Where is the Change ?
As I ponder more and more about what I can do for this world that I inhabit in this time reality, I see who needs my help more – People who have access to state funded medicare or people who die because of malnutrition and droughts? Fairly easy to judge.
Being at such a position where I can sit back and actually think of helping someone out in the 6 billion population of the world, I want to help. The opportunity is huge and can’ t be ignored at any cost. The future generation is at stake and it is essential for us to act on what needs to be done in order to create a world full of opportunities and a world which was given to us.
Kangaroo and Elephant!
Elephant aka India is a energy starved nation among others of it’s problems. after signed the historic deal with US for nuclear fuel supply in July of 2007, has been working tirelessly for resourcing nuclear supplies to its reactors
Good… Is not good enough!
It seems as if whatever we attempt to do or actually do, is usually measured by some standard or another. But what is good? Define good.
Good for me might not just be fair for you and vice versa! 
These are my thoughts -> As human beings, we have a moral duty to make the best of what we have and what we were given. In the process, we must/should try to become the best of human beings, and sometimes in the process, we must stop for a moment and ask ourselves “What is good enough? What is the best for me? ” Good enough is sometimes not just enough.
I had this epiphany “Good…. Is not enough?” With all of my good intentions, trying to pull off my “normal” lifestyle, it appeared that even though I was putting my best foot forward, it is just not worth it and the task that lies ahead is herculean and our efforts are futile. May someday when it comes to you will understand what I mean!
It doesn’t make me nervous, but makes me realize that someone is bigger than us and that someone expects more out of me.
10/19/2009 update!
I received the email from one of my daily alerts – AstheManThinketh.net, and it said something like this
“Doing good is not enough when you are trying to become GREAT !” Now I know, why good is not good enough.
Calorie Count – Day 3, 4, and all of the days till now!
Okay, I am guilty. Guilty of not writing regularly, but I am certainly not guilty of over eating. I kept track of what I was eating and how much I was eating. The portion size is important right? Yes I thought so. !
The gone day i.e. 10/04/09, I ate just 5 strawberries and one banana till 8 pm in the night! And then I fell into the trap of HUNGER. I went to White Castle and order two jalapeno burgers and medium fries. So my calorie count on Sunday was around 1000 Cal. Kill me!
I remembered the fact that each of us should fast one day each week. This process helps you be clean from the inside and helps strengthen the metabolism! So when are you fasting next? I chose Sundays J
For the most of the week and weekend I ate moderately, except on Friday lunch and dinner and Saturday dinner. Now you will ask me that is pretty much everything 
That is not all I had fasting for the entire Sunday and Saturday morning to even out excess food! So the reason is that I was really hungry and didn’t bring my lunch to work on Friday, so that eventually leaves me with the option of Subway. Understandably, my colleagues disobeyed my standing orders to go to Subway and instead we lan
ded at a Chinese, Japanese buffet kind of restaurant. The food was delicious ! Yummm !
But the bad part is, like every other student, I ate a little over what I eat normally. So I assumed that this huge meal killed my appetite for dinner and I planned to have only salad!
The sad part is that I forgot that I have to go to the Sikh Temple at Bridgewater, NJ ( I try to go every Friday evening and Sunday morning). So I landed up there, and it is customary to have dinner after prayers as a pious offering. But I ate modestly again. So say Friday wasn’t that bad, I was a little above 2200 cal (Calories breakdown not provided, because I don’t remember what I ate). Intense I know
For Saturday I think I had a little intense dinner with around 1400 calories at once but be assured that I ate nothing all day. Except milk and cereals in the morning and water melon; PS: I love water melon.
I love watermelons
Till my next rambling then! Chao! Leave comments!
Cross connections – Serial or Parallel
How do you feel about yielding your bed at 3:30 am in the morning? Disgusting right! Even if I get up late, say 7, 
morning still comes anyways! J
Yearning up from a place a little far away from my own bedroom, I entered my bed at 4:50 am and after contemplating going to bed again or not for less than 60 seconds, I finally gave up on going to bed.
So imagine at 4:51 am you are standing in the middle of your room and thinking what to do? Seems a little lost? I was honestly. Rushing through the book kept next to me ( Blink) and understanding that I cant read it any faster, I gave up on that too, and did allow myself to relax a little bit watching SG1 on Hulu.com. And before I knew, it was time to get ready for work! LoL
Then all of a sudden my eye shutterbugs went down and I was almost going to give in. I think I gave in for a nano seconds coming back only to see another adverstismetn running in between the season 4 of SG1,which can become a little too much when you don’t have the patience to wait for the episode to continue giving me thrill of SG.
