The Rule of the Belly

It was an unladylike, multi-napkin lunch at Moe's for me today.  I know, pick up your jaws from the floor, pregnancy makes you do some wacky things!  Today, it was a burrito.  Not only did I need one, I needed one bad, with real sour cream and lots of it.  It would not, could not, should not be ignored.

Remember how I told you that I gained 75 lbs in my first pregnancy?  Sour cream had a lot to do with that experience.  I just could not get enough!  I ate tacos for three weeks straight, no lie.  Well, this time around I am going about things with a little more restraint so I'm working hard to strike a balance between giving in to pregnancy cravings and not eating like a vacuum cleaner.

So, I pulled up Moe's website and went straight to the Nutrition Calculator so I could find exactly what I wanted - because you know pregnant ladies need exactly what they crave - without eating 900 calories just in lunch. It was perfect.  I was able to satisfy my craving and get out of there under 500 calories.  A little more than I would typically spend on a lunch, but the beast has been fed!

I have a firm belief that pregnancy cravings should not be ignored.  There is some weird reason why we need bagels with cream cheese and cool ranch chips sprinkled on top (saw that one online) or a specifically specific brand of ketchup to go on our grilled cheese sandwiches (no I do not want to eat that...yet).  Who knows why it happens, but I've learned the hard way not to try and reason with a baby.

But, I apply the same three rules to pregnancy cravings as I do regular ones:

1. Stall. I've gotten through many a craving by telling myself I could have it tomorrow, a day that never comes.  "Oooh, a brownie sounds good.  Maybe I'll have one tomorrow."  Most of the time by the next day I am not as interested anymore.  But when a craving keeps tapping you on the shoulder for a few days, move to rule #2...

2. Go get it.  Get exactly, precisely what you want or you will just eat around it, circling closer and closer until finally you cave in and eat it, and by which time you have now eaten way more calories than you would have had you just eaten what you wanted in the first place!  Which is why you should....

3. Manage the portion.  I didn't get a ginormous burrito today, I got a small one and I made it work with the rest of my day.  I knew it had to have sour cream, so I skipped shredded cheese to save calories.  Go get what you want - exactly what you want - but manage the portion and make compromises on the stuff that doesn't matter so it doesn't wreck your day.

I love the fact that I was able to get what I wanted today and still keep my day healthy.  Cause who knows what I will want to eat tomorrow. :)

Good day!

Holiday Weightloss: A How-to Guide

Ha! SO SO SO SO SOOOO not true.

Warning: this is a long one. I'm going to make you think on a Monday.


Okay, so we've been talking (or at least I have) about saying focused on our wellness goals and not gaining the average seven pounds that Americans put on during the holidays.  And you may be sitting looking at your screen saying, "Sounds good Healthy Heather but HOW?  How the heck am I going to do that?!?"  


Well keep your britches on! I'm going to tell you!  You'll need two things:


1. A calculator (yes, there is math)
2. Someplace to accurately log calories.  
I suggest an account on the free food journaling website Fitday.com.


In order to lose or maintain weight during the holidays (or any time of year) you need to know what you're working with.  In other words, you need to  determine your Basal Metabolic Rate.  Your BMR is the number of calories your body burns at rest.  That is, if you were to lie in bed all day watching Harry Potter movies back to back all day long, your BMR is the number of calories it would take for your body to keep pushing the remote control past all the parts with Dobby the House Elf in them. That's your base.  To find out what yours is, use this formula.  Keep in mind this is just an estimate!

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

For example, this is what that looks like for me: 

• 655 + (4.35 x 140) + (4.7 x 64) – (4.7 x 34)
• 655 + 609 + 301 – 150 = 1,415 calories burned AT REST

Okay. Now, unless you really do lie in bed watching Harry Potter every day, we need to multiply your BMR by your activity level.  Use the following descriptors to categorize yourself, and if you're somewhere in the middle of two categories, well, split the difference!

• Sedentary: multiply BMR x 1.2
• Light activity (1-3 days per week): BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active (3-5 days per week): BMR x 1.55
• Very active (hard activity 6-7 day per week): BMR x 1.725
• Extra active (training for a sport full time): BMR x 1.9

Example, for me: 
1,415 calories burned AT REST x 1.725 = 2,440 calories burned on average each day

According to my collected data, this is pretty darn accurate. On average, on days when I exercise, my GoWearFit shows that I burn between 2,500 and 2,600 calories. On rest days when I just walk around doing normal stuff but don't work out, I burn an average of 1,800 – 2,000 calories.  So I trust this formula.

