Lose weight without dieting

By Shola Ogundipe

YES it is possible to lose weight, and  nothing can be too little or too much.Strategies such as making a commitment and being focused take a lot of mental   and physical energy. One fact anyone attempting to lose weight has to know first and foremost is that no one else can make you lose weight. You need to undertake diet and exercise changes to please yourself. It is also vital to adopt habits for slimming down without a complicated diet plan. Here are great tips to make you lose weight without necessarily going on a diet.

To lose weight exercise is key

Slow eaters eat less

Savour each bite and make it last.Partake of smaller portions from which you eat slowly rather than wolfing your food down in a hurry which may signal overeating. Set a timer for 20 minutes and reinvent yourself as a slow eater. This is one of the top habits for slimming without diet plan.

Sleep more, weigh less

Sleeping an extra hour a night could help a person drop eight kilos a year. When sleep replaces idle activities  you can effortlessly cut calories by 6 percent. Results would vary for each person, but sleep may help in another way, too. There’s evidence that getting too little sleep revs up your appetite,

Eat more vegetables

Serve three vegetables instead of just one, and you’ll eat more without really trying. Greater variety tricks people into eating more food and eating more fruits and vegetables is a great way to lose weight. The high fibre and water content fills you up with fewer calories. Cook them without added fat. And season with lemon juice and herbs rather than drowning their goodness in high-fat sauces or dressings.

Soups drop weight

Add a broth-based soup to your day and you’ll fill up on fewer calories. Soup’s especially handy at the beginning of a meal because it slows your eating and curbs your appetite. Start with a low-sodium broth or canned soup, add fresh or frozen vegetables and simmer. Beware of creamy soups, which can be high in fat and calories.

Go for whole grains

Whole grains such as brown rice, barley, oats, and whole wheat also belong in your stealthy weight loss strategy. They help fill you up with fewer calories and may improve your cholesterol profile, too. Whole grains are now in many products including waffles, pizza crust, muffins, pasta, and soft “white” whole-wheat bread.

Soups can drop your weight

Cut back on sugar

Sugar is the No.1 enemy of every weight loss strategy. Replace one sugary or soft drink with water or a zero-calorie cola and you’ll avoid about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Add lemon, mint or frozen strawberries for flavour and fun. The liquid sugar in soft drink appears to bypass the body’s normal fullness cues.

Drink from a tall, thin glass

Use a tall, skinny glass instead of a short, wide tumbler to cut liquid calories — and your weight — without dieting. You’ll drink 25-30 percent less juice, cola, wine, or any other beverage. How can this work? Visual cues can trick you into consuming more or less. People tend to poud more into a short, wide glass—even experienced bartenders.

Limit alcohol

When an occasion includes alcohol, follow the first drink with a nonalcoholic, low-calorie beverage like sparkling water instead of moving directly to another cocktail, beer, or glass of wine. Alcohol has more calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein. It can also loosen your resolve, leading you to mindlessly inhale chips, nuts, and other foods you’d normally limit.

Go for green tea

Drinking green tea may also be a good weight loss strategy. Some studies suggest that it can rev up the body’s calorie-burning engine temporarily, possibly through the action of phytochemicals called catechins. At the very least, you’ll get a refreshing drink without tons of calories.

Eat at home

Eat home-cooked meals at least five days a week. A Consumer Reports survey found this was a top habit of “successful losers.” Cooking may be easier than you think. Shortcut foods can make for quick meals.

Catch the ‘Eating Pause’

Most people have a natural “eating pause,” when they drop the fork for a couple of minutes. Watch for this moment and don’t take another bite. Clear your plate and enjoy the conversation. This is the quiet signal that you’re full, but not stuffed. Don’t miss it.

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Brazil 2014: Nigeria draw Argentina again, open with Iran June 16

Nigeria were yesterday handed what could be termed a soft group after they were drawn against former World Cup Champions Argentina hoping to inspired by mercurial and skillful Lionel Messi with former African player of the year winner, Victor Ikpeba calling on the Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi to work hard on the team.

Drawn in number four of the group, the Eagles will open their World Cup account with a match against Asians, Iran on June 16, 2014 in the Brazilian city of Curitiba inside the 41,000 capacity Estadio Joaquim Americo better known as Arena de Baixada.

According to Ikpeba, “Argentina are favoured to top the group because of their pedigree in footbakl with a player like Lionel Messi. Nigeria will come second but Keshi needs to work hard to contain the stubborn Bosnia Herzegovina and Iran,” he said, adding that “It is a good draw for Nigeria.”

