Dragon diet

DISCLAIMER: The info below is my personal opinion on dieting and exercising, and I don’t claim to be a guru that knows all there is to know about these subjects. Feel free to disagree, but be warned: I passionately believe I am right about the subject.

I’ve gotten fair few inquiring emails about kolibri’s diet, so I thought I’d jot down my basic principles on how I approach my diet and lifestyle. I hope some of you find this helpful, or at least entertaining.

Since I have a keen interest in nutritional science, I’ve read thousands of diets over the years. And guess what… most of them work, as they simply instruct you to cut down the amount of calories you consume. Consequently you lose weight, though at great cost since starving yourself and denying your cravings is stressful and physically hard. Problem isn’t that diets don’t work, the problem is that no normal human being can stay on a diet for long. Therefore the dieters pack on the weight they lost almost as soon as they end their diets since they simply return to their old eating habits.

Therefore, you must chance they way you eat and make a permanent lifestyle change in order to control your weight once and for all. Who wants to be stuck in an endless loop of dieting and bingeing?

Most of the people trying to use diets fail because diets are simply too extreme. Living like a monk is simply not possible for most of us: it takes iron willpower to completely give up on your favourite foods. Dieting non-stop also requires almost completely stress-free existence, and I cannot remember a single year of my adult life that was not filled with enormous amounts of stress.

So what is the way to keep your diet clean and stop your waistline expanding you ask? Here are Dragon’s top tips on how to change your diet and your lifestyle with maximum gain for minimum effort.

1 Eat six small meals a day instead of three big ones

There is really nothing complicated about this: Just cut your lunch and dinner into two smaller servings, and eat small breakfast and light evening meal instead of the usual three huge meals after starving yourself for hours that is the basis of the bizarre western tradition known as “three square meals”.

There are many reasons why this will allow you to keep your fat under control: Eating several meals a day keeps your metabolism going, so you burn fat even without trying. Keeping the hunger at bay by nibbling at smaller meals every few hours means that the unstoppable craving to eat two tons of ice cream and sixteen cheese cakes is relatively rare as you are sated for most of the day.

As for the content of the meals, you should favour proteins and low amount of fats over carbohydrates. Chicken, tuna, salmon, beef, turkey, eggs and beans are all your friends. Side salads with little dressing are great too, but piling ten kilos of potatoes and white rice on your plate will be your downfall (see below). Fruit in moderation, oatmeal, cottage cheese and cereals high in fibre are good to mix up your meals.

I’m not even gonna list all the foods that are bad for you: sufficient to say that if you eat portions of food consisting of lard, salt and sugar, you really know already you are on a wrong course.

2 Find an exercise that you like and stick to it

It is no secret to my readers that I prefer lifting weights above all other exercises, but I definitely understand that this is not for everyone. Whatever it’s aerobics, bicycling, yoga, swimming, running or fencing, the most important thing is to do it regularly, at least three times a week. On top of this, use your legs whenever you are able. Walk to work, take stairs and travel to the shops on foot rather than taking a car. 10 000 steps per day is a healthy average for a human being. Buy a pedometer and find out how close to this you come, and adjust accordingly.

3 Banish the White Enemies from your diet

White bread, white rice and sugar are the bane of the waistline, the enemy of sane fat percentage and the nemesis of visible abs. Why is this you ask? Are fats not the real enemy? Well, not exactly. While eating tubs of butter with a spoon might indeed pack on the pounds, the “fast carbs” are the true villains of this story, and these three Great Whites are the reason of more obesity than all the fat in the world combined. White rice, sugar and white bread are highly processed foods that get converted to glucose faster than you can say “Mr. Creosote”. These nasty white things give you insulin spikes big enough to impale an elephant, and cause you to store masses of calories you consume as fat.

Since I am self-confessed addict of all the above, I’ve had to find substitutes: Brown rice, black and brown bread, and moderate amounts of fruits tend to handle my cravings. Just this single change in diet is often enough to make an enormous difference in people’s weight. How do you achieve this, you ask? Very simple: do not buy any of the above for your home, save for a little sugar for your more festive occasions of cooking.

If you have the willpower, try to keep the amount of potatoes you eat in reasonable levels, too. They are match even to the mighty sugar in their ability to cause insulin spikes and make you fat.

Sweet drinks are perhaps most insidious of them all, for they are sugar in disguise: everyone knows that guzzling down enormous quantities of Coca Cola is bad for you, but fruit juices are almost as bad. Water should be your first choice of beverage whenever you can muster the willpower to avoid sugary drinks. Water has almost endless list of benefits compared to any other drink: it has no calories, it hydrates the body, and it drives the feeling of hunger away. 8 large glasses are the recommended minimum.

A quick tip to burn a few extra calories with no effort: drink your water cold: body must expend energy to heat up the water, meaning you can spend fair few calories by just drinking water!

4 Do not measure kilos, measure inches

If you look good and healthy and, does your actual weight matter? I have always been a big believer in what appears in a mirror and a great sceptic when it comes to the scales. I pretty much believe that if you look good, you are doing good.

Besides, if you do any heavier exercises (such as weights, power aerobics, gymnastics etc.), you will pack on muscle mass. Muscles weight more than fat. Therefore you can have tiny waistline and still dip the scales at ‘overweight’ levels. In fact, according to BMI (body mass index) rating, many of the really fit people are overweight, but they are not fat or out-of-shape. They simply carry more muscles mass than your average citizen. If you can see your abs clearly, you are not fat no matter what the scales say.

5 Give yourself a day off once a week

Once a week, pig until you burst. Pro athletes can handle a diet that is always super-strict. The lesser mortals like us have to give in to our cravings once a week. Eat pizza, chocolate, ice cream, crisps, hamburgers, and whatever else your heart desires, BUT ONLY ONCE PER WEEK! Following otherwise sensible diet will kickstart your body’s metabolism, and deviating once per week will not allow your body to shift gears into fat storing mode. Yes, you will put on a bit of weight, bit if it happens only once per week the damage is not uncontrollable, and your otherwise cleaner diet and exercise regime will keep you well under control.

Thus spoketh the Dragon, and in his voice echoed with the deafening roar of Truth.

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