Okay!  Now that we have a good idea how many calories we are using up in a day, we need to know how many we are eating.


Yep.


You gotta write it down.  Everything.   Half cookies count, that little spoonful of peanut butter counts, and food you taste even though you're making it for someone else...that counts.  Food that no one saw you eat, yeah, that counts.  If it is digested by your body, you count it.  It's science people. I can't help it.

Fitday makes it easy to keep track of it all with a ginormous food database, and it calculates everything for you.  Your goal is for the number of calories you EAT to be the same or less than the number of calories you BURN.  


To lose weight, you need to burn more than you eat.  It really is that simple.  If when you enter in your food and you don't like what you see on either end, change it. Either eat less or move around more - your choice.  I think you will see that the cleaner and healthier your food choices become, the happier that scenario begins to look.  However, pay close attention to the number of calories you are taking in; eating fewer than 1,200 calories for women or 1,800 calories for men is not recommended and can do more harm than good.  You have to eat. Again, it's science.  I can't change science. If I could, trust me things would be different around here.


Remember, our goal during the holidays is progress, not perfection. By being aware of your caloric needs and intake, you can minimize the damage done to your wellness and make January a much happier month.  


Do the math!  Do it today!  Make progress!

Wham! Pow!

What a great workout this morning!  I donned my boxing gloves and spent a little time sparring with my trainer, which was a really fun way to start the day.  People say that boxing is a good way to get rid of any frustrations, but I have had such a fun week that I don't have much angst built up.  But it still felt good to hit stuff.


We're coming into the first weekend of the holiday season, so you may be facing parties, baking, and more. Remember our deal - progress, not perfection.  I'm doing some baking myself this weekend and my goal is to weigh the same on Monday as I do tomorrow morning!  The number on the scale is just one small part of our overall wellness, but knowing you're going to be checking is a good way to stay accountable about those sneaky little things like sodium, alcohol, and sugar that will cause us to retain water and feel unhealthy, which will make us frustrated and lead us to be less motivated to stick to our healthy goals.  So give it a shot!


I've also broken out my trusty calendar stickers, and I've been putting one for exercise and one for nutrition on my calendar each day.  November looks awesome!  All of those stickers all lined up means I had one healthy month.  I have the same goal for December: a sticker on five days a week for exercise (real, hard, sweaty, calorie-torching exercise) and a sticker for every day of the week that I have a calorie deficit.  


Take the weekend to think of some small things you can do to make sure you're making progress on your wellness this month.  Then, rest up.  I have a doozy of a post for you on Monday!


Have a great, healthy weekend!  Good day!

Holiday Battle Plan? Engage!

It's the most dangerous time....of the year......

That's right: holiday food time.  Halloween candy is on the shelves and Christmas goodies will be marching close behind to take their place faster than you can say, "boo!"  So that means it is time to make that holiday food plan.  To help, I'll be doling out Healthy Heather's Holiday Hints a few at a time.  Ready?

Here's the first few:

1. Start eating clean NOW! (duh, did anyone see that coming?) In a nutshell, eating clean is the practice of eating whole, natural foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and complex carbohydrates. It also means staying away from the junk that typically makes up the Standard American Diet (S.A.D) These types of food include man-made sugar, bad fats (hydrogenated, trans-fat), preservatives, white bread, and any other ingredients that are unnecessary. An easy way to remember if a food is clean is: “if man made it, don’t eat it.”  And if your mom made it with a pound of butter cause that's how you liked it as a kid, still don't eat it. :)


2. Find time for (more) exercise. Fall and winter weather is perfect for walking, running, and being outside. To keep holiday pounds at bay, increase your exercise by about 30 minutes of vigorous cardio a day, or begin a walking program. The extra calories burned won’t completely void out a glass (or four) of eggnog, though, so be honest about how much activity you’re getting.


3. Tell everyone around you about your goal. You’ve heard that a goal without a plan is just a wish, right? Well a plan without ACTION is lunacy! Tell everyone you know about your great, fabulous plan to eat clean and not gain weight during the holidays. Knowing that eyes are on you to be the example will make you think twice before taking a second cookie.  While you're at it, recruit a few friends to join you and keep each other motivated.  Remember, the holidays are a lot more fun when you aren't preoccupied with how you're going to lose the weight you gained from "fun food."

You don’t have to be perfect during the holidays. You just have to try.  :)  Good luck, and good day!

