Hi everyone this Wengie here,
Welcome to third part of my diet tip series,
this week I’m gonna be going through something that I find really really interesting
and that is the Diets Secrets of Asia,
Japanese women in particular are very well know for their diets to keep them slim,
I think there was a book written about it, about Japanese diets tips and tricks,
in countries like Japan is incredibly important to stay slim,
companies actually have policies where they will measure your waistline every year
and if you are over a certain healthy waistline they actually put you on a sort of probation program
and I guess help you get your diet on track,
and find out why you are going.. becoming like overweight,
I guess is a way for the government to combat like higher health cost later on, from obesity,
I notice every time I go back to Japan especially when I went in University, everyone was so slim,
I don’t think I saw a single overweight person like on the train, there was like none,
I was so surprised, like, I was like, where.. what.., like how can everyone just be like really really skinny,
and I think the women are not afraid to tell each other when they are overweight,
like I know here, it’s kinda like if someone is a bit overweight,
you don’t want to be rude and you don’t want to tell them,
hey you are overweight, but apparently in Japan,
they just go you are overweight do something about it,
so I think they are very open there and the culture is very different,
but I realized like.. recently going back to japan, I go almost every year, I love that place,
but I found that there are a few more overweight people in Japan, probably because
I guess the food is becoming more processed more westernized, there is a lot more fast food,
I think people are going away from their traditional diets and culture, which keep them quite slim,
what I just told you about Japan, it’s sort of my experience on what I saw when I was there,
my best friend is also Japanese and she is very very slim and naturally so,
I think she was just brought up in a way
in a culture, that sort of promoted, healthy eating habits and not overeating,
and I guess just emphasize in being slim, so today I’m gonna be sharing with you,
10 things that Asians do that keep them slim, so the first tip is to
drink green tea and just tea in general,
there are so many benefits that green tea have, beyond just losing weight,
I mean is just full of antioxidants, it increases your metabolism,
a faster metabolism allows you to burn more calories, and keeps..
I guess is just like keeping your engine running efficiently,
drinking green tea can actually burn an extra 70 to 80 calories per day,
and not only that, it can help keep you young,
because it has a lot of antioxidants that you know keep the wrinkles from coming,
you can get green tea in a variety of forms as well, like you can get it in a tea bag,
tea leaves or um.. I got this really cool green tea from the market,
is called the jasmine pearl green tea, smells really nice,
there is all different kinds of green tea,
they come in little balls it’s so cute and just put it in a tea pot and drink it,
so the best water temperature to actually.. for pearl green tea is, I think is about 98 degrees,
so don’t just put straight boiling water in it,
just let cool down for like a minute or two before you pour it into your tea leaves or tea bag,
there are other types of tea that are really good for you as well,
this is called Pu-erm, as pronounced in chinese, it’s pronounced
P-U-E-R-H TEA, I found this in chinese supermarkets, it’s got a really strong taste,
if you don’t like strong tea this is probably not for you, I’d stick to green tea,
this also known to help you lose weight,
I think it’s the taste, I know that green tea actually has this slightly bit of taste
and it helps curb your appetite and your sweet tooth at times,
the other type of tea that you can get like if you are not a hot beverage fan,
you can buy these packets at DAISO
or probably Japanese supermarkets,
but is actually tea for like a big jug or like a big bottle,
like one liter bottle that you can just put in the fridge, whenever I went over to my best friends house,
she would always have like a jug of these like chilled in like the fridge,
it’s perfect for summer, she usually has oolong tea,
this is barley tea and it’s got a black soybean flavor,
you can get barley tea as well or oolong or sort of jasmine tea and what you do is,
you get a big jug or you get a big bottle and you sort of brew the tea in the bottle
and then choke it in the fridge and any time that you need to drink cold water or a cold drink
instead of reaching for a juice or a soft drink you actually just pour the tea, tea is really nice,
if you want a bit of sweet taste to it, you can just add a little bit of honey when you brew
and then choke it in the fridge, you can probably buy bottles of it as well,
in the Asian supermarket, they have big two liter,
one liter bottle of tea that you can just choke in the fridge,
but sometimes if you want it fresh and less manufactured, you can just buy these tea bags,
or you can just get you know, a couple of your green tea bags and just put a few more
and just choke it in, brew it, and choke it in the fridge,
it’s the perfect.. I guess way to kind of keep off soft drinks and sugary drinks,
the best time to drink tea is, before a meal during a meal and after a meal,
I mean you can drink tea the whole time
I usually drink tea in the morning as well and then with my lunch and then with my dinner,
my best friend always said that her mom, gave her a cup of tea to drink with her dinner
or before her dinner and that is really smart
because I think that if you drink tea before dinner it actually keeps you a bit full,
so you don’t overeat, so you already got something in your stomach
so you are not completely hungry and starving when you eat,
and also drinking tea after dinner will really help curb your appetite from too many sweets,
the taste of the tea really helps settle some cravings…
you know after I drink tea that I’m less likely to crave unhealthy food,
is also really nice to have with me just a small sweet
like instead of having like a full flan cake with dessert or ice cream,
you have like a small sweet with tea and that is really nice for dessert.
