InDeeNile's Wedding

Hey there fellow bloggers,

I tried hard to get off my lazy ass (as promised to some of you who actually read my blog) and finally posted up some of my pictures from InDeeNile's wedding.

Anyways it was a great wedding!! I had a lot of fun taking pictures, it helped me practice with my new camera and a little bit with photoshop.

Since photoshopping photos takes many many hours to do, especially when you have hundreds of photos, I decided to only do a few just for fun, I didn't have much time because I'm getting ready to go to LAS VEGAS for the long weekend!!

K, I know you are all waiting, so here are some of the pictures!!

... the Bride and Groom...

Malcolm, the best man, trying to look cool...

Huan thinking dirty things..

... the gentlemen...

JUST MARRIED

I finally got introduced to "S". This guy is supposed to be my twin....well, at least according to a lot of people. Since I had this rare and golden opportunity, I decided to see for myself by taking a picture side by side. What do you think? We tried hard to look the same...

On the right we have "R" (notorious wedding crasher) attempting to pick up a Topless at the wedding

and "R" trying again, at the reception....

just kidding, they're married.

...the beautiful bridesmaids making a toast to the bride...

mmmmmm... wedding cake

CHEEEEEERS

Me and my gf....

My twin with my gf... grrrrrr...

the party favors

the cutting of the cake, thanks for looking "H"

let the games begin...

looks like InDeeNile and "H" have done this before

"...OOOOOOPSSS...!!!"

According to "H" he said he tried to beat InDeeNile's time in the last game (see picture above), so he decided to take a shortcut thru the chairs. If you can't tell from the picture, he tripped on the chair leg. I can't tell from his face whether he is happy or surprised, but for the sake of his wife, I think he looks very mad at himself.

Of course, he didn't REALLY let her drop on the ground. "H" is like a superman, he darted to the ground faster than InDeeNile could fall and saved her from a nasty spill.

while still in pushup position, she decided to reward him by picking up his legs and walking him around the room. Don't ask me, maybe it's their "thing".

umm.. yeah... besides putting on panty hose, I'm not too sure what he's doing.

InDeeNile showing off her basketball skills

Dancing the night away....

the guys rushing in to get a piece of the bride

Squeaky79 goes to cover InDeeNile's mouth. Her motive? Who knows, but "H" in the background is looking excited.

So that's all I have for this post, only 3 of these pictures are actually photoshopped. I hope you enjoy these photos. If you want to see the whole album that I uploaded to Snapfish, just leave me a message with your email address and I'll send you an invitation to see the album. (I know, Snapfish is stupid that way).

Why Most Diets Don't Work: Calorie Restriction

"Dieting is not effective in controlling weight. You can get a temporary weight loss with a diet, but each scheme ultimately gives way to weight gain, and subsequent losses become increasingly difficult. Worst of all, you get progressively fatter on less food. Dieting actually makes you fatter!!  - Dr. Lawrance Lamb "The Weight Gaining Game: The truth about weight control"

Oftentimes you hear someone say, "I'm going on a diet", and almost everytime you hear that, you know that they are somehow going to restrict the amount of food and calories they are going to eat.. There are so many calorie restriction diet programs out there (eg Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig), with calories as low as 800 a day (a normal person should eat about 2000 calories a day, depending on your body type). In other words, you are starving yourself.

If you don't care about the type of weight you lose, then yes, you will for sure lose weight. You will lose fat, you will lose water, and you will lose muscle. However, keeping up with calorie restricted diet will not work forever.

The Basal Metabolic Rate and Catabolic State

Earlier I said a normal person eats about 2000 calories a day. If the person burns 2000 calories a day doing normal activity, that person will maintain their weight. So if you eat less calories than you burn in a day, you will lose weight. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. Calorie restricted diets use this concept for weight loss, and it works.

There are 3500 calories in one pound of stored body fat. So if you reduce the calories you eat by 350 calories a day, you should theoretically lose one pound every 10 days. If you stick with a calorie restriction diet, you may see the initial results, but you will eventually notice that it will take you longer and longer to lose weight.

Your body has a basal metabolic rate (BMR). The BMR is the minimum amount of calories required for your body to function (the rate at which you burn calories at rest). Combine that with your normal daily activities, you will require a certain amount of calories to maintain your weight.

Incidently, your BMR is related to the amount of muscle mass you have. The more muscle you have, the higher your BMR, and the more calories you require to maintain your weight.

