First things first: The Caloric Balance
When it comes to weight, the most important thing you must keep in mind is your caloric balance. In fact, this point is so important that I’ve written a separate report about it. The caloric balance is the difference between your intake and output of energy.
IN – OUT = BALANCE
Your IN is the food you consume. Food contains energy (that’s why you die if you starve yourself). The more you eat, the bigger your IN.
To keep things simple, your OUT is the energy you spend in physical activities (it’s a little more complicated than that, you can read the full story in the report). Physical activities don’t just mean sports or exercise. Walking from home to work, walking around the shopping mall or grocery store all count. Even washing the dishes does, to a certain extend. We spend energy all day long. Anytime you’re not seated or lying, you spend more than the minimum. Of course, the harder the activity you’re doing, the more energy you spend.
At the end of the day, the BALANCE can be either:
1) Positive. A higher IN from food than OUT from physical activities. The extra energy is stored by your body as fat for future use. If the balance stays positive for prolonged amount of time, you store lots of fat and become overweight.
2) Negative. Good news. More energy OUT from physical activities than IN from food. The missing energy is taken from your energy store-yep, fat tissue. If the balance stays negative for a long period of time, you lose some of that tissue and become leaner.
3) Neutral. Your IN equals your OUT. Nothing is stored and no fat tissue is used up, so there is no change in body weight.
ACTION STEP
Review the past two weeks: how big were your IN and your OUT values? Would you say the BALANCES were positive or negative? For today, list what caloric values of what you’ve eaten so far and the physical activities you’ve done. Is the BALANCE is positive or negative?
What’s in my food? Nutrition Facts
Most of the foods come with a Nutrition Facts label. The first thing you want to look for is serving size. Here it’s “2 crackers (14 g)”. This means that the numbers shown on the label are for just 2 crackers. If you eat the whole bag (“Servings Per Container About 21”), you need to multiply by 21 to get the right numbers (multiplying by 2 and adding a 0 will do, too). Showing Facts for a tiny portion of what’s inside the bag is a trick the food industry uses to make it appear like it’s no big deal, when you’re actually eating a huge number of calories. Here, for example, 2 crackers contain 60 calories. But you’ll eat 1260 calories if you eat the whole bag! (42 crackers).
Also on the label are macronutrients: fat, carbohydrates and protein. Micronutrients come last: vitamins and minerals (in this case: Vitamin A 0%, Vitamin C 0%, Calcium 0%, and Iron 2%). The part underneath (“Percent Daily Values []”) is not worth mentioning here, so don’t pay it any attention.
ACTION STEP
Take a look at the Nutrition Facts of your two favorite foods. How do they compare? Next, examine the serving size shown on the label and scale it to your actual regular serving. Are you eating more calories than you thought?
ACTION STEP REVISITED
Review every item you usually eat that’s home right now. Find out how calorie rich your regular serving is for each. List the top 3 richest and ask yourself: do you really need to eat that? Next time you go for a serving, take half of your regular portion. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.
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categories: Nutrition,Health,Dieting,Food