Archive | November, 2016

Resuming My Couch To 5k Training – Learning To Run

Posted November 21, 2016 at 6:11 pm in Couch-to-5K, Fitness

I started this journey way back in 2013 with my Couch to 5k training and my dusty treadmill and unfortunately this category on my blog has remained lonely with only 2 posts in it for the past 3 years.

But now I’m eating well with WildFit, I feel great and have loads of energy, plus I’m way better at committing to things now – I decided to take it up again.

I think last time I only documented the first workout of week 1 and probably didn’t manage to get much further than that: Couch-to-5k – Week 1 Workout 1 Conquered!.

This time though, I WILL FINISH IT! No promises I’ll actually be able to run 5 kilometres at the end, but I’ll give it a damn good go.

So yah, I started again. Started with walking at 3.2 mph and jogging at 5.2 mph – not too bad. Got a good sweat on and heart rate maxed out (my Fitbit Charge 2 arrived just in time!).

Resuming My Couch To 5k Training

It’s a good work-out, nicely paced and with 3.2/5.2 mph I find it very manageable to complete. The first week has you going about 2.6km in 28 minutes.

Fitbit Charge 2 - Couch to 5k

I’ve actually complete 3 weeks of the program now and am starting my 4th (tomorrow night will be Week 4 – Day 1) and I haven’t missed a single session yet, plus I’ve completed them all.

My speed is up as well, now I’m doing 3.4 mph for the brisk walk and 5.4 mph for the jogging sections (the past week had 2x 3 minute jogs – which was pretty intense).

Couch to 5K Training

It’ll be interesting to see what the coming week brings, I can definitely feel the difference in my cardiovascular fitness, stamina and ability to run. It helps a lot of Badminton (which I try to play at least twice a week) – and burns insane calories (1500-2000 in a 2 hour session).

Definitely getting thinner, fitter and healthier every day!

Get a great book to help here: 5K Training For Beginners: From Couch To 5K Runner In 8 Weeks Or Less

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WildFit Challenge – Week 6 – Entering Ketosis AKA Spring

Posted November 14, 2016 at 3:03 pm in Food/Eating, WildFit

Week 6 is here, winter is over, fruits are gone and we are entering ketosis – also known in WildFit terms as ‘Spring’. I think the past 5 weeks have been leading up to this, week by week eliminating the most obvious bad stuff (sugars, dairy, grains, carbs) and the toxins which cause fat storage (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine) – all that’s left now which could make us gain weight is..

THE FRUIT – so yah, no more fruit platters for breakfast – fruit is OUT. No more apples in the Alkagizer, no more Alkagizer Mild. Now we switch to Alkagizer Prime which is basically a bitter green smoothie.

It’s not too bad at this point as our taste-buds have normalised a lot, so we can even detect sweetness in Lemon Juice now..

Day 1

Wow the first few days after cutting the fruit is TOUGH, your body is just screaming 24/7 for sugar, for carbs, for something to give it quick energy, you feel a crushing tiredness, headaches, body aches, cramps and I had pretty bad nausea too – this is called Keto Flu.

We continued having delicious meals, but Kimberly kept talking about Krispy Kreme doughnuts every 5 minutes, all day, and I kept having dreams of big piles of baguettes slathered in French rolled butter..

Steak, Mushrooms and Broccoli




Day 3

By midweek we were feeling kinda better, slightly.. Energy was still hard to manage, especially if you exercised – aerobic exercise is recommend but not anaerobic which I did (Badminton). I feel asleep on the sofa immediately after getting back from badminton and woke up at 5am!

Badminton in Ketosis

The Rest of the Week

Of course we continued having amazing meals, this was one by me – sous vide salmon with stir fried mixed vegetables in a little Bragg’s Aminos.

Sous Vide Salmon

We also realised we were shopping very differently and Malaysia does have healthier options available in all shops pretty much, you just need to look for them. Jaya Grocer has grass feed beef and a decent organic section where we could replace our normal Balsamic Vinegar with an organic option containing no sugar, caramel or colourings.

Healthy Foods at Jaya Grocer




This was a winner too, sous vide grass fed steak with roasted mixed vegetables and lightly pickled cucumber.

Grass Fed Steak

Selling my Nespresso Coffee Maker

I also got hardcore committed to not ingesting caffeine anymore and decided to sell my Nespresso Pixie – it sold within an hour of me posting it.

Nespresso Pixie for Sale

Feels good to not have a daily drug addiction anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure caffeine will pass my lips on occasion in the form of chocolate – but it will be minimal and infrequent. Coffee and Tea is pretty much below my line of acceptability right now.