But what happens in a calorie restriction diet is that your body resorts to burning off fat stores, muscle tissue, and even organ tissues, just to keep up with amount of calories you need in a day. When your body resorts to this, you are basically starving yourself, and putting your body in a catabolic state.

When you are starving, your body has an incredible way of compensating. Your body thinks that it won't be getting food for a while, so while your body is breaking down fat and tissues for energy, your body is also on a mission to store energy as well, mainly as... you guess it.... body fat.

Another thing is when you start losing muscle tissue, however, you lower your BMR. This effectively lowers the amount of calories you require in a day. When the number of calories you require to function to do your normal daily activities reduces, the caloric deficiency also reduces, hence slowing down weight loss.

So for example, let's say you normally require 2000 calories/day to function, but you are starting a diet in which you will only consume 1400 calories/day. That means you will have a 600 calorie/day deficiency, resulting in a weight loss of one pound approximately every six days.

But as your body muscle deteriorates, it will require less energy to function. So while maintaining your 1400 calorie/day diet, after a little while, your body will only require 1900 calories/day to operate. This will give you only a 500 calorie/day deficiency, instead of the 600 calories/day deficiency stated earilier. With this you will lose one pound every seven days.

This process will continue to drag on until your body only requires 1400 calories/day to operate, in which case you will stop losing weight. From this point on, the only way to lose more weight is to eat even less, but you'll eventually run into the same problem again.

To summarize:

• low calorie diets forces your body to burn fat, muscle and tissue for energy.
• burning muscle tissue lowers your basal metabolic rate, effectively reducing your metabolism overall
• low calorie diets puts your body in a starviation (or catabolic) state, which in turn makes the body try to store energy as fat stores; this can easily rebound into weight gain.

Beware the extremely low calorie diets!!!

High Reps, Less Rest

I'm done with the high reps, less rest. I've switched back to heavy weights a long time ago, and I have a mixed opinion about the high rep less rest routine that I tried out.

Advantages

- Workout can be finished faster.
- Increased endurance (as a result of an increase in mitochondrial density which is promoted by the high demand of this type of exercise)

Disadvantages

- Lost a lot of strength (for me = BAD). I had to drop about 25% in the amount I could lift, I felt really sad.

Diet Changes

Anyways, I went back to heavy lifting, and I've made a few changes to my dieting recently.  I now have a pre-workout shake (one that I share with my gf), I bring a waterbottle with powdered Gatorade (for drinking during the workout), and I take a weight gainer + added whey post-workout shake after the workout.

From what I've read on Edmonton Online, I was told that a pre-workout shake has more benefits than a post-workout shake. I'm not too sure why this is the case, but I do realize that keeping my metabolic rate high before and after the workout, it's a good thing. The reason for this is because the higher you spike your insulin, the faster the nutrient absorption (carbs, creatine, glutamine, protein, etc).

Also, powdered Gatorade contains maltodextrin, which is an extremely fast absorbing sugar (aka spikes your insulin very quickly, it has a glycemic index of over 100, which means it absorbs faster than glucose-sugar). The prepackaged drink version of Gatorade only has fructose/glucose. Hopefully this will keep my energy levels up while lifting.

How to Lose Fat

Near the beginning of this year, I was about 160 lbs. Right now I weight over 165 lbs (couldn't really tell exactly how much because the scale at the gym isn't calibrated properly). And I admit it, though some people will laugh when they hear this (because they don't believe it), I am getting fat.

Since I'm approaching my goal of 170 lbs, it's time for me to start thinking of how I'm going to shed the fat. I was going to write a blog about simple weight loss tips in the beginning of the year, you know, kind of like a New Year's Resolution kind of deal, but I got lazy.

Anyways, for all you people looking to lose weight, here are some tips and ideas (may not be applicable to everyone):

