Recommendations from the FDA and the Surgeon General have sighted the need to lose weight and exercise as a means of controlling your weight, reducing heart disease and living longer. Restaurants are now downsizing their food quantities and schools are serving more nutrition meals to school children. Even the chow lines in the military services have reduced the amount of fatty options we are feeding our soldiers.
Every year we make our New Year’s resolution to go on a diet and loose weight and do more exercise and live healthier lives. However, after a few months of struggling we our back on the usual bad eating habits as well as less exercise.
However, this year I promised myself to try again but I do need some incentives and more help. It is very tough trying to diet on your own. At my annual physical, my family doctor gave me a general good bill of health but saw that I had gained about 20 pounds since last year. He urged me to diet and exercise more and also offered me to participate in some programs offered at my HMO. These involved a nutritionist and an exercise program. I had tried them before but with limited success.
Recently, I saw an APP on my iPod which is also available on-line at http://MyFitnessPal.com . It is a free program and has a bunch of on-line tools to help track your food intake and your exercise. It gives you daily progress reports and short incentive messages. Since I am a gadget person, I put the APP on my iPod and also synchronized it with my desktop computer. That way I can enter and see my progress with my iPod mobile devise or at home on the PC.
Since I know that I have to keep accurate records either on the iPod or PC, I try to stick to a diet and do some daily exercise so that I will have data to enter but also see some meaningful changes. The iPod has become my personal mentor. It has forced me to stay true to my set goals. It’s like someone is looking over your shoulder and reminding you of all the do’s and don’ts. However to my benefit, over the last 4 days I have lost 3 pounds and have successfully kept to a healthy diet and to some daily exercise.
When I started the program last week, I weighed 256 pounds. My ideal weight should be a max of 175 pounds. With the iPod program I could calculate my BMI (Body Mass Index) and BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate per day) so that I could set some practical goals. Using my age, weight and height, my BMR is calculated to be about 2400cal. I decided that for a minimum I wanted to loose at least 1 pound per week so by next year I would weigh about 200 pounds.
Normally, nutritionists have calculated that 1 pound of body weight is equal to about 3500 calories. Consequently if you eat 500 calories less per day than your body needs from your (BMR), then in 7 days you will have lost 3500 calories or 1 pound of body weight. The converse is also true for gaining weight.
Since I want to loose 1 pound per week, then I have to reduce my calorie intake by 500cal per day or 3500cal per week. With my calculated BMR (2400), I subtract the calorie deficit (500) and get my maximum daily calorie intake (1900). This is the maximum number of calories that I can consume each day so that I reach my goal of 1 pound per week. I can also reduce this even further with exercise.
The neat thing about the iPod program (MyFitnessPal) is that it has a data base of 630,000 food choices and their equivalent calorie amounts as well as thousands of exercises with their calorie equivalents. In addition you can adjust the actual amounts of food intake (cups, tablespoon, etc.) or exercises (reps, minutes, etc.) with a dial meter. The portion or amount is then adjusted automatically. You then hit the ADD button and it gets added to you daily diet chart. Everything is then automatically updated and synchronized with your mobile device and/or PC.
Of course some days I am under my calorie goals for the day which allows me to go over a little the next day. However, I have tried to stay under my maximum calorie intake so that I can loose more weight faster, as long as you are eating a balanced diet with all the needed nutrients.
I have included some snapshots below of some of my Diet Info so you can see the progress that I have made. One of the reasons for posting this info on my Blog is that I want to keep this program going for at least a year. I know that you all will be asking me if I have continued my regiment, with the same exuberance in a week or month from now. Wish me luck. If you like, please join me on this health quest. The program makes a claim that followers of the program have 3x more success when done in groups.
