Calorye

I’m standing in front of this new post, sipping on Afrimalt and writing. It’s a non-alcoholic malt drink that tastes so good, it’s like sweet beer with no ethanol taste. The Nigerians and Jamaicans love it I think, at least the brand Supermalt is very popular with them. I only discovered this kind of drink a couple of years ago, so whenever the mood strikes, I gets me a large can. By the way, Lithuanians love this shit as well! Our city has a Lithuanian shop that sells Kvass, among other interesting things that you can only find in the Balkans(?)….. Kvass is the shit as well, and it’s pretty similar, except I find it tastes less sweet and more like beer.

As you may be able to tell, the title today is a play on words. Rye is a grain and shit, you know, and carbs like this give out some of the highest calories that I know of. Well, I don’t know if it’s a lot, but the 500ml can I’m drinking gives me a whopping 265 calories. Initially I thought that a starving man or gal could drink one of these if they can’t afford dinner, and then go straight to bed, you know, so it’s easier to fall asleep and the stomach doesn’t scream in despair. I thought, this is is liquid bread! Aaand it’s less than 2 quid. What else can you get that is so dense at this price? Now I realise that you could get free water and mix it with shit loads of table sugar for a fraction of the price.

I never heard of a struggling, a really struggling person say that they had sugar water for dinner. That’s a fantastic idea actually, but it should only be done as a desperate attempt at not dying. If you watched Baki, you know of the time when he got poisoned, so he started fasting until his autophagy kicked in and destroyed the toxin from inside. Well, after fasting for many days, he had lost all the water in his body and he looked shrivelled up, but the genius that is Retsu Kaioh came to the rescue, with a bucket of water, in which he poured a whole lot of sugar! Baki gulped that shit down and he was back, ready to roll.

Money For Nothing

When I started going on the journey of becoming a healthier individual, and especially having a healthy diet, I went through various phases and relationships with my gut and my food. When I was blasting my liver with alcohol, I gained lots of visceral fat, and my gut was big like them Bengali uncles with diabetes. At one point though, after I was isolated (partly by my own choice and by the situation I happened to be in), I started taking care of my body by going on walks lasting hours. After a whole lot of that while listening to Dire Straits, I came back looking better than ever, and having lost much of my bulge (the one I wanted to lose 😉

Key fact to mention about that, was my decision to go on a strictly Keto diet for 3 months. The huge reduction of carbs helped immensely. I was gourging on trays of shawarma, ribs, and bowls of salad. It worked really easily for me, mainly because I lived by myself at the time, which means I cooked for myself, or I ordered from takeaways. I love meat anyway, which satisfied my food cravings, and funnily enough, I didn’t even crave sweets or bread. I mentioned living by myself because, if you know anything about South Asian mums, they seem to ignore or not understand the concept of carbohydrates and what they actually do to the body. So after I came back to live with my family, I parted ways with Keto, for in a Bengali household, rice is queen.

After introducing regular carbs into my diet though, I expected to gain back a lot of that nasty fat and become uncomfortably unhealthy again. But it didn’t happen. In fact I’m now in an even better shape than during Keto. Yet, I don’t have nutrient restrictions. That is because I realised the simplicity of the diet. It’s so easy it makes me laugh and cry at the same time, at how stupidly “scientific” and “anal” I was about dieting. All sorts of amateurs and professionals will tell you the most complex and sophisticated things about how to lose weight, or to gain weight. Bear in mind, complex situations do often need complex approaches, but when it comes to losing fat, and gaining weight, it’s actually easy.

Combustion Engine

Calorie sounds like calore, the Italian word for heat. They probably are related in that way. So what does heat have to do with calories? Calories are energy, and when you read the calories behind a packet of ©Rustlers™, you’re reading how much energy that burger will give you. It’s like going to the petrol station and deciding how much fuel to put in your car. When I see these low calorie options I think that if all those people eat just low calorie foods, their tanks are gonna be running empty. Guess what, this is simple mathematics, and I’ve only heard one other guy talk about it this way. Sam Sulek. This is how I think of it mathematically. If you have a car that needs to do work, i.e. run, you need to put fuel in it. If you need a person to do work, i.e. anything that you want to do, you need to put calories in them.

More petrol = more distance travelled.

more calories = more work done.

Basically, food gives you the energy to live. More food, more energy to do stuff. You don’t use the energy, that’s on you. I’m sure leaving petrol to decay in a tank isn’t useful either. This is what I realised. Losing weight is a question of calories in vs calories out, exactly what Sam says. The differentiation between carbs, protein, and fats comes later, or rather is a more fundamental and subtle difference maker in your weight. As long as you burn more calories, as long as you generate more heat, more energy than the calories you eat, you will lose weight. In fact you will lose fat first. If you work out, you need proteins, but trust me, if you listen to your body, it will tell you when it needs meat. If you want to gain weight, just eat more than you do. It’s a patience game, because it takes time and it happens slowly. Once you reach your goals the hard way, ain’t NO way you’re getting worse.

Be you.