Week 5- a review and wrap up of week 4
If metabolism, macronutrients, and calories are still foggy subjects for you, I hope things become clearer after this week. If not, please give us a call or shoot us an email so we can chat! Debbie and I are always happy to help!
Calories
The main takeaway I want for you all on the topic of calories is just to understand that they aren’t evil. EVERTHING we do involves calories whether we are eating them or burning them. I don’t expect you to count calories, but just be aware of what your body needs in comparison to your typical consumption.
Macronutrients
It will also be helpful for you to see how your calories are dispersed between the three macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrate. To help you see this more clearly, your challenge this week is to create a MyFitnessPal account and log your food and beverage intake for two weekdays and one weekend day. The site has an extensive database of foods. You may have to modify your serving or portion size depending on how much you ate. This part if very important because the amount you consume can drastically effect the end results of this food log activity. This can be an eye opening experience. It was for me when I was gaining weight last fall and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Here are some helpful screenshots to walk you through the process:
Pay close attention to the activity level. If you spend most of the day sitting, even if you workout before or after work, you are considered sedentary.
Here is the summary based on age, gender, height and weight, activity level and weight goals:
This is what your "homepage" should look like. Next you'll click on food in the top toolbar to begin your food log.
This is where you will need to be particular about your portions for your foods and beverages.
Lastly, add your exercise/physical activity for the day, or pair your smart devices together to do the work for you.
Call or email me if you have any questions about the process!
I’m asking you to do this activity on two weekdays and one weekend day because we usually eat different on the weekends than we do on week days. I also encourage you to get in the habit of doing this every month or two, just to check in and see if you’re still consuming what and how much you need in terms of calories and macronutrients.
As a bonus, you can also input your physical activity or exercise and the app will add these calories to your daily allowance. If you have a smart phone and an activity tracker/pedometer, you can pair the MyFitnessPal app with your activity tracker and the app will automatically tabulate your burned calories for the day so you don’t have to enter them.
The main takeaway I want for you all on the topic of macronutrients is to find a ratio that works for you from the three options given on the PowerPoint slide last week and below.
Protein- choose lean animal sources, or plant sources; lean beef, poultry, fish, and eggs, or nuts/seeds, quinoa, soy, and beans/legumes.
Fat- choose plant or unsaturated fats. A study from the American Heart Association found that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat lowers the risk of heart attack, stroke, and angina. Replacing foods high in saturated fat like butter, meat, and coconut oil with polyunsaturated fat-rich vegetable oils such as soybean and corn oils could lower rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by about 30 percent. Replacing foods high in saturated fat with monounsaturated-rich vegetable oils such as canola and olive oils was found to be associated with a 15 percent lower rate of CVD.
Carbohydrate- avoid refined carbs. Focus on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lentils.
As Abbey Langer mentioned in her blog last week, many foods have all three macronutrients, like dairy products.
Metabolism
I don’t know about you all, but growing up, metabolism was always this thing that we talked about like it was an organ in my body and I always wondered where it was. If metabolism was as confusing to you as it was to me, I hope you have a clearer picture now of what it is and how it works.
Big takeaways here: you can’t outwork a bad diet and adding physical activity to your daily routine can help boost or speed up your metabolism.
What I mean by ‘outworking a bad diet’ is that if you consume too many more calories than what your body needs (your BMR), it will be very hard for you to burn those extra calories off.
I know this week and last week seemed to focus a lot on weight loss, but this information is important to understand for general healthy living too.