23 Years of Daily Calisthenics Exercise

The Magic of A Daily Workout Program At Home
Apart from fasting, my other health secret is calisthenics exercise. I have been doing it everyday first thing in the morning since 1987. You may not see the power or the magic of such a workout program until you do it. I am now 53 but I must admit that I am far healthier than when I was young. Daily calisthenics had changed my life. Here is my story.

Road to Daily Calisthenics
Some 20+ years ago (around 1987), I was badly weak. Half of the money I made went to my doctor. I caught a flu every other week, had nosebleed regularly and I was always feeling tired. My doctor told me to do some exercises first thing in the morning for 20 minutes and that should be able to improve my health condition. Of course I didn’t give it a single thought. As I was only 30, I thought morning exercises were only for old and retired people. It was about the 10th time my doctor gave me the same advice before I gave it a little consideration.

Red Cross Gave Me a Hand
At that time Red Cross had a mobile station downstairs my office building and I used to give blood. At some stage they refused my donation because I did not meet their requirement. Indeed, they needed blood from healthy people whom were not subjected to any medication three weeks ahead of the donation. For a period of almost a year, I kept refused by Red Cross for the same reason. I was really shamed.

The ‘Magic’ Decision
One day after seeing my doctor and receiving the same advice of doing morning exercise, I made up my mind and gave it a try. I was thinking I couldn’t get any worse and I had nothing to lose. I was only required to wake up 20 minutes earlier in the morning and did some simple exercises at home without any apparatus. Even if it didn’t work out, I lose only 20 minutes of sleep everyday which was no big deal. However if that worked, it would greatly improve my life quality. I am glad that I made that decision. Because of this, something like a magic happened.

Gap of Two Years
The next time I saw my doctor, he had a graceful smile on his face and said “Anna, you have a two-year gap on your record card. What happened? Did you migrate?”

I said “No, doctor, I took your advice and have been doing daily morning exercises. That should have caused the gap.” Not until I did it, I never realize the power or better say the magic of morning exercises. My health had since then greatly improved; didn’t need to see my doctor regularly and of course saved a lot of money on medical expenses. And because of this magic, daily morning calisthenics has been part of my life since 1987 through now.

Daily – Morning – Calisthenics – At Home
I have couple of rules to stick to: Do it first thing in the morning daily for 20 minutes. This is also my advice to whoever wants to do something to improve their health. If you only do it once a week or irregularly, you may not see the results significantly. There are other benefits of doing calisthenics at home. I don’t have to sign on expensive gym membership and as I am doing it with my pyjamas, I even save money in buying beautiful sports wear.


Recommended reading: Workout Without Weight


Intermittent Fasting Success - Daily Calisthenics

Intermittent Fasting Benefits – Weight Loss and Many Others

This March marks the beginning of my 5th year of intermittent fasting. To review my IF lifestyle in the past four years, I must say I have changed a lot – mainly eating habit and appearance. If I were to name the most significant benefits, I would say bloating relieve and natural weight loss.

Road to Intermittent Fasting
My road towards IF was relatively short as I didn’t gone through any experiment stage. Though I have been suffering from digestive problems for 17 years, I kicked off my fasting out of an overnight decision. Once I see the benefits, I had never look backed to my old ways of eating throughout these four years.

My fasting window is averagely 24 hour, as I target one meal a day. If I eat dinner tonight, I won’t eat until next day’s dinner. In between I had some drinks such as water, fruit juice, coffee or tea and I don’t care about decaf or not. In some occasions, due to social/business commitments, I eat lunch following the previous night’s dinner, my fasting window was much shorter. Nevertheless I try to maintain the 24 hour window about three to four times a week. For beginners, my suggestion is to start slow. Try it once or twice a week and when you see the benefits, move on progressively.

The Benefits I’ve Seen

1. Bloating relieve. Though it is still bothering me occasionally, but I feel far better than before.
2. Natural weight loss. This does not only came naturally but fast. I lost six pounds in the first week and progressively another 18 pounds in six months.
3. Improved mental clarity. I do audio typing quite a lot at work. Though I look like a fossil while typing and listening, I am completely aware of what’s going on around me and when I pick up a phone call, I managed to immediately switch my mind.
4. Improved workout performance. I do lunch hour swimming during the weekdays. I’m not an Olympic swimmer, but I recon my speed had improved.
5. More energy. I used to feel tired most of the time. After I started doing daily workout plus intermittent fasting at a later stage, my energy level was greatly improved. Now I can swim without food before or after.
6. Improved appearance. I had to wear tight underwear in order to fit into my Chinese traditional night gown ‘cheung sam’. Now I don’t need it any more.
7. Food tastes better. When I had no food for a period of 24 hours, I really enjoy and respect each meal. I’m amazed that food tastes much better than before when I routinely fed myself three meals a day.

