Meditation

Healthy lifestyle means we are fit physically and emotionally. To be fit physically, exercise is very important in our daily life. We should spend at least 15-20 minutes daily to do exercise. This can helps to keep us healthy and energetic.

 

Healthy emotions is as important as getting enough exercise. With all the problems in daily life, to reach a healthy emotions is quite a challenge. If we fails to handle this emotions, it turns out to be a disease that would kills us eventually. Many of us have heard of stories that someone commited suicide due to depression and stress.

 

Handling stress wisely is very important to prevent any health issues. There are many ways that we could do to release the tension and stress. For girls, one of it would be shopping and spending money. However, excessive spending will actually causes more stress at the end of the day - credit card debt, unable to meet month end, etc.

 

Meditation is about focusing our mind and deep thinking to provide relaxation and thoughts of an issue. When I'm in reall
y frustrating and stress moment, meditation would helps to provide peace of mind. For me, meditation is simply talking to God and listening to what He wants to tell us.

 

To start meditation, we must find a quiet place - best is in our room where no one would disturb. First, just sit down comfortably and close our eyes. Take a deep breath and stay focus with the breathing.

 

When the mind is calm, think of what is the issue that causes us to feel stress, frustrated or angry. I would normally ask myself few question:

1. What causes me to feel angry/frustrated/sad/stress/annoyed?
2. Is it within my control?
3. If yes, what can it be done to solve?
4. If its beyond my control, how should I tackle it?
5. Is it worth to be bad because of what had already happen or going to happen?

When there's no solution from the deep thoughts, try to focus the mind on happy things which related to the issues. For example: if we are unhappy at work and there's no solution to it at the moment. We can think of the happy gathering/party that we enjoyed. Or receiving bonuses/increment/promotions. Or anyone that brightens our day at work.

The most important of all is to learn to let go. While meditating, talk to God and listen to His tender voice within our hearts. When we open up our ears and listen, we will hear His voice gently comforting us.

Breaking the Plateau

When I start my weight lost program, losing the weight seems easy. Averagely, I lost 3KG per month for the first year. After that, losing weight is so dissapointing. No matter how I try, the weight just doesn't moved on.

One of the possibilities is that I've gain more muscle than before. As we all know, muscle is heavier than fats. I can feel that my body is firmer and I feel stronger. If you are wondering whether your body stops losing that fats, try to see if you have lost some inches in your body.

When neither did we lose the KGs nor inches, this status is called plateau. I have tried all sorts of ways to break plateau but all the work just doesn't seems to bear any fruits.

I came across an article about plateau and some suggestions on how to break it. One of the many ways is to change your routine workout. If the normal workout is aerobics, perhaps its time to switch from aerobics to yoga (or any other form of exercise).

Determination too is another factor to helps in reaching our key goals. Set our goals, reach for it and find solutions. Nothing is impossible.

10,000 Steps A Day Keeps A Healthy Heart

Have you ever count how many steps did you take everyday? During the ancient time, walking is the only way for a person to gets from one place to another. Regardless of the distance, our ancestors spends most of their time walking. As technology begins to advance, we human began to forget about walking. Now, we can get from one place to another within minutes.

 

Nowadays, we try to avoid walking too much by replacing them with cars, bikes, elevator and even prefered online activities to get things done. Walking is actually the best form of exercise for everyone regardless of age. It helps to trim up the tummy, keeps our heart healthy and refresh our mind with the nature of the earth.

If you are in Kuching, you can try to have a good walk at Friendship Garden. While walking along the garden, you would be amazed with the surroundings too.

 

Fishes at Friendahip Garden Park

Anyway, regardless of where it is, we should have the mindset to encourage walking in our daily life to keep us healthy and a step further from sickness. Here's some suggestion of how we can practice walking in our busy working life:

 

• Avoid lift, instead use staircase
• Park your car a bit further from the office entrance and walk your way to the office!
• If there's an urgent issue to settle with another colleague, walk up to her/his place instead of calling their extension
• If there's public transport to get to your workplace, make use of them instead of driving

Happiness Comes from a Healthy Lifestyle

Chakra Asanas or the Wheel Pose

One of my resolution for this year is to attend at least 40 classes of yoga as a self motivation for myself.

On the sixth class that I attended this year, I began to like it more especially the posture chakra asanas. This posture is very good for us mentally and emotionally.

