Wudhu: Cleansing while Talking to Allah

Assalamualaikum. Good day everyone, May all in good health, happy environment and bless by Allah S.W.T.

Today I love to talk about wudhu.

As a Muslim, wudhu is something that is not rare or hard to do. All of us, as Muslims, will do wudhu before performing our daily prayers. Sometimes some people do it just out of habits like before going to work or before getting ready to sleep at night. This wudhu is so unique in some ways that I personally hope I can learn more about it.

Today, before I performing my subuh prayer, I went to take my wudhu like any other day. But today it is more unusual. Before this, I usually lingering my mind with Dunya while performing my wudhu.
I always think about what I'm gonna do today? Are there any headlines I need to aware of? Too many things in my mind while my body is performing my wudhu.

But today, I sat on my bed and for the first time I was thinking,

" Why I need to perform Wudhu?"

I ask this question not out of laziness don't want to take or anything. It is just out of curiosity and searching for the 'purpose' that only Allah Knows.

Because I know that Allah Knows best. For the first time, I asked Him sincerely,

Allah, please showed me why I need to do this? What is my purpose here, Ya Allah?

I am still searching for the answer, but asking Him sincerely really makes my heart calm. So when I perform my wudhu, for the first time, I talked to Him because I love the calmness I felt inside my heart when I ask Him personally before I went to Wudhu.

I knew that I will not get an answer, but I believe Allah is there, and Allah Hears. Maybe the calmness I felt in my heart was the answer that He Wants to give me. Wallahualam. But the truth is, I love how I felt.

So, during my wudhu, I keep on talking to Him. Instead of thinking about Dunya ( Problems that never settles and thinking about people that always has flaws), I started talking to Him!

When I reached for the cold water at my hand for my wudhu. I talked to Him of how much sins I've done with these two hands. I asked Him for forgiveness for these two hands that Allah gave me. I asked Allah to please make use of my hands to do something good for the people and for Islam.

I kept on doing it to all parts of my body without noticing it. I never felt so close to Him while taking my wudhu. I make jokes too. I said to Allah not to make me too fat. I want to be more confident with myself and always be so light to do ibadah to Him.

Then after I finished, It felt different when performing my salah. I believe everything needs to start during the preparation. Like we're going for a war, we need equipment and shield and many more.

Same with preparation to meet our Creator, Allah SWT. My salah is not really perfect. Too many flaws and need more knowledge and fixing it. However, I felt blessed for having this calmness when preparing my wudhu and perform my salah.

I will try to do it consistently to look at the more excellent outcome that I can achieve in shaa Allah.

From this day on, I hope I can TALK more to Him not just during my wudhu but in my everyday life in shaa Allah. So can you!

Let us be closer to Allah S.W.T.

Calories : Good and Bad Calories (Part 2)

*Please read Part 1 here before continue!

We need to differentiate between good calories and bad calories. Calories are divided into two categories, which are good and bad. All foods and drinks have calories except plain water. For example, iced milo has 130 calories. Approximately, a curry puff has 60 calories. Chicken breasts and a packet of instant noodles have the same calories, which are 400 calories.

This is when the "good or bad" calories question kicks in. Usually, people like to choose instant noodles rather than chicken breast because who doesn't like Maggi, right? BUT if we are on a weight loss journey or we want a healthier lifestyle, we need to choose wisely.

Let us have a look at what we can get from 400 calories of chicken breast and instant noodles.

400 calories of a chicken breast have:
✅protein
✅instant full
✅help to produce more muscle mass in the body 👉🏼 burn more calories

400 calories of an instant noodle have:

✅fats

✅the rise of fat cells in the body

✅will easier to get hungry back

✅only have carbohydrates without protein

✅no good nutrition for the body

All of us need to understand that the same calorie intake will not have the same effect on our body. This really showed that even though we fulfill our body calorie requirement, but we only eat unhealthy food, we will still gain weight even though we did not exceed the calorie requirement.

For instance, a person needs to burn 1300 calories without work out. This means that if the person eats no more than 1300 calories, the person can lose weight, right?

.

BUT the person made a mistake by fulfilling his or her calorie with unhealthy food:

Morning

Nasi Lemak- 400 calories

Afternoon

Nasi Goreng Ayam - 800 calories

Night

Crackers - 100 calories

TOTAL= 1300 calories

This person's body can burn 1300 calories. Even though this person did not exceed the calorie requirement, this person still will experience a high percentage of fats in the body because of the lousy calorie intake.

This will risk with weight gain or can also lead to " slim but beer belly" or maybe slim but with a heart problem or worst becoming fat and excessive fats in the body.