Despite rating the Argentines highly, Ikpeba who would be remembered to have missed his penalty in the 2000 Nations Cup co-hosted by Nigeria and Ghana stressed that “ If we work hard on our team, we could take the game to the Argentines.”

Nigeria was in pot two alongside Algeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana,Chile and Ecuador and fans of the Super Eagles were all hoping for the best possible draw .

Joining Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke to assist with the draw were a host of legends: Uruguay’s 1950 World Cup winner Alcides Ghiggia, England’s 1966 hero Geoff Hurst, former Brazil captain Cafu, Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro, Argentina’s Mario Kempes, Spain’s Fernando Hierro, France’s Zinedine Zidane and German great Lothar Matthaus.

It will be the fourth time Nigeria and Argentina will be clashing in the group stages of the World Cup finals.

The two nations both clashed in 1994 when Claudio Canniggia scored a brace to condemn the Super Eagles to a 2-1 defeat.

In 2002, Gabriel Batistuta scored a brace to sink the Africans while Gabriel Heinze netted a solitary effort as Argentina won again at the expense of Nigeria in 2010.

Nigeria will also face Bosnia and Iran in the group.

Hosts Brazil are in Group A alongside Croatia, Cameroun and Mexico while champions, Spain square off in Group B alongside the Netherlands, Australia and Chile.

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It was very difficult to arrest my kidnappers — GUO Motors boss

By Okonkwo Eze

Godwin Okeke

An Onitsha High Court in Anambra State, presided over by Justice Chudi Nwankwo on Thursday adjourned till Thursday, December 19,this year for continuation of cross-examination of the Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of G.U.O.Motors Limited,Chief Godwin Okeke, the first prosecution witness, PW1in the on-going trial of three accused persons in connection with his kidnap on August 23,2009.at All Saints Anglican Church Cathedral, Onitsha.

The adjournment came after D. U. Nwafor, counsel to the second accused, Ifeanyi Okafor, concluded his cross-examination of the complainant, Okeke and midway into the cross-examination of Okeke by Mrs. Chinelo Okongwu, counsel to Alexander Onyinanya, the third accused.

During the cross-examinations by both the second and third defence

counsels, Okeke noted that it was very difficult to track his kidnappers down  after the incident, to the extent that the third accused was arrested even two years after because he was in hiding.

“I made statements to the police ever before they were arrested and they were not arrested in one day. I limited my statements to the general attitude of quite  a good number of the accused because I could not know their names one by one”, he stated.

On the date of his statements, Okeke declared: “I can’t remember the particular statement I made on each date and the exact date I made them or the exact date the second defendant was arrested. None of them was arrested at the scene of the crime because their weapons were so sophisticated that they kept firing for 30 minutes and I later heard that even the policemen at the nearby CPS and Area Command, Onitsha were locking up their gates for fear of being invaded by the kidnappers”.

When D. U. Nwafor asked him whether he acted as a pointer to the accused, Okeke replied: “I did not act as their pointer when they were arrested, rather, the police invited me to identify them which I did and most of them in the charge sheet in Charge No. MO/179c/2010 were identified by myself on the particular date they were arrested by the police”.

“Before my kidnap”, he continued, “I can’t remember knowing the accused, except the third defendant who served in my village at Adazi-Ani as a member of the vigilante group. He worked in my village for about a year before he was redeployed at my own request because of his flamboyant life style and as at the time I was kidnapped, he was no longer with me but he was still hanging around my village”. .

“I am not aware if there was any previous criminal charge against the third defendant but I learnt he ran away from South Africa for one reason or the other best known to him. In my statement, I did say that only two of my kidnappers covered their faces with masks while I was with them in their hideouts.”

He further replied: “I made a statement of suspicion to his employer and leader of the vigilante group but I made a general statement to the police.  I made statement to the police in Onitsha before their arrests and after their arrests, I made other statements. to the police but I don’t have their dates off-head”.

On why his statements to the police were not elaborate as to mention the name of the third accused in any of those statements, Okeke replied the third defence counsel, Mrs. Chinelo Okongwu thus: “Even as at January 2010 when I made statement to the police, I was still in shock but now that it is four years after my kidnap and torture, I rely more on my evidence-in-chief in this court because they are more detailed now that I am more composed than then”..

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Mandela’s life example of what people should aspire for – Obasanjo

Abeokuta, – Nigeria’s former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has described the late Nelson Madela as a man who raised the beacon of human struggle to lofty heights of nobility.

Obasanjo, who addressed journalists in his home in Abeokuta on Friday, said Mandela’s life was an example of what people should all aspire for.