Although wheel posture is good for us, we should also be cautious of what it can do to our body if we don't practice it properly. Some of the impacts would be headache, back injury and heart related problems. So, make sure that you have a qualified teacher to teach you before trying out this posture!

So what is the steps to do chakra asanas?

1. First, you must lie flat on the back
2. Bring the knees close to the buttock while exhaling out. The feet must be flat on the ground
3. Then, bend the arms at the elbow and place the palms flat on the floor (under each shoulder). Fingers pointing towards the back.
4. Take a deep breath, then raise the head, back and buttocks off the floor.
5. Press downward on the hands and feet while raising the hips and stomach as high as possible.

In my googling research, there are few major benefits from wheel posture:
- it stretches the chest and lung
- stengthen the arms, wrists, legs, buttocks abdomen and most important of all, the spine
- also stimulates the tyroid and pituitary
- increase our energy level and helps release depression
- a therapy for asthma, back pain, infertility and osteoporosis

For more details, you can get from this website which for me, contains a lot of useful information

Yoga definitely challenge ourselves on what we can or can't do. However, nothing is impossible. If we can't do it now, doesn't mean we will fail forever. For those who can't do this, don't give up!

Calculate Your Body Fat

Recently I'm stuck in a plateau stage where my weight doesn't seems to decrease. This has really de-motivating me in doing any dietary plan.

Then I realize that weight measurement is not only based on scale measurement but also on how much percentage of body fat in our body. Averagely, an Asian women will have the range of 25% of body fat and 75% lean muscle.

Some equipment in the gym have the formulas of calculating total body fat and total lean muscle that a person have. As I did not have the habits of going to gym, I've tried an alternatives way of finding whether my body fat is healthy or bad.

I found this website that tells us how much body fat is good and how much is bad. In average, women with 20% to 27% of body fat is consider as normal while men would have 13% to 17% of body fat. Slim or skinny doesn't mean that the body fat is lower. The body do have probability of having high percentage of body weight.

These website helps me to know my own body fat. In one sources, my body fat is 22% while another shows a lower body fat of 18%. After few tryout of the body fat calculation website, I found two website which gives more information and is nearer to each other than the others.

**The website is at the bottom of the picture.

This website gives more information. Other than the body fat percentage, it gives the ratio of waist to height and BMI.


So, what are you waiting for? Checkout your own body fat. Remember: Slim doesn't mean fit. And fit doesn't mean you must be skinny!!

Aerobics - Extreme Exercise?

Aerobics is for everyone, regardless of age. Some of us would think that exercise is only for those who loves an extreme sports. Well, this is wrong.

I have been going for aerobics for almost 2 years now. The place that I went is quite nice. I can say that the instructor is good and the exercise is not very extreme. I guess she considers that not only youngster joining but also middle ages ladies.

For those who are interested, can always drop by at the centre every Tue and Thur, 6pm - 7pm.

While waiting for the class to start, I snap a video of our instructor demonstrating steps aerobics. Enjoy!

Maha Yoga, Jalan Song

Finally, Maha yoga had opened another branch, which is nearer to my work place. They have another branch somewhere at Sekama area.

I didn't go to their opening but starts to join their yoga class with SK. It's quite a nice exercise where there's something different with the practising here. Although the movement is quite slow, we can sweat too.

Last week, we attend the Friday class, teached by Yikru. There's only me and SK that day. Well, it's fun to practice yoga in a small group of people. The teacher asked what we want to do on that day. SK say to reduce tummy fat. Hahaha... girls will definitely opt for this one. Well, after the yoga lesson, I really can feel my tummy is smaller.

Anyway, here's some details for those who wants to go. There are 3 teacher: Valerie, Yikru and Alvin. I believe any of them is equally good. You can drop by at the centre on weekday at

5.45pm for a lesson or 7.15pm for the night lesson.

Photo taking outside the washrooms. If you came early and previous class had not finish yet, you can wait here

Here are summary of the fees:
Drop in = RM15
4 class per month = RM50
8 class per month = RM75
12 class per month = RM90
Let's stay healthy!

Rambutan - Benefits and Nutritional Info

Rambutan from my backyard

Rambutan is a local food found in typical Asia country such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. It's hairy appearance of either yellow or red color while the inner are white juicy fruits.

