The Change

It’s almost one month that my tongue hasn’t had any contact with rice. I’ve been motivated through my readings that people who actually avoid rice from their intakes would have their weight decreased. To name few; Awal Shaari, Aznil Nawawi, Ziana Zain and Dafi AF5. And they who I am referring to are celebrities who have reason for doing that; they must look good in the television, or more precisely in shape enough to look good in front of camera. But how about me? Do I have any cameras to stand in front of them, or do I have any people to look me in the television? Absolutely no. However this change of diet of mine is due to the awareness of how far my body has been from the healthy BMI range.

Let me reveal this. My height is about 1.80m while my previous weight before I started this change of dietary intake was 90kg or ++. Thus, the BMI value would yield 27.778 (weight in kg divided by height in meter to the power of 2) which is in the range of fat people. The fit people have BMI values within 20-25. Therefore, for me to reach at least 25, I have to decrease my weight up to 81kg, which is to some people still sounds scary. However, taking into account my height, it is considerably fit.

For the benefit of monitoring my weight, I’ve bought a scale. I’ve measured my current weight; it is 88kg, which means I’ve fruitfully reduced about 2kg for one-month avoidance of rice. But back to the main topic, is rice the absolute culprit?

Actually, rice contains complex carbohydrates which will yield a lot of glucose after being digested. Thus, foods containing complex carbohydrates like rice must go through levels of processes which take time before the yielded glucose can be actually used up to produce energy, and most importantly the digestion usually produces extra glucose. It is this extra glucose which will eventually be converted into fat for energy storage if they are not used. That’s the basic idea of how rice makes people fat. However it has to be stressed here; rice is NOT the mere culprit but since it is the most common meal for Malaysians, it has to be listed as one of the culprits though.

However again, it’s not all about the meal, but the energy use also. It is as simple as this; 1. Input More, Output Less = Fat
2. Input More, Output More = No Change
3. Input Less, Output More = Thin
where the input is the meal intake, while the output is anything that uses the products from the digested meal such as working, thinking, and exercising. If you eat more but you do activity less, how do you expect you will be thin? So to accelerate reducing my weight, I do some light exercises like sit-ups and lifting weighs. Owh... it’s not so accelerating considering only 2kg per month, but I believe I’m not torturing my body so much with this change.

With this change also, there are some social changes and conflicts occurred. For example, my mom continuously pleads me to eat rice but I have to refuse and that hurts her. She can’t stand it seeing me not eating rice. So does my abah. Poor mak and abah, but please understand me. Besides that, I who are not used to consuming biscuits, have change. I buy hi-fibre biscuits and to replace glucose intake, I choose fruits, breads and chocolates. Yummy! And how about seeing me doing sit-ups previously? Hell no! I used to considering my daily works as ample enough to replace the exercise, which was actually only an excuse to keep the “mim alif lam sin”. Hoho...

Along this period, I only miss nasi goreng kampong which is my favorite meal, but not nasi putih to accompany the lauk-pauk and vegetables for my lunch. Owh ya, I don’t take heavy meals for dinner also. Sometimes it’s only a cup of tea and a bar of chocolate. I hope I can continue this “revolution” for few months more before I can actually taste rice again. Hoho... sorry rice. We’ll see other time ya?



Do you have any advise for me regarding this change of diet? I would love to hear it. Let's be supportive!

My toes are big enough to cover the scale aren't them?

See... 98 88kg.