“In all situations, he lived nobly and died in nobility. Let us bear in mind that we all have the opportunity to act nobly in whatever position we find ourselves,” he added.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo

He described Mandela’s death as a monumental loss to all human races and called on all to emulate the life and times of the great leader.

“His demise is a loss to his family who will miss a caring patriarch; the people of South Africa who will miss a guide, Africa who will miss a role model and the world who will miss a leader.

“When we teach our children lessons for tomorrow, let us remember lessons Mandela gave the world in forgiveness and forbearance,’’ Obasanjo said.

Obasanjo, who eulogising Mandela, recalled the times when he was voted to become South-Africa’s post-apartheid president.

“During the first non-racial democratic elections in 1994, I was on election observation assignment in South Africa and was there for his campaign and when he cast his vote.

“He was devoid of bitterness or anger against anybody except the hated apartheid system.

“He went on to win the election and more importantly led South Africa to the extent that the country was able to cast aside its apartheid legacy and take its place in comity of nations.

“Certain that his task was completed, Mandela modestly refused to seek re-election after his first term in office as his presidency elapsed.

“I still recall his pragmatic words when he said to me ‘Olu, show me a place in the world where a man of 80 years is running the affairs of his country.

“This, to me, reflects an unequalled sense of modesty for a man who spent 27 of the prime years of his life in prison for a just cause.

“Yet he still kept a calm and peaceful disposition to those who took away his freedom for all those years of his life,’’ he explained. (NAN)

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Mandela and his three wives — Evelyn, Winnie and Graca

JOHANNESBURG, (AFP) – Nelson Mandela ducked out of an arranged marriage when he was a student, then went on to wed three times.

His first two marriages collapsed under the strain of politics, but the third time around he found enduring happiness with the widow of Mozambican president Samora Machel.

In sharp contrast to Graca Machel and his feisty second wife Winnie, Mandela’s first wife was a demure country girl who kept well away from politics.

Nelson Mandela

Like him, Evelyn Wase hailed from the rural Transkei and had come to Johannesburg in the early 1940s to carve out a living in the big city.

She was the cousin of African National Congress (ANC) stalwart Walter Sisulu and met Mandela in Sisulu’s home in Soweto, southwest of Johannesburg, in 1944.

They married months later, in the same year that Mandela, Sisulu and Oliver Tambo formed the ANC’s Youth League and politics of struggle against white minority rule came to consume his life.

Descriptions of their first years tell of Evelyn as the happy housewife with Mandela bathing their three babies and helping with the cooking when his work at his law practice and political meetings were done.

But by 1954, Evelyn had buried herself in religion like her husband had in politics and bitterly resented his absences.

When Mandela was arrested for treason the first time, he came home on bail to find Evelyn had gone, leaving behind their two youngest children.

She returned to the Transkei, ran a shop and remarried in her seventies.

Winnie came into Mandela’s life at the start of a second treason trial, which would see him jailed for 27 years, and they married in June 1958.

She too came from the country, but took to the city, and once she met Mandela, also dived into politics with alacrity.

Soon after their wedding she was arrested for an incendiary speech, leading Mandela to remark — proudly and prophetically — “I think I married trouble.”

The couple had two daughters before the prison doors slammed behind Mandela in 1964. In the coming years Winnie would be in and out of jail as the police hounded her in a bid to demoralise him.

In 1969, she was held in solitary confinement for 13 months on terrorism charges and in 1973 endured another six months in jail, but when the 1976 student riot revolt broke out in Soweto, Winnie was unbowed, urging crowds to “fight to the bitter end”.

The police saw her as a mastermind of the uprising. She was locked up for five months, then banished to the desolate town of Brandfort for seven years.

When she returned to Soweto, the firebrand militant-martyr became a liability for Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement.

In 1986, at a time when suspected traitors were being burned alive in the volatile townships, Winnie declared that South African blacks would be freed “with our matchboxes”.

She surrounded herself with a band of thugs christened the Mandela United Football Club who murdered a young activist called Stompie Sepei.

Her bond with Mandela had endured through letters and visits to prison and when he was released in 1990, Winnie was there holding his hand, but in private she rejected him for a young lover.

Mandela stood by her when she was convicted for kidnapping Sepei and only in 1992 announced their separation.

Winnie’s six-year sentence was suspended on appeal and in 1994 she was appointed a deputy minister in his government, but was later sacked for insubordination.

By the mid-90s, Mandela was courting Graca Machel — a serious but warm woman 27 years younger than him who studied in Lisbon before she became a freedom fighter for Samora Machel’s Frelimo movement, and eventually Machel’s education minister and wife.

Graca’s first contact with Mandela came in 1986 when her husband died in an air crash many believe was orchestrated by the apartheid regime, and he wrote to her from prison.