Before this, I thought that rambutan is one type of heaty food but in actual facts, it contains a lot of nutritional that our body needs. Rambutan is rich with:

- vitamin C - antioxidant that protects cells from radical and helps the absorption of iron
- vitamin A
- potassium
- zinc
- manganese
- magnesium
- calcium
- iron
- protein
- ash
- copper

Vitamin C helps in building up tissues, strengthening our immune system and decrease LDL cholesterol. It also protects from heart diseases and prevents us from fatigue, weakness, aches, rash and gum problems.

This juicy fruits contains a lot of fiber that is useful to eliminate waste, preventing us from diverticulitis, gallstones, hemorrhoids and colon cancer.

One major nutrition needed for structure of teeth and bones are calcium.

Well, I guess it is good to have some rambutan in our diets to help increasing our immunity and for good health. Since it is the season now, let's have rambutan for our health.

Durian Durian - The Benefit of It

As we all know already, it is durian season now. We can see durians sold at almost everywhere; be it outside the supermarket, 'pasar malam' and it at the roadside. Durian is also known as the king of fruits.

Durian is an extremely heaty fruits. Once you had some, it is better to drink plenty of water so that we won't fall sick after over-consuming of this fruits. Some believe that drink salt water after taking durian can help in cooling down our body.


Before this, what I know about durian is that it is very high in carbohydrates and extremely heaty. Other than that, I know nothing about durian. So, I do some google search about durian and found the nutrition facts of durian.

Taken from nutritiondata

Durian contains not only carbohydrates but protein and fats. So for those that is thinking of losing weight and trying to reduce the fat level, try not to eat too much durian.
Like any other types of fruits, durian too have some benefits:

Junk Food - Is this Good?

I believe all of us ever tasted all sorts of food that normally known as junk food. Common known definition of junk food is something which is consumable but not necessary.

Little did we know that the fried 'keropok' that we used to buy is called 'junk food' for a reason. Why?

Basically, the word 'junk' means something useless, something bad and no benefits. Here's what junk means in dictionary.com:

Isn't this means that junk food is actually something which is not suppose to be consumed but instead discarded? But why is it that we likes this food so much?
　
What about definition of junk food? Wikipedia defines junk food as "Junk food is a common term used for any food item that is perceived to be unhealthy and has low or poor nutritional value". Not only that, junk food actually contains too much calories and fats which are useless and may cause health problem such as obesity.

Junk food is loveable in-spite of the name "junk" given to it. The sweetness or sourness of the taste makes human just gets attach to it. One of the factor that makes us link to junk food is the conveniency. We can find junk food at anywhere; the mall, small shops, five-foot stall and even our office/school canteen. As I'm creating a blog about health, so this time I'll stress on the effect causes by junk food.

There are two types of effect ; the short term & the long term:
Short term:
Reduce energy - as junk food contains little or no nutritional value, therefore, our body will weakens due to the lack of nutritions.
Reduce our concentration - without energy, there's no concentration as blood circulation decreases.

Long term:
Heart disease & high cholesterol- as junk food contains very high amount of fats and calories, over consuming it will cause heart disease and high cholesterol level.
Obesity - consuming junk food daily can lead to obesity

So, stop eating those unhealthy food and let's get on with healthy lifestyle!

Curry-Puff

Business is getting better and so does the size of curry-puff. Few weeks ago, my cousin brought back curry-puff from KL. I believe this is one of the special food over there that they decided to enlarge the original curry-puff from the size of a soap into the size of 350 ml body shampoo.

For me, the taste of this super giant curry-puff has no difference than other curry-puff. I had difficulties finishing them and felt its such a waste to throw it away. So, I had to force myself to finish it and start the day with heavy stomach.

And yet Malaysian is wondering why obesity rate is increasing in Malaysia ......

Curry-puff is very high in calories and saturated fat. In one website, it is reported that every piece (25g) of curry-puff contains 115 calories with 14% of saturated fat. For the curry-puff that I've had for breakfast, it is equivalence of 4 piece of the normal curry puff. This means, for breakfast, I've polluted my body with 460 calories + 48% of saturated fat!!!!

For those who do not know what is this, here's where you can find the recipe. Don't eat too much ya!

Dark Chocolate

I believe all of us are chocolate lovers. But how many of us loves dark chocolate? Not everyone!!
Dark chocolate is actually a much more healthy choice for chocolates compared to those which tasted so sweet that after taking one, you will need to drink one glass of waters.