That Darn Reality

*sigh*

Okay it's time for me to face reality: in three weeks I am going up north, where I will not be able to get away with wearing my usual uniform of baggy men's shorts and t-shirt, and will be required to actually fit into a pair of pants that I wore last winter.

I'd be lying if I said that didn't terrify me just a tad.  Yeah....its been a long summer and I have landed at the end of it with five or six extra pounds around my middle that need to make like a tree and get outta here.  Yeah yeah, poor me, six pounds, wah wah.  But you know six pounds can make a big difference on a shorty like me!  So I'm sucking it up and facing the reality of what I need to do to make everything right again:

Stop eating so dang much.

Even healthy food has calories, friends!  When I sat down to evaluate my current nutrition, there wasn't much I felt needed to change. I have a pretty darn awesome diet!  It's just a little closer to the maintenance end of my calorie range too many days out of the week for my brown corduroy pants to be a viable option for fall.  I've become one of those people who eat at a deficit all week long, and then make up the difference on the weekend, coming out at maintenance.  And most of that time that's fine. 

Until I try on my winter pants. 

Then it is not fine.  Then it is soooooo not fine.

So!  Six pounds! Bye-bye! And.....we're off!


Good day!

GoWearFit: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has never been so rewarding

So I've been wearing my GoWearFit for a little over a month now and have not lost any of my initial enthusiasm for it.  Where has it been all my life?  I will tell you what, if I had this thing 10 years ago I could have saved myself a lot of time in the self-help section of the bookstore. 

But I don't want to dwell on the past.

Or do I?

You see, my GFW (we're BFFs now so I can call it that), tells me about my past.  My immediate past, that is.  It allows me to look back over my shoulder (or my left tricep, since that is where it lives) and see if I really did burn what I thought I did.  And then, it allows me to make a better plan for the future by showing me in black and white what my body is doing, within a 5% margin of error.  So, for example, yesterday I burned a whopping 2,443 calories (give or take), which gave me an approximate calorie deficit of just over 900 calories, which means that vacation weight is going bye-bye. yay!  Today I estimate I'll have about 800 calorie deficit, based on my workout plans for the day and what I plan to eat.  I'm going to a party this weekend, so I will workout Saturday morning, sync the GWF up to my reporting software, and decide on a calorie goal for the day that will result in a break-even (if not a small deficit) so I can relax a little at the party but stay within maintenance.  If I don't hit my mark, GWF will tell me and I'll adjust accordingly on Sunday.

And in a week or so, when I am back in my happy zone, I'll go back to eating more and exercising a little less, so I can break even around 2,000 calories a day.

What is so exciting about all of this (for me) is that it is a completely sane way to manage my fitness.  A little compulsive, yes, but come on.  Being compulsive is like Christmas morning to me.  I love it!  Seriously.  I can obsess about so many other things now that my GWF tracks all of the stuff I used to obsess about.  Thanks, BodyMedia!

Speaking of compulsive, here's a little peek into my report from Sunday.  See the spike at the beginning of the day?  That's me exercising.  See where it is WAY higher in the second hour?  That's me doing sprint intervals outside.  The first part is an elliptical-and-weights circuit I did, and the second is this interval podcast.  Seeing the difference in the effectiveness of different workouts is golden to me.  That little flat part around 4:00 is when I was swimming with my kiddo.  GWF doesn't do water, yo.

Okay, I'm rambling.  Bottom line - if you're a control freak perfectionist tired of wondering if you really are burning what those formulas say that you are, go get a GoWearFit already! 

Be a control freak perfectionist about something else for a change. :)

Why to weigh your food

I stumbled upon this video yesterday and it was the perfect reminder for why to weigh your food...on a digital food scale...in grams. 

Now, the grams thing is just me being a freak, but the digital thing is for real.  Seriously, people, we all know our eyes play tricks on us when we think we are having a serving of something and it turns out we just ate double what we thought.  When I started weighing everything in grams, it took about 24 hours to realize I had been eating about 300 calories more a day than I thought.

Take time today to consider whether you are recording your food accurately.  Remember, studies show that keeping a food log is a key success factor to weight loss and maintenance...but only if it is what you actually ate!

Good day!

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Attn: New Mothers! Breastfeeding is no longer necessary!

New baby at home? Congratulations!

Be sure you stock up on plenty of soda! Thanks to my hilarious friend Christy for this little dose of fear-mongering. I always wondered why I never seemed to fit in at school.  Now I know the truth.  Thanks for nothing, mom!

Have a healthy (non-cola) day!