Away from that, I messed up a little bit before I could eat my breakfast and pack my lunch ( yes yes, I pack my lunch! BOOOO.. I am vegetarian and it is hard ! lol ) It was my intention do as the old German proverb says;
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” 
So based on this, I made two eggs ( sunny side up in my own special delicacies) sandwiched between toasted 12 grain bread slices and a little protein butter. This was soon supplemented by bowl of (warm to hot) milk and oatmeal cereals. But that is not just enough. I kept on thinking something was missing; Because this CAN’T be what Kings eat! ( ha ha ) So I decided quickly grabbed the nicest curry from the leftovers I got from my temple. Together I pushed a nice home made wheat bread onto the pan for heating it. 
Now while making my breakfast, I had a tough time dealing parallel activities. Like my ideals in life (Stay tuned for the next blog posting about Mahatma Gandhi), I also like to stay on top of my things and work very hard for whatever cause it might be. Time was clocking very quickly and no kidding I wanted to cook breakfast ASAP, eat and then wear my socks, shoes and belt, take my laptop, oh yeah the charger and yes the mouse! It almost appeared that I was flooding with breakfast and clothes at the same time.
Seriously, consider your home kitchen slab (shelf) with Protein Butter, Wheat Bread, Eggs pack, Butter knife, Plate, curry, home made bread, a pack of cereals and an empty bowl. So now you make two eggs, put bread onto grill, microwave curry, and prepare for next slot of things. Once the face of eggs is done, it is time to cook the back! Swap it up a little and add black pepper and a little salt now. Ding! The bread is done. Tossing it up on the porcelain plate, I am careful not to break it and increase my work by cleaning the menace. Well, the work is not done yet, apply the butter and take out the curry from microwave. Now run to the fridge and get milk for microwave and how about the cereals? Bring them from the attic and see what flavor you like. Quickly you drop the flavor you like onto the shelf behind you and grab the eggs, bread and butter while you rush to the fridge. By this time, the eggs are almost done and you still have the pan on the fire! J Oh where is my other bread? I forgot it in the fridge!
Well finally after two more minutes, my myriad with cooking breakfast and eating king size ended with food finally ready and I decided to eat it outside rather than have to go to my room to eat and then bring the dirty plat
es to the kitchen later.
Now off to the room to do the rest of shoes, socks, belt, laptop, chords, mouse and other things! And I had 10 minutes to complete all of this. Yeah baby! BREAK a leg. Ha Ha Ha
Well you see there is a connection, it appeared to me if not parallel, then serial. I just think I would be way well off cooking my breakfast at dinner time. It just appeared to me, as much as we want our mind to work in parallel, mind likes to work serially, afterall!
What a Gandhi?
As for the people whose understanding for developed and transitional economies is narrow and/or is limited to assuming US/UK/Europe to be developed and all of the Asia and Africa to be undeveloped, I must tell you that that is true, just not entirely.
Gandhi as people know him was from Gujarat, India. His full name was Mohan Das Karam Chand Gandhi aka Mohandas K Gandhi. In very short
Apart from the obvious tentacles of myriad of problems arising from being home to almost all known religion, profuse poverty, moderating illiteracy, highly secluded urban economic growth and burgeoning village population, less often abuse of religious minorities, widespread lack of electrical power, etc. this homeland has more problems.
As Gandhi said – fight to change things! So fight! Chao!
A good and a bad day!
With the last day of September, I took time to reflect what I did involve in this entire month. But the point of this post is about Last day of September – Sep 30 – which means my second day of diet planning..
Today I ate just about nothing the whole day! Not because I wanted Erick to see I can survive on below 2000 calories but I wanted to take less calories in general and what it turned out to be that I didn’t eat much at all.
In retro, when I see myself during the events and the day in particular, I don’t feel that way, but my stomach complained in the night, which I remember quite distinctively 
Adding from the point that I ate just above 1700 Calories on the day1, I ate just about a little above the half of the same amount on day 2
- Milk and oatmeal cereal (warm) – 8:00 am– 200 cal
- Fat free Yogurt cup – 60 cal – 12:00
- Flattened rice made up with oil, onions, mustard seeds, ginger garlic paste, and boiled potato (1 normal size) – 600 Cal – 1:00pm – Whoa look at that! PS: The portion size was big so is the amount of cal
- Two hotdogs with buns and mustard sauce – 200 Cal – 6:00 pm
- Five strawberries – 50 Cal – 9: 00 pm
There you go, a near about 1100 Cal. Now you are probably wondering what is the bad about this day? You ate less calories and this will help you be lean sooner! RIGHT. ?? Well the answer is YES and NO.