In general, the benefits are :

• Help in reducing blood pressure
• Improve our circulation
• Gives us lower percentage for heart disease
• Improve the function of endothelial cells
• Improve digestion and help to stimulate kidney

Dark chocolate (without milk) is a potent anti-oxidant that helps to prevent heart disease. As it contains anti-oxidant, therefore it can also gives the radiant look on our skin. In another words, glowing skin. Hot cocoa can be use to substitute coffee. Suggestion is to have 1 glass every morning.

Not only that, eating small amount of dark chocolate can actually helps to improve our memory too. For those who have difficulties in remembering things, try eating dark chocolate.
Like any other chocolate, dark chocolate can also helps in reducing depression.

Have anyone wondered what will cocoa do to our cholesterol level? Unlike other chocolates, dark chocolate (pure dark cocoa) can help to reduce the LDL cholesterol level by 12%.
So, stop feeling guilty to your weight when you grab a bar of chocolate. Grab one dark chocolate instead!

Papaya - The Source of Anti Oxidants

I'm not sure whether I've posted anything about papaya or not, but anyway, there's no harm in posting again. Recently, my papaya tree had collapse due to the strong wind. Luckily, the root is still attach and I believe the fruits would be able to ripe, not just rotten and spoilt.
Some of the benefits of papaya:

(1) Eating papaya gives us a lot of benefit. It is believe to help in preventing cancer. Papaya is rice with antioxidant that helps the body to fight against cancer-causing cells. Sources of antioxidants are vitamin C, E and beta-carotenes.

(2) For those with digestive disorders, papaya is one of the best solution. It contains the proteolytic enzymes (one of the leading proteolytic enzymes that are found in papaya are papain). Papain breaks down proteins in food, thus allowing better digestion. Eating papaya regularly treats digestion disorders such as bloating and chronic indigestion.

(3) For male, papaya helps in boost male virility. Arginine, which is found in papaya is known to boost blood flow around the penis. These enzymes boost nitric acid in the body to relax the muscles around the blood vessels and increases blood flow. Specific use of arginine is to treat erectile dysfunction.

(4) For girls, we are very concern with the premature aging sign. Papaya are proven to be able to control premature aging. When our body digest the food properly and absorbs all the nutrients it needs, our body remain vital for a long time, indirectly controlling the premature aging.

(5) For those who concern with heart attacks and strokes, you can include papaya in your daily diet plan. The antioxidants in papaya prevents cholesterol from oxidizing. A plaque is form when cholesterol becomes oxidized, which causes heart attack or stroke.

Hope all this tips would benefits my readers. It is good to plant 2~3 trees of papaya in our yard. Papaya is easily planted and the tree can serve as a shed to our homes too.

Lui Cha

"Lui Cha" is a traditional Hakka dish that contains seven types of vegetables which is good for our health. It is believe to be able to reduce the heat in the body, health in constipation, cleansing our body system and also free from artificial food.

Not long ago, my Godmum had prepared Lui Cha for breakfast. Lui Cha is not complete without the soup. For those that hate bitter stuff, you won't like the soup.

It is so bitter and it smells of chinese herbs. These vegetables are crushed in a lui cha pot and grind with a stick. Some people would use the blender as it is easier and faster. However, for those who loves lui cha, they says that the taste when grinding with blender is not as tasty at the original grinding with lui cha pot.

The vegetables, rice and soup are served by mixing all of them into a bowl.

Picture Illustration of Health Tips

Smoking Hazard - It's Free to Quit Smoking

Nowadays, the numbers of people that smoke increased day by day. Even though many know that smoking can kills not only the smokers but those close to them, yet this fact seems to be ignored.

Smoking can lead to deadly diseases to the smokers. In order to create this awareness amongst smokers, our government had taken the best measure. Some says that picture speaks louder words. Therefore, I have taken some photos that are printed on the cigarette’s package that shows some major diseases cause by smoking :

Another fact about smoking that many didn’t take into consideration is that smoking not only causes you bad health but would actually cost you a lot financially! Imagine if one packet of cigarette cost your $7. Most addicted smokers would require a packet a day. This would means 30 packets in a month, which is $210!! For those with family, you would definitely know how much pampers or baby milk powder you can buy with that amount of money!

