Friday, February 27, 2009

Messing with Mojos

Shakey's Pizza is a popular eatery. Have not been there in a while! Being that I need to check my calorie intake I did a search on one Shakey's entries, Mojos.

Not exactly a heath food is it? 950 calories for 15 pieces! If I have two, that will be the equivalent of one slice of thin crust sausage and mushrooms pizza. The amount of sodium is astronomical.

As always, making wise choices is our responsibility and over indulgence will lead to trouble.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Half-a-Habit

I recently read and interesting suggestion. When setting goals we sometimes tend to go for an all or nothing deal.

There is anothe way. A Half-a-Habit. While I now can't remember exactly where I read the concept of a Half-a-Habit this may be a good unitended definition.

From BrianKim.net
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In the beginning, set the goal so it's easy to achieve to help build a solid foundation
to work off of.

You can set the goal high, but scale back and choose the first target so it's easy
to hit.

Then set another and another and another.

It's tempting to go for all the marbles the first time but it's easy to forget that
for each target you hit, you accrue a vast amount of experience, knowledge,
contacts, ideas, confidence, etc., that you can use to hit the next and the next
and the next.

You rarely have all that in the beginning so don't plan on going for it all just yet.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How much? That is the question!

The question was how many calories does an individual need for maintenance, to gain or loose body fat.

The Basal Metabolic Rate formulas for men and women are listed below.

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )

Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

So my BMR is 66+(6.23 * 233) + (12.7 * 69) - (6.8 * 52) 66+ 1451.59 + 876.3 -353.6 = 2040.29.

My RMR is 1880. I obtained that from a RMR online calculator.

My basic metabolic rate would then require me to eat 2040 calories per day. It does not consider activity levels. This would be a vegetative state, doing not much of anything!

Next you use the Harris Benedict equation to figure out how many calories per day you need with different activity levels:

1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9


If I choose option 1, my daily caloric intake would then be 2040 * 1.2 = 2448.348. If I choose option 2 it would jump to 2805.

One caveat, technically these are as scientific as you get, but how our bodies respond to what we eat affects the rate of fat loss. For example my activity level is number 3 (3-5 days/week I do something). That would put my caloric consumption at a whopping 3162 calories per day (I can eat a lot ice cream with those numbers). But my experience has been that eating that much makes me gain weight (not muscle weight), regardless of how much excercise I participate in. So, I've been shooting for 2400 and so far I'm happy with the results. Never go below you minimum BMR or RMR. That only causes you to be constantly hungry.

I have been tracking my food for the last four weeks. My weight has fluctuated tremendously but I have lost all the weight I gained while on vacation. Figuring out what I need to eat is the hard part. For option 1 I would choose to cut 5%, a conservative amount of fat loss. Are you still with me? 2449 (rounded) minus 5% equals 2326.55. If I chose a more aggressive plan let's say 15% that would put me at 2081.65 which is just above my BMR.

Once you know your target daily calorie consumption, split it into five or six meals and fat will slowly but surely melt away. Plus your insulin levels will normalize. Exercise is involved in insulin control as well but apparently not as much as we think. Nutrition is where the 'buck stops'.

Another thing I would recommend is that when working out these formulas, you leave your ego at the door. We think we are more active than we really are and tracking calories can be off as well. The formulas have an error percentage of 5%. They are not menat for very fit nor extremely obese individuals. They are estimates!

Working out these formulas for the umpteenth time, made me realize that I was off in understanding the concept. What I was doing was figuring out how many calories I would use during a workout and ate that much more (silly!). That effectively nullified the whole thing and therefore made me remain at a constant weight or worse, gain some pounds.

Below are the results of using an online calculator:

BMR 2,025 RMR 1,880 (calories)

Adjusted BMR and RMR calculations with activity factors.