• increase muscle mass - now don't get me wrong here, I'm talking about fat loss, not weight loss. I've already mentioned this in some of my other blogs, 1 pound of muscle means 50 more calories burned everyday without doing anything. Muscle is active tissue, so it requires more energy for functional maintenance. And how do you gain muscle? LIFT HEAVY, and EAT RIGHT. And girls, please understand that it's a myth that you will get large if you lift heavy, it's simply NOT true (read my older blogs to find out why). Doing cardio activities like running on a treadmill is good too, however, I'm not too keen on completely focusing on cardio exercise. Why? Too much cardio means that you will lose muscle mass!
• eat right - okay I just mentioned that above, but I'm going to mention it again, because I cannot stress this point enough... if you don't eat right, you're pretty much destroying the potential that you put in with exercising. Here's a decent list of things you can eat http://www.bodyforlife.com/nutrition/foodlist.asp. If your goal is the lose fat, it's probably more essential that you eat right than if you exercise or not.
• increase protein intake - the majority of Americans eat way too many carbs. What happens to carbs that are not burned? It turns into fat.... so yes, you can get fat on fruits and vegetables. I've known a health nut who had to find this out the hard way when their diet mainly consisted of fruits, and they were extremely puzzled when they couldn't lose any fat. Another thing, 100 calories of carbs is not the same as 100 calories of protein. Protein requires more energy to breakdown, so your body will expend more calories to break down protein than it will carbohydrates. Protein will also give you the sensation that you are more full, effectively limiting the amount of food you intake during the day.
• drink lots of water - They say about 8 glasses (2L) of water for the average person, and even more for a person who exercises. As mentioned above, we tend to eat too much carbs. Eating carbs retains water in your body (another reason why you should reduce carb consumption). Increasing water intake will teach your body that it does not have to hold so much water.
• increase meal frequency - eat more meals, but smaller portions. Many advocate the idea of eating 6 meals a day, approximately 3 hours apart each. The idea of this is that you want to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible during the day. When you have food in your stomach, your body consumes a tremendous amount of energy to digest it. The longer you have your stomach empty, the more your body goes into a catabolic state, or in other words, your body goes into starvation mode. What happens when your body is in starvation mode? It tries to store as much energy as possible... as fat. You'll notice that if you eat breakfast, you will be hungrier for lunch, due to the increase in your metabolism. The problem usually occurs after lunch, people don't eat anything for about another 6 hours, making their body starve. Then dinner usually becomes the largest meal of the day. A starving body + large meals spells disaster for those trying to lose fat.

Any other tips and tricks? Feel free to add them in my comments, I'll add it to this blog.

Happy New Years!

I didn't really make any New Years resolution this year. I made one last year to exercise and to gain strength, and after about a month of doing that, I made it into a habit that carried me through to this year.

I made a new friend at the gym, he's been working out for about 10 years now, and he's huge. I told him about my problem, that I've really plateaued in strength since the summer (since then I've only gained about 6lbs), and I asked him what I could do to break it.

After asking me a series of questions, like my diet, my post workout shake, supplements I take, how I workout, what kind of workout split do I have, etc... he couldn't really critique me on anything that I'm doing wrong, which to me is a good sign.

However, he did offer me a suggestion, something I never really considered doing: instead of doing reps of 10-8-6-4, try reps of 15-12-12-10. He told me that the weights I use will be reduced considerably, and that the rest time I take should be less than 1 minute. The point of it was that my body was too used to lifting heavy, and that I was probably only working out a certain type of muscle fiber (fast twitch).

He told me that after doing this for about a month or so, move back to heavy. He said that I would start out weaker than what I left off at, but it won't take long for me to surpass my previous limits.

I'll let you know if this works out for me!

How Smart Are You? Answer....

When this question was posed to me and my friends, almost everyone said that the plane would not take off, including me.

The example most people used was to imagine a person running on a treadmill. As the person ran faster or slower, the treadmill would adjust so that to an outside observer, it would appear that the person is not moving from that spot. Now in the case of the plane, if it is NOT moving from an outside perspective, it effectively has no airspeed; And without airspeed, the plane will not and cannot take off.

Unfortunately for all those who thought this way, they were wrong.

The plane will take off.

Here is the article I will be quoting from: http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/191034-1.html

While the speed of the conveyor belt in the opposite direction is superficially attractive in saying the airplane cannot accelerate, it truly is irrelevant to what is happening with the airplane, because the medium on which it is acting is the air. The only time it could be a problem is if the wheel speed got so high that the tires blew out.

Put another way, consider the problem with the plane mounted on a hovercraft body. The hovercraft lifts the airplane a fraction of an inch above the conveyor belt, and so no matter how fast the conveyor spins, it cannot prevent the propeller -- acting on the air -- from accelerating the airplane to takeoff speed. It's the same with wheels rolling on the conveyor belt. Those wheels are not powered and thus do not push against the belt to accelerate the airplane. Were that the case, the vehicle could not reach an airspeed needed to fly, because then the conveyor, the medium acted upon by the propulsive force, would be able to negate the acceleration relative to the air and ground.

The speed over the ground, or a conveyor belt, when an airplane takes off is irrelevant; all that matters is its speed through the air, and unless the pilot sets the brakes, a moving conveyor belt -- under the freely turning wheels -- cannot stop the process of acceleration.