Day: August 1, 2019

Simple Secrets To A Svelte Figure – Portion Control

For the past two months, I have brought almost ten of my old skirts and pants to the tailor to have the waist part tightened. I know that I’ve lost about 2kg since early this year.  But what I didn’t realize was how much my waist has shrunk. It’s a frigging 3cm! No wonder my pants and skirts kept dropping off my waist and I thought that they  have shrunk in our rather new washing machine that seems to spin rather wildly.

For the record, my waist is now 68cm, down from 71cm!  This means I’m almost back to my pre-pre-pre-pregnancy waist and weight!  I used to be 42~43kg before I became a mother.

Besides ramping up my 5-day a week exercise duration and intensity, I am back at cutting down bread and noodles. Another secret is portion control on food.

I share EVERYTHING that I eat with my daughters, hubs and mil. They are happy too as everyone is very, very cautious on their weight and sugar level at their age now!

In the trunk of my car, I have a tiffin carrier and multiple stainless steel food containers in various sizes.  Whenever I eat out, I stash a food container in my tote bag or lug the 2-tier tiffin carrier along. When my dish arrives, I place half or three quarter of the food in the food container first before I dig into my portion.  Thus, I only eat a quarter or half of what I’ve ordered. This way, I always leave the eatery feeling half full and without guilt!

This is what I had for lunch with the hubs at LDG yesterday ~ chicken chop.

Before digging into it, I quickly kept three quarter of it in a food container for Sherilyn who’s waiting for her lunch at home:

My lunch at PappaRich with Sherilyn earlier this week:

And I kept three quarter of the food in a food container, for Cass’ lunch later.

I don’t really snack in between meals and if I have to, my go-to snacks are always nuts, seeds, sugar-free skinny yoghurt, nut butters, organic milk kefir or organic almond milk with oat bran.

But I’m no angel, I still indulge in sinful carbs and my kryptonite is kuih-muih! 😆  But instead of stuffing the entire kuih into my mouth, I share half of it with my daughters.

Sahara is my current favorite brand of organic milk kefir, imported from Australia.  It has assisted me greatly in my evacuation job every morning! Love the taste too.

No. of times viewed = 55

How Often Do You Service Your House Air-Conditioner?

An air-conditioner has to be serviced regularly so that it can perform optimally.  Regular servicing also improves the efficiency of our air conditioner. Experts warn that for every year of operation in which you do not service your aircon, it loses 5% of its efficiency. After 3 years therefore, the efficiency of your air conditioner will have decreased by 15%. This adversely affects its performance, as well as your electric bill!

I clean our air conditioner filters regularly – at least once every 2 weeks – as the filters often get clogged with dust and pollutants.  When the filters are clogged with dirt, you aren’t getting the full effect and your air-conditioner has to work harder to push cool air out, thus more power is used, which means you’ve got to dig deeper into your wallet every month to pay your electric bill.

For air-conditioner, ideally it should be serviced at least once a year.  But we don’t. Both hubs and I are usually so occupied with our work respectively that servicing the air-conditioners will be the last thing on our mind. Plus, the thought of  cleaning up the mess that the technicians leave behind after the job is done is enough to make me procrastinate this yearly affair!  Instead, we have them serviced once every two years.  And this is how shockingly dirty the insides of our air-conditioners are after two years from the last service!

Oh. My. Freaking. Gawd!! Check out the inches of dust, dirt and mold!

I can’t believe that we’d been inhaling such dirty cool air every night for more than a year! No wonder there was a period of time that I kept getting the flu no matter how hard I work on at preventing it.  But after switching the position that I sleep on the bed and the air-conditioner no longer blows at my face directly, I’ve not had another episode of flu.  I now sleep on the inner side of the bed, next to the wall, directly beneath the air-conditioner and no longer feel any cold air lashing out on my face.  Poor hubs has to sleep on the other side of the bed, facing the cold air (23C). Sometimes he sleeps in the living room to avoid the air-cond (good, as I don’t have to be tortured by his thunderous snores 😆 ).

How often do you service the air-conditioners in your house?

No. of times viewed = 20

HEALTH FREAK MOMMY