Look leaner and think sharper!

This week is the University's "health awareness" week. There is a health check for blood pressure, height, weight and many more. As I was curious about what might be checked and an eagerness to know how my "health" status, I went for the "check up". I was quite pleased with the result, particularly my body fat is only 13.4%. I remember about 6 years ago, a similar test about my body fat was done and I was 20% at that time, so my lifestyle and dietary habit did helped me to gain a change in my body fat weightings. What, however, more interesting is the muscle mass, which is 46.9 Kg. Given that I weighed only 57.1 Kg. The muscle represents more than 80% of my body content. That feels great!

I surfed the website to find a bit more about how to build up the muscle mass. The following are few points I gathered from a website, that are related to those heavy weight trainers, but I do see some relevance to my case of "building small muscle".

1. Weight Train - I didn't do that, of course. However, since I bought a abs crunches equipment for £3 from my local charity shop, I quit the Gym. I mean, I went there to use their machine to do the crunches anyway. They said men accumulated fats round the abdominal regions and that is how I get to do crunches a lot more 2 years ago. I just do that every morning.

2. Eat More Protein - Don't get me wrong, I am not an Atkin's diet advocate, I do have calorie in my diet. The percentage of protein, however, then to be higher. This includes brown bread, Greek yogurt (it is thicker and better quality), tuna sandwich, peanut butter, etc. These are good in building body muscle

3. Eat More Often - have snacks in between meals. I normally have brown biscuits in the afternoon or throughout the day whenever I felt the need to eat them, just one or two at a time,.

4. Eat More Fat - well, this means unsaturated fats. The body needs fat to maintain a balance diet anyway. I had olive oil, walnuts in my evening meals most days. non-saturated fats also have the benefits to help reduce cholesterol.

5. Rest More Often - You don't need to exercise everyday. While I went swimming 2 - 3 times a week, I don't go consecutively two days in a row. I let my muscle some "rests". It "trained itself" better after a "rest", so is my crunches exercise in the morning. Sometimes, I just gave myself a day break.

I am sure if I want to look a lot like "Mr Muscular", I need to train up a lot more, which I am reluctant to do so. I am just happy to do my crunches, firm up my lower abdominal muscle, which is a lot harder to reach if you don't have the right position and equipments to support the crunches on that part of the body. Luckily I have those equipment and I am able to do so, and it seems it has the desired effect I wanted as well. As long as I look leaner and sharper on my exterior, I am pleased, but all of that starts from the intention to live and stay healthily.