hawker center hunt

Sunday January 9, 2011

Today we were meeting our good friend for lunch, and we were looking for cheap and cheerful, so decided to go to a food court. Singapore is famous for their foodcourts, also called hawker centers, which have little stands offering everything from Chinese to Japanese to Korea to Western, Indian, Thai and even more.

photo online that shows some of the standard food court options

While this sounds like you are spoiled for choice, and you are, they are a dieters worst nightmare! Eating at food courts means you are getting primarily oily rice or noodle based dishes, soup noodles, sizzling plates of meat, curry, etc. There is a severe shortage of things not-fried, drenched in sauce or carb heavy. It's great hangover food, but its not so awesome of your waistline.

For the first time, I'm committed to losing weight without dieting, but through common sense. I've found that I can do anything for two weeks. Live on cabbage soup? Sure. Cut out meat? No problem. Wait, now only eat meats and fatty cheese (hello Atkins!), can do. Oops, try low fat and reintroduce heart-healthy carbs? Sure. Ohhhh, its about the right kind of carbs (southbeach diet), I get it... I can have anything within my points, great, and so on and so on. From doing every diet on the planet, I think it boils down to just having enough common sense, often enough, to make a difference.

I want this to be sustainable. And it is unrealistic to avoid real life, so I don't want to not eat in food courts, because that would be missing out on a part of Singapore. That being said, it's so unbelievably hard to pick something good, so I had to plan my day around it. I had a late breakfast of just fruit and coffee, because I slept in today. Then I had a medium dinner, in fact, I would have had a larger portion at dinner but I wanted to compensate for the fact that my lunch could have had hidden calories.

I chose Korean at lunch, because Korean food is generally not oily like Chinese food, and the Japanese stand wasn't sushi, it was teriyaki, deep fried squid and shrimp, etc. The other possible choice was a Western stand that served italian style pasta, which may have been ok.

I got thin sliced beef on raw cabbage (hooray for something green!), with plain white rice. It was good, and I hope not too naughty..,because -tomorrow is weigh in day!


Exercise - C25K week 2: 33 mins (20 min interval training)

Breakfast - approx 55 cal

• 1/2 c fresh papaya
• coffee with skim

Lunch - approx 550 cal

• Korean stir-fried beef (4oz, lean) over 1/2c fresh cabbage
• 1/2t soy sauce
• 1.5c rice
• 1t kimchee

Afternoon
diet coke

Dinner - approx 475

• 1c whole wheat pasta with garlic, shrimp and fresh basil, mushrooms and tomatoes
• mixed veg salad w olives, 10 cal dressing
• 1 piece dark chocolate w chili - 25 cal

Total Calories - about 1080
(This is actually a bit low, but since we ate lunch at a food court with a friend today, I specifically ate low-cal the rest of the day as I can't be 100 percent on the calories at lunch. This could be higher on the amount of oil or sauces used).