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“How Many Calories Should I Eat?” Part 3

June 17, 2013/1 Comment/in Health & Fitness /by TheJerd

How Many Calories Should I Eat In the last two articles in this series (catch up on Part 1 & Part 2 if you haven’t read them yet!) we spent a lot of time doing math and figuring out the science behind exactly how much you need to eat to stay alive and fuel your daily activities; maybe a little boring, but do you think Tony Stark just guessed how much energy it would take to power the Iron Man armor? Of course not, and neither should you!

I know what you’re thinking, “So now that we have all this data, how do we actually use it to our advantage?” Well, here is what I recommend you do next if you are serious about getting your eating habits in control and marching forward down the road to becoming a real life super-hero!

Keep Track of What You Eat!

If you’re looking for a starting point, this is it. Now, I have extolled the virtues of food journaling already, so I won’t beat you about the head again with why it is such an important tool… but starting first thing tomorrow, I want you to start keeping track of every thing you put in your mouth (seriously, everything.) You see, most people have no idea how much they actually eat! So I want you to take 5-7 days and record absolutely everything, so that at the end of the exercise you can calculate what your average daily caloric intake actually is. Now (this is important, so listen up), even though it might be difficult I want to you to make sure when you are reviewing your journal that you aren’t judging yourself or rationalizing your choices.

It doesn’t matter if Monday is Milton in accounting’s birthday and that is why you had that giant slice of tasty chocolate cake or that your pet goldfish, Jaws, died and you that’s why you powered down an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food to numb the pain. I am not discounting that life often seems like it is conspiring against your health goals, but at this point in our Heroes Transformation we are just trying to understand our bodies, habits and what we need to adjust to reach our goals. The slippery slope of justifications will just make it easier for you to revert back into bad habits! We need to approach this as scientifically as possible. So just gather the data, don’t judge it.

Yet.

Eating Healthy While on Vacation

June 10, 2013/2 Comments/in Health & Fitness, How To /by TheJerd

Editor’s Note: Summer is here, and that means vacations! Guest author, Cole Millen, has some solid tips for you on how to stay on track… so heed his wisdom and check out his blog, Cole’s Mill, when you get a chance for more of his musings on travel and food!

Eating Healthy While on Vacation The entire point of a vacation is to interrupt the daily grind of life and hit a “reset” button. Things like eating healthy and exercise are just two of them, but it’s so easy to let them slide. It is, after all, a vacation. Time to cast aside all the worries of daily life. Eventually, all good things (including vacations) must come to an end, and it will be a rude awakening if certain habits like exercise and healthy eating have not been kept up.

If you are traveling by air, eat a healthy meal before you get to the airport. This will minimize the likelihood of you raiding the vending machines and snack shops for cookies, chips and other fatty items. Also, stash a few healthy snacks like raisins, nuts and sunflower seeds in a plastic baggie and put them in your pocket just in case you get hungry while you are waiting for your flight. The airport can be a very difficult place to find healthy food. Make sure to look for grilled chickens and salads whenever possible.

If you are traveling by car, pack a cooler full of your favorite health foods. This will keep you from swinging by fast food joints and ordering greasy burgers and fries. Turkey on whole wheat, low fat yogurt, water, carrot sticks and boiled eggs are nutritious options you might consider packing. Also, avoiding fast food places at all costs is very important. Even the salads that you order from fast food joints are processed and not good for you.

“How Many Calories Should I Eat?” Part 2

June 5, 2013/5 Comments/in Health & Fitness /by TheJerd

So last week in “How Many Calories Should I Eat?” Part One we established the fact that a calorie is simply a unit of measurement, that is is neither good nor evil and that approximately 3500 of them equals about 1 pound of fat. While we didn’t get into discussing the quality of said calories, when broken down to its basest level it doesn’t matter for this part of the discussion; so…

“How Many Calories Should I Eat?”

How Many Calories Should I Eat Like I said in the last installment, this is an extremely common question; don’t feel bad if you don’t know how to figure the answer out. That’s why I’m here for you!

The way you are going to figure this out is by calculating your Basal Metabolic Rate and then adjusting for how active you are. Yes, I know you probably just wanted me to give you a number and then call it a day, but that’s not how it works! Caloric intake is highly individualized; so yes, you are going to have to do a little math. So suck it up and let’s take a look at how we are going to calculate this mess!

First up is figuring out what that mildly ominous sounding Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is. The basic gist of the BMR is that it is tells you how many calories your body uses to stay alive… or in other words, how many calories your base bodily functions burn while you lounge around all day reading comic books or binge watching old TV series on Netflix. Unless you are bed-ridden this is only part of the number crunching we are going to have to do, but for desk-jockeys who don’t get much exercise, it’s a good starting point. So what exactly is this magic formula? Luckily you don’t need to recall your college trigonometry class, because we have the Internet! *cue the angel’s choir*