We’re all guilty of becoming just a little bit lazy in Hong Kong. Often this laziness can creep into our diets, meaning we end up eating whatever is most convenient, without taking into consideration how healthy (or unhealthy) that might be. With Hong Kong’s growing interest in health and wellness, you may have noticed the number of healthy meal programmes that have recently started appearing. The newest one of these is Eatology, which I sampled for a week earlier this month. (See also: Lean by Design.) Eatology provides premium, tailor-made meal programmes that are designed by chefs and tested and tweaked by dieticians to ensure that all the macronutrients are spot on, whilst still providing customers with delicious food. There are a variety of different meal plans to suit your overall goals – whether it’s to lose weight, boost energy levels, or to generally just eat more healthily. It’s also the only meal programme in Hong Kong that fully caters to vegan diets. The plan that I was on was a completely custom-made one that began with an in-depth consultation with nutritionist Tanja Guigon-Rech from Nutrition Nation.

Tanja runs a team of internationally certified nutritionists who are dedicated to providing food education and guidance to the people of Hong Kong. I found my consultation with Tanja pretty fascinating. Just by asking a few questions about my day-to-day life, diet, sleep patterns and exercise regime, she was able to tell me my body type and give me concrete suggestions on how I can work with my body type to achieve my goals and lead a healthier lifestyle. Tanja then calculated how much protein, fat and carbohydrates I should be eating and relayed this information back to the team at Eatology so that they could put together a programme to suit my exact requirements. I was put on a meal plan of around 1,600 calories per day with a macronutrient breakdown of 40% protein, 30% fat and 30% carbs (good fats and good carbs only, of course). My meals were delivered to my office at 8:30am sharp and consisted of breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks. Each dish was listed on a daily menu, including total calories and macros, so I could see exactly what I was eating.

I’ve tried a couple of meal plans before that were so uninspiring that eating the dishes almost seemed like a chore. Eatology’s meals were the complete opposite; each morning, I was like a child at Christmas – I couldn’t wait to see what I was going to get! The meals are so well thought out and genuinely exciting that they were a real pleasure to eat. Breakfast always consisted of eggs, since they’re high in protein. House Sale Westminster Ave OttawaYet it was never just plain, simple eggs; Where To Buy Munchkin Cats In Texasone day I had ‘Moroccan-style scrambled eggs’, another I had Alaskan-style omelette with smoked salmon and crème fraiche.Homes For Sale In Streams Of Plainfield Il

Lunches and dinners were never just grilled meat and two veg. I’d have things like chicken burger with quinoa salad and homemade ketchup, or honey duck breast with cabbage mango slaw, or (one of my favourites) Marseille fish with green beans and aubergine gratin. Mid-morning or mid-afternoon snacks were often meat-based (again, for the protein count), such as Moroccan meatballs with tzatziki, or marinated seared tuna with wasabi soy. One issue that I know I struggle with is portion size, as, when left to my own devices, I invariably overeat. I’ll start grazing on anything that’s put in front of me, and just keep eating even when I’m already full. The Eatology portion sizes were more than enough without leaving me feeling uncomfortably full. And, since I was getting a snack somewhere between breakfast and lunch and then lunch and dinner, I was seldom hungry. Another thing I loved about Eatology is that they use environmentally-friendly packaging. Since you’re receiving five dishes a day, some of which are split into two boxes, there is obviously a LOT of packaging.

Eatology uses Vegware packaging, which is entirely made from plants and 100% compostable. It’s refreshing to find a company that thinks about things like this, particularly here in Hong Kong, where saving the planet is rarely the highest priority! Eatology’s programmes start at $308 per day, depending on the number of meals and calorie count (i.e. if you choose to, you can do just breakfast, lunch and two snacks, to give you a bit more flexibility for dinner). If you think about it in terms of how much you’d usually spend on food per day, you might think it sounds a bit expensive and might claim you could do it all yourself for less. Then think about grocery shopping, preparation and cooking time, and think about if you could really create meals this exciting and delicious for yourself for less money. The answer is most definitely no. Are you wondering how I felt after a week of Eatology? Not only did I feel less bloated, more energised and apparently noticeably slimmer, but I was consciously aware of my portion sizes and calorie intake once I was back on ‘normal’ meals.

I was in fact so impressed by Eatology and the way it made me feel, that I have already signed up to two more weeks of it before I head off to get married! There are obviously a number of these meal plans out there, but of the ones I’ve tried, Eatology is by far my favourite. Their motto is ‘eat healthy, live easy’, which couldn’t be more true. As a special offer for readers of The Dim Sum Diaries, Eatology is offering HKD250 off your first two-week Eatology meal plan!  and mention The Dim Sum Diaries.When describing someone that has successfully made the transition to the Primal way of eating I often refer to them as “fat-adapted” or as “fat-burning beasts”. But what exactly does it mean to be “fat-adapted”? How can you tell if you’re fat-adapted or still a “sugar-burner”? I get these and related questions fairly often, so I thought I’d take the time today to attempt to provide some definitions and bring some clarification to all of this. I’ll try to keep today’s post short and sweet, and not too complicated.

Hopefully, med students and well-meaning but inquisitive lay family members alike will be able to take something from it. As I’ve mentioned before, fat-adaptation is the normal, preferred metabolic state of the human animal. it’s just how we’re meant to be. That’s actually why we have all this fat on our bodies – turns out it’s a pretty reliable source of energy! To understand what it means to be normal, it’s useful examine what it means to be abnormal. And by that I mean, to understand what being a sugar-dependent person feels like. A sugar-burner can’t effectively access stored fat for energy. What that means is an inability for skeletal muscle to oxidize fat. Ha, not so bad, right? I mean, you could always just burn glucose for energy. Yeah, as long as you’re walking around with an IV-glucose drip hooked up to your veins. What happens when a sugar-burner goes two, three, four hours without food, or – dare I say it – skips a whole entire meal (without that mythical IV sugar drip)?

