FOOD JOURNAL!
During the last challenge, I waited until 3/4 of the way through to do this bonus. But I feel like this one is so beneficial that it's a skill some of you may want to learn soon and a habit you may want to implement more often than when you're forced to do it as a bonus challenge.
Weight loss/gain is truly a result of calories in vs. calories out. I will never forget something a dietitian said a number of years ago on a news report I was watching, "A person can lose weight eating nothing but snickers bars, and someone can gain weight eating nothing but healthy food." This fall, I was reading an article about a nutrition professor at Kansas State University who ate nothing but junk food (and one serving of vegetables) each day for a month. The interesting part for me is that he had lost 7 pounds in the first couple weeks. You must realize, however, that he was monitoring his caloric intake closely and limiting it to 1800 calories per day. I'm not condoning the consumption of junk food. I am merely pointing out that this Sensible Lifestyle Challenge increases your chance at successfully losing weight, but it does not guarantee the results you want. That is achieved by keeping your caloric intake to a level that is right for you, no matter whether you're eating healthy food or junk food. Here are two links to websites that can give you an idea of how many calories your body burns each day: option 1 (in the bottom right of the webpage) or option 2. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will probably gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you should lose weight. To lose one pound in a week, you would have to eat 500 calories less than you burn each day. That can be achieved by reducing your calorie intake or increasing your activity duration / intensity.
So am I asking you to count your calories? Absolutely not. I find calorie counting to be very tedious and annoying. And quantifying whether or not you ate moderate portion sizes is impossible. This week you will report your food intake (and drinks containing calories) each day to at least one member of your team. Every day that you report your food journal to a team member, you get 5 points for a total of 35 possible bonus points this week. You need to report what you ate and how much of it you ate. Here's an example:
Breakfast:
2 pieces whole wheat toast, 1 T. butter and 2 T. strawberry jam
2 hard boiled eggs, no yolk
Snack:
1/2 cup baby carrots dipped in 1 T. ranch dressing
Lunch:
1 cup vegetable soup with 8 saltine crackers
1 cup fresh spinach with 1/4 c. dried cranberries and 2 T. vinaigrette dressing
Snack:
1 medium banana and a 6 oz. light yogurt
Dinner
1 medium baked potato with 1 cup chili
1 piece of cornbread
1/2 cup grapes
Perhaps if you have to account to someone about what you're eating, you'll think twice about what or how much you eat. If you were wondering, the food listed above totals approximately 2000 calories. Sometimes when I start to lose perspective of how much I should be eating to lose weight, I think about the show The Biggest Loser. When I consider that those people are exercising 8 hours every day, only eating about 1400 calories per day, and seeing an average of 5 pounds of weight loss per week, I am reminded that I shouldn't expect huge results when I'm not putting in that kind of effort. Also, please remember that if your daily caloric intake drops below about 1200-1300 calories, your body will think it is starving and start storing all the energy it can, causing you to gain weight. And lastly, our bodies are not machines or calculators that always give the same result with the same input. Human bodies are unpredictable and require a lot of trial and error to figure out what works. One person's recipe for success may not yield the same results for you.
This week when you are keeping a food journal, you may want to estimate in your head how many calories you think you are eating and then do an actual tally of your calories one or two of the days to see if you are in touch with your true caloric intake. That is not required, but it might give you some insight into the results you're seeing. If you want to know the nutritional information about a particular food you eat that doesn't have a food label, try this website and enter the food into the search box at the top. If you want to know the nutritional information of a recipe you make, try this website and it will do a complete recipe analysis for you. There are tons of great online resources for health, fitness, and nutrition. I've listed the links to a few below. Please be wise with how you pursue weight loss. Slow and steady wins the race!
MyPyramid.gov
SELF Nutrition Data
Calorie King
The Daily Plate
Spark People
Cooking Light
Eating Well
The Couch-to-5K Running Plan
Exercise TV
Workoutz.com
Free Dieting
Weight Loss Institute
MSN Health
WebMD Health
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