Once thin, always thin?

All the best to MMMC hardgay! I wish you all the best in your dieting. You really looked good last time when you came back=) Btw, nice hairstyle!

If you ever want to start a diet again, please bear in mind a few things. I believe that reducing on food intake is usually not sufficient to ensure long-term weight loss. With less food intake, the body goes into starvation mode, thinking that a "famine" is coming along soon, and so takes measures to prepare itself. For example, it uses less energy by reducing the metabolism rate so that more energy stores (read: energy stores = fat) can be prepared within the body. Also, it uses fat more efficiently, so that fats are burned less quickly. You get the idea.

Cut down on food if you must, it's ok to do so. Nevertheless, don't cut down too much, especially the proteins since if you do that, the body will breakdown your proteins to compensate for the lack of energy intake. Meaning, you will lose muscle mass, which is definitely a big no-no as muscles help you to burn fat! I read about the specific maximum reduction in food intake that you should do, but don't quite remember it. I think maybe it's around 20%? Not too sure..Cut down on oily foodstuffs if you want, the more the merrier=)

For carbs, change your diet so that it comes from food with low GI. Fruits and vegetables are such sources. Low GI means that the carbs will only be slowly digested, thus it doesn't cause a spike in blood glucose, leading to less fat being formed and stored in the body. Plus, it helps to reduce your risk of diabetes=) However, there is another concept involved too. That's glycemic load. It is the product of GI and the amount of that particular food that you eat. What this tells you is how much the food affects your blood sugar. For example, although watermelon has a real GI (around 70 with 100 being the max), it has very little carbo content (fibres are NOT considered as we cannot breakdown and absorb these). So, it's glycemic load (GL) is lower than what you would expect. This means that eating watermelon might give you a small spike in blood sugar levels, but will not result in a lot of fat formation.

So, that's about all about the diet part. Go exercise. Your campus should be fairly big. Keep the bike once in a while and go jogging! Or if you trust the water supply to be free of those pesky HepA virii go get a swim=) And make sure after exercise you don't eat more food than usual (grab some vege or fruits if you're still hungry) and that you don't feel muscular aches the next day. That's a sign of going over the limit. A good workout for now would be the stamina type, where you can harden/tone your muscles without building too much of a bulk. This helps to make you look better and increases your metabolism rate to burn more fat. Then again, if you like some resistance training to build up muscle mass, go ahead! Personally I don't do that too much to prevent flabby muscles later on when I get lazy=) Just make sure you stick to 70% of maximum weight that you can lift to prevent muscle injury. (That's for resistance..stamina training involves jogging or light weight-lifting that's around 40% max weight but for more reps)

All in all, hope you stick to whatever plan you have in mind. Don't want that ping-pong effect coming back at you. (That's where people go on crash diets or totally abstain from food, resulting in drastic weight loss which cannot be maintained. The weight goes back up, and usually even higher than before, when the diet is ended. Successive rounds of such diets result in less weight loss in every successive bout of dieting, and in the end the nett body weight goes up, not down.)

PS. All the best in your exams. Hope to see you again later this year. Don't paiseh stay over my place. Though I think most of them will still be in uni..then it'll be a bit boring here..Maybe we can go visit them? =)