Yes because eating less calories will definitely help me burn the already present cal (flab) and this way, because for everyday activities body needs around 3000 calories and rest of the gap would be used from your own existing flab and this will result in burning the fat and appear you leaner!
But wait before you can celebrate this lean moment of happiness! Why?
NO because if I continue this way, my body will soon realize this that it is faced with a starvation situation and guess what happens next – because of less calories, my metabolism runs towards the body itself to nourish it.
Now this is more complex than you think. Body is made of proteins and fats and many more things. When body understands that it is malnourished, the body metabolism slows down and starts to look for food in the body since it is not getting any from outside. That being said, since the metabolism is slowed down, it moves towards slowly digestible food and that is usually proteins. Surprised are you? Well don’t be. Body reacts differently than we think it will.
When our body is underprovided with food, the slowed metabolism doesn’t have the strength or will to go look for food around bones ( that is where fat is stored), alternatively what it does is that it goes to nearby muscle tissue and starts eating it up. Slowly and slowly the size of the muscle tissues becomes smaller and smaller and hence you become leaner and leaner, but this is very harmful for body.
Decay of proteins is a long process and is a continuous process whereas fat decay is short and fast process. Once your body starts eating tissue, you will feel leaner but you will also feel weaker as compared to when you lose fat, you feel better about yourself.
Now, let me tell you why is it bad? For a simple reason is that you can add carbs to your diet and fat will come back quickly to your body, whereas in case of proteins, this is not the case. First off, proteins are usually very less in food as compared to fats, and they are hard to extract from food for the body. Second the process to extract the proteins and then use it to create muscle tissue is a long process often multiple days extending upto a week and comes back really slow.
So, eating less can be good, but bad too! Be careful what you eat! And how much you eat! And most importantly eat healthy!
Calorie Count – Day 1 – 09/29/09
As a part of the ongoing sequence of events, I will post my food everyday for 21 days from today and then we will re-visit it and see how successful we are in becoming lean! This list will also have an estimated Calorific value and time
Here goes for the day 1 
1. Oatmeal Cereals with milk ( warm) – 8: 00 AM – 250 Cal
2. Boiled White Kidney beans curry ( small bowl) with rice ( small bowl) – 1:oo pm – 400 Cal
3. Banana – 3:00 pm – 90 Cal
4. Cheetos packet – 5:00 pm – 150 Cal
5. Oatmeal Cookies ( 2) – 7: 00 pm – 180 Cal
6. Boiled White Kidney beans curry ( small bowl) with rice ( small bowl), small yogurt pack & wheat bread slice (2) – 8:00 pm – 200 + 200 + 60 + 200 = 660 Cal
7. Water – 10:00 am, noon, 2:00 pm, 6:00 pm and multiple other times — 3- 4 litres of water - O Cal
In all, around 1700 calories with no meat whatsoever!
War of weights!!
DISCLAIMER: This is beginning of new series for 21 days! And I hope to struggle through it ! Why 21 days? Three weeks and then we will review how things are and what we can do about them!
I was 190-ish pounds earlier this year, for more than 6 feet in height and that didn’t made me nervous at all. It however did made me curious as to how to put off weight and if not, then how to maintain myself at this number. A weight of around 190 pounds isn’t that bad for a person of my height ( See BMI for yourself, I swear I am not lying)and physical strength, but I argue that I can be better!
So keeping this theme in mind, I have pretty much tried a lot of healthy foods, salads, vegetarian sandwich (without cheese, of course), switched back and forth between different kinds of vegetarian foods, and also kept my life connected with exercise ( as much as it was possible with swimming, cardio, Yoga and weight training).
Like everyone, when faced with dire question of starvation and eating, I chose eating – then it might be a subway meal or an oatmeal raisin cookie! Yes I did! Beat it! I indulged into very occasional ice cream/frozen custard eating. And I don’t think that is bad because this is what you do, treat yourself for having to diet and exercise so much to help you “Look healthy and pretty”
Unlike everyone I didn’t fret about it later! You got to treat yourself with respect and dignity even though you might hate what you see after shower! So after nine months of discipline and over indulgence sometimes in different kind of healthy foods and occasional deviant eating habits, I am still at 190 pounds. That’s not bad! Right J
As the Gurus say, you got to keep track of what you eat and you will know how much you are eating. So here goes nothing. I have to put up with the challenge of meeting my fate of “becoming lean” by monitoring what I eat and how much quantity I eat and how many calories it gives me.
As my roommate Erick tells me “Dude, it is hard to keep your diet under 2200 calories a day”. Taking inspiration from this, I am going to set a limit of 2000 calories for each day.
