Achieve more in life.
Hoi Wan
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Homepage: http://www.lifehack.org
Posts by Hoi Wan
How to Be Healthy and Lose Fat: The 3 Minute HIT Health Hack That Helps Burn Fat
Feb 29th
There’s new research out that suggests that you can make significant and measurable changes to your fitness. This research has uncovered how to be healthy without having to spend large amounts of time exercising…in just 3 minutes a week.
Yes…just 3 minutes of exercise a week!
To achieve this, it requires you to do High Intensity Training (HIT). In longer, more regular bursts, it can also be used to burn fat too. Science shows that low intensity, long repetition exercise is much more efficient at burning fat. However, for many people it’s a time-sink — it uses up far too much time.
Using HIT can help you burn more absolute amounts of fat in a shorter amount of time and you can improve your insulin sensitivity. It’s a great way for everyone to be healthy.
How does it work?
- When you perform high intensity exercise, you use a lot more of your body’s muscles; around 80% of your body’s muscles are active.
- It moves sugar from blood into the muscle so that it can be readily burned.
- It releases adrenaline which acts as an appetite suppressant.
- You can release hormones that break down fat.
- High intensity exercise causes microscopic tears in your muscles as it strengthens. This healing uses up calories.
- Insulin regulation occurs due to release of growth factors such as IGF-1.
- Metabolic rate increases, which means you will burn more calories when resting.
How do you do it?
There are several exercises that can be done to do this. Here’s just one example that you can follow:
The Exercise Bike
- 2 minutes of gentle cycling to warm up on the bike
- Go flat out for 30 seconds
- 2 more minutes of gentle cycling to catch your breath
- Go flat out for 30 seconds
- 2 more minutes
- Flat out for the last 30 seconds
And that’s it.
Okay, so this is basically 6 minutes of gentle exercise and 1.5 minutes of HIT, but you can adjust it to suit your needs. The HIT part of the exercise should not last longer than 30 seconds for each time. Do this once a week to help keep insulin levels healthier. If you want to burn fat, you want to be doing this a bit more regularly (like 2-3 times a week).
“HIT is really good at improving glucose uptake into the muscles in a very, very short time,” Professor James Timmons, leading the research at Birmingham, said. “With really intense exercise, you release hormones that can help break down fat. This may help burn that fat over time, after HIT is done.”
UPDATE: Added link to the research
(Photo credit: Woman Showing how Much Weight She Lost via Shutterstock)
Hoi Wan is a mobilist who blogs about smartphone trends and analytics. He is also an avid home cook and sports enthusiast. Hoi has lived and worked in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and USA and holds a BA in Sport and Recreation and an MBA. You can see his profile on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
Spentable: Track Your Expenses Quickly and Easily [Giveaway]
Feb 27th
You buy a cup of coffee every morning, and you probably think it doesn’t amount to much. How much does it really add up to during the course of a month? Then you make a bunch of impulse buys. It really adds up and those coffees and impulse buys may have tipped you over the edge of your monthly budget…but it’s too late! You only notice the cost is significant afterwards!
It’s usually the reason we don’t have much money left towards the end of the month and when “tax season” is approaching we ask ourselves, “Where did my money go?“
Enter Spentable.
Let’s take a look to see how Spentable can help us to track expenses. It’s available on Android and iOS. The basic version is free and there is a pro version that provides many more features.
How to use Spentable to track your expenses
Spentable has some pre-created categories for your spending. The default categories are food, transport social and retail. To record what you have spent, simply select the category and type in the amount. This makes it simple to segregate your spending into different areas. It shows you how much you have spent and how much you have left in your monthly budget. Before you make a purchase, add it into the app and you can see if you will go over budget.
Customize and adjust your budget
Do you have extra categories that you want to add or want to adjust the amount of your monthly budget? Press the “cog” in the top right corner and from there you can create new categories and set the budget. You can even export the data to a file and send it by email to use elsewhere. (Note: These options are only available in the pro version.)
Track your history
To see an overview of your spending, press the button on the top left and it switches to a list view, detailing everything that you have spent. Made a mistake in one of your entries? You can delete it by swiping across the incorrect entry and you will be given a delete button to remove it. At the bottom, your total spending for that month is displayed. You can scroll through the months to look back at your spending habits.
Spentable is a convenient, in-your-pocket app that helps you to track your expenses and make purchasing decisions. Spentable helps you to see how your spending is distributed so that you can rebalance if necessary. And because it’s an app, it can always be in your pocket — making it easy to form a habit to track your spending.
Free offer for 30 Lifehack readers
We’re giving out free copies of the pro versions of Spentable for Android and iPhone to the first 30 people who register using the following form:
Click here to register for Spentable
And if you miss out on the pro version, give the free one a try. It very well could be the app that saves you time — and money.
