Tag: diet

breathing to get healthier

As is typical when the new year rolls around, people are making resolutions to be healthy and to lose weight.  This is a good thing, although continuing to follow through with them is a good thing, too.  (Good intentions don’t make you lose weight.  I wish it were that easy, but let’s not fool ourselves.)

take a deep breath, enjoy natureAlong those lines, Mango-Man sent me an article called “Healthful Resolutions: Breathing”, with the summary saying breathing exercises are portable, free, and help you manage unhealthy stress.  I couldn’t be bothered to read the article, because I’m already pretty good at breathing, if I may say so.  I’ve been breathing successfully for, um, a number of years now.  The actual number isn’t so important.  It’s been a lot of years, with the caveat that it’s not a LOT.

I’m not saying certain breathing techniques can’t help you feel better, especially if you’re exercising — there are techniques that can help.  But there are better ways of removing stress than just breathing.  For starters, laughing does the heart good, like a medicine.  That’s the primary purpose of this blog: to enjoy life more.  So if you want to feel better, deal with your problems as best you can, and find ways to laugh more.  I was going to say “and don’t forget about the breathing part”, but you don’t have to think about it, because it happens naturally already.

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BTW, while searching for this image, I came across an article that says:

Deep breathing exercises are a great way to lose tummy fat around your waist and get slim without strenuous workouts that seem to do more harm than good that or portable, which mean you can do them anywhere you go.

long breath dietThat’s the actual text to start the article.  Then on the same page was this image, explaining that you can get ripped abs in only minutes a day, that some 50-year-old Japanese guy lost 28 pounds and 5 inches from his waist in only 50 days with this diet.  And supposedly it’s “similar to Bruce Lee’s dragon breathing technique”. So that’s how he was so fit!  I never knew it was so easy!  So if I just do this 1 minute long breath diet, I’ll have ripped abs like Bruce Lee.  Amazing!  I always figured he had to do hours of weightlifting and fitness training to be so buff.  There’s no telling what you’ll learn just from surfing the Internet a few minutes a day…  That same page also had a Karaoke Diet.  Maybe we need to invent our own diets!

the junk food diet that works!

Have you heard of the Twinkie diet?  It’s also known as a convenience store diet.   A professor of human nutrition decided to prove that the main cause of weight loss was counting calories, not the nutritional value of the food.  So for two months, he ate a small meal of junk food every three hours.   His meals consisted of Twinkies, Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Doritos, sugary cereals, and Oreos.  That was two-thirds of his diet — the rest included a daily protein shake, some vegetables, and a multivitamin pill.  His project was a success, in that he lost 27 pounds in two months.

Would deep-fried Oreos fit in this "diet"?

Sounds great, right?  When I heard this, I was thinking, “Where do you sign up for this kind of research?!?”  What made his “diet” effective was that he limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day.  A man of his size would normally consume 2,600 calories per day.  The key to his “diet” (and any diet) was to consume fewer calories than he burned.   It makes sense.  (That’s my approach, although it looks like I haven’t been eating enough junk food!)

You might assume this his junk food diet would make his health worse, but it actually didn’t.  His “bad” cholesterol (LDL) dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol (HDL) increased by 20 percent.  His level of triglycerides (a measure of body fat) went down by 39 percent.  That’s inconceivable.

So according to his research experiment and the documented results, you can eat Twinkies and Oreos and Doritos every day and become healthier! The numbers don’t lie.

At this link there’s a list of what his typical daily diet would include: Twinkie diet helps professor lose 27 pounds.

I almost hesitate to admit this next part because it might mean that the self-proclaimed “Important Doctor” might actually know something about nutrition and be right, but perhaps there is some validity to the bacon and cheese diet, if used in moderation.  I decided to put that in here because it sounds like some research is in order…  🙂   We also need to add Cheetos and Oreos and ice cream to it.   Then include copious amounts of Southern-style sweet tea, and it would be the most awesome diet ever.

finally a diet plan with enough splurging

The other day I overheard the “Important Doctor” giving some health advice to someone trying to lose weight.  He said if you would eat healthy and responsible (low-fat and low-calorie and small portions) for 80% of your meals, then you could eat whatever you want for the other 20% of your meals and still lose weight.

Let it be noted that his actual words were “whatever you want” concerning 20% of your meals.  So if you normally eat 21 meals per week, then 20% would be about 4 meals.  That sounds like a plan I could follow.   That would mean I could eat at a pizza buffet 4 times per week and still lose weight.  Or have one of the meals be an all-you-can-eat donut bonanza.  Or I could eat dishes like the bacon explosion.  I think I could eat responsibly for the other meals of the week if I could splurge all I wanted on four meals per week.

However, I suspect that once again the (self-proclaimed) “Important Doctor” is blowing hot air.  If I were to eat at a pizza buffet four times per week, I guarantee I wouldn’t be losing weight — I’d be gaining it.  He’s probably just throwing figures out there to make it sound like he’s done research and knows what he’s talking about.   But we’ve had this debate before, that he’s probably non-accredited (if he even is a doctor at all).  His infamous bacon and cheese diet sounds great, but I don’t know of any research proving that it works long-term.  (I imagine it does make people happy in the short-term, though!)

new diet plan based on Michael Phelps’ success

U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps dominated the swimming contests at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  He won a record 8 gold medals in 8 events, and shattered 7 world records.  How does he do it?

Well, our investigative staff here took a look at his daily routine.  When asked what he was doing during the Olympics when not swimming, he replied, “I’m eating a lot of pasta and pizza.  I’m eating a lot of carbs.  And sleeping as much as I can.”  I could do that!  And I’d like to do that!

In preparation for the Olympics, he also swims a lot for training, which is expected, but so do all the other contestants.  So what sets him apart?  I’ve found that he eats over 12,000 calories per day!  That’s not normal!  So in the name of research, I’m going to start eating 12,000 calories per day to see if it makes me excel at what I do.

Here’s a listing of what he eats on a typical day:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread — capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs — what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen — with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For me, I’m going to substitute sweet tea instead of those energy drinks.  I don’t know how many glasses of tea it will take to get those 1,000 calories, but I can handle it.

Of course, if my daily workout doesn’t keep up with this increased caloric intake, I run the risk of looking like this:

But I reckon someone should test out this crazy new diet plan, in the name of research…