11.09.07

Fit Girl: Entry #3


Reclaiming Body and Soul -- One Workout at a Time


Entry #3 – Food, Glorious Food!

Welcome back!

Okay. You’ve had time to ponder the whole equation of “calories ingested versus calories burned”. Now we’re going to talk about those pesky calories!

The bottom line is this, folks: it’s all about paying attention to what you put into your mouth. Fad diets and supposed “quick loss” plans aren’t going to do the trick, no matter what anyone says. And even if you do lose several pounds quickly by just eating cabbage soup, the minute you stop (because who can eat cabbage soup forever??), those pounds will come back on. Why? Because your eating pattern will simply return to what it was before.

Bummer, huh?

And nobody says you have to deprive yourself—I certainly don’t!—of the things you love. It’s called moderation, and keeping track of what you eat.

Excitingly enough, you can do this sort of thing for free on the Internet. All it takes is a little bit of your time. The site I’ve discovered that I like to use is SparkPeople.com. (But you can also use Google and search for “calorie counters” or “food diary” or “food journal”. The important thing is that you are comfortable with using the site you choose. If you don’t like using it, you’re not going to track your calories, are you?) SparkPeople is free to use and easily navigable, and only requires you to register. The best thing is, though, is that the site has a ton of neat calculators and trackers that you can use to keep tabs on your wellness journey. There’s a weight tracker that shows your progress in a handy chart form; there’s a fitness tracker that logs your workouts and estimates the calories you burned (yeah!); and there’s a great recipe section with tons of low-calorie meals.

But probably the most valuable part is the food tracker. Logging what you’ve put into your mouth helps to keep you accountable, and helps to keep you on track. Yes, it takes a bit of effort to remember to sit down and log what you’ve eaten, but if it helps you on your weight-loss journey, that’s a good thing!

SparkPeople will require you to input your basic information—height, weight, activity level, etc.—and give you a resulting recommended range for calorie consumption, but you can also use the number you came up with from the last entry—remember your BMR? It doesn’t really matter which one you choose, as long as you’re consistent.

The other thing I’ve done is purchased a small notebook (doesn’t have to be anything fancy—that’s up to you. Even one from the dollar store is perfect.) to keep track of my daily and weekly totals. (Remember, a 3500-calorie weekly deficit = 1 pound lost!)

In my notebook, I divide the two facing pages into eight squares—one for each day of the week, and one “Total” square. Then in each square I write:

Calories Ingested: (total taken from SparkPeople—everything I ate)

Calories Burned BMR: (this is my daily basic expenditure)

Calories Burned Extra: (this is for any exercise or extra activity I do during the day)

Total Calories Burned: (self-explanatory, I think!)

Day’s Total: (Calories Ingested minus Total Calories Burned—a deficit is what you’re aiming for!)

Just to give you a more concrete example, here’s one day from my notebook:

Monday

Calories Ingested: 1,888

Calories Burned BMR: 1833

Calories Burned Extra: 600 (trip to the gym!)

Total Calories Burned: 2433

Day’s Total: (545) (Yeah!)

So I’d gone a little over my daily recommendation, but that workout definitely helped!

In the eighth—“Total”—square, just add up every day’s totals to give you figures for the entire week. This way, you can see where you’re at with that magic number of 3500 calories.


Remember, of course, that these numbers are all estimates. Like I’ve said before, it’s not an exact science, but it does give you a ballpark to work with.

Thanks for stopping by! Start tracking those calories, and next time, we’ll talk about the flip side of the coin—burning those sneaky things!

FitGirl, aka Tanya Saari, is a freelance writer and editor living in the Sudbury Area, who battles daily with not really wanting to work out, and talking herself out of that extra piece of pizza or square of chocolate. She welcomes your comments and questions at tanyasaari@gmail.com.