Making Nut Milk

Nut milk is REALLY expensive in Malaysia and usually has all sorts of crap in it, including sweeteners, chemicals and only about 2% nuts.

Making Macadamia Milk

It’s really easy to make at home with some raw Macadamias bought from a baking supplies shop for about RM80-90 per kilo.

– Soak them for 2 hours with some good salt (pink Himalayan or sea salt) and a splash of apple cider vinegar
– Blend them (1 cup of nuts with about 3 cups of water)
– Season to taste
– Drain with a nut bag (or we just used a cheese cloth)
– Chill and enjoy!

Honestly, it’d be a lot nicer with a little sweetener (raw honey or maple syrup) but we can’t have those right now, and it’s pretty nice without.




Week 6 Summary

I’ve got to say, as far as this program goes, this is by far the toughest week so far – last week was pretty hard, but the fruit keeps your energy pretty high so you don’t suffer too much.

But as soon as you cut the fruit out, bam, your energy sinks to the bottom of the ocean and you feel all over the place as the last remnants of sugar leave your body.

It’s one time when you have to exercise some willpower, read about what is going on with your body and power through it until you flip your switch from sugar burning to fat burning (ketosis or entering a ketogenic state).

Probably the most valuable article I read about it was this one: Keto-adaptation: what it is and how to adjust

– So up your salt intake (my preference is Himalayan pink salt as it’s very mineral rich and pretty cheap and easily available here)
– Eat plenty of healthy fats (Coconut oil, fatty fish, avocados)
– Even more water than usual
– Some moderate exercise (brisk walking for 20-30 minutes every day is enough, especially when you feel low energy)

To summarise:

– Drink more water (at least 6-8 large glasses a day)
– Drink the Alkagizer Prime every day (no fruits)
– Add an EXTRA portion of vegetables at every meal
– Continue removing refined sugars
– Continue removing all grains (rice, wheat etc) and white potato
– Continue removing dairy (and all byproducts)
– Continue to remove Food additives, Nicotine, Alcohol and Caffeine
– Remove fruits, sweet vegetables, beans and honey

Ouch. Those fruits were really keeping me going!

All my WildFit posts are here:

WildFit Challenge – Week 1 – Inner Dialogue
WildFit Challenge – Week 2 – Alkagizer Mild
WildFit Challenge – Week 3 – NO SUGAR!
WildFit Challenge – Week 4 – NO CARBS Or Dairy
WildFit Challenge – Week 5 – No Alcohol or Caffeine
WildFit Challenge – Week 7 & 8 – Staying In Spring
WildFit Challenge – Week 9 & 10 – Yah Still Spring
WildFit Challenge – Week 11 & 12 – A Small Break

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Web Application Security – DevFest + GDay George Town 2016

Posted November 10, 2016 at 12:57 pm in Hacking & Infosec, Internet & Tech

Recently I was invited down to Penang for DevFest + GDay George Town 2016 to give a talk on Web Application Security. This is my 3rd year in a row attending (for a panel and last year a talk) and this year I managed to record (most of) my talk with my own camera.

Web Application Security Talk

The subject I covered was titled “An introduction to Web Application Security” mainly focused for web application developers (although most principles also apply to mobile and native or embedded apps). The talk covers the basic principles of infosec (CIA), do’s and don’t and the top 5 from the OWASP Top 10.

I thought what was the highest value subject that I have some decent expertise in and is relevant to the audience (mostly young or junior web and mobile devs), last year I already covered CI/CD and the tools used + some agile.

So this year I decided to go back to my roots and dive into security in a fairly holistic manner (without getting too technical).

georgetown_devfest2016-2

The slides are up on Slideshare here:

And the (almost) full video is here:

Apologies for the last 5-10 minutes being cut off as the camera battery ran out 🙁

Hope you enjoyed it.

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WildFit Challenge – Week 5 – No Alcohol or Caffeine

Posted November 7, 2016 at 2:27 pm in Food/Eating, WildFit

This week was a shocker for a lot of people, WHAT NO CAFFEINE TO WAKE UP?! WHAT NO ALCOHOL TO FALL ASLEEP?! NO NICOTINE?! Indeed, no alcohol or caffeine and no nicotine.

WildFit Challenge – Week 5 – No Alcohol or Caffeine

Yah, those are the crutches most people are extremely reliant on, and the basis is that now you’re extremely well nutritionally satisfied at this stage (After having Alkagizers and fruits for 3 weeks now, any withdrawal symptoms you might have will be minimised drastically).