Factor Category Definition BMR RMR
1.2 Sedentary Little or no exercise and desk job. 2,430 2,256

1.375 Lightly Active Light exercise or sports 1-3 days a week. 2,784 2,585

1.55 Moderately Active Moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days a week 3,139 2,914

1.725 Very Active Hard exercise or sports 6-7 days a week 3,493 3,243

1.9 Extremely Active Hard daily exercise or sports 3,848 3,572

As we can see there is a lot of room to experiment. But as I stated, there seems to be a threshold for me. I go over that and the weight comes back really fast.

So now that I know exactly how this works and where I went south, I’m back on track. This will work, but one has to be patient. We say this to ourselves, the weight did not come overnight (well it might have), it will not go away overnight either. We just don’t seem to believe it. Shows like ‘The Biggest Looser’ may be to blame for this. Those folks workout 2-4 hours a day! I’m sorry, I only have 45 minutes. Besides after 45-60 minutes ‘cortisol’ levels increase which make it hard to recover. Unless of course you really have good sleeping patterns and impecable nutritional discipline.

In the end, I'll know which formula works for me by the results.



Monday, February 23, 2009

Do we really know?

I think I finally figured out the reason for my plateau; it's basically thinking you understand something when you really don't.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Tea, cake and my grandmother!

My other secret attraction comes in the form of sweets such as ‘sweet breads’, cakes, doughnuts (as opposed to Ice Cream).

Self examination is once more in order. Besides the usual, ‘I’m mad so I’m going to have some sweets’ trigger, what else is going on?

Well let’s see, just like the ice cream story confessions, there is something similar here. When I was a little boy (I know, here we go again), my grandmother would call me in the afternoon; I would go to her room (she lived with us), and she would have a cup of tea and some assorted sweet bread to go along with the tea. I remember this like it was yesterday. It was the special treat for the little prince of the house (yeah, I was spoiled rotten, and that is another story which I’ll put in writing as well). This was done every afternoon around our school break on weekdays.

Tea was prepared, sweet bread warmed up or just right out of the oven. My dad was a baker and we had this rather large brick oven. So talk about organic, everything from the bread to the ‘little drunkards’ (small muffins with Rum), tasted absolutely great! In any case, there it was just for me and I sat there and enjoyed the treat for as many years as I can remember (until I was almost twelve).

Having tea with something sweet does take me back forty years back. To a place where I was soon to be crowned (that’s what I thought in any case). The problem is that the sweet tooth took me to the brink of good old diabetes. This was in my late mid forties at that. My cravings for this stuff are much more controlled now but once in a while, the devil in disguise turns up.

I’ve made a pact and my goal is this: I enjoy sweets appropriately and as long as I don’t have them every day I’m great. Home made is best so I avoid the market variety. I leave it for the weekends but not excessively so I’ll not feel guilty. I use a small spoon or fork and have my tea with ‘Flan’ or whatever my honey bakes once in a while.

The fight goes on! Onward!

Monday, February 02, 2009

My food log and the iPhone!

By far what I'm describing here is not a novel idea. I was actually doing a similar thing using my old PDA; but for some reason it was not as fun.

Tracking your food intake fun? Well, sort of. The fun lies in taking control of your daily eating habits and having some semblance of what is actually happening throughout the day. Lots of folks do well without it; I prefer this new method for now.


Must of us carry our phone with us all the time; I use my iPhone as my alarm clock, as a calendar, note taker, task organizer, news reader, mail reader, online banking, camera, ebook reader, timer for my workouts, music listening and more.


Phone calls are a third or fourth distant cousin.


I found this neat little app called 'Loose It!'; which I promptly installed on the iPhone. It has been a pleasure to use it, keeping track of my food intake and getting ever closer to my goal of becoming leaner.


Included is an image of what is called a 'cheat meal'. Something I don't normally have but will not do without so I don't go crazy.

The Loose It! app has a very comprehensive database, you can add your own foods and exercises as well.


All I have to do now is make sure I don't dunk the iPhone in the soup.