They get ravenously hungry. Heck, a sugar-burner’s adipose tissue even releases a bunch of fatty acids 4-6 hours after eating and during fasting, because as far as it’s concerned, your muscles should be able to oxidize them (PDF). After all, we evolved to rely on beta oxidation of fat for the bulk of our energy needs. But they can’t, so they don’t, and once the blood sugar is all used up (which happens really quickly), hunger sets in, and the hand reaches for yet another bag of chips. A sugar-burner can’t even effectively access dietary fat for energy. As a result, more dietary fat is stored than burned. Unfortunately for them, they’re likely to end up gaining lots of body fat. As we know, a low ratio of fat to carbohydrate oxidation is a strong predictor of future weight gain. A sugar-burner depends on a perpetually-fleeting source of energy. Glucose is nice to burn when you need it, but you can’t really store very much of it on your person (unless you count snacks in pockets, or chipmunkesque cheek-stuffing).

Even a 160 pound person who’s visibly lean at 12% body fat still has 19.2 pounds of animal fat on hand for oxidation, while our ability to store glucose as muscle and liver glycogen are limited to about 500 grams (depending on the size of the liver and amount of muscle you’re sporting). You require an exogenous source, and, if you’re unable to effectively beta oxidize fat (as sugar-burners often are), you’d better have some candy on hand. A sugar-burner will burn through glycogen fairly quickly during exercise. Depending on the nature of the physical activity, glycogen burning could be perfectly desirable and expected, but it’s precious, valuable stuff. If you’re able to power your efforts with fat for as long as possible, that gives you more glycogen – more rocket fuel for later, intenser efforts (like climbing a hill or grabbing that fourth quarter offensive rebound or running from a predator). Sugar-burners waste their glycogen on efforts that fat should be able to power.

Being fat-adapted, then, looks and feels a little bit like the opposite of all that: A fat-burning beast can effectively burn stored fat for energy throughout the day. If you can handle missing meals and are able to go hours without getting ravenous and cranky (or craving carbs), you’re likely fat-adapted. A fat-burning beast is able to effectively oxidize dietary fat for energy. If you’re adapted, your post-prandial fat oxidation will be increased, and less dietary fat will be stored in adipose tissue. A fat-burning beast has plenty of accessible energy on hand, even if he or she is lean. If you’re adapted, the genes associated with lipid metabolism will be upregulated in your skeletal muscles. You will essentially reprogram your body. A fat-burning beast can rely more on fat for energy during exercise, sparing glycogen for when he or she really needs it. As I’ve discussed before, being able to mobilize and oxidize stored fat during exercise can reduce an athlete’s reliance on glycogen.

This is the classic “train low, race high” phenomenon, and it can improve performance, save the glycogen for the truly intense segments of a session, and burn more body fat. If you can handle exercising without having to carb-load, you’re probably fat-adapted. If you can workout effectively in a fasted state, you’re definitely fat-adapted. Furthermore, a fat-burning beast will be able to burn glucose when necessary and/or available, whereas the opposite cannot be said for a sugar-burner. Ultimately, fat-adaption means metabolic flexibility. It means that a fat-burning beast will be able to handle some carbs along with some fat. A fat-burning beast will be able to empty glycogen stores through intense exercise, refill those stores, burn whatever dietary fat isn’t stored, and then easily access and oxidize the fat that is stored when it’s needed. It’s not that the fat-burning beast can’t burn glucose – because glucose is toxic in the blood, we’ll always preferentially burn it, store it, or otherwise “handle” it – it’s that he doesn’t depend on it.

I’d even suggest that true fat-adaptation will allow someone to eat a higher carb meal or day without derailing the train. Once the fat-burning machinery has been established and programmed, you should be able to effortlessly switch between fuel sources as needed. There’s really no “fat-adaptation home test kit.” I suppose you could test your respiratory quotient, which is the ratio of carbon dioxide you produce to oxygen you consume. An RQ of 1+ indicates full glucose-burning; an RQ of 0.7 indicates full fat-burning. Somewhere around 0.8 would probably mean you’re fairly well fat-adapted, while something closer to 1 probably means you’re closer to a sugar-burner. The obese have higher RQs. Diabetics have higher RQs. Nighttime eaters have higher RQs (and lower lipid oxidation). What do these groups all have in common? Lower satiety, insistent hunger, impaired beta-oxidation of fat, increased carb cravings and intake – all hallmarks of the sugar-burner. It’d be great if you could monitor the efficiency of your mitochondria, including the waste products produced by their ATP manufacturing, perhaps with a really, really powerful microscope, but you’d have to know what you were looking for.

And besides, although I like to think our “cellular power plants” resemble the power plant from the Simpsons, I’m pretty sure I’d be disappointed by reality. No, there’s no test to take, no simple thing to measure, no one number to track, no lab to order from your doctor. To find out if you’re fat-adapted, the most effective way is to ask yourself a few basic questions:Then you’re probably fat-adapted. Welcome to normal human metabolism! A quick note about ketosis: Fat-adaption does not necessarily mean ketosis. Fat-adaption describes the ability to burn both fat directly via beta-oxidation and glucose via glycolysis, while ketosis describes the use of fat-derived ketone bodies by tissues (like parts of the brain) that normally use glucose. A ketogenic diet “tells” your body that no or very little glucose is available in the environment. “Impaired” glucose tolerance and “physiological” insulin resistance, which sound like negatives but are actually necessary to spare what little glucose exists for use in the brain.