Hoi Wan is a mobilist who blogs about smartphone trends and analytics. He is also an avid home cook and sports enthusiast. Hoi has lived and worked in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and USA and holds a BA in Sport and Recreation and an MBA. You can see his profile on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
How to Use Pinterest to Get Productive and Stay Motivated
Feb 24th
What is Pinterest?
For many people Pinterest is the new super-addictive time-sink. You can name and create “pin boards” of whatever you like. You can pin things you find interesting, creative, beautiful, things you want to try; pretty much anything. You can also follow people and repin the things they discover; it’s well designed to suck up your time and make you unproductive. But you can make pinterest into a useful productive and motivational tool.
Here are 4 ways to get productive with Pinterest:
Create boards for read later articles
Sometimes you don’t have time to read everything you discover. Use Pinterest to bookmark the articles. One cool thing about Pinterest is that the webpage from which you pinned the picture will be directly linked. For example, we have created several boards linking to articles of various topics (e.g. http://pinterest.com/lifehack/productivity). This makes it easier to go directly to an article you have saved for later.
Motivational boards
We’re not always productive and sometimes we need an occasional boost to get us up and running. Keep a board with motivating, inspirational pictures. And it’s a bonus if they link to articles that help you get into the right frame of mind to kickstart your motivation.
To-try lists
Have a new technique you want to try? New lifehack? New recipe? Pin it and keep it as reference for later. You can arrange your boards into different categories for the areas you want to improve (like Lifehack’s food hacks).
Collaboration & Communication
Pinterest allows you to have a shared board which is a great way to share ideas, link to useful articles for your team or other people to read. It becomes more than just pictures but a resourceful to pull from. You can comment on the articles on your own boards making it into a useful communication tool (like Lifehack’s communication hacks).
Do you have some ideas on how to use Pinterest to improve your productivity?
Hoi Wan is a mobilist who blogs about smartphone trends and analytics. He is also an avid home cook and sports enthusiast. Hoi has lived and worked in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and USA and holds a BA in Sport and Recreation and an MBA. You can see his profile on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
10 Killer Cooking / Kitchen Hacks
Jan 27th
I love to cook. There’s nothing quite like enjoying a tasty home-cooked meal that I have prepared and made myself. It’s satisfying knowing that my effort has paid off and I have produced something that I can be proud to share.
However, if you’re a novice, it can take time to learn some of the tricks and hacks that can improve your cooking skills or speed up your kitchen prowess.
Then there is the cleaning up afterwards — a sink full of dishes that gets in the way whilst you are cooking that no one wants to deal with.
Here are a few tips I’ve learned to improve your kitchen capabilities:
- Plan what you need to do. Whatever takes the longest, do first. Warming up an oven, boiling up some water. Put those on first. It takes about 10 mins for an oven to heat up to the right temperature, and about 5 minutes for the water to boil where its constantly bubbling. Get that going first before you need to prep the food.
- Defrost meats in advance. If you plan what you are going to eat you can preserve the quality of meat. Leaving it on a counter top to defrost will increase bacteria levels, nuking it in the microwave will leave you with a cooked outside and frozen middle. Put it in the fridge for 2 days in advance. If you’re in a hurry, defrost in water.
- To open an impossible-to-open jar lid, hold the jar upside down and put it over the cooker flame for a couple of seconds. Alternatively if you are going to use the whole jar, stab the lid with a sharp knife to break the vacuum.
- Don’t have a steamer? Put your vegetables into a colander and put it into a pan with boiling water that fits. Make sure the colander doesn’t reach the water and then cover it with a lid. The lid may not fit perfectly, but it does the job.
- Get more juice out of lemons and oranges by warming them up. You can do this in your hand or in some warm water.
- Wash while you cook. This removes wasted waiting time and keeps you on top of the cleaning. When you put some meat in the pan and need to turn it over in a couple of minutes, fill the sink with water and start washing up. After you’ve washed a couple of items, it’s time to turn the mean. You can use this as a method to time your cooking.
- Shell boiled eggs with ease. You can do so by breaking a small hole at both ends and blowing into one end.
- Recipes are guidelines, they do not need to be followed to the letter. Love ginger? Put some in.
- Avoiding wheat but need to make a crispy coating without using bread? Oats do a great job. Put them into a food mixer and you have a coating that can be applied to almost anything.
- Short on time and need to make a roast? Chop it up into smaller pieces. Your cooking time will be vastly reduced.
These are just some of the hacks I use when cooking. Do you have any to share?
(Photo credit: Chef Woman via Shutterstock)