When they met in Mozambique’s capital Maputo in 1990, Machel was still in mourning. But two years later Mandela became the godfather of her stepchildren and in 1996 they were spotted at President Robert Mugabe’s wedding.

Mandela was smitten and let the press in on their love story, telling reporters: “Late in life, I am blooming like a flower because of the love and support she has given me.”

On July 18, 1998 — Mandela’s 80th birthday — Machel broke her vow that she would not marry another president.

While clearly a proud husband, Mandela sometimes found it hard to keep pace with the younger woman.

“She is busier than I am. We meet for lunch, go off and then only see each other again for supper. I wish I had married a wife who was less busy,” he quipped to students at a ceremony in March 2007.

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How Mbazulike Amaechi hid Mandela from apartheid regime in Nigeria

BY VINCENT UJUMADU
ONE of the few surviving nationalists and former Minister of Aviation in the first republic, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi has revealed how he hid the foremost South African nationalist and former president of South Africa, Chief Nelson Mandela for six months in Nigeria to evade his arrest by officials of the apartheid regime in that country.

Amaechi, who spoke with Vanguard at his Ukpor country home in Nnewi South local government area of Anambra State said people like Mandela are great assets to humanity and should not be going through the pains of life.

Amaechi

The former minister, popularly known as ‘the boy is good’, said it was a privilege to him being asked to live with Mandela when he ran away from the apartheid regime and came to Nigeria in 1963, adding that they shared great moments during the six months plus Mandela lived in his house.

According to Amaechi, even when Mandela returned to South Africa and was sentenced to life imprisonment, he still wrote him letters from prison, showing how appreciative he is.

The interview with Amaechi on Mandela went thus:

PRESENTLY, the foremost South African nationalist, Nelson Mandela, is sick and in the hospital. We want to know if you had any relationship with him in the past or an encounter?

Yes, he was the leader of the Africa National Congress, ANC. He led the group that struggled for democracy in South Africa. That was the time of the apartheid regime in South Africa and when the British government was desperately looking for him to imprison him; he ran away from South Africa and took refuge in Nigeria.  That was when the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was the President of Nigeria and late Dr. Michael Okpara the Premier of the Eastern Region.

When Mandela came to Nigeria, Zik as the leader of the nationalist group in Nigeria in consultation with Okpara decided that they should find a nationalist of Mandela’s caliber who would accommodate him. So they called on me to take Mandela and accommodate him.

At that time, I was the parliamentary secretary and also a member of the parliament before I became a minister. He moved in to my house and stayed for about six or more months with me and my wife. I was then newly married while he was in his early 40’s or so.

We used to go out together and both the British intelligence and the South African intelligence services knew that he was with me, but there was nothing they could do about it because I was in government. Then, after sometime, during our discussions, he said: “My stay here, how long will it last? “I think I better return to South Africa. They will either kill me or send me to prison and it will spur the other nationalists remaining to continue with the struggle.

So, after about six or seven months in my house, he decided to move back to South Africa. When he went back, he was promptly arrested, charged and sentenced to life imprisonment. He went to prison, but the nationalism in him did not depart from him.

He continued doing his best for some of his colleagues. He wrote me a letter from prison asking me to find employment for one Dr. Barange. Barange’s father was a lawyer who defended the nationalists in a previous case, while Barange himself was a geologist. The apartheid people in South Africa were seriously looking for him and so Mandela wanted him to get out of South Africa. I was able to get a job for Dr. Barange at the University of Ife as a senior lecturer in Geology.

Mandella wrote me from prison. In fact when you called that you were coming, I went to my office to search for this letter. This is the letter he wrote me from the prison on the 18th of February, 1964, he signed the letter as Nelson Mandela, prisoner No 116570/63.

Then during his 74th birthday, he was still in prison, I joined his family to send him goodwill messages.

When he came out from prison, I wrote him too. When he came to Nigeria after his release, he specifically requested to see me and Dr. Azikiwe. So, when he came to Enugu, the then governor, Col. Robert Akonobi, because we were in military rule then, wrote me to say Mandela wanted to see me. I honoured the invitation and I went to Enugu with my wife to see him. He was in the company of his former wife, Winnie. We shared some time together before he went back to South Africa.

After that visit in 1993, have you been communicating with him?

Yes, my last letter to him was on 18th November, 1993.

Since the last letter, have two of you been communicating?

No. We have not spoken to each other again. When he was appointed the President of South Africa, I was invited to his inauguration ceremony, but the military here did not allow me to go. They said I needed clearance to go and I did not get it.

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