put in freezer.

reward yourself 4putt`away home cooked left-over for8Hr

Posted on by tiger40490

Out of sight out of mind. The availability temptation is extremely hard to handle, as I experienced.

  • I deserve reward for starch abstinence, even if BMI doesn’t improve !
  • I deserve reward for putting away the most temptating food such as meat, fish etc
  • I deserve reward for putting away part of the left-over cooked food

— specific comfort foods as rewards

  1. ice cream
  2. milk shake
  3. eat the meat/fish etc during the day, outside the hot window (i.e. night time)

entic`food=more controllable if outside#^Bayonne #w1r2

Posted on by tiger40490

Same enticing food is always easier to manage if outside home. As I told boy…

  • when I face a wrong-* temptation outside home, I only need to say NO once. There’s no wrong-qty temptation. The high price tag is on my side.
  • when I face a wrong-* temptation at home, I need to say NO over and over. There’s less wrong-food temptation. The ‘soon-to-be-discarded’ SMS is an enemy.
  • office free food?

Q: Why is home context so tough?
A: In a commercial place, every additional food requires payment. Built-in portion control and speed bump. Mindful consumption. In contrast, Home food is mindless eating by default. So we have to exercise self-constraint which is tough for most of us.
A: too many varieties of enticing foods at home
A: more unexpected stress events at home. By contrast, in office, any work stress tend to be expected and well-contained.
A: I think unexpected enticing foods might be one of the G7 key factors.

In this concrete experience, the same enticing foods [claypot rice] was more manageable in office. I always bring the most disruptive (not exactly “harmful” [1]) foods to office like

  • cakes
  • brownie
  • ice cream
  • chocolates
  • fried rice, fried noodles

[1] Rember .. home-cooked food, enticing foods like starch..≠opium .

— In Bayonne,

  • There’s no cooked food at home.
  • there’s less budget street food as in Toa Payoh. There are American fast food such as pizza and ice cream but they are costiler, less available and fewer varieties.

Therefore, in Bayonne, the wrong-time temptation was easier to handle.

Rubber Speed Bump, 6' x 12" Easy Rider

 

## lockdown⇒ G3 damages@my life #harbor

Posted on by tiger40490

k_office_sanctuary

See also 1st days back in office 

This “Group of big 3 damages” highlights the real priorities among priorities.

  1. loss of private space (quiet hours) for reflective blogging and self care, but since late May 2020 I could go to MRT or bus interchange
    • the #1 most critical situation — family conflict. Lockdown results in Loss of harbor. In the form of office or MRT (later the bus interchange), the harbor had become a critical resource I depend on, similar to my son’s dependency on electronic devices.
    • A separate room did make a real difference, after grandparents left. Even though it is 10% as effective as office, this 10% is a Big Deal !
  2. bonding with boy — I had more frustrations, and more bursts of temper, until May.
  3. loss of opportunities to capture absorbency power-surges. I rely on these power surges to compete.
    • work projects, localSys
    • QQ
    • exercise, yoga
  4. — beyond g3, unranked
  5. diet and BMI loss of control
  6. sleep — my late hours often lead to poor sleep the next morning, with noisy kids.
  7. loss of exercise opportunities — absorbency, facilities, until I found the jogging tracks.
  8. no family outing, until we found the PCN at Lorong 8
  9. yoga
  10. standing desk usage

— Some of the unexpected triumphs:

  • More positive perception of wife’s parenting practices
  • I learned to accept my kids’ misbehavior — ignore, or become detached observer
  • jogging
  • repaired many things at home
  • wrong-time temptation at home meal time
  • intimacy with wife

home cooking=better quality but wrong time/qty

Posted on by tiger40490

Many friends warn me that compared to home cooking, commercial cooking uses far inferior ingredients, i.e. wrong nutrition. ( uncooked food is “safest” by comparison) Yet, for my BMI, my cardio risk, biggest problem is availability — wrong time and wrong quantity, not wrong nutrition.

This revelation and the tips below makes this blogpost one of the most valuable self-discovery in recent years because I was baffled for more than a decade why home cooking represents such a massive derailer to my diet regime over my entire adult life

— updates:

Critical thinking .. home cooking is better nutrition, but why my experience proved that my BMI was always better when living alone without home cooking? I would say quantity outweighs quality.

quality of commercial food .. nowadays I buy more raw foods, less affected by inferior nutritional quality of commercial cooking.
fast food .. is known for poor nutritional quality, but I seldom eat fast food when living alone.
home food still involves commercial cooked foods such as bakeries, ice creams
nuts .. as a group is never home-cooked. If I eat at home, the nuts in the home stash become unexpected and hazardous.
fish and meat .. perhaps home cooking is better quality, but by how many percent?
vegetables.. perhaps home cooking is better quality. Nowadays I tend to eat raw.
starch at home .. tend to be too enticing. The home stash has lots of outside starch food
starch bought outside .. tend to have more fiber, and stored in a stash under control
soymilk .. home-made is better, and I don’t overeat.
milkshake .. home-made is better.

— buying a small ice cream ^ home cooked meal

  • The Ice cream is usually a conscious buy, less likely wrong-time and rarely wrong qty.
  • home cooked food — frequently wrong time and wrong qty. In the grand scheme of things, the quality factor is smaller.

— ice cream in home fridge ^ single ice cream in BurgerKing

Wrong-qty temptation is clearly worse at home

— hawker mixed veg rice ^ home cooked meal

  • hawker food is a conscious selection (Nowadays I ask for less rice and often more veg) — rarely wrong time/qty
  • home food — more likely wrong time/qty. In the grand scheme of things, the quality factor is smaller.

— healthy fish cooked at home:

I am still struggling with this challenge. I think it’s important to avoid starch completely if I were to eat home-cooked fish.

— grandma’s 饼 ^ similar food from MRT station 山东大包

Wrong-time temptation? Well, in this case the time of eating is the same.

I sometimes choose to get out of the house and eat the commercial food ! I have reason to believe grandma’s cooking uses more healthy ingredients, possibly less oily. However, ,,

Wrong-qty temptation? With commercial food, I somehow have the self-control to buy and eat just one piece. At home, I typically eat twice as much. Sometimes I can restrict myself to one piece, but it takes a huge effort as a lot more is left on the table or in the fridge.