In choosing food to eat every day, choose food with better nutrition quality rather than just look at the calorie intake. Diet coke can have 0 calories, but is it good? 

Is it essential to know about calories?

For those who understand the concept of good calorie, they will look at the food with different perspectives. All diets that we do exercise plan or health trend nowadays all expending because of the fact that everything is going back to "calorie deficit."

A calorie deficit is the total energy of food (calorie) that we take is less than calories that our body needs to burn every day for the body to function, which will lead to losing weight.

HOW MANY CALORIES DO WE NEED??

Click this link to calculate:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

 🔥 Choose the fat loss option

✅ to enter the daily activity option honestly. If not exercising, choose not to exercise.

Here to remind all of us again. Imagine 7700 calories is equal to 1 kg of fat; this means eat more than 1000 calories in a week will gain 1 kg of fat.😱

Source: Get Fit Now Online

Do not worry if we cannot memorize all the calories in food in this world. Just focus on this principle:

In one plate should have 

Carbohydrate = Rice 1 handheld

Protein/lauk = size of the hand palm

Fiber/clean veggies = the same with rice. If it' not a clean cook, then get rid in half.

So about calories, we can install the app called "MyFitnessPall" in our smartphone to kick in our food that we eat. They also put the calorie intake as well. Or we can also just google the number of calories of the food. Another tip is we can also type "nutrition fact" of the food to choose healthier food.

That's all about calories! This is so important because we consume calories every day! So it is a good choice for us to know more about how our body functions and what's good for our body!

Calories : Good and Bad Calories

*Most of the pictures are in Malay language but the explanation will be in English

When we want to lose weight, we always heard about "Cut your calorie intake," "You should eat fewer calories to lose weight.." and much more! We all know when involving losing weight, "calories" are not something that rare to this journey. But, do we really know what it really means by calories? We must understand the differences between good calories and bad calories.

Here a few insight about calorie deficit in weight loss journey before we go into depth about calories:

The picture above roughly showing us that if we want to lose weight, we need to eat fewer calories than our calorie intake for our body. However, if we eat more than daily requirement calories for our body, we will gain weight. It is like the basic concept of calorie deficit that we all should know now.

This is an important topic to make it easier for us in this weight loss journey. Why is it important? This is because every time we talk about weight loss, fitness, or a healthy lifestyle, we always will go back to "calories" and "metabolism."

MEANING OF CALORIES : 
A calorie is an energy in foods

For example:
If we want to drive a car, we need fuel (in this case: energy) For humans, calories are energy that enters our body from the food that we eat.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:
All food has calories! Only plain water has "zero-calorie."

🔥REMEMBER THIS FORMULA🔥
👉For losing weight. We need to eat LESS from calories that our body can burn in a day.
👉If we eat MORE calories from the food we eat, they will be stored as fat beneath our skin.

TIPS!

Every decrease of  7700 calories intake in our body, we will lose 1kg of fat. If we now our "ideal calorie intake to lose weight per day," we actually have decreased by 500 calories from what our body can burn every day.

For instance:
A person with a weight of around 70kg-80kg. The body can burn calories around 1800 calories if the person wants to maintain their body weight. So, to lose weight, the person should eat around 1300 calories only ( subtract 500 calories that our body usually burn). If we eat more than that, the person will not lose weight but gain weight!

What is metabolism?
 Metabolism is the total energy or calories that can burn by our bodies for all systems and organs in our body to function well every day. It includes all our daily activities like breathing, walking, sleeping, talking, watch television, exercising, and everything we do on that day. The more active we are, the more active our metabolism in our body.

Where does the metabolism come?
From calorie intake that we put in our body. Then the calories will change into energy that mainly will change into fat ( carbs) or muscle (protein). That is why everything that we eat will change into energy for our bodies to function well. A simple analogy we can understand is like a moving car that needs fuet to move. The fuel cannot be too little for the vehicle to move to its destination.

When the car tank is empty, we just put only RM5 worth of fuel to travel from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bharu. It will surely not enough for the car. A bigger car will need more fuel to move. This is the perfect analogy fo "Daily Calorie Requirement (DCR).

That's why it is imperative to know our DCR for our own body so that we will not eat less than the calorie requirement and to prevent our metabolism rate from dropping.

Our metabolisms are different depends on our sex, ages, our daily activities, and our body composition, which include our muscle mass and fat in our body. Muscle cells can burn more calories than fat cells. Those that have more muscle mass will have a high metabolism rate rather than those will more fat cells. That is why it is essential to increase our muscle mass that can contribute to burning more calories. Burn 7700 calories will get rid of 1kg of fat = weight loss.

~ Continue in PART 2!