Happy Tuesday! I hope you had a good week last week and a great weekend!
How did this week’s challenge go? Were you able to keep up with everything you ate? Did you notice any eating patterns? Were you able to find the nutritional break down on your meals? Did anything surprise you? How many calories did you eat on average per day? How many grams of Carbohydrate, Protein, Fat and Fiber did you consume on average per day?
My goal is to help you break down your diet and figure out eating patterns that you can change to improve your overall health and achieve your personal goals. Together, over the next couple of weeks, we will walk through your diet and help you to achieve this goal. Continue to keep track of what you are eating.
Let’s start out by looking at the basics. Did you eat three meals a day every day this week?
A big mistake that most people make when dieting is in order to decrease calories, they will skip meals. This is never a good idea. Picture your body like a car. You would never get in the car and try to drive across country with the gas tank sitting on empty, right? Right! The car would break down on the side of the road and you would ruin your engine. Your body is the same way. Calories are your bodies “gasoline” (or energy) source. With the right breakdown in calories, you can help your body to run more efficiently and smoothly. Now on the opposite side of the equation, you wouldn’t sit at the gas station and overfill your car with gasoline so that gas was spilling onto the concrete, right? Right! It is the same idea with your body. There is a fine line that when crossed, you have over-consumed food and therefore consumed too many calories, which will contribute to weight gain.
To make sure that you have enough fuel for your body and to help limit hunger, you should try to eat every 4 to 6 hours during the time you are awake. This will help keep your energy level up and gas tank full. Now to make sure that you don’t consume too many calories, let’s make it simple. If you are a female, take your goal weight and multiply it by 10. If you are a male, take your goal weight and multiply by 11. That should be the amount of calories that you try to consume per day to achieve your weight loss goal. Example: Female - If your goal weight is 150 lbs......take 150 x 10= 1500 calories daily. This is the maximum amount of calories that you are trying to reach per day to facilitate weight loss. The bare minimum amount of calories that any one should eat without medical supervision is 1200 calories. Anything less than a 1200 calories diet needs to be discussed with your doctor.
Please keep in mind that I understand everyone has individual needs when it comes to their health. So if you have any specific questions please let me know and I will try to answer it as best I can without having all of your medical history and health concerns. The advice I give is general advice.
This week’s challenge: Figure out what your realistic target weight is. Where would you feel comfortable in your own skin? Where would you be happy? Take that number and multiply it by 10 and try to limit your daily calories to that amount. If your target weight requires you to eat less than 1200 calories based on the calculation, I would recommend increasing your exercise to achieve your weight loss goal. Current research shows that just losing 5% to 15% of your weight can help drastically reduce your risk of health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and high cholesterol.
Need helping tracking your food? Check out the following I-phone apps and websites:
www.myfitnesspal.com (also an app for iPhone)
www.caloriecount.com (also an app for iPhone)
“Lose It!“ app on iPhone
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Good luck!
The Dietnista
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