Baana Kathadi - One line review

Watched "Baana Kaathadi" today...just because I was so damn bored and didn't have patience to do anything useful... 

So how was the movie? - பாணா காத்தாடி - ஒரு நூல் அருந்த பட்டம். 

I liked two songs though. Considering that I am listening to those songs for the first time, they were quite catchy. "En nenjil" and "Paithyam pidikudhu". Yuvan has scored music.

2 Square...

I had lunch at "2 Square" - A veg restaurant in Nungambakkam (In the one way near Loyola college). The food was A.W.E.S.O.M.E. They just serve Thalis during lunch. There are 4 different varieties of Thalis available - Madras, Hyderabad, Malabar and Mumbai. The spread on all these varieties are pretty much the same except for minor differences. You can have everything on the Thali in unlimited quantities. It is priced at Rs. 85/- inclusive of taxes.

They offer ala carte service for dinner. The dinner menu has very limited options available available but I believe the quality of food would be as good as lunch.

# The ambience is pretty good.
# They have valet parking.

Do check it out if you are in Chennai...!!!

Understanding Calories and weight loss...

We see more and more obese people every day. This number keeps increasing and most of them are from our industry. Fortunately, people are becoming conscious of their weight/health these days and are trying to go on a diet. But most people do so without understanding the concept behind calories, weight loss/gain. Such mindless dieting doesn't help. I was obese a couple of years back and since then have reduced 48 Lbs (22 Kgs). I feel good and confident now after losing weight. While I was trying to lose weight I read a lot about dieting and exercising. Now that I have successfully lost weight and have been maintaining it for more than a year, I thought I could share some of my knowledge on this with you all.

Calories are just a way to measure energy. Our body needs a certain amount of energy to function (Example: Pumping of blood, respiration and maintaining body temperature). Even if you do nothing a whole day but just sit in a place still your body needs energy to function. This minimum energy (Calories) needed by your body to sustain life is called Basic Metabolic Rate. Apart from this you do basic activities everyday like brushing your teeth, taking bath etc which also require energy (calories) which will be in addition to the Basic Metabolic Rate.

You can easily calculate your BMR with your age, sex, height and weight. There are lots of BMR calculators available in the internet. Let’s take a case of someone with a BMR of 2000 calories. This is the minimum calories required by that person to exist. The actual calories which includes other activities can be roughly calculated using the below scale.

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (No exercise)

Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (Light exercise, 2 days a week)

Moderately active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise, 3-5 days a week)

Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports all days of the week)

Extra active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)

Considering the case of a sedentary person, he/she would need 2000 * 1.2 = 2400 calories per day.

From the listing above you can easily know that when you exercise the amount of calories needed go up. I guess you get the idea. So in our case eating more than 2400 calories per day will cause weight gain because your body only needs as much calories to function and when you provide additional calories it stores it as fat for later use. Every additional 3500 calories than what your body needs would cause 1 lb (~0.5 kgs) increase in weight. For example now when you need just 2400 calories per day, you eat 2900 (500 calories more) calories continuously for 2 weeks, you would gain 2 lbs (~1 kg) weight because you have had 7000 more calories than you should have in those 2 weeks (500 additional calorie per day * 14 days = 7000 calories) So the idea with weight loss or weight gain just resides with how much calories you give your body.

Wait; now because I told you that weight loss depends on giving the body less calories don't think not eating a meal every day or eating only 500 calories per day would help you easily lose weight, NO. You might ask, when I need 2400 calories per day if I eat only 500 calories per day, I am basically eating 1900 less calories per day right? So shouldn't I lose weight quickly? The answer is a big NO. When you start giving your body less than what it needs to survive (Your Basic Metabolic Rate - 2000 calories in our case) your body would start using less calories for functioning. Your body is intelligent. Your body would try to adapt itself to the calories available. It would think that you are starving and it would try to run the show using just the energy that you give it. So eventually your weight loss would slow down and also you are putting so much pressure on your body that it would start giving you health problems. So the best way to reduce weight is to reduce it slowly. Eat not too much less than your BMR. It would really help if you exercise daily which means your body spends energy in that too. This would mean your body would need more calories per day. For example if you exercise to burn 500 calories per day (20 minutes in Tread mill + 20 minutes in EFX) your body would now basically need 2900 calories per day but when you give it just 2000 calories to take care of its basic functioning it would take the rest from fat which in turn becomes weight loss.

 I don't want to confuse you much but want to tell you a couple more things.

1. As I had mentioned before, the BMR of every person would be different. But unlike I said before there are more factors than Age, sex, height and weight which affects BMR.

a. Illness - For eg when you have a high fever your BMR would increase

b. Thyroid - Thyroid produces a hormone called Thyroxin. More Thyroxin = More BMR, which is why some people with problems with their thyroid gland are fat because their thyroid would be producing very little thyroxin.

c. Diet - Like I had mentioned before if you give your body very little calories, it would go into starvation mode and would try to spend lesser calories than it usually would. Our body is intelligent.

d. Exercise - More exercise = More BMR

e. Body fat percentage - More fat = Less BMR. Its inverse is also true. More muscle = More BMR. This explains why exercising increases your BMR because exercising increases your lean muscle.

 When you diet, only 75% of your weight is taken from fat and the rest from your muscles (which is called lean mass), so eventually your body's BMR lowers slowly as you diet/reduce weight so it is good to exercise to compensate for this muscle loss so your BMR doesn't go down.

2. Even if you eat just 2000 calories per day, eat the food in proper proportion. Roughly 25-30% of energy given to your body should be from FAT, 20-25% percent from PROTEIN and 45-55% from CARBOHYDRATES. So fat is a must in your daily intake. There are two types of fat, good fat and bad fat. Monounsaturated fat and Poly unsaturated fat is good for health. Whereas saturated fat and Trans fat is bad for health. People suggest virgin olive oil or Canola oil because they have a high content of Mono unsaturated fat.

Eat healthy. Eat adequately. Start exercising. Live a longer life.