The Asian tip number 2,
is to always have soup with your meal,
so I’m not sure if you guys had Asian soup before,
but Asian soup especially chinese soup is made out of pork bones, chicken feet or chicken broth,
the best thing about these kind of soups is it’s super cheap to make,
because bones are just like 2 dollars a kilo, 3 dollars a kilo where I can get them,
you can probably get them free from the butcher,
if they sort of get rid of it, and all you need to do is seriously wash it,
choke it in a pot, bring it to the boil and when the bones like pork bones, or beef bones first come to boil,
there is a lot of like brown stuff, so you just tip it all out, scrub it, wash it, choke it back in,
and then pour water onto it again and reboil it from there,
add you know carrots, add corn, add like dates to sweeten up the flavor and whatever you want really,
and after a few hours the pot is ready, is really really good for you,
it’s got a lot of minerals in it from the bone, you can add
a little bit of vinegar or apple cider, the acidity really brings out all the nice minerals from the bone,
is just really great to have sort of before or after dinner,
when I was growing up, every weekend we had soup with our meal,
and I guess if we had her stay at home mom.. , you probably have soup every meal
if you are in a traditional chinese family,
my mom worked so the only time she had time to make soup was on the weekend,
I was having this conversation with my friend the other day,
you know different chinese people have soup at different times,
you either have it before dinner or you have it after dinner,
some families have it before some families have it after,
in the restaurants they serve it to you before and the sweet soup is served after,
the good thing about the soup is not only is super good for you
it also actually helps you like the green tea fill you up a little bit,
before you start your meal, before you start eating rice
and before you start.. you know eating your main meal, so having like a bowl of soup
with your meal of before you meal is good because it keeps you full and if you eat slow enough,
you actually feel full and eat less food and also the liquid is sucking in your actual food,
I'm not sure if you'd noticed, but when you eat like noodle soup and then sometimes if you eat too quickly
and then you drink the soup and then it just expands your stomach,
because the noodles suck it up and just expands, and you feel terrible,
but yeah japanese people have miso soup with their meals
so it really depends, if it’s too hard to make bones soup, you can also drink miso soup as well,
they come in packets these days, the only thing about miso soup is it might be really high in sodium,
which isn’t good for you in the long run,
so maybe make your own miso soup with a little bit less salt,
I currently actually make bone soup once a week, and I just make this huge pot,
and I put in the fridge, and I just drink it whenever I can, it’s really good for your skin as well,
especially if you put things like chicken feet,
I know it might sound disgusting, but it has a lot of collagen
things with a lot of collagen really make your skin nice,
so I been trying to include more collagen to my diet.
The third Asian diet tip
It’s actually to eat more vegetables,
I’m not sure if you notice but when you look at Japanese cuisine,
Chinese cuisine and also Korean cuisine even, it’s very low in meat,
and very high in vegetables, a traditional Korean family diet, is mainly made up of rice and vegetables,
not that much meat, my family only had like a small cut of meat
like.. and usually you chop it and sliced it up and include it with the veggies,
and that would be kind of like your meat,
or maybe you have like a 1 meat dish and then like 3 vegetables dishes,
but we would always have a vegetable dish, like the would not be one day,
where we don’t have vegetables,
vegetables and rice was like a staple,
and I think that really help to keep me slim,
because vegetables are actually very good for you and they are very low in calories,
low calorie vegetables are very predominant in Asian cuisine
like cabbage I know Japanese people have a lot of cabbage,
so the Korean people,
I mean Chinese greens are very low in calories and are very good for you,
lettuce is even good because like lettuce is only water,
you can eat as much lettuce as you want,
and my favorite thing to put with lettuce is like to put in a hotpot, hotpot lettuce is the best,
other low calories vegetables that are very predominant in the Asian diet is raddish as well as..