So for those that want to quite smoking here are some tips, hopefully will be useful:

• Chew on gums or fruits but avoid sweet stuff
• Wash your hands as wet hands will urge you to pick up a cigarette
• Shower frequently
• Exercise, exercise and exercise!
• Meditate
• Pray

Remember that it doesn’t pay to quit smoking, but it cost to smoke!!

Say NO to Smoking!

Barley Drinks

As we all know, the weather recently is extremely hot. It feels like the mother Earth is punishing us for polluting her.

Due to the hot weather, I decided to make barley drinks. Barley is believed to be able to cools down our body from the heat. It is not only nice to drink but is also soothing. The preparation method is also easy.

Ingredients:
Barley seed (opps, I don’t know how to call it)
Sugar (I combine normal sugar with gula melaka)
Pandan leaves
Water

Pour in water into the cooking pot, together with the barley seeds (don’t forgot to clean the barley seeds). When it is boiling, add in sugar up to your own taste. Lastly, when it is almost ready, add in the pandan leave to enhance the smells.

I keep the cooked barley drinks into warmer to soften the seeds. The seeds can be eaten as well.cooked barley drinks into warmer to soften the seeds. ce the smells. d yet. onut smell is gone. re will be games, foo

I’m thinking of cooking kundur soon!

Benefits of Drinking Plain Water In the Morning

There is some research shown that it is good to drink water immediately after waking up every morning. It is said that this method can help to cure certain disease that is very well known amongst us. The diseases are - headache, bodyache, heart system, arthritis, fast heart beat, epilepsy, excess fatness, bronchitis, asthma, TB, meningitis, kidney and urine diseases, vomiting, gastritis, diarrhea, piles, diabetes, constipation, eye diseases, womb, cancer, menstrual disorder, ear, nose and throat diseases.

The treatment methods are:

• Drink 4x160ml of plain water right after you wake up, before brushing your teeth
• After you brush and clean the mouth, do not eat or drink anything fo 45 minutes
• Do not eat or drink anything for 2 hours after 15 minutes of breakfast, lunch or dinner

There are also study shown the total days needed to illiminate the disease:

• High BP - 30 days
• Gastric - 10 days
• Diabetes - 30 days
• Constipation - 10 days
• Cancer - 180 days
• TB - 90 days

As of how true is the above, I'm not so sure. Anyway, good luck readers!

Aerobics

Many people thought that aerobics is a very fast and hard to catch up type of exercise. Well, for me, if you think its fast then it’s fast. If you give yourself a chance and try it out, after a while, you would feel that aerobics and other sports have the same level of frequency.

If you are going for aerobics, make sure that you do some warming up before the actual fun of it. Warming up is important because it tells your body that you are going to do something that needs energy. Also, don’t forget to drink warm water while you exercise. Many say that we cannot drink water while we are exercising. Let me ask you this- Do you drink water in between cleaning the house? It’s the same thing! Water is very important and if you feel like you need it, just drinks some (not one full cup!).

Warming up is not only important during the start of aerobics but also after the aerobics. After aerobics, it is also good to do warming up. This is to slow down your metabolism after the tedious possibly 30 minutes aerobics.

So, don’t just sit there and give reason for yourself! Let’s aerobics!

Snack Habits and Personality Traits

Last Saturday, an article in Borneo Post had kept my interest to read it more. It is about snack habits and what we can learn from a person habits on snack. Can’t help it but to share this with everyone else:

Disorganized Snacker
A person that often misses meals due to work or home schedule and snack when they need to. They may snack in the morning, evening or even during the day. They are seen as absent-minded and disorganized. They have a lot going on and meals are not high on their agenda. Often, this group of person is misunderstood as self-involved and selfish. They are ambitious and respected at work.

Emotional Snacker
Emotional snackers are friendly and outgoing and love life. Their cravings are driven by their emotions. Food cravings are often too sweet or too fatty snack to help sooth their emotional crisis. This snacker wants to feel appreciated and loves and can easily stress and feel fatigued.

Scheduled Snacker
This group has a set of snacking habit at the same time each day. Those that belongs to this group are set in their own ways and traditional in style. You can be charming as long as there’s attention. You live for your family and home life and can be opinionated.

Constant Snacker
Also known as nibbler loves to snack all-day long. The snacks are really mini meals 5 to 6 times a day. Also, the healthiest snacker among the rest. This group of people tend to be easy-going and experience little stress and rarely have mood swings. They cope well with life and are full of energy.