Any Disadvantage About Intermittent Fasting?
Yes, if I were to say, there is one. I spent some extra money due to IF.

Some people thought I should save money by eating less. Well, the money I spend on food does not relate to the amount I eat; it relates to what I eat. Like three meals a day can be bread and butter; one meal a day can be Kaiseki. I spent extra money in buying new clothing as I am now two sizes smaller. I really look odd if I continue wearing my old clothing.

Learn More About Intermittent Fasting

Flexible IF is increasing in popularity. Brad Pilon, author of the best-selling ebook Eat Stop Eat believe that in five years time, IF is how everyone will be eating.

If you ever wanted to venture into intermittent fasting, read Brad’s Eat Stop Eat and he will walk you through the ‘how’ and ‘why’. Brad goes through all of his graduate level research to lay out the case for using IF to improve your health and even your athletic performance.

Intermittent Fasting Success Report - Fasting Benefits

Eat Stop Eat – All About Flexible Intermittent Fasting

As intermittent fasting (IF) has helped me to lose weight progressively and greatly improved my quality of life, I have a passion to tell the world about its benefits.

I come across Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat when I was researching to write an ebook on IF. I’m glad that Brad has not only done the entire writing job, he is also a far better qualified author than me.

After all, I am someone who practices IF and can tell you that it works with great results. But for ‘why’ and ‘how’, I’ll let Brad to tell you. Apart from being nutrition professional, Brad is also an athlete. See his bio below.

Two Reasons You Must Read Eat Stop Eat
(1) To start with, Brad said: “A true weight loss plan does NOT have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler the program the better the results will be. The more restrictive the diet, the more likely it will fail you.”
I can’t agree with this more. If you’ve ever browsed my food blog, you will notice that I never have to restrict on what I eat. Brad never tell me what to eat, it’s all up to me. I shed 20 pounds in six months by eating anything I love to eat.

(2) Brad emphasizes that your metabolism will not slow down, you will not lose muscle, your workouts will not suffer, and you will not become a ravenous eating machine. With Eat Stop Eat you will clearly see the research behind why short periods of fasting will NEVER cause you to go into starvation mode.
Again, I must say this is completely true. If you’ve browsed my ‘workout’ session in this blog, you will notice that I can do my daily workout during lunch hour, without lunch and breakfast. As Brad reveals, I feel energized and alert all the time. Throughout my four years of intermittent fasting, I had never experienced slow metabolism or starvation nor have to worry about them.

About Eat Stop Eat
Brad does not offer seventeen free bonuses or ‘special reports’ written by random authors you’ve never heard of before. Reason being – You don’t need any of this fluff. Eat Stop Eat will work for you, so he doesn’t need to entice you with a bunch of meaningless extra ‘perks’ or ‘empty promises’. Once you have read this book, I guarantee you will never pick up another nutrition or diet book ever again! Nor will you need to!

Eat Stop Eat is 16,400 words and 90 pages long – It is simple and concise and will probably only take you one evening to read.

The Eat Stop Eat method of using flexible intermittent fasting for weight loss is so completely uncomplicated that you can literally start the program the VERY MINUTE you finish reading this book.

About Brad Pilon
Brad has a unique background. He has an honors degree in nutrition. Instead of becoming a dietitian, he started working in the weight loss industry, right after university. Throughout his career, he was able to conduct multiple body composition tests on numerous athletes and top level bodybuilders and monitor them while they dieted and tried new experimental weight loss programs.

In fact, it was these experiments that ultimately led him to leave the industry and pursue graduate studies in human biology and nutritional sciences.

Many of the experiments he conducted had results that were VERY different from what he expected, and he soon realized that if he was to truly understand nutrition’s role in weight loss, then he would have to start from the very beginning and study what happens to the body when it goes without ANY food.

Believe it or not, Eat Stop Eat is actually all the research from the scientific reviews he completed in graduate school.

That’s right, Brad’s research was on ‘The Metabolic Effects of Short Periods of Fasting in Humans and its Potential Application in Weight Loss’, so in essence when you read Eat Stop Eat what you are really reading is an easy to read version of his graduate education! Aside from being nutrition professional, Brad is also an athlete. He has competed in (and won) amateur bodybuilding contests and power-lifting meets.

More about Brad Pilon and Eat Stop Eat

Eat Stop Eat - Book Review

Intermittent Fasting Success Report