japanese people eat a lot of radish and radish is included in various dishes,
as long as you eat more vegetables not starchy vegetable like potatoes but just like leafy greens and spinach,
spinach is so good for you and those kind of things,
like I don’t think you ever gain weight if you just replace a large portion of your diet with those kind of vegetables,
even things like, I know a lot of K-pop stars actually instead of eating like lunch, they have like
a sweet.. a steam sweet potato and they are like super good for you
and they are really really filling, so if you ever feel like snack or something during the day,
why not think of like, roasting or steaming some corn or sweet potato or like steaming some vegetables as a snack,
because I’ve done that before, I like savory snacks so like it does take a little bit more affort but
you are more likely to stick to your diet,
steaming your vegetables or stir frying with a little bit for oil keeps the calories down as well.
Asian tip number 4,
how you use utensils?, so let’s compare, how we eat food, let’s say a spoon or a fork right,
how much food do you feed in your mouth with that,
compare that with eating with chopsticks,
not only does chopsticks make that much difficult to eat
a lot of food in a short period of time,
if you don’t actually know how use chopsticks,
it might even be a celebratory moment to even get food into your mouth
so using chopsticks to eat actually makes you eat a lot slower,
like if you pick up your food slowly and also you pick up less food each time,
because when I eat with chopsticks like..
how we eat in China like a family is like all the dishes are placed in the middle, you have your bowl of rice,
and you have your chopsticks and then you just grab food put it in your bowl
and then your eat it, so is not like, you are served with a huge plate of food that you have to finish,
you just take what you want, and because you are taking 1 at the time, one piece at the time
it’s like.. it really controls, how fast you eat,
because your stomach takes about 10 minutes to realize it’s actually full,
eating slow means, you eat less in the long run, and you don’t overstuff yourself,
so eating like this, maybe you should try like serving the dishes separate,
to like your bread or your rice and only take enough to finish your bowl of rice or something,
you find that you will eat a lot less and you feel less obliged to finish everything in your plate
and you might find that you know.. you don’t actually need as much like meat and stuff to finish your rice,
you might eat less and you can take more vegetables
and things like that, but eating like this, will mean that you eat a lot slower,
although I have seen some really pro chopstick users that just like shovel it into their mouth, don’t do that.
Asian tip number 5, I covered this in my
last week’s video, in japanese culture there is an old saying that they say which is,
“hara hachi bu” and that just means eat till you are 8/10 full and that is 80 percent full
and that is something that has been past down generation to generation,
it’s a really good habit to get into, because overstuffing yourself is actually not good for you
because you are forcing your stomach to work really really hard
to digest and you don’t actually need that much food,
you just need enough food to keep you going for the day
and make sure that you eat enough nutrition to keep you nourished, ‘hara hachi bu’ comes from
a Confucius’s teachings and yeah I guess the culture really pick up on it,
in fact I think in Japan eating like a pig or eating too much is actually look down upon,
it’s like why do you need to eat so much
you are such a pig, so I guess it is a good thing when.. when you know you are stuffing your face
instead of people just encouraging you to do it, like.. it’s kinda like why are you eating so much,
but with that being said I think Japanese people have this weird obsession with eating competitions
I know there is like this girl in Japan she is like.. she only weighs 45 kilos,
super small and I saw her eat 7 kilos
of rice and curry that is crazy, but yeah eat to your eighty percent full.
tip number 6 is switch from rice to brown rice and you just choke in this and you steam it,
and you eat from this it’s.. eating fish is actually better for you
because it’s high in sort of like fish oil which is really good for you..
like if you go to the convenience store in Japan, you can sort of buy this stuff and eat for breakfast
and it’s good for you and it’s made out of something called..