I already stopped caffeine earlier when we stopped dairy because honestly, coffee doesn’t taste that great, especially without cream or milk – it’s just kinda bitter and very acidic. But alcohol haha, slightly harder for me as I love beer and whisky and enjoy them on a fairly regular basis.

I have stopped alcohol totally for 30 days before just to make sure I was an alcoholic (Which my family has history of) and I could do it just fine, so I know a few weeks in this case is no problem.

Caffeine was a real problem for some people, especially those with a 4-5 cups a day habit, they had terrible withdrawals (sweating, trouble sleeping, back aches, intense tiredness, shaking and more).




The Kitchen Clean-out

No real changes for us, but this week we got REALLY committed to this, I wanted to throw away some jam and a few things from the fridge and we ended up cleaning out the entire fridge, freezer and all our cupboards.

We were brutal, anything with ANY form of sugar, dairy or wheat is gone. Cupboard, fridge and freezer now only contain foods that support us.

I’ll be honest, it was hard, but not as hard as I thought, I have a strong emotional/cultural attachment to some things, which I don’t even really eat (which is odd) but feel much better now I don’t have to hang onto them any more.

The ones that really hurt me were:

– Branston Pickle
– Sriracha
– HP Sauce
– Worcester Sauce (its my hometown)
– Biscoff (malt biscuit spread)
– Bagels
– English Breakfast Tea (Yorkshire)
– Pickled Gherkins

For Kim it was her beloved jelly. For most things I’m sure we can find more functional alternatives. I was surprised neither of us was really attached to the ice cream.

Ended up with about 6 bin bags full of crap.

Started slow with condiments, yup they all have sugar in.

Condiments with Sugar

The first huge pile of stuff.

Non functional foods

More crap.

Sugar laden foods




Another thing we observed was that we had bought a lot of this stuff, but 90% of it was unopened and expired which means we thought we wanted it, but actually we didn’t and never ended up consuming it.

Which kinda shows we were already on the right track, just not consciously, not all the way and not fully committed.

Day 1

By now honestly I didn’t really feel the need to eat lunch, the fruits and Alkagizer were very filling and kept me full till about 3-4pm when we just needed something light to keep us going to dinner (an avocado) and one of our favourites and the reason I made mayonnaise is two 6-minute boiled eggs with some sea salt, mayo and paprika.

Eggs with home-made mayo

And of course, we kept on with our carb free meals for now to flip our switch to fat burning as we move into week 6 and a new season.

Day 4

We managed to eat out and stay on plan, no pictures of the food as we were too hungry haha. We went to Nando’s after taking Liam for his play-time at Ikano.

He also had a fairly WildFit compliant diet but we got him some fries as he does need more carbs than us to keep growing. We weren’t even tempted to eat any of the fries, which was pretty amazing.

Liam at Nandos




I had grilled veges, half a chicken (which seemed too much) and sweet corn – totally on plan.

So the week went pretty well so far, no problems so far.

Week 5 Summary

So the week wasn’t too bad and for Kim was easy as she doesn’t have to change anything really (She doesn’t drink coffee, alcohol or smoke so ya) but we did cut out all processed foods just to follow the program as strictly as possible.

That means everything you can buy in a can, jar or vacuum pack is out, for now, to give our body a break from all the chemicals and preservatives in those types of food.

Everything we are eating is natural and fresh.

Honestly wasn’t too hard for me either, as I have a massive beer tasting coming up on 29th (gonna be TOTALLY off program) so I can stop for a while, and probably will enjoy stopping after that too haha.

To summarise:

– Drink more water (at least 6-8 large glasses a day)
– Eat 3 pieces of fruit each morning on an empty stomach
– Drink the Alkagizer Mild every day
– Add an EXTRA portion of vegetables at every meal
– Continue removing refined sugars
– Continue removing all grains (rice, wheat etc) and white potato
– Continue removing dairy (and all byproducts)
– Remove Food additives, Nicotine, Alcohol and Caffeine

The enhancement for Week 6 was kinda expected too and we started during the buffer zone (for the first time). More on that in next weeks post!

All my WildFit posts are here:

WildFit Challenge – Week 1 – Inner Dialogue
WildFit Challenge – Week 2 – Alkagizer Mild
WildFit Challenge – Week 3 – NO SUGAR!
WildFit Challenge – Week 4 – NO CARBS Or Dairy
WildFit Challenge – Week 6 – Entering Ketosis AKA Spring
WildFit Challenge – Week 7 & 8 – Staying In Spring
WildFit Challenge – Week 9 & 10 – Yah Still Spring
WildFit Challenge – Week 11 & 12 – A Small Break

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