Lesson 3: More Food

Last week I talked about the kind of food you should be eating (home cooked vs. fast food) and this week I want to talk to you about how much food you should be eating. Your body uses food as fuel which I’m sure you’ve heard before. You need to be sure that you are giving your body enough fuel to do its job. Even if you were to stay in bed all day, your body is using fuel just to perform basic body functions such as breathing and pumping blood through your veins. The calories your body uses just to sustain basic bodily functions is called the basal metabolic rate or BMR.

The formula to figure out your BMR is pretty long:

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

If you’re interested in an easier way, there are countless BMR calculators on the internet that will do the math for you. Here’s one to get you started: BMR Calculator.

So, now that you have the number of calories you need in order for you basic bodily functions, you also need to figure in the amount of calories your body needs just to do your basic daily activities such as getting out of bed and going to work (or sitting on the couch watching TV). If you’re like most people these days, you probably work a desk job and the only physical activity you get is walking to the bathroom, and maybe the water cooler. If this is the case, you’ll need to multiply your BMR by 1.2. This is the number of calories you will need to eat each day just to give your body enough fuel to work on and sustain your current weight. Let’s call this number your daily maintenance calories or DM calories.

So, if you’re happy with your current weight, you now have the number of calories (your DM calories) you need to eat each day in order to maintain your current weight. However, if you’re like me and you’re trying to lose weight, you’re going to have to cut that number a bit. I’ll tell you all about it next week.

Lesson 2: Food

There is a lot to know about food, from eating enough (yes you read that right), eating the right kind of food, and when you eat it.

Let’s start with the kind of food. Sure you can eat fast food for every meal, one meal, or any combination in between. But let’s take a look at exactly what that means. We all know that we should only eat a certain amount of calories per day, and later I’ll tell you how to figure that out, but for this example, I’ll use my recommended caloric intake for when I’m losing weight and say that our daily calories intake should be 1500 calories for the day.

If you eat fast food for every meal and stay within 1500 calories for the day, here is what your daily food intake will look like:

Breakfast
Egg McMuffin 300 calories

Lunch
Premium Asian Salad with Crispy Chicken 410 calories

Dinner
Filet-O-Fish 380 calories
Small French Fries 230 calories
Ketchup Packet 15 calories

Desert
Chocolate Chip Cookie 160 calories

Daily total: 1495

(The items I picked are all relatively low in calories compared to other items on McDonald’s menu.)

So, it is possible to stay at 1500 calories per day eating only McDonalds. But let’s take a look at some other nutritional information for this day’s food. Specifically, let’s look at fat content. The McDiet above has 68 grams of fat and, that’s 12g of fat more than the recommended daily intake of 32-56g of fat.

Now, let’s take a look at what your meals would look like if you prepared them all at home:

Breakfast
1.2 cup blueberries 41 calories
1 Yoplait yogurt cup 100 calories
2 Kellogg’s Lowfat Nutri-Grain waffles 142
1 tablespoon pancake syrup 59 calories

Lunch
2 cups Romaine lettuce 16 calories
1/2 chicken breast 104 calories
1 tablespoon salad dressing 26 calories
2/3 cup croutons 122 calories

Dinner
1/2 red bell pepper 22 calories
5oz ground turkey 200 calories
1 cup spaghetti 208 calories
4 slices onions 21 calories
1/2 cup spaghetti sauce 71 calories
3 tablespoons parmesan chest 68 calories

Desert
1 peach 42 calories
1/2 bagel 73 calories
1/2 tablespoon jam 28 calories
2 Oreo cookies 130 calories

Daily total: 1475 calories

Now, take a look at the home cooked list of daily food compared to the McDiet list and think about the volume of food for each. There’s a lot more food in the home cooked day. Now, let’s take a look at fat content. With the home cooked day, I would only consume 37 grams of fat, well within the daily recommended range. So, more food (and a couple less calories) and less fat. I don’t know about you, but I’m all for more food, and if I can do it while eating less fat (which will help lose weight), then even better!

So, the lesson is… while you can eat McDonalds for every meal and still stay within a reasonable calorie range, at the end of the day you may not feel very full, and will have consumed way too much fat. I’ve seen a lot of people write that they can eat whatever they want and lose weight as long as they stay within their calorie range, and while that may be true for some, others will have to work harder to burn off those extra grams of fat, and will most likely still be hungry when they go to bed. So, do yourself and your body a favor, eat fast food only occasionally and cook more. Your body and your stomach will thank you!

Lesson 1: Diets Don’t Work

I know you’ve probably heard that line before, but it’s true and let me tell you why. Restricting the type of foods you heat, relying on shakes, relying on prepackaged food, and any other type of diet in which the thinking is done for you, just don’t work.

You’ve got to learn and do some thinking in order to live healthy, and a healthy lifestyle includes all types of foods including fast food, with of course the disclaimer that fast foods should be in moderation. If you’re restricting your intake, you’re going to feel deprived. If you rely on prepackaged food, you’ll never be able to maintain your weight once you need to start cooking on your own (and trust me, you’ll need to cook for yourself eventually since those packaged meals aren’t palatable forever). Whatever method you use for losing the weight is what you'll have to do for the rest of your life to maintain it. You can't live on packaged foods, pills, or shakes for the rest of your life just to maintain your weight... that's not even living!

So, the bottom line is this: You have to learn about food, keep track of what you’re putting in your mouth, and stay away from all diets!

Surprise! You’re Fat

I, like most people, have made countless new years resolutions… and broken them all. Then one day, I got serious. Before I begin the story of how, why, and when I got serious, let me give you a little background on my life before that.

I didn’t really live too unhealthy of a life, I certainly didn’t exercise regularly or anything, but I wasn’t too far off track. I rarely ever ate fast food, most meals were cooked at home and cooked from scratch, and I had long since been a non-smoker. I even hopped on the elliptical machine in my garage every now and again.

Then one day, while I was standing on the scale in my doctor’s office, it hit me… I was fat! I weighed in that day at 200 pounds even, on the dot, and right at FAT. That’s when I decided to get serious about my weight. I hadn’t even realized I was fat. Sure, I knew how much I weighed, but when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see a fat girl, I just saw me. Everyone has their upper limit for their weight, a point at which they realize that they need to do something, and my limit was 200. I had finally seen the real me in the mirror, and I didn’t like what I was seeing.

On April 27, 2008 I took the first step on the road to health. I’ve learned a lot in a short amount of time, and I want to share what I’ve learned. Getting healthy isn’t all that hard. There are plenty of resources to help you get to where you want to be. Getting healthy is simply a commitment. It’s a commitment to yourself, your loved ones, and to change the way you are living your life.

Here are the lessons I have learned along the way to Healthy.